{"id":8504,"date":"2023-04-01T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-01T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8504"},"modified":"2023-03-20T13:34:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-20T17:34:42","slug":"mirenas-tower","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8504","title":{"rendered":"Mirena’s Tower"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Rodney Nedlose\nSelf Published\nShadowdark\nLevel 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Village of Wealton is a peaceful hamlet in the northernmost reaches of the Green Valley.  It enjoys natural terrain to isolate them with a swamp to the north, mountains to the east, and an enchanted dark forest to the west. Now strange things have been happening in town, and the farmers and peaceful folk need help!  Some think it\u2019s the doing of the local witch-woman, who lives in the swamp.  But is there more to this picture than immediately meets the eye?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 21 page digest describes a fifteen room tower with about four levels. There\u2019s basically nothing going on here. At least nothing that couldn\u2019t be done in a single page. A single digest page. It\u2019s just a padded out almost-empty tower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As of this writing, Kelsey\u2019s kickstarter is closing in on $1mil. So, a) Congratulations! And b) I\u2019m so jealous! To mollify my feelings I\u2019m reviewing some third party stuff for Shadowdark. It don\u2019t matter how good your game is, someone with more enthusiasm than talent will show up to publish something for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, small idyllic village. Been that way for a long time, even though Evil Undead Kingdom is to the north, separated by a menacing swamp, where the Swamp Witch lives. Some evil shit goes on in the village. Youget sent to the swamp witch. You find her tower. It\u2019s made of obsidian and its been damaged. Inside you fight a couple of shadow-things on some stairs, before fighting a couple more in front of a locked door where the witch is holed up. Also, there\u2019s a wight on the roof. Witch needs her tower repaired to recharge the spell that keeps evil away from everyone. Thus the end of the adventure is the hook for the next part. That\u2019s it. You can now run the adventure.
But, Bryce, there are a lot more pages here?! And rooms! You said fifteen rooms! Yeah, man, but, there not adding anything. The rooms take five pages and are full of exciting descriptions like \u201cHallway from east to west. Foul smell fills the enclosed space\u201d and \u201cThe door from the lavatory opes into a hallway\u201d \u201cThere is a broken door to the east and a closed door to th west, which is locked\u201d Ok, yeah, so there\u2019s more. But, this, the boring mundanity of life, is AT LEAST 50% of the adventure text. Text explains the mundane. Text repeats. The \u201creally\u201d clean lavatory smells of lilacs and elderberries. Nothing more. We\u2019re told where doors exit to. The witch is withered, 85#, and impossibly old \u2026 we\u2019re told several times. Padded out. No real interactivity at all. Just stab a couple of things and break down a door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is, I think, a good monster description in the monster stat appendix. For the Hexling: \u201cA whispering, writing shadow that coils and snaps like a whip.\u201d Not bad! The others, though, tell us things like \u201cShades created by the ritual Mirena performed to ward the southern lands against the Bonecrusher\u2019s hordes.\u201d Great. A backstory but no description to use when the party encounters them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Just use the four sentence description I provided if you need to. There\u2019s nothing else here. All if bleak. Not dark. That would be scary. Just bleak. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. Ain\u2019t no preview. That sucks balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/429890\/Mirenas-Tower?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Rodney Nedlose Self Published Shadowdark Level 1 The Village of Wealton is a peaceful hamlet in the northernmost reaches of the Green Valley.  It enjoys natural terrain to isolate them with a swamp to the north, mountains to the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8503,"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-8504","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\/2023\/03\/mirena.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8504","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=8504"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8504\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8505,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8504\/revisions\/8505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8504"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8504"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8504"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}