Adventure Lookup - Intriguing DM Tool

I'm a big sucker for lists and databases, and my recent discovery of Adventure Lookup is squarely in that wheelhouse. It is, in essence, a big list of adventures for the various versions of Dungeons & Dragons - from the Basic set to 5th Edition, with options for Pathfinder, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and various OSR rulesets. But not only is it possible to filter the list by system, but by player level, setting, publisher - even by what treasure is included or what kinds of monsters there are to fight.

Once an adventure is located, most entries will have some kind of indication of where it can currently be obtained - often a direct link to DriveThru or some other host (However, many that were originally from Dungeon magazine just have the issue number, and only a couple include a link to the Internet Archive Dungeon collection). After that, well, it's all up the the DM . . .

'Zines Without Number

Well, perhaps not literally, but there are certainly a large number of fan-produced gaming publications that have started in recent years, many of which focus on one OSR game or another. I suppose this is no surprise, as it is my understanding that in the early days of RPGs that the Old School movement looks back to, this kind of thing was also common. Nowadays, of course, with desktop publishing and the Internet for distribution, it's easier than ever to do.

The other day, thanks to a tip from Tenkar, I picked up the latest entry into the field. The Sandbox #1 is a product from Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine Publishing, which has produced such gems as the Stars Without Number sci-fi OSR game, the Spears of the Dawn and Red Tide fantasy settings (the latter incorporating the Scarlet Heroes solo-hero rules), and - most recently - the Silent Legions Lovecraftian game based on the same ruleset. The Sandbox, Kevin says, is a vehicle for passing along a "passing idea or small notion" that could work with any or all of these.

 In this inaugural issue, we find four items:

• "The Last Prince", a custom class for Scarlet Heroes based on being the last survivor of a vanished people. Really, this is more of a background than a class, as it is "treated as a Fighter for all general purposes". It would be, I think, an interesting exercise to port over the more flavorful items onto other classes to create, for example, a Last Wizard or Last Assassin. The d8 Doom table looks useful for general backgrounds, as well.


• "Kickstarter Production Guidelines", taking up more than half the issue's pagecount, offers an inside look at the process that has made Sine Nomine one of the most reliable crowdfunding brands in the RPG market.


• "A Quick Backwater Spaceport" is a set of random tables designed for use with Stars Without Number or similar games (I get a very Firefly vibe from it) that, with just the teensiest bit of modification, could also be used for settings focused on regular ships - a pirate-era game, say, or a Pulp game based out of a tramp steamer.


• What's That Abandoned Strucure?" is a similar set of tables for, well, abandoned buildings.

All in all, it's worth taking a look at (especially as it is being offered for free), and in spite of the announced production schedule of "irregularly" I await the second issue with great interest.

Transmission Resumed

You know, of course, about the Suppressed Transmission.

But just in case this is the first you've heard of it, I shall Illuminate you. Back in 1998, Kenneth Hite, an all-around expert on conspiracy theory, Lovecraftania, and High Weirdness of all varieties, was given a column in Steve Jackson Games' Pyramid magazine for the purpose of writing about, well, conspiracy theory, Lovecraftania, and High Weirdness of all varieties. The column, Suppressed Transmission, became wildly popular, and a fraction of the columns were collected, annotated by Ken, and published in two highly-recommended collections.

Unfortunately, those collections represent the only currently available examples of the Transmissions, and official word is that further collections are not forth-coming (this based of the sales of the PDF versions of the books to date, hint hint), at least not this year. There is, however, another source for those desperate for a semi-regular, bite-sized pieces of weird brilliance - for the past few months, Pelgrane Press has been publishing articles by Ken under the precise, if prosaic, name of Ken Writes About Stuff - said Stuff consisting largely of (all together now) conspiracy theory, Lovecraftania, and High Weirdness of all varieties.

Now, I don't want to give anybody the wrong idea - despite my choice of post titles, there's no official continuity between the two projects. And indeed, there are a few significant differences - most striking, if not especially surprising, is the occasional reference to the GUMSHOE system rules, especially in the monster-centric ones. Lovecraftian monsters, of course - the one of these that I've read is "Hideous Creatures: Deep Ones", and a significant portion of the document is spent showing various ways that different skills could be used to detect Deep One activity. The ideas for giving different Deep Ones a variety of powers and motifs also tend towards the stat-specific, although they're quite useful apart from the system as well. Of course, there's plenty of ideas that aren't system-specific, too - the "world tour" of fish-men myths given a Lovecraftian slant felt especially close to the spirit of the Transmission.

The other KWAS that I've read thus far, "Die Glocke", is a much better example of the effect - Ken has himself described it as "essentially a double-length* "Suppressed Transmission" on" a lost (if it ever existed, which is in considerable doubt) Nazi science experiment. What, exactly, it might have been - options range from a nuclear testing device to a time machine - and where, exactly, it may have ended up is investigated in the typically far-ranging manner, with the system intruding only in the last few paragraphs which custom-fit the ideas into the various GUMSHOE settings.

Much like its Suppressed predecessor, the various KWAS installments cover a wide range of subjects - the "Hideous Creatures" sub-series is the most frequently recurring element, with articles covering not only Deep Ones but also Shoggoths, Ghouls, Mi-Go, and the Hounds of Tindalos - and that's just the ones that have been published or announced. There's very GUMSHOE-centric ones, under the "Zoom" sub-title (Martial Arts or Mind Control, anyone?), and more setting-heavy ones like the newly available "Moon Dust Men", which looks like it'll be all about the Cold War, UFOs, conspiracies, and the secret veil between the mundane and the fantastic.

A typical Ken Hite product, in other words.

BREAKING NEWS: Just before posting this, I have discovered that the entire first year's worth of Ken Writes About Stuff - including the ones yet to be published - is available as part of this week's Bundle of Holding collection. Ordinarily I would say that the ability to pick and choose the most interesting articles is, for a collection like this, an improvement over the subscription model. Given the Bundle's set-your-own price methodology, however, this week may present an opportunity to check out the whole range at a bargain price.


*He's being a bit modest here - the average Transmission takes up about three pages in the PDF collections, while the KWAS articles are 10 - 11 - counting the cover and title page, of course.