Friday, July 28, 2017

Mini OSR Fall Campaign Idea Using 'In Search of Adventure: The Grand Duchy of Karameikos Anthology (Dungeons and Dragons Supermodule B1-9)' & Some Free Old School Appendix N Downloads



"THRESHOLD! The northernmost town in the Duchy - and your last stop before your adventures begin. Threshold, the gateway to mysterious castles, lost temples, deadly caves and caverns. You have heard the stories and legends, now you wish to see for yourself. This product provides a complete campaign adventure that will take beginning characters from 1st all the way to 3rd level and possibly beyond, drawn from the first nine modules of the B-series adventures."



So one thing that that last night's Legion of Gold run through provided me with two things, 1. Folks are interested in a post apocalyptic setting for old school play 2. The mix in of D&D or retroclone material & or systems works very well together. But there was grumblings that B10 Night's Dark Terror By Jim Bambra, Graeme Morris, Phil Gallagher might be a bit too hard  for a beginning group of adventurers.  What's an old school DM to do who wants to mix a bit of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea with a weird proto Russian pulp mythological feel?
Well you go back to basics & pull out another connected classic and in this case its
B1–9
In Search of Adventure. B1-9 gives an over arching interconnected plot thread to a number of older modules for placement into Mystara. But it can also be used to build these into a post apocalyptic wasteland. This was something that gave an ex friend of mine fits and shakes.
"In Search of Adventure is a collection of parts of the first nine B-series D&D Basic Set modules, with a frame provided to fit the adventures into the Grand Duchy of Karameikos, the first country treated in the D&D Gazetteer game supplement series.[1] The modules B1-B9 include: B1 In Search of the Unknown, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands, B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, B4 The Lost City, B5 Horror on the Hill, B6 The Veiled Society, B7 Rahasia, B8 Journey to the Rock, and B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond.
The adventures in In Search of Adventure can be strung together in one of three new overarching plots using an adventure flow chart, depending on where the players head off from their starting point in the town of Threshold"
This gives the campaign old-fashioned dungeons by world-class designers like Gary Gygax, Doug Niles,&  Tom Moldvay. 
You can see the changes to these old school classics by the then staff of TSR in the Wiki entry. 
You've got secret societies, factions, adventure locations, political intrigue, and more.  This gives the structure & outline to a campaign setting & adventure flow to the whole affair. But that's only part of this now when we start looking into back tying this into Clark Aston Smith, A.Merritt, and the rest of the Lovecraft circle its Catherine Lucille Moore's Earth's Last Citadel which was reprinted in the July 1950 edition of Fantastic Novels that ties it all together.The weight of ages past & the weirdness of the Earth's Last Citadel echoes Clark Ashton Smith's  The The Tomb Spawn in many ways. Weird life forms living on the edges and fringes of Earth's last epochs.


Earth's Last Citadel is part time travel novel, part pulpy adventure, and has a style that echoes the William Hope Hodgson's Nightland without the hard bits to get through. There's a breezy pulpy style that mates up with Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique cycles of novels. The plot is pure pulpy goodness;"During World War II, four people (two belonging to the Allies, two to the Axis) find a strange vehicle in the Tunisian desert. It whisks them to the far future where the Earth has been conquered and mankind is nearly extinct."
You Can Download Earth's Last Citadel from the July 1950 edition of Fantastic Novels right here


All of this mates up with A.Merritts Dweller in the Mirage,the regions of Alaska in North America & Russia have rejoined we might have something very similar to the world of Night's Dark Terror & In Search of Adventure. The stars might have come right with the emergence of the horrors from the fringe & lost places of the world. There ages undreamt of before Zothique and that's when the events of this campaign are going to be taking place.
"THE MOUND" by H. P. Lovecraft & Zealia Bishop really does give the feel for these sorts of preserves where the true masters of the cults of Cthulhu dwell.   A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage first published in book form in 1932 by Horace Liveright gives full details about the
faction that worships the evil Kraken named Khalk'ru.You can read Dwellers in the Mirage With The Happy Ending Here From Fantastic Novels v03n03 (1949 09)

So I'm working on factions, races, and more coming up for my Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea Fall/Winter campaign so keep those dice rolling!


 The above commentary & opinions are copyrighted & trademarked to the author.  The role playing systems mentioned in this blog post are copy righted and trade marked to their authors and companies this blog post is not an attempted to violate those trade marks this blog post is for entertainment and educational purposes only.

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