{"id":9431,"date":"2024-10-28T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-10-28T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9431"},"modified":"2024-10-14T10:29:50","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T14:29:50","slug":"dark-clouds-over-castle-talbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9431","title":{"rendered":"Dark Clouds over Castle Talbot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By muv, Billman
Novis Ludis
OSE
Levels ?<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The Lord and Lady Talbot are the last of their line, wealthy owners of a remote but productive silver mine. Over the past decade or so, things have changed. The Talbots have become reclusive, packs of wolves howl throughout the nights, and people have vanished without a trace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 25 page adventure has three encounters. With werewolves, mummies, Franenstein\u2019s monster (fuck you!) and a vampire. And igor? A new low in 4e conversions. Or, someone’s home play style with OSE resembles the worst that 4e had to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went to see My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult once at Talbot street in Indy. So, now, yo uget a Talbot adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am disappointed. Shocking, I know. But this had a decent start! The party is in a village, a mining village, when an earthquake hits. Miners are trapped! Off to the rescue! See, now that\u2019s something I can get behind. A great big communal rescue job. The party as a part of a bucket brigade or making a human chain to reach someone in a flood\/river. This is how people act. It\u2019s relatable. When the party, the players, can react to situations like this, situations that are real, that have that flavour of reality to them, then it sticks much more with them. The players get  motivated, and that is SOOOO much more better than the characters being motivated or resignation to the monday night hook.  So, the premise, generally, is that some miners get trapped by an earthquake.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, also, generally is all you\u2019re getting here. There\u2019s no real information about the cave in, etc. To quote the adventure \u201cEarly the next morning, a small tremor rocks the village. Miners pour from the silver mine calling for help; a cave-in has trapped and possibly killed miners!\u201d That\u2019s it. The adventure then transitions in to encounter one. Oh, I did mention that there are only three encounters, right? In 25 pages? Oh, but it gets worse! More on that in a minute. I was looking forward to some greedy mine owners, foremen, a company store, wildflowers, crying kids, lunch pails and the whole lot. Nope. Just that little bit I copied above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are mountains and mountains and mountains of text in this. Backstory, almost all of it. I think we\u2019re told three time that \u201cLord Talbot\u2019s mind shattered and he became obsessed with disturbing uses of alchemy.\u201d At least three times. To get us to those three announcers, each of which  takes about a page to describe. In the mine you get attacked by werewolves. At the lords castle you get attacked at the gates by mummies. In the great hall you get attacked by Frankensteins Monster and a vampire. Yes, I have accidentally reviewed a halloween adventure, I guess. I try to avoid those for exactly these reasons. Anyway, there\u2019s no castle details and no treasure in this adventure. No silver in spite of it being a silver mine. No treasure in the castle. Or magic items. Must be something inside, says El Senor Ant. Clearly no one has ever leveled in OSE before. Strange, but the adventure is FOR OSE, yes? Hmmm \u2026 Three encounters. A page for each. A map for each encounter that has multiple areas on it \u2026 I know what that means!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
4e.  Look, I\u2019m not gonna hate on 4e. I mean, sure, it\u2019s a disgusting pile of shit, but, if you want to enjoy your tactical minis combat then you should be able to enjoy it without me dumping on it. It\u2019s just not my cup of tea, because I don\u2019t like a giant turd floating in my cup. To each his own, though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is clearly a 4e conversion. I\u2019m not sure how anything could be more clear. The maps here are of an area. So, encounter one is a map with like ten locations on it, each with one sentence like \u201ctwo werewolves start here\u201d and shit like that. Nothing evocative at all. Just minis combat notes. Mechanics. And the same with encounters two and three; large area maps for you to tactically move on. \u201cBlacksmith – this shop is functional and appears to be in occasional use (Lord Talbot sometimes uses it in his work)\u201d Just notes about the extensive bestiary. No one cares about treasure. No one cares about descriptions. No one cares about roleplaying or situations. Just tactical minis combat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, hey, did I mention tha the opening read aloud mixes third person and second person narrative, in amazing levels of abstracted text? No? Oh,ok.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We do not do that here. A shitty shitty 4e adventure pretending to be OSE. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $4. The preview lets you see encounter one. Not that I\u2019ve seen the entire thing the 4e nature is obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/498351\/dark-clouds-over-castle-talbot-ose?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By muv, BillmanNovis LudisOSELevels ? The Lord and Lady Talbot are the last of their line, wealthy owners of a remote but productive silver mine. Over the past decade or so, things have changed. The Talbots have become reclusive, packs … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9430,"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-9431","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\/10\/talbot.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431","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=9431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9432,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9431\/revisions\/9432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}