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“There’s other possible solutions of course, like lighting all the hydrogen on fire, which will remove all the oxygen from the room and, again, open the door.” Exquisite understatement lmao
I don't know what it is about Patrick's particular style but it just resonates with me so much. Instead of being extremely streamlined and condensed like many OSR products are, I can riff endlessly off a few sentences written by him as they just evoke these images and thoughts in my head. I can just read a book of his once and then take a single glance at a room and have this aha-moment remembering what it was about. It's hard to run his adventures if you're a stickler for very precise rules but they are absolutely best in class if you're one of those creative/imaginative 'improvising' kind of GMs. I really wish the book got a second edition like DCO did to eliminate some of its shortcomings. Maybe it's a possibility though Patrick's Kickstarter projects don't seem to gain as much traction as pretty much everything else out there in the OSR space...
Proofreading errors like that are pretty damning for me. If your blog or G+ post has some spelling errors, yeah, that's fine, whatever. But we're out of that era now. This is a real product you're charging money for and I feel like some OSR creators don't really draw a line between those ideas in terms of the level of polish and effort that goes into the finished product.
I've noticed an uptick in such issues in the past 15 years in fiction print media, so it's not atypical. I suspect it's related to epub and lower bars (and prices), with a bit less costly human editor oversight. Would make sense. But you know what print versions and writing is awesome? Kevin Crawford's. It's pretty much flawlessly written and there's some great vocab here and there without being a 19th Century English novel/punishment at all. On top of the superlative organization & layout, I can't stop buy his [print] stuff...even though I'll certain never play them, I enjoy the reading.
I feel that it's an issue of a lack of professional proofreaders/editors putting critical eyes on the thing before it's released combined with a feeling of urgency to release that leads to products being rushed out without having been properly proofed. Proofing is a harder job than people believe and it's undervalued. I'm sorry, but your mom or brother or roommate is not a good enough proofreader. But the funds for professionals is just not there, and it's an industry with a dearth of talent anymore.
Patrick Stewart's writes a lot of content and I don't think his products sell well enough to always justify proofreaders and editors. We're in a crazy niche hobby and as much as I would wish that everything was always neat and tidy I'd rather have this than a book every 5 years from him.
Just ran my second session of this, definitely a bit rough around the edges but my players are having tons of fun regardless. Not for everyone but definitely a good time :)
I love Patrick's work. Reading some of the descriptions of dwarven technology from deep carbon observatory actually blew my mind. His ability to describe ideas in a way that paints an image in your head is incredible. I lament that i cannot afford supporting him through physical copies.
Editors are the true heroes of the publishing world. Well and maybe Grammerly? Looks great though but I collect to read mostly as I'm fully satisfied with my current RPG system.
As an editor, I agree. 👍The hard part is getting creators and publishers to understand that professional editing means paying professional rates. And many would rather cut corners on editing and publish shoddily-proofread work.
Patrick's weird, amazing ideas only work when he has a brutal editor (Such as Zzarchov, Sabbath, or Raggi), willing to reel him in where necessary and fix his mistakes from his admitted personal lack of playtesting (other fans did playtest it). Also, making changes after the editor hd fixed many things, caused this to be released with mistakes, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. I really looked forward to this, but the end product was less than impressive and unplayable without the referee having to fix numerous things, unfortunately.
Should probably call these videos Overviews rather than reviews. I'd not review a videogame by watching trailers and explanations of how it plays by the developers.
As a chemist: lighting a room full of hydrogen on fire while you are in it does not only remove all the oxygen in the room.😅 It also removes you. (also to remove all the oxygen you would have to wait until the room is 2/3 full of hydrogen anyway but that's a minor nitpick)
I like Patrick's work, but this one seems excessively cumbersome to read and run. Rooms like the one with mirrors, I would only make a d6 roll. That's the number of turns it takes the party to find all the exits. Encounters happened every 2 turns, or something like that, so the rooms becomes only a risk, but not a boring annoyance.
This has some great creativity, but my read through just felt like it was going to be a lot of work to make it runnable and to fully grok everything. Has anyone had success running this adventure?
I just finished running it. I had changed allot of things regarding the motivation of having the PCs want to go inside the tomb, but other than that the adventure had run incredibly well. I had been building up the legend of the Empress of Fire for some time before this, and the players were kinda enamored by the whole thing. Patrick’s writing only furthered their obsession with her. The randomization of the dungeon was very fun, and once the party figured out (kind of) how to use the Glass Girls they had a great time making new shortcuts through the dungeon with their acid. The feeling it gives me is that this adventure is what I wanted the Tomb of Horrors to be. When I heard about that tomb back in the day my mind raced with ideas like “who was this lich, what/who was he buried with, what horrifying and strange secrets lie below”. This tomb actually has strange, alien and beautiful things for the players to find inside, as well as awesome treasure. Basically, add to/change the motivation of why the PCs are going and I think it’s a very solid dungeon crawl. A chunkier amount of prep than I normally like for an adventure, but the payoff was very much worth it.
Hopefully if he kickstarts the next one Patrick will consider updating the text and editing problems with this one. I’d love to own a 2nd edition physical copy one day
They should just send you an advanced copy of the next one to review and mark all the mistakes before they go to press. You are going to read it anyway.
I hope they have an editor for the Speak, False Machine book. If someone like Ben is reviewing your book and there is an error on every page...that's high-school author level material.
DBS is pure unfiltered Patrick. It's janky in a way which brings me fond memories of the peak of the OSR. I absolutely love the descriptions of the Fire Aristocracy.
It's an RPG adventure, so you need a rules system to make characters and help adjudicate situations. D&D or one of its spinoff systems would work fine.
I am running this right now and am now convinced that Patrick Stewart is the best adventure slinger I've seen. His only flaw is that he does not produce enough content.
I backed DBS on the second-highest tier on kickstarter. I do not regret it one bit. The product is fantastic. While I hope Patrick hires an editor with the next release, I think this was just a magnificent product with tons of great ideas and I hope to run this for one of my groups soon.
Thanks for the balanced review, especially raising the concerns about content editing, copyediting, and proofreading. This book seems emblematic of so much of the material that gets produced in this space: wonderful creativity undermined by a lack of respect for readers with shoddiness and corner cutting. Sadly, another hard pass from me as a result. There's simply too much good stuff out there and I have too little bookshelf space to endure amateur hour productions like this. If you can't afford to hire a professional editor, you can't afford to produce a product you're going to charge people money for...and 30 GBP at that! Thanks again for accurately describing the issues with this book and helping me avoid another frustrating disappointment.
Always like these overviews. I see that the text doesn't say "effed"; but smoothly applied. I like the presentation of this one, but for me the artwork is too distracting--as I don't like it, personally. But I can see it's a good entry in this category.
Patrick's such a good writer that he can kind of get away with what I feel is egregiously bad organisation on his part to actually assist DMs with running his adventures. I've found they require a lot more prep than others of its type, but it's so rewarding regardless
It's great you let me check what I think I'd like with your reviews, but it would be greater possibly without spoilers or with some spoiler warning and instructions on how to skip them - like spoilers of the WHOLE mysterious story behind the dungeon. Everyone likes mystery and surprises. That's a huge part of playing or reading such a book - discovering it. Remember you record videos for audience to watch them (I guess?), so you probably don't want them to enjoy the video or the book less because of extensive spoilers, and you probably don't want them to not watch your videos at all just because they don't know at which point their fun is going to be irrevocably ruined, right?
@@thehauntedhat5519 Peter seems to be referring to how Ben’s thumbnails have been getting more creative lately in order to attract more viewers. There’s a big difference between clickbait and an enticing thumbnail. The thumbnail for this vid would have been clickbait if it had said something outlandish like “You’ll never need to buy another dungeon again” But Ben’s thumbnail is asking an honest question in an effort for you to decide for yourself. Just because it makes you want to watch the video, that doesn’t make it clickbait.
A typo a page is not a mess by any definition. The thumbnail is designed to bait by raising curiosity that there is some ingesting question to be answered by the video. There is nothing to be answered. The product is a masterpiece by author's own admission. Clickbait is a clever psychological trick that works. It has become massively pervasive in modern media. It is also exhausting to be bombarded by it from every direction. Most clickbait turns out to be a nothingburger - just like this video. The algorithm YT grind is a tough game to play indeed :-) Yes, some clickbait is pretty mild, but using psychological tricks on people is pretty questionable in this age of widespread social media addiction.
Back Speak, False Machine on Kickstarter!: bit.ly/SpeakFalseMachine
Get Demon-Bone Sarcophagus in PDF: bit.ly/DemonBonePDF
Get the free map pack: bit.ly/DemonBoneMaps
Get it in Print: bit.ly/DemonBonePrint
Get the Heist Plan in Print: bit.ly/DemonBoneHeistPlans
“There’s other possible solutions of course, like lighting all the hydrogen on fire, which will remove all the oxygen from the room and, again, open the door.”
Exquisite understatement lmao
I don't know what it is about Patrick's particular style but it just resonates with me so much. Instead of being extremely streamlined and condensed like many OSR products are, I can riff endlessly off a few sentences written by him as they just evoke these images and thoughts in my head. I can just read a book of his once and then take a single glance at a room and have this aha-moment remembering what it was about.
It's hard to run his adventures if you're a stickler for very precise rules but they are absolutely best in class if you're one of those creative/imaginative 'improvising' kind of GMs.
I really wish the book got a second edition like DCO did to eliminate some of its shortcomings. Maybe it's a possibility though Patrick's Kickstarter projects don't seem to gain as much traction as pretty much everything else out there in the OSR space...
Proofreading errors like that are pretty damning for me. If your blog or G+ post has some spelling errors, yeah, that's fine, whatever. But we're out of that era now. This is a real product you're charging money for and I feel like some OSR creators don't really draw a line between those ideas in terms of the level of polish and effort that goes into the finished product.
I've noticed an uptick in such issues in the past 15 years in fiction print media, so it's not atypical. I suspect it's related to epub and lower bars (and prices), with a bit less costly human editor oversight. Would make sense.
But you know what print versions and writing is awesome? Kevin Crawford's. It's pretty much flawlessly written and there's some great vocab here and there without being a 19th Century English novel/punishment at all. On top of the superlative organization & layout, I can't stop buy his [print] stuff...even though I'll certain never play them, I enjoy the reading.
I feel that it's an issue of a lack of professional proofreaders/editors putting critical eyes on the thing before it's released combined with a feeling of urgency to release that leads to products being rushed out without having been properly proofed. Proofing is a harder job than people believe and it's undervalued. I'm sorry, but your mom or brother or roommate is not a good enough proofreader. But the funds for professionals is just not there, and it's an industry with a dearth of talent anymore.
The author said that he made changes after editing. Don’t do that. Editors are wonderful
Patrick Stewart's writes a lot of content and I don't think his products sell well enough to always justify proofreaders and editors. We're in a crazy niche hobby and as much as I would wish that everything was always neat and tidy I'd rather have this than a book every 5 years from him.
@@kenhensch3996 chicken, egg. Maybe if his products were proofread he'd sell more. He'd certainly sell more of his products to me.
Just ran my second session of this, definitely a bit rough around the edges but my players are having tons of fun regardless. Not for everyone but definitely a good time :)
I love Patrick's work. Reading some of the descriptions of dwarven technology from deep carbon observatory actually blew my mind. His ability to describe ideas in a way that paints an image in your head is incredible. I lament that i cannot afford supporting him through physical copies.
I playtested this module and had a blast, but I also wasn't the one running it. Interesting to see the review of the finished product!
Editors are the true heroes of the publishing world. Well and maybe Grammerly?
Looks great though but I collect to read mostly as I'm fully satisfied with my current RPG system.
As an editor, I agree. 👍The hard part is getting creators and publishers to understand that professional editing means paying professional rates. And many would rather cut corners on editing and publish shoddily-proofread work.
Patrick's weird, amazing ideas only work when he has a brutal editor (Such as Zzarchov, Sabbath, or Raggi), willing to reel him in where necessary and fix his mistakes from his admitted personal lack of playtesting (other fans did playtest it). Also, making changes after the editor hd fixed many things, caused this to be released with mistakes, misspellings, and grammatical mistakes. I really looked forward to this, but the end product was less than impressive and unplayable without the referee having to fix numerous things, unfortunately.
Should probably call these videos Overviews rather than reviews. I'd not review a videogame by watching trailers and explanations of how it plays by the developers.
As a chemist: lighting a room full of hydrogen on fire while you are in it does not only remove all the oxygen in the room.😅
It also removes you. (also to remove all the oxygen you would have to wait until the room is 2/3 full of hydrogen anyway but that's a minor nitpick)
ah the good ol' conversion to co2 and water
oh and as well as a side of expanding flesh burning heat
I like Patrick's work, but this one seems excessively cumbersome to read and run.
Rooms like the one with mirrors, I would only make a d6 roll. That's the number of turns it takes the party to find all the exits. Encounters happened every 2 turns, or something like that, so the rooms becomes only a risk, but not a boring annoyance.
This has some great creativity, but my read through just felt like it was going to be a lot of work to make it runnable and to fully grok everything. Has anyone had success running this adventure?
I just finished running it.
I had changed allot of things regarding the motivation of having the PCs want to go inside the tomb, but other than that the adventure had run incredibly well.
I had been building up the legend of the Empress of Fire for some time before this, and the players were kinda enamored by the whole thing. Patrick’s writing only furthered their obsession with her.
The randomization of the dungeon was very fun, and once the party figured out (kind of) how to use the Glass Girls they had a great time making new shortcuts through the dungeon with their acid.
The feeling it gives me is that this adventure is what I wanted the Tomb of Horrors to be. When I heard about that tomb back in the day my mind raced with ideas like “who was this lich, what/who was he buried with, what horrifying and strange secrets lie below”.
This tomb actually has strange, alien and beautiful things for the players to find inside, as well as awesome treasure.
Basically, add to/change the motivation of why the PCs are going and I think it’s a very solid dungeon crawl. A chunkier amount of prep than I normally like for an adventure, but the payoff was very much worth it.
Hopefully if he kickstarts the next one Patrick will consider updating the text and editing problems with this one. I’d love to own a 2nd edition physical copy one day
They should just send you an advanced copy of the next one to review and mark all the mistakes before they go to press. You are going to read it anyway.
Ben should charge for that, and I feel like that's exactly the problem, no one wants to (or can't afford to, more likely) pay an editor.
I hope they have an editor for the Speak, False Machine book. If someone like Ben is reviewing your book and there is an error on every page...that's high-school author level material.
DBS is pure unfiltered Patrick. It's janky in a way which brings me fond memories of the peak of the OSR. I absolutely love the descriptions of the Fire Aristocracy.
How do you play this? Do you need other products to interact with the story?
It's an RPG adventure, so you need a rules system to make characters and help adjudicate situations. D&D or one of its spinoff systems would work fine.
Thank you for what you do, Ben. My wallet would beg to differ but I'm super inspired to build my own stuff because of the content you expose us to.
I am running this right now and am now convinced that Patrick Stewart is the best adventure slinger I've seen. His only flaw is that he does not produce enough content.
I backed DBS on the second-highest tier on kickstarter. I do not regret it one bit. The product is fantastic. While I hope Patrick hires an editor with the next release, I think this was just a magnificent product with tons of great ideas and I hope to run this for one of my groups soon.
The Backstory matrix is a cool looking idea.
Thanks for the balanced review, especially raising the concerns about content editing, copyediting, and proofreading. This book seems emblematic of so much of the material that gets produced in this space: wonderful creativity undermined by a lack of respect for readers with shoddiness and corner cutting. Sadly, another hard pass from me as a result. There's simply too much good stuff out there and I have too little bookshelf space to endure amateur hour productions like this. If you can't afford to hire a professional editor, you can't afford to produce a product you're going to charge people money for...and 30 GBP at that! Thanks again for accurately describing the issues with this book and helping me avoid another frustrating disappointment.
Always like these overviews.
I see that the text doesn't say "effed"; but smoothly applied.
I like the presentation of this one, but for me the artwork is too distracting--as I don't like it, personally. But I can see it's a good entry in this category.
Great stuff friend 👏 👍
Messterpiece
sounds v evocative
Tri-crawl
Patrick's such a good writer that he can kind of get away with what I feel is egregiously bad organisation on his part to actually assist DMs with running his adventures. I've found they require a lot more prep than others of its type, but it's so rewarding regardless
Gave this a review a try, still not a fan of Stuart and the artist. Not my thing at all.
I really dont like this art style. Too chaotic for me
It's great you let me check what I think I'd like with your reviews, but it would be greater possibly without spoilers or with some spoiler warning and instructions on how to skip them - like spoilers of the WHOLE mysterious story behind the dungeon. Everyone likes mystery and surprises. That's a huge part of playing or reading such a book - discovering it. Remember you record videos for audience to watch them (I guess?), so you probably don't want them to enjoy the video or the book less because of extensive spoilers, and you probably don't want them to not watch your videos at all just because they don't know at which point their fun is going to be irrevocably ruined, right?
The vast majority of my viewers are DMs, who are looking for adventures to run. As a result, all of my reviews are very spoilery.
I see you are starting to get into clickbait. Nice.
Clickbait is when your title or thumbnails are deceptive.
Care to elaborate? Purely curious.
@@thehauntedhat5519 Peter seems to be referring to how Ben’s thumbnails have been getting more creative lately in order to attract more viewers.
There’s a big difference between clickbait and an enticing thumbnail. The thumbnail for this vid would have been clickbait if it had said something outlandish like “You’ll never need to buy another dungeon again”
But Ben’s thumbnail is asking an honest question in an effort for you to decide for yourself. Just because it makes you want to watch the video, that doesn’t make it clickbait.
@@beemaack "The Greatest 4-Room Dungeon, EVER!!! (Room #3 with SHOCK YOU!) WotC Don't want you to know!" 😄
A typo a page is not a mess by any definition. The thumbnail is designed to bait by raising curiosity that there is some ingesting question to be answered by the video. There is nothing to be answered. The product is a masterpiece by author's own admission.
Clickbait is a clever psychological trick that works. It has become massively pervasive in modern media. It is also exhausting to be bombarded by it from every direction. Most clickbait turns out to be a nothingburger - just like this video. The algorithm YT grind is a tough game to play indeed :-)
Yes, some clickbait is pretty mild, but using psychological tricks on people is pretty questionable in this age of widespread social media addiction.