A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Treasure Trove

CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Treasure Trove is a role playing game supplement written and published by Kent David Kelly. This is a treasure supplement intended for use with OSR role playing games, particularly Dungeons & Dragons and derivatives.

This is a 786 page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $3.99 but was purchased at the reduced price of $0.99 during a sale. One page is the front cover, four pages are the front matter, two pages are the Contents and one page is an ad for another supplement.

Part I – Treasure Lore explains how this supplement features tens of thousands of non-magical treasures that can be used to replace unimaginative treasures. The author states that Book II, detailing gems and jewellery, is in preparation (although at the time of writing it still hasn’t been published).

The Value of a Hoard states that this supplement does not say how to generate random treasure hoards and that such should be found in the relevant GM materials. Monster-guarded hoards can be designated by a Lethality Level and that non-sentient monsters have an intelligence of 0-3 (in D&D terms) and sentient monsters one of 4+. Sentient monsters have normal treasure and non-sentient monsters simply have valuables that are nearby but which are not actually guarded.

Next in this section are monsters arranged by Lethality Levels from below Level I to Level XI. Each of these levels has examples of sentient and non-sentient monsters, and then there are chances for incidental and guarded treasure for sentient and non-sentient monsters followed by value of incidental treasure for non-sentient creatures and guarded treasure for sentient. There’s a note on extrapolating beyond Lethality Level XI – although Level XI includes such as demon lords, archdevils and Great Old Ones.

Finally in this section is Treasure Trove Value Considerations and has notes on the value as well as trick and trap protected treasures, referencing The Book of Dungeon Traps and unguarded treasure.

Part II – Coinage starts with how the author has tweaked standard coinage values to make it easier. Next there are tables for minor (0.01 gp value), silver, electrum, gold and platinum coins. Each coin is named, such as “Aquitainian Grotes,” and followed by a very brief description, such as silver coins, old silver coins, exotic silver coins etc.

Part III – Miscellaneous Treasures is the largest part of the supplement. This has notes on selecting treasures – manual selection is recommended to a degree – and system notes, the latter referring to the (unwritten as yet) Treasure Trove Book II (gems and jewellery) and Book III (magic items). These treasures are divided into different values starting at under 1 gp up to 60,000 gp.

Part IV – Treasure Maps has different treasure maps that can be found, divided into value of the treasures, starting at 0-3,500 gp up to 175,000 gp, and how treasure maps can be used to enhance a campaign. Each map has rough details of the value of the treasure – the treasure itself would then need determining, its location – such as dungeon, submerged, tomb, ruin etc. – and distance, and whether the treasure has been moved and where to. The 0 gp treasure maps are false ones that simply lead to a location that never had a treasure.

CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Treasure Trove in Review

The PDF is bookmarked and the bookmarks cover the major sections but not the sub-sections. The Contents is hyperlinked and to a similar level of depth. There are also a few hyperlinks within the text leading to different sections. Navigation is okay, but it could be better. The text maintains a single column format and appeared largely free of errors. There are a number of colour and black and white illustrations; there are the typical public domain images and some newer pieces of stock art. These are used in the fairly typical scattershot manner, where images aren’t necessarily placed to fill blank space or illustrate something in the text but often placed in a fairly random and disruptive manner. Presentation could be better.

There may be a lot of results on the table but are a lot of variations on the same things, which is kind of mentioned in passing in Part III, so there are actually a lot less results than might be though by the table size. For example, holy and unholy symbols come for many different gods as individual results. These then come in different materials, iron, copper, silver etc., each of which has its own entry. Then for other items such as animal pelts, these come for different creatures and then different qualities of pelt, so ragged, faded and damaged fox pelts will all have their own entries, even if they have the same value. Alcohol comes in different size containers and remedies comes in multiple doses. Then for higher values a 2 gp item can be simply two 1 gp items, so two fox pelts rather than on, and so on for larger numbers; a 10 gp item can be ten 1 gp or five 2 gp etc. The same item can group up over a dozen times. For a high value item such as 40,000 gp there are results such as 20 platinum ingots for the value.

There are some interesting ideas but these are then drowned under a host of variations, often with very little difference between them. So a book on one subject will then have a lot of very similar clones with merely the subject changed. Using the tables as-is could, despite everything, lead to some very repetitive treasure hoards. This doesn’t mean the tables are useless, for they do have some interesting ideas, they are perhaps not as useful as is made out. Oldskull Treasure Trove is best purchased at a discount and it is probably not as good as the author makes out, nor are the results as detailed or varied as they could be, although it does have decent qualities. CASTLE OLDSKULL – Oldskull Treasure Trove can be found by clicking here.