{"id":7130,"date":"2021-02-06T07:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-06T12:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7130"},"modified":"2021-01-26T08:30:53","modified_gmt":"2021-01-26T13:30:53","slug":"shadow-of-the-beakmen-dcc-adventure-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7130","title":{"rendered":"Shadow of the Beakmen, DCC adventure review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Harley Stroh\nGoodman Games\nDCC\nLevel 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Towering obelisks stab the sky. Monstrous knights with blazing lances prowl the night. Huts burn, and entire villages are taken as slaves to be fed darksome pits. The cries of terror and panic give the horrors a name: the Beakmen have come. But you are no mere peasant or serf, cowering the in the dark. You and your companions are reavers, with bloodied blades and spells wrenched from the dreams of demons. You stride through chaos while others flee, turning your steps towards the great stone obelisk, the source of the beakmen and their alien magics.  Whether for the cause of justice or merely to acquire these strange blazing weapons for you own, tonight there shall be an accounting: a blazing brand thrust into The Shadow of the Beakmen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, Harley know how to write a fucking adventure!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sixteen page adventure details about twelve encounters, mostly inside a beastman obelisk. Evocative & interactive, the adventure does a great job creating a feel in the DM that they can then translate to the players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harley knows how to write an adventure, both from an interactivity and from an evocative standpoint. Let\u2019s look at the opening encounter: \u201cA hellish light fills the night, as one of the huts is set aflame. Moments later, a silhouette staggers free of the smoke and fog, stumbling towards you through the mud.\u201d Ok, so, hellish is a conclusion, but, note the scene it paints. Smoke. Fog. Stumbling. Silhouette. Aflame, with the strong strong smell of smoke that work evokes. Mud. That\u2019s how you write a fucking description folks. And, the action implied. The potential energy. There\u2019s no \u201cWhat do you do?\u201d explicitly stated because it just hangs there, looming over you. AIII!!! WHAT TO DO?!!? WHAT TO DO??!!? A shadowy figure stumbling out of a flaming hut. That\u2019s a fucking classic and this encounter brings it. There\u2019s this hanging moment. What do you do? That\u2019s the soul of adventure. It puts the party in a situation and then begs for them to do something without actually begging. A little on the nose, for an example, but that\u2019s why it makes a good example. \ud83d\ude42 Harley is able to do this time and time again. He sets the mood and imbues it with potential energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another encounter has the party seeing a short dude with a huge bulbous head. And 23 Beakmen. The numbers here are SO overwhelming. It\u2019s not a fight, it\u2019s a puzzle in the guise of a fight. Defeating the boss man leaves the minions helpless. More evidence? When you save that dude running out of the hut (assuming you do \u2026) then he will become your Man at Arms. Fuck. Yeah! That\u2019s a reward! That\u2019s gratitude! That\u2019s the sort of Actual Play character and game development that makes a campaign meaningful and personal to everyone involved. Doesn\u2019t treat you like shit. Doesn\u2019t ignore you. Rewards you with service. Gold is fleeting. Service? The players will remember that scene every time they interact with him. There\u2019s this section, at the beginning, where you are moving through a village under attack by the Beakmen and their knights riding crocodiles (!) (Hmmm, Trog Knights on their lizard mounts from Darkness Beneath?) There\u2019s a little table to help simulate the chaos of an ongoing attack through a village. It\u2019s great! It\u2019s exactly the sort of little idiosyncratic thing that a DM needs to help run this section \u2026 and so Harley provides it.  Monsters get little flash cards with their stats on the back \u2026 more of that DCC specialness from Goodman Games! The map of the dungeon isn\u2019t exactly linear, with a couple of choices to be made; it\u2019s just enough that you get to pick your poison when exploring, while still heading towards your final destination room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And sometimes that specialness gets in the way. The formatting could be better in places. Longer sections of italics don\u2019t work well; they should use some other formatting technique that is easier on the eyes. Likewise they use an incomplete formatting style for the rooms. Treasure and monsters get offset by bolded headings, but the sun-sections of the rooms do not, causing you have to hunt for information as you run it. They could do better in that area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, though, an excellent little DCC adventure and it does a great job recreating a kind of atmosphere thanks to the interactivity and writing of Stroh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe wide-mouthed, oval chamber is lit by a luminescent pool of glowing slime. Partially submerged in the ooze are dozens of large white sacs, seemingly spun from light. A low, dull hum can be heard, vibrating in your bones and the walls and floor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $6 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. Boo! BooI say Sir! Boo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/307225\/DCC-Day-1-Shadow-of-the-Beakman?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Harley Stroh Goodman Games DCC Level 1 Towering obelisks stab the sky. Monstrous knights with blazing lances prowl the night. Huts burn, and entire villages are taken as slaves to be fed darksome pits. The cries of terror and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7129,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,8,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-level-1","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/307225.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130","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=7130"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7131,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7130\/revisions\/7131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}