{"id":8346,"date":"2022-12-21T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2022-12-21T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8346"},"modified":"2022-12-11T16:45:25","modified_gmt":"2022-12-11T21:45:25","slug":"the-oneiric-hinterlands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8346","title":{"rendered":"The Oneiric Hinterlands"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Stephen Jones\nUnsound Methods\nOSE\nLevels 1-7<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
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Deep in a hollow hill in the ancient Woldwood lies the Dream Gate: a beachhead for a war against reality that never came to pass. Its custodian, Lord Nuada, has disappeared, and now the oneiric energies have begun to warp the very fabric of the world. Nuada’s subjects – the sapient animals called the Danu – are too distracted to care. Following his disappearance, a civil war ended in a magical catastrophe, and the ascension of cruel predator overlords.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Meanwhile, the ‘Goblin King’, deposed by Nuada, has returned from Underland. Sending his fungal minions into Nuada’s abandoned hill palace, he seeks to retake his throne. Nearby the dwindling human colonies are still dealing with the aftermath of their war with the giants two decades earlier. Rumors circulate that the leader of the giants may have returned from death, and now treasure hunters arrive to disturb things best left buried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 144 page adventure features two dungeons and a wilderness area, all interconnect with plot hooks. It\u2019s a real deal adventure. Lots of interactivity and a decent format compliment an adequate job at evocative writing to produce an environment that can occupy a decent amount of your campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The general set up here is a vaguely points of light type environment. A war with giants awhile ago left many of the surrounding kingdoms destroyed. This we get a wilderness, and a starter town. The wilderness has a about twenty locations to wander around in. But, those encounters generally have a common theme \u2026 linking them to the larger situation going on. A woodlands fey ruler is missing, there\u2019s a new one in town \u201cthe goblin king\u201d (ala Bowie) And the local baddie, killed awhile ago, may be back! Andthen there\u2019s some intelligent animals running around the first, split in to the SOme Are More Equal Than Others group, in charge, and a small rebellion, and the bulk who are just trying to get by. We can supplement that with \u2026 idk, like, twelve other groups running the forest, including escaped prisoners and the people hunting them, and A LOT of others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wilderness environment is almost large enough to support itself as its own campaign. I\u2019ve seen a lot of shit that don\u2019t come close to it in with regard to size and degree of interactivity. So, what we\u2019ve got is a relatively complex (but easy to follow!) social environment with plenty to stab and steal and talk to. But that\u2019s not all, by a long shot. Because the wilderness here is just the larger context in which the \u201cmain\u201d adventure takes place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And that\u2019s two dungeons, of 34 rooms and 118 rooms. These are related to each other, and related to the things going on in the wilderness and the overall \u201cplot\u201d, if we can call it that. FOr there is a timeline here. Shits going down motherfuckers, with or without you! We\u2019ve got about thirteen weeks worth of activities that can happen while the party is out fucking about. People are on the move and they got places to go and shit to sack!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Formatting is good. NPC\u2019s are terse and use bullets and such to make finding their personality traits easy. The details are gameable. ROom entries start with a (useless) one line summary and then move to \u201cFirst impressions\u201d \u2026 a few short sentences, two or three, that giev an overview of the room for the DM use. A few words in that description are bolded, and then those act as section headings lower to add more detail. It\u2019s easy to scan and find what you need. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interactivity is great. Chasms, rooms with knee deep water, secret doors behind giant heads. Traps, generally telegraphed, and creatures that make sens in the environments they are in. And, this isn\u2019t just mindless crawling, after all, there are a plot point or two to figure out and resolve \u2026 if the party is interested in doing that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ideas, for the encounters, here are pretty good. A ghost of a dead giant in a cell, sulking, in despair over his (dead) brother. He wasn\u2019t really in to the whole \u201ctake over the world\u201d thing and just came to be with his brother. Or, a place in the woods where the locals dump their unwanted babies. Ouch! All pretty well done. A beginning encounter, near town, is \u201cThe zombie (9 HP) is the returned form of Old Jeb who died last winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
f left alone he will go inside his old home, and shut the door. The terrified townsfolk will call for the Reeve, Ulric Frost. After brief consultations with the townsfolk, Ulric will wedge the cabin door shut and set fire to it with the zombie inside. The charred remains will be collected the following morning and buried outside the town boundaries (after suitable blessings from Father Benedict).\u201d  That\u2019s pretty well done, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Things fall down a bit with the actual writing of the descriptions. They are not bad, at all. But, also, they are not home runs.\u201dA spectral male giant in tattered robes with greasy looking shoulder-length hair is muttering and swaying. Swaying, greasy, tattered, \u2026 ok, sure. Not great but ok. \u201cSpectral male giant\u201d is a bit bland though, yes? I spean, yes, \u201cspectral\u201d, which is better than most would do \u2026 but we\u2019re not looking at most are we?. \u201cAt the bottom of the pit: a horizontal tunnel, knee-deep in muddy water, leads into darkness.\u201d Not bad! That conjures up a pretty \u201coh shit! Attitude for people, I bet!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, a real deal adventure for sustained play. A lot of running around, multiple dives in to the dungeon(s), and some maneuvering back and forth of the political situation \u2026 without judgment from the designer on which side, if any, to take. This isn\u2019t rock star quality, but, also, it\u2019s a pretty solid entry in the adventure market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $13 at DriveThru. The preview is twenty pages and shows you a decent number of rooms, so, pretty good preview from the standpoint of letting you see what the writing and encounters are like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/418017\/The-Oneiric-Hinterlands?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Stephen Jones Unsound Methods OSE Levels 1-7 Deep in a hollow hill in the ancient Woldwood lies the Dream Gate: a beachhead for a war against reality that never came to pass. Its custodian, Lord Nuada, has disappeared, and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8336,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/oneiric.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346","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=8346"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8347,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8346\/revisions\/8347"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}