Mini settings > modules

Give me the keys, I wanna drive.

I always thought Matt Finch's Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom was good. My players had fun with it, at least. Lot of things to play with and a variety of environments.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;754494Mini settings > modules

Give me the keys, I wanna drive.

May I suggest Frandor's Keep from Kenzer. It is written for the new Hackmaster system but the locales, adventure seeds, interconnected npcs, and adventure locations are all superb even if you replace all the stats with the system of your choice.

Quote from: S'mon;754452Lost City of Barakus was great for 3.5e and has a Swords & Wizardry version coming out from Frog God, it's a great campaign dungeon + wilderness + city + loads of small dungeons fandango. I guess that'd be my recommendation for the future.

Good to hear as I pledged for the S&W version on Kickstarter.

Quote from: bryce0lynch;754480I was looking at the Chaotic Caves just on Friday. I decided not to review it right now, because it appeared to be SUCH a knock off of B2.

You're inconsistent, mate.  JD Neal's Hill Giant module that "channels the spirit of" G1 "without plagiarising it" gets two thumbs up from you.  The same bloke wrote a humanoid-tribes module that channels the spirit of B2 without plagiarising it and you call it a knockoff.

It's got exactly as much to do with B2 as SG1 has to do with G1.  Far as I can tell, the only difference is that you don't like humanoids.  I like humanoids; from my perspective, humanoids lead to interesting positional battles where combined arms tactics matter, whereas most weird gonzo science-fictiony monsters are either boring hackfests or else they boil down to "Can you guess how to kill this one before it eats the whole party?"  Which is arbitrary as well as boring.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;754494Mini settings > modules

Give me the keys, I wanna drive.

Frandor's Keep. Yes, I will look at it. Thank you!

And a thumbs up from Chuck Norris. Wow. That's worth, like, One and a Half Internets, which I will now roll into my Roth IRA for later use... ^_^

Quote from: S'mon;754452My best experiences have not been with full modules (frankly I've not been too impressed by the OSRosphere modules* I've seen), but rather with seeding a bunch of "One Page Dungeon" contest entries into a small sandbox area.

This is a freaking EXCELLENT idea.

Thank you!

Quote from: ptingler;754514Good to hear as I pledged for the S&W version on Kickstarter.

Barakus is brilliant for old-school sandbox play; it's much more a fully detailed campaign setting than a 'module'. I think it should work even better in S&W than in 3.5; the fast levelling rate & power progression of 3e caused some problems even using the recommended halved XP awards.
The one thing I'd say could have been better was the wilderness map, an ugly greyscale affair. I hope they redraw* it for the Kickstarter, and ideally add a few villages - as written there's a big city with no real surrounding settlements; though adding a few was no big deal.

*Get Rob Conley to draw it!

Quote from: Spinachcat;754594This is a freaking EXCELLENT idea.

Thank you!

You're welcome.
Making a sandbox to put them in is easy enough - I've done it with the Labyrinth Lord 'Known Lands' map, and also with the Wilderlands. I also recommend Points of Light, which I see is still cheap on amazon - http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0981666361/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1401615404&sr=8-1&keywords=Points+of+Light&condition=used - PoL has three fairly 'normal' campaign mini-settings to choose from, each in a different historical era covering around a millenium of their world's history; plus the extra-planar lair of Set/Sarrath.

Quote from: S'mon;754452seeding a bunch of "One Page Dungeon" contest entries into a small sandbox area.

Agreed. I'm currently running ACKS using the City of Parsantium as the base and bolting on dungeons from Dyson Logos ; Dyson's Delves I & II. So far easy to populate and backstory as you go.

Quote from: Chainsaw;754500I always thought Matt Finch's Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom was good. My players had fun with it, at least. Lot of things to play with and a variety of environments.

I wholeheartedly agree; it was one of the first "OSR" modules, and still one of the best.

Some interesting suggestions here!

Quote from: S'mon;754598You're welcome.
Making a sandbox to put them in is easy enough - I've done it with the Labyrinth Lord 'Known Lands' map, and also with the Wilderlands. I also recommend Points of Light, which I see is still cheap on amazon - http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0981666361/ref=sr_1_1_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1401615404&sr=8-1&keywords=Points+of+Light&condition=used - PoL has three fairly 'normal' campaign mini-settings to choose from, each in a different historical era covering around a millenium of their world's history; plus the extra-planar lair of Set/Sarrath.

Thanks for the shout out. And there is Blackmarsh which sits directly to the north of Southland in the same time period. The book details a small city as well.

Blood Moon Rising is certainly a good choice, though not exactly what you'd consider the "conventional" OSR-style dungeon crawl.