{"id":2419,"date":"2014-05-11T13:30:41","date_gmt":"2014-05-11T17:30:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2419"},"modified":"2019-02-18T07:53:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T12:53:46","slug":"the-one-page-dungeon-contest-the-complete-2013-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2419","title":{"rendered":"The One Page Dungeon Contest – The Complete 2013 Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"2013\"<\/a>
\nPeanut butter one page time!
\nPeanut butter one page time!
\nPeanut butter one page!
\nPeanut butter one page!<\/p>\n

The winning entries this year are all pretty strong, with many of them usable & interesting right off the page. The others are of various qualities, however this is, without a doubt, one of my must-keeps every year. I buy a lot but I keep almost none of it. I keep the one-page collections. They are an excellent collection of adventures and idea seeds to riff off of and steal from, if not use outright. This 2013 collection also include the winning entries from 2010 and 2011, which I’m not reviewing because OH MY GOD this is a lot of work.<\/p>\n

Some recurring themes in my commentary this year: you need good descriptions in these things to bring them to life. Not long descriptions but EVOCATIVE descriptions. Also, no more “you fell unconscious and wake up in a cell” bullshit and no more “you seek shelter from a storm” bullshit. Put some fucking effort in it people!<\/p>\n

Only Acrobats Need Apply
\nBy Andrew & Heleen Durston<\/p>\n

This is a cute little \u201cflee across the rooftops\u201d mini-game sort of thing. The map represents the rooftop\/overhead view of several blocks of a town. You start on the rooftops of one corner and have to get to the other far corner to escape, while the streets are full of guards and a mob looking for you. It consist mostly of jumping and balancing DC checks, with some weird things like some clandestine meetings to spice things up. This is actually a pretty nice little idea for a game that could be used pretty much as is. The DC checks range from 5-25, and are probably 5 too high in most places unless everyone ranked all the time in jumping. The concept is a nice one though, it just needs a little more to handle the core issue: someone fails. That is the issue with most of these sorts of skill challenge things. Everyone has to make multiple rolls and has to be successful every time. Failure indicated 4d6 damage from a fall and then having to deal with the mob\/guards. One fall, maybe two, could create some tense play with hiding and getting back on top, etc. I don\u2019t have an answer. It\u2019s great that you made them do 8 DC 30 checks to swing over the lava. Lots of tension. Now what happens when they fail? Fix this and it would be Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

Arena of Blood
\nBy bygrinstow<\/p>\n

This map details the holding pens, cells, etc under an arena. It\u2019s inhabited by cultists who channel the spilt blood in to a special room to reawaken their reaver god. Nice concept, especially the \u2018blood stream\u2019 aspect. The execution of the concept is less than stellar. Generic cultists and generic traps combined with too much repetition deliver a boring vibe that is inconsistent with the flavor text of the corrupt city and the reaver god. The content must inspire, and the core of the keying here does not.<\/p>\n

Iron Cloud
\nBy Caelum Roberts<\/p>\n

Gonzo to the bone and with more soul than 90% of the stuff I\u2019ve ever reviewed. This may be the platonic ideal of terse & flavorful descriptions. It\u2019s a floating could-like airship drifting over the land, with ropes and cables hanging from the underside. Inside is a huge assortment of fun. Robot dragons who think they are real and thirst for flesh. Heads who want to be placed back on bodies. Cavemen who worship robots. Here\u2019s one of the rooms: \u201cflying vampire squids: drain magic Bones jewels, armor, and a lazer mace.\u201d or \u201cOrgotron the robot overlord \u2013 grafts robot parts on to creatures to control them.\u201d or \u201cRocket knights. Friendly, Evil. Turn in to rockets 1\/day. Leader has a vibro-axe.\u201d Holy shit! If you can\u2019t do something with that stuff then you shouldn\u2019t be running D&D! Each one gives you an immediate vibe of the thing, the room, and how to run it. Friendly\/evil rocket knights? It\u2019s obvious they are in some kind of man-cave rec room! Maybe with Bro Power! Orgotron?!!? Who wants a spleen! The text in this exemplifies the ability of good minimalist design to contain rich and flavorful content. It\u2019s not just the gonzo, it\u2019s the potential energy present. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

Down Among the Dead
\nBy Daniel O\u2019Donnell<\/p>\n

Another fine entry that details a sea temple to a god of death. It makes a great impression and is themed very strongly, with tides, stilts, chained dead, pickled nobles in barrels, a hermit, giant sea animal head to enter through, and the whole thing set in a wrecked ship. The magic items are themed well: shark-teeth armor and coins to place over the eyes of the living to make them appear dead\u2026. that\u2019s much better than a Feign Death scroll. This is another one that you could use out of the box with no prep. A bell, tarnished green. If rung underwater sea creatures will gather and sing the secrets of the deep to those underwater. This FEELS like a fantasy temple to a god of the sea dead and not one of those generic High Fantasy temples that are so common in supplements. Where Iron Cloud was an exercise in beauty and flavor minimally provided, this instead has the several sentences per entry that work seamlessly with the art and map to provide an awesome experience. Terse but not minimal. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

The Brittlestone Parapets
\nBy Gus L.<\/p>\n

This is an ancient battleground of two arch-mages who conducted some extended warfare with each other. It reeks of the weird and magical, from weird looking owl bears rooting around for magical refuse to eat to an army of skeletons looking for a new (temporary?) master. It ends up in a swamp corrupted by the magical energies, and the corrupt villagers who live there as bandits. In one paragraph Gus brings to life the villagers and gives fire to enough imagination to run quite a few little mini-encounters in just that one section. Everything in this contributes to the vibe of a magic-littered WW1 trench warfare feel. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

The Giant\u2019s Dollhouse
\nBy Jens Thuresson<\/p>\n

Nice concept by poor execution. Giant uses a magic staff to turn people to stone to populate his huge dollhouse, which is carved in to the side of a mountain. That\u2019s about the extent of the adventure. There are some NPC personalities \u2026 but you won\u2019t interact with them until the end since they are stone. The interior doesn\u2019t have any description at all to speak of. The core concept is a very fairy tale, which I love, and the giant, the mountain dollhouse, the magic staff with two crystals are all very good ideas. But they need to go somewhere and the dollhouse needs some more around to make it work. Maybe some notes about the giant interacting with it, or more room contents to mess with and get in to trouble with. Some way to bring the people back and hide with them in the house while escaping, etc.<\/p>\n

Into the Demon Idol
\nBy Jobe Bitteman<\/p>\n

You know the idol on the cover of the 1E DMG, that the adventurers are prying the gens out of while dealing with the dead lizard men? Well, that\u2019s the demon idol mentioned in this adventure. it\u2019s a small mini-dungeon inside the idol, which is actually one of those construct things you can get inside of and control. The vertical nature of the map, both inside the idol and down in to the caves underneath, is a welcoming and refreshing change the normal. This nature is emphasized with broken ladders and a hand cranked winch lowering a rope in to the floor. As per usual, you have to repair the idol and feed it mined gems, found underneath. One of the nice differences between the 1-pagers and the old Dungeon adventures is that the 1-pagers aren\u2019t afraid of giving the party a nice item to use, like a demon idol that shoots ruby death rays. Gelatinous humanoids, damned cultists, cinder beasts, tortured souls and the like are decent encounters. There\u2019s soothing missing from this adventure and I can\u2019t quite say what. The first three rooms, which are inside the idol, seem a bit \u2026 bland. The cave rooms underneath seem a bit better but still lack a bit? Maybe \u201ccinder beast\u201d and “Gelatinous Humanoids \u201c are more fantastic than a Tortured Soul? This one needs just a little more spark in it to bring it fully to life.<\/p>\n

The Burial Mound of Gillard Wolfclan
\nBy Josh Burnett<\/p>\n

A basic little multi-level dunegoncrawl whose charm lies in its basic\/simple\/stick-figure aesthetic. Nine rooms in three levels. It\u2019s got some evil dudes who are potential allies, some pretty decent named NPC\u2019s. I have no idea why I get off so much on trap doors and ladders and holes with rope in them, but they are in this as well and I love it. This has decent variety but the \u2026 bland aesthetic of most of it leaves much to be desired. It needs some more descriptive words around the environment in order to give it as much life as the NPC\u2019s. Gillard, Hogor, Skizle, Blehk have life. The environment \u2026 not so much.<\/p>\n

Girly Girl Dungeon
\nBy Kaylee Thumann<\/p>\n

\u201cAn adventure for 1st level girls or 5th level boys\u201d just about sums this one up. Women have a certain way about them when they are I groups and low-level success in this adventure depends on the behaviors they tend to exhibit. \u201cNo, you\u2019re not fat! You\u2019re beautiful!” When one of them is down, for example. That sort of \u201cWhat would my wife do?\u201d philosophy will get you a LONG way in this adventure, as you dance with people you don\u2019t want to, console those with low esteem and so on. In essence, it\u2019s a social puzzle adventure with combat as an option in all of the rooms. It marries the theme to the adventure in a way that I have rarely (If ever?) seen before. I\u2019d recommend reading this even if you don\u2019t want to run it, if only as an example of how to integrate puzzles and realistic behaviors\/actions in to a fantasy game. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

A Stolen Spring
\nBy LSF<\/p>\n

This is a little six room dungeon under the town well. It\u2019s a pretty straight-forward adventure. People in town are getting sick and there are six of so clues\/rumors offered, all relevant to the adventure. The map is purty, though linear (it IS a stream, after all.) There are really only two interesting things: a huge stone poisoning the well, the removal of which is left as an exercise for the reader, and an enigmatic shrine with scales of justice unbalanced. You could steal this as a kind of kick off for a campaign or some such. The encounters here, what few there are, are interesting enough to work with I guess. The adventure seems \u2018off\u2019 and I think that might be the small size of it. I wanted to call it plain, in spite of a body plugging up the stream and fungus infested goblins. All I can think of is that the small size is contributing to my \u2018off\u2019 vibe. This one is interesting enough to read and think about, even if I can\u2019t recommend it.<\/p>\n

The Wizard in the Woods is up to Something (Maybe)
\nBy Matthew W. Schmeer<\/p>\n

A minimally keyed dungeon in flowchart form. Weird power levels here. There are caves full of cave gnomes, an 18th level MU, and a shit-ton of succubi. I\u2019s all themed around the Petty Goddess of Sexual Fear, so lots of references to white stick fluid references on features pants. The minimal keying amounts to things like \u201c18 caves gnomes\u201d and the like, so we\u2019re talking Palace of the Vampire Queen minimal keying, or worse. There are occasional bursts of flavor, like the entrance: \u201clarge empty chamber, lit by ambient light from thousands of small holes in the ceiling.\u201d This needed fewer rooms (there are 43) and a four or five words more per room to impart some additional flavor. Your Milage May Vary on the (light) Petty Goddess of Sexual Fear theming. I don\u2019t think care, except to say that it was generally uninteresting. Some more stuff like \u201c2 harpies, 1 cup\u201d or a goat see reference could have done wonders for this.<\/p>\n

Court of the King of No Men
\nBy Misha Favorov<\/p>\n

Perhaps the platonic ideal of one-pagers. This follows the traditional format\/template but adds a very interesting touch to what would otherwise be a normal dungeon crawl. The four NPC\u201ds are PERFECT for the dungeon; if every dungeon had NPC\u2019s this strong then I\u2019d be out of a job. The addition of them, and their one sentence description, adds SO MUCH to the dungeon. You\u2019ve got the new god, the old god, the rebel beast man, and the faithful gremlin servant of the old god. In 22 encounters the designer manages to paint a fairly complete and \u2018believable picture of a fantastic situation with beast-men, mad revelers, bridges over wine rivers, and competing factions. Combined with the new creatures and the new magic items, this is another GReAT example of how a tersely described product can bring tons of flavor to the game, empowering the DM to fill in the rest. NOT verbose, but does a better job of communicating the flavor than any random 20 boxed-test\/expansively described adventures. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

Something Happened At The Temple Near Glourm
\nBy Ramsey Hong<\/p>\n

Another good terse adventure but this time with non-traditional keying. Each level is described by the names of the rooms, and only the room name and interesting facts are described, in a kind of free text\/conversational format. It works \u2026 probably. It\u2019s awful close to violating my \u201cmust not obfuscate\/must help the DM run it\u201d rules. The (terse) descriptive test is excellent. The basement is described as \u201cIts noticeably hotter and drier on this floor. Theres a sulfurous odor in the air.\u201d That\u2019s a GREAT general description of the level. The various rooms all get the same sort of terse but descriptive text. \u201cMeeting room\u201d Ok, now I know it\u2019s a meeting room; I can fill some shit in for that out of my own head. It goes on to ONLY mention how this meeting room differs, the mess and the body on the table. Perfect descriptions. Highly recommended, but you are going to have to take a highlighter to it and go over it several times because of the non-traditional keying.<\/p>\n

Citadel of the Severed Hand
\nBy Rob S<\/p>\n

A little adventure in an orc fort and caverns. There are at least three factions here which allow for some pretty strong RPG play in addition to the usual exploration and combat encounters. The various encounters have some good descriptive text: \u201cKitchen & Larder. \u2026 Bodies strung up with bowls collecting blood. Large beetles pinned to table with knives, some still squirming & fluttering wings.\u201d I know how to describe a kitchen, so telling me that it\u2019s a kitchen takes care of all the mundane nonsense. Then the designer told me what was interesting in this kitchen \u2026 and did it in a couple of GREAT flavorful sentences. I can run that room with minimal brainpower; its perfect. Hands nailed to doors, amputee slaves, weird magic helms, mushroom men \u2026 Recommended.<\/p>\n

Devil\u2019s Acre
\nBy Roger SG Sorolla<\/p>\n

A high-concept thing where the party protects a praying dude while waves of devils attack all night long. Based around the 7 deadly sins, many of the waves have themes. One or two are interesting, like the I\u2019mp cooks with a firehose of dinner they fire at the party. Lust is pathetic: the praying guys greatest desire shows up and it attempts to tempt him \u2026 really? We\u2019re being attacked by devils all night long, how is this anything other than everyone in party putting the smack down on ANYTHING that walks up all night long? The last night has a lot of true devils attacking \u2026 true devils are powerful. I\u2019m not sure how anyone lives through this. The theme is too straight-forwardly applied and encounters too much the same for my tastes.<\/p>\n

The Baleful Spring
\nBy S.J. Harris<\/p>\n

This is in the traditional 1-page format and is of a small river fort with a ship nearby. Lizardmen are raiding villages and the party sent to stop it. The Lizardmen say the people in the fort are charming them (and are possible allies? I like the possibility of monster allies! Think of all the fun RP\u2019s a LG character while your Lizardmen allies eat people in combat, zombielike!) The for itself is not too exciting, with a couple of exceptions. First, there\u2019s an implication that The Party IS Supposed To Be There \u2026 lots\u2019 of people hesitate or shout warnings or assume the party are new recruits. More nice RP opportunities. There\u2019s also nice tapestry that you can stare in to and get a magic sword from. Would have been cooler if you reached in to grab it instead of it appearing in your hands, but, small diff. The rest of the adventure is a bit \u2026 mundane. If you were running a low-magic or low-monster campaign, or something gritty, then this would fit in well. I like the RP, I like the human opponents and the eleven asshats, I just like a little more weird and fantastic in my adventures \u2026 stuff like that tapestry. Still, a fine adventure. Recommended.<\/p>\n

Church of Consumption – By Simon Forster
\nCute adventure about a church of gluttony. Nice theme & atmosphere. Shotgun shack map, totally linear. Simon could learn a thing or two about descriptions from a couple of others. He does a description of a storeroom that\u2019s \u2026 A typical storeroom. That\u2019s wasted. The whole \u201cmorbidly obese priests\u201d thing is nice, as is the gullivered god that the cult is snacking on, as are the ghouls (who might even be allies!) The map in interesting, visually, but I suspect lacks during gameplay, and the theme of eating the dead god, giant meat grinders, obese priests, etc, is great also, but the execution lacks a bit. I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s The Description Problem I mentioned above. A good example is the cultists cave. It looks interesting, but we don\u2019t really get anything interesting to work with from the text. It somehow feels incomplete, or maybe rushed? IDK. I thin it\u2019s the strength of the theme combined with the lackluster descriptive text that is making me say that.<\/p>\n

A Living-Dead Nightmare — Cristian Aviles
\nI have NO FUCKING CLUE what is supposed to go on here. It\u2019s like the ravings of a madman. Maybe a non-native speaker? Anyway, this is a confusing mess. A BRILLIANT confusing mess. This is why I love the one page contests. You could take all the shit in this one page and build a pretty bitching campaign around it. Black demon. White Demon. Werewolf fort. Mother turned succubus. Lich killer-of-mothers-children. Forest of the dead. Bell of doom. Cave of Despair. Weird ass rogue archers \u2018protectors\u2019 of the town. Crazy beggar. That would be a bunch of bad ass stuff to sprinkle in a starting region around the home base.<\/p>\n

Assault on the Goblin Hold — Scott Slomiany
\nA gimmicky little choose your own adventure solo thing. You need to cut it out, fold it, and make some more cuts. You end up with something similar to the BASIC program I wrote in 7th grade computer lab at Forest Manor. You\u2019re gonna have to put some work in to this to assemble, but if you\u2019re in to solo things then I suggest you do so. It\u2019s a cute little thing, especially if you don\u2019t spoil the adventure by reading ahead. It does start off with the goblins stealing a baby and a drunk guard, both of which are nice, strong, and classic elements that resonate well. Might be a nice 1-on-1 with a SO or kid also. Recommended, in those circumstances.<\/p>\n

Bloodbath at Camp Terrahorra — Steve Johnson
\nSummer camp counselors and a maniac killer. Not really thing to this at all, just a map and some generic rules for when the killer shows up. That\u2019s disappointing. It does make me think though that you could get away with a little story game set around the same concept. Something like Shab al-Hiri with fixed scenes, or something else with a DM and a lot of good tropes\/NPC\u2019s to mix in. You could have a pretty fun Total Drama Island light RPG with the killer mixed in. Someone go write it and do a decent job with NPC\u2019s, scenes, random killer motivations\/generation, and lots and lots of ideas for what happens. Everyone is familiar with the camp counselor horror\/maniac thing; it would be a blast!<\/p>\n

Brewer’s Backwoods — Doc Brewer
\nHey! A hex crawl! I love those! 240ish hexes and about 34 encounters is a coverage of 12%. The encounters range from good to sucky \u2026 or from NOD\/Wilderland to Isle of Unknown. Good hexes are \u201cisland of cursed souls WHO RISE AFTER MIDNIGHT\u201d or \u201cNesting grounds of fearsome Hodag, WHOS EGGS ARE PRICELESS.\u201d Note the inclusion of the adventure, which I\u2019ve hi lighted for you in CAPS. Poorer ones don\u2019t have the adventure included: \u201cWhat lies behind the misty waterfall\u201d or \u201cA baneful aura lurks in this comet blast zone.\u201d Interesting places, but they need the extra phrase to encourage ACTION. The wandering table provided has a lot of made up shit on shit & words on it, which appeals to my FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING VICTORIAN CATALOGUERS! sensibilities. Haint. Glawackus, and squonks inhabit these woods, along with a shit ton of other stuff and more mundane things, like sneaky outlaws and laconic loggers. Again, note the adjective. More descriptions should do that. Would be better if ALL the wanderers were to something \u2026 Hex Crawls almost always end up on my Recommended list.<\/p>\n

By Esophagus Brood — Dyson Logos
\nA return to the purple worm corpse. Not really a map in this one, but some great imagery. Worm-infested ents are great, and the man-eating apes work REALLY well (as opposed to the boring old Carnivorous Apes.) It\u2019s got a decent little bit of an approach game, as the characters are assaulted from above while trying to gain the entrance of the worms mouth. Fetid worms erupting from walls, and a bad guy out of a bad Hentai tentacle video. This does a good job of setting the mood and brining the flavor through the use of the right adjectives and adverbs, which is the KEY element in being able to deliver good content in a terse format. Not much of an adventure, but one of the best (and shortest) D&D side-treks ever written.<\/p>\n

Clown Robot Doctor Apocalypse — Dustin Brandt
\nSome kind of weird maze of catwalks, moving walkways and the like, straight out of every \u201ccity guts” section of every dystopian movie ever made. I was on the quiz team in high school. My specialty was Dystopian Societies. I FUCKING LOVE THIS ADVENTURE! The map conjures up the images of all those scenes and the hooks are all tied to the specific adventure locations within the \u201cmaze.\u201d The creatures and wanderers are all nice, although the wanderers are, exclusively, in the \u201cROBOT THAT GONNA FUCK YOU UP\u201d category. SOOOO worth it if you will ever play a sci-fi game in your life. Recommended. And a hearty “Fuck You!” to the judges for not recognizing your genius Dustin!<\/p>\n

Combat Duality — Jon Picardi
\nA genero puzzle\/combat room. It\u2019s one of those sliding tiles games, where there are 9 tile positions and only 8 squares and you slide the tiles around to unmix them. But this time the tiles are whole rooms and there are two monsters in each room. One represents virtue and one represents vice, each having some special combat power. The virtue\/vice monsters could have used a description. That, and a bit of a throw-away description for each room would have transported this from generic-land to something to fro in a game as a puzzle room. Maybe one room is full of bookcases and another full of fine china\/glassware. You know, things that could cause the room to be INTERESTING when the party has an encounter in it. A combat with Pride in a room full of swinging meathooks full of sides of cattle? But Jon didn\u2019t do that. Jon thinks its our job to do that. It\u2019s not our job Jon, it\u2019s your job.<\/p>\n

Dinner at the In-Laws — Jim McGarva
\nHey, Morningstar! THIS is the way you do shit! You get to wander around the in-laws house, having adventures. Those adventures will lower or raise your tolerance level, your perceived sociability, and impact your stomach capacity and spousal anger levels. You get to negotiate chatty aunts, asshole father-in-laws, the neighbors kids, your spouse, and sullen teens. Nice degree of humor, a situation most of us can relate to, and still manages to be a great game. I have no fucking clue who I could play this with \u2026 but I want to!<\/p>\n

Dragon’s Den — Greg Haugh
\nI\u2019m pretty sure Greg is trolling the contest, so bad is this adventure. 11-ish rooms, most with some bullshit name and bullshit \u2018test\u2019. “The Cavern of Strength Is filled with stones on the strongest can move past.” Ooohhhhh! Come up with that on your own did you Greg? \u201cReward is based on choices of players: Hammer of strength or Cloak of Acrobatics.\u201d Room after room of this shit, in exactly the same format. Nice job Greg, you made Going to 11 monotonous. People who hate D&D should not write adventures for the game. Go pound a copy of Fiasco up your ass in your cave so the rest of us can have funs with our friends.<\/p>\n

Echoes of Empire — Joe Pruitt
\nThis is a mini-game hex crawl where you try to gather some troops to fight off the evil empire army showing up at your door in 12 days time. You start with a bag of gold, a couple of troops, and being told there are four villages nearby. They got 99 problems \u2026 uh \u2026 including the empire army. Go solve their problem and they donate troops. Or \u2026 make an alliance\/pay off the people they have a problem with, piss off the villagers, but get some elven archers, or a dragon, or some zombie hordes! Decision & choices and role-playing opportunities and a little Armies Smash mini-mass combat thing at the end with the Empire \u2026 there\u2019s more than enough goodies in this to fill a nice evening of gaming. I usually don\u2019t go for 1-on-1 games, but this one is a good one. Recommended.<\/p>\n

Escape from the City of Madness — Ed Nicholson
\nThis adventure in the sewers sucks a fuck ton less than almost every other sewer adventure I\u2019ve ever seen. I can\u2019t recall a better one, but I\u2019ve gotten black-out drunk a lot from doing Dungeon reviews, so I may be forgetting one. Anyway, this one rocks because SOMETHING IS GOING ON.It\u2019s set in a totalitarian city so the city guards are called Stormtroopers. It\u2019s right out of some WW2 film or maybe the Necromungers in the city in Riddick. You\u2019ve been hidden by a baker in a secret room in his shop, and you hear the Stormtroopers drag him away for questioning! I have no idea why this resonates so much. The rest has you breaking open a crack to escape, the crack leading to the sewers, and stumbling across shit in them. A dead guy under a huge stone. Two dude who tunnel through a wall near you, just breaking out of the gulag. The bottom of the main Execution Pit in the main punishment courtyard as they are tossing down prisoners in to the a big spider web a few feet below you in the sewers \u2026 and oh shit! The baker is one of them! And then theres a bunch of traditional fantasy stuff also, almost all of it well done. There\u2019s a setting implied here, told through the encounters. Perfect! The map in this sucks shit, but the vibe is great. Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

Faery Ring to Alpha Ari — Paul Gorman
\nFaeries AND a space station! Be still my lonely heart! A fairy ring sends to you a space station where you encounter the usual assortment of robots, weird gardens, lack of gravity, hentai monsters, and so on. There\u2019s an extra element of antsy here, with healing pools, tiny villages, pixies in space suits (all dead) and so on. I think its a passable adventure with enough interesting going on to take a look. Some of it could use a little more detail (Hedge Maze, I\u2019m looking at you) and I don\u2019t feel the wanderers do the adventure justice (oh boy, rats. Joy.) but overall I think it\u2019s a nice little environment. Could use a little more to play with, maybe, and the fungus needs some differentiation other than color, but not bad. I\u2019d put this on the edge of being Recommended.<\/p>\n

Games People Play — Eric Harshbarger
\nFractal adventure. Explore an old 14-room house on a sea cliff, collecting gems, until you meet the Lich owner who takes you down to the living room to play some D&D, where your characters roll up characters who play in the adventure you just played, and so on. Mostly uninteresting, although the NPC\u2019s are pretty nice. You meet a guy carrying a body, with blood on this hand and his dagger missing. The body is that of a ghost you find a different room and in still a different room you find a body with a dagger in its chest. That kind of In Media Res really gets me off and it\u2019s done well here. There\u2019s just not enough flavor for me to sustain this as a DM.<\/p>\n

Golden Triangle — Dylan Hartwell
\nA kind of mini-game of low-class arena combat. It\u2019s pretty mechanical, and those parts suck. The descriptive parts are worth stealing though. Half-hearted crowds, bored guards, haggard wizards \u2026 This is defiantly the \u2018F\u2019 list for the Kumite leagues. But 80% of the page is covered with a useless map and some boring tables about who you fight and what you get to fight with. This needed a shit-ton less of that and more adjectives & adverbs, and more interesting entires on the tables. \u201cA codfish\u201d would be a good thing to find in the weapon chest. \u201cOrphan with rag doll\u201d would be a great opponent. Do more of that and less boring.<\/p>\n

Great Library Of Hypatia \u2014 ProBono
\nRought roh raggy! The great temple is on fire! Looters from the marketplace are all over picking up goodies while priests from the temple scurry about protecting their stuff. And, of course, the place is on fire. It\u2019s a great set up with a lot of potential but is presented as \u201crandom occupants + random loot\u201d in each room. That doesn\u2019t do this justice. I can deal with generic Scum but the Rabble Rousers that you encounter, who summon more scum, are just screaming for extra detail and the generic \u201cgold plates\u201d treasure is lame. I would TOTALLY throw in some price temple stuff instead of just generic \u201cgold plate\u201d treasure. I really think the random element should shave been abandoned and it keyed traditionally with a brief sentence for a rabble rouser and some decent treasure. The concept it good enough that its almost worth it to flesh it out on your own. Almost.<\/p>\n

Hall of Five Elements — Justin Peeples
\nOh boy, an elemental-themed puzzle adventure! And it\u2019s symmetrical! Let me file it right here NEXT TO THE FIVE MILLION OTHER CRAPPY ADVENTURES THAT HAVE DONE THE SAME THING. Do you want five or six elemental themed puzzles generically presented with a generic hook\/introduction? Then this is the adventure for you! Seriously kids, give your fucking adventure some soul! Make the rooms interesting! And no, massive text blocks describing the puzzle\/trap do not count as soul. If you can\u2019t make a memorable room in the first three sentences then try again. You can fill the rest with your mechanics, but the initial description has to be interesting & wonderful. It has to make me want to run the room and be excited about it.<\/p>\n

Hobrock — Lee Mohnkern
\nThis is a hobgoblin fort. I like monster lairs. Humans\/humanoids hiding out in their bandit HQ, guard patrols, watchtowers \u2026 all cool. But not in this one. This sucks the life out of things. A good monster fort exists kind of out of time. It\u2019s described as a place, with a routine, and who lives their and what they are doing. It should NOT center around the party. You should find dudes dozing, or shooting dice, or sleeping, or whatever. The boss, especially a smart one like a hob, should have some plan for invasion. This one further goes off the rails by describing what mundane contents of the rooms. Don\u2019t do that. Name the room \u201cArmoury\u201d and then describe why the room is special. Everyone can fill in the mundane, your job as the designer is to go beyond that. This doesn\u2019t do that. The leader hangs out in his own room \u201cpreferring to face the party on his own terms.\u201d and the guards react stupid. LAME-O!<\/p>\n

Island Grave of Alsiaurignis — Giuseppe Rotondo
\nA FANTASTIC LOCATION that falls down. Applesauce (which I\u2019m going to use instead of the title, since I don\u2019t care to remember to spell it every time I type it) was the mother of magic before she died. She was a dragon. When she died her bones were turned to gold. The island has wild pack dragons on it and flying around it. Snow apes live on the island in great numbers (which is now covered in snow) and there are great caves full of their bones. Her bones lie in an island in the center of a volcano, along with some generic loot. You can loot her, or bring her back to life. She doesn\u2019t sound like too much of a dick, can identify items ad teach you spells! This adventure flirts with greatness. it\u2019s got a good idea (the mother of magic) and a nice idea for a location (island, volcano) and even a nice twist (wanna bring her back?!) but fails on the execution. Too much space is spent on getting to the island and the guards and the dragon patrols and the \u2026 well \u2026 everything that is NOT interesting. The items, cult, totems, volcano and the ilk needed more, or the island needed more fantasy. Mother of Magic, remember?! Her island\/tomb should be CrAzY! You need to channel your inner Zarathustra to fill the place with flavor & imagery (IE: adjective & adverbs) to bring the place ALIVE! Instead we learn that 1d6-2 dragons patrol the skies over the seas with a 36% chance for detection and this is modified by .02% if you keep to the \u2026 oh fuck it. When you have a choice of being mechanistic or romantic then choose to be the romantic dreamer in your writing. Quick Silver Boychild.<\/p>\n

Key of Dissension — Adam Taylor
\nI have absolutely no fucking idea what this is. Some kind of mini-game\/wargame? It\u2019s got a map but the map doesn\u2019t seem to relate to anything in the text except some of the symbols are the same? You Go through six encounters per plevel, for ten levels, according to the text. Then you fight the guardian and win? There\u2019s some kind of movement mechanic\/action mechanic\/combat mechanic thingies but I have no idea how they work. But then again I have a degree in Logic. Hang on, let me drop some acid. Nope. Still no idea. This is cool:Puzzle room: DM may insert a puzzle or just have the players pick a number to see if they go on to the next lane. Uh \u2026.? It notes that the ghouls can be easily killed \u2026 but they have half the HP of the characters? Seriously man, this is your intervention: get off the drugs. I know good drug-feuled work. This ain\u2019t it \u2026 it\u2019s just unintelligible. And, gentle, readers, don\u2019t go looking for this to take joy in weird stuff. It nonsensical, but not in a good way.<\/p>\n

Kibhur’s Dungeon — C. Martins
\nEight linear encounters in a puzzle dungeon, based around a Rubik\u2019s Cube. I like riddle props. A couple of the rooms are incomprehensible to me. I have no idea how the chess puzzle works, and the illusion puzzle seems a bit arbitrary for a trap. There\u2019s good use of illustrations \u2026 or, rather, I feel like there should be if I could understand the damn puzzles. As puzzle\/riddle dungeons go this is one of the better ones. Or would be if it were more comprehensible. The treasures are a bit generic, if that: \u201creward them with a nice treasure.\u201d Sorry buckaroo, I expect you to do that work for me when I\u2019m turning to a work that is supposed to do that work for me. Sidenote: there\u2019s an amusing typo. When you play a harp the minotaur does not turn Harmless, he instead turns armless. I like the armless thing better. \ud83d\ude42 If I wanted a riddle\/puzzle thing I\u2019d use this.<\/p>\n

Kingfisher — Nick Wedig
\nEspionage mission that tries too hard with presentation. Are you doing an art project or creating an advent? Pick One. Small building map, barebones outline, and three\/four NPC\u2019s presented. it\u2019s supposed to be a secret fetch quest type thing, maybe with some bribery. I used to play a lot of Danger International in high school. You know how we handled this shit? We assaulted from three sides and shot the fuckers in the head, took the laptop, and escaped. What\u2019s the scene in \u2018Bastards? \u201cYou\u2019ll be court martialed!\u201d *thinks* \u201cNah. I\u2019ll be chewed out. I been chewed out before.\u201d Bare bare bones adventure.<\/p>\n

La Bassee — Jason Morningstar
\nYou know how to tell this one sucks? It\u2019s got Morningstars name on it. I like The Roach, but man, this is just some kind of art high school school senior project. Yes, I\u2019m using that as an insult. It\u2019s my universal stand in for Style over Substance, and the style sucks. You\u2019re traumatized soldiers in France, returning to the scene of your WW1 battles. You travel back in time\/memories blah blah blah \u201ca company of men travel down this road for the first time to the sound of the guns in the distance. Only memories come back.\u201d or something. Gag Puke. It\u2019s a fucking rpg not psychotherapy. Pretentious high concept shit.<\/p>\n

Lost Banner — Philipp Hajek
\nThere\u2019s some good imagination here but it\u2019s disconnected in places. Nice backstory about knights, bandits, and a gargoyle, and the monsters in the adventure make sense from that standpoint. I particularly like the zombie hunting dog. The carpet trap is nice, and the rotting stairs\/escape from the zombie dog thing is good also. But then some of the items are disconnected. A random table to find what\u2019s in a chest? Couldn\u2019t that space have been used better? Or the whole \u201crocking chair friends\u201d things; I just don\u2019t get it. Also, the wardrobe; the magical effect seems out of place, even though I do like the butterfly brooch. A little less mechanistic and a little more Fantastic would have helped this. Either go for rotted house or magic house, or even both, but be consistent in the rooms and theme each one a bit better. The ending with the gargoyle is very nice; the monster makes sense.<\/p>\n

Memento Mori — Jeff McKelley
\nUh \u2026 I don\u2019t know? An old house\/dungeon what housed a family who worshiped the Old Ones. Fish people stuff in the intro, and a bunch of shit that feels like it should fit together in to a puzzle (mostly because the text says so) but I have NO idea what the puzzle is. The various locations don\u2019t really have anything interesting going on, the original sin of adventures. It\u2019s just a bunch of throw off crap (13 portraits hang on the walls of the gallery\u201d without anything to put it all together or tie the rooms to each other.<\/p>\n

Midnight At Halcyons Coven — Marten Zabel
\nA modern super-villian lair, but this time it\u2019s cultists in an old missile silo. You\u2019re trapped and trying to escape, bout two hours before the cult completes the ceremony that destroys the world. The base is described as a PLACE, with routines and guards and a timeline, just exactly the way a setting\/location should be described for an adventure like this. The base is a mix of the mundane and the supernatural, which, again, fits well. This needs one more STRONG edit to prune back the wording \u2026 but not for the usual reasons. The font size is too small to read. I don\u2019t usually complain about such presentation-layer things, except when they get in the way and get in the way they do here. A final strong edit should have helped. The, uh, supernatural hungry thing (spoilers!) is described twice. Library, lab, kitchen, mess, barracks could have all lost at least one sentence and maybe more without impacting the adventure in a negative way. The resulting increase in space would allow a larger font, which is my only complaint. Recommended.<\/p>\n

Miscegenation of the Ancients — Eero Tuovinen
\nToo high concept for it\u2019s own good. Let\u2019s go adventuring in Noah\u2019s Ark! It\u2019s got three levels, but no map is provided. The vast majority of this is devoted to a kind of \u201cark generator\u201d which describes the features you find when you explore the ark, the and the hybrid creatures that inhabit it. These sections, the majority of the adventure, are soulless. Then it hit some Nietzsche level shit, with is super-fab! \u201c The remaind of the Gibborim Hoard that financed\u2026\u201d \u201cthe hoard is the patrimony of the tenth patriarch and consists solely of Nephilim-struck antediluvian gold\u201d and \u201cThe bones of the First Man are on this floor, seeping myth and bestowing resistance to original sin.\u201d That shit Is bad ass! It\u2019s too bad it\u2019s buried in mechanical soulless crap. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

Old Guard Tower — Aaron Frost and Mundi King
\nThis has a little 3d tower cross-section you can print on card stock and then use as terrain. That\u2019s cool. The adventure, though, is boring as all fuck. \u201cThird Floor: Two orcs rummage through tower supplies.\u201d Good thing you told me that. There\u2019s a whole \u201clight the watchtower fire and defend the tower from the orcs until rescue comes\u201d thing going on, along with a gargoyle ally, but three\u2019s just not enough interesting content here to make this worthwhile. It needs some more gonzo\/weird\/or interesting stuff going on in the tower, or more opportunities during the assault or defense to add drama.<\/p>\n

Prehistoric Kickboxing Killer Turkeys — Jacob Wood
\nYou are hungry dinosaurs who enter a cave looking for food. You die of boredom. The end. I\u2019m not sure how you can take such a find]e premise and ruin it, but Jacob does. Oh, look, rats you can eat! Oh, and a river that takes up too much text space because of the need to explain how everything works! And \u2026 a cavewoman and caveman! Who are instantly awake and attack! YAWN There\u2019s no life or soul in this, just a Ha Ha, look at me, you\u2019re dinosaurs and you go in to eat people Ha Ha thing going on. \u201cYou see, it\u2019s a commentary on the social, with the juxtaposition between \u2018 blah blah blah. It\u2019s lame when art school kids do it, it\u2019s lame when Ai Weiwei does it, and it\u2019s lame when you do it Jacob. Put up or shut up. Unfortunately, neither is done here. You need to provide some content and something interesting going on for the players to interact with. A river ain\u2019t it.<\/p>\n

Surface — Leslie J. Furlong
\nNot really a dungeon, more of a poem in a non-traditional format. And because I\u2019m a critic and artists LUV critics: Reading through it does deliver the tension that is relieved when you break out to the light of the surface. This is a nice piece of creative work. The whole \u201cyou sense, you feel you smell\u201d thing is a little hokey, but the repetition of the elements does serve to reinforce the vibe created which is then busted when you reach the surface in a wonderful tension breaking scene. I wonder if the repetition could have been left out and the same effect obtained? Or if the bolding in the Surface breakout section was necessary? I think I\u2019m saying that because I read this as an adventure, to begin with, and the sense thing was a turn off. Rereading it as a poem probably alleviates those comments\/concearns. Recommended, but again, it\u2019s a shot poem and not an adventure. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Techno Bandit HQ — Robert Render
\nUh \u2026 Mega-generic adventure. Non-english speaker or troll? Just a list of rooms and how many bandits are in each room, with no context to the entire thing. \u201c2-3 bandits, -2 because of their welding masks\u201d \u2026 That kind of shit is good, but completely out of context. I\u2019m really at a loss here. Uh \u2026 if there\u2019s a vision then it wasn\u2019t communicated. Maybe an intro\/backstory would help?<\/p>\n

Temple of the Demon Speakers — Andreas Folkesten
\nThis has a spark in one or two places but is of lackluster quality overall. An old temple with bandits hiding in it. The party is sent to take care of the bandits \u2026 will they explore further?!? It has \u201csheep women\u201d, a maze you can walk to summon a demon to do your bidding, and an amulet that lets you speak to demons in your dreams \u2026 but no health\/spell recovery when you do it. All nice. But the rest is a little generic. \u201cThey did evil things\u201d is not good. TELL me about the evil things they did. Show, don\u2019t tell. It\u2019s also too generic in places: “The liquid in the pool does dangerous things.\u201d Again, show me, or provide some imagery\/flavor. I still can\u2019t figure out what a sheep-woman is. Rule 34? I don\u2019t know. Anyway, nice hook to the adventure in hunting bandits leading to temple exploration, but \u201cEVIL TEMPLE\u201d should never be allowed to be typed again. \u201cTemple of virgin impalement.\u201d or \u201ctemple of dog\/human caterpillars\u201d does a much better job of not imposing labels \u2026 and still totally getting your point across.<\/p>\n

Ten Minute Dungeon — Donny Sanchez
\nDonny used a weird font for this adventure, which made it very hard to read. I decided to not review it because the font was impossible to read. Donny & I are the logical end of the choices we\u2019ve made in our pasts.<\/p>\n

The Black School — Fco. Javier Barrera
\nAn old school of magic that has a passage to The Evil Ones prison. The school of magic portion of this is not very interesting\/mostly boring with few if any fantastic elements or interesting things going on. There is a nice \u201cfamiliars soul trapped in a gem\u201d thing, but you have to swallow the gem for the effects. Dungeon of the Bear did this also, if I recall. Who the fuck the swallows gems? Did I miss that meme\/fairy tale? Anyway, nice little headmaster\/ghost thing going on, and the antechamber of the evil one has some nice imagery you can work with. There\u2019s also a nice NPC outside the tomb (you\u2019re #2 on the scene!) which some decent motivations for exploring. If the school had been better this would have been a strong adventure.<\/p>\n

The Blackacre Heist — Roland Volz
\nA modern heist\/espionage adventure. Six possible Evil Bad Guys\/motivations and six possible variations presented, along with a basic floor plan of the top level. So, not an adventure, just a collection of ideas. Maybe you want to use this to build a Shadowrun adventure off of, or something similar. The variations and motivations are quite nice, but there\u2019s not really enough meat here to go forward. It\u2019s all background no substance.<\/p>\n

The Broken Ring — Michael Llaneza
\nIn this pretentious piece of crap Llaneza condescends to tell us how to run a space station adventure. The sad part is that once their head comes out other ass the designer actually does provide some decent imagery. \u201cThe detritus of a child\u2019s birthday party drifts lonely n the dark.\u201d Solid Gold, as is the the of the half dozen or so \u2018Impressions\u2019 thrown in as an afterthought. The rest if just a list of questions like \u201cwhy are the characters here\u201d and \u201chow wrong is their intel\u201d combined with suggestions like \u201cblind them with science\u201d and \u201cmake them sweat to work it out\u201d and some other environmental advice like \u201cget them lost\u201d and \u201ccut off their escape.\u201d Everyone, please, in unison tilt back your head slightly and look down your nose and repeat in a nasally academic manner \u201cMy intent was to teach how to design an adventure and give the storyteller the tools they need to develop their own stories.\u201d Did you make it the entire way without throwing up a little in your mouth? I didn\u2019t. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

The Devil’s Cell — Matt Mueller
\nAs a fantasy adventurer you should always carry a good supply of wet weather gear. That way you will never be driven to seek shelter in The Old Tower\/Ruin\/Hamlet\/Hovel. No good ever comes form that. Likewise, as a Modern-era player you should always have a suicide tooth so the next time you wake up in a prison cell is no\/little memory of what has happened, you end the suffering immediately. What follows is ALWAYS a fucked-up piece of shit. This time you\u2019re in an empty prison and \u201cthe creature\u201d roams about. You go on fetch quest after fetch quest to get a key to open a box that has a key to another box that has a key to BLECH. Lame. The only good moment in this is finding a body with a shiv in it that you can pull out to use. Otherwise the environments are devoid of anything interesting to interact with. There\u2019s more than enough space left over to have provided some more cool scenes, etc. I would put this solidly in the \u2018I had an idea\u2019 stage of development. The designer should have spent a lot more time on it ad finished it.<\/p>\n

The Diamond of Hishep-Ratep — Heikki Hallamaa
\nThis might be another side-trek appropriate adventure. It describes a small tomb under a fountain wherein a legendary figure, and big ass honking diamond, are buried. It\u2019s got a nice \u2018tree root horror\u2019 thing going on, with both a root abomination and some ‘root-infested prophets in caskets\u2019 stuff going on. It tries to use a little Persian backstory, but nothing persian comes across. It also tries to add a central focus on some water, but not much comes through with that. \u201cMost of the room is full of water\u201d is not amazing adventure design. But overall this works. The imagery around the prophets and last room with the root thing is great, as is the kind of overall \u201ctry grove, fountain, statue, tomb\u201d thing going on. IE: the elements seem to match and tie back in to each other, which develops a kind of continuity through the back references that I think allows a player imagination to play with. Nice job on this. Or, maybe, I just liked the concept of an alien prophet\/alien world teleport. But a 6-month trip COULD punish instead of reward. Recommended.<\/p>\n

The Eternal Maze of the Minotaur — Ken Gatzemeyer
\nGeneric random crap. Wander the random dungeon having random encounters until the DM rolls a \u20181\u2019 enough times for you get to the key to get out. It devotes half a page to a generic background \u201cohs no! you\u2019re betrayed and captured and escape through the sewers to the maze!\u201d Here\u2019s an idea that, in retrospect, I\u2019m sure you will agree with Ken: take that half page and do something interesting with it in your adventure. Make the tables more colorful. Add detail. Turn it in to something other than a generic dice-rolling random crap-fest.<\/p>\n

The Halls of Power — Michael Getridge
\nOh! Someone had an idea! Which is great! Except you then have to flesh OUT the idea, which hasn\u2019t been done here! It\u2019s a schematic! For a high voltage circuit! To get the EMMc stones! Get it?! The room are devoid of interesting shit\/descriptions! Burnout! Look man, you should have played up with techno aspect more. Nice descriptions for the hallways, mercs, rooms, resistors, etc. Terse & evocative descriptions are the key to success. Flavor without verbosity. The Fantastic without a Wall of Text.<\/p>\n

The Issue of Blipdoolpoolp — Erik-Karl Read
\nA pretty standard low tide\/high tide sea cave dungeon. It\u2019s got a decent vertical element to it, which I always enjoy. Only about 1\/5th of the adventure is devoted to the keys, with th rest being some EHP descriptions, rumors, background, how the tide works, etc. Almost all of the non-eyed information is lackluster and adds little. The keyed encounters are mostly the same, with a couple of exceptions. There\u2019s a nice collapsed cistern that acts as a blowhole, with fetid smells and the sea coming out of it. Otherwise it\u2019s just your standard fish-men & brood stuff, with not much interesting content.<\/p>\n

The Jester’s Tomb — Dan Roy aka Bogie
\nYet another puzzle dungeon. Eleven rooms of arbitrary not-fun. If you\u2019re going to put puzzles and traps in as a main feature then you need to give hints. This mostly fails at that. You get maybe 1, that the jester liked silver, which helps in one room. Otherwise its arbitrary. The third person to enter is teleported naked to a guard room. Gee, fun for them for the rest of the night. Turn thew handle right and die, turn it left and solve the puzzle. Ok, so, the party should rig something up if they don\u2019t know the answer, but, its more fun for players if they think all the hard work they put in to thinking will pay off. Give them the rope to hang themselves or climb up to the treasure vault!<\/p>\n

The Lost Temple of Tyrandraxu — Joshua J. Laboskie
\nYet Another Generic Ruined Temple. Yet more room descriptions that waste time telling me what the map already says. The overall mythology is nice: loch king rules land, ram headed god comes down, rips off horn to feed the people, then kills loch king. (which is a perfect excuse for \u2026 a horn of plenty!) There\u2019s also a nice fire trap that can bypassed by purifying oneself, but no clue that you SHOULD do that. Finally, there\u2019s a nice little room complex section with a monster in it. I first saw this, or recognized it anyway, in a 4e product \u2026 Shadowfell? And it struck me as interesting there and it strikes me as interesting in this. Many products will toss in a monster and saw it wanders through Z, Y, X, but putting it in an environment in which it\u2019s contained, interesting, and yet doesn\u2019t seem forced is something else. Some extra effort in descriptive language would have made a large impact in this.<\/p>\n

The Mad Riddlers Halls — Christian Hollnbuchner
\nAnother linear riddle dungeon. Where Kibhur used the environment in the riddles to great effect, this one instead has the traditional \u201cthere\u2019s a locked door that only opens when you solve the riddle\u201d trope. Guess which one is better! That\u2019s right, NOT the bullshit\/arbitrary\/door locked one. Otherwise it\u2019s got five pretty common riddles\/puzzles to overcome. Significantly bland and it uses a fuck-deup hard to read font to boot! Oh Boy! You can\u2019t make me work to read your adventure; I\u2019m not going to do it voluntarily. The goal is to HELP the DM, not make it a pain in the ass for them. Standard \u201cstep on the letters on the floor\u201d puzzle. Standard \u201cguess the riddle\u201d puzzle, etc. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n

The Misty Pond — Mike Monaco
\nI usually want to see some flavor text in an adventure encounter. There are rare instances in which longer descriptions work other rare instances in which a militant minimalism works. This is an example of the later. In two small paragraphs Mike lays out the background. Eight sentences. That\u2019s it. That provides the lens through which the rest of the adventure is then viewed and allows the minimalist descriptions to work. How minimalist? How about \u201c Flail Snail.\u201d or \u201c6 giant ants. They can walk on water.\u201d That is the sum total of two of the encounters. And yet they work. Just those words, when combined with the intro and the small \u201cenvironment\u201d section gets your imagination worked up enough to run the rest of the adventure and fill in the details. The \u201cwho can walk on water\u201d thing is GENIUS. Everyone knows water bugs and has chased them in creeks as a kid. [Trivia: in Indy the creeks serve as overflow runoff for the sewers during the rainy season. Yeah for picking up gold balls and hunting crawfish in the shit streams!] Anyway, the \u201crooms\u201d make sense. The monsters make more sense than in the vast majority of shit I see. The troll and undead remind me of the ones in Fallen Jarl, which is certainly one of the best portrayals of the dead in fantasy adventures. My only complaint is the treasure and MAYBE the flowers. The treasure needs a description and the flowers could use a random table or something. But, still, Highly Recommended.<\/p>\n

The Parched Throat — Intrepid Eddie
\nSomeone\u2019s been watching In Search Of. This is an Oak Island knock-off which works. There\u2019s a deep pit, filled with dirt, wood log floors, a giant bronze floor, and so on. The various levels have quite a few different things going on, including a nice death trap at the end. The McGuffin is at the bottom. This would be a nice little location for players searching for artifact destroyers, or some other legendary thingy. It\u2019s kind of a mini tomb of horrors, but without the nonsense found in all the clones of ToH. It\u2019s got a nice puzzle aspect to it, and, played in a very open-ended way (ala the real history of Oak Island) would be a wonderful location to drop in to a game.<\/p>\n

The Revelry at Pickett Castle — Alex Cirsova
\nNice concept but very incomplete and needs more cowbell. You arrive at a castle to find it overtaken by monsters: a flesh golen, a wolf man, some vampires, zombies and ghouls. They are all dancing to a record player. The guy in the lab says his assistant has been captured and could you please remove the monsters? The only direct allusion to The Monster Mash is the name Pickett, in the title. It feels incomplete because there doesn\u2019t seem to be any way to get the misters to leave, other than smash the music \u2026 which is suicide. I suspect Boris has something to do with it or I\u2019m forgetting some lyric from the song. Anyway, two ghouls making out in a bedroom “Do you mind?\u201d and some zombies passing a joint in the other bedroom were welcome additions. There needed to be a few more details like this and a little less \u201cgeneric undead monster in the woods.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Sea Tower — Scott W Roberts
\nUh \u2026 Vague description of an adventuring environment. Writing \u201cits a giant dyson sphere with various decks and each section is different\u201d is not an adventure. Writing a table to populate the various decks that says \u201c1. Plants 2. Aliens 3. People 4. Machines\u201d is not an adventure. I\u2019m quite disappointed by the lack of detail and the generic description of an environment. \u201cIts a planet. It has land masses and seas. You can have adventures on the planet with stuff.\u201d Uh \u2026. Ok. If you say so.<\/p>\n

The Subterranean Maze of Aarthal — Nicolas Senac
\nAnother maze with another minotaur. This one emphasizes the lack of light and food. There may be some language issues \u2026 walls carved with vultures all have very expensive gem eyes? Or maybe just the various statues are of vultures with gem eyes? Anyway, minor point\/mistake. The rooms are scattered with gear and equipment and a monster or two. There\u2019s some weird random teleported thing going on but the main problem is that rooms are \u2026 that\u2019s right! Devoid of good descriptions. There\u2019s just some generic contents listed, as if one took the random tables in the back of the 1E DMG and rolled on them. The spark and joy of the adventure is not presented.<\/p>\n

The Tavern at the Edge of the World — Jim Pacek
\nUh \u2026 maybe I\u2019m missing something here. It\u2019s a tavern. Small. Pretty boring descriptions. Nothing of note or of interesting in the place. Yes, that\u2019s right, I\u2019m calling the magic genie who lives in the oven and makes food \u201cboring & uninteresting.\u201d You know why? Because it\u2019s written as being boring and uninteresting. Where\u2019s the romance? Where\u2019s the wonder? Where\u2019s the fantastic. Fuck, where is The Edge of the World? It\u2019s not even implied anywhere in here. You gotta breathe life in to this shit in order to inspire the DM running it. This is just static words on a page. Chrome Leather Lover.<\/p>\n

The Witch’s Hut — Kevin Flynn
\nThis thing tries too hard. It\u2019s a witch hut with a single room, but a couple of portals to other places. It tries overly hard to force certain behaviors. For example, the hut reflects all spells 100%. You can\u2019t see inside the hut. You have to go through the door one at a time. None of that is really necessary though. Inside are four things: a bed, a chair, a fireplace, and a cupboard. You could let the players burn the fucking place and just keep those four things intact \u2026 AS IF BY MAGIC. See? Simple. The exterior of the hut has some good flavor around it and springs to mind, in the middle of bog, in a low section, brambles grown up and mixed in as an upside-down birds nest. The descriptive text then falls down once you go inside and in two of the three extra-dimensional sub-areas. It also uses \u201cdiscs\u201d as magic tokens \u2026 that\u2019s generic and lame. Internal organs, or torcs, or something else could have added a lot of flavor.<\/p>\n

Thoorsten’s Treasure \u2014 Leicester
\nA wizard tomb\/lair. Or, shall I say \u2026 A MOTHER FUCKING SORCERER! This brings the silly\/gonzo shit I like, especially for sorcerers. Most of the map is kind of non-sensical and doesn\u2019t really mean anything, except for the \u2018gotcha!\u2019 pattern in the last room. The encounters are silly and magical. A horde of magical boots attack. Bureaucratic homunculi abound, asking for id\u2019s and pushing paperwork. Lots of wasted space in this one but what is present is GOLD.<\/p>\n

Tower of the Toad Lord — John Hazen
\nSigh. Ruined sunken tower in a swamp. It\u2019s boring. How do you make shit like this boring? By describing the obvious, that\u2019s how! \u201cA door to the sat and stairs to the west are in this 30\u2019 square room.\u201d No fucking shit Sherlock, the fucking map told me that. YOU\u2019VE managed to waste my time, make the text harder to read\/find the important parts, and turn me off thanks to your shit description of the mundane details shown on the fucking map. \u201cThe kitchen has a fireplace.\u201d ARGGGG!!!!!!!! Spend your fucking text points describing the great and fantastic parts of the room. You know that cursed guy downstairs, you know, the only good part of this adventure? Maybe DO SOME MORE SHIT LIKE THAT INSTEAD OF TELLING ME HOW BIG THE FUCKING ROOM IS!!! Why people think that BORING is acceptable is beyond me. Maybe they have no examples to work from. IDK. It sucks. Dream Devil Dancer.<\/p>\n

Trouble’s Root — Fraser Nelund
\nBoring stupid dungeon of boringness. Themed around two rapscallion brothers \u2026 who turn to arming hobgoblins & ogres so they can massacre human villages. That\u2019s literally how the thing is presented: wayward youth \u2026 who turn to massacring their own. Could have used JUST a bit more there. But that\u2019s not why this sucks. No, this sucks because it\u2019s mundane. The dungeon has little to nothing fantastic or interesting about it. Just a collection of mundane rooms who\u2019s mundane contents are described. You don\u2019t need to tell me what\u2019s in a kitchen, or armory, or workshop. I know that. I can describe that. Just put in a room name. \u201cKitchen.\u201d Now, tell me what\u2019s different or new or exciting or fantastic about this place! What what\u2019s it special? Why was it important enough for you waste a map location on? Why was it important enough to include? This doesn\u2019t do that. It just describes what\u2019s in the kitchen. Or armory. Or workshop. Lame.<\/p>\n

Vault of Vintage — Barry Pace
\nLinear adventure in a 6 room wine cellar. 4 evil faeries, a sediment ooze, and a wine troll. The platinum cork screw and wine stoppers of healing are nice treasures, but the adventure just seems to wry commentary on wine culture. And not a clever one at that. The same & usual generic language. The troll gets a description (Great!) and the sediment ooze has some flavor (grape pulp and leftover yeast) but everything else is generic. Evil Faeries and Generic environments & language do not provide the flavor or help or inspiration a DM is looking for.<\/p>\n

Vertigo — Rodney Sloan
\nBattle above the clouds, so to speak, on high towers in the city. If you think \u201cVornheim\u201d before reading this then you\u2019ll get a good vibe off of it. Needs more though. The Rogue Mage needs 0E type spells, and the minotaur needs to catching some rays and drinking beer and pissed at being interrupted, and so on. I like the \u201crooftops\u201d chase thumbing and I like fantastic elements more than I like the ones in \u201cAcrobats only need apply\u201d, but the lack of \u2026 interesting things? Makes this overly bland. Crashing through a skylight? Great! \u201cgeneric \u201cblast\u201d spell? Not so great. How about Shingle Blasts or something like that? And the archers really need to be in church steeples, etc. Lacking the extra bits of details needed to make it super fab.<\/p>\n

This is available on DriveThru.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/188300\/One-Page-Dungeon-Compendium-2013-Edition?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peanut butter one page time! Peanut butter one page time! Peanut butter one page! Peanut butter one page! The winning entries this year are all pretty strong, with many of them usable & interesting right off the page. The others … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2420,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/2013.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419","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=2419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2419\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}