Thursday, July 15, 2021

OSR Space Dungeons & Sectors - Science Fantasy The OSR Way - The Forgotten OSR Game Hulks & Horrors rpg

 Never let it be said that any good good deed goes unpunished. On July 5th Erik Tankar put out a video on Hulks & Horrors rpg Basic Black Edition. So a copy of Hulks & Horrors rpg was ordered from Drivethrurpg. Now anyone whose been reading blog knows of my absolute love of Science Fantasy esepcially OSR Science Fantasy. Over the years Hulks & Horrors has been of especial interest for me as reviewer Philip C put its susinctly in his review of H&H on Drivethrurpg;"Love this game. The mechanics are 1st Edition of the Gygax game which work fine for an RPG that is all about Dungeon Crawling or more appropriately a lost starship, space station, pod colony, science complex and ruined city crawler. While there are no starting adventures in the book (sorry to those who need everything handed to them), there are more than enough examples and charts (lots of charts) that make it easy to create an advanture which is tailored to your play group.

The only down side of this game is that there was never any follow up and the game looks to only have this one book."

While there's no follow up book for the Hulks & Horrors rpg its gotten my mind reeling back towards several years ago. The thought at the time was could Hulks & Horrors serve as basis for the Stars Without Numbers revised/Cepheus Engine hybrid game as an active source book?! According to several sources, the answer according to ancient OSR theorists is yes. Outlaw D&D writes on this thread on Reddit; "I am actively blending WS with SWN for the best of both worlds, as they are more largely compatible than many folks realize." 
So if we use SWN as the basis replace the space ship rules with Cepheus Engine rpg then we are left with a very active campaign setting waiting to drop in PC's! 

Imagine that after the Shundering that a great plague swept across the universe. Billions & billions of sentient species were extinguished or worse. 


The Reticulans of 'These Stars Are Ours' come into this power vaccuum &  void left by these other races disappearance.  They found thier empire without a single shot being fired. The Reticulans take over & move in. Then upstart man comes upon the scene & he begins messing with Pandora's boxes & ruins. He raises up to a certain point & then mankind has a long hard fall into the present day. The are long forgotten mankind has crawled back to Hostile's technological level nine. 



Then one of the flash point plagues crops up except this time there's a possible cure in the Sanora sector as Joseph Mohr's Rumble In The Jungle adventure provides one possible cure & or treatment.  The trick is surviving Mr.Mohr's pay what you want adventure?! Mohr in twenty six pages neatly wraps up a solid adventure and its easy to use for Cepheus Engine or other OSR games. 
Mohr is on the level of unsung OSR creators such as Michael Brown whose own work on a little number called Lifeform Yeti might well fit such a campaign. Ancient engineered life form capable of surviving extreme artic temperatures & yet is capable of breeding with mankind. Sounds like something one of the ancient races of Hulks & Horror might have done. 



One can well imagine an entire sector of abandoned planets & space craft  made up by the plague mutated life forms of former races. Giant space wrecks & alien craft tumbling through space waiting for the lurcritive contents to be exploited. And what other horrors are waiting for our party of adventurers. 

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