{"id":6783,"date":"2020-07-22T07:16:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-22T11:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6783"},"modified":"2020-07-13T09:17:49","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T13:17:49","slug":"keys-of-the-apocalypse-1-pestilence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=6783","title":{"rendered":"Keys of the Apocalypse 1 – Pestilence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jay Parker\nDilly Green Bean Games\nS&W (Modern)\nLevels 6-10<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
First play as Red Ops as they head to an island off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine to retrieve a Senator\u2019s wife and daughter after contact with the island is lost. But a looming hurricane is making things tricky and a missing Coast Guard cutter is drawing unwanted attention. Not only has that, but something biblical has occurred that will change the world forever\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 49 page adventure contains brief rules for modern S&W play as well as \u201cthree\u201d adventures, only one of which is relevant, and is ten pages. The other two are a solo mission and a Blay as the Bad Guys thing. The \u201cReal\u201d adventure does a good job portraying a survival horror base raid, but it completely marred by the walls of text and lack of any coherent method for organizing the text. And it fucks with the characters too much, even for a one-shot with included pre-gens, which this has.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In high school I played a lot of Danger International. It was\/is a low-powered\/normal person version of the Champions using the HERO system rules. Spies, special ops, commandos; a kind of James Bond type game that usually had a kind of investigation ending with a commando type raid on the evil bad guy base. This fits in to that genre. While this adventure seems to communicate post-apoc from its marketing, it\u2019s actually more of a Delta Green type type affair with the party being a kind of investigation and special missions type unit set in the modern day. This book uses S&W for it\u2019s system, with first eighteen or so pages having some rule adjustments and character classes, followed by a \u201cnormal\u201d adventure, then a solo mission and another niche one that I won\u2019t cover; just the \u201cReal\u201d on in this review \u2026 and I\u2019m not covering the rules either. As a result there\u2019s only about ten pages to the \u201ccore\u201d adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sentaos wife and daughter are missing on a island that has a medical facility they were visiting, no contact, multiple previous teams sent in not responding, and so now it\u2019s the party of pre-gens turns (or, make you own, but pre-gens are provided.) Of course, there\u2019s been a virus outbreak and there are zombies, something that any self-respecting group should immediately pick up once \u201cmedical facility\u201d and \u201cno contact are mentioned.\u201d As a result this is a kind of Resident Evil or Silent Hill type survival horror mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These things live or die by the vibe they create, and this one does a pretty decent job. Abandoned ship in the harbour, bloody handprints, an abandoned dingy floating, pouring rain, hearing a crying baby, figures seen alone out in the rain \u2026 it does a great job of including the kind of slow build\/burn environment, building dread and tension in the adventure. It\u2019s not an adventure for the light of day, but uses the typical genre elements or body fluids and dread to do a great job building tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The evocative writing lends to this. Sounds of a crying baby building tension, and pale people soaked in rain with a dead eyed stare, holding a pistol loosely in one hand. When the adventure knows it\u2019s trying to build dread it does a great job of presenting a situation that does that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But when it\u2019s not trying it is REALLY not trying. \u201cThis is a refrigerated lab that is empty.\u201d Well, ok. I guess I can\u2019t ding it for overwriting most of the room descriptions and descriptions for \u201cempty\u201d rooms\/ But there are opportunities lost to provide the DM with just a little more information to help them build a scene. Giant tanks, or freezers with cold air mist escaping from the lids, a fog covered room from the mist, and so on, would have helped. I\u2019m not saying every room has to have something in it, but helping the DM out to create an evocative setting is a part of the designers job, and this doesn\u2019t really do that with the environment. When it\u2019s got something to say, when it decides to put something IN the room then it brings the noise, but otherwise it doesn\u2019t really try. Again, not every room needs to be a tour d\u2019force, but I do expect SOMETHING to bring the room to life. There\u2019s a place for an empty room, but the empty room has to be something also, at least in an adventure like this one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The major, MAJOR problem though is the wall of text that it brings to the table. The opening intro must be three or more pages of exposition text mixed in with directives to the DM. It\u2019s hard to tell what is what. There\u2019s nothing to catch the eye. There is very little organization, use of whitespace, bolding, headings, etc in order to make it easy for the DM to find information and make it easier to assimilate and run. It\u2019s more of a first this happens and then this and then this and then this \u2026 and thats hard to run. This sort of thing continues in the \u201cinteresting\u201d rooms as well. There are times to switch formats, and certainly I\u2019m not calling for every room to look like a \u201cgood\u201d dungeon room, organization wise, but when you are doing a complex room, or a room with something in it, it requires the designer to put some effort in to make the room easy to run. This don\u2019t do that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some \u201cgotcha\u201d things as well. The crying baby is a zombie like thing and if you kil it then you release a plague on the world. But there\u2019s no hint that\u2019s the case. And there are sometimes bodies on the floor. They don\u2019t rise up zombie style (well, some do, but not the ones I\u2019m thinking of \u2026) If you get too close to the bodies on the floor then you die, instantly. It\u2019s the arbitrary nature of the scene that makes it problematic, even for a one-shot. By doing what the party normally does, go in rooms, they die instantly without warning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also uses randomness in a weird way. Encountering the abandoned dongy in the harbor only happens on a 1 in 6 chance. Why? This is an encounter to build dread. Why would you make it unlikely to happen? You\u2019re fighting the very nature of the adventure type with this behavior. In other places there is a chance for a random encounter. I\u2019m not talking wandering monsters, those are always ok for driving an adventure forward, time-wise. I\u2019m talking \u201cif you leave the room then there\u2019s a 1 in 6 chance of the following fully described scene to take place.\u201d And the scene takes a page, or half a page to describe and, again, builds horror. This doesn\u2019t make sense in a survival horror genre. Again, I\u2019m not talking wandering monsters, I\u2019m talking fully fleshed out scene. That should be included. There is no principal of old school gaming here; you\u2019re doing a different genre, survival horror instead of exploration, and the tropes and standards for it are different. There may be some things to borrow from exploration adventures but random scenes isn\u2019t one of them. Programmed is ok; it\u2019s not a railroad, it\u2019s part of the room. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d say this is essentially unusable because of the wall of text\/organization issues. I can\u2019t say I\u2019m surprised, for all the trouble with OSR adventures not knowing how to do it I\u2019d say that other genres have much MUCH more issues with this. Refer to just adopt every Call of Cthulhu adventure ever written. And that\u2019s too bad. The scenes are good, in a little \u201cstandard zombie medical lab on an isolated island\u201d kind of way. It\u2019s what you would expect, but it knows how to do survival horror. It just doesn\u2019t know how to present the adventure in a wy that a DM can actually run it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1.50 at DriveThru. There is no meaningful preview, just the usual \u201cthumbnail\u201d one. It needs to show some text of the actual adventure to give people an idea of what they are buying before they buy it, $1.50 or no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/311241\/Keys-of-the-Apocalypse-Pestilence?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jay Parker Dilly Green Bean Games S&W (Modern) Levels 6-10 First play as Red Ops as they head to an island off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine to retrieve a Senator\u2019s wife and daughter after contact with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/pest.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6783","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=6783"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6784,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6783\/revisions\/6784"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}