Hi, all. I thought you may be interested to hear that I am putting together what started as an expansion for the classic D&D module X2: Castle Amber, which attempts to bring some of CAS's writing (specifically The Collossus of Vyons and some other Averoigne stories) to the game table.

The module itself is pretty cool, but little of it is actually based on Averoigne, and out of 32 pages, the Collossus, The Enchantress of Sylaire, The Beast of Averoigne, and a handful of characters from other Averogne stories get a whopping 3 1/2 pages!

I will fault the editor for not realizing that this part of the module should have been the start of such a gazetteer, or at least expanded considerably, but editors are not always perfect. This one in particular was plain bad, given the fact that there is a *huge* amount of motivation and connection between characters that just got left out in a 13 paragraph translation of the Collossus into game terms.

I have been fairly mild in my criticism, but I will point out that if your stated intention is to bring some of CAS's work to life, you should probably devote more than 10% of a 32 page pamplet to doing so. Honestly, sentence structure and quality of writing aside, it looks like a high school literature project.

Criticism aside, there is the germ of a fine idea here and with a little (and sometimes more than a little) creativity where CAS left out some detail my intention is to complete what was started in 1981, meager as my writing skills are.

The final product is expected to be a single document containing maps of lairs and locations, details on major areas such as Vyones and Xima and hopefully Les Hiboux (lots of potential but not much detail), new magic items and characters of interest, a list of foul creatures that inhabit various areas of Averoigne, and finally notes on expanding the work into a full-fledged campaign using additional CAS story elements as the basis.

While the work is written for the HackMaster 4E game system, it's generic enough to be easily converted into other FRP systems.

I'll be posting this at Hacklopedia.com when finished. If anyone wants to pitch in or get a sneak peek, write me at my gmail account, which is hacklopedia.

Not many gamers here? I'm a little surprised. Don't let my poor spelling fool you, I'm normally quite meticulous but the fact that HackMaster uses parody names (so locations and people have 2 names to keep track of) make things more difficult.

The work is progressing well, and should actually be larger than the original module. Formatting will effect the final page count, but in Word so far I estimate at least 40 pages.

I've stayed very true to CAS's work, and I was very happy to see Ryan Harvey draw most of the same conclusions I did when I read his article on Averoigne on Swordandsorcery.org. I did expand Sylaire a bit - in the game, it's more interesting if Malachie has "friends", and I've defined just what "enchantment" is on "the enchanted land", but it's all in keeping with the spirit of the mythos.

Hi, just wanna share my experience and excitement playing with the role playing game from izombiegames.com, horror games are what makes me enjoy.

i am very interested in this, how can i reach you through mail?