Random Tavern Generator For Your Old School Campaigns

    Skirmisher publishing just had their 'Game publisher WTF moments'on their  D-Infinity broadcast on Youtube this evening. Which had some pretty fun stuff in it. You can see that right over HERE. But the reason for the mention is actually the Random Tavern generator that was mentioned at the end of the board cast. This handy dandy little generator gives the perfect watering hole or meeting place for your party. 

This is a perfect random generator from Skirmisher publishing for your old school game campaign. This is a solid done generator. Easily adapted to your urban encounter area or adventure locations within a town, city, or even the countryside wagon trail.

Start Using It Right Over 

HERE

original artist right over Here

Another trick I came up with is to use the generator a couple of times to create various watering holes within a town or city block. This way various watering holes might be owned and operated by a crime family or thieves guild or some other organization.
All of this material is based on the Jester Dragon's Random Tavern Generator. A system neutral product that's only .99 cents and will seamlessly fit into the background of your campaigns,neatly and quite concisely.







Grab It Right HERE 

Free OSR Resource From Dragon's Foot - Footprints Issue #22 For Your Old School Campaigns

Footprints #22 of the venerable pdf magazine is out, and its actually one of my favorite old school resources. The magazine has changed and evolved over the years and it now sports the 'ideas and adventures for advanced fantasy gaming';this is exactly what it is and does. This issue is no exception. First I absolutely love the cover on this issue. And that's really one of the places where the places where a revamp for the look of the magazine has been coming. Believe it or not the contents page has the look of the TSR era Dragon and my heart ached seeing it for a moment. 

Go Right Over
HERE

But then after looking through this issue's contents it became even more apparent that this wasn't simply the graphic layout and content but there's more to it.
The Dragon's foot page reveals more of this new direction

Contents
% In Lair Column  By Ron 'rRedmond' Redmond - This is really a great article about the old school gaming experiences and tackling of the Footprints magazine by Ron. It really gives some personal insight into the who's, what's, why's of his experiences with Dragon foot and the OSR.
It also sets the tone for the rest of the mag as a whole. Some of the tone in this article sets up the backbone for the rest of the articles to come.

Charge It!(article) by Ian Slater is a really solid take on 'correcting' and offering an alternative method for charging magic item from the 1st edition DMG, and it breaks down both math and method to the madness. A really well thought out system with some nice twists that can really be applied in a number of ways. A solid addition to this issue right out of the gate. 

Feelin' Trapped? (article) - Continuing the trend with excellence is this article on random trap generation, Tony Chaplin does an excellent article which again gets back to early Dragon magazine articles. This is stuff that you can add into your own DM tool box and do so with little problems because of its quality. 

Pulling Strings (adventure) - Ahh The depth of this issue is in the adventures as well as the articles and 'Pulling Strings' really is an excellent adventure by Darren Dare  for 2nd edition AD&D but man this is a really solidly done adventure featuring some of my favorite old school monsters. I might have to back engineer this one into something like AD&D 1st or OSRIC. Very well done and love the maps and look of this one. 

Treasure & Tables (article) - Stuart Marshal turns in a really well done article on OSRIC random magic item generation, this one covers all of the bases and its very useful. The article has some very nice applications for adventure generation and provides a quick as well as effective method for magic item creation. 

Systems & Swordplay (article) - Is another Stuart Marshal effort for OSRIC to address the problem of weapon specialization inside the game. This article does a good job of giving the DM the means to deal with this problem that players sometimes make take center stage in combat situations. No more, this one takes the headaches right out of this. 

Many a Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore (article) - Michael Haskell does an excellent job of setting up the back drop for wizards and magic users and their time between adventures. This one has it all and its worth the price of admission on the strength of this article alone. Very cool stuff with some horrific applications that reminds me of historical articles I've read about historical characters like John Dee and others. Wizards should often be the catalyst  for adventures and this article gives a DM a nice excuse to slip in plot hooks and twists between adventures. 

Prelude to an Adventure (fiction) - Now this is a good piece of fiction that drops in some ideas for the 'who, what, & where' aspects of old school adventures and their preludes. Nothing happens in a vacuum. And this story highlights that in spades. 

Blacktop Vale (adventure) - This is a solid adventure and Steve McFadden turns in all of the stops with this OSRIC or AD&D 1st edition style adventure. The maps, story, backdrop are all pure sword and sorcery with a pulpy heart that I loved. Again this is worth the price of admission. 

Bottom line this is a solid issue with content that can adapted into any number of old school or retroclone systems. Hell I can see these adventures being adapted for Labryth Lord with the advanced companion, I can see the material being retrofitted into several other systems. Including easily being used for Fantastic Heroes and Witchery, or even OSRIC or AD&D 1st edition. 

Is it worth the download? Hell yes and its very well done issue at that. Grab this issue and get moving to the gaming table. A really nice free download. 

Adapting The Free OSR Adventure Resource The Stone Alignments of Kor Nak By E.Gygax & B.Poire To The Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea Rpg System

I've been following the development of this free adventure resource for months and now its come out as a fully fleshed out old school pdf.
What is The Stone Alignments of Kor Nak about?
Well according to the GP Adventures website -
Discover the secret of the Alignments of Kor Nak, defeat many foes, and piece together a secret that will perhaps bring peace to the Carnelian Queen of old. This short module is compatible with 0e, 1e, and most variants of the World’s Premier Role-Playing Game. Light on stats and mechanical details, this hex is usable in a variety of settings and games, including your own.


 Grab It Right Over
HERE

So I've been wracking my brains about adapting the brand new adventure resource The Stone Alignments of Kor Nak by Ernie Gygax and B.Poire to the Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea rpg system. But not in the way you might be thinking, you see some very cool folks have done quite a bit of the hard work for me over at the Hyperborea forums HERE

As one of the B.Poire points out :

"You'll see that we make allusion to the "Black Gulf" as "that which extends beyond the material plane" several times in the description. That's a nod for you guys, obviously. 

This material is eminently adaptable to Hyperborea, by the way, but you might have guessed it, given the source. Please enjoy, and let us know what you think!"The material is hugely influencal and very well done. It presents some clever locations, monsters, adventure hooks, and more.
Hell there are even crabmen, already built into the whole thing. I love the crabmen of Hyperborea because they're a fully fleshed out alien culture with a ton of menace and horror built right into the race.
Benoist Poire points out -
I could post some notes about possible AS&SH adaptations, but I'm not even sure those are even necessary: Switch Tenkar's Landing for the east coast of Hyperborea, and the ancient Ayceni just emerged on the continent from there, cast out from Old Earth or whatever alternate setting (our own Eurth, perhaps) you'd be using in your AS&SH game. Exchange humanoids like ape-orcs for fully blooded ape men, for instance, and you're pretty much there. It's even got a bit of science-fantasy on the side with the Iron Pyramid, the Cobalt Caves and why not, the Lone Tower as well.

EDIT. As far as our HSD AS&SH campaign is concerned, just include a portal from the Marmoreal Tomb into the deepest level of the Alignments of Kor Nak, back-and-forth, so the PCs can return, and you are set. Of course, any portal of such sort in Hyperborea would include some sort of chance of failure, mishap, or misdirection, but that's the gist of it right there. Boom. Enjoy the Dark Youngs of Shub-Niggurath, players. ;)

Once again this is hugely inspirational. And actually very useful advice. 

I read through Handy Haversack's contribution and I see a thousand possibilities for this setting.
Yeah, I read it when I got home, and it seemed like a perfect thing to put out on the coast by Brigands Bay--or to use as the "Black Fief," Blackadder23! It's great stuff, Benoist. Thanks for sharing it.

And sometimes that can be the problem with a setting,its simply too awesome to use right out of the gate.As a DM you need time to digest it and let it rattle around in your head for a day or so. The fact that its been collected and released as a pdf with a nice old school cover is simply icing on the cake.
I've already reviewed it on the Swords and Stitchery end of the blogs but after my Stars Without Number game I cracked open my Robert Howard Nameless Cult's book and my other Robert Howard fan book.
The maps in the Stone Alignment are really well done and I want to take this mini campaign hex location and build a campaign world around it.
There are a few other free resources that I want to add, mold, and mix with this one. The possibilities here are pretty damn endless. The authors have done a tremendous job with the whole package of The Stone Alignments of Kor Nak.

If you haven't gotten into this free resource? I strongly suggest that you stop what your doing and go to the GP adventures website right now and download.This is not the last that your going to be hearing about me adapting this campaign resource to AS&SH.