{"id":10451,"date":"2026-06-03T07:12:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10451"},"modified":"2026-05-11T09:14:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T13:14:55","slug":"hell-comes-to-frogtown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10451","title":{"rendered":"Hell Comes to Frogtown"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Phil Martin
Self Published
Knave
Level 2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Come for the frogs.  Leave when it all goes to hell. The small hamlet of Roudenbush moulders on the edge of the Great Cheerless Swamp. Built at a crossroads, the town sustains itself on a mix of merchant caravans stopping for provisions, those that seek treasure in the swamp, and the bounty of the swamp itself. Wooden, thatched-roofed residences and stone municipal buildings make up the town. Two weeks ago, a tide of giant frogs breached the town\u2019s outer wall, causing chaos in the streets until they retreated back into the swamp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirteen page adventure uses three pages to describe seven overland locations and a five floor wizard tower. Napkin notes for an adventure, it exemplifies the IF rather than a THEN. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My brief foray in to products recommended that live in Itch has ended as I am, and no one else, is completely shocked. I find it FASCINATING in what both people seem to be willing to pay for nothing and in what people are willing to publish. For Money.So, some giant frogs showed in a a town int he swamps and rampaged through. I guess you\u2019re going to do something about it for some reason. There\u2019s some abandoned wizards tower in the swamp with a magnifying glass turning frogs giant. That location is called Frogtown. There\u2019s also a wandering knight called Sir Robin Hell. Get it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m in a foul fucking mood this morning. This thing isn\u2019t help that any.  I\u2019m not going to waste a lot of time on it. Fourteen pages and it manages to put in just a few with encounters in it. This is nothing more than napkin notes. It\u2019s not an adventure. It\u2019s possibilities, rather than specificity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do we mean by this? There is some rather common tendency to be seemingly afraid of outcomes. It is as if the designer is terrified of actually stating something concrete may happen. In this sense it is more like a hex crawl but without the scope of a traditional hex crawl. You come across a village of 100 gnomes living in a mesa. \u201cThe hive-mind seeks the return of myconids that have gone missing, believed taken by the lizard folk as food \/ offerings. Will exchange fly agaric mushrooms from their grove for myconids that are found and returned \u201c I\u2019m paraphrasing the set up but the outcome is from the adventure. This is classic \u201cgiant hex crawl.\u201d But it\u2019s not \u201coverland journey to the adventure site.\u201d In the starting village there are a couple of NPC\u2019s. The are not specific to the adventure, just a list of NPC\u2019s for the most part. One of them is a guy you can hire, Buckingham Craddlethatch. The second floor of the five floor \u201cend site\u201d tower in the swamp reads, in its entirety \u201cRuined arcane library and alchemical lab. Most of the tomes are mildewed and illegible, but an intact Chaos Spellbook can be found among them. If Buckingham Cragglethatch is with the party, he finds a book bound in human skin. Perusing it, he will suddenly announce that he must leave immediately. \u201c <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Those two encounters are representative of most of what is going on in this. They are possibilities. They are the \u201ccollapsed stairwell to another level of the dungeon that the dm COULD expand upon if they were so inclined.\u201d In a traditional hexcrawl adventure these are the core of the adventure. It\u2019s a wide open area that the party brings themselves to in order to exploit. Contract this to the standard \u201coverland adventure\u201d portion of adventures where to travel to get to an adventuring site. These are instead dangers and Lair, with associated lair treasures. And then contrast these two types of things to the keys found in most adventures. Obstacles and encounters to overcome. Those three encounter types serve much different purposes, influenced by the scope of the adventure and environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The muddling of the streams here results in adventure that is nothing but napkin notes for a small adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No more itch for awhile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s Name Your Price at itch, with a suggested price of $5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/daseinphil.itch.io\/hell-comes-to-frogtown<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phil MartinSelf PublishedKnaveLevel 2 Come for the frogs.  Leave when it all goes to hell. The small hamlet of Roudenbush moulders on the edge of the Great Cheerless Swamp. Built at a crossroads, the town sustains itself on a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10453,"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-10451","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\/05\/image.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10451","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=10451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10454,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10451\/revisions\/10454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}