{"id":3681,"date":"2017-07-01T07:16:13","date_gmt":"2017-07-01T11:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2017-06-21T10:46:56","modified_gmt":"2017-06-21T14:46:56","slug":"dungeon-magazine-141","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3681","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #141"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nThe Sea Wyvern\u2019s Wake
\nBy Richard Pett
\nLevel 5<\/p>\n

Savage Tide adventure path, part the third: a sea voyage. This installment is hard thing to review. It\u2019s heart is in the right place but it suffers GREATLY from the three-column Dungeon format. Combined with the word-bloat common to Dungeon it makes this thing very hard to run. But \u2026 it has great elements. The party is hired to be \u201cship #2\u201d in a two-ship expedition to a colony on an island and this adventure deals with the voyage. \u201cShip #2\u201d allows for the party to make their own decisions but for there to a lifeline available. Run the ship how you want and if things are too bad then ship 1 is there is bail you out. And, of course, vice versa in certain situations. There\u2019s an allotment of NPC\u2019s to spice things up on board, some generics to die horrible, and some locations to visit along the way. \u201cHey kids, Meteor Crater is right on the road to the Grand Canyon!\u201d Linear, but not exactly a railroad! The NPC\u2019s have decent motivations and are interesting enough to get them involved with the party. As always, they could be organized better for use during play \u2026 a typical failing. But, still, recurring folks on a three-month voyage is a great thing to have! And their detail is PLAY focused, not just generic trivia that will never come up during play. There\u2019s too much detail in place, such a entire column of text on \u201csecuring a vessel\u201d when much less would have sufficed in an adventure that\u2019s a follow on to capturing a vessel. In other places a little more could have been included, such as better help in recruiting crew and provisions in town before the party leaves. Similarly, there\u2019s a small section, a column or less, on ship combat, but it suffers from the Dungeon 3-column text block problem, making it hard to reference during play. There are a few other nits, like a priest who dies a day after getting sick to reveal a slaad \u2026 nice, but if it were dragged out a bit it would be even nicer. Also, a stowaway assassin that takes a DC30 to find if the party searches the ship \u2026 because there\u2019s an event built around them. The players should be REWARDED for thinking of searching the hold, not punished because it’s on the DM\u2019s ToDo list for later. The thing is full of nice little vignettes and encounters on the way to the island. In short, I think it\u2019s a pretty damn good sea\/travel adventure, one of the best I\u2019ve seen. It needs more expansion before town is left, and reference sheets for important things like NPC\u2019s, combat, etc, and a complete rewrite of the encounters to pull out important details \u2026 but it\u2019s heart is in the right place. It just needs a complete reworking to be useful …<\/p>\n

Swords of Dragonlake
\nBy Nicolas Logue
\nLevel 12<\/p>\n

2p backstory
\nHoly fuck, what a mess. This is an investigation in to a missing person \u2026 at a theater. Ug. Fucking Magical RenFaire shit. Anyway, there re about a thousand NPC\u2019s, each of which get almost an entire page to describe them, along with an entire section on Gather Information checks for each one. MASSIVE amounts of text and a unfocused writing style make this one a bear. \u201cIn addition to the dressing rooms, the PC\u2019s may decide to investigate the grid-like iron catwalk and rafters above the stage from which the moving scenery pieces [long list] and heavy sandbag counterweight are suspended.\u201d Yes, Nicolas, they might. Which is why I, the DM, and looking at the \u201cFly Rail and Grid\u201d section of the fucking adventure. This kind of crap just clogs things up. Scene\/Event based and a mass of text make salvaging this one a losing cause. <\/p>\n

Vlindarian\u2019s Vault
\nBy Jonathan M. Richards
\nLevel 18<\/p>\n

Oh man \u2026 can you accept the fact that the city has a storage facility\/warehouse that has a bunch of slaadi employees? If so then do I ever have the Grimtooths adventure for you! You\u2019re pleaded with to rescue a guys mate from a vault where she\u2019s being held captive. There\u2019s some nonsense about them being disguised silver dragons, but that\u2019s irrelevant. This adventure JUMPS in to things immediately. Seriously, the keyed locations start on page 2 and I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve EVER seen a Dungeon backstory\/into that short! And the intro even includes a bullshit plan involving a magical shield and portable hole to smuggle the party inside the storage vault! It\u2019 all feels a little Harry Potter\/Gringotts, with a healthy dose of Grimtooth. Walls of Force that appear and disappear, teleport circles, rolling boulders. And every guard is either a slaad or devil, with the boss being a beholder. The maps a fucking disaster and needs a cross-section to clarify the confusing relationship between the levels and corridors. I\u2019m going to forgive the abstracted treasure because the entire thing is so ridiculous. I love it! No gimping. High level. Absurd enemies and deathtraps! A glorious glorious mess! A little (lot) restatting could make this a fine low-level adventure also. Hard to recommend to seek out, but if you NEED this sort of adventure then this is IT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Sea Wyvern\u2019s Wake By Richard Pett Level 5 Savage Tide adventure path, part the third: a sea voyage. This installment is hard thing to review. It\u2019s heart is in the right place but it suffers GREATLY from the three-column … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3680,"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-3681","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\/06\/d141.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","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=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3682,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/3682"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}