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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5844307" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Beyond, "Can I hit it with my sword?", the system wasn't offering much. If you are familiar with the module, practically every room has a rules subsystem described for it so that a significant portion of the module text is describing the chance of drowning (but not for example, how far you move or how fast), rules for non-thiefs climbing, rules for handling balance checks, and so forth. But while the rules for drowing are intricate to the point of being ridiculous - measuring to the 1% chance the chance of drowning based on hit point loss, pounds of weight carried, the bulkiness of armor, the dexterity and consitution of the character - no mention is made whatsoever for another character assisting the drowning character either directly by acting as a life guard or throwing them a rope. Are these actions meant to be automatically successful? Do they change the percentage chance of drowning, and if so, by what degree? And while the writer took great pains to figure out a 'realistic' chance of drowning, he still tracks drowning by simple hit point loss and system is not of general use because the numbers don't work out well for higher or lower level characters (a 100 h.p. character with 90 points of wounds has a 90% chance of drowning, while a 10 h.p. character with 9 points of wounds has a 9% chance of drowning).</p><p></p><p>The lack of a unified system wide skill system was deeply felt. The subsystems in the text were clunky, difficult to port to other situations, fiddly, and really if they were important to ordinary play had no business being buried in a module.</p><p></p><p>Probably the worst case is that in the first two encounters very great detail is lavished on the doors in the rooms - which direction do they open, do they have hinges, how much gap is between the edge of the door and the wall, whether they have handles and of what sort. But after presenting these initial tests, these details of door construction disappear from the text, but the first few rooms have taught the player that the doors require a high degree of tangible interaction to open. So for every damn door in the module thereafter, I'm making up descriptions on the fly. These basic details of the room construction established by the text as important, get left out in favor of having to write the rules of play into the room descriptions. There are so much rules in the text covering basic play, that the adventure text suffers as an adventure. Missing also from the description of doors is how long it took to break the hinges or drive the pins out of the hinges when they were exposed. This missing value is extremely important because every second counts in a module with a hard time limit - every 10 minutes you take poison damage.</p><p></p><p>While it wasn't a rules issue per se, equally bad for me is that the module has detailed descriptive blocks and detailed illustrations. But neither the descriptive blocks nor the illustrations match the fact established earlier in the text that the party can see no more than 10' in any direction - making them worse than useless if you want to stick to the mechanics described in the text. It's like even the author has forgotten the mechanics he's established and now has abandoned.</p><p></p><p>I was familiar with the module, both from play in the '80's and having owned and read it. It still outshines modern adventures in many ways in terms of creative encounter design, interest of its layout, and how evocative its rooms are, but wow was I ever surprised by how clunky the system was. It's like going back to some show from your childhood nd discovering that it is insipid, infantile, and corny, and thinking, "Did I ever really enjoy this?"</p><p></p><p>I guess I should give an actual play report.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 5844307, member: 4937"] Beyond, "Can I hit it with my sword?", the system wasn't offering much. If you are familiar with the module, practically every room has a rules subsystem described for it so that a significant portion of the module text is describing the chance of drowning (but not for example, how far you move or how fast), rules for non-thiefs climbing, rules for handling balance checks, and so forth. But while the rules for drowing are intricate to the point of being ridiculous - measuring to the 1% chance the chance of drowning based on hit point loss, pounds of weight carried, the bulkiness of armor, the dexterity and consitution of the character - no mention is made whatsoever for another character assisting the drowning character either directly by acting as a life guard or throwing them a rope. Are these actions meant to be automatically successful? Do they change the percentage chance of drowning, and if so, by what degree? And while the writer took great pains to figure out a 'realistic' chance of drowning, he still tracks drowning by simple hit point loss and system is not of general use because the numbers don't work out well for higher or lower level characters (a 100 h.p. character with 90 points of wounds has a 90% chance of drowning, while a 10 h.p. character with 9 points of wounds has a 9% chance of drowning). The lack of a unified system wide skill system was deeply felt. The subsystems in the text were clunky, difficult to port to other situations, fiddly, and really if they were important to ordinary play had no business being buried in a module. Probably the worst case is that in the first two encounters very great detail is lavished on the doors in the rooms - which direction do they open, do they have hinges, how much gap is between the edge of the door and the wall, whether they have handles and of what sort. But after presenting these initial tests, these details of door construction disappear from the text, but the first few rooms have taught the player that the doors require a high degree of tangible interaction to open. So for every damn door in the module thereafter, I'm making up descriptions on the fly. These basic details of the room construction established by the text as important, get left out in favor of having to write the rules of play into the room descriptions. There are so much rules in the text covering basic play, that the adventure text suffers as an adventure. Missing also from the description of doors is how long it took to break the hinges or drive the pins out of the hinges when they were exposed. This missing value is extremely important because every second counts in a module with a hard time limit - every 10 minutes you take poison damage. While it wasn't a rules issue per se, equally bad for me is that the module has detailed descriptive blocks and detailed illustrations. But neither the descriptive blocks nor the illustrations match the fact established earlier in the text that the party can see no more than 10' in any direction - making them worse than useless if you want to stick to the mechanics described in the text. It's like even the author has forgotten the mechanics he's established and now has abandoned. I was familiar with the module, both from play in the '80's and having owned and read it. It still outshines modern adventures in many ways in terms of creative encounter design, interest of its layout, and how evocative its rooms are, but wow was I ever surprised by how clunky the system was. It's like going back to some show from your childhood nd discovering that it is insipid, infantile, and corny, and thinking, "Did I ever really enjoy this?" I guess I should give an actual play report. [/QUOTE]
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