Temple of the Blood Bat, AKA Lair of the Night Scourge (Jason Blasso)
OSE (B/X) adventure for four to six PCs of levels 1st-2nd
I am reviewing these in the order they were submitted. For my review criteria, please check out this post. All reviews will (probably) contain *SPOILERS*; you have been warned! Because these are short (two page) adventures, it is my intention to keep the reviews brief.
Last year, I dinged Blasso hard for misidentifying his adventure as OSE when he was using "OSE Advanced." This year, the cover page states up front that the thing is written for both "OSE Classic" OR "OSE Advanced."
Soooo...which is it?
I'm treating it as OSE Advanced which makes it hard to judge. I assume it's pretty close to Labyrinth Lord + the AEC ("Advanced Edition Companion"), or something close enough.
This adventure is...
*sigh*
Mr. Blasso's previous adventure offered way too much treasure and was a little scant on challenge. This season, he goes the opposite way. Treasure is light...about 4,300 g.p. when it should be pushing 6K...and the danger is off the charts. 17 keyed areas include 15 hostile encounters; no rest, no respite. Encounters include large numbers of zombies (killers of low level characters), multiple save or die poison encounters, encounters with large numbers of creatures (again, at low levels multiple attacks are a killer and a fight against 10 giant rats or 30(!!) giant bats is no joke), and a carrion crawler.
The main baddie, the "Night Scourge," seems to be some invention of Blasso's (it doesn't appear in any of my "Advanced" books): a swarm of "vampire bats" who drain blood and leave animated corpses (zombies) behind. This is not how zombies are created, like, ever. And why all the skeletons? Where are they coming from? Who's making those?
***EDIT: It has been pointed out to me that, per Moldvay Basic, "5% of all giant bat encounters will be groups of giant vampire bats" which function exactly as Blasso's Night Scourge, including those being drained of blood needing to save vs. Spells "or become an undead creature 24 hours after death." I will point out that it ALSO states that if using the Expert rules, this creature "may be a vampire" and that this contradicts the zombie description. However, it certainly gives off an old horror film vibe to have a plague of restless dead caused by a bat scourge.***
I don't like this one, sorry. For me, it only barely falls under the category of "playable" D&D. I'll give it a low ***, mainly because the bat theme is nice and fairly tight. The map is also interesting. But this one needs some work and polish. ***EDIT: I am changing my opinion of this one...slightly. Treasure is still too low and danger is still too high, but this is definitely playable (***) AND the tight theming is worth a "+" moving the thing up higher in my personal rankings.***
In BX (and OSE) anyone who has been drained of blood by a vampire bat can rise as any undead, not just a vampire. I don't have my copy of Moldvay handy but I can see this in the online OSE SRD. My guess is that it was as broad as any undead because Moldvay's most powerful undead was the wight.
ReplyDeleteHaha! Wow! You're absolutely right! Never read that before (p. B31).
DeleteOkay. I'll have to re-evaluate this adventure.
It's easily missed, as are many quirky rules in the monster section (eg: chameleon, giant lashing out with its tail and knocking you over for example). That quirkiness isn't anywhere near as strong in the Cook-Marsh Expert book. I wonder whether that carried over in Mentzer's Basic? I like to think that these quirks are reflective of Moldvay's house rules, and for me make his book my favourite.
DeleteNow ***+ though still not quite 4-star material.
DeleteI appreciate you pointing it out to me. It's not every day I get schooled in some aspect of B/X!
Delete"So... which is it?" is a really good callout. OSE is a very solid clone of BX. Probably the best out there. Advanced is a different animal. It is not a clone of AD&D or even a truncated clone like LL-Advanced. It is more a simulacrum of AD&D created via the result of a thought experiement asking several questions: What if TSR has never split the line and BX was the base for AD&D? What if level 14 was as high as it went? What if there were only 6 levels of spells? How would the more popular AD&D elements have manifested if they had simply been an expansion on BX?
ReplyDeleteOSE Advanced still stops at level 14. The max level of spell is still 6. So while race and class are separated and a lot of AD&Disms like spells, treasures, and monsters are added, the mechanics - morale, combat etc. follow the BX lead. But the spells and monsters are re-leveled to fit into this context and while the "to hit", spells per day and hit point power curve does not really change from OSE, the RELATIVE power to the monsters from AD&D does because the spells and monsters have been recalibrated to fit the "14 level as a hard ceiling" paradigm. It is this compression that drives my love for OSE Advanced.
However, while any level of adventure designed for OSE transfers seamlessly to OSE Advanced (and part of the appeal of the system) and vice versa, purely OSE characters in an Advanced adventure may not have some capabilities against some Advanced monsters, and Advanced characters in a purely OSE adventure may have a capability that gives them an unanticipated advantage.
Huh. Interesting...I was unaware (I've never read Advanced OSE). A 14 level hard cap is...interesting. So the game is designed to be finite? Well, that's a choice. A GOOD choice for B/X. But not the kind of game I want to play these days.
DeleteI guess my conclusion is while an adventure written for OSE or OSE Advanced can be used with either - so it kind of doesn't matter which one it was written for - but because it can matter, prospective DMs and players should be able to know if the adventure is going to have Advanced elements in it. Best example I can think of is a DM that is running OSE RAW with no tweaks or expansions and for some reason wants to keep it that way. Maybe they are running a weekly game down at the Baranoff, who knows? Depending on what they are doing they may not want Advanced Chocolate in their OSE peanut butter. And so it would help to know "Ah that adventure might have curve balls I don't want to have to handle after 2 pints."
ReplyDeleteI'm going to guess that for an adventure of 1st and 2nd level, there's not much difference between OSE and OSE Advanced.
DeleteNot really no. I just looked to make sure I am correct on all this. Spell lists for Clerics and MUs are the same in both. The interesting releveling of spells happens in the Druid and Illusionist spells. For example, Control Weather (7th) and Wall of Thorns (6th) are now both 5th level spells. Of which there are only 6.
DeleteNot particularly original:
Deletehttps://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/11/holmes-rules-druid-part-1.html
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/11/holmes-rules-druid-part-2.html
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/11/holmes-rules-illusionist-part-1.html
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/11/holmes-rules-illusionist-part-2.html
(that's from 2015)
Delete