{"id":3721,"date":"2017-07-17T07:55:28","date_gmt":"2017-07-17T11:55:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3721"},"modified":"2017-07-17T07:42:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T11:42:53","slug":"halls-of-the-dwarf-lord","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3721","title":{"rendered":"10’+1 – Halls of the Dwarf Lord"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Another double shot this Monday morning. We’re trying to figure out how to make this work.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Review 1 – Bryce Lynch<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Stephen Grodzicki
\n$1 Adventure Frameworks
\nLow Fantasy Gaming
\nMid\/high Levels (8?)3d6 7hd cyclops, 5hd boss<\/p>\n

This is a ten-ish page adventure with a short overland and one level dwarf hold with about fifteen rooms. It touts itself as a framework to run a sandbox, and is a freebie from a Patreon site. The adventure tries hard and does several things very well, just missing the mark in several areas. With a little more focus this could be that rarest of things: a series that is good.<\/p>\n

Woodcutters are seeing small woodland creature skeletons walking about in a cursed wood and want you to check it out. There\u2019s a short overland adventure with a great wandering table that gets you to a small abandoned fortress on a cliff. Inside you find some cyclops and a crazed wight.<\/p>\n

This is a good place to talk about the wanderers, both in the dungeon and the wilderness. Everyone is DOING something, and I can\u2019t tell you how happy I am to see this. It\u2019s not just a garbage encounter table copied from a book, but just a little more is added. Just about one sentence more. Just one, and it adds so much. Skeletons \u201clooking for humans to kill and return to their master for animating.\u201d Or cyclops \u201creturning from a raid carrying sheep and children in heavy nets, for eating.\u201d Giants rates \u201cbiting a chunk out of a person and then fleeing in to the undergrowth.\u201d These are great. They ARE little frameworks that can be built upon, exactly what a good published wanderer encounter should be. It turns \u201cskeletons\u201d in to something much more, likewise rats and cyclops. THAT\u2019S show you write an encounter. They are dynamic, doing something. It\u2019s not loaded up with text. There\u2019s not much useless detail. It\u2019s focused. It knows what it\u2019s doing. It\u2019s stabbing the DM with an icepick of an idea in the brain where it can flower. As soon as I read the cyclops entry I\u2019m thinking \u201cthe cyclops are singing and joking, happy, while the sheep bleet and kids cry and scream and the cyclops smack them.\u201d That\u2019s what you want, JUST enough from the designer to get your brain kicked in to gear and expanding it. Evocative and terse. More IS less, it hides the evocative and forces the DM to dig for the encounter.<\/p>\n

The dungeon, proper, is at its best when its following this formula and at its worst when it is padding things out and dwelling on trivia. \u201cThis hallway is 20 ft wide and 30 ft long. Corridors branch off to the east and west. A 10 ft wide corridor runs about 100 ft east \u2026 \u201c and so on. This is garbage detail. It\u2019s trivia, duplicating what\u2019s shown on the map and does nothing but clog things up. Likewise a room telling us that a small dias \u201cis where dwarven guards once stood guard.\u201d Well, are the fucking dwarves standing guard there now? No? It\u2019s a cyclops common room? Then why the fuck are you telling me about what USED to be in this room? Look, it’s great if, as the designer, you\u2019ve built this backstory, but you don\u2019t need to vomit it up to the poor DM. I\u2019m desperately scanning text trying to run the room<\/p>\n

But, the adventure has some great things in it. Once room has a pit covered by an iron grate and a winch. Brain Eating ZOmbies are inside, moaning, climbing each other to reach through the bars, thumping their fists and biting the bars. PERFECT! You know what it adds? \u201cReleasing the zombies could be an extraordinary bad idea for any nearby humans (or cyclops.)\u201d GREAT! It\u2019s a thing, it\u2019s interactive, it\u2019s evocative. That\u2019s kind of fucking shit you want in your dungeon. I don\u2019t need to know the wight uses this chamber as a holding pen. It\u2019s obvious. I don\u2019t need the fucking room dimensions. The entire five paragraph description should be shortened to three (one being monster stats) and it would be a lean, mean Dungeons and fucking Dragons Machine!<\/p>\n

But, for every one of those there\u2019s something that doesn\u2019t quite work as well. The cyclops common room has one abused & bitter one that could be a turncoat …but that’s not really likely in a big cyclops common room, is it? The thing isn\u2019t designed for that detail to be useful. Likewise there are two encounters outside, near the entrance to the keep, on a bridge or in a stream\/ravine that feel forced. \u201cGriffins attack when you cross the bridge\u201d and a river monster attacks when you cross the stream. These feel less natural than either the wanderers or the creatures in the keep. More of a \u201cnow is the time when you fight a monster\u201d than a \u201cthere is a monster living here.\u201d There\u2019s also a section where there\u2019s some ancient writing. It you don\u2019t make you check to decode it\/speak the language, then you still get the gist of the message. That\u2019s fucking bullshit. Why fucking bother rolling then? Likewise the mundane treasure is boring abstraction like \u201ctrinkets\u201d, while the magic treasure is boring potions or full of bullshit mechanics. Fuck the \u201cadvantage in all checks to resist fatigue and may invoke a Thunderweave effect once every 1d4 days.\u201d boring Boring BORING. \u201cThe bearer never tires in combat and, once charged with static electricity (every 1d4 days) releases (whatever the thunderweave effect is.) Magic should be wonderful, not reduced to mechanics. I touch roses.<\/p>\n

The map has nice details on it, even if it is a bit cramped. The challenge level is all over the place, with a room full of 7HD cyclops and a boss monster that\u2019s 5 HD, zombies, skeletons, and a 10HD river monster \u2026 I\u2019m just guessing at level 8.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a decent effort and I think the designer is close. More focus, more evocative, more creativity (no, not every fucking room needs to be a set piece) and this could be a really nice series.<\/p>\n

This is currently free, as an example of the designers work on their Patreon page. Check out those wanderer description on page three, or the zombie room (5) on page seven. Or, the absurd amount of text for room one on page five.
\nhttps:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/s\/1xtqfss1mfuc5r4\/%2818%29%20Halls%20of%20the%20Dwarf%20Lord%20%28Parchment%29.pdf?dl=0<\/p>\n

Review A – The Pretty Girl<\/strong><\/p>\n

Halls of the Dwarf Lord
\nBy Stephen Grodzicki
\n$1 Adventure Frameworks
\nLow Fantasy Gaming
\nMid\/high Levels (8?)3d6 7hd cyclops, 5hd boss
\nTotal Score: 15 (out of 22)<\/p>\n

A bread and butter campaign written in the style of a late 2.0 Forgotten Realms Module.. I hope all those references and proper nouns show up in other modules.. otherwise it’s a bit silly to behave as if ~made up person~ has significance either within the module itself or outside. If I am expected to care that the famed hammer likes to be called Sally.. I better get the chance to meet her.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Optimal Applications<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
Novice GM<\/td>\nGood structure and low complexity for someone still developing a personal style and learning rules.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Novice Players<\/td>\nStraight forward situations and combat<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Rating Breakdown<\/strong><\/caption>\n
GM Complexity<\/td>\n5<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Player Amusement<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Graphics<\/td>\n4<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Language<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Maps<\/td>\n2<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

What do the numbers mean?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another double shot this Monday morning. We’re trying to figure out how to make this work.   Review 1 – Bryce Lynch By Stephen Grodzicki $1 Adventure Frameworks Low Fantasy Gaming Mid\/high Levels (8?)3d6 7hd cyclops, 5hd boss This is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3722,"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-3721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/hdl.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721","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=3721"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3730,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3721\/revisions\/3730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}