Tag: dungeons & dragons (Page 3 of 4)

A New House of Horrors Adventure Has Arrived: DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor for OSR Games

Out now on DriveThruRPG and itch.io is the long-awaited sequel to DD-01: a brand new house-of-horrors style adventure for OSR games in the vein of OD&D and AD&D 1st edition.

DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor

This standalone adventure features the manor house of a noble spellcaster, corrupted by a mysterious influence. The Brightwell family goes insane, subjugating or killing their mercenary guards and servants, and performing all manner of horrific ooze-related experiments. Their ultimate goal: to eventually build an army of slime-infused monstrosities to threaten the nearby settlements!

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DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor for OSR Games Out Tuesday

The 5th Edition version of DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor has been out for a hot minute, and right on its heels is the OSR version compatible with B/X and AD&D-style OSR games!

DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor

Subscribe for an email update here at the site, or check itch.io and DriveThruRPG early on Tuesday morning, March 23rd, as the new version drops! Built for compatibility with Old School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, OSRIC, and all your favorite retro-clones!

Adventure Features

  • An adventure for 4-6 adventurers of levels 10-14 in your favorite OSR system of choice.
  • An easy reference layout, with each dungeon on just a couple page spreads, and concise descriptive text to make it easier to run on game day!
  • Monsters, magic items, NPCs, and preparation lists are all in a separate, printer-friendly appendix PDF to make your life easier! You can even cut up the magic items into individual reference cards for the players.
  • SRD links throughout the text so you can reference spells, monsters, items, and more. Don’t like our layout? Snag the SRD stats and do with them what you will!
  • Monsters and magic items pulled from a huge variety of OGL sources, as well as some newly created ones. Don’t like the adventure? Steal the monsters and magic items and make your own!
  • All the stats you need to run the adventure are provided; no need to hunt down other books.
  • Cartography by Dyson Logos, but with some artful Photoshopping to give each a floor of the manor a unique layout.
  • Separate PDF with all keyed and unkeyed maps, so you can print them or extract them for virtual tabletop play.

Coming Tuesday 3/23 to both itch.io and DriveThruRPG!


If you like DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor, check out the start of this storyline in DD-01 The Darkness Beneath Dalentown. You can also pick up the setting — including not one but three settlements full of plot hooks, NPCs, new monsters, and more — in Adventures in Dalentown. Both can be found at DTRPG and itch.io; links are in our shop!

DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor out now!

After an awfully long time fidgeting with the layout and presentation of this thing, we’re finally releasing DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor! This follow-up to DD-01 can easily be run as a standalone house of horrors-style 5th edition adventure as it contains all the lore you need. But there are a few connections to DD-01 that can really expand on that adventure’s storyline, or inspire even bigger adventures elsewhere!

Easy Reference Layout

What we’re hoping you find really useful is the layout: it uses a landscape format for presentation on your computer screen, or if you print it out, this format allows quick and easy reference of maps and room descriptions all in a simple, minimal spread. You can even just put up the current level on your DM screen since none of them are more than 3 or 4 pages.

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor adventure layout

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor adventure layout

Monster & Treasure Cards

The appendices include ALL the monster and magic item stat blocks, and they are formatted for ease of use as well! The monster stat blocks are either in 2 column spreads or entire pages, so you can cut up the spreads and arrange the monsters by encounter or use these as initiative cards/tents, or whatever.

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor monster appendix

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor monster appendix

Magic items are similarly laid out so that they don’t break over columns whenever possible, allowing you to chop them up and use them as reference cards or player handouts without any fuss.

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor magic item "cards"

Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor magic item “cards”

SRD Reference Links & VTT Support

Plus, there’s an appendix of handy lists to help make prep way easier. And on top of that, we’ve linked all the monsters, traps, and magic items throughout the text of the adventure. So, if you hate our layout tricks, just pull up the stats (from 5eSRD.com) on your own and format them however you like, even if that means just having a billion tabs open in your browser of choice. For VTT folks, this is a great way to get what you need to import into your VTT of choice. Oh, and all the maps are included in a separate appendix, for easy printing or porting into your VTT of choice.

Enjoy the adventure!


If you like DD-02 The Darkness Beneath Brightwell Manor, check out the start of this storyline in DD-01 The Darkness Beneath Dalentown. You can also pick up the setting — including not one but three settlements full of plot hooks, NPCs, new monsters, and more — in Adventures in Dalentown. Both can be found at DTRPG and itch.io; links are in our shop!

Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak in the Seas of Vodari

Last time I started a project on Greyhawk adaptations of the adventures Lost Mine of Phandelver and Dragon of Icespire Peak from the D&D Starter Set and D&D Essentials Kit, respectively. I mentioned some Greyhawk factions that I’ll post (actually re-post from my old site neuronphaser.com), but that’ll have to wait a hot second. You see, the day after writing the Greyhawk article, I got my hard copy version of Tribality Publishing’s campaign setting and rules expansion The Seas of Vodari (<– affiliate linky, if you wanna help support articles like this).

If you haven’t heard of it or checked out, hit that link above (even if you don’t want to buy it) and check the preview. It’s an awesome seafaring campaign setting made up of a post apocalyptic world of island nations, at the center of which is a raging magical storm. From a setting perspective, it’s got a lot of great ideas and tools for being a lot more inclusive than classic D&D settings (i.e. LGBTQIA representation; diverse artwork; not all orcs and drow are evil), and it doesn’t go grimdark with the post apocalypse side of things. From a rules perspective, there’s a huge amount of supplementary material on firearms, cannons, boats of all shapes and sizes, and loads of new class options, monsters, and magic items. Oh, if that’s not enough of a sell, there’s a 26 page free preview, too.

So what’s that got to do with LMoP and DoIP? Well, here’s a map and a few ideas on porting those adventures to The Seas of Vodari! Read on!

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Trueland Gazetteer and Hex Map Now Available for Old School Essentials

A couple weeks back we launched the Tales from Dalentown series of campaign setting and adventure supplements with a free gazetteer for 5th Edition. Now it’s out for OSR games by way of Necrotic Gnome‘s amazing Old School Essentials retroclone of BX D&D. It’s fully compatible with a host of games like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, Castles & Crusades, and including 1st Edition games like OSRIC as well.

We didn’t just throw in a couple off-hand references to OSR systems. Inside these pages are a dozen fully developed NPC stat blocks and three new-to-Old School Essentials monster stat blocks: the Swamp Hag, the Lich, and the mysterious Whisper Wraith. “Fully developed” means that there are spell lists and weapons, armor, and gear loadouts where applicable. You don’t have to extrapolate what armor an NPC wears from their AC rating; it’s listed under Armor. You don’t have to come up with a customized spell list for an NPC spellcaster or the 12 Hit Die lich, because it’s listed under Spells Memorized. There’s even listings for what might be included in an NPC’s spellbook, if they have one.

Pick up Tales from Dalentown: Trueland Gazetteer for 1st Edition and BX for FREE at itch.io or DriveThruRPG!

And if you want to run a campaign here, or just modify the included Western Frontier hex map to your own ends, hit this post to get the Worldographer file and an unlabeled version of the map!


If you enjoyed this article, please like, comment, and share! Use the widgets to subscribe to get an email as soon as I publish something new, or check out my stuff at DMsGuild, on DriveThruRPG, on itch.io or in my shop. I really appreciate your support.

Happy gaming to ya!

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