{"id":8801,"date":"2023-10-14T07:13:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-14T11:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8801"},"modified":"2023-10-02T10:15:40","modified_gmt":"2023-10-02T14:15:40","slug":"five-visits-to-goldruns-grotto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8801","title":{"rendered":"Five Visits to Goldrun’s Grotto"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Vance Atkins\nLeicester's Rambles\nOSR\nLevel: Various?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Welcome to Goldrun’s Grotto, a cave complex out in the wild lands. The complex was originally developed in honor of Zaliel, an out-of-favor minor god of woodlands and rain, with an open-air grotto filled with trees and a hidden shrine in the caverns. Over the years, the complex has been claimed and reclaimed by numerous occupants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This ten page adventure presents five different interpretations of the same ten room cave map. It would have been FAR better to have done one, well.Cause these are minimal junk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Five versions of keying the same cave map. \u201cVarious Levels\u201d says the intro, but none of the dungeons give any guidance on that. They all starts with a five entry rumour table and then move on the dungeon keys, ten of them, that generally fit about seven or eight to a page. The titles are all \u201cthe one with the snail\u201d and \u201cthe one with a lot of skeletons\u201d, so, enjoy that. And, to be clear, this isn\u2019t five versions of the same map throughout time. There\u2019s no How To Build A Dungeon thing here. It\u2019s just five different keys for the same map. An evolution, through time, could have been interesting, either as a standalone or as a time travel adventure. There have been a couple of those so far, but none, if I recall correctly, that really stood out. Instead we just get five half-hearted attempts at a dungeon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of these dungeons are going to be very interesting. While the room entries DO tend to have something interesting in them, the writing is just not solid enough to hold up a nten ine room dungeon. \u201cA pair of giant crayfish lurk\u201d or \u201cWarning glyphs are etched in to the cavern wall, indicating poison\u201d are the general extent of the room descriptions. This is nowhere near the degree of evocative writing I\u2019m looking for in an adventure. There\u2019s no indication of the room, or passage, and what it FEELS like. There are, here and there, things that are a little more interesting. \u201cLantern Pool: The chimney of Bretha’s Lamp (Area #5) lies in the muddy bottom of the pool, faintly glowing. If a character enters the pool without holding the body of the lantern, the water solidifies to a glass-like consistency, \u201cfreezing\u201d the person in place.\u201d The imagery of a pool of water with a faint glow in the bottom is relatively nice, and a classic. The interactivity here, freezing someone in place, is interesting as well, and its handled, mechanically, just with what you see and a note indicating that dispel magic will work. But, no, \u201cA beehive sits at the south end of the grotto. The bees have absorbed some beneficial energies from the old shrine and its trees\u201d is what we can expect, time and again from this. I note, also, the effort at explaining what is going on in the room, in the beehive example. This is not uncommon in this adventure, and totally unneeded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are other minor things. The entrance is noted as area two, when its actually area one. The pools of water are described as being between knee deep and waist deep \u2026 a decent difference, and it\u2019s handled by one sentence at the start instead of noting it in each room. The lack of that detail, or not caring about it, harkens back to those very minimal, if nonexistent, room descriptions and lack of interest in providing an environment to adventure in. A mighty sin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One dungeon, putting all of ones effort in to it, would have worked out better. As if, this is just another novelty product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is six pages. You get to see the first two dungeons (!), so, good preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/455013\/Five-Visits-to-Goldruns-Grotto?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Vance Atkins Leicester’s Rambles OSR Level: Various? Welcome to Goldrun’s Grotto, a cave complex out in the wild lands. The complex was originally developed in honor of Zaliel, an out-of-favor minor god of woodlands and rain, with an open-air … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8800,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/10\/455013.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801","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=8801"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8802,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8801\/revisions\/8802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}