Once a dwarven stronghold guarding the Great Trade Road, the Grimhold Keep has fallen into ruin. Rumors claim, though, that an extensive network of tunnels and chambers exists beneath the ruins. Home to all manner of horrors and traps, the dungeons are also said to house the hoarded wealth of marauding bandits and monsters. Only a brave party of adventurers can survive the dangers to discover the truth. Enter the depths of Grimhold Keep in search of gold, glory and adventure. But beware, the denizens of the dark depths are a danger to all who dare to enter their domain. And there are rumors of a new power rising, one that bears the symbol of the crowned skull.
Who the fuck recommended this thing to me? The background has nothing to do with the adventure. This is HeroQuest.
You draw a card to determine the room shape. You draw a card to determine the monster in the room. When you search it you draw a card to see what you found. I hate my fucking life.
Here’s your room :“Numerous narrow tunnels pierce the far wall of this large room. Bones, rags and rusted arms litter the floor.” Numerous. That’s fun, right?
Here’s your monster: “A clicking sound fills the air as a large, multi-colored centipede scuttles into view” Large and multi-coloured. I’m astounded at the wonder and majesty.
Man, I just wanna play a good game of D&D. Someone? Anyone? I’m gonna go get fucked up. Make sure and join my Patreon for loads more interesting and informative reviews like this.
This is $3.50 at DriveThru. There is no full sized preview, alas. How can I make a purchasing decision without a preview? Oh, Lament!
The blazing beacon from the lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals used to be visible on every cloudless night. Just above the horizon line, the brightest star in the sky, a sleepless eye, slowly winking on and off as it rotated between Sagewood and the sea. After weeks of fog and rain, last night was clear… and the lighthouse was dark. The town council of Sagewood meets and decides you must go to the lighthouse and discover what’s gone wrong! There are portents that someone—or something—wanted the light- house extinguished. It is up to you to uncover the mystery and see what has befallen the residents at the lighthouse at Shipbreaker Shoals.
This sixteen page adventure describe about fifteen locations in and around a lighthouse is nigh impenetrable with the amount of text in it. Massive italics text and useless DM details combine to form an adventure that even my mother could love.
The adventure is in two parts. First I guess you walk around town and talk to people and then you go to the lighthouse and kill shit. The town portion is the more interesting portion, both for details and for critical commentary. You don’t get a town, you just get a series of NPC’s listed, a couple of pages worth. Each has LONG sections of read-aloud in italics. This is both a blessing and a curse It’ eschews a traditional keyed format, which I’m supportive of in situations like this, but, the NPC’s are just listed by name. Instead of “drunk in the inn” or “mercantile woman” you get a name … and have to figure out on your won that this is the mercantile woman. You don’t want that. You want things easy to find and reference. You’re going to the temple so you want “TEMPLE” and the main entry, maybe with the character name following in case th party seems out “Priest Frank” from another dialogue.
What you absolutely DO NOT want are sections of long read0aloud. People don’t listen to this shit. Yes, I know, you want to convey information and you want to convey the character of the NPC. But you do this with a couple of words describing them and some ideas, aimed at the DM, at what they will say, maybe with an in-voice sentence for something key, which would also help convey character. But, multiple paragraphs of read0aloud? No.
Nor do you want it in italics. Italics is hard to read. Use an offset box or some shit. You can use a phase in italics, or a sentence, maybe, but more than that and italics becomes an eye glazing afair.
It’s the designer job to convey information to the DM in an easy to use manner that also is evocative … and it does a decent job of the evocative in town (and in some sections of the lighthouse.) We get brief snippets tha are good specificity,like the rumor that the lighthouse keeper ate his own leg when he was shipwrecked once. Or, the rambling s of the dunk in the inn with his “you ae all DOOMED” speech. Most frustrating are two younglings tht follow the party out of town and try to join the party. You get no personality or anything, in spite of the fact that thOSE NPC’s will most likely be the ones tha the party will spend the most time with … and thus are the most important convey some sense of their charatcre beyond being a swinherd and innkes daughter.
The lighthouse is more of the same. There’s an occasional bit of evocative test in the read-aloud … a giant SLAB of fatty grey steam cought on a root in a sinkhole … with the putrid smell of rotting fletch coming from the sinkhole. Note the use or slab, and purtid. Not boring words, but specific, that conjure an image in the mind that’s good.
Less good are the MASSIVE amounts of DM text. Sometimes a page per room, in order to describe something like a normal kitchen. The read-aloud over communicateds, destroying the back and forth between the players and DM. The DM text conyers useless information about the mundane or irrelevant to the adventure “Her husband dies at sea and her sons moved to Malmo, one weeks walk north of Gielo. Well, fuck me, its a good thing I now know that!
And thus we get another lame adventure. I mean, it’s sgot some flavour in places, but its the usual “sometime crawls out of the sea” thing, even though, as a DCCadventure, we get decent creatures. And the environments don’t generaly support the DCC playstyle … in particular you need a decent environment for githers to mighty deeds off of things … and a flat field don’t help much with that.
It’s ok, if quite quite basic, but it would NEVER make it to my table, given the amount of text there is to wade through.
Keep your adventure descriptions, ead-aloud and DM text, terse. That helps the DM scan is quickly to find pertinent information. Supplement that with strategic bolding to help find sections. Cut the useless drivel of backstory and explanations WHY, and focus on evocative writing that is curt and to the point. This don’t do that
This is $6 at DriveThru. There is no preview, alas. How am poor little I to make a purchasing decision if I have no hint at whats inside?
By Rob Alexander
Medium Quality Productions
OSE
Levels 3-4
You are alone. It is dark. You have never read a book. There is something in here with you. On a hill above a deserted road there is a rocky crown, and in that crown is the Bone Place of Dreib, and in the Bone Place (so you have heard) is a temple of the ancients full of treasures wondrous and diverse. Why it is unlooted and undefiled? Probably the stories about the place, the ghosts that come if you sleep too close, and the list of grave-robbers who never came back. But the stories are probably bullshit, the ghosts probably just nightmares, and the grave-robbers rank amateurs. You are don’t care about that shit. And you have this dream every night. A dream that you are alone, that it is dark, and that you have never read a book. You are down there in the earth and there is something in there with you. It is a million years old and it is not your friend.
Dude, this thing is weird.
This twenty page adventure details about thirty locations with a non-traditional (or, maybe, ultra-traditional?) undead thing going on. And fear. And primitivism. And … well, it’s just weird man. And I mean that in a good way. It’s could use a little more theming, I think, in order to communicate a vibe to the players better. But what there is, here, is very interesting and as freaky as anything I’ve ever reviewed … without it in ANY way being gonzo or alien.
Check out the fucking marketing blurb on this thing. At first I thought it was just some modern adventure, from the “never have read a book” thing, and then I see it’s OSE and I look at my other Medium Quality reviews and I’m like, ok, I’m taking a chance. And man, thet fucking blurb delivers. That in the dark thing … that million years thing. But, it’s not ALL that. Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok, I’m gonna cover this shit.
The place has three parts. First, there’s the “outside”, or maybe the preamble. Imagine the Ol Zeke shit in Death Frost. There’s this giant mesa and a path cut in to ala Petra, and outside of the mesa and path are some shit. A little hut. A graveyard. A little section off to the side, elsewhere, with two fresh graves but NOT in the graveyard. We’re building energy here, preparing the party for the vibe to come so they can shit themselves when stuff starts to go down. A hand sticking out of the ground that grips back if you grab it. Skeletons in the graveyard, if dug up they have vaguely animalistic features. A couple of fresh graves off to the side, I guess they didn’t find the loot they were looking for. And a gap in the mesa, 6 feet wide, flanked by pillars with a stone lintel engraved with DREIB in foot high letter. Uh … ok. Who’s up for the paths of the dead?!
That section, along with the rumors and hooks, makes the initial vibe setting. There’s a creature in the dark, and weapons simply don’t work. There’s a creature, under, that should not be woken. That’s what the ancients sealed the place up. If you overturn the great stone THEY will come and drag you underground and that will be the end of you. Vague shit. Scary shit. Less is more and the parties imagination starts to run. Oh, and while I’m not a big fan of dream shit, there’s a crawling through narrow tunnels naked and afraid in the dark clutching a primitive torch and a sharp antler. Fuck yeah man! That’s a fucking vibe!
Part the second: you come through the crack in the mesa and it’s hollow on the inside and big. Giant rock in the center, a boulder, and like nine or so tunnels that go in the rock. These are tombs, but, also, that’s a little misleading. Let’s start with “hey, its a cave a we buried a dude in the back” at the middle of the spectrum and branch out both directions from there, but absolutely trending to the more primitive side of things. (There is a more traditional tomb or two, but not a fancy one. More of a burial place, I might call it.) Caves, tunnels, some narrows, ornamentation of some sort in most, mostly primitive. You got me? With some undead.
Undead like a leg and pelvis sticking out from under a boulder. If you fuck with it it gets up and kicks you, maybe kicking off YOUR leg. Or a ribcage that launches at you. Ar a mass of skeletons under the big boulder that form up to kick your ass. Or ghostly bodies wrapped tight in white burial shrouds, attacking like worms? Or maybe the ghosts of those people, dressed the same way? We’ll call that the more traditional of the encounters.
Because there’s also a spider thing, with hooks on its feet and vaguely human like face, squeezing through small tunnels, slicing off a limb or head and then retreating to eat it … it’s quiet the rest of the day. Or worse, the thing in the tunnels .. .which is really just vague.
And let’s cover that third part now. The Prehistoric Tunnels. The alter of man. The alter of the stag. Tight, your light doesn’t seem to give off much light at all. And something, in the dark, reaching for you. Clawing. Stabbing it makes it retreat for awhile, but its always present in the dark, always coming back.
Learn to genuflect baby, that’s gonna be one of the most important skills here, to appease some shit and keep the restless spirits happy!
I’m down with this fucking thing. Except … I am an unhappy boy on the descriptions. It’s using a brief summary paragraph with keywords bolded, and some keywords in parens to describe things. So, in the primitive tunnels we get “Headless man-figure (made of wood and clay, with crown and staff as if a king and an excessively erect phallus)” Yup, i agree, that’s what it looks like. And I’m down with this description. Terse, brief, evocative; works for me. But, the encounter areas themselves don’t tend to get descriptions. There are some general notes about packed earth and the like, but I think almost all of the rooms could use an additional sentence about the actual room instead of the things in the room. That vibe of the location needs to be better communicated. And not having it is a major downer, I think.
Like, so much so I’m not going to Best this one. Oh, and also, I can’t find the entrance to the Prehistoric Tunnels? I don’t know here they are? But, sure, this one is close. A little more work and it could have been.
The Spider-Thing is a hairy black spider, 8ft across with
all its legs splayed. The legs end in cutting hooks. Its
central body is a black sphere, and though you look
close enough there is a humanesque nose and mouth…
though the latter has all the wrong teeth.
This is $3 at DriveThru. There are two previews available, the seonc shows you the prehistoric tunnels. Good stuff, and enough to make a purchasing decision.
In the skies above Vorngard, a winged beast is causing trouble, killing messenger ravens and scouts that wander too far west. Scouts say the monster lairs in a fallen tower, once home to a long dead sorceress. But if that’s true, what’s causing the glow in the highest window by night?
This twelve page adventure describes about eight locations in and around a tower. There’s one big bad and some minor creatures floating around. The situations in this are pretty good, and while the writing tends to the long side, and flat, a highlighter solves that. of course, I won’t do that, but maybe you do?
This is a relatively basic adventure that could, I suspect, be done in one night. There are some garbage hooks and backstory that take up more than a few pages, but, basically, it’s a ruined tower with a manticore in it. There’s a short overland journey to get to the tower, with a decent wandering monster table. The wanderers are not just a monster listing but rather a situation. Some are creatures, like a band of barbarians camping or a”dessicated husk of a dead beastman with yellow warpaint on the ground. Several days old and laden with grubs. In the high trees are a phase spider, hoping to ambush the outermost part member that stops to investigate.” Just a couple of sentence that give the DMs brain something to work with. This is exactly what an adventure should be doing: giving the DMs brain something to work with. You need JUST enough content to get the creative juices of the DM going, but not so much as to overwhelm their ability to scan and absorb the information quickly. The designer is relying on the DM to fill in the rest, as all adventures do, but doing it in such a way as to add significant value by giving the ol noggin a hard shove in a certain direction and letting the DM riff from there. I’m a big fan of the one page of wanderers, ten in all. I think it’s the right page count for the right number of creatures, and the encounters tend to be situations.
Ok, you’re now near the tower. Turns out there’s a band of barbarians camped at the base of it. A group of exils that have banded together led by Malmogg the hulkig young teen, bald, skin covered in battle scars ,exiled for seducing the chief’s second wife. Again, perfect amount of content for the kid. You get a few keywords and that describes the dude enough for you to riff on it from there. The exiles serve the manticore in the hopes it will go eat their former tribe … but might let the party pass with a bribe if he thinks they are weak. Great! More personality!
Also outside the tower is the place where the manticore eats his prey .. .not wanting to get his bed dirty in the tower. A clifftop blood stained, scattered with bones old and new and skeletons at the bottom, overgrown with grass and other plant life. Pretty good scene. And some giant worker ants picking over the bodies. Who are fine with taking a live human back to the nest. And if you kill them then in an hour or so some soldier ants show up to swarm the area. Perfect! It makes sense! That the ants are there in the first place and that the soldier ants eventually show up. It’s what SHOULD happen.
The tower has a few floors, like, four or five, and as many rooms. Maybe. I say maybe because there’s no map. We get a small map of the lands around the tower, showing the relationship of the bandit camp to the tower to the feeding grounds, along with a small river/creek to help with the inevitable sneaking plan. But we don’t get a plan of the tower. There’s a sideview of the outside, noting some features like a large hole in the side and windows (and some advice inside for gaining entry that way) but nothing about the interior. It’s just described, textually. Yes, I suppose that theoritically this can work. But, just include a map man; it’s a thousand times easier.
It’s pretty basic inside. A bathroom with giant worms in it. A storage room with animated armor. The manticore, who is open to some Smaug-like talky talk Maybe that happens. Or, maybe, he’s not in the tower and the party has some time for an ambush and explore before he comes home. Either way. Nice.
And then there’s the “extra” encounter. One floor has a ghost on it. The sorceress that once lived here. She’s the usual ranty/moments of clarity ghost. Except … if someone agrees to stay with her … she remains mostly lucid. And les them go eventually. And even bestows spell power on them … but she touches them to do it … aging them! Nicely done! We turn a minor also-ran encounter in to something that could hang around the campaign for a long time and also speaks to the essence of what a ghost encounter is. Another nod to the way things SHOULD work, things that seem like they fit, or are realistic. Not just a throw away encounter. Perfect!
It should be obvious I’m pretty enamored with the situations in this. And the advice to the DM, on gaining entry to to tower and where the manticore can’t fit, for example, is spot on what the DM needs to run the thing. The things that don’t work here are relatively minor.
Treasure is f the “roll once on the loot table in the rulebook” variety. Not cool. Add some colour and flavour to your treasure man! And, there’s a curse on the tower that makes approaching it very difficult … I’m not sure about this. Basically, if you fail then you try to keep your friends from going in to the tower. “Its doomed, an we will be also! You’re my bud and I can’t let you do that!” Pretty good, actually, but in practice I’m not sure how its going to work over time. Two factions of the party? And on return visits? This could be the major holdup in the adventure … and thus a few more words of advice would be in order.
It IS wordy. We’ve got some “This room was once a … “ text going on. The text, while not full on conversational in style, does trend in tha direction. We’ve got some if/then statements. Combined with the textual description of the levels, insertions of motivations and so on, then we’ve got room entries that are trending to half a standard page or more. And that’s not something you can scan easily without some extra bolding, whitespace, or so on to help the DM orient themselves. You either gotta be terse or do the heavy lift of the formatting and layout to help with DM scanning … and this doesn’t do that.
This is a decent little adventure. Decent enough that, being three years old, I may check out some of the others in the line to see which ones are better and which ones worse.
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is only two pages, with one of them being the cover. It does nothing to help you make a purchasing decision.
Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!
*sigh*
Eight pages. Nine rooms, all on two pages. Which could have been one, honestly.
Look at that tagline. Fear the waves, the tides, the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone! Note: this adventure doesn’t even have a tower, that’s how AWESOEM it is!. The existence of waves, tides and sea must be extrapolated, allowing the DM to put a bunch of extra time and effort in things, allowing them to exercise their brain muscle!
Seriously, no tower. A cave complex, but no tower. Note the adventure tidal: Wavestone Keep. No keep. At all. Just caves. How’s that for marketing oomph?! Yeah baby, it’s open ended, allowing the DM to fill in the gaps!
How about a bunch of rooms with lizard men and kobolds who just wait in side to die, not responding to anything? You got it! Wave after wave of them, where “wave” is defined as the waves in the tagline, I guess? It’s too complex for a mere plebe like myself to understand.
Like, what the fuck am I supposed to say about this thing? “Crudely carved room, stone protrusions serve as beds.” Woaaah! I’m inspired! How about the 2d10 lizard men that are inside? You know it baby! There’s a challenge for you! Your brain just SPRINGS in to action when something like this pops across the page. “Natural cave with a carefully cleaned floor?” Count me in! My players will DROOL with anticipation at that! And the loot! That room contains AT LEAST 4000gp worth of treasure, allowing the DM to just fill everything in on their own without having to worry about a designer filling it in for them!
Wait, wait, back to the 2d10 lizard men! EVERY room is like that, with a variable number of monsters/guards. How’s that for sticking it to man?1 No need to actually put itin, it could be 1 or it could be 10! Masterful game design!
How about that wandering table with giant rates and bats on it?! You remember that old marketing line that D&D was limited only by your imagination? Rubbish! This is clearly not limited by imagination AT ALL, and has NOTHING to do with imagination! The marketing lies, this is the real deal, right here!
“Crumbly natural cabe, stone floor littered with detritus.” Thrill at that terse description motherfuckers! Fuck your evocative writing! This adventure don’t need it!
Room after room like this. All nine of them. With variable monsters. With a short description tat says nothing. With DM text that elaborates on nothing but what there is to stab. Sadly, there’s no details on how many egg clusters there are on the nesting room, or what lizard men eggs taste like.
A boy can dream.
I find my recent run of adventures deplorable and they make me want to giv eup on life. Not kill myself. Just stare at the screen, numbly. So, we gonna do something bout that.
Ok fuckers, you made it this far. Welcome to the next Bryce Lynch adventure design contest. There’s only one prize. $100. And you get a handwritten card from me calling you not a fucking idiot. Unless it turns out you are one.
You get nine fucking rooms and eight fucking pages. And PLEASE don’t feel the need to use all eight pages. Pretty please? Entries must be received by March 15th. The title has to be Wavestone Keep, but you can’t use that name, just call it something like that. And the marketing blurb has to be “Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!” But, again, you can’t use that wording, come up with the same fucking thing though. Oh, and buy a copy of this shit-fest as inspiration. br*********@***il.com That’s a zero and not an o in there.
By Jon Bertani
The Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 3-7
Rumors abound of treacherous jungles with giant birds, carnivorous apes, a smoking and angry volcano, and even hushed whispers of a giant sea creature that protects the island! But the lure of countless lost treasures of the fallen civilization may be more tantalizing than old tales told by fools and drunks.
You make me. Feel like. I’m living a teenage dream. The way you turn me on. I can’t sleep. I mean, not the adventure. I’m talking about you, gentle reader. Let’s run away and don’t ever look back!
This 25 page adventure details about a six locations on a tropical island. AKA: Dread. We can dance until we die. As Dread clones go, this one is far better than usual and, also, suitable to a shorter game … a session or two or three, maybe four, instead of Dreads “We’re gonna fucking be here for a while …” There’s nothing wrong with the long game as Dread enables, but sometimes you’re looking for a quickie tropical game treasure map. You and I. And the writing is generally evocative and put together well, if a bit long.
There’s a bunch of garbage in the beginning about hooks, and reverse pickpockets and shit, but, ultimately, you get a treasure map to an island about a week away with a big X on the map like, a “lost temple/treasure!” note on it. That’s all you fucking need man. Will be young forever.
Supporting the sea voyage, and the hooks, and general fuckwitery, are three different pirate ships and rews that the DMcan use to spice things up. Wandering encounters on the ocean, or near the island, or aybe on the return journey. They are MUCH more fully formed than the usual dreck you come across. You get a ship name, a fun little description of it that takes up no more than a sentence, and a sentence each on the captain, someone else important like maybe the first mate, and another for the pirate crew. Together they amount to four fucking sentences and bring SO much more life to the things than the usual adventure does. The pirate shit is a big part of these things, usually, and it’s good to see someone deliver on the promise of some fun pirate content. “The Bone Vulture” has bird bones attached to the ship because the captain things it bring him luck. Captain Vaigle is very superstitious about small things, constantly runk making him fearless, and an expert at close-shore ship maneuvering. Legless Freynar the first mate is a legless barbarian from the far north with a very intimidating voice the crew responds to immediately. The crew is a very superstitious lot that listen more to the first mate than the captain. You get it, they got some color and fucking life to them and they seem fucking fun to run! And when I’m excited to run something, especially lame ass pirates, then that’s a good job!
Our wandering tables do a pretty decent job as well of brining the mundane and the exotic. Things from the rumor tables show up, and each entry gets one sentence to kind of bring them to life and ge the DM riffing on the encounter. I love that. Got a motel and built a fort out of sheet! One of my favorite is just a fight breaking out among the ships crew you’re on. Just the mundane shit that a DM can riff on. There’s gonna be some shivving, taking sides, and sme ocean justice kiddos! All cause the wandering table says “Squabble on the ship! Sailors begin fighting each other over some argument.” Ima get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans
We hit the island and you’ve got some of the classic encounters from Dread. Volcano plateau with temple. Cannibal tribe. Good tribe. Then you’ve got a dragon living UNDA DA SEA in the lagoon and a small abandoned temple with just a few locations … it being just above ground ruins. And then you’ve got the wrecked ships on the beach. What d oyou do? Hey Mr Adventure Person … you’re on your ship and you see some wrecked ships on the beach .. .what do you do? What comes to mind? Well … do fucking HARPIES come to mind!?! It’s a fucking GREAT harpy encounter! Fuck! Yeah! Classic baby! They charm the young sailors and get them to wreck their ships. Sailor heads, sailor heads, eat them up , YUM! (More on this kick ass encounter later.) So, you get my vote for some decent encounters … although they do tend to be a little sandboxy and open-ended and could use a real adventuring location at some point on the island … and the volcano temple isn’t really large enough to count. You want a Kopru complex (and some more treasure, i think … it seems a bit light … unless OSE is on the silver standard?)
Formatting is pretty good .. .you get a longish opening paragraph with some keyword bolding and then bullets underneath that expand on those keywords. It’s a good format, one of my favs … even though the text does a run a bit long in the various descriptions. It’s not extravagant, but I really do think it’s pushing things for scanning purposes ,,, but, sure, it falls inside the range of normal for good scanning, if at the end of the that spectrum. And, bonus point, there’s some clarifying artwork at one point tat makes on of the volcano rooms really come to life! When you look at me, just one touch.
I’m pretty happy with the language, even though I do think the evocative writing is not used consistently. But when it does it’s pretty good! A large tied gourd holds one tribes loot. Good fitting in to the theme of the village and I can visualize it being wrapped up A LOT in grass twine or some such … even if the description does use the hated word “large.” But, in other places we get longer visuals, like “Several corpses are strewn about, some even hanging from trees with dangling entrails that the curling mists reveal once closer. Broken branches, feathers, dung and foliage make a series of filthy tiered nests among the towering trees” Dangling entrails in the mist for the win kids! Other visualis, like a chief being the only one in the village with a bit of metal armor “a shining open faced helm with ornate eye slits.” A tribe of cannibals with just suede like that? I’m signing up for that visual!
Oh, and the fucking harpies again. They’ve got one dude they are keeping alive in their main nest, from a wrecked ship, who they are using for breeding .. .and he’s guarding a harpy baby, his, with his life. Fuck man. Heavy. Oh! Oh! And the wandering tables do have sailors refugees, stranded pirates and the like routinely showing up, for roleplaying fun and maybe joining your crew, since they are stranded … that’s awesome!
Again, quite short, I think, compared to Dread, but really well done. It could use a larger adventure site on the island and maybe one more thing going on with the island. There are ROCs and the lag0on dragon, I guess … as a DM you should be ramping that shit up I guess.That part could be a little more explicit .. .even though the adventure tells you to use them frequently. It just doesn’t FEEL right, I guess, the way it’s communicate. Which is weird because a lot of the rest of adventure DOES feel right. This could be polished a bit more, I guess I’m saying, to bring the minor stuff more to life. Still, good jorb!
I’ll be your teenage dream tonight!
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages, and shows the pirate ships, the general island and that great harpy encounter. Good preview … although the rest of the island is not quite at the harpy level.
A seemingly innocuous store front, Just don’t look below the floorboards!
This seven page adventure uses two pages to describe ten rooms, about evenly split between a building above ground a small cave/dugout below ground. The above ground portion seems more natural, while the below ground portion is lacking in anything interesting at all. This is, essentially, a one page dungeon padded out with extra text and blank pages. That’s disappointing, as is the rather basic premise.
There’s not much going on here in terms of plot, which is ok. The hooks are basically “you’re in the shop and something happens”, which is pretty much word for word what the hooks says, “something.” Or, you’re sent to find a kidnap victim. I’m not really upset at this, but, it also feels like “some bandits using this store as a front” could use a little more to it. I don’t know, a paragraph describing their extortion schemes or something.
The front itself is a tad interesting, but could be better. You’ve got a grumpy old man with an eyepatch running a general store. I’m imaging a run down one, anthough tha’s not mentioned. He’s a coward and lets the bandits use the stor as a front. Again, I think maybe a little more, in the intro, could have been good here. He’s got money troubles or a sick mom or something, a little bit more depth to him. In any event, in times of trouble he gets the fuck out of dodge, which is a great realistic reaction … something the upper level/front business does well. In the back room you’ve got some tables with some bandits hanging out playing cards. I’m imagining something out of the Sopranos, although there’s not anything more to it than “three dudes in a back room playing cards.” Still, again, this is a realistic kind of thing and I like it. It feels right. I could have used a bit more description, to get a vibe going in the room tha the DM can then communicate to the players. We’re not talking about the need for a lot here, just a few more words, maybe one sentence that describes the room/social club. In a similar vein, we’ve got two dudes sitting out the “special guests” room, guarding it. That’s all we get, they are in a foyer, with it being undescribed. I imagine them sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper, the legs up or some such. It’s good that I’m going there, that my brain is making up these little scenes … but the designer could have added a sentence to bring that vignette more fully to life.
When the adventure moves out of the front store and down in the basement dugout, then the wheels fall off. It’s just a room with a couple of bandits in it. Bandits ambush in the room that has the entrance trapdoor in the ceiling. How, in what I assume is an empty room? Sure, i can put some cratesin it or something. Or, the designer can provide one sentence more about the room that brings it to life. And not even the minimal brain spike from the upper floors are included in the basement … it’s just dudes in a room.
There’s just nothing here to work with. It’s padded out with nonsense, like, the backroom has goods for the general store that the guy legally acquired. Ok, sure, what’s the point in the legally aquired thing? It’s not going to make one difference one way or another. The padding and more conversational 5e text style (and it looks like it’s done in one of those 5e adventure templates) doesn’t provide anything to work with DURING the adventure and just detracts from the scanning.
As a small single location for the party to adventure in, a quick raid on a storefront bandit lair, it’s small. And that’s ok. But the lack of entanglements, or things in the room to work with, or evocative writing to help more fully bring the adventure to life is really dragging it down for me, no matter the small concessions to the more realistic bandit behaviours on the first and second floors of the building.
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1.
Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
B/X
Levels 1-3
Delve deep into the Mountains of Fire to solve the mystery of torturous screams echoing across the valley. Within the depths you will find kobolds, slimes, and the dying quest of a long-lost paladin order!
This thirteen page adventure details a town and three level dungeon with about fifty rooms. Good maps, some interactivity, and a terse verbiage create a pretty well rounded product that feels like a pre-AD&D adventure. You could run a game with this! Although, I would prefer a bit more in the way of evocative writing and interactivity.
The map here is fairly interesting. The first level is fairly simple, with a few features, like a tunnels underground and s could of very simple loops. They are all hand-drawn, but with computer lettering on it, making for an exceptionally clean look that is easy to follow. Levels two and three are done the same way, but with more rooms than one and with more features like loops and “in room” features. It’s a fairly impressive map effort given the size. We’re not talking Gygax filling the page, but, a level with thirty rooms on it is a pretty decent level Same level stairs, one-way doors, and locked doors near the beginning of the dungeon that you must eventually return to provide some real value.
Thirteen pages, three levels and over fifty rooms … WITH a town attached! That’s a designer with focus right there, folks! This thing manages to pack in about ten or so rooms per page, which means that it’s keeping a tight hold on its writing. And this is both a blessing a curse. When you’re really focusing the text you need to bring your A game to get a terse but evocative room description, especially if the room is bringing extra interactivity beyond “stab the monster.” The terse format of the rooms here allows the DM to effortlessly scan the room descriptions; I heartily approve. There’s not much wasted in the word budget here; the extra conversational padding or bullshit that so many adventures revel in is not seen at all here, or, close enough to that for it to be true.
What we struggle with, in these terse room descriptions, are evocative language. You’re not going to get a fully formed image for a room, and that’s, say it with me, O K . What you’re looking to do, as a designer, is to shove an idea seed in to the DMs head. To give them enough, in the word budget, that their brain will grab hold and run with it. And there come to it, the fuzzy line. What’s enough? Did the designer write enough, put enough in, use the rights words … to bring the room alive … at least enough for the DM to run with. Well, no, not really. But, maybe?
The room descriptions here are brief and generally have one idea and that idea IS enough to run with. If you want to. But, I’d argue that, as presented, I’m not excited to run them. I’m not talking set pieces or nifty gee wiz bango rooms. I don’t FEEL the rooms, in a visceral way. “Outer Parlour There are two acolytes here discussing the worship of Zoray. They are intoxicated and get a +1 on reaction rolls.” So, with that I can run those dudes. A couple of drunk clerics talking about the worship of their god, man Can you dig it? Sure. I can. I can run that and it’s a situation that is better than most fucking garbage that is published today. Terse, and a situation, perfect. . But it feels to me more like a basis of a room description, like the designers notes for a room description. It feels like the descriptions could be tweaked to more fully bring it alive. I’m going to reuse a phrase I sometimes turn to, but this time in a different context. It feels like a fact based description and I think you want to convey a mood based description. Two wasted priests enveloped in a cloud of opium smoke from a hookah philosophize over the finer points of ooze-based worship” or some shit like that.
Another example is “Door Carved into the door is the image of a demon being pierced by a broadsword.” Sure. And again it lacks that little extra oomph to bring it fully alive. It’s a concept, or, notes for a concept, that need to be developed. Not necessarily with more words but with a different vibe being conveyed.
Interactivity is a mixed bag. There’s some lip service being played to some factions on the first level. Certain kobolds are a supporter, or not, of their leader Kurtz. But that’s all you get, a brief note every time a room has kobolds, on if they are supporters or not of their leader. Can I do something with that? Sure. But it’s the basre fucking minimum.
More traditional interactivity is a bit light. While you CAN murder everyone in the start village (the adventure makes a point of noting their treasure, just like in B2, to tempt the party …) the more dungeon based interactivity is a bit light. You can get tossed in a bronze bull, or explore a dig tunnel, which is good. One more the more set-piecey encounters is “Study A hooded medusa sits in this room and offers to play chess with the character with the highest Charisma. That character must roll equal to or under their Intelligence on 3d6. Failure results in losing the game, at which point the medusa will remove its hood and initiate a gaze at the character. If the character wins, the medusa will give them her treasure which consists of 4 anklets. They are golden and worth 3600gp” Soo … ok. But, also an exception rather than a rule in the dungeon. The first level, in particular feels more like a B2 lair cave … a vibe that continues throughout the other two levels to a slightly lesser degree.
It does, however, FEEL like a basic adventure, or, rather, an adventure from pre-AD&D days. The more … whimsical, or looser, nature of the dungeon comes through loud and clear. This is Basic/OD&D and I love that fucking vibe.
I’ve bitched more than a little about this one, and it could absolutely be improved. It’s also a nice little dungeon that you can actually fucking run that can bring the basic vibe … if you’re willing to maybe read it first and really visualize each room and make some liner notes to help you bring it more fully to life. Almost a No Regerts, but, I’d also sign up for the designers newsletter … I want to know more and see mroe from them.
Bonus points: there’s a dragon sleeping on a bridge on the third level. Rock on!
A nice inn, a warm fireplace and someone to bet your precious coins, what could be better to start an adventure that this ? I offer you Altrair’s hideout, a quest filled with puzzles and tricks, deceptions and big rewards… maybe ?
This eight page dungeon features eight rooms. It’s a funhouse dungeon. I am filled with the regrets of a thousand lifetimes. The mourning of the deaths of all possible futures given the choices of the past and their inevitable consequences for the predestination that they lead to. If you’re feeling like I feel then run your life like it’s a dance floor. And if you need a little heat in your face, that’s what I’m here for.
A Request! For 5e! It’s not clear how many more of these I’m going to handle. I’m not devoid of sympathy for the 5e designers, but, it’s also not my life’s mission to provide individual feedback. Hmmm, maybe I should start up my design consultation/feedback thing again. Maybe, one thou a pop? Like they say, fifty though a year will buy a buy a lot of beer, And maybe even some shades. And maybe some therapy? Or, I could finally get the brakes done on my truck and the rotors on my car. Now I’m just rambling. If you’re feeling like I feel throw your fist though the ceiling! Some people call it crazy but I call it healing.
It’s not clear I recognize D&D anymore. Time counts and keep count. The seasons change, as do people. Well, except for me, from the day of my birth Gilgamesh was called by name. But D&D? … This adventure features one combat with four thugs. They surrender when reduced to a third of their hit points. Which, I guess is nice to see since I usually complain about fanatic opponents fighting to the death. They also deal non-lethal damage, which, I think, is a trend these days? At least, when I play 5e, I get chastised for my “I stab him 76 times in throat with my pocket knife” style of play. So I think it’s a thing. And since this is my blog and the rest of you are just undigested bits of roast beef, that’s all that counts. And keeps count.
Seriously, that’s the combat.New readers just arriving will now think I’m some kind of kick the door in and kill the monsters guy. A thousand times No! But, man, a bit of the old ultra-violence keeps things interesting! When it’s not the only note in the cymphony. (<—Ha! Get that one you fuckers!) What ever happened to fire and torture? Who wants to start … oh, hey, that’s a really great idea!
Ok, fuckers! Who wants to be an asshat with me? You gotta be a HARD piping OSR player. A team player, engaging, not a wall flower. Thinking outside the box murder fucking hobo par exelance! It’s gonna be fucking great! And, it will distract me from reviews like this one.
Look, man, this dude don’t deserve me. He’s just some designer from Quebec writing adventures in French & English. No doubt they love D&D. And some dickhead somewhere told him to send his adventure to me for a review, maybe. That person is a dick. And, I’ve got a soft spot for the Quebecois. I don’t know, preserving some unique culture shit while getting fucked over by the rest of “friendly” Canada and their martial law bullshit. Is there some pro-Quebec slogan that isn’t from de Gaulel?
It’s a funhouse dungeon. Eachroom is a puzzle. There’s one combat. The number seven repeats in most of the puzzles, which is fun and i support. You see, you’re in a bar and play some wacky game involving 7’s and multiples of 7’s and that theme repeats inthe dungeon, with a stair of 77 steps trapped in the same way. And seven mirrors each with phantasmal killers. And the seventh door the right one. And … you get the idea. I’m supportive of the repetition
But, the actual dungeon? It’s a linear set of rooms, one after the other. The DMS’s mao is labeled one through seven while the rooms in the text are not labeled with numbers but just names.
The read-aloud is not overly long but it does over-reveal, with things like “some of the steps do not have footprints on them. “No. We do not say that. We say there are footprints on the steps and thenwhen the players ask we reveal that some steps do not have footprints. We do not over reveal information in read-aloud since the back and forth between DM & player is the sould of the game.
There’s also some very confusing text, especially in the upper levels/outside the dungeon. This may be an EASL issue, which I am generally very forgiving of. “The stone floor underneath the arch is trapped …” except this the first time we’ve heard of the arch, there’s no map and no arch mentioned anywhere. There a rtap food in an abandoned house AND in the shed in the garden … and I’m not sure which one goes to dungeon, or if they both do, or what. Or maybe it’s the same hatch? It’s not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be, i mean, after all, there’s a fucking door to the dungeon and the party enters it, right?
I’ m less forgiving of the abstraction. One room has cool looking magical weapons. That’s the desccription. Nope. You have to DESCRIBE what they look like, in way that makes people think “cool”, rather than putting that work of fon the DM. In a related note, there’s the usual “characters worst nightmare attacks them” shit. I hate this. I know, its supposed to be meaningful, but it never is. Just come with a phantasmal killer concept and shve the character in to it all Pyramid-head style. Any time I see an adventure want to engage in any “tell me what your worst X is “ I roll my eyes.
There’s also a decent amount of magical set up. Like the baddie having a magic bell that alerts his thugs, or a ready made scroll of major image to conjure a vampire illusion. It begs the suspension of disbelief.
So, eight-ish puzzle with one combat, generic abstracted treasure, and nothing else. *Yawn*
Oh, wait, one of the hooks is that Luke, the local priest, lost a bunch of money gamblng. Money that was not his. I love me a dirty hook!
Did I mention the bad guy is a doppelganger that makes himself look like a princess? Have you EVER actually rescued a princess D&D, or were they all poly=d dragons and succubi and doppelgangers and the like? In my next campaig … or my new secret project, there’s gonna be a fucking princessin every dungeon. And lots of carnivals.
Man, you don’t deserve me. You didn’t do anything but ask for a review. But, then again, I don’t deserve this, either, do I? Or, perhaps, deserves got nothing to do with it in a search for meaning in a universe devoid of it? We want an explanation but there is none coming. Ever.
By Timothy A Sayell
Fantanomicon Press
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3
Crossriver Span has been seized by the Iron Tusk Orcs! A desperate Baron hopes to save his town from imminent attack and sends the Player Characters to repel the Orcs or dislodge the bridge. But this is no easy quest–the Orcs are tough, smart, and have a new Chieftain with a few surprises of his own!
This 22 page adventure features an assault on a “spans a gorge” twin tower/bridge fortress full of orcs. It’s pretty minimal, with brief notes on how many orcs are in a room and some order of battle notes. Exploration, this ain’t. Sneak around and hope you don’t alert the orcs, while killing room after room of them. Pretty boring.
My notes for this one are pretty short … because there isn’t really anything of note. We get mini-maps in the single-column text, which helps the DM run the various rooms, The orcs are pig-faced, and wear garish yellow tunics, a nice touch. Everything interesting has now been covered.
Ok, so, there’s this gorge. There’s a tower on each side of it and a bridge connecting the two. Go root out the orcs. There are some guards on top of the near-side tower, don’t let them see you . Either sneak in via a tunnel or learn the secret knock to get the oones inside to let you in, hoping that the random number generator doesn’t let the ones on top see you.
This is one of the exciting room entries “This area is wide open. There are two open casks
of ale here.” Also, that room has five orcs in it. “This area is wide open” is another exciting description. As is “the floor is covered with the debris of smashed furniture.” You get the idea by now? The exploration elements, the evocative text, the tricks and traps that make D&D a sense of wonder and mystery … those don’t exist in this. This is a 4e assault. You go from room to room and kill orcs, most of who don’t try to alert anyone else or hear fights in the next floor. Every once in awhile you get a tactical note, like, the orcs see you characters on a roll of 1 on a d6, or “make a des check if hit in combat ir fall of f the bridge.”
Two shattered chairs lay in a pile by the north wall.
The rotted remains of a table lay in the center of the room.
I guess people play D&D like this? I mean, that’s the stereotype, right? That you smash in a door and kill the monsters and take their stuff? Isn’t that even the tagline/marketing line of a couple of the newish publishers? But that is bad D&D. Yeah, that’s fucking right, I’m gatekeeping. That isn’t the D&D I know and love. That’s not the mystery and wonder, the magic of the unknown. The wonder of discovery. The fear when confronting something new that might eat or face .. .or grant you a wish. This is just boring.
I get it, there needs to be pacing. Empty rooms are a thing. A set piecey-thing or two is fine, not every room has to be a thing of beauty and joy to explore. But, man, there has to be SOMETHING. This just strikes me as drudgery. Like, drudgery for the DM to run it and try to breathe life in to it and drudgery for the players to explore it and work their way through it, facing room after room after room with nothing in it except something to kill or maybe an arbitrary trap that’s not telegraphed at all. Oh, look, another room full of orcs to kill. I want something to fuck with. I want lever to pull or a pool or green water to fuck with, a statue that rotates, or bozarre crystals. I want the adventure to be ALIVE. I can sit at my desk all day and play with spreadsheets. I’m bored to death most of the day. Why would I want to be bored to death while playing D&D also? There’s just NOTHING HERE. And, now, I’m depressed about it. Ug. That’s not what I need tonight. “It’s Sunday night ennui! :et’s watch Precious and The Road and then play Chaos at the Crossriver Span!” That will leave you depressed as fuck at 11pm tonight and weeping for a future that is not meaningless. So, great. Thanks Crossriver Span, now I get to contemplate the meaninglessness of my own existence, thanks to you! I don’t need that tonight. I wanna have dinner in a blanket fort and make out with cute girls on a Sunday night, not wonder what the meaning of it all is, in despair.
Why do things like this exist? Seriously? Why? Do the designers not know what an adventure looks like? Are they making the things they want to play, and this really IS the type of D&D that people want to play? I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. It seems wrong to me though. Like, everything I know says that this sort of D&D is boring and empty. Like, I think the same thing, mostly, about plot D&D, maybe with a few platitudes thrown out for fun time with friends in an adventure thats not a complete throw away. But, even more than most, this just seems boring. Empty. And not in a We Must Imagine Sisyphus As Happy kind of way. More like imagining his as unhappy kind of way.
“This room is littered with ruined furniture and dust. Nothing of interest is here.”
Nothing of interest, indeed!
Some drink to remember. Some drink to forget.
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see part of the first room.; That’s not enough to make an informed purchasing decision … although you might be able to intuit what’s to come from the intro text.
The link to the product in this review is probably an affiliate link. If you follow the link and buy the product, I make some money. Just thought you should know.
