Greyhawk Ruins

I didn't really know what this module was when it first came out. I remember seeing it on the shelf at the store but when I got into AD&D the first campaign I played was Dragonlance and the first campaign I DMed was Forgotten Realms, so the Greyhawk campaign world just looked like generic-but-older fantasy from my viewpoint.

To this day I don't really get Greyhawk.

It was the first campaign setting, it was Gygax'es world, it was where all of the canonical lore for AD&D's spells and outer planes originated from and I get why all of that is important to most grognards. But in 1989 my teenager brain didn't find it all that interesting. These days I look at Greyhawk and I still see a kind of generic fantasy steeped in American sensibilities. It seems saccharine and simplistic, but I can respect it.

I bought the pdf for Greyhawk Ruins because it's a published megadungeon and it seems to draw out wildly different reactions from people based on their personal investment with the Greyhawk setting. I wanted to read it for myself and it was pretty cheap. I used store credit at drivethruRPG which nice readers like yourself have supplied by clicking my links to DriveThruRPG before purchasing products there.

So, what is this module?
Gary Gygax had a notorious megadungeon that he pulled his original group of D&D gamers through and there are many apocryphal and amusing anecdotes about this dungeon, and commonly when people discuss this megadungeon they refer to it as Castle Greyhawk even though in reality it was likely not actually called this by Gygax or any of the players in his group. Supposedly. Who knows? The original Castle Greyhawk has a lot of weird and wild stories about it. You can read about some of them at Hack & Slash, Zenopus Archives, and Power Score and Power Score again
The Power Score blog in particular has TONS of links to more information!

Castle Greyhawk received a module, though it was mostly humorous nonsense, and many people don't consider it an "official" adventure since it materialized after Gygax was ousted from his own company. I've flipped through it, but I don't own a copy of it so I've never been able to sit down and properly read it.

At the beginning of AD&D's 2nd edition era every campaign setting got tentpole releases and for Greyhawk the flagship release was Greyhawk Ruins, a module that details the dungeons beneath what once was Castle Greyhawk. The castle was composed of three towers and has collapsed or been destroyed in some vaguely handwaved ways that leaves no rubble on the ground and didn't somehow also collapse the tower-like cave structures beneath the castle.

Seriously?
Yes, seriously. One of the towers is said to have had ONE HUNDRED floors, yet when it collapsed it somehow left the first floor free of debris.

Are you going to review this module?
That's what this post is. As a whole I don't like this module very much. It's filled with crappy ideas and poor setups and would not be fun to play through as written. There are a few good ideas hidden away in the thing but ultimately I don't think it's worth the time scouring the thing for them.

I've read through it and I found most of it pretty boring. It's an interesting little post-Gygaxian artifact of Greyhawk but I didn't find it essential to anything about the Greyhawk setting. The complaints I've seen of the adventure online tend to be accurate. However, when people talk about the story I get confused because there doesn't seem to be absolutely any story here.

The adventure is written with the assumption that the PCs are here to loot as much as possible, and are possibly in competition with other people who are here to loot the ruins, but no plotline exists to push PCs into the dungeon. There's a list of rumors to drop into your campaign, but these are given with the phrase "The truth or falsehood of these rumors is left undefined as they often have elements of both."

There are sometimes explanations for why a particular creature lives in a particular room or how this NPC will react if the PCs follow a course of action, but I consider that proper window dressing for a dungeon. There's just enough information to know as the GM what's going on and to relay the proper amount of information to the players. The descriptions for rooms are concise and compact, explaining everything in very brief but often exhaustive details. It's put together efficiently, but it doesn't seem like a very fun place to explore. It reads as a tedious environment.

Here's a cutaway map of the levels and how they connect together.

Okay, why does it suck?
Let's ignore the fact that none of these "towers" have stairwells, or remnants of stairwells, leading upwards. You got that? There is no evidence that were ever stairs going UP! That's pretty important for the first floor of a tower that once had one-hundred floors. But whatever, this was clearly not written for somebody who asks logical questions.

There are also NPCs that are described as potential allies for the PCs, they are clearly meant to be befriended, who often have more treasure than the places the PCs are going into. Why bother dungeon delving for jewels when you could murder-death-kill these hapless helpers for their bags of loot?

This module could be forgiven for being written during that time when TSR was transitioning from 1st edition AD&D into 2nd edition AD&D. There are pages of stat blocks for monsters that seem to be compensating for a lack of an official monster manual.

And that is all you really need to know. You can stop reading now unless you want to know, in exhaustive detail, what is good and usable (very little) and what is bad and unfun (most of it).

What's bad
• On one level, the PCs are going to encounter troglodytes right away, and even though when entering this level the hall splits into three directions the PCs are surely going to follow down the path where the troglodytes are laired. Which leads to a fun house / death maze which is filled with carnival clown faces that curse and kill PCs who look at them. The whole maze is ridiculous, stupid, and pointless.
• The first real encounter at the "tower of power" is a scripted fight between some elves and an ettin. Though the module instructs you to play this like a real battle it also literally tells you "let the ballista automatically hit and score maximum damage"
• There is a locked door that is described "with a lock that can never be picked nor even knocked as it is not a true lock." So this is just here to waste the PCs time, and there are A LOT of things like this throughout the dungeon. I don't want to write them all out, just reading them is exhausting.
• There's a trap that releases poison sleeping gas into a chamber then tries to trick the PCs into staying in the chamber to hide from some soldiers, except the illusion involved uses game terminology and I've never ran a dungeoncrawl where the PCs tried to avoid violence.

What's good
• In one room you find the deed to a tavern, which must be validated by an item (a magical key) on the 9th level (excuse me, P900 - weird numbering system in full effect). This is a promising item by itself because I could think of quite a few adventures around trying to claim the tavern using the deed, but sadly very little detail is put into this. Even the magical key is explained as opening a secret door in the tavern, but nothing else. So, sorta badly written and unnecessarily convoluted but still a good idea.
• There are a couple of secret rooms which read to me like secret sex ritual chambers, or rooms for orgies.
• There's a whole section of rooms with kobolds occupying them that are given about 4 paragraphs total. Very light on details, but enough that you could probably wing it. One of the things this module does that I really like is exemplified by the elven fortress and these camping kobolds. It gives a number for an area of rooms and describes a group of connected characters that are occupying the area, then gives individual rooms letter designations so you can decide for yourself where these characters are and what they might be doing when the PCs arrive. It's quick and dirty, but not very elegant since some room elements are never expanded upon.
• There's an artifact on the first level that is basically a GPS that requires magic to read. It's quaint.

I was going to write out more, but I hate that it's even occupying my brain this much.

Final verdict
Don't buy it. But if you buy it, just get it to read how bad it is.

pedantic shopping

purchasing from multiple stores online on a Friday evening! this is probably of no interest to anyone but myself, and I wanted to track this information for my own understanding, as I would sometimes order a book and forget about it before it arrived in the mail

here is how I rank them,

in terms of delivery time, from best to worst:
Spear Witch
Monkey's Paw Games
Exalted Funeral - Tuesday Knight Games
Indie Press Revolution

in terms of pdf delivery, from best to worst:
Indie Press Revolution - Exalted Funeral - Tuesday Knight Games
Monkey's Paw Games
Spear Witch

downloads are ready upon receipt of transaction from Exalted Funeral, Indie Press Revolution, and Tuesday Knight Games, obviously an automated process, only Exalted Funeral and Tuesday Knight Games offer access to your digital content from the order confirmation page

Spear Witch and Monkey's Paw have the same layout on their stores, which implies that these are truly independent sellers operating out of a storefront or home, the other stores all had unique layouts

Spear Witch gave me a tracking number within hours, but this was merely for a label that had been created. I don't know if this was done manually, but either way they are already one step ahead of everyone else.

The next day I get a message from Sean at Tuesday Knight Games thanking me for being a repeat customer. This appears automated since there is an unsubscribe button.

On Monday, TKG, EF, and IPR all sent me tracking numbers for my orders, but these are all for labels that were created. Monkey's Paw is shipping from Canada (I'm in the US), but also appears to be in the same situation.
Only the package from Spear Witch is listed as departed and on it's way.

Spear Witch arrived first, on Saturday exactly one week after ordering. On the same day I emailed both Spear Witch and Monkey's Paw to ask about getting digital copies. Spear Witch instructed me to contact the authors of the books, since they didn't provide digital copies to Spear Witch, and Monkey's Paw sent digital copies, further explaining that they should have a digital copy attached to invoices soon.

On the following Tuesday, the order from Monkey's Paw arrived.

On the next Thursday, both Tuesday Knight Games and Exalted Funeral arrived.

The absolute worst delivery time turnaround was Indie Press Revolution. Arriving more than three weeks after being ordered, 23 days total.

almost perfectly balanced on good and bad points, but I'm inclined to favor fast delivery over pdf availability as I'm purchasing from them for the physical books, my final rankings for each:

Spear Witch ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Exalted Funeral ⭐⭐⭐
Tuesday Night Games ⭐⭐⭐
Monkey's Paw Games ⭐⭐⭐
Indie Press Revolution ⭐⭐

Fate RPG

If I'm playing a game and my character is a super badass who is really good at one thing then I shouldn’t be left rolling the dice and feeling like I have a completely average result.

The first time I played in a Fate game it was a science-fiction setting and I made my character to be this ace pilot. I had the maximum skill that I can possibly have in flying my space fighter, and I remember rolling the dice (A LOT OF DICE) and the result that I got was completely average. I didn’t even successfully complete a basic maneuver. It wasn't so much that it was a very bad roll, it was just that it was not a good roll. I looked at it at the dice and asked "doesn’t this mean this is always going to average out?" and the GM said "yeah it pretty much always averages out" and I said "then I'm not an ace pilot, it doesn’t matter how good my skill is, I’m always going to be average and everything I do is going to be average"

There was a lot of hemming and hawing from the players around the table who loved the concept of this system, and somebody said "that’s not exactly the way that it works because you have other things to draw upon" and I said "I don’t think I should have other things to drop upon, I should have the skill, and then I should roll the dice and do something cool, or do something skillful, or at the very least competent"

I wasn’t even competent

The other thing I don't like about Fate is that there's no character progression.

I asked about experience points at the end of the session and was basically told there’s no leveling up, there’s no buying more skill points, you basically just spend experience to move points around or shuffle your skill levels around. That doesn't appeal to me, either as a player or as someone who enjoys fiction. If I’m playing an ace pilot in the first session then I should still be an ace pilot in the 14th session, regardless of anything else. Just like Walter White is a chemist in the first episode of Breaking Bad, he's still a chemist in the last episode of Breaking Bad, but he's definitely picked up some other skills along the way.

I asked "I'm a pilot, I’ve maxed out my skill, what is stopping me from just moving all those points from being a pilot into becoming a neurosurgeon?" and I was told "you have to justify the changes, so it would very unlikely that you would be this great pilot and then all of a sudden become a great neurosurgeon, because you have to explain why" and I said "you mean, an average pilot becoming an average neurosurgeon" but I went a bit further with this inquiry too and said "well it’s in the rules that I can just move these things around, so if I can find a way to become a neurosurgeon you’re telling me that’s all I need to do, contrive a way to connect it?" and the GM said "yeah, it's highly unlikely you'd have a character that is a great pilot who becomes a great neurosurgeon, but if you really want to find a way to do it then you just need to explain it"

Well, that's my only goal with this character now: to become a great neurosurgeon who dies while flying because he's forgotten how to pilot his ship.

I remember somebody saying that character growth is not tied to skills, and my response to that is "But it is!" I'm a completely different person today than I was when I played Fate. I'm not only a different person but I've picked up new skills along the way. That's what's key about character progression, you not only have to progress but you have to feel like you're progressing. I feel stale and stagnant if I stop doing new things but the great thing about progressing through life is that I can still do the old things that I haven't done in a long time. Accounting, bartending, making a latte, I still remember how to do all of those things alongside being able to write a joke and drive a semi. I'm not an ace pilot or a top notch neurosurgeon, but I definitely still think Fate is a dumb system.

2 out of 5 stars, for this years-late review of the Fate RPG

the Black Hack

It was a fast read, and I like a lot of the streamlining. You can tell the author loves D&D but doesn't like getting bogged down with minutia and fiddly rules. It's still basically a D&D game, but it's a lean, fast beast. Even leveling up is simple and quick. When I finished reading the spell lists it made me want to run Dwimmermount again.

For less than $5 you can get the Black Hack and two supplements with a "procedurally generated" village and extra classes.

A Red & Pleasant Land, by Zak S.

If you buy the pdf but never hold the physical version of this book in your hands, then you are missing a key facet of the experience. Much like how Vornheim excels as a physical tool, the ambiance of owning A Red & Pleasant Land is in holding the finished tome in your hands.

This book has a very distinct smell. Maybe mine was dropped into a canal beside a garden in Venice, the red-cloth cover is a little warped and bows outward, as if the book itself is trying to open up and invite me to flip through its pages. The pages have a distinct off-white look to them, which adds to the otherworldly and unusual nature of both the contents of the title and the method by which this volume saw publication. The gold text on the cover has flaked slightly, giving the red cloth a glitteriness which I am not sure is intentional. My fear is that with use the gold will eventually flake off and I'll be left with just a red cloth book, but that would still look cool.

A Red & Pleasant Land takes place in Voivodja, which might be a stand-in for Transylvania, or it might be an alternate dimension lurking behind mirrors. Whatever it is, the land of Voivodja is ruled by families of vampires who identify themselves by card suits. They have an intricately complex society yet many of them seem to suffer from dementia or schizophrenia.

The very first section of the book is called "How to Use This Book" and it suggests using the book as a whole setting, use parts of it, read it and not use it at all, or use it as a weapon. I think the author forgot to suggest that you could also use it as kindling, may you never be so cold that you resort to that option. I plan to use the book as a demiplane of madcapped grotesqueries & violent whimsy to cajole my players with.

The first chapters throw all of the basic information about Voivodja at your game head. You'll learn about the strange nature of the landscape, the bloody customs and traditions of the locals, and Voidvodja's own mirror universe called the Quiet Side. There is even a custom class to work into your gaming group that seems suitable for a campaign set in Voivodja: the Alice. (Yes, that bit is free.)

Roughly 1/4th of the book is composed of monster and NPC descriptions and this is the biggest highlight of the book, with many strange and wondrous versions of creatures to bedevil and bemuse players with. The spine has a red cloth bookmark and I'm currently keeping it on the page with my personal favorite, the Colorless Rooks.

The next 1/4th of the book details two major castles for two of the vampire clans battling one another; Castle Cachtice, the Card Castle, and Castle Poenari, the Looking Glass Palace. There is a lot of information here and it's so dense with oddities and distortions that I know I haven't really absorbed all of it. The beauty of these locations is that each room has a minimal bullet point description that evocatively describes each area without bogging you down in text to read aloud. The weirdness of the castles are largely left to an individual GM's judgment on how to resolve bypassing a room.

The other 1/4th (more like 1/5th, let's just call it 36 pages) comprises "Tables & Resources" at the back of the book and that is where a lot the fun stuff is. 'No Voivodja Required' is what I call it because several of the tables can be used independently of the setting and those that can't can easily be hacked for use in your own campaign. The best part of the "Tables & Resources" section is, in my opinion, the "Relationships Between NPCs" d100 table. Page 174. Go buy the book and look at that page first. I think it's a thing of beauty!

So that's also my final verdict: buy this book.

Deep Carbon Observatory, by Patrick Stuart

It is rare that I hold high expectations for something and then it lives up to those expectations. It can feel pretty gratifying! I had been hearing about how intriguing this module was before it was available in print, and Patrick Stuart is one of my favorite game bloggers, which means I was a little biased with the eager anticipation of reading this adventure. I was expecting Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) to be awesome, and I was not let down.

There is very little in the way of set-up for this adventure. A single paragraph sets the stage for what the PCs know, and clever GMs who read the entire adventure ahead of time can find easy ways of hooking the PCs into the sequence of events that follows. The adventure is divided into eight chapters, more than half of which can be thought of as simply descriptions for inhabitants and encounters within a specific region. The adventure starts with a flood that destroys most of the countryside, and if the players are keen on following the damage to the source of the flood waters they will be led to a broken dam which is pretty compelling location all on it's own. It's entirely possible that the observatory of the title could never be found. But if it is, complicating matters is a thoroughly evil adventuring party that is competing with the PCs, though neither of them knows about the other ahead of time.

I'm not going to explain any other further details than that because I've perhaps revealed too much of it already. It's a pretty straightforward premise, but brutal in it's execution. This adventure deserves to be spoken about in hushed tones and discrete symbols. The only thing I didn't like about the adventure is that the words on the overland maps were a little hard to read and there's no sense of scale described anywhere on the maps or in the text. There are alternate maps available for the observatory, but I found the maps included in the original pdf useful and compelling (though the numbers here were also a little hard to read). Scrap Princess did an excellent job with the artwork throughout the book, giving the adventure a gritty and disturbing atmosphere. I would love to see her illustrate more modules.

Deep Carbon Observatory is available from DriveThruRPG in both print and pdf!

The Third Verse, by Johnstone Metzger & Tony Dowler

The Third Verse is the third of Johnstone Metzger's Dungeon World / Labyrinth Lord series, and like the previous adventures before this one the River Knife runs alongside the area where this module takes place. I think this is pretty cool because it allows a GM to use all of these adventures as part of a larger campaign and use the River Knife as a constant feature and returning point for the PCs. Either the river is their main method of navigation, or imagine a three-segment artifact that needs to be put together and each piece is found somewhere in all of the adventures. This isn't something that is suggested in any of these modules, it's just my own flight of fancy after having read all of them.

This module has the PCs being asked by a venerable sorceress to complete an ancient song that will banish the monsters the plague this region. There is a short description of the town of Springvale and the sorceress Liniakatra, and the rest of the adventure is a dungeoncrawl. The players presumably learn the first two verses from Liniakatra and then they must venture into the underground temple housing portals that spring forth a variety of monsters to learn the third verse and seal the infernal portals forever.

This is a fun adventure, but short. There are some interesting conundrums and encounters inside the dungeon itself, but some GMs might be turned off by the simple dungeon design. The whole structure of the dungeon and it's denizens reminded me very heavily of playing Gauntlet when I was younger, but it's different enough that most players might not notice the similarities. There is a lot information here to build off as well, with the portals that disgorge otherworldly monsters to the shrine in the last level.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK3 - The Third Verse" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a Patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats
Tony Dowler also has a blog and a Patreon campaign for creating maps

Evil Wizards in a Cave, by Johnstone Metzger

Evil Wizards in a Cave is the second of Johnstone Metzger's Dungeon World / Labyrinth Lord series, and in a change of pace from some of the other modules this one is a hexcrawl. Those familiar with the previous adventure will see that the River Knife features prominently in the landscape of the setting.

This book has a fairly straightforward sounding adventure: some monks in a monastery, nestled in a mountainous territory plagued with extraordinary monsters, have had a sacred artifact stolen from them by some wizards who are using it to power a far-reaching and nefarious ritual that will affect every living creature in the surrounding region. Find the wizards, stop their ritual, and get the artifact back. Pretty simple really, but not quite.

The thieving wizards have to be tracked down and because the adventure is presented as a hexcrawl this adds a level of anxiety to stopping the ritual. The worst aspect of this is that there is nothing specifically in the adventure to tell you the ritual is happening. There are suggestions on how to impart this information to the PCs like prophetic dreams or insidious rumors, and there is even a suggestion that you just describe an impending supernatural feeling coming from the mountains where the wizards are hiding, in this way it's left very open for the GM to construct their own method of spurring the PCs to action, but not having anything concrete to give the players right away is a huge detraction from the rest of this module.

There is also very little in the way of clues to guide the PCs to the cave where the wizards are hiding, but the map puts the hexes at 2 miles across so it would be fair to give the players an eyeline to the mountains and hills on the map, thus narrowing their search. There are a few magical beasts prowling the area and there is even a dragon, and every hex has some kind of feature that ties into the local population of humans or beasts. The monastery even has it's own twist going on, but the twist seems unnecessary and I suspect this was added on for players who might find the hunt for the wizards too easy.

I have mixed feelings about hexcrawls and that might be why I am not as excited about this adventure as I was of the previous ones Johnstone Metzger has written. There is a lot going on in this adventure and plenty of interesting encounters, but the most interesting part of the module is the ritual the wizards are performing. It's too bad the players are set up to prevent the ritual because I think it would be a lot more fun for the PCs to enter this hexcrawl after the ritual has just been completed.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK2 - Evil Wizards in a Cave" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats

The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children, by James Edward Raggi IV

The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children (DCCHC) was the Free RPG Day release for the Lamentations of the Flame Princess RPG. If you were really lucky, your FLGS isn't run by a douchebag who refuses to carry LotFP products and you got a print copy earlier this year. Unlucky souls can still pick up a pdf copy of the adventure. DCCHC was initially funded on Indiegogo and that is the only way I was able to procure a print copy of the module.

James Raggi IV has a reputation for writing adventure modules that are basically traps for the PCs. Another blogger coined the term negadungeon to explain this kind of module, an adventure that is meant to destroy the PCs rather than to entertain or reward. I personally find assessments like this unfair, but I will say that he manages to craft adventures which seem uncompromisingly difficult from a cold reading.

The premise of DCCHC all by itself is weird and horrifying. All of the women in a small town are convinced that they gave birth to a son four years ago, named him Andrew, and yesterday he disappeared - despite the fact that nobody else remembers these multitudes of Andrews and there is no evidence that these Andrews exist except as a mass hallucination of the women of this town, one of these boys is seen outside of town, and... you'll have to read the adventure or play through it to find out who and what these Andrews are.

Having read that last paragraph, aren't you intrigued to find out what is going on? I know I was!

DCCHC is a great module because there is a ton of weird and dangerous stuff inside a dungeon complex that is authentically creepy and strange, but the real charm of this adventure is that the main hook that brings the PCs to the cave could all be resolved in the very first rooms. The plot involving the many Andrews takes up about 6 pages of a 36 page adventure. Everything else around the crystal-headed children is just icing on the cake!

Even though it was a Free RPG Day offering, you can still get "The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children" for free (or purchase it as a pay-what-you-want pdf) at DriveThruRPG

The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence, by Venger Satanis

The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence (IPHP) is an OSR hexcrawl over a gonzo science-fantasy landscape populated with strange creatures, unique challenges, and deranged populations. IPHP was initially funded on Kickstarter and was one of those rare gaming projects that actually saw an early delivery.

The first half of the book consists of background information about the islands as well as lots of useful tools for inserting weird ideas and background data for the PCs. I would think of this part of the book as a grab bag of inspirational ideas and useful character building tools. Some players might balk at having a randomly generated flashback to their childhood or having a random personal connection to the islands, but with the right group of people this can be really charming and adds the to astronomical creepiness of the island's history. My favorite part of this section are the purple stones, a mechanical method to reward players for acting in the islands' interests (yes, you read that correctly), and the mysterious crystals native to the islands, powerful but nonmagical artifacts left behind by the decaying corpses of ancient wyrms.

The second half of the book describes the islands, hex by hex. There are lots of weird diversions scattered across the three islands, but there doesn't seem to be alot of effort made to connect them together in any discernible way. A constant theme is aliens from another dimension/planet who have crashed/landed and are up to some kind of mischief, or just minding their own business. There are pop culture references appearing just as often but are obscured in ways to not be immediately noticeable or recognizable, and some of the treasure includes items that might be found in our modern world which I found amusing, but some gamers might find distracting.

Some things I don't like:
1) There are sometimes multiple encounters listed for a single hex, but the map itself doesn't have distance marked so it's difficult to know exactly how big each hex is. One of the islands is said to be over 1000 square miles and a rough estimate means each hex represents about 30 square miles. A simple map key would have saved me the time to try and figure this out. This isn't egregious, but a lot of sections probably could have used some proofreading from a fellow gamer because there are lots of little things like this that seem overlooked.
2) There are lots of encounters that result in a save or die scenario, and I personally dislike these because I would either never use them or feel the need to rewrite them.

Some things I really like:
1) It's almost like having two sourcebooks because the first half is written with a general approach and many of the ideas can be used outside of a IPHP adventure. But hen you have the second half, which can be used as a straight up hexcrawl or as a collection of ideas to throw into your own games.
2) Despite the randomness of each encounter, each has enough detail to build off of and potentially create a whole session worth of adventure around. Played right, and this module could make a campaign last for months or years.
3) The artwork is great. There's a lot of great talent inside and I would love to see more of it!
4) Amazing Larry in hex 016

This book is a lot of fun! I don't see myself running it as a straight adventure but I can definitely see myself taking things from it frequently (and perhaps randomly) in order to spice up my own OSR games.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence" at DriveThruRPG

Ghostwood Haunts, by Johnstone Metzger

Ghostwood Haunts is the third of Johnstone Metzger's Dungeon World series, and while it's the third in the series it doesn't directly follow the events of either of the previous two modules. It does, however, focus on a town called Knifesbridge and Metzger's other series of modules is named River Knife. Crossovers are definitely possible, but don't seem expected or necessary.

I have to say that I wish all adventure modules were written like this.

None of Metzger's previous works feel like traditional adventure modules in any sense of the words, there is never really a central plot or story but you're given an environment, perhaps a mountainous valley or an island or a riverside town, with all of the tools for introducing a series of events that can lead to really bad things happening. In Ghostwood Haunts, if the players neglect or ignore any one event than the greedy brigands or undead things lurking in the shadows will quickly take control of or destroy the township caught in the middle.

In this adventure an unscrupulous mayor holds sway over the town of Knifesbridge where the populace is being terrorized by bandits calling themselves the Wolf Pack. This threat, though formidable, almost seems like a red herring compared to the coven of witch-ghosts that populate the town and the Ghostwood surrounding it. While it takes some work to free these witches from their undead prisons, one careless player could conceivably do it while searching for the Wolf Pack, and one NPC will definitely do it if the players spend too long attempting to smoke out the Wolf Pack from their hideouts.

Metzger illustrates many connections and details between the NPCs and threats, but even if a piece of info seems useless it's still usable and can feed back onto the adventure he has outlined in some way. The names of some of the NPCs seem contrived or lazily written, and maybe that's because he expects you to change them, for example there is no way I'm ever going to refer to the mayor as Old King Cole. But otherwise, I really enjoyed reading this and plan on using this the next time I GM as there is plenty of wiggle room to file off the serial numbers and place this town into any fantasy setting.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "DW3 - Ghostwood Haunts" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats

Island of Fire Mountain, by Johnstone Metzger

Island of Fire Mountain is given the code DW2, it's the second Dungeon World adventure by Johnstone Metzger though it doesn't directly connect to or follow the events of "DW1 - Lair of the Unknown" and after the scenario presented in that first adventure you could be forgiven for assuming that this module is a callback to another famous D&D module. It definitely has some similarities but the inhabitants and plotline are wholly original.

There is no railroading and there is no predetermined mission for the island. If this adventure had been published as a Labyrinth Lord (or any other similar OSR rule system) module then it would probably be classified as a hexcrawl. The booklet consists of five parts; an introduction laying out the island with ways of landing the PCs onto it along with two fronts for creating conflicts with the colonial inhabitants and the tribal natives, a section on the colonial fort that has been practically abandoned but is still occupied by desperate ne'er-do-wells hoping to find a way off the island, the middle part describes the island proper with all of its natives both humane and monstrous, the fourth part describes a ruined city at the base of the island's central volcano in the heart of the jungle, and the last section is a collection of custom rules and a new class to introduce to your game if you feel they're appropriate.

This book is brimming with possibilities. There is no central plotline or story, but there are conflicts that could arise and there is plenty of legroom for a creative GM to take what is here and mold it to fit around her PCs. I kept finding parts of the adventure really inspiring and I repeatedly found myself wishing I was running a game this weekend. Many of the monsters are unique and provide plenty of healthy challenges even before the stories of the NPCs might warp or twist the goals of the players. I love-love-LOVE the Cyclopeans and their strange connection to the cannibals on the island, I would probably use them outside of the adventure if I could get away with transplanting them to multiple environments.

The elementalist class at the back of the book is very cool and interesting, but many aspects of it are vaguely written and I think it's the weakest feature of the book. There are eight tables of grim portents scattered throughout the module and I can't tell you how many times I flipped through the book reading the portents, looking at the NPCs, and studying the map. I was really taken with this adventure, perhaps because I like the idea of stranding some hapless adventurers on a wild and savage island with little to no hope of escape.

You can purchase pdf and print versions of "DW2 - Island of Fire Mountain" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu
Johnstone Metzger also has a blog and a patreon campaign for writing up monsters in Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord stats

fuck WATCH_DOGS

WATCH_DOGS is a game for dudebros. Steeped in manly male manmeat, the man character is a gruff take-no-prisoners antihero who will steal your money and shoot you if you're black. He might be one of those pansy hackers who would normally be sat behind a computer sucking on Mountain Dew and pissing into the bottle after it's empty because nothing can tear them away from their screens, but he wears a stylish hat and a trenchcoat, plus his voice is deep and gravelly, so you know he's a tough guy who don't piss in no bottles. But he's not really a hacker anyway, he's got an app on his cellphone which turns it into a magic wand, it lets him turn on all the traffic lights at an intersection, steal money from some bank accounts, steal any car including ones that look like they were produced before the internet existed, or pop steam tunnels in the road that conveniently disable cars but never ever stop spewing out cubic tons of steam.

In WATCH_DOGS, your man character will beat up gangsters, shoot fixers (which is an obscure way of saying hitmen), collect massive amounts of weaponry that all fit underneath his stylish trenchcoat, construct rudimentary explosives and mp3 players that are the size of a fucking light switch yet somehow will never be able to construct a portable camera or drone, and spy on any citizen, all in a way that totally doesn't rip off any other open world games with better storylines or more interesting casts of characters.

You'll meet Jordi Chin, a badass Asian hitman who should be the character you are playing but you're probably a white male and playing an Asian doesn't get you to pay $60 for games so he's relegated to smartass sidekick and for some stupid reason likes the man character and does favors for him. Jordi is the most interesting and likeable character, but since you're not playing him that means he will probably betray the man character in the second to last mission.

You'll work with Clara Lille, the goth hacker who serves as the nerdbait stand-in plagiarized out of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but without all of that uncomfortably pesky rape storyline, or any storyline really. The man character's search for the hacker who is responsible for his niece's death will almost assuredly lead to her judging from the way she's always looking at Aidan like he's a walking dildo that she feels guilty about not cleaning.

There are other characters in this game, but they're so one-dimensional it actually hurts my psyche just thinking about writing about them. There are some missions you will probably enjoy playing, especially if you like getting chased by cops for 30 minutes at a time, or trying to disable somebody's car so you can knock him down to the ground with your nightstick while he's surrounded by a fucking platoon of soldiers with body armor and assault rifles, or playing poker where the computer opponents will say things like "Too rich for my blood" as they raise the pot because apparently they are all mentally disabled, or playing drinking games which are really just contrived quick time events.

I played the demo for Super Time Force for less than 10 minutes and had more fun than I had playing WATCH_DOGS for four hours. In summation, play something else!
But you won't.

Shadows of Umberto, by Joe Banner

Shadows of Umberto could be thought of as a city sourcebook, but there's enough detail here to turn it into a full campaign setting. Right away, I notice that it has a different layout and design than Joe Banner's previous module, the Green Scar. The maps are now in colour and the pdf has a wider 2-page spread. I'm not sure if this is more useful, because when I print it off now I feel like I need to bend all of the pages in half to make it a proper booklet.

"Shadows of Umberto" feels like Conan meets Arabian Tales, or sword & sorcery meets romantic political intrigue. It is divided into three sections, the first ("Shadows") details the brief history of the city and provides you with plenty of hooks and hazards to introduce to your players, the second ("Darkness") covers a very comprehensive detailing of local threats and monsters along with some choice encounters which have fictional triggers but could almost be used as random events as well, and the final section ("Dawn") introduces some custom moves for navigating Umberto along with some memorable NPCs that could be hired by the players. There is a wealth of details packed into a small space and I think I would find myself having a hard time using all of it.

My only real complaint about "Shadows of Umberto" is that it's too short. Yes, there's a lot of good information here and none of it seems unnecessary or unusable, but somehow it leaves me wanting more. I really like the simple layout of the pdf, but I feel like the 2-pages-on-1-page format of the pdf is best for reading from a tablet or laptop, and I would like to see something that is convenient for printing too. Again I'm stymied by a technical issue, but I am a picky bastard when it comes to this stuff.

You can purchase the pdf of "Shadows of Umberto" at DriveThruRPG

The Green Scar, by Joe Banner

The Green Scar is a very inventive and compelling three-part adventure, but it could act as an entire campaign setting with the adventure acting as the skeleton underneath the setting. Somehow the author manages to create a jungle setting that is unstuck from time, where the players could find themselves warping in and out of the past and the future, and he fills this jungle and the town closest to it with plenty of other perils in addition to this without making the adventure feel bloated or complex.

The first half of the pdf deals with the jungle and the Stone Glade, the primary setting that will vex your players, but it seems more fitting to call this the first act of the drama that is unfolding for them. I think these first 30 pages have enough detail and interesting ideas that are enough to build an entire series of adventures off of, there is even a compendium class that fits seamlessly into everything. There are only two tracks of grim portents, and it would be easy for an enterprising GM to stretch out what is here or even add a few more. The second half of the book details the closest piece of civilization, the town of Brink, and there is a separate adventure here with a completely different pace and theme stretching between the town and an airship where an industrialist is going to destroy the jungle, and in so doing might also destroy a lot more!

There is a lot to like about the Green Scar. I like the dungeon moves, and how the dungeon moves aren't literally used for dungeons but instead for a jungle, a town, and an airship. I like the history behind the Stone Glade and the frogmen, though it seems like you would need players who are curious about it in order to reveal pieces of it, and I like the fact that each of the three parts of this adventure can easily be altered to stand all by itself. There are only two things I didn't like. First, the design of the download is not implemented very well. The maps come bundled as additional pdfs instead of jpgs, and there is a separated beastiary file which would work great as a little printable booklet, but the pages seem to be designed for a full 8.5 x 11 format. I kept imagining how the layout and the design of all the moving parts could work better and I take that as a sign that what was here was lacking. Second, the author spends several pages giving GM advice which is almost identical to what I've read in the Dungeon World rulebook and so I consider it unnecessary. Since these are technical complaints they are barely worth mentioning, as the adventure itself is very good despite them.

You can purchase the pdf of "The Green Scar" at DriveThruRPG

Lair of the Unknown, by Johnstone Metzger

This adventure module is reminiscent in both title and story of an early Dungeons & Dragons module, In Search of the Unknown. Like his previous module, Metzger lays out this adventure as a collection of resources for setting up the adventure and allowing the players to set their own pace. The environment in town is charged and ready for conflict with plenty of NPCs, and the dungeon itself is large and features a broad variety of challenges. However, unlike the previous one I reviewed it is only meant to be used with Dungeon World rules, though it would not be difficult to convert it to Labyrinth Lord. This is another first in a trilogy which are given traditional module code numbers, Lair of the Unknown is given the code DW1 which probably stands for Dungeon World. I own the original D&D adventure that Johnstone Metzger is name-dropping and I will try to both avoid making direct comparisons or pointing out obvious similarities.

Lair of the Unknown is set up as an introductory adventure for a beginning group of characters, and the first 18 pages could have been a very useful resource all by itself for creating a campaign and pushing the PCs into the direction of adventure. The next parts of the book describe some of the challenges that could crop up both in town and in the nearby dungeon, and these are structured as individual pieces that can easily be dropped into the story or left out entirely. The sandbox nature of the town of Westham puts a burden onto the players to find their own way, but there are plenty of obnoxious NPCs that could make trouble in the PCs lives if they stay in town for too long.

The second half of the book is dedicated to the lair, named Xallevyrx, and it is filled with numerous dangers and threats that would be unique challenges even for seasoned adventurers to overcome. However, the layout of the maps is disorienting and only by reading room descriptions can you understand where they link up, preparation is definitely required to familiarize one's self with the dungeon since several areas of Xallevyrx lead directly to an underground cave system which could act as an alternate entrance or escape route, but the maps themselves are of no help whatsoever. This may be the only thing I found confusing and really didn't like about the module.

The final section of the book details some custom rules and compendium classes to introduce to your campaign, one of which is a full-fledged class dedicated to exploring underground lairs: the Dungeoneer! When I first purchased the module this class was the first thing I read and I made my own custom character sheet for it, though you can also find the details for it, and a series of other classes Johnstone Metzger has written, in a pay-what-you-want collection on DriveThruRPG.

The book really shines in the early chapters, where it is filled with excellent advice and interesting details, but there's a section titled 'They Who Make Trouble' which seems tacked on to the adventure to make it more than just a dungeon. The dungeon itself feels a bit dry and flat, even when I try to ignore the obvious inspirations for it. The most interesting part of the adventure is in the deepest and darkest part of the dungeon, which it is noted that even the author's players never managed to explore. The new Dungeoneer class is also a real piece of quality work and I really like it, but it may seem overwhelming to a beginning player, and it is probably only going to be useful if your campaign focuses solely on exploring dungeons and caves.

You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "DW1 - Lair of the Unknown" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu

Knives in the Dark, by Johnstone Metzger

I have a soft spot in my heart for anything that Johnstone Metzger writes, solely because he endeared himself to my sensibilities when I discovered his Heralds of Hell playbooks for Apocalypse World, but also because he can write some damn cool gaming resources and essays (venture down his blog's archives). A short time ago he began writing adventure modules that were dual-stated for both Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord and so far he has produced six titles, I bought the first two but never got around to reading them until recently.

Knives in the Dark is a creepy horror adventure about undead assassins who have been released from their secret tomb. The town of Affeldeen and the mountain range in which it is nestled, the Black Peaks, serves as the adventure setting. Some dimwitted tin miners act as the catalyst that gets the adventure started, and provide most of the dramatic points for furthering the story.

Instead of a traditional adventure module structure, the booklet acts as a collection of resources for setting up the adventure and letting the players look under the blanket of the story and the setting at their own pace. The social environment around the mining camp and the town is filled with NPCs, about half of which only get a sentence or two but are varied enough that any collection of adventurers should be able to find something to do. The mountain where the shadowy terrors have awakened gets it's own chapter and there is a modest dungeon with plenty of unique challenges laid out within. The book is filled with a plethora of custom moves uniquely wrapped around the environment and the story.

The most interesting and useful part of the adventure are the details surrounding the goals of both the assassins and the Governor, they are explicit enough to give a good direction for why and how the story should unfold but leave all of the intricate details of when the plot opens up in the hands of the GM. There is no railroading here, and the centerpiece villain of the adventure (a dragon made of shadow) might not even show up if the PCs are really efficient at finding and stopping the shadow assassins - though that outcome is as unprofitable as it is unexciting.

This adventure is the first of a trilogy which are given traditional module codes, Knives in the Dark is given the code RK1 which I believe stands for River Knife though nothing in the module explicitly states that. You can purchase both pdf and print versions of "RK1 - Knives in the Dark" at DriveThruRPG or just a print version at Lulu

short and sweet: Qelong and Scenic Dunnsmouth

It is rare for me to read a role-playing game and feel awed. I don't gush about my favorite games or game authors the same way I do about my favorite comic books, movies, or video games. Today I'm being uncharacteristic.
These are spoiler-free reviews.

Qelong, by Kenneth Hite
For the first time in years I simply could not put a book down, and it was an adventure module. I lost track of time while reading it, and was even late for work because I found myself wanting to read just one more page. Fans of Kenneth Hite are probably nodding sagely and wondering why I am so surprised. Outside of his Suppressed Transmission articles, which I found fun to read but never very useful for gaming, I haven't read anything else written solely by him. That changed after reading Qelong. I've slowly been collecting his work now that I know how good it is. Qelong is brilliant and engrossing! If you don't find inspiration from within this adventure module then you should start letting somebody else GM.
Buy it from DTRPG!
Buy it from LOTFP store!


Scenic Dunnsmouth, by Zzarchov Kowolski
I was completely gobsmacked by this module. The premise is pretty simple: mix one secluded village with a cult, sprinkle a powerful artifact into the middle, garnish with PCs and hijinks are bound to ensue. But the execution is where this seemingly cut-out scenery truly shines! The cooking metaphor above is apt given there is a lengthy set-up before the module can be used, but the random generation of key elements insures this module will never be played the same way twice. It's truly inspired work, and Scenic Dunnsmouth has made me an instant fan of Kowolski! He has crafted an adventure and setting all-in-one that oozes with menace, and I can't wait to play it.
Buy it from DTRPG!
Buy it from LOTFP store!

OSR comparison / review

[CORRECTION]: My initial math for Cyril's chances to hit were faulty for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. This has been corrected in the text.

I wanted to see exactly how some OSR games differed in rules and mechanics, and rather than try to write down how the mechanics differed from book to book I decided that I would make the same character in each system to see how they stacked up. These six systems lend themselves to this comparison rather easily because they all include the same basic six attributes during the first step of character creation, and the first step is described in each as rolling 3d6 and keeping them in the order they were rolled. The systems are:

Adventurer Conqueror King system (ACKS): Provides an epic fantasy game with an old school atmosphere. The big feature touted on the back cover is that characters can eventually move into the worlds of politics, finance, and leadership.
"Will you survive the perils of war and dark magic to claim a throne? Or will you meet your fate in a forgotten ruin beyond the ken of men?"


Adventures Dark and Deep (ADaD): Builds off of 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and imagines what the 2nd edition had been like under a different authorship.
"What if Gary Gygax had not left TSR in 1985, and had been allowed to continue developing the world's most famous fantasy role-playing game?"


Castles & Crusades (C&C): Uses a rules-lite and backwards-compatible approach to deliver a game written as a love letter to the nostalgia of discovering Dungeons & Dragons for the first time.
"A Game That Is Yours To Command"


Labyrinth Lord (LL): An emulation of basic D&D using a few modern touches in a slim book.
"Back to the Basics of Fantasy Roleplaying"


Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LotFP): An often horrific re-write of old school D&D that has become infamous for both it's brutally unforgiving rules, and it's violently graphic artwork. File this one under: dark fantasy.
"Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. Mystery and Imagination. Adventure and Death."


Swords & Wizardry (S&W): An emulation of D&D that emphasizes and fixates on the sword & sorcery epics of the quintessentially influential Appendix N.
"Light your torches, don your helmets, and ready your spells..."

Keep in mind, I am not including optional rules or alternate methods of playing outlined in these rulebooks, the comparison of systems is strictly by their "official" rules as written. Apart from this, keeping the same scores I rolled for all six characters and thus making the exact same character in each game is the only rule I'm following.

Some of these games arrange the ability scores in differing orders, but the ability scores are still the same. I learned AD&D with the 2nd edition rules, which arranges the scores from top to bottom as Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom then Charisma, so that's the order I'm rolling them. I get a 5, 11, 12, 10, 13, and 7
Not the best.

Exceptions: LotFP allows you to swap one score with another in order to get a high ability score to play the character you want. None of the other systems allows for this. LotFP also allows the player to reroll all of the scores if the total modifiers added together are below zero. My rolls qualify, but the other games wouldn't allow this so I'm going to keep the scores as they are.

With 13 Wisdom being my highest stat, I've got a cleric. If the game allows for race selection outside of class than I'll also make this guy human to keep it simple. I've decided to name this guy Cyril.

Here's where the first real differences come into focus. Each system has a very different method for determining clerical spells, there are a few similarities but mostly different. Right out of the gate C&C is emulating 3rd edition D&D a lot more than 1st edition. What I find very interesting about this character is that every single system uses a different means or level of potency for Turning Undead, a staple of clerical magic.



                    ACKS           ADaD              C&C               LL            LotFP            S&W
 # of spells      no            one 1st        three 0-level     one 1st       one 1st            no
at 1st level    spells     + WIS bonus         one 1st                                               spells

  Turning        1d20             1d20              1d20              2d6             2d6             2d10
  Undead      to 4 HD      to 5 "types"     WIS check        to 3 HD   requires spell    to 5 HD

I'm surprised how little variation there is amongst some of these systems. The Saving Throw categories are identical between LL, LotFP and ACKS, and the starting numbers for a 1st-level cleric jump around quite a bit, yet retain very similar quantities. Even ability score bonuses and what is doled out with the different modifiers is virtually identical between different rule sets. S&W seems to be the clearest and simplest system to get acquainted with, even the character sheet evokes a minimalist style.

The next major difference I find is with carrying capacity and encumbrance, each game makes a different system out of it and I am beginning to think this is where you can see how each designer thinks the game should operate. Before I get into the meat of how encumbrance works, first I must have some basic equipment.

Though each game seems to have unique rules for monetary exchange rates, starting money for a cleric always seems to be 3d6x10 coins, except for C&C (2d10x10) and LL (3d8x10). For my own personal taste, I never like my characters to be encumbered so depending on the system I would choose different armor.
However, we don't have time for rational thought!
This is a comparison of how each system stacks up with an identical character, so without rolling for money I'm simply going to give my cleric Leather Armor and a Shield. Some systems use a descending Armor Class system, while others use ascending numbers, I've marked these by showing what the AC would be for leather armor first and then with shield second. I find it interesting that only two of these systems are identical.



                        ACKS       ADaD+      C&C+     LL      LotFP      S&W
Armor Class        2/3          8/7        12/13     8/7      14/15*      7/6**
Warhammer      d6/d8     d4+1/d4       d8        d6         d8        d4+1
Total Cost          35gp        14gp       21gp      23gp      55sp      21gp

* shields in LotFP give an extra +1 to AC vs missile attacks
+ these systems only allow shields to be employed against a certain number of attacks per round
** S&W gives both descending and ascending AC values, but ascending is an optional rule so I used the descending values

"This is all very good, but what do those Armor Class values really mean?"
A fair question, and could be adequately illustrated by explaining how Cyril might attack an exact replica of himself in each system. Cyril only wears Leather and carries a shield, but he's also a weakling, so each roll is going to come packaged with extra penalties.
In ACKS characters have Attack Throw numbers which vary based on class and level. A 1st-level Cleric has an Attack Throw of 10+ so with Cyril's -2 to hit and his AC of 3 he would need to roll a 15 or higher to hit his duplicate. That's a 30% chance of success.
C&C is one of the newer, simpler systems that uses ascending Armor Class, and it's basically right there. AC 13 with -2 Strength, Cyril needs a 15 to hit here too.
ADaD, LL, and S&W all use a descending Armor Class system and rather than keeping things simple the rules replicate the old combat matrix of 1st edition AD&D in varying levels of complexity. In ADaD you have to consult two different tables to learn what your base chance to hit is before you can start applying modifiers. Interestingly, Cyril only needs a 13 to hit his clone in Labyrinth Lord, but otherwise there's a lot of chart searching to find that Cyril still needs a 15 to hit his doppleganger.
Back to ascending Armor Class in LotFP, and that makes this simple because the number he needs to roll iS RIGHT THERE! But the (slight) brutality of LotFP is also revealed, Cyril needs a 16 or higher to hit his replicant in this system (25% chance of hitting is still less than 30%).

I should point out that both Labyrinth Lord and Swords & Wizardry have little tracks on their character sheets to help the player track what they need to roll in order to hit different values of Armor Class. Which is nice and thoughtful but I'm starting to be really confused as to why people like to make this more complex. Looking at these systems side by side it's hard for me to comprehend why gamers embrace these hurdles in the rules since it only serves to slow down the game for people who don't want to to do the math and it alienates new players who might be turned off by rules that don't make sense. (speaking from experience in both cases)

Back to equipment! Cyril's going to want a backpack, a bedroll, 10 torches, 10 days worth of rations, 50 feet of rope, one flask of oil, and a holy symbol, preferably made of silver. Pretty standard fare for a dungeon delver, not overly prepared but definitely not an amateur either. I'm ignoring the actual costs but limiting myself to purchasing the cheapest items when price differentials are available. With a 5 Strength I'm going to have an encumbered character in some of these systems, if not all of them. Let's explore these rules in each system individually, since a side by side comparison wouldn't reveal the intricacies of each difference. These examples will include both the money spent and the weight of the weapons and armor listed above.


ACKS: Weight and encumbrance is measured by stones which is roughly 10 lbs. (4.5 kg) but is left purposefully vague. Various items and objects relate to this stone measurement. A thousand coins weigh one stone; armor doesn't have weight, but every point of Armor Class that a suit gives your character counts as one stone; every six items carried counts as one stone, unless they are large or unusually heavy. A character can carry about 20 stone modified by their Strength.
Poor old Cyril can only carry 18 stone, but after spending 65 gold and 5 silver he's only carrying 7 stone (about 70 lbs).


ADaD: The total encumbrance of a character is equal to the character's weight adjusted by a special modifier under Strength, which makes figuring it out simple enough but weight is randomly determined and stats don't play any role in it. Finding the page, I roll and get 176. With Cyril's Strength penalty he can only carry 151. This system limits how much can be put into backpacks and sacks, so in order to carry everything Cyril will have to purchase an extra small pouch. It doesn't matter much because all of that gear weighs less than half that.
After spending 66 gold, 22 silver and 15 copper, Cyril is carrying 72.7 lbs of gear.


C&C: They try to simplify things by giving every character an Encumbrance Rating (ER) and equipment has both weight and Encumbrance Values (EV). I'm not sure why weight is listed unless the authors wanted the reader to have a frame of reference for using ER and EV. If the total EV of all of your equipment exceeds your ER then your speed starts to slow while you begin to suffer penalties to Dexterity-based rolls. There are several categories of encumbrance based on how much you've exceeded your ER by. Every character gets an ER of 10 modified by Strength, but since Cyril is a little scrawny twit he only has an ER of 8, and just with weapon and armor Cyril is already carrying 9 EV worth of gear.
C&C also has one interesting feature related to ability scores and this comes into play now because it can modify my ER. When you're making your character you choose three of your abilities to be primary attributes, and your class will require one or two abilities to be designated as primary abilities (Wisdom for Clerics, duh!) and if you choose Strength or Constitution as primary attributes then you can add +2 to your ER. Without knowing this ahead of time I selected Constitution as one of Cyril's three primary attributes so his ER is back up to base 10.
After purchasing the rest of the gear he wants, Cyril has spent 28 gold, 1 silver and 10 copper and he's under Heavy Encumbrance with an ER of 33. The real killer here are the torches which are listed as 1 ER each, but the rules don't specify why that is or even how long the average torch should last before a new one is needed.


LL: Encumbrance is an optional rule for LL, so Cyril has no worries. But LL still manages to have the simplest system. A character can carry up to 40 lbs of gear before they are slowed down, and the maximum that any character can carry is 160 lbs. No Strength modifiers, no Encumbrance Values, and no fiddling with numbers - other than calculating the weight your character is carrying.
Using this optional rule, however, Cyril would be carrying 57 lbs of equipment and thus be slowed by one-fourth of his movement rate. Total cost? 51 gold and 5 silver.


LotFP: Another system that uses Encumbrance points rather than weight, though it asks you to use common sense when it comes to the total weight of gear carried. Every six items carried counts as 1 point of Encumbrance, with larger items and heavier armors counting a point themselves. Carrying more than 1 point of Encumbrance will slow a character down, to a maximum of 5 points.
If I'm reading this correctly Cyril is carrying 4 points worth of gear, his shield counts as 1 and his multitude of torches and rations add 3 more points, thus he is severely encumbered. Again, no rules for how long torches last or what they actually weigh. Also, Cyril spent 60 silver and 47 copper.


S&W: Another attempt at simplicity, all characters can carry 75 pounds before they are encumbered and their Strength score will have a Carrying Capacity modifier. S&W instructs the player that a normal level of general equipment will weigh about 10 pounds. They actually use the word "normal" with quotation marks. The only items with weights listed are weapons and armors.
After all of that, Cyril isn't encumbered at all. He spent 58 gold and 4 silver, and is carrying 55 lbs of gear.



                          ACKS          ADaD         C&C          LL         LotFP       S&W
Gold Spent             65              66             28            51            -            58
Silver Spent            5               22              1             5            60            4
Copper Spent          -               15             10             -            47            -
Carry Limit         18 stone     151 lbs       10 ER        40 lbs         1 E         70 lbs 
Weight Carried     7 stone     72.7 lbs       33 ER       57 lbs         4 E         55 lbs
Encumbered?         no              no          heavy       1/4th      severely      no

I think that's the meat and potatoes of the different rule systems. I'm not getting into spell lists or higher-level characters because I wanted to compare what a beginning character would look like; freshly made, rolled up randomly, and applied equally across every system. There are more OSR systems out there than these six, and I might add comparisons to those as an addendum to this post at a later date. For now, this was a lot of work and I spent as much time double-checking rules and flipping through pages as I id just writing up the character(s).

In conclusion

Each of these systems of rules has a distinct theme, whether you might call them flawed because you don't like the theme is a matter of taste. Some of them have a different frame or a different paint job, but they are all variations of the same bicycle. I feel that showing a single character in side-by-side comparison can reveal and highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
Below you can click on the thumbnails of each character sheet and see Cyril the Cleric as I wrote him up.

Adventurer Conqueror King System: With a 5-page long character sheet I was expecting a game that was absolutely comprehensive and exacting in detail, but it seems to be lacking in some essential organization. (Please note I only scanned in the first 2 pages of Cyril's sheet because the rest of the pages were blank.) Nothing is more frustrating than looking up some info about your character class or equipment and getting mired in pages and pages of unnecessary data. Not the worst offender of this, but the character sheet itself shows a lack of organization and a disconnect from the rules as they are doled out to the reader which left me flipping back and forth through the back in order to fill it out. I like the artistic style of this game, and despite my misgivings I'm curious about exploring some of the more complex rules, but the use of stones for encumbrance is jarring and not very intuitive to me. Weird interior layout too. A lot about this can be forgiven because the index is amazing, and if you have the pdf the page numbers are linked for quick referencing, which is double awesome!


Adventures Dark and Deep: The first thing I thought while constructing Cyril was that the rules were comprehensive and boldly written. As I dug deeper into the rulebook I found myself flipping back and forth between pages a lot. A LOT! I think this system takes too much inspiration from 1st edition AD&D because I remember feeling the exact same way when I had to flip between three different pages for the stats of one item. It is comprehensive, but it's perhaps too complex. Deliberately? I'm not sure, but it definitely feels as disorganized as anything else Gygax ever wrote. In that sense, it could be a stunning success for what the author intended! I will say that I was blown away by the character sheet, and I think it's missing a few things but it's still a great piece of work. Not since I first started playing have I seen something crafted with such delicate care and exhaustive detail. I wouldn't call this Gygax'es 2nd edition of AD&D, but I would say that it's a very good collation of 1st edition's disparities into a cohesive whole. I like a lot of what is presented here even if it's not presented in the best way. The weapons table should be on one page, together, and there's also no index, which I consider a cardinal sin!


Castles & Crusades: The rulebook is well organized but some rules seem to be lacking. There's a little too much emphasis on DIY aesthetics in some areas of the system when one considers how many supplements the same company has produced. In that regard, they're following TSR's footprints very well! Encumbrance, which is a major issue in this game, isn't expressed anywhere on the character sheet. A major oversight! Otherwise, if C&C got together with ADaD and had a baby, that game would likely be the gold standard of OSR games.


Labyrinth Lord: It doesn't feel like a rulebook but more like some old school gamers got together and attempted to reconstruct their old rulebooks from memory. The rules jump around a fair amount and some things seem thrown together while the rules are also missing a few things that might seem crucial to the average player familiar with D&D. The game is simple, which is not a bad thing, this game would be ideal for teaching a new person role-playing or perhaps gaming with children or young teens. Which makes sense because Labyrinth Lord does also have an advanced supplemental rulebook to expand upon the concepts introduced in the core game. The character sheet is equally charming in both it's simplicity and brevity. Everything you need to play a game is right here!


Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Organized and simple, yet complex enough that the unfamiliar will be perplexed by some of the inspired but unintuitive turns in the rules. Out of all of the games I looked at here, this one is by far the most brutal and unforgiving, but also the most interesting and enticing. It's probably not the easiest system to use right away, but it definitely leaves a lot to the imagination and has open spaces for expanding and complicating the skeleton of rules presented. If I were going to GM tomorrow, I would run this system.


Swords & Wizardry: THIS GAME HAS NO INDEX! Two of the games above don't have indexes either, but they do have comprehensive or intricate tables of contents and that makes up for the lack of index. This game has neither and my copy is supposedly the "fourth edition," this is an unforgivable sin in my mind. (It does have an index of it's tables, but no page numbers, so why is it there? Ugh!) I absolutely hate when a game doesn't have a way to find relevant information quickly (I'm looking at you White Wolf!) and so I got frustrated quickly with this game while writing up Cyril. However, I would put this in the same wheelhouse as Labyrinth Lord as a starter set of rules for newer players. It simplifies a lot of concepts that the other games make a lot of unnecessary noise about. The character sheet is pretty decent too, though it's missing a few concepts introduced by the ability scores and I don't think the equipment section is big enough, but it's the only character sheet here that comes on one page and I consider that a boon.

Final statement

I'm not going to call one of these games the best or the worst, I think that is entirely a distinction of taste. I think of 4th edition D&D as a board game and yet one of my gaming buddies exalts it as the system where some of his best role-playing moments have happened. I could probably say the same thing about Deadlands and I know people who hate the dice mechanics of that game.

I wanted to see how these systems stood up to one another on the fly and without much prep. I've never played any of these six titles nor have I ever read through them cover-to-cover. I did this for my own enlightenment, to really explore each rulebook on it's own and have a decent measuring stick in the form of a single character. I just happen to be sharing what I've found with you dear reader.

Out of these six systems, I am most intrigued by Lamentations of the Flame Princess. I think that's the one I like the most. Swords & Wizardry might be the best of the bunch for introducing new players to D&D, but it's lack of an index and a decent table of contents makes me think Labyrinth Lord is better suited to a learning player. The average gamer is likely going to be attracted to Castles & Crusades or Adventurer Conqueror King, depending on their play style but also because the art is higher quality and just makes those games look more professional. I am most disappointed by Adventures Dark and Deep, which I could only recommend to the most hardcore of grognards, who likely already own it, and this surprises me because starting this comparison I expected to feel almost the exact opposite about both ADaD and LotFP.