OSR Review & Commentary On the Beginning Castles & Crusades Adventure 'A Blaze in the Northern Sky' By Scott Myers For Your Old School Game System Campaign

 

Never let it be said that circumstances can make one take a break between breaths. Recently a friend came to me looking for a beginning adventure recommendation for his home Castles & Crusades home  game. Now sure there are ton of beginning adventures out there but for something that really flies in the face of convention?! I strongly recommend A Blaze in the Northern Sky by Scott Myers . This is a bit of a different matter & while I have covered Mr.Myer's adventure before with a review of  'Under a Funeral Moon'.   I paid for A Blaze in the Northern Sky  out of pocket for the chance to take a look at the adventure. 
Believe it or not beginning OSR adventures can be absolutely easily screwed up. And this isn't one of those. Instead its a straight forward set up & take down with very nasty twist in the middle of it. The set up goes something like this;"The people in the village are weary but still worried. The village was raided by Hobgoblins and a large Ogre that wore a collar and chain last night. The local ranger fought and killed 3 Hobgoblins before succumbing to his wounds. The Hobgoblins took most of the town’s supply of grain and with winter around the corner they fear they will go hungry come years end. Several men in town got together and decided they would go after the raiders. They gathered their weapons and followed the Hobgoblins into the woods north of town. About a half hour later the villagers noticed the woods north of town were on fire. It rained here around sunrise and the forest fires died out, which is strange because the players noticed no signs of rain on their travels to here." 
This is a straight up action set piece from beginning to end & starts with a bang! And it keeps going! Hobgoblins & horrors are here aplenty & they don't stop. This is war right out of the gate with the village caught in the middle & a mini crawl right in the middle there's enough here to start the PC's in the deep end of a C&C campaign. 

 

I don't want to give too much away but this module picks up the action in the old school of the sense that the PC's are gonna be a part of something nasty because out in the bigger world there's lots going on beyond your level. 
 Not only could this be set up in Greyhawk but A Blaze in the Northern Sky   could be used as a prelude to a classic TSR module. You got combat & you've go dungeon crawling happening in one very short module but those adventure elements could be used to connect  A Blaze in the Northern Sky   right into the back door of Gary Gygax's T1 The Village of Homlett. The events of a A Blaze in the Northern Sky   could have the PC's stumble right into the village very much the worse for wear! 

Adventure events unfold from there but they lead right into B2 Keep on the Borderland! Why?! Because they can that's why?! This all sets the stage for Gary Gygax & Frank Mentzer's T1-4 The Temple of Elemental Evil!  A Blaze in the Northern Sky   isn't a 'Scooby Doo' crap sack of an adventure that doesn't deliver. In stead this is a solid & carefully crafted little slice of violence & degeneration for the PC's as they navigate through a shark tank of weirdness. 

A Blaze in the Northern Sky   could be set within  Castles & Crusades Aihrde because it has all of the classic elements within it for continued play! The history of  Castles & Crusades Aihrde fits easily the back story of A Blaze in the Northern Sky  . This is exactly what I wanna see as a dungeon master. A miniumist approach to an adventure so that if need to modify it then its easily done. Again this is the hallmark of a good adventure. And one that could take its 'p's & ''q's from classic gaming. Is  A Blaze in the Northern Sky   a good adventure?! Yes as a beginning adventure that puts the PC's into the hearth & then adds logs to the fire. 

Could A Blaze in the Northern Sky  be added into the weirdness & background of  the Haunted Highlands with the menace & adventure plot really lending itself as a possible beginning for the highly venerable C&C setting? The answer to this is a quick yes! 

But let's talk about yet another setting that would fit the plot of   A Blaze in the Northern Sky   adventure. That setting is the Castles & Crusades version of Judge's Guild's The Wilderlands of High Fantasy. The adventure plot is down & dirty,the violence very much in the vein of Sword & Sorcery. So everything neatly fits into the dovetailed weirdness of the 'Wilderlands'! The monsters are all provided for the dungeon master, the encounters are laid bare, & everything is ready to go from outta of the tin A Blaze in the Northern Sky  ! This is good adventure & way to start a Castles & Crusade campaign! 

OSR Review & Commentary On the Free Beginning Castles & Crusades Adventure 'Under a Funeral Moon' By Scott Myers For Your Old School Game System Campaign

 

When it comes to Castles & Crusades a beginning free mid range adventure is Under a Funeral Moon By Scott Myers is a solid little adventure for six or more PC's levels 1-2. This  Scott Myers has done a solid job of working out a beginning & the introduction makes it clears from the beginning;"This adventure is for 3-5 1st to 2nd level characters and is set in the Eastern Marches of Havvengarde near the town of Magefall. I have tried to make this adventure easily adaptable for any game world. The Eastern Marches of Havvengarde are the ‘less civilized’ area of the country, stretching from Kampenheim and the Woods of Ypres to the Eastern Wall. The area is still filled with large expanses of wilderness, monsters, and ruins from ages past. ‘Under a Funeral Moon’ begins with the characters escorting a merchant houses supply wagons (and the corpse of a recently deceased noble) from the town of Waldrand and over to the village of Magefall where the supplies will be loaded into caravans and taken south to Ivywood."

Because Castles & Crusades Player's Handbook has been free since the start of the Pandemic & since this is the case Under a Funeral Moon is a solid choice for a starting adventure. Why?! Because of the level of the encounters & the care that has been put in. 

And the beginning of Under a Funeral Moon makes it quite clear that  is an adventure that throws the player's PC's deep into the C&C world in spades;"The players had been holed up in the town of Waldrand, taking odd jobs and merchant wagon escorts for most of the winter. As winter draws to a close a merchant company hires them to escort a wagon of seed and supplies to the village of Magefall (a 3 and a quarter day trip)." Under a Funeral Moon clocks in at thirty three pages & these are filled with nastiness & death. But its well written nastiness & death designed from the ground up to make things interesting, random, & very deadly. 

There's all of the little things that go a long way to making Under a Funeral Moon just that little bit of deadly. Random encounters, a bit of an adventure plot, & just enough action to make this a short but quick series of sessions. 
Do you need the Castle Keeper's Guide with Under a Funeral Moon? Nope every thing is self contained within the adventure to get a campaign off the ground in short order. 

Where could Under a Funeral Moon be set?! In the classic AD&D first edition world of Greyhawk Under a Funeral Moon  fits very easily. The danger, the random encounters, the menaces, & even the adventure  place names could fit easily into Greyhawk. 

The world setting of Castles & Crusades Aihrde can easily accommodate Under a Funeral Moon but with a bit of minor modification on the DM's part. The material is readily pulled into the official home of Castles & Crusades. 

But another viable possibility for Under a Funeral Moon might be the Haunted Highlands with the menace & adventure plot really lending itself as a possible beginning for the highly venerable C&C setting. 
But this option means some really quick & dirty rearrangement of plot,places, & adventure menace. Not impossible but simply a challenge unless the dungeon master is experienced at this sort of thing. 

Another strong possibility is to take Under a Funeral Moon & set it within a dark Europe home brew campaign set within a mythological dark age. This allows the DM the advantages of an OSR home brew advantage & none of the dangerous baggage of the players having a touchstone with the world for a home team advantage. But that's a part of the flexibility of Under a Funeral Moon. Do I personally think that Under a Funeral Moon is worth your time to down load & use in an OSR or Castles & Crusades game?! In a word yes!