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12/30/2017 6:29 pm  #1


List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

I thought it might be a useful resource to list adventures that fit the Hyperboarea setting in one place.

The Maze of Screaming Silence - by Monkeygod enterprises.
This is a really great adventure written for 3e. It’s got a great swords and sorcery vibe. Takes place in a cold mountainous region. The main plot takes place in an outpost of a evil empire, which doesn’t really have a direct counterpart in Hyperboarea but would fit right.

S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks - TSR
A classic that needs no introduction. There have already been some suggestions about including this.

 

12/30/2017 7:17 pm  #2


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Narcosa - Neoplastic Press
This is a supplement that talks about using drugs in OSR FRP settings. The rules are pretty generic. There is an adventure near the end: THE MOLDS AND SLIMES OF VILNID which might be a good fit for the Hyperborean setting. Meant for a tropical or sub-tropical, where huge fungus might grow, it could be placed on an island in the Kitasion Archipelago, a swamp regions would also work, like somewhere in the Lug Wasteland. It would also be right at home amongst the steam vents in the Gibbering Fields. 

     Thread Starter
 

1/02/2018 1:25 am  #3


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

I have far too many to list, my entire campaign is based on published material that has been hacked or reskinned for Hyperborea. I'll list a few of my favorites but I am leaving out tons of equally good material. For obvious reasons I highly recommend all of the material published by North Wind Adventures.  

The Black Gem. Start your campaign in the Lug Wasteland with this adventure. It has a great cold open and is 100% free. 

Barrowmaze. The platonic ideal of megadungeons, Helix could be located in the Lug Wastelands.

B4 The Lost City. Set this timeless classic somewhere in the Diamond Desert. Replace goblinoids with mutants.

Purple Worm Graveyard. Looking for the legendary purple worm graveyard is how the players stumble across The Lost City in the first place.

Hel's Crows Final Rest Two pages of adventure concerning a legendary undead reaver and his crew of 40 wights fits right into Hypeborea.

X2 Isle of Dread. Man oh man do I love this adventure, pulp lost world fantasy at its best. You gotta include an airplane graveyard for funsies. Gary Gygax's Isle of the Ape could work too is insanely difficult content for a level 12 level cap.

Tegel Manor. I place the manor overlooking the coast close to Khromarium and tweak the more gonzo elements to taste. I recommend Shadowbrook Manor for something similar but not so massive.

The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. I reskinned this classic into the tomb of an ancient Hyperborean witch queen hidden in the Spiral Mountain Array. The riches are great but she is now a vampire with great sorcerous power.

Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan. Reskin this oldie but goodie for the Savage Boreal Coast.

Death Frost Doom v2. Every sandbox needs a negadungeon or two to satisfy the doomed obsessions of player characters.

City State of the Invincible Overlord. I refer to this supplement for Khromarium.

Lankhmar City of Adventure. With a little reskinning this makes a lovely Port Zangerois.

Last edited by Brock Savage (1/02/2018 2:27 am)

 

1/02/2018 2:34 am  #4


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

I've been toying with using Rappan Athuk as a nice Hyperborean mini-campaign.

Make it a cult stronghold that's been secretly growing in power for decades that is threatening Swampgate and/or Khromarium. Instead of Orcus as the big-bady, just make it an upstart, named Type IV or Type VI daemon. Substitute Picts, Ixians, Orcs, and Ape-men for humanoids on the fly (wouldn't even change the stats since I'd use the S&W version). Hours and hours of campaigning prep - done.

I like the The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth idea above as well; I always thought it would make for a great Iggwilv-themed megadungeon kick-off. Consider that stolen.

The Caverns of Thracia and I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City would work well in Hyperborea too.
 


"I, Satampra Zeiros of Uzuldaroum, shall write with my left hand, since I have no longer any other, the tale of everything that befell Tirouv Ompallios and myself in the shrine of the god Tsathoggua..."
 

1/02/2018 5:34 am  #5


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

foxroe wrote:

I've been toying with using Rappan Athuk as a nice Hyperborean mini-campaign.

A heavily pruned Rappan Athuk exists in my Hyperborea campaign but I suspect my players will go for lower-hanging fruit.  I think there's room for Orcus in Hyperborea. Heck, Ghul wrote an adventure called Chasm of the Faceless King that features Xxubleks (Jubilexs) and his cult. 

 

 

1/02/2018 11:52 am  #6


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Most Dungeon Crawl Classics modules can be run as AS&SH with a little bit of work. 

 

1/02/2018 2:34 pm  #7


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Ar'Pharazon wrote:

Most Dungeon Crawl Classics modules can be run as AS&SH with a little bit of work. 

DCC #84 Peril on the Purple Planet is my favorite. It starts in media res with players arriving Stargate style to this strange planet and escalates from there, jumping right into action.

I highly recommend Geoffrey McKinney's excellent Carcosa supplement if you're a fan of otherworldly hex crawls under an alien sun.

 

1/02/2018 3:05 pm  #8


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Call of Cthulhu seems like a good "outside the box" source of adventures for Hyperborea. They would need to be cosmetically reskinned, but probably no more than that. And it would greatly reduce the chance of players recognizing what adventure they're playing.


Michael Sipe 1979-2018
Rest in peace, brother.
 

1/02/2018 3:08 pm  #9


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Brock Savage wrote:

DCC #84 Peril on the Purple Planet is my favorite. It starts in media res with players arriving Stargate style to this strange planet and escalates from there, jumping right into action.

Agreed. I nabbed the boxed set from Goodman at GameHole a few months back. I find their modules to be filled with weird fantasy or elements of, episodic and some sort of minor aspect that engages the players to think. 
 

 

1/02/2018 9:10 pm  #10


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

I've been collecting classic adventures for years, and the problem I'm having isn't so much as "which ones would best fit" as what must I omit in the current campaign. Just about anything from 1e can be re-skinned into a kickass sword & sorcery adventure. That includes the bulk of Dungeon Magazine, Judge's Guild (Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor!! in my Xoth campaign!!), and the Mayfair stuff. Most of that material assumed human-centric worlds. I think Gygax, Arneson, Moldvay etc, were more influenced by weird fantasy and swords & sorcery than what came later...

2e, though? Most of those are decidedly more difficult to adapt. Besides the default setting more or less wearing its high-falutin' fantasy on its sleeves, and that setting intruding on adventures from the top down; modules were just written differently. Excepting a few gems, there was a shift in adventure writing: and that is away from personal goals, discovery, treasure hunting, and sandboxes.
Rant Warning:

In fact, those older 1e adventures--those that were about nothing more than exploring and emptying dungeons of monsters and booty--were subject to scoffs in the 90's. I guess it was supposed to feel more sophisticated and prove we'd grown up, to demand "gravitas" and complex plots in the adventures. Sigh. So in 2e, you saw the module's author dictating the "story" from start to finish--rather than simply setting the stage. These stories were high-stakes and setting shattering, "help Elminster and the god of whatever save the universe from Malar or something." This shift had to be editorial, because you look at something like Zeb Cook's Dwellers of the Forbidden City and compare it to his Vecna Lives! and it is like two different authors with two opposite philosophies.

That said, I'd love to adapt Night Below from 2e.
 


"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game."  ~ Gary Gygax
 

1/02/2018 9:17 pm  #11


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

foxroe wrote:

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City would work well in Hyperborea too.

Not that anyone asked, but Dwellers is my favorite module ever and I'm happy to see it mentioned. I try to shoehorn it somehow into every campaign I run...
 


"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game."  ~ Gary Gygax
 

1/02/2018 9:24 pm  #12


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Blackadder23 wrote:

Call of Cthulhu seems like a good "outside the box" source of adventures for Hyperborea. They would need to be cosmetically reskinned, but probably no more than that. And it would greatly reduce the chance of players recognizing what adventure they're playing.

Hey BA23. I own over 100 Lovecraftian supplements and adventures that I will probably never run.

Chaosium published some amazing campaigns like Tatters of the King and Masks of Nyarlathotep. I have a dream of running a pulp Cthulhu game using the Savage Worlds system but I think it's a hard sell ("it's like Indiana Jones meets Cthulhu!"). Anyway, I would love to convert my favorite adventures to Hyperborea but I'm having a hard time of it. I'd appreciate any advice you could give as otherwise I end up taking out my favorite scenes and shoehorning them into a standard pulp format. I really want to do something like Lovecraft's Colour Out of Space meets "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" from the movie Creepshow.

The Pulp Cthulhu supplement has a cool adventure called The Disintegrator that I reskinned into Hyperborea. It concerns the auction of an alien device and serves as an excellent example of why magic items aren't sold on the open market. Ripples from Carcosa has an adventure set in Roman times, Adventus Regis, that I'm using to introduce the PCs to the dreadful play, The King in Yellow

 

Last edited by Brock Savage (1/02/2018 9:24 pm)

 

1/02/2018 9:30 pm  #13


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Brock Savage wrote:

I have a dream of running a pulp Cthulhu game using the Savage Worlds system but I think it's a hard sell ("it's like Indiana Jones meets Cthulhu!"). 

As a man who has already thought of a character, "greaser who finds an alien rocket pack," I want in.
 


"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game."  ~ Gary Gygax
 

1/02/2018 11:34 pm  #14


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

I think most of us can agree that classic old school modules are perfect for Hyperborea. There's a lot of great stuff coming out from newer authors as well. I liked Along the Road of Tombs, here's a review by someone who's better at describing it than I. I wanted to set it in the Zakath desert as a route to Yithorium but with the new Kickstarter coming out I'll just have to wait and see. 

Jimm.Iblis wrote:

As a man who has already thought of a character, "greaser who finds an alien rocket pack," I want in.

Thanks, it's nice to meet someone who sees the potential for fun. A lot of Lovecraft fans seem to consider mixing genres to be badwrongfun because it doesn't treat the source material with the proper gravitas. Savage Worlds is an excellent pulp system because it can seamlessly represent a two-fisted Jack Burton-type fighting the Mythos alongside a hard boiled detective, a vigilante, a sorcerer, a globe-trotting explorer, a spy, and a weird scientist.
 

Last edited by Brock Savage (1/02/2018 11:37 pm)

 

1/03/2018 2:36 pm  #15


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Brock Savage wrote:

Thanks, it's nice to meet someone who sees the potential for fun. A lot of Lovecraft fans seem to consider mixing genres to be badwrongfun because it doesn't treat the source material with the proper gravitas.

#*&! them if they can't take a joke. I mean that sincerely.


Michael Sipe 1979-2018
Rest in peace, brother.
 

1/03/2018 3:54 pm  #16


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Lovecraft himself didn't seem to have a problem with his buddy Howard's Conan tackling alien demons with nothing but grit and a broadsword.

Last edited by Jimm.Iblis (1/03/2018 3:55 pm)


"Role-playing isn't storytelling. If the dungeon master is directing it, it's not a game."  ~ Gary Gygax
 

1/03/2018 6:42 pm  #17


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Jimm.Iblis wrote:

Lovecraft himself didn't seem to have a problem with his buddy Howard's Conan tackling alien demons with nothing but grit and a broadsword.

When I was developing AS&SH ten years ago, I was pouring over all the HPL, CAS, and REH tales that I could, and what an incredible volume of material to study! I had been reading REH and HPL since I was a young man, but CAS I didn't encounter until adulthood (except, perhaps, for a few short stories as found in anthologies). During my research, I had a eureka moment when I read the following passage from HPL's novella, "The Shadow out of Time": 

       I learned—even before my waking self had studied the parallel cases or the old myths from which the dreams doubtless sprang—that the entities around me were of the world’s greatest race, which had conquered time and had sent exploring minds into every age. I knew, too, that I had been snatched from my age while another used my body in that age, and that a few of the other strange forms housed similarly captured minds. I seemed to talk, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system.

     There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity.


HYPERBOREA- A Role-Playing Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Science-Fantasy
 

1/03/2018 11:40 pm  #18


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Ghul wrote:

When I was developing AS&SH ten years ago, I was pouring over all the HPL, CAS, and REH tales that I could, and what a incredible volume of material to study! I had been reading REH and HPL since I was a young man, but CAS I didn't encounter until adulthood (except, perhaps, for a few short stories as found in anthologies). During my research, I had a eureka moment when I read the following passage from HPL's novella, "The Shadow out of Time": 

       I learned—even before my waking self had studied the parallel cases or the old myths from which the dreams doubtless sprang—that the entities around me were of the world’s greatest race, which had conquered time and had sent exploring minds into every age. I knew, too, that I had been snatched from my age while another used my body in that age, and that a few of the other strange forms housed similarly captured minds. I seemed to talk, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system.

     There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity.

You'll always be a Wholly Abominable Tcho-Tcho to me, Ghul.

Which, also: there's your next T-shirt.

 

1/04/2018 10:45 am  #19


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Handy Haversack wrote:

Ghul wrote:

When I was developing AS&SH ten years ago, I was pouring over all the HPL, CAS, and REH tales that I could, and what a incredible volume of material to study! I had been reading REH and HPL since I was a young man, but CAS I didn't encounter until adulthood (except, perhaps, for a few short stories as found in anthologies). During my research, I had a eureka moment when I read the following passage from HPL's novella, "The Shadow out of Time": 

       I learned—even before my waking self had studied the parallel cases or the old myths from which the dreams doubtless sprang—that the entities around me were of the world’s greatest race, which had conquered time and had sent exploring minds into every age. I knew, too, that I had been snatched from my age while another used my body in that age, and that a few of the other strange forms housed similarly captured minds. I seemed to talk, in some odd language of claw-clickings, with exiled intellects from every corner of the solar system.

     There was a mind from the planet we know as Venus, which would live incalculable epochs to come, and one from an outer moon of Jupiter six million years in the past. Of earthly minds there were some from the winged, star-headed, half-vegetable race of palaeogean Antarctica; one from the reptile people of fabled Valusia; three from the furry pre-human Hyperborean worshippers of Tsathoggua; one from the wholly abominable Tcho-Tchos; two from the arachnid denizens of earth’s last age; five from the hardy coleopterous species immediately following mankind, to which the Great Race was some day to transfer its keenest minds en masse in the face of horrible peril; and several from different branches of humanity.

You'll always be a Wholly Abominable Tcho-Tcho to me, Ghul.

Which, also: there's your next T-shirt.

Who are you calling abominable? ;)
 


HYPERBOREA- A Role-Playing Game of Swords, Sorcery, and Weird Science-Fantasy
 

1/04/2018 11:01 am  #20


Re: List adventures that would fit the Hyperborea setting

Robert E Howard and HP Lovecraft adventuring together as children:


"But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood" -REH
Rambling Conan Blog

 
 

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