Summer’s End is a compact, system-neutral zine collecting twelve one-page adventures—six compact dungeons and six “six-mile hex” sites—designed to drop instantly into an OSR or hex-crawl campaign. Each adventure is laid out as a single spread so a Keeper (GM) can read and run it with almost no prep, and most entries include brief mechanical stat suggestions aimed at Knave 2E and other old-school systems. It was released by Questing Beast as a PDF and print zine; the product collects Patreon-exclusive mini-adventures, redrawn and tightened for the one-page format.
📦 What you get (the contents)
The book runs about 24 pages and collects twelve bite-sized sites. Highlights include the titular mountain hex “Summer’s End” (rival factions, a tree of magic swords, and a Summer Worm lair), The Raiders of Wolfsea (an archipelago hexcrawl with fog-wolves and civilized liches), and The Wizards of Sparrowkeep (a village ringed by wizard towers locked in passive-aggressive rivalry). Most entries present a short premise, key encounters, treasure seeds, notable NPCs, map hints, and one-line stat blocks so you can run them with whatever OSR or Knave-style engine you prefer.
🐾 How it performs at the table
The zine’s one-page format is the secret sauce here: each location gives you exactly what you need to run a 60–120 minute scene or to seed a hex with long-term adventure hooks. The hexes are especially useful for hexcrawlers — they’re dense with factions, dynamic encounters, and exploration hooks that reward players who wander, negotiate, or follow rumors. Dungeon entries use clocks and simple encounter flows that let a Keeper adjudicate quickly and keep momentum. If you run a campaign that occasionally needs a “drop in” site or you host convention one-shots, these are perfect.
✨ Highlights — what works well
- Economy of design. Each adventure is dense with useful bits—names, a twist or two, a notable location, and immediate encounters—so you can run one with almost zero prep. The art and layout keep everything legible at a glance, which is exactly what you want for a drop-in scenario.
- Hex & dungeon balance. Splitting the book between hexes (good for hexcrawls and overland play) and dungeons (classic delves) makes the zine versatile for different campaign styles. Several reviewers and users single out entries like The Alchemist’s Repose and Lair of the Keymaster as reliable, replayable scenes.
- System neutrality + Knave friendliness. Stats and mechanics are presented for Knave 2E but are intentionally minimal and easy to port to Basic/Expert D&D, Old-School Essentials, or similar OSR games like Shadowdark—helpful if your table uses a different ruleset.
⚠️ Caveats & who should be careful
- Not a deep narrative experience. One-page adventures trade depth for immediacy. If you want sprawling, highly scripted, character-heavy plots, this isn’t the book for that—you’ll need to expand the seeds here.
- Some entries reward a practiced GM. The minimal text asks the GM to supply connective tissue and voices; beginners might find the format skeletal until they add their own detail.
- Reuse vs originality. A couple of the tables and hooks feel familiar OSR fare; if you play many one-page zines, you may recognize tropes. That said, the quality of execution and the neat twists make these particular tropes fun again.
🧭 Where it fits in your library
Think of Summer’s End as an “adventure swiss-army knife.” It’s ideal for:
- GMs who run hexcrawls and need dense, inspirational hex content.
- Convention GMs and one-shot specialists who want a ready pile of short, interesting locales.
- Keepers who run Knave 2E, OSE, B/X, or similar systems and value quick conversion.
If you already own a broad bestiary or an array of megadungeons, this complements rather than replaces those purchases: it gives small, flexible scenes to stitch between larger story beats.
🗡 Final verdict
Summer’s End and Other One-Page Adventures does exactly what it promises: it delivers a dozen tightly written, immediately usable adventure sites that sparkle with OSR flavor and hexcrawl potential. It rewards Keepers who like to improvise and who value hex-level density over pre-rigged theatricality. The zine’s compact size and low price make it an easy buy for OSR GMs; for Knave players it’s especially handy. If you run sandbox campaigns or want a stack of one-page hooks for pickup sessions, this is a small book that packs a lot of mileage.