[Homebrew] Our BX/OSE Combat House Rules

The following hodgepodge is a glimpse at the house rules we use in our Old-School Essentials campaign Portals of Eremus. Some of them were borrowed from other games and supplements, others are my own. Some of them have been already used in previous campaigns, others were first introduced for Eremus. The goal was to spice up B/X combat without making the process too cumbersome. Only time will tell if they succeed at that or not, but so far they worked fine for us - especially the weapon properties!

If you are looking for complicated combat rules, you are in the wrong place.
Check out Player's Option(TM): Combat & Tactics instead.

Death and Dying

At 0 hit points the player character loses consciousness and begin to bleed out, losing 1 hit point per round until healed. Death is instantaneous when the current hit points reach half the character's Constitution score (round up) in negative. E.g. a character with CON 17 dies when reaching -9 hit points.

After regaining consciousness, the wounded character needs a full week of bed rest. Until completely rested the character moves at half the normal rate, cannot carry heavy items, and receives penalties in combat.

Being reduced below 0 hit points leaves the character with a hideous permanent scar.

Disarming

When attempting to disarm a successful hit doesn't cause damage, but forces the defender to make a saving throw versus petrification or lose the weapon being held.

Distance: The weapon falls at the owner’s feet if it is of the same size as the attacker’s weapon, or lands 1d10 feet away if smaller. Recovering the weapon takes a round.

Limits: Weapons held in two hands cannot be disarmed. Disarming can only be used against weapons of the same length or shorter.

Fumbles

When the character misses by 10 or more on a natural 1 roll on the following table to see what happens:

1d20	Result
1-2	Just a minor inconvenience. Laugh it off.
3-4	Weapon slips. -2 to the next attack roll.
5-6	Weapon damaged. -1 to damage rolls until repaired.
7-8	Weapon stuck in something. It takes an attack to free it.
9-10	Weapon dropped or thrown. It lands 1d10 feet away.
11-12	Attacker slips. +2 to the next attack of the enemy.
13-14	Attacker stumbles. Free attack roll for the enemy.
15-16	Attacker falls. It takes a round to regain footing.
17-18	Attack roll against self. Classic.
19-20	Attack roll against nearby ally, or damage self when there is none in reach.

Grappling and Overbearing

When grappling each attacker makes an individual attack roll. Those attackers who hit roll their hit dice totals and compare their sum against the defender's hit dice total roll. E.g. two 1 HD orcs trying to pin a level 3 cleric roll 2d8 versus 3d6.

Attackers have higher total: The defender is pinned and can be executed or knocked out for 1d6 turns next round. Before that defender can try to break free, or another grappler can join the fray to pull the defender out.

Defender has higher total: The attackers are beaten back and stunned for a round.

Draw: No one manages to get the upper hand this round. 

Parrying

When parrying the character’s total melée attack bonus* is added as an Armour Class bonus that round. The bonus is only added against missile weapons if the character has a shield. The parrying character can't attack until next round.

Tripping

When attempting to trip a successful hit doesn't cause damage, but forces the defender to make a saving throw versus petrification or fall prone.

Regain footing: Can be done next round during the movement phase.

Limits: Must use weapons that can hook the victim’s leg. It’s impossible to trip creatures without leg. Creatures with more than two legs gain a +1 bonus to their saving throws per additional leg.

Weapon Properties

Crushing weapons (club, mace, staff, stone, torch, warhammer, etc.) get a +2 bonus to attack rolls against heavy armour (chainmail and above)**, unless the armour is of much harder material. E.g. a wooden club against plate mail does not get any bonus. A natural 20 that hits*** stuns the defender for 1d6 rounds. Another successful strike from a blunt instrument knocks the defender out for 1d6 turns.

Piercing weapons (arrow, bolt, dagger, javelin, lance, polearm, short sword, spear, etc.) impale foes on a natural 19-20 that hits. Impaled creatures suffer a damage roll from the weapon again when they do strenuous activity, or when the weapon is forcefully extracted. If the weapon is held by someone the victim is held at bay until the weapon is removed. Extracting the weapon forcefully costs an attack, while doing it carefully to avoid additional damage requires an entire turn.

Slashing weapons (battle axe, hand axe, polearm, sword, two-handed sword, etc.) can cleave, which allows a free attack against another foe within reach after killing someone. On a natural 20 that hits the weapon causes double damage. If the victim falls to 0 hp the attack tore off a random limb.

Some weapons can be wielded in different ways, changing the damage type. Depending on the weapon this can result in reduced damage, or the weapon handled as another weapon that’s more fitting for the situation - eg. attacking with a spear’s shaft counts as a staff.

* I assume attack bonus and ascending armour class.
** In case of monsters I use the following rule of thumb: hide and fur count as leather, scales count as chain, hard shell count as plate.

*** By this I mean the attack would hit even if the natural 20 wasn't automatic success.

[Content] Generic Fillable B/X Character Record Sheet

What the new campaign will end up looking like.

Summer has been busier than usual this year, if it wasn't obvious from the lack of blogposts. Miraculously it didn't have any effect on my campaigns - unlike the chain of bad decisions and critical hits that TPK-d my HackMaster party. My players started rolling up new level 1 characters immediately (that's the spirit!), but the process came to a halt as we ended up discussing that this might be a good time to give HackMaster some rest, and play something else. We agreed that an old-school kitchen sink sandbox using the B/X rules would be fun, so that's what I'm going to run starting this September or October.

I've spent a few hours on retooling one of my older character records into a bare-bones, printer friendly, form-fillable sheet. B/X has probably the largest amount of variants and descendants within the OSR. My game of choice is Old-School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome, but I wanted my character sheet to be useful for those too, who prefer some other flavour. Thus, there are no logos or watermarks on it. On the other hand, it has a place for race, in case you are running a variant with Advanced options. I hope you will find it useful!

Generic Fillable B/X Character Record Sheet (A4)
Generic Fillable B/X Character Record Sheet (US Letter)
Generic Fillable B/X Character Record Sheet with AAC (A4)
Generic Fillable B/X Character Record Sheet with AAC (US Letter)

Update #1: US Letter-size version added.

Update #2: Version with both descending and ascending AC addad.

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[Review] Wee Warriors Reprints, Part II: Dwarven Glory

The cool original cover...

Not to be mistaken with the unfortonately named Judges Guild classic Glory Hole Dwarven Mines, Dwarven Glory is the second Wee Warriors Dungeon Master Kit originally released in 1977. The module got a facelift when Pacesetter Games reprinted it in 2013 with an additional AD&D rewrite included.

V3 Dwarven Glory is 44 pages long, with color covers, and black and white interior. Visually the book is quite a disappointment. My biggest gripe is the cover - I have absolutely no idea why the excellent original illustration was replaced with something that looks like a cheap caricature of it. It's not only a downgrade aesthetically, but also feels disrespectful. The obvious answer would be for legal reasons, but as far as I know Pacesetter did reprint the book with the original cover before. My other issue is the obsession with the Vampire Queen. She is on the back cover of the book, on the first page, and she is glaring at me with her smug face from every page header. I know Palace of the Vampire Queen was a huge milestone and the first kit in the series, but she has absolutely nothing to do with Dwarven Glory - it's only good to mislead customers and hurt the module's identity. Let's give her a rest, shall we? Otherwise there are barely any illustrations within other than the maps, and those few pieces range between okay and meh.

The adventure takes us into the semmi-abandoned dwarven caverns within the mountain chain on the island of Baylor. The background  is summed up in less than a half page: the once thriving dwarven community was besieged and conquered by Mortoc and his 10 Orc Tribes, but there are still rooms they didn't penetrate, and survivors they didn't slaughter. It's a great setup, not only because it goes against the usual cliché of dwarves digging too deep, but because it also promises opposing factions - one of the cornerstones of turning your dungeon into a dynamic environment.

The caverns have 7 sections and 64 keyed rooms. Their presentation is unusal: the maps use hexes instead of squares, they are marked by letters ranging from B to G instead of numbers (curiously, there is no A), and there is no set order to them, although the introduction offers a sequence for beginners, and another for medium strength parties. The maps can be connected through their north and south ends, resulting in a long tunnel of thematic segments instead of the classic vertically aligned set of levels. Each section has branches and loops of their own, but due to their small size they don't make a meaningful difference in the exploration's overall flow.

The room descriptions in Dwarven Glory are a huge step forward compared to PotVQ. Each section has a theme outlined in one or two sentences, followed by terse summaries of the room entries which deliver more information than the predecessor's tables ever managed to. Of course the new approach is far from perfect: the entries often turn into a laundry lists of trivial objects, some of the details are unnecessary, and there is zero highlighting. Still, it's an improvement!

...and the crappy remake.

While it had a minimilastic presentation, PotVQ packed quite a punch with its varied and imaginative entries. The caverns of Dwarven Glory follow suite as its parts get introduced from the once busy cities entrance, through its monster-infested mines, to a desecrated temple of heretic stunties. The environment is the least interesting part of the module though: it's the NPCs where Dwarven Glory really shines. They have interesting relationships with each other, they have their own goals, and are mostly shameless opportunists who will try to take advantage of the adventurers. Some highlights include the thieves in the first tavern who want to poison and loot the party, pixies who blatantly lie about the magical properties of the clothes they sell, an ogre chess player who is a sour loser, heretics who summoned the Elenoin (see a Gods, Demi-gods, and Heroes or Deities & Demigods with the melnibonéan pantheon in it) to assassinate their own high priest, and so on.

My absolute favorite is the mess in Section F. There is a minotaur who will put a geas on the party to recover his son, two ogres in the neighbourhood who hate him, the minotaur's lost son with a gem of insanity around his neck on his way to kill the ogres, twenty ghouls working for the minotaur, ten lizardmen on friendly terms with the minotaur and a cave troll (to whom they will try to lure the party the bastards they are), and a lich who will put a geas on the visitors to recover the young minotaur's head. It's fucking brilliant. Shit like this is what make a dungeon come alive. When the players arrive the whole level is in the middle of a chain of events that unless stopped will make the place explode in a wave of violence. There is so much opportunity to roleplay and get slaughtered it's amazing. It makes me even forgive the relative small size and simple design of the level.

The loot is nothing extraordinary, but at least it's varied. The upper levels offer mostly gold and mundane valuables, but as further one ventures gems, magic items, and magic gems become more common. The module rewards exploration with some ludicrously precious hidden treasure, while other times it punishes with traps and cursed items. Needless to say, the descriptions of traps and new magic items is vague. A chest has a 6-hex chlorine gas trap on it. What does it do? No clue. Probably save or die, but at least you get a book that tells you the value of gems, which is nice.

Dwarven Glory's tone feels more lighthearted than PotVQ's, mostly because it lacks gory and disturbing scenes - no children drained dry or grinded into blood pudding this time. It has plenty of old-school quirkiness and humor, even some juvenile, like the former night club with posters of dwarven go-go-dancers, or the two bookcases of X-rated materials in the dwarven high priest's chambers. That wasn't meant to be criticism - I leave a healthy amount of naughty magazines and kinky statues in my adventures too for the sake of immersion and verisimilitude.

The AD&D version pisses me off even more than PotVQ's. Dozens of rooms were replaced with empty holes, encounters were watered down, the eccentric elements were mostly thrown out the window. The conversion strips down the charm of the original module and sacrifices cool roleplaying opportunities in favor of run-of-the-mill encounters. The only good idea is the extra detail the heretics receive: they are deviants who want to live in forests with elves, which is actually an idea fitting to the spirit of the original.

This time it's a no-brainer which version to choose if you want to run the adventure. The conversion is just deadweight to the original edition - it adds nothing of value while increasing the page count. Dwarven Glory is by no means a masterpiece, but it is a good module and an interesting historical curiosity, with some qualities many modern adventures should envy and take note of.

Part III: The Misty Isles coming soon (hopefully in less than two months).

Tl;dr: A solid old-school dungeon crawl with exceptionally well done NPCs and factions, accompanied by a weak conversion.

Where to find it: You can find the module in print and pdf in the Pacesetter Games & Simulations webshop. Some of their modules are alse available on DriveThruRPG in pdf, so I wouldn't be surprised if the above mentioned three would surface there in the near future.

Other parts of the series:
Part I: Palace of the Vampire Queen
Part III: The Misty Isles

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[Review] Obscene Serpent Religion

You are not trve kvlt if you can't decipher
the author's name.

Reading Obscene Serpent Religion 2 got me in the mood of checking out Obscene Serpent Religion. Unlike OSR2, OSR1 is not an adventure module, but a supplement devoted to generating serpent cults. That should be enough to justify its existence. Who doesn't have evil snake-worshippers in his fantasy campaigns after all? They are as crucial tropes of a healthy swords & sorcery setting, as evil frog-worshipping cults, or evil spider-worshipping cults.

The book is made of 32 weird 7.5 x 7.5 inch sized square pages. The cover looks like that of a death or black metal album's, and the black & white interior follows the gimmick too. Needless to say, those faint of heart should avoid the product, for there is plenty of gore and nudity within. Most illustrations are exceptionally well done and detailed, save for the last one which looks like something made with Microsoft Paint.

The first half of the supplement is about generating the features of the cult. You can find out what are they ways of the church, who the goddess is, what her teachings are, what missions do the leaders send the members on, et cetera. We aren't talking about tables here in the traditional sense. Each element has six possible results, each explained in a few paragraphs. While six doesn't seem too much, there is plenty of rolling to do until you get the end result, thus it's unlikely you will end up with a similar outcome after multiple usage.

The entries show a rampant imagination behind them. They can add a lot of depth and character to the sect, and can fire up the GM's creativity about how to further expand them - especially the bizarre, seemingly contradictory combinations. The author also proves that serpent faiths don't necessarily mean cloaked dudes worshipping ophidians - they can also be fertility cults, art idolizers, fortune seekers.

My favorite results are those with an ancient, mythic feel. For example:

"She gave birth to the moon, which was the first egg, and when it hatches, all will be devoured. She immolated her husband, who became the sun. His name is forgotten, for he is of no consequence. The Goddess is life, the Goddess is all."

That's evocative, and if you roll with it as truth it can bring some unique flavor to your campaign world. The moon is way too often underused in fantasy campaigns anyway, surprising your players with turning it to a literal snake egg sounds way too cool to not use it once in your life.

Unfortunately the book is not devoid of the edginess of typical LotFP products. Case in point, here is a quest for advancement within the cult:

"In a public place, you must force a serpent into the body of a powerful foe with many allies. The result must be fatal, regardless of whether the serpent is shoved into the victim’s mouth, or into a wound, or in some other part of the body."

I like the irony how the hole everyone first will think of is not mentioned among the examples. Still, the above was one of the tame options. There are others with more mutilation and sadism. Around the Tenets of Faith and Quests for the Hexagram was where I noticed the major difference between OSR2 and OSR1: the former pits the PCs against a cult, while the latter assumes they are the members of one. While I have no issue with having a serpent-worshipper or two in the party, I would avoid most of the tenets and quests presented, because they are just wanton torture porn.

After generating the faith's details come the appendices. The first is for generating random NPCs, and has plenty of names, epithets, situations. The only place where its lacking is the random items they are carrying. The second is encounters in the wilderness. It requires three rolls too to find out who the party meeets, what they are doing, and what they are carrying. Solid chart, well worth injecting into your campaign if the serpent cult becomes a prominent feature  of it. Third and fourth are two magic items. Sable Nectar is created from Sweet Nectar and the blood of a half-serpent creature. The juice grants random bonuses for 1d6 hours, at a cost - like blindness, or losing abiltiy score. Scarlet Nectar is made of Sweet Nectar and the blood of a snake. Its effects depend on what kind of snake's blood was used. Predictability has its cost too, though: drinking Scarlet Nectar is considered blasphemy by snake cults. The book ends with stats for Skin Vessels, which follows the good old (but not overused) cliché of a body filled with wriggling and writhing creatures - this time with snakes, of course.

Obscene Serpent Religion is a mixed bag. It's an evocative book, but some of the ideas you can end up with don't live up to their full potential. I understand it was meant to be an LotFP product. It's just a pity that if it wasn't one, it could have ended up with being something so much more. Its usefulness can also be limited depending on how prominent role are you planning to give the serpent cult(s) in your campaign. Still, it's a relatively cheap sourcebook with some excellent ideas. Having it on your shelf won't hurt.

Tl;dr: Obscene Serpent Religion is an imaginative supplement that limits its potential to fit the grimdark edgy weird fantasy of LotFP. You can buy the pdf on DriveThruRPG, and the paperback on Lulu.

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[Review] Obscene Serpent Religion 2

One of those babies can be your character,
if the dice says so. No save against it.

Public Service Announcement. The following review cointains the OSR acronym multiple times, but with different meanings. For the sake of clarity, OSR refers to Old-School Revival (or Renaissance), while OSR1 and OSR2 refers to the corresponding Obscene Serpent Religion product.

OSR2 is one of the new Lamentations of the Flame Princess products debuting on this year's Gen Con. Since I didn't even know there was an OSR1, I did some research to figure out what's going on. OSR1 is a LotFP supplement about generating serpent cults, written by Rafael Chandler, published by Neoplastic Press. OSR2 is a LotFP module about a small serpent-infested hamlet, written by Jeff Rients, released by LotFP Publishing. Other than spending 32 pages on serpents and cultists they don't have much in common. Jeff Rients, besides being an excellent blogger, is also the author of Broodmother Skyfortress, which I consider one of the best OSR adventures. That should mean sky-high expectations, but because OSR2 is a different kind of animal, I tried my best to avoid unfair comparisons with BMSF.

OSR2 is a 32 pages long digest booklet. The color cover is a sight to behold, beautiful and slightly disturbing at once. The black and white interior illustrations are good, though not outstanding. The art is surprisingly tame, so if you are expecting gore and naughty bits you will be disappointed. The layout is a clear and breezy two-columns affair with a faint grey scaly background, which fortunately does not harm readability.

The first half of OSR2 introduces the bucolic hamlet of Nonsbeck, along with its notable features, personalities, hooks. Good writing and intriguing details make the small community come alive: the settlement feels like a real place, with real people, who have real problems. The realistic nature of Nonsbeck is further emphasized by the lack of supernatural elements: there are no fantastic beasts, weird horrors, haunted places, or anything unusual to speak of. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the events depicted in the second half will feel more effective because of this. On the other hand, the DM is tasked with making the players care about an unremarkable little rural village enough to return there several times. You can make it a recurring feature of your campaign, but I find it a cheap solution. I prefer my players visiting something because it caught their attention for some reason, and you don't need big spectacular tricks to achieve it. The chapter ends with some useful random encounter and random local name generator tables.

The second half of OSR2 is about how the appearance of a snake demoness fucks up Nonsbeck while the PCs are away. Where she comes from is up to the DM - the book offers three different options. What's more important is her ability that turns the place upside down: she can travel time through one's genetic material, and alter past events. What I loved about the changes is they aren't immediately evident, but revealed slowly as the players begin looking around. Even if they go right to the inn ignoring everything else they will have a chance to feel that something is amiss. The blacksmith's apprentice turned into a mute roadside beggar who doesn't want to return home. The church is barred, the blacksmith is closed. People are gone, the stories about their departures are out of character. There are new graves in the cemetery, while others are missing. The serving girl in the inn was replaced by two boys with the same name as the innkeeper's stillborn sons. If the players stay or investigate, they will soon learn that the village turned into the nest of serpent worshipping human-snake hybrid cultists, hellbent on sacrificing them. I enjoyed Nonsbeck's shift from simple boring hamlet into a horror movie village a lot, especially the details that can help building tension.

Too bad there is no real climax to the adventure. "Remember that village? Now it's corrupted, FIN." The lack of third act makes the events of OSR2 feels more like a lengthy side-encounter, than an actual adventure. The second half ends with a few ideas about the possible fate of some NPCs, a few paragraphs about the LotFP way, and the stats of the demoness herself, in case the PCs want to take revenge. There is nothing about her whereabouts or plans, not even seeds like about how she surfaced. At least the monster's abilities are unique and interesting, and in true LotFP fashion many fall into the "your character is fucked up, no save" category. The creature can murder the PC's father which can totally change or even erase him, help his parents in a time of need and turn them into snake cultists, implant viper eggs into the victim's stomach that hatch in the present, and so on. Use it only if you are not afraid to wreck your campaign.

Overall OSR2 is an uneven adventure. It requires a long setup to be effective, delivers a short and powerful confrontation, then leaves you hanging without meaningful resolution. While I like terse adventure kits and love using them as framework I can build upon (heck, I filled the Sunstone Caverns once), in case of OSR2 I can't help feeling that it's missing something. It's only a few pages away from being an amazing product. Still, it was an entertaining ride, and it whetted my appetite for more gaming material about ophidians. Time to get OSR1!

Tl;dr: OSR2 does a great job at building up, then corrupting a mundane rural village, but would benefit greatly from some more content. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

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Review: Slügs!

I prefer the first two weeks of the new year over Christmas, because that's when the best presents I ordered for myself usually arrive. This morning the postman finally brought me my order from Lamentations of the Flame Princess. There were two items in the box: the already reviewed Broodmother Skyfortress (which is even more amazing in hardcover format), and the dirt cheap Slügs!, which was also LotFP's Free RPG Day product last year.

Slügs! is a 36 pages long digest monster supplement. It's written by James Raggi, who introduces 16 unique slugs you can use in your campaign. An intriguing choice, one that has a huge gap to fill because mollusks are extremely underused in D&D. It's a pity, they are weird and disguisting things - which are also the two of Raggi's specialties, so my expectations were high in this regard.

I can't complain about the quality. The color cover is outstanding, and the interior black & white illustrations are pretty good too. The artists knew when to get serious, funny, trippy, or weird. Those who are looking for the hardcore visuals seen in other LotFP products will be disappointed though, there isn't much disturbing stuff here except for two sexual themed pictures.

Raggi starts the book with ranting about the rpg industry in the introduction, which is not devoid of some cheap Trumpish rhetoric. Will this product make gaming great again? While slimy invertebrates aren't enough to save the OSR, they can surely spice your campaign up! Slügs! is fun to read, offers imaginative new creatures, and silly pop culture references that made me grin like an idiot.

My favorite is Slügatron, a robot in disguise who on Saturday mornings will take you on random adventures. The Sluggish Slug spreads apathy, slowly turning everyone within a few miles into me during my university years. An encounter with the Love Slug will answer the ages old question about what perverted things the player is willing to do with for a few extra levels. Then there is the Christmas Slug, who eats junk, leaves a delicious trail, and carries treasure in his hanging colorful tumors.

Of course Raggi didn't forget about those who want to mess more directly with the PCs either. They will get what they are looking for in the Acid Slug, Glass Slug, Rock Slug, Vomit Slug. My only disappointment is the Mentallo Slug, which provides funky adventure opportunities, but otherwise feels very bland despite his huge brain. I was hoping for some psionic powers in vein of Carcosa.

The best thing I got with this book aren't the monsters themselves though, but the writing kindling my creativity. After reading Slügs! I came up with a dozen new creatures, which I can't wait to deploy against my players.

If you are ordering anything from LotFP do yourself a favor and put this book into your cart. It's inexpensive, and you're also doing a favor for the community, because the sooner his stock is out, the sooner Raggi will put up the Pay-What-You-Want PDF.

Tl;dr: Slügs! shows you how mollusks can improve your campaign. You can buy it on  DriveThruRPG.

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Review: Broodmother Skyfortress

Holy fucking shit! I have totally forgotten about this! Broodmother Skyfortress was one of the many concurrent indiegogo campaigns Raggi ran as an experiment more than four years ago. From around two dozen campaigns only four got funded. Many considered this  whole affair a failure and forgot about it - including me. No wonder I was surprised when a few weeks ago the release of BMSF was announced.

Broodmother was written by Jeff Rients, who is one of my all-time favorite OSR bloggers. While others were busy rambling about how thieves ruined D&D, admiring obscure rules from the DMG no one ever used, or having dick measuring contest about who is the grognardest of all, Rients let his imagination run wild in fun and evocative articles. I'm not saying he didn't have some tedious posts about things I couldn't care less about, but I've found him to be far more entertaining and helpful than others. Thus my expectations were high.

Those who supported the indiegogo campaign didn't exactly get what they were initially promised, and I'm sure none of them will complain about that. Instead of a 32 page digest-sized module LotFP published a 170 page booklet that's full of DM advice and Jeff's best posts besides the adventure. That's what I call overdelivering!

Before delving into the contents I have to halt for a bit to praise Ian MacLean's brilliant art. Just take a look at the cover! It's a huge ass elephant-shark hybrid bursting through a door to slaughter soldiers with an anchor. It looks wicked cool. It makes me want to read it. It makes me want to run it even before reading a single word. The interior art is just as good as the cover. It's full of energetic comic style illustrations about these ugly bastards ruining iconic stuff, adventurers getting the short end, and the author doing all kinds of silly things. My favorite is the homage to a classic Exalted cover, which will make your eyes bleed. The adventure is accompanied by two maps, which besides showing the cartography have the random encounter charts on them. It's as useful as it sounds: incredibly.

The book is anything but boring. Jeff's conversational voice will grab your attention right from the first sentence, and take you on a journey where he introduces every aspect of DM-ing. The titular adventure about big weird monsters isn't your usual dungeon with keyed rooms, it's an example Jeff uses to show you how to write a kickass adventure. He will analyse every aspect of his work, reveal the reasons behind his decisions, and then give excellent advice about running and customizing it.

Jeff starts this by showing you how to incorporate BMSF it to your campaign, come to terms with it wrecking your setting, get your players motivated to visit the godforsaken place, and start a new campaign if you don't have one already. By the time reach the cast of antagonists you will be already pumped to run this!

If it wasn't clear from the covers, the monstrosities of BMSF aren't your usual D&D giants. They are wicked barbaric beasts that spend their time with operating the sky fortress, raiding settlements, leaving their eggs behind, and doing all kinds of disgusting things. They are godlike, and to illustrate it, Jeff uses a cool mechanic that will surely piss of some grognards: they don't have any AC value, because they are so big you can't miss them, but they have 5 points of damage resistance. With their shitton of hit points it's obvious that battling them is suicide.

There are seven giants, each of them with its own personality, agenda, and disgusting habits. Their rendition is straightforward about what's important, and vague about the small details. What are the tits of the Broodmother like? How are the Terrible Twins conjoined? Who are these giants? Who built the floating castle? Who are the wretches living underneath? You don't get exact answers. Instead, you get options that you can choose from, or completely ignore. Inspiration over instructions. I love it. Thanks to these holes the adventure will need some work before running it, but not too much, and gives you enough help to get it done quickly.

The dungeon has 28 keyed sites, and can be divided into three major sections. The sky fortress is where the giants live their lives and keep the fortress afloat. The surrounding clouds are full of ruins left behind by the original builders. The tunnels below are the home of primitive humans stuck here generations ago. The players can also meet spider swarms, hatchlings, spectral malevolences conjured from an angry dead god's brain, but they will probably have more problems with the enviroment than its inhabitants. There are plenty of objects to interact with, but being careless will have dire consequences. Foolhardy players can quickly turn the exploration into a crazy escape mission in several ways - including tampering with the skydrive, turning off the golden obelisk that serves as lightning conductor, and reviving the dead god that kills 1d6 creatures every turn. Such extraordinary place has extraordinary loot too, but their value is not always apparent.

The second half of the book is a collection of Jeff's best articles, including classics like Carousing, The Living Dungeon, EXPloration, How To Awesome-Up Your Players. Some had minor updates, but they are basically the same articles you can find on his blog. At the end there is an appendix with monster and magic item stats for 3e/Pathfinder fans. It's a nice touch, although whoever converted the monsters forgot to take into account the higher damage values 3e/Pathfinder characters. To achieve the same shock and horror that the giants can have in LotFP I recommend at least doubling the DR values.

BMSF is a module that was worth waiting for. For your money you get a kickass adventure, and some of the best advice the OSR ever provided. This is the magnum opus of Jeff Rients. While I can't imagine he could ever produce anything better than this, I sure hope this isn't the last time we've seen his work published.

Tl;dr: Instant classic. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG and in the LotFP store.

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Review: Underport: Abyssal Descent

Reading Crimhthan The Great's OD&D Blog reminded me I've bought a module called Underport: Abyssal Descent many months ago. Released by Direbane Publishing this adventure promises to be a vintage mega dungeon from the halcyon days of the hobby. It focuses on action, and does not give a shit about encounter balance. Sounds good! The dungeon was written for the Knights of the All Mind ruleset, which seems like an unholy mix of 3e and OD&D. It's unlikely anyone ever used this system other than its author. Thankfully it's easy to convert the stats to any editions of D&D.

Opening the book will immediately invoke the inimitable old-school feel thanks to a layout so bad, it makes even the LBBs look good. Single paragraph, shitty fonts, ugly stat blocks... I'm not sure if it's intentional, but well done! The foreword confirms that the adventure will be a huge mess, with changing styles and a wide variety of influences including Judges Guild, Arduin, and puberty (unless you've forgot about those years, the latter means violence, sex, drugs). We also learn important information like the average heights of tunnels, chambers, caverns, and why didn't the author include wandering monster charts: if the PCs make noise just pull the monsters from the nearest room, or throw them a gelatinous cube. That's a simple and elegant solution I was thinking about using too.

The adventure is 88 pages long, with a seperate 18 pages long file for the maps. The dungeon has more than a dozen levels, big and small ones alike. They are scans of old drawings that were never cleaned, full of stains and smudges. Until you get familiar with them it can take some effort to find out what's going on, and where the different labels are. Once you can see through the Chaos you will find a real gold mine! The maps are full of exciting names, like Tita Luigi Bomba's Castle Hold, Battle Caves, Prime Material Gate To Abyss. Names like these are a perfect way to pique my curiosity in no time. They sound interesting! I want to check them out! I want to know what's going on there! To make things even more olde school, there is a cross section of the levels too.

Not only there are many levels, but they are varied too. The module starts in an underground pirate hideout, then continues to the depths through a mining complex, a crossdresser overlord's castle, the battle caves, a monk's hold in a mushroom forest, a "multi-dimensional demiplane Hellscape prison", and other weird places until the aforementioned gate is reached at the bottom of the Eternal Pit.

The encounters are just as colorful as the environment. The adventurers can meet both classic and unique monsters during their delve. What I really love about them is that these creatures aren't just put in a room to be slaughtered: the book is full of scenes where something is actually happening! A bar with drinking skeletons! Drunken pirates causing fire! Hobgoblins planning a rebellion against their king! Fire giants having sex! An insectoid creature disguised as a crying little girl trying to lure victims to their doom! I could go on all day about all the amazing happenings of this dungeon.

The writing is short, rough, and goddamn evocative in the beggining. The descriptions could've been even more effective with more powerful choice of words, but they are still miles better than your average dungeon room read aloud text that gets bogged down by unnecessary details. It's a pity the style changes dramatically midway. The encounters become more static, the descriptions longer, the levels less interesting. Sometimes I felt the author being tired, maybe even a bit burnt out. This doesn't mean of course that the lower levels are rubbish, but they aren't as good as the upper ones.

I can wholeheartedly recommend this product to anyone interested in megadungeons and early homebrew adventures. It's my favorite historical artifact besides the Rythlondar chronicles. I wonder if the Necropolis of Chaos, a sequel promised at the end of the book will be released too one day.

Tl;dr: Underport is an authentic old-school megadungeon with exemplary upper levels, and a bit weaker lower levels. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

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Review: Appendix N Adventures #2: The Vile Worm

The Vile Worm is the second adventure in Brave Halfling Publishing's Appendix N Adventures line. The first module was pretty disappointing and required some serious overhaul to make it interesting. Is this any better?

I'm one of those few souls who own a print version of this module too. It's a neat little saddle-stitched booklet. The illustrations are a bit weaker this time, and the cover is downright ugly. The map looks great, but it will ruin your hopes if you thought this will be a good one shot for Saturday night, because this dungeon has a very small number of rooms. The Vile Worm is not a fully fledged adventure. It is more of a sidetrek, a filler to put in an empty sandbox hex.

The highlights claim this is a dungeon crawl for 8 to 12 1st level characters. That's quite a lot for such a small place. The highlights also note this is a linear rescue mission. That's a very poor start, for two reasons. First, I hate linear adventures. Second, rescue missions need NPCs the PCs find worth rescuing - either because of the NPC itself, or the reward. The worst you can have is assuming the party is made of Goody Two-shoeses who can't wait to rescue random villagers never met before. You will later see this is exactly what we get.

The background is only half page long, and far cooler than The Ruins of Ramat's. It's a good setup for a gritty medieval lovecraftian tale: after finding the sacrifical tree for a worm god a crazed berserker becomes its priest and starts kidnapping people to sacrifice. Wicked! The next page introduces said hermit and his lynx and wolf companions. He's an adorable dark twist on druids, I like it a lot. With some build up he could turn into a memorable villain!

The next section is about how to begin the adventure. I thought The Ruins of Ramat was bad with the hook, but The Vile Worm surpasses even that! The writer basically tells you to invent your own hook, like that party getting lost in the forest, or maybe looking for a chaotic outpost. That's all. That's lazy. Come on, I paid for your creativity, to do the dirty work instead of me, to inspire me. Is this really the best you can do?

Okay, the party is in the forest, deal with it. They meet the hermit who will manipulate them to follow him to his oak. If they follow he will lead them to an ambush. What if the adventurers don't follow? The Judge shouldn't force the party, says the writer, he should just let them wander a bit until they run into the oak and the ambush. The irony is strong with this one. Also, good job at throwing away an interesting villain right at the start of the adventure!

The oak is the ancient hollow tree where the hermit lives and sacrifices folks. There is some boring treasure hidden around it, plus an obvious secret door to the prisons. Despite their two-three sentence long descriptions most of the cells are empty, except for the one where two peasants are kept, and the secret room with the bell that calls the worm. No mention of the 65 feet deep hole that leads down to the caverns. One of the prisoners will ask the party to recover their fater who was dragged away by a many tentacled monster. Down below careless adventurers can fall int a shaft with paralyzing mucus, find bodies impregnated with worm eggs, face worm hatchlings, loot a treasure hoard, and of course battle the worm itself. The encounters are passable: there are new hatchlings continuously bursting out from corpses, paralyzing goo all over the place, and while the Vile Worm is just a glorified carrion crawler, it is presented as a sneaky bastard who likes hanging out on the ceiling.

The adventure doesn't end after saving the shephard. The oak will try to murder the party, which isn't as scary as it seems, especially with 8-12 level 1 characters. While he can deal a decent amount of damage and can charm party members, his hp is ridiculously low for a 20x25 feet large tree. Within a round the party will make firewood from poor monster. Once its chopped down the peasants will give shelter, food to the adventurers. Hopefully they didn't forget to heal the shepherd, otherwise they will witness the chestburster sceen from Alien, which sounds an amusingly anticlimactic way to ruin the dinner. There are two more paragraphs with further ideas about what's under the worm caves, but they are weak and uninspiring.

The loot is boring as hell. Coins, jewelry, gems... There is no meaningful reward, there aren't even consumable magic items. Since magic item shops don't fit into DCC RPG's mentality, you likely can't even buy potions on your money. The whole adventure is just a waste of resources.

The Vile Worm is a lot like those modules hastily threwn together on the day before the session because you forgot to prepare during the rest of the week. There's no shame in that, I do that quite often, but at least I make it sure they aren't railroady, have at least one exciting encounter, reward the players with some juicy loot, last longer than two hours, and I don't publish them either. This module reminds me of a Dire Straits song.

Tl;dr: The Vile Worm is a waste of a cool idea on a short and linear sidetrek that lacks challenge and originality. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

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Review: Appendix N Adventures #1: The Ruins of Ramat

Brave Halfling Publishing's Appendix N Adventures Toolkit was among the first 3pp product lines announced for DCC RPG. It's probably the most infamous too: after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2012 it still didn't deliver everything that was promised. I'm not sure whether John Adams is just an unlucky guy who bit more than he could chew, or some scam artist who desired to earn some quick buck on DCC RPG's succes. He did deliver me a Delving Deeper boxed set and the first shipment of ANAT modules (heck, I actually got it twice with a year difference!), he did help quickly whenever I asked him for something, but there is still a lot of stuff I paid for missing. This won't hold me back from reviewing what I've already received, and neither will it influence my opinion on the products. In this series I will review the adventures one by one, and the add-ons in a single post in the end.

The Ruins of Ramat is a character funnel for DCC RPG. The print version is a digest sized booklet, which comes with a detachable cover, cardstock handouts, and an alternative level 3 version of the adventure. These are all parts of the pdf version too. The quality of the print product is top notch. The booklets seem sturdy and they look beatiful. Doug Kovacs made a fine cover, while Mark Allen did some cool handouts, and amazing map that imitates the style of the current DCC adventure maps. The print version has a bit more art (one by Steve Zieser, the rest by Mark Allen), but it lacks the end of the player introduction in both copies I own.

The module starts with two pages of background about how a cleric from a different sect compromised and destroyed a militant order of Ramat  from within. That's two pages wasted because the players won't learn anything about it, and likely won't care either. There is a section that highlights the features of the adventure, which is unnecessary for such a short module. Next is the player introduction, with one of the lamest hooks I've ever seen. A bunch of villagers learn from a crying girl that her dog was pulled down to some dark hole by a giant clawed monster. Risking your life to return a probably dead animal to a nameless NPC is everything but a tempting reason to go on an adventure. If you want a good hook for character funnel take a look at The Meat Grinder or Sailors on the Starless Sea! The former throws the PCs right in the middle of a massacre and makes the players thirst for vengeance, while the latter operates with kidnapped beloved ones and some rumors of great treasure. Much better!

The dungeon starts great! There are slippery stairs and a hungry spider right at the entrance. It doesn't matter if someone dies by breaking his neck, or being snatched away by the spider, it will be hilarious anyway. Once down the players can go three ways. This will be a random choice since they don't know anything about the place. The problem is that only one of those choices will result in a meaningful adventure. Going right they can explore most of the dungeon, have some battles, and get all the loot the place has to offer. Going forward they will run into some meaningless encounters with giant bats and meet a dead end. Going left their adventure will end early - either because they die in the trap, or because they find the dog and decide to end their quest.

Do you love all the crazy and weird stuff of DCC RPG? If your answer is yes, then you will be disappointed, because the rest of the adventure is unimaginative. There are 17 rooms in total, but most of these are far from memorable. There is nothing "Appendix N" about the adventure. What truly saddens me is that an extra sentence or two would have had been enough to make it raise above mediocricity!

For example, there is a cell with lawful aura where the chaotic PCs feel uneasy, the rest heal better, get a bonus to saving throws, and have a vision of Marpu, a former cleric. The healing bonus is useless for funnel characters, unless the Judge allows the bonus to natural healing too. Even then it's only marginally useful because level zeroes usually die by a hit. The saving throw bonus is useless because it's only available in the 10 x 10 feet cell. They can't even take a battle there! The vision is useless too, it only refers to an optional adventure. It doesn't even give a hint about what happened here. Did I mention there is no description about the room at all? You get a single sentece about the door being okay. Well thank you very much, it's a huge relief that I don't have to waste my imagination to describe a plain wooden door! The text is full of one sentence long descriptions without any substantial information.

This is where I started making notes on the margin. The room got some nice furniture (rather unusual and striking in a moldy dungeon), and a large tub of odorous hot water. Looking into the water long enough made Marpu's vision appear on its surface. He would answer a few questions before disappearing. I think there was a pallet too that could resurrect a single character laid on it. There were seven more empty cells on the corridor. I made one of them the spider's nest with the remains of earlier victims, and put a pile of coins in another that would turn into a golem when harassed. I could go on what I changed on the armory, library, chapel, dining room to make them a bit more interesting.

The monsters are generic too. There is a giant spider, some bats, some skeletons, an undead cleric, and a black tentacle demon that can't leave the sanctuary. At least the demon is powerful: it has an instant death attack and requires a unique way to defeat it. The level 3 version is much better in this regard: it adds flying demons, an engulfing psychic ooze, a few skeleton acolytes witch charm spell to the mix, and a bit more of everything else. Putting these into the funnel (in smaller numbers of course) would improve the adventure a lot.

Surprise! The treasure isn't that attracting either... There is a ring that works as a lantern for an hour, a few healing potions, a light golden chainmail, some junk weapons, and a chest of gold near the end. There is a cursed shield that's simply there to mess with players: it turns to dust on touch and gives a -1d on attack rolls. No foreboding, not a single sign of danger, it isn't too good to be true either. It's just a simple bronze shield that will mess with you. There is also a minor artifact among the loot, the Spear of Ramat! There are murals depicting it slaughtering demons with its holy light. Sounds fun, doesn't it? Well gues what, it's just a McGuffin. It has no stats, because its special abilities only function for a cleric of Ramat. Once taken it will force its will upon the PC and make him dispatch the demon mentioned above, essentially finishing the adventure. Once a demon is gone an angelic being appears and takes the spear. Well, at least you can keep the 500 gold... Did I mention that the loot in the level 3 version is exactly the same as in the original module? The only difference I discovered in loot is the lack of the cursed shield.

The adventure ends with an appendix that proposes two optional adventure ideas in a few sentences: one is a trip to the underworld realm of psionic lizardmen, and the other is a quest for becoming a cleric of Ramat. These are actually cool sounding adventure opportunities, which aren't planned to be released. Shame.

While there are hints of egyptian theme (just look at the cover), it's unfortunately not emphasized in the scenery. No typical egyptian elements like ankhs, scarabs, hieroglyphs. They could've helped in giving the adventure some character, which it painfully lacks. Instead of a black tentacle demon how about one with crocodile head that spits deadly slime globs? Instead of a generic ten feet deep pit how about one with scorpions? The point of adventure modules is reducing preparation time and inspiring the Judge. Unfortunately The Ruins of Ramat doesn't help much. The module looks gorgeous, the map is amazing, it also has some potential, but it's up to the Judge to create something good from the bare bones he paid for. If you are willing to finish someone else's job you can start it by adding a giant clawed monster mentioned in the hook, because the writer fucking forgot about it.

Tl;dr: The Ruins of Ramat has stunning illustrations, forgettable content, and lazy writing. You can buy it on DriveThruRPG.

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Dark Souls and the Spirit of Old-School D&D

It seems my girlfriend is twice the man I am: a few weeks ago she finished Dark Souls. In case you were living under a rock and never heard about it, Dark Souls is a cruel japanese dark fantasy rpg where you will die a lot, usually because you suck at combat or you are careless. It's a game I adore, but never started playing seriously because it needs a lot of time, patience, and endurance. I usually lack all three of them nowadays.

Character sheet full of juicy details, and you haven't
seen the inventory screen yet!

But why is Dark Souls so interesting for a Dungeons & Dragons fan? Because the game cannot deny the influence of old-school D&D. Dark Souls is full of spells, items, monsters, game mechanics, and design principles a grognard will be familiar with  - even if some of them are hard to recognise thanks to weird twists and changes to the well known formula. Let's take a look at some of the most interesting and less obvious ones I've found so far. I'll leave out trivialities like "you can be a wizard Harry!", "OMG it has fireballz!", and "you can slay giant rats!" Those are pretty common fantasy clichés no one will be surprised to see in a crpg.

Experience for Gold: In D&D gold and experience are the two main resources needed for advancement. Interestingly in classic D&D most of the experience is awarded for the treasure the player character brings up from below, which makes XP seem a bit redundant. Dark Souls merges GP and XP into a single currency: souls, which are used both for payment and advancement. You can earn souls for defeating enemies, or you can find then as item, which esentially replaces the gemstones and jewelry of D&D. In Dark Souls your character and most NPCs are undead and demons, so it's fitting they use souls to trade and gain power. This is an amazing example about how you can make some weird game mechanic make sense in your setting.

Death Penalty: Every death means losing some progress in old-school D&D. While in Dark Souls you won't lose levels on death, you will lose all your unused souls and respawn at a bonfire. You can recover your dropped souls, but you have to be careful, because if you die again your previously lost souls will disappear. I've seen people lose souls enough for multiple level ups thanks to stupid mistakes.

Importance of Player Skill: Classic D&D puts a huge emphasis on player knowledge and skill. So does Dark Souls. Death is a harsh lesson. If you want to advance you have to learn from your errors. While good luck, improved stats, and quick reflexes are helpful, knowing the attack patterns of monsters, the signs of traps, or the small difference between normal chests and mimics is what will make the real difference between a successful and a bad player.

Familiar Monsters: Even if you ignore classic fantasy tropes like giant rats, giant spiders, dragons, undead, chimeras, hydras, hellhounds, snakemen, etc, you'll still find enemies that feel like gigerian reimaginations of Monster Manual entries. Mimics, myconids, slimes are no-brainers. Pisacas remind me of gricks. Phalanxes are lemures with spears and shields. Chaos Eaters are the nightmarish children of xorns and rust monsters. Chaos Witch Queelag is Lolth. The predecessor Demon's Souls had mind flayers. And there are probably more I didn't notice, yet.

Historical Arms: Unlike most crpgs nowadays Dark Souls has polearms, and they are downright awesome! Speaking of polearms, I've always found it strange how specific Gygax was with their names in AD&D while using only generic terms for the most iconic weapons of fantasy fiction: swords. Thankfully the developers of Dark Souls weren't so ignorant! Besides the generic swords you'll find Estocs, Claymores, Flamberges, Zweihanders, Iaitos, Uchigatanas on your adventures.

Weapons vs Armor: Do you remember AD&D 1st edition's unwieldy Armor Class Adjustement section of the weapon table? The game has something similar with different armor offering different amounts of protection versus each damage type. If you know what you're going to face it might be a good idea to dress and arm yourself for the occasion - unless you are one of those who like dodging around naked or attacking from distance.

Enchanted Equipment: Dark Souls uses the good old traditional plus symbol to mark weapon and armor upgrades, but also introduces different upgrade paths to make the system more complicated. These enchantments need special materials and expert blacksmith.

Looks like a good place to die.

Megadungeon: I've left the most important to the end. Dark Souls' Lordran is a colorful and
immense dungeon with multiple levels. The protagonist's journey goes through monumental castles, moldy catacombs, sparkling crystal caverns, fiery hellpits, gloomy forests, and even abstract places like a city in the past, or a world inside an ancient painting. These areas are not only huge, but they are full of secrets, loops, branches. They are also interconnected, thus the game is everything but linear. To make things even more complicated there are covenants you can join for different benefits and a few memorable NPCs who are far from static shopkeepers and questgivers: they have their own stories, they have goals, and your deeds will influence how they behave with you and even each other, which makes Dark Souls' environment feel alive.

A few years ago I thought Dark Souls was just a grim hack & slash for masochists, but after trying it myself and seeing the adventures of the Chosen Undead I had to realize how close it is to old-school dungeon crawls and roguelikes. It is a game worthy of sinking a good hundred hours into it. Unfortunately before I can do that I'll have to finish like a dozen other games. But who knows, maybe once I'm retired I'll be able to start my journey through the land of the Ancient Lords!