{"id":10387,"date":"2026-04-20T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10387"},"modified":"2026-03-30T08:59:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T12:59:23","slug":"righteous-bro-cave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10387","title":{"rendered":"Righteous Bro Cave"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Operant Game Lab
Self Published
OSR
Levels 1-2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Decades ago, there were two adventuring bros\u2014Thom the Mighty and Oolnor the Weird. After much questing and looting and war against the hated bone men of the North, they carved for themselves a dungeon fortress one day\u2019s march from the nearest village. Here, in this righteous bro cave (RBC), they stationed their henchmen, stashed their gold, and hosted epic parties. But there has been no trace of Thom or Oolnor for ten years now. A brave few have trespassed into their RBC, lusting for the riches that no doubt reside there. None have returned, for no force could be mightier than Thom and Oolnor\u2019s eternal, bloodthirsty friendship. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ten page adventure describes about 32 rooms in a \u201cdouble adventurer\u201d lair much akin, and a homage, to B1. It\u2019s trying hard, and has some decent formatting and a writing style that is, in form if not function, almost consistently great. And, also, it comes off a bit staid and disconnected from itself. You getting close there, Operant Game Lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The set up here is much the same as B1, on purpose. Two adventuring buddies build a fortress to live together and then they disappear for over ten years now. Inside you\u2019ll find some things harkening back to B, like pools, as well as some mushroom men wandering around, \u201cthe bone men\u201d, a tribe of barbarians trying to retrieve the bones of their ancestors that were stolen by the dynamic due, and  some leftover orc servants trying to fend off the bone men incursion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I talk sometimes about good writing and great writing and how there is a way of writing in which more is implied than the written word. If I can write three words and it makes you think of some kind of misty forest glen, coming alive in your minds eye, then I\u2019ve done a good job. But if you can build the rest of the forest from that then I\u2019ve done an even better job. A good room description may bring a room to life and an even better one brings the SITUATION to life, or the NPC, or so on. And, one hopes, it is tersely written, helping us scan the page and run the game at the table, the whole idea being using words to their maximum effectiveness, implying more than the words themselves describe. At one point in this adventure you come across some orc officers, planning to repel the bone-men barbarians. They will talk, but want to make sure you are \u201corc tough\u201d and \u201cthey are willing to generously split the resulting bone-men meat 50-50.\u201d This is very good writing. You know EXACT:LY the tone that the designer is going for with this encounter. From this you, as the DM, know how to run this encounter perfectly. You can ad-lib and fill in the gaps of the encounter, and, because of this, can turn it in to something quite memorable for the party, something they will recall in stories for sessions to come. More than just imaging the environment of the room, it has communicated tone and a situation. And that is the very highest form of evocative writing. That certain wryness comes through in other places in this adventure as well, so while not consistently hitting, it\u2019s not an accident either. One of the wandering encounters, on a roll of 00,  has the two adventurers, \u201cThom and Oolnor, returning home at long last\u201d with their seven giant golden idols. Well there\u2019s a sticky wicket to toss in!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The writing here tends to be terse, but not overly so. Formatting and layout is done paragraph style, with a a few short intro sentences and a word or two bolded and then followed up in their own paragraphs, with rooms given names next to their key numbers in order to help frame the text for the DM. This is all great, easy to scan at the table while running. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Encounters can be, in places, well done. Outside the entrance we get a couple of sentences that ends with \u201cEvery few minutes, a gust of wind blows away the humidity and mosquitos.\u201d More than just padding and setting the scene, if you listen to the wind you you catch the faint sounds of a flute, following it leads you to where the bone-men have made their encampment and their lon guard killing time playing his flute. This, obviously, helps the party, giving them clues as to whats to come. Depth, following up on what the DM has related to the party leads to more information and revelations. And that\u2019s what you want in a room description. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In another spot, the treasure room, we get \u201cPiles of Gold. On the scale of Scrooge McDuck, one could swim through these stacks of silver and gold coins. All told, there are 2,834 silver pieces and 198 gold pieces (many of them stained with the old blood of their previous owners)\u201d On the Scale of Scrooge McDuck, this gives us an immediately visual image to work from as a DM. (As an aside, is that many coins really a hoard ala Smaug the Golden\/Scrooge McDuck? The imagery works well but I\u2019ve not sure I\u2019ve ever seen an adventure in which the actual coinage lives us to that imagery. Or maybe I just don\u2019t know what 2800 coins looks like in real life?) Other wry things include a room with an effigy of a woman in it, a crude statue built. \u201cParading the false wife around in \u201ccivilized\u201d settlements confers a -1 ongoing penalty due to its creepiness.\u201d That\u2019s solid. The use of parading, civilized in quotes, creepiness. Great use of descriptive words to help nail the vibe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some decent vignettes in this. Bone-men stacking up chairs and climbing on each other to get to their ancestors bones hanging from the ceiling in the great hall. A wounded bone-man, with his buddies keeping watch, that drank from a pool and hulked out and got wounded badly. In spite of this though I\u2019m not going to even Regerts this. It\u2019s close, but there are a few things that keep me from that. The entire thing feels, sparse? Staid? Disconnected from itself? Static? Maybe static. It\u2019s not that there\u2019s a lot of empty rooms, that can be cool in a dungeoncrawl. But it just doesn\u2019t feel like a unified whole. There are little linkages, the bone-men through, the orc sector, the previously mentioned wounded bone-man from the pool. Certainly no order of battle though, or anything overly dynamic in the environment. It doesn\u2019t feel like a place that is alive. The overall vibe of the place just doesn\u2019t come through well. I wish I could put my finger on it. It doesn\u2019t feel like a bone-man incursion to a place and the orc servants repelling them and the mushroom men adding trouble in a place that is already a little weird, being an adventurer home. Certainly all of those elements are present but they don\u2019t feel like they are working together to create a unified whole. I\u2019m thinking of this in terms of, say, the first level of Stonehell. Stonehell level one, or even the outside, feels like an empty dungeon but the overall emptiness, exploration, and creatures there make it, all together, feel like a certain place with a certain something going on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m certainly not angry about this. Most adventures are piss-poor wastes of paper and this is not that. The overall environment just doesn\u2019t get me excited to run this. I think it\u2019s close, though, to being something worthwhile. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is ten pages, essentially the entire thing. Great preview. I\u2019d check out, maybe room 3, 12, and 25 for an example of some of the better rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/561741\/righteous-bro-cave?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Operant Game LabSelf PublishedOSRLevels 1-2 Decades ago, there were two adventuring bros\u2014Thom the Mighty and Oolnor the Weird. After much questing and looting and war against the hated bone men of the North, they carved for themselves a dungeon … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10384,"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-10387","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\/561741.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387","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=10387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10388,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10387\/revisions\/10388"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}