{"id":9493,"date":"2024-12-09T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-09T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9493"},"modified":"2024-11-25T07:29:15","modified_gmt":"2024-11-25T12:29:15","slug":"the-lost-garrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9493","title":{"rendered":"The Lost Garrison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Stephen Smith
Mister Smith Design
OSE
Levels 2-4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
200 years ago, Goshawk Keep was overrun. It has been mostly buried for generations\u2014the hidden underbelly long forgotten. But deep within the darkness life goes on…some things lost…some things found!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirty page adventure uses about five pages to describe eighteen rooms. It is overly simple, both in description and interactivity. A minimally described dungeon turned in to thirty pages \u2026 somehow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This adventure is boring. It\u2019s not altogether bad. There\u2019s not enough content for the adventure to be bad. It\u2019s just boring. And it\u2019s boring in a very specific way. There\u2019s this way of describing a room. It\u2019s a minimal description, like \u201c12 rats in a bedroom\u201d or something like that, something close to Vampire Queen. But, it IS given an actual description. Something like \u201cA Victorian bedroom with a dresser and 12 rats in it.\u201d  The description doesn\u2019t really do anything for the room. It doesn\u2019t add anything. It is not really evocative and doesn\u2019t really lend itself to the actual play of the adventure. That\u2019s not an altogether uncommon complaint of mine in an adventure, but the degree to which it pertains, the \u2026 lack of other issues? Really brings it into focus. Which kind of makes sense; if you\u2019re not really saying anything in a description then there\u2019s really not much room for me to complain, is there? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s look at one of the rooms in the adventure. \u201cDispensary: Abandoned medical storage area\u201d Are you not inspired!?!? There is a DM notes section, the DM text. It says \u201cTreasure: 2 potions of healing, 1 scroll of neutralize poison, 1 scroll of cure serious wounds\u201d I mean, this IS vampire queen. The description simply defines the room name. Yes, a Dispensary is a medical storage room and, yes, we ARE in an abandoned ruin. I\u2019m not fucking around and being hyperbolic. That IS the complete room description. Can you put in a fucking rooms that says \u201cEmpty\u201d or something like that? Absofuckinglutly you can. It\u2019s just the \u2026 perfunctory nature of this that offends me so much. It\u2019s a room that COULD have something interesting in it.And, in fact, it DOES have some decent treasure in it. But that was not enough to deserve a room description. If that doesn\u2019t deserve a room description then what exactly DOES deserve a room description?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I note that this is just an extreme example in the adventure. It\u2019s much more likely that the room would be something like this one \u201cA small chapel with rows of stone benches facing a raised votive alter. The walls are painted with chipped and faded landscapes.\u201d And then the DM text ONLY tells us that you see a ghostly figure float down the hallway. It takes a lot more words than that, but it doesn\u2019t say anything more than that. It is EXACTLY the fucking same as those fucking chess players in Dwimmermount. This is, essentially, an empty room. Can you give an empty room a description? Yes. Can you put a weird thing in the dungeon? Yes. Can your dungeon consist primarily of this? WHhy the fuck did you write the dungeon then?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know what this is. This is essentially the same as a random dungeon. You rolled on the back of the 1e DMG tables or something and that gave you list of monsters and treasure. Then you got a list of random room names to put on each room. Then you gave each room like a one sentence description. Done! That is the closest I can come to accurately describing what this dungeon is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Can you write a dungeon like that? Sure? I Guess so? I mean, who the fuck am I to tell you what to like? But this just seems so \u2026 I don\u2019t know. I mean, there is a small section at the end for amping up play. It says thing like \u201cMaybe the kobolds are bullied by the orcs.\u201d Well then why the fuck didn\u2019t you put that in the actual fucking adventure? I mean, that IS the value that you, as the designer, is adding to the adventure. I can roll on the fucking random tables myself and say \u201clooks like a sea cave theme to me.\u201d But the actual shit beyond that? That IS the value that a designer is adding. I think that\u2019s the joy, also, in creation. Is it just drudgery to get through so you can move on to the next thing? What the fuck would the point of all that to be? A school assignment? A futile hope to generate revenue? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In spite of the thirty pages, there is almost no content here. A simple definition description of a room. DM notes that are as minimal as are humanly possible, to the point of \u201c12 rats.\u201d There is almost no interactivity beyond a simple trap \u201cBlock trap: 1d10 damage\u201d or stabbing something. I just don\u2019t understand at all what the motivation for writing something like this would be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview shows you eleven pages of spread, so about 22 adventure pages. Good preview. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/494867\/the-lost-garrison?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Stephen SmithMister Smith DesignOSELevels 2-4 200 years ago, Goshawk Keep was overrun. It has been mostly buried for generations\u2014the hidden underbelly long forgotten. But deep within the darkness life goes on…some things lost…some things found! This thirty page adventure … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9493","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\/11\/garr.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9493","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=9493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9494,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9493\/revisions\/9494"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}