{"id":6116,"date":"2019-07-10T07:11:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T11:11:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6116"},"modified":"2019-07-09T10:50:48","modified_gmt":"2019-07-09T14:50:48","slug":"bone-marshes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6116","title":{"rendered":"Bone Marshes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By David Schriduan\nTechnical Grimoire Games\nKnave<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
We need your help! The marshes are burning, and we don’t know why!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 48 page hexcrawl has 25 hexes. [Hex size defined as \u201cfour hours to cross] It falls in to the \u201cReal deal\u201d category of adventures. Not mini-dungeon, but fully formed with lots going on. It makes some non-intuitive choices but it\u2019s easy enough to use once you\u2019ve got the hang of it. Chok full of adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You find some magic flyers saying the swamps are on fire and some mage needs help. The mage has a mission for you: charting a path through the swamp for her supply caravan to reach her base. After that she another mission, and then another. These come with handy dandy tracking sheets and notes on modifications on how to turn each in to one-shot. The above references two themes: an impishness and a nod to usability. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a tone present which isn\u2019t gonzo and isn\u2019t deadly serious 1e AD&D and isn\u2019t humor. It\u2019s a slightly bizarre character thing, drifting toward ren-faire but never actually getting close. There\u2019s some tech present in the swamp, at the heart of mystery in fact, but its not a gonzo adventure. It\u2019s more subtle. There\u2019s no real humor, but there are non-serious moments. These are almost entirely in the form of the NPC\u2019s. They are not humorous, but they do have strong character. A guy who like to see things burn. Sages who like their comfort. And the primary quest-giver, a mage with a lot of money, not much sense, a childlike wonder, and who is looking to make a name for herself. Further in the swamp are memgomanicial bandit kings and some swamp-creatures with a trial separation going on. They don\u2019t go over the top, or least not enough to make the adventure a farce. They do provide strong elements to hang your DM hat on and provide engaging play for the party. Which is what it\u2019s about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s also an emphasis on usability. I noted the handouts for the three missions, which double as a kind of note-pad, etc for the party. The character sheets also have some nods to usability for a \u201cyou got mud on you\u201d mechanic. The hexes are noted in a format to help aid the DM, as is some underground\/flooded tunnel notes. The descriptions make good use of bolding and summaries, whitespace, bullets, and terse evocative setting descriptions. It\u2019s clear that usability was a major design consideration, and it pays off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a lot to do and interact with in the swamp. Fighting, fire fighting, NPC\u2019s to talk to do, schemes to plot, places to explore and so on. It\u2019s a small hex crawl done right. There\u2019s some over-arching goals for the party and a canvas full of things waiting to happen for the adventure to develop as the party tries to achieve their goals. It\u2019s a great example of both plot and sandbox mixing in the correct proportions to achieve some directed purpose without dictating which way things should go. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it\u2019s not without its flaws. For all its attempts at usability a few fall short. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure makes an effort at cross-references, they appear in more than a few places. It also doesn\u2019t always use time when it should. There are five gizmos scattered about the swamp that play a major part in the adventure \u2026 but there\u2019s no unified place where they are all mentioned. Other elements, mentioned in passing as goals or so on, also do not get a cross-reference. Where was that swamp-throne again? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The swamp map is a little non-intuitive as well, at first glance. The hexes are numbered A through R. Then the hex descriptions start. It took me more than a few minutes to recognize that the hexes were keyed by the encounter name. \u201cArchies Camp\u201d is hex A. \u201cQueens House\u201d is hex Q, and so on. I get it, once I figured it out, but I\u2019m still not sure it makes the layout\/design more intuitive. It also moves from one area to the next a little more fluidly then is helpful. In particular the indoor and underground sections for the main encounter areas end up being less intuitive then they could be if done in a more traditional format.It\u2019s not BAD, exactly, but it does require more work than usual to figure out how things relate to each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally, there\u2019s the fire aspect. This is the pretext for the entire adventure: the swamp is on fire and the mage wants to put it out. Mechanically, this is covered. There are rules for fire fighting, damage and the like. Easy to find, laid out, and understandable. Then there are tactical level fire issues: many random encounters and a few fixed ones have fire elements to them. Hexes tell yo uwhat they look like before and fires in them. But it feels like there\u2019s a gap when it comes to, oh, let\u2019s call is Strategic fire management. Let\u2019s start with something very basic: where are the fires? Having spent a couple of hours with this adventure I can only tell you one hex. If you levitate up, or fly, or somehow get high up and look out \u2026 where are the fires? Where is the smoke coming from? There\u2019s not help in this area. [Further, in retrospect, I don\u2019t think fires exist, except in isolated circumstances and that one hex. I think they mostly come up through play and random encounters. The feeling of \u201csmoke and small fires everywhere\u201d doesn\u2019t really come through for me. This may be a play thing though.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, these are minor nits and generally easily addressed. Monsters are freaky and get good descriptions. Hex\/item descriptions are evocative and terse and the text easy to scan. It\u2019s just how it all fits together that could be better. Still, easily one of the best. A \u201creal\u201d adventure, and there\u2019s not many of those out there,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru, and worth it. The preview is fifteen pages. You get to see a DM overview of one of the \u201cplot quests\u201d, laid out nicely. You also get some bestiary pages, showing off their descriptions and freakiness. Preview page 10 and onward shows you sample hex encounter descriptions, with wanderers and the main layout\/descriptions for hexes. It\u2019s a good preview.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/275159\/Bone-Marshes?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By David Schriduan Technical Grimoire Games Knave We need your help! The marshes are burning, and we don’t know why! This 48 page hexcrawl has 25 hexes. [Hex size defined as \u201cfour hours to cross] It falls in to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/bonem.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116","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=6116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6117,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6116\/revisions\/6117"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}