Pages

Friday, July 25, 2014

Observations on the Free OSR Adventure - The Forbidden Land For Your Old School Campaigns



Grab It Right
HERE

Author R.C. Pinnell brings us an eighteen page mini campaign along a sort of  high fantasy world that can be used as a great little adventure ground for any old school OD&D style or the adventure focuses 
primarily on those listed in the BX-BECMI tomes, but may be found in the other systems mentioned. This adventure could easily be converted to your own favorite edition of the world greatest fantasy adventure including Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea with little work.
The prime focus here is on the adventuring aspects and the hex crawling which creates a greater sense of campaign here. There are a few fantasy cities out lined but this is a bare bones mini campaign and its in my opinion one of the great strengths of the adventure. The level of customization by the DM is wide open here, this adventure could with little issue be used for a game such as Lamentations of the Flame Princess or some other retroclone that uses BX- BECMI as its foundation and game base. The layout in this free adventure is classic and the encounters pretty well balanced. The author gets straight to the point, lays out a few tips, and we're given a wandering monster chart, a brief outline here and there, and lots of room for a DM to put their own stamp on the adventure.
This adventure would make an excellent jump off point for a campaign or as mini campaign for back yard adventuring for starting adventurers. With a bit of tweaking this mini campaign could easily be used for an OD&D horror campaign or as a jump off point for a high fantasy campaign depending upon how the DM decides to level the D&D tropes.
I like the author's bare bones, straight to the point adventure structure, the adventure sticks with the classic aspects of OD&D while leaving a DM plenty of real estate to create his own world by using this adventure as their very own.
There's going to be a bit of back conversion if this adventure is used for Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Many of the monsters have their very own reflections in AS&SH as well so using this one won't present too much of a problem for the experienced DM.
All in all this was a fun little read through last night and I can see grabbing this one for a fast pick up or a convention set style adventure campaign. Grab it and make this one your own. Not too bad for a free download. 

No comments:

Post a Comment