OSR OSR News Roundup

No idea why there are so many new superhero RPGs nowadays, but I love it.

Autumnal said:

Okay, KOKOTÖNA is something I’ve wished for for years: more games building fantasy out of pre-Columbian materials, by people with more clues than I have. I fell on it with glad little cries. Thank you for pointing it out!

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It does look very intriguing. Even though it will be hard for me to get a chance to play it, I'll back the campaign.

Wandering Cities also looks interesting to me, but I'm a bit disappointed about the lack of a digital version.

I have the same feeling, @Nikosandros If they add a digital option, I’ll be on it.

thirdkingdom said:

Duginthroat Divided is funding on Kickstarter. It's a large-ish dungeon for OSE, designed to take PCs from levels 1-4. The art is astonishing, and the adventure looks really solid, but the only thing that gives me pause is the lead time; it's planning on releasing in August, 2026, and that just seems like an awfully long time with everything going on in the world.

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I playtested it this spring/summer, and had a lot of fun with it.

There is a castle hidden in the wilds, inhabited by bandits who prey on the trade road. In our campaign, we were lowlifes seeking to join them, but just prior to us reaching the castle, a massive lightning bolt split it in half, and now very weird stuff was happening and the bandits were spooked. It is full of fun ideas.

It's the penultimate Monday in October, and the winter holiday season is rapidly approaching, along with the end of the year.

The big news of this week is Mothership Month is underway, and raising funds for a ton of cool-looking projects on Backerkit. If you're on Bluesky, you've no doubt seen an overwhelming number of posts tagged "over/under", all part of a massive, 1,000+ member strong play by post game Sam Sorenson spearheaded in conjunction with Mothership Month.

In a Roundup first this week features three campaigns funding on Gamefound. I've been tangentially aware of this funding platform, and have backed a couple of projects on it, but it's really flown under my radar, for whatever reasons.

The final big news story of the week is that Drivethrurpg has quietly rolled out a Retailer program, where instead of purchasing a print-on-demand physical book from Drivethru you can purchase an offset print book from the publisher. You buy through Drivethru, the order goes out to the publisher, who then fulfills the order. Right now it is US only (on both ends), but it allows those publishers who do offset print runs to sell those through Drivethru. I've signed up to the program, and you can see my selection of books on offer here. It's still early on in the process, and the filters can be a little tricky to navigate. Any publisher that is involved with the program will have a "retail" option on each title page.

• Red Ruin Publishing has been releasing a series of solo play game books based on releases from the 80s, and they've just released Sword of Harmony: Blood Sword Prologue. This is all fan-released material.
• Jonah Lemkins has released a set of hand drawn fantasy map assets. It's a steal at 50 cents for sixty-six images, and the art is really cool.
• Phantom Mill Games is funding Wilendrem Volume Two: The Saintly Hollows, the follow-up and companion volume to their excellent Valley of Flowers setting. It's statted for OSE and Cairn.
• I don't see that much funding on Gamefound, but did stumble across Sewer Sanctuary recently. It's billed as a one-shot temple crawl rpg, that brings to mind the classic rogue-like dungeon experience.
• And speaking of Gamefound, Twilight Sun is also currently funding on the platform. It's Victorian-inspired ttrpg set in a world lit by a constant mechanical sun, after the death of God, and seems pretty intriguing, and makes good use of public domain art from the period.
• Doomsong: Though Shalt Not Suffer the Wycce, is currently funding on Kickstarter. It's by the same folks that brought us the excellent Labyrinth and Dark Crystal rpgs, and this new one is set in a world on the cusp of a Biblical Apocalypse.
• A third (!) campaign on Gamefound is Turn it Off, an eldritch horror adventure inspired by Lovecraft, Poe, and Eggers. It's statted for Knave 2.
• Yochai Gal, the author of Cairn, has released a free adventure, The Feast of Tegny Wood, written for Cairn 2e. It's set deep in the forest, in a region where an alchemist's failed experiment is twisting the nearby life.
• Vox Dei is a Mork Borg-influenced game that lets you play as pilgrims facing an existential threat to their faith. You don't need MB to play.
• I'd mentioned Starship Adventures, by David Okum, a month or so ago, and they've now released Starship Adventures: GM's Guide, as a guide to create adventures and run the game.
• One of my favorite recent releases has been the excellent Painted Wastelands, and the publisher has just released The Quest Unpronounceable, an adventure that ties in to a hook from the PW core book. I'm hoping this sees a print version soon.
• Fortnightly Adventures #0: The Hollow Tower, is the first in a planned adventure periodical. This adventure is written for OSE, a short, 16-page adventure for characters levels 1-3 and placed in a desert setting.
• Savvy Thief Studios has released Epona's Temple, a one-page dungeon that focuses on player skill and the ability to solve puzzles.
• Freelancer is an interesting release, a beta document about freelance mages for hire fighting preternatural threats in an alternate reality similar to our own.
• Justin Sirois, of Severed Books, recently released Sickest Witch, and John McGuire is currently raising funds for Under the Shadow of the Noon-Day Witch, a dark folk horror adventure written for Sickest Witch.

thirdkingdom said:

The final big news story of the week is that Drivethrurpg has quietly rolled out a Retailer program, where instead of purchasing a print-on-demand physical book from Drivethru you can purchase an offset print book from the publisher. You buy through Drivethru, the order goes out to the publisher, who then fulfills the order. Right now it is US only (on both ends), but it allows those publishers who do offset print runs to sell those through Drivethru. I've signed up to the program, and you can see my selection of books on offer here. It's still early on in the process, and the filters can be a little tricky to navigate. Any publisher that is involved with the program will have a "retail" option on each title page.

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Well, this is exciting news, especially for publishers. I hope it doesn't put too big of a bite on FLGSes, though, both brick and mortar and online.

thirdkingdom said:

• Vox Dei is a Mork Borg-influenced game that lets you play as pilgrims facing an existential threat to their faith. You don't need MB to play.

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So, I was raised Catholic and know all about the older history of that term, but in the present climate ... woof, that's a tough Google search results to break through.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

So, I was raised Catholic and know all about the older history of that term, but in the present climate ... woof, that's a tough Google search results to break through.

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That was my first thought as well.

Whizbang Dustyboots said:

Well, this is exciting news, especially for publishers. I hope it doesn't put too big of a bite on FLGSes, though, both brick and mortar and online.

So, I was raised Catholic and know all about the older history of that term, but in the present climate ... woof, that's a tough Google search results to break through.

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I was actually on the fence about including this title, largely due to the name, but in the end I went through with it, largely on the strength of Waclav Traier's art and the author's previous works (Waclaw has done work for me before).