{"id":8588,"date":"2023-05-27T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-05-27T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8588"},"modified":"2023-05-15T09:30:59","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T13:30:59","slug":"milk-and-blood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8588","title":{"rendered":"Milk and Blood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By John Cunningham\nSBM Press\nOSR & Dark Albion\nLevels 1-2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 in the village of Bacton in Herefordshire in 15th Century England, but can easily translate into any fanasy setting. The PCs are called upon to investigate the disappearance of a child amidst a rising tide of pranks and odd goings-on that has caused the local priest to beg for help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This eleven page adventure details a small \u201cinvestigation\u201d in a village with an imp in it. Oops, gave it away. Now you wont be able to enjoy this outline of an idea for an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Well to do chick wants to marry a petty aristo kid. But her parents die, so shes sent to the country to live with granpappy orchard man, who is a bit of an ignorant lout. And now shes too low to marry the aristo, so, to improve the orchard she gets the local wisewoman to tell her how to summon brownie, and is wanted against mixing in blood to the milk becauseit will summon too powerful an entity. She wants a great orchard, so she adds some blood and get, unknown to her, an imp. Who is doing shit around the village. And eventually convinces her to get it a baby for its more powerful blood. Oops. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The editing here is not great. The opening paragraph is immediately duplicated as the second paragraph. The imp is noted as a Imp of Desire. And then an Imp of Conceit. These are, of course, minor issues, and only stand out as witness to the more serious affair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s an outline. You get a VERY basic list of major NPC\u2019s. With descriptions that focus on background rather than the bits you need to run them. Griff and acerbic. Clever and oddly charismatic. I\u2019m a fan of these sorts of quick hit descriptions for an NPC, but these don\u2019t cut it. They are too abstracted and need supported by more, and I don\u2019t mean their character history.
And then, as the main part of the adventure, you get a list, in bullet form, that takes up about two pages. This is, essentially, a list of 24 things that the party can learn as they investigate the village and ask about after the missing child. It is, essentially, a rumor list. Mixed in to it, though, are a few things to learn is you talk to NPC Frank, Sur, or Mary. And they all start with \u201cIf you talk to Sue then you will earn that \u2026 \u201c or something like that. Obviously, not the best presentation for information. You can\u2019t make the DM hunt for things. It should be easy to locate the specific NPC and what they know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, I should note, most of the rumors are from a rando villager. As in \u201cThere\u2019s a Full Moon in a few nights, best to be indoors that night if you know what\u2019s good for you!\u201d or \u201cAnother villager complains their cow has run dry.\u201d We don\u2019t get these villagers. Just the core NPC\u2019s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On top of that are the consequences for what\u2019s going on. We get a couple of paragraphs describing complications. \u201cthey must realize that if Annes dies or is executed for witchcraft the High Sheriff will be angered, as will the Talbots when Humphrey holds them to blame.\u201d Will they, though? Has the adventure done ANYTHING to help the DM communicate this AT ALL? No. Gonna blame the wise woman? She aligned with the House of York. Ok. And? I get it, War of the Roses, but, \u2026. And? How does the party know this? How are the consequences made clear to the party? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could be missing something here. The main rulebook for Dark ALbion could have a great villager generator and make it clear all the consequences. But, even if it does, that\u2019s no excuse for the information presented in this adventure. It is a rough outline of an adventure. A rumor table. A list of bullets that an adventure would then be designed around. It\u2019s missing EVERYTHIGN that a modern adventure should have, meaning, supporting the DM in the play of the game. Theres none of that here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see all of the major NPC\u201ds and all of the adventure bullet points. ALl that\u2019s missing is that short consequences section \u2026 Good preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/437300\/Milk–Blood–an-OSR-and-Dark-Albion-Adventure-12-Level?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By John Cunningham SBM Press OSR & Dark Albion Levels 1-2 \u2026 in the village of Bacton in Herefordshire in 15th Century England, but can easily translate into any fanasy setting. The PCs are called upon to investigate the disappearance … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8587,"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-8588","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\/05\/milk.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8588","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=8588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8589,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8588\/revisions\/8589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}