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Worth it for the backstory alone, this product opens with a dire tale of how a greedy and intolerant emperor who confused dire poverty caused by crop failure with a mere unwillingness to pay taxes was eventually deposed... but not before he'd both devastated the township that was the centre of what he perceived as rebellion and had built a gaol there. That emperor's long gone, but the gaol remains...
There is a description and a rough sketch map of this dire establishment, a strange place indeed that's built on a towering column and hangs out high above the surrounding wasteland (a cell with a view, perhaps?). If you indend much running around therein, you may need to come up with more detailed maps, especially if you use miniatures for combat, but the sketch and description are enough to give a feel for the place.
Several people are then introduced: the warden, a guard,and a couple of prisoners; each with a whole backstory of their own. Then comes several plot outlines involving the gaol. Perhaps the party is hired to get someone out of there, whether wrongfully imprisoned or in need of incarceration but with friends wealthy enough to hire folks to break them out. Or the characters might even have fallen foul of someone and been imprisoned. Or... there is plenty of food for thought here with twists and turns aplenty to make a full-blown adventure.
A couple of interesting items, a few rumours and some encounters wind this up. Perhaps worth tucking aside for when your characters annoy you so much that they need banging up... but certainly an interesting location to place in some out-of-the-way part of your campaign world just ready for when you need it.
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The Three Sisters are mountain peaks (NOT 'peeks' - a typo that slipped by in the opening paragraph of the introduction) chiefly known for the quality of the coffee grown on their slopes and the market that has grown up in the valley below where the three peaks meet to trade in coffee and other produce from the area. Quite sensibly the market operates as a 'free trade zone' outside the influence of all the adjoining kingdoms, a place where making money is all-important and what law there is exists solely to enable trade.
Naturally, this has drawn a few folks who have fallen foul of the law elsewhere, as provided they don't interfere with commerce nobody cares what they might have done back home. These and market officials and a few people catering to the needs of residents and visitors alike, form the permanent community here: others ebb and flow depending what's in season and being sold at the market. One remarkable establishment is the King's Club, formed to provide a refuge for deposed monarchs (although dictators and others who have fallen foul of those they sought to govern are equally welcome). Unsurprisingly, it's a hotbed of intrigue. Quite a few would like to regain the power they once held and plot to that end, others trade in the secrets they learned whilst they were ruling or plot revenge.
Four notable residents are described in detail (you will, of course, have to supply whatever game mechanics your chosen ruleset requires). One is a local coffee farmer, one claims to be a madman (but is he?), one - the owner of the King's Club - is a rogue of a peasant who tricked his way onto a throne and was ousted from it, and the last is a merchant who trades in coffee.
Then there are some 'situations' which could lead to adventure. You'll have to develop them before they are ready for use, but a slection of twists present different options you can weave into your plots. Everything from dealing with exiled monarchs to assassins to double-dealing in coffee futures, and that's before you get to the human interest that often forms the best stories, no matter the epic sweeping events that might affect whole kingdoms. Some provide work for enterprising characters, others just involve them whether they like it or no.
A couple of magic items, and a selection of rumours and encounters round it all off. There is also a sketch of the centre of the market, showing the few permanent structures and an idea of the temporary ones set up by visiting farmers and traders, who ebb and flow with the seasons.
Find a suitable location in your campaign world and let the dealing begin! Plenty of scope for adventure here...
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Toys for the Sandbox 58 - The Mouth of Moonshield Canyon is a well-presented pdf providing adventure ideas and descriptions for the canyon and its environs. I've long wanted to review one of Occult Moon's Toys for the Sandbox products, and I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't sooner because, judging by this product, I've been missing out. The Mouth of Moonshield Canyon is ripe with ideas for the picking, very well delivered with exactly the right amount of detail, and good at inspiring the imagination. An all-round fabulous product.
The Mouth of Moonshield Canyon is an unique location - living stones formed from residual magic guard the canyon entrance as part of their holy ground, while being watchful over barbarian threats and intruders from nearby locations. The product provides a gripping background, history and description to the location (including an illustrative map), numerous NPC personalities that one may encounter in the area, and excellent adventure ideas and possibilities for short or long excursions to the location. I thoroughly enjoyed reading each part of this pdf, as it really inspired one to adventure! The diversity of adventure ideas tied to one location is impressive, and it would easily suit most adventure character levels and party types. The product does a wonderful job of catering towards a wide variety of different stories and adventures that can be had.
What I really liked about the product is that all the numerous adventure ideas can be played separately, but as they're all tied to one location, can easily be combined into a larger whole. This means that you can make the adventure as complicated or as simple as you like, depending on how much time you have in your session. All you need to do is throw together the mechanics and various encounter details, as location descriptions, NPC personalities and motivations, and numerous plots and subplots (and variations of these!) have been provided.
If the rest of the Toys for the Sandbox series is as good as this, then they're all well worth the look. This is a great product that inspires the imagination, and its utility can vary depending on the GM's needs. Great writing, presentation, format, and wonderfully rich and creative. Excellent product.
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It may be because I'm a teacher, but I always delight in using educational establishments as role-playing locations. So here is a music school - neglected amidst the plethora of magical academies you can get your hands on, yet music is an important part of most fantasy worlds so people are going to have to learn to play somewhere!
On the face of it, the Grand Conservatory - home to the Musical Society of Drilthenholen - is an absolute feast of musical excellence where music can be studied, played and enjoyed. It has a vast collection of compositions in its library, and you can get instruction in just about any instrument known. Impoverished or ill musicians can get help, too - worth noting as few fantasy societies have much in the way of a welfare state!
But that's the PUBLIC face of the place. Like all really interesting places, there's a lot more going on under the surface... and that presents plenty of opportunity for adventure, and provides the potential of making the Conservatory an important location in your campaign world, should you like intrigue and adventure where brains are at least as useful as brawn.
System free notes are provided on major individuals who work or frequent the Conservatory, along with six scenario seeds (which all sound rather fun, if you make the Conservatory an important location that the characters visit often, you might well be able to make use of all of them) as well as a couple of magical items, rumours and encounters and a plan of the Conservatory itself.
I like music, and playing bard or minstrel characters, so I think this will find a place in at least one of my games!
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Forget your average scruffy fantasy tavern where adventurers go to quaff ale and wait for a brawl or someone looking for adventurers... The Vintners is a different kind of place, an upmarket oasis of luxury with a fine wine cellar where travelling nobles will feel quite at home.
In this product there's some backstory to set the scene of how The Vintners came to be established, with a noble family falling on hard times and a neglected vinyard resurrected by a curious guest who spotted grapes ripening when out for a stroll. The establishment is described in evocative terms and there's a sketchmap of the main building and its environs - you'd need to do some work developing it if you like detailed floorplans or make use of miniatures, but there's enough to go on for at least a casual visit. It's all fairly self-contained, just find a suitable location in your campaign world and plop it down, changing anything necessary to make it fit in completely.
Some of the notable characters you'll find there are described in detail (you'll need to add game mechanics of course), and several adventure ideas. These may be enough to get you going, especially with the plot twists included, or you may feel more comfortable developing them in more detail before play begins... or even combining more than one should you like busy, multistranded plotlines as much as I do!
An excellent resource with plenty of potential for some interesting adventures, especially if interaction and intrigue appeal.
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There's a wealth of idea-spawning goodness crammed into this small product. To start with, when you download the zip file, there are no less than four PDF files inside. Between them there are plenty of resources to give you ideas for adventures, and provided in a range of layouts to suit most tastes.
The product provides background and setting information, which links this in to other Occult Moon 'Tools for the Sandbox' product should you choose to use it in conjunction with them - yet not so tightly interwoven that you cannot use it somewhere else in your campaign world if preferred. The four main players are set out with plenty of detail as to who they are and what they intend, all you need to do is stat them out for your chosen ruleset. Several main adventure seeds - or 'Possibilities' - are provided and each has several Twists that you may choose to apply to create just the adventure that you want. This part is rounded off with a couple of items, some rumours you can scatter around and a few random encounters, and a one-page map of the Caverns themselves.
OK, so why four different files? There's a full-colour landscape one to read onscreen, and a black & white portrait one for printing out. The other two files provide for a neat booklet-style print, again black & white but designed to be folded and interleaved. So plenty of choice!
The ideas themselves have plenty of potential and variety, and you ought to be able to come up with something after reading them through, matching them to your own preferred game and setting and doing some basic preparations.
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If you are playing a B/X style game and embrace race-as-class then this product will be of use to you, and serves as a first release of what I hope will be a number of follow ups.
In brief, this book gives you four new Halfling racial classes so that not every PC Halfling will be forced to play the same exact class. The new racial classes fill in social and adventuring roles, giving halflings access to clerical and arcane magic, as well as some effective guerrilla fighters.
There are a few typo errors in this product, the layout is work-man-like, and the art is primitive and a bit cartoony, but honestly I like it just fine.
I think this is a really good value for the price, and would rate it a bit higher (4.25 or 4.5) if I could.
I hope Occult Moon follows up with additional Demi-options for the other races.
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Previously only available to members of the Yahoo Communities Fudgemembers. This is an excellent "create-your-character-as-you-go" design using the Fudge system. You will need to know how the Fudge levels (Terrible to Superb) and action resolution work to use this.
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Like: Concise and descriptive enough to be useful
Dislike: All-italic font hard to read, even when printed out.
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The third line of generic adventures packs by Occult Moon. As you would expect from the title this line is set after a nonspecific cataclysm has destroyed the world as we know it. The world and the humans that that populate it are quite different than what came before.
The PDF is well laid out and generously bookmarked for easy navigation. The art work, by Ashe Rhyder is suitably suggestive of the world as described by Quinn Conklin and Gary Montgomery.
There are six scenarios presented in the Possibilities section. Each presents a possible adventure for a party and provides a basic description of the events and then presents three possible plot twists to complicate things.
The People section details four NPCs that are in some way included in either the description or twists of the scenarios described above. They are described in detail and given a bit or history. Stats and abilities are described generically so they can be translated in any system that the GM wishes to use.
The imagery that is described is evocative and harrowing and puts you right into this nightmare world of the day after tomorrow. An excellent resource for any Post Apocalyptic game!
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The good: I enjoyed the content of the package. The package lays out several NPCs and several interesting plot hooks. I really enjoyed a strong female villain who is intelligent and ruthless.
The bad: The font and the layout really detract from the overall product. The font mimics handwriting, which goes along with the post-apoc feel of the product, but, it makes the product look sloppy and deters a quick skim. Also, I found the layout and organization to be lacking. For example, when twists are listed, it took me a second to realize that not all of the twists were linear, but, instead, different options to choose from. Also, needs a second set of eyes to edit it for typos.
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Nicely laid out. This has interesting ideas and nice sketches to boot. I can see this being useful for DMs to use or to have as inspiration. I was slightly confused by the multiple files, which appear to be the same content but in different forms.
The map was less than enthusiastic. I stared at it for awhile and still have difficulty figuring out what it is supposed to depict. Mountains maybe? Anyway, the map details are not important. The general outline is there and players can create their own version of the map easily enough.
The rest of the visuals and all of the writing are spot on. Give this a try.
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Review originally published at: www.whitehairedman.com/review-the-forgotten-outpost
This is my second review of an Occult Moon product. A few months ago, I reviewed The Library of Ethos, a system neutral locale from the Toys for the Sandbox line. Unlike The Library of Ethos, The Forgotten Outpost is not system neutral, but utilizes game mechanics that should be compatible with most Old School rules. Priced at a reasonable $1.99, the adventure is designed for characters of levels 3-5.
The Forgotten Outpost reminds me of the adventures I played during my RPG infancy in the early 1980's. I immediately recalled the first dungeon entered by my first character, the Fighter Torgar, and how he was incapacitated by Troglodyte stench. Like my first dungeon, The Forgotten Outpost resides in the wilderness near a small town. If you've been around as long as I have, you've probably played scores of variations on this scenario. There's a reason for this: some plots, when done well, tap into a fundamental aspect of why we play these games and don't get old. Every adventure need not break new ground; sometimes I'm looking for a solid example of the type of adventure that brought me into the hobby over thirty years ago.
The Forgotten Outpost embraces the Old School mindset with a simple situation. A local adventurer has gone missing while exploring ruins infested by kobolds and gnolls. His wife enlists the characters to rescue him. Some good hooks are provided to jump-start the adventure, but an Old School GM can surely devise a few more if these don't fit the characters.
The adventure contains classic opportunities for stealth and straight-ahead fighting as the characters penetrate the monster's defenses. They have a real chance to rescue the lost adventurer. The GM could easily make the rescue more interesting by having the gnolls use him to barter for their lives.
However, the rescue is just a prelude to discovering why the place is called The Forgotten Outpost. This occurs after the characters dismantle barricades erected by the kobolds and gnolls and venture into a deeper level filled with undead, magic, and other strange creatures. The change of pace elevates the adventure and makes it more memorable. The deeper rooms were apparently built to imprison a great evil.
I like how the shift from kobolds and gnolls to undead may surprise the characters and hint at a further mystery that will be difficult to resist. I would enjoy the The Forgotten Outpost as a player or GM. The adventure is simple, to the point, and, if necessary, playable without extensive preparation. Matt Jackson's maps also have an excellent hand-drawn feel.
However, there are areas where the adventure could be improved. First, it is never explained why the outpost was originally built, and we gain no insight into the reason for the prison. Even one or two paragraphs of information could provide additional ways to tie the adventure into a campaign.
Second, although usable, the writing is weak and does not serve the adventure well. The words fail to evoke the atmosphere of the outpost. The few examples of flavor text really have no emotional impact. Some room descriptions were confusing or unclear. This is my most serious criticism of The Forgotten Outpost.
Finally, the graphic design could be improved in two areas. Because the PDf contains no page numbers, I sometimes lost track of page order as I read a printed version of the adventure. The maps also have no scale. I suppose a GM could devise a scale, but in an adventure of this sort distances are important and should be indicated on the maps.
Pros: Good price, pure old school, easy to use, nice hand-drawn maps.
Cons: Lack of outpost history, weak writing holds back the adventure, PDf needs page numbers, maps have no scale.
Verdict: 3 out of 5.
Dave Przybyla
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Originally published at: http://diehardgamefan.com/2012/06/20/tabletop-review-captain
s-logs-from-the-sandbox-003-the-mining-colony-at-elkos-iv/r />
The Mining Colony at Elkos IV is #3 in the “Captain’s Logs” series for Occult Moon Games. Unlike the fantasy-based series that started off the Toys for the Sandbox, this series seems to be open to multiple authors and artists, which is pretty cool. The art is nice, very much like classic RPG books, with some computer rendered pieces.
Overview
This booklet comes with a map that covers part of the surface of a planet called Elkos IV. There are a few areas of note, presumably ripe for a little investigation. The main one is the abandoned mining installation, left over from when there was promise of some valuable substance under the frozen surface. There is also an abandoned city, a purported region where the lost ships might be, and a few others.
There is a brief planet profile of Elkos IV, and then a few tables for space and planetary hazards. Of course, there is the essential part of the Sandbox modules, the plot twists, and then a few profiles of major NPCs. The planet is described as being nearly inhospitable to life (a “complete snowball”), yet one of the plot twists involves there being a race of chipmunks of all things. This is a little silly to me, because as a GM how am I going to explain how they live or what they eat when there is virtually no other life on the planet? These kind of inconsistencies are a continual source of weakness in the continuity of these modules. The setting is put forward, and then ideally the plot twists make sense inside the setting. If you’re going to put forward an inhospitable planet, you better help me explain to myself and the players why there is any life there.
What Do I Think?
This module seems a bit more focused, a bit more coherent and, at the same time, a bit more open than the module before this one. It feels more like the sandbox is being defined, but the goal of the sandbox is pushed less. That is, the whole “lost ships” mission is put forward, but that in itself is an open-ended goal. Would ships be there? Maybe, it’s up to the GM and the players. Meanwhile, there’s all this other stuff to engage the players if you want. In my opinion, one of the better modules from the Sandbox series. GMs be warned, it’s still a skeleton of an adventure so be prepared to either make up or write up a lot of the details. Also, the chipmunks.
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As a mainly improvisational GM, Toys for the Sandbox is right up my alley. Normally I buy adventures to cannibalize bits and plotlines for my game, but I didn't need to cannibalize Great Bridge since it comes in bite-sized chunks already. Even though they're designed to work together, each element can stand on its own in other adventures.
Great Bridge is a small town built on an ancient bridge high in the mountains. It's a crossroads of trade, packed full of rival merchant houses, political maneuverings, shady deals, rumors of treasure, and the frozen dead. In 10 short pages, you get a town map, a brief town overview and history, four major NPCs with potential plotlines for your PCs to trip across, six plot hooks, seven one-line rumors, and seven one-line encounter ideas.
For me, the plot hooks turn those ten pages into pure gold. Each hook runs about a half a page, containing a setup and three ways to twist the plot as it unfolds. In some cases you can use all three twists, but some twists are mutually exclusive. This gives me the flexibility to change the adventure as it goes along. It's very liberating to have something "canned" that will keep up with my players.
Great Bridge contains no game stats, so you can use it in any high fantasy game system and scale it to fit your needs. There's a delicate balance between a skeletal outline of an idea and an adventure bloated with detail, and Great Bridge nails that balance for me. It's a treasure trove of game ideas that I can mine to spice up a game, or use together as designed. Either way, the great ideas and easy-to-digest format make it a win.
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