Sunday, July 5, 2015

Review & Commentary On The OSR Adventure Descent into the Candy Crypts From Kort'thalis Publishing For The Crimson Dragon Slayer Rpg or Your Old School Campaigns

Just when you think you've been wondering if you've become far too jaded and gone too far down the old school rabbit hole, the OSR produces something so weird as to take you by the hand and show you weird. In this case,  Descent into the Candy Crypts From Kort'thalis Publishing which has been created for Venger Satanis's Crimson Dragon Slayer game.  Crimson Dragon Slayer is a  scifi, totally 80's, mildly post-apocalyptic, and self-indulgent sword & sorcery roleplaying game turned up to eleven. Then the knob broke off. If you take your games too seriously then your not going to make it past the first random table.
Descent Into the Candy Crypts is a hell of a lot of fun, this is an adventure that harkens back to 80's Saturday morning bright day glow cartoon characters making war, taking slaves, and generally having your PC's caught into the middle of events. It's a mini-module that adds in new races, magic items, and Venger's random playing tables that enable this module to be perfect for replay value. And at three dollars this one actually has plenty of utility value.
Grab It Right Over HERE

Before jumping on the band wagon that this adventure  is perfect for the kids; be warned  that this module  is peppered with profanities and some very weird motivations for your PC's. It has some very interesting cross sections about the realm of the candies, their rivals the fruits, the surrounding regions, and there's even some dungeon crawling thrown in to get  into the old school Saturday morning Crimson Dragon Slayer action.
Part of the backdrop of Descend Into the Candy Crypt goes something like this:
Candies buy and sell slaves as they would milk, sugar,
or eggs. They believe in a master candy race.
Since all others are inferior to them, in their eyes, all
non-candy life is fair game. However, candies take
special pleasure in dominating fruit people (commonly
known as fruities). There has been a longstanding
rivalry between candies and fruities, lasting
generations and poisoning both cultures. Fruities believe
they are sweet enough and that candies are
an unnecessary extravagance. Candies consider
fruit and fruit-based snacks to be a dull reflection of
their own delectable sweetness. And so it goes.
So we get a bit of backhanded campaign rivalry right out of the gate and that's one of the things that keeps Descent Into The Candy Crypts interesting and entertaining.
If Strawberry beserkers, psychotic killer bananas, and Hentai style grape men are your thing, then your in the right adventure.  The puns are flying fast, and the humor is take no prisoners as adventurers are recruited into a world of one part 80's cartoon, three parts of high school humor, and three parts of awesome thrown into a blender on old school high.
After talking with the other half about this module, blenders and juicers of +1 or better were mentioned as possible treasure to be injected into the mix of this module. Which brings up one of the parts of this module, one of the things that Venger injects into his modules are random tables for PC motives and these always dovetail in with the campaign adventure's background. Although played for laughs this is a very well done way of bring in PC's and players with a vested interest of the action. This makes it a very nice add on for OD&D and OD&D style retroclone rpg systems  with plenty of room to customize DICC into your own campaign world. Hell I can even see using this module with Dungeon Crawl Classics with little to no issue at all given the way the adventure is plotted out.
Now believe it or not, this is a pretty tightly plotted module with a nicely done linear plot that takes its backstory, setting, and material  into some interesting turf. I can see this module working with any number of retroclone systems besides Crimson Dragon Slayer, or perhaps Swords and Wizardry, or Fifth Edition D&D as suggested by Venger. With a good bit of tweaking this module could be used with the Toon Rpg.   Or gasp as a completely off the wall unexpected twisted adventure for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg system.  The reasons for the latter choice are pretty simple, given the amount of dimensional hijinks that seem to occur in LoFP and the naughty nature of Descent Into the Candy Crypts, this might be a good fit. Other choices that come to mind are the Mutant Future rpg or Planet Mother $%@er. But is it worth the price of admission? I think so because of three things; the price admission, the presentation, and because of its a great add on module for the Crimson Dragon Slayer rpg.
Given those factors and the utility of  Descent into the Candy Crypts From Kort'thalis Publishing  this is one module that holds much potential for your old school games.

4 comments:

  1. Sweet review, man! (Did you see what I did there?)

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  2. I worry that the PC's will get tooth decay and die , these are some really dangerous and bad pieces of candy and fruit! Rotten apples, berserk oranges and grapes of lust even the strawberries as PC race were something I wasn't expecting. Very sweet inspired adventure design but still very original
    Had a ton of fun going over this one! Great artwork and maps from Monkey Blood Design as well.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, man. If you ever have the chance to run it, let me know. ;)

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  3. I'm going to be taking you up on running Descent Into The Candy Crypts, soon. Believe me I've got some thoughts about the adventure and how to run it inside not only Crimson Dragon Slayer but other OSR systems. Part of the charm of the adventure is the flexibility of setting and utility.

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