{"id":8161,"date":"2022-08-27T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8161"},"modified":"2022-08-15T12:27:06","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T16:27:06","slug":"country-meat-grinder-classics-wasted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8161","title":{"rendered":"Country Meat-Grinder Classics – Wasted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Tim Snider\nSavage AfterWorld\nDCC\nLevel 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well, I swan…this season\u2019s been a rough \u2018un, what with alluva crops gone sour with that corn blight what\u2019s been runnin\u2019 wild through the county. But enough of our miseries! I cain\u2019t wait to git to the Addersbrook fair and relax fer a spell! Get me some good eatin\u2019 and listen to a tune or two. And if\u2019n we\u2019re lucky, maybe Junebug\u2019ll be there with some of his pa\u2019s hootch!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This eighteen page single-column adventure contains five scenes in a small farming village. It\u2019s the kind of adventure that contributes to a certain malaise one finds in a one-shot or con game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a rural village themed adventure, from a request that I review it. And, I generally agree that the Country Crawl Classic\/Shudder Mountain adventures can be used, to a great degree, in a wide variety of games, from fantasy to Gamma World. Horror, in general, I think transcends genres well and is relatively easy to translate from system to system. And thus, we come to this review. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A rural area. You come upon some smoke. A farmer and his daughter are burning a portion of their fields of corn. They rush about, now and again, to keep it from spreading to the nearby woods. A part of their crop has a blight and they are handling it. (ObFact: Farmers & Adventurers: Brothers in \u201cFire Will Fix It!\u201d arms \u2026) This is quite the nice little scene. An introduction, perhaps, to rural life and a time honoured way of fixing stuff. It also introduces some blue corn, that the farmer shows off if the party asks about the blight. This is all a little too on the nose for me, revealing up front what is going on. As if the farmers statement that \u201ca bunch of it went missing.\u201d At this point I think the adventure writes itself if you\u2019re a player. A little scene where the party helps stop some minor fires \u2026 and if they miss a luck roll they get attacked by a rapid \u201cblue mouthed\u201d animal. And the farmer invites them to the county fair this afternoon. Is there ANYONE who now DOESN\u201dT know what is going to happen? I recently saw a discussion on metagaming in which, I believe, the majority of respondents would get upset if the party acted on this information, but, come the fuck on \u2026 they\u2019re not idiots!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You get to the fair. You participate in a greased pig contest, or a wrestling match. The imagery is pretty light here and there could have been more, especially when it comes to bonding moments with the villagers\/townfolk. If you make a DC20 check you see a hulking ogre-like man \u201cwith dead eyes\u201d, but loose him in the crowd. Uh huh. This is going swimmingly. A meaningless roll. If you\u2019re gonna let them not catch him then just have everyone see him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The inevitable occurs and the townsfolks start drinking tainted moonshine, made from the infected corn. They die. Then they get back up again, now zombies, and attack people and try to get THEM to drink the moonshine. This is one of those \u201cthrow more 3d6HD zombies at them until you are satisfied\u201d things. Which I hate. Just do an encounter man. It\u2019s all written pretty lifelessly, with not much to riff on in the town and no little vignettes to enjoy. Just \u201cThey attack.\u201d Then the surviving townfolk ask you to go talk to the moonshiner so he knows his liquor is infected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You set off through the woods. You get attacked. Didn\u2019t see that coming. There\u2019s a table of four or five encounters that you roll on, once, to see what happens\/who attacks you. And make no mistake, they are all \u201cthey attack\u201d moments. The table makes no sense here. Why detail four or five encounters if only ONE is ever going to be used? Just put some effort in to ONE of the encounters. You got to understand this is not a wandering monster table. This is a set scene. And if you\u2019re gonna have a scene then have a scene. Fleshed out. In to something that it interesting, or evocative, or interactive. And not just some infected bobcats dropping on to you to attack, or some zombie villagers attacking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the shack you meet the moonshiner. He\u2019s evil, and controlling the shine zombies. You fight him and the zombies in a pretty uninteresting fight. At some point the still gets kicked over in to his skinning guts pit and they come to life as an organ zombie that you fight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You win the fight. You go back to the village. They celebrate, and continue their fair \u2026 unconcerned, I guess, that a bunch of locals have fucking died. Not too interesting or realistic, that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, everything is telegraphed..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, all of the fights are relatively simple affairs, with almost nothing to riff on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, there\u2019s no real bonding scenes with the community. Or help doing that. Or evocative writing..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, there are meaningless rolls of the dice..<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not down on scene-based adventures, man. I\u2019m down on BAD scene-based adventures. No, not even bad. But, just, ladventures that seem to lack effort. Like there\u2019s not really much goin in to them except a few random rolls to create it and then some scenes that just are not very memorable. Which is my definition of a bad con game\/one-shot. I was there. It took up time. But it wasn\u2019t good, but neither was it laughably bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. \ud83d\ude41<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/404355\/Country-MeatGrinder-Classics-Wasted?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Tim Snider Savage AfterWorld DCC Level 1 Well, I swan…this season\u2019s been a rough \u2018un, what with alluva crops gone sour with that corn blight what\u2019s been runnin\u2019 wild through the county. But enough of our miseries! I cain\u2019t … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/country.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161","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=8161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8162,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8161\/revisions\/8162"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}