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By Vanessa Nairn
Snail Song Studios
OSE
"Low Levels"

Jebediah Bigby is a meadmaker extraordinaire, famous throughout the region for his delicious mead. The secret to his success is simple, ‘Big Bees make better honey.’ However, rumours run wild as to the true secret of Bigby’s success. Now that shipments have started going missing, it’s your job to delve into the meadery and find out!

This 34 page adventure presents an underground brewery with bees and goblins with a small above ground section. A rather A rather standard fare that doesn’t overstay, with the usual issues. Where ‘standard fare’ has the usual low-interest meaning. 

So, there’s nothing special about this adventure. It’s the usual go in a room and stan things kind of affair. This comes along with poor text/descriptions, etc saving grace being the text doesn’t drone on and on. But, also, I had this idea …

What’s going on here is the halfling Bigby (no relation) runs a meadery. Another halfling meader rival, Penelope Smallby, hires a hobgoblin and his goblin band to raid it and get the secret recipe. It’s not Love. Turns out ol Bigby has been running his mead through a fishtank with slopfish in it, which infuses an unnatural happiness in his mead. And in stronger doses it makes you not be able to feel ANYTHING ut joy, even during the greatest tragedies. Also, Penelope doesn’t want to pay the goblins. Also, Bigby is cheery and morbidly obese. There’s an entry on the (aboveground) wandering monster table that has a group of halfing nature enthusiasts about and about enjoying watching the bees. The giant bees. …  I hope you’re thinking what I’m thinking! There was an opportunity here, that I initially thought the adventure was going to go down, for a REALLY good adventure. Murder, betrayal, suicides in town. Extortion. Bribes. Cover-ups! All of the seediness of a small town coming out and being amplified. You can imagine Poirot at the end emphasizing “And all for a mead recipe!” The cheeriness of the halflings. The absurdity of the situation, juxtaposed with the awfulness of the consequences of the actions taken. That’s an awesome fucking adventure!

But this one is just your normal fare. Walk in to rooms in an underground area. Meet a goblin. Or rat. Or bee. Maybe talk to a goblin. Stab everything else, probably. The height of interactivity is finding a key behind a painting (nice!) or following some pipes behind a wall. Again, nice. But these are very isolated examples. The vast majority of it is just walking to a room with very little for the DM to work with. You know the deal, just one thing in the room. And the thing is simple. And it usually doesn’t have implications for things further/deeper in to the dungeon. There’s no build up or mystery.

This isn’t helped much by the words. What we get, time after time, is some text that looks like read-aloud but is really a kind of narrator’s commentary in a movie or tv show. “Normally, the ground floor of Bigby’s Meadery is well kept and serves as a bar and storefront. However, ever since Glurgak’s band took over, it looks like a hurricane has hit it, with broken bottles and furniture scattered about” I can imagine the narrator in those old Discworld Tv Movies. Or “A decorative garden that offers one of the sources of pollen for Bigby’s Giant Bees.” That’s more of a name, rather than a description? The text should inspire the DM to greatness, to plant a solid idea in their head that they can then riff off of, making it more than the sum of the its words. 

This isn’t an offensive dungeon. It’s hard to imagine something this simplistic to be offensive. I’m not even sure its a dull dungeon. It’s more of a … staid dungeon and/or adventure? I wish it were more. I wish the giant bee/honey/mead thing was more prevalent in more rooms, and really lent a vibe of being immersed in it. But the descriptions just aren’t evocative enough for that.

This is $5 at DriveThru. The preview is nine pages. That gives you the background info that I though would be great as a tragedy, but it needed to also show some rooms so we can get a sense of what the core of the adventure looks like.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491923/trouble-at-bigby-s-meadery?1892600

By Gabriel Ramos
Wonder Twin Harmony
OSE
Levels 1-3

On the lonely Windswept Island a death cult’s dungeon hides the path to an extraplanar vault with a macabre ritual. Within that dreadful vault rests a powerful sword imbued with the soul of the death deity’s most fervent fanatic.

This forty page adventure uses twelve pages to describe seven rooms in a puzzle dungeon. Intricate rooms with some decent imagery, but it all feels like a video game, with confusing descriptions.

Member when, back when there were these video games that were co-op, in a certain way? Maybe split-screen couch co-op, and they were advertised that you could play them with your girlfriend, cause girls don’t like to play videogames. And you’d run along in your own little separate splitscreens and do things in one area to help the person in the other are get past some obstacle? Portal was kind of the same thing, except it was just you. This adventure is that.

You walk in the front door of the dungeon and the doors slam shut behind you (sigh) and the giant statue says something like “go get the magic sword and present it to me and I’ll let you out.” (sigh) Anyway, you’re supposed to figure out that a party member needs to kill themself. Then you can use the green orb in the room to turn them in to a ghost. They then have a limited amount of time to walk through a wall and pull levers and so on. In some other room (that you don’t see till later, remember you’re trapped) there’s a fresco that implies you can bring them back to life again. So, stuck in a room forever with some vague riddle telling you to kill yourself. Until you do so. And use the green orb right. 

From there things get a bit confusing … I swear I have gone through this multiple times and, just like that fucking dam thing in Zork 2, I cannot figure out what the fuck I am supposed to do. I THINK the ghost goes west to pull a lever, which unlocks the room with hints in it, and then you go east to get a key and then put the key in the lock in the hint room and then get the sword. I THINK. I note that this is all outlined in a summary section and individual parts are noted in the room descriptions, but I STILL can’t really figure out if that’s the correct reading. The whole ghost/no-ghost thing is also a mess. Oh, and, also, remember, fuck around too much and your ghost buddy dies for realsies. 

That problem, the one of confusion for the DM, is a trend in this adventure. At one point there’s a text description that has some references to cones and spheres, I think, and then says something like there’s a malnourished cube down in a pit. What the fuck is a malnourished cube? I read and reread and then skipped it … only to find, at the end of the room entry on a different page, that it’s a malnourished GELATINOUS cube.  Ohhhhhh! That makes sense! And now the algae line on the wall makes sense also! So much more now makes sense! And these are not isolated examples, in a seven room dungeon. The text, the DM text, is cumbersome. It’s using some formatting where room exits are very important and high up, so shit about the room that might be important is further down, sometimes on another page, and it’s not always obvious that the text continues. So you look at it thinking “huh. What am I missing?” At one point there’s a note that the green orb can tell “A creature is given the time of its lingering life force potential were it to die.” After puzzling that out for a great long while I think I decided that it tells a ghost how long until it does for realsies. I think.

And the individual rooms tend to be set-piecy. It feels for all the world like you’re in some Portal stage that you need to clear to move on to the next one. That’s not the vibe I’m going for in D&D. But, hey, I recognize that could be your vibe. For some reason … If you like rearranging blocks on the floor to spell a death gods name while skeletons come out each round to fight you until you’re done. It’s just TOO blatantly a puzzle. Like you just handed someone a crossword puzzle and told them to solve it to cross the river Styx. 

There’s some good stuff in here also. There’s a decent overview, in most rooms, which could be read-aloud, which generally gives a very strong impression of the room. Cherry picking room five “Chained skulls hanging from the ceiling emit a pale blue light, illuminating a long hallway of constantly rippling sand. An obsidian altar stands before a barred archway.” Not the best, from a “where is what? “ standpoint, but still a cool room description that cements it and really makes you feel like you are somewhere. Although, it is leaning towards “stick a cool adjective in” syndrome. Yet I will the admit the line is fine between sticking in a cool adjective and good writing. 

I’ve got a lot of nits around treasure, with skeletons with diamonds for teethe not getting any worth. But, also, the hook treasure map only is readable on moonless nights. Groovy! And a severed hand in a box wears a ring. A cursed ring! I like it! And in other places we’ve got heads of kings with their golden crows nailed to their heads. Ouchies! Or their wrists bound with rusty barbed chains. But, then again, the entire “explore the island” section is really perfunctory and kind of a museum tour.

If I excuse the set piece nature, then more focus on the text could have solved the confusion issues. (Where was that editor?) And there is clearly a bit of talent for conjuring up a memorable scene and at least describing it initially. Yeah, needs more focus, both on the wilderness sections especially and in the dungeon in general. And the concept it kind of lame. But, given a non-lame concept I would be interested in seeing something … say, a full on dungeon/adventure? 

This is $8 at DriveThru. The preview is six pages. You get to see the ritual overview I had trouble with, and some of the island … for which there is no map. Not a great preview, since there are no rooms, but not a terrible one either.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/489237/secret-vault-of-the-windswept-island?1892600

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The Doctor discovers a secret and Ruby finds some unlikely friends as dark forces target our heroes for a night of terror

 

Titan Comics’ new Doctor Who comic continues this month, with the Doctor and Ruby getting closer to the heart of the mystery at the end of the world. Following on from last time, they’re lost in a post apocalyptic shopping centre, on the run from an army of zombie Cybermen.

The second of four issues, this is classic Part Two material. After facing off against the immediate danger, the Doctor begins to realize the true nature of the threat. Meanwhile, his companion has her own diversion, where she meets some unlikely allies. But if Everyone Must Go feels structurally like the type of story Tom Baker used to run around in, it’s also thoroughly in touch with the modern era. There’s a dangerously smooth supervillain with a penchant for breaking the fourth wall to confide in the audience about his schemes. The nature of fear plays a central role in those plans, along with the question of what it takes to make the Doctor truly afraid. Meanwhile, the importance of not judging others by their appearance is also building to be a major theme of the story.

 

Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #2. Art by Kelsey Ramsay and Valentia Bianconi (c) Titan Comics Some neat plot twists keep you guessing, while avoiding some recent Cyberman cliches

The issue’s bookended at one end with the type of doomed local that Doctor Who cold opens love to send into the opening credit scream, and at the other by a powerful cliffhanger. In between there are some clever twists of the plot to keep you guessing. Fortunately, we’re steering away from just another case of the Cybermen as lackeys of another villain. At this halfway point, then, The Fifteenth Doctor is lining up to be a fun addition to this Doctor’s adventures.

In terms of the art, Kelsey Ramsay continues to provide an angular energy to the moments of chase and threat. However, at times the script seems to call instead for a more sinister mood, and sequences like the villain’s casually malevolent musings before fixing the reader directly in the eye could have used a more elegant touch. Blogtor Who will leave you discover that villain’s name for yourself, by the way, coming as it does as a cliffhanger reveal. Though it does smack so much of all the ‘The ____’ titles being taken that issue three may well start with the Doctor mocking the choice.

 

Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #2. Cover A by Roberta Ingranata and Marko Lesko (c) Titan Comics Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #2

Join the Doctor in a new comic book adventure! The Doctor and the Cybermen clash while Ruby faces an insectoid threat. But is everything as it seems? And what is the true nature of the terrifying evil that stands ready to unveil itself…

Issue #2 is on sale now from Forbidden Planet and your local comic shop. #3 is out from Titan Comics on the 25th of September.

 

The post REVIEW: Doctor Who: The Fifteenth Doctor #2 appeared first on Blogtor Who.

JUDGE DREDD // MACHINE RULE by John Wagner (w) Colin MacNeil (a) Chris Blythe (c) Annie Parkhouse (l) ROGUE TROOPER // RECON by Geoffrey D. Wessel (w) Paul Marshall (a) Pippa Bowland (c) Jim Campbell (l)…

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By G.A. Mitchell
Self Published
OSR
Level 1

A barrow has sat on a hillside for centuries, unnoticed by all save a few grazing cattle. But in recent years the barrow has grown a reputation for darkness. Suspicious tales are whispered about a malevolent creeping spirit that steals from the barrow at night to eat livestock and carry off the unwary. Yet that is not all. Strange men came through town of late, all heading in the direction of the barrow. Who knows what cruel and evil god these new arrivals worship, or what fell machinations they plot from within the old barrow’s halls.

This eleven page adventure presents an eleven room barrow. It’s a weird mix of classic fantasy, almost from folklore, and standard dull fantasy. It’s trying, but the designer hasn’t quite mastered the skill of writing a room description, both from the read-aloud or DM text.

I love me a barrow adventure! Ancient hills with crumbling standing stones on top and weathered lintels leading to narrow tunnels. Sign me up! And this adventure uses both the word verisimilitude AND effluvium?! Someone is going for that old school D&D vibe! And that comes through, well, in places. There’s this nice little encounter inside, in a natural chamber with a pool in it. And a harpy, luring the party in to drown. Yeah, the rooms al little small and Ms Harpy aint gonna succeed well, I suspect, against a full party, but it really does a good job, in its presentation, of converting this kind of classic fantasy vibe, free of all of the RPG bullshit. Likewise, we have a giant spider, who talks, and her daughters, in one room. And she’s got this cultist trapped in her webs, who’s kind of an idiot, who they are keeping alive because he’s a fool. At least temporarily. Yeah, yeah, I like talking animals. But, also, the VIBE from The Hobbit is a really good one. Maybe a little too clean, but that’s the way I rumble. And the talking spiders really communicate that vibe. You can like different things, I don’t care, but I think this kind of thing really communicates situations in which the party can be free thinkers, and rewarded for it, instead of just rolling a fucking number from their character sheets. And that’s the atmosphere I want in my game. 

I want to point out, also, a description of a bubbling cauldron which appears in one of the final rooms: “A hissing pool, thick with creamy brown slime bubbles with slithering movement. Worm-things spasm and groan beneath the fat-skin on the surface of the font which faintly glows, casting lurid whispering shadows about the vaulted hall.” I can get down with almost all of that. The hissing pool. Thick creamy brown. Slithering. A fat skin. The whole casting lurid whispers thing goes a bit over the top for me, but the rest of it is pretty decent. 

But, alas, the rest of this is the usual that we find in adventures. The baddies are cultists of the worm god, although, that whole worm god motif doesn’t really come through much at all. Just a veneer, really, with little vivadry. And the read-aloud is italics, which is hard on the eyes for long sections of it. And the DM’s text contains a lot of room history that is irrelevent to the play at the table. The entrance tells us “This is the doorway into the barrow. It was smashed open with prybars and picks and hauled open by Kizvin and his cult followers two weeks ago.” Yup, the entrance is usually the entrance. And the backstory here is the third, or fourth, time we’ve been told it in the adventure. It all comes off as a rather staid location rather than a dynamic one, full of mystery. 

And then there’s the timer. The adventure tells us its a timer. It’s actually more a timeline. Days one through seven, with different things happening each day, like the spiders eating the dude and then on the final day the worm god being summoned forth. But, this has a problem. While timelines are great, they move things and make the world seem alive, timers are different. Timelines usually give a hint that a timER exists. You learn that you need to deal with the situation or something bad might happen. The timer here, if we can call it that rather than a timeline, doesn’t really give any hint at all that The End is coming, and thus there is no way for the party to know. Any tension that was possible is not present. Further, certain aspects of the timeline actively work against the fun of the adventure, like the spiders killing the dude they’ve captured. Realistic? Sure. But the point is fun. And if killing him (the spiders killing him) detracts from the fun then why do it? He’s not a resource for the players. They don’t know the spider will kill him. There’s no race against time, at least not one that the party knows about. I make wanderer checks in the open, and openly advance the wanderer time wheel (Goblinoid Games, if memory serves?) It’s the tension. You have to know you are making a decision in order to feel the tension from that decision. 

There are elements here that show promise. Some interesting encounters and a decent description or two. But, also, a lack of focus on the keys and it slips in to a kind of staid cultist/tomb vibe. 

This is free at DriveThru.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/491280/the-barrow-of-bhalagrim-jem1?1892600

That’s the fucking way you explore a fucking barrow!

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A murder mystery in the stars awaits Mel Bush, in Death in the Stars, an exciting new release from BBC Books

Doctor Who: Death in the Stars is the debut novel from star of stage and screen and Doctor Who alum Bonnie Langford. Written with Jacqueline Rayner, the adventure follows Bonnie’s character Mel Bush on one of her own adventures between departing the Seventh Doctor’s TARDIS in Dragonfire and reuniting with the Fourteenth Doctor in The Giggle.

Travelling the universe with intergalactic wheeler dealer Sabalom Glitz, Mel discovers a spaceship full of secrets, and murder. As the new arrivals, she and Glitz are immediately the prime suspects. With no other way to prove their innocence, Mel has no choice but the uncover the real killer.

Death in the Stars is out now in hardback, paperback, e-book, and audiobook. In addition to writing the new adventure, Bonnie Langford also narrates the audiobook. Find it now at any good book retailer, or from the list of options here.

 

 

Death in the Stars presents a Doctor Who murder mystery starring Mel (c) BBC Books Doctor Who: Death in the Stars

A band of killers. Survivors with a secret. A death-defying murder mystery in space.

When young Mel’s business partner, Sabalom Glitz embarks on yet another “get rich quick” scheme, it marks the start of an epic, death-defying murder-mystery in space.

After barely escaping the snares of a murderous galactic cult, Mel searches for fellow survivors in a nearby spaceship graveyard – while Glitz looks to fill his pockets. But the discovery of a spaceship with its crew in suspended animation and incredible secrets on board leaves the duo stranded with no way off.

Mel revives the crew – and then the murders start. Murders that cannot possibly have been committed by any of the crewmembers. In fact, there are only two realistic suspects – Glitz and Mel themselves…

The post Doctor Who: Death in the Stars – Out Now! appeared first on Blogtor Who.

 

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The Sixth Doctor’s 40th Anniversary celebrations continue with Big Finish’s epic boxset The Trials of a Time Lord

It’s forty years since the Sixth Doctor burst flamboyantly onto TV screens, and Big Finish Productions’ anniversary celebrations continue with Doctor Who: The Trials of a Time Lord, an epic six-part story told across three discs.

In this brand-new audio adventure, the Doctor (Colin Baker) teams up with both of his classic companions. He’s travelling with Mel (Bonnie Langford) when they follow a distress call. It’s a cry for help that leads to a reunion with his old friend Peri (Nicola Bryant).

The time-travelling trio soon discover that a sinister force is pitching them against a number of foes. It’s a veritable rogues gallery recognisable from the Sixth Doctor’s era of TV Doctor Who. There’s the Cyber Leader (David Banks), Davros (Terry Molloy), and even the murderously gluttonous Androgums in the form of Stunrib (Jon Culshaw).

 

“Six episodes with every monster imaginable!”

The Trials of a Time Lord guest stars Rufus Jones (W1A, Wonka) as game show host Brot Zirkussen. Meanwhile, Aruhan Galieva (Can You Hear Me?) plays Tiffany Jenkins, a woman from 1985 who’s met the Doctor before. The cast also includes George Naylor as Voss, Samuel James as Grobolosh, and Holly Jackson-Walters as Vurglemere.

Rochana Patel scripts the first two episodes of The Trials of a Time Lord, Katharine Armitage the third and fourth, and Stewart Pringle the final two.

Colin Baker said: “We’ve got six episodes here with every monster imaginable! The highlight was working with all those dear old chums – with my two lovely companions, of course, and also Terry Molloy as Davros, and David Banks as the Cyber Leader.

“And whilst sadly the original Androgum actors are no longer with us, to work with the Androgums again was rather splendid. They were prime creations of the best of all writers, Robert Holmes.”

Nicola Bryant added: “It’s a bit different to your run-of-the-mill Sixth Doctor and Peri story, and it’s wonderful to be working with Mel, teaming up to take care of our Doctor. The story is very present, but also harks back to a story I did with Colin, Vengeance on Varos, which seemed very much ahead of its time.”

And, Bonnie Langford said: “It was interesting to be part of The Trials of a Time Lord because I was involved with the original Trial of a Time Lord when it was on screen; that’s when Melanie was introduced – or just basically plonked, I think is the right word! – into the series, as wide-eyed as I was. This is a very different story, because obviously the world has changed a lot over the years.”

 

Doctor Who: The Trials of a Time Lord. Cover by Sean Longmore (c) Big Finish Doctor Who: The Trials of a Time Lord

The Sixth Doctor’s fortieth anniversary celebrations continue, courtesy of LudoSphere Incorporated, with the greatest adventure ever streamed…

Responding to a distress call from an old friend, the Doctor and Mel find themselves in ‘Cyberia’, a prison camp run by an even older foe. But this time, the Cyber Leader’s machinations are just the tip of one very sinister iceberg, one that will test the Doctor to his very limit, and beyond…

We hope you’re hiding behind the sofa, because ‘The Trials of a Time Lord’ are about to begin!

 

Doctor Who: The Trials of a Time Lord is now available for £22.99 (collector’s edition CD boxset + download.) You can also buy it download only for £18.99 exclusively here. There are only 1500 copies of the collector’s edition CD box set. Furthermore, Big Finish will not be repressing this release.

The Trials of a Time Lord is the second of two box sets celebrating forty years of the Sixth Doctor, following March’s The Quin Dilemma. Both can be purchased together in a multi-buy bundle for just £44 (collector’s edition CD box set + download.) Alternatively for £36  you can get them download only exclusively here.

All the above prices include the special pre-order discount and are subject to change after general release.

Please note that Big Finish is currently operating a digital-first release schedule. The mail-out of collector’s edition CDs may be delayed due to factors beyond Big Finish’s control. But all purchases of this release unlock a digital copy to immediately download or play on the Big Finish app.

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