{"id":10695,"date":"2026-11-02T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10695"},"modified":"2026-10-12T13:33:51","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T17:33:51","slug":"the-ruined-watchtower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=10695","title":{"rendered":"The Ruined Watchtower"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Mountainland Games
Self Published
Shadowdark
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The old northern road was once safe. Now travelers are disappearing\u2014and the bodies that are found are missing their hearts. The trail leads to Blackstone Watchtower, an abandoned fortress that has stood empty for generations. Now strange lights flicker in its windows, goblins haunt the surrounding countryside, and something ancient has begun to stir beneath the stones. The characters are hired to investigate. What begins as a hunt for goblin raiders soon leads into the forgotten ruins of the watchtower, where the characters will uncover an ancient guardian, a powerful artifact, and the first signs of a threat that could shake the kingdoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fifteen page adventure presents a little tower with a few levels and about fifteen rooms. A basic little adventure that is generally inoffensive and trying to set up things for the next to in the series. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This reminds me of a basic \u201chome game\u201d adventure. You come up with a little arc and it takes place over a small number of sessions. I\u2019m sure I\u2019ve done something like this a multitude of times over the years. This is the first of a three part series, I assume. This is the teaser adventure, investigating a merchant wagon that gets raided, with the nearby village reporting raids and killings recently. You end up at a tower in which you learn about IMPENDING DOOM!!! The Evil One is returning! So, look at the wagon, question people in town, and then off to the tower ruin on the hill to eventually figure out the larger issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The opening scene of this, the hook, with the raided merchant wagon, is doing a couple of good things. It\u2019s the usual goblin arrows\/tracks in the mud thing with a survivor, but it also builds a little tension. Or, perhaps, foreshadows a few things. More than just a raided wagon, the bodies are missing their hearts. This adds a little to the adventure, raising the stakes to more than just a raided wagon. And then there\u2019s the boot prints. The survivor tells you of a tall man in black armor standing on a hill nearby that oversaw the battle. And then perhaps a captured goblin says they were led by him and he was faceless. (With a note to the DM saying that he means that literally. Nice added confusion there, with the party perhaps misinterpreting it.) Thus our main antagonist, not showing up in this adventure, is previewed a bit. A mighty blow against Lareth! But, seriously, both the heart thing and the man in black add tension and give a hint of larger things afoot in the world around the party. It doesn\u2019t take much, but the hints here will play on the party members minds as they proceed through the adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Otherwise the adventure is not exactly breaking new ground. The town is terse described with the focus on the people and who can tell the party interesting things. Again, appropriate to the adventure, not telling us what an inn looks like and all of its prices, but what the innkeep can tell us relevant to the raids and the tower on the hill. The focus is kept on what is relevant to the adventure, as it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formatting is clean, with bolding in place, and bullets for information related to the party. Most of the entries are short and easy to scan. Maybe too short; the evocative text here is few and far between. An entry for The Crypts reads \u201cSix stone coffins are arrayed in this small complex of tunnels. If any of the coffins are disturbed, a Restless Dead emerges from each of the six coffins and attacks.\u201d That could be worked a lot harder to provide a more evocative environment for the encounter, and is fairly typical for the type of encounter description the adventure provides. Workmanlike? In a negative sense? It\u2019s the bare basics and one step above  very minimal \u201cCrypts. 6 Restless Dead\u201d.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The interactivity has a few goblins, who you can cower by defeating\/capturing their leader, which is a nice touch of realism, along with a handful of undead. Reactions to noise are noted in the rooms where the noise takes place, which is appropriate as well. You can find the old commanders sword, which will also make the undead hesitate and perhaps allow the party to bluff their way out of things with them. Another nice touch akin to the \u201cbless is a utility spell for solving a variety of problems\u201d approach to DMing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It does rely a bit on \u201croll on the treasure table\u201d mechanic, which I\u2019m not a fan of. Put in the treasure man! Theme it to the environment the party is in! The map generally ok, with some confusing bits around a sealed tomb that took me several readings to figure out. The map and text descriptions do NOT work together well for that one room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The encounter at the end of the dungeon is the bulk of the adventures purpose. There you meet an undead dude, the commander of the tower. He has A LOT of information to dump on you about what is actually going on and the charge for the party to take the DooHickey and deliver it to the PLACE in order to stop The Evil One. Not exactly a monologue, it  does fulfill the expo dump of setting up the next adventures. This is not ideal. Theres a little lead in, but its just a big dump of info in the end. There\u2019s no real slow play out of information and a burgeoning discovery. Utilizing the rest of the space, and room, more to provide info for the party to put together, to trickle out a puzzle\/discovery, would have been a much better way to handle this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a quite basic and inoffensive adventure. Working on the room descriptions would make a more evocative environment, as would better utilizing the tower, and its environs, to more slowly reveal information about The Evil One and the task at hand. There\u2019s not much to recommend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. A good preview shows the buyer what to expect before they purchase and should contain a few encounters in order to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/587110\/the-black-fortress-episode-i-the-ruined-watchtower?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mountainland GamesSelf PublishedShadowdarkLevel 1 The old northern road was once safe. Now travelers are disappearing\u2014and the bodies that are found are missing their hearts. The trail leads to Blackstone Watchtower, an abandoned fortress that has stood empty for generations. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10689,"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-10695","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\/10\/587110.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695","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=10695"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10696,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10695\/revisions\/10696"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}