{"id":7823,"date":"2022-03-07T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-07T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7823"},"modified":"2022-02-24T12:50:09","modified_gmt":"2022-02-24T17:50:09","slug":"the-bone-place-of-dreib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7823","title":{"rendered":"The Bone Place of Dreib"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Rob Alexander\nMedium Quality Productions\nOSE\nLevels 3-4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
You are alone. It is dark. You have never read a book. There is something in here with you. On a hill above a deserted road there is a rocky crown, and in that crown is the Bone Place of Dreib, and in the Bone Place (so you have heard) is a temple of the ancients full of treasures wondrous and diverse. Why it is unlooted and undefiled? Probably the stories about the place, the ghosts that come if you sleep too close, and the list of grave-robbers who never came back. But the stories are probably bullshit, the ghosts probably just nightmares, and the grave-robbers rank amateurs. You are don\u2019t care about that shit. And you have this dream every night. A dream that you are alone, that it is dark, and that you have never read a book. You are down there in the earth and there is something in there with you. It is a million years old and it is not your friend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dude, this thing is weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This twenty page adventure details about thirty locations with a non-traditional (or, maybe, ultra-traditional?) undead thing going on. And fear. And primitivism. And \u2026 well, it\u2019s just weird man. And I mean that in a good way. It\u2019s could use a little more theming, I think, in order to communicate a vibe to the players better. But what there is, here, is very interesting and as freaky as anything I\u2019ve ever reviewed \u2026 without it in ANY way being gonzo or alien. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Check out the fucking marketing blurb on this thing. At first I thought it was just some modern adventure, from the \u201cnever have read a book\u201d thing, and then I see it\u2019s OSE and I look at my other Medium Quality reviews and I\u2019m like, ok, I\u2019m taking a chance. And man, thet fucking blurb delivers. That in the dark thing \u2026 that million years thing. But, it\u2019s not ALL that. Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok, I\u2019m gonna cover this shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The place has three parts. First, there\u2019s the \u201coutside\u201d, or maybe the preamble. Imagine the Ol Zeke shit in Death Frost. There\u2019s this giant mesa and a path cut in to ala Petra, and outside of the mesa and path are some shit. A little hut. A graveyard. A little section off to the side, elsewhere, with two fresh graves but NOT in the graveyard. We\u2019re building energy here, preparing the party for the vibe to come so they can shit themselves when stuff starts to go down. A hand sticking out of the ground that grips back if you grab it. Skeletons in the graveyard, if dug up they have vaguely animalistic features. A couple of fresh graves off to the side, I guess they didn\u2019t find the loot they were looking for. And a gap in the mesa, 6 feet wide, flanked by pillars with a stone lintel engraved with DREIB in foot high letter. Uh \u2026 ok. Who\u2019s up for the paths of the dead?!  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
That section, along with the rumors and hooks, makes the initial vibe setting. There\u2019s a creature in the dark, and weapons simply don\u2019t work. There\u2019s a creature, under, that should not be woken. That\u2019s what the ancients sealed the place up. If you overturn the great stone THEY will come and drag you underground and that will be the end of you. Vague shit. Scary shit. Less is more and the parties imagination starts to run. Oh, and while I\u2019m not a big fan of dream shit, there\u2019s a crawling through narrow tunnels naked and afraid in the dark clutching a primitive torch and a sharp antler. Fuck yeah man! That\u2019s a fucking vibe!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Part the second: you come through the crack in the mesa and it\u2019s hollow on the inside and big. Giant rock in the center, a boulder, and like nine or so tunnels that go in the rock. These are tombs, but, also, that\u2019s a little misleading. Let\u2019s start with \u201chey, its a cave a we buried a dude in the back\u201d at the middle of the spectrum and branch out both directions from there, but absolutely trending to the more primitive side of things. (There is a more traditional tomb or two, but not a fancy one. More of a burial place, I might call it.) Caves, tunnels, some narrows, ornamentation of some sort in most, mostly primitive. You got me? With some undead. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Undead like a leg and pelvis sticking out from under a boulder. If you fuck with it it gets up and kicks you, maybe kicking off YOUR leg. Or a ribcage that launches at you. Ar a mass of skeletons under the big boulder that form up to kick your ass. Or ghostly bodies wrapped tight in white burial shrouds, attacking like worms? Or maybe the ghosts of those people, dressed the same way? We\u2019ll call that the more traditional of the encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because there\u2019s also a spider thing, with hooks on its feet and vaguely human like face, squeezing through small tunnels, slicing off a limb or head and then retreating to eat it \u2026 it\u2019s quiet the rest of the day. Or worse, the thing in the tunnels .. .which is really just vague.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And let\u2019s cover that third part now. The Prehistoric Tunnels. The alter of man. The alter of the stag. Tight, your light doesn\u2019t seem to give off much light at all. And something, in the dark, reaching for you. Clawing. Stabbing it makes it retreat for awhile, but its always present in the dark, always coming back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learn to genuflect baby, that\u2019s gonna be one of the most important skills here, to appease some shit and keep the restless spirits happy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m down with this fucking thing. Except \u2026 I am an unhappy boy on the descriptions. It\u2019s using a brief summary paragraph with keywords bolded, and some keywords in parens to describe things. So, in the primitive tunnels we get \u201cHeadless man-figure (made of wood and clay, with crown and staff as if a king and an excessively erect phallus)\u201d Yup, i agree, that\u2019s what it looks like. And I\u2019m down with this description. Terse, brief, evocative; works for me. But, the encounter areas themselves don\u2019t tend to get descriptions. There are some general notes about packed earth and the like, but I think almost all of the rooms could use an additional sentence about the actual room instead of the things in the room. That vibe of the location needs to be better communicated. And not having it is a major downer, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like, so much so I\u2019m not going to Best this one. Oh, and also, I can\u2019t find the entrance to the Prehistoric Tunnels? I don\u2019t know here they are?\u00a0 But, sure, this one is close. A little more work and it could have been. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Spider-Thing is a hairy black spider, 8ft across with<\/p>
all its legs splayed. The legs end in cutting hooks. Its<\/p>
central body is a black sphere, and though you look<\/p>
close enough there is a humanesque nose and mouth\u2026<\/p>
though the latter has all the wrong teeth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. There are two previews available, the seonc shows you the prehistoric tunnels. Good stuff, and enough to make a purchasing decision. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/387172\/The-Bone-Place-of-Dreib?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Rob Alexander Medium Quality Productions OSE Levels 3-4 You are alone. It is dark. You have never read a book. There is something in here with you. On a hill above a deserted road there is a rocky crown, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7822,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,9,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-level-3","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/bone.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7823","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=7823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7824,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7823\/revisions\/7824"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}