{"id":9533,"date":"2025-01-06T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-06T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9533"},"modified":"2024-12-22T13:18:24","modified_gmt":"2024-12-22T18:18:24","slug":"the-fallen-watchtowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9533","title":{"rendered":"The Fallen Watchtowers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
by Rick Maffei
Expeditious Retreat Press
1e
Levels 2-3<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bandit and humanoid raids have increased on Ashen Ridge rendering the trade route increasingly more dangerous. Spurred by a recent, brutal attack by humanoids that claimed an ingot caravan, guards and all, the elders of the towns below the ridge have put aside their differences and agreed to reclaim and permanently re-staff the fallen watchtowers. Engineers and guardsmen stand ready to attend the towers, but first they must be scoured of any threats and wildlife. The towns have put out a call for brave adventurers willing to seek out the towers, assess their condition, and cleanse them of hostile humanoids and beasts if necessary! Will you hear the call?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This twelve page adventure presents four-ish adventuring areas of a ten or so entries each, for you to stab your way through. Lots of backstory in each entry turn the caves of chaos in to rather long-winded examples of what it should be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are some old watchtowers along a ridgeline and the local towns hire you clean them out so they can be garrisoned. For hitting up three watchtoweres, which they KNOW have bandits and humanoids in them, you\u2019re gonna get the princely sum of 500gp. Fucking live it up boys! 500gp! Speaking of, monetary treasure is WAY on the light side, but a gem of seeing, pearl of wisdom, +1 manual (bodily health, iirc?) and a tooth of Dal-Vahr-Nahr reside within. Along with a necklace of adaption, esp, and a decent amount of other magic. But, yeah, just in cash and jewels you\u2019re gonna be hurting a little at this level range. Oh, while I\u2019m on the plot, there\u2019s some subplot that involves  L6 fighter, and his L1 cronies (six of them?) hitting you at the end when you\u2019re wore out. You see, he\u2019s a member of the town council and has been getting kickbacks from the goblins in tower two. Having been outvoted in the Hire Adventures vote he hits you at the end to keep you quiet. Not that there\u2019s much to give it away anyway. Basically it\u2019s just a pretext to hit you on the way out. I don\u2019t really get this. There\u2019s three different watchtowers and a little fairy grover to deal with. Which one does he hit you after? The second I guess. And takes up A LOT of words. I mean, A LOT. It doesn\u2019t really add anything to the adventure before or during it, and afterwards it\u2019s just stabbing Lareth. But, sure, whatever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And I feel like this adventure does this kind of thing A LOT. B2 and the caves are note exactly a masterpiece, but they are terse to a very great degree. This thing could be as well if the designer could keep the backstory out of the room descriptions. \u201cIn a rear corner of this cell, behind a loose wall stone, is a brilliant yellow topaz (worth 500 gp). A bandit imprisoned here stashed the stone for future times and later escaped while being moved upstairs for questioning, only to be slain by an irritable owlbear in the woods some miles distant while making his way back to his hideout. Neither the tower\u2019s original inhabitants nor current residents know about the gem.\u201d So, I\u2019m not opposed to an occasional aside or two in an adventure. But, also, I prefer them when they add to the overall adventure trajectory. Here, everything after the 500gp portion is just backstory. WHY is the jewel here? Well, let me tell you why \u2026 When we look at this entry we can see that far and away the text bloat here, in relation to the content, is way out of proportion. And it\u2019s this way with EVERYTHING in this adventure. Why use one sentence when five more are possible? The town council of, like, seven or nine people (a select group from a larger council of forty or so, the text tells us \u2026) is described in detail. Because they will hire the party. It\u2019s fucking insane. There\u2019s no real reason for them to have multiple paragraphs each,or the backstories they do. It\u2019s great that you grew up in Virginia. It\u2019s great that the hogs got the fever. It\u2019s great that you moved to SanFrancisco and prospered in dry goods. But, man, I need to know what I need to know NOW to run the fucking adventure at the table, not the adventure twenty years ago before I had eight kids. We\u2019ve got a small font and a lot of words. Not a good combination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is an assault mission. You are stabbing things in the three towers, one with bandits, one with goblinoids, and one with a yellow musk, ending with a fairy kill in their grove. Mostly everyone just sits in their individual rooms to die. Notes about bandits reacting to the noise in room one are found in room two, where the bandits are, instead of where the noise\/reaction is needed. I guess you can stab things as an adventure. I\u2019m not the biggest fan of just stabbing, but a good ol assault with a sneak up and plan and infiltrate thing can be a great one. I don\u2019t think this is that though. The towers just have, like three or four rooms each, usually. That\u2019s rough. I guess the bandits hiding on the second floor, with no way to reach them, can be interesting. I suppose the town council would be shitty at me for undermining a wall and collapsing the thing on them. Mostly, a gem of seeing, painted back and used as a paperweight, is what the interactivity here is going to be. Do your tactical assault, 1e style. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is just way too long for what it is. I get that, perhaps, you need a page count to publish something, physically. And maybe twelve is the magic number here, hence the smaller font. But cutting back on the text bloat and padding and working a bit more on some interesting descriptions of rooms, magic items, or jewelry would have been nice. Not to mention, perhaps, a bit more involvement in the tower portions. A slightly more complex environment for our fours and fives to take on. Basement tunnel in. Trees too close. I don\u2019t know. Some pretext to get inside and bluff? Nothing certainly precludes this, although the adventures lean is certainly to the \u201cthey attack!\u201d side of things. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess the publishing spectrum runs the gamut. Some will suggest changes and some will copy edit? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $6 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, which shows you all of the intro, tower one, and part of two. I really like the inclusion of the areas around the tower, which you can see here in the preview of one and two.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/502703\/advanced-adventures-45-the-fallen-watchtowers?src=newest_recent?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Rick MaffeiExpeditious Retreat Press1eLevels 2-3 Bandit and humanoid raids have increased on Ashen Ridge rendering the trade route increasingly more dangerous. Spurred by a recent, brutal attack by humanoids that claimed an ingot caravan, guards and all, the elders … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9532,"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-9533","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\/12\/fallen.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9533","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=9533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9534,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9533\/revisions\/9534"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}