#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 1, Room 26

The odor from this room hits the PCs before they even get near the opening.

Free Art Assets - Grey Gnome Games - Jason Glover

Inside this room are 1d8+4 Zombies in this room. They are milling about the room aimlessly, but when the PCs enter, they will attack. Zombies always attack last. All the zombies have swords that look beat up and rusted. One zombie, though, has a sword +1. The only way the PCs can learn if it is magical is because it is not rusted like the others.

There is a fair amount of treasure here. In various bags, there are 100 gp, 35 SP, and 1000 cp. The PCs have no way to discover this, but they were left behind by a group of evil adventurers who killed an adventuring party and left these zombies to guard the loot they could not carry themselves. That evil party went deeper into the dungeons and has not been heard from since.  They even left an extra magical sword to make sure their loot was guarded well. 

The zombies look like they are a couple of weeks old. 

Chivalry & Sorcery: Basic Set and Print on Demand

About a week or so ago, I talked about bringing in some "new" games into my life to substitute for D&D. Here is one of them.

Chivalry & Sorcery

When it comes to RPGs emulating an authentic Medieval experience there are generally only two games that people go to; Pendragon and Chivalry & Sorcery.  One could argue how authentic each of these are, but in general, they are far closer than D&D or anything else on the market. 

Chivalry & Sorcery has been around nearly as long as D&D (1977 and 1974 respectively) and like many gamers my age we saw a lot of ads for it in the pages of Dragon Magazine, especially the Fantasy Games Unlimited 2nd Edition.

Currently, it is in its 5th Edition and is published by Brittannia Game Designs.

I am not going to review it today, but this is a gorgeous book. It is also a huge book at 600 pages.

I picked mine up from my FLGS a while back for some ideas on various campaigns, but now I am going to try it out on its own instead. 

Brittannia Game Designs recently released the 5th Edition in a Print on Demand format AND a brand new "Basic Game." 

The Basic Game is just about 80 pages and will cost you a whole $2.00.  So well worth it for any D&D refugee.

I recently got my wife into the Showtime series "The Tudors," so maybe I could use that as an "in" for this game. 

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 1, Room 25

Going back to Room #17 the PCs make a left (where they made the right before) and they turn left into a parallel hall to the one before (#18 to #24).

This room is empty save for some random glowing lights of unknown source or origin. The radiate magic (a wizard or elf can tell) but they don't actually do anything but float around. They are creepy all the same.

If anyone puts a weapon into one of the lights their weapon will glow for the next hour.  There is no magical effects, but it does look cool. 

Mail Call: Chilling Worlds of Darkness

Part of my goal this year now is to expand my game-playing a bit more beyond the realms of D&D and the clones.  But I am not venturing too far afield.  In fact, of late, I have been turning back to some old friends.

I have gotten these all in the mail over the last couple of days. 

Up first is an old favorite, Mage, in a new (to me) setting. Victorian Age Mage is based on the M20, Mage 20th Anniversary Edition, system/setting. I love Mage. I love the Victorian Age. So this one was a no-brainer for me when I saw it on DriveThruRPG's newest releases.

The book looks great, and maybe for the first time ever in Mage, I'll consider playing a character from the Technocracy!

I am also getting back into a really old favorite of mine, Chill 1st Edition via Cryptworld.

I picked up the two latest adventures from Yeti Spaghetti and Friends designed for Chill 1.0 and Cryptworld. Horror in Hopkinsville is good old-fashioned 50s UFO paranoid fun (or is it...) and The Blood Countess features a new take on the Other Side favorite Elizabeth Bathory. These do not have print options yet, I picked these up from Yeti Spaghetti directly.

The Fright Night Classics adventures are fun and would make for great NIGHT SHIFT or Dark Places & Demogorgons adventures too. 

Going through them reminded me how much I do love Chill. So I went back to look up some monsters. Imagine my surprise when I discovered I didn't have a copy in print of Monsters Macabre!

This one is from Goblinoid Games. Figure I'd toss them some coin while they work out what the next Labyrinth Lord will look like. 

So expect some more Chill/Cryptworld goodness from me soon!

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 1, Room 24

Down the hall is the last room on the right. The room is the same sort as the rest on this side. 

The commotion in this room can be heard from the outside.

A group of Kobolds (2d6) are trying to spear a large boar-like creature (Dire Boar). They do not notice the characters until they enter the room.  Most of the kobolds have 4hp each, and the boar is down to 3 hp.

There is no indication of where the boar or the kobolds came from or how they ended up in this room.

The kobolds have 2sp and 5cp each (on average).

Down the hall is a half-flight of stairs to the right that meets up with a similar set, both going down and then meeting up with another half-flight going down. This is Encounter area #31 and will be dealt with then.

Monstrous Monday: Monster Mash

We have all seen the new proposed OGL. Honestly it looks like publishing under the OGL 1.0a  will soon be over, at least how it has been.  So, what am I do to with three separate monster-related projects?

Simple. I combine what I can and try to get something ready to go.

Here are the efforts of that.

Monster Mash

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/424046/Monster-Mash

Here, there be Monsters!

For years brave adventures have been going into dark dungeons and fighting monsters. Now the monsters are fighting back.

Monster Mash is an Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy compatible game supplement that allows you to take on the role not of a stalwart hero but as one of the monsters.

This book features 13 horror-based classes.

The Awakened Golem, Cat Folk, Ghosts, Haglings, Hobgoblins, Revenants, Shadow Elves, Shades, Werewolves, Wererats, Vampires, Profane Necromancers, and the Gothic Witch.

New spells for Haglings, Profane Necromancers, Shadow Elves, and Gothic Witches.
New occult powers ritual spells for Gothic Witches.

Fully compatible with Old-School Essentials and other Basic-Era games.
Fully compatible with other witch books from The Other Side.

Requires Old-School Essentials Core Rules.

--

I put in a lot of the art I was going to use for this, Monstrous Maleficarum and the Basic Bestiaries.  I had wanted to get this out for Halloween (naturally) but I had a lot going on.

Now I would LOVE to get a couple more of these out. I have nearly everything I need; I just have to put everything together. 

Will this be my last publication for OSE? I certainly hope not.

#Dungeon23 Tomb of the Vampire Queen, Level 1, Room 23

Continuing down to the next room on the right has a strange glow coming from it.

The glow comes from a room full of glowing mushrooms, at least 40 to 50.  

Among the mushrooms are glowing Shriekers. 

There are 15 of them and they are indistinguishable from the other mushrooms in the room.  Once they start shrieking (see your Basic-era rules), it will become nearly impossible to tell them apart. Each attack on a mushroom only has a 1 in 6 chance of being a shrieker.