Through the Foglands

Posted on February 4, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By David Maynard
Self Published
5e
Level 3

The ambitious King of Octavia has promised a title and a portion of profits to any prospector who can find the source of the lustrous ore recently panned in the river near Walton’s Point. This boundless and “empty” land, previously only thought of as a curiosity only relevant to scholars for its Elven ruins and odd weather, is on the verge of annexation by the crown. Its residents are scrambling to profit off of the discovery – or to avoid displacement. Kingdoms of yore sold their souls to assert dominion over their neighbors. Will history repeat itself?

This wilderness pointcrawl has about 26 locations and a small dungeon with about thirty rooms. Decent formatting and descriptive text compliments it, with rival parties and a timeline augmenting play. A decent adventure, if slightly … generic?

First, the good. A decent adventure. Travel through the pointcrawl wilderness to another town. There are things in the forest that interact. So, the goblins want loot to let you pass … maybe divert back to that ruined elf city to find some? Or, the two rival parties wandering around ar ein your way. Or, the witch of the wood will make a bargain with you for something else if you go fetching. So, a decent amount of the wood feeling like it s real, like the things in one location impact the things in a another location. 

And the descriptions are relatively good, especially when they come to rooms. “A dry fountain peeks out of rubble and dust. Or “Thick hewn stone blocks and roof tiles are scattered on the eastern side of the tower strewn about the forest floor.” This is all decent imagery. A black pudding “glomps” its way somewhere. Just a few selected words and the place does an ok job of coming alive.You can talk to a lot, and there are little places to explore along the way, a ew rooms at a select number of stops in the wilderness. 

So, a decent little adventure.

I think my issues with this adventure are two.. 

First, the theming is a little sparse. So while we get the title “THrough the Foglands”, we don’t actually get much in the way of fog. The kind of misty environment, with low visibility. The old growth rainforest of the pacific northewest, with fog creeping up. If you take THAT, for example, and then, for almost every encounter, try to incorporate that feeling in to things. Maybe not the fog, proper, but at least the vibe that kind of otherworldliness gives you. There are hints of it, here and there, but it’s not frot and center. Hitting this theme, over and over again, would have, I think, elevated all of the encounters and make them that much more evocative., This is where I get my somewhat generic statement, from earlier. Without that strong theming coming in then its just another encounter with a ruined tower. And, thusly, the adventure is somewhat weaker. 

There is also some weakness in the overall situations. I mentioned a linkage between locations, loosely. This is, by far, not the strongest part of the adventure. There’s a mechanism, that I am particularly fond of, of explaining the situation through the text and encounters … as opposed to, say, some summary text of what’s going on. It works well when its pulled off right. I THINK that’s whats going on here … but not in anything like the best way. Take the overall hook. I thought, from the adventure summary, we were going up river. No. while it’s never really explained, we’re actually travelling from one town through a forest to the second town where the gold in the river is. Once there we get a paragraph about panning for gold. If you make your check you find the source of the gold. Done. Nothing more. 

Likewise the witch of the wood. While its supposed to be involved, I believe, in a major way in the adventure, its kind of almost like a separate encounter. The linkages to the other parts, how they make sense and so on, is done very well. Or the holy order of knights in the dungeon ruins. I thought they’d be outside. But instead there’s just a note or two inside. And they don’t really seem to give a fuck about much. It’s all more than little disconnected, the smaller “point” situations from the larger issues. Given time, highlighter, and notes, you could make things clearer. And, also, there are few to no cross-references. You’re taking me to see your leader? Great … which room is that/

 And there’s A LOT of fucking statues in this thing. ?

So, we’ve got a decent little journeyman effort here. It needs more consistent theming and a better way to integrate the larger situations in to the text. But, hey, it’s better than most.

This is $5 at Itch.io

https://davidmaynard.itch.io/through-the-foglands

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 4 Comments

The Sun Orb

Posted on February 1, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 4-7

Bellamar, ancient mage of great power, jealously guarded her secrets, especially her signature spells. She created several orbs, each a tiny world of their own, filled with mystical creatures and traps to protect her most treasured spellbooks and experiments. Upon her mysterious death, the orbs have become scattered across the lands and lost in time….until now.

This 24 page dungeon features a sun temple with about 25 rooms, and an extraplanar area with about fifteen more at the end. A bit puzzle/riddle heavy. Malrex can get a bit lengthy in his DM notes for rooms, but it’s a solid adventure that does nothing wrong. 

You’re after a spellbook full of sun spells, probably. And the way to get it is to go inside a magic orb by touching it. Inside you see a temple … with a lot of sun theming. 

I always have a hard time with these sorts of reviews. Ultimately, it’s ok. It’s not doing anything wrong. Maybe a little lengthy in the DM notes for some rooms, with stretches of text (decently organized, if long) that stretch for a column or more for the more complex rooms. And, also, I’m not terribly excited for it. I think a lot of your own views on this are going to come down to differences in personal preference. Seeing so many adventures, my standards are impossibly high. This adventure is certainly exceeds  most, even of the older stuff, and in many ways reminds me of the better old adventures. Or, maybe, is evocative of them. It’s a fine journeyman effort. 

I’m struggling with the room descriptions. “The doors open to a brightly lit marbled passageway that ends at a whitewashed stone door. The marble boasts swirls of gray and golds intermixed with a chalky white. Golden runes are etched on the floor.” That’s fine. I think you can see, maybe, the comparisons to the older adventures in that description. This is not minimalism and there was clearly an effort made to bring the environment to life. But, also, I find it a little dry … just as I do most of the earlier adventure descriptions. As always, I think this is the hardest part of writing an adventure. Bringing an environment to life in the DMs head. You have to envision something and get it down on paper in such a way that the DM reading it has their mind come to life. This is hard. For many purchasers they are not going to be worried about this. The description, above, is enough. If we ignore design/story/plot/situations, as a lofty goal almost unobtainable, in our criteria, then we’re left with ease of use, my usual gripe. The single most common complaint is that adventures are hard to use, and thus my emphasis on that. If you eliminate that and write something that’s not a nightmare to use (which should be allow hurdle …) then I’m left with: what makes me excited to run this adventure? And, generally, that’s going to be the descriptions. That’s what’s going to make me excited to run it … if I leave out the situations/design criteria. And that excitement about running it is what’s going to get it to the table. Sure, great situations and/or design will trump almost everything else, but that’s not something I’m going to harp on. If I did there would be VERY few entries on my recommended list. For all the bitching about the standards, my criteria is rather low, and yet few things make it past. This one does.

There’s a lot of theming here, which translates, in a way, in to a lot of puzzle like elements. Doors that open only at certain times of day (Sundial!) or straight up riddles. Darkness and light being used in a variety of way to elements to the adventure. A prism, in a room full of mirrors. A fresco giving hints on  how to pass a room without damage. It’s a decent integration of the theme of the temple. Maybe trending a bit to the “challenge dungeon” trope a bit, but, it’s a temple and there are riddles. What ya gonna do?

At one point you can defeat a (godling?) in his temple (nice art there) and go through a portal to a sun god mini-dimension, fucking around a bit. 

My notes for this adventure are almost nonexistent. I don’t have much to complain about. And, also, not a lot to gush over. That puts us solidly in the category of a fine adventure that just isn’t hitting the highest of highs for me. IDK, maybe it seems a little rushed to me?

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages. More than enough to determine if this is for you or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422991/The-Sun-Orb?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 33 Comments

Rites of Weeping

Posted on January 30, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Harry Menear
Self Published
OSE
Levels 2-3

Deep in the woods, where the pines grow tall as churches, a god-thing is dying. Her children are gone, taken by the plague, and what was once her temple is now their tomb. In desperation, she prolongs the life of her last remaining servant, transforming her into a vile instrument of grim necessity — a yellow-eyed horror that preys upon the inhabitants of the local village. The servant comes at night, dragging its victoms, screaming, to the black lake beneath the sodden earth. There — amid the rotten husks of plague-ravaged monks — they are caged, nourishment for a dying thing that dreamed she was a goddess.

This ten page adventure has a small lair dungeon with five rooms. Great room descriptions come to life while the rest of the surrounding adventure descriptions reek of a bit too Try Hard. I might run this as a lair side-trek.

As I write this I have a leg of lamb sitting in my fridge. I saw it again this morning when I grabbed a jar of olives. I bought it as a special food. Then I got sick the night I bought it for and didn’t make it. It’s been sitting in the fridge since then. Getting greyer. It stinks. A lot. I think about it sometimes. That little lamb was raised for just once purpose: me eating it. Everyone who worked on it. The dude who raised mom, the transport company, the farmer, the people at the slaughterhouse, the grocery people, buyers, distributors. Everyone. They all exist in a big long chain with the end result being me eating that leg. The thing that didn’t happen. It stares back at me, reminding me that it has failed in its purpose.

Exactly like the fuckwits who spend too much time on layout. “I want it to be pleasing!” That’s fucking great. More power to you. But you can’t lose sight of goal: the adventure as an ADVENTURE. To be run. When your pretentious layout garbage takes over and contributes to me NOT running the adventure then you’ve failed. Don’t worry fuckwit, you can still make it look nice. “Ahhhh, but it’s all subjective!” wails the maddening crowds of layout idiots. Sure, in as much as absolutely everything in life is. But, also, maybe the fucking moron who buys your work and takes enough time to write up something about it could be given just a tad bit more credence than the fucking echo chamber you’re in? No? Ok. We arrive at todays review.

Menear can do a couple of things right. He’s got a decent overall aesthetic going on, in the adventure. The theming, as it were, of all the elements, rooms, and people and such, of the adventure all work together fairly well. The setting, and each room, all make sense together and contribute to the overall mood. That’s fucking great! We get consistency throughout. 

And dude knows how to write a room description. “The tracks end at a rough stone arch, doors hastily mortared shut with lyme and ash.” Fucking lyme and ash man! Great specificity. Brings the entire thing alive. Or “Flickering candlelight, dripping water. Wet stonework caked in mould. Smells of sweet rot and Petrichor.” Flickering candles and dripping water … with some sweet rot? Sign me up! There’s some great use of adjectives and adverbs in this. Great specificity. The kind that I’m really looking for to make a room description come alive. 

The first words of the actual adventure are “The boat is leaking.” Perfect. The game is afoot Watson! On the river you come across thee sullen, cock-eyed fisherwomen smoking pipes and srinking coarse bramblewine, outside their huts, watching the river go by, in the rain, with goats, chickens and muck-smeared children running up and down what passes for a street. I’m not doing the thing justice. It’s really good. Sets the mood. A great description. 

I’m down man.

Well, until I’m not.

There is a definite talent for setting a mood. And the room descriptions, the evocative part of them, are top notch, without relying on gore and explosion sounds to make them come alive. But then, also, some of the descriptions are just REALLY try harding. The main creature of the adventure is described as “Hunched, yellow-eyed embodiment of a dying god-thing’s will. Consumed by virulant plague. Stinks like a leper colony and screams with a voice like tearing paper and gushing boils. Wants to take people and cage them above the Weeping Lake as sustenance for its god.” I note that there is no actual description here. I don’t think I can tell the party what they see. And the tearing paper/gushing boils stuff reads nice but I don’t think that translates to something I can do for the players. What the fuck does a leper colony stink like? This needs to be grounded. 

The text here is two column with some fuckwit font choice. And, I swear to fucking god, half the page is green. Like, once column has a green background. And it looks like the text in that column is yellow. Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? With your fucked up font. The main text is good. The rooms have a little overview. There’s good use of bullets, bolding and whitespace. I think it runs a good tight ship in terms of formatting, combining both a more traditional descriptive style with the good elements of the OSE house style. But, man, slapping down that green? With text on it? In that font? Shove it up your ass. 

There are some design things in this that I kind of like .. and am maybe questioning. The main enemy has 9hd and reappears, in the main dungeon room, in 1d6 turns after you kill it. That’s a little fast and a little much for levels 2-3. But, also, the main map is a loop, so we can do some avoidance stuff here. And, you don’t actually need to kill it in the adventure. You don’t know that, but, you can “win” by just rescuing some people. And, also, the main room is a lake underground. You take a boat from one shore to another. So, you could be stuck on the far shire when the creature reappears. It’s got some interesting design choices here. I might put the monster down a little longer and maybe keep the hints it is coming back. But, if you want to go all LotFP style, then you can.

You’re also rolling, every turn you’re in the dungeon, to see if the creature moves to a different room. I don’t know man. That’s a lot of fucking rolling. Maybe you hear sounds in the darkness. Maybe it serves as pressure to keep the party moving and provides some tense situations. But, also, that’s a lot of rolling. Every time I see an adventure that wants rolls every turn I ask myself if this person actually ever plays D&D. 

This thing is short. A little village play to get the adventure going. That part is almost presented in a perfunctory manner … where it could be a little longer or more involved. And then a five room dungeon. This is absolutely a side-trek lair. And for that, yeah, groove on. It fits. It kind of fits that petty god/folk horror thing that I like in a lair adventure. It’s not 100 Bushels of Rye, but, with with, it could be. Descent design and good room descriptions. A great vibe. Something meatier. Less head-up-the-ass on layout and controlling the nonsense descriptions. But, it’s still Best quality. 

This is $3.70 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You can get a look at the layout and such, and that great intro the village (that ultimately doesn’t pay off) but no room descriptions, which is where I think the strength of the designer lies. The village intro description, though, give you can idea of what to expect.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/409267/Rites-of-Weeping?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 47 Comments

The Sepulchre of the Serpent’s Servant

Posted on January 28, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Miles Adams
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-2

An ancient, crumbling crypt overrun with vermin is now home to a band of goblins, but the temple beneath the crypt contains dark secrets.

This fourteen page digest adventure features a two level dungeon with thirteen room in about eight pages.It’s a pretty basic goblin affair. There are hints of better things to come with the designer, based on elements of the room description

It’s a humanoid lair. B2 had humanoid lairs. What’s it doing that B2 doesn’t do? Orcs in a Hole  man. Except this time it’s goblins. A bunch of rooms on the first level with goblins in them and then a couple (four?) on the second level with an old temple and mummy in one. 

The format here is interesting. A room title. A short one sentence italics … overview? “The stench of death. Moans in the darkness.” That don’t do shit … except give a certain vibe to the DM. That’s what vibe the designer is going for in this room. And …. Meh? I mean, ok. I get where you’re going. But, also, why not just make that the rooms vibe? Via the descriptions? 

Then we get the bullets, with some nested bullets under those for more info, like treasure carried by the bulleted monster. With some bolding to draw the attention to a word. A stat block in an offset box and maybe another section with some more information if there’s a random table or something. It’s basic, easy to scan and find information. And, probably, in this case, implemented incorrectly. More on that later. But, it also has some extraneous information, like “The goblins keep the toad well fed so they can pass it by.” Great. Why do I care about that, when running a game? Or, where the fucking doors lead. You mean, the thing the map shows? You almost never need to include exit/door information. And, then, some of the bullets are out of order. Room one’s first bullet is that there is a giant toad in the room. And bullet two is that the muddy floor conceals the toad. We dont do things this way. Obvious things first. First things first. The floor is muddy. It hides a giant toad. That’s the way we order information, the the manner in which the DM is likely to need to use it.

Before we get to my main comments, let’s talk first about randomness in an adventure. I feel like I’ve talked about this sixteen hundred million bajillion times. Randomness in an OSR adventure is not arbitrary. It’s there for a reason purpose. It feels like people say “Oh, OSR has random tables in it. Here’s a random table. Now my adventure is OSR also!” No. In certain situations it makes sense to have some randomness in an adventure. A giant room full of trash that you search could reveal some loot/objects in a rather arbitrary manner. If you have multiple corpses, or graves, or something. Enough tha keying each, individually, could be a pain, then randomness might make sense. But, let’s say there is ONE corpse in the room. And you loot it. What’s the purpose of having a random table to show you what is on the body? The table takes up more space. And, there’s no reason for it. Whatever the body has is what the body has. Put put ni the fucking things you were randomizing. If you’ve got a scene based adventure and write four scenes as potentials on the way to the dungeon, and you roll to see which one the party encounters … why the fuck are you doing this? To waste three encounters worth of content? 

But, mainly, I want to talk a bit about the room descriptions and how I find them uninteresting. This is a common complaint of the OSE format and/or bullets. The usage of these, for organizing, does not remove the need to be evocative in your descriptions. 

The general, “always on” descriptions used for the dungeon rooms are found on a normal page … and not the fucking map, etc, where they should fucking be. And they are not bad. A cool, damp, dank, earthy smell. Ceilings of timber, 8’ tall, falen bricks, handling root, dripping water. Floors of black flagstones, broken and uprooted by mud, roots, and slime. Sconces of coiled serpents. Sagging dark green stone block walls, collapsed by expanding roots. These are not bad at all! But they are lost by being put up front and not someplace the DM can always reference to beef up a description. How often ar eyou going to remember to go back and look at that page, while looking at the page you are running, in order to incorporate it? WHich is why you put the fucking things someplace they will always be seen. OR you put them in the room proper, in your description. Pick one or two and go with that in that room. 

There are rooms here which could not be bad. “Smokey, fetid, crawling with lice”, says a room. With an oil lamp hanging from a ceiling. Lean in to that fucking smoke. Hanging in the air. Hazy, Choking a bit. With debris. The floor crawling with lice. And goblins lurking in it. Instead it comes off a little busy and boring.

Or, The SInking Temple. Which is labeled Dark, Dank, Roots entwined serpent columns sinking in to a muddy mire. And a corpse floating FACE DOWN in it. (Nice!)  But I’d lean in to the ankle deep water, and maybe some slime and debris, leaves, roots in the water. Go harder on the vines and columns. 

So, conceptually, you can ALMOST get to a decent room.But it just never makes it there because of the choices made with te format. 

In the end it’s just another goblin lair with little to distinguish it.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422928/Sepulchre-of-the-Serpents-Servant?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

Gilded Dream of the Incandescent Queen

Posted on January 25, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
Gilded Dream of the Incandescent Queen
Footprints #25
HDA Terrible Sorcery
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 3-6

Nearing the end of her life, she explored every option to extend her years: magic mirrors, lichdom, medicine, even Infernal bargains. Nothing was satisfactory. Finally, she built the sanctum and attempted to transcend mortality itself. It didn’t work out.

This is one of the adventures in Footprints issue #25. And, as it turns out, was also at least partially developed in a contest on my Adventure Design forum. Which I didn’t participate in or even realize was going on until two years after it ended. My bad …

This 21 page adventure describes a two-ish level “castle” in the sky with about forty rooms in it. It’s doing everything right … and yet leaves me nonplussed. Maybe the Dwarf Temple problem.

One of the opening sentences to this is “Many NPCs in the adventure have useful knowledge about local dangers – parties who don’t gather information and put the pieces together might make a fatal mistake! Thus is the game played.” So, surprise surprise surprise, Terribly Sorcery gets it. 

So, queen lady tried to become immortal by building a stairway to heaven, literally, from her cloud castle. It worked kind of like one would expect. Now the vil part of her broods in her throne room. Oh, also, rumors say the castle has something that can turn base metals in to gold. Let’s take a look, shall wel?

We’ve got a mostly functioning caste here. There are cloud butlers and marble courtesans running around. And some rotting corpses. And some ‘angels’ “the gilded ones” who’ve descended from on high having come DOWN the staircase. And a decent number of other weirdos to be found in the cells and dungeons and palace proper. The major groups get a little run down of some basic personality and desires – which is good for the more generic ones like the butlers, angels and courtesans. Our angels? “Culturally insensitive tourists with holy

Powers.” Noice! And the remains of the queen in her throne rooms? She wants “To increase the misery in the world, even her own. To be praised, flattered and obeyed. To live forever. To be beautiful again.” Nice stuff there. Realistic and runnable as an NPC. This is all supplement by a decent, if somewhat layout-expansive, wandering monster table good enough to add sufficient variety to the DMs imagination during play.This is how you add colour, people.

Treasure, both mundane and magical, is well described, generally, and a mix of unique items and book items. The map is …decent for the limitations given: the base outline is a triangle and shows us some features, like light and such. (And it’s worth noting that some rooms are bigger on in the inside … like the 2 mile diameter ocean inside of one rooms, complete with multiple islands. That’s a nice addition.) I might have found that the “always on” dungeon dressing, marble, etc, would be better served as a note on the map page rather than only in the text. I like general features somewhere I can reference them quickly.

Writing is relatively decent here. If, maybe, a little .. static? Low energy? “11 worthless remains are climbing up the pillars to catch and eat a group of 19 sunlight moths resting on the ceiling.” If I look at that description and I really THINK about it then it could be pretty cool. It’s certainly better than the vast majority of descriptions written in rooms in adventures. They are doing something, both crawling up the pillars AND trying to eat something, so, great job! Maybe a few better adjective/adverb choices would have given it a little more energy in the imagination. Likewise, let’s look at this room description: “CHAPEL – Hung with white and crimson banners, lit by golden candelabras. On a marble altar rests a glowing red cross which bleeds constantly, covering the altar and overflowing into a floor drain.” Again, if I really think about this then it seems pretty nifty. And it is ABSOLUTELY better than most of the garbage I run across. (This is what praise from me looks like. Its not the best food ive ever eaten in my life. Why is that the case?) But, again, it seems a little … ossified? Again, I think some better adjective and adverb choices. And, again, I will point out that I think this is the hardest part of adventure writing. Making a description really jump off the page and live in the imagination of the DM, immediately, is hard. 

Certainly, we get a kind of mythic element to the adventure. There’s the golden stairway to heaven, which is described well and FEELS like what it’s meant to be: a major major location. A mythic place. And, likewise, the dungeons below have some shit equal to the stairs. Mythic things and rooms that you’re like “Damn. Yup. That’s what some soul scales are, where they live, and who guards them!” The ability to create, and communicate, the truly MYTHIC in quite well done. The designer understands the need to do this in an adventure and has the ability to do it.

The environment is a little austere, with marble hallways and the like. I wondering if my lack of enthusiasm here is because of that. There’s a tendency to make dwarf temples, and indeed anything dwarf, somewhat austere. And I think it’s quite difficult to communicate the grandeur of the austere in the written word. Magnificent desolation, and the like ot the southwest landscapes … how do you do that? It does seema lot simpler to appeal to those baser dark and dripping caverns with streams of blood and gore. Given the austerity of the place. “The hallways are polished white and grey marble, trimmed with gold and silver highlights. Furniture and artwork is clean and well-cared for. Soft lighting permeates the sanctum, like being indoors on an overcast day.” Maybe? I don’t know. It’s got a decent amount of interactivity. Mythic things. Good wanderers and decent map for its size. The rooms are decently written, and yet I’m not very excited here. Which is why I want to turn to the austerity excuse. 

I think this is worth checking out, especially since Footprints is free. I’m just not sure this every makes it to my table? 

Free at Dragonsfoot at:

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FT&fileid=503&watchfile=

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 22 Comments

Blackmore

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Eric Garneau
Critical Lit Publishing
OSE
Levels 1-2

Suspended high above the land by magicks unknown, the magnificent Castle Blackmore stands as the sole remaining triumph of a civilization long past. But every Year of the Fox, for but one day, a luminous rainbow bridge appears to connect the lands below to the castle above. What treasures does Castle Blackmore hold?

This is just crap. You don’t need to keep reading this review.

Have I told you about my band, Mic Check? We get up on stage at your local dining pub, crank up the amps, and spend two hours just (badly) tuning our instruments. and saying “Check check.” My band has more merit than this adventure.

It’s got 44 digits pages and has three adventures. It’s inspired by Deep Purple? & Dio? That’s metal from the … 60s? Early 70’s? Ok, so,  this is either boomer or some kind of music dude that also likes D&D. And has, presumably, never actually seen a D&D adventure. And thus we get this thing of a shit-fest. 

The first adventure, the only one I could make it through, is fourteen pages long. It has a “really fun role play encounter” and then a six room temple … in which four of the rooms are on one page. How this thing managed to get to fourteen pages is beyond me. I mean, I know, it’s my fake job to know, I’m just incredulous.

So, you want to make it to the magic castle in the sky. TO get there you have to take a circular tunnel in the side of a mountain. You go through it to find a room with a wizard in it. He tells you that to get to the castle you need to open a frozen door and that he’s forgotten all of his fire magic. Great. You thaw the door, go through the passage to see a temple. All of that takes four pages. We’ll get back to that. The temple is one one big room, four smaller rooms hanging off of it and a basement. The basement has 2d4 sahuagin in it. That you have to fight to continue on. Those are what … 2HD? Yeah, levels 1-2. Right.You get a ring off of one of them, stick it in the alter up to and you’re done … you summon the rainbow bridge to the sky castle. Fourteen fucking pages.

That initial four pages of text? That’s just paragraph after paragraph of “and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens” sprinkled in with a lot of “and as a DM you could do this or as a DM you could do this or as a DM you could also throw this at the players.”

 And long fucking italics that is hard to read. 

 An din the adventure advice like “play up their grotesque description” … without any description for the DM to play up. 

And commentary in the text like “but where is that object?”  addressed to … theDM? The players? 

And other commentary in the descriptions like “they are possibly remnants of the temples earlier inhabitants or perhaps among its meanest primal antagonists” This is in reference to the sahuagin. Who the fuck cares about that? 

This is just nonsense. There’s little semblance or organization at all. Just a whole lot of words that are padding. No help to the DM in running it, either in the descriptions or the formatting or anything else. Your interactivity is putting a ring the sahuagin have in to the alter in the main room. And, I guess, thawing an obviously frozen door? 

Yeah, I’m not explaining why anything is bad this morning. I’m not explaining what to do better. I really don’t give shit, after reading this. If you’re going to make no effort at all then why should I?

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. Go ahead and summer through the last couple. It’s representative.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419845/Blackmore-A-Rock–Roll-Adventure-Module?1892600

Posted in Do Not Buy Ever, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

Pilgrimage of the Roaches

Posted on January 21, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
Kormar Publishing
OSE
Level 1

A group of Roachling pilgrims from the chasms below the earth have emerged and are fortifying the abandoned chrysalis of a death gnat. They prepare to wage a profane war of infection against those who refuse to live in squalor. The human village of Peldor has already been ravaged by the emergence of death gnat; it is not equipped to handle the insect threat.

This sixteen page digest adventure uses seven pages to feature a two level dungeon with 21 rooms and a lot of intelligent roaches.  The central conceit is a gimmick, with interactivity being limited to stabbing. 

The roaches got three factions. The mercs, interested in cash, the preachers who want to convert folk and the zealots who want to kill people. As a level one, id you take roachling as your optional language? No? Then I guess you’re not gonna talk to them, are you? So you better get out your stabbers and stab away. Not that there’s any real guidance on talking to them, anyway. So stab away you kooky cats! For, while the roach leaders have personality ,and the lair is full of weirdo window dressing, ain’t none of it meaningful for an adventure.

“Room 5: Refuse Pit. A dumping ground for the Roachlings. Trash and excrement left here may

be used later in construction.” Wunderbar! You’ve both defined what a refuse pit it and then told us what its going to be used for. Neither of which helps us run this adventure. That’s a pretty good example of a low-value room description. “Bedroom: This room is a bedroom. People sleep in here at night. It has a bed.” would be an equivalent description. 

There’s a lot of littl mistakes in the descriptions I could point out. Important things second int he descriptions. Little bits of backstory embedded. None of them is really enough, in a normal adventure, to make me more than a little grumpy. But, here, the minimalism of the text combined with the complete lack of anything interesting (ooo! Roaches that can stand up and weak clothes and can speak their own language!) make them all stand out like a sore thumb. 

It’s just being weird for the sake of being weird. Kormar has done some interesting things in the past; this is a shame to encounter. There’s nothing to this. I don’t know how to write more. There’s nothing here to review. “Oooo, look, the pug is wearing a tutu!” Ok. Now what?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $2.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/422019/Pilgrimage-of-the-Roaches?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Secret of the Wood of Dark Bough

Posted on January 18, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
The Secret of the Wood of Dark Bough
Footprints 20
R. N. Bailey
1e
Levels 3-5

… An angry mob rushed to arrest the suspected Ostenheim farmers. Eight men of that community were given a quick trial and found guilty. These men are now held in Alfandi. In five days’ time, they are to be executed for practicing black magic on their neighbors….

This 31 page adventure details a wilderness region, a small wilderness lair, and then a three level bullywug dungeon. It’s a real 1e dungeon, for better or ill, that is magazine formatted. So, you’ll get a kick in the balls trying to run it but it’s the real deal. A classic 1e adventure right out of 81.

ObInsult: Ah yes, the hardcore 1e gang. Where the height of game design and formatting was whatever Gary shit out in 1981. Alas, for us all, it was pretty good design …

So, the village of Bumfuck has had some crops fail. They blame the village of Asshattery and their black magic. They kidnap eight farmers from there and are executing them in a few days time. You learn of this and attempt mediation. In looking at the Bumfuck farms, you find some tracks, follow them in to the woods, find a siren in her lair and learn of a stolen magic cup, go back to town to confront the thief about the crop-withering cup only to learn that bullwugs in the swamp stole it … and set off to go get it back so as to provide an alternate theory and free the villagers. As a B/X five, I’d probably just kill everyone, but, we’re in “realistic” 1e land, so, we murder ourselves with labour (U1, biatches!) for 2000gp in treasure. Along the way we get a handful of farms to investigate, a handful of locations in the woods, a siren lair with a few roms, a swamp with a handful of locations, and a three level bullywug lair. 

There is a casual realism here that I greatly appreciate. The mob and fueding villages is very well done. Petty grievances, some jumping to conclusions about evidence, and so on make civil hands unclean. The villages, proper, are well done, with almost no shops. One has a Drink Hall instead f an inn, and you can all sleep in it for a cp. No private room bullshit here! The creatures, as enemies, and the locations extend this kind of realism. Not just things to stab, but also not a useless backstory and history garbage. 

This thing is TIGHT. I mentioned all of the locations, and, with that page count, you’ve got to expect that there’s a been tight job of writing/editing. You get a page of backstory, or so, but, other than that there’s almost no wasted space. None of this “appears to be” shit or integrated what used to be or motivations in the room descriptions. There are some spare words, you’re not getting a flavourless minimalism, but its realism without simulation and a focus on actual game play. Exactly the fuck the way an adventure should be written.

Interactivity here is … subtle. For the most part you’re following breadcrumbs, talking to folks, and stabbing things. Generally, the monsters know something and thus capturing and questioning works for the trail. There’s a shrine to maybe leave an offering in. Or, an underwater cave to discover and swim through. Mostly, this is going to be the party using all of their 1e abilities to overcome things that are at their level. We’re not talking an environment set up against the party, but rather a more natural, neutral environment, with the associated interactivity. 

Decent NPC’s, with their descriptions focused on play rather than backstory. A great little timeline of local events that take place, and where a roving band of miscreants is at any one time, for the party to perhaps stumble upon. The lack of an order of battle for the bullywugs, in their lair, is a somewhat obvious miss. I guess they get what they deserve then 😉

Right now out 1e friends are masturbating furiously over this. And they will continue to do so in spite of …

This is magazine formatted. Magazine formatting is something I discovered in my Dungeon Magazine odyssey. Basically, you’re getting two column, with some bolding. Overall the formatting options appear (for magazine reasons?) to be quite limited when things appear in that medium. This severely limits the possibilities for bringing clarity and scanability to an adventure … something high up on my list. (And, everyone else’s, since “they are hard to run” is the number one complaint, year after year, about prepublished adventures.) This seems to be a common problem. Or, at least, a refusal to deviate from a house style. That’s a miss. The long form paragraph is not the end all and be all of formatting. It can absolutely work, but, also, it is almost certainly not going to work if you don’t work the entries hard with editing and/or keep the entries short. And, all that 1e realism is NOT contributing to keeping the entries short.

We’ve traded evocative writing for gygaxian naturalism. Both can work, although I find High Gygaxian a little distant. The writing here, especially for the descriptions, can be very hit or miss for that reason. “Steady drips of water fall from the ceiling, a few inches of foamy water cover the floor, and flaky, white mold grows on the walls.” I find the overall effect here to be a bit distancing, or coldly written, but steady drips, format water, and flaky white mold are all hitting exactly what they should be. So, not rock star but also not bad at all. But then we get to “In the center of this cave sits a 3’x3’x3’ flat-topped chest of iron.” This is not exactly the best room description ever written. There’s this steady cadence, both in the descriptions and in the DM text, of 1e descriptive elements. Exact dimensions. And dear god, if I have to read “If there is a ranger or druid in the party then the tracks …” one more time I’m gonna have a head burst. “This cavern has a 15; high ceiling and a strong musty smell” is not going to do it for me. 

Which, again, leads to the primary interactivity in this adventure: fucking up dudes. Because, if you’re playing 1e like it’s 4e, then you’ve got enough information to fuck up the dudes present. 

Thus, it ain’t cutting it for me. I could debate the merits of high 1E for a long time. I believe, though, that if you are in to high 1E then I’ve already told you enough that you’re going to check this out. For everyone else … there are other fish in the sea.

Yo, free at Dragonsfoot. You should absolutely check out their magazine, Footprints, at least once in your life, if only to see how the other half lives.

https://www.dragonsfoot.org/php4/archive.php?sectioninit=FT&fileid=377

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 29 Comments

Aberrant Reflections

Posted on January 16, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By directsun
Self Published
B/X
Levels 1-4

At the bottom of an ancient temple, beyond the mirror’s edge, lies the spot where reality was sundered. Fortune and power await those who learn its secrets. A fate worse than death is reserved for those who fail. You’ve come to plunder the temple between worlds and gaze into its ABERRANT REFLECTIONS.

This 44 page digest adventure features a mirror themed dungeon with about 22 rooms. It IS a puzzle dungeon but feels less like one than the ham-handed ones. The writing could be beefed up quite a bit to make it more evocative. This is a decent dungeon, especially as puzzle dungeons go.

This is a mirror dungeon. Meaning that there are mirrors in the dungeon that reflect a second dungeon, with the same basic layout as the first. You can, if you figure it out, pass through the mirrors to manipulate the other environment … such as the big honking room near the entrance stuffed full of treasure! Nice job that … by putting the treasure room up front, albeit in the mirror universe, you get the players interest fast and they pretty quickly learn their mission: figure out those fucking mirrors so they can get the treasure. Thus, I’m all on board with the core conceit. It’s just a dungeon. With another dungeon behind it and a motivation for reaching it. An appeal to the players, rather than the characters, is almost always going to be a good thing and it’s done here.

The map supports the mirror play by overlaying some purple text on to the “normal” map; the purple stuff representing the things that are different in the mirror-verse. The text of the adventure continues this with the rooms having both traditional text and then also purple text to handle the mirror universe things. It’s simple and effective and the purple is easy to read. The lack of numbers on the map raised some eyebrows, but, it is cross-referenced to the page the room is on, one room per page, so, the page numbers essentially serve as a room number … no harm no foul.

Formatting is decent, with bullets, bolding  and whitespace and boxes/shading. And, of course, the purple text clearly designating the mirror room. Interactivity, likewise, with the core puzzle concept of entering and/or manipulating objects in the mirror dungeon. This is complimented by Marvin the Morose Rob^h^h^hgolem and creatures which come through from the other side … as well as a few Things type body horrors. There’s enough variety to keep the party on its toes but still engaged.

My main issue here is one that I frequently have and seldom mention: the quality of the descriptive writing. This is, as I’ve said in the part, what I consider to be the hardest part of writing, so I don’t like to make TOO much of it. But, when its lacking it tends to turn someone I might want to run, or something I am excited to run, in to something I am indifferent to run. And that is, essentially, what we have here. 

Each room starts with a little bit of text, a kind of overview that could be aimed at either the DM or at the players as read-aloud. For example “Mirrors flank a black curtain that conceals the passage north. At the west end of the hallway sits an empty doorframe.” Bolded things have section heading down below, but, looking at the text proper, as an evocative description … meh. Ok. It is, I guess. It’s not bad, but, also, it’s not very evocative, I guess? Perhaps a little too grounded in the facts of the situation rather than the feelings of a situation (I just saw Bodies Bodies Bodies … Feelings are Facts!) 

I’m not altogether bored by descriptions like “A grand mirror towers over a stone altar, bathing it in green light.” as an initial room description. Grand, tower, bathing … and pale green light is always a win. But it is lacking just a little more. Maybe the context of the room? Dust motes? A barrenness by which the mirror and light/altar is thus the highlight? It’s not bad, but it’s not a stunning example of writing either. 

And, I guess, that’s got to be good enough. This is a decent adventure. It’s not doing anything wrong. Maybe a bit rough for level 1s, with a bunch of 3 and 4HD baddies, but as puzzle dungeons go its a pretty decent. The puzzles are integrated, not isolated funhouse rooms. It feels like a real place. Or, at least, the heightened reality of a “Real” dungeon in D&D. The concept, formatting, and interactivity are good and the writing not bad at all.

“Bryce, you’re not excited.” Nope. I’m not. I’m gonna Best this, because I think it deserves it. But, a print copy isn’t going on my bookshelf. Not that you fuckwits give a damn. Directsun is, however, on the short list of people to look out for when new adventures appear by them.

This is $8 at DriveThru. You getting all 44 pages in the preview. Rock on man! Directsun knows the score!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419533/Aberrant-Reflections?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

Welcome to the Valley

Posted on January 14, 2023 by Bryce Lynch 
By Skeeter Green
Skeeter Green Productions
S&W
Level 1

The Valley Out of Time is a series of ‘zine-sized adventures from SGP. This valley can be placed in any ongoing campaign, and is set in the “Neanderthal Period” of development. Huge monsters – both dinosaurs and otherwise – and devolved humanoids plague the area, and only the hardiest of adventurers will prevail! This series of adventures borrows heavily from classic dinosaur art, books, and movies; if you’ve ever seen a classic Frank Frazetta or Roy Krenkel painting, or read or watched The Land that Time Forgot, The Lost World, Journey to the Center of the Earth, One Million Years B.C., The Flintstones, any stop-motion film from Ray Harryhausen, etc., you’re going to feel right at home.

This twenty page digest adventure has three encounters in it. With a fuck ton of 4HD and *HD combatants. At level one. In long form paragraph form. I wish I had this chutzpah.

Twenty pages. Three encounters. You see a tribe of cavemen. A giant monitor lizard attacks the cavemen. They move camp and a giant snake attacks. Welcome to $5 worth of value, folks!

The caveman thing takes, like four pages or so. See the cavemen. And then get a run down of what they do if you approach. Or attack them. They’re a tribe of cavemen. That’s what the four pages say. And they attack you if you are hostile. There’s a staggering fucking leap of logic. There is NOTHING in those pages that any fuckwit on earth would not do if you said “tribe of cavemen.” No little vignettes. No personalities. No curious kid. Just a fucking tribe of cavemen. In four pages. 

And then a 8HD monitor lizard attacks. Then it’s followed by eight 3 HD raptors. For “Four to six characters of level 1–3 should find the encounters presented herein challenging but manageable.” Uh huh.

And, did I mention, that if you’re injured you get to make a save or get jungle rot. No spell recovery and all rolls at a -1. At level one. And if y ou wear armor you move at 25% movement speed because you are sure to fail one of the eight heat exhaustion rolls you make a day. At level one. 

The cavemen move camp after the lizard/raptor attack. On the way they get attacked by a 8HD snake. Oh, also, the cavemen are 4HD, so, good luck attacking them. 

Three encounters. Not first level. Nothing to them beyond what “cavemen” would most commonly imply. 

But, sure, it takes a lot of fucking words to get there. All laid out quite nicely in long paragraph form. Just read the entire thing. How many cavemen are at the party? Read all of the cavemen pages and then at the very bottom of it you’ll be told. Yeah you! Maybe you wanna give me $5 for this review? It has just as much value as this adventure. But, hey, it pulled in $8k in its kickstarter and has 100% 5 star reviews!

Happy fucking New Year.

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/391980/The-Valley-Out-of-Time–Welcome-to-the-Valley-SW?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 14 Comments