{"id":7621,"date":"2021-11-08T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-08T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7621"},"modified":"2021-10-27T09:41:20","modified_gmt":"2021-10-27T13:41:20","slug":"the-haunting-of-the-inn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7621","title":{"rendered":"The Haunting of the Inn"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Don MacVittie
Hellebarde Games
C&C, OSRIC, 5e
Levels 4-8<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When all you want is a drink at the inn, perhaps a warm bed for the night, of course it has been taken over by unspeakable horrors! If you’re going to get an ale and a room, you’ll have to brave the stench coming from the front door, and figure out what went wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This twelve page adventure uses three pages to describe 24 rooms in an inn. It wants to be body horror. It is, though, just a monster zoo with the usual issues. Inn of Lost Heroes it ain\u2019t. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m in the mood for something new & delightful! Let\u2019s see \u2026  Multiple Mauseritter adventures. Darkmaster adventure. Morg Borg adventure. Surrealist RPG written by an AI \u2026 Halloween adventure it is! While I\u2019m not the biggest fan of holiday adventures, halloween gets a special hall pass cause SPOOKY.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What we have here, though, is an absolute fucking mess of an adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It WANTS to be spooky. It WANTS to be atmospheric. It WANTS to be body horror. But it doesn\u2019t do anything to facilitate any of that beyond the basic aspects of \u201coh, look, a gibbering mouther!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first issue is the town itself. There isn\u2019t one. There\u2019s no real hook, or town, or anything. And that\u2019s ok, not every adventure needs a town or a town element. But what there is are little bits of the town, scattered throughout, in the various \u201cmarketing blurbs.\u201d  The DriveThru description is quoted above. The front cover description has the staff & patrons turned in to horrifying monsters \u2026 and the locals only caring that all the ale comes form the inn, so, you know \u2026 could you please? The first page has different teaser line from the town, and a little bit of \u201cshutters baning and miasma smells coming out of the front door\u201d thing. Then the first real page of the adventure has a fog rolling out of the doors and more rotting meat miasma. There\u2019s a further line deep in about what everyone in town knows. The BACK cover blurb has the constable saying things like people that go in don\u2019t come out. Get it? It\u2019s all scattered, not in one place, no way to reference it in a meaningful way during play. So, there kind of IS a town element, but no way to get anything out of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the map. Ug, the map. There is only one set of doors, I guess, in to the inn. And no windows on the first floor, even though the text references there are some? But the second floor is showing explicitly? And no real interior doors on the first floor? Just walls? The map here is \u201ccolor\u201d and I\u2019m guessing comes from some app. Better to have an actual functional map, in black & white or even hand drawn, than a color map with features \u2026 that you can\u2019t make or use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s see, inside the inn you get to make, if you are playing non-5e, a Save vs magic EVERY TURN or turn in to a monster. You need to miss two to complete the transformation. EVERY TURN. A save vs magic. Fuck me man! Clearly, someone doesn\u2019t play old school and this is just a bad conversion attempt. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then the atmosphere. Or lack thereof. We get one line, one sentence, that says \u201cBe atmospheric. The rhythmic chopping coming from the kitchen, the squeak of rats from the nursery, the claws scraping wood coming from the common room\u201d That\u2019s it. A well written adventure would have supported the DM in this regard. Noted this in each room, or in the previous room. Stuck in atmospheric details in the various rooms. Summarized them on a chart. SOMETHING. Nope. One line telling you to do it. Well, no shit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s the body horror. Or lack thereof. The people in the inn are supposed to have been turned in to horrible monsters. Grey Ooze, Cubes, gibbering mouther, zombies, and some other stuff. Mostly bestial and\/or abominations. But you don\u2019t actually get anything to support the body horror aspect. \u201cFrank was turned in to a gibbering mouther\u201d is about as much as you get. No description at all. Nothing to support the horror. What happens, then, is thar the entire place just feels like am monster zoo. Go in a room. Fight monster. Go in another room. Fight a different weird monster. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the rooms, proper, don\u2019t get any support either. There\u2019s no horror, or destruction in them. There are hardly any descriptions. An occasional \u201cthis room is destroyed\u201d comment, but that\u2019s it. Nothing to support the horror, or body horror. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what there is has a lot of \u2026 backstory! \u201cServant Bunkroom<\/strong>: This is where the servants normally sleep. They were all working hard when the trouble started, but three ran back into here when all the chaos broke out. As they ran, they transformed into Zombies.\u201d So, that could be shortened to \u201cServant Bunkroom: 3 Zombies.\u201d Everything else is padding. Instead of padding it could be a description of the zombies, or of the room, or SOMETHING to support the actual play of the adventure. And room after room after room does this. A boring description full of backstory not supporting the horror elements of the game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You  can\u2019t just say that there\u2019s a gibbering mouther in a room and call that horror. You can\u2019t just say \u201ccreate a spooky vibe.\u201d Of course you should be doing these things. It\u2019s the job of the designer to help the DM pull it off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/371815\/The-Haunting-of-the-Inn?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Don MacVittieHellebarde GamesC&C, OSRIC, 5eLevels 4-8 When all you want is a drink at the inn, perhaps a warm bed for the night, of course it has been taken over by unspeakable horrors! If you’re going to get an … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7620,"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-7621","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\/10\/371815.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621","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=7621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7622,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7621\/revisions\/7622"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}