{"id":7721,"date":"2022-01-10T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7721"},"modified":"2021-12-27T08:57:51","modified_gmt":"2021-12-27T13:57:51","slug":"dungeon-magazine-152-the-last-breaths-of-ashenport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7721","title":{"rendered":"Dungeon Magazine 152 – The Last Breaths of Ashenport"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Last Breaths of Ashenport\nby Ari Marmell\nD20\nLevel 6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A special request for a Dungeon 152 review!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 44 page adventure is the standard Call of Cthulhu scenario, except written for 3e (3.5?)  You\u2019re in an Innsmouth, it\u2019s cut off, freaky shit goes down, you raid the church and then you raid the sea caves. I\u2019ve played and run enough to these that I know how it\u2019s supposed to go down, and you can see the basic outline and what the designer wants to do, but the scenario doesn\u2019t accomplish it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like CoC. I think CoC is great. Non delta-green versions of CoC are the perfect one shot\/con game. What I do NOT think, though, is that investigation adventures are meant for D&D. D&D has the Divination problem. The players can and will cast Detect Evil\/Locate Object, etc. This is because D&D is not an investigation game. D&D is a dungeon exploration game. The spell lists are crafted for a party raiding a dungeon and finding a princess and wanting to know if they are gonna get a kiss and kingdom as a reward or a level drain for their problems. And for every Detect Evil you memorize that\u2019s one less Fireball to toss out. It\u2019s a give and take and resource management game. And I don\u2019t really give a flying fuck how YOU play D&D. That\u2019s irrelevant. The Spell Lists are created for this type of play. It\u2019s built in to the game and WILL be built in to the game until someone reworks the fucking spell lists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until this happens the only possible solution is to gimp the fucking party. I still remember being stone\u2019d by a Medusa who the adventure said was evil \u201cbut not enough to register on the spell \u2026\u201d Uh huh. And in this adventure there is a vague evil detected in the village but nothing specific. Because two evil altars are masking the fact that everyone in the village is an evil Dagon cultist. Combine this with the standard \u201cYou are trapped in the village by a raging storm\u201d mechanic. I know, I know, it\u2019s a standard trope for these things. Or, rather, it\u2019s a standard fucking trope for a game in which you are normal people facing the terrible unknown. I can teleport without error and he regularly communes with his god and rides the sun chariot around the night sky with him. We don\u2019t get trapped in villages. It\u2019s trying to force a scenario type in to a game that doesn\u2019t support it. Just like you don\u2019t explore dungeons in CoC, you don\u2019t investigate in D&D. That\u2019s not how the game was built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, that\u2019s out of the way. Let\u2019s say something nice. There\u2019s a paragraph of advice up front that is extremely useful advice to the DM: \u201cWhen describing them [ed: the fish-men], however, don\u2019t use either of those terms. In context of the adventure, they\u2019re not \u201cpseudonatural kuo-toa\u201d; they\u2019re fish-men of Dagon. It may sound like a minor point, but the proper use\u2014and, just as important, the careful avoidance\u2014of particular terms can go a long way toward making the PCs, and indeed the players, feel like they\u2019re truly facing the unknown.\u201d No truer words. This gets to a core point: making the party afraid. You don\u2019t tell them they face a troll. You describe the troll. You don\u2019t say \u201cdragon\u201d, you describe it. You describe eyestalks popping up out of a bit, not say the word \u201cbeholder.\u201d The specific advice given is different (they are fish men, not kua-toa) but the concept is in the same neighborhood. Don\u2019t remove the mystery and fear from the game by naming the thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s also a pretty good in-voice bit from an NPC. If you question a rando townsperson about an inn, when you first arrive in town, you get this little gem: \u201cMight meet you there later to hoist a tankard or two; gods know I\u2019ll not be doing much else \u2019til the sky stops weepin\u2019.\u201d Pretty good! An NPC acting like a normal person for once! The adventure also let\u2019s you roll, after 24 hours, to determine that the weather is not normal. A nice naturalistic way; it takes time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We are now done being nice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The standard long read-aloud. The read-aloud is in italics, making it hard to read. Nothing new there. The read-aloud has a lot of \u201cyou\u2019s\u201d scattered in it: \u201ctheir eyes glare at you in hatred\u201d and so on. It does solve the \u201clong stat block\/enoucnter\u201d issue by removing all encounters and placing them in the rear of the adventure. So a room might say \u201crun encounter \u2018from the sea on page 24 now.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure does two things majorly wrong, which would be wrong even in a CoC game. First, it relies A LOT on questioning captives. It fully expects you to knock people out and question them so you can find the next breadcrumb location. Not cool. And if this doesn\u2019t happen then the NPC\u2019s in the inn, the other travelers, will spoon feed info to you. \u201cIt looks like everyone is going to the church!\u201d or some such. SO much so that at one point it advises to give the party a story award if you DONT have to have the NPCs do this.  This Adventure Plot extends in to other areas as well; when the party is magic\u2019d to walk in to the sea to drown themselves, if they all fail their save, then an NPC in the inn will save them. IE: This is all just window dressing. It\u2019s meant to be exciting, but not dangerous. You don\u2019t actually have agency and there are not actually any consequences to your actions. Not cool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s also using a standard room\/key format for the town. The mayor is in the town hall. The sheriff is in the sheriffs office and so on. But, this isn\u2019t how an adventure gets run. They shouldn\u2019t just be sitting there, waiting for the party. The sheriff is a small town bully. He should be out, harassing the party around town, having goons do things and like. His entry even says this. But, his description is just hidden there, in the sheriffs office entry. There should be a section, up front, describing events and actions and things to happen in the town. The towns vibe. It\u2019s a dynamic, fluid place \u2026 or, at least, it should be. This is not an exploratory dungeon. This is a social investigation adventure. Room\/key isn\u2019t the right way to present this information in order for the DM to be able to run a smooth and fluid game in which that asshole small town sheriff is out causing trouble. It just comes across as a throw away comment, and too much is left fo rthe DM to infer. The DM is not supported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I can see exactly HOW this is supposed to be run. I can get the vibe the designer is going for. It\u2019s not the utter garbage that most Dungeon adventures are. But it\u2019s also no where near runnable in order to get the full experience that I think the designer was going for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Last Breaths of Ashenport by Ari Marmell D20 Level 6 A special request for a Dungeon 152 review! This 44 page adventure is the standard Call of Cthulhu scenario, except written for 3e (3.5?)  You\u2019re in an Innsmouth, it\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeon-magazine","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/Dungeon152.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721","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=7721"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7723,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7721\/revisions\/7723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}