So I recently received my Lion & Dragon physical copy (finally!). I intend to pick up some Dark Albion adventure modules to start out. I'm curious which adventures are best for low-level beginner characters. I don't have any particular location or type of campaign in mind, I'd also welcome recommendations for other appropriately low-fantasy and low-level modules.
Any pointers would be much appreciated!
Oh, man, you're in for a treat. Here's some ideas based on how I did it.
AFAIK there is only one Dark Albion adventure module published, "The Ghost of Jack Cade on London Bridge", which is great, but it's only one or two sessions. After that, you can use the books as inspiration to write your own adventures.
Imho, L&D and DA have a 'theme', medieval-authentic roleplaying, which is based on history and fantasy gaming based on realistic interactions between players and setting. Any adventure or module can be easily converted to L&D if you apply the "default setting assumptions" (L&D p. 1-2) to the module. I'm not repeating these assumptions here, but they're quite simple to understand and run in a game. If you start reading any D&D module and get the proposed story through these lenses, then they become amazingly fun and 'new', you know? It sounds strange, but bear with me.
First, use the Dark Albion timeline of future events. Research the events, if you like, and use them with the random tables to create interesting background events to color the sessions. It works great! Here's my own campaign and how I did it (I have to update it, we already had some games)
https://www.therpgsite.com/design-development-and-gameplay/campaign-updates-lion-dragon-dark-albion/
As another example, I've converted the classic Keep on the Borderlands and many Basic Fantasy RPG adventures for L&D. For the Keep, I placed the fortress beyond Adrian's Wall (in Scot's Land, beyond Edinburgh), as the last Anglish fortress on the region. Instead of orcs, bugbears and stuff like that, I filled the caves and regions around the keep with a Cult (from Cults of Chaos, which matches the KotB storyline perfectly), a rebel/inbred Scot clan (they fought against the Bruces and lost, being banished and now surviving in the caves) and several bandit gangs (the Black Fangs were originally goblins, in my game they are a marauding band of highwaymen), and so on.
Now, a point to make is mix and match some supernatural creatures here and there - but make monsters unique, special, and dangerous. For example, the KotB has an owlbear in one of the caves - I kept the owlbear, but gave it a unique background connected to a witch secretly living in the keep. The monsters are usually related to authentic folklore and both books are great sources of ideas for this (just reading the monsters in L&D gives you great ideas).
Now, much of what I did I got from the "Caves of Carnage" video series from the Dungeon Craft channel, where Professor DM shows how he converted the same module to have a definitely more medieval-authentic/grimdark feel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RayVJoDwuwQ&list=PLYlOu5g6H7ZzvhIruv6BAd5XSArkgZzYw&ab_channel=DungeonCraft
Another thing I want to do is run Ravenloft in Dark Albion, using Dracula instead of Sthrad. It fits so well that seems almost obvious. Dracula's described in Dark Albion, p. 181
Hope some of this helps! Happy gaming!
What about the classic "Castle Amber" by Tom Moldvay?
Quote from: Reckall on March 28, 2021, 05:57:49 AM
What about the classic "Castle Amber" by Tom Moldvay?
Oooooh. That would work well from what I can remember of it.
Half of the adventures in the RPGPundit Presents (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/451/Spectre-Press?page=1) series are explicitly made for Lion & Dragon/Albion.
For low level adventures I'd suggest The Child Eaters, The Secret Order of the Red Lady, "3 Occult Killer Antagonists", The Ladystone, The Cymri Davey, and Cave of the Hawk.