Some Castles & Crusades Thoughts on Judge Guild's House on Hang Man's Hill By Jon Mattson

The nice part about Castles & Crusades is the modular nature of the system. One can go forward or backward on compatibility when it comes to dealing with various editions of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first & second edition.  Now tonight I'm going to talk about two very different products from first & second edition AD&D respectively.
House on Hangman's Hill was  published by Judges Guild in 1981 &  is a scenario for character levels 3-4. One of my fellow dungeon masters calls it Judge's Guild's other haunted house adventure withe classic Tegel Manor of course taking the lead.  But after a classic Hammer horror film marathon. I was inclined to start tearing into House on Hangman's Hill . Note that this is for my Victorious rpg /Castles & Crusades rpg campaign.  steampunk horror campaign.



Sir Christopher Lee as one of my favorite Draculas from the classic Hammer Horror films.
No copyright or trade mark infirgment is implied. He was just on bad ass Dracula.

Imagine if you will that Castles & Crusade's James Ward's Tainted Lands is a sort of predatory demi plane that feeds off the chaos, carnage, fear, & horror of  its millions of victim's souls. Now imagine that there are agents across the planes who are aware of this. They will & do feed on many, many, victims. Well this is where 2nd edition AD&D's Domain's of Dread comes in. Its a sort of a perfect book end for Tainted Lands in a way.



Andreas P.'s review on Drivethrurpg summarizes everything I love about 'Domains of Dread';"Greatest book for Ravenlolft AD&D 2nd edition. Detailing everything about the history, places, faces and rules of the Ravenloft setting. Very happy I purchased the softcover reprint of the original, it is of excellent quality."
Right so Domains of Dread is the perfect book to transform JG's House on Hangman's Hill into a sort of rogue tainted land adventure location roaming about the plains murdering victims within its halls. And trapping their souls within. For the Castles & Crusades's twist grab a copy of The Codex Slavorum.


Forget the whole Transylvania is the land of vampire's B.S. its actually Russia that's the Slavic Hellscape for the undead. Use 'The Codex Slavorum'  add in the Tainted Lands with a twist of Ravenloft! Then whamo you've got a great on going Gothic Slavic campaign! The setting here is pure Castles & Crusades Slavic adventure setting with a solid overview of both the Slavic/Russian 'real world' & the spiritual world. This includes a good array of monsters, spells, Gods, interactions, low & behold a good damn solidly usable Slavic Shaman class!

House on Hangman's Hill shows up in your campaign, people go missing, the local undead population reaches & all time high, & murderous rival demonic & vampire slayers start killing everyone in sight. Suddenly there's a campaign!


Having run House on Hangman's Hill your probably talking about three or four months of a mini campaign at best & a two or three session one shot at worst. This is a deadly little twenty something page module. And I literally present this adventure as the rival to my planar traveling version of Tegel Manor. While it doesn't have Tegel manor's history or is as well known. This makes House on Hangman's Hill just that touch more deadly in my humble opinion.