Whitestone Tower

Posted on March 5, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Stephen Grodzicki
Pickpocket Press
OSR
Level ?

In the skies above Vorngard, a winged beast is causing trouble, killing messenger ravens and scouts that wander too far west. Scouts say the monster lairs in a fallen tower, once home to a long dead sorceress. But if that’s true, what’s causing the glow in the highest window by night?

This twelve page adventure describes about eight locations in and around a tower. There’s one big bad and some minor creatures floating around. The situations in this are pretty good, and while the writing tends to the long side, and flat, a highlighter solves that. of course, I won’t do that, but maybe you do?

This is a relatively basic adventure that could, I suspect, be done in one night. There are some garbage hooks and backstory that take up more than a few pages, but, basically, it’s a ruined tower with a manticore in it. There’s a short overland journey to get to the tower, with a decent wandering monster table. The wanderers are not just a monster listing but rather a situation. Some are creatures, like a band of barbarians camping or a”dessicated husk of a dead beastman with yellow warpaint on the ground. Several days old and laden with grubs. In the high trees are a phase spider, hoping to ambush the outermost part member that stops to investigate.” Just a couple of sentence that give the DMs brain something to work with. This is exactly what an adventure should be doing: giving the DMs brain something to work with. You need JUST enough content to get the creative juices of the DM going, but not so much as to overwhelm their ability to scan and absorb the information quickly. The designer is relying on the DM to fill in the rest, as all adventures do, but doing it in such a way as to add significant value by giving the ol noggin a hard shove in a certain direction and letting the DM riff from there. I’m a big fan of the one page of wanderers, ten in all. I think it’s the right page count for the right number of creatures, and the encounters tend to be situations. 

Ok, you’re now near the tower. Turns out there’s a band of barbarians camped at the base of it. A group of exils that have banded together led by Malmogg the hulkig young teen, bald, skin covered in battle scars ,exiled for seducing the chief’s second wife. Again, perfect amount of content for the kid. You get a few keywords and that describes the dude enough for you to riff on it from there. The exiles serve the manticore in the hopes it will go eat their former tribe … but might let the party pass with a bribe if he thinks they are weak. Great! More personality!

Also outside the tower is the place where the manticore eats his prey .. .not wanting to get his bed dirty in the tower. A clifftop blood stained, scattered with bones old and new and skeletons at the bottom, overgrown with grass and other plant life. Pretty good scene. And some giant worker ants picking over the bodies. Who are fine with taking a live human back to the nest. And if you kill them then in an hour or so some soldier ants show up to swarm the area. Perfect! It makes sense! That the ants are there in the first place and that the soldier ants eventually show up. It’s what SHOULD happen. 

The tower has a few floors, like, four or five, and as many rooms. Maybe. I say maybe because there’s no map. We get a small map of the lands around the tower, showing the relationship of the bandit camp to the tower to the feeding grounds, along with a small river/creek to help with the inevitable sneaking plan. But we don’t get a plan of the tower. There’s a sideview of the outside, noting some features like a large hole in the side and windows (and some advice inside for gaining entry that way) but nothing about the interior. It’s just described, textually. Yes, I suppose that theoritically this can work. But, just include a map man; it’s a thousand times easier. 

It’s pretty basic inside. A bathroom with giant worms in it. A storage room with animated armor. The manticore, who is open to some Smaug-like talky talk Maybe that happens. Or, maybe, he’s not in the tower and the party has some time for an ambush and explore before he comes home. Either way. Nice.

And then there’s the “extra” encounter. One floor has a ghost on it. The sorceress that once lived here. She’s the usual ranty/moments of clarity ghost. Except … if someone agrees to stay with her … she remains mostly lucid. And les them go eventually. And even bestows spell power on them … but she touches them to do it … aging them! Nicely done! We turn a minor also-ran encounter in to something that could hang around the campaign for a long time and also speaks to the essence of what a ghost encounter is. Another nod to the way things SHOULD work, things that seem like they fit, or are realistic. Not just a throw away encounter. Perfect!

It should be obvious I’m pretty enamored with the situations in this. And the advice to the DM, on gaining entry to to tower and where the manticore can’t fit, for example, is spot on what the DM needs to run the thing. The things that don’t work here are relatively minor. 

Treasure is f the “roll once on the loot table in the rulebook” variety. Not cool. Add some colour and flavour to your treasure man! And, there’s a curse on the tower that makes approaching it very difficult … I’m not sure about this. Basically, if you fail then you try to keep your friends from going in to the tower. “Its doomed, an we will be also! You’re my bud and I can’t let you do that!” Pretty good, actually, but in practice I’m not sure how its going to work over time. Two factions of the party? And on return visits? This could be the major holdup in the adventure … and thus a few more words of advice would be in order.

It IS wordy. We’ve got some “This room was once a … “ text going on. The text, while not full on conversational in style, does trend in tha direction. We’ve got some if/then statements. Combined with the textual description of the levels, insertions of motivations and so on, then we’ve got room entries that are trending to half a standard page or more. And that’s not something you can scan easily without some extra bolding, whitespace, or so on to help the DM orient themselves. You either gotta be terse or do the heavy lift of the formatting and layout to help with DM scanning … and this doesn’t do that.

This is a decent little adventure. Decent enough that, being three years old, I may check out some of the others in the line to see which ones are better and which ones worse. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is only two pages, with one of them being the cover. It does nothing to help you make a purchasing decision.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/260668/Adventure-Framework-42-Whitestone-Tower?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, No Regerts | 13 Comments

Wavestone Keep

Posted on March 2, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Kevin Conyers
ShickTohp
OSE
Level 3

Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!

*sigh*

Eight pages. Nine rooms, all on two pages. Which could have been one, honestly.

Look at that tagline. Fear the waves, the tides, the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone! Note: this adventure doesn’t even have a tower, that’s how AWESOEM it is!. The existence of waves, tides and sea must be extrapolated, allowing the DM to put a bunch of extra time and effort in things, allowing them to exercise their brain muscle!

Seriously, no tower. A cave complex, but no tower. Note the adventure tidal: Wavestone Keep. No keep. At all. Just caves. How’s that for marketing oomph?! Yeah baby, it’s open ended, allowing the DM to fill in the gaps!

How about a bunch of rooms with lizard men and kobolds who just wait in side to die, not responding to anything? You got it! Wave after wave of them, where “wave” is defined as the waves in the tagline, I guess? It’s too complex for a mere plebe like myself to understand.

Like, what the fuck am I supposed to say about this thing? “Crudely carved room, stone protrusions serve as beds.” Woaaah! I’m inspired! How about the 2d10 lizard men that are inside? You know it baby! There’s a challenge for you! Your brain just SPRINGS in to action when something like this pops across the page. “Natural cave with a carefully cleaned floor?” Count me in! My players will DROOL with anticipation at that! And the loot! That room contains AT LEAST 4000gp worth of treasure, allowing the DM to just fill everything in on their own without having to worry about a designer filling it in for them!

Wait, wait, back to the 2d10 lizard men! EVERY room is like that, with a variable number of monsters/guards. How’s that for sticking it to man?1 No need to actually put itin, it could be 1 or it could be 10! Masterful game design!

How about that wandering table with giant rates and bats on it?! You remember that old marketing line that D&D was limited only by your imagination? Rubbish! This is clearly not limited by imagination AT ALL, and has NOTHING to do with imagination! The marketing lies, this is the real deal, right here!

“Crumbly natural cabe, stone floor littered with detritus.” Thrill at that terse description motherfuckers! Fuck your evocative writing! This adventure don’t need it! 

Room after room like this. All nine of them. With variable monsters. With a short description tat says nothing. With DM text that elaborates on nothing but what there is to stab. Sadly, there’s no details on how many egg clusters there are on the nesting room, or what lizard men eggs taste like. 

A boy can dream.

I find my recent run of adventures deplorable and they make me want to giv eup on life. Not kill myself. Just stare at the screen, numbly. So, we gonna do something bout that.

Ok fuckers, you made it this far. Welcome to the next Bryce Lynch adventure design contest. There’s only one prize. $100. And you get a handwritten card from me calling you not a fucking idiot. Unless it turns out you are one. 

You get nine fucking rooms and eight fucking pages. And PLEASE don’t feel the need to use all eight pages. Pretty please?  Entries must be received by March 15th. The title has to be Wavestone Keep, but you can’t use that name, just call it something like that. And the marketing blurb has to be “Fear the waves, the tides and the sea itself! A fearsome tower of stone roams the oceans, delivering its deadly cargo of lizardmen wherever it happens to land!” But, again, you can’t use that wording, come up with the same fucking thing though. Oh, and buy a copy of this shit-fest as inspiration. br*********@***il.com That’s a zero and not an o in there.

This is $1 at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/386162/Wavestone-Keep?1892600

Posted in 2 out of 10, 5e, Adventurers League, Do Not Buy Ever, Dungeon Magazine, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, God Effort, Level 0, Level 1, Level 12, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, Level 6, Level 8, Level 9, Millions and Millions of its Babies, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Pathfinder, Reviews, SciFi, The Worst EVAR? | 69 Comments

The Cauldron

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Jon Bertani
The Merciless Merchants
OSE
Levels 3-7

Rumors abound of treacherous jungles with giant birds, carnivorous apes, a smoking and angry volcano, and even hushed whispers of a giant sea creature that protects the island! But the lure of countless lost treasures of the fallen civilization may be more tantalizing than old tales told by fools and drunks.

You make me. Feel like. I’m living a teenage dream. The way you turn me on. I can’t sleep. I mean, not the adventure. I’m talking about you, gentle reader. Let’s run away and don’t ever look back! 

This 25 page adventure details about a six locations on a tropical island. AKA: Dread. We can dance until we die. As Dread clones go, this one is far better than usual and, also, suitable to a shorter game … a session or two or three, maybe four, instead of Dreads “We’re gonna fucking be here for a while …” There’s nothing wrong with the long game as Dread enables, but sometimes you’re looking for a quickie tropical game treasure map. You and I. And the writing is generally evocative and put together well, if a bit long.

There’s a bunch of garbage in the beginning about hooks, and reverse pickpockets and shit, but, ultimately, you get a treasure map to an island about a week away with a big X on the map like, a “lost temple/treasure!” note on it. That’s all you fucking need man. Will be young forever.

Supporting the sea voyage, and the hooks, and general fuckwitery, are three different pirate ships and rews that the DMcan use to spice things up. Wandering encounters on the ocean, or near the island, or aybe on the return journey. They are MUCH more fully formed than the usual dreck you come across. You get a ship name, a fun little description of it that takes up no more than a sentence, and a sentence each on the captain, someone else important like maybe the first mate, and another for the pirate crew. Together they amount to four fucking sentences and bring SO much more life to the things than the usual adventure does. The pirate shit is a big part of these things, usually, and it’s good to see someone deliver on the promise of some fun pirate content. “The Bone Vulture” has bird bones attached to the ship because the captain things it bring him luck. Captain Vaigle is very superstitious about small things, constantly runk making him fearless, and an expert at close-shore ship maneuvering. Legless Freynar the first mate is a legless barbarian from the far north with a very intimidating voice the crew responds to immediately. The crew is a very superstitious lot that listen more to the first mate than the captain. You get it, they got some color and fucking life to them and they seem fucking fun to run! And when I’m excited to run something, especially lame ass pirates, then that’s a good job!

Our wandering tables do a pretty decent job as well of brining the mundane and the exotic. Things from the rumor tables show up, and each entry gets one sentence to kind of bring them to life and ge the DM riffing on the encounter. I love that. Got a motel and built a fort out of sheet! One of my favorite is just a fight breaking out among the ships crew you’re on. Just the mundane shit that a DM can riff on. There’s gonna be some shivving, taking sides, and sme ocean justice kiddos! All cause the wandering table says “Squabble on the ship! Sailors begin fighting each other over some argument.” Ima get your heart racing in my skin-tight jeans

We hit the island and you’ve got some of the classic encounters from Dread. Volcano plateau with temple. Cannibal tribe. Good tribe. Then you’ve got a dragon living UNDA DA SEA in the lagoon and a small abandoned temple with just a few locations … it being just above ground ruins. And then you’ve got the wrecked ships on the beach. What d oyou do? Hey Mr Adventure Person … you’re on your ship and you see some wrecked ships on the beach .. .what do you do? What comes to mind? Well … do fucking HARPIES come to mind!?! It’s a fucking GREAT harpy encounter! Fuck! Yeah! Classic baby! They charm the young sailors and get them to wreck their ships. Sailor heads, sailor heads, eat them up , YUM! (More on this kick ass encounter later.) So, you get my vote for some decent encounters … although they do tend to be a little sandboxy and open-ended and could use a real adventuring location at some point on the island … and the volcano temple isn’t really large enough to count. You want a Kopru complex (and some more treasure, i think … it seems a bit light … unless OSE is on the silver standard?) 

Formatting is pretty good .. .you get a longish opening paragraph with some keyword bolding and then bullets underneath that expand on those keywords. It’s a good format, one of my favs … even though the text does a run a bit long in the various descriptions. It’s not extravagant, but I really do think it’s pushing things for scanning purposes ,,, but, sure, it falls inside the range of normal for good scanning, if at the end of the that spectrum. And, bonus point, there’s some clarifying artwork at one point tat makes on of the volcano rooms really come to life!  When  you look at me, just one touch.

I’m pretty happy with the language, even though I do think the evocative writing is not used consistently. But when it does it’s pretty good! A large tied gourd holds one tribes loot. Good fitting in to the theme of the village and I can visualize it being wrapped up A LOT in grass twine or some such … even if the description does use the hated word “large.” But, in other places we get longer visuals, like “Several corpses are strewn about, some even hanging from trees with dangling entrails that the curling mists reveal once closer. Broken branches, feathers, dung and foliage make a series of filthy tiered nests among the towering trees” Dangling entrails in the mist for the win kids! Other visualis, like a chief being the only one in the village with a bit of metal armor “a shining open faced helm with ornate eye slits.” A tribe of cannibals with just suede like that? I’m signing up for that visual! 

Oh, and the fucking harpies again. They’ve got one dude they are keeping alive in their main nest, from a wrecked ship, who they are using for breeding .. .and he’s guarding a harpy baby, his, with his life. Fuck man. Heavy. Oh! Oh! And the wandering tables do have sailors refugees, stranded pirates and the like routinely showing up, for roleplaying fun and maybe joining your crew, since they are stranded … that’s awesome! 

Again, quite short, I think, compared to Dread, but really well done. It could use a larger adventure site on the island and maybe one more thing going on with the island. There are ROCs and the lag0on dragon, I guess … as a DM you should be ramping that shit up I guess.That part could be a little more explicit .. .even though the adventure tells you to use them frequently. It just doesn’t FEEL right, I guess, the way it’s communicate. Which is weird because a lot of the rest of adventure DOES feel right. This could be polished a bit more, I guess I’m saying, to bring the minor stuff more to life. Still, good jorb!

I’ll be your teenage dream tonight!

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages, and shows the pirate ships, the general island and that great harpy encounter. Good preview … although the rest of the island is not quite at the harpy level.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/383741/The-Cauldron?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 7 Comments

Bandits Below!

Posted on February 26, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Eric Moss
Bugbear Games
OSR
Level ?

A seemingly innocuous store front, Just don’t look below the floorboards!

This seven page adventure uses two pages to describe ten rooms, about evenly split between a building above ground a small cave/dugout below ground. The above ground portion seems more natural, while the below ground portion is lacking in anything interesting at all. This is, essentially, a one page dungeon padded out with extra text and blank pages. That’s disappointing, as is the rather basic premise.

There’s not much going on here in terms of plot, which is ok. The hooks are basically “you’re in the shop and something happens”, which is pretty much word for word what the hooks says, “something.” Or, you’re sent to find a kidnap victim. I’m not really upset at this, but, it also feels like “some bandits using this store as a front” could use a little more to it. I don’t know, a paragraph describing their extortion schemes or something. 

The front itself is a tad interesting, but could be better. You’ve got a grumpy old man with an eyepatch running a general store. I’m imaging a run down one, anthough tha’s not mentioned. He’s a coward and lets the bandits use the stor as a front. Again, I think maybe a little more, in the intro, could have been good here. He’s got money troubles or a sick mom or something, a little bit more depth to him. In any event, in times of trouble he gets the fuck out of dodge, which is a great realistic reaction … something the upper level/front business does well. In the back room you’ve got some tables with some bandits hanging out playing cards. I’m imagining something out of the Sopranos, although there’s not anything more to it than “three dudes in a back room playing cards.” Still, again, this is a realistic kind of thing and I like it. It feels right. I could have used a bit more description, to get a vibe going in the room tha the DM can then communicate to the players. We’re not talking about the need for a lot here, just a few more words, maybe one sentence that describes the room/social club. In a similar vein, we’ve got two dudes sitting out the “special guests” room, guarding it. That’s all we get, they are in a foyer, with it being undescribed. I imagine them sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper, the legs up or some such. It’s good that I’m going there, that my brain is making up these little scenes … but the designer could have added a sentence to bring that vignette more fully to life. 

When the adventure moves out of the front store and down in the basement dugout, then the wheels fall off. It’s just a room with a couple of bandits in it. Bandits ambush in the room that has the entrance trapdoor in the ceiling. How, in what I assume is an empty room? Sure, i can put some cratesin it or something. Or, the designer can provide one sentence more about the room that brings it to life. And not even the minimal brain spike from the upper floors are included in the basement … it’s just dudes in a room. 

There’s just nothing here to work with. It’s padded out with nonsense, like, the backroom has goods for the general store that the guy legally acquired. Ok, sure, what’s the point in the legally aquired thing? It’s not going to make one difference one way or another. The padding and more conversational 5e text style (and it looks like it’s done in one of those 5e adventure templates) doesn’t provide anything to work with DURING the adventure and just detracts from the scanning.

As a small single location for the party to adventure in, a quick raid on a storefront bandit lair, it’s small. And that’s ok. But the lack of entanglements, or things in the room to work with, or evocative writing to help more fully bring the adventure to life is really dragging it down for me, no matter the small concessions to the more realistic bandit behaviours on the first and second floors of the building.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $1.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/386378/Quick-Micro-Dungeons-2–Bandits-Below?189260

Posted in Reviews | 4 Comments

Kobold Caves of the Golden God

Posted on February 23, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
Jeff Simpson
Buddyscott Entertainment Group
B/X
Levels 1-3

Delve deep into the Mountains of Fire to solve the mystery of torturous screams echoing across the valley. Within the depths you will find kobolds, slimes, and the dying quest of a long-lost paladin order!

This thirteen page adventure details a town and three level dungeon with about fifty rooms. Good maps, some interactivity, and a terse verbiage create a pretty well rounded product that feels like a pre-AD&D adventure. You could run a game with this! Although, I would prefer a bit more in the way of evocative writing and interactivity.

The map here is fairly interesting. The first level is fairly simple, with a few features, like a tunnels underground and s could of very simple loops. They are all hand-drawn, but with computer lettering on it, making for an exceptionally clean look that is easy to follow. Levels two and three are done the same way, but with more rooms than one and with more features like loops and “in room” features. It’s a fairly impressive map effort given the size. We’re not talking Gygax filling the page, but, a level with thirty rooms on it is a pretty decent level Same level stairs, one-way doors, and locked doors near the beginning of the dungeon that you must eventually return to provide some real value.

Thirteen pages, three levels and over fifty rooms … WITH a town attached! That’s a designer with focus right there, folks! This thing manages to pack in about ten or so rooms per page, which means that it’s keeping a tight hold on its writing. And this is both a blessing a curse. When you’re really focusing the text you need to bring your A game to get a terse but evocative room description, especially if the room is bringing extra interactivity beyond “stab the monster.” The terse format of the rooms here allows the DM to effortlessly scan the room descriptions; I heartily approve. There’s not much wasted in the word budget here; the extra conversational padding or bullshit that so many adventures revel in is not seen at all here, or, close enough to that for it to be true. 

What we struggle with, in these terse room descriptions, are evocative language. You’re not going to get a fully formed image for a room, and that’s, say it with me, O  K  . What you’re looking to do, as a designer, is to shove an idea seed in to the DMs head. To give them enough, in the word budget, that their brain will grab hold and run with it. And there come to it, the fuzzy line. What’s enough? Did the designer write enough, put enough in, use the rights words … to bring the room alive … at least enough for the DM to run with. Well, no, not really. But, maybe?

The room descriptions here are brief and generally have one idea and that idea IS enough to run with. If you want to. But, I’d argue that, as presented, I’m not excited to run them. I’m not talking set pieces or nifty gee wiz bango rooms. I don’t FEEL the rooms, in a visceral way. “Outer Parlour There are two acolytes here discussing the worship of Zoray. They are intoxicated and get a +1 on reaction rolls.” So, with that I can run those dudes. A couple of drunk clerics talking about the worship of their god, man Can you dig it? Sure. I can. I can run that and it’s a situation that is better than most fucking garbage that is published today. Terse, and a situation, perfect. . But it feels to me more like a basis of a room description, like the designers notes for a room description. It feels like the descriptions could be tweaked to more fully bring it alive. I’m going to reuse a phrase I sometimes turn to, but this time in a different context. It feels like a fact based description and I think you want to convey a mood based description. Two wasted priests enveloped in a cloud of opium smoke from a hookah philosophize over the finer points of ooze-based worship” or some shit like that. 

Another example is “Door Carved into the door is the image of a demon being pierced by a broadsword.” Sure. And again it lacks that little extra oomph to bring it fully alive. It’s a concept, or, notes for a concept, that need to be developed. Not necessarily with more words but with a different vibe being conveyed. 

Interactivity is a mixed bag. There’s some lip service being played to some factions on the first level. Certain kobolds are a supporter, or not, of their leader Kurtz. But that’s all you get, a brief note every time a room has kobolds, on if they are supporters or not of their leader. Can I do something with that? Sure. But it’s the basre fucking minimum. 

More traditional interactivity is a bit light. While you CAN murder everyone in the start village (the adventure makes a point of noting their treasure, just like in B2, to tempt the party …) the more dungeon based interactivity is a bit light. You can get tossed in a bronze bull, or explore a dig tunnel, which is good. One more the more set-piecey encounters is “Study A hooded medusa sits in this room and offers to play chess with the character with the highest Charisma. That character must roll equal to or under their Intelligence on 3d6. Failure results in losing the game, at which point the medusa will remove its hood and initiate a gaze at the character. If the character wins, the medusa will give them her treasure which consists of 4 anklets. They are golden and worth 3600gp” Soo … ok. But, also an exception rather than a rule in the dungeon. The first level, in particular feels more like a B2 lair cave … a vibe that continues throughout the other two levels to a slightly lesser degree. 

It does, however, FEEL like a basic adventure, or, rather, an adventure from pre-AD&D days. The more … whimsical, or looser, nature of the dungeon comes through loud and clear. This is Basic/OD&D and I love that fucking vibe. 

I’ve bitched more than a little about this one, and it could absolutely be improved. It’s also a nice little dungeon that you can actually fucking run that can bring the basic vibe … if you’re willing to maybe read it first and really visualize each room and make some liner notes to help you bring it more fully to life. Almost a No Regerts, but, I’d also sign up for the designers newsletter … I want to know more and see mroe from them.

Bonus points: there’s a dragon sleeping on a bridge on the third level. Rock on!

This is free at DriveThru.


https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/386057/Kobold-Caves-of-the-Golden-God?1892600

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Altrair’s Hideout

Posted on February 21, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Maitre Corbeau
Self Published
5e
Level 3

A nice inn, a warm fireplace and someone to bet your precious coins, what could be better to start an adventure that this ? I offer you Altrair’s hideout, a quest filled with puzzles and tricks, deceptions and big rewards… maybe ?

This eight page dungeon features eight rooms. It’s a funhouse dungeon. I am filled with the regrets of a thousand lifetimes. The mourning of the deaths of all possible futures given the choices of the past and their inevitable consequences for the predestination that they lead to. If you’re feeling like I feel then run your life like it’s a dance floor. And if you need a little heat in your face, that’s what I’m here for. 

A Request! For 5e! It’s not clear how many more of these I’m going to handle. I’m not devoid of sympathy for the 5e designers, but, it’s also not my life’s mission to provide individual feedback. Hmmm, maybe I should start up my design consultation/feedback thing again. Maybe, one thou a pop? Like they say, fifty though a year will buy a buy a lot of beer, And maybe even some shades. And maybe some therapy?  Or, I could finally get the brakes done on my truck and the rotors on my car. Now I’m just rambling. If you’re feeling like I feel throw your fist though the ceiling! Some people call it crazy but I call it healing.

It’s not clear I recognize D&D anymore. Time counts and keep count. The seasons change, as do people. Well, except for me, from the day of my birth Gilgamesh was called by name. But D&D? … This adventure features one combat with four thugs. They surrender when reduced to a third of their hit points. Which, I guess is nice to see since I usually complain about fanatic opponents fighting to the death. They also deal non-lethal damage, which, I think, is a trend these days? At least, when I play 5e, I get chastised for my “I stab him 76 times in throat with my pocket knife” style of play. So I think it’s a thing. And since this is my blog and the rest of you are just undigested bits of roast beef, that’s all that counts. And keeps count. 

Seriously, that’s the combat.New readers just arriving will now think I’m some kind of kick the door in and kill the monsters guy. A thousand times No! But, man, a bit of the old ultra-violence keeps things interesting! When it’s not the only note in the cymphony.  (<—Ha! Get that one you fuckers!) What ever happened to fire and torture? Who wants to start … oh, hey, that’s a really great idea! 

Ok, fuckers! Who wants to be an asshat with me? You gotta be a HARD piping OSR player. A team player, engaging, not a wall flower. Thinking outside the box  murder fucking hobo par exelance! It’s gonna be fucking great! And, it will distract me from reviews like this one.

Look, man, this dude don’t deserve me. He’s just some designer from Quebec writing adventures in French & English. No doubt they love D&D. And some dickhead somewhere told him to send his adventure to me for a review, maybe. That person is a dick. And, I’ve got a soft spot for the Quebecois. I don’t know, preserving some unique culture shit while getting fucked over by the rest of “friendly” Canada and their martial law bullshit.  Is there some pro-Quebec slogan that isn’t from de Gaulel?

It’s a funhouse dungeon. Eachroom is a puzzle. There’s one combat. The number seven repeats in most of the puzzles, which is fun and i support. You see, you’re in a bar and play some wacky game involving 7’s and multiples of 7’s and that theme repeats inthe dungeon, with a stair of 77 steps trapped in the same way. And seven mirrors each with phantasmal killers. And the seventh door the right one. And … you get the idea. I’m supportive of the repetition

But, the actual dungeon? It’s a linear set of rooms, one after the other. The DMS’s mao is labeled one through seven while the rooms in the text are not labeled with numbers but just names. 

The read-aloud is not overly long but it does over-reveal, with things like “some of the steps do not have footprints on them. “No. We do not say that. We say there are footprints on the steps and thenwhen the players ask we reveal that some steps do not have footprints. We do not over reveal information in read-aloud since the back and forth between DM & player is the sould of the game.

There’s also some very confusing text, especially in the upper levels/outside the dungeon. This may be an EASL issue, which I am generally very forgiving of. “The stone floor underneath the arch is trapped …” except this the first time we’ve heard of the arch, there’s no map and no arch mentioned anywhere. There a rtap food in an abandoned house AND in the shed in the garden … and I’m not sure which one goes to dungeon, or if they both do, or what. Or maybe it’s the same hatch? It’s not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be, i mean, after all, there’s a fucking door to the dungeon and the party enters it, right?

I’ m less forgiving of the abstraction. One room has cool looking magical weapons. That’s the desccription. Nope. You have to DESCRIBE what they look like, in way that makes people think “cool”, rather than putting that work of fon the DM. In a related note, there’s the usual “characters worst nightmare attacks them” shit. I hate this. I know, its supposed to be meaningful, but it never is. Just come with a phantasmal killer concept and shve the character in to it all Pyramid-head style. Any time I see an adventure want to engage in any “tell me what your worst X is “ I roll my eyes. 

There’s also a decent amount of magical set up. Like the baddie having a magic bell that alerts his thugs, or a ready made scroll of major image to conjure a vampire illusion. It begs the suspension of disbelief. 

So, eight-ish puzzle with one combat, generic abstracted treasure, and nothing else. *Yawn* 

Oh, wait, one of the hooks is that Luke, the local priest, lost a bunch of money gamblng. Money that was not his. I love me a dirty hook! 

Did I mention the bad guy is a doppelganger that makes himself look like a princess? Have you EVER actually rescued a princess D&D, or were they all poly=d dragons and succubi and doppelgangers and the like? In my next campaig … or my new secret project, there’s gonna be a fucking princessin every dungeon. And lots of carnivals.

Man, you don’t deserve me. You didn’t do anything but ask for a review. But, then again, I don’t deserve this, either, do I? Or, perhaps, deserves got nothing to do with it in a search for meaning in a universe devoid of it? We want an explanation but there is none coming. Ever.

This is free over at the designers Patreon.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/altrairs-hideout-51412985

Posted in 5e, Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 37 Comments

Chaos at Crossriver Span

Posted on February 19, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Timothy A Sayell
Fantanomicon Press
Labyrinth Lord
Levels 1-3

Crossriver Span has been seized by the Iron Tusk Orcs!  A desperate Baron hopes to save his town from imminent attack and sends the Player Characters to repel the Orcs or dislodge the bridge.  But this is no easy quest–the Orcs are tough, smart, and have a new Chieftain with a few surprises of his own!

This 22 page adventure features an assault on a “spans a gorge” twin tower/bridge fortress full of orcs. It’s pretty minimal, with brief notes on how many orcs are in a room and some order of battle notes. Exploration, this ain’t. Sneak around and hope you don’t alert the orcs, while killing room after room of them. Pretty boring.

My notes for this one are pretty short … because there isn’t really anything of note. We get mini-maps in the single-column text, which helps the DM run the various rooms,  The orcs are pig-faced, and wear garish yellow tunics, a nice touch. Everything interesting has now been covered.

Ok, so, there’s this gorge. There’s a tower on each side of it and a bridge connecting the two. Go root out the orcs. There are some guards on top of the near-side tower, don’t let them see you . Either sneak in via a tunnel or learn the secret knock to get the oones inside to let you in, hoping that the random number generator doesn’t let the ones on top see you. 

This is one of the exciting room entries “This area is wide open. There are two open casks

of ale here.” Also, that room has five orcs in it. “This area is wide open” is another exciting description. As is “the floor is covered with the debris of smashed furniture.” You get the idea by now? The exploration elements, the evocative text, the tricks and traps that make D&D a sense of wonder and mystery … those don’t exist in this. This is a 4e assault. You go from room to room and kill orcs, most of who don’t try to alert anyone else or hear fights in the next floor. Every once in awhile you get a tactical note, like, the orcs see you characters on a roll of 1 on a d6, or “make a des check if hit in combat ir fall of f the bridge.” 

Two shattered chairs lay in a pile by the north wall.

The rotted remains of a table lay in the center of the room.

I guess people play D&D like this? I mean, that’s the stereotype, right? That you smash in a door and kill the monsters and take their stuff? Isn’t that even the tagline/marketing line of a couple of the newish publishers? But that is bad D&D. Yeah, that’s fucking right, I’m gatekeeping. That isn’t the D&D I know and love. That’s not the mystery and wonder, the magic of the unknown. The wonder of discovery. The fear when confronting something new that might eat or face .. .or grant you a wish. This is just boring.

I get it, there needs to be pacing. Empty rooms are a thing. A set piecey-thing or two is fine, not every room has to be a thing of beauty and joy to explore. But, man, there has to be SOMETHING. This just strikes me as drudgery. Like, drudgery for the DM to run it and try to breathe life in to it and drudgery for the players to explore it and work their way through it, facing room after room after room with nothing in it except something to kill or maybe an arbitrary trap that’s not telegraphed at all. Oh, look, another room full of orcs to kill. I want something to fuck with. I want  lever to pull or a pool or green water to fuck with, a statue that rotates, or bozarre crystals. I want the adventure to be ALIVE. I can sit at my desk all day and play with spreadsheets. I’m bored to death most of the day. Why would I want to be bored to death while playing D&D also? There’s just NOTHING HERE. And, now, I’m depressed about it. Ug. That’s not what I need tonight. “It’s Sunday night ennui! :et’s watch Precious and The Road and then play Chaos at the Crossriver Span!” That will leave you depressed as fuck at 11pm tonight and weeping for a future that is not meaningless. So, great. Thanks Crossriver Span, now I get to contemplate the meaninglessness of my own existence, thanks to you! I don’t need that tonight. I wanna have dinner in a blanket fort and make out with cute girls on a Sunday night, not wonder what the meaning of it all is, in despair. 

Why do things like this exist? Seriously? Why? Do the designers not know what an adventure looks like? Are they making the things they want to play, and this really IS the type of D&D that people want to play? I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. It seems wrong to me though. Like, everything I know says that this sort of D&D is boring and empty. Like, I think the same thing, mostly, about plot D&D, maybe with a few platitudes thrown out for fun time with friends in an adventure thats not a complete throw away. But, even more than most, this just seems boring. Empty. And not in a We Must Imagine Sisyphus As Happy kind of way. More like imagining his as unhappy kind of way.

“This room is littered with ruined furniture and dust. Nothing of interest is here.”

Nothing of interest, indeed!

Some drink to remember. Some drink to forget.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see part of the first room.; That’s not enough to make an informed purchasing decision … although you might be able to intuit what’s to come from the intro text.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/385492/Chaos-at-Crossriver-Span?1892600

Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, My Life is a Living Fucking Hell, Reviews | 6 Comments

Bottomless Pit of Zorth

Posted on February 16, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By G. Hawkins
Self Published
OSRIC
Levels 3-5

The Bottomless Pit of Zorth has stood as a place of inscrutable mystery and dread since time immemorial, yet not few of the brave and reckless have tried their luck within its deep and reportedly never ending depths. Those lucky enough to survive can attest to its apparent bottomless nature, but spoke more of the alienness and oddness of the place: the unfathomable purpose of the giant rotating pin that pierces down into the depths; the otherworldly machinery; and the crazed and demented denizens that for reasons unknown defended the hellish hole. These survivors often left with a sense that there was a deliberate design and purpose to the Pit and that a terrible but inhuman intellect ruled and guided all, though none have yet seen or met this assuredly dreadful master.

This 56 page digest adventure details a six-ish level dungeon with around 65 rooms. A seriously fucked up 65 level dungeon that will represent a strange, alien-like slime environment, the likes of which are seldom seen in an rpg adventure. Which is a good thing. Decent formatting, weird environments with interactivity, and decent evocative writing are only detracted from by a tendency to run long in word count. Not to excess, but it’s getting there.

This is a decent adventure. You probably want it. The deciding factor is probably the vibe of the environment, so I’m going to talk about that first. It’s a slime dungeon. Meaning that just about every surface is covered in slime or has some sort of slime feature. The monsters are either outright slime monsters (new ones) or some kind of hybrid slime creature, as shown on the cover. Does the cover appeal to you? Yes? Then this adventuring environment is for you! One section is, literally, completely slime covered (in the non-monster sense) as if you are are walking through a body or some such. Oh, oh, I know! Remember those Psychedelic Fantasy adventures I really likes? Three of them were REALLY bizarre environments, alien-like. This gets close to that vibe, but, stays solidly in the D&D camp. It’s a pretty good realization of a slime themed environment, and in fact is probably the best slime themed environment I’ve seen in terms of reinforcing the theme. But, it’s still recognizable as a D&D dungeon. 

There are six levels to the dungeon, or about that. There’s a central shaft, huge and empty, and a central pillar in the middle of it, floatig in the air, with a bridge over the shaft to the central column at the surface. Then you go down the column and see, at about six different points on the walls, some cave entrances. You need to figure out how to get from the central piller to the cave walls. Oh, aalso, the bottom is filled with lava. And, also, it’s bottomless. Yes, these two things work together. Also, the shaft spins. And is broken in to segments, each of which spins in a different direction. And there are chains that swing. And there are hidden teleporter portals, invisible, that youneed to make a leap of faith to use to get to hidden areas of the dungeon. Also, did I mention that everything is slime themed? There’s a fuck ton going on in this thing. And I’ve JUST described a small part of the central shaft and pillar and haven’t even gotten to the rooms yet!

The central shaft/pillar thing is the only part of the adventure tha tis in any way difficult to understand, and I finally figured it out a little way in to the adventure. There are both traditional maps and lots of side view maps to help the DM understand the verticality of the situation. (And VTT maps for the internet crowd) Each of the six dungeon levels has a little section up front explaining what is going on and how the rooms work together and then each room has a little up fron paragraph description, with certain words bolded and those bolded words followe dup on later in their own paragraphs as things of interest the party might investigate, etc. It’s a good format. The initial text descriptions do get a little long at times, in about seven sentences or so for some of them. I’m not a big fan of that, and think that certain rooms, like the Animatorium, for example, could have been better/more terse described in the initial description with more in the follow ups. “Fleshy blob” descriptions with follow ups instead of detailed fleshy blob descriptions. But, whatever, it could be worse. 

Interactivity is good, although a little one note in places. Chains to swing on and things to jump to. Slime to eat, machines to play with … and a few too many levers to pull and helmets to try on. Seriously, it’s a theme. And not enough to be farcical 

The fucking thing is also HARD. In one place there’s a 25% chance per minute of a 15HD monster getting you. And the main slime baddies are ROUGH, even though its unlikely the patry will meet them. Most creatures, though, are one and two HD creatures and there are rooms just primed for the ye old fireball to go off. 

There’s some decent writing throughout, like “A fetid and rotting corpse lies in the mud. Its body is a twisted mass of odd limbs, bumps, warty growths and misplaced” or a mottles purple cone-shaped blob with dripping pink slime”, as a monster description. Although, admittedly, there is a rather slime forward description style. 🙂 There’s also a kind of sly humor that runs through it. Some slime creatures on treadmills are motivated by an illusion of “ a female tread

servitor running away through a field of grass, then seductively turning to look back …” or, a transformation of a party members head, giving them a snout and a ranged attack like te slime zombies have from it. Which expels the PC’s brain from the snout, killing them .. .but probably stunning the creature that the brain hits in the face. 🙂

There’s some repetition here, quite a bit where the shaft and teleports are concerned. And, to little effect, I was still confused about the shaft, or, perhaps, it wasn’t immediately clear until I read more. 

So, pretty nice little dungeon. The central shaft element gives is a good twist, and the slime theme is a good one. This, and that Finch adventure, Spire of Iron and Crystal, could be kissing cousins. It’s a unique environment, good for a Fantastic Place for the party to adventure to.

This is $7.50 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages. Pages fifteen and on show the actual encounter keys. Check them out! So, good preview to determine if you want to buy it; I wish more people did this. Also, the level range could be in the product description rather than on the cover only.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/378555/Bottomless-Pit-of-Zorth?1892600

Posted in Level 4, Reviews, The Best | 17 Comments

The Lair of the Shaggy Beast

Posted on February 14, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Nobboc
OSE/BX

This is a one page dungeon from, it looks like, a book on monsters from folklore. While I don’t normally review one pagers anymore, Nobboc asked and Nobboc is not a git, so, a review it is! I assume the book is about the folklore monsters and they are includin a short adventure for some and/or all of the entries. This is the one for the Velue “the shaggy beast.” 

This is landscape formatted, a one pager. The left colum, maybe ¼ or 1/5th of the page, has the monster description and stats. The rest of the page is taken up by a small map of around eight rooms of a cave complex, it’s lair, and the keys for it as well as a minimal hook and instructions for running the monster.

The map is a pretty good one, for its size. Essentially two paths running parallel to each other, as a cave system. The effect is a long snarky path, essentially one hallway running to chambers. I’d normall call this liner, except for the cave features throughout, like the overpasses, underpasses, rivers, and the other parallel tunnel system. Things are made more interesting by making one of the paths too small for the Velue to fit in to. Hit & run tactics then become available … which may in and of itself be a problem for the DM. There’s also a short system to determine if the Velue is at home in its lair and where it is, as well as a way for it to flood certain parts of the system using its water control powers. Overall, it does a lot in a small space with the map and its features.It’s a good cave system with the vertical represented.

The descriptions are terse, as one would expect in a one pager, and relatively evocative. “Pebble beach by a river” is the first location … notice how the room title adds additional context to the encounter. We’ve already got a brief description that “1” alone just doesn’t convey. On top of that there’s “a pestilent small forming from inside the cave.” Great! We’ve got a little bit of foreshadowing, a little bit of a hint that something lives here, and little bit of the mythic underworld, if played that way, implying things are about to get weird. The second line is a strange crow on a rock that says “She’ll give me your eyes! Before flying off. Nice scene, but, “strange” is a poor word choice. HOW is it strange? Strange is a conclusion, you see. You want the description to convey to the players “oh, thats strange”, not tell them its strange. 

I know it’s a one pager, and sospace is limited, but this whole “give me your eyes” thing could have been touched on again via a callback. It’s the only time it’s mentioned.

Room two is a stinky cavern. I’d prefer a sulferous cavern, or something to convey the smell of death, as the room title, since the caracasses of many rotting creatures lie within. There’s rando cave paintings showing men coming down from flying ship. A “very old” cave painting. A better word could have been found for this, and the cave painting has no impact on the adventure. I would have liked to see it contribute. There IS a dead gnome body in a crack … wearing a ring of invisibility. Nice way to hide treasure; I approve!

Room three is a foggy cave, with a knee high mist hiding a troll in a pit … the mist coming from a hot spring in the bottom of the pit. Interesting. I like the trap/trick aspect of the room, as well as “knee high” to describe the mist. Maybe one more line about the troll and how he interacts? The rooms continue like this, generally some interactivity with some decent writing that could be better. The treasure is book, but it’s also one page.

So, it’s a decent little adventure that suffers from all of the usual problems of one-pagers: its too constrained. I can see how a little lair dungeon would buff up the monster entries in a folklore book, but … I’m not sure that the mythic nature, or even the specific aspects of folklore, are captured in the entry. The usual issues, it’s too constrained. I don’t think you need to go all 100 Bushels of Rye on the thing, but, there must be a happy medium here. It’s about as good as you can do, in a one page format for a lair, but … in a one page format. 

Nobboc posted this over ath reddit in the OSR group, so, it’s free:

New creature and mini dungeon for OSE B/X
byu/Nobboc inosr
Posted in Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Review, Reviews | 8 Comments

The Thedron Barrows

Posted on February 12, 2022 by Bryce Lynch 
By Tad Davis
Ars Phantasia Blog
Generic/Universal
Level ... 4?

Cresting the northern peaks of the Thildish Highlands is a series of Barrows, forever enshrouded in mist. Entombed within lie the remains of the Magearchs of Thedron, great sorcerers of a bygone age. For decades after its discovery the barrows served as one of Thild’s hottest adventuring destinations. Songs are still sung of the riches of the mage lords. What’s more, scholars and sages agree that Thedron was home to one of the great lost Demon-swords of old. Interest in the Barrows, however, declined sharply after surrounding townships were hit with a plague of ghoul fever that transformed the citizenry into undead cannibals. Of late the Barrows have become a place of interest for diabolists seeking to unearth forbidden knowledge, as well as a troupe of bandits hiding from the law. Yet the lure of untold wealth and relics continues to draw the occasional stalwart adventuring party to this hilltop necropolis.

This 32 page adventure features a two level “barrows” dungeon full of undead with about a hundred and twenty rooms. It’s trying to present an interesting, dynamic environment that is easy to use. It comes off as a slightly generic “undead tomb” adventure … with lower interactivity. Still, I get what they are going for.

Let’s say something not nice about this adventure! It FEELS like someones first attempt at writing an adventure. And I don’t mean that from a “the first time I played D&D” kind of viewpoint, but, rather, from a “first time trying to write an adventure for someone else to use.” There’s an inkling of knowing what to do, but other areas in which things are just not considered. There are assumptions that are made, by a designer, that they don’t even know they are making. You KNOW what x, y, and z means. It’s implicit in your understanding. And, yet, passing this along to someone else, they get to figure out what you meant. Which, it turns out, is not so obvious. Ideally your editor points this out to you and/or fixes it. 

We’ve got a barrow complex here, a mini barrowmaze. A field full of barrows, a two level map with  a bunch of barrows, a bunch of sarcophagus in those barrows. A bunch of undead in those sarcophagus. Some cultists running around. Some bandits, a goblin tribe. And things assumed. 

The map, I guess, is a good starting point. There are just rooms hanging out on the map. A room surrounded  by rock with a door leading to rock. What’s up with that? As near as I can tell these are meant to represent some of the barrows on the map that are “small” barrows. IE: the barrowfield map show a number of barrows, one of which is numbered to represent the entrance to the greater dungeon, and, I guess, the other barrows might correspond to the entrances to these “disconnected” rooms? So, you look at the barrowfield map and the partygoes in to one of these unnumbered barrows and then you flip to the dungeon level one page and try to match this up to the numbered room on level one. Or, you could just number the barrows in the field? Likewise the stairs. There are a decent number. Again, I think these are supposed to match up, vertically? Why not just number them or make a reference to where the come out at  And, the main entrance to the main barrow dungeon. I don’t see a door? It’s written as “The Great Barrow Interiour” and that description makes it seem like it is the first room the party will encounter. But, there’s no passage to the surface, or obvious doorway to the outside? And the “wilderness” key for the great barrow doesn’t mention anything obvious, like, a hole in the ceiling or some such. 

And then there’s the vibe of the place. Dead. I don’t know why but this has been grating on me for a few years now. Tomb dungeons just seem … boring? I get it, we’re tomb raiders! Yeah! Exploring the crypts! But, it’s got a lot of Stoic Dwarven Temple issues … that can just not be an inherently fun environment. Maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know. But, combined with a low treasure and low magic world … it feels a lot like real world barrow exploring .. if they were this large. 

It’s not impossible to create a dynamic and interactive environment in a tomb, but, the environment, I would argue, does not inherently lend itself to these situations. You get traps. You get frescoes. You get The Tomb of Horrors. You get caskets to open. It all feels very static. And, that’s the way this adventure feels, in spite of the various factions running around inside of it. Because they don’t FEEL like they are running around inside of it or that they are lending themselves to a dynamic environment. They feel staid. Ossified, maybe?

The formatting here is explicitly influenced by Courtney and the generic to specific style. You get some italics up front (blech! No long sections of italics please! They are hard to read!) with a kind of general room description, and then bolded sections underneath describing the various things of interest that the party might then want to investigate. Great in principal; it’s one of my favorite formats and it’s also easy to describe and a n00b to get in to. 

So … should the trap come first? I mean, if there’s a fresco on the wall, should the Frescoe come first or should the trap, thats mentioned in the fresco description, come first? You want the room format to continue the theme of delivering what the DM is likely to need first, first. 

Should things in descriptions ever say “appears to be?” 

Should the entirety of the room description be “A small alcover is hidden by a thin wall behind the idol?” How about The Lich? Should the lich entry say something like “it has the name of the lich on it.” but never ever refer to the name of the lich? SHould the small idol not have a value but the jewels for its eyes have a monetary value? I mean, i think it’s a VERY small idol, stealable? Or maybe it’s not? 

How about the monsters? Should they NOT appear in the room description? Should you just toss in “Creature: 6 ghouls” in to the DM section of the description? 

It’s disconnected. Almost clinical in its coldness. There’s no joy. It feels generic and/or abstracted. Rocks are “large”. The wilderness encounters, for two trolls that are a major menace, says only “the trolls dwell in a cave in the center of the grove. The wilderness map that is lettered one through five while the entries in the keyed section are A through E. 

The end result, from the adventure type, the descriptive type, the lack of dynamics coming through, is boring. 

119. The Open Grave

The beginnings of a long fresco has been painted along the eastern wall. The floor is littered with bones.

Creatures – Shriven, Skeletal Champion

Fresco – a layer of background colors has been painted on the wall. The ghostly dark brown shadows of several human figures have been added, though not detailed. The fresco remains unfinished.

Gate Keys –in addition to the treasure carried by each of the undead, two egg shaped pearlescent orbs are in the pockets of the shriven. One glows a faintly azure color and the other glows aureloin.

What treasure the undead carry? What are they doing? Are they in the rubble? Standing in the middle of the room? I don’t need to be spoon-fed, but, the vibe here is disconnected.

This is free at the designers Ars Phantasia blog. And, yes, I did upload a random Barrow photo for the cover …. 😉

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