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!

About The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak

 The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak is a 24 page OSR adventure by Robin Fjärem, for a party of level 1-3 adventurers, designed for Knave, and easily convertible to other OSR games.

I got the PDF and printed it at home as an A5, stapled zine of sort (no POD option is available).

Mr Fjärem has done a very good job at designing a module that in 24 pages describes 32 rooms full of adventure.

What's it about? The adventure offers 3 levels, each with a distinctive theme and flavor. The first is the titular frozen temple with 11 rooms, the second is a a single large cave with an underground lake with 6 areas, and the last is "the spirit realm", a large underground complex with 15 rooms.

Before the dungeon proper, we have the description of a mountain camp, 6 different hooks, and 6 rumors.

The first level is long lost temple. The glacier has melt a bit, and it is now possible to enter the temple again. The contents of the temple fit the theme perfectly, its all abandoned and icy, close to no encounters except a frost centipede and, from the random encounters table, rival adventuring parties and a frost smilodon who has just ventured inside the temple looking for prey.

The second level is fairly linear, with a sequence of islets scattered through the lake. But has a snorting troll sleeping in the farthest islet, and the lake is the portal to the spirit realm, if the group figures out how (and there's plenty of ways to understand how the lake is magical), while possibly avoid waking up the mysterious source of the snorting. 

The last level, the spirit realm, is in fact a perfect adventure in the mythical underworld, with more than a hint at fairy tales and norse mythology. This level is full of fun, interconnected encounters with NPCs, including a Lindwurm (a flightless dragon) and its magnificent hoard.

So how is it? It's a great little adventure, with a distinct pacing and a strong theme. The writing is short and clear, exactly how I like it. You read it once, you're ready to run it.

Is it perfect? No, but close. I didn't like that some secret passages in level 1 don't include in their description an obvious way to suspect they are there. I didn't like that the "spirit realm" level is too small. It feels like it should have been vast, too vast to explore in its entirety (there's world in mythical underworld). And it feels so because there's a lot going on with the fairy creatures and peculiar places described, and also because of the very good random tables included (mushrooms, treasure, NPC motivations, events). At your own risk, you may attempt connecting this to other adventures such as The Incandescent Grottoes, or simply expand the map, adding rooms and paths between the keyed ones, to increase the feel of an underground world. Those tables should make it relatively easy.

All in all: It's a good one, definitely recommended if your campaign has snowy mountains and you like the fairy/norse(ish) themes, and worth the effort of conversion to your favorite OSR system.

Expanding HeroQuest: The Sword & Sorcery "Minions" Expansion Pack

 I've just acquired a new "expansion" for HeroQuest: the Sword & Sorcery "Minions" Expansion Pack, which I found for €13 on Amazon.it...

...and, oh boy, this was a very good bargain! The box includes 10 spider minis, 5 spider egg clusters, and 5 mini-yetis. That's 20 pieces, for little more than 50c.

And it seems to be available for about the same price on amazon.com too.

Here's a pic of the models together with the HeroQuest heroes:

Note 1: the rocks are from my back yard and are not included!

Note 2: the board is my very own custom cavern game board, which I'll write about as soon as the whole project is complete.

Note 3: I'm bad at taking pics. You can see the models on the official box art. The pic here is meant to show you relative size, and the fact that the spiders have bases.

So what about these models? Here's I plan to use them.

The Spiders: Spiders are fast. These spiders are small. All in all, the same statistics as the HeroQuest Goblins will do for me. HeroQuest is a simple game and I like it exactly because of that. If you want a little more punch, check my swarm rules in the Legend of Drizzt monsters.

The "Mini Yetis": I like them, even though they're fairly small. But hey, they are grey models, and in HeroQuest the color grey means Chaos Dread team! So I'll play these as Dread Imps, the little cousins of the Gargoyle. Small but vicious!

Move: 8

Attack: 3 dice

Defense: 3 dice

Body: 1

Mind: 3

The Egg Clusters: These are where the fun is at. You can use them as simple terrain in spider-infested dungeons, of course, but how about making them interactive? Here's how:

During Zargon's turn, each Egg Cluster spawns a spider in an adjacent square, until destroyed. Egg Clusters have 6 Body Points, but don't roll to defend.

As a one-trick pony, this is sure to surprise the players the first time, and it'll keep giving them a priority even afterwards: as soon as they find a cluster, they'll probably prioritize destroying it, even in the presence of other monsters.

The spider-spawning eggs can be fairly easy inside the dungeon rooms of the official board, but may make for one hell of a scenario if you use a different board, like the much more opened areas from the boards and map books I use.

All in all: If you find it for a low price, this box is an excellent expansion for homebrew heroquesting!

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest Posts!

About Wyvern Songs

 Wyvern Songs is a collection of four adventures for Old-School Essentials, authored by Brad Kerr. If you like your OSE game with just a pinch of weird and whimsy, and you are looking for GREAT adventures, Wyvern Songs is a must-buy.

Brad is the author of the widely acclaimed, best-selling OSE adventures Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords (I've reviewed it here), and of Demon Driven to the Maw (written for Cairn RPG).

In short, Brad had dropped an outstanding series of adventures, so as soon as this new book was available, I ordered the hardcover version, which is a nice full color,  A5 book (hardcover A5 is, in my opinion, the best print-on-demand format from DriveThru, and the one I've chosen for my OSE-licensed Axian Library book too).

What's inside

The book features four adventures: The Sinister Secret of Peacock Point, Fabien's Atelier, The Singing Stones, and The Dreaming Caldera, plus an impressive appendix of bonus material.

Each adventure has a different color used for text headings and as the background of the maps, making browsing the volume very easy.

All the adventures are location-based, with multiple hooks, and no preset outcome. All offer non-linear problems and things to play with, and ideas on how to further develop the place or the events that the players may trigger. The text is short and sweet, with clever use of bolded text and bullet points, making preparation super easy.

The table of contents, with a summary of the adventures.
It also introduces the color-code used throughout the book. 

The Sinister Secret of Peacock Point is a dungeon crawl adventure for first level characters. The dungeon (25 rooms) is the guildhall of a gang of thieves, who've just been slaughtered by a demonic insect lord they've unwittingly released from its prison inside a locked music box.

So the place has a story, and it shows in every room. And it's got the traps the thieves had set to stop intruders, and they are reasonably telegraphed, empowering player agency; and an overarching "puzzle" that develops along with the random encounters and exploration of the place.

Fabien's Atelier is a dead wizard's flying palace. It is a puzzle-heavy dungeon for characters level 2-4 (19 rooms), and can be played as a followup to Hideous Daylight or on its own. Fabien the wizard has died, and its flying abode has a lot of things going on.

The core piece of the dungeon is a magic cabinet that makes you change size, allowing the players to explore a series of small tunnels inside the walls (among other things). Also of notes are puzzles featuring keys which are not keys, a miniaturized dragon living inside a doll house, and a mass battle between dream gremlins and undead rats. The adventure is open-ended and the players may cause a lot of trouble freeing a djinn, or crashing the flying palace on the duke's beloved garden.

The Singing Stones is a point-crawl adventure for characters level 3-5, set in a rocky valley of enchanted stones that's 6 square miles and features 20 different points of interest to explore. The valley has a lot going on. The main hook is to find the disappeared prince (who got poisoned by a wyvern, and also petrified by a medusa before the venom could kill him!), but other hooks are provided: finding a great bard's burial place and treasure; stopping the mysterious beast eating the singing stones; investigating the ghost of a young bride; visiting a commune of dwarven artists who are unwittingly creating a summoning device for an ancient vampire... and more.

This adventure is probably the best of the group. Even more open-ended, with each location point offering enough elements to investigate, explore and interact with, to fuel hours and hours of play time.

The Dreaming Caldera is another "traditional" dungeon, designed for characters level 5-6. It features 27 rooms divided in 2 levels, and includes areas specifically designed to expand the dungeon, if you want. The content is a bit of a funhouse dungeon, with a great variety of monsters. What makes it a cool scenario is the strong theme the connects everything: all the monsters inside the dungeon are busy trying to shape a body for a chaos godling that is about to be born. 

All in all: the book is just great. From overall structure, to layout, use of of colors, and text organization of each room, everything is just perfect to make it easy to run. You read it and you are ready to run the game. And the content is top notch. If you like your fantasy game with just a pinch of weird (of the imaginative -not dumb, not gonzo- kind), this book has four scenarios you want to have and will enjoy running, as players will find plenty to do, figure out, interact with, and decide on their own terms.

And I haven't even mentioned the bonus materials at the end of the book: a new class, a starting village, and even a regional hex map with the locations for the four scenarios in the book AND a score of other published adventures, both from Necrotic Gnome and from other authors, as The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford and The Seers Sanctum.

About the New HeroQuest, or The Sublime Horror

 So I three weeks ago I received the new HeroQuest as a birthday present. The joy!

For those who missed it, Hasbro relaunched the much beloved '90s board game (and gateway to fantasy gaming for thousands of kids) in 2021, with a crowdfunding campaign on Pules, Hasbro's own crowdfunding platform. So how is it?

I'll talk about how it is from my point of view: a gamer in my 40s, who had the original game back then, and with a 7yo kid.

The rules: They are the same, including the original quest book. The rules are the same as the US version, not the European one. where all monsters had 1 Body Point (which was a very bad idea as it made the game too easy).

Components: This is where the game has changed the most. 

• The board is the same, just slightly bigger. It's still that very same board, with the same graphic, the same room arrangement.
• All the furniture is pretty much identical in design, except all pieces are made of plastic, doors included. In the old version all furniture pieces where a mix of plastic and cardboard.
• All the minis have been redesigned! They are slightly bigger, more detailed, and made of a soft plastic, which makes snapping almost impossible, but frequently comes with bended pieces (swords, staffs, spears, leg or ankle joints, etc).
• There are LESS minis! In the old game you got a lot of goblins and skeletons. In this new version you get less of each monster type except for the "Dread Warrior" (the new Chaos Warriors). It turns out I was completely wrong about this: you get the same amount of minis! My memory tricked me, I should have checked before posting!
• The cards (monsters, spells, equipment, etc) have grown bigger (standard MTG-size), with a mix of old and new designs.

I appreciate the change of plastic type, as I think these soft models will be more durable. On the other hand, all the cardboard pieces (box, board, tiles, and cards) feel very much thinner and less resistant. Must be the global paper crisis, I guess.

Another big change is that all references to the Warhammer world are gone: Chaos Warriors now are "Dread Warriors" (just a name change), and Fimirs have been replaced with "Abominations", i.e. hulking fish-men, which look cool but feel definitely out of place inside a dungeon.

Oh, and the game as changed from "Age 9 - Adult" to "14+", for reasons I can't fathom.

I won't discuss price vs quality, as price varies wildly depending on where you buy it. Amazon has it.

The old box...

...and the new one

My Personal Take: The Sublime Horror

Let's be frank: if you look at the rules and mechanics from the point of view of a frequent, refined gamer, HeroQuest is a horrible game, for a series of reasons. Players have too few occasions to make meaningful choices. Most of the time, they open doors without a clue, and combat is just rolling dice with almost no chance for any kind of strategy. The only big exception is the mage hero who has to manage their nine single-use spell cards through every game.

The quests in the book are balanced against a full party of four heroes, so with less than five players (or four + the official gm-less app), all quests become quite hard.

But at the same time HeroQuest offers, in my opinion, a sublime experience with regards to immersion. The furniture, the cards art, the minis, the board, all enforce immersion in a way more refined games fail to convey. Perhaps it is the very lack of a cumbersome rule system that makes everything else shine, as the rules leave the spotlight to components, and to the story that unfolds through the quests.

So all in all it is a super bad game for experienced gamers, and an excellent game for experienced gamers who want an introductory game for non-gamers and kids. My son is enjoying it A LOT, and I'm enjoying it through his eyes. He can't wait to invite his friends to play. Damn, I can't wait to invite his friends to play!

If you don't plan to play it with kids or non-gamers, the only other reason to get it is to change, expand, substitute the rules with a deeper system (like an rpg's), and just save the components. It's still a decent deal for those alone, probably.

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest Posts!

About Kosmosaurs

You are a dinosaur. You are a Kosmo Ranger. You are a Kosmosaur—a protector of the galaxy. You and your companions travel through the stars to help all sorts of people, planets, and organizations by preventing disasters, battling assassin robots, banishing chaos mutants from the Void Dimension, and facing all kinds of weird dangers. [From the blurb]

Kosmosaurs is Diogo Nogueira's latest rpg.
If you don't know him, he's the author of several acclaimed games, including the Ennie-award winning OSE adventure Halls of the Blood King and big hits such as Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, Dark Streets & Darker Secrets, and Lost in the Fantasy World.

A few months ago Diogo asked on his socials for bloggers etc to check and review his upcoming game, so here I am. I received the work-in-progress pdf and had the opportunity to check it. Now the game is available both on Diogo's itch.io page and on DriveThruRPG.

Here's some basic facts:

• Written by Diogo Nogueira
• Lavishly illustrated by Łukasz Kowalczuk, with a colorful layout by Guilherme Gontijo
• Format is A5 or similar (guessing this from the pdf)
• At the time of writing this it is an 80-page full color sweet little book

It is inspired by Saturday morning cartoon shows and as such is a perfect game to play with younger players. The characters are Kosmosaurs, i.e. dinosaur space rangers and protectors of the galaxy. While it is not stated explicitly in the game, it's very well suited for children. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with it even with a group of adults, of course.

Let's see how the game works.

The core mechanic is inspired by John Harper's new classic Lasers & Feelings. Kosmosaurs only have two numerical statistics: Kosmo and Saurs, which represent intellectual and physical capabilities, respectively. When you create your character, you divide 5 points among these two stats, and that's the pool of d6s you roll when you make an attribute test. Characters are further defined by the type of dinosaur they are, of course (a pterosaur can fly, for example; an a ankylosaur can bash things with its tail, and so on), and they must also choose a role (pilot, scientist, xenologist, commando, etc), and two extra things the kosmosaur is good at and one thing they are bad at. Furthermore, each character can choose a number of significant items equal to their Saur score, and a number of knowledges equal to their Kosmo score. That's it for characters.

You roll your Kosmo or Saur pool of d6s, and add an extra die if the action is typical of your role, if that's something you're good at, or if one of your significant items or knowledges applies to the situation.

Things you are bad at, and stuff that your role would be bad at, reduce the die pool by one. Same goes for difficult actions, which is determined by the GM.

So you roll your pool and take the die with the highest result.

Results have five degrees of success and failure which can be described as:  No, and / No, but / Yes, but / Yes / Yes, and. These are not the terms used in the game, but I guess most of my readers get this type of thing. The game explains the results fairly clearly.

The rules are player facing, meaning the GM never rolls. Combat is quick with players rolling to attack and to avoid damage. Damage is handled as markings on your Kosmo or Saur scores, and the default rules dictate that characters don't die: they are just taken out for the scene, as appropriate for Saturday morning shows. Players also have the option of (temporarily) losing a meaningful item instead of taking Saur damage (which can be later repaired or replaced), or one of their knowledges instead of Kosmo damage (representing temporary self-doubt). 

The "combat" rules apply to any type of conflict really, so Kosmo damage can represent the outcome of a failed social conflict.

Beside their characters, the players get to create the group's spaceship, which is handled with similar stats as the Kosmosaurs.

This is pretty much all there is to it as regards rules. I didn't go into the details of the consequences of damage but I think you get the idea.

What I've found especially good is the large set of tables that accompany each section of the game: types of dinosaurs, roles and names, for players, and then a whole lot of tables for the GM: mission objective, antagonists, locations, supporting cast, complications and rewards are the tables you get to help you quickly set up a scenario. All of these are d66 tables, which means there are 36 results, a reasonable number for the scope of the game, and also a way to have tables with many entries in a game that only uses d6s. 

The book also contains a series of five detailed enemy factions, a sort of recurring villain organizations that help define the setting. They are: the Robot Empire, the Voidsaurs, the Undead (space) Pirates, the Slime Lords, and the Broccoloids. Each has a fun general description, a list of associated themes, and two d6 tables: one with what they want, and one with what they are doing. The first is more of a possible long-term objective which can be the subject of an adventure or even a series of adventures, while the second can fuel a scene or a single scenario.

The final pages of the book are the colorful character sheet and space ship sheet. 

Is this game for you?

I think there are two possible ways of playing this.

One way is to play with a group of kids of any age as soon as they can read and write a bit. Rolling a bunch of d6s is something children can do long before they can read, and the game requires zero math skills, but they need to be able to write a few things on their character sheet... unless you write stuff for them.

As a game for adults, it certainly is a great choice for a light-hearted game night for players who enjoy the joyful silliness of Power Rangers and similar shows.

What I find very good is that:

- the rules match very well the spirit of the "source material", with heroes that don't die, simple action, and no simulation or realism whatsoever;

-the same goes for the fabulous art which is colorful, full of action, and fun with a lot of goofy details and over the top characters;

-considering the two types of gaming groups I see this for, the suite of player and GM tables are very helpful and definitely help to get quickly into the game. You want all the help you can get to run a game for kids who are absolute beginners, and it's also good to have tables to quickly set up a scenario for them (or for adults, of course).

- The game has the potential to be a very good introduction to RPGs both for kids AND for parents who have never played rpgs before, so I've especially appreciated the few pages devoted to explaining how the game flows, and what are the task and responsibilities of the players and the GM. These include the who does what in game terms, but also some advice on the social aspects of the game. These recommendations may seem obvious to experienced role-players, but I think they are very precious for beginners.

So, yes, Kosmosaur seems like a great game. Frankly, I hope some Italian publisher will localize it. I see it as a perfect game for me to play with my 7yo, and as a gift I could give to my gaming friends who have children of similar age!

So yes I think you should definitely check it out!

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.

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About Old School & Cool Vol. 3

Old School & Cool Volume 3 is the third installment of Knight Owl Publishing's zine series dedicated to OSR games.

It was crowdfunded last February during Zine Month. I backed the project and the printed zine has just landed here at my place, all the way from Portland, US to Pisa, Italy!

It came in a simple letter envelope, plus a protective plastic wrap. It came in good condition (except for a corner on the cover).

The zine is one of those US formats I can't fathom, similar to A5 but slightly narrower. It looks beautiful. Color cover, b/w interior, good staple binding and print quality, 40 pages of goodness, with clear layout and nice art. I especially like the full wrap-around cover art.

So what's inside?

The objective of this zine is to give options and content for b/x d&d and its simulacra, Old-School Essentials included, to go beyond the 14th level limit.

This is achieved in the various sections of the zines: new options for classes, high level spells, immortal artifacts, monsters, gods who used to be adventurers, and the adventure "Don't Lose Your Head".

First of all, the zine introduces the concept of "level x": instead of coming up with tables upon tables of new level progression beyond level 14 (or lower, depending on class limits), the zine presents the idea that once a character has reached their class' maximum level, plus another xp threshold listed in the zine, they can reach "level x" if they defeat ("though not necessarily kill") a level x character.

Defeating another character is a very interesting concept (yes I know druids already had that) and one that makes progression more interesting than just an abstract, arbitrary xp goal.

Once both conditions are met (xp and victory over a level x character), the new level x hero must choose one of two paths: Ascended or Descended. These two may sound a bit like "good" and "evil" (which in turn is quite close to how the law/chaos opposition seems to map in b/x d&d), but it's not necessarily so. The two paths available to clerics are pretty much so, with one being the angelic healer, and the other an aspiring demigod of undeath. Things are definitely more nuanced for the two paths available to dwarves: the runesmith and the grudge keeper. I like that, as per the rules presented in the zine, the choice is free and not tied to alignment in any way, and that there is no neutral choice between, say, the path of the vigilante and the path of the crime lord for thieves, forcing players to an interesting ethical choice beyond their alignment. . This section, with two paths for each of the seven bx classes, is 10 pages.

Each level x path offers a packet of new class abilities (in most cases 4 or 5), plus of course access level x spells for spell caster classes.

The zine lists 8 arcane level x spells and 6 divine level x spells, described in 4 pages. These are of course very powerful (the arcane list includes a wish spell, for example).

What I like about both the new class abilities and the new spells is that yes of course they are powerful (often extremely powerful), but also that they are not just and not only numerical bonuses, but often give new capabilities. Examples: an elf who's picked the path of the unseely fey can "command any animal, beast, or monster with 10 or fewer HD, so long as they are within a forest". That's one hell of a special skill, and the type of ability that truly changes the game, which is good, in my opinion. Another example: one of the level x divine spells completely restores an undead creature to life, as if death and undeath never happened to them. This, in a domain level play, can have a lot of consequences which can be interesting to explore and definitely may go beyond mere combat.

I like that these new powers, abilities and spells are clearly not mere conversions of stuff from other editions.

I don't like that here and there some rules are not 100% crystal clear in their meaning, or so they appear to me.

I can't be sure these powers and skills can work or will ruin the game with their immense power, but one thing is sure: before players gain those skills, they must defeat an NPC who possesses them, and it will definitely require some very clever planning and group work. Think for example of a grudge keeper dwarf: one their abilities says once they lose half their hp they "lose track of their dwarfmanity" (LOL) and until all enemies are dead they attack at -2 but roll 1d100 for damage! Go kill that guy, I dare you, this is what the zine says, and I like it.

The "Immortal Artifacts" sections presents 22 (again, very powerful) magic items. These are cool and detailed with backstory, powers, and also a corrupting trait and some way to neutralize them. These are very cool and can definitely be introduced as treasure (and game changers, and of course as part of the arsenal of villainous NPCs,) into a high level campaign wether you choose to use the "level x" rules or not.

The monsters section includes ten creatures, such as Apocalypse Dragons, Devil Wyverns, Kaijus, Shoggots, and Ghost Cataphracts (a Ghost Rider inspired undead, complete with a "hellfire flail" that extends to 15'). They range from 12 to 33 HD and of course have very nasty special abilities. These are solid and interesting and, like the previous section, can surely be introduced as mega enemies for level 10+ parties.

The "Gods who used to be adventurers" section (2 pages) briefly describes four godly NPCs, with brief background, game statistics, holy symbol, unique special abilities, and individual art pieces. These are frankly cool, and are connected with the other contents of the zine such as the artifact, but on the whole I'm not sure what's the deal here. Even though they have the six abilities scores listed, based on their statistics they don't seem to be level x characters, but their own thing, so what are they here for? Possible adversaries or allies, I suppose, but the intended purpose is not perfectly clear as it is not stated.

The final 4 pages feature a scenario for characters who "have enough experience to reach level x but need to defeat a level x champion. Characters of less power but great cunning could perhaps survive, but it would not be an easy task".

This is a short open scenario with a city threatened by an evil level x magic user, but also protected by a good level x fighter. It also features several creatures from the monsters section and a couple of items from the Immortal Artifacts section. It could have benefited from having one or two extra pages to make a few details clearer, but overall it seems to me a good example of high level play scenario, which is quite rare. It is an open scenario where clever thinking, diplomacy and political decisions may have a large impact and, while the default approach is to stop the evil magic user, the scenario will still work if the group decides to challenge the good fighter instead.

Overall

Overall the zine is very good, with lots of things that can be dropped into high level campaigns (10+), all together or in selected bits, and I'm glad I backed it! If it's ok to have ogres and trolls in scenarios for level 1-3 characters, then you can definitely put some of those mega monsters (and magic items, and spells) in a level 10-14 scenario.

Print version?

The print version (I suppose the same as mine), alone or with the PDF, is available at the Knight Owl Publishing store, while the pdf alone is up at DriveThruRPG.

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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).

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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About Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum is a definitely interesting OSR dungeon adventure. It was originally launched during ZineQuest3, and is currently available at DriveThruRPG.

Some basic information. PD:TSS is a 22 pages PDF, offering a10 room dungeon adventure for characters level 1-4, with statistics that allow to use it with pretty much any odnd/BX/BECMI type of ruleset.

The dungeon is the underground temple of the long lost cult of the Seers, and sight is the theme of the whole place.

What's so great about the module? A lot:

• Original theme. Being original is not a strict requirement for me, but having a dungeon which is not just yet another crypt filled with undead, or cave with a bunch of orcs, is definitely good.
• Interactive environment. Each and everyone of the 10 rooms offers a "puzzle". These are not actual puzzles as much as environments that the players can examine and interact with in a series of meaningful ways, and this is definitely good. There's a hand mirror that allows to see how the place was in the past, allowing for a lot of investigation. And the general theme of sight is carried on consistently through the place, meaning that players should reasonably figure out how to circumvent traps and reveal secret passages and hidden things.
• Non-necessary fights. The whole dungeon only host 4 rooms with a single creature encounter and one room with 2d4 creatures. The cool thing is none of them, except perhaps the grey ooze in the first room, is a necessary fight. The 2d4 floating eyeballs don't attack by default, and can be tricked in several ways. There's a medusa whose objective is to leave the dungeon, and a gelatinous cube that first appears trapped inside a pool, and so on.
• Great formatting. The text organization and layout are excellent and make preparation and running the adventure very easy.

Things I'm not completely happy with.

• Some unclear points. The text and formatting is, in general, excellent, but I've found a few odd bits. The iron doors in room 2 are described as "no handles, no hinges, locked" and that's it. Perhaps a paragraph is missing? Anyway, before running the scenario the GM must decide how to handle those doors. Personally, I would just treat them like the similar door found in room 1.
• Treasure. There is a very cool magic item (a stick that can be used like a periscope), but the treasure in the treasure room is barely described ("coins, gems, golden monkeys") and the GM must decide the actual value. Being the only monetary treasure, I would go for something like 1d3 x 1,000gp worth of coins, and two more rolls for the gems and the monkey statues.
• Treasure, again. The deepest room has a medusa trapped inside. She only wants to be free again, so unless the players mess with her, The problem I see is that getting to her room requires some effort and clever thinking, so I would rather put some treasure here: jewels, jars with precious oils, something like that, for another 1d3 x 1,000gp at least.
• Room 8 has the "final puzzle", a planar travel device which the group might figure out how to use (finding it is one of the possible reasons to enter the dungeon, as per the provided hooks). It IS cool, of course, but I would keep it as it is only if I'm ready to have the player characters hop into other planes. Should I run this dungeon (which I definitely would like to), I think I'll change the device in someway, if I play it as part of a larger campaign.

[Please note my observation is based on the PDF version I bought and printed at home last week. Later versions (especially the PDF) might have these little things fixed]

 For those using VTTs, redditor StevenZivon has made a very cool map of the whole dungeon.

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About The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford

 The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford is, well, an excellent OSR adventure, and you should probably stop reading now, click on the image, and buy it straight away.

As I'm writing this, it is even part of the GM's Day Sale at DriveThruRPG...

But since you are still reading, I'll give you a bit more context.

TBWoB is a sandboxy pointcrawl adventure for level 1-3 characters, with statistics compatible with most OSR rulesets of the od&d/BX/BECMI type. You find AC, HD, and so on. Treasure is in line with the gold/xp progression of those games.

It takes place in a small forested area, pretty much the size of a 6 miles hex, with a river and some mountains at the north.

The town of Brandonsford is the only civilized settlement, and the adventure starting place.

The citizens refuse to go outside the city walls because a dragon has been sighted for a few weeks.

This is the basic set-up.

The module includes two dungeons (one is 6 rooms, the other is about 20), and several other smaller locations. The city of Brandonsford includes several NPCs, and others (including a whole humanoid faction) live in the woods.

The theme/implied setting is vanilla fantasy with more than a sprinkle of fairy tale/folklore vibes. I like it.

What's so great about the module? Three things:

• Number one, everything connects with something. The NPCs in town have their hooks and miniquests and information bits that may lead the adventurers in new directions, look for certain areas, investigate places, and so on.
• Number two, freedom. There is nothing the group has to do in order to "solve" the scenario, but there are lots of different paths of action that can make the battle against the dragon much easier. Even the "miniquests" are great, interesting situations with no predefined solution but a variety of possible approaches and outcomes. Everything is open-ended, but tightly designed to push adventure on.
• Number three, great formatting and text. As far as I'm concerned, they're pretty much perfect: sweet and short and well organized, without useless fluff. In just 18 pages you get hours and hours of gaming, and they're very easy to understand and prepare thanks to a clear layout and use of bold and bullet points.

Is it perfectly perfect? Well, almost!

There's basically only three minor flaws that I've found, and you can fix them in 5 minutes.

• Some creatures don't have their stats in the adventure: I remember the fauns and the witch, not sure if that's all or I'm forgetting something. This is solved with using stat blocks from your game of choice. And if doesn't have them, you can just wing it using the gnoll stat block and a level 4 magic user, I guess! For Old-School Essentials, you have Satyrs in the Advanced Fantasy monsters book, but no witches it seems!
• Exploring the outdoor area, and familiarizing with the town and the locals is intentionally left to the GM. This means you must think how to start the scenario and run the exploration. Luckily, you may use these maps I've found on Reddit: hex map of the area, and Brandonsford town map, both by  Bricky (reddit user BadRussell). Oh and there's also this colorized map on Imgur.
• In the goblin castle map, number 3 and 4 are swapped; and so are 10 and 11 in the Barrow Mound. This was pretty obvious from the room descriptions.

[Please note my observation is based on the Print on Demand version I bought last week. Later versions (especially the PDF) might have these little things fixed]

....so, yes, I'll just copy-paste the first line of this post now.

 

 The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford is an excellent OSR adventure, and you should stop reading now, click on the image, and buy it straight away.