{"id":4068,"date":"2018-02-14T07:15:52","date_gmt":"2018-02-14T12:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4068"},"modified":"2019-01-21T13:08:51","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T18:08:51","slug":"operation-unfathomable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4068","title":{"rendered":"Operation Unfathomable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Jason Sholtis
\nHydra Cooperative
\nS&W
\nLevel 1-<\/p>\n

BEHOLD!!! the Underworld in all its bewildering majesty as titanic Chaos godlings and their unsavory cults make genocidal war upon one another! EXPLOIT!!! a trail of dead horrors
\nsupplied by the recent, doomed expedition of powerful heroes! SEIZE!!! eldritch artifacts and treasures far above your lowly station! PONDER!!! the mind-bending riddles and inscrutable anomalies of reality itself in an overwhelming cascade of cosmic secrets! THRILL!!!as you throw the gauntlet of your life into the smug face of the unknowable and embark upon this OPERATION UNFATHOMABLE!!!<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in LUV! mostly.<\/p>\n

Unfair Advantage! Sholtis writes one of my favorite blogs, The Dungeon Dozen. It\u2019s magnificently creative, when he\u2019s not slacking off and not updating it. No pressure, Spudboy. Also, I tend to prefer the more simplistic & free-flowing forms of D&D, and this falls in to that genre.<\/p>\n

This 110 page adventure contains 22 encounter areas in the cave world beneath your D&D game. Gonzo, fanciful, hyper-realistic, it is one of the most imaginative, and fun, things you will ever run. It also needs better use of bolding to call out important data and make the encounters more scanable, as well as a legible map. Still, it tends to marry the art to the writing to the layout in a way that very adventures do. IE: the art contributed rather than being filler. Easy to recommend.<\/p>\n

The sorcorers-kings son has stolen the null rod from the Tower Impregnable and journeyed underground. The sole survivor of his expedition has returned mad, as has a guard group sent in. Guess what Level 1\u2019s! You\u2019re up!<\/p>\n

What follows is a journey through the underdark unlike those seen before. This is firmly in the Weird side of the D&D spectrum, with little magical ren faire or pseudo-medieval to be found. I fucking love this shit. There\u2019s little to no game balance present, it\u2019s the brave little tailors vs The Strange. At heart, a pretty straightforward cave crawl looking for the pretext item, it shouts Come At Me Bro, at every turn, daring the party, over and over again, to engage. Enticing them. Luring them. Magnificent.<\/p>\n

Fuck, back to facts. This was the results of a kickstarter, and started out in Knockspell Magazine #5. I reviewed that and loved it. The 22 rooms take up about 25 pages in the adventure, with about three rooms per page, except for the multi-room complexes, like temples. The appendices, taking up the last 25 or so pages, have the creatures and magic items, etc in them. The first fifty pages has a brief overview, the faction overview, and an extensive wandering encounter tables with monsters, strange stuff and so on.<\/p>\n

The monsters are unique and magnificent. The magic items have a good mix of \u201cnormie\u201d stuff, like potions of invisibility, and unique items. You even start out with some AND ITS NOT ODIOUS! I recall that giving each party member a random item was in vogue for awhile, as a manner in which to encourage creative play. The magic items given out here fit that mold, with a sword that can explode, Staff of the Magi style, offering up plenty of opportunities. The creatures and magic items are perfect, contributing to the overall weird vibe of the adventure and keeping the party on its toes. There\u2019s no half efforts by just using book shit. This is the definition of the added value I\u2019m looking for in an adventure.<\/p>\n

I want to call out the art, specifically, also. I don\u2019t usually do that. WIth very few exceptions I find that the art used in adventures are generally not evocative or inspiring. It\u2019s filler. (And before the mob shows up, I\u2019d like to note that I keep & display art while relegating almost all print material to PDF.) I don\u2019t think art is generally used well. This is an exception. Almost every piece contributes directly to the evocative natures of the subject displayed. It helps bring the adventure alive by giving the DM even more inspiration than the printed word, which is what it should do.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s talk NPC\u2019s, including potential enemies encountered. From the pre-gens to the potential rival parties they come alive. The sullen guard sergeant sent with you to show you the way to the caves has already made funeral arrangements for himself. That\u2019s fucking great. That\u2019s a detail you can use. It makes me think he\u2019s dressed in his finest, maybe has a coin in his mouth or has hired mourners. That\u2019s what I\u2019m looking for, detail that I can riff off of. This happens over and over again in this adventure. At one point there\u2019s a terrified wooly neanderthal on a solo spirit quest. He asks questions like \u201cWhat is good wooly neanderthal?\u201d Perfection Personified.<\/p>\n

The entrance to the caves is down a 1000\u2019 ladder in a shaft. That\u2019s a classic \u201centrance to the mythic underworld\u201d right there. Fuck your 3e\/4e\/5e\/Pathfinder set pieces, the parties gonna remember that ladder and climbing down it is going to set the tone and leave them scared shitless as they wander beyond. EXACTLY what its supposed to do.<\/p>\n

Now that we\u2019ve suitably inflated his ego, let\u2019s talk about how Jason fucks up.<\/p>\n

The map has a legibility issue. It\u2019s got good terrain and level changes, lots of loops, and nice detail, but almost all of the text on it is impossible for me to read. I can read the numbers, but of all the text on the map, and there is a lot, I can only read \u201cStart Here\u201d, \u201cVault of Shaggath-Ka\u201cand \u201cMap of the Underworld.\u201d Even if I take my glasses off and get close the text is fuzzy and hard to read. The PDF though DOES have the text hyperlinked, which is a nice touch.<\/p>\n

The initial overview sections are organized well and use bolding to great effect to call out important details. It ALMOST disappears once the core of the adventure starts. It\u2019s almost as if several different editors (or writers, whatever) were given different chunks and one person chose to highlight text with bolding while the others did not.<\/p>\n

This is an issue because of \u2026 the text length. Jason can really get in to his descriptions, they are quite flavorful and easy to riff on, but at the cost of length. Length issues can be mitigated with organization and techniques like bolding. (IE: the highlighter.) The inconsistent nature of the bolding, mostly present in the (very sticky) summary and mostly absent wanderers\/encounters, makes these sections more difficult to scan and run than I would be happy with.<\/p>\n

Still, \u201cCreative & hard to scan\u201d is better than \u201cboring and hard to scan\u201d and \u201ceasy to scan but non -evocative.\u201d I can fix it with a highlighter. I don\u2019t WANT to have to fix it that\u2019s the fucking writers\/editors job, but I CAN. Well, I guess I could fix \u201cboring\u201d and \u201cnon-evocative\u201d also, but then what the hell am I paying for in the first place?<\/p>\n

This is $12 on DriveThru. The last couple of pages of the preview show you some of the weird \u201cwandering stuff\u201d you can encounter, and gives you a good idea of the writing style throughout the encounters.
\nhttps:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/233145\/Operation-Unfathomable?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jason Sholtis Hydra Cooperative S&W Level 1- BEHOLD!!! the Underworld in all its bewildering majesty as titanic Chaos godlings and their unsavory cults make genocidal war upon one another! EXPLOIT!!! a trail of dead horrors supplied by the recent, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-1","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/opun.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068","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=4068"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5074,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4068\/revisions\/5074"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}