Old-School Essentials: Lairs and Dungeons

 This post is basically me trying to establish the answers to questions the keep coming on and on:

• What is a lair?
• What is a dungeon?
• Are lairs and dungeons the same thing?

I'm going to answer these questions first of all with what's in the Old-School Essentials core book, then trying to make logical conclusions from it. Since OSE is a bx d&d clone, such conclusions should apply to the "whole family" (probably including BECMI and its clones).

What is a lair?

Ok let's begin with good old Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Lair

a: the resting or living place of a wild animal.

        "we tracked the bear back to its lair"

b: a refuge or place for hiding.

        "a villain's lair"

Why am I starting with this? Because the rules offer no definition at all, so I believe the only safe path here is to assume "lair" means what "lair" means in ordinary English:

a monster lair is the place where monsters live, rest, and/or hide.

The Game Statistics (Monster) page in the OSE srd, under the Number Appearing (NA) section, gives us the following information:

Number Appearing (NA)

Listed as two values, the second in parentheses.

[...]

Monster lair in a dungeon: The second value lists the number of monsters found in a lair in a dungeon.

Wandering monsters in the wilderness: The second value indicates the number of monsters encountered roaming in the wilderness.

Monster lair in the wilderness: The second value multiplied by 5 indicates the number of monsters found in a lair in the wilderness.

Lairs are mentioned again right after that, in the Treasure Type (TT) section:

Treasure Type (TT)

The letter code used to determine the amount and type of treasure possessed by the monster(s) (see Treasure Types). The letters listed are used as follows:

A to O: Indicate a hoard: the sum wealth of a large monster or a community of smaller monsters, usually hidden in the lair. For monsters with a lair encounter size (see #Number Appearing) of greater than 1d4, the amount of treasure in the hoard may be reduced, if the number of monsters is below average.

This is basically all there is to it.

In the rules, a lair is defined by two things: 

• A variable amount of monsters (a "community");
•  a (usually specifically) associated treasure type.

Additionally, from the NA section we derive the following knowledge:

• A lair can be in a dungeon;
• A lair can be in the wilderness (and has 5x the monsters, but their treasure hoard stays the same!).

Accidentally, I think the first point takes us closer to answering the question "Are lairs and dungeons the same thing?" Spoiler: no.

Let's put it all together and this is the best answer I can offer:

A lair is place where a (typically large) group of monsters (often as an organized "community") live, rest hide, etc, and keep their "community" treasure hoard; monster lairs can be found both inside dungeons and in the wilderness.

Let's work an example?

The Goblin entry in the OSE srd has additional specific information for goblin lairs, so let's see what we get.

• A goblin lair in a dungeon amounts to 6d10 individuals (and x5 if the lair is in the wilderness).
• If encountered in their lair, the goblins have a type C treasure.
• A 3HD (15hp) king and 2d6 2HD (2d6hp) bodyguards live in the goblin lair.

These three pieces of information are the building blocks to create a goblin lair.

An average goblin lair in a dungeon amounts to about 30-36 individuals, plus a 3HD goblin king and 6-8 2HD bodyguards, and a treasure hoard worth around 1000gp.

Yes, that's a lot of enemies for some crappy loot... but type C also has a 10% chance to include 2 magic items!

Considering the swingy nature of random treasure, wise players should try to figure out if a specific lair is worth making an enemy of, before committing to attempted mass goblin murder. Their hoard might as well amount to zero...

Just for fun, let's also consider the largest, richest goblin lair we could finde in the wilderness according to the implied setting: 300 goblins, 1 king with 12 bodyguards, somewhere around 10,000 gp worth of treasure, and 2 magic items.

The only thing that's lacking is: where is this goblin lair? What kind of place is it?

For the most part, we can only answer using common sense and imagination.

The rules tell us it can be in a dungeon or in the wilderness.

In the wilderness, the lair can be anything the specific monster would consider a suitable "home": a cave, a ruin, a hole in a hill, a nest on a mountain peak, the inside of a volcano, etc. And also any type of "home" the specific monster might be able to build, in the case of intelligent creatures: a camp, village, castle, or even a whole city. Remember, NA in the wilderness is x5!

In a dungeon, the lair can be one or more rooms of a larger dungeon. If the dungeon is a small one, the lair can occupy all of it, causing "lair" to be the same as "dungeon". Or does it?

What is a dungeon?

Hey this sounds like the dumbest question. We've been playing dungeons & dragons for decades, we don't need to define what a dungeon is. 

Of course! What I'm doing here is answering the question only with information from the OSE rules, because this will help us understand the difference with lairs.

Again, the rules don't give us a definition of what is a dungeon, but the OSE srd has a whole big Designing a Dungeon page, so my take is: whatever we can infer from that page, gives the "nature" of a dungeon.

The page tells us a dungeon can be a variety of different places (section 1), it has monsters (section 2), you should map it (section 3), and you should stock it with the following "important details" (section 4):

Important details: Monsters (including the possibility of patrols in the area), traps, tricks, treasures, or special magical effects that are present should be noted.

Section 4 continues with the notion that a dungeon often extend over multiple levels, and the deeper you go the higher the risks and the reward, and then notes that treasure is usually guarded by monsters, but can occasionally be found unguarded.

After that, the final section is the Random Room Stocking section. In my mind, this is not just a tool to randomly fill the blanks, but also a set of implicit guidelines. That simple table tells me that a dungeon "as intended" is supposed to roughly have:

33% "empty" rooms (i.e. no monsters and no traps, and about 16% of such empty rooms should contain treasure)

33% rooms with some monsters (and about 50% of such monster rooms should contain treasure)

16% rooms with a trap (and about 33% of such trap rooms should contain treasure)

16% "special" rooms.

These proportions match the intent of "risk goes hand to hand with reward".

In a hypothetical 36 room dungeon, these proportions give us:

10 "empty" rooms (i.e. no monsters, no traps, no treasure)

2 "empty" rooms with unguarded treasure (no monsters and no traps!)

6 rooms with monsters

6 rooms with monsters and treasure

4 rooms with some kind of trap

2 rooms with some kind of trap and some treasure

6 "special" rooms.

This is not all, however, because another important bit about dungeons is found in the Dungeon Encounters page: dungeons are expected to include wandering monsters!

Can we figure out a definition from all of that? Let's try:

A dungeon is a place that: is populated by monsters; features traps (or other environmental hazards); has treasure that make it worth exploring; has bizarre, magical things going on, good and bad (the "special" rooms), and monsters roaming around. 

Are lairs and dungeons the same thing?

Short answer: No, obviously.

Longer answer:

A dungeon can host anywhere from zero to dozens of lairs. If the dungeon hosts 1 lair of monsters, we can say that the dungeon is a lair.

We can look at it the other way around and say that a lair can be a dungeon if it has all the features that a dungeon requires: monsters and treasure, and also empty rooms, traps, and special rooms. In other words: it has to be fully fledged, exciting adventure site!

Let's make some comparative examples with Fire Giants:

• You can have a Fire Giants lair inside a larger dungeon, with the following numbers: 1d3 individuals, with a type E treasure hoard + 5,000gp.

• You can have a Fire Giants lair in the wilderness. The description tells us that it should be a black castle near a volcano, with 1d3 x5 individuals, the same type E treasure hoard + 5,000gp, and also the "guardian" creatures listed in the description; 1d3 hydras or 3d6 hellhounds.

The wilderness lair has a lot more giants, but has the same potential treasure as the dungeon lair. How is this fair?

This is supposed to be fair because:

• The wilderness lair is supposed to be all there is to it, i.e. it is supposed to NOT include traps and wandering monsters.
• The dungeon lair is supposed to be part of a dungeon with all the "dungeon stuff": traps, special rooms, and wandering monsters. All of that should compensate for the reduced amount of giants.

Can we have another example?

Sure, let's go on with the hypothetical 36 room dungeon:

6 rooms with monsters + 6 rooms with monsters and treasure

It really is up to you to decide how many monster you put into these 12 rooms.

It IS up to you because the BX flavor of d&d does not include a "% in lair" for monster entries, which is featured in the AD&D books and bestiaries.

So you can decide to have zero lairs! Just a bunch of monsters, with some treasure of your choice.

You can decide to have the twelve rooms as a single goblin lair, and this means you'll spread the total number of goblins, and their king and bodyguards, among these 12 rooms, and spread their hoard among 6 rooms.

Or you can decide to have 6 lairs of different creature groups, each controlling 2 rooms. This will give you a much more crowded and dangerous dungeon, but also more potential loot.

4 rooms with some kind of trap

The guidance for traps is sorely short and only amounts to the six examples in the Example Room Traps section.

2 rooms with some kind of trap and some treasure

The guidance for traps is sorely short and only amounts to the six examples in the Example Treasure Traps section.

How much treasure here? The answer is in the Treasure in Empty / Trapped Rooms section, and depends on dungeon level.

11 "empty" rooms.

These have no monsters, no traps, no treasure, so you "stock" them with whatever makes sense for the type of place the dungeon is.

1 "empty" room with treasure.

No monsters and no traps! How much treasure? The answer is in the Treasure in Empty / Trapped Rooms section, and depends on dungeon level.

6 "special" rooms.

The guidance for special rooms amounts to the 9 examples listed in the Example Specials section.

(The truth is, for actual guidance about traps, "empty" and "special" rooms, you should probably check Courtney Campbell's Artifices, Deceptions and Dilemmas).

Does all of this matter?

No, probably! I mean, considering the gm is supposed to roll the dice to determine how much treasure (if any!) can be found in each lair, we can safely say all of this is just guidelines to stock your dungeons.

Not to mention this post is probably the nerdiest thing I've written in my own life. I feel comforted by the fact that if you are reading this, you are at least as much of a nerd as me.

All of this matters a lot if you care for the implied setting and "balance", and if you want to know how much treasure and how many monsters you are supposed to put into your dungeons and wilderness locales.

Even if you don't roll the dice and end up choosing exactly how many goblins and gold pieces you stock your dungeon with, I think it's just nice to know what the expected numbers are, you know, so we try to be all on the same page.

Because those numbers, and the treasure/HD ratio, is the only attempt BX has to make things "fair" and less "whatever the GM thinks".

Especially if you want to write a dungeon module for publishing, I guess.

About Ruins of the Undercity

 Ruins of the Undercity is a small book written by Kabuki Kaiser. It was released in 2013, when the OSR was still relatively young: Labyrinth Lord was 5 years old and basically the go-to OSR system. It is a very faithful restatement of BX D&D, and almost 100% compatible with its most popular today's equivalent: Old-School Essentials.

Ruins of the Undercity is, in many ways, similar to more recent hits like The Stygian Library: in a nutshell, a procedurally generated dungeon adventure.

Why am I reviewing this ten years after release? Basically because it fell into my hands while sorting out my bookcase. I must have bought the POD book somewhere around 2013-14 and remember using it both solo and with my group, and I believe it to be one of the lost gems of the early(ish) OSR scene.

So what is it? RotU is, in the author's words, "a huge randomly-generated adventure spanning a full campaign and backdrop setting", that you can play solo and DM-less.

The book. My POD RotU is a digest-sized (A5), softcover, 70 page, black and white book. About six or so art pieces can be found inside, and the text is very clearly formatted and easily readable. I have no idea if my POD book was from dtrpg (the option isn't there anymore) or from Lulu.

What is it about? The adventure inside the book is a virtually endless, randomly generated megadungeon structure, designed to support characters from level 1 to somewhere between 10-14. The dungeon itself is an endless complex of ancient ruins that can be found under Cryptopolis, a thriving desert city ruled by merchants and priests.

It is the type of dungeon everyone in the city knows about, with lots of possible entrance points, and with a constant flux of aspiring adventurers going in, and a few lucky ones coming out alive. A great setup to get to the dungeoning and adventuring in no time.

Breakdown of the Book. After a brief introduction, the books gets you going with a one page background of the city and the dungeon. This is really good. In six paragraphs, it succeeds in painting the big picture and setting the tone and the players' expectations: a trade city the desert; a city of beggars, rascals, and corrupted merchants and priests; the city's main cult, based on an ancient goddess whose colossal statue was found in the underground ruins; the first explorers of the ruins who turned to liches long ago, and now dwell somewhere down deep. Very few elements, but all of them have some sort of connection with the dungeon. Very good!

Next is two pages of instructions to play solo/dmless. Basically a series of customizable exploration routines you set for your specific party, followed a double set of procedures to play in the city and into the ruins. These create a main game cycle of city/ruins/city or, in other words: down-time/dungeon/down-time.

Some reviewers have praised the exploration routines and dual game cycle as a great example of how to actually play OSR games. One such comment can be found on the reviews section on dtrpg.

The In the City section (12 pages) is pure gold. It gives instructions to mark the passing of time as the party tries to find equipment, hire henchmen, and possibly step into random city events and encounters. This three sections are brilliant because they make an excellent job of painting the picture of this desert city. Instead of a generic equipment list, you have 20 different shops, temples, and guilds offering different types of wares and services. So you don't just buy a scimitar: you visit "the curved shop" (which only sells curved blades), and while you're there you may also check if they have a magic weapon for sale. Next, you can visit "Sifforn's Bows", "The House of the Pole" (selling wooden poles, iron poles, pole weapons, and also pole dancer services!), "The Caravan Market", "Zavbira & Lobellia" (who only sell elegant clothes), "The Cloak and Dagger", "House of the Roper". There are also a temple and a magicians' society, and both offer exclusive services to special members. After that, the magic items that might be available for sale are described: four different pairs of magic babuschs, three different magic turbans, four magic weapons (daggers and scimitars). Finally, the henchmen paragraph describes the available types: men-at-arms, veterans, nomads, elves, dervishes, and scoundrels. Again, the desert-city-theme is coherently reinforced.

In short: the shops, services, and henchmen descriptions already help set personal goals for your character before you even start your first delve. And they do that while just being little more than a series of lists.

The Into the Ruins section (23 pages) is the core of the book. It gives instructions to finally get you to into the megadungeon. You get a set of six starting areas, and then a plethora of tables: area types, door types, illumination, corridor types & features, random items found, special corridors, room structure, special areas, room features, room contents, treasure types, containers, and traps, stair landing types, magic effects, gems, jewelry, and a matrix for monster encounters which sends you to 10 different monster tables based on encounter level. That's a lot of tables!

This section has several merits but also flaws. What's good: again, everything is thematic! Nothing in these tables feels out of place. The monsters are a well-considered selection of classic monsters, plus the FORTY monsters described in RotU in the following section. The environmental details, traps, treasure: everything is coherent. Rolling on the tables gets you exactly the dungeon contents that you would expect from the premises of the book. What I dislike: basically two things. First, too much rolling! You'll proceed in 10-minutes turns in real time, because of so much rolling. Second: if you play this as intended (i.e.: rolling the dungeon live as you play) results will often be underwhelming, leaving you with a sense of having wasted your time rolling dice for nothing really, when the results give you details that offer nothing to play with. Knowing about the shape of the columns, is just not worth another roll, as it will probably be a useless detail.

And this leads to the broader issue of how randomly generated content often suffers from a lack of interconnectedness and meaningfulness. RotU has a lot of broad interconnections, but unfortunately fails at its main goal: consistently creating an engaging dungeon delve, if evaluated by today's standards of  theOSR adventure critique. When you roll a new room or corridor, you'll find details that feel like clues, but are not. They are general clues of the global environment, but there will never be any kind of foreshadowing (or telegraphing) of nearby hazards or opportunities. I did play a few sessions of RotU years ago, and this flaw was evident.

Fixing this would have required a completely different design approach of the generation procedures. Again, The Stygian Library comes to mind as an example of "less rolls, more useful results". I tried my hand at this too, with the Gold & Glory dungeon generators.

Another issue I have with this section is that the encounter generation matrix computes the party level into the types of encounters. This means that a level 1 party enters a manhole on the city plaza and finds skeletons, while a level 10 party entering that same manhole will meet terrifying 10+ HD monsters. In other words: dangers and treasure are dictated by the party's average level, not the dungeon level, so the traditional megadungeon structure and philosophy ("go deeper to find bigger treasure") is not here. The generators will produce "a dungeon adventure suitable for your current party level".

The Fiends of the Ruins section (16 pages) introduces 40 "new" monsters. I'm not an expert here, but I feel some of them are new with reference to the Labyrinth Lord bestiary, but are not completely original. Anyway, they are nice, thematic (again...), and those with a variety of powers of spells include a "tactics" paragraph. Nice.

The book ends with some extra tools, tables and an appendix: a table to thematize the treasure maps that can be found as treasure, and make them functional with the Undercity dungeon; there's also four powerful artifacts; and a final appendix with post-delve events and a series of nine possible longterm personal goals for the player characters, including becoming a high priest of the Goddess, a member of the city's council, a city hero, or even a lich. This section, like others before, is great: lots of ideas, interconnectedness, and thematic coherence. And for each goal there are clear instructions on how to achieve it. Perfect for both traditional and solo/gmless play.

Final considerations...  All in all I cherish my PoD RotU book. It's a piece of my personal hobby history, and it was one of the inspirations for my Gold & Glory series. I cannot say I would recommend using it as intended (i.e. to generate the dungeon as you play), with or without a gm. But, if you think you like the general premise of vast ruins under a desert trade city, I definitely recommend giving it a shot as a "thematized dungeon preparation toolkit": i.e. as a set of tools and tables to generate your Undercity dungeon before playing. Used like this, you may decide which tables to skip, which to roll on, and which to choose results from instead of rolling; you may decide to completely skip the map generation tables and simply use Dave's Mapper to instantly generate endless maps, or grab some of those amazing Paratime Design maps; you may decide to use the encounter matrix as is, and thus create dungeon adventures balanced for a given party level, or you may "cheat" and use the encounter matrix to create a 10+ levels megadungeon by simply considering party level 1 for dungeon level 1, party level 2 for dungeon level 2, and so on.

...and hopes? Despite its flaws, I must say I'm fond of RotU. I hope Mr Crespy will someday consider creating an updated, upgraded edition (possibly an Old-School Essentials version?), to bring the mysteries of Cryptopolis and the Undercity back on a thousand gaming tables. 

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!

Legend of Drizzt monsters for HeroQuest

 I've just grabbed a copy of the Legend of Drizzt Dungeons & Dragons board game!
I was looking for it to expand my HeroQuest game, and I must say I'm far from disappointed with the content of the box!

I mean, I don't care about the dungeon tiles, which I find both visually dull, and practically annoying. But, oh boy, those minis!

I love that the minis are kinda color coded like in HeroQuest, with (almost) all the dark elves (drows, in d&d terms) being purple, along with their spider friends, plus a dragon because why not. Together, they make a great set and faction for homebrew adventures.

The goblins are just a little bit smaller than the ones from HW, but they include 3 archers, and they are a slightly lighter green than their relatives in the HQ box. The green team also includes 3 drakes and two huge, impressive trolls (the one on the left has its base so deformed I'll have to treat it with hot water to make it stand again).

The box also includes a bunch of heroes which can be great as alternate models, plus Drizzt's panther. As you can see, there's a archer and a few dual wielders, begging for some house rule to allow it.

Next in line there's these 6 transparent models. I don't like the water elementals, neither as models nor as creatures, so I didn't create game statistics for them. The ghosts are cool though.

Then there's the grey group. An Illithid, yay!, a witch and a grey bubbling thing (Lolth's something-something, I don't really care what these things are meant to be in d&d), plus 2 guys I've decided to use as "assassins". All in all, since they are grey, I consider them 100% part of the "Dread" team in core HeroQuest.

The true stars of the box are, of course, the big ones: the super big fiery Balor, the purple dragon, and the huge troll twins. 

The Balor is huge, so I statted it as a truly daunting enemy.

So here's the stats for HeroQuest, feel free to download and use as you prefer, as long as you keep the attribution to me.

All in all, I'm super happy with this purchase. If you are into creating your homebrew quests, the Legends of Drizzt board game is a highly recommended addition for HeroQuest.

As usual, all feedback is appreciated!

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest Posts!

Halloween Mega Sale at DTRPG: My OSE Recommendations

 The Halloween sale is on at DriveThruRPG. For the next 14 days, more than 14.000 horror-themed rpg titles are available at reduced price!

The list of OSR titles currently discounted counts a big 588 items, which is a lot.

The sheer amount of titles available makes it hard to create a list of OSR recommendations, so this time I'll focus on some of the titles listed for Old-School Essentials and for Labyrinth Lord, as BXDnD is my current go-to ruleset.

Pumpkin man courtesy of Nightcafe AI art generator

Adventures

Of the Necrotic Gnome's official adventures for OSE, the only one available during this sale is the Ennie award winning Halls of the Blood King by Diogo Nogueira: exploring the interdimensional castle of a vampire lord sounds like a great scenario for a Halloween game indeed.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - is a very good 10 room dungeon which develops the cliché theme of "crypt with undead" with interesting twists and consequences, and a horror from beyond space and time. I've reviewed it here.

Falkrest Abbey - Ghost, wights, and ravenous zombies in a ruined abbey. Written by Andrea Mollica and me. More about it here.

The Frost Spire - An excellent creepy-fairy-frosty level 3 dungeon adventure with an interesting moral dilemma. Reviewed it here.

The Demon Tower of Valdig Fel - An intriguing scenario for Labyrinth Lord, with a flying citadel shaped like a demon head, for characters level 5-7. Short and sweet.

Witches of Frostwyck - A long, mystery scenario for characters level 1-4, with witches and a cursed village in frozen forest.

The Haunted Hamlet - A best-selling location based scenario by Lazy Litch.

The Stygian Library - A hugely successful and widely acclaimed infinite dungeon-library with lots of random content.

Sourcebooks, Supplements & Zines

Of my very own Lands of Legends zine series, the Grim volume is now on sale, (and the five zines are also currently bundled up in PDF + Print on Demand.

Realms of Crawling Chaos - A classic Labyrinth Lord supplement to introduce the Cthulhu Mythos in your OSE/LL/BX campaign.

Into the Wyrd and Wild - A supplement to make wilderness adventures more interesting, with a strong accent on the weird and terrifying side of things out there.

Don't forget the Trick or Treat specials!

During the Halloween sale, you should check the DTRPG Home page and click on the big orange banner at the top of the page, because you'll find three titles offered for free, on a rotation with new titles every 24 hours!

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

Talk Like a Pirate Day: d20 Seas Encounters & Events!

 So hey today it's Talk Like a Pirate Day, so here's 20 sea-themed encounters and events for your OSR campaign, straight from Lands of Legends Grim and Lands of Legends Mundane!

click on the flag for DTRPG pirate-themed bundle sale (today only!)

Roll a d20.

1. The Lost Merchant. A middle-aged man floats on the waves, clinging to a splintered mast. He screams for assistance as soon as he sees the heroes' ship. Hailing from some distant land, he may or may not speak any of the languages known by the group, but his fine jewels and his patronizing attitude speak for some wealthy origin, and a possible reward for bringing him back home.
2. Message in a Bottle. Heroes spot a corked bottle floating on the waves. It contains (roll a d6): 1: a pirate’s last will and treasure map; 2: a nautical chart; 3: a love letter; 4: a madman’s ravings, 5: a shipwrecked or slave’s plea for rescue; 6: a spell or cursed scroll. Roll another Sea Encounter or Area for further details, if needed.
3. Floating Coffer. This damaged wooden coffer floating on the waters contains (roll a d6): 1: d6 bottles of excellent wine; 2: some minor treasure; 3: common tools; 4: a partially deteriorated spellbook; 4: a collection of bizarre trinkets; 5: a set of medial tools; 6: whatever comes to your mind, as long as it’s lighter than the box.
4. Dolphins. A school of dolphins or narwhals approaches the ship and follows it for d6 days.
5. Sea Giants. Large fins and flat tails can be seen emerging from the waves: 2d6 huge cetaceans (whales, narwhals or blackfish) seem to have gathered here, or are migrating together (roll for a random direction). Sailing away from these behemoths might be a smart move, but trying to fish some might be more rewarding.
6. Ships! Two ships appear on the horizon. They are very close to each other and smoke rises from one: it’s a pirate attack. Will the heroes rush to help the assailed sailors or mind their own business?
7. Broken Ship. A partially destroyed merchant ship is carried by the waves. Its passengers (2d12 survivors) scream for help as soon as the heroes’ vessel comes into view. The ship might have been damaged by monsters, a fire or a storm.
8. The Mighty Remora. Suddenly the ship on which the heroes travel becomes much slower and difficult to maneuver. A huge fish called Remora has attached itself to the keel with its strong suction cup. Its presence can be hinted by the risen waterline on the ship sides, as if an extra weight were on the ship. If the Remora is not removed, navigation will proceed at half speed. If they decide to get rid of the monster, the heroes will have to face a sort of large whale-shark.
9. Wood Limpets. The hull of the ship is attacked by a swarm of wood-eating limpets. If the sailors do not remove and kill them one by one in 24 hours, the ship will be “holed” in a hundred different places and begin to sink.
10. The Lost Hideout. This uncharted minuscule islet features a small rocky hill rising over the lush vegetation. The hill has a small, partially hidden cave, where a long dead pirate’s 2d4 trapped treasure chests can still be found.
11. The Oldest Ship. A bizarre ship appears, crafted in a very exotic fashion. It seems to have been mended and repaired endless times and to be now a mosaic of different parts, from all the seas and all the times. The crew is dressed in rags, and also seems to come from every age and place. The crew is cursed by the Sea Gods for being the first people challenging the sea, in the dawn of navigation. They can never disembark and the ship is constantly repaired and the crew kept fed with offerings made by other seafarers. Denying something to the crew unleashes a curse: the captain (or those who refuse to help) is forced to embark on the ship forever (all sailors have a chance of having heard the legend of this ship and might recognize it).
12. Murders on Board. A ship appears on the horizon. Its crew has been killed and dismembered. Blood is everywhere and there are signs of claws on the wood. The murderer is still hiding on board: it is the figurehead! This is a species of marine gargoyle, wingless, with wooden-looking skin and capable of swimming and crawling from ship to ship. Variant: the gargoyle is on the heroes' ship and the murders take place one by one during the night. Its presence on a ship can be the result of a curse, or the gargoyle might have taken the place of the original figurehead without the crew noticing.
13. The Wrong Timber. This ship is cursed: strange accidents occur to the sailors, wood seems to moan and blood drips from the masts. A recent repair to the ship has been made with the remains of a Treant (or a tree inhabited by a Dryad) and now the restless spirit will not subside until those who have committed this sacrilege are punished.
14. The Rainbow Swarm. A bright-colored cloud is transported by the wind. Examination might reveal its true nature: it is a swarm of flying jellyfish about to attack. Probably the best way to avoid their attack is to find a shelter and wait for the swarm to pass, as it lands and takes off again with a popping sound. Those who can’t find a shelter and fail a Save are hit by d6 jellyfish, each inflicting 1d4 acid damage, before jumping off again and continuing their mindless journey.
15. Dragoning Ship. A sailing vessel covered with horn spikes, with scales along the bulkhead and the head of a bronze dragon as figurehead appears at the horizon. The ship is armed for the hunting of sea serpents, with harpoons, tools for skinning, and a crew of the roughest sailors of the seas. The Captain asks if anyone has seen a great white sea serpent, but the monster actually follows the trail of the ship and attacks all those who come in contact with it.
16. Those are Pearls that Were His Eyes. A derelict man emerges on the waters. He floats on a tortoise shell decorated with coins, his horribly skinny body is encrusted with corals, jewels and gems. As he approaches, he asks “please, an offer for the treasury of the sea”. If refused, he will just spit and sink back underwater. But those who don’t give him at least a coin, will suffer his same fate: their body will start to wither and turn into coral, starting from a random hand or feet. The metamorphosis will be complete in a lunar month and the character will have to leave the earth and join the cursed man in his wanderings, unless he can find him again and give him his due.
17. Boon from the Dead. A small wooden coffer floats on the waters. It contains a random magic (but alas cursed) item.
18. Marauders! A fleet of 2d6 warships appears on the horizon and approaches quickly. Each is manned with a crew of twenty warriors and twenty slaves at the oars. Unless the heroes manage to outmaneuver them, the marauders (vikings, savages or pirates) will be on them and their fierce captain will decide to confiscate their ship, rob them of everything, capture them as oars slaves or enlist them as fellow marauders under his orders depending on their numbers, reaction and type of vessel, as their plan is to ravage and pillow the closest villages and then return home.
19. Triton Patrol. A squad of 5d6 tritons riding giant seahorses approaches the group’s ship. Their leader, a proud knight in seashell armor, politely but firmly asks for a tribute to the Sea King: 100 gold pieces per voyager.
20. The Sargasso Ogre. The waves have accumulated hundreds of tons of fibrous seaweeds, on which explorers can walk. This place is inhabited by birds and other harmless animals. But also by a terrible Sea-Ogre (or a similar monster, like a troll or a scrag)! The Ogre attacks anyone who walks on “his island”. Or worse, it can try to sneak into the ship while the crew is distracted, and butcher all the sailors one by one.

Christmas in July Sale: My OSE Recommendations!

 The Christmas in July sale is on at DriveThruRPG. For the next 14 days, more than 70.000 rpg titles are available at reduced price!

The list of OSR titles currently discounted counts a big 3716 items, which is still a lot.

And to those, we must also add 109 official OD&D/BECMI titles, and 135 AD&D1stEd titles! 

The sheer amount of titles available makes it hard to create a list of OSR recommendations, so this time I'll focus on some of the 169 titles listed for Old-School Essentials as it is my current go-to ruleset.

OSE Rulebooks

As with other large DTRPG sales, the core OSE books are discounted, both the Classic Rules Tome and the Advanced rules (Player's tome and Referee's tome). If you're reading this, you're probably already a fan (like me), but don't forget sales are a great occasion to spread the word. Tell your friends!

Adventures

Well, the whole Old-School Essentials line is part of the sale, which means you can get some great adventures too, like Incandescent Grottoes, the Ennie award winning Halls of the Blood King, and Isle of the Plangent Mage by Donn Stroud.

The Palace of Unquiet Repose - An acclaimed level 3-5 dungeon adventure that got some stunning reviews.

In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe - A regional module in zine format written by Jacob Fleming, with lots of dungeons and lots of hours of play. Reviewed here.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - is a very good 10 room dungeon which develops the cliché theme of "crypt with undead" with interesting twists and consequences. I've reviewed it here.

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - An exquisite, sandboxy point-crawl adventure for characters level 1-3, very easy to run, with lots of interaction between locations, and guaranteed to offer a huge number of hours of play. I can't wait to run it. My review here

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - Another very good 10 room dungeon with, well, a lot of well conceived puzzles. I've reviewed it here, and if this dungeon is a great opportunity to connect your existing campaign to the setting outlined in the best seller Planar Compass zine series which, by the way, currently is on its own sale and is less than $1!

Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords - Two third-party Old-School Essentials adventures by Brad Kerr with awesome reviews. I've reviewed 1000 Swords here.

Bottomless Pit of Zorth - Another acclaimed adventure, with a slime theme and insane art, for  characters level 3-5, which is a less frequent level bracket in comparison to level 1-4, and makes it definitely worth checking.

Tannic - A just released level 1-3 adventure set in a haunted forest, by Amanda P., that looks pretty cool (seriously, check the preview).

The Frost Spire - An excellent fairy-frosty level 3 dungeon adventure with an interesting moral dilemma. Reviewed it here.

Sourcebooks, Supplements & Zines

The Dungeon Dozen, collecting over 200 system-agnostic d12 tables full of awesome inspiration, from the blog of the same name.

The whole Third Kingdom line of hexcrawl supplements is out there, including the great Filling in the Blanks guide.

The unusual A Groats-worth of Grotesques bestiary, which I've reviewed here.

The Delver Magazine zine series, full of awesome random tables, along with its Tavern spin-off.

My very own Lands of Legends zine series, with the five zines also currently bundled up in PDF + Print on Demand.

The Old School & Cool zine series by Knight Owl Publishing. Reviewed issue 3 here!

Bonus Offerings

While not part of the CiJ Sale, I'd be a very bad person if I didn't point you to the Classic Gaming Negative Space Bundle which collects the three masterpiece supplements for classic OSR play by Courtney Campbell: On Downtime & Demesnes, Artifices, Deceptions & Dilemmas, and Bestial Ecosystems Caused by Monstrous Inhabitation. Cool thing is, this is a PoD bundle!!

If all those sales don't whet your appetite, you can check some free or PWYW titles, such as The Prison of the Hated Pretender adventure (reviewed here), my own Old-School Essentials e-zines, or the stunning Black Pudding zines by James West!

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

About The Frost Spire

 The Frost Spire is one of the adventures that resulted from the Wavestone Keep adventure design contest at Bryce's blog.

It is a 16 pages black and white pdf, written by Jacob Hurst, with real nice art (see pics) by Joshua Alvarado and maps by Dyson Logos.

I've grabbed the PDF and had it printed locally.

The adventure is listed as 3rd level, and has generic OSR game statistics (with ascending AC) which make it pretty much ready or almost ready to use with the usual od&d, bx and becmi d&d rulesets and their retroclones. Treasure values seem appropriate for a third level adventure for such games.

The titular Frost Spire is a floating iceberg that occasionally comes near coastal villages, magically freezing seawater around it and making it reachable from the shore. In order to run it you'll need your group to be near a coast.

Killer art piece and opening text

Avoiding spoilers, the adventure is definitely on the grim-fairy-folk side of fantasy, with children being kidnapped by ancient elves. Theme and flavor are nicely and consistently carried on in the background, hooks, events and dungeon itself.

The first 2 pages feature the background of the Spire, both as a false legend and the actual facts going on; a timeline of events which can be used as a "before" to the adventure or as events that gradually unfold before direct players involvement; a series of 5 hooks; and 4 different encounters that can be played on the magically frozen sea as the group approaches the spire.

All of these are well written and intriguing. My only quibble is with the hooks, which set up an interesting mystery but might require some adjustment or expansion for groups where some reward or perspective of treasure is the only working motivation. For my group, I would probably make the initial legend known to the party, adding some legendary treasure in it, to give them some extra reason to go.

The adventure itself is a 10 page dungeon (with 3 pages of art and 7 of actual text): it's a short scenario that's quick to prepare.

The dungeon is 9 rooms inside the iceberg, with two different entrances, both of which are not immediately accessible and will require some problem solving by the group.

What's cool

What is immediately cool about this dungeon is that nothing is immediately, necessarily hostile. It basically starts as a mystery: what is this place? and, depending on the hook(s) you've used, where are the missing children? What is going on here?

While the inhabitants include harpies, a gelatinous cube, and a polar bear, they are are not immediately hostile (the cube only being released if the PCs upset one of the NPCs). There are several treasures the group can loot, including original and well-themed magic items, and the set-up of each encounter and situation is clear and well-thought, with the players often facing interesting decisions.

Everything contributes to creating the specific atmosphere of "enchanted dangerous fairy/icy place", reinforcing the theme of a journey in fae territory.

And ultimately, the dungeon is a path to the final encounter and the conundrum it poses. The NPCs in the throne room is responsible for the missing children, but her reasons are worth pondering.

Moreover, the adventure states that inside the dungeon time flows differently, and makes it clear that you can use it to shift the PCs forward into the future, as hours inside the spire may correspond to years in the outside world.

What's not cool

Two NPCs don't have game statistics. While it's evident they are "not meant" to be fought, I would still prefer to have game statistics for them just in case.

EDIT: The adventure is so good I've created Morrigan's statistics for Old-School Essentials.

All in all

The scenario is frankly cool, atmospheric and well-thought, with interesting situations, interactive encounters, unusual dangers and rewards. Like Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss, it's a great short dungeon with a lot going on and with possible meaningful consequences.

And it is also deep, with a final encounter which may become a moral debate, and one which is not obvious. It really is nuanced, and the scenario gives clear instructions on how to play it. The only thing missing is game statistics in case the group's choice is "die you witch!". Based on the scenario, the minimum effort solution for the lack of statistics can be a level 9 elf from your favorite online character generator, but of course I would have preferred the author's view. Still, a very minor flaw in my view.

Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

About Cliché Dungeon Design

 I've recently watched a video by a friend and rpg designer who advised GMs to avoid trite cliché dungeons such as the goblin lair cave, the undead crypt, the vermin-infested sewer, and so on.

That surely is sound advice, in general, unless your players are complete RPG beginners. But I feel there's more to be said about those cliché, and more than a little something that's worth saving about them.

I think those cliché, with their list of obvious places and situations, are actually very good, if you don't stop at that when designing your dungeon.

Why are they good? Because they empower player agency by allowing players to have solid expectations of what can be found. If the environment fits a logical scheme, you can make predictions and take meaningful decisions while exploring the place.

This can, of course, become very bad, if all there is to your dungeon is the cliché place and situation. A dungeon adventure should be a foray into the unknown, and the trite goblin cave won't take you there at all, if all you put in it is the same old barracks, kitchen, prisoners room, wolves pen, throne room, and hidden treasure. Such places will make the dungeon easy to understand and navigate, which is good, but you'll need some extra work if you also want your dungeon to be more entertaining, challenging, and engaging.

One way to do that little extra work is to take time to come up with the dungeon backstory. That can be as simple as a three step timeline:

1. Origins: Who built the place? What was the purpose? What's left of the original construction?

2. Distant Past: Who occupied the place in the past? For what purpose? Did they modify it? What is left of their passage? Have they really left? Why? Also: Natural events such as cave-ins and floods? These can create new, unintended paths through the dungeon and have other consequences.

3: Recent Past: Have the current dungeon denizens altered the environment for their purposes?

Let's put this to work with the boring goblin lair cave concept.

1. It was a natural cave. Ok. Vast, with all the usual cool places of natural caves: crystal cave, pools, fungi, chasm. A waterfall too! Or it could be lava... but for this example I'll keep lava out of it.

2. Stone giants settled in! BAM. These 14' tall chaps smoothed and decorated a dozen rooms and of course left a stone throne, five huge stone beds, and clubs made from stalactites. What else? They may have carved the entrance as a huge giant face, or something more subtle, but definitely something goblins wouldn't be able to create. They might have buried their dead in deeper, hidden caves, perhaps protected by magic, and definitely with some big ass treasure. They might have had some stone elemental device/totem/altar, still working now, or needing repair or reactivation.

Why did they leave? Let's say they left because they were attacked. Two of their 14' tall stone skeletons are still in there.

3. Of course goblins changed the environment. They've brought in their stuff and the stuff they've pillaged from farmsteads or robbed from travelers, and set their little traps and alarms, and so on. A mushroom orchard, henhouse, pigsty?

This was literally written in 2 minutes, but now I have enough stuff to make this goblin lair a little bit more unique. They may have found a giant-sized ring which their leader uses as a crown; they may have gathered some cool crystals from the deeper caves; they may have used the stalactite clubs or giant bones as part of their wire traps. They definitely haven't been able to open the sealed, 16' tall stone door to the giant king's sanctum, of course.

Is this enough? If you want. But of course you can go on and make another round at the dungeon backstory, now filling it with details and events you can use to make the dungeon cooler. Some of these I've already come up with above. But what about the goblins? 

This is where you take time to consider the activities of current denizens. Ok they are goblins so yeah they raid farmsteads and/or assault and rob travelers or small merchant caravans. Fine. But also boring! One way to make a better dungeon out of it is to think of specific, special incidents that have happened during such activities and that have consequences on the dungeon.

They might have stolen something unique which, while valuable, may also be dangerous. How about a caged cockatrice? Is it still in the cage, or of course they accidentally freed it and had to barricade a section of the caves? Or... a trunk of alchemical components? Sure they've been messing with it, which may have resulted in some mutated goblins, a proliferation of slimes, or a cauldron full of their "magic potion".

Is this enough? If you want. But of course you can go on. You know what's also missing to shake up the cliché? Some good old conflict for faction play! The goblins must have made enemies, and the mountains are full of dangerous beasts and monsters...

Ideas off the top of my head:

The deeper caves have been invaded by caecilias or frigging purple worms! Those stone giants' totems the goblins have been defacing? I guess their function was to keep those away deep down into the earth! Some still stand, but the goblins haven't figured out why the monsters stop pursuing beyond a certain cave. They've just carved a warning on the wall, like a crude drawing of a stickman (stickgoblin) sitting at the top of a tree, or falling headfirst inside a pipe, or is it a tornado with teeth?

The goblins have messed with the wrong guy(s). They always do. Here's a faction that wants revenge, or their stuff back. You can pick the sentient creature(s) you like from your bestiary, and this is the enemy that is stalking the area, looking for the lair, or waiting for the good moment to attack. Depending on what you pick, lots of different interactions with the party, the goblins and the dungeon may result. This can be a single, powerful individual patiently stalking the cave and killing the goblins one by one predator-style (and it goes straight into the random encounter table); or a group of lesser powerful creatures who were just waiting for a bunch of adventurers to get in and distract the goblins. Very different scenarios here if you go with, let's say, kobolds, neanderthals, or pixies.

Again, whatever you add, take time to consider the impact it may have on the dungeon. The goblins pissed off the pixies, ok, why exactly? Is there something they've taken from them, which can be found inside the dungeon, like a jewel, a prisoner, a magic bough?

Are the goblins aware of the threat? If so, they may have set up specific countermeasures and traps. And signs and consequences of previous battles should be there, including trophies, captured armament, warning posts. Their leader might offer a reward to the party if they can destroy their enemies.

Is this enough? Ok, it really is enough when you think it is. For such a dungeon scenario, you may really want to outline at least two personalities, with their goals, wants and needs. The cliché here would have a presumptuous but kinda dumb goblin king, and a devious, cunning advisor or shaman. You know what? Invert those, then put in a goblin princess who wants to escape and live her life. Or become queen. Or join the avenging pixies. Spend 5 minutes to give at least 2 goblins some extra reason beside survival to tell the party "hey don't kill me, let's work together", or "hey don't kill me, I have something for you", such information or actual help.

This can really be enough now. BUT! One more way to play on the cliché is to work on the reason(s) to go into this dungeon. The complete cliché scenario is the goblins have treasure because they stole stuff, kill them and it is yours. Coming up with something different adds a very impactful layer on the dungeon and how it plays out.

Three off the top of my head:

The group is hired to extract that rebellious goblin princess. Depending on who's commissioning the extraction, and for what purpose, she might be happy to come along, or be part of the problem. It might even be her own machination all along!

One of the stone giants' ancient devices must be repaired in order to stop the swarm of earthquakes that's been going on in the region. Hey, the goblins might actually want to help, if convinced (that's why you also want those caecilias or killer pixies in the picture).

Sometime after the giants' demise and before the goblins' arrival, the legendary bandit king hid one of his seven treasure trunks inside one of the pools of the deeper caves, and the party has found a partial map to it. Now the goblins become a completely accidental problem.

Ok, NOW I think there's enough meat to make a nice goblin lair cave that doesn't suck, while still be made out of a pretty cliché scenario idea.

One last consideration: Prison of the Hated Pretender, Tomb of the Serpent Kings and Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss are cool dungeon adventures that closely fit the train of thought of this post, as they both start from a cliché scenario type (actually: the SAME cliché scenario type!), but feel very unique and are absolutely cool!

Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

About Prison of the Hated Pretender

 Prison of the Hated Pretender is great short dungeon written and illustrated by Gus L.

It is available as pay-what-you-want on drivethrurpg, and you really have no excuse not to grab it now, because it's a very good one!

I grabbed the PDF and printed and stapled it at home.

The Basics

The 20-page pdf includes a backdrop village for the adventure, rumors and hooks, and the description of the dungeon itself, which has 10 keyed locations. It is "for 4-6 characters level 0-1", so basically a starting adventure.

It includes "universal" old-school statistics which are perfectly compatible with OD&D/BX/BECMI and their clones and pseudoclones. Treasure seems set to values that are appropriate for xp-for-gold systems, too.

It also includes an appendix with 5e statistics which, frankly, I didn't even bother to read.

Art is nicely evocative and the map is really good and included in three versions.

Same goes for the writing style, reasonably compact but very evocative.

The Dungeon Adventure

The Prison is not a dungeon proper, as it is above ground. It's a head-shaped, three-story tower of sorts, with an underground crypt. It's the crowned head on the cover.

Despite the small area, the prison definitely allows for multiple expeditions, because the place is full of interesting stuff to investigate and interact with, AND there's a faction of creatures that just keep coming on and on, until the players figure out what makes them return and how to prevent that, which means a typical group of the suggested level will be forced to leave fairly often, and plan to visit again.

In the 10 rooms of the Prison, there's pretty much everything a good dungeon adventure should have: faction play, possible non-violent interaction with creatures, mysteries to unravel, traps and hazards that are well described in their functioning and trigger and with ways to figure they are there, and treasure that is interesting.

Extra Feature: An OSR Essay on Dungeon Design AND Refereeing

PotHP also shines as an excellent guide of sorts for GMs who want to familiarize with the old-school style of play and adventure design, as each page has a box of text explaining the design approach of the adventure, the reasons behind it, and how to best run it.

The combination of "theory" and playable example truly is gold, and puts PotHP in the same category as Tomb of the Serpent Kings as great "educational" modules (and great modules on their own right).

May D&D Sale 2022: My OSE Recommendations

 DriveThruRPG is having a HUGE sale on thousands of titles with the May D&D Sale, with everything Dungeons & Dragons, from Original to Fifth Edition!

And when I say thousands, I mean almost seventeen thousand. Good luck browsing those! Only considering the titles tagged as OSR, you get the incredible amount of 1980 titles on sale to check!

And to those, we must also add 107 official OD&D/BECMI titles, and 134 AD&D1stEd titles! 

The sheer amount of titles available makes it hard to create a list of OSR recommendations, so this time I'll focus on Old-School Essentials as it is my current go-to ruleset.

OSE Rulebooks

Of course the list begins with the core OSE books, both the Classic Rules Tome and the Advanced rules. If you're reading this, you're probably already a fan (like me), but don't forget sales are a great occasion to spread the word. Tell your friends!

Adventures

Well, the whole Old-School Essentials line is part of the sale, which means you can get some great adventures too, like Incandescent Grottoes or the Ennie award winning Halls of the Blood King, and also the Dolmenwood setting line!

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - A very good 10 room dungeon. I've reviewed it here.

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - An exquisite, sandboxy point-crawl adventure for characters level 1-3, very easy to run, with lots of interaction between locations, that I can't wait to run. Just reviewed it!

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - Another very good 10 room dungeon with, well, a lot of well conceived puzzles. I've reviewed it here, and if this dungeon is a great opportunity to connect your existing campaign to the setting outlined in the best seller Planar Compass zine series which is on sale too!

Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords - Two third-party Old-School Essentials adventures by Swordlords Publishing with awesome reviews.

Xanadu - Another acclaimed third-party Old-School Essentials dungeon adventure, by Singing Flame.

Bottomless Pit of Zorth - Another acclaimed adventure, with a slime theme and insane art, for  characters level 3-5, which is a less frequent level bracket in comparison to level 1-4, and makes it definitely worth checking.

Tannic - A just released level 1-3 adventure set in a haunted forest, by Amanda Pratt, that looks pretty cool (seriously, check the preview).

Sourcebooks, Supplements & Zines

The whole Third Kingdom line of hexcrawl supplements is out there, including the great Filling in the Blanks guide.

The unusual A Groats-worth of Grotesques bestiary, which I've reviewed here.

The Delver Magazine zine series, full of awesome random tables, along with its Tavern spin-off.

My very own Lands of Legends zine series, learn more about it here.

The Old School & Cool zine series by Knight Owl Publishing.

Bonus Offerings

For those who feel like reading thousands of pages, the Castle Oldskull Megabundle is definitely worth a look (includes guides, classes, bestiaries and even novels), and price-wise it is the sale with the largest discount.

And if all those sales don't whet your appetite, you can check some free or PWYW titles, such as my own Old-School Essentials e-zines, or the stunning Black Pudding zines by James West!

About Artifices, Deceptions and Dilemmas

 Artifices, Deceptions and Dilemmas is a book by Courtney C. Campbell, of Hack & Slash blog fame.

In short: this book collects guidelines and ideas for old-school games DMs to both create and adjudicate fairly a variety of "unusual circumstances, hazards, benefits, and puzzles, and creating interesting encounters". It is designed to create better dungeons, and to become better at running them at the table.

Is this for you? You may check some portions of the content at Campbell's blog.

The print-on-demand version, which I've grabbed a couple months ago, is a 162 page, A5 b&w book. It is available both as soft- and hardcover, and I've picked the latter as I strongly prefer a solid book. It is one of the few OSR titles that are currently part of the global Best of Print sale on drivethru (and for some strange reason the hardcover costs less than the softcover version).

Esthetically, AD&D (see what he did there?) is a spartan book with a super-simple, one-column layout.

It sports an amazing wrap-around cover art by Karl Stjemberg (aka skullfungus), and a LOT of functional art by Campbell in the Rooms section of the book (more on that later), plus a bunch of illustrations by James Shields.

Skullfungus' incredible wrap-around cover

What game is this for? Despite the acronym, AD&D is a book for DMs/GMs/Referees running any old-school or OSR-adjacent game. Game rules and statistics are barely present, if at all, as the focus of the book is on dungeon design and adjudication. I think it can be of interest to GMs of any edition of Dungeons & Dragons or other fantasy games, if they feel traps-as-hp-tax and perception checks are boring.

So...

Let's break down the content. We have four main sections: Rooms, Agency, Traps, Tricks.

The first section has a set of tables to randomly determine the specific nature of a room. Each of the results of such tables is described in the following pages, where you find more than 100 room types in alphabetical order, from Amphitheater to Zoo. Each room is described in objective terms, with its necessary, functional features, plus a list of possible additional elements, objects that can reasonably be found in that type of room, plus an illustration for each. This section is definitely useful if you like your dungeon rooms to make sense! See the images below for some nice examples.

The second section, Agency, describes the mechanical or magical functioning of a variety of triggers such as pressure plates, switches, latches, levers, and so on. More important, and the reason why the title of the section is Agency, this section describes how to run them in game: what to describe, how to give clues, how to give a reason to players to investigate and interact with them.

The third section, Traps, describes what's at the other end of the trigger, detailing more than 30 literal traps and environmental hazards, from arrow trap to vents & sprays. For each, examples are given to make them unique, and turn them from a boring hp-tax into an interesting encounter.

Where the Rooms and Traps sections deal with physical elements of a dungeon, the last section of the book, Tricks, tackles situations. It describes 17 categories of them, form bait to weirdness, each with examples, plus a two-page guide on how to design them for your games.

AD&D together with its companion book OD&D, and the Italian version of Old-School Essentials 

All in all

Like the immensely popular The Dungeon Alphabet, this is a great book if you want more creative fuel when designing your dungeon. What's more: it gives a lot solid advice on how to design environments and situations that create challenging gameplay in the OSR sense: challenging player skill to investigate and interact with the environment in a meaningful way.

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts, reviews and games!