Commentary On B11 King's Festival (Basic D&D ) By Carl Sargent For Your Old School Campaigns

 "Someone has "borrowed" a cleric, and without him, the fabled King's Festival cannot go on. Unfortunately, it looks like the orcs have him, and your characters must rescue him."

I had an email request for B11 King's Harvest & while I have covered B11 in the past I wanted to do a fresh blog post on this classic module.  B11 King's Festival is by Carl Sargent can be seen as one of those modules that attempted to revive the Basic Dungeons & Dragons line of product at TSR during the '89 era. I have a very storied history with this module because of its Basic Dungeons & Dragons roots. The fact that its deeply rooted in Mystara or more importantly in as an  introduction to the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. This module can be seen as the Grand Duchy of Karameikos lite in a sense. The whole adventure centers around the region as a whole. The dungeon master has enough details to fill in all of the little layers of B11 with each of the classic elements of Dungeons & Dragons. All of the ins & outs of dungeon crawling along with investigative old school play is highlighted in B11 King's Festival.


While B11 King's Festival seems like its a straight forward adventure module, B11 in fact supplies all of the classic Dungeons & Dragons elements in one very tightly run adventure package. There's enough here to keep a minor Basic Dungeons & Dragons campaign going for months of game play. The overview of the module has the plot revolving around the major big bad at the center of the module. The truth is that B11 King's Festival if used right will put the PC's center stage for the royals in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos & not simply as flavor of the month. That is if they survive the experience & here's where the module really shines. This is another Basic D&D module that takes the PC's into the Dungeons & Dragons Mystara experience. The fact is that on the whole B11 King's Festival by Carl Sargent is a good set of 1st through 3rd guidelines on actually making, creating, & running a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Scattered throughout B11 are tables, references, charts, & advice for actually becoming a better player & dungeon master. Today B11 King's
Festival almost seems forgotten & that's a shame because its a quality low level dungeon crawl adventure romp as much as an introduction adventure module.

For running B11 King's Festival through an OSR retroclone system there are a number of OSR systems on the table including B/X Rules Cyclopedia Dungeons & Dragons. B11 is a fairly easy to run introduction to the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game on its own. All of the classic D&D elements are here in force & the module moves quickly at a brisk pace. The dungeon master is going to have to be on his or her game when running B11 King's Festival. Taken as a whole the module will leave the PC's right in the middle of & at the attention of the royals of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos! This might not be a good thing depending upon the module's event's outcome. PC's may want to tread this path carefully.

Black BASIC Dungeons & Dragons Thunder Rift Setting & A Trail of Murder - Campaign Commentary

"The Shady Dragon Inn is a set of pre-generated characters for use with the Dungeons & Dragons game. This player's aid comes in two parts: each character appears first in a section devoted to his or her character class. They appear again in the second section as members of a party. As a DM or as a player, you may use either or both sections; over a hundred characters await you!

Each character has a brief biography that will help you to create backgrounds for PCs or NPCs as needed. Also included is a rough physical description, and a list of items owned by each character.

The Shady Dragon Inn also contains the D&D statistics for those special characters who are presented by figures in the D&D and AD&D toy line, and provides a tavern setting from which players may start adventures or gather party members."0

Take a classic era TSR product & you can find some very interesting little tid bits in the hidden gems of another era. Take for instance 'AC1  The Shady Dragon Inn' by Carl Sargent filled with over 100 pregenerated NPC characters.. Now for quite while now I've been needing an NPC to help fill an NPC murder niche.
Before I continue this particular NPC is inspired by the fact its for Mike Stewart's Victorious rpg  And the fact that the Thunder Rift campaign setting for Black Basic Dungeons & Dragons has a lovely little adventure called Escape Thunder Rift which expertly places this setting in Mystara.

Thunder Rift on occasion crosses into the world of Fairyland in my 1870' alternative history version of New York City & also  'AC1  The Shady Dragon Inn' by Carl Sargent which quietly appears on a side alley in the city . This brings me to mad, evil, & highly dangerous NPC that crosses over from the inn into New York with murderous intent. My version of the Shady Dragon Inn is taken from The Vaults of Pandius here.. 
I'm speaking about Zarak the Evil Half-Orc Assassin whose going on a job. And if you think that he's not someone to wreck havoc think again. 


My use of Zarak is inspired by the pint sized assassin the BCC's exceptional '87 adaptation of 'Sherlock Holmes' 'The Sign of the Four'.  There's a cursed treasure from Mystara that's crossing hands & causing murders in my campaign. 


The 1892 cloth-bound cover of The Sign of Four after it was compiled as a single book

Someone's hired   to recover that treasure and now the bodies are starting to pile up. But no Venger isn't on the other end of Zarak. Instead someone far more personal to our player characters is.. My use of Thunder Rift isn't an accident because it goes all of the way back to '94 when I took the self contained book for a spin. Thunder Rift is small. .You've got self-contained little setting in a valley about thirty miles long. All of the familiar Basic Dungeons & Dragons monsters are in here including a dragon, elves, dwarves, goblins, & lots of human settlements.
The quality of the Thunder Rift's setting & adventures are exceptional. They make excellent OSR campaign adaptions & their not well known to the experienced & jaded AD&D or D&D players. They can be used in very unexpected ways to suit a dungeon master's taste. 

OSR Commentary On The Orc Raids Of B11 King's Festival By Carl Sargeant For Your Old School Campaigns

"Someone has "borrowed" a cleric, and without him, the fabled King's Festival cannot go on. Unfortunately, it looks like the orcs have him, and your characters must rescue him. "
So I've been playing around with & looking over lots & lots of B/X  & Advanced  Dungeons & Dragons adventures over the last six to eight months. Now let's dive into the deeper B/X pool with an adventure that seldom gets mentioned.


If your looking for a B/X Dungeons & Dragons adventure that will actually take your PC's from first through fourth without the iconic drivel that seems to follow in the wake of Keep On The Borderlands. Let me point you all in the direction of one of the most under sung modules to come out post classic era TSR then B11 King's Festival might be just what your looking for. This introductory adventure will take your PC's from levels one right through four with action, danger, & plenty of actual plot.
This is an adventure that takes the humanoids & orcs especially bringing them where they belong front & center. So I know what your thinking, " What the hell does this have to do with Sword & Sorcery"? Well I'm glad you asked. The orcs of King's Festival are the nasty & highly dangerous pig faced orc bastards that old school players know & love.
But as good as my word B11 King's Festival makes a perfect Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition set up. The fact is that in AS&SH orcs are the product of a mating of Picts with a really nasty Lovecraftian or Clark Ashton Smith pig demon thing.


The result of this is a rather nasty monster with all of the charm of a migraine headache for your PC's. But there's also another hook here for AS&SH players for the DM to take full advantage of, "King's Festival provides players and DMs with a valuable introduction to fantasy role-playing in the land of Karameikos."

 If we transfer the events of King's Festival to just outside of the Hyperborean capital of Khromarium then suddenly things take a very weird turn of events. All of this might center on Petrides the evil NPC behind all of the events of this adventure. He could well be connected with the thieves/assassins guild  network of one of the Vorloi, Radu, and Torenescu families Atlantian royal survival families in Khormarium from my version of B6 The Veiled Society.

What King's Festival does doesn't just set up B6 but also puts orcs dangerously close to the Hyperborean capital & sets up events for either an earlier brush with Keep on the Borderland or a combat round about with Night's Dark Terror waiting in the wings. This all culminates in the awakening of the Lovecraftian forces of 'The Temple of Elemental Evil' set on Hyperborea.


I've written about The Temple of Elemental Evil way too many times on this blog. But there's a more subtle & insidious reason to pick B11 King's Festival as introductory adventure. B11 puts the PC's square on the path of domain level play, the PC's are in the cross hairs of the royals of the adventure & destined for greatness or the headman's ax. The stakes here are perfectly aligned for a Sword & Sorcery campaign set against the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rules set. 



I've used B11 King's Festival in the past as a set up for a  Dark Avalon campaign. The 'orcs' were debased humans that had been mutated by the chaotic energies of Fairyland. There were  the ruins of Elven engines nearby allowing the animation of the dead. This all centered around the occult gateway that was beginning to open up again allowing a crossover into the dread realm. The set up here was the fact that the kidnapping by the 'orcs' was the first salvo of the Rose War.  The adventurers were pawns in the game of the royals. My point is that B11 King's Festival is flexible as it is useful.  If your going to set B11 for Dark Albion make sure that you use Cults of Chaos.

From Hyperborea I Can See Oerth - Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk Being Run With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea Rpg System - Thoughts on The Free City Of Greyhawk Box Set

"Greyhawk -- City of High Culture and Low Life! From the high towers of its grand universities to the rancid alleys of its darkest slums, the City of Greyhawk awaits you. Center of magic and learning in the Flanaess, Greyhawk is also the home of powerful thieves, mighty warriors, traitorous ambassadors, and honest craftsmen."

1989 ... Douglas Niles & Carl Sargent ... TSR 1043 ... ISBN 0880387319"



So what are the ramifications of the Free City of Greyhawk in a solar system where Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea floats near Saturn & Greyhawk sits next to the star Jupiter? I began to think about this far future solar system of mine millions of years in the future  where Jupiter is a small star. Greyhawk orbits around it & Hyperborea is near one of the sixty two (sixty three?) moons of Saturn. Greyhawk's golden age might have been in fact much more marked by the passage of Ragnarok. Humanity was led to the safety of Greyhawk because of the sacrifice of the deities of Old Earth. This has been a part of an irregular series of blog posts that started here.



Passage between the two worlds is highly parlous & extremely dangerous fraught with all kinds of soul draining horror.  Maybe the occasional party in the capital city but not likely. It would be extremely rare. I'm talking 'The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad' film rare. The Free City of Greyhawk is the focus of a place of incredible Sword & Sorcery ancient learning like the Library of Alexandria. 
This is the setting where the  Xian wizards would sell their black hearted souls to go. The Free City of Greyhawk still boasts pieces of learning from before the Great Rain of Colorless fire & the Green Death.



The Scarlet Brotherhood is focused much more along the lines of  "the Dreaming Isle of Melnibone, its Suloise monks and wizards the modern descendants of the twisted demon-sworn conquerors of a dead age" but they have their tendrils throughout the Free City. Few release the horrors that the Elemental Evil cult brought to Greyhawk but its not dead only dreaming at the moment;

"The Wizards of the Coast provided the following introduction to Elemental Evil:

“

Four apocalyptic cults of Elemental Evil are building secret sanctuaries and outposts throughout the North, bringing terror and destruction to the Forgotten Realms. Each cult is devoted to one of the Princes of Elemental Evil (godlike entities embodying air, earth, fire, and water) and is led by a nihilistic prophet, corrupted by power. The cruel elf princess Aerisi Kalinoth speaks for the air Cult of the Howling Hatred, while Marlos Urnrayle, a fierce male medusa, leads the Cult of the Black Earth. The Cult of the Eternal Flame scars its followers at the behest of the beautiful and deadly tiefling Vanifer, and the mutilated sailor Gar Shatterkeel plots to drown the world with his Cult of the Crushing Wave. The cults use devastation orbs, forged of raw elemental power, to ravage Faerûn with horrifying earthquakes, typhoons, tornados, and other disasters. Independently, the cults are terrible adversaries, but now they have secretly begun transforming a long-lost dungeon into a huge subterranean temple dedicated to an alien entity known as the Elder Elemental Eye. To prevent this union of the Elemental Evils into one catastrophic force, heroes must expose the prophets' true agenda. The cults' agents are everywhere and their power is immense. When you don’t know whom to trust, knowledge is your only weapon. Unearth the Deception." There are mages & wizards on the wizard's council in the Free City of Greyhawk who know the danger & connection of the T1 -4 Temple of Elemental Evil with the Ashen Worm. Here's where a Greyhawk or Hyperborean party of adventurers comes in. The occult horrors presented by the Elemental Evil cult comes into focus on both Hyperborea & Greyhawk through the Free City of Greyhawk rulers & councils. These are not going to sit idly by as these cults begin rising across Greyhawk. These events are gonna start with S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth by Gary Gygax ;" In the Yatil Mountains south of Perrenland there is rumored to be a magical hoard of unsurpassed value, a treasure of such fame that scores f adventurers have perished in search of it. Find the perilous Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth and you may gain the hidden wealth of the long-dead arch-mage -- if you live! " Why?! Because of the fact that  Bodaks, derros, marlgoyles, xag-ya/xeg-yi, and more. Also various demons, minor, major, and demon princes like Graz'zt are also tied right into the events surrounding T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil. The village of Homlet becomes the home base for the PC's and then everything rolves around the Free City of Greyhawk. Think of this as almost a film like campaign where the PC's are the heroes if they survive the experience.

Mentzer Expert Dungeons & Dragons Box Set & Low Level Grand Duchy of Karameikos Campaign Action

When it comes to grabbing onto the gusto of Mentzer Expert Dungeons & Dragons edition there's no better edition to add onto Basic Dungeons & Dragons. 'The D&D Expert Rules Set (1983), by Frank Mentzer, is the second iteration of the boxed Expert Rules for Basic D&D and the second volume in Mentzer's BECMI rules series. It was published in August 1983.' 
With Expert the players & their PC's have been playing & adventuring for bit now. But perhaps its time that they make the next leap within their adventuring career. They'll need a home base but within striking distance of their adventure patrons.


Mystara's Karameikos is unique in that regard because the PC's are in the center of the action & able to deal with the day to day matters of the kingdom. They find themselves swept along with royal ebb & flow. GAZ1: "The Grand Duchy of Karameikos" (1987), by Aaron Allston, is the first book in the "GAZ" series of Gazetteers for the Known World. It was published in April 1987. This is a must have for the DM & puts the information on the capital right at the DM's finger tips. Couple this campaign setting with Mentzer Basic & Expert D&D, then its off you go to play right in the middle of the empire. 


Your adventurers are going to want to put themselves down on the street level of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. Here they'll embroil themselves in the thick of adventure. But there are some other 'add ons' books that can save a ton of time for the dungeon master. Especially when running a brand new campaign. 

"Venture into the bustling capital city of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos! Learn of its colourful history and meet many personalities who call it “home”! Find your way through its maze of streets to a friendly (or perhaps unfriendly) tavern, to a boarding house to rest your limbs, to many businesses that sustain adventurers in the wilderness lands beyond the city! Specularum is a very cosmopolitan place - you’ll never know who you might meet there. Around any corner your characters may find someone or something that may lead them on a new quest. It may lead them out of the city, but the intrigue and power struggles (not to mention crime) means that the streets and buildings of the city contain as much adventure as might be found in the wilderness. They say there are more than fifty thousand stories in this city - will you be part of one?"

So from yesterday's post I had a ton of questions emailed to me especially about where could a party of beginning characters begin in Mystara, what module do you grab to get the PC's off to a very epic start, & what's the best way to get them into the thick of Mystara adventuring. So let's start with the basics first off as a DM grab a free  copy of Threshold Magazine issue 21 v3.  So why is this an important add on to your campaign? Because its going to put your adventurers center stage at ground zero within the bustling capital city of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos.

"The vast city is not only a place to obtain supplies to enable adventurers to equip themselves for their quests or somewhere to store or sell the treasure they may acquire in their missions, it is a place of adventure itself. Along every street, around every corner, there are opportunities. The many trades and nationalities that inhabit the buildings all have stories to tell, rumors to share, and so much more.
The articles in the the magazine will tell you more about the history of the city, of some of the people and groups you might encounter; there are maps of the distinctive neighborhoods and information about some of the landmarks you might find your way to, and much about the intrigue behind the scenes. "
I consider Threshold issue 21 v3.  essential reading for running a Mystara campaign set in  the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. But the module to couple with this material might surprise you. DDA3: "Eye of Traldar" (1991), by Carl Sargent is simple, easy to run, & offers the PC's some quick & dirty dungeon crawl action. This is a good module to get the players hooked on a campaign quickly & efficiently Couple this with Mentzer's expert set & play is going to go as smooth as glass. Why?! Because DDA3: "Eye of Traldar" (1991), by Carl Sargent can be linked into another TSR classic era module. 

B6 The Veiled Society By David 'Zeb' Cook is a classic but more importantly it hooks into Specularum, the capitol of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. The "Veiled Society"  becomes an integral building block for a  Known World campaign.

Now your ready to take on some of the secret conspiracies, back room dungeon deals, & high flying dagger filled fun of Specularum, the capitol of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. The reason for choosing B6 The Veiled Society By David 'Zeb' Cook is simple. The adventure is plot driven, this is going make the players think a bit more, & they'll have to deal with both events & NPC's in perfect measure. The framework of these modules will introduce important NPC's to the campaign that as a DM I strongly suggest that you take advantage of. All of these modules take full advantage of Frank Mentzer's Dungeons & Dragons Expert set. The combat is streamlined, the material in Expert is handled well, the iconic artwork is all there. But most importantly this is a very well heeled & handled set up which is easy to run for the dungeon master & actually enjoyable for the players. 

OSR Campaign Commentary Greyhawk Memories - The City of Greyhawk by Rick Rose, Carl Sargent, & Douglas Niles.

"Greyhawk - City of High Culture and Low Life!

From the high towers of its grand universities to the rancid alleys of its darkest slums, the City of Greyhawk awaits you. Center of magic and learning in the Flanaess, Greyhawk is also the home of powerful thieves, mighty warriors, traitorous ambassadors, and honest craftsmen.
They all await you within the pages of this information-packed boxed set.

You get four full-size, full-color maps, each depicting a different aspect of the Greyhawk campaign. Two 96-page books give you a detailed overview of the city and a closer look at its more influential citizens - and its more notoriouus criminals."

The year is 1989 & we're in the middle of the golden epic campaign of mythology & opera. Then the bottom dropped out after a friend of mine's parents divorced & devastated our Summer. The latter part of that year saw the release of one of my all time favorite box sets The City of Greyhawk by Rick Rose, Carl Sargent, &  Douglas Niles.


The break down from Wayne's books serves to highlight the innards of this box set & believe me we were excited as both players & dungeon masters;


"* Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess - 'A gazetteer of the Free City of Greyhawk and the surrounding area' 96-page softcover.
* Greyhawk: Folk, Feuds, and Factions - 'The good, the bad, and the in-between: People who make the city what it is' 96-page softcover.
* 3 large fold-out maps of the city & environs, and overhead picture of the city.
- 1043XXX0701 Area map (scale: 1 inch = 8 miles)
- 1043XXX0702 City map
- 1043XXX0703 Sewers / secret passages
- [uncoded] pictoral overhead map
* Two-dozen adventure cards, with mini-modules set in the city.":

Its been about a dozen years since I cracked open this box set & its interesting how things are set up & why its laid out the way it is. This box set marks a transition between 1st & 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons as the design conceits echo throughout the box set. Here factions, & NPC folks are just fleshed out just enough to give the dungeon master lots of latitude to make this setting his or her own. Almost everything here ties in & contrasts  with the grittiness of the Greyhawk Box set.


 Greyhawk: Gem of the Flanaess lives up to its reputation but for us the events of Gord The Rogue novels  kept creeping in. We saw the rise of cults of the Abyss in the furthest  regions of the Flaeness. This was in keeping with the events of the Gord The Rogue series novel Sea of Death by Gary Gygax.  These events would latter on affect my own Stormbringer game as friends & players would transfer their Greyhawk PC's over into our Eternal Champion game. The City of Greyhawk by Rick Rose, Carl Sargent, &  Douglas Niles had far reaching effects as we took the PC's from our The Ring of the Nibelung campaign & brought them forward into the multiverse of the Eternal Champion in '98.



 We had a mix of Viking warriors, mysterious wizards, & one or two low level demigods in the mix. Much of the material that we used came from my uncle's notes. A  heady mix of opera & AD&D elements spun through with lots of Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, C.L. Moore, and a healthy dose of Robert Howard thrown into the campaign mix.
Man did we pay for it as vast sums of gold were paid to resurrect the dead PC's. Fortunes gained from gods for relics that we had sweated & bleed over. But Greyhawk always played a central role in these games & still does for me.
Next time we get into where all of this is going? 

The Royal Treatment Of CM3 Sabre River By Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith For Your Old School Campaigns

"Have all of your characters settled down and started dominions? Have you wondered if they'll ever get a chance to fight their way through an old-fashioned dungeon again? Yes, they will!"

The CM series of modules isn't really one that you hear to much about today even with the OSR raging on about classic modules. I first encountered CM3 Sabre River in about '85 when I got involved in playing a friend's dad's higher PC level game.
"CM3 Sabre River was written by Douglas Niles and Bruce Nesmith, with a cover by Keith Parkinson"

The module is mostly forgotten today as a classic of higher PC level domain & dungeon crawl play. You see this module concerns the fact of what happens when the PC's settle down for domain level play & all of the headaches that come with it. Like Robert Howard's Conan who sits on the throne of Aquilonia. The PC's have to look into why & how a curse has been affecting the lands of Norwald on Mystara. "A mysterious curse has hit a barony in the realm of Norwold: The waters of the Sabre River have been tainted, bringing death or evilness to all who drink from them." There's far more going on here then simply healing the land of its curse & the PC's are in the cross hairs every step of the way. The adventure involves an actual investigation besides the expedition to the Tower of Terror. This is a high level adventure for Basic PC's levels 18 to 22, The PC's are put through their paces because CM3 Sabre River actually uses 'the D&D Companion' set.


"What's so important about Frank  Mentzer's Dungeons & Dragons Companion set? Well at its heart everything is built around the PC's domains & strongholds;
"The Player's Companion covers information on character levels 15-25.^[5] The book begins with commentary on the changes since a character began as an adventurer at level one.^[6] It introduces new weapons, armor types, and unarmed combat rules as well as providing details on running a stronghold and its recurrent costs, such as wages of the castle staff.^[5][6] The Player's Companion details the new abilities and increases in skills, spells, and other abilities that accrue to members of each character class as they rise in level. This section concentrates wholly on human characters, treating dwarves, elves, and halflings separately.^[6] The concept of "attack rank" is introduced for the three demi-human classes; although, per the Expert Set rules, they are capped at a specified maximum level. Further accumulation of experience points increases their combat abilities. It also introduces the optional character class of druid, presented as a special progression for clerics of neutral alignment"

We've seen the role that Norwald plays in B10 Night's Dark Terrors but its really in B12 Queen's Harvest by Carl Sargent that sets up everything for the politics of Frank  Mentzer's Dungeons & Dragons Companion set! Yup that's right the steps, rules, etc. are all there in the second part of B11 King's Festival.


The Dungeons & Dragons companion set takes the PC's from being middling of the road adventurers straight onto the path of being eventual royals themselves. Don't worry you don't need to grab the Dungeons & Dragons companion box set because all of these rules & such are in the Dungeons & Dragons rules Cyclopedia.
CM3 Sabre River introduces a monster that will haunt my dreams, the sabre claw. A humanoid demon like creature which a flock of which can dispatch even high level parties of PC's. Back in '85 we had half of our seven player's PC's slaughtered by these winged horrors. These monsters were only ever featured in the Creature Catalog & CM3. There are reasons for this. They are monsters that can cause havoc for small parties of adventurers.


But is CM3 Sabre River a good module? I happen to think so because in many ways it helps to fill out another very weird & slightly terrifying corner of Mystara. The whole module has the vibe of a thriller movie where your not quite sure where the next issue is going to come from. The fact is another plus is the way everything is laid at the dungeon master's feet. The whole of CM3 is placed on the shoulders of the players & from their its sink or swim.

Review & Commentary On B11 King's Festival (Basic D&D ) By Carl Sargent For Your Old School Campaigns

"Someone has "borrowed" a cleric, and without him, the fabled King's Festival cannot go on. Unfortunately, it looks like the orcs have him, and your characters must rescue him."

I had an email request for B11 King's Harvest & while I have covered B11 in the past I wanted to do a fresh blog post on this classic module.  B11 King's Festival is by Carl Sargent can be seen as one of those modules that attempted to revive the Basic Dungeons & Dragons line of product at TSR during the '89 era. I have a very storied history with this module because of its Basic Dungeons & Dragons roots. The fact that its deeply rooted in Mystara or more importantly in as an  introduction to the Grand Duchy of Karameikos. This module can be seen as the Grand Duchy of Karameikos lite in a sense. The whole adventure centers around the region as a whole. The dungeon master has enough details to fill in all of the little layers of B11 with each of the classic elements of Dungeons & Dragons. All of the ins & outs of dungeon crawling along with investigative old school play is highlighted in B11 King's Festival.


While B11 King's Festival seems like its a straight forward adventure module, B11 in fact supplies all of the classic Dungeons & Dragons elements in one very tightly run adventure package. There's enough here to keep a minor Basic Dungeons & Dragons campaign going for months of game play. The overview of the module has the plot revolving around the major big bad at the center of the module. The truth is that B11 King's Festival if used right will put the PC's center stage for the royals in the Grand Duchy of Karameikos & not simply as flavor of the month. That is if they survive the experience & here's where the module really shines. This is another Basic D&D module that takes the PC's into the Dungeons & Dragons Mystara experience. The fact is that on the whole B11 King's Festival by Carl Sargent is a good set of 1st through 3rd guidelines on actually making, creating, & running a classic Dungeons & Dragons adventure. Scattered throughout B11 are tables, references, charts, & advice for actually becoming a better player & dungeon master. Today B11 King's
Festival almost seems forgotten & that's a shame because its a quality low level dungeon crawl adventure romp as much as an introduction adventure module.

For running B11 King's Festival through an OSR retroclone system there are a number of OSR systems on the table including B/X Rules Cyclopedia Dungeons & Dragons. B11 is a fairly easy to run introduction to the Basic Dungeons & Dragons game on its own. All of the classic D&D elements are here in force & the module moves quickly at a brisk pace. The dungeon master is going to have to be on his or her game when running B11 King's Festival. Taken as a whole the module will leave the PC's right in the middle of & at the attention of the royals of the Grand Duchy of Karameikos! This might not be a good thing depending upon the module's event's outcome. PC's may want to tread this path carefully.