{"id":4409,"date":"2018-09-05T07:09:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-05T11:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4409"},"modified":"2018-08-27T13:10:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T17:10:00","slug":"nightstone-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4409","title":{"rendered":"Nightstone Keep"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Ed Greenwood
\nFrog God Games
\nS&W
\nLevels 4-6<\/p>\n

The characters will be able to explore the ruins of the keep, which have become a plant colony, and attempt to wrest a powerful treasure from the clutches of the araunglyd, a gigantic sentient fungus. The araunglyd will attempt to thwart the players at every turn, using its drone-like minions to harass and hinder them as they go. <\/p>\n

This 23 page mess describes a keep with \u2026 10 rooms? It is ABSOLUTELY a fucking mess. I think it might be another Aliens-type adventure, like Arachnophobia by Usherwood. Take Greenwoods expansive writing and combine it with Frogs utter incompetence when it comes to editing and you\u2019ve got a very special product indeed. This thing is like it\u2019s been through 6 passes of a translator, one of which was old english. There\u2019s a fungus monster in the keep \u2026 and he\u2019s got some minions? That\u2019s about as much as I can dig up.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know who\u2019s to blame. I suspect Greenwood for his writing style and no one at Frog pushing back \u2026 and then also an \u201ceditor\u2019 \u2026 who I suspect didn\u2019t read it at all. That\u2019s the only excuse I can think of. I remind you that the Frogs put out an adventure with the wrong cover .. an no one ever seemingly caught it. It\u2019s cra.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s got be be pretty fucking egregious for me to say something, and I\u2019m saying something. \u201c… connecting to underground areas in the Mainmain Cellarcellar beneath.\u201d That\u2019s not an infamous Bryce typo. That\u2019s a$8 adventure with an editor attached. That\u2019s not the only example. This shit happens all over the place. The Speartongue monster has \u201cHit Dice: 32\u201d Not, that\u2019s not a hit point mistake, as in it has 32 HP. It bears no relation to reality. Someone just put in 32. <\/p>\n

The fun starts almost immediately. As you approach there are two birds atop the keep that attack you. This is a four paragraph encounter, for some fucking reason. It starts with this little gem \u201cA mated pair of carrion graw nesting atop the keep see any characters approaching. The graw can\u2019t immediately be seen from below, as they lie on its roof with wings spread and heads down, peering out through the gaps where merlons have fallen away. The graws will swoop to attack as soon as any character moves into the open.A mated pair of carrion graw (giant predatory birds) nesting atop the keep see any character character him\u201d That last sentence looks like notes or something, that was expanded in to the text, maybe, that appears before it? It just ends, with the \u201chim\u201d, without punctuation. And the fucking adventure does this all over the place!<\/p>\n

And the format Oh boy. It\u2019s not room\/key. There\u2019s just a big bold heading, like \u201cThrone Room\u201d \u2026 and then four or five paragraphs of text explaining what is going on. Or \u201cMain Cellar\u201d or something like that \u2026 with seven paragraphs of text. From that you have to read it all and figure out what is going on. It\u2019s fucking nuts. It\u2019s not even wall of text, its something else. I have no fucking idea what to call it. No one spent ANY time trying to massage this thing in to something useful. It\u2019s like you tries to have James Joyce write the pre-flight checklist for an airliner \u2026 sure, it\u2019s kind of neat in a weird way, but its utterly useless for the purpose of which its intended. <\/p>\n

This adventure, for 4th-6h level characters in a game where gold=xp, has 25sp and 148gp of treasure, as well as a Gem of Vitality \u2026 which heals you for 1d4hp every round and can bring the dead back to life. It has no downsides\/curses, etc. <\/p>\n

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and only shows you one page of text \u2026 the one with the start of the bird encounter on it. https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/232207\/Quests-of-Doom-4-Nightstone-Keep-Swords-and-Wizardry?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ed Greenwood Frog God Games S&W Levels 4-6 The characters will be able to explore the ruins of the keep, which have become a plant colony, and attempt to wrest a powerful treasure from the clutches of the araunglyd, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4404,"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-4409","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\/08\/nightstone.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409","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=4409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4410,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4409\/revisions\/4410"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}