{"id":7472,"date":"2021-08-09T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7472"},"modified":"2021-07-29T11:44:24","modified_gmt":"2021-07-29T15:44:24","slug":"roman-silver-saxon-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7472","title":{"rendered":"Roman Silver, Saxon Greed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By James & Robyn George\nOlde House Rules\nBarons of Braunstein<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Set in dark age (Saxon) Britain, the characters have found a strange map promising riches among the cellars of a forgotten Roman villa.  But beware, for the land is wild\u2026 Brigands and beasts prowl, faiths collide, and lost treasures await!  But this is no fantasy dungeon where the heroes go room to room killing monsters.  It’s an adventure setting where anything can – and will – happen.  Visit the village of St\u00e2nweall, uncover mysterious factions, and witness the collision of old and new, Christian and pagan.  All of this awaits the hand of willing heroes\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure uses eight pages to detail a 24 room ruined basement. It has a Saxon England in te 8th century thing going on, with primarily human enemies (yeah!) and a snake or wolf or two. It\u2019s rather pedestrian, lacking much in the way of interesting detail or advice for the DM in running its somewhat unusual environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You find an old cracked leather map with an X on it and word DIVITIAE near it \u2026 Latin for \u201criches.\u201d Hot damn, I\u2019m in it to win it! More than the usual generic \u201ctreasure map\u201d those few words help bring just a little more depth to something that would otherwise be boring. Likewise the hooks, while the usual perfunctory stuff, offer at least a few extra words of detail to help the DM. \u201cLocale clergy recognize the old wall and can translate the maps promise.\u201d or a guy running bandits he stole the map from. Ok, so, of the four hooks those are the two highlights. And that\u2019s going to be the story of this review. It\u2019s got a turn of phrase here or there but is otherwise lacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The village is the usual mean Saxon affair, described briefly, with the little offering that the locals turn to pagen gods (when Christ alone is not enough.) That\u2019s exactly the sort of tossed off comment that can add so much depth to a place. Which is in no way found on the rumors table that contains such wonders as \u201cBrigands are a problem on the old south road.\u201d So, \u201cold south road\u201d is good. It speaks to specificity. But Brigands is an abstraction. It shouldn\u2019t be Brigands. It should be \u201cHanks gang\u201d, or \u201cFat Mamma Cass\u2019 Boys.\u201d Specificity is the soul of narrative, and just like with the old south road, when Christ is not enough, and \u201cRICHES\u201d in Latin, just a few extra words can make all of the difference. And the rumor table doesn\u2019t give us any of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general formatting of the thing is emulating the old typewritten pages of the early days of the hobby. It\u2019s not bad, and it\u2019s single column is actually not so hard to read to scan, with most paragraphs being short and not taxing on the eye to move back and forth. It does fall down at times, generally when NPC\u2019s and Dudes are encounters, as it tries to present them in a stat blocky way without any of the modern features to help bring recognition to the various sections. This means that things run together and are hard to distinguish when one thing ends and another begins, making scanning much harder than it should be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s the cellar, proper. The object of your search and the location at the X. It\u2019s a \u201cReal\u201d basement, with some caves attached. Doorways, but not really doors, close and cramped. \u201cDaylight reaches the bottom of the stairs, but no further.\u201d Nice imagery that. Of course, it kind of ignores the fact that there is flickering light coming from every room, but, hey, I\u2019ll latch on to what I can. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are a couple of problems with the cellar. First, the various chambers are rather plainly described. There is none of those choice words to help bring the various places alive, as with the examples I quoted above. And while there\u2019s an NPC or two with an interesting backstory, it doesn\u2019t really help when all you\u2019re going to be doing is likely stabbing them. And then there are little bits of padding, adding nothing much to the adventure. \u201cThere is little chance the characters will know this unless they take prisoners or manage to engage them in conversation. The players can use this as they wish\u201d And then there are confusing bits that seem out of place. A description of the boss\u2019s room contains information on how the prisoners, tha the party may have freed, react to combat. It seems like that should be in the prisoners room description \u2026 where you find them? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which leads to the lack of an OOB in general. Given the small cramped and open map I should expect that the parties actions will bring down the wrath of the bandits as they all respond to an incursion. A response that we\u2019re given little advice on. The best is that one guy yells for his buddy so they can set up an ambush \u2026 although what that is goes unmentioned. There are casual references to \u201cpatrols\u201d that go undescribed, and potentially returning bandits \u2026 all left out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, the DM does need to bring their skill to an adventure to make it come alive. But it is the designers job to both inspire the DM through evocative writing and to assist them \u2026 through things like an OOB or responses. And that sort of thing is not present here at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m also left perplexed by the room WITH the riches in it. And full of carbon dioxide. Such that you can only make one attempt a day to enter the room to recover treasure. Ok. So? You agro all the dudes in the dungeon in the first room, have a big fight, and then having a boring old time going from room to room pulling loot. And, hey, if I only get one attempt a day then you better telegraph it to the players and you I expect some dope ass descriptions on the effects, etc. Not \u201conce a day.\u201d Similarly, treasure of \u201ca vintage statue\u201d ain\u2019t gonna cut it. That\u2019s abstraction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is five pages but really only two are useful. You get to see the hooks page and the village page. They should give you a decent idea of the formatting, it\u2019s issues, and the abstraction problems. A page of room descriptions would have been good to include in the preview also.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/358778\/Chronicles-I-Roman-Silver-Saxon-Greed?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By James & Robyn George Olde House Rules Barons of Braunstein Set in dark age (Saxon) Britain, the characters have found a strange map promising riches among the cellars of a forgotten Roman villa.  But beware, for the land is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7471,"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-7472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/roman.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472","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=7472"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7473,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7472\/revisions\/7473"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}