{"id":6297,"date":"2019-11-04T07:13:43","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T12:13:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6297"},"modified":"2020-02-21T12:50:12","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T17:50:12","slug":"the-mud-king-of-stoney-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6297","title":{"rendered":"The Mud King of Stoney Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Created with GIMP<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By WR Beatty\nRosethorn Publishing\nS&W\nLevels 5-7<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Beavers have dammed up Stoney Creek… but the villagers who went to break up the dam have not returned. Perhaps something sinister is going on here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This nineteen page adventure details a small wilderness with ten locations and a troll cave with eighteen more. I might call it a Lair Adventure & Environs, since it\u2019s a small-ish location and is \u2026 a lair. It\u2019s firing on all cylinders with good usability, creatures doing things, good treasure, and decent interactivity.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do I like Rosethorn? I recognize the name but I can\u2019t recall previous quality. Anyway, this one is good. The monsters have arranged for a beaver dam in a remote section of a road. They they ambush travellers who are camped for the night in front of the new lake. In the village, a couple of villagers went up a month ago to clear the dam. They didn\u2019t come back. Then two weeks ago four more went to look for the first. They didn\u2019t come back. Then a mob went up with all the villages weapons. THEY didn\u2019t come back. Ouch! One of the hooks has a trapper going there to bust the dam, and looking for protection, which could also slot in well as to Why The Local Lord isn\u2019t Involved; he hired the trapper. Then again, at levels 5-7 in OD&D the party is pretty Big Shits themselves \u2026 which I choose to ignore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a nice little wilderness area described around the dam, lake, road, and cave. It all makes sense. A dam, a stream, a stirge tree, an attacked campsite, an inviting campsite, a lookout. It feels like it all works together well and makes sense together. A lot of this can be summed up as \u201cthey are trolls, they don\u2019t care about the piranha\/stirge tree\/razorwire.\u201d Take the beavers. D&D being what it is, you could spell a conversation with them, and the designer has provided notes on what they knew. Along with other creatures you might capture, just a few bullets on what they can relate. The piranha are attracted after a few rounds. They patrol the banks for a few rounds after a feast. Too much blood and MORE piranha show up from pools deeper in to the caves. A retreating troll might shake a tree full of stirge; he doesn\u2019t care about them. A stirge, injured, flees to not return. It all kind of makes sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s some monster actions mixed in. The troll, fleeing, might shake the stirge tree. A goblin, fleeing, might jump in the water \u2026 and get attacked by the piranha. Another might be thrown in elsewhere to attract the piranha and creature a diversion. There are some charmed trolls inside \u2026 but charm works both ways; they tend to ignore the party is they don\u2019t directly attack them or they are ordered otherwise. It\u2019s this very neutral way of writing the adventure that leads to opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Obstacles present themselves. The aforementioned streams\/pools of piranha \u2026 I mean \u201cNeedleFish.\u201d In the water there is some razor sharp wire strung as obstacles to overcome. Treasure is stored in a steaming hot 180 degree mud pool, or deep in a pool of piranha or a water monster. These are open-ended, with no suggestions given, just something for the party to devise a way to overcome. And it doesn\u2019t FEEL like it\u2019s a gimpy set up, it feels like this is natural and how things should work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the most part. The razor sharp wire is pushing things a bit as is the existence of a MU with charm in service to the troll king. I\u2019m not sure the Charm MU is really even needed; it doesn\u2019t feel like the charms provide that much of a needed background explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Treasure is good. Magic Lead. Weapons with names and (brief) histories. Items described sometimes with non-mechanical states, like chains that cannot be broken. Mundane items also get a little description, adding to their flavor. There\u2019s a wandering monster table that has them doing something. There\u2019s a monster reference stat chart at the end. The map is interesting, for a lair, with water features, terrain, collapsing tunnels, various levels and the like. Good job on it. There\u2019s probably enough treasure, also, which is rare for a GOLD=XP game. You\u2019re not gonna level, but there might be 40k or 50k, which is good for a lair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the weird side of things, it sometimes engages in tables for the sake of tables, it feels like. A goblin has four possible reasons for being outside. A water monster has a table of random special abilities and weaknesses. The wanderer chart is a full page \u2026 which is great from a usability standpoint, it\u2019s easy to find. But in all of these cases it feels like there\u2019s more content than is needed\/expected. That\u2019s not bad, i just found it a bit strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map and text, while both good, could work together a little more. In particular light is strange. Room ten mentions it is lit \u2026 and also that room six is \u2026 but room six doesn\u2019t mention that. With a simple map, like this, you don\u2019t necessarily need to note light\/sound on the map since it\u2019s easy to scan ahead in the text as the party leave down the hallway to the next room. Nut \u2026 it\u2019s also nice for those details to somehow be conveyed to the DM ahead of time. It\u2019s related to the \u201coutside vista\u201d issue where the party can see a lot of an environment at once, looking down on a ruined keep for example, but no overview is given, focing the DM to scan everything to tell the party what they see \u201cin one go.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are minor though. The evocativeness of the writing is the major shortcoming. And by \u201cmajor shortcoming\u201d I mean the area for most improvement that the adventure has, not that it\u2019s a major problem. The writing is terse and the environments well described and interesting, but the writing is also a little flat. Hmmm, no, not flat. It\u2019s not generic. But it also doesn\u2019t really spring to life in your minds eye. And let\u2019s be clear, I\u2019m being kind of a jerk here. The language use is fine. But of course I want everything to be perfect. Tersely writing an evocative description that springs to life in your mind is not an easy task. Again, not that it\u2019s bad here, but it could be better. Have I inserted enough qualifiers yet?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is easily a Best. When you want an adventure and go to DriveThru to buy something THIS is EXACTLY the sort of thing you are hoping for. I wish every adventure ever written were at least as good as this. Yeah? Fuck it. This is my new baseline. I now hold your Rosethorn adventure up as the platonic example of a journeyman quality adventure.  Writers could do A LOT worse than emulate the format & style of this adventure. There may be other ways to achieve the same thing, but this thing is easy to relate to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru.The preview is five pages and shows you outside encounters and a few inside, including most of the piranha pools, the fleeing goblin, troll, stirge tree, etc. It\u2019s a good representation of the type and quality of writing\/adventure you\u2019ll be getting. The last page, has room I3, and shows some of the \u201cnot flat not the best\u201d writing I spoke about. 
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https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/290849\/The-Mud-King-of-Stoney-Creek<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By WR Beatty Rosethorn Publishing S&W Levels 5-7 Beavers have dammed up Stoney Creek… but the villagers who went to break up the dam have not returned. Perhaps something sinister is going on here? This nineteen page adventure details a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-level-6","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/mudking.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297","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=6297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6298,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6297\/revisions\/6298"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}