UnSung Heroes of the OSR World! - Part III

I have a nomination of my own for an UnSung Hero of the OSR World! Now at first you may say why is this guy an UnSung Hero Of Old School Roleplaying, I will point out a few facts and then cover why in total I think he qualifies. Consider these things when you make your nominations.

First a little bit of background which ties in with my first post in this series and with some other previous posts. As I built my forum, he was a great source of advice and suggestions and contributed in large measure to making the forum what it currently is, he made my job a lot easier because of his assistance. Over at my forum The Ruins of Murkhill (OD&D) (yeah the blog and the forum have the same name) I recently created a new area called Rules/Campaigns Projects (Both Joint & Singular) about a third of the way down the page and the first project is called Space: 1977 (the Traveler/OD&D mashup) which I have already shared about.

My friend tetramorph (aka Nathan) (you can read his About page) posted this thread in General Discussion titled idea: a shared "mini-module" project  in which he outlined a project and he is looking to see who might be interested in participating in it. I asked him if I could quote him and he granted permission. When I indicated that I was going to highlight him as an UnSung Hero of the OSR World! he said:

Well, that is really nice.

I'm psyched about the exposure and geting the word out about the project idea.

I'm not sure if I'm an OSR hero - so I am not unsung! I'm exactly proportionately sung to my actual output!

The point being that he does not think he has done that much. I beg to differ. So let me talk about him a bit and then about his idea: First of all his blog is called Campaigns Playable . . . with paper and pencil and traditional legendaria . . . and it has been around since November of 2013 and over that time he has contributed 26 posts - yeah that does not sound like a lot - until you look into it and the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. His third post is about the house ruled OD&D campaign that he is developing and he writes:

 Dun Kells names a wargames campaign set in a fantastical medieval Christendom. 

It is the dawn of the sixth age of the world and “Middle Earth” (Mitgaard) has now fallen down to mere “earth” in almost all its regions. The free and rational races continue their losing battle against the forces of chaos while the church spreads its gospel of a universal Law not derived from earth but heaven. The “Eldar” have long since departed to the uttermost west and now only dark elves lurk in wooded glens in dispersion and shadow, barely and listlessly maintaining a mere handful of far-flung woodland realms. The dwarves too now feel the urge to seek their promised slumber at the roots of the ancient mountains but some still wander, trade and maintain their hidden vaults. “Hobbits” now live by wits and in hiding. 

The Forests of Dun Kells form a wilderness that separate various scattered kingdoms and grand duchies of Christendom from unknown lands beyond. Dun Kells is situated somewhere in an imaginary and vast temperate continental European region. To the west the shattered and scattered lines that claim descent from Charles the Great maintain their Lawful estates of Christendom and the lonely isles of Britannia maintain their Lawful Christendom in memory of the long departed Once and Future King. Far to the south and east the various Slavic tribes have only recently adopted the new religion and its Law. Further east lie unknown mystical and barbarian lands. To the direct south lies much of the remains of the various empires that once ruled the great Middle Sea. Finally, to the north lies the mighty icy sea. Beyond that sea are lands of barbarian pirate-people known as the “Norse,” or Vikings with their powerful neutral and chaotic gods. 

So imagine King Arthur and Beowulf meet in a low-magical post- “Middle Earth” Christendom. Turn the dial a bit up on the Tolkien and a bit down on the Howard, then mix in a bit more of the “Three Matters” (that is to say, Arthurian Legend, the Roland Saga and the medieval reception of classical myth and legend) and add just a bit of the ballads of Robin Hood and some of the Brothers Grimm and you will get the “feel.” Magic is waning, the church is waxing, but they are not necessarily at war. The Archbishop and Merlin both consult with King Arthur, etc. 

Will your characters bring law and order out of this chaos and loss, or at least die trying? Fight on!

  Through the next few posts he says this following in the introduction:

These campaign specific rules seek to do three things: to engage a legendarium of a fantastical medieval Christendom, to build into the mechanic reward for more heroic, “high fantasy” play-style and to build more obviously into the core rules the conquering, building, ruling and keeping, not only of strongholds, but their concomitant realms as home-bases for more large-scale wargaming.

and in the "forward" (I trust you know the reference) he says:

Dun Kells names a wargames campaign set in a fantastical medieval Christendom. The published rules, additions and modifications are designed not so much as a “retro-clone,” but as a “retro-supplement” to the original edition of the first published rules for fantastical medieval wargames campaigns. So, just as that game had several supplements that still relied upon the core three digests, so too the rules for Dun Kells do not stand alone but require the same three, or their “retro-clones” and simulacra. In this document I provide a description of the “campaign world” for which I designed those rule additions and modifications.

Eventually as the project developed, he renamed the project from Dun Kells to A Supplement for Perilous Realms. Since I am The Perilous Dreamer, I am rather fond of that name. He posted this when it was completed:

A Supplement for Perilous Realms

After many conversations over many fora my first old school project is finally available!

A Supplement for Perilous Realms: Suggestions for Pick-up Sessions and Otherwise Rollicking Fantastic Medieval Wargames Campaigns Playable with Original Edition Rules and their Various Simulacra
The Lulu version is currently $4.15
If you buy it you will help contribute to my becoming a hundredaire through old school self-publication!
Otherwise, a free PDF is also available
Share, enjoy, let me know what you think!
Thanks!

And that brings us to his current project idea: a shared "mini-module" project that I mentioned above and here are a few tidbits:

A shared subforum where we build "mini-modules" together.

I love how TSR called them "modules," not "adventures." Use of the term "Adventures" seems like what I am getting is going to be self-contained and goal, if not narrative oriented. "Module," sounds, to my ears, well, modular. And here I mean not only something that could be dropped into a sandbox setting (their original implication, I think) but droppable in relationship to each other in terms of a multi-layered dungeon.

But here is my other idea. What if each map was keyed three times: once for normal leveled characters, then for heroic and finally for super heroic and beyond. So, for example, a kobold lair for normals, a hobgoblin for heroic and a troll for super-heroic. Thus many birds are killed with one stone. Or, again, a wight borrow for normals, a mummy's tomb for heroes, a vampire's undercroft for super-heroes.

Not too much standardization. But just enough that the modules would be "modular," that is to say, mutually compatible.

New monsters and new magic items for sure. But especially unique tricks and traps.

So I am imagining something like the Travel sub-forum in the group work on many different "locations," but unlike that sub-forum we would not need a shared setting "map," but mutual compatibility across "levels"? Does that make sense?

Okay, so this is just a list of possible "mini-module" titles based upon the monster list and some magic items. Namely, those monsters that clearly constitute the mythic underworld (vs. wilderness) in my loose estimation and the misc. magic items (some, not all of them).

I just went through the lists and tried to give a fun, youthful, pulpy adventurous title based upon each.

The Bandit’s Lair
The Brigand’s Redoubt
Berserker’s Mountain
Revenge of the Mad Dervishes
Nomads of Wasteland
Pirate’s Cove
Buccaneer’s Bounty
Cavern’s of the Lost Cavemen
Mermen’s Hidden Mere
Tucker’s Kobolds
Night at Goblin Mound
The Minions of Orcus
The Gnoll Knoll
The Ogre’s Horrid Banquet

This is just a few titles, he lists many more as examples. And just a bit more:

Okay, so one of the directions I am traveling now (and assumed in my proposal for "mini-modules") is something like the following for a setting:

I want to combine Wayne Rossi's account of the "Original D&D Setting" of The Outdoor Survival Board (or some equivalent wilderness) as a "Demon Haunted Land" with Philotomy's Musings about the "Dungeon as Mythic Underworld." I imagine doing so by filling up the wilderness with lairs and "dungeons."

 There is quite a bit more, but this should be enough to whet your appetite. But I believe you can now see why I think he is an UnSung Hero.