{"id":6076,"date":"2019-06-29T07:14:22","date_gmt":"2019-06-29T11:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6076"},"modified":"2019-06-20T10:26:06","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T14:26:06","slug":"5e-waking-the-wizard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6076","title":{"rendered":"(5e) Waking the Wizard"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Robert L Rath\nRATHSQUATCH Publishing\n5e\nLevels 1-4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The morning dew hasn\u2019t even had a chance to evaporate when the carrier rides in. His flowing shirt decorated cart, and a tabard adorned with a lion within a purple diamond tells you that this individual brings a message directly from the capital city. In a village this small, it doesn\u2019t take long for word to travel. The council is summoned, messages delivered and decisions made before the sun even reaches mid-day. What is it that has sent this little village into a scramble? A letter from the King. But what role do they play?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 121 page adventure features a couple of sub-plots on the journey to explore s wizards house. It also appears to have gone down the \u201cbad adventure\u201d checklist, ensuring that just about every mistake possible is made. It\u2019s an unusable mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s cover the good first, and yes it does do something good. As a starting adventure it covers each of the potential 5e backgrounds and has a little hook\/background that integrates with the generic PHB background. Local hero, spy, etc, they all get a little section on how that characters background fits in to their life in the starting village and how it drags them in to the adventure at hand. I think i\u2019ve seen maybe one other starting 5e adventure do that; it was a good idea then and it\u2019s a good idea now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, it absolutely ruined during the implementation. It\u2019s presented almost as read-aloud for the PC, rather than notes for the DM to relate.  You are angry. You feel X, Y, or Z. It\u2019s the worst type of background information, telling the players who they will be playing, ruining whatever ideas they already had for their character. Yeah, in a con game or a one-shot, sure, it helps get things going. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ham-handed stomping on player agency continues throughout. Mountains of read-aloud (mountains and MOUNTAINS of it) do a great job of relating the parties feelings and what they do. You sit down on some hay bales. You\u2019re disgusted. You wonder. It\u2019s this garbage failed novelization shit that pops up again and again. It\u2019s trying desperately to set a mood and its attempting it in the worst way possible: by forcing the players. Instead it should be presenting evocative descriptions that instill the mood. Is it better to say \u201cyo ufeel tense as you wait\u201d or is it better to presents descriptions that create a mood that get the players thinking they feel tense? Obviously, the second. And that\u2019s something that this adventure does over and over and over and over and over again. And by \u201cdoes\u201d I mean \u201cdoes not do.\u201d It\u2019s not quite a puppet adventure, but its close enough to make me roll my eyes on at least half the (very numerous) read-aloud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every description is too long. For every business in the villages. For every encounter. For every keyed encounter. There\u2019s too much read-aloud. The read-aloud is bad. There\u2019s too much DM text. The DM text is bad. Oh, oh, I\u2019ll include a section at the end, for a kitchen. I fucking lvoe bad kitchen encounters. I should write a book of collected bad kitchen encounters in RPG\u2019s. It would be magnificent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s trying to include some sub-plots on the way to the wizards house, and even inside the house, but the writing is utterly incomprehensible for play at the table. Long paragraphs relating exactly And then and then and then and then and then. Details embedded in paragraphs, long NPC motivation paragraphs that hide the information you need to actually run the NPC at the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Area 16: The Kitchen<\/p>\n\n\n\n
[read aloud]The southwest corner of this room sports two cooking pits, which don\u2019t appear to have been used in quite some time. Each pit is large enough to cook a medium-sized animal, with a three-foot stone ledge built around it to keep the meat within. The pits are filled with ash and charred remains. A chimney leads up from here, but it is much too small to investigate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Long tables line each wall while bowls, cups, and moldering food sit upon them. This only fuels the rancid smell within the room, although it was hard to place at first. The cheese upon one of the tables looks especially bad, with a fuzzy growth upon it. Finally cooking utensils hang from the ceiling.[\/read-aloud]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the stronghold\u2019s kitchen area, but it hasn\u2019t been used in quite some time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are two doors leading into this room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The west entry is a Simple Wooden Door (10 hp immunity to piercing damage) which slides upward and is unlocked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The East Entry is a Strong Wooden Door which is locked (DC 15 to open, DC 20 strength check to break; 20 hp to smash but has immunity to piercing damage<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that is our kitchen. Two paragraphs of read-aloud garbage that amounts to nothing followed by some door stats. It\u2019s evocativeness is matched only by its interactivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This looks like a home game\/campaign conversion, with all those loving details thrown in. I have no doubt this was someones labour of love. It\u2019s just that the designer had no idea how to translate that in to an effective written form. No doubt they took as an example other written adventures for 5e, which were themselves terrible. And thus the cycle of bad 5e adventures continue. No doubt the 5-star reviews are already pouring in. I wish that designers had more guidance on how to write\/present their adventures. We\u2019d all be happier. I wonder how much blame goes to editors, who SHOULD know better, and how much goes to a designer who won\u2019t listen? I\u2019m not saying that\u2019s the case here, but an editor who is just a copy-editor is no editor at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages. You get to see the players background integration text that I was fond of in concept and hated as it was implemented. You also get to see some read-aloud and DM text, which should serve as fair warning as to what to expect in the rest of the adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/278644\/The-Chosen-Ones-Part-1–Waking-the-Wizard?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Robert L Rath RATHSQUATCH Publishing 5e Levels 1-4 The morning dew hasn\u2019t even had a chance to evaporate when the carrier rides in. His flowing shirt decorated cart, and a tabard adorned with a lion within a purple diamond … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6075,"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-6076","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\/06\/wake.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076","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=6076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6077,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6076\/revisions\/6077"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}