Baron Ketterall’s lands are beset by a plague of marauding goblins! Goblins you say? Pah! Who's afraid of few poxy goblins? But two experienced parties have already gone looking for the goblin lair – never to be heard of again. Poxy goblins you say? Be afraid, be very afraid… The scenario is designed to be an extremely challenging adventure that might undermine a player’s bravado in dealing with low-level monsters such as goblins. Unusual traps, tricks and special weapons are used by the inhabitants of the dungeon to cause the party as much trouble as possible. Published by Dunromin University Press.
Part megadungeon, part underground expedition, Operation Unfathomable serves as both a one-shot adventure and a campaign framework. PCs are (optionally) drafted at swordpoint to recover the Nul Rod, a priceless artifact that was recently lost in a local prince's foolhardy attempt to destroy the Chaos Gods of the Underworld. The PCs have been drafted as an expendable set of pawns to venture into the vast and bewildering Underworld and retrieve the Nul Rod. With the Underworld's innumerable beasties being on high alert after the prince's expedition, the PCs must sneak through the incredibly dangerous Underworld. Fighting is not as important as stealth, fast-talking, and running away rapidly. This is the expansion from Sholtis's original Operation Unfathomable, released in Knockspell #5 (2011).
A little cave-borne adventure about harvesting valuable cysts from a sleeping creature, trying not to be killed by the horribly mutated infectious things that already tried that, and helping a wizard who recently lost all his friends and just wants to get his spellbook back. For use with your fantasy RPG of choice. How would I use this thing? -As a terrible one-shot without consequences! -Drop "Find the wizard Felix Longworm cowering by stones and a mournful tree" into your mountainous random encounter table of choice, and pull this out when the fates decide. -If the cave is ignored something else will eventually be birthed out of it, so you get free campaign fodder if your players shake their heads and say "nope". Apart from the adventure it also contains a glorious suit of cursed armour, horrific explosives, four new spells, an adorable cut-out map for your players to put together as they explore, and some pretty neat light tracking mechanics, so there's that.
The manor of Willowby Hall is under siege by a giant, enraged at the theft of his magical goose. The band of thieves has taken shelter within the manor's crumbling walls, cowering with their ill-gotten poultry as the building shakes itself apart. But something else is stirring. The giant's rampage is slowly awakening a Death Knight from its black slumber, and once it rises it will call on the bones of the manor's old residents to drive out the intruders. Will the party loot the manor of its ancient relics, or succumb to the blades of its skeletal guardians? Who will make off with the goose and its golden eggs? Will anyone survive the giant's onslaught? The only way to find out...is to play.
One page adventure, one page map. On the edge of a lake/ocean’s windswept field/forest, outside of his small stone home, a very old, callous human magic user, Cyfrin the Wrathful, summoned an invisible stalker in a magical binding circle. First he began to taunt the stalker, proclaiming his dominance over it, describing its powerlessness to do anything but carry out the old spell caster’s will. Next, Cyfrin dispelled its invisibility, ordering it to execute his plan. In Cyfrin’s excitement, he gazed upon the stalker’s now visible, horrifically impossible face - and abruptly suffered a stroke, dying on the spot. Still imprisoned, the stalker wants freedom. Will the PCs help it? Adventure hooks provided. Published by Wicked Cool Games
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
Some time ago, the wind began to sing of death in the Sision River Valley, and if purgatory was a song, Glovakians are now listening to it. The source of this soul-crushing music was tracked to about 90 miles northwest of Ambir. What was found? A massive, oddly built stone tower that wasn't there before. Word quickly spread and the curious set out in droves. Many turned back however, as every passing day the music got worse, but a brave, or foolish few, managed to make camp and eventually go inside. If anyone's made it out, no one really knows, but there's no shortage of rumors as to what's really going on in the place that's come to be known as, Sision Tower. Sision Tower is an OSR styled, vertical dungeon-crawl where the PCs explore an odd domain of Holy origins. Here, they will test their survival skills as well as their Faith. Here, they will meet Saints and Seraphs. Here, in the struggle between Law and Chaos they have to decide.....Plunder??......Sacrifice??......or Both!!! Sision Tower includes: All original black and white art. Over a dozen, fully illustrated, new magic items. Unique monsters and a sample setting. A vertical dungeon-crawl of 35 rooms. A spiritual setting in the same vein as Praise the Fallen. Sision Tower is designed to challenge character levels 3-5 and is easily used with most tradtional fantasy role-play systems.
A level 9+ hex-crawl adventure by D. M. Wilson and Sarah Brunt. A portal leads adventurers to a comet of fire and ice hurtling through the void of space. Can they survive prehistoric beasts, warring factions, and the comet’s impending doom, to find priceless treasures and a way home? For Old-School Essentials (OSE) Included as one of four adventures in "Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1"
Far out in the void, an ancient city of vampires endures. Welcome to Araveshti, a city of a thousand towers floating safely in the shadow of the world, glittering with starlight, thrumming with ancient magics, and crawling with vicious immortals. Will you seek to destroy these bloodthirsty aristocrats? Or will you help them pursue their bizarre alchemical experiments in immortality? Or will you simply seek a way to escape their twisted and crumbling paradise? Within these ancient towers, adventurers will find vampire lords and servants, zealots and goliaths, as well as werewolves, mycotic zombies, victims of strange experimentation, fanatical holy knights, tragic vampire hunters in black, shipwrecked dreamers, castaway aliens, metal angels, eldritch horrors, star dragons, and (of course) the vampires' giant dragon-killing mecha suit... This is a dark sandbox. Players will explore a vast city of undead people and monsters in outer space, full of homages to classic horror and science fiction films and literature. ADVENTURE TYPE: Mid Level / Combat / Exploration / Dark Fantasy / Fantasy City / Gothic Horror DESIGN NOTES This adventure is intended for mid-level characters around Level 5-10 Players explore a large vampire city in space, encounter numerous NPCs and monsters, and engage with diverse factions to destroy, conquer, or escape from the city 40+ unique encounter locations, plus countless randomly generated locations 100+ original magic items 40+ original monsters One city map Estimated play time: 1-8 sessions (4-32 hours)
Your party approaches a barrow at the base of the mountain. A raging storm brews overhead, and as you approach, a bolt of lightning strikes down on the peak of the mound, lighting up the world all around you. A thunderclap momentarily deafens you, and as your eyes adjust to the resuming grey of the dark day, you see a flicker of firelight emerging from the two gaping holes built into the side of the hill. You’ve found the pirates camping within the Barrow of the Raging Storm. As I delivered it to my players, the premise of this Midnight Sun adventure is that some pirates have been attacking ships returning from raids. They have been stealing the loot and the corpses of any slain Nords. Among their victims, a ship from Valthis returns to tell them that the pirates sailed upriver (to hex 506), where I placed the Barrow in my Shadowdark RPG campaign. The adventurers started from there and explored the dungeon thoroughly. The adventure was created using the tools described in the Shadowdark RPG core rules. I created it in about 6 hours between 2024-03-08 and 2024-03-09 and ran it for my group on the 9th. It took about 2.25 hours to play to completion. The party consisted of two level 1 characters and one level 2 character. I had so much fun making and running this that I will continue creating more Midnight Sun Adventures, so stay tuned!
The ancient world of Harth withers beneath its dying sun…but it’s not dead yet. Welcome to the strange and dangerous city of Carcassay, huddled below the skeleton of a titan rat, sprawling above the ruins of countless dead civilizations. This is where folk come to find wealth, power, revenge, secrets, oblivion… and everything in between. Carcassay is a sandbox city adventure. There are many locations to explore in, around, and under the city. Players can explore any place at any time, and may radically reshape the city’s politics, economy, religions, and physical existence. There are standard dungeons stacked under the city, and GMs are encouraged to keep adding more dungeons… all the way down. Tone. It leans more toward low fantasy or sword-and-sorcery. Most shops look like real shops. Most people look like real people. But strange and horrible things lurk everywhere as soon as you start to scratch the surface. This is my Lankhmar. Carcassay is a vast, bizarre city. It has over 100 locations where you can meet Chaos cultists, Lawful knights, retired adventurers, shopkeepers, brewers, musicians, artists, scientists, hermits, royalty, beggars, doctors, space vampires, eldritch horrors, machine priests, crab colonists, mushroom farmers, mummies, assassins, and diplomats from distant lands… and the moon. And every one of them has goods or services to sell, and a quest (or three) to offer. What sort of quests? Fetch a relic, assassinate a rival, find a relative, steal a soul, implant an agent, cure a disease, stop a riot, solve a murder that hasn’t happened yet, hunt a thief, locate a shrine… the list goes on. And for every Quest, there is a specific Reward: money, weapons, relics, Chaos mutations, exclusive memberships, information, Angelic miracles… the list goes on. This is a place where you can make a lot of money, but also where you can spend that money on interesting goods and services. Factions? We have a few. Seven Chaos cults, five knightly orders, two mercenary companies, four wealthy families, six (seven!) Corpse Lords, foreign diplomats, rival innkeepers, rival tavern owners, plus all the dungeon-delving gangs currently mucking about underground. When you grow weary of all the adventures at ground level, there are three classic dungeons buried under the city to explore. This book contains months (if not years) of campaigning. Enjoy the Chaos.
The City of Bergholt lies upon the southern shores of the Interzae. Her crumbling walls and ancient cobbled streets are little more than a backwater, controlled by powerful merchants and thieves. In these darkened streets and twisted alleys people claw their way to the top through violence and guile. In Bergholt, the fear lingers in every shadow. In By Shadow of Night you’ll find a complete detailed description of Bergholt, a rich cast of NPCs who all have their own plots and plans, over 20 encounter areas, including a small dungeon and a large fold-out map of the city. All this setting material comes to life in the dark and deadly adventure, also included within, that is By Shadow of Night. By Shadow of Night picks up after the Death in the Treklant series, available from Troll Lord Games, though it can be a stand-alone adventure if desired.
An old-school dungeon adventure! Explore (and possibly claim and re-open) an abandoned gem mine. 8 pages, 16 rooms, weird monsters, eerie situations, arcane technology and iridescent jewels! For use with old-school or OSR RPG systems.
From Exalted Funeral: "Fair hero, the end, the end alone awaits all travelers and at the end...was the journey all in vain? All journeys end in vanity. In vanity." - Mused the Grand Observer at the end of time. Welcome to The Ultraviolet Grasslands, the roleplaying game of heroes on a strange trip through mythic steppes in search of lost time, broken space, and deep riffs. The Ultraviolet Grasslands and the Black City is a tabletop role-playing game book, half setting, half adventure, and half epic trip; inspired by psychedelic heavy metal, the Dying Earth genre, and classic Oregon Trail games. It leads a group of ‘heroes’ into the depths of a vast and mythic steppe filled with the detritus of time and space and fuzzy riffs. The UVG is the work of the designer, artist, and writer Luka Rejec and was made possible through the generous support of hundreds of discerning fans at the Stratometaship patreon. Luka's other work with Exalted Funeral Press includes writing, art, and design on: Witchburner, Longwinter: The Referee's Book, Longwinter: The Visitor's Guide, and the adventure for OSE, Holy Mountain Shaker.
Run, play or splice up 66 pages of mayhem and weirdness in this Slavic mythic-inspired (with an acid fantasy-twist) mini-sandbox for Labyrinth Lord or the well-aged fantasy rpg of your druthers. Contains: • A 25-site pointcrawl of the otherwordly Slumbering Ursine Dunes region. Beyond the big ticket adventure sites you will find along the way a Polevik-haunted rye field, a Zardoz head-living hermit, bearling pilgrimage site, antediluvian beaver engineers and other assorted madness. • Two separate “dungeons”, the bio-mechanical, lost-in-time Golden Barge and the faction-contested Glittering Tower, with enough detail and portability to be slotted into an existing campaign. • The Chaos Index, a dynamic events system for modeling the mythic weirdness of the Dunes. Actions of the players in the sandbox will escalate or de-escalate the levels of events. • Four competing factions operating inside the Dunes, plus guidelines for their mutual interactions.
Something fell. A sickly gloaming lit up the night like mock daylight, just for a moment, and then the hills trembled. Now, an alien entity lies brooding in a crater gouged out of the moor. Local folk are enraptured with the toothsome jelly exuded by this being, but are blind to the true nature of the events unfolding in their rustic little backwater.
The adventures in Dalentown continue in The Darkness Beneath Dalentown. Workers in the town’s sewers have stumbled upon the long abandoned halls of the dwarves that once settled beneath this region. What they’ve found is a haunted library. What they’ve woken is something far more sinister! The Darkness Beneath Dalentown features hordes of oozes, undead, and demons festering for years in an ancient dwarven mining stronghold. Now, they are slowly working their way to the surface, and the folk of Dalentown are in dire peril!
The Hyqueous Vaults is a site-based dungeon with water and necromancy themes, some tricky/puzzling situations, and plenty of opportunity for combat. A challenging and lucrative module for 6-8 characters, averaging 3rd level. A centuries-old map leads to a mysterious cliffside complex, rumored to be flooded, and supposedly holding a dead necromancer’s fortune. Sages believe the arm-length metal implement accompanying the map must be some sort of key. The complex stands ripe for exploration by a party sufficiently strong and sneaky to wrest any treasures from the depths within. Written in celebration of OSRIC’s 10th Birthday.
One page side quest, one page maps. For amusement, twenty years ago, a transient vampire passed its blood curse to a flying squirrel making it undead, intelligent, and immune to aging. The squirrel calls itself Darkfang and mostly enjoys preying on tiny humanoids, favoring halflings, elves, & young humans. DF often relocates as years ago it learned humanoids seek justice. To avoid notice, DF may move lairs after killing a humanoid. Three solid adventure hooks are provided. Published by Wicked Cool Games
There is a Ruined City in the central northern Borderlands, often called Ghoultown by explorers of the area, but its original name is Ust Lesesi and it was once the second city of the Empire of Karan. Long since plundered, ruined and abandoned, the place has become home to a sinister mix of creatures, some are trading with each other, some are resting between skirmishes, all are schiming and all of them are trying to survive. This is a toy box for the GM - there are three settings in one - the Abandoned City, with stange creatures wandering the streets; the Monstrous community with several significant and detailed NPCs and their followers all trading, quarrelling and trying to get along with each other; and the city of the (un)dead - there's a whole army hidden in here, what are they being prepared for? The Ruined City is a 40-page game resource rather than a complete adventure, although it has almost everything you need for a simple hack or a more complex web of intrigue. Along with a sumptuous set of maps is a set of encounters, monster and NPC stat-blocks, and ideas for how to use the place in a campaign. If you need a ruined city in a hurry, this is the supplement for you! The Ruined City is designed for OSR but is also compatible with AD&D 1st and 2nd edition and pretty much any TTFRPG you fancy. The encounters are all pretty high level but most of the encounters will not be immediately hostile. There is scope in this setting for far more than simple hack and slash. These resources allow you to build a set of encounters as complex as you like. You can simply try and hack your way through, but there are some VERY nasty encounters in here. You could maybe set up your own base here, or just try and take over an existing group. Perhaps you want to start up a trade route, or maybe even start a Civil War! All of these possibilities, and many others, are catered for here. SM20 The Ruined City is released by Dunromin University Press. We are a very small publisher based in the UK and our aim is to produce VERY high quality products as the best value possible.