I’m still working on my 5e movement and chase mechanics post, so here’s what I’ve been reading to bridge the gap.

The New Mutants: I read through the Renewal Epic Collection and was surprised by how good it was. I honestly think it’s on par with the X-Men books of that era. Christ Claremont was just knocking it out, interweaving the stories of both series, and New Mutants manages to avoid being just another X-Men team. Each character was distinctive right from the start. It is kind of quirky how quickly Karma was shuttled off stage, but that was fine with me. The book ends with the Magik limited series and that’s a great slow burn across its four issues. The Demon Bear Saga is, of course, probably the classic New Mutants story. More importantly, it brought in the more abstract, expressionistic art of Bill Sienkiewicz. His work really opened my mind to the possibility that comics could be more than the status quo. Just fantastic stuff. I already picked up the Asgardian Wars Epic Collection which includes more of the issues I read as a kid. At my current pace, I’ll be reading it soon.

Gradient Descent/Holy Mountain Shaker: Gradient Descent is a module for the Mothership space horror RPG and Holy Mountain Shaker is one of the official adventures for Old School Essentials, but I’m pairing them up because they’re both abstracted point crawls of a sort. Gradient Descent has a reputation as megadungeon, and I’m not entirely sure that descriptor fits. It’s big at two hundred-some locations, sure, but it isn’t the sort of setting to return to again and again in an ongoing campaign. I haven’t finished the entire book, but after you’ve messed with the big bad and seen enough freaky androids, you’re probably good to move on. That isn’t a slight against it at all, because it doesn’t make the megadungeon claim itself. It’s just something else. Hole Mountain Shaker is an exploration of (spoilers) a holy mountain that is shaking apart. It layers an intriguing point crawl mechanic on top of the OSE chassis. It might need a little finessing and getting used to, but it seems sound enough upon reading.

The issue I have with HMS and Gradient Descent is, I’m not sure how much I would enjoy running them because of the degree of abstraction common to both. My favorite sorts of role playing games are very tactile. I like to know what’s in the room that can be messed with and how the exits are accessed. I’ve read (and written) point crawls that tie distinct encounter locations together with abstracted travel and exploration. These two modules tie abstract locations together with abstract travel. I really don’t know how I would convey the locations to my players in a way that both made them feel real and made the options for interactivity clear. In Gradient Descent you have small rooms and large rooms, with the large rooms being the size of warehouses. But the only real difference is how long it takes to cross a room and from that, how many random encounter checks you make. Some of these massive spaces get two sentences of description. “Snaking conveyors run through these chambers, carrying finished bones.” “Wow! What can we take or mess with?” “Eh, nothing. Hang on, there are two exits, and I have to make three encounter checks as you travel between them.” I’m being a bit crass, and clearly this play style might not be for me, but I’m not sure how I would run this, other than letting my players in on the “view from 20,000 feet” perspective shift. A warehouse (or a ruined city in Holy Mountain Shaker) should have tons of stuff to check out, otherwise it might as well be a twenty foot square room. At least in that small room, I can check under the rug because it’s an actual object and not just the impression of one. Really though, I can’t write these off without playing through them. They’re well outside of my comfort zone, and that’s fine. At least they’re interesting.

The Scourge of Northland: this OSE module is the third in a series by Jacob Fleming. Each one features impressive topographical maps and crystal clear layouts and presentation. However, The Scourge of Northland feels like the series might be due for a renewal of inspiration. All the pieces are there and executed with workmanlike precision, but it fails to follow through on its setup of a rampaging orc horde. Instead, you get orcs who are humanized and just want everyone else to leave their nomadic roaming territory, so players, go figure out how everyone can live together, I guess? Except the adventure doesn’t give you any of the tools to do that. There are no resources to negotiate over, or common enemies to defeat, or a mechanized ticking clock of the horde’s rampage. Instead, you get dungeons with bandits, giant spiders, and ghouls. It’s odd. It’s an adequate canvas to build your own fun in, but there isn’t much to really fire up the excitement engine, and it gives me around half of what I need to run the adventure that it says it is.

Stepping back to one of the previous entries in the series, this is one of the wilder things I’ve read lately. In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe is a similarly lean adventure. Its writing and structure are terse and proficiently executed. It’s a perfect example of, “here’s a basic D&D setting to run around in and make your own fun.” Its only shortcomings in my eyes are that the writing is not particularly evocative and it lacks a little bit of excitement. I could run it and add things and see what happens, but it’s a solid “read once and let rip” sort of affair. With that in mind, on to the wild part: the prep notes presented here (https://rancourt.substack.com/p/audit-tower-silveraxe) are possibly longer than the adventure itself. It goes deep. I read maybe a fifth and punched out. It’s really impressive but also… not my DMing style, at all? I think through some of this stuff in my head (how are these giant spiders behind a stuck door? Yeah, I know, monsters in the earliest editions of D&D can open stuck doors in dungeons, but with only their little spider hands?), but it’s like a window into another reality to see someone prep this throughly for what’s otherwise a “pick up and run” adventure. I mean, good for them for doing their thing, really.

Am I Just Grumbling? I Don’t Mean To. I finished the Incandescent Grottoes a couple weeks ago and liked it. It seems fun. Lots of stuff to mess with, faction zones, connectivity. I liked it enough that I don’t have much to say about it other than, from other discussions online, I deeply wish more 5e folks would read modules like this to open their minds to the broader possibilities of how adventures can be written and presented. I think the OSE house style is a bit extreme, but it’s a worthy experiment. Add a few more complete sentences to flesh things out and you’ve hit my sweet spot. Out of all the official OSE modules, this was probably my favorite.

Quick Listening Notes: “Put Your Back Into the Oar” is one of the best weight lifting soundtracks ever written and I can partially credit it for my deadlift PRs this week. I’ve been iffy about the tickle of songs from the upcoming Judas Priest album, but “The Serpent and the King” hits the right marks with the double bass and Painkiller shriek. The halftime beat is exquisitely tasteful and the chorus has some Stained Class intonations. Spotify can’t really figure out what I like (Hawkwind, Maiden, Priest, the MC5, and the best ’80s hardcore, is it that hard? Plus Japanese hardcore, but that’s out of their range), so the recommendations are usually terrible. But every broken clock has its day, or something like that, and this goofy Euro metal fest song has me hooked, even if it opens with treble bagpipes played with a straight face and has an egregious key change at the end.