by bryce0lynch

By Fabricio Garcia
Kobold King
OSE
Level 3

The adventurers will face an ancient mage trying to free his soul from it’s bindings in his tomb. The group has 10 sessions to reach the tomb, where they can stop the ritual or join Kaeloreth’s quest to rein the region again. In the tenth session, Kaeloreth completes his ritual and now possesses a new body. He send his undead thralls to slaughter 3 Sylvandur population, each death gives him more power. As sessions progress, the common enemy will start to change from wild life and monsters to Kaeloreth’s undead soldiers.

This 93 page adventure uses nine pages to present a small trial dungeon. Whatever the intent was is lost in its incomprehensibleness.

This is an EASL adventure, and while the EASL is thick in this, I don’t think that’s the main problem, so I’m going to ignore it.

I don’t really know what to say about this. It’s a mess. It’s trying to present a small region with the central focus being a dungeon/tomb with ye olde “ancient dude trying to return to the world.” He’s in a tomb that is a simple “challenge dungeon” with a number of rooms in which you face “challenges”; my least favorite type of dungeon. There’s a timeline, based around adventuring sessions, with the concept of escalating stakes introduced for each session the party takes to complete the adventure, rather than a strictly daily countdown.

I guess I should start with the format. Or, maybe, file type. It’s done in Obsidian, a markup tool. I downloaded the app and installed it, but still couldn’t get the files to open. It appears to have a rather steep learning curve. I THINK it’s just a system of hyperlinking. I think. There’s also a single column PDF that contains everything in the markup app, I think. But, even though I’m looking at the adventure in a non-optical manner (the PDF) I still don’t think that’s the issue.

It’s just … abstracted? I don’t really know what to say except “a mess”, but that would imply it’s not organized. But I think it IS organized. It’s just not supporting anything.

I THINK what is meant to be going on is that the party is charged with STOPPING THE EVIL and they end up in a small town. There they meet some NPCs and get mini-quests that forces them in to the region and then they get more information and find the tomb and stop the big bad.

The best example I can cite to relate the issue is the mini-quests. At the end of the adventure is a list of NPC’s. One of the NPC’s has this in their description ”His son is late to return home. He went to the forest at morning (This happens on the first session). He start searching for his son on the second day.” [sic] So, to put together the mini-quests you’re going to have to reference all of the NPC’s and what they want done and where they are. I don’t see how this is possible in gameplay, given their quantity. That means you’re going to have to essentially take so many notes that you would be rewriting the adventure. His kid, later in the NPC’s, has the description “Cerabino is lost inside the forest. He got distracted when he found Living Cave entrance. He can forage for berries and water but monsters can ambush and kill him. “ There’s no mention of the kid anywhere else, and certainly not in the living cave. So … you stick him in it? IE: you have to put together each of the mini-quests on your own. There IS no supporting information.

The living cave, proper, is procedurally generated. Roll a d12 and maybe get “6 Forgotten gear (CHA or attract the owner ghost) “ You gotta wander the cave till the DM rolls a a twelve so you can find the tomb entrance. And it changes every time, since it’s living and procedurally generated each time. This is tedium. And, again, not very well supported. One of the two central locations is essentially not described at all.

Challenge dungeons, the main tomb, are their own problem. You know the whole “door slams shit and figure out what you are supposed to do” thing. And there’s no map. Well, there is one, but it’s not keyed (maybe that is fixed with the markup file?) And then, the big bad has a 4HD fireball he tosses. At level 3?! WHat is that, 14/7 damage? Ouchies.

And the room description, what there are of them, are full of asides and backstory. “The manor don’t clean or fix itself inside this room. This was caused by a bad spell from Maliel – Corrupted Witch while she researched a way to preserve Nermanik – Human Mage’s body.” With victorian laundry lists of trivial contents and extensive room exists and the like.

The rooms and descriptions, the dungeon and towns, the quests, the entire plot … it’s all abstracted. There’s no real summary of how the thing is supposed to work together. There’s no real support for any aspect of it, except perhaps the main dungeon, and even that is written almost like it’s a generic/universal adventure. It has abandoned all conventional aspects of layout and organization, but not replaced it with anything better. It’s as if the designer had not seen a published adventure before and didn’t know to do, but didn’t have an idea anyway on how to organize it.

I’m open to this being an Obsidian issue, solved by it, but I don’t think so. The lack of a summary that makes sense, and the lack of support for the various areas just seems missing.

This is $2 at DriveThru. There is no preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/567830/kaeloreth-s-t...

by bryce0lynch

By David Hay
Third Castle Games
OSE
Levels 1-3

Travel from sun-drenched beaches to dense jungle trails, over vine-rope bridges and up volcanic cliffs. Encounter lizardmen, the living dead, diabolical cultists and worse. Find magical items, gold and perhaps some glory too. Or at least a good tale to tell, should you make it to the taverns of Hardwind Harbour. But don’t tarry too long – for dark smoke belches from the volcano and the earth trembles. Where will your party be when it erupts?

This 74 page adventure uses about 55 pages to describe sixteen points of interest, and some of their dungeons, on a tropical island you are shipwrecked on. It’s pretty good for what it is, combining some ok formatting and a more situational approach to the adventure. I wish the overall situation on the island, how it works together, was addressed just a little more.

Oh no! You’re shipwrecked on a topical island! You probably find your way to the pirate town and there you probably find out it’s a lot harder to join a pirate crew than I thought. The island, while it has a map, is laid out like a pointcrawl. Each location is either self-contained or has a small complex/’dungeon’ attached to it. A couple of caves, a town, a necropolis, ye olde volcano temple, and so on, each with between eight to, say, eighteen locations in them.

Ostensibly you are trying to get off the island, and many of the paths/leads go to the pirate town where you can bargain with the pirates. There’s pirate intrigue in the town, of course, and everyone wants something in order to help you out. But, also, there are other things about. You can find a small rowboat at one beach, and you see a much smaller island offshore, and it has a ship on it. A cursed ship, as it turns out. Do you know how to sail? Do you know how to recruit sailors to man a cursed ship?

And, thus, we see a larger kind of more traditional hex crawl sort of thing going on in this adventure. In those more traditional hex crawls there are generally resources and wants/needs from others that the party exploits to fulfill their needs. They are generally not explicitly noted, with perhaps a few linkages explicit but in most other cases the party comes up with some crazy thing to do to exploit hex Y to do something in hex X. And this adventure, while a pointcrawl, does much the same thing. There ARE explicit linkages between the sites, Bob wants you to deal with the cult or Frank needs their crew found before they can do THE THING. But there are more than enough resources, and weirdo things going on, that the party can exploit things of their own design as well. This is good. The designer has written the adventure to present situations, expanding that to also present some more traditional crawls, and that situation-forward writing is what enables the more free-form non-linear gameplay. And, as the adventure reiterates a couple of times: “oh, and don’t forget to make the volcano explode!”

The more traditional “dungeons” are decent, as well. Underground passages to swim to are a great example of a kind of hidden area of a dungeon that a party paying attention to can discover to get a reward/danger. A bridge over a chasm … and exploring the BOTTOM of the chasm is another example of that. Something a little oblique but obviously present, that the party can poke their noses in to. It’s the ol “cave behind the waterfall’ thing that I love so much. There are also rope bridges over a valley, complete with a corpse hanging from it and wild baboons on it. Or crack in a sea cave floor with an old rowboat, rickety, spanning it. The old “sarcophagus with something inside banging on it to get out’ thing. The rooms, much like the hexes, generally have more than one thing going on in it and many times the dangers are telegraphed well. A pool with luminescent seaweed, and when you go fucking around inthe pool you find out its strangleweed. Well, the DM told you the fucking seaweed glowed, did you think it was just window dressing. For that room, in particular, there’s a sandy floor with footprints, a pool of water, with the underground passage, a howling sound coming from somewhere and then that seaweed, and it’s all handled in one column rather than droning on and on.

As that column note implies, formatting and word count here is pretty spot on. There’s a little sections at the top of an entry that could be read-aloud or inspiration, with some bolded words that reference bullets deeper in the description. A couple of sentences for each bullet, and two to three for the read-aloud/summary. It’s easy to scan and easy to locate information. There is a case of three of information being presented a little late, with something more critical to the action being presented later in the description/bullets. If there’s an ancient red dragon in the room then maybe get to that part sooner rather than later, yes?

I do want to call out something I rarely do: the art. More than once in this I thought some associated art pieces did a GREAT job of bringing the room better to life, which is what I think ALL art in an adventure should do. I understand this is subjective to some degree, but I know it when I see it. Tommaso Devitofrancesco and Gary Trow are credited with the interior art and one/both of them did a good job. “This large room is filled with magnificently sculpted statues standing in rows. At one end of the room war relics are displayed – trophies taken from the Old Empire’s defeated foes. Mosaics depicting famous victories festoon the walls.” This is accompanied by an art piece of greek-style warrior statues on plinths that really brings home the scale of the room. It’s one of the few times that good art in an adventure made me want MORE art pieces to do the same for EVERY encounter. (Which I’d probably then bitch about, but, whatever.)

There’s not a lot of padding in this thing. A few pages of pre-gens and one page of magic items at the end. The preamble before the keys are focused on wanderers and other pertinent information. Still, I wish perhaps the ‘summary’ information was just a little more in depth. A better overview of the various linkages between sites and perhaps a bit more about … campaigning? Hiring a ship, living in town, a sentence on expeditions … this is an expansive adventure and the support for that part of the play could have been better. The whole “jungle vibe” thing doesn’t really come through much at all. I think this is related to the pointcrawl nature; the immersive jungle setting doesn’t come through because the journey to the next time is essentially abstracted in a point crawl. That doesn’t have to be bad, but it needs a little attention, I think, to bring the journey part to life. The sites feel weirdly disconnected, which I guess makes sense give the pointcrawl nature. But, as I said, the designer must then remedy this. And the lack of travel time issues almost certainly strengths this abstraction and minimizes the jungle vibe.

Still, a pretty decent adventure. I’m happy I found it and happy to see what the publisher does next.

This is $16 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages and shows you the entirety of the starting point/cave complex. It’s a good representation of the encounters to be found, and shows off the nice Glynn Seal maps.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/552809/escape-the-de...

by bryce0lynch

By Dan Collins, Paul Siegel
Wandering DMs
OSR
Levels 3-5

Long ago, a secretive cult promised salvation through sacred waters said to heal any affliction, wounds, curses, even madness. Pilgrims came from distant lands to seek their aid, hoping for a miracle beneath the cult’s solemn gaze. But the cult’s mercy was not freely given. Cloaked in silence and ritual, they judged each petitioner, granting grace only to the worthy. The rest were cast aside, their fates hidden beneath still waters and stone. Unicorn symbols adorned their vestments and sanctums-beacons of purity masking a far darker doctrine. The cult is gone now, or so the tales say. Yet the ruins remain, quiet but not empty. Some claim the waters still flow, and that the judgment of the faithful endures, waiting for those bold or desperate enough to seek it out.

This six page adventure uses two pages to describe eleven rooms in a small cavern complex that used to house a religious cult. It feels uninspired. As if encounters were placed just to have encounters. At least they kept it short. Ish.

Blah blah blah, old cult caves using a dyson map. This is an attempt to make a dungeon in about an hour on their podcast. I recall feeling like I didn’t hate an earlier entry so I wanted to see if, as things usually transpire, practice has made perfect. It has not. I’m going to go back after this review is finished and watch the episode where they write this dungeon. I think, perhaps, they may be tiring of the schtick?

The Logos map they are using is small but packs a decent punch. This is mostly because of a river running through it with a couple of bridges over it. That leaves space for hidden rooms on the map, off the river, and all sorts of bridge shenanigans. This does not come to pass. There IS one hidden room off of a river, which contains a 12HD water elemental. The two bridge spots are essentially ignored, with one receiving a rickety trap door in the middle of it. That is all. This is opportunity wasted and I’m quite disappointed.

There is a group of lizard men present in one room. A Carrion Crawler in another. I guess a couple of zombies? This is not exactly, I think, the height of interactivity. I guess there’s a trap and a secret door and a kind of trick to the water elemental, but, it just feels like the rooms are plain. It doesn’t feel like a cave, or a cult temple. There’s not real build up, in room after room of some sort of vibe.

“Former chamber of the cultist’s ogre guard” the kick off to one of the rooms tells us. That’s just padding and the designers should know better. In anther place we’re told, of the Carrion Crawlers nest “Its former victim lies slumped on the floor.” Beyond the repeated use of “former”, I must note just how prosaic the writing is. I want some bloated corpses, eyes bugged out, maggots from the cavities. Or dried husk, etc. Instead “former victim” with no other words, positive or negative, loot or danger. Again and again and again we see opportunities squandered. No springboard to interactivity. No real evocative description. Just something tossed in with seemingly minimal effort.

I will note the one place where things DO come together. It’s that fucking water elemental, the 12 HD one. Former guardian. Hiding in a little bend in the river that an uninquisitive party may never see because they must traverse the river instead of the cavern path. “a water elemental in the form of a mist that hovers low over the water. It will form into the shape of a surging unicorn and murder anyone that enters its watery domain.” In the form of a mist?! That’s fun! I’m sure everyone reading can understand the possibilities of that. And the writing! “And murder anyone who …” Ha! Not challenge. Not defend. Not any of those other bs words. MURDER. Fuck yeah man! You go! Not just a monster rolled and plopped in a room but a little thought went in to the mist and a little elan in the murder description.

Otherwise … it’s just a little staid. It doesn’t feel inspired, or as if someone enjoyed writing it.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is not worthwhile. 🙁

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/568347/wdm06-dungeon...

And while I’m at it, I don’t understand the love for Brideshead. It’s just people monologuing at Mr Ryder for fifteen minutes until he responds with a terse monosyllabic phrase like “Oh, yes? And then they monologue at him for another twenty minutes.

by leroy43

Are you populating a dungeon for your friends? Or maybe you're playing a variant of D&D (or as Phil Reed likes to call it and its variants and spinoffs the Ampersand system)?

You could use ChatGPT or a random table from any number of sources, but there is a certain satisfaction to shuffling a deck of cards and pulling one out.

Cards in On the Other Side holds a mystery. What beyond the door awaits our intrepid adventures? Friends? Foes? Some from column A, some from column B?

Each card features a specific dungeon location such as a Tomb, Armoury, or Spiral Stairs. These are then paired with a compact table of area specific discoveries listing potential encounters, unique characters, objects, and other thematic elements. Since each card has half a dozen options, that's 52x6=312 different things. You aren't required to roll of course, you can choose your favourite.

Available at your favourite drive through website you can download and print or order a deck for delivery. Recommended for your box of miscellaneous GM tools.

by leroy43

Depending on how you like to run your fantasy RPG game, you might well have the classic bulletin board in the centre of town kind of thing going on. However, what might be missing from your repertoire are quick ideas for how to populate said bulletin board.

Or perhaps you like to have quick side quests handy for the party, especially if someone is away or a specific character is in jail or in training or otherwise unavailable to accompany their companions.

To the rescue comes Phil Reed's Deck of Notices & Quests, featuring 80 tarot sized cards formatted much like the photo to the right.

The cards are handy as you can literally hand them to the players to review and consider before they decide to accept a challenge.

The notices and quests have a broad variety of topics - everything from safety notices not to drink the water, warnings that travellers and residents alike are required to surrender their weapons and armaments, to jobs that might include a reward for solving a problem or the apprehension of a wanted fugitive.

The currency used on the cards is gold pieces, which nods it towards what Phil liked to call "the Ampersand system", but for those not using D&D, the quests and notices are otherwise generic and suitable for any fantasy system.

The product is also available as a print on demand book, but then the GM would need to photocopy or otherwise find a way to share it with the players. In the book, the pages come with extra notes about the notices and quests themselves. Perhaps the person seeking a fugitive has darker motives... It also includes blank worksheets to make up your own.

Either way, the deck is good value and a lot of fun. Highly recommended for your gaming repertoire.

A new episode has been added to the database: Ep 278 - Player Expectations of their GMs

A new episode has been added to the database: Crew Gunk: Part 24 - Spit on Me, Moon Daddy

A new episode has been added to the database: Crew Gunk: Part 23 - He's Small

A new episode has been added to the database: 3TROLLS N°21 : Soirée PMU²

by Stymie says, "No Fidgets"

June 21

1900

- Boxer Rebellion: China formally declares war on the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan [microbadge=7125]

1942

- Tobruk falls to Rommel [microbadge=974]

1947

- Actors Michael Gross & Meredith Baxter (Family Ties) Yeah, they have the same birthday [microbadge=40416]

2004

- SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately funded spaceplane to achieve spaceflight [microbadge=43900]

June 22

1342

- Bilbo returns to Bag End and finds he's been declared dead (Shire Reckoning) [microbadge=4671]

1611

- English explorer Henry Hudson set adrift in Hudson Bay by mutineers and is never seen again [microbadge=36197]

1633

- Galileo forced to recant his Copernican view that the earth orbits the sun [microbadge=5407]

1856

- English adventure novelist H. Rider Haggard (King Solomon's Mines, She) [microbadge=17870]

1941

- The Axis Powers declare war on the Soviet Union [microbadge=16058]

1949

- American actress Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman)

1981

- Publication of L1: The Secret of Bone Hill [microbadge=7668]

????

- James Lowry aka Rindis

June 23

1912

- Alan Turing [microbadge=17212]

1955

- Misfits frontman Glenn Danzig [microbadge=3369][microbadge=3366]

1960

- Actress Frances McDormand [microbadge=6095]

2007

- First ever Free RPG Day [microbadge=37603]

June 24

1509

- Henry VIII crowned King of England (4 days before his 18th birthday) [microbadge=10071]

1950

- Fantasy author Mercedes R. Lackey [microbadge=42313]

June 25

1876

- The Battle of the Little Bighorn, Custer's Last Stand [microbadge=24690][microbadge=6432][microbadge=13783]

1903

- English novelist and critic George Orwell, author of "1984" [microbadge=8182]

1975

- RPG Designer Jason Bulmahn

1982

- Blade Runner released in theaters [microbadge=1487]

????

- Shadow Hexagram

June 26

1284

- The Pied Piper leads 130 children away from Hamelin[microbadge=39066]

1898

- German aircraft designer Willi Messerschmitt [microbadge=15938]

1963

- Maho [microbadge=34899][microbadge=37725]

1963

- JFK: "Ich bin ein Berliner" [microbadge=6002][microbadge=4350][microbadge=29061]

1997

- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (aka Sorcerer's) Stone released on film [microbadge=6212]

June 27

1743

- Battle of Dettingen: George II is the last reigning British monarch to lead troops in battle [microbadge=16]

1966

- Writer/Director JJ Abrams [microbadge=32325][microbadge=4358][microbadge=3959]

1975

- Actor Tobey Maguire [microbadge=5525]

I'm sure this list can be improved. Feel free to offer suggestions for this and upcoming weeks. If you want your birthday included just add it to this geeklist: RPG Geek Birthday List

by Rachel Carpenter

Today got off to a great start- socials, more Elder Sign, and then... derailed by a migraine.

Image Credit: TeeTurtle

Be back tomorrow!

Happy Saturday 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

A new rpg item has been added to the database: Feline Ghost Hunters