A new episode has been added to the database: Overcoming Inertia

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by Steve

January 17th, Our Gang meets again to celebrate the existence of

[user=wysire][/user]

Happy Birthday, Stymie!

by bryce0lynch

By Jonah Lemkins
Self Published
OSR
Levels "Low"

Long have these borderlands been sparsely populated by only the savviest and hardiest folk. But now, moves are being made, deals are being cut, and new & old evils are rearing their heads. Heroes are in short supply – and sorely needed. The fate of the Ridgeland is in your hands!

This 28 page ‘adventure overview’ presents seven hexes, each with a number of sites in them, and four ‘dungeon ideas’ in a small wilderness area brimming with shit going on. Bryce likes a lot going on and this certainly does that. It also cheaps out on “adventure” by just giving some guidelines instead of actual adventure. It is an intriguing concept, though, even if it’s not an adventure.

This thing is weird. I guess it’s actually a fluff piece of a regional supplement. But it’s done in a style more reminiscent of the Ready Ref Sheets with very little fluff and a lot of intrigues. It’s a section of land 18 miles across with a lot of intrigues, major and minor. And there’s a sentence or two for each little thing going on. And almost nothing else is present. There’s none of this “Gondorians wear purple scarves on Moonday” kind of shit. Padding is almost nonexistent. And there is a WHOLE lot of The miners are skimming off the top, the silversmith is cutting the silver with copper, the miners hate their rations and are eager to trade, a think b are pagan heretics, Kent leads the brigands, Kent hates the brigands and wants out, and about a bajillion things more.

I don’t know if I can adequate describe an overview. We’ve got a town, with a bridge in it being the only way to safely cross the nearby raging river that cuts the region in two. We’ve got some miners in the hills. Ghosts are popping up in their mines. There’s a village, full of pagans, who want to build a bridge. Financing in a somewhat complex land deal with some corrupt mine territory players., smelters, etc. Bandits in the woods robbing individuals and running protection racks, factions within them, wildmen in the hills abducting people, a cult (which, frankly, seems benign, though they are of note, in comparison to the other shits) Rumors everywhere. Open-ended. It’s fucking JAM PACKED with shit going on, people wanting things and trusting the party over time, and just about everything else under the sun. This place feels ALIVE in the way that only petty self-interested people can make a place feel like. Recall I like to harp on the fact that people having interactions with other people, John Loves Mary who hate William, is the key to a good social environment? Well this fucking does that. Everyone has interests all over the place. I note, also, that the terrain brings a little to the table. Seven hexes, six around a central hex. We’ve got the river, with the one bridge in the main town, that serves as barrier straight across the hexes. And then also there’s a ridgeline cutting across them, with only two good paths down through the cliffside. Natural passes/chokepoints, full of ointrigues!

And then there’s … the content? For you see, all of those ideas are essentially just that, ideas.


L’page typica
Each hex is going to have a few locations in it, typically. This is a screengrab from one of those. Note how you are creating your own monster. This is the ONLY hex it’s appropriate for … so the designer should have just tossed in a creature. But, then, also, “gold coins.” Well that’s exciting. Chunk of amber is a little better, with both amber and chunk being decent word choices, but there’s really no specificity to anything her. And everything is going to be like that. Just an idea.


This is a dungeon. Obs
Those four dungeons it lauds in the marketing? That’s one of them. You like? It’s certainly something, but not what I cwould call a dungeon. The concept of a dungeon, maybe. And all of the content in this adventure is going to be like, the concept of an idea. “gold coins.” “Copper Caves.”

As an outline this is great. That kind of short-hand content dense (or, at least the potential for being content dense …) information that Ready Ref killed it with. Or, even, that the Wilderlands did well. Yu can get glimpses here.But, it just doesn’t do anything ever. It doesn’t go anywhere. It’s concepts and ideas. I’m not even sure it would quality as an outline. Maybe? Which is why I’m going to slap this down as closer to a fluff region guide than a sandbox or hexcrawl or adventure. It’s ALMOST those things, but its just lacking in so much. I suspect you could kind of run it on the fly and fill in as you go, riffing on things. But it seems like such a shallow experience.

I will note one of the better bandit encounters I’ve seen is in this, for all of my bitching about specificity. Dude in the bar might try and recruit the party. He’s got a good thing, a protection kind of thing. Noice!Dude hangs in the parties bar, they see him and interact with him. Befriend each other. Several sessions He drops a hint that he can make them some cash, and they find out that their bud is actually the local bandit informant in the bar. That would be great! SO, in at least one case, the writing inspired me. But, also, I’m looking for just a little bit more in the way of specificty than this brings.

This is $1 at DriveThru. The preview is eight pages and, as long as you understand that what you’re looking at is all you’re getting, then it does a good job of showing you what to expect. Just don’t expect more elaboration on anything you see.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/548190/the-rugged-ri...

by bryce0lynch

By Amerlia Luke
Necrotic Gnome
OSE
Levels 2-4

When an earthquake unseals the long-buried temple of the wild god Iakos, whispers of visions and ancient treasure draw witch hunters and adventurers alike. Four royal witch hunters entered and never returned. Now the way lies open. Dare characters brave the delirium-haunted ruin, discover the witch hunters’ fate, and claim what lies within?

This sixteen page adventure uses about nine pages to describe sixteen rooms in a newly unsealed “Greek Mysteries” cave/temple/place. A decent little adventure that sprinkles in a bit of various interactives and does good enough describing things. Meh, it’s fine. And “Meh, it’s fine.” is good enough. It’s a sixteen page dungeon in a sixteen page adventure; it doesn’t need to change the world. Also, it’s OSE but doesn’t use the OSE style guide, for you haters.

We’ve got Ye Olde Mysteries Cave here. You know, all volcanic vapours and oracular visions and all that jazz. Cept it got sealed up. Cept it just got UNSEALED up by an earthquake. (“An Evil Earthquake? With frigging lasers?”) Chasing downs ome rumors, four royal witch hunters went in. And didn’t come out again. Ought oh! Inside we’ve got three Grotesques, avatar/servants of the god. And after being sealed up for a thousand years they are desperate for new things to predict, having been isolated for so long. Two of them steal secrets from each other and hate each other. The third wishes to bring fulfill a prophecy and bring out the destruction of the temple. Slight case of ennui there buddy? Tried the Camus? Some people get comfort from religion. Oh, sorry.

Already we can see a few interesting things, just from the setup. The call back to the actual Delphi is a nice one, this kind of an appeal to a cultural memory that then overloads all of whats to come in the adventure. I sometimes refer to room titles in an adventure, instead of putting in “Room 1” you instead say “1. Pristine Kitchen” This lets the mind get a kind of framing of the description to come. Everything is seen through the lens of Pristine Kitchen. And the appeal to the heritage is much the same. Ophelia comes with context. History. All the media that’s every existed that has leveraged it that the DM and the players have consumed, consciously and subconsciously. And so all of that is leveraged when an adventure makes direct or oblique references to it. It’s all about bringing more than the actual words written to the page. Big vs Cyclopean. And then also the Royal Witch Hunters. Specificity. There’s not much more information so the mind naturally races to fill in the gaps, wondering. Not “adventurers.” Or the better “Mercenaries.” Or the better “Murder hobos.” But the better still “Royal Witch Hunters.” One still lives, inside the cave/temple. “Mu freely volunteers that this is the witch hunter Crawe, who was set upon by Empties when Mu tired of him. Mu is able to reverse the process but sees no reason to.” Nicely done. Except, also, I don’t give a shit about the witch hunter, Crawe or not. No reputation for good or ill, no connection. The royal witch hunters don’t really get enough for anyone to really care about their fate. I guess the various prisoners in the OG adventures don’t really either. “Elf. Will join party for one year.” But, also, it’s clearly meant to be a kind of motivation since they Do get the title “royal witch hunter” instead of “elf.” Ahhh, I’m not really bitching here, I’m just pointing out the disconnect.

Monsters noted on the map, which is the OSE style. The keywords style isn’t really present here. These are more like a traditional read-aloud and extra information format. Here’s a screencap:


I don’t mind the old keyword style, but I do know it gets under the skin of the traditionists. I do like a more sentence like structure, but, that’s just personal preference. Whatever works and the old OSE style works as does this one. Nice little offset in a color box, some bolding. Not the biggest fan of “see area one”, but whatever. Soggy Earth. Silver Pool. Murmuring. Nice descriptive words. It doesn’t always follow through like that. “Ornate stone table” “honeycombed shelves” and the like. But it’s clearly trying in both instances.

Oh, also:


From that read-aloud I think we can tell that, maybe, it’s not read-aloud. If it IS read-aloud then it over-reveals. So, then … it’s a DM summary? That we riff on to players? I’m not actually sure it’s either. And I think it shows in my feelings towards this thing. I’m not sure it knows what it wants to do with that text. That kind of muddiness is what is influencing my “meh” attitude toward this. It can’t lean in. And so I can’t. As a read-aloud it over-reveals. As a DM summary it is no summary. So … ?

Monsters get some ok descriptions. “A giant, bloated maggot, 20? long,
armoured in a shimmering, polychromatic exoskeleton. Six 10? long tentacles ring its small, toothless maw” Or how about “pity”, “Pity 5? tall, female water spirit with fey, elf-like features. Nearly skeletal, tousled hair, feral eyes. Clad in a spectral, tattered gown.” Nice appeal to what one would normally expect of a water spirit … after a thousand years. These are not winning any awards but they are so much better than one would normally see. [Also, as an aside, the artwork in this adventure compliments the descriptions quite well. The entrance illustration in the first screencap, for example. And the water spirit brings the kind of emaciated horror without going overboard. Simon Underwood, with Gavin as “Art Direction”, whatever that is. He told Simon what to draw?] Anyway, the monster descriptions are up front in their text and focus on what they look like, act like, interact as. Which is what the fuck they should do.

And, thus, interactivity. We’ve got some “steal the loot without busting the tree pustule” stuff. (Which, I note, doesn’t really come out in that summary description, explicitly or implicitly.) We’ve got the three Grotesques, who want to talk until they get bored with you. (Always good advice in every situation: don’t be boring.) Maybe they want you to go steal something. Pity, who wants to eat two people. A prisoner. And the whole “fulfill the prophecy” thing. There’s some stabbing and talking. I don’t know. It feels a little lacking. Then again, I might just be bitching about the small size. Four or five different things going on in sixteen rooms is a little cramped, yes? Anyway, not many mysteries to discover here. But, also, a nice little “push” on what to do if the party fucks up the prophecy, as well as some decent consequences for fulfilling them that doesn’t fuck shit up too much but still provides something meaningful. And, nice magic item. This is the kind of non-generic shit that really gets me going. escalate in villainy. Make those asshats Grotesques do some shit for you. 100′ caldera. Nice job!


I’m not mad, not at all. I think it’s one of those cases where you see potential and its not really attained. I suspect its the smaller size of this place. A little more expansive complex, more space to breathe, to match the scope. Anyway, good effort here, just not quite enough.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is twelves pages. More than enough to make an informed purchasing decision. Necrotic Gnome hitting that production pipeline checklist!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/547110/quick-delve-2...

by bryce0lynch

By Matt Kline
Creations' Edge Games
S&W
Levels 9-11

Merchant caravans passing through the valley known as The Walled Path have reported being attacked by roaming earth elementals and brigands with rock-hard skin. Signs point to the return of an evil cult…. [Shitty low-effort marketing blurb]

This fifteen page adventure uses about seven pages to describe ten rooms in a simple cultist cave. Garbage, as the french would say, [hey, foreign-folk, I was gonna be all cosmopolitan and shit and put an accent grave over the e, but I forgot how in WordPress. Oops. Sorry] with an uninspired and lame setup, mediocre writing, and nothing interesting on. [Shitty low-effort marketing summary]

For as much as I loathe my own continued existence, I do get to tell the same stories over and over again. Like, when a young little Bryce discovered this “OSR” thing, full of wonder and joy! And the forums! Full of people just as excited! And, look, a list of adventures to get, and the people say they are good! Except they were not good. They sucked ass. Boring adventures with mediocre, at best, writing. And, thusly, a tenfootpole. This adventure is a throwback to, what fifteen years ago? That same kind of nonsense I encountered back then, returned anew. [Shitty low-effort self aggrandizement]

Ohs nos! Some caravans have gone missing! The merchants guild hires your LEVEL ELEVENS!!! Jesus Christ man .. are you all winos? What he fuck, tired of killing the heads of all of the pantheons so yu’ve hiring out to the local merchants guild? For … 1000gp? Man, I’m not even pissing my pants, my own or someone else, for 1000gp if I’m level eleven. Fuck me, a level six in OD&D, is essentially unkillable, if the player isn’t dumb, as long as there isn’t a confusion spell or some shit. And these are level elevens. Sure thing. Oh, and if hiring out to the merchants guild, WHO GIVES YOU A PLANER SEAL, isn’t your kind of thing then the designer suggests that “Perhaps the group has agreed to serve as escorts for a caravan passing through The Walled Path when they come under attack by members of the cult.” You know what low effort means, right? Of course you do, you read this shit for some reason. And All of the bandits inside, like, I don’t know, eight bandits in total? are 9hd. That’s like lords in their own right, but, whatever. [Shitty low-effort focus on non-adventure component.]


Shitty low-effort screen-grab
An entire page for the storage room. An entire backstory for the storage room. A shitty little uninspired read-aloud for a storage room. A group of bandits that appear a million words after the read-aloud with no other indication they are in the room. Oh, oh, and, for it being an entire page, the text in a DIFFERENT rooms reads: “The bandits here are used to breaking, cracking, and splintering noises coming from the north. There’s only a 20% chance each round of combat in Area 2 that they will wake and head north to investigate.” It’s a page long and you can’t even tell us IN THIS ROOM who reacts to noise from inside of it. There’s no fucking reason for ANY of this. You’re fucking level eleven man, have some self respect. What’s next, rats in the widows basement? What’s the use of any of this?! What’s the purpose?! [Shitty low-effort commentary without ending punctuation]

There isn’t one, is there? It’s just a shitty low-effort production. This is not a level eleven adventure. Or a level nine adventure. At BEST it’s a level one adventure. And, if I was playing in a new game and this was the level one adventure I’m not coming the fuck back for session two. There’s nothing here. Just stabbing some level nine bandits. Ohhh, they have STONE SKIN, so they have an AC three better than normal. Great. I am thrilled. Awe and wonder. Magical moments. Just turn the handle and crank out the shit man. Make it level eleven so, I don’t know, you can put in some earth elementals? I mean, they don’t really serve any purpose. All you do it’s stab everything in all of the rooms. And get your bags of 1,500 silver pieces. [Shitty low-effort attempt at a rant.]

This kind of shit robs the joy from the game of Dungeons & Dragons. [Shitty low-effort disguised ad hominin attack]

This is $1.50 at DriveThru. The preview is four pages. You get to see the setup, but nothing of the adventure. [Shitty low-effort preview.]

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/547794/children-of-t... [Shitty Low-effort cash grab]

by Rachel

I did play Friday today. A Level 2 loss. That said, this sinus infection has really taken it out of me. You can expect your regularly-scheduled Friday on Friday report tomorrow.

Game Over On borrowed time...

Happy Friday and happy playing!
-Rachel

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