Some Thoughts On Using The World Of The Lost Adventure Source Book By Rafael Chandler With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg System

So last night it was time to get together with friends and start talking campaign development and DM round robin duties. World of the Lost somehow became the center of the conversation last night and beer was involved but it was a productive evening. Here's how things went down.

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 Set Up & Use For World Of The Lost
Sometimes you've got to use whatever resources you've got at hand and sometimes it takes a friend to point out the obvious to a dungeon master. So last night I got together with a few of my friends for a DM meeting and get together IE we were watching movie and having a B.S. session. The World Of the Lost book by Mr. Rafael Chandler  was out on the table and we had 'The Sword & The Sorcerer' in the background along with Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea with us. One of the newest DM's is a twenty four year old young lady whose only recently become a DM after taking over for her husband whose been down with an illness. She brought some incredible energy to the table and the infusion has been like fresh blood on the alter of our old school campaigns.


"So why does this whole thing have to take place in 1551? And why can't we simply have this lost African world with all of this cool stuff as a part of another location?" "Well, because of it significant to the Age of European exploration and European history which Lamentations likes to take advantage of. The idea of using and grounding real world history in addition to create a more cohesive whole for an old school campaign  and all of that rot."  "Yeah but why are we tied to it?" "I mean it seems kinda limiting for our purposes and you've got this great resource to throw into the mix"  If Hyperborea is a shadow world or some other such setting of Earth then why couldn't World of the Lost's PC options from character generation expansion, new spells, equipment, regional weaponry, dark magic, techno science fantasy secrets, and all of that be a part of this upcoming game. There are some options for  warrior  PC classes and that I want for my character"
Suddenly the Sword and the Sorcerer movie went off and out came the note books. We were off and running. The ideas were flowing faster then the beer and in fact the beer went away and out came the tea. We were at it until late.



So the set up in World of the Lost goes something like this; "Central Africa, 1551. The metalworkers of Awka rise in prominence, even as the Kingdom of Nri declines. Every year, the Awka who dwell in the shadow of the Great Plateau deliver their tribute to the gods that dwell there. To acquire this treasure for themselves, the adventurers must face great beasts like the gbahali, mokele-mbembe, and the kholomodumo. Then they must brave a dungeon where memory is an illusion and time is a weapon. No sane person would ever attempt this. But a thousand years of tribute paid in silver."
So this is a 17th century fictional Nigeria and its way too tempting to not use as a much more advanced city state and plateau in Hyperborea especially with some extreme and weird pulpy resources in the mix. Would the mix of AS&SH and World of the Lost change up anything. Not really at all. We started looking into 15 mm figures as an option at our table to start saving costs and more. The idea has been something that we've been toying with for quite sometime now. Khurasan Miniatures makes some excellent ranges of fifteen MM figures that will suit our purposes.


 Now to back connect the whole premise of this style of campaign what was discussed last night was to take the whole premise of the Forgotten Fane of the Coiled Goddess by +Joe Salvador.  and then sprinkle trade artifacts from World of the Lost throughout the adventure leading the PC's into the next leg of a mega campaign run. The quasi Orientalist slant of the Forgotten Fane has some damn fine weird dinosaur resources that would fit quite nicely into the World of the Lost. But, but, how could we do that? What possible way is there to fit these two OSR resources together?  There are problems and situations that both products bring to the table as we shall see.

   The Khirima Connection & Beyond  
  World of the Lost allows the DM to create their own version of Khirima from the ground up for campaign construction that means  cities, towns, and tons of wilderness options. All of this can be expanded up on the fantastic maps that come with this adventure sourcebook. If we are looking at World of the Lost as adventure and campaign construction set for a game such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea suddenly Khirima becomes a very credible threat against ANY of the other nation states within the Hyperborea setting. Khirima has a 17th century African history and background. These were extremely dangerous players on the African stage of history dominating those tribes and areas around them. This means that either Khirima needs to be a lost world setting on its own or a major player controlling vast territories in the game setting of Hyperborea


Khirima (kurr-EE-mah) is the capital of a large kingdom surrounded by villages and towns for many miles. So there are going to be tons of options on the table for adventure opportunities for a party from men and women across a vast swath of a sword and sorcery campaign. You could add into the mix either a traditional Lamentations of the Flame Princess party of adventurers or something on the level of a traditional AS&SH party which is right at the moment the route my players seem to be leaning towards. Here are ten possible reasons for mixing the two OSR products:

1. An incredibly rich lost world setting that might keep a campaign going for years with a dire and richly familiar but completely out there system. 
2. The World of the Lost setting gives a cohesive city state to adventure in and background to sew the campaign together. 
3. Not the usual D&D monsters even with dinosaurs and African legends there's lots of room for the gonzo adventure antics to seep in. 
4. The old school asthetic is alive and well in this campaign and it easily lends itself to incorporating tradition D&D monsters and elements. 
5. Potential to bring over the extremely dark LoFP magick aspects and still keep traditional campaigns intact. 
6. This setting could be used as an extreme fringe setting for the Dark Albion campaign empire to be explored and as a potential war point for future campaigns 
7. This mix of settings could be used as a shadow world past the 'Borea Winds' for LoFP adventurers to stumble upon and adventure in. This place might also be used for traditional D&D adventurers to explore as a lost world setting. 
8. Entire campaigns could be played here for years and years to come with lots of lethal ulitlity. 
9. This is an excellent setting for a new prehistoric monster or race to be explored in without upsetting your normal campaign. 
10. This  is too damn cool of an idea to not use.