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The original was posted on /r/osr by /u/bhale2017 on 2025-06-29 01:22:39+00:00.

In my opinion, one of the best things the OSR brought to the RPG space was good module layout and succinct information presentation. Despite this, there are numerous examples of adventure modules which didn’t seem to get the memo. To me, this is most frustrating when there is probably a good adventure lurking in the book, but it will never see the light of day until someone takes a second pass at reformatting and possibly rewriting the module.

The module that prompted me to post this was Love Songs of the Death Goddess. There are a lot of cool ideas in here that fit well in the world of the Black Sword Hack: priests falling in love with a death goddess, vampiric monks, epic poems as a plot element. But it’s buried behind walls of text and structured as a series of events that could easily play out as a railroad. The creator posted here and one of his players talked about their great experience playing it, and I believe it, but I wouldn’t know how to deliver a similar experience from the book before me.

Perhaps a more unfortunate one is Escape from Miklagard. The idea behind this one is freaking cool: the mercenary auxiliaries of a fantasy Byzantium are rioting throughout the capital, the escape emperor’s frost giant Varangians are going to arrive soon t decimate everyone in the city, and you must escape with as much loot as you can gather in the time you have. Unfortunately, the issues are many, as reviewers have noted, ranging from the exploration mechanics, the adaptation to low level OSE, and the English of the text. There is little guidance in the book on how to actually run this. But man, it’s cool, and I would like to see a new and improved second edition.

And it has been done before. I would have said the same about Matthew Finch’s modules once upon a time, but since he has founded Mythmere Games and taken on a partner with editorial acumen, those modules have received much more usable editions.

So what about you? Any good subjects for makeovers?