Welcome to the Bundles, Freebies, and Sales News, the weekly column at EN World that helps make sure you don’t miss out on big tabletop RPG bundles, charity fundraisers, and sales from around the internet.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
Ordo Arcanorum released a quickstart for Opus Magi, a Cepheus Engine urban fantasy game. The game features 13 magic domains that allow players to quickly craft their own spells and a full psionics system with new talents and abilities.
Ethan H. Reynolds posted the one-page RPG Cowl about the resurrection of the Guild of Rogues. The system uses a single d20 for every roll as you seek to steal from the rich and corrupt and give to yourself.
Adrian Young Games has the Age of Adventure RPG: Player Compendium and the Age of Adventure RPG: Game Master Compendium. The two products are expansions for the Lasers and Feelings hack released last month with new pregens, ready-to-use encounters, conversion tables, player reference sheets, and more.
If you’ve ever had issues sorting out exactly what a “Session Zero” should be, Icarus Games gives us the RPG Session 0 Guide. The guide gives you an outline for what to discuss and how to hold a session zero before starting your campaigns including scheduling, table conventions, house rules, the process for determining rulings, safety, tone and theme of the campaign, character concept and building, and more.
Fans of MÖRK BORG have a new class from Grover Did it, the Venerable Hunter. You may be past your prime but that doesn’t mean you still don’t have some legend left in you.
From Foxwood Games, the RPG Swords in the Deep is an original system RPG inspired by CRPGs like Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Dragon Age: Origins. This public beta/soft launch of the system includes four classes with three subclasses for each, dungeons built from random tiles, random loot generation, crafting system, a detailed social interaction system, and more.
I always like when people are so passionate about a game that doesn’t have a real open license or the game is a licensed game itself that wouldn’t allow third-party creators, but they find a way to make it work anyway. And Joseph Kellogg has done it again with Aces High, an adventure for “your favorite post-apocalyptic sci-fi 2d20 game”. (It’s Fallout. He can’t say it’s Fallout legally but it’s Fallout.) A poker tournament is happening inNew Las Vegas, and you’re invited!
We have a pair of CY_BORG adventures, the first from JKW called Dead Man’s Switch. The ripperdoc Emily Radfield received a post-mortem message from her friend Sarna and wants the players to infiltrate a cyber-scav chop shop to recover Sarna’s remains and, in the process, take out as many of the body snatchers as possible on the way in and out.
And from M. Allen Hall, there’s The Backrooms which pits the punks against an assassin attempting to infiltrate secure locations across Central and The Hills. Are they ready for what’s waiting for them? Can they possibly be ready to be pulled into The Backrooms?
If you’d like your VTT games to have a little extra pizzaz, ForgottenAdventures as the Animations Pack 1 featuring seven unique animations with variations designed to be places as an overlay on your map to add extra details like a burning fire, flies, falling leaves, fireflies, and more.
Over on Dungeonmaster’s Guild, Tom Flynn posted an adventure for 5th to 8th level characters The Cult of Malusignus. Following the dying wish of a monk from the Red Abby Monastery, the party uncovers the entrance to an underground temple with fierce creatures and treacherous traps gathering proof of the resurrection of the titular Cult of Malusignus.
Scott Eubanks has an interesting optional rule set to get more out of your long rests, House Role: Roleplay to Rest. Described as “low stakes, simple, and effective”, the system acts as a pause to reflect before a big battle or a campsite along the road with mechanical incentives for characters to talk to one another.
Christopher Hamwell released Dark Lairs which I feel is a title that doesn’t quite show how cool this is, as this is an expansion of the ecology of iconic Dungeons & Dragons monsters to create additional adventures and plot hooks. What happens after you defeat the owlbear? Where did the owlbear live? Were there cubs or eggs nearby? Are they good eating? There are five different adventure hooks with outlines for exploring the ecology of monsters and posing moral questions that can be resolved without combat.
Gadget Blanchard has an expansion on the death and dying rules with Shades of Mortality, a set of narrative mechanics for death saving throws. Rather than a flat d20 roll, these rules add challenges to the character’s Mind, Body, or Soul with the ability to gamble to improve their odds with potentially life-changing consequences.
I’m not a fan of puns, but I shouldn’t let that affect my coverage of titles so know that I present to you Annabel Heindla’s anthropomorphic cow race while groaning at the name: Moomin.
While I’ve got a list of classes coming up, I feel the Reclaimers – Dwarven Classes for 5e from Bas Klein deserves a little more explanation. This supplement contains three classes specifically designed for dwarves (though anyone can take them obviously) along with a new background, new spells, new magic items, and a new take on the Dwarvish language.
For more class options, IamSposta has The Martial Scholar and Additional Fighting Styles for Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers. These new fighting styles focus on the scholarly warriors who hone their minds as well as their bodies and collect knowledge and train their observational abilities to exploit new tactics in a battle.
And for more straightforward new classes and subclasses, we have a rapid-fire round. As always, all of these are either free or pay what you want with the suggested price in brackets.
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
While GM’s Day was yesterday, DriveThruRPG still has their annual GM’s Day Sale going on with discounts on over 72,000 titles.
And Roll20 is also getting in on the holiday and stretching it out to GM Appreciation Month with a sale on pay-aid tools including maps, tokens, addons, and more.
Grim Press collected Stock Maps – Settlements, which also includes a commercial license. The maps include alpine villages, city docks, town square, village market, and more with and without grids that you can use in your own products with credit.
And we have another resource for aspiring creators with the 850+ Art & Layout Assets Bundle, a massive collection of templates, textures, art assets, and other layout assets available for personal and commercial use with credit.
There’s no commercial license attached to this collection, but MmpApps has four maps meant for 1920s settings and is perfect for classic era games of Call of Cthulhu with a medieval cathedral, speakeasy, golden age train, and zeppelin airship.
And more from MMpApps, the Space Opera Maps bundle includes over twenty maps for ships, space stations, settlements, bases, and more for science fiction settings.
If your nostalgia is at superheroic levels, you know exactly what you’re going to get with WHITEFRANK’s FASERIPopedia bundle. A retroclone of the classic superhero RPG Marvel Super Heroes from TSR, this setting-neutral supers game recreates the system with character creation, random adventure generation, power rules, and more with five additional rules expansions, character sheets, and adventures.
Charity Bundles and Sales
Pinnacle Entertainment created the Jonathan M. Thompson Memorial Bundle benefiting the family of Thompson who passed away last month. This bundle collects about 150 game products (it’s really hard to estimate on DriveThru without losing count) from over 100 publishers including many titles for Savage Worlds such as sourcebooks, settings, adventures, bestiaries, accessories, tie-in fiction, and a lot more.
On Itch.io, Peach Garden Games along with over 100 other creators have put together the Solo but Not Alone 3 bundle with 149 single-player TTRPG titles ranging from introspective journaling exercises to intense hexcrawls supporting suicide prevention.
Over on Bundle of Holding, there are a pair of bundles for GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. The first is the GURPS 4e Combat Action bundle featuring the sourcebooks GURPS 4e Martial Arts, Tactical Shooting, Gun Fu, and three additional high-tech gun books. The Bonus Collection adds on five more action supplements, four more martial arts supplements, and Transhuman Space: Martial Arts 2100.
And the second bundle is the GURPS 4e Supers Bundle which, as you might guess, is about superheroes. The Starter Collection includes GURPS 4e Supers and GURPS 4e Powers while the Power-Up Collection adds on four GURPS Powers expansions and nine GURPS Power-Ups.
Arion Games has two bundles for Advanced Fighting Fantasy, the roleplaying game based on the classic adventure gamebooks by Steve Jackson (the British one) and Ian Livingstone. The first is the Starter Collection with Advanced Fighting Fantasy Core Rulebook 2nd Edition along with the Heroes Companion rules expansion, the Sorcery Spell Book magic expansion, and the monster book Out of the Pit. The Bonus Collection adds on the full-length campaign Crown of Kings, the Beyond the Pit monster book, the Titan setting guide, the Blacksand city book, and the adventure Warlock of Firetop Mountain based on the first of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
The second Advanced Fighting Fantasy bundle adds even more options to expand your game of classic fantasy adventure. The base level includes the bestiary Rough Guide to the Pit, the rules expansion Demons of Doom that lets you play the bad guys, plus three more adventures with the Bonus Collection adding on six more titles.
For those who want to catch up with the previous edition of Shadowrun, Catalyst Game Labs and Humble Bundle have the Shadowrun 5e Mega Bundle. The top tier of the bundle includes the Shadowrun 5th Edition Core Rulebook (that would be the 5th edition of the Shadowrun rules and not a version of Shadowrun made for 5e D20 System rules) along with the core sourcebooks (the rules expansion books for each major aspect of gameplay) Run & Gun for guns and combat, Street Grimoire for magic, Chrome Flesh for cyberware and other implants, Rigger 5.0 for vehicles and drones, Data Trails for hacking and decking, Howling Shadows for critters, and Run Faster for general player options along with 11 more books covering campaigns, player resources, setting sourcebooks, and more advanced rulebooks.
We’ve also got the Castles & Crusades Bundle from Troll Lord Games featuring a library of books for the retro-styled D20 fantasy RPG. The top tier of this bundle includes the Castles & Crusades 7th Edition core rulebook, the Monsters & Treasures GM reference book, the Codex Classicum player option expansion, and 34 more books and supplements.
While not exactly a roleplaying game product, the classic comic book series ElfQuest definitely shares much of its DNA with fantasy roleplaying. The bundle includes 13 volumes at the top tier with the entire 45-year run of the comics from the original issues all the way through to The Final Quest.
The miniature skirmish game Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is back on Humble. This bundle features the core rules of the game plus at the second and third tier the Fallout Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game (which is not the same as the Fallout RPG but is a campaign mode expansion for the miniature game) and a collection of rules expansions, campaigns, references, and STL files ready to print with a variety of terrain including the Red Rocket, ruined houses of Sanctuary Hills, a parked Vertibird, and more.
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
Ordo Arcanorum released a quickstart for Opus Magi, a Cepheus Engine urban fantasy game. The game features 13 magic domains that allow players to quickly craft their own spells and a full psionics system with new talents and abilities.
- Price: Free
Ethan H. Reynolds posted the one-page RPG Cowl about the resurrection of the Guild of Rogues. The system uses a single d20 for every roll as you seek to steal from the rich and corrupt and give to yourself.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
Adrian Young Games has the Age of Adventure RPG: Player Compendium and the Age of Adventure RPG: Game Master Compendium. The two products are expansions for the Lasers and Feelings hack released last month with new pregens, ready-to-use encounters, conversion tables, player reference sheets, and more.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
If you’ve ever had issues sorting out exactly what a “Session Zero” should be, Icarus Games gives us the RPG Session 0 Guide. The guide gives you an outline for what to discuss and how to hold a session zero before starting your campaigns including scheduling, table conventions, house rules, the process for determining rulings, safety, tone and theme of the campaign, character concept and building, and more.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.50)
Fans of MÖRK BORG have a new class from Grover Did it, the Venerable Hunter. You may be past your prime but that doesn’t mean you still don’t have some legend left in you.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.50)
From Foxwood Games, the RPG Swords in the Deep is an original system RPG inspired by CRPGs like Diablo, World of Warcraft, and Dragon Age: Origins. This public beta/soft launch of the system includes four classes with three subclasses for each, dungeons built from random tiles, random loot generation, crafting system, a detailed social interaction system, and more.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $15.00)
I always like when people are so passionate about a game that doesn’t have a real open license or the game is a licensed game itself that wouldn’t allow third-party creators, but they find a way to make it work anyway. And Joseph Kellogg has done it again with Aces High, an adventure for “your favorite post-apocalyptic sci-fi 2d20 game”. (It’s Fallout. He can’t say it’s Fallout legally but it’s Fallout.) A poker tournament is happening in
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $2.50)
We have a pair of CY_BORG adventures, the first from JKW called Dead Man’s Switch. The ripperdoc Emily Radfield received a post-mortem message from her friend Sarna and wants the players to infiltrate a cyber-scav chop shop to recover Sarna’s remains and, in the process, take out as many of the body snatchers as possible on the way in and out.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
And from M. Allen Hall, there’s The Backrooms which pits the punks against an assassin attempting to infiltrate secure locations across Central and The Hills. Are they ready for what’s waiting for them? Can they possibly be ready to be pulled into The Backrooms?
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
If you’d like your VTT games to have a little extra pizzaz, ForgottenAdventures as the Animations Pack 1 featuring seven unique animations with variations designed to be places as an overlay on your map to add extra details like a burning fire, flies, falling leaves, fireflies, and more.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $4.99)
Over on Dungeonmaster’s Guild, Tom Flynn posted an adventure for 5th to 8th level characters The Cult of Malusignus. Following the dying wish of a monk from the Red Abby Monastery, the party uncovers the entrance to an underground temple with fierce creatures and treacherous traps gathering proof of the resurrection of the titular Cult of Malusignus.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.50)
Scott Eubanks has an interesting optional rule set to get more out of your long rests, House Role: Roleplay to Rest. Described as “low stakes, simple, and effective”, the system acts as a pause to reflect before a big battle or a campsite along the road with mechanical incentives for characters to talk to one another.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
Christopher Hamwell released Dark Lairs which I feel is a title that doesn’t quite show how cool this is, as this is an expansion of the ecology of iconic Dungeons & Dragons monsters to create additional adventures and plot hooks. What happens after you defeat the owlbear? Where did the owlbear live? Were there cubs or eggs nearby? Are they good eating? There are five different adventure hooks with outlines for exploring the ecology of monsters and posing moral questions that can be resolved without combat.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $2.00)
Gadget Blanchard has an expansion on the death and dying rules with Shades of Mortality, a set of narrative mechanics for death saving throws. Rather than a flat d20 roll, these rules add challenges to the character’s Mind, Body, or Soul with the ability to gamble to improve their odds with potentially life-changing consequences.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.99)
I’m not a fan of puns, but I shouldn’t let that affect my coverage of titles so know that I present to you Annabel Heindla’s anthropomorphic cow race while groaning at the name: Moomin.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
While I’ve got a list of classes coming up, I feel the Reclaimers – Dwarven Classes for 5e from Bas Klein deserves a little more explanation. This supplement contains three classes specifically designed for dwarves (though anyone can take them obviously) along with a new background, new spells, new magic items, and a new take on the Dwarvish language.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.48)
For more class options, IamSposta has The Martial Scholar and Additional Fighting Styles for Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers. These new fighting styles focus on the scholarly warriors who hone their minds as well as their bodies and collect knowledge and train their observational abilities to exploit new tactics in a battle.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $2.00)
And for more straightforward new classes and subclasses, we have a rapid-fire round. As always, all of these are either free or pay what you want with the suggested price in brackets.
- Cursed Classes: College of the Luckless (Bard) from Patrick Rehse (free)
- The Charmer (Rogue) from Sinan Aydin ($0.50)
- Oath of the Gold Dragon (Paladin) from John Borneman ($1.00)
- Mirrored Soul (Sorcerer) from John Beardify ($2.12)
- Revised Paladin from Elly ($0.90)
- Street Fighter (Fighter) from Elijah Something ($2.00)
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
While GM’s Day was yesterday, DriveThruRPG still has their annual GM’s Day Sale going on with discounts on over 72,000 titles.
- Price: Up to 30% off
- End Date: March 15, 2023
And Roll20 is also getting in on the holiday and stretching it out to GM Appreciation Month with a sale on pay-aid tools including maps, tokens, addons, and more.
- Price: Up to 30% off
Grim Press collected Stock Maps – Settlements, which also includes a commercial license. The maps include alpine villages, city docks, town square, village market, and more with and without grids that you can use in your own products with credit.
- Price: $5.08 (90% off)
And we have another resource for aspiring creators with the 850+ Art & Layout Assets Bundle, a massive collection of templates, textures, art assets, and other layout assets available for personal and commercial use with credit.
- Price: $21.00 (28% off)
There’s no commercial license attached to this collection, but MmpApps has four maps meant for 1920s settings and is perfect for classic era games of Call of Cthulhu with a medieval cathedral, speakeasy, golden age train, and zeppelin airship.
- Price: $5.99 (47% off)
And more from MMpApps, the Space Opera Maps bundle includes over twenty maps for ships, space stations, settlements, bases, and more for science fiction settings.
- Price: $39.99 (39% off)
If your nostalgia is at superheroic levels, you know exactly what you’re going to get with WHITEFRANK’s FASERIPopedia bundle. A retroclone of the classic superhero RPG Marvel Super Heroes from TSR, this setting-neutral supers game recreates the system with character creation, random adventure generation, power rules, and more with five additional rules expansions, character sheets, and adventures.
- Price: $28.98 (39% off)
Charity Bundles and Sales
Pinnacle Entertainment created the Jonathan M. Thompson Memorial Bundle benefiting the family of Thompson who passed away last month. This bundle collects about 150 game products (it’s really hard to estimate on DriveThru without losing count) from over 100 publishers including many titles for Savage Worlds such as sourcebooks, settings, adventures, bestiaries, accessories, tie-in fiction, and a lot more.
- Price: $25.00 (96% off)
- Charity: The family of Jonathan M. Thompson
On Itch.io, Peach Garden Games along with over 100 other creators have put together the Solo but Not Alone 3 bundle with 149 single-player TTRPG titles ranging from introspective journaling exercises to intense hexcrawls supporting suicide prevention.
- Price: $10.00 (over 99% off)
- End Date: March 31, 2023
- Charity: Jasper’s Game Day (all proceeds)
Over on Bundle of Holding, there are a pair of bundles for GURPS from Steve Jackson Games. The first is the GURPS 4e Combat Action bundle featuring the sourcebooks GURPS 4e Martial Arts, Tactical Shooting, Gun Fu, and three additional high-tech gun books. The Bonus Collection adds on five more action supplements, four more martial arts supplements, and Transhuman Space: Martial Arts 2100.
- Price: $17.95 (78% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: March 28, 2023
- Charity: Direct Relief (10%)
And the second bundle is the GURPS 4e Supers Bundle which, as you might guess, is about superheroes. The Starter Collection includes GURPS 4e Supers and GURPS 4e Powers while the Power-Up Collection adds on four GURPS Powers expansions and nine GURPS Power-Ups.
- Price: $9.95 (85% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: March 28, 2023
- Charity: Direct Relief (10%)
Arion Games has two bundles for Advanced Fighting Fantasy, the roleplaying game based on the classic adventure gamebooks by Steve Jackson (the British one) and Ian Livingstone. The first is the Starter Collection with Advanced Fighting Fantasy Core Rulebook 2nd Edition along with the Heroes Companion rules expansion, the Sorcery Spell Book magic expansion, and the monster book Out of the Pit. The Bonus Collection adds on the full-length campaign Crown of Kings, the Beyond the Pit monster book, the Titan setting guide, the Blacksand city book, and the adventure Warlock of Firetop Mountain based on the first of the Fighting Fantasy gamebooks.
- Price: $7.95 (80% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: March 20, 2023
- Charity: Yorkshire Air Ambulance (10%)
The second Advanced Fighting Fantasy bundle adds even more options to expand your game of classic fantasy adventure. The base level includes the bestiary Rough Guide to the Pit, the rules expansion Demons of Doom that lets you play the bad guys, plus three more adventures with the Bonus Collection adding on six more titles.
- Price: $9.95 (74% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- End Date: March 20, 2023
- Charity: CoppaFeel (10%)
For those who want to catch up with the previous edition of Shadowrun, Catalyst Game Labs and Humble Bundle have the Shadowrun 5e Mega Bundle. The top tier of the bundle includes the Shadowrun 5th Edition Core Rulebook (that would be the 5th edition of the Shadowrun rules and not a version of Shadowrun made for 5e D20 System rules) along with the core sourcebooks (the rules expansion books for each major aspect of gameplay) Run & Gun for guns and combat, Street Grimoire for magic, Chrome Flesh for cyberware and other implants, Rigger 5.0 for vehicles and drones, Data Trails for hacking and decking, Howling Shadows for critters, and Run Faster for general player options along with 11 more books covering campaigns, player resources, setting sourcebooks, and more advanced rulebooks.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (96% off at top tier)
- End Date: March 30, 2023
- Charity: Global FoodBanking Network (user-defined, default 5%)
We’ve also got the Castles & Crusades Bundle from Troll Lord Games featuring a library of books for the retro-styled D20 fantasy RPG. The top tier of this bundle includes the Castles & Crusades 7th Edition core rulebook, the Monsters & Treasures GM reference book, the Codex Classicum player option expansion, and 34 more books and supplements.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (95% off at top tier)
- End Date: April 1, 2023
- Charity: Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society (user-defined, default 5%)
While not exactly a roleplaying game product, the classic comic book series ElfQuest definitely shares much of its DNA with fantasy roleplaying. The bundle includes 13 volumes at the top tier with the entire 45-year run of the comics from the original issues all the way through to The Final Quest.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (88% off at top tier)
- End Date: March 23, 2023
- Charity: Hero Initiative (user-defined, default 5%)
The miniature skirmish game Fallout: Wasteland Warfare is back on Humble. This bundle features the core rules of the game plus at the second and third tier the Fallout Wasteland Warfare Roleplaying Game (which is not the same as the Fallout RPG but is a campaign mode expansion for the miniature game) and a collection of rules expansions, campaigns, references, and STL files ready to print with a variety of terrain including the Red Rocket, ruined houses of Sanctuary Hills, a parked Vertibird, and more.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (94% off at top tier)
- End Date: March 18, 2023
- Charity: Trees, People, Water (user-defined, default 5%)
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
