{"id":4545,"date":"2018-11-26T07:16:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T12:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4545"},"modified":"2018-11-06T09:07:53","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T14:07:53","slug":"dead-god-excavation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4545","title":{"rendered":"Dead God Excavation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nVenger As’Nas Satanis
\nKort’thalis Publishing
\nCrimson Dragon Slayer
\nLevels 1-3<\/p>\n

A fifteen page non-adventure calling itself an adventure. One door, one room, a couple of NPC\u2019s to interacts with. Didn\u2019t Venger write a \u201cHow to write adventures\u201d book? Yes, yes he did. Exhibits A & B in the buying things from DriveThru. Really, the jokes on me. His pitch for a review was more manipulative than his usual \u201cPLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW MY ADVENTURE PLEASE.\u201d I knew it was a front and did it anyway. I just didn\u2019t realize how bad it was.<\/p>\n

So, yeah, it\u2019s an archeology thing. Nobles and laborers are gathered around a recently unearthed big iron door. Carnivals, circuses, archeology expeditions, museums, post offices, DMV\u2019s, sewers \u2026 it\u2019s like the imaginations of the designers are bankrupt. I\u2019m waiting for the circus archeology (or archeology circus?) adventure.<\/p>\n

Which is not to say that the core social aspects of the nobles, sages, laborers, priest and sorcerer NPCs is bad. Quite the contrary, a group of fuckwith NPC\u2019s each with different motivations hanging around the party while they do something dangerous tugs at my DM heartstrings. It brings the roleplay and involves a kind of push your luck mechanism with how much shit the party is going to take and\/or how they are going to use the resources that a few extra bodies provide \u2026 Or, it COULD do that, if it were written well. Venger tries. You get that he\u2019s trying to set this up with a bunch of different NPC\u2019s hanging around, offering advice, getting in to trouble, etc. That is, if you squirt pretty hard and you see that. It comes across on a couple of pages, about a paragraph or so per NPC ending with a one line motivation. I\u2019m going to address Venger directly now: Hey, dipshit, I know you read these reviews. Stop making the same mistakes over and over again. Put in a fucking summary sheet for the NPC\u2019s. Stick in the name and a couple of words for motivation, characteristic, etc. That way I don\u2019t have to keep turning back to the NPC pages and digging through the stupid text to find something worthy for them to say\/do. See, if it were all on one page then I could attach it to my DM screen and look at it on the fly and see everyone in one glance and get some real nice interaction shit going on. And while I\u2019m at it, if the NPC\u2019s are supposed to be a big part of the adventure then give them a couple of things to do. Have the laborers smuggle in a couple of liquor bottles, or play the lotto, or a full tea service for the nobles or some such. You don\u2019t need to drag it out, four or five words per. But its your job to help prompt the DM to action, giving them tools to work with. \u201cBob is a jackass.\u201d is a little too open ended. Sure, it works, but if he\u2019s a face talker with odious body scent\/personal habits .. AND useful, all the better.<\/p>\n

Ok, so, there\u2019s this door. You open the door and there\u2019s a room beyond with a dead god in it and a couple of other things to fuck around with. That\u2019s it, that\u2019s the adventure. Oh, and every fifteen minutes you take 1d6 damage from acid drips from the ceiling. And every fifteen minutes you have a 50% chance of just dying from some d6 table. That\u2019s fun, right? Actually, I don\u2019t mind the acid drips; it\u2019s minor and encourages the party to find a way around it. The whole \u201cevil effects while in the tomb\u201d table, though, needs to go. It discourages exploration and interaction. Not cool. I get it, dangerous environment. But NOT exploring an erupting volcano is not fun.<\/p>\n

Venger also puts shit in the wrong order. E\u2019s got such a hard on for describing the dead god, and its effects, that he puts the room description elements FAR down in the adventure. Hey, first n the description is what the party see\/encounters first. Then you expand it later on. You put what the DM needs first as the first thing the DM sees. Otherwise I have to read a page of text before I run the room. I\u2019m not reading a page of your text at the table.<\/p>\n

And what\u2019s with the names dude? Miss Forgotten Realms much? Voss’th Ekk, Chanz Kol, grok-nods, Zirnakanan. I guess Forgotten Realms isn\u2019t the only place where random letter generators are used for names. Next time try some names WITHOUT apostrophes in them?<\/p>\n

He\u2019s got some decent alien\/demon magic items and At one point, when characters open a book, a woman screams at the same time \u2026 because she thought she saw a spider. Nice. That\u2019s the kind of local colour I like to see.<\/p>\n

Didn\u2019t I like a Venger product in the past? Islands of Purple, maybe? Dude, what happened? Is this a money play or something else?<\/p>\n

Get it together man. This thing needed a fuck ton more editing to tighten it up and expand it a bit. <\/p>\n

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The beginning of the preview shows your the NPC\u2019s. They are not bad, they just need the summary sheet and a couple of prompts for causing trouble. The end of the preview shows you the \u201crandom death and damage\u201d shit from when you are in the tomb. The middle shows you the, essentially, preprogrammed events at the start of the start when the party arrives. Sage touches tomb, gets headache, sorcerer shows up and warns everyone off, etc.https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/232344\/Dead-God-Excavation?affiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venger As’Nas Satanis Kort’thalis Publishing Crimson Dragon Slayer Levels 1-3 A fifteen page non-adventure calling itself an adventure. One door, one room, a couple of NPC\u2019s to interacts with. Didn\u2019t Venger write a \u201cHow to write adventures\u201d book? Yes, yes … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4544,"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-4545","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\/deadgod.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545","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=4545"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4546,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4545\/revisions\/4546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}