Matters of Death & Amber - Using X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay & The Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Rpg As OSR & Old School Campaign - Laying The OSR Ground Work

 " Lo ! Death hath rear'd himself a throne

In a strange city, all alone,
Far down within the dim west —
And the good, and the bad, and the worst, and the best,
Have gone to their eternal rest.

There shrines, and palaces, and towers
Are — not like any thing of ours —
O ! no — O! no — ours never loom
To heaven with that ungodly gloom!
Time-eaten towers that tremble not!
Around, by lifting winds forgot,
Resignedly beneath the sky
The melancholy waters lie."
The Doomed City
by Edgar Allan Poe


DM Steve sipped his brandy quite nicely & the pipe smoke waffled around us. 'How would you go about running a successful Modern Gothic dark fantasy game?!' The question hung in the air about our group of players in the after game session fugue. In this case the question was hung out because already the blog entries  on  Matters of Death & Amber here & here.  'The problem is that you, the dungeon master already have campaigns in play some of which are still in play years on. Even if the players have pasted on..'  DM Steve & co. are trying to force me to move on with everything. 

There were murmmerings among the other players at this point & Steve was bringing up the fact that several campaigns had simply 'ended' when friendships had broken up & funerals had occurred. Now was a new beginning & the players wanted in on this purposed  'Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Rpg' campaign with the hooks & chains that it connects with our older campaigns.




 In the past we've used elements of Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg but not all of the line. And if this holiday weekend's games taught me anything its that we're gonna need vehicle rules & we're not going to wait around for the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Rpg companion which is due really soon. Fortunately my buddy Dave Miller did OSR Vehicle Rules and those should work out quite nicely. But Simon Washbourne also did his Terror Tales X! rpg rules for his OSR label Beyond Belief Games & these were done for the Swords & Wizardry light rpg. 

Why?! Because there are extra monsters, spells, & equipment that can easily be adapted into this  'Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Rpg' campaign. The players have told me in no uncertain terms that this isn't going to be in their words a WB Supernatural television show. This is straight up going to be a bloody 'R' rated Gothic horror fest. If this is going to be a Gothic horror fest then other resources have to include Jack Shear's  Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque series &  Adventures on Gothic Earth. These are top drawer OSR Gothic horror & adventure campaign world builder stuff. Be sure to check out Jack Shear's blog here. 

And its from here that we've got to pick up with campaigns of the ghost Christmas past. The first thing the PC's are gonna have to do is to clean out the Duley house. The Duely house was the headquarters for a party of supernatural hunters & slayers that was wiped out back in 2012. And that was from the D'Ambervilles influence but we'll get into that one tomorrow.