The Haunt

Posted on February 5, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Phil Beckwith
P.B. Publishing
5e
Levels 4-5

In ages past, an ancient town was lost and destroyed to a seige of orcs. Only one building survived and to this day, the manor is the only still standing building to be seen for miles around. Some say it is haunted, a few whisper of great treasures within, whilst others whisper that it is the manor itself that lives!  No one knows for sure, only that a great evil haunts its halls. Do you dare enter Montarthas Manor?!

This sixteen page adventure presents 24 rooms in a two floor haunted house. If you liked the Dwimmermount chess players then this adventure is for you. Otherwise, it’s just a collection of what not to do in an adventure.

For [reasons] you are entering an abandoned manor home. You know the deal, tired old generic you were hired or you need a place to stay or it feels evil shit. You approach. There are front doors. You try to enter them but you cannot, in any way, open them. Then, as you turn to leave, the doors open with a creeeeaaakkkk. Welcome to this adventure, where the tropes are done childishly and the adventure is a railroad.

You are not adventuring here. You are EXPERIENCING this. Because it’s a railroad. It’s all telegraphed through a series of simplistic vignettes that tell you how to feel and what to think instead of showing you. There is the front door thing, it not opening until you turn your back on it after trying. Because a front door opening on itself with a creak is c00L! No mention of the doors, windows, roof, or anything else. YOU WILL DO AS THE DESIGNER INSTRUCTS YOU!! You want free will? You want to explore? You want some player agency? Fuuuuucccckck you! “A portcullis blocks the way up until the party has explored at least 5 rooms on the Ground Floor (in total)” It’s clear what is meant to happen. There’s no mention of the windows or roof or balconies or alfresco areas as entry points because that’s not how the adventure is meant to be experienced. I can, perhaps, get behind this. If this were some story game and not D&D. Write the fucking thing for a story game if you want to fucking story game. This is a shitty fucking D&D adventure. “Once the heroes enter the basement, the door slams shut and a noxious green gas begins to fill the room” Yes, I am fucking aware that this has happened in many an adventure. And it was bad then and its bad now. There have always been designers doing these shitty things. 

And the prose. It is almost purple, and not for lack of trying. I suspect that if it could be it would “The looming black space behind the entryway stares menacingly at you, inviting you into its abode.”  Ug, ok, so, second person. Never good. It tells you what to think instead of showing you, with that menacing word. And the room descriptions aren’t even god at all. It’s just barely a description, at all, with nothing evocative about them and sometimes the read-aloud telling you what to feel. It’s fucking weird. 

The map is super simplistic. You can go right or left, down a hallway, with rooms hanging off of it. Oh, I guess you can dgo up one set of spiral stairs to the second floor. Where you can go right or left with rooms hanging off the hallway. And the kitchen is on the second floor?

Whatever. I mentioned the chess players. I don’t mean to keep crapping on it, but it was an iconic moment in the OSR. This thing has, I don’t know, eight chess player rooms? Meaning that there’s a hologram in the room that you watch and essentially has no impact on the adventure. There is the (required) ghostly dining room. If you do nothing they do not interact with you, or have anything to do with the  adventure, just floating around. If you do then the host screams at you “You should not be here! Leave this place!” and then everyone disappears. Or, perhaps, if that’s too much interactivity for you: “A ghostly apparition is stirring an ectoplasmic load of dirty

clothes. She fades once the party attempts to interact or they enter the room.” This is not horror. 

It’s padded out. “But the heroes must defeat it [ed: the monster]  one way or another to retrieve the jeweled sword.” Yup, sure is. “This is the tea room. Where the residents drink tea and have refreshments.” Yup, that’s a tea room all right. The read-aloud over reveals details of the rooms. The adventure is DESIGNED to split the party. For “Atmosphere” purposes. I fucking HATE running splot parties. One group is always bored to death. I don’t know, maybe I don’t know how to run a split party. 

The main baddie is a hag. You meet her in the last room to stab her. There are attempts to foreshadow, through the ghost vignettes and diaries, but her evil never really comes through. The more relatable evil is a little childs doll that does hit and uns on you when you reach the second floor. No description of it, of course. But it drops from the ceiling, stabs you with a knife and then teleports away … as a bonus action. A little uncool. More like a “take damage” situation. Don’t get me wrong, an evil little possessed doll with a knife and glinting eyes is, BY FAR, the best concept in this adventure. It’s just not handled well and doesn’t really have enough room to breathe. Also, you actually find the doll in room two, inert. If I found a doll like that I’d destroy it. No notes from the designer about that. It’s just a doll laying on a chair. Maybe its not the real doll? But I think the adventure says it is. It’s fucking weird. It doesn’t occur in the plot yet so it doesnt occur in the design yet, of course.

I leave you now with this read-aloud, the last thing in the adventure: “You manage to escape the falling manor, which has been the epitome of true evil. The night hag, Gertrude, has been defeated, the horrifying evil doll was removed from this world, and the undead have been laid to rest. You know not who the hag’s victim was, however, but they did leave you the emerald in their departure. Now, standing before you, are the piles of rubble and decayed remains of the manor; finally resting in peace. The night begins to grow old as the first hints of dawn start to creep over the horizon. Today is going to be a good day, well a better day, you hope”

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages, with the last page showing you some rooms. If the entire preview were like that then it would be a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/206076/the-haunt?1892600

Posted in 5e, Reviews | 32 Comments

Curse of Bleckdell Forest

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
by J Lasarde
Broken Rat Games
System Agnostic
Levels ???

The forest of Bleckdell is around a mile from the village of the same name. The forest has always been a part of village life, used for hunting, foraging, and other activities. The forest has also been the subject of rumours, stories, and dark tales, which most of the villagers either did not believe or felt were tales for children.  Now something has changed.  People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned. Something is amiss and brave adventurers are needed to help.

This sixteen page adventure uses three pages to describe about 26 ‘encounters’ in a forest. It is boring and has nothing to recommend it.

And thusly we come to another one of those “Bryce regrets all of his life choices” adventures. The adventure is generic, padded out, and poorly done. It’s not that it seems to be going out its way to be bad, as a great many do to lean in to some shitty design principal, but rather that it just doesn’t seem to want to do ANYTHING. In spite of it being in the OSR section, this has the hallmarks of the traditional Generic/Agnostic adventure, being too afraid to do anything specific.

The intro is the hook, you’ll get nothing more “People who enter the forest never reappear, hunters are never seen again, and now the children of a respected farmer who went into the forest to forage for mushrooms have not returned” I believe we call this missing white girl syndrome. If he was a poor farmer, or a hunter, or someone else we’d all just tell them to go fuck themselves, I guess. 

Anyway, the hook doesn’t matter. What’s we’re looking at here is “the heart of the forest”, meaning some trails through the forest with some clearings to have encounters in. You walk through the “normal” forest for an hour and then get to the “thicker” dungeon map forest. The map, as presented, has no scale. The encounters are practically on top of each other. It feels almost like one of those “greater area” 4e tactical maps, you know, where the entire adventure is taking place on a 200 foot by 200 foot complex? Anyway, you wander around in the first having encounters until you get to the the one where you meet some dryds and the captured children in a clearing and then you can be a pussy and talk to them or you can cut them down like the dungeon scum they are.

Yes, I understand that seems like a rather harsh analysis of the situation. But, also “should the characters decide the Dryads are evil and should not be kidnapping children and killing the villagers …” Why, yes, I think the monsters should not be kidnapping children and killing villagers. I think it would be super cool if the monsters didn’t do that. And I shall brook no cultural relativism bullshit in this discussion. Killing a rando deer and chopping down a tree does not equate to LURING in and killing a bunch of hunters and kidnapping children. So, yes, the dryads are getting fucking stabbed. Any party that does otherwise should be visited for the rest of the campaign by continuing ongoing acts of violence by the relatives and friends of the hunters and children. “the Dryads are not monsters but are powerful and do control monsters in order to protect themselves and the forest.  they will attack any human attacking them, and do it indirectly if they can, using the forest beasts, trees, plants to do so they will not harm children, though they have taken them hostage” Well, except for that whole luring people in to kill and/or kidnap them thing. Oh, and the take away others free will in order to use THEM to kill the party. Our definition of evil differs, I guess.

Ok, but, also, who gives a fuck about ll of that. Let’s stab some shit! There are random tables for “random” things, for asterisk” encounters, for “discoveries” and for “strange noises.” This is all just window dressing and doesn’t do anything. You hear a twig snap or see a dagger stuck in a tree or some shit. Yeah yeah, I got it, ambiance. “A dagger stuck in a tree” is not ambiance. 

Forward! To Adventure!  About thirteen or so of the 26ish encounters are forks in the path. “You can go north or you can go south from this location. So … not much adventure in this adventure. Also the read-aloud is in italics, which is never good, and in second person, which is never good. It’s also WRONG in more than one place. “You can go north or you can go south at this intersection” actually means, according to the map, you can go south or you can walk east for twenty more minutes and then the path turns north” Yeah, giving a shit about the adventure you write!

One of my favorite read-alouds is one of the first “The pathway twists and turns for a short while before eventually coming to a dead end. You feel watched, test Str vs a DC14 or become fearful.” That’s the read-aloud. The effect of being fearful is that you will want to turn around and go back down the path. Also, this is a dead-end to you have to turn around and go back down the path. No, there is nothing here to explore or investigate.

The read-aloud also overrevels. ”Behind the ogre resting against a tree is a greatsword made of iron.” Time and time again I’ve noted how a read-aloud that overreveals destroys the back and forth between players and DM tha is at the heart of an RPG. Not to mention telling us that this is an ogre instead of showing us that this is an ogre. But, sure, it’s a greatsword made of iron.

In one encounter you see a wounded deer. “ the deer’s meat would keep you fed for a week and it’s pelt would fetch a good price in town, or you could release and heal it.” Hmmm, what do YOU think the designer is telling us to do? Because the designer has already decided how the adventure should be played, of course. 

There’s nothing here. Overly simplistic encounters with encounter text that does little to describe the encounter environment and instead makes an overly direct appeal to mechanics or morality.

This is $3 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/509013/curse-of-bleckdell-forest?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 19 Comments

Pestilence at Halith Vorn

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By G Hawkins
Self Published
OSRIC
Levels 4-6

In the days before the rise of the Jade Empire and the rule of the serpent men, the enigmatic axolittians reigned in Halith Vorn and there built their cities amongst the reeds in the swamps and caverns below. They mastered sorcerous arts and paid homage to devils and terrifying elemental beings. In the end, their serpent men slaves rose up and rebelled against their rule, driving the axolittians into the lower caverns; there they lingered on, slowly degenerating to a primitive and base level. In turn the Jade Empire was cast into ruin, and the former slaves of the serpent men occupied parts of the once great city. Finally came the Cultists of Thul, worshipers of disease and inheritors of serpent man sorcery, enemies of civilization and the Baron in Longfelt, searching for a weapon of great power…

This 120 page dungeon contains numerous levels and rooms all centered around an evil cult in a ruined city/civilization/cavern and its neighbors who hate them. Evocative descriptions, interactive encounters and situations, with formatting that works and great design. This is the adventure you were looking for.

I do, what, twelve or so reviews a month? Usually of shorter adventures; it takes me a few days to work through them. The hundred-page-plus stuff is piling up on my todo list because I have to review them as time allows in inbetween other adventures, since it takes often weeks to absorb them. But, then this came out. I got it and set to work. Generally, I think, I might find one adventure a month or so that is not terrible or even good.  Then something like this comes along; something that is not just good but is FUCKING GREAT. 

Like most reviews of good things,I don’t even know where to start on this. The very first words are the background. Does Hawk drone on and on and on? No. The designer gives us a short paragraph that sets up the dungeon and situation and then moves on. It’s enough to get us oriented as to whats to come and doesn’t get up its own ass. Perfect. The Hooks? How about “We received a strange report from the village of Hroogpith. Something about pestilence assailing the village; and the village blacksmith’s deceased grandmother rising from the grave and eating his leg or something” See that? That’s fucking specificity. That’s what makes your adventure evocative. That’s what gives the DMsomething to work with. A faction table? Sure. Everyone is evil, but, also, they all hate the evil cultists. That was cute. ?

The designer knows what the fuck they are doing. An NPC is a short stat block, where needed, followed by a terse personality. Dude oils up and “Poses to show off his figure before combat,” Noice! The start village is short, doesn’t overstay its welcome and yet is described with a great vibe. You KNOW how to run this place from the terse but evocative descriptions. Edge of the swamps. Smells of fish oil. DIlapidated. Shrouded in mist. Corpses lying in the streets rotting and bloated and covered in flys and maggots. Oh … ope! That is, after all, why you’re here. ?

The formatting here is clean. It’s easy to find information with a decent number of cross-references. Bolding and whitespace are used effectively to help the DM locate information during play. Boxes and shaded text and bullets … not becoming an eyesore but used effectively. The designer knows WHY they are using these techniques and it shows. 

The writing proper is somewhere between good and great. “A field of corpses lying half-submerged in the mud. A thick cloud of flies blankets the area; the air heavy with the droning sound of their wings. The corpses are bursting with puss and filth” Heavy air. We’ve all experienced that. A FIELD of corpses. THICK clouds. Not a large or big to be seen here. It’s terse. It’s evocative. “A gnarled, weeping, leafless willow tree stands by a black stone monolith.” Gnarled. Leafless. “Water cascades down a shaft; mist swirls out of the opening. The sound of crashing water echoes up from below” These are almost impressions of a room rather than a description of a room. And, frankly, I like that best. I’m sure some fuckwit will take the wrong message from that statement, but, I think you want to communicate a message, a vibe, to the DM. The DM is the designers greatest asset. Inspiring them, getting the vibe across to them, that’s the key. Then they can expand and expound on the situation, the description, whatever. Like the NPC doing poses. That’s enough for the DM to run with, to be inspired by. 

And situations abound! I love situations! Not just a room stuffed with a monster to hack, although there is certainly a place for that. But, also, everyone hates the cultists. And, also, they are all evil. So, enemy of my friend? But they are assholes also. And then there are things like this, a prisoner in a cell: “Lealock, merchant (frizzled hair, lesions on body, ripped clothing); fetal position in cell corner, rocks back and forth whispering ‘My good little doggy, my good little golden boy’: if released, runs screaming to area 11 and throws himself down the pipe—this alerts the cultist guards in area 10”   FOOL OF A TOOK! Not just the dude, and roleplaying with him, but also consequences of NOT handling him. 

There are so many other details here that are great. A timeline for the village. Not a static place but a living place and shit WILL happen as you rest and fuck around. A whole booklet of additional resources, like a time tracker and henchmen sheets to track things with. These things are fucking great and go a long way to show someone who is actually RUNNING a game and an understanding of what you need to run a game like this. I don’t comment on art frequently, but, personally, the art style here appeals to me. I’m not sure it contributes as much, specifically, to individual situations going on, but it does contribute to the overall vibe. 

This seems like a good place to comment on the maps. They are fucking great! Complex, with caverns and rooms, water features, chasms, good same level features. There is a sense of verticality in many of them. Claustrophobic tunnels and wide open spaces with all that entails for encounters in them. I need to up my map vocabulary to better relate their complexity. Hmmm, not so much complexity as it is variety and … opportunities for gameplay? Whats a word for that? “Enables better/more interesting gameplay.” Seems like in fifteen fucking years I should have figured that out by now.

But, also, I would have put the business names on the village map.

I’m a big fan of this. I wish I could better convey all that makes it work. The factions, the cultists proper. The interactivity and variety of types of things to do and explore. It’s really all of the components integrated as a whole, working together to bring something more than the sum of its parts. Design.

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is 25 pages. More than enough to show you the clean formatting, the great maps, and a variety of encounters and text overview. Great preview. Hawk has done just about everything right to produce to a great adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/508270/pestilence-at-halith-vorn?1892600

Posted in Level 5, Reviews, The Best | 16 Comments

Furvik’s Destiny

Posted on January 29, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Adam Dreece
ADZO Publishing
OSE
Levels 5-7

First, a strange goblin sorcerer managed to take over an ogre cult, then he somehow knew how to navigate a hidden crypt and turn it into their lair. Now he has stolen the Gauntlets of the Ice Demon Kofnar and is on the verge of unlocking their power. The party must journey into a trap-filled, ancient crypt to get to Furvik and his followers in time to stop him.

This 71 page adventure presents twenty rooms in an old trap and puzzle tomb. It engages in every bad adventure writing trope possible. I hate it. A lot.

Frequent readers will need to take that I Hate It and make up a Bryce review in their head, reminiscent of the old days. I made a mistake. I thought the credits had a lot of same last name energy and was aghast at flaming on at a group of jr high students. It turns out I was wrong. But, also, I’m still not flaming on. I could take this review to a bunch of places. These are places I’ve been before. Dozens of times. What’s more important, the act of creation or the act of selling? What are the moral ramifications of claiming to write for yourself and yet putting it on a blog? Do designers have any obligation to figure out what the definition of the word good is, or shall we simply let pure unrestrained capitalism decide? The annual autumn of new students discovering UUnet and horrors until they figure it out become eternal. No one is born with the innate ability to write an adventure. Once more in to the breach! 

We begin this adventure with eight pages of padding telling us how to run an adventure. The designer spends time telling us what a stat block looks like. They tell us that the DM can change things in the adventure. They tell us that … You get the picture. The boilerplate. This is part of how you turn twenty rooms in to 71 pages. What if, instead, you just write a fucking adventure? And then just published it? Without a bunch of appendices? WIthout a bunch of intro shit? Just twenty fucking rooms. No context. I mean, those twenty rooms ARE the adventure, right? It’s what we’re paying for? You can shove the aesthetics of a book up your ass; I’m paying for an adventure to run at the table. It can look nice, or have supporting material or whatever, but, first, it’s gotta be a decent adventure. A couch that is all Bed Of Nails isn’t a couch it’s an art piece. Concentrate on the fucking adventure.

Our hook here involves a dead family member. Jokes on you buddy, no player character has a family. Do you know why? Because the DM is always killing them or kidnapping them or something.  My cold father is dead, my estranged mother keeps going on about the church of Wheatana. My brother got his hand cut off for stealing and now is the hickest of hicks. My sister is drunk all the time and miserable. Why the fuck do I give a shit about any of them? You think a happy family that I care about led me to a life of murder hobo’ing? 

“It’s up to you as GM to determine what type of close friend or family member works best for the party – brother, sister, father, mother, cousin, aunt, uncle, etc. Wherever you see [Family Member] in the text, swap it out for whatever you decide.” Ths, then, is a major theme of the adventure. Beating a dead horse. WHich anyone reading this will I’m sure be WELL aware of. The same information. Over and over and over and over and over again. The most basic of things expanded out in to PAGES of content. There’s a section here on pit traps. They have poisoned spikes at the bottom. Two pages. It takes TWO PAGES to describe this. Remember when it used to be a simple X on a grid square with a dot in it? TWO PAGES. And, then, the pit traps get even MORE text when they actually show up in a room. This is madness. I’m not sure how it is even possible, with a highlighter, to wade through this during play. And, of course, there’s Bryce’s core assertion that shis shit detracts from the actual room keys proper and this is all wasted effort that should have gone in to polishing the actual keys.  

Oh! Oh! I was talking about the family member thing and then I got interrupted by going on a pit digression. Let me digress from that digress and talk about gimping the party. The fucking thing is a puzzle and trap dungeon. And it’s got some ogres in it, the minions of the goblin sorcerer. (Ug!) And, get this “Furvik and his lieutenants have crypt keys which unlock secret doors and deactivate (or activate) traps. They have all memorized where they are. The party should not come into possession of a working crypt key too early as it could bypass a large part of the adventure. Feel free to have any keys found too early break when used.” Man, just fuck you. I was going to be nice in this review but I just can’t stand this. I get it. You want the party to “experience” the dungeon. How about you let them do whatever the fuck they want? Fucking level sevens. “All three of the doors are made of two-foot-thick stone and have anti-magical powder in them which renders them immune to magical effects” YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE DUNGEON!!! “As mentioned earlier in About the Crypt, the players shouldn’t be able to pick the lock successfully or use a crypt key until later in the adventure. However, any failed attempt to pick it will trigger an alarm in Area 15, 16, and 19 which cannot be heard from Area 1.” YOU WILL EXPERIENCE THE DUNGEON!!!! God fucking forbid the players use their fucking heads or their characters abilities to overcome obstacles using imagination. You might not fight some random ooze that shows up. Heavens to mercy! 

Back, now, to our hook. “A party member gets to [Family Member] in time to hear them say, “Ogres attacked the temple. Please, make it right. Help the elder. Outside.” The Family Member dies, unable to be healed from their wounds. They have nothing of use in their possession.” How heartwarming! *barf* *barf* *barf* I’m level seven. Ra is my best bud. We hang out on Sundays (get it?! Get it?!) Sun god bro before Ho’s. You’re seriously powerful as sevens but, no, your beloved [family member] dies. This is the worst kind of dreck. Oh, oh, and “Once the party agrees, the elder teleports the party to the entrance of the crypt” Wouldn’t want to waste time, would we. “Time is of the essence. If the party attempts to return to town to get provisions, or rest up, they will fail the mission.” How does the party know this? A hidden fail condition, always a great thing to slap down in an adventure. I’m down for some fails. I’m down for some Broodmother Skyfortress. But it’s not a game unless the player is making an intentional choice for a meaningful condition. They must choose to suffer their wounds and chance blindness, or whatever, in order to Save The World. Even our player characters are doomed by the existence of Free WIll. 

I can go on and on here. The read-aloud is is in first person mode, never a good thing. Doors slam shut behind you and lock when you enter a room. Treasure is light for a gold=xp game. The ogres all wear plate mail and carry +2 sabres. On and on and on it goes. Rooms that take four pages to describe because of all of the padding and if/thens and instructions to the DM. 

Two parting statements of a more personal note: Far after I developed my opinions on this adventure I reached the description of a door with symbols/scenes on it. “ A success will reveal that it tells three tales. One is of how greed for knowledge gets the better of the curious. The second tells of how sacrifice is needed and often unexpected. The last seems to be about having patience and that pain, as all things in life, is transient.” This is how you become a wizard. By rejecting the small minded caprice and impudent convention of the prols.”  Some murals “… show a scene of a rolling countryside with burning towns and skeletal warriors battling people from all walks of life.” Good for you skeletons. Good for you.

You should write. Over and over again. You should create. Over and over again. And you should strive to understand what you are doing, if only for yourself.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see part of the first room. So, I guess, it’s an ok preview. You just need to understand that nothing is done if it’s not beaten to death. No aspect of the adventure. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/507654/wondrous-and-perilous-adventures-furvik-s-destiny-for-old-school-fantasy?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

Storm the Dark Castle

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By TrueTenno
Self Published
OSR? Pathfinder
Level 1

Sarvon Sengir the diseased vampire noble lurks in the dark halls of Castle Sengir. His dark alchemy has created monstrous ghouls and a cloud of darkness over all the land.

This eight page adventure is barely coherent enough to describe nine rooms in a large castle, with a vampire in it. That you fight. At Level one. 

There’s this thing, maybe you’ve heard about it, where someone dies and they ask for all of the paper in their trunk to be burned and someone doesn’t and lo it’s their early writings and they are saved from the fire and all is wonderful in the world. First, good on that dying writer for not subjecting the world to their early writings. Second, a healthy degree of self-loathing and shame about your own writing is wonderful. Why? Well, let me tell you …

This adventure is listed as OSR, as well as Pathfinder. I expected a conversion guide, I guess. There was not one. It is OSR in the same way that every adventure ever written is OSR: I guess you could convert the entire thing yourself if you wanted. Nothing. NOTHING about this is OSR> Not a single stat. No mention of anything OSR at all. Maybe, in this case, it means you could make it 3e? Right? Cause Pathfinder is 3e? So all Pathfinder adventures are OSR adventures? I’m open to some blurry lines in definitions but calling 3e OSR is a very liberal definition of OSR.

So, I’m reviewing a level one Pathfinder adventure today. You’ll be fighting fifteen or so 1HD humans. And The White Wyrm with 50HP and a 2d6 bite. And A 30HP chamberlain. And some ghouls with 30HP each. And a frankenstein monster with 90HP. And, of course, the AC18 90HP vampire with all his vampire powers. At level one. It’s been a long while since I was in a Pathfinder game, and I know the meme is hero to superhero, but, still, this seems like a lot for some level ones? In an adventure not about exploration but which is entirely about stabbing  whoever is in the room? (With some minor flesh golem adjustments to that statement.) 

The map is hand drawn. And small. Barely legible. The room keys are numbered in the text. But not on the map. Some rooms are described in the text rather then separately as a key. So there’s a sentence that says something like “Wooden doors lead to …” in every room. And in one room there’s a paragraph entry, alongside five other entries, that STARTS “A room with a false floor and an ironbound box hanging from a chain. Removing any weight from the chain …”  Rooms within rooms! But not in a good way. It’s all a confusing mess.

There is an iconic hook with the party staying with a local miller who gives them supper, beer, and a wam place to sleep only to find his daughter missing come morning and the village mobs up. It’s all abstracted in a paragraph, which is fine given the hook and iconic nature of the hook.

Every once in awhile the adventure engages in some kind of absurdist thing in it that just strikes me as wonderful. A room full of thralls, the gatehouse, with an iron pot full of cabbage stew. No other notes about it, it’s just in the laundry list of mundane objects in the room. But man, drown a party members in it, kick it over at them, dump it on them like boiling oil. It could be great! And in another room there’s a thrall sitting in a large iron chandelier pelting visitors with the shells of the walnuts he’s eating. Great! There’ is nothing more to this AT ALL except what I just write, but thats a character introduction!  And, then, also,, there’s the Candle of Melting, as a magic item. “ (lasts one day, will slowly melt any substance, comes with a note detailing its Properties) I’m not so cool on the note, new designers are always noting everything. But, also,I love the abstracted nature of the item. SLowly melt anything!  That’s the kind of shit that true D&D problem solving comes from! Touch some roses baby!

While I’m not the biggest fan of sex in an adventure, this is how you find the vampire. “He lounges on a couch, sipping wine and surrounded by 1d6 cringing Thralls which cater to his every Whim.”  🙁 Abstracted descriptions. Lame.

The way this thing goes about its life is truly bizarre. This weird combination of abstraction. The Tower of Solitude is described, all three or four levels in like two paragraphs. Which, I think, would normally be cool, the terseness and focus on the keys and play at the table that implies … but not here. Lots of if/then and abstraction and just cramming in more abstraction and rooms. “This is a castle. There is a gate house. In the left gatehouse tower on the first floor is a mouse that speaks spanish. On the second floor you see a chandelier made of iron with lit candles on it dripping wax down to the floor. A set of stairs leads to the third level where you find a whining dog and a parapet that can take you to the right gatehouse tower. In the right …”

And, there’s a sun sword in this adventure? What’s up with the vampire adventures with sun swords? This is all from Ravenloft, or it predates that?

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker. (Which I would have looked at this time before buying, as I do sometimes, especially when we get a “Pathfinder/OSR” like situation going on.)

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/498362/storm-the-dark-castle?1892600

Posted in Pathfinder, Reviews | 6 Comments

The Lamp of Paths

Posted on January 25, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Davidf Ingle
Hard Marble Games
OSE
Level 1

Hidden within a dangerous swamp a disturbed priest makes his ruinous plans against his former community. Will the characters be able to find him and bring him to justice before disaster strikes Cypress Keep?

This 24 page adventure uses three and a half pages to describe a ruined temple with about fourteen rooms in it. It feels disconnected from itself, as if the designer didn’t know what the adventure was,or didn’t know how to include parts other than the main hack. Also, it has the usual problems.

I need to complain about some of the weird choices this adventure makes. They clash with the tone, the style, the expectations … and I had a relatively hard time trying to marry the various parts of the adventure. The first is the portrayal of the villain.

The local church find a orphan on the streets as a child and takes him in. He is devoted to the church and inspires the people in town. Until mental illness comes for him and he descends in to paranoia and megalomania, etc. He steals their magic holy item, the The Lamp of Paths, and hoofs it in to the jungle to some ruins where he does the usual: raises an undead army to destroy the town. The adventure goes out of its way, several times, to note that he is mentally ill. I don’t know what to do with this I’m down to hack down the baddie that is raising the dead to destroy the town. Am I down to do the same, with the same pragmatism, for a dude that is mentally ill? And he’s trying to fucking kill you. This isn’t some nuanced Cthulhu Now adventure about addiction and other complex topics. No. This is a cartoon villain. Who is that way because of mental illness. I can kill the orc babies, no problem. That’s a walk in the park compared to a discussion about intent vs impacts in the role of justice and the nature of responsibility. You want to do that in your adventure? I’m chill. You want a maniacal cackling villain raising the dead to take over the local village? I’m chill with that. You want to do BOTH at the same time? Uh … I don’t think I know what to do with that, either as a DM or as a player. You gotta pick a vibe so we can run with it. And this does NOT seem to be a piece of performance art in which we must examine our own reactions to it and how we interact with it as a commentary on how we use violence and mental illness as entertainment. It’s Tuesday night at the D&D table.

Onward! Dude stole the Lamp of Paths, a magic item from the temple and they want it back. The item is mentioned several times. You find the item in the last room, with him. The item barely gets a description and, as a magic item, nothing about it is detailed. I guess you give it back since it doesn’t do anything? It doesn’t even have a value for selling it. 

Anyway, you follow the old road out of town. It ends. There is now FOUR MILES of jungle between you and the next encounter. There are no hints. You get to wander to find it. There is a small set of encounters in the back that help get the party back on track, but, they don’t seem oriented to this part of the adventure. I have no idea how you find the place. But, also, you’ll get to enjoy that wilderness encounter table with boars and harpies and the ilk for your levels ones. Oh! Oh! It’s the swamp, so you’r ein water. There’s a disease table. It’s got like eight entries or so. Only two are described at all though. It’s like the delete button was accidentally pressed in the editor. I always wonder if I’m missing something and like the rest are in the OSE core or something. 

Once you do, you’re likely to find a goblin tribe first. With SIXTY fighting males. Sixty goblins. In the wilderness. Not even a cave hall to use as a choke point. I get it. You can run. But they are next to the place you need to go. I don’t know, you try to parlay, I guess? There’s not really anything in this adventure to help you with that except a single note that they don’t like the dude either. 

And this is weird. There is the ruined temple where dude is hanging out. Then there’s a small ruined city nearby it, a couple of miles away. Then, the adventure notes, between the two is the lair of the goblins. But, also, there’s a building there, at the lair, that was once a mercantile … with a stage? And, as for the goblin chiefs lair, there’s another building: “This 2-story structure consists of stone and was the town hall of Old Cypress Keep.” This same building is noted as having the chiefs treasure hoard. Which is never mentioned again The contradictions here … again, I’m not sure how to interpret these things. In another place, at the old temple ruins, it tells s that if we explore the ruins to the north by vessel then we can find a waterway leading to the great river that can take us back to town. But, also, how are you exploring by vessel? I don’t fucking understand this shit. And I don’t know if I’m missing something or something was accidentally deleted, ala the diseases perhaps, or if its just a mess. 

The temple exploration, proper, with dude, is made of description such as “A pungent stench fills the air of this room. This flooded area once stored ceremonial objects, fresh grains, and food” or “Numerous old crates and barrels litter the area of this flooded storage area.” Not exactly the the height of evocative writing. Weird portions are highlighted in the text, which I think is read-aloud at points, but never mentioned again in order to expand upon. At one point we’re in the main worship center, pews and the like, with an altar and a small choir stage behind it (lots of stages in this adventure?) There’s a ramp down in each corner of the stage, leading underground. One is choked with rubble and plants. We then get this line: “Dangerous passage: Hidden among the walls and

floor is a patch of yellow mould.” Given the section heading Dangerous Passage, I would think this is the ramps down? But it can’t be the rubble one? And the open one is the one the baddie uses … so it can’t have the mold? So the Dangerous Passage is the entire back part of the worship area? Is that a passage? If it is I have a another complaint to lodge with the Connections editor. 

Oh, also, in the read-aloud “Two goblin zombies scramble toward you from the back of the chamber.” Well now, that’s not really something to put in the read-aloud, is it? We don’t know how the party got here. Also, they are not zombies when the party sees them. They look like goblins, or green dudes with open wounds or something? 

The entire dungeoncrawl is completely different from the wilderness. Where the wilderness is a continual deathtrap, the dungeon crawl has a couple of zombies and some giant centipedes, culminating with the Level 4 cleric in the middle of a mental health crisis. It’s empty and boring, with not much loot at all.

Fun times!

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. You get to see the wanderers, the disease table, and the dudes backstory. Quite a poor preview from the the standpoint of helping you make a purchasing decisions based on the adventure, proper.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/507954/hmg-1-the-lamp-of-paths-level-1?1892600

If you’re not power gaming when you come from the bar when it closes, then what are you doing?

Posted in Reviews | 6 Comments

The Cliff-Lair of Heeter

Posted on January 22, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Corey Ryan Walden
Self Published
Basic
Levels 1-3

A local tale whispers of a strange sorcerer who has dwelt in the cliffs and crags for centuries. During that time savage lightning has illumined the skies and valleys, seemingly at the bidding of this enigmatic figure. More recently there have been even more bizarre stories. Horses stolen by blue-skinned men for unseemly purposes — disrupting trade and traumatising travellers. You have heard these disturbing stories, whether they be founded in truth or fiction. But one question remains: will you brave the journey to the crags?

This twelve page adventure uses five pages to describe the twelve room lair of an alien who drinks horse urine. There is nothing of value here, figuratively or literally. You’d be better off going to half price and reading board books where you touch the kangaroo hair.

And so, this is what has become. All of the choices I have made in my life have led me here. You meet an old man on the path. He tells you that modern neuroscience has proved that all of our actions and decisions are merely the machinations of a predetermined universe and that our concept of free will is naught but a comforting illusion. If you agree with his hypothesis then turn to page 72. If you disagree then turn to page 72. (Actually, the cartoon in question does not use an if/then structure. Even THEY know that you should not use an if/then structure.)

What do we know about Heeter? Well … “Heeter has an unusual thirst for horse urine. When he is craving this delicacy he will charge two of his men to gather some from a nearby village, or ambush a mounted traveller. They may take the whole horse, or they may simply “milk” it.” You enjoy that. 

But, wait, somehow, in an adventure about a man who milks horses so he can drink their urine, I am getting ahead of myself. This adventure, but twelve pages long, starts with five empty pages. There is the cover. Then a white page. Them there’s another cover, the exact sam as the first except its had its transparency shifted a bit so it looked a little bit faded. Then there’s another blank page. Then there’s the title page. It has a link to the designers blog. But that’s down now. A search for him reveals nothing except a couple of puff reviews where “who is one of  the smartest and cunning young writers I’ve know” and the usual ? B+ nonsense that the fuckass online community gives to each other and, strangely, no mention of horse urine drinking. I did find one that seemed to like The Black Ruins, but, I question that reviewer’s judgement; sometimes confusing naivete as creativity. 

Back to the horse urine.There’s nothing here. This is a VERY simplistic lair. Just twelve rooms. The entrance has the usual murder hole/ambush stuff, done in a VERY simplistic manner. Almost to the point of minimalism, but then expanded upon to fill a word count. There is no interactivity, there is just stabbing things. Maybe? I guess you can ask nicely to come in and then be bored? Oh, you can watch the guy when he sleeps. The adventure makes a point of telling us that he sucks his thumb. It also makes a point of telling us that “The desk has a writing quill and inkpot. Not particularly valuable, though certainly useful.” Great. Or, how about the time the adventure tells us that “There is no known history for the object.” Uh … okI guess …? You mean like almost everything else I encounter every single day in my life? Why would it have a history? Why would I need or want to know the history? 

I added up the loot here. I think this was a B/X adventure but you’ll probably want to keep in the mind the 1e rules that you can  only advance to 1xp less than the next level. IE: you pop to the next level and then also get enough XP to put you 1xp from the next one. 747gp of value in this place babbeeeee! 

His servants attack. No one does anything but stab you. The rooms are boring, just laundry lists of mundane things in them. 

And, there’s not even any horse urine drinking in this! Dude doesn’t even offer you any! Can you believe it?! After all that horse urine milking and drinking that was going on in the prologue!   I feel ripped off. I feel ripped off by the five useless pages at hte beginning. I feel ripped off by the complete lack of anything interesting in this. As if I just put in ten basic rooms with an orc in each one and called then “kitchen” and “study” and then didn’t do anything interesting in any of them. I feel ripped off by the lack of horse urine milking and drinking that I was promised.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and shows you a couple of rooms. And the horse urine milking thing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/156584/the-cliff-lair-of-heeter?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 14 Comments

The Final Voyage of Draengr Thar

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By J.C. Conners
1Shot Adventures Blog
OSR/5e/GURPS/Cthulhu Dark Ages
Levels 3-5

[…] Drængr survived the initial attack and ordered his men to barricade the lodge. But the next night, the wights returned and Drængr was unable to fight them off. He and the surviving men were taken into the earth to face the resentful King Kolbakr, lord of the land’s wights. Meanwhile, Drængr Thar’s scouts finally reached the nearby town of Bjørgvin. Not knowing their warlord’s dark fate, they pleaded for the town to send a boat to rescue Drængr. Promised by the appeal of treasure and the favors that might be bestowed by a great war leader, a band of Viking sailed north to find the Drængr Thar’s hidden inlet.

This 25 page adventure has about eleven locations in some old barrows with wights and is themed around Vikings. It is one o the best viking adventures, one of the best wight adventures, and one of the best horror adventures that I’ve seen. It’s also a bit wordy and lacks an understanding of adventure focus, as witnessed by the page count. Je wil be de firste mann!

The backstory here, from the designers page, is that there was this supplement called Lords of Darkness that was full of adventures and each one was supposed to focus on one type of undead. Surprise surprise, T$R was pumping shit out and it sucked.  In (this) designers words “My main gripe with this old-school adventure is the lack of unsettling horror or even creepiness. Fighting wights in their barrow should be horrifying AND also give you a sense of why they’re cursed and buried there — two things this original adventure didn’t do.” Well, dude generally accomplished those goals to a large degree. 

This thing brings the dread, anticipation, creepiness and horror. It’s set up as a one-shot with a viking theme. Dragnr is a viking raider, and a damn good one. On his latest return trip from England he’s blown off course by a storm and beached a few dozen miles from port. He send two men to run down the coast to fetch help. Fuck yeah he does! We’re not a million miles gone. He’s sending for help with runners. Great! Then we get to our pregens. This thing does two things with them that is great. First, they have a starting motivation. “You have raided with Dræengr Thar twice. Each time he generously shared his pillage with you and your brothers. You grieved when he was hurt in the storm, and cried when he ordered you to run to Bjørgvin to get help. It felt like abandoning a blood relative. This is what Dræengr Thar’s life means to you. Dræengr Thar must be Rescued.” Each motivation is different but each one ends with that “This is what Draengr Thar’s life means to you. Draengr Thar must be rescued.” Great fucking tone setting for a viking adventure. (Also, I don’t really give a flying fuck if any of this viking shit is historically accurate. It FEELS like it should be and it fits in to the game AT THE TABLE, both of which need to, and do, happen here.) Then, each pregen gets a little index card called a banter card. It’s got like five or six separate lines on it. Each platers goes around the table and reads one line in turn until all of the lines are done. “The winds from those cliffs chill my bones.” and “Draengr Thar myst be rescued.” and shit like that. Again, GREAT tone setting here. There’s a handout page from a manuscript that looks like what you think a dark ages manuscript might look like. One of the better mood setting handouts I’ve seen. 

You arrive on shore. The ruined ship is there, no sign of the men, and the ship has been INTENTIONALLY ruined and torn apart. Nearby “the PCs find the corpse of a man nearby, nailed to a tree not too far from the wreckage. The man’s skin is withered and gray and he’s tattooed in old, unrecognizable sigils. His eyes have been devoured by birds. Above him in the branches, a large crow proudly rattles and clicks, something small and wet in its beak.” Fucking A man! Nailed to a tree! Withered and grey! Tattooed in sigils! And on top of that eyes devoured by birds?! Sign me right up! Welcome to the mythic underworld motherfuckers! “his chest has been pierced many times with a broadsword. many of his tattoos refer to eating at the great feasts of Valhalla.” That’s the shit right there. Pierced many times by broadswords! What the fuck is going on here? The party might ask themselves. 

Wolves howl. The runner (now a PC) says “Agnar fell behind and was taken down by the predators. “Those wolves have no fear of men nor gods.” Ok, off we go down the deer trail to find a hunting lodge. Old and abandoned. The door replaced by a board from the ship. Inside are a few things, abandoned by the shipwrecked crew, no sign of them, but “Unusually, the fireplace is piled with far too much wood inside its great hearth. The wood overflows on to the floor in a disorganized mess. Much of the wood is from the boat, and some of the wood underneath the pile seems to have been burned; the feint smell of burned oak comes from the fireplace.” Eeris. Odd. Unsettling. UNUSUAL. We’re still building that mood. Fucking with the fireplace reveals a hole in the ground underneath … at the same time a lady shows up. “She is dressed in fine but long-faded raiments. She carries an old oak spear, which she grips

tightly in her hand, and has a heavy blood-stained sack over her shoulder. Thick-bodied flies buzz around it.” Fucking a man! A crazy lady! The wife of the man who owns the lodge King Kaldor. “On some nights he even invites me, but his men do not like me anymore. They are jealous of our love” A fucking crazy lady! Unsettling shit AND a crazy lady??! Game over man! Th e dread here just keeps building and building. I got a BUNCH of other shit I’ve yoinked from this adventure to illustrate this shit, but, I’ll save space. It does a really great job if emulating vikings, doomed ladies, and horror. It is less successful in brining the wights to light, but still does a much better job in that area than most. We do get a couple of great vignettes with them and you CAN learn why they are doomed, but it just doesnt rock out like the rest of the adventure does. Above average but not the rock star of the rest.

Treasure seems light for an OSR game, as befitting the conversion to all those systems. But, also, here’s the magic sword you can  find “the sword is fused with the dead spirits of the barrow and constantly whispers to the one who wields it. This gives the wielder the sense of true north, and signals danger (sometimes… what the sword finds dangerous is not necessarily what the wielder might…).” We’ve got a reason for the sword that fits in to the adventure. It’s got context. Great item. For a +1 sword. In other places there’s a fine shield perfectly intact, except for its straps that have rotten. Yup! Thats’ what happens. Great job! These things are so immersive amd so evocative; I love them.

It’s also doing a few things I’m not so fond of. That treasure conversion issue is one of them. The l00t from the mighty summer raid of England is only 4k in gold and the barrow treasure is mostly just a couple of magic items. This isn’t the treasure table from Bree & the Barrow Downs. I think I also mentioned that the wights themselves get the short end of it. The whole Doom & Curse thing is in this, but I think it comes through the weakest, by far. And the horror of them doesn’t really come through either, when you are in their presence. Not a great physical description or manner. That’s disappointing.

There’s also the backstory. The actual backstory that starts the adventure, the background, is not too bad and not overly long, helping the DM understand what has happened. But then, also, there are little bits of explanation and WHYs in the descriptions all over the place in this. They are generally in their own paragraphs, and you could, I suppose, just highlight those and ignore them all to help with focus during running of this. That little thing with the magic sword is a fine few words. But longer explanations are generally not needed and interfere with running things. Nobody enjoys having to whip out the highlighter. 

Die rolling and skill checks are another area of note. Generally they are handled poorly in this. I think the concept of what a good skill check/stat check has been well explained in many articles by now, 2025. Putting in a skillcheck for the sake of rolling dice, for no real purpose other than that, isn’t really useful. And then there’s this example” Under the firewood is a hole in the ground. If the party moves the firewood then they find it. If they don’t then the DM is encouraged to let them make a WIS roll to detect a foul smell wafting from it … clearly with the purpose of getting the party to look in the firewood pile and discover the hole … which triggers the crazy lady event. If they fail that then the crazy lady shows up anyway. So … we’re helping the party through the adventure with the roll, or it’s pointless because the event happens anyway, with just some more difficulties for the party as they attempt to find the main, or alternate, entrances that she hints at? I could go either way. 

And the page count ins’t THAT off; we’ve got the pregens and shit back there. Let’s call it eleven pages for the main adventure. This could use a little more focus in the main text, I think, to cut and focus the DMs attention, and a little more work on the wights and their doom, their description, their vibes. But, fuck man, most adventures don’t get anywhere CLOSE to the vibes this thing brings. I’d get my fucking hilighter out and run this.

This is free at the blog: https://1shotadventures.com/the-final-voyage/

Seated around the table are four men, the last survivors of Drængr’s crew. Their hands have been nailed to the table so that they cannot move. All are bloody and barely alive. Elder wights loom over the men, holding pale hands to their skulls. The wights’ lips move, but only meaningless, wrenching sounds come out

Posted in 5e, Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 10 Comments

Secrets of the Blind Palace

Posted on January 18, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tal Aviezer
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-4

The wealthy Von Crofts hire a party of adventurers to find the body of their dead son in a haunted pleasure palace – and to bring him back to life. To aid in their quest, the resurrectionists are provided with a guide: the only survivor of the previous expedition, a bard who has been unable to speak a word or sing a note since she escaped from the Blind Palace.

This 42 page adventure details about twenty rooms in an abandoned mansion home. It’s got that specificity that makes things great, although it runs its mouth so much that it flogs any joy out of it.

The product pages for this designer have a bunch of quotes from people that basically makes it seem like these adventures are the second coming. I’m down for some hubris. Having seen this one now I can understand what the comments are referring to. In a world of generic and homogenized 5e adventures, this one veers off in to the sort of specificity that breathes life in to an adventure. Which, I think, is what the comments are referring to when they reference “story.”

We can start by noting that the party is called “resurrectionists.” They are sent in to get the sons body so it can raised. And, thusly, resurrectionists. This alone breaks the mold. No more generic adventurers and what that implies about a game world. No, perhaps a little more gritty. A world, perhaps, of that of The Frankenstein Chronicles. No candy coated shine, is what I think is implied by tat word choice. And, then, even, the party is given a scroll of raise dead. In a scroll tube, an ebony case with a wax seal depicting a black tower on a red field. When’s the last time you saw an interesting scroll case in an adventure, let alone a wax seal from the people giving you the scroll? Specificity hints that the game world is larger than what is directly in front of the parties eyes. 

There are other parts of the adventure that are fantastic. The undead porter has a wall of keys behind him … something for the party to steal from an undead who is not particularly hostile. He can be manipulated with an invitation to the home, or fooled, and tipped. He is mortified is someone points out a key is missing from pegboard, and “. He then extends his hand for a tip. If he is given less than a silver piece he sighs disdainfully” And THAT gentle readers, is how an undead porter SHOULD act. When we talk about capturing the essence of an NPC THAT is it. 

Other details of the home are great as well. In the grand entryway, hanging from the ceiling are fetishes. A thieflings ear, with earrings, a blood soaked leather pouch with two eyeballs in it, and others. These are the remains of the previous group, the part the son was a part of. And, these are there because of … guess the monster. Which monster does this? A hag. Nicely done. Hanging tokens/feetishes by a hag? SIgn me up!

There are parts of this are very relatable. The vibes here smack of real life. The motivations seem real … even down to one (former) party member betraying the son in order to get out. These are real things. And this relatable stuff comes through and does wonders to enhance the adventure. 

I hesitate to put this next part in, but feel obligated. Even the opening read-aloud is decent. “Your boots crunch on hard, cold ground as you make your way up the hill to the old stone windmill. You can see the breath of your companions in little puffs of steam. Light snow is falling. You hear a crow call from the top of the old mill. Well-bred horses with expensive saddles are tied to a post near the front door. You find Valentin and Helena Von Croft waiting inside. He is standing and looking at you; she is sitting at a wooden table, looking at nothing. They are both wearing heavy fur cloaks. Their bodyguards …” I complain all the time about purple prose. I complain all the time about first person narratives. There is a somberness here that is seldom communicated in an adventure. She is staring at nothing. As one does in mourning. 

There are, however, more than a few problems with it. There is a degree of text bloat here that rivals the best. Our porter encounter is just over a page of text. That’s WAYYYY too long. We get roleplaying notes for NPC”s that are too long and delve in to backstory. There is backstory and explanations WHY something is built in to a great many of the rooms, in multiple ways. “The ground inside the courtyard was once covered in colorful gravel and decorative slate tiles. Now most of the tiles are cracked and broken, and the gravel is overgrown with scrubby grass” Well, ok, overgrown with scrubby grass is decent, but the rest is irrelevant. “The rim of this ancient well is decorated with crumbling stone seahorses. There is no windlass or bucket. Perhaps they rotted away.” Anything else not there? A bear, maybe? “The four skeletons (MM 272) are the remains of Brightblossom’s guards. Decadesago, GreyMaggie manipulated them into murdering each other over gambling debts”  Just more backstory. And a paragraph to tell us that steam coming from under a door is harmless. The steam under the door is good.  All this shit does is clog up the text. It make sit harder to find the parts that the DM needs by including this nonsense of why and how things are. We’re playing the game NOW. It doesn’t matter that “old hinges squeak” or that he allegiance of a certain NPC could go either way depending on how the party trets her. (Thank god! No auto-betrayl for once!) You are going to have trouble finding any of that because of the ridiculous amount of non-play-at-the-table text you have to wade through. 

The interactivity also, is a bit, off. There is certainly roleplaying and puzzles that are not outright riddles and things to discover and so on. But, also, they are VERY skill check forward. You will be making a skill check for FAR too many things, in order to solve problems that is. Make a check to convince Bob., Make a check to dance. Make a check to … with the associated text bloat that comes with these. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the interactivity surrounding these checks, but it comes off as a little … I don’t know, more of the usual? The creativity and free flowing nature of the encounters is then ruined by the expected manner outlined to overcome then. Now, I know we’re not forced in to those outcomes alone, but it’s clear that this the way that the designer meant for it to go and that they turned down the support for other solutions. That magnificence of the porter encounter, and its various outcomes and resolutions and nuance, is lost in most of the other places. 

So, way too much text bloat (as twenty rooms in 43 pages would imply) because of backstory, irrelevance, and a focus on outlining outcomes generally through skill checks. A decent degree of interactivity and a great usage of specificity and language which should be double downed on. 

Maybe another release, one day? Certainly good enough to not dismiss outright.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages. More than enough to get a good idea of what is going on. 


https://www.dmsguild.com/product/267835/Secrets-of-the-Blind-Palace?1892600

Posted in 5e | 8 Comments

Tomb of the Necromancers

Posted on January 15, 2025 by Bryce Lynch 
By Pail Mitchener
D101 Games
Crypts & Things/OSR
Levels 6-8

The ruins of the Unknown City stand at the edge of the Death Wind Steppe, surrounded by the foothills of the Wolf Head Mountains. They are a monument to a once mighty city. Few now know the city‘s history, and how it fell. The city‘s old name, Tetronis, now belongs to a village of simple fisherfolk standing amongst the ruins. The force behind both the old city‘s greatness and its destruction was the god Orlusz.

This 21 page adventureo details a small overland journeyo and a dungeon with about twenty roomso. Mucho Texto Bloato that all endso with stabbing thingso. 

I don’t know. I just went with it.  

Ok, ice witch chick, legacy and  heir to an empire blah blah blah, who lives in a hovel in a fishing village, hires your level eights to go raid an old temple for her. It’s full of undead. When you get to hoveltown (population … 40?) you find it’s been raided and is occupied by berserkers from the northlands. Ok, they’ve hung half the villagers from the giant oak in the middle of town (noice!) and taken the other half as slaves, marching them north. Ice witch chick is not among them. You track her down, by following tracks I hope, and she gives you a ley to get in to the dungeon. In you go. You then suffer through twenty overly long rooms full of backstory while you kill undead. You can talk to three of them, but, they probably attack also. Adventure over. 

We’ve got two sins here: backstory and hacking. The NPC that negotiates with you, to hire you is ice chicks retainer, a full 6HD in his own right.  He gets a full treasure list. “Treasure: Scroll containing the spell Charm Person (Navi knows how to use this, though he is not a magician), Bright Red Silk Jacket (worth 30 gp), Silver Rings on each finger and thumb worth 5 gp each, Leather Armour, Shortsword, Dagger, Light Crossbow and ammunition, Riding Horse, 15 gp.” Because he’s the dude that hired you? This reminds me of the 3e adventures where the local fry cooks all got full page stat blocks … just in case! In the fish village we get this description “In the village, the hall of the headman was once the focus of the community, and provided space for everyone to feast on special occasions, as well as the headman‘s private quarters. Further, guests were put up in the hall, either in private rooms, or in the feasting area itself if space and numbers did not permit.” Yup, that is a headmans hut. DO you know how I know this? The entry is labeled “Headmans hut.” Defining what something is only a way to pad shit out. Why put in  the word Elan is your just going to put next in parens (vigorous spirit or enthusiasm.) Yup, that’s what it means all right. Outside of ice chicks hut is an ice statue of a barbarian. Obviously, ice witch turned him to ice. The adventure tells us that if it’s summer then it has started melting. Then it tells us that the ice witch turned a barbarian to ice with her flesh to ice spell. Did she now? I would have never guessed. “In the old worship of Orlusz, entrances to temples were deliberately shaped this way, in order to invoke the underworld aspects of the god” I can’t say enough how that sentence just improves my D&D life. I would have run a boring and prosaic D&D adventure, but, then, that sentence, telling me backstory on the architectural details of the ancient worshipful architects just really sold the thing for my players. This shit drives me fucking crazy. I can handle an aside or so, but, when MOST of the text is padding I just wonder what the fuck was going on. Drop in a Cormac McCarthy story while you’re fucking at it. It has as much relevance to the adventure at hand. When encountering a dragon “It is a male, though this will  not be obvious to anyone not expert on dragons.” I guess we hang out in different groups online. …

And then there’s the combat. Basically each room is just combat. With undead. Got a cleric? Maybe there won’t be combat then. Let’s see … level eights auto turn up to … 5HD? With 8HD being a 50/50 chance (I’m looking at S&W.) Seems like a chill thing to me. I can’t really think of a more boring adventure for level eights than a bunch of undead, most of which are sixes or less with the big bads being seven and eight HD. *YAWN* ALso, I love that monster stats are elsewhere in the text sometimes … if this is the second time you’ve encountered the monster in the text then you’ll need to page flip to find the stats. 

It’s just reams and reams of  backstory and explanations and little more than that … with that little more being hacking. And no real treasure to boot. 

This is $11.34 at DriveThru. The preview is just the cover. Sucker. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/119970/tomb-of-the-necromancers?1892600

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