tenfootpole.org

By Chris Gonnerman
Basic Fantasy Project
Basic Fantasy
Levels 3-5

Strange, frog-faced humanoids are raiding the Dardenway, the main trade road running south from Essentelle to the Principalities of Kasdeneigh.  They have attacked travelers on the road near the village of Wolvenmere, leaving few survivors to tell the tale.  The King of Essentelle has sent you into the disputed territory to investigate this new threat, and perhaps to end it.  What awaits your party at the strange domed tower on the Rock?

This 69 page adventure presents four game nights/chapters worth of adventure, with three dungeons and a hex crawl. It’s padded out, with little more than stabbing present. I wish I had some kinder things to say but I don’t.

Ok, so, lizard-like humanoids are attacking trade caravans, as hey are wont to do. The local lords can’t do anything cause this is disputed territory, so the merchants guild gets the party involved. They go to the local wizards tower, the titular Rock. He’s a nut now, there’s a rift in the basement, and the place is crawling with the lizard-like humanoids that came through the rift. That’s session one. Quick! Hex crawl to an abbey to get help. That’s session two. Session three is at the abbey, as Hivelings escape from a mirror and go on a rampage, and you discover a scroll that can close the rift. Part four is going BACK to the Rock, fighting more of the rift monsters, and closing the rift. All in a short timeline before an eclipse happens. This was written for a convention where two for hour sessions a day were played across two days. I guess there were four tables playing and some DM’s got this, I hope, more than five minutes before the game started. I hope.

So. Let’s think about your own life. Think about, say, the last ten years. What have you done? Have you grown as a person? Have you learned Spanish? Have you learned some uncomfortable wisdom about life from personal experience? Learned to appreciate something about a different viewpoint? Have you improved your ability to write a dungeon for publication?

Here’s the last review I did by this designer: https://tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?p=2434

And, nine years later, this adventure is more of the same. There is extensive read-aloud. I think the opening section is something like one and half pages of it? The boxed text in encounters is full of second person narrative, with “Opening the doors, you see just ten feet of corridor before you,”. It should be obvious why both of these are generally to be avoided. If you read a page and half of text to me then I’m pulling out my phone about a paragraph in and playing Connections. And, no, this is not a generational thing or a respect thing. Wait, maybe it is. You expect people to listen to you drone on and on while you read AT them instead of allowing them to engage in the activity that they sat down for: interactive game play. And as for the second person thing, you don’t know. DId they float through the wall? Wizard eye in? The read-aloud in second person isn’t going to make much sense then, is it? This is much the same as embedding “They Attack!” text in the read-aloud. You don’t know. And, while the DM can adjust the text on the fly, it would also be much simpler, and provide a better experience, if the read-aloud simply described the room instead of describing the programming of the room. It is some misguided attempt to be immersive, I think, but it comes off jarring and less immersive than a good description would.

The DM text is long. VERY long. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen some trap and door porn, but it’s present here. “The mace-armed statue is part of the secret door in the alcove. If the mace is twisted in its grip, the statue and a 5-foot wide section of wall behind it slide forward into the corridor, until the two statues seem to almost be embracing. Characters can then enter area 3a in single file.” Great. Wonderful. 

Oh, oh, did I mention the text padding? “… as what seems to be dust motes swirl around” This is classic appears to be/seem to be. Writing with Style by Ray Vallesse. I don’t agree with everything, but he’s spot on most of the time, and covers this topic well. There is absolutely no fucking excuse to not have glanced at this most basic of writing guidelines. 

There is EXTENSIVE backstory in the DM notes sections of entries. Backstory is only relevant when it is needed to run the game during play and, I believe, is generally better handled in ways other than an exposition dump at the DM. “Daemos followed a ritual (found in the Library, area 17 above) which he believed would make him a powerful lich; in fact, it turned him into a zombraire instead. He has not been undead.”

Backstory is trivia. And this adventure is FULL of trivia. “If anyone looks, the supervisor is wearing a white rope as a belt while the other two have brown ropes; the white ropes are reserved for clerical members of the abbey, while brown ropes signify lay monks (oblates).” Wunderbar. How about “There is a quill knife mixed in with the quills in the basket.” Or, maybe “A chamber pot is beneath the bed, for use when needed. “ Yes, I can see the utility there. “The box has a hinged top, and inside are a number of metal pen nibs (24, if anyone bothers to count, some with dried ink on them) and three wooden pen handles that will accept the nibs” Next up, a detailed account of all the spices in my spice cabinet along with an exact count by weight and number of grains in each … in an adventure in which the spices don’t matter.

(I promise that this will not be a regular thing here) Let’s look at a brief overview of the first chapter/session, from an interactivity standpoint. This would be about 21 rooms over about fourteen pages, not counting the maps and handouts.

• 1: Nothing
• 2: Automatic Shrieker
• 3: They attack!
• 4: They attack!
• 5: You sneeze
• 6: They attack!
• 7: Nothing
• 8: Nothing
• 9: Two groups of monsters fighting. You can help one to earn a reward
• 10: They attack!
• 11: They attack!
• 12: Nothing
• 13: They attack!
• 14: A secret door
• 15: Nothing
• 16: Trick, which has no impact on the adventure except to damage you
• 17: Nothing
• 18: The Big Bad
• 19: They attack!
• 20: You hear whispering
• 21: DImensional rift with something coming through it. 

So, lots of fighting. Two encounters where you could talk a bit. But nothing really to figure out or mess with. These are B2 encounters, expanded to several paragraphs, to no great effect for it. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514750/peril-at-the-rock?1892600

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
levels 1-2

The tomb was discovered by Aldo, a local shepherd, while he was out searching for a lost sheep. Aldo noticed the tomb’s carved doorway when he was passing a rocky hill and saw the stairs down when he approached the entrance. Though he didn’t know what it was, patrons at the local inn, to whom he told his discovery, reasoned that it could be Sir Edgar’s tomb, the only tomb known to be in the area that was unaccounted for. 

This nine page digest adventure uses about three pages to describe fourteen rooms in a small tomb dungeon. It is minimally described, with little more than stabbing.

What value does a designer add to an adventure? If we just roll on a wandering monster table, and then roll again on a Dungeon Dressings table then that’s not much work for the home DM. This can, and has, been programmed a thousand times and you can find numerous examples right now of websites that will generate a dungeon based on that. So, as a designer can you just take those results and package them up in to a dungeon? I mean, I guess so, sure. But why? There is the explicit goal, I guess, of making money. You could pump one of these out every week and make some amount of money, build a following, run a kickstarter and make more money. I guess rolling on the random tables and having AI pump them out gets you there. But then also there’s the goal to create. To really work on something and be inspired in your creation. To design something that people will love and find enjoyment in. Through your work you help others find some joy in life. A slower, more difficult process, to be sure, but I suspect a much more rewarding one, personally, and I suspect financially. A slow hit is better than a fast miss, as they say.

And thus, this adventure. “Next to a marble basin is a Giant Rat. The basin is full of black, foul smelling water.” This is a room description. We rolled giant rat and basin I guess and then embellished it to marble and put some foul smelling water in it. There’s really nothing to this. Or “Up against the north wall is a chest with [coins] in it.” I guess we rolled a treasure chest on that one. There is nothing to these. There is nothing here. There is no value beyond rolling on a wandering table, and I can do that with a generator in less time then it took to grab this adventure from DriveThru. You’ve got to add value beyond what a random roll produces. This ain’t that. 

You’ll be stabbing here. There is a room with a basin of clear water that will heal you. “There is a shallow marble basin, filled with clear water, in the center of the room.” And then there’s another that you open a compartment in a statue, with a key you find deeper in, for a +1 sword/+3 vs dragons. Well, that’s a nice one for level one anyway. But, beyond the point. There’s no interactivity here. Just walk in and stab something. I’m not gonna go all Three Pillars here, but, again, this is the point of having a designer. Someone to think about the adventure beforehand, make the connections, and communicate them in an effective way that leverages them to more than the sum of their parts. Someone to really do the work to communicate a vibe to the DM, to create something that the players that will intrigue and scare them and give them opportunities of joy. Sure, emergent play, blah blah blah, but, also, you’ve got to have something to work with in the first place. 

Or you can say “There is a stone box up against the east wall it contains [coins].” 

This is free at DriveThru. I think I’m done with Aaron’s Gaming Stuff.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517053/sir-edgar-s-tomb?1892600

By Andy Castillo
Celestial Skunkworks
OSRIC
Levels 3-7

The party arrives in the City of Genepa, a thriving port and trade town where they explore the city and seek adventure.  Their inquiries lead them to a troll and reptile infested swamp, in search of an elusive group of slavers that are reputed to be lead by a wererat bandit and his wife, The Rat King and The Rat Queen.  Meanwhile, a necromancer is busy, secretly plying his trade in or about the Ratmire District and the Planned Afterlife Cemetery.  As undead start to rampage through sections of the city each night, the council summons the players to investigate the cause of these serious disturbances.  This leads the players down a perilous path of uncovering the Cult of The Rat God!

This 101 page adventure uses about 22 pages to describe the titular adventure of 22 rooms, and includes a couple of other small areas as well as an extensive gazetteer/campaign guide. It is quite wordy, uses second person voice, and eventually just ends up, after all the talk, in simply stabbing things. Whatever the vision, it did not come through.

I don’t know how to get you going here. There are a couple of adventures in this. I’m going to ignore the one with a vampire and thirteen shadows in one room (rated for level four+). Oh, also that one has a level fourteen evil magicuser. But, hey, we’re gonna ignore that one. Instead we’re gonna concentrate on the adventure of the title, the rat god thing. Yes, of course it’s wererats. Duh.

But, first, we must slog through the fifty or so pages of the gazeteer. Land of blah blah blah. City of blah blah blah. We’re here for the adventure; I don’t know how to review a gazeteer. It does seem to be a bit prosaic though, so, not my style at all. Specificity! That’s what I’m after. But, also, not the kind that means a random monster encounter takes three quarters of a page to describe. FOR THE STA BLOCK. That’s just stat blocks. There are, in several places, d8 random tables for wanderers. Those generally take four or so pages to describe, the stat blocks taking up half a page at least. Every once in awhile you get a “Lore” section in a wanderer, which is something like “The traveling wizard’s apprentice will keep to herself and try to travel past the party without drawing much attention. If they engage her, she may offer to trade with the party, providing magical services as allowed by her memorized spells.” Hope your day is going better than mine. I know what a kitchen looks like, after all.

Eventually you stumble upon the keep of the rat men. It intimates over and over again their evil deeds, but there is no lead in. You’re there. They are in league with some bandits, and, of course “The bandits have committed countless terrible atrocities, and do not expect mercy; therefore, they will fight brutally to the death.” Gotcha. IIf it wasn’t clear already, it’s one of THOSE adventures. Inside you will stab things. Over and over again. With little interactivity beyond that. If you encounter a trap it will be a simple one and then you will get attacked immediately by “sentries” waiting in hiding on the other side. They don’t exist, I guess, unless you trigger the trap. 

The descriptions are rather simplistic and overreveal. We get things like this: “This courtyard is 40’long and 30’wide, with a statue of a warrior pointing a two-handed sword towards the ground. A campfire is in front of the statue,where the bandits cook their meals.Wooden doors are spaced evenly along the north and south walls. A couple of these doors appear to have been bashed in, revealing that the area is used by the bandits as a barracks.” And, then, of course, it switches things up to second person ni read-aloud: “When you open the door …” and “You even find a small trail of jewels that lead around the keep to the south side.They could add up.Do you collect them?” Don’t do this. Don’t use second person in your read-alouds. We endeavor to describe something in a neutral way, and, if we include something like that statue then we do something with it, not ignore it. Sure, there can be window dressing. 

And then of course the guards and monsters/bandits. They have a reaction to the intrusion. But their reactions are all included in their individual encounters. So room three and such will say things like their sentries react and run to help the people in room one. Better to put that in room one, yes, where the action is taking place? Or to include a note on the map on reactions? Something that the DM can readily see and use DURING the running of the adventure?

And then there’s the DM advice. There’s a lot of it. “Play on the group’s sense of greed. Tell them they have a vision of themselves in gilded armor or golden finery, surrounded by admiring glances! Encourage them to lunge to their deaths! Try not to laugh until you have sprung the trap” I don’t know who falls for this. Well, I guess I do every time I see something that could be The Hand or The Eye, but, there’s no accounting for taste. And, of course, everyone gets a little backstory in their room, meaningless for actual play but obfuscating the ability to tun the adventure at the table by interfering with the DMs ability to locate the text they need during play.

A mundane stab fest, disorganized, with muddled descriptions. This would have been far better as a stand alone adventure that was really worked on to pump it up. Not that there’s much here to pump up, with most everything just being a stab.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, and shows some of the regional gazetteer as well as those awesome wanderer tables. Poor preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/373071/gma1-cult-of-the-rat-god-osric-1st-edition-rpgs?1892600

By ScarletRevense
Melpomene Gaming
Outcast Silver Raiders

The outcasts encounter an isolated farming community where apocalyptic dogma has evolved into a growing apocalyptic reality. If the outcasts cannot shut down this sect, the danger may creep out into the larger world, perhaps even dooming the Mythic North as a whole.

Wormwood & Gall is a twelve page adventure inside of a 42 page digest zone devoted to Outcast Silver Raiders. It’s try to present this edgy biblical apocalypse thing. Instead it is just coming off as a small series of encounters in which nothing ever really happens. Good luck with your tribulation!

Maybe Outcast is everything I wanted Mork Borg to be? Creativity, but this time cloaked in the aspect of a real adventure? Except, it’s not a very GOOD adventure.

So you show up at his village. Seems a little quiet. Maybe if you ask around and make some rolls and do a good job roleplaying you can find out that the local priest, Ljsdfjgsd, summoned everyone up to old Ahjsgfsdg’s farm. Heading up there to the Ahjsgfsdg’s  place you eventually find some villagers in the middle of an apocalyptic fervor. After a more differenter villager tells you exactly what is going on. You stumble about from place to place, meet someone hiding, and then move on to the next place. 

Or, maybe, in the second hook, you show up in the village/farm because someone told you that a rock fell from the sky in the woods behind Ahjsgfsdg’s farm. ARGGG!!! You know, the adventure is trying to do this whole apocalypse thing, replete with the four horsemen, and then it goes and undercuts the entire thing by telling the party, explicitly, in the hook, that they are going there because of a rock in the woods. Well then, I guess thats what the fuck caused it and where the fuck we should go, right? Look, the rest of this adventure is not great, but, still, you don’t put the fucking twist ending to the suspense movie in the fucking trailer, do you?

And, as I have intimated, the NPC names are off the hook. I am open to being told that these make sense in the context of the designers country (I assume this is up Nordic way, anyway) but fuck man, its going all Forgotten Realms on me. I am NOT going to use your fucked up names. No, it doesn’t have to be Bill and Frank. But you gotta do things to make it easieron the DM rto run the fucking thing.

And, speaking of the fucking NPC’s, they suck. The adventure is supposed to, I think, run as a kind of open ended thing. The party stumbles about, meets some people trying to do something and other people interfere, etc. Except the people here are sooo loosy goosy htat you can’t do that. They don’t really have meaningful goals. I’m not even sure “bring out the tribulation” is a goal of anyone. The vast majority are hiding or cowering in some dark corner. Seriously, at one point I thought “the NPC in this room will be cowering in the corner.” Sure enough, they were. Anyway, they don’t DO anything. The big congregation scene in the barn has a bunch of villagers and a giant virgin mary weeping blood or some shit. That’s it. Yeah, I guess preacher kAksjdfhkdsh could rally them to kill the party. But he’s off elsewhere. Where you meet him. And likely stab him. 

There’s just nothing HAPPENING. Well, besides the cowering. You go someplace and someone or some thing interesting is there, but they are all isolated from each other. The giant blood weeping virgin mary statue in the barn. GREAT!  Nothing to it though. You meet a dude who is smeaty and obviously looks like hes having a heart attack and about to die. GREAT! If you mention him looking like that then he DOES have a heart attack and die. GREAT! These kind of individual elements are all great. Solid anchors to work from. But there is no follow on. He’s nothing but an NPC. The statue does nothing. It’s just all something weird, or someone weird, and nothing more form there,

And, speaking of that hook ruining things … the very first encounter at the room. Roo one. The first thing you are likely to meet … is a chick you tells you EVERYTHING that is going on at the farm. The preacher, ghost, the falling star, images in the mind manifesting. Shes got it all. No discovery for you, Mr Party! No slowly unfolding drama! No rising crescendo to a release.! 

Did I mention it’s digest. In two column format. With a tiny font. And long italics. And, even better, the PDF is spreads only, Jesus, I had this thing zoomed in a bajillionfold just to be able to see the fucking text. And, even better, you don’t NEED spreads! It doesn’t take advantage of that. It’s fucking digital man, make a page version available also.

Decent individual elements here. And I can see where the designer wanted to go with the apocalypse thing, and the villagers, and rivals and so on. But it’s so unsupported as to be goals and wants that mere suggestions of ideas. Those parts, the interactions, needed A LOT more support, perhaps even with a timeline. And some stakes that matter beyond Saving The World. There’s no reason to be here or to give a shit. And even THAT isn’t played up. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Taint got no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515517/altar-issue-1-for-outcast-silver-raiders?1892600

By Mauro Longo
Black Pepper Game Studio
OSE
Levels 1-3 Ha!

Twelve Dead Make One Alive, the rhyme says. Adventurers soon learn there is a grim truth at its core. Far from civilization, deep within the shadowy depths of the Grimwald Forest, lies the ominous Black Mill, an abandoned place shrouded in whispered tales of dark magic and spectral hauntings. The unwary who venture to explore the Mill must overcome its sinister perils and disturbing inhabitants: the Black Miller and its Twelve Dead, who dwell within its moldy walls…

This 78 page adventure uses about thirty two pages to describe thirty pages in a mill compound stuffed full of undead. Looks pretty. Seems to have a nice format. But its just mostly a hackfest with enemies WAYYY out of your league with a layout style that actually makes the fucking thing MORE confusing.

Seems that a hundred or so years ago the old miller made a deal with a dude named Avery Goodman. In return for killing twelve people he gets blah blah blah. He does so, the twelve rise, and kill him. He comes back to unlife. Avery shows up again and makes the same deal with the newly undead twelve: kill twelve each and you get to come back to life. Now, a hundred years on, they’ve almost killed 144 people. They are short the parties number … Not a bad setup for a locale. We got ol Goodman, a shady miller and vengeful undead with a mission all running around an old mill compound. A little bit of folklore to kick things off, yeah? Fear not, that’s not going anywhere and isn’t really going to ever pop up again. Sure, there’s a nice ring of twelve graves in the basement, a tunnel full of 140 corpses, some hearts to destroy and a couple of contracts with Goodman that you can burn, but the folklore elements pretty much dies out in the backstory.

The map is going to illustrate a lot of the issues with the adventure. It looks fine. There are monster names on it. (Yeah, I love it when I can tell easily which monsters nearby might react to the party in the next room!) and some icons indicating locked, stuck, and open doors. Hey, this all sounds great yeah? Sure. But the map is small. The monsters and creatures are kind of on top of each other in many cases. One room with a red dragon and the next with a blue and the next with a black, all within thirty feet of each other, or, the level 1-3 equivalent of that, with undead. And then all of those icons? They just kind of get in the way for the most part. Locked, stuck, I’m not sure that’s information that’s needed on the map AND in the text? It reminds me for all the world of the folks who use like eight different colored box types to denote read-aloud, hidden information, monster stats and so on. It becomes distracting and eventually makes the thing harder to use.  And then the map, proper, after all of that, is just hard to read. The pencil lines, the lines on the map that make up the details of the rooms, the walls, doors, and the like, come off as a very light stroke weight. These will be the issues of the main adventure as well: something that at first glance looks great but then ends up being less than that. A lot less than that.

But first, the difficulty level. I find it hard to believe this was ever playtested. It’s listed as level one to three. That is repeated in several places. As I bitch, note, we could just bump this up to 3-5 or something and I’d shut up. But, the lack of playtesting here … It’s meant to complete in one session and in one evening. There are twelve core undead to defeat plus, maybe, a few more. Well, hang on. Once you arrive at the mill, and the mechanics set it up so that you WILL arrive at night/sunset, you can’t really leave again. Save vs spells, at -4, to find your way back through the woods again, otherwise the evil conspires to lead you back. Plus, there’s a wraith in the woods that attacks you if you try to leave. And no real place inside the mill to rest. You are really kind of doing a one and done thing here. I guess you could kill the wood wraith and get the fuck out, trying over and over again until you make that save vs spells at -4. Oh, and then the next time you show up the wraith is back again. The undead come back fully each night. So, you’re in, probably. With multiple wraiths inside You know, four HD, energy drain, magic to hit? Those wraith. It suggested using The Gaborians alternate rules for energy drain, but even that is gonna smart. How about a 6HD giant leech? There’s something like nineteen creature encounters, some with groups and some individually. This fucking shit is gonna be ROUGH. Even a hit and run loot is gonna be hard. You can make something hard, but you also gotta give them out or else you are deathtrapping a group of ones. Smart play doesn’t matter when your group of four one’s face all of the colors of the ancient dragons with no way out. 

There’s no real overview of the mill. There are individual locations, on the outer walls, on either side of the mill, but, coming upon the mill there’s no real vista overview descriptions of the place. I guess you just wander in at location number one and go from there? Speaking of location one … there’s a murder of crows there ready to kill you. And some bandits in the woods ready to kill you. And a wraith wandering around ready to kill you. I guess this is just “whats going on in the woods” but its weird in that it all sounds like its all just mashed up there in location one. And then there’s the fucking stables. The stables and the hallway outside of them are, like, five feet apart. But we get two separate encounters here … one with a skeleton horse in it. If you can fucking see it from where you are, and its meaningful, then you need to note it even if its not in your room.

It’s full of long italics, and we all know by now how much I hate that, I find it hard to read in longer sections, and that holds true here. The propose gets purple in it also, here and there, on a more than regulate occurrence. “A rickety well curb is located at its center, and distant eerie wails echo all around when the rain beats softer.” This isn’t a novel here folks. And even if it were it would be a purple one. Lets keep the descriptions grounded. I’m all for allegory and metaphor and the nonstandard use of language to impart a vibe, but purple don’t do it. And Jesus H Christ, every single time you meet one of the twelve, so, twelve times, we get a little description about how they come back to life the next day. Fuck me man, i got it. You’re just padding it out. Plus, you explain the mechanic like three times in the text BEFORE we even get to the fucking keys. It’s all fucking padding. “The trapdoor is still perfectly functional, and once discovered, it can be opened and closed at will.” Yes, things that we would expect to work normally do, in fact, work normally. It’s just fucked up padding.

The layout here, the formatting, is a major pain. At first is SEEMS like a good idea. A little section of read alound, set aside in italics, with some points bolded. And then the text follows up with sections with headers of those bolded sections. But it’s SO trivial. There is SO much going on and the text for each of them is SO long. It ends up being more confusing than if you didn’t do that .It just drones on and on, and mixes the important with the trivial window dressing. The formatting was a good idea, but it was so tortured and misused that it makes the mess bigger. I’m am seriously MORE confused by it. Again, it’s like those color coded text boxes in some adventures, seems like a good idea but isnt/

Ultimately, this is just a hack. You can talk to a couple of them, but, mostly, you’ll be stabbing undead and some vermin. The only real interactivity beyond that is burning their hearts, which are located together in the same room, where their graves are. And they respawn. So you gotta kill them twice. 

Levels 1-3 my ass. As a much higher level adventure, that is primarily a hack, meh. I still think its lipstick on a bullette.

This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. You get to see the level one map and the background. No encounters shown, so, poor preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515518/mill-of-the-twelve-dead?1892600

By Aaron Gustwiller
Aaron's Gaming Stuff
S&W
Levels 2-3

Recently, and much to the despair of the nearest residents, a Young Red Dragon, Malurax, has taken up residence within the ruins. Shortly after moving in, the young dragon began preying on the livestock of the local peasantry, driving many to the brink of ruin. Harold, one of these peasants, called a fool by some but egged on by others, decided to try and slay the beast himself, but never returned. 

This eight page adventure uses two pages to describe nine rooms in a young dragons lair. It flirts with some decent imagery at times but comes off very flat. It’s just a room with a drgon in it.

Ok, so, good on Harold! I bitch all the time about the locals not taking their fate in their own hands. And, it just goes to show you … sometimes you get the dragon and most of the time the dragon gets you. But, still, I admire Harold. We don’t get anything about Harold, but, I’d have loved to have seen some shit about Harold being desperate, in dept, loansharks on his ass, or hating his wife, or great with the local always volunteering and stuff. And then some shit about finding harolds body. And, maybe, the villagers caring more about Harold than they do the party at the end. These are the things that really ground an adventure and tha ta DM can really riff on. I guess the fact that I’m brining it up at all means that it DID spark some interesting thoughts for play, but, as always, I want the designer doing a lot of the heavy lifting here. Or, better said, some medium lifting through heavy work.

And. then, there’s the dragon. At levels two or three. That’s an AC2 (ouch!) and 9HD 18HP dragon. What is that, like, 18HP of damage, save for halfsies? I’m not sure that halfsies is gonna matter. There are some giant bats present in one of the rooms, but other than that it’s just a dragon sitting on its hoard. (Which, I appreciate. The classics are always the best.) Anyway, this is gonna take some work. Any dumbass party is gonna get cooked. You’re gonna have to go in with some poisoned cows or some shit. Or a fuck ton of men at arms. Which you aint getting at the local village (not detailed.) That AC2 man. Ooph. That’s gonna be a rough one. But, hey, at least you’re not a dirt farmer!

The villagers offer some cash for killing the dragon. 600gp as I recall. And you get 1200xp for turning down the gold. *hrumph* Not a fan of imposing morality in an adventure. There ARE gods in D&D, and an afterlife, so, I guess there IS a morality inherent in a land without Neitzsche. But it just seems wrong. 

The map has some small castle ruins, just the ouline of walls really, running up to a creek with a hole in a cliff wall and six chambers inside of it. There are a couple of loops, and a couple os passages that the dragon can’t get down .. .which, as the adventure points out, is not true for the dragons breathe weapon. Still, it offers some opportunities. It is, in the end, just a lair map.

Room one, the courtyard of the ruins. “Scattered around the ruin’s courtyard are the bones of cows, horses and sheep.” Ok, so, we’re going minimalistic here. Nice concept, with the bones of the livestock the dragon has been preying on. I could use a little more viscereal in it though. Room two, the ruines of a small one room building in the courtyard: “ Inside the ruined building are the remains of a half-eaten horse, being picked at by crows. The crows fly away when a

character enters the doorway.” So, a little bit of padding here. But, the crows, dead horse, and them flying off? That’s good. It SEEMS dynamic even if it is still static. That is the extent of those two descriptions. There is nothing more to those rooms. We’re clearly working up to the dragon. Adding some foreboding and such. Not bad, but still a little lacking if were just gonna shove a dragon in a room on the inside. Which is what hte adventure does.

Room three, the stream crossing from the ruins in to the cliffside cave mouth:  The land bridge between the ruins and the lair entrance is made up of dirt and the scattered remains of the castle walls that washed away in the flood. The footprints of a small dragon can be clearly seen in the dirt.” This is a little interesting, from an evocative standpoint. Land bridge, dirt, huge chunks of stone. Th dragons footprints could be a little more ominous, but, I’ll take on that challenge.

I won’t do all of nine rooms, but I’ll do one more “ There is a pool of murky water in the southwest corner of the room. The pool is about 1ft deep.” With just nine rooms I think I’d like to see just a little bit more going on. Some viscera? Harolds body? The dragon is kind of an afterthought. Just The dragon sitting on its hoard, with no description beyond that.

Not much lead in at all here beyond what you’ve read in the intro. A little bit of “theres a dragon here” window dressing in the ruins, but not much at all in the cave. And then an aggressively minimalistic approach to the descriptions. With just nine rooms to work with, it feels like more could have been with the lead in, or to build an environment in which the characters and dragon face off. I’m not the biggest fan of set pieces, but, a nine room set piece, or some room count like that, could have been an interesting concept. (I wasn’t exactly mad at some of the 4e adventure concepts in which encounters spanned a larger larger with multiple chambers) 

You’re not really buying anything here. Figuratively or literally.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515288/malurax-lair?1892600

I’m gonna keep on dancing

By Giles Pritchard
Caradoc Games
With Every Fibre

Redevelopment of an old building deep down, close to the mines, led to a collapse. A crack in the wall has revealed a cave beyond. Now, the builders say, when the hammers and forges of Bellfounders District fall quite, you can hear something. The sound of some vast thing sleeping… Terror has put a stop to the work, you don’t need to be superstitious to find the distant hissing sigh of giant breaths unnerving. Is anyone brave (or foolhardy) enough to find out what’s causing the noise?

This 36 page adventure presents a cavern system with about thirty rooms. There is little in the way of evocative text, with most being overly padded out mechanics. It’s got an interesting vibe, kind of Tekumelish, but its just a hint.

So, I’m not sure about that intro. Redevelopment? Mines? Builders? Dudes got a basement and a wall collapsed and he hears giant breathing beyond it. Somehow the miners are involved and send a crew in but they turn back after a hundred feet, the breathing scared them. Ok. Sure. And now you’re being offered 150 coppers to go figure shit out. Oh, and the favour of the Founders Guild. Sure. I’m not judging the 150 cp thing, different game world different economy. But, also, you’re paying more. Terror has put a stop to the work? Your first crew turned back after a hundred feet? Also, your crews stopped work because of some heavy breathing in a basement somewhere else in the city? I’m just gonna hand wave a Setting Details thing, but, in my heart, I know its just another one of those shitty hooks without any thinking behind it. If you gonna hook, and I’m not saying you have to, then put some effort behind it. If kis are missing, and there are parents, then theres a vigilante mob, not parents too scared to do something. Miners can’t work? That’s not what some dude in a suit sitting behind a desk has to say about it. There’s always scabs and a mine owner willing to break the workforce for more profit. 

 The dungeon itself is … well, lets cover the vibe. The encounters range from caves to old basements to and underground lake to ancient sites to beastmen warrens. This is, I think, where I’m making the Tekumel comparison. It’s an interesting mix, under an urban environment. One portion of the basements has bootleggers in it with a FUCK TON of whiskey. Bootleggers! That’s chill! I Love it! Not bandits. Bootleggers. This is the specificity I’m always referring to. Not just Bandits. And, you might be able to join them! Thats not really covered much, but also they are willing to talk in some circumstances. That’s the kind of shit I am looking for. 

Most of the rest of this, though, is terrible. 

The room descriptions are … I don’t know. It’s not minimalism, for sure. There is sentence after sentence after sentence of text for even the smallest mechanic. The mechanics of a room are what make up 95% of the room descriptions, I’d say. And we’re not talking overly complex things here. There are no Grimtooths to be found. This is very simple stuff like falling in to a pit or getting scared of the breathing sounds. That hearing the breathing sounds in the hallway? Half a page of text. To be scared of it or figure out that your torches waver when you hear it. And that is not that unusual at all, the amount of text. It’s wiiiild! 

And the atmosphere of the various locations? Practically nonexistent. The room that the sounds originate from? Two pages long. “A room so large the light of a torch or lantern will illuminate only part. The roof, if there is one, is beyond sight. Dominating the room, and giving off a strange and eerie glow, is a vast insectoid statue. It looks like it is made of metal, and is crusted green, markings are barely visible on the surface. Each leg rises and falls in turn, like giant bellows, whatever this thing is, it is obviously the driving force behind the wind rushing through the tunnel system.”  Note the padding. “If there is one” and abstraction with the use of the words “strange and eerie glow.” Instead, pulsating iridescent or something. This BY FAR the best of the rooms in terms of atmosphere. There are brief glimpses, here and there, that the designer was trying. But they are full of this abstraction and lack of specificity in most places … and then followed by tons of padding, a conversational writing style and mechanics, mechanics, mechanics. 

This is for a d10 system that I’ve not heard of before, so I thought I’d check it out. This COULD be the reason that the mechanics play such a prominent role. After all, you don’t do your own system unless you give a couple of shits about mechanics and fixing all of those problems that all of those other RPGs have. It also appears to be for a light system, with the rulebook being 48 pages, which makes the focus on mechanics even weirder to me if its a light system. I suspect that the light folks are looking for atmosphere and interactivity, not die rolling and minute judgements. Your debut adventure has to be rock star; it’s what people are going to remember. It should chanel ever essence of what you’ve got going on. 

There is a nice bit of naturalism here, with the caves, basements, and ancient civ room. (That bug statue.) The bootleggers mixed in with a chasm and underground lake.That’s a great vibe. In theory. 

This is $6 at DriveThru. You shall find no preview here! Sucker!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/515078/the-caves-beneath-us?1892600

By Kai Putz
Self Published
LotFP
Level ... 4?

Devils of the Old Barrows: a rural community is disturbed by strange figures that sneak around the outer homesteads at night, as well as by howling calls coming from the nearby ancient barrow graves. The people that heard them swear that those are not from dogs or wolves nor from a human throat. Not willing to have superstitions infect the souls of his flock, the local priest moved to the barrows at daylight to see for himself what is going on. He never returned and now the people are afraid to go there themselves.

This fifteen page adventure uses six pages to describe eleven rooms in a lovecraft-ghoul burrow. It suggests a giant fight full of ghouls, and presents way too much text. This combines with a standard paragraph style of formatting, with no highlighting for scannability during play. 

Pickmans Model rises again! What happens if you DO go down that long burrow in the basement? Well, you end up in a dig out place with a bunch of ghouls in it. This is mostly going to be a big fight. You run in to some ghouls in one room and then they all end up swarming you, coming in from multiple sides, as the occupants in the other rooms join in. So, I don’t know, maybe, 20 or so two HD ghouls with a few three HD dudes mixed in? These are lovecraft ghouls, though, so no real paralyzation other than maybe losing initiative because of being repulsed by them. Once you are through this you can use some skulls as an oracle, meet and kill the immobile, bloated and defenseless ghoul queen, talk to an intelligent ghoul who is pretty resigned to being killed. (A stoic to the end, literally, that one) and face the ever popular “do you kill the children” question, which is elaborated on in some designer notes. I don’t know man, your ecosystem involves, as its central tenet, killing and eating people. 

The usual problems. A lack of specificity in the setup and background. “Characters are hired to look after a man who has not been seen for days. Said man …” Abstraction and generalisms don’t suit the pursuit of evocativeness. We do get a short list, maybe two dozen entries on ghoul looks, “thick & scarred; hulking” but this still isn’t great and isn’t a substitute for the designer putting in the work to make a creepy and interesting environment … and ghouls. 

“And you, the refer, may even rule that one is not able to navigate it [the tunnels] in full plate armor.’ I’m free to do a lot of things as the ref. Rock fall, everyone dies. I don’t need to be told what I could do. Again, it’s up to the designer to elaborate and construct an environment. Dynamic in this case ,to adventure in … which may contain tunnels that cannot be explored in full plate with drawbacks and boons for doing so. That’s why we’re paying the designer. There’s a lot of this running around the adventure .At best is a conversational way to relate information and at worst, my rocks fall example.

Another example, of the padding involved would be “Characters that approach the opening to the south will notice that …” which is a very long winded way to say it smells like rotting bodies. It’s all padding. This isn’t academia, we don’t need to coach everything in twelve half-sayings before we get to the point. Just fucking tell us. And make it evocative. Sickly sweet. Putrid cheese. Whatever. Just don’t pad the shit out. “If they have not already dealth with the ghouls in area 2b …” Yeah, that’s what happens. 

This is just SO padded out. About three paragraphs per room, at a minimum, with some taking far, far longer. And to no real effect. The room descriptions are weak and the interactivity almost all a few ghouls that will show up in another room to fight, thanks to their order of battle in swarming targets. 

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview gets you the primary group living quarters, that they all swarm out of. It’s a decent preview if you know what he rest of the adventure is like. And now you do!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/513947/gregorius21778-burrow-of-the-ghouls-lotfp?1892600

By Lixu
Lixuni Gaming
OSE
Levels 3-5

An Adventure module for old-school essentials, uncover the mystery of an ancient celestial civilization an its ruins, involving yourself in the events taking place on an apparently frontier region, slaying evil monsters, fighting bandits and chaotic cultists and eventually reaching a floating ancient dungeon!

This 29 page adventure features a little region and mini-sandbox that culminates in exploring a 31 room floating fortress full of robots. It’s an interesting beast, needing a WHOLE lot more evocative writing, but it has its heart in the right place … if only it knew how to do things other than stab.

I know how this is going to sound, but … Cult of the Reptile God vibes from this one. No, not the town conspiracy. And not really the reptile gods lair. I don’t know. It’s a combination of the sandboxy nature and the tend of minimalism in the writing. Also, I said a vibe, I  didn’t say it was worth it.

You’re in this town and there’s this dude missing, an herbalist. The inn owner hates him. Her sister, the general store chick, got ghosted by him when he disappeared. His apprentice has a gig for you … clear out the bandits by the lake? He’s double crossing them, farming psychedelics out there. There’s a few other threads also; the local nobles, fallen from the grace of the capitol, protecting the roads and hunting the mutant monsters that are roaming around to protect the lands … and their income. You can fuck around town a bit, fuck with the bandits and learn about the double-cross, find the dudes lake house … wth him dead in it, and explore a cult shrine of cannibals natives. And then transport up to the sky fortress … all while potentially dodging some weird weather in the area. 

It’s not the best sandbox ever written, but the designer is making an effort to have several things going on in the region and around town … and they all kind of lead to the same place, eventually. This is good; you’ve got a main thing and you’re working in some other things, either subplots of the main thing or other happenings in the area, back to what the core of the adventure is meant to be. I’m down with that.

There’s also a hint of realism in this. If you fuck around too long on one of the subplots then it could be that the son of the local lord, a level six fighter, eventually shows up to resolve the issue … with all that implies for both the party and the region. A random happening in town is that the price of something goes WAY up, because bandits have hit the supply wagon for it and now its super rare. Thats a pretty good cause/effect related to an adventure lead. And, then, the room descriptions are, if you squint, trying to bring it also. “Filled with skulls and rags from the warbands enemies” or mounds in the area, a hole in the ground marked by a flag, with a ladder in it leading down, to a room full of charms and candles … all burning green. Noice overall zone. 

But it’s not a great overall zone. The first half of the booklet is devoted to background, the town,  and other places that are less than adventureful. That leaves us maybe eight pages for the bandit lair, the lakeside cottage, the native shrine, and the sky fortress. Not exactly fully realized environments are possible with those page counts, eh? 

And that’s true. The room descriptions, the descriptive part, is quite terse. It’s not exactly Just The Facts, but it cuts close: “The room consists of only one stone bed carved into the wall, which depicts a military battle with what appear to be dragons and flying machines” That entrance room is “the entrance lies around a series of mounds, a flag pole standing at a hole to go down a ladder, 30’ deep. Once down, the room is filled with charms and candles, all made with a special wax that makes the flames have a green coloring.” and is by far one of more fully realized ones. A couple of rooms have pits/holes full of poisonous snakes. A little smell in the room above would have been nice? It’s just SO minimal. Matter of fact. 

The treasure, for example. These almost always run to “Treasure room: This room is filled with 6 pieces of jewelry (4 x 1,000 gp & 2 x 1,100 gp)” That is the descriptions of the treasure room. And several are like this. You might get a +1 sword here and there, but “4x1000gp jewelry” is pretty much the height of this. 

It’s like, in all places, it is ALMOST there, but pulls back just a little. The Lack of treasure detail beyond the barest minimum. The lack of an evocative environment beyond the barest minimum. The lack of interactivity (beyond stabbing) except for the barest minimum required in a kind of sandbox. The hooks are not fleshed out at all (and presented in a random manner, as in a random roll, not a good use of randomness …) 

And then there’s the editing. I suspect that there might be an EASL thing here, so I’m not going to go down the path of the word order and so on … it’s good enough. But there are some mistake mistakes. The local lord … that level six fighter son? It says they are a daughter. And it’s implied in other ways, like with the name. I know A Boy Named Sue is a thing, but it really is more than a bit confusing. I guess it doesn’t matter, but, also, I’m bewildered at multiple times in this over multiple issues. 

This isn’t a terrible adventure. It’s more than a little straightforward for me, with very little in the way of local color or interactivity beyond some basic stabbing. It isn’t realized in the manner of a good sandbox, or even have components that are realized, like the village in Reptile God. Some better flavour, interactivity, and maybe a touch more going on … a more complex web, and this would be great. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. Alas, there is no preview, and thus no ability to make a purchasing decision based on that preview before you actually buy it. Shame. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514767/appendix-l-3-fane-of-the-laruleans?1892600