{"id":6732,"date":"2020-06-17T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-17T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6732"},"modified":"2020-06-07T14:53:42","modified_gmt":"2020-06-07T18:53:42","slug":"gatehouse-on-cormacs-crag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6732","title":{"rendered":"Gatehouse on Cormac’s Crag"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Dave Bezio\nDave Bezio's Grey Area Games\nS&W\nLevels 1-3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The dilapidated keep on a windswept cliff has long been shunned by the local…so of course, that’s where you are headed!  Uncover secrets and explore the unknown as you attempt to rescue 3 helpless maidens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This forty page adventure details a dungeon with seven levels and 135 rooms. A good attention to the basics keeps this from running away with itself. It does tend to the \u201cplain\u201d side of the house, though, in terms of writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, do no harm.<\/strong> Is that were the mantra of adventure writers then we\u2019d all be in much better shape as a hobbyist looking at products for our use. This adventure gets that right. It\u2019s not stellar, but, it also doesn\u2019t fuck up. And \u201cNot A Fuck Up\u201d is a pretty good place to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This adventure is doing everything at an \u2026 acceptable? Level. It has a small village with terse little descriptions that are littered with potentially interesting things and brief little snippets of NPC\u2019s that a DM can take and run with. It\u2019s got a rumor table and henchmen table, as well as some small wilderness wandering monster tables that embed a bit of detail. None of this is bad. None of this is overwritten. It not exactly forthcoming in providing detail that excites the DM, but its doing a great job of batting average, over and over and over again. In practice this looks like \u201cThe smith Bjorg is a crotchety loner who has noticed that the McDugals have been acting a bit funny since marrying the 3 old crones from outside the village.\u201d We get a smith. He\u2019s crotchety and a loner. His name is Bjorg. All of those are things the DM can work with. And then get a little bit of intrigue with the 3 old crones comment. This isn\u2019t fuckign rocket science. Bezio knows that less is better than more and he uses the less to great effect, empowering these short little descriptions with what both the DM needs to run the NPC and to empower some action further on \u2026 and note it\u2019s done by having the villagers have relationships with each other. One mentions the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rooms are much the same. They tend to be very basic and just a little bit above minimalism. This isn\u2019t the minimalism of the Vampire Queen or that of expanded minimalism but rather that of some of the beter adventures that use minimalism. Just like with the smith description, the rooms provide JUST a little more than minimal, and not in the \u201cexpanded minimalism\u201d manner. It\u2019s not droning on about some backstory. What there is is embedded in the room description much in the same way Gygax did in his better writing. The story builds as the adventure unfolds through the room descriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And getting to that, there\u2019s an interconnected nature to the rooms. While the levels have themes (kobolds, goblins, wizard, temple, etc) they also have a interconnected nature. Clues for one area in another. The map has a cross-section and several levels have multiple entrances\/exits. You can bypass levels and there are hidden levels with good map detail. Some levels open up and others tend to only have ten or so rooms. You can get yourself in to trouble by going deeper and skipping levels. This is a part of what I mean by \u201cdesign\u201d when I use that term specifically as the seldom-mentioned fourth-pillar, alongside interactivity, evocative writing, and ease of use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of evocative writing \u2026 well, this don\u2019t do that. \u201cA chipped statue of a maiden stands in one corner of this room (worthless.) Ok, so, it\u2019s short and easy to scan. That\u2019s good. But it\u2019s not exactly making me excited about running the room. Ratlings play a game involving human teeth and a sharp stick. This gets to the better part of the description in the B2 Keep on the Borderlands, where orcs shoot dice. But the adventure is almost never rising beyond that. A storeroom with empty barrels and smashed crates. Book treasure. 3 tapestries (100gp each.)  These are all very basic details. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Art is charming as are names for folk like Pepsy Tallfeller the halfling and Erikk the Crass the dwarf. There are good level overviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can quibble with other details in this adventure. Creature reactions for a level are in their room rather than the (summary) overviews of the levels. Not ideal. A room or two has some background information first, prior to the meat of the room, increasing scanning time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is design here. That is good. But I don\u2019t see myself excited to run this the way I am other adventures. The rooms don\u2019t fill me with glee. This isn\u2019t about rooms being exciting set pieces but rather the writing being such that I WANT to run the room, tha the description springs to mind and my brain takes over and runs with it, filling in the details. Others will no doubt disagree, but, in spire of the design present, I\u2019m going to regret this. Stronger descriptions, without many more words, would easily bump this for me in to something of the Best. It’s 2020; we can do better than the best of the stuff stuff. (Although this blog seems to prove, day in and day out, that, no, most people can’t get even close to the best of the old quality.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages. You get to see the village description, rumors, level overviews and wilderness wanderer tables. That\u2019s a decent selection. It would have been better, though, to also include a page or so of dungeon descriptions. The title page\/intro pages do little to add to the value of the preview but a few pages of dungeon rooms would. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/315159\/Gatehouse-on-Cormacs-Crag?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dave Bezio Dave Bezio’s Grey Area Games S&W Levels 1-3 The dilapidated keep on a windswept cliff has long been shunned by the local…so of course, that’s where you are headed!  Uncover secrets and explore the unknown as you … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6731,"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-6732","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\/06\/crag.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6732","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=6732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6733,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6732\/revisions\/6733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}