{"id":8578,"date":"2023-05-20T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-20T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8578"},"modified":"2023-05-08T09:50:28","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T13:50:28","slug":"a-green-and-dead-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8578","title":{"rendered":"A Green and Dead Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By John Battle\nSelf Published\nOSR\nLevel ? Fuck you for wanting a level, plebiscite!<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The curse left behind by the shells of gods has turned the canopy of this forest into a fungal carpet. It\u2019s tangled so thick that it can be skiffed across like a green and dead sea, on wood and steel barges, frigates, and scooters. Bismark\u2019s Guild of Hooligans has spare cash to throw to adventurers who climb down below the canopy and pilfer the pre-war tech that\u2019s probably still down there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirteen page hexcrawl in a post-apoc\/fantasy\/bio\/retro setting is the usual for this style: more ideas than adventure and a lack of understanding of what \u201cSituations\u201d means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How disappointing. I reviewed a decent adventure by this designer a few weeks ago. It was artpunky, but, was substantially longer and with more substance. A rarity among the artpunk crowd. So I sought out another one. That was a mistake. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, hex crawl. Three hexes \u201con top of the trees\u201d and five underneath it that have encounters. A small rando table for each that has Other Things that happen while traveling. Bismarck has an airship, there are biotech giant mech wreckage (\u201cthe gods\u201d, I think?) and so on. Kind of an interesting setting; maybe a little anime for my tastes with the appeal to Bismark and airships, but, sure, I could do this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The descriptions suck. \u201cA sac of lifeforce wrapped in now-sentient fungus which fights to protect itself.\u201d Great. I am inspired. Can we pulsate? Can it be ghostly lifeforce? A translucent purple sac? A fungus full of fave with only mouths? I don\u2019t know. SOMETHING?  Everything is like this. This is the core conceit of these types of adventures. Just toss out an idea of something and put all of the work on the DM. This fucking shit does this enough that I hesitate to even call them adventures. \u201c99 adventure ideas within a fungus forest\u201d might be a better idea. Except there are far fewer than 99 ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Stats are few and far between. That lifeforce fungus shit gets some. 5HD. But thats the heart of the adventure. The Big Bad. Most things don\u2019t get stats. And most treasure is not detailed. You do get a treasure table at the end, ala the Gamma World junk tables. \u201cA broken AI chip.\u201d Wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As with most of these, it\u2019s just ideas. It doesn\u2019t understand the difference between an idea and a situation. \u201cA still living war machine is impaled on a fungal thorn tree, made of red, bleeding fungus and 6ft spikes. Its battery can charge two disintegration rays.\u201d Great. \u201cSpiced Pear Pirates are arming a car-sized bomb to blow a hole in the canopy.\u201d Wonderful. These are, I admit, wanderers, but, the hex locations have much the same energy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You need to do a mission for someone, in one of the hexes. You need a pre-war cape, the blood of a god, a vial of time and the \u201cfinal\u2019 mushroom. I get that a large part of D&D is improv. A large part is people making shit up. But, too much reliance on this and you fall in to story game territory. That\u2019s not OSR D&D. Let\u2019s look at this comment, in the description for the sinkhole that leads you from the upper canopy to the ground beneath things \u201cI don\u2019t know how they could get down this, so just ask them how they\u2019d like to avoid being crushed by the sands and what they plan to do about the fall. They\u2019ll think of something.\u201d Or this commentary for a treasure item \u201cThe sand is crystalized Time and can be used for many interesting purposes (I\u2019m sure).\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I get shit sometimes for wanting things a little more loosy goosy and less mechanistic, but this is just insanity. This is just the typical artpunk collection of ideas. This is a story game. Perhaps, I guess, this is what happens when the OSR won. The story gamers, the people who hate the D&D mechanics, are still around. They just call themselves D&D players and continue to play, and produce, story games. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Quite the disappointment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, to out ArtPunk friends \u2026 be happy that you have an identity. From high fantasy railroads in 2e to 1e stick-in-the-ass, to the sublime perfection of B\/X and the New SHovelWare of The Hotness, at least you got a brand also. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no preview. Of course. No doubt there are Communty Copies on itch or something like that. I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t really give a fuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/321686\/A-Green-and-Dead-Sea?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Battle Self Published OSR Level ? Fuck you for wanting a level, plebiscite! The curse left behind by the shells of gods has turned the canopy of this forest into a fungal carpet. It\u2019s tangled so thick that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8577,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[35,29,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artpunk-shovelware","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/05\/greendead.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578","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=8578"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8579,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8578\/revisions\/8579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}