Apparently time really does fly when you have a blog you're supposed to update. I hadn't realized it'd been this long since my last update.
My bad.
So the voting has finally ended and results are in for Round 4 of RPGSS Season 9! As always, however, I exist in a state of perpetual lateness and am only just now providing my reviews for all eight encounters that were submitted. Since these are a little longer, I'll divide them in half and cover the four that didn't make the cut today and the other four tomorrow (probably/maybe/okay-sometime-this-year).
As before, my judgement comes largely from the cinematic value of an encounter. This is especially true when the challenge basically comes down to 'take this really boring map (so boring we made it a re-usable flip map!) and do something cool with it.' At that point, the actual map is probably less important to the encounter than how fun the encounter actually is...
But I've done enough hating on everything for now. Let's talk critique.
Rimesoul Nexus
Aw yeah, rime-buddies. On a first reading, I was a little thrown by the fey dealing in souls. Night hags aside... is that even a thing? I know that they're mean fey, but isn't it more the domain of daemons and all those bad-plane dwelling folks? I guess it's Irrisen, so all of that sort of fits up there because everyone's a jerk... so I'll just roll with it. I really like how this isn't a strict combat encounter. There's a strong likelihood the PCs are going to end up making a mess, but the set up is all there for a perfectly reasonable monetary exchange for some souls. The fact that the night hag dips out seems a little bit of a pulled punch, to me. Sure, she doesn't care about the market--but why shouldn't she care about a couple of (probably not Irrisani) PCs coming around and mucking things up? Even if she just tossed a couple of spell-likes and stomped off in a huff screaming 'not even worth my time,' that would add more personality and more memorable npcs to these whole scene. And man is there a great little cast here. The redcap butcher, the money-driven forlarren, and a pair of smartly cold-resistant water buds chilling in the water to watch the prisoners. I could see my PCs striking up conversations with any of them--except the redcap, of course, who would probably just enjoy lopping off limbs more than anything.
I'm not so sure I'm buying the cages outside and over the water. Yeah, they're cool, but is that how souls are collected? What happens if the prisoners die from exposure early? Why not just harvest those guys when you get them--is it better to let the souls simmer in the cold for a bit? Likewise, it seems that the biggest threat here isn't the boss of the place--it's the night hag who's pulling bunches because of ???, the redcap in the back room, and a really nasty freezey drowny cage. All of them are a really cool composite, but individually looking at who should be the real challenge of this place, I'm left wondering why the forlarren is in charge of anything.
Laboratory of Unraveling Arcana
Oh, hey, someone used the beginner's box map! Props for using one of the flipmaps I actually enjoy.
This one's got a whole lot of great set up for a dungeon crawl, but the actual encounter here at the start feels like a mishmash of cool features thrown together. There's a really cool NPC who probably wants nothing to do with a real fight because he'll get his shit kicked in, a shadow that lurks there just to piss off said NPC, a neat and relatively unique hazard (and one that feels very Mana-Wastey), a fiendish snake swarm, and some asshole construct. That just about runs the gamut of beasties, and--while pretty cool--feels like it would just end up being a huge hassle to run as a GM. There's just so many disparate elements working together here because 'bad guys said so.' I don't even really buy Turlik's commitment to this whole fight.
Granted, I think it's a very cool fight. There's a big room with lots of detail and all kinds of hazards and things to deal with. Stuff to jump off! Walls to climb on! Crunchy things to ruin your stealth checks! That's a lot of really good detail. But for what this encounter is--a huge truckfest with a construct and a swarm--I'm not sure any of those details are really needed. The other guys are just sort of there. I'd actually think it was cooler is the shadow was also a scorned researcher, forced to work with Turlik and the two absolutely hate each other and everything. Then you'd have two insane NPCs to interact with in hilarious and awesome ways. And, as an added bonus, the encounter with the door-guards wouldn't feel like such a wild mashup of random elements.
Kynoon's Crossing
The set up for this thing is great. More Tian Xia adventures? More kaiju? More cool encounters with Eastern-themed baddies? Yiiiiis. My biggest fault here is that the approaching kaiju making a mess of the land should play out earlier than it does, I think. Does the Consort cross the river right exactly when the PCs get into a fight with the terracotta soldiers? That's a little contrived, and I feel like the PCs should be made well aware of how dangerous the ground itself is becoming well before they get into a fight. Each step should threaten to knock them down--perhaps Kynoon has balanced himself on the bridge to play because it suffers less from each impact. Perhaps whole bits of the bridge could give way over time, or the flash flood could threaten to displace the entire thing! For something that clearly wants to be such a key element of this encounter, the kaiju feels like it's sort of tacked on (and for hazards with no CR value, at that!).
All of that might just lend itself better to my new abhorrence for battlemaps. You don't have to worry about exactly where the bridge is crumbling or where the flood is or where the 'new' ground is as the bridge gives way and starts flowing downriver when there's no actual map to deal with. But, I suppose, that's not the challenge here--even if I think it should be. Given the parameters, I really like this encounter. The tanuki is the sort of NPC I love to play and my players love to interact with. The terracotta soldiers aren't super duper interesting on their own, but they play to a larger story that could be a whole set of awesome adventures. Unfortunately, assuming the PCs ally with Kynoon, the encounter here isn't the most interesting--it's Kynoon himself, and the ever-present force of the offscreen kaiju.
(Side note: I know Jeff was... not himself while writing this. I
think that shows in the actual quality of writing--I've been up sleepless nights writing long enough to know the look of it. I still think it's awesome, though!)
The Petrified Plain
People really seem to enjoy Nex and Geb. I don't really care for either of those places, though I do think the Mana Wastes are a neat concept. Regardless, this has a lot of set up to get there and I think it's a pretty cool set up. Maybe a bit much for an encounter... but it's pretty cool regardless. Petrified, talking, beheaded pirate queens with buried treasure? Sign me up. Oh, the encounter doesn't actually use any of that? O-oh... nevermind. Yes, there's obviously a whole lot of cool adventure to come. Yes, I was totally disappointed this encounter didn't get straight to that business and skip all these generic mooks.
The encounter itself feels so lackluster compared to the setup. Some wights, some hungry fog, a pair of haunts. The one haunt doesn't even feel haunting--the visions it provides are inspirational if you're blissfully unaware of the results. Perhaps it should end with them all wasting away in death or stone or whatever... something that makes it clear the promises were indeed broken. The other haunt? Now that one is frickin' cool. As they're all turned to stone... you are slowly joining them! Neat. It occurs to me that setting two haunts against one another would be cool. Can haunts even be positive? (I'm going to vote sure, fuck it, why not.) Maybe the inspirational haunt, a remnant of all the hope they had, helps empower the PCs against the calcifying haunt and the mean undead nasties below the bridge. Man, those undead nasties just feel like such an afterthought. "Oh, I guess I need something that can actually attack and stall and/or kill people here." Easily the least interesting part of this encounter, and there's some really cool stuff going on in the rest of it.
And that's that for these encounters! Tune in next time on Dragon Ba- Er, the Captain's Quill to hear all of my debatably curmudgeonly and clearly highly opinionated thoughts about the rest of the encounters!
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