Saturday, July 8, 2023

Rats In The Back Alleys - Using 1991 Tales of Lankhmar (LNR2) By Anthony Pryor & The Hyperborea rpg For Sword & Sorcery Urban Crawling or Adventuring.

 "Hire on, in 'A Cask of Trouble,' to guard a wine-tasting from the vengeful Vintner's Guild. Dare, if you will, 'The Red God's Curse,' in which little is as it seems. Aid the wizards Sheelba of the Eyeless Face and Ningauble of the Seven Eyes at an era's end, 'When Walks the Wyrm.' Undertake an expedition of inquiry for the Lankhmar Society of Sages to 'The Land of the Pale Ones.' Learn if the Thieves' Guild really has a hand in 'The House of Mazes.'"


Photo stolen from Wayne's books here. 

"Beware strange priests and darkest alleys, lest you meet 'A New God.' Finally, no anthology of Lankhmar would be complete without a trip to its maze-like sewers, wherein rages 'War in Lankhmar Below' (a follow-up to the adventure 'Return of the Rats,' from CA2, Swords of Deceit)." 

Wayback in 1991 Tales of Lankhmar (LNR2) By Anthony Pryor  came out it was  64 pages  and went by the product designation TSR 9329 or  ISBN 1560761350. What Tales of Lankhmar (LNR2) did back in '91 was to create a  64-page LANKHMAR adventure anthology which contains seven original adventures for a party of four to eight characters, levels 3 to 10. And what's good about LNR2 is the fact that a lot of the TSR Lankhmar adventure modules were centered around urban Sword & Sorcery adventuring. This makes the Lankhmar adventures  perfect fodder for the Hyperborea rpg. And this is especially true of LNR2 which is a perfect follow up to the Hyperborea rpg adventure 'The Rats in The Walls and Other Perils'. Why?! Well let's take a quick look at the back cover explaination; "Rats in the Walls and Other Perils" also includes two more short adventures: Chainsaw’s “The Brazen Bull”, and “The Lamia’s Heart”, by Jeffrey P. Talanian. (An early draft of the latter was published in the AFS fanzine.) Edited by David Prata, all three adventures are set in the dismal City-State of Khromarium and is designed for from four to six characters of 1st or 2nd level. "  So not only do we have a starting adventure module set within the Hyperborean capital of the City State of Khormarium but in Tales of Lankhmar we have a perfect follow up the 'Rats in The Walls'. 
 "Rats in the Walls and Other Perils"puts the PC's footloose and fancy free in the big city. But what does one follow it up with?! Why the whims of two weird wizards of the DM's design. And the adventures continue. With a bit of work there's the fact that we give   the City State of Khormarium a real face and character about it. 
We've used  the City State of Khormarium as a jump off point a hundred times. And it makes an excellent urban landscape for the adventurers to kick up thier heels. 
Hyperborea is a world with vast, vast, oceans and hardly anyone talks about it. The Hyperborean  campaign setting makes an excellent Sword & Sorcery pirate campaign & this can easily be contrasted with an urban crawl twist. 1991 Tales of Lankhmar (LNR2) By Anthony Pryor is an excellent counterpoint adventure anthology that gets the PC's deep into the heart of a city grinding conspiracy. And much more. And I think it's the much more that get's over looked within 1991 Tales of Lankhmar (LNR2) By Anthony Pryor. 
There's enough mini adventures here where the players are going to be more then busy for a few months. The DM is going to need to keep an eye on the PC's levels and the distribution of treasure. 

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