by skalchemist

An item Genre: Fantasy has been added to the geeklist Kickstarter RPG Game Books - 2025

by EndersGame

<div>Adam Stichter (courtesy of James Ernest, with permission)</div>

by bryce0lynch

By Dale L. Houston
Duck and Crow Press
OSR
Level ?

A secretive cult conspires in the shadows. A spy from the Church of the Sepulcher of the Holy Carcass seeks answers. And a once-peaceful village teeters on the brink of chaos. Delve the depths of the execrable crypts, save the people of Ableturn, and revel in glory and treasure!

This forty page adventure presents a three level forty room dungeon with nihilist priests in it. It brings the color to the environment, but has a disconnected start and is rather one-dimensional. Get it?! Get it?! One Dimensional?! No? Neither do I.

I’m doing some shit out of order today. You’ll have to bear with me; it makes more sense this way. Here’s page one of the room keys:


Formatting is fine, yeah? Easily scanned. A discussion about bullet points may be warranted, but, let me summarize what it will come out to: good writing trumps bad writing, be it in bullet form or sentence form. Nice bold, subtle indent. Relatively terse sections. An offset of for glances. Seems fine. Further on, incense pours from a mouth. tracks shuffle. It’s doing a pretty decent job of sticking in some adjectives and adverbs to spice up the descriptions. It doesn’t feel like a rote task was done either, not just saying every noun needs an adjective or something like that. It feels like some little vignettes were created and them some amount of effort was taken to find words to describe the vision int he designers head. Which is, I think, the best way to write. Imagine first. Then kill yourself trying to describe it.

And the room descriptions, in the green boxes? Seems fine also? (‘Fine praise’ for our new readers.) There is some warmth to them. CHARRED painting of the family on the wall. WARM this chamber. Nice to see some orange paint in a dungeon, at last. EPHEMERAL forms float AIMLESSLY. This isn’t rock star territory but it does try, and succeed in some cases, in painting a relatively evocative picture of what’s going on in the room.

it is the interactivity that I want to discuss in terms of having some qualms. The dungeon proper falls in to two parts here. There is a decent bit of hacking, as one would expect. Then there are the void priests, proper, in the dungeon. These folks want to be killed. Well, in a certain kind of manner. First, killing them steadily advances the “demons eyes turn red” counter of a central statue. When you kill them all then THE THINGS happens and as a result all undead in your campaign get tougher. because of THE REASON. This is not quite the end of the world stuff prevalent in LotFP adventures, but does harken back to the advice in Broodmother Skyfortress of shaking up your game world with big things. It’s a nice consequence and, really, it should be obvious to the party as hacking the priests slowly turns the idols eyes red. If you don’t pay attention to the walls of the room being scorched then you deserve the fire trap. The priests also can/will talk a bit. They have goals also, beyond simply being killed. You see they love/hate their fellow priests and want to be killed, generally, before or after another priest. Think of a lovers pact or, after two thousand years, you really can’t stand the way your roommate brushes their teeth. Beyond this the interactivity is somewhat lacking. Not every adventure need be exploratory, but just a little more in this area would have been nice.

There is another part of this adventure though that has me more than a little bewildered. I THINK there’s supposed to be an investigation before you get to the dungeon. There are, I believe, about six pages before the dungeon starts that details some goings-on in the local village. Someone is found killed. There’s a page of rumors.


That rumor page would certainly imply an unfolding investigation. After all you need to get to “Fred was killed” to the dungeon. There are some intriguing elements, The Society. The Church. A certain mysterious Mister Ultos and the more relatable Mother Juaz. It’s all quite intriguing. I believe what its doing is leaving some room for mysteries, by not overexplaining, which is a key tenet in getting the DMs imagination going.

Essentially, some dudes hit the dungeon/crypt, and bring back an amulet. The Society starts killing anyone who has come in contact with the amulet in order to PROTECT ORDER and the like. And, it turns out, there’s been more than the one killing they’ve done to keep things quiet about the amulet. Ultos has his own mysterious motives and the Church and Mother Juaz act as a kind of “the inquisition is sniffing about” threat .. appearing benign. The town is on edge. You can easily get to ‘powederkeg’ as you review it … and that’s just the way I like it, and it should be.

It’ feels like its missing something though to tie it together as the lead in to the dungeon. I’m going to be hyperbolic in this analogy, but imagine I gave you that rumor table and a couple of NPC descriptions, and nothing more, and said to run the investigation. It can be done. But the support for the DM in this is not quite, I think, where it needs to be. It feels like it needs just a paragraph or two more to tie the town, the NPC”S, the investigation, and the countryside together to lead to the dungeon. I’m walking a fine line here. Not being spoon-fed or having a railroad start, but six pages of village lead in feels like it should be a relatively major part of the package. And yet the ties feel more like tenuous than that would otherwise imply.

.There’s a nice “Aftermath” section, as I indicated earlier. The monsters get some ok descriptions in the appendices, though I wish they were a bit better. There are some extensive handouts for the party and the art and layout are decent. This is one of the “fuller featured” adventures I’ve reviewed that doesn’t screw up at least one part of . “The crew hears tell that bathing in the hidden hot springs near Ableturn can heal a body mind and soul. This is a fabrication, a campfire story that still gets passed around.” And that’s a decent little one liner of a hook. A vagabond-like thing. Throw away NPCs get a nice description “Councilperson Ingram: A quixotic busybody who can’t stand to be wrong, but is an effective leader” That’s good for running. “Cursed: Anyone that opens a child’s crypt will forever be haunted by a phantom child. The curse can only be removed by acts of goodwill that benefit children and orphans. The phantom will slowly drive the character to madness and death.” That’s a good, creepy curse, more than just a mechanical effect. It’s hitting well in many areas. Even though the level range is never mentioned … Bad designer! No cookie for you!

This is $12.50 at DriveThru. The preview is the first fourteen pages, more than enough to get a good idea of the lead in and what the encounters are like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/540649/the-execrable...

by Mark3275

Thanks for the info. The game looks cool.

by Blowncover

An item RPG Item: Hull Breach Volume 01 has been added to the geeklist Short campaigns I intend to run

by Blowncover

An item RPG Item: Orc Borg has been added to the geeklist Short campaigns I intend to run

by nyrox

Hello everyone!

I’m a DM looking for players for a new online D&D campaign.
Sessions will be held on Discord.
Details:
• System: D&D 5e
• Platform: Discord
• Schedule: Flexible, will coordinate with all players
• Timezone: GMT-6
• Experience: All welcome
• Style: Balanced roleplay + combat

If you’re interested, please send me a private message on Discord nyrox9.

Looking forward to adventuring with you!

by Damdael

An item RPG Item: The Curse of the Snake Queen has been added to the geeklist Gamebook rankings by Damdael

by TomTomThePipersSon

It happens on and off; currently, a green comet is an evil portent which is causing concern around the area. Concern as well as an uprising of the dead.

by JLongden

Hey, good news. We just got an update saying that the book's been through final editing and approvals, and will be released on PDF soon with the hardcover coming soonish afterwards. (Obviously it's got to be printed and shipped.)

by failhouse

The printed book rules say The Tower starts the decline/death phase, but in the card descriptions it looks like it's The Devil. So I'd it The Devil?

by Mallet

:laugh: