{"id":9441,"date":"2024-11-04T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9441"},"modified":"2024-10-21T09:46:27","modified_gmt":"2024-10-21T13:46:27","slug":"hunt-for-the-last-owlbear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9441","title":{"rendered":"Hunt for the Last Owlbear"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Jacob Densford
Illuminated Snail Press
Knave 2e<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Only one of the foul creatures remains\u2014abominations forged by the meddling hands of wizards. After generations of slaughtering us, we’ve finally driven them back to the brink. Let the final hunt commence: the hunt for the last Owl Bear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sixteen page adventure has seven hexes to explore as you slaughter the last living owl bear. You\u2019ll need all of your wits to survive the monotonous boredom of hexes with nothing\/close to nothing to do in them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sixteen fucking pages my ass. I\u2019ve been noticing a lot of Knave adventures pop on DriveThru all at once. Looks like there was a contest and this thing was the third place winner. Which seems to mean the public voted on it being the third place winner, so you know, the unwashed masses and all that jazz. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, so, there\u2019s one owlbear left. You\u2019ve just arrived incountry at some white colonizer camp in the jungle. There are two hunting parties going out tomorrow. You want to join the big game hunter and her quisling local businessman sponsor or you want to join the white savior environmentalist and his smiling caricature of a local? Or maybe go your own way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But first, the news. You wander around those seven hexes, notably NOT going south. IE: you start on a hex border at the six o clock position with nothing else shown on the map but the rest of the surrounding dial from the centerpoint of the hands. And from there you wander from hex to hex with little initial direction in finding the owlbear. Eventually you\u2019ll find something. A village of locals who have all been grisly slaughtered by the owlbear with some ghosts playing a flute.. Or a bunch of monkeys in a tree banging on a drum. Or a wizards hut with nothing to do in it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I really really can\u2019t emphasize enough how shitty the encounters are. There is this thing that designers sometimes do where they are SO resistant to actually putting anything concrete down on paper. Maybe, if you squint really hard, you can get what they are going for. But, the wizard hut. It takes a fucking page, like all of the encounters do. And it\u2019s nothing. It\u2019s a dude living in a hut. He\u2019s not fucking histile. He doesn\u2019t really even have anything. You CAN get a spell component from him, for some project later, but it\u2019s just so empty. He\u2019s got no real personality other than \u201clikes flowers.\u201d The entire thing is pointless. I get it, you want a place to get the spell component. So, put some interactivity there. Likewise the monkeys in the trees. They\u2019ve got a drum they bang on. That\u2019s it. I guess you are motivated to get the drum because you se ethe monkeys have it? And I truly am guessing; I don\u2019t see any reason to do anything here other than yawn. You\u2019ve got to lead the party on, give them something to follow up on, give them SOME kind of bone to get them going an interested. We\u2019re not talking spoon feeding them, but, something. ANYTHING to get the going. \u201cMonkeys in the trees\u201d ain\u2019t it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know what else isn\u2019t it? If you pick up the drum then you hear in your head \u201cRebuild my shrine and I will reward you!\u201d Likewise if you pick up the ghosts flute or the other thing. LIterally a voice in your fucking head. This is not roleplaying. There is no subtly here. Telling someone directly what to do is not embracing the joy of player discovery. But, in the rumours, there is no specificity. \u201cThe local gods are feuding with each  other, with dangerous repercussions  for mortals\u2014take shelter in bad  weather\u201d Well that\u2019s exciting. DO the local gods have names? Is there a story to go with this? No? There\u2019s just senseless abstraction of a rumour? Got it. I am not amused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now to the part of the review that the fuckwits will feel the need to comment on. You know what\u2019s a decent novel? Things Fall Apart. Not my favorite, but pretty decent. You know what\u2019s not Things Fall Apart? A sixteen page adventure. I have no fucking idea why someone decided that a sixteen page adventure, with a contest deadline attached, was the correct medium to comment about white colonization. We  get white colonizers. We get the enviro dude with a white saviour complex. We get lots of references to white colonizers. We get a note about portraying the locals with empathy \u2026 even though we don\u2019t get any information about them except they are all friendly. It\u2019s fucking nuts. But, sure, dump in the smiling native caricature and the evil quisling businessman caricature. Or, the infantilized natives who can\u2019t solve their own problems. And don\u2019t forget to slaughter the smiling natives family so we can know for sure he\u2019s just there as a trope. Got it. Ham fucking handed. And let\u2019s be clear, I\u2019m not bitching about your white colonizer shit. I\u2019m bitching that its done is a hack fucking way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, also, I\u2019m a hypocrite and can get over that. Well, I could get over that that. I mean IF THE FUCKING ADVENTURE WAS ANY GOOD. The smiling native guide has a village. If you go there everyone is slaughtered bloodily by the owlbear. There are some ghosts playing a flut. If you bury the villagers bodies then the spirits go to rest. IT TAKES A FUCKING PAGE FOR THIS. An entire page. Is there detail? None to speak of. Evocative descriptions? Not really, not to justify a page. Big fonts, a lot of white space and A LOT of extraneous padding. \u201cIF the party picks up the flute THEN [fuckwit local god] speaks directly in to their mind: Build me a shrine and I will reward you.\u201d Fuck off with that shit man. There\u2019;s nothing to this village, or any of the encounters. There\u2019s no content. There\u2019s an ABSTRACTION of content. \u201cYou could, maybe\u201d put in some ghosts of the villagers or something, I guess.\u201d This is the equivalent of what is going on here. The specificity that brings an adventure life is just nt present at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages, a mix of intro and hexes. That\u2019s enough to know what you\u2019re getting.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/498863\/hunt-for-the-last-owl-bear?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Jacob DensfordIlluminated Snail PressKnave 2e Only one of the foul creatures remains\u2014abominations forged by the meddling hands of wizards. After generations of slaughtering us, we’ve finally driven them back to the brink. Let the final hunt commence: the hunt … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9440,"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-9441","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\/owl.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9441","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=9441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9442,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9441\/revisions\/9442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}