{"id":3115,"date":"2016-07-06T07:17:47","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T11:17:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3115"},"modified":"2019-02-25T11:12:49","modified_gmt":"2019-02-25T16:12:49","slug":"curse-of-the-kobold-eye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3115","title":{"rendered":"Curse of the Kobold Eye"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cke\"<\/a>
\nBy Dave Olson
\nCut to the Chase Games
\nS&W
\nLevel 2-4<\/p>\n

An unusual curse from their last brush with danger befalls a party of adventurers! Haunted by the spectral image of a one-eyed kobold warrior, the heroes must race to unravel the mystery of the curse while avoiding death at the hands of their ghostly visitor. Can they stop the effects of the curse in time before it consumes them entirely? A harrowing journey awaits them!<\/p>\n

I try to be a good person. I promise. Do you think the people who write shovelware know they are doing it at the time? The answer, of course, is no. (I tell myself, for my own sanity, that it\u2019s more like the way Ed Wood was depicted in the movie, a vision in their own eyes that doesn\u2019t get fully communicated on the page. This shovelware raised $7k on kickstarter for a series of three modules.<\/p>\n

DM Fiat. You know it as the crap-ass mechanic used by DM\u2019s everywhere to enforce some petty tyrannies on the players. \u201cWelcome to the game! Congratulations, you\u2019ve been cursed, off-screen, and now you will suffer each day until you go on my railroad adventure. Have fun!\u201d The party has been cursed, either from the first adventure (because they went on the adventure, you can\u2019t avoid it) or a random kobold beggar on the street curses them. That\u2019s the hook. Go on the adventure or else. This is not the fucking way you write, or run, an adventure. NO FIAT! Look, if the player has his character cut off his ear and attach the Ear of Vecna, then have at it. The SOB should know better and the player has made a specific choice for their character. Telling the party they are now cursed, for the contrivance of the adventure, takes away all semblance of control the players have over their characters. It makes it clear, in brutal terms, that the players are just toys for the DM, they have no control and their action, or lack thereof, are meaningless. Further, this PIECE OF SHIT hook has no real impact on the adventure. Other than punishing the characters and motivating them to go on the adventure, it doesn\u2019t really have any impact. Evil Bob shows up a couple of times to attack them, on the curse pretext, and they have to go to the tomb to sprinkle the Magic Elixir McGuffin on his corpse, to break the curse, but this is all just pretext and not an integral part of the adventure. If it\u2019s not \u2026 then why use such a crappy pretext?<\/p>\n

On to the crappy-ass generic adventure! Get attacked by six zombies and a wraith, with no choice in the matter. Get attacked b a bear, with little choice in the matter. Get attacked by four animated books and a wraith, with no choice in the matter. Get attacked by a water weird, with no choice in the matter. Enter a basically symmetrical gnome tomb complex with twelve rooms. Get attacked by a poltergeist with no choice in the matter. Fight some undead until you find the body and sprinkle the goop on it to end the curse. This is NOT a good adventure, or even a decent adventure. It is, at best, a thoroughly mediocre adventure. Railroaded encounters do not an adventure make and further illustrate the power-mongering DM attitude that is illustrated so well in the hook. You have to give the party a fucking choice! You can\u2019t just toss encounter after encounter at them! Ok, I guess, yes, technically you can. I rather disparagingly call that style \u201cD&D Mini\u2019s\u201d and I FUCKING LOATHE IT. You like sitting around bored for four hours rolling dice and pretending they have some effect? Great. Knock yourself out. But you\u2019ll have to excuse me while I ensure everyone knows that the adventure is just a 33 page expanded Chainmail encounter. That\u2019s not what I\u2019m looking for when I think of D&D.<\/p>\n

The writing here is generic and abstract. \u201cThis room was once used for \u2026\u201d How many times have I railed against that sort of writing? Descriptions of what it once was, with little to no impact on how the party interacts with the room? It\u2019s useless. It\u2019s a waste. It does NOTHING to advance the adventure or provide a tool for the DM. This isn\u2019t a fucking history lesson. It\u2019s not a National Geo special on the burial rites and complexes of gnomes. NONE of that matters. What matters is describing something that the players will interact with. That\u2019s the fucking point. To aid the in running the thing. This sort of basic lack of understanding of the point of the adventure is what has launched this thing in to thirty three pages. Yes, thirty three pages, for, maybe, eighteen or so encounters, plus a couple of wandering tables. Sure, there\u2019s the license nonsense, and art, and DM and player maps, and monster stats, etc. But still, eighteen or so core pages, for what\u2019s being presented? Long, wordy text that does nothing to add to the adventure.<\/p>\n

Curse of the Kobold Eye, it is with great sadness that i bestow upon you the coveted tag of \u201cWorst Adventure EVAR.\u201d You join a hallowed group of Really. Shitty. Adventures. Your combination of a threatening hook, railroaded events, and boring and uninspiring encounters all combined with a writing style that can best be described as Phone It In earns you this prize. Your representative nature, being held up to all and standing in for all of the vast quantities of shovelware found on \u201cBuy three get one free\u201d shelf sales earns you this. Stand proudly, Curse of the Kobold Eye, know that you are just the latest in a long line of mediocrity in RPG design.<\/p>\n

And because I am an ass: at one point you meet some giant badgers next to an abandoned gnome settlement. One of them can talk to you. I like talking animals, they harken back to folklore and I think conjure up a shared history larger than themselves. The poor things think you are the harbingers of the gnomes coming back and their greatness being restored. It\u2019s a fun roleplaying encounter, overly described with too little specificity, but it also has a lot of potential and is the only thing in the adventure that is the least bit interesting.<\/p>\n

And not enough fucking treasure! Gold=XP!<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/166047\/WK2-Curse-of-the-Kobold-Eye-SW?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dave Olson Cut to the Chase Games S&W Level 2-4 An unusual curse from their last brush with danger befalls a party of adventurers! Haunted by the spectral image of a one-eyed kobold warrior, the heroes must race to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-worst-evar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/cke.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","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=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5735,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions\/5735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}