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Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Mini Review - The Nameless City (Swords & Wizardry)

The Nameless City comes in two flavors - Core/Complete and White Box.  Finally some White Box love ;)  They are separate products, so be sure you purchase the right one for you (it is suggested if you plan on using the module with a different set of OSR styled rules, that you opt for the Core/Complete version - I haven't looked at the White Box version, so I can't tell you what the differences are - yet).

What is The Nameless City?  It is an adventure for characters of levels 7-10.  It draws inspiration from a HP Lovecraft short story.  It  looks to be pretty lethal.

I did a very quick read thru this adventure, and it will require players that think first and then act.  Impulsive parties won't last long.  Many of the adversaries are spell casters, which makes this far from the usual dungeon crawl many players are used to.  The DM should expect to make plenty of notes when reading through this, and it will probably require multiple read throughs before you are ready to run this.  There is plenty of atmosphere, so reading to prepare should be a pleasure.

We get four new monsters added to the S&S ruleset - three should be familiar already.

From the blurb:

In the world there are ancient, degenerated remnants still living, survivals from unimaginable antiquity. What happens when the adventurers stumble across one of these deadly places? There must be treasure untold for those willing to brave the long-forgotten perils of ... The Nameless City.

This module by Alphonso Warden is loosely based upon the eponymous short story by HP Lovecraft, and is designed for characters level 7-10.

The module is available for both Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox and Swords & Wizardry Complete Rules and Freestyle (Core) Rules. If you're going to use it with another old-school system, it's obviously going to be compatible, but use the Complete/Freestyle version for this: the hit dice and other information will be closer to other systems than WhiteBox.

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for the review, Tenkar! I think you win the prize for fastest reviewer in the West!

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  2. Heh... I couldn't run it from the way I read it, but I learned speed reading for my day job ;)

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  3. I love Warden's other works, thanks for the heads up.

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  4. No prob BIUsKrEEm - OSR products go to the top of my review pile ;)

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  5. Can't wait to play this one! When are you running it for us? ;)

    Sakusammakko

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  6. @Rob - Hey, lets see... at the rate we currently clear out adventures? About 3 years ;)

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