{"id":3563,"date":"2017-04-15T07:15:57","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T11:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3563"},"modified":"2017-04-05T09:36:47","modified_gmt":"2017-04-05T13:36:47","slug":"dungeon-magazine-130","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3563","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #130"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nWithin the Circle
\nBy Sam Brown
\nLevel 1<\/p>\n

This short little adventure has a nice introduction and wilderness section combined with a rather disappointing little twelve room dungeon at the end. It\u2019s meant to kick off a Yuan-ti themed campaign, I believe. The party, retainers of a Baron, have dinner with a man from a remote village. He tells of the village being poisoned, livestock killed, crops in disrepair, all from a goblin demanding tribute. Later, in private, the Baron tells the party the real mission: that he wants them to check out a depot nearby that he was tasked with burning down when young. He questions now, that he is wiser, how he has risen in power, and why. The villagers act like villagers, the goblin is dealt with, briefly, and information on his lair is the same as the depot, which can be learned from him or fro some ambushing lizardmen, who retreat in deference when they learn they made a mistake ambushing the party. <\/p>\n

Up until this point the adventure is pretty good by Dungeon standards. Lots of words, and read-aloud, but the motivations make sense and nothing is really forced. Parts of what going on could have been emphasized more, with trivia deemphasized, but it\u2019s there, somewhere in the text \u2026 and its not as bad as the usual Dungeon fair in terms of wordiness. It\u2019s a nice little thing that doesn\u2019t really force the players in to anything, after the initial hook .. and I can even forgive that seeing as this is meant to be a campaign kickoff. <\/p>\n

The goblin lair has bad read-aloud and is more confusing than normal. It\u2019s mostly linear, with a lot of background and history clogging up the text. In one room, the main entrance, there\u2019s a trap with a bag of giant centipedes. I still have no idea which door, or side of the door, that trap is on. Most of the rooms FEEL boring, even though there are one or two goblins with some motivations other than \u201cKILL!\u201d A matron protects the young with a spear, warding the party away but not attacking until she is. Another goblin spies behind a table and then tries to run away. Again, very relatable motivations. The rooms, beyond the goblins, are just not very interesting. There IS a nicely integrated trap that is not meant to be a trap, and several clues as to what is going on. <\/p>\n

Its\u2019 decent, especially by Dungeon standards. It reminds me of something out of those more realistic settings, like Harn or the like, but with more monsters. <\/p>\n

The Palace of Plenty
\nBy Tito Leati
\nLevel 10<\/p>\n

This is an Oriental Adventures themed adventure, that seems to be derived from watching too many 1940\u2019s and 50\u2019s Japanese ghost story movies. Vague hooks and no wilderness journey has you in a legendary ruined paradise city. Which takes a DC 10 roll to know where it is. If you fail, there\u2019s a map in a library. The icy ruined city is large and ruined and very sparsely keyed. After wandering about and finally figuring out where you go you get to a non-ruined place, through white fluttering butterflies, which has mostly empty rooms. This place has such exciting encounters as \u201cSentry Box: The entry box is unremarkable.\u201d The whole thing is \u201cicy ruined village theme and then ghost village theme\u201d all with that sort haunting quietness that comes from older Japanese horror movies. It gives it a very \u201cstory game\u201d feel. It\u2019s also nigh incomprehensible as an adventure. Props for taking a chance. It was your editor’s job to tell you it didn\u2019t work so well. A STRONG edit may give you a Mountain Witch-like adventure. It\u2019s just trying too hard with too many words to be as effective as, say, Inn of Forgotten Heroes \u2026 hence the need for an edit.<\/p>\n

The Spire of Long Shadows
\nBy Jesse Decker
\nLevel 13<\/p>\n

Another in the Age of Worms adventure path. Get out your lozenges, this one is the exposition entry! Miles upon miles of read-aloud in order to relate reams of backstory to the party, either through a sage they meet or through visions they have. It starts with a meaningless combat right out of the bullshit \u201chave a quick first encounter so the party can get some dice rolling\u201d advice column. It then passes to a small city where the party cool their heels a bit, and then a visit to the sage who talks at them for hours (Real time.) teleport to a far away land has the party at the site of where Kyuss ascended to godhood, and a pyramid temple full of kyuss worms and room after room of guardians. These are spaced out with visions the party has about Kyuss and the prophecy of his return. There are about A MILLION of pages before you get to the temple. The rooms embed history \u2026 in a bad way. \u201cThis room represented Kyuss\u2019 master over death \u2026\u201d, or \u201cthe stairs were destroyed in year blah blah blah by blah blah blah.\u201d Meaningless trivia that does not contribute to the adventure. This \u201cadventure\u201d is just an excuse to talk at the party with monologues and put in some combats with worm-themed NPC\u2019s. Boring.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Within the Circle By Sam Brown Level 1 This short little adventure has a nice introduction and wilderness section combined with a rather disappointing little twelve room dungeon at the end. It\u2019s meant to kick off a Yuan-ti themed campaign, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3559,"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":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeon-magazine","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/d130.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563","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=3563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3564,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3563\/revisions\/3564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}