Good Artists Borrow...

This is somewhat of a follow-up to my previous post about the role of "canon lore" as it pertains to TRPGs, and how I care for it (answer: not very much). One thing I admire about the OSR community is their commitment to the open-ended freedom of the hobby - they're not ones to concern themselves with how things "should" be, and they take pride in mixing and matching content from different sources.

You'll often see published adventures being referred to as "modules," and even though that parlance isn't in official use over at Wizards of the Coast, people still use the term to refer to their 5e adventures. This reflects a conception of the purpose of published adventures as being, well, modular - the idea is that they would be quests, encounters, and locations you could drop into an ongoing campaign so you wouldn't have to draw out a bunch of maps in advance. Over time, this gave way to adventures being entire pre-built campaigns expected to be played from start to finish, and with it, some of the do-it-yourself nature of campaign worlds has been lost. But it's definitely not lost in the OSR scene, and often you'll find DMs discussing how they work different modules into their settings.

I use the Lunar Lands to run almost all of my games. This includes campaigns I've run from modules - and I've made use of modules that originally came from a number of different settings and even systems (as Dave Hargrave put it, the numbers don't matter, only the ideas). As a result, my campaign map is a patchwork of original content and stuff taken from various writers. Yes, this does often result in me needing to tweak material to fit my setting - changing NPC names, scaling back the level of magic, and so forth - but I find that can be just as engaging as writing original material. It's like putting pieces of a puzzle together and seeing how well they can fit, and I hope to create something that's more than the sum of its parts.

To put things in perspective, here's a list of the different locations I've used from different modules, and where I placed them in the Lunar Lands. Some of these are locations I've used; others are locations I placed on the map should I need them in any of my sandbox campaigns. I should warn anyone now, this post is not safe for canon purists!

And a big shout-out to Bryce of Ten Foot Pole, who picks up the burden of reviewing more modules than you could expect one man to do so and stay sane. Without him, I wouldn't have known about some of these.

Click to enlarge

Classic Modules

• I've seen it written once that every old-school D&D setting should have the Keep on the Borderlands and the Village of Hommlett in them somewhere, and this is no exception. I placed Hommlett in the territory of Redwald, while the Keep (named Snowhall Keep) is on the border between the Vardessian imperial core and the Ukian March, across from the Caves of Chaos (now named Broken Skull Cavern).
• Although I haven't read as much of the original Clark Ashton Smith stories as I perhaps should, I do find the hex map of Averoigne included in Castle Amber to be a nifty little mini-setting inspired by medieval history and folklore, which of course I can't get enough of. It's been dropped in as the City-State of Vyonnes.
• As an avowed follower of the British Old-School, I have a special soft spot for the modules put out by TSR UK, before they were Games Workshop. I've run The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh in my setting, even before Ghosts of Saltmarsh was released, and the town of Saltmarsh is in the Vardessian province of Gundarsland. Yes, I'm aware it should be Salzsumpf, but my players still called it Saltmarsh and I got used to it.
• As part of a sandbox campaign, I had plans to throw in the Fell Pass from The Dragon issue 32 on the border between Taldameer and Golnir as an obstacle for my players to get past as part of an overland journey to Quel'Ahma. The campaign didn't last that long, unfortunately, but it's still there on the map.
• Little-known fact: during the 2e era, TSR put out a few sourcebooks on gaming in different historical eras. One of them, Charlemagne's Paladins, was based on the early Holy Roman Empire, so naturally I was going to crib from that for Vardessy. The villages of Eigenmacht and Fabelhaft come from one of the modules included - and yes, their names are different German expressions amounting to "not real." Nice try, TSR, but future generations have Google Translate on their side.
• And finally, yes, I did put the Tomb of Horrors in Quel'Ahma. Just in case.

Other Games

• It's no secret that Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has been a big influence on my setting, and the game put out some very nice city guides and adventures, so of course I would integrate some of those in my setting. Both the town of Bogenhaufen from Shadow Over Bogenhaufen and the city of Middenheim (renamed Torvaldshaupt to fit with its new status as the center of the cult of the god Torvald) from City of Chaos are included in Vardessy. Similarly, the city of Rolanfels is an adaptation of the very good fan-made guide to Bergsburg you can find here.
• The castle of Corteaguila in Taldameer is based on an old module on Weathertop from Middle-Earth Roleplaying, and is the result of me throwing a landmark on the road for my players on the spot when I didn't have anything prepared. MERP has a number of very handy fortress modules with detailed and realistic maps, so they're helpful for this purpose.
• The city of Sirka in Kvesland is an adaptation of Dave Morris's city of Brymstone for Dragon Warriors. I owe more to Dave than I do to perhaps any other individual creator in the TRPG world, so in terms of if his creations would show up in my setting it was only a matter of "when."

Newer Stuff

• Among one of the campaigns I've run that's been most dear to my heart was a run of 5e's Curse of Strahd, moving the setting of Barovia to a backwater barony in Togarmah. No impenetrable mists here - I don't believe in trapping my players if they're truly not invested, and many stories can attest to how that's more likely to burn players out than make them want to escape, so I just made it part of the material plane. However, I would later discover that Curse of Strahd only details the northern half of the Barovia that was established in previous editions. In order to make use of those materials as well, the southern part - including Immol, Mount Sawtooth, and the village of Krofberg from the 3.5e setting guide - was made into a Vardessian-controlled subdivision of the Togarman March known as Neiderbaroven. On the border is where I set the excellent fan expansion to Curse of Strahd, The Beast of Graenseskov.
• As part of a later campaign taking advantage of the release of Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (one that was actually run by one of my players from the aforementioned campaign), a few other Domains made it into my setting, including Dementlieu being in the City-States and the valley of Tepest, including the village of Viktal, being in Halvardy. It was a great time, and I'm happy to make it canon.
• There's a funny story behind Porto Libre, the capital of Valossa. Green Ronin's Freeport: City of Adventure book(s) is one that hews closely to the old-school ethos of publications being setting-neutral and able to be dropped into any world, and I saw fit to place the city into the Lunar Lands. The only problem...I grew up in Freeport, Maine, and I am incapable of seeing it as a city of adventure. My solution was to rename it and make everything feel slightly Spanish - and, when I already had a Spain stand-in in Taldameer, it eventually evolved into being the capital of an entire fantastic Mexico analogue.
• Similarly, another setting-neutral city - Bard's Gate by Frog God Games - was adapted into the city of Pylithopon in Golnir.
• And, yes, I have something from 4e on here. Horror of horrors! Don't worry, I dislike the system as much as anyone else, but remember what I said about numbers not mattering, only ideas? Reavers of Harkenwold is an interesting module, seeing the PCs gathering allies and waging a guerilla war on a barony taken over by bandits. It's one I hope to run (in 5e) some time, so Harkenwold is here on the map, in Vardessy - the Holy Roman-inspired empire seems like the perfect place for petty coups and robber barons.

The OSR

• I'm eagerly awaiting the release of Dolmenwood - the folkloric, low-fantasy setting is the kind of stuff I want to inject directly into my veins. Naturally, the Duchy of Brackenwold is in the setting as one of the many fiefs of Vardessy. And yes, I do intend to put both Winter's Daughter and Barrowmaze in there too.
• If there's one thing I love, it's modules that present a regional sandbox with a number of areas and sidequests to explore. Curse of Strahd is one - and Dungeon Crawl Classics' The Chained Coffin is another I've had the pleasure to run. The Shudder Mountains has been placed in Vardessy under the name of the Schaderbergen, with the Appalachian influences reskinned to a more ancient Germanic vibe (and a little bit of Pennsylvania Dutch). As for the town of Dondern, that's a special case - although I was inspired by the town of Thundercrack described in The Almanac of the Shudder Mountains included in the boxed set, the description of a town built on platforms over water brought Lake-Town from The Hobbit to mind, and I have the MERP module on it saved up in case I need to represent the town.
• The ruined dwarven hold of Amudid (Thunder Rock) is an adaptation of Sanjikar from the excellent OSR module Mines, Claws, and Princesses - another one I hope to run some time.
• The island of Al-Awali off the coast of Quel'Ahma is based on Kalmatta from The Treasure Vaults of Zadabad - I had to change the name because I kept thinking of olives.
• And you'd better believe that Yoon-Suin and Qelong exist over the sea to the east.

Altogether, it's a diverse bunch - but it's brought us many hours of fun, and I like to think I make it all work. What about you? What modules have you integrated into your game worlds? I'd be interested in seeing what others have made!