Earlier today, Chris McDowell ran a stream in which he talked about the idea of OSR and TTRPG Blogging. I’d also heard more discussion on this topic when I was listening to Between Two Cairns. Yochai and Brad occasionally get into discussions about what the RPG scene was like back in the Google+ days. Prismatic Wasteland also wrote their own take on the topic of OSR movement and the role of blogs in it.
It’s a topic that seems to be in the air and gets me thinking about my own experience reading RPG blogs and the aspects of that that got me back into writing about the topic. I’ve also been meaning to talk about some of the Cairn adventures I’ve been reading.
My own start with TTRPGs came around 2008, in the closing days of D&D’s Third Edition. As Fourth Edition loomed and then was leaked, this is also one of the heydays of some of the early OSR movement. And some of these blogs found their way to me as I was being talked into becoming a DM to fill out play time since our primary DM wasn’t available. A lot of these blogs talked about things like freeform play and the way that exploration was more a focus of old school games. RPG Forums and blogs provided a whole wealth of knowledge about how other people ran games and how to prep. Stuff that you might expect to see from Sly Flourish or Keith Amann today.
A lot of this same type advice now comes in waves through Twitter or in long form videos on Youtube. Which really isn’t the same. There’s not the same ability to sit and intake the information at your own pace and in your own way. In the olden days (and again in more recent ones), I set my mail app up as an RSS reader and just had blogs dump their new posts into a nice convenient place for me to look upon them and decide which I needed to read right now and which could wait until later. In places like the NSR Cauldron and Cairn Discords and on Mastodon, I’ve been seeing a lot more links to blogs than I’ve seen in a while. So, maybe there’s a renaissance of blogging and we’ll see more stuff.
Which brings me to what I’ve been wanting to put more of on my own blog. Note that I’ll be discussion what I like and what I might like to see more of in the upcoming, so beware of spoilers.
Tannic by Amanda P
Tannic is a 28-page adventure written by Amanda P.. It describes itself as “A Point Crawl Forest Adventure.” It contains stats for both Cairn and Old School Essentials.
Premise
Tannic takes place in and around the eponymous small town. The town is in a forest, and there is an annual summer festival going on. As part of a festival tradition, a group of teens has gone off into the forest to camp. They were supposed to be gone for a night. It’s been three days since they were expected to return.
The Twist
In the opening section, meant for the game master’s eyes only, Tannic describes that there once was a royal ruling family in this area. Years ago, they went the way of the Romanovs and got themselves deposed. The last heir of the family, Prince Sebastian, was sealed alive into the family mausoleum, and time went on. This being a fantasy RPG, this Prince’s spirit lingers on in a destructive, though not malicious, way. Time and a redirected river have worn away the seals on the old mausoleum and the Prince’s influence is expanding.
Cool Unique Feature
There’s a sort of motif running through this whole adventure where water that has touched the mausoleum is dangerous. It grants an effect whereby the person who imbibes it can hear undead. However, that’s how the Prince’s influence is spreading.
The Bog Tomb dungeon carries on this theme and ramps it up to eleven. Areas are flooded, and would-be game masters are reminded again that drinking the water will subject their players to the influence of the Prince and his magic harp. I really like the way that this cool trap shows up in repeated and different ways that drive home the danger of the main threat.
The Main Threat
I like the way that the Prince in this adventure is absolutely a threat, and is completely worthy of being called an antagonist, but perhaps a title of “Big Bad Evil Guy” might not fit.
The spirit of the Prince lingers, and that spirit is definitely a threat. But as you read, there is no malevolence, no malice, to the Prince’s actions. The Prince just wants his buddies back. And when people come into his awareness through drinking the tomb-water, he assumes they are his buddies and tries to gather them to get the group back together.
This, of course, leads to their eventual deaths in the flooded mausoleum, but there’s no intended harm here. Just a tragic story about a boy who was slaughtered amid revolution who looks for friends and companions.
Impressions
And that sort of thing is why I really enjoy reading this adventure. For a party to just rush in and murder their way to a solution mirrors the tragedy that begins the core problem here. Like the revolutionaries before them, they just heap tragedy on hardship and leave the people of tomorrow to deal with the fallout. There’s enough here that I can see my players wanting to find an alternative way to deal with the Prince’s ghost. I have an image that as characters under the Prince’s thrall re-enact his more violent memories, the Prince would be hiding his face, afraid. Give the players an insight that the violence isn’t the point and isn’t the answer. It’s just a really fun story that goes in a different direction than a lot of adventures I’ve run in the past.
Art
The art in Tannic is a mix of public domain art and art done by the artist themself. One piece I really enjoy is the Skull Pillar from the Bog Tomb. It’s just a fun piece of art that goes along with the ossuary that it describes.
The hex map showing locations in the forest and the dungeon map of the tomb are well labeled and easy to use to find which locations are being talked about.
Writing
Like the water I spoke of before, a theme of repeated tragedies flows through the adventure in different locations. The teens are missing, the prince has this horrific death in his past, the river was rerouted and wore away the seal because this iron smelting furnace was built which then blew up and took a guy’s life savings with it. The writing through out keeps the melancholy tone of this theme of tragedy without getting too far into melodrama.
An example that I just enjoy the flow of: “Striding below the tree boughs, the pine forest’s sharp, fresh aroma fills your nostrils. The distinctive trickling of water from distant creeks and the occasional bird call reaches your ears but otherwise, there is a stuffy silence. You may be holding your breath, but the forest is too.”
It’s a simple few lines of box text describing entry into the forest, but it does it’s job well. It establishes the forest and chooses just a few words in just the right way to get some tone in before stepping out of the way.
I’ll definitely be keeping an eye for more work by Amanda P. and picking it up to read and to run.
Where to Find
Print and PDF: Exalted Funeral
PDF Only: Itch.io and DriveThruRPG
The Post Image is Taken from the Cover of Tannic by Amanda P. from their Itch.io shop
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