{"id":8044,"date":"2022-06-18T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-18T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8044"},"modified":"2022-06-08T19:41:57","modified_gmt":"2022-06-08T23:41:57","slug":"dragon-teeth-of-kataphrasis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8044","title":{"rendered":"Dragon Teeth of Kataphrasis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By M. Greis\nGreis Games\nLabyrinth Lord\nLevels 3-5<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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In the ruins left by the wizard Kataphrasis are left strange artifacts from the age when the stars fell from the sky. In the dim corridors inhabited by foul goblin raiders and their gnoll allies are left strange magics and few explorers are left umtouched after exploring the depths. It all begins with a caravan plundered by goblins and a rescue mission to free the prisoners of the goblins but from the within the dark, deeper than the goblins care to go something calls to the curious – and this may be the undoing of the adventurers for magics of ancient wizards are better left alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 33 page adventure describes a three level dungeon with about 25 rooms. It\u2019s got some creative encounter details, and is also dense enough, with enough text, that I don\u2019t care about the details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kind of a strange one, this one. At it\u2019s heart is a standard \u201cdungeon with some humanoinoids in it who don\u2019t control the entire place, the rest of it being a \u2018normal\u2019 dungeon.\u201d It\u2019s a strange one because even though it does many things right, the information density is so high that I think it gets quite wordy and hard to scan and run at the table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got the usual assortment of iffy hooks, including getting hired. The start is the party finding a destroyed caravan, along, perhaps with \u201cTerruce, the young local they recently met at an inn, who wanted to be an adventurer and therefore took a job as a caravan guard.\u201d I\u2019m always up for a little mangled body of a local youth energy. It\u2019s that kind of detail that pervades the adventure. That\u2019s great specificity. The actual descriptions of the various things in the dungeon may not be stellar, but, the concept behind them? Absolutely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The dungeon, proper, starts with the party seeing a large namd of gnolls in front of the dungeon entrance, being sent away by a group of goblins and being told to return at sunrise. Thus you\u2019ve got a timer, the return of the gnoll warband, to act as a force driving the party forward. (Along with, presumably, the rescue of some prisoners obviously taken from the caravan.) This start is all supported by a small table of six rumors that goes something like \u201cSome herb gatherers\u201d and \u201can ancient ruined fortress that nobody should ever go to.\u201d The rumors have their heart in a good place, even if the writing is more than a little cumbersome in places \u2026 which is a great summary of the entire adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWagons are emptied and overturned, and guard  peppered by goblins’ arrows or ripped to pieces by savage gnolls. Among the dead are goblins and gnolls.\u201c So, sure. Empty, overturned, peppered with arrows. And less great, this read-aloud, telling us they are gnolls and goblins. Errr, sorry, SAVAGE gnolls. Its got more than a little taste of high brown\/flauting in my mouth. Technically, you can see what they were going for, even though they didn\u2019t reach there in a natural way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The individual room entries can be long, a column or more not being uncommon. Green text telling (I just typed repent instead of green. This is not an autocorrect situation. Hmmmm, thats weird \u2026 the tribulation has begun?) us the room name. A grey text books of a couple of paragraphs with read-aloud text. \u201cHere sits seven goblins swaying from drunkenness amidst dice, coins and empty wine bottles. The place reeks with stale wine, coal and goblin sweat.\u201d The end of the room read-aloud, there, again is trying hard. Reeking. Stench, sweat, wine. Sure. But the description is more than a little off. Here Sits? Really? Then we\u2019ve got a paragraph description the seven goblins in the room and their drunk attack modifiers. Then a yellow boxed text with some treasure details. Then a paragraph each for the vampire and portcullis in the room (starting wth thos bolded words to make finding them easier) and then a pink boxed text section on bribing your way in. It\u2019s busy. Very busy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is it wrong? Meh \u2026. It certainly feels the fuck wrong. Maybe from how busy it is. Maybe from the length, or what it implies. Combined with the somewhat cumbersome writing, the grammar and sentence structure, and youtube a section of  text, for each room, that feels like a struggle to wade through. I look at it and just sigh. I close my eyes a moment to gird my loins for handling whats to come. Not exactly what you\u2019re looking for in running something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the map \u2026 the map is really strange. Three levels, if a room has a 30\u2019 high ceiling then it shows up on all three levels of the map. Isolated from the other rooms for the upper two 10\u2019 sections, for example. This sort of multi-level map details should be great but it comes across as confusing.I had to keep returning to the text over and over again to be like \u201cwhere the fuck does this room connect to?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And yet it also does so many things right. The map, multi level complexity, is great. Its just a  poort implementation. And individual encounter elements being great, like the campfire attack details, or bribing your way in, or any of what feels like twenty other nice little details and specificity in the dungeon. One room, with a weak\/collapsing ceiling, is supported by a sweet little table of a kin of escalating room\/ceiling collapse type. I ike it, a lot. The bear claw goblin tribe gets no real \u201cbear claw\u201d descriptions, but, sure, what the hell, why not have each of them holding a cruller? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s got great specificity, but it\u2019s handled in such a cumbersome way tha tits hard for me to do anything like recommending it. And i feel like an ass for saying that *also, because I think there are some EASL issues) but, ultimately, I don\u2019t want to run it. I don\u2019t want to fight what I\u2019m running to run it. Even though I\u2019m not sure that\u2019s the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru.The preview is six pages and shows a couple of dungeon rooms, so, good preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/391622\/Dragon-Teeth-of-Kataphrasis–a-B-X-adventure?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By M. Greis Greis Games Labyrinth Lord Levels 3-5 In the ruins left by the wizard Kataphrasis are left strange artifacts from the age when the stars fell from the sky. In the dim corridors inhabited by foul goblin raiders … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/dragon.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044","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=8044"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8045,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8044\/revisions\/8045"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}