Expanding The Campaign Frontier With B10 Night's Dark Terror by Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, and Phil Gallagher For Your Old School Sword & Sorcery Campaigns

Barely one day's march from Kelven, the uncharted tracts of the Dymrak forest conceal horrors enough to freeze the blood of civilized folk. Those who have ventured there tell how death comes quick to the unwary - for the woods at night are far worse than any dungeon.

But you are adventurers, veterans of many battles, and the call of the will is strong. Will you answer the call, or are you afraid of the dark terrors of the night?
Night's Dark Terror is the module for campaign expansion after your traditional Keep on the Borderlands introduction module run through & the next connecting module Horror on the Hill. Night's Dark Terror pulls the PC's into what remains of the ruins of an empire long gone to seed but vital enough to kill them quite easily.
"This campaign adventure is for characters just beginning Expert play (levels 2-4) and hurls them into the exciting outdoor world which awaits in the Expert rulebook.

With a 64-page booklet, 2 double-panel covers, and complete scans of the orioginal double-sided mapsheet, this super-module provides all you need for epic wilderness and dungeon adventuring. Journey across the Grand Duchy of Karameikos in a desperate race against time and the forces of evil."B10 Night's Dark Terror is one of my all time favorites because it's a true location based adventure & its got the look plus the feel of the classic Conan novels with an over arching Russian look about it. It can be used as a point crawl or hex crawl or as a full up action oriented adventure with a classic siege mentality about it. There are mysteries, weird events, plenty of unresolved adventure elements, & political intrigue. Sure I've written about Night's Dark Terror before. But I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction.



Night's Dark Terror brings several things to the table in terms of what it can do for the PC's:

• This is also a great module to let those rangers & scouts shine at what they do in their classic elements. This module also has plenty of hooks for a shaman or druid to come into their own for a party of classic 
• The action is pretty high enabling a DM to keep the encounters dangerous and yet build up their campaign world within the adventure context. 
•  As a Dungeon master you get an entire mini-campaign in 56 pages, and it's the type of by the seat of your pants action I like, complete with mystery, a siege, and a pulp-style Conan lost valley.

This means that Night's Dark Terror can be used to expand the frontier/wilderness of your own home campaign. This wilderness is the 'dark wood' of so many fairy tales & pulp adventures. The placement of  Night's Dark Terror in campaign world has one very interesting factor about it. The adventure takes place almost but just out of reach of the capital of Mystara. You can see this in Mystara Module and Placement by Andrew Theisen  at the Vaults of Pandius site. This means that all of action takes place just out sight of the campaign world's capital & help isn't coming. It also indicates an empire gone to seed as the wilderness has crept back to get an almost strangle hold around the throat of civilization.
The fact is that throughout the Night's Dark Terror there's a sense of the pulpy Sword & Sorcery  weird that runs throughout it. Things are over the edge of the strange wilderness & the PC's are in way over their heads. This is another of those modules that seems dangerous to many levels of  player characters because of the type of monsters and the danger the at PC's seem to face at every turn. There's a sense of the authentically violence that seems to bubble just under the surface of B10 that gives the adventure gravity implied in Keep On Borderlands a reality during play.


The wilderness surrounding the Keep could mate up with the events of 'Horror on The Hill' & then B10 Night's Dark Terror for a sprawling wilderness campaign with plenty of room for even more ruins & dungeons to be thrown in. I had a sense reading through Night's Dark Terror of Clark Ashton Smith's  Hyperborean cycle whispering in my ear. I felt like there would be shrines to the toad-god Tsathoggua sprinkled near some of the trails that the PC's tread.


This is one of the strengths of the module is how adaptable it is for campaigns & even retroclones. The fact is with  few elements of CAS thrown in Night's Dark Terror could be mated up with events happening around or near the borders of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerer's capital.  The reason for this adaptability of the adventure is because it serves as bridge gap between B/X Basic D&D & Expert. This was done by the team of authors who would later on go on to create the seminal Warhammer Fantasy Rpg.

 There has been an issue with missing maps in the past with Night's Dark Terror but thanks to thread on Dragon's foot that's not a problem.

Thanks to member Mike:
"Here is what I found on the Vaults of Pandius:
Replica map of The Lost Valley of Hutaaka from B10 by Thorfinn Tait, from the Mystara Message Board posted 16 May 2006.
Replica map of Foamfire Valley from B10 by Thorfinn Tait, from the Mystara Message Board posted 14 May 2006."


B10 Night's Dark Terror could be used in conjunction with  Dark Albion to create the beyond the edge of empire feel with both Keep On The Borderland & B5 Horror on The Hill. The events of  the War of the Roses might not have happened.. yet. The PC's however have been dealing with the forces of Cults of Chaos for months before hand lending them a sense of wisdom of the depth & corruption of Chaos.


This is part of the flexibility & the customization factor that allows early modules to remain classics for a reason. In fact with a little work B10 Night's Dark Terrors can be one of the pivot modules in a DM's collection allowing them to set up multiple events helping to build a dangerous wilderness frontier where death is only a knife's blade away.


Ten Ways That B10 Night's Dark Terror Can Work For You

1. Cults, factions, slavers are all in the module waiting to be expanded and fleshed out as powers of incredible potential for campaign play. 
2. Lots of room for sticking in your favorite set of ruins or lost super science artifacts in a dungeon. 
3. The module can even be used as a  Assault on Precinct 13 or edge of the wilderness Western style adventure set in a dark fantasy world. 
4. Up the fairy tale elements and add in horror for a Ravenloft style Gothic edge of the wilderness horror survival adventure.This works well with Lamentations of The Flame Princess. 
5. Turn up the volume on the lost world cult for a far more conspiracy style game to weird out the players. 
6. Set B10 during a post apocalyptic game for a twist on the Gamma World classic adventure. Thundarr & Moks not included and sold separately. 
7. Change up the Russian elements and add in more Fiend Folio monsters for a completely weird fantasy realm. 
8. Add in traveling ancient Chinese merchants to form a bridge gap into another Orientialist sword & sorcery realm. New factions can be created for the expanding frontier feel. 
9. Exploit the native NPC's by the slavers for an almost but not quite quasi historical feel.  
10. Expand the wilderness for more 'old world' European encounters but add in more Lovcraftian cults to up the weirdness & pulp. 

OSR Commentary On B5 Horror on The Hill By Douglas Niles For Your Old School Sword & Sorcery Campaigns

The end of the road. A lonely fort stands on the banks of a mighty river. It is here the hardy bands of adventurers gather to plan their conquests of The Hill, the hulking mass that looms over this tiny settlement.

The Hill is filled with monsters, they say, and an evil witch makes her home there. Still, no visitor to The Hill has ever returned to prove the rumors true or false. The thrill of discovery is too great to pass up, and only the river stands in the way. The adventurers' boat is waiting!  One of the best mid tier B/X Dungeons & Dragons adventures that came out during the B/X era. Yes I said mid tier because this is a very deadly adventure in some respects. You've got elements of a wilderness crawl, several deadly encounters & a butt load of goblin & humanoid encounters. Wiki actually has a pretty solid breakdown of the whole module;"It is intended for beginning gamemasters and 5-10 player characters of level 1-3.^[1] The module contains around 20 encounters on the surface, a monastery, three dungeon levels and three new monsters."
So this adventure has been made for a large group of five to ten players?!? Which makes the adventure come off as a bit of a 'combat hog' ( a term often used in New England war gaming circles to indicate a combat situation which could bog down play for hours). In fact its got a completely different feel from 'Keep on The Borderlands' in terms of artwork, production values, & overall cohesiveness to the whole old school affair. This is also an adventure with a decidedly European pulpy flair as one of my American friends pointed out last night.

Some other very interesting things about 'Horror on the Hill' with a little work this adventure can be used to put PC's straight into the middle of a sword & sorcery fairy tale gone wrong setting. The dungeon master here is going to have to do a lot of work but with some customization work this isn't as bad as it sounds. The whole feel of the module has this sort of 'fairy tale' gone wrong or is it reality?! Something a friend suggested on the phone when we went over the module is that the forces of sorcery have been breaking things down & mutating the locals for some time. Some minor artifact of old has been unleashed within the last twenty years & slowly warping the locals in some very bad ways. The witch has been taking full advantage of this & bringing in several monsters from other realities.
"At the Fort, hardy bands of adventurers gather to plan their conquests of The Hill, the hulking mass that looms over this tiny settlement"


In Mystara the placement of 'Horror on the Hill 'by various hands reveals an interesting pattern. The adventure brings its placement that sharp interior fantasy Europe that we so often in D&D or AD&D campaigns. What this means is that DM's are using Horror on the Hill as a bridge gap for parties of adventurers to cross over from 1st to higher levels instead of simply using it as a first to third level advancement as the module was intended to do. This is being done because of the number of players that the module relies on. This isn't the first time I've had some commentary with 'Horror on The Hill'. 

 

So I've been thinking a lot about Horror on the Hill & how I would use it. There are several conclusions I've come to lately. The fact is that module might be used to help define a 'war with chaos' using local conditions that are 'on the ground' for players. The weird elements are clearly defined from easy encounters right up through the dragon at the end. There's a weird Saxon/Roman movie romantic feel to the artwork of 'Horror On The Hill' giving a not quite but close Arthurian or Russian pulp fairy tale feel to the module. This could be picked up and run with by the Dungeon Master.  How do I mean? Forget Michael Moorcock & let's plug into a far older chaos war. Perhaps Paul Anderson's Three Hearts & Three Lions background might be something that the dungeon master might want to pull from. What's giving me such an epic background for a beginning module is the number of players needed to pull Horror on the Hill off.


Surely that's going only be a one shot style of adventure? Umm no with the background of a world such as Hyperborea of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea we can mold the background of Horror on the Hill as we see fit. We have no ideas what's been taking place after the events of the Green Death plague.

Yes once again this is a clear point in which the DM is going to be setting the tone & placement of the adventure. This is something that happens time & again in campaigns but its up to the players to decide where & when their going to run with the adventure elements. The article Modules and adventures in Mystara is a clear example of this sort of thing.

The fact is that 'Horror on the Hill' could be mated up with Keep on the Borderland to create an over arching ruined fortresses on the edge of a crumbling empire sort of a feel. Something that has clear indicators for a game campaign world such as Dark Albion from which the PC's might be called back to deal with the War of the Roses events. In fact Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos could be used to add even more background to give 'Horror On The Hill' a bit more historical gravitas for players.


Horror on the Hill could be used to highly the pulpy transition from the run of the mill into the deep end of old school pulpy adventure with little effort. The DM is going to have to be willing to sacrifice a few PC's along the way because of its lethality but this is a module from the transition period of TSR. It has all of the old school deadliness we've come to expect.


Ten Ways That Horror On The Hill Can Work For You 

1. Get the players into the deep end of your sword & sorcery world by providing local events of the past in an in your face way. 
2. An easy location in Guido's Fort that can separate them easily from their hard earned gold. 
3. Horror on the Hill could be used as a side quest for a group of experienced players and add a new faction or two for campaign direction 
4. As an add on for a quest to pad things out with some pulpy adventure 
5. To get the PC's into the thick of deadly pulpy humanoid action 
6. Horror on the Hill makes a very nice post apocalyptic adventure with some adjustments for a slight twist to your old school wasteland adventures  
7. Add in more pulp elements to bring the adventure into a sharper sword & sorcery focus such as a slightly different origin for the goblins for a game such as AS&SH 
8. Add in more evil witches & covens with a Lovcraftian twist for a deadly cult of evil. Night Hags make excellent heads  heads of such cults. 
9. This is an excellent adventure to add in some Clark Ashton Smith elements such as Gargoyles. Or  Averoigne elements to 'Horror On The Hill' 
10. As a bridge gap for a Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk 

Retro Review & Commentary On The OD&D Adventure Module- Horror on the Hill For Your Old School OD&D Campaigns

Horror on the Hill is a weird beast of a low level module for OD&D and occupies a slightly different take on D&D then many of its other B series of adventures. The module is sort of its own creation and written in a completely different way then say Keep on the Borderlands. According to Wiki : This 32-page book was designed by Douglas Niles, and features cover artwork by Jim Roslof. It is intended for beginning gamemasters and 5-10 player characters of level 1-3.  Right out the bat this module came in at around 1983 and has always had its own completely different feel to it when running it then say Keep on the Borderlands.


The plot is interesting, engaging and pretty nice for a set up for a getting the PC's deep in the action Wiki has a pretty good overview of the adventure plot ; The scene of the action is Guido's Fort, located at the end of a road, with only the River Shrill, a mile wide, separating it from "The Hill".^[1] At the Fort, hardy bands of adventurers gather to plan their conquests of The Hill, the hulking mass that looms over this tiny settlement. They say the Hill is filled with monsters, and that an evil witch makes her home there. No visitor to The Hill has ever returned to prove the rumors true or false. Only the mighty river Shrill separates the player characters from the mysterious mountain." But the first thing that the PC's are going to run into is a mess of hobgoblins and goblins. Jim Halloway's hobgoblins are different then many dipictions I've seen and have a Morlock quality about them.

The module is well done but there are certain adventure plot element problems. There are some big problems right out of the gate, the module is trying really hard to use the standard alignment of OD&D to justify its own monster, encounters, NPC's, and plot elements. All roads lead to the boss monster at the end of the module, this is a very nasty bit of business and a problem because it makes the PC's confront the monster eventually regardless of their actions. Too much lame treasure being handed out to the PC's  and not enough mystery within the adventure's bounds and setting material, this is one of those treasure equals experience points adventures that were going to become more common as time went on. Yeah, so its a bit of a  railroad and has some minor issues. But the pluses far out weight the negatives in this adventure if your willing to look. According to Wiki; "The module contains around 20 encounters on the surface, a monastery, three dungeon levels and three new monsters." Believe it or not this is actually a really brutal adventure that can and has wiped out a number of parties that I've run through.


There is a terrific feeling of being trapped in a hellish fairy tale or dream like atmosphere in B5, but it seems to be lurking in the background of the adventure. You've got factions of  neanderthals vs ogres, hobgoblins lurking in the background waiting to pound PC's, witches cutting deals with PC's, a strong sandbox feel to the whole setting, and a massive horror waiting on the Hill itself. Then there are a ton of other classic adventure elements  plus dungeon crawling, high weirdness, and lots small side bit quests, encounters, and some interesting ideas. Pull all of that forward and run this as pulp driven sword and sorcery adventure, all of the elements are already build into the background of B5 The Horror On The Hill. There are some great ideas for a complete reskinning of the module over at Dungeon of Signs.
I love a ton of the ideas that he's done with B5 and they're fantastic but I did something a bit different with Horror on the Hill. I upped the sword and sorcery elements and set the entire adventure within the confines of Hyperborea. I left the dragon as is as a one off, changed around the humanoids, left the neanderthals and had the events of the module taking place within a cross road point between the PC's homelands.

This option worked pretty damn well and explained the Saxon/Roman style armor,elements,etc. The challenges of The Horror on the Hill were just as lethal and dangerous. Other adventure elements I just winged and it worked out great. Here's what I learned from that experience, Horror on the Hill is flexible enough to be mutilated into a retroclone system with little issue. I've heard of other friends of mine working with Swords and Wizardry and other basic clones to get the most adventure  utility out of B5. For me the dragon's presence & corruption spread itself throughout the region causing all kinds of havoc in the area for the ten or so years it was there. It mutated and caused havoc with the locals until only the descendants of the local regions remain. The Dragon is far more Lovecraftian, and yes I realize that there are no dragons in AS&SH but its a dimensional traveler and this was a one off event.
The weird fairy tale like nature of Horror on the Hill might be adapted into Lamentations of the Flame Princess as a part of a dark fantasy Europe in some back water and remote area such as Russia, or the upper parts of Hungry or another remote location. The pulpy morass would fit those areas very well.


To overcome to the 'Dwarf problem' of AS&SH, I've made the Dwarves of D&D mutated descendants & children  of the maggot things of Hyperborea. This totally creeped out the players and made the Dwarf players quite happy. The sword & sorcery themes of  Horror on the Hill lend itself to a variety of playing styles and for myself I turned the volume up to eleven resulting in a pretty damn good basic  adventure experience for the players while giving them the lethality  that they've come to expect in old school games.


Are there system differences and issues? Some but not as many as you might expect, some of the witch encounters had to be redone with nods towards AS&SH system. Magic items were reduced down to far more mundane treasures, and the encounters were pruned and made more Conansque. But surprisingly the adventure not only survived but the players had a blast.



Despite warts, a few wonky encounters, and some really weird choices in placement Horror on The Hill is an old favorite of mine that can be used with a wide variety of old school play styles. I think it still has a place at the table and with some adjustment remains a pretty good crossover point adventure from the classic TSR D&D output into  Electrum age old school role playing.