The Bare Bones of An Upcoming Adventure Using Castles & Crusades Classic Monsters book & Frog God Games Glades of Death

So I've been going through Castles & Crusades Classic Monsters book & setting up wilderness campaign encounters for an upcoming Victorious rpg campaign. Work has had me on the ropes for some time now but some how I've squeezed a few ideas into the campaign mix. The Classic Monster book basically has a rework of many of the Fiend Folio favorites in it Behirs and Boggarts cavefishers,  coffercorpses, demilichs, devil dogs, ear seekers and flumphs.  This has basically made me get off my butt & get in gear with some of the books in my other part of my collections.



I'm speaking about Frog God Games Glades of Death a three point five era  book but with some very interesting back pieces to the spine of it.
"From dreaded ghoul wolves to a battle between druids and insects to the forested demiplane of a mad druid and many more encounters, the forest is home to numerous mysteries and threats. Whether the focus of your PCs’ adventures or simply an interruption in their travels, adventure awaits in the wilderness!"
There are several reasons for this first of all this is a good 3.5 era Sword & Sorcery book. Hear me out here. The wilderness of this upcoming campaign needs a bit of extra kick & converting from 3.5 to Castles & Crusades isn't a big deal at all. 




This is an older Necromancer games title & it quietly cuts across many of the wilderness & wasteland ideas that I'm going to be applying for this campaign. The wilderness is a dangerous & very rife with black druid covens. So I'm bring back some of my 3.5 era campaign staples but bring them up to Castles & Crusades standards. Frog God Games Glades of Death isn't simply a set of rules, new character classes, etc. This is an ideas book & there's some great wilderness twists to it.

 But why the wilderness aspect? Because the upcoming hex crawl & dungeon is going to sprawl into the wilderness. Wilderness is a huge part of the tradition & play of classic Dungeons & Dragons. Just look at this blog piece from The Angry DM all the way back in 2015.  Read the comments at the end of the blog entry these are very insightful & there's some thoughtful opinions.
The encounter idea of a grove & coven of evil black druids using plant imbued remains of local prehistoric wildlife is a very scary proposition.  The characters confronted with such a reality vs the greater one looming on the horizon is gonna be a test of the viability of this campaign setting.


Animals depicted in rock art from the Les Combarelles cave are some of the dangerous prehistoric fauna that's going to be in the area of this up coming game. I'm being purposely vague on some campaign setting aspects.



François Guizot (1787-1874), The History of France from the Earliest Times to the Year 1789, London : S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1883, p. 103 is one of the main influences on this up coming game adventure.  There's some great ideas in the background of this history of France. It was actually the artwork about that inspired me to start working on this adventure. A dark druid coven has been operating in this back water of France for centuries after stumbling upon an ancient place of power in this case a dungeon. All sorts of mayhem has become a part of the local folklore. The local population has been enthralled to these evil bastards for centuries now.


Eleanor Hull, The Boys' Cuchulainn

The set up goes like this the PC's wander into a hex crawl area where the druid coven is operating & find out that human sacrifice is going on. But there's a looming greater evil baring down on them. Do they take out the locals or let greater evil overwhelm it? Will they deal with the dungeon powering the dark occult weirdness going on?
Right now this is the figment of a dungeon in the French countryside with lots of dangerous wilderness aspects to it.  I've really gotta flesh this adventure out far more before running it.