{"id":8711,"date":"2023-08-16T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8711"},"modified":"2023-08-01T17:01:11","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T21:01:11","slug":"the-tomb-of-the-baboon-king","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8711","title":{"rendered":"The Tomb of the Baboon King"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Sage Paoilli, Dean leonard, John R. Brennan\nArmored Storyteller Publishing\nOSE\nLevels 8+<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The civilization that once worshipped the Baboon King no longer exists, and only a few scattered ruins remain. None remember its name. A few rare scholars and priests deciphered fragments of the ancient city- state\u2019s history. The humidity of the region devoured most scrolls and painted images left behind. Only the stories recorded in worn stone provided a clue into the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 33 page adventure details a dungeon with 24 rooms. I kept thinking I was in a 5e adventure instead of an OSR one. It\u2019s fine, I guess, as linear dungeons go. Whatever. It\u2019s so bland and yet polished that my eyes have glazed over in looking at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know why your level eights are afraid of a baboon, king or otherwise. AC0 with 101hp, I guess. Along with a 4d6 bite and two 6d6 claws. Meh. What is that, more than a huge red dragon? Or a Trex? Sure thing man. I guess  this is one of those \u201cBryce doesn\u2019t know classic fantasy fiction\u201d things again, where Conan or Elric or someone masturbated a bunch of baboons and now we have to think they are cool or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map is terrible. It\u2019s too small to read. It\u2019s one of those full color things, with detailed floor tiles. A garish monstrosity that you can\u2019t make out any detail in, or even the room numbers. And it\u2019s linear. Yea, linear. So you are almost doing, like, 24 rooms all in a row, in a straight line, to make it to the end of the adventure. That is SOOOOOOO anti D&D that I don\u2019t even know how to describe WHY it is. There\u2019s no exploration. No choice. No unknown. No mystery.Just a boring nonstop of first this and then this happens to you. Who the fuck would want to play something like that? Room after  room in a straight line. I\u2019m not sure I even made dungeons like that when I was eight. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s see \u2026 book magic items. A wilderness and dungeon wandering table in which 95% of the entries have a sentence or two of text that amounts to \u201cThey Attack!\u201d Yup, we\u2019re doing everything right it seems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The encounters, the rooms proper, are \u2026 something. Basically it amounts to a surprise in each room. In this room your surprise is: water pours in to flood the room. In this room your surprise is: walk the CORRECT path of wisdom on the floor tiles. In this room your surprise is: poison gas drives you crazy. In this room your surprise is: wait, it\u2019s just some monsters attacking if you open some caskets. That\u2019s the first four rooms. Then there\u2019s eight mummies. Then a spear trap. Then the ever-present falling portcullis and bronze golem. And then vines in the room. It\u2019s all the same. It\u2019s shit you have seen a thousand times before implemented in exactly the same way it\u2019s been implemented a thousand times before. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
For each room you get a paragraph or two under the heading of What Is Noticeable and a whole lot more text, many paragraphs, under the heading of What Is Not Immediately Noticeable. Nice idea. Terrible implementation. Rooms take a page. The first room takes a page and a half for a flooded room trap. There\u2019s a one page stat block in another room. This is just TERRIBLE. What were they thinking?! There\u2019s three of them. Did NO ONE stop and say \u201cHey maybe this is a bad idea.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m just incredulous. AT level eight. In B\/X. OSE is basically B\/X, right? Level eight. How the fuck do you make a level eight D&D adventure boring? How do you put a challenge in every room and STILL make the adventure boring?1<\/p>\n\n\n\n
GenCon is in two days. Dear baby jesus, please let me find some joy there \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see that first room. It could be a longer preview, but, I guess it does show you a room.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/443056\/The-Tomb-of-the-Baboon-King-Campaign-Drop-A2?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Sage Paoilli, Dean leonard, John R. Brennan Armored Storyteller Publishing OSE Levels 8+ The civilization that once worshipped the Baboon King no longer exists, and only a few scattered ruins remain. None remember its name. A few rare scholars … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8703,"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-8711","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\/07\/baboon.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8711","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=8711"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8711\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8712,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8711\/revisions\/8712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}