{"id":3572,"date":"2017-04-22T07:18:26","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T11:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3572"},"modified":"2017-04-12T09:29:14","modified_gmt":"2017-04-12T13:29:14","slug":"dungeon-magazine-131","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3572","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #131"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Beasts of Aulbesmil
\nBy Skip WIlliams
\nLevel 3<\/p>\n

Nice to see Dungeon back in the business of publishing crap. You\u2019re in a village for some lame pretext (an old friend is gone. The church has asked you to investigate \u2026 or the baron hires you to find his kidnapped son because his men might be recognized, which is a decent hook.) People have disappeared. Everyone thinks the miller is evil and is behind things. If you go to the mill you are attacked by the evil wererat miller and his thugs. Orcs in the barons hunting cabin are in league with the miller and hold the son. So you show up, get a miller clue, and confront the bad guy in the first ten minutes? \u201cYou go to the grocery. Everyone gains two levels.\u201d You do, however, get to learn ALL about how the wererat committed his thefts and murders. Useless information. History and backstory are so seldom of use. The fetish around novelization is depressing.<\/p>\n

The Hateful Legacy
\nBy Greg A. Vaughan
\nLevel 12<\/p>\n

This \u2018Lost Valley\u2019 adventure starts with an attack by an awakened dire ape ranger. And that, alone, was enough to let me know how this thing was going to go. A society of warrior ogres guards the entrance in some kind of watchtower at a chokepoint. (Which might actually have been interesting, but I can\u2019t for the fucking life of me decipher the map. I THINK the entrance MIGHT be area 7, but that doesn\u2019t make sense either \u2026 Anyway, it has two more set pieces after the first two and then you get to pick up a bunch of coins in treasure. Joy. The whole transition from adventure and wonder to set-pieces with columns of pages of tactics has been more than a little disappointing for me. The mania to constrain the DM with rules was not a good path.<\/p>\n

The Prince of Redhand
\nBy Jesse Decker
\nLevel 15<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s the eighth installment of Age of Worms. Only four more after this. This is meant to be a social adventure. You need to talk to an elf, and she lives in a bandit town. Once there your only opportunity to talk to her is at a dinner banquet. There is a small dragon lair some Ebon Triad nonsense to go kill, if the players insist on stabbing someone who\u2019s not a commoner. Rather than integrating the social aspects in the adventure, or integrating them in to other episodes, they instead have \u201cthe musical episode\u201d; disappointing. Getting through the front gate takes a page of text to say nothing important. One event is \u201cyou roll some dice and regardless of the results you get an invitation to the banquet.\u201d Another one is \u201cyou go to the elf house and get turned away at the door.\u201d Maybe six \u201cevents\u201d before the banquet and maybe as many at the banquet proper. The banquet has a host of NPC\u2019s, with appearances, personalities, goals and so on, but it\u2019s all presented in giant text form \u2026 meaning you\u2019ll need to take copious notes to run it. Tables. USE. A. FUCKING. TABLE. TO. SUMMARIZE. Ug. Anyway, the events are longer than they need to be, of course, and this being 3e they amount to little more than some skill rolls. That\u2019s too bad. The end result is that the elf chick agrees to talk to yu in a couple of days \u2026 the next episode. The events here are little more than a railroad, both before and during the party. That\u2019s too bad. There\u2019s a nugget of interesting adventure here, with a social dinner party and wacky nobles from the capitol \u2026 fodder for a 1000 LARPs, but it’s awkward to run. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Beasts of Aulbesmil By Skip WIlliams Level 3 Nice to see Dungeon back in the business of publishing crap. You\u2019re in a village for some lame pretext (an old friend is gone. The church has asked you to investigate … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3572","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\/d131.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572","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=3572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3573,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3572\/revisions\/3573"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}