Ten Foot Pole

Says here I have published 2,161 posts on this blog. About three a week since August 2011. All but eight have been reviews. Let’s post a ninth, shall we?

The tenfootpole is a place of crap. Full of shit and worthless writing about it. A monument to the hubris of man that stinks like a trash container full of dead squirrels sitting the June heat for a week.

What it is not is an outpost of the great internet hype machine. But the hype machine has made a foray, testing the borders of the volcano lair. You see, Greg Gawron, Founder, Advanced Fantasy Games, has responded to my review of The Lost Tomb of Kazcuk Mot the Undying. You can read the response for yourself, or simply rely on my cherry picking. Fear not gentle ones, while there is no bad publicity, I have no great conceit here. Nothing matters and the tilting of windmills must be done, as Camus says, in spite of the results.

Our goal was to hit the market with a fun and challenging adventure that sets a new standard for Old School formats, use of cool artwork reflective of the earlier days of D&D, and other traditional things like a removable cover, blue map, challenging encounters, 12 point font for easy reading in low light, and more. However, we didn’t just put extra effort into the module itself, we also made a commitment to our customers with a quickly delivered product immediately after the Kickstarter closed. Also through our timely communications, packaging, shipping, and little details needed to earn their business again and again.

We see here, the Advanced Fantasy Games creed. This line is a nostalgia play. It is an appeal to nostalgia, no doubt to those middle aged people who have a fond memory from their past about D&D. And now have money to spend. It’s a member-berry. And, note, as a major selling point, the commitment to a quickly delivered product, timely communication, packaging, shipping, and other little details needed to earn the repeat reader business. Great for your fucking revenue stream, eh? Lots and lots of shit mentioned there isn’t there? Oh, hey, wait. Do you think it’s weird that not much is mentioned about the ACTUAL ADVENTURES? I mean, i don’t. Why would he write a decent adventure anyway when the focus is clearly on the repeated buyer.

Let us look now at the comments about the adventure that Greg Gawron, Founder, Advanced Fantasy Games, specifically called out to us, as convincing testimonials as ” direct messages received from our customers:”

“Just wanted to let you know I received my copy in the mail today and it looks fantastic the art print is getting framed and hung in my game room. Thank you again. I can’t wait to play it.” – Eric F.

Eric F. there didn’t say anything about the adventure. Eric F. got his in the mail. Eric F likes the art print and the way it looks. Eric F didn’t actually say anything about the adventure though, did they?

“Well packed. Carefully packed. Thanks Greg!” – Bill A.

Bill A there likes your packaging. Both well packed AND carefully packed. That certainly means a fun night ahead, right? The correlation between “I literally received it in the mail” and “a great adventure to run at the table!” is obvious, no?

“Layout is beautiful and so fantastically readable, Greg, great job!” – DTFA

A vote for reading the adventure from DTFA! I’m sure there will be many future readings of the adventure as well! And, well, layout, sure, right?

“OMG! This is awesome! Thanks Greg!” – SJ

Hey, it’s awesome! Weirdly nonspecific though. I wonder what was awesome. They seem very excitable. Maybe they think Applebees is awesome also? No specific comments about the adventure.

“Just got mine today! Love it!” – Steve J.

They got theirs. Presumably in the mail also, although, I must say, the lack of noting HOW they received it does raise my eyebrows more than a little. I do hope that the trend here is obvious, and was obvious from the second quoted one.

“I was lucky enough to get to play test and let me say it brought me back to my childhood and how much fun the OG of D&D was and still is very challenging and so much fun… Thanks.” – Vincent F.

Sounds like someone had a good DM. That’s great! I wonder if they actually played this adventure though? Or something else? Awwww, look, a direct reference to an aging person wistfully looking back at he lost days of their youth.

“Now, after having given it a 1st “Read Through” I must say, Excellent Work! Well Done! This is a great little adventure that will serve as a perfect introduction to OSRIC/AD&D, especially with the pre-gen characters. Thank you! I’ll be looking forward to the sequel.” – Joseph Y.

Maybe the closest to an actual comment about the adventure. Again, very non-specific about what is excellent and what is well done. At least they, unlike everyone else, actually read the adventure?

“Just got mine in the mail and I couldn’t be happier! Really nice job, and ahead of schedule.” – Rob H.

The take away here, for everyone actually writing good adventures, is that no one gives a fuck about your quality. They care about getting it in the mail and ahead of schedule. Well, presumably tat’s the baseline anyway. I should hope that writing something good raises the floor a bit in what one can expect … as long as you deliver it. And Early.

“I have to say this was one of the fastest campaign completions I have ever seen!” – Aaron T.

Again and again and again, we can see the important of commerce and not anything actually related to the adventure.

“I received mine today – looks great!” – JBCTCJoe

And again.

“I received my physical copy in the mail this week! It arrived in great condition, your packing skills & package nomenclature (DO NOT BEND) precede you, Greg! 

What the fuck is obsession here? I guess you can make $6k a month slopping out adventures as long as you ship it with a DO NOT BEND on it.

The module itself is a work of old school trade dress & format beauty & I cannot wait to dive into it! Thank you so much for this!” – Robert W.

Our final comment. An appeal to nostalgia.

Do you think it’s weird that NOT ONE PERSON commented on anything specifically about the adventure? It was all delivery and nostalgia trade dress. I think its weird that not one person said anything about the adventure. I also think its a lot weirder that Greg Gawron, Founder, Advanced Fantasy Games, selected those quotes to post. “Great commerce!” huh?

The post ends with Greg Gawron, Founder, Advanced Fantasy Games, making a direct appeal to marketing their latest and hyping it and noting that they are a good DM. That’s what it means when you run an adventure and people have fun. That you are a decent DM, at a minimum. Or, you don’t know what polite people look like. But, no, let’s remain optimistic and take you at face value, that you are a good DM.

I don’t really give a shit man. You’re just another in a long line of slop artists churning out nostalgia crap for an aging population that doesn’t actually play D&D anymore but just reads it. It’s their money. They can do what they want with it. Make your money. But let us not pretend you are producing anything decent or for any other reason than cranking out the old bank account. Not on this site.

By David Hay
Third Castle Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

Travel from sun-drenched beaches to dense jungle trails, over vine-rope bridges and up volcanic cliffs. Encounter lizardmen, the living dead, diabolical cultists and worse. Find magical items, gold and perhaps some glory too. Or at least a good tale to tell, should you make it to the taverns of Hardwind Harbour. But don’t tarry too long – for dark smoke belches from the volcano and the earth trembles. Where will your party be when it erupts?

This 74 page adventure uses about 55 pages to describe sixteen points of interest, and some of their dungeons, on a tropical island you are shipwrecked on. It’s pretty good for what it is, combining some ok formatting and a more situational approach to the adventure. I wish the overall situation on the island, how it works together, was addressed just a little more.

Oh no! You’re shipwrecked on a topical island! You probably find your way to the pirate town and there you probably find out it’s a lot harder to join a pirate crew than I thought. The island, while it has a map, is laid out like a pointcrawl. Each location is either self-contained or has a small complex/’dungeon’ attached to it. A couple of caves, a town, a necropolis, ye olde volcano temple, and so on, each with between eight to, say, eighteen locations in them. 

Ostensibly you are trying to get off the island, and many of the paths/leads go to the pirate town where you can bargain with the pirates. There’s pirate intrigue in the town, of course, and everyone wants something in order to help you out. But, also, there are other things about. You can find a small rowboat at one beach, and you see a much smaller island offshore, and it has a ship on it. A cursed ship, as it turns out. Do you know how to sail? Do you know how to recruit sailors to man a cursed ship? 

And, thus, we see a larger kind of more traditional hex crawl sort of thing going on in this adventure. In those more traditional hex crawls there are generally resources and wants/needs from others that the party exploits to fulfill their needs. They are generally not explicitly noted, with perhaps a few linkages explicit but in most other cases the party comes up with some crazy thing to do to exploit hex Y to do something in hex X. And this adventure, while a pointcrawl, does much the same thing. There ARE explicit linkages between the sites, Bob wants you to deal with the cult or Frank needs their crew found before they can do THE THING. But there are more than enough resources, and weirdo things going on, that the party can exploit things of their own design as well. This is good. The designer has written the adventure to present situations, expanding that to also present some more traditional crawls, and that situation-forward writing is what enables the more free-form non-linear gameplay. And, as the adventure reiterates a couple of times: “oh, and don’t forget to make the volcano explode!” 

The more traditional “dungeons” are decent, as well. Underground passages to swim to are a great example of a kind of hidden area of a dungeon that a party paying attention to can discover to get a reward/danger. A bridge over a chasm … and exploring the BOTTOM of the chasm is another example of that. Something a little oblique but obviously present, that the party can poke their noses in to. It’s the ol “cave behind the waterfall’ thing that I love so much. There are also rope bridges over a valley, complete with a corpse hanging from it and wild baboons on it. Or crack in a sea cave floor with an old rowboat, rickety, spanning it. The old “sarcophagus with something inside banging on it to get out’ thing. The rooms, much like the hexes, generally have more than one thing going on in it and many times the dangers are telegraphed well. A pool with luminescent seaweed, and when you go fucking around inthe pool you find out its strangleweed. Well, the DM told you the fucking seaweed glowed, did you think it was just window dressing. For that room, in particular, there’s a sandy floor with footprints, a pool of water, with the underground passage, a howling sound coming from somewhere and then that seaweed, and it’s all handled in one column rather than droning on and on. 

As that column note implies, formatting and word count here is pretty spot on. There’s a little sections at the top of an entry that could be read-aloud or inspiration, with some bolded words that reference bullets deeper in the description. A couple of sentences for each bullet, and two to three for the read-aloud/summary. It’s easy to scan and easy to locate information. There is a case of three of information being presented a little late, with something more critical to the action being presented later in the description/bullets. If there’s an ancient red dragon in the room then maybe get to that part sooner rather than later, yes?

I do want to call out something I rarely do: the art. More than once in this I thought some associated art pieces did a GREAT job of bringing the room better to life, which is what I think ALL art in an adventure should do. I understand this is subjective to some degree, but I know it when I see it. Tommaso Devitofrancesco and Gary Trow are credited with the interior art and one/both of them did a good job. “This large room is filled with magnificently sculpted statues standing in rows. At one end of the room war relics are displayed – trophies taken from the Old Empire’s defeated foes. Mosaics depicting famous victories festoon the walls.” This is accompanied by an art piece of greek-style warrior statues on plinths that really brings home the scale of the room. It’s one of the few times that good art in an adventure made me want MORE art pieces to do the same for EVERY encounter. (Which I’d probably then bitch about, but, whatever.)

There’s not a lot of padding in this thing. A few pages of pre-gens and one page of magic items at the end. The preamble before the keys are focused on wanderers and other pertinent information. Still, I wish perhaps the ‘summary’ information was just a little more in depth. A better overview of the various linkages between sites and perhaps a bit more about … campaigning? Hiring a ship, living in town, a sentence on expeditions … this is an expansive adventure and the support for that part of the play could have been better. The whole “jungle vibe” thing doesn’t really come through much at all. I think this is related to the pointcrawl nature; the immersive jungle setting doesn’t come through because the journey to the next time is essentially abstracted in a point crawl. That doesn’t have to be bad, but it needs a little attention, I think, to bring the journey part to life. The sites feel weirdly disconnected, which I guess makes sense give the pointcrawl nature. But, as I said, the designer must then remedy this. And the lack of travel time issues almost certainly strengths this abstraction and minimizes the jungle vibe. 

Still, a pretty decent adventure. I’m happy I found it and happy to see what the publisher does next.

This is $16 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you the entirety of the starting point/cave complex. It’s a good representation of the encounters to be found, and shows off the nice Glynn Seal maps. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552809/escape-the-devil-s-eye?1892600

By Greg Gawron
Advanced Fantasy Games
OSRIC
Levels 2-4

Hidden within a long-forgotten cemetery stands an abandoned mausoleum, once a place of grand splendor and solemn reverence. Now it lies broken and rotting — its roof collapsed, headstones shattered, and its glory buried beneath decades of neglect. But decay has not left this place empty. A new evil has claimed the ruin as its lair, and by fate or folly, you have found its resting place… and it now awaits your party of adventurers in The Lost Tomb of Kazcuk Mot the Undying.

This 28 page adventure presents a small tomb with fourteen rooms that is primarily aimed at tournament play. There is a certain, physicality? to it that I find interesting, however, it’s a bad tournament adventure, with mucho read-aloud and padded out DM text with rather simplistic challenges. 

It’s not every day you see someone thanking both Finch AND Taormino in the same breathe, like the credits page to this one does. I assume he went to a con and they both said some kind of Gandhi shit to inspire him to publish? I hope that’s the case. I don’t know, Taormina cranks his shit piles out so maybe it was publishing tips? Anyway, this is a tournament adventure. Tournament adventures need a few things special going on so you can judge them similarly, fairly, amongst different tables. I think that’s all bullshit and it’s like comparing a Rothko to a Picasso. “You get a prize!” Fuck that shit. 

And, therein, is the issue, at least with regards to the tournament aspect to this. Let us consider two different scoring systems for a dungeon. In the first, I give you one point for each room you enter. In the second I roll a d6 for every room you enter and if it comes up a ‘1’ then I give you a point. IE: what are we measuring? The ability to penetrate the dungeon by any means possible or are we measuring how lucky the dice are for the party? Further, we must be up front with the players on what we are measuring. SHould they be tearing the place apart looking for treasure, or defeating monsters, or “winning” the plot, or trying to roll as high as they can on their dice? This adventure, of course, does not disclose the scoring to the party other than to say you get a point for accomplishments and lose a point for mishaps. And then it does things like “if you search the room then roll a d6. If you roll a 1 then the party finds a pearl necklace. They get a point.”  I seem to recall that some tourney adventures went so far as to have die rolls prepared for the DM in order to make things as fair as possible across tables. Rothko does not approve. So, as a tournament adventure I think this fails to do a decent job with the scoring. The answer is not more prepared die roll and less randomness, but a different axis of scoring, I think.

Ok, so, the adventure intro also says we can use this as a stand-along adventure. How was the play Mrs Lincoln? Not as bad as one might think, given the murder of the president.

I’m not happy with the adventure, or the interactivity as a whole, but there is a certain physicality to the interactivity that I think works well. One of the entry rooms has a door under a sarcophagus that flips up. There’s a grate in the floor to go down. There’s a portcullis to lift. There’s a decent amount of this kind of physical interactivity in the adventure. Or, maybe, environmental? Whatever. There are other classic elements as well, such as yellow mold, the old water monster in a pool of water thing, and so on. They don’t feel tired in this, but I’m also open to this being because the amount of text that surrounds them. Interactivity, beyond that physicality, is generally limited to stabbing. And, even that is a bit iffy. The wanderers are bats, rats, and centipedes and they show up a decent amount. One wonders at the boredom of it all. 

Otherwise, the adventure has some of the long standing usual problems with the untrained. The read-aloud can be quite long. And, of course, players don’t listen to long read aloud. It’s not a new thing. You’re boring them with read-aloud. Keep it short. It’s the designers job to figure out how. Further, the read-aloud over-reveals the rooms contents. You want the read-aloud to hint at things for the players to have their characters follow up on, not to just expo dump every little detail. at the party. You want the back and forth. 

EVerything here is padded out. Every read-aloud ends with “WHAT DO YOU DO” and then immediately we get a “DM NOTES” heading. Yeah, got it man. It’s not read-aloud so it’s DM notes. Yeah, got it, the read-aloud is over so now the party and do things. The first trap takes like three paragraphs to describe, and it’s a simple stair foot pit. Ok, so, I take it back. Four paragraphs. This is a quarter of a page. For a simple trap. It’s not complex. It’s just padded out. The wanderer text is padded out. “Inside the mausoleum the characters will find ample space to move about and it may appear to be a safe place to rest and take shelter. It is not.” Jesus man, that did nothing for the adventure. It is just worthless text. You didn’t actually say anything. All you’re doing is adding words to the adventure. And these filler words and paragraphs get in the way of the ACTUAL meaningful text that the DM needs to locate in order to run it at the table. The DM needs to be able to quickly scan the text, and right now they have to dig through shit like that in order to get to the stuff that matters. 

It’s just relentless. The editor is the designer, which is either magnificent, if the designer knows what the fuck they are doing, or a disaster is they do not. The designer was not born with some a priori knowledge of how to write an adventure and do layout and what makes it fun and so on. Ideally, an editor, a decent one anyway, can help with some of that. YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. You might be a decent DM. You are probably an ok guy But YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING. Seek help. Seek an editor. Learn what makes an adventure a good adventure and also an easy to run adventure. 

This is $20 at DriveThru. I think that’s because it was kickstarted. I’m going to, rather generously for me, NOT say this is a fucking cash grab, even though the first thing published was kickstarted at $20. That advice above? Learning what makes a good adventure, getting an editor, etc? You can ignore that. You can go down the path of filthy lucre. Just crank shit out on kickstarter the most efficiently possible and build your market. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/562629/the-lost-tomb-of-kazcuk-mot-the-undying-osric?1892600