by bryce0lynch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568698/dungeon-modul...

by bryce0lynch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569215/beneath-twin-...

by bryce0lynch

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/566897/caverns-of-th...

by panzer-attack

This game completely came out of left field for me. It’s a spin off from the Mork Borg rules, which are often described as more of a work of art than a game, and from what little I’ve seen of that book, I think I’d probably agree with that notion.

Often when a game’s a hit, it’ll spin off a whole bunch of other games using the same system – things like Blades in the Dark, the D20 system, etc. Usually that’s enough to put me off a game (I like a bespoke rules system), and to be honest, for ages I’ve dismissed Pirate Borg for that very reason.

However, after seeing some footage of the starter set at the UK Games Expo, I thought it actually looked like a good product and, from out of nowhere, I got the hankering for a bit of pirate action.

And after getting my hands on the starter set I can confirm that yes, it’s a really good product.

The rules themselves are fairly straightforward and to the point. It’s not a complicated system at all, and tends towards being quite deadly for the PCs (although not excessively so). The little cut-down rulebook you get with the starter set is much like the Morg Borg rulebook – funky artwork that pretty much covers every inch of every page and with a commitment to uniformity that mirrors a great white shark’s commitment to peace and reconciliation. There’s not a massive amount of words on each page, but fonts change, the layout of rules for each class are completely different, the orientation of sentences can switch from page to page. It doesn’t make it super easy to find rules quickly, but it’s interesting to look at. If this were a more rules heavy game, this decision of style over practicality would be a pain in the arse, but as Pirate Borg is fairly rules lite it just about gets away with it.

There are loads of random tables to roll on in this game, from character creation, to carousing, to jungle events. I love a good random table and this game has some really inventive ones. These really add the spice that the bare bones ruleset needs.

But the absolute best thing about the starter set is the adventure it comes with. It’s a contained sandbox – not too big that it’s intimidating but big enough to allow the PCs to play about in and have a feeling of freedom. It’s got a good set of NPCs, some cracking locations, manages to fit in some high seas action as well as island japes and it ends leaving lots of possibilities as to how you continue the story.

The handouts, maps and counters it comes with are second to none and really add to the experience.

I love this box set. I think for players, this could work as a really good introductory RPG. The rules are simple, everyone knows pirates and the starter set comes with everything you need to play, along with some great maps and hand outs. It's also great for seasoned players.

As far as the GM is concerned, the set seems to assume you’re already familiar with RPGs. There’s no hand holding, no ‘What’s an RPG?”, it just gets straight into the nuts and bolts with no faffing about.

I rate this two pirate hooks (which is traditionally the max number of pirate hooks)

by Rachel Carpenter

This isn't a true Mythic Monday report. Rather, it's a behind-the-scenes plotting. I'm excited to share that I've now got 7 plays in the books. All require writing up, but, I'm just happy that the playline/plotline is finally progressing!

Here's a sneak peek:


And today was also special because it marked something I'd never done before:

A 5-investigator play!

Catch you all tomorrow for the next Mythic Monday!

Happy Sunday and happy playing!
-Rachel

Thank you for reading my blog. If you liked it; then please click the green thumb [microbadge=23724] at the top of the page. If you really liked it; then please subscribe. And follow me across social media with my Linktree:
https://linktr.ee/rachelncarpenter

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A new episode has been added to the database: [Cthulhu by Gaslight] "Cracks in the Facade" (Session Seven)

by Mootin78

$10.00 for RPG Item: Alice is Missing
Condition: Like New
Location: United States

A new rpg publisher has been added to the database: Slime Mind Studio

A new rpg publisher has been added to the database: Brackin Adventuring Companyt