RPG CROWDFUNDING NEWS – Night Hunters, Dungeon, Inc., Empire of Bones, and more | EN World D&D & Tabletop RPG News & Reviews

This week’s crowdfunding sampler looks at campaigns that close between February 12 to 25, deep into Zine Month. Called ZineQuest on Kickstarter and ZineTopia on Backerkit, February is a promotion/celebration of the RPG zine format, booklets great for adventures, games, and more. While I don’t have any listed here (too early), this month is sure to offer so great gaming options, so be on the lookout.

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Night Hunters: Gothic Horror for TOV and 5E D&D from Kobold Press

END DATE: Fri, February 13 2026 6:00 PM EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Kickstarter
SYSTEM(S): Tales of the Valiant and Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebook and adventure
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: CA$129 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of both hardcovers
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Kobold Press offers their take on 5e Gothic horror with Night Hunters and Night Terrors. These books give you new player options – new subclasses, backgrounds, heritages, and monstrous lineages – as well as enhanced mechanics to ramp up the terror at the table with a robust dread system and a new system where the GM can tempt players to make dark decisions in exchange for in-game perks. Night Terrors gives 12 adventures with unique villains to push the nightmares your characters encounter. To support these books, Kobold provides a set of 56 Tarot-sized cards featuring the bad guys of this setting as Major Arcana. In addition, the cards can be used for Kobold’s in-world card game. Kobold Press does beautiful 5e books, and these look like they will sit well alongside official Wizards of the Coast options like Ravenloft. Their projected delivery is summer of 2026, well ahead of the Halloween, so you can make use of this for any seasonal, themed adventures. If you need 5e-specific dark fun, check out this Kickstarter page to get a free preview and/or back the campaign.

Empire of Bones from Agamemnon Press

END DATE: Tue, February 17 2026 7:04 AM EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Kickstarter
SYSTEM(S): Old-School Essentials
PROJECT TYPE: Adventure
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $55 + S/H for the PDF and hardcover versions of the book
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Keeping with the horror theme, let’s talk about the sequel to The Painted Wastelands. This offering takes the dream-like quality of The Painted Wastelands hex crawl campaign and adds nightmare fuel. Twice the size of the original, Empire of Bones is a new Old-School Essentials hex crawl for your gaming table. Explore the necromancer-ruled city of Zeb, a metropolis administered by undead politicians, the 36 hexes of dust, and the 4 dungeons found in this tome. There’s a 22-card deck of holographic cards, the deck of the cursed dead, used for necromantic spells that alter encounters. Expected to deliver this summer, this book promises nightmares for your OSR hex crawls. Empire of Bones should fill your table with the fun kind of fear.

Dungeon, Inc. from Merry Mushmen

END DATE: Thu, February 19 2026 6:00 AM EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Kickstarter
SYSTEM(S): “This campaign is for the new edition of award-winning French TTRPG Donjon & Cie (2022), remastered and augmented by the Merry Mushmen with its original author, Ben Felten. Dungeon, Inc. is built onto Macchiato Monsters, itself a hack of OSR powerhouses Whitehack and The Black Hack.”
PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook and campaign
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: €38 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of the book
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? The Merry Mushmen have a job for you. A notable segment of OSR is about dungeon delves, adventuring in and raiding a dungeon for treasure and experience. Through Dungeon, Inc., the concept gets turned on its head, OSR-style. You are a monster in the dungeon, an employee of the main boss; you have quarterly kill projects and must demonstrate your value in team meetings or be downsized into the boss’ maw. That’s right, you have a 9 to 5 with team building exercises and customers that are trying to kill you, offered as a 128-page core rulebook featuring OSR rules for the corporate elite and a 72-page mission book with 10 adventures. Do your players want to run a dungeon and eat adventurers? Sure, we all do, and Dungeon, Inc. makes it possible, so check out this Kickstarter to get your franchise started today.

Swords Without Master from Unwritten Earths Symposium

END DATE: Sat, February 14 2026 2:00 AM EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Kickstarter
SYSTEM(S): An original system
PROJECT TYPE: Core rulebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $25 + S/H for the PDF and print versions of the book
AI STATEMENT: “Swords Without Master is by humans, for humans. We do not use generative AI in our work, and neither do our collaborators.”
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? This storytelling RPG has you take on the role of a rogue in a fantasy world. Less simulation, your rolls use a set of tone dice to determine the action/scenes outcome. Your character attempts to steal, roll to see if the outcome is jovial or glum. This isn’t a d20-based RPG, but a TTRPG that is a group exercise in story focused narratives. It’s finding an audience and it’s one of the few TTRPGs that offers a vanity press, pay-to-publish backer level so you can suggest tonal elements to enhance the campaign. If your table enjoys group storytelling or you want your work to appear in this book, this Kickstarter is worth a read.

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RealmBreakers — Apocalypse Machines to Terrify Your Table from The Arcane Gate

END DATE: Thu, February 19 2026 2:49 PM EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Kickstarter
SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Adventure
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $
AI STATEMENT: “100% Human-Made Content. Every illustration, map, miniature, and page layout in RealmBreakers is created by real artists. No generative AI. No stock assets. No placeholders.”
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? This is an idea – 5e adventures featuring colossal machines designed for world-ending destruction. The twist? These are drop-in adventures. Does your 5e campaign need a big bad that may destroy your town or region or the world? That’s the stakes for these random adventures. As a GM, did you prep for tonight’s game? No? Well, here’s an option to gamble the whole campaign on! I really dig the machismo of any GM that risks their carefully built world on a drop-in adventure that could destroy everything they’ve been building if the players don’t win. Despite this being a book of 5e adventures, that spirit feels brazen, unsafe, and fun. Normally, the players are the ones risking loss if their characters die, but here the GM could lose their setting via a one-shot (actually, multi-session stories, but still designed to be dropped into an ongoing campaign). If you want to add a new level of risk to your campaign, check out this book of adventures on Kickstarter.

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Complete Class Compendium for Level Up A5E and D&D 2024 from Mike Myler

END DATE: Feb 13, 2026 at 11:59pm EST.
CROWDFUNDING ON: Backerkit
SYSTEM(S): Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition and Level Up: Advanced Fifth Edition
PROJECT TYPE: Sourcebook
MOST POPULAR PLEDGE: $20 for the PDF of the book
AI STATEMENT: “All-Human. No LLM, ‘artificial intelligence’, or any other Response Machine was used in the making of this project.”
DISCLAIMER: Mike Myler is a columnist for EN World
WHY SPOTLIGHT THIS CAMPAIGN? Over on Backerkit, EN World’s Mike Myler offers 12 original classes for your 5e and A5E games. In addition, get new feats, spells, schools of magic, ways to build settlements, lineages, monsters, and more. Play as classes like the Doctor, Mechanics where your armor is your strength, the Speedster where your quick actions make you a hero, and many more. If you want new 5e player options, this sourcebook may speak to you.

See you in two weeks.

Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, Kobold Press Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, Kobold Press, and Amazon.