OSR Review & Commentary Castles & Crusades The Hallowed Ring By Stephen Chenault For The Castles & Crusades Rpg

 "It is a hard thing to cross the plains. The land is flat and seems limitless. The wind is forever blowing. The wild grass stretches on forever, until it mingles with the pale skies. Where one begins and the other ends is anybody's guess. Tt is easy to become disoriented, lost or turned around, and fall prey to the sun, wind or any of the many creatures who stalk the flat earth."

"Somewhere on this unforgiving landscape lies the body of a man ravaged by hunting beasts. He holds in his possession an amulet, a trinket really, but one that must not be left on the plains. The body must be found, the amulet retrieved and returned to its rightful owner. But to do so one must brave the wild beasts and unforgiving nature and unearth the mystery of the grasslands."

 Castles & Crusades The Hallowed Ring By Stephen Chenault is a lower tier adventure that has the PC's starting at an inn and in search of  an amulet. This adventure starts off in an inn and pits the PC's against not only adventure's monsters but the weather itself. There's more to this adventure then a simple piece of  jewelry and more about the party's commitment to do the right thing. Clocking in at twelve pages. The Hallowed Ring picks up a first level party and brings into focus the commitment of honor and commitment. 

Castles & Crusades The Hallowed Ring is a well written, edited and solid adventure. That can act as a spring board for the PC's to jump head first into a C&C campaign. This adventure does this by presenting a solid backbone from which the basics of the  Castles & Crusades systems  are explored. And it is upon this foundation that the dungeon master can build. 
The Hallow Ring is a fun little adventure that presents the DM all he or she needs to bring the player's party into their campaign. 
The Hallowed Ring is a simple, effective, and well written adventure that shouldn't last more then a three or so sessions. It doesn't over stay it's welcome at the table top and has some solid challenges within it. 

Review & Commentary On Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 "Adventurers Backpack is a book designed for the player, introducing a wealth of content to expand your player experience, but also your character’s survivability! Within you’ll find:

• 13 new classes
• mountains of spells for all classes
• counter spells and spell duels
• bandages and healing
• a fresh easy-to-use approach to unarmed combat
• war mounts
• rune magic
• a new look at pole arms."

"Backpacks for Every Campaign

But more than that, Adventurers Backpack delivers a new, innovative approach to equipment and equipping your character. There are 34 unique backpacks complete with all the equipment your character will need! Each backpack comes with cost, weight and encumbrance value. The backpacks cover it all. There are class-based backpacks for all character classes, general purpose backpacks for dungeons and overland, and special purpose packs such as the medic or dungeon mappers pack. Equipping your character was never so easy."

Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack is one of those C&C rpg titles that I've been hemming & hawing about for years. Do I need another supplement with tons of player PC options. Do I need another equipment book and another book with the planes in it plus new spell and magic items. The Adventurer's Backpack covers this all and a bit more. 
The first part of the Adventurer's Backpack is the 13 new character classes which have been featured elsewhere in the past. What this supplement does is update them and put them into one place. We get an overview and placement of these classes. Easy to use or discard depending upon the needs of your players or your campaign. 

From here we slide into the equipment & backpack section which is customized for backpacks and equipment for every character & campaign types. This allows a DM or a play to drop equipped characters into a campaign right away! 

There's a literaly ton of spells and counter spells for many of the spell using PC classes. These are all optional and that should be used with care for your campaign. Then we dive into pole arms and thier uses. This is an article that hits all of the right Gary Gygax buttons. Then there's tools for DM's to customize thier own campaign from planar travels and adventuring. On the whole Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack is a highly optional but highly useful supplement. While the rules & articles that appear within this supplement have appeared elsewhere. The Castles & Crusades Adventurers Backpack brings everything into one useful tool box for both dungeon master and players. 

Review & Commentary On The Castles & Crusades: Winters Bite By Stephen Chenault For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 "Something haunts the river folk…

It steals into homes and snatches the unwary, the weak, and the gentile. For those whom the horror does not abduct, death comes swiftly. Those slain by the monster are found strangely maimed, with bloody gums, devoid of teeth."

"An apparition? Some fiend of the old world? A black hearted fey? Few can tell for few have seen it, and those who have speak only of its pock-marked skin and crown of teeth."

"The river people hide now. They seal their doors with wax every night, stamped with magical runes, in hope of keeping the haunt at bay. The long winter is made longer still, and more evil given over to the Winter’s Bite."

 The Castles & Crusades: Winters Bite By Stephen Chenault  is an adventure designed for 3-5, 3rd level characters. This is a great adventure that hits the PC's right in the middle of mid stride for an adventuring party. This is an excellent joining adventure that can be dropped into a existing Castles & Crusades rpg campaign. The artwork is a very well done adventure and it only comes into twenty pages. The editing and fonts are easily readable and Winter's Bite hits the high notes for bringing a Winter adventure for the player's PC's.

As an OSR adventure the texture of this adventure feels like a small scale and highly dangerous adventure. This is not a stepping stone adventure. Instead this is an adventure that acts as a bridge adventure across a campaign.

This Castles & Crusades adventure fits the feel of the game. There's nothing however stopping a DM from dropping Winter's Bite into thier own campaign. The writing on this adventure is tight. 
Winter's Bite is very much at a minimum for PC's of third level and that's no lie. There's some dangerous stuff happening within this adventure.  Winter's Bite has all of this going on and takes full advantage of the Castles & Crusades rpg system in spades. 
Winter's Bite could very easily be set within Greyhawk or your own old school rpg campaign. This adventure easily fits a wide variety of campaign styles. But it is  a highly dangerous adventure consider yourselves warned. 

OSR Commentary On Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 "Beasts of legend and myth, monsters great and small, these are the minstrel’s fare: dragons, giants, orcs, foul-minded fey, the dreaded hydra, the riddling sphynx, the naga, wyverns, griffons and so very much more."

"Monsters & Treasure contains over 400 monsters for your Castles & Crusades game. Each entry consists of an in-depth description of the monster, along with its nature, habits, the territories they occupy, their predilections, and all other relevant material. Each entry contains all the statistical information required to run the monster at any game table."

"Including mountains of treasure, both magical and mundane, as well as how to roleplay monsters, handling combat with monsters, creating monsters and defining and awarding treasures"

Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure was on my desk last night. It's been while since I've cracked open this C&C tome. One thing I've noticed is that even though all of the classic monsters are here. The organization of the Monsters & Treasure is done in such a way as to make it advantageous for adventure construction. The thing I started noticing is that Monsters & Treasure is laid out like a tool kit. You have a certain way that the monsters are placed with the right amount of likely treasure & the advantages the monsters have over the PC's. Is Castles & Cruasades Monsters and Treasure classic OSR?! Yes and no, Yes this book certainly fits the asthetic of modern rpg system but uses the trappings of old school gaming. So much so that Gary Gygax endorsed Castles & Crusades when he was alive. 
Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure fits the asthetic of the old school by providing the full gamit of horrors and monsters for your C&C adventurers to run into in the dungeon. 

There's enough generic bent to the monsters that they can fit into an any OSR or old school rpg campaign that is using the Castles & Crusades rpg system. For example we ran a Greyhawk C&C campaign. The Monsters & Treasure book was essential to running Greyhawk especially since it was such an unstable time in Greyhawk's history. 
Now we're talking about when there were a ton of raiders and barbarians during this time in Greyhawk's history. Therefore the Monsters and Treasure were essential to this core of this campaign. Why because of the number of treasures that had been looted from the countryside. Every small kingdom & village had a small treasure or artifact that seemed to wind up in the hands of every petty tyrant, king, dictator, and warlord in the region. 

This was a time in Greyhawk's history when monsters were outta of control and they were a part of the dark forces of Greyhawk. Our adventurers  came in as survivors of the purges and raiding from various villages or outlying regions. This again is where Monsters & Treasures came in handy as both reference and guide for our Castles & Crusades campaign back about two years ago. To me Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure is one of the C&C essential books and very well done in my humble opinion. 

OSR Commentary On Running DSR1 Slave Tribes By Bill Slavicsek With The Castles & Crusades Rpg

 "Out of the swirling, bone-dry sands of Athas come hordes of raiders. They overrun caravans, strip them bare, then vanish into the untracked wastes once more. Who are these ghosts of the desert? Where do they live? How do they survive far from the high walls of the city-states? Slave Tribes answers these and many more questions about the ex-slaves who escape into the desert."

"The DARK SUN game world is now open to campaigns in realms beyond the reach of the sorcerer-kings. The most prominent and successful slave tribes of the Tyr region are presented in great detail in this accessory. Slave Tribes enables the DM to create entirely new tribes to roam his DARK SUN campaign. It also shows players how to form their own tribes when their characters escape the clutches of the sorcerer-kings. The deadly world of Athas shows no mercy to those who are unprepared for its dangers!"

This blog post is going to pick right up from here on the blog.  DSR1 Slave Tribes By Bill Slavicsek hit the shelves  in January 1992. And what's unusual abou this book is how it's written and that is from the first person point of view with highly verbose tone about it. Because DSR1 rolls into it's escaped slave energy on Athas with abandoned. This is one of the first of a series of Dark Sun book that hit's the high notes of Dark Sun. You can feel the struggle of the protagonist within his bonds and the struggle of survival. We get within DSR1 a deep  look into the institution of slavery on Athas. And forget problematic, slavery is a virtual industry upon the face of Athas. It is the mechanism by which the world of Dark Sun runs and we get a look at several slave tribes of Athas. These tribes continue to play a central roll on Dark Sun. And Slave Tribes of Athas is a solid look at these tribes. Don't believe me?! Back in 01/22/07 Jeno S on Drivethrurpg wrote the following; "This accessory focuses on an aspect that differentiates Dark Sun: slavery. Although slavery exists in many campaign settings, Athas is a cruel world in which this notion plays a central role for its economic and social dynamics. Members of any race, thri-kreen, dwarves, and any stratum, rich, poor, templars, have seen themselves as victims or perpetrators of slavery. The first part of the accessory examines slavery in the Athasian society, its origin, practice etc., the second one focuses on several slave tribes (groups of ex-slaves), while the last one reveals life in these tribes and provides information for creating our own tribes.

This accessory is by no means essential, but is well-written, has the form of a chronicle, like the Wanderer journal of the boxed set, with frequent first-person narration (Bill Slavicsek speaks as the chronicler Daled, a dwarf and ex-slave), elegant language, offering an enjoyable read and helping the DM to add a special flavour to his campaign." 
And while DSR1 Slave Tribes both acknowledges & deals with slavery it never shys away from the fact that it is an abhorrant practice on Dark Sun. There are no innocents here on Athas.  What does any of this have to do with Castles & Crusades?! Well hold up, if we take DSR1 Slave Tribes by Bill Slavicsek and combined it with Brian Young's  Codex Classicum. Then you have the beginnings of a bad ass campaign. Why because this Codex Classicum have several classes that easily mirror many of the materials, tropes, settings, etc. that DSR1 talks about. 

Remember this isn't a bug it's a feature. Many of Athas's citystates are built on Earth's historical places. What makes Athas unique is how these cultures blend together against the undying Sun of Athas. 
This also comes into play when designing adventures. Slave Tribes is no exception as the slaves become the danger as well as the salvation for PC's. There are more then enough tribes that pray on both thier own and others. Such as the way of Athas. Is  DSR1 Slave Tribes an essential book? No, but it's a damn fine addition to the Dark Sun line for those wanting something different that takes a horrid practice and turns it on it's ear. This enables the player to begin to assend the ladder from slave to hero. This is a journey frought with danger at every turn. We're just getting started buckle up! 

The Propercare & Maintence of the Incorporeal Undead With Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure Book For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 With the Halloween season almost upon us Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure jumps into one's hands to take a look at the more traditional Siege Engine rpg systems for OSR style games. The number of undead within this tome is fantastic. But sometimes the DM needs a bit of extra edge & with Halloween only eleven days away it's time to bring in a bit of back up. 

James Mishler gets B/X style rpg's & he's been proving it again & again over time. Now we realize that C&C isn't B/X but it trails down that same Gygaxian old school trail. And that's where Ghosts -- The Incorporeal Undead By James Mishler, & Jodi Moran-Mishler From Mishler Games comes in really handy.

 Take your favorite incorporeal C&C  undead & add in a plethora of ghostly abilities such as the following:
List of Ghostly Special Abilities
Acid Ghost
Alien Ghost
Ancestral Ghost
Animal Ghost
Animate Corpse
Armored Ghost
Blinking Ghost
Bloody Ghost
Chained Ghost [Earthly Remains]
Chained Ghost [Location]
Child Ghost
Create Remnants
Cursed Ghost
Damned to Walk the Earth
Daywalker
Demon Ghost
Dream Killer
Drowned Ghost
Drunken Ghost
Ectoplasmic Blast
Ectoplasmic Touch
Embodied Ghost
Entropic Attack
Environmental Ghost
Fast Ghost
Fiery Ghost
Fortean Apportation
Friendly Ghost
Frightening Ghost
Frost Ghost
Ghost Lover
Ghost Magician
Ghost Object
Ghost Priest
Ghost Ship
Ghost Sovereign
Ghostly Head
Guardian Ghost
Headless Ghost
Hungry Ghost
Hypnoghost
Keening Ghost
Laser Ghost
Lifelike Ghost
Lightning Ghost
Material Susceptibility
Monster Ghost
Multiattack
Nanny Ghost
Negative Energy Blast
Nightmare Ghost
Object Animator
Pipeweed Ghost
Plague Ghost
Poltergeist
Poison Ghost
Possess the Living
Radioactive Ghost
Robotic Ghost
Shackled Ghost [Item]
Shrouded Ghost
Skull Thrower Ghost
Special Immunity
Spectral Music
Spectral Steed
Stuck in Time
Tasked Ghost
Teleport
Thunder Ghost
Trickster Ghost
Unwitting Ghost
Vengeful Ghost
Wandering Ghost
Warning Ghost [White Lady]
Wind Ghost

 
Not only will have your players guessing but they'll hate you for 'ruining' the standard C&C Monsters & Treasure book. Well not really your simply applying a different slant to the classic ghostly & incorpeal inhabitants of your ruins or dungeon. Don't believe me check out Gregory B's review highlights of Mishler's Ghosts The Incorpreal Undead; 

"GHOSTS offers a complete paradigm of incorporeal undeadness for any D&D-ish style rules set. There are completely statted ghost types, discussion of how mortals interface with the sidereal world, and a good number of new spells to enrich your game's ghostly experiences." This brings up a very important point for Ghosts, it can move the simple one dimensional ghosts into being an important & unique undead horror NPC that can add a bit of tragic or down right disturbing dungeon decor.This NPC can come in handy  to your favorite ruin or adventure location by adding a key piece of campaign lore or dungeon trival.  Another aspect that Ghosts offers are simple & highly effective rules on the sixth sense  & sensitives being able to sense the spirit world. Mishler has done some highly effective rules regarding Mediums and Séances.   These rules helps move ghosts from a monster with X amount XP to something that can be worked into an adventure  plot. We also end with  information on ghost-sensitive animals & how they interact with the spirit world..  All of this material folds into the Monsters & Treasure book allowing the DM to go that extra mile from turning a simple ghostly horror into a giant encounter of epic proporations.  Ghosts -- The Incorporeal Undead By James Mishler, & Jodi Moran-Mishler From Mishler Games Is Available Right Over Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OSR Commentary On The Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide 3rd Printing By Davis Chenault, & Stephen Chenault For The Castles & Crusades rpg

 If there's one book that over the years that needs to go into my collection is  Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide 3rd Printing By Davis Chenault, & Stephen Chenault for the Castles & Crusades rpg. Over the years Castles & Crusades is one of my main favorite OSR systems. The fact is that I'm a really late hobbyist to the C&C rpg line. 

The Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide 3rd Printing is possibly one of the best updates of the classic C&C Castle Keeper's Guide. It is superior to other printings because of the expanded rules across the board for the C&C's Keepers Guide. There are three areas that the 3rd printing shines. The sections on the urban areas. The city as adventuring hub and the dungeon as dynamic adventuring enviroment. 

The Castle Keeper's Guide is a great resource for the dungeon master looking to use the Seige Engine as a world building font. 

The reason for this is three fold, one  Davis Chenault, & Stephen Chenault have a deep as well as an abiding understanding of the system that they've created. 

Two the Siege engine isn't static but rather a dynamic campaign system and the various avenues of outlet found within the Castle Keeper's Guide bares this out. 

Three Siege Engine get's it's due within the Castle Keeper's Guide with all of the alternative rules, roles, and really beefs up the system. Not only for the DM's perspective but the players as well.. 

The Castles & Crusades Castle Keepers Guide 3rd Printing By Davis Chenault, & Stephen Chenault is one of the absolutely key books for the Castles & Crusades system. The Siege Engine system is absolutely pimped out with a metric ton of subsystems that add a huge amount of adventure & world building options to the Castles & Crusades as well as the Seige system.