{"id":9910,"date":"2025-08-09T07:02:28","date_gmt":"2025-08-09T11:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9910"},"modified":"2025-07-24T07:03:38","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T11:03:38","slug":"milk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9910","title":{"rendered":"Milk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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by Vasili Kaliman
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-4<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
IN THE CAVERNOUS DEPTHS of a mountain lies a lake of pure milk, inhabited by a tribe of peaceful merfolk. Their king and queen, aided by dwarf servants, use the milk to manufacture the most exquisite chocolate truffles in existence. The truffles are said to be so delicious as to soften even the most hardened of hearts. People from all over the world visit the lake to buy these irresistible creations. Recently, truffle production has mysteriously ceased, the dwarves have disappeared, and in nearby cities, scores of disreputable merchants have begun hawking<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This sixteen page adventure features seventeen rooms in a merfolk chocolate factory where candy and chocolate golems are made by dwarves. That has been taken over by Willy Wonka. And her skeleton servants and apprentices. A simple stabby adventure, easy to run, with an odious premise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I guess I start with the Castle Greyhawk warning. I hate Castle Greyhawk. It is, perhaps, the first real betrayal in my life. Anything resembling Castle Greyhawk is going to not be met favorably by me. Independent of that, I don\u2019t think comedy works in D&D. Or, perhaps, if you write for comedy its going to come off badly, while certain situations can get a pass. The comedy inherent in the way, say Gamma World 1\/2e was run vs the way Gamma World 4e was presented. Front and Center doesn\u2019t work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Merfolk live in a mountain that produces milk. They use the milk to make delicious chocolate truffles. With the aid of their dwarf friends, which have \u201cOrange skin, green hair, and white eyebrows.\u201d Not the only time there will be an appeal to Wonka in this adventure. Augustus Gloop shows up and takes the place over, there are chocolate golems and her apprentices and her skeletons who sing and dance and, most of all, now the chocolate is bad. (And by bad I\u2019m sure the designer means that while they are cost optimized for a certain quality level and yet the pricing does not reflect this. Otherwise is to suggest that only the rich and powerful get access to chocolate, except, perhaps, when the merfolk dole out a bit to the general populace on the charity day they use to assuage their consciousness to tell themselves they are good people? A McDonald’s Cheeseburger is good at $.59 and bad at $6.) So, it\u2019s a Willy Wonka adventure with merfolk, oompa-loompa dwarves, singing and dancing skeletons, and that kind of shit. I find this tone enormously offputting, but, I know (and have suffered through) many a local game in which the DM\/friends loved it. Easier to play off a bad game as \u2018just for fun!\u2019, is my theory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Map is fine. The monsters are on it. The formatting is clear. It\u2019s not the standard OSE ultra-terse keyword style, so, haters of that format will need to find something else to hate. \u201cLibrary: A humid and stuffy cave with a 20? ceiling hung with long, jagged stalactites. Bookcases <\/strong>line much of the western wall. A hefty tome<\/strong> sits on a polished wooden lectern near the doorway.\u201d A room name to start to frame whats to come, a decent but short description (which I wish were more evocative, but, it\u2019s fine) and then some bolded keywords that are followed up in sections below. Good format. Appropriate bolding to highlight things. It doesn\u2019t look at all like a rigorous railroad format, but that what needs to be done in the moment is done to bring clarity \u2026 in a generally consistent way. Which is perhaps the highest praise one can give with regard to formatting and layout and organization. \u2018I follow some standards but I break them when it doesn\u2019t make sense. Monsters all get descriptions right up front, instead of backstory and ecology and shit. This is how it should be. If I\u2019m running the fuckign adventure I need to know what the things looks like RIGHT NOW. \u201cHuman magic-users clad in purple robes embroidered with a symbol of the Chocolatier’s trading house. Carry lanterns for light.\u201d We\u2019re not winning awards here, but, also, you don\u2019t need to win an award with your evocative writing it just needs to be good enough. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The adventure is mostly fighting. The first five rooms are \u201cpublic\u201d and you can nose your way through them. Then we switch to \u201cyou\u2019re not supposed to be here!\u201d with some occasional freeing of prisoners or talking to the merfolk king or freeing the merfolk queen. A couple of traps, maybe you eat some magic chocolate, but, mostly, you are fighting things. \u201cLit by chocolate candles in iron candelabras, flickering with a warm glow. 5 skeletons are engaged in a musical performance, merrily singing and playing instruments around an 8? solid chocolate mermaid statue.\u201d So, stab some skeletons, stab some dwarves, stab some apprentices, stab some golems, stab Wonka. It\u2019s a lair adventure except it has seventeen rooms. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not enthused about this one. Yeah, the tone is a turn off for me, so, maybe thats coloring my opinion too much. But the thing is a little too straight forward for me. The writing just not decent enough, the situations (if anything could be called a situation \u2026) not interesting enough. No real order of battle for the apprentices. Yeah, formatting is great, but, in 2025, I\u2019m gonna need just a little bit more. So, it gets a 6.99999999999999. It\u2019s fine, and if you\u2019re ok with the tone and just want stabbing then it doesn\u2019t offend. Bleh. It\u2019s bland. Bland with, perhaps, a veneer of trying to hard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
.This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages. It shows you the intro and about eight dungeon rooms. More than enough to make a judgement call on the adventure, so, great preview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/530085\/quick-delve-1-milk?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Vasili KalimanNecrotic GnomeOSELevels 2-4 IN THE CAVERNOUS DEPTHS of a mountain lies a lake of pure milk, inhabited by a tribe of peaceful merfolk. Their king and queen, aided by dwarf servants, use the milk to manufacture the most … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9907,"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-9910","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\/07\/milk.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910","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=9910"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9911,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9910\/revisions\/9911"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}