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By Shanklimb
Self Published
Domenwood
Levels 2-3

A desperate mother, Brala, approaches the PCs – in a tavern, on the road, etc. When she awoke this morning, her infant was gone. Searching the woods around her cottage, she found tracks of hoof-marks, which she can lead you to. Crookhorns stole her baby, Lilith, and you need to find her before she becomes breakfast! 

This six page adventure uses three pages to describe ten rooms in a small cave lair. Weirdly incomprehensible in places, there’s no lead in so there’s no pay off. 

Hey, get an editor. If it’s not a real editor then have your worst enemy read over your adventure before you push the publish button. You want someone else to see what you’ve put down on paper. You’re too close to it. You already KNOW what you meant so your brain is filling in context that the rest of us fuckwits don’t have. And not your mom. You don’t want someone saying “its great!” You want someone to rip you apart. You don’t have to take every comment they make to heart but you want them making all of those comments.

Case in point. In one of the last rooms of the this adventure, nine or ten I think, there’s this witch buried under the dirt floor. Fuck if I know why. Anyway, if the witch Gwendolyne is with the party then the witch uncoverers herself and helps the party. There is no witch named Gwendolyn in the adventure. The name Gwendolyn doesn’t appear in the adventure anywhere except that sentence. And no, there’s no Gwen or anything like that. Have someone who hates you read the adventure. 

This next point is probably not relevant to anyone except me, who finds it very interesting. How much can you ‘lie’ in an adventure if it serves a purpose? This adventure is using the OSE description style, which some fuckwits overly hate on. But, anyway, in one of the early rooms, an entry tunnel, it read “Narrow (unsupported ceiling)”  I hate this. I hate it because of the hypocrisy it reveals. It is fucking dumb. Of course it’s unsupported. No other ceiling reads as supported. It’s not important to the adventure. It’s like putting (alive) after every creature and NPC description in an adventure in which that doesn’t matter in any special way. It’s fucking bullshit nonsense. Oh, yeah, and also it does accomplish the purpose of writing, which is to communicate a feeling to the reader. Narrow and unsupported certainly lends to a claustrophobic kind of vibe, yeah? I think the unsupported word helps conjure up a certain kind of imagery of the scene in the DMs head in a way that simply “Narrow” doesn’t communicate. So, it’s doing a great job, adding the superfluous Unsupported word, using the language in a way needed to communicate the overall vibe of the encounter. It just FEELS wrong to see it, although it’s just as right if you were to scan this in order to run it. You are allowed to twist and turn and push and pull the language in any way needed in order to communicate the overall impact the description is supposed to have. My ‘padding!’ hat hates it and yet I cannot deny that it is effective.

Looking at that tunnel entry, the description reads “Narrow (unsupported ceiling). Four

dead crookhorns (throats carefully slit, blood still fresh). Two dead women (adolescent, impaled)” I find that some striking imagery. Throats slit. Adolescent impaled women. That’s pretty nice. Vivid. A pretty decent description. And, also, when you imagine impalement, that’s some vlad stuff, right? With the pole in the ground? No, I don’t think so. While the description is quite vivid I THINK that the women were just speared, like in the middle of battle. Later, we find some other witches in the complex and I think its clear from their entries that they attempted a raid and that there was a battle in that tunnel, the witches doing some throat slitting and a couple of them getting stabbed with spears. So, striking imagery, but, perhaps, not quite accurate. 

The set up here is a little confusing. A woman finds you and says her baby was just taken. It’s suggested that this could be in a tavern, but I don’t think that makes sense, from a How a Community Reacts standpoint, the other option being on the road which I think works much better. Anyway, there’s some QUITE confusing text that follows. I think the witches kidnapped the baby, took it to their cave lair (the dungeon) and then it was invaded by the Crookhorns and their leader, let’s call her a hag. They want to kill witches and/or convert them in to their messiah. And, anyway, they don’t care about the baby AND the witches were mistaken, the baby they kidnapped was the wrong one. Actually, I think the witches think the baby is their messiah also. It’s a confusing mess and after several read-throughs I’m still not sure I have things straight.  There’s little lead in here, just the frantic woman and some tracks. This, I suspect, does not bode well for the complex situation that I think the designer is trying to get across across here, with the various goals and the creature factions mistaken identities, the lair invasion, etc. But the ‘thrust in to the middle of it’ thing doesn’t work well without the context needed, or any buy in. Not the greatest fault for a site based adventure, but, also, no real stakes except maybe for the baby, motivating the party to do anything other than just putting everyone to the torch.

Other than this, the adventure is mostly a hack. You can talk to some of the witches, and rescue some/all of them that are left alive, but no mention of rewards for their troubles. I think, maybe, three rooms with encounters, maybe more if you just start stabbing captured/trapped witches. They seem to want to talk a bit, but evasive about answers, which, in Brycelandia means you get to tell your story to Odin.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $2. The preview is three pages, which shows you the overview and the first page of four encounters, so, good preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/584721/the-baby-in-the-briar-a-dolmenwood-adventure?1892600

By Ron Meischker
Orange Cat Games
Castles & Crusades
Levels 4-6

An ancient tomb. A fading bard. A new generation of heroes. The venerable adventurer, Targan the Bard, has learned about a long-forgotten ancient tomb and has chosen your adventuring party to explore it. He is only asking one thing in return… Are you ready to make history?

This sixteen page adventure uses six pages to describe nine rooms in a linear tomb dungeon. Long italics second-person read-aloud. Linear. Long DM text. And, ultimately, Just Another Tomb Adventure.

It’s a nine room linear tomb dungeon that turns out to be A Test To See If You’re Worthy, the 1,936,736 Test/Challenge dungeon I’ve reviewed in this blogs short history. Seriously, it feels like there’s more of these things than there are orcs in a hole. At this point it’s all rote: linear dungeon. Some trap rooms. Some guardians. But, we must judge each thing on their own merits, so, how about this iteration of the nine linear room trap/guardian challenge/test dungeon tomb? 

I’m not sure I have much interesting to say. It’s got a lot of read-aloud, which is not good. People don’t pay attention when long sections of read-aloud come trotting out. The read-aloud is in italics, sometimes almost half a column, which is not good. Long sections of italics, or any funky font, are hard to read for the DM. It’s using a second person writing style, with lots of “you”, which is not good. It robs the room of immersion as it ignores the varied style of play that individual parties will engage in. “None of us have eyes you clod!” is hyperbolic but gets the point across. I do, however, admire the ability of the party to all have built-in DeWalt leaser measurement devices so they know from the read-aloud that a ceiling is 18.5” feet high in the first sentence. Whatever. Nothing to see, move along, move along.

The DM text is long and padded out. I think in one room I counter three times that the party will need light to see. Do they need oxygen to breathe? I know, it sounds nit-picky. But it’s pure padding. It’s like saying they need air to breathe or some other obvious statement. Multiple times. This kind of shit gets in the way. It gets in the way of the DM scanning the text to find the information they need and it gets in the way of the designer, who is distracted by this nonsense instead of working the room harder. 

And the DM padding. Oh my. “ENTERING THE TOMB – This is the first challenge the party will face. The party encounters an obstacle immediately upon reaching the tomb: a massive obstruction blocking the entrance. The party will need to find a way to move the slab.” This is all preamble. Then there’s the read-aloud. Then theres the actual DM text of the blockage. There’s no point of the preamble. And it’s like this everywhere. Just repetition for the sake of repetition. 

The flooding chamber trap. The stone crush trap. The mirror of opposition trap. The water weird in the fountain. The required false tomb. The mummy that wears an amulet that makes it immune to turn undead. (Thanks B2!) 

It’s a small linear tomb test dungeon, just like all of the small linear tomb test dungeons that have come before. I am annoyed by how cookie cutter it is.

The one thing that isn’t cookie cutter is the build. It’s packed dirt and peat moss and bog wood. You know, the kind of wood that is sunken and preserved and turns to like iron? The adventure makes a big deal of the lack of stone and how the bog wood is the major construction item. But it’s not to any end. It doesn’t play any part in the dungeon at all. Also, isn’t that wood super expensive, and always has been? Mining the dungeon for the wood would be of great profit. Why base the entire dungeon on this window dressing if you’re not ging to do anything with it?

So, just the standard straight line tomb, with all of the seemingly required parts of that. Nothing special. But, lots of padding and a read-aloud that make it hard to dig through and run.

This is $12 at DriveThru. There is no preview. There needs to be a preview, showing a few encounters, so a potential buyer can get a sense of things before they commit to the spend. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/569173/tomb-of-the-ancient-moor-king-castles-and-crusades?1892600

By Scott_M
First Era Adventures
OSRIC
Levels 1-2

Clinging to a rugged mountainside, this once-magnificent palace of a self-styled empress stands burned-out and abandoned, though its dire ivory tower yet stands, unblemished. Beneath the toppled estate sprawls a maze of chambers dedicated to the mad Empress Helene’s perverse delectations. Within may be found wondrous treasures and terrible dangers alike. Only the foolhardy dare venture there now. The few brave explorers who tested it did return with riches—and a steadfast refusal to ever try their luck in the dungeon again.

This ten page adventure presents one level of an old school megadungeon. A solid work with good ideas, it captures the spirit of OSR play, even if the theming is light.

What an interesting dungeon level! This is the first level (although it seems like there’s an “outside” level also) of a megadungeon. Mumble mumble Imperial Queen mumble mumble. Anyway, this thing is doing a pretty decent job in presenting an old school megadungeon level. There’s a mix between traps, secrets, hacking, and specials. This FEELS like a dungeon out of the early days. 

Level one has some orcs and “evil men” (berserkers) having invaded the level and pushing the hobgoblins down to level two. This is the major level theme, with a few undead and vermin and such scattered about also. One of the first rooms reads “Fragments of rotting wall tapestries dangle from iron rods. A torch gutters on the NE wall. Room is filled with flies and stinks of death from 3 hobgoblins impaled on wooden stakes (dead ~3 weeks, stripped and mutilated, facing S wall). N door is locked and barred (–1 Open Doors).” There are two components here, the writing style and the mechanics. The mechanics here are terse. There’s enough facts and numbers for the DM to get a rough idea of what is going on and then to interpret for themselves. I like this style. As a DM I want a little guidance on how to frame things, how hard things should be, etc, but I don’t want a full on prescriptive page of guidance for every detail of the thing, be it a room, door, or magic item. The room description is decent enough. A GUTTERing torch. IMPALED bodies. ROTTing and DANGLing. Flies and the stink of death. It’s doing a good job of sticking in adjectives and adverbs to help bring life and specificity to the rooms objects. In another room we have “The room reeks of sweat and smoke. Three filthy, degenerate hillmen squat around a copper brazier, poking at smoldering coals.”Reeking of sweat and smoke is a good sentence. And I love a good berserker description that calls them filthy and degenerate hillmen. It didn’t call them berserkers. Instead it described the people. I wish every adventure described how the party interacted with something instead of just slamming in a monster type. It feels visceral, yeah? It’s doing a pretty good job keeping the single-column room descriptions short and evocative. It’s not rock star quality but it  is solid solid work, room after room.

There are a variety of specials in this as well, but which I think I mean interactivity beyond stabbin. Traps blah blah blah. But, also, a Wizard Vault “Heavy iron door (–2 Open Doors) has 3 separate locks and is also Wizard-locked (at 12th level).” There’s something for the party to come back to later, yeah?  In another room “The walls are decorated with bas reliefs depicting the cutthroat adventures of a frog-headed knight in plate mail wielding a military pick” First, I love that. Frog-headed. Military pick. CUTTHROAT adventures. Nice job on that little bit. There’s a fountain in the room  with murky scummy water with a frog statue spitting water in to it. Opening the mouth reveals loot. Purifying the water causes a suit of +1 plat mail (with the head of a frog) to rise, all Excalibur like, from the pool (where it otherwise is not present.) Hidden depth, yeah? Fuck with shit. Do the right thing. Be rewarded. There are teleport hallways, a secret door middle chamber. Hidden loot inside of little niches, statues to mess with. It’s not set pieces or a funhouse, but rather those kinds of weird dungeon things that you find in old school exploratory dungeons. There are a few weird creatures as well for the party to figure out, like a vortex in ajar that is a little whirlwind that will trap someone inside of it. Yes yes, everything has been done before, but its not mainstream and I like it as a great example of dungeon weirdness that still makes sense.

The map is relatively complex, with, I think, five sets of stairs on it? Teleport hallways, pits, secret doors abound. Loops. I could quibble with there not being monsters on the map, always on features no on the page, or a lack of dungeon environments on the map, like same level stairs, etc, to liven things up. Those would all improve things but the map is also not doing anything wrong and is large enough to encourage exploratory play, which is more than welcome. 

There are some areas in this in which things could be more visceral and/or an appeal to mechanics is made when descriptive text would be better. I think the classic example is with a trapped chest: “The handle is trapped with contact poison.” That’s pretty classic. But, also, generic. I might trap is bubonic plague, or cyanide, or cholera shit smeared on thorns. Those are all much more grounded, much more specific, than a generic “contact poison.” Is contact poison bad? No. But cholera is always better. 

There’s also a bit of, oh I don’t know, genericism, in the level proper. What we;re looking at here is one level in a megadungeon and thusly it suffers from that episodic nature. The theming here is “ weird dungeon level one.” So, the elements of classic OSR weirdness are present but they don’t really serve a purpose. I’m not sure I understand the above ground portion or the levels before this, or get a sense of what they could be. There seems to be a lack of continuity, only in that I don’t really see what continuity there could be given the themeless nature of the level. 

To this end, I’m probably not going to review another level of this. I’ll instead wait a bit and grab all the rest of the levels and review it as whole the time I visit. And I WILL be doing that. This is a classic megadungeon level and I LUV a good megadungeon and good megadungeon level. I got no regerts on this one, and may bump it when I see the rest.

This is Pay What You Want at DriveThru with a suggested price of $1. The whole thing is in the preview also, so, check it out.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582765/the-hurricane-dungeon-the-upper-works-level-1?1892600

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Blogtor Who has entered the world of Battles in Time with a fast growing collection of these fun and beautiful Doctor Who trading cards

 

Those who’ve been following along with Blogtor Who’s Instagram Reels and TikTok will already know how much he’s been enjoying the reinvigorated Battles in Time from Master Replicas. We’ve has now opened a whole box of the Obliterator set, along with the packs for the First Doctor and the Second Doctor.

The collectible card game originally ran from 2006 to 2009 and covered Series One to Series Four. Now it’s back, and expanding to cover all the seasons before those seasons and those since. Each character features a different character, object, or action, with the own power rating, as well as offensive and defensive strengths for intelligence, agility, stamina, special abilities, and fear factor. When competing against another player, these scores determine the winner, but objects like the sonic sunglasses or the Moment have special actions that can change everything.

However, the real appeal here is just how gorgeous all the cards look. Many of the modern eras of Doctor Who featured fantastic, high resolution photographs and they’ve rarely looked better than when produced on the glossy Battles in Time cards. But Master Replicas also do wonders with the photos from the 1960s. Wonderfully, they’re resisted any urge to colourise them, and the black and white image look simply beautiful here.

The current status of Blogtor Who’s own Obliterator collection Building a complete set with depend on a great deal of trading with your fellow fans, but even an incomplete set is a lovely thing to behold

The Obliterator set consists of 142 individual cards, 92 of which are Common, 40 are Rare, and 10 are Super Rare. Each packet of six cards contains 5 Commons, either 1 Rare (in 9 out of 10 packs) or 1 Super Rare (in 1 out of 10 packs.) Although to add to the fun, or complexity, whichever way you want to look at it, there are also Vortex cards to be found in 1 in 720 packs, and 6 oversized Box Toppers, with 1 in every box of 36 packs.

If that that all makes building a complete collection sound like a daunting task, then you’d be right. You could spend over £2,000 on boxes and still only probably find an ultra-rare Vortex card. Leaving that aside, even putting together the full 142 cards on the main set will depend on some canny trading with other collectors. In Blogtor Who’s review box from Master Replicas, we wound up with 55 Commons, 15 Rares, and 2 Super Rares, with the rest of the box doubles of those cards. So more or less half of the entire set.

However, few things worth doing are easy, and the thrill of finding a new card, versus the good natured groan finding your twelfth Mr. Sweet from The Crimson Horror, is more benign and pleasant than a visit to the casino. In any event, even an incomplete set is a delightful thing to have between your Target Books and Blu-rays.

 

The Doctor sets, however, feature 15 cards in every packet, giving you their entire set of Rare cards in one go

There are no such concerns with the First Doctor and Second Doctor sets. Each is a single packet of 15 Rare cards, highlighting companions and monsters from their respective eras. Plus, of course, the Hartnell and Troughton Doctors themselves. Moreover, this is just the start, with more such self-contained sets for each classic Doctor arriving each month. Though it will be interesting to see how the team get 15 cards out of the Eighth Doctor era.

There’s also a full Dalek Invasion set, following fast on the heels of Obliterator, and even a new Doctor set for Circuit Breaker. It seems clear that the regenerated Battles in Time is here to stay. And while it may not be the most inexpensive hobby, whether you’re a Tennant baby looking for a hit of nostalgia, a dedicated gaming enthusiast bringing two interests together, or the newest of fans encountering Doctor Who’s long legacy in a fun and visually appealing way, it doesn’t disappoint.

You can follow along with Blogtor Who’s Battles in Time journey on Instagram and TikTok. Meanwhile, you can start your own Battles in Time collection by ordering from the Master Replicas page.

 

 

 

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By Howard Shirley
Parzoval Games
OSR
Level 1

A beautiful bride, a handsome groom, a starlit wedding… and GOBLINS! At least you have a wedding present for the young couple— a promise to rescue the kidnapped groom!

This 26 page adventure uses about six pages to describe ten rooms in a small goblin lair. Lots of read-aloud. Lots of stabbin. Lots of text, in general. Oh, also, your level ones get to save the world. *YAWN*

You’re at a wedding. You’ve haven’t brought your weapons and you’re not wearing you’re armor because you’re at a wedding. I mean, because you’re stooopid. The murder hobo trope wasn’t started by the players. Bad DM’s and bad designers are to blame, when when all you’ve ever cared about has been butchered. Anyway, the designer wants you to grab a smith hammer or the spit the pig is on, or a butcher knife and go chasing after the goblins who crash in and steal the groom. Goblins, a lot of them, wolf riders, shivving the old people. This is all the shitty hook, related over three agonizingly long pages of DM text and read-aloud. Anyway, you stab stab stab but you can’t win since it’s the hook and the groom gerd stolen by them and oh no you’ve got no weapons or armor and have to pick up what you can find and give chase to the goblins. 

Ok, so, second scene, you head in to the woods to give chase and come across two goblin wolf riders. Stab stab stab. Again. You keep going. You come to the goblins lair, a cave with a door in the mouth. You now have ten rooms to explore. You pull aggro if you’re loud at the front door, otherwise you just stab stab stab in every room. In the last stab stab stab room you meet the goblin shaman. The groom is on a throne in a trance and the shaman is doing his ritual thing. It takes him like a full hour to do it, after which The Evil One gets summoned in to the grooms body. Like, a level 36 evil cleric. Anyway, it takes an hour from then the party shows up at the rooms door, so, no hurry. You stab a bunch.

The text is single column and this thing is the poster child for why that’s a bad idea. The whole eye fatigue thing form scanning all the way right an left. Yeah yeah, it sounds like minor shit but it’s a real effect. And then the read-aloud is LONG. Like quarter page long. No one cares. After two or three sentences peoples attention starts to drift. You gotta keep the read-aloud short. And the text is LONG, in general. The goblin raid on the wedding takes like three pages to describe For goblins on wolf back to snag the groom. And then, in the cave section, it starts with like a ¾ page overview of what a captured goblin might know. With no formatting at all so it’s just read the entire fucking thing and hope you stumble across whatever the party is asking about. START THE FUCKING SHOT WITH A BOLDED WORD. Jesus, man. 

Oh, what else, you start with a locate object spell, I guess to find the cave? Although the tracks are easy to follow? You also start with a very high level dispel magic scroll tht can be used to break the ritual. You know, whenever you find a bunch of potions of water breathing laying by the side of the road then its time to head up in to the hills. You GOTTA write an adventure where you don’t need this deus ex shit. Why the fuck does it have to be the end of the world at level one, at the first adventure?! (Although … that’s a fun campaign. EVERY session has the party saving the world. Betty the housekeeper. Frank the night soil dude, EVERYONE is trying to end the world. TO save it you must end them all. Everyone in the world!)  You can fuck around and break the conventions, but do it for a reason. Give them six of every magic item in game one. But on purpose. Because the resulting power struggles are the campaign. But, no, no Staves of Power at level one because you need that to overcome some specific challenge. Write the fucking adventure without needing that shit. 

So, you wade through a lot of poorly formatted and overly long text in a railroad setup, for no reason, in order to just stab a bunch of goblins. I’m not real sure what goes through peoples heads when they write these things. Its easy to say that the vision and implementation didn’t align. But, that should be obvious from looking at it, right? So why not work it harder instead of just pressing publish?

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. The last four are the hook and the goblin chase. They are a decent representation of what you’ll find inside. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582262/the-night-of-the-goblin?1892600

Also, you should see Night of the Hunter if you’ve not. It’s no Night of the Goblin, but, you know, what can be?

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By M. Allen Hall
Self Published
OSE
Levels 2-3

The disappearance of Old Ilfen has left the wizard’s tower at the center of a power struggle. Lord Cargan wants to tear the tower down and replace it with a lighthouse. Skaarn and his pixie war band want to raid the dungeon below the tower and recover a magic item Ilfen once stole from them. Ilfen wants someone to help him get his body back. And at the bottom of the dungeon, the Green Ooze King wants to be left alone so it can seed other worlds with its spawn. Whether they want to help Cargan, Skaarn, Ilfen, or only themselves, your players’ characters will be drawn into Ilfen’s Halls to face the Green Ooze King and its minions.

This 34 page adventure presents twelve hexes and a small dungeon with twenty rooms in an “abandoned” wizards tower. It does a decent job of setting up a wizardly lair and in presenting several factions working against each other. Faction play follow through could be a bit better, and the hex and room descriptions get long in places, but the weirdo ooze monsters are a highlight.

Lord Rob is a decent dude. He also HATES the local wizard “made all the worse by the fact that the wizard seems oblivious to his hatred”, which makes him hate him even more. Wizard dude disappears so the lord decides to use the site of his island tower to build a lighthouse cause of all the shipwrecks. This in spite of the fact that there are better places on the island to build it. That is an excellent bit of pettiness there, love it. He’s sent a work crew, led by a foreman (who’d rather building in the better spot on the isle) and the work crew is having trouble. Explosions while working on the tower. Monsters coming out of the forest to attack the camp. Sometimes the tower, being unblocked from the top, seems to regrow. There are some pixies hanging about, unknown to anyone, who are trying to get in the tower to recover a magic crown, and they are the cause of the shadow monsters coming out of the forest. The wizard, of course, if not dead. His body is in the Ooze King in the basement and his head is floating around the rest of the dungeon, unable to communicate but REALLY wanting to be reunited with his body once the ooze king is dead. Thus we have the laborers, mercenaries hired to protect the laborers, the fey, and then the wizard head all mucking about the area with different goals. Add to this The Party. I do love a good fireworks show in a gasoline factory. 

The wizard tower in particular, and the rest of the island generally, has a decent amount of stuff to fuck with. Weird machines to repair, stone circles and ley lines to teleport with, places to get your soul sucked out and, of course, a few small missions from the pixies, in particular, to augment the greater goals the factions have. There are some decent little moments as well, such as when mercenary guards question the party, as laborours, if they are allowed to be in the area. Just a sentence and it does a good job prompting the DM in such a way to add life to the game. The monsters, mostly things that can only be hurt by fire, add a nice little puzzle element to the combat as the party tries to figure out how to hurt ooze things.

Hexes are about a page and dungeon keys are about a column, in general. This is where things start to get rough for me. Formatting is decent with bullets and bolding and indents, but there is only so much cognitive space for a DM to have. It’s a tricky problem, rooms with depth add so much to the game, rooms with multiple elements, but then the challenge becomes the ability of the DM to handle all of the information. The hexes, in particular, tend to run a bit long and complicated to run, or, perhaps, to keep all of the elements straight in ones head. 

For all of the potential that the faction play provides it falls down in the execution. While the factions have these major goals there is not a lot, if any, provided for handling the consequences of play. How do the laborers react, or the mercs, or the pixies. Raw violence? How? Surely they are not standing still while the party works against them and they find out. This sort of guidance is just not present. And yet it would add so much to play and the use of the factions in such a small environment. 

The concept here is an old one: making things seem like they are real. Giving the appearance of depth. This allows for a certain kind of immersion, and buy in from the PLAYERS in to the game world situation. This is what an evocative room description does, it helps the DM bring that to life. This is what realistic motivations with NPCs does, the relatability helps. That specificity that I’m always harping on and on about, it enables it. It’s not detail. Detail alone is almost always useless. A DM can make up detail, especially if the designer has done their job well in relating a room and/or situation. But the specificity, that is core to the designer bringing their ideas to life. Looking at the merc situation, above, that I mentioned, the mercs challenging the party. You’re getting hassled man. By the cops. By the mall security guard. By the doorman. Who can’t relate to this, both personally and in the many media depictions? It’s a petty annoyance and it GRATES on you. Fucking POS, how about I just stab you 196 times in the throat and then we’ll see who authorized to be in this area. And that’s in the case where I AM authorized to be in the area. It’s one fucking sentence, but it IMPLIES so much more. That’s good writing. That’s a good situation. That’s exactly the sort of specificity that adventures should put forward. Why the fuck do I care about a dudes eye color or hairstyle, unless its pertinent to the game? No, the fact that he’s a bully, or holds a petty grudge or something, that’s what brings the noise. 

It’s an ok adventure. Which means very little makes it stand out except that it’s not a disaster of an adventure. But it’s also not a good adventure that I get excited about when I think about running it. 

This is $5 at DriveThru. There’s no preview. M. Allen Hall, why do you hate us, and freedom? Why do you think we should not see a couple of encounters before we spend our hard earned cash on this adventure? Stick in a few pages of preview. A hex or two and a room or two. 

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/582152/the-green-ooze-king-for-cairn-and-ose?1892600

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Various BBC Studios production teams are preparing submissions to be the new home of Doctor Who next year

 

The Doctor Who tender process continues with the next milestone tomorrow, the 2nd of October at 2pm. That’s the deadline for interested parties to express their interest in being the next team to lead one of the BBC’s flagship shows – Doctor Who. And it appears there’s already some surprises on the way about who’s entering.

We already knew that BBC Studios would be entering a bid to take back production of the show. But now it turns out that the company, which acts as the BBC’s commercial arm for creating programs, will be entering multiple bids. Jamie Hall, the head of BBC Studios’ Scripted division, that there are “one, potentially two, companies” within the group developing pitches for the job. Rather that compete with each other to represent BBC Studios in the tender process, Hall has cleared the way for all interested BBC groups to make their own tenders for the job, saying he’s “100%” happy to make multiple submissions.

So what does this mean in practice? Well, Hall’s Scripted division is made up of three department, and several production companies that, while whole owned by BBC Studios, operate like small independents. Any one of these could among the teams making sure to have their papers in by 2pm tomorrow.

 

BBC Studios Scripted is composed of three major in-house labels, which make shows both for the BBC and other channels

 

David Tenant and Michael Sheen describe the mismatched heroes of Good Omens as a true double act (c) Amazon Prime Video BBC Studios Comedy

Comedy is unlikely to be among those looking to take over Doctor Who. It’s true its remit is wider than the name suggests, having been involved in projects like Good Omens and Inside No. 9, as well as more obviously comedic fare like Mandy and Here We Go. However, Blogtor would guess the BBC won’t be keen to place a ‘comedy’ label on the show.

 

Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) – Doctor Who BBC Studios Drama

Drama was the home of Doctor Who from its return in 2005 until the end of the Whittaker era in 2022. (This does mean that if they win, they could potentially dub the 2028/9 season the headache inducing “Series 14.”) Other shows currently made by Drama include EastEnders, Silent Witness, and Casualty. They’re very likely to among those entering tenders for the show now.

 

Custodial Manager Bobby Bailey (DAVID TENNANT);Peter (OLLIE McNULTY);Christopher (Ushindi) (CHUKWUBUIKEM MOLOKWU);James (LOUIS McCARTNEY);Marie Louise (SIOBHAN FINNERAN),DESCRIPTION:,COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC/BBC Studios/Peter Marley BBC Studios Fiction

The newest of BBC Studios Scripted’s divisions, Fiction was set up only last year. Josh Cole, whose CV includes being the executive producer of Good Omens, heads up a team dedicated to producing high end, BAFTA worthy television. Prison drama anthology Time is the first show so far to transfer to Fiction. Making a pitch for Doctor Who may well appeal to a fresh new team actively looking to expand their slate. That said, its eligibility depends on the interpretation of the rules laid out in the tender invitation. In its own right, Fiction simply hasn’t been around long enough to establish the track record the invitation requires.

 

The BBC Studios Scripted banner also cover six production companies which are owned by BBC Studios but operate independently

 

Alan Partridge (STEVE COOGAN),DESCRIPTION:*NOT FOR PUBLICATION UNTIL 00:01HRS, TUESDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER, 2025*,COPYRIGHT:Baby Cow,CREDIT LINE:BBC/Baby Cow/Rob Baker Ashton Baby Cow

Steve Coogan heads up Baby Cow as its Creative Director, and naturally the company produces all his shows such as Alan Partridge and The Trip. However, it does also make other projects too, such as Alan Carr’s Changing Ends and Rob Brydon’s upcoming sitcom Bill’s Included.

Baby Cow’s emphasis on comedies does make it seem unlikely to be chasing Doctor Who. Unless, of course, Steve Coogan has decided he fancies a go in the TARDIS himself…

 

Matt Smith in The Death of Bunny Munro (c) Clerkenwell Films Clerkenwell Films

Clerkenwell have a long and impressively varied list of credits. This includes hard-hitting. award winning dramas like Baby Reindeer and Matt Smith’s The Death of Bunny Munro. They probably have the most experience in science fiction, fantasy, and genre productions too. The End of F***ing World, Misfits, The Aliens, and Paradox were all Clerkenwell projects.

 

Jenna Coleman as Liv Taylor in Wilderness (c) Amazon Prime Video Firebird Pictures

Firebird describe themselves as having “a focus on character-led contemporary series,” which suggests Doctor Who may not appeal to them as fitting their particular niche. There’s no denying the quality of their productions, though, which include psychological thrillers The Jetty and Wilderness, both starring Jenna Coleman, the equally dark and complicated Wild Cherries, and  ‘true story’ historical drama Outrageous.

Another factor in Firebird’s case is that their preference for one-off mini-series means they likely won’t qualify under the tender rules. Those require the bidder to have made at least one series that lasted three seasons of at least six episodes each.

 

Ian St Clair (DAVID MORRISSEY),DESCRIPTION:,COPYRIGHT:House Productions,CREDIT LINE:BBC/House Productions/Sam Taylor House Productions

Another element of the invitation to tender is the BBC’s desire that the new Doctor Who be ‘cinematic.’ House Productions certainly qualifies on that front, with their slate a mix of big screen films and prestige television dramas. Its feature films include critical acclaimed productions like papal drama Conclave, and harrowing concentration camp film Zone of Interest. On television, they’re best known for Sherwood, currently making the third season of the Nottingham set crime drama starring David Morrissey.

 

Suranne Jones in Gentleman Jack (c) BBC Lookout Point

Lookout Point have one of the most eclectic portfolios in the whole BBC Studios family, which may make them a prime candidate for the Doctor Who job. They’re responsible for the bleak psychological drama Happy Valley, as well as comedies like Am I Being Unreasonable? and The Power of Parker. They’ve also demonstrated the kind of quirky charm you’d expect from Doctor Who in projects like fantastical highway-woman adventure series Renegade Nell, and sapphic historical drama Gentleman Jack.

As with some other production companies on this list, Lookout Point’s success seems to be in enabling creatives to bring their personal vision to life. This does suggest that if they were to make a tender, it would likely be because some writer/producer in their orbit had approached them with a vision for the show.

 

The cast of Extraordinary Sid Gentle Films

Sid Gentle Films have perhaps some of the most experience of genre television on this list. They’re the makers of Extraordinary, for instance, about a world where everyone has superpowers except Jen, as well as horror anthology Likely Stories, and alternative history detective series SS-GB. Other projects include serial killer horror series Ragdoll, and of course, Killing Eve. The award winning series was one of the BBC’s biggest hits of the past decade and launched star Jodie Comer to international fame.

 

By the end of this month, eligible candidates will have signed their NDAs, and there will likely be little more to tell until the end of the year

Fans should brace themselves for another period of the tender process going dark, starting from tomorrow. Once the submissions are in, the BBC will have until the 9th of October to decide which applicants are eligible under the rules to go forward to the next round. Those that do will have until the 23rd to submit their short editorial proposals, sketching out their ideas for Doctor Who. In parallel to that, though, they’ll have to sign their Non-Disclosure Agreements with the BBC. Even without those NDAs, competitors will not want too much about their plans reaching the press, and their rivals.

Perhaps later this year, as head towards the finish line, our old friends unnamed “sources” will begin to discretely tell the papers some details to create a sense of inevitable momentum. But we may not even get an acknowledgement of who’s on the short list until then.

As is so often the case with the development process, we shouldn’t take an absence of exciting news as meaning a lack of exciting work happening behind closed doors. But Blogtor Who will stand ready to fill you in with everything there is to know, as details emerge.

 

 

 

 

 

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By Stadtjaeger
Self Published
Generic/Universal
"Low/Mid Levels"

Something went quiet in Frostholm. The mining outpost stopped sending word weeks ago. Company says it’s the weather. Locals won’t go check. A mother’s paying good money to anyone willing to find her son — a scholar who went up chasing some old civilization and never came back.

This thirty page adventure presents a small village investigation and a dev le in to a mine with about eight rooms, plus a couple of overland events before and after. It’s more of a scene based “Experience” than an adventure, with the designer describing it as no-win. The writing is purple and there is no loot to be gained. 

This has elements of War Against the Chtorr, in that an alien organisms is trying to chtorraform the planet. You head up to a snowy mining camp that no one has heard from and have a few spooky things happen along the way. At the camp you poke around the buildings and find bodies and more eerie stuff. You survive (presumably) a night attack by a swarm of alien insects and head to the mine the next day. There you might get infected with spores in the weird crystal/plant environment and find a dude in an alien pod. If you free him then an unbeatable monster appears. Fleeing from it you fight hordes of crystal block constructs. You’re supposed to figure out to seal the mine shaft with some explosives you find. On the way back down the mountain, with the dude you found, a different unbeatable monster appears, klils the dude, and takes off for the stars. The dude you found has a book and if you perform the ritual in it then a portal opens in which armies of alien life forms come through to finish chtorraforming the planet. 

The vibe here is similar to those killer LotFP adventures. You know, you delve in and try to get loot while avoiding the doomsday scenario that is sure to happen. Maybe mix in a little Call oc Cthulhu where messing with books will fuck you up. Except, there’s not really any loot here. I find this annoying and it makes me want to put this solidly in to the Modern Adventure category where you’re just fucking around together at a table instead of gaming. Yeah yeah, there are different ways to have fun, but I prefer the one where the story is the one the party makes. But, with that in mind …

This is also a generic/universal adventure. Which means a lack of stats. You get some general “there should be twice as many creatures as party members” and other story based mechanics like “the attacks last until dawn” kind of stuff with a few “they should take one hit to kill” sorts of things thrown in. This, again, contributes to the more story based approach that the adventure is taking. 

It DOES do a fairly decent job with the investigation and lead in to the mine. You get a few eerie things happening on the trail to the mining town, dogs nervous, a body frozen in the snow and so on. And the town investigation is also likewise eerie. Strange scratch marks covering all of the buildings, skeletons huddled in corners stripped of their flesh or other clearly holed up and waited to die. The whole “meal still on the table” sort of thing. At one point you can’t get in to tone of the village buildings and have to go in a window to find the door blockaded. Nice.The whole preamble to the ride os decently done, in what is presented if not in its form.

Any by form, I mention that because of the writing style. It’s very much heavy with first this thing happens and then this thing happens and keep the party from doing X and so on. This is then exacerbated by a certain conversational style of writing, HEAVY with purple text. “The walls have stopped pretending to be stone. What covers them now is something else, layered thick like scar tissue over a wound that never closed — glistening, faintly pink where the light catches it, soft enough that you do not want to touch it and cannot stop noticing that you have to.” Or something like “Something is coming, but not in a hurry, It doesnt need to.” That least bit being a read-aloud line. 

While this MIGHT work in in the village/investigation portion, it breaks down in the mine where it tends to continue. The mine is mostly just poking around on a museum trip, looking at the weird plant life that might infect you with something only very high level magic can cure. There are a couple of light problem solving situations, like getting down the central shaft, but you’re not doing much until you find the dude in the alien pod thingy.

At this point all of the stillness disappears. The unbeatable monster appears as well as the hordes of lesser crystal golems. You’re supposed to run away. That’s the point of the entire adventure. Run away, beat off the crystal golems while ascending the shaft and, hopefully, sealing it lest the horrors are loosed upon the world. 

This is all, essentially, a railroad. It’s an experience. Follow the tracks laid down and survive and “win” by escaping with a sealed shaft,. If you don’t guess what the designer wants you you to do then die 

The conversational writing style makes running it difficult, and the purple prose if so bad that I’m not sure I could read it with a straight face. Even when it’s not read-aloud the DM will need to wade through it and try to translate it to something evocative for the party, which is not going to be easy.

The generic/Universal curse strikes again. Just write it traditionally and stat it for B/X and STILL call it generic/universal. Once you get good, as a writer, THEN you can branch out to more experimental styles. But you gotta learn to walk first.

This is $4 at DriveThru.The preview is the first three pages, which are all, essentially, designer notes. A few encounters needed to be included so a potential buyer can get a sense of what they are buying before they do so.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578991/they-come-at-night?1892600

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It’s 1999 all over again as the dynamic duo of the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa return with some standard, but well made, Doctor Who

 

Over the past several years, the Fifth Doctor Adventures have become one of Big Finish’s most reliable Doctor Who ranges. A large part of the reason for this consistently high quality has been the relationship between Peter Davison and his companions Janet Fielding, Sarah Sutton, and Matthew Waterhouse. In particular how that spills over into their characters to make one of the most engaging and fun TARDIS teams. It’s perhaps because there’s such a thing as too cosy that new boxset Shock and Awe mixes things up. It introduces a new dynamic, with the Doctor and Nyssa travelling together alone.

Or rather, it’s a return to an old dynamic. In Big Finish’s earliest days Fielding and Waterhouse had yet to be convinced to come out to play. This meant an awful lot of Fifth Doctor stories set in the gap between Season 19 and Season 20, when the Doctor and Nyssa were on their own. It’s a combination that never got a single episode on television. Yet it still provides a hit of nostalgia to long time audio listeners. (As unlikely as being nostalgic for Land of the Dead sounds.)

It’s remarkable just how well Davison and Sutton slip back into this very specific time in the characters’ development too. Sutton in particular instantly inhabits this version of Nyssa. She brings back the earnest, righteous, naivety of a young nobleman thrown from her alien utopia into an unkind universe. The script provides details like her still not being entirely sure what tea is. But it’s Sutton who provides the potent mix of anguish, confusion, and outrage in the face of sadism and genocide.

 

Lair of the Voltaxa is Who at its cosiest and most familiar

If the choice of leads mixes things up, the two stories in this set balance it with cosy familiarity. They’re the sort of story you could listen to at the end of a long day, confident that if you doze off momentarily, you won’t be lost when you snap back awake. So firmly do they keep to some standard Doctor Who patterns, you could probably fill in the blanks pretty accurately.

This is particularly true of the four part story Lair of the Voltaxa which makes up most of Shock and Awe. Its basic set-up goes back at least as far as 1968’s The Invasion. Moreover, it unfolds in much the same way as stories like The Sontaran Stratagem. It’s compounded by enough previous Big Finish releases to fill a bookcase, also sharing the same essential plot.

There’s a powerful tech millionaire, Miranda Moss (Beth Goddard) and her revolutionary new AI product on its way into every home in the country, the Miri Cube. Of course, this tech-oligarch is aligned with forces even darker than late stage capitalism, if such a thing is possible. Soon it’s up to the Doctor and his friends to shut down this product roll-out and send these domestic invaders packing.

 

There’s no denying the quality with which the story riffs on these tropes, however, or the performances of the cast

Even though Lair of the Voltaxa is straight off the shelf of Who Ikea, the real test is how well writer Ronald Moore assembles those flat-packed pieces. Fortunately, there are no awkward angles, evidence of overenthusiastic hammering, or left over screws, here. Everything is beautifully paced, with a good mix of action, drama, and lighter moments. The Tweflth Doctor almost certainly had a well thumbed prompt card for “I’m sorry but that’s not your family member/lover/friend/pet/robot anymore. It’s the thing that killed him/her/them/it. Stop trying to hug him/her/them/it.” But this Fifth Doctor adventure provides one of the best examples of a character’s mind telling them the tragic truth that their heart can’t accept.

A lot of Voltaxa’s success is due to the confident performances of the cast. Especially Clive Hayward and Alex Stedman as a father and son duo hunted when one steals a Miri Cube. Wanda Opalinksa also does great work the potentially annoying Ania, shop manager and Moss’ unlikely companion as they search for the stolen cube.

 

March of the Colossus may have been done before, but it fizzes with the wild excesses of a comic

March of the Colossus makes up the final two episodes of Shock and Awe. If the Voltaxa brought the shock with their electric powers, the Colossus certainly bring the awe with their sheer gargantuan size. Unrestrained oligarchy is again the root of all evil. Though this time it’s with all the larger than life energy of a Doctor Who Adventures comic strip. Stuart Milligan’s Austus Zebeck certainly channels DWM villain Josiah Dogbolter, with his plan closely resembling that of Berakka Dogbolter in The Warmonger. This time, though the scale of Zebeck’s plan is vastly bigger. Literally, as instead of 20 foot tall alien warriors, the battling Colossus at the heart of his pay per view fight empire are the size of mountains.

It goes without saying that that’s bad news for the Dianasa tribe who happen to live on those slumbering mountains. These comic book visuals do sometimes extend beyond the ability of Alan Ronald’s script to describe them. You’d think people falling through the air as their village suddenly pivots 90 degrees from horizontal to vertical would be less helpfully descriptive for instance.

 

The story’s real heart is the conflict between an obnoxious tech oligarch and the outraged Nyssa

Where March of the Colossus really sings is the battle of wills between Zebeck and Nyssa. The Doctor’s companion viscerally recoils from perhaps her first encounter with not the banality of evil but its cartoonish stupidity. Destruction, torture and death in pursuit of universal power is at least rational. But wiping out a whole civilization, and torturing innocent creatures to the point of insanity, just to earn a quick buck and get your face on TV… Sarah Sutton plays this knife to Nyssa’s very soul, and her subsequent grief and rage, with power and truth.

This Doctor and companion pairing may deny us the amiable four way banter that’s made recent Fifth Doctor Adventures so enjoyable. However, is the result is giving the space for moments like these, it’s worth the trade.

 

Doctor Who: Shock and Awe. Cover by Rafe Wallbank (c) Big Finish Doctor Who: Shock and Awe

The Doctor and Nyssa face alien menaces on Earth and on a far-off unnamed world.

Doctor Who – The Fifth Doctor Adventures: Shock and Awe is available to purchase now for just £19.99 (download to own) or £24.99 (download to own + collector’s edition 3-disc CD box set). Please note: the collector’s edition CD box set is strictly limited to 1,500 copies and will not be re-pressed.  

 

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This year you’ll be able to live-stream Crime and Comedy’s A Christmas Carol starring Colin Baker, Sophie Aldred and Tom Baker as it tours the UK again

 

In what’s now an annual yuletide tradition, Crime and Comedy Theatre’s production of A Christmas Carol returns. The new tour will take place this November at theatres across the UK. Live on stage, Colin Baker (The Sixth Doctor) and Sophie Aldred (Ace) lead the cast of Charles Dickens’ Christmas classic. It also features a rare, specially recorded appearance by Tom Baker (The Fourth Doctor) as Jacob Marley!

On Christmas Eve, Ebenezer Scrooge is warned by the ghost of Jacob Marley that he will be visited by three Spirits – Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet To Come. They whisk <strong>Scrooge to the past and his happy boyhood Christmastimes, to the present to meet Tiny Tim at Bob Cratchit’s Christmas feast, and to the future and Scrooge’s own miserable grave – all to show him the error of his ways. But will Scrooge wake on Christmas morning a changed man?

The presentation takes the form of a radio-play-live-on-stage. The setting is a radio studio, the actors ready as if for a radio broadcast, and the sound effects are created live. It all combines to transport the audience to Victorian London. There, Dickens’ timeless tale of charity, forgiveness and redemption at Christmas unfolds once more.

 

You can also livestream the performance on the 15th of November, or buy previous productions on DVD

You can now also buy a recording on DVD of the production’s previous version, with Peter Purves as the narrator. There are also DVDs of the same team’s Sherlock Holmes adaptations The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four. These both star Colin Baker as Holmes and Terry Molloy as Watson. You can order them now from Honolee Media.

There will also be a livestream of the performance on the 15th of November. You can buy your tickets for the livestream here.

The full list of dates and locations for this year’s tour of A Christmas Carol are on the Crime and Comedy Theatre website here.

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By Oliver Müller, Prizren Buçpapaj
Voltaria Games
OSE
Level 1

A village is silent. None dares to speak out loud anymore, for fear of invoking the curse of the bell. A nun was burned 300 years ago, because she was accused of having consorted with a demon who stole the voices of his victims. The same demon who is bound to the bell of the ancient belltower in the center of the village. Will your party of adventurers brave the depths of the old catacombs to lift the curse and right the wrongs from the past, or will they accidentally unleash an even greater evil?

This twelve page adventure presents eleven rooms on two levels of a small dungeon under a ruined monastery. It’s a little dull and lacks flavour but is far from the worst things ever written. 

Man, my compliments are really getting out of hand, aren’t they? But, seriously, something seems to have happened with adventures. Some of them don’t make me want to gouge my eyes out. Now, I’m not saying they are good, or even regertful, but, they don’t just absolutely suck ass. I don’t know how many times in, what, fifteen years, that I’ve seen stuff that is just Meh, but I’ve been seeing it a lot lately. Yeah! The world is getting better! “You won’t hate everything about your life if you purchase this adventure!” That’s right, I’m available for writing ad copy! If this trend continues I may be out of a non-job. Because as much as I love a good adventure the blog only exists because I REALLY hate bad ones. “Not writing crap” seems like such a simple idea, at least in theory.

You show in a village. The people won’t talk to you. They will grunt at you. They will make arm gestures. Some will write notes. (Booo literacy!) But they won’t talk. Every time someone tells a lie then the bell in the old ruined monastery rings, louder and louder. Popping on over you can go up the bell tower, which contains only the bell, or you can go down in to the dungeon and it’s small handful of rooms. Down there you will fight a few 1hp undead, a few skeletons, and meet the ghost of a chick burned alive who cursed the monks. The bell contains the essence of a demon, which is why the monastery exists. The chick was a part of the monastery, the monks lied and got her burned. The curse infected the bell. Destroy the bell and the demon gets out. Kill the ghost of the chick and the bell cracks and the demon gets out. You’re supposed to find the one-charge hammer of banishment and use it on the ghost, putting her to rest while the bell remains intact and freeing it of the “lie and the bell rings” curse. 

The hooks are the usual low-effort stuff of get hired, with one having the party just arriving at the village and stumbling in to things. One of the best parts of the adventures is a throw away line in that hook that has an old woman attacking the party with a broom if they speak. That’s the kind of specificity that makes an adventure shine. It’s short and fits in perfectly with a bunch of scared villagers. Another line has advice to the DM in making the bell ring every time someone in the party tells a lie. A nice touch. Finally, n the dungeon are a number of cubbies with bones in them, catacombs like. In one cubby the skeletons still have jewelry on them! Time to get a lootin! Except it’s a cube, the remains of other adventurers in it. Very nice integration of a classic monster in to an adventure in such a way that makes it a surprise. All of those “empty” bone reliquaries pay off in a nice monster attack. That’s how you lure a party in to a classic monster.

The descriptions here are not terrible, although they are not really evocative either. The Sacrist reads “8. SACRISTY Wardrobe: There is a rotting wardrobe containing 1d4 robes for mess. They are damp and filled with holes, but they will prevent the skeletons from attacking.  Box: Used to store religious tools for the mess, which have been hidden in the secret treasure room when the monastery was abandoned.” This has some line breaks in it, I’m condensing it here. It’s easy enough to follow and, while the length is not great it’s also not a burden. It comes across as rather mundane, and doesn’t really do a great job of painting an evocative picture of the room, being more fact based than impressions. Note that there is no room summary, and in some places this gets awkward, such as in one room with zombies that only show up at the last sections. These sorts of things, the most obvious thing or something likely to be of import immediately, should really ne higher up in a description. “Oh, yeah, there are also some zombies here” is not the way to run a D&D game. This means takingin the entire room description before relying it to the party rather than a descriptive style that builds with first impressions and follow on detail. Thus the text length does come  to play when as being of note.

It doesn’t feel like a spooky monastery with shit going on, although thats what it is. The titular bell tower, while having the mostimportant thing in the adventure, the bell, is almost an afterthought, with the focus being the dungeon under the tower. The bell tolling helps, but it needed more build up or, interestingly, less, almost as an aafterthought. Either would have worked better, I think.

This is an EASL adventure, with some AI to help with the translation, the adventure discloses. This is probably fine. I suspect some of the mundanity in the descriptions comes from its EASL nature, but that’s to be expected.  “Grave chamber: It is an undecorated tomb with a single simple grave in the middle.” is a good example. Like, a dug grave, in a catacomb? I suspect we mean a stone sarcophagus? But, also, not exactly the height of evocative writing. There’s not a whole lot wrong here, it just doesn’t stand out as something I’d like to run. Also, put the level range is IN the adventure. Put it on the cover or in the marketing blurb.

This is $3 at DriveThru. The preview is the first three pages. Another page of encounters would have been nice, to get a true sense of the adventure keys.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/581426/lies-at-the-bell-tower?1892600