OSR OSR News Roundup

[thirdkingdom]

That is a major concern conidering they’re using that as cover to specifically target LGBTQ+ content by mislabeling it as NSFW. I won’t be buying from itch until that policy is fully reversed and apologies go out.

I might be mistaken here, and this is probably not the thread for it, but my understanding is there is plenty of LGBTQ+ material currently available and indexable on itch, and that it is the creator's responsibility to tag their products NSFW. Additionally, there's been a movement amongst creators who do publish on itch, in response to the new policy, to set itch's share of any proceeds to 0. I'm not sure how widespread this is, but I do know a number of publishers who have done this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Another great Appendix N Jam mini-adventure site I can see being dropped into lots of campaigns: Thunder Speakers of Buzhou. It's an Asian-coded adventure site where adventurers have to deal with the celestial bureaucracy to get the Celestial Emperor to grant their wish (although toned down so it's not game-breaking). The odds that a campaign wouldn't need something like this seems really unlikely to me.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the second News Roundup in August. If you're in the States you're probably looking at the start of school and the winding down of summer. Let's jump right in and check out last week's releases, shall we?

• Perplexing Ruins has published Saint Witold's Bell, an adventure for Shadowdark written for characters of levels 2-4. Perplexing Ruins is a fantastic artist (full disclosure, they've done work for me) and they're trying to make it full time in the rpg field, so can use your support!
• Matt Kelly has released Reputation, a simple system for tracking a character's renown and reputation as they adventure. It's written for Cairn, but should be broadly applicable to other OSR systems.
• I'm glad to see support for the excellent post-apoc game Glowburn and Radscars; Terror Beneath the Sunken City, by bread wizard, is an adventure set in a swamp, featuring a city of the Ancients covered by the muck and water.
• Rat in a Suit released their entry into the one-page rpg jam currently running on itch: The Grand Melee. In this game, each player takes on the roll of a knight in a medieval melee tournament to see who will be the last knight standing!
• I'm not familiar with yanahn, but they've just released a really cool adventure: Enter the Whalefall is an underwater depthcrawl/dungeon inspired by the death of whales and the ecosystem that forms around their bodies at the very bottom of the ocean. It looks really neat.
• YouCanBreatheNow Art just released a bundle of ruin art for use with the Creative Commons License. I'm a big fan of their work, and their recent release is a really nice combination of peaceful landscape and forgotten ruins.
• Zones is a neat looking new game with fantastic art that's now out on Drivethru. It uses the Into the Odd rules system, and is a post-war, post-apoc game inspired by Escape from Tarkov, Twilight 2000, and others.
• Temple of the Cybernetic Cult is a short adventure for Shadowdark that brings some advanced tech to the game.
• I'm always happy to promote the work of a new publisher, and Crookhorns is Muzgrob's second release. It's a kindred for the newly released Dolmenwood game/setting.
• Casey Garske has released Issues One and Zero of Oubliette, a mega-dungeon published in a serial zine format. I really like their use of public domain art.
• Sandbox Casual bills itself as a "small press indie mixtape RPG from a parallel universe where 1979 never ended". It looks pretty interesting, and has some great art.
• Tales from the Skieg River is on Drivethru in both English and Italian (I've linked to the English version). It's a collection of three system-agnostic one-page dungeons written for OSR/NSR-style games.
• Based on the Brindlewood Bay rules engine, Fiendgazer is a game of small-town weirdos and misfits protecting their town from supernatural horror. I stumbled across this because it features the art of Tony Tran, who I really admire and think does great work. I also really like Brindlewood Bay.
• Another Brindlewood inspired project is Serving up Disaster, a game of kitchen nightmares. One player takes on the role of the fiery celebrity chef visiting struggling restaurants, and the other players take on the roles of the staff of said restaurants.
• I've been a big fan of Idle Catulary and their blog -- especially their bathtub reviews -- and I saw that they've just released The Frost-Wreathed Heart, a grim game where the players are trapped in a labyrinth and not everyone will be able to get out alive.
• After four straight years of consistent monthly releases, Populated Hexes Monthly is taking a month off (I needed a break). We'll be back in October with Issue 49, this time beginning an exploration into the oft-mentioned, but as not-yet covered, Scarlet Principalities.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Whalefalls are an amazing event in nature. Great fodder for adventures.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the third News Roundup for August. For new readers, this is a compilation of last week's new releases that I found in the OSR and indie RPG fields. I don't promote anything that contains AI assets, and I also make my best effort to promote the works of marginalized creators. If you've got something you would like me to mention please send me an email at thirdkingdomgames at gmail dot com and I'll see what I can do. After the relative calm of releases around GenCon it looks like things have picked up again.

If you're a publisher and reading this, Sabre is looking to expand our selection of indie games at both the retail and wholesale level. I'm trying to start carrying and distributing titles for wholesale. We already handle distribution for a couple of smaller companies, Leyline Press being the main one, and offer fair terms, fast turnaround on shipping, and good customer support. We can also help fund print runs or fulfill Kickstarters, so if you're interested please reach out to the email above.

• The Potato Game Quickstart, by Gnomestones, is now available on itch. It is based on a BX-engine, and is simple and easy to run, and incredibly charming. You play as field gnomes, and it is an absolute whimsical delight. For people who say they need to resort to using AI art in their games, I would urge you to check out The Potato Game to get a sense of what you can do on your own, and how much it adds.
• There must be something in the air about gnomes this week, because I just saw Tomte, a cozy rpg based on Swedish folklore where you play gnomes that care for a farmstead.
• One of our best-selling zines is Transgender Deathmatch, so I was tickled to see Pronoun Throwdown, a one-page wrestling rpg that's got a much lighter tone than TD.
• I'm not familiar with the work of ehronlime, but I saw the other day they've released Ithaca in the Cards: The Second Expedition. It's a game about tragedy and loss on the voyage home from a successful quest, and the art is really stunning.
• Beyond Tell Arn: Kurhan of the Spear is a city supplement for BX-style games, introducing the city of Kurhan. It's written for The Lions of Tell Arn, but should be easy to add to any existing OSR system or campaign.
• Shadowdark is a system that I really haven't delved that much into, although I like a lot of what I see. I was especially intrigued by the new third party zine Shadowstones, which is geared towards solo play using SD.
• Non-Euclidean, 4 Dimensional Aberrant Castle is a collection of two dungeons with system agnostic OSR stat blocks. One of the dungeons is designed as a shifting block puzzle, with printable pieces. The whole product is designed to be easily printed using a home printer, which is really nice.
• Red Ruin Publishing, the folks who have been putting out an amazing amount of free or PWYW content for Dragon Warriors, have just released Island of Fury, in both GNAT and Dragon Warriors flavor. It's a chunky 200+ page playbook for either system.
• On Solar Tides is a short adventure for the Dirtbags! system, and is an adventure where the PCs need to pose as space pirates to eliminate the true threat: even nastier space pirates.
• Heroes and Homebrew has released Beyond the Twisted Portal, vol. 3, a punk, DIY OSR zine with a dash (okay, maybe a bit more than a dash) of weirdness.
• Hoser Mode, by David Okum, is a Mork Borg game about what happens when Canadians get pushed to far and they drop their legendary niceness.
• Kobayashi, the creative force of nature behind Black Sword Hack, Fleaux!, and more, is crowdfunding Fallen Blades/Endless Stars, a zine designed to emulate Star Wars games. Their work is definitely worth checking out.
• What happens when a successful halfling adventurer retires, founds their own Shire, and invites their relatives to stay? Only a group of Expert-level adventurers can answer that, apparently, in the new adventure Hubert's Hole.
• I missed the first issue of Ever and Anon, but the second issue is out (and free!). It's a digital zine (and comes in at 150 pages) seeking to continue the legacy of Alarums and Excursions, and features contributions from a number of creators in the OSR and indie gaming space.
• Grimme Perils is a grim fantasy game with fairy-tale influence that uses a 2d6-based system. It looks pretty interesting, and the author was nice enough to send me a complimentary copy, which I'm hoping to do a review of when I get a chance.
• I've launched the Kickstarter for Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 49. It's going to be releasing in October, and features the town of Junction, at the edge of the Scarlet Principalities, an oft-mentioned city that can serve as a base for the PCs.

 

[Scribe]

Hoser Mode, by David Okum, is a Mork Borg game about what happens when Canadians get pushed to far and they drop their legendary niceness.

It may be my duty to buy this.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the last News Roundup for August. First, I'd like to apologize to Will, of Inverted Castle Press. I had fully planned on mentioning their release Manic at the Monastery, but it slipped through the cracks. It's an adventure for characters of levels 1-3, and is statted for both OSE and Worlds without Number, and is their second published adventure, after the excellent Fragments of the Floating City.

It looks like last week was a bit slower with new releases than the previous week, but I think I've found some titles that might be of interest to folks.

• It seems like it's been awhile since I saw something released for the 24XX line of games, so I was pleasantly surprised to see 24XX-RPS pop into my feed. It's a version of 24XX that uses Rock-Paper-Scissors instead of dice.
• More Dungeons and Treasures is a collection of short zines for A Deck of Dungeons and Treasures and Mausritter, and the goal is to eventually have nine different micro-settings to play in.
• Not a new release, but a remastered one, and a system that gets mentioned here with some regularity: bread wizard has released a remastered version of Glowburn and Radscars, a nice little post-apoc game that mashes up Cairn and Mutant Crawl Classics.
• Heretics' Grave is a modular adventure for 3rd level characters written for Swords and Wizardry. It's specifically designed to serve as a bridge between two unconnected areas, or perhaps as a filler in one of those "the dungeon continues on here, but it is unmapped" regions. It's nice seeing some 3pp support for S&W.
• I'm also glad to see some more stuff coming out for Red Borg, the explicitly anti-capitalist hack of Mork Borg (although, I'd argue that most of the Borg line of games are anti-capitalist); this one focused on bringing the revolution to South America.
• I'm still seeing stuff trickle in from the Appendix N jam; one of the more recent releases is The Howling Blade, by Suffety Games, in which War, one of the four horseman, is determined to bring about the apocalypse.
• As may be obvious, I'm a sucker for lo-budget, do-it-yourself art, and Riff Wizards fits that groove totally. It's a rules-lite, story-heavy rpg that bills itself as universal. I haven't had a chance to give it a thorough read-through, but the art is glorious and reminds me of margin doodling in my notebook during 10th grade English.
• Been seeing more and more stuff for Dolmenwood: Cobbin is a new ancestry for the system, that lets you play as an anthropomorphic animal.
• The Fantasy Trip is a fascinating little system published by Steve Jackson decades ago that, in some ways, is surprisingly modern, and it's nice to see that there's still support for it. The Heresy zine is an unofficial fanzine, and is currently on Issue 3.
• All Rolled Up Games is raising funds for Cork Bord, the Borg-based game of Nordic investigation and mystery. It looks pretty sweet.
• Rowan, Rook and Decard has been publishing some really groundbreaking games over the past five or so years, and they're currently crowdfunding a supplement for Heart: The City Beneath. Called Ways and Means, it expands on Heart with a bunch of new options and rules.
• Bree-YARC, my take on what 3rd edition D&D would have looked like if it used BX as a springboard, is now available as a Quickstart on Drivethrurpg and the Sabre Games website. It's free!

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the first news roundup for September. Here in the States it is Labor Day. The first thing I wanted to plug isn't a release, but an event; on September 28th, Pure Panic and Games in Silver Springs is hosting a mini-convention, in conjunction with the indie rpg group Designed in the DMV. If you're in the area you should try and swing by and show them some support. You can check out the Designed in the DMV website, and they've got information there about the event.

• Manor of the Swine Duke is a new adventure for Rovers and Riches 2e. It's published by goblinpitgames, (they're the authors of Miasma and Monsters). This current adventure is part of the Filthy Rich OSR Adventure Jam.
• As I'm sure many long-time readers are getting tired of hearing, nothing gives me greater pleasure than promoting the work of first time publishers. I saw a thread on reddit by one such individual asking how to promote their work; please, if you're one of these people, reach out to me and I'll do what I can to include you in this publication (I don't promote work with AI assets, though!). Anyway, be sure to check out Family of Night: The Sunless Cæthedrull, by Melotron9. It's a free module for Mork Borg.
• Onslaught Six has launched a Kickstarter for Monster Condo, the follow-up to their Ruins of Castle Gygar adventure. Monster Condo is a mega-dungeon, with 17 areas and 114 rooms. Similar to Castle Gygar, this project was written as a "room-a-day", and then integrated into a whole.
• Weird Heroes of Public Access is available on etsy as a hardcover. We've carried a bunch of Joey's zine titles, and I'm really excited to see that Fairhaven is now available as it's own thing. If you're looking for something that would be perfect to emulate Welcome to Night Vale or UHF with equal ease, you should check this out.
• I missed this a few weeks ago, but Sivad's Sanctum has released In the Light of the Setting Sun Tombstone edition, a neat little game for role-playing in the Weird West.
• Goblin Archives has released Case Files 01: Anomaly, an anthology-style releases of content for the excellent Liminal Horror rpg.
• The Bones of Elenore Greymarsh is an adventure for Pirate Borg, an adventure of revenge served cold and justice delivered.
• Epoch: A Game of Stone and Spell is a stone-age rpg, and the newly released Red Ochre and Ruins is a supplement for it, that brings a number of optional rules to the table, including ideas and guidelines for converting it to a far-future, post-apocalyptic setting.
• Dyson Logos has released a new crop of his Cartography Collections, these from 2024. The god-father of OSR cartography, these maps are invaluable resources for small publishers (like me!) looking for some inexpensive yet awesome maps, or GMs looking for some inspiration for their own dungeons.
• JV West has released the Black Pudding Playbook, an expansion of the material from Issues 4 and 7, expanding the setting and character options. Of course, there's also the terrific art by JV, as well.
• So many collections of tables I see on Drivethru are AI-driven drek, so I was pleased to see that Tables & Lore: Vol. 1, is not one of these. It's a collection of 13 random tables and 6 pieces of lore designed to spark imagination; I'm looking forward to checking out future installments in this series.
• Ancestral Peninsula #1 is a periodic hexcrawl campaign (much like the Nod series), written for generic OSR systems, in an Iron Age setting.
• Loot the Body has released Candle, a reverse dungeon crawl written for Mork Borg, in which the adventurers find themselves summoned to the lowest level of a dungeon and must make their way to the surface.
• I'd mentioned Island of Fury a few weeks ago; its a solo-style gamebook in the vein of the old Fighting Fantasy releases, and has been released for GNAT and Dragon Warriors, and last week the authors published a version for OSE.
  
  

 

[thirdkingdom]

I try to catch as many new releases as I can, but sometimes I miss one, and I'll try to plug stuff that I missed that seems really interesting. Back in March Thunder Toad Games released their first adventure Titan's Throne: Infested Archives, a sandbox-style adventure for characters of level 1-3. It features giant ants and a dying race of stone-skinned humanoids (that you can play as a character!).

Anyway, there were a lot of releases last week, and I've compiled some of the ones that caught my fancy below.

• The Crescent Monastery is an adventure for 4th level character using the OSE ruleset, in which the monks inhabiting a distant monastery famed for the healing oil it produces, have been transformed into undead monstrosities.
• 1pagedungeons has released https://1pagedungeons.itch.io/urban-crawlBazaar of Lies, a one-page urban puzzle dungeon written for Cairn or the Odd-like series of games.
• Crystal Hollow and the Barony of Duskvale is a system neutral(ish) sandbox setting book that is designed more as a toolbox than a complete setting, and is designed as a tool for experienced Referees.
• The inimitable Kevin Crawford is running a Kickstarter to reprint the offset version of Stars without Number. Crawford's stuff is a must back for many people, and I'm glad to see SWN back in print in the offset version.
• There's an itch jam currently going on for the Crown 2e rpg. It's pretty open ended, but the general theme should revolve around the end of summer/autumn/approach of winter.
• Hauler's Handbook is a supplement for Mothership that provides rules and guidelines for deep space hauling and transport.
• mtb-za released Open Season, a system-agnostic, lightly sci-fi adventure about a big game hunting safari.
• Written for Cairn, The Dreaming Well is a short adventure about a banished wishing well that haunts everyone's dreams.
• Paolo Greco consistently produces some of the most beautiful products in the indie rpg field, and they're currently crowdfunding Pergamino Barocco, a beautiful, system agnostic collection of weird and unusual spells that would fit just as well in an occult modern game as a fantasy setting.
• Bill Edmunds is Kickstarting Inn to the Deep Deluxe, a collection of four adventures all tied to a single inn that can be used as a base for the party, in a deluxe boxset collection. There are options to back it for OSE and for Shadowdark.
• I like the recent trend of bestiaries that expand on existing monsters, and Malum Monstrum Vol. 1 is a new series that does just this. Published by Wytchin Hour, this first volume looks at goblins, and is written for Basic Fantasy.
• Land of Blood and Honey is the inaugural issue of an OSR-system agnostic setting zine that explores a desert campaign world. It looks a lot like Al-Qadim, and there are what looks to be some interesting twists.
• It was a sad day when Lee Gold announced she was shuttering Alarums and Excursions, but Ever & Anon has picked up the mantle and run with it. They've just published Issue 3, 161 pages of free material.
• The Lamplit Market is a short, PWYW adventure for Shadowdark, focused more on social interactions than combat.
• Hellwinter Forge of Wonders has released Hearts of Steel, a solo gamebook for Old School Essentials. It looks really well done, and the pdf is hyperlinked, making it super easy to use.
• I saw the Magical Compendium Companion mentioned on Discord earlier this week; it's a free, 130-page adaption of spells from advanced editions to OSE rules. It's a pretty amazing piece of work.
• James Spahn has released Chickendark, a collection of fowl rules, classes, and options for Shadowdark.
• Red Ruin Publishing, the folks behind the free Dragon Warriors zine Casket of Fays, have released Issue 17. It's jam packed with lots of interesting material.
• Relics and Ruins is a dungeon crawl for OSE set in the Little Ice Age period of our world on the Italian peninsula. It looks really interesting, and I like the premise. It's also available in a Knave version.
• I'd mentioned Sapphire Seas when it was Kickstarting, and I see it is now out on Drivethru. It's an adventure path for Shadowdark, taking characters from levels 1-10, and is set in a Phoenician-inspired world.
• I'm a huge fan of Arden Vul, and was excited to see that the folks behind it have released a bullet-point pdf of a couple of the areas: Level 1 -- The Basement, and The Pyramid of Thoth and the Tower of Scrutiny. I believe the eventual plan is to revise the entire document, a daunting task. I think what they've done so far is a nice compromise between a complete bullet point layout and text, making it easier to run but not reducing the lore and information which makes the book so unique.
• Silver Bulette has released Temple of the Sheep God, an adventure for Shadowdark for characters level 2-4, that includes a dungeon as well as a 24-mile hex filled with dangers and treasures.
• The Frontier 2nd edition is a Borderlands-inspired sci-fi quickstart guide of high-octane energy and excitement. It's unabashedly a shoot-em-up style game.
• I've launched a Kickstarter for the Bree-YARC Quickstart Rules. The rules are already available for free online, and this crowdfunding project is to raise funds for art and an offset print run. Bree-YARC is a mash-up of BX and 3rd edition D&D.
• We've added a number of indie and small press titles to the Sabre webstore, including Dead Orbit Mall (by Evlyn Moreau, and we're the only place to buy it in the States), Gnome and St. Witold's Bell by Perplexing Ruins, and Inevitable, by Soul Muppet Games.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Man, everyone came back from their holidays and hit Publish all at once.