tenfootpole.org

By R.A. Lopez
Hyperfantasy Handbooks
d20/3.5/PF
Levels 6-20

Your heart skips a beat as you realize something and time seems to stop. This being, this “God-Beast” was sent by this newworld. It could have just summoned a gate or spirited you away, like a babe in the night. Instead, it sent a God it here to rescueyouall

from death. You -are- precious. You are not just a lost soul with fate cut via the golden scissors that has no recourse but tofadeInto history- potential unfulfilled. Only you can delve deep and discover the depths of your psyche and what you can become! This is Not “The End”, but a New Beginning. A Life Eternal, A Promise Made, A Gift of The Land. What Will You Do WithIt?

This 242 page adventure is a literal nightmare. Whatever demons you face in life can not be as bad as this heartbreaker. It has no redeeming qualities. I’m not even sure how someone managed to type the 242 pages it took to make this. It is a TRUE fantasy heartbreaker. 

I have been trying, very hard, to make it through this. I know that longer adventures take more time to review, and thus typically work on one over the course of weeks. I don’t see how that is possible with this adventure. I can make it through, maybe, two pages? Then I have to put it down. It’s a nightmare. There’s almost no formatting. It’s absolutely a wall of text. The font is small and, while not “a funky font”, it is something that is not easy on the eyes … maybe the stroke weight? And that’s just the non-creative decisions! There is a literal DM in the game to guide the players. The read-aloud is mixed with mechanics information. It is … I don’t know man. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered something like this before? 

This is hard to review. My ire is generally reserved for those individuals trying to cash in via shovelware, AI slop, or Megacorps who have the resources but don’t care. (Which is all of them.) One person, making one thing, a man of singular vision … Objectivism is the western version of communist heroic sculptures: fucking awesome and inspiring and yet absolutely worthless once you reach age fourteen. But man, the mythic appeal! I don’t want to go full force on this dude. But, also, man, every decision this designer made was wrong. I don’t want anything to fucking do with this, and neither do you. But also, he did it!

So, you get transported to this new world, ala the Dungeons & Dragons ride. You can change your characters appearance over time. Such as: “Personal Evolution can be as simple as losing weight or a shift in hair color, to the growth of wings or horns or sometimes again or loss of more sensitive bits such as breasts or genitals.” It’s not FATAL, but my rule of thumb is that any time someone mentions something akin to sex, then it’s got those undertones that can’t then be unseen. The god-beast talks to you for a million paragraphs of read-aloud. I guess you’re level six now. Then you are released upon The Land to do what DungeonMaster tells you to do. Yeah, he’s in this. Different name, but same thing. You will visit various lands and solve abstracted set pieces. Here are six towers in a circle. Explore the sic levels of each and defeat everything/overcome everything in them and then a clock tower appears in the middle with a jeweled pegboard for you to move the pegs around, representing the towers, to solve the puzzle. How do you know what to do? Well, the first few pages of the book have a bunch of prose about the eighteen or so different aspects.

“There are Six Elements of Arcane Origin: Fire, Earth, Lightning, Ice, Water, and Wind. Earth is ruled by Constitution. Earth is powerful against and weak versus Wind. Earth is expressed as the color, Orange. The natural crystal of Earth is Topaz.” And that continues for each, and then covers device, arcane, ying, yang, dark and light aspects, rare, active, reactive …  THis then is your first real sign that something ‘special’ is going on with this adventure. 

Ok, so, you’re off exploring The Land, which basically means doing what DungeonMaster tells you to do and nothing else. Your first challenge is … fishing. There’s a river. You can fish. And of course you get the rules for making rainbow trout sushi. No, I’m not making this up. THEN you get to go to the tower puzzle/thing. Which, if I know my 3.5 right, is going to take about nine hundred sessions of play to complete, given the length of Pathfinder combats. 

I know, many of you are worried about the god-beast and it’s endless exposition. Or DungeonMaster and his endless instructions (much more than in the cartoon.) But, not worry. The read-aloud has you covered! “As your bloodline is wakened, you will take on the signature of it’s power, a visible sign, a Stitch. You may attempt to hide this feature, but trust me, if you do attempt this you will find luck is not on your side. There is a special kismet that guards our kind ensuring that we cannot hide from it. If you attempt to hide away from God, does God not forsake you? Regardless, when you hide your Stitch/es, you begin to lose health and energy over time. This is called [Masking]. It can be dangerous to do it often.” I’m not cherry picking. That’s fairly typical. A weird mixed tense or second person, DM voice, mechanics, some attempts at being evocative. That’s it, that’s the adventure. It’s pervasive and normal here.

Hey, remember that river I told you about? Here’s the encounter: “Everflowing River (Drinking) Restores Health and Energy to Maximum. Destroys All Epic (and Non Epic) Negative Effects. ‘Mortal Wound’ Effects are Destroyed! After Drinking Deeply, Status is Reset to Clear! It is almost like having a new body. Secondarily, drinking the equivalent of a small lake from the aquifer fed river is not only one of the most exhausting things you’ve ever done but also the most refreshing.” How the fuck do you run something like that?

The font is small. It’s something hard to read, but not obviously so, I think it’s the stroke weight. It is repetitive. I mean REALLY beating a dead horse. Even more so than I just did about the stroke weight. “On The Fourth Morning (After All 3 Days and Evenings Have Been Spent!)
Yes, that is generally the definition of the fourth morning. And the, the descriptive text is clearly meant to be a railroad “Breakfast’s remnants sit now on barren, cracked ground. In the distance, you spot a series of bleak towers. You notice a steadyglowbriefly appearing to outline the edges of all weapons and armor; they are all now enchanted with the barest of magics- onlyasimple+1 (Enhancement) imbues all starter equipment transforming from fine craftsmanship (masterwork) to true magic” Uh, no? I’m not camping next to some towers.

This adventure is set pieces. It’s a lot of exposition, mixed in tone and voice, and then set pieces. DUngeonMaster is there for you. He guides you, explicitly. Then you do a set piece. Which is itself full of other set pieces. And you go on to the next one as you visit multiple areas of The Land. 

This is %100 a heartbreaker. It is also, I think, unusable. I toss that word around a lot, but this is … completely legible but difficult to decipher? The best example yet of what a spellbook is like? You can read it … but it’s hard as hell. A month to get through this and I’m still not sure I can describe it.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The previs is six pages. It is perfect. No, that legalese does not go on for pages. That’s the adventure. Enjoy the elemental BS, and the god-beast exposition. You know EXACTLY what you are getting from this preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/529775/reality-unbound-reclamation-book-i-levels-6-20?1892600

By Scott Craig
Cutter Mountain Simulations
B/X - Shadowdark
Levels 1-6 (?)

For hundreds of years, the Lunamancer conducted his magical research in the pinnacle of his tower, hidden by potent illusions. Whenever he needed rare components for his research, he relied on the Greater Crypt Thing in his tower’s lower labyrinth. This labyrinth was well known by adventurers far and wide, and they regularly entered its dark halls for loot. The best and brightest of these adventurers the Crypt Thing would set a geas upon to procure whatever the Lunamancer required. And so the years passed… Until one fateful night when the moon waxed full, and the Lunamancer made one small error in his calculations. Then something filtered down from the night sky to terrorize him in his very chambers, and his illusions suddenly faded…

This six page adventure uses two pages to describe six levels of an illusionist tower. Yes, six. Its heart is in the right place, if only it stopped stopping drinking a bottle of rumplemintz immediately upon entering surgery for its organ donation and then immediately passing out on the floor and vomiting all over itself. 

I’m a big fan of hubris here at Ten Foot. You go Icarus! Fuck the rest of those asshats! Try new things. Iconclast those safety regulations on the reactor! Build your truck campers bed frame out of aluminum and then put your 300 amp battery ¼” from the frame! And, of course, get criticized harshly for the foolish decision you’ve made! This is the way designers of singular vision advance the art. Or die trying.

 The six pages here reflect a title page, a fluff page full of “WHAT BOLD MEANS” and other dumbass boilerplate, a monster reference sheet (Huzzah!) with some general notes as well, A page of four maps for the six levels (one maze map being reused three times) and the two pages of keys. For six levels. I think that means something like 46 keys. Plus a decent number of portcullis, curtains, statues and other features. The maps here are at least interesting. If Scott is a mapmaker then he does a decent job with room descriptions and if he’s a designer then he does a decent job with his maps. Even a dumb-as repeating maze level gets a decent amount of interest on the map. We’re not talking talking rock-star, there’s a lot of symmetry here which is a cop out, but they are more than just a throw away basic effort.

This means we get descriptions like “ Strangely clean…” for a room. Or, perhaps “Entrance – Scattered Leaves and twigs, muddy footprints leading all directions.” Or, straight out of The Borderlands caves “2 ORCS laze about on a pile of smashed furniture and soiled rugs. One wears a GOLD TORQ (65gp).” There are a couple of longer rooms, “. Moon-Lens Turntable Machinery Room. 2 SERVANTS OF APOC’L’TH examine a forest of arcane tubes, gears, and pistons that actuate the forcefield projectors holding the MOONLENS atop the spire. The spiral staircase ascends to area 24.” But, I’d argue that, other than a couple of riddle rooms, these are actually just further examples of the ORC LOUNGING room. CREATURE verbs OBJECT. Room interactivity might be something like “Central Hall. A stone FOUNTAIN gushes clear, refreshing water. A marble STATUE of a robed philosopher stands with hand extended in friendship. If statue’s hand is touched, statue speaks loudly (once per adventure): “Harken! Behold, a river!” Secret door is opened by pushing statue’s arm downward.” At its heart that’s not bad. A little magical wonder, a classic pull the arm down.  But, also, marble statue of robed philosopher is not exactly the most evocative. But, also, to be fair, that strangely clean room is foreshadowing a Cube, so, fuck me and my criticisms. 

It’s an ok adventure. “The LUNAMANCER appears as friendly, ELDERLY WIZARD in moonlight. Otherwise appears as the lich he truly is.” That’s the kind of shit you want in your adventures. If every adventure I reviewed were at least as good as this one then I’d be bemoaning the blandness of the environment and lack of complexity. Most adventures are fucking train wrecks and this one isn’t though. But it IS a bit bland with some lack of complexity and depth. The core concepts are good but the dungeon size (six levels … of like eight rooms each) and the artificial constraint shows through. Dude has his thing and his thing is a six page adventure. Got it. But the artificial constraints imposed by that decision will mean that the chances of a Spawning Grounds, Hyquatious, or other classic adventure coming from a one-page dungeon, Stonehell (half marks for building depth over depth), or a six page dungeon are rather low. It is serviceable, but it’s hard to see it rising to greatness. Especially when squeezing in six levels, as this adventure does. I’m not going to say move to a longer format. Sure, I’d love to see something from this designer that had a map with room to breathe and descriptions and interactivity that had that room also. But he’s doing a six pager. Which means creating an adventure that can truly excel in those six pages. No, not a fucking lair dungeon. I’m gonna puke if I have to see another one of those five room shit holes. How do you create a six page adventure that can be magnificent? That, good gom-jabbars, I leave as an exercise for the designer. For I am The Watcher.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is interesting. It’s one image/photo, but it shows the map, the two keys pages and the general info/summary page. You can get a sense of the formatting, but zooming in makes it too blurry to read. I appreciate the attempt, but I suspect shoing a portion of the keys would have been better. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528166/the-mystery-of-the-moon-haunted-spire-compatible-with-shadowdark?1892600

By Odinson Games
Self Published
Cairn

Sir Zebadiah was once a war hero, celebrated for purging witches from the Wenderweald. Now he exhumes his subjects and puts their corpses on trial. His squire begs for intervention before her liege damns the barony entirely. You’re sent to capture Zebadiah alive—but the villagers want him dead, his loyalists stalk the woods, and the dead themselves rise for justice. Will you bring the heretic to justice or suffer his corpse trials?

This fourteen page adventure features about eighteen locations in a village/woods pointcrawl search for an errant and fanatical knight. It has a decent premise and detail in places, but it falls down severely when it comes to locations. Cutsy layout detracts from what otherwise could have been a decent adventure.

“You must arrest the false knight zebadiah and bring him to justice.” Well, actually, I think he IS a baron and knight, so, not really a false knight. Basically, dude burns witches. He got cursed and is now REALLY on a tear, digging up bodies, trying to find the last “real” witch he burned, his sister, who he thinks cursed him. The villagers get pissed and the dead are rising in revolt against having their graves molested. He runs off with his men in to the woods to look for more bodies. So we’ve got a village on edge with soldiers about, and a fanatic in the woods. In comes the party. 

I’m not super down with the hooks, they are all very honor, faith, justice oriented. I’m more down for some RealPolitik framings in situations like these. What was that runaway bridge adventure where the lord said something like “if you can do it without violence then I guess that’s ok also”, or “tie up the loose ends.” Essentially the hooks presented are all the same, with the party being of mine moral character, and I prefer to see some variety. Sure, a fine moral character hook. But also a RealPolitik one, or some other mood variety. Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter who hires the party, you’re just wasting hook space to describe essentially the same hook with different actors.

The general set up and specificity, especially around the village proper, are pretty good. We get some key NPC’s and a little villager generator with a two part name generator, trait, personality, and quirk. Excellent, although a page of these pre-gend would have perhaps been better. There’s also an escalating tension table which serves as a kind of event generator. You really feel the reality of the situation the villagers are in. “Grieving villagers claim their dead at the graves and squabble with tense guards.” or “Moreina doles silver to grieving widows outside the keep.” or “Jaanus leads a mournful family to collect their exhumed dead gibbeted in the square.” or “Edvin leads flagellants around the Temple, crying “Repent! Repent! Repent!”” Excellent window dressing to communicate mood and perhaps even spur some deeper play. “Several stockaded villagers beg for water beside it.” With guards about this could be fun. 

The dude is hiding out in the woods, running around digging up graves, and he’s got a short little three-day timeline associated with his actions, which ends with him razing the village after burning his niece alive. Ouch. 

The overall framework, the situation, the window dressing, this is all great. But things fall apart when we get to the keys. This is one of the, few, locations and typical for the location descriptions: “Rainrot Pit:  creek runoff drains into the cavernous hollow. Dappled light catches on gold down there. + A hex-smuggler stashed 300 gold pieces in a dry bag but the draw-rope was cut.” All of that fabulous situations and specificity , etc really don’t show up at all. So this is not a bad location description: “The Breedpool: mosquitoes cloud the reeds and algae films the still, black water. Helm-sized eggs float in the pool.” But then there’s nothing there. Yes, a monster has a 50% chance of being there, but that’s just a stabbing. The more interesting play just isn’t available. Dude has a timeline and he might be at one of these locations, but then the location is just which screen the Mortal Combat match has a backdrop, with it contributing little to nothing to the play.

And this is a shame. I suspect that there is MORE than enough room in the fourteen pages used to provide just a little more depth to the various keys.  Even if they are meant to be used as backdrop, they could be made in to more interesting backdrops. But it’s gotta use one of those modern hip edgy layouts. And it’s gotta use a fucked up font in place in order to make things hard to read. I just want more out of this. As presented it falls in to something like “a large social situation” adventure, which I can dig. But the way the material is presented doesn’t really help that too much. It seems like it is fighting against that. We need locales, people, timelines, situations, ad then a little bit on using them all together, as the DM, to put it all together. You’ve got this situation and the designer should be giving you the tool sections to help run that in the loosy goosy way that these things usually play out. And there is an attempt at that. You can see the village map and brief descriptions, the forest map and loose descriptions. The NPC section, the events section. But it just never gels to come together in the way I would want it to. It’s like, I don’t know, half a page of text is missing (in addition to the locales …) 

At the conclusion, you need to capture the dude to get the full payout. But, also, “The villagers will be enraged if they see Zebadiah captured and will demand his death, descending into a riot.” Noice. A couple fo extra sentences there would have been ice.

This is not a train wreck. But it also just misses the mark of what I consider decent enough to run.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. No preview, but it is Pay What You Want, so I guess the whole thing is a preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527846/knight-of-the-corpse-trials?1892600

By Crumbling Keep
Self Published
OSE
Levels 1-3

Your mother used to sing you a song when you were young about circling birds, but it would always end with her tears. Now you find yourself in a forest of crawling dead things and strange happenings, and the events of the song are coming true! What does it all mean? And what is the creature that stares at you with your own eyes?

This fifteen page adventure has five populated hexes, one with a small five room keep. It’s got one of those bullshit narrative game framing devices. Otherwise it’s just fiveish simplistic hexes in a font/layout optimized for your phone. 

Time marches on. We’ve seen responses to various trends in D&D adventures over the years, such as the inclusion of VTT maps, hyperlinks and so on. This time we’ve got an adventure ‘optimized for mobile.’ In practice that means a GIANT FONT on a small screen size and some hyperlinks in the adventure to make moving around it easier. I can’t imagine ever using this, but, it exists so someone somewhere must need it. But is it GOOD? 

No.

Let’s looks at the opening page: “Dim light filters in from a sun that struggles to rise over the horizon. It’s early, perhaps earlier than you’d like, but sleeping was not easy last night. It’s eerily silent as you all mill about, gathering your supplies to get back on the road, and a low mist gathers around your legs, obscuring the ground. Suddenly, a large group of crows rises out of the woods, their caws rising in an insane chorus as they fly in a circle before heading northwest. Ask: Which PC’s mother used to sing them a song about circling birds?” Yup. It’s one of those. A narrative bullshit thing. The followup question is “Why did you think she would cry after singing the song?” So, even better, it’s got some trauma dumping shit attached to it. This is not fun and is inappropriate to put in to a game. The trauma shit. I think the narrative shit, explicit as it is here, is lame as fuck and tends to not fall in to my definition of what a ‘game’ is. It’s a fucking activity. But, if we are going to go down that path then FORCING your players in to some kind of trauma dump is bullshit. Yeah, I think the trigger warning shit is general nonsense. “Someone dies.” or “There are snakes.” But, also, if you’re gonna put crap like this in your game then, yes, you get to trigger warning it. And, further, if you feel the need to trigger warning something then you probably shouldn’t put the fucking thing in your game. This is all edgelord bullshit. You write a couple of decent adventure that I would consider Best, then I’ll ease up on my diatribes and consider that you might be able to stick something edgier in. But, again, we’re all here for fun, not for trauma bonding in a group circle where we work out our feelings. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. EXCEPT WHEN IT HAPPENS IN THE FUCKING D&D GAME. “Sketch the symbol your mother had tattooed on her wrist that she never explained.” Go fuck yourself. I’d walk the fuck out of this nonsense and demand a refund if I stumbled upon this at a con.. 

The style is OSE. “Birds flying over head (squawking ominously), Bones litter the ground (animal and human, clean and unmarred), Stone Altar (northern end of the field, ancient, crumbling” It’s fine. OSE Style is easy to do. You still have to write a decent description. These are ok. Nothing special, but also not terrible. Meh. 

There is, though, a lack of understanding of what a D&D game that infects the encounter keys. Let’s look at one of the encounters: “Pained Man (half embedded/phased into the rock wall, there’s no way he should be alive, can only wail, has lost his faculties)” You getting nothing more than that. Seriously, that’s it. Has the designer never played D&D before? This is clearly an element one wishes to focus on in the room. The party WILL be investigating. And, yet, nothing more. It’s just fucking window dressing. Similarly, there’s a chasm in another area. Down below are a lot of bodies. Absolutely nothing to do in the text mentions that again. The party WILL be fucking going down there. They WILL be searching. If you didn’t want them to then don’t fucking thell them that there is shit down there to do and look at . You put something there, so you need to help us run the inevitable situation where the party goes down to investigate it. 

Oh, I didn’t describe the adventure. You start with that rad-aloud from above, do the trauma dump thing, and then, for some reason, wander around in the woods. I guess cause those birds circling and your mom? Whatever. You wander hexes until you maybe stumble in to one with an encounter in it (five of them) and hope you don’t wander off the edge of the map. IE: I’m sure it was playtested as a railroad rather than a hex crawl. Eventually you find a cave with some abomination in it that looks like your twin. Whatever. No explanation. Just a mystery. 

Garbage adventure with nothing special going on except some pretension. If you’re gonna do some pretension in your adventure then fucking disclose it so we can avoid it.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages. You get to see the start with the narrative nonsense. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/528159/that-old-familiar-song-a-tinderbox-mobile-adventure?1892600

By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 1-3

SIPPING ON SHADOWS FROM A BOTTLE OF BETRAYAL! Ardin Winery, once a flourishing estate, is now on the brink of collapse. The Baroness promises a generous reward to anyone who can save her farm from distress. A sobering reality—her recently deceased husband secretly attempted to formulate an eldritch wine and cheat death—but the dark recipe twisted his body and mind instead. It’s time to uncork the truth!

This 26 page adventure uses three pages to describe thirteen rooms in the basement of a vineyard mansion. It feels like 5e conversion crap, though I can find no of another version. It’s nice to see someone making all of the classic mistakes and producing classic shovelware.

Isn’t it fun, the many myriad ways in which adventures can suck ass? Today we have a classic shovelware adventure. All of the trappings of a decent adventure with none of the content to make it so. Dude made 28 pages of content, art, all of those words, and only three pages are the actual fucking adventure. Which is gonna suck ass, but, imagine what the thirteen adventure rooms could look like if the designer had actually put effort in to them? I mean, all of that effort that went in to the other 25 pages. What if THAT effort was sent on the fucking room keys? You know, the art piece of two wizards (one barefoot. No wizard goes barefoot man.) The brothers, a wizard and an illusionist, that have crafted the bespoke security measures for the winery in which the adventure takes place. That art piece. The backstory for them. WHo don’t appear int eha adventure at all and are never referenced by anyone in any way. That effort. What if instead you had spent that fucking effort on actuall doing your fucking job as a fucking designer and made just one sentence in one room key actuall decent? Think about how you could be proud of that one sentence. How you could have contributed to a better world, producing something worthwhile. Instead of spending your time on AI art prompts for an art piece to accompany the sidebar description of the two magical brothers (one of who doesn’t wear shoes. Yes, that bothers me a lot.) who run a bespoke security company. That has no impact on the adventure at all. But, no, you made a different decision. Put your fucking effort in to the part of the adventure that matters. This is almost always the fucking encounter keys, by a lopsided degree. Yes, content and supplemental material like a wanderer table help with adventure. But the fucking keys ARE the adventure. That’s where most of the designers effort should be. It’s not an afterthought.

Hey, have you ever wondered what a farm field looks like? “Rows of wheat, barley, corn, and root vegetables stretch across the gently rolling hills. The land is tilled in organized sections. Rutted paths allow carts to pass through for harvesting.” Yeah, that’s a farm field. Good thing you put that description in there telling me what a farm field looks like. Otherwise I might not know what a farm field looks like. Over and over again, hammering in mundane and worthless descriptions. We know what a kitchen looks like. Tell us why this kitchen is different. 

Line after line of text description background information. Line after line of text explaining why something is the way it is. “During happier times, the fairgrounds would be hosting lively gatherings and celebrations, with several bungalos offering convenient lodging with stunning views. But today … all is uncommonly quiet.” I don’t fucking care. I DONT FUCKING CARE. It is the way it is NOW. I care about that. You know, something that happens during the actual game of D&D. In the graveyard there’s a fresh grave. Part of the tedium says “Before heading down, he pilfered Chuco’s staff (Vintner’s Vine) for protection. Unfortunately he dropped it in the Fermentation Hall.” I’m knocking one point off of this things final score because the designer didn’t tell us what the dead guy had for breakfast. 

Let’s see, level one and two. The ladies maid, to the baroness who hires you? She’s a level five bard. A level five bard is scrubbing the shit out of a womans chamberpot every morning. Yes, I know, but there are only a couple of servants left. The four or five NPC’s all get long paragraphs describing them that is absolutely useless in running them at the table. As one would expect from a high quality adventure like this.

Oh, right, level one and two adventure. The wanderer table has a hill giant on it. And a decent amount of other monsters. For an upscale vineyard, like, Napa Valley long established estate kind of shit. The fucking fairgrounds have a god damned Press Area on them.  (I chose to believe that this is for reporters and not for pressing grapes.) Did I mention that the entire thing ends with finding … a journal! Ah yes, the classic Find A Journal shitty backstory exposition. How have I have missed thee! Too long have I waded through the shit of Ai crap, not understanding the simple joys of ranting about an exposition dump through a journal that doesn’t mean anything to the adventure. It’s like a pair of comfortable slippers.

A Level five ladies maid. Telling us what a farm field looks like and what it is. Meaningless and long NPC descriptions. A journal describing all of the backstory. Backstory for everything and everyone. No real interactivity beyond fighting. Oh, shitty adventures, how I missed you. It’s nice to see people still churning out the same shit piles that were being turned out twenty years ago. I love you always forever

Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you
Say it, say it again
I love you always forever
Near or far, closer together
Everywhere I will be with you
Everything I will do for you

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages.  You get to see everything worthwhile, the backstory, the farm field description, the level five ladies maid description. The first eleven of the thirteen rooms. Great preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/525635/sour-grapes?1892600

By B. Wraven Wright
2Die10 Games
OSE
Levels 1-2

An Audrune hires the adventurers to deal with “what lies below” a particular dolmen and to “leave nothing moving”. He says the party can keep anything of value they find and to burn the place out when done. He provides a map to the location of dolmen and sets off on his way. He is of little words and refuses to entertain further questioning. The dolmen is easy enough to find with a fairly sturdy stairway leading down below

This six page adventure uses three pages to describe seven rooms in an underground dolmen. It’s error-prone, makes simple logic mistakes, and is little more than an excuse to kill things. 

Yes, I know. I say that a alot. But a lot of adventures deserve to have that said about them. I still believe in magic. And, this thing starts with a passing wizzo hiring you to “deal with what lies below” and to “burn the place out when you’re done.” Well howdy! Always a big fan of fire and salting the earth in an adventure. There’s a dude with something going on who, for some reason, doesn’t want to deal with it himself. 

The adventure explains nothing. Just a dour passing dude hires you to, as I noted. There is nothing more. He is of little words, recall, and refuses to entertain further questions. Always a good way to get your job done. Go fuck yourself man. How much extra you paying for the privilege of being an asshole who needs something done? Oh, no notes on what hes paying you or what you’re reward is. Nothing more than what I posted in that intro. At the end of an adventure you, perhaps, find a secret door to the last room. Inside is an invisible old woman. Sobbing. She laments all of her dead children (the six previous rooms being littered with little clay fetish dudes, all broken to pieces. So, she’s hiding out in this secret room, crying and invisible. Until you open the door. Then she “Stops at nothing to leave the dungeon until killed.” Okaaaaay. I guess we’re killing her for some reason? No? She escaped? Then when you exit you find the dude that hired you standing over her, having killed her. Uh. And he wants all of the gold and magic from the dungeon, which he originally said you could keep. Also, he has no stats. This is all a confusing mess, as is the adventure. Except … I wonder if this was supposed to be a domestic violence situation? I’m filling in some shit here, but they start a quarrel for some reason, he breaks the dudes or she has them attack him? He leaves, gets the party to kill his wife and burn down his life. She’s inside, either the victim of abuse or dealing with him having gotten rid of her clay friends (rightfully or wrongly) and she comes out of her sobbing when interrupted by the party, only to flee, meeting him outside. We don’t see the outside so she attacks him or he attacks her? So, he called the cops on his wife and it ended in violence. As presented the adventure is a mess. Me filling in the gaps turns it in to something I don’t think I want to play. 

The wandering monster table, and many room keys, have “soldiers” in them. Actual soldiers? People who we are using soldier stats for? What are they doing there? It’s not clear they talk. Who are they? Absolutely no fucking idea at all. There is nothing here to guide using any way. They are just stat blocks to stab. AND, the killings? They explode for 2d6 damage, save vs half. And there are A LOT of then. I’m not sure thats survivable for levels 1-2? Playtested? Probably not. And there’s a 50% chance, in every hallway, of encountering a fight. This is not a old school thing.

Each room starts with read-aloud. Room one tells us: “ Opening the double doors, soot and ash swirl about the air. A large kiln fashioned from crude, clay bricks is built into the wall at the opposite of the room. Broken kilnlings litter the floor in front its numbered of it. Tables littered with jars and kilnling parts face the walls.” Note that the kilnlings are new monsters. How do you know what they are? This is pretty classic telling instead of showing. Another room has a state of a god in the middle of a pond. We never hear anything more about the statue. The party will OBVIOUSLY be investigating it. To no end, since there’s no information on it. 

And I’m pretty sure there are obvious map and keying errors. Rooms five and six appear to be swapped. This is pretty basic shit. It’s as it the entire thing was written in one sit down and then no effort was made to read through it or edit it or anything. Not that it matter. 6 SOLDIERS and 6 PIKES attack immediately after the cottager dies. They able to narrowly squeeze through the prison bars.” So you’re just gonna be stabbing shit. Regardless of what the designer places in front of the players, the monsters will get to do whatever the designer wants them to do, but fiat. Also, that cottager wants you to kill his bitch wife, so, maybe his wife and not the dude who hired you? 

Anyway, just a complete mess of an adventure with nothing more than stabbing and some domestic violence. What a fun night of gaming ahead of you!

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527686/under-the-dolmens-delve-a-one-shot-dungeon-for-level-1-adventurers-in-the-dolmenwood-setting?1892600

By Daniel Collins
mxplusb
OSE
Level 1

Aeranor is a land of scattered small communities trying to carve a stable life for themselves. Petty Lords squabble over land as neither the crown or the head they sit upon last long for any King. Darkness festers in the deep wilderness. Evil stirs in the dark dungeons below. Rumors of silver and glory stir about. The adventurers are a few of the many who have grown tired of the simple life. They yearn for more than what their father did before them. Barrow elves, witches, dragons, and more await the adventures in the wilderness of Aeranor. Oaths will be tested, the Gods will send forth Omens, but it is up to the party to forge their own destiny. 

This 64 page adventure describes about thirteen mini-locations in a small region. It wants to build intrigue. It wants to be a teaching adventure for DMs. It is dull, unimaginative, and needs to learn how to write an adventure before telling others how to write an adventure.

I am fond of a few things in adventure. Town adventures. Barrows. Gonzo. Generation ships. I try to disclose these at the start of a review. I also have an unnatural hated for at least one thing: the teaching adventure. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM. Specifically, the ones that try to teach the DM how to write an adventure. I loathe them. I think this comes from all of the reviews I’ve done, and seeing people follow all of the bad advice. Time and time again a magazine, or published product, has had an article about How To Write An Adventure and its almost always full of shitty ass advice. And then I get to see the fallout from that, as others write to those standards or learns to write an adventure from the looking at the adventures that were written to those standards. I fucking LOATHE it. Hence my descent in to hookers and blow. “For this, we need to make a table. When you make your own, you want enough to be able to run an interesting encounter without having to think about too much during play. Give each a little prompt instead of just the monster.” You learn, instead, the way everyone else has fucking learned: by looking at good adventures that speak to you. Having to be told how to create a wandering monster table is wiiiilllldd. And in a conversational tone as well, no less. This then is the doom of man.

To its credit this product is trying to weave a larger narrative. It’s trying to tie the thirteen populated hexes in to a larger narrative about a stay-at-home-lord, a newly married couple set to inherit the crown and blah blah blah. That’s the right thing to do. You’ve got all of these hexes and you make a handful of them related to the “plot” and the others complications or just things to do. Correct. It also doesn’t really takes sides, allowing the party to do what they will, although it seems that one of the choices it played out more. I’m generally ok with this. We don’t force things down the parties throat, but also, we support the options the most that are the most likely to be taken. 

Hey, did I mention that the Table of Contents has no page numbers? No, it’s not hyperlinked either. Good luck locating any information on those thirteen adventure sites that you need during play! Obviously, there were no instructions to put in page numbers. 

And what kind of adventure can we look forward to? Well, “Lord Eowald has posted a notice asking for any men-at-arms to take care of this elusive “Barrow Elf” who lives near the river to the East. There is a total reward of 50 sp for its head.” Wunderbar! It’s one of THOSE adventures.

The first adventure ,with the Barrow Elf, is generally typical of everything you’ll find in here. It’s got a small Dyson map of ten or so rooms. (Quoting some Sly Flourish advice mahed up with the designers own: “dont worry about finding the perfect map, just grab the first one that looks good enough.” and “go find a free Dyson map.” Both oof which i might take … if I were using this in my home game. And neither of which is good advice for something that you are going to publish and charge fucking money for.

Anyway, on to the rooms. I’m going to do something here I don’t usually do. Yes, I quote room text frequently. But this time I thought I would just include the first six rooms wholesale, so you can get a good look at the context in which the critique is going to happen:

1. 3 Corpses of unlucky victims (Zombies) are scattered on the stairs. They stir if anyone walks past.
2. Still, putrid smelling water. The water will rot away any flesh.
3. Empty, and eerily clean.
4. Zombies shambling around the room where they once rested eternally. Each stone coffin holds 1 keepsake and 1d4 silver pieces.
5. Empty
6. Ulsylmor’s wondrous lyre lay discarded in a stone coffin along with a set of silver plates (25 hacksilver worth). 1 XP

How’s that? You loving your fucking life? Maybe a little less effort in to the bullshit advice part of the booklet and more effort, A FUCKING LOT more effort, on the actual adventure, eh? Unlucky is padding. Once rested eternally is padding. These are backstories that don’t impact he actual play. The designer has confused “backstory” with “useful to play. You could have made them do something. You could have given then a word or two of evocative description. Nope. Backstory. And those rooms, proper! The majesty of them! The lack of evocative description! The lack of interactivity! Look, ok, I’m not morally opposed to room twos still putrid water that rots away flesh. I think it could use a little more. You had, obviously from the comparison to the lines above and below it, a few more words you could have thrown in there, but, not a bad thing. The rest though? Low effort descriptions of low effort room concepts. Shit. And I’m not cherry picking here. Most of the adventure locale keys in this resemble those above. Which kind of makes you wonder what the designer was thinking, devoting, generously, thirty pages to keys and thirty four to padding outside of the adventure. 

The general store, in the starting town: “Talbrak’s Goods: Talbrak’s is the one stop shop for anyone traveling looking to restock supplies.” A boring town, with a sentence per, and nothing unusual or fun or intriguing going on. The local roc lair: “While they do mate for life, the father went off to the mountains to the East to protect his family from another aerial intruder – a dragon!” Sir Not-Appearing-in-this-Film has been a fixture for a long time now. It’s systemic, it’s everywhere.

Hey, that barrow elf? It’s a wight. That’s the first thing you’re gonna fight. A fucking fight. It’s explicit. Well, there’s those four zombies, but the only other thing is the wight in the tomb. 3HD: THAC0 of 17. Energy Drain. Hit by magic and silver only. That kind of wight. I’m not sure if that’s a TPK at level one or not. Hmmmm … And you start, right after the garbage Session 0 advice crap, in media res, right on the journey to his mound. 

This is hard because I generally separate the creator from their work. In this case those, because its to be a learning adventure, they seem inherently linked to me. The advice within is simplistic and the adventure itself not good in the most basic ways, except for the overarching concept behind it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nineteen pages and you get to see the first couple of adventuring locales as well as some of the “teaching.” So, good preview anyway.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/524071/adventure-kit-1-the-lover-s-folly?1892600