{"id":3373,"date":"2016-12-21T07:15:52","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T12:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3373"},"modified":"2019-02-26T08:41:48","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T13:41:48","slug":"arsenal-of-the-warrior-princess","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3373","title":{"rendered":"Arsenal of the Warrior Princess"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Alessandro Dellamotta
\nStarlight Games
\nOSR
\nLevels 4-5<\/p>\n

An ancient underground hideout, filled with weapons, magic and lore from a long-gone empire… And a terrible curse.<\/p>\n

This is a seventeen-ish room dungeon spread over 21 pages \u2026 that\u2019s been formatted to fit on four print pages in folio format. It\u2019s an ancient complex with undead and vermin. There\u2019s some decent non-standard magic items in places, and unusual magic items for the book items. There is also some decent imagery in places. In other places you have to work for it and in still others it\u2019s a little fact-based for my taste-in-room-descriptions.<\/p>\n

The pretext here is quite light, but strong enough to sustain it. It\u2019s an abandoned complex of an ancient empire. You\u2019ve got two possible pretexts presented. First, the party could be after some kind of magical research thingy and since there\u2019s a magical lab inside you could find what you\u2019re looking for there. Second, you could have found this magic sword, cursed, and you can lift it by exploring. This is a nice contrast to the usual plot-dreck. In other words, the dungeon is presented as a place for you to wrap your own characters story around rather than a place to have the designers shitty ass plot forced down your throat.<\/p>\n

This suggests an interesting question: which is worse, a crappy exploration dungeon or a crappy plot based adventure\/dungeon? Is the answer obvious?<\/p>\n

The room descriptions are a mixed bag. There is a decent attempt, in some of them, to provide some nice imagery. A skeletal blacksmith has a hammer wreathed in flames, and a dim fire burns in other skeletons eye sockets. The blacksmith gestures for them to rise \u2026 It\u2019s a little \u2026 direct? Inelegant? In its implementation. The noun\/verb choice is pretty straightforward instead of a more esoteric usage to convey hidden imagery. Still, above average. Even during the pre-animation description of \u201cA decayed skeleton wearing a blacksmith\u2019s leather apron lies propped up on the wall next to the forge, hammer in hand. He still wears a golden key on a chain around his neck. Another dozen skeletons are scattered throughout the room.\u201d It\u2019s the specificity. An apron, propped, key around neck. Not the greatest ever but a decent image without getting too bogged down in useless garbage description.<\/p>\n

There are a few other descriptions like that in the adventure. If you squint hard then you can see opportunities for others. The wanderer table has a few things on it that are ripe for this. \u201c15 skeletons with sword & shield.\u201d This was an old military installation. Well, they are obviously patrolling, all Red Square May Day style. Until they reach a room and then they enter it all Rainbow Six tactical style. \u201c2 wights\u201d, and they both happen to wear silver rings. Why not glowing with bright silvery light against the wights decaying background? I\u2019m being, perhaps, a little too generous in my squinting. On the one hand the )brief) background gives rise to the inspiration that feeds this (Yeah!) on the other hand I don\u2019t review fluff product because \u201cI was inspired by it\u201d is such an ambiguous measure. Objectively, a little more of \u201cwhat they are doing\u201d would have been nice for the wanderers. Subjectively, there was enough here to push me in to filling in the details \u2026 which is one the reasons I harp so much on the terse (easy to use by the DM) but evocative (captures the DMs imagination) description. The wanderers (and some of the other encounters) are overly terse AND lack the evocative nature \u2026 but I picked it up in the rest of the product.<\/p>\n

But that doesn\u2019t touch other areas. One of the weaker rooms ia an armory with a door \u201cmarked with a magical glyph\u201d and \u201cand ancient cracked amber golem in the shape of a tiger.\u201d These are mere facts. \u201cAncient\u201d is a conclusion, in this case, not a description. Showing, instead of telling us it is \u201cancient\u201d would be better. And there are more than a few rooms like this.<\/p>\n

The designer contacted me and asked for feedback, so I\u2019m going to fall in to the pedantic now and play Editor. You may want to skip this paragraph. Taking one of the better rooms, \u201c3. Forge\u201d we immediately see a missed opportunity. \u201cForge\u201d is boring. Why not embed a description? What\u2019s the overall sense of the room you want to convey? A massacre, long passed? Or, I see the forge is still lit and the description says \u201ccasting a dim reddish glow on the room.\u201d That\u2019s a decent first impression. How can you update the room name to better convey that? \u201c3. Shadowy glowing forge\u201d? I\u2019m terrible at this, but you get the idea. Second, I see that the first line of this room’s description, and most rooms description, are the dimensions. \u201cThis 9x15m room used to be a well equipped smithy.\u201d Well, we know that. It was the room name, remember? Secondly, we know the room dimensions. It\u2019s on the map. The map is a real map, and not some art school project, so you\u2019ve got a grid. Don\u2019t pad the room with useless words. The designer of Adventure Mos Fowl just commented, on my review, that \u201cbetter to have it and not need it, right?\u201d He\u2019s missing the point. WHile that could be said, it\u2019s also critically important that the words not get in the way of the DM running the room at the table, which is amazingly easy to do. SO watch your room descriptions. Focus. You go on to say that there\u2019s an anvil up against the wall (duh, it\u2019s a forge, does this add to the room, or the gameable nature? If the anvil was missing and was the key to getting to a secret door, maybe, but that’s not the case here) and that there\u2019s a narrow air vent. Again, while wonderfully pedantically historically accurate, not necessarily applicable to running this room. You want to put a thin trail of smoke in the room description somewhere? Ok. But that’s an appeal to the evocative and is a visible effect of the air vent. The last line of the first paragraph(!), The shadowy room being lit but a dim reddish glow, is DYNAMITE, as is the second paragraph, describing the skeleton. You might get rid of the first paragraph and combine the two so the skeleton is lit, barely visible, by the dim reddish glow? The third paragraph, a list of mundane objects, is lame. Convey it terser and\/or combine it somewhere else. The monster description is good, but the additional \u201che does not talk but he is no mindless undead. He is sentient and cunning\u201d is padding. He\u2019s cunning. Or he\u2019s [insert a better adjective.] Finally, you\u2019ve clearly made a very deliberate choice in dividing the room content in to different, labeled, sections. \u201cHaunt\u201d(nice!). Room. Monsters. Treasure. Feature. I\u2019m not going to pass judgment on that, except to say that separating out the \u201cHaunt\u201d is a good idea. I would, however, leave you with a couple of things to think about, understanding I\u2019m not necessarily telling you to change things. First, If the room is so wordy that you have to have separate headings for each little thing, then maybe the room is too wordy? Second, \u201cRoom\u201d is obvious, and probably doesn\u2019t need a heading. Its implied because \u2026 we\u2019re reading about a room. Second, monsters are usually obvious in a room because of the stat block. In any event, a separate paragraph, with a stat block. Is usually enough, I find, to find the creature. Usually. Finally, the treasure\/feature, located at the end of the room after the monster description, is probably adequate. Or, you could mix & match heading as needed to bring out important information. IE: don\u2019t be slave to including the headings in EVERY room, but just use a heading where you think you need to call something out. I don\u2019t assert your choices are wrong, I\u2019m just giving you other things to think about.<\/p>\n

The magical items are interesting and are a mix of non-standard and unusual standard. The forge is lit by a severed fire giant hand, that burns eternally. Nice! There\u2019s a +1 dagger made of ice that also deals cold damage and can freeze liquids and put out fires with a touch. Nice! Magic silver platemail, which can deal damage when silver-vulnerable monsters touch it. The final monster, the warrior princess proper, can even be won over to your side and used as an ally and NPC in an ongoing campaign. REALLY nice touch there! Further \u2026 she\u2019s got PHAT LOOT. Kill her and take the Loot=XP or keep her as an ally? Oh, the despair of choice! You know, there\u2019s another room like this, a room with an ochre jelly. It doesn\u2019t attack unless provoked. If you kill it it turns out that there\u2019s treasure inside. I would have TOTALLY played that up in the description. Make it obvious it has treasure inside. Or imply heavily it does. Put the big red button in front of the party and dare them to press it. There\u2019s another room, with normal spiders with human intelligence, that misses an opportunity. This roleplaying GOLD and could use a sentence or two more to expand on some personality, what they know, etc.<\/p>\n

There are some visual aides in the back of the adventure, to show the players. Props are always nice. The concept of a \u201cfour print pages\u201d format is pretty interesting as well. I remain a bit skeptical about it working out in practice \u2026 the font is a bit small already and printing two per page \u2026 my old eyes may protest. The formatting and wordiness detract quite a bit, IMO, from an otherwise generally decent adventure \u2026 that has several rooms that need some extra evocative help. I think it\u2019s a first effort. If so, it\u2019s an excellent first effort.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s $2 on DriveThru.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/199488\/Arsenal-of-the-Warrior-Princess?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alessandro Dellamotta Starlight Games OSR Levels 4-5 An ancient underground hideout, filled with weapons, magic and lore from a long-gone empire… And a terrible curse. This is a seventeen-ish room dungeon spread over 21 pages \u2026 that\u2019s been formatted … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3372,"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-3373","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\/12\/sx1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373","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=3373"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5775,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3373\/revisions\/5775"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}