5 adventures seeds which will take you on a fews days of goblin slaughtering - for 5th level adventurers.
This product is not ugly, but damn, it's not handsome either. I would go as far to say that it has a unique charm and appeal, both in it's writing style and aesthetic. Whether or not this appeals to you though is the difficult question here. This product is colourful, the fonts are ok, and there's a clear, well defined 'vibe' which has been consistently applied. All in all it's a decent job. However, there is little else we can reliably compare this 'style' of presentation too though. Some of the 'appeal' for much of the content we buy in the DMs Guild is that we get what we pay for. I feel that LMYE doesn't explain itself well enough on the product page for me to congratulate it's author on a job well done. I am NOT against breaking traditions with regard to appearance, but some how LMYE's uniqueness or cleverness didn't quite convince me of it's beauty. Along with the conversational style of writing, it felt unprofessional and ultimately sent confusing signals to my little brain. ★★★☆☆. Confusing, yet clean. Charming yet unapologetic. No maps, just colourful boxes of text.
There's no getting away from it, this product is bewildering. There are 5 adventure seeds with 4 text boxes on each page; The Quest, The Core Problem, Plausible Complications and Unlikely Disasters. To the best of my ability I will try to explain what I think they all mean. The Quest: this is a short introduction to the adventure plus a hook. Spoiler alert - the hook is always Mother Haggle and her hatred for goblins. The Core Problem: text in this box breaks the adventure seed down into 2-4 encounters. They are a sentence a piece and add more detail to NPCs, items, locations, and just about anything else which is important to the story. Plausible Complications: these helpful tips are linked to the 'core problems'. They expand upon them, and suggest ways in which to further complicate them. For example; normally we writers will design series of fully fleshed out encounters which are almost always required in order to enjoy the adventure to it's fullest. However in LMYE, the author makes no such assumptions. He simply gives you more ideas on how perpetuate each encounter, should the players go at it like the clappers. Unlikely Disasters: this is a list of things to do if your players find the proceedings way too easy. Maybe they are over-powered? Maybe they skipped over most of what had been planned for them, and now you need to slow them down? Maybe... just maybe you want to have more fun.
As you can see, the design and layout is very unconventional. The more I think about it, the more I like it. But the problem here stems from the fact that the Oliver Clegg does nothing to explain his new system to us. We have to work it out for ourselves.
If that wasn't enough, there are other problems with it's usability. The excellent single page adventure seed idea is rendered almost useless by it's colourful graphics and lack of a print-friendly option. Yes-yes, maybe more of us are using tablets to read from during sessions now a days, but creating an easy to print page so we can write notes during the adventure would seem like a sensible option. The conversational style of writing and number of puns it rattles off, gives it a 'down the pub, talking to my mate feel'. Which kinda works with the informal way it's information is given to us. What I find difficult to swallow though are the many references to monsters but not once are we told where to find them in the Monster Manual or Volo's Guide to Monsters. ★★☆☆☆. I LOVE the ideas here, but in the end I had to work too hard to harvest them.
Adventures do well to include the 3 pillars of adventure, as set out in the 5th Edition Players Handbook - exploration, social interaction and combat. We dutifully write them into our adventures, and smugly claim to all those who would listen, that our adventures are some how complete. LMYE does not do this. That goddam author gives us everything we require, so as DMs we decide where, when and IF we put them in! Because sometimes we just want to kill all the goblins. No talking, just murdering thank you. LMYE takes all that into account. ★★★★. It's different alright.
I have no delusions on whether this series of adventures will change the way we write for Dungeons & Dragons forever, because it won't. However I can see that it is a solid step in a new and exciting direction. I'll be on the look out for more material like this - but hopefully this time it will knock politely on my front door, rather than climb through the bathroom window and puke over my duvet. Final score: ★★★★☆ (3.5 stars). It's a great start and I do 'get it', but I'm not convinced that many others will.
Please enjoy this product, and let us know what you think to our review. See you next time.
Disclaimer:
My review is based upon the product's original version, as of the 8th January 2018. For a full list of disclaimers please scroll down to the very bottom of this review post before you continue. But if the thought of all that arse covering bores you... then please keep on reading!
At 'The DMs Guild Review', we pride ourselves on finding interesting content to tell you about. Lend Me Your Ears by Oliver Clegg doesn't disappoint and is a great example of how writing reviews for products like this can be incredibly challenging. Firstly I would say that this product is for Dungeon Masters with a high level of experience. You can pick up your copy here for free, but we invite you to follow the author's recommendation and pay a dollar, just like we did. Lend Me Your Ears is entirely worth a look, let me tell you why.
For this review I will be breaking my thoughts down into the following topics of discussion: Cost (value for your dollar), Appeal (Aesthetics. Is it a pretty or professional looking product?), Usability (ease of use for a DM & Players), and Originality (how exciting, clever or creative is it?).
Cost
Lend Me Your Ears is a Pay What You Want product. Oliver Clegg recommends that you pay $1, so I will proceed on that basis. For your dollar, you will get 7 things. Firstly you will have a colourful, yet psychotic new NPC called Mother Haggle. She runs a Lost & Found emporium on the edge of the Misty Forest, and loves giving mercenaries and adventurers crappy things to do. Next up is a single page describing a small goblin settlement which is central to the story. Also you will own 5 one-page adventure seeds, all of which can be used as tiny one-shots or strung together to form a good few evenings worth of merriment - helping an old woman out with her hatred of goblins. The author claims that these 5 'seeds' are mini adventures. I don't believe they are. However together, they form quite an interesting set of quest ideas which will serve to entertain you and yours. ★★★★☆ (4/5 stars). Great value, but not what you think you're paying for.Appeal
Usability
There's no getting away from it, this product is bewildering. There are 5 adventure seeds with 4 text boxes on each page; The Quest, The Core Problem, Plausible Complications and Unlikely Disasters. To the best of my ability I will try to explain what I think they all mean. The Quest: this is a short introduction to the adventure plus a hook. Spoiler alert - the hook is always Mother Haggle and her hatred for goblins. The Core Problem: text in this box breaks the adventure seed down into 2-4 encounters. They are a sentence a piece and add more detail to NPCs, items, locations, and just about anything else which is important to the story. Plausible Complications: these helpful tips are linked to the 'core problems'. They expand upon them, and suggest ways in which to further complicate them. For example; normally we writers will design series of fully fleshed out encounters which are almost always required in order to enjoy the adventure to it's fullest. However in LMYE, the author makes no such assumptions. He simply gives you more ideas on how perpetuate each encounter, should the players go at it like the clappers. Unlikely Disasters: this is a list of things to do if your players find the proceedings way too easy. Maybe they are over-powered? Maybe they skipped over most of what had been planned for them, and now you need to slow them down? Maybe... just maybe you want to have more fun.If that wasn't enough, there are other problems with it's usability. The excellent single page adventure seed idea is rendered almost useless by it's colourful graphics and lack of a print-friendly option. Yes-yes, maybe more of us are using tablets to read from during sessions now a days, but creating an easy to print page so we can write notes during the adventure would seem like a sensible option. The conversational style of writing and number of puns it rattles off, gives it a 'down the pub, talking to my mate feel'. Which kinda works with the informal way it's information is given to us. What I find difficult to swallow though are the many references to monsters but not once are we told where to find them in the Monster Manual or Volo's Guide to Monsters. ★★☆☆☆. I LOVE the ideas here, but in the end I had to work too hard to harvest them.
Originality
This is one helluva creative, off-the-wall, craze-feast. It's because of adventures like this one that I write reviews. Tradition has not just been thrown out the window, it's been set alight, stamped on, resuscitated and thrown out the window. Then disintegrated.Adventures do well to include the 3 pillars of adventure, as set out in the 5th Edition Players Handbook - exploration, social interaction and combat. We dutifully write them into our adventures, and smugly claim to all those who would listen, that our adventures are some how complete. LMYE does not do this. That goddam author gives us everything we require, so as DMs we decide where, when and IF we put them in! Because sometimes we just want to kill all the goblins. No talking, just murdering thank you. LMYE takes all that into account. ★★★★. It's different alright.
In Conclusion
Buy it. It's only a dollar and there are tonnes of really interesting ideas hidden away in the boxes. It will make you think about how you run your game as a DM, and maybe even convince you that you've been doing D&D all wrong for years. This product is not all alone though. The author has written a whole series of similar titles, presented in the same way and then published them in quick succession. So if you want to plant your PCs in a small corner of your world and give them quest after quest from a hateful old crone, then all your dreams have come true. It's not what you expected, and probably not what you wanted either but this product is much more than it seems.I have no delusions on whether this series of adventures will change the way we write for Dungeons & Dragons forever, because it won't. However I can see that it is a solid step in a new and exciting direction. I'll be on the look out for more material like this - but hopefully this time it will knock politely on my front door, rather than climb through the bathroom window and puke over my duvet. Final score: ★★★★☆ (3.5 stars). It's a great start and I do 'get it', but I'm not convinced that many others will.
Please enjoy this product, and let us know what you think to our review. See you next time.
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| ★★★★☆ |
Disclaimer:
We love D&D. We adore creativity and focus on the language of surprise and awe. Sometimes we may seem overly critical of some writers work. It's not because 'we be hating', so please give us some credit. Pushing writers to grow and consider both the DMs and players perspective is what we live for. Yeah, we can be mean, it's easy to be critical. However we see the beauty in all of your work and will continue to bring that to the surface too. Finally, all our links presented here on this page to the DMs Guild are spiked with our affiliate membership code. If you click though to the DMs Guild site from this blog, we own you forever. No! I mean we may see a few cents thrown our way for recommending a title or 2. Show us social media love. Don't troll.
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