OSR OSR News Roundup

[Simon Miles]

The new SM10 The Pit of Panzar mega-dungeon adventure from Dunromin University Press is out now; download for just $3.95 until the end of July.

In City Year CY444 the greatest Dwarf mage of all time, Archmage Panzar, mounted his Flying Pig and rode up to the Necklace to do battle with Guth-Targ Greller Ak Terraak, an Efreet, and her army in her asteroid palace.

Despite his great magical powers, Panzar failed.

His burnt and petrified body fell from the asteroid and crashed down upon a hillside somewhere in the Borderlands. His fall drove a narrow pit into the hillside to a great depth and neither his body nor his legendary magical equipment were ever recovered.

But now a seal ring bearing the mark of the House of Panzar has been found in a riverbed thirty miles west of the border city of Karan. The river is fed by streams emerging from the hill above it – Dol Jint.

Could this large hill be the final resting place of the great mage and, more importantly, all his loot?

The Pit of Panzar is the latest release from Dunromin University Press and the pdf download is available at a special price of just $3.95 until the end of July, 2024.#

With over 300 encounter locations over 5 levels, this is a MEGA-DUNGEON scenario that follows the Dunromin University Press paradigm of Great Quality at the best possible value for money.

The Pit of Panzar is designed for OSR, AD&D 1st and 2nd Edition, or pretty much any TTFRPG, and intended for 5 to 8 adventurers of 6th to 9th level

The Pit of Panzar is also available in Print-on-Demand Hard and Soft cover, each with free pdf option.

DriveThruRPG

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the second news Roundup in July. SabreCon2024 is officially over, and it was both tiring and a lot of fun. It is perhaps good that the last week was light on new releases. No doubt the long holiday weekend in the US had a lot to do with it. Anyway, it'll be a short Roundup this week.

• I've been listening to Dimension 20s new game, Never Stop Blowing Up, based on action movies, and so it seems to be perfect timing that I see Bravado, Bombast, Brains + Bullets is live on itch. It's a rules-lite homage to cheesy 90s action flicks.
• Nuked! is a clever little post-apoc rpg, and the author has released the first two supplementary zines for it that are available on itch: the Totally Radical Tales Volumes One and Two. Volume 1 is an adventure, while Volume 2 is a rules supplemen and expansion.
• We're currently out of stock of Barkeep on the Borderlands, but a little itch adventure caught my fancy when I saw that it was inspired by the music of John Fahey. The Outer Reaches was a submission to the recent Barkeep jam on itch, and details a setting to use for that system.
• The Occluded Keep of the Doomed Elementalist is a new adventure by YouCanBreatheNow Games, and it has gotten praise from the excellent Between Two Cairns podcast. It's written for broad OSR-play, and is designed for adventurers of 3-4 level.
• Prolific author Philip Reed has released The Many Eyes of the Tyrant, a system-neutral supplement for customizing the already terrible eye tyrant. It's primarily written with 5e in mind, but Reed is no strange to old-school gaming, and wrote this specifically to be used in older games, as well.
• The Harvest of Horror is written for DCC and starts off with a mysterious meteorite landing in a farmer's field, one of my favorite plot hooks to throw at characters.
• I'm not familiar with Bee Excellent Games, but they've just released a 0-level adventure for Shadowdark entitled Tower of the Missing Mage. The premise is that a local wizard was defeated in a magical rivalry, and their tower is now open for plunder. Even if you don't run it as such, I think it sounds like a good resource for adding a mage's tower to your setting.

We've added a bunch of new titles to the Sabre website, including:

• I played my first game of Battletech about a month ago after a thirty-year hiatus and was surprised and thrilled to learn that the rules really haven't changed that much. Anyway, we've started to carry individual Battletech minis in addition to the larger force packs, so if you're looking for a specific mech or two to round out your lance you don't need to buy an entire box.
• We've restocked the OSR Classic Rules Tome, Advanced Player's Tome, and Mausritter,
• Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 35 is now in stock in both print and pdf. This 44-page issue takes a look at the first level of the dungeon underneath Dry Gulch and expands on the city encounter tables found in Issue 34.

 

[thirdkingdom]

I don't know about where you are, but it is hot here as I'm writing this: close to 100 degrees F. Great weather to stay inside, under a ceiling fan or in air conditioning, and check out some new OSR and indie releases, which, to be honest, are still a bit light this week. It's something I've come to notice around this time of year; people are on vacation, gearing up for Gen Con or the other big conventions, and the pace of new releases often slows down during July and August.

• Tanya Floaker is one of my favorie indie rpg publishers. I've interviewed here a couple of times about the various projects she's worked on: one of the general interviews can be found here. Floaker has just re-released Tiny Spaceship on itch. It's a designed to be run as a whimsical one-shot about aliens trying to understand earth.
• I always see people asking about mass combat systems, and while I've certainly got my favorites, I like to see other takes on the genre, especially abstracted systems that are designed to be run without a grid or map. Bread Wizard has released Feoht!, a system-neutral abstracted mass combat system.
• There are so many cool projects that come out of itch jams. Some are one and done, and lay abandoned by the publisher, but others, like Palace Run Remastered, saw it's initial release as part of the jam, an expanded, remastered version to build on the initial concept (exploring an endless palace that is built as it is explored), and is now available in a limited print run.
• I've mentioned Hilander's work before on the Roundup. They're currently itchfunding Dead Man's Song, a nautical adventure written for Shadow & Fae 2e, but easily adaptable to other OSR-style games.
• Jimmy Shelter has released the Passkey Solo Expansion on itch. It's designed to be used with the Passkey system to provide oracular options for solo play, or to help GMs with their design. The Passkey system is designed to be an open-ended, rules-lite means to create a variety of games.
• The Book of Hexcrawl Adventures popped up on my socials, and I knew I had to give it a plug. It provides a bunch of random tables that can be used to spice up wilderness adventures.
• I really like the Hypertellurians game by Mottocross Machinations, and they've just released a follow-up: Ultracosmic is what I hope will be the first of many zines for this system, and if features work by a number of notables in the OSR/indie sphere, including Amanda Lee Franck, Alan Bahr, Wind Lothamer, and more.
• Eric Bloat has released a third adventure for the Underworld game (itself inspired by classic NES games): Madness of the Magi has stats for a bunch of systems, old and new (including 5e, the Zelda-clone Forgotten Ballads, Bloat's own Survive This!, and more).
• Ambaridell and the Freezing Vault is a short OSR adventure for characters of levels 1-3. It's designed for BX-style games.
• The newly released Eco Mofos! is being supported by a ton of content already, which is great to see, because it makes playing the game that much easier. Nauti Mofos is a nautical themed supplement and adventure for this new system.
• Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 35 is available on Drivethru as a pdf and pod softcover. This issue looks at the first level of the dungeon below Dry Gulch, a spread out complex connected by a variety of service tunnels.
• Rounding out the third year of its existence, Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 36 is currently funding on Kickstarter. In addition to finishing up the first three years, it completes the three-issue look at Dry Gulch with the second level of the dungeon beneath the surface, a network of abandoned sewers and settling tanks once used by the ancient city that stood where Dry Gulch is now.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome everyone to the fourth news roundup for July. I will be on vacation the next week, so there will be no Roundup then. I hope everyone has a great couple of weeks, and I'll catch everyone for August 5th's review. As I'm writing this I realized I'd like to make a clarification about how I decide to include games; as I'm sure most readers are aware, I've made the decision to not include any products with AI assets in the Roundup. I've seen a number of games recently, primarily on Drivethru, that don't mention use of AI assets but also don't include any artists' names in the description, even stock art. If an artist/s are not given in the description, even if it is just properly crediting stock artists, I will not be pluggin that product. I think it is important to credit artists who have contributed to a product -- stock or not -- and given my policy on AI assets I would rather play it safe. So please, if you're a publisher and your work includes the artwork of others, include their names in your products!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Drivethrurpg is currently holding their Christmas in July sale, and you can purchase a whole slew of titles for drastically reduced prices for the next week or so.

• I've plugged Nuked! by Mac Makes Games, and now I see they're hosting a game jam on itch for Nuked! It has a deadline of August 31st, and is themed around "The Devil's Highway", a stretch of cursed and forsaken highway with unknown origins.
• Lonely Adventurer has released Cult of the Morach, an homage to the classic Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Although certain aspects are statted for GLAIVE, it's largely designed to be system agnostic to be run with any OSR/NSR-style game.
• Hilander is one of the indie publishers that I am always happy to give a shout out to. They're currently itchfunding Goons, a mobster rpg inspired by America in the 1920s, but not set in America. It looks like a fun little system for roleplaying mobsters.
• Knight Owl Publishing has released Janky Goblins, a short adventure for Cairn designed to be run as a one-shot or an introductory game. Plus, it has art by Amanda Lee Franck, one of my favorite artists.
• Josh Burnett consistently publishes some excellent OSR content, and I see they've just released Blobs vs Blades, a collection of six new and weird classes of OSR-style game. As something pursuant to my interests, they also break down the math behind figuring out the XP requirements for each class.
• M Allen Hall has released Foul, a funnel adventure compatible with Mork Borg and other OSR-style games. The adventure includes rules for DCC-style 0 level characters in Mork Borg.
• The Tabletop Engineer has released Issue 15 of Delver and Issue 4 of Runes. Delver is primarily OSE-adjacent, while Runes is specifically focused on Shadowdark.
• Chrono-delve is an interesting new PWYW ruleset available on Drivethru that seems to incorporate some neat twists on OSR-gaming; roll to cast, procedural dungeon generation, and more. The publisher will be using proceeds from sales to comission more art for the project.
• Orbital Blues is a space western/opera game we have a hard time keeping in stock, and there's a new bundle of three OB adventures now on Drivethru.
• Beyond the Twisted Portal #1 is a new OSR zine by Tristan Radu that includes a little bit of everything; an adventure, some optional rules, a new class, and more.
• Rise up Comus has released the hotly anticipated -- and apparently currently impossible to find in print, as it sold out of its first printing in hours -- NSR megadungeon His Majesty the Worm, which is luckily still available in pdf.
• I'm intrigued by The Fortunist, a new class for OSE based on wild west gambler themes, and using a deck of cards to judge their abilities.
• In the Steal of the Night is a cat burglar mystery adventure written for OSE. It looks to be a cute intro or side-quest adventure for when the players are in a city.
• It's not really OSR, but Coyote and Crow is a current game that I'm a big fan of, and the publishers are currently raising funds for Ahu Tiiko, an expansion to the system that brings themes of mystery and horror to the game.
• Perils and Princesses is another game we're having a hard time keeping in stock, and there's currently the first official campaign setting being Kickstarted now: Sweet Revenge is heavily influenced by Grimm's Fairytales.
• Today's the last day for my Kickstarter for issue 36 of Populated Hexes Monthly, finishing off three years of the zine with a bang and the second level of a dungeon under the town of Dry Gulch. Since it is part three of the series, you can pledge to get Issues 34 and 35 if you don't already have them.

 

[thirdkingdom]

I'm back after a week off, and I'm sure a number of readers are waking up bleary-eyed this morning after a long weekend at GenCon. Looks like Shadowdark (deservedly) cleaned up at the Ennies. I'd also like to call attention to:

• Eat the Reich.
• Hexcrawl Toolbox.
• Cloud Empress (sadly, we're out of all the CE titles).
• Ultraviolet Grasslands 2e.

I'm not going to be able to cover all of the new releases/projects that dropped in the past two weeks, but I'll try to get as much as I can get.

• I've been waiting for Painted Wastelands to drop on Kickstarter for awhile, and it's finally live. It's a dreamy acid-trip of a game, reminiscent of the Electrum Archive and Ultraviolet Grasslands.
• Speaking of UVG (and they also won an Ennie!), the long-awaited companion/sequel to it is currently funding on Backerkit. Called Our Golden Age, it is a two-volume set designed to be used either as a companion to or independently of UVG.
• First time publisher Lost Legacies Gaming is raising funds for the Immortals White Box. There's only a day left in the campaign as of this publication, so this is one to jump on if it grabs your fancy. It's a pretty ambitious project, a love song to the original White Box game.
• Cain is a new release by Tom Bloom, the driving force behind Kill Six Billion Demons and the recently released in print Lancer. Featuring the same art that makes Lancer such a beautiful book, Cain is a game of psychics hunting the sins of humanity made manifest.
• I'd mentioned Ghosts of the Sierra Verde Grand Campaign a year or so ago; written by Sivad's Sanctum, and strongly influenced by Wolves Upon the Coast, SS has added another County to this, and ever-expanding hexcrawl (and, like WUtC, those backing earlier will get access to additional material at the original price).
• Gothic Grace is a dice-less, GM-less playtest by Lost Seas, in which the players take on the role of wizards and warlocks who must work for an incompetent government in order to survive.
• I'm not familiar with the works of Symbolic City, but a new release of theirs -- Tarnation -- caught my eye. It's a solo rpg set in a weird west pocket dimension, and while it is currently just available in pdf the art and layout cries out for a physical copy.
• One of my current favorite indie publishers is Cats Have No Lords (author of Swamp Troll Witches). They put out such a wide range of games and adventures that make me somewhat jealous. I saw recently that they've just released Hwaet, a solo game inspired by Beowulf. Both Hwaet and Tarnation make excellent use of public domain art.
• bread wizard has just released a tantalizing mashup adventure written for MCC and Cairn. Titled Glowburn and Radscars, it is a playtest version available as a PWYW product, with the author hoping to fund art and editing down the road.
• The Old School Revival Solo Role-Playing Guide is a recently released product by Arcane Sword Press. It looks to be an interesting product.
• In a similar theme, Hilander has released The Old School Referee, an introductory guide to the nuts and bolts of running OSR-style games.
• Lizard Isle is a low-level adventure written for 1e and other similar OSR games, in which the task the adventurers are hired for turns out to be a lot more complicated than what they had originally imagined.
• The One That Got Away is an adventure for DCC by Shinobi Games, designed as a 0-level tournament adventure, all about catching the largest eel in the Gravic Swamp.
• Another product that makes great use of public domain art is Pluvium, a supplement for Mork Borg that revolves around rain. In some ways it reminds me of Gavin Norman's excellent -- and sadly ended -- Wizardzine.
• Decay is a cool-looking OSR game inspired by Cairn, White Box, and similar systems. It's a classless system set in a decaying and crumbling world.
• After years of quiescence, Fight On! is back with Issue 15. One of the most important zines of the beginning days of the OSR movement.
• Knight Owl Publishing just released the recently Kickstarted project Isle of Joy, an adventure billed as David Lynch directing The Tempest. All of Knight Owl's products are pretty great (and they also just released Volume 5 of Old School and Cool).
• Another great publisher is the Melsonian Arts Council, and they've just released Palace of the Metegorgos, by Evey Lockhart.
• The Giant Moth that Awaits us All grabbed my attention right away when I saw the cover art by Acid Lich, one of my favorite illustrators. It's written for DCC, and set in a weird far future.
• It was pointed out to me that I've been remiss with promoting the works of Dyson Logos; I don't know how I managed this obvious oversight, so want to make sure to call out their Cartography Collection from June 2023 of Dyson's Dodecahedron.
• I'm Kickstarting Issue 37 of Populated Hexes Monthly. This, the first issue of the fourth year of this zine, contains material that didn't make it into Vol. 2 of the BX Advanced Bestiary, and includes four playable race-as-class options (three versions of bee-folk, plus the bird-folk garuda), the slime magus prestige class, and more!
• Issue 36 of Populated Hexes Monthly is now live on the Sabre Games website in pdf and print. This issue finishes the the exploration of the dungeons underneath Dry Gulch and includes some new clerical ritual spells.

 

[thirdkingdom]

It's the second Monday in August. GenCon is over, and here in the States kids are getting ready to head back to school. New releases seem pretty light this week, but let's see what we can cover.

• I mentioned a new game called Dungeons of Galora a few months back; there's now a free version available on itch, with a bunch of new content, including some really nice art. It's a solo OSR dungeon crawl, and really evokes some of the old rogue-like games. The author is Brazilian, so the game is inspired by South American folklore. There's some amazingly creative stuff coming out of the indie rpg zine in Brazil right now.
• Chicken Pod #1 is available on itch right now, and will, at some point, be available in print. It's by Mobile Hut, a collective of trans game designers (including Roundup fave Evlyn Moreau). The first issue of the zine lays out in broad strokes the goals of the collective and what they're working on for the future.
• I am about the furthest thing from working in IT, but The Awful Weekend On-Call made me chuckle. It's a one page solo rpg about working the IT call center on weekends, and includes mechanics to replicate a descent into madness.
• Umbra Arcanum is a system-neutral OSR adventure set in a dark fantasy world on the brink of Armageddon. It's the second in a series of adventures by the author but can also be run as a stand-alone scenario.
• Pirate Borg is another Borg hack that, in my opinion, is one of the best of the variants that has been released to date. Rough Seas is a supplement for PB that brings a bunch of new stuff to the table; random tables, new monsters and NPCs, and a short hexcrawl.
• The Bounty Hunter is a new class for OSE with an interesting take on rangers whose alignments shift to Chaotic.
• As popular as Mork Borg is, and as well designed and beautiful the book is, it's something that I just bounced hard off of when I tried to get into it. Perhaps if I had this short primer by KJJ Publishers I would have had better luck! How to play Mork Borg is a 6-page introduction to the system and setting designed specifically for new players.
• I wish I was able to name my products with catchy and poetic names, instead of just prosaic descriptions of what they contain. I saw the title A Spear Brings Sorrow and was immediately intrigued. It's a short, system neutral OSR supplement that presents an NPC that can be used in game, and their backstory to incorporate into the campaign.
• Shadowdark cleaned up at the Ennies, and just this week I saw the first (to me) hack of the game: Neonbright, a Cyberpunk Fantasy Hack. It's a short work, and requires Shadowdark Core rules to use.
• I'm loving this new art style that seems to be popular these days, inspired by works such as Ultravioulet Grasslands, The Painted Wastelends, and others. Ruthless Heavens, Boundless Fates is another new release with this style of gonzo, pastel art. In it, the characters play as Ascendants, near god-like beings that rule nations but soon learn they are still at the bottom of the pecking order. It also includes rules for solo play.
• The Dream Shrine is the first collaboration between Brad Kerr and Skullfungus, and is a dreamy, psychedelic adventure for OSE and Cairn. It's meant to be a low-level "escape room" style adventure.
• Currently funding on Kickstarter is the solo game Necrovenge, in which you play a necromancer who awakes from a long slumber only to find that pesky adventurers have trashed your dungeon!
• Vol. 2 of the BX Advanced Bestiary is now live in pdf and hard and softcover POD options, with the offset version coming to the Sabre Games store in a few weeks. The second in the series, it covers the monster entries E-K in the OSE Classic book and expands them with options and variants. Each of the monsters is fully illustrated, and it also includes new classes, spells, and psionic abilities.
• As a companion to Volume 2, the Kickstarter for Issue 37 of Populated Hexes Monthly is ending today. This, the first issue of year 4 (!), contains material that didn't make it into the Bestiary, and includes four new classes, new clerical spells, and more.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Let's jump right in and see what's new, shall we?

• BlueMountainBooks has released a free hexcrawl on itch, inspired by Luke Gearing's Wolves Upon the Coast. At the Base of Blue Mountain includes seven dungeons, nearly sixty hexes, and more.
• Ventis was an entry in the Vaarn Summer jam, and is a city located at the edge of Vaarn. The art is really stunning in a minimalist, Vaarnian sort of way. I think this is a great little product to pick up either for Vaarn or to mine for ideas to plop into other settings.
• Another Vaarn adventure is Penumbral Oasis, Part One, a three level dungeon for characters of level 1-3.
• Trouble at Bigby's Meadery is a system-neutral, lighthearted adventure that packs a surprising amount of content into 34 pages. It's the publisher's first product, which is always really great to see.
• Dice Goblin Games has published Deep Delve, an adventure inspired by The Stygian Library and compatible with either Block, Dodge, Parry or Cairn. If you're looking for an adventure set in an abandoned dwarven mine this is the one for you. It's also available through Drivethrurpg.
• Dark Tales for Dark Times is an OSR bundle now available on Drivethrurpg. It features eight publications by different authors, some adventures, some supplements, that all are written for OSR-style games. It looks to be a good bundle to pick up to get a sampling of some lesser-known OSR authors.
• I'm a sucker for a good kids on bikes game, and Teenage Oddyssey (not a typo) is another entry into the genre, this one embracing the awkwardness and humor of adolescence. The art is spot on and really captures the vibe. This game uses the Mark of the Odd system used by Into the Odd and others.
• One of my favorite things about doing this roundup is when I get to mention a game that is crowdfunding and then it pops up as published some time later, and I get to plug it again! The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow is one of these. It's the first hardback adventure written for Liminal Horror. It also features art by one of my favorite artists: Amanda Lee Franck.
• Another such adventure is the seacrawl Wind Wraith, by Lazy Litch, who has really found a niche putting out spooky, creepy mini-settings and games.
• Continuing with the nautical theme, The Undying Sea, by Dungeon Age Adventures, is an Into the Odd game set in a dying world.
• I'm in the process of harvesting peppers as the growing season begins to wind down, so it was perhaps serendipity that I stumbled across The Chili Rat Chiefs, an Into the Odd (lots of stuff for ItO this week!) adventure, a fun little short scenario that would work well as a one-shot.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I am amazed it took this long to come up with something like Deep Delve. Excited to check it out.

 

[overgeeked]

I am amazed it took this long to come up with something like Deep Delve. Excited to check it out.

What’s special about Deep Delve? It reads like every other generic abandoned mine dungeon.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

What’s special about Deep Delve? It reads like every other generic abandoned mine dungeon.

If it's using the Gardens of Ynn/Stygian Library system created by Emmy Allen, it's a procedural megadungeon generator that's being used to create a Moria-like, rather than a body horror Alice in Wonderland or infinite magical library setting. I've run Stygian Library (and am waiting for the revised Gardens of Ynn to get shipped out) and it's amazing.