Why Tractor Feed Adventures? In the summer of 1980, the year before I started playing D&D, I saved all year for a computer. I bought a used TRS-80 Model I with an LP-II printer. It accepted a stack of paper with tractor-feed spoke-holes on both sides. What does this mean? It means that the adventures I wrote in 1981 and 1982 are still legible today.
Don’t expect too much of these things. If they were great, I would have converted them to Gods & Monsters, as I did with Haunted Castle Oberon and The Vale of the Azure Sun.
But I have to say, it’s a blast looking at these things again and remembering what we did with them back in the day.
Dungeons & Dragons
- Beneath the Isle of Dread
- TSR’s module X1, The Isle of Dread has some caverns on level three unmapped, with the note “so the DM can create his or her own special encounter areas”. Well, okay. Edible dinosaur hardtack equals special.
- Evil Quest for the Gem of Kerouac
- I wrote this adventure because all of the characters had turned evil and I had no adventures that would entice them. So I wrote a quest adventure using evil instigators.
- Incident at Thunder Ridge
- A DragonQuest adventure, converted haphazardly to AD&D 2e, but most of the DQ still shows through.
- The Isle of Mordol
- An island a thousand miles from Specularum, filled with monsters and superstitious townfolk.
- Mista
- An adventure in which the characters travel to another dimension, gain superpowers, and… I’m not really sure what was supposed to come next.
- Mysterious Lights of Witch Mountain
- Aliens and Adventurers are a natural fit, judging from Carcosa, Barrier Peaks, and a goodly amount of Dave Arneson. Note that the title is the only thing this adventure has in common with Alexander Key’s book. (Which I loved as a kid; I never saw the movie, and judging from Wikipedia’s description of it I doubt I ever will.)
- The Petrified Forest
- The entire forest has turned to stone—and people seem to randomly turn to stone, too! Can you re-open the valley and make the village of Ashton profitable again?
- Rainbow City
- Set in “the badlands”, this adventure even included Monster Manual II creatures, placing it firmly in my AD&D college days.
Gods & Monsters
- Gods & Monsters
- Explore!
- Illustrious Castle
- The Order of Illustration once guarded remote Biblyon. Today, Illustrious Castle is deserted, long-since looted of anything valuable. For second to third level characters.
- The Vale of the Azure Sun
- There are things in this world that defy all logic. Places that no door enters and no road goes, where the maps exist only in the minds of madmen.
More Information
- Q1: The Evil Temple of Fraz-Urb’luu
- Jim Pacek used ruled paper, not tractor feed, but this 1983 adventure otherwise hits all the right notes.
More old-school
- Island Book 1 and old-school tables
- Judges Guild Island Book 1 is a fascinating playground on which to place a sea-going adventure or campaign. It’s also a great example of the usefulness and wildness of old-school encounter tables.
- Knee deep in monster frogs: A Judges Guild history
- Bill Owen, one of the early members/employees of Judges Guild, has created an amazing color collection of old Judges Guild artifacts: maps, designs, and more from the early days of JG.
- Old School Cool
- Since I first made Gods & Monsters public over ten years ago, there’s been a groundswell of support for “old-school” D&D games. Since Gods & Monsters is compatible with adventures for original D&D and AD&D, it’s also compatible with adventures for most of these new games.
