{"id":4471,"date":"2018-10-13T07:19:23","date_gmt":"2018-10-13T11:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4471"},"modified":"2019-01-04T11:53:25","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T16:53:25","slug":"5e-pudding-faire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4471","title":{"rendered":"(5e) Pudding Faire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Will Doyle, Shawn Merwin, Cindy Moore
\nSelf-published
\n5e
\nLevels 3<\/p>\n

BREAK A CURSE THAT ECHOES THROUGH TIME! You awaken on the morning of the Pudding Faire: just as you did yesterday\u2026 and the day before that\u2026 and the day before that! To escape the loop, you must break a curse that strikes to the heart of halfling and gnome lore.<\/p>\n

This 24 page adventure deals a time loop ala Groundhogs Day, with a halfling and gnome god poking at each other. Not a total shit show and better than average, it looks like either it was actually playtested or some serious thought went in to organization, or both. Long but not really overly verbose, it handles \u201ctime travel contingencies\u201d about as well as it can. It is non-trivial, but the overlapping events seems like a lot of fun.<\/p>\n

Halfling goddess won\u2019t let the (evil) gnome god of trickery join in the pudding eating at a local halfling\/gone fair they are both attending, so he curses the village to relive the same day, while he tries to convince her each day to let him try the pudding. Solutions are to help her by keeping him from casting the curse, or convince her to let him also eat the pudding.<\/p>\n

Bonus points for Gods. Modern D&D relies too much on piling kits on monsters to communicate the fantastic and not enough on the old folklore elements \u2026 and mixing it up with gods could be either folklorish or S&S\/DCC-ish, depending on their treatment. It does a good job of handling the gods, covering blasting players with spells and why they don\u2019t, etc. It supports the DM covering this as well as farming XP, gold, etc. \u201cThese are unusual situations, let\u2019s give the DM a couple of words of advice on each.\u201d That\u2019s good work.<\/p>\n

And that extends to other areas of support the adventure offers the DM. There\u2019s a decent amount of advice about running the time travel elements that doesn\u2019t get too in the weeds. Guidelines that get in and out fast. Then there\u2019s a nice one-page summary at the end that has NPC\u2019s, the problems\/situations they face, along with a little personality and a location. That\u2019s GREAT to see. It\u2019s a perfect example of the designer including support material for the DM based on the idiosyncratic needs of the adventure they\u2019ve written. Be it from playtesting or otherwise the support material thoughtfulness and advice shines through.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s about two dozen locations in the adventure. Each has a little description, some have a key event that happens at a certain time each day. Some have a little situation that happens the first day but not other days, and other have events that happen in response to other events and\/or the parties actions.<\/p>\n

That, in a nutshell, is the problem with these time travel adventures. They have to account for the initial situation as well as the parties, and other NPC\u201ds meddling in things. That can make for some long descriptions. These are not necessarily verbose, but the pure volume of events makes the description drag out. They COULD be shorter, with some really dedicated editing. And the headings could be much better. Right now there\u2019s a \u201cSignificant Event\u201d heading for those locations that have one. It would have been better to use more descriptive headings, like \u201cSI: Mayor Turned in to a Toad\u201d or some such. While the SI heading provides you the ability to find the SI section easily, you want to overload the data when possible to cue and orient the DM. The same goes for the other events headings. Further, there could be some bolding or better use of bullet points. The ability to scan the text quickly is important. If we assume the DM has read it once, then at the table we\u2019re looking to job their memory \u2026 which bolding and bullet points can do well \u2026 and which this adventure does not do well.<\/p>\n

It does a decent job with presenting some nuanced NPC\u2019s \u2026 in some cases. There\u2019s a thief to redeem \u2026 but also a gang of outlaws that can\u2019t be reasoned with. You can help either god to break the curse, but the good god is clearly MUCH easier. The adventure even goes so far as to say the outlaws will never help the good guys and it should be VERY hard for the players to convince the good god to allow the evil one to eat some pudding.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got some problems with that. The adventure does a good enough job of being open ended that these discrepancies stand out. I remember a Deus Ex game in which you complete without violence \u2026 except for this one farmed-out boss battle that you had to fight. The outlaw gang stands out here. They have a mortally injured member and go so far as to kidnap an herbalist to save them \u2026 and its even mentioned that only divine magic can save him. But they will never side with the good god. Not even if she promises to save their buddy? And the whole good good good god pudding thing is kid of lame also. Gods has a historical basis in kind of getting along, even when they don\u2019t like each other. Is it really so much to ask that the gnome god be allowed to partake in the pudding feast?<\/p>\n

That accompanies some bad advice in places, like \u201cthrowing some skulks at the party when things are lagging.\u201d That\u2019s never a good idea.<\/p>\n

But, still in all, much better than I was expecting. I was prepared to make a disparaging remark about the Adept level DMSguild stuff, having encountered at least one stinker, but so far I\u2019m two for three for them not being total shitshows. That\u2019s MUCH higher than usual for me, and ridiculous when considering the depths of despair general DMSGuild adventures send me to. It actually MIGHT be worth checking them out! I’ve also decided I’m grading this 5e\/Pathfinder shit on a curve from now on.<\/p>\n

This is $5 at DMSGuild. The fucking preview doesn\u2019t fucking work!
\nhttps:\/\/www.dmsguild.com\/product\/249757\/Pudding-Faire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Will Doyle, Shawn Merwin, Cindy Moore Self-published 5e Levels 3 BREAK A CURSE THAT ECHOES THROUGH TIME! You awaken on the morning of the Pudding Faire: just as you did yesterday\u2026 and the day before that\u2026 and the day … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-3","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/pudding.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471","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=4471"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4793,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471\/revisions\/4793"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}