First Impressions - The Magonium Mine Murders [OSE]

The Magonium Mine Murders

The Magonium Mine Murders is a short zine style adventure setting designed of Old-School Essentials (and thus pretty much compatible with any OSR engine) by James Holloway. It's 24-pages long, black-and-white interior, but adds a further two pages by using the covers. The cover is evocative and effective and is deliberately aged to look like an old pulp cover or film poster.

I purchased it from James' Gumroad site for £10, and the physical copy came with a PDF as well.

The scenario is a murder mystery sandbox set during a time of war between two kingdoms. Magonium is a magical element which is used to support the war effort; miners are protected from the draft that has been instigated to provide soldiers for the war. The mine has expanded to support the war effort using both miners and prisoners of war, creating a boom-town effect which is not especially popular with the locals. They tolerate it more because it pays the bills. Recently, the mine has been troubled with tremors and the administrator has been murdered. There are reports of Magonium poisoning spreading from the mine; free workers wear protective suits when mining, but the prisoners don't.

The characters are given multiple hooks to put them in a place to investigate what's going on. There are several intertwining threats and challenges which should make things satisfyingly messy. There are two separate criminal threads and something more mysterious. The overall plot is explained and the information that each non-player character has is explained. Characters have nice portraits in a variety of styles, and there are functional and useful maps.

As a B/X clone, OSE isn't especially designed to do scenarios in this style, so James provides a page of guidance on running a scenario like this using an OSR ruleset. 

This is an above average scenario which could easily be picked up and run by a GM with minimal preparation. The complexities will come from the player's interactions and there are plenty of levers to be pulled to make things interesting. The vibe of the game reminds me of some of the Warlock! scenarios I've read, which is a good thing. I could easily imagine moving this sandbox over to that engine if I wanted to. Nicely done.

28 August 2022