{"id":8701,"date":"2023-08-09T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-09T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8701"},"modified":"2023-07-26T11:52:21","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T15:52:21","slug":"hounds-of-hendenburgh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8701","title":{"rendered":"Hounds of Hendenburgh"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Liam Padraig o Cuilleanain\nSelf Published\nCairn\nLow Levels<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Terror roams the dark and brambled paths of the Kryptwood. A pack of giant spectral hounds rule the night, savaging those foolish enough to brave the forest. The villagers of Hendenburgh cower in the shadows of the ancient boughs as each morning heralds a newly savaged corpse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 22 page adventure presents a delightful little romp through a colourful town, a dreadful forest, and a small haunted dungeon\/crypt. Would that everything I reviewed were at least this good. A credit to county Donegal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok Liam, I\u2019ll strike you a deal. I\u2019ll give this one a pretty good review and in return you don\u2019t roast me for not including the fifteen different accent marks in your name. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We got a small village. Folk inside it are being attacked by ghostly hounds. Oliver the poacher took out a mob to the forest to hunt them down, and  they killed a few, but the mob got seriously fucked up. Hola bitches; it\u2019s time for you, the party, to show up and fix things. Or, so it seems. What we have here is something quite interesting: the adventure is not the adventure. The ghost hound thing, while a real situation, are but one of things going on. They are, essentially, a pretext, with the rest of the excitement of the adventure coming from the townfolk and others hanging around. And it is magnificent. Simple, but engaging enough situations to add complications and shit to any  adventure that party might want to head in to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s see, the local lord is ancient and senile. But, he got an \u201cinappropriately young wife.\u201d  That\u2019s fun! Both singularly and in combination with each other! And, also, she\u2019s  \u201ca student of the new learning who regards reports of the ghostly hounds as mere peasant superstition. She attributes the savaged bodies found in the woods to the work of a particularly vindictive badger.\u201d Great! And, Oliver the Poacher, who\u2019s ready with a posse of the three Winstaple sons, Gregory the Blacksmith, and five village toughs in case the party throws around too much weight. A fuckingpoacher man! And \u201cthe Winstample boys.\u201d Fyuck yeah. That\u2019s how you add specificity. That\u2019s how you make a situation. The pastor, who could banish the ghosts, is a hoot. He\u2019s a heretic. The villagers informed on him and he was punished by the bishop. He\u2019s fucking bitter as all fuck. And a drunk, making his own wiskey. Convince him to help them and load him up with grain alcohol! (And, at the end, the villagers love him, turn to his heresy \u2026 only to have the bishop send in the inquisition, eventually. Sweet!\u201d) The miller is sad, his wife is gone. I guess the hounds killed her. Turns out shes left him and moved in with the local bandit leader. He\u2019s Sly Willy, with his men. More bluster than ability, but he DOES have a lot of men. Also, he reneged on a deal to marry one of the three crones that live in the woods. I didn\u2019t mention them? How about \u201cNaked apart from the cloud of flies that cling to her old leathery flesh\u201d or \u201cEyeless crone who wears a tattered black leather cap and robes sewn from seaweed and taut human flesh.\u201d Great! Perfect! Three\u2019s about six or so more townspeople\/things in the woods that you can deal with, including the ghost dude in charge of the hounds. Just break the circle around his tombs dn he\u2019ll fuck off along with his dogs. And he\u2019s a man of his word! There\u2019s SO. MUCH. going on here. And it\u2019s never overpowering. It\u2019s never so much you can\u2019t handle it. It\u2019s all delightful, terse, and sets up a great situation for the party to handle. You\u2019ve got lots of paths to weave your way through this little area and whats going on. There\u2019s no assumed solution, although there are notes to help with the most common ones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is all fucking great. The designer has a knack for these situations, human nature, and a terse but evocative description. Treasure is well-enough described, just a couple of extra words. Like a gold wedding band or a gem-encrusted jewelry box. All told, you get nine hexes described (and about nine more empty), with one of them being the town and another the main dungeon\/crypt of nine rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m a pretty ig fan of this. But it could be better. Maybe a one pager with the major NPC\u2019s on it. And, at heart, beyond the townfolk shit, this is a horror adventure. It\u2019s fucking ghost hounds in the woods attacking folk and a crypt at the end. It should feel scary. And while the descriptions and the ilk tend to lean a little in that direction, it doesn\u2019t really push that theming very far. A few extra notes \u2026 a little bit of a lingering phrase to help bring home the dread and anxiety would have helped quite a bit. You want to keep that theme going int he adventure, after introducing it, instead of it just coming out as a hack. And the designer could have done more to help bring this forward, especially for the DM. There\u2019s nothing to stop the DM, and even some theming to help, but it really just needs more in this area. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Big fan though. Looks like this is his only adventure?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. And with a sixteen page preview, you can see more than enough of the adventure. Nice job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/444913\/Hounds-of-Hendenburgh?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Liam Padraig o Cuilleanain Self Published Cairn Low Levels Terror roams the dark and brambled paths of the Kryptwood. A pack of giant spectral hounds rule the night, savaging those foolish enough to brave the forest. The villagers of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-the-best"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/hounds.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8701","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=8701"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8702,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8701\/revisions\/8702"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}