{"id":6757,"date":"2020-07-06T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-06T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6757"},"modified":"2020-06-27T09:53:28","modified_gmt":"2020-06-27T13:53:28","slug":"so-youve-been-thrown-down-a-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6757","title":{"rendered":"So You’ve Been Thrown Down a Well"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Madeleiine Ember\nAsh Game Design\nTroika!\nIntroductory Levels?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
After a long fall, you’ve landed on something soft. A bit squishy and squelchy, really. And moving. Is it… a worm?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This \u201csixty page\u201d adventure describes an adventure where the party is thrown down a well in to a weird underworld and have to regain the surface.\/escape. It is uber-weird, as Troika! Tends to be, and mostly linear, as modern adventures tend to be. That aside, a pretty book, it is not very usable, with massive walls of text and formatting transitions that are not amenable to usability. It needs a hard, hard edit and some layout effort \u2026 which is saying something because the layout clearly was quite involved \u2026 to no good end other than \u201cpretty.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, of the 60 pages, about seventeen are devoted to backgrounds, with a decent sized appendix, so you\u2019re actually getting something around ten or so pages of actual adventure, with that involving seven to nine encounter areas. This is a mostly linear adventure, which, in the modern vein, is just something you need to expect. Getting rid of Gold=Xp and exploration elements, modern adventures create small environments for the party to interact with. That\u2019s what modern RPG\u2019s are, and that\u2019s ok, if that\u2019s what you\u2019re looking for. It\u2019s a different genre, I don\u2019t have a problem with that genre when that\u2019s what I\u2019m expecting to get when I buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The layout here is PURTY. Landscape design layout, with four column, black and orange backgrounds are striking with an art style reminiscent of ancient vase figures, in the negative space-ish, all in black. It\u2019s drool worthy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Drool worth and detracting from the usability, though. The white text, in negative, on the black and orange backgrounds make it hard to read. COmbined with the four-column (landscape mode) small text, making it hard to read. There\u2019s a dearth of effective whitespace and section headings, bolding, etc, to help bring to the eye to important details and to help with scanning. There\u2019s an attempt at this, through the use of italics to note another section heading, but the italics, in negative, doesn\u2019t stick out very well. This all leads to a wall of text syndrome. The \u201cRememberroom\u201d room, on page seven, have two solid columns of text, with only paragraph breaks. This is very ineffectual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is it the layout, the writer, the editor, or combination of the above that is responsible for this? A mix of all three? The writing certainly doesn\u2019t help. A lot of if\/then statements, some background mixed in, mechanics mixed in \u2026 it all combines to make the eyes glaze over. Recall that the most common complaint of adventures is that they are hard to prep and use. The usability. This is the chief barrier that an adventure needs to overcome. It must first succeed in its core mission: being used at the table. The most common complaint about adventure is that they are hard to use at the table. Look, it\u2019s not impossible that the most dazzling adventure ever could be in wall of text\/hard to use, but in a world in which people commonly complain about usability, the chief complaint in fact, the primary goal should be to make the damn thing usable at the table. Scalability. Readability. The ability to quickly and easily grok the room and reference the parts of it. It\u2019s not an absolute, a disaster in readability may be worth investing your time in running anyway if its good enough. How many adventures are there like that? Thracia? Maybe one or two others? What\u2019s the excuse, in 2020, to having a wall of text? You don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know, I guess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s some nice scenery scattered through.  Maze has a little table with the following sentences in it, as example places for the party to visit: \u201cCavern with stalactites carved as greek statuary.\u201d \u201ca rainbow-lit (by fluorescent mushrooms) waterfall.\u201d , \u201cA gentle brooks that flows with glittering golden water.\u201d There\u2019s no interactivity there, just little single sentences. It\u2019s nice imagery, but it should also serve so purpose. The Ed Greenwood \u201cmuseum tour\u201d adventures make a similar mistake, but instead of being evocative, as these are, they are pointless interactive <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s got interactivity. Things to talks to, a rope bridge to traverse, NPC\u2019s and situations to interact with. But they are a FUCKING PAIN to figure out because of the text issues. If I\u2019m struggling, reading casual with all the time in the world, how can I expect to run the encounter at the table? After two times through the text I\u2019m still struggling to understand the overall situation down below and how the adventure should flow. And in a modern adventure this is NOT a good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A hard edit of the text. Focus the rooms. Work on the usability. Republish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. $10 adventures without previews make me sad. How can one expect to know what they are buying without a preview? Are we to throw ourselves to the wind and hope for the best? Well, we\u2019ve seen where that gets us …<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/313219\/So-Youve-Been-Thrown-Down-A-Well?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Madeleiine Ember Ash Game Design Troika! Introductory Levels? After a long fall, you’ve landed on something soft. A bit squishy and squelchy, really. And moving. Is it… a worm? This \u201csixty page\u201d adventure describes an adventure where the party … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6755,"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-6757","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\/06\/well.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757","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=6757"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6758,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6757\/revisions\/6758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}