{"id":9395,"date":"2024-10-02T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T11:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9395"},"modified":"2024-09-17T09:17:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-17T13:17:23","slug":"madness-of-the-azure-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9395","title":{"rendered":"Madness of the Azure Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Realm Diver
Self Published
BECMI
Levels 4-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
You opened the chest? You shouldn’t have opened the chest! You are magically transported to a ruined temple surrounded by vast desert. A dragon, driven mad by the slaying of her mate and brood, lies between you and a wish-granting treasure that could mean your salvation, or spell your doom\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a dungeon with about 35 rooms. It\u2019s got a rather complex situation going on in it that seems inconsistent with its size and difficulty. I\u2019m not a fan of the long-winded and writing to be slogged though, but, also, there\u2019s something going on here. Just not enough for me to to deal with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m having a hard time with this one. I think I can tell that there is something going on here, but I\u2019m so off-put by the presentation and writing that I want to throw up a little in my mouth. WHich does seem overly harsh. But, there it is. Anyway, I said there was a lot going on \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re going to ignore the premise. You find a treasure chest and open it and find a jewel buried in some sand and if you touch it then the sand swirls around you and you\u2019re all transported to this place in the desert. There\u2019s an abandoned campsite and a mesa with a couple of giant statues standing in front of a crack in the mesa wall. So, right, we\u2019re ignoring that. Yes, treasure chest adventure, living room, blah blah blah, hook. Let\u2019s instead focus on some on the weirdly high number of things going on here for a dungeon with 35 rooms. We\u2019ve got the lizardmen-like tribe in this temple complex. Then we\u2019ve got the EHP lizardman shaman, who is raising humanoids from the dead with her magic staff. We\u2019ve got the former leader of the tribe, under house arrest and looking to regain power, pretty please Mr adventurer. Let\u2019s see, we\u2019ve got a thief raiding the temple. We\u2019ve got the undead former high priest of the temple who really thinks the lesser evil here is getting the party to cleanse the temple of most of those folks. ANOTHER undead dude seems to be full of ennui. The Azure Guard, the undead dudes raised by the EHP, are bopping about. And then there\u2019s the crazy dragon whose mate and hatchlings are dead, in the final room. Azure? Yup. Worshiped by the lizardman dudes? Yup. Stuck in that room? Yup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While there is  bit of an order of battle for the evil lizardman faction, and the house-arrest queen has some deets, mostly the people with plans are just sitting in their rooms waiting. Including the dragon. This is kind of disappointing. In addition to everyone listed there are also a few other things going here, ghosts to talk to and so on, almost all of which give you some kind of clue as to SOMETHING in the adventure. What\u2019s a little off putting here, though, is the relative size of the adventure. It\u2019s only 35 rooms, and in a typical dungeon room format. And that\u2019s A LOT of intrigue for 35 rooms. The tightness of space isn\u2019t going to allow for a lot of room to sneak about, infiltrate and so on, I think. There IS a secondary entrance to the tomb, that takes you to quite a few of the lizardman people to interact with, so, maybe thats the \u201ccorrect\u201d way to play? It\u2019s just hard. There are a lot of high HD enemies here and we\u2019re playing BASIC. Like a bunch of 3HD lizardmen riding 5HD firebreathing (3d6) firedrakes. It\u2019s just rough, in such a compressed area. I guess your going to have to really sneak about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Up until now, in the review, you might be thinking this is a relatively decent adventure. And it might actually be one. And then I touch on the writing. I hate it. It\u2019s got a format its using and its own style and I fucking hate both of them. It\u2019s probably just me. But I don\u2019t know that I care; it was also my money. We\u2019re going to ignore that the read-aoud is in some fucked up font that you can\u2019t actually read. There\u2019s only, like, two sections of read-aloud in the adventure anyway. Still, I hate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve taken another long break. I still hate it and I still don\u2019t really know. The writing style is not particularly evocative, at all. And I don\u2019t think it\u2019s trying to be, at all. I guess, it\u2019s fact based? And I don\u2019t like that? A typical description might read: \u201cThis room has a 5\u2019 pit in it to house giant oil beetles the Sandscales farm for their oil and meat. The beetles are fed on whatever dead or rotting matter the Sandscales accumulate, and are quite content to stay in the pit. They will certainly see anything that enters the pit as fair game to eat, however. There is a 40% chance there is a Sandscale male in here on the raised floor, dumping slop into the pit.\u201d That room description isn\u2019t really saying anything. There\u2019s a lot of explaining why things are the way they are, but it\u2019s not really anything other tan a 5\u2019 pit with beetles in it and maybe a lizardman. But it\u2019s long, isn\u2019t it? And that\u2019s pretty typical. A lot of the rooms, most, I\u2019d guess, run to half a column of text. It\u2019s got this bullet point style and I think the first one is usually a general overview of the room with the rest following up on that. But, also, this means a lot of the rooms are four or more paragraphs. And padded out, wordy, verbose, mostly for no reason at all. It if could take a sentence then it takes three. I feel, continually, like I\u2019m fighting the text to get something out of it. \u201cPrison Cells: Whatever these rooms used to be, the Sandscales have repurposed them as a prison\u201d Yup, that\u2019s why the room name is Prison Cells.That first sentence does nothing but repeat that this is a prison. That\u2019s the purpose of the room title, to frame what\u2019s to come. And then you frame it again. I think we all know by now that I\u2019m not looking for an ultra minimal room description, but, also, I fucking HATE the padded out shit. This isn\u2019t an ethnographic exploration of the lizardman takeover of a desert temple. We\u2019re playing fucking D&D tonight and I\u2019m not using a highlighter to do the work that the editor should have done. Oh, wait, no editor. Not that the fucking copyeditor shit that passes for editing would have helped anyway. Man, I AM grumpy this morning. \u201cThis room has the appearance of a barracks.\u201d No. Never. It IS a barracks or is not. That goes for the DM text and that goes for players text. You\u2019re just padding the fucking thing out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a 9HD undead philosopher in this. He summons four 1 HD blobs to defend himself. \u201cHe will not defend himself, but will cackle madly and disappear if destroyed.\u201d A commentary on the futility of modernism since the death of God? I didn\u2019t expect to see that in a BECMI adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t like this. I accept that there could be an adventure in here. I think it needs a larger map and a reworking of the various areas in to something that might be more supportive of faction play. In terms of design, that\u2019s the flaw here. But, also, this thing needs a complete reworking of the text. There is no evocative writing to cement the room for a DM to effectively riff from. And they are padded out to hell and back, making digging though the text a chore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you mostly padding. The last two pages describe the outside of the temple complex and part f the first two rooms. Those last two are what you can expect from the text, especially that last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/494473\/madness-of-the-azure-queen-becmi?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Realm DiverSelf PublishedBECMILevels 4-6 You opened the chest? You shouldn’t have opened the chest! You are magically transported to a ruined temple surrounded by vast desert. A dragon, driven mad by the slaying of her mate and brood, lies … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9394,"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-9395","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\/09\/azure.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9395","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=9395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9396,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9395\/revisions\/9396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}