The Castle of Aandoran the Defiler by Joseph Mohr is a role playing game supplement published by Old School Role Playing for use with OSRIC. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result. This is an adventure for characters of levels 10-13.
The supplement is available as a 63 page Pay What You Want PDF from DriveThruRPG. One page is the front cover, three the front matter, four the Open Game License and two are blank.
Game Master Information explains that this is the third in the Mountain of Fire adventure series, following on from The Temple of Domi, a campaign against the lich Malcon the Firebringer. The final adventure is The Mountain of Fire, though they could be played as standalones. It then gives some background details on Malcon from the author’s campaign, along with a link to a site that has more details, a recap of what the characters have accomplished so far then the recommended levels for the adventure and what it roughly entails.
Stat Block Conventions for the Module has various abbreviations used that refer to AD&D 1E rulebooks.
The Dark Forest gives a brief description of this with various random encounters, some for the forest as a whole, some for within 10 miles of the castle.
The Castle of Aandoran the Defiler has random encounters within the castle and then descriptions of the various locations. The castle has the aboveground level and three dungeon levels, which are full of the usual tricks, traps, puzzles and treasures. There are a lot of undead, not surprising, as this is the castle of a vampire, as well as some deadly traps.
Game Master Note briefly covers success conditions.
New Magic Items has a couple of these; there is an artefact that was described in the adventure itself.
New Monsters has these.
The final five pages have maps of the castle levels.
The Castle of Aandoran the Defiler in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and is long enough with enough different sections that these would have been useful. Navigation could be better. The text maintains a two-column format and some minor errors were noticed. There are a number of stock colour and black and white illustrations. Presentation is okay.
This is a potentially deadly adventure as some of the traps and tricks have results that are extremely dangerous. Riddles and such are for gaining more treasure, so they don’t derail the adventure. Given this is a fairly typical powerful vampire lair, it will be easy enough to drop it into another campaign setting with only a few minor changes, and it is in most regards a standard dungeon crawl. The Castle of Aandoran the Defiler can be found by clicking here.
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