{"id":7298,"date":"2021-04-28T07:13:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-28T11:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7298"},"modified":"2021-04-19T14:14:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T18:14:46","slug":"castle-of-mirror-5e-adventure-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7298","title":{"rendered":"Castle of Mirror, 5e adventure review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Runehammer Games\n5e\/\"OSR\" (not really OSR)\n\"Mid Levels\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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 The sinister influence of an ageless dragon is plagueing the Westlands with vampiric evil. Can the heroes confront these undying dooms, and solve the riddle of the magic mirrors?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 39 page adventure describes a castle with a fuck ton of rooms. It\u2019s doing it in a new manner and I can\u2019t, for the life of me, decipher how this thing is supposed to be run. It looks like it\u2019s mostly combat with a lot of abstracted detail, to the point of being an outline. Which doesn\u2019t have to be bad, but in this case is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most people run a sort of plot-based game, especially in 5e, and I\u2019m always interested in how those adventures could be done better, to more align with their style  without throwing out the important parts of the game. This adventure is trying something new towards that, but it just doesn\u2019t come off right, for with a traditional exploration game or a more common plot-based one with light exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As best as I can figure out, each major part of the castle is called a \u201cscene.\u201d It\u2019s not like you\u2019d think, based on that word. It\u2019s more like a zone in a dungeon, an area. Each \u201cscene\u201d then has \u201czones\u201d in it, which you could think of as unnumbered, but labeled, rooms in which something could occur. When you move between castle \u201cscenes\u201d (which are just major parts of the castle) you make a kind of survival roll for the transition, with a failure indicating an encounter before transition and a success meaning you simply transition, with the whole thing being narrated as a montaage. Each scene has about 3-5 zones, just labels like \u201cCauseway, Gatehouse, Crumpled Gate, Battlement, Interior Court\u201d, for example, for the \u201cMain Gate\u201d scene. There are bulleted notes (Yeah) in each scene about \u201caction.\u201d There are about three major areas in this (we\u2019ll call them \u201clevels\u201d) with about eight or so scenes per level. I have absolutely NO fucking clue how the action is supposed to fit in. Are these the things that happen if you fail a survival check? Or they happen in each zone? How do you move between zones? The maps are, essentially, abstracted, although they look like maps, so it\u2019s not real clear how you move from zone to zone or transition to a new scene, or know that you COULD transition to a new scene. Maybe the action happens throughout the scene, with zones just there as \u201cfluff\u201d for the DM to narrate as the action takes place? I have no fucking clue. There\u2019s a supplement, called \u201c5e Hard Mode\u201d that is a separate product that maybe goes in to more detail. In any event, there\u2019s an overview in this on how the scenes and zones are supposed to work, but it still isn\u2019t clear, so that could be improved.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also not real clear to me that there\u2019s much more than fighting in this. The \u201cAction\u201d notes are GREATLY abstracted, to the point of it being almost an outline, in spite of the scenes being about a column each.  At one point one early room tells us \u201cThe machine can be used to glean all kinds of secrets about the castle.\u201d Uh \u2026 like what? How does this all fit together? There\u2019s o real summary, or overview. There\u2019s no understanding of why the gate guards attack you but then there are miners in one room that will help you. There\u2019s no order of battle for responses, or even, I can\u2019t tell, if there should be one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a section early on about themes in the adventure to get the DM to use while describing. Many worlds, vampires, and a dragon. But it\u2019s not really themes, as I would think of them, more \u201cthis is in the castle.\u201d There is a dragon under the castle. Uh, ok, great? How does that theming work? There\u2019s nothing here to suggest how to do it, or how to frame it, and it\u2019s described as a fact about the castle rather than a theme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a bright spot or two in the town description, with some of the NPC\u2019s having the right kind of description. One dude always seems to be relieving himself outside. ANother is a group of loyalist troops looking for a reason. Those are GREAT NPC\u2019s, they provide a lot for a DM to work with. You instantly know how to run them. To my surprise, about half of them were decent like that, so the designer clearly has some idea of how to write something good, even if the rooms\/scenes\/zones themselves are a fucking mess. There\u2019s also a hook or two that is more than a little interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think I get what the designer was trying to do. Major areas with common elements, and then some sub-elements in ear areas, the rooms. Some things that could happen there. I get it, and I think it has potential as a good format for these sorts of games. As implemented, though, it\u2019s a disaster. There\u2019 nore real anchoring concepts. No real anchoring interactivity (although there does seem to be more than a few role playing encounters, or potential ones, to the designers credit.) The amount of interactivity beyond that is lacking. There\u2019s no real summary of how things fit together, or are supposed to work, as in how the castle and its various groups function. It TOO devoted to the bullet point to convey information, and each scene needs a little overview for the DM, rather than everything laid out in bullets. And the Magic Mirrors? The thing that is supposed to be a major element of the adventure? That\u2019s a WHOLE confusing mess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The format here is more than half done. The designer is one to something. It needs more work though, on communicating the ideas to someone OTHER than the designer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The same is ten pages, with the last two showing four of the zones. I strongly encourage you to check out the preview and those two pages. It\u2019s interesting. The one that makes the most sense is the last, the watch tower. From that you can get, I think, the best idea of how things are supposed to play out.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/312984\/Castle-of-Mirrors?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Runehammer Games 5e\/”OSR” (not really OSR) “Mid Levels”  The sinister influence of an ageless dragon is plagueing the Westlands with vampiric evil. Can the heroes confront these undying dooms, and solve the riddle of the magic mirrors? This 39 page … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7297,"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-7298","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\/2021\/04\/rune.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298","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=7298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7299,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7298\/revisions\/7299"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}