{"id":10428,"date":"2026-05-18T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10428"},"modified":"2026-04-27T09:25:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T13:25:13","slug":"the-banquet-of-the-starved-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10428","title":{"rendered":"The Banquet of the Starved King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jason Youngdale
Youngdale Productions
DCC\/OSR
Levels 1-2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Long ago, beneath the fertile valleys south of Castle Dragonwater, a minor baron swore fealty to the Starved King, a demonic entity of hunger. In exchange, the baron\u2019s land flourished with endless crops and fattened livestock. When the baron died, his descendants sealed the King\u2019s shrine in terror\u2014but the hunger below never ended. Now, farmers near Horndale report crops rotting overnight and livestock turning feral. Strange lights flicker in the old Granary Hill Mound, and the smell of roasted meat fills the night air. The locals beg the adventurers to descend into the forgotten vault and end the demonic banquet once and for all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This twenty page adventure uses about four pages to describe twelve boring rooms of boringness using single-column formatting. Here are words that should be a contradiction: it\u2019s a boring DCC adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The turn of the millennia was an exciting time in RPG\u2019s.the 3.0 explosion, indie RPG\u2019s everywhere. I remember Polaris. Or, rather Polaris: Chivalric Tragedy at Utmost North. Conflict can be ended by someone saying \u201cThou are but a warrior \u2026\u201d Yeah, that\u2019s tragedy all right. Your force of arms can do nothing here to resolve things. Noice! You know ol Brycy Bryce loves some human relatability and complexity in his game. Not to punish the party for wrong choices but to muddle the affairs of the way the word REALLY works in to an RPG and still have it be fun. Let us imaging, though, after saying this the party then stabs the NPC. And then they go all Lancelot-at-the-wedding and stab the king, queen, prince, half-brother, wedding guests, and everyone else in a ten mile radius. Ha! Damn skippy I\u2019m a warrior biatch! I\u2019m not sure that one is playing Polaris then, even though you might be using the Polaris rules. Blah blah blah its art is the creator calls it art blah blah blah. Whatever. It\u2019s lost the point of Polaris. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And thusly this adventure and DCC. Let us imagine a DCC adventure with three 30×30 rooms in a row. No doors. 4 orcs in each room. Each room is otherwise empty. Is this DCC? It\u2019s stat\u2019d for DCC. Does that make it DCC? Sure. But it has lost the point of what a DCC game is. What is it, Mighty Deeds or something, where you can describe using what’s in the room to do cool shit? That’s the point of DCC. It makes cool shit happen. The halfling, the thief, the mage, the fighter, they are all built around making cool shit happen ORGANICALLY. The person has an ability, but the environment and set up is there for the party to riff on. The designer takes us to the McDonalds PlayPlace and the fighter drowns someone in the ball pit. Except. What if there is no ball pit? Or slide. Or anything else. It\u2019s just an empty room. I\u2019ve played in DCC games like this at cons and the difference is marked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Examining this adventure, room 1 save or vomit. Room 2 save or eat dirt. Room 3 is a ghost kitchen with nothing to use to fight in. Room 4 has a banquet table to fight in. Room 5, finally, is larder is hanging hooks to fight in. Room 6, pantry of jars to fight in. Room 7 had a bed to fight in. Rooms 8 and 9 have nothing but saves. You get it. There\u2019s is little to build on here. What the fuck am I supposed to Might Deed in a ghost kitchen in which nothing is real? The banquet table isnt fucking stupendious but at least it has a table, and the same goes for the larder, at least there are hooks with shit hanging on them. Not exactly a complex environment but at least its SOMETHING. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the save rooms. Ug. Save or vomit. Save or eat some dirt. These have no meaningful impact on the game. It\u2019s window dressing. Just a reason to roll dice. It\u2019s fucking lame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The locals are starving, crops withering, livestock fading away. \u201cThe locals beg the adventurers to descend into the forgotten vault and end the demonic \u2026\u201d WHat about them? DId they try and fail? No? We don\u2019t care about them? Because we don\u2019t care about the adventure? It\u2019s just a flimsy pretext for a VERY lightly themed \u201chunger\u201d dungeon? Yeah, I know, because it comes off like that. There\u2019s no immersion here. All these pages. Nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cGiant rats could also be in this room, waiting to attack any intruders.\u201d Wonderful. \u201cFour ghouls here jerk their heads sharply as you approach.\u201d Great, embedded tenses in the summaries. \u201cThis appears to be a\u201d Padded out wording. It\u2019s only four fucking pages rooms and it\u2019s still padded out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing to see. Move along. Move along.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages and shows you nothing but the credit and table of contents. You can\u2019t make a purchasing decision based on that, so it fails at being a preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/555500\/the-banquet-of-the-starved-king?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jason YoungdaleYoungdale ProductionsDCC\/OSRLevels 1-2 Long ago, beneath the fertile valleys south of Castle Dragonwater, a minor baron swore fealty to the Starved King, a demonic entity of hunger. In exchange, the baron\u2019s land flourished with endless crops and fattened … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10427,"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-10428","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\/555500.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428","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=10428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10429,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10428\/revisions\/10429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}