From Hyperborea I Can See Oerth - Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk Being Run With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea Rpg System Part II - B2 In Search of the Unknown By Mike Carr

"Many years ago two wealthy adventurers, Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown, built a hidden complex known as the Caverns of Quasqueton. From this base, they conducted their affairs away from the prying eyes of civilization. While of questionable ethical standing, the two drove back a barbarian invasion and gained the support of locals. Eventually, they gathered their own army and went on an expedition against said enemies, where they met their demise."

If you've been following this latest incarnation of blog entries I'm playing a thought experiment for working on a Sword & Sorcery version of Greyhawk here's the other day's blog entry. 


So Jeff Talanian got a chance to go on (Mathew Finch) uncle Matt's Youtube channel last night after some minor difficulties. After cyber... erm fanboying out with these two I got one last question in the mix. 'Whose your favorite author/designer besides Gary Gygax? The answer was Mike Carr whose work in the game design field is right within the classic period from 1968 through 1983.

To be quite frank the answer surprised me. But B1 In Search of the Unknown is one of my all time favorite modules. So I grabbed my copy & began to really dig into the module once again. Nearby my handy copy of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.



There's something about the Caverns of Quasqueton that draws me back down the misty corridors of time once again. At about three am I was mucking about on the internet and came across a whole host of OSR links on Dragon's foot and a source book for one of  my favorite module from TSR for D&D. I'm speaking of course of the classic B1  In Search of The Unknown by Mike Carr. The sourcebook is a free jammed packed piece of OSR goodness with all kinds of old school awesomeness. Its available for download in the fifth paragraph down with the words," Demos Sachlas (paleologos of Dragonsfoot) has assembled a mighty B1 Campaign Sourcebook (link is for pdf download; linked here with permission), which is subtitled "a collection of original work and material gathered from the pages of Dragonsfoot and elsewhere on the internet". Since I don't have permission to host the link, go to the Zenopus Archives & you won't be sorry.

GRAB IT RIGHT HERE 
But something happens when I started staring at the Charles Lang cover for Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Sure up in the corner is the homage of the castle from B2 Keep of the Borderlands by Gary Gygax. But there's something that echoes the Caverns of Quasqueton there in the artwork but very Weird Tales and alien in its own right. But what's this got to do with Greyhawk? Well, everything really.

What does B2 In Search of the Unknown have to do with Greyhawk? Originally in the first run of the module it was clearly set in Greyhawk. But what does this have to do with AS&SH? Well, as we look upon the red bloated sun baked alien world of Hyperborea its not that much of a stretch to imagine that a very different Sword & Sorcery soaked version of Greyhawk might be right around the corner.  Take a look at the cover for the latest version of The Sea-Wolf's Daughter  with that art by Del Teigeler & its not hard to see that Gary Gygax Greyhawk influence there. Also if you haven't backed the Hyperborea Otherworldy Tales  kickstarter then by all means do so.  I say this with confidence. 

What if there was more to this thought experiment then simply whistful thinking. What if Greyhawk's Oerth was actually in orbit around not another sun across some scattered plane prime but near Hyperborea on the same plane. In fact let's go one better and place it within our solar system.


Are you mad there's no way that could happen. Well yes I'm mad but no it could happen in the wiki entry on Oerth; 

"It takes exactly 24 hours for Oerth to make one revolution on its axis. Oerth lies at the center of Greyspace. Unlike most planets, Oerth does not orbit its sun, Liga. Instead, the Sun, and all other planets in the crystal sphere, orbit Oerth. Thus, Greyspace houses a geosystem, rather than a solar system. Oerth's "moons", Celene (Kule) and Luna (Raenei), are in fact the first and second planets in the geosystem, with Liga being the third. From Oerth, planets beyond Liga appear to the naked eye as wandering stars.

Liga orbits the Oerth once every 364 days, thus the Oerthly year is slightly shorter than that on Earth. Luna has a 28-day lunar cycle, while Celene's cycle is 91 days."

But it was this further revelation in the same wiki entry that it was revealed that there were other alternative versions of Oerth; "In a 1984 interview for Polyhedron Newszine, Gary Gygax revealed several "alternate Oerths" while explaining the setting for his HEROES CHALLENGE game books, co-written with author Flint Dille and published under the aegis of the Dungeons & Dragons Entertainment Corporation by the Wanderer Book division of Simon & Schuster.

"By the way, action takes place on Yarth, a place somewhat similar to Oerth, the setting of Greyhawk, et al. It has fewer magical properties than Oerth but more than Earth. It is not impossible that additional works will be contracted for in months to come, action being set on Yarth or perhaps another alternate world, Aerth. On Earth, magic is virtually non-existent. On Uerth, dweomers are weak, chancy things. Yarth has a sprinkling of things magical, and Oerth is pure magic."

This implies that the planets differ in both their geographies as well as the relative presence of magic; but also that they operate in divergent realities.

Other references to these alternate Oerths appear in the Gord the Rogue short story anthology Night Arrant as well as in Gygax's Epic of Aerth campaign setting for the Dangerous Journeys roleplaying game. The five parallel worlds of Oerth, Aerth, Uerth, Yarth and Earth were mentioned in the 3rd Edition adventure Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk and thus found their way into 3rd edition canon."

So if we go with the explanation that during the far future  events of Ragnarok the gods of Greyhawk evacuated humanity to the world of Greyhawk's Oerth then where's the planet? Well its in orbit around its own sun near what was once Jupiter. Now a separate sun whilst Hyperborea is in orbit around Saturn.
Artist's impression of the Voyager 2 space probe (1977—) on approach to Saturn. Artist's description: "Voyager 2 at the moment of its closest approach to Saturn. The ring divisions were drawn on the board with a rapidograph pen before the paint coats were applied! Earth is the blue 'star' to the right of the Sun, below the Sun is crescent lit Titan. Oil on illustration board for JPL.

B1 In Search of the Unknown By Mike Car takes on a whole new meaning as the hordes of humanity settle onto their new home of Oerth. And they begin to prey upon each other as warlords seek to carve out empires. This is a time when might makes right & Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown are the type of heroes of questionable ethical standard that are needed. The world of Oerth as a Sword & Sorcery setting isn't for the faint of heart. Add to this some Lovecraftian horrors of AS&SH and you've got a mix forces beyond the pale of most men. Roghan the Fearless and Zelligar the Unknown's slide into legend & fate takes on a much broader stroke of the pen of mythology in this expansion of the Mike Carr legendary introductory module as we shall see in the next installment. 

From Hyperborea I Can See Oerth - Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk Being Run With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea Rpg System

I'm never content to rest on my laurels, & last night I was zipping around the internet gathering up information about Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Once again I came across the review that Venger Satanis did for AS&SH on Rpg.net (I'm not a fan of rpg.net at all. That's a personal preference.),but I came across this bit,"Likewise, there are some really cool magic items and weapons, a few that have escaped from the science-fantasy milieu. We all know about Spheres of Annihilation… how about Spheres of Blackness or Girdles of Golden Serpents? Yes, there could be more than what's included, but this is a decent amount.



While the Hyperborea Gazetteer isn’t huge, this volume  may be the best part about AS&SH, where the uninitiated learns of the bloated and dying scarlet sun which never rises very far in the sky. It’s an icy realm surrounded by a Stygian abyss where Night Gaunts fly, Saturn is faintly visible, there’s a small moon associated with blood sacrifices, and curtains of red, green, and purple illumination in the sky signal the arrival of ultra-telluric beings"
I suddenly started to remember a project that the Beyond The Black Gate's writer did, he took the  1983 campaign Greyhawk box set & turned it into a down & dirty Conan style campaign. Now mind you this was way back 2010 
Now here's the thing, I didn't have access to Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea at the time. But now that I do this not only would work but it could be run as a sustained campaign setting using the materials & systems of AS&SH.

There are more then a few reasons why this would not only work but it could be used as a sustained game world over the long haul:

• Established world with an expansive setting by Gary Gygax and it takes the familiar & turns it on its ear. Everything old is now new again. The magic system of AS&SH fits the motif of Greyhawk & brings it back to its pulpy roots
• Many of the adventures that I've done commentaries about could easily be fitted into this style of sword & sorcery setting because they were already run in Greyhawk:"Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and TSR's desire to make it central to Dungeons & Dragons encouraged many new writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with the fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or co-written by Gygax:
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (Gary Gygax, 1980)
• A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity (David Cook, 1980)
• A2 Secret of the Slavers' Stockade ( Harold Johnson & Tom Moldvay, 1981)
• A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords (Allen Hammack, 1981 )
• A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (Lawrence Schick, 1981)
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (David C. Sutherland III & Gary Gygax, 1980)^[77]
• C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason, 1980)
• C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness (Allen Hammack, 1980)
• I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City (David Cook, 1981)
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill (Lenard Lakofka, 1981)
• U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1981)]
• U2 Danger at Dunwater (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1982)
• N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (Douglas Niles, 1982)
• WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (Gary Gygax, 1982)
• S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Gary Gygax, 1982) Originally published as Lost Caverns of Tsojconth in 1976
• U3 The Final Enemy (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1983)
• L2 The Assassin's Knot (Lenard Lakofka, 1983)

This means that suddenly Greyhawk's Temple of Elemental Evil could have a very sinister connection to the Ashen Worm of Hyperborea. The Rain of Colourless Fire might have a far more reaching cosmic effect then even previously thought.


PC classes, sword & sorcery substance, campaign setting material such as population distribution, settlement populations (village, town, city); also, fortifications and population communications are discussed in the Greyhawk box set. Everything you need to run this is in the AS&SH box set and the Eighty three Greyhawk box. Everything to run this is right out of the AS&SH player's hand book from classes to starting equipment.



In Greyhawk many of the lands on the map are discussed. It is important to note that there are many towns, villages, stretches of land, rivers, islands, and so forth on the map that are left blank for the individual referee to develop. But there's going to a ton of substitution from the Referee's Guide for monsters, races etc. but having said that this idea could easily be done in spades. 

 

So while I don't hold any claim on the idea of this style of Frankencampaign setting I think its one that I'm going to keep in my back pocket for the moment. This idea has merit and its something that I'm going to explore in the coming weeks. I think that this could work as a long term campaign! 

Commentary On Terror Tuesday - Thirteen OSR Folklore & Fairytale Books For Your Old School Games

There's only so far that regular OSR reference & resources can carry you as a dungeon master & sometimes you need that extra edge. Last night whist doing a bit of research I came across this great little page of thirteen free books on folklore.

These are perfect resources for a Dark Albion, Lamentations of the Flame Princess or A Red & Pleasant Land style of campaign. An old school campaign featuring E.Gygax's EX1 Dungeonland & The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror could benefit from some of these resources to help fill in the back bone & certain areas within this classic module.This is a module for characters 9-12 level & it goes above & beyond hard in certain areas. The module is imaginative but has that old school aesthetic of being weirdly violent and very dangerous to PC's health. But what it actually is a way of using classic fairy tale and folklore motifs and settings within an old school campaign.

If we start looking into Dungeonland for a moment we see that the PC's are transported there via any means;"The adventure begins with PCs falling down an earthen tunnel. It is suggested that the portal to Dungeonland be a barrel within the dungeon of Castle Greyhawk, but the Dungeon Master (DM) may work in any premise to get them to this stage." That's it that's the whole adventure background motivator for the PC's. Personally I'm more in line with what one of the reviewers of White Dwarf had suggested, "the player characters (PCs) are plummeted into what White Dwarf reviewer Jim Bambra referred to as "a strange partial plane"" Given the background & setting for these nightmare classics this makes a certain amount of sense.

I've written about using EX1 & EX2 with the Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg system before.  But what about using EX1 & EX2 with other retroclone systems? Well that's where those free resources actually come in. In Dark Albion the idea of there being a partial plane waiting just on the other side of reality isn't that far off given the background of Chaos & the nature of the Elves. Its also not that far fetched to think of a high ranking social group of royals using such an area as a resource. The White Rabbit Charldos the arch mage is quite close in attitude to the elves of Dark Albion. Nasty, dangerous, & completely immoral. The white rabbit below isn't a rabbit at all but a man polymorphed into a rabbit. That's twilight zone level terror right there. But why add it into Dark Albion?

So what's idea have to do with Dark Albion? Well think about the Dark Albion setting rife with double dealing secret societal cults of chaos based on the black queen, white rabbit, red queen motif's & characters  of Lewis Carroll. Albion already has the War of the Roses going on & its a very simple idea to add in these factions. As things progress & move through your going to see royal players go down like chess pieces. Humans are such fragile things & these players are going to get very desperate as their side loses during the War of the Roses. The gloves are going to come off & forbidden secrets are going to be revealed for better or worse.
Matthew Lewis in his new book about the War of the Roses; "the roots of these dynastic civil wars went deeper and the branches reached further than this time frame suggests." This suggests forces that are in play that are far more dangerous than even the PC's realize.  I think that you could be looking at cults of the Elves of Albion bringing back pieces of fairyland & a possible end game. These folklore resources could be used to expand play in a totally different and possibly unexpected direction for Dark Albion.

The idea of partial planes also suggests an entirely different take for Lamentations of the Flame Princess & A Red & Pleasant Land. Dream planes that while based on human myth & legend are far more dangerous & totally alien then players were expecting. Once again here the idea can be to take the familiar motifs, tropes, legends,etc of mythology, folk lore, and fairytales then turn it into a ballon animal like creation for adventure fodder. Lamentations as a system is ideal suited for this style of one shot adventure where the PC's are at the center of the action. Will they live or die? Well that's where you and your players are going to have to take it too the table to find out!


GRAB THESE FREE
RESOURCES RIGHT OVER HERE

  Dark Albion, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, & authors sited here are copyrighted & trade marked to their respective owners. E.Gygax's EX1 Dungeonland & The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror are trade marked & copyrighted to Wizards of the Coast. All other ideas & opinions are copyrighted & trade marked to the author as well as Dark Corner Productions. This blog post is for entertainment & educational purposes only. 

From Hyperborea I Can See Oerth - Sword & Sorcery Greyhawk Being Run With The Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea Rpg System

I'm never content to rest on my laurels, & last night I was zipping around the internet gathering up information about Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Once again I came across the review that Venger Satanis did for AS&SH on Rpg.net (I'm not a fan of rpg.net at all. That's a personal preference.),but I came across this bit,"Likewise, there are some really cool magic items and weapons, a few that have escaped from the science-fantasy milieu. We all know about Spheres of Annihilation… how about Spheres of Blackness or Girdles of Golden Serpents? Yes, there could be more than what's included, but this is a decent amount.
While the Hyperborea Gazetteer isn’t huge, this volume is may be the best part about AS&SH, where the uninitiated learns of the bloated and dying scarlet sun which never rises very far in the sky. It’s an icy realm surrounded by a Stygian abyss where Night Gaunts fly, Saturn is faintly visible, there’s a small moon associated with blood sacrifices, and curtains of red, green, and purple illumination in the sky signal the arrival of ultra-telluric beings" 
I suddenly started to remember a project that the Beyond The Black Gate's writer did, he took the  1983 campaign Greyhawk box set & turned it into a down & dirty Conan style campaign. Now mind you this was way back 2010
Now here's the thing, I didn't have access to Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea at the time, but now that I do this not only would work but it could be run as a sustained campaign setting using the materials & systems of AS&SH.

There are more then a few reasons why this would not only work but it could be used as a sustained game world over the long haul:

• Established world with an expansive setting by Gary Gygax and it takes the familiar & turns it on its ear. Everything old is now new again. The magic system of AS&SH fits the motif of Greyhawk & brings it back to its pulpy roots
• Many of the adventures that I've done commentaries about could easily be fitted into this style of sword & sorcery setting because they were already run in Greyhawk:"Of the ten adventures set in Greyhawk published by TSR before the folio edition, all but one had been written by Gygax. However, the new availability of information about Gygax's campaign world and TSR's desire to make it central to Dungeons & Dragons encouraged many new writers to set their adventures in Greyhawk. This, combined with the fact that Gygax was increasingly involved in other areas of the company, meant that of the seventeen Greyhawk adventures published in the two years after the folio edition, only four were written or co-written by Gygax:
  
• S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks (Gary Gygax, 1980)
• A1 Slave Pits of the Undercity (David Cook, 1980)
• A2 Secret of the Slavers' Stockade ( Harold Johnson & Tom Moldvay, 1981)
• A3 Assault on the Aerie of the Slave Lords (Allen Hammack, 1981 )
• A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords (Lawrence Schick, 1981)
• Q1 Queen of the Demonweb Pits (David C. Sutherland III & Gary Gygax, 1980)^[77]
• C1 The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan (Harold Johnson & Jeff R. Leason, 1980)
• C2 The Ghost Tower of Inverness (Allen Hammack, 1980)
• I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City (David Cook, 1981)
• L1 The Secret of Bone Hill (Lenard Lakofka, 1981)
• U1 Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1981)]
• U2 Danger at Dunwater (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1982)
• N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God (Douglas Niles, 1982)
• WG4 The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun (Gary Gygax, 1982)
• S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth (Gary Gygax, 1982) Originally published as Lost Caverns of Tsojconth in 1976
• U3 The Final Enemy (Dave Browne & Don Turnbull, 1983)
• L2 The Assassin's Knot (Lenard Lakofka, 1983)

This means that suddenly Greyhawk's Temple of Elemental Evil could have a very sinister connection to the Ashen Worm of Hyperborea. The Rain of Colourless Fire might have a far more reaching cosmic effect then even previously thought. 


PC classes, sword & sorcery substance, campaign setting material such as population distribution, settlement populations (village, town, city); also, fortifications and population communications are discussed in the Greyhawk box set. Everything you need to run this is in the AS&SH box set and the Eighty three Greyhawk box. Everything to run this is right out of the AS&SH player's hand book from classes to starting equipment.



In Greyhawk many of the lands on the map are discussed. It is important to note that there are many towns, villages, stretches of land, rivers, islands, and so forth on the map that are left blank for the individual referee to develop. But there's going to a ton of substitution from the Referee's Guide for monsters, races etc. but having said that this idea could easily be done in spades.

 

So while I don't hold any claim on the idea of this style of Frankencampaign setting I think its one that I'm going to keep in my back pocket for the moment. This idea has merit and its something that I'm going to explore in the coming weeks. I think that this could work as a long term campaign!