{"id":4505,"date":"2018-10-29T07:14:03","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T11:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4505"},"modified":"2019-01-21T13:20:15","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T18:20:15","slug":"through-ultans-door-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4505","title":{"rendered":"Through Ultan’s Door #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nBy Ben Laurence
\nThrough Ultan\u2019s Door
\nOSR<\/p>\n

Go through Ultan’s door in this inaugural issue into the Ruins of the Inquisitor’s Theater, a 30 room dungeon replete with oneiric puddings, delicate shadow puppets, giggling white swine, and much more. This 36 page zine contains everything you need to launch a D&D campaign in the Zyan, flying city of the dreamlands.<\/p>\n

This forty page \u201czine\u201d contains a thirty page dungeon and the supporting monsters, spells, etc. Lush, rich prose, the ruins of a decadent empire, and heavy opium clouds bring the OD&D HARD. Digest format is as digest format does. It\u2019s good. I\u2019m also predisposed to this kind of shit.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think people still used opium in the US. This adventure proves me wrongs. Yes, that\u2019s a compliment. It\u2019s important, I think, that I communicate the vibe of this adventure. There\u2019s this thing that some of the Psychedelic Fantasy adventures fell in to, and some of the Calithena\/Bowman Darkness Beneath adventure briefly hit upon. It\u2019s also present in in some of the pointcrawl work of Slumbering Ursine and those world weary decadent elves of that setting. From the Vats, Operation Unfathomable, Blue Medusa and some other Patrick shit, the city from ASE1, a touch of Tekumel, and Lapis Observatory. There\u2019s this lush, sometimes lurid, velvety decadance \u2026 sometimes in the writing, sometimes in the environment, sometimes in the imagination behind the encounters. There\u2019s this intro to a Frankie Goes to Hollywood mix, cribbed from Nietzsche I think, that gives me a certain feeling when I listen to it and this adventure reminds me of that feeling.<\/p>\n

A part of this is the OD&D thing it\u2019s got going. By that I mean, in part, the monsters are new. You don\u2019t know what a new monsters will do. It\u2019s powers are unknown. That creates apprehension in the players and that’s usually a great thing for an adventure to do. Not only are the monsters new, the descriptions focus entirely on the actual play of the creatures. Descriptions are: Sinuous white swine, with children\u2019s hands, and mischievous human eyes, or Each is a tangle of raven\u2019s wings with no body or head, flitting erratically like a quick moving bat. In the center of the conjoined wings is a single staring eye that gives baleful glares like cutting knives or worse. That\u2019s what the characters encounter so that’s what the description says. The only addition to that description is their spoor (hints to come) and the monster stats. No bullshit history or crap to clog up the adventure \u2026 just pure impact for the players. Fucking. Perfect.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another part of the OD&D vibe that tends to concentrate on the non-standard encounter. I\u2019m not saying it well, but there tends to be this de rigeur way of writing encounters. It almost seems like there\u2019s this hidden formula that people follow to create a boring encounter thats the same as every other boring encounter. Tolkien genericism. I\u2019m not bitching about orcs, I\u2019m bitching that they always appear the same way, as do pit traps, etc. There\u2019s this emphasis on mechanics, as if they come first \u201ca 100\u2019 pit trap\u201d, and then the rest follows. When I talk about OD&D encounters\/imagination I\u2019m then I\u2019m talking about that being flipped There\u2019s some weird ass scene imagined \u2026 that\u2019s the focus, and then some mechanics are are lightly bolted on. There\u2019s this room, smelling of decay, with a straw floor, and a balcony up above, and three bodies hanging from it with hoods over their heads \u2026 and a bear trap in straw under each body. Balcony with hanging bodies and bear trap \u2026 just a little twist that keeps it fresh. And this adventure does that over and over again.<\/p>\n

The descriptions are lush and rich with great imagery. A door of cerulean blue and gold leaf glittering in the candlelight. Or, to directly quote: \u201cThe statue at the end of the room is made of basalt. It depicts a robed figure, with a long beaked mask. She pulls apart her robes, and dozens of small- er beaked masks peer forth form the darkness beneath, pressing out. Lapis Lazuli borders her robes, and the eyes of the masks sparkle with polished carnelians and peridots.\u201d That\u2019s a pretty cool thing that I\u2019m DYING to run! Which is exactly what I\u2019m looking for. I want to be excited. Ben jabbed an idea in to my head and I can fill in the rest effortlessly because of his ability to communicate the seed to me, the DM. WHich I can them have a much better chance of doing the same for my players \u2026 and communicate my enthusiasm to them. Nd, as an aside, much of the treasure is great also. A necklace of bismuth stones strung on a chain of platinum, each stone a miniature rainbow labyrinth. Fuck Yeah I want that thing man! If you have treasure that the players want to keep, wear, and use, instead of just abstracting away in to gp, then you\u2019ve done a good job and this is a good job.<\/p>\n

Twenty-ish rooms means the map isn\u2019t too large, but it\u2019s good enough, and it appears that the next \u201cissue\u201d will be the next level of the dungeon. My only major complaint is that the room numbering is not as trivially legible as I would prefer.<\/p>\n

Ben\u2019s got an overview of the game world this comes from, a kind of Dreamlands-ish thing, on his blog. That should give you an idea of what you are getting yourself in to. These days Dreamlands makes me think \u201carbitrary\u201d, but that\u2019s not the case here. This is a concrete, real adventure.
\nhttp:\/\/maziriansgarden.blogspot.com\/2017\/09\/two-years-through-ultans-door-zyan.html<\/p>\n

Another great example of a \u201cgoing to a freaky place\u201d adventure \u2026 with the door signaling that the rules are all wrong and every perversion is justified in the mythic underworld \u2026 communicated via the door transition.<\/p>\n

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ok. Showing some of the rooms, or wandering table, would have been better. The general fluff stuff is ok, amd gives you a view in to the writing style, but the actual rooms and wanders give you and better view in to the FOCUS that the actual rooms give, and encounter types. As is, what\u2019s previewed seems to imply a longer writing style than is actually encountered and not as much of the OD&D style. It\u2019s more setting than adventure in the preview.
\nhttps:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/254659\/Through-Ultans-Door-Issue-1?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n

It is, of course, Frankie, and Frankie only …
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