#module reviews

[legionofmyth]

Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games

🎲 Looking for an RPG that brings back the thrill of old-school dungeon crawling with a modern twist? Discover Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games! Dive into epic adventures, face deadly challenges, and uncover powerful magic. Perfect for both new players and veteran gamers. #DungeonCrawlClassics #TTRPG #TabletopGaming #OldSchoolRPG #FantasyGaming

Dungeon Crawl Classics by Goodman Games What is it? Dungeon Crawl Classics Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC) by Goodman Games is a tabletop role-playing game that combines old-school dungeon crawling with modern mechanics. Set in a fantastical world filled with dangerous dungeons, powerful magic, and deadly monsters, DCC harkens back to the early days of RPGs, emphasizing exploration, combat, and the…

[1-50thofabuck]

Review of "Hamlet of Volage," Adventure Module V1 from BRW Games for Adventures Dark and Deep.

I love printed gaming materials. I adore published modules that have a distinct old-school look. If I see such modules being offered, I generally purchase them, for my own collection and to support small publishers. They usually don't cost too much.

Modules with witches, fae, conspiracies and/or cults are another selling point for me.

Case in point: I purchased each of the V series modules by BRW games before they were published in print, so I got each as a PDF with the printed book to be sent later when completed. The stories revolve around different covens of witches, existing in secret(naturally) and warring among themselves.

Take the incredibly small hamlet of Volage. At least one coven exists here, most of them living normal, public lives, while members of other covens either live within, or visit frequently, to keep tabs, act as spies and everything you'd expect of such a scenario.

As I'm running this module for a system that we're play testing for publication by Penny Thought Exchange, and this happens to be an anthro based system based loosely on our Steal This Game! public domain engine, I ran the module as "The Hamlet of Vole Lodge: The Haunting of Pell House." None of these kinds of changes affected the module's play too much. Since characters are animal based, they do have access to abilities that run of the mill PCs in other games might not, but we try to balance these abilities as a part of character creation. Also, the NPCs, including the baddies, get these also, so it levels out. Otherwise, it's largely cosmetic, as NPCs are assigned an animal type and fitting description.

Because the module has so many NPCs and information on the town, I printed these out and affixed them to standard paper sized cardboard for quick reference. It also made it easier to track my own additions, such as what animal types the various NPCs are.

All that said to prepare for the review proper, I have to give one last bit of insight. I was running for a very small group, and certain among them are known to get frustrated quickly if leads and clues aren't given to them easily or frequently enough. Thus, I'm not sure in certain places where the problem may lay with the module or with the sensibilities of certain individuals, though in at least one case the problem is certainly the module's, as I will describe as we continue.

Within a day or so in the hamlet, there was already grumbling that nothing was turning up of any real interest. Most of the supernatural occurences, as the PCs felt, were rather mundane, unprovable, or non sequitur to their investigations. Blankets getting bedbugs and such seemed normal enough. Sheep being attacked by wolves and then vanishing is a bit odd, but not enough to jump to suspicions of witchcraft, and seemingly not enough to investigate at any rate. The module itself didn't suggest or describe any methods of doing so or anything learned if PCs did, but it wasn't relevant since they were disinterested in doing so. Every cat being found dead was more mystifying but another case of "what are we supposed to do about it?" People getting sick, people falling off ladders, all seemed like a typical string of unfortunate but not distinctly magical occurances.

They decided to spend the night in the cemetery, where only one random event took place, a weird fog or mist which I tried to play up as much as I could. When all was said and done, however, it was more of the same: "Weird, but nothing we can learn anything from and seemingly unrelated."

The group decided that after another day or so if they didn't come across something of more interest they were going to bail. I still had two more modules and they were ready to quit before getting more than a day into the first. I ended up throwing in a clue not in the module to keep them in, though I regretted throwing bones like that simply because the PCs became disinterested. Still, I really wanted to continue the module, so I did so. To some degree, two of them, but the details of those aren't very important.

They decided to keep an eye on some of the young ones of the hamlet who had been rumored to run off into the woods some nights, and follow them.

Around this time, I decided to look into the next module. It shouldn't be necessary. Each were published at different times, and are supposed to be playable independently. Yet the second module gives details of great importance: the way the Pell family is butchered. V1 simply says they were killed violently. The second reveals that the attack has the hallmarks of an animal attack, yet they got into the house at night, somehow, and left without being seen. Now that gives some serious indication of some supernatural going's on. Too bad V1 decided we didn't need to know!

After telling the players about this new info, they became much more convinced of supernatural tomfoolery, but still felt about the same as they did - follow the young ones next time they run off, if that doesn't lead to anything, we leave.

I don't believe the module tells you what night the young witches go to their esbat, but an NPC suggested the night of the new moon, so the PCs kept special notice that night. One of the bones I threw in to keep the adventure going.

In the end, they got noticed while trailing the girls, but the witches pretended not to notice. They completed their esbat, getting new familiars and other boons before revealing their awareness of the PCs.

The battle didn't last long. The PCs got destroyed. However, it was a small group, and my suggestions of getting retainers and mercenaries to boost their numbers fell on deaf ears. I do not fault the module for their loss whatsoever.

At the moment, I'm running my own revision of an old adventure I wrote(I shared a little taster of it a bit ago), but afterwards, I hope to jump to V2 and see how that one goes. If it works out well, on to V3, or perhaps my sequel idea to the module I'm rewriting now, and then V3. If V2 goes poorly, I suspect I will abandon the series and leave them to look pretty on my shelf.

If you like OSR adventure modules, despite my less than stellar success, you can't go too wrong for a $4 PDF. https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/373537/Adventure-Module-V1--The-Hamlet-of-Volage

Addendum: While looking for a quick cover image to put at the beginning of the review, I came across tenfootpole's review. I often agree, sometimes strongly disagree, but generally find their reviews entertaining either way. Looking to see if they hailed it as a masterpiece and realize I'm a big dummy, oh boy did they not find it impressive. Strong language warning for those sensitive to that kinda thing. Their agreement does not make me right, but I'm gratified that at least it wasn't just me who was kind of bewildered by a lot of the adventure.

[ustalav]

“why is published content so popular in pf vs dnd”

Bc wotc sucks at putting out quality modules consistently and paizo doesn’t. Next question.

[papus-clown-enclosure]

Hand me the clown shoes and wig

[elektroblues]

btw classes r gonna start tmrw so ofc i won't be online much again. not that i haven't alr been disappearing spontaneously lol but yeknow just to let u know it's not bc of something bad <3

[anthonypanics]

While I don't think it should be necessary to read the length of a novel as a requirement to run a setting, taking time to read through a module is very useful.

[befuddled-calico-whump]

does anyone remember the somewhat short-lived writing website that was figment dot com? I spent half my time in high school on it and I'm being nostalgic about it again

[daforged]

*looking between cards that say “therapy” and “school” with increasingly rapid glances* having more letters after my name will fix me

[whentherewerebicycles]

goooood morning from my beautiful green living room. we got up at 6:15 today (sleeping in lol). I have had a busy morning so far—long meeting with my boss + shorter meetings with the HR team and my team lead. but now I am done with being on calls for the day and can dig into this stupid graphic design work (HUGE sigh). I do not want to do it at ALL so I am trying to break it down into smaller steps.

distill this super unwieldy overview they gave me into a simplified timeline

look at canva + articulate for timeline options (choose the simplest possible version)

input info into timeline graphic

finish copying over images and priorities into leadership section

look in the canva business section for simple templates for project recommendations

marshal my strength and figure out what next steps are (I’m so bored my brain is shutting down lol I can’t figure out what else needs to happen). figure out if there’s anything more I need to do today… then tomorrow

I am going to allow myself to do no work for 20 min (until 11am) and then I will get up and try to do a burst of concentrated work from 11-12 to get through as much of that list as possible. then I will take a break and look for my preexisting letters for these students to figure out how much new drafting I need to do. hopefully not much??

[charlottechua]

NTU Sociology module reviews: HS1001, HS1002, HS1003

Note: I took these modules in AY22/23, there is a chance that things have since changed.

(Ctrl+F to skip to the mods you’re looking for :-D)

HS1001 Person and Society

Course Type: Major Core, 3AU Course Coordinator/ lecturer: Associate Professor Shirly Sun When I took it: Y1S1, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:

Class participation - 10%

Group in-tutorial presentation - 20%

Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 13)

Finals (essay-based) - 40%

TL;DR:

Not hard, not easy. Attending lectures is important. Readings can be overwhelming, don't waste too much time on the longer, traditional texts; skim those readings for key concepts and useful case studies which will come in handy for finals. For the presentations, be concise. For the term paper, do A LOT of research and planning.

What is this mod about?

This module is an introduction to Sociology. Accordingly, it goes through Sociology’s basic concepts, the major schools of thought/ theories in the field, and some of the major social phenomena that shape our lives today.

Overall,

This module is relatively manageable and really quite interesting. The main concepts across the mod are not hard to grasp. This is mainly because the module's textbook, The Practical Skeptic (McIntyre, Lisa. 2020) is very accessible for people with no background knowledge.

Attending lectures is important:

They go through useful concepts that are not really covered elsewhere in the course and the lecture slides alone are not sufficient to fully understand what was taught in lecture.

There were a number of documentary screenings during lectures over the sem. Info from the documentaries will be useful for finals, attending lectures will let you know which parts of the documentaries you need to pay attention to.

Prof Shirly is very kind.

Tutorials and tutorial presentations:

Courtesy of the wonderful graduate TA that helmed tutorials when I took this mod (Ms. Raksha Kirpal Mahtani), tutorials were, at once, productive and low-pressure.

Tutorial presentations: Most sociology mods seem to have a tutorial presentation component. At the beginning of the semester, students will be assigned to a particular week and they would then have to prepare a presentation (and usually facilitate discussion for) the week’s readings. Here, being concise is key, do not be afraid to cut out large parts of the readings for your presentation.

Though, the readings outside the textbook can be overwhelming:

There are a few readings from the ~19th Century that can be tricky to navigate (vis-à-vis old fashioned academic language). These are classic works in sociology by the field's founding fathers (Marx, Weber, Durkheim). But, fret not, the concepts covered in these readings are also covered in the textbook in a more digestible form. So, do not make the mistake of spending too much time deciphering these classic readings.

And there are a few other quite lengthy, info-overload papers. Be selective in identifying which parts to pay attention to and which parts to skim over.

Term paper:

Involved writing about a social issue of your choice that fell into one of 3 broad categories (racial profiling, gender discrimination or class inequality).

This will probably be one of sociology students' first experiences with academic writing. Don't be too intimidated, the syllabus lays out a clear structure to follow in writing this paper.

I intend on writing a more comprehensive guide to academic writing but for now, to do well for this essay, I suggest you do a lot of research on your chosen issue and the sociological concepts you intend on using in the paper (and make a plan before you start writing!).

Finals (essay-based):

Even though the content was relatively easy to understand, there was a lot of it.

Understanding the broad concepts and processes in the mod is, of course, the most important thing to do.

Secondary to that is cherry picking case studies/examples from the readings to supplement your answers.

HS1002 Singapore Society in Transition

Course Type: Major Prescribed Elective (compulsory), 3AU Course Coordinator, Lecturer: Assistant Prof Ye Junjia When I took it: Y1S1, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:

Class participation - 15%

Group in-tutorial presentation - 15%

Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 7)

Finals (essay-based) - 40%

TL;DR: Again,  not hard, not easy and attending lectures is important. For tutorial presentations, focus on facilitating discussion rather than summarising content. Don’t be intimidated by the term paper, as long as you nail the basic elements of a paper, you can do well. For finals, keep in mind the main theme of the course ‘transition’

What is this mod about?

This mod is a sociological overview of Singapore: its history, how it is today, and how it might be in the future. Specifically, the mod explores how SG has been governed and how that has shaped its society. Some topics include: gender & family; race & ethnicity; public space; civil society; migration.

Once again, attending lectures is important:

I found that lectures went through the core, most important ideas which were supplemented by the readings. Lecture content gives you the necessary framework to understand the readings and clues you in as to which parts of the readings are most important

Also, the lecture slides are pretty bare bones. They won’t be too useful to you if you don’t attend the lecture.

Readings:

Compared to HS1001, I found that HS1002 had a heavier reading load. Though, most of them are easy enough to grasp.

Again, readings will provide you with a lot of supplemental information; do not attempt to memorise everything, pick out several key examples when studying for finals.

Some readings will introduce other concepts that weren’t really covered in lectures. In my experience, I don’t think that these are too important, I think that you can do well in finals without them. Instead, use the readings to build on the core ideas from lectures.

Tutorials and tutorial presentations:

Tutorials revolved around student presentations. In my tutorial group, we didn’t do anything other than listen to student presentations and engage with their discussion questions

Prof Jia emphasised that the presentations should mainly be about on facilitating discussion (as opposed to being a regurgitation of the readings by students). However, it played out very differently in my tutorial group. The presentations essentially became ~30 min lectures with some breaks for discussion questions. I think what happened was: early presenters focused on regurgitating content and everybody else was subsequently pressured into doing the same. As a result, the presentation became a rather demanding. 

That said, I think that essentialising your presentation’s content and focusing on facilitating discussion (via discussion questions, debates, Kahoot, etc) is for the best, even if everyone else seems to be doing presentations deep diving into the readings. Your presentation will be far more engaging and a lot less onerous to prepare for.

Term paper:

HS1002′s term paper was due mid-semester, which is a bit out of the ordinary but not a bad thing, you’ll likely be juggling several other deadlines towards the end of the semester. So, this paper was the very first experience with academic writing for many soci Year 1s.

Accordingly, there was an (ungraded) abstract that you had to submit before the paper. This was probably just for the TAs to make sure you were on the right track. This is a good opportunity to get some feedback on your paper so take this seriously, even though it is ungraded.

The topic for the paper is very broad -- any issue related to Singapore, essentially. This meant that I had difficulty deciding on a topic/research question. My advice: don’t waste too much time trying to think of a unique or impressive area of study, it’s fine to write about a generic topic.

Also, given that almost everyone will be new to academic writing, it won’t be hard to do well in this paper. Getting the baiscs of writing a paper correct will be enough for a good grade (i.e. Organised structure; a research question/argument; coherent writing; proper citating and formatting).

Finals:

Take direction from the core concepts from lectures in your revision. Do not blindly memorise content from the readings.

Do not study the weekly topics in isolation, think about how they interact. This will be crucial for finals. And relatedly,  think about the main theme of the course ‘Singapore society in TRANSITION’ -- how has society transitioned/changed?

I found it helpful to put together a short timeline of major developments in SG’s history with info from lectures and various readings.

Dust off your exam taking skills and try to craft some essay questions and attempt to answer them.

Some thoughts from myself:

I really enjoyed this mod. Not only is Prof Jia a wonderfully engaging speaker, the content content of the mod was very eye opening; it called into question a lot of the taken-for-granted beliefs that we might have about SG. I feel like I have a more holistic understanding of SG society now.

HS1003 Social problems in a global context

Course Type: Major Prescribed Elective, 3AU Course Coordinator, Lecturer:  Assoc. Professor Sulfikar Amir When I took it: Y1S2, AY2022-2023 Assessment structure:

Class participation - 10%

Group in-tutorial presentation - 20%

Term paper - 30% (Due: Week 13)

Finals (essay-based) - 40%

TL;DR: The presentation/essay assignments were pretty demanding (if you wanted to do well, anyway). The mod’s content is not difficult to comprehend, finals were relatively manageable. The topics from the first few weeks are especially important. If you’re aiming for an A+, thorough knowledge of the readings is necessary, with regards to finals. Otherwise, understanding lecture content, its broad concepts, is all you need to do decently for finals.

What is this mod about?

Contemporary globalisation is the central theme in this mod. Each week typically looks at a set of social problems and how they relate to/are created by globalisation. Some topics include: crime; poverty and inequality; technology; war.

Lectures

And once again, attending lectures is important. But probably more important for this mod than others. Prof Amir has a few ‘whiteboard style’ lectures. That is to say, a lecture comprised of mostly verbal communication and some mind-mapping-type drawing on the whiteboards with very minimal slides. You will be completely lost without attending lectures.

The first few topics covered in the mod are particularly important.

They are broad, foundational concepts that are the mainstays of the rest of the mod’s content (e.g. social structures, global division of labor, neoliberalism). So, make sure to establish a strong understanding of these topics early on. These should be the first topics you revise in your preparation for finals.

Readings and finals

With the exception of the first few weeks of content, the readings didn’t seem to be too important in the rest of the mod. However, I was rather blindsided during finals for this mod. without revealing too many details, the exam questions made explicit reference to several readings. This was surprising because we never really went through any of that in lecture or tutorial. Had I known that, I would’ve studied the readings in greater depth.

Tutorials 

I just want to say that the TA for my batch was so incredible in all respects. (Thanks for everything, Ming Wei!)

Tutorial presentations and the social problems essay

These are individual and connected assignments. In the presentation, we had to go through the outline of our essays, answer questions from the audience and receive feedback. Like the other mods, we were assigned a topic at the beginning of the semester and had to present and write our essays about the assigned topic.

There is a fairly set structure to the essay: describe your chosen problem, explain the problem with sociological concepts/theories, and link it all back to globalisation. The tricky part of this essay is weaving these 3 parts into a seamless, coherent argument (and you do, in fact, need to have an argument; your essay cannot simply be a description of a social problem)

My advice: read widely in search of the sociological concept(s) you choose to use in your essay; a very common mistake people made was to invoke ‘cOnFliCT thEoRY’ which is probably better described as an overarching paradigm in sociology rather than a theory.

Regarding the presentation, I can’t speak for future batches, this might depend on your TA, but in my experience, presentation skills did not seem to matter as much as the content of your presentation. It was alright to read off a script, to have not-so-pretty slides. 

More importantly, the presentation is a fantastic opportunity to get feedback on your essay. So, even if you were unlucky enough to be assigned a week 3 presentation slot, take this very seriously.

On a final note, this presentation and essay were the most difficult and demanding assignments I did that semester. Though, they were also the most rewarding. I’m quite proud of the essay I ultimately produced and I think the process of researching for and writing this essay really upgraded my writing skills.

[deepwoundsandfadedscars]

.

[charms-of-earth]

I can’t recommend this prewritten adventure for 5e enough, its so good. I’ve been running it for some friends and everyone always has a great time, me included (and that’s important!) It’s for 15th level, so players get to enjoy playing their characters at the peak of their abilities, and it’s got cosmic, body, and folk horror elements. Without giving any spoilers, my players just finished business at the phenological pharmacy where they found out some disturbing truths about Elysium and it’s inhabitants. 

There’s also Cicero’s bar, where you can order drinks of many kinds, but careful what you order. One of my players learned that the hard way. There are mechanics for spicing up battles if things are too easy or slogging on too long, and it’s the city of eyes so you better watch yourself. Get it? 

As one GM to another, if you like horror and feel it can’t be done well in d&d, give this module a shot. I will warn you though, if you’re looking for something with jump scares or something that will traumatize your players, this isn’t what city of eyes is about. It’s the kind of game that will disturb your players and make them laugh at the absurdity at the same time. 

The art in the book is suitably creepy, and the writing is really good too, with little jokes put in for the GM here and there. I bought the pdf on a whim, and I'm really impressed with it. It uses the stress mechanic from Van Richten’s guide to Ravenloft (the sanity rules in the DMG were too insensitive for modern views of mental health), which means that every attack, skill check, or ability check is made with a negative equal to your stress score. But wait, that’s not even the coolest part. There’s a mechanic in the game called the sight, which allows characters with stress to see past the way things appear to be, into what things actually are. I hope my players don’t see this section because they haven’t figured that part out yet and are finding ways to get rid of stress however they can. 

The game also has a time limit, but that time can be as stretched out as much as you need it to be because it relies on events, not real world time. For example, if the characters kill an especially tough monster the bells might toll, marking the next hour and putting more things into motion in the background. It’s very complex and has a lot of layers to it, but it’s really easy to read and fun. 

[faaun]

not 2 be like im gonna cry but 🤪

[official-finstudios]

As with any module that Reverse Landfill releases, we have to pick it up and put it on the workbench. The Noise (v8) is no different. It is a brutal, gritty and chaotic module that can bring the next level to your drums or inputs. Check out our latest build which features music by @taet.music @taet.bandcamp and if you want to learn more about the build, head on over to the main site for more info. #finstudios #module #noise #noize #eurorackmodule #synthporn #eurorack #modular #diykit #reverselandfill #reverselandfillnoise #diyguy #synthmodule #synthdiyguy #buildingkits #synth #modulardiy #timelapsebuild #review #diybuild . . . https://finstudios.com/reverse-landfill-noise-v8-diy-build/ (at fiN Studios) https://www.instagram.com/p/CovNmANSrQO/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[madammayh3m]

Sunshine

268 words. A pre-canon ficlet about Thais because I have been having feelings about her and her cowboy. There’s no real spoilers for the Curse of Strahd module in here, just some little tidbits about the setting at most.

If she thinks back on it, Thais can probably count on one hand the number of times she’s seen sunshine. Actual, honest-to-gods sunshine. The sun doesn’t shine in Barovia, that’s simply the way it is. And so she doesn’t entirely understand what Yeska is missing when he talks about sunshine; it’s something beyond her comprehension.

When the light comes in, it’s too often snuffed out. She has learned to clutch at any fleeting happiness with both hands in a white knuckled grip, clawing and biting and fighting to keep it. And, all too often, even that isn’t enough. She’s not yet old enough to have worn down to apathy.

So yeah, she doesn’t really get the fascination. And she doesn’t like it when he gets sad, and when he talks about times before coming to Barovia, he gets sad. But she likes listening to him talk, and if that’s what he wants to talk about, she’ll listen nonetheless.

Everyone she has ever known has warned her away from him. She knows why – they won’t stop telling her about it, after all. He’s an outsider, and outsiders might as well have targets hand-painted on their backs by Zarovich himself. She knows, she just doesn’t care. Yeska is her friend. Anything that wants to get to him has to go through her first, including that demon.

And so she finds herself looking up sometimes. Checking that the constant cloud cover is still, in fact, there. Not that she expects it to ever be gone. But just because she wants to make sure she’s not missing the sunshine that peeks through.

[nohkalikai]

oh yeah i know how to check the quality of an intervention