{"id":7900,"date":"2022-04-13T07:18:00","date_gmt":"2022-04-13T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7900"},"modified":"2022-04-04T21:20:54","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T01:20:54","slug":"kallistas-floating-keep","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7900","title":{"rendered":"Kallista’s Floating Keep"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Artem Serebrennikov\nSelf Published\n5e\nLevel 5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Again, the image has nothing to do with the adventure. I just google searched on floating keep and “keep floating” popped up and I liked it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This is an entry in my Wavestone Keep adventure design contest. Which I held to combat the crushing ennui I feel when reviewing too many bad adventures in a row. The challenge was to write and short adventure, eight pages, inspired by the concept and marketing tagline of the Wavestone Keep adventure. Now, to combat my crushing boredom, and the perfectionism which prevents me from working on larger projects, I\u2019m going to review the entries!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fear the mists, fear the tides, fear the seagull\u2019s call! A sea witch from a bygone age has returned to exact revenge, her floating keep spelling doom for surface dwellers!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This eight page nine room adventure features an \u201cunder da sea!\u201d theme, without actually being under the sea. It\u2019s got some nice imagery in places, and great use of integrating magic items and creatures i nto the design in a natural way. It\u2019s also a little fun-housey, but, not bad for a 5e adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, get this \u2026 stop me if you\u2019re heard this one before \u2026 there\u2019s this fishing village and dark mists have moved in , the fish have dried up and bad shit is going down!I kid, but, that\u2019s what we\u2019ve signed up for here. There are rumors that a dead sea hag has returned and the party is rowing out to her keep in the mists to stop her. Along the way, in a very early paragraph on the first page we get this gem \u201cDuring the journey, the PCs encounter foreboding omens (a lone albatross with a broken wing moaning Kallista\u2019s name, shapes of enormous fish appearing and vanishing underwater, seas turning blood-red, etc.).\u201d Uh \u2026 fuck yeah man! That\u2019s some good shit, the use of \u201cetc\u201d aside. I wish more adventures would do this, insert omens and \u201cthe land has turned against itself\u201d type of shit. Too many times the party just walks up to the dungeon. No! The world is WRONG and only some fucking idiots (IE: the party) goes out to meet it. Gold, glory, whatever \u2026 normal folk heed the warnings. This kind of thing sets the mood. What was it, the latest Witcher PC game, that had that tree full of corpses hanging in it? That set the fucking mood. Andm a lone albatross with a broken wing (nice classical callback!) does the same thing. Before the party gets to the main event you want the fuckers quaking a bit. The entrance to the mythic underworld, in action! Set the fucking mood, just like Artem did with an almost throw-away paragraph. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This \u201ctypical\u201d 5e adventure has a few things going for it that set it above, better than the usual 5e adventure. The keep itself is made up of everflowing black water. That\u2019s cool! And in one of the early rooms you get Fourteen human skeletons in tattered sailors clothing, cutlasses tucked in their belts, suspended on ropes tied around their necks with placards on them saying \u201cPIRATE.\u201d Uh, yeas, thank you! They are, clearly, gonna be skeletons that attack the party. But it\u2019s not just throw away bones that assemble themselves. The callback to hanging pirates, replete with placard, a few extra details, this nails the scene! Oh, and, there\u2019s a skull sittong on a chest in the middle of them, complete with eyepatch. Noice! That\u2019s whatthe fuck a pirate lair looks like man! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, that skull? It\u2019s a \u201cflaming skull\u201d from the 5e monster manual. That\u2019s good. Note here that the skeletons and the skull FEEL like the monsters that they are. It\u2019s not just throwing in a flaming skull as an enemy, but, the party gets to \u201csee\u201d them first, and then they turn in to what you KNOW they will be. The flaming skull feels natural, just as the pirate skeletons do. This designer does this repeatedly in this adventure. It\u2019s a good skill to have, turning what would otherwise be just a \u201c12 skeletons\u201d from the monster manual in to MORE than just the manual states. It\u2019s almost like the designer decided what to have in the room and THEN went looking for stats for me. Imagine first THEN find some way to make it gameable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, then, there\u2019s the magic items. There\u2019s a golden scimitar\/cuttlass, which makes perfect sense in this room. (it lets you float on water and does extra damage to water type creatures.\u201d And, that pirate skull with the eyepatch? The eyepatch is magical, acting as goggles of the night. Not goggles. An eyepatch. On a pirate, who always wear eyepatches. It FITS. It\u2019s good retheme. Later on there\u2019s the hag who is clothed in anemones. Which, when\/if you defeat her act as a robe of scintillating colours. Perfect! It takes a natural element of the adventure, for this encounter, and turns it in to something in the book. If you\u2019re gonna use a book item then this rethemeing is the way to go!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pirate skeleton room is kind of funhousey, right? Well, how about \u201cdozens of oysters nested in its niches. They open and close rhythmically to the sounds of calypso, produced by a tin pan and drumsticks, hovering in the air and playing seemingly by themselves. Thirteen enormous crabs are gamboling in a round dance around the Instrument.\u201d Ok, so, i can\u2019t argue that this is bad imagery. It\u2019s pretty cool. But it is most definitely funhousey, as is the room full of mounted fish on the wall with a sign saying \u201cPlant a kiss on your favorite hanging fish and see what happens.\u201d Uh, ok sure. I shall admit that funhouse designs are not my favrote, and yet, this thing does them in an almost OD&D\/Tunnels & Trolls style, and there\u2019s a charm in that. Ot just the same old boring heroic battle bullshit, but, having a little (or a lot) of fun. Tonally, it\u2019s not my thing, but I bet a lot of 5e players would eat this fucking shit up. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The formatting here is one of the weaker parts of the adventure. I don\u2019t want to go too far down this road, but, it\u2019s a simple paragraph format with some boldings and italics in it. It\u2019s getting a little wall of texty, or, tending in that direction without fully going over the edge. I\u2019m sure it was probably just some two column format in a word processor, and, for that, it\u2019s decent. But, it could benefit form breaking things up a bit more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the interactivity, well \u2026 ok, so, yes, there\u2019s interactivity, but it feels set-piecy (or funhousy, I guess) if you know whatI mean. There\u2019s a lot of springing to life when you enter or touch something and that\u2019s a cumbersome way of doing things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Overall, though, I would not be upset to play in this in a con, or even run it if it were dropped in my lap with 5 minutes till the game starts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Snag a copy here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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