{"id":10662,"date":"2026-10-14T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10662"},"modified":"2026-09-22T15:36:38","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T19:36:38","slug":"the-horror-on-goat-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10662","title":{"rendered":"The Horror on Goat Hill"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Tyler McIntosh
Table Rock Independent Press
OSR
Levels 4-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
AN ANCIENT EVIL FALLS FROM THE HEAVENS ONTO GOAT HILL AND ALL THAT STANDS IN ITS WAY IS A RAGTAG GROUP OF HOBO ADVENTURERS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 36 page adventure present a two level dungeon with about fifty rooms, a coupl of factions and THE END OF THE WORLD. It is trying to present a changing environment, over the adventure timeline, and has some new terrifying creatures, The descriptive style is hard to manage and the timeline elements is not organized as ideally as it could be. It is, essentially, a hack with some faction play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This adventure centers around a dungeon with three specific acts. In the first you dive in to find the McGuffin. While inside you find orcs and goblins in conflict with each other. Returning to town, SOMETHING HAPPENS which indicates a major game world problem; it seems the MCGUFFIN is going to end the world, etc. The second dive in the dungeon then happens to stop things. The third act has you, potentially, then dealing with the orc\/goblin faction play in the dungeon as a kind of \u201cclean up\u201d operation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The acts, and the various events that are a part of them, are awkwardly organized. The back half of the adventure is the dungeon, devoid of events. The front half has the events in the various acts. So, you get text like \u201cThe second time the orcs encounter the party, they will not attack and will inform the party that Boarstein wishes to make them an offer.\u201d So, during play i the first two acts, in particular, you\u2019re going to need to keep track of the various objectives and integrate them in to the play. This is made more troublesome by the somewhat conversational, and long winded, manner in which these various things are communicated. You\u2019re going to need a separate notepad to keep things straight and substitute for a clearer organization method. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main problem here are Void Creatures, and a unique ability they have to suck your soul\/brain out of your face. They are striking enemies, but the adventure suggests that the first encounter, the first time a party member is about to die, a rando goblin or orc shows up and body slams the party member out of the way so they are the victim, telegraphing that the party needs to take care. Not perhaps the most elegant solution but it does what it needs to do: telegraph and give a hint that this is a common save or die situation. Even if it does take a column to communicate,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The text here is \u2026 interesting. It\u2019s abstracted. It\u2019s a novelization of the text of the adventure. \u201cThe heart of the camp is its fire. Travelers gather to cook, eat, and trade stories.\u201d  or \u201cThe glitter of gold reflects your torch\u2019s light as you pass by this niche. Upon investigation, you find coins mixed in with the decayed offerings laid out on the offering Stone.\u201d So there\u2019s a lot wrong here. From the second person. To the novelization aspect to the writing. Do the short cutting of the back and forth between the DM and the players. What if they didn\u2019t investigate? Why remove the ability of the players to look for themselves? This is an absolutely critical aspect to RPG\u201ds, the heart of them, the back and forth of players doing something and the DM responding. You want to write a neutral room, one in which the interactivity can take place by the players, not shove something down their through in read-aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read-aloud which can be extreme in some cases. I think the opening section is like a page to a page and a half. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s so much else going on here with the writing. In one room the DM notes say that interacting with a statue will reveal a secret door \u201cSecret door on the east side of the room. Statue can be turned to open.\u201d There is no other mention, anywhere in the read-aloud or elsewhere, that there is a statue in this room. The party is supposed to go to the local lord at one point, but that tie, the prompt to get them there, is tenuous at best, even though the entire \u201cplot\u201d depends on it. The place is full of skeletons and zombies, for you level four to six cleric. There\u2019s a hobo camp at the start \u2026 with all of the hobos being level three. It just defies the kind of world building in which immersion can take place. Or, facts in which a game can take place. Some of the monster descriptions are actual monster descriptions \u201cThis orc stands a head taller than the rest and has huge, curved tusks. A spiky crest of stiff fur runs from the \u2026\u201d Decent description. Others are ecology articles \u201cGoblin Tappers are the engineers and craftsmen of the Noble Goblin tribe.\u201d and on it goes not giving an actual description. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Out of nowhere, then, is this description \u201cA dozen enormous breeding females are in this room, surrounded by smaller orcs with buckets that are massaging bloated, veiny teats to harvest their thick, fatty orc milk.\u201d Cosmic horror my ass, that\u2019s real horror! No other description reaches this pinnacle, even the cosmic horror descriptions are mundane by comparison. Oh, also, room after room mentions creatures, orcs or goblins usually, in the read-aloud description, in the abstract. But not quantities for the DM. Smaller orcs milking? How many? No. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And there are problems with the events. There\u2019s supposed to be this faction thing in acts one and three and in act two they team up so everyone can kill the void creatures. There is virtually no guidance in this area. Essentially just that they team up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The concept, at a high level, is ok. The designers notes have some inspiration from people cracking open bison skulls to eat brains and petroglyphs and such. Nice. The void people concept is nice. You can KIND of see where things are meant to go. But the implementation here is not great at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru.The preview is two pages. The second page is a room of keys. Can you get a decent idea of what to expect from it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/582885\/the-horror-on-goat-hill-an-old-school-cosmic-horror-adventure?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Tyler McIntoshTable Rock Independent PressOSRLevels 4-6 AN ANCIENT EVIL FALLS FROM THE HEAVENS ONTO GOAT HILL AND ALL THAT STANDS IN ITS WAY IS A RAGTAG GROUP OF HOBO ADVENTURERS. This 36 page adventure present a two level dungeon … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10658,"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-10662","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\/09\/582885.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662","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=10662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10663,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10662\/revisions\/10663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}