tenfootpole.org

By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic
Low Levels

The Mysterious Witch is an adventure designed for low level players, for use in any fantasy generic-system TTRPG. This adventure is themed around dark magic, mystery and corruption. Exploration and dangers await players as they travel into a forsaken village among the woods, besieged by undead creatures and horrors. The village asks for help to find the culprit, but the actual truth is more complicated, and beneath the dark veil, a sad reality awaits.

This seven page adventure features a five room dungeon. And small glade to explore. It’s generic, in the abstracted way, rather than in a system neutral way. Well, it’s that also, but, the adventure is more of an outline, devoid of anything interesting that would be useful to the DM in a meaningful way.

I think system agnostic adventures have a lot of potential. At least, system agnostic adventures of a certain type. You’ve got the ones that try to stat something using a “universal” system, usually the older fold who got traumatized by The Game Wizards lawyers. Then you’ve got my favorite type of system agnostic adventure, the ones that are really just an adventure without stats or mechanics to speak of. I mean, sure, a small mechanic or here, but, generally the designer trusts the DM to do what they need to to run the adventure, and maybe stats things for BX or something. This is, I think, the way most people run adventures anyway. You take something for some system, probably not your own, and do a kind of conversion on the fly. Maybe monster stats ahead of time but the rest is on the fly. I really like this sort of thing and I think it has a lot of potential. I really don’t care about balance or mechanics in my adventures, that’s what I’m there for. I’m in this for a decent environment for the party to explore an dplay in, some fun situations and so on, and you don’t need mechanics for that. Then there’s the third type of system agnostic adventure. The kind that is all too common. The one that is essentially an outline. Abstracted content that is not too specific. Almost minimalism. And usually, as in this case, minimalism that is expanded and padded out. Booo!

So, villagers are going missing. Like, ALOT of villagers. There’s not much information on that, almost none at all. They suspect undead? But also, they suspect a witch and know where she lives and want you to go get her. This is the first abstraction. Not many villagers and no real story to tell of the abductions. Or the undead. Nothing really at all. Just what I typed above. Yes, absolutely, it’s up to the DM to fill in things and bring a game to life, but, also, the designer needs to give them the tools to do that. And just saying that there have been a lot of abductions and they think undead might be invoved is not enough. You need some terrified looks. Boarded up windows. Some personal tales from people. You need to set the VIBE for the DM to then riff further on. And this don’t do that.

“Once the layers reach the clearing they will find themselves surrounded by four ruined stone houses and a dry well.” Note the padding. “They will find themselves surrounded by.”  and “once they reach the clearing.” My old quantum example I thinks makes the best point about this, but, whatever. This is a conversational style. That pads things out. There is a clearing with four ruined stone houses and a dry well. We then get a description of the dry well. “The dry well has an object hidden at the bottom. It is a dungeon map that reveals the witch’s last location”. Again, padded out They find a hidden object. No, They find a map. And, to boot, it’s boring as fuck. “That reveals the witches last known location.” This is an outline. There is no specificity. It’s an abstraction description devoid of any life. Going further we get the same sort of descriptions for the first house and the big house. Then a paragraph tell us tat amongst the ruins of “a house’ there’s a giant creature feasting on a dead body. The feasting is good, but thahat’s not the ont. It’s another paragraph. AND THEN we learn that, in another paragraph, there’s a zombie lying stuck on top of the dry well. NO! We put things relevant to an object near the object in the description. Stuck is an abstraction. Tell us how. Zommbie is an abstraction. Describe it to us. Paint the picture of what is ging on for the DM to expand upon and rif fon and run the encounter. It’s fucking terrible.

The entire thing is like this. Abstracted generic descriptions. No life in it at all.

And then there’s the design, proper. “On the altar lies a scroll with the following riddle: ”It’s so magical, it comes every night. It takes you away without moving. To see it, close your eyes. ” If the players say the answer out loud: Dream. The scroll magically transforms into a golden key.” This is the worst kind of thing. Just a meaningless riddle, unrelated to the game, a pretext to give out a key. Lame.

This is free at DriveThru. But you will never get your time back. All for a misunderstood evil witch.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/396898/EQ3-The-Mysterious-Witch?1892600

By Jonbar
Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 5-7

Shipwrecked upon a deserted island the party soon realizes they are not alone. Populated by intelligent and savage red haired apes, the heroes must fight for survival and find a means for getting off the jungle island. These hungry apes are eager for the taste of man flesh and are ruled over by something not of this world that thrives on hunting and terrorizing intruders within its domain…

Meh.

This 39 page adventure details an island with an evil ape. And a pyramid. And a volcano. Alas, no tribesmen. I’m left with an overwhelming sense of “meh” as I review this. I’m not excited about it. It’s seems staid. Maybe that’s because the formatting and writing style remind me of those middling days of TSR, beyond the wall of terse and just prior to the Shit Fest it became. Those days of Meh.

Ok, so, island, 20 by 30 miles. Tropical. Yeah, it’s fucking Dread. I’m not sure anyone can do a tropical island anymore without Dread coming up. Yeah, it’s got an evil ape, this time a demon ape. Yeah, you’re not really there for any reason (which is cool, I guess? Islands seem like work. Maybe I don’t grok the cargo carrying capacity of ships?) Besides the evil demon ape that most things on the island revolve around, there’s also a giant cro, a stone pyramid, and a small cave/tomb, each with about ten-ish rooms. 

Ok, so, good things. There’s a huckster selling a map as a hook. ““Look, why wouldn’t you want your own island that you own? Eh? For 5,000 gp, I can give you this deed to that island. I even got a map straight to it! Imagine….beautiful sands, the soothing waves of the sea, jungle birds and friendly monkeys? You just need to build your dream home…or perhaps a castle for heroes such as yourselves. What’s not to like? What do you say? 5,000 gp is a screaming deal…..” Sold! American Tobacco! I’d be in. That’s the way you say We’re Playing D&D Tonight Bitches! Your soul has to be dead to not swallow that hook. In fact, I’m gonna say that’s my litmus test. If you don’t follow that hook then you don’t get to play in my D&D game. The notes tsay that the deed is fake. Pffft! _I_ think it’s real, and saddling the players with a disease ridden island full of carnivorous apes, disease, pirates and the like is great!  Level 5-7? Sure, we can start some domain play! The other hooks are blah blah blah hire the party shit. LAME! 

The island is … meh? I mean, 20×30 miles, with like three features on it. I guess you can see them from the ship if you sail around it? I don’t knoow. DOesn’t say. But, it’s also not a hex crawl. Sweltering Jungle Island doesn’t come through in the island description or wanderers, but whatever. Also, the evil demon ape is supposed to be kind of omnipresent onthe island, but I don’t think that comes through on the thing either? ROll a ‘1’ on a a d10 for a wanderers, and then get a 12 on a d12 for the demon ape? Meh. I don’t know. The whole island just doesn’t seem to be a place. Empty With No Place To Go And Nothing To Do is the impression I’m getting.

Descriptions are … Long?I don’t know. I guess I get what they are going for. It’s not uncommon for them to be half a column, with multiple things going on in each room. But it comes off as busy. Here’s the first paragraph of one of the room: “The groaning and rumbling stone sound begins to echo away as the platform settles into the center of a square chamber, creating lazy dust swirls. Pillars stand on either side of passages that lead into darkness set in each wall, decorated with pictographs of various creatures (apes, colorful birds, snakes, etc.) that live on the island. Huge blocks, covered in hieroglyphics, create the walls and floors; the open shaft the only escape from the surrounding oppressive stone. Stone ledges along the walls hold vials, urns, decanters and other implements and tools organized neatly upon them with a layer of dust. Writings are engraved overhead of each of the four exits.” So, yeah, get it? Groaning stone. Lazy dust swirls. But, also, I’m bored. I’m not excited. Length? Writing style? I don’t know. I just really don’t give a shit. At All.

And I don’t mean that in a “Oh my god, every moment of this adventure must be the greatest moment of my life!” sort of way. Not set piece after set piece trying to top each other. That would be fucking lame. But the entire things just leaves me Not Excited about it. All of the encounters are just kind of there, and present, but nothing more. And not in a Regerts kind of way.

Which is a good transition. Best Of generally means I’m excited to run this! And Regerts gets close to that but generally has some flaw. This. I don’t know. I mean …

Here’s the description of the evil demon (literally) ape: “hulking and shaggy haired ape beast, with rusty colored fur and gray mottled skin. Long muscular arms end in wicked claws and the mouth has large, sharp fangs framed by curving horns. The legs are short, but powerful, and are able to grip limbs of a tree or grasp prey. Their stench of their matted unwashed bodies is almost overpowering and their eyes burn baleful dim intelligence.” I mean … meh? 

Props for taking one demon front the MM and making an adventure surrounding it. Good idea. But it just doesn’t come across in any way as an active adventure. Or something that you want to run. 

Or something that you want to play in.

The PDF is $10 at DriveThru. Le Preview is fourteen pages. The last few show you most of the encounters on the island, with just the three mini-dungeons left out. It does a good job of showing you the writing style, for the most part. Also, I just fucking didn’t care for this thing AT ALL.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/392345/Gyllagoons-Island?1892600

By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler
James Mishler Games
Labyrinth Lord
Level 1-3

A local tavern, known as a hive of scum and villainy, has fallen under the powerful curse of an angry wizard. The locals and the heirs of the taverner are offering an exorbitant sum for adventurers to go in and perform the needful actions to lift the curse. It is a LOT of money. And the adventurers get to keep all the treasure they find in the tavern. And the local authorities have even suspended their usual taxes on treasure. Too good to be true? As a down-on-your-luck adventurer, you are probably too poor to care…

This sixteen page adventure details a tavern, stuck in time, with three levels and 34 rooms. The pretext is pretty pretexty, it’s chocked FULL of monsters that a groups of firsties can’t deal with, the writing is padded out with historical context, and it lacks interactivity. There’s also the seeds, unknown to the designer, for a full fledged campaign that could be both interesting and boring as fuck.

Ok, so, bar is cursed and full of monsters, etc. You’re offered 1000gp to go fix it/clear it out. The locals know that its full of fursed tavern goers, and if you die inside you stay inside and you need to find five of the original bar patrons, kill them, and bring their foci, some shit, different for each one, that they wear out to the porch of the bar at first light. Then the curse is broken. They also know the exact foci of each one of the people inside. How? I don’t know. Shut up and stop asking questions. “But, they have the EXACT detailed information on the descriptions of each of the foci, from the wizards curse? That seems weird and …” I said shut the fuck up. It’s what the fucking game is tonight. 

In you go. Encounter one, in the foyer, is a 3HD black widow spider with 2d6 damage plus poison. TPK? Maybe. Directly beyond the foyer is the main bar, with 1d6+3+10% of the main gnoll force in the bar, as well as 1d6+3+10% of the ogres and orcs in the bar. They aggressively attack all intruders. TPK? For sure. 

And thus it goes. It feels like EVERY.FUCKING.ENOUCNTER. In this thing is a potential TPK. There is NO way in fucking HELL that a group of level ones is going to make it through this thing. And it’s all combat. There are no real secrets, or things to play with, or anything like that. There’s not really even any negotiating. Just roll on in and start fucking hacking. You got five dudes to kill … including a minotaur and a werewolf. Good fucking luck with that.

Oh? You’re a hot shot D&D player? That not hard enough for you? Well, you need to do it all IN.ONE.DAY. Yup, you got 24 hours to kill everyone you need to. Because at the dawn of the next day they all come alive again. Everything thing you’ve killed inside is back alive again and ready to go, again. Have at thee, varlet!

[Not mentioned are the bad room descriptions with historical context like: “(the body on the floor) … was reincarnated as a wolf, and no one has tried to enter the area since the GIANT …” or “an ogress thought to poach a dead adventurer, but was herself slain before she could, and the adventurer was reincarnated the next morning.” Perfectly adding nothing to the adventure but padded text that distracts. 

But …

This things got potential. Also, I’m living on 3.5 hours of sleep over the last 48 hours, so, bear with me some if I seem slaphappy.

It needs to be totally rewritten in to a groundhogs day adventure. Just make the entire campaign, the entire adventure path, in this one location. You go in, figure out what you need to do, get in good with people, and figure out a path through all the madness to get your five kills, against impossible odds (maybe all Hitman style?) through he course of one campaign. Like, one book, a hundred pages, different time/ages of the bar, different goals and how the bar changes over time as people reincarnate and come and go. It could be great Or an immense drag on everyone who plays it.

Like this thing is. I don’t see how its even possible to START playing this, given the spider and main room. I think you’re just gonna die. Meaning you reincarnate inside. SO, like, my groundhog day thing is closer to the truth than it might first seem? I think? mYabe? Is that how this thing is supposed to be played?

This is $3 at DriveThru. Preview is two pages, showing some random “how to reincarnate” bullshit. So, useless preview to figure out if you should buy it or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/397489/The-Tavern-from-Hell?1892600

Eldrad Wolfsbane
Self Published
OSR
Level 1?

The kingdoms of the Northwestern Lands have fallen and the wars have been lost! MAN, ELF, DWARF and HALFLING are on the run or are waiting for THEIR DOOM! Gnolls from the northeast! Piece of S*** Gnolls! F*** Gnolls! Goblin’s, Hobgoblins and Bugbears from the East! Killing! Snorting! R*****! Goblinoid F***S! We hate them! Fleasheaters! They kill and eat the women and children! They even eat the babies! The ROTTEN Undead from the Southeast! That ROTTEN Undead! That SMELL! In the Kingdoms of the East, Mankind is being wiped out! The Southwestern lands have the chasm one must pass! The Chasmfort saves us all for it cannot be taken! Beyond the chasm, it is safe! From there, wandering! The Middle Lands are full! The Empire to the south has fallen as well! Go west! Nobody wants us here! True grief and sadness! Rumors of the farthest southwestern settlement. One can take the trail or the sea! The High Forest! HIGHHILL Town! This place is being flooded by the desperate refugees fleeing from their lands and is quickly becoming crowded. Every day, add 1d100 people. Now there are rumors that the Pig Orcs have came out of the ground to the Southwest and now are plaguing this land so say the Rangers. Ever growing in numbers! The rangers killed many but there are around 30 or so, getting a base ready! There is no other place to go! There is one thing we must do! Make them DIE! DIE! DIE! DIE! PIG ORC!

This 24 page single column adventure details a small region and dungeon with around twenty rooms. It channels some old Judges Guild with its encounters and format, appealing to that sense of nostalgia. And like those products, when it’s good its very good, but its so inconsistent, and all over the place, that it’s hard to recommend. And yet, the heart wants what it wants … and this IS one of the more old school things I’ve seen in a long while.

That fucking marketing blurb is BAD! ASS! You should check it out on the drivethru listing, where it’s formatted better. In the product, what you’re immediately confronted with a hand drawn map of the region with computer text overlay conveying a lot of the same information, in visual form. THE EMPIRE TO THE SOUTH HAS FALLEn. GOBLINS< HOBGOBLINS AND BUGBEARS and so on. EAST KINGDOM MANKIND BEING WIPED OUT. So, yeah, some names could have cool instead of EAST KINGDOM, but, you get the sense of scope of it, which is the purpose. And in the middle is Highfell Towne, where our merry little adventure takes place. You gotta go west, young man! Next up is, out of nowhere a ten entry rumor table. It’s not labeled as such, but that’s what it is. It just IS. Nice presentation harkening back to the old fucking days. Yeah, it’s a fucking rumor table, do I need to tell you that? No, you’re not a fucking idiot nd you kow it’s a rumour table? Damn straight1 Our rumors are in voice. “They gots a pack of them giant jackals that lurk them Creepwoodes. Old Smelt is they pack leaders name! He be kill you!” I’m in LUUUUUUUUVVVVVVV! “Everyone say hide at night as Specter comes from the

graveyard and haunts Olden Towne.” That’s what a fucking rumour in a D&D town sounds like! 

Next up is a description of the town on two pages. It’s ok. There’s something mysterious, generally, in most entries. The bazaar has foreign merchants speaking in strange unknown tongues and thick common accents running the place. Nice! What’s up with them? Doesn’t say .. but there’s PLENTY of room for the DM to run with that as the game unfolds. My fav is the campground, with “poor ass people and those not wanting to be found lurking here.” Shanty town! Also, monsters lurk on the outside, waiting for their next meal/victim. Roll on the forest or swamp table. I like it!! Something coming out of the swamp to feast on the poors! That’s the kind of normalization of despair that happens in real life. It’s fucking simple as all shit, but works. The encounters for the town are worse, but still prob something you can work with. 1d10 whores out for a nigh. An NPC party. Drunk merchants.Old Mr. Gunderson the old dead Werewolf Hunter … so evil he’s now a specter! It’s just that kind of random shit that you would get in an old supplement … that somehow made sense in the context of the town/place they were being encountered in. Enough to riff with!

We then get a “wildecrawl” with around 20 to 25 places. It’s really just another hand drawn map, with no scale and some (easy to read) computer lettering. You’re gonna have to work a bit, as the DM, to make sure nearby things are aware of the party or they are aware of them. It’s a clean map and easy to read. No scale, and you’re gonna bedoing some lookups, especially in a couple of the encounter dense areas. That could be better, but, also, that’s one of my traditional hexcrawl bitches: seeing whats over the hill/next to you from the map alone. Anyway. Brigands led by DEATH MONGER the brigand! A lake with 32 nixies. A green dragon. “Just some hungry bears trying to make it in the world” Right on dude!  The encounters are a mix of one liners and things that are MORE. “This terrible creature haunts the night out of some old ancient stable. Nightmare” Ok, so, I think I can run that, but, also, pretty minimal. Compare to this encounter: “MORLOCKS, they live in The Tangles, a huge growth of swamp vines that overtook and entire area. The tangles actually block out the sun. They are part of the former civilization that ruled here. They plan to protect the land from the Orcs and prevent a greater evil, the opening of The Deadmoore Crypts. They still have the problem of really liking to eat people, elves, and halflings. Dwarves, not so much. Morlock (38)” So, straight out of the hex crawl textbook. More than enough to work with. And then this: “Giant Worker Ants live in the big anthill. Everyone is terrified of the ants coming back like they did around 10 summers ago.” hat’s a real encounter. The 10 summer shit is nonsense, there’s no way to communicate that without a hint beforehand about it, but, also, very evocative if you COULD work it in. I’m down! Very old school!

Ok, the main event! Die Pig Orc Die! The map is two long hallways with rooms hanging off of them. *SIGH*. Our pig orc friends are in the first “section” of five rooms before they barricaded a huge double door. Orcs (26). “THIS should be a major battle. Warn the PCs that they should have as many NPCs as they can.” Well, fuck. Maybe you should have put that up in the front in the towne section, not in the middle of the pig orc fight? The rest of the dungeon is full of such things as “Another room with cracks in the ceiling. Giant Centipedes come forth! Centipede, Giant – 6’ or “A rooms with a fireplace, sealed for hundreds if not thousands of years. Completely empty.” This smacks of procedural generation WITHOUT enhancement. I’m chill with table generation, but you need a guilding hand with it to turn it in to something. This ain’t that. It’s essentially minimally keyed, which is such a disappointment. I guess it’s full in line with that old school product that it harkens back to, but, still, it’s 2022. 

And the last line of the adventure? “This is just some dude and his computer and is not supposed to be a polished product.” Hey, man, we put that in the marketing blurb so we know what we’re buying. Some people are gonna be chill with it. Others are not going to be chill dropping you money for a Not Finished Product.

Old school chanelling? Absofuckinglutly! And I can get down with a great deal of it! Two column would have improved it. A little work on the dungeon encounters, and even less on the overland, would have really done wonders here and turned in to something majestic. But, simple hallway dungeon with minimal keying? No recommendation from Brycy.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. Preview is seven pages. You get to see those hand drawn maps with computer text overlay … good job on those. And the rumor table. But, o real encounters shown. One page of the wilderness and dungeon would have been better than just slapping down the first seven pages of the product. AND PUT A FUCKING LEVEL RANGE ON IT MAN!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/395361/DIE-DIE-DIE-PIG-ORC?1892600

By FEI Games
FEI Games
OSE
"Mid Levels"

Simply put … A band of Gnolls have made the area their new home and the villagers want them taken care of….

Seriously? You want this reviewed? What is wrong with you people? Did I date your mom or something? I promise, I really was just going to the corner for a pack of cigs. Something came up. Ok, it’s on the list and it’s time to pop from the queue has arrived. 

This fifteen page adventure uses four pages to describe rooms in a gnoll lai,r, about half of which are occupied. It’s boring. 

But, then again, you already knew that, didn’t you? I mean, you can just TELL, right? I mean, like, the cover could be cool. It harkens back to some older products from the 70’s and 80’s. So, like, cool. But, come on, yo unjust know what’s coming, right?

Villagers want yo uto go stop some bandits that look like canines. They give you 20gp, a mule, 3 beaver prlts, 3# of dried venison, 5 live chickens, 5# of dried grain and 5# of gooseberries as payment. Bring on the dancing horses! Also, you get free lodging at Jax’s tavern. Which really surprised me. Cause one of the rumors was that jax was behind the raids and I had no idea who Jax was. I guess he runs the tavern. Whatever. I’m not going on this adventure. What if we just kill most of the townfolk, enslave the rest to work the fields and call ourselves Baron Froffbooty and take a more traditional view of the situation. I mean, whoever IS the local lord should be looking in to shit, right? I mean, these people are paying taxes to him and, at a fucking minimum, he wants his taxes from them. So, if he don’t care then how about we take or swords and take his place? Then, because I am, deep down, a traditionalist, when he complains and tries to kick us out then we hirre a lawyer and make a legal claim to the land. And we bribe the judge. And whoever the local lord is as Sir CantBeBothered is supposed to paying fealty to. That’s right kids, we’re playing OD&D Kissinger style! Pragmatism, without being (overly) bound by moral and ethical consideration. In some possible world that’s a good act, so, you know, I’m Lawful Good. 

The rumors are full of great things like “The leader can be bribed to leave the area.” Like, what the fuck? “The leader?” who the fuck is the leader? How the fuck does our rumormonger know that? Do they deliver it like that? No? How about “Henri? You means Balls of STeel? Henri, with the hairlip? He got raided by them and instead of killing him he took them to an ATM and gave them $400 and they left him alone. “Right? Jesus fuck man, how is the poriginal even a rumor? I get it, but, also, why not put just a modicum of work in the adventure to elevate it above all of the dreck available today? “The old mine has a rich gold bein yet to be discovered.” Huh? Then how do you know that? Boring, and makes no sense at all.

Inside the “mine” is six rooms. Oh, no, wait, hang on. There’s a giant clearing in front of the min entrance. If  you just walk the fuck across it without trying then their guard out front has a 20% chance of seeing you. … Serious? Anyway, anyway, Inside we are met with just dazzling writing as “As you make your way you can hear the voices of multiple gnolls.” No? How about “Once they notice your party they pull their weapons as they quickly move to attack.”  *sigh* nothing better than some you’s in a read-aloud. Or Them automatically noticing you. Or the standard ATTACK action. Dazzling. 

The encounters are just the monsters attaking, present in about half the rooms. Gnolls. Just gnolls attacking, with not real order or battle for them to respond. The leader and his two bodyguards do all have rings of invisibility that they use to sneak out though. THREE rings of invisibility. And 12k in personal treasure. Yes, that’s right, 12k in personal treasure. And that’s in addition to the 15k the treasure room has. So, like, there’s no fucking detail at all, butt, het I guess raiding has been kind to these gnolls? What if we become the local lords AND raid the roads of the kingdom next door to make bank like this? I’m gonna need a XP ruling, gentle readers, on how much XP we get from taxes and raiding merchant caravans of the nearby lords lands. And don’t gimme no shit, you know that’s why B2 has an extensive keep.

Yeah, so, shitty read aloud. No real DM notes. No real encounters other than a minimal keying that is padded out. 

Nothing to see. Move along, move along.Bring on the new messiah.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and shows you nothing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/396813/Grohog-Clan–An-Old-School-Essentials-Scenario-A5-Digest-Sized?1892600

By Radulf St Germain
Studio St Germain
OSR
Levels 3-5?

Somewhere near the border of the civilized lands lies the Sharkfin Coast. Here, all kinds of outcasts and scoundrels hide from the authorities and other bothersome fellows. Several of these people also make good money, most notably Bruce McHamish, the leader of the local smuggler gang hiding in the ruins of Killburne Castle. Now, McHamish has managed to anger Martellus, a powerful merchant prince. Martellus has taken two of his ships to interdict the smugglers’ base…..

This 43 page adventure presents a small sandboxy region with associated timeline. It’s more of a small region, I think, than an adventure, though. The differentiation being the degree of detail, perhaps? This is a strange thing to review, with the normal criteria not exactly applying … or, it does? 

I don’t even think I know where to start with thing. There’s this ruined seaside castle there are smugglers in it, led by Bruce. He’s finally pissed off a merchant house and they are laying siege to the castle with a couple of ships and a band of mercenaries on land. In around twenty days the merchant and his forces will launch their main assault on the castle. Until then, there are some machinations, on both sides, driven by a timeline. Sounds pretty standard, right? Welllllll…..

What’s throwing me here is the mashing up of several concepts. Sandbox adventure and regional setting, I guess? There are various sites, all related to what’s going on. They may take up two pages or so, single column, to describe, for around a dozen or so places in each location. “Ok, so what Bryce?” Well, there’s also NPC’s running around, with wants and personalities. “Yeah, that sounds ok” No no, hang on, there’s also this timeline and some quests tha the party can go on. “Yeah, bryce, that’s what is generally in a good adventure.” Yeah, man, but …

I think I’m complaining about the degree of zoom out in the adventure, and, perhaps, the focus on the main plot. (I’m using plot loosely here, there is a sandbox adventure.) Everything is pretty … abstracted? Here’s a room description: “Guard Room: There are five water elementals resting here in amphorae. If noise is being made(e.g. at the front door) they will emerge and attack anybody not wearing the holy symbol of their ghrine of the Seven Winds” Notice the fact based nature of this description. It’s not really a dungeon crawl description. And, it’s not a dungeon crawl, right? It’s a sandbox. But, it’s a sandbox with dungeocrawl elements. It’s more like an outline of an adventure rather than an adventure. And, again, my language is failing me here. Generally I’d be ok with this, but again, it’s the degree of the detail. This is, essentially, forty pages of an outline. “A halfling approaches the party and hires them to retrieve a dagger from site X, on behalf of the smugglers.” There’s more to it than that, but, essentially, that’s the degree of detail you’re working on. It’s like you’re reading the summary of the adventure rather than the adventure proper. 

(I’m not going to really mention some other things in this review. There are good parts. A giant snake that spits venom and has the head of a goat. That’s great! And “First impressions” room descriptions that don’t put the important bits up front and instead bury them after some general historial/background information. If you can hear people training and see smoke from the cooking fires, far before you reach a location, then that needs to be up front and not in the third paragraph. LENGTHY paragraphs.)

This is essentially an outline of an adventure, rather than an adventure. Take that room description I listed earlier. Can you work with that? Academically, sure. I can see what the designer was going for. But, also, it comes across at a degree of detail that is more like a small regional supplement (which is a lot going on in a 6km/8km region.) 

There are a lot of people and factions to interact with. A lot of GREAT NPC’s, who are not just goons, pursuing their own goals. But you don’t get names, or personalities of most of them. You get a general vibe but that’s it. (This extends to treasure, which, also, i think is a really light for an adventure of this size.)

There are a lot of great little bits in this. The wanderers are great little vignettes. But they can’t support the abstracted/zoomed out nature f the adventuring sites on their own. This is a toolkit for an adventure … without it being a toolkit.

Do you want that? Academically I can see a place in the genre for these sorts of little regional settings.l But, also, No? I mean, why am buying this when I could run Demon Wolf, or something else, which provides more support for the DM? 

It’s a funny little product, and you can see me struggling to review it. So much of it SEEMS like it should ok, but, also, I know thatI’m not going to put in the work, beforehand or at the table, to run this when I could run something else. Maybe, what I’m saying here, is that this is the equivalent of module B2, but in a regional/sadnoxy form? You need to bring the thing to life, and, of course, that’s what the tagline of most of the old adventures said. But, also, it’s not 1978 anymore and design has moved on. 

Is that ok? I don’t know. I really want to like this. I like the scope of it. But not the degree of detail, in a forty page product.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. I encourage you to read the first page. That shows one of the five adventures i the book. That’s it. That’s what you get. Along with the sites, of course, but those are minimal, like the guard room example I gave. So, there’s your adventure. Cool?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/387604/The-Siege-of-Killburne-Castle?1892600

By Amanda P
Hopeful Weird Wanderer
OSE
Levels 1-3

A request! I’m going to be working through several of these that I received while running the contest reviews.

4 days ago, three village youth went camping to prove their courage during a midsummer festival. 3 days ago, they failed to return. Can you brave the haunted forest and bring them home to safety?

This 36 page digest adventure features a small hex crawl with a tomb having around eight rooms. It’s got some great encounters, but takes a long time (36 pages …) to get there, with some wonkiness in the room descriptions. There’s clearly an effort at formatting well, but it falls down where academic meets practical.

So, village holds a big festival once a year. As a part of it, teens go camp in the forest overnight to prove their bravery. Three of them go missing. The elders hire the party to go find them because Frank the woodsman is incopetent, evidently. You hex crawl through a small setting until you find a tomb where the kids are, as well as an undead dude who’s a bit delusional. Got it? Ok.

The nice thing about this adventure are the various encounters … which is nice to hear. 🙂 There’s a little event table for the festival that’s got some interesting things on it. Oldersters quilting, telling stories … as a way to integrate rumors. The butter sculptures at danger from a clumsy stilt walker. Local cats terrorizing the fish fry, a bone carver making a carving while they do it. Guards dicing,and arguing, not noting a drunken group starting a fire. Nice little situations for the party to find themselves in. And that’s the key, little situations. I know, I know, a situation, so what? Or, better, what’s the difference between that and a typical encounter. We’ve got several things going on in them, a little chaos, and no real solution to follow. In fact, no real imperative for the party to get involved at all. Something is GOING ON, outside of the parties involvementin the world around them. And that’s a good thing.

Our random forest encounters are another good example. A fog rolls in, full of ghosts strumming harps and playing hoorns, parading down the road. Carnivorous trees that imitate the sounds of young voices to lure in people. A grove … blooming with too many flowers. The bog witch, who rescues people from the bog in her little rowboat and loves to gossip. Fun little interactive elements, more than just 1d6 giant rats. 

The “major” hex encounters also follow this formula. We’ve got an undead knight pinned to a tree by a lance, asking to be released, his ghostly steed nearby. He’s a friendly fellow. Or another ghost haunting an old smelter site …full of business advice … his downfall. 

And that’s about where things end. Once we get to the tomb, proper, things fall down fast. With one exception, the final encounter, it fails to deliver the situations that were the hallmark of the adventure thus far. We devolve in to just normal old room stuff with normal old dungeon stuff. Static rooms. Broken crates. Partially open sarcophagus. Static. Yawn! There’s a nice thing or two in it, such as river snakes in a horrible moving pile on top of a well-dressed skeleton wearing a gold circlet. But for the last encounter, it’s just a dusty old tomb with some freaky shit in it at places. The last encounter, an undead dude playing a harp with two of the kids in thrall, gets a full page or two of detail and there’s a non-violent option to end things. Which is great. Sure it is. It feels like EVERY intelligent foe in this adventure has a non-violent option. I’m down for neutral undead, having just seen Caveat, but, hey, sometimes the undead just need a little blood to make the flowers grow. It follows the theme, I think, of intelligent foes, no matter who they are, deserving “life” while the hack shit are the unintelligent blob monsters and the like. So, good? Yeah And bad? When there’s too much of it, sure. Don’t get me wrong, I love the extra options

It’s also full of small inconsistencies, like a floor described as having frescoes on it … covered in boot high murky water. Well, how do you see that? Or read-aloud with “As YOU approach the festival grounds YOU smell …” or, a casket with a body in it … and her cloak ismissing. How do you know its missing? How do you know she ever had one? Just little things like that, continuity errros, almost.

Formatting is meh. I mean, it’s great, it uses one of my fav formates. A brief description up top, some bullet points with major items listed with la little sentence each. Nice!  Except the “up top” test and the bullet points are done clumsily. Whats important is not always mentioned first, or high up, or in a methodical fashion, or in a useful fashion. At what point do you tell the party the room is flooded up your knees? Higher up in the description or lower down in it? And the NPC description, trying to list traits and wants, etc, are almost OVERLY formatted, like they take up TOO much space, making them hard to reference and follow. But, still, these are errors in executing the plan, not in the plan itself. A little more work in this area and those things could be ironed out rather well.

It’s an ok adventure. I think the dungeon is too static, but I do enjoy the outdoor encounters and specific imagery IN the dungeon at times. I get what its trying to do, even if I do think tha the kids situation is never really communicated well, or in a meaningful manner (their love triangle, whathappened to them, etc.)

This is $5 at DriveThru. The purview is fifteen pages, enough to see the hex crawl and village, but not enough to see the examples of the dungeon, proper.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/394013/Tannic?1892600