B/X Dungeons & Dragons Free & Pay Resources For Your Old School Campaigns

So yesterday around the table I heard some grumbles about the B/X Essentials review I did. Namely that there were no really free expansions for B/X Dungeons & Dragons. Oh but there are my friends! Way back in '09 there was a really well put together product for B/X Dungeons & Dragons from Barrataria Games called the Companion Expansion. There's a free no artwork version of this book which clocks in at a hundred & eight pages

Then there happens to be a print version of this book on lulu for sixteen dollars. 

Why should you as a player or dungeon master want or need this product? Well there are few reasons one its a very nicely designed rules rules set. Two the Companion Expansion brings lots of options to the Moldvay/Cook ruleset. Here's what the 'Companion Expansion' brings to the table for expert-level players and gamemasters, lots of additional  including 8 additional character classes (bard, druid, gnome, wildwood elf, half-elf/half-orc, half-ogre, illusionist, scout), expanded experience, combat, and saving throw tables, two additional types of magic (druid and illusion) and additional magic-user and cleric spells (90 in all), over 130 new or additional creatures (with a comprehensive index and suggested experience point awards), dozens of new or additional magic items, and extended treasure generation tables!' This book actually lives up to the hype on the tin and gives a good deal of bang for the buck.


While originally designed to expand the PC's hold in the' in house' campaign setting of the ' WORLD OF STRONGHOLD ' from Barrataria Games. This material is easily usable in the B/X Dungeons & Dragons Moldvay/Cook ruleset.

The Campaign Expansion is able in the No Art Work Version here. 

 



Now between the Campaign Expansion & the  B/X Companion from
Running Beagle Games  there a lot of  options at the table.
Of course if I wanted to really keep the ball rolling I'd throw in Running Beagle's The Complete B/X Adventurer. This brings more new classes, new spells, new character options, and rules options for beginning PC's. These are B/X gaming materials not found in the the Advanced Edition Companion™ for Labyrinth Lord™.

The B/X Companion & the B/X Adventurer is available in print through the B/X Black Razor blog. All of the material I've covered so far is completely compatible with Labyrinth Lord. Which makes the entire affair sweeter in my humble opinion. Yes I also know about Barrel Rider Games Class Compendium for Labyrinth Lord. Yes this is a great PC class book that expands the gauntlet of classes for LL & B/X Dungeons & Dragons. I heartily recommend it for dungeon masters looking to expand their B/X range of material. Yes it really well done quality OSR material.



Now this being said if you as a Dungeon Master & your looking for a good free value download, AA2 Adventure Anthology Two just broke for the Basic Fantasy Rpg by James Lemon, Chris Gonnerman, and Contributors is solid.

 Also grab Chris Gonnerman's other Basic Fantasy rpg materials whist your there at the downloads section you won't be sorry.

 Another option that you have at the table for B/X OSR play is another favorite of mine which is Dark Dungeons which is a retroclone of the Dungeons & Dragons Rules Cyclopedia along with its attendant supplements. 

Following this path for B/X Dungeons and Dragons PC design and class options at the table gives the DM a ton to work with for both his campaign & his players. There are far too many resources to name in a simple blog post but this is a starting point.
I'd also like to mention that the guys at Frog God Games  have a 30% off Coupon for PDF Purchases - Benefits Catholic Charities Houston who were affected by Hurricane Harvey and that there are LOT of Texas gamers are affected by this, including S&W creator Matt Finch, and several other OSR regulars that I know.

Review & Commentary On B/X Essentials: Core Rules From Necrotic Gnome Productions

So I received an email last night from Gavin Norman with my sparkling copy of B/X Essentials. Straight up I asked to for a copy for review and boy I surprised at the fact straight out of the gate that its only thirty seven pages long. This really is a boiled down version of B/X Dungeons & Dragons in retroclone form. Right out of the gate The author states exactly what his intent is;
"My love for Basic/Expert-style fantasy adventuring was reignited with the publication of  Labyrinth Lord and the rise of the old-school renaissance / whatever-you-like-to-call-it.   Over the years, I’ve run all sorts of campaigns with the Basic/Expert rules— everything from classic dungeon hacks, to dying Earth science
fantasy, to Lovecraft-inspired, Victorian age horror. Of course, all these campaigns have
added their own twists to the rules: alternate classes, new spells, monsters, equipment,
treasures, and so on. Nonetheless, the core rules of the game remained constant. And I think that’s the real treasure of the Basic/ Expert rules: their timeless elegance, concision,
and very wide (I wouldn’t go quite so far as to say universal) applicability. Through all these years of play, though, what I’ve always missed is a cleanly presented, easy-to-reference rendition of the core rules of the game separated from the associated “accoutrements”—the classes, spells, monsters,
magic items, etc. Neither the original Basic/Expert books nor the various modern clones exactly satisfy this requirement. That’s what this book is about."
But does it succeed in its mission of boiling down everything in the B/X Dungeons & Dragons Basic & Expert rules into its quintessential form? Yes but that's not everything that B/X Essentials does. The mission statement goes like this:

• 100% accurate rules clone. B/X Essentials, unlike other clones or games inspired by B/X, goes to great efforts to be 100% accurate to the original. Nothing is altered. Nothing is added. Nothing is removed.
• Organized for quick reference. The text of B/X Essentials is consciously kept concise and is broken into logical chunks, each with a header, making quick reference possible. I believe this is the clearest expression of the Basic/Expert rules available to date.
• Clarified rules. The original rules are delightfully straightforward, but there certainly exist areas of confusion and ambiguity. (Check out the rules for encumbrance or wilderness chases, for example.) B/X Essentials presents greatly clarified descriptions of these rules.

These rules are the essential systems for B/X Dungeons & Dragons nothing more or less. They are the combined Basic & Expert D&D systems boiled right down to their essence and its done right in my humble opinion.  Is it better then Holmes or Mentzer? No, its a good set of both edits in one system.



But the best part about this product is the following :

"100% Open Game Content. In addition to a fancy, fully illustrated print / PDF edition, the B/X Essentials rules will be released in a simple text format licensed as 100% Open Game Content (under the OGL). The fresh expression of the B/X rules can thus be freely used by other people for the creation of their own house rules documents and B/X-inspired games."

This is one of the places where the OSR excels at by creating a set of rules open for others to create their own game material and settings to put into the OSR but its also a bane because of the sometimes lack of oversight. But this is the drawback with any open game content OSR retroclones but shrug that comes with the territory.

Does B/X Essentials succeed in its mission? I think over all it does exactly what it properts to be a 100% boiled down reference set of rules that has the Gavin Norman style of  'meat & potatoes' approach to the rules. This is where I'm familiar with how the author works in his game design choices and its something we've seen before in Wormskin with Greg Gorgonmilk. Take the high road with the choices but deal with the hard & fast regardless of design conceits. Necrotic Gnome has done this before but its not a bad thing. The quality of rules are here in B/X Essentials and it shows.


Here rules are combined & straightened out without altering the flavor, the essence, and intent in my opinion of the originals. Sure its a new coat of paint but its one with all of the bumps and creases taken out from the material. This means there's enough here to run a campaign but its a set of rules that applies across the board. How does this compare with other retroclones on the market currently? There are choices here that make B/X Essentials stand on its own. And that's the way it should be in my opinion. Over that means that purists are going find little to 'bitch' about but there will be some as always. What I was surprised at was the artwork in the B/X Essential rules set. Its very nice and layout is very well done. The material is easily accessible and its true that everything here works for a B/X addict like me. Overall the effort in my humble opinion is five out of five. There will be a follow up book B/X Essentials: Classes and Equipment so B/X Essentials is exactly what it claims to be the essential rules for B/X.
There is a No Art Work Version available for free here Print editions coming soon! People who purchase the PDF edition will be sent a voucher to upgrade to the print edition, when it becomes available.



The B/X Essentials Paid Version With artwork
is available right here for five dollars for a 37 page PDF full
of great artwork!

Bad Moon Rising - Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea - Actual Play Event

Picking up right where last week's game left off the PC's went down the hidden stair case after almost running into a black pudding sent by one of the vampiric lords of Tegel Manor after last week's game.  That's when they ran into a party of  skull faced Formorian  slavers who were  wrapping up a deal with the servants of the Moon beasts. The Skull Faces are a tribe of intelligent evil cannibals Formorian warriors who use a variety of magical weaponry & armor to compensate for their relatively smaller size among giants. They range from only the eight to ten foot tall range. They also pray on tribes of half caste Hyperborean fishermen who ply the waters around some of the lower quarter islands around Hyperborea.



Meanwhile the PC's ended up going up against seven of the Formorians who put up a good show with radium pistols, +3 hooked knives of returning, and a few radiation grenades to slow things down.The PC's saw the black ships of the moon beasts & a small party of the Lunar ogre servants of the beasts who were there to collect the other half of the slaves. The Aztec style priestess working for Morgana already collected her lot which were taken to 'Old Earth'. These seven were the third half which the PC's realized were due for a mass sacrifice on the Moon of the Old Solar system. I took a lot of ideas for the Skull Faced Formorians from the Frank Frazetta Battle Field Earth cover which as a kid I had hanging on my wall.


Burned into my mind was the illustration for  an admiral's galley from Architectura Navalis, found in The Story of the Barbary Corsairs' by Stanley Lane-Poole, published in 1890 by G.P. Putnam's Sons.


This ship has been my moon beast ship design since I was a kid stocked by Men of Leng and Lunar ogres. The ogres are the intermediate race who capture slaves, act as muscle, and generally act as the muscle for the moon beasts. Who are the moonbeasts? "Moon-beasts are creatures in H. P. Lovecraft's Dream Cycle. They are “great greyish-white slippery things which could expand and contract at will, and whose principal shape — though it often changed — was that of a sort of toad without any eyes, but with a curious vibrating mass of short pink tentacles on the end of its blunt, vague snout” (The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, Lovecraft). They live on the dark side of the Dreamlands' moon which, unlike the moon of the waking world, has great forests and oily seas.
The Moon-beasts sail black galleys between the moon and the Dreamlands, trading rubies for both slaves and gold"  
I always associated them with The Moon Maid & Moon Men  by Edgar Rice Burroughs & since it was Edgar Rice  Burroughs birthday I used the enemies from that classic science fiction series to design my lunar ogres.They were almost but not quite taken from Frazetta's cover for the Moon Men. My Moon is a place where the inhabitants, tribes, etc. all go through cycles of birth and death. Tribes of advanced humanoid species have city states within the underworld of the lunar surface. When the stars have come almost right they came back with a vengeance using Selenite technology to terraform the lunar surface of the 'Old Solar system Moon.


The PC's managed to save seven islanders destined for slavery and I've managed to move my Fall campaign ahead at full speed but after this week's sword & weirdness action their going to need more magic, weapons, coin, and time to recharge. The manor is really taxing the hell out of em and their starting to realize that their going to have to find the dimensional control mechanism that moves the manor across the old solar system. For the Fall campaign marks the following is coming up:
1. Return to the 'Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence' for some of the lost technologies & crystals of the Ancient Ones. 
2. Exploration of the Lunar underworld & its connections with Hyperborea 
3. Dealing with several leads to a mysterious island on Old Earth that appears occasional on Hyperborea as well 
4. Tracking down that dark priestess and her connections to the witch queen Morgana.
5. Finding out the vendetta of the Skull Faced Formorians with the tribes of the PC's. 
6. Dealing with the mysteries of 'Old Venus' and the awakening of the serpent people especially on Mars. 
7. Exploration of several dangerous Hyperborean ruins that the PC's have come across on Old Earth. 
8. What are the connections to the empire of lightless N'kai and the cult of
Tsathoggua which has deep connections to Tegel Manor. 
9. What is the connections between the Rumps and the two statues of
Tulu (Cthulhu) and Yig that are in the possession of the PC's. 
10. Is there a  sleeping star spawn of Cthulhu near the manor?


All Frazetta covers and artwork used without permission, this post is not an attempt to violate the copyrights or trademarks of any of the science fiction stories cited in tonight's blog entry. All opinions are copy righted and trade marked to the author as none of the table top rpgs mentioned in the blog article have any responsibility for the content of this blog.

1d7 Random Low Level Sword & Sorcery Treasures Table For Your Old School Campaigns

Dusk on the sea; the fading twilight shifts'
The night wind bears the ocean's whisper dim—
Wind, on your bosom many a phantom drifts—
A silver star climbs up the blue world rim.
Wind, make the green leaves dance above me here
And idly swing my silken hammock—so;
Now, on that glimmering molten silver mere
Send the long ripples wavering to and fro.
And let your moon-white tresses touch my face
And let me know your slim-armed, cool embrace
While to my dreamy soul you whisper low.

Adventurer  (1926)  by Robert Ervin Howard

 There is plenty of loot that flows the hands of PC's, items, relics, and treasures from a million realms. But how many of them are really life changing without the aura of magick about them? What if there are treasures from lost worlds & other places that can simply shift the role of history for a PC? There are! Each and everyday the sandal shod feet of adventurers pass over a thousand ages past's relics. There are ancient relics that have been lost to the pages of history.

Many of these treasures will be regional or local items with their own history and background endemic to the area. Because of this there may be 1d10 bandits or local outlaws interested in these items and more then willing to murder for them.


1d7 Random Low Level Sword & Sorcery Treasures Table

1. Sixteen golden disks containing the wisdom from the far off ages of the past. These disks contain 1d100 pieces of religious and occult wisdom They are worth 40,00 gold pieces because of the rarity and inhunan medium they play only with the right mechanism 
2. Nine silver statues of animal headed gods that were the respresentations of their respective gods. The statues are worth 20,000 gold pieces because they are hallow to certain active gods of Egyptians. 
3. A giant key of jade worth 10,000 gold pieces because it opens the vaults of the ages which belongs to the Ancient Ones. The vaults are rumored to be in the wastelands. 
4. Funerary vases containing ancient vials of gold that are used in elemental summoning rites and rituals. 
5. Six caskets containing magick supplies for dangerous rites and rituals. Perfectly mundane but worth   60,000 gold pieces 
6. A radium projection system able to create three dee holographic mental projections created by Hyperborean interfaces and mechanisms. Worth 40,000 gold pieces 
7. Water clock of Hyperborea that counts down the dooms of the Great Old Ones as the hours draw near and stars are right. There isn't anything supernatural about it but the graviton pulse waves signal the time. This item is priceless to a wizard of dangerous aspect.   

Clark Ashton Smith's 'Forbidden Planet' Movie Connections To The 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

Out on the outer edges of the 'Old Solar System' are the more forbidding worlds of the system. These worlds are ones where mankind is the trespasser or the late comer. This is something that seems to echo through the original  Star Trek series & the cult classic sci fi film Forbidden Planet.

Again this is something that we see in the Clark Ashton Smith "Captain Volmar" sequence with his icy Captain Volmar dishing out his justice to a crew ready to mutiny. There's also a sense to these stories that we are actually seeing a life expectancy of red shirts from Star Trek in these stories.
"I'm going to put you fellows off on the first world of the first planetary system we come to."
The icy deliberation of Captain Volmar's tones was more terrible than any show of anger would have been. His eyes were chill and sharp as the sapphire lights in snow; and there was a fanatic rigor in the tightening of his lips after the curtly spoken words.
There's a sense to the "Captain Volmar" story, "The Amazing Planet", which took the cover of the Summer 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly.  That mankind is really the late comers to the interstellar stage and these stories taken with his The Plutonian Drug by Clark Ashton Smith reveal that something very weird has happened to the Mi Go. Their not around anymore in the local star system. They've left the solar system lock stock and brain cylinders and its my theory that they moved their whole base ala the Puppeteer planet in Larry Niven's Ring World series. Sure there are few odds, ends, & relics that they've left behind but they've bugged out. Sure there are still the warrior cast, the middle management brain bugs, & a few queens here & there as revealed in the "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1931).
But over all the Mi Go as a whole are no longer around Pluto or the former Yuggothian colonies. They know something big is coming and they've moved on. Because their sacred to Hastur, Nyarlathotep, and other Great Old Ones. But there numerous other void such as colonies of   the star-spawn of Cthulhu, the Great Race of Yith, and the elder things not to mention the 'Martians' from HG Wells War of the Worlds.



So what does this mean for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea? Well actually quite a bit. The implications are that the far future of AS&SH is a very busy place where the Hyperboreans have come back to a mankind whose used to dealing with some of the hellish things from the void. There's also the Martian rebellions that are briefly outlined in CAS's Adventures in Futurity. But that particular story foreshadows the return of the Atlantians, Hyperboreans, etc. as highlighted in H.P.Lovecraft's The Mound. We get a feel for the weirdness of the Saturn in  Clark Ashton Smith's The Door Into Saturn. The alien ecology, odd Lovecraftian entities, & the utter remoteness of Cykranosh."He turned to see what manner of creature had flung the shadow. This being, he perceived, was not easy to classify, with its ludicrously short legs, its exceedingly elongated arms, and its round, sleepy-looking head that was pendulous from a spherical body, as if it were turning a somnambulistic somersault. But after he had studied it a while and had noted its furriness and somnolent expression, he began to see a vague though inverted likeness to the god Zhothaqquah. And remembering how Zhothaqquah had said the form assumed by himself on Earth was not altogether that which he had worn in Cykranosh, Eibon now wondered if this entity was one of Zhothaqquah's relatives.
—Clark Aston Smith, "The Door to Saturn""
Mankind is going to be dealing with such Great Old Ones as Atlach-Nacha , Tsathoggua (Zhothaqquah), and even perhaps Tsathoggua's paternal uncle, Hziulquoigmnzhah.

We get some of our answers in Clark Ashton Smith's Amazing Planet story in

Wonder Stories Quarterly v02n04 (1931 Summer)

 

Forget the lower tier weaponry, out here your going to need a serviceable blaster that does 2d6+2 points of damage with a range of  60 feet or more. They have charges of 1d20 shots when found and run about 30,000 gold pieces each.

The second most common weapon used by the human colonists is the blaster rifle of the Human Collective. Manufactured by armorers from a hundred colonies these weapons do 3d6+2 points of damage & have a 1d30 shot capacity with a range of 200 foot or better depending upon planetary conditions.
After encountering Elder Things and shoggoths on both their colonies of Neptune &  the triple star system (with a yellow, red, and blue star) located "between Hydra and Argo Navis"

Elder Thing by  Віщун - http://vixis24m.deviantart.com/art/The-Elder-Thing-395769042

But these were the least of the horrors encountered by mankind who stumbled upon the remains of other weird horrors such as those in   Leigh Brackett's Thralls of the Endless Night & Marooned On Io. Out in the depths of space are the ruins & remains of the Hyperborean empires that have fallen into rot because the interstellar infrastructure has completely disappeared. This is one of the reasons why the life expectancy  of adventurers, outlaws, and others out in the solar system is so high. The Old Solar System is a dangerous place & we get hints of this sort of vibe from the classic Forbidden Planet where crew members of the C-57D fall like a kid's wooden blocks. But this doesn't mean that the Old Solar System isn't a great place to adventure.




There are a couple of things to keep in mind for an old school dungeon master looking at Clark Ashton Smith's novellas & stories :

1. The hero & his party of adventurers & hirelings go on a few side quests before achieving their goals in many CAS stories.
2. Scattered all throughout CAS's novels are the remains of the worlds before the gods. This is something that echoes throughout his novels. The feeling that there was 'a world before' We are merely a part of that cycle.
3. The prison of Old Ones at the edge of the solar system  is a  pure dungeon crawl & has many classic elements of an old school adventure including a guardian monster and much more.
4. There are other echoes of earlier Lovecraftian  mythological novels  such as Lord Dunsany scattered throughout the CAS material
5.   Xeethra, a goatherd of Cincoris a perfect pure bard,r NPC & his characteratazion makes an excellent reference for old school DM's from Xeethra by Clark Ashton Smith
6. The interaction between the gods and humans in the Door Into Saturn  is fickle at best and downright dangerous at worst. This sort of interaction might be typical for human and alien  interactions. 
7. There is treasure just sitting around several of CAS's adventure locations and this could lead a party of adventurers to follow the trails blazed by various CAS heroes   
8. Cthulhu  isn't the only monster that the gods have imprisoned. There's a bunch of horrors implied by the CAS novels  but never seen. 
9. There isn't much back story given to several of CAS's characters. Could a relative of  the PC's have been one of the Great Old Ones victims? This might make for a good side quest. 
10. The gods make several references to the moves of other humans on their chess boards within the Hyperborea cycles. Could these be the PC's interfering in the plans of the gods?

 This post is not an attempt to violate the trade mark or copy right of the film Forbidden Planet. The contents of this post are for entertainment & educational purposes only all writings are the copyright and trade mark of Dark Corner productions. Photos blaster and blaster rifle photos are used without permission & are for reference only the copy right and trade mark belong to their holders.