{"id":3674,"date":"2017-06-26T07:16:01","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T11:16:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3674"},"modified":"2019-03-13T08:43:51","modified_gmt":"2019-03-13T12:43:51","slug":"perils-of-the-sunken-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3674","title":{"rendered":"Perils of the Sunken City"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Jon Marr
\nPurple Sorcerer Games
\nDungeon Crawl Classics
\nLevel 0 Funnel<\/p>\n

The Great City is old and faded, a pale reflection of its former glory. Life is a challenge for most, but for the weak and unconnected, the city is a place of unrelenting hardship harboring neither hope nor promise of escape. With one exception: the Sunken City. Most find death in the crumbling ruins that stretch beyond sight into the mists; once rich districts now claimed by swamp and dark denizens. But for the desperate few, the ruins offer treasures the Great City denies them: fortune, glory, and a fighting chance!<\/p>\n

This seventeen page funnel has about thirteen to twenty encounters areas and a small starting locale. It has a writing style that, while not terse, does an excellent job of communicating the flavor of the encounter. This is combined with a layout style that makes the mechanics of areas easy to find. There\u2019s a good mix of encounter types, from mundane to undead to weird, with a couple of the encounters being truly excellent pieces of design. I dub thee \u201cEasy to Run!\u201d \u2026 if a bit bland in some of the corners.<\/p>\n

The publisher’s blurb does a decent job of introducing the scene: a great city, overtaken by the swamp. On it\u2019s edge is a small settlement from which scum (IE: adventurers) set forth. Condemned criminals seeking pardon, apprentices, etc, all form up small bands and head off. It\u2019s an environment that appeals to me, the small insular murder hobo community with its own culture. Purple Jon does a good job here of communicating the culture of the place and it\u2019s the first example of a descriptive style that\u2019s rare \u2026 and very good.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m fond of quoting a section from Spawning Grounds of the Crab-Men, a room that has an ld retired hill giant named Old Bay. He\u2019ll pay for dead crabs and his cave smells of butter. The room is a couple of paragraphs long but if you read it ONCE then you\u2019ve got the vibe and can run it from memory. It\u2019s sticky. I talk a lot about terseness in descriptive style, all for the purpose of helping the DM run the thing at the table. The ying to that yang is sticky. You don\u2019t have to be terse if you can be sticky. That\u2019s dangerous territory though since EVERYTHING is likely to be sticky to the designer. But when it happens it\u2019s great to behold. This adventure is sticky.<\/p>\n

The little outpost of murder hobos can be read once. The little section on the approach to the sunken city, with six or seven locales, can be read once. The four or so outside encounters can be read once. The main aboveground encounter can be read once. It all stays with you, at least enough so that when you look at the map you can recall it. This is all supported by the layout and formatting which makes it easy to find the mechanical bits. \u201cOh yeah, that\u2019s the room with the tentacles that do weird stuff \u2026 \u201c and in the text the bullet format and bolding makes finding that \u201cweird stuff\u201d trivial to locate. The writing did an excellent job of giving me the vibe while the layout & formatting did an excellent job of making the mechanics & specifics easy to find. IE: It supported the DM, exactly what it\u2019s supposed to do.<\/p>\n

I want to focus on one encounter as an example of good encounter design. It\u2019s one of the best in the adventure and I think many could learn from it. There\u2019s a grotto underground. The witter glitters with glowing scarlet crayfish (window dressing.) There\u2019s an island out in the middle \u2026 with something sparkling on it. You see a massive shadow swim under the water. TEXTBOOK tease. Everybody, from the DM to the players, knows that fucking water is a deathtrap \u2026 and yet \u2026 what\u2019s that sparkle? It\u2019s the kind of shit that makes players eyes light up. Wacky plans ensue. D&D is played. The treasure is a real treasure, not a rip off DM screw job. There are some things around \u2026 stalactites, giant braziers that could be boats \u2026 This is GREAT design and, again, once read it stays you and the mechanics of the treasure and monster and so on are easy to pull out of the (column) of text.<\/p>\n

That room does something else, it provides some unexplained stuff, a mystery, about the monster. This happens routinely in the adventure; things are introduced that have a mystery to them. A giant \u2018Warden\u2019 who stalks the entry. A demon in a pillar that teleports. It\u2019s not missing information, its writing in such a way that DOESN’T explain, but at best just hints at, letting the DM run with things and expand as need be. This is the kind of writing that fires the imagination.<\/p>\n

The maps are clear with just enough art to contribute to helping the DM recall the rooms. There\u2019s even a cross-section or two to help the DM understand some elevation elements \u2026 Excellent! But, alas, all is not well in Sunken City-ville.<\/p>\n

Some of the encounters are a bit \u2026 mundane. Possemmen are great! Armadillo-cros are great! Yet Another Skeleton Encounter is less than stellar, as is \u201cGeneric Slime creatures.\u201d This isn\u2019t much of a condemnatio; most adventures have some rooms that are weaker than others. It\u2019s just that the more mundane rooms could have been kicked up a bit, perhaps with more environmental\/room details to make the encounters a bit more fun. There\u2019s also a bit of a screw-job encounter, an arena the characters are forced in to and then a dungeon\/hole they must enter to escape the certain death in it. It\u2019s got a lot going on in it, with lightning walls, ghosts, spikes, death traps, and so on, but it FEELS forced. DCC published adventures can tend to the linear side of the spectrum but generally don\u2019t feel forced. The arena encounter in this does.<\/p>\n

This is $5 ar DriveThru. The preview is four pages and shows off the writing for the like murder bobo-ville and the general locales on the way to the sunken city. It does a good job showing off the \u201csticky\u201d writing style. I challenge you to read those four pages and then look at the map and start running the game in your head. Should be trivial. It\u2019s a travesty it took me this long to review a Purple Sorcerer adventure.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/102457\/Perils-of-the-Sunken-City-DCC-RPG?affiliate_id=1892600<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jon Marr Purple Sorcerer Games Dungeon Crawl Classics Level 0 Funnel The Great City is old and faded, a pale reflection of its former glory. Life is a challenge for most, but for the weak and unconnected, the city … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-0","category-no-regerts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/pss.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674","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=3674"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5875,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3674\/revisions\/5875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}