Notes on Running B3 Palace of the Silver Princess (Basic) By Tom Moldvay, & Jean Wells

I've been thinking more about B3 Palace of the Silver Princess by Tom Moldvey & Jean Wells as well as  the Adventurer,Conqueror, King rpg. Today I came across a very interesting post on the Alexandrian blog and its author's attempts to reskin the Green Moldvay module & Jean Wells original orange  version.  It  might make sense that there's more going on below the module' surface. Looking over the old 2014 Dungeon of Signs blog review of B3 I can see the bones of a few ideas in there. 



The Dungeon of Signs blog points out some very consistence ideas about the over arching fairy tale  of the adventure material; "Palace of the Silver Princess has a story, of the B series B3 is the first module to try to tell a complex story akin to a fantasy epic or fairytale. The story is confused and muddy, but at its core there is something quaint and fun about the tale of the Silver Princess’ kingdom cursed by a wedding gift from the dwarfs. The whole idea of the castle being magically transformed to evil, and attracting an evil patriarch who seeks to finish transforming the peaceful valley kingdom into a dark hellscape full of carnivorous roses is also fairly fun. It’s just a question of how to do it.  Palace takes some brute force approaches of locking the party into the castle with no chance of escape (which gives new players the idea they are supposed to camp inside the thing), then it creates a situation to remove the curse with three solutions that aren't really clear, and provides explicit clue giving green fairies to nudge the party in the right direction.  This is not a fun way to run a D&D game.  What if the players decide they area a pack of blackguards intent on plunder? That the valley of Haven turns into an outpost of some evil ruby eyed demon is not necessarily a loss condition for a party of wandering plunderers, and really it provides a better source of a campaign then Princess Argenta back on her throne handing out boons. "

Looking over the Jean Wells version of B3 pdf hosted over the vaults of Pandius website & we're left with two very different & yet similar  products. The fairy tale or is it nightmare? The nightmare of a chaos god whose been dreaming about the kingdom of Haven from the beginning. Could it be that Princess Argenta called it much earlier in the events of B3? Events went from bad to worse as the magick of Haven's nightmare enveloped it. 


The Dungeons & Dragons Review Guide  Maintained by Mark Bertenshaw has some excellent notes on using B3 Palace of the Silver Princess with Mystara. 
Further we have even more ideas for running a campaign with Mystara especially with the 

Mystara Module and Placement by Andrew Theisen article.  Mystara has always played its share when comes to the B/X modules. Greyhawk & Mystara have been linked as two very different aspects of Dungeons & Dragons. This doesn't mean they have little use in the world of the OSR. Quite the opposite in fact. 

Mystara connects to the dimension of Nightmares & through it the  demi plane of Shadows. B3 Palace of the Silver Princess is a fractured fairy tale waiting to happen. And perhaps one of a number of battle grounds that the adventurers might find themselves in when the trap of Haven is sprung on them. 

Commentary On Running B3 Palace of the Silver Princess With Adventurer,Conqueror, King As Old School Campaign

Not long ago, the valley was green and animals ran free through golden fields of grain. The Princess Argenta ruled over this peaceful land and the people were secure and happy. Then one day, a warrior riding a white dragon appeared in the skies over the castle, and almost overnight the tiny kingdom fell into ruin. Now only ruins and rumors remain, and what legends there are tell of a fabulous treasure still buried somewhere within the Palace of the Silver Princess."
This is pretty much all it would take to lead a party of adventurers, and outlaws to their doom to a ghostly kingdom that appears when certain strange signs appear in the sky. 



I've been thinking about reskinning Palace of the Silver Princess as a Adventurer, Conqueror, King adventure piece with a spin towards the alignment of the gaming system working in the favor of the fairy tale like atmosphere of B3. I want to concentrate on the Moldvey version of Palace of the Silver Princess. I'm thinking of running it as Return To The Palace of the Silver Princess instead of the usual set up.  No I'm doing a D20 version of it. Instead I'd take more Michael Moorcock approach to the Silver Princess, Haven becomes a place locked out of time and space, the forces of chaos have been unleashed. The wizard is someone taking full advantage of the plot using it to establish his own other dimensional domain hellscape. The wizard might be from Hyperborea, the leader of a powerful faction of a  Lovecraftian chaos cult. I'm still tossing this around in my mind but the events of the Palace could recycle themselves over and over again. This makes Haven & its environs a weird pulpy sword & sorcery location with lots of old school potential. 



This isn't the first time I've run this adventure, the last time I used Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. 
"The plot of Palace of the Silver Princess revolves around a country frozen in time by a strange red light. The only seemingly unaffected location and the apparent source of the glow is the royal palace. The adventurers must restore the flow of time and save the country."  I slowed the corrupting nature of the red light last time and perhaps I can up the dark fairy tale aspect of B3 this time. Several of the optional magic systems that I've been reading in Axioms magazine fit this style of dark fantasy fairy tale. Arik of the Hundred Eyes patron of Forbidden Secrets & the Lost sounds like he's straight out of a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure. It under his influence that the kingdom has become anchored in time & space. Parts of the module could be crossed over into the recent Free  DIY revamp of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess to give the whole affair a much more Lamentations of the Flame Princess feel. The forces of chaos seem hell bent in taking down the foundations of the kingdom down from the inside out. This speaks ACK's alignments and take on the forces of chaos. 


The question becomes with the focus of Adventurer, Conqueror, King would the PC's try to take the kingdoms of  the Silver Princess module  for themselves? The defeat of the main menace in Palace of the Silver Princess might set things up for an entire mini campaign of domain sword and sorcery warfare?!
This could be the route that I want to take for a beginning adventure into my own take of Adventurer,Conqueror, King.

More as this develops.

Saturday B3 Palace of the Silver Princess Tom Moldvay and Jean Wells Notes & Commentary For Your Old School Campaigns

Sometimes the obvious isn't obvious at all when you've been rereading the same material for many years but at about three A.M. this morning the obvious hits me. I could transition my players into a pocket side adventure involving based on the works of HPL, Lord Dunsany, & Clark Ashton Smith. There's a series of forts along the old Hyperborean border lands that were filled with strange Hyperborean writing at might activate a gate or two. I had this echoing through my head at about eight o'clock this morning. I've been thinking lately once again about B3 Palace of the Silver Princess which has always been a bit of a minor obsession.
The module always reminds me of Shadows of Nightmare by Clark Ashton Smith especially with its dream like connections.

What gulf-ascended hand is this, that grips
My spirit as with chains, and from the sound
And light of dreamland, draws me to the bound
Where darkness waits with wide, expectant lips ?
Albeit thereat my footing holds, nor slips,
The night-born menace and the fear confound
All days and hours of gladness, girt around
With sense of near, unswervable eclipse.

So lies a land whose noon is plagued with whirr
Of bats, than their own shadows swarthier,
That trace their passing upon white abodes,
Wherein from court to court, from room to room,
In hieroglyphics of abhorrent doom,
Is trailed the slime of slowly crawling toads.

Shadow of Nightmare By Clark Ashton Smith

"Not long ago, the valley was green and animals ran free through golden fields of grain. The Princess Argenta ruled over this peaceful land and the people were secure and happy. Then one day, a warrior riding a white dragon appeared in the skies over the castle, and almost overnight the tiny kingdom fell into ruin. Now only ruins and rumors remain, and what legends there are tell of a fabulous treasure still buried somewhere within the Palace of the Silver Princess."

All of has me thinking about the fall out from Palace of the Silver Princess adventure that I ran some months ago. Basically I'm thinking that Arik of the Hundred Eyes patron of Forbidden Secrets & the Lost has taken the entire adventure of B3 into his own fragmented Dreamlands realm and the cycle of events continues regardless of the adventurers, or outlaws who find the place. The events are a part of an ever looping cycle. Treasures, relics, etc. taken from the place spread the corruption of Arik of the Hundred Eyes across the face of Hyperborea. The PC's are going to have to tackle the adventure on his terms to rid the world of the ever increasing evil. Parts of the module could be crossed over into the recent Free  DIY revamp of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess to give the whole affair a much more sword & sorcery Weird Tales feel to it.  That being said one of the elements that I really want to add into my current adventures is rival NPC adventurers. These folks can generate so much conflict and heart ache for PC's and players.

1d6 Random Rival Low Level Adventurers For PC's To
Encounter Table

1. A party of second level thieves known as 'Well's crew' is looking for relics & treasures. They're murderous thieves and scum of the based nature.
   
2.   Here a  group of 1d10 outlaws is on the run from Hyperborean bounty hunters and they've hidden out only to find themselves here. They're very dangerous and armed with a variety of make shift weapons. They won't hesitate to murder others for their own arms. 

3. A gang of cut throats from the losing side of an army has decided to try their luck here there are 1d6 3rd level fighters

4.  Strangely garbed Amazons armed with radium pistols & close in weapons are on the hunt for a sacred object. They are 2nd level thieves and assassins working for their clan heads there are 1d6 lady adventurers 

5. Disguised as palace servants these adventurers are all 2nd level adventurers making their way through the palace. They will murder anyone they come across. They are lead by a third level necromancer

6. A group of 1d6 royal soldiers has begun to plunder parts of the palace and is looking for other co conspirators to help them. They are 2nd level fighters armed with a variety of swords, knives, and other melee pieces for murder & mayhem.

 

 

 

 

 

The Purple Haunted Dr. La Sing & The Classic B3 The Palace of the Silver Princess For Your Old School Campaigns

I'm not going to lie, I've been laid low by the Flu. & so I've had to push off my Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea game till next week. I also spent the night in a fever dream of reliving some of the more weird details of the Palace of the Silver Princess mini campaign I ran. Yes I know the module's plot is a mess, but the weird fairy tale aspects of it have passed into local legend in Hyperborea. I was dreaming of Dr. La Sing the NPC villain behind sending the PC's almost to their doom back in 2015. The Palaces are still there trapped in timeless fairy tale pulpy fashion like something right out of a Clark Aston Smith novelette.




The vile villain behind the PC's involvement in the whole affair, Dr. La Sing. La Sing is an NPC Oriental mastermind in the true tradition of pulp magazines. Except he isn't what he seems at all. You see Dr. La Sing is actually David Carter adventurer from 'Old Earth' who was driven mad by the Lovecraftian forces of the Islands of Purple Putrescence. David was convinced that he was being cursed by the evil mastermind Dr. La Sing & that the evil vile forces of the island was his Hell. His mind cracked under the strange forbidden forces & the doctor was only to glad of a force to step into the lime light of David's mind. The calm, cool, collected evil doctor stepped into the body of David & was only too glad to embrace the dark purple forces of the islands. Now Dr. La Sing lives as a forth level purple monk &  seventh level black necromancer dressed in long draped purple robes of the sage. He is surrounded by loyal mercenaries, mutants, & savage warriors. His ever present opium water pipe bubbles with weird scented smoke that curls into dragonlike humanoid shapes and his strange hooded eyes regard the world with malevolence. But he is very honorable, wise, but extremely dangerous (there are rumors from his most loyal retainers that think that the real Dr.La Sing controls this one magically but they are never whispered in his presence). Even now several bounty hunters range across Hyperborea looking for David Carter.

Image from http://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_
images/4a/10/72f2fd40dc3af4505b2520eeac77.jpg

Dr. La Sing controls all manner of vice, slave trade, & other vile pass times. It is rumored that he has ties to deep cults within the Narcosa dimension. There are also rumors of his trade upon Mars of the Beast Jewels and his operatives have been seen as far as Alpha Blue. 

1d6 Random 'What's in Dr. La Sing's pipe today' Table 

1. A small dragon fetus from another planet 
2. The pickled head of the doctor's last enemy 
3. Hashish from the mountains of H'Rmu 
4. The ground powder from a +1 sword named Tem're 
5. Bones from a thousand heroes selfless deaths 
6. The bones from a worshiper of the Elder Gods

 But it is the Palace of the Silver Princess that haunts Dr.La Sing trapped in time and outside of space. The forces of chaos & degenerate horror play within this bauble and like him it is subject to the whims and depredations of the black gods. the presence of Arikof the Hundred Eyes patron of Forbidden Secrets & the Lost was there causing all kinds of havoc for the good doctor's operatives. There are rumors that there has been a protracted war between the forces of La Sing & the ancient god thing.



There have been several attempts over the years for the PC's to kill the good doctor but they're pretty afraid that one of them might be chosen to take La Sing's place. It seems that the forces of the islands enjoy their insane cat's paw and he still has uses to them. They made this very clear a few times in the past, so for the moment Dr.La Sing is still a thorn in my player's side.
I've also used him as the patron who sent the adventurers into the Palace of the Silver Princess - An Adventure by the DIY D&D Community. Available in PDF for FREE.That did not go too well for them & several of the PC's died, the good doctor was most amused by this turn of events. It is also known that La Sing has in the past contact with the "The Stairway of V'dreen " from Venger's latest kickstarter. In terms of Adventurer, Conqueror, King La Sing runs several criminal enterprises as a nineth level thief & a sixth level black wizard. He maintains a forth level market place & has a wide variety of vice based criminal enterprises on Hyperborea.

Commentary On Running B3 Palace of the Silver Princess With Adventurer,Conqueror, King As Old School Campaign

"Not long ago, the valley was green and animals ran free through golden fields of grain. The Princess Argenta ruled over this peaceful land and the people were secure and happy. Then one day, a warrior riding a white dragon appeared in the skies over the castle, and almost overnight the tiny kingdom fell into ruin. Now only ruins and rumors remain, and what legends there are tell of a fabulous treasure still buried somewhere within the Palace of the Silver Princess."
This is pretty much all it would take to lead a party of adventurers, and outlaws to their doom to a ghostly kingdom that appears when certain strange signs appear in the sky.



I've been thinking about reskinning Palace of the Silver Princess as a Adventurer, Conqueror, King adventure piece with a spin towards the alignment of the gaming system working in the favor of the fairy tale like atmosphere of B3. I want to concentrate on the Moldvey version of Palace of the Silver Princess. I'm thinking of running it as Return To The Palace of the Silver Princess instead of the usual set up.  No I'm doing a D20 version of it. Instead I'd take more Michael Moorcock approach to the Silver Princess, Haven becomes a place locked out of time and space, the forces of chaos have been unleashed. The wizard is someone taking full advantage of the plot using it to establish his own other dimensional domain hellscape. The wizard might be from Hyperborea, the leader of a powerful faction of a  Lovecraftian chaos cult. I'm still tossing this around in my mind but the events of the Palace could recycle themselves over and over again. This makes Haven & its environs a weird pulpy sword & sorcery location with lots of old school potential.



This isn't the first time I've run this adventure, the last time I used Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.
"The plot of Palace of the Silver Princess revolves around a country frozen in time by a strange red light. The only seemingly unaffected location and the apparent source of the glow is the royal palace. The adventurers must restore the flow of time and save the country."  I slowed the corrupting nature of the red light last time and perhaps I can up the dark fairy tale aspect of B3 this time. Several of the optional magic systems that I've been reading in Axioms magazine fit this style of dark fantasy fairy tale. Arik of the Hundred Eyes patron of Forbidden Secrets & the Lost sounds like he's straight out of a Dungeon Crawl Classics adventure. It under his influence that the kingdom has become anchored in time & space. Parts of the module could be crossed over into the recent Free  DIY revamp of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess to give the whole affair a much more Lamentations of the Flame Princess feel. The forces of chaos seem hell bent in taking down the foundations of the kingdom down from the inside out. This speaks ACK's alignments and take on the forces of chaos.


The question becomes with the focus of Adventurer, Conqueror, King would the PC's try to take the kingdoms of  the Silver Princess module  for themselves? The defeat of the main menace in Palace of the Silver Princess might set things up for an entire mini campaign of domain sword and sorcery warfare?!
This could be the route that I want to take for a beginning adventure into my own take of Adventurer,Conqueror, King. More as this develops.

Eight Free OSR Adventure Resources For Lamentations of the Flame Princess, AD&D, & Your Old School Campaigns

I love looking around the internet net you come across so many cool OSR  adventures. Today during a quick search I came across a couple of PDF's I thought I bring to your attention. Many of these can be used with many of the most common retroclone sets including Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, and a few others.
First up is the Wreck of the Anubis from the Dungeon of Sighs blog creator. described by Rpggeek as;"The Wreck of the Anubis is a short, lair style adventure designed for use with Labyrinth Lord or a similar system and set in Patrick Wetmore "Land of 1,000 Towers" home of the Anomalous Subsurface environment. It can conceivably be used in other settings with some modification but was intended as a 1 session locations for placement on a hex map or random encounter table for the Livid Fens, the trackless swamp South of Denethix. It would likely work best with a party of 1-3rd level adventurers, but with slight adjustments I believe The Wreck of the Anubis should scale well."
I've used it a couple of times and it works really well especially for that mix of post apocalyptic science fantasy and dark fantasy.
Next up is  650 Fantasy City Encounter Seeds & Hooks From RoleplayingTips.com.

These are simply a bunch of drag and drop into your old school campaigns a series of random encounters for urban adventures. They're very well done & easy to use. Simple & very effective at what they do. The Coward's Heart by Gus LaRu  is a necromancy style  magic item of revenge & some very nasty power perfectly suited for Lamentations or Labyrinth Lord. 

Mini Module M1 - The Maze of Death by Mike Walters  is a sort of trip down memory lane from Eighty One. The modules is one of those sort of mini adventures that you would publish when you were a talented ten year old.

Obelisk of Forgotten Memories by Gus LaRu is a very clever & well done mini wilderness romp that gives plenty of dark fantasy & science fantasy elements to it. Described by its author as;"The Obelisk is moderately large outdoor adventure with a small attached dungeon for a party lvls. 1-3.
This adventure was occasioned by my players deciding to take a lark into the wilderness rather than exploring Patrick Wetmore's wonderful megadungeon the Autonomous Subsurface Environment (ASE). It's my own attempt to create another, smaller adventure location that seems reasonable within Pat's world. It contains several elements (guns, ancient technology, God's eye's) that won't make sense outside of ASE, but I suppose it could be run as a simple graveyard based cult-smashing expedition in with a little modification." Once again from the creator of the Dungeon of Sighs blog,do yourself a favor and just down load his entire catalog. Its very well done stuff and easily adaptable to many retroclone systems. 

Dungeon Module B3.5 Palace of Queen Ehlissa

by David Prata  is an adventure for AD&D first edition & set in the world of Greyhawk for characters levels 6 through 30! Its a reconsitution of the Palace of the Silver Princess in a new and very weird way. "An adaptation of B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. This AD&D adventure combines both versions of the original module with the World of Greyhawk legend of Queen Ehlissa and her Marvelous Nightingale."

Finally there's the Cult of the Skin Demon adventure, a nasty & very dangerous romp through with possible overtones as a DCC funnel! Cult of the Skin Demon by Jurgen Mayer  features maps by Dyson Logos who describes the production of the adventure as;"One of my favourite recent maps was Maker’s Hall. I like the multiple paths through the dungeon instead of the raw linear design it may appear to have to PCs on their first pass through it. Plus I like the mix of straight and curved hallways, the detail work, and the funky round room.

And the best part of the whole thing – I’m obviously not alone in this. Jürgen Mayer flagged me over on google+ with a system-neutral adventure he had written using this map and some of the commentary that appeared about it and secret doors in the comments section of the blog."
Cult of the Skin Demon can work as a Lamentations of the Flame Princess or Labyrinth Lord connecting adventure for your favorite cult or demonic horrors in your old school campaigns.
I've used this adventure several times and its a deadly and lethal little romp that can be used as a mid point adventure hook or as a complete funnel for a Dungeon Crawl Classics. Or it will work as a Crawling Under A Broken Moon funnel which I did last year with it when set in the wastelands.

Finally there's the Free DYI Palace of the Silver Princess Remix Adventure which was done by a ton of talented people according to the authors;"G+ indie tabletop gaming community were given one page of the old TSR adventure Palace of the Silver Princess to re-write. None of us communicated with each other about what we were writing, we just had the original dungeon and that was it. The end result is surprisingly coherent and showcases some of the best Weird Indie D&D Talent out there these days."
 Now with a bit of effort & time a DM could take all of these resources & quickly put together an adhoc campaign on the fly centered around the multi dimensional palaces of the silver princesses. The original modules & the fan creations might be creations or versions of the same location scattered across the various prime material planes with the forces of chaos at the center of the locations. Finally the various free dungeons might be side settings and adventure quests created to keep the action going or as a part of greater hex crawl to the palace.

Actual Play Of The OD&D Adventure - B3 Palace of the Silver Princess With The Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea Game

I spent most of my day playing Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea with friends, and running a module that has caused more then a few legends around the age old school gaming campfires. I'm talking about B3 Palace of the Silver Princess. Yes Wiki has the whole sorted affair of the naughty artwork bit; "It is notable as being the D&D module that was recalled on the same day it was released, then rewritten and re-released some months later. The original version, with an orange cover, was written in 1980 by Jean Wells.^[2][3] When the orange version was recalled (and most copies destroyed), the module was rewritten by Tom Moldvay and released with a green cover. Writing credit on the second version was given to both Moldvay and Wells, although there was very little of Wells' original content in Moldvay's version."
 I'm going to concentrate on Moldvey's version of the module. Which when I ran it completely changed it.


B3 is a mess and the plot doesn't match maps and some of the levels at all. There are standard monsters in places where they shouldn't be, and on the whole it needs some major work. Right out of the gate B3 is a bit a mess but what I did was take the module and whip around some of the elements and have the entire adventure location trapped in time within the red light and the PC's stumble upon the palace, its inhabitants, and the adventure in progress. There's a feel to it as if the spell just went snap and the trap has been sprung upon upon the palace and its inhabitants. This sort of a feel works and works very well. It became just another location within the bounds of local legends of Hyberborea. The plot is straight out of mythology and legend; "The plot of Palace of the Silver Princess revolves around a country frozen in time by a strange red light. The only seemingly unaffected location and the apparent source of the glow is the royal palace. The adventurers must restore the flow of time and save the country."  I slowed the corrupting nature of the red light, gave the players the opportunity to loot the dark fairy tale of a castle adventure location. There are some really good bits scattered throughout  B3 and those I brought to the fore. I can't say that this was an original idea. Many of the ideas I lifted straight out of the Dungeon of Signs blog review. Well sort of.

I had the evil cleric, his were wolf bodyguard and the orcs become a major issue. Because the palace had become unstuck in time and the presence of Arikof the Hundred Eyes patron of Forbidden Secrets & the lost was there causing all kinds of havoc the PC's had their hands full. Vampire roses and archer bushes claimed two PC's lives and they really had a fight on their hands. The players are convinced that the Eye is somehow related to their experiences with a Red and Pleasantland I think I might have pushed the dark fairytale aspect a bit too far but I'm going to run with it.

The PC's actually encountered their other characters from the Lamentations of the Flame Princess campaign I ran a month or so ago. This both surprised them and horrified them because at some point they know that they're going to return to the LoFP version of the Silver Princess. They're afraid that they might be caught in a time paradox because of the chaotic nature of the magick of the place.

So after tangling with a number of the obstacles, and NPC's of the Silver Princess module the PC's were able to leave with some loot and most of their lives. All in all it was mostly a good day but they left behind the corpses of their comrades. That's never a good thing.

Where else does the causality and weirdness of the Silver Princess adventure locations  touch? Well only I know that for the moment and the players are going to have to deal with it when the time is ripe.
The palace of the Silver Princess is a place of horror, highly dangerous magick of the Abyss, and worse all wrapped up in a dark fairy tale waiting to be sprung again.