New edition of Manse on Murder Hill now available

If you have never picked up The Manse on Murder Hill, a low-level adventure for Labyrinth Lord RPG, then now is a fantastic time to do so.

Featuring additional art by David Guyll, new cartography by Tim Hardin and a stunning layout from Matt Hildebrand, this edition of Manse is available as a PDF download and softcover print version.

From the inside:

«One night fifteen years ago during the harvest night festival, wild screams and sardonic laughter were heard coming from the lone mansion perched atop Farview Knoll, ten miles north of the village center. Unaccountable lights and high winds worried the knoll. The lightning was fierce and odd-colored.

In the morning, the last sod who had my job found the remains of the occupants, a well-respected cleric and his staff, slaughtered by an unknown adversary. The mansion has remained empty since then.

Most people in the village now avoid talking about what happened that night, except for calling Farview Knoll 'Murder Hill.'»

One reviewer has said of the new edition:

I am serious. It's amazing. The layout, artwork and the writing are top notch. From now on this is one of the modules I am going to go to when I'm designing my own.

Pick up a copy today!

Manse on Murder Hill available now!

The year-long process has finally ended and the winner is YOU!

Hustle over to the fine folks at RPGNow to get a free copy of my old-school role playing game module, The Manse on Murder Hill.

Manse is a low-level module designed to be completed 2-4 sessions using the Labyrinth Lord rules, which themselves are free.

I welcome any and all comments about module. If there is enough positive feedback, I have 2 follow-on modules that extend the story presented in Manse.

LET THE NIT-PICKING BEGIN!

UPDATE: Read the press release.

Manse cover

It may not seem like much, but a lot of hand-wringing went into this design. I opted for a minimalist look. It helps that I do not need a lot of legalese on the cover, unlike TSR.

Again, thank you to Stuart Robertson for artwork. I had to crop the full cover he gave me, which is a little death in itself. I may put together a t-shirt with the full graphic.

Sadly, just having a decent cover helps propel me to get the rest of the layout done.

You comments are appreciated.

Tech reviewers wanted

Fellow, OSRers! Let me your ears! Or eyes, rather.

My adventure, Manse on Murder Hill, is ready for a technical review. By that, I mean that I am looking for feedback on the quality of the adventure based on the following:

• Does the adventure hang together in a logic way?
• Are the motivations of the villains plausible?
• Are the mission objectives for the party clear?
• Is it interesting? Would you want to play as a PC? Would you DM it?
• Does the adventure seem well-balanced? Too much treasure? Not enough?
• Are the traps too difficult for beginning level characters?
• Do the maps make sense?
• What is missing that you expected to see?
• Are the any rules mistakes? I am targeting the core Labyrinth Lord rule set.

While I am happy to get reports about grammar mistakes and layout issues, I plan to focus on that aspect of production after this phase. I have additional art from Stuart Robertson to add plus coming up with a layout I can live with.

I plan to release the PDF of this adventure for free through RPGNow.com. If there is interest, I may print up some hardcopies to sale. I would like to this adventure to be judge against all the other TSR entry-level modules. I would consider this project a success if some people consider Manse a missing B-level module.

If you are interested in helping in this project (and getting a nod in the module credits), please email (joe.johnston@gmail.com) me. I will share the draft with you.

Thank you for reading.

Little Flanders in High Relief

Stuart Robertson has posted the illustrations that I commissioned from him for a Labyrinth Lord adventure I call The Manse on Murder Hill. The adventure happens in a small village called Little Flanders, which I will talk about in another post.

I am very pleased that Stuart was available to work on this project. I am a first-time module publisher, although not a first time writer. Many, many things can go wrong in this process. However, Stuart showed a lot of enthusiasm for this project when I shared with him the very rough draft I had at the time.

You can't buy enthusiasm.

Stuart's illustrations are excellent. I am a huge Mike Mignola fan (and by extension, a Jack Kirby one too). The artwork captures that high contrast, low detail style that I love without being derivative. It also has got an old school feel without aping the original TSR illustrators.

Role playing uses the best graphic processors in the world: our minds. However, the occasional illustration seems to fire off our imaginations far more than words alone.

As I work on tightening up the manuscript and layout, I am confident that the product is now in my hands to screw up. Stuart has more than delivered on his part.