{"id":4825,"date":"2019-01-19T19:17:42","date_gmt":"2019-01-19T19:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4825"},"modified":"2019-01-23T07:30:20","modified_gmt":"2019-01-23T12:30:20","slug":"5e-quest-for-the-demon-slayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=4825","title":{"rendered":"(5e) Quest for the Demon Slayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Ed Shatto\nSelf Published\n5e\nLevels 3-5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
For levels 3-5. This is the first of four modules in a series. In this module we learn of an impending demon war, and go in search of a magical sword. Full of battles, riddles and puzzles.
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Hey, it\u2019s Saturday, that means non-OSR stuff, in general. I\u2019m going to try something new and repeat myself more\/rehash old dead topics, since they will be less familiar to the 5e crowd. We\u2019ll see how long this lasts.
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This 31 page adventure features a twenty room nearly entirely \u201ctext\/challenge\u201d dungeon. It is, essentially, just a series of linear combats interspaced with linear riddles. I\u2019m at a loss to find something positive to say. I guess \u2026 it\u2019s coherent?
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We start with a two page backstory. Yes, I\u2019m kinder about those things these days (unless important things are in it) but in this case it\u2019s a taste of what\u2019s to come. The 2 and half page read-aloud that begins the adventure. Yup. 2.5 pages. Players don\u2019t listen to long backstory. Did you know that WOTC did an informal study and found that players stop listening two to three sentences in to read-aloud? That\u2019s a lot less than 2.5 pages. It is far FAR better to provide a few keywords that describe the personality and then do something like bullet-point paraphrase the salient issues. Then the DM can do a little more back and forth with the players and it comes across more natural and is interactive. D&D is supposed to be interactive, between the players and the DM. A long monologue has NO place in D&D.
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It takes a week for the party to sail to some old ruins, wherein they are looking for a sword. The sea voyage has four entries. \u201cPirate, mermen, dinosaur, sahuagin.\u201d Just a 1-4 and those four names, nothing else. It\u2019s up to the designer to add value to the adventure in order to assist the DM in running it. \u201cTHEY ATTACK\u201d is boring. The pirates need some character, the sahuagin some mechanism of attack. Each entry deserves a few words, no more than a sentence, to give the encounter some character. Then the DM has something to work with during the game.
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Arriving at the ruined city the party is presented with a map. The only encounter is the tower at the center. What happens if you search? Do you have random encounters? Is there ANY guidelines for the ruined city at all? No. \u201cThe party should go to the tower, it is the next stop,\u201d Linear adventure design is BAD adventure design.
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The rooms in the tower either have a monster that attacks or a fey that gives you a riddle\/challenge. This is what I would expect from this, and it is boring. Again, D&D is an interactive game. You need to give the party something to do besides fight. And no, solving a riddle aint it. The purpose of the room is not to have a combat or to solve a riddle. That\u2019s the height of bad design. Something else should be going on, something more, and the combat and\/or riddle should be a part of that, but not the sole reason for the room existing. 
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The final room is the old \u201c12 foot pit and 11.5 foot board\u201d thing, and you\u2019re not allowed to bring anything in to the room, says the fey who meets you outside, because the door won\u2019t open otherwise. IE: do what the designer says you should do and don\u2019t be original. Look at the D&D spell list. Imagine the very first time, back in 1971, that a player encountered the 12 foot\/11,5 foot thing. Look at the spell list. Know why dimension door exists? So the players could skip that puzzle. At the cost of a spell splot, a precious resource. Someone at the table said \u201cfuck this shit, I\u2019m researching a new spell: dimension door\u201d and thus it became part of the list. When there is only one solution allowed then the players are not playing D&D, they are just doing what the designer\/DM wants. 
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And, and that book title trap? I couldn\u2019t read it on my copy of the adventure. Since the titles only exist in the picture I can\u2019t really figure it out. Was it meant to be a handout?
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Also, there\u2019s a line in the backstory about a wizard who attempts to control an archdemon. It goes something like \u201cOnly a fool would attempt to control such a Being\u2026\u201d Hey! Yo! Prejudicial much? You never hear about all of the time a wizard controlling an archdemon turns out well, only the bad stuff. I think our nameless narrator suffers from a lack of archwizard vision! 
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You don\u2019t want to get anywhere near this adventure.
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This is $2.50 at DMSGuild. The preview is six pages. You get to the the two page backstory and the 2.5 page read-aloud, and that most excellent wandering monster table. The preview should show you a couple of rooms\/encounters, so you can get a feel for the types of writing and encounters to be expected in the product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.dmsguild.com\/product\/264023\/Quest-for-the-Demon-Slayer?a<\/a>ffiliate_id=1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Ed Shatto Self Published 5e Levels 3-5 For levels 3-5. This is the first of four modules in a series. In this module we learn of an impending demon war, and go in search of a magical sword. Full … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5e","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/demonslayer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825","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=4825"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5237,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions\/5237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}