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Author Topic: What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?  (Read 3569 times)

southpaw

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #15 on: March 10, 2018, 12:38:36 PM »
I would love to see a OSR treatment of the old Gamelords game Thieves' Guild with capers, heists, burgling, and banditing. They did a great job of fleshing out the life of the criminal with solid and interesting gameplay.

Gorilla_Zod

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #16 on: March 10, 2018, 07:58:10 PM »
Quote from: southpaw;1028697
I would love to see a OSR treatment of the old Gamelords game Thieves' Guild with capers, heists, burgling, and banditing. They did a great job of fleshing out the life of the criminal with solid and interesting gameplay.

Now that you've mentioned Thieves' Guild (going to have to check that out, cheers), I'm reminded of when I first ran Blades in the Dark, a fantasy-city heist game, and thought "there should be an OSR version of this".

EDIT: Actually, I think I thought "knockoff" instead of "version".
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jcfiala
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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #17 on: March 11, 2018, 05:29:31 PM »
Quote from: Gorilla_Zod;1028603
I'd like to see a Lankhmar or a Waterdeep, a big OSR-flavoured city that wasn't Vornheim, basically

Well, DCC did a kickstarter for Lankhmar a bit ago, and they'll be going out probably sometime later this year.  That should also satisfy needs for city adventures.

That said, the person who said a big book of capers/targets for robbery had a good idea there.
 

Dr. Ink'n'stain

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #18 on: March 12, 2018, 01:37:02 AM »
Quote from: Krimson;1028526
A Book of Heists, for Thieves and Bandits and assorted scum and villainy. Not every treasure is to be found in a dungeons. Some are in manors, or castles, or houses, or carriages. I'd add ships but then we're getting into pirate territory.

Also something along the lines of a police procedural. You are the town or castle guard, or adventurers hired to investigate some mystery. There may be fewer lethal encounters, and much more talking to NPCs and gathering information or clues. Basically some medieval mittelmarsh that lays somewhere in between Criminal Minds and Scooby Doo. The main thing here is that instead of being in a dungeon, you're in a city, town or rural area. You know, unless your psychotic serial killer is an elf hiding in the woods. Actually this could work for any kind of intelligent marauding foe, including monsters. This also ventures into horror, but often the more mundane kind that doesn't require Cthulhu or Strahd. The main different between this and a dungeon crawl is that you're not venturing into the monster's lair. At least not yet. Instead, the monster or villain is wandering around, mingling with the population and preying on them. Perhaps in plain sight.


Oh yes, this! This would be a 'shut up and take my money' -thing for me, and I'm generally not an impulse buyer.
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S'mon

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #19 on: March 12, 2018, 02:51:50 AM »
Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;1028873
Oh yes, this! This would be a 'shut up and take my money' -thing for me, and I'm generally not an impulse buyer.

I have Kobold Press's Streets of Zobeck, it's pretty close to being a 'book of heists'. It often feels more like a Cyberpunk supplement than a D&D one to me.

Christopher Brady

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #20 on: March 12, 2018, 03:22:45 AM »
I've always wanted to run a Hawk and Fisher (novel series by Simon R. Green) style game.  Where the players are City Guard or Thief Catchers and it's all based in one town/city.
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Dr. Ink'n'stain

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #21 on: March 12, 2018, 01:24:37 PM »
Quote from: S'mon;1028876
I have Kobold Press's Streets of Zobeck, it's pretty close to being a 'book of heists'. It often feels more like a Cyberpunk supplement than a D&D one to me.


Thanks for the tip, it seems solid. What would make it better is if it was
1) Not based in any specific setting, and
2) Be more of a toolkit than a bunch of pre-digested adventures.
But I'll take a closer look for sure. As luck would have it, the pdf seems to be on sale at DriveThru at the moment.
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Dr. Ink'n'stain

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #22 on: March 12, 2018, 01:37:02 PM »
Quote from: Christopher Brady;1028879
I've always wanted to run a Hawk and Fisher (novel series by Simon R. Green) style game.  Where the players are City Guard or Thief Catchers and it's all based in one town/city.

That's basically my on/off campaign at the moment. Although at times I feel that it would be easier to run if I had one or more groups playing the criminals, and the main group then making the investigations...
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Spinachcat

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #23 on: March 13, 2018, 03:37:59 AM »
Have there been any OSR adventures focused on planar travel?

Larsdangly

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #24 on: March 14, 2018, 12:05:32 AM »
I'm kind of stoked and kind of terrified by the fact that Cubicle 7 is working on one of my long-term published game desires: A version of Moria that can be played using some sort of established and basically normal roleplaying game (in this case, it will be 5E compatible). On one hand, if they do it right it will be one of the coolest adventuring environments imaginable. On the other hand, every dungeon-scale sort of map they have made for TOR is pathetic, and I think the odds are good they will present Moria as some sort of adventure path drivel rather than an actual physical space. But, until that day I can hope and dream...

S'mon

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #25 on: March 14, 2018, 05:27:42 AM »
Quote from: Dr. Ink'n'stain;1028942
Thanks for the tip, it seems solid. What would make it better is if it was
1) Not based in any specific setting, and
2) Be more of a toolkit than a bunch of pre-digested adventures.
But I'll take a closer look for sure. As luck would have it, the pdf seems to be on sale at DriveThru at the moment.

The first half is toolkit, NPCs (eg Goldscale the noble kobold paladin, Sjt Hendryk the corrupt guard commander) and locations (eg Old Stross Bathhouse, Cartways underground black market). The locations include more fun NPCs who didn't merit a complete writeup, eg Vukas the tiefling satyr 'mayor' of the Black Market, who sadly got slaughtered by my PCs- one had been spying on him, overheard him chatting with a prostitute post coitus, & wrongly suspected him of plotting to steal their dragonhoard.

I've been dividing the NPCs & locales up among two or three of the towns IMC, and they have been the source of many hours of fun play, so I'd recommend it for that alone. The second half is adventures - for me they're over-plotted, pre-digested, though they would be easier to adapt if running a Rogues/heist campaign.

grodog

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #26 on: March 20, 2018, 01:39:32 AM »
Quote from: JeremyR;1028528
There are surprisingly few Lovecraftian/Cthulhu ones. Oh sure, a lot modules throw in an element or two (and there's a love affair with frog gods and frog worshipers), but how many actually involve them in a major way? I can think of 2, that one from North Wind and mine about the Mi-Go.  

The ASSH adventures are not the only ones leveraging the mythoi of Lovecraft, Smith, and Howard, but they are definitely the more-easily recognized ones.  Kuntz's Bottle City includes a number of HPL-inspired gods, and his Lost City of the Elders/Garden of the Plantmaster and El Raja Key castle levels includes similar non-traditional play environs (less so the dungeons themselves; these two are available in the El Raja Key Archive). His Dark Druids leverages on Tharizdun (which is in turn based CAS' Thaisidon), but doesn't really tie-in the mythos much more in explicitly.  Simliarly, Maure Castle has strong HPL-driven overtones (discussed in more depth in Kuntz's "Advent of the Elder Ones: Mythos vs. Man in the Lake Geneva Original Campaign, 1973-1976" in AFS#2).  

Quote
Quote from: JeremyR;1028528
Planar travel is largely untouched. I can think of a couple involving trips to Hell/the Abyss.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1029051
Have there been any OSR adventures focused on planar travel?

Planar OSR content is definitely a general gap, but are you looking for planar settings/adventures, or planar travel/mechanics, or both?  Thus far, there have been a number of settings/adventures published over the years, but little in the way of planar travel/mechanics (outside of The Primal Order; for more on my distinction here, see my bibliography in the first link below).

To begin to fill those gaps, I wrote two long articles on "The Theory and Use of Gates in Campaign Dungeons" for Knockspell BITD at https://grodog.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-theory-and-use-of-gates-in-campaign-dungeons.html and https://grodog.blogspot.com/2017/05/the-theory-and-use-of-gates-in-campaigndungeons-part-2.html, and more-recently added another gate-related spell in The Twisting Stair #2---The Multi-Faceted Portal-Penetrating Gaze, a new 4th MU spell that allows you to scrye through to the other side of a gate before you decide to step through.  I'm definitely working on more on this front, which the re-reading of Elric with my 10-year-old son has further invigorated (as well as our read-through of the World of Tiers a couple of years ago).

On the OSR planar settings/adventures front, Anthony Huso's A Fabled City of Brass is largely excellent---true to the spirit of the AD&D tropes for the City of Brass, but returning to its original inspirations in The Tales of 1001 Nights, while his Night Wolf Inn hearkens to a more-detailed and planarally-focused Comeback Inn from Blackmoor fame.  Neither is really an adventure per se, but more of a setting/environ into which PCs might drop in and out over time as their quests take them to such destinations, or as waystops en route to other locations.  

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What Kind of OSR Adventures are Still Missing?
« Reply #27 on: March 22, 2018, 02:10:27 AM »
I've seen some OSR adventures that involve jumping to some brief jaunt in some demiplane or wherever, usually for a boss fight; but none that's about traveling extensively in another plane.
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