OSR OSR News Roundup

[EthanSental]

Give Falk some credit, he broke down his estimates for producing the kickstarter and it came out to $2022 and it made a little over 3k. Glad to see if finished. Retailer tier was $37 for 5 physical copies so luckily retailers weren’t out a ton of cash without a product to sell for a couple years.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Give Falk some credit, he broke down his estimates for producing the kickstarter and it came out to $2022 and it made a little over 3k. Glad to see if finished. Retailer tier was $37 for 5 physical copies so luckily retailers weren’t out a ton of cash without a product to sell for a couple years.

I hope that didn't come across as not giving Falk credit! And yeah, in the grand scheme of delayed Kickstarters it's pretty minor. The one that turned me off to backing at the retailer level was the OSE boxset one from a few years back. I had about 1k in that and it was nine or so months late. That was hard to bridge.

 

[Autumnal]

Here you go. I owe it some updates.

Thread 'High-quality systemless books [+]'

May 9, 2025

I’ve been thinking about setting books that are either genuinely free of mechanics, or close as darn it. Favorites of mine include things like the systemless version of Freeport, a bunch of the Glorantha books for HeroQuest, and settings for Amber and Lords Of Gossamer & Shadow. My experience with allegedly system-neutral books published within the orbit of D&D was that they were actually compatible with any variety of D&D, but I like being happily surprised. So please, tell me about your favorites of this sort, in any genre.

One request: please tell me about them. Don’t just...

• Autumnal
• Replies: 56
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

 

[EthanSental]

I hope that didn't come across as not giving Falk credit! And yeah, in the grand scheme of delayed Kickstarters it's pretty minor. The one that turned me off to backing at the retailer level was the OSE boxset one from a few years back. I had about 1k in that and it was nine or so months late. That was hard to bridge.

That would be a big ouch for sure for a business!

 

[thirdkingdom]

That would be a big ouch for sure for a business!

Yeah, these days I don't back a crowdfunding project as a retailer unless a) the finished product is ready to go and ship within a couple of months or b) there's an option for an upfront minimal pledge with the ability to do the full purchase when ready to fulfill.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the second news roundup in June. We're about a month out from SabreCon2025, the mini convention we're hosting in downtown Charlottesville. If you're in the central Virginia area and would like to check it out we've got tickets available here. Josh McCrowell will be running a game of His Majesty the Worm, Lyme running Dawn of the Orcs (and other games), and we've got Samantha Leigh, author of Anamnesis, Death of an Author, and more, will be giving a talk, as well.

Last week was pretty crammed with new releases. Let's see what this week brings us, shall we?

• Goblin Pit Games has released the Miasma and Monsters Player's Pamphlet on itch. They've got more releases lined up to support it. I'm intrigued by the game, partially because of it's incorporation of Miasma, a physical manifestation of evil that reminds be somewhat of the mythic underworld tropes.
• Matt Kelly has released Gamma Mutant, a submission to the Cairn Backgrounds Jam. It's inspired by post-apocalyptic literature of the 70s and 80s.
• Nevyn Holmes and S. Quinn Morris (of Dinoberry Press) are gearing up to launch a crowdfunding campaign for Dragon Reactor, and have released a demo of the game on itch. Dragon Reactor is a game about conflicts on a grand scale, as well as 'mechs. We carry a number of their products, and the quality is always top-notch. I'm excited to see what they've come up with for this project.
• Bundle of Holding has a Pride Bundle with a number of great titles on it, including one of my favorites, Moonlight on Roseville Beach.
• James Floyd Kelly is raising funds for two OSR zines: Delver #18 and Runes #7. Delver is written for OSE, Runes for Shadowdark. He consistently puts out quality content, and is one of those publishers I can always count on to deliver on time.
• I'm a big fan of Jess Levine's products, such as I Have the High Ground, a dueling mini-game, and Planet Fist. Along with Riley Rethal they're funding a new and combined printing of Galactic and Going Rogue. Galactic is inspired by the Episodes 4-6 of Star Wars, while Going Rogue by Rogue One and Andor.
• Against the Darkmaster is a system I've never gotten around to reading, although it has been on my reading list for awhile now. I happened to notice Critters #3, a collection of monsters and foes to use with AtD and other similar systems.
• The Corrupted Library is a one-shot adventure written for Shadowdark and designed for characters of roughly 5th level.
• David Okum has released Wreck of the Stormglaive, another adventure for Shadowdark, but this one geared towards 1st level adventurers.
• I am not familiar with the work of Ellie Valkyrie, but I spotted their recently published Redirections: Tiny Biomes #1 and was immediately interested. This 80-page pdf presents five system neutral "setting seeds", little mini-settings designed to be dropped into existing settings or campaign worlds.
• The MultiOSR Creature Codex is a collection of 100 monsters for use with Troika, Into the Odd, or other OSR systems. It's a great value, and is something I'll likely be using to dip into every now and then when I need a new monster to confound players with.
• Now that the year is almost half over we've marked down the 2025 Hexcrawl Workbook by 50%. It's a spiral-bound daily planner-style calendar and hexcrawl journal.
• Issue 47 of Populated Hexes Monthly is winding down its campaign as we approach the end of the fourth year of this zine. This issue has a small, ruined keep and caves beneath occupied by brigands (which ties into the sewers in Dry Gulch from Issues 34-36) as well as some rules for downtime activities that tie downtime into leveling in a deliberate attempt to slow down the pace of play.