Quick OSR Review & Free Adventure Download - DF18 Where The Fallen Jarls Sleep For Your Old School Campaigns

"A malevolence darkens the northern reaches of The Land of Song. Can your group defeat the evil and bring peace. An adventure for characters of level 3-5."

The days are growing shorter & I've had to think a bit outside the box as far as running something dangerous & dire for Halloween. I need a solid adventure to run with some of the more experienced players in my social circles. So what really cares the Hell out of players? Hordes of undead waiting to tear into PCs!

Where The Fallen Jarls Sleep by John Turcotte is the perfect Viking Halloween Dungeons & Dragons answer! Dangerous as hell for PC's this is nasty little affair where PC's are investigating undead sightings & the survivors of attacks by these creatures. There are some incredibly well done bits of this adventure where the NPC's have a personal stake in the goings on of the adventurers.
The homesteads of the northmen are being attacked, raided,  & people are being murdered left, right, & center. The northmen here are peaceful & the adventurers are brought in as muscle & to put to rest the undead cancer.

An adventurer rushing to doom for a party of fellow warriors not artwork from DF18.

This is the perfect module to run with a Sword & Sorcery campaign. The advice on monsters, pacing of the adventure & the extra bits of fluff that make this one of the best & must have free Dragon foot modules. The hidden locations & other mystical Norse tone of D18 make this a perfect middle tier adventure for PC's to really get into the setting of Where Sleep Jarls lay. Text & layout are up to Dragon foot standards but make this a really solidly set adventure.

This is one of those adventures that can be played over a long series of sessions making it quite epic in scope as a mini campaign. There are some aspects that could be quite lethal but that is the point of DF18.



Over all DF18 Where The Fallen Jarls Sleep is a solid adventure with a very good reputation among certain quarters of the OSR. The presentation is very well done & I think that the undead encounters are very dangerous especially if the player's PC's don't exactly know the full extent of the horror in this module.
You Can Download DF18 Where
The Fallen Jarls Sleep Here!

Happy Gary Gygax Day & The High Road To The Astral Plane With The Free Adventure ZA6: Journey to the Astral Plane by Joseph Mohr

Today would have been Gary Gygax's eightieth birthday today & we're supposed to celebrate his life. Gary Gygax was a lot of things designer, writer, & to a certain extent he was a Renaissance man. There was a lot of water under the bridge with the history of Dungeons & Dragons. For some folks those events yesterday even if it was forty plus years ago. But someplace along the line I stopped caring about all of the drama. Yes this includes the OSR's branch of garage band marketing.



I began to admire the sheer force of will & 'American know how' that went into the creation of the game I love. Being in a home based business for thirty plus years I know all of the trials & tribulations this can cause families. But the kind of success that original Dungeons & Dragons caused well that's another level all together. So I admire the man whose hard work & know how co created a phenomenon is one thing. But getting to know something of the man behind the game I came to like that guy as well. I've gotten to know that gentleman through the people who loved him, were his friends,co workers,etc. 
GenCon is happening right now but I've never had any desire to go again to that event. Instead every year I lament the fact that I've missed another GaryCon. But with an elderly parent whose condition is stable but a part of life adjustments have to be made. Many of you dear readers  are going through the exact same thing or worse.I'm so very sorry for those who are dealing with these situations. These are but after all merely amusements & games. That's all they ever really have been,really.  But the men who created these games in the form of Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson have been huge influences on my life. Not only the games themselves but the men behind them. Gary Gygax was a family man & a risk taker that's the best I can strive for in this life. Family has to come first.



 Real life causes us to make compromises & adjustments as it always has. So this weekend instead of booking a plane for GenCon I'm getting together with friends to celebrate the life of Gary Gygax. Toss back some beer, throw some dice, & fight on!
Meanwhile this weekend I'm introducing another classic planar element into the campaign mix. I'm going through the Monster Manual & the Fiend Folio picking out some classic Astral planar monsters. The other wonderful little wrinkle for this is using bits & pieces of the mythology of Gods,Demi Gods, & Heroes for this little bit of tomfoolery



Now why is all of this going on?! Because I'm planning on introducing adventure elements of the free Dragon Foot. org  adventure ZA6: Journey to the Astral Plane by Joseph Mohr to my home campaign the plot goes like this;

" The crown of the queen of Zanzia has been stolen! The culprit has escaped into the astral plane. Heroes are needed to chase down this villain and recover this priceless artifact. Only brave and powerful adventurers of at least 10th to 15th level could possibly successful in this adventure."

This isn't lower tier PC stuff at all. This is right up there in levels but its high time that the Astral Plane play a part in the otherworldly background of my home game. Its like this I've never needed Spell Jammer because I've had the Astral.



A Journey To The Astral Plane has all of the basics carved out within the module for planar travel. The encounters are interesting but many of the adventure elements could have far reaching consequences for a campaign if a DM isn't careful. This is a high level adventure but that means that the DM has to trickle down the events, adventure elements, etc. carefully in their own home games. But there's some good material here to use & adapt.

Wish me luck as things are about to get messy & weird for my players as the otherworldly Astral makes its way into the game! Happy Gary Gygax day!

Free OSR Adventure Resource - Adventure Module BL1-2: The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming From Barrataria Games For Your Old School Campaigns

So here is a free fifty nine page OSR module from Barrataria Games  it has a sort of Village of Hommlet feel with a twist or two. Are you looking for an excellent adventure to start a campaign with? Then download this book because its bursting with some great OSR campaign resources and lots & lots of hooks throughout.
GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

The set up is pretty nice and ropes in the PC's straight out of the gate and into the back end of the module where they're walking into a situation that they may soon find themselves up to their necks in;"nto the Unknown! The wilderness around the cave stronghold called Gold Hill Trading Post is dangerous and scattered with ruins of large and small settlements. Will your party find fame and fortune, solve ancient mysteries, or just disappear into the Borderlands like so many that came before? This module contains underground and wilderness maps that form a detailed adventure and mini-campaign for beginning characters, including an abandoned village, haunted graveyard, ruined church, traders’ camp, wilderness encounters, and monster lairs. It also includes a ruined keep and dungeon as well as a mapped and detailed “base camp” stronghold"



There are some really nice maps and hooks in BL1-2: The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming  as well as a large assortment of NPC's, factions, powers, and over arching situations to get your party of adventurers into. The material here feels like a compete touch stone to step into a campaign, with a large amount of sword and sorcery action on the side. You get There are fifty pages of adventuring and 6 pages of maps all designed to dovetail and slide into your existing campaign material which is fine. This module has a bit of everything from a small range of spells, monsters, a distinctive flavor about the setting and more but none of this takes away from or tries to perform hugely distinctive adventure setting on its own. Its almost as if this module was designed to seamlessly expand and fit into your own campaign world. I'm all on board with this style of game writing and design. Everything here is fairly evenly put together making this a perfect DYI D&D module for a retroclone, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord or first edition Advanced Dungeons and Dragons game. The settings include a fully detailed hamlet, a wilderness section, a graveyard, a trading post, and much more which makes the price of admission worth a look alone! 
Everything in this module suggests and sets up a campaign from the ground up with the PC's hip deep in the local scene. There are mixes here of the mundane and the fantastic, the module reminded me of the Village of Hommlet more then once making this an adventure module to drop into an existing campaign or as a location to have more experienced PC's deal with some of the adventure hooks that  Module BL1-2: The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming brings to the table.

There are several reasons why this module reminds me of the classic T1 adventure:

• Organic campaign set up and implementation into an existing campaign as well as use for a jump off point for a brand new campaign. 
• Old school no tears encounters with a mix of the bizarre and the mundane. 
• The adventure blends the local scene and politics with the PCs playing into both! This makes the PC's invested in the action. 
• The factions and NPC's are deeply invest in the adventure's plot and themes. 
• The 'Big Event' of  BL1-2: The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming  actually has some solid repercussions on the campaign world and setting and not simply an implied campaign or setting impact. 

The bottom line is to grab this adventure for your old school games and use it as both adventure and tool box. The fact that its free is icing on the cake in my opinion.

Review & Commentary On The Free OSR Adventure - Red Tam's Bones By John Turcotte For Your Old School Campaign

There are adventures that seem to just have a sense of the weird right out of the gate and this is one of those. The premise sounds basic but its really anything but; "Can you find the bones of Red Tam, the notorious Bard? An adventure for 5 to 8 characters of levels 3 - 5." This is one of those adventures that thrives on fairies and fey and in fact they're featured throughout this adventure.
This adventure recreates an idealized English fairy tale adventure and the cover blurb doesn't do it justice. There's everything here to stage your own mini campaign within  the lands of fairy. The PC's are trying to find the bones of a bard whose shuffled off the mortal coil to break the charm he's placed on a young lady. But there is far more going on then meets the eye. The fairy elements are both like a fairy tale gone wrong and bits of a hex crawl gone right.

 GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

 But is it worth the download? Yes in point of fact it's well worth the time for a download; the Fey elements are well done the encounters very interesting and engaging without resorting to pandering BS that we find in other modules. The author/designer keeps the encounters fast paced without rail roading the PC's. This adventure feels like a Disney movie come to life in the right ways. A dark fantasy adventure to be sure but nothing over the top. The material here is solidly designed for OSR play but the adventure takes its materials very well without completely blowing the adventure out of propitiation. This adventure can easily be adapted into a Fairy heavy campaign set against an  Edwardian/Regency England.


Everything here is oriented toward getting the players into the deep end of the adventure's plot lines without hitting over the head and taking full advantage of pit falls of this sort of adventures. Folks are going to have a blast playing this free adventure while trying to out wit the NPC's and gaming situations. This one rates a five out of five for some old school fairy tale action; don't miss the  adventure Red Tam's Bones. There's plenty of fun still to be had with this one.
This adventure could also be adapted to other retroclone systems including Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Dark Albion, there are some areas in this adventure that fit both game systems as well as  some of the conceils of  where this adventure is trying to take players.

Review and Commentary On The Free PDF Adventure For The Dungeon Crawl Classics Rpg - HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep From The Hapless Henchman

This is a eighty nine page can of 'Choose Your Own Adventures' or 'Fighting Fantasy'  style Dungeon Crawl Classics Madness in the form of a free PDF adventure from Hapless Henchmen games. 
 HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep .This is actually three products in one, you get a choose your own adventure solo book, a monster book  for the adventure, and a really nice map of the Keep. Basically this is one very large and well put together solo dungeon that acts as a complicated PC funnel generator for the Dungeon Crawl Classics game using a modified set of DCC rules and some really nasty encounters. This isn't made to be an easy dungeon at all but its DCC folks. I personally died twice trying this adventure at four am this morning. Its a neat and fun little crawl put together with lots of twists and turns with a twisted sense of humor this side of a Nineties cartoon from Nickelodeon with an over flow of Adventure Time style hi jinks thrown in for good measure.

GRAB THIS ONE RIGHT OVER HERE
 HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep .
Believe it or not this is a big module designed for solo play and your really going to need a solid copy of this adventure in other words a physical copy. The adventure unfolds around your character and does three rather interesting slight of hand tricks at the same time. One the story of the adventure's frame work happens around you. Two you want to read more to see what happens to your adventurer and three the damn adventure has your attention span in its clutches. All of this happens while your playing and reading it. I suspect that Noah Stevens not only played a hell of a lot of solo adventure books in the Eighties but he also played a ton of the video game Dragon's Lair because this has that feel to it. That classic playability is another factor that these various influences also share with HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep.

This was done with a solid intent and all of the classic elements of OSR design are in the Keep. Are the encounters balanced? Yes they are with a solid base and they are beatable but this is Dungeon Crawl Classics and your going to have to think your way past several of the best bits and pieces of the Keep.
Before even attempting to play through this adventure there are several things to keep in mind. One have more then a passing familiarity with the DCC rulebook and then familiarize yourself with this adventure's modified rules set. It does exactly what it says on the can, this creates a solo played PC whose ready out of the gate for further adventures with a regular party  of DCC adventurers. This book emulates and twists around many of the conventions of solo play adventure books. This being the case your going to die several times and that's not something to worry about at all. The play is the thing here because its going to generate some solid PC elements in your brand new ready to take on the world character.

But is the adventure worth your time and effort to download? Yes I do think so because of its utility and here's what can be done with it. Adventure locations like Halthrag Keep tend to attract adventurers like flies to a corpse. These places are prime to generate a whole party on their own. Buy this adventure and pass it around to the players like a joint at a hippy party. The players will get killed have a kick ass time with the adventure and you dungeon master will have PC who have been forged in the fires of the Halthrag Keep. There are several reasons to grab this adventure as well if your a dungeon master. This adventure comes with a spiffy monster book and with a bit of easy slight of hand these mad bastards could easily be repurposed for your own Dungeon Crawl Classics campaign and perhaps with a bit of easy back fitting could be dropped into your campaign so that the Keep itself becomes a dangerous but minor campaign element in your own games. This way the solo play adventure might be used to create a new adventurer should one of your players have his own characters killed off during play. With DCC this happens frequently and its a trick I've used several times over the years, especially with games such as Gamma World second edition. The Endless Quest books were dismissed by 'serious players' but I came across more then a few at various tag sales and library sales. The setting of those books were pretty damn well done and with a bit of modification became a minor back part of a campaign and introduced a brand new green horn adventurer to the group. A trick that HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep can do in spades. Do I think that The Hounds of Halthrag Keep is worth downloading? Yes and I'll go one better I think that its worth getting the physical book because my eyes are bleeding from reading the eighty nine page pdf, a physical book is so much nicer to have. Five out of five for content and inventiveness with lots of great old school and OSR fiddly bits thrown into the background. Is there a downside to this adventure? Yes in the form of it can't really be adapted to other OSR or retroclone style games. This is one of the downfalls of DCC's adventures in my opinion, while a myriad of D20 and retroclone adventures can easily be modified to DCC reverse engineering has been a problem for some folks. There is another side of HHSOLO 1 - The Hounds of Halthrag Keep in the form of a part II that expands the solo play into a full on full party of adventurers style game. Noah Stevens and co. need to get in on that right away.

Quick Review Of The Gar’Haden Family Crypt By Steve Gilman For Your Old School Campaigns

Grab It Right Over 

HERE 

The The Gar’Haden Family Crypt is a well done and quite straight forward old school adventure, the material here seems to pull from the horror filled roots of OD&D and is done with a great sense of dread and doom. The author has assembled all of his bits and pieces very well to enable a DM to drop this adventure right into his existing campaign. The design could be used as a part of a far more extensive campaign set up or as a drop and draw adventure for its intended game system which is Sword and Wizardry. The use of monsters is straight out of the S&W Monstrosities & Tome of Horrors Complete titles and the twists on the more traditional undead are surely welcome here.  The maps is well done and gives the DM exactly what's need to peer into the crypt.
This adventure could work for any number of campaign styles from straight up horror to a more sword & sorcery based campaign as well as everything in between. Style and substance are fully fleshed out here but there is plenty of meat on the bone for a DM to do their own DYI twist to add this to their own campaign. All in all a very enjoyable little romp through the grave yard and the author knows how to put together a tight,condense, and professionally done adventure. This adventure is the first to receive the Swords and Wizardry compatible logo. I meant to get this one up days ago but work has been keeping me busy and it seems sometimes the OSR titles can get away from you as an author. 

Free OSR Adventure Resource - Adventure Module BL1-2: The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming From Barrataria Games

The Ruined Hamlet/Terror in the Gloaming is an excellent free adventure resource that features the art of  William McAusland and author and designer Barrataria. The module is a solid low level crawl and features some other solid adventure resources that can be used with any number of other old school campaigns. 

The author and designers have done an excellent job of creating an adventure that can easily and quite seamlessly be incorporated into an old school campaign. The work is well done and the adventures can easily work with many of your favorite old school original D&D style games or with the retroclone of your choice.

Grab It Right 

HERE 

The basic plot of the adventure is straight out of the old school play book and works well along the usual and solid line of D&D style design and this is one of the modules strengths in my estimation. A module that offers all of the basic tips, tricks, and tools with just enough of a twist to have PC's in the middle of the adventure. The plot goes something like this The wilderness around the cave stronghold called Gold Hill Trading Post is dangerous and scattered with ruins of large and small settlements. Will your party find fame and fortune, solve ancient mysteries, or just disappear into the Borderlands like so many that came before? 

Everything here is well designed and built so that all of the adventure elements can easily be used for any number of old school adventures and this is one of the reasons why I love this module. This module contains underground and wilderness maps that form a detailed adventure and mini-campaign for beginning characters, including an abandoned village, haunted graveyard, ruined church, traders’ camp, wilderness encounters, and monster lairs. It also includes a ruined keep and dungeon as well as a mapped and detailed “base camp” stronghold. The module is designed for use with all “classic” fantasy roleplaying game rulebooks or sets for Basic- and Expert-level players and dungeon masters  It can be converted for use with “Advanced” fantasy game rules and compatible systems with a minimum of effort. Cover art by William McAusland! This is a module that has some unique changes for thieves and adds a bit of flare flare to the DM who really wants to customize this adventure as a part of their own DYI D&D style campaign. This is really one of my favorite modules to run across in recent days as I keep looking over adventures from the past couple of years. This module really has everything a DM could need or want to construct his or her own mini campaign from the resources provided. That being said this is still a deadly little adventure product. Care should be taken. This adventure works for either OD&D or AD&D styles of games but care should be taken because of the spin on some of the PC classes and their uses within this mini campaign. The artwork, maps, elements and adventure pieces in this adventure are vary welcome as well as concise details throughout make this an adventure with lots of repeat play value. This adventure could also be used for the Adventurer,Conquerer, King rpg system but it might require some adaptation.
This is more like an adventure kit as well as module so its almost like getting two products for the price of one. B1-2 can be used for quick play or as an adventure resource over and over. All in all this is a solid product and one that deserves far more air time then its gotten. 

A print version of this adventure is available right over on lulu right HERE

Free Egyptian Themed OSR Adventure Resource - TM1 The Ogress of Anubis From New Big Dragon Games Unlimited For Your Old School Campaigns

Are you looking for an old school adventure with an ancient Egyptian style theme capable of supporting a wide variety of retroclone system and with an actual challenge to you parties that can be played in one night or stretched into a mini campaign with lots of potential? And do want it for free? 

Well TM1 The Ogress of Anubis just might be your answer for your old school AD&D 1st edition or OSRic style system. 

Fully compatible with a wide variety of retroclone systems as well, this adventure offers thrills,chills, and some really nice twists on the usual themes of the pseudo Egyptian setting. 
Grab It Right
HERE

The plot follows some of the classic OD&D and basic D&D plot outlines that while we've heard as DM a million times but here  are twisted around in something that comes more out of a pulp style weird tale then the usual D&D plot line.

According to the Rpgnow blurb: 

Azeneth believed the life of the high priest (or priestess) should be as comfortable as that of the kings and the gods. She spoke her contempt for her father’s “weakness” loudly and publicly, almost from the time she learned to talk. As she neared her teens, she made it known her plan was to supplant her father and become high priestess of the temple, sometimes claiming it was her place as the incarnation of the goddess Nekhbet.

Many say Azeneth has the power to command serpents, and it was she who sent the asp that killed her father Kemosiri. Regardless, she Azeneth believed the life of the high priest (or priestess) should be as comfortable as that of the kings and the gods. She spoke her contempt for her father’s “weakness” loudly and publicly, almost from the time she learned to talk. As she neared her teens, she made it known her plan was to supplant her father and become high priestess of the temple, sometimes claiming it was her place as the incarnation of the goddess Nekhbet.

Many say Azeneth has the power to command serpents, and it was she who sent the asp that killed her father Kemosiri. Regardless, she seized her position as high priestess of the temple and set about her accumulation of power and wealth. 

Recently, children from the villages around the temple have begun to disappear. Rumors abound that Azeneth is sacrificing them and cannibalizing them because she believes this will make her wealthier, more powerful, and more divine. The people of the villages have begun to refer to Azeneth as the “ogress of Anubis”—believing it was Anubis himself that made this woman mad, and commanded her to consume the children she sacrifices. her position as high priestess of the temple and set about her accumulation of power and wealth. 

Recently, children from the villages around the temple have begun to disappear. Rumors abound that Azeneth is sacrificing them and cannibalizing them because she believes this will make her wealthier, more powerful, and more divine. The people of the villages have begun to refer to Azeneth as the “ogress of Anubis”—believing it was Anubis himself that made this woman mad, and commanded her to consume the children she sacrifices.

All of the usual suspects are in this adventure but its been written in such a way to be dropped into an existing campaign or as a convention style one shot. The module's encounters are weirdly pulpy and highly entertaining. The module works within the plot perimeters but the maps,handouts, rumors tables, allow for play expansion and can quickly be expanded into a mini campaign. Since downloading this one a few years ago, it looks as if new material has been added into the background of it. In fact it looks like a ton of new work has been added to make this one even better.
Includes the following: information for adapting to different OSR rules editions; adventure background; regional overview (small map + info on villages and wandering monsters); information on the temple compound and its vicinity (including wandering monsters); a detailed map of the temple compound; a 4-page detailed encounter key for the temple compound; new monster (animal mummy w/ 7 variants, statted for Oe/BX/1e); "generic" stats for all monsters and NPCs mentioned in the adventure; 12 pre-generated NPCs w/ details; 10 adventure seeds (for continuing adventures in the area); and 8 additional unkeyed maps (7 tombs, 2 caves, 1 sunken city) for use with the adventure seeds.

Everything here is a nice blend of mythological weirdness, old school solid encounters, and the maps and keys for the temple compound could be used for a wide variety of other games. The Animal mummies could easily be used for any old school D&D Egyptian themed game or added into the backdrop of your own campaign world and this is one of the strengths of this particular set of adventure pulpy weirdness thrown into the structure of an old school adventure.
The encounters are balanced, the maps are well done, and the whole adventure has a nice internal Egyptian style mythological tone that is perfect for both an existing D&D style game or as change up to a more old world Egyptian campaign with a touch of high weirdness in the background of it floating around.
Do I think that this adventure is worth the download? In point of fact I actually do. Here's why! This adventure can easily be added into the back drop of your favorite sword and sorcery campaign. The adventure will keep a set of PC's very busy as well. It works with a wide variety of old school retroclone or basic D&D or OD&D games and it could be used as the frame work for an existing game or as a touch stone to a whole mini campaign featuring an Egyptian style game. All in all this is a solid adventure worth your time, energy, and because its free it has a nice touch of the pulp that will challenge your adventurers and keep them coming back to the table for another round.