{"id":10591,"date":"2026-08-26T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10591"},"modified":"2026-08-05T10:53:33","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T14:53:33","slug":"queens-gambit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10591","title":{"rendered":"Queens Gambit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Eric Jones
Ludibrium Games
OSR
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Tragedy has befallen the Kingdom of Ambarge\u2014the king is dead; long live the king! Yet strife in the realm has only just begun, for the sole heir is nowhere to be found. The fate of the entire kingdom now rests with the grit and guile of a few humble caravan guards in a far-off land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 32 page adventure presents a ten events caravan journey It feels more generic than perhaps it should, given the subject and the NPC\u2019s. Almost as if it\u2019s one step away from the specificity that would bring the entire thing home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a reissue of the 2011 adventure Kingmaker, \u201csignificantly expanded and revised from the original version.\u201d It looks like I reviewed Kingmaker ages ago. I\u2019m going to review this and then go back and read my other review. Let\u2019s see how a new reissue compares to an old review?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the death of the king the royal consort\/mom smuggles her son, the heir, out of the kingdom to get him out of the way is assisination attempts. Mom and son are in disguise as a wealthy merchant\/son and taking a caravan to Another Kingdom. They\u2019ve got a few hired guards, none of who know who they are. Oh, hey, Mr Party, how about we hire you also? A few more never hurt. The caravan is almost immediately discovered by a witches familiar, part of a band of mercs to hunt the boy down, and then nine more scenes play out until the next town is reached. It\u2019s the party and their merc caravan against the witch and her mercs, as she tries to get at the boy and\/or whittle down the caravans guards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NPC\u2019s, the good guys and the bad guys, are all covered up front. There\u2019s a little description and a stat block. Something like \u201cMundencain\u2019s partner, Oading Whitebones, would be tall but for a terrible hunch. The road-weary but loyal soldier has accompanied Mundencain on various adventures since they were small boys dueling with wooden swords.\u201d I\u2019m just having a hard time getting behind them. Road-weary, loyal, hunchback. That I can do. As a quick reference its lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The encounters are decently open ended, in general. The DM is given a situation, maybe half a page or so, and then  you run it. Importantly, the evil party and the NPC\u2019s in the caravan are not really covered. Well, they are, here and there, but it\u2019s minor issues or just leading to something else. For the most part , if the room description was something like \u201corc main room with cooking fire and six orcs\u201d and nothing more, then I\u2019ll let you, the DM, determine how the previous information about the NPCs, good and evil, fit in to that. The entries are not that short, but, the point I\u2019m making is that they generally do not deal much with the NPC\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You must cross a raging river. You meet merchants. There is a cart full of bodies on the road. How the party wishes to overcome these things is up to them. How they wish to use it against the party following them. How it gets used against them by the evil party to harass the good party. The adventure is not going to give you much to work with here except some personalities and general goals, spiced up by some specific remarks here and there,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As event based adventures go it\u2019s not the worst. There\u2019s no real railroad here, except for maybe the first encounter where a bird flies by, discovering the party for the witch. You can kill off good caravan members, or do pretty much anything. If the kid dies, or you turn him over early or something, well, I hope you got paid well for it by the witch? Just beyond the ten static events is a little section on other events that the DM can toss in. Less events, i think, and more how to handle party actions, like, we want to talk to the baddies, or other actions to toss in to spice things up. This is all then further augmented by a terrain and weather table to add additional spice. So, a lot of tools, from good guy npcs, rto baddies, to terrain, to weather, to static encounters to tossed in encounters, all to mix in together for an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only thing that REALLY doesn\u2019t work for me is one of the early encounters, a gnome, polymorphed, controlling animals via a potion\/fungus, attacking the party. Meh. It\u2019s a little prescriptive and renfaire fantasy for my tastes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think, though, this comes off a little bland. The evil mercs are mostly just dudes. Fire arrows. Hit and run. The personalities are not there to sell a desperate chase. Nd I\u2019m not sure tha the personalities for the good guys are there, cemented enough, either. Yeah yeah, dour, tacitern, boisterous, the obligatory traitor. I think, though, in the years since this was first published, other adventures have come along and done the evil party chasing us thing better. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This isn\u2019t a bad adventure. It\u2019s certainly easy to read and follow. I just can\u2019t get in to it at all. There\u2019s a little too much work on the DM, I think, and\/or that lack of specificity that I enjoy. I\u2019m not mad at this, I just don\u2019t see a reason to run it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $8 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. Boo! Boo! Stick in a preview Eric! (Also, I seem to recall loving Ironwood Gorge?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/555687\/queen-s-gambit-osr-version?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Eric JonesLudibrium GamesOSRLevel 1 Tragedy has befallen the Kingdom of Ambarge\u2014the king is dead; long live the king! Yet strife in the realm has only just begun, for the sole heir is nowhere to be found. The fate of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10586,"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-10591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/gambit.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10591","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=10591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10592,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10591\/revisions\/10592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}