Adventure Site Contest: Oglias’s Folley

Written by Kevin Conyers (Flooded Realms Adventure Press)
OSE, Levels 7-9
Fishing lake set in a remote badlands hex.
  [This adventure] describes the private fishing lake of a Cloud Giant, Ogg, and his eccentric mage companion, Oglias. The lake itself is arcane in nature and can be switched to various bodies of liquid in which to fish […] These locations are all held, with their stock of fish, in various demi-planes until used. The giant himself, Oggy mistakenly touched his pet Cockatrice while fishing. Oglias has not been seen since. This adventure describes a number of magical fishing poles. These poles are all made of young trees, between 13’ - 21’ long and weigh 80 coins, and are magically reinforced for hauling in giant catches. They can support up to 10,000 coins without breaking. This effect is extended to any line or rope connected to them.
  What a guy, Kevin Conyers. The most popular OSR adventure review blog on the entire internet read his well-intentioned freshman adventure and dedicated months and $100 to a huge contest inviting people to one-up poor little Wavestone Keep. Yet here dude is, releasing more adventures, learning from criticisms, and even judging this contest. With Oglias’s Folley here he tenders his own submission at the relatively high levels of 7 through 9, where the veteran PCs stumble upon a cloud giant’s fishing hole.
  As expected by this point, the adventure is written in a clean two-column format, tastefully bolded and well cross-referenced. The slightly dry prose paints us clear pictures and at times smells (good), and the charming fishing tables for the different planar lakes made me smile. Some small details, like a one teleporter lever being made of green-glowing driftwood while the other orange-glowing ivory, are quite welcome and enhance the storybook qualities of the site.
  As for map…we have our first, but probably not our last, Dyson Logos map. It’s one of his fairly linear affairs, but not fatally so, basically a ramp descending down a crater lake with caves attached, saved from mundanity by a secret passage, water feature, and the verticality of the environment as a whole. +1 point for having a bridge…although then -50 DKP for no scale being provided. I’m going to go with 20ft squares as making the most sense, this is after all a cloud giant’s place.
  There’s a story to the site that can be sussed out in play, which is good. The massive petrified cloud giant atop the bridge is good, and telegraphs the cockatrice that’s on the random encounter table. One of the custom monsters is Ol’ Bluefin, a giant tuna that ate Oglias, the wizard who built this whole complex. As written this just means you get his giant fishing pole (which is awesome, made out of scrimshaw, grants both giant strength and ogre power, and can of course be wielded as a magical club)…personally I’d have Oglias’ remains not fully digested yet for the level 7+ party to at least Speak With Dead to the corpse, could even resurrect. This isn’t in the adventure but that it occurs to me as a possibility means we’ve conveyed the narrative at least adequate...important for running a site particularly at this high a level.
  The night of D&D promised by this site is pretty standard, which means good. Only three of the rooms have fights in them by default, with a nasty troglodyte ambush, a pair of reskinned crystal living statues, and a full up chimera being our battles of the week (all at least have a chance to be avoided). Traps are telegraphed sensibly, good. The main “thing” here, the fishing lake, can be turned into different liquids (magma and void needing specialized fishing poles to use). There’s not a fishing minigame procedure here but I’m going to guess since this is OSE there are approximately one billion splats available for our enterprising angler, with nice loot possible (as well as a few nasty surprises, like the octopus who’s arms are made of octopuses and who inflicts sanity damage just to look at). Definitely a good spot for high-level risk/reward playing.
  Treasure isn’t terrible, could be bigger, the chimera’s hoard is a slightly miserly <35lk but fishing the void can more than triple that take (and also risk said octopus). Given the encounter rate it’ll be a bit of a slog to take everything but this is fishing after all…you’re here for the process. Magic items, like above’s scrimshaw fishing pole club, are solid if a little gonzo.
  That gonzo tinge is going to be the real determinant for how easily inserted this site will be into your own campaign. If cloud giants with floating sky castles fit into the world, then this magical fishing spot just makes sense. If this all damages your carefully cultivated sense of verisimilitude, well…maybe level 9 D&D isn’t exactly for you. It’s a novel notion but also plausible as soon as you hear about the idea, which is a praiseworthy sign of actual creativity. As it is, players will definitely find this a dangerous and interesting adventure site even as they near name level. Just watch out for when the magic-user hits 11, because you know he’s going to unpetrify the giant…

See also the following reviews:
Grutzi
Owen Edwards
EOTB

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