{"id":6430,"date":"2019-12-30T07:10:00","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T12:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6430"},"modified":"2020-02-21T12:51:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T17:51:00","slug":"the-lost-treasure-of-atlantis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6430","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Treasure of Atlantis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Chainsaw\nNorth Wind Adventures\nAS&SH\nLevels 6-8<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In the far reaches of Hyperborea\u2019s Crab Archipelago lies a small, mountainous island known as Crystal Point. Passing sailors recently have witnessed a crimson glow in Crystal Point\u2019s waters and beams of russet light shining up from its steep cliffs. Too, unusually frequent lightning storms in the area have torn the sky in blinding flashes, shattering the air with their awesome sound. The seedy wharf taverns of Khromarium and elsewhere buzz with these strange tales\u2014some even speculate that Crystal Point may hold the lost treasure of Atlantis! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 68 pages adventure OOZES with flavour. Primarily a \u201cdungeon\u201d of tunnels & caves, it also includes an island exploration to get there and little social adventure in an \u201cevil\u201d village to learn of the island. It, finally, lives up to the promises made of AS&SH. Flavour & interactivity abounds \u2026 diminished only by the layout (and editing?)  choices made. Buy More. Buy More Now, and Be Happy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was not looking forward to this review. I\u2019m off, and lazy when I\u2019m off work. And it\u2019s an AS&SH adventure, and I\u2019m not fond of those. And a 68 page slog through crap is no fun AT ALL when you have holiday things to do. But wait \u2026 what\u2019s this? Talanian didn\u2019t write this? Chainsaw did?Hmmm, He\u2019s on my internal mental list as \u201cNot a complete fucking idiot.\u201d (And to be clear, this ranks right below \u201cBryce is fanboy Of\u201d \u2026 there\u2019s a big gap there that explains many things about me psychologically speaking.) To my delight Chainsaw has finally produced an AS*SH adventure that FEELS like a pulp adventure. It\u2019s full of flavour and action and interactivity and is evocative as all fuck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A zombie has a map tattooed on his back, or a toothless sailor with glinting eyes grins and shows you a platinum coin, or a noble \u201cof little renown\u201d has gone missing. Even my own fucked up summaries of the hooks communicates some of the awesome of these hooks. Not long, but PACKED with flavour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this continues in every part of the adventure. Onboard ship to get an island there\u2019s wandering monsters, of course. I often lament \u201cthey attack!\u201d encounters \u2026 but these are different. They have flavour. \u201cA group drifts into the party\u2019s path and crawls hand<\/p>\n\n\n\n
over hand up their ship\u2019s sides.\u201d or \u201cGiant tentacles burst from the water,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
attempting to rip the party\u2019s ship to pieces.\u201d This communicates the encounter vibe well. One short sentence and the DM has something to work with. Evocative writing is important in an adventure, especially these days. Most of us have packed lives. By writing evocatively the designer communicates tone, tenor, flavour of an encounter directly to the DM\u2019s brain, and then the DM can take over and build upon it. Encounter after encounter after encounter does this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The very first location is an \u201cevil\u201d village. The people paint themselves red, like crabs. It\u2019s full of crab parts. The blacksmith has a birth defect that looks like a crab hand. They keep slaves. They have two dudes in hanging iron cages …errr \u2026 one, the other, his brother, was burnt to death in his cage. There\u2019s \u2026 oh fuck, why am I even trying. This is place is PACKED. Several subplots in just the opening village. The dude in the cage, another brother trying to free him, the village elders hiding a crab conspiracy (duh \u2026) and a villanous merchant, a \u2026 it\u2019s just fucking packed! And the island is also \u2026 including a mi-go automaton with rudimentary intelligence that has broken free and is repeating why me WHY ME\u201d over and over again. Fucking Flavour. And, it should be obvious by now: Fucking Interactivity. More than just combat. Telegraphing. Plans to be made. Plots to be foiled. ADVENTURE!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, as per usual, it\u2019s fucked over by the layout and editing. There ARE cross–references, and bolding, and some indents, all of which make things easier to find. There\u2019s also the usual mania found in all Northwind adventures to laying out every word in a paragraph style. I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s in the designers manuscript or not. But I do know that the editor and \u201cdevelopment person\u201d should have done something about it no matter who did it. Unless they did it. In which case BAD! YOU\u2019RE BAD PEOPLE! You can\u2019t just bury information in a quarter page paragraph of small font type. I\u2019m scanning the page, looking for the encounter description. I can\u2019t read a column before relating it to my players. Get it? Do you get it? No? You don\u2019t get it? That\u2019s why it continues to show up in adventure after adventure? Look, I\u2019m not saying you have to sell your soul down the river. What I AM saying is that you need to find another layout and editing style that both works for the \u201cHoward wrote this a hundred years ago and look out layout looks like that!\u201d and \u201cusability at the table for quick scanning.\u201d Do some work and find something that works for you from now on. And keep publishing from people like Chainsaw that know how to write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can poke some more holes in this. A reference sheet for NPC\u2019s in the village. A kind of \u201coverview look\u201d for the large open vistas, like when you enter the village, see the island, etc. Landmarks, first things you see, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Chainsaw writes viscerally. You FEEL the encounter, NPC, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plus, there\u2019s a Lightning Reactor in this adventure. With levers you can pull. FUCK! YES!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a great place to adventure and a great adventure module. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is broken! Fix the preview!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/296269\/The-Lost-Treasure-of-Atlantis?1892600 <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Chainsaw North Wind Adventures AS&SH Levels 6-8 In the far reaches of Hyperborea\u2019s Crab Archipelago lies a small, mountainous island known as Crystal Point. Passing sailors recently have witnessed a crimson glow in Crystal Point\u2019s waters and beams of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6427,"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-6430","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\/12\/atlantis.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430","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=6430"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6433,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6430\/revisions\/6433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}