The Book and the Spring Review — Sumerian Sandbox for First Edition

 The Book and The Spring is a mid level module for 1st Edition, though it seemingly borrows a bit from Adventures Dark and Deep, the idea of different monsters having different types of hit dice (d4 for small ones, up d12 for large ones). It's from Christopher Letzelter and his Anachronistes Press and is a bit unusual for two reasons. Firstly, it's mostly inspired by Sumerian culture, and secondly, it's split into two separate products — the module itself, and the map/supplement book.

I suppose it's also a bit unusual in the premise, which seems like the second half of the adventure (or campaign, even). The PCs are tasked with destroying an evil artifact, a book, by submersing it in a holy spring. However, the spring has dried up thanks to a magical curse by an evil king, now undead. But they can't kill him until they open his tomb, which requires finding keys.

Thankfully that can easily be ignored, since essentially you have a small sandbox setting with several sites for the PCs to explore, though three in particular are the largest and most detailed: A ruined palace, a tomb, and the ruins of a hanging gardens style structure. Each room is given a physical description, sometimes quite lengthy and often includes dimensions (which some people like but others seem to hate).

Mischief Inc's Kickstarter is Live

Mischief Inc has produced a couple of OSR/1st Edition adventures,  The Tomb of Rakoss the Undying, which was pretty good and The Inheritance, which was flawed, but had its heart in the right place.

Although I think those two modules were produced using their own funds (including print versions), their newest project, A1 A Forgotten Evil has a Kickstarter.

Anyway, pretty good deal, PDF for $5, $10 for a print copy, And apparently they've learned their lesson from The Inheritance (which isn't that bad, just rail roady).

Ernie Gygax's Hobby Shop Dungeon goes to Kickstarter

And it's well on its way to being funded, with $14,000 of the $20,000 already raised.

Looks good, if a little expensive.

1E Module Line on Kickstarter

I don't know how I missed this (thanks to Eric Andres for mentioning it to me), but over on Kickstarter is a new project to bring out a series of 1e folio adventures. While the art is clearly quite different (though some interior art is apparently by Jim Holloway), it will have the detached cover with the map inside like the old modules (and not something you can do at POD printers)

My Project: The Folio is a 1st Edition gaming module. It will be produced as an 8x11”, removable cover [11x17" once removed], adventure with mostly b/w interior artwork.  The final size is 30 pages of content.
Who’s it for? ALL gamers, both new gamers and old gamers as it is easily expandable or playable as is.The concept is to allow gamers a starting point for adventure that can be modified to their liking while providing excellent reference content and framework.The base mechanic will be for 1st Edition, but I’ve designed it to be readily modified to any fantasy game.
What’s in it? All original content. It has been written by myself and my OSR compatriot Mark Timm, with incredible cover art from old school masters and interior artwork by skilled black and white illustrators Travis Hanson and Michael Wilson, and even a bit of Jim Holloway because I can never get enough Holloway. We are intent on providing a polished and modern design with creatively nostalgic content that transcends a particular age. The Folio will contain a 3-D map, a Gazetteer, a monster section, a new monster unique to the setting, DM’s notes and guides, and a full adventure. 

Also very reasonably priced, $5 for a PDF, $15 for a print copy. So check it out.

HS1 The Lost Shrine of Sirona Released

This is sort of cheating as a news item, since I made it, but I just released the first (of hopefully) a number of modules, HS1 The Lost Shrine of Sirona. It's meant for first edition and for 5-7th level characters, though I ran it for a 5th/6th level party and they found it kinda easy, but they also had 9 characters total, which complicates things.  

It's a very short, fairly simple dungeon crawl, 9 rooms and 2 pages. I've been working on a much longer (80 room) dungeon, but I wanted to release something short and simple as a test.

Edit:

Slightly updated version —  Fixed a couple typos, added AL to critters I forgot to, and added a monster xp summary in the Notes. Which as it varies from rules system to rules system, might be off, but it's more or less the 1e xp values (I also round)

Mad Monks of Kwantoom Review

Mad Monks of Kwantoom by Kabuki Kaiser is an Asian themed game supplement for Advanced Edition Character Labyrinth Lord, which basically means it works with 1st Edition AD&D and other games where you have separate class and race. I call it "supplement" because it's several products in one. It's part rules supplement, part setting sourcebook, part dungeon adventure, and part monster manual. It's also largely aimed at solo gaming, just one person playing while also being the GM. It reminds me of some of the mini games from the 1980s, meant for solo play.

I say Asian themed because it's really a mash-up of both Japanese and Chinese culture and folklore. This is perhaps never more evident in the rules section, where several new races are introduced. Most of these are Japanese, like the Tanuki and Kitsune. On the other hand, the new classes intoduced are really all variations of the monk (thus the name of the product), which are mostly Chinese. If you are a looking for a historically accurate product, this isn't it, it's as much of a pastiche of Asian fantasy as regular D&D is of Western.