{"id":9562,"date":"2025-01-25T19:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T00:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9562"},"modified":"2025-01-09T13:05:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-09T18:05:40","slug":"the-lamp-of-paths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9562","title":{"rendered":"The Lamp of Paths"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Davidf Ingle
Hard Marble Games
OSE
Level 1<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Hidden within a dangerous swamp a disturbed priest makes his ruinous plans against his former community. Will the characters be able to find him and bring him to justice before disaster strikes Cypress Keep?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 24 page adventure uses three and a half pages to describe a ruined temple with about fourteen rooms in it. It feels disconnected from itself, as if the designer didn\u2019t know what the adventure was,or didn\u2019t know how to include parts other than the main hack. Also, it has the usual problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I need to complain about some of the weird choices this adventure makes. They clash with the tone, the style, the expectations \u2026 and I had a relatively hard time trying to marry the various parts of the adventure. The first is the portrayal of the villain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The local church find a orphan on the streets as a child and takes him in. He is devoted to the church and inspires the people in town. Until mental illness comes for him and he descends in to paranoia and megalomania, etc. He steals their magic holy item, the The Lamp of Paths, and hoofs it in to the jungle to some ruins where he does the usual: raises an undead army to destroy the town. The adventure goes out of its way, several times, to note that he is mentally ill. I don\u2019t know what to do with this I\u2019m down to hack down the baddie that is raising the dead to destroy the town. Am I down to do the same, with the same pragmatism, for a dude that is mentally ill? And he\u2019s trying to fucking kill you. This isn\u2019t some nuanced Cthulhu Now adventure about addiction and other complex topics. No. This is a cartoon villain. Who is that way because of mental illness. I can kill the orc babies, no problem. That\u2019s a walk in the park compared to a discussion about intent vs impacts in the role of justice and the nature of responsibility. You want to do that in your adventure? I\u2019m chill. You want a maniacal cackling villain raising the dead to take over the local village? I\u2019m chill with that. You want to do BOTH at the same time? Uh \u2026 I don\u2019t think I know what to do with that, either as a DM or as a player. You gotta pick a vibe so we can run with it. And this does NOT seem to be a piece of performance art in which we must examine our own reactions to it and how we interact with it as a commentary on how we use violence and mental illness as entertainment. It\u2019s Tuesday night at the D&D table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Onward! Dude stole the Lamp of Paths, a magic item from the temple and they want it back. The item is mentioned several times. You find the item in the last room, with him. The item barely gets a description and, as a magic item, nothing about it is detailed. I guess you give it back since it doesn\u2019t do anything? It doesn\u2019t even have a value for selling it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anyway, you follow the old road out of town. It ends. There is now FOUR MILES of jungle between you and the next encounter. There are no hints. You get to wander to find it. There is a small set of encounters in the back that help get the party back on track, but, they don\u2019t seem oriented to this part of the adventure. I have no idea how you find the place. But, also, you\u2019ll get to enjoy that wilderness encounter table with boars and harpies and the ilk for your levels ones. Oh! Oh! It\u2019s the swamp, so you\u2019r ein water. There\u2019s a disease table. It\u2019s got like eight entries or so. Only two are described at all though. It\u2019s like the delete button was accidentally pressed in the editor. I always wonder if I\u2019m missing something and like the rest are in the OSE core or something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Once you do, you\u2019re likely to find a goblin tribe first. With SIXTY fighting males. Sixty goblins. In the wilderness. Not even a cave hall to use as a choke point. I get it. You can run. But they are next to the place you need to go. I don\u2019t know, you try to parlay, I guess? There\u2019s not really anything in this adventure to help you with that except a single note that they don\u2019t like the dude either. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And this is weird. There is the ruined temple where dude is hanging out. Then there\u2019s a small ruined city nearby it, a couple of miles away. Then, the adventure notes, between the two is the lair of the goblins. But, also, there\u2019s a building there, at the lair, that was once a mercantile \u2026 with a stage? And, as for the goblin chiefs lair, there\u2019s another building: \u201cThis 2-story structure consists of stone and was the town hall of Old Cypress Keep.\u201d This same building is noted as having the chiefs treasure hoard. Which is never mentioned again The contradictions here \u2026 again, I\u2019m not sure how to interpret these things. In another place, at the old temple ruins, it tells s that if we explore the ruins to the north by vessel then we can find a waterway leading to the great river that can take us back to town. But, also, how are you exploring by vessel? I don\u2019t fucking understand this shit. And I don\u2019t know if I\u2019m missing something or something was accidentally deleted, ala the diseases perhaps, or if its just a mess. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The temple exploration, proper, with dude, is made of description such as \u201cA pungent stench fills the air of this room. This flooded area once stored ceremonial objects, fresh grains, and food\u201d or \u201cNumerous old crates and barrels litter the area of this flooded storage area.\u201d Not exactly the the height of evocative writing. Weird portions are highlighted in the text, which I think is read-aloud at points, but never mentioned again in order to expand upon. At one point we\u2019re in the main worship center, pews and the like, with an altar and a small choir stage behind it (lots of stages in this adventure?) There\u2019s a ramp down in each corner of the stage, leading underground. One is choked with rubble and plants. We then get this line: \u201cDangerous passage: Hidden among the walls and<\/p>\n\n\n\n
floor is a patch of yellow mould.\u201d Given the section heading Dangerous Passage, I would think this is the ramps down? But it can\u2019t be the rubble one? And the open one is the one the baddie uses \u2026 so it can\u2019t have the mold? So the Dangerous Passage is the entire back part of the worship area? Is that a passage? If it is I have a another complaint to lodge with the Connections editor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oh, also, in the read-aloud \u201cTwo goblin zombies scramble toward you from the back of the chamber.\u201d Well now, that\u2019s not really something to put in the read-aloud, is it? We don\u2019t know how the party got here. Also, they are not zombies when the party sees them. They look like goblins, or green dudes with open wounds or something? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The entire dungeoncrawl is completely different from the wilderness. Where the wilderness is a continual deathtrap, the dungeon crawl has a couple of zombies and some giant centipedes, culminating with the Level 4 cleric in the middle of a mental health crisis. It\u2019s empty and boring, with not much loot at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fun times!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. You get to see the wanderers, the disease table, and the dudes backstory. Quite a poor preview from the the standpoint of helping you make a purchasing decisions based on the adventure, proper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/507954\/hmg-1-the-lamp-of-paths-level-1?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you’re not power gaming when you come from the bar when it closes, then what are you doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Davidf IngleHard Marble GamesOSELevel 1 Hidden within a dangerous swamp a disturbed priest makes his ruinous plans against his former community. Will the characters be able to find him and bring him to justice before disaster strikes Cypress Keep? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9561,"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-9562","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\/507954.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9562","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=9562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9563,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9562\/revisions\/9563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}