Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers Of Hyperborea rpg System + The Psychedelic Fantasies #1 Adventure Beneath The Ruins - Actual Play Event

So tonight I got together with some old friends Steven and his brother Mike  came to town, called me up last second and wanted to play with a couple of their friends a bit of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.


Now ever since last year and me running AS&SH locally many of my friends and players have purchased the rpg themselves. That also means that they had also purchased the adventures that went along with the rpg system. Now that's not a problem because I've been working on a few of the details of the Accursed Atlantis wasteland setting. That being said, I needed an adventure location fast. They were picking me up from work at seven. So I pulled a bit of a back trick when I took Beneath the Ruins, an old school minimalist pamphlet by Alex Fotinakes and published by Geoffrey McKinney's Psychedelic Fantasies series and dusted it off. There several interesting things about the Psychedelic Fantasies; these are complete adventure locations unto themselves. You can set them anywhere and then pull the trigger. The back story of the adventure continues along its merry way regardless of the adventurer's actions. They can blunder into the action of the Beneath The Ruins and their going to be drawn into the unfolding  action. And that's exactly what happened. There's plenty of room for DYI D&D with this adventure. A sentence or two about certain bits in the adventure and then its up to the DM and players to fill in the gaps. There were seven players in tonight's game.  And almost right out of the gate the PC's were in serious trouble.

The party was drawn into the cross hairs of two rival wasteland warlords and one of the PC's family members was held for ransom while the party had to retrieve an item from one of the adventure locations of Beneath the Ruins. Two pizzas later the adventure hummed right along. There were several encounters that had the PC's in a Robert E Howard Red Nails sort of situation made the mix of warriors and wizards nervous to say the least.
This is a pure site based adventure and there for can easily be stuck into the wastes of any old school game but because of the nature of the rooms, encounters, monsters, etc. most of this adventure comes under the science fantasy banner.  This makes it especially easy to convert over to AS&SH. The monsters were weird enough and some of the treasures as to keep the jaded players interested till the very end.


I've reviewed Beneath The Ruins before and so I knew what to expect and to act accordingly. It wasn't a bad night in the least with at least two near PC's deaths. So that went right according to plan. AS&SH is ideal suited to the maximum amount of carnage. More the week after next when the guys come back into town again from Maine. 

Review of the 'Pay What You Want' OSR Adventure - The EIGHTH Psychedelic Fantasies module For Your Old School Science Fantasy Campaigns

Its always a good night when I come home to a new copy of a Psychedelic Fantasies adventure but its even better when its one from Bjorn Waredal whose work is very familiar to me. Once again this wonderful little line of high weirdness system neutral OSR goodness delivers the goods. Here we have an eleven page adventure location based goodness in an old school mini campaign but one that does its job in style and with a sense of fun that really compliments the adventure in spades. Here's far warning ahead, pick this adventure up! Seriously this is a perfect vehicle as a middle of the campaign flash or bridge gap. There's literally a ton of links to tie this little adventure in with your favorite retroclone OD&D style, science fantasy  or post apocalyptic old school campaign. With little modification this adventure could be used with Lamentations of the Flame Princess's Carcosa. Best of all its on 'Pay what you'd Want'

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Proteus Sinking by Bjorn Warmedal

As you can imagine Proteus Sinking is a low level science fantasy campaign adventure that puts the PC's right into the middle of the action. The author has taken the unbridled creativity into a whole other directions then other adventures in this line.
From the Rpgnow blurb: 

This adventure is set on a crashed starship of gelatinous beings. You do not have to wait until the PCs are high-level to get them into crazy sci-fi weirdness, for this module is for character levels 1-3. Start them off right away with the crazy. Don't let the Globo-Zen, Globo-Disco, and hallucinogenic mushrooms fool you into letting your guard down. This dungeon will kill you.

Compatible with every old school version of the original fantasy role-playing game.

Each stand-alone adventure module in the Psychedelic Fantasies line revels in unconstrained imagination. Every monster, every magic power, and every magic spell is a unique and never-before-seen creation of the author. No orcs, fireballs, or +1 swords will be found within. Leave the familiar behind to explore hitherto undreamed of wonders…

Even though this is a low level adventure it does a really nice job with its encounters of keeping events interesting, room descriptions inventive, and monster encounters deadly. This is one of the those adventures that can easily be plugged into a deep post apoclapytic wasteland campaign or a sword & planet location. This entire adventure could take place within one hex upon Carcosa easily and become a mini campaign for a few weeks as the PC's go from room to room dealing with the high weirdness and alien devices. Make no mistake that if the PC's are not wise they will end up dead or worse.
The monsters have a definite tongue & cheek quality to them but this for me part of the appeal of them. That does not make them any less deadly at all. Certain parts of this adventure remind me of the 'Mother Ship Zeta' expansion to the Fall Out Three video game.But this is in a good way, because this adventure is going to keep the PC's  guessing.
And that's really one of the strengths of this adventure the fact that while its well done its going to move the PC's into completely unexpected directions. This is a nice bridge gap adventure to take PC's from a fantasy setting to science fantasy or science fiction setting climate.
 Ten pages isn't a huge module but its a decent change of pace for an old school dungeon romp through this adventure location.  In other words pick this adventure up and get into some really nice old school dungeon crawl with a high room count in an unexpected adventure location. In other words pick this one up as soon as possible.

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

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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!