tenfootpole.org

by The Danger Forge
Self Published
Swords & Wizardry 
Levels 5-7

Khaliassa. The ancient Serpent Queen of lost Samarra. While her empire crumbled long ago, stories of her malice and cruelty have survived the passage of time Now hushed whispers are heard in the Free Cities of Thendar. They speak of the return of the Serpent Queen and the rise of her dark temple in the Forest of Jilan. Tales are told around campfires that her followers roam the land, capturing the innocent to offer as sacrifices at her altar The Prince of Belkan-Tir calls for the aid of a brave party of adventurers to travel to the village of Ilkuz and determine the cause of the local unrest Has Khaliassa truly returned? Or is some other agency operating under the shadow of her ancient legend Who knows what perils await in the dark temple of the Serpent Queen.

This sixty page adventure uses about thirty pages for an verland journey and raid on a serpant man temple. Small fonts, triple columns, long italic read-aloud and mostly just fighting. And, worse, no crumbling serpant man temple vibes. 

You travel to a village, getting attacked at a waystation along the way. Making it to the village, they are having trouble! You travel to a bandit camp and fight them. You travel through a forest to serpent man temple and fight them, across a couple of levels. Along the way you will do nothing other than stab things. 

I guess we can start with the most glaring obvious things: the presentation layer. It’s triple column. With a tiny font. There are few other formatting options selected, just an occasional bolded word in what is otherwise an unrelenting sea of text. You have to wade through it, drowning in it. Wall of text in an almost extreme way. I’m looking at s ection right now and I thought it was a full column of information without a break. I was wrong. There IS a slight indent for new paragraphs, but it’s hard to see. You just can’t pick anything out of it. And then there’s the read-aloud. In italics, of course, so it’s hard on the eyes to read. And it, also, tends to the long side more often than not, sometimes multiple paragraphs. Which means that the players lose interest in the monologue and pull out their phones and start  swiping left. Terse, evocative, punchy. Everything in the adventure contributes to the whole. 

Let’s pop on over to design. You start on a road to a village. It’s a kinbd of hex crawl journey, along the road. There’s only one populated hex along the way so the other hexes are just wanderer rolls. Each hex is two miles long and you make a wanderer check in each hex. That’s fifty wanderer checks. And you just start in the middle of the road. You’re not specifically coming FROM somewhere or something. Which means tha the designer specifically selected starting the party fifty wanderer checks away from the village they are heading to. I just don’t get this. It was obviously not run this way; there’s no way that makes it past playtesting, even by the designer. Worry not though, if youhave no positive checks for wanderers the designer advises just tossing some encounters at the party anyway in order to keep things interesting. There is clearly a disconnect here between modern gaming and OSR gaming, where you are specifically trying to avoid most fights and rolling dice because you are so squishy and take so long to heal. But, whatever. Oh, I’ll tell you whatever, it’s also a Race Against Time adventure! You get eight days to find the temple and then four more till the serpent queen makes it to full power. Get to hacking you fucks! Healbot gonna healbot, I guess …

Let’s look at the writing in the adventure. “In this 30′ x 15′ chamber, the priests of Sass’Ra conducted cleansing rituals prior to engaging in ceremonial activities. It also served as a storage space for potions and sacred fluids central to their practices.” Isn’t that fun! You learned about the history of the room! And the room dimension, already found on the map! The fucking adventure is FULL of backstory. EVERYTHING gets a backstory. It’s all in that tiny three column font shit and you never know what is relevent and what isn’t. I fucking hate it. I want to play the fucking game not learn history. The focus on the text should be on information that is gameable. Not on tangential information. Sure, you can drop some shit in here and there, especially if the DM can riff on it. But we’re not making a historical study of the fucking ruin. 

Worry nt though, the read-aloud text also over-reveals information. Why engage in the trivial back and forth between the DM and players that is the heart of the game when you can now get all of the details in the read-aloud and just concentrate on rolling the dice in order to kill whoever is in the room, that WILL attack immediatly. But, also, there’s no order of battle, so everyone is just standing in place and dying with no reactions to nearby rooms, etc. I guess that famous snake/yaun-ti hearing is fucked. All you’re doing here is killing shit. Walk in to a room and kill shit. Walk in to another room and kill shit. I understand that one of my favs, G1, was essentially the same, but somehow there was some variety there. The whip thing. The orc rebellion. The giant intrigue. This has noe of that. There’s no real crumbling jungle temple vibe. No real snake man vibe. Just enter a room and kill something. 

“shadows seem to push against your flickering light” I think not.

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages. More than enough to get a sense of the challenges you face as a DM.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/484979/the-temple-of-the-serpent-queen-swords-wizardry?1892600

by Mark Kerruish
Self Published
BECMI
Level 1

Murder! There’s been a murder in the graveyard! And who is digging up graves in the Old Section? The vicar needs your help.

This 21 page adventure has the party fighting some bandits and then some skeletons. It’s got a hint of Miss Marple in it, which I enjoy, but the elemnts outside of that are pretty weak. 

Ok, so, hear me out. I like it when people actlike people in an adventure. When they are more than just generic cardboard cutouts and instead remeble something that you can relate to. I also like MURDER. Well, british murder mysteries, especially in the pre-70’s period. I used to watch one every sunday while reviewieng a new Chinese restaurants General Tso chicken on my insta. And, thusly, this thing has a c oupe of points that appeal to me. 

Aristo apprentice chick “The Lady” is sent to a village by her Necromancer master to get a book. It’s buried in a crypt that can only be opened by the hand of a loyal servant. Last servant is dead. She’s hired some bandits to dig up graves until she finds one their old servants, at which point she will animate him and get him to open the crypt, allowing her to snatch the book. I have no idea why but that appeals to me. Tropy, maybe. Convoluted, but in a way that makes sense to me, I guess. The graverobbers eventually get heard by the odl gravedigger and they murder him and leave a note saying something like “Paychback for looting ma’s body you old coot!” The village vicar has a matron lady who keeps house, cooks meals and the like. She’ll be familiar to anyone who watches english village murder mysteries. She is brining the gravedigger his breakfast, finds the body, and thus comes the vicar and constable and the party gets involved. The party tracks the graverobbers back, kills/captures them, and then sets upin the graveyard on night to in cse there are more. Casper gives them a warning and they go tothe vicerage only to find the door open, the vicar missing, and the old matrons throat cut! In to the church they go, to find the lady, some bodyugards, and some skeleton minions, trying to get the vicar to open a crypt. Final battle. 

The vicar and matron are pretty well done examples of those tropes and I think it helps give the adventure that air of realism that I like. The plot plot here is quite simple; two combats and a pit trap. And the DM is activly advised to keep the party in the graveyard and away from the vicarage so the murder and kidnapping can occur. Bleech! Anyway. Very simple adventure, but with some above average village parts.

There’s weirdness in the read-aloud. One section reads “Mrs Calmly explains that she took Everig the groundskeeper his breakfast at the cottage as usual. She found his body in the cottage and raced to tell the vicar. Both then went to get Constable Bier and the three of them returned to the groundskeeper’s cottage. They found a strange note – Mrs Calmly doesn’t reveal details of the note – and decided to walk together to do a further inspection of the Graveyard” That almost seems like it’s supposed to be DM notes instead of read-aloud. And there is a decent amount of read-aloud. A column and a half to kick things off, with more to come after that. Longish NPC descriptions full of stat blocks and possessions and backstory, although it does generally have a sentence in it to hang your hat on. That sentence is really the only important thing in any of the NPC descriptions and is all that was really needed.

As mentioned, there are some great realism moments here, like an acolyte putting a body in a bag/sack to sew them into, and pausing for the party to check it out. Sometimes the cart gets before the horse, with a description of something like that and then “Another acolyte (same stats) called Parsim waits outside with a coffin – he has vomited and looks queasy.” I note that you walked right by this dude before going in to the hut. It’s a great little vignette and detail, but it should have come BEFORE the inside of the hut was described. Just little things like that, over and over again, that shows a pretty basic lack of overly through editing. And, I’m not sure skill checks ever made it in to BECMI? Maybe in the Cyclopedia? That makes me think this WAS a conversion. I like a back and forth with the party instead of a “make an int check to find the blood trail going over the low wall.” Dice rolls to figure things out are a travesty in a game. The back and forth between the party and the DM is the should of the game.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview kind of gets you in to the swing of things, you can get the vibe and the “this is gonna be text heavy” nature of the thing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/469218/a-grave-matter?1892600

By Mark Meredith
Dice Monkey
OSE 
Level ... 1?

The villagers of Ethan’s Vale seek out a group of heroes to find the whereabouts of the strange Drengr raiders that have been causing harm to the area. As the heroes track the Drengr higher and higher into the mountains, they realize that the premature winter that has struck the land may be connected to the Drengrs’ actions. The heroes must stop the Blackwinter Court from awakening Winter’s Heart, an immense frost elemental, and prevent the ancient magics of a renegade unseelie fey from consuming the land. With bravery and cunning, the heroes must brave the icy dangers of the Fey lands and save the land from the doom of Blackwinter.

This 64 page adventure is a linear railroad conversion from 5e, presenting 21 encounters in about forty pages. It is exactly what one would expect from a 5e adventure. 

Some D&D ads have popped on TikTok for me, for the next edition/version of the books. There were, like, six comments on the ad. I found the few comments to be weird; there should have been more? And, they were all VERY negative. And, thusly, this cycle of “D&D’s Renaissance” completes, with the brand sleeping now for fifteen or so years until it reemerges again in to the pop culture spotlight, parked by WoTC while a succession of VP’s get hired and fired by Ha$bro for lack of monetization. And this is all relevant to this review because this may be the poster-child for a 5e adventure. And we all know that’s not a compliment.

Orcs are attacking villages. The party tracks them down to find that they made a deal with the Fey. The party tracks the fey to a dwarf city, abandoned, and through a frost gate to the Feywild. There they kill some fey and fight a giant ice elemental. 

This takes place over 21 encounters that are all going to happen in a row. A railroad, so to speak. Now, I HATE railroad adventures, but, also, I’m willing to admit that there may be a place for them in certain game types. Like 5e plot ‘adventures.’ I find them worthless dice rolling exercises without merit, but, some people are looking for an activity with friends instead of a game. I note, however, the lack of agency in this adventure, in particular. Even within the encounters/scenes the party has little to no agency. This extends to their deaths. If you attack the orc village and they kill you then the orcs heal you up, bringing you back. Not even in death can you escape the railroad! Too extreme? When talking to the orcs chief (where you are brought for questioning after they bring you back to life) then you need to be completely truthful with him. No deception allowed! Because “Unless the players are completely truthful, he will be dissatisfied.” There’s no fucking reason for this. God forbid the party do ONE LITTLE THING that is not in alignment with what the designer wants to have happen.

The usual issues with formatting. Long sections of read-aloud. In italics. Long DM text with little to no formatting to help the DM wade through things. Abstracted textual descriptions that do little to help bring an environment to life. In spite of sections of purple prose. “They find a Drengr Seidmadur, or spellcaster, casting a ritual over the rocks …” You mean an orc shaman? Got it. Did I mention the skill checks? Yes, abstracted skill checks. [Insert tired story of  Knowledge:Religion to sneak past gate guards … with appropriate dirty looks from DM]

The tropes are heavy in this one. I guess the modern trend of religion being bad is over and has moved on to the Fey being the faceless bad guys now. Every other adventure seems to have them evil and plotting and angry at [something in history] and the bitter about the encroachment of the mortal races. In contract, of course, to the noble orcs found in this adventure. While in league with the fey, they are the goodies. When raiding farms they burn down bard, but only after releasing all of the farm animals first, and, of course, don’t kill people. The orc wolfmaster cares deeply for his pack and will try to speak to the party once one of this pack has fallen. If you are winning against the orc village then the leader calls down an avalanche to bury you until they all escape. He has a resigned look on his face. He’s sad. All that’s missing is a single tear as he looks at the litter. Meanwhile the fey are just faceless stat blocks to kill. There is no nuance here. There is no complexity. It’s just a ham handed sledgehammer of a tale. Why not make everyone an asshole? Or, at least, lean in that direction. Villagers, orcs, fey, dwarves. Insular and self-interested, the lot of them. You know, giving the party a choice. Ahh, and there is the rub.

The adventure ends when the party meets Lareth the Beautiful and his ice elemental. “Temintariel Elenvaul, the enigmatic leader of the Court, stands in silent vigil before the massive, glowing heart of Winter” Ah yes, he is behind the entire thing and we don’t hear anything about him until the final encounter. Literally Lareth.

Pathetic earthlings, hurling your bodies out in to the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the adventures, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror. But, sure, why not just throw some words on a page and charge $20 for it instead. Dude obviously put some effort in to this. But, also, he focused on the wrong things and made some of the most common mistakes in adventure writing. Meaning this is blunt force effort rather understanding the purpose of the design. And, thusly, just more conversion trash.

Oh, I forgot that this “lower level adventure for parties just getting started in the world” has you fighting a band of frost giants. Uh huh.

This is $20 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. You get to see four or so encounters at the end of the preview, and those are quite representative of the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482815/the-doom-of-blackwinter-old-school-essentials-edition?1892600

By Petras Vaznelis
Archon Games
Generic/Universal

Throughout the realm, there are those that whisper legends regarding the end of days – rumors of a great entity, cast beyond the veil of reality, scratching at the seams with rapacious vigor. Borne on the tide of arcane fires, the breach of their return would yield an apocalyptic cataclysm. As the onset of this pressure fractures the realm, dark intention finds physical manifestation amidst the daily lives of those who inhabit the established territories. Ancient relics, imbued leylines, and twisted fiends all carry traces of this ruinous distortion. Though the omens chime of certain doom, there are those that seek these nodes for their own gain. Cults of all sizes rise and rally around the confluence of arcana found in these treasures, locations, and abominations. Heralds to the onset of Armageddon, the conclaves muster and channel arcane power from beyond the veil. All the while, the reach of the fabled ‘Dark One’ lengthens across the realm.

This forty page adventure is full of overwrought text and a simplistic plot that doesn’t take advantage of the opportunities it does have. I wonder who this was written for?

We’ve got a double helping of tropes today. First, The Evil One is coming back. Second, you’re shipwrecked on an island with no gear. You make your way to the lighthouse, not lit, and force your way inside. The keeper tells you to go to the storehouse for oil and wicks to relight the fire to summon a rescue ship. You fight some barnacles on the way, go to the storehouse, find the keepers helper and some zombifiedish dudes and an avatar of The Evil One. You go back, light the fire, and a ship full of the Evil Ones cultists show up and capture you. Game over. I’m not simplifying at all, that’s the adventure, all forty pages of it. 

Needless to say, the text is wordy. There are DM notes, lengthy, all over the place, as a matter of routine. Such as as “the party will have to force their way inside the lighthouse” or “the party will need to convince the lighthouse keeper that … “ and then some lengthy exposition. Stating the obvious. More than this though is the overwrought text that is presented. I THINK it’s supposed to be read-aloud. “Your balance is rendered naught by the tumult of the waters. As you make an effort to scramble from the boat, you fall into the frigid waters” I can’t imagine ever reading that outloud to the party. But, then again, I also can’t imagine this being notes for the DM to run the scene? “ a small tower stands defiant amidst the wind.” or a window opens and you hear “shouts from the weathered watcher.” 

The text is full of this. Overwrought and purple. Lengthy descriptions without much formatting. Lengthy DM advice sections that state the obvious. And this is to the detriment of actual information. At one point you see some crabs on the beach and can examine them, only to find that they are unusual. Or, as the text says “notice that something is distinctly unnatural about these particular creatures.” But that’s all you get. What is unnatural about them? I’ve no idea. We’re offered no information. It’s just a throwaway statement, behind a throwaway skill check. We don’t want, when designing an adventure, to TELL people things. We want to SHOW them things. We want to provide an explanation that makes the players think “wow, those crabs are weird and unnatural!” But that’s generally not present here.

The adventure presents a straightforward plot that is unsatisfying. We have a lighthouse, on a lonely rock island. Away from everyone, and help. There should be a feeling of claustrophobia here. The party should feel uneasy. Those thrall zombies should be a threat to moving about the island. The avatar should hunt the party. Catch glimpses of it. Fortify themselves in the lighthouse. Be under siege. Work up the tension to a release that is earned  by the tension of the gameplay at the table. A fantastic opportunity to try and light the beacon and keep it lit all while under siege. But there’s not much here at all that would facilitate that. Instead it’s a straightforward “have this encounter and then have this encounter” key, and not many of them at that. 

And then, of course, the cultists show up and capture you, ending the game. Yeah fun!

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages and shows you none of the actual adventure to make a purchasing decision. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/483575/dread-shores-black-horizons?1892600

By Todd Leback
Third Kingdom Games
OSE
Level ... 5?

Dry Gulch is built upon the bones of a much older city, Lisau, that fell into ruin over seven hundred years prior to the current day. Almost no traces of the city remain aboveground, but belowground are plenty of re? minders of the old city’s existence. Much of this is unknown to the citizens for Dry Gulch; the Guild of Silence, un? der its current master Uco Fridtack, dis? courages exploration of this under? ground network of ancient tunnels, sewers, and cellars. This is partially be? cause the ruins still contain dangers — creatures and spells of antiquity that have moldered these many years — but also because it is useful for the Guild of Silence to have a network of hidden tunnels that connects multiple buildings surreptitiously.

This 46 page adventure details six mini-dungeons undr a major city, all connected together loosly. I really like the concept, but the execution tends to the dry and overly wirteen/padded side of the adventure spectrum. The undercities of the Petal Throne are still waiting to be discovered.

This is issue 35 of Popilated Hexes. Last issue it looks like they descrived a city in a hex. This issue has a description of the undercities dungeon, rather than hexes. I love undercity dungeons! So off we go! Visions of tube transfer stations and isometric DL1 maps dance in my head! We’ve got six little standalone regions under the city, connected, in one way or another, via some long abstracted tunnels. (Which, for the record, I’m ok with even though I usually complain about abstraction. In this case it serves a purpose and can even add some mystery, as, for example, wthe wizards bring a prisoner down a LONG tunnel to the Guild of Silence area for “supplemental questioning.”) 

Each little section has it’s own, say, primary entrance, and is connected to some other areas as well. In fact, this probabally goes on too long, the entranes that is. We get an overview of areas, a listing of all f the underground entrances, a specific listing of each area in a general way, the conditions of each area … I think there might be another section as well for each area, before we get to the keys. Seriously, you go through, like five different “overviews” for each of the six major dungeon areas. At some point you’ve got to wash your hands of it and put the information in the section for that specific area. I don’t know, the conditions for that area, at a minimum? It ends up that each area is so fragmented, at that so much information for each area is scattered throughout the pages, that it’s hard to put it all together. Lot’s of flipping with this one.

The overall vibe of this thing is … normalcy? Mundanity? I love a touch of the normal,of the real world, in an adventure. I think it adds spice to see real life show up. In one of the rooms you find a journal telling how the thieves guild is entwined with the ruling council, and “as well as a general picture of how profitable the Cantering Stallion [ed: the front taven] is (very) and the frustrations of running a business in the hospitality industry (extreme).” Now see, that’s the kind of sly shit that I can run with and GO. A kind of throw-off sentence that contains mountains of gameable information in it for any DM. When I say I’m looking for shit to riff off of that’s what I mean. 

But, also, those moments are, I think, few and far between in this thing. What’s far, far more common are long sections of text, padded out, that just have mundane details in it. We get a section telling of the apprentices in the thieves guild, working in the front tavern, which include “Heson Du (F1, 4 hp). A young lad, strong (STR 17) and cocky with the assurance of youth, Heson is desperate to escape Dry Gulch and see the wider world. When not working in the forges (Area 8 of Issue 34) he spends his time in the Cantering Stallion, listening to the tales of merchants and adventurers as they tell of their experiences.” That’s a nice background portrait, but not really informative. A few keywords would have done as much. The frail consumptive waif with a brilliant mind, for example. 

And these sorts of long sections of text, overly long for what they are trying to accomplish, are everywhere. And they are do this for the most mundane of purposes. “The stairs level out after descend? ing 15’, into a corridor that runs for an? other fifteen feet before opening up into a chamber measuring 15’ x 15’. There are three exits leading out of this cham? ber: open corridors leading out of the center of the south and eastern walls, and a stout oaken door set into the cen? ter of the western wall. The door leads to Fridtack’s personal office (1.3.2),” Well fuck, that told me nothing. And then we get a hudge section on the door trap and how to pick it. This, the hallway map description and door/lock porn, are the only things in this key and it takes, I don’t know, a column of text? And the next room openes with “Fridtack’s personal office is here, just at the bottom of the stairs, behind a well-secured locked and trapped door.” That’s, I think, the third time the adventure tells us where the dudes office is and which door its behind. Another section has a column to describe ton empty room with two doors in it. And describe is a strong word, I don’t think the room proper is very described at all, maybe a dust trail. But backstory, where the doors go, etymology, etc? All present.

I’d like to also mention two specific encounters, as examples of design. The first is a room, kind of sealed off and blockaded in one of the populated sections of the thives guild area. In it is a kind of abandoned library. There’s a collapsed bookshelf by a door, and a ghost comes out from under it and attacks you. This stands out to me because of the nature of a ghost vs a humanoid monster. If you look at the humand monsters, kobold, goblin, orc, gnoll, hobgob, giant, etc, then you notice that, essentially, there’s just a humanoid monster for each HD. It’s just “a 3hd monster.” And in this case the ghost is being used in much the same way. It’s just something to stab. tit comes out from under the bookcase and attacks. It’s nature, as a ghost, and all of the subtext and cultural heritage that brings, is completely absent. Now, certainly every encounter doesn’t have to illustrate a justaposition between the order and chaos of mankind, but, also, fuck man, it’s a ghost! You know, unfinished business and all that jazz! Sure, I guess it canbe a murder ghost. But its presented as just something to stab, a single enconter and then you move on with your life. B O R I N G!

The second one if with a mummy. In this case, once you kill the mummy you could find some earrings … if you unwrap the mummy. I love this sort of “hidden in plain sight” stuff. Looking under the bridge, at the bottom of the chasm, behind the waterfall, cutting open the purple worm stomach, or … unwrapping the mummy. The assumptions that people make about their environment. “This is a monste encounter and I don’t need to search the monster to find the treasure’ or, maybe “i only need to do a surface search.,” “Mummy” is now a monster, and is treated, by someplayers, much like a naked orc. But, it’s not. It’s body wrapped in bandages. With, potentially, things underneath it. That’s good.

But, really, these moments are. little far apart for my tastes. What we’re getting here, mostly, is some mudanity, for the most part. It feels disconnected from each other, mostly. It doesn’t feel like the undercity. It doesn’t feel lie it’s a part of something larger. It just feels kind of like the interior of the great pyramid of Giza. Dusty, boring, and empty. 

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, and shows you nothing of interest to make a decision on.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/484818/phm-35?1892600

By David Henley
David Henley Productions
OSE
Levels 1-3

For weeks, your expedition has trekked through the overgrown jungles of these islands in search of antiquities. At last, you reach the crumbling ruins known locally as “The Sunken Sisters” – named for the twin weathered statues guarding the entrance, draped in vines. What looks like a massive stone door once barred entry into the shadowed interior. But it has long since fallen, leaving an unbroken gloom within that puts your torches to shame. A darkness that raises more questions than it answers. What civilization erected such monolithic stonework here, only to become lost to the ravaging jungle? You’ve heard legends of an ancient apocalyptic event known as the Atuang (Sky Fire) that reshaped this region – could that cataclysm be the key to unraveling this archaeological mystery? More importantly, are you prepared for what primordial secrets or perils may lurk unchallenged in the lightless nadir of this forgotten temple complex? One thing is certain – those depths were never meant for the unprepared. Venture inside at your own risk and solve the enigmatic riddle of The Sunken Sisters…if you dare.

This 35 page single column adventure uses about fifteen pages to describe twelve rooms. The dungeon is empty. The titular Sunken Sisters do not appear. You will die in this adventure. Of boredom.

I don’t know what to say here. I guess I try to start with something good? This thing has a void entity in it. I’ve liked that as a concept ever since I saw The Void, as a supplement in a local game shop back in the 3.0 era, when everyone was releasing niche products. This concept of nothingness, more than a sphere of annihilation but more lovecraftian, either in its chaos or in its implied order, has a certain appeal. A violation of the laws of nature. 

So, we’ve got that marketing blurb, above. It talks about the Sunken SIsters. The name of the adventure is The Sunken Sisters. As far as I can tell, they don’t appear anywhere. No where. There are no twin statues flaking anything. The entrance has “A weathered statue of a jungle spirit guards the entrance” That’s not the sunken sisters. It is a rather abstracted and generic description of a statue. One that should have had a description. What the fuck is a jungle spirit? No specificity. Whatever, I guess. They are not inside, they are not outside. I have no fucking clue. The adventure intro is on the last page, weirdly, but it doesn’t say. And the entrance room, full of backstory about the temple, doesn’t say either. I have no idea.

Speaking of inside and outside, I have no idea if this thing is underground or above ground ruins. Lots of stairs down and so on. But, also, there’s this room “• This room’s ceiling is a cracked, partially collapsed glass dome.” So … we’ve got an above ground roof to it? There is, of course, no description of the temple ruin above ground or this room as a secondary entrance. It just is. This makes my heart heavy.

The writing is abstracted everywhere. “Ancient frescoes, marred by cracks and water stains, depict figures who seem familiar yet remain unknown – heroes and heroines of a bygone era.” No specificity to it at all. Specificity is the soul of the narrative. Tell us about the frescoes, not the conclusion drawn from the frescoes. Another room has the description “Linked to the previous room by an open doorway. This circular room lies empty, except for a trapdoor on the floor.” That surly conjures the imagery of a jungle temple, yes? Repeating things we know from the map, like the entrance and circular nature of the room. And yet providing nothing to actually tell us about the room at all. 

The encounters are almost all “roll on a table and see what you get.” And the treasure, what little is present, is the same thing. Roll on a short six entry table and hope you get something. I can’t STAND this. Pick a fucking encounter. A trap, whatever the fuck. And tailor the fucking room to it. Make even the SLIGHTEST amount of effort to provide value. But, no.

There are, I think, four different rooms in this adventure each with a circle of pillars in them. None of them have any special significance. You do get to roll on a random table in one of them. But no special effects or interactivity. In. Any. Of. The. Four. Rooms. It’s like putting a chasm room in a dungeon with a very well constructed bridge over it, with massive safety railings and a current inspection sticker, and well lit so you’re sure there are no monsters nearby to shoot at you. Why the fuck does this exist? Certainly not every room has to be a funhouse or set piece, but the dungeon should have SOMETHING in it, yes?

“While accommodating rituals, the circular Columned Chamber’s primary role was likely as an antechamber through which supplicants entered the grandeur of the main temple’s inner sanctum through the ornate gate passage.” Oh boy! History!

There is nothing here. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is broken. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/485297/the-sunken-sisters?1892600

By Eon Fontes-May
YouCanBreatheNow Games
OSR
Levels 3-4

For as long as we can remember, the landmark has been a facade of solid stone. False windows and doors carved into the rock. But Sly Diego found a way inside. He says it’s hollow, there’s a whole building in there. And now he’s telling anyone and everyone the way in. So… who will be the first to plunder the creations of the mad elementalist and discover his strange fate?

This eleven page adventure uses four pages to describe about thirty locations on a four level wizard home/tower. It avoids a most traditional wizard tower mistake but is padded out with bland writing. 

The old wizzo home is slowly being turned in to stone, from the outside in. Hence it looks like a stone facade. Dude found a way in through an underground river coming up through a well and has been selling the location. Thus we have an adventure in a small two-story home with a connected wizard tower. And when I said “avoids a mistake” I meant that part, the layout of the map. Instead of just a tower we’ve got the attached home as well. We’ve got some good secret doors in the place, some secret tunnels for the servants, teleport circle, extradimensional biomes. It’s doing a good job of trying to combat the traditional issues that a small tower has ni terms of map complexity. It’s still not gonna be the greatest exploration ever. It is, after all, a house. But it does well with what it has for the size to jazz the travel between locations up just a little bit. A mural of a classic garden, and if you push the door handle then you find the secret door in to the wardrobe in the next room. Nifty! 

There’s also a pretty decent magic item or two, like an ever-glowing coal. Which is exactly what it sounds like. What kind of shenanigans can you get up to with something like that? I can think of a lot! And I love magic items like that. Not just a mechanical bonus but something that you can use, creatively, as a player. There’s another adventuring party also and their descriptions are pretty decent as well. “Unarmored and keenly aware of it” or “a bit too brave” or “a real cutthroat.” That’s pretty much what I need in order to riff on it. I’m down for this. 

I mentioned the other adventuring party. A great deal of the play in this, I suspect, is that party interacting with the party. The environment here is a little static and without the other party there to add some hit and run tension then I suspect its going to be a rather unassuming adventure. There’s very little on the other party, but there are designers notes on them. I suspect that, instead of the designery notes that could have been replaced with a tip or two on their hit & run stuff, or a couple of ideas. This falls in line with a desire for the designer to provide the DM options and tools to make the game fun.

And then there’s the rest of the thing.

The map is hand drawn and a bit hard to grok. I don’t like “hard to grok.” One of the major conceits in tenfootpolelandia is that things shouldnt be hard to grok. The monster descriptions are kind of meh. There’s a whole page of them and they just don’t really have descriptions at all. At least not really about how they look, act, etc. It’s more backstory than relevant to play at the table. Make those monsters scary and give them great things to do! 

And, the descriptions are generally poor and padded out. We learn tha the house was built over a small cave with a river in it that they use for fresh water and to dump their sewage in to. That’s pretty obvious from the “Well” thing in the kitchen and the cave being the way in. We’re told that one of the rooms was once the loading room where they stored good, but is now empty. Where have I heard that one before? As, yes, the platonic example, the war trophy room that went on and on only to end with “and now its empty.” Or, for the winter biome, noting that water magic was always the dudes weakest elemental magic so he made it solid water, snow, in order to help him control it. Great. No gameplay effect. There’s a “dread windmill that inspires fear!” but, really, the next sentence then describes the windmill and shows us, instead of telling us, about what it is that causes that fear. “A skilled thief can bypass the door lock and trap, of course.” Yeah, that’s what they do. And a fighter can stab the monster, of course. It must be that every room here is padded out with this sort of thing. This makes the entries long and confusing. 

Not that there’s a whole lot going on here anyway. As I noted, that other party is going to have play a HUGE part of the adventure. There’s some stuff to interact with but also it feels more like one of those museum tour adventures. The “turning to stone” thing isn’t used very well beyond window dressing. A room where dude was growing a gibberring mouther now is all stone and looks like freaky flesh sculpture walls. That’s all. And, we’ve got a lot of stone guardians and the like to battle.

The passage elements here are pretty nice. And, thirtyish rooms in four pages is not bad. But it lacks the verve that good writing brings to the game, inspiring the DM and planting an image in their head. And the interactivity just feels … sullen?

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing, so good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/478704/occluded-keep-of-the-doomed-elementalist?1892600

By Glenn Robinson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 4-6

Once upon a time, this was Dwarf land, with all their stone houses and secret tunnels. But then, they vanished, like they were never here. And we came along, making our homes in this old, empty place. Some of their buildings were still standing, but they were like empty shells, missing all the cool stuff they used to have. But guess what? Folks say the dwarves are coming back. We’ve only heard stories about them, never actually seen one for real. But our grandparents, they tell us if a dwarf’s shadow touches you, you gotta spit on the ground to keep away bad luck.

This 46 page adventure has 32 linear rooms in an old dwarf base under a hill. It’s a weird one in that while it APPEARS to have some descriptions and interesting things, it actually does not. With a decent mythology and final encounter, it doesn’t really give you a decent journey, just a destination.

This adventure has one really interesting thing going on. The final room is a large underground lake in a cavern. In th e middle is an island, and there’s a flooded causeway just a few inches under the water that can get you there. On it is the big boss, trapped, because he’s surrounded by water. If the water level lowers then the dude can get free. Ought oh! The use of water brings back those cultural memories. An underwater causeway is great imagery as well. There’s a big  skull on the island, which is great. All pretty well done. Well, except maybe for the fact that you don’t know what you are doing if you stop the water.Youget a clue, in the form of some wall writing in a room with the flow of water in it, room two: “My flow holds back the darkness Hinder me not, lest you awaken the shadow in our hearts “ We get one hint and it’s a bit ambiguous, not knowing yet that the dude lives on an island underground, etc. Just, hey, don’t push the button. I’m not morally opposed to Fuck Around And Find Out. But, pushing you’re luck, and making intentional decisions about risk/reward just hit better. Knowing what you are doing can cause problem, but, man, I really want that Hand of Vecna … this is the tension that D&D thrives on. So, decent concept for that last room with the overall effect being dragged down by the decisions you make in room two. 

The rest of the adventure, I’m afraid, I can’t be so kind to.

No real backstory. We’re trying, it feels like, to tell it through the keys. Which is a great concept. But it comes off VERY disconnected. There’s a road, for example, running through the forest. It crosses a stream. Further in there’s a pool. The pool is a kind of keyed encounter. It tells us that there is a sign on the road where it crosses the stream that the body of water is Stonegrievers Creek. Well, fuck me man, that would have been nice to know back on the road, yeah? And it does this all over the place. There are these little bits of info that ae out of place of where they should be. 

There MIGHT be a wilderness adventure here also, to kick us off, as you travel to the hill. The hexes are one mile across and you have to travel, I don’t know, two hexes on a road? There are really only three hexes presented, completely, on the map. This is supported by two or three pages of tables for you to roll on. A 2 in 6 chance every turn. Yes, every turn. No less than eight different tables to walk … two miles? Fortunately the vast VAST majority of the stuff is not an actual encounter. It’s a bunny rabbit running away or some “escalate the tension” stuff, like the wind blowing hard. And, the cyclops, dragon and wyvern table. All three. No, not all three. You have to pick one, to lair in the dwarf hill. But all three are presented. I fucking hat eit when they do this. Just pick one and go for it man. Theme the fucking thing around it. Dragon dung, a pair of binoculars torn apart. Pick one and go, otherwise it comes off, as it does here, generic and perfunctory. 

Inside the dwarf home we get … not much in the way of interesting writing.The Well room is described as “clear and fresh.” This is outstanding for this adventure. Most rooms do not really get a description. More of a “contents of the room” instead. And, sometimes, “Reception: 30′ tall space of dressed stone and a mosaic floor with geometric patterns.” The scriptorium trades prose for bullet points telling us about leather books, and then dusty bookcases, and then large crates. The description is disjointed. It doesnt consider the room as a whole and, if we were to go with the formatting it is using, the bookcase and crates should probably appear first, as the objects most likely to be noticed first.

The formatting in this digest is using 2/3rd’s of the page for the text and one third, essentially a side column, for extra information. Not a bad idea. I’m not sure I’m supportive of it in the way it is used here, with things for rooms ‘not on this page’ appear. It’s trying to keep things relevant, but, there’s too much relevant in some places. WHich could mean rekeying to solve the problem (oh, but it’s mostly linear!) or putting the stats in the main text (Heresy! Or, let us not be too devoted to our conceits and instead keep the eye on the ball of usability) 

There’s a lot of magic treasure and it’s quite decent. Nogs Grasping Staff sometimes appears to crackle with electricity and has a hand on the end of it. You can grab things! And, also, shocking grasp! The thing is PACKED with potent and unique magic items, almost to a Monty Haul level. 

But, also “Each room is unlit with a name engraved above the door. Plain stone walls methodically scored by picks.” is not the height of evocative description. At places things are mentioned never to make an appearance again. Any depth hinted at here is lost. I’m not angry at this one, just disappointed., You can see that someone had some pretty decent ideas, with bandits, the lost king, etc. But the size, combined with the lack of follow through and consistency in following up on its ideas, and their implications, causes this one to miss the mark.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages. More than enough to see the “intro”, wilderness, and first few rooms. Great preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/486391/shadow-of-the-deep-king?1892600