A level 2–3 sewer adventure by Glynn Seal. PCs plumb fetid sewers and recently-revealed secret halls, in search of a lost worker. In these forsaken chambers, they may find answers and treasures, but may also come face-to-face with a bloated monstrosity and its depraved followers. For Old-School Essentials (OSE) Included as one of four adventures in "Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1"
There is a witch in the wilds, a goddess unremembered, and a madman. There is a circle of stone - who knows what lies beneath? The villagers are distraught: their children! replaced by fae! The villagers are distraught: who heeded their plea? Ravenous inquisitors, that's who. Oh, and adventurers... This investigative folkcrawl adventure module contains: * an isolated village full of secrets, riddled with strange traditions, * adventure sites and dungeons populated by peculiar denizens, * a small Fae Realm to explore, weird and perilous, * a terrible fae threat and too many curses, * unlikely friends, and foes nobody expects! An OSR adventure module for character levels 3-4, designed for use with the Old-School Essentials ruleset, compatible with most old-school pen-and-paper RPGs. Includes a fully-linked interactive PDF, a fillable Referee's Toolkit, and player-friendly VTT maps.
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!
“Rats in the Walls”: A dockside tavern in Khromarium is plagued by rats of a most unusual breed. These abominable rodents have ruined the tavern keeper’s business and his life. The man is desperate, and he offers a substantial reward for the elimination of his horrific problem.
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)
‘Wyrd’ things are afoot. This town might seem like your ordinary, post-apocalyptic-now-turned-fantasy locale, but it is not! Fell Cults have begun to take over and it is up to the brave adventurers to stop one in particular: the Cult of the Shield Ghul. But the ‘Wyrdness’ doesn’t end there. Though this adventure can be used to facilitate your typical wander-around-and-kill-everyone-to-take-their-stuff-type scenario, it also includes a sinister (and frankly genius) plot, feuding factions, plenty of hyphens, not to mention bizarre NPC’s and situations to either interact with or stab to death.
Into the Unknown! The wilderness around the cave stronghold called Gold Hill Trading Post is dangerous and scattered with ruins of large and small settlements. Will your party find fame and fortune, solve ancient mysteries, or just disappear into the Borderlands like so many that came before? This module contains underground and wilderness maps that form a detailed adventure and mini-campaign for beginning characters, including an abandoned village, haunted graveyard, ruined church, traders’ camp, wilderness encounters, and monster lairs. It also includes a ruined keep and dungeon as well as a mapped and detailed “base camp” stronghold. The module is designed for use with all “classic” fantasy roleplaying game rulebooks or sets for Basic- and Expert-level players and gamemasters. It can be converted for use with “Advanced” fantasy game rules and compatible systems with a minimum of effort. Cover art by William McAusland! Print version (with full art) available at www.barrataria.com. Picked as one of the best by Bryce Lynch at tenfootpole.org!
Once a powerful proponent of Law, the Archmage Tazimack the Red was eventually driven mad by a fear of mortality. As he slipped into insanity his retirement home began to reflect the chaotic bent of his mind. Long after Tazimack’s unnaturally animated body has disintegrated, his manor house remains as a shadow cast by a twisted intellect. Can the characters bring order to this chaos?
Beneath our feet is the mythological hollow world – a realm of dense jungles, putrid swamps and rugged mountains. Here a brave party will struggle for survival as they seek to fathom the unseen expanse and to prevent a once defeated god to rise again. ‘Journey to the Inside Out’ can be played as a stand-alone scenario or be used as the first installment in a trilogy of connected adventure modules each taking place in a different era. The scenario can be used with Swords & Wizardry or any other early variant of game rules. Inside you will find: • A 40+ page old-school module with a layout optimized for fast and easy interfacing. • A challenging lost world setting with the possibility to toggle the complexity. • Alternative suggestions for entry to the hollow inside. • Downloadable maps for both players and the Referee. • Story-points for a guided scenario and tables for sandbox and hexcrawl-style play. • Advice for an ongoing campaign. • Locations allowing the PCs to travel to another era within the setting. • Unique new creatures. Published by CTM Publishing.
Dungeon Full of Monsters is a modular megadungeon for use with Labyrinth Lord and other old school fantasy role-playing games. The megadungeon is composed of 50 individual sections, separated into 5 different levels. You can assemble these in any configuration you like, either randomly or not, either before the campaign or on-the-fly in play. You can also use these sectiosn on their own, without reference to the larger dungeon itself. The second half of the book contains dozens of monsters, illustrated in full colour, often with multiple variations and types. Combined with the unique monsters located in specific dungeon sections, this book contains over 150 different monster stat blocks. There are criminal organizations, insane cultists, meddling deities, evil wizards, undead kings, infernal demons and other invaders from beyond the stars, numerous unspeakable horrors and arcane beasts, and even a few rival adventurers. Use these monsters with this dungeon or any other. Specific conversion guidelines for The Nightmares Underneath are also provided.
Strange doings are underfoot in the wild hills bordering the realm of decent and civilized folks. Villagers and cattle have gone missing; woodcutters have disappeared; misshapen beings have been seen shuffling through the forests. Some brave villagers have tracked a group of stolen oxen as far as the rocky banks of a small river in the hills. The trail disappeared down into a fissure in the limestone rock, where a fast-running stream plunges down to the dark caverns below. Gird your loins, stand behind the dwarf, and get ready to face The Pod-Caverns of the Sinister Shroom!
STRANGENESS AND TERROR FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE! Borgenwold is cursed, they say. Cursed by pride and greed to cower in fear of the past. A fell monstrosity from beyond the grave has risen to devour this town and all who dwell here. Open this book and to find... a town in the grip of horror, drunken monster hunters in way over their heads, debts, desperate bargains, miraculous goblins feasting upon godflesh, the treasures of the dead, and the price to be paid by those who seek to claim them. The Beast of Borgenwold is a 59-page Old School Roleplaying Adventure designed for characters of between 1st and 3rd level, and designed to be compatible with Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome, and other B/X and OSR affiliated games. mini hexcrawl (12 hexs) plus a small dungeon
...There are older things in these forests too; the knights did not just battle the pagan kings of man but also the forest dwellers; the wodewose. Spend too long in any tavern or listen to a village alewife and you’ll hear stories of knights and wodewose duking it out in little patches of now cleared pastures. One of these little villages is the village of Levnec, a sad little town ruled by a self appointed lord banished from his seaside villa far to the south. His name is Lord Kristoph and he has been looking to hire some transient sell swords to solve his problem. Some of the townsfolk are (repeatedly) going missing and others are refusing to work, even after examples were beaten and hobbled by his men. Seeing as the townsfolk are blaming the local Gnomes, he would simply like these drifters to saunter in the wood, murder some Gnomes and bring them back to show the townsfolk there is nothing to fear (except him) and to get back to work.
An adventure for starting characters When vicious bandits waylay a caravan bound for an outpost on the edge of civilization, the player characters are the only survivors, trapped and lost in a hostile wilderness. If they would live to see another day, they must learn to work together and discover the people they might one day become. This adventure is designed for a group of starting characters and is especially suited to new players. Published by Schwalb Entertainment.
A new megadungeon from Three Castles Award Winner (2018) and Barrowmaze author Dr. Greg Gillespie! HighFell: The Drifting Dungeon is a 246-page classic megadungeon for use with any old school fantasy role-playing games/clone. The pages of HighFell are crammed full with new material, maps, and art, including a colour cover by Ex-TSR artist Erol Otus (that matches Barrowmaze Complete and The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia as sister-books). HighFell: The Drifting Dungeon will keep your players on their toes and your campaign going strong for years. HighFell is brought to you by the Old School Renaissance (so don’t forget your 10’ pole).
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.
A 1st-level dungeon crawl for Shadowdark RPG where the characters delve into a ruined citadel hunting for legendary treasures while avoiding the wrath of the infamous scarlet minotaur! Inside the citadel are secrets about the downfall of the warrior-cultists who once ruled it, three legendary weapons they wielded, and several factions of intelligent creatures to turn into allies or enemies. This adventure is part of the free, digital Shadowdark RPG Quickstart Set, which comes with two 68-page booklets (Player and Game Master guides), 8 pre-made characters with gorgeous art, and a form-fillable character sheet. Shadowdark RPG is what classic, old-school fantasy gaming would look like after being redesigned with 50 years of innovation. It's the world's greatest roleplaying game in a whole new light! Download the free Quickstart set here: https://www.thearcanelibrary.com/pages/shadowdark
Lord Galveston's lands are plagued by murders. For the past several months people have been disappearing. Some bodies have turned up, their corpses found along the banks of the river. Strange tracks of a cat-like creature have been found around the villages, and rumors abound that a charon fiend, a dreaded beast of chaos, has come from the nearby wood and settled in the area. The latest victim is the Deacon of the Four Saints Church in Capendu. His body, found in the river, sent the alarmed villagers in search of aid. The adventure unfolds in the lands of the aged Lord Galveston and plunges everyone into a twisted tale of wild beasts and the restless dead.
The adventure text was written by a neural network (Talk to Transformer) and compiled by a human editor. It is surprisingly usable. The adventure is centered upon the dangerous and thoroughly weird Tomb of the Daughter, the burial place and temple of an ancient Goddess. Explore several rooms connected by teleport systems, fight strange creatures, and perhaps thwart a demon summoning.
Long ago the dwarf-like "Dverg" established a "forge" hidden deep beneath the earth where they forged weapons of "cold" iron. Cold iron was considered a far superior material and was especially effective against Trolls and could even damage ghosts. The forge is thought have been long abandoned and priceless artifacts of great power are rumored to lie forgotten beneath the Altis mountains. Among them is rumored to be the fabled Axe of Mortality - a weapon said to be powerful enough to slay a god. Is your party brave enough to venture out in search of these valuables? Flameless Forge of the Dverg is a free/pwyw dungeon crawling adventure designed for level 1-3 Shadowdark RPG characters. The adventure is assumed to take place in a viking-esque fantasy setting, but can be adapted by tweaking some names and figuring out replacements for the nordic gods.