I've been meaning to do this for a while - start an irregular series of posts about influential yet often overlooked releases in the OSR. This is THAT first post for OSR Deep Tracks.
Joe Bloch, often known as the
Greyhawk Grognard (and man behind the
Greyhawk Grognard blog) is probably best known for his OSR megadungeon release:
Castle of the Mad Archmage. In many ways,
CotMA is Joe's imagining of what Gary Gygax's megadungeon would have looked like, assuming he hadn't been forced out of TSR back in the day. Its very much an Old School dungeon and I ran it for over a year with one of my groups to great success.
Therein lie's Joe's strength, the "What if Gary had...?" I was never a huge
Marvel comics fan as a kid but I picked up every issue of
What If? I could get my hands on. I enjoyed the alternate takes. They made me think.
Joe's other major project is
Adventures Dark & Deep, very much a "What if Gary had gotten to do AD&D 2e as he had planned?" So, Joe dug deep with the hints Gary had published and later spoke about and he designed and published
AD&D - The What If Edition ;) If I weren't neck deep in
Swords & Wizardry Light its probably the OSR edition I'd pull out for my next campaign - it really does hit the notes that Gary hinted at back in
Dragon Magazine.
Often overlooked is
A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. The precursor to
Adventures Dark & Deep, I often see it as an unofficial
Unearthed Arcana II. These are the classes Gary hinted at. This is the book that led to
Adventures Dark & Deep.
New and revised classes - the bard, jester, mystic, savant, and mountebank. I remember reading about plans for these in Dragon, but alas, it never would be until
A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore.
The book is modular too, so you can take parts that you want - classes, and maybe only one or two, and leave the spells. Pick and choose among the monsters. Want to use the alternative combat presented? Do so. If not, don't. Looking for seaborne adventuring rules? Got you covered. Whatever you need to do. Its a supplement, not a system, and its easy enough to use with the OSR system of your choice with minor conversions (and often not even that).
There you have it.
Tenkar's Tavern's first
OSR Deep Track Pick -
A Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore. An OSR What If...
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