{"id":10413,"date":"2026-05-09T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10413"},"modified":"2026-04-16T13:17:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T17:17:02","slug":"shrieks-in-the-dark","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10413","title":{"rendered":"Shrieks in the Dark"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Martin Cubas
Weird Adventures by Martin A. Cubas
Castles & Crusades
Levels 2-3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
They can’t see you. They don’t need to. A colony of blind, grotesque predators has infested an abandoned temple deep inside a canyon. They hunt by sound. They move in packs. And they’re starving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirty page adventure uses about fourteen pages to describe seven rooms. Obviously long-winded and padded out, you kill a few monsters. Also, it\u2019s not dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh lop-sided page count, where have you been? I\u2019ve missed you. Look, I get it, PDF pages are \u201cfree\u201d; you\u2019re not paying to print them. Why not put in a bunch of appendices, and lead in, and backstory, and everything else? It\u2019s free! Academically, I agree. But, in practice, what I see time and time again is a poor adventure with a low \u201ccore\u201d page count with a whole lot of extra information. While a bit hyperbolic, one must ask oneself, is the designer interested in writing an adventure or ar they interested in world building and the adventure is just a pretext for that? Again, I don\u2019t care if you world build. I don\u2019t care if the page count ration is one adventure page per one hundred pages of backstory. But if you\u2019re selling me an adventure then it had better be a ROCK. FUCKING. SOLID. Adventure. And it almost never is. The designer is distracted by the fluff. They spend their effort there instead of in the core adventure text. What pops out the other end is just another crappy adventure surrounded by a bunch of backstory and appendices. Who would like to guess if this is in the one in a thousand adventure in which there is a lot of fluff and a solid adventure? We all know the fucking answer already. You have to AGONIZE over the adventure text. It should be the best possible, that you are capable of (… ) and more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, we\u2019ve got some eyeless creatures in a cave. There\u2019s a long backstory here about bandits, a holy order, orcs, and so on but all that really matters is that there are eyeless creatures in a cave. They hunt by sound. This whole \u201cshrieks in the dark\u201d thing doesn\u2019t really matter. They can use a sonic attack, but the party is never limited on light. So, you\u2019re just stabbing some monsters in a cave. The central conceit, of these creatures who can hunt without sight, is never capitalized on. We get long monster ecologies (in fucking italics \u2026) who nothing about them putting out lights, etc. So, you\u2019re fighting 5HD orcs in a cave that have a sonic attack. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Room descriptions average a couple of pages each. There\u2019s no need for that. Nothing that interesting is going on. \u201cThe disc was collected by the Shrieklings along with other debris from the caverns and has no special significance to them.\u201d Great. You want me to etll you about the pile of shit I collected this morning? It has no bearing on anything, so why not? Backstory, meaningless trivia. Overexplained things. \u201cThe Shrieklings’ thick, mucus-coated skin produces a scent that naturally repels the barracuda, allowing them to swim and hunt freely.\u201d Explanations on ecology. Great. That\u2019s not coming up during play, so it\u2019s a great thing it’s in there clogging up the descriptions (as my aforementioned shit this morning may have the toilet?)  These are simple rooms with simple interactivity that are just padded out in what amounts to a wall of text. Bullet point up the main issues, but if the bullet is half a page then what’s the point? Sixty some words to describe \u201c+4 to move silently when within 15\u2019 of the waterfall.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The designer notes that this is inspired by the a Dungeon Design Framework. Monsters have patterns and routines, etc. There are a couple of charts to help with the monsters wandering patrol paths. I\u2019m not saying they are wrong, but they are poorly done, not noting the creatures locations. Just dots and blips that you must then interpret and expand on. Hooks are all \u201cyou are hired to \u201c nonsense. And, in particular, the claim that \u201cInside, you’ll find tightly written areas built around meaningful encounters, and systems that keep the dungeon active between player actions.\u201d would not be true. Tightly written. Meaningful encounters. I think not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is likely the last Cubas review, joining Mohr, Filbar, Elven Tower and the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. Meaning nine pages of background\/fluff\/intro and one that starts to show the first room. (There\u2019s another full page of room one info.) Take a look at that Gannt chart like thing. The blue and reds could be handled much better to show current location, not moves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/563481\/c-c-shrieks-in-the-dark-c-c-edition?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Martin CubasWeird Adventures by Martin A. CubasCastles & CrusadesLevels 2-3 They can’t see you. They don’t need to. A colony of blind, grotesque predators has infested an abandoned temple deep inside a canyon. They hunt by sound. They move … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10406,"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-10413","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\/04\/563481.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413","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=10413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10414,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10413\/revisions\/10414"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}