Castles & Crusade Dreams In the OSR & More Campaign Commentary

I've been doing a lot of thinking about Castles & Crusades while going over the The Castle Keepers Guide (CKG) again for the ninth or tenth time now. I've sort of last track at this point but its been very interesting to say the least.


I'm not entirely convinced about fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons taking over & saturating everything lately in the rpg table top hobby scene. I understand & like the game but there's something that sort of saturation  rankles me as dungeon master about this. We saw this during the D20 boom back in the early '00's. So I've been circling the C&C & OSR drain again looking into the archives at Casa De Fabiaschi for some sort of insights into the D20 weirdness that seems to have been infecting me. As getting a hold of original D&D & AD&D books seems be becoming an issue many are turning to print on demand as Tim Brannan writes about in his recent blog post. I fade back into a mode that I was in back in 2014/2015 the idea of using other OSR resources with Castles & Crusades such as Dominique Crouzet's Fantastic Heroes & Witchery. This game seems to be the name not spoken of in some circles of the OSR. Well those are not my circles so I steadily look into the options & ideas of a great many OSR products from both an economic stand point & from a practical  one.



In practical terms I've been talking with my players about a Castles & Crusades/ Dungeon Crawl Classics hybrid campaign using several of the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea adventures. 



But right at the moment work has been killing me & in practice this is at the moment a mental exercise with some bare bones skeleton outlines & ideas. I'd start this on Hyperborea & begin to adjust as needed for DMing. For an on the ground starting adventure I'd run The Anthropophagi of Xambaala™ by Corey R. Walden .


Right now all of the options are on the table as far as how & when this game  might happen & this is more of a mental exercise then anything else. But the ideas are flowing & its going to be a matter of scheduling with the players. 

'The Three Impostors of Greyhawk' An Amazing World of Greyhawk Campaign Connection & Commentary

"Enter the WORLD OF GREYHAWK...
...A world where bandit kings raid from their remote stronghold;
...A world where noble elves fight savage invaders and where bold knights wage war on the terror of Iuz;
...A world scarred by a vast Sea of Dust, across which drift lost memories from the awful forgotten past.
Enter a World of Wonder & Intrigue...
Fantasy Game Setting for a panoramic view of this fantastic place.

More than a collection of maps and names, it is an active world filled with decaying empires and dark forests. Game elements include the gods of Greyhawk, the clash of political factions, and encounters in this wild land."



If you've been following events on the Danube parts I & II  then you know that the Astro Hungarian Empire  had  a joint operation between  the German  Intelligence Bureau & the German Foreign Office, have uncovered ancient documents relating to the two wealthy adventurers, Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown while working with officers & soldiers of The Astro Hungarian Empire. But  operations down in the lower levels of the dungeon went very wrong.  Yesterday I mentioned that there was a gateway that opened to an AD&D style fantasy world. But what I didn't mention is that fact that I think that Gary Gygax's Greyhawk  setting could seamlessly slide into this Pulp & Supers  alternative WW1. How?!
Lets talk about two facts about Arthur Machen & the Greyhawk setting. Greyhawk is both a fantasy world & a post apocalyptic world with its twin events  'rain of colourless fire'  & 'the invoked devastation'. Both events dramatically changed the face of the Greyhawk  setting & brought the Suloise peoples across the world of  the Flanaess;

"In the World of Greyhawk campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons roleplaying game, the Suloise, also known as the "Suel," are one of the major races of humans inhabiting the Flanaess.

The Suel began migrating to the Flanaess in large numbers c. -447 CY, from the Suel Imperium. The numbers of the Suloise Migration increased dramatically after the Invoked Devastation and the Rain of Colorless Fire in -422 CY. The Suel settled in many regions of the Flanaess, often competing with the native Flan and migrant Oeridians, as well as non-human inhabitants such as the elves and dwarves.

Though people of Suel descent can be found nearly anywhere in the Flanaess, notable lands that contain a significant number of Suel include the Thillonrian Peninsula, the Scarlet Brotherhood, the Lordship of the Isles, the Sea Barons, the Sheldomar Valley, and the Urnst States. The Lendore Isles was once home to a large contingent of Suel, but most humans have been expelled from that land since the cult of Sehanine Moonbow gained control after the Greyhawk Wars." 

What if these humans & near human peoples had migrated to Greyhawk in the ancient mythological days & this was only one more migration for a world's peoples that was a part of a greater cycle?! What if these movements & migration were a part & parcel of the mythology of the Earth as well?!  I'm I speaking of the Elemental Evil religion here?! No & this isn't normal Greyhawk at all. This Greyhawk is tightly woven to a secret occult society which at its highest levels has infiltrated pre WWI society across Europe & the world as a whole! What does this have to do with Arthur Machen? Well back in 1895 Machen wrote 'The Three Impostors'
The book's plot goes something like this; "The novel comprises several weird tales and culminates in a final denouement of deadly horror, connected with a secret society devoted to debauched pagan rites. The three impostors of the title are members of this society who weave a web of deception in the streets of London—relating the aforementioned weird tales in the process—as they search for a missing Roman coin commemorating an infamous orgy by the Emperor Tiberius and close in on their prey: "the young man with spectacles" " This occult conspiracy & society rears its head across Europe as deadly as any terrorist bombing or other military action. Heroes are needed! Arthur Machen's Three Impostors is available here for free. 


What happens if part of the inner circle of occult secret societies 'the true Biblical & mythological'  history of the Earth is revealed & part of these reveals is the fact that 'lost fairy worlds or lands' like Greyhawk exist? Would this spark off occult & supernatural wars? Possibly sparking off events that happened within Machen's own life time & because of publication of the 'The Three Impostors' ; "Partly in response to criticism of the Stevensonian style of the book, Machen altered his approach in writing his next book, The Hill of Dreams. Following the death of his first wife in 1899, Machen developed a greater interest in the occult, joining the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He noted that a number of events in his life seemed to mirror events in The Three Impostors, most notably a conflict in the order between William Butler Yeats (a "young man with spectacles") and Aleister Crowley, which reached its height around this time. (These experiences are reflected on in Alan Moore's Snakes and Ladders.)

In Things Near and Far (1923) Machen wrote:

It was in the early spring of 1894 that I set about the writing of the said "Three Impostors," a book which testifies to the vast respect I entertained for the fantastic, "New Arabian Nights" manner of R. L. Stevenson, to those curious researches in the byways of London which I have described already, and also, I hope, to a certain originality of experiment in the tale of terror."

If I was to run Greyhawk in this style I'd use an unholy mix of Castles & Crusades with Rpg Pundit's Lion & Dragon rpg  Make no mistake that the occult forces we're talking about here are evil & chaotically deadly. The stratification of Greyhawk social norms & the human dominated areas of the setting make this perfect. Yeah,yeah, Lion & Dragon is a historic  medieval  rpg & shouldn't have anything to do with Pulp or Supers. No it should all the more because it reflects history in a better way. 

But what the Hell does this have to do with World War I & Pulp heroes? Well just about everything really. 'Post Gilded Age' society is an upheaval at all levels & change is in the air. The death of the monarchy is at hand & crown heads of  society as they knew it were going to change completely. The Gilded Age to  World War I marked an incredibly progressive death kneel for Europe. This is a time when heroes are needed! 
But who is this occult conspiracy & society?! Well if I was too guess? I'd say it would be one of the new witch queens of the Le Fey & Morgause's  great grand daughters lines respectively. Machen gives us a really clear view of the occult forces behind the curtain & their very alien & very dangerous. The Arthurian legends connect up very nicely with Greyhawk because Arthur has his swords deep within Greyhawk's history. 

The Castle & Crusades's Castle Keeper's Guide is going come in real handy here to help keep track of several key points of monsters, magical events, & managing some of the campaign elements not to mention possibly the pre or post WWI technologies. All together though this is going to be an uneasy mix & the dungeon master is going to have to make their own decisions. Tomorrow we get into the deeper campaign aspects of Amazing Adventures! rpg & how Victorious affects all of this. 

Leigh Brackett's Black Amazon of Mars & Castles & Crusades The Castle Keeper's Guide Commentary

When it comes to Mars I turn to Leigh Brackett with a side of Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is going to be a Mars a more then slightly twisted Mars. Mars comes across as sort of Western planetary frontier to be tamed. The inner worlds are the 'new frontier' while the outer worlds out from the meteor belt are older, decadent, & very alien.
If we start using the Castle & Crusades  Castle Keeper's Guide to begin to flesh out the Martian landscape via Brackett & Burroughs something very interesting comes up. Humans are at a distinct disadvantage. 

Everyone talks about 'orcs' being one of the most dangerous races in D&D & its various incarnations. Green Martians make orcs look like Mary Poppins. Both Burroughs & Brackett's Mars is an ecological nightmare. There is never going to be any peace on the planet. Green Martians are highly adaptable, intelligent, & take to technology easily. They are also egg layers & vicious bastards with a code of honor similar to the Samurai of ancient Japan. That's where the similarities end. These are completely alien creatures to humanity.


 Green martian on his thoat.
Extract from an art by James Allen St. John
 from Thuvia, Maid of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs, McClurg, 1920.

Mars is a world  encourages such grand scale genocide for the sake of species survival & prosperity on the surface of the planet. We see this in Brackett's 'Black Amazon' of Mars has two such species in utter elemental contrast to one another. If we go with the fact that Burroughs yellow Martians exist along side of the 'Shining Ones'. Then perhaps this is a situation similar to what we find in Martin's Game of Thrones. Ancient alien kings of the world of Mars held at bay for the survival of the humanoids but still given reverence out of fear & for their wisdom.


Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars describes hordes & tribes  of Green Martians pillaging their way across the surface of the planet. Could the Yellow Martian peoples have been paying homage to the 'Shining Ones' all this time for keeping these invading hordes at bay.
While Brackett doesn't give any origin for the 'Shining Ones' I would venture to guess that their alien origin is tied with the 'outer worlds' of the solar system. The 'Shining Ones' seem like their straight outta Clark Ashton Smith's Mars as well. These aliens feel like they'd fit right into the ancient war between  The Aihai & the Yombis. These are invasive species of the Mythos whom mars tests with its genocidal ecology. We see this time & again in the world of plants & given particulars of  Vulthoom the plantlike 'Old One' of Mars this is no surprise. 

• Dweller in the Gulf, The (1933)
• Mnemoka (1955) Fragment
• Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, The (1931)
• Vulthoom (1935)
• Seedling of Mars or The Planet Entity
• Mars is a place of   decadence & utter ecological warfare. The fact is that I think that the human colonists of Mars would have completely & utterly under estimated the Green Martians. The Wiki entry for A Princess of Mars describes them; "The Green Martians are 15 feet tall, Burroughs wrote, adding from John Carter's observation of newly hatched children,

  “

  They seemed mostly head, with little scrawny bodies, long necks and six legs, or, as I afterward learned, two legs and two arms, with an intermediary pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning the head. The ears, which were slightly above the eyes and closer together, were small, cup-shaped antennae, protruding not more than an inch on these young specimens. Their noses were but longitudinal slits in the center of their faces, midway between their mouths and ears. There was no hair on their bodies, which were of a very light yellowish-green color....[49]

  ”

  They are nomadic, warlike, and barbaric; do not form families; have discarded concepts of friendship and affection (presumably in the name of survival); and enjoy torture. Their social structure is communal and rigidly hierarchical, with various levels of chiefs. The highest rank is the all-powerful Jeddak, who reaches this position through combat. They are tribal, and war among one another.^[2][44] They are primitive, intellectually backwards, and have no art or written language. Any advanced technology they possess is stolen from the Red Martians. They inhabit the ancient ruined cities of Barsoom."
  So what if the Green Martians exterminated the ancient Martians because the cycle of Vulthoom the plantlike 'Old One' of Mars  got into a complete ecological disaster instead of its usual cycle of death & rebirth? 
  What might happen if there was an event that utterly caused them to go on a planetary wide campaign of destruction? A new invasive species called to Mars perhaps by the Great Old One?
  
  
  
  
  Brackett's 'Black Amazon' of Mars
   Available Right Here 

Castles & Crusades, Old School Mars, & Appendix N Authors

 "Gaunt giant and passionate beauty, they dragged their thirst-crazed way across the endless crimson sands in a terrible test of endurance. For one of them knew where cool life-giving water lapped old stones smooth -- a place of secret horror that it was death to reveal!"

Queen of the Martian Catacombs by Leigh Brackett 

Part of the reason that the war between the forces of light & darkness is heating up is because mankind is stirring up the hidden places at the edge of the maps of the universe.
So once again I've been thinking about Mars, I had my Victorious Rpg /Amazing Adventures! Rpg campaign last night. But that's going to be another blog entry I've been thinking about Mars again when I got home. I began thumbing through my player's hand book, thinking about Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, & Clark Ashton Smith. 


I want to make this Mars a bit different from the run of the mill Mars game campaigns that steal heavily from the John Carter of Mars books. So I began to think more in terms of Leigh Brackett's Mars & Sword & Sorcery. Skirmisher Publishing's Shadows of A Dying World has all of the Barsoomian creatures & horrors all under one D20  roof. But I really want to break away from the traditional & so I dug out my copy of Ancient Kingdoms Mesopotamia (SWORD & SORCERY) D20 book instead. This book draws specifically from the mood & themes of some of the great pulp writers, specifically Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft.

Next I dug out my Castles & Crusades  Codex Classicum which has a number of classes that will port over to Mars with out a problem. The fact is that gladiator class has some bones on it for use as a part of a Mars gladiatorial style adventure element & feature that I'm thinking of using.  Maybe using some of the Greco Roman gods as 'lost' Martian clerical options.

I know that Queen of the Martian Catacombs by Leigh Brackett is definitely going to be a major inspiration for this upcoming campaign. 


I've been quietly looking at how Brackett's humanoid Martian tribesmen are put together into their low lander dead sea tribes. These are a very barbarian race that seems to draw from the American plains Indians & Celts as much as ERB's red men races. Brackett manages her usual trick of flowing prose filled with beautiful women, blood feuds,weird science, daring do, & some excellent scenery perfect for old school adventure settings. The Eric John Stark stories as well as a bunch of Brackett's other early stuff, seems to fit into the notion that Mars is a both a very old world & a world of many forbidden little areas of insanity just waiting to not only engulf Mars but the whole of the solar system. This same notion we'd see from Lovecraft & Clark Ashton Smith in "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis". 

Even Edgar Rice Burroughs inferred that there were locations of grave peril upon the back waters of Mars. We'll get into those later on. 

Using The The Castle Keepers Guide & The Siege Engine For Clark Ashton Smith's 'Old Solar System' Campaign Setting

I've written extensively about my obsession with the  Castles & Crusades rpg over the years. I've been quietly on the side been using both the Victorious Rpg & Amazing Adventures ! rpg product lines over the last couple of days. I'm thinking of doing a joint game set in an alternative Earth prime material time line.
But if only there was a supplement book that had guidelines for combining & straddling the lines of these books?! Well there is! The Castle Keepers Guide (CKG) by Davis Chenault, &  Stephen Chenault does an excellent job of clarifying the C&C system while giving enough room for the dungeon master to customize their own campaigns. The mechanics of the Castles Keeper's Guide  are so easy to convert that it hardly matters what game you are playing it will work with this system. C&C is stripped down 3.5 AD&D done right. 



That brings me back to the under unifying ideas of my campaign worlds. Way back in January of 2017 I began wanting to run a Clark Ashton Smith Solar System. Well I ran quite a few mini campaigns of that setting but it mutated through a few different retroclone  systems. Lately I find myself wanting to return to that campaign once again. The difference here is that I've got more resources to really pull this off. One of which is a copy of Skirmisher Publishing's Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Mars: Shadows of a Dying World (An OGL Guide to Monsters, Races, and Beasts). I really want to get back to my own version of Mars & expand back into a pulpy & comic style Mars. 

Alternative cover of Shadows of A Dying World from Amazon. 

The inner solar system worlds are sort of settled but the worlds beyond the asteriod belt are utterly savage places of Lovecraftian horror. I was reminded of  Leigh Brackett's Thralls of the Endless Night & Marooned On Io both stories convey the utter alien weirdness of the "Outer Words" The "Captain Volmar"cycle of Clark Ashton Smith puts the ball right into the Earth colonists hands. 


 I'am going to be going back to the pulpy goodness of Amazing Adventures! & Victorious rpgs with the PC's having their hands full of the back alleys & high strangeness of the world of 2100. Where both the Drow menace & costumed villains have begun to show up. The fact is that panic of the machinations of the Drow have settled into the outer edges of the monad cities.


 There's been a power vacuum left out in the 'outer worlds' beyond Jupiter after the Mi Go empire  left the solar system. The monstrous  god beings of Saturn & Jupiter had long since stopped giving the Mi Go adoration, payment, etc. The real question is why had the alien horrors of the Mi Go fled in the first place. There is speculation that they had taken their entire planet of Yuggoth & its satellites of the damned with them far beyond the known places of our solar system; 
"I knew those fires were brewing monstrous things,
And that those birds of space had been Outside -
I guessed to what dark planet's crypts they plied,
And what they brought from Thog beneath their wings.
The others laughed - till struck too mute to speak
By what they glimpsed in one bird's evil beak."
HP Lovecraft Fungi from Yuggoth (1930s) 


Mi Go By Khannea SunTzu - Artstation.com/khanneasuntzu 

So this leaves Earth in the throws of the after affects of a solar system at the mercy of alien entities & an uncaring universe. Earth cities are crime ridden places at the mercy of fellow travelers from beyond Earth's space time. Not to mention the increasing presence of foreign mercenaries & adventurers from other prime material planes that come to ransack & pillage the fringes of the world. Many times they find themselves drawn into ruins & dungeons that dot the countryside & wilderness the remains doorways & gates into other worlds. These places often spell the demise of these foolish outlaws & criminals from other places. 


This is a world in desperate need of heroes, adventurers, & fighters willing to take on some of the the evils that have come to plague this land. The Spirit of 61 is among the onslaught of daring heroes that have come to do battle with the horrors from beyond the ken of mankind. These heroes are often out matched & gunned to try to take on some of the alien horrors that they come to face. 

 Even among the heroes & mercenaries who have come from across the planes there are rumors of an ancient & evil dark presence that has been watching the Earth from the remote confines of hidden valleys upon the red planet. Adventurers with 'the sight' do not say what it might be but only shudder at its presence. The Aihais nor the Green Men will not say what they might be but there are rumors even now. 

Campaign Catastrophic Curse Or A Deeper Look Into The Realm of the Dungeon Master With The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide & The Castles & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide

When it comes to campaign & world building sometimes its time to fall back into the fundamental books & guidelines. The powerhouse books often inspire deeper looks into the process of a fictional table top universe. But first let's go over some of the situation with some boots on the ground.

Dungeon master Steve's lot of players can't seem to make a commitment to a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night OSR game at the moment. So I'm fading back to back up plan 'A' which is to concentrate on my own weekend game of OSR /Amazing Adventures! rpg hybrid campaign. To this end I unpacked my copy of the Troll Lord games Castle Keeper's Guide & my copy of the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide. Now at first these two books would seem to be at odds for a dungeon master. But in actuality they both have the bare bones of their respective old school & OSR systems. The Castle & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide has the bare bones of the Siege Engine & some very solid systems for campaign implication.



But let's face facts this book doesn't have the advise & wisdom of Gary Gygax even though its a perfectly decent book. There's simply something about the DMG that has just a bit more under the hood of it. The Castle Keeper's book is however designed with several subsystems in mind that are perfectly suited to old school Pulp adventure & Sword & Sorcery. Oddly enough Castles & Crusades was designed to work with AD&D which is fine.  The Castle Keeper's Guide contains : player races, variants on the standard character races, different approaches to spells, spellbooks, material components and holy symbols, mana points, vehicles, lodgings, and hirelings. There’s a chapter on world design, including discussion of such elements as climate, geography, weather, calendars, government, a slew  of alternative settings  to the usual high medieval cultural setting such as Greco-Roman, Iron Age, Renaissance, or even Meso-American or Stone Age (and a later section even discusses futuristic and horror settings).

And its these that I'm going to be concentrating on. Now I've talked about using the Amazing Adventures! rpg by Jason Vey for some time. But the thing to remember is that the AA! rpg is completely & utterly cross compatible with the Castles & Crusades system.  Now that being said I'm going to get back to the weekend campaign that I've been working on based on several Appendix N sources. The far future world of HG Wells When The Sleeper Wakes & the year 2100 when the campaign takes place.



The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly, dated Winter 1928.
 The cover art is by Frank R. Paul^[1] for H.G. Wells' story When the Sleeper Wakes.Artwork is public domain.

The far future  world of 2100 is a very dangerous place with a lots of influences coming from Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique . All of this dovetails into Wells The Time Machine &  William Hope Hodgson's The Nightland. All of this has to do with the the artificial space-time structure ruins that have already cropped up in several of my games. And what about the demi gods & adventurers etc? Well this is a job for mortal men & women of adventure!


Already several of the Morlock & Abhuman factional blocks have had contact with the PC's. There the minions of several wizard's minions  prowling the New York City mega state & a bunch of artifacts from the Museum of Time & History have gone missing! Now all of this I just randomly rolled up from  the first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master's Guide &  Troll Lord games Castle Keeper's Guide

The wilderness of the world of 2100 is indeed looking very dangerous! Already there are several crystal eggs that have shown up in my weekend game!  Special thanks to Heretic Werks blog for ruining my player's PC s day!