Saturday, March 26, 2016

Free OSR Resource Adventure - Under Xylarthen’s Tower By Jeff Rients For Your Old School Campaigns

When I first started in the OSR I came upon a gem of an old school adventure done by Jeff Rients which pretty much had each and every element that my gonzo science fantasy heart desired. Tonight I reran the adventure for the first time in a very long time for some friends and it still was as good as it was back in '09.
Under Xylarthen’s Tower By Jeff Rients is a nice romp through a six level dungeon of awesomeness. The adventure has a lot going for it.

GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

Its easy to run has a great take on monsters and really hits that gonzo spot without over powering the old school feel of the dungeon and it still runs damn well. At least one of the PC's in tonight game died rather badly.


I have to say after running this adventure its really nice to get a module in where the players were having a blast with a quick OD&D style of play. This adventure could easily be used in a Lamentations of the Flame Princess over the top gonzo game setting such as Carcosa or something of a similar nature.
For a game such as Dungeon Crawl Classics this is a nice module to challenge some lower tier PC's or a group of 1-3rd retroclone adventurers. Even the introduction of the adventure betrays the old school inspired roots of the adventure;"The dungeon levels below the tower of the wizard Xylarthen began life as an attempt to create an ‘authentic’ dungeon
using the random dungeon stocking methods outlined in Book 3, The Underworld & Wilderness Adventures, with an eye towards creating something playable as a one-shot at the 35th annual Winter War game convention in Champaign, Illinois. Because I am the kind of gamer who enjoys
rolling on many random die charts, I also employed some of the tables found in the Judges Guild publication Ready Ref Sheets, particularly the elegantly simple random dungeon charts and the goofy magical statue generator.The maps are exactly what the adventure sounds like something that a young but accomplished dungeon master would whip up over a weekend for a Monday night game.



I have to say how please I was with the way that events went when I ran this tonight. The players had a blast and everything went off without a hitch. Not a bad's nights gonzo game with  Make sure you grab a copy of this beast and then run the hell out  Under Xylarthen’s Tower. This is an adventure that does exactly what it sets out to do, that is present a gonzo adventure that can still challenge players for a low level good time. I highly recommend it as a free download.

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