OSE’s Island-Crawl sandbox: Secret of the Black Crag

Joel Hines and Silverarm have a Kickstarter success with Secret of the Black Crag. It’s described as an island-hopping sandbox adventure for Old School Essentials.

There’s nearly a month left for the adventure to gather backers, and it’s approaching 500. That’s enough to more than double the target funding goal. You can join in or pledge from the pitch page.

[Back this Campaign]

Hines has succeeded with the temple-crawl Abilities Considered Unnatural and the space western Desert Moon of Karth, which got around 1,500 backers each.

However, while Joel is doing the publishing and development in his role as the founder of Silverarm, the Secret of the Black Crag is being written by the talented Chance Dudinack. Dudinack wrote The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford. which is a mithral bestseller with 5/5 star reviews, after over 40, on average at DriveThruRPG.

The successful campaign will produce a ~100 page A5 hardcover with smyth-sewn binding and offset printing. The module will have;

• The enigmatic Black Crag, a forbidden rock studded with over 75 intriguing and perilous dungeon rooms put out on three levels for optimal ease of use at the table.
• 18 exciting locations spread across the Salamander Islands on a detailed hex map, including 2 more fully keyed dungeons (a monkey overrun temple and a sea wyrm’s underwater lair) and 5 opposing factions ranging from coral encrusted skeleton pirates to manufactured crab people to travellers from beyond the stars.
• The pirate outpost of Port Fortune, a shantytown of ship hulls and sailcloth with 11 detailed and odd NPCs with diverse needs and personalities with adventurer-appealing hooks linking them intimately to the rest of the environment.
• Approximately 6,655 possible encounter permutations in detailed encounter tables.
• Chance Dudinack, the book’s author and equally talented artist, has created almost 50 illustrations.
• A competing pirate crew generator.
• Quick and Dirty Underwater Adventure Rules to assist you when you take a potion and leap from the ship.
• 11+ completely new monsters and a slew of innovative takes on old favourites
• There are several weird magical and scientific fantasy objects and treasures to cause havoc with.
• A talking gorilla dressed in a captain’s hat.

A pledge of $15 is sufficient to unlock a PDF and all digital goals as a reward.

At $35, that thank you loot pile get the smyth-swen hardback added, with worldwide shipping supported.

There’s a deluxe tier at $55 for a double-sided folding map, additional printed material from Hines, an iron-on patch and a community copy for others. The top tier, hover, is $85 for the deluxe edition and physical copies of the other zines.

The estimated delivery on the project is February 2023.