OSR Dark Albion: The Rose War, an OSR campaign setting released

[Turanil]

I would like to announce the release of the following OSR campaign setting:

Dark Albion: The Rose War is a 275 pages long, OSR RPG campaign setting, set in a fantasy medieval England during the War of the Roses (15th century). Think England + sorcery + demons and fairies + some fantasy twists to the world. 80% of the book is system neutral, so can be used with most role-playing games. Nonetheless, this book is designed with OSR games in mind, and will run best with Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (also available on Lulu), and similar games such as Osric, Swords & Wizardry, etc. Note lastly that layout and art have been given great care to make the most visually pleasing book as possible: this means 10 maps, and two illustrations per pages on most of the 275 pages!

RPGPundit wrote the text, while I did the layout, maps, and publishing. Some photos of the book's interior can be seen here

The book is currently available as a hardback on Lulu

The book is also on Cratespace as a softcover book, so should be available on Amazon (at 22$) in a few days.

The book will eventually be also available as a bookmarked PDF on RPGNow, plus POD as hardback and softcover. Unfortunately, despite the files are ready, I have a problem to upload them. So this will have to wait for yet a few more days.

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A last thing please: RPGPundit, the author, has been at the center of some controversies. As a result a few people don't like him. If it's the case for you, you are of course entitled to your opinion; yet please, don't use this thread to discuss this. This thread, is only to discuss the Dark Albion setting. Thanks.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This looks like a heck of a good book. It'd be interesting to see how it compares with A Song of Fire & Ice, which jumps off from the same idea.

 

[Turanil]

Well, both remain very different. For example: In Games of Throne (I have seen some of the TV show, but not read the books) magic and supernatural creatures are relatively rare, while they are more widespread in Dark Albion. Then, north of Westeros there is a great ice wall, with countless horrors beyond. There is the Hadrian Wall north of Albion, but no ice nor supernatural winter.

On the other hand, Game of Throne, a story of political intrigue in a medieval world, is much inspired by the War of the Rose in 15th century England. Since Dark Albion is indeed the War of the Rose set in a fantasy 15th century England, you could have the same sort of GoT political intrigue in this old school setting (but with the option of adding much more magic if you want...).

 

[Turanil]

Here are a few snapshots of the book:

 

[Voadam]

It is now available on rpgnow/dtrpg.

 

[davout1805]

Nice to see that Fantastic Heroes & Witchery is getting some support.

 

[Turanil]

Only problem is that working alone (although the text was written by RPGPundit on this one) takes a lot of time (months) to get something released. Next project are an adventure scenario for Dark Albion (this one should be released soon), and then the Blasphemous Bestiary, a monster manual for FH&W. If Dark Albion is a great success, I will write another (and longer) adventure. Note otherwise that Dark Albion has a 20 pages appendix to run it with FH&W, which include 8 classes that are designed specifically for this setting.

 

[Dartavian]

Purchased PDF & Soft Cover; gave it a quick look through. Even though I may not run a campaign with it in the foreseeable future, I will definitely use if for source material. Nice addition to my game library.

 

[Kensboro]

I just got a copy from Lulu.com (hardcover) after reading about it here.

I love bronze/iron age history, and subscribe to a newsletter published by the "Lance and Longbow Society" (whose favorite period is the War of the Roses); so this pushes a lot of buttons for me.

Even if you don't use its game system, it's still a fantastic source-book for anyone running a game in the "Dark Ages".

It reminds me a bit of "Chivalry and Sorcery", but Albion is more thoroughly fleshed out. It looks to be a good bit more playable too; I liked C&S in it's day (especially the horse rules), but the game system was a chore to play/run.

This would make a great supplement for a "Shadow of Esteren" campaign; both with a somewhat low-magic, therefore making fantastic creatures incredibly dangerous game design, I think they're a good fit together.

The research and effort put into this is impressive; and is very historically accurate (minus the fantastic parts) as far as I can tell.


I only have 2 minor gripes...

1: is with Lulu's printing... sometimes the text fades from black to gray; as if someone wasn't paying attention to the ink supply in the printer. Otherwise, it's a beautiful book.

2: is with the supplement in the back (Appendix-3)... please no 6-pt fonts in rulebooks or boardgames!
Add a few more pages and charge a dollar more if need be.

Thank you for publishing this! I've been waiting a long time for someone to take C&S and do it better. How long is that... 30-years?
1977... yikes! almost 40-years!

 

[Turanil]

Thanks!

Appendix 3 uses the layout of my RPG: Fantastic Heroes & Witchery, reason for which the font is smaller (i.e., 7.5-pts). So if you don't like it, better you don't buy FH&W. (It had to be small font because even like that it's already 430 pages long... and with less illustrations.)