{"id":2589,"date":"2015-05-27T06:20:07","date_gmt":"2015-05-27T10:20:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2589"},"modified":"2019-02-19T08:25:10","modified_gmt":"2019-02-19T13:25:10","slug":"dcc-77-5-the-tower-out-of-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2589","title":{"rendered":"DCC #77.5 – The Tower Out of Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"775\"<\/a><\/p>\n

by Michael Curtis
\nGoodman Games
\nDCC RPG
\nLevel 2<\/p>\n

From out of the past comes an ancient evil to plague the present! A mystifying tower crowned by a blinding blood-red light has appeared in the forest, arriving as a never-before-seen comet burns in the sky above. Is its arrival a harbinger of terrible times ahead? Only those heroes brave enough to confront what lurks behind the inexplicable walls of the Pharos of Scales can solve the mystery of the tower\u2019s puzzling arrival!<\/p>\n

This is a straightforward and pretty linear adventure, exploring a simple tower layout. There\u2019s only so much you can do with a simple tower map. Tower of the Stargazer probably did the best, at least with regards to the map. This adventure attempts to present a wizards tower, from the earliest primordial days of creation. Created by the strange serpent folks of that time, it travels through time in order to arrive at the destination in time in which the master of the tower will arrive back from the stars. (IE: the comet is his ship.)<\/p>\n

As such the adventure is trying to create kind of primordial experience, to immerse them in this otherworldliness that existed before the modern DCC era. It starts well enough. A fetid steaming lake of prehistoric origin that has appeared in the forest where no lake should be. A weird tower, twisting up, asymmetrical, with a slumped melted look with its construction seeming to be more related to leather than stone & mortar. Semi-opaque membranes cover certain areas \u2026 windows and a door? To get in you must press through a semipermeable membrane that settles for a door. Or slice through it and watch it repair itself. Inside in a kind of arboretum, the air rich & thick, a riot of vibrant green, with some burbling and slurping pool, creating bubbles rising to the fleshy ceiling overhead.<\/p>\n

There are a decent number of rooms like this: well described with more than the usual amount of weird flavor present. Ape-things with pulsating fleshy mounds on the back of their necks, humanoids hooked up to bubbling and gurgling tubes to power ancient devices. And there are some stinkers mixed in like \u201ca number of barrels and small boxes stand against the wall\u201d, as well as some, oh, lets say the descriptions of some of the inhabitants, like giant trilobites, antehumans, and green splitters could use some serious work. There are only eight rooms here, and only a couple of magic items, which are, frankly, not that strong. A vial full of a greasy liquid? Eh. It\u2019s got a nice effect anyway.<\/p>\n

On another front, I think I have some insight in to ONE of the reasons why I tend to like the Stroh (and sometimes Bittman) adventures more than the Curtis & JoeG ones. It\u2019s the use of the archaic forms of adjectives & adverbs. I\u2019m probably mixing some truth with legend here, but I get the sense that in the time before time, language was a bit looser. For convenience I\u2019ll refer to the tipping point as Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary. A words and structure\/grammar became more defined we someone became slaves to the rules. Witness the \u201cWeirdling sun\u201d in Stroh vs the \u201cmelted look\u201d of Curtis. To take a hypothetical example: we want to convey the image of an woman floating over the ground. How do we describe this? Does she \u201cfloat\u201d over the ground? Yes, but that\u2019s boring. We want something more. Something ethereal, unearthly, gossamer, empyrean. How about \u201cshimmer\u201d instead? Better, but not great. Which is why I write reviews instead of adventures. \ud83d\ude42 Anyway, this more fanciful and archaic language, both in structure and in word choice, communicates the visual image so much more strongly. And that\u2019s what we\u2019re looking for in an adventure: something that can strongly and solidly communicate the author’s vision to the reader.<\/p>\n

This is short. It\u2019s an ok but straightforward adventure. Certainly better than most published, but does not reach my lofty platonic idealism.<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/134981\/Dungeon-Crawl-Classics-775-The-Tower-Out-of-Time?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Michael Curtis Goodman Games DCC RPG Level 2 From out of the past comes an ancient evil to plague the present! A mystifying tower crowned by a blinding blood-red light has appeared in the forest, arriving as a never-before-seen … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2588,"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-2589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/775.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589","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=2589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5637,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2589\/revisions\/5637"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}