tenfootpole.org

By Thom Wilson
ThrowiGames
Five Torches Deep
Levels 7-9

The Death Downs is a vast burial mound of noble families and great warriors. Characters will discover great riches and wealth if they can survive the burial ground’s traps and evil undead.

This 55 page adventure details nineteen burial mounds with about four rooms each, and one larger mound with about thirteen rooms. There are occasional bursts of interesting interactivity, but, the overly rigid formatting and lack of evocative writing really drags the entire thing down.

Bree & the Barrows Downs hangs heavy over the hobby. In my youth it entranced me, mostly for the treasure I think. Because the actual product was lacking with little more than the usual great maps and the laundry list of treasure items. This doesn’t stray much from that formula, although the entries take up a lot more space and there actually are a few points of interactivity.

Nineteen burial mounds, in a misty and swampy valley. You get no map of the valley, or the general mound arrangement; the adventure just launches in to the keyed locations for each of the mounds and provides a little map at the start of each one. Each one has between two and four rooms, with the last mound having thirteen. 

The highlight of this adventure, appearing infrequently, is the interactive elements. One room has a shallow empty pool basin with whispering voices circling around it when you get close. Runes on the bottom, spoken outloud, cause it to fill with what is a healing potion. And placing something in the dry pool otherwise causes a shadow serpent to appear. That’s great design! Weal and Woe! A hint of the arcane and supernatural! Another has a statue with a slow petrification gaze. Behind it, at the head, is a jar full of grey goo … that can be used like a petrification potion; it has been powering the statue. I’m not always a big fan of “things that make logical sense”, like a potion powering a statue, but sympathetic magic is a big turn on for me and if handled well, like it is here, then it makes for a great interactive element. When the adventure is engaging in acts like this then it’s doing a great job. Of course not every room is expected to be fun and games, and the rooms here are sparsely populated throughout the mounds. The highly interactive ones, I mean. There is the usual assortment of creatures and traps as well thrown in, of the more mundane variety. I’ve always wondered about undead in these high level adventures. Do we make every creature a Vampire-class monster so as to manage the turning issue? Maybe Five Torches handles it differently? Whatever. Decent interactivity, although perhaps a little sparse, a problem exacerbated, I think, by the “individual mounds” format.

One of my two major malfunctions with this adventure is the formatting selected. It is an extremely rigid system. While I do prefer a good format, I also want it tuned to the adventure, with a willingness to break the rules of the formatting when needed in service to the adventure digestibility. In this one I can get what the designer was going for, but I don’t think what was intended is what comes across at all.

First, we’ve got a little italics to start the room, usually a short sentence. As far as I can tell, this serves no porpoise (Thanks autocorrect, I will be spelling porpoise that way from now on!) at all. Room one area one says “A prominent tomb far enough away from the corruption to be unaffected by the infection…for now.” Great! So … absolutely no value to the adventure at all? Dead weight. Filler. This is followed by GM notes. This tends to be still more useless background information, like “The challenging locked door (DC 15) has yet to be opened by previous explorers.” or “a 1 in 10 chance that the dead here have been corrupted and reanimate.” So, the presence of more background fluff should be an obvious NoNo by now. We also see an example here of the misuse of randomness. Just make it full of undead or not. You need to actually DESIGN the adventure and make the various parts work with each other, not just rely on randomness for the adventure. 

Ok, so, two sections in to a room description and it’s still not very good. We then get a Quick View section. Alright! I’m on board! Except, it overexplains. “Diamond tiara lies on a partial skull.” Hmmm, no, that’s detailed view, the next section. For quick view it should be a glint of light from the head or something.  Detailed view tells us … Skeletal female form and the exact value of all of the treasure goods found on the body. Then we get smell “Slight acidic aroma” This should probably be in the quick view, but, it does foreshadow a trap, which is good. Then we get a secrets section, which is normally telling us about a secret nice to be found, and then a Traps section saying something like “Acide cloud erupts if the tiara is moved”

The overall effect is disconnected. No notation in the tiara section that it is trapped. Different elements and aspects of various room features are scattered across a column of text, causing the DM to need to reference multiple sections during an initial action. I mean, I get what the designer is trying to do, but it just doesn’t work out right here. The italics and GM notes are mostly useless. The Quick View should be First Impressions and contain the (obvious) sensory data. The Detailed view should follow up on individual objects.  And a separate trap section is fine, for detailed information on traps, but, I have to ask: why? Why are the taps so complex that you feel you need to almost a third of a page to describe a simple “pick up tiara trigger acide cloud” trap? It’s trap & door porn all over again, with overly mechanistic details. 

Combined with this, or perhaps because of it, is the somewhat drab nature of the descriptions. I thought things were going to be coo. A sunlit valley, full of mist, a marshland in it, a dry spot in the middle covered with mounds, others flooded in the marsh … That’s pretty good! But the actual rooms are bogged down by that format and come across lame. “Most of thi tomb has collapsed.” Rectangular room with massive wall tapestries. Central stone slab covered in bones and rotten silk fabric. Meh. And., there’s no follow up on the tapestries. We get over-explained quick views that have very little in the way of painting an evocative setting.It don’t feel like a dry & dusty tomb.

Did I mention there’s a tomb devoted to dead circus performers? I will never fucking understand this obsession with the circus/carnival. 

One room tells us it is very well lit with chanting. It’s about 30 feet from the entrance. That’s something you want to mention in the entrance, not in the room in question. You want to tell the party that when they can sense it. This happens repeatedly in the adventure. I will not cover in detail the room that says the walls had portraits that are now missing. *sigh*

Whatever this adventure has going on for it it is obfuscated behind mounds and mounds of detritus. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is about twelve pages and shows a lot of room descriptions, so it’s a good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/379439/The-Death-Downs?1892600

By Scott Cox
Self Published
Call of Cthulhu

Wavering Hills Sanatorium, a hospital for the relief of suffering lies nestled in central Kentucky on grounds with a sordid and mysterious past. The apparent suicide of a troubled young girl yields questions of an otherworldly nature. Will the investigators unravel the mystery of Wavering Hills?

This fourteen page adventure details the investigations in a sanitarium. It’s a basic investigation and at a pretty high level, which is good for an investigation. But, it lacks basic details and doesn’t help the DM out enough. You can do high level, but you need to support it also.

A request! You know how I love to do requests! So stop your bitching and allow me to be do this good act.

It is our investigators first adventure and its in a sanitarium. There are no real hooks, just a suggestion that they could be new staff or new patients “or any other reason.” None of this really helps, at all. No information to support play as staff or patients or “anything else.” It’s needs about one page more to develop a solid hook/background/support for this. Otherwise the DM is left with making up what its like to be patient, or staff, or whatever. 

There are a few NPC’s, a head nurse, the doc in charge, and a patient, with a couple of other patients given a few words. The NPCS that do exist are done well, with solid trophy personalities to play up. Maybe a few example statements would have been nice for each of them, and a fw more staff and patients, but, whatever. “Nurse & mother hen” and “cold hearted and single minded” go over well in my book.

There’s a small section on the five sense, which I really appreciate. Adding the sound echoes or antiseptic smell is a good touch for the DM to add to room and encounter descriptions. This could have been put on the border of the map page, or some such, to keep the DM reminded of tit. 

Of, wait, there’s NOT a map page. There is, instead, a brief text description of the hospital. Of, like, eleven floors. Un. Cool. That does NOT work at all. You just need a basic fucking map. You can just label it, you don’t need to describe every room, but you need SOMETHING to support the party sneaking around and avoiding nurses, doctors, etc. 

There’s some other simple things wrong also, like putting the read-aloud in italics and making it long. It doesn’t overexplain, but it does get long. Which is how a 1.5 hour adventure gets to fourteen pages. Yes, 1.5 hour or so. It’s VERY short. There’s not a lot going on and the investigation is pretty straightforward. Oh, look, the third floor is chained shut, let’s go there!

But thats not the main issue here. The main issue the the overview style of presentation.

This is going to get a bit complex. Essentially the adventure is written as an investigation. Rather than room/key it instead covers major rooms, like the docs office, etc, and gives an description of those major locations. Which is exactly what should be going on. And it details some of the key things that the DM should be doing in the different chapters. Like, in this chapter they should learn X or discover Y. That’s great. I can quibble that those sections could be clearer/easier to find and parse, but the dude has the right idea. Kind of a major outline, with more detail zoomed in on for those sections that need it. 

But, we’ve already seen, that the adventure glosses over just about everything else. I mean, no map. No real hospital staff scedule. Nothing to support sneaking around or asking questions or anything like that. And lets pray no one goes in to town for a newspaper office; there’s no support for anything other than looking around the hospital. 

It’s so very BASIC. That doesn’t have to be bad, but, in this case, its completely straightforward. It opens with a patient jumping off the roof and saying something like she wanted to fly “like they do” and green goo leaking from her ears. Ok. So, no build up at all then. Ok, third floor is chained up. Let’s fucking hit it! 

It needs more build up. More support for investigating and talking to people. A basic map to run nightime stealth. A few more NPCs to round things out. Maybe a few subplots going on. None of this has to be huge, at all. But the complete lack of support for anything OTHER than the very short adventure hinders the play immensely, IMO. or, perhaps, hinders the support of the DM in trying to get more out of this. 

This is $3 at Drivethru.The preview is not the best for figuring out if you’d like this. Page three, though, does have the text description of the hospital layout.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/378808/Whispers-from-Wavering-Hills?1892600

Hello. This is the Bryce Emergency Review protocol. Bryce writes about three weeks ahead and has not written a new review in about three weeks, so this script has snagged an emergency review to post instead. Bryce has also been emailed and told to get back to work instead of engaging in whatever delight he is currently using to manage ennui.

By Jonathan Hicks
Open Ended Games inc
Against the Darkmaster
Levels 2-3

Once one of the mightiest families of all the Nine Kingdoms, the Leorics have now fallen on hard times. Dark tidings and unspeakable rumors surround this once noble house. But a chance at redemption may still be at hand. In a desperate race against time, the heroes must recover a cache of lost magical artifacts before they fall into the hands of agents of the Darkmaster. Only this way they can restore the fallen noble family’s legacy, and stop the darkness spreading through their domains. Can they reach the treasure before the agents of the Darkmaster pursuing them? Can they sneak past the dragon who has made Castle Dulgroth her lair? Can they survive this Legacy of Blood?

This 37 page movie uses 22 pages to describe a fantasy novel. 

Like what the fuck man? What the serious fuck. Are you proud of this “adventure?” This is what you dreamed of doing? This is what you lay awake thinking about? No? It’s just a fucking paycheck for every single person involved? Oh? Rlly?  I couldn’t tell.

This thing is crap, from start to finish. I’m not sure there’s anything good about it at all. It doesn’t feel like a cynical money grab, but, rather, a product mired in the past. As if someone active in RPG’s from an earlier era decided to produce something and had learned absolutely nothing in the meantime. Cycnically, I think it’s just pushing out product and who the fuck gives an actual fuck the morons are going to buy the fucking thing anyway so why actually give a shit in producing something good?

This is now, what, the second fucking review in a fucking row of a movie plot adventure? You don’t have agency here. What you have here is columns long read-aloud text in which NPCs dump fucking exposition at you. All in italics, of course, because no one gives a flying fuck about usability or readability. And then the overly dramatic read-aloud exposition is then followed by mountains of DM text all arranged in just normal paragraph form. It’s fucking impossible to find anything in this. There is NO scanability, at all. This is Dungeon magazine, the worst of Dungeon magazine, all over again. In 2021. 

You ready for some hooks? How about an exciting one, like “They are looking for new opportunities and have swords and spells to hire out.” Yeah, that’s the extent of the fucking hook. The others are similar. A fucking hook that says absolutly fucking nothing at all. Why the fuck is this included? Do you seriously think that this is adding value to the product? Do you seriously think that this is helping someone run their game? No? It’s just fucking boilerplate? THEN WHY THE FUCK WAS IT INCLUDED? Because there was a word count, perhaps? 

Blah blah blah, … Desperate Race Against Time. Uh huh. You put that fucking shit in your adventure description and I know its crap without even reading it.

Ok, so, what’s up here? The actual adventure? It’s a fucking movie. You will get almost no choices at all. You will go overland and get attacked by The Darkmasters forces. You will win, and then an overwhelming force will descend upon you. The goal is to get the party to run, so there can be the next section … The Exciting Chase! And of, course, whats an exciting chase without a rescue from a mysterious ranger?! And then, of course, the chase must resume so you can flee in to a barrow and have the entrance collapse just in time separating you all from the darkmasters forces. And then you explore to escape only to find a tunnel that leads to where you want to go … pursued by the forces breaking in to the barrow. Only to come to a vault. Where the ranger betrays you! Ohs nos! And then the darkmasters forces arrive and attack! Ohs Nos! And then the dragon above shows up! Ohs Nos! 

“Anything can happen on this journey; perhaps a small scout force of Orc wolf riders intercept the players as they head to the barrows.” Yeah. That’s what you’re fucking paying for. To be told anything can happen on this journey. This thing is padded the fuck out. Backstory and motivations. The animated skeletons “have sworn to protect the riches of the barrow and they will do so!” Uh huh. That helped me run the game. “The water is ankle deep which could signify that the barrows are below the water level of the lake and the water is getting in somehow. “Wlel, just fucking wonderful. The price of tea in Taiwan while we’re at it? 

The absolute worst kind of drivel. Cinematic bullshit. Meant to tell a fucking exciting story. It might as well be a video game that is nothing more than quicktime events. This is why we play D&D? To have no choices? To just roll dice in combats? To have no control over the fate of your own lives? 

My cynicism here is strong. It’ is SO depressing to see shit like this. I get that different games have different vibes and the extreme agency of exploration D&D is not the vibe of every game. But to have little to no agency at all? Like the serious fuck? Didn’t that go out decades ago? Shall we forever cursed to relive this shit, because of designers or publishers unwilling or unable to liearn from the past? Shall I be generous to people who have made little to no effort to learn and update based on the times? Is all there is just banging two rocks together, forever, with no progression beyond that?

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get tp see that magnificent hook page and a couple of pages of irrelevant backstory. So, terrible preview that in no way helps you make a purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/374191/Legacy-of-Blood?1892600

Hello. This is the Bryce Emergency Review protocol. Bryce writes about three weeks ahead and has not written a new review in about three weeks, so this script has snagged an emergency review to post instead. Bryce has also been emailed and told to get back to work instead of engaging in whatever delight he is currently using to manage ennui.

By Daniel DeFazio
B&W Media
Generic (no stats)

Ingolstadt, Bavaria – 1799 Elizabeth Lavenza is searching for her fiancé Victor Frankstein. Cholera has taken the lives of many citizens of the city and the streets are crammed with fear. Amidst the chaos, bodies of victims are going missing and a creature stalks the rooftops near Victor’s laboratory.

This twenty page adventure, a re-telling of Frankenstein, exemplifies all that is wrong with late 90’s role playing adventures. 

Todays review is charity work. Someone suggested that this designer is A) popular in the new world we find ourselves in and B) needs help. So, I’m jumping in. Both statements are very accurate. The designer has their own website and runs a decently popular youtube channel. And they have no clue how to write an adventure. Since the fucking fanboys are sure to show up, let’s make this clear. This is not a moral judgement on the designer, or a reflection of them as a dungeonmaster. This is a statement based on their inability to have the skill of technical writing, or at least to recognize that adventure writing is technical writing. The purpose is to help the DM run the adventure at the table.

First, let us examine the subject matter: Frankenstein. Another offering is MacDeath, clearly a riff on the play. Both well known works and essentially retellings. At least Frankenstein is. Let us ask, why? Why not original IP? The recognizable IP no doubt appeals to non-RPG players … but, again, why? You gonna play this instead of How To Host A Murder? Ok. There’s not enough in this for a newbie DM to use. And if you’ve got an experienced DM then they are gonna barth before running this. It’s some weird middle ground choice of how much information to present, and how. 

The primary sin, here, is the retelling of the story. The characters in this essentially have no agency. Very little of their actions matter. Oh, what’s the Vampire adventure whos name I always forget? You know, the worst adventure of all time where the party doesn’t get to play, they just get to watch ancient vampire monologue at each other? This is that. This is not an adventure inspired by Frankensteinm it WILL be the Frankenstein story, all the way to the end and the designer WILL ensure that it works out that way. When the party first meets Victor he is behind a locked door and nothing, come hell of high water, will result in the party getting in through that door … because that’s not where the plot is yet. It would ruin the STORY. Yes, the fucking STORY. This is a fundamental misunderstanding in RPG design that many new designers have. The story is not the designers. The story is not the DM’s. The story is the players. I don’t give a fuck what shit you dream about at night, and how it might unfold. All that goes out the window when the wrecking crew meets it. You write the fucking thing with that in mind, and I don’t mean by preventing things from happenning.

Likewise our ending. There MUST be a showdown in Victors lab. The create and Dr MUST meet and fight, with flames. That moment MUST happen …the adventure dictates it. Possibilities in the decision tree that do not result in the few laid out by the designer are NOT allowed … and in this case we mean supported. “Oh, a designer can’t support everything Bryce …” “ Fuck you N00B”, I say, the designers job is to present information for the DM to riff on, in that way many outcomes CAN be supported. 

About 80% of the text is read-aloud. Specific read-aloud generally laid out in a somewhat bulletish manner in a Q/A format. So, if the party asks Frank about X then read this long section of monologue. Embedded in this is the personality of the speaker, the scene, and a lot of backstory. This works against effective running of the adventure. You can’t riff on a monologue. Ideally, you want a brief personality snippet, in a few words, and a general outline of information to be conveyed in a way that’s easy for the DM to locate and add their own flair to, reacting to it and changing it as the parties actions dictate. The format selected herein, along with the plot really force this adventure down a “watching the movie unfold” kind of thing. Which is not roleplaying. And fuck you, new readers, for thinking it is. Yes, there can be a great variety in how games are played, but taking away the agency of the party is not one of them.

So, it’s the most extreme railroad kind of plot-based adventure, combined with a format that actively works against riffing on and focuses on monologue. Pretty much exactly a late 90’s adventure and everything this blog rails against.

Finally, let me state that I get the generic/no stats thing and am supportive. But, man, throw in one page for some stats for a system or two.

This is $7 at QuestGivers.com, the designers site.

https://www.questgivers.com/product.php?p=38

Hello. This is the Bryce Emergency Review protocol. Bryce writes about three weeks ahead and has not written a new review in about three weeks, so this script has snagged an emergency review to post instead. Bryce has also been emailed and told to get back to work instead of engaging in whatever delight he is currently using to manage ennui.

By Shane Lacey Hensley
Pinnacle Entertainment
Savage Worlds

It begins with a shipwreck on a cold, gray night in Lankhmar. The Temple of the Shark God has come to Lankhmar. They teach “the Way of Predation,” an extreme version of survival of the fittest. The city begins to take their message to heart. Tempers rise. Violence flares. And the city burns. Is the cult the cause of the troubles? Or is there something more ancient, more powerful at work? Your scoundrels, rogues, and heroes must find out before everything they know vanishes in…A Night of Blood and Teeth!

*Withering Sigh* Someone asked for this. I agreed, based on my recent good experience with Lankhmar. Then I realiazed it wasn’t DCC Lankhmar.

This 32 page adventure has five scenes in Lankhmar. It is boring. Lankhmar is boring. Mostly because the designer doesn’t really understand Lankhmar, even though they state in several times things that imply they do. As if the designer knows what they should do but are unable to do it.

Ok, so, shark cult brings a talisman to Lankhmar that brings bad luck. Scene 1: There’s a shipwreck. Scene 2: Some vignettes around town. Scene 3: Save the Beggar King Scene 4: Steal talisman from Shark Temple. Scene 5: Take a boat ride. Scene 3 is completely useless. The party is hired by the thieves guild to go save the beggar king from a mob that the shark cult has instigated. There is no real meaning to this encounter. It serves no purpose. It does not advance the adventure. Failing it does not throw up obstacles. It just wastes time. Scene 5 you take a boat ride to drop the talisman in to the sea. Of course, the shark cult arrives JUST. IN> TIME. as you perform the ritual. There’s no real reason for the party to go on the boat ride; you’re on some anti-shark cult ladies boat and shes the one doing the ritual. It’s a fucking meaningless scene that exists only to have a big final battle. Scene 1 has the party “saving” the survivors of a ship wreck. The hook is that some people come in to your bar, you learn of the shipwreck that is happening right now, and that they were merchants with a lot of gold. Thus you could be heroes that save people or just want to loot the still breathing bodies. This is the best you’re going to get in this adventure for Lankhmar attitude. “You could be a hero or for more larcenous, you could steal from the survivors as they fight the waves while drowning.” The rest of the shit is all do-gooder stuff. One of my favs is the beggar king thing; if you refuse to be hired then the DM is encourag to have the party at least go out to watch what is going on for this meaningless thing.

There’s no grit. There’s no dirt. There’s no squalor. There’s no larcenous thieves. Tis could just as well be written for a 5e game … and, I guess, that’s kind of what Savage Worlds is anyway, a popcorn reality, so, you know … why the fuck would you play this when there are other Lankhmar adaptions available?

It’s full of column long read-aloud in italics to convey information. Long italics sucks shit and is hard to read and no house style should contain it in 2021. Likewise, no long sections of monologue to convey information. You write the fucking adventure so it comes out over time. This is basic, basic design shit. And yet here we see Yet Another Publisher engaging in it. Fuck your editors and Fuck your house style. Make a fucking effort.

Mixed in to the long paragrapgh style encounter descriptions are, of, lets, see, a quarter page of backstory, in random places? Like, how does that advance the plot? How is that backstory actionable or leads to gaming moments? Oh, it doesn’t? THEN WHY THE FUCK IS IT IN THERE?! To meet pay per word requirements, no doubt. Look, I don’t know that’s true, but it is generally true in the industry, so, yeah, lets be evil and slap it on here also.

I don’t know. The temple raid is nor interesting. It gives the DM several options. A straight up fight, sneaking in, dressing up as acolytes, etc. But then it doesn’t really support those styles at all. It just says you can do it and goes in to the (boring and long) room keys. 

There is essentially no thought given to running this at the table; how the DM would use it, making it easy to scan and so on. I guess that’s not a surprise. Are there ANY major publishers that do this? I mean, basically, once you publish an RPG and it has ANY popularity at all then all you have to do is shovel out adventures and people will buy them. Why invest in making them good, or easy to use/run?

Why do you even license something like Lankhmar for Savage Worlds? I guess I know, money. I’m not even sure market demand counts here, unless it is induced. 

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The last three show you the start of the first scene. Enjoy that shit. It’s the highlight of the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/247786/Lankhmar-A-Night-of-Blood-and-Teeth

By James Introcaso, Sean Van Damme, Jeff Stevens
Self Published
Zweihander
Basic Tier

Anthla Tremal leads the Cult of Slugidor, the ancient deity of oozes. She brought the cult to the caves five days ago after learning Orthive’s tower was destroyed when the now-deceased wizard tried to summon Slugidor. The cult found the basement of Orthive’s tower connected to the caves and captured and questioned Orthive’s ghost. According to Orthive, the cult needs a “worthy sacrifice” to offer the demon lord. Anthla sends the minor oozes created in the slime to terrorize the people of Norwal, hoping heroes track the monsters back to Slime Cave…12p 6r

This twelve page study in depression describes a cave complex with six rooms and a few slime monsters in it. What do you actually expect to get from a review from a low effort adventure? Joy? Meaning? What even does happiness mean?

So far everything written for Zweihander is crap, right? Or did I miss something?

I guess Zweihander remains the hotness in the mainstream OSR world, with the market continuing to be spammed with adventures. This one was a 5e adventure converted to Zweihander. So, you know, one of the worst things in the world: a conversion. The grim & perilous world of Zweihander is about to meet its greatest foe: the magical ren faire of 5e! Yeah, so, tonally, this thing has issues. It’s the gump drop fairy world of 5e, with candy colored art, rather than the grimdark of Zweihander. Conversion, conversion, conversion. Yes, you can use any system, but, certain systems have certain vibes and a raw conversion, in my experience, seldom manages to convey the vibe of the game. All they are doing is slapping some new stats on monsters, converting skill checks if you’re very lucky, and that’s usually it. Low effort conversion to take advantage of the hotness. LAME

So, a village of 200 people supports a tourist industry to the local ruined tower and caves full of slime. 200 people. Tourist industry. With a spa. And a gift shop. And an inn that serves extra oozy eggs and slime pea soup. Ok, so, I have to admit, I like the food, and the slime spa treatment iea, but only in a farcical “lets push this fucking thing to its fucking limits.” But, this plays with the suspension of disbelief. As does the hook of all of the local militia having being killed by slime oh please might you do something? I’ll maybe give you a magic shield, and, if you bargain more, I’ll throw in a slime bath treatment at the spa. Seriously? This is the grim dark that Zweihander promised me? I’ll all for farce in a game, but there has to be some core of realism. The world the players are in MUST be the straight man. It must SEEM normal, until the party shows up and starts to fuck things up. 

So, there’s a cult, because mental illness, anti-science (alchemists) and cult religions are the three acceptable bad guys these days. Not that I have a problem with that, but, its fucking over-used. Everything is a fucking cult these days. Come up with a decent fucking spin on a cult maybe? Remember the throwaway cult in Hoard of Tiamat, and the Hack & Slash remix of chapter 2? THATS a fucking cult. This is just a fucking low effort throwaway. Anyway, the cult is in the caves, blah blah blah, they need to lure heroes to cave to sacrifice them to summon their slime god. Lure. Heroes. Yes, another fucking low effort idea. I can’t come up with any reason why they are in the caves and/or pretext for things so I’m just going to say that they want to lure heroes in and sacrifice them. Jesus. How about a skill gauntlet while you’re at it, just to “test” them? No? That would be effort? Ok. So, cult luring heroes to the cave.

You have to track the oozes that raid the town. I have no idea why you have to do this. It seems obvious that the ruined tower, and slime cave underneath, are the place to go. But, anyway, you track the oozes. If you make your roll you track them to the slime cave. If you fail your roll you track them to the slime cave and get attacked by four of them. So as to encourage mix/max’ing of characters. Inside the cave are six rooms.

Let’s see … “get attacked by an ooze” seems to the major theme here, surprisingly. After fighting oozes in cave one, cultists come rushing out, (their names are in room two, obviously) to pretend to be adventurers and lead the party to the finale trap room. Oh, and a “shimmering ooze” attacks the party, I guess maybe when they cross a slime river? It’s just a one sentence thing. Which, I can appreciate form a terseness standpoint but has absolutely no flavour at all. 

Another room has an ochre jelly in it, standing behind a slime river and in front of a chest. The chest is trapped, setting it off pushes you in to the ochre jelly. Why you left an ochre jelly in the room is beyond me, as is why the thing didn’t attack you before you opened the chest. 

Oh, there’s a ghost. The cult trapped a ghost in a giant alien-like pod transparent bell jar. He’s a scared ghost though, and doesn’t fight ot help you. Except by prodiving monologue to explain everything that is going on in the adventure. Because that’s the only way to convey information, beyond a journal/diary, in a shitty adventure. 

I guess, the only good part of the adventure is that if the party fails then the cutists summon their slime god and it devours the entire world. So, you know, time to switch games. THAT’S a good thing!

Low effort ideas. Low effort interactivity. Conversion job. Nothing to see here, move along!

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. Good enough to make a purchasing decision. That, to be clear, should be “NEVER.”

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/368404/Slime-Cave-of-Norwal–ZWEIHANDER?1892600

By Andrew Foster
Self Published
City of Mist

An aging catholic exorcist and assessor needs the crew’s help in banishing the alleged evil spirits surrounding a young boy. What kind of terror could bring a once steadfast priest to the breaking point ? Could a mere child really be the harbinger of something evil or is something else at play? Whatever it is, it’s quickly spreading to the nearby neighbors who are being plagued by the all too real events colored by death and terror. If that wasn’t enough, people are starting to believe the rumors about a previously captured serial killer who is on the loose again. Will the crew be able to save the residents of the 36th Street Apartments in time before their own living nightmares consume them?

This 25 page adventure is the usual spooky dream time investigation adventure of a modern horror nature. It has nice touches here and there and, surprisingly, doesn’t reach TOO far in to the pretension that the marketing hints at. It also has no idea how to support the DM. Or write read-aloud. Or format a section for scanning. And, I take offence at the subject matter.

This adventure centers around a kid who is the living manifestation of The Spirit Of All Life, the aboriginal creator who also created the dreaming. Or is the dreaming? I don’t pretend to understand. All I know is that a white kid is the aboriginal creator. Can you do this in a home game? Sure. Should you shit all over gypsies in a published adventure? Probably not. It’s in bad taste and things suitable for a home game are not always suitable for a published adventure. 

So, I don’t know where to start with this. I bought it explicitly because it looked like pretentious edge lord shit. Read that marketing blurb again. “What kind of terror could …” and, the best of all, the last two lines of the other marketing blurb are “… ultimately come face to face with their own demons, and hopefully find the wisdom to help a hurt soul come to terms with their grief.

“ Uh huh. Grief? Uh huh. The characters own demons? Uh huh uh huh. Fucking masterful pretention that is. How could this adventure be anything other than the full on catharsis that we all seek from a tuesday night of gaming with beer and pretzels!? Finally, my deep held truma regarding the search for meaning in a world inherently devoid of it shall be resolved and no longer will all love me and despair but I shall remain Galadriel. Or, I’m gonna have some more Campairi and roll my eyes. 

So this kids mother dies. He starts making people have nightmares, including a priest who comes to exorcise him, a psychiatrist who examines him, and basically everyone in his apartment complex. The party enters at the behest of the priest, does some basic investigation of the priest, psych, and the apartment complex. They go to the kids apartment, find a THING has happened, and go to the roof to find the kid pulling the entire complex in to the dreamtime. The only real conflict here is with shadow monster things from the dreamtime. This seems lame to me, much in the same way that I bitch about designers using humanoids too much in fantasy adventures. When every threat is supernatural the tone of the game changes and becomes substantially less visceral, with, I believe, less perceived threat of the players characters. The fantastic made mundane. 

It’s a pretty standard adventure of this type. You get a call from the priest. Go to the church and fight nightmare monsters. Investigate. Go to the next place in the chain, the psych’s office. Fight nightmare monsters and investigate. Go to the apartment complex and investigate and fight nightmare monsters. Find the kids apartment and have the “emotional” ending. 95% of all modern adventures go this way, be it the modern genre of the post-90’s time frame. They both do it. You know, the plot thing.

I’m going to cover a few interesting things about this. First, the monsters/people, etc have a few bullet points in them to help run them, atmospherically. One of them “Creeps along the walls silently like a fluid shadow”, or “Whispering and snickering near you” or “Bang and scrap at the doorway where Father Stone has barricaded himself in” or “Dissipate right in front of your eyes with a terrible screeching noise.” I talk frequently about specificity and in supporting the DM with some advice. These are excellent examples of what I’m talking about. It’s specific examples that the DM can either include directly or riff off of, instead of generalized advice. It’s not text heavy, or dragging on for paragraphs. It’s bulleted for easy reference. It’s exactly how the DM should be supported for a shadow nightmare monster might act and/or interact with the party. 

It also doers this interesting thing, in one place, that tells the DM “Hey, if you want a quicker pace to the game then skip this next section and if you want a slower pace then use it.” That’s interesting advice, especially in one of these plot/investigation things, and something that I don’t think you ever, but rarely, see an adventure do. It’s totally misplaced in this adventure and has you skip some quite evocative content, but, hey, nice idea anyway.

FInally, the designer does have a certain penchant for writing a cliff hanger line of dialog. The hook has a priest calling you late at night and whispering in to the phone in a terrified voice before screaming “I will cast you out and send you back to hell!” Sweet! That’ll wake you up in the morning! As you approach the church, the read-aloud there ends with you hearing a scream coming from within “You have no power in the house of the Lord! Unclean spirit, I cast you out and back to hell!” Uh … fuck yeah! That’s how you write a cut! None of this “What do you do?” interrogatory bullshit. 

Ok. I did my good deed for the day and noted a few non-shitty things. Time to Burn it down. Burn it down baby burn it burn it down!

The read-aloud happens as you transition to each new scene location. It is terrible. Dreadfully pretentious. I guess, I could see how it could be ok in a kind of noir-like voiceover. “The silhouetted gothic form of the River- side Cathedral, with its vaulted but- tresses and harsh pointed arches cutting through the thick misty fog looms over you, stopping you in your tracks. Is it awe, reverence or fear?” or “The palpable hopeless- ness reminds you of one of the City’s harshest truths…“Everyone is just a step away from disaster.”” Classic examples of telling instead of showing. You want the party to feel this way, and it’s up to you, as the designer, to write content that gets them to feel this way. I am not so jaded as I let on that I cannot be moved. But, if you TELL me to fell someway them I’m just going to roll my eyes and say fuck you, at least internally, and fuck with the game. You gotta communicate this shit by showing. What can you describe that makes me THINK “a step away from disaster?” Write that. 

The designer also leaves shit out. A LOT of shit. They center certain pieces of information as being important to the story and then never mention it again, at least not in a way that is useful for the the DM. A serial killer, back on the loose again? Let’s not mention ANYTHING about him other than give him a stat block for his nightmare version. What the fuck do you do if the party starts to investigate the killer? Asks questions about them? Nothing. Well, “make some shit up”, of course. But, the designer should be supporting the DM in this. Thisa happens time and again in the adventure. The priest is troubled by a past exorcism that went wrong. The demon in the church taunts him about this. The party is sure to ask him about it. But, nothing is provided. Sure, it’s all misleading content, but, fuck, if you’re going to introduce something like this then give it a few sentences to support the DM as the party inevitable follo wup on this lead.

Scenes are also incompletely described. You see a doctor sitting in her chair in one intro paragraph. There’s no fucknig mention of the giant pools of blood that surround her, since she slit her fucking wrists. Or, in another, of a body hanging out the window of the apartment complex that you can presumably see from the street, or the piles of people mulling around in the courtyard. No, you must reach those other locations before those details are shared. And yet, those clues, mentioned before then, lead the party to those scenes. If you open a door to a 20-x20 room with a fucking giant dragon in it then you mentioned the fucking dragon inthe read-aloud. Prominanalty. You don’t leave the giant pools of blood as a follow-up detail. This is not the over-explaining that I blast readaloud for. 

I could go on an on on this adventure. I’m particularly disappointed by the lack of dreamtime support, and annoyed at the direct question “whats your worst nightmare” that is asked for the players characters so it can manifest. This is SOOOOO overfuckingused and always not supproted … just as it is here. And the final “battle”/scene on the rooftop is essentially not supported at all …e xcept for a entire page of stat block for the kid. Who the fuck can wade through that during a game while running it? Nothing evocative, nothing to guide. 

A locked door mystery without mentioning the door being locked. 

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages. You can get a decent idea of the writing style from it. It’s a good preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/375944/What-Nightmares-May-Come?1892600

I recommend watching from 30 second onward. I love how the stenographer is diligently recording the chanting.