Old-School Essentials Quick Delve #5 — Golden Lies
Two posts in one day? That's very unlike me, but it's a strange time, as it's OSE Month over in crowdfunding land. Besides more kick-ass content for my favorite retro-clone, the final stretch goal ($350,000) means everyone who backs the Demonic Grimoire campaign will get a free copy of Golden Lies, which I wrote!
A false goddess rises, her cult swelling with gold and devotees. In a half-sunken temple in a fly-infested swamp, miracles mask a darker truth. Followers vanish and wealth flows. Can players uncover the deceit before the Radiant Queen’s lies consume all?
For those not familiar, an OSE Quick Delve adventure designed for 1–2 sessions of play, perfect for side quests, one-shots, and conventions. This adventure is suitable for characters of 4th–6th level.
Thoughts On That Thing I Wrote
I'm really proud of how the adventure turned out. One of the most challenging things you can do in adventure writing is to turn a broad idea into a compact, highly gameable creation within a tight word count. I think the format falls into the same category as a one-page dungeon, but obviously not quite as restrictive. For this adventure, I wanted something centered on the classic weird cult, but I find the generic "wicked cult worshipping an eldritch god" trope lazy. That's not how cults tend to work, even if we are hand waving it away mostly for the sake of giving us mooks to battle in our elves and dwarves fantasy adventure game.
For this adventure, I wanted to find a real reason why this weird thing was going on. I'm not going to spoil anything here, but there's a bunch of stuff going on in this 20 page adventure. Additionally, most of the Quick Delves and much of the OSE anthology series are more focused on dungeon crawling, so I wanted to create an adventure that was, in part, a highly social roleplaying experience. We have weird cultists, the classic scheming high priest, and darker machinations in the caverns below.
Given where the Demonic Grimoire crowdfunder currently is, I'm feeling pretty confident that it's going to hit that last stretch goal, which means a lot of people are going to get a look at this adventure. As someone who only recently started feeling confident enough in my work to actually write adventures publically, it's exciting, humbling, and a little bit nerve racking. So, dear reader, I hope you enjoy the adventure!
Golden Lies Actual Play
I recently ran, and recorded, a complete session of Golden Lies for an illustrious group of OSR creators! The party was composed of W.F. Smith (Prismatic Wastelands), Michael Putlack (Night Noon Games & the Arcane Library), Steve Albertson (Epic Levels / Mad Dungeon podcast), and Donn Stroud (Dead Planet, A Pound of Flesh). They immediately went off the rails and the group bypassed the entire roleplaying portion I just talked about, but I had an amazing time trying to keep it all together. The actual play will be released in three parts, hosted on the Exalted Funeral YouTube channel once editing is complete. Keep an eye out for it!
I'll try to remember to post a link here when the first episode goes live.
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