{"id":3937,"date":"2017-12-02T07:15:43","date_gmt":"2017-12-02T12:15:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3937"},"modified":"2017-11-27T07:36:44","modified_gmt":"2017-11-27T12:36:44","slug":"53-5th-edition-funnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=3937","title":{"rendered":"(53) 5th Edition Funnel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Ken Sturgis
\nTen Red Crows Place
\n5e
\n0-Level<\/p>\n

Trouble at the door. Something in town is dangerously wrong, and there is no one to bail you out. The grave quest falls to you and your friends. You are under-equipped, under-prepared, and in all likelihood, you are not coming back. There is a second of hesitation but then you grab your gear and head out the door. Adventurers are made, not born.<\/p>\n

This is a 22 page adventure, about fifteen of which are zero-level character creation rules for fifth edition and the last six or so being a small \u201cadventure\u201d for a bunch of zero-levels. The zero-level rules are pretty much a clone of the DCC rules. The adventure is simple and overly non-specific.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll cover the zero-level rules briefly: they are pretty close to the DCC rules, including a profession, starting gear, and multiple characters per player. It does go over the advantages of zero-level play, the idea that you form your character through play instead of \u201cby build.\u201d Truer words are hard to find. There\u2019s a small section as well on raising your zero\u2019s to level one. If you want zero-level & funnel rules, and don\u2019t have DCC, then this does a decent job of providing the basics in a terse format.<\/p>\n

The adventure, proper, is just the usual dreck. Bandits are burning the grain storage. And then while on your way to the evil lords manor, you encounter some kobolds. At the manor you can sneak in or knock on the front door. Both probably lead to one or two fights in the manor. <\/p>\n

The major issue I have is with the abstraction. The guys burning the grainery are bandits. But they aren\u2019t. They are lords men, and have been cowing the town for awhile. 5e has monsters called \u201cbandits\u201d and it\u2019s not unusual for an adventure to say something like \u201cfor the kingsguard, use the stats for bandit.\u201d Fine, no problem, but in this adventure the use of bandit if reinforced over and over in the text to the point where the original intent of the dudes, a kind of \u201cthe lord mayors guards\u201d is lost. Further abstraction comes in the form of \u201cone of the carries a small token of the lord’s authority\u201d thereby indicating they operate on his behalf. What\u2019s the point of saying \u201ca small token \u2026\u201d? How about a scroll ordering them to do it that ends with \u201cHAIL TIAMAT!\u201d, or the head of the village headman, or something else? Why abstract it \u201csome token \u2026\u201d instead of just adding color by saying what it is? This is an EXCELLENT example of how man adventures generalize and abstract and thereby, through the lack of specificity, lose the ability to inspire the DM. This happens over and over again. \u201cA black book that discusses evil artifacts.\u201d and \u201can evil goblet.\u201d Ug! Name them! Tobin’s Spirit Guide! Something else, anything else! \u201cThe black goblet of St Bart the Heathen Betrayer.\u201d See, now it\u2019s fun! Be specific! The final rub is probably the fact that the party members could \u201cfall under the influence of the goblet\u201d, which is TOTALLY not specified. Look, I don\u2019t need a page, but a couple of sentences on this would be great. They get a taste for blood, or something. ANYTHING. The entire adventure is like this.
\nFinally, the adventure has read-aloud and that text is \u2026 weird. It seems more formatted to \u201cvisiting heroes\u201d then it is the ad-hoc mob of locals that is implied in the text. This happens over and over again in the read-aloud.<\/p>\n

It DOES provide for sneaking past a wilderness encounter, and even sneaking in to the lord manor, both of which are good design decisions. It\u2019s still boring and abstracted, but at least its not exactly a railroad.<\/p>\n

This just doesn\u2019t work for me. The DCC zero-level stuff has your mob of morons usually going after something larger than life. The cosmic nature of it tends to add an air to the adventure and a great vibe. This, the mundanity of it, just seems \u2026 I don\u2019t know. Boring.<\/p>\n

This is PWYW at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $5. The preview is a 22-page flip-book, too small to read. Unlucky. \ud83d\ude41https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/186076\/Fifth-Edition-Funnel?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ken Sturgis Ten Red Crows Place 5e 0-Level Trouble at the door. Something in town is dangerously wrong, and there is no one to bail you out. The grave quest falls to you and your friends. You are under-equipped, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3929,"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-3937","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\/11\/5efun.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937","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=3937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3938,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3937\/revisions\/3938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}