{"id":7798,"date":"2022-02-19T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7798"},"modified":"2022-02-06T18:54:00","modified_gmt":"2022-02-06T23:54:00","slug":"chaos-at-crossriver-span","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7798","title":{"rendered":"Chaos at Crossriver Span"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Timothy A Sayell\nFantanomicon Press\nLabyrinth Lord\nLevels 1-3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Crossriver Span has been seized by the Iron Tusk Orcs!  A desperate Baron hopes to save his town from imminent attack and sends the Player Characters to repel the Orcs or dislodge the bridge.  But this is no easy quest–the Orcs are tough, smart, and have a new Chieftain with a few surprises of his own!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 22 page adventure features an assault on a \u201cspans a gorge\u201d twin tower\/bridge fortress full of orcs. It\u2019s pretty minimal, with brief notes on how many orcs are in a room and some order of battle notes. Exploration, this ain\u2019t. Sneak around and hope you don\u2019t alert the orcs, while killing room after room of them. Pretty boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My notes for this one are pretty short \u2026 because there isn\u2019t really anything of note. We get mini-maps in the single-column text, which helps the DM run the various rooms,  The orcs are pig-faced, and wear garish yellow tunics, a nice touch. Everything interesting has now been covered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, there\u2019s this gorge. There\u2019s a tower on each side of it and a bridge connecting the two. Go root out the orcs. There are some guards on top of the near-side tower, don\u2019t let them see you . Either sneak in via a tunnel or learn the secret knock to get the oones inside to let you in, hoping that the random number generator doesn\u2019t let the ones on top see you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is one of the exciting room entries \u201cThis area is wide open. There are two open casks<\/p>\n\n\n\n
of ale here.\u201d Also, that room has five orcs in it. \u201cThis area is wide open\u201d is another exciting description. As is \u201cthe floor is covered with the debris of smashed furniture.\u201d You get the idea by now? The exploration elements, the evocative text, the tricks and traps that make D&D a sense of wonder and mystery \u2026 those don\u2019t exist in this. This is a 4e assault. You go from room to room and kill orcs, most of who don\u2019t try to alert anyone else or hear fights in the next floor. Every once in awhile you get a tactical note, like, the orcs see you characters on a roll of 1 on a d6, or \u201cmake a des check if hit in combat ir fall of f the bridge.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two shattered chairs lay in a pile by the north wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rotted remains of a table lay in the center of the room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess people play D&D like this? I mean, that\u2019s the stereotype, right? That you smash in a door and kill the monsters and take their stuff? Isn\u2019t that even the tagline\/marketing line of a couple of the newish publishers? But that is bad D&D. Yeah, that\u2019s fucking right, I\u2019m gatekeeping. That isn\u2019t the D&D I know and love. That\u2019s not the mystery and wonder, the magic of the unknown. The wonder of discovery. The fear when confronting something new that might eat or face .. .or grant you a wish. This is just boring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get it, there needs to be pacing. Empty rooms are a thing. A set piecey-thing or two is fine, not every room has to be a thing of beauty and joy to explore. But, man, there has to be SOMETHING. This just strikes me as drudgery. Like, drudgery for the DM to run it and try to breathe life in to it and drudgery for the players to explore it and work their way through it, facing room after room after room with nothing in it except something to kill or maybe an arbitrary trap that\u2019s not telegraphed at all. Oh, look, another room full of orcs to kill. I want something to fuck with. I want  lever to pull or a pool or green water to fuck with, a statue that rotates, or bozarre crystals. I want the adventure to be ALIVE. I can sit at my desk all day and play with spreadsheets. I\u2019m bored to death most of the day. Why would I want to be bored to death while playing D&D also? There\u2019s just NOTHING HERE. And, now, I\u2019m depressed about it. Ug. That\u2019s not what I need tonight. \u201cIt\u2019s Sunday night ennui! :et\u2019s watch Precious and The Road and then play Chaos at the Crossriver Span!\u201d That will leave you depressed as fuck at 11pm tonight and weeping for a future that is not meaningless. So, great. Thanks Crossriver Span, now I get to contemplate the meaninglessness of my own existence, thanks to you! I don\u2019t need that tonight. I wanna have dinner in a blanket fort and make out with cute girls on a Sunday night, not wonder what the meaning of it all is, in despair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why do things like this exist? Seriously? Why? Do the designers not know what an adventure looks like? Are they making the things they want to play, and this really IS the type of D&D that people want to play? I don\u2019t know. Maybe I\u2019m wrong. It seems wrong to me though. Like, everything I know says that this sort of D&D is boring and empty. Like, I think the same thing, mostly, about plot D&D, maybe with a few platitudes thrown out for fun time with friends in an adventure thats not a complete throw away. But, even more than most, this just seems boring. Empty. And not in a We Must Imagine Sisyphus As Happy kind of way. More like imagining his as unhappy kind of way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis room is littered with ruined furniture and dust. Nothing of interest is here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing of interest, indeed!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some drink to remember. Some drink to forget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see part of the first room.; That\u2019s not enough to make an informed purchasing decision \u2026 although you might be able to intuit what\u2019s to come from the intro text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/385492\/Chaos-at-Crossriver-Span?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Timothy A Sayell Fantanomicon Press Labyrinth Lord Levels 1-3 Crossriver Span has been seized by the Iron Tusk Orcs!  A desperate Baron hopes to save his town from imminent attack and sends the Player Characters to repel the Orcs … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,33,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-my-life-is-a-living-fucking-hell","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/cross.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7798","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=7798"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7800,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7798\/revisions\/7800"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}