The Dread Lands

Posted on November 5, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Christian Blair
Self Published
Generic/Universal
Mid-Levels

These lands are plagues with horrors, awaiting for discovery.

This 54 page adventure describes a frozen northland full of zombies and the last few settlements. Numerous small quests and a handful of tenish rooms dungeons have a spark of interesting in them, but, it has a fatal flaw. And this, seriously, breaks my heart.

This is a hard review to write. I’m going to have to pass on this because of something I’m unhappy about complaining about. I wish it weren’t so. Because, at its heart, there are some decent ideas here, combined with a tone that I think could work quite well. But not in its present form. 

What we’ve got here is some frozen tundra. Forest. Snow. hard land. Got it? A kind of bleak and snowy landscape, but with a thing pine forest almost every. Great! We’re creeping it up already! And to this we’re going to add about a bajillion zombies. There’re everywhere. It is, essentially, the zombie apocalypse, with just a few locations left that have not fallen. A Game of Thrones Beyond the Wall analogy here would not be far off. Also, we’ll throw in some specters, wights, and wraiths here and there, whenever there is a decent sized horde of twelve or so. To this we add some locations. The Last Guard Tower, on the northern trail in, with their embittered and low morale soldiers. An old farming estate complete with one holdout left, and all of his traps. The Keep, on the verge of ruin from the attacks, with a twentish people golding out inside. And the last town, with about two hundred people left. And to ALL of this a silence … for sounds attracts the zombie hordes!

And, sometimes, the writing can be quite good! Let’s take a look at the fate of the North Party, a group of people who disappeared: “Before entering, players are welcomed by a series of crucified travelers. They are tied to wooden posts. Their bodies are upside down, their hands pointing skyward. They are in an advanced state of decomposition, covered in maggots and flies, feeding. The closer they approach the post, the louder the buzzing sound becomes. Strident and eerie. Inside lies the fate of the North Party. Their bodies are piled in a mass of putrefaction in the middle of the structure. A black cloud of flies circles around. On top of all the bodies, lies a naked man. His body is full of scars in the form of occult patterns.” Not too shabby! Maybe a bit long, but good energy there!

And this is the end of my compliments.

That example of the writing is a rare one. If the adventure had A LOT more like that then I would be  ok with it, and my main gripe would be undercut. (I’m working on my click bair, how’s it going?) But, before we get there …

This is for D&D. I know it says Generic, but it’s D&D. It’s stat’d for D&D. Which is great. That’s what generic adventure should do. Everyone can convert easily enough; mechanics is just mechanics. But, also, it’s not for D&D. It’s essentially HP, AC, and XP. Dude, just stat the fucking thing out for 5e, or 1e, or whatever. It’s chill. I really don’t think there’s a palace for generic/universal adventures in the hobby … because I think nearly every adventure should be written in such a way that it’s generic/universal. 

But, also, the Table of COntents has section headings but no page number. Hmmmm …. The wandering table only has ten entries, for a LOOOOONG adventure, and yet the yeti entry says it’s “very very rare.” Hmmmm …   Oh, here’s a section, let’s see … “Blizzards are powerful snowstorms.” … Hmmmm, I think I see where this is going. How about the moose entry onthe wandering table “A white moose is spotted in front of the players. If they follow the creature, it will lead them into a hidden spot where useful treasure can be found.” *sigh*

We got two main problems here. First, it’s a simplistic adventure. By this I mean … there are quest boards in places. Almost like … a CRPG. And in fact that carries over The very first one, at the guard tower, is to go kill the remaining 2d6 zombies outside and light six torches. Whait. What. For serious? Light six torches? Did I mention the fetch quests? Collect 600kg of wood and 100kg of ore. Uh … Or, how about in the town of 200 people, “Rebuild the Sanitorium” … where you collect 40,550kg of concrete. (That’s weirdly specific …) Oh, and the townfolk can sell you 100kg a day. That’s over a year! The scale, here, in time, seems a bit off. There’s no mention of long term play, but there is certainly a lot to imply it! Hey, man, but, if you rebuild the guard tower then your reward is two martial weapons. ?!?!?!?!?!?!

It’s all very frustrating. It’s like it’s ALMOST a regional setting, but, not quite. The quests are short. Or, rather, they take about ? of a page or so to describe, from start to finish. So, you don’t a plot based quest. It’s more of a description of a situation. Which, I can rock. I love that. Except, it’s NOT that. It’s full of padding and other garbage. But, also, it’s weirdly generic, or abstracted. Zoomed out. As if the designer is afraid to get in to the specifics that help bring something alive. 

That crucifixion description proves, I think (?), that the designer can do it. But we don’t get that. We get that “involved in local politics” generalization. Or, “The soldiers advise against following the trails due to undead patrols”. No. Nope. Absolutely the fuck not. That is not what the soldier says. The soldier is haunted and says “The dude roam heavy, still your tongues and avoid the trails!”, before wheeling his horse and riding off. Jesus man, be specific. Give some detail. SHOW, don’t TELL. 

Here’s the castle intro “When the players approach the castle, they are met by a party of 4 soldiers on horseback. They introduce themselves as Royal Guards, and offer escort to the castle. They explain they spotted them from afar, and that staying outside is highly dangerous.” That’s boring as fuck! They should be unkept, expect a weirdly kept lieutenant, clearly insane. In a rush, glancing about manically, rushing the players. Calling them fools. Wanting to save them by ushering them inside. Paint the picture man. And, for the castle proper we get “There’s a total of 20 people living inside the castle. Half of them are knights, the few that remain, acting as a guards. The other 5 are workers, and the last 5 are the few leaders of the region that are still alive, among those, Eweil the Regent.” B O R I N G.But, also, on the right track, right? I mean, maybe they are getting a little handy, all 28 Days Later style. Or those cops in the hospital in The Walking Dead. Give me something to actually work with!

“An undead giant lies on the floor, chewing on the bones. The monster is accompanied by 4d4 ghouls.” It’s sooooo fucking close, right? But then, also, “This used to be another room of the catacombs, but it must have collapsed long ago.” Arrggggg! And the town? There’s a fucking serial killer on the loose.It’s so fucking close. The situations are there. 

And, now, the bad part that I am uncomfortable with. I think this is an EASL issue. And I feel like a jerk faced jerk. But, also, the descriptions are just not there. To the degree that it feels like an EASL issue. Just , word choice and phrasing and cadence and things like that. I admire the ability of someone to write this well in another language. But, you have to also be able to transfer the ideas from your head, to the paper, to a DMs head. And while you can see the glimmer of the ideas here, you don’t get the transfer because of the attractions and generalizations. 

Oh, Did i mention that, after you kill the big bad lich at the end, you get The Soul Stone. Which, once a day, can bring someone back to life. Including a zombie. !!!!

Oh, and, let’s not forget, zombies, skeletons, wights, wraiths, etc, at level 12? Don’t they all turn to ass at seeing the party cleric? I’m not sure how you handle this.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $6. The preview is 38 pages. Which is fine. Dig deep in to it, past the fist few pages, and you get a true sense of the writing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/409358/EQ5-The-Dread-Lands?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 20 Comments

The Vault of Larin Karr

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By W.D.B. Kenower
Necromancer Press
3e
Levels 4-9

Hunt for a Legendary Treasure. Deep beneath a peaceful valley lies the vault of the legendary drow adventurer, Larin Karr. Rumors claim that Larin Karr vanished long ago, but his vast treasure acquired from years of plundering hordes in the Underdark still remains. Can you find and loot the impenetrable vault?

This 114 page adventure features a small valley with numerous towns and adventuring sites, with the titular vault (25ish rooms) being the capstone. The adventure is designed well, a rarity in D&D, and the designer understands D&D. It’s the real deal D&D sandbox, with a major fucking caveat. A product of its time, and as such is not much more than a curiosity.

I own a Nissan Frontier truck, for off road camping. (#vanlife bitches!) The gold standard in this space is the Toyota Tacoma. I like to say that the Frontier is 10% more reliable than the Tacoma, costs 30% less than the Tacoma, and has 5% of the aftermarket parts of the Tacoma. Somewhere, a Nissan engineer designed the engine bay. He spent four years on it, fitting everything in it perfectly with no space to spare. This saved the company $.000001 cents per unit manufactured. And then I come along and want to add a fuse for a winch. Is the Frontier designed well? Absolutely! Is it a royal pain the fucking ass to work with? Absolutely.

And thus, Larin Karr. 

This is a real deal sandbox adventure. Things are interconnected. People are interesting. The locations are well done. There is a complexity here, in design, in interconnectedness. In morality and the situations going on. This IS a real sandbox adventure, designed well. IN THE LAND OF 3E WHERE SHADOWS LIE. For it is devoid of what is needed to make it runnable at the table. And, thus, I will never run it. Every adventure ever made in the history of mankind is now available. Why oh why should one put up with this adventure, and, I will assert in the following text, its nigh impossibility to run, when you could choose from half a dozen others that do the same thing and ARE easy to run? Why choose to suffer? Because Larin Karr is THAT much better than the other? No, it’s not. It’s good, but, once you reach those lofty heights, of being “good”, nothing s going to rock you harder than the others. This relegates Larin Karr to a curious place. A thing to be studied, to learn both how to write an adventure and how to not write an adventure. 

Larin Karr has an interconnectedness. Things in one place impact and/or have a relationship with things in another place. This is not “go collect the three gemstones scattered throughout the valley” (although this is present) but more the nature of how the real world works. The local lord, near one settlement, has a younger brother who runs one of the other three settlements. And a cousin who is mayor of the third. Family ties. Makes sense right? And the mayor is really self-appointed and hates his cousin and wants to overthrow him. Also, hes hired a gnoll in the forest to do that. Also the gnoll is now blackmailing the “mayor.” Also, both of them know some things about other things. You go places, you learn things, you talk to people, you return to places to follow up. On a decently fucking sized overland map with five mile hexes that is at least 27×40 … with about half of it directly relevant to the adventure. 

Further, note in those examples how things seem natural. They make sense. The infighting amongst relatives is common in history and fiction. The blackmail? Makes sense. The local lord is just a kid, barely 20. FABULOUSLY wealthy, and trying to appear not so because its so out of place here. The best of everything. Trying to do a good job. He comes to power and finds some records that this old abandoned ruined keep nearby actually belongs to him. So he sends out some party members to go take his keep back! That makes sense. Hes digging through shit, does not understand the full context, comes across shit, claims what is his. 

In other places we get a different kind of naturalism. An old orc burial site, underground. Floor dotted with totems, skulls on spears, necklaces of fangs draped over skeletons. Much debris scattered about, broken pieces of armour and shields, bits of leather, rusted lamps. A discarded cape in a corner. FUCK YOU! You just got eaten by the cape! A cloaker! It makes sense. It fits in well. The designer understands the scene, the orc burel ground. He understand what belongs there. It’s not some case of mechanics first, but, rather, what makes sense … ok, now lets fit it in to the rules. Which is the fuck how this shit should be. Things feel right. The interactivity is natural. 

“Two rusted portcullises stand half-raised at either end of this corridor. The dull ends of the grates descend to within 2 feet of the floor. Small or Tiny creatures may pass beneath the grate without difficulty; Medium-sized creatures must take a moveequivalent action to crawl beneath the portcullis; Large or bigger creatures require a successful Escape Artist check (OC 15) to negotiate the narrow space. Either portcullis may be raised entirely with a successful Strength check (OC 20), which breaks the raising and lowering mechanism. Once raised, a portcullis drops to the ground upon its release; future attempts to open it require no Strength check.”

So, that portcullis. Half opened. People squeezing through it. The mechanism breaking. That is exactly how a portcullis encounter should be. It’s not just a simple binary condition of open or closed, raised or lowered. 

And herein we also see that Larin Karr has a problem. A serious fucking problem. It’s a 3e adventure from the time of 3e. Usability, essentially, does not exist. 

That cloaker encounter I’m so fond of? Well, after that broken lamp sentence we get “One piece of trash, a discarded cape in the northeast cornet, is something far more sinister. The cape is, in fact, a cloaker, which lies curled in the corner of the save waiting for unsuspecting passers-by. “ This is, in no way shape or form, taking in to account that the DM has to run this room. Oh, the encounter is, but the writing for the DM is NOT. That fucking thing is padded to hell and back, a conversational style that does nothing to make it easy to scan. Quite the opposite, in fact. We see this all over the place in the this adventure. “A2: Rough Tunnel – Though poorly constructed and low (6 feet high), this tunnel nonetheless provides safe passage to and from areas A3 and A5.” Repeating what the map says. Telling us that, in fact, the kitchen is a kitchen. Poorly constructed and low is great. The rest … no. 

But, these are rather simplistic examples. The heart of Larin Karr is not, I would argue, the “dungeons.” There are a few of them, each with a handful of rooms (the titular vault having around 26, I think?) The heart of the adventure is the situations going on in the valley. The situations amongst people/places, and this, I think, is handled quite poorly. 

Oh, the DESIGN is great, but how its presented to the DM is terrible. 

Lord Kyle’s Manor is a location, in the first town area. This is where you get the description  not only of the manor, but of Lord Kyle. Which takes about a column. Which is about three DENSE paragraphs. The fucking paragraghs are great. The description is solid, in the first paragraph.; And the “Developments” in the next two, have some solid information. But, digging through a column of text, DENSE text, that is almost wall of text, to grab the information you need? Absolutely the fuck not! And yet, it’s got fucking gold in it! Nice commentary on other NPC’s and leading conversation … it lends to a natural development with him. And a great situation to resolve in the ruined keep, and how it comes to be, but, again, it’s fucking buried. 

And this is the way of this. It’s a continuation of the bad olf 2e formatting, the formatting from Dungeon. The long text paragraph, with little else to break up the words. TO call attention to things. To highlight sections. 

And this is BAD. Because of the density of material, it’s particularly bad in this adventure. It’s complex. And it’s hard to find and dig out. And I’m not GOING to dig it out. Maybe you want you run your highlighter dry, and make margin notes, and create summary sheets for yourself. I’ve got better things to do.

And, so, Larin Karr. An excellent adventure that is saddled with the Style At The Time. You can see how Necromancer built their reputation from things like this. It’s refreshing to see it, and especially so, I suspect, in the era of 2e/3e adventures, to see a real adventure pop up. The din of excitement around it makes sense. But, it’s not 2002. 

Larin Karr and Thracia fit much the same role. Very good adventures. Classics. But products of their time. And, because of that, they are little more these days but interesting curiosities. Less so Thracia, whos terseness it benefits from, from something to buy and examine. Something to learn from. Rare examples of actual well done adventures … and with fatal flaws to also learn from. 

You wanna run this? Good luck. You want to learn from it? Good choice. That’s right. Not The Best. Not Regerting this decision at all. Larin Karr deserves better. It deserves a refresh, like Thracia deserves one.

This is $11 at DriveThru. The preview is only three pages,and thus hardly a preview at all, certainly not enough to make an enformed decision about eh product from it before you buy it. But, also, the formatting, the tight text, almost reaching wall of text proportions? This is Larin Karr.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/894/The-Vault-of-Larin-Karr?1892600

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

The Saint of Bruckstadt

Posted on October 31, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Markus Schauta
Gazer Press
LotFP
Level 1

Autumn 1631: Germany is plagued by the Thirty Years’ War. Bruckstadt has so far been spared, neither mercenary bands nor epidemics have reached the little town on the Katzbach. The inhabitants attribute this to the protection of St. James, whom they honor every ten years with a festival. In 1631 it should have happened again, but the explosion of the town‘s powder store buried the entrance to the saint‘s tomb. The saint, the citizens are convinced, will therefore no longer hold his protective hand over Bruckstadt. Count Reuben Wolfsgrau is now looking for volunteers to find another way to the tomb of St. James. A way through the Roman catacombs, where dangers lurk from beyond the grave.

This 104 page adventure details a few regional sites of note, with the main attraction being a five level dungeon. Dripping with flavour, organized well, it’s an excellent return to the lamentations that Lamentations has seemingly abandoned. A great achievement in the genre of almost-realistic dungeon crawling.

Fucking A man, this dude gets it! When I see an expensive product, or a long one, I sigh internally. My experience with both have not been good. But this thing (and, maybe, my recent forays in the depths of my Wishlist) has made me a believer! This is a Lamentations adventure of the Old Ways. No tricks, just a good time! Human centric, some undead running around, a werewolf, vampire, “stone spiders”, its an adventure, and dungeon, out of folklore. Never a funhouse but rocking the interactivity like few other things.

I don’t even know where to start.

So, the town, I guess. It’s DRIPPING. The guesthouse, where you’re likely to stay, is run by a shrew. How do w know this? “No magicians or heretics!” Plump, bossy, loud voice, hates cats, and devoutly religious. Fuck yeah! I can run that! The party is in for a good time when they stay here! Or, at least, I, as the DM, am in for a good time. 🙂 Oh, also, she loudly scourges herself every night. Fuck me man, THIS isthe atmosphere of thing. Imagine the party beng woken up buy this, investigating, and then quietly creeping back to their rooms … Things seen cannot be unseen. 🙂 I fucking love it. And this thing does this over and over and over again! The gravedigger? One of this notes is “Always surrounded by a bulk of cats, which he loves. When he dies in d4 days from hemorrhage, the cats will eat from his corpse.” None of that fucking high fantasy Forgotten Realms Drizzel Durdan shit in this! This fucking thing does life with a snark that is PERFECT for the fucking party to wander through. 

Beyond a base of operations, the town serves as the springboard for several minor adventures. In attempting to learn more about the crypt, you learn what has happened recently, follow up on it, and get some clues on leads to pursue. All relevant, all interesting, and all presented very naturally. None of the fetch quest or de rigeuer investigation shit that we see so often in other adventures. No, here it’s all integrated. The town, as a resupply, is married perfectly to the town as an investigation source, which is married perfectly to the sites in the surrounding region, as a source of information and items for the crawl, which all prepares you for the main event: five levels of dungeon. 

It starts strong, with some bandit-like folks on a lot of the first level. Are they bandits? Maybe? Yes, for sure. But, also, they fit in well and there’s this air of … naturalism. Maybe they just want an entrance fee to get in/past them. Not the usual sort of bandits in a dungeon, but some that fit in well, What if they were just living there, and you wanted to walk through someones living room? You’d expect that, maybe, they would charge you, right? And be a little hostile and possessive of it? Nevermind that they are squatters … .and, of course, there’s more going on than meets the eye. 

Cannibals, undead, all sort of fun to be had in these catacombs, on your way to the crypt and the showdown with St James. Interactivity is strong. Not just fights. Not just talky talky. Quandaries. Things to do. Ways to explore. Sacrifices to be made. A stake in a corpses body? Dare you pull it out? Statues to worship, and traps to fuck with. Traps that usuallyhave some clues about. A dungeon, and encounters, that are not arbitrary but one in which the players get to push their luck and dare to explore more, for more rewards.

And such rewards! A great amount of unique magic items, the skulls and talismans and books of old folklore come to life! A death mask, with real rotting teeth, that lets you turn invisible! Oooh! Sign me up!

“Gnarled willow to which the head of a horse is nailed. The wood sweats red liquid dripping from the branches” Uh, yeah, so the atmosphere is quite strong here. Great evocative writing, terse. Just the seeds of an idea, with some mechanics attached to it. All you need, really. Maybe its role as “Translated from the Germanic” shows a bit, with the writing being a little less evocative than I would prefer, but this is no “big chest” adventure. Sparkling gemstones and golden cups with giant brown-black spiders standing  motionless in a puddle, water dripping from a vaulted ceiling on to its shiny wet body. It’s all supported by a format that is decent, using bullets and bolding and whitespace pretty effectively. It’s a little busy and gets close to being TOO dense, but manages to handle things well in the end. 

This is a GREAT dungeoncrawl! A perfect little thing to maybe start a campaign with. With a timer. And the usual CONSEQUENCES if the party fucks it up. This sthe grim and gritty human centric dungeon of your dreams, full of the flavour of Darklands, but turn up just a little more.

This is $14 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages and does an EXCELLENT job of showing you the format and encounter types of the adventure. What to expect, both in format and tone.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/383050/The-Saint-of-Bruckstadt?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 10 Comments

The Mall

Posted on October 29, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Goblin Archives
Goblin Archives
Liminal Horror

What is The Mall? The Mall is a wet, gooey, practical effects filled TTRPG adventure set in a 199x mall pulled out of time and space. The mall’s denizens are trapped inside with a creature not bound by any one form. It slithers among them now, preparing to assimilate and imitate its victims until no one is left and it can open a rift between its home dimension…AND EARTH!

This 36 page adventure details a mall caught surrounded by a blod with some strange trans-dimensional shit going down. Full of the required old cults, new cults, paranoia, and mall fun that you could hope for in a mall, with a format that supports the play well. A good looking horror adventure!

One of the old Gamma Worlds, 2e or 3e, had a map of Pittsburgh and a brief description, a few sentences, or some major locations in it. One was the mall. I would draw up maps and place encounters and a trip to the mall was always a staple of my early Gamma World games. Seeing this on DriveThru, along with the great cover, brought back some memories so I put it on my wishlist and I’m finally getting to it. It’s for Liminal Horror, which I assume is a horror rpg. I don’t know shit about the system, so, we’re gonna have to keep that in mind. But, also, i don’t think I need to, for the most parts. Some of my nits may be handled by the system, unbeknownst to me. And while I generally think that horror adventures cross genres pretty well, this one is gonna be stretch in a fantasy RPG, because of the large building and some of the objects in the mall. But, I suspect it translates to just about any other modern or SciFi system pretty well. Almost on the fly I’d say.

Okey doke, the mall is in decline. The town leaders have organized a raffle for a car in the middle of it, and old Olds, as a fundraiser to help bring the mall back. As the raffle starts, a monster erupts from the mall managers stomach, on stage, and starts its killing! People scramble and the begins! It seems the building is now surrounded by a giant blobs, outside of each door, making escape not something to do. Some factions develop and the party tries to survive and get the fuck out. It has some pretty strong elements of The Thing, and that latest version of The Fog? (I think it’s the fog? They are in a supermarket and the army shows up at the end after the suicides?)This adventure handles the Thing and Fog elements really well, making it a delight. 

For factions we’ve got eh main cult, led b y the mall manager (I guess he survives his monster stomach thing?)They are kidnapping people, turning them in to Things in the ventilation system, and have a giant fungi forest and Barrier Between The Worlds in the mines down below where the mall was built on top of. This is gonna be the main problem for the party, and, i think, closing that gate it main thing they want to find/figure out/do. That’s a little iffy in the adventure (the closing of te gate) and not really handled very well. Maybe in the Liminal rules, proper? Anyway, there are hints here and there of things that could be used. Some gas, some O2 and CO2 canisters here and there, that I assume are ments to be used to close the gate. It’s not really covered at all and that part could be quite a bit better. But, whatever, we’ll wing it man.

We’ve got got the town leaders, hold up in a storefront, who want to protect their property values, etc. And Then we’ve got the new cult, based around a fitness center. End of Days, and all of that. Kudos for the gym leader, who gets his cult off and running really quickly! 🙂 There’s also some mall rat kids hanging around, that don’t really get flesh out enough to be a good faction. And then there’s the randos, which, again, don’t really get flesh out, or enough of them. It could use some more random encounters that feature them, as allies or enemies and so on, lone wolves one way or another, to help bring that aspect to life.

The map is decent. A bit small but it will do. There’s good references for all of the stores and NPC’s and locations are cross-referenced well. The format features short little descriptions for each area, focusing on evocative writing and gameable content. THis is followe d by bullets for the major features and action, with great se of bolding and whitespace to make it all immediately usable vian scanning. Really, really strong focus here, in the writing and format. Nary a word wasted at all, and all of it really contributing to the adventure and the Thing and paranoia vibe. A model for how things should be done. It’s supported by good tables for Getting Too Close to the Other Side, and Thing body horror mutations, and a few other tables that are easy to reference and use at the appropriate times. Things like the Blob outside, surrounding the building, are not belabored … accepted as a given and telegraphed well with bodies or cars being eaten and slowly dissolved i nit. No need to stat it or go on and on about it. Really well done.What’s the zombie video game in a mall? Mall of the Dead or something? Really good job recreating the major elements of that … but without zombies and a sparser feel. Like I said, it could be supported better with more/better rando stuff going on, but still good.

I can’t say enough good things about this. Some of the best horror adventures I’ve seen were in Unspeakable Oath, and this one is at least that good, if not better. It recreates the paranoid well, with People Are the Problem focus, the body horror, and integrates the mall, and stock characters, really well/

This is $11 at DriveThru. The preview is the first five pages, which really just shows you some of the reference material. Including a page of the actual store locations would have gone a long way to being a better preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/399171/The-Mall?1892600

Posted in Reviews, The Best | 9 Comments

Ascent of the Leviathan

Posted on October 26, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Malrex
The Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 2-4

The ship has been breached by a monstrous jellyfish! Will you be able to delve within and find a solution on how to free your ship?

This 42 page adventure uses about 25 pages to describe about forty chambers inside of a giant jellyfish. It does a good job of presenting an alint-like undersea environment while still being approachable and not too abstracted. A good variety of encounters, and a meta-situation helps to drive the adventure and provide a more open-ended framework for an adventure.

I must admit, that whenever the marketing blurb ends with a question I am compelled to answer, silently to myself “Well, probably No.” But, anyway, you’re out at sea when you see two pirate ships coming at you! Famous Dread Pirates! The ship you have passage on starts to flee, but they are gaining! Just as they are about to catch up … a GIANT dead jellyfish rises to the surface, trapping all three ships in it! The pirates compel you to find a way to sink the jellyfish. 

And thus we come to our first interesting things. There’s a meta-situation with exploring the dungeon: the pirates. Can you trust them? They send in some pirates after you, real assholes, just to make sure you doing your jobs. And, once you sink the jellyfish, what’s to stop the pirates from finishing the job they started? Thus the dungeon is not just a dungeon but has a situation wrapped around it, always on your mind, as you explore and interact. The addition of the asshole pirates showing up after you go in is a nice touch, as is, if you bargain hard enough up front, the pirates sending in to dudes to be WITH your party. LOYAL dudes, to you. Some real nice roleplay opportunities there. 

And, before any of this happens, we get, right after the jellyfish surfaces, some halfhearted missile attacks between the ships before the captains all stop it. A nice bit of realism there. That’s augmented by one of the best rumor tables I’ve seen. As everyone is milling around, the sailors are all talking, etc. And thus, your rumor table, specific to the situation at hand! Very naturalistic, it fits in well. Excellent job.

And then there’s the map … There’s a side view which is quite evocative. Shows major features and so on. Really gives you a sense of the thing. And then there’s a couple of traditional maps, just white space caverns and hallways. There’s also a “surface” map, showing the three entries to the jellyfish. I found the sideview hard to navigate, hard to tell which room connected to what, especially on the two levels. And the surface maps three entrances, some of which were steeper than others? Forget about it. I have no idea what connects to what. That could have been much better.

Once inside you’re wearing jellyfish masks to breathe underwater. (Of course, it’s a low level adventure and you’re always given shit in D&D adventures to breathe underwater. Nice use of the jellyfish though!) It feels like some of the jellyfish is underwater and so if it is not, but that’s not always clear. Or, maybe you’re always swimming and the rooms noted as having some headspace are not fully full? I don’t know. There is a good summary of underwater rules and some good monster placement … the use of skeletons, in particular. On piercing and thrusting work well underwater, but that’s what a skeleton is strongest against, eh?

There’s some great variety ot the interactivity here. Lots of interesting encounters and effects. Some people and things to talk to and a situation or two to manage. Always looking for the edge against the pirates will result in some benefits. The alien environment of the undersea is managed well, very well, i’d say. Alien, but not unapproachable. 

I must mention a cursed scroll found. Actually, a treasure map! “Scroll looks like a treasure map, but it’s gibberish. Character spends his/her life searching for the treasure and can’t stop talking about it.” That’s how you fucking integrate! It’s not a scroll, it’s a map! And it does what treasure maps do! Perfect alignment there of form and function! Once of the best I’ve seen. And, again,, in another place, you meet a skeleton tied to an achor, sunk under the sea. With an effect of intense fear of drowning emitted by the long-dead victim. It’s not just some random effect. It fits perfectly with whats going on. It’s like someone though up the scene and THEN added mechanics to it … which I firmly believe is how the best adventure elements come to be.

There’s some things here that don’t work so well. The major NPC’s have some italics text associated with them, a paragraph or so, describing them generally. That really doesn’t mean much and the description, whats described, is to little effect. And another conversation table, with an intelligent jellyfish, is full of NON naturalistic shit. It came from the elemental plane of water. You can heal me by getting some  [latin name] kelp from upstairs. A little too businesslike compared to the more natural elements elsewhere in the adventure. And, a few rooms where you take 1d4 damage every turn from stomach acid … that’s a rough one, especially for this level. A little mitigation there, perhaps? I don’t know, maybe it works in play.

Still, a good effort here by the Malrex. Still could use some polish, especially in the descriptions. They are not bad, by many means, but don’t reach the steller heights I am always looking for. Worth checking out as an undersea adventure.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is 24 pages. More than enough to figure out if you want it or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/383740/Ascent-of-the-Leviathan-OSE?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 3, Reviews, The Best | 17 Comments

Dark Obelisk 2

Posted on October 24, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By J. Evans Payne
Infinium Game Studios
Pathfinder
Level: Many

Infinium Game Studios

Pathfinder

Level ?

At the end of Dark Obelisk: Berinncorte, the titular village lies in shambles, taken over and nearly consumed by forces of evil and chaos. Those few who survived the Obelisk Eruption are scattered and leaderless, with no hope of fighting back against the monsters that now walk the streets. In the wake of this tragedy, the PCs are tasked with gaining the aid of the nation of Druids who live to the northeast. The Druid Enclave has woes of their own, however: they have lost contact with the mining city of Mondaria. Upon arriving, the party finds a nearly-vacant city, torn apart by some unseen violence. Things look bleak and mysterious, and the PCs venture down into the dark murk of the mines to uncover the secret…

This 840 page adventure features a CRPG style exploration of a nine level mine and town. It’s bizarre, with rainbow formatting and an emphasis on looting everything in sight, along with a de emphasis on actual traditional adventure contents. It’s fuckign weird, and not in a good way.

So, whoever wanted me to review this is a bad person. I’m still working through my requests and, as with many of the things I’ve not gotten to yet, there’s a reason for it. And “840 pages of Pathfinder” is a pretty good reason to let this one wallow in the pit of unfulfilled requests. It’s taken me about a week and half to dig through this, working on it a few hours a day, and I still don’t know if I understand what is going on. What if the only exposure you ever had to an RPG was a dungeon level or two in the Icewind Dale computer game … and then you made a paper RPG adventure. That’s what you’ve got here. Seemingly every decision made is bizarre. And the, what if you made “interesting” decisions on how to format and layout your adventure? Then you’d have this adventure.

There is this choice being made to color code things in the text. Read aloud one color. DM text another. Traps another. Things you can open another. What you get is this rainbow effect on the pages, so busy that it makes my eyes hurt. An attempt to make things simpler and more logical results in the exact opposite: an obfuscation. And this theme will repeat: attempts to make things logical resulting in … other impacts.

At one point there is an attempt to explain the four factions in town. Each faction has fifteen different aspects to it, beyond the name. These faction descriptions take about a page, for all four. About a quarter of a page each. But then there is attempt to explain what each element means. So, each faction has a size, for example, and there’s a section telling us that “Size: Most factions have fluctuating membership; the size noted here is the typical range.” And this explanation of the key elements takes about a page also. So, as much to explain the key as it takes to explain the four factions! And this is typical in this adventure. There are these long and involved explanation of the key, or, rather, how to read the key, in nearly every section and for everything. It detracts from the actual game content. Did we really need to be told what “Size” means? “Leadership”, as a keyword, kind of stands for itself, as does size, and every other word. It’s like a dictionary definition was added for every word. It’s not, but I think you get where I am going.

The big hook, for the product line, is that every building is described. If you see something on the map, a building or so on, then it is fully mapped and keyed. So the blacksmith shop gets about a page of explanation and then about a page to describe the eight “rooms” that make it up. And this happens for EVERYTHING. 

But, importantly, is the emphasis of the text. Seemingly without exception you get a short little read-aloud and then a section telling you what in the room can be looted and which treasure table to roll on. I mean, it’s weird. It’s like the CRPG where there are barrels and crates everywhere and you spend your time busting them open … hopefully with auto-pickup on. The doors are the same way, with what locks. There are NO placed items, it’s all “roll on table Alcohol: General” … which means that in addition to this 840 page adventure you also need to consult the 250 page “Random tables” booklet. And this extends to the creatures, almost without exception. Roll on “Aboveground: Uban” monster table for an encounter. This is an absolute emphasis on the maps and describing everything, to the detriment of the actual content of the adventure, or what it should be anyway.

And then The read-aloud overreveals. Telling us that the room has two locked chests, for instance, removing that interactivity from the game of the DM and players that an RPG thrives on. And, occasionally, layered with overly flowery test “THis is clearly where the smith lays his head at night to rest.” Uh. Ok.

There’s a table to be used that has modifiers on it for NPC’s you encounter. It is a page long with over thirty modifiers on it. NPC’s have four levels of stats, I guess making this a level agnostic adventure. The NPC’s will sometimes have a page or a page and half of TINY text describing their special abilities … there is no way in hell you could run that at a table. 

I am reminded of the wargame period in the late 70’s and early 80’s. A period in which they got VERY complex. They were basically computer RPG’s but without a computer. And that’s what this is. Lots of maps. Everything described, but somewhat generically. “Roll on the clothing: winter table when you search the wardrobe or on the Fishing Supplies table when you search a chest. 

And the NPC’s contain, maybe, five or so elements at the end of each that contains what they know, in a Q & A format. If you ask A then then they respond with B. It tells us little of what they actually know about what is going on … in spite of paragraphs and paragraphs of descriptions about their motivations and backstories. 

This is a CRPG in paper format. That is almost impossible to dig through to get the larger context … in spite of the adventure trying to lay out summaries at every opportunity. 

It’s fucking bizarre.

Clearly, someones labour of love. But I can’t help think that a multiplayer Icewind Dale game would be better suited?

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is 23 pages and accurately represents what you find therein. Take a gander at it and stop by the smiths shop and enjoy running THAT!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234225/Dark-Obelisk-2-The-Mondarian-Elective-Pathfinder?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 21 Comments

Shadow of the Necromancer

Posted on October 22, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Mark Taormino
Dark Wizard Games
5e
Level 1

Fear stalks through the darkness of night in the form of the walking dead! They attack innocent travelers and merchant caravans in the moonlight! Animated skeletons have also been seen digging up the recently dead and carrying them into the nearby ruins of an old abandoned keep! Rumor spreads fast from lip to ear amongst the locals, whispering that a sinister hooded figure has been seen directing the undead and is taking up residence in that foul dungeon! Your stalwart group of adventurers has decided to take on this challenge, get the treasure you know is in there and defeat this evil menace known only as the Shadow of the Necromancer!

This twenty page adventure uses about ten pages to describe seventeen rooms in a a couple of levels of an old ruined dungeon, with an undead theme. It most resembles a old 1980’s T$R adventure, both in retro styling and in the types of encounters presented. And I don’t mean that as a compliment.

It’s 5e, but with a early 80’s B/X vibe going on. Once we get past the 3.5 page backstory, and all of the “how to read a stat block” nonsense, we get to a couple of interesting hooks. Or, at least, some interesting possibilities with some hooks. Long time readers will note that I am frequently disappointed with hooks. While not really needed, I do expect, if they are included, for them to deliver something. Boilerplate is not in my lexicon. Most of the time these amount to something like “You’re caravan guards” or “you were hired by the local blah blah blah.” And in most of these the common thread is a kind of blandness combined with the lack of agency by the players. You are hired. You are already employed, and being told what to do. A force of motion that comes from outside the party. Here, though, things are a little different. The hooks have a little more going on. A few more details, and a force that comes from the player & character motivations … both far superior motivations for driving an adventure. While the first hook is all garbage, s if the last one, both being “youre hired” stuff, the middle two are more interesting. The second is “While camping out fireside and squabbling over the division of a measly ten copper pieces from recent petty crimes your party notices a small abandoned keep in the distance. Surely there must be loads of treasure there just waiting to be found!” Note te specificity, 10cp, feuding and squabbling over a few measly copper pieces … and the gleam of rewards to come from the old ruin in the distance. A perfect hook, a nice little vignette in just a sentence or so, and an appeal to player and character motivations! Likewise, the second has the party ending up at a camp near an old cemetery, and a brief examination shows several graves disrupted and coffins smashed open and empty … strange footprints in the muddy ground, leading away … to a small abandoned keep. The party motivates themselves to investigate here. Open graves and muddy footprints. I don’t need much more here, I can run this, aI can embellish it. I can fill in the details. This is what this sort of description should do. It communicates the energy of the scene. It inspires me to run the party setting up and a slow burn, describing and interacting with the players and their characters, as they lead in to the cemetery and discover things and more things. That’s what a fucking hook should do!

Ok, so, the rest of the adventure is shit.

I don’t like, and/or don’t trust, the trade dress. When am adventure uses trade dress from the olden days my mind immediately goes to an appeal to nostalgia and, perhaps, an emphasis on things other than the actual adventure. This comes from the same place as seeing long backstories and appendices in an adventure. Yes, … what could you have produced if you had instead devoted that time and energy to the actual adventure?

And in this case it’s not even good trade dress. Oh, I mean, it’s accurate. But its the shit kind of accurate. The text is fully justified, and there are a distinct lack of paragraph breaks. This means that this is quite literally a wall of text. Your eyes glaze over when looking at the text. You loose the ability to tell where once sentence ends and another starts, your eyes darting along. It’s the Bad old Days of trade dress, where things are hard to read.

Then comes the read-aloud. Lengthy sections. It over reveals, telling us what king of skeletons we see and details about them. This should be saved for the back and forth between the DM and the players, the interactivity which is the heart and soul of an RPG. And then it tells us conclusions. Rolls are delicious. A fountain is creepy. These are conclusions, to be avoided in favour of a better, more evocative description that causes the players to arrive at the conclusion that it is creepy, or delicious. 

Our encounters feature things like automatically getting stuck in mud, with no way to avoid it, so the giant spiders can drop down on you. Or automatically getting spit on but a demonic fountain shooting acid. There are no way to avoid things in this adventure… and taking away our ability to interact is almost never a good thing. 

The encounters themselves do not have to be terrible. A demonic fountain spitting acid, or the muddy gatehouse and spiders in the ceiling. But it is the wya they are presented, with little actual interactivity. More of a choose your own adventure interactivity. With lengthy read-aloud and lengthy DM text … all in wall of text format.

Uh, no. I’ll pass.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. WHich shows you the wall of text and some of the backstory but little else. So, not a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/397474/Shadow-of-the-Necromancer-5E?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 10 Comments

Duumhaven

Posted on October 19, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Thompson
Laidback DM
5e/OSR
Level 1

In Duumhaven Village, a Spirit Screams…

This seventy page adventure uses ten pages to describe ten rooms. Poorly.

Why the fuck do you, gentle reader, feel that you deserve a better summary of this product than I just wrote? I mean, I had to wade through seventy pages for a ten room dungeon, based off of “In Duumhaven Village, A Spirit Screams”, so you, also, get to wade through this review with the word “Poorly” being your only guide. But, that’s not true, is it? You already know everything you need to know about this adventure don’t you? Quiz time my lovelies! Let’s see how much you’ve all been paying attention! How do you know this adventure sucks? No, not because I said Poorly. Not, not because it says 5e. Those of you answering that get to stay after school and correct typos on this blog. The answer, of course, is that it uses seventy pages for a ten page adventure.

What does this mean? It means that A LOT of time and effort was spent on supplemental information. What if, instead, that time and effort were spent on the main adventure? You’d have a better adventure! (I hope, anyway …) This is not true 100% of the time. I’m sure there are adventures that have a high page count and low number of pages for the adventure that are not poor, but, that’s a rarity, I think. The designer doesn’t want to be writing the adventure. 

That’s obvious from the designers notes at the end. He doesn’t like dungeons. He thinks they are poor. Kick in the door., kill the monster, and take the loot. Now it becomes obvious, doesn’t it? He doesn’t know what the OSR is. He doesn’t know how to play old school D&D. Because anyone that knows old school D&D, at least as portrayed by the OSR, knows that this is NOT D&D. But, hey, dude loves layout! And it shows! This looks pretty! Pretty layout. I mean, absolutely useless for usability, but, hey, looks nice. Again, a wrong takeaway from the designer. (Or, cynically, he’s cracked the code. Just make it look nice and damn the contents. That’s how you sell. Re: WOTC, Re: Paizo, Re: All the minor companies producing The One Ring, etc.) 

“Bryce, you’re being a fucking ass!” I hear you say. “Tell us WHY!” I already did. Ten pages out of seventy. But, ok, I will go on. Let us look at the opening read-aloud for the party: “They say that rain on the road bodes well for the body. The say that rain washes sins away, clearing the path so that weary travelers may walk safely through savage lands.” The read-aloud continues for two more long paragraphs. The THIRD paragraph starts with “All journeys start with hope and the best of intentions.” It continues, through that paragraph to another. That’s four. But, really, you don’t need to know it’s four. That opening two sentences. That All Journeys line This is garbage, and you should all know that by now by just reading those lines.

Nobody is sitting through a page of read aloud. I’m pulling out my phone. I’m going to the kitchen to stir tomato sauce for an hour. I’m going to the bathroom. Playing a game on my phone. Texting my partner a sad face emoji. You’re boring them to death. Its not their job it listen to to your monologue. It’s their job to interact with the game world. When players pull out their phones and/or disengage with the world its the DMs/designers fault. But, really, it’s the flowery text here. The purple prose. You know what your attempt to make me feel caused to happen? I rolled my eyes, sighed, and girded my loins to endure the next four hours until I could go home and make an excuse as to why I couldn’t be there the next week. Just fucking tell us what we see (etc) and move the fuck on. We don’t need the purple prose commentary.

If I’m being fair, then it’s not ten pages. It’s maybe, thirty pages. The other describe a town and a small wilderness region. It’s supposed to be some home base for a megadungeon. Uh huh. Le’s look at it.

The standing stone, with a wight in them, are forty feet from the town walls. A rickety bridge with a troll under it is eight feet from the town walls. The bandit camp is forty feet away. 

The wandering monster table, for the wilderness, contains an elf hunter who will guide the party. Except, he’s a werewolf and kills you all at night. There is some justification made for this in the adventure. “It’s OSR! Challenges can be harder!” Yes, absolutely they can be. But, also, we don’t do it in an unfair manner. This is, essentially, the DM rolling for a wandering monster and then declaring“the sun went supernova, you’re all dead.” We telegraph. We let the let the party make foolish mistakes. We give them a chance to run away. We don’t put an invincible supermonster in at Level 1 and have it kill everyone at night while they sleep. Again, a lack of knowledge of how old school D&D works. 

I don’t know. It goes on and on. That wight, at the standing stones? Here’s the text for it “A wight emerges from behind the standing stones and attacks. “Quite evocative isn’t it? No descriptive text for the wight. No mists rising. No fog from its head or burning eyes. This theme continues, with no attempt at real evocative text in the adventure. Just the purple prose, over and over again.

One of the gate guards at the town offers you 200gp to go pick a flower. Gate guarding is paying rather well these days, isn’t it? The priceless family heirloom at the inn, an axe, on display, is given no value. 

But, hey, we do get page after page telling us how to read a stat block!

The wilderness keys are a mess. Just random places appearing in the keys. There are ten keys, but other features on the map also. And those other features just appear alongside the keys. Some cliffs appear after a keyed entry for a ruined cottage … even though the troll bridge key is closer to the cliffs. It makes no fucking sense.

Did I mention that the designer is apostrophe happy? I mean, to an extent that Venger is given a run for his money. Jesus fucking christ. 

Read-alouds are a column in places. There is text thrown in, commentary, to the read aloud “Apparently the villagers experienced an earthquake a month ago …” Why the fuck does this go in a read-aloud? ALL of the read-aloud is like this. Full of meta data and commentary that the party doesn’t know about. It’s a complete lack of understanding of what kind of text is appropriate.

So. A mess of keys. Read-aloud that is purple and long. A complete lack of evocative descriptive text. Or terseness. Or layout that facilitates te DM scanning the adventure to run it. An emphasis on things irrelevant to the adventure, and a wasting of effort on things other than the adventure. 

I’m sure the designer is doing very well with these. It is exactly the sort of product I expect to succeed. A doppleganger. A mimicry of a real adventure.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages. It shows you nothing of the adventure, and thus you can’t make an informed purchasing decision. Well, it shows you that amazing “How to read a monster key” information. So, you know, The More You Know …

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/408464/SHOTGLASS-ROUNDS11-Duumhaven?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 25 Comments

The Beast of Jelin’s Mire

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Irene D.B.
Self Published
Zweihander
Basic Tier

Something lurks within the perilous swamp of Jelin’s Mire. The Townsfolk of Jelinton are falling victim to a series of grim attacks by a terrible creature. They have called upon the aid of the Guild, a grim organization of monster hunters to kill the Beast of Jelin’s Mire.

This was a review request from someone. A very very very bad someone.

This thirty page adventure uses eleven pages to detail … two scenes? Three scenes? Of which two are combats? It’s a nightmare of formatting and not knowing how to write an adventure.

You’re monster hunters, sent to the village of Jellin to kill a monster. It seems a few villagers have died and a kid has gone missing. 

This adventure contains trigger earnings for animal death and monstrous plants. And general violence? Isn’t that D&D?

And isn’t Zweihander a Warhammer clone? Isn’t that the game where to kill muties, who want to eat your flesh? And those ratling things that everyone seems to masturbate continually over? That’s Warhammer, right?

This adventure has a golem in it that is a townsperson. And a guy with a clockwork arm. And an ogre dude lives in town. And a dude with a boar head. And a ratling chick that works at the inn who has many suitors, both men and women. That’s Warhammer? Can it be a Boot Hill adventure if its in space with no references at all to the old west or the themes therein?

But, let’s explore a little more that boar dude. His description tells us that “Jor has the head of a goat, and a heart of gold. He is constantly sweaty. He refuses to wear a shirt, and has a sculpted body. He stands at about 7 ft.” Uh … ok. I guess we know a little more about the designer now … Did I mention that there is a brief little break away section dealing with threesomes with some of the townfolk? 

Lest we think I criticize, I do not. I mean, yeah, I am, but not for THAT reason. Especially since it does nothing related to the adventure? The morons are gonna come out of the woodwork to quote the downfall of society, but all I give a shit about is the relevance to the adventure.

But, also, I don’t really give a shit very much about that. I mean, in the context of including shit in the adventure that is irrelevant. Backstory, sex shit, I don’t care. What I DO care about is the degree of concentration on these irrelevant topics to the exclusion of the actual adventure. 

Kristi Fortis is an NPC. They have the profession of Courtier and the Social Class of Aristocrat. We are told “They have been elected uncontested for the past four elections by the town.” For what? Mayor? Garbage collector? There is absolutely no indication. Hey, instead of concentrating on other irrelevant shit, maybe you could put down what the fuck their job is?

This continues to the adventure. It’s a fucking mess. You get to dig through paragraph after paragraph, with sentences like “If they want to go to the local tavern …” Seriously. It’s just paragraphs. Oh, there’s a heading now and again. Here’s one “Later Gator.” Hmmm, I wonder what that means? No? No idea? Don’t fucking do this. There’s so much wrong here that it’s hard to actually list it all. Don’t use if/then conditionals. Don’t write in paragraph form as the major style of writing. Use some keys to help separate out content. Make the adventure easy to scan so the DM can find information quickly and easily. NONE of that is done. Just scene after scene with a fuck ton of conditions embedded in paragraphs. I weep for the future.

But, the adventure proper, you ask! You go in to town. Oh no, people missing/killed. FOr some fucking reason you go find a woman in a tower. She’s a golem. (Thats fucking boring. Don’t say golem. Tell us shes made out of weeping mud. Or snow. Held together by hair or something. With STATS as a golem. Imagination trumps mechanics. Ok, anyway, you go to this golems tower, for some reason, and get some rose petals, I guess to help a dying kid. Then you go out in the swamp and fight an octopus with hands on the ends of its tentacles. The adventure is now over. Thirty pages for that. Sorry, no, eleven pages are used for that. Eleven pages. 

But, hey, if you attack the golem then she chokes each of you out, ties you up, delivers you to the town sheriff, who tells you that you shouldn’t attack her if you want to keep the monster hunter contract. IE: No Consequences to our actions. IE: Mary Sue.

This is an absolutely atrocious adventure. There is nothing evocative. There is no interactivity to speak of. There is no formatting to help run it at the table. It fails on every account. I don’t give a fuck about the sex shit. I give a fuck that the adventure design, formatting, and interactivity stinks.

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages, with the last three being relevant to making a purchasing decision. By then you should be able to figure out the focus on anthro kink and lack of organization in the text.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/340119/The-Beast-of-Jelins-Mire–Adventure-for-Zweihander-RPG?1892600

And, lest we think I’m a heathen, the last page advertises a work called “LGBT in a Grim and Perilous World.” The description is pretty interesting. To quote “exploring how other cultures have historically seen such things and how you might use this knowledge in a Zweihander, or other fantasy RPG, game.” A focus on how gender and sexuality have not always been as cut and dry as presented in history, and influences seen in history and mythology. That’s cool. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/331633/LGBT-in-a-Grim-and-Perilous-World–Supplement-for-Zweihander-RPG

Posted in 2 out of 10, Reviews | 29 Comments

Witches of Frostwyck

Posted on October 15, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Joseph R. Lewis
Dungeon Age Adventures
OSR/5E
Levels 1-4

The ancient world of Harth is dying, but you’re going to die even sooner if you can’t escape from Frostwyck. You’re lost in a frozen forest of deadly predators and mysterious recluses. Your only refuge is the tiny village of Frostwyck, where metal is rare and kindness is rarer. And there are worse things in the shadows than mere bloodthirsty beasts. Witches haunt the groves of the north. Most keep to themselves, content to guard their secrets and powers. But one torments them all. Dama Zhadna has cursed the village so that none can escape. And now you’re trapped here. You’re going to die here. Unless you find a way to defeat the Witches of Frostwyck.

This fifty page adventure describes a small region around a village with about 22 locations.  Lewis knows how to write an adventure of this scale, and delivers again with something terse, easy to use, and evocative with great situations to explore.

You think my negative reviews sound like a broken record? I think my positive ones are super shitty, saying only things like “its good” and nonsense like that. Whatever. I swore I would review more stuff from “good” designers AND that I’d work through my entire request list before delivering the depths once again of that cesspool known as DriveThru New Releases,

There are 5e and OSR versions of this adventure. Which would make Lewis one of the best 5e designers in existence since the open-ended nature of his adventures style perfectly match the OSR sandboxy style. Notably, Lewis states that this adventure can take a 5e character from levels one through four or five, and that in either system you’re look at twenty to forty hours of play … five to ten sessions at four hours each. And I believe it! There’s a lot to see and do here, without there being any dungeons, proper. This could be a little self-contained campaign!

You can think of this as a kind of Ravenloft thing going on. You’ve got a Baba Yaga running around in her spider house and a cursed village/region that no one can leave, always getting turned around and coming back. Enter the party. There are the usual “wandering down the road” hooks, but, also, a hook where you are prisoners on a river barge, being transported, and the brage gets attacked by river pirates … leaving the party with nothing. And the first few encounters on the map, near the river, are set up as such, with some supplies like clothes and a few simple weapons and so on. Then you roll onin to the village, assuming you are following the main road in from the river, and discover the troubles.

And troubles there are, aplenty! As, I guess, you’d expect if a Baba Yaga lived in the woods nearby. The local priest is missing. As are a few villagers. Oh, and the pond in the center of the village has a monster living in it. Rumours of witchcraft IN the village! And outside the village. And in your head. Pretty much everyone is stupid paranoid about witches. For good reason, but, still! Oh, also, that river monster is going to eat everyone in the village if they don’t make their annual offering of 300# of meat. And by “annual” I mean “it’s time to do it.” 

Witchy McWitcher has captured the soul of several others, as her allies, if you call her name three times and summon her to fight her. You can find out more about them in the woods, and/or find her house and destroy their coil bottles, freeing them from her service. One s a doppelganger of an old babushka living in a hovel in the woods with her husband and daughter. The real old lady is buried under a nearby bridge. The husband is good natured and hen pecked. The daughter is a snow construct that just looks like her. (What’s that recent eastern/central european horror movie where they sell their soul to the devil for constructs?) It’s perfectly done here, as both folkish and a doppelganger. The encounters, the locations, they are situations and vignettes. People(ish ..) to talk to and things to resolve.  Sure, there’s a fight or three, at random, but also a lot more complexity if you want it. Clues to other locales and situations to resolve. It’s interlinked in a way that is DESIGNED.

The format is DungeonAge house style, which is an easy to read triple column. How the fuck he does this I have no idea, but he does. I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone else ever do triple column in a way that doesn’t need a magnifying glass, but not here. Basic locations fit in a single column, with terse and evocative overview/read-aloud text with bolded and underlined keywords that lead you to other paragraphs and butt information. For how Lewis uses it, it perfectly matches what he needs to accomplish. The perfect amount of information provided and the perfect format for what he’s doing to communicate that information. I can’t say enough kind things about it.

And, he does the small stuff also. Cross-references abound, and magic items can be unique and wonderfully done, both normal magic items and minor items and effects. There’s reference sections for monsters. The DM is WELL supported here.

Well, except … some travel times/distances for the map would be nice, so I had some idea how long to run an overland journey. And a single page of NPC summaries would have been nice, to better manage some NPC’s talking about other NPC’s and situations. 

Oh, wait, hang on. DId I mention the villagers mistrust witches? Yeah? That includes magic users. And others who are unholy. There’s a paladin out there, also, stalking about, illing the unholy. Like the party. “Irena – Steam rises from her bare head. Dried blood clings to her dented armor. A heavy chain-and-sickle clinks in her hand.” A relentless one, that one!

Lewis does a terrific job. Traditional dungeons don’t appear here, but for a
“Plotty” sandboxy adventure its perfect. A great adventure for both 5e or OSR folks looking for that in their lives, I can’t recommend Dungeon Age enough. They should all be pretty much an auto-buy from you.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is half the product, at 25 pages, more than enough to get a sense of the product and if you want to buy it. $8 for 20-40 hours of adventure, that you can essentially use immediately? (You need that NPC summary sheet man …) That’s a steal!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/354011/Witches-of-Frostwyck?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 1, Reviews, The Best | 23 Comments