tenfootpole.org

By Karla Adder
Karla Adder Press
OSRIC
Levels 1-3

For years, the southeast border of the Domain of Grauheim was silent, the thunder of marching footsteps and the stampede of calvary long-faded into the history of the Borderland Wars. Yet this peace has been ruptured by a band of hobgoblin mutineers and their treacherous commander, Sergeant Rovacs. The hobgoblins have seized a long-disused outpost just across the Morfluss River, from which they have raided caravans, captured prisoners, and amassed a small fortune in the halls of their captured fortress…

This 36 page adventure uses about thirteen pages to describe a hobgoblin fortress with about forty locations. And fuck ton of hobgoblins. It’s padding out language and room descriptions, with a few mysteries to solve, but, ultimately, it’s not a dungeon adventure, or a raid, or a siege. It’s a weird diplomacy/logistics/siege adventure that doesn’t do much to support that. 

I don’t really know how to go about this. The heart of this product is a fortress taken over by hobgoblins. It’s well defended, walls, towers, archers, lookouts, defenses, and a metric fuck ton of hobgoblins. Like, thirty or so. There are also some dungeon areas, old temple secrets to uncover and so on, as well as some goblins slaves in the basement, a few dozen of them, and they are feisty.

There’s a disconnect here, in the adventure, which I think the designer explicitly acknowledges, and, yet, there’s still a disconnect. This isn’t a dungeon adventure. It looks like a dungeon adventure. There’s a map, and it’s keyed, and there are some secret areas and so on. But a force of thirty or so hobgoblins, in a fortress, is not a nut to be cracked by traditional means. It’s not an exploratory dungeon. And I don’t think it’s a raid, or, rather, it’s not solved through the usual “sneak in via a dumb plan and then when it goes to shit start the frantic hacking.” I am pretty certain that the adventure is going to START that way, and then the second party to come along, after the TPK or near-TPK, will select another option to crack it. 

The dudes in town, the mayors personal guard, are ten or so levels three, four and five fighters. But dude will not commit them without a great plan. There are a lot of goblin slaves in the basement, that the party doesn’t know about. There is a merchant in town that is looking to curry favor with the townfolk. And, then, there’s an explicit acknowledgement by the designer ta the end of the adventure that the party could siege the place, attrit the hobgoblin patrols, diplomacy the hobgoblins to buy them off, or “stealth in”, which is basically the “come up with a wacky plan that then goes to shit” approach I noted earlier. 

Diplomacy, siege, and attrition are not likely to be the initial approaches the party selects, correct? That’s a different type of adventure. I don’t know, a campaign issue? Something that shows up again and again in the game? 

Ok so we’re gonna ignore that your level ones are gonna get slaughtered. Instead we’re gonna assume that the DM has successfully telegraphed that the usual “explore/raid” methodology is gonna end in a disaster and the party is selecting another approach. The question then becomes how well does the adventure support those other approaches? A siege, diplomacy, attrition? Not well.

“The Mayor believes his first responsibilities lie with his community, which he is hesitant to leave, though he will part with up to 4 of his 9-man household guard. However, if the party presents a compelling strategy for a full assault that seems likely to eliminate the Hobgoblin menace, Morrik and all his men will join the combat.” That is, essentially, all you’re getting. There is no support for diplomacy, or issues arising from it, or support for a siege or attrition via the surrounding area and environs, or anything other than a cursory note about patrols. But, the designer, proper, makes it clear that IS the adventure. 

It’s a misunderstanding of the adventure as presented. These are not bandits in some ruins. This is now the local raubritter. Herr Raubritter is not dealth with the same way as a few bandits in the ruins and thus the information needed by the DM, presented to them by the designer, is not the same. This is not a raid or three in to the dungeon. You need more on the town, the local situation, resources, escapes, patrols and so on. You need far less “dungeon room key long descriptions.” This is not exploratory, or a typical dungeon room/key environment in any sense. At BEST it needs to be oriented towards raids/infiltration, or the possibility thereof. 

Instead we get “The torturer himself is long gone,” or “this was once, evidentally” or long conditional statements. It’s padded out language, not targeted to how the adventure is meant to be used. There’s not even an order of battle or response information. 

But, hey, you do get Mark & Emma, a couple in town “M8c. Mark and Emma – Mark is a grey haired old man long past fighting age, and is cared for by Emma, his niece and the sole surviving member of his family. The two of them eek out a meager living, but are supported generously by their neighbors and granted wide latitude in work by Mayor Morrik.” This deserved, at best, a line of text in order to spice up a call to arms in town, not a paragraph. 

Either you write a level one to three adventure with hobgoblins in a fortress that is more “setting” oriented or you make the environment less impregnable and target it at the standard party incursion/raid type play. You gotta decide which you are doing and target the writing., and resources provided to the DM, in that style. 

This is, in some ways, a better example of “writing a social adventure in standard room/key” than anything else I’ve seen, even though its not really a social adventure. It WANTS a situation but then presented a room/key dungeon. 

Also, meh, no reason for them to be hobgoblins. I think I like humans better for things like this.

This is $13 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and shows you the room keys in the fortress. Not exactly focused descriptions, but, also, I’m not sure communicates the overall vibe of the adventure.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/567161/the-hobgoblin-warlord?1892600

FEI Games
Self Published
B/X
Levels 3-4

Long ago a small village accepted a gift from a traveling group of clerics. The gift was a large bronze bell that was surprisingly light for it’s size. A newly formed cult discovered the bell and it’s history and have recently decided that bell was better off in their possession… so they took it.

This seventeen page adventure uses seven pages to describe seven rooms in a graveyard. More FEI slop, with massive read-aloud to make it to seven pages, and enemies that are no match for a party. FEI Games is fascinating.

I find FEI Games absolutely fascinating. FEI and a couple of other publishers, that is. You know the ones. I don’t review any of them any more because they just pump out garbage, one or two adventures a week. “Oh, it’s AI!”, except they started before the LLM’s appeared in a common way. Are they using AI now? Well, FEI Games claims to not be using AI in their adventure disclosure page. I also don’t really detect the obvious “rule of three” dead give away that AI is present, or the “It is not X but Y” AI phrasing. So, this could be actual real deal hand crafted garbage. 

Why? I mean, what motivates someone to write like this? FEI and the others. Are they making money on these? I mean, that has to be the motivation of the AI slop people, right? They just flood the market with shit and they make $1 off of each one. That’s obvious. And then there’s the patreon/kickstarter people who are inevitably marketing to people who don’t play D&D and just buy and read shit. That’s shitty, but I understand it. Then there are a whole slew of people who WANT to create and are just bad at it. (And, some small percentage who are good at it.) All driven by passion and a compulsion to create. Buy why hand craft slop? What’s the pay off? The dopamine hit? I mean, it feels like I’m in a old folks home and they tell you to paint one picture a day to help fend off the Alzheimer’s. There can’t be any joy in this. Can there? Or sales? I have to be wrong about something. I just do not know what the fuck I am wrong about. 

Edqrd E Sutton, writer, just did not give a FUUUUUCCCCK about this adventure. In what is possibly the shortest read-aloud in the adventure “The door that you discovered opens without a sound. Treasures is revealed before your eyes.” This is quite awkward. Who phrases something like that? I love using off kilter phrasing and it’s weird even for me. There’s a decent number of zombies in this. Like, small numbers in several areas. Zombies are like an auto-turn at level three in Holmes, I think? That leaves a couple of 2HD darkmantles, a 3HD elder darkmantle, and a 3HD spirit. This is not exact;y the challenge of the century. It’s clear he did not give a fuck when placing the enemies. 

And the map, some of the zombies are noted, in the text, as appears in areas 1(a) through 1(d.) There is no area 1a-1d on the map, just a 1. And there’s no room for a 1a-1d to be placed. This is all examples of human slop, not ai slop. 

Read-aloud is huge. 1.5 pages to start, if I recall. There’s read-aloud everywhere. Long sections of it. Except, is it? It’s boxed. It’s phrased like read-aloud. And then there’s text like this mixed in to it “The trip to the abandoned chape is uneventful except for any random wildlife they may see off in the distance. The final few miles of their journey they will experience….” Uh. Yes. The designer does not give a fuck. 

It’s a couple of encounters with very low level creatures for the level range. They are uninteresting encounters. They are full of massively long and confusing read-aloud. 

I just don’t get it. I understand the AI cash grab. I understand the kickstarter/patreon cash grab. But hand crafted? It MUST be a cash grab, right? Why publish at such a rate, weekly or even more frequently, if it’s not a cash grab? But you just CANT be making bank on these. Right? Just slop, pumped out week after week. There can’t be any joy in it. There can’t be any cash in it. So, it’s like, just doing the work someone else has assigned? How do you pump this out and not give a shit about what you are pumping out? How do you pump it out weekly, or more, and not get AT ALL better week after week after week? What is the motivation for the hand crafted slop publishers?

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/588428/the-bell-of-blackthorn-hollow?1892600

By Mountainland Games
Self Published
Shadowdark
Level 1

The old northern road was once safe. Now travelers are disappearing—and the bodies that are found are missing their hearts. The trail leads to Blackstone Watchtower, an abandoned fortress that has stood empty for generations. Now strange lights flicker in its windows, goblins haunt the surrounding countryside, and something ancient has begun to stir beneath the stones. The characters are hired to investigate. What begins as a hunt for goblin raiders soon leads into the forgotten ruins of the watchtower, where the characters will uncover an ancient guardian, a powerful artifact, and the first signs of a threat that could shake the kingdoms.

This fifteen page adventure presents a little tower with a few levels and about fifteen rooms. A basic little adventure that is generally inoffensive and trying to set up things for the next to in the series. 

This reminds me of a basic “home game” adventure. You come up with a little arc and it takes place over a small number of sessions. I’m sure I’ve done something like this a multitude of times over the years. This is the first of a three part series, I assume. This is the teaser adventure, investigating a merchant wagon that gets raided, with the nearby village reporting raids and killings recently. You end up at a tower in which you learn about IMPENDING DOOM!!! The Evil One is returning! So, look at the wagon, question people in town, and then off to the tower ruin on the hill to eventually figure out the larger issue.

The opening scene of this, the hook, with the raided merchant wagon, is doing a couple of good things. It’s the usual goblin arrows/tracks in the mud thing with a survivor, but it also builds a little tension. Or, perhaps, foreshadows a few things. More than just a raided wagon, the bodies are missing their hearts. This adds a little to the adventure, raising the stakes to more than just a raided wagon. And then there’s the boot prints. The survivor tells you of a tall man in black armor standing on a hill nearby that oversaw the battle. And then perhaps a captured goblin says they were led by him and he was faceless. (With a note to the DM saying that he means that literally. Nice added confusion there, with the party perhaps misinterpreting it.) Thus our main antagonist, not showing up in this adventure, is previewed a bit. A mighty blow against Lareth! But, seriously, both the heart thing and the man in black add tension and give a hint of larger things afoot in the world around the party. It doesn’t take much, but the hints here will play on the party members minds as they proceed through the adventure. 

Otherwise the adventure is not exactly breaking new ground. The town is terse described with the focus on the people and who can tell the party interesting things. Again, appropriate to the adventure, not telling us what an inn looks like and all of its prices, but what the innkeep can tell us relevant to the raids and the tower on the hill. The focus is kept on what is relevant to the adventure, as it should be.

Formatting is clean, with bolding in place, and bullets for information related to the party. Most of the entries are short and easy to scan. Maybe too short; the evocative text here is few and far between. An entry for The Crypts reads “Six stone coffins are arrayed in this small complex of tunnels. If any of the coffins are disturbed, a Restless Dead emerges from each of the six coffins and attacks.” That could be worked a lot harder to provide a more evocative environment for the encounter, and is fairly typical for the type of encounter description the adventure provides. Workmanlike? In a negative sense? It’s the bare basics and one step above  very minimal “Crypts. 6 Restless Dead”.” 

The interactivity has a few goblins, who you can cower by defeating/capturing their leader, which is a nice touch of realism, along with a handful of undead. Reactions to noise are noted in the rooms where the noise takes place, which is appropriate as well. You can find the old commanders sword, which will also make the undead hesitate and perhaps allow the party to bluff their way out of things with them. Another nice touch akin to the “bless is a utility spell for solving a variety of problems” approach to DMing. 

It does rely a bit on “roll on the treasure table” mechanic, which I’m not a fan of. Put in the treasure man! Theme it to the environment the party is in! The map generally ok, with some confusing bits around a sealed tomb that took me several readings to figure out. The map and text descriptions do NOT work together well for that one room. 

The encounter at the end of the dungeon is the bulk of the adventures purpose. There you meet an undead dude, the commander of the tower. He has A LOT of information to dump on you about what is actually going on and the charge for the party to take the DooHickey and deliver it to the PLACE in order to stop The Evil One. Not exactly a monologue, it  does fulfill the expo dump of setting up the next adventures. This is not ideal. Theres a little lead in, but its just a big dump of info in the end. There’s no real slow play out of information and a burgeoning discovery. Utilizing the rest of the space, and room, more to provide info for the party to put together, to trickle out a puzzle/discovery, would have been a much better way to handle this. 

This is a quite basic and inoffensive adventure. Working on the room descriptions would make a more evocative environment, as would better utilizing the tower, and its environs, to more slowly reveal information about The Evil One and the task at hand. There’s not much to recommend.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. A good preview shows the buyer what to expect before they purchase and should contain a few encounters in order to do so.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/587110/the-black-fortress-episode-i-the-ruined-watchtower?1892600

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To the Bitchmobile boy wonder! 

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

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

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

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

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

By Nate Treme
Highland Paranormal Society
OSR
Levels 1-2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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