As we embark upon this contest, I suppose I should publish my targeted review standards for these adventure sites. I’ve certainly reviewed enough with my Crapshoot Monday series to give contestants my kindly standards for that; I will still be looking to highlight what I liked in submissions, give some ideas about what might be improved, and the use case evaluation is what I’ve outlined in my last article. I won’t be giving direct ratings as I go, but I will release my ranked choice evaluation in the end. Generally, here are the things I’ll be looking at:
I’ll also have a few little things I personally look for to give bonus points. Crediting playtesters is good practice, I give a bonus nod for playtesting. I’ll be looking favorably at higher-level sites, just for sheer value-add compared to the trillions of “level 1-2” content already. Original cartography is also going to be a bonus over repurposed Matt Jackson or Dyson Logos map. None of this is to say that an unplaytested level 1 Dyson map adventure site will dinged for all that, just like to see the stretching. Get stoked. Contest opens FRIDAY, although submissions will be accepted through January 31st, 2024. I’ll be writing up my own contest entry for playtesting over Christmas. Feel free to ask whatever you want.
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Right then, as previously hyped, we’re going to begin a contest for writing up adventure sites. Some explanation for what an adventure site is, anyway, wouldn’t do amiss. I’ll follow up with review standards in a post later this week, at least for my own judging. Almost every campaign that lasts longer than half a dozen sessions (and many that are shorter) can benefit from seeding adventure sites around the map: small areas discoverable by navigation, rumor-mongering, or luck that have a discrete geography to explore, containing a roughly session-sized amount of gameplay content that offers both extrinsic rewards (gold, items, allies, etc) as well as intrinsic rewards (a story, hooks that lead elsewhere, “man, that was a fun session of D&D last night”). In the olden days of Dungeon Magazine, this was the assumed use case for practically all the adventures published…supporting a picaresque of the PCs wandering from adventure to adventure, their only continuity being whatever is come up with by the table group themselves. That sounds dismissive, but in fact these are wonderful campaigns, often the very best. The best and most free campaigns are the ones that start in a simple village with a dungeon next door placed on a big ol’ hexmap, maybe even Outdoor Survival’s map if you’re feeling nostalgic. Contours of the terrain and the whimsy of the DM will determine political borders, where cities and towns show up, and which of the millions of random encounter tables get used when the players feel like going out for a bumble. Whip out your best Larry Elmore paintings and go forth, young man. While this style of campaign will find a plot inevitably, though, there’s a real need for texture to the world, strange and interesting places that, when stumbled upon, lend themselves to an episode of adventure slightly disconnected from the clash of kingdoms or the machinations of a dark lord. Ergo, the need for adventure sites, ideal to be placed down on the hexmap or in the cities and towns. An adventure site is, first of all, a site. While traditionally a hole in the ground filled with some manner of hobbit-eating monstrous humanoids, it can also be a tower, a ruin, a sewer nexus, a shipwreck, a tree village, an inn…the form can vary, but the form does have to matter, the site needs to have elements of exploration and searching, choices of navigation. The second, but equally vital, aspect of an adventure site is that it’s an adventure. Anchored within the geography of the site there’s got to be something adventurous going on, be it plundering a tomb, rooting out kobolds, rescuing prisoners, stealing valuables, acquiring knowledge…if a fun and engaging challenge for 2-6 armed societal outcasts isn’t imaginable in the area, what’s the point? What is a good example of the kind of adventure site I’m talking about? I’ll tarnish my credentials with both the OSR and the Pathfinder communities and say that one of the best examples is Cragmaw Hideout, from the 5E introductory adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver. Ignore the lame railroad of an introduction, and the MMORPG-quest style adventure that follows…Cragmaw Hideout is a lovely little goblin cave complex entered via stream, with water features (including a great naturalistic trap), incredibly looping geometry leading to real exploratory options, interesting foe variation in the form of worgs and a bugbear boss, a prisoner to rescue, and even a mild rivalry aspect between the bugbear in charge and his Starscream. Is it the pinnacle of dungeon design? Hardly. But Cragmaw Hideout manages to hit a lot of marks despite its teeny tiny size, all the more impressive when considering where it comes from. I would gladly place Cragmaw Hideout in any of my campaigns were it not the single most played and podcasted piece of TTRPG content in all of history. There’s a dark three-word phrase that probably should be addressed…”Five-Room Dungeon”. Some of you may well be familiar with the strict formula, it’s a dungeon/tower/artistic dreamscape that puts out the following sequence:
Although I’ve been mostly talking about adventure sites to be seeded in wild lands of high fantasy, there’s also a real value in smuggler’s dens, sewers, jails, and hideouts to be seeded in cities belonging to some kind of invincible overlord. I hope to see variety in the submissions, both wild and urban sites and in between. Just remember, adventure sites need to be sites full of adventure. A town and dungeon adventure by Masters of Evil, level 1 For Heroes of Adventure Hey look, it’s a Dungeon Magazine adventure (Paizo Publishing era) to close out November. Technically a twenty-one-page adventure, with about fourteen pages of “adventure” content (rest cover, back page, NPCs, monsters, items), The Wyrd-Pearl of Bryne is a first-level adventure where the PCs get sent to Innsmouth, hopefully pursue the tentatively-linked investigation sequence, and then kill Dagon (sorry, Yog-Lammor). It’s traditional enough to make me vaguely nostalgic for the early 2000’s Dungeon…with two-column layout, colorful but tasteful AI illustrations, and tiny but clear dungeons, it’s all a very modern style. It’s written for Heroes of Adventure. The basic plot won’t surprise anyone with any vague familiarity with the genre. The suggested start is, of course, “you’re all caravan guards” or other extremely generic hooks going to a lonely city. Local baron is concerned by a lack of fish shipments from Innsmouth (the eponymous Bryne), has sent a guy but nothing came of it. An extremely untrustworthy pack of ruffians (the PCs) is the ticket, go there, the village is miserable and gross (with drowned undead wanderers), faded rails lead to a town hall, then a graveyard/crypt, then a cove where the solution to all problems is found by killing a weak low-level god. Hope you brought your random-encounter Blue Pearl to nerf him. Nostalgia for the formatting aside, what I liked in the Wyrd-Pearl was the relentlessly miserable atmosphere, this sucker drips, it oozes, it even squelches with solid atmospheric writing as soon as the rails reach the sodden Bryne, with AI illustrations that complement the story and environment. Most of the key locations are pretty generic but I do like the submerged crypts section where the module expects the players to take hours maneuvering in deep water, lurching from air pocket to air pocket. Rewards are low, but at the end is your plot coupon to the next location and it’s a gorgeous handout: I know everything here is the current WotC/Paizo style so I’ll ignore the formatting in listing what can be improved. I’m going to talk maps again…I know they’re small, but that’s no excuse for how linear they are. The initial caravan scenes and a subplot about bandits in the region are disconnected completely from the main plot here, and the rando “slowly being empowered god” at the end could also probably use some more telegraphing. Heroes of Adventure is a silver standard system, so treasure amounts that seem penurious “1d10gp and 100sp” are merely slightly stingy. But the biggest issue to fix, what crops up again and again, is illustrated in that treasure amount above…there are waaaay too many “dX appearing” comments in this thing. The entry to the final boss’ lair is guarded by 1d4 mid-difficulty monsters, for example…so it’s going to be an easy little warm-up, or maybe a brutal gut check of a fight. This isn’t a random sandbox, this is an adventure module for first level players with a very strict, very traditional, railroad of a setup…you tell us how many monsters are there. Unfortunately because of the strict setup the best use case for this is as a Dungeon adventure…pull it out with your D&D 3.5-loving friends and run it for a single session, while planning to actually finish it out in 1-2 more, but then mysteriously fail to schedule anything further. The best parts of the adventure, the handout and the atmospheric writing, really don’t translate well to plundering for other use. It’s a railroad, with some slippery and badly-maintained tracks, hard to repurpose. Final Rating? */***** Admirably good production value and evocative writing over a fundamentally dull adventure. The success of recent reviewer-hosted contests had me thinking that there's a lot of potential talent hungry for feedback; more than a monetary reward or a physical copy of a module, the primary motivator for me at least was the critical reviewing. There's no real shortage of opinionated old designers here, as I am thinking of a contest where potential writers submit adventure sites:
These submissions would be judged and most importantly reviewed with at least a solid page of reviewing, like Bryce or Prince or Melan manage. A pool of interested volunteer judge reviewers are engaged, notably myself, EOTB, Owen Edwards, (possibly) Grützi, and Malrex. Judges are welcome to submit to the contest as well, but they obviously can't judge their own work. Selection of the top 8 adventures would be ranked choice, which then get bundled into a free product on DriveThru, published under a creative commons attribution license (so it can be shared, but credit to writers). This is similar to how the One Page Dungeon did it. Malerex of the Merciless Merchants, in addition to offering services as a judge, has said he'll offer Merciless Merchants adventures for the prize pool. Josh/Gus from the Classic Adventure Gaming podcast have advertised this, and anyone involved should definitely blog about it. And you should get involved too…submit, read, or at the very least give us a shout-out…I’d love for as many contestants as possible to hear about this. Submissions will open starting in December through Jan 31st, with judging aiming to be done by the end of February. It’s been organized via the CAG podcast’s Discord, but submissions can be made to my own email here. If you have a blog and a desire to join in the judges, drop me a line; feedback is the value that every contestant will be getting out of this. A dungeon adventure by Morware, level ??? For Troika Is this really the first time I’ve encountered a Troika adventure here? The indie darling, the fan favorite of…oh, wait, I guess that’s the Old New Hotness, not the New New Hotness. Anyway, this is a trifold adventure where a party has been invited to a social engagement with a boring wizard and need to escape while he’s off to the loo. Yeah, you heard me. It has 2d6 rooms “keyed”, randomly entered until you randomly roll the exit. It’s so whimsical I could vomit. This is the thinnest dungeon I’ve yet to bump into and I started reviewing a one-pager based on a crossword puzzle. What I liked is that it has a cute little tower illustration. Actually, it could be used as a workable vertical map, if this product wanted players to make actual choices in a physical environment. I liked that it was very short. I’m going to stuff down my first suggestion for what can be improved (set it on fire and delete the PDF) and instead say that the best path here is make a real map, allow for exploration, give thought to actual consequences for literally any player actions at all, good or bad, and maybe try to pretend that some human beings somewhere with an ounce of agency would attempt to have fun with this product. Tall order, I know, but if the writer has the dim flickering spark of creativity to make the single piece of usable loot in the adventure a jar of teeth with spells inscribed on them (no, the type of tooth doesn’t affect the type of spell), then maybe with monumental effort a wizard tower escape could be turned into a mildly entertaining scenario. The three monsters to fight(?) should also maybe be called out more directly. The best use case for “A Regrettable Invitation” is as an exhibit in any anti-Troika lawsuit that might be brewing. Beyond that it’s a cute tower. Final Rating? */***** Ultimately so worthless as to be kind of offensive. A dungeon adventure by The Classless Kobolds, level ??? (low) For “OSR systems” I knew I was in for it when I saw that cover. This thing is six pages describing a fifteen-room dungeon where goblins are making drugs. It is, as you might expect from the cover, Very Interested in Drugs, with the thin stoner substitute for “whimsy” lightly coated over a very generic adventure site. To enjoy this players would have to be high enough that they would also really struggle with reading die faces. The wafer-thin story of this site is that there was once a goddess of indulgence and drugs, this was her temple, it fell, now goblins live here and use her sacred flowers to mass-produce a street drug they call Mung. If that sentence wasn’t enough to send you into paroxysms of laughter, how about we add in a tunnel-room full of kobolds led by “Nut Puncher PikPik” and some paladins that, oops, got really high? Oh, and also there’s a drug effects table? Yeah. Like all drug-related humor its only funny to drug enjoyers, and like all humor adventures the jokes are broad and fall flat at a table. At least the map has…oh wait, it's probably the most linear Dyson Logos map conceivable for its size. There are also helpful old priests of the goddess in a magic stasis. And some friendly rust monsters. And some myconids because mushroom reference. Nothing is automatically hostile. I’m search for what I liked and it’s a struggle, dear reader. I suppose there’s at least some potential for entering a goblin lair where nothing is automatically hostile, where the goblin leader and his magic-using lieutenant are at odds…oh wait, it was already done to perfection in Brigands of Bristleback Burrow. The social situation potential is here, although fuzzy...factions are good. Ergo, what can be improved is first and foremost “make the factions have motives”. Everyone in the adventure site seems to be at worst mildly annoyed with the other factions. If you’re going to have multiple groups all with competing motivations, make the situation a highly volatile power keg just waiting for a player-character-shaped spark. As it is, the entire dungeon is more likely to offer a joint to the party without much conflict ever coming into it. The other lack-of-conflict aspect here is due to the very linear map. “Loops” sounds trite but the reason why dungeon map branches should interact along multiple points of contact is because that allows for exponentially more interactions, rather than just going down a branch and dragging the inhabitant(s) back to mess with another branch’s people. The Mung Effects Table, while I’m sure very exciting to both dudes in the world who want to roleplay a high wizard, could definitely be filled with more gameable effects. Finally, treasure is very light, need about x10 more. So what’s the best use case? I guess if you need a drug-related site filled with anachronistic goblin Breaking Badders, this fits the bill. Otherwise, it is best used as a cautionary tale. Final Rating? */***** Ultimately inoffensive but kind of worthless. I have recently received a new sledgehammer, which of course is a useful and practical tool to have around the yard. Of course, once I hand the 10lb sledge to my boys, the very first thing they do is heft it aggressively searching for enemies to smite. I get it, I'm in my late thirties, but I feel it too.
There's an unfortunate dearth of two-handed sledgehammers in our fantasy games. Obviously a two-handed maul has major issues as a practical weapon...you can talk about how they're hard to use in anything remotely resembling a battle-line. You could talk about how they'd be hard to swing in a tight cave system. You could talk about how not having a shield is a major disadvantage. You could even talk about the first reason why heavy mauls aren't favored in long-term fights (they're really really freaking heavy). I'll respectfully disagree on all counts. D&D characters are exceptional people, if not in abilities, than in the raw insanity of going into horrifying dangerous places on the hope of finding riches. Idiosyncratic PCs should have a wide array of possible armaments, and the aesthetic choices like having a big ol' sledgehammer should be allowed. So next time you're seeding your magic weapons table, why not throw in a sledgehammer or two? Give 'em a meaty d12 in lieu of static bonuses too. A dungeon adventure by Highland Paranormal Society, level 1 For The Vanilla Game Well, we’re sticking to vanilla again this week I see. Not only is this a tomb adventure (elf-royalty-tomb subgenre), but it’s written for the enticingly titled “The Vanilla Game” system. Wait, you say it’s also eightish pages for ten rooms? And for “3-4 first level adventurers”? My we are in for a treat… The story is so perfunctory if you blink you’ll miss it. There’s a cairn. In the woods. Elf king buried in it. Rumors says its riches. Go loot. There’s a little bit of “entry into the underworld” in either stacking some rocks to open the barrow or crawling through a hole in a tree, then it’s loot stuff while encountering (no wandering encounters) a few rooms’ keys. There’s a very dangerous giant spider that is in her own skippable room, some bored skeletons playing dice, a stuck Whimsy Goblin, the king’s own ghost with a puzzle aspect, and finally a couple vermin fights with 1d6 1HD big bugs, so those are either negligible or overwhelming depending on the roll. One of the entry tunnels does have a very nasty “collapse the whole shebang, DEX save or 3d6 damage” trap, which given starting Vanilla Game characters appear to have 10-11 hp…that sucks. But if they survive there’s nothing wandering or active to threaten them while resting, at least. I’m being grumpy, what I liked in this little project actually is that trap, mostly, it’s a baited by skulls with valuable gems in their eyes. Just add a little more telegraphing or less damage, there is something great about “pick up skull, get hurt”. There are what feels like a ludicrous number of magic items in the module, but I do like their flavor and uniqueness. The total loot of 2,180gp is also good for the scope of the adventure, albeit none of it is hidden, just trapped or a challenge to retrieve. The giant spider is sentient, as is right and proper, and has a nice boon with a nasty cost on offer. That said, what can be improved is probably first “jettison the public-domain old sketches as your primary means of selecting encounters”. The most imaginative stuff is where the author didn’t have a picture he was trying to wedge in, just pure imagination. There’s also the map, which is dismayingly cramped and a lot more linear upon analysis than even the initial impression provides. The tomb is also static, which with spiders, carrion worms, sentient skeletal guards, and a sneaking goblin certainly wasn’t something that it had to be. A little movement in a roomier barrow complex, with some time pressure given by the place being active, would do wonders for the dynamism. As it is, it’s just a cute little succession of set-pieces. All that means that unfortunately the best use case here isn’t to have it whole, I’d rather swipe the trap, the giant spideress, and maybe a couple of the magic items. There’s potential for better here, but not enough to warrant using it as is. Final Rating? **/***** Just plundering some value out of the bits. |
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