For today’s prompt, Unexpected, I’ll welcome you with a statement you don’t expect from me: “I’ve found an adventure I want to run!”
If you know me or have read my posts over the years, you’ll know I rarely, if ever, run published adventures. In 39 years as a Game Master, I’ve run four adventures: the introductory adventure in the D&D Mentzer Red Box, the D&D Basic adventure B7 Rahasia, the AD&D 1e Forgotten Realms Adventure REF5: Lords of Darkness, and the Call of Cthulhu Western-themed horror adventure Down Darker Trails, but using the Amazing Adventures rules.
I read many adventures and find inspiration in some, but I rarely want to run a pre-written adventure. I enjoy creating my homebrewed worlds and the adventures in those worlds; that creative process is something I enjoy immensely. The first two instances mentioned above, the adventure in the D&D Red Box and Rahasia, were in 1986, just as I was starting to learn to play RPGs. The third one, Lord of Darkness, was a request from a player around 1999, who wanted me to run a published adventure. I did, and it was no fun for me.
Then, when my son was born and I started playing again in 2019, I knew that the demands of fatherhood and an infant child would cut into my prep-time, so I ran Down Darker Trails and enjoyed it enormously! There were a lot of details to fill in the adventure; it was more of a background and a series of events I could run and adapt to my style of Game Mastering.
Despite this positive experience, I have not run any other adventures since. Then I discovered this gem. When I told my friends Anibal, Felipe, and José that I wanted to run an adventure, they seemed flabbergasted.
Okay, so after all the beating around the bush, which adventure do I want to run? Drum roll, please!
Raiding the Obsidian Keep, written by Joseph R. Lewis and published by The Merry Mushmen.
I became aware of the adventure in a Questing Beast review video. The themes described and the adventure organization presented by Ben in his review intrigued me, so I had to get the PDF. I was not disappointed. From what I can tell, this is an expanded and illustrated version of the original adventure available via DriveThruRPG, The Obsidian Keep, adapted for Old School Essentials.
I don’t want to spoil it, but the exploration of an island devastated by chaos is a quirky swords and sorcery adventure, featuring interesting NPCs, situations, challenges, opponents, and magic items. Dark, foreboding, but a lot of fun. The implied world seems so interesting that I now want to read the author’s Dungeon Age novels. Regardless, adventure can be adapted to other fantasy worlds. I can see this adventure being a good fit in Mystara. I wholeheartedly recommend it, and I’m now eager to run it, sooner rather than later.
What unexpected surprise have you discovered in an RPG recently? Any new game you did not know about? A supplement or adventure you’d care to recommend. A new rule that caught your attention? I’d love to read your thoughts on the topic; feel free to share them here in the comments or tag me wherever you do. If you choose to join in the conversation, don’t forget to include the #RPGaDay2025 hashtag so the community can find your contribution.
And just like in the post for #RPGaDay, for day 10, in 2016:
