{"id":6579,"date":"2020-03-18T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-18T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6579"},"modified":"2020-03-10T08:06:16","modified_gmt":"2020-03-10T12:06:16","slug":"the-forgotten-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6579","title":{"rendered":"The Forgotten Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Walter Srebalus\nAegis Studios\nB\/X\nLevels 8-10<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
[…]  Pravus was a dedicated follower of Ragnar and decided to keep hold of the temple. Pravus and his fellow priests headed under the temple to wait out the war and maintain prayer to Ragnar. With continued dedication to Ragnar, the god bestowed upon Pravus the knowledge of a ritual called Everlife. The Ritual of Everlife was a guarded secret that wasn\u2019t widely shared with mortals. This ritual grants priests that Ragnar deemed worthy the ability to gain an everlasting unlife to continue their worship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This fourteen page adventure features a two level temple complex with nine rooms, three above ground and six below. It has a couple of gnolls up and the usual shadow\/wights\/lich below. It just seems like someone wanted to write a short adventure with a lich in it. The read-aloud and DM text could be the platonic example of how to not do things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know what to do here. It\u2019s coherent; I guess that\u2019s good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet Another Abandoned Temple. And a small one at that. Your level eight party is going to kill seven gnolls, to start with. Is that a challenge? Do you even try at this level or do you let your torchbearers do it? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The upstairs is a ruined temple with three rooms with those seven gnolls in it. The adventure, proper, is behind a secret door. The entire adventure of six more rooms. So you won\u2019t be going on the adventure unless you find the secret door. Which means that if the party doesn\u2019t find the secret door then the DM is going to fudge the roll and let them find it. Which begs the question: why have a secret door? Don\u2019t put your fucking adventure behind a die roll of any kind. You have to succeed on a spot\/secret door find\/negotiation\/diplomacy in order to continue the adventure? Don\u2019t do it. A treasure room at the end is one thing, but the main fucking adventure? No. This is bad design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DM text is full of useful information like \u201cThe characters can arrive from any direction and at ay time of day.\u201d I am now empowered. It\u2019s full of things like explaining what an ossuary is, what it was used for, how it was used, and other trivia that has no bearing on the actual play of the game at the table at all. It\u2019s nothing. I\u2019d say it gets in the way of the useful data ut I\u2019m not sure there IS useful DM text. It\u2019s just a monster listing, that attacks when you open the door, and some treasure, separated by the background trivia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The main baddie, the lich-priest, granted eternal life by his god for being a good worshipper, lives in a locked room behind a metal door, with the key to open the door in another room. Why s the main priest, granted unlife by his god for being a faithful worshipper, locked in his room? Who knows. As in, I\u2019m not looking for (more) backstory here, but the set up makes no sense. Why would he be locked in?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gnolls grunt and yelp at each other upstairs, according to the read-aloud. Given the ruined nature of the temple, with no roof and broken down walls up top, shouldn\u2019t we be able to hear that before we enter their \u201croom?\u201d Noting things like this, things that impact other areas of the dungeon, in their own room tiks me off. It shows an lack of thought for how actual play works. People listen. They hear things. This shit needs to be noted elsewhere, or on the mpa or something. If you\u2019re in a 1000 floor wide cavern and something as bright as sunlight is glowing on the other side then you don\u2019t wait until you get to the other side\u2019s read-aloud to tell us there\u2019s a light in this area.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, the read-aloud. It is, perhaps, the most magnificent ever. You get evocative writing like \u201cthis large area \u2026\u201d to describe a room. Don\u2019t use common adjectives and adverbs. English is a very descriptive language. And you can steal words from other languages. And you can make up words and use them in wrong way. You can do ANYTHING to get your vision across. Was your vision really as boring as the word \u201clarge\u201d implies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The read-aloud is quite bad. It explains backstory that the characters would not know. It provides details that should not be provided. \u201cWhen the temple wasn\u2019t in ruins, the lower level of the temple was used as an isusuary for patrons and a crypt for the priests.\u201d What the fuck is this? Is that what the party is experiencing right now? A monologue from a lecturer? Another room goes in to detail on what the party sees, what frescoes look like, their damage, detail on what statues look like. This DESTROYS interactivity in the game. You provide a general overview, then the party follows up with questions, searing and examining the frescoes and statues. Of you tell them all of this up front then there\u2019s little reason for them to look at them further. This back and forth between the DM and players might be THE key mechanic in a RPG, and yet these sorts of overly-descriptive read-alouds destroy that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s see, this is four to six characters of levels eight to ten. Let\u2019s say five level eight characters, an average of, say, 120,000 XP needed for level 9, each. The haul from this adventure is going to be about 15,000 in gold, divided five ways, that\u2019s going to be about 3000 XP per adventurer. If the party goes on forty more adventures like this then they can make level nine! So, look, I know. Walter wanted to put in a cleric lich and worked backwards from there, to a short adventure Travis would publish. But it doesn\u2019t work, not in a campaign. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru.There\u2019s no preview at all. Why would you deserve a preview? So you can determine what you\u2019re wasting your cash on beforehand? I think not!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/305743\/The-Forgotten-Temple?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Walter Srebalus Aegis Studios B\/X Levels 8-10 […]  Pravus was a dedicated follower of Ragnar and decided to keep hold of the temple. Pravus and his fellow priests headed under the temple to wait out the war and maintain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6578,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/03\/forgot.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579","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=6579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6580,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6579\/revisions\/6580"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}