{"id":7577,"date":"2021-10-16T07:18:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-16T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7577"},"modified":"2021-10-05T09:20:10","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T13:20:10","slug":"the-forest-that-knows-your-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7577","title":{"rendered":"the FOREST that KNOWS your NAME"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By N. Masyk\nMonkey's PPaw Games\nOSR\/Pinkhack\nLevel? Fuck your and your concept of \u201clevels\u201d, just buy my product!<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The sun is out. Smoke drifts from cookfires. Loggers nap in the shade, or dice beneath awnings on ramshackle yurts. Nearby, raised voices. One petulant: \u201cThis path was to be cleared weeks ago!\u201d Another, defiant: \u201cYou ask the impossible. I need more soldiers!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 31 page booklet is not an adventure but rather some ideas for a setting in a weird haunted forest. Atmospheric, the way inspiring content in a setting guide should be. Also, falsely advertised and not an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
fuck you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
its not an adventure<\/p>\n\n\n\n
it says its a pointcrawl forest adventure. twice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
its in the adventure category<\/p>\n\n\n\n
its not a pointcrawl<\/p>\n\n\n\n
its not an adventure<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a collection of rando evocative tables and descriptions for a weird insular\/haunted\/bloody forest. Dark ancient forest, make some blood sacrifice to get the paths to open up, even just a drop of blood. Weird forest people living inside, farmers and the like. Loggers who want to log. Ancient ruins. Weirdo \u201cformians\u201d, no two alike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything in this is very well described. It\u2019s evocative. The writing is descriptive, generally without not overstaying its welcome, although it does tend to the longer side. Which, is ok in something that is not an adventure. If I\u2019m looking at a setting guide, or regional guide, some kind of thing to help inspire me to create a game or an adventure in that setting, then longer form writing, and even paragraph-style writing, is ok. It\u2019s not an adventure, it\u2019s something else, and it doesn\u2019t need to follow the technical writing\/usage conventions of an adventure. A bureaucrat is described as portly, brittle, slick-backed hair. Always glancing from side to side. Rarely leaves the city, eager to get back to it. \u201cYou there! You look a warlike lot. Indulge these local louts\u2019 superstitious nature and the nawab will shower gratitude upon you!\u201d That\u2019s a great description. It\u2019s specific. It\u2019s sticky; it stays with you after you finish it. You instantly know how to run him. A brief conversation snippet, related to the adventure, provides more than the mere number of words would indicate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the booklet does this time and time again. The formian table creates weird giants: a hobbled left leg, bound in chains, with a pair of ravens perched on their shoulder croaking words of prophecy, with a voice like a golden trumpet that ruptures eardrums in fountains of blood. That\u2019s a pretty good set of random things to build a legendary creature out of! Magic items. Farmer descriptions. Things found in the forest. All of the descriptions hit and hit and hit. Who\u2019s hungry for some blood figs?! The juice is a bright arterial crimson! They fall to the ground with a wet sound, SPLORCH. Sweet! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, that\u2019s all the fuck it is. A series of random tables with some other descriptive elements, like creatures and so on. This is a booklet that you can use to inspire you to create a setting. There is no adventure. I\u2019m not even sure that there\u2019s a hint of an adventure. There\u2019s some kind of implied \u201cloggers need protection\u201d thing at the beginning, but there\u2019s not even enough there to go forward on. There\u2019s no goal. There\u2019s nothing to solve. There\u2019s no places to plunder, no ruins to explore, no mystery to uncover. Not even a Big Loot to plunder. WHich is weird. There\u2019s this section in the back that looks like it MIGHT be locations. It says things like \u201ca break in the trees\u201d and then gives some kind of a description. But there\u2019s no map. And they don\u2019t really DO anything. I mean, hey, some weird description and a monster that attacks. Yeah!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
IF this were an adventure, then there would be some great evocative writing, but I\u2019d ding it for a lack of interactivity. Writing a good location description, or an interesting NPC, is useless without something going on IN that space. You need some potential energy. In the example NPC, I quoted above, he\u2019s at least sending the party on a mission\/hiring them. But, beyond three \u201chook\u201d NPC\u2019s you don\u2019t get anything like that in any of the locations or with any of the tables. They are just static random elements. It reminds me a lot of Isle of Unknown where you\u2019d just encounter some bizarre creature.  For no reason. And, while some of that it perfectly fine in an adventure, if the ENTIRE adventure is nothing but that then you have a very dull boy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s what you have here. A dull boy. No potential energy because nothing is actually going on in the forest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I mean, IF it were an adventure. Which it is not. It’s just another filler product masquerading as an adventure in order to snag your filthy lucre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/366945\/The-Forest-That-Knows-Your-Name?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By N. Masyk Monkey’s PPaw Games OSR\/Pinkhack Level? Fuck your and your concept of \u201clevels\u201d, just buy my product! The sun is out. Smoke drifts from cookfires. Loggers nap in the shade, or dice beneath awnings on ramshackle yurts. Nearby, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-worst-evar"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/forest.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577","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=7577"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7579,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7577\/revisions\/7579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}