{"id":5948,"date":"2019-04-20T07:15:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-20T11:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5948"},"modified":"2019-04-19T08:27:39","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T12:27:39","slug":"5e-tides-of-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5948","title":{"rendered":"(5e) Tides of Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Christopher Walz
Self-published
5e
Level 6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Menthias Dolgutha, a Coreanic priest in Mithril, has received a vision of the Silver Bastion, a fortress used by the knightly Order of Silver during the Divine War, rising from the Blood Sea. Searching Mithril\u2019s libraries, the priest discovered the fortress was built before the titan Kadum was defeated and imprisoned at the depths of the sea. The Silver Bastion was overrun with titanspawn as the last remaining knights stayed behind, allowing others to retreat to the mainland. Menthias believes a Coreanic relic, the Brightshield, may still be hidden in the once-lost castle. Will your heroes be able to brave the dangers of the Blood Sea and contend with the Heartseekers of Kadum to wrest control over the powerful relic?
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First, some secret shame. I have a Patreon! It’s got free adventures, commentary on adventure design, and random musings about RPG’s, etc. And, it does help me buy adventures to review. It’s at https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/join\/tenfootpole?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 37 page adventure details a small over-ocean voyage and a ten room fortress. It\u2019s nothing more than garbage combats. Encounter after encounter. Room after room. \u201cCombat!\u201d \u201cRoll for init!\u201d \u201cThey attack!\u201d Oh, and the baddies? A cult. Wow. Really. A cult. How original. I wonder how long that took to come up with? 
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My plan was to check out some NON-Dmsguild content. To see who out there was raging against the dying of the light and jousting against the windmills of corporate licensing agreements. Don\u2019t get off the boat man, don\u2019t get off the boat \u2026
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This hunk of junk claims to have content supporting all three pillars of D&D play: social, exploration, and combat. I have no fucking idea what Social and Exploration mean in 5e circles these days, but if one were to take this adventure as canonical, not much. There\u2019s not exploration to speak of, unless \u201cI go in to the next room\u201d means exploration. The social seems limited to \u2026 the quest giver? Some generic sailors on a ship you take? It\u2019s all combat. Your quest-giver is interrupted by combat. \u201cThere\u2019s bloodtained on the docks!\u201d yeller a commoner. Uh huh. Blood tainted. Because people talk like that. Feels more like a\u201dthrow a combat in early\u201d garbage advice being followed. 
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You sail to an island to follow up on the \u201ca cleric hired us\u201d hook. The DM rolls weather occasionally. \u201cPlayers can think weather is boring, liven it up\u201d says the adventure. Yes, that\u2019s because simulationist shit is boring. I got four hours this week in between 60 hours of assistant crack-whore trainee work and you\u2019r chukcing \u201clight rain\u201d at me, and taking up a significant page count doing so? Or, maybe, the forced combats twice a day. Once each twelve hours you have an encounter\/are attacked on the seas. Joy. That seems like fun. Then you get to the island and have more \u201cfun\u201d fighting room after room of creatures\/cultists. 
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This sort of stuff is soooooooo boring. Combat is boring. Tactics combat is boring. Yes, I know some people like this shit. 40k is thing. Descent & Gloomhaven is a thing (I\u2019m playing Gloomhaven in \u2026 90 minutes from now. Dr. Nick the DOOMSTALKER. And yes, I just spoiled the game.Mayor McDickCheese, aka Nico Crystalhead the Spellweaver was just the first to retire] 
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Spot distances on the boat are short. Like 30-60 feet. Wasn\u2019t it like 320 yards in 1e\/0e? That\u2019s because there is no more Combat as War, it\u2019s all Combat as Sport. God forbid you do anything but use your Encounter powers and roll to hit. Everything on earth sneaks on board your ship as a wandering encounter. You gotta make DC20 insight checks to figure out the evil cleric is evil. Solid silver doors are given no value and not one word about looting them. The adventure is rife with the words \u201cat your discretion you can \u2026\u201d Yeah, no shit. Roleplaying advice for NPC\u2019s is long and  boring, with bonds and ideas and flaws straight out of the book, still generic and boring.
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The monsters are all Blood Sea Mutant Killer Whale and Heaker Cultists of titspan Krathas and shit like that. Look at that fucking intro text, that\u2019s supposed to get you excited about the adventure. My eyes are rolling so much I can barely read it. 
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The entire adventure is nothing but aggressively generic and focused on combat. In an attempt to be non-generic it focuses on \u201cbloodspaned mutants\u201d and other language that is just a different dimension of generic. There\u2019s no details to bring anything to life. There\u2019s nothing visceral. Specificity is avoided. It\u2019s all just generic heroic language.
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Next time I\u2019ll try harder to find something not in DMSGuild. 
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This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages long. The last two pages are not TOO far off from showing you what you get in the bulk of the adventure locations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/262487\/Tides-of-Blood?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Christopher WalzSelf-published5eLevel 6 Menthias Dolgutha, a Coreanic priest in Mithril, has received a vision of the Silver Bastion, a fortress used by the knightly Order of Silver during the Divine War, rising from the Blood Sea. Searching Mithril\u2019s libraries, the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5947,"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-5948","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\/04\/blood.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948","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=5948"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5952,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5948\/revisions\/5952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}