I have a potpourri of interesting fantasy RPG products from the first three decades of the hobby, starting with Fortress Ellendar (1979), for High Fantasy.

Jeffrey C. Dillow’s High Fantasy was originally self-published in 1978 and a second edition appeared in ‘79. I have the revised and expanded third edition, released by Reston in 1981. It’s a percentile-based system that is pretty simple and straight-forward for the time, but I don’t know. It feels rickety to me and didn’t make much of a splash back in the day, but has recently gained some admirers among the OSRish. 

This is the first time I’ve seen a supplement for High Fantasy that was produced before Reston took over publication and it is a surprisingly professional seeming product for the time (this scenario is included in the Reston book, Adventures in High Fantasy). Tidy layout and organization, good paper stock. It’s slim, but no slimmer than G3. No illustrations beyond the cover, unfortunately, but lots of well rendered maps (all the visuals are by Bruce Jensen).

The idea is a little bit preposterous. The fortress has fallen and the original lord has tasked the players with taking it back. Weirdly, the lord had previously been beset there by a demon, who killed many of the inhabitants, including the lady of the castle, until a wizard managed to bind it. I, personally, would not want to live there anymore and would not go to any lengths to get it back once I was kicked out by men with swords, but maybe that’s just me.

The lord’s plan is to have the players break into the castle, figure out the binding spell and…unbind it. The demon will then kill everyone inside, and then the lord will come back with his wizard and re-bind the demon. That…doesn’t sound like a great plan to me. But it does seem like workable prequel to The Demon Pits of Caeldo!