Taking a short break

I believe I mentioned my father had been in and out of the hospital for the last month or so. Well, he passed away this last week somewhat unexpectedly (he had thought he was getting out of it in a couple days, but this was not how he planned) and I've been trying to clean up his affairs and what not. Dealing with his friends, dealing with body arrangements, and the fact that he didn't leave any money but a lot of bills and debt has been seriously stressed out.

Anyway, there's an Xmas in July sale at DTPRG

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?filters=0_0_1300_0_0&page=1&sort=4a

New OSR Titles at DTPRG/RPGNow — July 12th, 2017

Busy week with lots of adventures, And I mean a lot of adventures.  And most are actually for OSRIC/1e

Official

Night Below -  Not unlike the D series, only for 2e and in Forgotten Realms  Generic. But basically players get involved into going underground and exploring and killing stuff. Actually quite good  192 pages, $9.99

Space Lairs - Essentially another entry in their Lairs series, but for Spelljammer. 64 pages, $4.99

WGQ1 Patriots of Ulek - I'm guessing they also probably cheat at football. $4.99 and 32 pages

Adventures

Orb of Undying Darkness -  1 page S&W adventure. PWYW (and looking at the average, clearly I should stop making 15-20 page modules)

OWB09: Stalingrad on Fire - That was also a song by Rock Master Ivan (er, audio NSFW).  Actually a module for Operation White Box . 26 pages, $3.99

SK1 The Corrupt Temple -  An adventure for OSRIC/1e for 3rd to 5th level characters. Sadly not about televangelists, but "a stirring journey into the temple of an aquatic goddess".  44 pages, $10

SK2 Scoundrel's Run -  An adventure for OSRIC/1e, for 1-3 level characters. Seems like a sandbox style adventure focusing on the exploration of a valley. 44 pages, $10

The Destruction Contraption -  A love level adventure from Unbalanced Dice Games who seem to be quite busy of late. 70 pages, $5

The Folio 14 - The start of a new series of Folio brand adventures for 1e/5e. As such it's for 1st level characters. Seems to involve the rescuing of a princess from a necromancer.  36 pages, $5.99

The Folio 14.5 The Pearl of Madness -A side adventure for above. Apparently the PCs go pearl diving in a hidden cover (as this is presumably before they find the princess).  8 pages, $1.99

The Folio 14.6 The Tomb at Dragon's Spine -  Explore the manor of a sea dwarf. Aren't those called penguins? 8 pages, $1.99

The Folio 14.7 Candon Shamen of the Dark Fen -  Sort of like a mountie only for lizard men. The PCs must do something or other to him. 8 pages, $1.99

The Oracle of Stone and Flame -  10 page S&W adventure. PWYW

Rules

OWB10: Tactical Combat - Expanding Operation White Box into a miniature game.  What, no retro clone of Tractics? $4.99 and 53 pages

S1 The Harquebusier -  Not to be confused with the Harpybustier, this is apparently a firearm using class for OSRIC/1e with a short adventure. $10, 24 pages.

Misc

ACR 1 - Advanced OCR Character Record -  Almost as much of an overkill as those "wheelies" for combat comes this from the Castle Oldskull guy. PWYW and 100s of pages.

Back to BasiX Vol 1 -  Fanzine devoted to B/X. 12 pages, $1.50

Friday Freebie 7-7-17 - Looks like an older style dungeon with diagonal corridors. $1 for enhanced version.

OSR Deluxe Character Sheet - Ironically from Bloat Games comes this single page character sheet, Free,

OWB Tactical Combat in Stalingrad - Bundle of  the tactical combat expansion and the adventure. $6.98

The Folio Digital Quarterly #2 - As with the other Folio stuff, they support 1e and 5e. This is apparently rules for running a steampunk style game. 28 pages, $4.99

Flying Buffalo's Citybooks up on Bundle of Holding

These are generic, but being old school, they are pretty easy to use with D&D

$7.95 gets you the first 3, plus the first 2 Grimtooth Trap books and beating the average (currently $18.76) gets you the rest plus Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes which was the system used in the original Wasteland.

Inferno: Oasis of Koessa Review — Banana Throwing Polymorphed Dwarves in Hell

Inferno: Oasis of Koessa is an adventure module from Paul Elkmann and Geoffrey O. Dale, the latter known to old school gamers as the author of the Inferno hex crawl for Judges Guild, which was literally set in hell as envisioned by Dante.  That only had 4 circles of hell, but he included a 5th circle in one of the issues of Fight On! and then apparently finished the rest in a stand alone product.

As the name implies, Inferno: Oasis of Koessa is set in hell (the 7th Circle), basically a small oasis consisted of some sphinxes, a funerary temple, a tower (obelisk), and some small pyramids, ruled over by a mummy king. In practice, it's a collection of dungeons. The largest is a sphinx, with just over 100 keyed locations and 20 pages. The funerary temple is 14 locations and 5 pages, the tower 11 floors (one per floor) and 4 pages, the tomb is 16 locations over 6 pages, and the pyramids are about 12 locations and 5 pages each.

For the most part, all of these places are old school dungeon crawls. Very old school, they very easily could have come out of a Judges Guild product circa 1980 (as did the original Inferno).  Lots of combat, lots of death traps (two or three saving throws per room seems to be about the norm), with the occasional very strange thing that makes you laugh and say "That's crazy!".  My favorite example of the latter is a dwarf polymorphed into a chimp that throws bananas at the PCs, some of which explode.

Castle Oldskull Products Apparently on Sale

For 99 cents each. Basically these are huge books full of random tables to generate various things.

While I personally am not too crazy about random tables, these are remarkably comprehensive. The PDFs are rather bloated by a huge font and unnecessary public domain art which can cause a table to be several pages instead of one, but still, at 99 cents, they are worth it to mine for ideas.

New OSR Products at DTPRG/RPGNow — July 4th, 2017

Sigh. My father had yet another operation this week (after one on Friday). Two actually. Apparently they botched it the first time and had to go back and fix it. But he's stable and conscious, but still in ICU.

I am not a BRP fan (at least for fantasy, it's okay for CoC), but there is an interesting product, Ki Khanga, a Sword & Soul based game like Spears of the Dawn. To me the best way to promote diversity in the hobby is to quit talking about it and put out diverse products, in this case, a fantasy Africa game.

Official

A Light in the Belfry -  Apparently one of the 2e era audio adventures, this time for Ravenloft. No audio though. 32 pages, $4.99

AC3 The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina -  TSR really had a thing for paper miniatures for some reason (also in their Indiana Jones game) and this was an attempt to add them to B/X.  $4.99

AC8 The Revenge of Rusak - See above. And Rusak's Revenge is much catchier. $4.99 and 16 pages.

Savage Baronies - Another audio cd enhanced product, again sans the audio. This time it was an expansion for the Savage Coast, which was sort of a mini-setting of Mystara in the 2e era. $4.99 and 96 pages.

Adventures

Zip

Rules

Microlite74 3d6 Edition - 68 pages, Another variation of the Microlite rules. PWYW  68 pages.

Misc

A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island -  I have no idea what this is exactly. An adventure? A location sourcebook? Fiction? Seems like it's all of them. No idea what rules it uses but it says "OSR" in the category, so who knows. And at $19.99, I won't be finding out. It's 240 pages, though.

Friday Freebie Enhanced 6-30-17 - Smallish underground temple, looks like. $1 for enhanced version.

The Lunar Library of Thurindisar Review — A Trip to the Moon with (almost) Jedi and Daleks in 15 pages,

The Lunar Library of Thurindisar is a short adventure module from John Fredericks and Sharp Mountain games, the third one of his that I've bought. The first two were good but not great, but this one hits the great mark and then some. Like his other modules, it's meant for low-mid level (3-6) Labyrinth Lord and is set around a town called Adela. But as the name of the module implies, the adventure might start at Adela, but most of it takes place on the Moon.

Essentially the local mage is looking for a certain rare spell, which was known to be in the spellbook of a magic-user named Thurindisar. While most mages seem to be make do with towers, Thurindisar wasn't satisfied with that and lived on the Moon. So the PCs are hired to go there, sent by a magical telescope, to recover the spell.