{"id":10478,"date":"2026-06-20T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10478"},"modified":"2026-06-18T06:52:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-18T10:52:01","slug":"kaeloreths-tomb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10478","title":{"rendered":"Kaeloreth’s Tomb"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSE
Level 3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The adventurers will face an ancient mage trying to free his soul from it’s bindings in his tomb. The group has 10 sessions to reach the tomb, where they can stop the ritual or join Kaeloreth’s quest to rein the region again. In the tenth session, Kaeloreth completes his ritual and now possesses a new body. He send his undead thralls to slaughter 3 Sylvandur population, each death gives him more power. As sessions progress, the common enemy will start to change from wild life and monsters to Kaeloreth\u2019s undead soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 93 page adventure uses nine pages to present a small trial dungeon. Whatever the intent was is lost in its incomprehensibleness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is an EASL adventure, and while the EASL is thick in this, I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the main problem, so I\u2019m going to ignore it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t really know what to say about this. It\u2019s a mess. It\u2019s trying to present a small region with the central focus being a dungeon\/tomb with ye olde \u201cancient dude trying to return to the world.\u201d He\u2019s in a tomb that is a simple \u201cchallenge dungeon\u201d with a number of rooms in which you face \u201cchallenges\u201d; my least favorite type of dungeon. There\u2019s a timeline, based around adventuring sessions, with the concept of escalating stakes introduced for each session the party takes to complete the adventure, rather than a strictly daily countdown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess I should start with the format. Or, maybe, file type. It\u2019s done in Obsidian, a markup tool. I downloaded the app and installed it, but still couldn\u2019t get the files to open. It appears to have a rather steep learning curve. I THINK it\u2019s just a system of hyperlinking. I think. There\u2019s also a single column PDF that contains everything in the markup app, I think. But, even though I\u2019m looking at the adventure in a non-optical manner (the PDF) I still don\u2019t think that\u2019s the issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just \u2026 abstracted? I don\u2019t really know what to say except \u201ca mess\u201d, but that would imply it\u2019s not organized. But I think it IS organized. It\u2019s just not supporting anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I THINK what is meant to be going on is that the party is charged with STOPPING THE EVIL and they end up in a small town. There they meet some NPCs and get mini-quests that forces them in to the region and then they get more information and find the tomb and stop the big bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The best example I can cite to relate the issue is the mini-quests. At the end of the adventure is a list of NPC\u2019s. One of the NPC\u2019s has this in their description \u201dHis son is late to return home. He went to the forest at morning (This happens on the first session). He start searching for his son on the second day.\u201d [sic]  So, to put together the mini-quests you\u2019re going to have to reference all of the NPC\u2019s and what they want done and where they are. I don\u2019t see how this is possible in gameplay, given their quantity. That means you\u2019re going to have to essentially take so many notes that you would be rewriting the adventure. His kid, later in the NPC\u2019s, has the description \u201cCerabino is lost inside the forest. He got distracted when he found Living Cave entrance. He can forage for berries and water but monsters can ambush and kill him. \u201c There\u2019s no mention of the kid anywhere else, and certainly not in the living cave. So \u2026 you stick him in it? IE: you have to put together each of the mini-quests on your own. There IS no supporting information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The living cave, proper, is procedurally generated. Roll a d12 and maybe get \u201c6 Forgotten gear (CHA or attract the owner ghost) \u201c You gotta wander the cave till the DM rolls a a twelve so you can find the tomb entrance. And it changes every time, since it\u2019s living and procedurally generated each time. This is tedium. And, again, not very well supported. One of the two central locations is essentially not described at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Challenge dungeons, the main tomb, are their own problem. You know the whole \u201cdoor slams shit and figure out what you are supposed to do\u201d thing. And there\u2019s no map. Well, there is one, but it\u2019s not keyed (maybe that is fixed with the markup file?) And then, the big bad has a 4HD fireball he tosses. At level 3?! WHat is that, 14\/7 damage? Ouchies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the room description, what there are of them, are full of asides and backstory. \u201cThe manor don’t clean or fix itself inside this room. This was caused by a bad spell from Maliel – Corrupted Witch while she researched a way to preserve Nermanik – Human Mage’s body.\u201d With victorian laundry lists of trivial contents and extensive room exists and the like. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rooms and descriptions, the dungeon and towns, the quests, the entire plot \u2026 it\u2019s all abstracted. There\u2019s no real summary of how the thing is supposed to work together. There\u2019s no real support for any aspect of it, except perhaps the main dungeon, and even that is written almost like it\u2019s a generic\/universal adventure. It has abandoned all conventional aspects of layout and organization, but not replaced it with anything better. It\u2019s as if the designer had not seen a published adventure before and didn\u2019t know to do, but didn\u2019t have an idea anyway on how to organize it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m open to this being an Obsidian issue, solved by it, but I don\u2019t think so. The lack of a summary that makes sense, and the lack of support for the various areas just seems missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/567830\/kaeloreth-s-tomb-mini-scenario-pdf-markdown-obsidian-ready?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Fabricio GarciaKobold KingOSELevel 3 The adventurers will face an ancient mage trying to free his soul from it’s bindings in his tomb. The group has 10 sessions to reach the tomb, where they can stop the ritual or join … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10478","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\/567830.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478","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=10478"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10511,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478\/revisions\/10511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}