Noteworthy OSR modules

[Yora]

While working on improving my campaign structure and gamemastering approach, I've come to appreciate certain elements of old school adventure design and see why some people are such great fans of them. (I'm not a sandbox dungeoncrawl fan myself, but there's more you can do with the open-ended dungeon approach.)

There's all kinds of classic AD&D and BECMI modules around that lots of people have at least heard about by name, but it seems that there's also lots of modules for all the recent OSR retro-clones.
However, of which I really don't know anything. I've seen some stuff from James Raggi, which I guess is awesome in it's peculiar weirdness, but that's pretty much it. Death Frost Doom seems cool, while The Monolith from beyond Space and Time is just weird without giving the players any real ways to influence the events. (The terrible, terrible events.)

Any recommendations you people can make?

[hamlet]

In all honesty, I find that many of the OSR modules are just . . . well . . . not good. That's just personal opinion, mind you.

There are a couple that I think that are quite excellent and I'll see if I can't remember them . . .

1) Caverns of the Sinister Shroom (or something like that) is quite good. Mostly site based, you stumble upon and explore a cavern inhabited by live, sentient, evil fungi. Has a fairly strong pulp influence and is definately worth playing with if you like that sort of thing.

2) StonePick Crossing. It's actually sort of less of an adventure module and much more of a location supplement with some adventure bits tacked on. Still, a great little town to drop anywhere in a campaign that can be used as a home base type of thing and it has a few interesting things to do around town, plus hints at possible connections with a wider world.

3) Stonhell. No, seriously. A fantastic megadungeon and we're expecting the completion of it any day now. No, really, any day now. *checks watch, calendar, lunar cycles*

4) When it comes out, the revised Castle of the Mad Archmage will be excellent. And I'm not just saying that as a shill since I know the author and playtested bits of it. It's just quite good, but it needs work in that you need to invent reasons for your PC's to be going into it beyond "it's there."

Uhm . . . I'm honestly drawing a blank past that. There are a couple of others that are worth looking into, but I just can't remember them off the top of my head. One involved a barrow inhabited by the undead abomination of an ancient king and there was a link to the caverns of the pod people beneath it. That one was pretty interesting. One about a murder mystery in a castle with a vampire and the castle being snowed in.

Past that, the Alzheimer's is kicking in here.

Actually, honestly, I think the greater strength of the OSR is in its many blogs. Huge amounts of phenomenal creativity in them that you can peruse at will.

[Rhynn]

Dwimmermount was a fantastic and inspiring idea...

:smallsigh:


Actually, honestly, I think the greater strength of the OSR is in its many blogs. Huge amounts of phenomenal creativity in them that you can peruse at will.

Agreed. Most of the awesomeness of the OSR is in blogs. I've only got a few OSR products (ACKS, DCC) but I read something like 20+ more-or-less OSR bogs.

[hamlet]

Dwimmermount was a fantastic and inspiring idea...

:smallsigh:



To be fair, we haven't actually seen a whole lot of Dwimmermount yet. I'm very eager to see my paper copy of it since I've never actually been able to download any of the PDF's from the GoogleDocs page or anything like that. I just want to see the frickin' book in my hand!

*cough*

Sorry bout that. But I really do think that a lot of what he had going on based on his blog posts was fantastically interesting and I'd love to run it, or at least steal from it.

[Rhynn]

Sorry bout that. But I really do think that a lot of what he had going on based on his blog posts was fantastically interesting and I'd love to run it, or at least steal from it.

I still think Grognardia is, on the whole, the best OSR blog, and the description of the actual Dwimmermount campaign is awesome and should be mandatory reading for anyone who runs RPGs (just for the "just in time" style of GMing), but how things eventually played out with the dungeon module is, frankly, disgraceful.

I'm happy I didn't fund the Kickstarter. If it ever does come out, I might buy it, although given James' lack of involvement, I doubt it'd actually be what I want/hope. And that is too bad.

[hamlet]

The map books are due out any day now, and the rest of the module soon after that.

What's been done has been based heavily on Jame's notes to begin with.

And given what I know was done to the man, I don't really fault him for writing off the entire human race as a horrible thing not worth the breath to curse them.

[Beleron]

Could anyone recommend some blogs?

[Rhynn]

Can I ever...

Grognardia (http://grognardia.blogspot.fi/) is just all-around awesome, and the Dwimmermount campaign descriptions are great.

Planet Algol (http://planetalgol.blogspot.fi/) is probably my favorite campaign blog ever. It's crazy.

Middenmurk (http://middenmurk.blogspot.fi/) has some of the most awesome ideas, wrapped up in incredible language.

Savage Swords of Athanor (http://swordsofathanor.blogspot.fi/)
Weirdlands of Xhuul (http://xhuul.blogspot.fi/)
Playing D&D With Porn Stars (http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.fi/) (supposedly NSFW)
Jeff's Gameblog (http://jrients.blogspot.ca/)
Necropraxis (http://www.necropraxis.com/)
Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.ca/?zx=bfb4032e79cd9432)

Slightly more high-brow:
The Nine and Thirty Kingdoms (http://9and30kingdoms.blogspot.ca/)
Dreams in the Lich House (http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.fi/)

[Beleron]

Thanks, that'll be great to be going on with!

[BWR]

Bruce Heard' (http://bruce-heard.blogspot.no/)s blog.

Heard was line manager for the Mystara setting, the default setting for BECMI.
It's very specific - apart from a few things like comments on Gygax or Greenwood, it's specifically expanding on the Mystara setting. So far just the empire of Alphatia and a few monsters. It uses the BECMI/RC mechanics and is just plain excellent on the fluff level.

Lest you think that a single empire is a bit small for several years worth of blogging and expansion, Alphatia is a small continent plus several large holdings on two other continents and various islands.

The only bad thing about it is you pretty much need to have read the information on Alphatia presented in the RC and preferrably the Dawn of the Empires boxed set to enjoy it.

[hamlet]

Thanks, that'll be great to be going on with!

Greyhawk Grognard is also a good one if you want to play in Greyhawk itself.

[Premier]

Anomalous Subsurface Environment is a really good "D&D+rayguns+weird stuff" type megadungeon (plus surface world). It's not complete yet, but the first three levels are out.

Also, the English language section of Gabor Lux's Fomalhaut (http://fomalhaut.lfg.hu/category/english/resources/) website has excellent material, more of his work has appeared in Fight On! and Knockspell.