{"id":10242,"date":"2026-01-21T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10242"},"modified":"2025-12-29T09:37:59","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T14:37:59","slug":"eastern-spark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10242","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Spark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Greg Daley
Tarichan Games
1e
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
There’s work a-plenty at the edge of civilised lands. Can young adventurers help a local community and forge new ties? A village at the far end of civilisation offers our novice adventurers employment, and the chance of advancement. Do the scrub and plains beyond The March offer discovery, daring, or death? A shady offer of work at the hidden gnomish settlement of Opus beckons the adventurers into the wild. Can they truly fathom the danger that awaits?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 41 page regional sandbox presents one of the more grounded and fun versions of a local starting setting. Each site has something short, a line or so, that is also memorable without being over the top. It is also clear that the designer has no idea how to present and format information. But interactivity, relatability, and specificity? It brings it without going over the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Man, this thing is great! There\u2019s no wormhole monsters or saving the world or anything exotic or set piecey. I\u2019m not even sure there\u2019s a whole lot of treasure in it. But what there is a game world full of shit that you are just BEAMING to run as a DM. Glee, just glee. Or, maybe, scene after scene that builds to a great finale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ve got the innkeepers perhaps making some inquiries, on the side, for \u201cThieves’ Guild financier Clarence Stoddard, staying upstairs.\u201d There\u2019s something interesting, the thieves guild financier. In a regional encounter, the party comes across a farm with a fence around it and a horse grazing in it\u2019s pasture. You watch three men take down a fence railing and approach a horse. Hmmm. Then a middle aged woman comes running out of the house with a sword \u2026 horse thieves! Horse thieves in D&D?! Of course! Everything is taxed, labour allotted for, and someone out to steal it. I\u2019m an idiot for not thinking of this. It\u2019s obvious. And the  three dudes on the road taking down a fence railing. The party is just going to stand there and watch. They won\u2019t know. And almost certainly be just as stunned as I was. And stunning me in a D&D adventure is a rare event. Those witches that were harpies got me in that one adventure. And the horse thieves in this one got me. But it\u2019s so natural. The designer TOLD you what was going on. It\u2019s so natural. In one place you might go out with the fishermen to catch some fish. You ever go out fishing with the dregs of the earth? \u201cThose who go out with the fishers may get into arguments with them. If there is an argument, the fisherfolk will turn violent.\u201d This is fucking great! A surly fisherman, just drinking enough to be pissy, breaking the parties balls, starting fights, hazing them. OF COURSE the fishermen are a rough crowd. Duh! I love it! They may also make some conversation with the party. Asking about their lives, where they come from. \u201cIf they believe the no-one knows they are here, they may attempt to drown them.\u201d Gah! \u201cYes, I am travelling along and no I have no friends or family at all and no one knows I am here and I am traveling with a large amount of expensive gear. Why do you ask?\u201d This fucking shit is wonderful. A herald in the inn taproom announces news in a great way. It FEELS like a dude stopping by to spread the news. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s this whole element of some druids causing problems, with a lot of little quests and tasks that the party can perform, some that track with the thieves (pirates and shipwreckers!) and some with the druids and some isolated. Things end up with the party returning to the town\/village and seeing dead bodies and animals attacking people! Packs of dogs! Wolves! More! Fucking Earth First druids man. D&D: if you have any alignment then you\u2019re the problem. Anyway, shit kicks off in to high gear. At least in terms of the shit I love in an adventure. You gonna maybe meet three fellow adventurers kicking the shit out of some wolves. You geta bit about them and then \u201cThese adventurers are slick, amoral, and spend freely on alcohol and meals. If a player character hangs out with them, they may easily leave them with the bill for entertainment. Ser Christan is particularly well connected, coming from a prestigious family in Origee (the nearby civilised province)\u201d You know the type. And here they are! How about the bar?! \u201cBarkeeper Jasque and her husband cook Ferdo have closed up the inn, and even blocked the fireplace. Several villagers wait in the bar, drinking from boredom or tension.\u201d Every apocalyptic movie ever has sullen people holding up in the bar. And here it is!  \u201cNalia will crush on an adventurer who helps save them, but her affluent family will overrule and engage her to a titled, or landed bachelor\u201d Fun! Hey man, the village school has kids hanging out of the windows hooting and jeering. Fuck those brats! How about the town well, eh? \u201cThe well of ancient stone has all four side basins full, but no-one is around, and this area is still. A sound rises from the well, like the skirl of bagpipes. A nightmarish, heaving, hairy carpet washes toward the characters.\u201d Fuck yeah! Classic!  These fucking things are short. Almost all of the good shit in this is. It reminds me of the very best of the hex encounters in Wilderlands. \u201cHere is something greatI can build and riff off of. I can\u2019t wait!\u201d Except I think maybe this does that better than WIlderlands. The scale is smaller, and thus you can have perhaps some more interconnections and so on, which perhaps helps. It doesn\u2019t drone on. It doesn\u2019t skip the mechanics. It fucking hits hard and moves the fuck on, letting you riff. And it\u2019s fucking great at it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What it does NOT do well is almost everything related to actually publishing an adventure. Dude knows what makes a D&D adventure good and almost nothing at all about how to format one. It does have two column. But the words and tables spread across pages and columns in weird ways (Guy Fullerton has a series of articles about the most basic of layout issues: http:\/\/www.chaotichenchmen.com\/2012\/05\/publishing-tips-introduction-and-order.html<\/a>) There\u2019s a kind of lack of summary of the situations going on, at least in a way that makes sense and a potential DM could follow. The formatting is such that the encounter areas are hard to pick out and had to tell when a new one begins. Following threads from A to B to C could be reinforced a bit. The chaos of the village attack needs a little summary of MAJOR things that could attract attention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s fucking great is what the fuck it is. But, also, it has those ease of use\/formatting and layout issues. I do fucking love the shit going on here. It\u2019s perfect as a starting region. Get to know people. Shit goes down. This iis going to take some study and a highlighter, but it is packed with good stuff. If dude can figure out the mechanics of layout, editing, and publishing then their next could be really good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3.36 at DriveThru. The preview is three pages and shows you nothing with which you can make an informed purchasing decision with. Shitty preview.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/549622\/em1-eastern-spark-old-school?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Greg DaleyTarichan Games1eLevel 1 There’s work a-plenty at the edge of civilised lands. Can young adventurers help a local community and forge new ties? A village at the far end of civilisation offers our novice adventurers employment, and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/549622.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10242","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=10242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10243,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10242\/revisions\/10243"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}