The Toxic Wood is a deadly wilderness adventure for Old School Essentials This hexcrawl adventure focuses on game-able content and being easy to use at the table. It is graphic and art heavy and utilizes a lot of random tables to make it easier for GMs to run with minimal prep. "You have been hired by a secretive council of wizards, who refuse to meet in person with you, to rescue the survivors of Mugwort - a town which was thought to have been destroyed and lies deep within The Toxic Wood. The Wood is corrosive and the air is not safe to breath there, so the wizards have given you a magical orb which will create a safe dome of air around you. The orb must be fed with fuel containing life force to continue operating properly. They have also gifted each of you a less effective necklace which will create a temporary small bubble of clean air around your head as an emergency measure. The Wood became noxious a couple of years ago after a dragon known as Ion moved in. You will have to navigate to Mugwort without Ion noticing if you are to conduct a successful evacuation." The toxic wood is home to many strange entities; spiteful mutated horrors, ancient insectoid witch sisters, bloodthirsty redcaps, a mushroom witch and a corrosive dragon cult. Noxious gases produced by alien plants slowly coil through the air creating an endless red haze. Anything that is not part of the woods lethal eco-system is rapidly corroded, with all evidence of its existence erased within days. Details: 32 pages Single column text 8.5 x 5.5 aspect Black & White Bookmarks Hyperlinks Random tables Hooks and rumors for your players Rules for surviving in the toxic wood using the orb and other means 16 keyed hex locations Backgrounds for characters to aid roleplay New monsters Key NPCs A timeline of events for the DM to structure their sessions around Flora of the wood Random treasure tables Prompts and resolutions for what happens if players take different actions Cursed Items and Powerful Artifacts: Scattered throughout the wood, offering potent abilities but often with dangerous drawbacks.
The Haunted Hamlet and other hexes details four unique modular locations for your game. Made for old school essentials, but can easily be used with other old-school systems or even 5E. The four locations detailed in the zine focus on gameable content and being easy to use at the table. The locations are not connected to one another and can be sprinkled onto your campaign map however you like, or run as one shots. The PDF is graphic and art heavy and utilizes random tables and other tools to make it easier for GMs to run in a pinch. Details: 40 pages Single column text 8.5 x 5.5 aspect Black & White Bookmarks Four hex locations Random tables A rival NPC party A sky merchant A one page town Two hirelings