Adventure Anthology 1 (2024) is a collection of four short adventures for Old-School Essentials (either regular or advanced is fine), each by a different team. The cover is by Frank Scacalossi and boast what is probably my second favorite depiction of a fire giant in the history of RPGs.

“The Jeweler’s Sanctum” is by Guiseppe Rotondo and illustrated by Mark Lyons. Some jeweler, damn, he built a gigantic magic laboratory under his house before he died. Kind of burly for a beginner dungeon, actually, with a great fake-out at the end involving some animated statues. Good stuff.

“Curse of the Maggot God” pairs Glynn Seal with artist Peter Pagano. Most of this one is a sewer system with the expected critters. Players are searching for a missing worker, and they are not going to like where he wound up (inside the Maggot God, probably).

Brad Kerr’s “The Sunbathers” is illustrated by Jersey lad Chris Malec. My favorite in the bunch and not just because Malec lives the next town over. You get a little island, a little complex, a bunch of NPCs and a creepy mystery. The pay-off is pretty horrific. I keep thinking of one particular boss in Castelvania: Symphony of the Night, and also the Suspiria remake?

“The Comet that Time Forgot” is by D.M. Wilson and Sarah Brunt, with the great Stefan Poag illustrating. This one goes the hardest. It doesn’t quite work for me, but it is by no means bad. Rather than a dungeon, a portal leads players to a comet hex crawl. The comet was meant to be an escape capsule for a dying world, full of biomes and animals and so on. This is all that’s left, and its gonna crash soon, so better get that treasure. The fire giant on the cover is hanging out in a volcano here.

Key question: does the series have a number 2, or does it fall prey to the RPG Curse of doom that you risk whenever you put the number 1 on your cover? Let’s see tomorrow!