{"id":8309,"date":"2022-11-26T07:22:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-26T12:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8309"},"modified":"2022-11-14T08:23:27","modified_gmt":"2022-11-14T13:23:27","slug":"the-sand-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8309","title":{"rendered":"The Sand Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Christian Blair\nSelf Published\nGeneric\/Universal\nLow levels<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The adventure is themed around exploring an ancient temple in the middle of the desert, hiding dark powers and amazing treasure beneath the sand. Danger awaits around the corner, and the players must be wary of the wandering shadows lurking beneath their feet. While their mission may seem simple, and their reward great, the possibilities of certain death are always following close by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This nine page adventure has nine rooms. Non specific, abstracted text. Boring. Generic\/Universal is a warning sign: Stay Far Away. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Man, I don\u2019t know what it is. Every time I see a Generic\/Universal adventure I know it\u2019s not going to be any good. They are all written the same way, as if being being specific about something will somehow make it specific to a system and therefore not Generic\/universal anymore. Heavens to murgatroyd! Not that!There\u2019s this abstracted way of writing that prevails in these. It seems universal. Get it?! Get it?! Universal?! What did you expect when you asked me to review this? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You approach THE SAND TEMPLE. After ten minutes you have an encounter and then explore the rest of the temple and actually start it. Your encounter is determined by rolling a d4. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We don\u2019t do this. This is not a random encounter. This is not a table that you could pick multiple items from at some point in the future, like a wandering monster table. This is not the purpose of a random table. There will ever only be one encounter in that temple. So why the fuck have you put in a random table? Just fucking stat out an encounter. \u201cA small room crumbles, revealing useful items.\u201d This is what I\u2019ve come to expect from Generic\/Universal. \u201cUseful items\u201d What if, instead, you had just, as the designer, rolled on that table and instead spent a paragraph describing what happens? You know, actually creating an interesting encounter? Wouldn\u2019t that have been better? FAR better?  The use of randomness in an adventure, when it\u2019s not called for, remains a pet peeve of mine. It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what randomness is used for, and, a lack of understanding of what IS important \u2026 the fucking encounter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, we\u2019re in a temple. There\u2019s absolutely no description. All we get is \u201csunken a quarter of its size into the sand.\u201d That\u2019s in \u2026 a couple of paragraphs of text? We get generic background text on everything, and I do mean generic, but no temple description. Ok, sure, how about you wing it? Except for this \u201cthe entrance is found beneath an old carpet in the center of the temple.\u201d Uh. Ok. So, I guess there\u2019s furniture and stuff in this abandoned temple a quarter buried in the sand? It\u2019s fucking weird. Toss the carpet in the corner, torn and fucked up. Or half buried outside. Or it\u2019s what you buy from some dude in town or something. It just doesn\u2019t fit, the juxtaposition of ruined and \u201ceverything here is normal!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, like, a column of text later we\u2019re past the entrance puzzle and canget to the nine room dungeon, proper. But first we have some generic dungeon description. Like \u201cNow, turned into a tomb<\/p>\n\n\n\n
for eternity, this dungeon houses the memories of forgotten times, under the unbreakable will of forbidden magic.\u201d That text is fucking useless. It does nothing. And, yet, text like that ABOUNDS in this adventure. In fact, that\u2019s what makes up at least 50% of the adventure text. And, frankly, I think I\u2019m lowballing things. It feels like 80 to 90% of the text is that kind of aggressively generic overview description shit. I\u2019m not even sure you can call it an overview description. Abstracted background? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s get on to the rooms!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis corridor leads to the only exit of the dungeon. There’s no light at all here,\u201d Yes, the fucking map shows that. And, yes, we all expect there to be no light in the fucking dungeon. Useless description. Useless padding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis is the only known exit out of the dungeon, other than the entrance. The exit is actually blocked by a massive pile of sand, which can only be removed in the presence of the Sun Engine. When the relic is nearby, the sand automatically makes way for the players to exit. This dark cave is inhabited by various Giant Scorpions (2-4). These are strong and deadly creatures. They can’t resist much damage but their natural armor means they can tank most hits. While they don’t deal a lot of damage on their own, their sting has a deadly poison that can kill easily.\u201d So, again with the random number of monsters. Just stick a fucking number in, man. The only known exit. Great. Again,m useless overview\/padding. It\u2019s actually blocked by sand. Perfect. More padding. How about \u201cBlocked by sand that parts automatically in the presence of the Sun Engine.\u201d That\u2019s fucking boring, but, also, I did it in FAR fewer words. And then the fucking monsters. We don\u2019t say that the cave is inhabited by the monsters. We know that already. That\u2019s why the monsters are there. And then this garbage description of them.. Just say Giant Scorpions and move on. Tell us about the cave. Give us something interesting about it. Or the scorpions. Or how they attack. Or how one of them looks like Nobboc. (That\u2019s your reward for writing multiple examples of how room text could be laid out \ud83d\ude42 Just do SOMETHING to rock me like a hurricane. Just something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, alas, no, that is not to be. Aggressively generic text. I repeat again, for those in the back: specificity is the soul of the narrative. You don\u2019t have to do this with everything, but you need SOMETHING to hang your hat on. To spark the imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What you Want at DriveThru, with a suggested price of $3. The preview is three pages and shows you absolutely nothing of the adventure. Leroy Brown preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/397993\/EQ4-The-Sand-Temple?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Christian Blair Self Published Generic\/Universal Low levels The adventure is themed around exploring an ancient temple in the middle of the desert, hiding dark powers and amazing treasure beneath the sand. Danger awaits around the corner, and the players … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8307,"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-8309","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\/11\/sand.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309","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=8309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8310,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8309\/revisions\/8310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}