The adventure is part of a recurring sub-zine, Andy Ravenscroft's "The Raven Croaks". In the downloadable pdf I've included the entire sub-zine, and since one of the illustrations in the 'zine depicts a monster not given a name or stats until Demonsblood #6, I've included that as well.
Explore: Beneath & Beyond
Sunday, 9 October 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected VI: Clearwater Caverns (1979, Andrew Ravenscroft)
The adventure is part of a recurring sub-zine, Andy Ravenscroft's "The Raven Croaks". In the downloadable pdf I've included the entire sub-zine, and since one of the illustrations in the 'zine depicts a monster not given a name or stats until Demonsblood #6, I've included that as well.
Monday, 22 August 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected V: P'teth Tower - the individual parts (1978/79, Brian K. Asbury)
Welcome to the fifth entry in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected, wherein D&D scenarios from the 70s and early 80s are republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we return to P'teth Tower by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.
Thursday, 4 August 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected IV: The Complete P'teth Tower (1978/79, Brian K. Asbury)
Welcome to the fourth entry in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected, wherein D&D scenarios from the 70s and early 80s are republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we turn to P'teth Tower by Brian K. Asbury. For all entries in the series see here.
There is complex publication history to this scenario - in brief this previously unpublished version is much improved as well as having an extra level and maps - so you may wish to skip this and go straight to the adventure; if so, break out your dice and get rolling up some characters, grab some graph paper for mapping, and dive straight in...
Sunday, 17 July 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected III: The Temple of Psaan (1980, Andrew Ravenscroft)
Welcome to the third entry in the series Original Scenarios Resurrected, wherein D&D scenarios from the 70s and early 80s are republished with the permission of the authors, usually together with extra contemporaneous material. Today we look to The Temple of Psaan by Andrew Ravenscroft. For parts I and II see here and here.
Today we move on to The Temple of Psaan by Andy Ravenscroft, originally published January 1980 in The Beholder issue 11. Andy started out writing for Shire Talk, a small print run local D&D fanzine, but he soon moved onto more mainstream D&D fanzines, where his contributions were often illustrated by his friend Quentin Manley. Andy stopped writing for role playing games in the mid 80s, but more recently he is the author and publisher of Dark Streets, a science fiction noir set in near-future London. He is well known to regular readers of this blog for his contributions to the Complete History of Early D&D Scenarios, providing much of the info on scenarios in fanzines.Bibiliography
July '79 - Demonsblood # 3: The Raven Croaks 1 (inc. falling damge rules)
Sept '79 - Demonsblood # 4: The Raven Croaks 2 (inc. Clearwater Caverns, a D&D scenario)
Nov '79 - Demonsblood # 5: The Raven Croaks 3 (inc. background skills)
Jan '80 - Demonsblood # 6: Reviews
Jan '80 - The Beholder #11: (The) Temple of Psaan
Mar '80 - Demonsblood # 7: The Raven Croaks 4 (inc. poisons & Cerberus Class scoutship for Traveller)
July '80 - The Beholder #16: The Devil's Quagmire - co-authored with Quentin Manley. A 14-page scenario
2014 - Dark Streets, a science fiction noir set in near-future London
Also contributed to Shire Talk, a local fanzine.
Thanks to Andy Ravenscroft for allowing me to publish this, and also to Guy Fullerton for his help.
Sunday, 26 June 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected II: The Complete Barbarian (1977-79, Brian K. Asbury)
The Barbarian, which appeared in White Dwarf issue 4 December 1977, was written for OD&D. It was many years before the "official" AD&D Barbarian was published, and Brian's class was very popular (being reprinted in The Best of White Dwarf Articles Volume 1, and even translated into Italian as part of "The Blue Book"). It is a very atmospheric class, with great abilities including Fearlessness (Fear instead makes them go beserk) and Sensing Danger, whereas the Unearthed Arcana version is rather bland.
But furthermore Brian's Barbarian also had something which the official AD&D version never had - it's own dedicated scenario.
Tuesday, 21 June 2022
Original Scenarios Resurrected I: The Solo Dungeon (1977, Richard Bartle)
Welcome to a new series where out of print D&D scenarios from the 70s are resurrected (and often expanded with contemporary material by the original author). These Original Scenarios are resurrected as opposed to being reincarnated, since (as everyone knows) in D&D when you're reincarnated you have only a slim chance of coming back in the same form and are of a lower level - an OD&D adventure would be in danger of being reincarnated as a 5th edition adventure...
To start with, we present The Solo Dungeon by Richard Bartle from 1977, wherein you can get a truly authentic 1970s dungeon crawling experince. Richard wrote this adventure shortly before he co-created the world's first MUD - MUD1 - in 1978. Along with a scan of the adventure, we present a scan of the original manuscript along with the original introduction.
Copies of this do come up on ebay from time to time, but not often, and they're not cheap. Last Saturday a copy sold for rather a tidy sum:
That's a health rate of return on your investment. I wonder how much the original '77 version would fetch?Sunday, 12 June 2022
1975.7: The Inner Temple of the Golden Skeleton (Ian Livingstone)
Today's dungeon was never published at the time, nor did it have a widespread audience, so that means it doesn't truly belong in my list - but it does deserve highlighting for it is pivotal in the history of D&D. Thanks go to Kelvin Green for drawing my attention to it! The Inner Temple of the Golden Skeleton is a dungeon from 1975 by Sir Ian Livingstone. At this point no dungeons had ever been published (only sample extracts) - so the blue colouring is just a co-incidence - and the map+key was only written for Ian's own usage (so don't read too much into the lack of detail or roughly drawn map). It's importance is that it was one of the very first dungeons developed outside of the USA, with very little opportunity for it to be influenced by American dungeons, and it has a distinctly different feel to its state-side contemparies, though much about it remains a mystery: