OSR OSR News Roundup

[thirdkingdom]

Just wanted to say thank you for these roundups. They’ve played a freaking huge part in my finding some great stuff I would’ve maybe never heard of otherwise. Thank you!

I'm glad to hear that. One of my main goals has been to help promote the work of smaller, lesser known publishers.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the first News Roundup for December, the last month in the year. I hope all of the USians reading this had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving.

We, like pretty much everyone else in the world who runs an online business, are having a Cyber Monday sale. If you use the code CyberSabre at checkout on Monday (today), you can get 20% off everything in your cart.

Releases are a bit thin last week, I think because they were split between PAX U, Thanksgiving, and Dragonmeet in the UK, but let's jump in and see what dropped, shall we? Just as a note, this Roundup tries to focus specifically on new releases and products, and not on sales or promotions. If you're running a sale on existing, already released products, feel free to drop a link in the comments.

• The big news of last week was the release of the revised Labyrinth Lord. It's a system that is near and dear to my heart, as it was the first BX clone I played after getting back into gaming, but it's since been eclipsed by newer, shinier system. I was excited when Daniel Proctor announced this new edition, and then it just kind of lingered. But, it's out now, and I'm really excited to check it out to see how it compares to the original as well as the wealth of BX-like clones out there now.
• Matt Kelly has just released Firearms for Cairn, a short supplement that does what it promises.
• Nearer My God to Thee is a cool-looking solo journaling game about the return of one's god and the refusal of destiny.
• Necrotic Gnome has released Carcass Crawler #6 as well as their second in the Quick Delve series: the Grotesque's Grotto, by Amelia Luke.
• Hellwinter Forge of Wonders has been releasing some solid adventures for Old School Essentials, and they've just released Bestiary of the Empire, a bestiary and travel guide for their setting.
• It's been awhile since I've seen any new releases by Atelier Clandestin, so I was excited to see The Book of Thieves: Procedural Burglaries. It's considerably longer than their other releases, at 112 pages, and provides rules, guidelines, and inspiration for everything thief-y, including support for solo play, so you can plan and run your own capers.
• Carousing Options - Romance expands on the Shadowdark carousing tables to add long-term romances into the mix.
• I've been a big fan of YouCanBreatheNowGames stock art, and so I was thrilled to see they've added some new sheets to to their inventory. This one is a selection of dungeon entrances.
• We've added A Haunting in Glass to our Sabre inventory. I'm really excited when we get to do something like this: I had mentioned this book a few months back when it was being crowdfunded, and the author (who has some Charlottesville connections) reached out recently to let me know they would be in town this weekend and would we like to carry the book. It's a horror adventure written for Shadowdark for a party of level 3-5. It always makes me happy when we can support small press or first-time publishers in a way like this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Carousing Options - Romance expands on the Shadowdark carousing tables to add long-term romances into the mix.

Now this is interesting.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the second News Roundup for December, 2025. Last week was a bit slow on releases, so let's see what this week looks like as we steam towards the end of the year. One development that I'm really pleased about is that Drivethrurpg has now made it mandatory for publishers to indicate if their releases contain any AI assets, as opposed to just an optional disclosure. It should hopefully make my job easier; I'd like to see them ban all content with AI assets, but that's a long uphill climb, I'm afraid.

If you're participating in the upcoming ZineMonth 2026 next year, I've started a thread on rpgnet that you're welcome to post in to promote your project.

• Temple of the Forked Tongue is a short dungeon crawl for Cairn 2e usable as a sidequest or one-shot, featuring a temple built by serpent-folk.
• Another Cairn release, this one by Pointless Monument, is Ruin of Reputation. This one is a sweet and short puzzle dungeon.
• Exeunt Press has released Blood Chapter, a bookmark game that uses any random book to generate keywords, and is about hunting vampires in 16th century Germany. This is a submission to the currently running (with a little more than a week left at the time of this posting) TTRPG Bookmark jam.
• Spooky Aurora's Final Cut is a horror-themed holiday adventure based on The Final Girl RPG
• Castle Grief is one of my favorite publishers I've discovered over roughly the past year, and they're currently Kickstarting Arathi Sector, a sci-fi hack of their popular Kal Arath system, designed specifically with solo gaming in mind, although it can certainly be played in a group.
• It's for 5th edition, but Eric Bloat is raising funds for Dark Places and Demogorgons, a kid's-on-bikes-style game. I'm a big fan of the BX version of the game that he published a few years back.
• I forgot to plug this last week, but I'm excited to see Hinterlight almost hitting its funding goal. Based on the Together We Go system, it's a really neat looking game of gothic horror role-playing.
• I mentioned Berserkr, a Mork Borg hack set in an impending Ragnarok, awhile back (we've got some physical copies preordered for Sabre), and I just saw Zoological Zine #1, three creatures statted up for use with Berserkr.
• Elln the Witch has been releasing some neat little OSR supplements in the past year, and they just released My Little d6 Tables -- Caves, a short supplement of random tables for, you guessed it, caves.
• Fight On was a seminal publication in the early days of the OSR, and publisher Ignatius Umlaut has brought it back, having just released Issue 17.
• Blade of the Explorer is an interesting looking rewriting of the BX rules. It's a barebones, no art release, available as PWYW.
• Using the Shadowdark engine, Shadows of the Star Knights is a sci-fi space opera setting.
• Paul Partington is known for his gamebook releases, and has just released Village of the Damned, a solo gameplay book using Old School Essentials.
• The Sun's Betrayal is Volume 3 in the Fortnightly adventure series, a planned collection of one-shot adventures that releases every two weeks or so. This one is written for OSE and set in a steaming jungle.
• I'm currently running a Kickstarter for Issue 52 of Populated Hexes Monthly, moving north to the a region of the world known as The Ruins of Isenden.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the OSR News Roundup for December 15th, 2025. We're coming towards the end of the year and looking at ZineMonth 2026 starting in February. Kickstarter has launched their open call already, here, and of course there's the community run ZineMonth . . . actually, I'm not sure if they've set up their webpage for 2026 yet. I need to dig into this further. Anywho, here's a selection of last week's releases. It was kind of a slow week for releases.

• I'm a big fan of James Holloway's work (Tome of Tombs and Pamphlet of Pantheons) and I was excited to see he's Kickstarting a new project: The Booklet of Bounties, a collection of ten ne'er-do-wells and criminals that have bounties on their heads.
• Matt Kelly has released another supplement (for Cairn specifically, but other OSR games generally) entitled Ships & Buildings, expanding rules for, well, ships and buildings in your games.
• Tis the Season is a tongue-in-cheek, Holiday Hallmark movie game designed to emulate the tropes of that particular genre.
• Leicester's Rambles has just released Yet Another Baker's Dozens of d66 Lists, which is pretty much what it sounds like: thirteen d66 tables to add inspiration to your games.
• Christmas Capers is a holiday-themed rules-lite system where the PCs are crime-fighters trying to save their city (and Christmas!) against impending doom. Features the charming public domain art of Arthur Rackham.
• Another new release that makes use of great public domain art is Strange Monster Generator, a collection of tables to randomly generate weird monsters.
• I'd mentioned A Haunting in Glass in October, and it's now available through Drivethrurpg (you can also grab it in print form at Sabre). It's a super cool Shadowdark adventure for levels 3-5 with strong horror themes.
• Troika! is such a fun little game, and Strange Magical Oddities from Across the Spheres is a supplement that adds new magical items, monsters, and spells for it (as well as other OSR-style games).
• Ankheg is an adventure for Knave that features mind flayers and dwarves and ankhegs.
• Graeme Davis has released Mayhem in the Market, an interesting-looking adventure for OSE that was written as part of a collaborative effort during an event at an Italian game convention. It looks like there's been an error with the pricing, though, at least as of this writing.
• In the Squeak Midwinter is a system-neutral game of winter-themed, cozy mouse adventures. It comes with charming paper minis.
• Ever & Anon, the fanzine replacement to Alarums & Excursions, is out with Issue 6 of this free role-playing resource.
• Written for Castle Grief's Grief Engine, Tome of the Pyromancer is a supplement, setting, and adventure specifically designed for use with solo play (although it can be used for GMed games as well), that is fire-magic themed.
• BX Advanced Bestiary Vol. 3 launches later this week, expanding on monsters L-P from the BX/OSE Classic books. Sign up now to be alerted at the launch.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Christmas Capers is a holiday-themed rules-lite system where the PCs are crime-fighters trying to save their city (and Christmas!) against impending doom. Features the charming public domain art of Arthur Rackham.

That paragraph did not end the way I expected.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the penultimate News Roundup of 2025, and, as it happens, the anniversary of this newsletter. The first Roundup was published on December 20th, 2021. I hope that readers have gotten some benefit from it; I know for me it has opened up a wide range of indie and OSR publishers and some fantastic products that I otherwise might not have heard from, and the simple act of maintaining this as a routine as helped motivate my writing in general (I am, if anything, a routine-driven person).

Since this is two days before Christmas, and right in the heart of the holiday season, releases are a little light this week.

• Ran has released a Quickstart guide to Those Under the Mountain, a dwarven fortress inspired settlement building game. It looks amazing.
• Frozen Fane of the Far Traveler is a mini-dungeon for Cairn, written as part of the Zungeon jam. It's a cold-themed adventure, perfect for this time of year (in the northern hemisphere, at least!), and features alien yeti, ice scorpions, and more.
• The prolific ManaDawn has released Riverbend Valley, a mini-setting hexcrawl for Mausritter.
• Rat in a Suit is a publisher I discovered this year, and they've just released A Glorious Winter Gift Giving, an adventure for the Trains of the Glorious Republic of the People game.
• I'd mentioned the Land of Mist last year when it came out as a setting for OSE; the author is currently raising funds for Adventures in the Mist, a Gazetteer and Campaign book.
• Arion Games is raising funds for Maelstrom Expanded, not on Kickstarter or another platform, but on Drivethrurpg. They're near their goal, and will use the money raised to commission art for the project. Maelstrom was originally published in the mid-80s, written by a British teenager, and has recently been revised and expanded.
• The folks over at Red Ruin publishing have just release Casket of Fays #18, the Dragon Warriors fanzine. Because it's not official it is listed as a PWYW product, but it is certainly a labor of love and worth supporting.
• Liminal Grimoire for Liminal Horror is a collection of six adventures, designed to be played either as one-shots or linked together as a campaign, written for Liminal Horror.
• It seems to me (in a good, fun way) that Mork Borg has become the 5e of indie games, used for a bewildering array of themes and settings. In the case of Mork Borg, it seems that a lot of these games are written for the ability to pun off the MB name. In this case, Smork Borg (a Smurfs knock-off) Episode Book 1 is out, over one hundred pages of Smurfy . . . I mean, Smorky, zany fun.
• Dried Marrow Fort is a fun-looking adventure for Shadowdark, heavy on undead themes.
• Lazy Litch has been consistently publishing some of the best weird fantasy content out there, and they've just released Demidirge -- Fanged Funnel, a 0-level funnel for Shadowdark. It looks exceptional, like all of their works.
• I'm raising funds for the third volume of the BX Advanced Bestiary, a collection of the monsters L-R from the BX and OSE Classic books, expanded with variants and monsters inspired by them.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I look forward to these every week. Thanks for the work in compiling and posting them.

 

[thirdkingdom]

Welcome to the last News Roundup for 2025. I know this year was fraught and stressful, at best, for a lot of people, and we're looking at a 2026 with plenty of unknowns and economic uncertainty. A big bright spot for me in the upcoming year is going to be ZineMonth2026, starting in February. I've already seen a number of people start promoting their projects, and I'd love to help with that. If you're going to be participating in the event, and have time to answer a few short, softball questions about your project, please let me know and I'll send them over.

Also, I've had some people ask about how to subscribe to the Roundup. This link should take you to the sign-up page. I send the Roundup out every Monday around 1:00 pm (eastern US time) via Mailchimp. It's a relatively light week, as might be expected for the week between two holidays, and a month before ZineMonth.

• As someone who publishes my own work I like to have a collection of dungeons to draw on that I can use to populate; NPC has just released the Guildhall Basement Dungeon, a small, ready to populate dungeon laid out with space to record encounters/areas of interest (this was supposed to go in last week's Roundup); also now out is Crook Sect, a release for Shadowdark with NPCs and a ritual fighting pit.
• Drops of St. Jerome is a small, nine-room dungeon written for Cairn, with themes of sorrow and loneliness.
• Hilander has released Felwoods, an OSR-lite game of travel through a mysterious and dangerous land, using the public domain art of Warwick Goble.
• Block, Dodge, Parry is a sweet little OSR system I've mentioned before, and I see that there's no an "official" zine: Steel & Survival, Issue 1. It focuses on gear and equipment, and should be useful for a variety of OSR systems in addition to BDP.
• In the Light of the Setting Sun, by Sivad's Sanctum, is a wild west game that I've been following the development of over the past year or two, and the publisher is currently hosting a game jam on itch for it, entitled On the Rails Jam, with the goal for all participants to contribute a car to the Rose & Thorn train, traveling along the frontier.
• Menagerie Press has released Gnome for the Holidays 2 -- A Shadowdark Christmas Adventure and Gnome of the Holidays 1, as well, on Drivethrurpg. Both are for Shadowdark.
• A Christmas Cookie Caper is another holiday themed adventure, written for Mausritter, where you play mice trying to steal Santa's cookies from under the watchful eyes of Pepper, the housecat.
• David Garrett has released Forgotten Shrine 1, a puzzle dungeon for Shadowdark.
• Many readers may have been gaming in the 80s and 90s and will well remember the Satanic Panic; Eric Bloat has just released a zine about and influenced by those dark days in gaming history.
• The Goblins of Volm is a one-page dungeon that is modular to allow mixing and matching to create up to ten different dungeons. It features charming, lo-fi art that is right up my alley. Everyone who insists on using AI art for their projects should check this out.
• The OSRIC 3rd Player's Guide pdf is now available on Drivethru. It's free, and should be a marked improvement -- from a layout perspective -- from the previous versions. I'm looking forward to diving in and seeing how it's been put together.