{"id":2986,"date":"2016-04-25T07:34:36","date_gmt":"2016-04-25T11:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2986"},"modified":"2019-02-24T10:11:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-24T15:11:46","slug":"the-tomb-of-rakoss-the-undying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=2986","title":{"rendered":"The Tomb of Rakoss the Undying"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rakoss\"<\/a>
\nBy Bob Pennington
\nMischief Inc
\nOSR
\nLevels 4-6<\/p>\n

Rakoss was a great wizard of ages past who served the Emperor of Maere. Tales tell of his prowess as a military strategist, but they also tell of his fall. It is said that although he won campaign after campaign for his emperor, just one failure earned the wrath of his master. The Emperor had Rakoss, his generals, strategists and personal guard sealed in a tomb somewhere in the Ganlaw Mountains, and cursed them. Who knows what treasure was buried with Rakoss and his retinue, or what horrors remain to test any who might enter the tomb. Certainly only a brave few would dare seek out the final resting place of Rakoss, and even fewer can survive the terrors of The Tomb of Rakoss the Undying!<\/p>\n

This is a generic dungeon crawl in a sixteen room dungeon that takes eighteen pages to describe. It begins generic hook #23: \u201chired by sage fetch quest.\u201d That takes one directly to the dungeon and then bores both the party and DM with generic encounters, descriptions, and read-aloud. There\u2019s a bright spot or two, but I\u2019d chalk this one up as \u201cslightly better than the average dreck.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dungeon keys start on page seven. That means five or pages of backstory, advice to the DM, hooks, and general conversational material that goes nowhere and adds little to the adventure. Half a page is spent describing state blocks. \u201cHit dice will be listed as number and type, such as 3d8.\u201d The new Bryce, now with fewer crushed expectations, notes that it\u2019s pretty easy to just skip over the first seven pages and get to something halfway decent. He would recommend just ripping them out and never reading them at all. The bitter old Bryce would note that this lengthy and irrelevant intro is a portent of things to come. It telegraphs a lack of focus in the writing, of not understanding and concentrating on what\u2019s important in an adventure.<\/p>\n

About \u00be of a page is spent on the default hook, the sage fetch quest. There\u2019s nothing unusual in it. Sage hires party, gives them map, he wants the books they bring back. A) that\u2019s boring. B) it takes \u00be of a page of boringness to get to the end of the boring. The alternate hooks are \u201cyou find a map\u201d and \u201csomeone hires you to go there in exchange for something from the tomb.\u201d IE: the exact same hook as the \u00be page hook. One of the most interesting things in the book are the two sentences devoted to the third hook. \u201cA band of undead spontaneously comes to life in a nearby town as a result of unstable negative energy that emanates from the tomb. A local lord hires the characters to investigate.\u201d The previous hooks are simple tasks. Jobs. But this third one is full of potential energy. Random attacks in the night. Weight effects in the countryside. Scared villagers. A local lord disappointed with his men and in fear of losing control. All of that is implied in those simple two sentences. That\u2019s what good writing does. It inspires the DM to greatness. It makes their mind race to come up with possibilities to use. If the adventures had instead spent \u00be of a page focusing on an OUTLINE of that hook, instead of \u00be of a page of boring read aloud for Generic Hook #23: Sage Fetch, then you\u2019d have a couple of hours of hook for the party to get into and get the context. Alas, this is not to be. A full page wilderness map is complemented by \u00bc page describing an uneventful trip through the wilderness (then you wasted the map \u2026) that ends with a forced combat with a band of Ogres. Preprogrammed combat encounters are not fucking content. They are boring and they take away decisions from the players.<\/p>\n

This all ends in a paragraph of overwrought read-aloud about the tomb entrance. \u201cAlthough the noonday sun is hot on your face \u2026\u201d oh, sorry, I threw up a little in my mouth. Anyway, the illustration showing the entrance is a great one. A nice semicircle opening, runes above the door, cold air mists coming out, icicles inside with trees and little hollock. Really top notch in bringing a mood to the DM. About 20 times better than the generic fact based boring overwrought text.<\/p>\n

This brings us to the part of the review I like to call \u201cThe terrible design places a lot of terrible restrictions on the party because the designer can\u2019t be bothered to design a level appropriate adventure.\u201d IE: blah blah blah justification. Blah blah blah you can\u2019t use passwall, teleport, blink, dimension door, etc. Blah blah blah undead are a lot harder to turn. Blah blah blah everything inside gets +2 AC and +2 to saves. This is lame. The characters earned those abilities, why cheese them out of it? So what if they passwall? Good for them! An adventure can be played many different way. By limiting the party you are telling them and the DM, that they will play it EXACTLY the way you described it. I should only aspire to that degree of conceit. \u201cIt might be too easy!!\u201d Good. Smart\/Creative players are SUPPOSED to have an easier time. Unconventional thinking is what makes the game fun.<\/p>\n

The room keys try to pay homage to classic design elements but are hampered by generic boring read-aloud. A big stone statue of a knight that comes to life. A wizard’s lab. An evil shrine. All the classic room types but hampered by boring read aloud. \u201cYou open a large wood door to reveal a moderately sized rectangular room.\u201d Boring read aloud. BORING! \u201cAt the south end is a twenty foot tall large stone statue of a fiendish knight carrying a dire flair and a tower shield.\u201d It tells. It should show. Why is it fiendish? Describe it and let the players imaginations run wild and draw their own conclusions. It doesn\u2019t help that almost every read-aloud ends with \u201cand then the monsters attack!\u201d I think this shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what old school gaming is, or even what FUN gaming is. This is not an exploration adventure, it\u2019s a combat adventure. Room after room of it. Remember the forced ogre combat in the wilderness? Np sandbox environment here. Just forced combats. And remember, no cheat spells so you can\u2019t avoid them.<\/p>\n

The monster descriptions are boring also. Instead of exciting content we instead get a list of things, ala 3e\/4e\/5e\/ that the undead are immune to. \u201cUndead: Immune to mind influencing effects, poison, sleep, paralysis, stunning, and disease. Not subject to critical hits, subdual damage, ability damage, energy drain, or death from massive damage.\u201d *whew* Good thing I was told that! It sure did add a lot of enjoyment to the adventure for both me, the DM as WELL as the players!<\/p>\n

The treasure is lame and boring books treasure, with the exception of one item. The monetary treasure is not appropriate to the level of the adventure and is pretty boring as well, except for maybe a demon tapestry and a tiger skin rug. It is telling that one of the items is described as a Masterwork Greatsword. This whole things feels like a conversion.<\/p>\n

The map triess. It shows lots of details on it, from furniture to some rubble to traps. That\u2019s good; it uses the map to help enhance the adventure text. It\u2019s a little small and \u201clight\u201d in the lines, making it hard to read\/use, but they clearly tried. Likewise there\u2019s an element or two of good things: destroying the statue reveals a giant ruby inside (Yeah! Not explaining!)<\/p>\n

The classic elements and tropes are present, but not used well. They come off as boring instead of exciting or imaginative. Fundamentally I think this is because of a lack of focus. The read-aloud and DM text do not enhance the rooms. The text just ends up being useless. This could easily be a one-page and lose nothing, because there\u2019s nothing to lose. That\u2019s a shame.<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/119267\/F1-The-Tomb-of-Rakoss-the-Undying?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Pennington Mischief Inc OSR Levels 4-6 Rakoss was a great wizard of ages past who served the Emperor of Maere. Tales tell of his prowess as a military strategist, but they also tell of his fall. It is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2985,"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-2986","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\/04\/rakoss.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986","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=2986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5710,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2986\/revisions\/5710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}