There are some clever ideas / nice bits of design here, but

"Written to provide the game master the options of running it as a straight delve, humorous repast, roleplaying endeavour, or OHMYGODFLESHEATINGBEETLESEVERYWHERE!"

The tongue is thouroughly in cheek, and I don't see remotely how to run this except as total anachronistic humor. Which might fit your games! But it doesn't fit mine, so I don't think I'm getting much value out of this, unless I want to rewrite heavily.

Four one-shot adventures based on one map.

None are clunkers and all offfer inventive fun for a small, low-level group of PCs.

Great little product!

A solid onme-shot for lower-level PCs. No real frills, but that's what you'd expect from a Pay What You Want product.

Plug-and-play after a read-through.

Vats of Rats (11 pages) is a fun fantasy adventure for the older editions/variants of D&D, but I used Cat Hack (16 pages, same place). To create my solo engine, I changed four lines in Eye of the Dragon/Golden Dragon Fantasy Gamebook #4. I created five first level cat characters.

So, the adventure started when the town Reeve visited the town prison cell and saw the man-rat. He listened to the employee report. His cat Jumper was there too. Jumper joined his four cat friends and they headed north to see if they could fix the problem. They were hit with a heavy rain storm and they took shelter in a cave for an hour. When they got to the cave/dungeon complex, they started looking for the entrance that was used the most. The first room they explored was filled with food. The second room contained a human farmer locked up in a prison cell.

In the third room they encountered a rat guard who attacked. He screamed to the get the attention of his fellow rats. The PC cats killed the first rat guard and the one that came running in later. Fluff was damaged and partially healed with the only two healing spells that the two cat shamans had. They discovered a rat secret door and followed it to more rooms and encounters. Another nasty encounter was with the two rat vivimancers (the two bosses). Both were killed, but Fluff went to zero hit points. She did not lose one of her nine lives, but she is now crippled (minus two on Dexterity – permanent). She regained four of her five hit points. They also had to deal with a man-rat. The cats ran into the laboratory followed by the man-rat. The cats jumped up on the tables and started knocking glass vials and jars onto the floor. The liquids mixed together which formed a misty gas which rose up from the floor. This gas stung the eyes. The man-rat cried and the cats were able to escape. Jumper still had the dead vivimancer rat in its mouth. Next, they freed the farmer. They went to his place, had a nice meal, and slept near the warm fireplace. Then next day they encountered a frog creature who did not talk to them. The adventure ended when Jumper gave his owner (Reeve) the dead vivimancer rat body. Give this adventure a try!

The Long Hall (10 pages, free/pay what you want at DriveThruRPG) is a fun adventure for OSR RPGs. I used Scoundrel (1 page, from Link-boiZ and ScoundreL, same place) as the RPG. To create my solo engine, I got out my D&D Player’s Handbook 3.0, and changed seven lines. I did have to add some rules to Scoundrel because my PCs had to make a Fort saving throw, and my cleric had to make a Will saving throw. I used six first-level characters : cleric, ranger, fighter, rogue, sorcerer, and paladin. They entered a shrine-mausoleum to explore it. A religious group had invaded it and was trying to convert all of the priests in there. I did not have any major problems until room # 12. My cleric cast his third healing spell and then a diety attempted to convert him to the diety’s religion. Rez did make his saving throw. After they rescued four people, they exited the structure and headed in the direction of town. At dusk they were attacked by three hobbits (yes, I was surprised too). So, they killed a total of 12 enemies that day.

On the next day, the PCs tried to convince three of the rescued priests to join them for the trip back to the temple. The priests did not like the sorcerer, so they said “no” (He has three eyes. He can not help it, he was born that way). On this second day the PCs killed 4 adepts, a giant ant, and then the avatar (boss). This boss fight was a tough one. Both the paladin and fighter went down. Soon, all of the healing spells were used. At this point my six PCs exited the structure. They did not explore every room. They were done for the day and had enough loot from two days of exploring (four scrolls, one magic item which has an expiration date, 698 silver pieces, and 159 gold pieces). Maybe you will find more loot. Give this a try!

With the exception of the Plague Doctor, which I felt lacked any particularly cool or interesting abilities to set them apart and make me want to play one (maybe give them a gun?), this book was excellent. By far the best 3rd party Classes for TBH currently available.

I'm not going to openly state that the art is stolen, but I sincerely doubt the artists were paid. The one that's stock art, maybe.

The major issue with this is that it's pretty definitively NOT a Black Hack book. It looks like it is, but the Black Hack doesn't use saves, and it certainly doesn't make NPCs do them. Look at the monsters section of the Black Hack book. Do you see ability scores? You don't. This renders the Alchemist in particular a huge pain in the ass to arbitrate.

A hack should not make you have to functionally rewrite a whole class because you didn't do it right.

I must admit from the start that I bought Children's Crusade strictly for the laugh value of reading the booklet through, and I wasn't disappointed. The game is a well-crafted blending of the best of Basic D&D with the Wild Imagination schtick of Steve Jackson's Toonioversal Tours TinyToons chapter. While I'm sure that real 9-12-year-olds will have fun playing CC. I'm also pretty sure that adults will have just as much fun playing 9-12-year-olds on their first fantasy adventure.

Great little adventure with a neat little ballad to go along with it. It's definitely worth picking up for your games as a haunting interlude.