{"id":5953,"date":"2019-04-22T07:15:39","date_gmt":"2019-04-22T11:15:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5953"},"modified":"2019-04-19T11:53:44","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T15:53:44","slug":"dire-tomb-of-the-fallen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=5953","title":{"rendered":"Dire – Tomb of the Fallen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Rodrigo Flores, Randy Musseau
Roan Studio
System Neutral\/\"OSR\"
Levels 3-5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A desperate ghost, a plea for help, and a forgotten crypt filled with peril and plunder. This is a tale of past conflicts, where blood magic has left a foul and dire aftermath, and time is of the essence.
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This 32 page adventure describes a fifteen room linear dungeon. Art & layout heavy, it looks good and is just garbage. Bad descriptions, failed novelist syndrome, linear and annoying, the \u201cadventure\u201d fails because of a lack of understanding of what an adventure should be, from formatting to design. Notable for the map giving me a headache.
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Fifteen rooms in 32 pages isn\u2019t QUITE as bad as it sounds, given the art heavy layout. WHile there is the occasional page of text, it\u2019s much more common for art to take a half page or more, leaving but a short paragraph or two on the page. Which doesn\u2019t excuse the product; there\u2019s at least seven pages of intro and I\u2019d say the adventure doesn\u2019t actually start until page fifteen \u2026 and ends on page 21ish. We\u2019re  not looking at a content-heavy product here, in spite of the 32 pages.
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 \u201cPadded\u201d is what I might say if I were polite, and \u201cfailed novelist syndrome\u201d if I were being blunt. The first room description contains such gems as \u201cOne could feel the passage of time itself upon entering the tomb\u201d and \u201c[the air] which promises to become even more dank as the adventurers move forth.\u201d and then ends with this beauty \u201cThis is the threshold to the Tomb of the Fallen; a place of legend, and a place of sorrow. With the entryway on their back, a single dark passage opens up ahead.\u201d
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And this ain\u2019t even read-aloud. I get it. We\u2019re trying for something mythic here. To leave impressions. But it\u2019s trying to accomplish that task by loading up on the text. When you load up on the text you\u2019re forcing the DM read the entire room. To stop the game and pause  everyone at the table and read the entire room. And then figure out how to relate it to the party. Room one has three paragraphs of text that don\u2019t actually say much, but the DM must still waste a bunch of time. It\u2019s no wonder there\u2019s so many reports of people playing with their phones; they\u2019re bored! 
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If this were a book then the passage would be ok. A small chamber carved out of solid rock. Two stone slabs lie in the middle. You feel the passage of time. Moss, grass, weed have crept in where sparse sunlight intrudes. Fresh outside air mixes with the foulness of the chamber.  There, I just used most of the same words the first room did but left out (most) of the garbage \u201cnovelist\u201d text. The sense of the place is there. Sunlight streaming in, the last vestiges of the outside giving way to the rock. 
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I should also note that room one is one of the better room descriptions and most are not that good. There\u2019s A LOT of explaining going on. Embedded backstory and justifications. Room two tells us \u201cThe water chamber is a large area that the Gnolls avoid due to the difficulty in getting across and the presence of some form of Water Elemental, that is continuously creating waves along the surface of the aquifer (underground lake).\u201d IE: it adds little to no content to the adventure, instead justifying things and explaining backstory. Some relevant history where the gnolls don\u2019t go in to the room \u2026 usually. 
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\u201cAssuming the PC\u2019s have an adequate source of light, a platform can be seen on the eastern side of the chamber, It\u2019s easy to deduce that a passage extends northwest from there.\u201c  Beyond the fact that this just describes the map, and the usual joke I\u2019d make about quantum platforms, this is a classic example of those an if\/then clause writing style. The description is muddying the waters between game play and location description. It lacks any kind of focus, and that\u2019s icing on top of it repeating something that the map shows and needs more explanation. Further, it\u2019s the most basic of information. It\u2019s akin to typing \u201cIf the party has a light source then they can see the room floor to the extent their light allows them\u201d in every single room.
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The adventure engages in these activities over and over again, providing little in the way of interactivity, beyond gnolls that \u201cbeing fierce warriors, attack on sight.\u201d 
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On the subject of \u201cannoying\u201d \u2026 there\u2019s an owl that you get to let rob your packs. Food, spell components, odd trinkets. \u201cThis is a great way to lighten the adventurers loads and make them more reliant on their surroundings & environment.\u201d Master thieves, they pick pocket as 7th level thieves. If you act aggressive they behave as shriekers, attracting more monsters. If you kill one you get bad luck for d4+3 days. IE: the DM gets to fuck with you and there\u2019s nothing you can do about it. This is bad Bad BAD. This is adversarial play. This is pixies who the DM doesn\u2019t let you deal with. Suck it up and be fucked with and there\u2019s nothing you can do. Uncool.
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And on the same subject \u2026 the map. I don\u2019t know WHAT is going on with it, but it hurts my head. It\u2019s some kind of isometric thing and I swear to Vecna it\u2019s got some weird Magic Eye thing going on. Every time I look at it it seems like it is upside down and I have to concentrate HARD to make my brain view it with the right perspective.
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This is a mega-pass. Little real content and what there is hides.  
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This is PWYW at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. There\u2019s no preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/272972\/DIRE-Tomb-of-the-Fallen?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Rodrigo Flores, Randy MusseauRoan StudioSystem Neutral\/”OSR”Levels 3-5 A desperate ghost, a plea for help, and a forgotten crypt filled with peril and plunder. This is a tale of past conflicts, where blood magic has left a foul and dire … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5951,"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-5953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/tombfallen.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953","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=5953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5954,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5953\/revisions\/5954"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}