{"id":10686,"date":"2026-10-31T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T11:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10686"},"modified":"2026-10-08T08:34:39","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T12:34:39","slug":"crucible-of-a-dead-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10686","title":{"rendered":"Crucible of a Dead God"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Christopher Wilson
Self Published
OSE
Levels 4-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Astral Bazaar has been experiencing “godquakes;” rumblings from deep within the very petrified corpse that the bazaar is constructed upon. The characters are thrust into an extraplanar mystery, tasked with determining the very nature of the dead god and what can be done to save the city that floats in the Astral Sea!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is 121 pages of junk. The hook is sixty pages long and then there\u2019s thirty pages to describe about thirty locations. It marks, I think, a new record in the amount and degree and uselessness of padding in an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You chase a wanted man across rooftops. You find a rock on him and a ticket to the circus. At the circus the ringmaster uses his astral ship(!) to take you to the Astral Bazaar. There Queen Frostine tells you the rock is part of a dead gods heart, the city is built on top of the dead god, and they\u2019ve been having godquakes, so, pretty please, go in to the dungeon and fix shit. You visit Reality, The Nightmare, and the Dreaming, about thirty locations in total, collecting the blue key for the blue door, etc. At the end you can wake up the god in question or kill  the god in question. Neither choice has any impact on the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m going to ignore parts of this adventure. Like the rooftop chase that begins it. There\u2019s no real set up here other than \u201cthe party is after a dude.\u201d The chase takes four pages to describe, with about one sixth of one page being actually devoted to \u201chow to run the chase.\u201d One of the roofs you can run across is an inn. Fully a third of the page it appears on describes the inn. In terms of all the food they serve and how much each costs and all of the various room types they have and how much they cost. There is literally nothing in the long ass description that is relevant to the chase. At the end of the chase you\u2019re given a long ass description of three items you find on the dude: a dagger, a rock, and a circus ticket. Then the adventure tells us that if the dude gets away the party find two items, the rock and the circus ticket, and then proceeds to repeat the long ass descriptions of those two objects. Mind you, this is on same page. ON THE SAME COLUMN OF TEXT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The amount of padding here is just beyond belief. I truly cannot relate to you the overwhelming degree of text here unrelated to the adventure. The hook, with this chase, the trip to the circus, and trip to the astral plane to talk to Queen Forstine takes 61 pages. And, it\u2019s not even trivia. It\u2019s trivial. Long ass descriptions for things that can, in no way, ever be related to the game that will be run. It\u2019s fucking exhausting. Oh, hmmm, I guess I\u2019m not ignoring parts of the adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mountains of read-aloud. There is no way in hell I, as a player, would sit and listen to this and I\u2019m the king of suffering in order to be polite to your host. It\/then statements abound. \u201cAppears to be\u201d all over the place. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This cannot be real. But it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Circus trope. For no reason. Dinner party at the circus, for no reason. Astral ship in the circus. It\u2019s like a list of all of the worst tropes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The actual \u201cdungeons\u201d here, the core of the adventure, are quite simplistic. You solve riddles \u2026 that are meaningless. You stab demons. You collect \u201cshard\u201d keys. You meet the Lawful Stupid good guy army. Your DM suffers through bloated text and the players suffer through long read-alouds. You wander about, mostly aimless and not knowing whats expected of you. You make checks you don\u2019t know are important or face arbitrary conditions until someone monologues at you for a column of text. At the end you free or kill the suffering god via fiat. There are no consequences for either decision, just \u201cit will take many mortal lifetimes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am aghast at this. Looking back at the designers other adventures, I can see it was all leading up to this. No more for me, thanks, I\u2019m full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you nothing of what to expect, although if you squint hard can you can get hints of the problems to come, if you know what they are in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/584562\/crucible-of-a-dead-god-ose-edition?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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That’s not the inn in question, with the chase. That’s a completely separate inn that has no bearing  on the adventure. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Christopher WilsonSelf PublishedOSELevels 4-6 The Astral Bazaar has been experiencing “godquakes;” rumblings from deep within the very petrified corpse that the bazaar is constructed upon. The characters are thrust into an extraplanar mystery, tasked with determining the very nature … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10678,"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":[33,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-life-is-a-living-fucking-hell","category-reviews"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/584562.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686","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=10686"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10694,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10686\/revisions\/10694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}