Past Incarnations, Free Classic Adventure Fiction Downloads, Domain Management, & Old School Campaigns

I was speaking with an old friend of mine last night about Appendix N from the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. What came up in conversation was the fact that there have always been connections within shared universes & heroes of fiction's incarnations. The first name that popped up was Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champions books. But the challenge was in using some less traditional sources for campaign building.


But actually the idea goes back much further and crosses into the Lost Worlds genre in several places. One of my favorites is the  prehistoric adventures of James Allison's pre-incarnations in the Aesir stories of Robert E.Howard. Here the protagonist James Allison is a crippled shell of a man dying in the heat of the Texas day who can remember all of his past incarnations including Niord who leads his stout warriors across the face of the world until they come upon a nation of Picts and then things get really bloody. Swords swing bodies fly and then reason takes over one of the Pictish tribesmen is spared & our hero's tribe settles into a former valley of the Cataclysm. The two tribes intermarry things settle down, time moves on, and eventually a splinter group goes out into the world to settle into another ruined jungle valley. This is the set up for the rest of the story as Niord goes out and faces not one monster but in fact four the last one being the Lovecraftian horror of the Worm. This thing is something out of a Lovecraftian nightmare, another of Howard's Mythos hold overs hiding out in a hidden valley. The worm leaves quite the impression though as a thing born from the imagination of Howard via his own take on his mythos.
"... a night-born demoniac intelligence such as men in dreams vaguely sense throbbing titanically in the black gulfs outside our material universe."


Down Load The James Allison Collection
By Robert E. Howard HERE
There are a lot of things to mine from the story. The second James Allison story in the public domain is Garden of Fear, it touches on many of the same themes as Valley of the Worm. But many Howard fans don't consider it in the league of Valley but it touches on another incarnation of James Allison & has a few trappings that can be mined for old school gaming. According to Wiki;The Garden of Fear and Other Stories is an anthology of fantasy and science fiction stories anonymously edited by William L. Crawford. It was published as A Crawford Publication in 1949 in an edition of 48,000 copies. The H. P. Lovecraft story first appeared in the magazine The Rainbow. The other stories originally appeared in the magazine Marvel Tales."
Howard has many of his central concepts on show in these stories such as the migrations of his Hyborian tribes and races, hidden gems of lost world valleys filled with steaming jungles & mysterious god like survivors of his Cataclysm. Many of these tales of Howard have entire eons, city states, heroes, and eons separated by cycles of death and rebirth with only ancestral blood ties binding our heroes together. Or so it would seem but in Kings of the Night by Robert Howard we have Bran Mak Morn conjuring up the spirit of King Kull to do battle with the Romans! Some of the  themes of racial superiority don't go over well today, they can be taken in stride as part of that era's outlook. They are are relics of their time and deserve to be left there but that doesn't take away from the fact that these stories kick ass and are still a fun read even today.
The second offering today is "The Eternal Lover" (The Eternal Lover Part 1) All-Story Weekly, March 7, 1914 which is an Edgar Rice Burroughs novella that appeared in All- Story Weekly and could be considered one of Burroughs shared universe Lost World/ Custer novels. The Custer novels are interesting because events of the Mad King happen between the events of 'The Eternal Lovers" or that is to say;"While the four Custer sibling novellas were first published in an alternating fashion; chronologically-speaking, the events of the two halves of The Eternal Lover/Savage occur between the two halves of The Mad King" Barney Custer is cast into the role of the king of Lutha set against the backdrop of WWI and the Eternal Lover comes right into the middle of the events of the novel.


You Can Download The Mad King HERE
The Eternal Savage concerns,"Barney's sister Victoria Custer. These stories take place between Barney's two Luthan adventures, when he and his sister are the guests of Tarzan on the latter's African estate. When cave man Nu is released from suspended animation, Virginia discovers that she is the reincarnation of his great love Nat-ul. The story covers her adventures with Nu."

You Can Down load The Eternal Savage From Gutenberg Australia as All four novellas—as they were serialized in All-Story Weekly—are in the public domain in the United States but check your home country for details before downloading.

Nu is no one to screw with as a cliff dweller from 100,000 years ago whose kept up his hunt with Oo a sabertooth tiger of deadly aspect. There's all sorts of other worldly weirdness about the Eternal Savage but the bottom line here is that time as it stands in the ERB universe is flexible and the action in the Eternal Savage is fast paced with lots of prehistoric hi jinks to keep the reader interested. There's also a ton of ideas here to mine the least of which being to take PC's out of their context and place them as their needed in an adventure.


So what does this have to do with OSR gaming? Quite a bit actually, one of the topics that came up in conversation were the links between sword & sorcery & Ruritanian romance. The
Ruritanian romance is defined as follows;"
Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name.^[1] Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty,^[1] although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship." 
One thing that I've noticed with Ruritanian romance sword & sorcery cross over games is that domain management is key for the end campaign game. This means that DM's have to be ready for domain mangement when one of their PC's seats their behinds on the throne.

For domain management in such Ruritanian romance sword & sorcery cross over games I'd use either Dark Albion The Rose War or Adventurer, Conqueror, King, or both since these systems actually play very well together.
I was recently involved in an OSR game with my buddy Steve where we were all playing AS&SH Hyperborean castaways facing down the terrors of Basic Fantasy's Monkey Island while the real villains of the lost world adventure were actually Dark Albion royals hell bent on claiming the island for their king. We were helping the liege of the island to be restored to her rightful throne. The Dark Albion royals had guns and there were other time lost castaways on the island who were incarnations or parodies of famous sword & sorcery figures. While it was a fun game there were implications that the royalty of the island was not what she appeared to be.  There was also an indication that we the party might actually be incarnations of WWI soldiers ourselves lost to time and space.

There were subtle & evil magicks involved as our party came across several items that the players recognized as WWI era items scattered about in the queen's chambers but it was a book of real world black magick that sealed the deal for the players. The game however has yet to be resolved but what it showed me was that potential for mixing and matching classic old school fiction and OSR material.  All of this ties in with my Atlantandria Port City of Accursed Atlantis as the PC's have unfinished business with some wily Dark Albion merchants there.

Commentary On Inhumanoid Episode Eight Cult of Darkness (aired November 2, 1986) As A Quick Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaign Adventure Point

 

So last night I grabbed my copy of the Inhumanoids VHS tape and threw it into the VCR, fired up the old beast and randomly came into episode #8 Cult of Darkness. Suddenly I was blasted back in time to another era of awesome! Even though the Inhumanoids cartoon followed a very specific timeline, this was one that I've been wanting to rewatch for a long while and the awesome can't be contained within this cartoon!
You've got the Soviets double crossing the Earth Core & branding their new buddy Tank a traitor after having cut a deal with local Granite tribe. Tank meanwhile goes off to kill Metlar himself and complete his mission. But where this episode really ramps up is when investigative reporter Hector Ramirez of Twenty Questions. goes to  expose a local cult of  Brother Druid whose recruiting local San Franciso Bay teens faster then you can say disposable army. Brother druid is inciting the kids into acts of vandalism, running wild in the streets, and general mayhem. All of these kids are being recruited in an abandoned sky scraper and then the final revelation is made when D'Compose bursts through a wall.  There's a mind control gas that's been affecting the kids and of course  Blackthorne Shore is behind the whole scheme.
Herc and Auger are d'composed and its up to Earth Core to save their team mates as well as the zombified teens. There's also a subplot of a chemical formula that will allow D'compose and his zombie minions to survive in sunlight.



There is a lot here to mine for an old school post apocalyptic campaign from the ground up. You've got the Inhumanoids who are essentially post apocalpytic mutant god things recruiting the local flesh slugs(humans) into a scheme of an undead army. You've got a vast array of dungeon locations with the underground cathedral being used as a recruiting point for a wasteland location not to mention Skellweb, D'Compose's dead city. The zombies here would be close to giant Ju Ju zombies from AD&D and they're free willed almost akin to the Deadites from Army of Darkness. Skellweb, D'Compose's dead city is a whole underground adventure campaign location unto itself. Especially given that you've got these things running around it.




Does the episode make a whole lot of sense? Not in the least but its got some great ideas in it to mine for an old school campaign :

1. Modern cults straight out of a post apocalyptic wasteland with potential as a cross over point for both Goblinoid Games Labyrinth Lord & Mutant Future. These mutant god things are perfect stand in for demons or other boss monsters. 
2. These cults & groups are perfect DCC fodder especially Crawling Under A Broken Moon 
3. The super science relics of the Inhumanoid series are perfect examples of artifacts bolstered by hi tech junk yard finds. They even use a ton of 80's stuff to form Tank's armor. 
4. There is a quick random encounter with giant bats! 
5. This episode has some amazing connections between the front organizations & the god things showing how such an organization reaches down into the streets and urban locations of the cartoon. 
6.  Cult of Darkness presents a good plot to use with any old school post apocalypse game as a quick jump point to get your favorite demon or undead horror to present to your players.

This blog post is not a challenge to the copyright & trademark of the Inhumanoids cartoon holders or Hasbro properties.

1d20 Random Sacred Guardians Of The Wastelands Encounter Table For Your Old School Campaigns

There are places in the wastelands where adventurers, outlaws, & wanderers shouldn't go. There are things from the angles of time and nightmare that stalk these places hunting for the souls of men. Guardians that were set upon the world before it burned within its own fires. There are echoes of guardians painted in artwork and with the soul fire of the planes, these are the sacred guardians of the wastelands & they do hunger.



These life forces are summoned from the half forgotten dream energies that course through the blank spaces of the universes. They can be called forth with certain twisting weird ways of the gods of Law but beware for these are alien orders & they come from strange hidden realms of the gods of Law themselves. Many a cleric has found themselves infected with these strange energies for arrogantly thinking themselves immune to the dripping weird orders of the gods of Law. For what man knows of the order & the ways of the gods?  Out in the wastelands these pieces of art sing the praises of Order even as they guard the last bastions of the Ancients. There is a 30% chance of a character becoming infected with the songs of Law for interacting & even studying these pieces of artwork in the wastelands. The songs of Law & Order will haunt their dreams & only a remove curse or a limited wish has a chance of removing the cursed infected weirdness from a PC cursed by this horror. Often times PC's will act as beacons for these sacred guardians as the song plays across the wounded mind of a PC. Sacred guardians often haunt the byways and ruins where law once flourished and even in places where super science thrived. The aura of law attracts these spirits and life forms which continue to protect these bastions in the wastes. Here then are 1d20 random sacred guardians ghostly encounters to bedevil your adventurers in the wastelands.

1. An ancient pack of ghostly sacred tigers & cats who prowl these ruins in search of trespassers & outlaws. They breath fire and kill anyone they can catch. They also can trace any relic or sacred object taken from this ruin for over a hundred miles. 
2. A herd of  bison from the god of home and order who guards this place, these animals appear each night and glow with an unearthly aura of the gods. They love to stampede over the bodies of evil men and adventurers tearing apart the souls of such fools. 
3. A flock of ravens belonging to the soul of the A.I. of this place, these entities are called from the depths of its unconsciousness and appear at night to guard against any who would violate the sacred sleep of this entity. 
4. The darkest depths of this place ring with the hoof beats of ghostly goats who actually can throw out bolts of electricity for 1d6 points of damage. The goats are sacred to a lawful version of a thunder god who has left them here for centuries. 
5. Giant glowing insects sacred to the termite goddess who guards this place. These insects will consume anyone taking relics from this place and curse anyone who violates these sacred grounds. 
6. A giant saber toothed tiger sacrificed eons ago has had its spirit awakened & now prowls the grounds around this ruin guarding the sacred scrolls. People who sleep within one mile will have their dreams disturbed by dreams of giant cat like creatures. 
7. A giant ghost of a thunder bird haunts this valley its cries echo across dreams even as its talons rip apart those who violate and trespass on these lands. The twelve scared objects of Order rest here. 
8. 1d20 small cat like carnivores haunt these ruins their spirits moving across time & space to rip apart whatever comes their way except priests of Law who serve the great spirit of order.  
9. The sacred spider spirit that moves the stars into place in the sky here watches for intruders. Those who come to plunder this cemetery of the ancients will find themselves cast within the low sky webs of this spirit. 
10. The ancient A.I. each night summons the totem spirit of order in the form of an ancient sky whale. The whale floats along silently until it unleashes its 1d20  dream ghosts of former warriors of the ruins here. They ride in on wings of moonlight. 
11. The ground swims with the spirits of giant worm like humanoid things that are actually the guardians of these ruins once a laboratory of super science & the sorceries of Law. 
12. A herd of the sacred bulls of Zeus guard this place their thunderous hoof beats echo with the thunder of his vengeance against those who would violate this place. 
13. 1d20 giant floating ghostly eyes of Law haunt this place supposedly the torn apart pieces of the eyes of order that watched over the ancients. 
14. A monstrous lizard like horror haunts this place its skin marked with the sacred symbols of order. The thing rampages across the wastes at night tearing apart any chaos or outlaws it finds. Its radioactive claw prints mar the ground where it has passed. 
15. 1d20 vulture like reptile birds dedicated to the ancient goddess of the wastelands bare the marks of order now and guard this place against all who would steal the sacred relics of law from a small shrine here. 
16. A huge cloud creature created in the days of the ancients of an alien order has come into existence here. There are rumors of the death of a god of order but none have proven it. The thing kills oath breakers and tress passers with a poisonous touch and choking gas attacks. The thing can flow into the smallest cracks. Only symbols of order drive it off. 
17. A small spirit of a little girl haunts this place demanding order; she curses anyone foolish enough to ignore her warnings. She can kinetically hurl objects weighing hundreds of pounds around like toys. Many living adventurers and mutants have become her victims. 
18. A ghostly white bison like creature haunts this place summoned from the dreams of a small boy priest of law who dwells here. The thing is terror incarnate and will hunt down anyone it deems unfit of Law. 
19. A tri headed god of law haunts this place a shadow of its former self but now a spirit of law and order tearing apart anyone who breaks the laws of these sacred ruins of the ancients. 
20. A black ball like guardian of order who haunts the lands here and comes from the nightmares of its prey. This ball like guardian can curse those who cross it or use a ray of order that does 1d8 points of damage to anything within 50 feet of it. 

There is a 30% chance of summoning a sacred guardian when coming within a hundred feet or so of the ruins that these creatures are charged with protecting. Sacred guardians are summoned with a special 4th level cleric of law spell or a monster summoning spell with an offering of no less then 8000 gold pieces in magic items or wasteland relics. Certain caves in the wastelands are often small shrines dedicated to order and feature artwork where these spirits dwell.

All ideas & opinions are copyrighted & trade marked to the author as well as Dark Corner Productions. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only.

Running 'The Pay What You Want' Dungeon From A Distant Star Adventure From Robertson Games As Part Of The Warlord Of The Outer Worlds Actual Play Event

Today was one of those days that I wasn't quite up to my usual standard of gaming; I had taken my father to a new doctor today some forty miles away and after coming back I was completely mentally blown or so I thought. I suddenly looked and it was seven PM and my players were out in my driveway for tonight's Warlords of the Outer Worlds game. I was caught with my pants down or was I? I hadn't designed the interior of the ruins of a Dwarven tower that in last week's game the PC's had discovered.
So I calmly opened my note book and there right in the middle of my binder was Dungeon From A Distant Star From  Robertson Games

GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

I've run this dungeon back to front so many times since it came out in 2011 and tonight it got turned into the interior structure of the Dwarven citadel/tower. My PC's weren't happy at all especially coming across some of the science fantasy weirdness of this classic science fantasy dungeon. Why? Well because the dungeon features some very unexpected sci fi style weirdness with: A flying saucer buried underground for hundreds of years lies a spaceship from the 3rd planet in the Altair system. While heavily damaged, the ship still has power for many of its systems and doors and lights are still fully operational in most sections. Will you be the first to explore The Dungeon From A Distant Star and uncover it's otherworldly secrets?An old school one-page dungeon including dungeon map, legend, wandering monsters, random tables and descriptions for 23 separate rooms. This module also features some of my all time favorite AD&D monsters &  fan favorites such as the vegepygmy and the Flumph as an alien race encounters!


With a bit of creativity the party of adventurers managed to make it through most of the major parts of the dungeon and into the control room where the remains of several Dwarven heroes awaited them and the weird final boss. They faced down Grey zombies and other wonderfully weird undead plus a boss alien undead thing in the center of the control room but they only managed to get through half of the dungeon tonight. They didn't happen to come across the room of vegepygmy tribesmen yet. They've also released at least one beakotopus after a pitched battle with android adherers in one of the saucer's corridors.



All in all using Dungeon From A Distant star was downright fun and as a quick pick up adventure this one went down quickly, it's material fit the over all style and tone of the campaign setting. I can't recommend this classic adventure enough to those who want to fight against some unusual monsters in a wholly original dungeon sci fi adventure location. Five out of five for this OSR classic!

So grab some dice and remember to make the save!

Free OSR PC Resources With First Edition Character Classes By Leonaru For First Edition AD&D, OSRIC Or Your Favorite Retroclone

A couple of years ago I needed a first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Samurai character class for a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 Japanese-language film Seven Samurai as an OSRIC one shot adventure. Now I've been a fan of the class since the original NPC class appeared in the pages of  Dragon magazine as a sub-class of the fighter in Dragon #3 (October 1976). Fortunately I was able to not only find that the class had been done for me for zero edition, AD&D 1st edition but second edition as well. It was also done very well and for free. The pdf comes with everything including the samurai's weapons, armor, and equipment.

You Can Grab All of PC Classes of Leonaru
right over here!


Leonaru also did a reworked Monk class, scout, barbarian, knight
& even alchemist for second edition  & even a duelist class for those Romance era types who want a sword swinger from Old Europe.  The classes are well balanced & can be used creatively to fill in a number of holes in a campaign for even NPC classes where necessary. Finally there's the Samaurai's old friend the ninja in zero edition flavor warning the Ninja class is over powered compared to some of the other styles of classes available & the class is done in a very cinematic style. The pdf of the ninja contains everything from equipment, tools, weapons, tactics, and more.

Finally Leonaru did the Full Metal Plate retroclone which has a few twists & turns on the world's most popular fantasy role playing game. You can check it out for free here  or you can buy a copy right over here.
Now these character classes can be added quite easily into the wastelands of your favorite post apocalyptic old school campaign for some extra cheesy weirdness or these classes could be used to represent some twisted version of Old Earth culture. These classes can easily be added into your favorite old school campaign for a twist on the usual PC classes that one finds in the various editions of  Dungeons & Dragons. Many of these classes are perfect for representing memorable NPC's. Anyway you slice it these are another welcome addition in the old school DM's arsenal of tricks to present to players. 
He even did a decent Lovecrafian monster book
with some of the usual Lovecraft alien races.

Free OSR Monster Resource - Monsters of Myth By The First Edition Society For OSRIC & Your Old School Campaigns

Sometimes a dungeon master needs something a bit weirder or stranger then the standard dungeon horrors and of course it all goes back to basics for me. Monsters of Myth by 'The First Edition Society'  was either the first or second monster book that I downloaded and had printed up.According to the official blurb on Rpgnet;"Monsters of Myth is an old-school bestiary inspired in both style and content by the original Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, and Field Folio for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and serves as both a sequel and a tribute to those books. The almost 150 monsters are entirely new, but compatible with AD&D (via OSRIC)."

GRAB Monsters of Myth
By The First Edition Society HERE

  So way back in 2006 the First edition society got together & made a solid monster book in the tradition of the Monster Manual & Fiend Folio for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. So why I'm I dragging this pdf from another age into the light of day? Well because it's got a ton of monsters that can be used at your table to scare the crap out of players. These are not your standard horrors of the dungeon instead you get a whole package of weirdness with new giants, dragons, demons, and more.
These horrors can also be used in the wastelands of your favorite post apocalyptic wasteland or far flung asteriod or sword & planet adventure with a bit of old school math magic. The majority of these creatures are very dangerous to the life and limb of adventurers. This is a monster book that I've used over the years to build adventures around and to stick monsters into the dark background of certain styles of AD&D  campaigns.
 Why should you care besides its free & mostly forgotten by the majority of the  OSR crowd? Besides the fact that the vast majority of these critters has a pulptastic sword & sorcery feel?
As one reviewer notes "The book is very much a tribute to the style and feel of classic AD&D, with art and text that old fans of the hobby will find fitting for the era of the late 70's to early 80's. The book would also prove useful to newer gamers who enjoy systems such as Castles & Crusades and other more recent "reductionist" style versions of the D20 system such as Basic Fantasy or Swords & Wizardry'

These monsters are very well done and easily usable in a Halloween sword and sorcery fest which is exactly what I'm going to do. If you want a physical copy Black Blade sells this bad boy for about thirty bucks and its well worth the price of admission.

Occult Secrets Of The Trinity of Awesome Kickstarter With Kort'thalis Publishing

The Trinity of Awesome is winding down in about seven days but it still needs your help to get to the promised stretch goals but I wanted to take a look into the deeper Lovecraftian horrors of  The Green Jewel They Must Possess adventure for a moment a part of The Outer Presence rpg line.



GO HERE TO SUPPORT THE KICKSTARTER

When it comes to low prep, high octane Seventies old school adventure one of my favorites is the Outer Presence by Venger Satanis. Now with the release of the Trinity of Awesome kickstarter we've got another Lovecraftian piece of that puzzle that is the Outer Presence universe in the form of A Green Jewel They Must Possess adventure. The basic plot outline sounds like something from an Eighties animated film but there are some very subtle differences;"This is a 4 - 5 page adventure of investigative horror set in "modern day," specifically the 1970's.  A glowing green sphere with spiritual powers has been discovered in Peru, but it's cursed because people keep dying.  Obviously, it's worth a fortune."
Right off the bat we've got this glowing jewel showing up in the 1970's Peru a country with a history soaked in blood going all of the way back to the Incan empire through the rise of the Shining Path. There is a lot of real world & Lovecraftian history tied up in Peru.


Photo by Matěj Baťha

Weirdly enough this is the second Venger Satanis adventure set in South America, the first one The Outer Presence deals with some very 'Cannibal Holocaust' jungle elements & Lovecraftian adventure sequences mixed with a good dose of adventure. These adventures are also self contained mini rpg systems that hook in with the principal game mechanic which is a d6 dice pool.  It's a simplified, closer-to-the-real-world version of Crimson Dragon Slayer and it makes modifying it into your favorite old school investigative supernatural game a snap. The Outer Presence takes place in & around Papua New Guinea with a health dose of action & some very dark supernatural horror taking place within its pages.


There is a definitively Lovecraftian element to the back universe story in the Outer Presence;"
The adventure starts in and around Miskatonic University and quickly heads to Papua New Guinea... cause you know what they do there, right?  This isn't one of those dull scenarios where hardly anything happens.  In fact, The Outer Presence occasionally borders on "out there" without diving into full-on gonzo territory.  Eldritch pulp action-adventure probably sums it up best." There are several places where the adventure almost seems to strain against itself to tell you more about the Outer Presence universe. In fact just the other day on G+ Venger let slip a tid bit about that universe that implies that there are deeper secrets in the Outer Presence adventures then meets the eye;"There is a para-military organization safeguarding the world from supernatural disaster. Theta Chartreuse is a splinter group devoted to awakening the Great Old Ones. They are determined to usher in an apocalyptic new world order." So already we're getting into tin foil hat X files territory which reminds me of several late night Eighties horror films not to mention the Heavy Metal film from 1981. 

Could this be because someplace deep within the Outer Presence universe there are those in the 'know' who are being deeply influenced & whose sanity is strained by the very Lovecraftian gods, horrific elements, and other weirdness just lurking on this side of the adventure. Could this have something to do with the Lovecraftian horrors lurk just on the other side of both Crimson Dragon Slayer and Alpha Blue? I think so my friends because there are wheels within wheels in the Outer Presence & Venger Satanis's creations. We've seen this in Alpha Blue & The Island of Purple Haunted Putrescence's connections through NPC's, random encounters, and other game elements. The same could be said for the Outer Presence. This sort of a pulpy weird vibe runs through the Outer Presence right from the very beginning.
 Basically its really essentially a boiled down pulp adventure done in a more contemporary style with Venger's flare for the gonzo with a heap of Lost, Cannibal Holocaust, and a piping hot side of HP Lovecraft. .There's precious little preventing the Game Master from swapping New Guinea out for the jungles of South America or similar locale. This scenario could take place during any period of the 20th century. If the 70's don't resonate with you, feel free to change it. Some conversion will be necessary, but the majority should play just fine as it is."

There are elements of Robert Howard's Cthulhu Mythos and other far more contemporary echoes in The Outer Presence. With a heap of Jim Jones style madness that anyone who grew up in this time will recognize. For example is  Doctor Karl Steiner, anthropologist, ego-maniac, and frequent contributor to the quarterly anthropology journal Culturally Speaking. With the help of Dr. Steiner and his team, the Meepie tribe has regressed to cannibalism and human sacrifice in order to appease something that lives in the nearby temple…the outer  presence."

And now the circle of Green Jeweled Lovecraftian madness has moved into 1970's modern  America, no one or nothing is going to be safe from the horrors that shall come from outside our reality. The secret cabal behind the jewel and its machinations are going to the fodder for the continuing weirdness. Be sure to support the Trinity of Awesome on Kickstarter to get more 1970's investigative horror.

Inner Earth Conflict - Lovecraftian Gods, Random Encounters, & Old School Campaign Set Up.

Yesterday I wrote about the Beast of Hollow Mountain & the various Mexican 'lost worlds' belonging to the Serpent People of South American inner world. I'd love to clarify about my Warlord of the Outer Worlds campaign and how all of this relates to the Lovecraftian elements of the campaign setting. Because of the very nature of Pellucidar as adventure and campaign fodder it seems quite easy to connect up the lavish and nicely put together underdark and OSR mega dungeon campaign worlds. All of these connecting up nicely with campaign settings such as the under Hyperborean world  campaign setting of AS&SH, Basic Fantasy, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and even my own Atlantadria Port City Of The Accursed and The Warlords Of The Outer Worlds Campaign Earth. At the center of the affair is actually two Great Old Ones Tsathoggua & Rhan-Tegoth who have been having a cold war for ages using the outer and inner  Earth as the battle field.

Depiction of Tsathoggua by Khannea Sun Tzu


Warfare between the hybrid mutant Serpent People & the Empire of  K'n-yan came when the stars went right once the apocalypse took the Earth. The Voormis & the similar Gnophkehs  have begun their age old warfare using both their own peoples & hybrid mutant tribes out in the wastelands.  Formless Spawn carry out the alien will of their god making sure that temples and relics stray not from their master's sacred places.

The basin ... was filled with a sort of viscous and semi-liquescent substance, quite opaque and of a sooty color.... [T]he center swelled as if with the action of some powerful yeast [and] an uncouth amorphous head with dull and bulging eyes arose gradually on an ever-lengthening neck ... Then two arms—if one could call them arms—likewise arose inch by inch, and we saw that the thing was not ... a creature immersed in the liquid, but that the liquid itself had put forth this hideous neck and head, and [it was now forming arms] that groped toward us with tentacle-like appendages in lieu of claws or hands! ... Then the whole mass of the dark fluid began to rise [and] poured over the rim of the basin like a torrent of black quicksilver, taking as it reached the floor an undulant ophidian form which immediately developed more than a dozen short legs.

—Clark Ashton Smith, "The Tale of Satampra Zeiros"

Sometimes great Martian war machines can be seen in the distances and there are rumors of them under Earth as well.


The Earth has been softened up by the Martian invasions of the 1800's when agents within the various Earth governments paved the way for the invaders to cause untold destruction on Earth. They almost terraformed the Earth to conditions more fitting to the old races. After the invasions of the Martians some of these horrors stayed behind within the inner Earth in some of the strange grottoes and pits.



Cults dedicated to  deities include Shub-Niggurath, Nug and Yeb, Ghatanothoa,^[3] and the Not-to-Be-Named One (a title sometimes used to identify Hastur) have been gaining in popularity within the Earth & outside of it. Many of the outer world colony pirates, marauders, mutants, and renegade spacer warlords all follow these new faiths. Earth is just starting to regain the upper hand once again but it will take time. PC's have heard rumors of the horrors of the Gibbering Tower have been stirring.

1d20 Inner Earth Lovecraftian Random Encounters Table

1. 1d10 2nd level  Voormis warriors on a holy mission for their priest on a mission to find some relics and looking for their enemies. They are aggressive and very dangerous. 
2. A group of mutant serpent men looking for sacrifices &  looking for relics for their clutch. Armed with three laser pistols and a heavy stunner. 
3. 1d6 ghoul warriors on their way to the Dreamlands looking for a bit of that extra juicy meat. 
4. Inner Earth Martian walker looking for a blood donor or three, the thing is armed with a heat ray capable of doing 1d8 points of damage to anything within a forty foot radius. 
5. K'n-yan necromancer and zombie horde moving through the underworld on their way to their inner world base. Capable and vary dangerous depending on how the party approaches her. 
6. A group of 1d10 morlock warriors led by mad scientist armed with energy weapons & looking for specimens. 
7. A lone 6th level yeti warrior searching the dark for his familial tribe of brother warriors. Very capable & armed with an energy pistol. 
8.  1d20 mutant  man eating ape men blind and idiotic searching the dark for prey. 
9. A lone  K'n-yan scientist searching the underworld for specimens riding a ghast like mount. He's armed with energy weapons and wants a humanoid specimen for experimentation. 
10. A underworld Dwarven trader & giant mutant centipede mount with 1d20 minor relics to trade. See appropriate matrix for material. 
11. Lost scientist from a drill machine party who got separated from his fellows. He's being tracked by an inner Earth Lovecraftian horror. He's a doomed man and doesn't even know it. Has several maps and he's twenty five miles from his party.
12. Broken troll being eaten by Lovecraftian inner Earth blobs of protoplasm. They will be 1d8 lone monsters looking to feed. 
13. Lone black wizard searching the under world for the ruins of an alien base. He is guarded by 1d6 unseen demonic warriors. He will hire adventurers quite readily. 
14.  K'n-Yan Empire atomic borrowing machine with a 1d10 war party led by a black wizard of 7th level. These bastards are out for sacrifices & slaves for their horrid under world empire. 
15. A pack of 1d10 serpent men hybrid mutant soldiers is on patrol and looking for an escaped prisoner. They're armed with energy weapons and a bad attitude, they're aggressive have laser like weapons that do 2d8 points of damage but the energy cells are highly unstable. 
16. A grazy ooze is going back to its home cave to reproduce & will try to kill anyone or anything that tries to stop it from getting back to its spawning ground. 
17. A horde of 1d6 Martians is moving through the darkness in war machines AC5, HT 30, with death rays capable of doing 1d10 points of damage with a 60 foot radius. They're on a mission for their brood queen and are aggressively carrying out her will. 
18. A giant mutant cave fisher moves through the darkness capable of taking out vehicle sized targets and prey is casting lines in the caverns and tunnels below. Watch out! 
19. An ape man cleric of the Mahars moves through the darkness with dark vision goggles on his way to another kingdom of the sacred reptiles. He has several key magic scrolls bound in human flesh. He is also armed with several weapons of their design. He will hide or kill anyone who tries to interfere with his holy mission. 
20. A serpent man black wizard of 8th level moves through the darkness with several mutant serpent men body guards. They are on a mission to the shrine of their black gods and will not hesitate to add in a few more offerings to the lot they have on their weird mutated mounts. They are armed with ray guns and are not afraid to use them.
 

Between Realms of Crawling Chaos , Obscene Serpent Religion ,Cults of Chaos for Dark Albion I've got about ninety percent of all of the campaign's Lovecraftian needs met. So that's the set up for this week's upcoming game folks!
. All ideas & opinions are copyrighted & trade marked to the author as well as Dark Corner Productions. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only.

Old School Campaign Deconstruction Using The Prehistoric Western Film With The Valley of Gwangi (1969) & The Beast of Hollow Mountain 1956 Cowboys, Dinosaurs, and Boot Hill

On a lazy Saturday afternoon in Connecticut way back in 1970 something or so, my world exploded in a prehistoric stampede of dinosaur fun when the Valley of Gwangi came on television. Maybe it was the fact that the Dinosaur Western wasn't that well  known or that this film came to define the Dinosaur Western genre in film. But for me in the Seventies & Eighties it came to define a friend's old school campaign world as we shall see.

My ex friend Peter was crazy about the film;"In Mexico at the turn of the 20th century, a cowgirl named T.J. Breckenridge hosts a struggling rodeo. Her former lover, Tuck Kirby, a heroic former stuntman working for Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, wants to buy her out. Along the way, he is followed by a Mexican boy named Lope, who intends to join the rodeo on a quest for fame and fortune. T.J. is not interested in Tuck because of this, but Tuck is still attracted to T.J., especially when T.J. jumps off a diving board on her horse. T.J. finally accepts Tuck when he saves Lope from a bull and the two kiss.
T.J. has an ace she hopes will boost attendance at her show - a tiny horse called El Diablo. Tuck meets a British paleontologist named Horace Bromley, who is working in a nearby Mexican desert. Bromley shows Tuck fossilized horse tracks, and Tuck notes their similarity to El Diablo's feet. Tuck sneaks Bromley into the circus for a look at El Diablo, and Bromley declares the horse to be a prehistoric Eohippus.
The tiny horse came from a place known as the Forbidden Valley. A Gypsy known as Tia Zorina claims that the horse is cursed, and demands that it must be immediately returned. Later, she and the other gypsies collaborate with Bromley to steal El Diablo and release it back in the valley. Bromley hopes to follow the horse to its home in search of other prehistoric specimens. Carlos, an ex-member of the Gypsy tribe now working for T.J.'s circus, walks in on the theft and tries to stop it, but is knocked out.
Tuck arrives just as the Gypsy posse leaves. Carlos sees him as he is regaining consciousness. Tuck notices that the horse is missing, and sets off after Bromley. When T.J. and her crew discover Carlos, Carlos claims that Tuck has stolen El Diablo for himself. Carlos, T.J., and the others decide to follow Tuck and Bromley into the valley.
Making their way into the Forbidden Valley, Tuck, T.J., and the rest of the group meet up and soon discover why the valley is said to be cursed when a Pteranodon swoops down and snatches Lope but due to the weight it falls back to the ground. After Carlos kills the Pteranodon by twisting its neck, they spot an Ornithomimus, which they chase after in the hopes of capturing it. Just as it is about to escape, it is killed by Gwangi, a vicious Allosaurus which chases Bromley and the rest of the group. However, a Styracosaurus appears and drives Gwangi away. As Gwangi leaves, he takes the dead Pteranodon with him.
Later, Gwangi pursues the group to their base camp and they try to rope him down, but he breaks free when the Styracosaurus reappears. Gwangi battles and kills the Styracosaurus and later manages to catch and kill Carlos, but is knocked out while trying to exit the valley in pursuit of the rest of the group.
Securing the creature, Tuck and the other men in the group take Gwangi back to town to be put on display in T.J.'s show. On the opening day of the show, the dwarfed Gypsy sneaks in and begins to unlock Gwangi's cage in an effort to free him, only to be killed when Gwangi breaks free. The crowd begins to flee as Gwangi attacks, and Tia Zorina is trampled to death in the chaos. Bromley is crushed by a broken piece of the cage, and Gwangi attacks and kills a circus elephant before rampaging through the town. Tuck, accompanied by T.J. and Lope, tries to hide the crowd in a cathedral, but Gwangi finds them and breaks in. Tuck urges the crowd out through a back exit, leaving Tuck inside with Gwangi, T.J. and Lope.
Gwangi tries to eat them, but Tuck manages to distract him by stabbing him with a flag. Tuck is eventually able to throw a torch onto the floor near Gwangi, setting the building on fire. Tuck and the others manage to escape, trapping Gwangi in the burning building. Roaring in agony, Gwangi dies in the fire. Tuck, T.J., Lope, and the crowd look on to mourn the sacrifice of the burning church."
Yeah its a classic & it was supposed to be done by the effects master Willis O'Brien but he passed shortly before the film could be produce & made. Now I've written extensively of  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World as fodder for an old school campaign but it was also the inspiration for the Valley of Gwangi.
But the Valley of Gwangi wasn't the only film in the Dinosaur Western genre there was a film that proceeded it. The Beast of Hollow Mountain was shown on Saturday afternoons as well as on TNT cable's Monster Vision much later on;"The Beast of Hollow Mountain is a 1956 Weird West movie about an American cowboy living in Mexico who discovers his missing cattle are being preyed upon by an Allosaurus. The Allosaurus would later attack local villagers in a town, and eventually be destroyed by getting lured into some quicksand and drowning.
The first film to show dinosaurs and cowboys in the same picture, it is notable for being based on a story idea by special effects innovator Willis O'Brien. It used a form of stop motion called replacement animation to bring the dinosaur to life. O'Brien co-wrote the script under the pseudonym El Toro Estrella; O'Brien was also to have originally done the special effects for this movie, but this did not happen for reasons unknown."
There are a few great differences here between the two films that an old school Dungeon Master can exploit. The Beast From Hollow was actually my preferred film because we were way back when playing a mix of Gamma World, Boot Hill, & OD&D. The Beast of Hollow mountains has a fully realized setting with prehistoric swamps, dinosaurs, & all of the classic lost world elements. These areas were all a part of an ancient empire belonging to the Serpent men of H.P.Lovecraft & Robert Howard's creation. These lost worlds & prehistoric laboratories were scattered throughout Mexico & Central America. Their degenerate Elven attendants still at the helm even into the apocalyptic era.

This is how we designed it in my old D&D group, many of us too turns Dungeon Mastering and we were in competition with each other to see who was the better DM. This also allowed us to cover lots of ground when it came to DMing. It also meant that we had an extensive prehistoric lost world inner Earth empire to accommodate our megadungeons and prehistoric wilderness point crawls.

All of this can easily be done by using both the Boot Hill rpg & AD&D, Boot Hill gave us some great 19th century fire arms rules along with quick rules for NPC cowboys and farm hands.


By using Mutant Future plus Labyrinth Lord and LoFP's World of the Lost to fill in the prehistoric monsters & the weird lost world elements as necessary. These strange types of Lovecraftian lost world adventure locations could show up anyplace and could be found tucked away across the world. Time warps, space gates and more means could be the perfect venue to bring in PC's as needed.


There are lots of possibilities for mocking up and using this sort of a lost world campaign, the hidden legends, weird mythologies, and even the possibilities of sneaking in some Lovecraftian horrors into the old school adventure mix. As a point crawl this sort of a campaign style can't be beat with the mix of classic old school TSR era elements to form a structured and stable campaign that could be enjoyed for years to come.
Cheers & remember to keep those dice rolling!

Four Free OSR Monster Books For Your Old School Campaigns

Old School dungeon masters can't have enough monsters & sometimes you've got to dust off some old favorites to throw a scare or two into the players.  Last night I was pursuing through the Planet Algol blog & dusting off some old ideas for my inner Earth campaign. Keeping to the gonzo pulp aesthetic of the campaign has taken me down a short path of memory lane to a few years ago. The first thing I noticed were two monster books that had escaped my notice for a long while. The first one was Varlet's & Vermin from the Roles,Rules, and Rolls blog;"It's a collection of monsters and related ideas for challenge levels 1 and 2, written for Swords & Wizardry but easily adaptable to other systems." I had forgotten how good some of these fiends were. I also really like the Man of Wounds, and the rat variants are very nicely done.

GRAB IT RIGHT OVER HERE


The second monster book is Telecanter's Deadly Distractions from Telecanter's Receding Rules blog and these are perfect beasties to challenge as well as dismay your party of adventurers. These are low level creatures with a twist or two. They're very well done and quite weird fitting in a number of criteria that I've had.
Download Telecanter's Deadly Distractions

Finally there's The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign which has a ton of monsters that are usable with a number of retroclones with minor adjustments. Did I mention that their free and you should also check out some of the other free downloads while your there on the Basic Fantasy website as well.

 Grab The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign Here

 There are two free nearly forgotten tomes of monsters from Dragon's foot. org Monstrous Tome - Volume One which contains new dragons , demons, monsters and all original content for AD&D first edition.  Be careful with these monsters some of these creatures have the potential for an old school party wipe of adventurers. GRAB Monstrous Tome -
Volume One RIGHT HERE



Then there's the second volume of The Monstrous Tome which adds a whole other layer of weirdness & nastiness to the monsters in your dungeon. The second volume of the Monstrous Tome seems to focus on monsters of the planes, some deadly dungeon deviants, and more horrors to throw into old school campaigns.

GRAB THE
Monstrous Tome 2 - Book of Beings HERE

There's a good mix of old school style original creatures to populate your dungeons, megadungeons, and campaigns. Then of course there are the various creations of Ancient Vaults whose Senufio: Lords of Misrule  are going to get a workout as the heads of some of the heads of cults of Chaos that the party will be encountering.

The Inhumanoids 1986 Kids Cartoon As A Quick Old School Post Apocalyptic Campaign Jump Start

So what happens when you take the over excess of the Eighties add in power armor & over the top gigantic pre historic  monsters? You get the Inhumanoids cartoon an inner Earth weirdness fest that was air along side Jem and the Holograms back in '86. Even back then these things were gonzo bat crap craziness all of it owned by Hasbro;"Inhumanoids is an animated series and Hasbro toy property in 1986. In the tradition of other Hasbro properties such as Transformers and G.I. Joe, the show was produced by Sunbow and Marvel Productions and animated in Japan by Toei Animation. Inhumanoids tells the story of the scientist-hero group, Earth Corps, as they battle a trio of subterranean monsters called the Inhumanoids with the aid of elemental beings, the Mutores."

As you can read the whole wiki entry here about the series  and its pretty detailed but then there's this gentleman's video which goes into some pretty good detail about most of the plot points, cast, and lots of The Inhumanoid's weirdness.

There is so much to mine here that I can't do this Eighties gonzo giant monster  show justice. Inhumanoids was packed to the brim with so much goodness that in sixty five episodes there was lot of epic ground to cover. The plot of the Evil That Lies Within movie goes something like this;"The story begins with the discovery of a monstrous creature encased in an amber monolith buried in Big Sur national park, which is recovered by the government-funded Earth Corps, a geological sciences research team. The finding spurs corrupt industrialist Blackthorne Shore to clandestinely uncover a second monster buried elsewhere — a giant vine-like creature called Tendril, who attacks the amber block's public unveiling in San Francisco to release the macabre colossus trapped within, D'Compose. They rampage through city streets before fleeing into the watery darkness of the bay.
Earth Corps member Liquidator returns to Big Sur in search of further clues to the origin of these monsters, whereupon he discovers a race of sentient trees, the Redwoods, who explain that they are members of a subterranean population known as Mutores, and that their kind sealed the evil Inhumanoids Tendril and D'Compose beneath the Earth ages ago. The malevolent Inhumanoid leader, Metlar, remains imprisoned below the surface, paralyzed by the magnetic field of a Mutore duo named Magnokor.
A nocturnal assault by Tendril demolishes the Earth Corps base, prompting a chase into the depths of the Earth, but even with the help of another Mutore species, the rock-bodied Granites, they are forced to retreat back to the surface. When their budget is summarily cut by Senator Masterson — a crooked politician in Blackthorne Shore's shady pocket — they are approached by Sandra Shore, Blackthorne's sister, who has learned of her brother's sinister plot to liberate Metlar. Funded by Sandra, the team constructs new vehicles and embarks back below the Earth's surface, tracking D'Compose and Tendril to the city of the Granites, where an ensuing battle frees Metlar from Magnokor's hold. Having pilfered Earth Corps' engineering schematics via his ties to Masterson, Blackthorne joins the fray, now equipped with his own battle-suit whose magnetic powers he wields against Metlar, only to be derailed by Tendril's interference while Sandra falls victim to the mutative touch of D'Compose.
Earth Corps manages to escape and forms an alliance with the Granites. Herc accompanies them to D'Compose's domain of Skellweb while Auger and Liquidator venture into Metlar's kingdom of Infernac, and Bright convinces the Redwoods to help defend the surface world against attempts by the Inhumanoids to acquire sources of power. Herc and the Granites are able to defeat D'Compose's reanimated soldiers and restore Sandra to normal. Blackthorne pursues Auger and Liquidator to Infernac and tries to use his magnetic powers on Metlar once again but is foiled by Magnokor and taken captive by Metlar.
Acting on information forced from Blackthorne, the Inhumanoids raid a Soviet air base, stealing a handful of nuclear missiles. A seemingly repentant Blackthorne warns Earth Corps that the missiles are intended to shatter the divide between the Earth's crust and mantle, but upon travelling into the Earth to preclude this catastrophe, the team discovers that Blackthorne has set them up and that the missiles are actually meant to detonate the planet's core. Earth Corps is able to convince D'Compose to allow them access to Infernac — a deal made easier by the fact that the Inhumanoid already fears for his own survival in the face of Metlar's insane plan — and they manage to defuse enough of the missiles to thwart the explosive scheme.
Following a climactic battle, D'Compose is re-sealed in amber casing and Tendril is imprisoned by the Granites. Finally, Magnokor succeeds in neutralizing Metlar even as Blackthorne is arrested by Earth Corps. Senator Masterson provides the Earth Corps team with a new headquarters facility, but a tissue sample secured from Tendril during their first encounter with the monster has mysteriously gone missing...:" To this day this show still has some of the most devoted fans outside of Transformers I've ever encountered. What is there for the old school dungeon master to mine & borrow? Lots and lots of stuff as we're about to get into.


Now here's where I head South from the fiery depths of the Earth folks, Inhumanoids is the Eighties version of an adventure opera. This is seriously one show with so much ground to borrow from it isn't even funny. You've got scientists in power armor running around facing some of the weirdest monsters to burst forth from the depths of the Earth. Let's start with the fact that if you want to get into gonzo epic weirdness this is a show to emulate in spades. Inhumanoids is the perfect adventure cartoon to use as a template or plan to use for an old school gonzo game. And when it hit in Eighty Six we grabbed our copy of second edition Gamma World (no we didn't fall for that third edition Action Control Table stuff) & set an Inhumanoids style giant monster game right up after school during the Shadow Years! But when it comes to using a power armor party going against giant monsters I can only think of the Mutant Crawl Classics game being able to sort of handle a funnel style with an Inhumanoids giant monster bent. Did that after school game back in sixth grade make a whole lot of sense? Give me a break we were kids. But the sheer scale of the game was really one of the fun parts.

While Mutant Crawl Classics isn't out yet I can also see using the Crawling Under A Broken Moon fanzine for my own Eighties power armored VS giant monster fueled fun. Given the fact that the collected fanzine has all of the elements a DM would need for giant monster bashing fun. Yeah this style of campaign is a perfect marriage of gonzo retroclone weirdness. But there's a lot more going on below the surface here in Inhumanoids.



There was one thing that made Inhumanoids such a hit with the kids back in Eighty six & that was the sheer variety of monsters and races in the cartoon. There was an internal consistency to the background,history, plot points, and internal mythology of the cartoon. Yes it was completely over the top Eighties cartoon crazy but it was so in an internal universe way. This was something really important that as a DM I learned from Inhumanoids, the idea of world building with an internal setting with layers of back history, etc. that the players uncover the deeper into the adventures they go. Marvel had a Sunbow crossover series of comics and it kept this aspect of the show but it came out in '87 and was canceled. "Marvel Comics produced a short-lived Inhumanoids comic book under its Star Comics imprint in 1987, adapting the storyline of "The Evil That Lies Within". The series ended after only 4 issues and left readers with the cliffhanger of Metlar's escape from captivity and Sandra Shore's transformation into an undead minion of D'Compose." Boo, hiss.
Could the giant monster vs power armor work for other retroclone systems or post apocalyptic  games? Short answer yes on a number of levels. The Inhumanoid's inner Earth ecology is very applicable to a point crawl game with lots of potential for underworld mutant monster races & forgotten adventure locations. I used this idea as a part of my Warlords of the Outer Worlds game recently.

A  couple of years ago an ex friend of mine DMed a Lamentations of the Flame Princess/ Mutant Future crossover game which used giant mutant god monsters straight out of after school Eighties goodness. This far more generic game used a group of scientists who are transported lock, stock, and university onto an alien planet ala Carcosa and they had to fight giant god things to survive. The play sessions were interesting, challenging, and very well done. And that same formula also had a brother/sister rivalry of patrons as well but that's where things went in very different directions then Inhumanoids as the sister was killed as a sacrifice for one of the god things. The brother ended up as the patron of the party of adventurers after suddenly seeing the light. The whole thing  works well with games such as Mutant Future or Gamma World 1st & second edition where the technology of inner Earth travel was implied and was never used. Now adventure locations with Shadow Years flavor are easily within reach of PC's.

So why use this style of game campaign? Because its Eighties gonzo epic adventure opera at its best. The stakes are ridiculously high, the weirdness is up to Eleven, and its got giant mutant monsters to boot! I've had several of the Earth Core pop up from time to time as high level retired adventurers in various campaigns making NPC cameos. Even after all of these years there are still thousands of devoted Inhumanoid fans out there (myself being one of them). The basis for the cartoon series could be used for an epic gonzo campaign of incredible old school proportions. The series is out on Blu ray and DVD so its easily accessed for someone with the time to grab it. I love to see a big screen revamp of it, given the fact that so many Eighties cartoon properties are being given new life. This is one to take a look at. Obviously I'm not trying to violate the trademark or copyright of Inhumanoids and this blog entry is for educational & entertainment purposes only. None of the table top rpg's mentioned in this article are responsible for its content its all down to me and my warped DM's mind and opinions.