{"id":8254,"date":"2022-10-26T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8254"},"modified":"2022-10-26T09:04:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-26T13:04:52","slug":"ascent-of-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8254","title":{"rendered":"Ascent of the Leviathan"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Malrex\nThe Merciless Merchants\nOSE\nLevels 2-4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The ship has been breached by a monstrous jellyfish! Will you be able to delve within and find a solution on how to free your ship?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 42 page adventure uses about 25 pages to describe about forty chambers inside of a giant jellyfish. It does a good job of presenting an alint-like undersea environment while still being approachable and not too abstracted. A good variety of encounters, and a meta-situation helps to drive the adventure and provide a more open-ended framework for an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I must admit, that whenever the marketing blurb ends with a question I am compelled to answer, silently to myself \u201cWell, probably No.\u201d But, anyway, you\u2019re out at sea when you see two pirate ships coming at you! Famous Dread Pirates! The ship you have passage on starts to flee, but they are gaining! Just as they are about to catch up \u2026 a GIANT dead jellyfish rises to the surface, trapping all three ships in it! The pirates compel you to find a way to sink the jellyfish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And thus we come to our first interesting things. There\u2019s a meta-situation with exploring the dungeon: the pirates. Can you trust them? They send in some pirates after you, real assholes, just to make sure you doing your jobs. And, once you sink the jellyfish, what\u2019s to stop the pirates from finishing the job they started? Thus the dungeon is not just a dungeon but has a situation wrapped around it, always on your mind, as you explore and interact. The addition of the asshole pirates showing up after you go in is a nice touch, as is, if you bargain hard enough up front, the pirates sending in to dudes to be WITH your party. LOYAL dudes, to you. Some real nice roleplay opportunities there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, before any of this happens, we get, right after the jellyfish surfaces, some halfhearted missile attacks between the ships before the captains all stop it. A nice bit of realism there. That\u2019s augmented by one of the best rumor tables I\u2019ve seen. As everyone is milling around, the sailors are all talking, etc. And thus, your rumor table, specific to the situation at hand! Very naturalistic, it fits in well. Excellent job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s the map \u2026 There\u2019s a side view which is quite evocative. Shows major features and so on. Really gives you a sense of the thing. And then there\u2019s a couple of traditional maps, just white space caverns and hallways. There\u2019s also a \u201csurface\u201d map, showing the three entries to the jellyfish. I found the sideview hard to navigate, hard to tell which room connected to what, especially on the two levels. And the surface maps three entrances, some of which were steeper than others? Forget about it. I have no idea what connects to what. That could have been much better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once inside you\u2019re wearing jellyfish masks to breathe underwater. (Of course, it\u2019s a low level adventure and you\u2019re always given shit in D&D adventures to breathe underwater. Nice use of the jellyfish though!) It feels like some of the jellyfish is underwater and so if it is not, but that\u2019s not always clear. Or, maybe you\u2019re always swimming and the rooms noted as having some headspace are not fully full? I don\u2019t know. There is a good summary of underwater rules and some good monster placement \u2026 the use of skeletons, in particular. On piercing and thrusting work well underwater, but that\u2019s what a skeleton is strongest against, eh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s some great variety ot the interactivity here. Lots of interesting encounters and effects. Some people and things to talk to and a situation or two to manage. Always looking for the edge against the pirates will result in some benefits. The alien environment of the undersea is managed well, very well, i\u2019d say. Alien, but not unapproachable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I must mention a cursed scroll found. Actually, a treasure map! \u201cScroll looks like a treasure map, but it’s gibberish. Character spends his\/her life searching for the treasure and can\u2019t stop talking about it.\u201d That\u2019s how you fucking integrate! It\u2019s not a scroll, it\u2019s a map! And it does what treasure maps do! Perfect alignment there of form and function! Once of the best I\u2019ve seen. And, again,, in another place, you meet a skeleton tied to an achor, sunk under the sea. With an effect of intense fear of drowning emitted by the long-dead victim. It\u2019s not just some random effect. It fits perfectly with whats going on. It\u2019s like someone though up the scene and THEN added mechanics to it \u2026 which I firmly believe is how the best adventure elements come to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s some things here that don\u2019t work so well. The major NPC\u2019s have some italics text associated with them, a paragraph or so, describing them generally. That really doesn\u2019t mean much and the description, whats described, is to little effect. And another conversation table, with an intelligent jellyfish, is full of NON naturalistic shit. It came from the elemental plane of water. You can heal me by getting some  [latin name] kelp from upstairs. A little too businesslike compared to the more natural elements elsewhere in the adventure. And, a few rooms where you take 1d4 damage every turn from stomach acid \u2026 that\u2019s a rough one, especially for this level. A little mitigation there, perhaps? I don\u2019t know, maybe it works in play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, a good effort here by the Malrex. Still could use some polish, especially in the descriptions. They are not bad, by many means, but don\u2019t reach the steller heights I am always looking for. Worth checking out as an undersea adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is 24 pages. More than enough to figure out if you want it or not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/383740\/Ascent-of-the-Leviathan-OSE?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Malrex The Merciless Merchants OSE Levels 2-4 The ship has been breached by a monstrous jellyfish! Will you be able to delve within and find a solution on how to free your ship? This 42 page adventure uses about … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,9,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-level-3","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/lev.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254","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=8254"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8283,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8254\/revisions\/8283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}