{"id":8706,"date":"2023-08-12T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-12T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8706"},"modified":"2023-07-31T10:40:46","modified_gmt":"2023-07-31T14:40:46","slug":"the-curse-of-vecna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8706","title":{"rendered":"The Curse of Vecna"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Dave Hartlage\nSelf Published\n5e\nLevels 8-10<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
An 8-year-old child hands the party a note, which reads, \u201cI poisoned my parents. I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.\u201d He offers a reward for help waking his sleeping parents. This quest takes characters to a dungeon under a ruined estate to break a curse Vecna put on the feuding family that served him. This adventure combines unforgettable roleplaying scenes, a dungeon to explore, and secrets to unravel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seventeen page adventure features a dungeon with 23 rooms. It\u2019s got some decent ideas, here and there. It\u2019s also trying WAYYYYY too hard on the formatting front, which ends up making it confusing. And the descriptions are less than stellar. It\u2019s promise ends up being mostly a one trick pony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That intro is pretty good, eh? \u201cI poisoned my parents, I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.\u201d That\u2019s pretty fucking sweet, man, as a fucking hook or inciting event or whatever. That shit is irresistible! Warms my  jaded heart. I\u2019m fucking in, man! And we\u2019ve got deputy dickhead batting the kid away, while asshole sherif is hiring you to find a stolen book. Both asshats, acting like asshats, and this fucking kid is there. It\u2019s quite good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fucking eight year old in D&D-landian writing a note? No way. His friend gave it to him. Turns out it\u2019s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up.  Funny looking boy who lives in the ruined chapel. Turns out it\u2019s a boggle who has set the illiterate kid up. His idea of a joke. Fucking awesome man! The first kid has a little sister. She\u2019s hungry. If you give her food then she doesn\u2019t eat it all. \u201cWe should save some for the hungry people int the basement\u201d or some words to that effect \u2026 oh man! Can you imagine?! The players should be LOSING. THEIR. SHIT. about now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, oh, that sheriff? That hires you to find the book? Here\u2019s his opinion on the local ruler, the one who killed her entire family to take power, the legend says: \u201cSalis smiles in admiration and says, \u201cThat’s how a strong ruler shows strength and keeps stability. Show me a king called \u2018the good\u2019 or \u2018the pious,\u2019 and I’ll show you people beset by invasion and civil war. Lady Vis- cec showed the price of unrest, and so she ruled over peace and prosperity.\u201d Fucking wonderful man! Fucking wonderful!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The boggle, and book for that matter, are in room one of the dungeon. Everything before room two is great. I fucking love  it. The inciting event. The sheriff. The deputy. The kids. The bogle. Fucking great. Then the dungeon starts and shit goes downhill fast. Basically, you go to the nearly-the-last room and fight The Skull Lord and and a couple of undead. Along the way you can pierce together a puzzle, of how Lady Despot killed her siblings, and do things like put the right head on the right body to have that body tell you a secret. Which  is something like \u201cwatch out for the floor in the last room when you are fighting the big bad.\u201d IE: some hint to that boss fight. There\u2019s really not much more going on than that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Along the way we get fine rooms like room eleven. \u201cSalon\u201d \u201cThis room is empty\u201d That\u2019s if you\u2019re on the material plane. If you\u2019re on the Shadowfell then its \u201cThis room contains comfortable chairs and empty bookshelves.\u201d Great. I am inspired. I love my life. IE: the room descriptions are some combination of non -existent and joyless. And the entire thing is a fucking mess with formatting. Traditional black font. And red font. And blue font. And line section separator. And italics read-aloud. In ref. I get it. Your heart is in the right place man, but execution is lacking. The material plane\/shadowfell thing, requiring a couple of descriptions for each room, doesn\u2019t help AT ALL. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, you know, there\u2019s this over explanation of things. Like every little thing has to be justified, or explained to the DM in detail. \u201cThe deputy is acting like this because \u2026\u201d Nah, find some other way to get the point across. \u201cIngratiating\/blllied\u201d does it in two words. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fixing the formatting crap would make this an ok short adventure. Nothing special. Just, like, one of those side-trek things from the Old Dungeon mags. It\u2019s really too bad. It started so strong before falling in to its \u201csolve the riddle!\u201d shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see that intro\/inciting event, and you can start to get an idea of the formatting issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/441084\/Curse-of-Vecna?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Dave Hartlage Self Published 5e Levels 8-10 An 8-year-old child hands the party a note, which reads, \u201cI poisoned my parents. I am a very wicked boy and I should hang.\u201d He offers a reward for help waking his … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,29,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-5e","category-dungeons-dragons-adventure-review","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/vecna.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706","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=8706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8707,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8706\/revisions\/8707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}