Free OSR Appendix 'S' Science Fantasy Download - Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 For Your Old School Campaigns

 There was a time when I talked extensively about the classic Pulps on this blog & so here we go back down the Apendix S material. Ages ago it used to be hard to get a hold of classic Pulp goodness. And this blog post is going to follow up on this one from back in 2017 here.  And of course there's a reason for this which is I had a gamer at my table talk about the fact that it's hard within his mind to justify using OSR games such as Warriors of the Red Planet with intergalatic rpg's  such as Colonial Troopers or even Cepheus Engine. And here's where Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 indeed actually comes in handy. 

Reprints such as Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974  brought home some of the best of the Pulp classic stories without the reader having to haunt second hand book shops all over Ameria & Europe. But it also brought home another little fact Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars was being colonized! Just look at the contents of this issue taken straight from the Mycomicshop entry: 
March 1974. Science fiction stories: "Warriors of Other Worlds" by Morris J. Steele, "Warriors of Mars" by Arthur Tofte, "The Underground City" by Bertrand L. Shurtleff, "The Missing Year" by Eando Binder, "Whirlpool in Space" by Miles Shelton, "The World That Dissolved" by Polton Cross, "Face in the Sky" by Thornton Ayre, and "Sydney, the Screwloose Robot" by William P. McGivern. 5.25-in. x 7.5-in.; black and white; 128 newsprint pages. Cover price $0.60.

Yeah, Sixty cents went a lot further back in March of '74 but its the fact that ERB's Mars was seeing explorers and colonizers. Leigh Brackett made a career out of the colonized solar system with some dam fine writing. 
The fact is that Mars became another destination in the solar system. And in today's gaming another PC racial option. Mars was seen as a relic of the past of Science Fiction. But its comeback into vogue lately because of the old school & the OSR. 
But Mars remains both a point on the map of our solar system & a destination for adventure. The Science Fiction authors of yore used it a point for an adventure jump off. There are hundreds of Pulp stories where the Martian royal or outlaw is the victim or the villain. And the fact is that Science Fiction moved on. But they didn't lose sight of where they came from. 
Mars is point for our players to draw their PC's from and an anchor for which our party of adventurers can draw campaign adventures on. 
One of the OSR titles that we've used to draw various cycles of races rising & falling on Mars has been Dead Names by Kevin Crawford. 

Dead Names clicks right into the vibe of "The Underground City" by Bertrand L. Shurtleff, and we see the migration of the weird lost worlds of the Pulps migrating to the stars as time went on. Whirlpool in Space" by Miles Shelton, picks up on an interstellar phenomna that could be used with Cepheus Engine easily. "The World That Dissolved" by Polton Cross, could be a fodder for an alternative Earth adventure or as a point for a space game as an alien colony world. "Face in the Sky" by Thornton Ayre, is a possible Lovecraftian diety or a random NPC encounter for an old school or OSR game. "Sydney, the Screwloose Robot" by William P. McGivern might make an excellent  NPC. 

You can download Science Fiction Adventure Classics (1969 Ultimate) Pulp Mar 1974 Here 

Using The Free Gamma World Adventure GW5 Rapture Of The Deep As Post Apocalyptic Dungeon Crawl Classic's Wasteland Adventurer Funnel

So I'm speaking with friends last night about the last travesty of my using Legion of Gold as a funnel for a post apocalyptic Dungeon Crawling Classics game using the Crawling Under A Broken Moon rules. So the big complaint that I heard from my friends and players was that they couldn't afford Legion of Gold but loved the ideas of such a funnel. Too bad there isn't a free Gamma World module that could be used in much the same way? Well actually there is! In fact this module has a straight up dangerous high level and very lethal faction from Gamma World introduced way back in an early issue of Dragon magazine. It really doesn't matter which one because everything you need is actually in GW5 and its free. It happens to be for second edition Gamma World and that's really not going to be a problem.

GRAB IT RIGHT HERE 

So what exactly is GW Five Rapture of The Deep and why is it free?
It's a fan made module created to fill the gap in the TSR GW sequence, GW5. For intermediate to advanced players. Here's where the funnel takes place your PC's are some of the victims caught within the attacks happening along the former Florida panhandle.

"A terrible menace from the sea is threatening villages all along the coast. Whole shoreline communities have been disappearing without a trace.
After going through the usual DCC funnel style experience using a bunch of aquatic mutants and their gear, the PC's should have a small side adventure in the ruins of Florida.  Then this bit get's them straight into the action;
"The remaining area inhabitants have banded together and sent for a group of experienced heroes to help. They want to know what could be causing these horrible events, and more importantly, what can be done to put a stop to them. Is it some new terrifying monster from the depths? Or is there something more sinister at work? "
The biggest hurltle the dungeon master and players might have is the use of the underwater rules for DCC but they are out there in the wilds of the internet if you do a bit of research. Here's some that might be of use. 
"The adventurers will travel deep beneath the waves to discover the answer. Can they survive the strange and dangerous ocean depths of Gamma World? Can they solve the mystery before it's too late? " This adventure is an extended campaign for underwater post apocalyptic adventure and there is a ton to encounter and deal with in Rapture of the Deep. This is an underwater sandbox that I've seen several side adventures worked into the background of play over the years and even with DCC it shouldn't be any different.
So that's really the set up for the post apocalyptic DM and his players. The adventure contains a whole plethora of Gamma World underwater madness including: " game master notes, background information, maps, rules for underwater adventuring, new equipment, and over 30 new aquatic creatures."

Rereading through Rapture of the Deep it brought home the opportunities for expansion of several set pieces I've seen used in Gamma World, Mutant Future and other PA games that other DM have used one of which has been floating space ship launch sites controlled by A.I.'s and machine intelligence gods. Many of these ideas were perfect for off of the coast or Florida and Gulf of Mexico, this fits in perfectly with the Merica of Crawling Under A Broken Moon. There are some free resources to that end right over HERE 


Rapture of the Deep features an extensive style of underwater campaigning and this adventure could take months for a group of experienced players to go through. Have several PC's ready and make extensive use of this time to establish an underwater domain or base for PC's because by the time they're done your going to have very high level adventurers at least three or forth level in DCC. If they survive the experience. For myself I used the pattern of the movie Leviathan from 1988 as the pattern for the domain that the players had. A roving under sea mining and scavenging  platform that the PC's managed to free from its A.I. god became they're domain. This same formula could easily work for a DCC game.

GW 5 has its own set of challenges but also an extensive set of rewards and ideas for a range of extended post apocalyptic play. The module remains a favorite of mine. For issues of Crawling Under A Broken Moon that would help I suggest issue #11, 10, 7, UX01: High Caliber Hijinks, and more. Hell just buy the whole damn run and you won't be sorry. More Gamma World and DCC goodness coming up.  

The Indifference of Cosmicism,Undeath, & The Infection of Evil Within OSR Urban Dungeon Ecology

The 1970's through middle period 80's were the the secondary or third tier period of solid haunted house & ghost  pictures. These films had a profound impact on my dungeon mastering urban locations & our dungeon master back then ate these things up with a spoon. There is a tremendous connection between pulp Appendix N literature & classic horror film resources.What does this all have to do with other classic Arthurian literature & material. We'll get right into that.

None more so then the 1973 film 'The Legend of Hell House'," The Legend of Hell House is a 1973 British horror film directed by John Hough and based on the novel Hell House by Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay." Author Richard Matheson was responsible for making the haunted house genre viable staple again for horror movies along with Shirley Jackson. Both authors are pillars & foundation authors of the horror genre. The haunted house is one of the more unsung adventure locations for urban dungeon adventuring and the the Belasco House is a perfect blue print for such an adventure location.
"Physicist Lionel Barrett and his wife lead a team of mediums into the Belasco House, which is supposedly haunted by the victims of its late owner, a six-foot-five serial killer."

In Renegade Heroes, Tyrannical Conquerors, & Wasteland Kings  my  turn of the of the century alternative Earth setting & system,an old school OSR hybrid of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Barbarians of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu mixed in with Troll Lord Games Amazing Adventures firearms rules, modern equipment & more.  The violence & depravity so long associated with pulp adventuring creates literal dungeon sink holes of evil via Adventurer, Conqueror, Kings appendix rules.

The literal depravity among men creates the perfect supernatural ecological conditions for dungeons to literally take root as the wasteland of Arthurian lore carries the adventure location closer to the occult chaos of Hell itself. This is created as the wasteland grows like a cancer within urban locations & cities literally rot from within with monsters & horrors from within & the Outer Darkness. Ghosts are the sieve indicating this rot on a grander scale.

This goes back into the Arthurian legends  of the Black Knight;"A
supernatural Black Knight is summoned by Sir Calogrenant (Cynon ap Clydno in Welsh mythology) in the tale of Yvain, the Knight of the Lion. The Black Knight bests Calogrenant, but the Black Knight is later killed by Ywain (Owain mab Urien) when he attempts to complete the quest that Calogrenant failed.^[2] A black knight is the son of Tom a'Lincoln and Anglitora (the daughter of Prester John) in Richard Johnson's Arthurian romance, Tom a Lincoln. Through Tom, he is a grandson of King Arthur's, though his proper name is never given. He killed his mother after hearing from his father's ghost that she had murdered him. He later joined the Faerie Knight, his half-brother, in adventures"
Ghosts shaped the destiny of the hero leading him further down the path of the knight & adventurer. This is the same sort of a journey that we see several characters in both Greyhawk & Blackmoor take. But these settings often turned such ideas on their heads because of Arneson & Gygax's take on matters of the heroic.



In Shakespeare there are ghosts literally created by  the hand of this protagonists & the British Libarary has an excellent article on the subject; "The earliest Shakespeare play in which ghosts appear is Richard III. Asleep in his tent before the Battle of Bosworth, Richard is visited by the spirits of his victims, one after another. Each one in turn recalls his or her fate at Richard’s hand, predicts their killer’s defeat in the forthcoming battle, and ends by telling him to ‘Despair and die’ (5.3.126). Each one of them also speaks to the sleeping Earl of Richmond, leader of the army opposing Richard, and tells him to ‘Live and flourish’ (5.3.131). Richard sleeps through all this, and any theatre audience can take it that the ghosts are in his troubled dreams. He wakes to say, ‘I did but dream. / O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!’ (5.3.178–79)"
All of this ties completely into the setting of Dark Albion & Lion & Dragon's settings themes of 'Death' & 'Chaos' with the Rose War's historical events.


When we look further afield then we come to realize that these cycles of Death & Chaos in the dungeon are the exact wheel house of Clark Ashton Smith. This theme can be perfectly framed with CAS 's The Empire of the Necromancers (1932) Weird Tales, September 1932 LW1.

The problem is that evil attracts greater evil & within the confines of a haunted dungeon or adventure location orcs & demons might be indicators of greater problems still! Clerics, paladins, & fighters of evil might be getting a greater workout as the forces of Hell try to force their way back into the world of the living. The whole of Hyperborea might be riddled with cities & dungeons in which the inhabitants don't even realize that their dead.  There might literally be empires of the undead where the living are plagued by undead conquerors of city states that should be dust.




In Renegade Heroes, Tyrannical Conquerors, & Wasteland Kings there are neighborhoods where dead cultists are tearing open holes in reality & minor monsters are good indicators that the powers of the Outer Darkness are knocking down the door of the Earth.
This comes straight out of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Lairs & Encounters which has several very well done undead barrows & cultist style monster locations within it.

The theme of undeath taken as symptom of total corruption & chaos is found within both Arthur Machen & HP Lovecraft.

"There are sacraments of evil as well as of good about us, and we live and move to my belief in an unknown world, a place where there are caves and shadows and dwellers in twilight. It is possible that man may sometimes return on the track of evolution, and it is my belief that an awful lore is not yet dead."

—Arthur Machen

This is especially true of HP Lovecraft's Horror At Red Hook which is a direct descendant to Edgar Allen Poe's tradition of stories & novels. Such a rend in reality within an urban environment can be easily seen within this story.
The haunted house isn't simply a lair for evil but its abode that attracts more until it festers into a complete dungeon giving all within range of its infestation cause to destroy it.

Vampires, Cosmicism, & 'The Monsters Within' More OSR Urban Dungeon Ecology For Your Old School Campaigns

Evil with a capital 'e' is seen as hokey & corny, but a recent four A.M. marathon viewing of the 1979 Tobie Hooper's Salem Lot has made my thoughts turn back to Arthurian literature. What does the concept of 'the Wasteland' of mythology have to do with a 1979 adaptation of Stephen King's classic vampire book?!


Well everything when it comes to Renegade Heroes, Tyrannical Conquerors, & Wasteland Kings! What the Hell is that title? Its my  turn of the of the century alternative Earth setting & system,an old school OSR hybrid of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Barbarians of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu mixed in with Troll Lord Games Amazing Adventures firearms rules, modern equipment & more.

Salem's Lot concern's itself with the theme of evil attracting more evil leading to the death of Salem's Lot. The Marsten house is pit of boiling corruption that attracts the vampire lord Kurt Barlow (Reggie Nalder) & his servant Richard Straker (James Mason). Its the small town complacency of the town's residents that opens the door for the vampire's corruption that literally invited into Salem's Lot.

But the town of Salem's Lot's fate is sealed in the opening credits. The wind blows dust & dirt around some of the abandoned store fronts & buildings as the main character drives into town. The impotence of the town's residents  in the face of the murders that occurred at the Marsten house act the catalyst for wasteland to gain a foot hold in Salem's Lot. This same theme runs through the Arthurian literature's Grail cycle.

"In the Arthurian Grail material, the Wasteland's condition is usually tied to the impotence of its leader. Often the infirmity is preceded by some form of the Dolorous Stroke, in which the king is injured tragically for his sins but kept alive by the Grail. In Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail, the Fisher King has been wounded in a misfortune that is not revealed in the incomplete text, and his land suffers with him. He can be healed only if the hero Perceval asks the appropriate question about whom the Grail serves, but warned against talking too much, Perceval remains silent. In the First Continuation of Chrétien's work, the anonymous author recounts how Gawain partially heals the land, but is not destined to complete the restoration. Over the course of time romances place less emphasis on the Wasteland and more on the king's wound. In the Lancelot-Grail Cycle the link between the devastated land and the wounded king is not absolute, and in the Post-Vulgate Cycle much more emphasis is placed on King Pellehan's injury by Sir Balin than on the devastation this causes to his kingdom.

Scholars of the earlier 20th century devoted much study to the Wasteland motif. In one of the more popular works on the subject, From Ritual to Romance, author Jessie Weston suggested that the origin of the motif lies with an otherwise unattested pagan fertility cult. The book is mostly disregarded today, though T. S. Eliot credited it as the source of the title and the largest single influence on his famous poem The Waste Land."

In classic original Dungeons & Dragon's campaign settings  such as Blackmoor &  Greyhawk the dungeon attracts even greater evil to it. The wounded king allows the evil in & the corruption takes hold this is especially true of Gary Gygax's classic Greyhawk setting.
In OSR terms Adventurer, Conqueror, King's main rule book has the sink of evil optional rules & it certainly fits the pulpy background of Renegade Heroes, Tyrannical Conquerors, & Wasteland Kings Pan America setting. The corruption of the dungeon literally attracts more evil men, cultists,  monsters & demons to it! Blocks of houses & buildings might have literally ruins & horror filled dungeons crawling under them.


The Lion & Dragon retroclone rpg has some great rules & suggestions for incorporating in the ideals & guidelines for a slower corrupting form of Chaos. Given some of the Arthurian origins of my heroes in Pan America I'm going to be taking full advantage of those. These same apocalyptic cycles of ending are exactly the sort of thing that Clark Ashton Smith wrote about in his Hyperborea cycle.

The monsters are carrying out a cosmic directive as the world moves on. And there's  a Cosmicism  indifference & ironic humor  in the in the monsters visage in Clark Ashton Smith's tales.

• Coming of the White Worm, The (1941)
• Door to Saturn, The (1932)
• House of Haon-Dor, The (1989)
• Ice-Demon, The (1933)
• Lament for Vixeela (1953)
• Muse of Hyperborea, The (1929)
• Seven Geases, The (1934)
• Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The (1931)
• Testament of Athammaus, The (1932)
• Theft of the Thirty-Nine Girdles, The (1958)
• Ubbo-Sathla (1933)
• Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan, The (1932)
• White Sybil, The (1932)

This is the same strain of wild weirdness that we get in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea second edition's latest adventures The Anthropophagi of Xambaala & The Anthropophagi of Xambaala. Why? Because the PC's in AS&SH are literally adventuring within a wasteland where time has passed the world by. The wasteland has engulfed the world & torn it from its moorings on Earth. AS&SH takes its 'P's & 'Q's from the Lovecraft circle. Its no accident that Underborea is so dangerous but by design of gods whose time has passed on.


AS&SH art by Peter Mullen

I've avoided Stephen King's Dark Tower series on purpose because it's just too damn expansive for my blog today. The idea that he adventure location is brought with  the 'sins' of evil of locals &  monsters are drawn to dungeon and vice versa isn't new but it does present some very dangerous opportunities for PC's. More to come

Monsters, Mayhem, & OSR Urban Dungeon Ecology For Your Old School Campaigns

There are times when a certain aesthetic is called for the monsters in a game setting & for me bizarre is the norm not the exception. Yesterday/early this morning I wrote about my  turn of the of the century alternative Earth setting & system,an old school OSR hybrid of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Barbarians of Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu mixed in with Troll Lord Games Amazing Adventures firearms, modern equipment & more. The combination will be called Renegade Heroes, Tyrannical Conquerors, & Wasteland Kings!  I've been working on an Appendix 1800 - 1980's Science Romance list. 

Well today my focus has been on my urban environment & dungeon adventure location New York City.  I love the ACK's Lairs & Encounters books, but sometimes I going over to the classic D&D adventures has a certain something. Fortunately there's a pretty good thread on the ACK's forums for conversions.


What I'm looking for is a bit more pulpy  & a bit more comic bookish in style & substance while simultaneously being very, very, dangerous. But an OSR  resource that I can still plug in all of the classic OD&D resources into. Hmm fortunately a couple of years ago I grabbed Neoplastic Press's Teratic Tome 


'But, but these are campaign ending monsters & nothing but nipple & penis horrors,' save your breath I've heard it all from  certain corners of the pearl clutchers of the OSR & fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons dungeon masters. But the truth is that the Brine orc, gelatinous pyramid, &  azure slime are exactly the sort of horrors that some pulp style vile villain would be cooking up in a New York lab.
The brine orc are perfect servants for the Deep Ones in the pulp make over of  Dave J. Browne with Don Turnbull's UK1 The Sinister Secret of SaltmarshMaking an ACK's style Lairs & Encounters set up for these creatures from the Teratic Tome  By Rafael Chandler would be an adventure unto itself.

Most likely these sorts of encounters would be mid way through an adventure or used as a side adventure unto themselves. Take the Ingenue for example according to the PowerScore blog which has a good breakdown & review on the book;

" A humanoid female with blue skin and white horns. They change their minds constantly and live for cruel pranks. Ingenues thirst for the blood of men, particularly nobles. She takes 1/3rd damage from spells cast by men, and double damage from spells cast by women."
These monsters are the perfect horrors to visit upon the royal houses of Pan America's New York City.  The whole place is riddled with dimensional doors & warp gates leading to other much more lethal planes of existence.

ACK's Lairs & Encounters breaks down not only the background & detailed pseudo ecology of a given monster but then gives a detailed encounter suitable for any OSR retroclone gaming system but obviously geared toward the Adventurer Conqueror, King system. Given this approach its reasonable to assume a very detailed breakdown for a pulp adventure location using these same guidelines found in ACK's Lairs & Encounters. The ACK's system from Lairs & Encounters will give any pulp or super hero pause and then some.



This same sort of approach could be taken with Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu where a very different occult approach is given to the Lovecraftian horrors of the other worldly setting of  Kanahu.
The approach to these creatures of Chaos is similar  to the  level of lethality of the  horrors found in the Teratic Tome  By Rafael Chandler. 

To a much lesser degree the chaos cults of Lion & Dragon & Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos have a far more personal approach & slower level of corruption but non the less are just as mutating & otherworldly. To some extent the OSR NPC tools of Lion & Dragon  & Cults of Chaos fit the level of weirdness that I'm going for.

So why I'm I worried about using this style of monster placement within my alternative history New York City? Because the monsters often make the setting & while its true that this is a pulpy sort of gonzo campaign with weirdness drenching out of the pores of the campaign & a very strange twist on events of a post Martian Invasion America in 1904. There's some degree with which I'm juggling the campaign's elements around both OSR & classic OD&D ideals here.