DriveThruRPG.com
Browse Categories
$ to $















Back
pixel_trans.gif
Venture Hold: A Dungeonteller Adventure $4.00
Average Rating:4.0 / 5
Ratings Reviews Total
0 0
0 1
0 0
0 0
0 0
Venture Hold: A Dungeonteller Adventure
Click to view
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Venture Hold: A Dungeonteller Adventure
Publisher: Blue Boxer Rebellion
by Alastair M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 08/30/2015 05:47:02

This is an interesting, pleasingly detailed, lengthy adventure designed for the "Dungeonteller Fantasy RPG" system, in which the typical party of 3-6 Dungeonteller starting characters could engage easily for several game-sessions (the designer suggests 6-10), and perhaps still longer, should the GM grasp the option to extend beyond what's provided, as the closing page of the text suggests. Placed in and beneath the town of Lastward, this product also ties-in with Blue Boxer's separate "Big Hexyland" mapped world, because Lastward features on the Quibble Marches map of Big Hexyland, a couple of game-days travel from the city of Stormgate, which city is described in the main Dungeonteller rulebook. Not to give any secrets away, this is only one of the Big Hexyland connections in this adventure.

There is a set of lovely hand-drawn perspective maps showing the entire subterranean prospect for the GM, along with a similarly-drawn, labelled view of Lastward. An unlabelled JPEG version of just the town drawing can be downloaded freely from the Blue Boxer Rebellion blog for player use. Perhaps it could have been included here too. The whole, text and maps, prints out clearly using a "normal" home inkjet printer setting - indeed the text is clear even on an ink-saving "draft" or "fast" printout - though it's probably worth considering doing higher-quality prints of the maps particularly, and maybe laminating or otherwise protecting them for repeated use, and also to allow making easily-erasable GM notes on them.

Venture Hold's format, with its numerous pages of densely-typed text and separate map pages, fits with that established for the first major Dungeonteller adventure module, "Welcome to the Plunderdome" (available as a set of free downloads from the publisher's blog, though written about a year before the RPG rules were published). However, that gives it a surprisingly drab, pedestrian appearance, by comparison to the colourful, lively, well-illustrated range of the company's other Dungeonteller products. This seems quite a mistake, as at least a few colour illustrations, with portraits of some of the key NPCs and the new monsters, scattered through it would have enhanced its look considerably. Even inserting some player-aid unlabelled drawings in black-and-white of the more important and intricate parts of the dungeon at relevant points in the text, would have helped give this a less forbidding, text-wall, appearance, as well as fitting with the other works Blue Boxer has already produced.

I'd also like to have seen a set of extractable pages featuring the new monsters here, in the standard, beautifully-illustrated, Dungeonteller format of the rule and monster books, so they could have been printed-off and stored as part of a complete set of available monsters by GMs. Their absence, and the fact there's no index to let you find the stat blocks for these creatures quickly in a printed-off version of Venture Hold, again seems a badly missed opportunity.

Although there are a few minor typos, missing words, and so forth occasionally, of little real concern, I did spot one mildly more problematic item. A new cool power (= skill for those not versed in Dungeontellerspeak) on pages 41-42, "Summon Nightmare", is described as the same as "Summon Hippogriff" from the Dungeonteller rules, yet the actual power (rulebook page 31) is "Create Hippogriff". What the power does isn't at all clear, since from the subsequent text notes, it makes a hippogriff appear to allow the summoner to ride it and escape, yet the place it's to be used is a location that seems to have no means of getting to the outside world by a creature that can only walk or fly. This needs revising, as a nightmare, perhaps able to pass through walls magically with its rider, might be a better option here. Plus it would also allow the introduction of another new monster. This is a rare lapse, however.

Overall, this is a good scenario product which will last a healthy number of gaming sessions, and is potentially open-ended. I've marked it down because it's visually disappointing, other than the maps, so fits less well with the overall Dungeonteller product line.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
Displaying 1 to 1 (of 1 reviews) Result Pages:  1 
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back pixel_trans.gif
0 items
 Gift Certificates