{"id":4433,"date":"2018-09-19T07:17:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-19T11:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4433"},"modified":"2018-09-12T11:18:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T15:18:41","slug":"dungeons-of-the-dread-wyrm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4433","title":{"rendered":"Dungeons of the Dread Wyrm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy R. Nelson Bailey
\nDungeoneers Guild Games
\n1e
\nLevels 10-15<\/p>\n

Rumors hint that below a barren crag in a forlorn range of hills lies the lair of the great dread wyrm, Felmurnuzza. This dragon has mercilessly terrorized and plundered the nearby civilized lands for hundreds of years. However, no one has seen her for many decades. Nonetheless, these kingdoms continue to pay the fell serpent tribute out of fear. Many now say that she sleeps that sleep of death \u2014 her legendary fabulous hoard unprotected and ripe for the taking. Of course, if the rumors of her death are not true, a grim death surely awaits those that seek to discover her treasures.<\/p>\n

This 37 page adventure describes a linear three level dragon lair with 41 rooms. Am I the only one who groans every time I see a high level adventure? Here\u2019s your recipe: gimp the characters, make it linear like Tomb of Horrors, stuff it full of death traps like Tomb of Horrors. This adventure follows the recipe.<\/p>\n

I feel like there was a crucial decision to made in the design of this adventure. There\u2019s a decision between writing a high level adventure and writing a dungeon adventure. High level adventures have to deal with the insane party abilities that high level PC\u2019s have. Over their lives they have had to deal with a bunch of crap, and have used abilities to help survive. And I don\u2019t mean fireball. DIvination, teleport \u2026 things to help them determine and avoid the dangers ahead and bypass and\/or escape when need be. A high level adventure has to address this. Hidden facts don\u2019t exist and walls don\u2019t stop high level PC\u2019s. <\/p>\n

But note that a dungeon is pretty explicit in its use of walls to channel and guide the party and limit their movement. Further, the environment is a \u201cclose\u201d one, allowing for lots of room for hidden information, such as traps and other secrets. This is, essentially, WHY the party has all of those abilities. The challenge for the designer then becomes creating challenges for a party whose growth path was specifically designed to thwart the environment.<\/p>\n

It seems like this almost inevitably leads to gimping the party. In essence, the designer refuses the challenge and instead just says \u201cfuck you.\u201d The walls are made of lead. Everyone wears rings of mind shielding. No teleports, or stone to mud, no ethereal, no scrying, no detect\/divination spells. (This adventure even goes a step further and halves the thieves find & remove traps ability.) You got a room full of human fighters? Just say they are all immune to mind-control magic that way the party has to fight them!<\/p>\n

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what D&D actually IS and how it works. Is D&D, fundamentally, about tactical combat? It is certainly an element, at times, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s what make it appealing. (And, on the other end of the spectrum, it\u2019s not about storytelling, especially by the DM.) There\u2019s an ad-hoc element to D&D that, I think, makes it appealing. A back and forth between the DM & players reacting to each other. It\u2019s a human interactive game. There\u2019s a part of me that wants to say that the more you can computerize your adventure, or THINK you can computerize it, the worse the adventure is. Note that this covers both tactical combat play styles as well as railroad plot game styles. I don\u2019t exactly buy 100% in to this idea, but there\u2019s an idea buried in there somewhere that appeals to me and I DO think is true.<\/p>\n

Yeah, Gygax gimped people in adventures. From stupid +1 turn amulets in B2 to the Tomb or Horrors. Look man, I would have wanted to explore greyhawk dungeon with him DM\u2019ing as much as the next player, but that doesn\u2019t mean he was infallible. Far from it. <\/p>\n

Either this should have been an adventure for lower level players that did not have as much \u201cbypass\u201d magic, or it should have been rewritten as something other than a dungeon. Yeah, it\u2019s hard. That\u2019s why there are not a lot of high level adventures and \u201cdomain play\u201d is a thing.<\/p>\n

This has got another problem. There\u2019s a style of writing that obsesses over dimensions. Room two, we are told, is \u201c… unadorned 30\u2019 by 40\u2019 room. A 9\u2019 tall, 7\u2019 wide, 9\u2019 long statue of a dragon sits across the room from the entryway. The dragon is constructed of bronze and sits on a 1\u2019-tall pedestal. It sits on its haunches with wings folded, its mouth hanging open menacingly.\u201d Or, as a better adventure would say \u201ca massive bronze statue of a roaring statue.\u201d Who the fuck cares that it sits on a 1\u2019 tall pedestal? Is that trivia relevant to the actual play? (Leading the witness by using the word trivia!) This shit stems from the mistaken belief that more is more. It confuses trivia, like dimensions, with providing a good description. You can never provide enough detail to turn a description in to something good. It can be hard to grasp, but its critical to embrace the less is more philosophy. By proving less you are allowing the DM\u2019s imagination fill in the details. THEY can provide an infinite amount of detail to the scene, if need be. This allows the designer to focus their writing. The craft that very short description in something extremely evocative. That little description will jab like an icepick in the DM\u2019s own brain\/imagination. THAT\u2019S the goal. Plus, it\u2019s easier for the DM to scan and use during play. A more evocative description, that lets the DM\u2019s imagination build on it, and as a consequence is also easy to scan during play. <\/p>\n

Hey jackasses (IE: my devoted readers), don\u2019t confuse this with minimalism. I\u2019m beating the terse\/evocative\/scanability horse because 95% of adventures fall in to this trap. When \u201cRoom 1: 12 skeletons\u201d adventures show up I\u2019ll instead bitch that a random number generator doesn\u2019t provide value. There\u2019s a middle ground, and it\u2019s not minimalism.<\/p>\n

One more bitch. Rube Goldberg design. Explaining effects with mechanics that already exist. Put on a crown and get \u201cteleported without error\u201d to the abyss. IE: the magic mouth says a word that dispels a massmorph that summons a \u2026 It\u2019s fucking D&D. Shit happens, you don\u2019t need to explain why.<\/p>\n

Fuck, no, sorry, another point. I like Grimtooth. I have fond memories of pouring over it as a young teen, along with my Battletech technical readouts. But it\u2019s not a style to be emulated. \u201cThe pit has a cone shaped bottom so thieves can\u2019t climb walls out\u201d is both a bit of gimping and a bit of Grimtooth and A LOT of the traps have a Grimtooth element. <\/p>\n

It did have a couple of nice hooks, like A Throne card from A Deck giving you the ruined castle that sits on top of the lair, or a captured spy revealing they were working for the dragon, or a prophecy about a certain group of heroes slaying a dragon when a star blazes during the day \u2026 hey \u2026 what\u2019s that flaming orb up in the sky? I was also rather fond of a room whose walls were black glass scorched, with a big urn in the middle. The urn is full of wraiths and spectres, from the dragon torching the room of workmen. I would have made it wiggle a little and smoke a bit \u2026 the best trouble is the trouble the party gets in to of their own accords. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Anyway, just another Tomb of Horrors. <\/p>\n

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, meaning it shows you nothing except the hooks and rumors on the last page. https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/250989\/Dungeons-of-the-Dread-Wyrm-DUNGEON-DELVE-2?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By R. Nelson Bailey Dungeoneers Guild Games 1e Levels 10-15 Rumors hint that below a barren crag in a forlorn range of hills lies the lair of the great dread wyrm, Felmurnuzza. This dragon has mercilessly terrorized and plundered the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4432,"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-4433","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\/09\/dreadwyrm.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433","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=4433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4434,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4433\/revisions\/4434"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}