OSR Commentary Adventures on Mars By ODD74 & Warriors of The Red Planet By NightOwl Workshop

 We've had a semi permanent Warriors of the Red Planet game on going for a long while. The PC's have been skirting  the Dark Martian lands of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds books. Now the Invasion of Earth happened a long while ago. DM Steve has trotted out the OD&D forum's Adventures on Mars ODD74 book from  thread. Scroll down to the last entry by Bastet1002's CLICK HERE!: Adventures on Mars (UPDATED WITH COVER!). And grab this one!

Adventures on Mars By ODD74 adds a ton of  Lovecraftian monsters, Dark Martians, Orks, and more. Even though the supplement is meant for original Dungeons & Dragons, it can easily be adapted for Warriors of the Red Planet rpg. For a really good overview of  Warriors of the Red Planet check out the Mutant Wiki entry. 

Back to the Aventures on Mars By ODD74 and the 'abandoned' Dark Martian cities which have caches of Dark Martians still living and maintaining them in DM Steve's games. The Dark Martians also have deep ties to the Kaldanines within the implied Adventures campaign setting. There are at least seven Dark Martian  cities that we've had to deal with. These are protected by walkers sunking in the sands of Mars. 

Let's not mention the fact that we've got two mega dungeons in the area. And this goes back to some commentary again from the Barsoom entry on the Mutant Future wiki enty; "Barsoom is a world of high adventure and intrigue! The world is dying, made somewhat livable by artificial means. Civilization is technologically advanced, but is suffering form social and technological stagnation. The red martian sands hide the ruins of untold civilizations. The many city-states dotting the red landscape are always at war, be it on ground or by great flees of airships, with fragile alliances and betrayals around every corner. The cites are suspended technological marvels from a bygone age"
What Adventures on Mars does is expand the scope of that adventure & campaign setting to deal with things hinted in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books and dealt with in the Leigh Brackett novels. 

OSR Commentary Adventures on Mars By ODD74 & Warriors of The Red Planet By NightOwl Workshop

 We've had a semi permanent Warriors of the Red Planet game on going for a long while. The PC's have been skirting  the Dark Martian lands of H.G. Well's War of the Worlds books. Now the Invasion of Earth happened a long while ago. DM Steve has trotted out the OD&D forum's Adventures on Mars ODD74 book from  thread.   Scroll down to the last entry by Bastet1002's CLICK HERE!: Adventures on Mars (UPDATED WITH COVER!). And grab this one! 
Adventures on Mars By ODD74 adds a ton of  Lovecraftian monsters, Dark Martians, Orks, and more. Even though the supplement is meant for original Dungeons & Dragons, it can easily be adapted for Warriors of the Red Planet rpg. For a really good overview of Warriors of the Red Planet check out the Mutant Wiki entry. 

Back to the Aventures on Mars By ODD74 and the 'abandoned' Dark Martian cities which have caches of Dark Martians still living and maintaining them in DM Steve's games. The Dark Martians also have deep ties to the Kaldanines within the implied Adventures campaign setting. There are at least seven Dark Martian  cities that we've had to deal with. These are protected by walkers sunking in the sands of Mars. 
Let's not mention the fact that we've got two mega dungeons in the area. And this goes back to some commentary again from the Barsoom entry on the Mutant Future wiki enty; "Barsoom is a world of high adventure and intrigue! The world is dying, made somewhat livable by artificial means. Civilization is technologically advanced, but is suffering form social and technological stagnation. The red martian sands hide the ruins of untold civilizations. The many city-states dotting the red landscape are always at war, be it on ground or by great flees of airships, with fragile alliances and betrayals around every corner. The cites are suspended technological marvels from a bygone age" 
What Adventures on Mars does is expand the scope of that adventure & campaign setting to deal with things hinted in the Edgar Rice Burroughs books and dealt with in the Leigh Brackett novels. 

OSR Commentary - Free OSR Resource Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley For The Castles & Crusades Rpg

 " “Spirits of Heaven and Hell” includes both “An Account of the Angels” and “A Directory of Devils”.

" 16 Celestial and Infernal beings in all, ranging from the tricky Pact Devil who makes deals at lonely crossroads, to the mighty Seraph, whose mere presence can burn mortal creatures to cinders."

"Inspired by real-world legends, folklore, art, and mythology, they’ll give your games a touch of authenticity."

Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley For The Castles & Crusades Rpg came into my possession by DM Steve today. I wasn't aware that this lovely little PDF was out in the wilds from 2011. This is a really nice little break down of angels & devils for the Castles & Crusades rpg. And could possibly be seen as a free side book for the Tome of the Unclean. The author Daniel James Hanley has obviously put some hard work into this little supplement because it covers an array of devils, demons, and angels all for Castles & Crusades rpg. 

Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley clocks out at a healthy fifty three pages worth infernal & angellic  goodness. Hell & Heaven themselves as adventure locations & planar destinations are also covered here in vivid detail borrowing heavily from Dante's Inferno & Paradisco as well as healthy heaps from popculture.
Common devils include: 
Accuser, Craft, Corrupter, Luminious Devil, Pact Devils, Seducer, Tormentor, & Wraith devils. All of these are far more subtle then the usual Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition devils. These devils are powerful but their proper use is as an adventure fulcrum or machinery. 
And the angels are just as well represented in the Spirits of Heaven & Hell. Angels of Death, Mercy, Chariot, Cherub, Guardian, Herald, Seraph, & the Warrior angel. Angels shouldn't be taken lightly, the idea of game balance within Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley is out the window here. But Spirits of Heaven & Hell isn't about balance it's about using the forces of Heaven & Hell within Castles & Crusades. 

Castles & Crusades doesn't seem like a subtle game but with the right blend of players & DM's Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley could easily become a center piece of a campaign. This is especially true of a campaign centered around a historical Europe. 

Spirits of Heaven & Hell By Daniel James Hanley For The Castles & Crusades Rpg Is Available Right Here. 

Free OSR Resource - The Varlets and Vermin 1.0 Supplement By Roger S. G. Sorolla For Your & OSR Old School Fantasy Campaigns

 There are some excellent OSR resources that have kinda fallen through the cracks of the OSR for the last couple of years in my humble opinion. One of these is The  Varlets and Vermin 1.0 Supplement By Roger S. G. Sorolla and according to his introduction from this supplement; "rats … rats … skeletons … Oh! Some fire beetles. Orcs. Giant centipedes. Rats … goblins … rats … First level characters in old-school adventure gaming can be forgiven for getting a little bored, especially if their players have been around the block a few times. Low level adventures have boring monsters because of the limited selection at those levels; after all, higher levels can always just add larger numbers of lower level monsters to provide an adequate challenge. Although stronger monsters every once in a while are good to provoke creativity, the usual meat and potatoes handed to beginning adventurers can get fairly tiresome. The sameness of low level monsters can also get in the way of developing consistent adventure environment themes." 

Time & again I've quietly used the The  Varlets and Vermin 1.0 Supplement for many OSR games but specifically the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg. And the The  Varlets and Vermin book's monsters come in especially handy when some dark magician or necromancer has been creating or opening gates that let the horrid energies of the occult & supernatural into our world. All of these dark energies that are released into our world always leave a stain of the otherworldly behind. 

These highly unusual supernatural workings always leave behind some minor stain of socery or mutate the wildlife where it's been done. And this is where The  Varlets and Vermin has you covered. Not only is it free but it covers all of the basics that a DM needs for minor horrors for experienced players. Need a giant rat variant?! We've got you covered. A weird fungus able to cause havoc for adventurers and experienced players alike again we've got you covered. 

The  Varlets and Vermin 1.0 Supplement By Roger S. G. Sorolla For Your & OSR Old School Fantasy Campaigns Is Available Right Here For Free 

Some OSR Monster Tactics With Kuntz & Ward's Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons

"Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars - Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.
Hither came Conan the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

"The Phoenix on the Sword" (1932) By Robert E.Howard 

Over the years I've thumbed through Kuntz & Ward's Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons. Its ironic that a supplement that was referred to as an excuse to slay gods, heroes, & other mythological creatures had the opposite effect for me. Back in the Seventies we started with this book because of "Robert E. Howard's Hyborea". No we didn't go around slaying Conan but in fact were barely able to handle some of the Hyborean age's horrors & dungeons. Fact is that nine times outta ten we'd run away. Tonight I'm not so much nostalgia tear   as I'm thinking back to how my uncle put his adventures together. I was musing today about Jason Vey's Grey Elf Age of Conan material. This can help fit together a complete package for the Hyboria Age for original Dungeons & Dragons. Did I mention that its free. 


So where does one actually take into account the fact that the "Robert E. Howard's Hyborea" has tons of opportunities to screw around with the player's PC's. This is a post apocalytic fantasy in the sense that the older world's ruins are existing side by side with the newer age's structures like a giant layer cake. But there's another almost but not quite forgotten aspect in Gods, Demigods, & Heroes that almost everyone forgets . "Numerous cultural monsters appear in this book, including the phoenix, fire snakes, Norse giants, the queen of the earth elementals, and more" there are lots of unique monsters that never appeared anywhere else & these are perfect to take slightly outta context & use with other OSR games or in a Hyborea setting. In fact these monsters are ideally suited to include in other D&D based products.  Several of these monsters besides the obvious Michael Moorcock Elric & Robert E. Howard Conan material there are numerous unique creations waiting to be sprung on some foolish unsuspecting D&D or OSR players. What are the cultures that are in this book? Surprisingly: Egyptian
Indian
Greek
Celtic
Norse
Finnish
Robert E, Howard's Hyborea
Elric and Melnibone
Meso-American
Eastern Mythos

Any of these can easily be reskinned for a Sword & Sorcery campaign & since we are playing in a post apocalyptic fantasy age these can appear anywhere from the 'old age'. None of the players will be the wiser. But generally speaking they will be reaching for those Monster Manuals. Now by the same token I've flipped several of the monsters in Kuntz & Ward's Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons for use with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea as mid range boss monsters from 'Old Earth'. The tactic worked & the players were in a full panic as we did a full on old school Jack Kirby press into the den of a Finnish monster dwelling in Underborea. The far future world of Hyperborea might be rife with Apocalyptic high level mythological monsters left over from the Apocalypse. They might be really pissed off. 



Not only can  Kuntz & Ward's Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons be used for OSR adventure tom foolery but its monsters can also serve the gap for Gamma World first & second edition where a powerful & unexpected horror or two is waiting around the corner for the PC's. 

These are just some of my thoughts tonight on using some of the mythological weirdness of Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons. The book remains a bit of unsung classic in my estimation. There have been numerous comments about the book's overpowered & stodgy for 2019. I think that these folks are full of it & not getting enough sunlight. Over all I think that Gods, Demi - Gods, & Heroes for original Dungeons & Dragons  is a must for any serious DM in my opinion. For now keep em rolling! 

Happy Birthday OSR Haul & A New Free Blackmoor book - Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook By Havard Blackmoor

So my other half had a birthday OSR surprise for me done up by a local printer. Done in black & white, plastic covers, & a spiral binding in the booklets. These are for the table top & lay out from the pdfs have come out quite nicely. 'Ghosts – The Incorporeal Undead' By James Mishler, Jodi Moran-Mishler has been on my 'must get' lists. Godbound Rpg By Kevin Crawford is another one on my radar & its companion 'The Lexicon of the Throne'.  The Kevin Crawford rpg  titles are centered around  a game of divine heroes in a broken world, men and women who have seized the tools that have slipped from an absent God's hands.Secrets of the Immortals By Steve Miller is D20 based title that  brings a new kind of hero to your OGL d20 System games... a hero who rises again and again from the ashes of the ultimate defeat, reborn and remade, and ready to adventure again into a new lifetime.


 Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu by Omer Joel, Alexander Macris  for The Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg  is another title that I've been wanting for awhile now. Yes I needed a new copy of this book after the great  salsa accident of 2018. 

Harvard Blackmoor has come out with the Fall of the Dwarves: A Free PDF Campaign Expansion to the CBI-2 The Rand Sourcebook. This book expands on Dave Arneson's Blackmoor Rand sourcebook also by Havard. This book expands upon Havard's ideas from that sourcebook & then kinda doubles up on them by expanding the Dwarven lore. "CBI-2 The Thonian Rand introduces the Duchy of Evedhur. The idea with Evedhur was to expand on the lore of Dwarves from the Blackmoor Campaign Setting. In Dave Arneson’s campaign, the dwarves were ruled by Oberstar Kazakhum , the Regent of the Mines. In CBI-2, I gave him a brother, Arkalist Kazakhum.

 My idea for the character Arkalist, was that this dwarf, like his brother, wanted a kingdom of his own and settled in a mountain chain in the Thonian Empire. Arkalist’s Duchy of Evedhur also allowed me to incorporate some of the material and characters from Clock & Steam, another Blackmoor sourcebook from Zeitgeist Games written for Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition."


There are tons of call backs, Blackmoor weirdness, & some really nicely done connections between 'The Thonian Rand Fall of The Dwarves' book & the Rand sourcebook. This one is up to Havard's usual bench mark of OSR Blackmoor goodness. 

Monsters & Mayhem - Some Alternative OSR Monster Book Options for Dungeon Crawl Classics

What happens when your players know every last classic monster in the Monster Manual, Monster Manual II, & even the Fiend Folio? This applies especially when you want to run something different in a retro clone mod like Dungeon Crawl Classics. Never fear we've got some monstrous options.

One of the biggest problems lately that I've found with OSR players? They know all of the classic monsters & many of the classic TSR era variations. Lately I've been slipping into Dungeon Crawl Classics rpg mode & while I have the option of using 3.0 & 3.5 D&D monsters converting on the fly is a giant pain in the behind. While Sword & Wizardry's Swords & Wizardry OE Reloaded: Monster Book is bloody brilliant & I highly recommend it. The monsters don't have the same punch when every player has a copy. 


So what's a dungeon master gonna do?!! Well sometimes you've got to go back in time few years.  In this case I'm pulling out the Teratic Tome By Rafael Chandler which has been free on Drivethrurpg  the last couple of years. Rafael Chandler has been off social media since about 2018. He remains one of the more original OSR creators in my mind. Many of the monsters in this book are plane ending threats & fit the all or nothing view of monsters with certain OSR games.

Since I've been doing a lot of Castles & Crusades lately I've taken a very close look at how monsters are put together & there are a lot of classics in the Monsters & Treasure book. The Monsters & Treasure book for Castles & Crusades offers a lot of options but Teratic Tome By Rafael Chandler coupled with Monsters & Treasure is a perfect combination for an almost upper tier Swords & Sorcery or higher fantasy comic book style fantasy campaign.
While it seems that I'm getting away from Dungeon Crawl Classics, I'm not at all. The fact is that by combining these monster resources the dungeon master has an entire palette of mayhem to work with.


If I continue the thread of monster mayhem then I'd remiss to mention to the other other free monster resource by Mr.Chandler's   Lusus Naturae  a bestiary for Lamentations of the Flame Princess (and other old-school games). This book is an 'R' or even 'X' certificate monster book perfectly suited to vileness of some corners of the planes & other dimensions. These monsters are very twisted & have far reaching implications far past the dungeon & may affect a campaign on a very deep level. 

CC1 Creature Compendium From  New Big Dragon Games Unlimited  is another option to throw on the table. The book has been widely praised & well received in certain corners of the OSR. So the DM may want to simply use the monsters & not tell the players until they are well into the campaign instead. There are many original & classics here that have lots of dangerous bits & sharp teeth to end adventurers lives.


Another option for the table top that while top notch will require a bit of adaption is The Basic Fantasy Field Guide of Creatures Malevolent and Benign there are some solid variations on many of the old classic monsters & I guarantee that players will not see this one coming. 

These are just some of the options to throw into the mix for running a Dungeon Crawl Classic rpg campaign with a bit of a more OSR flare.