{"id":7274,"date":"2021-04-17T08:13:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-17T12:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7274"},"modified":"2021-04-06T15:08:18","modified_gmt":"2021-04-06T19:08:18","slug":"a-simple-dungeon-adventure-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7274","title":{"rendered":"A Simple Dungeon, adventure review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Micah Anderson\nSelf Published\nGeneric\/Universal<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Seven rooms filled with traps, magic, monsters, and treasure. Fight a Troll! Help a Halfling! Defeat an Undead Curse! For the Bastards. RPG system, although easily converted to any game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sixteen page adventure features seven rooms in a tomb as well as a page of hex encounters. It does have some decent descriptions in places but it suffers from its art house focus, simplistic interactivity, and treasure abstraction. It suffers, mostly, from not knowing what it wants to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Someone asked that I review this so I picked it up. Then the designer said my name three times while standing in front of a mirror and I said I was going to review it.[EDIT] Maybe it\u2019s an ego thing? I would certainly understand that, mine being fragile enough. I may wallow in shit all day but it\u2019s MY shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I say that this adventure doesn\u2019t know what it wants to be. This gets to the core point of what an adventure is supposed to be: a tool for running a game at the table. Let us say I make a crowbar. It\u2019s a beautiful crowbar. Perfect in every way. Except for the fact it\u2019s made out of tinfoil. Useless as an actual crowbar but fine if you just want a coffee-table crowbar. Or, perhaps, if it brought me joy in making it? There\u2019s certainly merit in that. But, then, I sell it as a crowbar, to be used as a crowbar. Now, lets change the material the crowbar is made out of but stillkeep it a damn sext coffee-table-worthy crowbar. Copper. Glass. Iron. Steel. Hardened railroad steel. There\u2019s a spectrum here. At what point could we generally consider the crowbar useful to most people in most common situations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a large segment of the diy\/osr\/indie scene that likes to make beautiful things. That\u2019s great. I don\u2019t need an ugly crowbar in my life. But, it does have to actually be useful as a crowbar. Doesn\u2019t it? Any none of this \u201cbut it\u2019s useful to ME\u201d stuff. It has to be useful to 80% of crowbar users. There\u2019s really no difference between Paizo, DMSGuild and the DIY scene, they all are focusing on something other than the actual fucking adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s how you get sixteen pages for a seven room dungeon. You do wide margins. You do digest format. You use large font sizes. You fill it with art. You do an abstracted map with fun font. That\u2019s all great, none of it is bad. But, at what point does your creation become performance art? Because performance art is not an adventure to be used at the table. It has its own merits, but not labeled as \u201cadventure.\u201d (A trap a lot of one page dungeons fall in to, especially the contest ones.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map has a list of omens on it.  \u201cCackling\u201d , \u201cChitterring\u201d, and so on. They just exist as window dressing, adding nothing at all to the adventure. There\u2019s little there to riff on. Why not, instead of perfunctory dropping it, add more to it to make it come alive and help the DM? Why say \u201cplace a treasure here\u201d instead of actually listing a treasure to engage your creativity? Or \u201che knows d3 spells\u201d? Why not list them? Why not engage totally with the creative process? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because when the creative process is engaged in then it is good. \u201cTen foot pit trap long ago sprung. Flimsy, rotten boards cover it. Corpse inside has dissolved into a grey jelly, will attempt to schlorp out and drag in interlopers feebly.\u201d That\u2019s great content! When I talk about specifics THATS what I\u2019m talking about. Already sprung, boards over the pit, the ooze is an actual dead body. THATS good! It\u2019s like the grells in Many Gates of the Gann. An extremely tall skeleton a mostly gilt free throne\u201d Krom is the gift that keeps on giving. A lead coffer IN THE MUCK at the bottom of the pool releases a paralyzing MIASMA and contains a random treasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can easily see the quality there. As well as bullshit like \u201ca random treasure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But there\u2019s not enough of that. That lead coffer interactivity is lacking. Sure, there\u2019s decent fighting. And there\u2019s decent talking to things (thank fucking god.) But the other interactivity is rather low. It\u2019s more watching things happen than fucking around with lead cofferrs buried in muck releasing paralyzing miasmas. And the writing FORMAT could be more solid. \u201cConspicuous sword upright in front of skeleton, actually lead painted gold.\u201d This is a short example, but note that an important feature, it\u2019s GOLD is in the second clause. Conspicuous GOLDEN sword upright in front of skeleton, actually lead.\u201d would avoid the cognitive load that putting the descriptor in the second clause. The sword can turn one metal to another \u2026 Cool! That\u2019s a good treasure \u2026 the kind that is lacking in this adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The final room is the one that is the worst, the treasure room. Beyond the abstracted treasure, the main description is \u201cThe chapel built in to the tomb.\u201d That\u2019s the extent of your description. Well, a small amount of loot piled up, let\u2019s call it 1000gp on average. \u201cPiled with hoarded treasure\u201d is an image that is in opposition to \u201c1000 gp.\u201d But, there\u2019s no chapel description at all, which is not cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the hex encounters range from good to poor. A bandit camp UNDER A FALLEN TREE. That\u2019s good. HOSTAGE SITUATION. Thats good. Maybe could use, literally, one or two words more, about the situation. That\u2019s a very good encounter. But dense trees and spiderwebs? Or surly wizard under a stuffed alligator? Ruined fort with valuable eggs? There\u2019s no potential energy in those, not in the way of the bandit camp. You need an energy. That\u2019s what interactivity brings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is PWYW itch.io.\u00a0 Yeah, I don\u2019t know how much it was before. $4 maybe? Or maybe free? I can\u2019t remember. I\u2019m gonna try and talk with the designer and see what\u2019s up. Also, please put in a good preview of your adventure. WIthout a preview then the only way of know what we are potentially buying is to either buy it or buy in to the marketing, which is always puffery. The preview helps us make an informed buying decision. You can support that, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/micah-anderson.itch.io\/a-simple-dungeon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Micah Anderson Self Published Generic\/Universal Seven rooms filled with traps, magic, monsters, and treasure. Fight a Troll! Help a Halfling! Defeat an Undead Curse! For the Bastards. RPG system, although easily converted to any game. This sixteen page adventure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7273,"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-7274","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\/2021\/04\/simp.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274","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=7274"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7277,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7274\/revisions\/7277"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}