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by bryce0lynch

By Corey Hickson
Corey Hickson Games
OSE
Levels 1-2

The adventurers celebrated their newfound wealth in Crossroads Vale, a prosperous trading village, merrymaking and sharing their spoils with the townsfolk. Unbeknownst to them, the hoard was a trap left by the dragon for the foolish and unwary and every treasure they returned with is cursed! As twilight fell, Crossroads Vale descended into chaos. The cursed treasure unleashed strange monsters and terrible magic: an enraged manticore rampaged, petrifying townsfolk; the fountain in the market square churned with a possessed water elemental; and a parasitic ooze began animating the dead.

Life is Pain.

This eighteen page adventure presents thirteen possible encounters in five pages in a village suffering from an influx of cursed magical items. A loose collection of aimlessness wrapped in some Wouldn’t It Be Fun If does not an adventure make. This is also, likely, a one-shot.

“I wrote this adventure with fun at its heart. I hope it brings you and your friends laughter and a joyful game night” I, obviously, do not know the definition of the word “fun.” The adventure starts in an inn. The town has gone crazy. You’re the [butcher, baker, candlestick maker, mayor, alewife, etc.] Hank the Adventurer is there. He brought back a cartload of treasure from the local dragons lair and the entire town celebrated. Except. Shit started happening. There’s a water monster in the town fountain and a manticore is flying around the town square turning people to stone.

“Hank the Adventurer (pg. 5) is at a lone table, carefully plotting how to get as much of the cursed loot and escape the Vale before the slumber arrives.” Hank is described as “Voluble, Ignoble, and Determined.” He knows everyone in town is going to sleep at midnight, in seven hours, because of a magic orb in the town square. As far as I can tell, Hank is the only one in town to know this, besides the person who caused it, Ekert. “Hank now realizes the rumor he got from Ekert began this horrid night.” Sooo … how do you get from point A to point B? How do you get info out of Hank, learning about Ekert and the orb? Clearly, it has to come from Hank. And, I think, just as clearly, Hank, the 3HD warrior with a +3 sword who can shoot fire rays from a magic amulet, is described in such a way that he’s not going to want to tell the L1 party. So … what do we do? You are, I suppose, the village worthies, by want of being the player characters anyway, so, you’re motivated, I guess, to save your fellow villagers. And pissed, maybe that Hank won’t help you? This FEELS an awful lot like the adventures in which the quest giver/hook is an asshole and you have to beg to go on the adventure. I can get to The Town Is In Danger And We Need To Help! I’m having a much harder time with Hank, and getting the information you need from Hank in order to actually play the adventure.


Moving to the actual encounters, they come in three types. We’ve got monsters rampaging. This is the manticore in the town square and the water weird in the town fountain. The weird is a kind of puzzle, you need to figure out there’s a cursed coin in the fountain and remove it. So, a straight up fight with the manticore and/or lure it away (since the Midnight Sleep Orb is in the same place) and/or puzzle your way past the water weird. Then there are some kind of Weird Monster locations. The graveyard has a ghost and some zombies with only tenuous ties to whats going on and not much reason to explore. Likewise a farmhouse with two dudes turned in Beauty & Beast type couches. Ok. Sure? Just weirdness. And then finally some things to spice things up. There’s a wanderer table, which could really use cross-references to the named people you encounter, and some rando locales/encounters you can throw in. The best of these is probably the WIll o the Wisps. “Help, I’m trapped!” seems like a perfect things for them to do in a village full of chaos. Being able to use a classic monster like this in a way in which they fit, and the party won’t suspect, is great. The context f the encounter, the village in danger, leverages the Wisps core aspect, luring people to their doom in a dangerous situation. Hearing a “Help!” out of he blue puts you on edge. Hearing a “help!” in a situation in which you EXPECT to hear a help is good monster usage. (See also: harpy singing, etc.)

The encounters tend to be short, a column at most, and formatted well so they are easy to scan. Not everything makes sense; there is weird bolding to highlight things that should not, perhaps, be highlighted. And the ending of the adventure doesn’t really make sense. You presumably stop the madness, but, there’s no epilogue, which I think would have been nice, even in a one shot. O, maybe, especially in a one-shot.

So, it’s a one-shot. You need to work it to get to some coherance.

This is $3.50 at DriveThru. The preview is the first four pages. It should, as always, really show some encounters. The Hank NPC description gets you a good way there though, if you know, from this review, what the rest is like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/536929/cursed-calami...

by bryce0lynch

By Guilherme Providello
Savvy Thief Studios
OSE
Level 1

For years, you were victims of an imperial Senator who lived in the Capital. He stole you as children from your home village in the Ancestral Peninsula, and assured your subservience through drugs and witchcraft. After many years receiving this treatment, you no longer remember who you truly are or where you came from. Enslavement was never accepted in the Empire, and one day his illegal actions were discovered. In a desperate flight towards your forgotten homeland, the senator let his guard down. And now, at last, he lies dead at your feet. This momentous death is only the beginning of the PCs’ struggle to recover their past

This thirty page supplement uses about ten pages to describe ten hexes in a Roman/Iberian like setting. It’s just boring crap. Nothing going on. Hardly a hex crawl. At a page per hex you’d think SOMETHING was happening here. No. Good luck.

This thing is so frustrating. It took me a minute to figure out why. It’s Isle of the Unknown all over again. Maybe not QUITE as bad, but close. And when I say bad I mean aimless. There’s an aimlessness here. But, let’s back up.

We start with the framing. Ok, you’re from fantasy-Iberia and you were fantasy-enslaved to a fantasy-roman senator who removed your fantasy-memories. You’ve fantasy-killed him right at the fantasy-threshold to fantasy-Iberia with the game starting with “How did you manage to kill the senator? What did you find on his body“. (I guess the whole “physical violence may be kept off-screen” is out the window as a trigger, yeah?) So, I guess you’re fleeing into non-Roman Iberia and away from Roman lands? Got it? You’re escaped slaves who just murdered someone.

So what’s the frequency Kenneth? What are you doing in this hex crawl? I guess it’s always the players job to find a motivation for doing things, yeah? But it just seems like there’s more to this. You are hexcrawling in a settled land. Whose treasure you stealing to level up? Or, who you stabbing to level up? That leaves the usual culprits: demons and animals. And, there are a couple of demons here in two of the hexes. More on that later, right now we’re philosophizing. How do you level in a world in which you can’t loot to level? I don’t know man. What do you exploit when you can’t exploit? I guess you just damn the torpedos and full hypocrite ahead? I’m down for a more nuanced view of monsters. After all, I love a good situation. But we’re still playing a game. The designer has to give us something to do. There’s got to be an out, someone to kill and something to loot if we’re playing a game in which we get XP by killing and looting. If you want to write for the “get xp by interacting with the environment” game then I’m down with that also. But that’s not what is going on here. I mean, IM happy to stab and loot, but, also, it seems more than a little disrespectful to play the Things Fall Apart adventure by looting houses and killing people. So, the designer forgot something. A critical something.

We’ve got a hex with d3x100 mermaids in it in a cave surrounded by shipwrecks. Hot damn! That’s a real hex crawl hex! We’ve got a hex with the millers family under the sway of a demon disguised as a pig with the families children rooting around in the pigpen. NOICE! A demon goat trapped under a hill temple. A witch in the woods. This is all very classical. 45 giant eagles in a lair. WTF?! Rock on man! This is the shit! Wilderlands eat your heart out! Lots of shit in the lair man! The lair where the goodies are …


But, then, the entry goes on for a page. Wilderlands did this in a couple of sentences, not a page. If Wilderlands jumped off a bridge then would you? Yes. Yes I would. A column for a stat block and a column for an encounter and treasure. I’m not even sure what the fuck to do with this encounter. I mean, stumbling upon it. Live and let live, I guess? There’s no reason to go here. There’s no reason to interact. Oh, look, we need a place to sleep for tonight? And the kids live in the sty? Ok. When in Iberia do as the Iberians do. Either I want to exploit a situation for my own ends or I’m an interfering do gooder? For my definition of good? I guess that’s why its a demon? Platonically bad? Does that cash belong to the miller though?


This is another full page hex and this is the pertinent part of the description. Do you care? Why are you interacting here? Domed rock? An entrance to it? Do you see one? In THAT text? Ok. Uh. I guess we move on? There’s just nothing here. I mean, functionally, what’s the difference between this goat encounter and “a 10 foot tall parrot on stork legs is in this hex.” (That being the platonic Isle of the Unknown encounter.) There isn’t on? Just more words spreads across the page?


Ok. So. What secrets? There are none. That’s it. That’s all you get. Can you riff on it? Sure. In the same way I can riff on a dictionary entry. In the lava temple the text tells us that “A lot of care and courage are necessary to leap from rock to rock over the lava to reach the temple (see map.)” There is no map. There’s a line drawing, a little art piece, of some rocks in a stream/lava. Is that it? Cause there ain’t no map of a temple.

This is pointless. The designer has explicitly outlined a play style and then provided hexes in which the journey is the destination … but no rules for XP for the journey. What the fuck do you do here? It is a simplistic worldview presented where a more nuanced one would have resulted in the situations in which a party of characters can enter.

This is $7 at DriveThru. The preview is ten pages. That shows you the slant but not any of the hexes, and it really should have shown some hexes to be a good preview. We need to see what we’re getting ourselves in to.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/534682/ancestral-pen...

by bryce0lynch

By Adam Helešic
The Curios Eye
OSE
Levels 1-2

Delve into the decrepit druidic crypt occupied by the warring tribes of lizard men and gullygugs. Discover its treasure, history, secrets, and rituals. Ally yourselves with the inhabitants, fight them, outsmart them, use every advantage you have to gain the upper hand and leave the dungeon with pockets full of gold, gems, and magic items!

This 24 page adventure uses thirteen pages to describe about twenty rooms in a druid crypt/cave complex overrun by a couple of humanoid factions. It tries. Really hard. Like, maybe, if you really tried to hand copy an illuminated manuscript. It just feels off, as if the various rooms don’t really belong together or interact together in any but the most basic of ways. The OSE style is not used in a very effective manner and the writing could be better. Still, though, you can see an adventure in there.

In a throwback, we’ve got no hook here. There’s just a giant tree with a hole hacked in to it and a set of stairs going down. Inaside we find an old elven druid burial ground. At least a few rooms full of it. And some bullywugs who’ve started to set up a lair. And some lizard men who are also trying to set up a lair. With the two groups fighting. And a treant protector of the tomb, who is absolutely useless, who wants everyone to be respectful. And a genie that the bullywugs have who is kind of an asshat in a new and different genie way. And some arcana spiders who just want to be left alone too do their magic shit. . Which almost certainly means they’d be REAL happy if the bullywugs were wiped out. No one likes you bullywug! Go home! Enter the party.

The map supporting play has, I don’t know, maybe one major loop. It does have monsters noted on the map and is easy to read, but also it feels rather linear. Not, I don’t know, natural? It’s ok. If you were looking for a basic map to support an adventure then this would do it. It’s not going to create fun, but, there it is.

And, that’s kind of the same with everything in this. What if you knew what the correct thing to do was but can’t quite get there? There are wanderers. They are doing things. But, well, they are not great. “1d6 lizard men in a battle-ready formation, slowly moving through the dungeon.” Well, ok, sure. But thats really not much more than my d12 table I use in my game for wandering motivations. It’s fine. Really.

There’s a line in this that I think is great. “The gullygugs are bandits, thieves, and overall bastards who can’t agree on anything, their approach always preceded by the sounds of their bickering.” That should, I think, be the springboard to many encounters and many situations. But I don’t think it’s taken advantage of. Playing them against each other. Hearing them coming. Luring them away. That’s the kind of “neutral environment” thing that I love. But I can’t see the adventure really taking advantage of it at all. Or, even, making opportunities where it could come in to play beyond the most simplistic “we approach the room and hear arguing” sort of thing. A potential denied, so to speak.

There’s OSE formatting. OSE formatting can be good. But only if done well. Is it done well here? Well, no? There’s descriptive text. Is it done well here? Well, no? There’s encounters with people to talk to and scheme. But, is it done well here? Well, no? Is any of it done BADLY, to the point of being odious, obviously off the mark or so on? Well, no.


We can see from that clip the OSE style. And how it has been clumsily implemented. Then, given the sarcophagi, the treant (in a dungeon …) and the skeleton vine dude, what order would you put the follow up the detail in? Or even the initial OSE style detail? Which is likely to be the most important thing, meaning what the party notice first or interacts with the party first, etc. What are you likely, as a DM to NEED first, in terms of follow up order and what are you likely to want to know about first, as a player, in terms of the OSE description section? Not what’s there. And then, the dude. The skeleton vine dude. Essentially he doesn’t do anything. I think the designer MEANT for this to be important. Interacting with him, what he says/des etc. But I don’t get much of anything out of that description. How to use him, both literally and figuratively. There is a lack of … payoff? Build up that leads to payoff? Does anything there, on that entire page, make you excited and the make the juices broil and cause ideas to leap to mind? Sure, not everything has to be The Jungle Cruise at Disney, but, also, maybe we can get to Epcot levels? Nothing there inspires.

And, even, nothing there is very well integrated in to the other environments. The lizard men, the bullywugs, the genie, the arcanas … there’s not much here. The treant would like people to play nice. Great. We just need a little more here. Some slightly stronger leanings towards interactive play. You can’t just SAY there are factions, you also need a little shove in to factions.


There’s this tendency to miss the obvious thing in the adventure. We see here the murmuring figure, a 50% chance of being there. Ok. Kind of an OSE description. Ok, not the bets one ever. Kind of a lack of understanding what the OSE description style is, but it’s there. I wonder, though, what the murmuring figure IS? There’s no indication of which monster this is. It’s not obvious at all. I’m not cherry picking, it’s not in text below this or anything like that. There’s just nothing there. You just missed one step: what the fuck it is. The most important one. In another spot there’s this adventurer that’s is emaciated, slumped against a wall, almost in a coma or asleep. He’s got some worm thing sucking his could out, and it will attack the party. But, what then, the adventurer? Nothing. Nothing at all. Who is he. Does he wake up. What if the party manages it? I get it “12 prisoners in a cell” don’t all need a personality and a life story. Sometimes genero dude is just a genero dude. But this is ONE guy. And it’s almost certainly the case that the party will do SOMETHING to try and help him. And if almost every party is going to do almost the same thing every time, then it seems like the designers job to maybe just provide a couple of words there to help support the DM during play.

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/527477/the-crypt-ben...

by Rachel

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thursday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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