{"id":9056,"date":"2024-03-16T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-16T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9056"},"modified":"2024-03-04T09:21:51","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T14:21:51","slug":"duirdun-vale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9056","title":{"rendered":"Duirdun Vale"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Mark Kerruish\nImagination Underway\nOSR\nLevel 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLook here,\u201d says the dragon. \u201cI know you must be a bit feeble of mind not to run and hide from a hunting red dragon. My condolences on your thick-wittedness. Take my advice and run next time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure presents six encounters, linear, on an overland journey between a village and a city. This is no whimsy or wonder. It is boring dreck with too much read-aloud and nothing going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
How bad is this? It\u2019s is close to being Eliminster \u2018Heal!\u2019 bad. At one point \u201cLater that day, lake gulls from Lake Mimrise fly low over the party and drop a bar of soap for each person present.\u201d Uh huh. Cause if you\u2019re a stinky person and try to get in to the city then the guards look weird at you. That\u2019s the final encounter. In the adventure. Of the six encounters that\u2019s the final one. The gulls dropping soap (\u201cthere\u2019s a nearby stream\u201d the adventure tells us) and then the gate guards sniffing the party and telling them the Earl doesn\u2019t like stinky people and the city is very clean. That\u2019s where the adventure ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, fuck, right. That doesn\u2019t make sense. You see, this is an ESCORT mission. You\u2019re escorting a young monk from the village to the city. I know, I know, escort mission. But, no, not like that. He\u2019s not going to be in danger. Instead he\u2019s going to silently judge you and you\u2019ll get less reward, I guess, when you get to the monastery in the city. You\u2019re never TOLD this. You\u2019re only told you\u2019ll get paid by the monks in the city when you arrive. I guess you have to intuit that the dude is going to rat out your misdeeds. Or, whatever he thinks are misdeeds. So, you get to the city gates and you\u2019re not paid. The adventure just ends. There is no payment. No monastery. I guess that\u2019s the next adventure? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, six linear encounters on the road. The entire thing is very 5e in its layout and art style and so on. No doubt this is from a template. The art is AI, but I don\u2019t really give a fuck, except to say I hate it. In fact, I think I hate absolutely everything about this adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I hate the long and pointless read-aloud sections. These are SUPER common and SUPER long. Her\u2019es just a portion of one, one paragraph from among many when starting the adventure \u201cIt\u2019s a grey, dreary morning with a chill drizzle. Liss, the innkeeper\u2019s help, brings you a hearty breakfast of sausages, bread, and gravy. She glances out the window as she puts the plates in front of you. \u201cUnseasonal, \u201d Liss comments. \u201cLooks like we\u2019re in for an early autumn.\u201d She walks away to let you get stuck into your breakfast. You\u2019ll need all the energy you can get if the road turns muddy.\u201d I hope Liss dies. Truly. Isn\u2019t this the way of it? You, someone engaged and interested in the world around them. Full of joy and wonder for the new day ahead. Ain\u2019t nothing gonna break my stride, ain\u2019t nothing gonna slow me down! Then Lizz appears. With his drivel. The mundane pointlessness. Prosaic. Liss deserves all of the abuses of the mundanity of the world \u2026 I\u2019m going down in a hole in the ground. Oh, also, this read-aloud is pointless. You get it, it\u2019s the novelization of the adventure rather than the adventure proper. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We get, like, 2.5 pages of wandering monsters for day and night. For when you go off the road in to the forest or some such. But you never do. You stay on the road. It\u2019s like throwing in the deep ocean encounter tables. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, escort mission, right? First encounter: a bridge over a mud puddle has collapsed and a horse is sinking in to the mud while some men watch, with their wagon. It\u2019s exactly what it sounds like, nothing more. It takes, like, 2.5 pages for the designer to tell us all about it. Encounter two: Frank the goblin is looking for some dude named Bob. Oh, also, do you  want to gamble? You can say No, it\u2019s ok. That\u2019s another page and a half. Then you meet some \u2026 hmmm \u2026 stereotypical eastern european travelers known for reading fortunes. Not Rromani. Those are real people. The designer is using the other word, which polite society no longer uses. Anyway, a page and a half for a fortune reading that uses a nicer version of the Deck of Many Things. Then you find a scroll on the road and a wizard in the next town who confronts you for stealing it. Another two pages for this, but, interesting: \u201cIf the party killed anyone, a gallows is constructed in front of them while they are in the stocks. They are executed as murderers the next day\u201d Well now, that took a turn! Just like guessing what action the monk wants you to take, you get to guess what action gets you hung! But, also, fuck me man, nice one! I mean, you\u2019re coming at it from an overly moralizing position, but I like the brutality of it. Some fuck around and find out shit right there! But, also, we telegraph shit like this, or should anyway. It\u2019s only fair to the party when you change the rules or game world in a major way. Let\u2019s see, then we\u2019re taking a couple of pages to maybe fight some ogres. Then you meet a red dragon, which is actually a gold dragon in disguise. That\u2019s it. You can do the entire thing without combat. Ignore the mud thing and walk around it. DOn\u2019t talk\/gamble with the goblin. Ignore the travelers. Ignore the two wrestling ogre teens. Talk to the dragon\/polied dude. Take a bath with the soap. Adventure over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
23 pages for a couple of wilderness encounters. In becmi. IN BECMI!!!With nothing really going on. Just stand there and let the world roll by. Because there\u2019s no treasure. After defeating four ogres, in their lair, you get about 260gp in loot. You fucking enjoy that new fucking level. Then again, it\u2019s six do nothing encounters, why should you level for that, or get even close? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have no idea what this thing is and I have no idea why it exists and I have no idea how one could write something like this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you all of that wonderful town\/hook read-aloud with the sausages and gravy, as well as part of the wandering tables, which you won\u2019t be using. Bad preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/preview.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/471169\/duirdun-vale?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Mark Kerruish Imagination Underway OSR Level 1 \u201cLook here,\u201d says the dragon. \u201cI know you must be a bit feeble of mind not to run and hide from a hunting red dragon. My condolences on your thick-wittedness. Take my … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9055,"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-9056","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\/2024\/03\/duird.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056","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=9056"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9057,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9056\/revisions\/9057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}