Saturday, December 24, 2016

Review & Commentary On Three Toadstools Publishing's Troubling Events: A Free Crimhuck Adventure For Labyrinth Lord & Your Old School Campaigns

Its Christmas time & its been a long time since I wanted or cared about the crass commercialism of the holidays at all. The older I'm getting the more it becomes evident to me that my family is the most important center of the holiday. Now that being said one of my best friends stopped by to see my family and my dad we were shooting the breezy about Adventurer, Conqueror, King, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, & generally just BSing as gamers do.
So what do I find when I sit down at my lap top? A brand new adventure called Troubling Events: A Free Crimhuck Adventure
What the hell is Crimhuck? Well its Shane Ward's sword & sorcery world that he's been slowly building up over the last couple of years or so. Bits and pieces of it have appeared on the Three Toadstools blog & in his various old school adventures. Since this is a Labryth Lord adventure its easy to adapt and modify to your own worlds. I can see using this adventure with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea quite easily. Even in the intro the writer presents his sword & sorcery setting in the firs paragraph,"It’s a semi unknown continent that has just been discovered in recent years; however it hasn’t been fully mapped. Well that isn’t exactly correct, it was previously discovered by other races, however there’s a whole new group of explorers that have just found the continent and they live in the “frozen” in a village known as Tilla. Crimhuck contains tons of dangers! Dinosaurs, Barbarians, Viking-esq raiders, Middle Eastern/Egyptian influenced
cities, wrapped up in (well maybe warped up in) the S&S aesthetic."
"Set in the city of Yahleui, the heroes have only recently come to the continent of Crimhuck, seeking adventure. The heroes are met by a large comely woman in a tavern called the “Winding Trail”, her name is Hilde. She tells them that if they can safely get a magical ring to her employer deep in the sewers under the city they will be rewarded with precious gemstones. She will resort to goading and betting that heroes can’t do it if she has to. The sewers beneath the city are a very dangerous place. Her employer is a sage who lives underground and does strange experiments far from prying eyes. The city is very big and he lives in a section of the sewers that has been cleaned out, and re-routed.
The sage is part of a secret order called “The Followers of Sabyl”. They are tasked with subverting the rule of the Shah. The order is not evil, it is however in hiding. Rumours exist of the order, but none of have been proven. The sage and the rest of the order have been working towards the goal of replacing the Shah with a better more religious ruler. They follow the tenants of a long dead demi god called “Sabyl” who is neutral in alignment.
Unbeknown to the heroes there is a gang of thieves hot on the trail of the ring. Turns out the ring was stolen from the thieves, who had previously stolen it from someone else. During the conversation in the tavern, a local soldier overhears everything and quickly sends word to his superior that the heroes have a powerful ring that may have once belonged to a king, but hasn't been seen in years. It is a race against time to find the sage in the underground. Hot on the trail of the players are two groups, a gang of thieves and a group of soldiers from the city. Every time the players get into a new room in the sewers roll 1d8. If a roll of 1 comes up the thieves have tracked them down. If a roll of 2 comes up the soldiers have tracked them down. The acolytes of Sabyl are unaware of the sages plans, and depending on reaction check will either hinder or help the PCs."
So its pretty easy to simply drop this unknown setting right down into the middle of Hyperborea or even your own home setting. Stat blocks 6 Thieves AC 7, HD 1, MV 120’(40’), #AT 1, D 1D6 Short Bow/Short Sword, Save T1, ML 6, AL Chaotic, XP 10 are set up quite nicely and on the whole it should be an easily adapted adventure to your home games. The whole thing flows quite nicely. It makes a great introductory or side quest adventure especially over the holidays.
On the whole for a free adventure the author's done a good job of setting up and introducing his world with little issue and another thing that can be gleaned is the fact that this is humancentric world which I'm a fan of in some respects according to the author," As time goes on I will continue to write more about the continent of Crimhuck & the city of Yahleui in particular. A few things to keep in mind regarding the world, it is low magic and a very brutal place. For the most part Crimhuck is populated with humans. Typical fantasy races like Elves & Dwarves do not exist within the world."

On the whole this is a four out of five because it sets out and hits its old school sword & sorcery goals. Its free, its fast, and can be played out in a night or two of game play. 

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