Dastardly, Dangerous, & Dreaming - Post Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Dragon Squad

 Dragons ruled Cha'alt ages ago, the last couple of weeks Cha'alt has been on my mind again. And it goes back to the fact that the party of Godbound have been disrupting events on Cha'alt. And the Lovecraftian Elven tribesmen have been on the PC's case. This of course is part of my on going Cha'alt/Godbound campaign. 

Dark Sun 1: color version by andybrase on DeviantArt artwork used without permission. 

The various Lovecraftian Elven worshipers are being drawn from Adventurer, Conqueror, King's Secrets of the Nethercity by Alexander Marcus & Newton Grant. These elves were originally worshippers of the ancient dragons but these have been corrupted by the demonic desert worms. And these worms have among their cult's ranks the following:the Elven Cultist, Elven Hierophant, Elven Warlord, and Elven Wizard.

Part of this campaign's NPCs are going to be drawn from Venger's July 2018 entry here.  And this brings up the PC's saving an ancient dragon priest. And this is going to happen below the streets of the city of A'agrybah. 

The ancient rivalry of worm cults vs dragon cults results in the facts that players may see full on warfare with lots of forces being called in from the planes that appear in  Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. This gives Cha'alt an almost but not quite Moorcock Stormbringer feel to it. 
The dragons are not going to stand for this & call in the PC's as Godbound to help resolve these issues. 

The PC's may have to speak with the gods of Cha'alt to help resolve this ancient & dangerous rivalry. This is where  Goblinoid Games Realms of Crawling Chaos is a Cthulhu sent resource. Because it includes lots of artifacts,technologies, etc. that can all be created through the book's random charts. 

Cha'alt has a ton of weird Elves that can be used as stand ins for the NPC Lovecraftian worm cult. 

The dungeon that we're going to be using is going be two or three randomly created ancient temple complexes. 

The Good, The Bad, & The Lovecraftian - Post Apocalyptic Lovecraftian Death Squad One Shot Encounter Updated

 One of the ideas that I've been toying with over the last couple of months with my campaigns is a down & dirty Cha'alt NPC death squad & for this I wanted to break out one of the OSR classics. So Goblinoid Games Realms of Crawling Chaos is gonna get a bit of a workout. This of course is part of my on going Cha'alt/Godbound campaign. 

The idea is that my player's PC's have been causing all kinds of havoc for the lords of Elysium & there's a hit out on the party at this point. And the party has been disrupting the lines of red zoth & xanthium-183 production.  But I don't wanna use some of the standard Dungeons & Dragons or Advanced books for some of this & Cha'alt is way too well known at this point to my players. What too do?! Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book is there with an answers. Well, not only do I have access to my copy of the Manual of the Planes but combined with  Realms of Crawling Chaos I've got a go to otherworldly resource of insanity!



How does this work? Well think Jack Kirby meets Lovecraft in a back alley. There's an exchange of money & then a group of inhuman adventurers appears made up of white apes, white ape hybrids, sea blood, and subhumans. We're talking about a group of NPC's who are 10th & above level here with perhaps a summoned upper level Lovecraft monster as leader such as a Mi Go or something equally nasty.
This party of mercenaries is often used to hunt down & take out any adventurers or others who get in the way of the interests of cults, cabals, & other organizations who are furthering the agenda of the mythos or its powers.



Reaper Bones Mi Go miniatures

So we are talking about a very alien group of mercenaries & I'm using this term in the loosest sense of the word. These are monsters who are hanging out in some of the most alien areas of the planes. This is where Jeff Grubb's Manual of the Planes for the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons book comes in. You can easily design some of the more alien lairs, bases, & dungeons for such a hit squad. This is the idea where such Eldritch come into my games! These monsters have a tendency to be treated as stagnant & really need to be exploited far more! And they need to be dynamic!


Eldritch Demon Reaper Miniatures miniature 

Using both Goblinoid Games Realms of Crawling Chaos & the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Manual of the Planes a DM can string together a cult, worlds, organizations, etc. for the Lovecraftian horrors of their games. This enables them to create such horrors with impunity to go after their PC's with abandon. Such death squads will often appear to originate within post apocalyptic horror worlds especially in books,films, & video games. Fortunately Goblinoid Games already has this covered as well with Mutant Future.


Not my books but one that came up in a random Google search.

I'm gonna state this again this isn't a random encounter this is an active group of NPC's that are sent to go after your PC's with abandoned. They will go all out to kill them & eradicate them with extreme prejudice! These folks are chaos & evil incarnate so this isn't a dungeon encounter per say. This is meant to be an all out encounter in either the wilderness or an urban setting. 

OSR Commentary On The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook By Tim Snider For The Mutant Future Rpg & Other OSR Post Apocalytic Campaigns

 Let's pick this blog entry up from the last time we were working with Goblinoid Games here.  It's been a couple of years since Thundarr The Barbarian was popped in the old Blu ray player. But after a long game night tonight it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. Thundarr The Barbarian ran from 1980 -1981 and was way ahead of it's time in many ways. Thundarr The Barbarian was also partially responsible for getting me into the Savage Afterworld blog back in 2009. 

In many respects Thundarr The Barbarian was hugely responsible for me getting into Metamorphis Alpha & the  Gamma World 1st edition rpg's respectively. The series ruled Saturday mornings for many years & according to the Mutant Future wiki ; "Thundarr the Barbarian is a Saturday morning cartoon series, created by Joe Ruby and Steve Gerber (of Howard the Duck fame), and produced by Ruby-Spears Productions (a studio made up of former members of Hanna-Barbera Productions). This is a show about a stubborn Barbarian (Thundarr), a know-it-all Sorceress (Princess Ariel), and a Wookiee-like Beast (Ookla the Mok) who roam the post-apocalyptic wasteland fighting savage mutants, and evil-wizards wherever they travel. The main characters are designed by famed comic book artist Alex Toth, and when he became unavailable, Jack Kirby (another famous comic book artist ) took over to design most of the villains and secondary characters." 
Binge rewatching the entire two seasons brings a few things to mind here. First there was a lot of weird technologies happening in the world of the Ancients. Did the Ancients actually summon the comet accidently or on purpose back in 1994? Looking through this Enworld thread about Thundarr The Barbarian as D&D setting from 2018 member Thomas Bowman brings up a solid point; 'A giant comet passed close to the Earth, more like a rogue planet to show the tidal effects in the opening sequence. My guess is, for the purposes of this campaign, the "comet" was no ordinary comet, the disasters shown were only the tip of the ice berg, the comet opened up a rift with other dimensions, and when that rift opened, some other creatures stepped through and magic was unleashed unto the world, this also had a detrimental effect on technology, and for a while this technology ceased to operate, this caused the death of billions of people, from which only a few survived, because without the technology and the transportation networks, most people starved to death, some of whom survived by cannibalism, and the descendants of those people still live today. Some people, such as Ariel's people learned to use magic. After a decade or two technology became functional again, but by that time it was too late, the damage was done, the World had reverted to savagery.' This really is the way I'd play Thundarr The Barbarian as a campaign. But the heavy lifting for a Thundarr The Barbarian campaign was already done by Sniderman of The Savage Afterworld with  THE WORLD OF THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN FOR MUTANT FUTURE. The free sourcebook is on the right hand side of the page with the Thundarr The Barbarian cover that looks like this. 

The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook By Tim Snider goes into most of the major NPC characters, many of the monsters,artifacts, & more of Thundarr's world. For me the The Free Thundarr The Barbarian Sourcebook hits all of the major high points. But there's one villain that defines Thundarr's world. Gemini is a major villain within Thundarr and we almost get a sense that Thundarr & co have clashed with him in minor ways before his appearance 'In Secret of the Black Pearl.' Gemini next appears In Last Train to Doomsday, Thundarr encountered Janus and after Gemini was revealed to be alive. In between & after these episodes the other wizards in Thundarr's world seem to grow far more bold. And within Thundarr's world I believe that Gemini was a stablizing force on the wizard's council. After his defeat, North America's wastelands become open & ripe for conquest. So the wizards of North America go to war over the domains open up by Gemini's defeat. Why?! Because of the fact that wizards are insane, crave power, and Gemini's holdings  were up for grabs. Wizards probably control millions of slaves & these are held within wizard's kingdoms. Mutant mercenary forces are the norm with a mix of human & mutant slaves toiling away for the wizard masters. 
There were hardly any human settlements as Thundarr rode through the wastelands of North America. Gemini controlled the wizard's council & the North American wastes through a combination of fear, power, reputation, & magic. His defeat meant the break up of the kingdom of Manhat. But this only one of his holdings which is why he fell back to his Janus persona. Gemini needed time to heal, regroup, & deal from the shadows with his rival wizards. Gemini could only deal with his loyal hawkoid mutants. 
Reading between the lines that Gemini controlled at least three or four types of mutant mercenaries & I would almost think that it would also be ape gangsters around the Chicago area of the wastes. Here's where  Mark Hunt's B/X Gangbusters edition comes in very handy to create such gangs especially mixed with Apes Victorious! 

The kingdom of Manhat supported Gemini's manufacturing base then it's not hard to see that a group of wizards could theoritically completely transform the face of North America. And here's where Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg with it's domain play would come in handy. 
But no one wizard would help to heal the wounds of the world of Thundarr. Why?! Because almost everyone of them is utterly & completely insane.  Thundarr's world could easily connect with the Elsewhere but those wastes could be another potential source of monsters, mayhem, and insanity. 

Goblinoid Games Blues - Creating the Wretched Elsewhere campaignscape

So let's pick this right up from yesterday's blog entry here. So with Goblinoid Games almost completely ceasing operations, it was inevitable that we started talking about Goblinoid Games OSR titles. And about 90% of those titles are actually open game content. My mind drifts back to Apes Victorious. 



And the fact Avalidad makes reference to mutants as criminals & weird outcast citizens. And my mind keeps returning to the underdweller PC class. The underdwellers in Apes Victorious have it going on. They have high levels of dimensional gate technologies, energy weapons, and know how the Ancients technology functions. Underdwellers in the Mutant Future rpg according to Rpg Pub forum member Klibbix! appear as folllows:

UNDERDWELLER

Class: Mutant Human

Mutations: Albinism, Telepathy, Mental Phantasm

But what happens if we take the underdwellers out of their Apes Victorious & Planet of the Apes setting. And bring them over into Avalidad. They become another mutant faction in a world where mutantkind are a reality. But why are they so reviled?!  Because of the fact that many of the mutantkind running around the world of 2088 or so are artificially created. And this is also true of Mutant Future where over the years I've run a soft post apocalptyic landscape which feels more like Cyberpunk or Bio punk then anything else. 

The post apocalpytic world of my campaigns is called Elsewhere a place that exists as dimensional anomoly. Elsewhere is the Thundarr the Barbarian world that seems to be a wasteland of mankind's future but isn't. Instead Elsewhere is a nightmare fueled hellscape where mankind is sliding to extinction, mutantkind is on the rise, and this dimension crossover to future Earth. And the fact is that no one notices this. Elsewhere is actually one of the prisons of the Great Old Ones & the Outer Gods but it's also the source for many artifacts from Realms of Crawling Chaos. Elsewhere is also the home of wizards, warlocks, & sorcerers who make bargains with the Lovecraftian entities for occult power & ulitmately themselves mutate. 
And Elsewhere is also the home of Orcs, Elfs, etc. who cross over into the world to become gangsters, thieves, etc. all in an effort to carve out their place on Earth. Needless to say that for that we've used  Labyrinth Lord: Revised Edition & the Advanced Companion . And these two Goblinoid Games titles are easy as pie to use with Mark Hunt's B/X Gangbusters edition to create the gangs to really screw with player's PC's. 

Now for the record Elsewhere has apekind as well but it's not clear who or what created them. They frequently appear within gangs, as criminal king pins, honest business men, etc. 

'Menace of From X1 The Isle of Dread ' - Lost In The Eighties! LoFP Carcosa & OSR Actual Play Session - Extension

 Expert  Dungeons & Dragons X1 The Isle of Dread by Dave Cook & Tom Moldvay is a module that we keep coming back to and its been playing on my mind for a long while now. And after watching through Seth Skorkowsky's Isle of Dread review  last night I came upon his idea with the Kopru eggs. This blog entry ties into the Lost In The Eighties! LoFP Carcosa & OSR Actual Play Session - Extension. 

Here we tie X1 onto Carcosa with the isle there. Go and watch the review. But the idea of the last two Kopru are guarding millions of eggs is very compelling & very Lovecraftian. Now let's take the idea that the Kopru empire having once held thousands of worlds within their slimy tentacled grasp. Evolve this idea further & extend it into the modern nights and the Kopru become a major threat to the Earth. 

The Kopru ruins from the TSR archive originally from Darrin Drader for 3.5 Dungeons & Dragons works very well for illutstrating the dangers that these ancient Lovecraftian horrors are to any humanoid life around them. Would the Kopru get along with other Lovecraftian life forms such as the Deep Ones?! No not all in my mind for several reasons. 1. The human population is a major resource for these Lovecraftian races. 2. Both Lovecraftian races are majorly Xenophobic & very terroritial. 3nd These two Lovecraftian races serve completely gods and masters! 

All of this leads into the fact that the Kopru would love to begin spreading their alien influece across the modern world quite easily through enchanted statues, artwork, and artifacts. The Kopru are a huge menace just waiting to hatch upon the modern nights easily. 

The Kopru may have access to planar gateways that extend among the planes & this could easily explain their presence in the modern nights. According to the Greyhawkonline.com wiki in the Kopru history; "Most kopru cities were founded over 3,000 years ago during a period in which their basic food source, a clam mollusk known as the kopura, thrived beneath the southern oceans. The kopru shamans of Demogorgon used their demonic magic to transform the largest kopura into fiendish creatures that produced black pearls the shamans used to work terrible magic. The kopru enslaved sahuagin, locathah, and aquatic elves, occasionally allying with the kuo-toas but warring with the ixitxachitls.

About 2,000 years ago, when the kopru civilization was at its peak, a mysterious disease decimated the kopura, marking the beginning of the koprus' decline. They began to kill and eat their slaves, and in some cases their nobles began to prey on lower-ranking members of their own kind. The kopru city-states went to war with each other.

Around 1,500 years ago a great rebellion of the kopru slaves caused the destruction of most kopru cities. Their leaders were hunted down and killed, and kopru society has been a savage shadow of its former self ever since." 
Could this in point of fact be a part of their alien life cycles where only the fittest survive to guard the next cycle of the Kopru race. And given the fact that perhaps millions of Kopru could  be just about ready to hatch these new menaces could be poised to invade Freisberg! 

And this ties into the fact that Friesberg's supernatural races & PC's serve as a kind of supernatural Earthly immune system. The space craft the PC's faced last session is going to drop them into the Kopru ruins and things about to get interesting. 

Lost In The Eighties! LoFP Carcosa & OSR Actual Play Session - Extension

 

So we've been picking up on an old OSR campaign game I ran awhile back 'Lost in the Eighties' wayback in 2018.  And we decided to revisit the game with our current Veterans of the Supernatural Wars PC's. And this all begins with the PC's crossing paths with Iram Vep and Les Vampires in America about 1985. Les Vampires are band of asssasins & thieves who are actually vampires! They broke into the home of a retired adventurer & stole the Ring of Ravago. The ring is literally a ring of gold brass material & the vampires had killed the adventurer when the PC's broke into the three story house. A fire fight ensued and the ring was activated when a stray bullet hit the right after the PC rolled a one. 

Artwork used without permission

Iram Vep and Les Vampires were not caught in the magick back blast but the PC's were! They found thenmselves within another fire fight on Carcosa between a group of blue men & green! The PC's kept their heads down until three fast moving & highly dangerous alien space craft chased off both groups! 

The PC's remained hidden behind a ruined wall & the space craft zipped off in quick sucession. The whole affair lasted a few moments. A few moments later the PC's heard a strangled scream from an old man. They rushed to his aid just as one of the space craft was beaming an ancient purple man aboard. The PC's Mystic martial artist Quan Linn dived into the ray and grabbed him. And just before they had a lock on him & they rolled out of the way. The ships left in a flash. 
Wi Granna a purple sorcerer of Law was grateful to the martial artist and took the PC's to his stone hut nearby. And Wi Granna was able to activate the ring using blood from each of the player characters. But is it ever a good idea to give a sorcerer your blood!? 
The PC's found themselves back in the middle of Friesburg Pine Court Mall surrounded by shocked shoppers?! 
The PC's were wondering why Friesburg Pine Court Mall ?! And they were missing over 24 hours that had vanished! And as they left the mall to call a cab things started to get weird. The sky turned an odd colour and the party heard the familar whine of the space craft they had just seen! And this is where we closed our session on! 

So we're using the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars Rpg Companion which adds a ton of options for the B/X D&D driven given. The mix of Lovecraftian & occult horror movie PC options are some of my favorites. 

Five Mirrors Of Terror For Your Old School Horror Campaigns

 

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.
Ernest Holmes

 Five Mirrors Of Terror

1. Etulariaelago's Glass - This intricate piece of bronze and glass seems almost warm to the touch. Created in Germany in the 1600's this wonderful piece not only reflects the owner but their hidden desires that seem to dark right out of the corner of their eyes. The piece contains a "phantasmal force entity" - This 4 hit point monster will do the owners bidding for a time but after 1d4 months the beast will tire of the current owner and look for a more malevolent master. The thing travels through the mirrors or reflective surfaces of world carefully choosing it's moment to strike. The thing's claw of light and hate wounds for 1d6 points of damage and most of its kills are arranged to look as if accidents. 
2. Glandurchilkor's Vision - This cheap five and dime creation from Japan is actually the work of a gifted street shaman from the 60's. The glass shows the reflection of the person gazing into it and the state of their soul. A Pit fiend of the most cunning type has been bound into the thing and wishes the most secret desire of the holder and how to carry out these cunning plans. The demon will offer more and more twisted tid bits of wisdom but there is a price. There is always a price. The mirror can't be destroyed, it heals as if a troll. The glass has many twisted bits of plastic and brass along its edge giving some insight into its history. 
3. Hael The Travelers  Friend - This glass will take a user between this world and the four other dimensional locations or alternative worlds its connected with. Getting back requires luck, blood, and enduring the horrors found between the worlds. This piece was created more then one hundred years ago by a mad optician using bits of his own mind. The piece has a wicked sense of humor as well. 
4. Korgogbar's Goblin - This incredibly expensive piece of brass, polished glass, and stone work is actually the body of Hans Korgobar who was twisted into this amazing work. Hans stumbled upon a goblin magician and for his troubles became basis of this piece. The mirror reflects not only the user but the darkest aspects of the world of faerie as well. They see you and you see them. The mirror bestow's a twisted version of the "fey sight" but only allows one to see the darkest aspects of that world. Only a quest of the highest horror always one to gain the full sight but madness may claim you by then. 
5. Loduguli The Lake's Surface - This glass reflects no only the roadway upon which it sat but also the lochs, lakes, and bodies of water around the world. The mirror however has a price for those gaze into its surface. A water spirit of the darkest stripe takes the dearest one of the owner of this piece of road way glass. 
   The glass allows the owner to see and hear all going on around each and every lake this piece is connected to and travel to those places almost instantly. The glass will take a person sometimes randomly every 1d8 months. It is a very hungry piece. 
   

'The Godzilla vs Cthulhu' OSR Campaign Set Up Revised For Mutant Future

Tonight its been one of those nights where classic 50's, 60's,70's, & even the 90's giant  monster flicks have occupied my thoughts with the release of King Kong Vs Godzilla film material with the first look. There's a bit of a big reveal folks on the video below & I was throwing down with Dangerville folks. Major possible spoilers in the video for King Kong Vs Godzilla. As G fan its a great time to be waiting on the film. 

Its been one of those days where I find myself drifting back to thoughts about Ishihara Gōjin the incredible children's artist & illustrator from Japan. Going back to 2011 & an article by Cyriaque Lamar on Gizmodo the incredible artwork of Ishihara Gōjin came my way. This stuff is just great for a resource for an old school or OSR giant monster campaign! This inner Earth world might be the actual source of both the strange radiations & giant mutant monsters of the Mutant Future rpg! 


According to the article;  "Gōjin Ishihara's profoundly weird children's art. In 1969. a Japanese magazine published these exceedingly intense depictions of life at the center of our planet. Taking cues from Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Lost World, these drawings and diagrams are the strange remnants of some plesiosaur-filled fever dream."
These children's magazine artwork are like something that a nine year old would be dreaming up. These would be perfect fodder for a Gamma World or Mutant Future rpg campaign. 

This is one of the most normal art pieces that I've seen. But the second one in the article is like something straight out of the classic Journey to the Center of Earth Verne book on steroids! And has a spin on the classic 'giant mushrooms at the center of the Earth trope. 

There is so much going on here that it reminds me of the classic Eighties cartoon 'The  Inhumanoids!' The Evil That Lies Within' another creation from the mind of Flint Dille from Eighty Six a line of toys,comic books & a very dark cartoon. This property was balls to the walls nuts! 

This is  especially the second piece of artwork which references the magnetic anomalies pf the Earth's poles & center of the Earth as giant magnetic generator! Better hand onto that hand gun & your air tanks!  

things really start to heat up with the lava rivers & fiery monsters that is normal for the inner world! There is so much to unpack in this piece of artwork from the bone fields to the full on river rafting down the lava! 

We get into the fire kaiju. salamander style mutant  antagonist in the final art piece that references both the Verne book 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'  & the classic Edgar  Rice Burroughs 'Pellucidar' stories!These elementally immune mutant monster species  reminds me of several Dungeons & Dragons monsters that we've seen over the years especially the  tarrasque. Those eggs pictured are going to be very valuable. But watch out for that hatchling!

The next piece we get into the actual layout & locations of the inner Earth featured in the magazine article prime pieces for the enterprising dungeon master who wants to use these adventure locations! We get a bit of a layout for the inner Earth's diagram & possible physical locations. 

We get a Richer Shaver mystery style magnetic rail car system left over from the Ancients. This system seems incredibly dangerous to me & crosses the Earth at different points with the pictographs indicating a world spanning system. 

Finally we get one a spin off of the Mahar splinter colony with a mutant shoggoth slaves/servants. This is one of the most dangerous areas that PC's could find themselves in! So there is a such a great deal of material that Ishihara Gōjin packs into his art & material. 

So besides using Ishihara Gōjin's artwork as inspiration for an old school campaign there's lots of gaming inspiration & adventure influence that can be had here. Now besides the obvious Gamma World/Mutant Future campaign material here. What I would do is take Ishihara Gōjin's artwork & go that extra mile with it. I'd take AC9 'The Creature Catalog' & use that source of an Inner Earth campaign. 

Add in Big Jim's P.A.C.K. which we covered last we & your ready to go with an off beat and very well done campaign jump off point. Take this whole cloth campaign & simmer with X1 'Isle of Dread' & your ready to run a complete campaign! 

 Add in a planar gate way or two to Carcosa & you've got one of the sources of every mutant monster & Kaiju induced mutation on planet Earth for ages to come! But let's say you want even more of a Lovecraftian tie in?! Well if we take Call of Cthulhu's 'Secrets of Japan' then we get a complete break down of Godzilla even though he isn't called Godzilla. 

In fact this inner Earth sets up a complete Godzilla vs Cthulhu campaign setting from the ground up! We've got everything completely to explain every single Lovecraftian monster, mutant, and deviant from the ground up! This was a perfect set up from Famous Monsters of Filmland artwork by "Godzilla Vs. Cthulhu" artwork by Bob Eggleton! 



This is exactly where Goblinoid Games Realms of Crawling Chaos comes in very handy! The book literally can create scads of weird Lovecraftian relics & monsters at the drop of a hat! Really well done OSR book & perfect for just this sort of a campaign. 

The Lost World By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle As Old School Campaign Setting

Nineteen Seventy Four was a killer year if you were a dinosaur fanatic like I was as a kid. Let me start off with a bit of quick background. I got an email request about a generic OD&D, AD&D, & OSR friendly non commercial setting that could be quickly set up & ready to go. Now why I mention Seventy four is because of the other Saturday morning cartoon show from Hanna Barbara that never gets mentioned. Yes I'm talking about; "Valley of the Dinosaurs is a 30-minute Saturday morning animated series produced by the Australian studios of Hanna-Barbera Productions and broadcast on CBS from September 7 to December 21, 1974."  Basically many folks see it as a poor man's Land of the Lost and while it shares many similarities with that show. There are some distinctions & one of those is the geographic location of Land of the Lost.

With that iconic voice over coming over the tube in the early morning you were tuning in to see dinosaurs. I was thinking about the fact that they had taken a good portion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World and dropped in their characters into it. And that's where we begin to diverge from Valley of The Dinosaurs. I'm talking about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel from 1912 & not the Michael Crichton novel from which we gets so many iconic CGI dinosaurs.Instead we're talking about one of the first block buster speculative fiction adventure novels of its time;"The Lost World is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle concerning an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin of South America where prehistoric animals (dinosaurs and other extinct creatures) still survive. It was originally published serially in the popular Strand Magazine and illustrated by New-Zealand-born artist Harry Rountree during the months of April–November 1912. The character of Professor Challenger was introduced in this book. The novel also describes a war between indigenous people and a vicious tribe of ape-like creatures." Yeah pay attention to those vicious tribes of ape like creatures because they'll become very important in a moment. "The Lost World is a 1925 silent fantasy adventure film adaptated from Arthur Conan Doyle's 1912 novel of the same name. The movie was produced by First National Pictures, a major Hollywood studio at the time, and stars Wallace Beery as Professor Challenger. It was directed by Harry O. Hoyt and featured pioneering stop motion special effects by Willis O'Brien, a forerunner of his work on the original King Kong. Doyle, who also created Sherlock Holmes, appears in a frontispiece to the film, absent from some extant prints."
Below is the complete and updated version of the film The Lost World and its an excellent resource of the film you can find it over at the Internet Archive. It runs for about one hour & sixteen minutes.

The plot is one that we've seen a million times in paperbacks and pulp magazines but this is one of the best uses of the lost prehistoric world its also one of the seminal classics; "Edward Malone, a reporter for the Daily Gazette, asks his news editor, McArdle, for a dangerous and adventurous mission in order to impress the woman he loves, Gladys Hungerton. He is sent to interview the cantankerous Professor Challenger, who has become notorious for claims made about his recent expedition to South America. The professor has been plagued by intrusive reporters and, being a formidable man of great strength, has taken to forcibly ejecting them, despite the resulting police prosecutions. To gain entry Malone pretends to be an honest enquirer, but is quickly discovered, assaulted and thrown into the street. Although this is witnessed by a policeman, Malone does not press charges as the original deceit was his. Challenger is suitably impressed, and decides to reveal something of his discovery of living dinosaurs in South America. Malone is invited to a scientific gathering that evening at which he volunteers, along with the biologist Professor Summerlee and the Amazon adventurer Lord John Roxton, to travel to South America to investigate the claims. After a long and arduous journey they reach the plateau. But one of their local guides has a score to settle with Roxton and destroys their temporary bridge across a precipice, trapping the explorers on the dinosaurs' plateau, where he expects them to meet their deaths.

On the plateau, the explorers encounter five iguanodons and are later attacked by pterodactyls, and Roxton finds some blue clay in which he takes a great interest. After numerous encounters with dinosaurs, Challenger, Summerlee, and Roxton are captured by a race of 'ape-men'. While in the ape-men's village, they discover a tribe of anatomically-modern humans (calling themselves Accala) inhabiting the other side of the plateau, with whom the ape-men (called Doda by the Accala) are at war. With the help of the expedition's firepower, the Accala conquer the ape-men; and insist that the expedition remain on the plateau. With the help from the young prince of the Accala, whom they had saved from the ape-men, the expedition discover a tunnel to the outside world, where they join a large rescue party. Upon return to England, they present their report, which include pictures and a newspaper report by Malone; but they are disbelieved by the public, until Challenger shows a live pterodactyl as proof, which then escapes into the Atlantic Ocean. At dinner, Roxton reveals that the blue clay contains diamonds, about £200,000 worth, to be split between them. Challenger plans to open a private museum, Summerlee plans to retire and categorize fossils, and Roxton plans to return to the lost world. Malone returns to his love, Gladys, only to find that she had married a solicitor's clerk in his absence. He therefore volunteers to join Roxton's voyage."

So what is it about the Conan Doyle book that is so important? Well Maple White Land is a hidden prehistoric  world on a South American plateau. It has all of the classic ingredients of the lost world genre & its all public domain. Many gamers haven't even read the book and so its wide open for exploitation by enterprising dungeon masters. In fact Maple White Land is a perfect OSR setting & recently I got the chance to play in a very different game by a friend. Glen is a DM up in Litchfield Ct that I've known for years whose DMing a very different sort of OSR campaign inspired by Sir Arthur Conan's The Lost World with few pulpy twists of his own.


Glen is a first edition AD&D dungeon master and retroclone enthusiast like I'm and loves to tinker with settings. Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World is easily adaptable to a number of OSR style games. With all of the classic setting material available its easy to see why. Here's how one dungeon master has made it his default OSR setting.




He's taken the setting of Maple White Land and made it into a hot house laboratory for HG Well's Morlocks of Time Machine  fame who are actually the vicious ape like humanoids that Professor Challenger's party fights and defeats. These are a variation of the Labyrinth Lord Morlocks able to go out in daylight but just as degenerate as their overseers.
The Morlocks are not the original owners of the laboratory but we'll get to the original owners  in a second. The campaign was actually inspired by a mash up of Goblinoid Games Labyrinth Lord retroclone systems & Mutant Future as well as Realms of Crawling Chaos thrown in for good measure. The setting was generated using the classic book. The Morlocks have been maintaining the systems of Maple White land for a very long time but their purpose is most likely the same as the time machine.

The original owners of Maple White land are H.P. Lovecraft's Old Ones who used this location as a biological breeding facility for alien and unknown purposes. Glen's campaign uses Lamentations of the Flame Princess real history conceit to add in his PC's at various times of history finding Maple White Land mixed in with some of the alien tech of World of the Lost plus bits of LoFP's Carcosa. Let's just say that there are certain tunnels you really don't want to go down in his version of Maple White Land.



Another aspect that Glen has mixed in is the inclusion of Maple White Land's Plateau surviving an apocalyptic event. Here your PC's are mutant cave men adventurers trying to survive in a mutated world gone mad. The Morlocks have spread out into the world and things are starting to get weird as Iguanodon

,Stegosaurus,  Allosaurus ,Megalosaurus , Apatosaurus  have spread to the Florida panhandle and the world has been terriformed into a jungle wasteland. There are deep connections to Rafael Chandler's 2016 supplement "The World of the Lost" but I can't get into them here because several of Glen's players read this blog. If you haven't picked up LoFP's World of the Lost I suggest you do, its a good solid campaign & toolbox plus its a good read packed with useful OSR stuff.


The Lost World remains a public domain resource that seems to seldom get mentioned in OSR circles which is too bad. The book would make an excellent excursion for Dark Albion as well with expeditions being mounted to Maple White Land for all kinds of natural resources. The book has the potential to be an exceptional old school campaign if a DM wants to put the time and effort into mapping it out.



You Can Download
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World For Free
HERE