Thursday, June 1, 2023

Pacesetter Games: Things Better Left Alone

 


Things Better Left Alone. Cover at by Wonkee.


Things Better Left Alone is an adventure written by Bill Barsh and published by his company, Pacesetter Games, based on four original dungeon maps drawn by J. Eric Holmes, as well as the associated keys, which are mostly written directly on the maps but also include one additional page of notes.

These maps include the areas which Holmes drew on for his novel The Maze of Peril. I wrote about the correspondence between the story and these maps back in my Tales of Peril Book Club (sadly unfinished); specifically, see Scene 6 and Scene 7. If you'd like a copy of The Maze of Peril to read along with the adventure, the publisher is still selling copies from the original print run on Amazon.

This adventure was authorized by the Holmes family and includes art by Chris Holmes and Wonkee, as well as scans of the original maps and notes on which it is based, as well as modern renderings of the maps.

The adventure went on sale today in conjunction with the North Texas RPG Con. Print copies can be purchased directly from their booth at the con, but are also available on the Pacesetter games website, where there are two options: Print + PDF plus PDF alone. The PDF can be downloaded directly after purchasing. Find it here on DriveThruRPG:

Things Better Left Alone in Print or PDF


6 comments:

  1. Wow…that’s pretty awesome.

    What is “The Adventurer RPG Game System?” Never heard of that one. Is it a retroclone? A euphemism?

    (I ask because that cover is badass, and I want to know how much conversion I’d need to do to run the thing)

    ; )

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    1. Bit from the blurb on the site

      "This adventure module is designed for use with the Adventurer RPG and is completely compatible with the classic fantasy RPG system written by Dr. J. Eric Holmes"

      I've never heard of the Adventurer RPG either, strange thing to publish for.

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    2. I only know a bit from listening to an interview with Bill, but I gather that it's a Holmes clone & expansion that they are producing. The version available right now is a beta version for public playtesting so they can get feedback, with a final version expected later. It was prompted by all of the material in Things Better Left Alone that is over level 3, and thus outside the scope of Holmes Basic as published.

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    3. Hm. Quite interesting. However, sounds like it would probably work with Blueholme (which goes past level 3).

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    4. He discussed that in the interview (on Talking Crit, if you are interested), mentioning that he thought Blueholme departed from the Holmes RAW enough that he wanted to make his own version, IIRC.

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    5. Huh...even more interesting!

      Yeah, I'll have to take a listen to "Talking Crit" (never heard of that one)...thank you!

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