{"id":6696,"date":"2020-05-27T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-27T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6696"},"modified":"2020-05-19T12:55:42","modified_gmt":"2020-05-19T16:55:42","slug":"the-stygian-garden-of-abelia-prem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6696","title":{"rendered":"The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Clint Krause\nRed Moon Medicine Show\nLotFP\nLevels 1-2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
This 31 page adventure uses about  twelves pages to describe around fifty locations in a manor and its grounds. The writing is tight and usually evocative, with some care paid to actually being usable by the DM. It is also a little slow and lacks some interactivity and, i might, motivation. It reminds me of Tower of the Stargazer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s this class of adventure, I usually think of them as Lamentations adventures, in which there\u2019s a recently abandoned X that the party goes to check out\/loot before anyone else does. \u201cNo ones seen old man Roy in a week, he must be dead, let\u2019s loot his place!\u201d As a fan of urban adventures I\u2019m generally on board with this sort of thing. This adventure has touches of that. A manor home, and grounds, the home of a slightly senile old woman, and a rumor table and backstory relating her dismissing her servants and dismissing them. Maybe a country estate, since the grounds are quite large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
 Usability here is high. The maps, there are eight or nine, are refreshingly clear but still have lots of details on them. It\u2019s easy to tell which witch is which and make out doors and the extra detail on the maps makes does a lot to help fill in the details of the rooms and orent the DM. There are multiple levels in some areas, balconies, dumbwaiters, and windows to the outside THAT CAN ACTUALLY BE BROKEN! Imagine, a real environment to explore!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Beyond this though the writing style of the rooms is direct. There is no conversation tone. There is non padding with \u201cthis was once\u201d or backstory embedded in to the rooms. The entries tend to be short, or at least the individual sections of rooms, with bolded headings indicating where to look for additional data on special items in the room to explore. Important and obvious things tend to come first in the description, helping the DM run the room well as they quickly scan the rest of the description.  It\u2019s really not fucking around here at all and I struggle to recall another adventure in which the writing was as tight as this one, devoid of useless word padding.Usability is further enhanced by a one page monster summary sheet, especially useful for the wandering monsters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The writing tends to be evocative as well, for the most part. Balconies overlook, doors in floral patterns, pantries invaded by rats, rifled kitchens, gilded harps. It\u2019s using a terse writing style but it\u2019s punctuating it with adjectives and adverbs other than \u201clarge\u201d and \u201cblack\u201dm along with room titles to help orient the DM immediately to what sort of room it is. Room one is titled The Foyer:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The front door of the manor is carved with a complex floral pattern. It is slightly ajar. Inside the foyer are four marble statues of female forms with scarves loosely draped over their bodies.Near the door there are two candelabras,each of which holds three dusty, half melted candles. In the center is a grand staircase that leads to the second floor.A second-floor balcony can be seen overlooking the room from above.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s direct. The front door is first. Floral patterns. Slightly ajar. Statues with scarves draped over them. Dusty half-melted candles in a candelabra. This isn\u2019t a masterclass in writing, but its far far better, both in being direct, lacking weasel padding, and sticking in some evocative imagery, than the vast majority of whats being produced in adventures. It\u2019s a little scene, in a few words. I would, generally, wish for things to be just a bit ore evocative, but for the most part this thing is on the correct track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interactivity is \u2026 somewhat lacking. This is slow, much in the same way\/vibe that Tower of the Stargazer is slow. There IS interactivity, statues to mess with, sleeps to have, and so on. But there\u2019s also more combat than interactivity \u2026 and there\u2019s not an awful lot of combat either. It\u2019s a slow, tension suspenseful thing, but it feels like the tension is somehow being mismanaged. As if there\u2019s not enough release, or not enough things to play with and investigate. For each statue that does something (attacks, spins, etc)  there are maybe four or so that do nothing. (Not to give the impression that the adventure is nothing but statues, but there are a lot of them in it,) It feels, I don\u2019t know, a little mundane? Slow? You need some, for horror and tension and suspense, but the balance just feels off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Combine this with a kind of lack of motivation for the adventure. I\u2019m gonna get shit for this, but there\u2019s nuance to what I\u2019m about to say. A site-based adventure needs something going on, especially at this length. There\u2019s no other team coming in to loot. There\u2019s no ghost in charge of the place. There\u2019s no pressure, other than the wanderers. I think, maybe, the open environment of a manor home and grounds, combined with only wanderers as pressure, seems to dissipate some of the tension. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a slower, dread and anticipation thing this works ok, and the descriptions are above average, as is the usability. I may elevate this to The Best upon further reflection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
 This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages, which, unfortunately, doesn\u2019t show you any of the rooms. That\u2019s disappointing, as is the lack of a level range on the store page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/152829\/The-Stygian-Garden-of-Abelia-Prem?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Clint Krause Red Moon Medicine Show LotFP Levels 1-2 This 31 page adventure uses about  twelves pages to describe around fifty locations in a manor and its grounds. The writing is tight and usually evocative, with some care paid … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/stygian.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696","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=6696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6697,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6696\/revisions\/6697"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}