Welcome to the Bundles, Freebies, and Sales News, the weekly column at EN World that helps make sure you don’t miss out on big tabletop RPG bundles, charity fundraisers, and sales from around the internet.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
With the Lower Decks campaign book still a couple of months away, Star Trek Adventures fans can get a head start on their adventures with the unsung workers of Starfleet with Star Trek Adventures BRIEFS PDF 011 Lower Decks. These ten detailed mission briefs are designed for use in campaigns in the Lower Decks era (between the end of Voyager and the start of Picard) with a crew of junior officers used as stand-alone or combined into a campaign.
PJ Coffey, co-host of Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, released a new inventory system West Marches Style - Simplified Encumbrance for A5e. While designed for EN Publishing’s Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, players of any d20-based fantasy RPG can make use of this system to keep track of loot and ammunition that somehow manages to make enchanted arrows actually useful!
Mike Shea aka SlyFlourish released a large amount of the content from the Lazy GM series into Creative Commons recently, and now that material is available on DriveThruRPG in The Lazy GM’s Resource Document. If you’re not familiar with the blog or book series, SlyFlourish focuses on streamlining game prep and provides resources to make it as easy as possible to run games, particularly for Dungeons & Dragons but useful for any fantasy RPG.
And for more advice on how to streamline your D&D games, EvanDiaz has Nimble: Streamlining Your 5e Games. This ten-page booklet features rules variants for multiple systems in 5e to help speed up play and skip the boring bookkeeping to get back to the fun.
Speaking of fast gameplay, it doesn’t get much more Fast! Furious! Fun! than Savage Worlds, and Pierce Williams looks to expand on that with Savage Courts. This courtroom simulator features real-time gameplay as players take on the roles of Prosecution or Defense, rolling off against the opposition and objecting to their pleadings as they attempt to win Jury Points to win the case.
Justin Ragan released The Hunt for Ivory Jack, a thrilling space adventure for the Genesys System that sends the party on a mission to find a lost historical artifact, starting the search at the chaotic trading world of Ferron IV.
Explorer’s Guild Publishing released One Page Adventure: Creeping Fungus which sends first-level characters into an abandoned mine to deal with a deadly threat. For which system? 5e, Pathfinder 1st Edition, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and Cogent Roleplay, and it’s very likely to be easily converted to other fantasy d20 RPGs.
Galactic Funk Creations has a pair of resources for gamemasters. The first is D100 Traps, a list of 100 traps ready to use for any dungeon encounter. The second is 100 Island Encounters, a collection of 100 encounters for any island-hopping or sea-based campaign.
Worldbuilding means creating new cultures, and that means explaining those new cultures to players and gamemasters. While most games cover this in encyclopedia-style entries, Amagi Games has a new approach with Culture Priming that helps you create more natural travelogue-style specifically for gamemasters to let players explore the fantasy cultures in a more natural way.
Over on Dungeonmasters Guild, we start with a fun new magic item from Zakariah, Bag of Enchanted Cookies. These cookies not only fill your belly but also warm your soul with a boost of rejuvenation thanks to the taste of joy and comfort.
How about a nice new familiar to go with your enchanted cookies? Zakariah also has stats for the hat mimic, a tiny mimic you can wear as a hat that unlocks useful new abilities.
One of the legacy holdovers from older editions in Dungeons & Dragons are ability scores from 3-18, even though the game design has long moved beyond them to using solely the ability bonus that goes up only on every other point. Poorly Drawn Pentagon looks to fill in that gap with Stat Perks, an optional rule system that provides new perks with every odd point of an ability score to make the difference between 14 and 15 mean something and make characters feel more unique.
Peter Leet and Dave Aspall released The Cavy - A Custom Guinea Pig Race. This fully custom race includes information about how to insert them into popular campaign settings (including Eberron, Krynn, Oerth, Spelljammer, Toril, and Wildemount), new items, new monsters, and a one-page scenario to introduce them to players.
If you’d like another new race, IamSposta has the Goblinkin, a group of half-goblinoids that have banded together to form their own unique culture featuring heritages for goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear.
If you plan to run Curse of Strahd, Jefferson Chalmers wants to enhance the dinner scene by following it up with a dance, presented as a mini-game of skill contests with opportunities for roleplaying and strategy to get an advantage.
Dan Newton’s Cardboard Box of Many Things has another new subclass, this time the Spirit Patron allowing a warlock to pledge themselves to a spirit guide from beyond the veil.
Andrew Fields also has a new subclass that expands on the Avatar: The Last Airbender-inspired option by giving wizards a chance at the bending-like fun with the College of Elements Wizard.
Are you ready to ROCK! If you just heard a distorted power chord in your head, then Joshua Willis has the subclass for you with the College of Rock for the bard. “The party is wherever you are. Stick it to The Man.”
It wouldn’t feel right to have a week without offerings from Gabriel Gro, and though it’s a bit early for Christmas in July, we have the new playable race Kringlefolk: Jolly Craftsmen. Yes, you can play your own version of the Hogfather! Or Santa I guess…
And more from Gabriel Gro, for your summery sea-faring campaigns we have Sharkin: Oceanic Warriors as a playable race with variants for the Coastal Sharkin and the Deep-Sea Sharkin.
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
Itch.io has a megabundle for the Queer Games Bundle 2023 featuring works by LGBTQ+ creators. The bundle features over 450 games and game products from almost 300 creators (and I’m pretty sure the number of games went up as I was writing this) all for the price of a single AAA video game title. On top of the video games, novels, short stories, interactive fiction, and game design assets, there are also several tabletop RPGs such as Glitter Hearts, Heart of the Forest, Rodents with Guitars, FIST: Ultra Edition, and a lot more with proceeds split between the creators.
Evil Hat Games is celebrating Pride Month by offering a coupon on select titles, including the Nebula Award winning RPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians, its rules expansion Advanced Lovers & Lesbians, accessories for Apocalypse Keys, and more.
The license for the Conan franchise expires at the end of this month, so Modiphius is having a fire sale on the Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of roleplaying game, adventures, setting books, and supplements.
Animancy Press collected together 20 different backgrounds in the Magewright Backgrounds Vol I-VI Bundle. From the Arcane Gladiator to the Diplomage to the Travelmage and more, this collection will give you plenty of new options to expand the backstory for your character.
If the College of Rock Bard from earlier wasn’t enough rock for you, how about the Monsters of Rock Bundle? This collection features 100 Heavy Metal Feats with 100 feats inspired by heavy metal (with lots of band name puns), 666: The Number of the Beast has six boss battle one-shots, and I Fought the Boar! Is a hunting/gathering simulator for a side quest or to flesh out a travel adventure.
If there was ever a setting for creepy, twisted versions of fairy tales, it’s Ravenloft. And the Ravenloft Grim Fairy Tales Bundle collects three examples of just that with Rose Red, The House that Jack Built, and To Grandmother’s House We Go.
Charity Bundles and Sales
DriveThruRPG has a pair of bundles featuring a wide array of games for Big Bad Con. The Big Bad Bundle #1 features City of Mist, Cypher System Rulebook, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Fear Itself 2nd Edition, Hunter: The Reckoning 5th Edition, and more. The Big Bad Bundle #2 has Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Fiasco, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Scion 2nd Edition, and more.
Over on Bundle of Holding, Quality Games and Acheron Games have the Lex Arcana bundle for the 2nd edition of the historical RPG of a magical Roman Empire that never fell. The Starter Collection features the Lex Arcana Core Rulebook, Lex Arcana Encyclopedia, the setting book Italia, and the magic book Arcana. The Bonus Collection adds on the setting expansions Dacia and Thracia, Aegyptus, and Mysteries of the Empire.
Fans of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have a pair of bundles of game books set in Lankhmar based on the works of author Fritz Leiber. The first, the DCC Lankhmar Bundle brings the classic fantasy setting to Goodman Games’s Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Starter Collection includes the DCC Lankhmar Boxed Set and the sourcebook Gang Lords of Lankhmar while the Bonus Collection adds on the location book The Land of the Eight Cities, A Dozen Lankhmar Locations, a trio of 2nd level adventures, and three higher level adventures.
The second bundle adds a collection of eight Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures set in Lankhmar. Not only do you get the 164-page tournament module The Greatest Thieves in Lankhmar but also the adventures Cheating Death, Unholy Nights in Lankhmar, Mercy on the Day of the Eel, Treachery in the Beggar City, Masks of Lankhmar, and the Free RPG Day offerings from 2016 and 2020.
On Humble Bundle, the Ultimate RPG Guides Bundle features several useful reference and background books for roleplaying games. The base level features two books on mythology, Wizards and Women of Myth, while the second level adds on myth books Dragons and Vampires along with the reference book A Dictionary of Made-Up Languages and the guide book The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming: Rules Every Gamer Must Live By, while the top level features a total of 22 books including the entire Ultimate RPG Guide series by James D’Amato with The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, Gameplay Guide, and Game Master’s Worldbuilding Guide, the RPG joke book A Dragon Walks into a Bar, books on Viking, Celtic, and Greek mythology, both a cookbook and a mixology book, and a lot more.
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
With the Lower Decks campaign book still a couple of months away, Star Trek Adventures fans can get a head start on their adventures with the unsung workers of Starfleet with Star Trek Adventures BRIEFS PDF 011 Lower Decks. These ten detailed mission briefs are designed for use in campaigns in the Lower Decks era (between the end of Voyager and the start of Picard) with a crew of junior officers used as stand-alone or combined into a campaign.
- Price: Free
PJ Coffey, co-host of Morrus’ Unofficial Tabletop RPG Talk, released a new inventory system West Marches Style - Simplified Encumbrance for A5e. While designed for EN Publishing’s Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition, players of any d20-based fantasy RPG can make use of this system to keep track of loot and ammunition that somehow manages to make enchanted arrows actually useful!
- Price: Free
Mike Shea aka SlyFlourish released a large amount of the content from the Lazy GM series into Creative Commons recently, and now that material is available on DriveThruRPG in The Lazy GM’s Resource Document. If you’re not familiar with the blog or book series, SlyFlourish focuses on streamlining game prep and provides resources to make it as easy as possible to run games, particularly for Dungeons & Dragons but useful for any fantasy RPG.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $5.00)
And for more advice on how to streamline your D&D games, EvanDiaz has Nimble: Streamlining Your 5e Games. This ten-page booklet features rules variants for multiple systems in 5e to help speed up play and skip the boring bookkeeping to get back to the fun.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
Speaking of fast gameplay, it doesn’t get much more Fast! Furious! Fun! than Savage Worlds, and Pierce Williams looks to expand on that with Savage Courts. This courtroom simulator features real-time gameplay as players take on the roles of Prosecution or Defense, rolling off against the opposition and objecting to their pleadings as they attempt to win Jury Points to win the case.
- Price: Free
Justin Ragan released The Hunt for Ivory Jack, a thrilling space adventure for the Genesys System that sends the party on a mission to find a lost historical artifact, starting the search at the chaotic trading world of Ferron IV.
- Price: Free
Explorer’s Guild Publishing released One Page Adventure: Creeping Fungus which sends first-level characters into an abandoned mine to deal with a deadly threat. For which system? 5e, Pathfinder 1st Edition, Pathfinder 2nd Edition, and Cogent Roleplay, and it’s very likely to be easily converted to other fantasy d20 RPGs.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.50)
Galactic Funk Creations has a pair of resources for gamemasters. The first is D100 Traps, a list of 100 traps ready to use for any dungeon encounter. The second is 100 Island Encounters, a collection of 100 encounters for any island-hopping or sea-based campaign.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00 each)
Worldbuilding means creating new cultures, and that means explaining those new cultures to players and gamemasters. While most games cover this in encyclopedia-style entries, Amagi Games has a new approach with Culture Priming that helps you create more natural travelogue-style specifically for gamemasters to let players explore the fantasy cultures in a more natural way.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $3.00)
Over on Dungeonmasters Guild, we start with a fun new magic item from Zakariah, Bag of Enchanted Cookies. These cookies not only fill your belly but also warm your soul with a boost of rejuvenation thanks to the taste of joy and comfort.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
How about a nice new familiar to go with your enchanted cookies? Zakariah also has stats for the hat mimic, a tiny mimic you can wear as a hat that unlocks useful new abilities.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
One of the legacy holdovers from older editions in Dungeons & Dragons are ability scores from 3-18, even though the game design has long moved beyond them to using solely the ability bonus that goes up only on every other point. Poorly Drawn Pentagon looks to fill in that gap with Stat Perks, an optional rule system that provides new perks with every odd point of an ability score to make the difference between 14 and 15 mean something and make characters feel more unique.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
Peter Leet and Dave Aspall released The Cavy - A Custom Guinea Pig Race. This fully custom race includes information about how to insert them into popular campaign settings (including Eberron, Krynn, Oerth, Spelljammer, Toril, and Wildemount), new items, new monsters, and a one-page scenario to introduce them to players.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.99)
If you’d like another new race, IamSposta has the Goblinkin, a group of half-goblinoids that have banded together to form their own unique culture featuring heritages for goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
If you plan to run Curse of Strahd, Jefferson Chalmers wants to enhance the dinner scene by following it up with a dance, presented as a mini-game of skill contests with opportunities for roleplaying and strategy to get an advantage.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
Dan Newton’s Cardboard Box of Many Things has another new subclass, this time the Spirit Patron allowing a warlock to pledge themselves to a spirit guide from beyond the veil.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.50)
Andrew Fields also has a new subclass that expands on the Avatar: The Last Airbender-inspired option by giving wizards a chance at the bending-like fun with the College of Elements Wizard.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.50)
Are you ready to ROCK! If you just heard a distorted power chord in your head, then Joshua Willis has the subclass for you with the College of Rock for the bard. “The party is wherever you are. Stick it to The Man.”
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
It wouldn’t feel right to have a week without offerings from Gabriel Gro, and though it’s a bit early for Christmas in July, we have the new playable race Kringlefolk: Jolly Craftsmen. Yes, you can play your own version of the Hogfather! Or Santa I guess…
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.50)
And more from Gabriel Gro, for your summery sea-faring campaigns we have Sharkin: Oceanic Warriors as a playable race with variants for the Coastal Sharkin and the Deep-Sea Sharkin.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.99)
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
Itch.io has a megabundle for the Queer Games Bundle 2023 featuring works by LGBTQ+ creators. The bundle features over 450 games and game products from almost 300 creators (and I’m pretty sure the number of games went up as I was writing this) all for the price of a single AAA video game title. On top of the video games, novels, short stories, interactive fiction, and game design assets, there are also several tabletop RPGs such as Glitter Hearts, Heart of the Forest, Rodents with Guitars, FIST: Ultra Edition, and a lot more with proceeds split between the creators.
- Price: $60.00 (over 99% off)
- End Date: July 7, 2023
Evil Hat Games is celebrating Pride Month by offering a coupon on select titles, including the Nebula Award winning RPG Thirsty Sword Lesbians, its rules expansion Advanced Lovers & Lesbians, accessories for Apocalypse Keys, and more.
- Price: 15% off with the coupon code PRIDE23
- End Date: June 30, 2023
The license for the Conan franchise expires at the end of this month, so Modiphius is having a fire sale on the Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of roleplaying game, adventures, setting books, and supplements.
- Price: 50% off all titles
- End Date: June 30, 2023
Animancy Press collected together 20 different backgrounds in the Magewright Backgrounds Vol I-VI Bundle. From the Arcane Gladiator to the Diplomage to the Travelmage and more, this collection will give you plenty of new options to expand the backstory for your character.
- Price: $20.00 (75% off)
If the College of Rock Bard from earlier wasn’t enough rock for you, how about the Monsters of Rock Bundle? This collection features 100 Heavy Metal Feats with 100 feats inspired by heavy metal (with lots of band name puns), 666: The Number of the Beast has six boss battle one-shots, and I Fought the Boar! Is a hunting/gathering simulator for a side quest or to flesh out a travel adventure.
- Price: $4.95 (18% off)
If there was ever a setting for creepy, twisted versions of fairy tales, it’s Ravenloft. And the Ravenloft Grim Fairy Tales Bundle collects three examples of just that with Rose Red, The House that Jack Built, and To Grandmother’s House We Go.
- Price: $18.00 (25% off)
Charity Bundles and Sales
DriveThruRPG has a pair of bundles featuring a wide array of games for Big Bad Con. The Big Bad Bundle #1 features City of Mist, Cypher System Rulebook, Thirsty Sword Lesbians, Fear Itself 2nd Edition, Hunter: The Reckoning 5th Edition, and more. The Big Bad Bundle #2 has Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Fiasco, Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Scion 2nd Edition, and more.
- Price: $24.99 each (84-85% off)
- End Date: June 12, 2023
- Charity: Big Bad Con (all proceeds)
Over on Bundle of Holding, Quality Games and Acheron Games have the Lex Arcana bundle for the 2nd edition of the historical RPG of a magical Roman Empire that never fell. The Starter Collection features the Lex Arcana Core Rulebook, Lex Arcana Encyclopedia, the setting book Italia, and the magic book Arcana. The Bonus Collection adds on the setting expansions Dacia and Thracia, Aegyptus, and Mysteries of the Empire.
- Price: $17.95 (72% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: June 27, 2023
- Charity: Direct Relief (10%)
Fans of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have a pair of bundles of game books set in Lankhmar based on the works of author Fritz Leiber. The first, the DCC Lankhmar Bundle brings the classic fantasy setting to Goodman Games’s Dungeon Crawl Classics. The Starter Collection includes the DCC Lankhmar Boxed Set and the sourcebook Gang Lords of Lankhmar while the Bonus Collection adds on the location book The Land of the Eight Cities, A Dozen Lankhmar Locations, a trio of 2nd level adventures, and three higher level adventures.
- Price: $14.95 (68% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: June 19, 2023
- Charity: San Francisco-Marin Food Bank (10%)
The second bundle adds a collection of eight Dungeon Crawl Classics adventures set in Lankhmar. Not only do you get the 164-page tournament module The Greatest Thieves in Lankhmar but also the adventures Cheating Death, Unholy Nights in Lankhmar, Mercy on the Day of the Eel, Treachery in the Beggar City, Masks of Lankhmar, and the Free RPG Day offerings from 2016 and 2020.
- Price: 17.95 (75% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: June 19, 2023
- Charity: San Francisco-Marin Food Bank (10%)
On Humble Bundle, the Ultimate RPG Guides Bundle features several useful reference and background books for roleplaying games. The base level features two books on mythology, Wizards and Women of Myth, while the second level adds on myth books Dragons and Vampires along with the reference book A Dictionary of Made-Up Languages and the guide book The Civilized Guide to Tabletop Gaming: Rules Every Gamer Must Live By, while the top level features a total of 22 books including the entire Ultimate RPG Guide series by James D’Amato with The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide, Gameplay Guide, and Game Master’s Worldbuilding Guide, the RPG joke book A Dragon Walks into a Bar, books on Viking, Celtic, and Greek mythology, both a cookbook and a mixology book, and a lot more.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (93% off at the top tier)
- End Date: June 30, 2023
- Charity: Worldreader (user-defined, default 5%)
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
