{"id":9398,"date":"2024-10-05T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9398"},"modified":"2024-09-20T10:14:34","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T14:14:34","slug":"tangled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9398","title":{"rendered":"Tangled"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
By Josh Domanski & Reilly Qyote
Afterthought Committee
OSE
Level 0<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Like viscera from a corpse, a carnivorous tangle of vines and bramble has spilled forth from an ancient fortress, swallowing up the countryside. Today, it reaches the outskirts of Peatstead. Your home. With promises of gold and glory swirling through your head, you\u2019ll accompany a small army of commoners to put an end to its deadly expansion and emerge as heroes. Discover ancient treasures, avoid devastating traps, and encounter the wrath of nature itself in\u2026 Tangled<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure uses ten pages to describe ten rooms in a plant themed dungeon. The read-aloud leans purple and the encounters rather simplistic in this \u201cEnjoy The Dm Backstory\u201d adventure. A couple of nice ideas to steal, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a funnel! The local plant life is out of control and the villagers go out to deal with in, in the local dungeon\/cave place. Where the old druid lived. So this is going to be a standard \u201cplant at the middle of everything will tendrils everywhere\u201d adventure. This one is done in the art style, with certain exceptions, of an 8-bit dungeon crawler. An appeal to nostalgia using a familiar trade dress that is not T$R? I generally stopped reviewing DCC adventures because of their linear nature. They do it well, but I don\u2019t need to go out of my way to find that. And this, also, has a map that is mostly linear. There are a frustrating number of \u201ccracks in the roof letting in a beam of light\u201d that the party CANT exploit. Such is the nature of a linear adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our read-aloud, which can in places push the limits of what I\u2019m willing to put with, is all in some cutsy font. No doubt authentic to the 8-bit genre being emulated. I continue to find it puzzling why people think illegibility is a good idea. I\u2019ve got enough problems in my life and struggling to read your text should not be one of them. Unless \u2026 this isn\u2019t an art book is it? Not an adventure at all but a piece of art masquerading as an adventure? Cause you know, if that\u2019s the case then I\u2019m going to go all full Bryce on you. Which is not to say you can\u2019t make your adventure look pretty. But not at the fucking expense of being a fucking adventure. Oh, also, the read-aloud over-reveals what is in the room. It gives too much detail in places, which means it destroys the back and forth between player and DM that is at the heart of all RPGs. For example, in one of the rooms, there are some woodland creatures. \u201cSome of them sleep while others have long since died in a peaceful huddle around a gnarled effigy\u201d That is something for the party to discover, not for the text to prematurely reveal. The tension of discovery has been ruined, as is the horror of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As that text betrays, the wording here runs to the purple side of the spectrum. It feels disconnected. In the past I\u2019ve made an analogy to the bible used to write scripts. Its not the end goal but something used to send a signal to someone else who is doing the writing. And that\u2019s not the right place to be in adventure text. \u201cThe smell of rotting wood and mildew sweeps up from the floor.\u201d Sweeps up from the floor? Really? I\u2019m all for a thesaurus, but we can play \u201cstick in a word randomly.\u201d Or how about \u201cInside is a pitch-black chamber of incomprehensible shape or size\u201d Ok, we\u2019ll ignore te pitchblack and vision aspect of this. Incomprehensible size and shape? Really? One of favorites from the adventure is \u201cThe river crashes against the rock with an uproar, as though fleeing from danger.\u201d You gotta be fucking kidding me man. See, maybe if I was trying to tell the set designer what to show me, maybe thats chill. But that\u2019s not the same as telling the DM something for them to riff on and inspire them, or to the players in read-aloud. That is all groan worthy.  Which is too bad because there is at least one major disconnect between the language and the art. There\u2019s a terrific back cover piece which communicates a scene in the adventure VERY well. And yet the text used to describe it comes nowhere close. The text needed a lot more work here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, we won\u2019t even mention all of the DM backstory that pads the DM text out. With all of that removed then theres remarkably little text to the adventure. It\u2019s all pretty much your standard fare in terms of interactivity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But not all of it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some really great things on here also. The magic items are TOP. SHELF. We\u2019ve got a ring that keeps you from getting surprised. And makes you very paranoid. Excellent! That is EXACTLY what being hyper-aware means! A wonderful example of not imagination first. If we assumed there was no surprise mechanic in the game, and you wanted to give someone the power to not be surprised, to make them hyper-aware, then what else would happen? The\u2019d be hyper fucking aware. Which is paranoid. NOW you can turn to the mechanics. And then there\u2019s this lamp that dispels illusions inside its glow. POWERED BY YOUR OWN BLOOOOODDDDDD! Fucking rocking man! \u201cI was a thousand times more evil than thou!\u201d Power has consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And, then, in the rooms also. There\u2019s a dude, asleep, with an apple tree growing out of his back. Uh. Ok. Hey, trees got some apples on it. Wanna eat? An apple tree comes out your mouth and stomach. Oopsies! It\u2019s fanciful and imaginative. Which is what an adventure should be. I know some of you are going to grouse at the more folkloreish aspect of it (and, I do love me some folklore in an adventure \u2026) but you also have to recognize that its a thousand times better than the deriguour that can pass for room encounters in many adventures. To it\u2019s credit, we\u2019ve got pitcher plant mimics as pits, rope bridges, an underground river to swept up in and a nice little room that you have to feel around and groped in, along with tiny mushrooms. That are bleeding. Pretty nice things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trappings here, though, are just not enough to really recommend the adventure. Yeah, it\u2019s a funnel. But the text really needs to be better and the encounters, the ones that are not straightforward, are just not enough in concept, by themselves, to support the adventure. I will note, though, a great little \u201cfollow ups\u201d section that recommends other plant based adventures. And, they are pretty decent ones. Hole in the Oak. Hideous Daylight and so on. AT least the ones I\u2019m familiar with are pretty damn good. That\u2019s a nice little tough for someone that wants to continue the plant theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $10 at DriveThru. No preview, so I guess the potential buyer can go fuck themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/493879\/tangled?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Josh Domanski & Reilly QyoteAfterthought CommitteeOSELevel 0 Like viscera from a corpse, a carnivorous tangle of vines and bramble has spilled forth from an ancient fortress, swallowing up the countryside. Today, it reaches the outskirts of Peatstead. Your home. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/tangled.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9398","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=9398"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9398\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9399,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9398\/revisions\/9399"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}