{"id":4446,"date":"2018-09-26T07:14:25","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T11:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2018-09-24T10:42:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T14:42:24","slug":"mims-recreation-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4446","title":{"rendered":"Mim’s Recreation Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy herror
\nRowdy Kobold
\nOSR
\nLevels 1-3<\/p>\n

The Garden is some sort of self-preserving magical botanical zoo, an attempt at avantgarde entertainment for kids \u2013 it never opened to the public, but it still works.<\/p>\n

This twenty page adventure describes a fourteen room dungeon right out Adventure Time. Candy colored weirdness closer to Willy Wonka than the Silmarillion, it presents an interesting environment to adventure in. It\u2019s also gota touch of the \u201cadventure as a walk-though museum\u201d, ala Ed Greenwood, can be confusing to decipher, and maddinley abstrated. It\u2019s hard to recommend because of that, but it sure is interesting as all fuck. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve got a wizard’s lair here, and this time a wizard interested in plants. It\u2019s laid out in a bunch of rooms that are more garden like than dungeon like. Inside we\u2019ve got a bunch of happy singing tree people, bumble bee people, fungus men, and so on. It\u2019s not quite cartoonish, but does lean that way more than it does to those mean old vegapygmies of S3. That means it\u2019s the new fresh material that was common to Psychedelic Fantasies and OD&D in general. <\/p>\n

The common elements of \u201cthings to fuck with\u201d is present also. The seasons can change in the rooms and\/or dungeon and that impacts the things around it. Several rooms have crystals, or other things, to play with. Interactivity is a key aspect to dungeon exploring and this brings that. Doors triggered on specifical elements, and tunnels in the walls that lead to strange new, and\/pr random rooms, also help bring in an element of the weird and unknown. I\u2019m such a fan of these additional elements being tacked on. The rooms feel stuffed.<\/p>\n

But they are actually pretty simple. Two or three bullet points generally describe the rooms, with certain exceptions being made for those long rando tables. It\u2019s pretty easy to scan and figure out the specifics of the room. The map also helps here, color coded for floor condition (mud, wet, slime, etc) and light elements in the room. <\/p>\n

But \u2026<\/p>\n

There is a fuck ton going on in this and its also hard to keep track of. While the rooms are easy to scan they also rely, heavily, on overloaded information presented in the general information before the keys begin. The slimes, fungus, seasons, trees, light, wet \u2026 it\u2019s all a little hard to keep track of what SHOULD be going on. The single column format doesn\u2019t ease comprehension, but I think the major problem is \u2026 English, and\/or the lack therefore. I really like adventures from our foreign friends. Their takes on fantasy, influenced by their own unique cultural experiences, can lead to a freshness that still resonates like my own Brave Little Tailor upbringing. It\u2019s generally easy to ignore or forgive any awkwardness in the language, from translation from French, Dutch, Spanish, or Hungarian. In this case though I feel like the language barrier may have contributed to the confusion. It\u2019s not so much awkward word choices or grammar, but rather a certain \u2026 organization? I know that organization is not necessarily unique to different languages, but it FEELS like the summaries\/organization of the general information was hampered by the language barrier. There\u2019s nothing really I can point to, it just feels that way. In any event, its the organization of the general information, and the awkwardness of it, that\u2019s an issue. <\/p>\n

The entire thing has a touch of the Ed Greenwood Museum tour to it as well. There\u2019s not really enough \u2026 motivation? in it. Everyone is just a little too friendly. It\u2019s like setting a D&D adventure in a grade school \u2026 visit the classrooms and see the differences \u2026 but what do you DO? Garden of the Hag Queen had a bit of opposition to it that this just doesn\u2019t seem to have. Long-time readers will know that I like talking to creatures in dungeons, and I like a \u201cneutral\u201d dungeon environment \u2026 but there has to be SOME kind of potential energy in the dungeon to drive things, and this feels weak in that area. <\/p>\n

It can also get abstracted. \u201cThis is the treasure room, with a big pile of treasure in the middle.\u201d Uh \u2026 great? OSR adventures also are generally aimed at Gold=XP games, and this is light in that area.<\/p>\n

And, one more nit. Room One says \u201cTwo homunculi (programmed to \u201cprotect goblins\u201d) wait at the bottom of the staircase, which has been covered with lard and caltrops.\u201d I\u2019d turn that around. The stairs are coated with lard and caltrops and two hom are at the bottom. The first thing the party will encounter is the stairs, and that should be the first thing the DM comes across in the sentence. <\/p>\n

This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn\u2019t really show you much. You get to the dungeon map (star shaped, with colod coding) and the wandering table, which DOES give a decent vibe for the types of encounters in the dungeon.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/252506\/Mims-Recreational-Garden?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By herror Rowdy Kobold OSR Levels 1-3 The Garden is some sort of self-preserving magical botanical zoo, an attempt at avantgarde entertainment for kids \u2013 it never opened to the public, but it still works. This twenty page adventure describes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4442,"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-4446","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\/mim.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446","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=4446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4447,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4446\/revisions\/4447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}