{"id":4000,"date":"2018-01-03T07:18:24","date_gmt":"2018-01-03T12:18:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4000"},"modified":"2018-01-02T07:34:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T12:34:13","slug":"caverns-of-the-fish-folk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4000","title":{"rendered":"Caverns of the Fish-folk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Casey Hoekstra
\nSelf Published
\nOSR\/S&W\/DCC? Probably 5e
\nLevels 1-3<\/p>\n

The players begin by meeting Tomen, a shipwrecked halfling, whose brother has been abducted by Kuo-Toa living off the coast. Tomen washed ashore on this forlorn coast thirteen years ago, and will do anything to escape, but first he must save Silvus, his younger brother, from the sacrificial fanaticism of the fish-folk. In addition, Kertol, Prince of the sprites has a bone to pick with the halfling brothers over the destruction of his summer court.<\/p>\n

This fifteen page adventure details nine rooms in a kua-toa cavern. A real shit show of an adventure, it is as close to incomprehensible as I\u2019ve ever seen, rivaling the efforts of the dear departed Injured Mage of old. Single column, no stats, confusing as fuck map, linear combat crap fests \u2026 everything present but Yul Brynner. Earner of a coveted Bryce Lynch \u2018Worst EVAR\u2019 award.<\/p>\n

I bought this because the DriveThru page said S&W, OSR, DCC. The adventure proper doesn\u2019t say what system it is for, but I suspect it\u2019s 5e \u2026 there\u2019s no evidence of OSR type stats while it does have ascending AC and DC checks. Bryce doesn\u2019t like it when he feels like he\u2019s been misled in to buying something. It brings back the trauma of Castle Greyhawk. What kind of person would do that to me, Casey? Do I not suffer enough, universe? Everything falling apart around me, grinding my nose in to the fact that I am powerless, I turn to D&D for a spark of joy and am confronted with this thing. Why, Casey? Why?<\/p>\n

Some halfling shit lives in a hut on the beach. His brother has gone missing ad he\u2019s a piece of shit, leading us to that famous situation: fight for the hook. The little fuck needs the party to do something for him. The DM needs the players to take the hook and to go on the adventure so we can all play D&D tonight And yet our designer has made the halfing an unlikable fellow who you have to convince to talk to you and receive the hook. This is the opposite of good design. You want the players excited about going on the adventure. You want them motivated. Putting them through a grinder just to start play puts everyone in a bad mood. I\u2019d just kill the little fuck and move on with my adventuring life. Even the more traditional definitions of HERO, if that’s your play style, doesn\u2019t mean DOORMAT. This is nothing more than the DM torturing the players and abusing the social contract of accepting the hook. <\/p>\n

It is, at this point, that an optional encounter shows up, the best part of the adventure. A noble delegation of sprites show up, demanding that the halfling move. Seems he\u2019s been cutting down their forest and devastating the communities of sprites living in the trees. The well mannered and noble sprites send a delegation to present their demands. They are about one million times more likable than the halfling \u2026 again suggesting that the dude should just be killed. \u201cBut I\u2019m attached to my little beach hut!\u201d Great, he\u2019s also a fucking whiner. Anyway, the sprites are presented as the bad guys, but a more nuanced interpretation would make this a decent encounter. Social encounters add life to an adventure, they present choices.<\/p>\n

Anyway, the kua-toa caverns are literally 45 feet from the halflings hut. No fucking shit your brother got kidnapped. The map of the caverns is hand drawn. I usually like that, but this one is a blurry confusing mess that also has no room numbers on it. You can\u2019t tell what connects to what of which room is which. That whole \u201cmake life easier on the DM\u201d thing that I push? FAIL.<\/p>\n

The fish-men have no order of battle, they just wait in their rooms to die. The monsters have no stats presented, just references to page number in a monster manual \u2026 I guess the 5e one? Again, not making life easier for the DM. It\u2019s all straight up combat encounters with nothing much interesting going on in the rooms. And since when did kua-toa and a giant octopus become a first level encounter? I know unbalanced encounters and \u201crun away\u201d are time honored OSR traditions, but, still, there should be SOME hand waving to character level. \u201cWelcome to D&D, you are all first level. The dungeon we will be playing tonight is full of vampire lords and balrogs. It\u2019s all combat and STFU its the adventure we\u2019re playing tonight.\u201d Wow. Fun times. The room descriptions\/text are nigh incomprehensible. <\/p>\n

This is $10 at DriveThru. Ten fucking dollars for a single column crap fest. The preview doesn\u2019t really show you anything. You DO get to see the sprite encounter, on the last page of the preview, that\u2019s worth checking out. The rest is just overview and wall of stat bloat text.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/228321\/Caverns-of-the-FishFolk?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n

Happy fucking new year!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Casey Hoekstra Self Published OSR\/S&W\/DCC? Probably 5e Levels 1-3 The players begin by meeting Tomen, a shipwrecked halfling, whose brother has been abducted by Kuo-Toa living off the coast. Tomen washed ashore on this forlorn coast thirteen years ago, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-worst-evar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/fishf.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000","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=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4001,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions\/4001"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}