The d' Amberville Gambit - Campaign Session Commentary Report 1b - Now With More Jame M. Ward

So my Castles & Crusades rpg campaign has been humming along with me updating various adventure elements thanks in part to the Castles & Crusades rpg community on Facebook. I was able to get my local print shop to do an incredible bang up job on my recent purchases from Drivethrurpg.


So I've been incorporating huge swaths of past campaigns & that brings me to one of my most troublesome adventurer patrons & sometimes wizard foe  Stephen d' Amberville. Now d' Amberville first appeared in  X2: "Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville)" (1981), by Tom Moldvay. For the last twenty or so years he's appeared in the background of various campaigns as a high level wizard of near cosmic power. But for some time now I've been toying with the idea of him being completely converted into a Dark Lord ala Ravenloft.  But it feels like Ravenloft is way too well known at this point among players. Others have whispered 'The Haunted Highlands' but that setting deserves its own adventures really. But then a friend recommended James Ward's Tainted Lands . So it was on sale & so I thought why not I'm having it!


Since it came out I've been debating getting 'The Tainted Lands' since  2010 & it was Nicholas B's review that really sealed the deal; "Well, I just wrote a lengthy review that was devoured by rpgnow requiring me to sign in a second time (timed out I guess) and I lack the energy to rewrite this, so I'll just do a summary:
Style/Presentation: there are 5 books included but they are not indexed. The artwork is good, although the new artist's style took a bit of adjusting to get used to. As with all Troll Lords products it could have used a bit more editing. There is confusion on the extra prime rules introduced in the book.
Stand-Alone Usefulness: The book includes a C&C quickstart rules set but the game is clearly written for use with the main books, and so this is of limited usefulness. It works great as a specific campaign setting for C&C, but it is very high powered, and using much of this material in standard C&C games requires careful consideration.
Usefulness as a Horror Setting: This game is clearly inspired by Ravenloft, but it is much closer thematically to the movie Van Helsing or Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. I would also suggest this was a great resource for a Castlevania style game. Characters in this game are tough, very tough. They face slavering hordes of monsters that are just as tough, however; it's a strange mix that felt like a "fantasy heavy metal" take on horror to me.
Contents: Four new classes, a ton of new magic items, gear and spells, a detailed overview of the demiplane and a scenario for 4th level characters that will put them through the wringer of a haunted former keep turned inn turned bastion of EVIL. There is also a PDF with class-based character records and a quickstart rulebook that is more useful as a hand-out to players new to the whole RPG thing than to running the boxed set as is.
Overall: James Ward knows how to write a fun old-school sourcebook. It's not for people who find and crave balance, nor is it for people who learned everything they ever knew about role playing games within the last six years; if you were gaming in the 80's you will grokk what this set is about and appreciate what it's trying to accomplish. It;s very accessible and full of weird over-the-top ideas. Well worth the attention of old school and C&C fans alike. I could also see this being converted to a more modern game like Pathfinder with minor work involved. Fans of WoD games need not apply, this is a brand of heavy metal dark fantasy that has little to do with the precepts of the White Wolf brand names; likewise if you come to this expecting a Ravenloft supplement with the serial numbers filed off you will only be partially correct; the Tainted Lands is closer to James Ward's homebrew Ravenloft, I suspect, than anything else, and the higher overall power level of this game means it will most definitely play out like some sort of dark heroic fantasy than gothic horror.

You can't tell but this part is bursting with undead.

Style: 4/5 -- good art, good layout, needs some errata and editing Rules: 3/5 -- useful for its internal setting, harder to adapt a lot of it to a standard C&C game Readability: 5/5 -- James Ward's relaxed and casual style of writing is a pleasure to read and made this more engaging than many existing C&C modules Overall: 4/5 -- I'm using this for a Tainted Lands campaign "as is", the wacky concepts within make for a singularly unique over-the-top splatterfest campaign; if you like old-school and this sounds intriguing, grab it!"

Heavy Metal Old School Splatterfest sounds about right in my wheel house. And I've been debating about what do about the plane of water seas around my dimensionally travelling Tegel Manor. Matt Finch of Frog God Games happened to put me on the indegogo of Island of Sorrow is an adventure for characters levels 3-5 that takes them on a journey across the sea to rescue the lost scion of a wealthy merchant family. Yeah this sound right up my alley for adding it near X1 The Isle of Dread. Seriously this a perfect fit for it.

So over the next couple of days I'm working my coins into getting on board with this funding effort but its gonna be tight. Last night I remembered that  Timothy S. Brannan over at Otherside blog  had covered Tainted Lands in his  Class Struggles: Castles & Crusades Classes.
Here he speaks about modifying the Tainted Lands classes;
" Moving on to more C&C specific "worlds" we can first turn to the Tainted Lands. Now to be fair, I was pretty hard on this product when it came out.  I still find faults with it, but I am softening my approach some more.  I just ignore the "Psychic" and "Supernatural" attributes. The nice thing about this setting is it is easily back-adaptable to ad some darkness to your games.  The Tainted Lands also gives us four new classes.  The Witch Hunter (which I have converted to Wisdom), The Metals Master (which I honestly don't use), The Portal Keeper (I use Intelligence instead) and the Vampire (Strength).  Of these, I use the Witch Hunter the most.

The Haunted Highlands are next and have some classes that fit into the same horror or darkness tinged mode.  This includes the Players Guide, the Castle Keeper's Guide and the Black Libram of Naratus.  Now these books hit me right in my home.  Dark, scary, Celtic themed play?  Sign me up!  I will work on getting a full review out for the Haunted Highlands soon.  Case on point, the classes are a revised Assassin, a revised Monk, the Conjurer (Charisma based), the Necromancer (an Inteligence sub-class of the Wizard and which is also detailed at length in the Black Libram of Naratus), and the Witch (Wisdom based)! I could go on and on about the witch here, but it is a very approapriate adaptation of the concept for this setting.  Again. There is so much here to go through that I will have to devote a blog post or two about it.  But I would easily play one of these witches or necromancers."

This sounds very close to some of the Hammer horror Gothic/Gonzo feel that I was looking to inject into my Franco Prussian War Steampunk campaign using Mike Stewart's Victorious rpg as the spine system.  Across the demi planes the Cha'alt warlords & the Slavers are pushing their own agenda. There's lots of weirdness as wizards, dead gods, & others play three tiered planar chess with various realities. The Cha'alt crew wants to bring the whole chess board down or do they?! 

Stephen d' Amberville has been moving various agents into place at key critical junctures. A few of my players in Frog God Games  Encephalon Gorgers on the Moon have encountered the cat's paws of d' Amberville in the form of rival adventuring parties. A great adventure with a dangerous under plot to it.



For these modules I'm looking more at a Bruce Campbell Vs The Army of Darkness meets Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust hence my grabbing James Ward's Tainted Lands.

X2: "Castle Amber (Chateau d' Amberville)" awaits on its own to spring upon the PC's like some insane wild beast & bring them into its fetid grasp.
Meanwhile an old friend in the form of the lich the  Duke D' Lamont is keeping an eye on the PC's. He's sent the occasional assassin after the party of adventurers after they've broken into his tax collection coffers & caravans over the years. He's got a rivalry going with d' Amberville and often seems to squeeze them between these two bastard NPC's. 

Cha'alt & Breaking The House Campaign Elevator Pitch

Breaking The House campaign basic premise - Interplanar gangsters bring Venger Satanis's Cha'alt mega dungeon comes to Los Vegas Earth! They've seen a rich opportunity for taking over the strip & bringing their madness to Earth for fun & profit! Months ahead the demigods,heroes, & gods of several alien universes have gotten wind of this! And their not taking it! So the gods of Earth have joined their alien breathen (for now) on dealing with this threat!



Vegas Sign artwork by Anasofiapaixao


Yeah I'm pitching a Godbound rpg campaign here & yeah the alien desert of Cha'alt fits in nicely with the decedence of sin city Los Vegas. So I'm thinking less of the 

Deserts of Desolation & Death & More of Tim Brannan. And more of the Clark Ashton Smith alien vibe that I've spoken so much about before on this blog. The dededence of Zothique mixed with the smatz of Vegas baby.



Yeah I just did something like this about a week ago on the OSR Commentary - Purple Gods & Mega- dungeons of Venger Satanis. But Vegas kinda brings it all together as Cha'alt warps into the sands of the sunset strip. Would anyone even notice?! The second I believe the lasers & whatnot started to fly then things would get very interesting.

I've got a lot of minor work to do on this campaign yet.

1.  Whose gonna be the gansters in question & I'm thinking of going with hopped up versions of classic Dungeons & Dragons races. 
2. What are they after in Vegas? 
3. Who are the patheons of Earth gods trying to stop them & where can I work in the Dieties & Demigods angles? 
4. I need to turn the Dungeons & Dragons vibe up to eleven & then  snap the knob off this one. 
5. Where can I work in the The Master and his Temple of Death series of modules?! 
6. There are lots of Fiend Folio monsters that I can throw in the mix here. Possibly several of the Babylonian angles as well. 
7. I've got several options for possible cults in the mix as well. 
8. The technologies of Cha'alt are gonna play a centeral part here. 
9. More Islands of Purple Putresence & less Alpha Blue infact a lot less Alpha Blue... 
10. Several hard core & metal Casio dungeons in this coming up. 

Review & Commentary & Review On The Free Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book By Tim Brannan

“Let us be Diana's foresters, minions of the moon”  - William Shakespeare

Artemis and Diana, Forever Young. Forever Wild.

Time out of mind the symbol of Diana meant freedom. And in freedom there is Power.

This book introduces the Amazon Witch Tradition. Witches from the ancient time of myths and legends."



This is a solid PC's option for a witch class & it can be used with other retroclones besides Blue Holmes. Sure this is a free pdf but the author knows his stuff when it comes to doing witches & witchcraft. The lay out & page count runs about twenty five but the material is useful & playable.
"For this book, Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch Tradition, I wanted to satisfy two goals. 1. To have a witch class that felt like something I would have played in between Holmes and Moldvay. That time between 1979 and 1981 where I didn’t have a clue as to what we were all doing, we were having fun. And 2. To provide something back to the community for free under the same spirit of sharing and love of the game that was so prevalent in those days. While overtly designed for use with the BLUEHOLMETM Prentice rules, I will present a full spread of 20 levels and some spells. All for the same price I paid for my first copy of Holmes. "
So the  Amazon Witch class is built on the foundation that the witch  player wants access to  40 Spells and 8 Rituals then this is the book for you. Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch Tradition is perfectly usable with Holmes Basic Dungeons & Dragons.

The BLUEHOLME™ Journeymanne Rules are perfect for using the Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book.  The fact that it goes up twenty levels for the player's PC. The witch class and two new witch covens work well together especially for creating a concentrated occult whole. 

 The BLUEHOLME™ Journeymanne Rules has basics are covered, species instead of races, classes, abilities, equipment, spells, monsters, treasure, adventures, encounters, & campaigns. Everything in these rules is oriented to dealing with campaign oriented play.

I love the artwork that was used in prentice rules. They are solidly done & they take on the persona of the original Holmes rules without the added BS of Wizards of the Toast ownership on your game. Anyhow the material in  The BLUEHOLME™ Journeymanne Rules. 
Anyhow the Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book complements the whole package to form a solid whole. This works as a package deal to work as a solid retroclone.
Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book Here. My recommendation is to download it, use it, & enjoy it. My players weren't thrilled because I could use Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book to create some rather nasty NPC's


Download
Cult of Diana: The Amazon Witch book
 Here

Review & Commentary On Secrets of the Witchkind by Steve Miller Of NUELOW Games

"Secrets of the Witchkind presents everything you need to bring a new, highly magical player character race to at d20 System campagin setting you enjoy. The Witchkind aren't just spellcasters... everything they are is tied to magic, and they use it more naturally than any other beings in the multiverse."



So I wanted to get back into a bit of OSR kitbashing with Secrets of the Witchkind by Steve Miller. The cover art by Bradley McDermitt convey's a sort of absolutely insane witchkind that might be the perfect NPC villain. Before we go any further this book this is a D20 modern Basics book. The book has a sort of Bewitched quality about it which happens right from the intro; "Every human culture has legends about men and women who bend reality to their will through magic. In the following pages, we reveal the source of those legends, the beings that sorcerers and wizards and demonologists through the ages have aspired to be like— Witchkind! A note about gender language in this product: Throughout this booklet, we refer to "witches" as a general term for witchkind. We do this as a matter of expedience, because we didn't want to type "witches and warlocks" or even "witchkind" over and over. Any reference to a witch applies equally to warlocks, who are their male counterparts. (That should be selfevident, but we have found in the course of the he/she/it wars that it is not.)"

One thing about Secrets of the Witchkind is that this higher quality book then some of Neulow games other offerings. The author has put more work into production & it shows. I was shocked to see that this book was up to Secrets of the Immortals standards. We get racial background on Witchkind their history, events, culture, etc. & it gets pretty indepth; "What is known is that witches and warlocks have existed along side and among humans for tens of thousands of years. The earliest witches seem to have been created via an accident in Atlantis that flooded several thousand people with magical energy during an attempt to study the extra-dimensional Realm of Fairies. When it became clear that there was no reversing the changes they had undergone, the Atlantean leaders isolated them for the rest of their population by restricting them to an extra-dimensional settlement that eventually evolved into a trading and diplomatic post where Atlantis interacted with all the other planes. "
So once again this goes side by side with Secrets of the Immortals history  another hidden race that has existed side by side with humanity. That's not a bad thing & Secrets of Witchkind is lite enough system wise to work with other OSR D20 products out on the market. This includes Troll Lord Games Amazing Adventures! But Witchkind are extremely long lived PC's.


The layout here is good & the material here is higher level then I was sort of expecting but many of the D20 Neulow games supplements could be used with  Light City a supers hack for the outstanding and simplified Swords & Wizardry Light and Swords & Wizardry Continual Light designed by Erik Tenkar. If I was gonna pitch a whole cloth campaign it would be used with Light City: The Assembly! That campaign material has the right mix of supernatural heroics & super villain nastiness to fit the implied material in Secrets of  The Witchkind. 
Is Secrets of  The Witchkind a rip off of the Betwitched television show? Kinda but not really at all this product is more of an upsend of the witch in a way where the feats & magic system of the Witchkind convey a much more dynamic & almost Pulp like mystic super heroic figure. They have a complete independent magic system; "The following spell point costs are baselines. There are circumstances that can either increase or decrease the amount of spell points expended. Here are some universal conditions that impact the spell point cost. • Spells in core rulebooks and other supplements: Spell level x3 • Minor spell effects, as created by player: 1 spell point (for example, turning a taco into a burrito) • Medium spell effects, as created by player: 6 spell points (for example, placing an enchantment on an item that causes the person carrying it to always tell the truth for 24 hours) • Elaborate spell effects, as created by player: 12 spell points (for example, causing a room to completely change in appearance) • Major spell effects, as created by player: 24 spell points (causing a fully furnished house to appear in an empty lot for a number days equal to character level) • Epic spell effects, as created by player: 100 spell points (for example, causing one or more structures to appear or disappear on a permanent basis, drawing a historical figure from the past into current time, or sending the witch and a number of other people back or forward in time)."
The layout & fonts are very well done here in  Secrets of  The Witchkind. The feats of the Witchkind reflect their 'otherness' from the run of the mill human; "Empathy [Minor Power] You detect the surface emotions of any creature you can see that is in the power’s area. Benefit: As a full round action, you can focus your attention on a single creature within your line of sight. Roll a Willpower save (DC10). If the roll is successful, you know the target's exact emotional state--afraid, angry, hate-filled, curious, friendly, or any other emotion. The following round, you gain a +4 bonus to Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, or Sense Motive checks you make at the target. Special: This feat serves a prerequisite for any talent from Superpower trees."
You get an almost a really horrific  nasty effect with the Talents of the Witchkind;"Invisibility You can become hard to see or totally invisible at will. The invisibility can be activated by a thought (standard action), and remains in effect until he wills himself visible again, or loses consciousness. The character’s clothes and carried objects become invisible as well. Shadowy: By taking a standard attack action, you turn partially invisible. You gain a +4 bonus to all Hide checks. This bonus increases to +10 if you are in a dark area or it is night. Invisible: By taking a standard attack action, you turn invisible. All attacks made against you suffer a -6 penalty. Creatures that can see invisible objects can still see you, and you can be sensed by equipment that detects body heat or movement. Likewise, if you step in a puddle, are submerged in water, stand in heavy rain, or if someone fills the air with dust or flour that clings to you, you essentially become visible. Prerequisite: Shadowy Insubstantial: As Invisible, except the character becomes vaporous and become immune to damage from all damage sources except those that compress or displace air, such as extreme heat and cold. The character suffers normal damage from such attacks. Prerequisite: Invisible"

How is this phamplet different from say the work of Tim Brannan of the Otherside Blog say his  The Children of the Gods The Classical Witch Tradition book? Well there are both some major thematic differences & racial ones. The witchkind are their own species, the have their own detailed societal overview, there racial details that differ. In other words the  Secrets of  The Witchkind  is its own product separate from many of the witch books on the market. I'll be doing a review of Tim Brannan's The Children of the Gods The Classical Witch Tradition book coming up but that's its own blog entry. 
Secrets of  The Witchkind is its own book & supplement. Its one that adds a very different take on a very long & almost immortal race unto itself. Is it good? In a word yes! Does it do its job?! Yes it does & perhaps a bit more. Overall I'm glad to have it & will be using it soon. Do I think you should get it? Yes if you want to add in a very different spin witches & witchkind! 

OSR Commentary - Purple Gods & Mega- dungeons of Venger Satanis

So Tim Brannan on the Otherside blog  has slammed down Venger Satanis's purple gauntlet mega dungeon Cha'alt  today on a Sunday. So in the nature of good time fun I've been a wee bit busy but I'll take up the challenge. I've got a group of players that have been interested in Godbound. So let's find out what happens when the gods themselves brave the depths of Cha'alt?




Now I know that Venger & Kevin Crawford have had issues in the past but that's really not my problem. My problem is if the PC's will survive the hundred of floors of mayhem within Cha'alt itself. And what about the factions of Cha'alt? For my purposes I've already got the far future desert environs in mind for this game. An alternative Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique is the setting for the mega dungeon. The wastelands, deserts, & environs are the perfect setting as its millions of years after the last battles of the Gods.


 Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's Hyperboreans are already on the cases of the PC's. Their empire is in ashes on the D20 version of Zothique . The hunter killer androids, robots, & other technological horrors left overs from the war of the gods. The PC's are veterans from that conflict now dealing with horrors of the next generation of upstarts,cults, & horrors from the void.

On the whole Cha'alt's Black Pyramid influence on this world has begun to be felt & what about the poor human population? There is a need & time for heroes this is it but will it make a real difference? The world of Zothique is far closer to the jungles in David Cook's X5 Temple of Death which I've used lots of times with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.



The Master and his Temple of Death might well be connected to several of the factions within Cha'alt. There's more then enough room to make the jungle & desert environments perfectly aligned with the 'sword & ray gun gonzoness' of Venger's creation. The real issue is if the cults of  Cha'alt are spreading their evils throughout time & space coming up!

1. Cha'alt is a build out & hot rodded to handle any of the antics that PC's can throw at it. 
2. The technologies of Cha'alt are right in line with some of the stuff that are found in Godbound. 
3. Cha'alt has lots of ins & outs for getting the PC's into trouble & even murdering them on the fly 
4. Many of the cities & adventure locations in Cha'alt are ripe for filling out & filling in 
5. The mythology of adventure fits the weirdness of Zothique. 
6. I've got lots of plans for putting this whole cloth adventure into action. 
7. Time, space, & even genre isn't even a problem for either of Godbound or Cha'alt. 
8. The whole campaign is gonna be very Metal so can't wait. 
9. So I want to use some of the optional D&D as well as AD&D material from Dragon magazine that I've acquired over the years. 
10. More blog posts as this develops. 

OSR Commentary - Dark Albion Cult of Chaos Sends The PC's to Hell

I posted a picture on Twitter this morning of the unholy trinity of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition books which have destroyed hordes of player's PC's over the years. But folks have lost their marbles over the fact that posted about Geoffry O'Dale's Judge's Guild adventure Inferno  . The fact that I was thinking about running with original Dungeons & Dragons or a retroclone.
What no one realizes is that I've run it in the past using an unholy combination of Rpg Pundit's Dark Albion, Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, & Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos. 


I can't say that this is an original idea at all I took my OSR pee's & ques from Tim Brannan 2016's Pundit's Dark Albion review; "I mentioned in the past that Dark Albion is particularily friendly to +Jeff Talanian's Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Using a page from DA:CoC one could easily add DA style elves (and of course their cults) into the world of AS&SH.  AS&SH style witches and warlocks seem particularly suited for the the chaos magic of DA. "

I've used both Dark Albion & Dark Albion Cults of Chaos to create Inferno & Chaos cults based on the demons & devils from Dante's Inferno. I use these across the board for my various OSR campaigns.

The Dark Albion campaign has some excellent resources to portray the era of Inferno & its far reaching horrors. The Hell of Dante is an excellent antagonist for the royals of Albion. There are several reasons for this: 

1. The alternative Hell will confuse the heck outta of players who are used to the usual mythology of the classic TSR era planes.
2. Several of the devils & demons are very nice to see in their in their proper place & they fit the stereo types of Chaos quite nicely. 
3. The cults of the book are perfect replacements for the various infernal cults 
4. Several blood thirsty horrors from the Inferno are perfect for the edge of the world of Albion & even gasp Greyhawk 
5. Demons from Hell instead of the Abyss makes things very interesting for old school play.
6. Hell is very aggressive & has some real stakes to conquer  various planes Prime 
7. Using Dark Albion with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery one could create various agents of Law, Chaos, & Neutrality. 
8. The overview of the Rose War & real world history makes a very vibrant campaign tapestry. 
9. There are so many options that one could take the cult thing into the  Dungeon Crawl Classic funnel realm with the PC's being escaped damned. 
10. Hell takes thing unto the next level. 

Rpg Pundit's Dark Albion, Astonishing Swordmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, & Dark Albion's Cults of Chaos works very well with other OSR systems including the  Castles & Crusades rpg. There are lots of Hellish options with such a combination. The PC's are going to have to do a lot of dungeon exploration to keep two steps ahead of the powers of Hell.

Where Tim Went Wrong and Right. Witches, Chaos, Cults, And Witchcraft In Old School Retroclone Campaigns

I've been following Tim Brannan's blog now for many months and he's been doing some very nice Fantastic Heroes and Witchery posts and talking about mixing in Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. He's going to try and smooth out some of the rough edges of  Fantastic Heroes and Witchery with the pseudo historic wonderfulness of Dark Albion from the mighty pen of +Kasimir Urbanski's aka RPGPundit's in his latest book Dark Albion: The Rose War. For the better part of  over a month I've been looking into Dark Albion's demonic and chaotic foundations. And I think that's where Tim is missing some vital information. He's done some damn fine posts about FH&W  All of these very solid posts can be found right over HERE, HERE & right over HERE. 
  Which brings up the point here, FH&W's implied lack of a cleric goes to the heart of the nature of Chaos in the rule book. Chaos in Fantastic Heroes and Witchery is all things of Hell, the Abyss, and Chaos. Occultists walk indeed a very fine line and a razor's edge in the game one to which can indeed cut the throat of the very expert in Magick as its implied in the book. Fantastic Heroes and Witchery takes grave pains to wear its Gothic pedigree on its sleeve especially in regards to its conventions towards Hell and the powers of Chaos especially within its spells. The six hundred and sixty six spells have had great pains by the author to have them modified to fit his world view of the corrupting and dangerous nature of Chaos. A view that is both shared by me and Kasimir Urbanski. Dark Albion presents a very solid pseudo historical  structure for its view of Hell, Chaos and its Demons. This is not so much based on a refinement of actual history but a blending of occult fictional tradition, historical ideas, and mythological conceits wrapped in very rich game setting.


And that's really part of the problem with mixing and matching some of these sources, Lord knows I've been wrestling with this problem ever since I received Dark Albion. Tim Brannan's style is the mixing and matching of these styles of games according to him:
'Another point of commonality is Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. I wanted to use it as a game system for both Dark Albion and my witch adventures.  I think it would work out well.  I need to find locales in "Dark" Europe for all of these adventures.'

What time's not getting is very dark and dangerous nature of Dark Albion, AS&SH, along with FH&W. These games are not so much D&D as they are Gothic pulp sword and sorcery wrapped in the seeming tropes of D&D. Rpgpundit went through a very carefully contrived blog entry regarding demons, cults, and chaos worship in Dark Albion :
'Regarding Chaos worship, some people have asked just what a Chaos-cult in Albion should look like.  Now the thing is, the particular manifestations of Chaos-worship in the setting ought to be extremely varied. Law is One, Chaos is Legion. So I don't think there's a lot of uniform things you can say about it. There are heretical subversive cults that appear to worship the Unconquered Sun (like the Cathari), there are secret 'satanic'-style sects, lone would-be witches venerating some dark thing in the woods, there was Bishop Peacock's sect that looked like a regular church congregation on the outside but they were preparing to open a gate to hell in the old Arcadian catacombs, there are of course the Frogmen and their Frog-Gods. So the answer is that the main thing a GM should try to do with Chaos-cults is not make any two look too similar to one another; this is of course a great detail if you choose to focus on a game of chaos-hunters (for example, of a party being sponsored by the Clerical order). Even so, there's a good list of references from the details in the gazetteer and chronology as to provide a GM with ideas of what Chaos cults can look like.
With demons, the whole system for demon-summoning, and the details thereof are explicit in the game.  The system is based on the actual medieval ideas on demon-summoning, from grimoires like the Goetia.  Demons come in different ranks (corresponding to their level of power), that human beings have labelled as though they were mortal titles: knights, counts, dukes, princes, etc.
The medieval magicians did not believe that summoning demons was necessarily an evil act; if you could control and bind them in the name of divine forces (in this case, the Unconquered Sun), then evil could be used for good purposes (naturally, non-magicians would have a hard time being able to tell if that was the case and would be highly paranoid about the whole business regardless).  Suitably bound, they could then be obliged to offer a service or deal with a problem in exchange for being released back from whence they came.  But it is also possible to end up making a pact with a demon, if one was inclined to the service of Chaos, where the demon would provide certain gifts in exchange for the magician's loyalty.  I did write a little about the kind of gifts Demons can offer: the permanent use of any of that demon's special powers, magic items, access to spell knowledge for magic-users, etc. But again, I didn't want to get too specific here so as not to be restrictive. In short, what is offered will be defined by what the magician wants, and what the demon has the power to give (and yes, there are clear guidelines as to what any given demon is capable of doing).' You can read the whole thing right over HERE And that's part of the very issue of using witches from Dark Albion, magick in the setting can and could be tied into demon summoning along with its attendant issues. Tim also talks about, 'I can take the occultist class and make it into a passable Occult Poet.' Why not simply use the bard class from AS&SH as a compliment as well?
This brings up the role of Chaos, & the Witch in AS&SH. The witch is a class in the game that can serve a very wide variety of purposes and roles in the game. Though tied to the world of Hyperborea by the class's very nature, the witch is perhaps in my mind tied to and linked with adventurers in a way that beckons adventurers into the very fabric of AS&SH. They can be and should be used as the glue that ties both cults and covens in the setting together. Chaos is in the mix for AS&SH but its the Chaos of classic mythology and otherworldly Lovecraftian horror and not so much of the Infernal or is it? Well its actually both. There are the classic demons of AD&D and OGL fare but also the rolling sanity wrenching weirdness of the Lovecraftian multidimensional murderverse laying in wait for the witch or wizard of AS&SH.


By using the three of these products together one gets the best strengths of all three as long as the DM remembers the conceil that these are Gothic/Pulp games at their heart and are  more then the sum of their parts. Tim's idea is killer with some real teeth to it:
'One thing I always wanted to do was run a dark age WitchCraft RPG game.  Set in the 1600s it would deal with rival factions of the Gifted fighting each other while Europe descends into the Burning Times.  It struck me how close that idea was some things I was also planning in my War of the Witch Queens adventures.'
In point of fact what I actually think could be run using Dark Albion and its Hellish powers as its base is in point of fact a Solomon Kane style campaign with bits and pieces borrowed from AS&SH and Fantastic Heroes and Witchery but the balance is very tricky.


At its heart and soul here in this style of campaign are the pulp sword and sorcery forces of the party and the forces of Hell and the demons all waiting to tear a ragged straight razor across the throat of the party. Does Tim have a fantastic idea? Absolutely but these rpg systems can be very tricky to use together. The key is balance and planning when working with these forces.

Quick Overview of Eldritch Witchery Now Live From Elf Lair Games On The Dark Corner Blog

 Just in time for Halloween is a cauldron of trouble from
the mind of Tim Brannan for your old school table now with a quick overview on the Dark Corner blog HERE