A review of "A Fool's Errand"

The prince was kind enough to take a look at my latest adventure "A Fool's Errand" 

You can read the review here: 

 https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2021/01/20/review-a-fools-errand-osr-skill-curve/

You can grab it here it's PWYW: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/309263/A-Fools-Errand

Here's the premise: 

A local jester (Gat) is looking for an ancient tome detailing long forgotten dances, it is called the “Grimoire Of Collected Dance” written by Halin Dwarivsh.  He hopes to take his stage show to the next level.  He hires the PCs to track it down after finding the possible location of the tome.  In return for the tome, the PCs will receive a treasure map and some gold.  The jester is part of a local troupe, (him and his brother).  The brother (Lath) is very cynical and believes this book to be cursed.  He has overheard the conversations his brother has been having, and is quite worried about the outcome.  He has hired a local sorceress to make sure that the book remains hidden.  Unbeknownst to either party, a demon has been on the trail of the cynical brother and is using this tome for his own means.  

One thing that was brought up in the review was the idea of adding the conversion notes for different D&D systems.  I suppose it makes sense that any GM whose picking up an OSR module is going to convert to their system of choice.  In my personal opinion all I really need for a monster is AC, HD and any extra special stuff.  I don't tend to use movement, although I know some people who do.  Since there's only a few things that all the OSR types agree on (mechanics wise), it makes sense to only really put them in the adventure.  Alternatively you can always write for a "specific system", provided you have an ok from the publisher.  In my opinion this does pigeon hole the adventure a little bit, but it also has all the information that one would need to run it. 

What are your thoughts on agnostic osr adventures? 

The Master's Hoard - A Review

Publisher Blurb:
A System Neutral Collection of 22 Magic items
Hopefully most of the items are fairly original and are often accompanied by a quirk or two!

A grabbed a copy of "The Master's Hoard" a little while ago, but hadn't had a chance to read it until now.  The author Goblin's Henchmen I've done a lot of work with over the last few years, he's contributed rooms to the blue baron series, and he made a very cool version of "Dusty Door" using an excel spreadsheet.  (see video and channel here).  While you are at it watch a bunch more of the modules he's been working on! Super handy stuff.  The book is 26 pages including the OGL.  It is however a slightly weird size 8.27 x 11.69 (I chalk this up to Mac software, it seems to do weird shit like this, and sometimes I have trouble printing it) 

Alright, onto the review.  First things first, I gotta write up a better blurb for him.  The pdf contains 22 system neutral magic items (although I would refer to them as artifacts I think, because they seem to me more of a one of a kind type of thing).  The premise of the book is that the author has been given each one of these items to detail for his master, thru working with the items he/she has discovered the powers that they can wield.  I should note that while this is system neutral it is decidedly OSR D&D feel to some of the mechanics.  That being said some simple conversions to other systems would be fairly straight forward (mentions of dice mechanics & damage as an example). example the "troll jawbone axe" does d8+4 damage, however if you were running say Advanced Fighting Fantasy you could treat it as a large weapon/monster damage.  Alternatively if playing Holmes or S&W you could just rule it as 2d6 damage.  Once again, not that big of a deal.

One of the super cool things about this supplement is that its setup up so that each magic item is on an individual page, which allows a GM to make hand outs for players.  Provided you play a game that the PCs are allowed to know what a magic items does (in some cases GMs like to not let people know outright what a magical item does, but only thru trial and error find out).  

Each magic item has a wonderful digitally drawn image, done in Goblin Henchmens awesome style.  

Further I really enjoy a lot of the names of these items "hosiery of ten steps", "Globe of Futures Forestalled", "bottle of misadventure".  Good stuff, beats the crap out of "+2 magical potion of giant strength" doesn't it! 

I would be very curious to see exactly where this Master's hideout is, and besides these wonderful magical items, what exactly would be in store for the PCs if they dared to enter it! 

I really dig a lot of these items, and would probably use more than a few of them in a campaign.  A lot of the items have interesting mechanical things associated with them.  example "Blade of blinking" allows a user to blink (teleport) when an adversary is hit.  Mechanic:  The 'blink location' is indexed to the weapon damage roll (see below). Where multiple dice are used for weapon damage (e.g. 3D6), then only the lowest die roll of the set is used to determine the 'blink location':

• 1 Rolled - user blinks, but ends up front and center of the target (no advantage gained by the user or target);
• 2 or 3 Rolled - user blinks to the side/flank of the target (next attack is: +1 to hit target; and -1 for the target to hit user);

Note: I purposely left out +4 so you have to go and read the rest of the cool magic items. 

The Master's Hoard is FREE.  Get it here. 

  

Dead God Excavation - Review

First thing that came to my mind when I read the title was "Who in their right mind would want to dig up a dead God? 

Obviously +Venger Satanis!

Here's the publisher blurb: 

Dead God Excavation is a short adventure for characters between 1st and 3rd level.  I happen to think it's perfect for kicking off a gonzo, eldritch, science-fantasy campaign.  If you incorporate this into your "session zero"... respect, hoss!

This scenario was written for Crimson Dragon Slayer (including some new rules for clerics), but everything can be easily converted to your OSR system of choice.

The layout is sick!  But there's also a printer-friendly version for those who are intimidated by such lurid hues (or who want to print it out).  Just to make you aware, the pagecount includes the cover, two decorative pages, and a page for the credits.  It's a densely coiled micro-adventure... beyond gorgeous demon-haunted sandbox!  YOU CAN GRAB IT HERE. 

First things first, I have to say I really appreciate that everyone of Venger's releases has a printer friendly version.  This is handy, because I still print things off when I run adventures, I haven't wrapped my head around using a tablet or laptop while GMing.  

The adventure starts off with a few rumours to set the stage.  The one I liked was that the adventurer's have heard of ancient treasures and have come to possibly get wealthy and adventure! Simple enough to install the players in the game world.  I should note, that I am probably going to run this module is some form.  My first thoughts are somewhere in the desert of Mystara.  Quite possibly as a 5e one shot.  In the notes at the beginning of the adventure it is suggested to run it as a "session one funnel", while that is a grand idea, I wouldn't be able to pull it off with the 5e group I have.  Mostly for "character development" reasons.  None of which have anything to do with the packaged material.  Onward!

Once upon the scene things start to liven up.  There are a bunch of interesting NPCs with really good motives.  The NPCs alone can get you going on different adventure ideas.

There is a super cool table with a variety of effects when touching the Alien Metal.

This whole adventure has a demonic/alien/god thing going for it.  It's sort of like if you took expedition to the barrier peaks and mashed it up with Call of Cthulu.  Actually that's not a half bad idea!  The one thing this adventure lacks is a detailed map of the inside of the tomb.  Now obviously there's a ton of great resources out there for maps, here's a good spaceship one you can use: http://paratime.ca/cartography/sf_spaceships.html

As a side note, Venger if you need a map you can always tag me man, I'd be happy to try it out!

Prior to entering the tomb there's a nifty table called "Strange Occurrences" here's the text prior to the table.  (it gives me the willies) 

Strange Occurneces table: 

This is not simply the inert interior of a giant container full of deceased demonic deity, but an ultra-telluric biosphere somewhere between reality and the place where dead gods dream. For every 15 minutes spent exploring, roll once on the following random table to determine what strangeness occurs....

All in all this is a pretty solid starting point adventure, there is enough text and flavour to get you going, but not too much that it starts to feel like a railroad.  And of course the whole thing is filled with the general weirdness and gonzo that we have all come to expect from Korthalis publishing.  I'm almost wondering if its worth challenging Venger to write something straight up? Nah.. 

If you have a copy of the The S'rulyan Vault II I think this adventure would go hand in hand with it! 


As usual there is some great mind blowing art in the book, and the design is well laid out by +MonkeyBlood Design (Glynn Seal) who always does awesome stuff! 

Good stuff!

Dark Fantasy Basic - A Review

+Eric Diaz sent me a copy of his ruleset "Dark Basic Fantasy".  You can check out his blog here:
http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.ca/ pretty cool stuff!

Publisher blurb:

Dark Fantasy Basic is an old school roleplaying game (or adventure game) that pays homage to a beloved 80's game - which is stilll, for many fans, one of the most concise, clear and well-written RPGs ever published.

This book uses the same system as the world’s most popular RPGs – six abilities, classes, levels, etc. – and it is meant to be compatible with games from that era. Or any OSR game, really. It also has some modern influences, including all of the OSR and the most recent version of this game.

This is a complete game (from the player's side), with five classes (fighter, cleric, thief, magic-user and hopeless), skills, feats, weapons, etc. There are no races - all PCs are human or similar - but there are notes on how to create races for your games. There are 20 different spells but each one is flexible, meaning you can choose the spell level and some of the effects as you cast them.

The book ends with conversion notes for other OSR games. No matter what your favorite system is, we hope you find something useful for your games here!

GET IT HERE. 

My thoughts: 

Dark Fantasy Basic is a solid OSR ruleset.  From what I gather it grew out of playing OSR games, and is a compilation of house rules that worked well for Eric.  There are bits and pieces from new games & mechanics, shout outs to lotfp & DCC, some swinginess of b/x, all very cool and thought out.  There is a lot of flexibility in these rules.  

I should note that this is the player rules.  I'm guessing eventually there will be a monster book/GM guide and HOPEFULLY a few adventures to go with the rules.  Obviously though, because it's an OSR game, you can pretty much use any adventure/setting/monster without a lot of conversion. 

The first thing I thoroughly enjoyed was that the game is built around the premise of starting characters being at 3rd level (something I tend to do, well I start at 2nd), for the simple sake that lowly first level peons die.  A lot.  This is a smart idea, and something that can probably be easily modified if you wanted to start at 1st level.  

The usual 6 attributes make an appearance in the game, and like b/x it has the swinging abilities bonus where 18 is a +5, etc.  Which I dig.  There is a cool skill system with DC checks, everything based on the 6 main attributes.  The game isn't minimalist, just straight forward.  You can run it how you want.  

Included are character backgrounds, which I always like.  It places you in the world, gives you something to base your roleplay/character on.  

Yes there are feats, but they are similar to the fifth ed feats, so they don't really break the game.  For me its a "nah", but for another GM I'm sure they'd be cool with it.  The feats don't break the game and they are not overly complex mechanically.  One neat thing, if you are a character class other than a typical magic user/cleric you can still cast spells! But you must use a feat to do so.  Interesting. 

The spells system is pretty cool, casting spells requires a spell casting check.  All spell effects are based on spell level, not caster level.  For example, some spells cause “1d6 damage/level”. This

means a fifth level spell would cause 5d6 damage.  My guess is that you can technically case a fireball as a higher level spell if you want, provided you can make the spell check.  This has a sort of dcc/lotfp/5e kinda vibe to it.  Another thing I dig about the magic system, is that all the spells are useful, there's not a metric butt ton of them which is good (myself personally I kinda like a trimmed down list).  There are a few changes from the normal spells you find in most games.  Example "black tentacles (basic terrain hazard), purge (basically fix rotten/poisoned food), Resit elements (gain resistance to the effects of fire etc).  

I must say reading this, I really enjoy the humour, whether it's dark, or just a good giggle.  There's no point always being the glum author, where everything is dark.  Writing like that makes me want to move onto something else.  

Note on money, silver is the standard. 

The stock art that is used in this game is fantastic! and it totally sets the tone for it.  Great job finding all this stuff and cleaning it up.  

One thing that I really dig about this rule system is that it's 43 pages, and far more expansive than similar games where you only get the first couple of levels.  It's easy as heck to create monsters and adventures for this.  You could run fifth ed modules without much issue, as well as all OSR type modules.  

Will I play it? Honestly I'm not sure.  I started working on my own hack, and I've got a variety of rule systems that I'd like to try as well.  I think this game will fit right in with anyone who has had a taste of fifth ed and osr games, and wants something a bit more straight forward and less bloated than fifth.  I'd play this any day over playing fifth.  It crosses the bridge from old school to fifth (and other newer games).  The game includes adv/disadvantage and other familiar concepts.  There are enough spells to keep any magic user type happy!  The skill system is smart and doesn't really get in the way (same goes for the magic system).  If you are looking for an OSR type game, with some newer mechanics this is a great pick. 

Comics! 

I should also note that Eric has seven comics called "the displaced" up on OBS, they all look pretty cool.  Here are the links.

Issue #1
Issue #2
Issue #3
Issue #5
Issue #6
Issue #7

Beneath The Fallen Tower (SWCL) Review

Premise: Fifty years ago, a magician known as Melchior the Despoiler, rumored to be consorting with dark forces near the town of Southfork was investigated by a troop of militia and a priest... all of who returned from his tower as undead attempting to slay their own families. They were defeated, and after a petition for aid, the Duke lent the village his trebuchet and his men leveled the mage's tower. Shortly before this assault was mounted, Melchior’s apprentice Xander escaped with a few books, a wand and a magical blade.

Now that Xander has died. His apprentice, Aurelia, together with her henchmen, have returned to find the master's library. Unknown to them, goblins have been living in the ruins for 30 years...

You can grab it here for $2.00 (GM's Day Sale, regular $2.99) 

Beneath the fallen tower is written for Swords & Wizardry Continual Light, but is easily converted to any OSR type system.  The adventure is written fairly open ended, as a GM you could place it in your own home brew world without too much extra work.  The town where everything starts is called Southfork, and that could be just off the map, an explored section.  As well the adventure has a medieval feel, so keep that in mind when planning.  The premise of this adventure is pretty solid, you can easily create a bunch of rumours in the town of Southfork circulating about the wizard, and the line of apprentices.  The hero's are tasked with finding the son of a merchant.  The hope of course is that they stumble upon a bunch more bad guys, the tower, etc.  This adventure could easily be a few session thing.  Especially if the GM took some time to add in a few more things to do (according to the map).  Depending on which way the heroes end up going.  

The background for the adventure (the towns & world) is well thought out.  I would however have placed the section regarding the wizards tower earlier in the text, as it states "this is where the adventure takes place".  But all good.  The tavern is interesting, where the adventure starts.  There is a list of rumours and a table for how many true or false rumours you may receive.  This of course is a fairly typical but smart way of starting an adventure.  One thing I noticed is that the tavern is "fairly rat free" as far as the basement goes.  There's adventure right there! The actual town could have a bit more description as far as other stores.  Where do we buy weapons and armour? who can we sell our loot to? Once again easily figured out by a GM. 

Onward.  The hand drawn map detailing the surrounding area is cool, my only issue is that the text is a bit hard to read, although that is easily over come.  I would try and blow it up and bit, and throw a hex layer underneath for the sake of argument.  

I should note that this entire module is filled with great art, all of which are drawn by Denis Mcarthy (also the writer).  It's nice to see a product that is completely DIY, the writing, drawing, etc.  This is something I'd love to take a stab at, but my drawing is not really on point. 

Once the players find the son (and or lack thereof, I'm not ruining anything here) they will also notice that the ruins of the tower are fairly close to the sons position.  

The map of the ruins is pretty cool, hand drawn.  The actual dungeon is fairly straight forward, lots of monsters and some treasure.  A smart party will enter and re-enter the dungeon as many times as it takes to kill off monsters, and find any treasure.  And a smart GM will reload some of the monsters upon their return!  The dungeon has a few traps, and could be deadly for a party of 1st level adventurers.  As in most cases, if I was to run this I'd tweak the amount of monsters depending on the party.  Not that big of a deal. 

Overall this is a pretty cool adventure, straight forward.  As far as constructive criticism is concerned a layout job would make this adventure have a bit more eye candy.  (Which by the way I'd be totally up for!).  I read another review of this, in which the reviewer tore the whole thing apart, not linking to it though.  The text and descriptions of the dungeon could be expanded a bit, a few more sentences of description.  As well creating a gap between the player information and the GM information.  Obviously though an GM worth his or her salt can get this adventure going without an problem. 

This adventure is worth checking out, especially if you are looking for something to run for SWCL.  It could easily become a sandbox with a few other little adventures going on here and there.  As an example my Lizardmen of Illzathatch could be placed within the overland map no problem.  

Denis also does stock art, which you can check out here: http://drivethrurpg.com/browse.php?keywords=Denis+mccarthy&x=0&y=0&author=&artist=&pfrom=&pto=

And you can check out Denis's blog here: https://gwythaintny.wordpress.com/

Denis has playtested this adventure, and you can read about it here: https://gwythaintny.wordpress.com/2018/02/01/session-recap-of-beneath-the-fallen-tower-playtest-at-manhattan-minicon-3/  (which btw is friggin smart! We should all playtest our adventures!) 

I'd like to thank +Denis McCarthy for sending me a copy of this adventure!  If I ever get a old school group going again, this is something that I could incorporate.  And that's the thing about the OSR, you can grab little bits and pieces and just have a wonderful time.