The Free OSR Weird Fiction Resources of A.Merritt & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea As Well As Your Old School Campaigns

My schedule has been more then a bit erratic as of late with work to say the least, so I've been dividing up my time over the last couple of weeks here at Casa De Fabiaschi to concentrate on OSR sword & sorcery & pulp material that I already have. This turn of events has not going unnoticed in certain corners of the OSR namely those garage band marketing publishers and firms who are pumping out the usual fire hose of titles. So I've put a moratorium on reviews for the next six months because of work & familial concerns at home. Work has been going like gang busters with work. So  I've had to devote my time to getting articles,blog posts, & whatnot ready to go for readers of this blog. So where does that leave us with? Well. it left me to dip my wick into the deep end of weird fiction for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea in the stacks of my gaming collection. I was specifically looking at AFS magazine issue #4, which if you're lucky enough to have a copy is one of their best. The contents speak for themselves and reads like a whose who of OSR gaming. But there's a specific adventure I'm going to be talking about tonight.

FS Magazine #4   - Table of Contents

New Monster – The Gurondu by Tim ‘Turgenev’ Hartin

Variant Class – The Burglar by Scott Moberly (written for Holmes Basic)

Artifact -  The Iounic Loop – Reimagining the Ring of Gaxx by Allan T. Grohe Jr. (grodog)

Fiction – A Blizzard in the Sahara by Aleister Crowley (1911)

Table of Items – High Value Treasures by Scott Moberly

Variant Class – The Purloiner by Jeff Talanian & Colin Chapman (written for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea)

Adventure – The Lamia’s Heart, An Adventure By Jeff Talanian (set in Hyperborea

For 2–5 Zero Level Thieves)

Table – One Sentence Plot Hooks for Sandbox Gaming by Various (named) authors

Adventure – Theme for a Jackal (an adventure set in Hyperborea for character levels 2-3) by Scott Moberly

Article- Crawling Without Hexes by Chris Kutalik

Map – The Nooks & Crannies Level by Allan T. Grohe Jr. (grodog)

AFS magazine jacked up the idea of OSR fanzine & took it in a different direction. The thing about the OSR material  was the quality of the articles. The magazine covers every retroclone from Swords & Wizardry, AS&SH, & even Holmes Basic. Do yourselves a favor and pick up copies the next time the magazine is published.

Theme for a Jackal  by Scott Moberly really got me thinking about taking AS&SH's Hyperborea in a different direction & showed me a really well done Weird Tales style of campaign kit. The whole issue is outstanding really and acts as a sort of AS&SH preview of coming attractions for AS&SH second edition. But once again I digress. The adventure has a sort of Clark Aston Smith feel mixed with something I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then it hit me early this afternoon, it reminds me of A.Merritt's science fantasy/sword & sorcery pieces of fiction. His life is as interesting as the fiction he wrote & he remains one of my all time favorite writers bare few. His writing have a timeless and almost dreamlike quality that reflects many of the ideas that seem to present themselves in  the Theme For A Jackel adventure and earlier Moberly AS&SH adventures.


If H.P Lovecraft is the father of cosmic horror then A. Merritt is the father of his own pulp style & sure has hell doesn't get his due today. "Merritt's writings were heavily influenced by H. Rider Haggard,^[6] Robert W. Chambers,^[7] Helena Blavatsky^[8] and Gertrude Barrows Bennett (writing as Francis Stevens),^[9] with Merritt having "emulated Bennett's earlier style and themes."" Umm. no I think Merritt doesn't emulate but improves upon Bennett's style of writing & makes it his own.



"Merritt's stories typically revolve around conventional pulp magazine themes: lost civilizations, hideous monsters, etc. His heroes are gallant Irishmen or Scandinavians, his villains treacherous Germans or Russians and his heroines often virginal, mysterious and scantily clad." Once again more pulp hand waving dismissive B.S. by Wikipedia. What really set's A.Merritt's work apart is his worlds, settings, originality, & pulpy sensibilities. Many of his novels & stories are now within the public domain. So let's get you some decent public domain downloads

• The Moon Pool (fix-up, 1919) Grab it Right Here
  (The Moon Pool (1918) + Conquest of the Moon Pool (1919))
• The Metal Monster (1920) Download Right Here
• The Ship of Ishtar (1924) Download Right Here
• Seven Footprints to Satan (1927) Download Here
• The Face in the Abyss (fix-up, 1931) Download Right Here
  (The Face in the Abyss (1923) + The Snake Mother (1930))
• Dwellers in the Mirage (1932) Download right here
• Burn, Witch, Burn! (1932) Grab It Here
• Creep, Shadow! (1934) Grab it Right Here 
• A Merritt's Collected Short Stories  Grab That Here.
• The Challenge From Beyond Features C.L. Moore, A. Merritt, H.P. Lovecraft,Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long & it showcases the vastly different styles of these giants of fantasy as each one picks up and takes over their parts of this entertaining piece of weird fiction. Grab That Here
  
  I've written extensively about A.Merritt before but he shares a sense of the alien & the lost world ethos that echoes many of the themes & ideas that creep through Astonishing Swords & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. I think that his writings exemplify some of the best of the pulp authors making them perfect fodder for old school campaigns.
  
  
  While A Merritt was presented as a part of Appendix N for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon's first edition Dungeon Master's Guide, he seems almost forgotten today by many of the fans of weird fiction and sword & sorcery literature. His writing reflects many of pop culture ideas of his time about Atlantis that one finds sprinkled throughout his work. There's some really incredible stuff to mine for adventures and campaigns especially for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. He's another writer that I'll be dipping my wick into for this upcoming campaign I've got happening soon.
  
  
  

  This post is not an attempt to violate the copyrights or trademarks of any 
  of the films nor properties named in this post. All ideas are for a 
  private table top rpg campaign. None of the ideas or opinions expressed 
  in this post are meant to violate the trademarks nor copy rights of any 
  of the table top rpgs discussed nor are they in away responsible for the
   thoughts or opinions of the author. The writing, ideas, and opinions 
  are copyrighted and trade marked to the author and Dark Corner 
  productions. This post is for entertainment & educational purposes 
  only. 

The Tyler Prequel An Actual Play Event - Playing On Clark Aston Smith's 'Uncharted Isle' An Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea/ Lamentations Mash Up Adventure

 Set Up & OSR Actual Play


"The boat touched a beach of fine, pearly sand, before I began to wonder where I was and to speculate concerning the shores I had reached. I knew that we had been hundreds of miles southwest of Easter Island on the night of the fire, in a part of the Pacific where there is no other land; and certainly this couldn't be Easter Island. What, then, could it be? I realized with a sort of shock that I must have found something not on any charted course or geological map."

I was able to get together with player and his family today to test out a couple of theories about about old school island play adventure encounters using a resource I've been itching to use.



Thanks to the Tyler family today I got a chance to try out an 'experiment' in old school gaming. Well, sort of it was more like I got together with the Tylers for a bit of Astonishing  Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea and bit of old school gaming but I didn't have whole bunch of time to prepare so I pulled out an old rpg convention trick out of my bag. This was running an isolated island location but this wasn't one that I had written. Way back in AFS magazine #3 there was an article, about  adapting 'The Uncharted Isle' by Clark Ashton Smith to Adventure & Setting, by Jason Zavoda.

The island, its environs, and the town are all steeped in weird sword & sorcery fiction. The article basically outlines the island, its environs, the town, the NPC Lovecraftian deity, and the weird situation that the PC's suddenly find themselves embroiled in.

 So what does this have to do with World of the Lost by Rafael Chandler? Well two of the Tyler clan wanted to play sea wrecked PC's from the fictional city of Khirima. Since this was going to be several  ship wrecked crews on the island I was alright with that.

 There were several advantages to this style of adventure we ended up with two 2nd level warrior women from the fictional African nation who were time lost as well as ship wrecked. There were three characters among six who were taken from World of the Lost two warriors 2nd level and a male sorcerer. William and his brother were playing thieves from Hyperborea

Our final player Brian was playing a knight from Dark Albion and half of the game adventure was spent making sure that none of the player's PC's killed each other. They each woke up washed up on the shore and the exploration began in earnest. Everything about the island is wrong from the position of the sun, the geography of the island itself, the creatures on the island, the sky, the stars, the ocean, and then the story just keeps going.

 “More and more decisively, I knew that there was something wrong:  I felt an eerie confusion, a weird bewilderment, like one who has been cast away on the shores of an alien planet; and it seemed to me that I was separated from my former life, and from everything I had ever known…”
Clark Aston Smith 'The Unknown Isle'  It took a great deal of cooperation and know how on the players parts to get out of the situation. There are plenty of ways to get out out of the ship wreck situation that the PC's  find themselves in but also plenty of ways to die. They managed to get off the isle today but were ready to kill me for making the language barrier an adventure element. This adventure is actually a prequel to the Temple of the Book adventure. See below.

Further Deep Background on Clark Aston Smith's  Uncharted Isle
  Once again I get called into a spur of the moment game with a bunch of other friend's players. Is this a problem no not at all. I was reading a couple of the short stories of Clark Aston Smith the other night and after writing up The Temple of the Book I wanted to write up or play through a prequel. AFS magazine happened to be nearby with the article by Jason Zavoda and there's also an excellent blog entry about this short story. Both of these served very nicely to keep things moving tonight.

  This keep things moving right along up to the point when the PC's built a raft and escaped the isle and its weird environs but does that mean that the PC's will be making it too the Temple of the Book? Not necessarily, for I didn't say that this was a direct prequel to the events of the Temple at all there could be other  stops and more yet to go before they might just might find their way to their respective homes.

I've often used ship wrecks uncharted islands, lost worlds, and other worldly locations for this sort of a quick mini adventure for conventions and other old school play style adventures. This sort of situation makes for a very good bridge gap game to get a mix of PC styles. It also makes an excellent bridge into the classic Isle of Dread adventure another old favorite with whom readers of this blog know my keen obsession and compulsion with. But that dear friends is a blog entry for another day. Will be getting together again to play another adventure in this OSR chain? Well that will depend upon my players schedules and if we're all going to be in Connecticut again at the same time. Only time will tell.

AFS Magazine Issue #6 Is Released and Ready For Order Details Over At the Dark Corner Blog

 Have you been getting in on the AFS  OSR Fanzine? If not now is a great time with issue number six released! We've got details on the contents of the latest issue right over on the Dark Corner blog!
Right Over
HERE

AFS Magazine Issue #5 Has Been Released! For Your Old School Campaigns We Take A Look At It On The Dark Corner Blog

AFs Magazine is one of the better quality old school fanzines out there and June sixteenth saw the release of issue #5 and today we take a quick look at this high quality print magazine. This issue is dedicated to the works of Michael Moorcock and is crammed with a whole bunch of Moorcock rpg goodness including  adventures and more.
Take A Look Right Over
HERE