Castle Oldskull Review

This review discusses a number of products which have been published under the Castle Oldskull banner. Each has been written by Kent David Kelly. Quite a number of products have been published under this line but I have only read a handful of them so I will only be discussing those. Those products include:

These products are published by Wonderland Imprints. Presumably the publication date is 2013 for the first products but it is difficult to say for sure since it only lists a publication date range of 2013-2019.

These products are designed to help the Dungeon Master develop a “Mega Dungeon”. By Mega Dungeon the author is referring to one massive dungeon which could easily be the entire campaign for the adventurers. It is a dungeon of more than 12 levels to explore.

Most of these books are random tables. The tables are designed to give the Dungeon Master ideas to think about in developing the ultimate deep deep dungeon for the players to explore. Many of these tables are from one to 1000. There are a ton of ideas presented in a ton of different tables so that every dungeon prepared will be so different than any other.

What I like about Castle Oldskull

Some of these products I really like. Others not so much. I will discuss these in more detail later. But the greatest strength of these products are the random tables. There are tables covering just about any possible thing you would need to think about in preparing a big and deep mega dungeon. From themes to specific rooms to tricks and traps. Just about everything that you need is encompassed in these products.

These products are not free…however. And no…I am in no way affiliated with the author of this series or the publisher. These products are, however, pretty cheap by comparison to other things you might find on Drive Thru RPG. I think that I got them on some kind of sale because I believe I paid quite a bit less than the listed price for them. There are many other Castle Oldskull products which I do not own and if I get any of them later on I may review more of them then.

The dungeon design books are excellent. There are three of these. They basically take you through every element that you might want to consider while developing a mega dungeon. There are a lot of different points made by the author that you would want to consider. About 20 such points in all. And these products give you random tables to give you ideas on just how to make your own version of the mega dungeon. You do not have to roll randomly. You could easily just select one. But rolling gives you ideas that you would have never thought of on your own.

What I do not like about Castle Oldskull

I was less impressed with the Dungeon Traps book and the two 1000 Rooms of Chaos books. The rooms books pretty much just rehashed things from the three volumes of the Dungeon Design series. Nothing particularly new or exciting is added by them other than you can randomly roll a number of different room types. The traps book really added nothing in the way of new traps that I have not seen elsewhere.

Do not expect a lot of flashy graphics with this product. There is a lot of art in it. But about ninety percent of that is public domain artwork. I know because I have used many of the same images on this web site.

Would I recommend Castle Oldskull to others?

I think that if you want to write home brewed dungeons the three Dungeon Design volumes would be very helpful. It provides several kinds of dungeons that one could develop and then provides the tables for designing any of these types of dungeons. The types include temples, tombs, strongholds and caverns. For anyone working on a mega dungeon project this series would be quite useful.

Would I use this product with my own players?

I intend to. And I have begun working on a mega dungeon which I intend to release on Dragonsfoot for free at some point with it. I have published a number of adventures there and elsewhere but none have been a mega dungeon with many deep levels. This will be a new thing for me and I have already begun in earnest. It may take a while to get there. This product certainly helped. At least the three Dungeon Design volumes have.



If you enjoyed this article then perhaps you will enjoy these as well:



Please follow and like us: