{"id":9552,"date":"2025-01-08T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-08T12:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9552"},"modified":"2025-01-06T12:53:58","modified_gmt":"2025-01-06T17:53:58","slug":"against-the-hydra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9552","title":{"rendered":"Against the Hydra"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Danilo Pellegrino
Mr Pilgrim's Tomes
OSE
Level ...5? \"Low Levels?\" <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The swamps near Gren are infested with strange creatures preying on travellers, the hydra has begun her yearly hunt and the river woman\u2019s daughter has vanished. Last year the neighbouring towns have all gathered together to mount an expedition inside the swamp, but none returned. With nothing more to do priests, druids and citizen have gathered a 2000 gold pieces to clean out the swamp and save the river woman\u2019s daughter from certain death.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 26 page adventure uses ix pages to describe fifteen rooms in a vegepygmy lair with a hydra. Nice map, but that doesn\u2019t help much for an adventure missing the good parts and spending too much time on the bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The map, dungeon map that is, for this adventure starts out a little weird. There are two towers, each on a little earthen hillock, and each with two simple levels. One of the towers has a collapsed wall that makes a kind of ramp in to it. The towers are connected with a raised covered bridge, and, inside, there are a couple of not-covered bridges over a small lake that are lined with wooden stakes, leading to caves. (Where things get the boring old cave treatment again.) It\u2019s kind of an interesting start for the complex, and has the air of the messiness that emulates real-life ruins. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rest of this is a mess.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re told that the river womans daughter is missing. How do we know that? No clue. She\u2019s the nymph that keeps the swamps foul waters in check, so, I guess the foul waters have returned? There\u2019s not enough fish? This all sounds overly dramatic for something that has just happened? It\u2019s just that nothing in the setup makes sense. The intro talks about a yearly hydra hunt. That never comes up. There are vegepygmy on the prowl. That doesn\u2019t come up. The river womans daughter thing \u2026 doesn\u2019t come up. It\u2019s just a one-legged one-eyed one armed man who will give the party 2000gp for helping the town. Helping them with what, exactly? It\u2019s not clear to me at all what the town thinks their problem IS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a hex crawl. There is a decent amount of space devoted to the overland journey wanderers (although, monster stats seems to appear in some cases and not in others?) and some decent ruins to appear on a table. The ruins aren\u2019t really anything other than notable features though \u2026 a low ruined wall \u2026 and nothing else. Just window dressing. And, also, the hydra base is one hex away from the town. SO \u2026 overland journey? It just seems, like a lot in this adventure, that something is off, or missing, or misunderstood or something. Overland journey? Yes! One hex away? Well \u2026 is that an overland journey? That needs the page count devoted to it that is devoted to it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The village \u201clies on the edge of the swamp like a sleeping dog.\u201d I don\u2019t even know what that is. A typical room entry is pretty straightforward with things like \u201cThe once grand corridor is now a rotten tunnel covered in thick layers of rust, mould and patches of fungi. All windows have been barred, keeping the room in near darkness all day long.\u201d The hydras lair, proper is \u201cA tall, 20ft, cave with a mucky floor and a great bed of reeds on the northern corner. Here the hydra spends most of its night sleeping or eating its daily prey.\u201d I note that there is no mention of the hydra in this room, other than it saying \u201cMonster: 1 hydra.\u201d So, yeah. Thrilling tales of adventure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this is the way the adventure goes. It\u2019s just a hack with a straightforward \u201csay the answer to the riddle\u201d puzzle  showing up so you can open a door. Oh! Oh! I forgot this one \u201c A circular room, filled to the brim with fungi clusters and moulds. At its centre stands a great pillar of fungi, encasing a cadaver with a cloth over its face\u201d That piller of fungo, with the cadaver and cloth covering it\u2019s face?! Never mentioned again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The treasure is light. Almost certainly VERY light for the adventure at hand, with a hydra in it. 1d6x100gp and 1d4 jewels. Enjoy that magnificence. And I say \u201calmost\u201d because I have no idea what level this adventure is for? A hydra is \u2026 8HD? The  vegepygmisies are mostly one\u2019s? It says \u201clow levels\u201d, but, there\u2019s a hydra? And no trick to killing it. I don\u2019t know man. Just another weird missing thing here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The gaps here are, by themselves, frustrating. The things that should be that are missing. And then combine that with the very simple interactivity of a straightforward hack and riddle room and lack of treasure, and no real evocative room descriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/503983\/against-the-hydra?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Danilo PellegrinoMr Pilgrim’s TomesOSELevel …5? “Low Levels?” The swamps near Gren are infested with strange creatures preying on travellers, the hydra has begun her yearly hunt and the river woman\u2019s daughter has vanished. Last year the neighbouring towns have … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9551,"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-9552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/hydra.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9552","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=9552"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9553,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9552\/revisions\/9553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}