{"id":4483,"date":"2018-10-20T07:11:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T11:11:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4483"},"modified":"2018-10-09T09:42:26","modified_gmt":"2018-10-09T13:42:26","slug":"in-the-dungeon-of-the-wizard-lord-keraptis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4483","title":{"rendered":"In the Dungeon of the Wizard Lord Keraptis"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Tim Krause
\nTomorrow River Games
\n3e\/5e
\nLevel 10<\/p>\n

\u2026 The party has already delved into the depths of the mountain and stand at a crossroads where they have difficult choices. They have already defeated almost all of the creatures at Lord Keraptis\u2019 command, rendering him far less sinister or capable of exherting his influence on the land. But do they risk it all and delve deeper into the mountain to eliminate Lord Keraptis for good? What if something more sinister awaits them?<\/p>\n

This 86 page adventure is a compendium of three different ones; three levels of a dungeon, with about 80 or so rooms overall. It\u2019s about Keraptis, from White Plume Mountain, with the first level written back in the 80\u2019s and the other two more recently. Tending to the minimal side of things, it\u2019s pretty your basic low-grade ToH. It got some goofiness to it, in the log, in the same way a jr high adventure does. An arbitrariness.<\/p>\n

Well, I just don\u2019t know where to start.<\/p>\n

This thing has some minimalism going on. Not the extreme kind found in VAmpire Queen, but a very plan facts like style. One of the rooms tells us that \u201cThe passage seems to end here in dense vines and the trunks of three large trees. The vines are from a Lurker Above and the tree trunks are Xorn.\u201d That\u2019s the room, all of it. Page after page of that, which is how the designer gets 75+ rooms in to about 20 pages \u2026 while still including big art pieces. <\/p>\n

It is, essentially, only the mechanics that are included. \u201cThis is no saving throw or ability for the players to find this trap. It till instantly teleport them to \u2026\u201d is a phrase written more than once. There\u2019s a certain minimalistic charm to this style. Kind of like one of those modern home living rooms that are all white with one simple L couch in the middle. Ok, yes, It fulfills the basic purpose I guess. But can\u2019t we do just a little more to make it livable? \u201cThis room contains no creatures but has all of the implements to torture poor victims.\u201d is not exactly Joyce.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no real joy to this. The descriptions don\u2019t really spark the DM much at all. A chest contains \u201cIt contains 30 pieces of jewelry, 40,000 gold pieces and three randomly determined magic items.\u201d Well, ok, yes, I guess that\u2019s a 4e treasure-parcel kind of thing? It\u2019s the journey, not the destination in D&D. All of that gold and shit, yeah, we want it for XP, but it\u2019s the fun of it that we\u2019re really after. And \u201c30 pieces of jewelry\u201d isn\u2019t really very fun. (Nor is an exhaustive list. Oh no! Adventure writing can be hard! Especially at high levels!\u201d)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s this goofy simplistic thing it\u2019s got going on also. An almost arbitrary thing. A dragon tries to surrender, if you almost kill him. If you DO kill him then his treasure just disappears. If you walk through a certain wall you take damage. But if you then jump in a river with your armor on you get healed. Its just \u2026 disconnected? This weird sort of logic. I know, I say don\u2019t explain shit, it\u2019s magic\u201d, but there\u2019s this sense of the arbitrary that I don\u2019t like. Not explaining why is different from things just being arbitrary.<\/p>\n

Wandering monsters happen on a 10% chance every turn. But \u2026 if you short\/long rest then it\u2019s only 10% every hour. This being 5e I\u2019m sure that\u2019s an attempt to control the resource game, but, still, man, that\u2019s a little rough eh? <\/p>\n

This is COMPLETELY unlike any other 5e adventure I\u2019ve seen. It\u2019s got a very \u201ci made this in jr high and then edited it as an adult\u201d thing going on. It feels more like an art project, like that kickstarter that made book of jr high published adventures. A curiosity, nothing more.<\/p>\n

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru, with a currently suggested price of $2. There\u2019s no preview.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/253687\/In-the-Dungeon-of-the-Wizard-Lord-Keraptis?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Tim Krause Tomorrow River Games 3e\/5e Level 10 \u2026 The party has already delved into the depths of the mountain and stand at a crossroads where they have difficult choices. They have already defeated almost all of the creatures … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4477,"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-4483","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\/10\/kerap.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483","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=4483"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4484,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4483\/revisions\/4484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}