Continuing OSR blogging & The Post Apocalpytic Mars Campaign

 First of all, fuck Echohawk & his thieving blog. I'm going to be moving forward with this blog for the moment until I can find another blog page  too support Swords & Stitchery blog. For the moment, the Echohawk situation is put to rest. And over the day I got together with various friends & cohorts. We spoke at length about the situation. The general consesus was to keep blogging. 
However the take away was the fact that some of my blog's deep commentary was on my Mars campaign. The Mars campaign was post apocalyptic game that used Night Owl Workshop Warriors of the Red Planet.  & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers rpg. And reading through the old blog posts the question came up in my mind.


Could Warriors of the Red Planet.  & the new Hyperborea rpg support a new post apocalpytic Mar campaign?! Short answer is that I believe so. Our Mars wasn't the Mars of our solar system instead it was a dying alien world around Alpha Centuri. The planet was originally colonized by a race of Lovecraftian serpent men. We crossed our campaign over with Adventurer,Conqueror, King 's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu™ (BCK) & this was the step up for the PC's to confront the Terrans from BCK. The Terrans were actually running from the Bugs from Colonial Troopers rpg. 

And the bugs kept getting really dangerous to the player's PC's interests. And eventually we brought in Colonial Troopers Knight Hawks.  Our players eventually encountered some of the more dangerous bugs & the alien insectoid masters who were behind the scenes. These masters were directly from the ACK's product line. Eventually we brought our group over into Cha'alt & things progressed fairly quickly. But there are several threads within this campaign that were left unresolved. Such as did the Terrans know about the on coming interstellar bug swarm?
Did the Terrans fleeing before the Swarm drop bread crumbs to the PC's to get the alien & human race deeply involved in the interstellar war?! 
The players never trusted the Terrans & thought there might be time & planar travel plots involved. 
This campaign eventually led me into the Cepheus Engine rpg along with a  rediscovery of both the 2d6 system & the Swords & Wizardry system. 

                                                                                  

White Box Gothic, Adventurer, Conqueror, King & White Star Rpg In The Making of An Interstellar Campaign Setting

 Somehow lately it feels like part of me has lost it's way with the OSR & perhaps its the near constant drum of diversity in games & rpg sales. Everyone seems to be trying to make a buck as fast as they can before the next hammer comes down from Cowards of the Coast. Once again I went back to Swords & Wizardry. Specifically the James M. Spahn's White Box Gothic set which comes in at about fifty pages of OSR Gothic goodness. 

Why?! You've covered White Box Gothic before. So what gives?! I'm looking to use White Box Gothic For the White Star Galaxy edition rpg. There are lot of good stuff between these pages for White Star specially if your leaning towards the void knights side of the spectrum. Between magic items that reek corruption. Several classes that would fit right into a dedicated crew of champions of light or interstellar mercs. There's a nice array of monsters that could serve as void monster stand ins. 
And this get's into an idea that's been floating in the back of my mind for a long while now. This is using ACK's Kanahu as a back water world of the Washington Sector. And how does this relate to White Star?! Simply put Kanahu is a lawless back water Sword & Sorcery world where corruption & Pulpy Eldritch evil has run amok! The Star Knights haven't gotten around to taming this world because of the fact that it was an ancient Grey protectorate world. And the reason for this conversion is simple & that's DYS Games Between Star & Void which has conversions for Adventurer,Conqeuror, King. Making it easy to have your star knights go up against the evils of the warlords of Kanahu.

OSR Commentary - Adventurer, Conqeuror, King's Forces of Chaos & Free ACK's Downloads

 So over the past couple of days we've been looking into Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg's download's page we came across Monster's Demons & Beastmen downloads. Why are these important?! Because they bring D&D traditional demon types into ACK's. Within ACK's the beastmen forces are literally the face of Chaos!  

In the past we've used beastmen as the obvious 'monster forces' for a wide
variety of ACK's campaigns & mini campaigns.  Axioms Issue 2: Savage Swords of Chaos brings home the beastmen forces &  Monster's Demons & Beastmen downloads compliments this issue like no other. Why because of the fact that the forces of Chaos in ACK's are so tied into the overaching campaign setting of the game. Yes there's lots of freedom for DM's to create their own worlds & campaign setting. The game is but the official ACK's world of Auran rife with possibilities for mayhem & depravity as Chaos takes over! However where these downloads shine is actually ACK's Future which has among other things the Martians including Green Thark warriors & giant space hamsters. These downloads line up very nicely with Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu. 

ACK's Future might be perfect for a colony of Kanahu as one of the planet's unknown moons. And possibly as another adventuring location. We've used this style of tactic in the past with Venger Satanis's Cha'alt & it might be time to return to it as mini ACK's campaign location. 

Do yourselves a favor as well if your going to get Cha'alt get the books directly from Venger himself. Amazon has them for one hundred US plus shipping. Venger will be much less within the continenal United States. Just contact him here. 

OSR Commentary On GW1 Legion of Gold By Gary Gygax, Luke Gygax, & Paul Reiche Ill & B2 The Keep on the Borderlands

 Over the holiday weekend we got together & played quite a bit (more on that later on). But what came to mind was our old GW1 Legion of Gold adventure romp. And the fact that the module was never resolved per say. Was GW1 ever actually resolved?! Was the Reaper A.I. destroyed per say? 

GW1 Legion of Gold By Gary Gygax, Luke Gygax, & Paul Reiche Ill premeired in Nineteen Eighty One. And Legion of Gold leaves more question then answers. Even though GW1 is for first edition, this module has been played in first, second, and fourth editions of Gamma World over the years. But GW1 leaves more questions then answers. Such as the fact that the Barony of Horn has to be employing other adventuring parties to have emassed such a powerful presence in the region. And this was made even more evident by this thread on the Piazza website here. What if the Barony of Horn is actually a wasteland warlord living in the shadow of the Orgs?! 
But what were the Legion of Gold's original purpose before the programming of Reaper was perverted by the ages?! There are several things that can be deduced from the cybernetic menaces. One they are immune to all mind influence magicks & powers, two they are under the direct control of the A.I., and two they have a very limited decision making abilities. 
So the Legion of Gold are the perfect weapons to use against the brain lasher menace. And yes, I do realize that this is Mutant Future but hear me out. Check out the Mutant Future wiki entry on them; "The Brain Lasher (also known as Mind Flayers) is a sinister humanoid alien. Its head resembles an octopus, with a round mouth lined with four large suckered tentacles, and four small, slime dripping tentacles. Its lanky body is humanoid, but it has four fingers on each hand, all of the same approximate size with no distinguishable thumb. The tips of its fingers have retractable, hollow claw-like talons. It wears clothing, but its visible hide reveals metallic green and copper colored, swirling patterned slimy skin.

"Brain Lashers are very intelligent and have powerful minds. They will often attack by stealth and subterfuge rather than full out assault. They will try to capture their enemy with henchmen, instead of intervening outright. If they intervene, they prefer to soften threats with mental attacks, before they close in by grasping the opponent’s heads. Once grasped, the hollow claws will puncture the skull in a few seconds, and instantly suction the victim’s brain into accessory stomachs within the Brain Lasher’s forearms. Once the slimy probes reach the brain, the victim is instantly killed, and the Brain Lasher will have all the victim's knowledge and memories. They may retain some key details (usually stuff that will give them a tactical edge), but much of it (typically the mundane things that are of no importance) will go away after 24-hours."

Jeff Dee artwork used without permission from S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

"It is rumored that Brain Lashers come from some other, distant world, which may not be impossible due to t their ability to plane shift. Others have said that Brain Lashers have control of alien technologies, which they wield to further their goals of domination, power, and enslavement."

"Brain Lashers are usually loners, and they do not operate in large numbers unless motivated by a common cause - such unions rarely last, as they are constantly scheming for power. They prefer to live deep in the depths of the earth, often occupying dangerous underground ruins or deep, expansive caves. They will usually have a bond of Homo erectus slaves - usually about 30 - which they create from humans with ancestral form, and breed as slaves for excavating their dwellings and using for other unspeakable tastes.

"As aliens, they live in spaceships or high-tech bases, and they make use of alien technology. They use ancestral form and genetic manipulation to spawn strange creatures or even living instruments."

Brain Lashers card stock characters from Skirmisher publishing available here. 

If we look deeper into GW1 then we find that the Barony of Horn's borders are perfect to drop in Gary Gygax's B2 Keep on the Borderlands. The Brain Lasher menace sits quietly in the background waiting patiently to feed on the PC's. 

So the Barony of Horn becomes very important as it allows the PC's to be recognized as legitiment minor royals taking on the role of wasteland or wilderness barons themselves. And this is especially true when these two old school resources are combined with Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Barbarian Conquerors  of Kanau. 

'Alone In The Darkness' - Campaign Commentary On Colonial Troopers rpg & Adventurer,Conqueror, King Rpg Hybrid Campaign Session Report

 Being a forever DM sometimes is a great thing & sometimes frankly, 'it sucks as a friend of mine' another forever DM says. But there are lots of highlights of greatness take for example last night's Colonial Troopers & Adventurer, Conqueror, King's hybrid campaign. Which picks up from this post on the blog here. 
And this get's into last night's game session. The player's ship drops out of hyperspace after receiving a distress call. Yes you've seen this movie before or so you think?! 

The party drops out of hyperspace into a no name planetary system & finds a Trade Empire class Commerical Transport floating dead in space. They've never seen this style of starship before and its massive. Yet greed get's the better of them & they begin making preperations to go on board. And yes this starship isn't from their universe. 

Aboard ship they begin to look around & find that Engineering is baracaded from the inside. Their pilot and navigator  begin to slowly start scanning the ship with their own instruments relaying what their finding. They find that the ship's systems are being controlled from engineering & that there is a lifeform at the pilot's station. 
The party splits up ( the players decided to do this not me as the DM) and one half goes to engineering while the other goes to the pilot's station. All of the while system after system has been shut off or shut down. When the party reaches the pilot station the door swings open in zero gee and they are confronted by a humanoid with a beatle for a face! A  Khepri warlord confronts the party and all Hell breaks loose as they attempt to open up on the insectal terror. But the fangible bullets are absorbed by an alien force shield the PC's have never seen before. They retreat as the Kephri disengages from combat shuts the pillot station door.  The other group finds itself outside of engineering & tries to communicate with whomever is inside. 

They finally make contact with the  Nephilim starship engineer within who after a bout with the universal translator tells them about the Kephri warlord taking over the ship. And turning the crew into fodder for its young. 
The Warlord then began to attach strange bioorganic systems throughout the starship and the cheif engineer had hid. Then the hyperspace generators began to take the starship elsewhere but the engineer managed to maroon them both in this dead starsystem. 
And that's where we ended last night! 

' A Bigger Piece Of The Cosmic Action' - Campaign Commentary On Colonial Troopers rpg & Adventurer,Conqueror, King Rpg Hybrid Campaign

 The following is all campaign commentary on an ongoing campaign that came to crashing stop because of scheduling conflicts. That's going to be changing soon. 

So a couple of months ago I was running a Colonial Troopers rpg & Adventurer,Conqueror, King Rpg hybrid  campaign. We had two different groups of players competing in the darkness of space to see what was out there in the great beyond. It got pretty heated when the player's PCs stumbled upon one of the secrets of the Terran Empire from the Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu rpg campaign setting book for ACK's. And its within this campaign settting that we've got the Terrans making their first appearance with shades of Farscape & John Carter of Mars By Edgar Rice Burroughs in the form of the Terran Cosmonaught ; "Men and women from Terra sometimes end up trapped on Kanahu. They might have been teleported there by a freak physics experiment, or perhaps their space capsule fell through a wormhole and ended up in Kanahu orbit. Educated and enlightened believers in science and reason, Terrans are utterly alien to this barbaric world of savagery, idolatry, and superstition, and thus (for game purposes) constitute a “race” of their own." And it continues along the lines with more PC classes being available in Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu rpg. By the time, we get into Aryxymaraki’s Almanac of Unusual Magic supplement for ACK's the Terran Engineers have already adapted their technological abilities to the ACK's fantasy world. 

It always has seemed like the Terrans were hiding something & it only got worse when after a job that the PC's carried out. The Bugs started showing up & showing interest in the space fleet of several of the local sectors. At the center of the whole thing were the Terrans who had ticked the bugs off by taking several very important techno occult artifacts from the Bugs. And this got the PC's into the middle of the interstellar conflict. And it was war on a much grander scale. Ready or not the PC's were in the center of the Reticulans, Bugs, & Terrans conflict! 

The PC's were cogs in a meg scale interstellar game of chess with them in the center of the board. Suddenly they were dealing with a whole other level of reality here. Young stars being shepparded for terraforming planets, mega structures being used to move entire star systems, cosmic entities dealing harsh truths  and much more. And they wanted a piece of the action. They were playing way above their pay grade and it was glorious. 

So now they want to go to war & we might have some ideas as to where this takes us! Stay tuned! 

Encounter With The Unknown - Play Session Recap #4 - ACK's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu & Colonial Troopers Knight Hawks rpg

 The players in last night's game are beginning to suspect the extent of Rogar and Zeglin the two mercenary warlords plans for the planet as they came into one of the castles from   B2 'In Search of the Unknown' by Mike Carr. This is going to pick directly from this blog entry & session report here.   Our crossover campaign 'After the Fall of Man'  is in full swing. This is a part of our on going ' The Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu'  & Colonial Troopers campaign.

The Caverns of Quasqueton hold some rather dangerous magictechnologies & are filled with weird radiations. They've also detected on the far side of the planet some sort of unknown 'sky chariot that the locals referred to. 

Several of Rogar's 'eternal guardians' were activated which turned out to be security droids and the PC's were able to save two of them. Their psychic has been going crazy because of the fact that's detected that Rogar and Zeglin are still on the planet but only very faintly! The party is still itching to get to  Jeff “Bighara” Sparks 'pay what you' want adventure 'The Hidden Serpent'. This location is another of the fortresses that  Rogar and Zeglin the two mercenary warlords own. 

For the moment the party has parleyed with the local wizard guild & magic academy for far more details on the magic academy coming straight out of Skirmisher Publishing's 100 Oddities for an Arcane Academy. 

St. Albertus is an arcane academy level 4 that has been helping the local exo planet that has suffered harshly under the onslaught that was leveled at them ages ago. Sorcerers from the academy have been acting as agents healing, helping, and moving the plans of the academy along on the exo planet. Meanwhile the planet has reverted to a Thundarr The Barbarian like existence. Then there is the nanite mutations planetside. 

The player's PC's did help the school by dealing with a rather nasty slime that threatened one of the side halls of the academy. What the players don't know is that it came from the Wizarding Ways [BUNDLE] from Skirimisher that I grabbed on cyberMonday. 

The slime came as a sample from one of the academy's sorcerer agents planetside on the exoworld. The PC's have only found out in this weekend's game. What other secrets is the academy hiding?! 

Encounter With The Unknown - Play Session Recap #3 - ACK's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu & Colonial Troopers Knight Hawks rpg

 So the PC's have located the post 'After The Fall of Man' already and this blog post is going to go right back into the other day's blog entry here. 

We've been really busy with work so I've had to fall back when it comes to making plans for our crossover campaign 'After the Fall of Man'  a part of our on going ' The Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu'  & Colonial Troopers campaign. And question came up who caused this colony world's devastation?! And I had to think fast?! Then one player piped up that it was intergalactic warlords of course! And I had to think fast so I rolled some dice, 'yes, yes, it was!' 
'And so let's try & locate their lair or base of operations!', & they began rolling dice as my heart began to melt. Or did it?! Earlier in the day I had a copy of B1 'In Search of the Unknown' by Mike Carr with me! And as they flew closer to only E type world in the system the player's starship detected structures & lifeforms down below on the planetary surface. Deeper scans revealed that they were over twenty five years old. 

Now I had a couple of tricks up my sleave from using B2 'In Search of the Unknown' by Mike Carr before for various sci fi OSR games over the years. And this included a couple of automatic defenses including a couple of missile batteries planet side, and defense sat equipped with laser cannons. And did I mention the automatic messages by Rogar and Zeglin the two mercenary warlords(the names were changed on purpose. Now during the smoke break I had a bit of time to draw myself together get a few details changed up. The Caverns of Quasqueton is only one of the pair of mercenaries lairs & this threw the players who have never been run through B2. And to change it up further I went back to Jeff “Bighara” Sparks 'pay what you' want adventure 'The Hidden Serpent'. This location is another of the fortresses that  Rogar and Zeglin the two mercenary warlords own. 

Were  Rogar and Zeglin the two mercenary warlords evil?! And why were weapons of mass destruction levied against the Thundarr The Barbarian exo planet?! What happened to Rogar and Zeglin?! And why are there several strange planar readings on the planet?! For the planet dress I employed Skirmisher Publishing's Ray Guns & Ruins to up the unexpected tech, weird ruin aspect and this was a part of the Mutant Bundle for Cybermonday. 

This is probably going to keep the party busy for a couple of months. And they could possibly settle down in the fortresses once they've been cleared out. But their wizard is already itchy because he thinks there could be bugs in the area. And he's right! 

Going in an Alien Campaign Direction For 2021 - Time to Pull The Lever

So are we pissed at Bill from Green Skeleton gaming Guild Blog?! Erm no not at all, in fact its given our group the opportunity to do a zoom call & discuss what comes next?! There's an opportunity here folks. An alien opportunity.. 
With Moorcock its all about fading back into the Sword & Sorcery & in this case the world of ice & snow is ending fast because of events within the  Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing.  
And in this case its the fact the PC's are going to be vary soon starting within the coming cycle of Womb Cult From Grimm Aramil Publishing. The PC's are making it back to Accursed Atlantis to do a bunch of shopping & re equipping. And then they face down the Lem! The alien spawn becoming a real issue for all right thinking folks. 

 And this isn't the first time the PC's have dealt with these alien bastards. Moving away from Black Blade & into The Chaos Gods Come To Meatlandia we find a ton of optional other worldly weirdness to dive into. Including two or more flavors of Chaos related high adventure to dive into. 

There's a number of PC options that are on the table from here. Meatlandia has already appeared twice in the Hundred Years War campaign. Things have to actually be played out in campaign. And this means grabbing my copy of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu From Autarch. 

 And this also means moving on various elements of Castles & Crusades as the Greys establish hives & brood homes across the planes! This fits something that the PC's in Victorious rpg already have come across. 

OSR Commenary- DA3 City of the Gods By Dave Arneson & David J. Ritchie & ACK rpg Greyhawk

 "New Magic?

That's what the flying egg has. New magic unlike any ever encountered in Blackmoor. New magic of a type that could give the fledgling kingdom an important edge in the wars that are brewing on its borders.

There are only a few minor problems. Like the fact that the magician who piloted the metal egg to one of Blackmoor's sworn enemies, the monks of evil and eccentric Order of the Frog, are also interested in the magic represented by the egg. And, most important, the fact that the egg came from the distant and dangerous City of the Gods.

Set amist the blistered salt flats of the Valley or the Ancients, the City of the Gods is a strange and deadly metal metropolis whose powerful guardians do not welcome intruders. Yet it is to this place of deadly menace that Blackmoor's leaders now send a daring expedition? to bargain for aid in the coming wars? or to steal the magic of the gods."


There are times when starting to look into the past means that the future holds its own! Such is the case with DA3 City of The Gods by Guy J Ritchie &  David Lance Arneson. My big problem with the OSR is how fickle it is. City of the Gods is an old favorite module of mine & last night DM Steve pinned my ears back about it. My comments here go all of the way back to 2018 & my comments still stand;
"DA3 City of The Gods has been available as a pdf from Wizards of The Coast going all the way back to 2016. 'DA3: "City of the Gods" (1987), by Dave Arneson & David J. Ritchie, is the third of the four Blackmoor adventure. It was published in March 1987.' , this one the best science fantasy resources available to bridge gap Greyhawk & Blackmoor together."
The discussion came down like this in last night's post game, 'You've got all this f@#^ ing chaos roaming through your campaigns especially your Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg campaign but none of the goodness or order?!'.  Never let it be said that there isn't consistency & coherence in my campaigns. Going back over my campaign notes I remember that there was a notes about using several knightly orders of the City of the Gods. What if those knights were actually Star Knights ala White Star's Galaxy edition or Between Star & Void by DYS Games. 



This puts this faction squarely in the time before the Twin Cataclysms We can see further evidence of this right in the Mechanics of Destruction: Origins of the Twin Cataclysms. There's a lot more to the land of black ice there there first appears in Greyhawk. 


All of this ties neatly back into Adventurer,Conqeuror, King's Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu so its easy to translate & transport the whole cloth of inhabitants of the City of the Gods as having ties to these OSR resources. Go here to read one of this blog's original City of the Gods entries with Greyhawk ties. 



Is the head of the Froggies looking for not only nests of machines but also a copy of  the Codex of the Infinite Planes?!  This is the same artifact that more then a few of the Jedi erm Star Knights have been looking for! 

And what of the Egg of Coot?! Has the egg suddenly vanished from its higher dimensional prison plane?! The egg was recently seen in my Cha'alt/Godbound campaign but its impact was only briefly felt. Was its attention diverted to something far more grand? The answer goes into Greyhawk's Land of Black Ice. 

"The only humans living near the area are the Baklunish Guryik folk on the Drawmidj coast, and the Suloise Zeai, or Sea Barbarians, who dwell on a section of Icy Sea coastline known as the Tusking Strand. Within the Land of Black Ice proper are said to dwell all manner of horrid arctic monsters, so few humans enter the region. Tales are told of wights, frost men, evil spirits, black-skinned trolls, and blue-furred bugbears inhabiting the wasteland" this ties directly into the fact that the Egg has been for centuries trying to escape its fate on Greyhawk. The 'Land of Black Ice' is a testament to its future but perhaps there's an escape through the city of the gods. 
All of this science fantasy  ties back into ACK's version of Dwimmermount. The grand megadungeon has some very definitive science fantasy  Greyhawk ties coming up. 

Loose Ends & New Beginnings - Cha'alt & Godbound with Adventurer, Conqeuror,King Rpg Campaign & More

So there's been an email request coming in from a patron of this blog wondering if all reason has been abandoned & my Cha'alt/Godbound campaign ended or vanished into the void of OSR nothingness. It has in point of fact hasn't vanished. But let's pick up with the fact that I've checked with my players who want to resume the rotating  Cha'alt/Godbound campaign game to every other week. Happy days!
Because I was in the process of cannibalizing some of my Adventurer,Conqueror,King rpg campaign material for this game.  But I've been thinking about something that I said back on December 29 & the fact that run my games as 'Epic Gothic Weird Fantasy'.  Why?! Because ACK's makes an excellent backbone fantasy game for this sort of campaign & it works well with Venger Satanis's Cha'alt. I've run Omer Joel, &  Alexander Macris's  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu with Cha'alt for several mini side games. These OSR resources work well & play well together. 


But my Las Vegas Cha'alt/Godbound campaign has an Anunnaki Grey base out in the middle of Death Valley. These bastards have been abducting human subjects ever since the Cha'alt wave hit the Earth allowing all kinds of horrors & what not to gate into this Prime Earth. The Grey have had unobstructed access to California,Nevada, & Amazon. 

The entire campaign came to screeching halt due to the Corvid 19 epidemic. The PC's had been summoned to this Earth by a secret society & things were reverting over to the Cha'alt continuum across the planet. Demon worms showing up, wasteland raiders, mutants,etc.
The PC's have crossed into Cha'alt a few times & I was looking forward to using AX2: Secrets of the Nethercity from ACK's as a stand in for some of the locations of Cha'alt. This was done from the example of the Mixed DM blog's Cha'alt review here.  Many of the locations depicted in Cha'alt fit nicely the cities depicted in the campaign sections of Cha'alt.



AX2's depictions of the degenerate nature of the Elves of ACK's also fits the chaos worshiping a holes of Cha'alt's Elven degenerate variants. This also fits the background of Rpg Pundit's Dark Albion setting & his Lion & Dragon Rpg. 


I want to take a step back here & talk about the fact that many of the Grey artifacts, relics, technologies, etc. are in my games considered Chaos tainted. Here's where I fall back to my Lion & Dragon, Dark Albion, & especially Cults of Chaos notes.  PC's fooling around with these items is a really good way of earning a chaos mutation or two. Now the reason for this is despite Pundit's review of Cha'alt there are some really good rules for using chaos or dangerous occult items or artifacts in your games. I turn to Gary Gygax's S3 Expediation to The Barrier Peaks module. I'm going to use the mind flayer that's one of the encounters within S3 as the basis for an 'unexpected guest'.


Psionically its been putting 'out the call' to a group of 1d20 Cha'alt scavengers who have been operating in the area. They are on their way into 'attack' the downed Grey craft to free the prisoner  specimen who was taken on a recent Grey expedition to a Flayer colony ship.The Greys will pay handsomely for it or mind blast anyone has the Flayer pod if they can get away with it. 

Books matter - OSR Campaign Setting Flip - World War I Godzilla - Prelude To War of the Worlds

"And we men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to them at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs to us. The intellectual side of man already admits that life is an incessant struggle for existence, and it would seem that this too is the belief of the minds upon Mars. Their world is far gone in its cooling, and this world is still crowded with life, but crowded only with what they regard as inferior animals. To carry warfare sunward is, indeed, their only escape from the destruction that generation after generation creeps upon them.

And before we judge of them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?

The Martians seem to have calculated their descent with amazing subtlety—their mathematical learning is evidently far in excess of ours—and to have carried out their preparations with a well-nigh perfect unanimity. Had our instruments permitted it, we might have seen the gathering trouble far back in the nineteenth century. Men like Schiaparelli watched the red planet—it is odd, by-the-by, that for countless centuries Mars has been the star of war—but failed to interpret the fluctuating appearances of the markings they mapped so well. All that time the Martians must have been getting ready.

During the opposition of 1894 a great light was seen on the illuminated part of the disk, first at the Lick Observatory, then by Perrotin of Nice, and then by other observers. English readers heard of it first in the issue of Nature dated August 2d. I am inclined to think that the appearance may have been the casting of the huge gun, the vast pit sunk into their planet, from which their shots were fired at us. Peculiar markings, as yet unexplained, were seen near the site of that outbreak during the next two oppositions.

The storm burst upon us six years ago now. As Mars approached opposition, Lavelle of Java set the wires of the astronomical exchange palpitating with the amazing intelligence of a huge outbreak of incandescent gas upon the planet. It had occurred towards midnight of the 12th, and the spectroscope, to which he had at once resorted, indicated a mass of flaming gas, chiefly hydrogen, moving with an enormous velocity towards this earth. This jet of fire had become invisible about a quarter past twelve. He compared it to a colossal puff of flame, suddenly and violently squirted out of the planet, "as flaming gas rushes out of a gun."" 

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

Chapter 1. The Eve of the War

So my latest blog posts about H.G. Well's War of the Worlds & Godzilla over the last couple of days has been getting me quite a bit of flack in my local antiquarian OSR circles. 

The War of the Worlds Godzilla 1898! - A Troll Lord Games Victorious rpg Campaign Set Up, War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 - The Opening Salvo A Troll Lord Games Victorious rpg Campaign, & War of the Worlds Godzilla 1914 - Years Zero 1912 -1913 A Troll Lord Games OSR/ Victorious rpg Campaign blog posts.  The reason appears to be because I used the Siege Engine from Troll Lord Games as the basis for this OSR campaign set up. Gotta say I'm in a bit of a state of shock about this development but I can show you how to do this same campaign set up with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons resources & OSR systems easily.  So let's assume here for the sake of campaign setting easy that Europe has had during its existence many of the tropes & clitches that we take for granted in Dungeons & Dragons. Dragons, dungeons, wizards, Elves, Dwarves, etc. And lets assume that the occult, supernatural, mythology, etc. is real & true to history for the campaign's setting. 

So assuming all of the above let's quickly review the video that inspired this campaign above. Now without missing a beat, we've got the crown heads of Europe starring at each other & ready to go toe to toe with each other over a series of interlocking alliances & conflicts. Everything boiled over in World War one from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. But its seeds go back to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the post-1848 rise of Prussia under Otto von Bismarck. And here's where the seeds of this campaign really start with the moves of Stephen d' Amberville against Otto Von Bismark. Stephen d' Amberville is an  undead arch lich & not taking it lying down! He's been going move for move against Otto Von Bismark. X2: "Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville)" (1981), by Tom Moldvay, takes center stage as the arch lich established by Tom Moldvay isn't resting peacefully. He plays human chess with real royals & the crown princes of Europe. 

But where's Godzilla?! Well if we assume that ancient dragons & tarrasques are real then it stands to reason that maybe that 'King of the Monsters' title isn't for show. He & his species has been been battling these bastards of the Earth for eons. Here's where you grab that copy of the Monster Manual II for stats kids on the tarrasques! 


All that weird radiation, strange magical energies, & incredible raw power that's been released into the Earth since the time of the dinosaurs? How ever will we as dungeon masters be able to play this?! Well there's Goblinoid Games Labyrinth Lord & the Advanced Labyrinth Lord Companion. But what about the 'modern' weaponry of WWI & the kaiju mutations?! Well Goblinoid also has Mutant Future to take care of all of that. 

Now personally I'd be using Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg system for doing pre WWI Dark Europe. And as for the stats for Godzilla himself? Well I'd be using Chris Van Deelen's City Killer Mark I for the stats needed for Godzilla.  I'd also thrown in a healthy dose of Realms of Crawling Chaos for any Lovecraftian bits as well and for some really nasty fringe cults & relics.


Now if you really wanna add a bit of that old school D&D weirdness have many of the smaller houses competing against each other ala Frank Herbert's Dune but add in a  Ruritanian romance element to this campaign; "Ruritanian romance is a genre of literature, film and theatre comprising novels, stories, plays and films set in a fictional country, usually in Central or Eastern Europe, such as the "Ruritania" that gave the genre its name.^[1]

Such stories are typically swashbuckling adventure novels, tales of high romance and intrigue, centered on the ruling classes, almost always aristocracy and royalty,^[1] although (for instance) Winston Churchill's novel Savrola, in every other way a typical example of the genre, concerns a revolution to restore rightful parliamentary government in the republican country of Laurania. The themes of honor, loyalty and love predominate, and the works frequently feature the restoration of legitimate government after a period of usurpation or dictatorship" 

Fictional countries are established only to obliterated in the shadow of the on coming war & the invasion coming up. PC's could be working hard to avert the on coming horrors by globe trotting & trying to get a handle on both the espionage, saving heads of Europe, dealing with hidden witch covens, & trying to survive against the monstrous spawn of Kaiju. This is the perfect time to add the Lion & Dragon rpg, Dark Albion, & Cults of Chaos to the mix.

In fact much of the history of the  Lion & Dragon rpg could be used as leverage for ancient rivalries between modern national powers. There could be a modern witch hunting campaign in the works.
The ACK's Heroic Handbook is the perfect companion to this campaign with the ancient dragons being incredibly dangerous adversaries & opponents on the world stage.



The Martian invaders are not absent during this time frame at all they have H.G. Wells  Crystal Eggs scattered across the Earth. These eggs have made their way into occult societies, shadowy terrorist organizations, & the hands of dangerous Fey across Europe. Details on the Crystal Egg were written up by The Old School Heretic Blog back in 2012.
In fact many of the dark & sinster cults detailed in ACK's  Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu could be operating on the fringes of Earth during this time frame.


Next time the Fey, the Fairies, & the Fated!