In July 2022 we revived the March 2019 Castle Oldskull Bundle featuring Castle Oldskull, a system-neutral line of FRPG supplements published by designer and novelist Kent David Kelly. Kelly’s voluminous ebooks use a nuts-and-bolts, idea- and table-oriented approach that exemplifies the do-it-yourself ideals of the Old School Revival. As inspiration he cites TSR-era stalwarts as well as many fantasy authors familiar from Appendix N.
In 2014-2018 Kelly published dozens of large supplements, often adapting material from his own long-running campaigns. In particular, his three-book, 1,200-page Classic Dungeon Design Guide has proven popular for its thoroughly systematic process of megadungeon generation. This revival once again presented all three Dungeon Design Guides and nearly two dozen further supplements on many topics of sandbox campaign design — more than 6,300 pages for a bargain price.
There were eleven titles in this revived offer’s Starter Collection (retail value $45) as DRM-free .PDF ebooks:
- Classic Dungeon Design Guide I, II, and III: The bestselling manuals that, across nearly 1,200 pages, take you, with precise steps, through the entire process of creating a gigantic megadungeon, complete in every detail.
- Oldskull Adventure Generator, Monster Generator, and D100 NPC Generator: 1,100 pages of systems and tables that spawn an infinite variety of plots, characters, and adversaries.
- Four Oldskull dungeon books: Dungeon Delver Enhancer (a 572-page character creator), Book of Dungeon Traps (800 of them), 1,000 Rooms of Chaos I, and 1,000 Rooms of Chaos II (quick ideas for room concepts).
- The Pegana Mythos, based on The Gods of Pegana (1905) by pioneering fantasist Lord Dunsany. (And download the free Gods of Pegana ebook from Project Gutenberg.)
Those who paid more than the threshold (average) price also got this revival’s entire Bonus Collection with fifteen more titles worth an additional $46:
- Game World Generator – Deluxe Edition (2018): Create your campaign world step-by-step with this 434-page guide to setting design. Includes the Tyrrhenia Map Pack with 18 full-color hex maps of Tyrrhenia, a mythic version of medieval Italy.
- Four campaign guides: City State Encounters, 333 Realms of Entropy, Plague Doctors, and The Order of the Scarlet Tabard (disposable “redshirt” henchmen).
- Three dungeon design enhancers: Oldskull Treasure Trove, The Deck of Strangest Things, and the Chaotic Descriptor Table.
- Five monstrous supplements: Monsters & Treasures Level 1, Dungeon Bestiary, and Dungeon Encounters I, Dragons, and Half-Ogres
- NEW in this revival! Captains of the Scarlet Tabard: A collection of “redshirt” nonplayer characters Kent Kelly created to honor the top-paying customers for this offer’s original run. (And if you purchased that offer — even if you weren’t among the Captains of the Scarlet Tabard — you also received the newly added title here on their Wizard’s Cabinet download page and in your linked DriveThruRPG Library.)
Ten percent of each payment (after gateway fees) for this Castle Oldskull revival went to the charity chosen by Castle Oldskull designer Kent David Kelly, the Arapahoe Rescue Patrol of Arapahoe County, Colorado. On the 4th of July, illegal fireworks caused a brushfire that endangered Kent’s home in southeast Aurora, Colorado. “There was some smoke damage to our property, but it is not visible,” says Kent. “Fortunately the fires were stopped before they got to the houses, but if the multi-brigade response had been a minute later, or if the rains hadn’t started during the fire, or if the wind shifted any more, I would be writing a very different entreaty.”
