{"id":3763,"date":"2017-08-09T07:15:34","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T11:15:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3763"},"modified":"2019-01-04T11:40:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T16:40:43","slug":"the-ruined-tower-giant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3763","title":{"rendered":"The Ruined Tower Giant"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy (Uncredited)
\nUnbalanced Dice Games
\nLabyrinth Lord
\nMid-Level<\/p>\n

The party must go to the tower the giant took with him when he ran away. Something is bugging the Duke and his Necromancer thinks it has to do with the tower. The tower must be explored and the purgative put in every room. Will they have an easy time doing this? Of course not. The tower is dangerous but someone else has taken residence up very close to it. Only by entering the tower will they find out who that is\u2026<\/p>\n

!!!I DON\u2019T KNOW!!!<\/p>\n

This is a 43 page six-level dungeon with about 65 rooms in it. I don\u2019t know how to summarize it. The rooms feel random, but connected by an overall theme. It\u2019s like junior high kid wrote a D&D adventure \u2026 and english wasn\u2019t their first language but they were fluent in it but they were raised in a skinner box with only the LabLord rules. It\u2019s all basic and to the point, simplistic almost to the point of being iconic. This is BARE BONES \u2026 but not minimally keyed. It\u2019s somehow one step above that.<\/p>\n

After I bought this and cracked it I had a sudden realization: I had seen this style before. Looking back it became clear: I had no fucking idea what was up with the previous product I reviewed and I have no idea what is up with this one.<\/p>\n

Nearby is part of a tower and attached to it is a giant that has been turned to stone. You\u2019re hired to go put some magic salt in every room in order to put to rest the spirit haunting the Duke every night. The tower has three levels and the giant has been hollowed out in to three levels also. The magic salt thing is an interesting way to get the party in to every room and to explore all levels\/rooms. It also has the kind of old timey folklore vibe that I groove on.<\/p>\n

The maps are pretty good, with decent looping and variety of design. The treasure seems light with not nearly enough to justify going in to the place. But, really, the \u201chighlight\u201d here are the encounters. One room has two shovels sticking out of the ground, forming a V. WTF is up with that, you ay ask. I have no idea. You know as much as I. It\u2019s the \u201cshovel themed\u201d area, I guess, cause there\u2019s a zombie digging a hole in another room nearby, and another that like to lie in the holes he\u2019s digging to rest. And another room with a bunch of buried bodies in it with a skeletons hand sticking \u201cpartway out of the ground.\u201d One room in the giant has some pink fluid oozing out of it, the giant is still alive and begs you to restore him! Another has a giant stone thumb sticking through the towers wall with a magic sword sticking in it. (Sword, is explicitly stated, has no discernable effects.) The rooms go on and on like this. Almost every one is short.<\/p>\n

There is some kind of intelligent hand massaging things here, but the entire thing is unlike almost anything I\u2019ve seen before. The encounters are \u2026 simple, but with detail like an icepick. It\u2019s almost like a series of minimally keyed rooms, loosely connected, but with detail then added that is EXACTLY what is needed to bump it up a notch in to \u201cterse & interesting\u201d territory. Your mind races with what is going on. Room three on the top level of the tower has No Ceiling, according to room name: \u201cThis area no longer have a ceiling. The sky is visible. Anyone who climbs upwards will be standing on top of the tower. From there they can see everything for a long distance.\u201d<\/p>\n

This thing is creative. The zombie laying down in the grave it is digging. The giant still living. The fact that the giant (a folklore giant who just wanted something to eat) has RUN AWAY WITH THE TOWER. Almost all of the writing is direct and to the point.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s something WRONG with it though, beyond the light to non-existent treasure. The rooms, while lightly themed, generally creative, and connected to each other (recall all the shovel rooms?) are somehow lacking. It doesn\u2019t feel like a cohesive whole.<\/p>\n

Imagine I created a random dungeon from a generator. Then I went through and minimally expanded the rooms a bit, and themed them a bit, to turn the randomness in to a decent little room idea. That\u2019s what this thing feels like, this sort of vibe of things being random or unconnected or somehow off center.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard to recommend this. As minimall keyed things go it\u2019s a decent endeavor with room creativity and variety that\u2019s a cut above. The minimal keying makes it pretty terse and easier to run than most adventures. Combined, they make this better than the dreck of most adventures. It doesn\u2019t all click together though and your happiness with it probably depends on your views of minimally keying.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth checking out one of these Unbalanced Dice Games adventures, just to get a toehold on the design behind it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s $4 on DriveThru. The preview is six pages and tells you almost nothing about what is inside. The only \u201creal\u201d adventure page is the background, which is not really representative. Which is too bad. I Wish ONE of the real room pages was present in one of these so people would think I\u2019m not crazy as I struggle to describe the style.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/213348\/The-Ruined-Tower-Giant-An-OSR-Adventure?affiliate_id=1892600<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By (Uncredited) Unbalanced Dice Games Labyrinth Lord Mid-Level The party must go to the tower the giant took with him when he ran away. Something is bugging the Duke and his Necromancer thinks it has to do with the tower. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3761,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-5","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/rtg.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763","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=3763"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4762,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3763\/revisions\/4762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}