{"id":3392,"date":"2017-01-02T07:15:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-02T12:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3392"},"modified":"2019-02-26T08:45:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-26T13:45:40","slug":"black-orc-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3392","title":{"rendered":"Black Orc Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Kieran Brannan
\nPoint Pony
\nBasic D&D
\nLevels 1-3<\/p>\n

Nobody else wanted to take on a job of helping out an orc, but if their gold is good then who cares \u2026 right? Black Orc Down puts the party on the trail of a missing orc chieftain. Can they rescue him from the dark mysteries of the Undercity beneath Forecastle? Can they uncover the vile plot which threatens to disrupt the power structure of The Shades? If they fail, will the death of one orc really matter that much?<\/p>\n

This is twenty page adventure in the \u201cundercity\u201d on a linear map with seven locations in a high-fantasy setting. It hits, negatively, a large number of my review standards. It is not, however, incomprehensible, or hard to run, so at least it\u2019s got that going for it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this generic fantasy city that\u2019s been taken over by different pirate lords. Pretty standard stuff. It\u2019s high fantasy though, so there\u2019s orcs and goblins and so on, entire tribes, in the city. Bob the orc, leader of some minor blah blah blah orc clan, has fallen through a hole in the floor that gave way while he was on his throne. He\u2019s now in the undercity, the ruins of the old city that the current one was built on top of. He was attacked by skeletons and ran off and his orc buddies tried to save him but were beaten back by the undead. They hire the party, for 100 gold, to go save their orc chief.<\/p>\n

I hate high fantasy. Or, rather, I hate THIS sort of high fantasy. I get it, different strokes for different folks. Like what yhttps:\/\/crou want and all that jazz. But this just sucks. One of my points is that I like humans instead of humanoids as enemies, most of the time. Or maybe I mean \u201cin certain situations.\u201d A sidebar DOES encourage you to change the orcs (and later goblins) to humans if you\u2019re not playing a high fantasy game, but I want to talk more about the use of humanoids in general. When you take an elf and make him a farmer, on of many in a human village, you generally destroy what it means to be an elf. Elf garbage collectors. Dwarf millers. You\u2019ve just turned them in to humans with pointy ears or short humans. The same with the humanoids. These represent THE OTHER. They should be different. Scary. Maybe bestial. In this adventure the orcs advertise on the local job boards. When they greet you the read aloud says \u201cThank you so much for answering our request for aid.\u201d Seriously? I get it it. High Fantasy. But \u2026 seriously? There\u2019s NOTHING in this adventure that makes the orcs seem like orcs. Or makes the goblins (a tribe of which you meet later) seem like goblins. A society of overly polite orcs drinking tea with their pinkies out? I can get behind that. But generic humanoids? Nope. Sorry. Disbelief broken. Grimy humans? Ok. Human cannibals? Ok. Humans can do some fucked up shit and making humanoids humans instead can lead to some good revulsion. It\u2019s more relatable. But generic orcs with a \u201cthank you so much for answering our request for aid?\u201d High fantasy or not, that sucks.<\/p>\n

Twenty pages with seven encounters implies a high word count, and that\u2019s present here. There\u2019s a MASSIVE amount of read aloud. Paragraphs and paragraphs that add little to no value. The writing isn\u2019t particularly evocative, although it is serviceable and clear, generally. It falls in to the trap of telling instead of showing. \u201cThe environment is an oppressive unwelcoming shroud \u2026\u201d Well, no. It\u2019s not. When you TELL me its oppressive then its not oppressive. SHOW me. If you\u2019re going to engage in this type of read-aloud then describe WHY. Let the players draw their own conclusions. There are reams and reams of advice on writing that tell you why showing is better than tellings. Go google it for more. Or don\u2019t. Whatever.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a table in this adventure I\u2019d like to talk about. It\u2019s a loot table, in case the party searches a random building in the undercity. A typical entry is \u201cYou manage to find a small cache of silverware worth 2d10sp.\u201d BAD BAD BAD! It\u2019s generic. Just \u201cSilverware\u201d It\u2019s written in read-aloud mode. \u201cYou find \u2026\u201d Blech! \u201cElven filigree tarnished silver olive spoons, bent.\u201d Instead we get \u201cThe jewellery is of simple design, being of a quality a merchant’s wife might wear.\u201d Generic sucks ass. Specificity is the soul of storytelling. And do it in under fifteen words. Please.<\/p>\n

And, to boot, there\u2019s not a lot of treasure. At all. So little for Gold=XP that the adventure encourages a story award at the end for completing the quest. That\u2019s NEVER good. It implies a right way and a wrong way to complete the adventure. I\u2019d be more ok with just giving the party a flat 2000xp after every session, or something like that, instead of a \u201cstory\u201d award. It removes free will from the players and forces them to complete an adventure in a certain way. If you squint, then Gold=XP does the same thing. Or, rather,?=XP generally results in the play style being optimized to get the XP, and thus the party will do whatever. I prefer a free will game.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a part of this adventure that I can\u2019t decide on. It goes beyond the generic encounters and dull descriptions of the various rooms. You track some goblins back to their lair\/hideout. You come out in the \u201cthrone\u201d room. There\u2019s a door. Goblins come through the door. The DM is instructed to make variable number of goblins come through it, in order to heighten tension and give a moment of drama. It is absolutely undeniable that barricading a door, goblins smashing in to it, daggers poking through it, etc, would be a great moment of drama in a game. But FORCING that situation is lame as fuck, especially with a \u201cjust keep sending in goblins to heighten the tensions\u201d advice statement. Uncool. If it happens, great. If you want to put 10 goblins outside in the guardroom and have them rush in, loudly, after three rounds that the players hear, great. But forcing the situation is un cool advice. D&D absolutely does NOT need more shitty DM advice.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, this is just another generic D&D adventure. There\u2019s little soul to it, even if you accept the high fantasy premise.<\/p>\n

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

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/188652\/P1-Black-Orc-Down?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kieran Brannan Point Pony Basic D&D Levels 1-3 Nobody else wanted to take on a job of helping out an orc, but if their gold is good then who cares \u2026 right? Black Orc Down puts the party on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3391,"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-3392","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\/bod.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392","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=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5778,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions\/5778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}