{"id":7974,"date":"2022-05-16T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-16T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7974"},"modified":"2022-05-04T09:32:26","modified_gmt":"2022-05-04T13:32:26","slug":"brewery-of-lost-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=7974","title":{"rendered":"Brewery of Lost Time"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Sean Sexton\nSelf Published\n5e\nLevels 5-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
I’m only doing 5e content by special requests these days, so, this was a special request.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly thirteen years ago, a powerful magic gripped the Darkside Brewery and sealed its doors. No one went in. No one came out. A few days ago, those doors reopened, releasing a silver mist that temporarily aged all it touched. Yet nothing else emerged. What happened to all the workers and visitors within? What could have caused the silvery mists? How could the doors have remained sealed for so long, and why have they reopened? Do you have the courage to figure out what happened within the Darkside Brewery? Gather your allies and find out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure features a brewery with five rooms and about twenty features to interact with\/explore\/kill, etc. It\u2019s modern D&D. Read-aloud is a bit long and the formatting is trying a bit too hard, but, overall, not a bad adventure if you\u2019re in to that type of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve come to a realization, while reviewing this. Modern D&D is actually a Supers game. It\u2019s set in a modern era, with modern stuff, but with fantasy trappings and being driven by a \u201cfantasy\u201d rule system. This thing is set in a brewery. More modern world trappings. They use a water elemental to create the pure water for their brews. Uh huh. It\u2019s an escort mission with a renowned alchemist to go in the brewery. There\u2019s restrooms inside the brewery. There\u2019s a couple of magical brooms & mops that clean the place. You work for 100gop, or, maybe, a potion from the alchemist. Or you\u2019re just a do-gooder. This is the modern world, but with a fantasy vibe. I fucking HATE magical renfairre, and I hate supers. Makes sense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, three kobolds in a coat show up. That\u2019s so great, right? It\u2019s supers. Ok, so, I\u2019ve got to get over my \u201cthe bad guy left seven priceless paintings in order to test intruders\u201d biases and do an objective review of this thing, though I loathe the setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, five big rooms. Each one has multiple \u201cthings\u201d to interact with in the rooms, so about twenty or so things going on in the adventure. Room one is a good example of this. It starts with a couple of \u201cDM notes\u201d sentences giving a little brief overview of the room. Then there\u2019s a LENGTHY read-aloud. Finally, there\u2019s a small section of DM notes; \u201cthe goal is to escape this rooms \u2026\u201d and then an overview of the various room elements \u2026 in this case a couple of pages of NPC\u2019s. Then, finally, there\u2019s a little bit of advice for the DM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our main read-aloud over-reveals. The FIVE PARAGRAGHS should make that obvious. We get various descriptions of NPC\u2019s and what they are doing. This is wrong. I get it, you want to set a scene, show the party the chaos of what\u2019s going on. But a long read-aloud is not the pay to do it. I will never ever ever ever pay attention to long read aloud, as a player. I will zone out. People complain all the time about lack of player attention. Pulling out phones. Because the content is not focused on them. You make your read-ahort and snappy, giving an overall impression \u2026 and then follow that up with information for the DM tto respond with when the party starts asking questions. \u201cWhat are the people doing?\u201d \u201cWhat do I overhear?\u201d What\u2019s going on with thoe doors. Etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ignoring the half elf reporter and three kobolds in a coat, we turn to the NPC\u2019s. It\u2019s clear that theyere is  a strong attempt. Little brief description. Someone is a bit yelly. What they want and what they know. Not bad. Given the number, could use a summary sheet in order to run it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I do, though, appreciate the DM notes in this section, or, rather, the advice for the DM. We\u2019re presented various room elements and then the DM advice, at the end, is what ties the room together. We learn in the room contents that there is a door guarded by three dwarves, that goes deeper in to the brewery. The advice section, though, tells us various ways the party can get through the door \u2026 which then ties in to the NPC\u2019s. If you\u2019re gonna stick a large open-ended challenge in an adventure then putting in a little help for the DM, for how you constructed this thing to go, is a helpful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The formatting, though, is trying a little too hard. There is, again, clearly an attempt to do the right things here. Boxes. BUllets, font sizing, bolding,e tc. I\u2019m not MAD at it. But I do think it\u2019s ineffective. Ultimately, all of the formatting, and different colored boxes and other attempts to bring clarity end up resulting in a more confusing mess because of all of it. This is a common mistake in overcorrection. Trimming the text up should help quite a bit, and calming the various color schemes for the fonts and boxes. You want something that is easy onthe easy to grok, but brings clarity to the text. This format is complex and causes the brain to fight it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know, right, damned if you do and damned if you dont? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A decent enough first effort for this designer. The core adventure is the standard 5e stuff, but the interactivity and setting embraced. If you\u2019re gonna go, then go all the way, and this designer does that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/393997\/Brewery-of-Lost-Time?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sean Sexton Self Published 5e Levels 5-6 I’m only doing 5e content by special requests these days, so, this was a special request. Nearly thirteen years ago, a powerful magic gripped the Darkside Brewery and sealed its doors. No … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7973,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5e","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/ery.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974","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=7974"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7975,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7974\/revisions\/7975"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}