{"id":9947,"date":"2025-08-30T07:11:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9947"},"modified":"2025-08-10T18:37:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-10T22:37:07","slug":"brink-of-calamity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/?p=9947","title":{"rendered":"Brink of Calamity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Trent Smith
Storm Fetish Productions
1e
Levels 1-6<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The town of Warnell, straddling a trade route that crosses two great forests, seems at first like any other backwater on the borderland of civilization, but menace and mystery lurk beneath the surface: a rash of disappearances from the shanties outside the town walls, a ruthless drug cartel operating with impunity while the town watch are powerless to stop them, and marauding bands of brigands and slavers ravaging the countryside. Rumors point would-be heroes and fortune seekers to the enigmatic sanatorium and casino outside of town that draw strange and wealthy travelers from far-away lands, to the abandoned (and reportedly haunted or cursed) old salt mines, to a remote mist-shrouded logging camp with an unsavory reputation, and deep into the trackless primeval forest where the xenophobic elves have forbidden all trespassers. While these locations likely hold death and destruction for the careless and foolhardy, they may also hold the keys to drawing this afflicted town and its hapless inhabitants away from the brink of calamity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This 180 page supplement describes a region with a couple of dungeons, towns, bandit lairs, eleven woods and such to have adventures in. There is design behind it, which has always been a rare thing to see and is always wonderful to see. It is dense, vanilla, deep, and pig-headed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why was this published?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It obviously took a lot of time and effort. There\u2019s a cover. A credits page. Art has been inserted. So, it was obviously meant for other people to look at, not just personal notes. Is it an appeal to the ego? To have people say \u201cMan, that dude, he knows what he\u2019s doing!\u201d I\u2019m sure some people will say that. Here\u2019s some quotes from Dragonsfoot: \u201cLooks cool. \u201c, \u201cCheers!\u201d \u201cWow! Sold!\u201d, \u201cWhat he said!\u201d \u201cIt looks nice!\u201d \u201cSweet! I\u2019m interested in the print version!\u201d \u201cLooks neat! Printed copy for me!\u201d That\u2019s not for this adventure, that\u2019s for Into the Mite Lair, a dreadful adventure. But fear not, I\u2019m sure the same people will say the same thing about this adventure. So, again, why was this published? For people to use? From the intro: \u201cBe advised that, contrary to contemporary fashion, this adventure is not designed to be run with minimal or zero preparation by the GM. The expectation rather is that the prospective GM will take the time to read and study the entire thing, or at least the appropriate chapter, and take notes as needed to help familiarize yourself with the material and how all of its pieces relate to each other to form a complete tapestry.\u201d A well designed adventure, with depth, is not mutually exclusive with easy to run. I\u2019m not blind, I know what the meme is. \u201cBrycey Bryce only likes those zero prep adventures.\u201d This is absurd. But, also, it is absolutely true that the number one complaint is that adventures are hard to run. There is no \u201cmodern fashion in easy to run adventures\u201d, as my continual rants will prove out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
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That\u2019s my bookshelf. You see that big stack of shit on top of Arabian Knights? A complete set of Federation & Empire expansions, to complement the main box next to Der Untergang von Pompeji. The core rulebook alone is 166 pages of dense type that compares to the bible or a dictionary. The base game takes weeks to play and dominates an OVERSIZED table, with other tables serving as support, with thousands of counters. It\u2019s never going to get played. This is no Acaeum collection, waiting to be pulped by my kids when I die. With the exception of F&E. Six\u00a0 months in this has generated little to no buzz almost certainly because of the barrier to entry. The fuckwits will chime in about now with some anecdotal examples, but I stand by my statement. This SHOULD be the new home base, the new general environment from which adventures spring. But it\u2019s not going to be. Because SOMEONE decided that their strict condemnation of a fucking MEME was more important than people enjoying this during play. You\u2019re damn right I\u2019m fucking angry. Because this is a good adventure.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Parts of this have been published before, I believe. Melonath Falls I\u2019ve reviewed before and one of the other parts seems familiar although I see no mention in previous reviews. Essentially you\u2019ve got a small region with a town, a couple of dungeons interconnected, a wilderness to explore, and a spa\/casino rife for some infiltration. No, it\u2019s not a magical ren faire vibe, it kind of fits in to a Road to Wellville kind of thing. The way to think of this, I think, is a base to operate from while you explore Other Adventures. In your downtime things will pop up as you interact with the folks and places in this setting. And that will lead to more intrigue, forays in to the dungeons and spa\/casino, and journeys through the woods, where you slowly become entangled in the things going on in this adventure setting. It is rich, interconnected and deep, none of it being in your face but all of it available. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A great deal of this drop in comes from the more vanilla vibe of this, combined with a kind of seediness. A kind of underground thug thieves guild, drugs (or the black lotus variety! A great appeal to the classics!), slaves, streetwalkers and gangs of children on the streets. RIval guards. The core of this is solidly in the human-centric approach to a base, punctuated with just slightly off humanoids: bullywugs, xvarts, some fox-people (in a non-odious way) and so on. Just enough to add some freshness to the creature encounters while still anchoring things solidly in bandits, thieves, and scoundrels. The Taggart Gang. The Golarossa Brigands (although I would rename them to the Gorarossa Free Rangers or something like that.) Intrigue is here, if you just open your eyes \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The writing is generally straightforward and is at its best when Trent is adding just a flourish that grounds the encounter in such a way that the DM can riff off of it easily. Age and eye color and cloaks are no match for \u201cone Erasmus Prokilios, an owlish, perpetually-bothered middle-aged man who is seemingly always carrying a large sheaf of papers and much too busy to be bothered by anything of less than existential urgency.\u201d That\u2019s an NPC you know how to run, a sentence that cuts through all of the noise; you need nothing more about him to run with it. That\u2019s when he\u2019s at his best at descriptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mostly, though, you\u2019re going to get VERY in depth and detailed descriptions of things. Unlike a lot of adventure, a lot of the description here is to a purpose. If you pay attention you can learn things. ABout people. About places, and the descriptions, lng though tey are, are the cornerstone of this. It\u2019s design, where things at this locale and a different one and different one add up to a larger picture and allow the smart party to figure things out. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And smart you will need to be. Seventeen giant rats. Eleven wolves. These encounters are not for the meek. You\u2019ll need your experienced players showing up to handle this, The deck isn\u2019t stacked against them (with a single exception), it\u2019s all coming from the neutral judge style in which difficulties are explained and then the party set loose to run their zany schemes to overcome them. That single exception is the casino, where magic columns, stone golems, and a captured daemon all protect the casino and vault. I get it, but, also, this is the one area in the adventure in which this kind of shit appears and I would have preferred a more solidly human\/normal grounding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An example? Hey, you know all of those times you explored a mine? How many times has the designer put in rules for undermining a support beam? Never? Well Trent covers it. Clearly, a reaction to playtesting, this is the kind of thing that abounds in this adventure. Detail. Mostly aimed at what you can see were actual play. Which is how it should be. A fucking dock takes, what? A page? A column? Yet it is key to understanding a piece of what is going, for a clever party who is paying attention. \u201cThe strongbox is trapped with a needle that will prick the finger of anyone who attempts to force or pick the lock, who must then save vs. poison or the hand struck will swell up and become red and will be useless for one week.\u201d Excellent!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I want to call out, in particular, the handling of the woods in this. The wilderness environment is one of the better ones, with the elves in it being maybe the best implementation I\u2019ve seen. There\u2019s a black dragon in the wilderness (I love black dragons. I don\u2019t know why? They just seem to fit so much better than other types? A byproduct of DL1 conditioning maybe?) We\u2019ve got all sort of magical creatures, dryads, and so on that fit in well. And elf communities. With a way to contact them. Maybe. Standoffish. Ready to fill you full of arrows. And then a corrupted elf settlement, with corrupted dryad and a fungus that works REALLY well together. The whole vibe of the elves in this is great. Not the super-powered problem-solvers we think of them from LoTR, but more isolated, coming though well, without being asshole xenophones. (Just , I don\u2019t know, Appalachian standoffish?) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The wanderers in this are great. Clearly influenced by the 1e DMG, they get little paragraphs that give some guidance for the DM to riff on. Hookers who are in with the waifs. You know how ACKS tried to do a whole econ\/larger game world thing? This delivers in the solid 1e style that I\u2019ve seen only a handful of times. No sages in this town! No seafarers, unless they are on their way somewhere else. Because the book says there might be sages, Trent is clarifying. Training and trainers, how many times have you seen that mentioned in relation to a home base? Well it\u2019s fucking here. Because that\u2019s 1e. This is more 1e than anything T$R every put out. Not the bullshit petty arguments over minutia or stodginess that reigns online, but 1e, the way it was meant to be. The SPIRIT of 1e oozes out of this, so much so that even my Skull Mountain OD&D lair needs to check to make sure its door is locked lest its owner be tempted by the Harlots table. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The issues with this adventure are too numerous to list. Monster reactions are in their rooms rather than in the rooms they would react to. The hex map, in particular, is quite hard to read. I get the barrier to entry the digital tools present, but that thing needs cleaned up. The adventure is low on WONDER. I\u2019m all for gonzo, but it needs to be anchored in the mundane, and this runs as much to the mundane as possible while still having dragons and the like in it. You\u2019re just not gonna get the weirdness that punctuates the more grounded 1e adventures from T$R. I\u2019m not even sure weirdness is the best right term. Specials? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The major issue here is going to be the DMs ability to run this. I am opposed to the DM making major efforts to run an adventure, particular with highlighters and notes. And that\u2019s just not possible here. This is dense and obtuse. On purpose. As I think back, I recall an index of major NPC names and a little brief section on which areas are appropriate for which levels. That may be the only assistance you\u2019re getting. And this extends to section headings. I\u2019m looking right now at the Government & Law section There are long sections of text punctuated by a NPC stat block. What you need to infer from this is the part of the city that person runs is detailed above their stat block. Like, write about a column of text, stick in a stat block, write a couple more paragraphs, stick in a stat block for an NPC and so on. From this you need to pull out that NPC is head of the forces detailed in that block section above them. No headings. No bolding. Just a giant blob of text. I\u2019m not sure how throwing in a section title of \u201cCity Guard\u201d or \u201cNight Patrol\u201d somehow undermines the clarity of vision that went in to this. The writing is not conversation and is not all useless, the closest example maybe being the writing in Tharizdun? Except much longer chunks. I\u2019m not going to insult Trent and tell him he needs an editor, challenges to authorial vision and all that. But it does need to be trimmed, with more focus, without losing the sections of depth he\u2019s provided. More section headings, a better section on how the adventure works together, and so on. In a perfect world we\u2019d see more use of indents and bolding to help focus the text and the DMs attention where they need it. This is not a dumbing down of the adventure or an appeal to zero-prep. The only person who can hold a 180 page adventure in their head is the designer, proper. You like Guy, yeah? He\u2019s got a series of articles on layout. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The binders to the right of Dungeonquest is what I run my games from. The books to the left of Arabian Nights are the D&D supplements I have in print. Some of them are also obtuse. But they ALL get used; that\u2019s why I have them in print and that\u2019s why there are so few of them. My fear, my great fear, is that people will get this and then NOT use it. And the fault is not on them because they choose to not make their entire personality Running Brink of Calamity. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would champion the fuck out of a Deluxe Edition Kickstarter that kept the depth while trimming it and making it more usable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is $15 at DriveThru. The preview shows you some dungeon pages, and is probably a good preview for those sections. Mayhap a little misleading on the other sections though. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
https:\/\/www.drivethrurpg.com\/en\/product\/508460\/brink-of-calamity?1892600<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sorry to do this to you Trent, it\u2019s unfair.  I\u2019d love to clarify my points more but I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m able to. The reviews may be coming out a little slower. I\u2019m still here but not at my best. Essentially every spare part that was inside my body is no longer there; if you can live without it then I don\u2019t have it anymore. (Including a fucking molar? I went in WITHOUT any cracked teeth and came out with a cracked #31 for the Endodontist to refuse and send me to the in hospital oral surgeon!? Yeah, nothing happened, sure thing.) I\u2019m going to try and use this time to cover some of the longer adventures that have built up on my Wishlist. I usually take about two days to do a thirty or so page adventure, with a longer one in progress as time permits. I\u2019m going to switch to covering some of the longer ones, so you should expect things to come out a little slower until I recover from my System Shock roll. Not to worry, I got a +50 on multiple rolls of the Harlot table and have been giving generously to the Temple in Corinth for years; I\u2019m well taken care of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Trent SmithStorm Fetish Productions1eLevels 1-6 The town of Warnell, straddling a trade route that crosses two great forests, seems at first like any other backwater on the borderland of civilization, but menace and mystery lurk beneath the surface: a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-no-regerts","category-reviews"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/calam.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947","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=9947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9949,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9947\/revisions\/9949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tenfootpole.org\/ironspike\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}