Final day of funding for From the Shroud Issue 3

At the time of writing, we are about to enter the last day of funding of the From the Shroud #3 which is a Crypts and Things/OSR zine, as part of Kickstarter ZineQuest 4.  The zine is now fully maxed out content-wise as a 64-page full-colour zine. It will have sixteen tales of cosmic horror, each featuring a different alien Other World, the demonic Others that live there and adventure ideas.

The campaign also funded a second twenty-three-page zine, Mancuria an fantasy version of my home-city Manchester, an OSR sandbox setting that every backer will get a copy of.

 

Weird Fantasy and Cosmic Horror?

These are two terms that are bandied around lots when it comes to the Old School Renaissance (OSR),

A quick Google looking for a definition of Cosmic Horror, sends you straight towards HP Lovecraft and his Mythos. The rather nihilistic idea of alien beings, and their incomprehensible actions being the source of alarm and anxiety, rather than blood and gore. To be fair that’s were I came in with the term, with the Games Workshop printing of Call of Cthulhu (2nd edition + Companion with all manner of new art, in a lovely hardcover instead of a bunch of pamphlets in a box which was the US Chaosium offering at the time). Actually, I was more interested in the idea of using it as a Gothic horror game, since rather than Lovecraft I had been brought up on a diet of Hammer Horror films, with a dash of the bizarre and creepy 70s/80s British TV Series Tales of the Unexpected (which sometimes went into the realms of the supernatural). I didn’t really get Cosmic Horror until I read the work of Lovecraft’s peer Clark Ashton Smith a couple of years later. CAS is the master of dry, almost sarcastic, delivery of “oppps man has wandered into an encounter with the supernatural almost outside of his comprehension, and suffers badly because of it”. I personally think he’s a much better writer, than Lovecraft, and he certainly got across the sense of how to use Cosmic Horror effectively.

Weird Fantasy? Again a quick Google brings you to a broad church of pulpy, supernatural, dark fantasy, swords and sorcery, titles and stories, that have their origins in the 1920s with the familiar circle of HP Lovecraft, CAS and Rober E. Howard.  For me as a Brit, brought up on a quaint diet of Tolkien and CS Lewis, it means anything that is genuinely strange and somewhat dangerous by its very nature. Moorcook’s Eternal Champion stories (Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum, Von Beck among others) which I drank deep off in my teens come to mind in a happy way here.

Both flavours are covered by the zines I’m offering as part of the From the Shroud ZineQuest 4 Kickstarter.

From the Shroud #3, is cosmic horror in a big way. The Tales that describe the adventures on Other Worlds and their alien inhabitants are the first proper look at the genre that has previously been heavily mentioned and referenced by some of the otherworldly fiends that are the monsters of Crypts and Things. Now I give Crypt Keepers (C&T GMs) a bucket full of ideas to inflict upon their players, whose characters now can visit the worlds beyond the Shroud.

The nearly funded second zine, Mancuria covers Weird Fantasy. It’s an alternative history take on 21st Century Manchester, with an airpunk theme, with flying airships, steam-powered weapons, and dangerous elements in the form of a zombie workforce that sometimes gets hungry, visiting barbarians on unicycles and pirates who prey on the airships.

Both zines are available on Kickstarter now until Monday 29th August.

 

 

From the Shroud #3 now live on Kickstarter

Live now on Kickstarter as part of ZineQuest for two weeks until Mon, August 29.  Fully funded within an hour, currently smashing through stretch goals, From the Shroud #3 is a zine focusing on the cosmic horror of the Other Worlds for Crypts and Things and other OSR/Fantasy games.

From the Shroud issue 3 on Kickstarter until Mon, August 29.

Also, everything that I’ve done for Crypts and Things, including previous issues of the zine, is available as an add-on, so it’s a great way to either catch up with the releases or get into the game.

Five Star Review of Crypts and Things Remastered over at Drivethrurpg.com

Although Crypts and Things has been out a good five years now, once in a while it gets a 4-5 star view over at DriveThruRpg.com. As quoted below, this one was especially useful since Patrick Y, the reviewer, had just finished a campaign.

I just concluded a six-month campaign, taking a party up through level five. Everyone had a blast and would have been happy to continue. My experiences track with the previous reviews. Crypts & Things is an excellent OSR game that captures everything I like about the Sword & Sorcery genre, without including tropes that more properly belong to high fantasy settings.

Under Dark Spires, Character Generation

And so it begins, our run through Under Dark Spires, my mini-campaign for Crypts and Things starting with 1st level characters.

It’s been a while since I’ve played C&T and an eternity since I’ve run an ongoing campaign of it. In between, I’ve been on a steady diet of D100 games (OpenQuest mainly) and new modern D&D variants like 5th Ed and 13th Age. So it was a shock at first going back to C&T’s very old school OD&D base + tweaks from 80s White Dwarf/Fighting fantasy. Any doubts that I would not enjoy this style of play anymore were quickly dispelled. The players are certainly very enthusiastic about playing it 🙂

The Crypt Keeper awaits you in the Room of Zoom!

The Crypt Keeper awaits you in the Room of Zoom!

I explained a bit about the dying world of Zarth, the demonic Others who have come to feed. We discussed that it has elements that require maturity due to themes of violence and oppression and the safety tools we would use if the game moved outside of what people were comfortable with.

The immediate set-up is that the characters are 1st Level and are many treasure hunters who have gone to a region called the Ash Plains. Where the Gods buried an Empire under volcanic debris for their hubris hundreds of years ago, hence in places, you can literally trip over the treasure that was left behind (or so they say).

We did character generation pretty much as written in the rulebook, the exception being that we used 3d6, rerolling 1s and 2s, which leads to more heroic characters. Part of me thinks I should make this the default for Crypts and Things.

The characters are:

  • Bodak Slashingspear (male fighter) played by Tony.
  • Xara (female Theif) played by Al.
  • Torsten Dagsson (Female Disciple) -played by Ginger Matt

We’ve also had another player, Jason, join us since the character generation session, and he’s currently considering a Sorcerer for his character.

I’ll post more about these characters, including starting character sheets, once I’ve got Jason’s character in a future blog post.

Under Dark Spires is currently in development. This run-through is meant as a final playtest of a set of adventures that were previously run individually as convention games. As well as making sure there aren’t any places where there are unavoidable Total Pary Kills, I’m also seeing how experience point allocation and levelling up works when the adventures are run together as a campaign.

We are playing again in just under two weeks when we get stuck into an adventure called Blood of the Dragon.

Look, it’s us rolling up characters!

Lucky Friday 13th!

Who said Friday 13th is unlucky?

Glynn Seal of Monkey Blood Design has just announced another Handy Maps Kickstarter.

Pelgrane Press has just put out a new 13th Age Quickstart rules.

Peter Regan has just started a very quick, nine-day long Kickstarter to fund a 2nd Printing of the Black Hack 2nd edition. If you missed it the first time around, or want the deluxe box sets with lots of extras, like foil-stamped covers, mugs etc, now’s your chance.

This is a fine award-winning British OSR rules set, that I personally highly recommend. I liked it so much that I used it for the base for a self-contained Crypts and Things reimagining.

Blood of the Dragon available until the end of November

As part of our Dark November sale, I’ve re-released my long-unavailable adventure for Crypts and Things, Blood of the Dragon, for free in pdf format.

It’s available until the end of the month, then it won’t be available again until the adventure/setting book Under Dark Spires, of which it will be part,  is released in early 2021.

The first adventure module for Crypts and Things, intended as an introduction to the game. Compatible with other Old School Class/Level based games based on the Worlds Favourite Fantasy Role-Playing Game in its 70s/80s incarnation.

“Under a land shrouded in volcanic ash punctuated by rocky spires that tear at the sky they say the Great Dragon sleeps. Tyanos the Black, Trickster god of the long-dead Hu-Pi people stole their blood and bottled it for his insane delight. As the drink of the gods, it confers immortality to mortal man, but at what terrible price? The very quest for this elixir is insane. A trip into a harsh and unforgiving land of the Spires, a poor and bandit ridden weird land, inhabited by the likes of Black Joop, Nigus the Headless and the Mother of Hydra. Names that should send a shiver down your spine. So pick up your sword, down the last of your ale to steady any nerves and stride off towards a great adventure amongst the rocks that defy the sky.”

What this Module contains

Blood of the Dragon is a short introductory adventure set in the ancient and ruined lands of The Spires.

  • A Rough Guide to the Spires
  • Adventure: The Lair of the Battle Apes
  • New Monsters – The fearsome Battle Apes.

Dark November is Here!

So I missed out on doing anything for Halloween because I was preoccupied with the end of my Gloranthan Fanzines, and before that, in Sept/Oct I was in full pimp mode for the OpenQuest Kickstarter which kind of blew up in my face.

So It occurred to me that my Dark Fantasy OSR/D&D stuff is not getting the love it deserves. So I’ve decided to run a month of promotions/competitions/new-releases for the Crypts and Things, the soon to be released Swords Against the Shroud as well as other OSR bits I do is in order.  This is what I call…

Oh, and It has a logo, that uses the most British Old School of fonts (Moria Citadel) 🙂

First Dark November competition is to get more minions…oops sorry followers over on D101 Twitter Account. When we reach 500 followers, I will do a prize draw for one of D101’s OSR/D&D titles in print.

 

Under Dark Spires coming soon

It’s Fiendish Friday, so here’s some news on what’s coming on for Crypts and Things very soon…
The long-overdue adventure pack for Crypts and Things, Under Dark Spires,  after a series of writers blocks, and various production failures (both straightforward and arcane) is back on track for being completed.
Under Dark Spires is a collection of five adventures. Blood of the Dragon (C&T’s long out of print adventure), The Dark Path, Terror At Black Oak, Fort Boneguard and The City of the God-Emperor. There’s also setting information for the Dark Spires region that the adventures take place in. Its a low level, 1st – 3rd, sandpit of nasty wriggly things that rises up to the pcs exploring one of the big secrets of the Serpent Kings.
I’m not going to give a firm date, but I’m looking within the next couple of months.
To help fire me up and inspire me, I’ve commissioned Dan Barker who did the art for Tournaments of Madness and Death, to do the art for Under Dark Spires. Dan brings his own take to the Weird Fantasy Swords and Sorcery world of Crypts and Things.
Here’s his take on a Barbarian being taken by surprise by a carnivorous plant in the fetid swamps of Stink River.

Stay tuned for regular updates.