Temple of the Bear Review — Bears and Bores

Sharp Mountain Games has put out a lot of mini-adventures for Labyrinth Lord over the last few years, and being a person that finds short-ish adventures the most useful, I've bought most of them. They tend to be a bit formulaic and can be a mixed bag, but once in a while there's one that's exceptional and they are cheap enough ($2.50). Temple of the Bear is perhaps the most generic of the bunch, although it's aimed at a somewhat higher level (7th) than the previous.

Originally SMG's modules were centered around a town of Adela, but recent ones have moved, this is in a village named Fastholme. Basically the place has been beset by animal attacks (bears) and recently a farmer's son has been kidnapped. There's no real detail about the town, only about a half-dozen townsfolk who are are given half a paragraph of background each. But presumably the PCs will investigate, with the mayor offering 4,000 gp. That's not a princely sum for 7th level, but it's better than the miserly amount many other modules offer.

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.

Robots: A New Character Class Review — Not Enough Distinctive Mechanics For Mechanical Men

 Robots! Although arguably the heyday for them in fiction was the 1950s, I discovered Isaac Asmiov as a teenager in the early 80s, a man who probably put more thought into his robot stories than anyone. I also later discovered the works of Clifford Simak, who although lacking the scientific background of Asimov and typically writing stories in a pastoral setting, absolutely loved robots. Not as props, but heavily developed characters. 

Robots from Sharp Mountain Games is not the first attempt to bring a robot character class to the OSR.  The first was perhaps the Automaton class from Barrel Rider Games (flavorful, but like the UA Barbarian, saddled with huge XP costs), and a couple years ago, I came up with the OSR Android. This though is more like the more traditional SF robot, the sort favored by Simak. At least in flavor.

The Sorceress of Mekaloare Review — More like Meh-loare

You never really know what you'll get in an adventure from John Fredericks and Sharp Mountain Games. Well, you do to a degree, you kno you'll get hand drawn art, battle maps, and pregenerated characters (using his own classes) that take up about half the product. But they can range from the short and boring to wildly imaginative and decent length.  The Sorceress of Mekaloare leans toward the latter, at least creatively (as it's a bit short, despite its 32 pages), with the PCs visiting another plane to rescue townsfolk from the titular villainess, including the mayor of the town the PCs happen to be in.

Frostbuy: The Lost City Review — More Like a Lost Half a Block

After a hiatus of about 2 years, Sharp Mountain Games and John Fredericks is back with a new module for Labyrinth Lord, Frostbury: The Lost City. His past modules were centered around a town called Adela, this is based around a hobbit (or halfing) shire. I've always thought that halfling adventure were very under represented, if not quite non-existent, but they offer a lot of opportunity for Wodehouse style absurd humor with country people acting silly. (E.F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series is another good example)

Alas, this module is not like that. Instead it reminds me a bit of Ramsey Campbell's Inhabitant of the Lake meets Star Frontiers, although not fully developed. Essentially the PCs are hired to find a lost halfling, one who is adventuresome and has not come back from visiting a nearby ruined city by a lake. Both lake and ruins are reported to be haunted and avoided by the halfling community.

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.

Giant's Perch Review — It's Not a Huge Fish

Giant's Perch is a short adventure for Labyrinth Lord, written and illustrated by John Frederick of Sharp Mountain Games. A couple years ago I bought another adventure from him, Witch of Tariswoods which was good but not great. Both adventures use the same town as base, though it's not really described here save for a tavern. (He's also released 2 more adventures, all available in a 4-pack for $6 total)

Also like that adventure, this has a couple of wilderness encounters, then a small dungeon. It's pretty much linear, the party has the first wilderness encounter, which then leads them to the next, then finally the dungeon. Basically they run into an elf being attacked by frogmen, they rescue him, who enlists them on his quest to find a magic flower.

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.