Review On The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell (Psychedelic Fantasies #3) For Your Old School Campaigns

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HERE

Tuesday I got a chance to read through 'The Fungus That Came To Blackeswell' in person for a change. This is a ten page adventure from Yves Geens and its pretty twisted and kinda trippy but clever for a fungus based adventure.
Blackeswell is pretty cool and very weird, an entire underground adventure location that creates its background and spawns its own old school adventures all by itself. Add in the fungus based ecology and it just gets more fun.
Without giving a huge amount of the plot of this one. I can see using this adventure again and again with various incarnations of the world's most popular fantasy game in its various editions. The utility of this adventure location is because of the originality of the adventure. But this isn't one of those 'oh my God that's an amazing premise but I'd never do that in my game' modules. No this is more of a let's see how I get the PC's up to their necks in fungus and slimes adventure.
According to the Rpgnow entry: 

The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell, a module for low-level characters, details the subterranean village of Blackeswell. It is a site-based module with no quests or plots. The word "Fungus" is in the title for good reason. This is a creepy, mushroomy, fungusy adventure. If you are like me, you love that squishy, slimy, over-ripe botanic feel of lots of vile, rotting fungus in your old-school fantasy game. This module has you covered. This is the best, most original fungus module of all time. It gave me the shudders. This is definitely the scariest of the Psychedelic Fantasies adventures.

This is a pretty sweet nonsense ten page deep end adventure. This could turn into a several game night adventure which isn't bad for a three dollar module at all.
 Make no mistake though this a very deadly adventure where PC's can easily get themselves killed or worse.

Using The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell 

For Your Old School Campaigns 

Played in correctly and your PC's are going to die in a very messy and mucus filled fungus hole in the Earth, its just that simple. The ideas here are based around the location and that location can be easily injected into a Lamentations of The Flame Princess campaign and expanded upon to Carcosa. Or this location could crop up in a Labyrinth Lord/ Mutant Future fungus filled cross over. There are several minor items that can have very large echoes in a campaign where the fungus action occurs. 

                               

Remember that bit on In search Of The Unknown, the one with the adventurers and the fungus garden? 

Well the Fungus That Came To Blackeswell is worse much worse. There are bits of this adventure that reminded me of some of the goings on in other  fungus based old school adventures out there that could be used to hook up with this one. 

Actually if one wanted to In search Of The Unknown could be sewn on to this adventure and might really add in a classic weird pulp twist to Blackeswell. 

Classic artwork from In Search Of The Unknown, not from The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell. 

There are several other options that I can think about Blackeswell. The adventure location once belonged to another race such as the Lovecraftian Mi Go or some other repellent Lovecraftian sanity wrecking monster. A half a dozen OD&D monsters or AD&D creations also come to mind as well who might have created the location and who have left it to its own devices.

Blackeswell as an old school adventure  location has a lot to recommend it, a lot of thought and energy went into the construction of this adventure and I'd like to see it used far more then it does. The bottom line is that while a lot old school modules promise the weird and strange this one actually delivers it fungus spawned spades. 

Grab this one, gross out your friends, scar your PC's, and bask in the fungus spawned radiance of The Fungus That Came to Blackeswell! 

 

Deluxe Tunnels & Trolls Kick Starter

Perhaps one of my all time favorites by a fantastic team of old schoolers who know quality! Another great kickstarter of this infamous game of dungeon delving\! Please take a look at this great old school game.
According to the Kick starter page : 

When it was first published in 1975, Tunnels & Trolls opened up the role-playing game genre, showing that these games could encompass a multiplicity of ways to make this segment of the game hobby exciting. Today hundreds of diverse RPGs explore every genre, every play style, and serve every player. T&T led the way first.

In the 37 years since then, T&T has seen eight major editions with many accessory adventures and supplements. The game has been published worldwide, including translations into French, German, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and even Finnish. It had two computer games created for it, and it has influenced other games time and again. A lively fan community shares their love of the game in blogs and forums. Fan publications abound, licensed and approved by the original designer and publisher. Tunnels & Trolls is a solid substantive game that has weathered the years, worldwide, and thrived.
You can read more about this great Kickstarter right over Here