{"id":10622,"date":"2026-09-16T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10622"},"modified":"2026-08-25T11:56:50","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T15:56:50","slug":"ahidls-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10622","title":{"rendered":"Ahidl’s Keep"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jeremy Farkas
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Level ... 3?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Dare you cross the vast desert and seek out the great red mesa where the near-mythical mine is rumored to lie? Dare you plunge the darksome depths of the labyrinth and wrest fortune and glory from its yawning chasm? Dare you seek out the legendary hammer Earthrender, which bestows lordship upon any dwarf who holds it aloft? Dare you discover the fate of the great wyrm Morglax the Bold, who brought her great host of bandits and monsters up from the south to snuff out Lord Ahidl-Mor and his kin?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This eighteen page adventure uses about fourteen pages to describe a thee levels dwarf \u201corcs in a hole\u201d with about 35 rooms. Stuffed with humanoids, it uses a conversational style to present a lot of things to stab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not sure what to say here. You know all of those adventures that have a bunch of humanoids in a dungeon with some kind of backstory? This is one of those. In this case the humanoids are kobolds, goblins, orcs and bugmeans. Along with the required vermin, an abomination or two, and a young dragon at the end. And in this case the dungeon is a three level Lonely Mountain, with thew dwarves pushed out by orcs and a dragon and the old dwarf king leaving a clue where the entrance was, up to and including a secret entrance on a ledge. The required \u201cbroken dwarf elevator\u201d is present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, I don\u2019t have anything positive to say. I guess I\u2019ve got some negative things to point out. But, overall, there\u2019s just not a lot here. This was a tourney module and then they added some content to try and expand it. I\u2019m going to ignore the expanded content, a village and preamble adventure. I don\u2019t think they really add anything interesting and are just padded out. If you just want to, I don\u2019t know, enter a few rooms and kill a few things then I\u2019ve got some great news for you about this adventure. It even has a few environmental things and light puzzels to solve! You gotta find the yellow control crystal to make the elevator work again! Uh. That didn\u2019t come across well. If you want to stab things then you can, and there a few things to break up the stabbin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, I know people like to stab. It is not lost on me that Chainmail exists. Chainmail, 3e, 3.5, 4e, the whole range, devoted to stabbin.I like to stab also. I like to stab as a means to an end. B\/X is my favorite edition because of the balance there between stabbin as a means to an end rather than a tactical minis simulation. Ultimately I\u2019m looking for something with a decent exploratory vibe, some roleplaying, and other interactivity in addition to the stabbin. And it has to be something  a little more interesting than \u201cfind the gold key to open the gold lock.\u201d  And the adventure here is not altogether great in areas other than things to stab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m also more than a little irked by many aspects of the C&C house style. Is any one thing terrible? No. Does it all annoy me? Yes. Like, no level range anywhere. I guess you just rush out and dump money at the new C&C adventure rather than looking for a specific adventure for a specific level range? Man, stick a fucking level range on it somewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the read-aloud here. You know the drill, fancy fonts with long italics make things hard t read. But, further, the read-aloud is all mixed up. We\u2019ve got the famous second person stuff, with lots of \u201cAs you draw nearer, you clearly see \u2026\u201d writing, which should never be used. But, then, the bold\/italics shifts. While read-aloud is in bolded italics so it DM text! Or, maybe its also read-aloud? It will just suddenly have what is obviously DM only information in the same bolded\/italics. Huh? What\u2019s the point then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then it\u2019s padded ALL the fuck out. The house style loves to pad, but then the adventure does also. Creature stat blocks are long with phrasing like \u201cTheir primary attributes are physical. Their special abilities are dark vision and light sensitivity. In battle they use military forks that deal 1d8 damage, or short swords that deal 1d6 damage\u201d As I get older the sublime majesty of the ready ref sheets becomes more and more apparent. No? You don\u2019t agree? How about a very conversational tone in the writing, which forces you to wade through mountains of padding when locating information? \u201cIf for some reason the PCs feel compelled to loot Ahidl\u2019s grave, \u201c Oh come on. What\u2019s the point there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then in other places the information is absurdly out of order. AFTER a room description we get this little note \u201cWhen the PCs get within 10 feet of the chamber prior, they must cross a steel tripwire just 6 inches off the ground.\u201d That should, I think we can all agree, come BEFORE the room so the DM notices it before the party gets to the room. \u201cKnock has no effect\u201d ah, jesus man. It\u2019s a low level adventure. Let the wizard use his fucking knock spell. It\u2019s one less sleep he\u2019ll have memorized, which is the entire point of utility spells. I can bypass this ther kind of challenge if I give up nuking a room of monsters. What\u2019s wrong with that? Sounds like the D&D circle of life to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m looking at room 33 right now, titled Dragon Bones. There\u2019s a paragraph of bolded italics read-aloud. Then there are five paragraphs of DM text that follow. There is nothing in those those five paragraphs related to the room, in play. The past sentence is \u201cSearching the room will yield no secrets or great treasures.\u201d It\u2019s all backstory. A quarter page, or more? For one room? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can excuse a lot of things as I\u2019m Not In To That Style Of Play. But I can recognize how someone else might be. But, all of that text, for nothing? Wasted effort? Aimed at readers? Distracting from the purpose of the designer AND the purpose of a DM? Nope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is about a dozen pages, which includes a sizable number of rooms as well as some preamble text. More than enough to see what you\u2019re getting yourself in to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/579756\/castles-crusades-ahidl-s-keep?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jeremy FarkasTroll Lord GamesCastles & CrusadesLevel … 3? Dare you cross the vast desert and seek out the great red mesa where the near-mythical mine is rumored to lie? Dare you plunge the darksome depths of the labyrinth and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10618,"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-10622","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\/08\/579756.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622","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=10622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10623,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10622\/revisions\/10623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}