Dark Albion: The Rose War Campaign For The Fantastic Heroes And Witchery Rpg System & Your Old School Campaigns Is Out!

So I'm a Fantastic Heroes and Witchery rpg fanatic, ever since the rulebook has been in my grubby little hands I've been going through it, designing with it, breaking the system, putting it back together, and it pretty much has been one of my go to systems. Because it hits that sweet spot between editions for my players.
Now Rpg Pundit has come out with his own game world based on the War Of The Roses. Now I've been not so quietly watching this project of his unfolding for the better part of a year. Now Dark Albion: The Rose War has hit the shelves! And this looks glorious! According to wiki: The Wars of the Roses were a series of dynastic wars for the throne of England. They were fought between supporters of two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet, the houses of Lancaster and York. They were fought in several sporadic episodes between 1455 and 1487. You can add in a dark fantasy element filled with black magick, demons, sorcery, The Fey, adventurers, and much more.
This is the kinda dark and dangerous setting that pulls you into the deep end of the world and asks you and your players to become a part of its brutal and dangerous world.

Dark Albion: The Rose War

But there's more to it from an OSR game standing then simply the above, according to what I've been reading 80% of the book is system neutral, so can be used with most role-playing games. Nonetheless, this book is designed with OSR games in mind, and will run best with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (also available on Lulu), and similar games such as Osric, Swords & Wizardry, etc. This makes it great value for the money. Also there are two covers available the white one above and the darker much more sinister cover with the classic War of the Roses artwork of which I'm a fan. Note that the alternate cover (the black one) is only available on Lulu.

Available right over HERE

But I can already see a ton of folks asking themselves, what can you do with this setting? Well this is not a straight up take on the War of The Roses, instead we've got an alternative Earth with a variant church and some twists into it. According to Pundit's campaign notes there are several suggestions for adventurers Intrigue-based politicking between the White and Red Rose factions with adventurers acting as agents, Warfare-based adventures around the major military campaigns of the war: the PCs being out in the field,and finally, "More conventional 'wilderland exploration' adventures: In Albion, all the fantasy stuff tends to be out on the periphery. So these adventures involved the PCs going to some lonely places in the countryside (The forest of Dean, the Welsh Hills, the Reiver Lands in the north, Sherwood, Scots Land, Transylvania, etc. etc.), and either resolving supernatural dangers for locals (usually based on actual folk tales of the area) or investigating ruins - these are never generic D&D-style dungeons, they always make sense in the Albion context: so you have abandoned manors and castles, or Barrow-Mounds, or Cairns, Mine complexes, Arcadian ruins, temples or catacombs, or ancient Elven sites."  You can read more about his campaign and actual play session experiences right over Here.

Its really the latter part of this that intrigues me, because of its pseudo Arthurian/English mythology name dropping and  feel to it.It ticks all of the right boxes for me and that's why its on the Swords and Stitchery blog and not the Dark Corner blog.
I played a ton of Chaosium's Pendragon rpg and Stormbringer. And when I start seeing the above locations it brings back a flood of memories for me. This is a different beast then say a Ravenloft or one of those second edition TSR pseudo historical books or their mythological lines. This is a dedicated alternative world with a completely reworked campaign setting and system.
Now its going to take me a week or so to get my hardback copy of  Dark Albion: The Rose War Campaign. And this is a huge book with a metric ton of material, including new classes, magick, monsters, adventure locations, factions, demons, spells, and the list goes on. The damn thing is two hundred and eighty three pages and you bet your ass I want a physical book! There is a pdf but I want a real book not a pdf, call me old fashioned but I'm just that sort of DM. There is a pdf that just became available on Drivethrupg but please don't bother sending it too me. I'd love a physical book instead and don't want to spoil the surprise of the setting and what it does. 
So I can't wait to get my hands on this one and there's all kinds of special offers on this week and such. Take full advantage of them. And I've been watching this one for a long while.