{"id":2416,"date":"2014-05-03T01:17:44","date_gmt":"2014-05-03T05:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2416"},"modified":"2014-05-02T10:18:47","modified_gmt":"2014-05-02T14:18:47","slug":"dungeon-magazine-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2416","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #28"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"d28\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Spelljammer baby! Kick! ASS!<\/p>\n

Also, Steve Stolph, from Medina Ohio, wants to know why an NPC Druid in a previous Dungeon adventure has a spell that is not on the list of allowed Druid spells. Published adventures set an example for people and for many will be how they learn to play. OD&D NPC wizards shot lazer beams from their nipples and summoned blue cloud of sparkly shrinking dust. Rules are for players. Judges judge.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I want to retire from my job and make a career of rewriting these adventures to make them actually useful. This issue shows hope. Photocopy or cut\/paste would do wonders for several of the adventures herein.<\/p>\n

[b]The Pipes of Doom
\nKristofer Wade
\nAD&D\/Battlesystem
\nLevels 6-10[\/b]<\/p>\n

This little railroad is composed of 7 encounters, all in a row, squeezed in between two Battlesystem battles. Evil Iggy has a little mashed-up evil army composed of a dozen different creature types and is attacking the little Hamlet of Pigstye. The party is recruited to help and lead the good guys army. The first day they loose, badly, because a lich employed by Evil Iggy has some magic bagpipes. That night the bagpipes are stolen by from Korred. The party is sent in to get the pipes so they can\u2019t be used again. You then suffer through 5 unavoidable and boring fights (werewolves, trolls, owl bears, dragon, manticore) before some elves lead to the Korrad. There they laugh at you while fucking with you. Evil heroes attack, you defeat them, and are given the pipes as a reward. On the next days battle the party has a better chance thanks to the artifact not being in Evil Iggy\u2019s army.<\/p>\n

This thing rubs me raw on so many levels. The first Battlesystem battle is irrelevant; it\u2019s just a plot hook to show off the pipes. The mashed-up army of ogres, orcs, loch, drow, fire giant, humans, demons is something I have ALWAYS hated. You have to stretch pretty far to come up with a backstory to make it all work. The railroaded encounters in the woods are just there to drain resources. They are not interesting at all and offer little more then \u201cthey attack.\u201d Then of course the Korrad and their arrogance\/laughter at the party. That\u2019s right, I enjoy having my 10th level PC laughed at because of some DM bullshit. And of course, they are actually good guys because they fight to capture instead of kill. \u201cWhy do you interrupt our dancing?\u201d Because you, Mr Korrad, like all the Kender and Dragonborn and Gnomes before you, deserve death. Oh, and the pipes, of course, can\u2019t be used by the party. Why the hell would you ever want to give something powerful to the party, heaven forbid. Ug. The only positive trait I found here was one of the kneaders of the good army is evil. Something similar was done in Ghosts of Dragonspear Castle and I liked it then as well. The portrayal of competent, evil, and non-phychotic leadership is few & far between in D&D and the game could use more of it.<\/p>\n

[b]Manden\u2019s Meathooks
\nAllen Varney
\nD&D
\nLevels 4-6[\/b]<\/p>\n

Two pages describing a straightforward ambush by brigands who use a Hurricane Lamp. You need two pages for that?<\/p>\n

[b]Sleepless
\nMichael Shel
\nAD&D
\nLevels 9-12[\/b]<\/p>\n

This is an exploration\/fetch quest inside a keep with about eight levels and fifths rooms. What makes it interesting is \u2026 the faction play! There are a ton of NPC\u2019s running around the place and then four OTHER groups show up. You see, the arch-mage that lived here died. Kind of. And he sold his soul to multiple parties in exchange for power. And then he died. But his soul didn\u2019t show up. So the buyers and\/or their agents show up in the castle to see what\u2019s up and collect. And his castle is stuffed full of his apprentices and staff. AND the party are lied to to get them in to the adventure. And the Soul Patrols are lied to. We end up with something that FEELS very social but can turn in to an explosion at any moment. The designer gets usability to a large degree. The NPC\u2019s are detailed in a table THAT ALSO NOTES WHERE THEY CAN BE FOUND IN THE KEYED ENTRIES. The Soul Patrols have personalities, as do the apprentices and the castle rooms have a bit of flair to them \u2026 some of them anyway. Hell even the hook is good: while passing by at night the party sees a tower of the castle erupt in eldritch green flame and then sees a body hanging from the window. Which then falls to the ground as the party approaches. There\u2019s no way in fucking hell ANYBODY is going to ignore that hook, no matter how jaded the player. And that is the key to a good hook: an appeal to the player rather than the character. My chief complaint would be that too much space is spent describing the mundane portions of the castle. No one needs a paragraph to describe a normal hallway. One of the NPC\u2019s also wears one of those annoying \u201ccan\u2019t detect my lie\/read my mind\u201d things, in order to launch the adventure. I REALLY hate that kind of thing, and there\u2019s several \u201ccan\u2019t passwall and can\u2019t teleport\u201d sorts of things going on with the castle walls, another axe of mine. Lowering the power level would have taken care of that nicely. There\u2019s a lot of crap in Dungeon that is not worth looking at or saving. This is not one of those. At a minimum you could steal the hook, NPC\u2019s, floor plan ,and visitors easily enough, in about 5 minutes, and then maybe spend some time with some quick notes on the castle and you\u2019d have a pretty good adventure. \u201cAh, yes Sirs, excuse me. A Mr. Demon Prince of Layer 546 is here. He says he has come calling about the soul? Would it be too much trouble for me to ask of you \u2026?”<\/p>\n

[b]Night of Fear
\nMark Lucas
\nD&D
\nLevel 1[\/b]<\/p>\n

Doppleganger in an inn. 13 people in the inn and the ganger wants to take the place of one and not kill TOO many of the others. He\u2019s tired of traveling and thinks taking over an inn would be a swell idea, but he needs those employees intact so he doesn\u2019t actually have to work! This is too long for what it is. The NPC\u2019s should be laid out in a table with less emphasis on stats and gear and more on quick personality reference, for use during play by the ref. There is a nice little table of \u201cstupid things the NPC\u2019s say after each murder.\u201d which I think would be VERY helpful during a game. It\u2019s presented as the typical keyed encounter setting but, again, it would have been much better with a very minimally keyed map. A cute trick of using animals to detect the ganger is presented, but otherwise I don\u2019t need an exhaustive list of the contents of a serving girls room in order to run this.<\/p>\n

[b]Visitors from Above
\nShonn Everett
\nAD&D Spelljammer
\nLevels 4-8[\/b]<\/p>\n

This is \u2026 strange. While listed as a Spelljammer adventure it\u2019s really just a plain jane adventure and a couple of Spelljammer ships on the ground that COULD be explored. It takes almost 6 pages of background and (boring) fluff before something happens. The party sees a falling star, follows it, finds a dwarf you tells them his buddies were captured by pirates. The players follow, assault a ship and then go to some mines where the leaders are, along with the dwarf captives. When the adventure is over you get to go to a big dwarf spell jammer base in space and maybe be given a small ship. The layout of the adventure is horrible and it\u2019s far too verbose in most places. We get a list of the pirate crew but then have to fight the text to see where they are located on the ship. Compare to the Sleepless adventure in this issue where it summarized the NPC\u2019s and in the same table told you were they were located. The ship is extensively keyed, but not really to any good effect. It\u2019s got Brown Mold freezers and black pudding garbage disposals ad the like, which I generally find abhor ant. But the mind flayer \u2018home canning of brains\u2019 WAS a nice little touch, in the freezer. The patrols of guards and the like were great, as are the siege weaponry on the ship, but the breakdown in the exhaustive detail provided of the interior. The second half of the adventure is in some old mines to free the dwarves. It\u2019s got a nice isometric map and while the encounters are not all that exciting the thee-dimensional nature of the map does a lot to save this portion. It\u2019s combined with a homicidal mage with some fly and invisibility spells and an entire table of suggested tactics for the mage to screw with the party. This is one of the better \u201chit & run\u201d mage adventures I\u2019ve seen. The environment is varied enough, and the scenario not totally gimpy and set up, that its believable while still having a lot of interesting opportunities. There\u2019s also, notably, a non-standard magic item that is both powerful and cursed \u2026 but maybe not enough to make the party throw it away. That sort of Deal with Devil kind of item is exactly the sort of thing that should be in D&D adventures. The artifacts in the 1e DMG were cool because of those small enigmatic backstories AND the cursed nature of the items.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spelljammer baby! Kick! ASS! Also, Steve Stolph, from Medina Ohio, wants to know why an NPC Druid in a previous Dungeon adventure has a spell that is not on the list of allowed Druid spells. Published adventures set an example … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeon-magazine","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/d28.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416","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=2416"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2416\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}