{"id":4019,"date":"2018-01-17T07:14:01","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T12:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4019"},"modified":"2018-01-09T09:36:25","modified_gmt":"2018-01-09T14:36:25","slug":"the-oracle-at-gula","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4019","title":{"rendered":"The Oracle at Gula"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Joseph A. Mohr
\nOld School Role Playing
\nOSRIC
\nLevels 10-13<\/p>\n

The King of Zanzia is greatly concerned about the troubles in his land and he summons the greatest adventurers that he can find to take a perilous journey to see the Oracle at the Temple of Gula to find answers to what ails the land.<\/p>\n

This thirty page adventure has about sixteen or so rooms in a two level temple in the mountains, with the actual adventure text taking up about nine pages, once you’re past the \u201cgetting-there wandering monsters.\u201d You\u2019re trying to get to an oracle to ask some questions. Linear dungeon, straight-up \u201cchallenges\u201d and fights in every room, and muddled text results in something atrocious. (Also, I had to spell atrocious three times to get it right.)<\/p>\n

Backstory: four or five pages with the hook mixed in. IE: the worst sort of backstory, forcing you to read it so you can run the adventure. King Dipshit think something is up in his kingdom, shit been going down a lot lately, and wants you to go ask the oracle whats up. It\u2019s a two week journey on horseback through the mountains, and you get a decent wandering monster table, with several of the encounters described. I like wanderers that have more than just a name, but the three or four paragraphs that each get here is a bit much. A couple of sentences, to set a scene and get the DM\u2019s juices going, is really all that\u2019s needed. Otherwise you\u2019re facing the same issues that you have in long encounter descriptions: fighting the text to find the important bits. And for all the bullshit you go through you \u2026 a 20 acre plot. That\u2019s what, one step above serf?<\/p>\n

The maps are small and hard to read. DON\u2019T USE FUCKING A CURSIVE FONT. Don\u2019t use it in on your map and don\u2019t use it in your adventure text. It\u2019s fucking impossible to read. And the grid lines on the map are in a heavy blue, obfuscating the numbers and just lending the entire thing an air of \u201coh god, why the fuck am I even trying to read this.\u201d Level one is a big open room while level two is COMPLETELY linear. One room after the other connected by a line. Not. Good.
\nRoome one of the temple complex. The statue blocking the door asks you \u201cWhat do you seek?\u201d If you answer knowledge it moves. Any other answer has some stone golems animating to attack you. Oh, and if you answer knowledge then then the statue says \u201cthen face my challenge to prove your worth\u201d and the same enemies attack. So nothing you do matters.<\/p>\n

Walk around a big room, proving your worth, repeatedly, until you face all of the challenges, and then a door appears, allowing access to level two. Level two is a linear map. You go in a room, right a monster, etc, and then go to the next room to repeat. This is not adventuring.<\/p>\n

Why you would want to suffer through this is beyond me.<\/p>\n

This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and all you get to see is backstory. Joy.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/229864\/The-Oracle-At-Gula?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n

mother fucker, and now my copy\/paste isn’t preserving para breaks between google docs and wordpress. Grrr…..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joseph A. Mohr Old School Role Playing OSRIC Levels 10-13 The King of Zanzia is greatly concerned about the troubles in his land and he summons the greatest adventurers that he can find to take a perilous journey to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4018,"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-4019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/ogula.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019","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=4019"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4020,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4019\/revisions\/4020"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}