{"id":7051,"date":"2020-12-12T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-12T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7051"},"modified":"2020-12-09T13:56:04","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T18:56:04","slug":"the-last-barrow-dd-adventure-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7051","title":{"rendered":"The Last Barrow, D&D adventure review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Mark Smylie\nAegis & Gorgon\nGeneric\/5e\/RuneQuest<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In ages long past someone built a barrow for a prince, and laid him to rest–or so they thought. The bodies of his wife and a few of his descendants found their way there as well before the barrow fell into disuse and was in time forgotten. And now, perhaps, after centuries have slipped by, the hour may have arrived for the prince to return, and with him relics of great power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 104 page adventure (plus handouts!) features an eight page barrow. Great art and style. A rich tapestry of an environment. Lacking in usability. The page count isn\u2019t as bad as it first seems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, up front, I like barrows. One of my dreams is to spend a year in Great Britain and Ireland travelling around, collecting the keys from local vicars, and exploring barrows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, first, the page count in this thing. Normally 108 pages for eight rooms would seem to be an issue. The last fifty pages of this are mechanics for the various game systems: Artesia, 5e, and Runquest. This means that the main text description avoids those things and a room that \u201cmakes you uneasy\u201d in the adventure is then detailed, in the various systems in the back half, with the specific game mechanics in each system. Thus you\u2019re getting one generic text description and then three more specific sections of the system-specific mechanics for the system. Further, it does have a short lead in with hooks, and wilderness travel, and the area outside of the barrow, before the dungeon proper starts. And then, the entire thing has what one might call a \u201cluxurious\u201d layout style, full of art and page design. The actual backstory\/extraneous shit is kept to just a couple of pages, with a bit more sprinkled in to the rooms. So, overall, not as bad as would first be indicated. Pruned back to just \u201cgeneric + 5e\u201d, and the layout condensed, it might be a 30 pager, which isn\u2019t so bad for something taking the holistic approach to the adventure with good hooks, wilderness travel, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The details here are great. Or, rather, the specificity. Specificity, without verbosity, gives the DM something to work with. They can take the imagination seed and run with it. And it\u2019s here, a lot. From the hooks, to the people you meet on the road. Omens to happens, ocular visions, and wildflowers atop the barrow have purposes, as well as the magic effects of menhir circle \u2026 and maybe you meet someone up there also who is doing something. (That table, in particular, feels wasted. Why offer a dozen choices when only one will maybe happen? The others are, essentially, wasted effort. But, that\u2019s a larger design issue.) The art style lends itself well to the adventure, with great illustrations of the various things you find, and handouts for the players, etc, to get you in to luxurious barrow mood. \u201cPlayers in fantasy RPGs rarely seem to need a reason to send their characters off to disturb the graves of the dead \u2026\u201d the hook section tells us. Indeed! And this sly little witt is present here and there in the adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luxurious. To a fault.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the thing has issues, both with its chosen style and writing decisions. First, the \u201csystem localization\u201d doesn\u2019t work well, I think. You are, essentially, flipping to two different sections of the text, the generic description portion and then your system of choice portion, forty pages later, to find the stats, mechanics, etc, of the room. It\u2019s not that it goes overboard on the mechanics, it doesn\u2019t, but just that the section is a long way away. You could take notes, I guess, or print out a second version to consult during the game? But it feels clunky to keep flipping back to reference the mechanic effects. And the stats are, essentially, not present, at least for 5e. For a given monster it will have a decent paragraph or two to read\/consult and buried in it are things like \u201cstat it like a GHOST or a WIGHT\u201d \u2026 sans stats. So now I\u2019ve got a third book to whip out and consult, assuming I put in the effort up front to prep it correctly. It feels HEAVY to prep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the text. For all of it\u2019s pretty layouts it does little to organize the actual room data. Instead you get these LONG paragraphs full of richness \u2026 that it hard to scan during play. This is exacerbated by a fancy font choice that makes comprehension even harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a GREAT fantasy barrow, fully supported as a complete adventure, including follow ups after the adventure is over.But it just doesn\u2019t feel like its usable. A great coffee table adventure to gawk at, but not to run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is a good one. From it you can see the richness of the layout style and art choices. Care was taken to ensure that the font color didn\u2019t clash with the background color. But note, also, the fancy font choices, italic old-timey, for certain of the descriptions. And note also the Longish paragraphs for the descriptions that bury what the DM need to run it in the hard to scan text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/337531\/The-Last-Barrow?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mark Smylie Aegis & Gorgon Generic\/5e\/RuneQuest In ages long past someone built a barrow for a prince, and laid him to rest–or so they thought. The bodies of his wife and a few of his descendants found their way … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7049,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,29,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5e","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/lastbarrow.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7051","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=7051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7052,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7051\/revisions\/7052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}