Introducing Old-School Adventures™ Module VA1: Valley of the Five Fires

Many of you may have noticed how "thin" my blog posts have been over the past few weeks. Well, in addition to the holidays, and trying to put the finishing touches on the d30 Sandbox Companion, the majority of my time has been consumed with what is now officially Old-School Adventures™ Module VA1: Valley of the Five Fires.

Those familiar with William Dowie's Mongol Month (back in Oct./Nov.) over at his Ramblings of a Great Khan blog, or my various notes about "getting my thoughts together" for said contest (here, here, and here), might recall my trouble refining my thoughts into something "small" for the Mongol-themed adventure design contest. That's because the more I got into it, the larger in scope it became. So I just kept working behind the scenes on my thoughts, and used a little free time during the holidays to and, well...

HERE'S A TOP-LINE OVERVIEW...

• it's a Mongol-inspired setting, with Mongol-inspired adventures/encounters,
but they're not necessarily the villains
(that "not the villains" thing was William's original direction from his contest, and I kept that; the major quest and the smaller detailed adventures are inspired by the setting and the mythos, but the overall vibe is definitely more fantasy than history)

• the single edition of the module supports 0e/1e/BX and comparable retro-clones
(e.g. NPCs' spells are noted to easily adapt to any ruleset, and the new monsters are detailed using a "dual stat" format with separate Oe/1e and BX stat blocks)

• the contents are set up to support sandbox-style play
(e.g., historical information on the area, details on the major NPCs including hidden motivations, info the major settlement including suppliers, plenty of pre-gen minor NPCs, adventure seeds for different types of play, and many of the detailed encounter areas can be placed whereever the DM sees fit)

AND NOW FOR SOME FULL-FRONTAL TEASING...
Since I have a bit more proofing/editing to do (hope to finish up over the weekend), and still need to order a test Lulu print to check the cover color, today I'm just going to tease you with a full preview of the inside of the 36 pages of the book, with complete details on the contents to come next week.