{"id":6415,"date":"2019-12-18T07:23:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T12:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6415"},"modified":"2019-12-12T10:26:31","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T15:26:31","slug":"6415","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6415","title":{"rendered":"Wherein Evil Lies – The Black Chapel"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Richard J Leblanc\nNew Big Dragon Games\nOSR Stuff\nLevels 3-5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Black Chapel adventure<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lemures have begun to emerge from the small shrine known simply as the Black Chapel. Surely, some sort of evil has been set upon the world and must be stopped before it\u2019s too late!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a digest sized zine with 47 pages that focuses on evil type things. It includes an eleven page dungeon adventure with about thirty rooms in an evil chapel of hell. It\u2019s a fun little interactive and evocative place that could use some trimming of superfluous information and phrasing. Which means it\u2019s good but not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The zine, proper, has some new classes, spells, monsters\/undead, and a few (great) tables in the back on Quirks when you become unhinged, methods of sacrifice, and evil hooks \u2026 like \u201clocal river turns to blood.\u201d Sweet! I approve! But the focus of this review is on the adventure, The Black Chapel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a couple of rooms above ground and quite a few more, thirty or so, below ground in the main chapel proper. The blurb about lemures, while true, is just some bs; there\u2019s no real reason or hook beyond a \u201cfarmers have 10kgp\u201d \u2026 I\u2019d instead use a few of the evil hooks from the last page of the zine, drop them in to my campaign over time, and eventually lead the party here. It\u2019s just a place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interactivity here is good. \u201cDelicious\u201d, I might even add. There is a lot for the party to play with, from unholy water fonts, to holes to put your fingers in. One room is a hallway with statues. They have names. There are two empty pedestals with the names \u201cself.\u201d It\u2019s pretty obvious you should get up on the pedestal IN THE EVIL TEMPLE and say your name \u2026 IN THE EVIL HELLSPAWN TEMPLE. Do you wanna do it? Huh? Wanna say your true name in the evil temple to hell? That is fucking wonderful. It\u2019s that\u2019s delight of both the players and the DM kind of knowing what is going to happen \u2026 a situation telegraphed, and a challenge accepted by the players. It\u2019s wonderful and this adventure has several of those moments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even better \u2026 nothing bad happens when you say your name. In fact, a secret door opens! This follows the rules that you can\u2019t fuck over the players time and again and still expect them to swallow the bait. You have to have some bad with the good and this adventure includes that. Interactivity is high and really good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Magic and treasure are pretty good as well, usually with an evil bend that is not TOO evil. Loose 1HD and gain a point of STR. A ring of summoning hell hounds \u2026 that attack everyone except the summoner. Choices to be made and magic items, with flaws, to leverage results in players making choices about risks to take and that kind of tension is fun in an RPG. The items in this, beyond being unique items, offer those choices in many cases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Description are decently evocative. You really get the sense of a forbidding black chapel to evil. Black granite baptismial fonts of unholy water. Hauntingly-beautiful frescoes of cult members in loin cloths who are self-flagellating. The smell of oil permeating rooms. There\u2019s a good effort here to up the descriptive game. And, as mentioned, it all works together to build this feeling of dread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it goes overboard in places. \u201cthe scent of burnt hair sneaks past the nostrils and into the mind.\u201d Ok buddy, we\u2019re pushing flowery prose more than a bit with that one. I get the idea, which is good, but I also cringe a little a it. I\u2019ll take that, though, over another \u201clarge chest\u201d and bother boring descriptive words that make it in to the text. Or phrases like \u201cIt appears to be \u2026\u201d and other padding. This is another case where Ray\u2019s editing\/style guide for RPG\u2019s would have been useful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s also a large number of asides and purpose\/historical notes in the text that only serve to pad it out. \u201c(once Master of Malbolge, but now exiled from the Nine Hells)\u201d and \u201c(and was likely carved when Moloch held higher standing)\u201d and so on. Purpose, history, asides \u2026 you can get away with an occasional one but paying in too many makes the text harder to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This combines with a certain tendency in Leblanc\u2019s writing to focus a bit much on the physicality and mechanics of things. A pedestal 1 foot wide and 3 feet tall \u2026 or a text description of the length and direction of a hallway, that copies what is already present on the map. Combine with the other issues and the room descriptions can be pulled to the mundane instead of the wonderfully evocative. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But \u2026 it\u2019s still a decent adventure. And, overall, the zine proper is worth it just to steal some of those tables!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru.
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https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/282689\/Wherein-Evil-Lies<\/a>?1892600
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Richard J Leblanc New Big Dragon Games OSR Stuff Levels 3-5 The Black Chapel adventure Lemures have begun to emerge from the small shrine known simply as the Black Chapel. Surely, some sort of evil has been set upon the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/evil.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6415","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=6415"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6417,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6415\/revisions\/6417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}