ZineQuest 4: The Old-School Essentials Projects!

 ZineQuest4 is happening now, with 70 active projects as of today.

Lots of cool projects, but apparently less than usual, what with the decision to skip February, and August being the month of Gencon, and people trying to be on holiday, maybe.

But still more than enough projects to make a list! So let's get it going.

The Old-School Essentials ZineQuest4 Projects - plus a bunch of not-zine projects worth checking!

Please note this list includes active projects as well as some in pre-launch.

Delver Issue 5 - The fifth installment of the zine series that provides LOTS of random tables for the OSE referee. Each issue also includes an adventure. The previous issues are available at DrivethruRPG.

Inn to the Deep - A five-booklets deal by Bill Edmund, offering four dungeons, a bestiary, and an inn connecting the whole thing. Check out those sweet annotated maps!

The Beast of Borgenwold - A level 1-3 adventure with a big bad reanimated taxidermied manticore! Written by Harry Menear, with cool art by Yuri Perkowski.

Zines With Class For Old-School Essentials - Offers 5 new classes and advanced races for OSE, including a chimpanzee folk and necromancer. 5 more classes are listed as stretch goals, and each class is featured in its own individual zine. By Appendix N Entertainment.

Gary's Appendix - A zine with articles by various authors, offering advice, inspiration and guidance for OSE referees. At $1 fr the PDF, it's definitely worth checking.

The Scourge of Northland - By Jacob Fleming, a new adventure module in the same vein as Tower Silveraxe and Valley of the Manticore.

Blackmore: a high fantasy Rock & Roll zine for 5E & OSE - A zine with three connected adventures, inspired by the Rainbow rock band albums.

Worldbreaker / Dark Tides of Zaratos - A HUGE double-feature campaign offering a pirate/psionic campaign setting and adventure (Zaratos), AND a sourcebook to end your campaign world with a bang (Worldbreaker). The whole campaign actually delivers 6 zines!

Into the Space Worm - A dungeon adventure inside a colossal space worm, from Knight Owl Publishing, authors of the Old School & Cool zine series.

Old-School Solo Adventures - Four zines each with a scenario that can be played solo like choose-your-own-adventure books, or used in regular group play with a referee.

Secret of the Black Crag - Written by Chance Dudinack, author of The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford. Nuff said.

BIG EYE CHUNGUS - From Levi Combs (check the Phylactery zine!), a zine dedicated to those tentacled, big-eyed, floating sphere monsters of the deep. Not officially associated with Old-School Essentials, but still close enough to make it into the list, as the OSE Advanced Rules has the eye of terror monsters available. You know, those with beauty in their eye...

The Den of Nightmares and Sweets - A "spoopy" adventure for low level characters.

Loot Hunters - System agnostic set of regional, city and dungeon maps, with a great old school feel and a bargain €1 pdf pledge.

The Medieval Margin-agerie Zine - A generically osr of bizarre content, by Paul Baldowsky, acclaimed author of award-winning The Dee Sanction.

Ogre's 11 - Not OSE-licensed, but a zine with heist scenarios by Mark Finn. Plus I love puns.

Black God's Kiss - An OSE adventure and "microgame" based on C.L. Moore's tale The Black God's Kiss (still in prelaunch as I write, so this is all I know).

Have I missed something? A new project has launched? Hit the comments so I can update the list

Axian Library is available! And Falkrest Abbey Is Coming! And More!

 Five months after a stunning Kickstarter, the Axian Library zine collection PDF has been sent to backers and is available for everyone at DriveThruRPG. 

I've got to say I'm very happy with the result, and hope all the backers will enjoy it.

Next step is preparing the file for the print version and getting the print proof from DTRPG. Once the proof is ok, all print level backers will receive their vouchers for the printed book, and the print version will become available for everyone too.

New Projects!

In the meantime, I've already started working on new projects! I've teamed up with Andrea Mollica to design a bunch (2? 3? 4?) of new dungeon adventures for Old-School Essentials.

The first one is Falkrest Abbey and the text is already pretty much finalized. If you're in the Old-School Essentials Facebook group you might have had a chance to grab an early playtest PDF.

Falkrest Abbey is an Old-School Essentials dungeon adventure for characters level 1-3, and features about 20 rooms with non linear exploration, puzzles, decision making & problem solving, a bit of faction play, and a bunch of new monsters and magic items.

For Falkrest Abbey I've decided to ask my friend Zaira Diana to draw the cover and interior art. Zaira, Andrea and I have already worked together on Guardians of Sol-Tau, and I'm very happy to have her again with us.

This is the cover art she's concocted for us: meet Grusom the cursed abbot. I love this piece!

And since the Abbey is already written and playtested, Andrea and I are already at work on another adventure: The Mouth, based on the ideas from this post.

We're in the middle of fine-tuning everything, but most of what's in that post has found a place in the adventure, and can't wait to begin internal playtest!

We'll also probably offer a public playtest version in the next weeks on the official Old-School Essentials facebook group...

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!)

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!

------

Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

Morrigan for the Frost Spire adventure

 Last week I reviewed the very very good adventure The Frost Spire by Jacob Hurst.

As pointed out in the review, for some reason the module doesn't include statistics for the final encounter, so I thought, why not make them?

As I wrote in the review, the quickest way is to generate a high level elf with the official OSE online tools, so let's start with that.  Considering all there is to the scenario (which is for a level 3 group), I have no problem shooting for a level 10 elf. Of course a less powerful version might be viable as well, but I really would not go below level 6. 

Here's what I got:

Level 10 Elf (NPC)

Armour Class 2 [17] (plate mail + ring)

Hit Points 36

Attacks 1 × crossbow (1d6) or 1 × spell

THAC0 12 [+7]

Movement Rate 60' (20')

Saves D6 W7 P8 B8 S8

Alignment Lawful

STR 16 INT 9 WIS 10

DEX 10 CON 7 CHA 10

Spells

read magic, shield, floating disc, mirror image, esp, mirror image, fly, protection from evil 10’ radius (mu), invisibility 10’ radius, dimension door, growth of plants, wall of fire, wall of stone, transmute rock to mud (transmute mud to rock)

Items

Broom of Flying, Potion of Heroism, Ring of Protection +1, Spell scroll (protection from evil 10’ radius (c), cure disease (cause disease), find traps, growth of animal, create water) , Crossbow bolts +1 (9)

Is that ok? Well I guess it could work if in a hurry, but this is not the case here, so I'll try and make it more in tune with the scenario.

That STR 16 doesn't really seem to match with the art in the adventure; and Morrigan's job makes me want to change the Alignment to Neutral.

I don't like the magic items I got, so I'll try and put some more frost-themed stuff here and there. Ok I like the flying broom, as it is a very convenient means of traveling to and from the spire, and offers a great option for retreat in case of hostile adventurers, so I'll leave it there.

A quick search on the OSE SRD for "cold", "ice" and "frost" gives me two things worth adding: a wand of cold and the wall of ice spell.

Some other cold-themed items? I have a bunch in this post with Diablo-inspired magic items: the Ravenfrost ring seems the right fix, as well as the Skin of the Viper Magi armor.

So here's the edited girl:

Morrigan - Level 10 Elf 

Armour Class 5 [14] (leather armour +2)

Hit Points 34

Attacks 1 × short sword (1d6+2, +1 from STR) or 1 × spell

Base THAC0 12 [+7], 9 [+10] with short sword +2 and +1 from STR

Movement Rate 60' (20')

Saves D6 W7 P8 B8 S8 (+2 to all from armour; +1 vs spells from WIS)

Alignment Neutral

STR 13 INT 9 WIS 14

DEX 10 CON 7 CHA 16

Spells

read magic, shield, floating disc, mirror image, esp, mirror image, fly, protection from evil 10’ radius (mu), invisibility 10’ radius, dimension door, growth of plants, wall of ice, wall of stone, transmute rock to mud (transmute mud to rock)

Magic Items

• Broom of Flying
• Short sword +2, Charm Person 3 times a week
• Wand of cold (7 charges left)
• Skin of the Viper Magi (leather armour +2, +2 to saves vs spells)
• 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)

Strategy

Well the first thing to do to run the encounter decently is to carefully read the page about Morrigan and prepare to defend her position and her job with discussion. If conversation fails to end the encounter, it's time smash the PCs.

With this set up, I can see Morrigan attempting various strategies if conversation with the PCs turns to violence. She can Charm with her sword; turn invisible; dimension door to safety; or fly out of the room and lock the party inside inside with a wall spell, then gather reinforcements such as the harpies or the bear. Or she could just mirror image and then hack at the group with her sword or freeze them to death with the wand.

----

Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!