{"id":4002,"date":"2018-01-08T07:14:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T12:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4002"},"modified":"2018-01-02T07:38:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T12:38:34","slug":"4002","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4002","title":{"rendered":"Reign of Ruin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Skeeter Green & Richard Moore
\nJon Brazer Enterprises
\nS&W (ha!)
\nLevel 6<\/p>\n

Rumors of death move like a plague through the Crannogtowns of the Great Swamp \u2014 of ranger patrols mysteriously disappearing on routine scouting missions, of a winged shadow that blots out the midday sun, and of entire villages slaughtered, their homes left burning and the victims\u2019 flesh melted from their bones. All evidence gathered from the sites of these massacres points to the heart of the Great Swamp, where an ancient and primitive tribe of lizardmen have ruled from an abandoned human temple for centuries on end. The Crannogtowns\u2019 protectors, the Stormhammer Rangers, warn that horrid half-dragon monstrosities still stalk the bogs and travelers would do well to stay away from the inner swamp. Yet the killing and the carnage continue, and the people of the Crannogs plead for heroes to aid them now as they did in days long forgotten. Are you up to the challenge?<\/p>\n

To paraphrase: Stupid, worthless, no good, goddamn, freeloading son of a bitch. Retarded, big mouth, know-it-all, asshole, jerk. “You forgot ugly, lazy and disrespectful.” Yes, yes I did. Thank you for reminding me.<\/p>\n

This 34 page piece of absolute garbage detail a \u201cfive level\u201d temple with about twenty rooms where lairs a black dragon. 5e\/PF conversion piece of shit, wall of text, combat\/set piece fuck fest and historical descriptions all contribute to the most worthless piece of garbage I have reviewed in a long time. Everyone involved should be ashamed. I\u2019m going to try hard to criticize ideas and effort, not the people involved, but fuck, man, how does your life get to the point where you care so little about the crap you put out and attach your name to?<\/p>\n

This little thing is a conversion. How do we know that? Well, there are versions available for 5e, Pathfinder, 13th Age and Swords & Wizardry. But, even if you don\u2019t know that, let me suggest that the presence of monster called a \u201cIxtupi dragonblood brute\u201d is pretty much a dead give away. Conversions don\u2019t have to be bad but almost always are. Different systems tend to have a different vibe to them and its hard to convert that vibe, especially, I would suggest, between something like 13th Age and Swords & Wizardry. There are mechanical aspects as well such as, say, XP. The adventure proudly states that 6 characters should get enough XP to gain two levels, each. A fighter going from level six to eight will require about 100,000xp. For quickness, let\u2019s say it\u2019s 600,000 for a party of six. The dragons hoard contains 10,000gp of treasure, that being the major source of XP for S&W characters. It\u2019s fucking absurd for a S&W character to gain two levels in an adventure. Even simple things like stat conversion can be hard. At one point early on some baddies attack a village. A bunch of 2hd dudes and a couple of 4hd ones. \u201cIts a hard fight\u201d says the adventure, \u201cso four 3hd guards join in to help.\u201d Sixth level S&W characters are badasses. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about S&W shown, the mistake almost every conversion makes. Skeeter did the conversion while Richard was responsible for the bulk of the crapfest, I believe.<\/p>\n

The writing and formatting is fucking atrocious. It starts with a two page backstory. I know I\u2019m being genter about backstory these days but FUCK I hate having this failed novelist shit passed off on me. I don\u2019t know if this is pay per word but it sure as fuck feels that way. Or, worse, maybe a vanity thing with being too attached to your own headspace. Anyway, the sin of backstory is always \u201cDo I have to fucking read your failed novel in order to run this thing?\u201d In this case, yes, you do. The hook is mixed in. The adventure has tendency to suddenly present a place name and start talking about it. You are left wondering how the fuck you got there. Well, gentle reader, it is always the case that it\u2019s mixed in somewhere to the wall of fucking text that comprises the writing. Right in the middle of a page of fucking wall of fucking text will be something saying \u201cthe village of Mistleshit is the next target.\u201d It\u2019s just fucking relentless text. Droning on and on. Burying anything of value in it.<\/p>\n

Ah, and the read-aloud. LONG read alouds. A quarter of half a page of long drawn out droning boring read-aloud, overwrought prose that is worthy of spoon gagging. THREE FUCKING SENTENCES. That\u2019s what you fucking get. THREE. No one fucking cares beyond that. People don\u2019t pay the fuck attention, and for good fucking reason.<\/p>\n

Oh, and our DM text. Full of such wonderful phrases such as \u201cOnce a sacred place of worship.\u201d FUCK YOU. HOW THE FUCK DOES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO ACTUAL FUCKING PLAY? ITS FUCKING PADDING YOU GIT! You\u2019re fucking goal is not to paint a fucking picture russian fucking novel style. It\u2019s to help the fucking DM run the game. Bombarding the DM with useless trivia, like \u201conce a sacred place of worship\u201d does not fucking do that. It does the fucking opposite. It clogs up the text and makes it fucking useless to actually find the meaningful text in the fucking adventure.<\/p>\n

The fucking maps are impossible to read and find exits, etc. The wanderers are just presented on a table \u201c8 itlixy and 2 sorceresses\u201d Ok. And? Doing what? Friendly? Want to talk? The actual fucking encounters are little more than \u201cEnter room. Fight. Next room.\u201d This is a fucking grind not an adventure.<\/p>\n

Look, fuckwitees …er \u2026 I mean \u201cindividuals who produced a fuckwit product\u201d, I applaud the fact you created and printed something. It sucked ass. People telling you otherwise either have no standards or are being polite to you. This thing sucks shit for a living. Keep writing & creating but, for the love of all that is fucking good in life PLEASE do a MODICUM of research on how to format your shit for better comprehension. Start there, and then we can move on to \u201cactually creating good content for an adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

This utter piece of garbage is $10 on DriveThru. Page four of the preview is a great example of literal wall of text you face as a DM. No formatting to help you out. Bolding, clue outline, whitespace \u2026 none of it. Just a wall of fucking text.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/224526\/Deadly-Delves-Reign-of-Ruin-Swords-and-Wizardry?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n

I am fortunes fool.<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Skeeter Green & Richard Moore Jon Brazer Enterprises S&W (ha!) Level 6 Rumors of death move like a plague through the Crannogtowns of the Great Swamp \u2014 of ranger patrols mysteriously disappearing on routine scouting missions, of a winged … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4002","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\/reignruin.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002","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=4002"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4004,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4002\/revisions\/4004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}