Tales of Gothic Transylvania - A Gothic Horror Campaign - Further Meditations On Tales Of The Grotesque And Dungeonesque Volume One

The nights are beginning to get longer and the shadows are lengthening. I'm putting together a series of one shot Gothic Fantasy Adventures using Tales Of The Grotesque And Dungeonesque. I've been rereading volume one of this piece of forgotten lore.

What Is Tales of The Grotesque And Dungeonesque? 

The Tales of The Grotesque and Dungeonesque volume one is a Gothic Fantasy Supplement for old-school fantasy role-playing games.

Contains house rules, random tables, new spells, new monsters, and a campaign setting for Gothic Fantasy adventures in the old-school fantasy RPG system of your choice.

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Its actually a bit more then just that. The book is actually the campaign setting background and volume one in three part Gothic tour de force. Tales is set up in such a way to be a plug and play piece of goodness. From the 162 page book of volume with the variations of horrific OD&D tropes. The book is set up for Labyrinth Lord but its easily adaptable to any number of OSR retroclones.
The first book is essential because it sets up the PC options, adds flavor to character generation, And adds the real world/fictional counterparts to the game world. The second volume adds even more background.

 Appendix N Background Material 
When I was very young, I was shown two books from the U.K. that grabbed my imagination and led me on a fifteen year odyssey. At a county fair I glimpsed a copy of  Tourist Guide To Transylvania And The Dracula Collection. They were deemed far too scary for me by well meaning grandparents. It too the better part of ten years to find the books I had glimpsed. Weirdly enough my wife whose from the U.K. where the volumes were published by Octopus books also owned them. 

The Tourist Guide & its sister book the Dracula Collection were essentially a number of science fiction & fantasy pieces with the Transylvania country side of a sword & sorcery universe as its framing device. The books are fantastic. They have zippo to do with the real world at all. Seriously this is a universe where no only is magic real but the countryside is ruled by vampire lords, liches, & black magicians who summon the very powers of Hell itself! Faerie exists  but its an uneasy relationship at best. These are the 'Kindly Ones' version of the fey. A sort of extra-dimensional monsters that can cause all kinds of problems. Count Dracula is eluded to but never given any real consolidation in the book.
There are barbaric tribes, witches, covens of white, black, & grey magicians, & all sorts of powers from beyond. Hell plays a very prominent roll in this book. This is a dimension where the gods of yesteryear roam the countryside plucking victims to feed their dark hungers.

 The second book describes Dracula's art collection and some of its inspirations. It also describes a family museum and the occult devices of power which it holds. The books are nice because in detail we are given a complete picture of the 'family Dracula' separate from the Hammer Films and even what we've seen before.
This is really a world of Gothic Dark Fantasy. 

These books provide very solid fodder. 

Tales of Gothic Transylvania

This is a world of the Gothic Pulp a place where the edge of nightmares have overtaken the daylight world and people fear the night. Only adventurers stand against the darkness. The Gothic Transylvania countryside is one part 'Supernaturalypse' and three parts of Hell. Its place in desperate need of adventurers and heroes. 
Some of these hard bitten individuals are those who seek thrills and hunt the most deadly game of all. The undead have run up against adventurers from 'The City' time and again. The odds are that the players are going to run into an NPC or two from the City. Trey Causey little creation is also going to be making an appearance or two at the table. 

For a metric ton of mileage from the author visit his blog right over HERE