I try not to write these too often… but sometimes, man, you just have such a horrific experience that you need to put it out where search engines can find it and hope other folks know what they are getting in to if they choose to go a certain way.
Me and the mister really enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons as well as the White Wolf kinda games, but scheduling any kind of regular gaming group has been really difficult for the past several years. So when we saw these Date Night adventures coming out from a few different sources, we were pretty intrigued. (We’re also bad at planning date nights, so this was a major two bird one stone potential win for us.)
Here’s what we found- Urban Realms is awesome (https://urbanrealms.com/). What you see is what you get, and we enjoyed the Rescue of the Blackthorn Clan. Wight Wedding is currently sitting on a shelf, ready to play when we are. The only part of it we didn’t 100% love is that we didn’t get to play together; one person plays while another GMs and you switch off through the course of the adventure. And at the time, there were only the two modules.
Then we discovered RPG Maps Forge and their date night adventures. It was all digital, and you know what Carrie Fisher said about instant gratification (if you don’t, her complaint is that it takes too long). So we went ahead and gave that a try, and while not awful, it also had the same problem of having to have one person be the GM.
Whomp. Whomp. Whomp.
So we got this email-
And, you know? That whole solve a mystery side by side part sounded like what we really wanted- the ability to play together.
We got excited. We made plans.
June 26th came, and we picked up the module… got to reading… and what do you know?
It’s the same damn thing- one person plays, the other GMs. With a sigh, we unmade our plans and played Valheim instead.
But not before I dashed off a note to the support address, letting them know this wasn’t what they advertised and we were pretty disappointed. While waiting for a reply to that (and to be fair, I didn’t expect a whole lot, maybe a ‘oh hey, sorry you can’t read’ or some crap), I got another invite.
Cue record scratch, for two reasons. One, I got the major icks from the invocation of She Who Must Not Be Paid, and second…
… isn’t it kinda creepy to be imaginary kids on a date night? Ick, ick, ick.
Then, me being me, I went and searched RPG Maps Forge in general to see what their overall reputation was. Well, gentlefolks, did I get an eyeful.. and this is just the AI summary of the problems with these folks.
So yeah. They steal assets, misrepresent their products, and refuse accountability for anything. Really a bad, bad look.
What’s that, you ask? Did I hear from customer service?
Oh, I did. ‘What email address did you use to purchase?’ over and over again, without any other conversation. I shared my complaint, my ick, and just get back responses that want my email address… because they were correct, I didn’t buy it- the mister did, and used his email address. And I hate the immediate refund and piss off version of customer service, so I kept trying to get them to address my actual problem.
But no, can’t have that. So here we are.
Overall, if all that I said up there is okay with you, cool, do you boo.
But if you want something truly co operative to play? Not here. If switching off works for you? Highly recommend sticking with Urban Realms, who also ships through Amazon, by the way.
Happy gaming!
Curiouser and Curiouser 