{"id":7775,"date":"2022-02-02T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7775"},"modified":"2022-01-26T10:58:41","modified_gmt":"2022-01-26T15:58:41","slug":"trouble-came-to-blackwood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7775","title":{"rendered":"Trouble Came to Blackwood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By S.E. Bischoff\nSelf Published\nZweihander\n\"Basic Tier Characters\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A beast from ages past plagues the village of Blackwood, hunting the population under the light of the full moon. For the last six months, many have tried and failed to stop the monster, but every attempt has met with death. Desperate for salvation, the villagers of Blackwood have concluded that what this beast wants, and the only thing that will save those still alive, is a sacrifice conducted by the beast\u2019s very own worshipers. As luck would have it, the arrival of the PCs has provided a fresh supply of sacrificial lambs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seven page adventure details the usual \u201cvillage cult captures the party\u201d scenario. I\u2019m using \u201cdetails\u201d mildly. There are good things that the adventure does, but it suffers from the usual inability to transfer information to the DM well, as well as setting up what I think is a no-win situation. More help for the DM in that area could have been done. Still, it ALMOST get the level of details right for a village\/cult sandbox. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t notice this was seven pages when I bought it. That\u2019s enough for an OSR adventure, but not enough for a \u201ctwo session\u201d adventure for a non-OSR game. I mean, it SHOULD be, but nothing published ever works out that way for a non-OSR game. Still, I was moderately hopeful at the start after seeing the NPC section.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the usual thing for a cult village scenario. Party arrive sin village. Village cult kidnaps party, hold them for a bit, then ties them up in the center of the village for The Beast to come eat them, as a sacrifice. It\u2019s been done a bunch. Has it ever been done well? Meh. Is it done well in this? No. It\u2019s not terrible, but it\u2019s no where near good either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s got a few things going for it. There are more than a few relatable situations in this. The inn owner, with kids, who just wants to be left alone so the rest of the villagers go pick someone else other than her family. The zealot priest, complete with gun in hollowed out bible, leading the villagers. The peasant mob, led by some hotheads. A broken down palisade, with destroyed house, from a previous attack. A hunter, maybe on the parties side, with four hunting dogs \u2026 two untrained. You just KNOW how that\u2019s going to go, right? A village meeting in the church, with the party not let in to it. You can kind of piece things together from this. The very relatable NPC\u2019s, with their motivations and archetypes, and the trophy little scenes, like the destroyed house\/pallisade and village meeting in the church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s not nearly enough. There are minor things and bigger things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The NPC\u201ds, while having relatable motivations, are not done in such a way as to make them usable by the DM easily. You need to read an entire paragraph and pick apart people they know, quirks, and motivations, scattered about in them. The village is supposed to have a \u201ccenter\u201d where the sacrifices are made, but its not obvious at all from the map what that is. In fact, I\u2019d say the ,ap is more than useless. It\u2019s basically just some squares representing houses, along a river. There\u2019s nothing about it that would facilitate the adventure. The \u201cpalisade\u201d around the village is only shown on one side \u2026 what about the other sides of the village? There\u2019s an island in the middle of the village, with houses on it, and no way to reach it? That\u2019s never mentioned? Nothing on the map makes sense, even for a map that would be more evocative\/arty than true mappy reference. The hooks and rumors are all just lame throw-aways, but, nothing new there, right? The \u201cbeast\u201d doesn\u2019t really get a good description. Oh, it gets one, I guess? In a long paragraph at the end of the book n the new monsters section, where you would expect it. But the actual physical description is scattered throughout the paragraph. Like, line of description, line of BS, line of description, line of BS, and so on. Monsters descriptions should be up front, the lead thing, in a monster entry. That\u2019s almost always the first thing the DM needs to know about the creature, so make it first in the entry and puti it all together. This is all part of the \u201cmaking it easy for the DM to run\/scan the adventure and use it philosophy. And you get three corruption for killing the leader of the mob?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A timeline embedded in the church entry. The location descriptions for he village are about the right size … except when they are not … like there are no clues in the ransacked house or palisade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, really, the adventure is short and weighted towards the village, which might be realistic but not fun. I\u2019m not sure how this is supposed to go. The mob comes after the party. The party runs off?  The mob chases and then the adventure is over, maybe? Or, the party is captured and held? Then there\u2019s no guidance on for the DM on holding a jail break and making that fun. There\u2019s just \u201cyou\u2019re taken to the village center and tied up\u201d for the beast to come and eat you at night. Gee, that\u2019s fun. There\u2019s no \u201cchaos as the party escape when the beasteats the villagers instead of the party\u201d or anything else to help the DM handle the breakout, the beast attack, the party escaping, or being given a fighting chance. I don\u2019t see how the beast showing up ever happens as a gameable moment. The party either runs off when trying to be captured, or are captured and sacrificed \u2026 in which case the DM monologs the party death. If they escape they run off again, right? Or they kill everyone? But, and this is my point, there is no scenario in which they are tied up as sacrifices in which the beast showing up is anything but a monologue.And, the party is meant to be captured, like, two days before the beast shows up? That\u2019s a ong time. And a long time to be captured. It seems like a prison break is in order \u2026 but it is completely unsupported. It\u2019s this lack of support for what should LOGICALLY happen, either the breakout or the sacrifice \u2026 and even support for the mob capturing the party. More village vignettes up to the start would be cool also. There IS support for tracking the beast back to its lair, but, again, I don\u2019t see how that happens given the timeline, unless you have a very aggressively do-gooder party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. How can I know what I\u2019m buying without a preview?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/363572\/Trouble-Came-to-Blackwood?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By S.E. Bischoff Self Published Zweihander “Basic Tier Characters” A beast from ages past plagues the village of Blackwood, hunting the population under the light of the full moon. For the last six months, many have tried and failed to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7773,"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-7775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/363572.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775","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=7775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7778,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7775\/revisions\/7778"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}