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

The Bats of Saint Abbans

Posted on August 4, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Richard Marpole
MonkeyBlood Design
S&W
Levels 1-3

The once-respected Abbey-Cathedral of Saint Abbans has stood at the top of Wellholy Hill for centuries. Revenue is scarce and the abbey is falling into disrepair. To make matters worse, church bats have now infested the upper reaches of the building. They are causing a dangerous nuisance and further damaging the precarious structure. Abbess Jessamine is looking for brave souls without fear of heights to ascend the cavernous cathedral and bring the problem under control. Maybe, just maybe, that’s you?

This 155 page labour of love uses fifty pages to describe a cathedral and the bat problem it has. As a philistine I find a lot of interesting content from a pseudo-historical and world building perspective, and not much of an adventure. 

Companion to Owls is a Bryce-approved sci-fi short story set on the roof of a giant church. And by giant I mean “So big that there are small villages on the church, along with communities and so on.” This reminds me of that. This cathedral isn’t that big, but it is set in a “working” cathedral in which the upper portions are off limits and where “Blind ghosts and other oddities stalk the upper levels, whilst demons assault the roof at night.”

And cool things this adventure has in spades. Blind ghosts, and others, stalking bout the upper reaches. A grim walled up. Other rooms with skeletons (the non stab you kind of them) are buried under rubble. Some THING locked in a cell. A tribe of little mouselings who run their OWN abbey to the exact same god in the upper reaches of the attic. And, of course, a group of giant bats that are not quite intelligent, but can engage in mimicry, wear clothes, and each having their own quirks of what they are attracted to. The abbey wants to have a big festival in three days and they need those pesky bats gone! Oh, and somewhere in 150 pages ia a VERY simple flowchart of how the adventure could progress, but, in a bit of foreshadowing, it doesn’t really matter. Just wander around and kill the things. Or, you could go question every NPC in the abbey and town (a half page provided for each!) and try to learn what each of the bats is attracted to so you can lure them somewhere. Or, byu talking to enough people you could learn that there’s a song you can play on the bells and if you wander around the abbey, mindlessly, rough then you can find the three parts and charm them all in to being nice, permanently. 

Clearly, I’ve got some issues with the way this adventure handles things. Having multiple paths to the solution is great. But the Music Sheet path is essentially random. You’ll probably learn about it randomly and there’s no real way to seek out the parts of the music. You’ll just stumble upon them in various places. The “lures” as well. You don’t know how many bats there are and you would have to learn that, as well as what each bat is attracted to (shiny things, ink, wine, etc) and find some and set a trap and execute the traps …  or you just to the traditional thing and wander about until you find you and hope you kill it (2HD) before it flies off. 

This adventure has more problems than a cathedral full of blind ghosts, demons at night, and church bats!

The map is fine and there’s a VTT version (yeah!) but it uses names instead of numbers to key it. This is a problem. It is not the case that EVERY map needs numbers, but traditional keying does bring one thing to the table that a lot of formats do not: the ability to find a room quickly. If the map says “Belfry”, then what page do you turn to? Where do you find that entry? In this case, you have to fumble through the pages or look it up in the index, a two step process. Traditional keying, though, helps you locate information quickly; 41 comes after 40 and before 42. This needed numbers in addition to the names on the map.

And then there’s the fucking fonts. Jesus H Fucking Christ what is it with designers and their “coo”l fucking fonts? The adventure is supposed to be easy to use. You know what’s NOT easy to read? Those ‘cool’ fucking fonts you’re putting it with all their gothic cursive bullshit. Wall of Text and COol Fonts both have the same fucking problem: you can’t fucking find the fucking information you need. You want to use cool fonts on some handout meant for the players? Great! Go to it! But the TARGET for DM information is the DM … why are you forcing them through all nine circles of hell to figure out what the fuck the read-aloud says? Or … the “easy to use” reference chart. 

It is a shame that the adventure is just wandering around looking for bats that might be someplace (legit, MIGHT be in a location) and having them fly away. There’s a lot of detail on miracles and freaky deaky shit, but its all disconnected from the actual adventure. If you put someones eyes on the altar then they appear on the wall and you get XX powers. Except its not relevant to the adventure. Or, you get to something like the Ghost Of The Baron, who is put to rest by using his true name. Found in the library. Which is left up to the DM or the player whose character uncovers it. ARGGG!!!! THIS! THIS IS GAMEABLE CONTENT! WHich is left out in favor of window dressing. “This aisle is uninteresting except for its ornately crafted stone architecture.” One of the DM texts descriptions tells us. Then why does it exist in the adventure? For completeness sake? It’s a fucking adventure! If you don’t need it then don’t put it in! “This usually busy room is still.” Great. Background. Not gameable. 

One of the descriptions reads: “A large gardening shed made mostly from wood.The ironwork on the outside is quite pretty, but do you honestly care about that?” No, not really. I mean, does it impact the adventure? That would make me care about it. But it doesn’t. Is it evocative and setting a mood for the players? Then I would care about it.  But this don’t do that. “Quite pretty” is abstracted description. SHOW us, don’t tell us. 

I like the curse that makes someones eyes fall out. Good theming on that. This adventure needed to bring that theming out more. It needed more RELEVANT interactivity. Not 100%, sure, but SOME amount of it.

I’m sure the designer envisioned an immerse locale, filled with NPC’s, and a rollicking bat hunt full of complications. That’s not what made it to the page.

This is $14 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/342726/The-Bats-of-Saint-Abbans-DIGITAL-BUNDLE-BUNDLE?1892600

Yup, still working through my Wishlist. Then the recent requests will be coming through.

Companion to Owls:

http://bestsf.net/chris-roberson-companion-to-owls/

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 4 Comments

Dread Swamp of the Banshee

Posted on August 2, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Alan Chamberlain, Mark Taormino, Joe Pearce
Dark Wizard Games
OSRIC
Levels 4-8 [<---- Not in the fucking product description!]

Downstream from the village of Silt is a great marsh created by a massive flood long ago. Many treasures were lost and now lay buried in the ruins of these cursed and water soaked lands. There are rumors that smugglers and criminals hide their felonious activities and great wealth here, but there is more to fear in the mist than the designs of men. Something sinister lurks in the darkness of the bogs. Find your courage, sharpen your blade, and trust no one and you may just survive the Dread Swamp of the Banshee.

This 48 page adventure details around 23 locales, mostly little islands in a swamp, along five or so lair dungeons on a few of the islands, mostly hideouts for bandits. It tries to present a dynamic environment, at least conceptually. Oh, also, around half the text on the 48 pages is read-aloud. I’m not exaggerating by a whole bunch.

[Sung to the tune of He’s a jolly good fellow.]

My lifes a living heeelll

My lifes a living heeeellll

My lifes a living heeeellll

Oh, my lifes a living hell.

So, little town on the edge of the swamp. Swamp is full of monsters. There’s a banshee in it. There’s a lady in a house. There are some hillbillies living in it. There’s some smugglers in it. I don’t know, a few other things also. You get the sense that the designer is TRYING to create a kind of dynamic environment, where there are several situations going on in the swamp and then the party gets mixed up in it. This would be something I can get behind; I think that kind of setup generally creates REALLy good adventures. I think these sorts of wilderness areas or little sandboxy places thrive on a lot going on. 

But that’s not what’s going on here.

Instead you get them all living in isolation to each other, even though their islands are, like, 500 feet away from each other. What’s that about? They pretty much all just stay in one place and their interactions are limited to the DM being told that “maybe the hillbillies follow the party and harass them or take advantage of them.” This is disappointing.

And, half the pages seem like read-aloud. Sometimes you’ll get almost a full page of read-aloud. And then the DM text is almost always then minimally keyed, maybe with some tactics. There’s really not much interactivity at all beyond just going from island to island to stab things. There are attempts to drop in treasure maps and so on to other islands in the swampy area, but you can just row your boat to the landing/dock on each island and have at thee, in a systematic way. There’s nothing to the exploration, it’s not engaging at all. What do you expect from a swamp tree miles wide with 23 large islands 500 feet from each other?

Let’s see … the bouncers in the bar are third level. The boat guide you hire for a pittance is a 6th level thief. And so it goes. Everyones a superhero, everyones a Captain Kirk. Oh! And let’s not forget what else goes with inflated townfolk levels “If Tuck is assaulted, he will activate the trap door, drink his Potion of Invisibility,” Uh huh. Forgotten Realms levels of magical fuckery going on in this one.

At one point you find a tree and kill it. Searching it you find a hollow. The read-aloud tells us “There is no oracle but there does appear to be an intact …” You see, there’s a rumor about an oracle living in a hollow tree. A rumor you may or may not hear. But the fucking read-aloud sure as fuck assumes you do. 

Book magic items. +2 daggers. +1 short swords. 

I get it. Swamp. Cursed banshee. Hillbillies, smuggles, wererats, monsters, lost treasure. It all sounds great in concept. But there’s just nothing here to support the DM in creating or providing for a dynamic play environment. Decisions made by the designers result in absurdity, like the 6th level rural folk boat guide, or the islands so close together, or generic “Fight fight fight” encounters. And you wave to wade through ALL that read-aloud. And the minimal DM text which somehow also is long and confusing in paragraph form.

This is $10 on DriveThru. There’s no preview, so you can’t even make an informed purchasing decision.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/337424/Dread-Swamp-of-the-Banshee?1892600

Why, yes, I am still reviewing every thing on my Wishlist that hasn’t made if off of it in the last ten years, why do you ask?

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 25 Comments

The Dream Cloud of E’lok Thir

Posted on July 31, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Fiona Geist, David McGrogan, Zedeck Siew, Adam Koebel
Free League Publishing
Forbidden Lands

This eighty page booklet has four adventures from four well known designers. I’m going to review this one differently, doing one review post per adventure, in an attempt to give their fair due, something that I think is missing in my previous anthology reviews. This is this fourth and final installment, and the general comments from the first, regarding publisher style, still apply.

The Dream Cloud of E’lok Thir (Koebel)

This seventeen page of emptiness is another one of those dream bullshitty things. Not an adventure, maybe a toolkit to build one, and too high concept and lacking support for the DM.

I went to a Disney costume party over the weekend. I painstakingly researched The Absent Minded Professor and put together a costume, complete with “leather” chemistry apron. In a room full of pirates and animation characters I don’t think my outfit worked; I was just a guy in a tweed suit and hat. This adventure is me at that party. 

I think, what was it?, part of Raggi’s Gran Quest adventures, there was one “Adventure” that was just a bunch of tables. “What color is the wizard’s eyes?” was one I remember. I think I mocked it by noting my own adventure, and linked to the Unabridged Oxford English Dictionary. This is that, with the typical dream bullshit layered on top of it. 

You know the dream bullshit deal. No map, and going back the way you came leads to somewhere else because “Dream.” And a whole lot of asking the party “What is something you regret?” and then having the DM work that in to the room on the fly. Woooo … classy! And totally not something that has been in about a hundred “adventures” before this one. And don’t give me any of that Jusir-my-dick-tpion shit either. Yeah, I get what it’s trying to do. And, thanks to my generations bullshit my cynicism detector IS quite twitchy. But if you’re going to for this high concept Absent Minded Professor shit, in a room full of Disney characters, then you better fucking bring the goods. And the usual throwaway comments about “doors don’t lead back to where you came” ain’t gonna cut it. No half measures. You want to bring the Dream then you better sweet your ass off delivering. 

“Roll a d66 on the 18 entry tables five times and pick one entry from each column to determine the wizards background.” Again, I will flog the horse, RPG designers don’t seem to know how to use a random fucking table. This is NOT OSR design. This is some kind of adventure toolkit stuff. It you’re writing an adventure, which this professes to be, then you, the designer, pick something. And then you integrate that background in to the entire adventure and theme shit and put things together in to a whole. “These entries should inform the dungeon in ways both vague and specific.” Uh huh. On the fucking fly. OR … and now this is a novel idea, YOU, the designer, could do the fucking work. You could spend a few weeks sweeting over it and put together something better than a bunch of randos can put together on the fly. 

“No map, no room description, no paths to follow.” Right. Got it. Typical bad dream adventure nonsense.

“The foyer might take on the qualities of anything just beginning – the foundations of a home, the empty stage just before a play begins, the first day of school.” Uh huh. Or … [repeat after me] the designer could put this in, based the wizard they designed, to make something more cohesive.

“When the characters spend time in this chamber, choose one and ask “what is some- thing you regret?” then weave the answer into your description of the room.” *sigh*

Treasure? Oh no. How about “Treasures found here will shy away from violent expression, but otherwise any magical treasure could be appropriate.” That’s content worth paying for, right?

There;s I don’t know, twelve rooms? The description of the trophy room, the read-aloud, says its quiet like a library. The DM text says the wizard “was an accomplished student of the magical arts who uncovered mysteries, bent reality and endured the very special sort of hubris only sorcerers can suffer. The Trophy Hall is a reflection of accomplishments real and imagined.” That’s it! That’s your fucking guidance for running the trophy room. No notes. No ideas for the DM. That’s the fucking help that the designer has included to help the DM create this room.

So, not an adventure but rather an adventure toolkit. And a pretty shitty one at that, with almost no assist provided to the DM in creating something. Just some vague ideas about a room called Regret Made Manifest.”

I don’t know, in retrospect I might buy it for the Geist adventure, but that’s about it. 

And FUCK YOU, gentle reader. There is room in my life for high concept shit. But not high concept shit that makes a half-assed effort.

This is $10 at DriveThru. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/310243/Forbidden-Lands-Crypt-of-the-Mellified-Mage?1892600

Now, onward and upward, to the next thing on my wishlist that I haven’ reviewed yet because it was too big/expensive/I knew it would suck, etc

Posted in Reviews | 17 Comments

Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord

Posted on July 28, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Fiona Geist, David McGrogan, Zedeck Siew, Adam Koebel
Free League Publishing
Forbidden Lands

This eighty page booklet has four adventures from four well known designers. I’m going to review this one differently, doing one review post per adventure, in an attempt to give their fair due, something that I think is missing in my previous anthology reviews. This is this third installment, and the general comments from the first, regarding publisher style, still apply.

Temple of the Six-Limbed Lord (Siew)

This seventeen page non-adventure is a general description of a situation, with some ideas about a village of monkey invaders. None of which my taxonomy allows to be defined as “an adventure.” 

It’s Monday morning! The shine is shining, the birds are singing, I had a super fun weekend planned, I’m not hung over and I’m only ten pounds from goal weight and fifteen from that mess jacket I’ve always wanted. I even forgot it was time to write a review, which makes it a very good day indeed! And then I remembered …

What if, like, some monkey tunneled in to our world, man? And what if they were like, invaders man? What about that? And what if they had, like, this giant monkey statue that they and their soldiers used to kill people and convert them to their monkey man religion? And, what if, like, there was also this monkey dude who was an outcast and the rightful high priest? Ok, you get the idea. It’s not an adventure. It bills itself as a “village”, in Forbidden Lands type of adventuring site vernacular, but it’s not even really that. It’s too abstract for that. It’s just an idea expanded to seventeen pages.

We start with … a mess. It’s meant to be an overview of what’s going on. An introduction. An orientation. It is not. It is almost incoherent. It’s almost like there’s a longer work, somewhere, and bits of paragraphs are plucked out of it and pasted in to a couple of pages to make an introduction/background section. There’s a role to be played by leaving things mysterious. The imagination needs room, after all, and given the room it will fill things in by itself. But There’s a difference between leaving room and seemingly random facts plopped down on the page as a background that you’re trying to make sense of.

It then offers some advice on how to frame the monkey invasion for your campaign. It suggests taking the wandering table, provided, and sprinkling it in to your own game. Each session replace one of the entries on your wandering table with one the entries from this which are, of course, monkey invasion themed. Hmmm, good advice. I like the stuff the tries to integrate itself in to your world, especially over time, instead of the typical one and done episodic stuff. More immersion=Good thing.

And then the real shit show begins.

The monkey soldier compound. Six towers with a central platform in the center. That makes for seven locations in this “village.” And what does one of these descriptions look like? How about “The barracks rings with shouted roll calls and the clanking of scale mail. Clerks waddle the corridors, tails picking up scrolls fallen from their full arms. The palace is abuzz. Troops make ready; their sergeants tasked with exe- cuting Ngajaputri’s newest stratagem. Roll a D6 on the table below.” Yup, that’s it. A description that only room after empty room in the barrier peaks could love. It’s a fucking abstracted concept. That is ALMOST the entire description of a major war tower of the enemy. Just a fucking concept. And by almost I mean that there’s a second paragraph: “Inside, Ngajaputri paces her throne room. She leans over her war table. Its mahogany cracks and warps and stains – a diorama of the world, updated in real time, as scouts in the field annotate their maps.” Well now, that added a lot, didn’t it! This is, essentially, about as much description, or less, than the great houses of the drow from D3. “Like, hey, man, you could have this tower, and, like, there could be monkey soldiers in it! Yeah! That’s it man!” There’s nothing to this. At best, its inspiration for the DM to create their own game, or run some kind of Fiasco like story game.

And then there are the table. The random tables. Proving once again that a fuck ton of people making RPG’s don’t the fuck know how to use a table and the what the fuck they are for. Basically, each tower gets its own random table, because, OSR< right? OSR has random tables! Look everybody! It’s Darth Vader! You recognize Darth Vader right?! Dance monkey! Dance! Table 1: where could the monkey compound be located, six entries. Bottom of a lake. On an important road. In the middle of a river. Just more ideas. Hey, one of the towers seems to have a jail cell in it! A ten entry table to help the DM pick a prisoner for the jail cell. *sigh* They are all like this. Hey, you know what works better than a table when you are creating major parts of your adventure? Actually creating that part of your adventure and then riffing the rest of the adventure off of it, as the designer, and focusing the editing around it to integrate it in to a complete whole. Or, I mean, you could just slap down a bunch of tables, creating ideas to inspire the DM to create their own adventure, and then slap “adventure” label on it. 

You know, whatever. For an asshole that claims language has no meaning anymore I sure get pissy when it actually happens. 

Anyway, the weakest entry so far. Next review: the last entry. Please baby jesus, let it be better. Please.

This is $10 at DriveThru. 


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/310243/Forbidden-Lands-Crypt-of-the-Mellified-Mage?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 15 Comments

The Firing Pit of Llao-Yuyuy

Posted on July 26, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Fiona Geist, David McGrogan, Zedeck Siew, Adam Koebel
Free League Publishing
Forbidden Lands

This eighty page booklet has four adventures from four well known designers. I’m going to review this one differently, doing one review post per adventure, in an attempt to give their fair due, something that I think is missing in my previous anthology reviews. This is this second installment, and the general comments from the first, regarding publisher style, still apply.

The Firing Pit of Llao-Yuyuy (McGrogan)

This dungeon uses thirteen pages to describe a 21 room cave complex that’s used by an (evil) dude to make magical pottery stuff. It’s lacking in much interactivity, beyond combat, and is fairly straight-forward, reminding me more of a lair dungeon in tone, if not in size.

Okey dokey, so, same italics in the read-aloud, same iso-metric map bringing a more evocative vibe to the mapping sphere. And, well, more of the same of everything.

The complex is mostly a just an adventuring site, with a couple of off-hand remarks up front about integrating it like “the party is just passing by” or “several villagers have gone missing.” Nothing wrong with just an adventuring site, but, I think the adventure would be stronger to leave them out rather than just have a throw-away sentence. Or, perhaps, use the space of the throw-away’s to expand the “missing villagers” thing by just a few more sentences to add some depth to it. 

The map is is in the same great iso-metric format as the first entry, adding life to what would otherwise be a pretty plain “a couple of chambers with connecting twisty passages” map. There’s a water feature or two and good little vertical piece, complete with pulley and bucket to get to the top/bottom … always a fun time! It’s more simplistic than the first entry in the volume, which is one of the reasons why I compare this to the simple lair dungeons so common these days. Larger in number of rooms, but still as straight-forward as they tend to be … and I don’t necessarily mean linear. And … one room is missing a key on the map; a dreadful oversight of our erstwhile editor. 

Read-aloud is … well, I’m not actually sure it’s meant to be read-aloud. It’s in italics (and long. Boo!). It’s formatted like read-aloud. It reads like read-aloud. Well, mostly. Until you reach the entry that says, in the read-aloud, that there are d3 treasures in the room. Editing error? Or, is this meant to be some text for the DM to give them a brief overview of the room? That would explain the over-detail of the read-aloud, destroying the back and forth between the players and the DM … because then it wouldn’t be over-detail. But, counterpoint, the creatures are never mentioned, which would be be something you should put in the DM focused text. So, I stick by my initial assertion: it’s read-aloud. In italics. Too long. With DM text mixed in. And using boring words like large and small instead of more evocative ones. And, of course, the over-detail. “It is guarded by a golem called the Child” says the read-aloud. Which both over explaines (The Child) and tells instead of shows (golem.)

DM text is added to fuck and back. “These were painted eons past by the primitive peoples who lived in the region.” Which has fuck all to do with the adventure. “They leave this room unguarded.” You mean, like, the description says? Or the fact that there are no monsters in the room? No shit sherlock. Look, ok, that’s an over-reaction on my part. A child could squeeze in to a crack. Or, the text tells us, a dwarf, halfing, goblin or other small humanoid. SO … something child-sized, you’re saying? This is just the typical padding that I would expect in an adventure … expect in a not very focused and/or well edited and written one, I mean. 

Which is not to say its all bad. “A large black hole in the side of the mound, below which is a steep slope of scree. Strewn all over the slope and in a huge pile at the bottom are shattered fragments of pottery and clay dust.” There are little bits like that are not too bad. Large and huge are pretty boring, at least large is, but not bad. 

Oh! Oh! Another padding tirade! We do get a over abundance of DM text, a lot of it coming from padding and repetition. For example, a watchpost has the usual “dozing watchmen” in it, but we’re told this in three separate places:  lazy servant is posted here at all time, the details of the lazy servant mechanics to see the party/be dozing, and then “Since nobody ever approaches the mound duties are treated laxly.” … an explanation and/or justification of the encounter. This goes a long way to padding out what should otherwise be a shorter amount of DM text. But, hey, it reaches the required page count. This room, in particular, also exemplifies the house style … never really mentioning the servant, beyond those oblique references, until the end, noting “Creatures: one servant” at the end of the room description. 

Over and over again this shit happens. When we do get something good, like potters who can’t walk and shuffle about on their fists, it’s done in a way that they DONT shuffle about on their fists. And, ultimately, it’s just going in to a room and seeing a human servant or some humanoid golem. One or two of the golems are mechanically ot descriptivly interesting, but theres little enough to the variety or interactivity to make it interesting beyond this. 

I’d rate this far weaker than the Geist entry in the anthology.

This is $10 at DriveThru. Preview doesn’t work.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/310243/Forbidden-Lands-Crypt-of-the-Mellified-Mage?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 9 Comments

Crypt of the Mellified Mage – Part 1

Posted on July 24, 2021 by Bryce Lynch 
By Fiona Geist
Free League Publishing
Forbidden Lands

This eighty page booklet has four adventures from four well known designers. I’m going to review this one differently, doing one review post per adventure, in an attempt to give their fair due, something that I think is missing in my previous anthology reviews.

It’s hard to review anthology adventures because you’re dealing with different authors with different strengths. On top of that, you have the publisher, who inevitably has their own house style guide. It’s hard, therefore, to attribute any aspect of an adventure. Was it the designer making the choice, or the publisher, or an editor, or a layout person? And thus we have this thing. A series of adventures that share some similarities that we’ll attribute not to the designers but to SOMEONE ELSE. For example, the house style guide says “Read aloud is in italics” so all of the read-aloud is in italics. Multiple sentences in italics in this one, making them hard to read. And a weird font on top of that, exacerbating the problem of quickly and easily absorbing the information. This, alone, makes me groan as I struggle with the read-aloud. Maps for the adventures are buried in some random location in the adventure, making referencing them during play difficult. I generally print them out for my screen, so not a huge deal, but it goes to show that shortcuts were made on the usability of the adventures at the table. An afterthought. We do get, however, a nice isometric view of each map that adds quite a bit to their nature, making them evocative and easy to read and bringing life to an aspect of an adventure that is generally just a simple drawing. Very nice

Crypt of the Mellified Mage (Geist)

Our first adventure is a 35 room dungeon, a tomb like thing themed to the “honey wizard” that is buried there. Bees and honey and wax, Oh My! It runs roughly eighteen pages, with two of them being a fine isometric map and a small amount of artwork. 

“The Honied Catacomb gestates beneath the earth like a pustule waiting to burst.” Is the first actual non-italic line of the adventure, and serves as a good summary of what’s to come: some decent ideas with perhaps a bit too much Try Hard with the verbiage. The alternative being what it is, I’ll take the Try Hard every time, but Geist walks a fine line here, getting things right a decent amount and dancing over the line in to inflated prose enough that I worry about my already poor eyesight. That balance, however, comes with time and practice and things are moving in the right direction with Geist.

The first age or two is background and summary and, frankly, one of the poorest sections of the adventure. A summary is a good thing for an adventure, telling us how things will go and how things work together. But in this instance is a worded mess. There’s a rough paragraph that is trying to describe a village on top of the dungeon that is a complete disaster, not being clear and something I missed entirely in the first reading. Abstracted to “insular and weird”, it provides no real benefit to the adventure. Nors does anything else in these two pages, except for a note that there are three entrances and the air inside thick with loamy and faintly spiced sweetness. This then is the gameable results of two pages of hard fought words, the rest being not coherent enough, in organization or sentence structure (and I thought I was paren happy!) to hack through.

The map is a great one through. Spread over two pages we get a kind of 3d view of the system. It really comes alive in this format. I can’t say it’s to the benefit of anything, mechanically, the way it is say in DL1, but It brings the place to life in a way that few maps do. Streams, same-level stairs, columns and alters, you get a great sense of the place. It’s a delight to see and has more variety than the usual old boring  tomb or temple map. 

Geist is a good designer and decent writer, and that shows up, in both ways, in the adventure. There is a general level of over-reveal in thread-aloud that works against the player-DM interactivity of slow discovery that should be a hallmark of adventures. A sample (italics) of a longer read-aloud says “A small idol of a bee made of expertly worked topaz and onyx sits atop a massive, papery bee- hive.”

This one line, pulled from a longer section, is indicative of the small issues that combine to less than stellar effect. We get the generic word “small”, with over reveals of detail in the read-aloud telling us it’s a bee, it’s expertly worked, what it’s made of , and the papery nature of the beehive. Ideally this would be a more general, but still evocative description of a gleaming point of something or some such on a beehive, leaving the details for the party to discover as they interact with the room. In other places we also get a kind of abstracted text in places, described conclusions and telling instead of showing, such as rooms “echoing dramatically.”

But, Geist knows their stuff. We get great bursts of imagery like a visiting “yokel armed with a handaxe and a disproportionate amount of self esteem.” That’s great imagery and you know immediately how to run the encounter. That sort of description is worth its weight in gold. I would hold that sentence up against any other ever written in adventures design as an example of writing looks like when its at its best. Short and punches WAY above its weight class. There is also a decent amount of interactivity that goes beyond the usual staid traps and tricks, like a throne that tilts backpack when you sit in it spilling the person in to deeper part of the dungeon God, I love the classics when they are well done!

If I was not full of ennui right now (My bottle of Chartreuse was $70. $70! Can you believe it?! Why, when I was a wee lad of 19 it was only $20.)I would pick the FUCK apart the text of this adventure. Like “6. Embalming Room. A room for the preparation and mummification of corpses.” Well no fucking shit, you told us twice. Plus, you don’t tell the fucking players its an embalmbing room, you DESCRIBE an embalmbing room. This thing needed a fucking editor. I see from the credit that the CEO of Free League edited it. Well, I see your problem right there. 

This thing is hard. The rooms are good. The writing has points where its REALLY good. I mean, fuck, a room stuffed FULL of beehives with the droning an bees? Fuck yeah man! But the house style, and shitty editing detract a great deal from it. Yeah, ok, so, I’d pick this over 90% of the adventures published. But I also wouldn’t look forward to running it, because of the layout/style issues. 

I can see parallels here to North Wind. 

This is $10 at DriveThru.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/310243/Forbidden-Lands-Crypt-of-the-Mellified-Mage?1892600

Posted in Reviews | 8 Comments