The Merry Mushmen are adventuring again!
People seem to like their adventure modules, so...
The team behind the bric-à-brac magazine KNOCK! (who Rascal’s own Thomas Manuel chatted with last April) are releasing two new adventure modules for OSR/NSR/Old D&D games. This new offering is gathering names old-school afficionados may recognise: Artyom Trakhanov, Ava Islam, Bruno Prosaiko, Eric Nieudan (that's me, writing this!), Jérôme Huguenin, Liam Pádraig Ó Cuilleanáin, Olivier Revenu, and Ripley Matthews.
What do these people know about designing adventures?
Glad you asked. The adventure gaming scene (also known as old-school gaming) knows a great deal about creating adventures relying on exploration, social interaction, and player agency. The designers of such campaigns create sandboxes and situations, not scripts and storylines. Sure, there will be stories told about these adventures of course, but this will happen after the fact. No one – especially not the game master – can guess what they will be before sitting at the table.
For more about what this ever growing sub-niche of the TTRPG industry is about, we will direct you to the article Thomas wrote about the OSR in the spring. But for the bullet-point addicts, let us just drop the pilars of the genre:
- Decision making as the core player experience: solutions are in the world and not on the character sheet.
- Open, dynamic environments leading to interesting situations. Nothing is scripted in advance, ever.
- The GM as a neutral interface between the world and the players. They're not your enemy, but they won't help you if you take too many risks.
- Ad hoc, agreed upon rulings, not bloated rules systems containing rules for every single edge case.
- Dice as oracles and generators of unexpected situations, using tools like reaction rolls and random tables.
- No game balance to make the world more believable and dangerous.
- Quick character creation: beginning characters are fragile but easily replaced.
New adventures, you say?
In Drought Dragon Desolation, the characters are exploring a desertic desolation that was a sea a mere twelve years ago. The surrounding realms are all bending the knee to the droughtwyrm, Lady Drybones, paying tribute for the right to live under her protection. In this module, the adventurers will explore sunken ships, parley with zombie pirates, and recover lost treasure... without touching a single drop of water! This is, quite literally, a sandbox. With a dragon waiting to be slain.
They're Making Hostage Sausage at the Dragonmeat™Processing Plant! takes a different approach from the modules previously released by the Mushmen. It is a heist! During a hostage situation! With a countdown! You know how careful exploration is the safe way to delve dungeons? Well, if the party take their time here, they will find themselves in an all-out militia assault, complete with airdropped commandos and armoured dragons. This adventure is set in Olgendsongrad, the city of the dragon butchers, which is introduced in the module.
Both booklets are 72-page long in A5 format, staple-bound, with a detachable screen cover for ease of use – and perhaps due to a little bit of nostalgia for the D&D modules of the 80s. The adventures use rules from the exceedingly straightforward Old-School Essentials, the closest thing the community has to a lingua franca, making them easy to adapt to your system of choice. They also borrow from OSE the hierarchical, terse-yet-flavourful style for which OSR writers are famous.
And these crazy books are on Kickstarter right now, surely you jest?
Absolutely not, there's even a video with original music by Loot the Body!
But be warned, the campaign ends soon – Monday 15th September at 4pm CET. As we’re writing this barely disguised ad copy, we’ve passed the 72 hours mark. Have a look at the campaign on said crowdfunding platform, and consider joining 1500+ adventure gaming connoisseurs.
