OSR There are TWO 'lost' Gygax castles crowdfunding right now

Two manuscripts, both unpublished works by Gary Gygax, are separately hitting crowdfunding sites.
Like buses, you wait ages for one, and then several turn up at once. Two manuscripts, both unpublished works by Gary Gygax, both featuring castles, are separately hitting crowdfunding sites.

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In one hand, there's the second part of Troll Lord Games' Castle Zagyg -- "This is the second of two crowdfunding campaigns. The first, Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage Act 1, was a huge success thanks to this incredible community. At last, we are back with Act 2, which includes all the dungeon levels, maps, and encounters needed to forge your way through the Mad Mage’s labyrinthine castle. These materials have never been published before; we are working tirelessly to produce the complete megadungeon that Gary envisioned." This one is for the Castles & Crusades game system, and is live now.

Castle Zagyg is a re-imagining of Gary Gygax's original Castle Greyhawk; Gygax lost the rights to the latter in the 1980s when he left TSR, and partnered with Troll Lord Games years later to produce his definitive version of the castle/dungeon.

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In the other hand, from Pulse Publishing, is Castle Wolfmoon -- "Back in the late 90s, when TSR was bought by WOTC, Chris Clark noticed there was a gap in the market for RPG adventures, so he contacted Gary Gygax and asked if he would like to collaborate. To his delight, Gary was available, and the two of them created and published the first two adventures in the Castle Wolfmoon series, A Challenge of Arm's and the Ritual of the Golden Eyes. After these two successful collaborations, they decided to form Hekaforge together, and the final installment in the Castle Wolfmoon series was set aside. Many years later, as Chris was tidying his hard drive, he found a forgotten file with "Gygax" in the name, and thought - why not finally bring the saga of Castle Wolfmoon to a close? And so now, a quarter of a century after it was first created, the world will finally receive the last unpublished adventure created by Gary Gygax and Chris Clark." This is not live yet, but there's a 'coming soon' page. Castle Wolfmoon is system agnostic and it has contributions from Luke Gygax, Frank Mentzer, Heidi Gygax, Erik Garland, actor Todd Stashwick, and more.
 

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If only I could afford it.

How does one make a system agnostic adventure? An Orc ambush (or whatever) maybe fine for a 5E group to face at level 1 but hard for a Shadowdark group and maybe a push over for a C&C group etc.
 

If only I could afford it.

How does one make a system agnostic adventure? An Orc ambush (or whatever) maybe fine for a 5E group to face at level 1 but hard for a Shadowdark group and maybe a push over for a C&C group etc.
Easy. The module says there's xxxx monster here (Orc, Giant, Demon, whatever) and leaves it to the GM to stat out said monster to suit the system being run. Ditto for traps.

And if that monster is a bit too tough or a bit too easy for the PCs in a given system when they meet it, so be it. Ideally, the too-tough too-easy moments would tend to cancel out over the course of the (probably quite big) module.

A bigger headache might be treasure inclusion, as some systems (lookin' at you, 5e) are far less generous than others.
 

Not to be a negative nelly -- but I am -- but man, I was hoping the Trolls would do a real edit on the Castle Zagyg stuff. But clearly they are just using the same overly verbose formatting as the previous Yssburgh and Upper Works versions with a fresh coat of paint. Knowing they are working off more terse notes for the later books for Vol 4 and 5, I feel like that's a miss. "This creature's vital stats are..." appearing in the front of every stat block is one example you can still see in their preview materials for the refreshed Yssburgh and Upper Works-region materials.

I don't need everything to be OSE-style bullet points, but this level of overwritten material is annoying. Knowing that some of it is Gygax's words actually makes me want tighter editing even more, because when he's well-edited his words shine. When he's not, he's obtuse and fills up a paragraph where a sentence in his inimitable style would do.

/griping
 
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How does one make a system agnostic adventure? An Orc ambush (or whatever) maybe fine for a 5E group to face at level 1 but hard for a Shadowdark group and maybe a push over for a C&C group etc.
You pick a lane.

As you say, something tuned for 5E D&D/Tales of the Valiant/LevelUp would get curb-stomped in an OSR game, and vice-versa.

So you make an OSR system agnostic book, or you make something tuned around 5E. DCC, which is based on a 3E chassis, can go in either, but probably is better off in a 5E-tuned book than an OSR one.
 



Does anyone know how many more 'Acts' are to come for Zagyg?

My recollection is that this was a two-part effort: part 1 at Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage advised that it would publish:

The five Box Sets are as follows. The first three are covered in this [first] campaign:

This campaign (tentative ship date: 1st quarter 2026)

  • Castle Zagyg Vol. 1 The Citadel (the town of Yggsburgh)
  • Castle Zagyg Vol. 2 The Ruins (the castle, East Mark, Mouths of Madness, and dungeon level 1)
  • Castle Zagyg Vol. 3 The Cellars (dungeon levels 2, 3, 3a, 4, 4a, 5 and 5a)
The second act/part is at Castle Zagyg Galleries of the Arch Mage 2! and according to the first campaign includes:


Follow up [second/newly-launched] campaign (expected campaign launch, 1st quarter, March, 2026)

  • Castle Zagyg Vol. 4 The Dungeons (dungeon levels 6-9 and sub-levels)
  • Castle Zagyg Vol. 5 The Caverns (dungeon levels 10-17 and sub-levels)

I’ll be curious to see what the new set looks like, and whether the vol. 3 book will be available separately (since I own the rest of the 1st act/part already). Hopefully it’ll be out and available at North Texas RPGCon in June, and I can see :)

Allan.
 



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