OSR Moorcockian Frankenstein Session Report - Across The Atlantean Divide

 So after this past holiday's MiGo rush off the PC's failed to complete  Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing. The ice world that they were on started to break up. And they decided to go back to the Mi Go base they had encountered a session ago because there could be a portal gate way according to the party's wizard.  We're using quite a few Lamentations of the Flame Princess resources with this campaign. The player's PC's survive a running hide & seek game with the MiGo resulting in some injuries & the death of the party's fighter. 

So they broke into the Mi Go base & then its an all out race to find the Atlantean teleportation circle that came from my friend Steve Miller's blog here. Now if you don't understand what's happening here let me explain very quickly, D20 & in some cases D20 Modern OGL forms the basis for many OSR retroclones & products. Now for a few months now our group has been using Fantastic Heroes & Witchery mixed with Adventurer,Conqeuror,King, rpg & Castles & Crusades. Now all of this comes back to the fact that Swords & Wizardry along with its adventures aligns with all of these resources. And what does this have to do with Stormbringer?!


Everything because when the party stepped through the disk they ended up in what appeared to be a very quant 16th century village complete with back smithy and more!? 
The party steps through the portal & ends up at the end of village. Vilagers rush to help them!? The party is welcomed into the village & the village doctor ends up binding the wounds of our fighter. A small temple to the gods  of Law is within the village & there's a mine further into the quiet rolling countryside.  

In actually the players are on 'Accursed Atlantis' an Atlantean fragment left over ala inspired by  Clark Ashton Smith's writings. This village is actually a mining outpost under the watchful eye of a wizard & cadre of purple knights which are from Fantastic Heroes & Witchery's  Science-Fantasy Classes and Race – PDF. 

The village burgermeister is eager to have the PC's meet the wizard who owns & runs the village.  The PC's meet with the wizard Garth Arseusi a member of the praying mantis scientist/wizard order from Hawkmoon's world taken directly outta of this book. 

How did I manage that feat?! Using the "Dragon Lords of Melnibone" D20 book, a slap dash book of a D20 adaptation of the Stormbringer rpg Elric rules. And no I'm not going to defend it one bit but what Fantastic Heroes & Witchery does is reorganize & codify the rules into a usable OSR whole for agents of  Law/Chaos/Neutrality. 

All of these D20 & OSR resources line up with Castles & Crusades supplements nicely. And this makes my job as a dungeon master much easier. And also goes back to Adventurer,Conqeuror,King, rpg's use of the humanoid races as pawns & products of Chaos. Something that will be playing a central theme coming up. The wizard Garth isn't insane but very much out of the way of the purview of his empire not knowing of the events on the Tragic Earth. He's actually got a problem with raids by tribes of Chaos mutated humanoids on his mine.Garth has his sights on the party. I grabbed a copy of Clipart Critters 609-OSR Goat Fiend by my buddy Bradley K. McDevitt. A print out of this mutant monster got everyone motived & worried! 

The player's PC's have faced down these types of Chaos mutants after I ran Perils of the Young Kingdom last year for my players.The chaos storm was a pain in the arse for the party & the chaos mutants caused all kinds of PC death! 

Will the The Man Who Sold Gods by Geoff Gillan adventure be taking certain stage coming up!? Possibly but there's going to be a lot of customization using the Castles & Crusades Keeper's Guide for this to work. 

OSR Moorcockian Frankenstein Session Report - Gregorius21778: The Mi-Go Outpost inside of the Red Mesa & YS1 The Outpost of the Outer Ones by Jeremy Reaban

" This is just a collection of ideas for an outpost of the Mi-Go, and for the contents of certain rooms. They are based on the concepts of H.P. Lovecraft (the author who “created” the Mi-Go), but are my own re-visioned version of them and thereby include sci-fi influences of other works and areas."




This is a session report of me getting dragged away for New Years day holiday play! The players deciding that we needed to settle down for a game. Last game session I mentioned rather casually the 'red mesa' last session  of play. The player in question Louis became obsessed with the importance of the 'red mesa'. Note that there was nothing prepared for this land feature?! Fortunately the mad man from Germany's OSR products are sitting on my lap top we're talking about Gregorius21778: The Mi-Go Outpost inside of the Red Mesa! Basically this is a five page quick dust up of Mi Go base. Really its more of a pay what you want adventure  outline. But its a well written adventure outline. This gives the dungeon master a prime opportunity to introduce some adventure elements from Accursed Atlantis into the campaign. You've got a bunch of Sword & Sorcery wizards, fighters, etc. all taken from Fantastic Heroes & Witchery rpg system.  The players are nervous now going deeper & deeper into the works as things get more horrifying with each step. The hive is alien, alive, and very dangerous. Now the Actung Cthlhu Mi Go mini's were in full effect on the table top. There are nefarious reasons why these guys are in use and they'll come to haunt the player's PC's later on. 

And then we took a smoke break because basically the dungeon master was running out of decription after five hours of play. But not to worry the intrepid dungeon master had YS1 The Outpost of the Outer Ones by Jeremy Reaban to use as the dungeon works of the Red Mesa. 

The player's PC's rounded a corner & in a cage was a group of very worried Pusher Gnomes. These little bastards were being experimented by the Mi Go for their potion & drug knowlege. The gnomes were having their brains taken out & put into brass cylinders. 

While there was a lot of bargaining going on with the gnomes the wizard was attacked! Things went from bad to worse as the party messed with a lava plug in the interior of the base. Earth shocks shook everything as the adventure plot moved along! They grabbed the gnomes & got outta of there! Two of the party's fighters were cut down by the Mi Go. The Mi Go themselves are full on servants of Chaos without remorse! 

The Mi Go from Dieties & Demigods for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition are 'Choatic Evil' & the easy way to explain the varying stats to players are the various incarnations & function of hive alien insects. 

The base started to quake & after losing several PC's the remaining adventurers simply left with the pusher gnomes. This lines up with adventure events that are happening with  Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing.

Thank God for Castles & Crusades Castle Keeper's Guide that provided some important science fictional or fantasy details. There's quite a few artifacts that  were slipped in last minute to really bring home the weirdness of this session. 

Most of these sessions were sneaking around & avoiding the Mi Go at any cost this was a very solid tactic on the player's parts. This whole affair could have been used with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea easily. 

OSR Moorcockian Frankenstein Session Report - Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp, & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing Session Report II

 "Buried for 10000 years beneath a mountain of black obsidian, a sword of unfathomable power has just awakened. Now, in a desperate race against time and the elements you must try to reach it before its former master returns from his astral prison."


Damn it! The players survived our Dredd/Swords & Wizardry mash up! But  Session II finds me dragged back behind the DM screen away from my family to deal with machinations of the players in  Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing.  The Chaos infused Amazons have been playing the PC's like harps from Hell! The PC  level of this campaign is on the heavy side of  3 thru 4th level  but its been really brutal! 

Meanwhile the player's PC's are making social contracts with obsidan gnomes & double dealing against an agent of Law. The whole affair is being run with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery  as the game began & sorta went on hiatus in 2018. Now unknown to our eight players  Gregorius21778 gave me a pdf copy of : Beneath Unhallowed Ground a Lamentations of the Flame Princess mini dungeon that I snuck into as a quick Chaos laiden encounter. 

 Beneath Unhallowed Ground is a location based adventure & now the base of my latest Chaos agent whose sending a few rather nasty undead at the players PC's. Now the game session is bogged down in the player's PC's party in a fight for life against the undead! One of the player's said something about today being a real Bernie Wrightson game!

Now the players are talking plans about possibly making this a regular game. Fortunately I've got one or two thoughts about this coming up. The players did get their hands on several magical scrolls in one of the crypts. And one of the PC occultists  cut a very fast pact with Chardros the Reaper, to become a necromancer . Fortunately I had a copy of James Mishler's Necromancer class on my lap top's hard drive & the player was really happy to have the opportunity to have a chance at this. 

Will they survive in this in this cold undead Hell from beyond the grave?! We'll see coming up!  These undead were mostly out of Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure. 

OSR Moorcockian Frankenstein Session Report - Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp, & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing Session Report .

"Buried for 10000 years beneath a mountain of black obsidian, a sword of unfathomable power has just awakened. Now, in a desperate race against time and the elements you must try to reach it before its former master returns from his astral prison."


 'Old habits die hard & there are prices to be paid.' the voice was as gravelly on the other end of the phone as a coffin in a Winter grave yard. 'Apparently you are also an idiot or have you forgotten the debt that you owe us. Its Christmas holiday. The game Eric its about the game. We're coming over & we're grabbing you.' So today apparently DM Steve blew into town & it was time for him to collect his due. Wayback in 2018 Steve had me promise to run a Moorcock style Sword & Sorcery Iceland game. The OSR rules set up for this game was Fantastic Heroes & Witchery  & the 1-3 level adventure in question that would be run was Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer from Knight Owl Publishing. So two hours was had to come up with 4 or 5 NPC agents of Chaos who wanted more then anything to have the blade of the demon king. Fantastic Heroes & Witchery was chosen because it has rules for agents of Law & Chaos even agents of 
 neutrality. 

So what was available for PC's?! All of the PC types for both the Science Fantasy & the Converted PC classes were used.  And how could we justify all of these different types of PC's mingling?! That's simple an Icelandic wizard used a mystic artifact similiar to the one used in the Hawkmoon boxset adventure 'The Shattered Isle. 

Almost immediately Havoc Tulson an agent of Chaos attacked & killed one of the PC fighters so things were off to a roaring start. Monsters & treasure came from Castles & Crusades Monsters & Treasure book & Castles & Crusades Classic Monsters & Treasure book. This is effectively the C&C Monster Manual & Fiend Folio (sorta) but works well with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery. 

There was a lot of moving across wilderness & dealing with weather related events. At certain points out came LoFP's Frost Bitten & Multilated which was Steve's Christmas or Yule present. The Amazons that I quickly rolled up within the two hours before the game were Chaos oriented. With seven players & masks the game moved along with the players basically runing away using a conjured snow storm as cover. 

The second agent of chaos was employing these lady warriors to take out the player's PC's. But the party actually ran before the ladies could press the issue. Black Blade of the Demon King by Ahimsa Kerp,  & Wind Lothamer really creates its own universe & feels very dangerous as well as isolated with a lot happening within it on a Sword & Sorcery level. Pretty much this is a solid Sword & Sorcery love letter to Moorcock. And the whole adventure reminded me very much of Moorcock's John Daker series of novels of the Eternal Champion but with Vikings. 

Will the players survive Black Blade of the Demon King ?! To be honest with only two hours to get ready & then run this adventure its really hard to tell. Prince of Nothing's blog has a very good review of Black Blad of the Demon King right here. 

But Steve making me simply run this from the hip has been an interesting experience. While smiling on the outside my insiders were screaming running this for Steve, his brothers, & my other players. Black Blade of the Demon King reads like a novel but it plays like a movie with a non linear plot that work well. 

Ten things that saved my arse when running Black Blade of the Demon King : 

1. There has been a ton of Fantastic Heroes & Witchery that has been DMed in the past. 
2.  Black Blade of the Demon King is very cinematic & this point makes the adventure really easy for the PC's to grasp. 
3. One of the players is a Chaos oriented occultist & possibly going to be a split class agent of Chaos. And things are going to go down hill for this player's PC fast. Note they are fully aware of this & want to see this through. 
4. There is going to be a lot of death coming up this is expected this is a LoFP adventure after all. 
5. I need a physical copy of  Black Blade of the Demon King & Frost Bitten & Multilated coming up like yesterday. 
6.  Black Blade of the Demon King could easily be a Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerer of Hyperborea rpg adventure. 
   
7. Could  Black Blade of the Demon King be a sustained campaign adventure?! Maybe with a lot of squinting on the DM's part. 
8. Thank God that I'm a paetron of Adventurer,Conqeuror, King rpg because the recent Conjuring, Calling, & Summoning article has the rules on Conjuring which allowed me to drag & drop the PC's into the mix. 
9.  Black Blade of the Demon King has a lot bubbling below the surface to allow the DM to connect it to his or her own campaign. 
10. Demon blades aside  Black Blade of the Demon King is a solid adventure & well worth your time.