{"id":8553,"date":"2023-05-03T07:32:53","date_gmt":"2023-05-03T11:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8553"},"modified":"2023-04-19T07:34:31","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T11:34:31","slug":"harrowings-03-muspelhell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8553","title":{"rendered":"Harrowings #03 – Muspelhell"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Aaron Cordiale, Jodie Brandt, Derek Bizier, Alex T., Ian Rollins, Kevin Miner, Benjamin Croft, Drew Cochran\nAGNVS DEI STUDIOS\nOSE\nLevel 5?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The ancient cairns of the old kingdoms have beeninfested with malign powers – demons, trolls, creatures of fire. Onar the Spelunker has returned with dark news\u2026 \u201cA door, wide and burning, has been opened to Muspelheim. I saw faces within it, terrible faces speaking of.. Invasion. The Sons of Surtr quake beneath our humble homes – they mean to sack our realm, and set up camp here – to strike Midgard without notice!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 115 page digest uses about 77 pages to describe a three level dungeon with about 46 rooms. If you want to do a hipster dwarf-based LOTR-type quest\/play DCC then this is for you. If you want to play D&D then maybe look elsewhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is a nigh infinite variety of RPG available to folks today. You can play any type of game you want. The problem is knowing what you want and finding it. (Actually, it\u2019s probably finding a few other people available at the same date\/time every week, but that\u2019s the META.) I play mudcore. You play gonzo. If we all call ourselves an OSE adventure then how to find what we each want? I don\u2019t know \u2026 the marketing? But, it always lies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If DCC isn\u2019t metal enough for you then welcome to Muspelhell. It goes out of its way to be metal, without being edgy. Which is something, I guess. You\u2019re a heavily dwarf-based party escorting a giant iron door on the back of an eight legged mule. You\u2019re taking it down to the depths of a dwarf city to close off a passage to EvilLandia. So, like, epic quest shit. I know, it doesn\u2019t really sound like that. But if you keep a kind of Epic Quest mindset when looking at this then it makes a lot more sense. Cause as a dungeon it sucks eight-legged donkey balls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the first rooms is the Tomb of Eternal Remembrance. It\u2019s got some dwarf heroes lying in state. The core description tells us \u201cThe party passes through a long colonnade (row of columns) into a vast cavern lit by glimmering torches. The honor guards therein are clad in black armor, so that at a distance, the torches seem to float by themselves.\u201d So, not the best description ever, but, I think I get it. You\u2019ve got some people visiting paying respects, putting stones on graves. This is a two page room, and there\u2019s not much more to it. As you pass through a guard coming off duty offers to sell you an ancient artifact. And, now, there ISN\u2019T anything else at all. Loot the graves? No guidance. Guards? No guidance. Regular folk? No guidance. How about that artifact? NO GUIDANCE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, thusly, with each room. What you are getting is the idea for a room. In spite of the entries averaging two pages each, you\u2019re not going to get anything to bring the room to life. You\u2019ve got some concepts floating around without the specifics needed to bring them to life. And I don\u2019t mean room contents. You\u2019ve got none of the text required to help inspire the DM to run the room and nothing of the specifics to help support the DM. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What you have is conceptual room after conceptual encounter. You\u2019re going to wander around down in here like you\u2019re Odysseus. \u201cSome sirens sign to people\u201d or \u201cYou meet a cyclops\u201d But, stretch it out to two pages for no reason. I mean, obviously, the designers tried to do more, hence the two pages, but their supporting information sucks ass and is useless. This is just normal hipster zine content. If it were rewritten as \u201cMaybe the party has an encounter with an ff duty dwarven guard selling an artifact\u201d then it would be more recognizable as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I note that, in issue two of the zine (this is issue three), the following was used as a marketing line \u201cHarrowings: The Exalted Hours hopes to explore the liminal space of Twilight and see what passages open before us between the light and dark.\u201d Uh huh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Conceptually, I think this thing works. If you can imagine a DCC convention game in which the DM waves their hands around in the air a lot and rolls dice and shouts and shit happens. That\u2019s what this is. Maybe you enter a room full of mushroom gardens and here the effects of four of them. Run that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s your reaction to that? \u201cMaybe you enter a room full of mushroom gardens and here the effects of four of them.\u201d If that\u2019s all you have to run a room. And you\u2019re a band of, I don\u2019t know, twelve dwarves with an eight legged mule carrying a giant metal door on its back. I don\u2019t see how there\u2019s anything more than that in this adventure. The number of times the adventure says \u201cOr, you can annihilate the party\u201d, leaves no other interpretation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I understand that people play d&d differently. Folks are looking for different things. I have a very hard time understanding that anyone is going to run this, complete it, and be happy with it. Two pages of text, per room, to dig through to run the room. It\u2019s not formatted in a way to scan it. It\u2019s too long to be that conceptual DCC thing and too non-specific to be a traditional supplement. It is, I think, in the end just another failed vision of what fun is. I wish more people would succeed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $10. Three stars on DriveThru. Who\u2019s mead did the designers shit in to earn that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/417840\/Harrowings-3-Muspelhell?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Aaron Cordiale, Jodie Brandt, Derek Bizier, Alex T., Ian Rollins, Kevin Miner, Benjamin Croft, Drew Cochran AGNVS DEI STUDIOS OSE Level 5? The ancient cairns of the old kingdoms have beeninfested with malign powers – demons, trolls, creatures of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8549,"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-8553","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\/04\/mus.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553","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=8553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8554,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8553\/revisions\/8554"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}