{"id":6535,"date":"2020-02-26T07:14:00","date_gmt":"2020-02-26T12:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6535"},"modified":"2020-02-18T08:36:54","modified_gmt":"2020-02-18T13:36:54","slug":"black-pudding-6-underground-down-below","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6535","title":{"rendered":"Black Pudding #6 \/ Underground Down below"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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J.V. West\nRandom Order Creations\nOSR\nLevels 3-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Black Pudding #6 is a zine and I\u2019m reviewing the eight pagepointcrawl adventure \u201cUnderground Down Below\u201d, with map by Evlyn Moreau. It\u2019s got 36 encounters described over eight pages, if you count the one page map. Imagine a REALLY large cavern with mesa\u2019s and stuff in it. That\u2019s this. IE: an underground valley hemmed in on all sides with some plateaus in it. It;s very imaginative. And it lacks inciting incidents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Have you ever been to an art forward gaming con? I have. They\u2019re great! I\u2019m thinking specifically of Con on the Cob. Art people are relaxed, not up their own asses, and know how to have fun and know how to run a game. The afterhours DCC games at GenCon are another great example of this as the ZZ Top gang run for fun. This has that kind of vibe. Mostly. But it\u2019s lacking that certain motivating aspect that drives the adventure forward. It feels more like an Ed Greenwood adventure where there\u2019s lots of interesting shit going on, that you CAN interact with, but why would you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map depicts a kind of isometric view of a large underground cave. Very big. Lots of shit going on on what is, essentially an \u201cart map\u201d rather than your usual gaming map. Nothing wrong with that, I love me some on map detail. There\u2019s no scale but it is, essentially, a pointcrawl. I don\u2019t know, maybe the cavern is lit by purple or green light or something, so the party can see points in the distance to travel to. That\u2019s not mentioned but would work. I\u2019m a big fan of \u201cthe party sees something interesting\u201d so that they can then decide to travel to it. The isometric view (is that the right word? I think I\u2019ve used it in this context since that DL1 map) does a good job of showing elevation and the map is chock full of little drawings (it\u2019s an art map, remember) that allows the Dm to describe vague half-seen shapes in the (I\u2019ve now added) pale green light. I see the back half of a shadowy colossal stone head up ahead in the pale green light? Let\u2019s go there! This kind of \u201cexpansive view in the distance\u201d is invaluable, for those situations in which it\u2019s warranted. For these \u201cI can see a lot so what do I see?\u201d sorts of situations i love a map like this or a brief overview text in the adventure to help orient the players. This does that well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The little vignettes are pretty imaginative, some interconnected and some not. The first location is a dozen little people washing and feeding and worshipping a giant fire beetle and her three dog sized babies. Her poo glows. Or giant centipede people. Or a cave mouth with teeth that can bite you. Giant demon statues that spit out gems. Giant people buried in rock. Hmmm, come to think of it, there ARE a lot of giant rock people\/buried\/made of stone elements in the adventure. Whatever, who doesn\u2019t like a giant cracked egg with something squirming inside of it? Or a village that sacrifices every ninth baby to the giant squid monster in the lake and drain their old people of blood to make protein cakes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, they lack a certain something and I\u2019m not sure I can fully describe what. It feels a little like one of those Ed Greenwood adventures where you can look but if you touch you die. There doesn\u2019t seem to be much reason to interact with the various locales other than, maybe, the innate desire of the party to fuck with shit.  Village of stoic philosophy dwarves. Uh. Ok. And? The priestess lives inside that teeth cave? Ok. So? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a hint, here or there, of something for the party to be driving towards. A 20,000p diamond and an unguarded, but cursed, ancient red dragon hoard. Ok, so, maybe that\u2019s what the party is here looking for? But, still, why am I interacting with the dwarves again? Just like a Greenwood adventure, there\u2019s as much trouble for the party as they make for themselves. (I played with Jim Ward once and his adventure felt the same way. Just don\u2019t fuck with shit. Maybe fun for a one shot you are ok with dying in 90 minutes in to a four hour game, but hard to sustain.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are little \u201chit point tracker\u201d bubbles after each creature and I can\u2019t help but wonder what if those were not there and instead there was just one more sentence? Something to drive the action forward? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What this needs is just a little more for each encounter. Maybe. Or maybe some kind of global overview and\/or \u201cwhat everyone knows and who likes\/hates who and what they want\u201d or something like that. There\u2019s no background or intro at all to this, just a few tables scattered in the adventure. \u201cHow did we get here?\u201d \u201ca wizard did it\u201d.or  \u201cYou fell through a hole\u201d and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You could steal a lot from this adventure. Do you want to steal? By which I mean, are you looking for inspiration? That sounds an awful lot like \u201cAdventures for Reading\u201d to me. But, there\u2019s also room in life for Art, right? Is this just art? Art that you\u2019re inspired by? To run a great game? Isn\u2019t that what I implore designers to do? But \u2026 is that art? Can it be art AND a good adventure? Sure. But is this everything it could be for the DM? Not without a shock rope attached.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. There\u2019s no preview, but, hey, you can download it for free, so the entire zine if the preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/303613\/Black-Pudding-6?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
J.V. West Random Order Creations OSR Levels 3-6 Black Pudding #6 is a zine and I\u2019m reviewing the eight pagepointcrawl adventure \u201cUnderground Down Below\u201d, with map by Evlyn Moreau. It\u2019s got 36 encounters described over eight pages, if you count … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/bp6.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6535","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=6535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6536,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6535\/revisions\/6536"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}