Reconsidering The OSR Free Adventure Resource - Fire Mountain For The Basic Fantasy rpg System Or Your OD&D Style Campaigns

I'm always on the look out for a free adventure for the Basic Fantasy Role Playing game, such adventure always seem to have other uses for retroclone systems .. Take 'Fire Mountain' a seventeen page low level crawl that has elements of both old English elements and several lost world features. Now in the play test phase this adventure features several adventure bits that make it perfect as a low level weekend intro game adventure or as a one shot. This is a low level but very lethal dungeon crawl with ruins, pulpy weirdness, and lots great encounters.

GRAB IT RIGHT HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WEB PAGE
FOR THE PLAY TEST VERSION OF Fire Mountain

The set up goes something like this; "an adventure for low level characters. The party travel to a dragons' graveyard located in a dormant volcano in search of an ingredient that will hopefully allow the court magician to cure a plague that is ravaging the kingdom. In the process they must overcome a tribe of lizardmen and persuade a malicious red dragon to let them go"

All of the maps and everything you need are there ready to go straight out of the gate and the adventure needs to be played. Fire Mountain could easily be connected to Cult of the Reptile God's meta plot to provide an intro into that classic's plot line and keep the pulpy fun going. Or the lizard men of Fire Top Mountain might be another arm of the cult from N1. There are several possibilities in the mix to allow the DM to adapt this adventure to their own campagin and this is one of the strengths of the Basic Fantasy RPG adventures, they work on a number of levels.

If the PC's piece everything together in Fire Top Mountain n adventure they might still be in for
a rough time. This is a perfect module to use another 'gag' that I'm fond of doing with retroclone adventures such as Fire Top Mountain is reusing the same adventure location for multiple games.  Often this is so that adventurers from one game of Lamentations of the Flame Princess might find the corpses of PC's from a Labyrinth Lord game. With some adjustment this is a solid module to convert to Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea, you can easily stick this isle right into the back end of any of the warmer temperate environs  of that game. Another way that this adventure might be worked into the back plot of AS&SH is to have this adventure link up with either Taken from Dunwich or .Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent From North Wind Adventures. In the case of Taken From Dunwich Fire Mountain would have to take place after the events of Taken, and there would have to be several adjustements made for certain monsters in Fire Mountain. For the Charnel Crypt several factors in the adventures time line place Fire Mountain as an addition to or side adventure. The various classic monsters from D&D or Basic Fantasy would have to be modified heavily for their stats and might be one offs from classic Atlantis for AS&SH.
For Lamentations of the Flame Princess or other alternative world  historical games, Fire Mountain might be set out in some backwater location with a bit of volcanic activity such as the borders of Russia or certain smaller island locations in temperate waters. This adventure could be used for a lost world location off the coast of Greenland or Iceland where volcanic activity could easly destory any evidence of it's existence to history.

I've always been a huge fan of lizard men and this adventure takes advantage of those reptile bastards. There is plenty of potential for lots of PC mayhem with Fire Mountain. So do I think that  this adventure is worth your time and efforts? Yes, yes, I do. I think that there is a ton of potential for a DM with a little bit of imagination and some time  to craft this adventure right into the background of their own game campaigns.

DAT artwork not used in Fire Mountain
but since I love lizardmen, its pretty damn iconic

Fire Mountain is a solid old fashioned adventure that hearkens back to older time in gaming and even though is outlined and advertised for the Basic Fantasy Rpg is a nice addition to any old school dungeon master's arsenal of adventures. This is a solid four out of five in my book and needs wider appreciation to get out of the play testing phase and out onto the Basic Fantasy Rpg's roster of polished adventures.