{"id":8681,"date":"2023-07-26T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-26T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8681"},"modified":"2023-07-13T10:08:27","modified_gmt":"2023-07-13T14:08:27","slug":"alchymystyk-hoosegow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8681","title":{"rendered":"Alchymystyk Hoosegow"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
By Alex Zisch\nNo Artpunk #2\nAD&D\nLevel 7<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legend says an aristocrat once kidnapped an alchemist and held him captive hoping to create untold fortunes and wonders for the noble\u2019s domain alone. If the secret of turning base metals into gold was found surely treasures and magic can be discovered in the archaic prison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This twenty page adventure details a multi-level dungeon with \u2026 fifty rooms? It\u2019s got a \u2026 richness to it, a degree of depth that is seldom seen. And it comes off in many places as notes,  or ideas for an adventure rather than an adventure. Until the last level of the dungeon is reached, where things chill out to a \u201cnormal\u201d dungeon crawl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The overland portion of this adventure is weird. There isn\u2019t one. But, the multi-level nature of the dungeon kind of acts like one. You\u2019ve got this plateau, with a tower, mine, and sewer pipe. Picking one can get you in to the main dungeon. After you travel through what I might call a mini-level. And it is these mini-levels and the tower\/mine\/shaft thing that I\u2019m going to do the majority of my bitching. Once we hit the \u201cmain\u201d level then things change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These mini-levels\/locations are quite strange. First, it\u2019s kind of a neato idea. Placing the main level under or behind a couple of loosy goosy locations that you pass on the way to it. Very D1. But, in this, implemented  kind of terribly. They are almost outlined instead of described. And, I think, that\u2019s not the way to do this. Let\u2019s look at the mines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got a small map with maybe six-ish rooms on it, four keyed, with a lot of hallway\/\u201dmine tunnels\u201d between them. This, alone, stands in contract to the 35 rooms on the main level. Then, we\u2019ve got one room described as the \u201corc camp.\u201d You see, there are thirty orc miners and a couple of supervisors. \u201cOff duty orcs congregate here. Ten sleep while ten eat and gamble at a fire.\u201d There\u2019s a sentence about the casserole they cook and one about shovels scattered about, before a one sentence treasure description. More of a general idea, or an outline or the pre-adventure and what could appen than the main adventure encounter descriptions that we are sussed to seeing. Sure, there\u2019s a couple of paragraphs in the \u201cintro\u201d to this level that describe the orcs a little more, their motivations and how they act, but, again, at quite the high level. The sounds of work and what happens is up to the DM to bring to the table. Which, to a certain extent is fine in an adventure, but, here underground, I would have expected something a little more akin to a traditional keying rather than a D1 type merchant caravan listing. And we get maybe four or five of these \u201csub level\u201d locations. Very loose. The mines, for example, imply that the orc miners are dumping tailings outside, but there\u2019s nothing on the plateau description to help with this. Detail about the exterior of the mines in is in the interior of the mines. And I\u2019m still not the fuck sure where the fuck that sewer pipe goes. It\u2019s all a jumbled fucking mess of text. Both too short and too long and badly formatted to aid in comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But all of this changes once we\u2019re on the main level. Things chill out and you get a dungeon that looks and feels like a \u201cnormal\u201d adventure. Some descriptions are a tad long, with four or so paragraphs not being unusual. But, also, this is mostly due to the complexity of the rooms. It manages it 35ish rooms in about seven pages, so it\u2019s generally keeping things to a paragraph or so. This provides an interesting mix. For each \u201cmundane\u201d room, still choked full of lab shit (this is an alchemist level) you will then get one in which things could\/can go south. The very first room on the level has three 3 foot tall humanoids floating in their own beakers, all weakening oversized rings on their fingers \u2026 each glowing blue. A great invitation to fuck around and find out, eh? Tempting the players is always a sign of a good adventure. I think we\u2019re looking at about seven creature encounters on this level, not counting wanderers, and about the same number of puzzle like things or specials or whatever. Not really situations and, in spite of the theming in each, maybe a little disconnected, feeling like separate encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Descriptions are decent in the dungeon. That first room is pretty good, and \u201cPlucked giant cranes hang from hooks. Barrels contain white wine, smoked hare meat, dried persimmons, pickled tomatoes and salted dwarf bits. \u201c is nothing to slouch at, to mix sayings \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not unhappy with this. But, also, I think it suffers as a part of ts origin story. Given some more time to work it, the dungeon encounters, the locales before the main dungeon level and so on, I thin it could have turned in to something rather decent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/princeofnothing.itch.io\/no-artpunk-ii<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Alex Zisch No Artpunk #2 AD&D Level 7 Legend says an aristocrat once kidnapped an alchemist and held him captive hoping to create untold fortunes and wonders for the noble\u2019s domain alone. If the secret of turning base metals … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681","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=8681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8682,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8681\/revisions\/8682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}