{"id":8148,"date":"2022-08-17T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-17T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8148"},"modified":"2022-08-07T10:29:37","modified_gmt":"2022-08-07T14:29:37","slug":"isle-of-the-succubus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8148","title":{"rendered":"Isle of the Succubus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Michael Robinson\nRutibex\nOSR\nLevel ?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Can you see through the Succubus many disguises?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This forty page \u201chexcrawl\u201d describes an island and associated area on level 69 of the Abyss. You walk around doing nothing and meet Midi the Succubus in a bunch of disguises, randomly. It\u2019s not an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thought the concept of a Succubus lair, fleshed out, would be interesting so I bought this. I am not amused. This runs painfully close to being a joke adventure, if it can be called an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of the forty pages, twenty are devoted to monster stats. There are ten locations on Midi\u2019s island and about twenty more on the surrounding hex map. Midi\u2019s island is supposed to be a hex map also, and looks like it, but there are no hex lines and there\u2019s no numbering for the hexes \u2026 so good luck hex crawling that map. You get a wandering monster table to help support a hex crawl play, but it\u2019s just a list of monsters with nothing more, and, for it being an island, no \u201con the waves\u201d notes for sailing around the Abyss. The maps, therefore, are an abject failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Midi gets more than few pages of description. You get five entire pages listing all of her disguises, maybe twenty in all. Every one of them matches her own personality, a bimbo\/cutsy type (with accompanying art style) with a heart of evil. Maybe. You get a page of motivations for Midi, about twenty or so, of which about half make her misunderstood or somehow allies of the party. Which doesn\u2019t really jive with her \u201cattach the party repeatedly\u201d thing that she has going on. None of them are very interesting, or detailed more than a sentence or two. This, in particular, is a mistake. These sorts of variables\/tables in an adventure do little good. It would be far far better for the designer to have picked one and ran with it. Make the island, and the surrounding hexes, mostly integrated in to Midi\u2019s plotting. Add additional information for the GM to help them along. Make the thing a cohesive whole. But, no. Instead we get a Midi disguise of \u201cPepper Minstix – An elf lost on this island. She needs help to get back to her workshop\u201d To be clear, that a Santa\u2019s workshop elf, as the art shows us. Midis is supported, in combat, by a small section that has doing hit and runs, and dimension dooring away. So, she gets 500\u2019 away when its her turn. You\u2019re told to roll some wanderers for her support troops if she ambushes the party \u2026 but the ambush stuff is never handled on a table or anything. You\u2019re told she\u2019s got a veritable army of people on the island who REALLY love her \u2026 but nothing more than that and it never comes up again. She also dimension doors a party member 400\u2019 up in combat .. but I don\u2019t think Dimension Door works like that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The locations on the island and hexes around it are trying for a hex crawl type vibe. \u201cA corrupted Abbot of Gollidar (Rowan Holmes) is in charge of the eye factory. He is concerned because the new shipment of halflings have not arrived and he needs them for the eye chamber\u201d or \u201cThe jails of Midi, where the Rabbit Prince is on trial for crimes against his people. Little does he know that everyone in the jury are not his peers but transformed Quasits!\u201d Hex crawls are a tough encounter type, I think. You need something that is both self-contained and ties in to the other hexes, sometimes. You need something going on, a situation, for the party to get involved in, or use as a resource, or something like that. Not all hexes, certainly, but that needs to be a general vibe. The party is going to want something to do and\/or get invested in. Those descriptions locations don\u2019t do that. It\u2019s better than the Isle of the Unknown encounters, but not by much. There\u2019s no real motivation for the party to do anything at all. It\u2019s like these locations are scoped too large for ad-hoc usage at the table. And perhaps that\u2019s it. In a hex crawl the DM is going to making things up on the fly for everything and trying to riff on things to tie the adventure together. And this doesn\u2019t support the DM in that manner. \u201cThis grotto is actually the mouth of a particularly perverted and huge demonic toad. It encourages guests and visitors to vacation within the resort he has constructed in his mouth.\u201d Can you do that with that description? Maybe? I guess? But you\u2019ll need other hexes and NPC\u2019s to tie in to that, and the adventure doesn\u2019t do that at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is just disappointing on so many levels. Clearly, the designer just wanted a cutesy shape changing succubus running around and everything else was an afterthought. The core concert is a good one, the central idea. A succubus nin her \u201clair\u201d so to speak, and using her charm abilities to their logical conclusion. But none of that really happens here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is just a quick one, so useless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/393213\/Isle-of-the-Succubus?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, Mohr got me again with his House of Falknor. Bought, but not gonna review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Michael Robinson Rutibex OSR Level ? Can you see through the Succubus many disguises? This forty page \u201chexcrawl\u201d describes an island and associated area on level 69 of the Abyss. You walk around doing nothing and meet Midi the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8147,"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-8148","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\/08\/succ.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148","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=8148"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8149,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8148\/revisions\/8149"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}