{"id":9546,"date":"2025-01-15T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9546"},"modified":"2024-12-30T13:59:39","modified_gmt":"2024-12-30T18:59:39","slug":"tomb-of-the-necromancers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9546","title":{"rendered":"Tomb of the Necromancers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Pail Mitchener
D101 Games
Crypts & Things\/OSR
Levels 6-8<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The ruins of the Unknown City stand at the edge of the Death Wind Steppe, surrounded by the foothills of the Wolf Head Mountains. They are a monument to a once mighty city. Few now know the city\u2018s history, and how it fell. The city\u2018s old name, Tetronis, now belongs to a village of simple fisherfolk standing amongst the ruins. The force behind both the old city\u2018s greatness and its destruction was the god Orlusz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 21 page adventureo details a small overland journeyo and a dungeon with about twenty roomso. Mucho Texto Bloato that all endso with stabbing thingso. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t know. I just went with it.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ok, ice witch chick, legacy and  heir to an empire blah blah blah, who lives in a hovel in a fishing village, hires your level eights to go raid an old temple for her. It\u2019s full of undead. When you get to hoveltown (population \u2026 40?) you find it’s been raided and is occupied by berserkers from the northlands. Ok, they\u2019ve hung half the villagers from the giant oak in the middle of town (noice!) and taken the other half as slaves, marching them north. Ice witch chick is not among them. You track her down, by following tracks I hope, and she gives you a ley to get in to the dungeon. In you go. You then suffer through twenty overly long rooms full of backstory while you kill undead. You can talk to three of them, but, they probably attack also. Adventure over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019ve got two sins here: backstory and hacking. The NPC that negotiates with you, to hire you is ice chicks retainer, a full 6HD in his own right.  He gets a full treasure list. \u201cTreasure: Scroll containing the spell Charm Person (Navi knows how to use this, though he is not a magician), Bright Red Silk Jacket (worth 30 gp), Silver Rings on each finger and thumb worth 5 gp each, Leather Armour, Shortsword, Dagger, Light Crossbow and ammunition, Riding Horse, 15 gp.\u201d Because he\u2019s the dude that hired you? This reminds me of the 3e adventures where the local fry cooks all got full page stat blocks \u2026 just in case! In the fish village we get this description \u201cIn the village, the hall of the headman was once the focus of the community, and provided space for everyone to feast on special occasions, as well as the headman\u2018s private quarters. Further, guests were put up in the hall, either in private rooms, or in the feasting area itself if space and numbers did not permit.\u201d Yup, that is a headmans hut. DO you know how I know this? The entry is labeled \u201cHeadmans hut.\u201d Defining what something is only a way to pad shit out. Why put in  the word Elan is your just going to put next in parens (vigorous spirit or enthusiasm.) Yup, that\u2019s what it means all right. Outside of ice chicks hut is an ice statue of a barbarian. Obviously, ice witch turned him to ice. The adventure tells us that if it’s summer then it has started melting. Then it tells us that the ice witch turned a barbarian to ice with her flesh to ice spell. Did she now? I would have never guessed. \u201cIn the old worship of Orlusz, entrances to temples were deliberately shaped this way, in order to invoke the underworld aspects of the god\u201d I can\u2019t say enough how that sentence just improves my D&D life. I would have run a boring and prosaic D&D adventure, but, then, that sentence, telling me backstory on the architectural details of the ancient worshipful architects just really sold the thing for my players. This shit drives me fucking crazy. I can handle an aside or so, but, when MOST of the text is padding I just wonder what the fuck was going on. Drop in a Cormac McCarthy story while you\u2019re fucking at it. It has as much relevance to the adventure at hand. When encountering a dragon \u201cIt is a male, though this will  not be obvious to anyone not expert on dragons.\u201d I guess we hang out in different groups online. \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then there\u2019s the combat. Basically each room is just combat. With undead. Got a cleric? Maybe there won\u2019t be combat then. Let\u2019s see \u2026 level eights auto turn up to \u2026 5HD? With 8HD being a 50\/50 chance (I\u2019m looking at S&W.) Seems like a chill thing to me. I can\u2019t really think of a more boring adventure for level eights than a bunch of undead, most of which are sixes or less with the big bads being seven and eight HD. *YAWN* ALso, I love that monster stats are elsewhere in the text sometimes \u2026 if this is the second time you\u2019ve encountered the monster in the text then you\u2019ll need to page flip to find the stats. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s just reams and reams of  backstory and explanations and little more than that \u2026 with that little more being hacking. And no real treasure to boot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $11.34 at DriveThru. The preview is just the cover. Sucker. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/119970\/tomb-of-the-necromancers?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Pail MitchenerD101 GamesCrypts & Things\/OSRLevels 6-8 The ruins of the Unknown City stand at the edge of the Death Wind Steppe, surrounded by the foothills of the Wolf Head Mountains. They are a monument to a once mighty city. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9545,"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-9546","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\/necro.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546","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=9546"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9547,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9546\/revisions\/9547"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}