{"id":6631,"date":"2020-04-25T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-25T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6631"},"modified":"2020-04-14T13:29:57","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T17:29:57","slug":"the-high-moors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6631","title":{"rendered":"The High Moors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Stephen J. Jones\nUnsound Methods\n5e\/OSR\nLevels 1-9<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The High Moors beckon\u2026 Little is known of the Ieldra – a race of cruel and depraved elves that once ruled the northern tableland called The High Moors – and no one has seen an elf in living memory. Their civilisation is dead, destroyed by an incursion from the Far Realm brought about by their hubris. The ruins of the High Moors have lain undisturbed for centuries. With news from a successful expedition, people have finally considered the treasures waiting to be discovered in the forgotten north.  A number of expeditions have now been dispatched to bring back magic and riches. Unfortunately, danger, horror and madness awaits most of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 198 page \u201cadventure\u201d is actually a mini-campaign setting, taking characters from level one through about level nine by way of a hexcrawl with about seventy location of varying depth. It\u2019s above average, as hex crawls go, in terms of the situations developed and the adventures support for it. For $10, you get an entire campaign \u2026 not a bad deal at all!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, a campaign setting. This means gods, races, leveling, coin systems, and other details have been changed. This hex crawl makes sense in the world that it lives in and would be quite the challenge to move it, unless it\u2019s a pocket dimension, etc. It is such a Of This Place that conversions are going to be difficult. It\u2019s a Gold=XP system, for 5e (and easily enough older school D&D) that also has attached to it unique roles for dwarves, elves, goblins, halflings, demons, giants, and a myriad of other races. It\u2019s going to hard to fit this in without some effort \u2026 but \u2026 it does contain enough adventure in it to handle levels one through nine. So, why fit it in at all? Just start a new campaign using this, make it the centerpiece, and off you go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The core of the adventure are the hex locations, about sixty scattered across three maps, each of which is about 11 hexes by 15 hexes, with a 1 hex=12 mile scale. These tend to stretch out to a page or so, especially where stat blocks are involved. In spite of this, they entries are relatively well organized. Each one tends to starts with an overview, what you might see from a distance as you approach, and then additional detail as you get up closer. Finally, the individual elements of the \u201cup close\u201d view get their own little bolded section that describes what it going on with them in a format that is relatively easy to scan. These locations have SUBSTANTIAL mysteries to solve, things that are missing, NPC\u2019s to interact with, and so on. There is definitely some potential energy in the vast majority of the encounters.These are not the static models of Isle of the Unknown, but rather something more akin  to the newer Wilderlands, that had more detail and the old Wilderlands. Interactive, lengthy, but generally easy to follow. There\u2019s only so much you can do, though, via a pig-man village and the intrigue therein without running the words the top of the bowl. The same with the ruins, or mini-dungeons prevalent throughout the hex crawl. There\u2019s just a degree of abstraction that you have to accept with a hex crawl. The hexes need to do a good job to inspire the DM because there\u2019s just no word budget for detail. Nor should there be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A substantial element to a hex crawl campaign is getting the players crawling and keeping them exploring. Numerous hooks are suggested, both more generic ones and then also more race-specific ones, which come off a little like secret society missions. Combined with the need to explore for coin purposes (you spend your coin, one GP to train for 1 xp) and magic then you get a nice little loop of coin, hooks, and missions you pick up out in the wilderness\/hexes. It\u2019s good. I think it more than adequately covers the pretext needed to play D&D tonight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m pretty happy with this. The setting has a lot going on, factions and the like, along with some substantial \u201cgame world\u201d mysteries to resolve. There are numerous opportunities to screw things up \u201cBroodmother Skyfortress\u201d\/Rients style. There\u2019s good cross-referencing, generally, and good imagery. The setup for the various sites seem interesting and more than throw-away sites. At one point there\u2019s an invisible chain, going up in to the sky, that you can hear but not see. Climbing up it reveals a platform and a building to explore. It\u2019s done very well. And almost everything is done well in this. There are significantly more highs than lows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It feels like this was done in word, or some such, with a 2-column format used. This FEELS off, in place, maybe a little amateurish? I appreciate the singular effort of a designer, but the product could have been better with good layout. Not that it\u2019s bad. Maybe it just REMINDS me of the look of products that ARE bad?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is eleven pages, but not very good. It\u2019s just the first eleven pages, which cover a bit of the overview. A few of the hexes would have been a much better preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/309401\/The-High-Moors?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen J. Jones Unsound Methods 5e\/OSR Levels 1-9 The High Moors beckon\u2026 Little is known of the Ieldra – a race of cruel and depraved elves that once ruled the northern tableland called The High Moors – and no one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5e","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/highmoors.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631","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=6631"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7255,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6631\/revisions\/7255"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}