{"id":5909,"date":"2019-04-03T07:18:08","date_gmt":"2019-04-03T11:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5909"},"modified":"2020-02-21T12:47:59","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T17:47:59","slug":"winters-daughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5909","title":{"rendered":"Winter’s Daughter"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Gavin Norman, Frederick Munch, Nicholas Montegriffo
Necrotic Gnome
B\/X
Levels 1-3
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The tomb of an ancient hero, lost in the tangled depths of the woods. A ring of standing stones, guarded by the sinister Drune cult. A fairy princess who watches with ageless patience from beyond the veil of the mortal. A forgotten treasure that holds the key to her heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This 32 (digest?)\u00a0page adventure details a nineteen room dungeon with a heavy fey bend. Gavin experiments with formatting and has a decent number of interconnecting rooms and puzzles to explore. A solid journeyman effort, if a big page-heavy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For (reasons) you are going in to an old knights tomb. Once there you probably get asked from someone inside to find and deliver a ring to a fairy princess. There\u2019s about eight pages of overview and background that relates a fey\/human war a few hundred years ago and a hero who banished the fairy ice king \u2026and fey dude is looking for round 2. Thus a kind of fey-heavy background and location, with them being the more classical fey\/fairies than the bullshit they turned in to in later D&D. Of the nineteen rooms about four are outside the heroes tomb, and about four more are in the land of faerie, leaving elevenish in the tomb, proper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The adventure is pretty solid, content wise. Each room pretty much has something to fuck with, examine, investigate, puzzle over, and so on. Look at a mural to find a secret word, figure out what was dragged where from scrape marks on the floor. There\u2019s a statue with a blindfold on you can take off. Skeletons float and dance together near the ceiling in one room. A mirror freezes you in place. Each room, just a little bit and a part of a larger whole. Cultists outside greet you warmly, thinking your appearance a boon, and their sacrifice happy to be one. Frost elf knights and nobility waiting for a wedding in faerie. There\u2019s a little bit of interactivity in just about every room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s also got a decent theming. Magic is glamour. The goblins are the “merchants” variety, and chasm leads not to death but a gentle float in to the realm of faerie. Gilded mirrors, and owls with violet eyes. Elven knights, ice wines, and foppish nobility. A troll in hessian garb that is of the “moss” variety rather than the carrot nose variety. This has that airy vibe that a good fey adventure does. Fey being who they are, Holy Water and sunlight works wonders in dispelling their glamours, a nice thematic touch. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most noticeable feature though is going to be Gavins play at formatting. He\u2019s trying something new, I think, and experimenting with a room format that allows one or two room per page. Large grey-boxed heading draw your attention to the major features of the room. Under those are key description words, bolded. WHITE MARBE STATUE. A fair maiden (long, flowing hair and robe, upon her brow a star) Beseeching silence (the statue is posed facing the stairs, with a finger raised to her lips) Blindfolded (a black cloth wrapped around the statues eyes, covering them) Round plinth (marble, 3\u2019across, 1\u2019high.) And then also some bullet points like *Removing the blindfold (the inside is embroidered with golden crucifixes) And then follows another grey boxed section for another feature of the room, the stairs down. It\u2019s in interesting format and It works fairly well for drawing the eye and allowing for expanding detail as the players ask follow up questions and probe further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The use of adjectives and adverbs is good.  a candle is “thick” and slime is in “sheets.” Brass is tarnished, skeletons slowly waltz and speak in a “distant whisper.” This is the sort of verbiage I can get behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He goes further with leveraging the maps. There\u2019s a little “mini-key” on them to help the DM during play and there\u2019s no messing around with duplication \u2026In one room there\u2019s a chasm and, momentarily confused, I checked the map and yes, there was a chasm! Thus map features and whitespace are leveraged to provide still more resources to the DM during play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will say that the background is also done in bullet-point style and I\u2019m not sure that works. I don\u2019t think it\u2019s reference material, during play, and perhaps, as an evocative piece, some freeform might have been better. Likewise there are bits and pieces that feel out of place and break immersion. The main quest item is a “ring of soul binding.” This links the ghostly knight to his fianc\u00e9e, the fey princess. But, it\u2019s described in the back as a normal magic item would be, even though it\u2019s unlikely to ever be used as one, and in particular effects other than “destroy”, etc. Better, I think, to NOT explain the knight\/princess magic and simply make them bound through their love and the betrothal ring. More explanation than that is not really needed and detracts from the mystery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, overall, a great effort. There\u2019s thought here in how the thing is constructed and how it tries to orient itself to the DM\u2019s use. A little slow, I think, or maybe, melancholic? It\u2019s a perfectly adequate adventure and I\u2019d not hesitate to drop it in a hex crawl or some other locale. and, of course, in Bryce-speak “perfectly adequate” means one of the The Best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is on DriveThru for $7. The preview is nine pages and gives you a great idea of what you’re buying. Check out those last four pages to view the format. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/270795\/Winters-Daughter-OldSchool-Version?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Gavin Norman, Frederick Munch, Nicholas MontegriffoNecrotic GnomeB\/XLevels 1-3 The tomb of an ancient hero, lost in the tangled depths of the woods. A ring of standing stones, guarded by the sinister Drune cult. A fairy princess who watches with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5908,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,11,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-1","category-level-2","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/wintdau.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909","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=5909"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5910,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5909\/revisions\/5910"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}