Old School Essentials | Nightwick Abbey

About the adventure

DO YOU WANT TO DIE IN A HOLE? For nearly two centuries, the ruins of Nightwick Abbey have cast their terrible shadow upon unhallowed ground. Built by demoniac knights and their satanic allies, now it is home to the shades of the dead and the living memories of the psychic shock of its destruction. Peasants refuse to work under the shadow of the place, leaving it to become overgrown with strange and unearthly vines. At night eerie lights issue forth from its foul depths. When the moon is full and bright, witches, devil-men, and shapeless things can be seen heading there for their terrible sabbaths. Some mad few have tried to wrest gold and glory from the crypts which lie beneath, but few of them have returned. Are you brave enough to seek your fortune in... NIGHTWICK ABBEY!

Additional Details

How to prepare

You will need a mic and a discord account. We may need to meet up on discord before hand and make sure you can log into the foundry server I use through the forge vtt, but I thusfar have not had an issue with that.

What I provide

I have a Foundry VTT license and pay a monthly subscription to the Forge vtt to host the game. I will be using Dungeondraft maps I created as well as custom tokens, overland maps, and other assets to make the experience as aesthetically pleasing as possible.

Gameplay details

This game focuses around Nightwick Abbey, a megadungeon which lies in the legend-haunted Dark Country. Typical sessions will involve player characters going on excursions into the unhallowed halls of that haunted place, or venturing into the wilderness to achieve some aim which arose from dungeon-delving. Some planning may be necessary for repeat players to avoid becoming lost in the shifting corridors. I handle this with the procedures in Old School Essentials books, and players looking for an old school dungeon crawl with strong thematic elements will be greatly pleased. I draw inspiration from horror films such as "Evil Dead," The Blind Dead series, "The Lair of the White Worm," and "The Church." This means the dungeon contains disturbing imagery which, in movie terms, would warrant an R rating. The worst of these, I hope, is relegated to implications about the dungeon’s past rather than things that directly appear "on screen." In addition, I draw from the history of medieval Europe. The two together combine into a grim-dark setting replete with gothic and Satanic imagery - at least among the bad guys. This is not to say my game is without levity, but it is usually of the sardonic kind.

Content warnings

(none)

Safety tools used

Aftercare
Breaks
Debriefing

How will character creation work

Characters are simple enough to be created during the session and will use the standard OSE rules plus modifications I have made based on the setting. I will also provide pre-made characters for people who want to get right into the action or who find making a character daunting.

Players can expect

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