{"id":7727,"date":"2022-01-12T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-12T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7727"},"modified":"2022-01-03T12:31:15","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T17:31:15","slug":"beyond-the-burning-teeth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7727","title":{"rendered":"Beyond the Burning Teeth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Amanda P\nHopeful Weird Wonder\nBX\/Cairn\/D&D\n\"Low Levels\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Don’t get excited. The Burning Teeth are a mountain range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A charismatic exiled warrior lord Dakon Lazard drove his followers to an ancient warrior temple in the Burning Teeth mountains, looking for redemption at any cost. It has been a month since any of the warriors have come from their vault. Villagers have begun to go missing, merchants are losing trade goods, and the earth rumbles more furiously than ever. Explore the volcanic mountains and discover what has happened below in the Sunken Grave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirty page adventure describes a 21 room dungeon with a boring disposition. Devoid of most evocative writing, or interactive elements, and slightly generic in the way that system-neutral things can be. I should have gone with the four page two hour dungeon instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You get three things here. First, a small town. You get descriptions like \u201cRespite has had to be relatively self sufficient as a border town. As you wander, you can find carpenter\u2019s shops, cobblers, and any other craftspeople you might find in a small village.\u201d So, you know, totally worth the page count to describe a generic small town. Unless you are doing something memorable then there\u2019s not much reason to spend a whole lot of time on the town. The best of the town entries is \u201cTwo large, homely men play cards at a table while the other two guards on duty whisper to themselves as you approach, eyes grim and deadly serious.\u201d Note the difference between that description and the previous one I pasted in (which, was another location, as generic as it seemed \u2026) In the guard one you have something going on. They are playing cards. They are glaring. They excuse danger. This is specific information. And in the world of evocative writing specificity rules. Not detailed, but specific. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part two is a kind of wilderness journey, I guess? There\u2019s a watchtower on a hill and a side-view map showing a cavern system with around eight rooms. The rooms get descriptions like \u201cThe Cavernous Descent is a dank hole with a hidden ladder under a wooden trapdoor.\u201d or \u201cThe Fountain of Ignus. A heavy door (locked) leads to an ancient shrine to a forgotten fire deity. A place for dreadful healing, soothsayers and curious sights.\u201d Completely abstracted text. I\u2019m not sure why the designer even bothered? This is not the second adventure I\u2019ve seen recently that has a cavern system as a \u201cfront door\u201d to the main dungeon. It\u2019s not a bad idea, but, why provide these descriptions, abstracted as they are? There\u2019s nothing here. Or, perhaps, you\u2019re putting work on to the DM? I don\u2019t understand AT ALL why this section exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Finally you\u2019ve got the dungeon proper. The rooms are formatted in a bullet point kind of system, maybe four or so per room sometimes. But, they aren\u2019t really in an order that makes sense. One room starts by telling us that a plaque hangs over the door to the next room. Then it tells us that door is broken and hanging from its hinges. THEN it tells us the room is full of pipes and shower heads pumping out hot steam. With acrid simple and burning cinders. Uh \u2026 Hello! Burying the lead! Finally, it tells us that thee is a great eye carved in to the door. Which door I don\u2019t know. The one in to the room? That would make sense in the other room though, the one that leads here? It\u2019s all just blasted out, without any consideration as to what he DM needs when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, mostly, there\u2019s a sense that things just don\u2019t work together. One rooms description is \u201cThe air singes your lungs and the hair on your arms. Sweat pools on your palms. The steps were carved long ago by a workman\u2019s pickaxe and chisel.\u201d So the workmans pickaxe thing is all padding, but the environmental stuff isn\u2019t. Excet, it really has no purpose. It\u2019s not like the next room is the furnace room or anything. It\u2019s all just window dressing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And EVERY room feels like this. Like they are just window dressing. Like nothing in the rooms matters. One tells us that \u201cIn the Drywell: a 40\u2019 pit. At the bottom, skeletons forever longing for their lost loved ones or raging at having been deceived.\u201d So, ok. And? I mean, that\u2019s fine, as a kind of side note to a room, but as the whole thing for the room? And for EVERY room to have this sort of window dressing and little else? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This extends to a \u201crandom effects\u201d table. It\u2019s just a table full of things that can happen to you in certain rooms. Like, now you glow green. Great! Why? Because the dungeon is evil. Uh, ok. I guess I\u2019m corrupt now? But it\u2019s all just window dressing. No good or ill effects, really. Grow a small antenna on your head that has no impact. Sure, whatever. Next room?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A room with a bridge, over bubbling acid, is written as the most boring thing in the world. The entirety of the description is \u201cThe collapsing bridge. Above the bubbling sulfur boiling acidic water. SUpports one person at a time. You get scalded every turn you are in the water if you all in. A set of bronze armor likes at the bottom of the lake\u201d  The armor thing is good, but, otherwise \u2026 thats taking an exciting room concept and making it in to nothing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru, The preview is eleven pages, but it\u2019s the first eleven, so you don\u2019t actually get to see any of the content you are paying for, preventing you from making an informed decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\nhttps:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/381410\/Beyond-the-Burning-Teeth?1892600<\/a><\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Amanda P Hopeful Weird Wonder BX\/Cairn\/D&D “Low Levels” Don’t get excited. The Burning Teeth are a mountain range. A charismatic exiled warrior lord Dakon Lazard drove his followers to an ancient warrior temple in the Burning Teeth mountains, looking … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7724,"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-7727","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\/2022\/01\/rning.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7727","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=7727"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7727\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7728,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7727\/revisions\/7728"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}