Planescape Wizards of the Coast releases the Planescape Conspectus and Palace of the Vampire Queen PDFs on DriveThruRPG (Update: PotVQ has been removed)

[Alzrius]

WotC has released two new PDFs as pay-for-downloads over on DriveThruRPG. One is the Planescape Conspectus ("A digital PDF of this poster of setting information for the AD&D 2nd edition campaign setting Planescape") for $4.99.

The second is Palace of the Vampire Queen for $3.99.

Before Curse of Strahd and Ravenloft came Palace of the Vampire Queen, a dungeon written by California gamers Pete and Judy Kerestan and distributed by TSR Hobbies. A piece of gaming history, this is the first known commercially-published adventure for Dungeons & Dragons.

For three centuries, the peasants of the Dwarvish island of Baylor have feared the raids of the Vampire Queen and her minions. Sweeping down at night from the palace in the shrouded peaks of the island, they range ever farther in their search for blood. The most recent victim was the Princess of Baylor, daughter of King Arman, who was taken in a midnight raid. King Arman has offered fabulous riches and land holdings with titles to the person or persons who can brave the stronghold of the Vampire Queen and return his daughter to him alive and well.

This PDF "kit" includes maps, referee (GM) maps, sheets of pre-factored creatures and treasure for solo as well as group play, and a ready-to-use adventure.

Students of D&D history will find this rather odd, since while Palace of the Vampire Queen may have been distributed by TSR Hobbies, to my knowledge it was never owned by them, being instead released by Wee Warriors in 1976. Even odder is that this adventure is still being sold by other companies, such as the "classic reprint" Palace of the Vampire Queen by Precis Intermedia, and the AD&D 1E/OSRIC adaptation V5 Palace of the Vampire Queen: Castle Blood from Pacesetter Games & Simulations.

This also apparently marks the end of the free PDFs that WotC has been releasing lately. Up until now, products such as World of Krynn and the Eastern Countries trail maps, Three Dragon Ante and Rob Kuntz's To the City of Brass (the latter also not originally a WotC product), and Wrath of the Immortals and The Book of Regency were all released for free download. However, while the 3.5 Deluxe Character Sheets and the AD&D 2E Dungeons & Dragons Adventure Game starter set were originally released for free, WotC later went back and increased their prices to $12.99 and $9.99, respectively.

Please note my use of affiliate links in this post.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Palace of the Vampire Queen is a fascinating glimpse into gaming history. It almost looks like a basic dungeon crawl until you realize that it's not giving you dungeon levels 1, 2, 3, etc., but A, B, C, D. You're supposed to put them in whatever order you want, just use sections, or otherwise connect them however you wish.

 

[Jack Daniel]

Palace of the Vampire Queen is just about the only published adventure module I can stomach running. Because it's only classic module I'm aware of where the dungeon room descriptions are one line rather than an eye-gouging wall of text.

 

[Davies]

I'm honestly surprised to hear that they're re-releasing any of the Conspectuses in this format; do they really think there's a demand for this?

 

[Orius]

$5 for something that was given away for free for buying D&D stuff back when TSR was going through its final meltdown? Especially since it unfolded into a large poster that won't be captured very well in pdf. Well, at least I still have mine in my Planescape box.

 

[Alzrius]

A quick update: WotC's DriveThruRPG listing for Palace of the Vampire Queen has been removed. A Google cache of the sales page can still be seen for those interested. The Precis Intermedia and Pacesetter Games versions of Palace of the Vampire Queen remain available.

 

[Umbran]

$5 for something that was given away for free for buying D&D stuff back when TSR was going through its final meltdown?

"This was free nearly 25 years ago, has been completely unavailable since, and now has a low price... and I question how this is reasonable!"

 

[Orius]

It still isn't worth $5 though. It wasn't one of the better conspectus posters to begin with IMO, one panel was merely an advertisement for the 1996 Planescape line, and the parts that got unfolded are going to be hard to read in the .pdf format. These things were mostly just promotions for the various settings.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

It still isn't worth $5 though. It wasn't one of the better conspectus posters to begin with IMO, one panel was merely an advertisement for the 1996 Planescape line, and the parts that got unfolded are going to be hard to read in the .pdf format. These things were mostly just promotions for the various settings.

I mean, it's $5... if that's too much for you, the product is clearly not for you anyway.