Tuesday, December 21, 2010

What It Is: Something Unholy Stirs

What's unholy is that I paid money for this crap.
I was bumming around on DriveThruRPG, looking for some cheap adventures to help populate my sandbox.  I came across the OSRIC-compatible Something Unholy Stirs, by Sancrosanct Games.  It looked interesting and had a decently old school cover.  The premise is kind of interesting.  The typos and poor editing are painful.  I went to the Sacrosanct Games website to see of maybe they are a foreign company and English is their second language, but it doesn't appear to be the case.  The title page reads "individual artits[sp] may retain copywrite[sp]".  Dude.  When even your CYA statements are spelled wrong, you need some help.

The plot of the module sounded good at first.  A necromancer was using a village's prime location as a stop along a booming trade route as cover for her nefarious activities.  The players stumble upon said activities and attempt to put a stop to it.  Well, this necromancer is about as subtle as a rhinoceros running wild through a crowded marketplace.  Any players older than 12 will probably see through to the plot and go straight for the fairly straightforward dungeon delve.  In fact, that's what this adventure reminds me of: something I would have come up with when I was 12 writing my own adventures for the rest of my middle school friends.

This is seriously the most poorly written and edited RPG product I have ever paid money for.  Do not go anywhere near Something Unholy Stirs.

8 comments:

  1. I felt the same way about a sourcebook called "The Phoenix Barony." It's laid out in three columns and in each of those columns is a typo. The booklet is full of errors, which never seem to get mentioned in reviews.

    Why people don't hire editors and play testers is beyond me.

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  2. Why people don't use the spell-check function is beyond me. I regard misspelt words, even in emails, as a sign of laziness, especially since all browsers and text-editors I am aware of has a spell-checker available as a built-in function.

    Then again, I am an old grump.

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  3. A lot of gamers put a lot of thought into their adventures and the artwork that goes in, but what a LOT forget is spending time and even a little money on someone to edit. Editing is one of the more important processes in any writing venue.

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  4. Including the OGL is not a firm requirement for declaring OSRIC compatibility nor for releasing adventures.

    Elmore I do believe has some stock art packs for sale, and it is possible (haven't seen it, so I'm not claiming that's what they did) that's what this module used. Spellcraft & Swordplay's first edition used Elmore stock art.

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  5. Firstly, I would like to offer my apologies if you were disappointed in the product. It turns out that there were only three spelling errors in the entire document. The reason two of them appear in the front page is because it was added after it was reviewed from a spell checker. I think it's a bit unfair to label the entire thing riddled with errors when there were only three misspelled words in the entire thing. And it's a bit ironic that you're complaining about those spelling errors as a huge deal when you misspelled the name of the company you did a review for, and have a few grammar errors of your own as well. Just say'n...

    Secondly, the OSRIC disclosure is right there on the front cover.

    Thirdly, Elmore's art is in fact stock art. I have actually spoken with him personally and he has given me permission to use other non-stock art as well.

    Again, I apologize if you didn't like this at all. I tried to price products accordingly (that's why this is 1/2 of the price of most of the other adventures you find there). But I felt I needed to address some of your complaints since most of them are not accurate.

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  6. I forgot to add, if you email me with your paypal address to support@sacrosanctgames.com, I will be more than happy to refund your money.

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