{"id":9779,"date":"2025-05-24T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-05-24T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9779"},"modified":"2025-05-11T08:41:37","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T12:41:37","slug":"the-tower-of-10000-floors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9779","title":{"rendered":"The Tower of 10,000 Floors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Play The Pulp Productions
Generic\/Universal<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A quick minidungeon, visit a few floors of the mad wizards tower. OSR-system neutral. My first dungeon, made mostly to practice Dungeondraft and dungeon design.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This thirteen page adventure presents thirteen floors of a wizards tower, one per page. It\u2019s one set-piece\/mystery per simple floor in this, with the focus appearing to be on the dungeon map rather than the encounter proper. And, the usual abstracted problem with the Generic\/Universal crowd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m still bitter about the Nystul thing, so I\u2019m reviewing this. Plus, our nameless designer wanted to practice dungeon design, so, maybe we can catch this one before more mistakes are made. This has twelve pages with a dungeon level on each page. Most of the levels are a single room or perhaps one main room with a couple of closet-like rooms on it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wizards tower has about a hundred levels above ground. One the top two and the first floor are described (as three of the ten thousand) with the rest being noted as looted and full of junk. TThen the rest of the levels presented are underground. A few are connected to each other with stairs, but other are reachable only by major portal, with the ever popular \u201cput the magic jem in the portal to go through the magic gate\u201d thing going on. Each level\/room is, essentially, a set-piece. You\u2019re going to be doing one thing on that level\/room, generally. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We can start with the most obvious of things: the pdf proper. It\u2019s thirteen pages long. And it\u2019s 171mb. It runs\/pages like frozen molasses on my PC. This shouldn\u2019t happen. You\u2019ve got to get the page resolution down to an appropriate level. Nothing here requires an overly large resolution. It\u2019s a very simple background, a paragraph or two of text on page, and a very simple dungeon map. The map does have some features on it, like a bed or a piano or such, but it\u2019s nothing that would require the 171mb tha the PDF is. Which make navigating the PDF a major pain in the ass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is also a generic\/universal adventure, and it shows. It\u2019s seems a truth, universally acknowledged, that a generic\/universal adventure will be afraid of its own shadow. SPecifically, it will abstract descriptions and content. I don\u2019t know why this is. If someone writes one then they immediately seem to switch in to some mode where they are afraid to actually describe something. \u201cThere is a treasure behind the bookcase.\u201d What is the treasure? It\u2019s up to you to put it in. There is a monster in the shed. What does the monster look like? It\u2019s a beast. And yet specificity is the soul of the narrative. But there is little here. You have to fucking describe shit. You need to be concrete. You can still be generic\/universal, that\u2019s just the stats. But put int the fucking treasure. Describe the monsters. Make us see and visualize them in our minds eye. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I note, also, that we DO get stats for the beasties, so, not generic\/universal after all. It would be far, far better to stat something for OSE or Labyrinth Lord and then label it generic universal than to just make up some system. T$R is dead. Long live Dancey and the OGL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The overall adventure design seems to be derided from the crpg market. There is a lot of \u201cfind the green gem to activate the green portal\u201d sort of thing. It\u2019s based on linear design principals. You are blocked and can go no further up\/down, until you can activate the glowing COLOR portal. And, then, on each level, some sort of challenge to overcome. Oh no! Spinning blades! Oh no, living statues! Oh, no, an indescribable beast! Defest the obstacle, get the gem, go to the next floor through the portal. This is then combined with a weird power level thing. You\u2019ll fight some 1HD skeletons. After you fight the 66HP Indescribable Beast. The power levels of the critters are just all over place, with little progression. And, of course, it\u2019s all linear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is, perhaps, the best written of the rooms \u201cThe memory of death looms heavily on this floor, the screams still echoing through the walls.Taunts and threats can be heard from the guillotine.If approached, he will mockingly introduce himself as Murray, ordering the players to return him to his body,so he can continue his evil conquest.\u201d We\u2019ll ignore the Memory of death nonsense. The screams and taunts of the guillotine remind you, I\u2019m sure, of every french revolution scene you\u2019ve ever seen. Thats good. This reference helps brings to bear more than the written word can convey alone. And, that\u2019s about it. Otherwise, the descriptions are pretty padded out, what there is of them, with little evocative text.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You got maps made and text attached to them and got it listed on DriveThru. That\u2019s all a great accomplishment in the mechanics ot dungeon design and publishing. Now, for the art of writing and design \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/521517\/the-tower-of-10-000-floors?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Play The Pulp ProductionsGeneric\/Universal A quick minidungeon, visit a few floors of the mad wizards tower. OSR-system neutral. My first dungeon, made mostly to practice Dungeondraft and dungeon design. This thirteen page adventure presents thirteen floors of a wizards … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9778,"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-9779","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\/05\/10000.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779","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=9779"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9780,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9779\/revisions\/9780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}