{"id":3338,"date":"2016-11-30T07:12:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T12:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3338"},"modified":"2016-11-28T07:10:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-28T12:10:50","slug":"stench-of-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3338","title":{"rendered":"Stench of the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"stench\"<\/a>
\nBy Paul Baldowski
\nJust Crunch Games
\nGeneric
\nAny level? [No Stats]<\/p>\n

The adventurers probably come to Brinwan not expecting a great deal, and a first encounter with a mildly insane goat herder doesn’t change that expectation. However, just as the characters secure rooms and dinner for the night, something monstrous crawls from the sea and the matter of unexpected deaths in the local mine come to light – potentially leading them down the road to adventure.<\/p>\n

This is a nigh incomprehensible adventure. 72 pages of endless text obscure a village, mine, trog games, dwarf tomb, and mermen outpost. There\u2019s some decent reference material included but the core adventuring locations are just \u2026 I don\u2019t know how to describe it. I\u2019ve seen a lot of shitty layout and writing. Seldom have I seen something as bad as this. <\/p>\n

The idea is that, while in a village, mermen riding giant crabs attack the beach. Except it\u2019s a mistake, the mermen are actually trying to herd the crabs back in to the ocean to KEEP them from attacking the villagers. The bigot primary landowner then hires you to investigate the goings on in the mines. Disappearances, etc. Inside you find trogs (subhumans, instead of stinky lizards) and maybe an old dwarf tomb. Hooks are the usual \u201cfetch me something from the village\u201d (crab, in this case) or \u201csomeone has gone missing, go find them\u201d \u2026 but includes \u201cthe tax collector has gone missing, go find him.\u201d That\u2019s interesting, but neither the ctab or taxman are mentioned again. That\u2019s not too supportive. Seems like in 72 pages you could pay some lip service to \u201cHarvey\u2019s Crab Shak.\u201d<\/p>\n

The village has too much information, scattered in too many places. There\u2019s free text describing things. There are reference sheets for the locations. There are reference sheets for the NPC\u2019s. All told it\u2019s scattered over a half dozen or more pages. That\u2019s not a reference sheet. The intent here is good. The implementation is what\u2019s lacking. The reference sheets manage to put 9 NPC\u2019s on one page but only manages three businesses a page. If this were TIGHTLY edited then you\u2019ve have a decent little village with some flavor, driven mostly by the interactions BETWEEN the villagers. Bob hates Mary and loves Fred. Except Bob is a racist and Mary is the boss of the miners union. Those things are great. The little quirks the NPC\u2019s have are great. But it doesn\u2019t stop at just two sentences. Instead it goes on and On and ON. <\/p>\n

The adventure locales, proper, have the same problem. There\u2019s some boring read-aloud and then an endless amount of text that obscures what you need to run the room. And it\u2019s meaningless text. \u201cKing Kailesh fights to defend his people, pulling a ghostly replica of his maul from thin air. The spirit weapon functions just like the maul, a weapon of great power that mutters and sings in the dead King\u2019s hand.\u201d What is that add to the room? And that\u2019s just two sentences on a page full of worthless information about the kings chamber, in the tomb. The history, what it was used for. Needlessly flowery language. None of this is relevant to the adventure at hand. And yet it\u2019s there. <\/p>\n

This is a basic adventure. There\u2019s nothing too special about it, except maybe an above average village. But it\u2019s ALL obscured by this mania to provide MORE information. Ya gotta know when to stop man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Paul Baldowski Just Crunch Games Generic Any level? [No Stats] The adventurers probably come to Brinwan not expecting a great deal, and a first encounter with a mildly insane goat herder doesn’t change that expectation. However, just as the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3335,"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-3338","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\/11\/stench.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338","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=3338"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3339,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3338\/revisions\/3339"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}