A collection of monsters designed ostensibly to work with "most" OSR systems (and therefore also early editions of D&D), although based on the OGL declaration it's likely made with Swords & Wizardry in mind. There are a lot of interesting monster concepts in this book, primarily fey and creatures from "Outside", and many suggest immediate plot hooks. However, this product is frustratingly inconsistent in how each monster is presented and formatted - not just in stat blocks, but also in terms of describing each monster. It's unfortunate, because the formatting issues are holding back an otherwise solid product. This is likely still worth picking up, if you're willing to dig out the good ideas from the product's presentation issues...

This is neat idea with an overall sloppy execution.

The adventure is 8 pages: cover, one area map, one random Balor picture. The first page provides a great introductory idea, but it fails to even summarize the overall adventure. It doesn't talk about "the band" or the werewolves or the timelines or anything really. The whole quest feels like an awkward railroad.

The sloppy parts are everywhere.

• page 2 is a map with no scale and no cardinal indicator
• page 4 tells you to roll 2d6 for information. It then provides an outcome for what happens when you roll at 1 along with two outcomes for the value 2.
• NPC stat blocks are just giant walls of unformatted, hard to read text. This is a PDF document, adding extra pages is free and makes everyone's experience better.
• There are a few "railroad contingencies" of the sort of "if the PCs don't comply, bad things happen".
• Some of the checks seem wrong. Tracking down a werewolf camp requires a DC 20 Int (Investigation) check, but somehow doesn't allow for Survival check? Suceeding the check is actually a death trap whose description takes up a full 1/8 of the text of the adventure.
• There are "uncertain" numbers of people in various parts of the adventure where knowing that number is kind of important.

I generally like to buy these little sidequests in order to have something clean, complete and coherent to "drop-in". This side quest has none of those traits.

Good adaptation of the Ghostbusters intellectual property to the wonderful Mini Six system. Includes modifications to Mini Six rules appropriate to the setting, new ghostbusting equipment stats, and a decent introductory adventure. Hope to see more like this!

I'm not one to be very critical of works created by my fellow game masters. Having said that; I do tend to have expectations of works that come with a price tag attached.

This adventure is rife with grammatical errors. Not just the usual typos (of which there are plenty) but also poor grammar ("Strangely, none of the wands requires no affinity with magic to operate" page 9) I'm not going to recount them all here (I haven't been asked to proofread, and I doubt anyone else was either)

Poor grammar aside, the art is somewhat of a saving grace. It's nice, black and white work by a few different artists, who clearly have talent. However, artwork does not a good adventure make. The dungeon map is nicely done in a computer generated program, but honestly a hand drawn map would have sufficed for this simple and very linear dungeon crawl.

Speaking of the adventure, it is not very well orchestrated at all. The hook amounts to nothing more than "Find the quest giver then jump through a portal into the dungeon" There are no exterior maps showing the location of the portal (in fact, it is just barely mentioned) and the location of the "dungeon" isn't shown either. The town where the adventure begins is not detailed beyond a paragraph or two (And not even flavor text, just DM notes) The villains are nowhere to be seen in the town (They only appear on a random encounter table) The beginning feels rushed, and really could have used a few encounters to set the tone and feel of the coming adventure.

The author could have put in a bit more work and had the party travel through the swamp in which the adventure is supposedly set. The cover of the adventure shows a couple of heroes standing in thigh deep water looking at the Horn, and that's about as close as you will get to it.

Inside the dungeon is only a little more interesting. It has an "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" theme (Trying not to spoil the plot here) with some interesting traps and interactive locations. Unfortunately the area descriptions have no flavor text and seem to have been rushed. The descriptions of the areas have not been designed for the reader, but rather, for the author who undoubtedly knew what he meant and didn't feel the need to elaborate on things. I found myself looking back through the rooms, sure I missed something, but there would be no mention of the plots or overall goals of the villains. At the end of it all, the dungeon is just a string of encounters where the PCs kick in the door, kill the monster, and move on. The author makes a half-hearted attempt at some roleplay with the bad guys but it feels like an awful exchange between B rate villains and B rate heroes. The overall impression is that the author is either very young, not a good writer, or both.

Finally, the new Background and race presented in the back of the adventure are steps in the right direction. The intent is admirable, but like so much else in the adventure, falls short due to a lack of polish and playtest. The racial power of Phase step, allowing the race to move through solid objects half their speed in ANY direction, is far too powerful an ability for a player character to possess. As is, I would not allow this race to be played and would restrict to to NPCs only.

In short, this adventure is poor. It needs much work to be playable as presented - work that should not be required of a paid product. It would be of use if a DM simply wanted a quick and dirty dungeon adventure that could be played in a single session or maybe a DM who has players that don't really care about anything other than rolling dice, hacking up a few monsters, and then getting loot. The ending will leave you scratching your head just like the beginning, wondering what the author is talking about and forcing you to put the pieces together yourself and figure out how to tie things up.

Even at $3.50 this product is a waste of time and money. It would be perfectly acceptable as a free download but I expect more from an adventure I pay for. This adventure does not deliver it.

Recommendation: Unless you just happen to have $3.50 burning a hole in your pocket, I'd avoid this one.

Amazons of Valsuum – A Review by Kurt R

This is an interesting little adventure for 4 to 6 characters of 2nd to 3rd level characters in the White Star setting.

The main content of the PDF are pages 4 through 21 out of 22 and it is bookmarked.
There's a short history of Valsuum, then it moves on to 3 races that are covered by this supplement. I would have liked to see more detailed physical descriptions, like fur/hair color, skin tone and eye colors that are common to these races. It does detail out experience tables and some special abilities for each one as well as weapon and armor proficiencies. Then there are stats for 4 types of ships that are seen in the module.

While the actual adventure starts on page 9 the Amazons don't get screen time until page 17. The Designer Notes are there for available customization of various aspects of the adventure which are very neat. There are some interesting paths leading to the Amazon Temple and also some encounter tables for day traveling and night traveling and detailed write-ups of each listing.

The Temple of the Way is one such detail that is well done and there's a brief map for it as well. It has some dynamics that are meant to test the party. Then we get to the Amazonian Pyramid Mountain that contains 5 levels leading to the top. This part can be tricky if the party is gung-ho and not wanting to be stealthy. I however would have liked to see a map for this temple and the GM would have to make one up ahead of time based on the descriptions for each level.

Overall, this is well done and would take a session or two to complete. I give it 4 stars of 5, based on the missing descriptions for the races, the miss opportunity to include a map of the Amazon Temple and I would have like a little more Amazon goodness, since that's the name of the offering.

I love new classes, I love trying them out, taking them apart and seeing what makes them tick. I also like thinking of potential characters to use with the new classes. So grabbing this product was a no brainer for me. Plus, I will admit I am a fan of Kaitlynn Pealer's art, so that attracted my attention right away.

The book is overtly for Swords & Wizardry Core rules, but it can be adapted to any old-school game. The book is 24 pages, 3 are cover, table of contents and the OGL. So 21 pages of solid content. There are nine classes and one "Advanced Class Option". There is no unifying theme to the classes, save for maybe a rough fae or celt theme.

First up is the Blood Witch which is a reprint/revision/update of a class the author did for Dungeon Crawl #3. The class is an alternate take on the magic user. This one, naturally, uses blood to power her magic. A very classic archetype. Equally naturally this one uses Constitution as the primary stat.
The blood witch has higher hit die (d6) and needs more experience than the stock magic-user.
The casting of spells required the expenditure of blood (again naturally) in the form of HP. Good thing she has a higher HD. One of the problems I see with this class is that the blood witch needs to roll higher than her Con + Spell level. So a Blood witch with the minimum Constitution (13) needs a roll of 20 (on a d20 presumably) to cast a 7th level spell. So her most powerful spells have only a 5% chance of working. In any case the blood is spent. So does have access to potentially every spell in the book, but this limiting factor seems to be too much really.

The Chesh are next. These are a race of cat-girl-like fae creatures. They have a some interesting abilities and would work very well in a game that has other faerie races in it or one if you want to get younger kids to play. They have some magical abilities based on music, though most of the abilities are support in nature.

The Forrester is akin to a archer-like ranger. Not as powerful as say the stock Ranger of AD&D but within the limits of S&W.

The Highlander is a somewhat romanticized version of a celtic themed barbarian. The barbarian rage ability is replaced by a fury ability which is like a super cleave. You can attack another victim if you kill the first. Though this one can be up to 12 feet away.

The Mermaid of the In-Land Sea is interesting. It's a mermaid, which is neat choice, but there was nothing here about how long she can live away from water. Maybe to keep the rough theme here they could be renamed to "Merrows".

The Mythwood Elf is actually very interesting. These are elves that look forever young and can summon up various elemental spirits. There is a list of the domains (Earth, Water, Air...) and what they can summon and do.

The Pixie. Pretty much what it says on the tin! Play a pixie. Actually a lot going on for this little thing.

The Prodigal is sorta like a traveling jack of trades. They pick up companions, spells, knowledge and some thieving skills. Actually a very, very workable class.

The Ruca is a dog-like humanoid character. Again a workable character and certainly more of a role-playing challenge than a game rules one.

The last class is for "Advanced" games, ie games where class and race are seperate.

The Draken-Knight and their companion the Drake are dragon riding, or drake riding, knights. The class has some odd experience point requirements. In fact it acts more like a "Prestige Class" for AD&D 1st ed than anything else, much like the Thief-Acrobat. The idea is you start out as a fighter till 5th level then you can switch over to Draken Knight. Not a bad plan really. Also reminds me of the old Knights in the Dragonlance books.

All in all this is a good book. Each class had something that felt a little off to me, but the proof is not in the reading, but in the playing. It passes my basic test when reading classes; would I play a character of that class? The answer was typically yes.

Gods of Air and Water is a 1st level adventure for the old school sci-fi game White Star. It is written by Johua de Santo from Genius Loci Games.

Included in this PDF is a broad-strokes setting. The adventure takes place on Valsuum, a world on its downfall. Once the center of a great empire with access to wealth and knowledge, it now houses three races who fight about the resources of this barren planet. The author provides stats for the rat-like Bromans while Humans follow the rules of the White Star rulebook and Tars use the “Alien Brute” class template from WS. Bromans are intelligent creatures who build underground cities and are known as excellent tradesmen and merchants. They are agile and nimble and are proficient with missile weapons. Tars are enormous big four-armed reptilian aliens. They are nomads and salvage technology from ruined cities. Valsuum is on the decline and while firearms are still common, advanced technology is not available anymore. However, there are ancient devices left, so there are still sky ships and star swords.

What’s the adventure about?

Generally, it feels quite pulpy which fits White Star like a glove. Warning: spoilers ahead! The plot hook is the crash of a sky ship, including a damsel in distress who the players can save from a group of Black Guards. Yes, as a woman I cringe a bit but the idea is well within the realms of pulp literature. The spacecraft contains a mysterious note and a hint to the ancient ruins in the East, the so so-called Pillar of Air and Water. The players have the choice to visit a Broman Outpost to nurture to woman back to life and can find out more about her and her story. The adventure includes a random encounter table which has a 4 in 6 chance of trouble. On the way to the Pillar of Air and Water the players will also come across an ancient city which is occupied by Tars and also violent Giant Apes. The players will need trickery or diplomacy to make it through. The main part of the adventure takes place in the Pillar itself. The author included a map for this 7-room-mini-dungeon. The idea of the dungeon is very nice: it’s an ancient site with strange technology: pipes and steam and a security system which fires energy bolts. Also, there is quite a big revelation for the world outlook of the players. The players can fight aliens and save the day and possibly the world of Valsuum.

Look & Feel

The product is a 14-pages PDF. There is a cover illustration and a map. The layout is simplistic but good to read. The text is mostly held in black and white but the author chose to color the headings in red which lets you easily distinguish it from the main text. The prose is easy to read but suffers from some minor grammatical errors and oversights. For instance, the rat-like creatures are first called “Brumans” and later the outpost is a “Broman” Outpost. Still, it’s well within the margin of self-published works and nothing really grave, especially considering the price. All in all, this is a functional product and the cover illustration looks lovely.

Verdict

The adventure is not completely versatile if you want to play White Star as it takes place on Valsuum and thus the players are stuck there for the moment. That being said, it’s well written and has some nice ideas. I like the “plot” which has wide reaching consequences for the world. Furthermore, the Pillar of Air and Water is a neat dungeon which makes use of pulp sci-fi tropes. The encounters look adequately balanced for a party of 1st level adventurers. (There is one exception which can end deadly if the players insist on violence but that’s ok for an old school adventure.) I know that there are many people who are very critical or commercial adventures for even one buck because there are many good free adventures out there. However, I feel that Gods of Air and Water is definitely a worthy product for USD $1.00. The adventure is somewhat of a railroad but offsets that with the interesting premise and the intriguing setting. If you want something fresh and don’t want to come up with your own adventure, this is definitely a possible way to mitigate your prep time. Personally, I’m not sure if I’d run it because it assumes that you want to play on Valsuum and I’m much more interested in space opera. It’s certainly possible to get the players off planet but after introducing the world I’m not sure if it makes much sense.

Please note: I received a free review copy of the PDF. This review is a “reading review”, I haven’t played the adventure.

I am giving this product a "Gentleman's 4" since I like many of the ideas and it is an impulse priced item.

Several of the character classes here are interesting for certain types of games: the Pixie and Mermaid are fun, the Mythwood Elf is very interesting, the Chesh and Ruca are great for folks who like faeries and anthropomorphic animal games.

However, some of the classes contain problematic or erroneous mechanics that I feel need to be corrected.

For instance, the Bloodwitch has a 60% chance per day of losing herself in the Song of Magic, during which she doesn't know what is real or what is delusion. The details of such state are never spelled out, so the character may be minorly inconvenienced or majorly incapacitated, depending on the DM... and who wants to play a character that is unplayable every other day.

Also, at each level the Bloodwitch learns 1d8 spells of the next highest level, so presumably a 2nd level Bloodwitch is learning 1d8 2nd level spells and a 3rd level Bloodwitch learns 1d8 3rd level spells and so on, which maybe a bit too quick a power escalation for some games.

All in all though, for the price I saw more good than bad here and came away with several ideas for interesting PCs and NPCs for my games.

A beautifully-presented short adventure that involves the party arriving in a small settlement where most of the population is out of its gourd on a halluncinogenic drug. The head of the town watch, who still has his marbles, asks for help in finding the source of the drug and preventing its distribution... and the fun begins!

That fun includes tribes of lizardmen, an alien artefact and plenty of action.

There's an area map and a couple more detailed ones. You might be able to use the area map as a handout, the others give too much away although at least one of them has the 'hand-drawn' feel that would make it otherwise prime material for a handout.

The background, although pleasing to the eye, is a little fussy making some of the text hard to read. Fortunately only a word or two so you can get by. Personally I prefer portrait to landscape presentation, but if you intend to run it from a screen you can manage fine.

The adventure itself should keep a low-level party happily engaged for a session's play, it's the sort of thing to keep to hand to run at an appropriate moment. The inclusion of the alien artefact could lead to more, or be left as something mysterious, as suits your overall campaign. A neat little piece.

27 pages of fae-like (or related) creatures for your Old-School games. There are some familiar names here (Korrigan, Slaugh, Ragman) but all neat takes on some classic monsters.

Use to use and read and can be dropped into any old-school game.

Can't wait to try some of these beasties out.

Overall I like it. The map mentioned above is well done. That map also doesn't take up the whole page so it is easy to add in by our own elements, encounters, traps, secret doors etc. You could add in another level of you own if you wanted. The page devoted to the adventure itself does a great job of following the "Bikini rule." Big enough to cover everything and small enough to keep me interested. I appreciate the monster selection especially. I am looking forward to more from JDS.

Up in the mountains in the ruins of a long lost civilisation is the Horn. A massive horn the purpose of which nobody knows. Only it has recently started to glow and night, and young apprentice wizards sent to look didn't come back...

Adventurers who are bold (or foolhardy) enough to go take a look will find themselves exploring a subterranean cave system, for which the GM is provided with a nice full-page map and short notes for what's found where.

If you and your players enjoy exploring caves and fighting the creatures they find there, this hangs together quite nicely. Those who want more of a plot will need to add it for themselves.

Can the adventurers find out why the Horn is glowing or what's happened to the young magelings? Up to you.