Adventures Great & Glorious Review — Three Things Wrong with the Title

Adventures Great and Glorious is a sourcebook for Adventures Dark and Deep (an AD&D 1e variant) meant for domain and high level play. Domain level play basically means when PCs run strongholds and such. This was sort of something Dave Arneson's D&D game seems to revolved around more so than Gary Gygax's and you never really had proper rules for domains in AD&D.  Later they were added in the Companion Set for the D&D line, along with a mass combat system.

I had somewhat high hopes for this, as AD&D has lacked a good domain system, and sadly, I can say that still is the case, as AG&G mostly rehashes what was in the 1e DMG on strongholds and followers. This does have a mass combat system, but it's somehow remarkably cumbersome and yet still vague.

New OSR Products at DTRPG — August 23rd, 2019

No review this week. Nothing screamed out to be reviewed.

Pretty slow week unless you want re-hashes of existing games.

Rules

Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy -  Apparently only I think this has reached the cash grab stage. But rules to play AD&D using the B/X rules (I mean, Old School Essentials) because Advanced Labyrinth Lord is just not trendy anymore. $6.99

Old School Essentials: Druid and Illusionist Spells -  Because apparently $6.99 is too cheap to give them to you without charging you another $6.99

Swashbuckler Class for D&D and AD&D -  Pretty much as said. Nice to see some people still make stuff for fun. 11 or so pages and PWYW.

Sword & Spell - Book 1, 2, and 3 - Hey, gee, another retro clone of OD&D! My goodness, never saw that coming. This one has a free Book up but 2 and 3 cost $9.95 each.

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 8-23-19 - Temple? $2

New OSR Products at DTRPG — August 16th, 2019

Doesn't seem to be a very busy week in terms of releases. On the other hand, in real life, I seem to have acquired a kitten, so I've been busy with him.

Official

S1-4 Realms of Horror - Compilation of the S modules. $9.99

2E Wizard's Screen - Not sure why anyone would buy this in PDF. But it's $4.95

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 8-16-19 -  Looks somewhat phallic. $2

Middenzine Issue 3 -  For S&W, 24 pages, $3.64

Gambler: A Class Review

One of the biggest problems of old school D&D is the thief.  Many people just don't like it on principle, or dislike the idea of thief skills. But my main objection to it is that it really sucks as a class. So I enjoy alternatives to the thief class (and have come up with three alternatives for my game, the tomb robber, the rogue, and the scout. The latter two have similar names to "official" classes in 2e and late 1e, but mine are different) and am always on the lookout for more.

The Gambler from Sharp Mountain Games is one of those alternatives. At least somewhat. It's a class meant for Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy RPG, but it's easy enough to adapt.  Although gambling was important enough back in the day for the DMG to have a whole appendix devoted to it, it really never was covered much since, nor does it really make much of an appearance in the OSR.

New OSR Products at DTRPG — August 9th, 2019

Not much new this week, the highlight being a high level campaign supplement for Adventures Dark & Deep.

Adventures

QF3 - Malady of the Moor King -  Yikes, this beats even Frog Grab prices, $5.98 for 9 pages.

Rules

Adventures Great & Glorious -  This looks interesting. Stuff for higher level characters to do - rule domains, create planes, and even make penguins fly.  123 pages, $9.95 (also in print)

Boons for Swords & Wizardry - They're totally not feats, cause they're random or something. PWYW

Shapeshifting -  As near as I can tell, artsy furry White Box. When you think it couldn't get any lower.  PWYW, 120 pages.

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 8-9-19 -  Not sure if this is a continuing map of that megadungeon he was doing. $2

The Vaults of Obryn Sapravda Review — Old School Feel with Printable Maps

With there nothing new that really caught my interest, I went back to my wish list for older stuff I hadn't got around to buying and bought this, The Vaults of Obyrn Sapravda, apparently published way back in 2010 for 1e (amazingly enough, adapted from 4e).  The price of $7 is probably what put me off, but it's 110 or so pages. Alas, most (say 60% ) of that 110 pages are maps meant to be printed out and used as battle maps, not unlike TSR's experiment with that in the Indiana Jones days.

New OSR Products at DTRPG — August 2nd, 2019

Also interesting, there's a handful of new adventures for The Fantasy Trip. I remember when that was a "Microgame". Dark City Games did a good job of carrying on that tradition

Official

Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting Revised (2e) - I was never too big of a fan of the FR, but for those that are, this is now back in PDF form. $14.99 and multiple files of about 280 pages.

Adventures

Cha-alt -  This is a mega-dungeon from Venger Satanis. Part of me hesitates to include this, since I'm not sure if it's OSR statted or not (even his OSR products aren't arguably OSR statted, as he has no grasp of any rules system, even his own). Probably at least has some interesting art. 218 pages, $20

Descent into Madness : First Steps - Part of a megadungeon, continuing from their module The Sunken Fort.  72 pages, $4.99

Grinding Us -  Apparently a spiritual sequel or something to the Grinding Gear module for LotFP, which made a big deal of the fact that it had a MU with the sleep spell in it. This seemingly has more of a premise like The Assassins Knot, a testing ground for would be thieves. 34 pages, PWYW

September Short Adventures 2 -  10 adventures from 2011 for use with Labyrinth Lord.  18 pages, Free.

Rules

Dark Fantasy Magic -  Small magical supplement from the author of the excellent Dark Fantasy Basic to make magic more , well, dark. 12 pages, PWYW.

Dark Places & Demogorgons - Martial Arts Mayhem -  What would an '80s game be without martial arts? I took Tae Kwon Do back then. (Amusingly this came up at work, I was talking with a 20-something co-worker who asked "Who in the breakroom could take him in the ring?" and was amused when I answered "Me", mentioning I had actually fought competitively before.  "When?" "30 years ago", which caused him to scoff, when I mentioned Bolo Yeung from Bloodsport who was like 50 when he did that. And he hadn't seen Bloodsport, which I found even more depressing.

Anyway ,$4.99 and 89 pages.

Luminous Bristlemaw -  Some sort of aquatic monster. 1 page, Free.

Old School Fantasy: Distinguished Characters - Dual and multi-class characters for B/X.  12 pages, $1.99

Misc

Friday Enhanced Map 8-2-19 -  Level 5 of the Eye of Shumway dungeon. $2

Megadungeon #4 -  Dual statted zine for B/X and 5e. $4.99 and 56 pages.

RPPP: Medieval-Authentic (TM) City Guide: Kingston Upon Hull -  Doesn't get any more British sounding like that (maybe throw in a Nigel and Ian in the name). $2.99 and 33 pages.

The Warren Review — Tucker's Goblins?

When I think of fantasy fiction, I think of powerful swordsmen cleaving hordes of enemies, defeating monsters, and foiling the plans of gods, and reaping overflowing hoards of treasure. Apparently others read fantasy fiction and see nothing but drudgery, misery, and toil, apparently some sort of cathartic re-living (or pretending to) of the Viet Nam and Korean wars.  Part of this is the obsession with low level monsters being super tricky and planting traps and such and thus challenging for high level parties.  (To be fair, this idea goes back to the old days, with articles in Dragon and White Dwarf about it)

The Warren is the first module in the Dunromin (or rather, Barnaynia) setting and is one of those modules, meant for 1e/OSRIC characters, levels 5th to 8th. There's a rather nasty bunch of goblins with a rather extensive cave complex, or warren, and the PCs are hired to clean them out, at the munificient rate of 3 gp per goblin head. It's hard to fathom why any 5th level party would accept that offer, much less 8th.