{"id":9021,"date":"2024-02-21T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9021"},"modified":"2024-02-07T08:58:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-07T13:58:39","slug":"kazad-mor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9021","title":{"rendered":"Kazad Mor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Taylor Seely-Wright\nSelf Published\nShadowdark\/OSR\nLevel ... 1?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Crawlers delve into the cursed, abandoned halls of the dwarves. They delve for gold, glory, and magic. They delve to find the truth of the fortress and its abandonment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The product page on DriveThru has a kicking map; go check it out before looking at the review! It\u2019s what lured me in!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure presents a Moria of about fortyish rooms. Nice map, some decent ideas. But it lacks life in it\u2019s descriptions and the interactivity is a little CRPG \u201cfetch the blue key.\u201d More than a little. A nice try. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A return to Narnia. Err, Moria. Err, Kazad Mor. These things never work out. Nothing ever captures the scale of Moria. Plus, stoic dwarf rooms are boring. As are elfhomes, for that matter. Nothing compares to the epics of men. Anyway, you\u2019ve got the ancient dwarf blah blah blah of Kazad Mor It\u2019s got loot. It\u2019s got a cursed thingy in it. Let\u2019s head the fuck in and fuck some shit up, yeah?!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our first room is the entrance. \u201c1a: Ruined Bridge. Collapsed bridge over magma.\u201d starts the description, telling us of collapsed supports and signs of blast marks. It goes on with another sentence, telling us that we enter through a carven dwarf mouth. (This is all in a terse, almost OSE format, but more on that later.) But what we have here is a very fact based description. There is a collapsed bridge over magma. We don\u2019t get the heat, or the eerie red glow. There  is no looming darkness from the other side of the carven mouth. Churning, flowing, bubbling? Yes, you can absolutely write that you have a collapsed bridge over magma, but if you can write four more words to bring in the VIBE of that scene then you\u2019ve gone above and beyond in bringing the encounter area to life. That\u2019s the challenge of being an adventure writer. And, also, the hardest part, I think.The entire dungeon is like this. A terse but not evocative description of the room that relies mostly on facts rather than feelings. And that\u2019s not an effective way to convey whats going on. Sure, you need to include facts at some point, but you want the DM to really understand the mood of the room at a very primitive level. Collapsed bridge over magma isn\u2019t a bad description. But it is also not a good one. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Which is interesting, because I\u2019d guess that, oh, half of the monster descriptions in this adventure are pretty decent. Pulling four at random: A squat, sawtoothed humanoid with one red eye. A gruesome specter with unfinished business A black light, darker than darkness with a horrifying face in its heart. Grotesque melding of dwarves in a hulking mass of madness. I can criticize the spectre description, and i don\u2019t think Gruesome or Grotesque are descriptions, but rather conclusions. But the rest isn\u2019t that bad. Squat, sawtooth, red eye. And the black light thing is an interesting description as well. When monster descriptions focus on appearance (or, maybe, vibe? If they make you feel chill or something?) then the description is doing well. You want one that matters to the players. The ones that focus on ecology suck donkey balls. This isn\u2019t the monster manual. I\u2019m running a fucking game here and the players want to know what they see and I want them shitting their pants because of what they see. The monster description needs to help do that. We do, though, get a page of monster stats, I think fourteen stat blocks on a page. Not bad! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the interior sometimes has some very interesting encounters in them. You can meet you a ghost with unfinished business \u2026 who might possess you for eight hours before departing, leaving you with knowledge. That\u2019s fun! And, Jesus, one of the wandering entries is a horde of 100 living corpses in a great moaning hoard, arriving from one direction. Can you imagine? As a wanderer? I love that sort of environmental hazard. Usually it\u2019s like a robot sentry or something, but a horde of living corpses just hits differently. Speaking of the wanderer table, you can also get things like this on the OMENS table: \u201c1d6 frozen dwarf corpses wearing stone masks emblazoned with an eye. These dwarves are standing in a semicircle facing the door\u201d Gah! That\u2019s gonna FREAK. THE. PARTY. OUT! And that\u2019s what shit like this should do, after all. Those are some nice entries. But, also, a lot of the interactivity is the traditional stabbing and more than a few \u201cgo find the blue key for me\u201d sorts of things, except you need to put ghosts to rest by watering plants or arranging a feast or something. Fetch quests, especially these basic ones, are not really the height of interactivity. And, other than traps, that\u2019s about it. It\u2019s an attempt, I think, to introduce situations in to the adventure, which I can appreciate, but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s the depth I\u2019m looking for in things to do other than stabbin. We do, however, get some zones of play, from the Hag zone to the Zombie zone and the great hall and so on. That\u2019s quite well done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need to bitch a bit about formatting and layout. That map is what drew me in, it\u2019s great,  but, also, the numbers tend to the illegible. That\u2019s not cool. Especially \u201c1e\u201d, which took me about five minutes to figure out. Doors are also almost hidden. The number one function is use at the table, and so I have to be able to read it. You know where this is going, don\u2019t you, The Designer? There are two versions of this adventure,a print and a printer friendly. The print version is an atrocity. White text on black backgrounds, yellow text, lots of italics in funky hard to read fonts. And a shading system that DEemphasizes the main rooms and emphasizes the notes. Both versions use icons in the text to note traps and monsters, which I think causes more confusion in this text, in the way its implemented. You know, you might find a middle ground where the print version is STILL nice to look at and yet is actually possible to use easily at the table without stabbing your fucking eyes out? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would note, also, a tendency of the formatting to place emphasis where it should not be. We get, in a room or two, notes about the distance, like a fetid wind blows from the north or the south hallway is glazed with webs. That\u2019s great. But in other places there\u2019s this weird order to the text that I can\u2019t figure out. I\u2019m a strong believer in, generally, putting the most obvious things first in a description or list of bullets. But, in a room with a crack in the wall that is glowing red, should we bury that in the text? Maybe stick it up front? Or, in the finale room. It\u2019s got a stone tablet in it covered with shifting text and an eye diagram thing floating around on it. Cool? Eventually we learn that it\u2019s as big as a barn. Oh. Hey. Need the info. This isn\u2019t exactly OSE format, it\u2019s got more words than that, but in both cases I think the same comment applies: it can be good if you really work the descriptions hard. And if you don\u2019t and don\u2019t really understand how to use them then you can get something worse than text description. I\u2019m not saying that this is a full on disaster, but it definitely causes some disjointed moments again and again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
DId I mention that, at a minimum, room 39 on the map isn\u2019t mentioned in the text? Well, I think it might be there, but there is no \u201cRoom 39\u201d label, just a room description where I think it should be. Hrumpf. Shit happens. Life will go on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I could go on. There\u2019s a lot to talk about here. Mostly because the designer actually tried.\u00a0It’s almost there man, a great first draft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages and shows you every keyed entry. Great preview! But also it\u2019s the print version, so you\u2019re gonna have to look past that and spy the actual entries to get an idea of the formatting and fact based descriptions and weird orders of things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/preview.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/381107\/kazad-mor-the-cursed-dwarfhome-compatible-with-shadowdark-rpg?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Taylor Seely-Wright Self Published Shadowdark\/OSR Level … 1? Crawlers delve into the cursed, abandoned halls of the dwarves. They delve for gold, glory, and magic. They delve to find the truth of the fortress and its abandonment. The product … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9020,"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-9021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/kazad.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","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=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9022,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions\/9022"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}