Adventure Framework 67: Sky Tower of Belk Xos From Pickpocket Press

(SPOILERS AHEAD) I ran the Sky Tower of Belk Xos for my Shadowdark campaign. The sky tower was located in a mountain range north-northeast of the main city in the region. Pickpocket Press’s work impressed me with a cleanly formatted, easy to adapt and run adventure, available for free.

Play Time: One session, about 3 hours

General Thoughts: Good adventure. Tones of Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Definite sci-fantasy, Thundarr the Barbarian vibes. Replayability is low, there’s too many in-game spoilers.

There was some off-the cuff stat translations for the space hounds and wizardly ghost that haunts the tower, but since the Adventure Framework series is written for Low Magic Gaming (an in-house RPG system I suppose), it was super-easy to grab HP, AC, and adapt any special abilities with some quick mental notes. There aren’t a lot of creatures, it’s a short adventure, one-shot style. Treasure was perhaps a little more tricky, but nothing outrageous.

The run-down is there’s a magic sky tower (which is really a space ship) floating in the mountains. It contains some cryogenic pods with aliens and their space hounds, and also is haunted by a ghost. There’s some other hazards, like a chromatic slime in the reactor room, that added to the spice level.

The adventurers had a fun time getting into the sky tower in the first place, since it’s hovering a ways from the nearest rock ledge. More importantly, fleeing the tower was a highly risky endeavor, with one PC almost stranding the rest of the group inside the tower, facing certain death. The adventurers managed to trigger over half the security systems (laser cannons), and encountered every single creature in the tower – when the priest was fleeing from the space hounds, he jumped down the grav shoot and ended up the reactor, then fled up to the exit, where the adventurers, hounds, and ooze got into a three-way tussle.

There’s some fun items like a disintegration pistol, a nice collection of bizarre sci-fantasy one-use items, and science versions of fantasy loot. My players seemed to have a great time using the trinkets they found, even though they were hopelessly outmatched by the plethora of things they kept alerting, unthawing, or stumbling into.

I liked Pickpocket Press’s Sky Tower enough to buy Adventure Framework Collection #1, which I’ve adapted some stuff out of for my West Marches Shadowdark campaign. Once the adventurers decide to accept that challenge, I’ll post a review.

Available on DriveThruRPG (affiliate link): https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/443982/Adventure-Framework-67-Sky-Tower-of-Belk-Xos?affiliate_id=14013