New Judges Guild Kickstarter

Joseph Goodman of Goodman Games has long supported the Bledsaws and Judges Guild. Their latest effort is to bring back some of Judges Guild's classic adventures in their original form: Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor, Citadel of Fire, Dark Tower, and Tegel Manor. However to complete the project they need funds for the final layout and printing and started a kickstarter here.

Judges Guild was the company that pioneered the idea of the adventure module which ultimately convinced Gary Gygax and TSR to get in on the action with their own adventures.

Tegel Manor
A huge sprawling haunted house with a dungeon underneath. It is effectively a megadungeon that will dominate the campaign for many sessions. It is my opinion that this is one of the few example we have of megadungeon from back the in the day in the form that it's creator used.

One thing that will be off-putting to modern gamers is how sparse the description are. To use this effectively you have to combine the text with the descriptions on the map and winging the rest with your own imagination. I personally ran this as part of a campaign at Gold Star Anime and can attest that the result can be fun and unique.

Citadel of Fire
This is my personal favorite of the bunch. It is the tower of an evil wizard with a dungeon underneath which is effectively an evil town.

Thieves of Fortress Badabaskor
A bandit citadel built  next a cliff which has a dungeon embedded in it. I liked Citadel of Fire better but when I dug into this as a result of writing a d20 version for Goodman Games I found that a lot can be done with it. Badabaskor used to be the center of worship of an evil god but the brigands pushed the evil priesthood into the dungeon. Now the two faction are at war with each other. I will say that is a long time for a bunch of folks to live off of Create Food and Drink.

Dark Tower
This won't quite dominate the campaign like Tegel Manor, unless you run it using GURPS, but this is a big big dungeon. This is consider one of Jenell Jaquay's best work and it delivers on all fronts. Two opposing towers, one dominated by Set and the other by Mitra, are buried and a dungeon was dug out around them.

Judges Guild Journal
If you go for the deluxe oversized book, you will get five issues of the Judges Guild Journal. The way Judges Guild worked was that it was a subscription service. You paid your fee and then get several installments. Each installment was a product, like Tegel Manor, or part of a product, City-State took several installments to release, Accompanying each installment was the latest issues of the Judges Guild Journal which was printed like a newspaper on newprint. This book collects together the first five along with the four modules mentioned above.

From what everybody told me, the OCR scanning has been done and edited and rough layouts have been completed. So pretty much what needed are the funds to do the final layout, art, and actual printing. Where kickstarters usually run into trouble is their stretch goals get out of hand or are unrelated to the purpose of the kickstarter. The ones for this are all about making a nicer printing or repurposing some of the art and work for the project. This makes it look like a solid kickstarter in my book.