The Sea-Wolf's Daughter Review — The Sea-Wolf's Daughter's Adventure, not the PC's

As a huge fan of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Howard, C.L. Moore, etc, I liked the general premise of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, that is an OSR based sword & sorcery game inspired by the pulps, but I have found the game to basically be a incoherent mess, both thematically and rules wise, taking random stuff from everywhere and just dropping them down into a giant mess. It's like how Michael Bay makes movies.

The Sea Wolf's Daughter is pretty much the distillation of this, as well as being, what in computer/video game RPGs, an escort quest. The PCs are engaged to rescues Gunnhildr, the daughter of a Viking, taken by another Viking. But upon infiltrating the stronghold, they discover that she's freed herself, escaping to the dungeon being the kidnapper's lair. But she doesn't want to be rescued, she wants to go on her own quest, which just happens to involve exploring said dungeon.

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.

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.

The Lost Valley of Kishar — More Trouble Than Treasure, For Misery Tourists Only

 The Lost Valley of Kishar is a site based adventure from Gabor Csomos from Gabor Lux's (better known as Melan) imprint, EDMT. As such, it's not surprising that it has a strong sword & sorcery feel, though this is almost taken to the point of cliche. While apparently for 1e (levels 6th through 8th), it uses its own house rules, including things like morale, and is extremely stingy (by design) on the treasure, both magic and mundane.

Essentially it's a small valley with a number of locations, though even calling them mini-dungeons would be a stretch. It seems that the valley has a magic tree and this magic tree was worshiped by followers of a fertility deity (Kishar). They lived there for a while until an evil magic-user came in and took over the valley, corrupting the tree and using it to create magical beasties. But the priestesses recuited an army of heroes who defeated them, but all died in the process (and despite being D&D, didn't have access to raise dead for some reason), leaving the valley more or less deserted and open for the remaning monsters people to slowly fill the power vacuum.

Ruined City of Cyfandir Review — Low Level Adventure with High Level Boss

Although I am not a fan of the Adventurer Conqueror King System, from Autarch, I was deeply impressed by their first module (besides Dwimmermount that is) that supported their system, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara, which was a nice take on the Keep on the Borderlands type scenario. So I quickly picked up this, Ruined City of Cyfandir as soon as I noticed it was out. It's meant for levels 5 to 7 and for ACKs (so probably a little higher level for Basic/Original games) and is 30 pages for $4 in PDF.

The premise is simple enough, an elven city was overrun by a dragon and her lizardman followers. 200 years later, they are still there. The PCs either stumble upon the city or are sent there. Presumably they explore and loot. There's only about 25 or so special locations in the city itself, most of which deal with lizardmen or the newly arrived goblin tribe.

The Sepulcher of the Burning King Review — Creepy Crypt Crawl

The Sepulcher of the Burning King is a short (20 or so encounter areas) module from Rosethrone Games, a site based adventure (ie dungeon crawl) part of their Highlands hexcrawl setting. One of the things I don't like how hexcrawls is that they tend to just provide short descriptions of an adventure site and expect the DM to do all the work filling out the encounter. One of the nice things about Rosethorne Games is they have been releasing modules like this to actually do the work of filling out the hex crawl.

Perhaps due to the old public domain artwork taken from old 19th century books on knights and such, it's got something of a King Arthurian feel to it, not Camelot itself, but the later, Holy Grail quest days, the idea of wandering a strange wasteland and coming across an old ruined castle with something weird and creepy in it.

FP1 Arrival at Fort Perilous Review — Child Friendly B2 Homage

Although personally I am more of a B1 In Search of the Unknown person, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands apparently resonated with a huge audience, as it continues to inspire homages almost 40 years later. The most recent homage is the first product from John Leeper and Grey Goblin Games, FP1 Arrival At Fort Perilous. The modestly priced ($2.20) 30 page module follows that basic setup, almost exactly, there is a lone (more or less) outpost in the wilderness that serves as a home base for low level parties to go out and explore.

The difference is, rather than one large, multi-faction dungeon to explore, there are three separate smaller dungeons, two out in the wilderness, one essentially part of the fort itself (well, right outside), each with a single faction.

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).

The Last Candle Review — A French flavored Keep on the Borderlands

 The Last Candle from Chubby Funster is part mini-setting, part dungeon. Unlike most such things that have something of a generic but vaguely English medieval/fantasy theme, this one has a French flavor, reminding me of Clark Ashton Smith's Averoigne (which of course was used for X2 Castle Amber) and C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry.

Essentially though, you get a brief sketch of the region and a somewhat more detailed look at a priory (basically an abbey or monastery), the "last candle" of the module's title, as it's the last bastion of a psuedo-Christian like faith. This place is apparently meant to be the home base for the characters while they explore/loot the local dungeon (described in the last part of the module), the Eagle's Eye. Then there are several pages of adventure hooks and wilderness encounters

Castle in the Clouds Review — More like Small Townhouse in the Clouds

 Castle in the Clouds is a 1st edition adventure from the "Old School Role Playing" company aka Joseph A. Mohr, who has produced a surprisingly large number of adventures (17 by my count) as well as a book of magic items, Malcon's Tome of Magic. I've got the latter but this is the first of his adventures I've bought. It goes for $3.50 and 25 or so pages, but it seems a bit pricey for what you get in terms of the adventure itself, it's more a mini-adventure with only about a dozen locations. The rest is mostly filler.

It's a case of where the title does describe the modules, it's set in a cloud giant's cloud castle. That has always been of of my favorite adventure ideas and it's largely been underutilized, I think. There was that goofy JG module with the balloon people, a couple decent Dungeon magazine adventures, but for something so much a part of folklore (Jack and the Beanstalk) and even music, it seems largely ignored. Compare it to Baba Yaga, who is much more obscure, yet her hut shows up all the time.

The Ranger's Hideout, PWYW Adventure, is now available for For Gold & Glory

For Gold & Glory, the 2e retroclone, has seen a fair number of products lately. Almost all have been pay, but this one, The Rangers Hideout,  is PWYW.

Despite the odd name, it's basically a sandbox style adventure, a small wilderness area for characters to explore.

It's well worth a look. As most of the changes in 2e were to character classes, this is probably entirely compatible with older editions. And the creator probably spent a good $30 on stock art.

The Merciless Merchants bring out some 2E compatible modules

I missed this in my last update or two, but a couple of new guys, The Merciless Merchants (which makes me picture them as Ferrengi),  have released a couple of modules over at DTRPG for the 2e Retroclone For Gold & Glory.

Although I was a fan of Spelljammer and Birthright, the 2e rules always just felt "wrong" to me, though in retrospect, not nearly as wrong as later editions. It certainly does clean up a lot of the issues with 1e, though not all. So it has its points.

Anyway, the first module, shown above, is The Willowmere Vagabonds for levels 2-4, which sounds like the PCs must deal with bandits in a forest (hopefully more than that).

Their second is The Nevermore Mines, which seems to be horror themed and is for levels 4-7.

Both are a bit pricey at $8.40 a pop, but also are about 60 pages each and from looking at the previews, seem to have a good chunk of stock art, which adds up

 

Mechanized Men of Mars Review

Mechanized Men of Mars is an adventure by Thomas Denmark for Warriors of the Red Planet, an OD&D inspired sword & planet game that I really liked. Unfortunately, Mechanized Men of Mars doesn't live up to that standard.

It sells for $2.99 at DTRPG/RPGNow and is a single column PDF of 32 pages. Seven of those pages are taken up with titles, credits, and legal stuff. Another five pages details the background of the adventure, though it can be summed up as basically a mad scientist who can turn people into machine soldiers has returned from the dead (sort of) and the PCs must stop him.

Khem's Order — New PWYW One Page Dungeon

A lot of them are pretty meh, but I found this one to be pretty neat. It's actually a three level dungeon, about 30 rooms.

At some point though, I think the one page dungeon format gets in the way of being effective. So much information is crammed into such a tiny space that a) it's hard to read and b) just seems pointless, just sticking to a format for the sake of being a gimmick.

Anyway, despite the drawbacks of the format, it's nice adventure. The author is apparently French so there are some oddities in the text, but nothing too bad.

The Sinister Stone of Sakkara Review — The Keep on the Borderlands, Autarch Style

Thirty-Five years ago, Gary Gygax wrote The Keep on the Borderlands as an introductory module for Basic D&D, to replace Mike Carr's In Search of the Unknown for inclusion in the basic box set. It was different from most existing modules in two notable ways. Firstly, it described with some detail a home base for the players, the Keep in the name of the module. Secondly, instead of a providing a fairly static dungeon for the players to explore, it provided a more dynamic one ruled by different factions.

As such an influential module, it has spawned numerous imitators as well as a reboot from TSR/WOTC themselves. Most of these provide far more detail than the original, easy enough since the orignal was a scant 32 pages. The Sinister Stone of Sakkara is Autarch's attempt at producing an homage, meant for their Adventurer Conqueror King System (aka ACKS) but with the exception of armor class and some classes, is more or less Basic/Expert D&D with a focus on bookkeeping. And that sort of focus in one display here, with a large amount of detail in some areas and sparseness in others.

The Witch of the Tarriswoods Review

The Witch of the Tarriswoods is an OSR module from John Fredericks and Sharp Mountain Games. It's a short low level (3rd or so) adventure meant for Basic D&D, though of course it works reasonably well with any OSR game. It does seem to rely a lot on both ability checks and open doors checks, for what it's worth.

The plot is fairly simple (and there is one, it's not a sandbox), basically the town of Adela is having problems and it's up the PCs to solve them. As can be guessed from the title, the problem is the doings of a "witch" (actually a 5th level MU), who has unleashed (perhaps somewhat unwittingly) an evil at a ruined shrine in the woods. So the PCs must go to the shrine and solve the problem.

On the way they have three encounters, one involving the rescue of a farmer, one with skeletons, and the last is really more of an obstacle that they must get through using ability checks. Once they reach the shrine, it has two small levels, the first with 5 areas and the second with 3, including the final showdown with the witch.

In Defense of Thuil Kickstarter

This is for a "multi system fantasy RPG adventure", which apparently includes OSRIC and two other systems

Swamp raiders from the jungle province have been raiding the small border towns of Wynhelm for years, with the village of Thuil being a frequent target.  Raiders no longer attempt to invade Wynhelm over the many small bridges spanning the Black River, but have taken to rafting large groups of warriors through the calmer sections of the water.  Raiding parties of a dozen or so desperate bandits have turned in to organized troops of lizardmen and red cloaked priests.  The snake god Sshanasa is surely behind these recent attacks!

$5 gets you a 20 page PDF (with really nice maps) or $25 for a printed copy.

The Beast That Waits Review—Overlooked Gem

Somehow I missed this product, The Beast That Waits from Three Sages Games, using the Sword & Wizardy (Complete) Rules. It apparently came out in the summer of last year (2014) and I just didn't notice it. I'm kicking myself, because it's essentially my favorite sort of gaming product, and it's extremely well done. It is a mini-sized sandbox setting. While a sandbox, it's not simply a collection of random tables (though it has those), but a well described location that the PCs can explore and interact with more or less at their leisure.

It's centered around a small village named Graven. The place has a lot of problems, and has been increasingly cut off from the outside world. Presumably the PCs will want to reverse that by exploring the country side, dealing with the various dangers. There are four wilderness areas to explore (well, one is really farms), two dungeons, and the village itself.

Much of the wilderness is table driven, rather than a hex crawl. There are separate tables for day and night in each area, and eventually the PCs can "clear" the area by killing off (or making friends with) everything. The dungeons though are fully described and keyed. One is the keep of the ruler of the area and is relatively small, clearable in a session, while the other is a combination of mines and ruins below the mines. This is large and could very well take two or three sessions to go through.

Delver's Dungeons

In case you missed them (I know I have), the author of Delver's Dungeons just posted a roundup of all his past AD&D modules, and is teasing a new release

The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem Kickstarter

Chalk this up in the better late than never department. The Stygian Garden of Abelia Prem is an OSR adventure from someone I'm not familiar with (otherwise I would have heard of this sooner) and is meant for Lamentations of the Flame Princess, though not an official product.

Seems pretty neat, something of an abandoned manor crawl which is probably my favorite sort of adventure. Remarkably cheap, too, $5 for PDF, $10+ shipping for PDF and print. Not quite funded, but needs only a little bit more.