My last post was about the 9th anniversary of the blog, which was yesterday, July 18th. Another cool event yesterday, in addition to session 210 of the Wednesday night AD&D game on Roll20 was the release of The Black Isle, AKA Eilean Dubh.
The Black Isle is the fruit of an OSR collaborative project that started back in 2014 to stat out a region centered on an island. Originally, the project was called Tenkar’s Landing, which is the main settlement on the island. We then decided to name the island. The project had most contributions in about 18 months, as I recall. Editing and layout are what took so long, for one person a 433 page PDF with contents, art, and an index is a huge task.
Fifty-four people stepped up and populated six mile hexes on and under the island and the surrounding area. There is a lot packed in, and some of us, like me, packed a lot into our hex. My contribution is The Screaming Swamp. I had a lot of fun putting it all together. A separate more realistic sized area for what I crammed in my hex is a project I have long thought about, but waited for the completion of this project. I blogged about it here and here. It doesn’t appear I went into detail of the finished product on the blog.
There are tables, new monsters, and I believe also new spells and items. This is a rich resource to run as is, or cherry pick for ideas. There are many years of adventure in this free supplement.
Podcast
I talked about it on episode 6 of my podcast.
Settlement
The second phase of the project is Tenkar’s Landing. As I recall all the work on that is done. There is a map by Dyson Logos. Now that the island is done, the next step is the town. I don’t know if there is the oomph to get it done, but it would be very cool to see the finished town to go with the rest of the setting.
The price is right, it is free and open source. You can see a lot of creativity and you get so many ideas, it would be difficult to use them all.
Where to Get It
You can download the 433 page PDF and 1 page map PNG from Google Drive.
The Black Isle PDF – Drop Box with both Map and PDF
The Black Isle Map PNG – Google Drive Map only
Elsewhere
Discussion on Reddit. [Added 08/12/2018]
Listened to the podcast, now scanning through Black Isle. Looks awesome!
Thanks! I’d love to have that in physical form. They just announced that they are taking submissions for the town of Tenkar’s Landing to flesh out what was already submitted. I have yet to dip my toes into that.
Tenkar may be a cool dude, but he is rather “the thing of the moment,” and I doubt you’ll see the town done if the ball is in his hands.
There is a G+ Community and the manager for The Black Isle is continuing to helm the next phase of the town. Erik has left completion of the project to the contributors.
Milton Murphy is managing the Tenkar’s Landing project, and once the dust settles from the shut down of G+, there should be some more news.
I’m looking forward to it! Not sure I’ll have anything to contribute yet, but I’m sure I can do something.