Bones of the Mountain (Jakob McFarland)
S&W adventure for PCs of 5th level
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.
This one's okay. Starts out with a banger of a premise...feels very mythic/folklore. Seven wights ride down from the Black Mountain every full moon on the back of their giant wolves, carrying off women from the valley below; a mad Sherpa claims he can lead you to their dark fortress for 100 gold coins.
Site is biggish (18 encounter areas) but it is still a "small" fortress. Draugr are just "wights" in my book (literally in my book...if you read my Five Ancient Kingdoms, you'll find I've replaced the "wight" entry with "draug." Well, druj really...had to go all Zorastrian, after all...but draug is what the Northmen call them. Oh, yeah...here, too), but in THIS adventure they are:
Frozen undead soldiers. They shall be statted as zombies with 3HD.
What exactly does this mean to be "statted as zombies?" They don't share the same AC or HD as zombies. Does the author mean they can be turned as zombies? Do they always attack last like zombies?
The mythic/folklore feeling persists throughout the adventure and helps make any weirdness (the friendly werewolves, the illusion-generating spider) seem like part of some dark fairytale rather than gonzo bullshit. No, the real problem lies with the treasure count. The scenario doesn't say how many PCs it assumes, but seven seems about the right number and that would mean some 67K in treasure for a site this size. Instead, we get less than 20% of that as potential take...far, far too little.
McFarland's adventure is still playable D&D, and has got some nice theming going for it. But the treasure is way off and despite some pretty beefy encounters (the worgs, wights, and draugr are nasty), it could probably stand to contain one or two more threats/hazards. Three stars (***) with definite potential.
I am loving your reviews, but have an incredibly dumb question to ask. How do you calculate "appropriate" treasaure for an adventure? I'm building out some stuff now and would love to understand that procedure.
ReplyDeleteSure, here's the basic gist:
DeleteFor a given adventure designed for a particular number of PCs of a particular level, you should be able to expect enough treasure to advance the entire ONE LEVEL over (roughly) 30ish keyed encounters.
SO (for example): a B/X adventure written for 4-6 PCs or 3rd to 5th level in B/X should have an expected yield in the neighborhood of 5 (avg. # PCs) X 8,000 x.p. (amount needed to raise a 4th level fighter one level) = 40,000 g.p. PER 30 ENCOUNTER AREAS. If you have a 15 encounter adventure site, you're looking at HALF this amount (i.e. 20,000 g.p. worth).
For an AD&D adventure for 6-8 PCs of 6th-8th level, you're looking at 7 x 55,000 = 385,000 g.p. worth of treasure per 30. A twelve area adventure site should thus have (roughly) 154K in treasure which (in AD&D) includes magic items (I use the g.p. value for magic items sold, not the x.p. value for magic items retained).
Again, this is POTENTIAL treasure yield...you should not expect PCs to find every last scrap of treasure, nor every hidden room and secret lair. PCs gain x.p. for other things after all (combat), and when some PCs die, the survivors reap a larger share of the reward...even if/when they decide to abandon a site due to danger/lethality or 'reward not worth risk.'
With regard to distribution, I like to see some sort of loot in roughly 40+% of encounter areas, and never less than 30% or thereabouts (50% is probably too high).
Of course, all this assumes the danger/"threat" level is appropriate for the expected PCs for which the adventure is designed.
I am glad you're enjoying my reviews: hopefully, people find something constructive in all my criticism.
; )
Thanks for sharing your method about treasure distribution — I'm gonna try this out in my next adventure site. My experience is that those dungeons I enjoy the most either playing are dming designed by those who care about nuances of right the ratio of room, treasures players (and whatnot), so I seek any such practices to improve my methods.
DeleteOne thing stuck with me regarding your comment about the actual ratio, where your average recommended nr. of rooms with treasure is 30 to 50%. Based on my previous digging my guts said this seems way more than in the original games. So I checked Actual Dungeon Mastering "master document" (which collects a few original and oldschool system site design methods, and I use it a lot as a reference point while designing) and made some quick calculation, to make sure I remember correctly. Based on the doc in B/X there's ~28% average chance for treasure (10 rooms have treasure per 36 rooms) and 20% for ADnD (4 rooms have treasures per 20 rooms). I did not have the chance to revisit ODnD's method but I believe it also runs with a lower percentage.
My understanding that you aim to play ADnD as RAW as possible and I assume you've modified the original ratios as per your experience as a referee over the years. Also, your description is pretty straightforward and makes sense — but I'm still curious how and why did you end up changing the original ratios?
Disclaimer heap: I did not check the original version of the rulebooks, assumed this little handy document represents the right ratios. Also I have never played or refereed ADnD, (only OSRIC), so I might not have all insights to understand the math behind. Last but not least: math is not my forte :D
My original distribution ratio of (nearly) 33% comes directly from Moldvay. I've explained this in another post, I believe...mmm:
Deletehttps://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2015/09/stocking-per-moldvay-part-2.html
However, in practice I find 33% to be a bit "light," and so I've upped it to 40%. Or, rather, I noticed Anthony Huso tends towards a 40% ratio, and when I tried THAT, I found it worked BETTER.
Generally, I do not randomly generate treasure from the MM tables, although I DO use those tables as a guide to the kinds of things a a monster of a particular type would have in its "lair." But I don't usually do the random dice roll thing unless I'm pressed for time and/or have a large number of magic items I need to generate.
Hmm...I could probably do a whole blog post on how I use the treasure tables.
That premise is excellent, definitely one that I'd like to play in. Seems a relatively easy fix.
ReplyDeleteThat's my thought, too. This is pretty classic D&D-ish stuff here. It'd make a nice little scenario (party comes to town, a la the Seven Samurai, and hear about the town''s troubles...adventure ensues!). Just needs a little tightening of the bolts.
Delete