Old School Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Adventures As Micro Campaign Settings Outline and Write Ups

 There are lone lost world settings that your PC's stumble upon and their perfect for pulpy mini campaigns but why?

So over the last couple of months I've been rereading old classic TSR modules and various OSR adventures including the recent World of the Lost From Rafael Chandler and the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg line. Right but then I started thinking about some of the classic Advanced Dungeons and Dragons modules especially C1  The Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan & I1 Dwellers of The Forbidden City. Both of these modules over the years I've seen sewn together to form an over arching lost world jungle. Something that occurs to me is how these adventures each could be used as a part of a mini lost world campaign.
These two modules back to back are deadly and very dangerous to one another but whose maintaining those ruins, traps, etc in both modules?  In world of the lost we get a glimpse of a campaign mechanism that helps to maintain the world of Khirima's adventure materials. And yes I understand that it takes place in a fantasy Nigeria that  the C1 I1 take place in a faux South American lost world setting but as we shall see there are parallels. Both adventures have incredibly expansive ruins that can be linked up to form a super mini campaign setting but when some fool stumbles upon these places whose maintaining the ruins, resetting the traps, and why are they doing this?
 

If Dwellers in the Forbidden City and Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth then we start to get our answer, its precisely the same sort of setting conceit that we see in the Raiders of the Lost Ark. The Hovitos are a South American  tribe who are descended from the Chachapoyans who came to house their golden Earth mother statue within that elaborate temple. A temple that was maintained for generations and reset. Add in the various factions of the  various power groups and factions within the city, namely the bugbears, mongrelmen, and bullywugs, add to this a boat load of human tribes in both modules and suddenly that jungle is going to be very busy indeed. This brings me to the micro setting aspect. Both of these modules have another commonality with many of the OSR modules we've seen recently. Namely the fact that married together they can be used to create a mini campaign that could go for months. 


Oh for the record don't screw with the Hovitos you will die with lots of poison arrows, and blow gun darts hanging from your PC's. Back to what I was saying many of the faux deities of these modules serve many of the same purposes as the gods in World of the Lost. A safety valve of control over aspects of tribal life and one that PC's might want to think twice about disturbing. Many times the destruction of petty gods or deities is a perfect time for DM's to set NPC assassins and warriors to punish the offenders. A tactic that often times seems to get ignored. World of the Lost presents a very dangerous option in the form of warrior women armed with high tech death tools of the gods should the need arise for the dungeon master.

The other parell between these various lost worlds is the placement of them, the dungeon master has a further option by deciding if he or she wants to make these locations other worldly or simply another lost world location to be exploited. After reading through various modules and pouring over a few OSR articles on the subject.   

I've come to the foregone conclusion of using both options at the table that is the idea of a lost world location that exists extra dimensional but at times impinges on the 'real world' of the campaign drifting into myth and legends of the locals and that can act as another PC sword and sorcery hook to rope them into more adventure. The pseudo African setting of World of the Lost dovetails into a whole sub realm of lost world African legends with dinosaurs and all kinds of high end mythology even crossing over into the ancient gods and UFO mythologies. A fertile ground to plan the next series of death traps and adventures, using a variety of both OSR and old school options DM's have fodder for seven or eight micro campaigns or mini campaigns as they see fit.


This sort of approach of using a limited number of campaign resources allows the DM to save time, energy, and playing time by focusing his or her energies upon the setting, adventures, and campaign motives while maximizing their approach to the role playing material. This gives both the players the best over all playing experience and takes some of the stress off of the DM so they can concentrate on important things like where the PC's might get killed and where the links are to other adventure and campaign elements.

Commentary On The Kong: Skull Island Movie Trailer, Lost Worlds, The Isle Of Dread, & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Filled with prehistoric beasts, weird lost world tribes, incredible dangers, and wild random encounters Isle of Dread might come off as the latest Hollywood blockbuster but it's actually a classic 1981 adventure module.Much of its gaming DNA has lots in common with the latest trailer release for Kong:Skull Island as we'll see.

 So last night I went to go pick up the wife from the bus station, and I was able to keep on top of the newest Skull Island movie trailer. This looks very well done with an ensemble cast & a complete set up for the new Godzilla vs King Kong movie that is going to be up coming. This trailer set's everything up for the film but there's lots of details in this trailer in point of fact too many in my opinion. Between this and the first trailer, we almost get a good solid overview of the entire assembled movie. But there are details that really struck me as an old school dungeon master.

There are lots of things that jumped out at me but it was the wonderful piece of cartography that is shown in the trailer of Kong's Skull Island. The map seems very similar to one that I'd study for hours as a kid, the map of the Isle of Dread seems very similar in point of fact. There are lots points of interest in both lost world properties that can offer an old school DM some great adventure hex crawling fodder.


This map is the latest incarnation of Skull Island & ties in closely with the set up of the 2015 Godzilla movie.  "King Kong vs. Godzilla (キングコング対ゴジラ Kingu Kongu Tai Gojira^?) is a 1962 Japanese science-fiction kaiju film featuring King Kong and Godzilla, produced and distributed by Toho. It is the third film in the Godzilla franchise and Showa series and the first of two Japanese-produced films featuring King Kong. It is also the first time both characters appeared on film in color and widescreen" This ties in with the land of monsters idea of the 'Monster Island' that was put forward in the Godzilla 60's, 70's, & 80's. The revival of the franchise ties in with the ideas that were put forward in the Isle of Dread in 1981;"The Isle of Dread is meant to introduce players and Dungeon Masters familiar with only dungeon crawl-style adventures to wilderness exploration.^[4][5][6] As such, the adventure has only a very simple plot, even by the standards of its time.^[7] The module has been described as a medium to high level scenario, which takes place on a mysterious tropical island divided by an ancient stone wall"  Simple plot, lots of factions of monsters & races, a much great threat, and an adventure location chuck full of random wilderness encounters. Basically I mentioned that the Isle of Dread is an adventure tool kit that can be customized as the DM sees fit.

This brings me back to the 1930's King Kong from which The Isle of Dread draws it's inspiration from,"Hundreds of miles from the mainland, surrounded by dangerous waters, lies an island known only as the Isle of Dread. Dark jungles and treacherous swamps await those who are brave enough to travel inland in search of the lost plateau, where the ruins of a once mighty civilization hold many treasures - and many secrets!" which sounds incredibly like Skull Island from the 1930's King Kong. How does this tie into Monster Island from Toho studios?


There's been much fan speculation over the years that both landmasses Skull Island & Monster Island once belonged to the same super continent that led to the fighting of both Godzilla's & King Kong's original species within their prehistoric world. This was something that the original Dell comic book speculated about way back in the 1960's.


One of the things that we never really see are the pulpy native factions who inhabit both Skull Island & Monster Island. These folks might be the remains of tribes Atlantis, MU, Lemuria or some other far older forgotten lost civilization. This is another commonality with the Isle of Dread. 
What makes the isle so unique is the number of small factions who exploit one another and the landscape all of the while back connecting everything around the pulpy elements of the adventure and yet it works in spades because of the attention to details that David "Zeb" Cook and Tom Moldvay have infused in this module. This makes running an adventure a snap with the right resources.
A solid resource for running a campaign in this area issue #3 of Threshold magazine. This issue is titled The Sea of Dread and contains a virtual ton of information and twists about the region of the sea, everything you would want to know is in there about this area of the Sea of Dread. This resource contains the inhabitants of the area, articles on minor islands in the area, the pirates, raiders &  merchant princes of the sea, a ton of background material ready to drop into your game and much more. This issue clocks in at two hundred and forty eight pages of lost world goodness. This makes it a very nice lost world bit to connect into a Swords & Wizardry game or another retroclone system.




All of this can be back connected into a retroclone system such as Dark Albion which has some edges of the map begging for a lost world adventure. The ramifications of a lost world in Dark Albion would be monumental especially for the political & resource driven nature of a domain level game. Imagine the in fighting & murder plots such a land would cause during the Rose War of Dark Albion. The bodies would stack up like cord wood as the economic fall out causes chaos at court. This might be one of the prime reasons to have an NPC occultist like John Dee

whose library might contain a vital map, artifact text, or some other piece of occult knowledge vital to the voyage.


If we take the other worldly or occult aspect further we could take Isle of Dread as a 'Bermuda Triangle' style lost island this allows the DM to hook it up with a sword & sorcery game such as Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. An island of lost souls & castaways which has claimed hundreds of lives over the centuries and the PC's are the latest victims of the other dimensional forces. With only three days to go on the AS&SH second edition Kickstarter I've seen several DM's scrambling  to get a campaign together for the game. A mixed game such as Isle of Dread allows a mixed party of adventurers of all stripes working together towards the common goals of escaping the island and its faction or ruling it. Because AS&SH works very well with Dark Albion the retroclone tableau is fairly open for all kinds of cross retroclone setting mayhem.  Several of the AS&SH adventures could also be used to fill in details as needed.

To take the adult gonzo route even further the Island of Purple Haunted Putrescence by Venger Satanis might be an option for the far more enterprising dungeon master but check with your group of players first. You could add in a dash of Carcosa by Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Alpha Blue for further pulpy weirdness.

For me the Isle of Dread is the perfect vehicle for mixing in several retroclone style adventurers who must work together against the island, the factions, and the various hidden menaces which abound in this classic Eighties module of lost world goodness. This is a theme that we see running continuously through various 'lost world' films including Kong:Skull Island. At this point I'm all in.

Halloween World of the Lost By Rafael Chandler & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea Adventure One Shot Or Mini Campaign Event

Halloween means something very different to me then some other folks; for me its the beginning of the holidays to get together with old friend's swill some beer, talk about table top role playing games, comic books, get into some campaign work shop design. So why is this critical? Because my gang of players is coming to another leg of my Warlord of The Outer Worlds game & I want to do Halloween game. There were about six of us tonight including of my favorite lady dungeon masters to lend me a hand. Karen & Alley are two ladies along with their husbands whom I've known forever & ever; well at least since I was running Mentzer Basic D&D, Vampire Dark Ages, a Mage The Ascension/Ars Magica crossover game, my infamous Kult/WoD campaign setting which later morphed into straight Kult, Trinity, etc. Both of these ladies took over for their husband's OD&D groups while both hubbies were in Iraq & Afghanistan serving in the armed forces. So they have a rather unique perspective when it comes to dealing with various table top issues. The topic of conversation was Lamentations of the Flame Princess World of the Lost


  GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

World of the Lost brings several things to the table for OSR gaming. Not only are there some great setting tools in the book perfect for building city states, details on African mythos, tribal factions, and more. But there's a ton of lost or relic technology to steal from even tables for generating more. We took several notes on world creation as we tasted beer and discussed various OSR Halloween adventure pitches.

Using World of the Lost As Adventure
Location Tool Kit

So tonight I got together with friends trying various beers & BSing about old school gaming. The beers were solidly put together but it was really about Halloween gaming. So one leg of my Warlord For The Outer Worlds game campaign is ending & I really want to have a Halloween game. Richard one of the DM's at the table brought his copy of The World Of the Lost book by Mr. Rafael Chandler  . Several folks mentioned using the Amazons from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea but combining the equipment, character backgrounds, & tribal aspects from World of the Lost. They wanted advanced metal workers guarding an ancient half forgotten secret in a lost cavern world about the size of Europe.

So the set up in World of the Lost goes something like this; "Central Africa, 1551. The metalworkers of Awka rise in prominence, even as the Kingdom of Nri declines. Every year, the Awka who dwell in the shadow of the Great Plateau deliver their tribute to the gods that dwell there. To acquire this treasure for themselves, the adventurers must face great beasts like the gbahali, mokele-mbembe, and the kholomodumo. Then they must brave a dungeon where memory is an illusion and time is a weapon. No sane person would ever attempt this. But a thousand years of tribute paid in silver." So this is a 17th century fictional Nigeria and its way too tempting to not use as a much more advanced city state and plateau in the inner Earth  especially with some extreme and weird pulpy resources in the mix. Would a mix of World of the Lost & AS&SH change anything at all? Nope not in the least. But it needed much more then simply dropping both of these resources into the same setting. This piece of artwork that someone pulled up on their tablet gave part of the inspiration. "This heroine has strength of steel, indomitable resolve, and mystic sorcery to turn the undead! She would be victorious. Illustration by +Del Teigeler!" This piece for the second edition of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea kickstarter gave the group some inspiration. Keep all of the details on the paladin except change her over to one of the tribes from World of The Lost. We began giving her details, background, and more. There are several citystates of Amazons from Old Earth  guarding several inner Earth secrets.


Among them in the jungles  is a relic rich city of old Earth, this adventure location  isn't what it at first seems. This is an old Earth city straight out of the 1960's which is actually under a curse of Orcus the demon lord of the undead & Artemis. The city's former inhabitants have all been turned into ghouls by an undead plague & are getting picked off by the Amazon's guns. But there's a fortune in silver, gold, and other worldly relics all waiting for adventurers to grab or get grabbed. And what about that curse? Is this a case of a static situation or a slowly degenerating group of survivors guarding 
The Amazons are the only thing keeping these horrors from escaping their jungle ruins. Not to mention the hazards of the dinosaurs & other alien horrors that these tribes of warrior women  are guarding. There are several options on the table one of which is a the AS&SH adventure Forgotten Fane of the Coiled Goddess. This wonderful little resource has a bunch of mutated & modified dinosaurs along with a really nasty adventure location that can be added to another inner Earth plateau.

Forgotten Fane of the Coiled Goddess brings lots of interesting twists to the table; both Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea & Lamentations of the Flame Princess work really nicely together. Between the two systems you've got the making for a mini campaign that could last some months. The alien adventure location from the Lost World can easily be slipped onto another area for one of these city states. And there's enough weird adventures to keep a group of players going for years or even months of play.

A dungeon master can easily drop a party of AS&SH adventurers into the prehistoric or Amazonian mix of this style of campaign. The deadliness of the world can be at Alien's levels of danger & horror. Having the Amazons around as hirelings or PC's is a solid option according to my fellow DM's Here are some of our conclusions from last night's beer & BS session. 

Ten Reasons To Use Combined World Of The Lost & Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers Of Hyperborea 

1.  The systems work easily and are cross compatible with little issue making for a richer & fuller prehistoric sword & sorcery campaign experience 
2. Expansion of cultures, tribes, and possible NPC creation 
3. A wide variety of technological levels from the ground up from stone age through Bronze age tech as well as beyond. 
4. Far more PC options are brought to the table enriching both game systems PC creation. 
5. Random dinosaur, technology creation characters and more from World of the Lost 
6.  The World of the Lost city states can provide the PC's with a home base from which to adventure from. 
7. Sword & Sorcery sometimes needs a twist or two to bring home some of the horror of the setting played right and this type of adventure can have players pissing their pants. 
8. Sorcerers, medicine men, shamans are a must here and hunters, rangers, etc are not going to hurt. 
9. Warriors and fighters are going to get a work out. Guns & black powder nor even high technological weapons might not help. 
10.  There are a wide latitude for world creation here and the DM is going to be making some serious decisions about the how and why of certain elements of this style of campaign adventure.

This whole thing could be dropped right into the post apocalyptic wasteland for a real change up in some forgotten valley or other lost world plateau for even more unexpected OSR thrills.

Commentary & Old School Lost World Campaign Impact With Marvel Comics Skull The Slayer

An adventurer out of time caught up in weird prehistoric hi jinks in the Bermuda Triangle? Sounds like the latest film from Hollywood? Nope this is a flash from the past from 1975 by some Marvel legends.

I'm trying to remember that exact moment when I remember seeing the first issue of Skull the Slayer from Marvel? I believe it was in Maxwell's drug store in 1975, but I can tell you who was with me. It was my dad Tom Fabiaschi & perhaps I don't mention my dad enough on this blog. My dad is responsible for a lot of the other half of my interest in my hobby. It was his box of Edgar Rice Burroughs books that I inherited, his keen interest in science fiction, the friendship with his best friend whom was in the RAF who brought me to this hobby(obsession), & his twenty five cents that bought this comic book. To understand the impact that Skull The Slayer had on me as a kid is to understand part of the catharsis that is this blog. You see I grew up with a ton of James Skullies in Torrington, Ct. Guys who came back from a war that never left them.Vietnam was a war that left its cuts, scars, and horrors on everyone who was involved. The plane that skull goes down in was actually a military transport to his own execution after killing his own brother in the series. This is really heavy stuff for a Marvel comic but back in the 70's Marvel wasn't pulling any punches.

The Wiki entry on this hero doesn't really get into the gonzo prehistoric aesthetic of Skull; "Skull the Slayer is a trained soldier turned superhero who wears a Scorpion power belt that enhances his strength and durability. The belt also has preservative effects on his body's metabolism. On one occasion, Scully was able to funnel energy into explosive force.[volume & issue needed] The full capabilities of the belt are unknown." Now I get all nostalgic about the series because when I was a kid, this comic was one of the things that my dad used to read to me to send me off to sleep. The thing I loved about Skull The Slayer was the fact that he was an 'every man'. For me he might have any of the dozen or so guys I grew up with who came back from a war they didn't want to remember or understand. But what really sent it over the edge for the eight issues of its existence was that it had a bit of everything that made the Seventies so great to grow up in. The Bermuda Triangle, aliens, cave men, lost worlds, dinosaurs, alien tech, over the top super heroes, & more. Skull had everything a kid needed to move through that ever weird and dark era we grew up in. Created by Marv Wolfman (Writer) & Steve Gan (Artist). The book only lasted about eight glorious issues but its like a  game of Dungeon Crawl Classics or something that would be birthed from the mind of  one of the OSR writers or addicts.


My history with the character begins & ends with the eight issues of his own series in 1975 and for the longest time I had & treasured those issues;"

Skull the Slayer is a trained soldier turned superhero who wears a Scorpion power belt that enhances his strength and durability. The belt also has preservative effects on his body's metabolism. On one occasion, Scully was able to funnel energy into explosive force.^{[volume & issue needed]} The full capabilities of the belt are unknown.

Jim Scully was an adventurer whose plane went through a time warp in the Bermuda Triangle, marooning him and three companions in an alternate Earth where dinosaurs, primitives, and aliens co-existed. Scully and his three companions were eventually rescued and returned to their own world by the Thing of the Fantastic Four.^{[1]" 
All of this relates back to the fact that given the time of publication and its direct impact on all things gaming in the 70's that we'd see some influence in the big lost world D&D adventure Isle of Dread from Skull the Slayer. All of the major weirdness from the series can easily be filtered into taking the Isle of Dread into a Skull style direction.}

 From the weird prehistoric fauna to the various cavemen, inhuman tribes, to the strange Lovecraftian menace of the kopru fit all of the weirdness that we've seen in the Skull the Slayer series. Many of the clever & dangerous pulp elements of Skull the Slayer can easily be transported over to the Isle of Dread this includes the 'Tower of Time', the various tribes from Skull, perhaps even the aliens, & the various dinosaurs.

<sup>There are at least three elements from Skull's series I would add to the Isle of Dread module without blinking my DM's eye. The time warp effects of the setting of Skull's Island to the Isle of Dread, two the alien elements of Skull the Slayer, & three the black wizard from Skull's series.


 

  Another tactic that I've recently seen used in a more contemporary OSR resource was to have Skull's island be a part of the same chain as Venger Satanis's Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence which could be back hooked into his latest Kicksarter adventure</sup>  Slaves of Tsathoggua which has a dark science fantasy bent. Would it be a perfect fit? I don't know the kickstarterter for these adventures is on going & I actively encourage its support. But back to Skull The Slayer.


 Skull the Slayer has appeared in a few of my games as an NPC adventurer that players have helped & had to deal with. He's savy, obscure, dangerous, and just weird enough to be very memorable for an old school  campaign. He's a seventh level adventurer by the time the limited series ends and he's already had some experience with super heroes, other adventurers, and alien wizards by the time the comic series ended.  Now if you want to check out the first issue plus some of the other great pulp elements from the other issues, The Diversions of The Groovy Kind blog has a great retrospective of it up.

For those of us budget conscious folks, Marvel has released the complete series of Skull the Slayer into a collected trade & its easily available from Amazon.

So until next time keep those dice rolling.

Saturday Morning OSR Campaign Fodder - Blackstar (1981) Cartoon Television Series As Old School Campaign

Good morning kids another Saturday is upon us and let's see what's on television in 1981 on CBS. Blackstar made his debut on September 12th along with his friends!

Last night I took a good portion of the evening off to get together with a friend for a beer and speak about his upcoming D&D retro clone hybrid game campaign. He was looking for in his words a hybrid campaign between 'Stars Without Number'  & 'The Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea ' but something that was kid friendly for a Saturday morning but something that kicks serious rear. He's going to be running this campaign for both his players and his kids on a Saturday morning at his local hobby shop/comic store out in the Midwest. Now lately I've been on a bit of a retro cartoon kick  Then it hit me why not run a Black Star cartoon campaign; "Blackstar is an American animated television series, a science fantasy story sometimes reported as being inspired by Thundarr the Barbarian. It was produced in 1981 by Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott for Filmation."



"John Blackstar, astronaut, is swept through a black hole, into an ancient alien universe. Trapped on the planet Sagar, Blackstar is rescued by the tiny Trobbit people. In turn, he joins their fight for freedom against the cruel Overlord, who rules by the might of the Powerstar. The Powerstar is split into the Powersword and the Starsword. And so with Starsword in hand, Blackstar, together with his allies, sets out to save the planet Sagar. This is his destiny. "I am John Blackstar." "

Blackstar doesn't get as much press as its Saturday morning competition Thundarr The Barbarian which is superior in many ways but Blackstar does have it where it counts. Now the reason why I named off Black star is because of the Stars Without Number connection; Black Star's space craft is a craft capable of multi planar travel; a ""fusion-drive" timeship capable of multidimensional travel" to be exact. Then there's the main villain of Overlord who is constantly using 'Empire of the Petal Throne' style retro future technology of planet Sagar. Almost everything really fits into a D&D style paradigm. Blackstar borrows heavily from The Hobbit, John Carter of Mars, with a healthy dose of Stars Wars thrown in for good measure.
 

You've got the planet Sagar which is a back water world which has gone from the highest apex of its pseudo techno magical past to almost full Dark Ages with bits of psionics thrown into the mix. We get a really good sense of the past of Sagar with episodes like  : "The Zombie Masters" (December 5, 1981)  and "Spacewrecked" (October 17, 1981 ).

You can find a really nice write up of Blackstar on Wiki which has a good breakdown of the series.

Overlord was a really minor space tyrant trying to mine his world's past, & it always seemed to me that the planet Sagar was at one time an interstellar holiday paradise with a sword & sorcery theme to it . The ancients of  Sagar created gene spliced creatures and mutants such as the incredibly obnoxious Trobbits & the dragon horses. Over the centuries the ancient's grasp on their super science began to slip, wars broke out & a minor tyrant rose to power to fill the vacuum. Overlord was the most cagey of these warlords to emerge over the centuries so far. Blackstar's world is a mix of magic, psionics, and mutant powers. The various races, magicians, sorcerers, etc. all fit a Dungeon Crawl Classics mold as well. Crawling Under A Broken Moon would suit this style of campaign perfectly especially if worked with Crawljammer. But back to Blackstar.  Everything on Sagar is centered around the power sword. This was an artifact level weapon broken in two.



The power sword has the abilities to unite Sagar and perhaps put  it on the galatic map once again;"Blackstar's weapon, the Starsword, is able to absorb, store, and reflect any external form of energy, and is virtually indestructible. It can also produce blasts of pure energy capable of destroying a target. The weapon generates an invisible "aura" which imbues Blackstar with superhuman senses, strength, endurance, reflexes, speed, agility, and a limited invulnerability to harm and extreme temperatures. Presumably the Overlord's Powersword confers similar abilities. For a brief time in the episode "Spacewrecked", the Starsword and the Powersword are re-united into the Powerstar."
Ever since I was a kid Blackstar was one of my Gamma World/D&D/Empire of the Petal  crossover points and ever since I learned about the He-Man crossover/nod in Temple of The Sun episode of He-Man it been in the back of my mind. "In the original He-Man cartoon episode "Temple of the Sun", a Blackstar statue (holding the Starsword) is seen next to Nepthu."  When the various planets and universes were swept up & put into pocket universes in the original  'Empire of The Petal Sun' perhaps Sagar and Eternia went right along with them. These various power swords might be artifact keys allowing passage between universes by accessing the same planar viberations as the star drives in Blackstar's ship.


This begs the question that has been on my friend's mind what other possible worlds might this also affect? Well according to a theory proposed last night there could be some very unexpected crossovers. I kept thinking about some of the dimensional/ time travel technology from Thundarr The Barbarian's Earth.

He-Man and Blackstar by MikeBock

Could Thundarr The Barbarian's ancients have been messing with some cross dimensional world technology that caused them to draw down that runaway comet that hurled between the Earth and the Moon in their universe? Well for the sake of fandom and my buddy's campaign I think so. This idea of the various power swords being keys across the dimensions and planes opens up the possibilities for just this sort of a dimensional hopping mega crossover campaign.  For a kid's campaign this would rock hard because you could easily slip in some Mutant Future especially Tim Snider's Thundarr material & merge some SWN Other Dust into the back drop.


Thundarr vs Blackstar by tomjf

To take this rpg fan & cartoon campaign fan speculation further imagine that Hanna Barbara's Goltar & The Golden Lance are simply another pocket universe that's fallen on hard times & is now reduced down to the sword & sorcery paradigm.  Perhaps that fleet that  Lieutenant Katana was asking for was facing down hordes of vary dangerous other dimensional raiders across the planes and Sagar was only the latest in a string of such campaigns. 



Anyhow this is all mere Saturday morning  fan speculation mixed in with a healthy dose of D&D peusdo sword & sorcery goodness. This post is for educational and enertainment purposes only and does not reflect upon the authors/designers opinions of any of any of this post. This post is not an attempt to violate the trade mark of any of the copyrights or trade marks of Blackstar or any of the other cartoons mentioned.

Saturday Morning OSR Campaign Fodder - The Land of the Lost 1974 Television Series As Old School Campaign

So last night after way too many beers & a phone call at about two A.M. with Steve a friend of mine whose a long haul trucker & AD&D first edition player. I some how ended up watching some of the original Saturday morning  Land of the Lost television shows from '74.When your four years old 'Land of The Lost' is awesome especially given the dinosaurs, the Sleestak, 'the lost city', and many a Saturday morning was spent at High Bluff with the Marshal family. According to the Wiki entry;"Land of the Lost (1974–1976) is a children's adventure television series created (though uncredited) by David Gerrold and produced by Sid and Marty Krofft, who co-developed the series with Allan Foshko. During its original run, it was broadcast on the NBC television network"

Land of the Lost is a hex crawl pure & simple, each twenty two minute episode reveals more & more of the pocket universe of Land of the Lost. In the episode 'Follow that Dinosaur' we get background on the time lost castaways that for centuries and background on the Sleestak who were named for an American  Revolutionary war officer that Private Peter Koenig a private didn't like. Rick Marshall (Spencer Milligan) and his teenage children Will (Wesley Eure) and Holly (Kathy Coleman) are perfect examples of the family of adventurers dynamic that I've used countless times. So instead of a bunch of strangers who meet in a tavern you get a family each with fulfilling the adventurer roles. Much later on we got  Uncle Jack Marshal who takes over the family after his brother exits the land by causing a time paradox in which trapped the Marshals in the first place. This was all because of Enik who whose people the Sleestak are descended from; they are the degenerate remains of the Altrusian people. The Altrusians are a reptilian species whose abilities with planar, time, and dimensional technology is really impressive. Its they're time & space gates that honeycomb the Land. The Altrusian's time space technology is actually part of what regulates the eco & weather systems of the Land of the Lost. The crystal control tables and time space pylons have showed up in many games over the years.



Land of the Lost boasted some really impressive science fiction talent behind some of the episodes with  David Gerrolds the writer of the 'Star Trek' episode the  'Trouble With Tribbles' on board as story editor but who comes to flesh out the entire Land of The Lost universe as the series progresses. There's an internal consistency to the mythology & background of Land of the Lost. Part of the reason is the science fiction talent that was brought in according to Wiki ;"A number of well-respected writers in the science fiction field contributed scripts to the series (mostly in the first and second seasons), including Larry Niven,^[6] Theodore Sturgeon,^[6][7] Ben Bova,^[6] and Norman Spinrad, and a number of people involved with Star Trek, such as Dorothy "D.C." Fontana,^[6] Walter Koenig,^[6][8][9] and David Gerrold.^[6] Gerrold, Niven, and Fontana also contributed commentaries to the DVD of the first season."  But for a four year old kid it was the dinosaurs and megafauna  which if you grew up in the 1970's. This show had a bit of everything for the Seventies kid, UFO's, time space gates, dinosaurs,etc. And as a D&D dungeon master I mined the hell out of this show from the early Eighties through my running Carcosa, Land of The Lost elements keep showing up. But if your want to put together your own OSR Land of the Lost game campaign there are some descent resources.


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First of all there is the Land of the Lost fan site.  which has an episode guide and break downs of all of the Land of the Lost material. The What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse Blog has some really nice AD&D 1st edition Sleestak monster stats and breakdowns.

Wiki has a whole bunch of resources that can be used the entry on the original 1974 television show is pretty good.

List of Land of the Lost episodes has quite a few quick nods and bobs for a time line for the show. The real meat for putting together & creating NPC's is the Land of the Lost characters and species entry which has everything to throw into a quick mix or one shot adventure. For artifacts & treasure the Land of the Lost geography and technology entry is one to look at which can give you everything you need to stock the 'lost city of the Sleestaks'
See you on the other side of the time space gate kids!


Note that this blog entry is meant for educational and entertainment purposes only this blog entry is not meant as challenge or violation of the copyrights of the creators or current holders of the land of the lost trade mark or copyrights.