This book is one of the best resources on ancient Germanic folklore and culture that I've found -- and I'm a non-fiction reader!

The author is a scholar and writes with integrity: he explicitly explains how he approaches subjects and to what degree he fills in historical deficits of evidence (or ambiguity) with interpretation or creative "filling in the blanks."

For someone who practices Northern Tradition Paganism, this book is probably more useful for me in my personal spiritual life than for my gaming even! Thank you to the author, Brian Young.

It isn't often that a gaming supplement makes me feel stupid for having bought it. I feel stupid for having backed the Kickstarter and now owning The Hermit. If I was to sum up the adventure in two words, those would be, "nonsensical railroad." I give the book 2 stars instead of one because the layout is nice and looks good. The set up for the adventure is paper thin and I imagine most gaming groups would turn on the NPCs trying to bully/force them into the adventure rather than undertake what was written, the overland hex crawl is uninspired, and the dungeon/maze crawl would cause most gaming groups to rage quit. There is more to the adventure than that, but I imagine only a fraction of a percent of gaming groups would get there. Did I mention the layout looks good? I usually like to wrap up my short reviews with a, "recommended for." In this case, the best I can do is say recommended for gaming groups who thought The Tomb of Horrors was their best night at the gaming table. A really disappointing piece of work from a legendary name and a great gaming company.

Pretty disappointing conversion of an adventure originally written for Gygax's "Lejendary Adventures" line. It's for high level characters and is sort of a hexcrawl investigation that essentially becomes a railroad. Lots of extended walls of text to read to the players and pretty underwhelming foes/villains. Also gets too self-indulgent with boring descriptions of castle walls and their dimensions. One can deduce that from the maps. The layout is adequate, but there's not much text on each page so the book feels stretched out. The artwork is minimal and much of the monster art is simply recycled from previous TLG publications. Groups that are heavy into scripted roleplaying and not big on character agency may enjoy this, but I found it to be one of Gygax's weakest adventures and one I doubt I'll ever bother running. Only worth the investment if you some kind of completist or Gygax fanboy.

Can't give 5 stars because 1e D&D is the originator, so CC version is a solid 4 star. A little simplified rules making roll less or easier. If you want to get back to 1e, want advanced rules - not 2e, less crunchy than 3e, and back to DM control not player control as is 5e, then CC is for you.

Nice adventure and floor plans are good. Very odd that the cover and pages inside have absolutely no art of dwarves.

Missing the detailed star blocks that existed in the original modules and for one the adventures even a basic stat block is missing for the four main monsters. However the maps are much improved

This adventure needs a single page option, the 2 page spread is too small to read when printed.

At first I was expecting some kind of weird flowery language due to the review that claimed the writing was filled with "purple prose". That's not true at all and I think the writing is perfectly appropriate. After a read-through of Castles & Crusades Aihrde Fantasy Campaign Setting, I can tell this is exactly the type of fantasy setting I like. Aside from a few OSR titles, it's almost impossible to find RPG games and settings that are not trying to dismantle the norms that make fantasy fiction and gaming so wonderful to experience in the first place. There seems to be a constant push to put a twist on the tried and true formulas. The result is usually not a twist, but more of a perversion. I detect no perversion here, nor any heresy (lol), just good wholesome fantasy. With this title, Chenault's fantasy world-building paints an epic picture of a world that is complete with creation myths, the history of many civilizations and a vast multi-species political tug-of-war across the lands of Aihrde. In short, it's super cool and I give it 5 stars!

Not as good as Castles and Crusades, but the story is still well written

Recently, I soloed my way through Mighty Scout Leaders (22 pages, free/pay what you want at DriveThruRPG). I did use four of the characters that are in this set of rules as my PCs. To solo this I used Magic the Gathering cards with a yes/no/maybe oracle. So, the adventure started out with the four camp counselors and their campers trying to earn a cooking badge out at their campfires. It suddenly started to rain, and the event was washed out. No badges for anyone. When the campers got into their sleeping bags that evening, my four PCs went to the dining hall to play poker. Unfortunately, an alien ship came down, put the PCs asleep with a sleep gas, and the four cat sized aliens attached themselves to the heads of the PCs. This put them into a dream state. If the PCs survive the dream they can reject the alien’s influence. If the PC dies during the dream, he/she becomes a drone. For the dream sequence I used Shadows of the Halfling Hall (26 pages at DriveThruRPG, a fantasy adventure).

The dream starts with the PCs listening to the quest instructions from Redd at his inn. They start their investigation and question several people who are scattered throughout the town. They also go back to the inn and recruit a goblin wizard. The clues lead them to the Brambletoe estate. In The Hall, and down beneath it, they battle different kinds of zombies and skeletons. The PCs do take damage and things get nasty when they run into the DreamKeeper. Roger goes down, but they do kill this Big Bad.

As soon as the monster is dead, Cleo, George, and Tag wake up. The aliens that were clinging to their faces, make a run for it. Roger is now a drone and heads towards the alien ship floating outside. Cleo tries to stop Roger, but Roger knocks her out. George tries to get inside the alien ship, but he is hit with a paralyzing ray. Tag chases an alien in the kitchen, but slips on a greasy spot. He catches up to it out in the grass outside and kills it. Roger the Drone and the other aliens make it to the alien ship and it takes off. Maybe you will have better luck.

Give this fun adventure a try!

A new drug is finding its way into pubs and Apothecary shops throughout the East End of London.

"This drug, called “M” causes rioting, murder, and worse things. Can your heroes find the source of

this maleficent chemical before the city is overrun with carnage?"

"A Gilded Adventure for levels 2-4

Gaslight street lamps pour fitful illumination through the fog-shrouded streets of Victorian cities. Menacing figures lurk in darkened alleyways. Desperate men with nothing to lose and the determination to take what they can from others plot.

This is an RPG where masked vigilantes pit their fantastic powers against all the evil that settled in the darkened streets of a Victorian past that both was and was not!"

So riding hard on the heels of Victorious rpg's 'Hide & Seek' comes A Night For Jackals by Mike Stewart For The Victorious Rpg. And I'm going to assume the author is a fan of the classic Sixties Wild,Wild, West television show hence the name of this adventure. There's a lot going on here in twenty four pages and some of it solid rpg setting contiuum work by Mike Stewart. We've got adventure plots within adventure plots within 'A Night for Jackals.' The writing is crisp and the implied world of the Superhumankind.And 'A Night For Jackals' centers itself on London; "This adventure is centered predominantly within the city of London, with emphasis on the poorer regions of the city such as Bethnel Green, Whitechapel, Limehouse, and other parts of the East End as well as certain points of interest in and around the British capitol that might factor into the players investigations"

Within twenty four pages Stewart lays down the adventure plot, the NPC villain, and brings the PC's down the rabbit hole of 'A Night For Jackals '. Professor Morierty is center stage and he's really ramped up as an NPC villain. He's not someone that the player's PC are going to want to cross.

'A Night For Jackals' does an excellent job on two levels, one it establishes the world of Victorious as an alternative Earth where superheroes from the 21 century have shown up. And two it brings the PC's right into the middle of the events with a stake in the action. Make no mistake the PC's are in big trouble and level heads with solid investigative skills are going to reign big time in 'A Night For Jackals'. Within the twenty four pages of 'A Night For Jackals' we get everything we want in a 1-4 level adventure. And the learning curve here for players of other super hero style games is going to be interesting 'A Night For Jackals' takes full advantage of the Victorious rpg's system in spades. Could ' A Night For Jackels' be used with other OSR supers games!?! This is a tricky one in someways let me explain. The world of Victorious is closely associated with the rpg setting and the two in many ways are indivisible. With that being said ' A Night For Jackals' could be run with the Wretched Époque rpg. But a word of caution, the OSR systems here are exclusive to each game. So there maybe balance issues that could crop up in running 'A Night For Jackals' with the Wretched Epoque rpg. It might work but there might be interesting issues. Something to explore in a future blog post to be sure.

Back to 'A Night For Jackals' , as I said this adventure expands on the timeline of the Victorious rpg. And I do feel that this is a key adventure for the foundations of a campaign of supermankind's Victorious rpg. I wish there could have been a bit more after adventure hooks in 'A Night For Jackals'. Thanks for reading our review Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Want more Victoriana content? Please subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

Fantastic source. Some typos here and there, but the amount of monsters and the description of treasure and magic items make the book well worth it. It contains stuff not found all the time in similar OSR books. Anyone intending to be a Castle Keeper should have this.

I found Amazing Adventures 5e when I wanted to run a Pulp Adventures campaign, inspired by the old polyhedron magazine versions of Pulp Heroes (both D&D 3.5 and d20 modern hacks). This is an all-in-one-solution--you don't need any 5e books to play, just this one.

It supports adventures anywhere from turn-of-the-century to sci-fi and I've used it as the platform for my streamed Actual Play campaign that bends genres. That game's been running for over a year now. Many of the classes are recognizable (Pugilist is the Monk with some changes and different flavor text), some have been overhauled (the Hooligan is the Rogue but with more changes, and the Socialite isn't a bard but has several things in common), and some are unique to this ruleset (the Gadgeteer and the Mentalist).

Aside from modern/pulp/futuristic equipment and vehicles (and the rules for running them), the book also includes a more realistic/simulationist set of rules for firearms that are more deadly and exacting, which will be a welcome plus for any fans of more sophisticated mechanics.

I've greatly enjoyed this book, importing other 5e material into it is not difficult, and it is all you need to run amazing 5e adventures for any modern time period.

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/06/one-mans-god-castles-crusades-gods.html

Gods & Legends

For the purposes of this review, I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG.

PDF. 144 pages. Color covers, black & white interior art. Bookmarked and hyperlinked. Written by Davis Chenault with contributions by Steven Chenault, Brian Young, Jason Vey, and Todd Gray.

This book largely replaces the Of Gods & Monsters book from a few years back, though it is smaller in size, 144 pages vs 162. I say replaces, but this is a new set of work. The original Of Gods and Monsters was written by James Ward of Deities & Demigods fame. There are similar gods in both books but this new version is a rewrite of the older work with new entires to work better with the Codex series.

This book is divided into three(ish) large sections.

The Anvil of the Gods

This section covers how gods work in a Castles & Crusades game, how the Castle Keeper can play them, and how the characters can relate to them. This section also gives advice on designing a pantheon. Unlike the original Deities & Demigods that seemed to want to shy away from religion, this book acknowledges it and all the myriad combinations (within the space of this book) religions can take. The focus here though is not a religious academic text (and Troll Lords has at least two people, Young and Vey, on staff with graduate degrees in religious studies, literature, and history) but more on how these manifest and work in an RPG, and in Castles & Crusades in particular. To this end there is advice on how to run and play gods and how they should interact with the PCs.

Common deific abilities are defined with Greater, Lesser, and Demi-god statuses. Details are given to how the gods relate to the clerics and paladin classes, alignments, and other archetypes. Holy symbols and characters with divine traits are also covered. Divine traits include the healing touch.

Of the Gods

This is the largest section of the book, detail-wise. This covers what could properly be called the Gods of Aihrde, the Castles & Crusades campaign world. A brief overview of the basic deity characteristics is first. Up first are the human gods of Aihrde. This is the section that is most like the older Of Gods and Monsters book.

Some sections are the same as in the older book, many do look to be rewritten. The art is used from the older text but I do not see an issue with that. Many gods here get more text as well. Many of the Aihrde gods take cues and ideas from Earth gods. This is also not a big deal and in fact no different than the gods of the Forgotten Realms. In fact I am going to go out on a limb here and say the process to create these gods (from the Chenault home games no doubt) was very similar to what Ed himself did when he created the Forgotten Realms Gods. Maybe one day I need to go through this pantheon and the Forgotten Realms ones and see what gods they have in common. The obvious "Earth" gods are the All Father (Odin), The moon sisters (Diana, Artemis), Frafnog (Fáfnir, Midgard Serpent), Tefnut, Toth, Unklar (Chernbog), and Wenafar (Titania). Again, I like seeing this stuff. It immediately gives me a hook. If Frafnog is the god of dragons and there is a Fáfnir connection beyond the surface then there is a great reason why dwarves hate dragons more than just the Hobbit connection (which is of course drawn from the story of Fáfnir and The Ring of the Nibelung). There is deep religious animosity here. Is this what the Chenaults do in their home game? No idea, but this is what is happening in mine.

Following humans, we get the gods of the Dwarves, Elves, Halflings (LOVE the art of the halfling gods!), Gnomes, and then the humanoids (bugbears, gnolls, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, lizardmen, giants, ogres, and trolls) there are even dragon deities, fey deities, and gods of mermen and sahuagin. It is a wide variety and shows some original ideas beyond what we typically think of in the Deities and Demigods, but not quite the level of detail as found in the very focused Forgotten Realms Demihuman Deities book.

All the Other Gods

This "section" is actually many sections, but they are mostly the same format. They cover the various gods and pantheons found in our world and are covered in detail by the Codex series. Where the Codecies give us a lot of details on the myths and stories of those pantheons, this section just covers game based stats. No stats as in hp and AC, but alignments, worshipers, granted attributes, preferred weapons and the like. No details on the gods themselves, for that you will need the Codies.

Covered are the gods of the Celts, Greeks, Egyptians, Germans, Norse, and Slavs.

Who should buy this book? Anyone playing Castles & Crusades and wants to go deep into the mythologies of Aihrde. Also, anyone that owns the Codies and wants more game content.

I also say this is a good book for the AD&D (first or second eds.) player/game master that wants a bit more detail on the gods in their Deities & Demigods/Legends & Lore books. Or who just want a different set of or more gods than they currently have. Indeed the title of the book, Gods & Legends, seems to state that it is a book with the AD&D books in mind.

One Man's God - The Demons of Aihrde

As I mentioned the Demons of Aihrde are already the Demons of AD&D. But what about the monsters and gods here in Gods & Legends? Let's see what we have here.

The obvious choices will be the Lesser Gods and the Demigods in terms of the power level near that of the Demon Princes. But I am not going to ignore the odd Greater God if they fit.

For the Aihrde human gods, Frafnog might fit the bill, though he is really powerful. Onduhl is the god of evil beings and has a strong Lucifer or Loki vibe to him. Unklar looks like a demon and has the Chernobog connection I mentioned above, but he seems more devil-like than demon-like.

The gods of the Dwarves, Halflings, and Gnomes do not have anyone. The Elves have Talahnatilia but that is something other than a demon or devil really.

It is not really to we get to the gods of the humanoids that we find good candidates.

Jarga the Bloodless is worshiped by many humanoid types (gnolls, kobolds, orcs). He is a lesser god and chaotic evil. He is a god of blood and battle. He might or might not be a demon, but he will certainly has their hatred of life. His plane is listed as The Wretched Plains, one of only three gods to claim this plane.

Bugbear gods here are Chaotic Evil. Hobgoblin gods are mostly Lawful Evil. This detail tracks with my own personal use of them. Bugbears are goblins with demonic ancestry and Hobgoblins are goblins with diabolic ancestry. So. If I am searching for demons I am going to look towards the Bugbears first. The bugbear gods are both greater gods and don't really fit the AD&D notion of demons. Same is true for the hobgoblins.

Gnolls have been long associated with demons in AD&D through Yeenoghu. Most of these gods are either too powerful (Greater) and/or Lawful Evil. Here is one of the issues of trying to apply the "rules" of one game on to another. They don't have to follow the same logic or premises.

Among the Goblins, Beerkzurd could be a demon, a powerful on to be sure. He is Lawful Evil, but he feels more Chaotic Evil really. He is also one of those gods people pray to not so much to get boons from him, but in order for him to leave you alone.

The Orc gods are quite war-like and many are Lawful Evil. They mostly seem like larger, more powerful versions of orcs. Which I guess can be said about most gods. They are just larger more powerful versions of the people that worship them.

Vasser of Lizardmen is another good choice. Lesser God, chaotic evil, looks like a demon. The same is all true for Grudznar of the Kobolds and Barg of the Trolls. In fact, all three do feel very demon-like. The lack of proper stats are really the only thing keeping me from deciding a definitive yes or no. Barg though is such an interesting being in a demented sort of way. I wish I had knew of him during my Troll Week a while back.

I am not considering the Dragon gods. They are really their own thing and many listed here do not fit the idea of a demon well. Yeah...I know I have both Tiâmat and Leviathan as eodemons. Plus I mentioned Frafnog above as a potential demon.

Same with the Fey. They are really their own thing. Though in my personal campaign the Fey do war against the demons. So it could be possible a "fallen fey" is a demon (fits what history did to them in our world). Not an evil fey. A "good" faerie still has more in common with an evil faerie than they do a demon.

Flathin of the Sahuagin also is a good choice as a demon. If we take the myths of Flathin and his sister Trimon it could be that Flathin was "cast down" as the patron of mermen and now is the patron of their evil counterparts, the Sahuagin. He is a chaotic evil lesser god and looks like a giant octopus with 10 tentacles (a decapus?). He grants little to his followers, save for what they get at their religious/war ceremonies.

Originally posted here: http://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/06/class-struggles-castles-crusades-core.html

The logical extension of the Castles & Crusades class discussion is to go through the Castles & Crusades Player Archive.

I will give a brief review of this book so people will know what I am talking about. For this review, I am only considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG. I thought I had the hardcover version of this as well, but I guess I don't. Will need to remedy this.

PDF, 128 pages. Hyperlinked and bookmarked. Color cover art and black & white interior art.

This book collects most of the classes published in various Castles & Crusades books including the core and the Adventure's Backpack. What is not here are some of the classes from the various Brian Young Codex books. There are some here, but I would have to go through all the books to know how many are here and how many are not. I do not see this a miss. Many of the Codex classes are very specific to their time and place and to remove them from that context they would loose something special.

This book covers the basic (levels 1 to 13) and advanced (expanded) information (levels 13 to 24) for all the classes. The classes are:

Arcane Thief, Archer, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Chromatic Mage, Cleric, Divine Knight, Druid, Duelist, Dwarf (Heisen Fodt), Elf, High (Oraalau), Ethereal Knight, Fighter, Foresworn, Gnome (Hugrin Dun), Goblin, Eldritch (Ieragon), Halfling (Felon Noch), Illusionist, Knight, Luminary, Magic-User, Monk, Oathsworn, Pacer, Paladin, Pirate, Primal Druid, Ranger, Rogue, Rune Mark, Seeker, Skald, Thief, Warrior Priest, and Wizard.

There is a split between the classes "Basic" entry which covers levels 1 to 12 or 13, and the Expanded entry later in the book for levels up to 24. This has some immediate consequences. While I am not a fan of my class information getting split up like this, many games only go to about levels 12-14 anyway. So this would cover the majority of all games played. It does give us a nice split today port these classes over to any OSR game based on B/X D&D (max level 14) or something Hyborea (max level 12). Then you can pull in the expanded information as it is needed if it is ever needed.

The Core/Players Handbook classes are here as are some classes that only appeared in limited-run products. It is really nice to have them all in one place. Great for anyone playing a C&C game, you just need to make sure that your Castle Keeper agrees on them.

Old School Games based on D&D usually do not handle multi- and dual-classes as well as say more modern versions of D&D. Castles & Crusades makes some vast improvements here with rules on this. They also add options of "Class Plus" or add some features from another class, Dual classing and Reclassing. What is missing here is the Class and Half from the Core Players Handbook. While anyone with this book will have the Players Handbook, it might have been nice to see here.

I mentioned in my coverage of the Adventurers Spellbook that the spells can be ported over to other D&D and D&D-like RPGs. In particular, I mentioned the Chromatic Mage being used in the OSR clone Chromatic Dungeons. The class is presented here in the Player's Archive. Yes, this class can be moved over rather easily, maybe even easier than moving it over to AD&D. Likewise nearly any class here can be used in AD&D or OSR clone. Want to play a Primal Druid in Old-School Essentials? No problem, they can be added with ease.

Note: Speaking of which the layout here aims to give each class a two- or four-page spread to keep referencing the classes easy to read and view at the table. The PDF then allows for ease printing of these classes. Playing a Warrior Priest and don't want to cart your hardcover around? Print pages 90 and 91 back to back and staple them to your character sheet. Everything you need. This does mean there is some unused white space after each class, but for me, this is well worth it.

With this book and the option within I could spend an entire month creating and posting characters and no two would even be remotely the same. A must-have for any Castles & Crusades fan.