Ten Foot Pole

By Drew Collins
Living Past Games
B/X
Levels 2-4

Below the silver mines of Eisenstead, an underground structure was just uncovered. Something killed the mining crew; now the mines are closed, costing the crown a fortune every day. A powerful wizard is en route to resolve the crisis… but until he arrives, there’s an opportunity for some brave or desperate nobodies to find their fortunes and make a name for themselves.

This 48 page adventure uses about 27 pages to describe a three level dungeon with about seventy rooms. All three levels play different from each other, with a decent amount of interactivity. This is supplemented by town events and writing style which is not overly terrible. It FEELS a little devoid of joy because of that, but I don’t think it is. A nice little romp in a dungeon!

I see a lot of garbage adventures and I think I go pretty easy on them. Then I see something that JUST misses the mark and suddenly I’m ripping it apart. I suspect that I see the potential, an understanding of what makes a decent D&D game and thus I am picking apart the aspects, and nits, that are preventing it from being a rock star level adventure. 

This adventure is doing something with, oh, the context in which the adventure is taking place let’s call it. Sometimes this kind of shows up in adventures as events in town, or a dungeon with Situations instead of just encounters. That context, not overwrought, lets us turn Palace of the Vampire Queen in to more than just a series of encounters. If an adventure is well written then you can add this context in some terse statements. In this adventure we have a basic setup. Silver miners found a brick wall, broke through, and a bunch of them got slaughtered. Now there’s no more silver coming out of the mine. What do we do about this? We’ve seen a set up like this a thousand thousand times. The town has a Mr Victor Smalls running the mine on behalf of the king. Oh, wait, no, Victor smalls JUNIOR. His dad was a dick, he’s determined to do better, and is now bogged down in bitterness and ruthlessness. Jesus man, talk about the cycle of violence. I fucking love it. But wait! In three days some mercenaries show up in town, a rival party. Who can ally with any enemies the party have made by then. Or get hired by Victor. There’s a wedding in town on day six. Also, the bride has tossed an engagement ring. And drama about the chick marrying a common miner, someone lower class than her. And a debt collector showing up to hassle the tavern owner who is therefore motivated to keep the inn and mine open.. And, then, on day nine, Hector Thriangulum, a ninth level wizard, shows up with a group of level 4-7 fighters, he cordons off the mine, and starts raiding, sent by the king to sort the fucking mess out. This is a huge amount going on back in town, at the home base. Deadlines. Motivations. Rivals. All related to the mine. All supplementing the choices the party makes in the mine. This is excellent. Think of the push your luck elements in D&D. The wandering monster table. Resource consumption in the adventure. Driving the adventure forward. Go! Go! Go! Or suffer. And, the events back in town, the context in which the adventure is taking place, supplements this. Driving the party forward. Providing reactions and actions to their choices in the mines. 

And then the mine, proper. Or, rather, the dungeon under the mine, through the brick wall. We’ve got a drop down situation, with ropes through the ceiling. All three levels are distinctly different vibes. The first level has 12 HD golem roaming around, a blind one. This is what slaughtered the miners, if they made noise. Which questioning the one survivor back in town would give a slight hint to. All he knows is that he cowered in the corner with his eyes closed and when he opened them it was gone and his friends were torn apart. The party isn’t told, but is only hinted at. Note that it’s 12 HD. This isnt a monster as much as a puzzle. Every time you penetrate the dungeon you’re going to have to deal with this first level and the fucking golem. Back and forth, up and down. Making things harder are Torment And False Hope, some illusionary creatures who are interacting with the party on what is mostly a dead level, with things to discover and poke at. It was a prison, and they were interrogators. Man, False Hope as an interrogation technique? This thing is hitting close to home. But it’s not the usual magical prison garbage. So, level one, explore and avoid the golem, each time you’re here.

Levels two has kobolds and mushroom people  engaged in a struggle for control, with some gnomes, the original dungeon inhabitants, having returned to try to reclaim it also. Almost everyone here talks to the party. They have goals, wiping out the others, etc. Thus, some social play, with alliances, and then pitched battles. And then level three, the domain of the kobolds and their leader: a dragon. Who is not a dragon anymore but a  nine HD hive creature. Oops, I guess thats why there’s a bee reference here and there in the adventure, for those who were paying attention. DId you make friends on level two? Are they gonna help you on level three? Are they gonna help you when you all find 250,000 silver pieces, and all the other loot, in the literal dragons hoard? Or are all bets off? Do you have to drag it out again past that 14HD golem, or did you find a solution … some of which are in the dungeon for those paying attention. The adventure is constructed. Things in one area could, explicitly or implicitly, be used to solve problems elsewhere. Situations abound, in addition to whatever the specifics are in the room you are in. Good fucking job.

In addition to these larger situations there are some things going on in the dungeon beyond combat and social. Traps, puzzles and so on. Things for the party to figure out, which EVERY party loves. I swear to god, if you let them figure out 1+1=2 then they will be thrilled. Every single party. Every time. 

To the Bitchmobile boy wonder! 

Keys do tend to be long and use a formatting style which I think detracts from the overall effects of the rooms. This extends to the town encounters as well as the dungeon rooms. There’s this attempt to organize well but I think it causes a kind of wall of text effects and the overall impact is a set of kind of glazed over eyes. It’s using a kind of bullet point style exclusively for all text, with supplemental bolded text and nesting of bullets. This makes the entire thing more than a little busy. I suspect a more traditional opening paragraph overview combined with bolded bullets later with more information would have worked better. There are weird implications to the style chosen, like important things almost a column away from the room start because there was, say, a desk in the middle that got eight bullet sentences inset. EVENTUAL:LY yu drop down to the green parrot head on the wall, or some such. 

Things get a little long, superfluous things get included, I think the effects is exaggerated because the format/layout styles chosen. It’s organized, but, also, its a pain in the ass. Also, I think it robs the rooms, areas, and people of their charm. There’s no opportunity to build up a room because of the way nested bullet points work. The net effect is a certain amount of dryness that comes through. It doesn’t seem to have that joy of life that good room entries have. Further, the selected style, of the various intrigues being in their own entries rather than, say, up front and summarized, doesn’t really put things together well. It’s as if you are hunting all over the place to get the entire story. We could, I think, combine this with a few other obvious things missing, such as perhaps an OOB for the final level and/or some general outlines, a sentence or two, for things happening on level two, generally, as the four or five groups, the kobolds, the mushroom men, the gnomes, the party, and potentially the other party, try to work their designs. Just a sentence or two, much as it did in the town and in other areas.

I think this is a pretty remarkable adventure. The town is a good supportive town. The three dungeon levels vary wildly, and the overall design of how they work together is pretty good. Notes and a highlighter can only take you so far though in saving something. The formatting, combined with SOME padding, and a kind of malaise in the room descriptive text really sucks the enthusiasm out of the room. Drew has done a good job here, especially for a first adventure. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is 22 pages and shows you a lot of the encounters. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/584747/the-hive-under-eisenstead?1892600

By Nate Treme
Highland Paranormal Society
OSR
Levels 1-2

The valley is a remote region in the shadows of the Dogtooth mountains—colloquially ‘the Dogteeth.’ While the Dogtooth Outpost is a relatively new settlement, some older civilizations’ ruins are scattered about the region. The Outpost is intended as a starting point players venture out from. Perhaps they are locals, passing travelers, or recent arrivals seeking work. They could have been sent to investigate the graverobbing or put a stop to the Coyote banditry.

This 24 page digest adventure describes six hexes, most with a six room dungeon in them. It;s cutesy and devoid of anything that could resemble a well put together modern dungeon.

Them’s fighting words! Indeed. We’re going to an Italian restaurant! Uh. Ok. Like, a pasta one or a seafood one or a meat one or like something else? We’re going camping! Uh, ilke, in a 53 foot long Rv parked in the middle of football field two feet away from another one or are we backpacking in a day and a half and then a day and a half back, uphill both ways? (Thanks, new Hampshire!) It’s a D&D adventure! Ok, uh, like, Mork Borg or Harn or …? There is absolutely nothing in the marketing of this adventure that would indicate its, shall we say, fanciful nature. In fact, I would suggest that the marketing page for it on DriveThru seems to indicate it’s a more realistic version of a D&D world, Harn or C&C or maybe even Greyhawk. The System is just ‘OSR’, so no hint there of anything amiss.

I got two complaints. Well, I got a lot of complaints but two central ones. The first, as I’m alluding to, is that this is kind of a bait and switch marketing. On purpose? Meh, maybe not. But, the adventure has this on the wandering monster table “Bakery drawn by a giant beetle. An old woman sells muffins and scones. Guarded by 3 orangutans.” And it’s VERY turtle forward. Or tortoise. Whatever; same thing in the soup pot. 20% of the wandering monster table is turtle related. The inn in town is the Tipsy Turtle. There’s a giant zombie tortoise in a dungeon. Theres more. The town has a couple of farms, a tavern, a general store and a post office. Hmmm. That’s interesting. A post office. Taking these together, the turtles, the post office, the mobile beatle barley with orangs, this tells us something about the game world. And I think we all know that this is not C&C or Harn. This is one of those indie OSR game worlds where anything goes. And that’s ok. Except, the marketing doesn’t tell us that’s what I’m about to pay twelve dollars for. Showing me a photo of a $12 hamburger and then serving me a bowl of 12 soup is likely not going to go over well.I’m going to assume this is not a bait & switch and it’s just a mistake. If you’re adventure is set in 6th century rome and you then you probably need to disclose that, If you need a space faring D&D ship for the adventure then you should probably disclose that. You’ve got to give a potential customer SOME idea of what they are about to buy. You can’t put a hello kitty (mother fucker! I wanted that Batz rodan figure!) DVD is a poirot box and sell it and not expect complaints.

This is not my preferred setting. It’s ok if you like it, of course, but I know that’s not really what I’m looking for in an adventuring world, just as I avoid story games and 4e adventures. But that don’t mean that you don’t deserve a good adventure. And this ain’t that.

The core of this is going to be the five one page dungeons, with about six rooms in each dungeon. IE: what can fit on a page. The first dungeon has a solid hook in town; three graves have been dug up and a paint trail leads away. Why paint? Why, because the necromancer is a painter of course. Anyway, after that first thing the other hexes have some vague rumors in town but nothing really linking them to anything going on. It is aimless 

And then the dungeon descriptions. “Ash Urns. Three large ash-packed urns.” or “Magma melted through the North wall. 1d6 stone ogres lounge in the magma pool.” or “Workshop. A massive anvil, a hammer, calipers and an iron boar-faced shield.” So we’re talking about very minimal room descriptions. There’s an overall, blandness? Aimlessness? Going on. For while it attempts to pump things up with some wacky rooms things, like a “is it cake?” room, or the bad painter necromancer, or the mobile beatle/orang bakery, it’s not really doing anything besides providing that basic wackiness. So, solve a beard length puzzle to lower a bridge, or Is It Cake trap, or a room that does 1d6 damage every turn with an obvious magic item in it. Conceptually it;s ok. But the room descriptions are a little lacking for single/two sentence entries. And with very little to tie them together, or to care about, combined with the small size of the dungeons, it just feels off. There’s no feeling of tension in the adventure. No one really seems to care about anything. Yeah, you can fall in to lava, or need to lower a bridge, but even then the room doesn’t FEEL dangerous. The whole thing just feels BLEH.

Combine this with an emphasis on the room, singular, not tied in to the larger dungeon or setting. A room tells us “A band of three skeletons play a sloppy waltz on drum, guitar and trumpet.” It’s as if this rooms exists in isolation, the sound anyway. Sure. there’s a necromancer and they are quirky. But, the sound carrying in to the next room, or rooms away, builds tension and thats something that the designer should be leaning in to , helping the DM do the same for the impact on the party/players. 

It’s a cutesy setting and it lacks the tension, the feeling of risk, that needs to be present to make the game come alive. It’s in it for the lolz.

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. There is one page of relevant text, the last one, which shows the wandering monster table. From that you’re going to have to determine the idiosyncratic setting. It needed to, perhaps, show an entire dungeons encounters. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/586786/dogtooth-valley?1892600

By Todd Leback
Third Kingdom Games
B/X
Levels 1-3

[…] The pair had left behind a small garrison at their fortress, led by their faithful steward, Tercy One-eye, with instructions to guard their domain and await their imminent return. Weeks turned to months, and months to years, and the pair did not re- turn. In that time, Tercy and the squad of garrisoned troops began to experiment with the magical pools that Zoridror

maintained within the fortress, drinking from one and then an- other and marveling at the strange effects they produced. Alas, the magic drove them mad, and now Tercy rules what parts of the fortress he can claim, lording over the remaining garrison who have been reduced to rage-filled berserkers.

This seventy page adventure details a three level dungeon with about sixty locations based around B1: In Search of the Unknown. It has a lot of classic elements and, even better, know how to use them to create an exploratory environment. Full of color and interactivity it is also, as the page count indicates, padded out to an abnormal degree. A decent adventure if you wish to wade through the text.

There are adventures that really stand out. You’re excited to run them, they are full of interactivity in multiple ways, the locales come alive, All you want to do is hire some dudes at the bar and GO. Then there are the journeyman adventures, pretty good but just really not grabbing you. Then there’s the loathsome money grab adventure, the waste of space adventures, and the They Tried adventures, and the Meh I Guess it’s fine adventures. This adventure belongs to somewhat a rare category. The designer knows how D&D works. They know what elements are needed for a good dungeon. They also have, I think, developed few frustrations with running others work at the table. And I’m gonna botch about that ?

This adventure is based around B1. It’ the first of several and it wants to turn the B1 backstory in to a larger campaign, so after exploring the dungeon the next adventure is going in search of the two missing adventurers in the land of barbarians, returning to their dungeon to explore further, and beating back the hordes of barbarians. And it all starts here, with this reimagined B1. Which as none of the tables from B1, so, no worries about that. This is a fully developed two level dungeon with an above ground area also. The barbarians and henchmen The Bros left behind have devolved a bit and then been pushed to level two of the dungeon. Fey have invaded, looking for a lost item The Bros stole from them. And bandits have moved in to the above ground area, with all three groups kind of mixing it up a bit. The three factions here, and their competing and overlapping goals, gives the party room to maneuver, socially, in the dungeon. The goblin fey, led by elf, do not give a fuck as long you don’t have their Prize or are impeding them from it. 

This is combined with some classic dungeon elements. The Pools! The Pools! Yes they are present. But, also, there’s secret second way in. The well also gets you down a level. The privy gets you down a level. The bandits guard the gate, but, also, a section of ungirded wall has collapsed to rubble. An underground stream, with strips of land, leading to a hidden chamber. That’s absurdly classic. Ye olde rickey bridge over deep water/chasm, complete with “onyx statuette depicting a hideous, betentacled humanoid figure with unnatural proportions” at the bottom of it. 

The issues here are with organization and padding obfuscating the ability to run the thing. “Bryce, you always say that!” Yes, and it continues to be the number one issues facing adventure designers. And, in this one, there’s a occurrence.

Let us say that you design a sixty room dungeon. Every room is dark, except one. Or, every room has no treasure, except one. Should you then note, in every single room, except one,  “Lighting: Dark” or “Treasure: None” in each room entry? Can we assume tha there is no treasure, or creature, unless the designer tells us that is one/some? Now, let us expand that example. What if, in every room, I note the First Impression, the Room Size, the Lighting, the Room Shape, The Exits, the ceiling height, any secrets in the room, any creatures in the room, any treasure in the room, any sounds in the room, and what a ruckus in the room will cause to happen? Each of these, individually, may be appropriate, but should I include these notes for every single room, every single note for every room, even if the note is “none?” No. obviously not. This gets in the way. What’s important I don’t know I have to slog through a bunch of unimportant stuff to get there. The concept, as a mental checklist in the designers head, is a good one. “Hey, things react to this room, I should note that.” But, you don’t need to note it if nothing is going to happen. When you do note it then I have to pay attention to checking for that. 

Every room here has each of those sections, called out at the start of the room in a grid block. A grid block that is then shaded or colored differently to differentiate things. The entries are busy. They demand our attention even when there is nothing to pay attention to. This makes it very rough to follow a room and run it. This is a trap. I know it SEEMS like you making things easier but in reality you are not. If something is not present then don’t note it. Yes, absolutely, have a mental checklist, or a paper one, to go through as you design the entries and write the entries, but you don’t need to include the checklist in every room for things that are not present. The cognitive burden is real and this contribute in a major way to trouble running the dungeon. No one wants to wade through this. As a result 2/3 rds of every column is the checklist and stat blocks. 

DM notes for the room are further padded out, a conversational style, almost. A walkway support three medium creatures AND WILL COLLAPSE IF MORE WEIGHT IS ADDED. (Emphasis mine.) “In case of a collapse, everyone on the wall-walk falls …” We’ve now been told three times that the walkway will collapse. And I’ve not even gotten to the Once Was padding, like “Commander’s Antechamber. Jabet Ceol, the captain of the garrison, lived on the top two levels of the tower, and this room was the antechamber where visitors waited prior to an audience.” This serves no in game purpose. If its not contributing to the room in play then it almost certainly doesn’t belong there, with very few exceptions. 

This is a relatively decent adventure, in terms of an exploratory dungeon. Things to mess with, factions trying to do their own thing. Classic elements and dungeon environment which encourages a free form play style, in the classic exploratory style. There are a decent number of these sorts of adventures available. It is hard to want to run this, given the padding and cognitive burned of digging through the entries, which is nontrivial, especially when other classic exploratory adventure do not have these problems. I would reach for something else. You have to WORK the text, the room entries, hard. Focus them. Work on the organization and decluttering. Why are the bandit reactions noted in the towers instead of on the walkway where the party is seen? A great haunted stable encounter can’t resolve the issues with fighting the text of the adventure in order to run it.

This is $10 at DriveThru. There is not a traditional preview on DriveThru, but several pages are shown, images of them, in the marketing text. Unfortunately, you can’t easily blow them up to get a look at them. 

??https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581097/quest-for-the-unknown-the-caverns-of-anamosa?1892600

By Jon P
Gwion's Mistake
OSR
Levels 3-5

Cross a mysterious bridge that appeared on the coast and enter a terrifying city of wealth and splendour.

This 54 page adventure describes nine areas, each with a handful of rooms, in a city that mysteriously appears one day and begins raiding the local towns. I don’t really understand how the adventure is meant to be run, given the content, or what the challenge is? Maybe, it’s not interactive in any way, to be hyperbolic?

I don’t fucking know man. I’m trying here. So, one day a bridge appears, running on to a local village, coming from offshore. At the end of the bridge is a magnificent city. Raiders come across the bridge carrying off people, valuables, non-valuables, dirt, whatever. Happens every twenty years and the bridge and city always disappear in three days. 

The city has a number of sections to it. So, the bridge is a section, and the city gates are a section and the kings palace is a section and so on. Each section might have four or five little areas, separate keyed areas with, ostensibly, something going on. With a very loose definition of “going on. 

Maybe the best example of the vibe of the entire adventure are the city gates. These are four locations provided by the map. There’s outside the gates, the gates (which means the guards), inside the gates, and a dock that is also behind the gates. There’s a page for a map. A page and a half to describe the keys, And two and a half pages to describe the NPCs/opponents there. Six pages for what is, essentially, a “challenged at the gates” encounter. Outside the gates we get a senior guard berating a junior guard and a collapsed wall section you can climb. In the gates proper we have a chest with a necklace in it. On the other side of the gates we have a couple of cages with prisoners in it. Finally the dock is the ONLY place you can land a boat. 

The adventure is levels three through five. The adventure states, definitely, that the dock is the only place to land by boat in the entire bridge or city. I have no fucking clue why. Because we MUST encounter the bridge adventuring locales before the city proper is reached? This makes no sense. I didn’t see any prohibitions against flying over. Why the disparity? There’s a fundamental disconnect here in what an adventure means. Is it meant to be a series of linear events or can the party use their wits to bypass things and find unique solutions. Essentially, the Combat as Sport/Combat as War discussion. The more non-Fireball spells the wizard memorizes then the more they can bypass obstacles, but, obviously, the fewer fireballs. If you are not allowed to be the strong proud independent wizard you’ve become then why not just kill everything and everyone? 

Looking further, this is a relatively simple set of encounters and yet it is taking up six pages, even while the keys proper take a page and a half. Time and again I see this happen in the adventure, the focus of the designer is somehow distracted, sifted away from the actual interactive portions of the adventure and on to trivia. “Page count is free in a PDF!” Sure as fuck is. And if the core of the adventure is great then I won’t bitch about the support materials. But when the support materials seem to get much more focus than the actual adventure then I start to question what went wrong? Why did the designer feel the need to have multiple named NPCs, each with a half page or more of information about them? FOr the fucking gate guard? That’s most likely going to get stabbed?!  Sure, absolutely, there COULD be an adventure in which that kind of information, that focus on the NPCs over the keys, makes sense to have. And we also all know thats not the case generally. What if your page long NPC was instead one line of stats, like the ready ref sheets, with three keywords after it? That’s an extreme example, but it counterpoints the verbose NPC description style and begs the question: what does the longer entry offer, for actual play, that the shorter entry does not? And, therefore, why pay attention to the longer NPC entry when you could instead be agonizing over the text of the actual keyed encounter location? That IS the point of the adventure, usually. Thusly we have some very overwritten encounters in which very little goes on that are then supplemented with an absurd amount of support. 

Except when we get to the core of the city. This is MASSIVELY abstracted. Up until this point I had pondered the use of a map in a game, because of the seemingly secondary nature of them in this adventure, even beyond a pointcrawl. Then the core city map showed up. That’s fucking useless. Here’s the map:

And the start of the description: “The City Plaza at the summit of the entrance staircases. Packed with stalls and stands, through which several major routes and seemingly hundreds of alleys can be navigated. Arcing around the entirety of the city, with the exception of the entrance, are monumental housing blocks that cast over the city through most of the day. The base of the housing blocks has an attached mass of accumulated shacks and houses accommodating the poorer classes of the city’s booming population.” There’s a disconnect here, not just between the scale of the map and the text, but the implied nature of the map and the text. The map is not just useless, it says things to us that are patently not true, actively working against the DM at the table. It’s bizarre. 

But, moving on, the core issue here would be the lack of interactivity. The backstory has raiders from the city, and a previous attempt to repel the city being stopped on the bridge and so on. This implies things. Things that are not true. Those two guards are the only bridge obstacles. There’s no reaction force to incursions to the city, advice or anything. If you kill the king then 2d6 palace guards respond to hunt you down. 2d6 3hd guards. All the other guards are 2hd. When they are present. Which they usually are not. Everyone else, the king, the important NPC’s, these are essentially zero-level humans. And I’m supportive of that decision, but, the party of three to fives just outright murdering people didn’t occur to the designer? I’m pretty sure you can just stroll in to see the king and gack him, or do the same with th giant obvious city teleporting device. There’s no real obstacles here. No contention. If you, today, were to be attacked by 50 ants, would it matter to you? Would that be the definition of interactivity? Or, if you, say, met 1d6 ants every ten minutes while you walked over to a tree to pick an apple. Is that interactivity? 

There’s nothing here. There’s nothing really to care about. There’s no subplots that matter. There’s no challenge. It is, at best, a series of colorful interludes on the way to pick an apple. The fishermen who swear they didn’t see anything. The administrator who hates the regime. Colorful bumpkins who say hello while you refill the car with gas. It looks like something is going on here but there is nothing.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $6.62. PWYW and a preview that shows you everything. The bridge starts on book page fifteen/preview page twenty. Check out those six pages for an overview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/570303/the-mechanism?1892600

Joseph Mohr
Old School Role Playing
OSRIC
Levels 2-3

[…] Fostrid has suggested that the adventurers meet him in an alley outside of the Gray Goblin. The Goblin is a tavern of ill repute near the Thieves Quarter. If the adventures meet him there perhaps they can negotiate a better price or learn more information from Fostrid. Many of the greatest citizens in the Free City made their fortunes plundering the cairns in the hills north of the city. Perhaps the adventurers can do likewise…..or perhaps they will meet their doom……

This 27 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe ten rooms, and several burial niches, in an old cairn. It’s got a few undead and a lot of altars to different gods. Just another tomb adventure with boring and padded out writing.

A dwarf wants to sell you a treasure map. He wants you to meet him in the alley behind the local shotty and dangerous thieves bar. If you don’t go then the adventure is over. If you do go you find him dead in the alley. If you don’t search him well then the adventure is over. If you do search him well then you find the map in his boot. No word on what happens if you get the map and don’t go to the location. I guess the adventure is also over? Obviously. My point here is that there is a lot of writing in this adventure about things that don’t happen. What guidance if my party holds their breathe while sitting at a table in a bar during a perfectly normal evening?! The obvious fucking thing happens. We don’t need to know about the obvious non-event. We don’t need to know what to do if the player decides to drown their character in a river on a whim. We know what a kitchen looks like. We know what a normal inn looks like. We know that the adventure is over if the party doesn’t follow up on the lead. This is not the point of adventure writing. The point is to tell us what is unusual and different and interactive for the players and their characters. This adventure spends a lot of time telling us obvious things. 

There a lot of weird descriptions here, not relevant to the room, or running the room, and in some cases referring to another room. The cairn is on an island and the island has a dock. “An old stone dock was once used by boats.” Yes, that is the definition of a dock. But then, also, we’re told in this entry about the door to the cairn. In the dock entry. And the entrance description, a couple of keys later, explicitly tells us to go look at the dock entry to learn about the entrance door. This comes up normally when an entry tells us that a certain room reacts to another room, instead of the text appearing in the room where the reaction s generated from. Keep the information relevant to the location in the key description to that location, not randomly somewhere else. 

In another location, in the DM text, we’re told “It appears that the builders of this place may have been shackled to the walls and left to die of starvation.” There’s nothing here to indicate that, other then finding some bodies shackled to the wall. And nothing “appears” to the DM, and the conclusion can’t “appear” to the players without something to support this, which is not present. There’s nothing behind this except padding. General worldbuilding which will not impact the game at all. And that should be avoided. 

Otherwise, you’re gonna stab a few undead here and confront A LOT of religious altars that you can pray to, clean up for blessings, etc. Good gods, evil gods, etc. It’s a bit of a mishmash. How you understand you need to donate 10% of your total wealth to get a boon is beyond me, and beyond the adventure text.

The map is linear, with a lot of the rooms behind one secret door. The map keying is in a very light font which doesn’t make finding the room numbers the easiest. 

There is a tomb/niche inside labeled “Sir Garin the Unjust.” It’s got an undead dude in it. It’ tickles me that, yes, inside the “Unjusts” tomb you will find an evil undead dude. What dod you expect? I love it when an adventure telegraphs what is going to happen and the party is like “DUH!” after the fact. A smart party will prepare and a clueless one will fall in to trouble, which is exactly what should happen in a D&D game. 

Yes, it’s a Mohr adventure. It’s slightly better than most of the stuff Mohr cranks out and he’s STILL doing a great job marketing; I buy one every now and again by accident just because of the marketing (and not looking at the author too closely. My bad.) Old School Role Playing is a publisher, not a genre type Bryce! It’s still, though, just shovelware.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. No preview. How hard is sticking in a preview?

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/585359/the-island-cairn?1892600

By Roberto Marcarini
Old School Fox
OSE
Levels 3-4

Beyond those tangled boughs, deep within the forest, the cure that could save Baron Duncan Bravewater and his wife from a terrible curse may lie hidden. Moira, the hag of Gloomwood, might know the secret to free them from their prison of stone… but what price will you have to pay to earn her alliance? And what dangers await you on the path to her remote hut, concealed among gnarled trees and deadly marshes?

This 68 page adventure presents eleven pointless hex descriptions. There is the outline of a plot, I guess, and little else meaningful going on, and little else to drive the plot, or hexes, to any outcome.

Do people not understand what an  RPG is or what happens in a game? This is not a recent phenomena, as many fuckwiths would suggest, but man it sure is frustrating. How can you look at every adventure ever published and come to the conclusion that nothing should happen in your adventure? That you should write about the price of tea in China for an adventure in one room tack shop in a small Indiana town? It’s inconceivable to me that someone doesn’t understand what the word inconceivable means! They don’t know what they don’t know, but fuck me it’s frustrating.

Baron fuckwit has been turned to stone. You need to seek out a solution to this in the DARK FOREST. Seems there’s a hag in there that may be able to help. The hag does hag stiff, striking bargains with people. Seems there’s a MOON CUP in some MOON TEMPLE in the forest and if you go get it for her then she can do the thing for you. Also, she’s got a beating heart in her hut and a skeleton knight, the first baron of these parts, and a bunch of his skeleton knight followers all as minions. The heart belongs to a dragon that’s now a man and running from a fortress surrounded by goblins and bugbears. Somewhere in the forest is the moon temple and the moon cup inside of it. You could just stumble upon the moon temple and get the cup and bring it back to town and solve the statue thing problem. Or, the hag could tell you about it if you find her first. Or the dragon dude could promise help if only you will retrieve his heart from the hag. There’s some other shit going on inside the forest, but thats the main thrust. Remember kids: if you need to find someone to fix a problem then they are going to send you on a fetch quest. You might as well just do the fetch quest WITHOUT talking to the someone and/or stabbing everyone along the way. There’s a reason murder hobos end up being murder hobos and its not because they want to be. 

I’m gonna ignore the 8bit art stuff except in one tangential way: there are no keys. Or, rather no traditional keys. You have to look at the art on the map and then thumb through the book until you find a page with the matching hex art. That’s the hex in question. This is essentially a random indexing based on visual acuity of shitty art piece. (Which is circular, be cause I’m using shitty here to denote it doesn’t do what its supposed to fucking do.) The designer has managed to hit both a legibility issue AND an organization issue in one decision to use the shit hex art as the key “number.” Ok, sure, there’s no reason that the alphabet has to start with A and follow the ABC song, just as the only reason one comes before two is that its smaller. Except, these common organization techniques help us locate information. Where is three? Two after one. Where is M? About halfway through. Where in the 68 page adventure is this squiggle block art? I don’t Know. Let me just page through shit until I find it. Fucking rediculous. I’m not sure how a decision like this actually gets made. 

The hag, the dragon dude, other “hex bosses”, they tend to be 8HD. And surrounded by lots of minions both high and low HD minions. So, I think, stabbin the bosses to get them out of the way seems like a nogo. The witch, 8HD, sits invisible in her main room with a 5HD skeleton knight and other minions nearby. The main rooms that has the dragons dude heart in it. There are similar set ups for the other hex bosses. So, clearly, stabbin is not the way that is meant to solve this shit. But there is NOTHING in the adventure that would lead you to something else. Deals, betrayals, events, subplots … nothing like that in this in any meaningful manner. 

Let us take The Traitor as an example. Perhaps the most interesting thing in the adventure, there’s a Ranger of the North type thing going on. One of the ranger is a traitor, having sold out to the hag. He can talk to her with a mirror in his backpack. He keeps her apprised of the parties movements, if they use him as a guide. Ok. The goal of the party is to find the hag and ask her help. And she has set this all up. So, what’s to traitor? Ok, lets say the party skips this nice nice talky shit and wants to stab the bitch. What kind of traitor shit is he going to do? There is no guidance for the dude. There is no guidance for the hag. There are no examples, or vignettes. 

The problem here is that this thing is just 68 pages of padding. Starting with the overview of the statue/hag/dragon situation, there is almost nothing else to this adventure. Not in terms of specifics. Oh sure, “werewolf clan in the forest with a key.” And nothing else. There are words, Lots of them. And they mean almost nothing in the context of the adventure or in providing interactivity toward play at the table. “The Forest Nomads are led by the Elder Council , composed of the three oldest and most respected members of the community. Their guidance is essential to maintaining order and cohesion among the nomads, especially given their life divided between human and wolf form.” Well just fucking great. You defined “Elder Council” in the sentence after first using it. This is padding. There is almost nothing in that hex that is interesting or interactive. One dude has a key. That’s it. It’s taking the old Wilderlands format and expanded it to two pages with almost no more interactivity than the Wilderlands two sentence description offered. 

It’s just fucking weird, man. Like, no interactivity or specificity that would make this special in any way beyond what a one pager could describe. 

This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. It’s all just bullshit overview stuff. It needed to show a hex or two so the potential buyer could understand the types of encounters and style they were potentially saddling themself with.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582786/adventures-in-gloomwood-eng-ita-version?1892600

By Tyler McIntosh
Table Rock Independent Press
OSR
Levels 4-6

AN ANCIENT EVIL FALLS FROM THE HEAVENS ONTO GOAT HILL AND ALL THAT STANDS IN ITS WAY IS A RAGTAG GROUP OF HOBO ADVENTURERS.

This 36 page adventure present a two level dungeon with about fifty rooms, a coupl of factions and THE END OF THE WORLD. It is trying to present a changing environment, over the adventure timeline, and has some new terrifying creatures, The descriptive style is hard to manage and the timeline elements is not organized as ideally as it could be. It is, essentially, a hack with some faction play.

This adventure centers around a dungeon with three specific acts. In the first you dive in to find the McGuffin. While inside you find orcs and goblins in conflict with each other. Returning to town, SOMETHING HAPPENS which indicates a major game world problem; it seems the MCGUFFIN is going to end the world, etc. The second dive in the dungeon then happens to stop things. The third act has you, potentially, then dealing with the orc/goblin faction play in the dungeon as a kind of “clean up” operation. 

The acts, and the various events that are a part of them, are awkwardly organized. The back half of the adventure is the dungeon, devoid of events. The front half has the events in the various acts. So, you get text like “The second time the orcs encounter the party, they will not attack and will inform the party that Boarstein wishes to make them an offer.” So, during play i the first two acts, in particular, you’re going to need to keep track of the various objectives and integrate them in to the play. This is made more troublesome by the somewhat conversational, and long winded, manner in which these various things are communicated. You’re going to need a separate notepad to keep things straight and substitute for a clearer organization method. 

The main problem here are Void Creatures, and a unique ability they have to suck your soul/brain out of your face. They are striking enemies, but the adventure suggests that the first encounter, the first time a party member is about to die, a rando goblin or orc shows up and body slams the party member out of the way so they are the victim, telegraphing that the party needs to take care. Not perhaps the most elegant solution but it does what it needs to do: telegraph and give a hint that this is a common save or die situation. Even if it does take a column to communicate,

The text here is … interesting. It’s abstracted. It’s a novelization of the text of the adventure. “The heart of the camp is its fire. Travelers gather to cook, eat, and trade stories.”  or “The glitter of gold reflects your torch’s light as you pass by this niche. Upon investigation, you find coins mixed in with the decayed offerings laid out on the offering Stone.” So there’s a lot wrong here. From the second person. To the novelization aspect to the writing. Do the short cutting of the back and forth between the DM and the players. What if they didn’t investigate? Why remove the ability of the players to look for themselves? This is an absolutely critical aspect to RPG”s, the heart of them, the back and forth of players doing something and the DM responding. You want to write a neutral room, one in which the interactivity can take place by the players, not shove something down their through in read-aloud.

Read-aloud which can be extreme in some cases. I think the opening section is like a page to a page and a half. 

There’s so much else going on here with the writing. In one room the DM notes say that interacting with a statue will reveal a secret door “Secret door on the east side of the room. Statue can be turned to open.” There is no other mention, anywhere in the read-aloud or elsewhere, that there is a statue in this room. The party is supposed to go to the local lord at one point, but that tie, the prompt to get them there, is tenuous at best, even though the entire “plot” depends on it. The place is full of skeletons and zombies, for you level four to six cleric. There’s a hobo camp at the start … with all of the hobos being level three. It just defies the kind of world building in which immersion can take place. Or, facts in which a game can take place. Some of the monster descriptions are actual monster descriptions “This orc stands a head taller than the rest and has huge, curved tusks. A spiky crest of stiff fur runs from the …” Decent description. Others are ecology articles “Goblin Tappers are the engineers and craftsmen of the Noble Goblin tribe.” and on it goes not giving an actual description. 

Out of nowhere, then, is this description “A dozen enormous breeding females are in this room, surrounded by smaller orcs with buckets that are massaging bloated, veiny teats to harvest their thick, fatty orc milk.” Cosmic horror my ass, that’s real horror! No other description reaches this pinnacle, even the cosmic horror descriptions are mundane by comparison. Oh, also, room after room mentions creatures, orcs or goblins usually, in the read-aloud description, in the abstract. But not quantities for the DM. Smaller orcs milking? How many? No. 

And there are problems with the events. There’s supposed to be this faction thing in acts one and three and in act two they team up so everyone can kill the void creatures. There is virtually no guidance in this area. Essentially just that they team up. 

The concept, at a high level, is ok. The designers notes have some inspiration from people cracking open bison skulls to eat brains and petroglyphs and such. Nice. The void people concept is nice. You can KIND of see where things are meant to go. But the implementation here is not great at all.

This is $5 at DriveThru.The preview is two pages. The second page is a room of keys. Can you get a decent idea of what to expect from it. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582885/the-horror-on-goat-hill-an-old-school-cosmic-horror-adventure?1892600

By Shanklimb
Self Published
Domenwood
Levels 2-3

A desperate mother, Brala, approaches the PCs – in a tavern, on the road, etc. When she awoke this morning, her infant was gone. Searching the woods around her cottage, she found tracks of hoof-marks, which she can lead you to. Crookhorns stole her baby, Lilith, and you need to find her before she becomes breakfast! 

This six page adventure uses three pages to describe ten rooms in a small cave lair. Weirdly incomprehensible in places, there’s no lead in so there’s no pay off. 

Hey, get an editor. If it’s not a real editor then have your worst enemy read over your adventure before you push the publish button. You want someone else to see what you’ve put down on paper. You’re too close to it. You already KNOW what you meant so your brain is filling in context that the rest of us fuckwits don’t have. And not your mom. You don’t want someone saying “its great!” You want someone to rip you apart. You don’t have to take every comment they make to heart but you want them making all of those comments.

Case in point. In one of the last rooms of the this adventure, nine or ten I think, there’s this witch buried under the dirt floor. Fuck if I know why. Anyway, if the witch Gwendolyne is with the party then the witch uncoverers herself and helps the party. There is no witch named Gwendolyn in the adventure. The name Gwendolyn doesn’t appear in the adventure anywhere except that sentence. And no, there’s no Gwen or anything like that. Have someone who hates you read the adventure. 

This next point is probably not relevant to anyone except me, who finds it very interesting. How much can you ‘lie’ in an adventure if it serves a purpose? This adventure is using the OSE description style, which some fuckwits overly hate on. But, anyway, in one of the early rooms, an entry tunnel, it read “Narrow (unsupported ceiling)”  I hate this. I hate it because of the hypocrisy it reveals. It is fucking dumb. Of course it’s unsupported. No other ceiling reads as supported. It’s not important to the adventure. It’s like putting (alive) after every creature and NPC description in an adventure in which that doesn’t matter in any special way. It’s fucking bullshit nonsense. Oh, yeah, and also it does accomplish the purpose of writing, which is to communicate a feeling to the reader. Narrow and unsupported certainly lends to a claustrophobic kind of vibe, yeah? I think the unsupported word helps conjure up a certain kind of imagery of the scene in the DMs head in a way that simply “Narrow” doesn’t communicate. So, it’s doing a great job, adding the superfluous Unsupported word, using the language in a way needed to communicate the overall vibe of the encounter. It just FEELS wrong to see it, although it’s just as right if you were to scan this in order to run it. You are allowed to twist and turn and push and pull the language in any way needed in order to communicate the overall impact the description is supposed to have. My ‘padding!’ hat hates it and yet I cannot deny that it is effective.

Looking at that tunnel entry, the description reads “Narrow (unsupported ceiling). Four

dead crookhorns (throats carefully slit, blood still fresh). Two dead women (adolescent, impaled)” I find that some striking imagery. Throats slit. Adolescent impaled women. That’s pretty nice. Vivid. A pretty decent description. And, also, when you imagine impalement, that’s some vlad stuff, right? With the pole in the ground? No, I don’t think so. While the description is quite vivid I THINK that the women were just speared, like in the middle of battle. Later, we find some other witches in the complex and I think its clear from their entries that they attempted a raid and that there was a battle in that tunnel, the witches doing some throat slitting and a couple of them getting stabbed with spears. So, striking imagery, but, perhaps, not quite accurate. 

The set up here is a little confusing. A woman finds you and says her baby was just taken. It’s suggested that this could be in a tavern, but I don’t think that makes sense, from a How a Community Reacts standpoint, the other option being on the road which I think works much better. Anyway, there’s some QUITE confusing text that follows. I think the witches kidnapped the baby, took it to their cave lair (the dungeon) and then it was invaded by the Crookhorns and their leader, let’s call her a hag. They want to kill witches and/or convert them in to their messiah. And, anyway, they don’t care about the baby AND the witches were mistaken, the baby they kidnapped was the wrong one. Actually, I think the witches think the baby is their messiah also. It’s a confusing mess and after several read-throughs I’m still not sure I have things straight.  There’s little lead in here, just the frantic woman and some tracks. This, I suspect, does not bode well for the complex situation that I think the designer is trying to get across across here, with the various goals and the creature factions mistaken identities, the lair invasion, etc. But the ‘thrust in to the middle of it’ thing doesn’t work well without the context needed, or any buy in. Not the greatest fault for a site based adventure, but, also, no real stakes except maybe for the baby, motivating the party to do anything other than just putting everyone to the torch.

Other than this, the adventure is mostly a hack. You can talk to some of the witches, and rescue some/all of them that are left alive, but no mention of rewards for their troubles. I think, maybe, three rooms with encounters, maybe more if you just start stabbing captured/trapped witches. They seem to want to talk a bit, but evasive about answers, which, in Brycelandia means you get to tell your story to Odin.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is three pages, which shows you the overview and the first page of four encounters, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/584721/the-baby-in-the-briar-a-dolmenwood-adventure?1892600

By Ron Meischker
Orange Cat Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

An ancient tomb. A fading bard. A new generation of heroes. The venerable adventurer, Targan the Bard, has learned about a long-forgotten ancient tomb and has chosen your adventuring party to explore it. He is only asking one thing in return… Are you ready to make history?

This sixteen page adventure uses six pages to describe nine rooms in a linear tomb dungeon. Long italics second-person read-aloud. Linear. Long DM text. And, ultimately, Just Another Tomb Adventure.

It’s a nine room linear tomb dungeon that turns out to be A Test To See If You’re Worthy, the 1,936,736 Test/Challenge dungeon I’ve reviewed in this blogs short history. Seriously, it feels like there’s more of these things than there are orcs in a hole. At this point it’s all rote: linear dungeon. Some trap rooms. Some guardians. But, we must judge each thing on their own merits, so, how about this iteration of the nine linear room trap/guardian challenge/test dungeon tomb? 

I’m not sure I have much interesting to say. It’s got a lot of read-aloud, which is not good. People don’t pay attention when long sections of read-aloud come trotting out. The read-aloud is in italics, sometimes almost half a column, which is not good. Long sections of italics, or any funky font, are hard to read for the DM. It’s using a second person writing style, with lots of “you”, which is not good. It robs the room of immersion as it ignores the varied style of play that individual parties will engage in. “None of us have eyes you clod!” is hyperbolic but gets the point across. I do, however, admire the ability of the party to all have built-in DeWalt leaser measurement devices so they know from the read-aloud that a ceiling is 18.5” feet high in the first sentence. Whatever. Nothing to see, move along, move along.

The DM text is long and padded out. I think in one room I counter three times that the party will need light to see. Do they need oxygen to breathe? I know, it sounds nit-picky. But it’s pure padding. It’s like saying they need air to breathe or some other obvious statement. Multiple times. This kind of shit gets in the way. It gets in the way of the DM scanning the text to find the information they need and it gets in the way of the designer, who is distracted by this nonsense instead of working the room harder. 

And the DM padding. Oh my. “ENTERING THE TOMB – This is the first challenge the party will face. The party encounters an obstacle immediately upon reaching the tomb: a massive obstruction blocking the entrance. The party will need to find a way to move the slab.” This is all preamble. Then there’s the read-aloud. Then theres the actual DM text of the blockage. There’s no point of the preamble. And it’s like this everywhere. Just repetition for the sake of repetition. 

The flooding chamber trap. The stone crush trap. The mirror of opposition trap. The water weird in the fountain. The required false tomb. The mummy that wears an amulet that makes it immune to turn undead. (Thanks B2!) 

It’s a small linear tomb test dungeon, just like all of the small linear tomb test dungeons that have come before. I am annoyed by how cookie cutter it is.

The one thing that isn’t cookie cutter is the build. It’s packed dirt and peat moss and bog wood. You know, the kind of wood that is sunken and preserved and turns to like iron? The adventure makes a big deal of the lack of stone and how the bog wood is the major construction item. But it’s not to any end. It doesn’t play any part in the dungeon at all. Also, isn’t that wood super expensive, and always has been? Mining the dungeon for the wood would be of great profit. Why base the entire dungeon on this window dressing if you’re not ging to do anything with it?

So, just the standard straight line tomb, with all of the seemingly required parts of that. Nothing special. But, lots of padding and a read-aloud that make it hard to dig through and run.

This is $12 at DriveThru. There is no preview. There needs to be a preview, showing a few encounters, so a potential buyer can get a sense of things before they commit to the spend. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569173/tomb-of-the-ancient-moor-king-castles-and-crusades?1892600

By Scott_M
First Era Adventures
OSRIC
Levels 1-2

Clinging to a rugged mountainside, this once-magnificent palace of a self-styled empress stands burned-out and abandoned, though its dire ivory tower yet stands, unblemished. Beneath the toppled estate sprawls a maze of chambers dedicated to the mad Empress Helene’s perverse delectations. Within may be found wondrous treasures and terrible dangers alike. Only the foolhardy dare venture there now. The few brave explorers who tested it did return with riches—and a steadfast refusal to ever try their luck in the dungeon again.

This ten page adventure presents one level of an old school megadungeon. A solid work with good ideas, it captures the spirit of OSR play, even if the theming is light.

What an interesting dungeon level! This is the first level (although it seems like there’s an “outside” level also) of a megadungeon. Mumble mumble Imperial Queen mumble mumble. Anyway, this thing is doing a pretty decent job in presenting an old school megadungeon level. There’s a mix between traps, secrets, hacking, and specials. This FEELS like a dungeon out of the early days. 

Level one has some orcs and “evil men” (berserkers) having invaded the level and pushing the hobgoblins down to level two. This is the major level theme, with a few undead and vermin and such scattered about also. One of the first rooms reads “Fragments of rotting wall tapestries dangle from iron rods. A torch gutters on the NE wall. Room is filled with flies and stinks of death from 3 hobgoblins impaled on wooden stakes (dead ~3 weeks, stripped and mutilated, facing S wall). N door is locked and barred (–1 Open Doors).” There are two components here, the writing style and the mechanics. The mechanics here are terse. There’s enough facts and numbers for the DM to get a rough idea of what is going on and then to interpret for themselves. I like this style. As a DM I want a little guidance on how to frame things, how hard things should be, etc, but I don’t want a full on prescriptive page of guidance for every detail of the thing, be it a room, door, or magic item. The room description is decent enough. A GUTTERing torch. IMPALED bodies. ROTTing and DANGLing. Flies and the stink of death. It’s doing a good job of sticking in adjectives and adverbs to help bring life and specificity to the rooms objects. In another room we have “The room reeks of sweat and smoke. Three filthy, degenerate hillmen squat around a copper brazier, poking at smoldering coals.”Reeking of sweat and smoke is a good sentence. And I love a good berserker description that calls them filthy and degenerate hillmen. It didn’t call them berserkers. Instead it described the people. I wish every adventure described how the party interacted with something instead of just slamming in a monster type. It feels visceral, yeah? It’s doing a pretty good job keeping the single-column room descriptions short and evocative. It’s not rock star quality but it  is solid solid work, room after room.

There are a variety of specials in this as well, but which I think I mean interactivity beyond stabbin. Traps blah blah blah. But, also, a Wizard Vault “Heavy iron door (–2 Open Doors) has 3 separate locks and is also Wizard-locked (at 12th level).” There’s something for the party to come back to later, yeah?  In another room “The walls are decorated with bas reliefs depicting the cutthroat adventures of a frog-headed knight in plate mail wielding a military pick” First, I love that. Frog-headed. Military pick. CUTTHROAT adventures. Nice job on that little bit. There’s a fountain in the room  with murky scummy water with a frog statue spitting water in to it. Opening the mouth reveals loot. Purifying the water causes a suit of +1 plat mail (with the head of a frog) to rise, all Excalibur like, from the pool (where it otherwise is not present.) Hidden depth, yeah? Fuck with shit. Do the right thing. Be rewarded. There are teleport hallways, a secret door middle chamber. Hidden loot inside of little niches, statues to mess with. It’s not set pieces or a funhouse, but rather those kinds of weird dungeon things that you find in old school exploratory dungeons. There are a few weird creatures as well for the party to figure out, like a vortex in ajar that is a little whirlwind that will trap someone inside of it. Yes yes, everything has been done before, but its not mainstream and I like it as a great example of dungeon weirdness that still makes sense.

The map is relatively complex, with, I think, five sets of stairs on it? Teleport hallways, pits, secret doors abound. Loops. I could quibble with there not being monsters on the map, always on features no on the page, or a lack of dungeon environments on the map, like same level stairs, etc, to liven things up. Those would all improve things but the map is also not doing anything wrong and is large enough to encourage exploratory play, which is more than welcome. 

There are some areas in this in which things could be more visceral and/or an appeal to mechanics is made when descriptive text would be better. I think the classic example is with a trapped chest: “The handle is trapped with contact poison.” That’s pretty classic. But, also, generic. I might trap is bubonic plague, or cyanide, or cholera shit smeared on thorns. Those are all much more grounded, much more specific, than a generic “contact poison.” Is contact poison bad? No. But cholera is always better. 

There’s also a bit of, oh I don’t know, genericism, in the level proper. What we;re looking at here is one level in a megadungeon and thusly it suffers from that episodic nature. The theming here is “ weird dungeon level one.” So, the elements of classic OSR weirdness are present but they don’t really serve a purpose. I’m not sure I understand the above ground portion or the levels before this, or get a sense of what they could be. There seems to be a lack of continuity, only in that I don’t really see what continuity there could be given the themeless nature of the level. 

To this end, I’m probably not going to review another level of this. I’ll instead wait a bit and grab all the rest of the levels and review it as whole the time I visit. And I WILL be doing that. This is a classic megadungeon level and I LUV a good megadungeon and good megadungeon level. I got no regerts on this one, and may bump it when I see the rest.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. The whole thing is in the preview also, so, check it out.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582765/the-hurricane-dungeon-the-upper-works-level-1?1892600

By Howard Shirley
Parzoval Games
OSR
Level 1

A beautiful bride, a handsome groom, a starlit wedding… and GOBLINS! At least you have a wedding present for the young couple— a promise to rescue the kidnapped groom!

This 26 page adventure uses about six pages to describe ten rooms in a small goblin lair. Lots of read-aloud. Lots of stabbin. Lots of text, in general. Oh, also, your level ones get to save the world. *YAWN*

You’re at a wedding. You’ve haven’t brought your weapons and you’re not wearing you’re armor because you’re at a wedding. I mean, because you’re stooopid. The murder hobo trope wasn’t started by the players. Bad DM’s and bad designers are to blame, when when all you’ve ever cared about has been butchered. Anyway, the designer wants you to grab a smith hammer or the spit the pig is on, or a butcher knife and go chasing after the goblins who crash in and steal the groom. Goblins, a lot of them, wolf riders, shivving the old people. This is all the shitty hook, related over three agonizingly long pages of DM text and read-aloud. Anyway, you stab stab stab but you can’t win since it’s the hook and the groom gerd stolen by them and oh no you’ve got no weapons or armor and have to pick up what you can find and give chase to the goblins. 

Ok, so, second scene, you head in to the woods to give chase and come across two goblin wolf riders. Stab stab stab. Again. You keep going. You come to the goblins lair, a cave with a door in the mouth. You now have ten rooms to explore. You pull aggro if you’re loud at the front door, otherwise you just stab stab stab in every room. In the last stab stab stab room you meet the goblin shaman. The groom is on a throne in a trance and the shaman is doing his ritual thing. It takes him like a full hour to do it, after which The Evil One gets summoned in to the grooms body. Like, a level 36 evil cleric. Anyway, it takes an hour from then the party shows up at the rooms door, so, no hurry. You stab a bunch.

The text is single column and this thing is the poster child for why that’s a bad idea. The whole eye fatigue thing form scanning all the way right an left. Yeah yeah, it sounds like minor shit but it’s a real effect. And then the read-aloud is LONG. Like quarter page long. No one cares. After two or three sentences peoples attention starts to drift. You gotta keep the read-aloud short. And the text is LONG, in general. The goblin raid on the wedding takes like three pages to describe For goblins on wolf back to snag the groom. And then, in the cave section, it starts with like a ¾ page overview of what a captured goblin might know. With no formatting at all so it’s just read the entire fucking thing and hope you stumble across whatever the party is asking about. START THE FUCKING SHOT WITH A BOLDED WORD. Jesus, man. 

Oh, what else, you start with a locate object spell, I guess to find the cave? Although the tracks are easy to follow? You also start with a very high level dispel magic scroll tht can be used to break the ritual. You know, whenever you find a bunch of potions of water breathing laying by the side of the road then its time to head up in to the hills. You GOTTA write an adventure where you don’t need this deus ex shit. Why the fuck does it have to be the end of the world at level one, at the first adventure?! (Although … that’s a fun campaign. EVERY session has the party saving the world. Betty the housekeeper. Frank the night soil dude, EVERYONE is trying to end the world. TO save it you must end them all. Everyone in the world!)  You can fuck around and break the conventions, but do it for a reason. Give them six of every magic item in game one. But on purpose. Because the resulting power struggles are the campaign. But, no, no Staves of Power at level one because you need that to overcome some specific challenge. Write the fucking adventure without needing that shit. 

So, you wade through a lot of poorly formatted and overly long text in a railroad setup, for no reason, in order to just stab a bunch of goblins. I’m not real sure what goes through peoples heads when they write these things. Its easy to say that the vision and implementation didn’t align. But, that should be obvious from looking at it, right? So why not work it harder instead of just pressing publish?

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. The last four are the hook and the goblin chase. They are a decent representation of what you’ll find inside. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582262/the-night-of-the-goblin?1892600

Also, you should see Night of the Hunter if you’ve not. It’s no Night of the Goblin, but, you know, what can be?

By M. Allen Hall
Self Published
OSE
Levels 2-3

The disappearance of Old Ilfen has left the wizard’s tower at the center of a power struggle. Lord Cargan wants to tear the tower down and replace it with a lighthouse. Skaarn and his pixie war band want to raid the dungeon below the tower and recover a magic item Ilfen once stole from them. Ilfen wants someone to help him get his body back. And at the bottom of the dungeon, the Green Ooze King wants to be left alone so it can seed other worlds with its spawn. Whether they want to help Cargan, Skaarn, Ilfen, or only themselves, your players’ characters will be drawn into Ilfen’s Halls to face the Green Ooze King and its minions.

This 34 page adventure presents twelve hexes and a small dungeon with twenty rooms in an “abandoned” wizards tower. It does a decent job of setting up a wizardly lair and in presenting several factions working against each other. Faction play follow through could be a bit better, and the hex and room descriptions get long in places, but the weirdo ooze monsters are a highlight.

Lord Rob is a decent dude. He also HATES the local wizard “made all the worse by the fact that the wizard seems oblivious to his hatred”, which makes him hate him even more. Wizard dude disappears so the lord decides to use the site of his island tower to build a lighthouse cause of all the shipwrecks. This in spite of the fact that there are better places on the island to build it. That is an excellent bit of pettiness there, love it. He’s sent a work crew, led by a foreman (who’d rather building in the better spot on the isle) and the work crew is having trouble. Explosions while working on the tower. Monsters coming out of the forest to attack the camp. Sometimes the tower, being unblocked from the top, seems to regrow. There are some pixies hanging about, unknown to anyone, who are trying to get in the tower to recover a magic crown, and they are the cause of the shadow monsters coming out of the forest. The wizard, of course, if not dead. His body is in the Ooze King in the basement and his head is floating around the rest of the dungeon, unable to communicate but REALLY wanting to be reunited with his body once the ooze king is dead. Thus we have the laborers, mercenaries hired to protect the laborers, the fey, and then the wizard head all mucking about the area with different goals. Add to this The Party. I do love a good fireworks show in a gasoline factory. 

The wizard tower in particular, and the rest of the island generally, has a decent amount of stuff to fuck with. Weird machines to repair, stone circles and ley lines to teleport with, places to get your soul sucked out and, of course, a few small missions from the pixies, in particular, to augment the greater goals the factions have. There are some decent little moments as well, such as when mercenary guards question the party, as laborours, if they are allowed to be in the area. Just a sentence and it does a good job prompting the DM in such a way to add life to the game. The monsters, mostly things that can only be hurt by fire, add a nice little puzzle element to the combat as the party tries to figure out how to hurt ooze things.

Hexes are about a page and dungeon keys are about a column, in general. This is where things start to get rough for me. Formatting is decent with bullets and bolding and indents, but there is only so much cognitive space for a DM to have. It’s a tricky problem, rooms with depth add so much to the game, rooms with multiple elements, but then the challenge becomes the ability of the DM to handle all of the information. The hexes, in particular, tend to run a bit long and complicated to run, or, perhaps, to keep all of the elements straight in ones head. 

For all of the potential that the faction play provides it falls down in the execution. While the factions have these major goals there is not a lot, if any, provided for handling the consequences of play. How do the laborers react, or the mercs, or the pixies. Raw violence? How? Surely they are not standing still while the party works against them and they find out. This sort of guidance is just not present. And yet it would add so much to play and the use of the factions in such a small environment. 

The concept here is an old one: making things seem like they are real. Giving the appearance of depth. This allows for a certain kind of immersion, and buy in from the PLAYERS in to the game world situation. This is what an evocative room description does, it helps the DM bring that to life. This is what realistic motivations with NPCs does, the relatability helps. That specificity that I’m always harping on and on about, it enables it. It’s not detail. Detail alone is almost always useless. A DM can make up detail, especially if the designer has done their job well in relating a room and/or situation. But the specificity, that is core to the designer bringing their ideas to life. Looking at the merc situation, above, that I mentioned, the mercs challenging the party. You’re getting hassled man. By the cops. By the mall security guard. By the doorman. Who can’t relate to this, both personally and in the many media depictions? It’s a petty annoyance and it GRATES on you. Fucking POS, how about I just stab you 196 times in the throat and then we’ll see who authorized to be in this area. And that’s in the case where I AM authorized to be in the area. It’s one fucking sentence, but it IMPLIES so much more. That’s good writing. That’s a good situation. That’s exactly the sort of specificity that adventures should put forward. Why the fuck do I care about a dudes eye color or hairstyle, unless its pertinent to the game? No, the fact that he’s a bully, or holds a petty grudge or something, that’s what brings the noise. 

It’s an ok adventure. Which means very little makes it stand out except that it’s not a disaster of an adventure. But it’s also not a good adventure that I get excited about when I think about running it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. M. Allen Hall, why do you hate us, and freedom? Why do you think we should not see a couple of encounters before we spend our hard earned cash on this adventure? Stick in a few pages of preview. A hex or two and a room or two. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582152/the-green-ooze-king-for-cairn-and-ose?1892600

By Stadtjaeger
Self Published
Generic/Universal
"Low/Mid Levels"

Something went quiet in Frostholm. The mining outpost stopped sending word weeks ago. Company says it’s the weather. Locals won’t go check. A mother’s paying good money to anyone willing to find her son — a scholar who went up chasing some old civilization and never came back.

This thirty page adventure presents a small village investigation and a dev le in to a mine with about eight rooms, plus a couple of overland events before and after. It’s more of a scene based “Experience” than an adventure, with the designer describing it as no-win. The writing is purple and there is no loot to be gained. 

This has elements of War Against the Chtorr, in that an alien organisms is trying to chtorraform the planet. You head up to a snowy mining camp that no one has heard from and have a few spooky things happen along the way. At the camp you poke around the buildings and find bodies and more eerie stuff. You survive (presumably) a night attack by a swarm of alien insects and head to the mine the next day. There you might get infected with spores in the weird crystal/plant environment and find a dude in an alien pod. If you free him then an unbeatable monster appears. Fleeing from it you fight hordes of crystal block constructs. You’re supposed to figure out to seal the mine shaft with some explosives you find. On the way back down the mountain, with the dude you found, a different unbeatable monster appears, klils the dude, and takes off for the stars. The dude you found has a book and if you perform the ritual in it then a portal opens in which armies of alien life forms come through to finish chtorraforming the planet. 

The vibe here is similar to those killer LotFP adventures. You know, you delve in and try to get loot while avoiding the doomsday scenario that is sure to happen. Maybe mix in a little Call oc Cthulhu where messing with books will fuck you up. Except, there’s not really any loot here. I find this annoying and it makes me want to put this solidly in to the Modern Adventure category where you’re just fucking around together at a table instead of gaming. Yeah yeah, there are different ways to have fun, but I prefer the one where the story is the one the party makes. But, with that in mind …

This is also a generic/universal adventure. Which means a lack of stats. You get some general “there should be twice as many creatures as party members” and other story based mechanics like “the attacks last until dawn” kind of stuff with a few “they should take one hit to kill” sorts of things thrown in. This, again, contributes to the more story based approach that the adventure is taking. 

It DOES do a fairly decent job with the investigation and lead in to the mine. You get a few eerie things happening on the trail to the mining town, dogs nervous, a body frozen in the snow and so on. And the town investigation is also likewise eerie. Strange scratch marks covering all of the buildings, skeletons huddled in corners stripped of their flesh or other clearly holed up and waited to die. The whole “meal still on the table” sort of thing. At one point you can’t get in to tone of the village buildings and have to go in a window to find the door blockaded. Nice.The whole preamble to the ride os decently done, in what is presented if not in its form.

Any by form, I mention that because of the writing style. It’s very much heavy with first this thing happens and then this thing happens and keep the party from doing X and so on. This is then exacerbated by a certain conversational style of writing, HEAVY with purple text. “The walls have stopped pretending to be stone. What covers them now is something else, layered thick like scar tissue over a wound that never closed — glistening, faintly pink where the light catches it, soft enough that you do not want to touch it and cannot stop noticing that you have to.” Or something like “Something is coming, but not in a hurry, It doesnt need to.” That least bit being a read-aloud line. 

While this MIGHT work in in the village/investigation portion, it breaks down in the mine where it tends to continue. The mine is mostly just poking around on a museum trip, looking at the weird plant life that might infect you with something only very high level magic can cure. There are a couple of light problem solving situations, like getting down the central shaft, but you’re not doing much until you find the dude in the alien pod thingy.

At this point all of the stillness disappears. The unbeatable monster appears as well as the hordes of lesser crystal golems. You’re supposed to run away. That’s the point of the entire adventure. Run away, beat off the crystal golems while ascending the shaft and, hopefully, sealing it lest the horrors are loosed upon the world. 

This is all, essentially, a railroad. It’s an experience. Follow the tracks laid down and survive and “win” by escaping with a sealed shaft,. If you don’t guess what the designer wants you you to do then die 

The conversational writing style makes running it difficult, and the purple prose if so bad that I’m not sure I could read it with a straight face. Even when it’s not read-aloud the DM will need to wade through it and try to translate it to something evocative for the party, which is not going to be easy.

The generic/Universal curse strikes again. Just write it traditionally and stat it for B/X and STILL call it generic/universal. Once you get good, as a writer, THEN you can branch out to more experimental styles. But you gotta learn to walk first.

This is $4 at DriveThru.The preview is the first three pages, which are all, essentially, designer notes. A few encounters needed to be included so a potential buyer can get a sense of what they are buying before they do so.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578991/they-come-at-night?1892600

By Oliver Müller, Prizren Buçpapaj
Voltaria Games
OSE
Level 1

A village is silent. None dares to speak out loud anymore, for fear of invoking the curse of the bell. A nun was burned 300 years ago, because she was accused of having consorted with a demon who stole the voices of his victims. The same demon who is bound to the bell of the ancient belltower in the center of the village. Will your party of adventurers brave the depths of the old catacombs to lift the curse and right the wrongs from the past, or will they accidentally unleash an even greater evil?

This twelve page adventure presents eleven rooms on two levels of a small dungeon under a ruined monastery. It’s a little dull and lacks flavour but is far from the worst things ever written. 

Man, my compliments are really getting out of hand, aren’t they? But, seriously, something seems to have happened with adventures. Some of them don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. Now, I’m not saying they are good, or even regertful, but, they don’t just absolutely suck ass. I don’t know how many times in, what, fifteen years, that I’ve seen stuff that is just Meh, but I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. Yeah! The world is getting better! “You won’t hate everything about your life if you purchase this adventure!” That’s right, I’m available for writing ad copy! If this trend continues I may be out of a non-job. Because as much as I love a good adventure the blog only exists because I REALLY hate bad ones. “Not writing crap” seems like such a simple idea, at least in theory.

You show in a village. The people won’t talk to you. They will grunt at you. They will make arm gestures. Some will write notes. (Booo literacy!) But they won’t talk. Every time someone tells a lie then the bell in the old ruined monastery rings, louder and louder. Popping on over you can go up the bell tower, which contains only the bell, or you can go down in to the dungeon and it’s small handful of rooms. Down there you will fight a few 1hp undead, a few skeletons, and meet the ghost of a chick burned alive who cursed the monks. The bell contains the essence of a demon, which is why the monastery exists. The chick was a part of the monastery, the monks lied and got her burned. The curse infected the bell. Destroy the bell and the demon gets out. Kill the ghost of the chick and the bell cracks and the demon gets out. You’re supposed to find the one-charge hammer of banishment and use it on the ghost, putting her to rest while the bell remains intact and freeing it of the “lie and the bell rings” curse. 

The hooks are the usual low-effort stuff of get hired, with one having the party just arriving at the village and stumbling in to things. One of the best parts of the adventures is a throw away line in that hook that has an old woman attacking the party with a broom if they speak. That’s the kind of specificity that makes an adventure shine. It’s short and fits in perfectly with a bunch of scared villagers. Another line has advice to the DM in making the bell ring every time someone in the party tells a lie. A nice touch. Finally, n the dungeon are a number of cubbies with bones in them, catacombs like. In one cubby the skeletons still have jewelry on them! Time to get a lootin! Except it’s a cube, the remains of other adventurers in it. Very nice integration of a classic monster in to an adventure in such a way that makes it a surprise. All of those “empty” bone reliquaries pay off in a nice monster attack. That’s how you lure a party in to a classic monster.

The descriptions here are not terrible, although they are not really evocative either. The Sacrist reads “8. SACRISTY Wardrobe: There is a rotting wardrobe containing 1d4 robes for mess. They are damp and filled with holes, but they will prevent the skeletons from attacking.  Box: Used to store religious tools for the mess, which have been hidden in the secret treasure room when the monastery was abandoned.” This has some line breaks in it, I’m condensing it here. It’s easy enough to follow and, while the length is not great it’s also not a burden. It comes across as rather mundane, and doesn’t really do a great job of painting an evocative picture of the room, being more fact based than impressions. Note that there is no room summary, and in some places this gets awkward, such as in one room with zombies that only show up at the last sections. These sorts of things, the most obvious thing or something likely to be of import immediately, should really ne higher up in a description. “Oh, yeah, there are also some zombies here” is not the way to run a D&D game. This means takingin the entire room description before relying it to the party rather than a descriptive style that builds with first impressions and follow on detail. Thus the text length does come  to play when as being of note.

It doesn’t feel like a spooky monastery with shit going on, although thats what it is. The titular bell tower, while having the mostimportant thing in the adventure, the bell, is almost an afterthought, with the focus being the dungeon under the tower. The bell tolling helps, but it needed more build up or, interestingly, less, almost as an aafterthought. Either would have worked better, I think.

This is an EASL adventure, with some AI to help with the translation, the adventure discloses. This is probably fine. I suspect some of the mundanity in the descriptions comes from its EASL nature, but that’s to be expected.  “Grave chamber: It is an undecorated tomb with a single simple grave in the middle.” is a good example. Like, a dug grave, in a catacomb? I suspect we mean a stone sarcophagus? But, also, not exactly the height of evocative writing. There’s not a whole lot wrong here, it just doesn’t stand out as something I’d like to run. Also, put the level range is IN the adventure. Put it on the cover or in the marketing blurb.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages. Another page of encounters would have been nice, to get a true sense of the adventure keys.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581426/lies-at-the-bell-tower?1892600

Vestiges?
Self Publised
OSR? 5e.
Level 2

Every night, someone climbs down into a burial mound sealed for sixty years and declared “inactive.” He’s counting something on a wall, in chalk. No one knows who, or why — and the answer reaches far beyond one lone surveyor.

This 21 page adventure uses four pages to describe six scenes, one having five rooms. Is it AI slop? It is pretentious? You now longer have to choose, now it can be both! It’s also barely comprehensible. 

This was a request, but the designer, as it turns out. I’m always a little bemused when someone wants ME to review something they wrote. Any publicity is good publicity? I mean, there are more than a handful of reviewers that will just give you five stars, why not go there? 

And then there’s the statement in the request that the line drawings are AI. Sure, ok. I don’t actually care about AI. I feel about it the way I feel about Mork Borg: there’s nothing inherently wrong with it, it just turns out it’s enabling a lot of garbage. Because, you see, while the designer disclosed the use of AI art to me, the adventure has this disclaimer at he bottom of the title page: “The illustrations in this work were created using generative AI tools, under art direction. Part of the content was developed with the help of AI, which was also used for proofreading and for translation. The whole — setting, rules, text — was conceived, directed, reviewed and approved by its author.” So, you used AI to write it and then write a deceptive missive to me in order to get me to review it because, I suspect, you knew that the use of AI in writing would be a no go. Except I don/t care about the use of AI. I care about the end result, and the fact that you engaged in a deceptive practice. I know, damned if you do and damned if you don’t, right? I note that the last sentence in that disclaimer basically just says “I used AI” using different words and notably does NOT say that someone write this. Just that they directed the writing of it. Having saif all that, I don’t understand WHY someone would use AI in a creative work. Isn’t that the point, the process of creation? Isn’t that a major joy in life? If it’s not then why the fuck are you engaging in it? Like most modern shams, this is hollow. Nice art. Nice page layouts and backgrounds. The APPEARANCE of quality. And it’s all to the end of hiding the word-guesser slop underneath. 

The text here just positively drips with AI mannerisms. Which is a euphemism for overwritten purple prose. It anyone wants to be a failed fantasy author, it’s the AI agents. “A Cabinet station: plain, functional, without a single ornament. It is not a tomb, it is an instrument, and it still works. At this depth nothing explains itself at first glance” Uh huh. Purple slop. “But he can read a depth, feel a draught and tell when a corridor is lying, which is worth more than a map.” Uh huh.Purple slop. “The threshold says it to anyone who looks: a sword bent double, a crushed helm, scattered iron filings — everything that carried iron and came too close” Purple slop. 

It doesn’t help that this is some walking simulator. “It is also a way into Vestiges, a game of archaeological fantasy in which you do not loot dungeons: you survey what dead worlds left behind, and you decide what to do with what you have understood.” I decide to sell it for money and power. “A Guild of scholars, the League of Nyméria, funds the expeditions, buys up the finds, and decides what the world is allowed to know.” Wrong! My sword decides that. “The scenario is not won by killing Orin. It is played by deciding what to do with a man who counts in spite of himself, and to whom the count is handed.” But, it’s a lot easier, I’d say, if I just stab him? So, pretentious setting. Oh, oh, also, you get the famous “ask the party a deep question” bullshit. In this case “Why do you go underground, when sensible people stay up top?” I do it as escapism for a shitty middle class wage slave life in order to have fun and as a pretext to spend time with friends. Why the fuck did you shortcut one of the few meaningful things in life, the act of creation, and instead resort to AI slop?

With pretentious interactivity. I’m not sure you actually DO anything in this. There is certainly no conflict. There are a few die rolls, which you can’t really roll to continue with. I guess, once you walk to the end you get to decide who to seel the COUNTER out to, if anyone? It’s not meaningful though. There’s not real consequence for anything. 

Bolding is used seemingly at random. The entire text is nigh incomprehensible because of the AI. I THINK I could give a somewhat accurate overview, although none of the motivations make sense. At some point in one of the railroad scenes it says something like “The real thread is pulled at a College cartographer’s, who sells copies of old surveys.” So, this is out of nowhere, I think, after you pursue the clue given to you at the start, which is a dead end/fake. How you end up at the Cartographers COllege, which has not been mentioned previously, is beyond me. At the end, during your one choice, you get this text “The return is the real fight, and it is fought without weapons. Three parties learn, within a few days, that the group went down — and each of them wants the count. Bring them in in that order” Bring them in WHAT order? The people mentioned, the table the table that follows, there is little in the way of consistency that would let you figure out what is going on here. 

This is just a mess. An AI mess. A pretentious AI mess. Even if you are in to walking simulator D&D this is a shitty version of it.

This is Name Your Own Price at Itch.

https://sylkaen.itch.io/rpg-sylkaen-en-the-hand-that-counts-en

By Close Reader
Oriental Mandarin Legend
OSE
Levels 1-2

In order to thank the PC for killing the monsters in his territory, the Boold[sic] Baron invited the players to come to the bright Red castle he built on the Wild Eagle Mountain.

This 28 page adventure presents seven-ish rooms in a scripted human sacrifice ceremony dungeon/scene/event. It has both EASL issues and is overly scripted. 

Disclaimer: I think this is a difficult review to write. I suspect strongly, based on the chinese characters in the text, that this is an EASL adventure and, further, an asian one. I love seeing non-tolkein fantasy and I don’t want to do anything to discourage EASL adventures, particularly from our chinese friends. But, also, there are EASL issues. The imagery in the writing doesn’t hit at all which is a problem given the subject matter and there are some areas, in the overview in particular, in which the language could be clearer on what is supposed to be going on, plot-wise. I’m not going to mention these things again in the review and encourage the designer to continue writing florid text, and, certainly, to continue writing adventures. 

You’re invited to the barons castle. Except, he didn’t actually invite you. It turns out that a priest, a spy in the castle, issued you the invitation. But, a carriage from the baron shows up to pick you up and you’re let in anyway. There’s a big banquet going down, but, right at the start this priest/spy dude tells you to go to your rooms and pack, and the baron reluctantly agrees. Also, the baron has drugged all of the food and wine and he and his cultists, also present as guests,will be capturing everyone to drag them below to sacrifice to their god. Also, the priest/spy invited you because he wanted a back up plan in case HE failed to stop the cult/sacrifices. Also, something else is going on with the ceremony because if you stop it then the cthulhu monster the worship will be freed and if you DONT stop it then his bonds are strengthened … so both the Blood baron cult leader AND the priest/spy are wrong about what will happen. Got it? Barely? Ok we’re on the same page.

The set up here makes little sense, from the invitation, to the baron excusing the party to their rooms. I’m not saying every setup has to be perfect, but there’s got to be some reasonableness to it for the party to buy in and for the DM to be able to expand upon things and run the situation. 

The hook, the carriage ride, arriving at the castle, the dinner, up to the party going to their rooms is all handled in a “first this and then this” kind of situation. It’s ALL hook. The presentation is not ideal and the “adventure” won’t really begin in a meaningful way until the party is in their room packing. At that point you can go explore the other bedroom on the second floor (and awfully small castle …) or go back to the main room to see the “end” of the feast and people getting hauled away, as well at the priest/spy getting gacked. Oh, and no leaving early, there’s some handwaving about there being “towers” with crossbowmen on them ready to shoot anyone who leaves. And it really is handwaving. This is not presented in any way as a tactical problem or in anyway a raid/sneak kind of thing, There are some minor notes, a sentence or two, to handle “the party eats the food” or “the party doesn’t go back to their rooms.”

The five room dungeon under the banquet hall (no maps of the upper floors/castle are provided) are the only traditional adventuring environment. Basically you fight giant worm things, a kind of body horror environment is attempted to be described, which doesn’t come across very well. I’ve generally pretty forgiving of EASL issues, but in this case the descriptions are critical to bringing about the full vibe of body horror and it’s just not present in a meaningful way. Since this is just a hack, hacking worms and finally the cultsists in their ceremony chamber, this is unfortunate.

I might call the first part just similar to an outline of an adventure and the five room dungeon portion a hack. I’m sure te language issues can be overcome with some more work, but the overall structure and flow of the adventure, getting the party in to it, the under-reliance of the tactical/free will element to the party and lack of exploration elements are just fundamental design issues. I’m excited to see more coming from asia though. And the attempts at formatting here, while not perfect, do show some understanding of layout and orienting the text to the DM who is running it.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3. The preview is three pages. In chinese. Which is great for our chinese audience, I guess? 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/455035/blood-castle?1892600

By Demi ElGato
Possum Print Games
OSE
Levels 3-6

Verzogen Vald is a twisted forest surrounded by impassable, jagged peaks. Folk that go in almost never come back out. One man has, but in his two weeks in those woods, he looks to have aged decades. His memory is not completely reliable, and his fellow lumberjacks think him insane. Though, they are disconcerted by his unnaturally fast aging, and his stories of what lurks in those woods. Every two hours, the great Green Dragon, Viridis, flies over the Vald, her domain. This is enough to keep all but the most foolish wanderers away. One of the most foolish, the heir apparent to the throne, 12 year old Prince Lukas, delved into those woods one week ago, alone. The King has posted a standing reward of 5,000gp for any brave enough to retrieve him. So far, none have been that brave…or that desperate.

This twelve page adventure uses five pages to describe ten point crawl locations in a fanciful forest. It seems a little pointless, the combination of fetch quests with a dragon at the end. But, if you’re ok with that, then fight on, it’s not bad except for the lack of adventure.

“Too Much stabbin!” or “Not enough stabbin!” Stabbing is a means to end, the ultimate way to get the treasure and remove obstacles when all else fails, or you just feel like today. A typical adventure needs a good balance. Situations and all types of conflict vs the expediency of a good stabbin. You can stab all adventure, with a good sneak in and magical plot to get in deeper and tactical assault/lair raid. You can do no stabbin with some situations good enough with nuance to for the party to work their way around … and stab their way out of. But, generally, you gotta think the whole thing through, as a designer, and work out a way for things to include the potential for stabbin and not stabbin.

This adventure don’t do that, mostly. You see from the intro that the kings kid is missing. In to the forest you go, to look for him and get the reward, while avoiding the dragon that flies overhead every two hours. Unlike Gon FIshin’, there is no stream of do gooders out for a reward; it’s just you in the forest. Not the best set up, but, we’ll forget that for the sake of expediency, while wishin for some Fishin. 

Most of the adventure has you visiting points in the forest with someone who wants something and has something. The vampire (yes, vampire) has wine and wants a goat. The goatherd has a goat but wants a lot of gold and/or some nearby bears killed. The kobolds want to be vassals of the dragon again and.or some silks. They all wants something and have something. Mixed in an occasional combat like an undead dude or two and some plants, that’s about it. So, you gonna run around and give the blue key to Bob who will give you a Red key to give to Sally and so on. It’s all a little too set. Combine that with the lack of specific numbers of kobolds, etc in the adventure and its clear you’re supposed to talk to people and do some horse tradin. No stabin. Except when explicitly told you can stab, like the rando undead or plants.

Reaching the last point, the dragons lair, this all comes to a head. The dragon wants followers. Like the kobolds. The dragon has a lot of gold. And the kings son, the prince. Critically, if you get the dragon what it wants it will let you leave, but not the prince. There IS no solution here, ultimately, for the dragon and prince, except stabbin. Everything else you do accomplished nothing. Oh, sure, if the elves teach the cavemen to sing then tey will teach you to read some glyphs which will help the wizard trying to decrypt some glyphs which will cause him to toss you a gem of seeing. But that didn’t help kill the dragon. It is an adventure in two parts. Wander around the woods performing fetch quests and then stab a dragon. The two are essentially unrelated. This irks me. The kabuki.

There’s another mechanism at play here that mixes in. Every two hours the party will age ninety days. It takes, essentially, one hour to cross a tiles borders. This means that if you go straight to the dragon and stab it then you age six months, based on the initial map. But that’s not going to happen, right? The party is going to fuck around with the side quests. And then, also, the map shifts every two hours, like a maze. So you’re gonna have to figure that out, perhaps with some clues from the adventure. Figuratively, and perhaps literally, a waster of time. There is a clue, up front, that the forest ages you, but the maze situation, as well as the social commentary on the ultimate futility of the struggles of life, well, that one you entirely.

The maze, fetch quests, dragon, and aging don’t mesh well together, I don’t think. Other than the assisination, though, the play is fine. A barbed wire fence, that you can catch tetanus from! I love scary real world shit tossed in a game. Dragonpos can go fuck itself but TETNUS resonates, yeah? And, frankly, a lot of the fetch quest shit is not bad. Maybe a little simplistic and lacking, ahum, alternate solutions, but it IS there, if a little overt for my tastes. Telegraphed, I guess. The fanciful nature of them is a little off, in my opinion. A vampire that wears a sun hat out. A kobold that speaks seven languages in a kobold village that sounds more like a halfling village. A wizard who teleports in and out of the forrest every hour, but can’t do a comprehend languages. It’s just straining thinsg a bit too much. I hate to bring up comparison adventures, but THAT OTHER ONE had a somewhat fanciful nature as well. But it was clear there was some farce. And it was grounded. People were idiots. The fanciful stuff seemed to mesh well in tha the elements it used did no seem random. 

I don’t know. I guess this one is ok. I mean, I hate a lot about it, but, at least you can comprehend what is going on and follow along and there IS something to do. Hmmm, I guess I mean there are situations here, even if I do think they are simplistic, and that helps a lot.

Sucker! Ain’t no stats for the dragon! Ha! Got ya!

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $3.33. There’s no fucking preview. Put in a fucking preview that shows us some of the content before we have to spend money on the thing!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581381/the-matriarch-of-verzogen-vald?1892600

Lixu
Lixuni Gaming
OSE
Levels 1-6 (ha!)

Centuries ago, a mortal Myrenean queen named Nimuanne used forbidden rites at a sacred menhir field to transcend death, splitting her essence into three fragments upon her final death: Body, Mind, and Spirit. Grave robbers broke open the funerary urn containing these fragments, plunging the region into a desperate crisis.

This 79 page adventure presents four or five dungeons with ten to twenty locations each, plus a few small towns in a small region that is having some troubles. Its abstracted text seems out of place given the page count, with a lack of anything specific going on in the adventure.

Ok, so, I got some things to say. And this adventure probably doesn’t deserve to be the one I go off on. It’s not a disaster.

But, also, this sentence appears in the adventure: “That independence became its undoing: no walls, no militia, no warning before its own monks were the first to fall when the Mind Stone took root beneath them, spreading house to house until the entire town turned in what may have been a single night.”  I have a blind spot when it comes to spotting AI. But, the triple negative is a a hallmark of AI. I’m not even going to mention the end of that sentence, just focusing on the triple negative. It stands out like a sore thumb. And it’s listed as human created with no AI. I’m no “AI is the bogeyman and everywhere!” kind of person, but this sticks out.

I think, though, what stood out the mot for me in this adventure was the page count vs the dungeon content. I’m not sure how to frame this so people will understand. The dungeons here are relatively small, ten to twenty rooms. The room descriptions are rather minimal, a sentence or two. “Cell 3. A single unlabeled potion of climbing, tucked behind a loose stone, easy to miss without a search.” Or, for a longer room “Storeroom. Broken crates, moldering sacks, the smell of old grain gone to rot. 2 Shambling Husks stir. Loot: a locked strongbox (30gp), and a scroll of protection from undead, wax seal still faintly intact.” Even that is pretty light. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But, that also means that the dungeon keys fit on a page or maybe a little more, for a ten room dungeon. And there are only, I don’t know, four or so dungeons in this? That’s only a small number of pages. But this is an eight page adventure. I have no idea, honestly, no idea, what those pages are being used for. Stat blocks at the end, tables at the end, maps, I guess. It’s just so offputting. To see a large page count and then see the size of the dungeons and the minimal room descriptions. 

Because the rest of the content, those in between pages, are not exactly stellar. The local lord is having a dream about three locations. Go check em out and defeat the evil one. I know, I know, i’m hyperbolic, but this is almost the extent of what you get to help launch the adventure. Go ahead and get the party moving based on that. Because that’s about all you’re getting. Oh, there’s a fuck ton of explaining and backstory and so on, but I think thats being confused for gaeable content. The actually hooks in, the specificity, is not there at all. This is supposed to be a sandbox like thing. Do the three in any order and then end up at the final dungeon. But its all so very loose. Maybe, I mean abstracted. “Hey, there’s a ransacked village with some pod people in it. You need the party to en up at the local monastery.” Again, hyperbolic, but not by much. But, then, also, augment that with a whole lot of backstory that isn’t really relevant to the game at the table. 

The emphasis here is on the wrong things. You can, as Stonhell demonstrated, get away with some minimal keying. But you do this by adding context and specificity around the general situation in the area. There are things going on, the place is alive, as noted in the general notes for the level/area. This allows for a rather shorter dungeon key entry. But, importantly, we cannot mistake historical background for “current situation.” Or even, the current situation for “this shit will impact game play.” If it’s not impacting game play then it’s just padding. A line or two od padding, thrown in here or there, might be fine. You can’t lose sight of the goal: supporting the game at the table. In looking at a page long NPC description, does it matter that dude grew up an orphan? Almost certainly not. 

This misses the mark with nearly everything. Yes, it does have some interconnected dungeons that are coherent enough to run. But any specificity, in town, in the hook, in the wilderness, outside the dungeon, inside the dungeon, is essentially absent. Anything that could tie things together well and help the DM create the feelings of immersion that a ten session adventure would rely upon is not present. 

Also, it’s mostly stabbin. 

There is supposed to be a whole pod person thing going on in one area that can bleed over in to others. None of that comes through well. The interconnections and theming between the sites, doesn’t come across. And, finally, the last dungeon has three separate version, only one of which will be used. This would seem to be a waste.

It’s just weird, in the way it abstracted the content and yet is STILL quite lengthy. 

This is $10 at DriveThru. The preview is fifteen pages. You’ll get some general overview, and none of the dungeons. That overview is, honesty, the most information you’re going to get about the hook and linking things together.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/580488/the-unleashing-of-st-nimuanne?1892600

By Jeremy Farkas
Troll Lord Games
Castles & Crusades
Level ... 3?

Dare you cross the vast desert and seek out the great red mesa where the near-mythical mine is rumored to lie? Dare you plunge the darksome depths of the labyrinth and wrest fortune and glory from its yawning chasm? Dare you seek out the legendary hammer Earthrender, which bestows lordship upon any dwarf who holds it aloft? Dare you discover the fate of the great wyrm Morglax the Bold, who brought her great host of bandits and monsters up from the south to snuff out Lord Ahidl-Mor and his kin?

This eighteen page adventure uses about fourteen pages to describe a thee levels dwarf “orcs in a hole” with about 35 rooms. Stuffed with humanoids, it uses a conversational style to present a lot of things to stab. 

I’m not sure what to say here. You know all of those adventures that have a bunch of humanoids in a dungeon with some kind of backstory? This is one of those. In this case the humanoids are kobolds, goblins, orcs and bugmeans. Along with the required vermin, an abomination or two, and a young dragon at the end. And in this case the dungeon is a three level Lonely Mountain, with thew dwarves pushed out by orcs and a dragon and the old dwarf king leaving a clue where the entrance was, up to and including a secret entrance on a ledge. The required “broken dwarf elevator” is present. 

Look, I don’t have anything positive to say. I guess I’ve got some negative things to point out. But, overall, there’s just not a lot here. This was a tourney module and then they added some content to try and expand it. I’m going to ignore the expanded content, a village and preamble adventure. I don’t think they really add anything interesting and are just padded out. If you just want to, I don’t know, enter a few rooms and kill a few things then I’ve got some great news for you about this adventure. It even has a few environmental things and light puzzels to solve! You gotta find the yellow control crystal to make the elevator work again! Uh. That didn’t come across well. If you want to stab things then you can, and there a few things to break up the stabbin.

Look, I know people like to stab. It is not lost on me that Chainmail exists. Chainmail, 3e, 3.5, 4e, the whole range, devoted to stabbin.I like to stab also. I like to stab as a means to an end. B/X is my favorite edition because of the balance there between stabbin as a means to an end rather than a tactical minis simulation. Ultimately I’m looking for something with a decent exploratory vibe, some roleplaying, and other interactivity in addition to the stabbin. And it has to be something  a little more interesting than “find the gold key to open the gold lock.”  And the adventure here is not altogether great in areas other than things to stab.

I’m also more than a little irked by many aspects of the C&C house style. Is any one thing terrible? No. Does it all annoy me? Yes. Like, no level range anywhere. I guess you just rush out and dump money at the new C&C adventure rather than looking for a specific adventure for a specific level range? Man, stick a fucking level range on it somewhere.

And the read-aloud here. You know the drill, fancy fonts with long italics make things hard t read. But, further, the read-aloud is all mixed up. We’ve got the famous second person stuff, with lots of “As you draw nearer, you clearly see …” writing, which should never be used. But, then, the bold/italics shifts. While read-aloud is in bolded italics so it DM text! Or, maybe its also read-aloud? It will just suddenly have what is obviously DM only information in the same bolded/italics. Huh? What’s the point then?

And then it’s padded ALL the fuck out. The house style loves to pad, but then the adventure does also. Creature stat blocks are long with phrasing like “Their primary attributes are physical. Their special abilities are dark vision and light sensitivity. In battle they use military forks that deal 1d8 damage, or short swords that deal 1d6 damage” As I get older the sublime majesty of the ready ref sheets becomes more and more apparent. No? You don’t agree? How about a very conversational tone in the writing, which forces you to wade through mountains of padding when locating information? “If for some reason the PCs feel compelled to loot Ahidl’s grave, “ Oh come on. What’s the point there?

And then in other places the information is absurdly out of order. AFTER a room description we get this little note “When the PCs get within 10 feet of the chamber prior, they must cross a steel tripwire just 6 inches off the ground.” That should, I think we can all agree, come BEFORE the room so the DM notices it before the party gets to the room. “Knock has no effect” ah, jesus man. It’s a low level adventure. Let the wizard use his fucking knock spell. It’s one less sleep he’ll have memorized, which is the entire point of utility spells. I can bypass this ther kind of challenge if I give up nuking a room of monsters. What’s wrong with that? Sounds like the D&D circle of life to me. 

I’m looking at room 33 right now, titled Dragon Bones. There’s a paragraph of bolded italics read-aloud. Then there are five paragraphs of DM text that follow. There is nothing in those those five paragraphs related to the room, in play. The past sentence is “Searching the room will yield no secrets or great treasures.” It’s all backstory. A quarter page, or more? For one room? 

I can excuse a lot of things as I’m Not In To That Style Of Play. But I can recognize how someone else might be. But, all of that text, for nothing? Wasted effort? Aimed at readers? Distracting from the purpose of the designer AND the purpose of a DM? Nope.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is about a dozen pages, which includes a sizable number of rooms as well as some preamble text. More than enough to see what you’re getting yourself in to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/579756/castles-crusades-ahidl-s-keep?1892600

By Noah Green
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-3

he shattered remains of the arch-wizard Rakius’s tower have long stood silent—until now. Gnoll fugitives seeking refuge have unwittingly unleashed the restless horrors that linger in the ruin. Can players unravel the wizard’s forgotten doom and escape his labs with arcane treasures and their souls intact?

This 24 page adventure uses about twelve pages to describe 25 rooms in s small five level ruined mage tower. You’re running around doing things for the undead as you stab some abominations. It’s trying to keep som themes running, but it feels disconnected from itself.

Meh. It’s a small ruined wizards tower. Inside you’ve got these gnolls, hiding out after they stole some gnoll artifacts. Except, all but one are now possessed by spirits that were in the tower. They now all hate each other, or have some quest inside the tower for you to go on, which could be something like “kill the other spirit Bob” or maybe “cleanse the tower of the abominations”! Because, yes, as a wizard tower there are some weird fleshy abominations. (Nice art for them!) 

I am just so Meh about this one. I can only point to a bunch of trifling things. There is a decent little outside portion, with multiple entrances inside and windows and thicket holes entrances and so on. There’s a little read-aloud section and then some decent little interactivity in places. Let’s open up the cold dome and find some brains and put them back in to skulls with bejeweled eyes! Or a toad statue in a fountain with a gemstone hidden in an eye, all in a kind of overgrown garden setting. Or, even, a room with paintings in it, one of which is a famous missing work! This should all be decent. I mean, even the shades and their entire fetch quest little bullshitty things, that should be fine also, right? Bring me the Jade Monkey! And I shall give you, I don’t know,  a necklace hidden in a fireplace nearby. 

And, some of the magic items are not bad at all. “Leonard: A life-sized, bald human male head sculpted of rubbery material. Pulling the nose or an ear causes it to scream for 1d6 rounds; all nearby suffer a –2 penalty to attack rolls.” Or a little bonsai tree with litte fruits on it that provide full size rations. Not everything here is great, there are boring old +1’s, but, it does have some objects with some creativity

But there’s just something missing to all of it. Some life? Some joy? Some completeness?

Let’s revisit that painting. It’s in a room with like twelve other paintings. It’s the only one mentioned, at like 200go, but, are the other worth something? It’s like they don’t exist. The whole possessed gnoll thing, and the stuff they stole, it just feel random. Why gnolls? Why possessed? Why do we care about the gnoll artifacts? The spirits, and their goals and wants and stuff, It just feels disconnected from itself. Maybe I mean passive? The spirits don’t seem to give a shit about anything. And not in a cool “Im from th beyond the grave” sort of way. Yeah yeah, go kill my brother. Yeah yeah, maybe rid the place of monsters. They’re boring. The entire thing is boring?

I don’t know why. A lack of active verbing? I mean, even in B2 the place didn’t FEEL boring. It felt dynamic. Dudes were up to shit. Free room and board. Toss a bag of gold through the door.  The spirits, here, are the main “person” interactivity. And they have some sort of enemies, friends, things they want done. At least theoretically. And I guess their rooms note what they could engage the party on. But there’s nothing in this beyond that. They just don’t seem particularly interested in getting what they want. As for the rest, it’s just vermin and abominations. Oh, oh, there’s a gnoll, a single gnoll left not taken over by the spirits. He’d hiding in a garden room. The one with the fish statue/fountain. It’s got some blood moths in it, think of them as stirge. They’ll attack him and if you save him then he;ll tell you that the eye of Utnapishtim is in the fish statues eye socket. It’s all in one room. There’s nothing larger or more grand, for the most part, than whats right in front of you. 

In another place you slap the brain of a dude back in a skull. That’s it. No fun interactivity that it enables. No places to unlock. There’s literally nothing else. 

So, I don’t know. Is there some room interactivity? Yes. Is there some NPC interactivity? Yes. Are the room descriptions disasters? No. Is the formatting a disaster? No. Do I care about anything in this and/or am excited to run it? No. As I noted, it feels disconnected, like the rooms exist in isolation, in spite of a few rooms, especially with the spirits, being tied loosely to to other rooms. 

It’s not bad. It doesn’t make me want to claw my own eyes out. So, you know, good job?

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelve pages, with a handful of rooms in the dungeon at he end of it. More than enough, i think, to get  a sense of the dungeon. And my malaise.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/580706/quick-delve-4-shadows-and-flesh?1892600