{"id":10483,"date":"2026-06-22T07:59:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T11:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10483"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:49:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T17:49:19","slug":"beneath-twin-pines-farm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10483","title":{"rendered":"Beneath Twin Pines Farm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Peter D Gray
Self Published
5e\/OSR
Level ... 4?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Farmer Jebsom has a problem – half his farmhouse, along with all of his family fell into a sinkhole that appeared beneath his farm’s foundations.  Now he is desperate to get his wife and children back from the mysterious depths and is willing to give 20% of his farm to anyone succeeding in returning them to safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seven page backstory uses one page to describe nine rooms in a tunnel complex full of bugs. A general overview with a lengthy backstory and terse tunnel chambers result in an IDEA for an adventure rather than an adventure proper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am less than thrilled with every aspect of this adventure. There is an extensive backstory here of a wizard noble dude, exiled, back, with a gang of like fifty doppelgangers, his revenge in getting ankhegs in to a village to disrupt the farms, and then his use of a giant burrowing monster to undermine a former rival farmers fields. You\u2019re in the village to clear out an ankheg infestation. That, alone, seems weird. It\u2019s all very nonchalant and no one seems to care much about rampaging monsters. But, whatever. Then farer bob runs in to the tavern noting that his wife and kid fell in when a large portion of his house collapsed in to a sinkhole. Again, no one seems to care much. There\u2019s an off-hand comment that the village priest wants you to wait a day to go save them so that the farmer can recover enough to tell his tale. None of this makes any sense to me. The casual monster infestation that no one cares about. No one really caring about a member of the communities family being in trouble. The priest urging you to wait a day. This is not how people react. I get it, we\u2019re hiring adventurers to solve our problem, but this immediately drags me out of immersion. Things would have gone much better with some local involved and framing this as a village crisis. They won\u2019t even form a militia because the farmers don\u2019t want their hands away. It\u2019s just this super long backstory and irrelevant detail to set up this absurd situation that just results in \u201cyou\u2019re hired to \u2026\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s a evil noble mage and his doppelganger gang. There\u2019s a note that they are replacing people, but nothing more than that. Evil Dude gets a stat block and you find letters in the tunnel, and evidence, tying him to whats going on \u2026 but nothing more. No reactions. No evil dude lair. That\u2019s it. The amount of backstory and time spent on him, and the gangers, would make it seem like this IS the adventure. But it\u2019s not. Nothing is there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The actual adventure is nine keys in a tunnel. This amount to \u201cyou enter a room and some bugs are there to attack you.\u201d You can find the missing family. While YOU take between 4d4 and 8d10 damage from collapsing tunnels, they are ok. And, no details about what makes a tunnel collapse or anything. You can also find some dead doppelgangers with the letter from the evil noble. Yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I find this so frustrating. At best you get an outline of things that could be going on. There is almost no specificity. The actual dungeon encounters are less interesting than Boggems, NO! From Legion of Gold. \u201cHey, heres this long backstory of stuff that could be happening. Now here\u2019s nine rooms in some tunnels with bugs\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get it. I get the vision. But nothing in the adventure is supporting that vision. Not even this review. OSR. Pffft. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview shows you the first two pages of baccktsory. Enjoy that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/569215\/beneath-twin-pines-farm?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Peter D GraySelf Published5e\/OSRLevel … 4? Farmer Jebsom has a problem – half his farmhouse, along with all of his family fell into a sinkhole that appeared beneath his farm’s foundations.  Now he is desperate to get his wife … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10482,"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-10483","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\/pine.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483","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=10483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10484,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10483\/revisions\/10484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}