ASC Review: The Lair of the Lamia

Lair of the Lamia (J. Blasso-Gieseke)

AKA The Monastery of the Cenobitic Order of the Starry Brotherhood

OSE (ostensibly) for four to six PCs of 4th-6th level

*facepalm*

For my review criteria, you may check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (three page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews short.

Okay, I'll start with the good. Nice idea...local landmark/mountain has a monster prob and PCs are offered 25K by the local merchants to clean it up. Off they go and encounter a fairly decent swath of monsters (peryton, leucrotta, lamia) hanging out near/in an old monastery of some star cult.

Mm. 

Map is serviceable and the right size for this competition: about a dozen encounter areas. Stocking is fairly close to Moldvay (counting the "shrieking thralls" as traps).

Okay, that's about it.

I don't have a lot of experience with OSE. My understanding is that it is "just B/X reorganized." Great...I know B/X very, very well (note the name of the blog I've been writing since 2009). There is no Leucrotta, Lamia, or Peryton monsters in B/X.

Now I only own the free copy of OSE, so I checked the "OSE SRD" (that's System Reference Document for you non-nerds out there)...nope no sign of those monsters, either. ALSO, no sign of most of the magical treasure items found in the adventure ("long swords," bracers of defenselessness, staff of the woodlands, gem of monster attraction, periapt of foul corruption, ring of charm monster). With regard to the monsters, he offered stat blocks at the end, but no description of the creatures which seem to be taken directly from the (AD&D) Monster Manual...just as the named magic items seem taken from the (AD&D) DMG and UA.

SO, either Blasso-Gieseke is using OSE Advanced (a book I don't own and thus can't reference) and hasn't described his adventure accurately as such, OR he is adapting AD&Disms to to OSE. Either way: not cool in my book. If I was an OSE DM picking this thing up to run for my table (because it says "Designed For Use With Old School Essentials"), I'd be lost.

Then we have the treasure.

For an adventure this size, with the indicated levels, I'd be hoping to see something in the 27K range, maybe 30K considering a lamia is pretty dangerous (as are peryton and leucrotta). Since this is B/X...which doesn't offer x.p. for magic items...all that has to come from monetary treasure. 

This adventure? 236,855 g.p.

Okay, no. While it's refreshing to see an author going the OPPOSITE direction of the usual (most authors are too low-ball in their treasure stocking), providing the PCs with ten times the usual amount is Monty Haul in the extreme. Just the merchant's fee (25K!) nearly covers the expected treasure take for a party of 5th level characters. A quarter million in treasure? No, man. It's not that challenging of an adventure.

One star (out of five).

*

ASC Review: Sausages of the Devil Swine

Sausages of the Devil Swine (John Nash)

B/X for four PCs of 5th level

A banger (no pun intended) right out of the gate; nevertheless, this adventure suffers from a number of flaws.

For my review criteria, you may check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (three page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews short.

Strong theming in this one, though it's hard to tell if it's meant to be humorous/satirical. I'd err on the side that it's more serious than jokey, despite pig themes bordering close to ridiculous ("Porcs" instead of orcs, "Porcus, the Demon Lord of Swine," etc.), without ever actually taking it too far. Overall, I'd say the concept is well-conceived, the adventure is easy to read/parse, and the map is good. High points here.

Nuts-and-bolts, however, require a little work.

I like devil swine a lot...they are a classic, if often underutilized, staple of B/X-BECMI play. They are also an EXPERT level creature: a shape-changing, 9 hit die hammer with a powerful charming ability (equivalent to a vampire), and a gore attack that does 2d6 damage. It's a pig demon of the first order; they don't show up on the B/X encounter tables till level 8. Are they appropriate critters for a party of four 5th level characters? Especially when encountered in groups of three, five, and two, throughout the dungeon? Not really, no.

But Nash doesn't use the devil swine entry from the rulebooks, instead making up his own creature: 3 hit dicers with an AC 7, 2d4 damage, no charm...um, what? You want to rename your pig-faced variety of orcs...okay. But nerfing the devil swine for your low-level theme? No. Use were-boars instead or else up the level. "Porcus," the Demon Prince of Swine is only 8 hit dice (less than a B/X devil swine) so here again we see an adventure designer wanting to nerf gods and entities so that their 5th level characters can duke it out with Great Powers. Man, I hate that kind of 'small ball.'

Treasure is light for my taste: an adventure this size, I'm thinking something in the range of 20K+ for ta party of the listed levels. The author states in the introduction that there is 14,404 g.p. worth of treasure (and since he bothered to do the math, I didn't bother to add it up). So, yeah...a bit light.  But the variety and distribution is good; it wouldn't be too hard to fatten things up. A minor knock.

Stocking in general is pretty good...very standard Moldvay (one-third monster, one-sixth trap, one-sixth 'special,' one-third empty). And treasure distribution (as stated) is good: 10 of the 17+ encounter areas have something worth discovering which, while high for Moldvay, is great to keep players poking along. Danger level appears a little weak for 5th level characters, unless one uses ACTUAL devil swine, in which case it is far, far too hard. Nash's swine are just half-strength trolls: three hit dice with a minor regen ability? Yeah, it just doesn't have the same teeth (tusks?). 

The Wand of Porcus is also anti-climactic, being a +2 mace with an effect that only triggers upon killing someone. Porcus himself is a bit of a pushover demon prince, having no special abilities besides a handful of (defensive) immunities. While he's nicely described, the fact that he's content to sit around doing the bidding of a mortal is lame. I don't like it.

The competing butchers are nifty. So are the strangling sausages.

This is a strong first entry to read, but it has (for me) some glaring problems. Love the concept and theming, but the execution needs work. I'll give this one a bit more than two stars (out of five).  For B/X, it's neither "B" nor "X" but something that tries to split the difference...and doesn't really succeed. Nash shows excellent potential...but it is potential yet un-realized.

**+

Judgment

What's today? The second? Oh, good.

Between October 1st and December 31st, Ben Gibson ran his second "Adventure Site Contest" (ASCII). Welp, the submission period is past and for the judges (including me) it's time to get down to the judging. Here were the basic criteria for the contest:

1) a small adventure site, pluggable as a hex or side crawl and appropriate for an evening's play.

2) no more than three pages in length (not counting maps and/or cover page); suggested range of encounters from 5 to 25.

3) system must be TSR-era D&D edition (or "a very close retroclone") OR an "old-school sci-fi" game "like Traveller or Stars Without Number."

29 contest entries were received in total; all appear to meet the basic requirements although five of them exceed the recommended encounter range. While this may seem like a minor detail, the point of the ASC is to make a small adventure, suitable for "a satisfying night's D&D session." 30+ encounters is, for me, a couple sessions in length...maybe one "all-nighter" (6+ hours) for a dedicated group that can buckle down (or a hand-wavy DM that skimps over material). But this will be a minor consideration in my judging standards.

Here's the breakdown of adventures:

12 AD&D adventures (including one Oriental Adventures themed)

1 OSRIC/1E adjacent

2 OD&D

2 Swords & Wizardry/OD&D adjacent

1 for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen (nominally OD&D adjacent)

4 B/X

2 OSE/BX adjacent

1 Labyrinth Lord w/AEC (B/X-AD&D adjacent)

1 ACKS (nominally BECMI adjacent)

1 Stars Without Number 

1 for "Classic D&D" (not a system) that I'll probably judge harshly

1 adventure that lists no system which I'll probably disqualify out-of-hand

I will review all the entries here on Ye Old Blog, but only the top eight make the book, and so I will only be recommending that number to Ben. Contestants should be happy to know that my judgments carry no more weight than any other judge, so just because I dislike what you've written does NOT mean you can't win. Bear that in mind if/when my review of your adventure seems...mm..."harsh."

Here are my personal judging criteria:

#1 Adherence To and Use Of indicated system for indicated level range

When a Dungeon Master sits down to run a game of [insert edition] D&D with an adventure module, they need to be able to count on that module working with the system. Yes, there are plenty of DMs that offer Frankenstein, hodge-podge games kit-bashed from multiple sources: that ain't my problem. Does the product match the advertised package? Are you competent at designing for the indicated system? I'm a stickler for this because it is FRUSTRATING to pick up an adventure and find that you have to "fix" problems that a laissez-faire designer has allowed to run roughshod.

A good chunk of this will be looking at treasure ranges offered for PCs of the indicated level range. Gaming takes time...is the adventure worth the time of players interested in playing hard and advancing their characters?

#2 Challenge Over Milquetoast

Assuming the design is competent and the treasure range is good for the system/levels indicated, how challenging is the adventure? Generally, I'm going to favor dangerous environments over pushovers...though if you go too far (say a dungeon full of poisonous critters for a party of low-level characters with no access to neutralize poison) you're going to get dinged. However, all other things being equal, I like adventures that push players and force them to sweat a bit (and cooperate with each other). The chance of absolute disaster (i.e. the infamous "TPK") should always be on the table for the over-ambitious, un-cooperative, and dreadfully stupid player group. Without risk there's no thrill.

On the other hand, risk is no good without reward. Fortune should favor the bold...if the treasure looks weak compared to the danger involved, I'm going to be unhappy.

#3 Creative Theming and Cohesion of Design

I'm listing my criteria in order of importance, and "originality" and "flavor" comes in a distant #3 to design and challenge. D&D is an experiential game...we want to give the players an experience they'll remember. An edge-of-your-seat fight with a goblin horde that forces them to use every resource in their bag can be surprisingly effective even if it's "just goblins." That being said, there is a place for creativity and theming, and an adventure site that links these together is good for verisimilitude which serves to HEIGHTEN the players' experience. If there are disparate creatures in the dungeon, they should have a reason for being together; there should be an interactive quality to encounter design. Does that matter as much as GOOD design and pressing challenges? No. But it does matter. 

This bit also takes into account map readability and usability of format (things that can, generally, be adjusted easily).

SO...that's how I'm going to be judging these adventures. I'd like to get through one per day...which would allow me to finish all the reviews by the end of the month...but I'm not sure my time's going to allow me to keep up with that grind (we'll see). 

I would prefer to review them in sections based on category of system (for example, do a review of ALL the 1E adventures then ALL the B/X adventures, etc.), but I think it's probably more fair to judge them in the order they were received? I mean, John Nash got his adventure in almost from the jump (October 4th)...he's been waiting a loooong time for his reviews. Does he even remember he entered a contest? A lot has happened since October 4th!

Still, the vast majority of adventures weren't submitted till mid-December, with two-thirds of them coming in after Christmas! Tell you what: I will review the pre-December submissions in the order they were received, and THEN I'll do everyone else by category (in the order received). That would give us the following order:

1. Sausages of the Devil Swine (John Nash)
2. The Lair of the Lamia (J. Blasso-Gieseke)
3. The Caverns of Despair (Kurt)
4. The Cleft in the Crag (J. Allen)

After that we'll go AD&D (and 1E adjacent), B/X (and Basic adjacent), OD&D (etc.), and finally the Stars Without Number entry ("Galactic Funtime"), which was the very last entry received and which I confess I'm not too keen to review anyway. Blog posts should...hopefully...start tomorrow.

One last thing. All my reviews will be without playtesting. As I've written (many times) before, it is extremely difficult (if not impossible) to tell just how good...or bad...an adventure is without playing it. Adventures are designed to be played...D&D is a game that is meant to be played. I will do my best to give analysis based on my past experience, but NONE of these reviews will be based on actual experience of play. As such, folks should take my musings and critiques with a very LARGE grain of salt. Things I think bad might be wonderful in play; things I think look great might be terribly clunky. Only actual play of an adventure will provide a real idea of how well it's been designed.

All right, that's enough. Will try to have the first post up tomorrow.

Pulled It Off

Well now, that was a heck of a New Year's Eve.

Somehow managed to finish cleaning the house and getting nearly all the food cooked (and the kitchen straightened up) before the guests started showing up. The menu included English-style roast beef (a new recipe never before tried...got it from the Downton Abbey Christmas cookbook), my own butternut squash soup, oven-roasted Brussels sprouts, oven-roasted potato/sweet potato medley, oven-roasted vegetable medley (broc, cauliflower, and carrot), pasta carbonara (made by my son from scratch...yes, he makes his own pasta) and a pretty expansive charcuterie board put together by my wife after we found out (too late) that you needed a 48 hour notice to just order one. Everything got demolished despite one of the adults being a vegetarian, and two of them abstaining from dairy. I mean, that 5.5# roast? There's only a sliver of it left on the plate this morning...a sliver. And somehow we still have two six-packs of beer...oh, wait, because we killed four bottles of wine even before getting to the champaign.

Everyone managed to stay awake (even me...despite getting up at 7am and missing my afternoon nap), and the karaoke machine made an appearance circa 1am. Oh, boy. 

I slept till 11am.

My but the house is in need of some cleanup, today. Not much left for leftovers (except pasta...Diego went a bit overboard and we have a ton of extra drying on the counter). I'm not a big watcher of bowl games (especially now that they don't really mean anything to college football...or college football players/coaches), but I still think some relaxing on the couch is in order today (as he sips his freshly brewed pot of coffee at 12:04pm). Cleanup will happen...maybe even before I finish this post...but, yeah, I think I want to take it easy today. Maybe some Blood Bowl or a walk in the fresh air. After the rest of the family gets up, of course.

The last thing I'll mention about last night (before it slips my memory) is I once again had a chance to regale half-a-dozen adult humans with a 30-40 minute lecture on what Dungeons & Dragons is and the state of the hobby. Personal chef, physicist, patent attorney for Microsoft, Boeing engineer, contractors, political consultant...yeah, a bunch of successful professionals...all of them knew of the game, but none of them had ever played or had any experience with it, and they were just fascinated.  It's always odd to me how this thing I do can demand such positive attention...when, as a teen in the late 80s, early 90s the opposite was more often the case. Of course, I'm a lot more self-assured/confident these days (I made a roast beef for 14 people!), but I'm also more knowledgable. I know how to explain things in a way that is A) understandable, B) interesting/relatable, and C) inspiring (I think) to the listeners. When half the people say they want to give the game a try after I've delivered what amounts to a sermon on the history of the D&D hobby...well, I shake my head in amazement.

One of these days I'll get back to running for adults. It's nice that I can still draw. 

Okay, enough bragging; on to the New Year retrospective/resolution making!

Despite most of my local sports teams tanking their seasons...and a certain presidential election not going the way I would have hoped...2024 was damn sight better for me personally than 2023. I mean, no one close to me died, so that's a win, right? Some good coaching experiences (volleyball and soccer), won an adventure writing contest, penned an adventure for Cauldron 2024 (that got played by some 40-odd people), learned to cook a few new dishes (*ahem*), got to meet and share a beer with a couple of game blogging luminaries, travelled to both Europe and Mexico, reconnected with old friends, made some new friends, threw some parties, attended some parties, and got to run some high level D&D for my kids. Heck, I even got some blogging in...more than last year, anyway (though that was a pretty low bar...).

But I didn't write/publish any new books. Oh, I had some writing published IN a couple books, but they weren't my books...they were contributions to someone else's project. It's been a while since my last publication. Which is a bit of a bummer: I've had some time to write, I've had some ideas/things to write about...but I haven't put it all together. I've been undisciplined. And, jeez, you'd think at my age (51! I'm on the downward slope!), I'd be able to pull it together. Avoid the distractions from my purpose. 

Mm. Life is a challenge.

SO...looking back at my 2023 resolutions (the last time I posted such things...right before my life went off the rails a bit), I see that I hit on less than half the dozen or so I proposed. I think we'll try to keep this year's list a bit more modest:

Resolutions for 2025

• Sell my mother's house
• Write ONE book by the end of August
• Publish ONE book by the end of December
• Coach Sofia's soccer team to the playoffs (in October)
• Publish 100 blog posts (99 to go!)

There's more that I hope to accomplish this year: I am coaching Diego's last season of middle school volleyball this Spring, for example, and I'll be attending Cauldron 2025 in October and hope to make a good showing with my adventures-not-yet-penned. But these are the five things I really want to have done by December 31st; if I can look back to this post in one year and say I accomplished all of them? That will have been a spectacular triumph for Your Truly.

All right. That's enough for right now...time to get to that kitchen clean-up.

Best wishes to everyone...I hope nothing but the best for you and your loved ones this year; may you have health and happiness and may your sorrows be small and manageable.