Off The Books

Posted on August 28, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Dana Floberg
Self Published
5e
Level 5

A magical mishap occurs when a handful of freshmen enchantment students cast a modified version of the awaken spell on a fantasy epic in the university library, and now characters are leaping off the page – literally! As heroes, villains, and damsels come to life, the librarians need someone to restore narrative order to the unruly tales. But as the lines between fiction and reality blur, some of the characters begin to suspect their stories are cages they’d rather not return to at all.

This 19 page adventure details a few encounters in a library with fiction characters from books. It has a certain funhouse design aesthetic. The core encounters have interesting fundamentals, but lack in their implementation, both mechanically and in terms of presentation.

Our exploration of The Storyteller Collective Workshop continues, I assume, since this adventure thanks those folks. As with previous entries, there are some decent foundational ideas marred by a lack of experience. But, again with this one, that’s what being a first time writer is all about. 

We are once again in the default 5e setting of magical RenFairre, with this time the issue being in a large library. It seems that characters are coming out of storybooks and appearing in the real world. Someone has to get in there and, literally, close the books. I think I remember a Dungeon adventure like this? And, certainly, a room or two in old FunHouse dungeons. This, also, has a bit of the funhouse vibe to it, with contrived situations from fiction being the reason for the season. If you’re gonna have a RenFairre world then you’re going to have libraries, and they are going to have issues. Not my thing, but certainly A LOT of other peoples thing. Our hooks are short: maybe you’re here to research something and need to solve the situation efore you can, or, a buddy caused the problem and begs you to help out so they won’t get expelled. The first is the standard “I placed the McGuffin here” that can be relied upon in any adventure while the second at least has a sheepish student begging for help, both better than being hired. 

Chick from a romance novel gets out and starts reading her own book, bringing the villain and hero in to the world … and some self-awareness on her part. You go from room to room (about seven in total) encountering some situation, resolve it, and move on, until you close the last book in the last room and deal with the fallout of nulling out, or not, someones existence by closing the book on them.  Along the way you pick up a side-kick or two and deal with the asshole good guy from the novel.

The strength here is in the room encounters and the hints of personality that come with them. A troll asking a riddle, a wishing well that knows the absolute truth about the universe that you can use as a lie detector, a toad needing to be kissed that can gets larger each time … and can be used to solve a puzzle, or a band of merry pirates and their White Whale they hunt. Good concepts, solid and recognizable and good pretty for the cultural memories that can bring more to an encounter from the players and DMs own backgrounds. And a little extra here and there, n the way of words, a sly recognition or the tropes. Our pirates “Like many fictional pirates, they don’t actually do a lot of murder or pillaging, but they are extremely cool.” So, conceptually some good ideas with some hints of personality that’s unusual in a 5e adventure. Someone’s soul hasn’t yet died from writing. 

Fear not, gentle designer, the ennui will come. Until then, let me help you with the self-doubt …

The biggest issue here is one of parties ability to impact the adventure. Yes, the old Quantum Ogre and his pal the {fuck, I’ve been driking and can’t remember the name. The party has the ability to make meaningful decisions and their actions are not irrelevant. What the fuck is that called again?] So, major issue.

We need to deal with the doors unlocking when you defeat a monster. This means one thing: YOU WILL FACE MY ENCOUNTER THE WAY I ENVISIONED AND FUCK YOU FOR TRYING TO AVOID IT. Perhaps a little overly harse, especially for a new designer, but the ability for the party to use their own wit and abilities to avoid/overcome something is a key point in roleplaying. This shows up in myriad different ways in the adventure, including monsters that spor you as soon as you enter the room, Ye Olde Door Unlocyky, a disguised baddie who has no sign of ill intent on you Detect Deceit roll, and, worst of all … the goody goody guy who has been brought back to life if you kill him too soon by Sir Not Appearing In This Movie. I know, I know, you want to set up a cool moment. You want him showing up in the final battle. But you don’t get to write cool moments, as a designer. Oh, you get to POTENTIALLY set them up. But this isn’t the designers story and it’s not the DMs story. It’s the fucking players story. We do not take away their [fuck! Whats the word?]  As a designer I appreciate some tips on what to do if that happens (WHEN, if I’m playing) but you can’t rob the players. 

There are a host of other issues also. The NPC’s descriptions oculd be better, and come off as a wall of text. They need some trimming and more bolding/underlining, etc, to make it easy to scan their personality traits during play. Likewise, I get that they should be turned up to 11 (as advised by the adventure) but that doesn’t really come through. A few hints in that area could be appreciated. Supporting the DM in their efforts. Wall of text, in fact, comes up several places, most notably in three “interlude” rooms, one of which the party will experience, that come come off as three giants hunks of text that is hard to sort through. I could bitch about the other two unused rooms as well .. might as well quantum that n a plot based adventure like this, otherwise its wasted content. If I COULD explore it, and don’t, then its not wanted. If Im explicitly forbidden to explore ? of it then its wasted. And then there’s the “place what you want’ treasure list. Sure, you get to select from the appendix, but, that’s a cop out. Decide it and put it in. That lets you have puzzles that leverage those items later.

And then there’s a couple of things that just DO. NOT. WORK. There’s a polymorphed cat in the beginning that gets too many words and feels like a pet NPC from a DM campaign, the extra adding nothing to the adventure and the DM being explicitly told “but all this backstory is irrelevant since the party wont be able to grok it out.” Outhgt oh! No good that! Mildly related is the “take a bunch of damage each round while trying to solve a riddle” room. But you get to save for half! Again, this feels contrived, and not in a fun-house manner. No matter what you do you take damage. And no, “the trolls gets to decide who is attacked by the flying books” is not a solution to that issue.

Exposition Dump Wolf is out of plac3 and whatever the designer was going for just doesn’t come through with it. (And, I should not, nor tdo the hero, villain, or self-aware woman. I get where you want to go with this but it just doesn’t come through at all. You need to support the DM more in this.) 

And then there’s the final mechanic: getting pulled in to the books. Not only can characters come out but the party can get sucked IN to a book. But, as implemented, this is weak sauce. It feel like the parties actions have no consequences. It’s just a save DC that gets harder and harder, and doesn’t really have consequence since they can be sucked out again and there’s not really anything in the adventure to support whats IN the books they sucked in to. 

And, peaking of supporting the DM, the final battle has some storybook characters showing up … “Whatever the DM likes.” NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You, the designer, get to decide that. You get to pull in some appropriate things and make them relevant and support the DM in their usage. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but thats the value add that you are adding as the designer.

So, some decent ideas in the puzzles and set up, but not really supported well either for the DM or in the formatting of the text. But, it also doesn’t want me to drink until I’m blackout drunk. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366213/Off-the-Books?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Orb of Goodbyes

Posted on August 25, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Marcos Lopez
Self-published
5e
Level 4

The Orb of Goodbyes is a magical item blessed with the power to extract and erase memories from a willing creature’s mind. When a Waterdeep lieutenant retires from military service, she seeks the Orb to forget a dangerous memory. Those who help procure the Orb from an enchanted cave discover the secrets behind this magical artifact and unearth its hidden memories.  The adventurers may then decide whether to deliver the Orb and help the veteran find peace, or use the item themselves to release burdens from their past.

This twelve page adventure has a small cave dungeon with seven rooms and three encounters, using four pages to do so. It’s neither as pretentious or as padded as the blurb or page count would indicate, and does a good job with specifics … when it goes there …

I’ve gotten a series of requests for 5e reviews lately. I don’t mind, and, in fact, am pleased that the 5e crowd is paying more attention to adventure design. But, also, I may have discovered why. This adventure is the designers first that they’ve ever written. Yeah! And, it comes from the Storyteller Collectives ‘Write Your First Adventure’ Workshop series. Ok, so, first, I throw up in my mouth a little every time I hear the word Storyteller, but, it probably comes the cynicism embedded in GenX. Who am I to shit on the younger generations Shining City On A Hill? Anyway, Marcos, congrats on your first adventure. Now, let’s rip it to shreds.

The adventure is not as pretentious as it might seems. “Unearth a haunting memory and discover the power to forget …)” says the marketing blurb on the cover. That really is the worst of it, by far. Reading that primes me to hate something, with memories of every edgelord adventure ever flooding back to me. But, it’s not that bad and it treads lightly on those issues … just barely enough to evoke a hint of it but not wallowing in it Well, ok, no I lied, it does get pretty close to the eye-rolling line with “two soldiers who have a memory from their past that they want to forget.” Again, hints of the edgelord, right? And it’s certainly true that my midwestern D&D values tell me that if you feel compelled to put a trigger warning on something then you probably shouldn’t be using that idea. Except … in this case the retired soldiers want to forget where they buried an evil amulet to no one can scry them and learn its location. It’s not actual trauma as much as its something more mundane. But that’s not what you thought, was it? Two soldiers, forgetting a memory? Yeah, we all know what the fuck that implies. And thus, a trigger warning … and some (brief) suggestions in the appendix on how to massage things to change the soldiers to something else. The inclusion of the soldiers brings to the forefront what that IMPLIES, but the adventure never goes there … leaving the vibe but thats it. It’s an interesting design decision (assuming it was one.) 

The cave involves three memories from people who have used the orb … and one of them is a sad one.  Young gnome sits on the edge of a forest stream crying, waiting for er friend to join her … who never did. Holy fuckballs, sad! The gnome needs the parties help deciding what to do, continue her journey alone, go home, or something else. Is a lost child a bad adventure design choice? No, it’s a trope. But here the similar scene is being framed and presented in the context of a memory someone wanted to forget … with all the baggage it implies. This should cement the power of framing a scene in every readers mind … it’s a very powerful technique. 

Now, I’m not suggesting that watching Precious is a fun time, but, I think we can allow just a little real feels in our game. I’m sure this is an interesting moment when groups encounter it … and its probably on the edge of the line, about to cross over to indie game nonsense, But, not over it, and bringing more to the table than the usual low-effort fantasy trope crap.

The designer also has a talent for an imagined scene OUTSIDE of the generic trope. There’s a tendency to just say “The village is having a celebration!” and leave it at that. Abstracted. Terrible design and writing. But here the designer does a little father. The town square is a dirt lot. The locals are having a community potluck, wooden tables and rough benches, a dancefloor, a handful of ok music performers. That FEELS like a real community event, doesn’t it? A little shitty, a pitch in, people just doing their best. And the stables, overflowing with horses and empty farmers wagons parked outside every which way. Or locals confusing the Orb of Goodbyes with the Goblet of Goobyes, a local everclear shot from the tavern. A rock wall with graffiti with people signing their name outside of the cave … a local custom. This shit makes sense.  It FEELS natural, as if it were imagined first and THEN someone stuck the fantasy on it. It even makes an attempt at supporting the DM in some interesting ways (beyond the trigger rethemes) If the party tries to get the old soldiers to come with them it has some advice for the DM on how to counter it … but also doesn’t explicitly forbid it and supports the DM a bit if THEY do get the soldiers help. That’s what supporting the fucking DM is all about. Or, some advice on how to handle a party that is overly suspicious of the mayor. A common theme in a village, and helps to handle players like me who stab the most obvious NPC first and lets Pelor sort out the damage. 

But were also facing a new designer here, and it shows.

There are lazy contrivances used in multiple ways. You can’t exit a room in the cave until you “finish” the memory, being blocked by an invisible barrier. Invisible barriers are lazy and nearly as bad as “the doors slam shut and lock when you enter the room.” Similarly, once you complete the cave the entire places swells up with water and forces everyone in the cave out from the torrential flood. Uh huh. To be fair, it’s handled fairly well, but the whole “closing time” thing is something I’m over. 

We’ve got three “memory” scenes in the cave, all of which must be completed. There’s the one I mentioned, the sad gnome one. Then there’s the “where we buried the amulet” plot hook one. (Which, gives the location of the amulet to the party … a floor up idea for DMs who want to use it) That leaves one more … a simple Yeti attack. When you’ve only got three encounters you need them to stick and while two do this third one does NOT, being a simple combat. I’m not necessarily asking for more edgelord stuff, but something more than a simple combat. 

There’s also LONG NPC descriptions, the in standard 5e format that make them impossible to scan quickly and water down the personalities of the people involved. And then … the read-aloud. 

The read-aloud is bad. It summarizes. It abstracts. “But, amid the festivities for the arrival of Brigita – it becomes obvious a mild disagreement is escalating between her and the retiring Townmaster, Anton Astorio. Both Brigita and Anton make an effort to smile and continue with the occasion, but perceptive people notice the friction growing.” This isn’t what you want to be doing. This is TELLING us what is going on. You want to SHOW it. You want to show a disagreement. You want to show the escalation. In this case, rather than read-aloud, perhaps through vignettes for the DM to drop in … which could be spaced in with some local color events form the yokals, to help the DM bring THAT part of the adventure to life more. “Once inside of the cave” says the read-aloud. Nope. You almost NEVER want to imply action in a read-aloud, at least not on the parties part. You want descriptions, not conversational writing. Ad meaningless skill checks to find the cave in the first placE? We won’t even talk about the useless rolling stuff, or the repetition in the background information which, while brief, still annoys the fuck out of me.

This is $2 at DriveThru. I’m willing to throw up in my mouth less when I hear the word Storyteller if their workshop continues to churn out new designers like this. Certainly not great, but showing some potential that is more than the usual DriveThru/DMSGuild drivel.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/366939/The-Orb-of-Goodbyes?1892600

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

The Bone Alchemist

Posted on August 23, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Gaz Bowerbank
Self Published
5e
Levels 1-3

A missing prince, nefarious magical goings on and fantastical beasts combine for a thrilling adventure taking characters from 1st level through to 3rd. What starts as an innocuous pub brawl soon becomes an exciting adventure encountering all manner of creatures: living, dead and undead, before a showdown in a dark magician’s lair.

This 22 page “arabian nights” adventure (although easily rethemed to a traditional environment, IMO) has five main parts, two with mini-dungeons and most with more than one thing going at the same time. Delightful specificity and evocative writing help stave off the negatives of the formatting used. This designer gets the highest praise Bryce can muster in his life, even if the adventure does not: Gaz Bowerbank Is Not A Complete Fucking Idiot. I don’t know who suggested I review this, but, Good Job!

The spoiled young Prince Asshat is missing in Agraba and the party is on his tail, eventually finding him in the company of Lareth the beautiful. This takes place over five chapters, which really means five major locations with, maybe, a couple of things going on in each location. So, more than the usual scene based adventure, there is more depth to the locations and they are presented in a looser fashion than the typical scene based adventure would have them. Guidelines for the DM combined with GREAT specificity to help inspire them to run the game. 

And GREAT I do mean. The designer has a knack for using the right words to really make you excited about running the game. The writing immediately makes you understand what is going on and gets you going to run it. That’s a special gift, and, I think, the absolute hardest skill to learn in adventure writing. And the designer does this over and over and over again, in every paragraph.

For example, we get a little summary paragraph for each major NPC, supported by a few lines of “in character” voice dialog/quote. Prince Asshats quote is “Mother, am I not the wisest ruler that will ever be? Indeed it must be so! Then instruct my people that from now on camels are illegal, they’re too ugly for this land.” A boy of nie glorious summers, were told, dressed in the finest silks favouring cloth-of-gold, dabbed with fine perfume and smelling AMAZING. You know this kid. Instantly. You know how to run him. And EVery. Single. NPC. gets the same treatment. Not as tropy as the kid, but you still instantly recognize them and can run them, well, quickly and memorably. 

The local gang in the first location, the bar? “The Talons are a swaggering bunch of villains, whose own estimation of themselves far exceeds their capabilities. This doesn’t prevent them from gaining even more bravado by drinking heavily and loudly proclaiming their purported excellence to all and sundry. Dressed in various loose-fitting garments and adorned with tattoos and cheap jewelry leaning heavily into the bird of prey motif, they are hard to miss.” Fuck! Yeah! I can run that! 

Even better, the designer has included a little table, one for each of the major chapters, to spice some things up with local colour. For the bar, in chapter one, during the fight, there’s a table called “Events at Initiative 0”, which includes a Talon doing their signature move, diving from a table/bar/balcony all bird of prey style yelling Caw-cawwww! Yes, please, more sir! May I have another? The whole fucking bar is like that. Little words and phrases dropped, line after line, that build on each other to provide this rich environment that is GAME FOCUSED. The bazaar, chapter two,has a little table of words in the bazaar you seeing doing things. Let’s see, human, peddler, singing to, tabaxi,gang member. Go!  Feels like an extortion thing, “Dance, parder!” to me! 

The designer does this time and time again. The specificity, while providing guidelines to the DM on how to run the place. And to a degree much much higher than the usual adventure, 5e or no. And that is what, primarily, I’m basing my “Not A Complete Fucking Idiot” praise on. Zombie? No. Giant goat, rotting, with half its face missing? Yes!

Now let’s talk about what doesn’t work, big and small. And the big is a BIG one. 

There’s a wall of text thing going on in the descriptions. And I don’t mean a traditional wall of text, but, rather, paragraphs so dense and dripping with flavour that they can’t be consulted quickly. There’s SO much good stuff that it’s hard to pick something out to focus on, as a DM. Remember, what we’re getting here are very specific general impression information, supported by things like those tables offering specificity. So, guidelines to help run a situation, loaded with great detail, rather than the usual hand holding railroady stuff present in most of the DMsGuild adventures. In this situation you need to be able to have the stuff at your fingertips, ready to go to drop in. And that ain’t this. We get the traditional “words in a paragraph” format to dig through, meaning you need time to absorb it at the start of the situation, and fight through it to reference it during the situation. No bueno. My standard response here is “bullet points”, but I don’t mean bullet points when I say that. What I mean is “Some way to highlight information and make it easier to pick and reference during the actual running of the game.” Different word/sentence breaks, whitespace, bullets, tables, bolding, etc, whatever. This is a big deal in this adventure. Margin notes and a highlighter would help. The greatness is there, but not readily available. And that extends to the NPC descriptions I noted earlier.

I could bitch about lots of small things. A little intro to the situation could be useful; most are pretty easily understood eventually after a first read-through, but a little more emphasis up front on how the party got here and where they are possibly going in the various outcomes could be useful to help framing in the DMs mind, getting them pre-loaded to accept the information thats about to be presented to them.

There’s some hook-like information, one for each 5e character background. I like this idea, in concept, but as implemented here its probably the weakest part of anything in the adventure. It comes off as generic, having none of the characteristics of the specificity that make everything else in this adventure great. This is the Folk Hero hook: “As much as the people honour their royal family, they love nothing more than the tale of someone from humble birth who rises to the occasion and saves the day or raises themselves up. Ehsan knows the power of a good story as much as the next person, and actively seeks those with that special something to be part of his schemes, so he can tell tales of how he “discovered” them.”   That’s just generic shit, and, if there were a second designer listed I’d suggest this entire section was written by someone else, it’s so out of place/character with the rest of the writing in the adventure. The follow-ups at the end are also pretty generic and uninteresting and the maps … well, the maps are interesting. The room keys and a little sentence to summarize the room encounter are provided on the map, off to the side of the rooms with an arrow pointing to the actual room, for example. I don’t get this. Well, I do, I guess, at least for the summary. But again, they have none of the characteristic wit and evocative nature of the rest of the writing and do little to jog the memory, which I assume is what they are meant to do? And off to the side? Maybe for Fog Of War/VTT purposes? IN which case why not just provide VTT maps? I appreciate the exploration of new ground, or attempt to, in presentation, but I don’t think this works. 

But, great little adventure. A little rando in stringing things together. “Bar fight, marketplace questioning, dead kraken on beach/scavs, Dragon Turtle Village, and then Big Bad Guy We’ve Never Met Before on the Island. But, good specificity, and some notes and highlighting would do wonders. Or, I mean, the designer doing their job and doing it for us. 🙂

This is $5 at DMsGuild. The preview is five pages. You get to see the NPC descriptions and the first page of the start of the adventure/bar fight. Note the abruptness of the start and the great scene.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/356191/The-Bone-Alchemist?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews, The Best | 8 Comments

The Pit

Posted on August 21, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tony Garcia & Simon Barns
Voxelhouse
B/X
Levels 1-3

The famed archaeologist Jonas “Greytooth” Walker discovered a strange pit upon an expedition to the Dead City. A spiral staircase descended into this pit, leading to a series of rooms carved from the rock. Each room lay behind a closed door and their mysteries have not been unveiled. The entrance is marked by a large portal made of black basalt. There is a belief that this underground complex may hide information about the mythical city of Xumoria, which is rumored to be located on the Isle of the Ancients. There are inscriptions at this site indicating the presence of an ancient wizard named Arne “Sacre” Nissen, a well-known Xumorian scholar and great explorer of Artrusia. Adventurers seeking the entrance got and haven’t returned yet. Exploratory expeditions are leaving Crimsonwater, heading for The Dead City. Dare you go down into The Pit?

This thirty page adventure uses five pages to describe seven rooms. This was someone’s dream.

So, what’s on the other 27 pages? An overview of the game world … presumably duplicating the information found  in the publisher’s “World of Altrusia” game book. It contains such exciting information as “The Human Empire” and “The Orc Kingdom.” Majesty & Wonder this is not.

We get a one page overview of a starting town. It has little detail but the usual generic fantasy stuff. The town of 920 people does, though, have a sewer. So, you know, it’s cool. It also has The Shady Orc, a tavern. Or, rather, one of the locations of a chain of taverns found all over the world. And another tavern that is known for its wild boar stew. Do you think wild boar comes in often enough to support that as a main menu item? Or, maybe, it’s just domestic pig relabeled as wild boar and sold to the owner? 

Anyway. You find some flyers for someone at th tavern wanting to hire adventurers and everyone in town is buzzing about the new dungeon and there are adventurers everywhere. And in the tavern you are going to its stuffed full of adventurers. And when you ask after the dude from the flyer the bartender is like “Why do you want to talk to him?” Dude! For the same fucking reason the last two hundred people in here wanted to talk to him … the fucking flyer! Anyway, that all happens in a read-aloud that is like a page and a half long. So, fuck you wanting to play D&D; this is a four-hour one-man show mashing up Moby Dick and heorin addicition. 

Dude pays you 3000gp to go to the dungeon a week away and find a map inside that tells you how to get to the megadungeon. You walk for seven days and have wandering encounters with 1d6 bears, ghosts, hill giants, a mummy, all on the wanderer table. A little aggressive for level 1’s? Whatever. You get to the ruins. “Signs direct you The Pits entrance” says the read-aloud. Really? Signs? And this isn’t farce? No, it’s not farce.

You are now at the adventure. Seven rooms, one of which is empty, is five pages. Multi-paragragh read-aloud. Doors that don’t open until you kill the monsters in the room. Find the moon key to open the moon door, the star key to open the star door, the heart key to open the heart door. The read-aloud over-explains, saying things like there are a half dozen bodies on the floor. The DM text says very informative things like “The room is trapped. This can be detected and disarmed by a thief (if there is one in the party.)”  IF the players open the chest THEN they find rotting food.

The forest encounter, in the place from the cover, the main seven room dungeon, starts with “You descend the stairs and reach a room that is set with a floor of pale stone tiles.” Does that match the sense of wonder from the cover illustration? No? How about the fight with a single skeleton inside the room? You know, after you faced a hill giant/1d6 bears/ghost/mummy in the wilderness, potentially? 

A dream to some. A nightmare to others. Who the fuck asked me to review this?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. There’s no preview link, but there are several sample pages. You get to see the first room in the seven room dungeon. The writing is all like that. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/364439/The-Pit?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 18 Comments

The Siege of Timberhollow

Posted on August 18, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Craig Patterson
Momentous Malice Productions
5e
Level 2

The frontier village of Timberhollow is the kind of place no one had ever heard of until its fortunes took a turn for the worse. The timber and pelts which formerly flowed out of Timberhollow to the markets in the nearest towns have ceased delivery, and rumor spread by travellers is that the woods surrounding the village have become haunted by a pack of especially savage wolves – wolves who attack anyone trying to enter or leave the village. The villagers must be starting to get desperate – and the merchants who once sold their goods in the neighboring larger settlements are beginning to worry that their business has dried up for good. The call has gone out for capable adventurers – whether for gold, glory, or charity – to investigate and save Timberhollow. Little do those adventurers know that there are even more sinister forces at work in Timberhollow than rumor would suggest.

Thise eleven page adventure uses five pages to describe a werewolf in a village and the dumb-ass druid trying to stop it. It’s a short thing that is trying to bring in some roleplaying and more complex environment than usual for this sort of one night adventure. When it’s being specific it’s good and could use a little more build up and some additional clarity in its NPC relationships. And A Wall of Text overhaul. And, I believe, it’s on the list because of a request from its designer. 

Sometimes you can tell what a designer is going for, even if they can’t communicate it well. That’s the case with this adventure. You can tell the designer was going for this isolated in the woods village thing, paranoid villagers, a kind of claustrophobic feeling, no one knowing whats really going on, people afraid, and so on. That comes though, no necessarily primarily because of the writing, especially, but because of the elements layered on top of each other. You get that the designer wants that, they just can’t yet write/layout well enough to communicate that in a way that really supports the DM.

So, the town of Timberhollow is cut off. No pelts or timber coming out. No merchants going in. Viscous pack of wolves killing everything that moves in the forest and on the road that cuts through it to the village. This initial set up is, potentially, supported in two ways: the hooks and the journey to the village. 

We get five hooks. A group of merchants hire you to restore the flow of goods. The Church of the Goddess of Commerce hires you. You’ve got a friend in the village. An innkeeper hires you to check on his friend. These are each presented in about as many words as I’ve typed here, and as generic and throw-away as I’ve typed here. Yes, I know, hooks don’t matter. But when they ARE included I feel the need to comment, and, a good hook that is present is a bonus to the adventure. But these four, they are just generic hooks. With no real meat on them, or specificity to help bring them alive. But, there are hints, here and there. “By any means” is tacked on to the merchants hook. And, the extreme genericism of the Church of the Goddess of Commerce makes me want to play that abstraction to the extremes, for laughs. Finally, the last hook, a druid circle hires you  to dispel a rumor that an evil druid is behind the attacks …and quietly eliminate them if there IS a druid behind it. It’s the “quietly eliminate” that, like the “by any means” that starts to work on the DMs imagination. Its these sorts of things that start to lead the DM down a path. Rather than five aggressively generic hooks it would have been better to take one hook, say the merchants or the druids, and use the space to bring it alive with a little more specificity. Play up the “by any means” or the Shadow Merchants Council or the weirdness of the druid circle, etc. Better to do one thing well than five things terribly.

Then there’s the “1 to 2 days travel” to the village, through the forest. I’m sure you can see the issue with putting “ 1to 2” in the travel times. But, anway, you get four possible encounters to help foreshadow the situation, with a suggestion that the DM include one of them. First off, great idea. Use the travel through the forest as foreshadowing to set a mood. Play up the oppressiveness and claustrophobia of a thick forest. Get the players in the mood and jumpy. But, this is essentially unsupported. There’s a table of four possible encounters and just the words “As they travel they could encounter any of the following.” I might suggest that, in an adventure of this type, this section could have beenbetter supported. A little more in the way if the encounters, and the journey, words playing up the environment and the vibe and so on. Of the four encounters we get an abandoned wagon with corpses of humans and horses, bearing signs of wolf attack. That’s pretty good! And one about mysterious symbols carved in a tree, Abyssal or druidic, vague and ominous. A good idea, used to good effect in Blair Witch, but it could have used a few examples of that vague wording. The tree’d commoner and a simple “ambushed by 6 wolves” is less interesting. So, you can get the idea of what the designer wanted, but it’s not quite there.

This continues in the village. We get the following text upon arrival: “Their arrival is not only a special occasion, but a marvelous sign of hope to the beleaguered villagers, and they beg the player characters for reassurance that their ordeal is nearly over. All villagers whom the party encounters try to usher them on to the village inn, where a hasty gathering of the village council is about to take place.” Aggressively abstracted, no specifics. This is a key part. The village is isolated, the people scared, but little beyond abstraction. And no real overview of the village, of the weirdo house with all the wood carvings outside, or the junkyard, or the ostentatious church. We’re left to the individual descriptions of those locations to learn those things. 

There’s supposed to be relationships among the people in the village. SOme people hate others, others are in love, but, while these are explicitly stated, you need a vignette or two to make them come alive. A on-abstracted vignette. At a town council meeting we get a flew words about how two people shout at each other or another two have an awkward conversation, but without anything supporting it for the DM to riff on. Instead we get a village that approaches Wall of Text territory, with lots of words (in a small font) that don’t really deliver much. Again, you get where things SHOULD be going but its not really supported well. And, I think, the NPC situation is complex enough, with enough weirdo names, to need a dedicated reference for them. 

The village map could use a little more detail, some rises or piles of timber or some such, to make the village investigations more interesting. The Lord of The Hunt angle could be played up a lot more, for feelings of dread. There’s not actually much of a “timber” vibe, or forest vibe going on. Someone in the town meeting says “last full moon” which should set off all of the alarm bells … I’d leave that bit out. The druid is referred to as a a druid instead of a weirdo horned head/antler dude. One guy in the village is very friendly, which of course means the party should stab him immediately because he’s the bad guy. And, again, you don’t get much to help support you, as the DM, in making him friendly to the party. Other than “hes friendly and helpful to the party.” And there’s no real siege going on, at least not one that will be visceral to the players.

Ultimately the adventure is short and straightforward. Travel to the village. Sit in on the council meeting. Go in to the forest to confront the druid. Come back to the village to find a murder and kidnapped villager. Follow tracks to abandoned cabin and save victim. Folow tracks to church and kill werewolf (At level 2?! I have some mental block that doesn’t allow me to understand 5e power levels).

So what we have is an adventure that knows what it wants to do but is too bogged down in the mundane and in aggressive abstraction instead of specificity. I think it’s about the right length for one of these typical plot-based things, and shows some promise that many of them do not (they being by far the most common type of adventure in the modern era.) I don’t think it’s as bad as the 3 stars out of 5 at DriveThru would imply. I suspect the Wall of Text issue/font has a lot to do with that rating, but the padding and lack of specificity and support for key elements of the adventure are what is mostly interesting to me. A hard tune up would make this shine to a journeyman level.

This is $5 at DMsGuild. The preview is two pages and gives you a good idea of what to expect. The formatting/wall issues, and the journey through the forest and some of the town buildings.

https://www.dmsguild.com/product/366457/The-Siege-of-Timberhollow?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe

Posted on August 16, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jacob Fleming
Gelatinous Cubism
OSE
Low to mid levels

There could be several reasons to seek adventure in the Gemthrone Wilderness. It is a region that is the subject of speculation on cold nights in the glow of a tavern hearth. Some may talk of the magnificent treasures that have laid untouched for centuries in dark dungeons, just waiting to be pilfered—which is, almost without fail, followed by another who interjects with the dangers of such notions, were such legends even to be believed.  There are, however, those that do believe such tales— grizzled adventurers that know there is always some truth to even the most unbelievable stories. One just has to know what rumors to listen for…

This 64 page adventure uses about forty pages to describe a wilderness region with around five settlements and nine dungeons. It’s a real adventure, with linkages between places and one thing leading to another. The writing is concise, but could be punchier. Overall, a nice effort. And I’m pretty sure that “low levels” doesn’t mean “first level”, there’s some rough shit in the wilderness.

So, a wilderness region. About 50 miles on side. Big scary forest in the middle. It’s got this Tower of the Ancients in the middle of it. A human village, an elf village, a dwarf village, and a cyclops village scattered around the map. Also, some weirdo statues on the roads/trails here and there and a couple of dungeon, most of which are triggered through a quest given by someone or a treasure map you find that leads you there. The DM’s map is a nice little topo like thing showing all of the features, dungeons, roads, statues and hill contours that I think adds a lot to overland travel and the DMs ability to describe what the party sees when they crest a hill, etc. Nicely evocative and useful at the same time. If you just wander around the road for a few days you’ll find all of the locations (except one) except for the ones in the scary forest … cause there ain’t no roads there, fool! 

The settlements are pretty brief, a couple of pages, and mostly mundane location descriptions with some rumors or a hook or two to get the party moving to an adventure site. Dwarflandia has a theater troupe that is absolutely terrible … but no one wants to admit it for fear of being thought uncouth and not “getting it.” That’s good specificity. Or, their local tradition of “the airing of grievance” after the Sunday sermon. When the adventure is dropping these little tidbits in then it is bringing the locations alive. When it’s just saying someplace has an inn, or smith, or an “eccentric” gem merchant, well, that’s not really saying anything at all, is it? Generally I prefer either no detail at all in these situations, just like “Gem merchant” or for the adventure to say “Gem Merchant who has replaced his eyes with emeralds” or some such. Go one way or another, but don’t describe the mundane and boring.

The various dungeons scattered around have around ten to twenty rooms each. The formatting is clear and easy to follow with good cross-references when needed. Descriptions don’t overstay their welcome … but neither do they tend to bring any sort of evocativeness or quirkiness to the rooms. “A large room with 4 doors and a round 10’ pool in the middle. The pool is purely decorative. Treasure: In the fountain is a heart-shaped locket with some dwarven runes etched in to it.” This isn’t winning any awards for inspiration, particularly given that it’s the room, and item, that the party has been looking for. This is the extent of the rooms description. Large. Pool/fountain, not really evocatively described in any way. If the room descriptions were punched up, without adding substantially to the word count, then this would be a real winner.

There’s some additional rules for hunting, and the weather could certainly add a little variety to the travel through the wilderness. The wanderer table is fairly generic, and brief at only twelve entries and fairly generic like “1d6 hobgoblins” and the like. Given the size of the region, and the probability for revisiting locations (because of mysteries, linkages, etc) travel is likely to be extensive and thus wanderers as well. While the weather table should help, a little more effort on the wanderers, and making them less generic and more linked to the locations, would have gone a long way. 

Still, there’s a lot to do here. A lot of places to explore. Explicit quests given “go find my locket” and others discovered by the party “A map to loot!” Places to just stumble upon. Puzzles to discover and decipher. A little bit, just a little, of faction play. (Which, also, could have been stronger.) It does feel a little static at times … as if the dungeons and settlements only exist in their own encounter keys and not interfering or being related to others … even though there ARE explicitly links to other places. Perhaps, I mean it doesn’t feel dynamic?

Anyway, these are small complaints. I’m sure many DM’s will get a lot of out of this, a lot more than most adventures these days and I’m happy to see these larger regional locales appearing. They bring a lot to the table in terms of party immersion and continuity. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is only six pages and doesn’t show you anything interesting. Just some brief background stuff. The topo map, or a location key or settlement would have been better to include in the preview so we could all get a sense of the core writing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358825/In-the-Shadow-of-Tower-Silveraxe?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts, Reviews | 11 Comments

The Feast on Titanhead

Posted on August 14, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Brayden Doomscribe Turenne
Games Omnivorous
LotFP? CoC? Meh, It's horror, and horror tends to translate well when well done

“Doomscribe delivers a heavy-metal, grind-core interpretation of the Manifestus Omnivorous, coated in weird-horror. One that speaks both to Lovecraft fans and those of movies like Saw. There is a big bad MONSTER that players will most likely not defeat. The LOCATION is the head of that very monster. And everything seems to be there to DEVOUR something. Includes psychotic outbreaks, naked people popping their eyes out, grotesque masses of fungi and engines of growth/rebirth that reshape humans into abnormal masses of skin and soft-tissue.”

This 28 page adventure describe twelve rooms in a colossal titan skull. Body Horror/The Thing/Stranger Things beasties abound in an adventure that brings the horror, but not necessarily the “skull”, and, as always, begs the question “Why bother going there?”

So, mountain, with a giant partially exposed skull on it. And I mean GIANT partially exposed skull. For some fucked up reason you’re going in there. The adventure suggests you’re hired to go in. Or you’re going in to find a friend that disappeared inside. Or, you’re just walking down the road and see it, and, of course, go take a looky loo. I know, I know, people say hooks don’t matter. I generally agree. Except when they ARE included. If you’re going to put a hook in then make it a decent hook. Or a supported hook. Or a relatable hook. And not just a couple of throwaway lines of text.

This mentions it’s set in “Europe”, but that doesn’t really impact the adventure in any way. There’s mention of leather armor, and one mention of explosives being used previously on the mountain to expose more of the skull, but both of those points are trivial to setting this wherever, in whatever game, although Europe+Leather generally means the default LotFP setting, but, as most horror adventures are, this could be used almost in any genre at any time. I only mention this in the context of Why? As in “Why the fuck are exploring this shithole of a place?”

The age old question. A giant skull halfway up the side of the mountain? FUCK Yeah I’m in! Let’s go? Same skull, but filled with weird pulsating fungus and hybrid creatures with giant toothy gaping maws stretching too wide? I’m getting the fuck out of Dodge! So, why explore? There’s no real promise of treasure, and a lot of promises delivered on of weird body horror shit.  There’s some kind of CoC do-gooder gotta stop the evil impulse, I guess. But, even then, dumping the place full of gas or explosive laced animals seems to be a better idea than slogging through each room. If you aint gotta, then nuking the site from orbit is always the correct PC answer. 

So, yeah, body horror. Naked people inside who have torn out their own eyeballs. Or, in the words of the designer “They’re each covered in blood, with many wounds along their bodies. As they move closer, you can see that their own eyes have been gouged out. They walk blindly, yet sniff the rank air like dogs, jerking their heads abruptly at their surroundings.They moan and weep pathetically as they scratch and bite themselves bloody like animals. The walls are scrawled with scribblings in blood and shit. One of them, a woman, is in the process of digging out their own eyes from their sockets. A large mound of brain matter resides on the opposite wall. A single man lies half sunken into it, writhing as though in ecstasy.” So … yeah. I said body horror, right? This is good writing. It certainly paints  very visceral picture and, also, does a good job SHOWING up a monster instead of just TELLING us its a monster. The writing is, overall, pretty strongly evocative. It dances over the line to pretentious read-aloud sometimes, but the DM text is pretty strong overall. “His head is half caved in, exposing part of his brain. His eyes are blood red and wide with shock. A PC may notice that the visible portion of Elijah’s brain looks wrong and that his skin is discolored in a sickly green.” Yeah, that dude is pretty fucked up. Probably no reason to waste a cure light on that guy. A lot of adventures TELL you that someone is too far gone to use cure light on, but this one does a good job SHOWING you. The rooms have a little interactivity, mostly shit like the pineal gland psychic blasting you, or a magnetic trap room, etc. Just a light amount for what is, at the end, just a small dungeon.

It is doing a few “interesting” things with mechanics. Every 20 minutes of real time everyone gets to make a save. If you have you have a vision and get a little crazier. After missing five save you attack another party member three times without them getting a defence … you’re just too fast! One more fail and you’re an insane NPC. So, about two hours, I’d say, before the whole party is a TPK because of the adventure mechanics. I get the need for a timer Mr “just fill the entire place with gasoline”, but I’m not sure this is the right way to do it. Also, every time you fail you have a vision which are mostly just variations on “empty blackness” and have NOTHING to do with advancing the adventure. That’s too bad, abd a very big missed opportunity. “You open your eyes to find yourself submerged in a sea of unknown substance, of a color that you cannot describe. You breathe the liquid as though it were air.” Sure, whatever. 

There’s also a place or two with things … muddled? The first room, the entrance socket, has a horse monster, complete with gaping maw, coming out of it. It’s written in such a way that it’s clearly meant to be the parties first encounter with the weird monsters. But, then, they also show up on the “journey up the mountainside” wandering hazard table … which will blunt this initial encounter with them. Weird things like that, like a little more thought needed to go in to things.

Oh, and the dude at the end, because there’s also a boss at the end, has “a ridiculous amount of HP” and if killed turns in to a baby monster with only 1HP but you need a nat 20 to hit. So … playing with mechanics a lot. That’s not bad, in general, but perhaps implements a little ham-fisted in this one.

And, you don’t get bonus points for using a fucking font that I have to literally copy/paste in a notepad app in order to tell what the fuck the writing was supposed to be. If you make “Sepulchral” illegible that’s on you. You have to be able to actually sit on it if it’s a chair and you have to actually be able to read the words if it’s meant to be read. I just don’t fucking get why that’s hard to understand.

So, lots and lots of body horror. Not so badly done and one of the better examples of it. Suffers from the “Why the fuck bother at all?” problem common to so many LotFP adventures. A little one note, and  all of the horror essentially starts in room one and doesn’t let up or change., which doesn’t help much. Death Frost Doom had old Zeke and his warning and then the cabin to warm the party up, and this needed something like that to ramp things up. One of the better body horror adventures, in terms of evocative writing, though.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and none of those nine really give you a good impression of the actual adventures writing. It’s better than the intro/background garbage that appears in the preview. So, bad preview that should have shown us a room or two anyway.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/303810/The-feast-on-titanhead?1892600

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

The Goblin Bathwater Incident

Posted on August 11, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Marius Brunner
Self Published
5e
Level 1

Goblin Bathwater, a magical drug, has taken hold in a sleepy coastal town at the edge of the Empire. As the characters investigate the origin of the drug, they uncover an international criminal conspiracy, wild and ancient magic, and a threat to reality itself.

This 54 page adventure uses about 35 pages to describe some political intrigue in a town and a couple of dungeons around in, in the usual sort of plot based “investigate and stop it” adventure. The designer has an interesting ability to slot in some relatable and gameable details, although the entire thing ends up being too complicated to get a good handle on. Which doesn’t make it impossible to run, but rather hard to get the fully intended effect. Also, it’s one of those modern D&D worlds where no one is human and everyone is half-genesai, blah blah blah etc. It really has no impact on the adventure though.

New in town, the party shoots a man in Reno just to see him die. Locked up for the night, they are told the next morning to go look in to some ghouls that appeared in the local graveyard. The trail of which leads to a farm. At which time the party is sent to look for the farms missing kids. At the old wizards tower. Who wants them to go to some caves. [Interlude with some events that can happen in town while the party is investigating something] And in the caves the party meets the creator of all goblins, and a magical portal to Cthulhu-land … bringing in some of DCC “Meet Gods at Level 1!” vibe. I won’t ask if 5e players ever get bored saving world every adventure; whatever floats your boat man.

What’s supposed to be happening is that the goblins are selling the bathwater from their creator-god (which lives in their cave, asleep.) Some guy in town is using is to sell drugs and take over the town from the other boss in town who controls the other half of the town. This rivalry creates the initial bar fight in the first scene, as well as being the instigator the ghoul shit and is SUPPOSED to serve as what the party is investigating … which I guess is supposed to lead to the weirdness in the goblin caves. This sort of breadcrumb investigation and then base assault is the usual part and parcel of modern plot games and this one does go the extra mile, throwing in a few more stops along the way than the usual adventure. In principle, the idea is not too terrible.

But before I get in to it, let me note some of the high points.

The designer seems to have knack for putting in relatable things and or the farcical, or, perhaps, ALMOST farcical sorts of detail that a DM can leverage to really bring a game world alive. We get little one liners scattered throughout the adventure that really do a good job conveying things. Each 5e character background gets a potential hook, with the Nobles being “You won a sizeable plot of land in an auction in the capital. Little did you realise just how far south this ‘rustic farmstead in the foothills near an important local travel junction’ would turn out to be.” So, a little bit of wit which does a great job conveying information and tone. Everyonein town belongs to one of the two factions …with a dumpling town guard. Kids who will pass along information for a swig of booze (which then leads be say “or cigs! Or cigs!” Thats what good writing does, it excites you and leads you to other places.) A wizard who watches the town in his scrying and treats it like his own soap opera. Or a found note right out of Jr High where one kid is asking another to be his girlfriend. It seldom forces the DM in to the farcical, but it does tend make the mind leap to there, and the possibilities for play it implies. And that’s a good thing. When the writing is doing this its strong. The ANCIENT cleric who everyone discounts because he’s so old. And the kids that trick him in to creating new effigies for his Temple of the All Faiths. GOLD!

And now for the rest of this is (according to the ad copy) “beautifully made” adventure with “faceted intrigue” and “balanced and devious encounters.” I have noted, in the past as general advice, that putting adjectives and adverbs in front of verbs and nouns can spice them up. Used too often though, or in ad-copy, and it raises my cynicism eyebrow.

The maps are in a .rar format (Do people still do that? I guess they do?) that my on rar unarchiver can’t handle. So, I don’t get some of the maps I guess. The hooks, one for each background (Yea!) are a little open-ended. Like the sage coming to town to research an ancient civilization. They could be a little more self-contained. Don’t get me wrong, great idea … but just a bit LARGE. The read-aloud says things like “Newcomers, eh?” and does other things that betray players with more local characters. Read-aloud, especially around the first barfight, is a little bland and there are leaps of logic … like the ghouls travelling three hours from the graveyard to the “special” farm and a Pegasus showing up out of nowhere. That, combined with the goblins in the cave system having two captured basilisks to turn loose on the  characters, feels a little too 4e/5e to me, and not in a good way. I wish there were more examples, in the barfight for example. And, things like the local tax collector assessing a 50% fine BEG for some stabbing … which I guess is not a desired outcome since there’s no guidance in that area.

But, no, the big thing is that the plot doesn’t really come through at all. There’s supposed to be this faction rivalry in town, and some drugs stuff going on. That feels VERY disconnected from the surface level main plot. In a bar, a boxer goes crazy, the crowd goes wild, the ghoul uprising. Leading to the farm. Leading to the tower. Leading to the caves. You don’t even actually need to get involved in the faction/drug thing at all. And it might not even be obvious that IS going on. The adventure doesn’t push it enough. There ARE town sections, and there ARE mentions of it, but it just doesn’t come through in a coherent manner. 

But it tries. It takes ten pages to cover a barfight, getting failed, and looking in to the disturbed graves. That’s too much. There too much extraneous detail, background, and motivations. The adventure jumps back and forth at one spot, with the farmers sending the party to the tower, and then the farmers telling the party, maybe, about a dream that leads to the caves. But this isn’t in plot order it’s in location order … so he post-tower section is also in the pre-tower section … both under the farm. TO be clear, you COULD organize things this way, but if so it just needs to be clearer … and it’s not. 

This could be a delightful little thing. The jaunt in to the tower, or to the political bosses lairs, or little events in town …, there’s a lot here that’s not actually required but could be delightful spice to an adventure. But, when your rumors says “the city council is corrupt” then you need something about that. And the space that could be used to support that, or to make the adventure clearer, is taken up by a lot of padding. This thing really needed a lot of focus to bring its true possabilities out. 

It’s clear, I think, that I found some things in this to like. The little bits of local colour do a lot to liven it up and those little bits are what are missing in A LOT of whats commonly sold. And, along with this, little bits of relatable content, like one of the boxers drinking before the out, the bluster and bolster to psych up. And then there’s he extra effort this thing goes to. The additional vignettes and areas and the “not just Yet Another 4 Hours Adventure” length, going just a bit farther. And while 25-30 hours to complete, as claimed in the intro, seems a bit long I can see this being 16 or so hours without much trouble. And then, toss in the ending with both the goblin creator … which you can totally fucking kill, and some Guardians Of The Cthulhu Realm shit … yeah, I can take an element of the fantastic, dcc style. It just needed more clarity and more integration of the political element and the actual plot and a trimming of the BS.

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. I might suggest the fourth preview page (adventure page 8) as an intro to the writing style that you can expect. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/365528/The-Goblin-Bathwater-Incident?1892600

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 18 Comments

Roman Silver, Saxon Greed

Posted on August 9, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By James & Robyn George
Olde House Rules
Barons of Braunstein

Set in dark age (Saxon) Britain, the characters have found a strange map promising riches among the cellars of a forgotten Roman villa.  But beware, for the land is wild… Brigands and beasts prowl, faiths collide, and lost treasures await!  But this is no fantasy dungeon where the heroes go room to room killing monsters.  It’s an adventure setting where anything can – and will – happen.  Visit the village of Stânweall, uncover mysterious factions, and witness the collision of old and new, Christian and pagan.  All of this awaits the hand of willing heroes…

This 24 page adventure uses eight pages to detail a 24 room ruined basement. It has a Saxon England in te 8th century thing going on, with primarily human enemies (yeah!) and a snake or wolf or two. It’s rather pedestrian, lacking much in the way of interesting detail or advice for the DM in running its somewhat unusual environment.

You find an old cracked leather map with an X on it and word DIVITIAE near it … Latin for “riches.” Hot damn, I’m in it to win it! More than the usual generic “treasure map” those few words help bring just a little more depth to something that would otherwise be boring. Likewise the hooks, while the usual perfunctory stuff, offer at least a few extra words of detail to help the DM. “Locale clergy recognize the old wall and can translate the maps promise.” or a guy running bandits he stole the map from. Ok, so, of the four hooks those are the two highlights. And that’s going to be the story of this review. It’s got a turn of phrase here or there but is otherwise lacking.

The village is the usual mean Saxon affair, described briefly, with the little offering that the locals turn to pagen gods (when Christ alone is not enough.) That’s exactly the sort of tossed off comment that can add so much depth to a place. Which is in no way found on the rumors table that contains such wonders as “Brigands are a problem on the old south road.” So, “old south road” is good. It speaks to specificity. But Brigands is an abstraction. It shouldn’t be Brigands. It should be “Hanks gang”, or “Fat Mamma Cass’ Boys.” Specificity is the soul of narrative, and just like with the old south road, when Christ is not enough, and “RICHES” in Latin, just a few extra words can make all of the difference. And the rumor table doesn’t give us any of that.

The general formatting of the thing is emulating the old typewritten pages of the early days of the hobby. It’s not bad, and it’s single column is actually not so hard to read to scan, with most paragraphs being short and not taxing on the eye to move back and forth. It does fall down at times, generally when NPC’s and Dudes are encounters, as it tries to present them in a stat blocky way without any of the modern features to help bring recognition to the various sections. This means that things run together and are hard to distinguish when one thing ends and another begins, making scanning much harder than it should be. 

And then there’s the cellar, proper. The object of your search and the location at the X. It’s a “Real” basement, with some caves attached. Doorways, but not really doors, close and cramped. “Daylight reaches the bottom of the stairs, but no further.” Nice imagery that. Of course, it kind of ignores the fact that there is flickering light coming from every room, but, hey, I’ll latch on to what I can. 

There are a couple of problems with the cellar. First, the various chambers are rather plainly described. There is none of those choice words to help bring the various places alive, as with the examples I quoted above. And while there’s an NPC or two with an interesting backstory, it doesn’t really help when all you’re going to be doing is likely stabbing them. And then there are little bits of padding, adding nothing much to the adventure. “There is little chance the characters will know this unless they take prisoners or manage to engage them in conversation. The players can use this as they wish” And then there are confusing bits that seem out of place. A description of the boss’s room contains information on how the prisoners, tha the party may have freed, react to combat. It seems like that should be in the prisoners room description … where you find them? 

Which leads to the lack of an OOB in general. Given the small cramped and open map I should expect that the parties actions will bring down the wrath of the bandits as they all respond to an incursion. A response that we’re given little advice on. The best is that one guy yells for his buddy so they can set up an ambush … although what that is goes unmentioned. There are casual references to “patrols” that go undescribed, and potentially returning bandits … all left out. 

Yes, the DM does need to bring their skill to an adventure to make it come alive. But it is the designers job to both inspire the DM through evocative writing and to assist them … through things like an OOB or responses. And that sort of thing is not present here at all.

I’m also left perplexed by the room WITH the riches in it. And full of carbon dioxide. Such that you can only make one attempt a day to enter the room to recover treasure. Ok. So? You agro all the dudes in the dungeon in the first room, have a big fight, and then having a boring old time going from room to room pulling loot. And, hey, if I only get one attempt a day then you better telegraph it to the players and you I expect some dope ass descriptions on the effects, etc. Not “once a day.” Similarly, treasure of “a vintage statue” ain’t gonna cut it. That’s abstraction. 

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages but really only two are useful. You get to see the hooks page and the village page. They should give you a decent idea of the formatting, it’s issues, and the abstraction problems. A page of room descriptions would have been good to include in the preview also.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/358778/Chronicles-I-Roman-Silver-Saxon-Greed?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 28 Comments

Memento Mori – Memento Vivere

Posted on August 7, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Wayne Canepa
Wyrd Valley Press
5e/OSR?
Level 5

What do you get when you mix Kakfa, Lovecraft, Camus, pirates, ghosts, graffiti, magpies, swamp monsters, philosophy, the spirit world, and an unimaginably large wall? Well, this book. … you are newly arrived and find yourself stranded on the mysterious, mist-shrouded island of Anon, in the strange city of Vestige—where ghosts mingle with mortals as if it were commonplace. However, you won’t have much time to gawk before you become swept up in a Kafkaesque adventure—and even more danger! You must overcome challenges and puzzles, uncover hidden secrets, come face to face with madness, the fragility of life, and the absurdity of existence to escape this place. Can you maintain hope in the face of impossible odds? Will you survive nefarious pirates, dangerous creatures, or the land of the dead itself? And, if your character dies while exploring Anon, your adventure won’t be quite over…

This 128 page source book uses about 41 pages for a plot based adventure. A COMPLEX adventure. In a baroque setting described in the sourcebook section. The setting is mostly a city, and interesting enough to steal bits from your own bizarre big city. The adventure is a fucking mess, as all plot based adventures are when they get too big and try to handle too many deviations from the norm.

Well, the designers have the fucking marketing down pat. “What if you took Albert Camus’ hope in the face of Franz Kafka’s futility and H.P. Lovecraft’s fear and paranoia, mixed in some existentialism, and certified continued existence after death?” Yeah bitch! Take my fucking money! In practice, this turns out to be a kind of standin city for 19th century Lond, maybe a bit like that Sean Bean Frankenstein series, with the bureaucracy from that Discworld city thrown in. Oh, and there are ghosts and skeletons everywhere, living in the city. 

So, some kind of pseudo-19th century London with a decent helping of Brazil mixed in. I can get behind that.

There’s no intro, though, shit just starts coming at you, and it’s a little confusing to make out the setting because of that. On top of that you’ve got to wade through some, uh … high brow bullshit statements, we’ll call them. “Memento Mori / Memento Vivere is designed to be many things, but need not be all those things to everyone.” and “What would such a world look like? We wanted to explore it, and we wanted to share that exploration with others” and “It is a philosophical foray into the meaning of life and death” Ok, sure, what the fuck ever. It’s a setting.

And a decently flavorful one. One of the random things is a mime with a consumptive cough. That’s cool. Or, a description of the red light district that goes “A red light district full of smoky cabarets, unruly bars, ample brothels, gambling halls, fight clubs, opium dens, pawn shops and fences, grifters and snakeoil salesmen, lurking cutpurses, and countless hangovers. Named for its many copper doors.” Uh. yes. Fuck. Yes. That should be what every D&D red light district is. And the setting hits on this stuff time and time again in the various encounters in the city, the city districts, the factions, and so on. 

It’s also got stupid shit, like level 9 guards and some level 5 fighter guy whos the hero of the mercenary fighter corp. So, a mess, but a delightful one and just dripping with flavour. 

But, this blog ain’t about no setting reviews! It’s about adventure reviews! What about that adventure that’s included, Escape from Ghost Island?

OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD. IT’S. A. MESS.

So, it’s a plot based thing. And a COMPLICATED plot based thing. There’s a flowchart. I can get behind a flowchart, to help sort things out for the DM. But, not when the flowchart needs a flowchart. And, of source, its railroady, because its a complicated plot thing. As the adventure justifies by saying “As this book is as much a foray into philosophy as it is an adventure, consider this a Kafkaesque element added to the adventure.” Uh huh. Or, maybe, work on the rewrites until you don’t need to do that?

It starts with someone getting killed. No problem, people come back as ghosts in this setting! And, of course, there’s Speak with Dead! But … the killers used a poison that prevents ghosts from manifesting after death. Uh huh. And thus it goes. 

And, of course, there’s, I don’t know, it feels like multiple pages, in which the designers have inserted themselves in to the adventure. That’s NEVER a good sign. 

The various scenes in the adventure are complex, but nearly impossible to piece together. The format selected is so … disconnected? From itself that making head or tails or it, much less quickly scanning a scene to run it, would be nigh impossible without actually make this adventure a major part of your ongoing lifestyle. This thing SCREAMS the type of incoherence that a CoC adventure can only dream of being. 

There are ideas here, but the degree of abstraction and irrelevant detail is overwhelming.

This is $25 at DriveThru. If it weren’t $25 I’d pick it up to steal parts for my city game. The city shit is gold.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/353280/Memento-Mori—Memento-Vivere?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 15 Comments