{"id":4207,"date":"2018-05-28T07:12:58","date_gmt":"2018-05-28T11:12:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4207"},"modified":"2018-05-21T08:41:11","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:41:11","slug":"the-haunt-at-crows-gulch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4207","title":{"rendered":"The Haunt at Crow’s Gulch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Randy Musseau
\nRoan Studio
\n1e
\nLevels 4-7<\/p>\n

\u2026 word of adventure and gold has drawn the characters to Crow Gulch A Gnome by the name of Galemon has offered 50 gold pieces, in advance, to adventurers and sell-swords willing to explore the ruins of the ancient tower in search of a silver orb. He will pay another 500 gold upon success. Rumors and fireside tales speak of a growing terror that lies deep beneath the Haunt and the rocky crag upon which it rests, but this has not deterred those hungry for wealth and glory.<\/p>\n

This 24 page adventure details a small town (first half) and a about twenty wilderness encounters followed by about ten dungeon encounters (second half.) Small fonts, lack of whitespace and bolding leads to some wall of text and SERIOUS highlighter fodder. The descriptions get long, even if there is a nice realism to them. Far too many negatives for me, but it\u2019s altogether terrible.<\/p>\n

You drudge up a cliffside, having wilderness encounters along the roadway, then get to the tower and explore the dungeons underneath. Along the way are a couple of expanded wilderness areas: a harpy lair and dragon crevisse, if you choose to go off path to chase down some fleeing monsters for their lairs. Inside the dungeon you find a sorceress \u2026 turns out the gnome hiring you was ruse and she uses him to find strong souls to sacrifice in order to summon a demon. So, while a test\/challenge adventure, it doesn\u2019t feel artificial like those usually do.<\/p>\n

That is the great strength of this adventure. The encounters feel natural and things seem to fit as a part of the natural world. It\u2019s not because the toilets and fresh water were provided for. Rather the text gives that natural feel and also a kind of \u2018in the moment\u2019 sort of vibe. You find prisoners almost dead, or raving madmen who rushing down a narrow cliffside trail \u2026 who slip and fall off the edge. Harpies and dragons feed, creatures are doing things. More than that though it has that natural feel that the best MRP products did.<\/p>\n

That does, however, come at a steep price. The font is small. Whitespace is sparse and bolding\/offsets\/etc non-existent. This text is THICK and hard to wade through. This all combines to make the text something torturous and I can\u2019t see how you can run this at a table easily. Highlighter? Sure. <\/p>\n

It engages in repetition to pad things out, with the same details being repeated. It has motivations and background and history embedded in the text. It engages in \u2026 definitions! Roblins are playing dones(dice.) There is a jacinth (orange gemstone.) Folks, if you\u2019re gonna use a two dollar word then don\u2019t explain it. Give your readers some credit. Otherwise 7th grade me will never pronounce Chaos as if it rhymes with Taos. <\/p>\n

One of the harpy lair rooms starts with \u201cLarge Cavern. The ceiling is a dome of sharp stalactites and filth covers the floor. A ledge along the right wall is covered in piles of twigs, rags, fur and clothing, each arranged in a nest-like fashion.\u201d That\u2019s not so bad. Relatively short. Not a paragon of evocativeness, but better than most. Then come harpy stats, inline, then comes the searching, inline, all in the same single paragraph, with comments. \u201cSearching the nests (8 in total) will yield \u2026\u201d (four more sentences, including telling us what a jacinth is.)<\/p>\n

It engages in this behaviour in a variety of ways, over and over again. At one point you encounter a will-o-the-wisp trying to lure a victim in . It has in it: \u201cThis is a trap. The boggart is trying to lure victims in\u201d and then at the end of the encounter everything is justified. \u201cThe Boggart is an immature Will-o-wisp. It is building strength by feeding off the essence of its victims. It can appear in humanoid form or as small and bright hovering lights. The net is old and useless. The crackling was coming from the Boggart itself as it attempted to maintain its current form.)\u201d Well, no shit to both.<\/p>\n

But, the core of the encounter is great. A tony writhing and twisting figure trapped under a small net crackling with blue electricity. And if you watch long enough you can see it change to tiny hairy man, giving you a hint something is not right. It\u2019s great little encounter.<\/p>\n

Most of the encounters here are great. People slipping off cliffs. Harpies luring you off cliffs (cliffs are a feature of the wilderness part of the adventure.) They are great. They just get ruined by the fact I don\u2019t want to slog through the text.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all commentary on the back twelve pages or so of the adventure. The first half describes the region and town. In the same, if not more, detail. Lots of motivations for the butcher’s wife to stay in town, and so on. It feels more like a writers guide for a Tv series than it does something to use at the table.Way WAY too much detail, and a focus on things not needed.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not a bad adventure, it\u2019s just not good. Or, rather, it\u2019s a pain to dig through. It feels like the setting should be pulled out for a fluff book, while the text proper needs to be pruned back a lot to remove all of the extraneous stuff, and then some whitespace and bolding, etc added for improved scanability. Also, I might buy a fluff book on the region, but it also needs to focus more on game ability rather than why the baker chooses to stay in town \u2026 unless there\u2019s a hook in there.<\/p>\n

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview can give you a sense of the font size and density of the text, but not really the encounters, etc.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/152482\/Crow-Gulch?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Randy Musseau Roan Studio 1e Levels 4-7 \u2026 word of adventure and gold has drawn the characters to Crow Gulch A Gnome by the name of Galemon has offered 50 gold pieces, in advance, to adventurers and sell-swords willing … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4206,"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-4207","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\/05\/crowg.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207","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=4207"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4208,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4207\/revisions\/4208"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}