{"id":3111,"date":"2016-07-04T07:10:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T11:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3111"},"modified":"2019-02-25T11:11:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T16:11:50","slug":"through-the-cotillion-of-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3111","title":{"rendered":"Through the Cotillion of Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cot\"<\/a>
\nBy Daniel J. Bishop
\nPurple Duck Games
\nDCC
\nAny Level<\/p>\n

In this adventure, sleeping characters are invited to the Cotillion of Somnos, the Dreaming God. If they can make their way past the entertainments at the Masked Ball, they can petition the Dreaming God to fulfill some request on their behalf.<\/p>\n

This is an adventure in the house of the god of dreams that mostly involves making savings throws \u2026 on a mostly symmetrical fourteen room map. I don\u2019t like dream adventures, or symmetrical maps, so be warned. Weirdly, I don\u2019t like this one either.<\/p>\n

The idea is that this is a drop-in adventure. When the party needs something, or goes looking for something then you can drop in this adventure. The official DCC line did something like this in \u2026 Blades Against Death? In that one you could drop it in when the party needed to bring someone back to life. In this one it\u2019s just \u2018Something.\u2019 Need a question answered, a life restored, or some other boon? You can drop in the house of the god of dreams! In principal I really like this kind of idea. It slots in to an idea that you can cobble together something from a published adventure to fit in to your own campaign. Need an oracle? Ding! Need a village for your plot? Ding! This is a kind of \u201csupplement as a play aid building block\u201d kind of adventure design rather than \u201csupplement comes bundled with plot.\u201d Generically, I think the concept is good. And then there\u2019s the implementation in THIS adventure \u2026<\/p>\n

The entire adventure is timed. There\u2019s a kind of clock counting off time and after it chimes thirteen times the characters wake up. When you go in to a new room the chimes ring.<\/p>\n

Boom, you\u2019re in the dream realm, in front of the god of dreams home, where a grand masked ball is taking place. You wander around from room to room until you find the god of dreams. In each room you find something that you need to fuck with in order to do something. That something is usually \u201cleave the room.\u201d Make a DC14 will save. Make six DC 10 agility checks. Blah blah blah blah. Sometimes when you miss a save it causes the chimes to go off because you\u2019re delayed, etc. There are a couple of ways to Turn Back Time, none of which involve aircraft carriers or fishnet, sadly. Make some saves, maybe pay attention to puzzle-like element. Go to Next Room.<\/p>\n

As an example, there\u2019s a room with \u201cFear Nothing\u201d or some such over the door. Inside the room melts in to a giant maw of your enemy and you begin to get sucked in. Letting yourself get sucked in advances you (Fear Nothing, remember) and there are vines that multiply faster than you can kill them, etc. That\u2019s the kind of encounter you can expect.<\/p>\n

Is that your thing? It\u2019s not my thing. I\u2019m not heavy in to combat (and, to be fair, this adventure really only has a couple of POSSIBLE combats in it, and then only if the party provoke, hence it\u2019s all levels designation.) but I\u2019ve got this problem with one note adventures. Make saves in rooms. Figure out puzzles. These things become boring after awhile. There\u2019s little for the players to do with their characters. Making a save, especially multiple saves, is not exciting. It\u2019s not the player directing their character. It\u2019s just rolling dice, without even the tension of combat.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a decent chance the party will become separated. The adventure even notes that. That\u2019s boring. With no hint of hyperbole, I don\u2019t think ANYONE has EVER had ANY fun being separated and sitting there, bored, waiting for someone else to finish their turn so they get one step closer to being able to do something. Beyond physical separation, there are several times when someone could be permanently taken out of the adventure, usually by doing what they are asked to do. I one room, you ask an oracle a question. If you actually do so then you get the asnwer, but then your sucke dout of the dream world and your adventure is over. The oracle endgame portion isn\u2019t bad but it\u2019s the player elimination that is. I\u2019ve got no problems with this in a boardgame but in an RPG? Lame. SImilarly, if you make the wrong kind of request to the dreaming god then you die. At some meta level this makes sense, Gods Take No Shit. But the players can\u2019t make a meaningful decision unless they know the consequences, and just tossing DOOM at the them, almost at random, is not cool.<\/p>\n

It was the usual problems with descriptions. A couple of paragraphs of read aloud per room are provided, but the text is generic. Rooms are \u201cOpulent.\u201d This is a textbook example of Telling instead of Showing. The designer has told us the room is Opulent. He should have described the room in such a way that WE make the determination that it\u2019s opulent.<\/p>\n

Nice general concept, but poorly executed. Also, nice to see Purple Duck return to core DCC: fucking with gods.<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/105707\/AL3-Through-the-Cotillion-of-Hours-DCC?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Daniel J. Bishop Purple Duck Games DCC Any Level In this adventure, sleeping characters are invited to the Cotillion of Somnos, the Dreaming God. If they can make their way past the entertainments at the Masked Ball, they can … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3110,"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-3111","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\/06\/cot.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3111","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=3111"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5734,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3111\/revisions\/5734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}