By John Webb
Self Published
OSR/5E
Level 2
[…] Years later, a band of opportunistic brigands took shelter in the manor ruins. In the depths below, their leader, Halren Pike, discovered the dagger and fell under its influence. Compelled by its will, he now seeks out elves and half-elves, testing their blood in search of a surviving bastard heir to House Thalanor. Though the bandits themselves are not uniformly cruel, their leader’s fixation has led to kidnappings, imprisonment, and worse. Some captives are released after being “tested.” Others are not so fortunate.
This twenty page adventure uses about seven pages to present sixteen rooms, six above and the rest below, in the ruins of a manor occupied by bandits. It’s a tactical deathtrap as your small band charges in to a mesatop fortress with a lot of lookouts and bandits present. It’s a raid, with nothing going on beside that.
I dunno know. Either the designer asked for a review or it was in the OSR category trying to Puffery its way in to a few more sales. Ok, so, a long time ago there was an elf noble house that was mean to its subjects. People rise up and the lord kill himself and his family when things go south. His god is pissed at that. (So, you can be a despot and have a chill god but killing yourself and family so you won’t be taken is just a step too far.) Bandits move in a long time later. Their leader finds a dagger, cursed, that makes him test elves and half-elves by cutting them to see if they are the heirs to the elf noble house. This entire nonsense of stuff I find lame, with despotic elf nobles and the like. Man, just make them human. The whole “Demihumans are humans with pointy ears” thing is kind of lame. Where’s Jorune when you need it?
Back to this, the designer tells us, up front: “With a mere sixteen rooms, this adventure’s complexity lies not in a vast sprawl, but more so in the behavior of its inhabitants and the unpredictability of its emergent narrative. Will the party fight, bluff, negotiate, or sneak their way into the lower level? Will they seek a peaceful resolution, or simply kill all in their path? Will they rescue prisoners at the expense of time and stealth, or leave them to an unjust fate? These are the questions that must be answered, Gamemaster, over the course of play. Alas, I cannot prescribe them nor would I, even if I were so capable! “ Just to be clear, none of that really exists in any practical manner. I mean, yes, there are prisoners to rescue, but they are not really troublesome other than wanting to leave, just like all prisoners freed are. Nothing mentioned in that section is anything other than the normal course of play. Nothing special is going on. In fact, there’s a lot less special in this adventure than in most adventures. I don’t know. I guess if you play Napoleonic Miniatures and someone introduces a dungeon it might be remarkable, so, if you play D&D in hardcore 4e tactics mode then “Look! You can roleplay also!” might be interesting?
“Wood Door: AC 13, 18 Hit Points, and immunity to Poison and Psychic damage.” Oh, how I have missed this nonsense. There’s nothing funnier than then when pay-per-word padding becomes the de rigueur standard because people grow up with it. But doctor… I am Pagliacci!. And, of course, married to that are explicit illumination notes in each room. This is so dumb. I’m not sure who these things are being written for that this kind of garbage has to be included. Well, no, I guess I stated it above. It’s written for someone paying by the word. But the designer writing THIS adventure doesn’t know that. They think that’s how you write an adventure. The sins of PF Changs Pad Thai run deep. That’s not real Pad Thai, but you don’t know that. Once you have the real thing you’ll never be fooled again.
This is a frontal assault. There are nineteen bandits present, but six start not-at-home and return 10-40 minutes after the party starts fucking shit up. There’s not a super good description of the outside ruins environs, but from the map it looks like a cliff face with a landing on it ten or twenty feet up with fortress ruins on it. There’s a broad stair case up running parallel to the cliff face that then turns 90 degrees to run perpendicular to in to it. There are the remains of three watchtowers on the cliff “landing” ruins. There’s a bandit in the towers watching the approaches. There’s guard dogs sniffing shit out. The bandits have planted shriekers on the “unused” cliff edges as an alarm bell. There’s also a patrolling bandit, watching specifically the approach of the stairs, walking along the cliffside it is on looking for intruders. I’m afraid this is a tough nut to crack, even for my “burn it down and reroute the river method of murder-hoboing. There is a 10% chance a guard is asleep. Yeah? And, there is a secret door in. Right in playing view of all of the guards, on the stair landing where it turns 90 degrees. You gonna have to search for it and then make a history check at DC14 to recall the password. I don’t see how you do this under the guards’ noses. This all seems a bit much at level two. Well, for anything other than a pitched battle. Which is fine, but, it looks like a death trap to me with that approach. You could silence the shriekers … if you knew about them? And had access to level two spells? The secret door doesn’t seem reasonable. I guess that leaves bluffing your way to the top? I don’t know man. This feels like a hack … with the odds stacked against the party.
Inside it’s more of a hack, although not quite in the same “its a trap!” set up. There IS a curse you can break. You need to make an offering to a goddess of the correct type. Then commune with here. Then make a DC14 check. Then you’ll get a scroll that of remove curse. Then you gotta figure out that there IS a curse on the bandit leader and use the scroll. Yeah! Now they are just a normal group of bandits instead of a group of bandits that also “test” elves and half-elves by cutting them. Uh. Ok? Or, just stab the bandits? Oh no! The bloodthirsty demon has acne! Good thing you have him some zit creme, now he can get on with his reign of terror AND look good for his portraits!
None of this shit makes much sense, and, it’s just a hack. I have no idea why it is in the OSR section of DriveThru. Usually that means Shadowdark, but not this one. I mean, it’s basically just a 4e adventure. And you KNOW that’s not a compliment. More minis combat min-maxing then RPG.
This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview gets you eight real pages, including some keys. Good preview.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/564113/the-ruins-of-manor-thalanor?1892600