{"id":9327,"date":"2024-08-21T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-21T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9327"},"modified":"2024-08-06T10:07:19","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T14:07:19","slug":"adventurers-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9327","title":{"rendered":"Adventurers Wanted"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Ben Burns
New Comet Games
OSR
Levels 1-2<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Join us on this whirl wind epic journey, as the characters are swept up in a struggle between good and evil, law and chaos and right from wrong. Return to the glory days when you feared rolling the dice, and one misstep might be your last<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a small double-cross and shipwreck adventure, padded out to 53 pages. Long read-aloud, overpowered opponents, and a simplistic adventure are not something I wanted to wake up to this morning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is from the designers home campaign, built over forty years. You can tell that they really love their home game. The artwork here is of serious adventurers doing serious things. The adventure has a section on the gods of the campaign world and an overview of it, all very serious. This is not my vibe. I\u2019m more of a ruffians and reprobates kind of guy. I\u2019m not sure what the market is for these \u201cthis is my campaign world\u201d adventures; I\u2019m usually looking for something that I can drop in easily to my existing game rather than use, whole cloth, as my new world, with a set of interconnected adventures. The inclusion of the background campaign world and, in particular, the gods, is quite peculiar since I don\u2019t recall that information having little to do in the adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the party is caravan guards and they arrive in a city at the end of their journey. They see a sign advertising for adventurers, which is a trap. They get captured, and then shipwrecked. Then they get captured again and dumped in to an underground temple. You escape the seven room dungeon and the adventure ends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am, perhaps, a little more forgiving of these railroad beginnings at the start of a campaign. You gotta kick the game world off somehow, yeah? But something about this one just rubs me wrong. The whole \u201cthe town has thirty buildings\u201d and then captured in the bar well known for capturing people thing is just off. And then, of course, the food and wine is drugged in the bar. As is the incense in the air, in case you don\u2019t eat anything. But, of course, the dude hiring has taken the antidote beforehand, so he\u2019s not impacted. Also, there\u2019s an illusion wall with a bunch of 7 though ten NPC\u201ds behind it, ready to capture you. It\u2019s just a little too much of a set up for me, and my hatred of gimping like this, where every possibility has been thought of. And then you wake up in the ship hold, the ship having already run around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is at this point that the party find themselves alone on the ship and need to get to shore. While in the water they will be attacked by a sea lion. A 6HD sea lion. Ouchies! Oh, wait, TWO 6hd sea lions. It does note those that they take their meal away after they kill someone. I guess one or two people are not playing D&D tonight?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then you\u2019re captured by an entire tribe of kobolds, many strong. You\u2019re not escaping this, since you have to be chucked down The Maw and in to the dungeon below. It is at this point, finally, that you get to play D&D for a bit. Seven rooms. Full of, for the second review in a row, inscriptions on walls to give clues to people. \u201cDon\u2019t leave the room without making a sacrifice!\u201d or else get hit by a 6d6 lightning bolt. And other ham handed interactivity like \u201c When the door the adventurers entered through closes, a mouth appears on the ceiling and says, \u201cRemember the way out is always opposite the way in.\u201d\u201d Well that\u2019s fun. This is the extent of the interactivity. Well, beyond being captured the multiple times in an adventure. That\u2019s always the least fun thing. To have absolutely no agency over your character,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Read-aloud tends to the long side, sometimes approaching column length. The DM text is full of backstory and history. Explaining why and so on. Completely useless to the game at the table and obfuscating what you need to see to run the adventure. And then there are things like \u201cYou could fire a shot from the ballista at the longboat rowing away \u2026\u201d with a bunch of text following. I guess I get no text in case I fire off a magic missile? The picking and choosing and over-explaining things tha the DM should be relied upon. I fully expected to read something telling me how to roll to hit. Or, in one part of the ship \u201cThe furs are from two different animals that the adventurers do not recognize, but they seem exotic.\u201d Great. Does the DM get told what they are? No. Value? No. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s a long fiction piece at the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I appreciate the history of ones game, and how it feels important. But a published adventure is different than a home game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages and shows you nothing of interest, except the first long read-aloud. It should have shown some encounters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/472820\/adventurers-wanted-osr?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Ben BurnsNew Comet GamesOSRLevels 1-2 Join us on this whirl wind epic journey, as the characters are swept up in a struggle between good and evil, law and chaos and right from wrong. Return to the glory days when … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9326,"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-9327","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\/08\/adv.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9327","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=9327"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9328,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9327\/revisions\/9328"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}