{"id":3053,"date":"2016-05-25T07:11:48","date_gmt":"2016-05-25T11:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3053"},"modified":"2019-02-25T10:59:11","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T15:59:11","slug":"the-stink-of-golanda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3053","title":{"rendered":"The Stink of Golanda"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stgol\"<\/a>
\nBy Steve Willett
\nPolyhedron Games
\nOSRIC
\nLevels 9-11<\/p>\n

Golanda, the Kingdom of Hope, devoted to the good of its people and all people. It’s knights travel Ropa looking for service in just causes. Its priests roam the continent healing the sick and injured with no regard to race, faith or morality. But something smells in Eddiston and it’s the stink of corruption.<\/p>\n

Oh, where to start \u2026 this is a linear adventure with light content, a pure railroad from start to end. There\u2019s not really a plot shield here, there\u2019s not enough content for that. There might be \u2026 five combats? There\u2019s a couple of word pages, printed as a PDF that describe some convoluted backstory with named right out of the goofball unmemorable Forgotten Realms names. Go to the damned (as in \u2018Hell-Damned\u2019) town. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Question someone. Have a combat. Meet a dude. Have a combat. Have the finale combat with an EHP and a demon. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

The entire thing is presented in a very conversational form. It\u2019s as if you were sitting down, having a beer with someone, and they described their last game to you. It\u2019s not quite incoherent, but it\u2019s also not quite all there. It\u2019s full of anecdotal events. That\u2019s good! They ground the detail and provide something to hang your hat on. But it\u2019s bad in the conversational form it’s presented in.<\/p>\n

Out of nowhere there\u2019s a table presented on what you see if you climb up to the city walls. It\u2019s not bad: a demon scurrying across a street, a zombie bumping into a wall, a panicked dog, people cowering in a corner. This is decent content. Maybe a little generic, but it\u2019s trying. There are plenty of example like this in the adventure (well, at least five anyway.) A daft old woman, zombies feeding on bodies, and so on. That\u2019s the sort of decent, specific, content that many adventures don\u2019t bother to describe. \u201c12 zombies\u201d or maybe \u201c12 zombies attacking some villagers\u201d is the usual fair. It could be even more specific, but what\u2019s here IS decent \u2026 when it tries. This leads into the monsters actually DOING things. They argue. They feed, and so on. Again, somehow this sort of content has been lost in many modern adventures.<\/p>\n

Make no mistake: this is terrible. It\u2019s linear. It\u2019s conversational. It is, at best, just a framework. Stat blocks take up fifty percent of a page. It\u2019s not so much organized as it is a story narrative, told linearly. It reminds me of some of the poorer Adventurers League stuff, like The Seer, but organized in a far worse fashion. Devoid of much content. What there is is linear. There are brief bright sports with the encounter descriptions, but its hard for me to even call them encounter descriptions.<\/p>\n

If you sat down, right now, and typed up, in Word, describing the last adventure you ran, in as if you were talking to your buddy, then you\u2019d have this adventure.<\/p>\n

Also: the intro notes there’s corruption present. Wellllll…. as in “overrun by demons?” Yes.<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/102124\/The-Stink-in-Golanda?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steve Willett Polyhedron Games OSRIC Levels 9-11 Golanda, the Kingdom of Hope, devoted to the good of its people and all people. It’s knights travel Ropa looking for service in just causes. Its priests roam the continent healing the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3053","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\/05\/stgol.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053","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=3053"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5726,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3053\/revisions\/5726"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}