A Review of N2: The Forest Oracle. An AD&D adventure review #05

[@freddaniel5099]

Well, the module may be BAD as it can be, but on a positive note - it has generated at least two entertaining reviews! I enjoy your channel and the humor you bring to a hobby that sometimes takes itself too seriously. Cheers!

[@TheLostAdventurer]

At the end of the day, it’s just a game

[@fleetcenturion]

I love these reviews. You never hear anyone else talk about the crappy adventures. Just proof that drugs and adventure writing don't mix!

[@thecosmic8248]

I kinda like the idea of the Wizard guilt tripping the party to take this quest. Done on purpose of course and not just standard “we need heros” sort of thing. Either the town doesn’t have enough money to pay them the full rate or are just cheap, having an impromptu “town meeting” when the party is conveniently around is a pretty good plan lol. And I mean like ham it up, have the entire village in on it. Cry on cue, bringing out little Timmy with the broken leg. Make a show of it.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Oh God. I may have lost my mind earlier if that was how it started.

[@stephenclements6158]

My wife said the townsfolk saw some fresh fish swim into town and sprang the trap. None of them wanted to die finding the druid, but these randos nobody cares about, let's browbeat them into doing it.

[@bobkarstenson1792]

Love these reviews….thanks for all your work…looking forward to the next one

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Glad you like them!

[@ribzed]

Wow. That really does sound like an incredibly bad railroad. I noticed Carl Smith was next to Merle Rasmussen in the very beardy photo at the start. Merle wrote Quagmire. Possibly the only module that could rival this one?

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I think I put quagmire a step above this one actually, at least the storyline made some sense, a little

[@gregh5665]

I ran this in '84, or rather, I used it. I didn't follow the plot, but added a bunch of the locations/NPCs/encounters to the region in which the party was adventuring (except the yeti, perytons, and gypsy/ogre lair, which even 13-year old me considered lame.) The cover art, seeing it on the shelf at The Railhead, drew me in. If only we had youtube reviews back then.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Sounds like you mainly only used the map as a setting

[@TheRealBobEsqueleto]

This is one of the first few modules I ever ran. My cousin paid $1 for it on clearance at a toy store. He paid too much.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I have to ask…. How did the game go?

[@mattnerdy7236]

You have to tell the full story now.

[@TheRealBobEsqueleto]

Well it was quite a while ago but I'll tell you what I remember. The game played out kind of like you'd expect, mediocre and forgettable. Only two incidents really stand out in my memory, which I just confirmed with a friend. The nymph and her sleeping boyfriend. They immediately picked up on the thought of "Why didn't she just wake him up herself?" They figured this was a trap. The encounter took a Tarantino-esque turn real quick. Weapons drawn in a high intensity confrontation. Shouting threats, they could only get hysterics from the girl. They poked the sleeping man with spear butts and then points. He woke in a panic and pulled his blade. The nymph disrobed and half the party died. The PCs attacked. The naked girl was killed. Her enraged man was killed. Dead bodies everywhere and nobody really understood what the hell just happened. The second, less-interesting memory was the yeti. It carried off and killed my cousin's character. He should've saved that $1.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I would have paid money to see the cluster of a mess with the nymph. Sounds about right though for adventurers. I'd probably have done the same.

[@captainbloth]

The only good thing about this adventure is the art :D Although, being addicted to guilty pleasure stuff, I am tempted to run it for the laughs. A beer'n'pretzel style of game in which the entire group can collectively bash the adventure and have fun :D

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I wish you luck on that, if you do do it, come back and tell us how it went!

[@Merlinstergandaldore]

It truly is a painful read. I actually tried running it, fixing the stupidity... it just wasn't worth it. Though it is fun watching youtube commentators lose their minds with how bad it was... maybe that was Carl Smith's plan all along... 🤪... (oh and BTW... Carl Smith was an EDITOR as well! Some people just don't deserve their careers...)

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Well, I'm happy you enjoyed watching me lose my mind Merlin!

[@johnscotto5045]

I listened to YoG's review and now your review and it makes me think that in general the quality of TSR (at least US based TSR) D&D products declined considerably in the mid-to late 80s. By then I was in college and soon headed off to the USAF and I'm glad, quite frankly, that I didn't see the sad fall of the fun and innovative game I started playing a decade earlier. Thanks for what you do, even if the module was lousy, the review was entertaining as heck.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Thanks John! I cant remember what was happening at the time, but this was also the year of huge layoffs from TSR

[@tinywarfare9109]

The module is terrible, but reading it is so much fun. Each time I find something new that's weird and/or bad. For instance I discovered the adventure has not one but two scrolls of protection from were-tigers. Why? No idea, I mean items don't need to be relevant to module. But what an oddly specific item, and have it appear in two separate troves. The eels? I didn't even notice that yet. You see? This module is gift that keeps giving. I do own this adventure, I actually paid for it too, purely for collection purposes. But believe me, it wasn't much.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

So do I. I bought it for completion purposes. The concept is a good idea... but it was just poorly put together

[@lionelhutz3142]

You went from B10 "Night's Dark Terror" to this?! Must have hurt your brain...

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I actually wanted to do B1….. but I can’t wrap my head around how to go over an adventure that has no pre-populated monsters

[@toddrlyons]

Sounds like Carl was an unhappy father with challenging teenage daughters. Maybe being guilt-tripped into action was a recurring theme in his personal life. On the other hand, I don't mind that he put some treasure inside of creatures in some unexpected places. Like with the hidden rooms in Doom, it's fun to reward curious players with some extra swag. Thanks for suffering through this module I will never play. I'm wondering what you thought of The Shady Dragon Inn (which I only skimmed through long enough to decide I didn't like it).

[@stephenclements6158]

Yeah, placing treasure to reward players that really go above and beyond is a good idea, but I wonder how it plays in practice. Will you put in all this stuff for the players to never think to look for it, wasting your time?

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Oh, I have it, I don't exactly know how I'd review it. It's merely a floor plan of an inn and a list of NPCs. I think it would be my one and only review that lasts less than 5 minutes

[@villiamkarl-gustavlundberg5422]

The N2_module is nothing like the N1_module.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Oh God no. I think everyone would conveniently forget this one existed

[@NefariousKoel]

Knowing how TSR was going at this time, I have to wonder whether various employees were forced to write adventures in order to splatter product onto shelves. People who never did so before. Just grab the janitor and tell him to write a D&D adventure after briefly explaining to him what that is. 😆

[@TheLostAdventurer]

oh I know..... im working on Tale of the Comet and that one is a bit...... poorly put together

[@BX-advocate]

I mean it seems like there are interesting encounters but it's just really badly written. I think with a bit of work this might actually be a salvageable module but yeah as written it's pretty bad. My suggestions would be to make it hex crawl where the players need to discover how to solve the curse and have the Oracle be a legend. Then sprinkle in the encounters as you see fit while adding or removing also as you see fit. Make the treasure more available and not in obscure places(seriously gutting a fish for gold), have some of that treasure be a reward/ payment from the villagers for success and perhaps the players also get a free house in the village that they can always come back to. Completely overhauled the Castle part to make it interesting and also make it so they don't discover it before the Oracle asks them to clear it. Oh and modify the weird young girl encounters. It's a lot of work but I think there is actually some good stuff here it's just laid out and thought out badly but with a bit of modifications it could be a great module. To be honest I kind of like getting bad or incomplete modules and trying to work with them, that's why I own X6: Quagmire! Edit: Also another side note I thought about after writing my comment. This adventure does have gypsies so you could make them Vistani from Barovia and tie this into i6: Ravenloft. Perhaps even run it before Ravenloft so when they return to the town and celebrate then run the intro tavern scene from i6. Or just have it be a connection, anyway just an idea.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

It’s there, the map has hexes on it. It’s possible, but the current set up is…. Very poor. And Carl Smith was a major editor for TSR at the time which kind of makes this a bit odder. There was so much potential, squandered. And yeah….. the fascination with 16 year old girls was…. Odd.

[@BX-advocate]

@@TheLostAdventurer Yeah it is weird that an editor doesn't make a well edited and layed out module. Does he literally describe them as 16? Anyway I actually like the general vibe of some of the encounters so I think I might get a reprint or a cheap original and see what I can do.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Oh yeah, it's usually in the descriptor, "blah blah 16 year old woman approached the party "

[@martinfiedler4317]

16:10 LOL 😂 Yea, the moment you mentioned the name, I thought "wasn't there some winged deer in some Monster Manual?". Pretty sure, I never came across one in any adventure that I ever read ... sure not in anyone I actually played back in the days.

[@toddlyons]

You know a guy loves your channel when he subscribes from more than one of his profiles. 😄 But this way I won't miss any new releases if I'm logged in under one or the other.

[@lionelhutz3142]

And such imaginative fantasy names for the locations! 😂 "Quiet Lake" in the "Greate Olde Woode"...who wrote this an 8-year old?! Should have renamed this module "Hard Pass" 🙄

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Actually a major editor for early TSR wrote this

[@mattnerdy7236]

Hey Lost Adventurer, this has to be the worst written module ever. I now know truly what a railroad adventure is. Fixing this adventure: I would make it to were the party has to help search for the location of the druid. The town is about to have a meeting about it, that's why there is good food and drink. Make one side good and the other side evil; gypsy and druid. Drop the yeti and just make it a group of apes. The beer people have to stay, that's just crazy good! Keep the encounters but lose the dialog. I would make some of those encounters, random encounters. Castle Karn, I now who that is! It's a wrestler from a old Nintendo game, called Pro Wrestling, I know-deep name, King Corn Karn! I never knew a wrestler could become a 13th century landowner. Thanks Lost Adventurer you have a wonderful day!

[@TheLostAdventurer]

At least you got some hints out of it, that one flew right past me. You pretty much have to gut the entire thing to make something useful. The most dangerous thing is probably the Beer People 😂 the rest of it was just.... wow... bad

[@stephenclements6158]

Wow, we got a Pro Wrestling reference in the comments. See, this video was worth making. ;)

[@BX-advocate]

Hey man are you alright? Its been a while since there has been a new video and just wanted to see how you're doing.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

hey man, yeah, im still kickin, just had a job change followed by a child custody battle, some changes on my side, but there will be videos in the next month or so

[@BX-advocate]

@@TheLostAdventurer Oh crazy! Okay man it's all good you take care of yourself, I'm not trying to pressure you I was just wondering what was going on. Glad to hear you are at least okay, I hope all goes well.

[@c-bass9367]

Yo my man what happened where did you go?

[@TheLostAdventurer]

I’m alive, just finishing up a personal child custody battle and a job transition one after the other

[@TheBasicBrit1989]

This is one of those adventures that probably should not exist but it does and feels like it's grown a cult following from the bad rep it gets 😂

[@richmcgee434]

How could wererats possibly cast a sleep spell? Gee, let me think, maybe they had a scroll they could use. Monsters don't follow the same rules as PCs anyway, and half the wererats in the universe have thief (or rogue, or whatever you want to call them) abilities anyway. Still a shitty module but hardly because of that minor detail.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Possibly, it doesn’t say, but it’s one of many reasons why this is a poor module

[@williamobraidislee3433]

I dunno. Doesn’t sound so bad.

[@0den]

I'm curious, Why would you invest your time reviewing something that you already know is of poor quality? It didn't seem like you enjoyed this review, and there are plenty of excellent RPG products out there that need to be reviewed.

[@TheLostAdventurer]

Morbid curiosity 😅

[@stephenclements6158]

Reviewing bad modules is important not only to warn people away from it, but also to help show people what works and what doesn't in adventure design. Plus the chuckles.

[@mattnerdy7236]

One man's junk is another man's treasure.

[@lionelhutz3142]

@@TheLostAdventurer A good DM and fun player group with a sense of humor could run this as a one-shot with PCs with terrible stats and character names just for comedic fantasy fun. The dialog between PCs and NPCs would be something right out "Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail" or "The Princess Bride". It would def be a change of pace. 😂