{"id":4537,"date":"2018-11-19T07:22:38","date_gmt":"2018-11-19T12:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4537"},"modified":"2018-11-05T07:23:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T12:23:46","slug":"the-tomb-of-harven-half-skull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4537","title":{"rendered":"The Tomb of Harven Half-Skull"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nBy Joseph Bloch
\nBRW Games
\nAD&D
\nLevels 3-4<\/p>\n

A hundred years ago, the pirate king Harven Half-Skull was buried with his ill-gotten booty in a secret tomb. Your band of adventurers have a map that claims to show the final resting place of the pirate king, and you’re off to claim his loot. But the dead do not rest easy\u2026<\/p>\n

This ten page tomb dungeon has twenty two rooms in three pages, and features undead and water themes, it being the tomb off a pirate king. Workmanlike in its design and presentation, it does a good job of emulating the style of the early AD&D adventures: short rooms with not much fucking around in the writing. <\/p>\n

The pyramid tomb is a favorite of designers. Except this time it\u2019s not a pyramid but a sea cave And it\u2019s not egyptian but a pirate. But, still, tomb with undead, traps and some loot. <\/p>\n

This adventure emulates the style of the older AD&D adventure, G1, S1, and so on. The descriptions are workmanlike and to the point. The rooms are not too complicated, te writing not that inspired, and everything with a briske style.Room six tells us \u201cThere is a colony of green slime on the ceiling at this point.\u201d and that\u2019s it. The underground river tells us that \u201cThis is a fresh-water river that flows into the sea a half-mile northeast of the tomb. Except in areas #7, #10, and #16-19, there is no air above the surface; the river completely fills the tunnels. It has a slow current moving from the southwest to the northeast.\u201d I don\u2019t know how to label this style. It\u2019s not exactly fact-based, I tend to use that (negatively) for styles that emphasize things like \u201cthe statue sits on a dias 6.3cm high with a diameter of 2.6 meters.\u201d It\u2019s not expanded minimalism either; that\u2019s reserved for people who offer too many mundane details in their room descriptions. This is, insead, a kind of, oh, I don\u2019t know, baseline room description? It tends to the terse style, concentrates on what you need to run the room, mostly, and doesn\u2019t tend to embellish much at all. <\/p>\n

It is that lack of embellishment that I have problems with. Adventure writing is such a tightrope. There are so many ways to go wrong. The adventure does nothing wrong (mostly). It also does nothing to recommend itself. This style, and thus this adventure, does nothing to make me want to run it. It comes off ass \u2026 dry? Dry isn\u2019t right, that\u2019s a different design sin. I just don\u2019t care about it. This is clearly not a disaster, I don\u2019t feel cheated (as I usually do when I\u2019m spouting profanity.) My expectations have not been crushed. I just don\u2019t care about running this. I know there\u2019s a segment out there that worships early T$R adventures and like this style. I don\u2019t get it. It seems like nostalgia worship to me. I don\u2019t need laser pistols, gonzo elements or grim dark to make me like something, but you gotta have SOMETHING \u2026 and that\u2019s what this lacks. Something to make you want to run it.<\/p>\n

I can quibble with some of the choices made. That green slime encounter is nothing special AT ALL. I\u2019d like to see it kicked up a bit, a little more evocative, better word choices. Certain rooms (Fresco Room, I\u2019m looking at you. You too Shrine Room) could use another pass at the editing to tighten up the descriptions. They either get too wordy or they don\u2019t put the most important things near the top of the description. [Things the DM needs first go high in the description and expanded details go lower.] I don\u2019t see an editor attached. If that\u2019s the case then Joe did a decent job by himself, and clearly has some vision of what he wants, but lacks the outside eyeballs and detachment that a good editor can provide. Not that there are many good editors, so I\u2019m speaking academically of course.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s pretty clear Joe understands how certain D&D elements work. There is a chamber you can only get to by following the (completely submerged) underground river \u2026 with a shelf high up with a body and a magic item. In another area there are keys hanging underneath a bridge the party crosses over. Rewarding exploration and people that go a little bit farther is good design. Likewise, he\u2019s got a golden crown with jewels with magic powers \u2026 and has an EGO\/is intelligent \u2026 and a bit evil. This is a great item. First, it;s the kind of thing that the part will keep and adds to the fun of future adventures as someone wears it around all the time, in town, in the tavern etc. Second, it\u2019s intelligent, which again gives you more hooks in the future to play with. Third, its evil and so the party has some FUN moral issues to sort out. Arguing about orc babies is not fun. What to do with a SLIGHTLY evil magic item IS fun. Or maybe that\u2019s just my obsession is the Eye and Hand.<\/p>\n

I will say that there is something weird going on with the undead; I don\u2019t think they are a challenge? This is for Adventures Dark and Deep, which I\u2019m going to assume is an AD&D clone and follows AD&D turning. This is also for levels 3-4 \u2026 and has more than a few challenges with skeletons in it. Don\u2019t they turn on like a \u2026 4 or something, or auto-turn? That\u2019s not really an encounter at all \u2026 but maybe its supposed to be that way? Turning undead in D&D doesn\u2019t work, I think. Even at low levels skeletons are not a threat if you have a cleric. That\u2019s too bad. They are a classic monster and deserve more love. Even Gygax knew they were broken, with his +1 amulets in the Borderlands. <\/p>\n

Anyway, hey Joe, time to return from your vaudeville show. Now that you can emulate old D&D you might try kicking things up a bit. Kick up those rooms descriptions a notch or two. No need for more words, generally, just better word choice. That green slime encounter, for example. A little more evocative to make people excited to run it .. .by which I mean putting a strong image in to their heads.<\/p>\n

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview is one page and show you the first eight or so rooms. Which is exactly what a preview SHOULD do, giving you the ability to understand what you\u2019re actually buying. You can check out the Fresco room, room three, to see what I mean about the need to tighten up the writing in places, and the rest of the rooms show the workmanlike writing style.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/257274\/The-Tomb-of-Harven-HalfSkull?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Joseph Bloch BRW Games AD&D Levels 3-4 A hundred years ago, the pirate king Harven Half-Skull was buried with his ill-gotten booty in a secret tomb. Your band of adventurers have a map that claims to show the final … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4529,"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-4537","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\/11\/harven.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537","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=4537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4538,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4537\/revisions\/4538"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}