Depravity and Debauchery Las casas de putas de Satanás A New OSR Mega Dungeon Location & Setting

To me the winds that die and start,
And strive in wars that never cease,
Are dearer than the level peace
That lies unstirred at summer's heart.
More dear to me the shadowed world,
Where, with report of tempest rife,
The air intensifies with life,
Than quiet fields of summer's gold.
I am the winds' admitted friend:
I share those ancient mysteries
They whisper to the trembling trees
Or roar along the heavens' end.
And when my spirit listless stands
With folded wings that do not live,
Their own assuageless wings they give
To lift her from the stirless lands.
Within the place unmanifest
Where central Truth is immanent,
Lies there a vast, entire content
Of sound and movement one-in rest?
I Know not this: yet in my heart
I feel that where all truths concur,
The shrine is peaceless with the stir
Of winds that enter and depart.

The Winds  (1912)  by Clark Ashton Smith

On the edges of the Jornada del Muerto a number of boom town cities have grown up around the great alien green black buildings, plazas, & step pyramids that sizzle in the deep desert heat. These appeared over night & the world marveled the golden artifacts,strange technologies, & weird glowing auroras that appeared around the skies around the pyramids.
Mutants, adventurers, outlaws, gamblers, & aliens from 'elsewhere' all converge around villages, towns,etc. as fortunes are made and lost in the otherworldly locations surrounding these pyramids. The whole place is known as Las casas de putas de Satanás or Satan's whore houses because of the number of demons & monsters of myth & legend that have been seen & have killed people. Las casas de putas de Satanás is twenty five miles of some the most dangerous extra dimensional alien ruins, dungeons,  & weird landscapes that dominate  the desert floor.

The local army, authorities, & occasional CIA Vanguard teams  try to cope with the mutant horrors, giant irradiated monsters, and worse that comes out of the deep desert & the volcanic lost world jungles. Meanwhile fortunes are made on the weird artifacts coming from the  Las casas de putas de Satanás. Back in the Eastern United States  & in South America a technological revolution has been taking place from these artifacts. But some are saying that these artifacts are allowing 'dark forces' to have influence on reality. Hidden alien presences & so called gods have been sprinkling cults throughout the states & beyond. Several joint US/Mexican militery bases have sprung up around the area including St.McCready,
Plissken, & Hicks all named after various war heroes.

So I've been wanting my own mega dungeon for a long time now & I'm going to start tackling it with this new project that I've outlined in the last entry on this blog. Personally I think that I'm going to take the Lovecraft Circle approach to the dungeon location & use some of the ideas of Clark Ashton Smith.

I'm going to be using a lot of  Labyrinth Lord,Apes Victorious  & Mutant Future in this one along with a good solid core of Adventurer, Conqueror, King's line.



A lurid poster of the play Dr. Faustus being performed in one of the numerous dance hall theaters around El Marro.

More to come!

Review & Commentary On Guns of War From Autarch For Adventurer,Conqueror,King Rpg System, Lamentations of the Flame Princess Rpg, & Your Old School Campaigns

So I've been gone a good portion of the day & how this review came about is a bit tangled. I've been rummaging around the a great many Adventurer, Conqueror, King titles for the better of a year now. Yes, I have friends of mine who feed my OSR habit quite regularly & I've been off the ranch for a long time now. This means I review what I want when I want as well as how I want. Still there are titles that I don't have access to so I hit up Alexander Macris with an email. Well the gentleman is a very busy guy and all, so I don't like bothering him. At least that's what I thought.
Wham two nights later I had a bunch of titles from the ACK's line up sitting in my inbox!? Among them was 'Guns of War', yeah great another 'fire arms' set of rules rattled through my head at about two A.M. Then I was zipping through G+ & came across this Lamentations of the Flame Princess play through.
Wait?! There's a whole supplement on black powder weaponry that could be used with both ACK's & Lamentations?  Given my obsession of  wheel lock weaponry & my love of all things Lamentations colour me interested folks.


So what does 'Guns of War' bring to the table? Well its a supplement that brings the timeline for ACK's up to the age of black powder weaponry not simply for the humans but most of the major races of the Adventurer,Conqueror, King & Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This adds an entirely new dimension to these OSR games themselves. This brings that setting dynamic into a new light entirely.

"Guns of War brings you all the rules you need to add the gunpowder, firearms, and artillery of the Age of Pike and Shot into your fantasy role-playing game. This century-and-a-half period was an age of war more terrible than any that had come before, as the technology of battle changed more rapidly than it had in any time in the preceding 3,500 years of human history. It was also an age of apparent anachronism made real, as plate-clad knights battled rifle-armed soldiery, field artillery fired on pikeman, and swords hung alongside pistols on the belts of cavalry.

Guns of War is designed for use with Autarch’s Domains at War (D@W) rules for military campaigns and battles. You will also need a copy of Adventurer Conqueror King System (ACKS), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LOFTP), or a similar D20-based fantasy role-playing game to use this book."

But is it worth getting into? Well from a dollar stand point my answer is 'yes' it adds whole new aesthetic to these games and it could be used with Dark Albion as well because its going to change events across the board in broad gun powder clouded strokes. The age of powder & shot becomes an entirely new set of dynamics & history stalking changes to the set up of games. This means that the material has a has a vaguely 13th-15th century feel to it in equal measure. Guns of War manages to do all of this in fifty eight pages of jammed black powder packed book. Does this really make a difference in the dungeon? Not really when your wearing twelve hand grenades packed with black powder called the 'twelve apostles'. Because your going to be facing down things like this Ifreet  in some God forsaken megadungeon.


Guns of War does the job of taking ACK's from the dungeon into other realms of adventure into things like the a fantasy age of piracy, full on full city siege warfare with cannons, mixing up with the forces of darkness with powder, and much more. I make this book sound like one of the essentials for ACK's don't I? Well that's because technically in my estimation it is!
When you have chain mail clad warriors fighting with pistols & swords then you've got a different mix of a game setting happening.

Guns of War presents its material concise and well laid out details with the rules, tables, & descriptions being very easy to read as well as the content  presented in a way that's easy on the eyes. The artwork is public domain with an eye towards the real world history whist keeping the book grounded in the ACK's setting (sort of). Because it moves the technological time table up there is a sense that Guns of War has at its core the OSR with an eye towards taking systems to the next level or at the very least the next time period. This book has lots of potential because of its use in ACKS Domains at War but that's a blog entry for another time. What it also means is that I can now run Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg materials within the ACK's system quite well. Things are not seamless but they work quite well so that suddenly that mini wall of Lamentations of the Flame Princes books has lots of potential in the ACK's system. This is another mark of the ulitity of the ACK's material at the gaming table. All in all I really enjoyed Guns of War so much so that I called the print shop today to get myself a copy of this pdf spiral bound. I give it four out of five because not only was I pleasantly surprised by Guns of War.

GRAB  'Guns of War' From
Autarch Right HERE

Review & Commentary On The Adventurer Conqueror King System: Player's Companion By Alexander Macris

Yeah, I've been around the table top rpg hobby for a long while now at forty seven years old & I've seen my fair share of 'character guides' & companions. But then Adventurer, Conqueror, King shows up with its B/X leanings, proficiency system, and customization factor then more. So there are always books that are touted as essential out in the table top market but then you've got the Player's Companion for the Adventurer Conqueror King RPG. So what the hell is so essential in this book? Right off the top it features:"
16 new character classes to expand your  campaigns, including the anti-paladin, barbarian, dwarven fury, dwarven machinist, dwarven delver, elven courtier, elven enchanter, elven ranger, gnomish trickster, mystic, paladin, shaman, Thrassian gladiator, warlock, witch, and Zaharan ruinguard." One of the strengths of ACK's is how the PC classes fold into the campaign setting material.



 Everything in the sixteen new character classes ties in with the Auran Empire material and the implied setting set up from the character section of the main Adventuerer,Conqueror, King rpg rule book. This is a round about way of insuring the dungeon master & his players are going to be engaged in the world setting of the book but with enough room for customization. This is one of the differences between a second tier & generation OSR product or  more 'modern' rpg systems. The amount of crunch helps to keep things wide open for player choice.  This trickles down into the '238 character generation templates with pre-selected proficiencies, spells, and equipment options to create archetypes such as the Aristocrat Bard, Buccaneer Thief, Gladiator Fighter, or Runecaster Shaman' These PC materials wrap character creation into essentially a kit like structure that actually works similar too but distinct from the old Skills & Powers second edition set up.You choose one of the "archtypes" to cut down on character preparation time to get up & playing as soon as possible.
This section actually works & ties back into the Antiquity style of the Auran Empire. But it can be just as easily used with a straight up Sword & Sorcery style campaign setting of one's own design. Even magic system which adds new spells can easily be ported over to a sword & sorcery setting especially with dweomers such as dismember, earth's teeth, and trance, as well as ritual spells including cataclysm, plague, temporal stasis, and undead legion.


Do you have a favorite OSR PC class? Well there's a really nice DYI character customize class built section too. And additional domain rules that tie back into both the existing ACK's rules book & the Player's Companion;"A point-based customized class system that lets you create the perfect blend of fighting, thievery, divine, and magical power. The custom class creation rules are 100% backwards compatible with every class in the ACKS core rules and all of the classes in the Player's Companion." Once again there's more justification for dungeons & adventure locations to exist as the NPC can and will grow along with their PC counterparts;"Additional equipment and proficiencies to provide options for character classes new and old, plus prices for building traps to defend your stronghold".


There is an an emphasis on the political and kingdom building aspects as intended right from the main ACK's rule book which continues straight though the The Adventurer Conqueror King System: Player's Companion. This is something  that makes it useful for the creation of both PC's & NPC's a welcome change of pace from many other rule books. All in all this well rounded approach to ACK's by the Player's Companion makes this one of the essential ACK's purchases. Its well put together, has a no nonsense approach to its subject matter and the sheer volume of material makes The Adventurer, Conqueror, King:Player's Companion a must have for any player or ACK's dungeon master. Clocking in at about thirty five dollars the hard cover has some really nice value for the dollar.
You Can Purchase The Player's Companion In Hard Back Here

Essentially all you need to run a complete campaign is the ACK's rule book & the ACK's Player's Companion

The Adventurer Conqueror King System: Player's Companion is on my short list of books to get in hardback for 2016 at some point.

Review & Commentary On The Auran Empire Primer By Alexander Macris For The Adventurer, Conqueror, King RPG System

I went into the Auran Empire Primer with open eyes not expecting that much, this is the implied & now fully fleshed out OSR setting for the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg system. The whole setting implies not so much the usual Sword & Sorcery of D&D but  Late Antiquity, around 250 - 750 AD."Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages in mainland Europe, the Mediterranean world, and the Middle East. " . This is the time period that saw the Roman Empire split in two, with the western half eventually dying while the eastern half of the empire continuing until 1453.Auran isn't the Roman Empire, there are some really interesting marked differences right off the bat. The fact that Auran is an empire with its cracks beginning to really taking its toll on many fronts means that there are lots of places for adventurers to make a difference. The setting is close to a Constantinople of the era of Antiquity in many respects including a reaming cross section of peoples, religions,and weirdness of a world on the edge. This is a place of forbidden black magic, the blackest magic that cracks peoples souls & beastmen capable of rending an empire in half.



This book presents in twenty five pages an overview of places, things, religions, cultures, and other elements that we've heard in other ACK's products such as ACKS Player's Companion, The Sinister Stone of Sakkara, &  Axioms digital magazine. That's pretty much only half of the material though.
What this book actually is a showcase of the elements from Adventurer, Conqueror, King & a kit for creating your own world if you want to look past the usual set pieces & system place holders which one finds in other OSR games. This system has a good grounding in real world as its inspiration & that to me seems to make a solid difference;"The ancient civilizations that precede the campaign’s era have realworld
cultural analogues as well. The ancient Argollëan elven civilization resembles a sort of Proto-Helleno-Celtic culture; imagine if the Danaans of Ancient Greece and the Danaans of Ancient Ireland
were actually the same people, part of a single, more advanced civilization. The ancient Thrassian civilization is inspired by Sumerian civilization with an Aztec aesthetic, while the subsequent Zaharan civilization is inspired by pre-Hellenistic Akkadian civilization with some Egyptian flavoring. The early Auran “Empyrean era” civilization draws on elements of the Minoans, Mycenaeans, and Sea Peoples, with extensive Heroic Age Greco-Roman (Illiad, Aeneid) inspirations."  This is a case of heavy is the head that wears the crown and that head just might be your PC, if their very lucky & the players might think outside the box. 


If your really lucky this just might be your character.

So what does the Auran Empire Primer bring to the table that's different then say Greyhawk or some other old school rpg setting book? Not much & that's fine with me! Let me explain here, the book presents a brief bite sized overview of the Auran world setting & it does it with a nice level of presentation along with some really well done artwork, cartography, and ideas. The overview is brief, to the point, and gives me exactly the level of detail that I want without overwhelming me with lots of filler BS that I don't need. In other words this is a place that I want to set adventures in.Its not a world that is so on fire that I as a DM don't have room or a elbow space to set up my own political or world events in. This is often one of the problems that I've had with other RPG products, the world events are happening right now! There's no time to get to know anything or do great deeds, your characters have to be heroes now! Well they do but in a system such as Adventurer, Conqueror, King they're going to need to build PC in roads into the world. This book helps to fill in the colour and setting material that you need.
Did I mention that the book sells for only two dollars and fifty cents? All in all I think that the Auran Empire Primer does a really killer job of presenting the world of the empire and its very well done product.

GRAB IT OVER HERE

Time To Dust Off Ancient & Accursed Terra With The Adventurer,Conqueror, King, Rpg With A Twist

The black season is upon Ancient Terra once more the shadows grow long & the monsters hunger from the shadows!


Beyond the demon haunted  Borea Winds there are other worlds such as Thule, Atlantis, and many other  places where the settlers from Old Earth came from thousands of years ago. This is a world of insanity, intrigue, monster haunted woods, and dungeons vast as well as deep inhabited by monsters. It was here that the battles of Ragnarok were fought & the gods died.

This is a world of terrible secrets, horrid legacies, vast ruin haunted plains. Man hides in his walled city states guarded by the forces of the Terra current & ancient technologies he hardly understands anymore.

"We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

HP Lovecraft 'The Call of Cthulhu'


Ancient & accursed Terra is a world in need of heroes as the seasons of blackness engulf this world.  Lo did the wars of the serpent men & the K’n-yan peoples turned the land into a blasted waste. Many peoples were made strange & frightening by the energies unleashed by these two powers. But those days are long past and only now are men emerging from the darkness and the long silence that followed in the wake of the sinking of Atlantis,Mu, & places whose names have passed into legend. But their survivals even now plot to retake this world from the darkness beyond the poles where the Elder Things and the Great race once seeded the interior world.Mankind sends adventurers of its races into the dark places to plunder ancient ruins, learn the secrets of those who were once masters and to take the relics, artifacts, and treasures they left behind. 

And even what they  left behind is still guarded by monsters and sometimes far stranger things. The survivors & dangerous inhabitants of the civilizations of those who came before wait & plot in dark places for your blood. Not gun, nor magic, nor even the bravest hero can keep these at bay.
And that's where you come in! Just beyond the fire light something howls for your blood is your sword hand or spell  ready for that monster?

So what's the deal here? Well I've gotten approved for a local game shop for a campaign down in my home town. Since I've been itching for the better part of a year to run Adventurer, Conqueror, King. This is the perfect opportunity to use the Astonishing ACK's material that I've been seeing for the better part of three years. Now I've just the time, the full setting as well as the venue to try this wonderful old school retro system with! This world will also be using parts of other OSR material including Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
Are you interested in joining in an exciting, challenging sword & sorcery world with deadly monsters, incredible magic, weird relics, ancient technologies, webs of intrigue where you just might make your fortunes & leave your mark on history!

Welcome to Ancient & Accursed Terra An Astonishing ACK's setting!
Coming Soon!

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. H. P. Lovecraft
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/h_p_lovecraft.html

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. H. P. Lovecraft
Read more at: https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/h_p_lovecraft.html

The Children of Tekeli - A New Lovecraftian Monster For Your Old School Campaigns

The madness and monstrosity lay in the figures in the foreground—for Pickman’s morbid art was preëminently one of daemoniac portraiture. These figures were seldom completely human, but often approached humanity in varying degree.
Pickman's Model H.P. Lovecraft 

The Children of Tekeli are ape like cannibalistic humanoids prone to destruction,rapine,destruction, and incredible acts of horror and they have secretly been with us since the very beginning of our evolution upon this Earth. Ages ago they were called the Shaggoths, named after the protoplasmic horrors who served the Elder Things in ages past. They call themselves 'The children of Tekeli' and were created by the Elder Things in one of the long forgotten cycles of Earth's ages past. The children served the Elder Things during the Age of Mammals when their masters were in sharp decline, they destroyed the last Atlantian colonists  that had come back from their colonies on Uranus. They added their magick power, their gene pool, and forbidden technologies to their own damned heritage. This act occurred near the Black Forrest of Germany and even today is remembered through the collective unconsciousness of humanity. 

The Children of Tekeli carved out a massive empire through the under Earth touching upon all corners of the world that we know. These mad beast like thing's rise to power was chronicled in the so called Grey Necronomicon chapters  penned by Abdul Al Hazard. 

The Children of Tekeli are cannibalistic, brutal, dangerous, completely amoral and capable of the most heinous acts imaginable. They are the inheritors of both Uranian forbidden technologies and the foul alien sorcery of the Great Old Ones from the ancient days of Lemuria and Atlantis. Their vast underground former empire honey combs throughout the world of man. They are completely distinct from Lovecraftian ghouls and the Morlocks of H.G. Wells, though they share many characteristics with both species and are distantly related.

The Children have vast underground empires beneath the Earth and they are both long lived as well as partially undead in nature. The number between thirty to fifty million and use humanity as both a stable food source and a secondary gene pool. They have vast underworld complexes and hidden lairs behind our own world's facade, it is known that they employ undead minions to record daily activities and strange details of our own world. The tribes of the child have contacts and cults throughout the world and employ thousands of dedicated minions who often help them kidnap modern men and keep vast slavery rings. These activities stretch back thousands of years into the remotest epochs of the past.

The Children of Tekeli

Frequency : Uncommon 

Number Appearing: 2-8

Armor Class: 5

Move:14"

Hit Dice: 7

% in Lair 20% 

Treasure Type : O,P,Q

Number of Attacks: 3 

Damage : 1-4/1-4/1-8

Special Attacks: Rending 

Special Defenses: Nil 

Magic Resistance : Standard 

Intelligence: High

Alignment: Lawful Evil 

Size : L (7'+ , Very Broad )

Psionic Ability : Nil 

Attack/Defense Modes: Nil 

The Children of Tekeli attack humans and have a very heavy appetite for human flesh, they have supernaturally keen senses of hearing, smell, and keenly developed infrared sight for their nearly light less environment. They are only surprised on a roll of one. If the child strikes with both claws it does an additional 1-8 hit points of rending damage.
For every 1d30 children there will be a wizard or priest of at least third level or higher. These black hearted and evil damned souls choose spells from the Gray magic schools and the black lists of spells. These monsters are subject to all forms of attack but are immune to sleep and charm spells. The children may be turned by priests and other religious types. Circles of protection will keep these horrors at bay.


Many cults across the history of mankind have had dealings with the Children of Tekeli and the monsters could be encountered anywhere. In the past the race has had several incidents of activity in the Black Forrest of Germany during the 'Thirty Year War' and have had connections to many of the witch cults of the area. 

The Children also have incredibly complex Earthworks in the New Amsterdam colony in the New World and have have several under Earth tribal warfare incidents with Drow, Elves, and Ghouls in the New England area as well. Several skirmishes with other legendary New England monsters has also happened. These affairs have become a part of occult myth and legend. 

Artifacts & Magick  of the Children of  Tekeli 

For Your Old School Campaigns 

The Children of Tekeli make extensive use of the schools of necromancy, summoning, and many other of the blackest arts of magick and dark occult power.
Rods of summoning often will have the 'contact other plane' spell bound into them. Wizards who have gotten a hold of these items have often found them to be very dangerous indeed. Demons, devils and insane things from Outside our mundane world are often summoned. Usually such items have eight or more charges roll a 1d8 to see how many charges remain.



The Children of Tekeli have extensive tunnels systems that blanket the Earth and have access to several technologies of the Great Race of Yith as well. This includes devices for traveling to alternative dimensions and different planes of existence. There are several Prime material planes where the Children of Tekeli have come to rule the world as their numbers have grown to invasion force size and they have swarmed across the planet. These individuals often use unusual energy weapons that do 3d6 points of damage with a range of some 30 feet, they can be used one handed and have about 8 shots before needing the energy cells replaced.
The Children of Tekeli have extensive colonies surrounding several Antarctica islands hidden within satellite blind spots up to the present day. These colonies were active through the early Seventies and may have served as a landing point for the alien allies of the Child. There is speculation that these alien allies may be servants of the soul of the Outer Gods Nyarlathotep and have aided the various tribes of the Children for more then four thousand years. There have been reports of a hybrid servant race which passes among mankind unseen. These individuals gain +3 to intelligence -1 on wisdom, and have an almost animal like cunning, they often serve as assassins,scouts or spies for the Children. These hybrid spies may be found anywhere across the face of Creation and report back to their masters from time to time as needed.
The Children it is known also operate in several alternative worlds including far into the future after several post apocalyptic events. There is even evidence to suggest that these horrors operate far into the future when Earth's sun has expanded and has turned into a red dying star. But there is rumor that this is only mere speculation.

Several orders of knights and crusaders have made it their life's work to eradicate the Children of Tekeki but so far their efforts have been all for naught. 

Free OSR Adventure Location Resource - Adventures In High Wold By Corey Ryan Walden For Your Old School Sword and Sorcery Campaigns

So I'm planning on running a Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea one shot adventure soon but I need a town and fast, like Monday fast. So I started looking around and stumbled upon Adventures In High Wold. Not only is this a free town resource but it has everything your going to need for a party of adventurers to have a starting point, home base, and even the potential for some back yard adventures in this resource. Adventures In High Wold By Corey Ryan Walden has everything right out of the gate for a town setting for an D&D style old school campaign.

Grab It Right
HERE
It clocks in at eleven pages of sheers old school goodness with plenty of room to add, modify, and weave this town right into the background of your own campaign. 

So what's in the backdrop of this free town pdf?
Well according to Lulu:
This supplement is for any DM who needs a town, and needs a town fast! Designed to be compatible with any fantasy role-playing game system, Adventures In Highwold is the perfect starting point for any campaign. Includes two full colour maps, a table of random encounters, area descriptions, fearsome foes and numerous adventure seeds for exciting adventures ahead. Now I said that I was adding a backwater town setting to AS&SH how can this add in the details that are needed to really convey the sword and sorcery feel of this to Hyperborea. Well that's part of the charm of Adventures in High Wold. The author has spun this town into a perfect backdrop for your adventures, perhaps a mammoth or two as heavy farm animals, a few weird mounts in the backdrop and your ready to go. This resource is that useful and its only nine pages and it also includes some lovely and well done maps of the town,did I mention that all of the NPC's have really well thought out motives and desires to get involved with your PC's. Not all is well in High Wold and that's the perfect in for your PC's to get involved in the day to day goings on of the town. This product has a ton of potential for a party there are numerous hooks and dodges that allow a DM to lay the colour of their campaign set's on thick. And the town can take it. This is also a really nice backwater to stick into a game like Lamentations of the Flame Princess where a place of relative calm is needed to deal with some of the darker aspects. High Wold can act as bastion of light to the weirdness and high darkness of pulp adventures or so it seems. This makes a perfect jump off point for your PC's to spring into the high frontiers of adventure. Because of the very nature of this product its a perfect jump off point for a party and a nice place to end up back in. High Wold could well be a nice place to retire your adventurers to after dealing with the many threats and hazards that a world like Hyperborea has to off. But like all small towns this one has secrets and a few of them could get your adventurers killed. All in all this is a really nice starting point for any campaign and with High Wold along with its adventure elements this is a really nice place to add into your campaigns as a starting point and to expand from it. This product works very well with other OSR products and by combining them, you've easily got the start for a whole bunch of old school sword and sorcery adventures. My advice is to go grab this and start using it, today!

Lands Beyond Kos (Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting) From Skirmisher Publishing For Your Old School Sword And Sorcery Campaigns

Lands Beyond Kos is the newest entry for the Swords of Kos Fantasy imprint from Skirmisher Publishing and for a fan of sword and sorcery role playing the timing couldn't be better. 
This is closer look at the big bright world beyond the Kos setting books, a sort of 'Ancient World' of mythology seen through a D&D style lens with over arching spins of adventure, fortune, and glory woven together with sword and sandal. Here adventure is always at the ready and your PC's are expected to be thrown into the deep end of legend and mythology itself. 
These are the lands of Hercules and  the heroes of old, erm not quite. See your PC's are the heroes and this book is a setting book of lands,details, all the little bits and pieces your DM is going to need to deal with what's over the horizon of the seas of the world of Kos. 

Grab It Right
HERE

This book details the lands and high areas of adventure in Kos. The book does it out in grand style and very easy to read bits and pieces with scattered adventure hooks provided through out but its a book with plenty of room for customization on the DM's part. The nice thing is the lack of system which means a DM can hang this world book right into the backdrop of their own campaign world and favorite system. 

So what's in it? Well according to the description from Drivethrurpg: 

As their adventures take them away from the shores of Kos, characters may increasingly visit other countries throughout the Mediterranean and the lands of Europe, Asia, Africa, and beyond — and, the further afield they go, the more unfamiliar the customs and people of these places will be- come. This chapter contains detailed descriptions of 16 nations that characters from Kos might visit in the course of their adventures, or which themselves might be the homelands of some characters. Most of these lands in this extended adventuring area are located in the region of the eastern Mediterranean but a few lie further to the west and three lie somewhat outside the region altogether, along the shores of the Black Sea, in Mesopotamia, and in the European Alps, respectively. Most are at least as much under the control of Humans as of demihumans like Dwarves or humanoids like Hobgoblins.
Make no mistake, this isn't our world but an alternative world of fantasy, with lots of details and back drop for the Kos DM. But this book has a ton to offer a DM who wants to add this world to their sword and sorcery game. With a bit of work this world can easily become another piece of mythological or planar setting material just waiting for your D&D characters to explore. There is place after place just waiting for adventurers to put into port and go adventuring on the deep and dangerous twisting locations of Lands Beyond Kos.
This is a setting with a twist, this world came about by the events of 'The Great Cataclysm'  which sparked off the populations of fantasy races in Kos and makes a good back drop to add into a weird fantasy world backdrop. There's plenty of monsters and mayhem just waiting for a party, there are enough details here to get a DM headed straight into the world and connect it straight into an existing world or transport their adventurers into Kos's setting.
Look the pdf is a good value at only 3.99 for the amount of detail and work that your going to take a away from the setting. This setting is sword, sorcery, and mayhem with a flare for old school adventuring and there's lots to be had.
One last thing Lands Beyond Kos comes with a well done, and highly detailed map of the locals and locations spoken about within the product. For a pdf this is a really nice add on and one that I'm planning on having done out in heavy parchment style paper at a local printer to keep track of an upcoming campaign using this material.

Using The Lands Beyond Kos 
For Your Old School Sword and Sorcery Campaign 
There are several ways to use this setting book, and for me they involve taking the backbone of the book in nations, details, and entries of the campaign setting and adding it to my favorite retroclone say Labyrinth Lord or some retroclone system. This is a readily available system free plug and play world and its a post apocalyptic fantasy world at that. 

The proto mythological world of Kos and its Grecian roots the meat of the product can be plugged into a wide variety of fantasy setting variations from the larger then life legends of the 'Great Heroes', to battling the monsters and titans of sword and sorcery, to dealing with the everyday problems of living against the backdrop of this world. Kos has one other element to it, a very dark and seething underbelly of mythology and legend. There are reasons for this darkness and Kos has it in spades relating back to the 'Great Cataclysm' and the origins of its fantastic elements.
There is a ton to work with here and at its price there is more then enough nations,powers, NPC personas, and more that enough to keep a DM and his players busy for years to come. My recommendation is to grab Lands Beyond Kos and get to designing your own adventures within this expansive setting. There is also a ton of setting material support available for Kos. I highly recommend this book and to get in on the action. 

A Red & Pleasant Land By Zak S. From Lamentations Of The Flame Princess

Grab It Right
HERE

I recently asked for a copy of a Red and Pleasant from James Raggi of Lamentations Of The Flame Princess after reading Tim Brananan's blog's review of the book on his blog HERE and for the life of me I've been trying to process the whole of this  book. Its part campaign setting, part art book, and part deep end launch into Zak Smith's pick up of the Alice In Wonderland books as well as legends and fairy tales surrounding the Lewis Carroll books shoved into a blender with classic Dracula and set on nightmare and the dream setting.






What's the book about? Well to be honest the back cover explanation doesn't convey half of the feel of the campaign kit/setting. It covers in broad strokes and artful descriptions a battle that has raged across 

A terrible Red King wars with an awful Queen, and together they battle into being a rigid, wrong world… and this book has everything you need to run it. (And any other place in your first, second, third, fourth or fifth edition game that might require intrigue, hidden gardens, inside-out-rooms, scheming monarchs, puzzles or beasts, liquid floors, labyrinths, growing, shrinking, dueling, broken time, Mome Raths, blasphemy, croquet, explanations for where players who missed sessions were, or the rotting arcades and parlors of a palace that was once the size of a nation.)

Zak S, game master on I Hit It With My Axe and author of the multi award-winning Vornheim: The Complete City Kit now brings the same do-it-yourself tables-and-toolkits approach and eerie magic to an entire distorted continent.

Voivodja is an old land with its own all encompassing setting and its old, rotten to the core , and damned as well as dangerous. The place is thick with vampire courts, heroes, heroines, and things they get up to all bound within a unconventional book. Many of the characters of Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass have been re imagined as ancient creatures out of European legend. Very old and very strange vampires of royalty with their own agendas and view points of events surrounding the brand new character class that shapes the events within , 'The Alice'.  'The Alice' is a new take on the 'Specialist' from The Lamentations of the Flame Princess as a heroine lightning rod for the adventure  events surrounding Voivodja. The Alice plugs into every single heroine and princess of every dream like fairy tale and pop culture fantasy that streams through the collective unconscious. 

The OSR produces tons and tons of random tables and A Red & Pleasant land has over thirty pages of them but this book implements the tables as key parts of the setting narrative guiding the PC's into the workings of the adventure setting. They range from the general encounter style ones, to one the spot adventure creation tables that happen on the fly, there are NPC generators, and more all tied neatly back into the Voivodja setting. This happens over and over again tying the PC's into the narrative of the dreamlike decayed fairy tale setting.

I've been reading reviews of A Red and Pleasant Land over and over the last few days then referencing back to the PDF. One thing that strikes me is how each person sees their own version of the setting of the Land of Unreason. This fact highlight's the phantasmagorical  nature of  Voivodja as a campaign. The factions are at each other's throats and warfare here can take the form of a game of crochet or the exploration of the setting's adventure locations. These are not simple dungeons in the conventional sense nor are they mega dungeons with their own ecologies  instead  they're almost artifacts of some old fairy tale echoing from older dreams as well as nightmares given a DYI D&D slant. 

The book is filled top to bottom with Zak Smith's artwork which set's the tone for the entire book from top to bottom marking it as an art book as well as a roleplaying campaign setting. The book is very well done in the graphic's regard. Its a brutal art book and it takes no prisoners with its dark, decadent artwork reflecting the feel of the dreamlike land of Unreason.

We're given a tour of this setting with options to look into niches,crannies, and the dark spots but there's plenty of room to get into the deepest recesses of the dream like realm. NPC's have motives and reasons as well as complex chess like takes on the state of things in the Land Of Unreason. Sometimes these goals and grudges stretch back centuries.



One thing about Voivodja, every single DM I showed this pdf in my circles of players and DM's has a different view of the setting.  Some see it as an other classic take on the Alice novels and the vampire literature. Still others have told me that its a gate way drug setting to a brand new take on using fairy tales as campaign settings. Still others have stated that this is a breath of fresh air for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rpg system and boosts the powerful hero PC take that the game has had lurking in the backdrop since its release. A Red and Pleasant Land simply gives validation to this ideal with bells.

Voivodja is a mix of all of the above and then some. Does it break new ground? Yes and it does it with style as a campaign setting. Do I think that it will set the world on fire? Perhaps as a way to show other game companies that there is more then a few ways of creating graphic design as a gateway for presenting your game as a both an exhibit for your product ideals and as a character within the campaign setting. A Red and Pleasant Land is as much an rpg artifact as a campaign setting.


The longer I read a Red and Pleasant Land the more the setting plays and begs to be run. There are bits of horror, fairytale, and lurking spillage of a world that runs right below the mirrors and places of shadow right behind our own world. The setting has as much of the modern running through its narrative as an alternative dimension as a it is a D&D setting.
There are so many hooks lurking in the back drop of the book that it begs to be connected with the rest of the Lamentations of The Flame Princess system but it could really be used with a great variety of other retroclones as well.
There are so many ways that this book could be plugged into games as a horror setting or as a completely different take on fairy tales. The author gives the DM everything he needs to take this setting and use it as everything from tool kit to complete campaign. The book can be dipped into a bit at a time or taken as a whole and used completely. My advice is to take the PC's there for a short visit and let them kick the tires of the setting and then see where this book takes them.

There is enough conflict for several years worth of play at least here with plenty to deal with if not more.


I don't think that A Red and Pleasant Land is a perfect role playing book but I do think that its one of the best to come out for 2014. Its a good and solid hit for the Lamentations of The Flame Princess.
Do I think that you should buy this book? Yes and I'm going to purchase a physical copy as soon as possible. 

It Came From The Dollar Bin Horror Edition - Hellhound Issue #1 From Epic Comics For Your Old School Horror Campaign

There are comics that kinda stay with you long after you put em down. Hellhound was an effort by Marvel's Epic imprint. The artwork puts it some place around 1993 or there abouts.  John Miller was the writer and Floyd Hughes the artist on this one.
This was one series that didn't pull punches, oh this one didn't have huge explosions,mutants or Marvels in it.
The title concerns a Hellhound, a damned soul who serves hell by acting as a bounty hunter or skip tracer for the Devil. This series was one of a long line of those weird 90's titles that had echoes of 70's goodness like Ghost Rider in them.

 Those titles teased, painted, and played hints about the characters damnation. Not this title. We've got a title from the Clive Barker school of horror where you get everything spelled out in black and white. 
The character is the damned soul of John Roberts   a former Blues guitarist who teams with William McCarty .  They are sent  after the soul of Marie Laveau whom it seems has returned to Earth healed the sick, restoring sight to the blind, making the lame walk. She's generally making a mess of the Balance for all the powers of the after world. 
 The powers of Hell can move the soul trackers across space, time, and whatnot to the location of the soul that they're tracking within about a fifty mile radius. In this issue they're transported to 1988 New Orleans and the middle of the Blues Quarter. This whole series is one long love letter to the Blues you see. 
 There they have a clandestine meeting with the angel Gabriel and find the direction of Marie's Voodoo cult. By voodoo here I mean what passes for the Hollywood version here. They track her down to a swamp and well things don't go well at all. Our Hellhound and partner  get their rear's handed to em. It seems that Amon an angelic god is Marie's body guard and they get a simple ass kicking.
 That's simply issue one folks. Two get's even better but we'll come back to that.

 Of Hellhounds, Satanic Panic, And The Cosmology of D&D

Way back when this series premiered Satanic Panic with D&D was sort of dying a slow death in many parts of the US. Not in my neck of Connecticut mind you but then sometimes you have to deal with things. World of Darkness from White Wolf was in full swing back then. And you'd think that D&D couldn't compete. We'll I used Hellhound and a few D&D style products to create a really interesting horror based campaign. I played pretty fast and loose with D&D cosmology and how dead souls were seen. One product that came in very handy was by Dragon Tree Press.
 Dragon Tree Press's The Delian Book of the Dead
by Ben & Mary Ezzell, et al is a weird fusion of material, wit, wisdom, and sheer insanity with a phantom class for dead characters mixed right in.
Available right over
HERE

The product that made things interesting was from Mayfair Games, Sentinels was part of their Demon's line before it was shut down by T$R back then. The PC's were given Paladins and Cavilers traveling across the cosmos to deal with Hellhounds, the powers of various Hells and save the souls of Mankind. That's right this is actually a campaign rooted in the powers of Light with lots of shades of Grey thrown in. 

Because of the low powered nature of the Demons line the material is easy to use with both AD&D first edition and OD&D a fact not widely publicized about over the years.Actually the Satanic Panic was great advertising and the campaign lasted three long years. It was lots of fun with players dealing with NPCs from across all of space, time, and history. Living, dead, undead, demonic, and angelic were met and dealt with.
Lots of fun actually. The Mayfair Demons line provided a good stand in for the Marvel Supernatural as well.

 When dealing with the damned and dead one thing that always came in handy was a simple rule. Keep the power gaming low, the stakes high, and action moving.
 If you like films like Angel Heart, and other classic horror films of this ilk this might be a series to check out. Its not well known and highly under rated. 

Free OSR Download From Emporor's Choice Games The Country of Chorynth For Your Sword and Sorcery Campaigns

Download it Right Over
HERE
 This is a fifteen page free OSR pdf that originally appeared in the world of Khass. There is plenty of old school pirate adventure to be had here. You've got culture, locations, adventure seeds, and more all here for free.
Here's the Drivethrurpg blurb: 

Chorynth. Fourteen sea princes –squabbling and fighting to be the greatest, some aloof and cold, others hotblooded and brash. All of them dirty; pirates of each other and everyone around them, bearding the world with brass, steel in their hands and a sneer on their lips. Chorynth is called the island of cutthroats and pirates. A standard it bears proudly.

The country of Chorynth was originally found in the World Book of Khaas, Legendary Lands of Arduin. This expanded version has more grit and detail than the original, as well as associated material appropriate for the Arduin Eternal® game system, published by Emperors Choice Games & Miniatures®.

Chorynth makes an excellent pirate haven that can be dropped into any old school game that being said this makes a great sword and sorcery location of scum and pirates. The place has lots of blank spots on the map that can easily be filled in.
Pirates always mean one thing when it comes to horror games. Manic pirate undead! The movie the Fog from 1980!
Given the propensity of adventurers to end up as pirates especially in an S&S style setting. This free download might get a hell of a lot of play depending on the players. But every party of adventurers needs a place to unload booty, get into fights, and generally have place for the DM to add adventure to his games. This is where this location adds colour, variety, and a much needed injection of intrigue into the mix.

We get a bit of everything with this fifteen page pdf and a nice overview of all of the customs, history, landmarks and more of Chorynth. The level of technology is Renaissance. And the magic level is low as well but we've got a population of scalawags, cut throats, and revears that out matches the Bahamas! We clock in at about 950,000.
Reading it over made me think of Captain Blood as well from 1935 with Errol Flynn. 

Add a bit of pirate treasure and some friends after the holiday and your ready to go! 

 

Part II Of The "Real" Sleeping Beauty' A Public Domain Resource For Your Old School Horror Campaign

Fairy tales are supposed be fun little stories we tell our children at bed time. Nothing could be further from the truth and 'the Disney" corporations of this world aren't stupid. They love to copyright, trademark, and stamp every single piece of the psychic landscape and our children's imagination.
They can't because Fairy and the Fey won't let them. These are wild things of chaos and dream sewn together with the collective human unconsciousness of hundreds of years of legends.
Think this hasn't anything to do with the hobby we love? Think again Mr. David Lance "Dave" Arneson & so did Mr. Richard Snider  knew better and so capitalized on those stories for an old school rpg that never made it.  It has however been retrocloned HERE

 Far better then me reviewed that game HERE

In the tale of The Glass Coffin the forces of Fairy are in full effect.  

The tale according to Wiki is a wild one and collected by the brothers Grimm.

The Glass Coffin is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm, tale number 163.^[1] Andrew Lang included it in The Green Fairy Book as The Crystal Coffin.

The Green Fairy Book available right 

HERE 

According to Wiki : 

A tailor's apprentice became lost in a forest. When night came, he saw a light shining and followed it to a hut. An old man lived there and, after the tailor begged, allowed him to stay for the night. In the morning, the tailor awoke to witness a fight between a great stag and a bull. After the stag won, it bounded up to him and carried him off in its antlers. It set him down before a wall of stone and pushed him against a door in it, which then opened. Inside the door, he was told to stand on a stone, which would bring him good fortune. He did so, and it sank down into a great hall, where the voice directed him to look into a glass chest. The chest contained a beautiful maiden, who asked him to open the chest and free her, and he did so.

The maiden told him her story: She was the daughter of a rich count, and after the death of her parents, she had been raised by her brother. One day, a traveler stayed the night and used magic to get to her in the night, to ask her to marry him. She found the use of magic repellent and rejected his proposal. In revenge the magician then turned her brother into the stag, imprisoned her in the glass chest (coffin), and enchanted all the lands around them.

The tailor and the maiden emerged from the enchanted hall and found that the stag had been transformed back into her brother. The bull he had killed had been the magician. The tailor and the maiden then married.

But this is not the only tale in the Glass Coffin cycle. There is also tale of "The Young Slave" 

Once again wiki : 

Girls competed to jump over a rose bush; at last Cilia, the baron's sister, did so, but she knocked off a rose petal. To pretend she had cleared it entirely, she swallowed the petal and became pregnant. She bore a daughter, named her Lisa, and gave her to fairies to raise. The fairies gave her gifts, but one twisted her ankle and cursed Lisa to die when she was seven, because her mother, combing her hair, forgot the comb in her hair. This happened, and the lamenting mother put her in seven crystal coffins and put them in a room. Her health failed. Before she died, she gave her brother the key to the room and make him promise not to open it.

He obeyed, but he married, and one day while he hunted, his wife opened the door. Jealous of the girl's beauty, she pulled her out by her hair, which knocked out the comb and brought her back to life. The woman beat her and made her a slave, telling her husband that her aunt had sent her a slave and warned her that stern measures were necessary with this perverse slave.

The baron went to the fair and asked everyone for what they wanted. Lisa asked for a doll, a knife, and some pumice-stone, and cursed him not be able to cross a river to return if he did not. He forgot them, but the river swelled, reminding him. Lisa took them to the kitchen and told her story to the doll, and then threatened to sharpen the knife on the stone and kill herself if the doll did not answer. The doll did.

After several days of this, the baron heard this and eavesdropped. When the girl began to whet the knife, he broke into the kitchen and took it from her. Then he put Lisa in the care of a relative, where she regained her health and beauty. The baron brought her to his own home, dismissed his wife back to her relatives, and in due course married off his niece.

Enchanted lands, half fairies, weird magical dolls, curses, and resurrection spells all in one small story?  Sounds like the makings of a Gothic Fairy Tale AD&D campaign to me! 

Fairy Tales are not sexist either there is another variant with an enchanted prince and some very interesting circumstances. This one was told to me by a lovely Greek Ex girl friend back in college.
The Sleeping Prince according to Wiki 

A king had only his daughter, his wife having died, and had to go to war. The princess promised to stay with her nurse while he was gone. One day, an eagle came by and said she would have a dead man for a husband; it came again the next day. She told her nurse, and her nurse told her to tell the eagle to take her to him. The third day, it came, and she asked; it brought her to a palace, where a prince slept like the dead, and a paper said that whoever had pity on him must watch for three months, three weeks, three days, three hours, and three half-hours without sleeping, and then, when he sneezed, she must bless him and identify herself as the one who watched. He and the whole castle would wake, and he would marry the woman.

She watched three months, three weeks, and three days. Then she heard someone offering to hire maids. She hired one for company. The maid persuaded her to sleep, the prince sneezed, and the maid claimed him. She told him to let the princess sleep and when she woke, set to tend the geese. (The fairy tale starts to refer to the prince as the king.)

The king had to go to war. He asked the queen what she wanted, and she asked for a golden crown. He asked the goose-girl, and she asked for the millstone of patience, the hangman's rope, and the butcher's knife, and if he did not bring them, his ship would go neither backward nor forward. He forgot them, and his ship would not move; an old man asked him if he had promised anything, so he bought them. He gave his wife the crown and the other things to the goose-girl. That evening, he went down to her room. She told her story to the things, and asked them what she should do. The butcher's knife said to stab herself; the rope, to hang herself; the millstone, to have patience. She asked the rope again and went to hang herself. The king broke in and saved her. He declared she was his wife and he would hang the other on the rope. She told him only to send her away. They went to her father for his blessing.
Available right over
HERE
Suicide, enchanted items, weird fairy lands once again and we finally have the makings of some very dangerous and dark tales this time from Greece. 

 Using The Glass Coffin Cycle In Your
Old School Horror Campaigns



These tales clearly illustrate the most diabolic forces of Fey magic in the hands of human magicians. The lands become enchanted and very dangerous. Objects take on a life of their own. Resurrection spells come into vague and the forces of life and themselves come into play.
These are epic tales where years, centuries, and hidden agendas of power of unseen forces reign over the lives of the humans of these worlds.
Here the social fabric is turned inside out and tailor sons become princes and marry enchanted princesses. Suicide, death, and even undeathly sleep is the norm. This isn't the world of Tolkien or many of the fictional worlds that players may be familiar with at all. These are enchanted realms where the monsters of OD&D and AD&D are equally at home. Time is bent and broken in some cases. Many of these realms are demi planes in their own right and can be used as side adventures or as part of greater cycle. The rule here is on the epic and the magical of fairy and Fey. These tales are part way between dark Arthurian legend and the realms of legend as well as beyond.
Since these tales are in the public domain be sure to bend, change, and even break the mold with them.
 More to come!