OSRIC (AD&D) for PCs of "1st-9th" level
This is an AD&D adventure. It says OSRIC, but everything here (with the exception of a "whip +1;" which isn't in OSRIC, either) can be found in AD&D. So I'm reviewing it as such.
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.
I'm going to start with the bad on this one. Because I want to get that bit out of the way:
This adventure is too ambitious for the contest parameters...it is too big, and designed too broadly. It wants to "accommodate a wide level range and be an active location in an on-going campaign;" notice the 1st through 9th level range? And, yet, because of its broad design, it suffers from a lack of specificity: it doesn't actual provide an adventure that provides challenges for all those level ranges, nor does it provide reward sufficient to satisfy all listed ranges.
In fact, the adventure leaves much of this work (because such specificity requires work) in the hands of the Dungeon Master. It provides broads strokes...but leaves far too many blanks to be filled in. Encounter areas give ranges of numbers of monsters that will appear. Monsters are listed but have no hit points determined. Treasures are listed as "1500gp and 6 gems" with no additional value given. This is not a fully developed adventure that a DM can simply read and run. For this site to work, "prep" is going to include doing a lot of the grunt work that should have already been done by the author.
For these reasons, this adventure cannot receive a three star (or higher) rating. It does not fall into the realm of "playable adventure."
Now for the good: this has the makings of (the potential for) a really great AD&D adventure!
It is, as I said, written too broadly. In challenge rating, it can probably function quite well for an average party level of 5th-6th. Well, except for the demons...all the demons.
We'll get to that.
The theming here is great. The concept is quite solid, and the manner in which the encounters interact is excellent. Well-developed. Usability is exceptional, unless you're talking about the map which is ASS (and that is being discourteous to ass). And again with using letters instead of numbers to designate encounter areas? Why in God's name do people do that? This adventure has 26 encounter areas...I know that because "Z" is the final one. Sheesh.
But other than the crap map and the letters, Edwards does a great job of laying out who all's in the cave complex, and where, and why, and how they interact with each other...it's great stuff, short-n-sweet, but with enough to give a DM a great grasp of how to run the whole thing, with good characterization and nifty motivations. Enough motivations that I'm never left wondering "why is this encounter here?" This thing really wants to be a large-scale, campaign-impacting faction fortress. That's great! That's a LOT of entertainment for one's player group and suggests a wide variety of approaches from a number of different angles...not all of them necessarily hostile! And, again, I love the whole 'bird theme' going on...not only is there consistency of concept (and good use of specific D&D creatures), it makes the whole thing more memorable. "Oh, yeah...the bird guys." That's impactful play: it's stuff that makes indelible memories.
I love the use of the Greek gods Nike and Hecate (reminds me of the AD&D campaigns of my youth as we were all Greek, all day long). Stylistically it's very Sword & Sorcery, which I know some folks will appreciate...and yet it's not over-the-top to the point of bad pastiche (which I appreciate).
However, I'm not grading on 'style' and I have some mechanical quibbles. While I rather love the mummies and how they are used, the +1 battle axes have got to go...not only does this nerf the mummies actual damage output, it places too many magic battle axes (12?!) in the hands of the adventurers. Similarly with all the monster summoning scrolls: I know Edwards wants his demonologist and his vrocks and succubi (the former for the bird theme, the latter for the S&S vibe), but this isn't the way to go. Besides, monster summoning does not create permanent conjurations...if such creatures were only summoned using spell scrolls, they would have long since faded from the encounter areas "O" and "U." Find a different way: have Bokon invent (or own a scroll with) a lesser version of cacodaemon, or give him an item (perhaps a cursed minor artifact) that makes such conjurations possible. Heck, perhaps he used a cacodaemon to gate in the vrocks, and maybe the succubus was always at the tor, a prisoner of the Nike priests that Bokon released and is currently learning from/scheming with (and the quasit's just a familiar, natch). There are ways to accomplish what wants to be accomplished without stashing dozens of monster summoning scrolls around the place.
At roughly 59K (before adding magic) treasure is only about 54% of what it needs to be for a 5th level party of adventurers, and for a group of higher level (7th+) it would be a fractional amount, even selling all the paltry items here. The high level NPCs are pretty magic deficient, with nothing greater than +2 and most items just +1...and no special abilities. In fact, other than armor and weapons, the ONLY magic items in the place are potions and the aforementioned monster summoning scrolls. It's odd, but perhaps a stylistic (S&S, mudcore) choice.
This one gets two stars (out of five), with a "+" because of the strong themes, tight concept, and unrealized potential. It's not playable as written, but the author shows promise.
**+
Thank you for a great review of my entry Tor of The Vulture Lord. I thought it identified a lot of areas that I suspected were weak but was not sure how to fix.
ReplyDeleteI will go back and implement all of your comments (particularly around hp, gp values, treasure etc.) with an eye to posting it as a fortress module. I think that additional attention to detail will help it a lot. The whole thing was lifted from my own campaign notes just a few days before the deadline. As such, it’s the sort of thing that I write for myself as a DM, I rarely make note of more than HD, AC, weapon type, alignment and motivation.
As a British gamer who has been playing d&d since 2E, I often feel that I am playing a little in the dark. We don’t have a scene in the same way as you do in the US so older d&d is harder to find. I have often had more knowledge of the game than the majority of my players (by dint of starting relatively early) so I rarely have the opportunity to compare notes with more experienced DMs or play in ‘advanced d&d’ games (I’ve played a lot but 95% as the DM with relative noob players except for a few very honourable exceptions). Taking part in this competition and reading your reviews produced so many useful pointers in regard to setting treasure, appropriate level ranges and encounter design. I think that you are right that these ‘gamist’ elements are so essential to the overall play experience.
I will also redraw the map (with numbers) in mapping software rather than my usual graph paper efforts.
Thank you so much for the many kind things that said about theme, style and verisimilitude.
I like to take a wargamer approach to setting and module design. I often start with generating warbands of different monsters (as if they were multi-unit armies with commanding characters in Warhammer Fantasy Battle) and then building a base and scenarios for them. I like to know how the monsters are organised and why they are where they are. I think without this it is very difficult for the DM to play them intelligently. This is my main problem with a lot of published materials, so I was very pleased when you said:
‘does a great job of laying out who all's in the cave complex, and where, and why, and how they interact with each other...it's great stuff, short-n-sweet, but with enough to give a DM a great grasp of how to run the whole thing, with good characterization and nifty motivations. Enough motivations that I'm never left wondering "why is this encounter here?" This thing really wants to be a large-scale, campaign-impacting faction fortress. That's great! That's a LOT of entertainment for one's player group and suggests a wide variety of approaches from a number of different angles...not all of them necessarily hostile!’
This is what I want as a DM in a module.
I think you are absolutely right that my entry was too big for the scale of the competition, and I will probably rewrite it as an 8 page lair.
I would also like to thank you for the nice things that you said about theme and setting which are also really important to me:
‘I love the use of the Greek gods Nike and Hecate (reminds me of the AD&D campaigns of my youth as we were all Greek, all day long). Stylistically it's very Sword & Sorcery, which I know some folks will appreciate...and yet it's not over-the-top to the point of bad pastiche (which I appreciate).’
I love the sword & sandal motif and the 1920s sword and sorcery aesthetic and I was hoping that would come through (you see it in some judges guild stuff that I love).
I ran this with two players each controlling two level 2 characters. They managed to collect twelve or so orc/lizardman retainers and kill a wandering Vrock before escaping through the well with a slice of loot. It was fun.
Thanks again for all your pointers, it’s very appreciated!
You’re very welcome. I really liked where this one is going…it just needed more execution to pull
DeleteIt into the station.
The main thing to consider is that writing for publication is different from writing for your home game. My notes have often been rougher than this (especially when running B/X) because I hold so many concepts in my head. But another DM wanting to run the adventure can’t read your mind. And they want the grunt work done for them: Gygax didn’t bother writing out stat blocks in his modules, but he at least told readers how many HPs the creatures had (so the DM wasn’t left rolling them up).
Still, a really nice concept. I’m glad you’re going to make the effort to fix it up…I think a lot of folks would enjoy a polished version of this one.