Sword & Sorcery Hex Crawling, Campaign Comprise, & Vault of the Dwarven King From Maximum Mayhem Dungeons Actual Play

Sometimes you've got to go back to basics & in this case its working out the internal adventure elements of our 'Old Solar System' campaign. So last night I popped a couple of beers with a friend & watched Ralph Bakshi's Fire & Ice.

When your getting into Fire & Ice your getting into some of the top talent in the fields of animation, fantasy artwork, film production, artwork, etc. including comic book writing and more. Yes this film is an underappreciated gem of the sword & sorcery genre. Just take a look at the film & street cred that this film has according to Wiki;" The film, a collaboration between Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, was distributed by 20th Century Fox, which also distributed Bakshi's 1977 release, Wizards. The animated feature, based on characters Bakshi and Frazetta co-created, was made using the process of rotoscoping, in which scenes were shot in live action and then traced onto animation cels.
The screenplay was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, both of whom had written Conan stories for Marvel Comics. Background painter was James Gurney, the author and artist of the Dinotopia illustrated novels. Thomas Kinkade also worked on the backgrounds to various scenes. Peter Chung, of Aeon Flux fame, was a layout artist." And that's just some of the talent that worked on this film back in '77. I saw this at the tender age of seven years old & yeah it made a huge impact on me.


Something my friend Steve & I noticed is that there is an internal flow to the story that one finds in animated films but there's also that same sort of flow in old school hex crawls. This was particularly true of B/X Dungeons & Dragons modules in campaign mode. A look at the basic plot overview of Fire & Ice will show you exactly what I'm talking about;"
From their stronghold in Icepeak, the evil Queen Juliana (Eileen O'Neill) and her son, Nekron (Stephen Mendel), send forth a wave of glaciers, forcing humanity to retreat south towards the equator. Nekron sends a delegation to King Jarol (Leo Gordon) in Firekeep to request his surrender, but this is a ruse orchestrated by Queen Juliana for Nekron’s sub-humans to kidnap Jarol’s barefoot, bikini-clad daughter, Princess Teegra (Cynthia Leake); Queen Juliana feels that Nekron should take a bride to produce an heir.
But Teegra makes an escape and comes upon Larn (Randy Norton), a young warrior and the only survivor of a village razed by glaciers, who offers to escort her back to Firekeep. As Teegra is recaptured, Larn teams with the mysterious Darkwolf (Steve Sandor) to save Teegra and then travel to Icepeak to stop Juliana. Darkwolf faces Nekron and kills him as Icepeak succumbs to lava released by King Jarol and is destroyed.
The film finishes with Larn about to kill a beaten sub-human until Teegra stops him saying that "it's over" and embraces him. Darkwolf is seen atop a cliff; he watches the pair, smiles and then disappears. Teegra and Larn kiss as the credits roll."
You've got all of the basic factions aligned where they need to be for the adventurers find them along the adventure path. This is something we'd later see during the evolution of adventure video games especially the text based ones like Zork. Yes I'm that old. There's another way of looking at this in the point crawl system of the Hill Cantons & there's an excellent series by Chris Kutalik. This sort of adventuring uses an absaract map to great effect but does put a bit of the pressure on the DM.

Basic placement of the factions of a campaign is going to determine the balance or lack there of when it comes to the adventure flow in an old school campaign. Sword & Sorcery campaigns don't often have a lot of balance they are punctuated by the violence & pulpy weirdness of the medium.
"Sword and sorcery (S&S) is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters.^[1] Sword and sorcery commonly overlaps with heroic fantasy."When it comes to hex crawling one or more factional powers are often the fixed points of 'law of the land' on the map. A good example of this is the minor witch queen or wizard that has carved out their own section of the map. These sorts of factions are the bread & butter for Adventurer,Conqueror, King & the game handles this sort of dark & dangerous figures quite nice as they make very portions of a campaign and even sub adventures unto themselves. Again this is where ACK's handles and excels at this sort of a campaign. What we're talking about today is where the Hexcrawl is actually driving the campaign itself. How to Hexcrawl From  Taskboy Games is a really good primer on just this sort of a game campaign. It gives a good solid overview & step by step guide for establishing and making your own hexcrawl for Labyrinth Lord.

So let's bring this round does this preclude a dungeon master from using a high fantasy adventure in a sword & sorcery campaign setting? Not at all, there are several ways that this can be done but for me one of the most successful is to have the high fantasy adventure become its own internal setting beast. A good example of this is my use of the recent Vault of the Dwarven King  From   Maximum Mayhem Dungeons  in my own 'Old Earth' setting. I've done this by having the entire adventure take place in an isolated hex area of the campaign.

Now this isn't the first time I've done this sort of adventure campaign set up & compromise but there are reasons for this including my buddy Steve whose nuts for Dwarves & the fact he brought beer, pizza, & his brothers as players as bribery material. Besides which I've already been ready for this sort of a player issue. Now the answer to this comes from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea  whose dwarves are the maggot people who fell from Ymir the ice giant. The goblin races in my campaign came from his feces & fungus!


Both were collected & refined by the Ancient Ones a mysterious Lovecraftian race who spliced them with a bit of humanity we'll get into another day. Most of these two races have gone extinct but the Dwarves are making a huge push to comeback from the brink of extinction in the ruins of Europe. The country that +Mark Taormino 's Vault of The Dwarven King takes place in is going to be an isolated country. The Dwarves were/are a modified race that is occasionally used for outer world work where their expertise in metallurgy is often needed.  Vault of The Dwarven King has more then enough campaign module stuff to create a whole hex country/kingdom unto itself. The events of the module are weird/gonzo enough to take place without actually damaging a campaign in progress. Alright let me address the obvious, yes I think this module is worth getting and after watching Steve & his brothers have an awesome time dying it was worth the writing I did. I'll be more then ready for the traditional D&D players who come down the pike. The module is very deadly and there was a TPK last night in which the PC's were fried badly. 

There are several elements that Mark's choice of artwork has worked very well for last night's actual game. The dwarves were very distinctive & so stood out from the usual run of the mill fantasy artwork seen in many products. This gave last night's game a distinctive feel.

The fact that several of Vault artwork pieces convey exactly what the players wanted worked in my favor & might connect up with an idea that I had. Its easily possible to place an adventure or gonzo setting  within a hex and still keep things moving along within a sword & sorcery game without completely and utterly destroying the entire mood of the campaign. This is something I'm going to have to keep in mind and I'm at the moment considering resurrecting the operatic campaign that my uncle did back in the Summer of '87.
Vault of the
Dwarven King Is Available
Right Here

Commentary On An OSR Combination of B10 Night's Dark Terror, & I6 Ravenloft As Fodder For Old School Campaigns

So I was talking with a friend of mine whose home for the Easter holiday today. He's a dungeon master of some experience & with an old school background. He was talking about using B10 Night's Dark Terror as the fodder for the lands surrounding the AD&D 1st edition classic I6 Ravenloft. This gives the over all campaign the look and feel of a wild Hammer style pseudo Russian or old world country without giving up the classic D&D Gothic feel. There are several reasons why this could work and work very well; one of which is because "Night's Dark Terror was designed specifically for campaigns transitioning from the D&D Basic Set to the D&D Expert Set. The player characters (PCs) journey from a farmstead into uncharted wilderness, where they encounter new hazards and contend with a secret society"



Apparently John got so fed up with his players knowing everything there is about the Ravenloft box set that he went back to the original source material where "PC's travel by river and over mountains, from the Grand Duchy of Karameikos to the chaotic lands. The characters encounter a town under siege by goblins, a ruined city, and a lost valley" . This means that the PC's are traveling through the fringes of the  lands of Count Strahd von Zarovich without arousing too much suspicions of the royal notice of the Count. "The module begins in a beleaguered farmstead. The PCs then explore more than 20,000 square miles (52,000 km²) of wilderness, with eighteen locations, including a number of mini-dungeons, a ruined city, a riverside village, a frontier town, and a lost valley, with the minions of the Iron Ring waiting for the PCs at every step." So is the Iron Ring one of the power blocks behind the mundane rise of  Strahd's rise to power. This could be hinted at the the gypsy camp on the Barovia borderlands. PC's are likely to encounter zombies, wolves, ghouls, ghosts, and other creatures. This helps to set the stage for the Gothic horror of  I6 & the tragic tale of love, lust, lost and more.

The combination of the two modules adds gravitas to the backstory of Strahd as well. "The master of nearby Castle Ravenloft, Count Strahd von Zarovich, tyrannically rules the country, and a prologue explains that the residents must barricade their doors each night to avoid attacks by Strahd and his minions. The Burgomaster's mansion is the focus of these attacks, and, for reasons that are not initially explained, Strahd is after the Burgomaster's adopted daughter, Ireena Kolyana." Its almost as if the countryside takes on the characteristics of the infamous vampire when the two modules are combined. Therefore the sum is now greater then the individual parts.


The DM gets the best of all possible worlds with this approach. Several mini dungeons & devilishly delightful mini wilderness encounters along with a mini dungeon crawl at lower levels that set's everything in the heat of the moment. There a little bit of everything before the main set up for the final show down with Strahd. 

 All in all this sounds like on paper a great way of having the best of all worlds by using this sort of old school hybrid approach. A bit of a Gothic guided wilderness crawl with lots of subtle changes that don't change the combination of awesomeness that is these two old school classics. 

OSR Thanks Giving Commentary - Greyhawk Show Down In The Old Mine - Unfinished Business

 'The snows & mists around the world of Greyhawk part allowing heroes desperately needed elsewhere to journey to a far away land on another world! But will this be a town's salvation or our heroes doom?! Come with us now down the corridors to the ancient year of 1989 for a game session of the ancient past!'





Happy Thanks Giving everyone & I've been wrestling with Greyhawk once again. This time I broke out my second edition folio & began rereading through it. Is there a dungeon location where the planes cross in a dangerous dungeon? Then an old Dragon magazine article fell out!?Then I started reading about Murlynd & got completely distracted.
Here's the complete background on Murlynd;
'Gary Gygax's childhood friend Don Kaye created Murlynd for the second-ever session of Gygax's Greyhawk campaign in 1972, rolled up on Gygax's kitchen table at the same time as Rob Kuntz's Robilar and Terry Kuntz's Terik.^[1] Gygax later recalled that, in those early days when most players including Gygax himself simply used their own name as a basis for their character's name — Tenser/Ernest, Yrag/Gary — "Murlynd" was the first attempt by a player to make a creative name for a character.^[2] Don Kaye was a fan of the Western genre,^[3] and at one point during the early days of the Greyhawk campaign, Gygax had Murlynd transported to an alternate universe set in the Wild West. When Murlynd was eventually transported back the Greyhawk setting, he sported the Stetson, cowboy boots, Colt revolvers and stereotypical outfit of a cowboy. Although Gygax did not allow the use of gunpowder in his Greyhawk setting, he made a loophole for Kaye by ruling that Murlynd actually carried two "magical wands" that made loud noises and delivered small but deadly missiles.^[4] (Many years later, Gygax created a similar item called "Kaydon's Thunderous Bolters" for the Lejendary Adventures role-playing system. Gygax made it clear that these items fired their six charges using magic, not gunpowder.)^[5]
The game Kaye and Gygax were playing would become D&D, and Kaye would go on to help Gygax start up TSR. In late 1974, Kaye also helped develop the rules for a Western-genre game called Boot Hill. However, Kaye died unexpectedly in 1975. As a tribute to his friend, Gygax published Boot Hill in 1975 in memory of Kaye. In 1983, Gygax would pay additional tribute to Kaye's memory by referencing Murlynd in the published version of EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, which also included the spells Murlynd's ogre and Murlynd's void,^[6] and further highlighted Murlynd in the March 1983 issue of Dragon magazine.^[7] The following year, Gygax paid further tribute to Kaye when he borrowed Murlynd's name for Murlynd's spoon, a magical spoon described in Unearthed Arcana that created a bad-tasting but nutritious gruel when placed in an empty bowl."

These days Murlynd role  is  as a deity of Magic Technology in 'Greyhawk: The Adventure Begins, the introduction to RPGA's massively shared Living Greyhawk campaign that ran from 2000–2008'. But it got me thinking about a massive Gamma World/Boot Hill/AD&D first edition adventure mini campaign where our characters back in '89 crossed over into all three settings. How?! The dungeon master in question used the massively underrated BH2: Lost Conquistador Mine by David Cook & Tom Moldvay.




This module provided us with everything we needed to get our characters killed across time & space. So what does this have to do with Murlynd?! Oh just about everything! Appearing across space & time the deity recruited our characters for a massive game involving seven players over the Thanks Giving holiday.After the Invoked Devastation there were places where the planes had been shattered across time & space. I mentioned the Egg of Coot raging across time & space as well as raiding the planes?! Well I wasn't the first DM to do this & in fact one of its wizards managed to find a few artifacts after the events of S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. This bastard had set up shop in the same dungeon across three planes  prime. We were going to have to stop the bastard.
What our party didn't know is that the deck was stacked against us. Alfonso The Grand Adjuster had been recruiting. His recruits included a band of gnoll warriors, berserkers, a beholder, various mutants, & about six gun fighters.


They held the town of BH1 Mad Mesa  & used the mine as their planar beach head into the Old West. We got our marching orders & began to take out the mercenary forces. We managed to free the town & do a bit of pillaging for ourselves. But we lost two our thieves & this would prove crucial coming up.



When we got to the mine we were completely slaughtered by the beholder! Knafr Yeney was the name of the beholder who took great pride in picking off our party one by one 'Ten Little Indians' style. Two of our party limped back to Greyhawk to recruit more adventurers & fighters for the up coming fight. It was a great Thanks Giving game & I might resurrect this idea for a session coming up.

B/X Dungeons & Dragons Along With The Winding Adventure & Campaign Set Up

Two events mark their passage in the next day or so. One of of course is Gary Gygax's birthday who would have been eighty years old on Friday. Its a bit hard to process this in 2018 because Mr.Gygax's death seems to be fresh in my mind. The other thing that's on my mind is B/X Dungeons & Dragons once again. The Dungeons & Dragons Basic Rules (1981), by Tom Moldvay,yet it seems like its still the 'new' set. For me the magenta box sets are the standard for Dungeons & Dragons to a certain extent. For me Moldvay/Cook is just a continuation of original Dungeons & Dragons warts & all.

The Drivethrurpg entry on  the D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic) by
by Shannon Appelcline, the author of Designers & Dragons breaks down the differences between Holmes & Moldvay cleanly;
"Whereas Holmes' Basic D&D was mostly a matter of organization and explanation, Moldvay's Basic D&D also engaged in simplification. Thus, for example, there were no longer separate character classes and races. The twelve race-and-class combinations of Holmes' Basic D&D (including things such as the elven fighter/magic-user multiclass) became just seven classes in the new Basic D&D: clerics, dwarves, elves, fighters (which had still been "fighting men" under Holmes), halflings, magic-users, and thieves.
Moldvay's second edition also cleaned up character alignment, constrained spell choice, and even improved the layout of the book. All around, every effort was made to upgrade the game for starting players. As for the results, even former editor Holmes said, "I think the new Basic Set rules are an improvement over the first edition. Not a big quantum jump ahead, but better in a number of minor ways."
Moldvay's Basic D&D was enough of a change from the previous edition of the game that it was actually a "new edition" as it's understood in the modern roleplaying market, which was a pretty rare occurrence in the 70s or early 80s.
The Basic Set was (as planned) released simultaneously with the new Expert Set by David "Zeb" Cook, which expanded Basic D&D to levels 4-14. Gary Gygax mentioned a "Masters Set" around the same time, which was to cover levels 15-36, but that wouldn't appear during Basic D&D's second edition."

The  Expert Set edited by Dave Cook  is still one of the best continuations of the B/X game out there. Folks are still playing Expert & continuing on with the legacy started by Gary Gygax. To a certain extent I'm waxing nostalgic for B/X. The game seemed more open for customization  totally different then conforming ways of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition. B/X was the choice for many of us who want to run a pick up game.



Just last night I was talking with a friend of mine about a game he ran with a group of new players who were friends of his son from school. Taking the free module from Dragon's foot.org HM1 - The Disappearance of Harold the Hedge Mage by Todd Hughs. He had the group set up with PC's, the map laid out, & the players set up in less then a half an hour.



There are several areas that could be used in Harold to hook up with B2 Keep on The Borderlands by Gary Gygax. This also means that HM1 could be used as a buffer adventure on the way to the climax of  T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil by Gary Gygax & Frank Mentzer.
The mines of HM1 might link up with B2 Keep on the Borderland's Caves of Chaos or some of the other underground works of the moat house of The Village of Hommlet. There would be a series of tunnels that could be used to stretch event into  ZA1: The Temple Of Chaos By Joseph Mohr



The goal of course is for the players to have fun but this sort of an adventure path is going to result in more then a few of the PC's dying by the hands of the humanoids & monsters scattered throughout. I'd make sure I'd have a few extra PC sheets on hand. The set up here is the expanding growth of the cults of Chaos & intertwined elemental evil religion gaining far more then a toe hold in the region of your campaign or Greyhawk. Power is on the rise & the altars of evil will be slick with the blood of sacrifices but only the PC's can stop the blood bath in time.

Alien Weirdness In X2 Castle Amber By Tom Moldvay As Old School Campaign Set Up

Its Saturday six thirty A.M. in the morning, we've come through a rather nasty Nor Easter here in Connecticut & most of New England. The wife is quietly sleeping & we've had a relatively good time of it compared to some folks in New England. I busted out the Clark Ashton Smith again this time his "Captain Volmar" sequence of novels offers a stark contrast to 'the devil may' care attitude of Edgar Rice Burroughs's characters  that's been crossing my literary palette as of late. 
""Marooned in Andromeda", the first entry in his "Captain Volmar" sequence, was the cover story in the October 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. illustrated by Frank R. Paul" 

 In my mind the "Captain Volmar" sequence of novels by CAS take place in the same universe as his Mars stories on a post Colonial Mars with its fading grandeur & strange alien Martians quietly watching the humans colonists arriving. They secretly know that their planet wide god will be waking up in the eons to come.
Vulthoom is a part of the greater Great Old One seen in both Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933) &  Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity.  All of CAS's Martian sequence slot into his  "Captain Volmar" stories nicely giving a deadly far future timeline & one that I've coupled with events in my 'Old Earth' campaign sequence.
The commercial metropolis of Mars - Igarth, with its 'old quarter' has in my mind stood in the long shadow of Edgar Rice Burroughs Helium. CAS's Mars material was more compelling because it brought a back alley alieness to the Martian landscape.

• Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933)
• Mnemoka (1955) Fragment
• Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, The (1931)
• Vulthoom (1935)
• Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity (1931)
  (An alternative background to the proceeding 4 stories]

At first this doesn't seem likely that the events of the "Captain Volmar" or the Mars cycles would have anything to do with a Dungeons & Dragons style game. But this Clark Ashton Smith given the length & breath of the man's imagination its not hard to connect the puzzle pieces here. Puzzle pieces that could connect back into some of my other ideas. Imagine if you will that your adventurers wander into Tom Moldvay's Clark Ashton Smith's love letter adventure X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) during the Thirty Years War.
"Trapped in the mysterious Castle Amber, you find yourselves cut off form the world you know. The castle is fraught with peril. Members of the strange Amber family, some insane, some merely deadly, lurk around every corner. Somewhere in the castle is the key to your escape, but can you survive long enough to find it? "

Not only does the party find itself at the mercy of the forces of the Amber clan but its also possible that they might have their backs against the events of the Bohemian Revolt.

"Without heirs, Emperor Matthias sought to assure an orderly transition during his lifetime by having his dynastic heir (the fiercely Catholic Ferdinand of Styria, later Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor) elected to the separate royal thrones of Bohemia and Hungary.^[30] Some of the Protestant leaders of Bohemia feared they would be losing the religious rights granted to them by Emperor Rudolf II in his Letter of Majesty (1609). They preferred the Protestant Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate (successor of Frederick IV, the creator of the Protestant Union).^[31] However, other Protestants supported the stance taken by the Catholics,^[32] and in 1617, Ferdinand was duly elected by the Bohemian Estates to become the crown prince, and automatically upon the death of Matthias, the next king of Bohemia."



We know that Stephen Amber was dabbling in forbidden magicks but perhaps he had stumbled upon an ancient Elven gateway deep within the catacombs of Château d'Amberville. Could some of the sources of his forbidden magicks in fact be the Great Old One Vulthoom?The Averoigne stories of Clark Ashton Smith use many traditional mythological elements in twisted & Weird Tales ways. Could the Fey creatures seen  throughout X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) actually be merely the Fairyland root extensions of the forbidden plant god?
I've used both Dark Albion & Cults of Chaos's OSR tool kits to set up & flesh out much of the backgrounds of the various cults & what not within my own home games. Those venturing into Chateau d' Amberville are not simply risking the encounters in the adventure location but the forces of both the Protestant & Catholic churches. Anyone wandering into Chateau d' Amberville is risking the time lost curse of the place & perhaps its forbidden weirdness just outside its walls.

X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) is a fairly timeless module & gives the DM a solid module to customize to their own home campaigns. The Chateau d' Amberville is steeped deeply in the occult & dangerous timelessness of the chaotic nature of Fairyland already. Blood thirst pagan cults outside its walls & dangerous fairies within its woods make
X2: Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville) highly adaptive. The fact that the module is connected with Clark Ashton Smith is a bonus.



The Edgar Allen Poe events of the module could trap a wide variety of time lost travelers & adventurers within its mad Fairyland location making X2 an adventure campaign point. This could move PC's from the Lion & Dragon retroclone game over into the events of Dark Albion with the forces of Fairy making a chess game of the player's PC's.


We'll get into the hows & why's of Fairyland's alien chaos cult in our next blog entry!

"The feet of animals, if not of men, had continued the path they were following, and had made an easy way into the wood of fabulous evil. The drooping boughs enfolded them with arms of soft verdure, and seemed to draw them in; and shafts of yellow sunshine rifted the high trees, to aureole the lovely secret lilies that bloomed about the darkly writhing coils of enormous roots. The trees were twisted and knotted, were heavy with centurial incrustations of bark, were humped and misshapen with the growth of unremembered years; but there was an air of antique wisdom about them, together with a tranquil friendliness. Adele exclaimed with delight; and neither she nor Olivier was aware of anything sinister or doubtful in the unison of exquisite beauty and gnarled quaintness which the old forest offered to them." Satyr, The (1931)

The Blood, Passion, & Horrors of The Legend of El Cid For Your Old School Campaign

A fallen hero, strange alliances, magic swords,mercenary warlords, violent triple crosses, & the fate of nations in the balance! The latest Hollywood thriller with a budget of millions?!  No one of the legends of the real world legends steeped in the blood shed of history.


Jura de Santa Gadea

Peeling back the pages of bloodshed & ancient history last night I came across my campaign notes on El Cid. The history, mythology, & legends of the Cid were something that grew up with. For me he's the arch type of the AD&D paladin without the baggage. Over the years I've heard El Cid's history compared to King Arthur's legends & mythology. A kingdom gained & lost along the trails of time. This is one national hero I've used time & again in my adventures & games. But who really was El Cid?



This simple blog entry can't go into the multi demensional history of the warfare & times that spawned the El Cid. He came from a time when the sword arm & warhorse were the tanks of their time. The heads of enemies decorated pikes outside of nation city state's walls. Wiki has a compact  breakdown but there are literally entire histories of the Cid as thick as a New York phone book;

"Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1043 – 1099) was a Castilian nobleman and military leader in medieval Spain. The Moors called him El Cid, which meant the Lord (probably from the original Arabic al-Sayyid, السیِّد), and the Christians, El Campeador, which stood for Outstanding Warrior or The one who stands out in the battlefield. He was born in Vivar, a town near the city of Burgos. After his death, he became Castile's celebrated national hero and the protagonist of the most significant medieval Spanish epic poem, El Cantar de Mio Cid.^[1]

Born a member of the minor nobility, El Cid was brought up at the court of King Ferdinand the Great and served Ferdinand's son, Sancho II of León and Castile. He rose to become the commander and royal standard-bearer (armiger regis) of Castile upon Sancho's ascension in 1065. Rodrigo went on to lead the Castilian military campaigns against Sancho's brothers, Alfonso VI of León and García II of Galicia, as well as in the Muslim kingdoms in Al-Andalus. He became renowned for his military prowess in these campaigns, which helped expand Castilian territory at the expense of the Muslims and Sancho's brothers' kingdoms. When conspirators murdered Sancho in 1072, Rodrigo found himself in a difficult situation. Since Sancho was childless, the throne passed to his brother Alfonso, the same whom El Cid had helped remove from power. Although Rodrigo continued to serve the Castilian sovereign, he lost his ranking in the new court which treated him at arm's length and suspiciously. Finally, in 1081, he was ordered into exile.^[2]

El Cid found work fighting for the Muslim rulers of Zaragoza, whom he defended from their traditional enemies, Aragon and Barcelona. While in exile, he regained his reputation as a strategist and formidable military leader. He repeatedly turned out victorious in battle against the Muslim rulers of Lérida and their Christian allies, as well as against a large Christian army under King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon. In 1086, an expeditionary army of North African Almoravids inflicted a severe defeat to Castile, compelling Alfonso to overcome the resentments he harbored against El Cid. The terms for the return to the Christian service must have been attractive enough since Rodrigo soon found himself fighting for his former Lord. Over the next several years, however, El Cid set his sights on the kingdom-city of Valencia, operating more or less independently of Alfonso while politically supporting the Banu Hud and other Muslim dynasties opposed to the Almoravids. He gradually increased his control over Valencia; the Islamic ruler, al-Qadir, became his tributary in 1092. When the Almoravids instigated an uprising that resulted in the death of al-Qadir, El Cid responded by laying siege to the city. Valencia finally fell in 1094, and El Cid established an independent principality on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. He ruled over a pluralistic society with the popular support of Christians and Muslims alike.^[3]

El Cid's final years were spent fighting the Almoravid Berbers. He inflicted upon them their first major defeat in 1094, on the plains of Caurte, outside Valencia, and continued resisting them until his death. Although Rodrigo remained undefeated in Valencia, his only son, and heir, Diego Rodríguez died fighting against the Almoravids in the service of Alfonso in 1097. After El Cid's death in 1099, his wife, Jimena Díaz, succeeded him as ruler of Valencia, but she was eventually forced to surrender the principality to the Almoravids in 1102."
In old school adventure terms there's a ton of potential adventure hooks from taken treasures to the ruins of dungeon locations. El Cid's wrath knew bounds for he made warfare across the pages of history. There have been rumors of the treasure of King Sancho Ramírez of Aragon centuries. The cup of the Islamic ruler, al-Qadir was lost in the uprising of the Almoravids &  is still out in the Spanish countryside. There are literally tons of mini dungeons & other adventure ruins scattered in the wake of the Cid & the armies of his adversaries.


In  Lion & Dragon terms El Cid might be from a very long tradition of knights & warlords who were the resistance to the Elves of old. The demons from the Underworld & Hell have a long tradition in the Spanish countryside. There have been numerous legends & a rich tradition of Christian & Pre Christian heresies in the area enabling a DM to create mixed parties of adventurers to deal with monsters of Chaos & other horrors.
Over the years I've used a number of time lost warriors & knights from the court of El Cid in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition.

The +3 two handed sword Tizona, of El Cid has been passed into a national museum where its intelligent essence still sleeps.

"A weapon traditionally identified as El Cid's sword, Tizona, used to be displayed in the Army Museum (Museo del Ejército) in Toledo. In 1999, a small sample of the blade underwent metallurgical analysis which confirmed that the blade was made in Moorish Córdoba in the eleventh century and contained amounts of Damascus steel.^[13]
In 2007, the Autonomous Community of Castile and León bought the sword for 1.6 million Euros, and it is currently on display at the Museum of Burgos."
El Cid's other sword Colada is still lost or according to legend has been passed down the bloodline of Martín Antolínez one of the Cid's knights. This +2 sword of sharpness has a thirst for the blood of demons & dark wizards. There have been instances of these swords being used against monsters that could be straight out of a tale by H.P. Lovecraft.

 There several instances when various knights of El Cid according to legend fought a cult that seems to have been very similar to the cultists of A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage.



The knights under the command of the Cid were violent, vicious warriors from a time when thrones made from the skulls of one's enemies were still the norm. The fact is that this was a time with plenty of room for both mythology & legend to mix into the paradoxes of history. The perfect frame work to add in your own party of adventurers or to take from the legends a bevy of opportunities for campaign elements or NPC's.

OSR Commentary - Episodic Adventures & Quick Old School Campaign Design

"There is much to worry about in the mutated world of the future, but Baron Jemmas, Warder of Horn, has more on his mind than most. In recent weeks several of the outlying towns of his Barony have been wiped out by a band of mysterious golden marauders."


I've been mediating on Gamma World's Legion of Gold module & wishing that B/X Dungeons & Dragons had followed this adventure's example. Legion of Gold was written in 1981 by Gary Gygax with his son Luke and Paul Reiche III.

"This is the first GAMMA WORLD module to be produced by the Game Wizards at TSR Hobbies, Inc. This module includes the main Legion of Gold adventure, several mini-adventures which lead up to it, background information, suggestions for the referee, a special players' map and numerous referee's maps."
This module does exactly what it says on the post apocalyptic tin. But today we're going to be talking about the anthology location adventure approach of a Legion of Gold formula campaign set up. 

The sand box anthology approach allows the DM & the players for that matter to determine the tone & direction of their own home campaign. Legion of Gold has been my go to Gamma World module because of its short anthology adventure style. It gives the Dungeon Master just enough with a minimalist approach to the post apocalyptic material to get the DM started.
When we start talking about B/X Dungeons & Dragons these mini sessions allow the dungeon master to take a series of miniature adventures & string them together to form an over arching campaign. This approach has been something I've liked & used as old style television episodes in the past. Isolated adventures that form the back bone of an episodic campaign played quickly and with little fuss.

This brings me to the point here of Holmes Dungeons & Dragons with its dungeon of the skull mountain example in the classic rule book. I mentioned this dungeon to a younger friend of mine whose in his twenties & he had no idea that such a dungeon existed. Each room & location within the skull mountain dungeon could be played like a separate television episode forming an over aching epic campaign.

Let's take this approach to the next logical step with the Legion of Gold model then we could have a series of small wilderness adventure encounters which take the PC's from first through fourth levels. A mix of ruins, a mini dungeon, & perhaps an underwater adventures. Then bring in something like Faster Monkey Games Skull Mountain adventure which is based on the classic dungeon for Labyrinth Lord. Faster Monkey Games Skull Mountain was six dollars but all of their adventures & supplements have been free for a year or so.
Then your cooking up an epic campaign with minimalist fuss & you get to have a convention style game with an episodic set up.

I've done a rather long & rambling review of Skull Mountain in the past so I'm not going to retread over old territory.

Skull Mountain is a perfect stand alone location based adventure that can stand quietly off in a campaign world. Its ideally suited for a Sword & Sorcery campaign world such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Because of the very nature of 'Skull Mountain' it lends itself to the anthology location adventure approach of a Legion of Gold adventure formula campaign. In point of fact Skull Mountain could be used as both the final goal & big evil of such a campaign.
You as the DM don't have to write an over blown  or aching script for such a campaign, the players will fill in the gaps, corners, colour in all of the blank spots so fast it will make your head spin. In the down time between playing sessions the action & pulp adventure style will have their imaginations working overtime. The products of their imaginations will become your old school campaign quickly & with very little effort on your part but keep a note book handy.

Sword & Sorcery Hex Crawling, Campaign Comprise, & Vault of the Dwarven King From Maximum Mayhem Dungeons Actual Play

Sometimes you've got to go back to basics & in this case its working out the internal adventure elements of our 'Old Solar System' campaign. So last night I popped a couple of beers with a friend & watched Ralph Bakshi's Fire & Ice.

When your getting into Fire & Ice your getting into some of the top talent in the fields of animation, fantasy artwork, film production, artwork, etc. including comic book writing and more. Yes this film is an underappreciated gem of the sword & sorcery genre. Just take a look at the film & street cred that this film has according to Wiki;" The film, a collaboration between Bakshi and Frank Frazetta, was distributed by 20th Century Fox, which also distributed Bakshi's 1977 release, Wizards. The animated feature, based on characters Bakshi and Frazetta co-created, was made using the process of rotoscoping, in which scenes were shot in live action and then traced onto animation cels.
The screenplay was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, both of whom had written Conan stories for Marvel Comics. Background painter was James Gurney, the author and artist of the Dinotopia illustrated novels. Thomas Kinkade also worked on the backgrounds to various scenes. Peter Chung, of Aeon Flux fame, was a layout artist." And that's just some of the talent that worked on this film back in '77. I saw this at the tender age of seven years old & yeah it made a huge impact on me.


Something my friend Steve & I noticed is that there is an internal flow to the story that one finds in animated films but there's also that same sort of flow in old school hex crawls. This was particularly true of B/X Dungeons & Dragons modules in campaign mode. A look at the basic plot overview of Fire & Ice will show you exactly what I'm talking about;"
From their stronghold in Icepeak, the evil Queen Juliana (Eileen O'Neill) and her son, Nekron (Stephen Mendel), send forth a wave of glaciers, forcing humanity to retreat south towards the equator. Nekron sends a delegation to King Jarol (Leo Gordon) in Firekeep to request his surrender, but this is a ruse orchestrated by Queen Juliana for Nekron’s sub-humans to kidnap Jarol’s barefoot, bikini-clad daughter, Princess Teegra (Cynthia Leake); Queen Juliana feels that Nekron should take a bride to produce an heir.
But Teegra makes an escape and comes upon Larn (Randy Norton), a young warrior and the only survivor of a village razed by glaciers, who offers to escort her back to Firekeep. As Teegra is recaptured, Larn teams with the mysterious Darkwolf (Steve Sandor) to save Teegra and then travel to Icepeak to stop Juliana. Darkwolf faces Nekron and kills him as Icepeak succumbs to lava released by King Jarol and is destroyed.
The film finishes with Larn about to kill a beaten sub-human until Teegra stops him saying that "it's over" and embraces him. Darkwolf is seen atop a cliff; he watches the pair, smiles and then disappears. Teegra and Larn kiss as the credits roll."
You've got all of the basic factions aligned where they need to be for the adventurers find them along the adventure path. This is something we'd later see during the evolution of adventure video games especially the text based ones like Zork. Yes I'm that old. There's another way of looking at this in the point crawl system of the Hill Cantons & there's an excellent series by Chris Kutalik. This sort of adventuring uses an absaract map to great effect but does put a bit of the pressure on the DM.

Basic placement of the factions of a campaign is going to determine the balance or lack there of when it comes to the adventure flow in an old school campaign. Sword & Sorcery campaigns don't often have a lot of balance they are punctuated by the violence & pulpy weirdness of the medium.
"Sword and sorcery (S&S) is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. An element of romance is often present, as is an element of magic and the supernatural. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tales, though dramatic, focus mainly on personal battles rather than world-endangering matters.^[1] Sword and sorcery commonly overlaps with heroic fantasy."When it comes to hex crawling one or more factional powers are often the fixed points of 'law of the land' on the map. A good example of this is the minor witch queen or wizard that has carved out their own section of the map. These sorts of factions are the bread & butter for Adventurer,Conqueror, King & the game handles this sort of dark & dangerous figures quite nice as they make very portions of a campaign and even sub adventures unto themselves. Again this is where ACK's handles and excels at this sort of a campaign. What we're talking about today is where the Hexcrawl is actually driving the campaign itself. How to Hexcrawl From  Taskboy Games is a really good primer on just this sort of a game campaign. It gives a good solid overview & step by step guide for establishing and making your own hexcrawl for Labyrinth Lord.

So let's bring this round does this preclude a dungeon master from using a high fantasy adventure in a sword & sorcery campaign setting? Not at all, there are several ways that this can be done but for me one of the most successful is to have the high fantasy adventure become its own internal setting beast. A good example of this is my use of the recent Vault of the Dwarven King  From   Maximum Mayhem Dungeons  in my own 'Old Earth' setting. I've done this by having the entire adventure take place in an isolated hex area of the campaign.

Now this isn't the first time I've done this sort of adventure campaign set up & compromise but there are reasons for this including my buddy Steve whose nuts for Dwarves & the fact he brought beer, pizza, & his brothers as players as bribery material. Besides which I've already been ready for this sort of a player issue. Now the answer to this comes from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea  whose dwarves are the maggot people who fell from Ymir the ice giant. The goblin races in my campaign came from his feces & fungus!


Both were collected & refined by the Ancient Ones a mysterious Lovecraftian race who spliced them with a bit of humanity we'll get into another day. Most of these two races have gone extinct but the Dwarves are making a huge push to comeback from the brink of extinction in the ruins of Europe. The country that +Mark Taormino 's Vault of The Dwarven King takes place in is going to be an isolated country. The Dwarves were/are a modified race that is occasionally used for outer world work where their expertise in metallurgy is often needed.  Vault of The Dwarven King has more then enough campaign module stuff to create a whole hex country/kingdom unto itself. The events of the module are weird/gonzo enough to take place without actually damaging a campaign in progress. Alright let me address the obvious, yes I think this module is worth getting and after watching Steve & his brothers have an awesome time dying it was worth the writing I did. I'll be more then ready for the traditional D&D players who come down the pike. The module is very deadly and there was a TPK last night in which the PC's were fried badly.

There are several elements that Mark's choice of artwork has worked very well for last night's actual game. The dwarves were very distinctive & so stood out from the usual run of the mill fantasy artwork seen in many products. This gave last night's game a distinctive feel.

The fact that several of Vault artwork pieces convey exactly what the players wanted worked in my favor & might connect up with an idea that I had. Its easily possible to place an adventure or gonzo setting  within a hex and still keep things moving along within a sword & sorcery game without completely and utterly destroying the entire mood of the campaign. This is something I'm going to have to keep in mind and I'm at the moment considering resurrecting the operatic campaign that my uncle did back in the Summer of '87.
Vault of the
Dwarven King Is Available
Right Here