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By John Abner
Lichyard Games
OSE
Level 1

Kragnuk and his band of goblin rebels had been traveling for days and their stomachs were thin. He knew it wouldn’t be long before they turned on him. But something told him his luck was about to change. A new lair was near – he could feel it, almost see it. The Watcher had borne witness to the birth of technomagical marvels, observed their inevitable abuse, and recorded every fiery detail of the fall of an ancient empire. It could bear no more and sought for release. But to whom could its burden be passed?

This 26 page adventure uses ten pages to describe twelve rooms. It’s using a “Read Aloud+Statblock” format for most things, meaning not much in the way of interactivity. Random trivia abounds … to no real end.

Ohs Nos! Some goats have gone missing! And now a local family is missing also?! The village decides, rather than mobbing it up and no information to go on, to send a small group of village n00bs to the local evil ruins. We don’t get the missing families name until way late in the adventure, the rumors have nothing to follow up on. If you prod me to tell the party that Frank and his boys been up to the ruins, then you damn well better give me a sentence on what Frank and his boys know. Because the fucking party is going to go asking around for Frank and his boys to get some information. There is this disconnected nature between whats written in the text and whats implied by the text that is prevalent throughout this. As if things were written down without really thinking about the implications of it. I’m not saying we have to agonize over it (thats reserved for the room description, which I want you flog yourself over for each and every one) but just a quick lookover for dangling plot threads would be nice. Like ol Frank and his boys.

Ok, so, evil space empire fell a long time ago. Buried in these ruins is The Watcher. He’s dying and needs a replacement. He’s using the goblins to lure someone in who he can transfer, in not a nice way, his duties to. I’m not a fan of the lure you in” pretext adventures, but, ultimately, it’s just goblins in a ruin with a couple of techno looking rooms. 

Ok, so, we’ve got twelve rooms. Let’s look at one of them: This chamber is empty except for debris, dust, and cobwebs. Many footprints can be seen arcing toward the far-right corner.” Ok, so, nothing really there. It’s a lame description though. Instead of saying its empty there should be a description that leads the party to say that its empty. I wouldn’t not even imply anything about the footprints, unless they are SUPER obvious. I might mention dusty or dirty in the description and then wait for the party to follow up with questions, at which point I can mention footprints to them, as the DM. A good room description delivers a vibe of the environment to the party, and inspires the DM to riff on it, expanding upon what the designer has actually put down on paper. It also teases a bit. You want to kind of hint at things in a read-aloud. It’s up to the party to [ay attention and follow up with questions, about things like looking at the dust. It’s this back and forth that is at the heart of D&D, the back and forth between the players and the DM. The DM providing a description and the players following up on what the DM has said and then the DM following up on that and so on. By just outright stating, in the read-aloud “You see footprints” then you are destroying this experience. Again, unless it’s super obvious.

A second example, if you please! “

This column-lined hall is dominated by a fearsome sculpted demonic face at its far end. Its open mouth forms a portal into an adjoining room. Its tongue unfolds into a 3-step dais. Goblins sit around a softly glowing pile of embers, jabbering in their high-pitched tongue.” In this we see just a read aloud description followed by only a stat block in the DM notes section. Nothing more. Which is too bad, the whole demon mouth and tongue thing could have been cool. 

For All Sad Words Of Tongue And Pen, The Saddest Are What Might Have Been, as they say. It’s just a fight. 

And, I note, another oom tells us that the goblins in it will react to a fight in that demon tongue room. Better, yes, to put that information in the demon tongue room? The DM needs that information there so we put that information there, not buried in an appendix in small print? Or in the next room. There are other missed things as well. At one point you have to climb up handholds in a piller to reach an upper room, coming up through a small hole in the ground. Thee are two goblins in the room, with spears, who stick you as you come through. And absolutely NO notes about that. Just tha they have spears and stick you as you come through. COME ONE. Falling advice? Can’t clamber up advice? Takes three turns to get out? ANYTHING? That’s a nice setup, but it’s implemented so piss poorly that in the end its just another boring old fight. 

“Hidden among the rubble is a wooden chest containing the clan’s booty.” Worry not, gentle reader, the treasure in that chest is not detailed. We are told, in the beginning of the book, to roll on the appropriate tables in the OOSE rule book for treasure. Well fuck me sideways. What the fuck is the fucking point of buying this fucking thing then?

“The door to this area is made of an unknown metal and secured with a bar. It appears to have been airtight, for when it opens, there is a noticeable hiss.” This is a travesty. It’s a barred door. You don’t do read-aloud for shit like this. You tell the fucking party that its a barred door and let them describe opening it, only to respond with the fucking hiss. “We go through the south door” Oh, it was barred and made of a strange metal and it hisses as you open it.” Remember when I said that the implications of what was being written were being ignored?

Finally, I want to talk about the control room in the dungeon. It’s got the required crystal things to play around with to make different things happen. AND ITS TOTALLY RANDOM. There is no pattern to figure out. There are no clues. You just insert shit and roll on a table. Maybe you see some colored liquids flow through pipes. Other than that you have NO IDEA what the impacts of what you just did were. Not that it would matter anyway since it’s completely random. This is not interactivity. This is random for the sake of random. 

Just a hack.

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages and you get to see several of the rooms. Good preview!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/519369/eye-of-the-watcher-for-old-school-essentials?1892600

 So our gang of miscreants pulled into The Wheel an interstellar trading post. This blog entry picks up from here on the blog.  We loaded up the space hauler John T. Booker which we picked up in contract from an independent outfit. Eventually we'll get our own hauler. Aboard the Wheel we got our cargo to run it to the Zeta Reticulan former colony worlds through the hyperspace Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 The Japanese Imperial Empire wanted it's own Kaiju during the glory days of empire expansion. To this end they began to look into the heart of the local Jari islanders legends of god like creatures that opposed the gods. This lead into the entrance of the Inner Earth on the volcanic active island of Jari itself & the discovery of the King Cobra Kaiju or Kyodai Kingu Kobura.The KingNeedleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

Adventure Squared
General/Universal/OSR - But really 5e
"Low Levels" - Ha!

Who are the Snake Monks? What is the Blood Cradle? Why are the villages being terrorised? Uncover the answers to all of this and more when you explore the Blood Cradle of the Snake Monks!

This 36 page adventure uses about nineteen pages to describe fifty rooms in dungeon full of … serpent people! The rooms contain a variety of challenges, classic and not, with conceptually decent, if fun house, ideas. But its all done in a weird flat bullet minimal format … that is somehow also quite long? Also, someone REALLY liked the snake scene in Raiders.

“It’s art if the creator says it’s art!” No, it’s not. This is labeled as a generic/universal adventure compatible with OSR blah blah blah. It’s actually a 5e adventure, mostly. Just because creatures have HP and AC doesn’t make it OSR. Even if, tonally, you can manage something akin to the OSR, and even if you dump in enough cash for a gold=xp payoff, there is a WILDLY different power balance going on. The boss here has like AC18 and 180HP. A far cry from the 20HD monsters of B/X and 1e. What is that, like, forty or fifty HD? “Low levels” my ass. This is 5e. Oh, oh, but it also says things like, in the monster appendix “We put in some modifiers for you to use if you wish”, which means creatures have a line that says something like “+3, +1, -1.” This is just a fucking dystopian hellscape. Write it for 5e or write it for the OSR. Fucking christ.

This thing sucks ass in every single way. Except one. It’s got some pretty decent room concepts. A room with a valley/put that is LOADED full of snakes down there. A room full of treasure chests and urns and things that rearrange themselves to block the exits. The room with three apple trees … with apples … A room where you move some portable walls around to literally wall off a deadly fog. The super dark room where torches only light 1 foot around you. A room full of ethereal whisps swirling around … which are snakes. There are quite a high number of these ‘specials.’ Certainly no one can accuse the designer of just having a room with a monster in it to stab. 

I don’t know what to say about them. They suck? None of them really realize their potential. This takes a variety of forms, with things sabotaging the rooms concepts, but in its most fundamental form, they are presented as nothing more than concepts. Imagine sitting around with your friends, drinking, brainstorming ideas for a dungeon. “There could be a room with a pit in it full of snakes!”  or “How about a room that sucks up the light full of shadow monsters!” or “You could get trapped by the treasure you want”! This is what this adventure is doing. The opposite, I guess, of trap and door porn. You can go too far, and most adventures do, in the mechanics and descriptions of the effect of an area. You want just jus the right amount of detail, of the critical pieces, to help the DM run the room without being prescriptive. And then there the opposite end of the spectrum, where this lies, which only gives the BAREST concept of a room concept. These are essentially one liners of each room. And relatively short one-liners at that. 

This is not to say that the actual room keys are one line long. Oh no. They are going to take up about a third of a page to half a page each. How can this be?! Well, the formatting sucks ass. First, it’s single column. And it’s using a very terse bullet like formatting for the rooms. This means A LOT of whitespace for something like seventy to eighty percent of a line. Then, it’s padded out. A room name, A three word description. Room dimensions. And a bullet system that only a mother would say is good. 

22- Crystal Caverns 
Natural cavern approx. 70x100ft. High ceiling (70ft). 
Uneven natural rock floor interspersed with stalagmites and stalactites jutting from the floor and ceiling.
-Crystals 
• Grow from all of the surfaces but mainly concentrated on the walls. 
• Refract light in mesmerising patterns.
• Valuable- 1KG is worth 50GP. 
• Extremely sharp when broken and can be carved into cutting tools or weapons.

You can see, from that, two types of bullets, a hyphen and a traditional round one. The hyphens are the major headings with the bullets containing additional information for the hyphen item. What’s missing is the indent. And we can see, here, from this room key, the three descriptions of the room. “Crystal Caverns/Natural Caverns” and then the “Uneven natural rock” line, and then the “refract light” line. These are all very business-like descriptions. There’s no real joy or inspiration in them. Yes, on some level you have described the room, but the room isn’t sticky, there’s no firing of the imagination. It’s a fucking giant crystal room full of dazzling lights. You need to witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational english language. Oh, and sections are hyperlinked. That room full of chests? It’s hyperlinked to a “Chest Table.” Which actually takes you to the “effects of the fog” table. The actual chest table doesn’t exist, but there is a “treasure table” full of things like “50sp” and “200cp” and “shovel” or “flask of oil.” I think, perhaps, we differ on the definition of the word avarice. And, of course, the improper use of randomness is prevalent throughout. “Here are six things that could be in the drawer!!’ is not the proper use of randomness

Rooms in concept only, no real room descriptions of note, and a format that makes no sense at all. Triple word score for AVOID.

This is $4 at DriveThru. There is no preview Sucker!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/519371/blood-cradle-of-the-snake-monks?1892600

I noticed an increase in visitors, and since my last post was in March, I figured a quick update was in order.

The writing for The Northern Marches is complete, and I’m now working on the Kickstarter setup. Expect a preview page soon, with the full launch planned for two weeks after that.

The last section I worked on was the travel rules and encounter tables. These expand on the travel rules presented in How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. I believe I’ve developed an elegant solution for determining travel speed across various terrain types. The rules also include underwater travel, with new encounters for Descents underwater, alongside the existing Journey, Voyage, and Trip encounters.

Traditional encounter tables are also part of the system, tailored to the various regions of the Northern Marches.

Expect a post soon on the Kickstarter details. 

I’m aware of the current situation surrounding Goodman Games’ City-State Kickstarter. My feelings remain unchanged since I posted Voyaging into Strange New Worlds. My kickstarter will have what I’ve discovered along the way, and hopefully, it opens the gate to new adventures with friends and family.

  Still not sure what we're doing in the  Dark Empire of Granbretan but we're still sneaking around from the animal headed knights that we saw from the side of the road we're on. From behind us we saw a new warrior who had no idea who we were and why he was with us.  Seems Radic the Great was a prisoner of Pan Tang one moment on board one of their slaver ships Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

 We've had a semi permanent Warriors of the Red Planet game on going for a long while. The PC's have been skirting  the Dark Martian lands of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds books. Now the Invasion of Earth happened a long while ago. DM Steve has trotted out the OD&D forum's Adventures on Mars ODD74 book from  thread. Scroll down to the last entry by Bastet1002's CLICK Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Dan Collins, Paul Siegel
Wandering DMs
OSR
Levels 1-3

Something is poisoning the land – livestock die, their bodies riddled with parasites, and a foul stench drifts from an ancient, long-abandoned temple. Locals whisper of a monstrous hatchling, born from a tainted egg and rotting from within. Treasure-seekers speak of a golden idol hidden in the depths, but none who entered have returned. Whatever festers below is spreading, and ifleft unchecked, it won’t stop with cattle.

This five page adventure uses just under two pages to describe an eleven room dungeon based on a small Dyson map. It was a youtube broadcast to create a dungeon in two hours. It’s better than most of the crap put out, and shows a certain flair for an interesting situation. This places it solidly above average, but that says more about the adventure market in general than this one. In the end, it doesn’t suck.

I’m going to hit this one extensively. It’s five pages. The front cover and back cover are two, and contain nothing of note. There’s a page of background information that also has the map and the wandering table. I might remove the back page and/or put the fluff on the back cover or front cover. This would free up room on the map/wanderer page. In particular, the map and wanderers are reference material, but the background information and notes about 1sp=1xp are generally things you only ever look at once, hence the move off of the reference page. The wanderer table is a little bland, just monsters, although “evil pixies” gives a hint of whats I’m suggesting: uses the freed up space to put in something that the wanderers are doing. Just a little nudge for the DM to riff off of. And then, maybe, put in some dungeon dressing, what the walls/doors/moisture is like; something for the DM to look at during play to beef up and nspire the room descriptions they will be riffing on. FInally, I note the Dyson map. It is what it is, but, also, I doubt it’s sacred; slap on an asterisk or a little monster label for those rooms that might have a monster in it making noise or that could react to the parties noise. IE: the reference page should be a great reference page.

The eleven keys take up just under two pages. But, also, there’s a lot of whitespace there. If you are married to just eleven rooms that’s not bad. The first room reads “1. Eight human veterans stagger toward the exit, their bodies ravaged by infection. Half are weakened (-2 to attacks), while the others are too sick to stand. Their eyes are fevered, and their treasure weighs heavy in their hands – 2 gems (20 sp each).” (then a terse stat block) I like this. I might give it a room title, llke “Boggy hallway” or something, to anchor the description to come. You want the DMs mind the right place, oriented and preloaded, for the description to come. I know that you’re using “veterans” as the monster type, but I might riff a word or two more to make them a hdge-podge of military uniforms, deserters, or something. Not evil, just a ragamuffin band. I love the ravaged and staggering words, staggering in particular gives great imagery. Eyes fevered, great. Maybe “yellowed eyes” or something also. I’m not sure “treasure weighs heavily” and “two gems” match up there, but I like where it is going. Barely able to lift their gems or something? But a pretty good job overall. Lso, 2 gems? Come on, there’s a ge table in the back of the DMG; use it.

Room 2. “A massive nest formed from a tangle of branches and debris fills this chamber, crawling with giant centipedes. Shattered remains of giant eggshells litter the floor – one among them is somewhat more intact, its occupant having successfully hatched.” Massive is a great word. I like the “tangle of branches”, that also is great imagery. Shattered remains of eggs … perfect. The next crawling with centipedes … oooh! Great! I might add a smell or a moist floor also; you want them quaking in their boots when they walk in that place. 

Room 3: “Two towering statues stand in alcoves along the western side of this hall. A near-invisible tripwire stretches between them – disturb it, and they will crash down in a shower of stone and dust. “ Towering! Great! Some argonath imagery there! I’m not usually a trap and door porn guy, but I might add a peg description or just a BIT more in the statue descriptions. Both holding out their hands in a “STOP” sign or something? Just a few words more to cement things. The top in shadows?

Room 4: “Steps lead down to a shallow two foot deep pool of murky water, fed by a cracked and blocked fountain in the center of the room. The cause of the blockage – a small pouch of 12 gems (100 sp each) – lies wedged in its spout. Swarms of flies buzz across the damp stone walls.” A few mpre adjectives. Crumbling steps down? Slick? Moss-covered? See how the water is “murky”? Why arent the stairs something? You can go too far with this, but I’d dump something in. Also, a small pouch? I think not. Small is boring. Cracked leather? Furry sealskin? Something more interesting. I like the swarms of flies, but, also, I might do a little more. There is little implied risk here. Why not put the flies around the spout? Maybe it’s a dead rat filled with gems? Hence the flies? Something to give the party just a little pause in the spout situation. Make them adventure with trepidation … even if it doesn’t play out every time.

I’m going to stop here. These are all general pretty good. A plague mask poison gas magic item also, so, some nice theming in places, although another couple of words would be in order. The rooms are a little disconnected from each other. A more consistent overall design, with things leaking over from room to room, would have been nice. Overall though, not bad. I might have given it a Ne Regerts if it were just a longer and/or the room descriptions were just a bit better or the design was bit more intentional. Pretty decent effort though; I would not be angry if this were likt one of those old 3e era pamphlet adventures. A little generic, but chill.

This is $1 at DriveThru. I know there are only two pages of rooms, but the preview is only two pages, one of which is the cover and the other the generic intro/reference page. Stick in a page of the keys so we know what were buying.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/518555/wdm05-dungeon-design-dash-5-infested-perch-of-the-mammoth-egg?1892600

 Tonight's Amazing Adventures rpg campaign went in an interesting direction as we began to deal with the wastelands around the city & here's where things got interesting with our PC's stumbling upon a jungle dragon feasting on the corpse of a deer. The jungle dragon is from the Amazing Adventures Manual of Monsters & this monster was clustered around the ruins of a former Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

By Will Jarvis
Inverted Castle Games
WWN
Levels 1-2

Lightning cleaves the sky. High above, a vast city emerges from the clouds. Is it the ancient temple-city of Mitosu? Has the Veiled Emperor returned? This starting adventure has players venturing into a ruined tower that fell from the mysterious city in the sky, crashing into the remote mountain valley of Glynmoor. Explore the charming town of Squabville, subdue the restless spirits awakened by the floating city, and discover the secrets of the fallen sky ruin.

This nineteen page adventure presents a small four level tower with about eighteen rooms in a fallen fragment of a floating sky city.. It captures the drama of small town life a bit, as well as supporting the village with a couple of sites. The phrasings, descriptions, and interactivity is almost enough to make me like it … a rare thing indeed!

Dude is doing some interesting things with this adventure. Right off the bat, we notice this is for Worlds Without Number … but can be used with any OSR system. What’s that mean, in practice? Truly? How do you take an adventure for a system you know nothing about and then convert it YOUR system of choice? Most OSR systems are some derivation of B/X, so it’s pretty chill. But, then, when we get to one of the more niche systems, how does one convert that? Are you an expert on Worlds Without Number? I’m not. But, also, the designer stuck in a note: “Hey, this is designed for 1sp=1xp.” Well Howdy Doody there! That’s actually something I need to know if I’m going to run this in B/X! Dude actually put some thought in to how HIS system differs from the more mainline systems and told us about that! 

Moving on, there’s a small town to support the adventure, and, for what it is, it’s interesting. The various businesses all have some local intrigue, a lot of small town stuff. Ostensibly, a dude on the town council wants you to take a look at a rumored sky tower that has fallen nearby. Secretly, he wants to control the whole valley and is hoping you’ll find something in it to help him. Also, he’s got the last kings regalia in his house, looted from the nearby burial mounds. Also, he’s blackmailing some local bandits to hit some trade caravans to better his own business position. Also, his daughter has probably swindled a local rancher out of his stock. He’s bitching in the local tavern. Also, one of the wandering events has three thugs drag the rancher out in to the street and give him a public beating. It’s not overdone. This isn’t a cartoon villain or Boss Hog. This is all great. The NPC summaries are terse, laid out in a small personality/goals/wants things. Easy to reference and you get exactly what you need to run them … and, more importantly, the situation they are involved in. One dudes wife is missing and the ocala are getting up their courage to go pitchfork mob out. The tavern dude has some shit to share, a quirk that he flies in to a rage if the food at the other place is mentioned. This all makes sense. You can run it. Situations, and just enough about them and the people in them to riff on them and make them your own. I’m pretty fucking happy here. Help the herder round up his cattle that got loose and get a rumor and friendly face out of it. That’s how you do rumors! Fix that fucking sidewalk in front of my house, councilman, if you want my vote!

Magic items are at least interesting, if not well described. “Horn of the Valley (carved from a gwibber skull, blowing it forces a moral check for 1 HD enemies, usable once per day” A very nice minor effect with some local color. Later on we get a suit of plate mail you can  wear … which is actually a kind of broken automaton … so you do feel compelled to kill al ot of vermin. Also, you could repair it and get a new buddy to help you out. That’s some interesting stuff. Magic item? Ally? Curse? It’s just a thing, with all of those aspects to it. 

Descriptions here are serviceable, for the most part. “Rubble has been cleared to open a passage inside. It is completely dark. Sounds of mechanical clanging can be heard coming from within.” It’s not going to win any awards, but it is also not so bad. I like it, but don’t love it. In another place “Piles of rusted tools and machinery parts. An inky black puddle of oil covers most of the floor.” Decent vibes. “The roof of the uppermost chamber has partially collapsed, and a heavy rain is falling through the opening, leaving the floor slick. A large amber crystal is built into a gleaming steel apparatus in the center of the room. It flickers intermittently” Broken dome, rain coming in, amber crystal, flickering. I don’t like the ‘large’ word, it’s boring, and I don’t think the overall vibe comes through that the designer was hoping for. I don’t get cavernous, or wondrous out of this. Certainly not a throw away meaningless/useless description, but it doesn’t really cement the scene either.

The dungeon does not quite that potential energy that the village does. You are, essentially, looting a mostly vacant structure, scrounging for a couple of treasure and dealing with some vermin. The final room has a weather control device, and a puzzle around its use that is the right kind of puzzle, with a few clues scattered throughout the complex. A trap or two is well telegraphed, with a burned body in the room and so on. These are all great, but, the situations that made the village good are just not present in the dungeon, and the environment, proper, feels static and dead. I suppose that’s true to life, but, also, this is a D&D adventure. We want to be doing things. It’s got that same vibe as Tower of the Stargazer, you know, the static environment thing?/ 

I’m a fan of the village and the (VERY small) regional encounters. The writing is serviceable and the formatting, with the word count, is fine. The dungeon proper is a bit of a let down from the highs I was looking forward to up to that point, but, also, I think I’m looking forward to the designers next effort.

This is free at DriveThru. Good job on making the first adventure free.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/518942/fragments-of-the-floating-city?1892600

So, I’m in Charlevoix yesterday, intending to stop by the Dairy Grill I drove past, but I need a few days worth of groceries so I stop in at some local grocery. Looking for local products, I see Michigan Cherry BBQ chips, skin on! I’s in the deli and a giant bag. 160 cal per serving and nine servings. I wander on, not wanting a bag that big. I eventually see the chip aisle and think maybe there’s a smaller bag. And there is, so I get it. I just looked. It’s about half the size of the big bag. And there are eight servings?!?!?!?!

Elderlight Press
Generic/Universal
levels 5-7

The quiet village at the mountain’s base is gripped with fear—protective symbols line every door, and whispers of shadowy figures haunting the forest grow louder. What sinister forces lurk in the mist? What ancient power stirs beyond the veil? Gather your party and ascend into the unknown, where the shadows themselves may not be what they seem…

This eight page “adventure” is just the flimsiest of pretexts to have some dice rolling in … three encounters?. It’s a read-aloud followed by a combat, in outline form. 

There is a giant spectrum of games. You can play Warhammer. You can play one of those indie RPGs in which you explore your own death for some catharsis. Somewhere in the middle is D&D. I’m out camping right now. Just like D&D, camping means something to people. It could mean backpacking in to the woods over a week. It could also mean sleeping in a giant RV in the middle of a parking lot like campground while 600 grandkids run around and you sit around watching Tv outside. Or any of a thousand different variations. Now, someone says to you “Hey, wanna go camping?” Which one can you expect? Alas, it is the same with D&D. The D&D experience I’m looking for is not 4e. It’s not Warhammer. I’d play those if I wanted to play those. I’m not fanficing my character or min-maxing them. I’m a brave little tailor with a glint in my eye and sharp knife up my sleeve in a hole in the ground. I guess you get to play 4e D&D if you want, but I just don’t see the appeal when games do it better.

And thusly this adventure. It’s sitting in the generic/universal category but it is clearly 5e. But it’s the kind of 5et that is 4e. This is just the barest outline of an adventure in order to get to the die rolling. It starts with the Village. Literally the bolded heading ‘Village’ followed by “Dynamic Moment: As the players arrive, they witness a villager hurriedly nailing new protective charms to a door. A scream echoes from another house, abruptly silenced. This adds immediate tension.” You will get no details about that scream. It’s just window dressing. It’s all just window dressing. The first encounter is you travelling to a grover in the woods and getting attacked. I guess you talk to the villagers and they tell you they are scared of the grove and so you go? Anyway, you’re walking to the grove. There’s a short read-aloud ““The trees grow denser, their trunks twisted and blackened as though scorched by an unseen flame. The mist thickens with each step, swallowing sounds and casting strange shapes in the periphery of your vision. Then, the whispers start—faint voices at first, like distant murmurs on the breeze. But soon, the whispers form words: ‘Turn back… your fate awaits.’” And then combat starts as ‘Shadow Creatures’ attack you. What are they? Your guess is as good as mine, all we get is a pretty lengthy stat block with no description or ambiance to their attacks. The next encounter is your skill challenge, as you navigate some cliffs and ledges. Make an Athletics or Acrobatics roll to navigate safely. Last up, another very short read-aloud that says you’ve arrived and then are attacked by the grove’s shadow beast guardians. COMBAT! (In color! Caje is a cajun!) 

If I ignore the half page stat blocks then the text here takes two pages. Which STILL seems excessive for a short read-aloud followed by a combat or skill check. There’s literally nothing more to this. Agnostic my ass.

For the sake of a civilized society you must be allowed to enjoy this gameplay. But, try as I might, I don’t see it. I guess, if that’s what you’re after then this adventure is perfect for you. It’s got a grid map for your minis and You get a little read-aloud before your die rolling starts. So, you found one that fits your style perfectly?

Also, there’s no fucking level range in the marketing/cover/etc. And no fucking loot. 

This is $4 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages, and the core six pages of text, so you do get to see the entire adventure Good preview. And worth it to see a fine example of this sort of thing.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517397/the-mistwood-ascent-the-shattered-veil-mini-series?1892600

 Pierce landing page

Luck of the Draw Kickstarter

The post Video of the Day – Doctor Who: Behind the Scenes of Lux, 2025 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

The player's PC's found themselves deep in the underworld of Avilidad after following the Scarrli cultists into the tunnels that line the city. The PC's dealt with several drone mines that the cultists had left for them! This session picks straight up from our last session here on the blog.  Our party ran smack into the mutant spawn of the cult! And then we ran as we lost two of Needleshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11243274667834930867noreply@blogger.com0

This Review Contains Spoilers for Doctor Who Season 2 Episode 4 – Lucky Day

Lucky Day marks this season’s Doctor-lite episode, bringing back Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday for a story that is far more complex and contemporary than it initially appears. Written by Pete McTighe (who is also penning the upcoming UNIT spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea with Russell T Davies), this episode smartly examines life after the TARDIS while delivering a sharp commentary on internet conspiracy culture.

Doctor Who S2, First Look, Ruby Sunday (MILLIE GIBSON), BBC Studios,Lara Cornell Ruby’s Return and Life After the Doctor

The episode begins by establishing Ruby’s post-TARDIS existence. Now working with UNIT but clearly struggling to adjust to ordinary life, Ruby embodies the familiar theme of companions finding it challenging to return to normality after travelling with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa). Gibson delivers a lovely performance highlighting how Ruby has progressed since her departure, and we get some delightful updates on her family after she was reunited with her birth mother in the Season 1 finale.  She still lives with her mother, Carla (Michelle Greenidge), and grandmother, Cherry (Angela Wynter), while now maintaining a relationship with her birth mother, Louise (Susan Lynch), as well.  But as much as things have improved, she still misses her best friend and the adventures he brought to her life.

Doctor Who: Unleashed S2, EP 4 Lucky Day -: The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA), Ruby Sunday (MILLIE GIBSON) : BBC Studios/James Pardon From Romance to Nightmare

Hence, Ruby is in the perfect place for a significant change in her life. She meets Conrad Clark (Jonah Hauer-King), a podcaster who encountered the Doctor as a child, setting up a cheesy romance story between Ruby and Conrad. But this is Doctor Who, and nothing is as it seems.  By the midpoint of the episode, everything has changed. The relationship has all been a ruse, and Conrad reveals himself as the leader of an online conspiracy group determined to “expose” UNIT as frauds. The tonal shift works, turning what seemed like a standard companion-returns story into a biting commentary on misinformation and online radicalisation.

Doctor Who S2E4 – Lucky Day – Conrad (JONAH HAUER-KING) & Ruby Sunday (MILLIE GIBSON) – BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/Lara Cornell

UNIT Takes Centre Stage

This episode serves as a showcase for UNIT, with Jemma Redgrave’s Kate Stewart getting some particularly strong material. Kate’s tempered rage seems on the edge of bursting out of control, especially after Conrad had the nerve to insult her late father.

It’s interesting to see how Kate behaves when the Doctor isn’t around. She’s been willing to go against the Doctor’s wishes in the past, but generally tends to defer to him whenever problems arise. Here, she makes the morally ambiguous decision to unleash the Shreek alien on Conrad, showing a ruthless side that the Doctor would likely have prevented.

The episode appears to be laying groundwork for the upcoming spin-off, with mentions of Mel (Bonnie Langford) dealing with “something strange in Sydney harbour” and hints of a relationship between Kate and Ibrahim (Alexander Devrient). Through Ruby’s interaction with UNIT, the episode does some groundwork to read the franchise’s upcoming UNIT spin-off, giving us a taste of what to expect from The War Between the Land and the Sea.

Shirley (RUTH MADELEY), Ruby Sunday (MILLIE GIBSON), Kate Lethbridge Stewart (JEMMA REDGRAVE) and Colonel Ibrahim (ALEXANDER DEVRIENT), in Lucky Day ,BBC Studios/Bad Wolf,Latoya Fits

The Return of Mrs. Flood – A Time Lord Revealed?

The mysterious Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) makes another appearance in the episode’s closing moments, this time addressing herself as “The Governor” as she frees Conrad from his prison cell. By referring to herself with a title like The Governor, we have to wonder if that’s not her real-deal Time Lord name.

Back at the end of “The Church on Ruby Road,” Mrs. Flood made the audience aware that she knew what a TARDIS was. Since then, there have been a ton of clues that Mrs. Flood has powers beyond that of a simple doddering old lady. The reveal of her calling herself “The Governor” suggests she may indeed be a Time Lord – perhaps even a return of classic villain The Rani, given her manipulative nature.  Or perhaps I’m just being hopeful.

Conrad (JONAH HAUER-KING) encounters the TARDIS in Lucky Day COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon

Conrad’s Future Role

Conrad emerges as a fascinating villain, perfectly embodying toxic internet culture.  There is no redemption of Conrad.  He holds to his character despite almost having his arm bitten off and being lectured by a Time Lord.

Conrad (JONAH HAUER-KING), hosts his ‘Lucky Day’ podcast in the Doctor Who episode of the same name COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon

Interestingly, Conrad asks the Doctor if he’s met Belinda – this version of the Doctor has not. This suggests Conrad might play a role in the ongoing storyline of the Doctor and Belinda trying to return to her proper time. Mrs. Flood recruiting Conrad at the episode’s end strongly indicates he’ll return, likely tied to the season finale “The Reality War.”

A Blend of Past Styles

“Lucky Day” does have allusions to “Love And Monsters” with the Doctor’s influence on a young child’s life, this time in a negative form. Meanwhile, the folk horror elements in the pub scene evoke last season’s acclaimed “73 Yards.”

Doctor Who – S2E4 – Lucky Day – Belinda Chandra (VARADA SETHU), The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) & Young Conrad (BENJAMIN CHIVERS), BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/Lara Cornell

Final Thoughts

Despite the Doctor and Belinda only appearing briefly at the beginning and end, “Lucky Day” is a strong entry in the season. What ultimately elevates the episode out of its Doctor-lite obscurity is its choice of villain and its willingness to tackle contemporary issues head-on.

McTighe’s script delivers a down-to-Earth glimpse at life after the Doctor, coupled with a very prescient takedown of conspiracy-laden internet culture. The combination creates an episode that’s both grounded and relevant, providing a welcome change of pace while still advancing the season’s overarching mysteries.

While we miss seeing more of the Doctor and Belinda together, “Lucky Day” makes excellent use of its format to deliver a story that’s both poignant and provocative, proving once again that Doctor Who at its best can tackle real-world issues through the lens of science fiction.

Doctor Who continues at 7.10pm this Saturday on BBC One. Episodes drop on iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ everywhere else (except Ireland) at 8am GMT.

The post REVIEW: Doctor Who : “Lucky Day” Brings Ruby Sunday Back for a Hard-Hitting Tale appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Suzie Costello was most definitely not expecting the package the stork has left her this morning. But can Torchwood’s most ruthlessly murderous agent resist the lure and remain Child Free?

 

Doctor Who’s spin-off for mature viewers, Torchwood features a team of morally grey characters. None more so that Suzie Costello, who painted her moral pallet in shades of very, very, dark grey indeed. Killed off in the very first episode when Captain Jack and new girl Gwen discover she’d turned serial killer to further her experiments with alien technology, she was too dark even for Torchwood.

But she’s enjoyed a second life (or third, counting They Keep Killing Suzie) with Big Finish. Now Child Free, July’s upcoming Torchwood episode focuses again on Suzie. Previous stories have established her a damaged character who sometimes wishes she weren’t such a psychopath, but who ultimately is who she is.

Much of Suzie’s self loathing and deadly behaviour driven by her hatred of her own father. So she’s probably the last person in the world to be left with a baby. Unfortunately, in Child Free that’s exactly what happens. Waking up one morning to discover herself somehow incredibly, impossibly, a mother, Suzie must figure out how. More importantly, she has to decide what to do with her new unwanted infant now that it’s here…

 

Torchwood: Child Free. Cover by Sean Longmore (c) Big Finish Torchwood: Child Free

Looking for a mysterious energy signal, Suzie Costello bumps into Hywel, who is having doubts about getting married tomorrow.

The next morning, they wake up with a baby and a whole lot of problems..

 

Child Free is available to pre-order as collector’s edition single-disc CDs (+ download for just £10.99) or digital downloads (for just £8.99), exclusively here. Note that there will be only 1,000 copies of the collector’s edition CDs.

The post Torchwood: Child Free – Due Date in July appeared first on Blogtor Who.

Ruby Sunday finds love in this week’s Doctor Who with Jonah Hauer-King’s Conrad

Some Doctor Who companions leave the TARDIS because they’ve finally found home. Others because they’ve found a place that needs them to stay and make a more lasting difference. On rare occasions, they even die. More than once, however, it’s because their Prince Charming has finally come to sweep them off their feet. As it turns out, though Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday originally departed to rebuild connections with family, it’s out that she’s found a literal Disney Prince. Lucky Day, indeed. Jonah Hauer-King plays Ruby’s boyfriend Conrad in this week’s episode so Blogtor Who takes a quick tour of his career beyond The Little Mermaid.

In a way, it’s strange that Jonah Hauer-King isn’t already a household name. Over the past decade he’s spent on film, he’s secured a succession of high profile projects opposite big name stars. It’s perhaps because of his mix of classic golden age of Hollywood good looks, and grounded ability to bring a grounded humanity to characters. The result has been a string of finely crafted by unshowy performances from an actor happy to step out of the limelight when the cameras are off.

 

Jonah Hauer-King (left) as Laurie in the 2017 adaptation of Little Women In the early stages of his career Hauer-King made a specialty of playing supporting boyfriends for female leads

Raised in North London, the son of a British restaurateur and an American psychotherapist, the Cambridge educated actor almost immediately began getting prominent supporting roles. Between 2017 and 2022, Hauer-King chalked an impressive list of such credits. In the BBC’s 2017 production of Little Women, he was Laurie, the inconsistent young love interest to Maya Hawke’s independently minded Jo. The same year he was Paul Wilcox in another literary adaptation, Howard’s End starring Hayley Atwell and Matthew Macfayden, and the memory of the central character’s dead son in The Lost Photograph.

The following year Postcards from London cast him as one of a quartet of high class male prostitutes which the central character falls in with. Meanwhile, he was yet again a love interest to a strong female lead in Ashes in the Snow, as the displaced struggle to survive under Stalin in a Siberian work camp. Similar themes of enduring impossible hardship permeate The Song of Names, with Jonah Hauer-King portraying the teenage years in the life story of a concentration camp survivor.

For Agatha and the Curse of Ishtar, he was again love interest for the central character. This time, like a weird sequel to The Unicorn and the Wasp, Agatha Christie (Lyndsey Marshall) is rebuilding her life in the aftermath of the 11 day disappearance when she finds herself solving murders in Egypt alongside Hauer-King’s handsome archaeologist Max (Christie’s real life second husband.)

Meanwhile, 2021’s This is the Night is a distinctly uneven film. But among the overlapping coming-of-age stories set against the backdrop of the opening weekend of Rocky III, that of Hauer-King’s Christian, struggling equally with his sexuality and his desire to escape the family business, is the most satisfying.

 

Jonah Hauer-King as Lali Sokolov, with Anna Prochniak as Gita Furman (c) Sky Atlantic Many fans will know the actor from his turn as Prince Eric in Disney’s live action adaptation of The Little Mermaid

By 2023 however, Jonah Hauer-King was ready to move into even bigger roles. Among his years of dramatically heavy fare, he’d already starred in 2019’s child friendly A Dog’s Way Home as the boy a loyal pup undertakes a cross-country trek to reunite with. But starring in Disney’s live action adaption of The Little Mermaid was a much more high profile affair. Drawing heavily on Disney’s own 1992 animated version, it featured Hauer-King’s Prince Eric as the royal heartthrob that Halle Bailey’s Ariel risks everything for.

Last year, The Tattooist of Auschwitz returned Hauer-King to more serious drama for another Holocaust drama, but this time firmly placed as the central figure of the best selling novel’s big screen adaptation. He also inherited David Tennant’s former role as Casanova for A Beautiful Imperfection, told from the perspective of his first great love Lucia.

 

Conrad (JONAH HAUER-KING) encounters the TARDIS in Lucky Day COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon Later this year Hauer-King will be branching out into horror and political thrillers

But the young actor appears to be moving away from more straightforward romantic fare. This year’s The Threesome had elements of the romantic comedy, but with the very modern complications of polygamy as an impulsive one night stand between three people leaves them considering what they really want in life.

After Doctor Who for Jonah Hauer-King is the upcoming remake of classic horror film I Know What You Did Last Summer and director Katheryn Bigelow’s latest exercise is tension and drama, an as yet untitled political thriller about a missile launch against the United States.

These are major departures from his earlier work but likely to only expand his profile further. But first there’s perhaps one last ‘boyfriend’ role for Doctor Who as his Conrad Clark, host of the Lucky Day podcast, gets pulled into the weird and wonderful world of his girlfriend Ruby Sunday.

It’s an episode unlikely to call for the former Disney prince to deliver a rousing chorus of Wild Unchartered Waters. But given some of the more musical episodes of late, it’s not impossible either…

 

The Fifteenth Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) channels a 21st century take on the Fifth in Lucky Day ,COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon Doctor Who continues with Lucky Day at 7.10pm tonight on BBC One. Episodes drop on iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ everywhere else (except Ireland) at 8am GMT.

The post PROFILE: Doctor Who’s Disney Prince Jonah Hauer-King appeared first on Blogtor Who.

By Silvio Navaretti, Alberto Iamone, Julien Fenoglio
Forgia Storie
OSE
Levels 3-5

At the end of his long life, the wealthy herbalist Cavillo Spiga required his descendants to tend to the Botanical Cemetery’s garden where he would be buried, under penalty of forfeiting the family’s immense wealth. For decades his heirs have sent a large number of gardeners every month to keep the Botanical Cemetery in perfect order.  But this month no gardeners have returned and the wealth of the Spiga family is in danger! Can you prevent it from falling into the hands of ruthless probate lawyers?

This 54 page adventure details a small cemetery and tomb, with about twenty locations overall. It is meant to be a light heater farce, I think. In the end though it is just wordy for what it is, as a walking tour of a cemetery with a What A Clever Designer Am I vibe.

I don’t like salmon. Or tuna, for that matter. Specifically, I don’t like them in their “steak” forms. Cod or halibut? Sure. But generally I loathe steak fish cuts. The rest of you can enjoy them while I silently judge you. And the same goes for these farce adventures. It’s some kind of tone thing or something. I can’t stand it. It’s not just farce though. I can get behind some farce, and absurdity. It has something to do with the comedic elements. I think they are supposed to be comedic? They aren’t. They are lame. It’s this pastiche. . You’re supposed to think its farce, or supposed to think it’s funny. But it’s neither; it’s just Try Harding.

Ok, so, cemetery with a dude buried in it. He’s relatives got his money as long as they planted a specific garden in the cemetery and kept it well maintained over the years. He’s back to unlife and, in the words of the adventure “The Herbomancer is working on the recipe for the perfect herbal tea”

See! See! Ohhhh boy! Isn’t that great! Guffaw guffaw guffaw. You’re supposed to think it’s funny. I don’t know, maybe you think it is funny. I don’t. I don’t think comedy works well at all in D&D. Sure, you can stick elements, but the suspension of disbelief required means that, at best, I think you can push things to a magical realism type of thing, with brief steps over the line. You know what I have a problem with though? “d. Bee-drawn: Tens of thousands of bees pull the wagon each with its own tiny harness tied to the front of the wagon. It moves 9′ per round.” That’s the werebee queens wagon. No? How about? “All goblins crossing The Botanical Cemetery tie a twig to their head. This silly accessory makes it so the zombie gardeners mistake them for plants, watering them, covering them in manure and shearing their hair. Cunning PCs might imitate the goblins to stay safe from gardeners.” This is, perhaps, as close as I’m willing to go. It is stepping on another trope, of the moronic humanoids, but, also, the party putting sticks on their heads is fun. This is my kind of farce, with a deadly edge to it. Alas, this is few and far between in this adventure, with most of it being the loathsome kind. But, then again, maybe you like that loathsome stuff? What I’m looking for may not be what you’re looking for, in tone.

There’s more than enough for me to not like without droning on about the tone. In the first area of the cemetery you meet some zombie gardeners. If you question them then the DM is instructed to ignore the questions and have the zombies recommend that te party don’t step on the flowerbeds. Again, not my kind of zombies, but, whatever. (In fact, I find the range of zombie vibes in published adventures wild. Mostly just generic undead, sometimes the hordes of flesh eaters, sometimes the horror of the living dead, and sometimes you can talk to them. I guess everyone has their own private Idaho?) 

Oh, also, that first room has the key you’re looking for and you’d have to be an idiot to not find it. You’re told that you hear the zombies hoes striking something metallic. Whatever. This is what counts for the heights of interactivity here. Oh, there’s shit to do. But, again, it’s just a pastiche. There’s no reason to really do anything. Stumble about, grab the key and the other part of it. Maybe talk to a couple of people. Turn some undead (zombies. At levels 3-5?!) Anyway, stumble about and interact with a bunch of ZannAAyYY creatures. Yeah you 

Oh, you get to travel through a body. FLATULENCES • Every 5 rounds: Muscular contractions in the walls create waves of explosive gas that are forcefully expelled toward the exit” That’s right man, never miss an opportunity. 

Oh, the format? Mostly facing pages. Which means two pages per room. Ug! And it’s trying to to the necrotic gnome type formatting. But it doesn’t understand what the purpose of that is or how to use it. Bolding leading to subject headings? Forget that shit, how about just bolding and subject headings not connected to it? The necrotic formatting works because it all works together. You have to understand the why of it to understand how to use it effectively. Otherwise it’s not bringing the clarity that the format is famous for, it’s just, again, putting on a pastiche. It looks like it should be chill but it’s actually worse than if it wasn’t used at all. What if I made a dictionary, and it KIND of looked like it was alphabetical order, but, turns out, it wasn’t? I mean, it DOES still have word definitions, right? It’s just a major pain in the ass to use.

Oh, one encounter has an amphitheater with a bunch of skulls in it, screaming at each other. Are you going to hear this before you get there? Yes, of course! Well, I mean, not in this adventure. Oh, no, no! The map! It’s fucking unnumbered! It’s just a fucking art piece that you get to follow along with because each room has something like “Northwest door: Leads back to

CAVILLO’S TOMB ENTRANCE. • Northeast door: Opens onto VICTOR’S WALKWAY. • Southwest door: Swinging panels. Leads to THE TASTING ROOM.” What the fuck? JUST PUT A FUCKING NUMBER ON THE FUCKING MAP! Why would you not do this? Why would you not put the dictionary in alphabetical order? It takes, what, five seconds? Maybe a minute, total, if I do it REALLY well and legible and number the text also? Also, almost every other adventure on earth does this, so you decided not to it? And, where is the level range?! Not on the fucking cover. Not in the text description on DriveThru. I guess I’m buying this because i just love the publisher and/or designers so much. Fuck that. I’m looking for a level 3-5. 

I loathe this sort of thing. More than the tone. The idea that wandering around and interacting with a bunch of skulls in an amphitheater is fun. I mean, it is. But it’s not interactive play. It doesn’t really lead to anything. It’s just another example of one of those museum tour adventures. In those, you get to wander, look, but touching brings you no reward and only danger. In this, there’s no reason to interact with anything. I guess you need a key part, so you’re fucking around looking for it, but, also, this is like writing a two page description of the mundane flower shop in town, along with the little flower girl that runs it, all so you can pass on a rumor to the party. And you can smell a flower! Roll on the table below … That’s not interactivity. NPC’s get a couple of lines to communicate their vibe and a couple of bullets for what they know, and a couple of sentences for the environment they are on. Much more than that and you’re just Such A Clever Designer. Look, I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I am saying it’s improbable.

This is $2 at DriveThru. The preview is seven pages. You get to see the unnumbered map, and a bunch of meaningless text. Nothing of the actual adventure keys, so as to help you make a purchasing decision. Thus, bad preview.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/517605/the-herbomancer?1892600

The Reality War comes to cinemas for an even bigger finale than last year

BBC Studios and CinemaLive are bringing fans together for an in-cinema screening experience of Wish World and The Reality War on Saturday 31st May. It follows a similar simulcast of The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death last year (as reviewed by Blogtor Who here.)  However, this year there are a few differences…

As this year’s season draws to a close, fans across the UK and Ireland will have the opportunity to come together in cinemas to watch the epic two-part finale on 31st May; starting with the penultimate episode, Wish World, and ending with The Reality War (both written by showrunner Russell T Davies and directed by Alex Sanjiv Pillai).

The list of participating cinemas is even longer than last year’s, including extending beyond the United Kingdom to cinemas in Ireland. There’s also been a change in when the screenings will take place, which seemingly impacts how television viewers can watch the episodes too. Last year the screenings began at 11pm, with the final episode starting at midnight, just as it dropped on iPlayer, but 19 hours before the BBC One broadcast.

 

The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) in Wish World ,BBC Studios,Dan Fearon The action begins in cinemas across the UK and Ireland at 6pm on the 31st of May

Listings indicate the action will kick off on the 31st of May at 6pm BST with Wish World, which will already have been on television the week before. It then moves on to the brand new finale The Reality War around 7pm, presumably the same time it begins on BBC One. Meanwhile, Disney+ advance listings for other regions already suggest that The Reality War will also drop on the international streamer at 7pm BST. (That’s 2pm ET and 11am PT.) It’s a reasonable guess that this also means there won’t be an early iPlayer drop for the finale.

It’s a change that seems to bear younger views in mind. With CinemaLive’s head of acquisitions John Travers saying “Following the success of last year’s midnight cinema event, we’re excited to be working with BBC Studios to ensure that this time round, Doctor Who fans of all ages are able to share in the epic experience of watching the two-part season finale on the big screen.”

Meanwhile, BBC Studios’ event director Natasha Spence said, “We’re delighted to be partnering with CinemaLive once again and give Doctor Who fans across the UK and Ireland the opportunity to watch their favourite show together. This finale promises to be an amazing ride for Whovians, and we’re excited to share the Doctor and Belinda’s latest adventures with them on the big screen.”

 

Tickets for Doctor Who: Wish World/The Reality War are on sale now. You can find your nearest participating cinema at doctorwhoincinemas.co.uk

.

 

The Fifteenth Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) channels a 21st century take on the Fifth in Lucky Day ,COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon Doctor Who continues with Lucky Day at 7.10pm this Saturday on BBC One. Episodes drop on iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ everywhere else (except Ireland) at 8am GMT.

The post Doctor Who 2025 Finale Coming to Cinemas appeared first on Blogtor Who.

The Well delivers a shocking sequel that, like Midnight, rests on the shoulders of a superb guest star

Back at the turn of the century, long before The Well, in the far flung days of the decade we called (more in hope than anything else) the naughty noughties, Doctor Who had a solid formula. There’s the present day fun romp opening. That’s then swiftly followed by one from the past and one from the future and an action heavy two-parter. The middle belt includes one highly emotional one, and one budget friendly one. Then shortly before the massive universe threatening finale, there’d be The Scary One. Usually by Steven Moffat.

Until Season Four, at least. That’s when the show wrong-footed viewers by following Steven Moffat’s Scary One (Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead) with Russell T Davies’ Even Scarier One. Until Midnight.

These days, that familiar template has been broken due to only have eight episodes a season. But we still get trips to the past, voyages to the future, the funny one and… well, 73 Yards was more spooky than genuinely scary. Despite all the monsters and death episodes like Dot and Bubble and Boom were full of tension rather than terror. So Ncuti Gatwa hasn’t had a truly scary episode. Until now. Until The Well.

 

Aliss Fenister (ROSE AYLING-ELLIS) in The Well, COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon Aliens revisited through the lens of Japanese horror, The Well is the Fifteenth Doctor’s first genuinely terrifying episode

The Well injects an overdue element of J-Horror into Doctor Who, as a malign, unknowable, and mostly unseen entity crawls out a well to inflict terrifying games on its prey. It’s a game with strict rules, of course, but ones that seem arbitrary and cruel. A design which our protagonists must reach to try and understand, desperately searching for an escape clause as others die one by one all around them.

And, of course, it has something else in common with the best J-Horror. A happy ending for The Well depends on finding the Stop button on your remote control at the right moment. Because those ineffable rules always have one last trick card to play.

It maps these tropes onto a loose sequel to that classic of Who horror Midnight.

Appropriate for an episode that went out on the 26th of April, aka 4/26, aka Alien Day (LV-426 being the planet from the first two Alien films) The Well rips a page from James Cameron’s guide to making sequels. Midnight had vague shadows of Alien, with recognizably ordinary people who only happen to live and work in outer space. Ordinary people who are soon trapped and out of their depth in the face of an alien threat. In a similar way, The Well has more than a hint of Aliens.

 

Doctor Who S2E3- The Well,TX Belinda Chandra (VARADA SETHU) BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon The Well sidesteps every reason a Midnight sequel is a terrible idea with a wickedly inventive script

Like that 1986 triumph, a gung ho bunch of space troopers should be more of a match for whatever awaits them inside the walls of an industrial facility on an all but uninhabitable colony world. There’s a lone survivor to rescue, and a civilian advisor who’s faced this menace before and barely escaped it. (Nobody listens to until it’s too late, naturally.) There’s even a plan to simply nuke the site from orbit. After all, it’s the only way to be sure.

Though The Well holds back Aliens’ big idea – this time, there’s more than one – until the closing moments.

A sequel to Midnight really shouldn’t work, admittedly. The entity that possessed Skye Sylvestre had such a rigid, defined, way of operating any return appearance would seem doomed to be more of the same. While even Russell T Davies said that the real monsters in his 2008 script were not alien. It was the volatile, easily swayed, casually vicious humans in the grips of paranoia. And that tempest of escalation and character clashes is so finely tuned in the original, any attempt to recreate it would likely suffer in comparison.

However, The Well sidesteps those concerns in some wickedly inventive ways.

 

Aliss Fenister (ROSE AYLING-ELLIS), The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) and Belinda Chandra (VARADA SETHU) COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon The story plays with viewer expectations about whether Aliss can be trusted or not

Like Midnight, much of The Well is spent with the Doctor almost nose to nose with a sitting woman. A woman who’s host to a fearful entity. But it inverts that central dynamic, with Skye’s seemingly malicious victim of possession needing to be given the benefit of the doubt while the Doctor investigates, replaced by Aliss’ apparently sincere and vulnerable victim, whom the first story makes us distrustful of as viewers anyway.

It also changes the nature of the entity at its black diamond heart. It’s no longer something which sits in plain sight, testing sanity with its alien behaviour, turning people on each other simply by existing and repeating their own statements back at them. Instead it lurks unseen, barely glimpsed as it sits surrounded by the carnage it wrought, having whispered its secrets into the ears of its prey.

That’s if this is the same creature of course. Despite the Doctor’s initial assumption, why shouldn’t Midnight be home to an entire ecosystem of horrors born of the X-tonic radiation of its now dead star? But whether it’s the exact same for the Tenth Doctor once faced, or even one of the same species, or something else entirely, their DNA share a malicious glee.

 

Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss in The Well, ,BBC Studios/Bad Wolf,James Pardon Rose Ayling-Ellis provides The Well with its real heart with a compelling and brave performance of a desperate woman

A well told horror story needs more than a compelling monster, though. It needs an equally compelling queue of potential victims. Some will need to be annoying enough that you can’t wait to see them shaken to death like a rag doll in a puppy’s jaws (hello Cassio!). Others need to be a hero whose survival we root for. Though sadly, with the Doctor radiating enough Final Girl energy to power the planet, even the odds of strong, conscientious Shaya, who asks all the right questions, making it through are slashed.

The real star this week is Rose Ayling-Ellis as Aliss, though. Hers is a fiercely brave performance, playing every ounce of Aliss’ fatigue, fear, and desperation completely real. Her quiet, forlorn “Me?” when asking about the planned evacuation has the battle between impossible hope and certain despair take place across every inch of her face.

 

The Well depicts futuristic communication aids like Aliss’ wrist device, with voice-to-text and signs-to-voice technology ,COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf Although not in the original script, Aliss’ deafness enhances her struggle to be understood and trusted by her uncertain rescuers

Like Ayling-Ellis, Aliss is deaf, the part having been rewritten when the actor was cast. At every step it heightens the drama without feeling exploitative. The creature is just an instigator, the real crux of Aliss’ terrors is not knowing what’s going to happen to her; not knowing if she’ll ever see her daughter again. And being locked out of people’s discussions about whether she lives or dies accentuates the tension. Aliss didn’t ask to be last woman standing on Midnight, and the injustice of it all extends to her rescuers. “No private conversations,” says Shaya warningly, to prevent the Doctor and Aliss from signing without sharing their words out loud.

But this command doesn’t extend to the troopers, who routinely turn off their holographic voice-to-text to prevent Aliss from understanding them. Her anguished “don’t turn your back on me!” meant both literally and figuratively, is enough to break all but a Weeping Angel’s stone heart.

Even the Doctor missteps, earning the light rebuke “I can still lip read.” In what may be the continuing development of one of the season’s themes, he apologies though. The man who can acknowledge his mistakes when called out on them, and genuinely dedicate himself to trying better.

 

Cassio Palin-Paleen Trooper 1 (CHRISTOPHER CHUNG) in Doctor Who;s 2025 season ,James Pardon. The Well is a slightly rougher diamond planet than Midnight, with a couple of unlikely contrivances behind the action

If Midnight was a flawless masterpiece, then The Well is a somewhat rougher diamond planet. And not just because it’s been so heavily mined it more closely resembles a Welsh quarry. In a sequel to anything less than perfection they may not matter, but still, some things niggle. The Doctor and Belinda accidentally picking out the exact uniforms of Foundation space troopers right before bumping into them seems incredibly implausible. So much so it almost ruins the joyous laugh of them mistakenly lining up for a sky jump from space. Perhaps the TARDIS not only takes the Doctor where he needs to go, but brings him the rack he needs to browse? It’s still an odd moment, when even the briefest line could have established the Doctor knows they’re on a Foundation ship.

Meanwhile, the Code Red protocol that allows any two troopers to relieve their superior of command at any time seems a preposterous way to run a military unit. Cassio is a fun mix of conceit and stupidity and, at the end, blind panic unbecoming to his uniform. But the plot mechanics to maneuver someone so unsuitable into command are awfully inelegant.

Even after that fantastically dramatic reveal of exactly what planet they’re on, and the return of one of Murray Gold’s greatest music cues, The Well also never quite loses a sense of the Midnight aspect being stitched on. It’s all too easy to picture the Midnight-less version of this. Indeed, almost nobody will have been surprised to read that Sharma Angel-Walfall and Russell T Davies’ script originally made no reference to the earlier adventure.

 

The Doctor (NCUTI GATWA), explores Planet 6767, aka… Midnight COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon The Well is likely to be remembered as one of the Fifteenth Doctor’s classic adventures in decades to come

However, an otherwise sharp script outweighs such issues. As does the superb direction from Amanda Brotchie, navigating the problems inherent in a dark, creepy location, which nevertheless requires visibility of exactly where everybody is at all times.

So ultimately some minor imperfections don’t detract too much from The Well’s brilliance. Carbon 44 is forever, after all; and in future lists of the best of Ncuti Gatwa’s era, it lusters on.

Perhaps we haven’t seen our last glimpse of the Midnight creature, either. The next logical step would be the Foundation ship crashing on a prison planet, the cycle beginning again among the inmates. Though maybe that rematch is one for Big Finish’s Classic Doctors New Monsters line. In the end, there’s no more appropriate Doctor to star in Midnight³ than Paul McGann…

 

The Fifteenth Doctor (NCUTI GATWA) channels a 21st century take on the Fifth in Lucky Day ,COPYRIGHT:BBC Studios,CREDIT LINE:BBC Studios/Bad Wolf/James Pardon Doctor Who continues with Lucky Day at 7.10pm tonight on BBC One. Episodes drop on iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ everywhere else (except Ireland) at 8am GMT.

 

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