{"id":8952,"date":"2024-01-06T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-01-07T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8952"},"modified":"2023-12-25T16:02:49","modified_gmt":"2023-12-25T21:02:49","slug":"garden-of-terror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=8952","title":{"rendered":"Garden of Terror"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Ben Thompson\n99c Adventures\nOSR\nLevel 4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The tiny village of Ostlund has long been home to a beautiful park, but, beginning around a year ago, the once-serene garden has become a very different \u2013 and much more sinister \u2013 place around sundown.  A mysterious dark curse now sees the village haunted by all manner of evil creatures that wreak havoc on the town and its people, causing destruction and mischief that is becoming increasingly more violent and frightening for the people living here.  Ostlund has managed to cope with this situation, for now, but with crops beginning to die, villagers going missing, and structures mysteriously catching fire at night, the people now seek help to free them from their torment. You must venture to Ostlund before the night of the Summer Solstice.  You will have just one night to wander the haunted park and cleanse it of the curse.  Succeed, and you will become the greatest heroes this small hamlet has ever seen.  Fail, and you doom these people to continue their cycle of misery for another grim year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 64 page adventure uses ten pages to describe fourteen areas in a small park that is about 300 feet on a side. No plants here, just endless read-aloud, too much DM text, and an obvious 5e adventure restated for the OSR to increase sales. 99c Adventures are now off the table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We start with a one page read-aloud; a letter to the party from a village pleading for help. Evil things in the park, crops failing, blah blah blah. Off you go. On the way you have a one and a half page encounter with a troll at a bridge. Nothing really special here; fight him or pay him off. There\u2019s a night in the river underneath that you can recruit. Sir Eric. A kind of Gilderoy Lockhart type dude with a fawning fan club of women in the village you are going to. That\u2019s fun. That\u2019s ALL that is fun in this adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A page and a half troll bridge encounter. What the fuck were you thinking man? With all that read-aloud? IN ITALICS so my fucking eyes would pop out of my head? And then ALL of that DMs text. For a fucking troll on a bridge. Why\u2019d you do that? And none of it is interesting. None of it. It\u2019s just troll bridge shit,all of it generic and nothing special or fun or unusual about it. It amazes me, the ability of people to pad shit encounters out with more shit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, then you get to town. There\u2019s nothing fun in town, really. There are three Vampire Spawn, which are not vampires, but, close enough I guess. They don\u2019t really do anything unless you hit on one of them (Hello Ladies!) And there\u2019s the knights fanclub. I guess that\u2019s fun. There are some druids you can talk to who will teach yo a spell to talk to the lake guarding in the park. Otherwise, it\u2019s just generic shit and a few programmed combat\/challenge encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Off to the park you go! There\u2019s a giant statue head in the park. It\u2019s the source of evil. How you know this I know not. You need to collect an incantation n the park and get the fabulous SUN SWORD, err, I mean Sunstone. The lake guardian thing can tell you to go get both. Otherwise , I don\u2019t really know how you are figuring this one out. \u201cYou feel like there might be more to do\u201d , I believe the encounters say. Yeah. That\u2019s always a great sign. Telling the party outright they have more to do. Which, of course, means more of the DM running \u201cINITIATIVE!\u201d as monsters attack. There\u2019s no real option to do anything but stab everything in the park. So, get stabbing boyo!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really can\u2019t get over this. Vampire Spawn in the broad daylight. Sixty four pages for just over a dozen encounters. Almost all just straight up combat encounters. It\u2019s fucking absurd. Ridiculous amounts of read-aloud. Ridiculous amounts of DM text. Why would you attach your name to this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. Enjoy that intro read-aloud and the start of the troll encounter. Perfect preview, since you know nothing but pain is coming for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/product\/464634\/LC3-Garden-of-Terror?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Ben Thompson 99c Adventures OSR Level 4 The tiny village of Ostlund has long been home to a beautiful park, but, beginning around a year ago, the once-serene garden has become a very different \u2013 and much more sinister … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8951,"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-8952","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\/12\/garden.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952","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=8952"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8953,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8952\/revisions\/8953"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}