Falkrest Abbey!

Falkrest Abbey is a level 1–3 dungeon adventure for Old-School Essentials. Written by Andrea Tupac Mollica and Giuseppe Rotondo, with original art by Zaira Diana.

We've just released it, and for now it's marked $1.

The legend: The forlorn Falkrest Abbey in the icy Lune Mountains is where the Queens and Kings of Yore used to be crowned and buried, along with their treasures. According to legends, the Fountain of St. Brynedd still pours its miraculous water somewhere inside. But what caused the fall of the blessed Abbey?

Content:

• A 19 room dungeon with exploration, combat, mystery, puzzles and NPCs
• Encounters and events along the way on the icy Lune Mountains
• Several hooks and alternate outcomes with possible repercussions on your campaign
• 3 new monsters
• 2 new magic items, plus one almighty magic vial of miraculous water
• Original art by Zaira Diana
• Map drawn with dungeonscrawl

Utility:

• Treasure & monsters overview sorted by room
• Interactive hyperlinked map and index
• Interactive hyperlinked map snippets accompanying room descriptions
• Printable hand-outs (optional)
• Extra files: VTT friendly maps without room numbers, monsters, secrets doors etc

Print version: Currently not planned.

Why $1: While we've done our best to create a professional product, at this time we are happy to share our adventure with as wide an audience as possible. If you want to support us, please consider rating or reviewing Falkrest Abbey on DrivethruRPG or your socials, and maybe check out the other Axian Spice products!

Content warning: Contains graverobbing, necromancy, flayed zombies (trying to kill you), golden nose prosthetics, and a pool of clotted blood. Oh and a frozen dwarf.

Media & Reviews

Andrea and I talk about Falkrest Abbey with awesome host Logar the Barbarian at the Wobblies & Wizards Podcast

"The adventure is a cornucopia of gleefully executed dungeon crawling stables. Falkrest Abbey is not an exotic module, and it doesn’t try to be. It is a brilliant piece of earnest, uncomplicated, and utterly joyous classical fantasy adventure purity. In a way, it almost feels like something from another age, reformatted to modern OSE standards." - Augury Ignored blog review

"Fuck that thing. Errr, I mean, yeah, uh … Good Job! This is a decent adventure." - Tenfootpole blog review [scored a glorious "No Regerts"]

Get Falkrest Abbey at DTRPG

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...