{"id":10520,"date":"2026-07-15T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10520"},"modified":"2026-06-24T13:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T17:52:24","slug":"danger-in-the-delta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10520","title":{"rendered":"Danger in the Delta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Demi ElGato
Possum Print Games
OSE
Level 1?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Delta has long been a dangerous place. Most citizens tend not to stray too far from the port city of Mirkell. When times were not so tough, barges, caravans and other travelers braving the wilds of the province would be well staffed with armed guards. However, as coin purses lightened, the extra expense couldn’t always be justified. Opportunists, both men and monsters, take every chance for an easy payday, or an easy meal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 120 page adventure presents a small region with about ten adventuring sites (taking about forty pages), a couple of towns, and a few other locations.  I love the premise and setup of the region but the core dungeon locations are beset with clumsy writing and lacks a certain life to the encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, look, I\u2019ll get to the review, but I need a moment to diatribe first. In this we\u2019ve got a new king, a Good Guy\u201d \u201cHe established a parliament, limiting his own powers, and fully recognized the citizens of the Delta as members of the kingdom.\u201d Kings don\u2019t do this. Well, they do, but only when their barons have quite strong armies and are not pleased with the king. That\u2019s just not what the job of king entails, giving away your absolute rights derived from god. But, then, also \u201cRecently talks of secession have been heard in the Delta. King Nicolai will not abide such murmurings.\u201d Well king dipshit, what the fuck does your parliment have to say about that? After all, you ceded rights to them. We\u2019re gonna ignore this little bit of contradictory realpolitik for the rest of the review; it\u2019s really the only truly dumb ass thing the adventure says. Not being internally consistent breaks immersion. Pick a direction and go, for real reasons that are relatable, not this scattershot shit. But, again, not a big deal, which is why I\u2019m leading off with it and ranting about it ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The really strong point to this adventure is the factions and their timelines. You\u2019ve got loyalists and successionists, anti-humans, researchers, nihilist death cult, and the Old Guard Rich & Powerful. Oh, look, the Teamsters (The Delta works best when we say Union Yes!) want more money and better conditions. Oh, look, the old boys club isn\u2019t happy about changes to the status quo. Oh, and some agtators who think the Delta would be better without a remote king. And the kings men who disagree. Oh, and now there\u2019s a death cult type thing mixing in with crowds and throwing firebombs, literally and metaphorically. This amps up feelings on all sides. And mixed in to this we\u2019ve got some rc town assholes and dedicated researchers and the usual array of bandits. There\u2019s a rough timeline of events that can kind of help set the tone during the game, such as \u201cA police force, only answering to the Noble Stewards, is established in Mirkell. The Secessionists have a protest outside of Town Hall in Mirkell. The Cult of Saint Hideo will begin attacking and burning barges on the river. The Segregationists will begin importing mass amounts of arms and armor.\u201d This isn\u2019t a set of specific events but it does outline the general situation and the vibe. I SUSPECT thats enough. Just reading that I can think of a lot of things I can drop in to a game as little side things, and that\u2019s generally what I\u2019m looking for from a designer: enough to get ME going to create and drop in things. We can see crackdowns, brutality both accidental and intentional, accidents that are real and imagined. What do you do when a crate of bows spills out of a wagon? \u201cUh, it\u2019s for fishing\u201d says the fisherman hailing it. It\u2019s a great little set up thing and a good way to use a death cult. \u201cYeah, there were death cult agitators in the crowd.\u201d  \u201cYeah, that\u2019s what you WOULD say! Death cult! As if!\u201d  I love it when the party explores \u201cBig Als Fireworks & Open Barrel of Gasoline Emporium.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are other tidbits here and there that are great as well. There\u2019s a rival adventuring party that shows up form time to time in the wanderers table and in other places. \u201cThey are always kind and helpful unless given reason not to be. They travel with their mule, Bee,and little treasure (hoard type D).\u201d Their mule, Bee. That\u2019s a nice touch. Good grounding. And good job sprinkling them in to places to give the world that lived in feel. Good design. And, here\u2019s a magic item \u201cThe Golden Eel Mouthpiece An exquisite, hollow golden eel. When held in the mouth, the wielder can breath underwater and swim twice as fast as usual. However, these effects only work in saltwater.\u201d That feels real, yeah? The description, proper, is quite short but great, and while it mentions an effect it doesn\u2019t belabour mechanics. Great magic item!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a few things that seem out of place, before I get to my major issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are these graves of saints scattered around. Maybe twenty of them? Basically if you show up and do something for them then you get a magic item or boon or something. It feels a little \u2026 I don\u2019t know, video-gamey? In that they are all basically the same mechanic? Or slight variations on the same mechanic? It\u2019s like you\u2019re touching all the totems on the map in Far Cry 19. And, then, one of them has a very specific morality test they ask you. \u201cA poor beggar child is caught stealing bread. He is arrested by the town guard and hung for his crimes. Who committed wrong here? The child? The guard? The hangman?\u201d Bonus test: this is a saint of the god Zakon, who believes that \u201ccultural tradition and legal authority are inherently holy.\u201d Make a guess. Did you guess? I SAID FUCKING GUESS! The child and guard are wrong but the hangman acted justly. I guess there\u2019s room for interpretation in the holy tenets, even among the sainted of Zakon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All of the intro and supporting information (and there is a lot of it, given that only about forty pages are dungeon) in this is either easily ignored or pretty decent. I wish, perhaps, it were trimmed back. A LOT. But, it is what it is and it\u2019s generally inoffensive when its not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dungeons, though, are something else. Maybe, I don\u2019t know, about twenty rooms in each of the ten dungeon locations? There\u2019s something weird going on with the entries, but, also, it\u2019s hard to point to what exactly. Here\u2019s an example \u201cBloody Hall The scrabble on the floor here<\/p>\n\n\n\n
makes quiet movement nearly impossible. The stalactites here are smaller and are not dripping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a bloody Drag<\/strong> mark here, leading to Room 4. There is also a Pile<\/strong> of stones along the northern wall.\u201d (Bold has more information) So, this should be pretty chill. Bloody drag marks. The text above is the \u201cat a glance\u2019 information, so, not exactly read-aloud. It\u2019s just \u2026 blah. \u201cThere is a \u2026\u201d repeated multiple times. The tites are smaller and not dripping. \u201cHere makes quiet movement \u2026\u201d I don\u2019t know. Here is a blah Here is a blah Here is a blah. Here is not a blah. The core here, though, I think you can recognize from what I\u2019ve pasted in, is not bad. Hard to be quite, tites, and bloody tracks.  Somehow, though, the language, and the follow up language, diminishes the interactivity in te room. Or the evocative nature? It\u2019s weird. I\u2019m not sure I see this too often.\u201d It\u2019s like having a decent idea and putting it down on paper in the most uninspiring manner possible while the concept still comes through. It\u2019s not padded out in a meaningless way, maybe just in an \u2026 ignorant way? As in the designer didn\u2019t know a better way to phrase what the room looked like in a more dynamic manner? And room after room is like this. The neato things going on are just so \u2026 BLEH. The follow on, for the bolded words, are fine, and the formatting is fine. It\u2019s just all so, I don\u2019t know, both padded out with pad phrasing and then, uninspiring? The formatting is fine. The interactivity is varied. I just have NO desire. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dungeons, and the adventure might be fine but I\u2019d rather run something else. It\u2019s all just cumbersome. The NPC\u2019s are listed in the back of the book, and are relatively terse, but there\u2019s no way I\u2019m flipping back there to run them. The dungeon are ok, but lack enthusiasm. Even something like the stricture of the regions and adventures. There are hooks for the ten adventures, or, perhaps, ways to get involved. I\u2019d just list them all up front, rather than right in front of the adventure, as shit going non in town or the village or something. Everything all at once, or tied to the timeline. Cut a shit load of text and instead focus on putting the NPC\u2019s together with the timeline together with the hooks, to make the entire regional flow together better as a cohesive flow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is, I think, the designers first real adventure\/publication. And, given that, it shows. The rooms are not overly written, while the regions is perhaps a little excessively written. The rooms ARE padded out with simple language padding while the regional data has some decent specificity here and there. A strong focus on specificity in the region, trimming a lot of the boilerplate fantasy stuff, and reworking the rooms in the dungeons to eliminate padded out phrasing and bring in more adjective and specificity would make this pretty decent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $7.77. The preview is 25 pages and mostly fluff. Page 19\/14 has the factions and their timeline, which is the best of the more interesting possibilities with this. It should really have had a few dungeon pages as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/569417\/danger-in-the-delta?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Demi ElGatoPossum Print GamesOSELevel 1? The Delta has long been a dangerous place. Most citizens tend not to stray too far from the port city of Mirkell. When times were not so tough, barges, caravans and other travelers braving … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10516,"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-10520","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\/06\/569417.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10520","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=10520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10521,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10520\/revisions\/10521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}