Hello All.
I am developing a dark fairytale/sword & sorcery campaign setting for OSE and am looking for some adventures that fit the general motif and which I can drop-in, modify, and use at the table.
So far I have identified the following:
The Black Wyrm of Brandonford
The Evils of Illmire
Ragged Hollow Nightmare
Does anyone have any other recommendations that would be good fits?
I love this topic. Fortunately (or unfortunately) between fairytale and sword and sorcery you cast a pretty large net over the NSR. You may need hone in on what exactly you are looking for to get recommendations that work better for you.
Here is a list of fairytale / dark woods fantasy adventures featured on Between Two Cairns in Chronological order that you could listen to see if they feel right for you:
Tangled
The Sepulchre of Seven
The Toxic Wood
The House of the Hollow
The Blackapple Brugh
Elder Oak
The Gnomes of Levnec
Falkrest Abbey
The Frost Spire
Palace of the Silver Princess
Beyond the Crystal Cave
Gone Fishin’
Sleeping Palace of the Feathered Swine
Willow
Waking of WIllowby Hall
Bonepicker’s Tower
Horrendous Hounds of Hendenburgh
Other Fairy tale Adventures (that I don’t currently see in other comments)
Hideous Daylight by Brad Kerr
Where the Wheat Grows Tall by Camilla Greer and Evelyn Moreau
Saving Saxham by Joseph R Lewis
Tannic by Amanda P
Gardens of Ynn by Emmy Allen
Doom of the Savage King’s by Harley Stroh (conversion from DCC necessary)
I know you started with Ragged Hollow Nightmare but I would keep checking out other works by Joseph R. Lewis as he writes both fairy tail and sword and sorcery genres incredibly well (though not always at the same time). I’d also look at other adventures by Zzarchov Kowolski as I think he nails the dark fairy tale vibe. Other than raiding adventures from Dolmenwood, I know that products from “Rosethrone Publishing” by WR Beatty are also popular choices.
I reviewed ‘The Darkling Seas of Islesmere’ recently. It’s for Best Left Buried but conversion wouldn’t be too hard, I’d run it with Mork Borg, Mythic Bastionland, or Cairn myself. It’s a 6 mile hex full of stuff that you could easily drop on a coastline.
I took bog standard format sword and sorcery tropes to create the framework for this one: a cult forms around a weird god, PCs are invited into the lair as a sacrifice, and meet the god at the bottom of the dungeon.
Then I mixed in a lot of fairy tale tropes. Dungeon starts at a “feast”. There are lots of ghosts in the dungeon, including a cowardly one that is more of an NPC. There is an evil talking oyster that rides around in a little cart that tries to join the party to kill them. And there are songs… (my favorite coming from some singing worms that ride by the PCs in a tiny boat).
Final confrontation with the god is where the “Disputation” takes place. You talk to the god, and argue about actual medieval philosophy.
Based on the history noted in the brief overview, Witches of Frostwyck could work well with the setting (though in it the witchlords were defeated more recently…)
I’ve been running a low-prep Shadowdark game that’s just a series of point crawls with a few published adventures seeded into each area. I prefer adventures I can get away with just reading the opening section of, and then only reading through as the party explores it if they happen to go there. So far the ones I’ve found particularly decent and minimal prep are:
any of the Necrotic Gnome modules. I just finished Isle of the Plangent Mage and Winter’s Daughter is still one of my all-time favourite easy one-shots
One Thousand Dead Babies, Gellarde Barrow and The Temple of Lies from Neoclassical Geek Revival
Lair of the Brain Eaters from LotFP
The Pirate Borg stuff from Limithron is good, but might not totally fit your theme
Trial of the Slime Lord and Hideous Halls of Mugdulblub, both for Shadowdark
The Tomb of Aum-Pharath from Carcass Crawler
Might not fit your tone but Wizard Trash, Goblin Treasure was a great drop-in
I actually ran Nightmare over Ragged Hollow and while the town, the whole point crawl and all the little parts of the adventure surrounding the big main dungeon are fantastic I thought the main event was incredibly disappointing. It’s a very linear dungeon, much of it is basically a hallway with optional encounter rooms on either side. If I were to run it again I would re-map the whole temple, or even just replace everything above the basement with another dungeon module that roughly fits.
With some minor modification, Demon Driven to the Maw could fit! Otherwise, maybe flip through some of the old AD&D adventures? The B, N, X, and Ravenloft series might be useful.
Demon driven to the maw is perfectly easy to drop into a campaign. Just stick the manor in a town and invite the PCs to the party. The only minor sticking point is that it’s a lil heavy on world building — since damnit. Where is the spoiler tag. Well anyways. For reasons.