{"id":9189,"date":"2024-06-08T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-08T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9189"},"modified":"2024-05-23T07:39:24","modified_gmt":"2024-05-23T11:39:24","slug":"a-plague-of-rats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9189","title":{"rendered":"A Plague of Rats"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By GM Jeremy
TWK Live
OSE
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
In the bustling port city of Vystaanzport, where ships arrive with goods from distant lands, a peculiar disturbance has emerged. Reports speak of rats swarming the docks, threatening the flow of trade and commerce. The city officials, desperate to maintain order, have put out a call for capable individuals to address the vermin infestation. Unbeknownst to the party, this seemingly routine task will be the first thread in a much larger tapestry woven by unseen hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This seventeen page adventure presents a seven room dungeon with a four encounters above ground, all related to killing rat swarms. And Giants rats. Ans a rat queen. It is closest in form jotting down notes on a piece of paper, with the expertise of a grade schooler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s single column. There\u2019s no real distinction between when read-aloud starts and when it stops. It just sort of all runs together, and one paragraph break suddenly turns in to DM text again. Not to mention the intro read-aloud text being Looooong, diverting players focus from paying attention. And it\u2019s full of second person narrative, YOU step off the boat. YOU see a so and so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is your first impressions of the adventure. The long read-aloud literally has you stepping off your boat on to the dock and seeing a sign on the tavern door advertising work. Well, after you \u201csense the urgency in the air.\u201d Dude walks in after you, the harbourmaster, and tells you he\u2019s got a rat problem on the docks and go fix it. This is, all, oh, a page of single column read-aloud to do all of this, all on monologue form. Then the adventure IMMEDIATELY shifts to DM text, with no change in font, or shading, or section heading. This is a portent of things to come. I\u2019m trying not to be too hard on this, since there is a sense of \u2026 naivete on the part of the designer. They DID just type up their notes in a single column google doc and slap a nice cover on it. Or that\u2019s how it seems anyway, and there\u2019s something charming about that. But, also, this is not something you want to get mixed up in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, time to head to to docs! We get a little section that says encounters one through three on the docs is with one rat swarm, two rat swarms, and then two rat swarms. And then we get some read-aloud that is to be used for all three of these encounters. Including a dock worked stumbling backward in surprise. (I\u2019d think I was GroundHog Day\u2019ing if this happened to me in D&D \u2026) There\u2019s not other text here, just a short bit of read-aloud used for all three of the encounters, exactly the same. No DM text. And just that little \u201cEncounter 1 – 1 rat swarm\u201d note before the read aloud. So, yeah. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You find a chewed sewer grate and go in. And thus starts the seven room sewer adventure. \u201cDescending into the depths of the sewers, a rusty ladder leads down into a dimly lit tunnel. The air is thick with the stench of decay, and the sound of dripping water echoes off the damp walls.\u201d The second sentence isn\u2019t so bad. Maybe a little purple, but it\u2019s heart is in the right place. And the first one is passive, putting the active clause second. Never a good idea. We\u2019re not writing a novel here.  But, then, also, we get descriptions like \u201cAt the heart of the sewers lies a foul-smelling cesspit, its depths obscured by darkness and filth.\u201d Maybe too many fantasy novels. Adventure writing is technical writing and has a different set of rules for how to present information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, inside the sewers you will not challenges except fighting rats. Rat swarms. Giants rats. A rat queen. And it looks very much like a 5e conversion, give you fight, like 2 giants rats,  five rats swarms and a rat queen in the final room. Oh, Oh! And you find a journal! It seems like it\u2019s been forever since I\u2019ve seen a crappy crappy journal included in an adventure that explains everything going on. Oh, those were the days \u2026 but, also, don\u2019t put that sort of exposition in an adventure it\u2019s better for it to come out through some natural gameplay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s interesting that this is an OSE adventure, with an OSE-like cover. That would imply the designer has seen a published adventure before writing this one. And, yet, almost everything in this would seem to imply that is NOT the case. The number of very, very basic mistakes here is quite surprising. More coherent than the Bloody Mage, and with no ill intent in their heart \u2026 but still not worth checking out, at all, in any way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1 at DriveThru.The preview is all seventeen pages. So, good on em, mate!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/479601\/beneath-the-grey-veil-1-a-plague-of-rats?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By GM JeremyTWK LiveOSELevel 1 In the bustling port city of Vystaanzport, where ships arrive with goods from distant lands, a peculiar disturbance has emerged. Reports speak of rats swarming the docks, threatening the flow of trade and commerce. The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9188,"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-9189","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\/05\/rats.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189","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=9189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9190,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9189\/revisions\/9190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}