{"id":7591,"date":"2021-11-01T07:19:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T11:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7591"},"modified":"2021-10-21T08:49:03","modified_gmt":"2021-10-21T12:49:03","slug":"the-infected-village","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7591","title":{"rendered":"The Infected Village"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Marcus Lock\nParts Per Million\nWorlds Without Number\/OSR\nLevels 5-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
No movement, No sound, barely a wisp of air. The village appears empty, with no sign of struggle, no violent death, in fact, no sign of the villagers at all. All there appears to be is an empty space as if the people were teleported away and, in their absence, in the time they have been gone, strange shapes seem to have almost sprung out of the ground. Growing upwards getting bigger, the shapes are familiar, but the size is wrong. Mushrooms just don\u2019t grow that big. 6\u2019, 8\u2019, some as big as trees, almost blocking out the sun. Multi-colored and grouped together around the village. The strong earthy smell of growth is almost overpowering. There is a mist filtering through the tree-sized mushrooms\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirty page digest adventure features 15 \u201clocations\u201d, using six pages to do so. It makes me question all of the life choices I\u2019ve made to bring me to this point in my journey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look, I\u2019m a happy go lucky kind of guy. Live and let live, Bryce always says. You see that hill over there? That very next one? Right behind it is a shining city under blue skies. We merely need to stretch our legs and walk the distance and we\u2019ll be there! Rage, my cynic friends! Rage against the dying of the light! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A magnificent adventure today! Look at that cover! How could there not be a shining city under it?! Blue skies await! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Look at that product description! Joy! Oh, no \u2026 wait, it\u2019s not joy. Hmmm, it\u2019s pretty much telegraphing what is going on. I mean, the villagers turned in to mushrooms, right? That\u2019s obvious to everyone? It\u2019s not just me? So \u2026 it\u2019s going to be obvious to the players just as soon as they step in to the village \u2026 or even see it from a distance? \u201cNo signs of life in the village, no dogs or fires or anything, but there are clusters of 6-footish tall mushrooms scattered around in clusters.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What follows is a study in tedium.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Essentially, there are no encounters in this adventure and there\u2019s nothing to do. I\u2019m not counting fighting. There\u2019s plenty of fighting. The DM text does say \u201crole-playing within a village environment\u201d, but, I don\u2019t think we\u2019re using a common language at least as far as it applies to the term roleplaying. I\u2019m cool with other play styles. I mean, I don\u2019t want fuck-all to do with them, but, hey, if you like them then engage all you want. But I despair over is the loss of meaning. \u201cI like to play D&D\u201d means nothing any more. It could mean literally anything. And this adventure is NOT my definition of D&D.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Basically, you walk in the village and get attacked. You fight some mushroom people. You can look around in some buildings, but, they are all empty, with minimal descriptions. \u201cRoberts family, 4 children.\u201d a great many of them say with a generic description above them all of a dusty building not lived in for quite some time. There\u2019s no specificity. And it wouldn\u2019t matter if there were because there\u2019s nothing going on in the village. Some giant mushrooms to look at. \u201cGiant mushrooms.\u201d is about all the description you get for them and there\u2019s no interactivity. Get attacked by some mushroom people. Yeah! Find a hole in the ground. Great. There is absolutely NO interactivity in the village. No mystery to solve. Nothing to find. Nothing to explore. And then the \u201cdungeon\u201d starts with it\u2019s eight-ish rooms. Again, no interactivity. You can go right or left. If you go right you find guard mushrooms and the hive mind aggros all mushrooms to your location. If you go left you find mushrooms that attack you and the hive mind aggros all mushrooms to your location. Each location is essentially just a description saying \u201cThere are X mushroom people of type Y at this location.\u201d with a long stat block then mixed in and a note at the end reminding the DM to agro all of the mushroom people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no treasure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hook is that the rumors are that the village is empty. Or a merchant hires you because no caravans have come. And the village is at a cross-roads. But no one has explored it all. Cross-roads is not out of the way. But weeks of dust, and un-looted general store implies that it is. Giant trees spore you once you get close. Maybe. Or maybe they don\u2019t? They take weeks to develop. The text says hey are not developed. And then it says they spore the party. None of this shit makes any sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wandering monsters contains such evocative entries as \u201csmall pack animal\u201d and \u201cherd beast.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is D&D. This is what a large number of people think D&D is. Because it IS that to those people. Just like Critical Role. That IS the definition of D&D for a great many people. The majority, now, I assume. Or D&D is \u201cthe DM is telling a story through the adventures\u201d bullshit. Or D&D is mini\u2019s combat and combat-as-sport. But this isn\u2019t D&D. You might have fun doing one of those things. I\u2019m genuinely glad you do. But, at some point, we must agree on the meaning of the word \u201cegg.\u201d If you offer me poached eggs and serve me dried maggots for breakfast then I think it\u2019s fair to assert that I have a right to be disappointed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I find adventures like this so perplexing. How do you put something like this together, with the obvious quality in layout and art, and NOT know what a D&D adventure is? Surely you\u2019ve seen them before? But I guess not? I mean, otherwise, why would something like this exist? Do people care so little for what they attach their names to? I mean, I\u2019m an asshat and too much of a perfectionist, having attached my name to nothing, but this is the other side of the spectrum. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I weep. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Day after day. Week after week. People who don\u2019t care. On a good day I\u2019ll tell myself that they just don\u2019t know what they don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t understand how they don\u2019t know it, but, it\u2019s clear they don\u2019t. Why else then? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because there is no shining city just over the next hill. All the clouds are grey. It\u2019s just people. People muddling through life. Doing the best they can. Which is substandard 99% of time. And no one really gives a shit, one way or another. There is no hope for a brighter tomorrow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet, we must imagine that Sisyphus is happy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is the entire thing. So, at least there\u2019s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/373012\/The-Infected-Village–A-Worlds-Without-Number-Compatible-Adventure?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Marcus Lock Parts Per Million Worlds Without Number\/OSR Levels 5-6 No movement, No sound, barely a wisp of air. The village appears empty, with no sign of struggle, no violent death, in fact, no sign of the villagers at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7590,"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-7591","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\/10\/infected.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7591","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=7591"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7591\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7592,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7591\/revisions\/7592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}