About Temple of 1000 Swords

 Temple of 1000 Swords is a dungeon adventure for Old-School Essentials by Brad Kerr, the same author of Hideous Daylight. If you play OSE, go grab it now because it's so good I'm stunned.

It is a 25 page adventure featuring a 19 rooms dungeon of intense fun. It is statted for Old-School Essentials so it's also ready to use with BX D&D and similar rulesets. It states being designed for "approximately level 3 characters", which probably means a level 2-4 range would be ok. I think level 5 characters would find it too easy, and with too little loot.

I bought the PDF and had it printed and stapled locally into a nice little black and white A5 booklet.

The writing is short and sweet and fully functional to run the adventure. Flawlessly structured and well laid out for easy running.

The temple of Gladio the forgotten sword god has interesting things going on in every single room, with situations that require problem solving, lateral thinking, one or two optional "regular" puzzles, a sort of moral dilemma, and even faction play. I think I couldn't ask for more!

You have Gladio's magical forge, capable of turning anything that is put on it into a sword-hybrid: a coin, a book, a torch, anything. And that's why one room contains crazed sword-persons...

The magic forge is also the source of the d100 table of peculiar swords that can be found scattered around the place among the piles of hundreds of swords that clutter all the rooms. These are made of stuff someone put on the forge to see the result. These include nonsense pieces such as the linen sword, papier-maché sword, and egg sword; some that are simply treasure such as swords made of silver, gold, rubies, mithral and dragon scales; some that are more conventional magic swords (light; masterwork; adamantine) and some very cool pieces such as a magically stretching sword, a functional blowgun sword, a rattlesnake sword, and my favorite: the intelligent, mustached, grandfatherly, +1 Grandfather sword (possibly a Diablo reference, and also meaning someone put their grandfather on the forge, which I find hilarious).

You have a legendary sword that is divided into nine pieces scattered in the various rooms, and one has been used to pin a vampire against a wall. You want to collect them all? You'll have to free the guy.

You have two factions battling for control of the place (treacherous merfolk and bloodthirsty duck people).

You also have a bunch of interesting hooks and and possible outcomes impacting the campaign outside the dungeon. 

The only two little quibbles I have are that one of the secret passages is marked on the map but there are no real clues to motivate the players to look for one, and one NPC, Piotr, has no game statistics. That's because players are not supposed to kill him, evidently, but still, players being players, you never can tell...

Of course these are very small flaws, more like two bits I'll have to remember fixing before running it (can't wait!). Seriously, this is one of my all time favorite OSR adventures along with Black Wyrm of Brandonsford!

(And it's currently included in the Christmas in July sale!)

Diablo Magic Items for OSR Games

I've loved the Diablo series since the beginning. I've played endless hours on Diablo 2 and 3. I love the lore, and enjoy the mindless destruction of the endgame game play. I also love OSR games.

Wizards of the Coast released a series of Diablo II licensed supplements for AD&D and D&D 3.X: monstrously faithful conversions, brilliantly showing how the videogame game play is abysmally distant from the type of experience I like in tabletop RPGs.

In diablo video games you pulverize monster after monster, looking for magic items that will make you stronger, gaining xp from kills, which will unlock more skills to pulverize faster.

In OSR rpgs you hunt treasures in dangerous places, and for the most part try to avoid danger...

And yet I think there's room for some kind of Diablo(ish)-OSR(ish) mash-up. It's something I've always dreamed of designing. 

For now, here's some iconic Diablo (2, specifically) items that I've always found interesting, converted for Old-School Essentials and similar OSR retroclones, in a handy d20 table.

These are not "faithful" conversions. Every item has 1 to 3 special properties, not 10+. They are my interpretation of each item, when translated into a simpler game like Old-School Essentials. 

d20 Unique Items

1. Stormshield: Shield +1. All fire, cold and lightning damage is halved.
2. Magefist: Iron gauntlets. Fire spells that inflict damage cause +1d6 damage (can be used by any class).
3. Duriel's Shell: Plate armor +3. +1 to all saves, +1 hit point per level (max +10).
4. Highlord's Wrath : Amulet. The wearer gains one extra melee attack every round.
5. Ormus Robes: Fire, cold, and lightning spells that inflict damage cause +1d6 damage.
6. Ravenfrost: Ring. Cold damage heals the wearer by the same amount, instead of harming them. Cold spells and effects never affect the wearer in any negative way.
7. Skin of the Viper Magi: Leather armor +2. +2 to saves versus spells.
8. Steelrend: Steel gauntlets. Metal weapons inflict +2 damage (may be used by all classes).
9. Mara's Kaleidoscope: Amulet. +2 to all ability scores.
10. Metalgrid: Amulet. +2 to melee attacks, +2 to AC. May summon a Bronze Golem (2d4 charges).
11. The Cat's Eye: Amulet. +3 AC versus ranged attacks.
12. Windforce: longbow +2. May fire 2 arrows per round, range is doubled.
13. Thundergod's Vigor: Belt. Lightning damage heals the wearer by the same amount, instead of harming them. Bare hands melee attacks inflict +1d8 lightning damage.
14. Halaberd's Reign: Helm. When worn by a fighter or barbarian, all their retainers gain +1 to melee attacks and damage and +1 to Loyalty.
15. Sparkling Mail: Chain mail +2. +2 to saves versus lightning-based spells and attacks; lightning damage from spells and attacks is reduced by 1.
16. Iceblink: Chain mail +2. +2 to saves versus cold-based spells and attacks; cold damage from spells and attacks is reduced by 1.
17. Venom Ward: Plate mail +1. +2 to saves versus poison.
18. Leviathan: Plate mail +2. Indestructible. Grants Strength 18.
19. Azurewrath: Crystal longsword +2. Indestructible. Deals +1d4 cold damage. All undead in melee range suffer 1d4 holy damage at the beginning of every round.
20. The Grandfather: Two handed sword +2. +3 hit point per level (max +30).

Into Old School? Check out my other OSR posts!