{"id":9342,"date":"2024-08-31T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-31T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9342"},"modified":"2024-08-15T09:04:24","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T13:04:24","slug":"the-lost-temple","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9342","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Temple"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Simone Zambruno
Classic Dungeon Adventures
OSE? No.
Levels 0-1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The History of Neraka Valley is a tetralogy of adventures revolving around a singular narrative. Each one weaves a fragment of the epic of an ancient temple nestled in a small, secluded mountain valley, from the present times to the days of yore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 25 page adventure uses about eight pages to describe thirteen rooms in a dungeon. Ponderous text and low interactivity. You know the drill by now, and are bored of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I see this web thing about a new place in town that advertises the best hamburger in Indiana. I drive there. There\u2019s a giant sign that says \u201cBest Burger in Indiana\u201d  It\u2019s in a great building and the decor is wonderful. The staff are great. Drinks (vodka gimlet, of course) are dirt cheap with a generous pour. I order the burger, medium, for $12.95. About a minute later they bring out a McDonalds hamburger, still in the wrapper. It\u2019s cold. \u201cYeah, we been working on the decor and bar; didn\u2019t have time to work on the burger.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This adventure has a musical soundtrack to go along with it. For each room there\u2019s a note on which track to play for the party. It\u2019s also got this super fun presentation where the pages are all black and a white font is used. A fancy one at that. And, of course, all of those background pages and notes for the DM and appendices and pregens and such. Those make up at least, what, two thirds of the text here? I suppose folks are excited about things other than the main text. Or, if they are me, they are sick of looking at the main text. But the main text IS the most important part of the adventure. The main thing is the main thing. That\u2019s what the vast majority of your time should bespent on, to the exclusion of almost everything else. Yeah, I\u2019d like an easy to use format. But the fucking formatting isn\u2019t the adventure. The text of the room keys. The interactivity of the encounters. I can, and will, sometimes tell people to go get a highlighter for this one, because it\u2019s worth it. But I\u2019m never going to say \u201coh boy! This is a super shitty\/average adventure and the room keys suck, but look at that colour scheme used! Totally get it for that!\u201d Dazzle in the page ong backstory of the dungeon that tells us there is an earthquake and worms tunneling collapsing things. Multiple times. This is not the main thing. You need to focus on the main thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is read-aloud. It describes things in second person. This is never a good thing. \u201cYou descend the stone steps.\u201d The read-aloud over-reveals. It destroys the back and forth between DM and player. The text, read-aloud and DM text is full of overwrought prose. \u201cThe luminous switch, if touched by a soul of benign alignment \u2026\u201d or \u201c… survived  the ravages of time. Mayhaps they were crafted from special materials or magically treated.\u201d  You can also see an example of if\/then writing in that. Background data: \u201cThis room, erstwhile intended as a waiting room or a modest study, now lies in disarray.\u201d No shit it\u2019s a fucking room. Thats what the fucking key says. And we don\u2019t care what it was, I care about whats going on now. \u201cAlong the right wall you may discern a sizeable circular aperture.\u201d \u201cThey appear frightfully ravenous.\u201d This is not how one writes. We write to convey a vibe to the DM, who can convey it to the players and riff off of it. We don\u2019t use this kind of overwrought text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Interactivity is stabbing things. There\u2019s a room where you can fall in a pit \u201cEscaping is easy if you have a rope.\u201d But, but, what if I have a ladder instead? Is it still easy? Anything else to be pedantic about? Anyway, stabbing, a pit trap, a room that heals you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a generic\/universal adventure in spite of it being labeled as OSE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $1.00 at DriveThru. There\u2019s no fucking preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/491366\/the-lost-temple?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Simone ZambrunoClassic Dungeon AdventuresOSE? No.Levels 0-1 The History of Neraka Valley is a tetralogy of adventures revolving around a singular narrative. Each one weaves a fragment of the epic of an ancient temple nestled in a small, secluded mountain … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9341,"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-9342","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\/lost.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9342","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=9342"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9343,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9342\/revisions\/9343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}