A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Adventure Generator

CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Adventure Generator is a role playing game supplement written and published by Kent David Kelly. This is a generic supplement although it is primarily aimed at creating adventures for Old School games.

This is available as a 702 page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $4.99 but was purchased at the reduced price of $0.99 during a sale. Two pages are the front and rear covers, seven pages are front matter, six pages are the Contents, two pages are About the Author, six pages are ads for other supplements and one page is blank. Also included are seven pages of worksheets for designing the adventure, in PDF and Word format.

The one page Description gives a brief overview of the book.

Chapter 1: Introduction explains that the supplement is intended to help create adventures, why a sandbox campaign is good, how the adventure creation process is described in this book and finally a copy of the worksheets for planning the adventure.

Chapter 2: Conceiving the Adventure starts with three random tables for generating the adventure title and a fourth table of pre-generated samples. Next is a table for getting the characters involved in the adventure.

Chapter 3: Envisioning the Benefactor starts with a table for describing the benefactor or patron who employs the characters then defining their archetype and recommended class archetype. Once this is done, the benefactor class and calling are determined, together with some specialisations, experience level and level title, if appropriate. Level titles are something that is seen in Old School games, but generally not in more modern ones. The final section is the benefactor’s promised reward, which is not just money; it includes things such as spell casting, boons, favours, followers, information, powers, legacies and training.

Chapter 4: The World of Adventure starts with the journey to get to the site of the adventure. There are a variety of different locales covered, including extraplanar, underground and underwater. Each has different terrain types which are then further subdivided. What the destination that the characters are travelling to is considered and then there is an overview of the Oldskull multiverse, and how there are problems with some of the traditional layouts of the planes and their powers. Finally there is a table of Dungeon Archetypes and Destinations.

Chapter 5: Locales of the Journey Region uses information on locales from the previous chapter to generate different types of location, accompanied by the Glossography from the Game World Generator explaining what they are.

Chapter 6: Turning Tropes into Unique Ideas starts with Chaotic Descriptors, a d1000 table of different descriptions that can then be added to the location types (or NPCs, dungeon rooms, monsters, treasures etc.).

Chapter 7: Creating Quests While Encouraging Free Will starts by actually defining the quest, starting with actions and target branches, person, creature or faction, places with different tables for targets and things.

Chapter 8: Destinies and Details has secondary quest goals, possible complications, potential allies and guides, tasks before departure and starting weather.

Chapter 9: Elements of Evil starts with designing a villain. First is a villain archetype, followed by motivators and goals, flaws and weaknesses and actions and methods. Next there are non-monstrous enemies and finally a table on selecting monsters.

Chapter 10: Guidance Through the Labyrinth is the final chapter and has an example of designing an adventure (although not really the final dungeon) by following the steps laid out in the book.

CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Adventure Generator in Review

The PDF has the major and minor sections bookmarked, although not some of the more minor tables. The Contents is to a similar level of depth. Given the complexity of the supplement, even greater depth in the bookmarks would have been useful. There are also hyperlinks within the book, going forwards to a new table or backwards to an earlier one, which is a great help to navigation given how many places refer to another table. Navigation is good, but it could have been a bit better.

The text maintains a single column format and a few errors were noticed. The artwork is the typical scattershot public domain works that are placed in a less than logical manner – they frequently break up tables for no apparent reason rather than being used to fill up blank space. Presentation could be better.

Readers familiar with the Castle Oldskull range will know that it tends to use a lot of tables, and this is one of the more table-heavy supplements. Although the Adventure Generator is said to tie together all the other supplements written to date, it sometimes gives the impression that it’s actually intended to sell those supplements, as more than one section has words to the effect “If you want more results, get this other supplement” which gives the definite impression that this is incomplete by itself and contains samplers from many others. Directly referenced in the supplement are the following: City State Encounters, Dungeon Delver Enhancer, Game World Generator, The Book of Dungeon Traps, The Classic Dungeon Design Guide I, II and III and The Pegana Mythos, some of them multiple times.

The method of adventure design will definitely not appeal to everyone. Those who are both willing and able to convert random results into an actual adventure (Chapter 10 is a useful read for this) will find it useful. Those who want some sort of structure to build an adventure around will find it a bit hard going.

The supplement definitely seems designed for Old School adventures – which the author clearly thinks is the best type; not really true, as the best type is the type you personally enjoy the most – and those most familiar with older editions of the game will probably find the supplement easiest to use. If inspiration does not strike from randomly rolling on d100 and d1000 tables and looking at random words, this is probably not for you, although it can still be possible to get some type of inspiration from it; there is a fair amount of content and some of the non-table information is useful. Chapter 10‘s portrayal of the creation process from start to finish would clearly appear to show that familiarity with this process makes it a lot more useful.

CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Adventure Generator is a lot of tables that is probably not useful for everyone, but there are still bits of interest that would make it worth picking up, especially at a discount, and it can be found by clicking here.