Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers Of Hyperborea rpg System + The Psychedelic Fantasies #1 Adventure Beneath The Ruins - Actual Play Event



So tonight I got together with some old friends Steven and his brother Mike  came to town, called me up last second and wanted to play with a couple of their friends a bit of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.


Now ever since last year and me running AS&SH locally many of my friends and players have purchased the rpg themselves. That also means that they had also purchased the adventures that went along with the rpg system. Now that's not a problem because I've been working on a few of the details of the Accursed Atlantis wasteland setting. That being said, I needed an adventure location fast. They were picking me up from work at seven. So I pulled a bit of a back trick when I took Beneath the Ruins, an old school minimalist pamphlet by Alex Fotinakes and published by Geoffrey McKinney's Psychedelic Fantasies series and dusted it off. There several interesting things about the Psychedelic Fantasies; these are complete adventure locations unto themselves. You can set them anywhere and then pull the trigger. The back story of the adventure continues along its merry way regardless of the adventurer's actions. They can blunder into the action of the Beneath The Ruins and their going to be drawn into the unfolding  action. And that's exactly what happened. There's plenty of room for DYI D&D with this adventure. A sentence or two about certain bits in the adventure and then its up to the DM and players to fill in the gaps. There were seven players in tonight's game.  And almost right out of the gate the PC's were in serious trouble.


The party was drawn into the cross hairs of two rival wasteland warlords and one of the PC's family members was held for ransom while the party had to retrieve an item from one of the adventure locations of Beneath the Ruins. Two pizzas later the adventure hummed right along. There were several encounters that had the PC's in a Robert E Howard Red Nails sort of situation made the mix of warriors and wizards nervous to say the least.
This is a pure site based adventure and there for can easily be stuck into the wastes of any old school game but because of the nature of the rooms, encounters, monsters, etc. most of this adventure comes under the science fantasy banner.  This makes it especially easy to convert over to AS&SH. The monsters were weird enough and some of the treasures as to keep the jaded players interested till the very end.


I've reviewed Beneath The Ruins before and so I knew what to expect and to act accordingly. It wasn't a bad night in the least with at least two near PC's deaths. So that went right according to plan. AS&SH is ideal suited to the maximum amount of carnage. More the week after next when the guys come back into town again from Maine. 

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