{"id":8524,"date":"2023-04-15T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-15T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8524"},"modified":"2023-04-03T10:59:23","modified_gmt":"2023-04-03T14:59:23","slug":"orbital-vampire-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8524","title":{"rendered":"Orbital Vampire City"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Joseph R. Lewis\nDungeon Age Adventures\nOSE\nLevels 5-10<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Far out in the void, an ancient city of vampires endures. Welcome to Araveshti, a city of a thousand towers floating safely in the shadow of the world, glittering with starlight, thrumming with ancient magics, and crawling with vicious immortals. Will you seek to destroy these bloodthirsty aristocrats? Or will you help them pursue their bizarre alchemical experiments in immortality? Or will you simply seek a way to escape their twisted and crumbling paradise?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 77 page adventure describes about fourty one locations in a city full of vampires. Nominally, in space. Great adventure, with locations full of interesting situations, and the Dungeon Age format gets the job done. The city, proper, the spaces between locations, lacks the context, though, to bring things alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a Dungeon Age pointcrawl! Well no. Except, yes. What was that other one, the one on the battlefield right after the eye of suaron exploded in the middle in the tower? That thing was like a pointcrawl also. You travel along from pace to place, in a bit of an abstracted \u201croll for an encounter as you travel between locations\u201d kind of mechanic. Get to the new place and do your thing\/encounter your situation. This adventure reminds me of that former one in many ways. Which is both a good thing and a bad thing. I hate recognizing patterns, but, also, it kind of works. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And what makes it work is the focus on situations. This is one of the great strengths of the Dungeon Age. That and the descriptions. And the format. Oh, wait, I just said that interactivity, evocative writing and format were all great strengths of Dungeon Age. You know, my three primary criteria? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, situations. We\u2019ve got several factions. Vampire Lords. Vampire Thralls. Vampire heratics working against the vampire Lords \u2026 but are still vampires. Alien vampires. Aliens. And a group of human vampire hunter zealots that, from my limited knowledge of it, come right out Warhammer. So, lots of people running around with a lot of needs\/wants\/goals and we dump in the party \u2026 with the ability to talk to most of the folks. Sometimes, at least. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, lots to do beyond that. Shit to play with, new unique magic items, good branding of \u201cnormal\u2019 magic items and treasure scattered throughout. Healing ichor pools \u2026 there\u2019s just a lot of shit to fuck with. Some of it good, som,e of it bad, and a decent amount that party could use as a resource to accomplish something else \u2026 neither good nor bad, I guess. Dungeon age does this over and over and over again. It\u2019s what a hex crawl should be \u2026 and since this is, as a pointcrawl, essentially a hex crawl \u2026 right on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Format is the standard Dungeon Age three column. Good sized font, clear and easy to read. Use of bolding and underlines and boxes and so on to bring attention to areas the DM needs to reference quickly. What\u2019s important, here, is that Lewis is not a slave to his format. He uses how he needs to to being clarity. You don\u2019t bring clarity by blindly marking down the bullet point path. You do what you need to to bring clarity and the bullets, formatting, whatever \u2026 they are all just tools to help you accomplish that. He\u2019s a master of his own format, to be sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the descriptions are pretty good. Each section, location, has a little descriptive overview. Essentialyu read-aloud. \u201cBeyond a low iron fence and a dead grassy lawn stands a circular domed building of white marble. A steady trickle of blood oozes under the door and into the swampy yard. Cat-sized mosquitoes suck greedily at the red puddles. A cruel chuckle echoes from within the rotunda.\u201d Pretty good description! You can get a good solid mental image of whats going on. \u2026 and yet your mind races to fill in the gaps. You WANT to explore this location \u2026 or not explore it. But, it makes you feel something about the location, one way r another. Which is what a good description should do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think, though, there is an issue with this one. And it\u2019s the context in which the adventure is run. Our name is \u201cOrbital Vampire City.\u201d But, there\u2019s not really much about the city. Sure, we\u2019ve got forty-ish locations. And there\u2019s a random location generator and a wanderer table. But, we lack the \u201corbital\u201d and we we lack the \u201ccity\u201d context. There\u2019s no real description of the city. Or the orbital aspect. It might as well be in the desert, essentially. And there\u2019s no real description of the city. What do you see when you arrive? When are on the streets whats the vibe? Whats the feeling? It needed another, maybe, two paragraphs to bring this to life. I really, really wish it were there. You need to BREATHE ruined orbital vampire city. Right now, the sites feel disconnected from each other \u2026 in the way that a pointcrawl or hexcrawl frequently does. You need to feel it in your bones \u2026 and that ain\u2019t there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, quite a nice little thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. Preview is twenty pages \u2026 more than enough to get a sense of the product, the format, the descriptions, and the situations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/421036\/Orbital-Vampire-City?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Joseph R. Lewis Dungeon Age Adventures OSE Levels 5-10 Far out in the void, an ancient city of vampires endures. Welcome to Araveshti, a city of a thousand towers floating safely in the shadow of the world, glittering with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8523,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/city.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8524","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=8524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8525,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8524\/revisions\/8525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}