{"id":8374,"date":"2023-01-09T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8374"},"modified":"2022-12-27T10:56:32","modified_gmt":"2022-12-27T15:56:32","slug":"the-beast-of-borgenwold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8374","title":{"rendered":"The Beast of Borgenwold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Harry Menear\nSelf Published\nOSE\nLevels 1-3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
STRANGENESS AND TERROR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!  Borgenwold is cursed, they say. Cursed by pride and greed to cower in fear of the past. A fell monstrosity from beyond the grave has risen to devour this town and all who dwell here.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 61 page exercise in pretension has a fourteen room dungeon. It shows some promise, in specificity, but lacks interactivity and the designer has their head so far up their Layout Ass that they ruin any hope of usability. It\u2019s as if it were a kickstarter for a one page dungeon with four rooms, and all the stretch goals added things \u2026 but not to the dungeon and not actually usable. Just shit like \u201cwhat color is the mayors hat back in town?\u201d tables.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some dude in town hires you to go to his moms tomb and bring back some priceless treasures for him. He\u2019ll pay you 500gp per treasure recovered. Why you\u2019re giving this shit to him, instead of just keeping it for yourself, is beyond me. He owes a loanshark and will be gone in a week anyway, if you don\u2019t give the loot to him, so might as well take it. Speaking of the loanshark \u2026 he\u2019s set up a big bad wolf \u2026 but has no stats. I assume that means he has 2HP and we stab him and take his shit. He\u2019s got no bodyguards mentioned, when the text goes out of its way to mention bodyguards for everyone else. I assume this means the adventure was not playtested but a variety of other groups. Oh, yeah, did I mention the hooks and timeline don\u2019t match up?
Weve not gotten a shipment for a couple of months now \u2026\u201d while the issues have been going on for a few weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, look, this is going to be a theme with this review. The adventure is pretty much crap. There is some high points with the specificity involved, which shows a good deal of promise, but just about everything surrounding that is shit. But, you don\u2019t really KNOW it’s crap just by taking a glance at it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And let’s talk about that. It looks niiiiicccccce! Ooo, look at that cover! Two page spreads! Nice art! And, hey, check out that fucking layout! Pretty artsy! Fuck me man, let\u2019s put that fucking thing on the coffee table, am I right? (A reproduction of the wenge table in the Japanese embassy.) Oh course, it\u2019s absolute shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same fucking problem we always have with this art house garbage. The morons get a hardon over their layout. Their fancy fonts. Their background images. How they mimic some cutout style and put the tables at odd angles. The tables that take up an entire page. OOooo, look, a faux gothic style of font! Text that runs at an angle! Fucking idiots. I\u2019m am so fucking done with their bullshit. If you don\u2019t want people to run it then just label the fucking thing as a coffee table book and be done with it. Bt, ohhhh, noooo, no one will buy it if you label it like that, right? They want a nice looking book. Who the fuck said it \u2026 the secret to success is to pay for art and layout and have a print fucking version. That\u2019s how you make bank. That\u2019s what the fucking idiots buy. But, also, you are abandoning the core feature. It\u2019s like buying a gorgeous new PC case \u2026 that\u2019s completely sealed. You\u2019re failing at the primary purpose. The fucking thing is a monstrosity to read. You can\u2019t fucking follow it. It\u2019s like almost every fucking choice was made to look pretty rather than to contribute to usability. And in this case I mean legibility. You\u2019re fucking brain hurts to look at this. You can\u2019t scan it quickly. The fucking main font, the use of the bold font, the off center text. The fucking gothic font. SHadow boxes and background images. It\u2019s a fucking nightmare. Oh, sure, looks pretty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, while I\u2019m on a I Can\u2019t Fucking Stand This roll, let\u2019s talk about the core of the adventure. A fourteen room dungeon. Everything else in this is essentially padding. And, hey, I don\u2019t mind a little local colour. I love it in fact. But the main adventure is the fucking dungeon. Fourteen rooms. Sixty pages. More on the shit-ass dungeon later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What do you get? How about a table to describe the local hunters? You see, there\u2019s some side shit (which is tangled up in the main quest.) The titular (heheh) beast is an undead manticore, taxidermied. There are some hunters about. You get a table to make up some hunters. EVen though they don\u2019t really play much of a part in the adventure. They are hardly mentioned. ALso, there is not one table but like four. On four separate pages. That you get to roll on to make one up. How\u2019s that for usability?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No? It\u2019s not? But, hey, one table per page lets you so some funky layout shit! I mean, fuck you and actually running the thing. Otherwise we\u2019d put all four tables on one page. Or, JUST DETAIL A FEW OF THEM IN THE FUCKIGN APPENDIX. People don\u2019t understand what random is for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s some other shit hanging around in this. Some crazy goblins described over seven pages. The sum total osf which is unpretentious is \u201cSmall, cramped passages \u2014 too small for anyone but children and halflings to move about. Goblin eyes shine like stars in the torchlight.\u201d That\u2019s your goblin lair description. But, hey, we did get to masturbate over all of those freaky deaky goblin tables that take up the rest of the pages, right? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a hex map. It serves no purpose and is not linked to the text. Therefore it\u2019s not a map. It\u2019s an art piece. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the dungeon? It\u2019s trying to use the OSE format but it fucks it up because because it dopesn\u2019t know what is important. The idea is a short little description with bolded words that expanded upon. But this thing is all over the place in what it thinks is important. Thus, you\u2019ll be readying the entire description to relate some bits to the party. This stands in direct opposition to what the OSE format is trying to do, when implemented correctly. Summary first. Or important things first. Or some way for the DM to figure out those things first. And, ultimately, the dungeon is just about stabbing shit. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. Almost no interactivity beyond this most basic of type. Enjoy your stabbing of 6HD creatures that are undead and immune to everything but fire and silver and magic. In your level one adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The fucking thing looks like an adventure that someone has sunk money in to, and thus will be good. But it\u2019s all flash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s got some decent specificity. Good even. The lady that runs the tavern does so \u201cwith her two knucklehead sons.\u201d Perfect! That communicates a lot! Of a magic hunting horn \u201cThe horn vibrates with raw magic; its makes your hand numb and your teeth hurt just holding it, like gripping a live wire.\u201d That\u2019s a magic magic item description! You know you\u2019ve got something! Some commentary on some magic \u2018godling\u2019 fish says \u201cIf you eat enough of a gods children, you are eventually deemed a worthy addition to the family.\u201d Absolutely! That\u2019s one way of becoming a god\/godling! It makes perfect sense and jives with all mythology ever. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, check out this terrific description \u201c[…] bodies of villagers, merchants, hunters, guards \u2014 brutally, gleefully rent by claw and tooth. Hoisted into the trees, impaled upon pine limbs; a grisly larder. The air is putrid, a wall of sweet death smashing against the nose. Rotten corpse fluids run rivulets down tree bark. Flies swarm and buzz in clouds.\u201d Fuck yeah man! Good description! So the specificity required to have a good description, to write a terse description that conveys overloaded meaning exponentially multiplied in a way that word count would not imply, os absolutely there. When the designer chooses to. In a dungeon room? No way. Hanging ut on its own somewhere, apart from the dungeon. Yup! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll the bestial heads mounted on the tomb’s walls animate, roaring, bleating, and wailing as one of the rooms’ animals come to life and another hunt begins.\u201d Absofuckinglutly! Now, but ina room fucking description that matches. Trim yor fucking text. Organize it so that the most important shit is up top, and actually give us some descriptions of the situation, or a way to ferret it out to relate it to the DM. And take a chill pill when it comes to the fucking layout. Jesus, man. Make it fucking legible. The main thing is the fucking dungeon. Agonize over the fucking thing. Beat yourself over the writing. Then, you can pad out the region and town and npc\u2019s and shit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
(And, note, I\u2019m not EVEN bitching about the disconnect between the hook, town, manticore, and adventure. I don\u2019t fucking care. This is a bridge too far for 99.99% of designers, so I\u2019m not going to beat someone up over it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cottage industry continues. Layout dudes doing layout adventure bought by other layout dudes. But, he is not a ninja.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. The first six pages. So, one actual page of adventure timeline. IE: worthless for making a purchasing decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/410351\/The-Beast-of-Borgenwold?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Harry Menear Self Published OSE Levels 1-3 STRANGENESS AND TERROR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE!  Borgenwold is cursed, they say. Cursed by pride and greed to cower in fear of the past. A fell monstrosity from beyond the grave has … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8370,"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-8374","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\/12\/410351.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374","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=8374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8375,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8374\/revisions\/8375"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}