Gobs o' Trouble Review — Odd Hobs

I really liked The Beast that Waits from Three Sages Game, it was an excellent sandbox-ish title. However, I'm guessing I was one of the few that even noticed it, since they have moved on to other game systems, with their only other OSR module being this, Gobs of Trouble. It's a very short mini-module (priced at $1).

As the name implies, it involves trouble with goblins. A small band of them has displaced a family from their farm. The party presumably stumbles across the evicted farmers and decides to help them by retaking the homestead. If they do that and succeed, they then discover that the goblins have been in turn kicked out of their lair by an advance party of hobgoblins.

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.