{"id":10101,"date":"2025-12-03T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10101"},"modified":"2025-11-11T11:14:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T16:14:45","slug":"morgues-borderlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10101","title":{"rendered":"Morgue’s Borderlands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Morgan Davie
Taleturn
Moldvay
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The great lands of Law do not march forever. At the great wall of tall, steep hills, Law\u2019s reach fades, and beyond flickers the uneasy influence of Chaos. Between the two, amongst foothills and thick forest, beneath strange purple sunsets, is the Borderlands. Here waits adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sixteen page regional supplement presents a small area in and around B1 and B2 with several adventuring sites. I\u2019m not sure how it even got to sixteen pages given the lack of things in it and the lack of detail in those things. It\u2019s written like someone is describing an adventure to someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Moldvay always gets reviewed and this is a Moldvay supplement. It\u2019s meant to be a small region in and around the Keep on the Borderlands. It also locates B1 in its area, and tries to expand the adventuring sites, villages, and dungeons in the area. The usual \u201cyes, but what\u2019s past the hermit’s kitty cat?\u201d stuff from B2. The issue here is both in density and specificity. There\u2019s not much past the lizard men, either literally or figuratively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, there\u2019s no map. No regional map. I find this strange. If you\u2019re doing a region, especially one with both B1 and B2 in it, outlying villages, small adventuring sites and so on, then where are they, in relation to each other? How do I get from here to there? I don\u2019t want to make it seem like I absolutely HAVE to have a map every time, but, in many cases, yes, a map would help. There\u2019s some adventuring site here in this, a tower, that overlooks both the lands of law and the lands of chaos. That\u2019s a great idea. Get an idea of the Valley of Chaos, ie: the caves. That would be a great lead in to much intrigue, watching the comings and goings. And, perhaps, meeting an orc band or something like that who is also doing the same thing to the keep. I just can\u2019t help thinking that having a map SHOWING all of that, the adventuring sites, the villages, roads and relationship of the smaller sites to the larger ones, would help. Plus, there\u2019s the wanderers table. How do you run a decent wanderer without knowing the distance to travel? I mean, they are based on time, which is based on distance and terrain. Why include a wanderer table if there\u2019s no time\/distance to wander? It\u2019s a curious decision, to not include one. But not necessarily fatal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The density here is another issue. I don\u2019t know what exactly is going on, but the things FEELS so sparse. Overview of the lands, village, rumors, retainers, minor sites, NPC parties, events \u2026 I don\u2019t think it should feel sparse, but it does. It just all feels a little bland and uninteresting. Maybe, kind of like those adventures that just pull a wanderer table straight out of a DMG. No embellishment. Here\u2019s a list of retainers. Just stat blocks and a name. Well, sure, Ready Ref. Here\u2019s a village. We gave it a fifth of a page. It doesn\u2019t say anything more than Ready Ref did. Just kind of bland content. \u201cCosts 1d10sp between each adventure\u201d says the first bullet point of the village. Ok, so, upkeep costs. That\u2019s fun. Mechanics oriented, just the facts. Which I kind of admire about Ready Ref. That thing was DENSE.  The language of pure adventure support. But, I think the idea that you are going to support the region comes with an implicit expectation that there will be COLOR in the region. And there’s not any in that village. And very little in the rest. Angry owlbear with a hornet singer in its ass also gets six or so sentences, to no effect beyond \u201cangry owlbear with a stinger in its ass. So while there are sixteen pages here and a few \u201cadventure site\u201d one pagers, the density here, the ratio of interesting content to padding and blandness, is quite off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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The content, proper, can feel abstracted. Not as if an encounter is being listed, but rather as if someone were describing an encounter, much in the same way that I do in a review. A ghostly warrior who is you defeat will point to a gravesite containing the same sword and armor we wore and also a chest of gold. How much gold? Deets on the armor and sword? Nope. That\u2019s it. It\u2019s more of a seed, an idea of an encounter rather than encounter. And much of this feels that way. It\u2019s tax day in town! That\u2019s really all you\u2019re getting. I get that some of these are meant to be ideas, but they seem longer than a seed, an idea but lacking the specificity that one might expect to be able to really launch them in to something, something to riff on. \u201cArtillery – A mounted heavy crossbow is aimed along the western passage and sentries always keep watch for visitors. Most kobolds sleep here, on piles of wrecked gnomish loot.\u201d It\u2019s an idea. There ARE kobolds here, sentries at the least, yes? I don\u2019t understand why its written this way. It\u2019s like there\u2019s an allergy to the specifics. And, yet, sometimes you\u2019ll get paid 2sp by someone to do something. It\u2019s maddening, the seemingly random way in which sometimes minor and meaningless trivia is included and yet the meat of what should be in the adventure is not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s another adventure in this series. While this is a kind of regional setting the other adventure appears to be an actual dungeon. I\u2019m going to review that one next and see if, perhaps, this is all a symptom of being a setting-like place? In any event, I can\u2019t see much value here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.50. There is no preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/537471\/mb0-morgue-s-borderlands?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Morgan DavieTaleturnMoldvayLevel 1 The great lands of Law do not march forever. At the great wall of tall, steep hills, Law\u2019s reach fades, and beyond flickers the uneasy influence of Chaos. Between the two, amongst foothills and thick forest, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/mb0.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10102,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10101\/revisions\/10102"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}