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by Steve

On November 24th we meet to greet [user=papiklfish][/user]

Happy Birthday Steve!

by Rachel

Been hard at work all day, mostly offline, but I did stumble across this gem and had ti share:

Not mine! But I had a good laugh.

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Mythic Monday!

Game Over On borrowed time...

Happy Sunday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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by bryce0lynch

By Tim Duncan
CritHeads Gaming
Castles & Crusades
Level 9?

150 years ago, each continent was ruled by its own Kings or Queens, with the exception of Athel, which was a true wildland and sparsely populated. King Bisdain of Othellis, a primarily human continent, set his eyes on Athel. He wasn’t the only one. In the west, the orcs of Undgar had several settlements established, and in the East, the elves of Vewul had built a magnificent frontier city, Mulvic, and had designs for another one. King Bisdain began his bloody conquest in the west, while secretly building the Eld Bridge to the east. The human steel was far superior to the orcish iron, and they managed to drive the orcs entirely from the land and into seclusion on Undgar. The King and his troops wasted no time moving east, converging with reinforcements from across the newly finished Eld Bridge, and laid siege to Mulvic. While the elves had far fewer numbers, their tactics and techniques kept the invaders at bay for nearly 20 years. As the years past, the elves’ numbers slowly dwindled, and the capital City of Isvewul across the sea was getting desperate to liberate their surrounded people. It was in this desperation that the elves created the Sentinels, mechanical humanoid constructs built to be controlled by the implanted brains of volunteer soldiers

This 104 page linear adventure uses roughly ninety pages to describe twelve scenes. There are no specifics, but there are a lot of motivations and backstory. It’s abstracted nonsense about the fallout from some political thing with elf kingdom manipulation or some shit like that. Boring crap.

Sometimes I just wish I could say “It sucks” and move on with my life. There’s this category of adventures that really are disasters, in the most amateurish way. Hubris, I guess. I can get behind some hubris. But, also, Pathetic earthlings. Hurling your bodies out into the void, without the slightest inkling of who or what is out here. If you had known anything about the true nature of the universe, anything at all, you would’ve hidden from it in terror. I admire someone’s ability to just go out and do it. And I absolutely loathe the result, everything that led up to it, and the fact that I get to pay, literally and figuratively, for the hubris of others.


That’s the opening page. Well, after the table of contents which is in the same style except all of the text is in that blue underlined font, making it even harder to read than a page of fancy font italics on a “fun” tan background image. Did you look at it? Did you look at it and say “Yup, that’s easy to read!”


Great. A column of read-aloud to kick things off. Ingenuity of its people. Got it. Time for a city adventure. I love me a city adventure! It’s one of my favorites! The adventure immediately transitions from that read-aloud to you waking up on an airship.


I don’t know. You’re on your way to another city. That’s like all you get. There’s no adventure between that meaningless starting read-aloud and that “night two” start of the adventure. No boarding of the airship or reasons or anything like that. I guess this will have to do, as well as being told the food is expensive and bad: “The first two days aboard the Airship is rather uneventful! The captain is friendly and more than happy to chat with the passengers. The crew are respectful, but in a hurry, as their duties keep them pretty busy while underway. Addison Buchard and CPT Greene keep to themselves as much as possible, trying to keep out of sight. Addison is shy if approached, and CPT Greene is standoffish, but not hostile or rude.” Abrupt transitions from scene to scene. Overwrought text. And a massive railroad. I guess you’re taking the fucking parachutes, ey?

This one scene, of the twelve, is a good example of the text and playstyle. You have a rather abrupt read-aloud to begin things. Then there’s a very general description of the scene, the number of bandits and their objectives, etc. You are essentially seeing all of that in the screencap above. Then there are like five pages of maps of the ship, one of which is a small keyed map with a very general overview of each section. “Main Foyer: This connects the Crew Quarters, the stair to the Passenger Quarters, and the Mess Deck together. The Door to the Crew Quarters is kept locked at all times. DC 18 DEX will unlock it.” It’s not really a keyed encounter map, and, for the play style envisioned, it’s probably the right amount of detail. About a page for everything and a brief enough overview to get the feel. But the ACTUAL encounter is not specific at all and, i think, is essentially just an idea padded out to a column of text. There are bandits. They want to capture the chick and will destroy the ship if it looks like the characters are fighting instead of fleeing. I mean, that’s the basic scene, just expanded. That’s seven pages to describe “the principals jump out with a parachute during a bandit attack.”


Everything is this very loose description of a situation surrounded by a very strict railroad so you can get from point a to point twelve. I’m normally down for a situation, but in this case it doesn’t feel like a situation. Or, perhaps, it doesn’t feel like the text supports the situation. It’s just TOO loose. I recall one of the early 4e adventures that had a complex of cave rooms and a monster in it with the party negotiating the entire area with its difficult terrain and so on. Like a traditional cavern map but with a only one creature. The minotaur in his maze or one of those “trick” levels, like the mirror maze level with a robot and laser beams. Not a room as a set piece but rather the level as a set piece. Except this isn’t a set piece. It’s too loose for that. And it’s not a sandbox, it’s too constrained for that. Here’s a genericish map of an airship. There are twice as many bandits as characters. Go! “It’s entirely up to the GM how many Terravore
occupy each mound, and if any mounds are vacant.” Well, good thing I bought an adventure And, yet, there is tons of backstory. And motivations. And NPC description details that don’t really matter.

Leaving aside the plot based/scenes/chapters issue, it’s the situations here that are frustrating. I get situations. I love them. And open-ended play and a sandbox. Great. If I squint hard I can tell that the designer is TRYING to support the DM. There’s an attempt to explain what is going on so the DM can improvise and adapt. But the emphasis is on the wrong spots. Those motivation and background parts should be shorter and the encounters/situations more specific. It’s too open-ended where it needs specificity and too wordy in the parts that are to support “off the rails” play. The formatting also doesn’t contribute to locating information easily for the off the rails portion.

This is $25 at DriveThru. The preview is the first six pages. That’s really just a table of contents and some background information, the first six pages. It should show a chapter, from start to finish, to give a potential buyer an idea of what they will be handling.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/532342/aoethera-cata...

by bryce0lynch

By Adam Dreece
ADZO Publishing
OSR
Levels 5-7

Time is running out as the infamous pirate Vocini races toward the swampy ruins of a coastal outpost in search of a legendary weapon, the Cannon of the Blessed. The adventurers must find and assemble the fabled cannon and sink Vocini’s flagship or risk being overwhelmed by his forces and tipping the balance of regional power. But danger lurks at every turn, as the Sea Witch’s minions do not welcome trespassers to her swamp.

This 104 page adventure uses about forty pages to describe about fifteen rooms. That means wordy and a lack of focus. Railroady to boot, I can think of no reason to ever consider running this.

Porchini the wannabe pirate king has one ship and the entire navy can’t stop him. Oh no! He’s going to try to find a legendary cannon in some ruins nearby! The party is arrested by a bunch of level fives and a level nine and sentenced to find the cannon that Porchini is after. You ride in a carriage a couple of hours, a carriage that holds at least seven extra people from all the guards present, until you get to the ruins. You explore fifteen rooms, find the cannon pieces, and shoot at the ship. The cannon does not cause nuclear explosions, so it’s unclear why everyone wants Porchini to not get it. Whatever. This adventure sucks.

Oh, fuck, I forgot. It’s a race against time! Of course it is. Porchini is on his way to get the cannon. I don’t think the party is told that. Maybe once? You have to tell the party when its a race against time or else you’re just suddenly springing shit on them. Better, just don’t do a race against time. They always suck fucking ass. Every fucking adventure is a race against time to save the destruction of the world. *yawn*.

So, five guards. All fifth level. And a level nine leader. This is at least as much power as the level range indicates. If you’ve got some level five guards then why not send THEM to get the cannon? Further, if the fucking ruins with te cannon are just a couple of hours from the fucking major city then why are they still unlooted?! Because of monsters? I think monsters have never met a city full of poor desperate methheads. None of this shit makes any sense.


It’s magically shushed. In the read-aloud.
You know what does make sense? When you’re dropped off the carriages and guards go hide until you’ve got the cannon. “Even if the party searches, they won’t find where the coaches, grand magistrate, and Yokik went, as there is no trail due to magic. A spell has been put on the coaches that cloaks them, which the grand magistrate has control of. It only lasts until the following morning.” See, that makes sense. That’s what a shithole of an adventure would do, and it does it. Railroad the party. Take away options by fiat for no reason. Why can’t the party kill them/find them? I don’t know. The designer decided so, I guess. It didn’t match their idea of a heroic adventure? “The party has until midnight, more than twelve hours, until the coaches will be forced to return to the capital city. It is a two-to-three-day march back, in good weather. Why midnight? Why twelve hours? I don’t know. No reason in the adventure. Just because the designer said so, for no particular reason, and is enforcing it. Hey, remember that level nine? “If the party is in trouble, the GM may choose to have Yokik Swiftblade attempt to save the day (Yokik’s details are in the Creatures section at the back of the adventure).” Because of course the mary sue saves the day. Fucking shit engages in seemingly every low-effort trope possible.


Good thing this was in there
104 pages. For fifteen fucking encounter locations. That’s absurd. Even if I JUST take the room key section thats forty pages for fifteen encounters. So roughly sixty pages of backstory, preamble, monster stats, magic items descriptions. And, of course, how to read a stat block. I hate this shit. Put your fucking effort in to the fucking rooms keys. The extra shit don’t matter as much. The room keys are, generally, the heart of the adventure. Put your effort in to the heart of the adventure. So much extra shit thrown in and such shitty fucking keys. It is, quite frankly, embarrassing. A special combination of hubris and chutzpah that I shall never possess, I guess.

Three page backstory. Four page room descriptions. Just some fucking monsters. “F you dont free the sea witch then she breaks out to attack you.” She’s been trapped forever, and, so, selects NOW as the time to break out. Because of some fucking story idea the designer has. Trying to construct cool moments. Punishing the party for their decisions which interfere with their cool moments. “Oh, no, sea witch is wronged, the party should see that and help and if they dont then i’ll punish them.” Look, reactions to things the party does are fine, but when they seem punitive because the designer WANTS another course of action to take place then that just sucks ass. No one enjoys that.

I don’t know, what do you want to talk about? The long sections of read-aloud in second person? That seems boring. The struggles of your level seven characters in crossing a two foot deep creek?

This is just a crap adventure. I guess it is technically an OSR adventure since it’s statted that way. What IS the OSR, blah blah blah. This is all such old hat. It’s the same old same old. The same people putting out the same crap, time and time again. Why do they care? They make some money off of each one. Who cares? Have another $.39 veal pot pie. Six hundred pounds of oatmeal for a dollar! What, you want to pay $10 for a half pound of artisanal locally-sourced heirloom oatmeal that supports a small business? Fuck you. Eat your swill. This isn’t a future where kilocals are used as currency. There is an inherent quality factor in the hunt for an RPG adventure. Isn’t there? Am I wrong? IS this just a hunt for the cheapest and densest calories? That can’t be right? Why not put out something good? Why not be as happy as you can be with the thing you are producing? You’re not making money. No one is. So WHY? Why put something like this out? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is 23 pages. So, you know, you’ll not get to see any keys. That’s willlldd. You enjoy that padding though.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/507942/wondrous-and-...

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by bryce0lynch

By Onslaught Six, Roz Leahy
Tidal Wave Games
OSR
Levels 1-9
[…] Deep beneath Castle Gygar was a thriving maze of magical creatures. These levels would shift and expand at times, as if the dungeon were taking a breath. The divine magic of Lord King Gygar was no match for the chaotic energy of his dungeon’s denizens, and, before long, the Castle was abandoned. The land of Jotun has been without proper rule for hundreds of years now. Castle Gygar’s ruins stand as a kind of warning now, a warning against digging too deep in search of power. For the foolish few who now and then decide to ignore this lesson, a p

This 64 page digest adventure fits in a megadungeon with twelve levels and about 25 rooms per level. It’s got a kind of disconnected vibe between the rooms, a very terse minimalism, and some videogame overtones. It does hit at a consistent mediocre level. I just find it hard to sustain interest.

Well, it got done. Which is more than most large projects can say. I’m going to struggle, somewhat, with describing what this is. “It’s the ruins of Castle Gygar, it’s dungeons anyway. Duh!” But, more than that, the kind of disconnected nature of the levels. But, perhaps, I should start with the room description style. That’s a weird place to start but I think it kind of is the origin story to everything going on in this, in one way or another.


You can, from that collection of room entries in the screencap, tell that the rooms are pretty terse. We’re talking twelve to a digest place terse. “Four +1 Spears hang on the wall, glowing brightly as they are approached. A small vent conceals a low tunnel to 1.3” Two sentences. Quite terse. Not the more evocative sentences ever written, by far, but also it’s hard to slam them for padding. 🙂 So. Why are the sentences not longer? Why select this ultra-terse format? It’s twelve levels and over three hundred rooms. Size can’t be the factor, the entire product is long. Unless 64 pages is a logic publishing format that it needs to fit in to? In which case … why twelve levels instead of ten with longer descriptions? I feel like I’m missing something, a gimmick or something. It just feels artificially constrained, although I can point to no real reason for that feeling other than the very short descriptions in a very large number of rooms … and thus implicitly a large page count. I do appreciate a terse format, but, not so terse that we lose the room proper. In the grand scheme of things a padded out product would be shittier than this, this kind of terse but ok would be neutral and an evocative terse description would be the ideal. So, first do no wrong is taken care of. I just can’t see why the word didn’t end up somewhere better. The rooms come off as barren.

And, more than that, they come off disconnected. Why are the spears there? I don’t mean backstory. There’s an ogre nearby. And imps. Gargoyles. Beastmen. The Hunger. That’s a lot of monsters. A zoo almost. In the rooms surrounding Ye Olde Glowing Speare Roome. I don’t need a historically accurate number of farmers to yeomen in a village but I do need the vibe to seem plausible. Why are they still there? And, for that matter, why the fuck are all of those monsters living so close to each other? This is why we have lairs, and zones of control, and themes areas in dungeons. It keeps this kind of monster zoo thing from happening. There are dead zones. And dead zones between areas can have secrets. Like four glowing spears hanging from the walls. So, it all just kind of comes off as disconnected. Sure, it’s a room and the description does not overstay its welcome. But, also, the description isn’t really bringing the room to life in any way AND the overall design and placement of the room doesn’t really contribute to a bigger picture. On the first level the leader of the beastmen, a single orc, sits on this throne, his 3000gp(!!) treasure in the next room. He’s flanked by his beastmen guards. So, I guess two of them? Pretty nice fucking loot. And no beastmen lairs or orc lairs or really ANY other monsters nearby. Just dude on his skull throne with his two bros. There’s no real level vibe. Or zone vibe. Or room vibe. Just do you thing in THIS room and move on. It’s not even full of special rooms, like, a set piece after a set piece like the Tower of Gygax con game specials. I don’t know, a more boring Stonehell barbican?

And there are quite clearly come videogame play loops. You can convert temples to your own god, which will give you a small attack bonus You can rind relics which are like one-time-use spell scrolls. You can go through a twelve step process to find a +5 sword on the last level that detects secrets doors and can cast list and cure wounds. Which, frankly, seems a bit of a rip off after twelve levels and the hoops you have to jump through. It feels like maybe its a way to help with that interconnection issue and lack of purpose, but, you also don’t really seem to know WHY, to what end, all of the mini tasks are leading to. And if you don’t know you are making a decision then the tension around making that decision is lost.

And, of course “The door to 0.8 is locked by the Gold Key (0.15).” How much more of a videogame flavor do you need than that?

Monster summary in the back, along with wanderer tables, which is a good idea. No monster descriptions, which is a bad idea. The map does denote which rooms have internal light sources, which I enjoy to help me run a level. But, also, the rooms try to denote it also by placing the text in either white or black font, which I think makes it busy. Not to the point it’s illegible or anything, I just don’t think it does what the designer wanted, it’s already on the map, and, worst of all, it annoys me. 🙂

Things are just not … vibing together the way I would like. It really needs a rug to tie the dungeon together. Outside level. Dragon level. It’s just, overall and individually, not working together toward a common end. Maybe you can sustain long play like that, I don’t think I can.

This is $10 at DriveThru. There are multiple previews, so, good job with that.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/510225/the-ruins-of-...

A new rpg item has been added to the database: YGGDRASIL BURNS