OSR OSR News Roundup

[darjr]

Per the podcast, you can't get into Between Two Cons' event spaces without a ticket, but you can go to the vendor area, which is probably a big draw for a lot of people anyway.

I’ll be at the con. Hope to see some of ya there!

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the last news Roundup in June. Saturday was FreeRPGDay, when a number of FLGS around the world have free products their giving away. By all reports this was an extremely successful year (although customs delays means that stores in the UK don't have their product yet); I ordered for Sabre at the same time I always do, and was only able to order one box instead of two. I also have a submission in the bundle, From Here to There, an OSR hexcrawl. You can download the pdf for free from Sabre or Drivethru, and an at-cost POD version should be available this week.

• Bartosz N has been releasing some really neat hexmaps that are created through collaging public domain images (no AI!); they're inspired by Mythic Bastionland, but are system agnostic and really beautiful. They just released a compiled bundle of the hexes on itch.
• Written for Cairn, Liquid Euphoria is a one-shot adventure that funded earlier this year as a part of ZineMonth, and it's now available on itch.
• Originally written as a One Page Dungeon, The Sundial Siphon is a rotating puzzle dungeon that has been expanded into a 20-page adventure, and includes a printable rotating dial to make and use as a prop for your players.
• Expedition 4155 is a mashup of Liminal Horror, Into the Odd, and Swyvers, a turn of the century found-footage dungeon dive. It's a fascinating premise, and I'll be curious to see if it is able to pull it off.
• I'd mentioned Sword& awhile back, the official zine put out by the NSR Discord community. They've just released Sword& Vol. 2 on itch (it will soon be released on RPGTrader, as well). The theme of this issue is "space wizards".
• Seekers, Keepers, Explorers, Wanderers (SKEW) is a new ttrpg mixing old school vibes with new school mechanics. It's in the beta phase, and the author is currently welcoming feedback.
• mucilage has just released Vol 2 of their Gadzooks! Zine for Shadowdark. House Auxor is an adventure for 2nd level characters, designed to be played through in 1 or 2 sessions, exploring the palace of an ancient doomed noble family.
• Another adventure written for Shadowdark, Hulk of the Dying Ship is a 1st level adventure that puts the PCs press-ganged into the service of a living ship.
• Slime Mind Studio has released Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between. It's an adventure statted for a variety of BX-style games, but there's no level range given in the description. There's a decent preview available, though.
• Nemesis Vol. 1 is out in pdf. It's a fanzine for the excellent Liminal Horror system.
• I haven't seen much coming out for the excellent, and seminal to the hobby, Black Hack recently, but I did just see the unaffiliated with Peter Regan but inspired by BH, Black Jam Post-Apocalyptic Adventure. It's a self-contained system and campaign.
• I released Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 57 last week in pdf, print on demand, and retail. It finishes off the mini-dungeon from Issue 56, looks at another ruined town on the road to the abandoned city mega-dungeon of Zizdul, and has extensive rules for adding Madness to your OSR-game, with an escalating system of rolls instead of tracking sanity.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the OSR News Roundup for July 6th, 2026. I may or may not get a chance to wrap this up today; as I'm compiling my list of releases we're seeing some pretty major thunderstorms roll through the region, and our power is flickering on and off. Still, it is rain, which we desperately need. This weekend was also Sabre's birthday, the end of our third full year as a brick and mortar location. To celebrate, we're having a 15% off sale through the end of today (Monday) on everything in stock, if you use the code "Birthday" at checkout.

Let's see how much I can get through, then, shall we, but first, I will blatantly abuse my power and highlight a Kickstarter that an acquaintance is running. Christopher Peter is best known for Fight!, an rpg designed to emulate fighting video games (they're also running an excellent Stonehell pbp game I'm playing in), and they're currently running a Kickstarter for Fight: Button Masher, a companion to Fight that provides streamlined options and character creation processes to make jumping into a game much easier.

• employees guide to h.e.l.l. inc. is an adventure for Electric Bastionland, a quirky adventure and corporate hellcrawl using the ruleset that predated, and have been somewhat overshadowed, by Mythic Bastionland.
• One question I see fairly frequently is people asking for supplements that involve using monster parts to brew potions, and the newly released Creature Alchemy does just that. It's written for Cairn, but should be easily adaptable to other systems.
• Odinson Games has just released Witches of the Wenderweald, Basic Rules, a PWYW eastern european-inspired folk horror game.
• Dougal Cochrane has released Pickman's Muddle, a delve for Shadowdark that draws room inspiration from different H.P. Lovecraft titles.
• He Who Claimed the Sun is an OSE adventure written for OSE and designed for a party of characters level 5-8. It also mentions it could be used as a funnel for 0-level characters, which the idea of using high level adventures in that fashion is not something I've ever considered before.
• Junksphere, a sphere and adventure for Troika!, is currently funding on Kickstarter, with the aim of producing a 32-page zine exploring a cosmic junkyard.
• Written for Shadowdark, Silverstadt is a PWYW adventure for Shadowdark that features a cursed mining town and the nearby mine.
• An adventure zine called Doomsmoke, written for Mork Borg, is currently funding on Kickstarter. It features art by Roundup favorite Perplexing Ruins as well as the immensely talented Chaoclypse.
• Jay_Zer0 has released Enclaves of the Eestern Coast, a publication that started as part of the Antarctica Jam, a little hexcrawl through antediluvian Antarctica.
• Fen Orc has released Blue Hack Companion, an expansion to the Blue Hack ruleset (itself a hack of the Holmes Basic ruleset), with art by Roundup favorit Denis McCarthy.
• If you're looking for a fun and cute adventure to run with little kids, or even as a one-shot palate cleanser between campaigns, Travis Takes a Turn sees Travis, the friendly sea serpent, trying to help his friends navigate an unexpected rainstorm.
• Plain of Mirrors is an interesting-looking, survival-based sci-fi rpg that is a self-contained system and setting. The art is super charming, pixel-based, stark outlines that really add to the setting.
• A town plagued by the pages from a magical tome scribed by an incompetent mage is the backdrop for the newly released Tomb of Tog, an adventure for OSE written for characters of levels 1-3.
• The prolific Philip Reed has released Solo Player's Companion, designed as an expansion and companion to the Shadowdark Solo ruleset. Philip is slow-funding this on Drivethru, expanding the release as more people purchase it.
• Vol 3 of the BX Advanced Bestiary is now in stock in offset hardcover, as well as the pdf. It takes monsters L-R from the BX books and expands on them with options, variants, and new creatures based upon the same themes.