An “adventure” by Brett Sullivan & Fern Cliff Studio, levels unlisted. Written for any system One pager alert. The Spoiled Hollow is a charmingly illustrated little adventure…er…set of adventure ideas set in an isolated little valley with a lake in the middle. I recognized the charming art style of Fern Cliff Studio, which I had quite liked in At the River’s Edge. The style of multiple possibilities for each doohicky present on the map, though, works better in a mini-campaign-scale sandbox region as opposed to this tiny little vale, which would at most be a single hex. I’m capable of solving this, but the author gave me homework, and I resent that. I shall have to spend time staring at the cute little waterfall drawings to soothe my troubled spirit. Okay, so there is a story here, a situation that can be sussed out. Formerly peaceful little hollow, now massive thorny vines are erupting, local wildlife gets blighted, lord of the tower in the lake has disappeared. The details are very shiftable based on these little d4 or d6 tables…I say, the real interest happens if you see the fork in the road and take it. The Abby of…The Maiden of Sorrow, aka Sister of the Peaceful Tenders, aka mother of the Marked Ones, aka she of the Knowing Eyes. Don’t roll, just have all of them true, and enjoy the contradictions. The village? Why not have it be overgrown, inhabited by blighted humanoids, full of happy and healthy people oblivious to the blight, and also be the lair of a huge monster? That is a place to have adventures in. With that modification you have a fun, if distressingly vague about stats/details, adventure here. The home containing an angry/sad/monstrous/lonely/shy/helpful hermit murderer farmer orphan lycanthrope scholar might require D&D 3.5 with full splatbooks to stat out, though. As the author is the cartographer, I’m happy to say what I liked is the map. Slap that puppy down on the table without markings and it’s going to lead to all manner of “I want to go to there” gameplay. As usual the table content is a mixed back of quality, but I liked more than I didn’t here. Particular points for wingless warped blight-gryphons as a monster threat, mourning their sacrificed eggs. You know what I’m going to be saying, but what can be improved is to collapse the tables into singular descriptions. Particularly with a 1-pager, this is a single hex’s contents, and potentially a very good hex at that with some direction given. This wild creativity is impressive in its way but pruned and tended by the gardener’s hand it could have produced even more fruit. That would have also given room for STATISTICS or SPECIFIC NUMBERS, which greatly reduce the burden placed upon the longsuffering man at the table trying to actually turn your vision into a solid gameplay experience for 3-5 hours. Yeah, best use case for the Spoiled Hollow is as a hex’s adventure site, particularly with that lovely illustration/map. There’s a lot of effort implied in turning the tables into a usable adventure, so I might just eschew them in favor of my favorite random encounter generator(s), but there’s definitely a good time if you take all the options as true at once. Not a lot of stripping for parts, sadly. Final Rating? **/***** because of the awkward fit. I like so much here, but it’s a heck of a lot of work to bring to the table. Five stars for the map as object d’art, however.
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AuthorWeblog of Ben Gibson, the main writer and publisher of Coldlight Press. Archives
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