Ten Foot Pole

By Peter Jewicz
Mellow Golem Games
"OSR"
Level 5?

This twelve page adventure uses about three pages to describe four rooms in a hag lair. It sufferers from the generic/universal curse and relies on tables for a substantial portion of the adventure. Abstracted content with little specificity to help bring it alive. 

The legend of the beast is persistent in these parts, a terrible force that dwells deep in the swamp and strikes fear into the hearts of those who live nearby. Little do they know, the beast is but a pawn, for something far more sinister lurks within the bowls of the swamp.

Ah, the generic/universal adventure. They seldom fail to not disappoint, even when statted for “OSR”, as this one is. There is something about them that makes a designer seemingly fearful of providing anything concrete to it. The designer wanted an adventure in which the party shows up to a village on the edge of a swamp. Fearful and superstitious locals. Talk of The Beast, everywhere, the cause of all ills. And then a journey through a swamp, full of dread, before finally arriving at the beasts lair, only to find out Muhahahahaha! The beast is the pet of a swamp hag! 

Instead, we get little of that.

Adventure writing can be hard. As a designer you have to get out of your head what you are imagining and get that down on paper so that when someone reads it they can get close to what you intended. We get what the designer wanted here because they out right tell us “To get the full effect for this mini-adventure, make sure to play up the townsfolk’s fear of the beast.” That is, in principle, great! You want a town that seems immersive to that point. The adventure designer needs to help bring that about. This doesn’t do that. The village is quite minimal, just one line or so about the town being on stilts and moldy. That’s fine, but, what isn’t fine is the lack of the The Best present in their ramblings. Or any rambling at all. We might look to the rumors table, but all we get is abstracted information like “1 The swamp has been especially active lately.” or that the swamp spirits are angry. There’s nothing much here at all about The Beast. I love that it’s called The Beast, but there’s nothing more. None of its misdeeds or lame calves or anything. The designer needs to bring an adventure alive through specificity for things like this. Yes, the DMs job is to run with it and expand on it but you have to give them SOMETHING to work with. 

Then we get to the swamp. This also is abstracted away. Just roll on a page full of random tables. “3 A large depression that collects rainwater.” or a smell that “A salty taste, similar to being near an ocean.”  That’s what you have to work with here; it’s totally abstracted away. There IS an encounter table, or single line entries or so, and it does show some decent things in it. “A series of stick figures are attached to the trees. Until they are destroyed, those traversing this area of the swamp walk in circles always arriving back at the figures.” That’s creepy as all fuck. And it deserves more than a line on a d12 encounter table. The swamp needed to be fixed encounters, or a pointcrawl or something, with the entries worked to bring them to life. 

The lair, proper, is four rooms. You get The Beast room, a Catoblepas, and then a potion room. In the potion room you get told EXPLICITLY how to make a potion, by a journal, that gets you through a bramble corridor. Then you hit, surprise, Lareth the Beautiful! Err a swamp hag. No hints of a hag up to this point at all. It’s all wasted. 

Make the town afraid. Make the swamp a real area and bring life to the best of the encounters on the table. Hint at creepy things to foreshadow the hag. 

Tables ruin adventures. Yes, old school uses tables and randomness, but not to create the entire adventure from. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see the “village” and the “swamp”, or at least the dressing for it. The preview should have shown a bit more of the adventure, a lair page, for example. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/571424/lair-of-the-swamp-beast?1892600

By Gordy Higgens
Self Published
OSE
Levels 4-6

The ‘Toymaker’ has gone missing – and nobility across the realm are scrambling to get their hands on his highly sought-after dolls. Hauntingly beautiful, and scarily well made.

His workshop is hidden, deep within the ‘Whispering Woods’. A dark and desolate forest, that locals warn all who dare enter, never return… that is, all except the Toymaker. To find his workshop, you must navigate the pitch black wood, haunted by imprisoned demons, zealous lumberjack wardens, cursed werewolves, possessed dolls, an entitled elf prince and a gaggle of other monstrous horrors. The balance of power in the woods is shifting – will the evils that lay trapped here be released unto the world?

This 52 page adventure presents about thirteen hexes and a couple of dungeons with about thirty rooms total in a dark forest kind of fairytale vibe. Sinister plots abound while the party tries to navigate a lot of competing goals in an adventure built to run.

Ok, so, as I’m describing what’s going on I’m going to have to ask you put aside certain feelings you have. Like, when I say “toymaster” or “puppets.” I know we’ve all been indoctrinated to expect certain things from the use of those themes. I promise this one isn’t like those others. Also, I suspect that the cover art might be a bit offputting. The designer is also the artist, so, hey, sorry man! I think the interior art is fine but the cover, along with the title “master of puppets” both sort of lean in to some tonal and historical implications that we are ALL bad people for having but which are true nonetheless.

Let’s think of a dark forest fairy tale vibe, maybe with a touch of farce in it, similar to Gone Fishin. And there’s a lot going on in this place. The Whispering Woods are a kind of dark forest/mirkwood stand in. All ancient and old and dark and foreboding with rumors of ancient battles and demons. And that the woods will whisper to you. There are woodcutters in the forest, who were once a kind of border guard keeping an eye on the woods but over time are perhaps a little financially focused. Especially since their funding was cut. Funding? Yes, the elves used to fund them. Let’s think a more Fey-like elf than a Tolkein-elf. ANyway, the border guards get their funding cut and now the mission has degenerated. Why does it need border guards it’s a literal demon forest, the trees are demons. Some old elf king defeated an invading demon army long ago and turned them all to trees. His magic axe, along with his bloody handprint, is embedded in a tree stump in the middle of the woods. Also, the trees can’t be cut down. Let’s think a super strong ironwood. In to this comes the Toymaker, who lives in the woods and makes wooden dolls. Expensive wooden dolls. That everyone just loves to get for their rich ass trust fund kids, like some fairy tale stanley cup. Yeah, he figured out a way to cut down the trees and makes dolls from them and lets the border force sell the remaining wood. Also the dolls whisper things, an attempt by the toymaker to embed his little chukies in to the nobility in order to influence them and gain power because, yeah, the demon from the tree is now in the doll, kind of, bound by the doll clothes. A couple of the dolls get loose and the toymaker goes looking for them, only to get killed by some werewolves in the forest. Werewolves that are turning the border guards and whose curse starts from a different fey-elf that was kicked out of elflandia, is 143 in line for the throne, and now wants to take over the wood and thinks that a perfect way to start that is kicking everyone out starting with the border guards. I think I just wrote a page on that shit? And theres more people/groups running around in there. A slightly different framing of the toymaker would have hit better, but it all kind of makes sense in an evil consequences kind of way and is not as “pretext” as the length of description might otherwise imply. These are just things following from others naturally, if pushed just a little. 

The hooks are the usual lame hired/dream shit, but the first one reads “A local Count wants the doll he ordered for his daughter’s birthday, but the Toymaker failed to make his delivery last week.” This one, I think, could have been pushed more and be the center of the adventure, much the way Gone Fishin was. A little expansion, a little more farce. And it’s gonna fit in well with people you meet in the forest, cavalier mercenaries who are sent by THEIR patrons to get toys for THEIR kids. A little push here in the writing, the absurdity, a tinge of evil, future chukie foreshadowing, insane offers, this would have lent a nice opening vibe that would frame the rest of the adventure instead of having just some genero stuff. 

There are a decent number of NPC’s in this. They are well organized with wants, needs, knows, offers to the party, along with short little descriptions like “Wild red hair. Always shouts, unable to speak at a reasonable volume” or “A nude, 2’ tall, crudely made wooden puppet. Exclaims ‘oh boy!’ frequently.” Perfect little nudges for the DM. You can talk to a lot of people and things, including a termite queen who can be particularly useful in a forest full of evil wooden chuckies. Not everyone is friendly, and a lot of the situations are tense and almost all can lead to some combat, but the talky talky option is there for a smartie partie. Think of the cavalier mercenaries, as an example of talking and fighting. 

Magic items are decent. “Royal Ceremonial Sword – +2 Elven Glass Blade, with gold leaf details. Used in knighting ceremonies. On a critical hit (19-20) it shatters, doing maximum damage. Repairs itself in 1d6 turns” and “Thief’s Lantern – Emits an area of light only visible to the wielder, and others that touch them.” These are nice little examples. Interesting effects to be sure. Useful, fun, unusual. They FEEL magical, especially the lantern. 

The entries start with a little overview that could be a read-aloud (In fucking italics! Don’t do that!) with certain words underlined and bolded (I’d do one or the other, not both) and those bolded/underlined words are then followed up with in their own sections with more details. A Sentence or two for each keeps them each to scan and run. Descriptions are not winning awards but are still pretty good. “A large open-cut marble quarry. Filling with water from a spring on the northern cliff face. A dull glow emanates from the loudly bubbling depths. Red handprints cover a nearby marble boulder. “ I don’t like “large”, but, not a bad little description and it hints at many things to follow up an examination on. 

There is A LOT to get in to trouble with in this, mostly from the party fucking around. Not in a Museum Tour kind of way but just the party doing normal shit. The locations can be fantastic, like a buried titanic statue you enter through a mouth, filled with stac/tags inside. Some of the wanderers seem rough, like 2d6 werewolves, but, hey, it’s OSR. You’re going to be doing a lot of freeing people, questioning them, and so on to get information you need to find the workshop, itself a twenty room dungeon. All without getting screwed over by the captives and/or people you meet along the way. Can you, having discovered termites, put together that this is an excellent resource to take advantage of in a wood themed adventure? If so, the designer was ready for you. Or, you can just stab them. How shall you navigate the mercenary knights? “Contract knights, mounted on warhorses. Equipped with expensive weapons and armour. Annoyed they couldn’t just pay someone beneath them to fulfill their quest “ Overemployment has always been a thing man.

This is $10.50 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages, showing rooms keys. Great preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569545/the-master-of-puppets?1892600

By ND Hobbies, Ulises Martinez, Mauricio Rosel
ND Hobbies
1e
Levels 7-9

In the majestic dwarven capital of Runekaatara, the miners’ guild has made an unprecedented discovery. What are these dwarven miners hiding from the city authorities, and why are they desperately seeking the help of a group of adventurers who have just arrived in the capital? In The Hidden Citadel, adventurers will embark on a classic dungeon-crawling subterranean adventure to discover the secrets that an ancient citadel holds, the dangers that protect these secrets, and the reason why the citadel fell into disgrace in the first place

This 32 page adventure is a simple hack on a simple simple map with underpowered monsters and a weird tonal imbalance. Grist for the gristmill.

The cover blurb here says “A group of mining dwarves found the remains of an old and forgotten underground city. Everything indicates that it is a lost and ancestral citadel of dwarven origin.” So, of course the heads of the dwarf mining guild, in the dwarf capitol city, looking for the dwarf ancestral citadel of dwarven origin, hires non-dwarves to go find it. Also, the dwarf ancestral capitol and origin is like six levels, each with, I don’t know, about six rooms? Anyway, we’re gonna forget about all of that and look at the rest of the adventure.

So you end up in dwarflandia and in the marketplace you overhear shit like  “The governor doesn’t have to find out” “They say the pay is crazy” “It’s the discovery of the century, whoever goes there will be remembered forever” “What if Is there something down there?” and most importantly “They are in the Anvil tavern. Shall we venture?” This is from people in the market, all members of the miners guild, who beat the characters away from them. But, also, direct them to the Miners Guild inn if they need a place to stay. I do like the overheard snippets of conversation; it smacks of the in-voice rumor tables that I love that I think add a lot of color and framing for a DM to play off of. Arriving at the inn a dwarf, who turns out to be the guildmaster in disguise, drops a bag of gold in front of the party while passing through the room. If you return it to him then you’re honest and he wants you to go on the adventure. If you steal it then it shows daring and he wants you to go on the adventure. If you ignore it then a thief picks it up and runs over the parties table to get out, no doubt prompting the party to intervene, which shows the parties [something] and the guildmaster wants you to go on the adventure. Tell me again, is the illusion of choice a good thing or a bad thing in an adventure? I guess it’s just the hook. Hey, also, they only want 10% of the loot you find in the ancient dwarven capitol origin. For realisies. Anyway, we’re gonna forget about all of that and look at the rest of the adventure.

I’ve mentioned that the map levels are rather small. Five rooms on a level, six rooms on a level. One has like thirteen rooms, an anomaly. They are done in a faux-art style so you’ve got cracks in the stonework and so on. The end result is that it’s hard to make out doorways and other features that you need to run the adventure. What’s a portcullis? What’s a door? What’s an open doorway? Good luck to you. Level entry/exits are not the clearest, from the maps, but there is an “overview” map in the back that has all of the levels on it and has some lines showing stairs from one location going to entry on another floor, so, that helps. But, also, putting it on the single page maps would have been better. The text says things like “ Room 2 is locked behind a closed portcullis and only accessible through Room 1.” Uh … no? Yes? Technically? The adventure seems to do this a lot. In another place we’re told “To continue delving into the dungeon, the adventurers will have to open the titanium gates that block the way to the Great Stairs.” Uh. I’m level nine? So, I guess the meaning of the text is that ONE of the room two entries has a portcullis in front of it and the other entrance is just open, the one from room one. It’s a strange way of writing it though. I’m sure there are EASL issues here, which I generally give a wide allowance for, but I think in this case it’s something else. It’s something like a lack of acknowledgement that you can go through the portcullis? Or the gates to the stairs to level two? There are no additional details, like bend bars/lift gates, or spells or anything. Which I guess you don’t need, it’s just a weird phrasing. Over and over again. Anyway, we’re gonna forget about all of that and look at the rest of the adventure.

Looking at the enemies we’ve got a two hit die ooze. And a one hit die giant rat. ONE one hit die rat and ONE two hit die ooze. Eventually you get to fight like FIVE two hit die creatures. There’s a 4 hit die ghost. What’s the turning rules again? TWO three hit die orbs? There’s a gold golem. I guess he’s seven hit die. The boss is a twelver. I understand that we normally look at dungeon encounters that are tough, and give the “it’s OSR, run away” answer, but I’m not sure what we do in the opposite direction? There is the usual “doors slam shut’ stuff. Anyway, we’re gonna forget about all of that and look at the rest of the adventure.

Writing is dull. The usual padding. “This room has several armored corpses, which in the past were dwarven guards.” THIS ROOM HAS is all padding. And then we run in to the usual historical survey of what the room was. It’s dull, long, multi paragraph with little in the way of formatting to help scan and run the adventure. Interactivity is generally stabbing something or a trap or “pull the two levels on the level to unlock the door to the next level.” I mentioned a gold golem earlier. Here is the entirety of that room: “This room is filled with gold and valuables, as if the noble dwarves had put their riches here to protect them in desperation. If someone takes a coin, several of them take on a humanoid form and will turn into a gold golem that protects this treasure.. Upon death, the golem becomes 355 gold coins.” That’s it. Nothing more. What do you think filled with gold and valuables means? 355 gold coins? Does it seem weird to mention the 355? Everything is like this. Missing information. Dull writing. Lengthy writing that leads to nothing. Anyway, we’re gonna forget about all of that and look at the rest of the adventure.

And then the tone changes, in one place. “This room is full of bags and suitcases, all arranged in a pile. Inside the suitcases there are souvenirs, family portraits, letters, and books. Everything is mundane, but each object represents someone who died in this place.” Uh …. The next room has a bunch of people in it, skeletons, bodies. Children sitting on mothers laps. People huddled. With the marks of slit wrists where they all killed themselves. Jesus man! So, yeah, there’s an emotional impact there. The antechamber, with the luggage, clearly is culturally overloaded. A mass suicide scene would not have as much impact as a mass suicide scene with some hints beforehand to really foreshadow and bring home the horror. “And we looted it?!” It’s the Lareth principal, done right. But, also, Jesus man! Here I was just killing rats and oozes and stabbing shit and pulling levers and you dump this on the players? But, whatever, it was good design even if tonally it is out of place.

There are also a few decent art pieces in this. Good art, in an adventure,helps the DM run the adventure. It helps clarify a room, or sets the mood for them, helping them riff on it. It’s evocative. David Arcila and Diana Rex are credited. I don’t know which one it is but I like them  for the purpose of inspiring the adventure. A nice barrier peaks vibe to it, that pulls you in. It’s not all the art, maybe four pieces or so, but those are good.

So, just kind of  generic adventure for the most part. Nothing very stand out in the writing or the room interactivity, with a notable exception. I’m not overly upset by it, but it’s just another of the large number of marginally poor adventures that flood the market.

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview, but you do get to see some page layout on the product marketing page. It needs a real preview, that shows real rooms, so potential buyers can get a read on if they want to purchase it or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/482182/hidden-citadel?1892600

By Jesse Winter
Slime Mind Studio
BECMI/Shadowdark
Levels 1-3

The mountain bled. Now powers from beyond slake their thirst. Bordering the long-abandoned Brackenhoorg mines, a lone gatehouse suffers both from the churn of a mysterious ooze and the encroaching domain of a fey lord. Test your mettle against a dungeon swamped by a potent arcane ooze and conniving fey vying for power. Will your players learn the secrets of the ooze—or need enough treasure to afford a priest?

This forty page adventures uses about 25 pages to describe about fifty rooms in a two level dungeon features slime, fey, and insects. And dwarves? It’s full of fantastic elements and does a good job with formatting even though I think the overall attempt at a “Timeline of events” doesn’t work very well. A good journeyman adventure.

I think this adventure is fascinating. First off, it’s an ok adventure. Which means I guess it’s great? In the sea of filth I usually see it’s not one of those. It’s doing almost everything right. I don’t think I’m excited to run it. And I think that sucks because it IS doing almost everything right and when you compare it to the absolute dreck that people publish it is light years beyond that shit. I mean, the designer deserves some admiration for that. If this was plopped down in front of me at a table and I was told to run it then I would and it would go great and I’d have a great time. I just don’t think I’d ever reach for this of my own free will. Maybe it’s something like marketing. I’m not saying it is marketing, but I’m drawing an analogy. Nothing made me excited by this. Except for the meta-discussion that it doesn’t suck. I’m super excited by that. Seriously. If every adventure in the world were as good as this one then I wouldn’t have the tenfootpole blog. Technically, it’s great. It just lacks a certain joie de vivre. That sucks. It’s like working for one of those shit ass companies in which being competent isn’t good enough. You have to suck off the boss verbally and engage in the kabuki of mouthpiecing the the mission, blah blah blah even though you’re really only there because hookers and blow cost money and you need money. That seems unfair?

The formatting here is nigh perfect. “Oh, Bryce cares too much about formatting!” No, dipshit, I do not. But I do seem to understand, which many of you do not, that formatting IS the great downfall of many adventures. My standards are quite low. Can I run the adventure? Ok, you get to squeak by. You can write the worlds best adventure and have shitty formatting and I’m still gonna call it the worlds the best adventure and grumble and recommend it. But, if you write a mediocre adventure and do a shit job at helping me run it then you can burn. The entries are clear and easy to scan. A little summary/read-aloud  with some words blended that are then called out with more detail in the bulleted sections below. Just a few sentences each. It’s also using a ? ? layout, so ? of the page, the left “column” is used for the keys while the right ? “column” is used for notes and other called out detail, like monster stats and so on. I think the format here is perfect. Easy to scan. It’s clear. It’s easy to find things, and to follow up on information. No notes. Well, ok. You can have your preferences with formats. You can prefer a paragraph style over say an OSE style. Both a paragraph style and an OSE style can be implemented poorly. But, ultimately, many formats styles can be used, anything, really, as long as they succeed in their purpose and this one does. It could, perhaps, be terser in paragraph form. Less whitespace and all of that. But it’s not overly long the way it is and it’s dumping three or four rooms to a digest page in this format, while maintaining an easy to read font size. It’s fucking good. Formatting.

And the map is decent also. Dyson is credited. I’m not sure if these are his free maps or this was a commission. They look a little more involved than I’ve seen many of his free maps. A little more complex, a little more involved. Same level stairs, tunnels present, and they even run above and below other passages. A kind of rubble-vibe to them.  Monsters are noted on the map, as well as entry/exit locations. (The level one map has six, I think, exist/entrances on it, out of 22 rooms total. That’s some decent map interconnectivity!) Monsters and traps are also noted on the map, and the lettering is generally clear with the keys, proper, being very clear. And the wandering table is ON the map also. This thing is close to being platonic! Maybe just tending a little bit to be busy, but, I’d take a look at the adventure just to see the maps in it and how they are done. Little minimaps are included on each page to orient you toward the room and exits. 

Descriptions are pretty decent, above average for sure. Terse, but evocative enough. “An emerald waterfall, frozen in time, suspends loose rock and a charred body. Green, soot-stained metal encrusts the floor and walls.” or “Green liquid oozes from a cracked stone wall and marble bricks ju??ing from the ceiling. It pools around a toppled stone statue “ These aren’t bad. Like, not rock star but certainly pretty good as a short description goes. The bricks jut and the liquid oozes. Dislodging a brick “spews warm verdigrint.” Spew. And warm. Ewwww! 

The rooms get noise and light pointers to rooms nearby, so you can hear things from the right or to the east or some such. Love it. Same with monsters reacting in certain situations. Attention is paid to the dungeon as a whole rather than a more room by room orientation. (Which, I suppose, is also mirrored in the entry/exits, both in quantity and in noting them on the map.)  There’s also this thing the adventure does with blocking exits. Normally we’d see a door. But in this there is a frozen emerald waterfall, as noted in the quote above. It blocks an exit if you hack it loose or unfreeze it. In another place there’s this kind of giant mass of flowers in a corridor … which it turns out is blocking a kind of Y intersection, growing in all directions. These particular flowers regrow FAST when fed blood and there just happens to be a dead body in the intersection that it can suck blood from. An interesting problem, yes? (Also, I really liked the art piece that went along with this. A kind of grayscale/monochrome  image of a ruined hallway with a mass of giant flower in it, with the petals done in a kind of muted red. It very much delivers the kind of striking impression that I think this encounter was going for.) There’s decent interactivity here. 

Randomly, the page count is misleading, there is almost NO padding in this at all. Excess pages are NPC descriptions for the dungeon. These are little paragraphs with  wants, fears and secrets called out and some keywords to help the DM quickly. “MYREROSE – SPITEFUL QUEEN. CALMLY SADISTIC. Master alchemist. Retains her fairy form by bathing in Blood Honey (made from perish lily pollen). The Gardener is her pawn: She gives him Blood Honey, lying that it will restore his True Name. Suspects Shiv, not Slaveral, created this mess. She rules from Bleedspire (V1) “

And those NPC’s are, I think, the downfall of the adventure, if it can be said to have one. Yeah, sure, the designer didn’t put the fucking level range in the marketing page or on the cover. Yeah, the hooks are fucking lameo hiring shit and the framing of the adventure could have had a little more thought. But, the NPC’s are the only thing here that I think doesn’t work well. 

The idea is that we’ve got this old mine/complex that hit an ooze vein and was abandoned. And then some shit went down in Fey land a group/manor of them got cursed in to bug-like creatures (again, good art!) and somehow their manor is now level two of this place. There is supposed to be intrigue among the fey, hence the wants/needs/secrets and expanded NPC sections for them. There’s even a timeline of events. But I don’t think ANY of it works AT ALL. Some individual encounters work out ok, like a room with covered mirrors and a dude can/will reach through an uncovered one to pull someone in if they can. But the lager intrigue thing just doesn’t come together. And the timeline doesn’t really impact the dungeon environs or the party in such a way as to impact play/the party to care about. “Meck accidentally blows up Lalizar. The cultists disband. Slaveral and Meck fly away to find Meck’s mother “ Sure thing. I guess fewer things to stab then? I mean, whats the impact in intrigue and, ultimately, the party interaction? 

There is also an overall … I don’t know, lack of … intent? Recall the dungeons exits and blocking exits and sounds/reactions, etc, all of which kind of give the dungeon a more wholistic feel. But, also, that wholistic feel is lacking in the way the dungeon rooms work together. The theming, of the fey anyway, doesn’t come through very well. The entire place, as a whole, isn’t left with an overall feeling. Yeah yeah, that a shit explanation. But, also, I wonder if thats not why I’m saying that the pace lacks a certain amount of joy and/or glee in it? My lack of enthusiasm for the place? 

This is doing almost everything right. It’s a good adventure. I’m going to dump this in to two categories until I can decide what I actually think about it. I’m happy to run this. I’m just not sure I’d go out of my way to run this. I think it is absolutely worth checking out.

This is $9 at DriveThru. The preview is thirteen pages, the first thirteen. You get to see the map, the NPC’s, the timeline, and three rooms. That’s a decent enough preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/566187/outcast-unseelie-and-the-ooze-between?1892600

By Jon Brackin
Brackin Adventuring Company
BECMI
Levels 3-5

On the hottest night of summer… it begins to snow. For as long as anyone can remember, the quiet village of Frosthollow has celebrated The Night of Falling Snow, an ancient midsummer festival unlike any other. White ribbons flutter from old trees. Candles burn in every window. Gifts are exchanged beneath a blazing summer sun while soft snow falls from a cloudless sky. The villagers call it a miracle. They have forgotten that it is a warning. This year, the snow arrives early… and it does not stop. As impossible winter spreads across the countryside, travelers find themselves drawn into a mystery buried beneath centuries of tradition. Forgotten journals, hidden chambers, and an ancient ritual reveal a terrifying truth: the festival was never meant to celebrate the snowfall. It was created to keep something from crossing the threshold into the world. And at the center of it all waits a smiling traveler known only as The Pale Guest. Will the heroes uncover the truth before midnight, restore a ritual no one remembers, or unknowingly open the door to an ancient horror?

This seventeen page adventure uses about eleven pages to describe about ten areas in a village about to reawaken an ancient entity. It’s sparse, with little specificity. There is an outline of an adventure but little to ground the characters actions or the DMs responses. 

I am continually mystified at the lack of adventure that passes for adventures. The barest outline of an adventure is somehow expanded to twenty pages and then a few dollar price tag slapped on it. We get little more than DM notes, time and again, the kind scribbled on my party tracker page ten minutes beforehand to run tonight’s game. What ends up being published is just anything that anyone could come up, with all of the specificity and adventure just not present, the stuff the designer SHOULD be working on to  help the DM bring the game alive. Yes, the DM needs to do work, but the designer is there to inspire them to greatness and provide the tools to do so. 

There’s this village where it snows on a day in the summer every year. The villagers hold this festival with a couple of traditions attached to it. Well, wouldn’t you know it, the snow doesn’t stop this year and gets VERY heavy. The party is there for [the usual lame reasons.] Oh no, people are missing! Poking about you find the basement of the inn has some old records, and the traditions are bastardized versions of a yearly ritual that has to be done to keep THE VISITOR away. The party must convince everyone in the village does a Whoville song and dance number and the entity will sleep for another year. Or, just stab the 12HD dude till it dies. 

The most specific thing in the adventure is, what a coincidence, also the most interesting. The villagers hang ribbons from a tree in the village with their names on it. (And, the missing villagers have ribbons there also, with their names faded away. I’m not sure how you know that given that the names are no longer there, but the concept is decent.) This is great. It’s like a line of text. It’s specific. It grounds the DM and gives them something to build on. This is by far the most interesting thing in the adventure.

The actual locations are given this description style that is … poetic? An attempt to be poetic? Let’s look at “Chamber Two: The Ice Archive”

A chamber sealed within magical frost.

Contains stone tablets.

These preserve the complete ritual.

Uh. Ok. How about another room, for comparison? The Hall of Forgotten Names:

Thousands of names carved into walls.

Reading them aloud causes spectral figures to appear.

Most are harmless.

Three become Snow Wraiths.

Meh. This borders on pretension. It’s the fucking idea for a room being sold as a room. Put in a fucking description. Look, I’m supportive of new ideas but also you gotta recognize when they don’t work and this don’t work. There’s nothing there! At some point we’re told “Eventually clues point toward old records beneath the inn.” What are these clues? Not present. Nothing. The DM gets to make them up. This is just some notes on a napkin about some major beats in a potential adventure. How about monsters? Here’s notes about an attack by Candle Guardians. Or,, maybe, Frostbound Remnants, both phrases are used: “Four Frostbound Remnants attack as soon as the door closes behind any person entering. “ What the fuck is a Candle Guardian? 

This is a ridiculously low effort adventure. I’m sure some work was put in to it, but its like the designer has somehow never seen what an actual adventure is and what one needs to run an adventure. Like what the fuck a monster is. 

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. There is no preview. You gotta put in a preview man, so we can make an informed decision to purchase or not.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/573268/the-night-of-falling-snow?1892600

By Greg Ferris
Talaraska
Generic/Universal
Level ... 3?

The hills making up the Archian border with Caledos are pocked with dozens of abandoned mines. These leave a lasting reminder of the rush for silver in the years prior to the rise of the Graun Empire. Without drawing much attention from local officials, a nebulous consortium of investors has been purchasing old dig sites throughout the region. The mine at Mt. Morris was one such purchase. About 12 months ago, a group of ten men reopened the dig, which locals were sure was folly. After spending a couple of weeks repairing the base camp, the team resumed the dig. None but the foreman had any previous mining experience. Most of the “miners” were farmhands or former members of the stevedores’ guild. None were strangers to hard work, but they were a motley crew to be certain. However, the strangers who came and offered them the job assured them that they would be paid handsomely. The past year had been difficult. The team had failed to find any substantial amount of ore and they often assumed that their work would soon come to an end. Despite this, the paymaster and his retinue of guards would appear every month and the dig continued.

This nine page adventure presents eleven rooms in an old mining camp & camp that has been “overrun” with undead. It’s pretty basic, with not much going on. 

I’m not super sure how this made it on my list. It must have either been in the OSR section on DriveThru or a request? I don’t think I see a request, so it must have been in the OSR section at DriveThru at one time, even though it’s labeled Generic/Universal. The marketing blurb advertises it as a flesh out adventure hook, but the adventure, proper, lists itself as an adventure. I don’t know, some way of framing it not having stats? I don’t think that matters. In any event, it has more life to it than the vast majority of adventures and even manages to present more rooms than the number of pages in the adventure. How far have we fallen to have that be some standard of success? What’s a spud to do? Anyway, ignoring most of the intro there’s a small adventure hidden in here that is relatively inoffensive. There’s not much interesting about it either, but, hey, it’s 2026 and I’m in a morose mood because somehow an uninteresting adventure with eleven rooms in nine pages somehow is better than most if the garbage I review. So, no stats and no treasure, just some “place treasure appropriate to your system” notes here and there.

There are some pretext reasons here for exploring, nothing very interesting. Hired to do blah blah blah, or local priest has visions blah blah blah. Getting to the site you find four outbuildings and then seven rooms in the mine. There are bodies about, partially eaten. A stable has horse bodies, and one stall padlocked with a living horse in it and extra water that has run out. One of the buildings has a survivor barricaded inside of it with a confusing story that doesn’t make sense. The idea is that the party will use the stable clue, as well as another clue in the bunkhouse, to understand that the dude knows more than he is saying and that they’ll press him for details. The details are not altogether interesting given the small size and stand along nature of the adventure combined with the generic/unival vibe. He was hired to run a mining crew, looking for a diary in a buried complex. He did some research on his own and found out that the dude was a necromancer and used animated bodies as guards. When the miners found a wall he gave his horse some water and locked himself in, fearing the worst. The miners break in, undead get out, the worst happens, everyone dies but him and his horse. It’s an interesting way to present a clue, without having to resort to a diary or monologue. And by interesting” I mean “correct.” We get to see the results of actions taken in the past that help explain the now, rather than listen to a droning monologue. The players gets to use their brains to put things together. Or not. 

The rooms inside the mine are uneventful. Generic alter room. Generic crypt. “There are 8 sarcophagi in this room. Four of these are open and empty. The remaining four are closed and hold inanimate skeletons. There is a small stone altar along the western wall. Beside it rests an open chest filled with gold and any treasures that would be appropriate for your game. “  Nothing really evocative about them, inside the mine or out. Nothing really stands out. A few ghouls/ghasts. Entries are padded out with things like “As the party moves in this direction, they are assailed by [an odor.]” There’s like five pages of intro to go with the four pages of room keys. There’s just nothing to this. “First, do no harm”, the slogan goes. And, for the most part, that was accomplished here. Sure, some padding, a decent amount of it. But, also, the rooms are still relatively terse and easy to scan. There’s still no way I would run this, there’s just nothing to it, but it IS still better than most adventures because it IS doing no harm.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/571820/the-mine-at-mt-morris?1892600

By Kirk Kahoe
Crimson River Games LLC
Generic/Universal
Levels: Any

Warning! This is as close as you can get to being a Heartbreaker without actua;;y being a Heartbreaker.

An eternal horror haunts the woods, reaping an endless harvest of woe from those foolish or desperate enough to travel through them. Tired and injured, the party will have to not only face an endless onslaught from the horror but fatigue and madness as well, for there is no sleep in the Old Man’s realm other than the sleep of death.

This 169 page adventure is an overwritten railroad in which the best solution is leaving the table to have explosive bloody diarrhea in your hosts bathroom and then going home. Ok, that was mean. It’s a 169 pages of railroaded atmosphere in which you have no choices to make as a player and the DM must wade through an excruciating amount of text to run even the simplest encounters.

Page twenty of the intro text tells the DM that they should Describe, not define and then follows this statement up with “A shambling and decaying humanoid creature that stinks of ammonia is scary. Labeling this creature “Zombie” and adding specific statistics is a game mechanism. It is thus no longer a scary monster but a set of numbers to crunch and probabilities to consider.”  This is 100% correct. Not only does it follow the show and don’t tell mantra, but it adds that air of mystery that RPGs thrive on. I’m a big big fan of this attitude and it bolstered my spirits seeing it. 

Oh! Oh! I forgot! You can get Hep! That’s right! Hep! That’s BAD AZZ! “So, what did I get? Another plague? Yellow squirting zombie fever or something?” “No, you got Hep.” Fucking christ ma! That’s great! I love it! Next time you roll through a village you find out 15% of them are dead from cholera. That’s nicely visceral and I do love a reaction from the players. Which, I might note, is exactly what the adventure is trying to do with its horror. 

Great, I’ve said something nice, even if I did include the backhanded “page twenty” reference. 

There’s a dude who is the only worshipper of a god and he’s constructed this obtuse parallel reality death trap in a forest to select sacrifices worthy of his god. As the adventure tells us “Due to the depth of role-playing required to deliver the Old Man and the complexity of fatigue’s impact on gameplay …” It’s a test/challenge dungeon. That’s it. 169 pages of test/challenge dungeon. You know how those things work. It’s an alternate reality blah blah blah, you can’t leave, blah blah blah, he controls everything blah blah blah. “In the event (which happens often) that the Old Man (or his copies) are somehow killed in any of the encounters before the final encounter at his hovel, he is instead fully healed and moved to the subsequent encounter.” Cause hes wearing this fucking ring that brings him back. Worry not, DM afraid the railroad will stop, “In all cases, the presence of the ring should not be noted due to the grime and darkness until the last encounter.” Ain’t nothing like having no choices that really brings home the immersion. Time and again we see this. This reliance on a test/challenge environment as a pretext for all of the setup the baddie has done. Time and again we see these mechanical contrivances, like the ring, used as an excuse to justify an effect. Time and again we see these railroads as an attempt to tell a story and get an effect. You can’t fucking do it that way. One of the keys to a roleplaying game is the ability to make choices. Once you take that away you might as well be watching a movie with a predetermined outcome. Sure, I can roll a die. Will the DM let me die or force me to suffer through the entirety of their story? Players check out when they can’t do anything. When they can’t make a decision. Sure, there’s a time and a place for “the RPG adventure as an Activity” instead of “the RPG adventure as a Game”, but, Baron Munchhausen did this a long long time ago. 

In spite of the adventures words implying it’s a show don’t tell piece, it relies on mechanics and read-aloud to bring the horror, telling instead of showing. A fatigue mechanic. Mountains and mountains and mountains of read-aloud. No one wants to listen to your half page read-aloud man. You don’t set a mood by using a lot of read-aloud. Yes, the writing should be evocative, but it should not be lengthy. You get a few sentences, three or four, and that’s it. You need to really work those sentences to bring the effect, the impact you are going for. Yes, it is not easy. It is, I think, the hardest part of adventure writing. More is not better. Player attention drifts. You make it harder on the DM to focus. You can’t use mechanics to fill in either. Sanity, in CoC, is just another pull of hit points, campaign hit points, as to say. It is up to the designer to put something together that FEELS like fatigue without relying on mechanics to accomplish that.

So, yeah, railroad. The adventure starts at a little trade town. Caravans leaving, to go over the pass. Wanna join? SURE you don’t want to join? Ok, so, no, you decide to wait at the trade town over the winter? Ok, then bandits keep attacking. Eventually you see over a 100 bandits about to attack and the entire town, whats left, flee in to the hill. Along the caravan route. Heh. So, yeah, you’re going on the adventure. Then you’re in the alternate reality shit where the dude controls everything and you’ve got exactly one path to go on. Just follow it and make skill check after skill check as: there’s a rock fall. There’s a bridge collapse. The wagon is stuck. Blah blah blah. I don’t know, there’s about fifty locations, between the overland and like a manor and such. 

There is an EXTENSIVE amount of information presented for each area. There’s a section for environment, then a section for topography. Then a boxed text section for the read-aloud, then a section for monsters/traps, then a section for encounter mechanics, then a section for notes, and a section for treasure, and a section for game master notes. There is EXTENSIVE repetition, which is great because with so much information, a long paragraph or more for each section, the area is then spread across multiple pages. There is NO WAY a DM can keep this shit together for a meaningful encounter. And this stuff is present for almost every area. Time and again, DO NOT use such a rigid format. Leave shit out if you don’t need it. Do NOT do shit like tell us the door, walls, light, smell, taste for each and every room. The purpose of formatting is to help bring clarity and help a DM when they scan the adventure looking for pertinent information. Used in mechanical fashion though, as it is here, is instead obfuscates and works against the goals it is trying to achieve.

It’s just weird, the way things come together in this. In one read-aloud section it says “They have knowledge of the mountains and what supplies are needed, and they can provide basic information about the mountain road. This sound slike DM notes, not read-aloud. And that’s not an isolated example, I’m not cherry picking. In another section there is a Treasure heading that reads “Treasure – Supplies from the abandoned wagons (See Treasure section).” Isn’t THIS the treasure section? (Turns out, no. It’s _A_ treasure section. FLipping to an appendix we can find a Treasure appendix with a listing for “Wagon Contents” which is full of mundane supplies.)

It’s just crammed with so much extraneous and repetitive information. And then the encounters are so humdrum. Oh, make a skill check! Ok, get a fatigue. Yawn. The final battle with th dude is anticlimactic as fuck. He attacks, eventually you drive him off. You find him in his hut and kill him there. End. Given this is 170 pages long and like almost fifty railroad encounters I would have expected just a little more in the way of flavour than a couple of sentences saying “he attacks you.” The horror element here just doesn’t work, hardly anywhere in the adventure. Mechanics and read-aloud doesn’t do it. The Hep C cant save an overwritten adventure in which the horror element is reduced to mechanics. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is the first seventeen pages. Which doesn’t show any of the encounters because there’s a LONG intro and background info and so on and so on and so on. A preview needs to show some of the encounters so a buyer can make an informed decision about the purchase. That’s the purpose of the preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/564568/the-old-man-of-the-woods?1892600

By Demi ElGato
Possum Print Games
OSE
Level 1?

The Delta has long been a dangerous place. Most citizens tend not to stray too far from the port city of Mirkell. When times were not so tough, barges, caravans and other travelers braving the wilds of the province would be well staffed with armed guards. However, as coin purses lightened, the extra expense couldn’t always be justified. Opportunists, both men and monsters, take every chance for an easy payday, or an easy meal.

This 120 page adventure presents a small region with about ten adventuring sites (taking about forty pages), a couple of towns, and a few other locations.  I love the premise and setup of the region but the core dungeon locations are beset with clumsy writing and lacks a certain life to the encounters. 

Ok, look, I’ll get to the review, but I need a moment to diatribe first. In this we’ve got a new king, a Good Guy” “He established a parliament, limiting his own powers, and fully recognized the citizens of the Delta as members of the kingdom.” Kings don’t do this. Well, they do, but only when their barons have quite strong armies and are not pleased with the king. That’s just not what the job of king entails, giving away your absolute rights derived from god. But, then, also “Recently talks of secession have been heard in the Delta. King Nicolai will not abide such murmurings.” Well king dipshit, what the fuck does your parliment have to say about that? After all, you ceded rights to them. We’re gonna ignore this little bit of contradictory realpolitik for the rest of the review; it’s really the only truly dumb ass thing the adventure says. Not being internally consistent breaks immersion. Pick a direction and go, for real reasons that are relatable, not this scattershot shit. But, again, not a big deal, which is why I’m leading off with it and ranting about it ?

The really strong point to this adventure is the factions and their timelines. You’ve got loyalists and successionists, anti-humans, researchers, nihilist death cult, and the Old Guard Rich & Powerful. Oh, look, the Teamsters (The Delta works best when we say Union Yes!) want more money and better conditions. Oh, look, the old boys club isn’t happy about changes to the status quo. Oh, and some agtators who think the Delta would be better without a remote king. And the kings men who disagree. Oh, and now there’s a death cult type thing mixing in with crowds and throwing firebombs, literally and metaphorically. This amps up feelings on all sides. And mixed in to this we’ve got some rc town assholes and dedicated researchers and the usual array of bandits. There’s a rough timeline of events that can kind of help set the tone during the game, such as “A police force, only answering to the Noble Stewards, is established in Mirkell. The Secessionists have a protest outside of Town Hall in Mirkell. The Cult of Saint Hideo will begin attacking and burning barges on the river. The Segregationists will begin importing mass amounts of arms and armor.” This isn’t a set of specific events but it does outline the general situation and the vibe. I SUSPECT thats enough. Just reading that I can think of a lot of things I can drop in to a game as little side things, and that’s generally what I’m looking for from a designer: enough to get ME going to create and drop in things. We can see crackdowns, brutality both accidental and intentional, accidents that are real and imagined. What do you do when a crate of bows spills out of a wagon? “Uh, it’s for fishing” says the fisherman hailing it. It’s a great little set up thing and a good way to use a death cult. “Yeah, there were death cult agitators in the crowd.”  “Yeah, that’s what you WOULD say! Death cult! As if!”  I love it when the party explores “Big Als Fireworks & Open Barrel of Gasoline Emporium.” 

There are other tidbits here and there that are great as well. There’s a rival adventuring party that shows up form time to time in the wanderers table and in other places. “They are always kind and helpful unless given reason not to be. They travel with their mule, Bee,and little treasure (hoard type D).” Their mule, Bee. That’s a nice touch. Good grounding. And good job sprinkling them in to places to give the world that lived in feel. Good design. And, here’s a magic item “The Golden Eel Mouthpiece An exquisite, hollow golden eel. When held in the mouth, the wielder can breath underwater and swim twice as fast as usual. However, these effects only work in saltwater.” That feels real, yeah? The description, proper, is quite short but great, and while it mentions an effect it doesn’t belabour mechanics. Great magic item!

There are a few things that seem out of place, before I get to my major issue.

There are these graves of saints scattered around. Maybe twenty of them? Basically if you show up and do something for them then you get a magic item or boon or something. It feels a little … I don’t know, video-gamey? In that they are all basically the same mechanic? Or slight variations on the same mechanic? It’s like you’re touching all the totems on the map in Far Cry 19. And, then, one of them has a very specific morality test they ask you. “A poor beggar child is caught stealing bread. He is arrested by the town guard and hung for his crimes. Who committed wrong here? The child? The guard? The hangman?” Bonus test: this is a saint of the god Zakon, who believes that “cultural tradition and legal authority are inherently holy.” Make a guess. Did you guess? I SAID FUCKING GUESS! The child and guard are wrong but the hangman acted justly. I guess there’s room for interpretation in the holy tenets, even among the sainted of Zakon. 

All of the intro and supporting information (and there is a lot of it, given that only about forty pages are dungeon) in this is either easily ignored or pretty decent. I wish, perhaps, it were trimmed back. A LOT. But, it is what it is and it’s generally inoffensive when its not great.

The dungeons, though, are something else. Maybe, I don’t know, about twenty rooms in each of the ten dungeon locations? There’s something weird going on with the entries, but, also, it’s hard to point to what exactly. Here’s an example “Bloody Hall The scrabble on the floor here

makes quiet movement nearly impossible. The stalactites here are smaller and are not dripping.

There is a bloody Drag mark here, leading to Room 4. There is also a Pile of stones along the northern wall.” (Bold has more information) So, this should be pretty chill. Bloody drag marks. The text above is the “at a glance’ information, so, not exactly read-aloud. It’s just … blah. “There is a …” repeated multiple times. The tites are smaller and not dripping. “Here makes quiet movement …” I don’t know. Here is a blah Here is a blah Here is a blah. Here is not a blah. The core here, though, I think you can recognize from what I’ve pasted in, is not bad. Hard to be quite, tites, and bloody tracks.  Somehow, though, the language, and the follow up language, diminishes the interactivity in te room. Or the evocative nature? It’s weird. I’m not sure I see this too often.” It’s like having a decent idea and putting it down on paper in the most uninspiring manner possible while the concept still comes through. It’s not padded out in a meaningless way, maybe just in an … ignorant way? As in the designer didn’t know a better way to phrase what the room looked like in a more dynamic manner? And room after room is like this. The neato things going on are just so … BLEH. The follow on, for the bolded words, are fine, and the formatting is fine. It’s just all so, I don’t know, both padded out with pad phrasing and then, uninspiring? The formatting is fine. The interactivity is varied. I just have NO desire. 

The dungeons, and the adventure might be fine but I’d rather run something else. It’s all just cumbersome. The NPC’s are listed in the back of the book, and are relatively terse, but there’s no way I’m flipping back there to run them. The dungeon are ok, but lack enthusiasm. Even something like the stricture of the regions and adventures. There are hooks for the ten adventures, or, perhaps, ways to get involved. I’d just list them all up front, rather than right in front of the adventure, as shit going non in town or the village or something. Everything all at once, or tied to the timeline. Cut a shit load of text and instead focus on putting the NPC’s together with the timeline together with the hooks, to make the entire regional flow together better as a cohesive flow. 

This is, I think, the designers first real adventure/publication. And, given that, it shows. The rooms are not overly written, while the regions is perhaps a little excessively written. The rooms ARE padded out with simple language padding while the regional data has some decent specificity here and there. A strong focus on specificity in the region, trimming a lot of the boilerplate fantasy stuff, and reworking the rooms in the dungeons to eliminate padded out phrasing and bring in more adjective and specificity would make this pretty decent.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $7.77. The preview is 25 pages and mostly fluff. Page 19/14 has the factions and their timeline, which is the best of the more interesting possibilities with this. It should really have had a few dungeon pages as well. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569417/danger-in-the-delta?1892600

By Greg Daley
Tarichan Games
B/X
Level 3

In the delta city of Portic, the heralds walk the bridges and call for the brave to save the settlement from the pernicious Thieve’s Guild. Papyri offering rewards in the thousands of gold pieces are handed out to the armed, the weaselly, and the wise. Advertising had its effect and dozens of applicants turned up at the Lighthouse. Even after describing the undead infested island, and the underground trap maze expected to confront them, four groups of adventurers drew lots to select which night they enter. The party is assembled, with retainers in tow, as the sun sinks west on the third day. No one has yet emerged from the Odd’s Sink (the Island of the Death). Straps are tightened, supplies checked, and holy symbols kissed as the guards move the barricade on the pontoon bridge.

This 26 page adventure uses about sixteen pages to present forty rooms in two tomb/undead themed dungeons. It is … obscure? In a good way. Full of tomb encounters that are familiar and yet not boring old vanilla tomb encounters. This feels like a lived-in world. That needs an editor in charge of formatting and layout.

You’ve read the marketing blurb, above, and it sounds a little early days to me. Like, 1972 early days. But, let’s back up a minutes and cover what has lead to that marketing blurb, above. We’ve got an old city. The nobility want to revolt cause they don’t like the current .gov. Revolts cost money. They get a loan from the local Guild Bank. This is a legitimate front for the thieves guild, which the current .gov kind of telerates. Revolution successful, there’s a new .gov in charge. Oh, the nobles have a VERY large sum to pay back to the Guild bank. And don’t want to. And the new .gov HATES thieves. Thus starts a pogrom against the thieves and the guild bank, which has an air of neighborhood watch death squads to it, an/or citizen checkpoints/militias. The last of the guild has been tracked to the Isle of the Dead, a funerary isle for the city. Chill during the day for burials, at night the undead walk about and giant beam of blue light shoots up into the sky. And the last of the guild was seen descending in to a tomb tha the light shoots up from. NOW you can go to the lighthouse and apply to root out the last of the guild … and you’re third in line to do so after drawing lots. Needless to say, your turns pops.

There are two dungeons to explore, each with about twenty or so rooms with a “tomb” or catacombs theme to both of them. Supplementing this is a small handful of other encounters nearby. A ship anchored offshore that could be aligned with the guild. Another, with a letter of marque, bringing in smugglers and pirates. Not exactly an adventure locale but more support for play AFTER the tombs are entered and the party returns out again, either successful or taking a break before they reenter. IE: things to support downtime, and such. This is further supplemented by eight or so “events.” Each takes up about a quarter of a page and details some things that could happen to complicate things. If the party returns out of the dungeon then maybe they get approached by someone and a conversation is had and an alternative entrance is offered, or bribes, or so on. 

I’m hoping, from all of that, you take away of a kind of context tha the designer has provided for the adventure. A context that all directly relates to things going in the adventure that a DM can use to add interesting things going on in the real world, to riff on and further enhance play. Specifics. It gives the world a kind of lived-in feel. The dungeon encounters, also, have a kind of lived-in feel to them, but its done in a different way. One room is kind of partially flooded. Below the water, is a grate that shifts if any step on it. (That, alone, is pretty nifty room feature. The use of a shifting grate implies things that a static grate does not.) “The Red Tree brigade, who entered the vaults first, are still here. They move through the water, their mail and robes torn, the wizened and twisted shapes no longer alive. They thrash through the water toward the warm meat of the party. – Red Tree Brigade Ghoul (3) “ The flooded room. The grate in the floor. The SHIFTING grate, and then the former party. It’s layered, and feels real to me. And the adventure does this over and over again. I think tomb dungeons can usually feel boring. But this has more of an undercity vibe, with tombs, vibe thing going on. Not completely, but there’s enough that it does bring a freshness to it. Ye Olde Slamming Locke Door is present as a trap room in this, but the room fills with smoke, a real life hazard that is quite seldom used. And this in spite of the twenty-ish room size of each of the dungeons. 

And this thing is a PAIN. I mentioned “obscure”, yes?

It’s like, all over the place. Sometimes we get a “you” in the descriptions. “A set of creatures clunks toward you, heavily decayed, skull domes showing. …” Sometimes there’s a random monster stats in a room that IN NO WAY mentions a creature. The rooms are inconsistently written, not clear in many places, or similar features described different ways, in the same room, making you wonder if you’re missing something. The text is … obdurate. Lengthy, maybe with a touch of self-indulgence, but not falling in to any clearly recognizable sin, like backstory, trap and door porn, or explaining why. Maybe a little of the if/then style. It’s just hard to dig through it all. Hard, but not unrewarding.

I am waffling, back and forth, on the Tarichan adventures. Best. No Regerts. I’m going to Best this one, I think. But, also, you know what I really wish? That Daley keep writing. Keep working on his products. And every day go back and edit the manuscript to this adventure for ten minutes or so. Every day. Not with the intent to publish it again but just to rework it and try to clean it up. Call it a daley trip to the adventure formatting and writing gym. Just to kind of get in the practice of seeing what’s possible, without any pressure to produce.

Anyway, good little necropolis adventure. and, frankly, I think Daley is about at the point in which he’s on an auto-buy list.

This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The preview is fourteen pages, more than enough to get a sense of the piece. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/570696/wmc-vaults-of-urpiram?1892600

By B. Wraven Wright
2Die10 Games
Dolmenwood
Levels 4-5

Four months ago, Father Wolfgang and several other members of the Church of St Pastery’ clergy were having strange dreams that all had one thing in common: a call of pilgrimage from The One True God. Father Dobey, Vicar of Lankshorn, initially had these strange dreams also but they faded in frequency and severity for him while the opposite was happening to Father Wolfgang and the others. Having been compelled into blind pilgrimage towards the direction of Hags Addle, Father Wolfgang and those afflicted with these dreams were confronted by Father Dobey, who declared these dreams as heresy. In doing so, the pilgrims openly questioned his piousness as well as his status of Vicar of Lankshorn. Father Dobey, eager to avoid conflict, decided to let the pilgrims go on the condition that they return in one month’s time. The pilgrims agreed and took their leave with the vicar’s blessing. One month has come and gone, with Father Dobey wanting to know what happened to the pilgrims for a host of reasons…

This seventeen page adventure uses about five pages to describe 27 rooms in a small dungeon. Hack till you drop and do little else as you explore the monotony of uninspiring rooms. 

I was quite disappointed with this one. Dolmenwood has been hitting at a decent rate, but, I guess, as a sign of its success, “more is coming out now.” I would hope you can understand the euphemism. The map, also, looks promising. It’s a larger Dyson affair with forty or so rooms on it, only about thirty of which are keyed in the his adventure. Some columns, stairs, curtains, an overhead passage and murder holes. Almost none of which is taken advantage of in te text. ?

The local clergy been having God dreams. The vicars gives them permission to go on a pilgrimage to their dreamed of site. They don’t come back so in you go to find them. 

“The One True God who weeps in the temple underneath the dolmen” is pretty strong flavour. There is no preamble to the adventure, no investigation, so there’s no build up to this before you get to the dungeon. Once in the dungeon the theming, of The One True God, and the weeping, is essentially not present either. You will find a weeping statue face (with decent art piece to accompany it) but that’s it. What you WILL find are a bunch of clergy/clerics. They are all scaly bipedal wolfmen. 

Why are they scaly wolfmen? No clue. You just show up and there are these empty, or mostly empty rooms and more than a few of them have these scaly wolf men in them that are doing clericy shit. And they attack you. In fact, everything and everyone attacks you in this. Monsters attack you and in a couple of rooms there’s a false floor that breaks away in to pit things. That’s it. That’s your interactivity. 

I cannot emphasize that enough. “You see 4 beings standing, frantically “reading” scrolls out loud in a hissing, barking language.” Thats your room. Oh, also, in the description for BEINGS, “Four LUPINE CLERGY stop praying and attack on sight.” Mystery. Wonder. Exploration. Not present. Just stabbing things that attack, which are the scaly wolfmen clergy and some black blobs that are in a few rooms. More than a little one-note. Oh, and the “break through the false floor” pits, Order of battle, for our clergy? Nope. They just sit in their rooms and get stabbed. Stab stab stab. Stab stab stab. Stab stab for the fun of it, stab stab for the fun of it, stab atb for the fun of it stab stab for the fun of it!

There’s little to no treasure present. The last room of the dungeon has Lareth in it. There is not hint, anywhere, that Lareth is about. “As you get close enough to the tapestry to make out the material it’s made of, you see that the ground starting in front of you winding all the way around the room to the pillars on the other side, is freshly turned earth that has a strong sickly-sweet smell of vinegar.” That’s Lareth for you, all vinegar-smelling! So, an earth wyrm pops out of the dirt and then attacks. LARETH WAS BEHIND EVERYTHING THE ENTIRE TIME!!! Oh, Lareth, such a card. No hint. No build up. Nothing that means anything. Just stab some scaly bipedal wolf clerics and then in the last room a wyrm pops up from the ground and you kill it. 

Formatting is ok. Headers, color changing, underlines, bolding. You can find things well enough. It also notes the door, light conditions, and exits in the rooms. I am not amused by anything done by rote. I think, that, unless told otherwise, we can assume darkness, or light, depending on the mood of the individual dungeon. Note what’s different, 

I don’t know, man. It’s just a VERY basic and simplistic dungeon. It;s padded out, with doors, and light and exits. It’s got some formatting to make it scan nicer. But the core of what’s going on it is quite simplistic. The One True God is not played up. The wolf dudes get nothing. The Lareth behind the curtain is not hinted at. There’s no build up. There’s no really e octave room descriptions, just a bunch of They Attack!s. There’s no insidious presence in town. There’s nothing really to EXPLORE ot interact with in the dungeon, proper. Even the scaly wolf dudes just sit around waiting to die with no order of battle. 

This is different than, say, a raid. In that case you know what you are doing and the various encounters and environments are engineered by the designer to support the raid. This is just … basic and static?

This is $1 at DriveThru. There is no preview. Sucker.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/570825/under-the-dolmens-delve-3-a-one-shot-dungeon-for-levels-4-5-adventurers-in-the-dolmenwood-setting?1892600

By Nikoline
Self Published
OSR
Levels 3-8

As above, so below. Above, Tell Arn is abandoned, the Hyrkossi kings ashamed of what is buried there. Below, stranger kings hold greater shames, and greater terrors are locked away. The mistakes of lost civilisations repeat on one another in the dark, holding a delicate, unruly balance. Tip the scales, break the seal, and let the Lions drink deep.

This 81 page adventure presents two more levels of Tell Arn with about a hundred numbered major rooms and probably as many sub-a/sub-b rooms. Complex maps. Great writing. Interesting environments to adventure in. An adventure that can stand toe to toe with Dark Tower/Thracia/Hyqueous/Xyntillian/The Bowman Levels. Buy the hard copy now.

One of the two level maps The Upper right corner

I think, perhaps, I’d like to examine this adventure through one small portion of a zone, in the northeast of the map. The map, alone, should be enough to get you excited. Water, tunnels, above and below, weird shapes, and a complexity that naturally lends itself to exploration. It FEELS like a ruined city, yes? Looking at the small area in the upper right, a kind of cavern. IN the middle is a pit. There’s this long corridor off to 39a, and a broken set of stairs clinging to a wall leading up to 28a. Rough caves to 29, with secrets in that room, multiple secret doors! Pools in 31, with more secrets, but the entrance to the 31 hallway from 28 is a ledge up on the wall. Rooms. Caverns. Pits. Ledges. Stairs. Exits. Secrets. An almost bewildering number and type of environments. Fucking great map! A place for an adventure!

The rooms start with a kind of vibe overview. Room 28 is “Lower Hydra Nest”. How much more classic can you get than a hydra in a ruined city? It makes my mouth water just thinking about the deliciousness of the encounter! Then the entry reads “Sickly stench; grease and putrescence. A ledge (40’ up) to the south (to 31). Water and blood drips from above” It’s kind of orienting the DM to the room. Room 29, the Putrescent Larder reads “The detritus thickens; half-rotted carcasses in great mounds. Sweet stench of death. Lit by guttering blue corpse-fires, burning at random. Sucking steps.” Got it. Ewww! Or, maybe room 21, the Upper Gallery “Reprieve from the miasma. Crashing water. Blue light through fine mist. Hollow on the north wall leads to 29. “ Crashing water, sweeter air, a blue light in a fine mist. GUTTERING. Or SUCKING STEPS. These descriptions feel imagined. They feel like someone called up a mental image in their head, lived the room, and then were able to get that down on paper, and down on paper in such a way that you, the DM reading it, can pick it up and run with it just as the designer imagined in their head. That IS the goal of good writing. A sucking step. Anyone in the mud, bog, fen, swampy environments knows what that is like. It’s a perfect description for that kind of thing. You KNOW what it is. The descriptions here range from good to excellent, across the board.

But wait, there’s more! This is not the end of things.We expand, when entering from room 17, the trail narrows, the stone crumbling, there’s a 30’ ledge to the floor below, with pitted walls. Pitted. The room? A ruined amphitheatre, buried in filth. Corroded pillars break the surface. They are gnawed and scored with deep claw marks. Detritus is 10 deep, bone, plasma, cave-slime, guano. I fucking love that amphitheater description. 

Heyt man, how about that pit? Let’s look at that bullet “In the centre of the amphitheatre, a sunken pit (40’ across, 20’ deep). The floor is thick with golden slime. Inspection reveals twisting movement below. A colossal gold-faced bust (3000c/300lb) rests against the west edge. Bringing fire nearby alerts the hydra: 4d6 HYDRA SPAWN surge into 28 to defend it. “ Golden slime. Twisting below. Jesus fucking christ! I’m not going near that thing! I see your colossal gold-faced bust, but the hand AND eye had better be clearly visible to get me to go there! Great fucking environment. And remember, we’ve still got “A broken set of stairs winding 20’ up the wall. At the top, a dark hollow “ and other things in here. Depth. Multiple things going on. Multiple things to look at, explore, interact with. 

Expanding this hydra room even more, there are mechanics to help the DM out. That 10’ deep filth? “The filth halves all movement in 28/29 “ Wanna dig through it? There’s a short table for that. Oh, hey, remember that pit with the golden slime and twisting movement? How about this as fucking follow up to that description: “If the slime-floor is broken (like the skin of a water-bed), it reveals a knotted, fused mass of hydra-flesh. A thousand blind eyes swivel into life. 1d10x10 HYDRA SPAWN burst out after 1 turn. “ Like the skin of a water bed. A thr\ousand blind eyes SWIVEL into life. A knotted and fused mass of hydra flesh. Fucking a man, this is a fucking adventure right here! 

We saw that colossal gold-faced bust, as treasure. Digging about in the filth could get you “Seventh Binding. (300c). A scabbard faced with moulded silver plates depicting the slaughter of seven giants. Inside, it is choked with black blood. “Nice little description. CHoked with black blood is a good touch also. No blade kept within will dull or rust. That’s a decent effect without relying on mechanics. And, then also “7 charges. The bearer can negate a mundane attack dealing ?8hp. The wound scars over, one of the seven giants rots to bones, and the scabbard fills with the blood that would have been spilled. “ Ewwww! Noice! Love it!  Magic item that FEELS like a magic item. 

Hey, how about another room? How about that upper gallery, with the blue mist? “Softly phosphorescent lichen coats the walls. It is thicker to the south, growing elaborate tendrils, swaying. On close inspection, see the form of a halfling, splayed out and subsumed by the algae. Its skull is stripped bare; a jewelled holy symbol (200c) of a sapphire rose embedded in the socket. “ Uh. Ok. And also “A stream of water cascades from above into a shallow pool. The pool is white with foam. It breaks off into a stream running down to 30. The water is bright blue and bitter. Small blind fish swim within. “ And then each of those two things, which are major bullets, have a minor bullet like “If bathed in, the water (highly alkaline) causes 1hp damage, drinking it 1d6hp. It cleans anything washed in it to a mirror sheen.”

Formatting wise, we’re seeing a vibe overview that’s highly evocative. Then a few major bullets with details on things from the overview. Then a sub-bullet or two with mechanical-like impacts from those bullets. Bolding and italics are used to effect to draw the eye to certain words, but not overused. Evocative treasure with good descriptions, terse but much more interesting than a Sword, +1. 

These rooms hit, over and over again. There are zones in this places, “themed” areas, if you will. There are a couple of major factions running around with wants and needs and goals, as well as theming around hunger, in particular, with a ravenous hydra and ghouls. The amount of repetition of rooms is close to zero, nothing really feels like it’s just thrown in, or padding out the adventure. Room after room and description after description feels intentional, as if absolutely everything in the is adding to the adventure, building it up with intention. 

Dense. Complex. Thrilling. Full of awe and wonder and horror the way an exploration adventure should be. You are a FOOL if you don’t check this out. For all the crap being published, today and every year, there is always someone out there with a singular vision who drives it to completion. This is the OSR.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. That’s absurd. This thing is great and you need a physical copy. The preview is twenty pages. You get to see a great map and lots of dungeon entries. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/530112/the-lions-of-tell-arn-part-ii?1892600

By Scott_m
First Era Adventures
OSRIC
Levels 2-4

Ten years ago, the new rector went insane and burned down the town chapel, killing his fellow priests. No one knows why he did it, but superstitious townsfolk just wanted the whole sad affair to go away, so they turned a blind eye. The scene of this terrible crime was abandoned, yet evil abides. Locals believe the site remains cursed, haunted by ghosts of the murdered priests. Now, after mysterious events have befallen the town in recent weeks, many look to the ruined chapel as the source of their ill fortune. Somewhere below the ruins, the fate of the temple’s holy relic may hold the answer to this disturbing mystery.

This 21 page adventure presents a burned out chapel and undercroft with about fifty locations. There are a couple of interesting subplots going on, with evocative descriptions, decent interactivity, and it being well formatted. A fine adventure. How often do I get to say that?

You know that bag of potatoes in your pantry? The one that’s been for awhile? You know how it’s begun to rot and stink up the place? Clean up your fucking churchs when they burn down!

I don’t know where to start. I want to talk about a couple of points, but I think I should cover the heart of the adventure first. There is a little background and a few hooks that kind of paint a scene of the surrounding town, but it’s VERY minimal. This is, essentially, just a site to adventure in with almost not surrounding info. And that’s fine. This works well as a site-based adventure that you can drop in almost anywhere and there IS just enough to hook it in a little deeper. The reeves teen boy  is missing and someone you find in the dungeon could be the kid. And, really, not much more than this and the local legend in the marketing blurb. 

The language use here is pretty decent. “Rusted iron gates screech open onto a flagstone courtyard, its edges overtaken with dirt and weeds. The stones are broken and shifted; tall weeds clump in the cracks.” Overtaken, edges, shifted, rusted. The words chosen are good. In another place there is this as a description “Dusty paths encircle scores of old gravestones squatting among the dry, rustling grass.” That could, I think, almost be the platonic ideal of a decent room description. It’s terse, evocative. It uses its word count wisely. It’s the kind of description that makes me think someone who was VERY adept with their vocab imagined a scene and then wrote it down, rather than working the other way around. “Hmmm, graveyard, what words can I use?” There’s a kind of ease that comes from the descriptions, as if they were effortlessly written. The words click together well to build on each other. That’s evocative writing. It does slip in a purple word now and again, like that “rusted iron gates SCREECH open upon” … that’s not read-aloud or second person, it’s trying to use an adverb. I applaud the attempt and I think adverb usage can REALLY work well, but it’s either a smash hit or a failure in my experience in a description. Still, there’s not much of it. 

Formatting is good also. This is a standard paragraph style, with certain words bolded to cal attention to them, like creatures or other things that the party might notice, a glint ,a marble font, etc. Each paragraph might have two or three sentences with a room averaging one to two paragraphs. And, those paragraphs are well written. They are not padded out. The important stuff comes up front. One room, I’m thinking of, stretches to a column of text, quite unusual for this adventure. But, it’s quite manageable. It builds. It’s easy to locate information. One paragraph might have the “marble font” bolded and then the very next describes the font encounter information. I don’t know, maybe it’s an accident, but I doubt it. It is, for lack of a better phrase, subtly formatted and organized. 

The maps,supporting play, range from great to good. The outside map, of the ruined chapel and grounds, is really nice. Almost an overlay on top of an art piece that doesn’t loose it ability to be clear. The undercroft map is clear as well, although it has a kind of symmetrical vibe to it that I almost always have a visceral response to. It’s NOT wholly symmetrical, but, also, when a map tends to the symmetrical I do enjoy seeing a secret placed on the map that rewards players who pay attention. A fully mapped dungeon, the known areas, would reveal one curious space unaccounted for, leading to a major treasure. Monsters are noted on the map, which is great for helping a DM react to noisy characters. There is a third level, some rat tunnels, that is a neato little extra, simple but nice to have also. Exit locations, and where they lead to, are noted as well, with … six entry/exits to the undercroft. Sweet!

There is some interesting interactivity as well. I’m going to note one of them, as an example. Up top, in the grounds, is a cemetery. At one point you can find four broken in to tombs of knights, with their heraldry, names, etc. Down below you can meet four skeleton knights, and by paying attention and drawing some inferences, they are the same dudes. Calling out to them with their names, etc, can let anyone kind of “turn” them, with a chance. This is the old trope of “i know the real you is really in there!” Finally, if you do the right thing and return their bones to their crypts then a golden trumpet appears midair. A nice kind of symbolism there with the knights and a church. And it turns out to be a horn of valhalla, allowing you to summon them 1d4 4hd knights. It all works together, and builds upon itself. OF COURSE that will happen, right? It what you WANT to happen, as a D&D player. Another example is an skull icon that cn talk (oh, Mort, you cast a long shadow) and if you say a prayer, give alms, etc, then you are rewarded. Again, a kind of free-flowing interactive play, not necessarily tied to casting the right spell but just doing what SHOULD be done. And then the skull responds “Your gesture comforts my eternal soul; Brother Denton has something for you” … so keep an eye open for his ossuary. In the main ruined church. “The cavernous interior space once soared to (60’h) down the center line. Huge rubble piles obscure sightlines deeper into the hall unless someone mounts one of the heaps” And some notes on the “valleys” between the rubble and on climbing them. A pretty good environment. 

There’s a place or two that I would have liked an extra word or two. “Scattered on the basin’s bottom are the bones of two missing townsfolk.” That could have used a couple of words more, a missing teen couple dating or some such. Nothing wrong here, but just a yearning for more specificity, given the quality of the rest of the adventure it seems out of place.

Lastly, I want to talk a little bit about the setup. This site is a fine stand-alone adventuring site and doesn’t need more, a surrounding town or some such. But, it’s teased a little, and, again, that makes me want more. “Livestock and stores have gone missing; shadowy, hooded figures are said to roam the fields at night; ghostly lights were seen (from a distance) in the chapel ruins, etc. Worse still, quite a few locals and itinerant laborers have gone missing over the last few weeks.” This is pretty much a platonic setup for a small village getting creeped out. Bad omens and strange happenings. Throw in some sour milk and a lame calf and you’ve got the motherload. This nothing more to this, in the adventure, than what I pasted in and, sure, I’d like to see some specificity here, but, it does make me wonder. I’ve not really been impressed by those “101 subplots for game!” type products, the content never turns out to be what I want. (Well, other than Pembrocktonshire and Petty Gods.) A giant compendium of quick hits for a game, with specificity. Full of lame calves, sour milk, disappearing teens, sudden appearance of hoof and mouth, hank the drunk saw a weird shadow stumbling home. Perfect little quick hits, with specificity, for a DM to tosses in to their games to help bring the context around these site adventures to life. 

Anyway, enough rambling. This adventure reminds me of the nostalgia of the original adventures. Not what they actually were, but what you remember them to be, the same as the old sledding hill being flour feet tall when you remember it being humongous. This adventure lives up to the memories of the old ones, meaning it exceeds them. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages and you get to see themain maps and several encounters. Great preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/567410/the-heart-of-st-althus?1892600

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSR
Level 3

Bugbears are attacking the dwarfs on their way up the mountain to make offerings to their god. A group of elf scholars came to the region to study the presence of bugbears in such remote region and they are stopping the dwarfs in their attacks against the bugbears. Furious with the lack of offerings and prayers. The dwarven god is eminent to turn away from the region and allowing monsters to roam free. The PC’s can seek the god absolution on the dwarfs instead or even make them leave the region and help the bugbears in taking the region and put their gods in power of Altuvia.

(This is a PDF but there is an Obsidian markup file. Again, I tried to install obsidian and get it going to view it the way it was meant to be viewed, got it installed, but again couldn’t figure out how to view/work with the markup file)

This sixty page adventure describes … I don’t really know what it describes. A political situation? A couple of dungeons surrounding a political situation? It’s all just general ideas, with few specifics, and almost certainly worth no time. And yet, I find the premise intriguing in a weirdly real-life cynical way.

The marketing blurb is essentially correct. Some dwarves were driven above ground by oozes attacking their mines. They have no ore. They are trying to get ore from their cousins but the elf lands are in the way and  “Now the dwarfs wait for the complicated and unhurried elf politics allows the ore transport.” Noice! And, now, some bugbears have moved in to the region. Their attacks are preventing the dwarves from getting to their temple to honor their goddess. This WILL eventually cause her to abandon them and then the bugbear god will move in to set up shop, which is the EXPLICIT plan of the bugbears. IE: preventing the dwarves from worshipping their goddess so she’ll abandon them and their dude can take up the mantle of the region. But, now, also, with the bugbears showing up, some elf researchers have shown up and have a manor home in the wilderness where they’ve set up base. They want to study the bugbear migrations, which they find unusual, and are preventing the dwarves from attacking the bugbears. If we think of the eves as having superior technology/gods/magic/armies, then the position of the dwarves becomes quite interesting. Piss off the local elves and maybe influence the larger political “ore from our cousins” thing? Are there local dwarves acting as guides to the elves, or, maybe, nearby halflings that trade with the dwarves but also sell their services to the elves? The analog of an asymmetric power relationship, and the consequences to all parties, it quite interesting. The elves WILL, through their good natured scholastic meddling, cause the dwarves to be wiped out and the bugbears to take over the region. Do they care? Will they be wiped out also? This is all fucking magnificent. The comparisons to real life are obvious.

And almost nothing of substance is in the adventure. Some of what I described is present in the adventure. Some of it is shit I inferred, like dwarf collaborators or halflings, or other linkages. But, also, beyond a simple overview, essentially matching in context and length what I described, there is nothing of any of this present in the adventure. The individuals, the timeline, everything else, none of it really is related to the overall situation described. Yes, the bugbears want to kill and maybe an elf , described, wants to study shit. But these kind of grand machinations, or even minor machinations, are just not present in the adventure. At best you’ll get an NPC description who has a quest like “I want some elven wine.”

For it being sixty pages there is remarkably little specific to point to. The dwarf mines have a map, but no key, just instructions to roll on random tables. But, even then, I’m not sure I can make heads or tails of the map. Are the rectangles rooms? Or are those just hallways that meet up? What are the grey lines? And then the map of a ruined manor is not keyed, with just things like “Bedroom 1 : The room to the left of the corridor” Creature amounts and mundane treasures, including potions and scrolls are just not present, explicitly so, fitting in to some “for use with any system” statement. I can’t fathom ever doing this in an adventure. 

This is SO open ended, SO non-specific that it amounts to just the overall situation description, some NPC descriptions that don’t tie in very well, and site descriptions that are almost as vague and non-specific as you can possibly have and still call it a site description. You’re going to have to wing, and add to and expand everything. I get it, we do some of that when running a game. But there is SO little direction here, so little that is specific, that this amounts to very little more than napkin notes and ideas of what could be going on in various places with various people. In sixty pages.  I think I’m done with Kobold King. 

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569519/bugbears-in-the-mountains-markdown-mini-setting?1892600

By Dinko "Salty Nick" Galeti?
Salty Nick's Tavern
Generic/Universal/D&D
Levels 5-6

Strange phenomena plague the land: saltwater rain, shared dreams of a tide covering the land, shallow puddles reflecting deep, strange oceans. Some people have even fallen into puddles and disappeared entirely. The epicenter of the phenomena has been traced to the mausoleum of an eccentric who believed the whole land was once under the sea. Whether to stop this, explore it, or just to loot the tomb, the players have arrived to the mausoleum.

This eleven page adventure uses two-ish pages t describe about five-ish rooms in a mausoleum being invaded by an aquatic entity. There are hints here of sophisticated play, and maddeningly abstracted text that somehow is also wall of text. The theming never comes through well and it’s hampered by it use of a 5e style guide.

What can i say, I found the title appealing. Alas, there are no hills or screams, much less SCREAMS.

Some dude really thinks the world was underwater at some point. He has a massive tomb built, is buried in it, and then his belief in that idea is so strong that a water-plane entity uses the belief to try to force its way through to our plane. 

There’s an interesting concept in this adventure in the way it handles illusion. Basically, the tomb is full of illusions, or, maybe, altered realities, but the adventure uses the word illusions. Before the first room you make a choice, after talking to the dudes friendly spirit, as to if you believe his theory or not. If you do believe then you treat the illusions as real and the non-illusions as illusions. If you do not believe then the illusions are illusions to you and the real dungeon is real. Like one of those scifi episodes where half the cast is out of phase or some such.  Some of the sections of the dungeon are filled with water, and there are shafts, so if you believe then you can swim up a shaft, and things like that. (And need water breathing!) The concept is haltingly implemented and not leaned heavily into, but the idea is an intriguing one. 

There’s one or two spots where the some interesting things come in to play. The standard “clear the rubble away” thing in one room has the note “Clearing it without precautions causee another collapse.” Excellent cause and effect there and a lack of punishment for players who are not on autopilot. In another section, where you meet the dudes spirit at the start “How to summon Sutton’s spirit is up to the PCs. As a rule of thumb, spending a resource such as a spell slot should work. Actions such as meditating on the bench or lighting the statue’s pipe reveal that the spirit wants to manifest but is struggling to.” Again, pretty decent old school sensibilities. Nothing prescribed but some direction to the DM to have some latitude in their judgements. This is akin to something like the Bless spell being a good catch-all for solving many problems. Rulings, not rules, yes? I suspect, from this, that the dude is a decent DM. 

But author …

There are a few quibbles here before the major issues. We’re told that people are missing, strange things going on, etc, and “The epicenter of these phenomena has been traced to Lubber’s Rest” with nothing more beyond that. In spite of the intro background, which is non-trivial, this is essentially just a site in the middle of nowhere for you to explore, even though “the PCs arrived to Lubber’s Rest with hopes of stopping these events and finding the missing people.” So, the framing to support the intro is just not present. At all. Which would be fine if the intro didn’t imply that it SHOULD be there. We’re just looking at a site.

But, more than that, there are some issues with the presentation and abstraction. The “5e template” was used here. This means sections of italics that are longer than they should be. This means long paragraphs of text with little in the way of formatting to help you scan the adventure. You’re digging through A LOT of text in this, with little to separate things and help you locate information. It is, I think, an issue with Wall of Text, even though there are line breaks and some bullets, there’s not section headings or bolding to help a DM figure out where to look for what. And that’s a major problem. 

Second is a frustrating amount of abstraction and things simply left out. You will run in to weird symbols that are being used to help summon the aquatic planer entity … but no mention of destroying them. And this is theme, the lack of even minimal guidance for things you WNT to fuck with. When you combine this with the amount of text used to describe and denote other, trivial things, it makes you wonder why the emphasis was placed where it was.

Eleven of the rooms are simply abstracted away. Roll on a table to add a couple of features and then roll on a table for an encounter. An encounter like “Aggressive illusory creature swims in. (Submerged rooms only)” Uh. Ok. And, yet, here’s room nineteen “Contains a heap of rocks, with 4d8 embedded raw rubies. Dumped here by thralls.” This is aggressively terse. Was there not enough room in the adventure for the other rooms, given the terseness of this one? And no value for the rubies? 

And, further, note the lack of evocative text. Nothing about a tomb or aquatic/semi-aquatic environment comes through here at all. And this is par for the course in the adventure. There’s a hefty intro. There’s a hefty appendix. But the actual rooms are terse without actually giving much of an impression at all.

What’s a DM to do? There’s little favour here. And I can roll on a table out of a book.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $5. The preview is ten of the eleven pages, so, a decent preview. You can see both the wall of text in the rooms at the beginning as well as the overly terse ones at the end, and the lack of specificity and lack of formatting to help locate information.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569157/the-hills-have-screams?1892600

By Stephen Green
Moonwhisper Magic
OSE
Level ... 3?

The world is shattered, the wizards are gone, and the sea swallows the ruins of their age. Scattered across the waves lie the broken islands of a forgotten empire places of fire, frost, and ancient magic. Among them stands the Isle of Ruk, a frontier of black sands, steaming jungles, and secrets buried beneath volcanic stone. […]  The wizards are dead. Their secrets are not.

This 64 page adventure uses about seven pages to describe about fifty encounters in two dungeon on an island, with all of the supporting pages being abstracted worldbuilding. There’s a whole lot of generalizations and could be’s in here with actual encounters and locations that don’t come close to realizing the designers vision, I suspect. 

This is an island with a couple of towns on it, a barrow field with sixteen locations, and a three level dungeon with about 45 or so rooms. With got this world where WIZARDS fucked up, they are all gone now but the world is blanketed in ice except for these volcanos around that keep things warm. A pretty decent number of pages is used to describe all of this, although it plays little to no import on the adventure. It’s just an island with a couple of towns and a couple of adventuring locations. The ice and volcano doesn’t really come through much. There is a volcano/volcano cultists/fire spirits, especially in the main dungeon, but that theming is still not really present at all.

The main town is described in a somewhat interesting way, at least in the keys for it. “1. Church of Foki has a large cauldron and offers free food for all.” That’s the first line for the temple location, in bold, as a kind of a location header. It’s an interesting way to embed the crux of the location in to the key title, allowing you to know immediately what the main thrust of it is. There’s a related concept with dungeon keys that I sometimes talk about, where instead of “11.” or “11. Bedroom” you put something like “11. Mildewed Victorian Bedroom.” In that instance you are framing the room encounter, preloading the DMs mind, so they interpret what is to come in the description with a “Mildewed Victorian Bedroom” mindset. It’s not exactly consistently used in the town descriptions, but it is present in places and does a great job when it is present.

The rest of the adventure is much murkier in its descriptions. 

There’s this abstraction going on, a bit different than other abstractions I generally see. It’s written almost like a regional guide that introduces mysteries without explanation. This is pretty consistent in the overviews of the various areas, which do seem to take up the bulk of the adventure. It comes off with a hefty lean to the purple side of the spectrum. “Thin wisps of yellow smoke coil lazily from the darkness within, carrying the acrid tang of sulphur and old fire. The mountain air snatches them, pulling them apart and scattering their scent into the breeze, but the trace remains a lingering reminder of whatever festers in the depths beyond.” That whole last sentence, with the snatching and scattering and festering in the depths beyond. It’s clearly going for inspiration for the DM, but there is FAR too much of it, especially considering the depths beyond don’t really live up to the concepts introduced. It certainly feels like the bulk of the adventure is made of these general overarching theme writing sections that meet more novelization rather than turning in to something concrete. 

This can then be contrasted with the actual location descriptions in the adventuring sites. “3.7 Firedrake (1) has made its lair here.” That’s not much of a description, eh, for a festering depth? Or, for another one “Black stone walls. In the middle of the room is an ancient ashy corpse. A Shadow (1) preys on adventurers.” A little more to this, but still not really living up, I think, to the vision the designer had in their minds when putting this down to paper. 

And then there are a few out of place things present. One room on the second level has a table and two chairs and a wardrobe in it. And a sad eyed bard sitting at the table drinking. Uh … there are fire spirits. Fire cultists. Gomens. Shadows. And dude is just sitting there in his cups? A dungeon population table can help inspire us to encounters but it does needs to be placed in context. Lost his party? Just hanging out for funsies? Refuge from a cult? The framing here, or complete lack of it besides him drinking in a room with a wardrobe, just is out of place. Minimal keying would have the DM making things up, as they would if populating from a table. A word of two of context would allow the DM to riff. I’m not really sure what to make of something so seemingly out of place. “Uh, there are a bunch of civvies on level eight of the balrogs lair having a format dance? Uh …”

There’s just this disconnect. The page count is devoted to the world and generalized framing that is leaning purple while the actual dungeon keys are less than thrilling in the capacity they serve. The vision presented in the world building never really comes to pass.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages and doesn’t really show you anything, just a brief overview, this is what an RPG is type of things. We need some meat in a preview to understand if the product is right for us.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568698/dungeon-module-isle-of-ruk?1892600

By Matt Gullett
The Long Con Press
OSR
Levels 1-2

The adventure starts in the rough-and-tumble port city of Warrenburg during the revels surrounding the imminent hanging of a notorious pirate. The Player characters are enlisted to explore the enigmatic cave system some locals refer to as the Caverns of the Dead god.

This 28 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a cave/dungeon full of cultists who just LUV insects. It’s heart is in the right place with a decent amount of interactivity beyond stabbing, supported by a some weirdness and some good use of language in places. It’s lacking just a little in the setup vibe, but the major pitfall is layout nd the need for a HARD edit to bring the rooms in to better focus. Your highlighter is going to go a LONG way with this one.

First off, while listed as OSR, this is clearly a DCC adventure, down to Luck and other terminology. That’s not such a high hurdle, and I used to review many a DCC adventure before finding them a little linear. There’s nothing inherently linear in DCC though, and its nice to see a more traditional crawl trying to cross game system boundaries. 

The setup here has some interesting qualities. We’ve got a town of 3,000 people which has swelled to 4,000 for some festivities: an infamous pirate is about to be hanged. At the same time a group of teenagers has gone missing, including the son of a local magistrate. Did I fail to mention the new priests in town who are giving out food and items to the poor? The swelling of the towns population gives a decent enough pretext to why the town isnt looking for the teens; a riff on the old “the kings armies are engaged with a neighboring kingdom” thing. The hanging and town swell offer a nice slice of life to the adventure and are great examples of specificity leading to things that the DM can riff on to add local colour. The hooks, or perhaps “quest givers”, also have a decent mix, from the magistrate to the sheriff to a do-gooder to a local worried that HE’LL be blamed if the kids show up dead. A nice mix of chaos and town “factions” I guess you could call them. Beyond the verbosity of the town/background section, my only complaint here is the lack of a few more specific situations for the DM to riff on during play. Hirelings and rumours are well covered, but a few street scenes would have gone a long way to helping reinforce the chaos of the town swell, the jubilant and chaotic atmosphere of the hanging, etc. 

The caves are a relatively simple affair, in a mostly star layout on the map. Nice use of things on the map to lend information, like curtains and statues and the like, but noting lights and sounds on the map, as well as creatures, would save me the trouble of having to note them myself. Entry is through a hole with a rope, always a personal favorite of mine. Unrealistic, but fun! This also seems like a good place to note that the cultists inside don’t really have an order of battle. There is a general note that they will prepare for return expeditions and set traps, but nothing more beyond that. 

Interactivity inside is decent. We’ve got status and curtains and porculii to mess with. There’s a spinning gizmo, like a gem, in one room, and a smokey archway in another. Riddles are present, which are NOT a favorite of mine; I like my riddles a little more engrained into the adventure and more subtle than the old say the answer thing. But there’s no question it’s a classical element. Also present is a gem inside of a skull … that you feel a certain compulsion to swallow. I think the last time I saw a swallowed magic gem was in, what, Dungeon of the Bear? Wonderfully non-standard! You do get your fair share of stabbing here, cultists and bugs, but this leans heavy in to the non-standard OD&D vibe. I wouldn’t want to say it goes too far down that path, but there is a sense of wonder here and there that I generally only get from those OD&D centered adventures. 

Language use is generally good as well. It’s hidden, sometimes, in the verbosity of the entries, but you do really get the sense that a scene has been painted and/or situations have been brought to life. In one room, were you find captives, “The door here is barred. This darkened cavern reeks of the eye-watering smell of filth. A dozen gaunt, reeking individuals huddle here, shielding their eyes from your light as you fight back the urge to gag.” (There’s no real read-aloud here, in spite of the use of the word “you” in a couple of places. I’ll forgive it as poetic license.) The cavern REEKs. Eye-watering. Gaunt. Huddled. And then, with one of them, “wet, rattling breaths speak of imminent death.” Just a couple of words to really bring home an awful situation. The usual “captive are here” is done more with, and then a situation is introduced, tersely, and not elaborated upon. This is what specificity buys you. Not only a great mental image but also one that you can then riff on as a DM. And this is not a cherry picked example, the use of language can be startlingly good in many of the areas.

But I’m not going to recommend this. It’s because of the layout, formatting and editing. I want to give you a mental image. Imagine a full page of text that is all center justified. So you have both a wall of text issue and the center justified issue to contend with. Now, this is NOT what the adventure layout is doing, but I think it’s the closest mental image I can describe that relates to the issues. This is all a single column, which of course contributes to the issue. When a paragraph is a sentence or so long and it ends a word or three in to the newline then you get this weird effect that almost mirrors a center justify. Especially when combined with a CRIMINAL lack of blank lines to help separate thoughts and sections. Almost a complete lack of bolding, or other elements to help orient the reader and help them locate information. And then a certain verbosity. It’s not appears to be, or room histories or motivations or anything like that, except it is all of them, and more, contributing line after line in very small ways. Things that build up, word after word and sentence after sentence, combined with the lack of formatting and single column. 

This needs a REALLY hard edit to focus in without losing the specificity and vibrancy hinted at, combined with some small efforts in formatting, bolding, white space and so on to call out aspects of the rooms, combined with nearly ANY other layout style. Were that done this would be a pretty decent adventure. As if, though, you’re gonna need a box of highlighters. 

I am hopeful. The interactivity is decent and the language use, what I think is the hardest aspect of writing, is good. Layout and formatting and ruthless editing can be learned easily enough.

This is $9 at DriveThru. Alas, there is no preview. A good preview of a dungeon room or two gives potential buyers a chance to judge the adventure for themselves before purchasing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/566897/caverns-of-the-dead-god?1892600

By Peter D Gray
Self Published
5e/OSR
Level ... 4?

Farmer Jebsom has a problem – half his farmhouse, along with all of his family fell into a sinkhole that appeared beneath his farm’s foundations.  Now he is desperate to get his wife and children back from the mysterious depths and is willing to give 20% of his farm to anyone succeeding in returning them to safety.

This seven page backstory uses one page to describe nine rooms in a tunnel complex full of bugs. A general overview with a lengthy backstory and terse tunnel chambers result in an IDEA for an adventure rather than an adventure proper.

I am less than thrilled with every aspect of this adventure. There is an extensive backstory here of a wizard noble dude, exiled, back, with a gang of like fifty doppelgangers, his revenge in getting ankhegs in to a village to disrupt the farms, and then his use of a giant burrowing monster to undermine a former rival farmers fields. You’re in the village to clear out an ankheg infestation. That, alone, seems weird. It’s all very nonchalant and no one seems to care much about rampaging monsters. But, whatever. Then farer bob runs in to the tavern noting that his wife and kid fell in when a large portion of his house collapsed in to a sinkhole. Again, no one seems to care much. There’s an off-hand comment that the village priest wants you to wait a day to go save them so that the farmer can recover enough to tell his tale. None of this makes any sense to me. The casual monster infestation that no one cares about. No one really caring about a member of the communities family being in trouble. The priest urging you to wait a day. This is not how people react. I get it, we’re hiring adventurers to solve our problem, but this immediately drags me out of immersion. Things would have gone much better with some local involved and framing this as a village crisis. They won’t even form a militia because the farmers don’t want their hands away. It’s just this super long backstory and irrelevant detail to set up this absurd situation that just results in “you’re hired to …” 

And then there’s a evil noble mage and his doppelganger gang. There’s a note that they are replacing people, but nothing more than that. Evil Dude gets a stat block and you find letters in the tunnel, and evidence, tying him to whats going on … but nothing more. No reactions. No evil dude lair. That’s it. The amount of backstory and time spent on him, and the gangers, would make it seem like this IS the adventure. But it’s not. Nothing is there.

The actual adventure is nine keys in a tunnel. This amount to “you enter a room and some bugs are there to attack you.” You can find the missing family. While YOU take between 4d4 and 8d10 damage from collapsing tunnels, they are ok. And, no details about what makes a tunnel collapse or anything. You can also find some dead doppelgangers with the letter from the evil noble. Yeah.

I find this so frustrating. At best you get an outline of things that could be going on. There is almost no specificity. The actual dungeon encounters are less interesting than Boggems, NO! From Legion of Gold. “Hey, heres this long backstory of stuff that could be happening. Now here’s nine rooms in some tunnels with bugs” 

I get it. I get the vision. But nothing in the adventure is supporting that vision. Not even this review. OSR. Pffft. 

This is $2.50 at DriveThru. The preview shows you the first two pages of baccktsory. Enjoy that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569215/beneath-twin-pines-farm?1892600

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSE
Level 3

The adventurers will face an ancient mage trying to free his soul from it’s bindings in his tomb. The group has 10 sessions to reach the tomb, where they can stop the ritual or join Kaeloreth’s quest to rein the region again. In the tenth session, Kaeloreth completes his ritual and now possesses a new body. He send his undead thralls to slaughter 3 Sylvandur population, each death gives him more power. As sessions progress, the common enemy will start to change from wild life and monsters to Kaeloreth’s undead soldiers.

This 93 page adventure uses nine pages to present a small trial dungeon. Whatever the intent was is lost in its incomprehensibleness.

This is an EASL adventure, and while the EASL is thick in this, I don’t think that’s the main problem, so I’m going to ignore it.

I don’t really know what to say about this. It’s a mess. It’s trying to present a small region with the central focus being a dungeon/tomb with ye olde “ancient dude trying to return to the world.” He’s in a tomb that is a simple “challenge dungeon” with a number of rooms in which you face “challenges”; my least favorite type of dungeon. There’s a timeline, based around adventuring sessions, with the concept of escalating stakes introduced for each session the party takes to complete the adventure, rather than a strictly daily countdown. 

I guess I should start with the format. Or, maybe, file type. It’s done in Obsidian, a markup tool. I downloaded the app and installed it, but still couldn’t get the files to open. It appears to have a rather steep learning curve. I THINK it’s just a system of hyperlinking. I think. There’s also a single column PDF that contains everything in the markup app, I think. But, even though I’m looking at the adventure in a non-optical manner (the PDF) I still don’t think that’s the issue. 

It’s just … abstracted? I don’t really know what to say except “a mess”, but that would imply it’s not organized. But I think it IS organized. It’s just not supporting anything. 

I THINK what is meant to be going on is that the party is charged with STOPPING THE EVIL and they end up in a small town. There they meet some NPCs and get mini-quests that forces them in to the region and then they get more information and find the tomb and stop the big bad. 

The best example I can cite to relate the issue is the mini-quests. At the end of the adventure is a list of NPC’s. One of the NPC’s has this in their description ”His son is late to return home. He went to the forest at morning (This happens on the first session). He start searching for his son on the second day.” [sic]  So, to put together the mini-quests you’re going to have to reference all of the NPC’s and what they want done and where they are. I don’t see how this is possible in gameplay, given their quantity. That means you’re going to have to essentially take so many notes that you would be rewriting the adventure. His kid, later in the NPC’s, has the description “Cerabino is lost inside the forest. He got distracted when he found Living Cave entrance. He can forage for berries and water but monsters can ambush and kill him. “ There’s no mention of the kid anywhere else, and certainly not in the living cave. So … you stick him in it? IE: you have to put together each of the mini-quests on your own. There IS no supporting information.

The living cave, proper, is procedurally generated. Roll a d12 and maybe get “6 Forgotten gear (CHA or attract the owner ghost) “ You gotta wander the cave till the DM rolls a a twelve so you can find the tomb entrance. And it changes every time, since it’s living and procedurally generated each time. This is tedium. And, again, not very well supported. One of the two central locations is essentially not described at all. 

Challenge dungeons, the main tomb, are their own problem. You know the whole “door slams shit and figure out what you are supposed to do” thing. And there’s no map. Well, there is one, but it’s not keyed (maybe that is fixed with the markup file?) And then, the big bad has a 4HD fireball he tosses. At level 3?! WHat is that, 14/7 damage? Ouchies. 

And the room description, what there are of them, are full of asides and backstory. “The manor don’t clean or fix itself inside this room. This was caused by a bad spell from Maliel – Corrupted Witch while she researched a way to preserve Nermanik – Human Mage’s body.” With victorian laundry lists of trivial contents and extensive room exists and the like. 

The rooms and descriptions, the dungeon and towns, the quests, the entire plot … it’s all abstracted. There’s no real summary of how the thing is supposed to work together. There’s no real support for any aspect of it, except perhaps the main dungeon, and even that is written almost like it’s a generic/universal adventure. It has abandoned all conventional aspects of layout and organization, but not replaced it with anything better. It’s as if the designer had not seen a published adventure before and didn’t know to do, but didn’t have an idea anyway on how to organize it. 

I’m open to this being an Obsidian issue, solved by it, but I don’t think so. The lack of a summary that makes sense, and the lack of support for the various areas just seems missing.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/567830/kaeloreth-s-tomb-mini-scenario-pdf-markdown-obsidian-ready?1892600

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