by bryce0lynch

By Joseph Quinn
BirdEnuf Books & Games
OSE
Level 1+

It began with a strange light in the sky. Now, an eerie glow emanates from the depths. Some creatures of the reef have grown disturbingly intelligent, while others attack with a maddened fury. The source is an object of impossible geometry that whispers psychic visions into the minds of those who draw near. A monstrous giant crab believes itself to be the shard’s protector and has dragged it away into its lair. Locals seek adventurers to delve into the caverns and remove the object before its emanations drive the entire region insane.

This 123 page adventure uses about seventy pages to describe eight loosely connected adventures, each with around twenty to thirty locations. The component parts are generally fine, but they lack a kind of strong running thread/threat that would bring home any kind of gravity or immersion. Can each part be ok and the whole not?

So, we’re gonna ignore the first forty or so pages of this. It describes generic fantasy land world, except there’s this mist around the edges. Actually, that’s pretty standard for a fantasy world also. There’s a hint here and there of RenFaire, like “oh no, all the town’s gremlin residents have gone mad!” I did chuckle, once, in the gazetteer description for the required “great desert” location.” In the section for Common Monsters it has Angels. Wow. This repeats with other monsters and other areas as well, so they are using Common to mean something like Thematically You Could Have One of These Pop Up.

The meat here is eight loosely interconnected adventures. A meteor falls to earth, things start to get corrupted, and eventually you end up fighting The Evil One at Mt Doom, this time in the form of a demon lord at Mt Dread. Yeah, he doesn’t want you chucking the meteor fragment in to the caldera. No word on eagle in this, but that final adventure is levels eight to ten, so, you know, flying?

Man, I’m down on this one and I don’t know why. There are things that hit wrong, like the whole Mordor thing and generic fantasy world description. Also, the first dungeon adventure, for level one, has you fighting a six HD giant crab that has a full time fear spell going. I don’t see how that’s possible, Combat as War or not, at level one.

But if I ignore all those things then it’s not bad? With a major caveat. But, the dungeons are varied. There are sea caves, a point crawl wilderness, a dungeon dungeon, a weird dug out place under a castle that reminds me of those Psychedelic Fantasy dungeons with abstracted environments. Dude is shaking things up and keeping the environments fresh. They are not the most dazzling maps. They are pretty basic. But the variety of environments is there so it’s not too much of the same old same old.

The writing here is … interesting? I think it hits well. Maybe. It doesn’t hit well? Something s wrong, but i can’t tell what it is. “A 30’ deep chamber permanently sub- merged in cold, murky water. Tiny fish dart between rusted mining tools, broken timbers, and other debris. Four stonefish, camouflaged as rocks, lie clustered a few feet apart on the chamber floor.” That’s decent, yeah? And, dovetailing in to the encounters and interactivity, it’s a decent encounter. Stonefish. Fuck yeah! The stonefish integrate well here, inexactly the way that impresses me. It’s obvious, in retrospect, and it’s a common thing tha the party knows of in the real world and, most likely, knows not to fuck with/is dangerous. Not just “Oh, bears are dangerous and we just met one!” but more like a “Yeah, you’ve got cholera.” They just hit more viscerally.

The adventure has this ability to create these little things like that. In one room, I think it’s inside Mt Doom, you meet a dude in a room. A cultist, maybe. Unarmed except for clutching a dagger to his chest. When the party gets close he stabs himself through the heart. Oh, yeah, when you die in this dungeon you turn in to a 2hd fireball. “Immolation” and the dude is a nihilistic devotee to the demon lord/cult shit. Well that’s kind of fun. I mean, in a horrible sort of way. It hits. It’s painted as a devotee, butI like to think of him as a brainwashed young adult, maybe bribed with a better life for his mom and younger siblings. Nervous, clutching a dagger to his chest. Maybe mumbling. Yeah yeah, I added shit not present, but that fucking encounter is what made it possible.

In another place you find a small golden statue in a chest. Great! Loot! Oops. It’s a ‘golem.’ It comes alive and stabs you and shit. But, hey, once you kill it you get the cash value. 🙂 Again, this just meshes in perfectly. Or, how about this baddie: “The Bronze Minotaur A scalding hot kettle of liquid fire in the shape of a towering, bull-headed man. Guards the building’s lower level.” Yeah man! That hits the spot and dredges up some memories, right? It FEELS right. And so much of this adventure, the individual encounters, they FEEL right.

But Denmark, as is well known, is stinky.

We got this pyramid place in one of the adventures. There’s a high level MU and a lich in it, at the end. Here’s the room “The pyramid’s angled walls meet above, sheathed in a layer of ice, forming the ceiling of its apex chamber. The room is ar-ranged as a study, but is lacking any comforts. Telos and Vlagrim are here.” Well, that’s less than stunning. How about the lip of Mt Dooms lava? “The northern exit of the Hexenruin lies upon the Great Caldera’s edge, the Magma Citadel visible in the distance, rays of ultra- black anti-light strobing out from the lava below. The Demon Lord Py’Rexus swiftly approaches, his wings outstretched, mere seconds away from reaching the ground.” Maybe a little better? I mean, there’s SOMETHING there, even if it is uninteresting? That’s the extent of those rooms, I’m not cherry picking sentences.

There’s this thing going on where some rooms have ok descriptions. And then some rooms have some decent interactivity in them and even some “interrelated” interactivity where things in one room impact another room. For things like the brone minotaur we can see some talent in creatures that is present here and there. But nothing just ever feels put together. The first dungeon is supposed to be a sea cave. There are some descriptions in rooms that maybe are wet. There’s the usual tide stuff. But it just doesn’t come together to feel like a sea cave. Or Mt Doom. Or any of the other environments. And, then, the same goes for the linking of things across the various dungeons. Whatever glue is required to really make a dungeon, a room, or a campaign visceral is missing. Specificity, maybe? Nothing to really hang your hat on? It’s like you can almost see what this be. Or, you CAN see what it could be, and you can also see that its just not it. It comes off as a generic adventure campaign instead of something that would stick, with villains and the like. Everyone is a Lareth. And Lareth is no way to run a railroad. I’m not mad. Just disappointed.

This is $12 at DriveThru. The preview is the first 54 pages. Page 49 is where the first dungeon starts, so check that one out. It’s a good indicator of the content.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/573958/adventures-in...

by Eric R.

There was a stretch of time during which this was my zen tv. Winding down for the night I'd find an episode of Globe Trekker on PBS and that's how I'd wind down the day. And this was the song that always put me in a slightly more contented mood for the end of the day.
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