{"id":3787,"date":"2017-08-26T07:20:22","date_gmt":"2017-08-26T11:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3787"},"modified":"2017-08-16T11:21:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-16T15:21:33","slug":"dungeon-magazine-149","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3787","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine #149"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Not as bad as I was expecting for issue 149. Nice ideas, poorly implemented.<\/p>\n

War of the Wielded
\nBy Richard Pett
\nLevel 5<\/p>\n

Well, you don\u2019t see that everyday. I tend to like things stretched to their logical conclusion, or at least I\u2019m morbidly fascinated by it, and this adventure does that. A world with intelligent swords that can ego-overwhelm people? Ok, let\u2019s see where that goes \u2026 Two groups of intelligent swords, with conflicting goals, are engaged in a kind of war. The party stumbles on a dead body and one of the swords. ENcouraged by a magic sword, and told of where to find more, they are encouraged by the sword to go rescue his \u201cfriends\u201d \u2026 the other swords on his side. This leads to a fight in a bathhouse, capturing a rust monster, and destroying all of the magic swords with it. It\u2019s linear, but the setup of magic swords engaged in a \u201cwar\u201d with each other is a good one. You meet someone after the first encounter who wants you to destroy all the swords and it’s simply a given that the party will \u2026 but this comes out of nowhere. There\u2019s no real motivation, horrific acts, etc, to motivate the party to give up a bunch of magic swords. It\u2019s just the next stop on the railroad. It plays out more like a series of set-pieces with token roleplay to tie things together, and that\u2019s never good. There\u2019s a decent idea here; it needs to be given more room to breathe, with fewer descriptions of ordinary rooms. In particular, the hooks appeal to the PLAYERS, but tempting them with magic swords. Nice job that.<\/p>\n

Twisted Night
\nBy Stefan Happ
\nLevel 10<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure about this one. There\u2019s an abandoned village with a mad dude in jail and a boy under a boat, neither of whom know what happened to the villagers. There\u2019s a sullen, forlorn vibe that I can dig. You eventually find out a tree monster signs after dark, luring people to their doom \u2026 which in this case meant slavers. But the slaves are still dying and the only way to save them is killing the plant monster. Good imagery with ogres skinning and hanging meat, the initial village, a drunk satyr, and, of course, the potential for pirate\/slaver allies. It\u2019s also very \u2026 encountery? Ogres in the village. A centaur slaver on a hill. Pirates on the shore. It all just feels like there\u2019s monsters there BECAUSE. Still, nice adventure concept and some good imagery. It\u2019s just needs a rework.<\/p>\n

Enemies of My Enemy
\nBy Wolfgang Baur
\nLevel 19<\/p>\n

Meet Charon and journey the Styx picking up allies to attack Demogorgon. Lots of words. Lots of forced combats and \u201ctesting skills\u201d and meaningless read-aloud. There\u2019s some decent roleplay in this, in negotiating the various creatures\/scenarios of the planes and recruiting demonic allies, but it’s buried in a horrid page count from stat blocks and overworked \u201caren’t I clever!\u201d text. It\u2019s feel formulaic and repetitive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not as bad as I was expecting for issue 149. Nice ideas, poorly implemented. War of the Wielded By Richard Pett Level 5 Well, you don\u2019t see that everyday. I tend to like things stretched to their logical conclusion, or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3784,"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-3787","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\/08\/d149.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787","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=3787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3787\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}