{"id":10380,"date":"2026-04-18T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T11:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10380"},"modified":"2026-03-25T11:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T15:11:22","slug":"a-grinning-ghosts-grim-tale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10380","title":{"rendered":"A Grinning Ghost’s Grim Tale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By GMaia
Knight of the Lake Games
OSR
Levels 4-8<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
[…] A bold entrepreneur decided to reopen the \u201ccursed\u201d stage, now renamed the Daggerpierce Theater, and revive what was hailed as the greatest play ever written, and at the same time the one everyone wished never to see again. The from the C\u00f4te d\u2019\u00c9cume, were not fully aware of the rumors surrounding the theater, the play, and its infamous author. Ignoring those who begged to keep the Daggerpierce Theater shut, the troupe accepted the job and sealed its fate along with that of The Tragedy of Gus de Montagne. The play was cut short just Wave fled Pont-Verre without leaving a single word or trace behind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 48 page adventure has a few locations in and around a theater with a curse. It\u2019s pretty obvious what the adventure WANTS to be and it\u2019s also pretty obvious that it is doing VERY little to make that happen. Maybe something like \u201cThis 48 page adventure presents some napkin notes that could one day be an adventure.\u201d Oh, and it\u2019s fucking pretentious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Life. You try to make some money then you die. A symphony that is bittersweet. And this adventure explores that. The theater (always a good sign when there\u2019s a theater in an adventure) is cursed. \u201cthe curse can only be broken when the play\u2019s profound message is understood and performed with the sole purpose of teaching the people to value what truly matters.\u201d Yeah, I guess The Verve is wrong because \u201cas long as the work brings success and enriches actors and theater owners, it will remain misunderstood, and its performances will claim lives.\u201d I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s love or selflessness or some shit like that. The playwright’s lover got framed by rich people to draw attention away from their counterfeiting. (Which, shows an incorrect view of counterfeiting. You don\u2019t get away with fucking with the States money supply no matter who you are.) Anyway the designer, or playwright or someone somewhere, knows the meaning of life and The Verve\u2019s more nuanced view can go fuck itself. This leads us to this interaction near the end where THE ENTITY asks the party questions. And you better get them right, or else! \u201c\u201cWhat would you have done for him, knowing he was innocent?\u201d Examples: Refuse to be passive before injustice; vow to place life above wealth. 2. \u201cWhat truth have you hidden for material gain that you could confess?\u201d Examples: Based on PC story, reveal a secret of greed or betrayal. 3. \u201cWhat act of justice would you perform now, even at great cost?\u201d Examples: Cut off a hand that committed a selfish act; blind an eye that witnessed corruption.\u201d  So, yeah, childish morality. Which means I can take the stance that this is the designer attempting to impose their own childish value system on the rest of us, and their players, in a game night that is supposed to be fun, or ITS ON PURPOSE!!, the standard artist cop-out. In this case that would appear as something like the intent of the curser, the playwright, his beliefs, and curse following that and the characters needing to figure that out so they can navigate his bullshit reality correctly. But we all know that\u2019s not what is going on here. It\u2019s designer imposing their morality on the rest of us and punishing us for not following it. This is absolute fucking bullshit. You can stick in all the fucking orc babies you want, you just can\u2019t punish people for not holding whatever bullshit views you do. ESPECIALLY when there is a god of evil in the game who is ACTIVELY rewarding their followers for evil acts. Fucking bullshit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hey, you want a challenge, how about this one? \u201cTwo to eight (2d4) energy discs hover in the air, half a meter wide, razor-thin,crackling with electricity.\u201d There\u2019s your fucking combat. I guess fighting rats might make a statement about man’s subjugation of the natural world. Far better to die by crackling electric discs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure is fucking garbage, what there is of it. I can make a decent case that this isn\u2019t an adventure at all, just an outline of one, if that.  You get a few locations, you get some NPC\u201ds with motivations and the rough outline of a plot. GO!. This leads to discovering clues like \u201cTorn letter referencing a mysterious debt \u2013 Actually belongs to Auguste, proving his ties to a shady merchant guild.\u201d How\u2019s that for evocative gameplay?! No more to this. Just that. No letter. No details. No specifics. That\u2019s all you get. And everything in this is like that. Just a few general ideas and notes. No specifics on how to use things. It\u2019s weird, how detached it is. You\u2019d think, with actors, customers, and so on that you might have some vignettes or something, but, no. Nothing. Dads house has a couple of sentences on background and then three bullets of clues. \u201cEmpty painting frame in the bedroom \u2013 Points to the diary hidden in the Red Hills hideout.\u201d How the fuck you make that jump I have no idea. Everything is like that, half finished? Just an idea? I think it might be referring to this? \u201cConcealed inside a magic mirror hanging on the wall, framed identically to the empty frame found in Edwin\u2019s house (Clue #1)\u201d So. I don\u2019t know? Is that a clue? Am I just being obtuse? Anyway, given the page count here the lack of specificity of ANYTHING resembling a plot or details is confounding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The formatting is \u2026 well, an interesting choice was made. It\u2019s doing a \u201cfacing pages\u201d layout thing. Hardcoded in to the PDF. Ug. Not cool. Anyway, the left page is a more traditional text based description while the right is essentially a cliffs notes version of the same text. As the designer notes \u201cthis is to test whether presenting the same content twice can serve both those who enjoy a full,detail-rich reading experience and those who prefer concise keywords and minimal description.\u201d I would take exception to this statement, The two are not mutually exclusive. Well, ok, maybe they are if we take \u201cdetail-rich reading experience\u201d to mean \u201cpeople who buy adventures to read instead of to play.\u201d In which case, Fuck You. But I\u2019m going to go with that the designer is taking the view that somehow full text and usable text are mutually exclusive. I think we all know, from numerous Best examples from this very blog, that is not he case. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any event, this experiment fails. The facing page \u201cterse view\u201d is a disaster. The font is in some faux-handwriting thing, which immediately destroys readability. And then its in a light blue text, which makes it even hard to read. Then it slapped down on some \u201clined paper\u201d background, which again interferes. IF something sane had been chosen to put the \u201cbullet points\u201d in then maybe this would have worked. But not as presented. Which is too bad because every once in awhile the summary information IS good. The theater producer, in his \u201cfull on\u201d text has a line that says something like \u201cDoes not believe in the daggerpiece curse.\u201d But, in his summary it says \u201cThe curse does not exist.\u201d This is interesting, presenting what is essentially the same idea in two different manners., using two different wordings. Which conveys two different attitudes. The summary version \u201cthe curse does not exist\u201d is, I think, far better, giving a much more solid foundation on which to roleplay the manager from. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The level range here appears to be arbitrary, with no real reason you’re level eight are fucking around with a playhouse. Also, the fucking overland map is a disaster with hard to read fonts on it. Why legibility\u201d remains a barrier in 2026 is beyond me. And, for the final cinema sin, there\u2019s a fucking expo dump in a fucking diary. It explains everything. Lame. LAME. DON\u201dT PUT IN FUCKING DIARIES! DONT EXPO DUMP! Figure out how to convey information naturally through the game, if it even NEEDS to be conveyed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. You make baby jesus cry when there is no preview. You don\u2019t want to make baby jesus cry do you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/558386\/a-grinning-ghost-s-grim-tale?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By GMaiaKnight of the Lake GamesOSRLevels 4-8 […] A bold entrepreneur decided to reopen the \u201ccursed\u201d stage, now renamed the Daggerpierce Theater, and revive what was hailed as the greatest play ever written, and at the same time the one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10375,"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-10380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/558386.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380","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=10380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10381,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10380\/revisions\/10381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}