{"id":2968,"date":"2016-04-06T07:25:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-06T11:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2968"},"modified":"2019-02-24T10:08:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T15:08:28","slug":"ks1-tower-of-skulls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2968","title":{"rendered":"KS1 – Tower of Skulls"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ts\"<\/a>
\nBy Dave Olson
\nCut to the Chase Games
\nSwords & Wizardry\/Pathfinder\/5E\/Savage
\nLevels 10-12<\/p>\n

Death and darkness has risen from churned black soil! A festering evil returns to the land, spreading a palpable fear to all in its area. A brave band of heroes are needed to seek out the site and cleanse it once and for all. But be wary! Brave heroes have fallen victim to the traps and dangers contained within the legendary … TOWER OF SKULLS!<\/p>\n

This adventure is a series of linear set-piece encounters in a tower housing an imprisoned demon lord. Book magic items, gimping the cleric, long room descriptions (remember, they are all set pieces!).<\/p>\n

Oh god I loathe shit like this. I was looking forward to seeing a high level swords & wizardry adventure. A feeling of dread came over me when I read the last sentence of the background: \u201cSo he has turned his former power base into a death trap for the unwary, cackling away at the mortals who blunder in to find naught but their doom.\u201c I know what that means. It\u2019s the code words that mean stupid set piece challenges in a Tomb of Horrors like environment. All I see is a lack of imagination, or, maybe, extremely constrained imagination. The ability to write a set pieces is, I guess, some kind of talent, but the inability to link them together in anything other than a linear adventure is a significant gap. I always feel ripped off in cases like this and I\u2019ve struggled greatly to make sense of those feelings. This doesn\u2019t fit any definition of what a S&W adventures is, for me. Sure, it\u2019s stat\u2019d that way, but is that enough? I\u2019m guessing that the answer is that it\u2019s just a BAD Swords & Wizardry adventure, and it\u2019s unfair of me to call it not even a S&W adventure. But it is SO bad, misunderstanding what the the system is and about, that it makes me want to place product like this in another category altogether. \u201cNew! Call of Cthulhu adventure!\u201d Maybe it is stat\u2019d that way, but if it\u2019s nothing more than 12 combats,all in a row, with nothing in between, between the characters and CoC monsters? I\u2019d say the designer just doesn\u2019t get what CoC is.<\/p>\n

Demon lord chuck challenges Orcus, loses, gets imprisoned in this tower which Orcus chucks in to the Prime Material plane. He\u2019s converted it into some deathtrap \u201cchallenge\u201d dungeon and now it appears during the full moon at random places. There\u2019s actually a couple of nice things in the introduction. Separate sections for Sage information and Legend Lore are nice; these should be standard operating procedures for any high level S&W character: getting a leg up any way they can before they actually get near the dungeon. Likewise there\u2019s a section on portents of doom that precede the towers arrival. Birds flees the tower area 6-7 days in advance of its appearance, and great squirming masses of earthworms appear. There\u2019s a few other examples of things like this, including a skull that burns with black flames and has eyes that light up in the direction of the tower. Very nice little additions to get the party moving in the right direction and add a touch of dread and fun to the adventure. That\u2019s great content.<\/p>\n

I won\u2019t be saying anything nice again.<\/p>\n

The tower has undead in it. Level 10-12 clerics laugh at undead, so turn undead doesn\u2019t work in the tower. I\u2019m not cool with this. I don\u2019t like it when the players powers are gimped arbitrarily by the DM. The cleric worked hard to get to level ten. Stripping them of their turn powers removes a significant ability. The wizard can\u2019t cast spells and the fighter can\u2019t swing a weapon? That\u2019s not something anyone would do, would they? And yet adventure after adventure does this to the cleric. It\u2019s like there\u2019s some sort of mental block when it comes to undead. The designer wants to put in undead. The cleric is a problem. The solution is to gimp the cleric. A better designer would turn to other solutions. Like not including undead. Or putting in more powerful undead. Or increasing their number.<\/p>\n

On a somewhat related note: the goal is to reach the top levels wherein resides whatever the players are looking for in the tower. You can\u2019t leave the tower except through the top floor or through a special room on each level that takes 50% of your magic items and teleports you d% miles away. And you can\u2019t rest in the tower, except for the one hour in those special portal rooms. It\u2019s clearly written to gimp the players and control resting, forcing them to confront set piece after set piece in an artificial way. Short rest. I don\u2019t think I recall that mechanic in S&W \u2026 hmmm, 5e perhaps? Let\u2019s be clear, even if I were reviewing a 5e adventure I\u2019d hate this thing, it\u2019s just a poor adventure overall and the imperfect conversion just shows the lack of experience with S&W. Also, if I were playing this, I\u2019d go to the roof and use any of a variety of wizard spells to drop in through the roof. Just saying.<\/p>\n

Having put this off as much as possible, I must now address the 51 set piece encounters. 51-5 that is, recall there\u2019s one \u201cRoom of Respite\u201d on each level. Enter room. See something. Take an action. Monster shows up. Defeating monster allows an exit to show up. Go to next room. Repeat. The door opens when the monster appears. The door open when the monster is killed. The door opens when you remove all the candles. The door open when you burn up an item. The door opens when you answer a riddle. The door opens when the trap triggers. You get the idea. You encounter the room and then you are allowed to go to the next one. The set pieces are not the set pieces of an Indiana Jones film. Grand environments with lots going on that the party can use for creative purposes. That\u2019s not this. These are extremely constrained environments, the only features present are the pits and traps the monsters pull you into. These are the worst sorts of encounters in any D&D game. A forced combat, the deck stacked unnaturally in the favor the DM. Roll the dice. Depend on luck. Go to the next one. The dreariness of round after round of mini\u2019s combat. From this standpoint even the Battle Interactive at DDXP offers more interesting environments to adventure in. A not insignificant effort is made to describe each environment a bit. A titanic mushroom. An obsidian step pyramid. Great cages. Hanging vines. But each one feels like those final rooms in the demonweb in Q1. The purpose of the room is to have a fight. The purpose of the read-aloud is to describe the set pieces. And then there\u2019s a column of text after that to go into detail on the description and monster tactics and so on. Described as a tower, it\u2019s actually a ring of rooms with an additional room in the middle. One entry door and one exit door, and sometimes a third to the central room. This repeats level after levels, for all four of the \u201cchallenge\u201d levels.<\/p>\n

The reward for all of this \u2026 +2 longsword. +2 ring of protection. And so on. And so forth. Wand of fear. Ring mail +3. Book item after book item. No imagination and no creativity in in the description. Just the name \u201cRing Mail +3.\u201d The fabulous treasure room in which all of those \u201cleaving the tower\u201d magic items were teleported to? Totally abstracted, just like in Hoard of the Dragon Queen. \u201cPiles of glittering coin and gemstones.\u201d And \u201cThere should be enough to tempt the most equipped adventurer.\u201d That\u2019s it. Nothing more. That\u2019s the extent of the creativity you paid for. S&W is a gold for xp system, iirc. But that\u2019s all abstracted here. There\u2019s little understanding of the game. It\u2019s not5e. It\u2019s not Pathfinder. It\u2019s not Savage Worlds, with their combat based advancement for plot point based advancement.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m very disappointed in this. $6 at DriveThru \u2026 I\u2019m really on the edge of giving this one of my coveted \u201cWorst Adventures of All Time\u201d checkboxes.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/178325\/BF1-Tower-of-Skulls-SnW?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dave Olson Cut to the Chase Games Swords & Wizardry\/Pathfinder\/5E\/Savage Levels 10-12 Death and darkness has risen from churned black soil! A festering evil returns to the land, spreading a palpable fear to all in its area. A brave … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2967,"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-2968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/03\/ts.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968","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=2968"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5706,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2968\/revisions\/5706"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}