Patracleo's Peregrinating Pyramid of Peril (Matthew Lake)
Seven Voyages of Zylarthen adventure for three to six PCs of levels 5th-6th
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.
Once again, Matthew Lake takes the final submission spot. Last year's entry was the best of the bunch and a decisive winner of the contest. This year? Well...
I'll make this brief, because I've already spent way too much time on this one. The idea here isn't bad: an undead AEgyptian princess zips around the world in her flying pyramid, picking up dummies to run a gauntlet/obstacle course for her immortal amusement. Okay, actually writing that out it looks worse than the concept actually is (I mean, D&D's premise isn't the greatest...).
The problem with this one (well, my MAIN problem) is that A) it's written for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, which requires some 'transduction' for me to grok, and B) the re-skinned monsters which need to be translated to 7VZ just so that I can translate them again to D&D terms. Which is a pain in the ass.
When I'm picking up a pre-written adventure for use at my table, I don't want UNDERSTANDING the module to be a "pain in the ass."
I will not quibble overmuch about 7VZ as an entry, because while NO, its system is NOT compatible with TSR-era D&D (its combat system functions differently), that doesn't matter terribly when looking at the adventure itself. All I see is "bugbear 12 HPs" or "gold ankh 500gp" or "save vs. spells or dance madly for 2-12 turns." These things all translate as "standard" D&D, and if you are playing this using OD&D, you don't need to know the funky 7VZ rules, nor does it matter that 7VZ doesn't use clerics or whatever.
No, the two biggest issues here are just monsters and treasures.
All the damn re-skins. "Scarabites" as goblins. "Stag-Scarabites" as hobgoblins. "Bear-bugs" as bugbears. "Scarabite flyers" as...winged goblins, I guess? Infrared scarabs (invisible goblins). I mean, I get it, you've got a bug theme going on here. I'm trying to play D&D, and I keep seeing paragraphs full of unfamiliar mouthful of words and I have to remember if Rhino-Scarabs are the ones that get ridden (they are) or are those the Stag-Scarabs (no, they're the riders). Scarab-scarab-scarab...sheesh.
But that just makes the thing a headache to parse. The other issue is the treasure.
7VZ uses a "silver standard," which NO is NOT the same as an TSR-era edition of D&D but whatever, I can do math. So players have to SPEND money to earn x.p. (*sigh*) and they get 1 x.p. for every 1 silver piece spent. So, easy right? Just add up the s.p. value and treat it like g.p. for seeing if the treasure totals are good for this adventure, right?
Except that the author isn't CONSISTENT with his nomenclature. He gives some items' values in gold piece, some values in silver pieces, and then there are coppers thrown in the mix just to piss me off (because in Zylarthen, five CPs = 1 SP, meaning that UNLIKE normal D&D, 100K in copper is worth a phat score of 20K experience points, rather than just something to weigh down bodies in the river...). As a reviewer I have to assume that the author did not just typo his way through this thing and meant every scrap of loot to be worth its exact value which, besides being a pain in the ass, GROSSLY OVERVALUES the treasure yield of this adventure...should be 43K in silver and instead you've got 110K.
Of course, if you were just using it as an OD&D adventure than it's grossly UNDERvalued at a paltry 11K in gold pieces. Bleah.
Matthew, you did a great job last year, and you're a creative guy, but this one needs work. For me, it's not even playable...but I don't play Seven Voyages, even if it IS the "new hotness" amongst classic adventure gamers. However, some people do and...as with the ACKS submissions...I'll defer to other reviewers and simply mark this as *** assuming its appropriately functional (if over-treasured) for 7VZers.
The end.
Deserves a + for the alliterative title and managing to use "peregrinating" properly.
ReplyDeleteFeels like all of your ratings for systems you don't know and can't be bothered to learn should be disqualified completely when it comes to the final tally. If those systems were allowed by the contest rules, your negative opinion of them as "not being D&D" is irrelevant and shouldn't be counted against those entries.
I'm glad you like the title - had to dig out a thesaurus for that one!
DeleteThere are five judges for this contest; if four of the five find an adventure to be excellent, one curmudgeonly opinion probably ain't going to sway the results.
DeleteThe ASC generally ends with the best 8 or so adventures being compiled in a single volume work. My "top nine" (which I've already submitted) were all rated 3* or higher...I did not elevate 2* adventures over any of the entries (like ACKS) that were given a "default score." Or...to put it another way...my own judgment criteria provided me with enough "winning submissions" despite my disdain for certain systems.
BUT...as I said...if the other judges (who are more knowledgeable about these systems than myself and who can provide better analysis) find these adventures to be spectacular, they will certainly elevate them over my own findings. In the end I am just one voice.
Hi JB, thanks for the review. I appreciate the feedback, even if 7VoZ isn't your cup of tea.
ReplyDeleteI see where you're coming from with the monster reskins. In my game I've reskinned most of the European-themed creatures to fit an Egyptian milieu and I'd hoped the goblinoid reskins were intuitively named, but I guess adding entirely new monsters with the same theme doesn't help.
For the treasure I am using the book's silver standard, but I choose to give the value of metallic treasure in the units of that metal (e.g. gold statue in gp) in the hopes it would be clearer. Evidently that had the opposite of the intended effect :)
I'm curious about the overall treasure count though. I benchmarked against the book's recommendation of [avg sp to level] * [avg party size] * [1.5 - 2.5] per dungeon level, and then divided by half given adventure sites are smaller and denser. For 3-6 level 5/6s, that gave me a target range of 142k - 236k for a dungeon level and 71k - 118k for an adventure site. I'm surprised that your benchmark is significantly lower.
Also to pick at nits: 100k of copper is 20k xp not 50k.
Finally, with an eye to polishing this up a bit, do you have any specific feedback on the tricks / traps / encounters?
Hm.
DeleteJust going back and reading 7VZ, I see that the formula Spaulding uses to determine treasure per dungeon level assumes "at least 50-100 encounter areas per level." Your adventure site, being 18 encounters, would presumably require a much smaller proportion of treasure than "half" that amount...more like 18-36%. I think calling it one-quarter would be fair.
So, using the 7VZ formula we get something on the magnitude of 36,000-60,000 silver pieces worth of expected treasure, an average of 48K, which is less than my own calculation method (57.6K) but still in the rough ballpark. Your potential treasure yield of 117K in silver pieces seems excessive given the size of the adventure site. Distribution of treasure is good...an easy fix would be to cut most values in half.
Other than treasure...
Good range of monsters and traps. Probably errs a bit on the side of the "vicious/lethal" side. Undead are perhaps too easy for this level range if using standard OD&D to run (7VZ has more difficult turn numbers despite anyone with a holy symbol getting a chance). I think the "tile trap" is going to throw people off (they'll start their count at 2, not 1) which I can anticipate causing irritation. The low gravity room feels a little fiddly to me. Would probably like to see the scimitar BEFORE the arena, as that battle is likely to wipe out the party...some very beefy threats, even if the PCs can find a way to remove the iron golem using the rust monsters. I kind of love the "dance hall."
The three artifacts are all well done.
Despite being difficult to parse, it's a good adventure, Matthew. With some adjustments (particularly to treasure, and room #17), this would be an easy four (4) stars...either for OD&D or 7VZ.