Gunslingers, Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyprborea, & More Commentary On Steve C.'s 'Arthurian Twist' Campaign & Actual Play Events

So last night about four A.M. after I got back from my regular game of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea I got an email from Steve C. and he wanted to talk about Arthurian mythology and Celtic legends. Sometimes that how these things begin small & work themselves into a bit of an OSR  frenzy. Steve had  seen the Steven King Dark Tower movie trailer that came out last week.I'm surprised that it didn't get more attention in the OSR but there you go.

You see way back in 1987 or so it wasn't that easy to get a hold of any H.P. Lovecraft or some of the other Appendix N fiction from the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. But everyone's mom, grandma, dad,etc. had a copy of Stephen King's The Stand. And since I was both the Arthurian guy & the Stephen King fanatic I knew that the Dark Tower: Gun Slinger stories were connected with 'The Stand'. My adopted uncle had made damn sure that I had copies of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction sent from New York State after he finished with them. There are five stories that constitute the original novel heres' the Wiki breakdown:

The five stories that constitute the novel were originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction:

• "The Gunslinger" (October 1978)
• "The Way Station" (April 1980)
• "The Oracle and the Mountains" (February 1981)
• "The Slow Mutants" (July 1981)
• "The Gunslinger and the Dark Man" (November 1981)

All of this would come in handy for the 1987 Stephen King games. My uncle also sent me the first edition of The Dark Tower :The Gunslinger by Stephen King. The Dark Tower first edition novel with the great Michael Whelan cover that I had for many years in Boston. Now gone the way of so many treasures as ash in an apartment fire. 


The blurb from Wiki contains a bit of information on the first edition cover.
This is the front cover art for the book The Dark Tower - The Gunslinger written by Stephen King. The book cover art copyright is believed to belong to the publisher, Donald M. Grant, Publisher, Inc., or the cover artist, Michael Whelan.

So what's this got to do with old school gaming? Everything because even back in middle school we knew that there was a connection between the Arthurian legends & the Gunslinger stories. So if it was good enough for Stephen King & Gary Gygax then it was good enough for us. You see way back when after reading Dragon magazine we knew that Gary Gygax & his players were mixing in cowboys from first edition Boot Hill into Greyhawk. So we took it to the next step & mixed in Book Hill with the Arthurian NPC's in Deities & Demigods turning King Arthur & his knights into gunslingers. There was also a healthy mix of Gamma World second edition thrown into the mix as well. So what does all of this have to do with Steve C. and his recent Arthurian Twist?


Well, Steve C. had questions about an NPC from that old game at the library way back in Torrington. It seems the players have run afoul of a certain time traveling gunslinger villain from our old days. Now they need to find a very special shooting iron from an abandoned ghost town that time sort of moved on from.

Now 'Merlin' has sent this party of of Roman cataphracts , Hyperborean thieves, Amazon warriors, outlaws, wizards,Keltic necromancers,warlocks, & cut throats after that shooting iron that we left in that abandoned ghost town so many years ago.
But that place is a half world location under the direct control of the 'Fey' forces of evil and the deserts around the ghost town are the playground of demons, specters, & worse. All of these under the control of  a very nasty version of Morgan Le Fey drawn directly out of Deities & Demigods.

Its been her group of mercenary trolls and their captain troll giant captain  that the party has endless trouble for. This has led directly to several PC deaths at the hands of this evil bastard and the backs of several Hyperborean warriors being broken. Will the PC's ever return to Hyperborea & England? Only the wily Merlin & the fiendish DM Steven C. knows the answers to that. If the recent Dark Tower movie trailer had this kind of inspiration on Steve then I can only imagine the types of horrors the players are in for.

Giant troll (Russ Nicholson, AD&D Fiend Folio, TSR, 1981)
Keep em rolling folks.

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