RPG Print News – Recently Played and Intriguing RPGs

Not necessarily new this week, but RPGs I have recently run like Amazing Adventures and Moria or done an in depth deep dive into. Normally, this column does not cover print on demand but this week some of the RPGs are available as POD on DriveThruRPG. There are even a couple of PDF only supplement and a collection of used RPGs well worth buying over twenty-five years after going into print. I finish out with some RPGs that sound intriguing but I do not own and have never run. Just to dream a bit of hinted at future adventures and possibilities. Just the core books are displayed this week, but each link has the cover for each product.

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Tales of Argosa | Adventure Framework 68: Caverns of Shennog | Adventure Framework 67: Sky Tower of Belk Xos | Adventure Framework 69: Crypt of Kursaba by Pickpocket Press

• PRODUCTTYPE: softcovers (hardcovers available also)
• RETAIL PRICE: $34.95/$9.95 each
• DESCRIPTION: My next campaign. OSR style rules with both ultra-modern design and layout including color coding things like magic items and monsters in the adventures. Solid d20 chassis with limited hit points, levels, and spell power to create a more grounded sword and sorcery feel. Emergent play is a big focus of this game and dozens of tables help generate adventure seeds and encounters for a variety of locations and situations. The three adventures fit well together especially the first two which deal with lairs related to Shennog, goddess of the night, deceit, and madness. This one is highly recommended.

The One Ring | Peoples of Wilderland (PDF) | Moria – Through the Doors of Durin by Free League Publishing

• PRODUCTTYPE: hardcovers and a PDF
• RETAIL PRICE: $59.71/$2.99/$50.25
• DESCRIPTION: All year long I’m running adventures through the Doors of Durin with a variety of different gaming buddies. The PDF helps to make additional Player-heroes as Moria stretches from Eriador to the Wilderlands. I’m running this one as poor people hunting treasure, hoping to score big, and get out alive before diving too deep and too greedily. Awesome to run, and it feels like I’m right there with the players, facing the long dark road of Moria. Every GM should have a copy of The One Ring and Moria – Through the Doors of Durin.

Amazing Adventures Complete Bundle | Amazing Adventures Manual of Monsters — Free PDF by Troll Lord Games

• PRODUCTTYPE: hardcover rulebooks, softcover adventure, GM screen/free PDF
• RETAIL PRICE: $87.99/$0
• DESCRIPTION: I have covered this RPG, sister RPG to Castles & Crusades, in detail and it continues to receive additional support especially with adventures. Plenty of pulp heroics and cross-overs with fantasy if the GM desires. The Red God is the focus of several adventures with sorcery wielding Nazi cultists being ardent followers and foes of the PCs. The monsters are free in PDF until an updated version monster book is published.

Liminal Horror Investigators | The Parthenogenesis of Hungry Hollow by Space Penguin Ink

• SYSTEM: OSR
• PRODUCTTYPE: softcover core rulebook and hardcover adventure
• RETAIL PRICE: $13/$40
• DESCRIPTION: Liminal Horror is the horror side of the coin to the same ruleset used by the fantasy Cairn Second Edition covered in last week’s column. While Cairn provides plenty of emergent play through world building and having adventures shape the world, Liminal Horror is about normal people facing eldritch horrors and, if they survive, coming out changed and even mutated. The world is dark and filled with unspeakable monstrosities hiding in the shadows. The PCs will be forever altered by encountering weird horrors and strange resonant artifacts that warp reality, mind, and body. Plenty of R and NC-17 body horror along with fear of the unknown all encountered by normal people thrown into terror and darkness. The Deluxe Edition is being worked on currently.

Alternity Player's Handbook | Alternity Gamemaster Guide | Star Drive - Campaign Setting | Star Drive - Alien Compendium I - Creatures of the Verge | Star Drive - The Lighthouse | Star Drive - Star Compendium by TSR

• PRODUCTTYPE: hardcover core rulebooks and setting and softcover supplements
• RETAIL PRICE: $15
• DESCRIPTION: Combined, these core rules and setting books present an entire system of planets for PCs to explore. The Lighthouse is a traveling space station that starfalls between six different systems. Plenty of unique aliens and alien artifacts to encounter and strange new worlds to land on and explore. The Lighthouse also harbors a dark and deadly secret that would make for quite a challenge to present to the PCs.

Possible Future RPG Gems​

I don’t own any of the following RPGs and I’ve never read or played any of them. Each is fascinating to me in its own way. Discovering gems like these RPGs that I might way day decide to buy, prep, and run is why I keep writing this column. I discovered Liminal Horror the same way and that one I have now and plan to run one day.

Memento Mori: Corebook | Memento Mori: Codex Gigas | Memento Mori: Ex Velum by Two Little Mice

• RETAIL PRICE: $55/$45/$45
• WHY: PC Drifters in 14th century Europe decimated by the Black Plague. The PCs are sick with the plague, and it opens them up to a dark world of power, horror, suffering, and opportunity. Because Drifters are determined to fulfill their Dream.

Lost Eons (three booklet pack) by The Lost Bay Studio

• RETAIL PRICE: $34
• WHY: Mutating PCs explore a solarpunk sci-fantasy. PC post-humans seek to understand the inscrutable and terrible forces that create the mysteries and dangers of a far future Earth.

ECO MOFOS!! - Punk Cover | Cathedral of Hope | Tower into Elsewhere by The Lost Bay Studio

• RETAIL PRICE: $48/$7/$14
• WHY: PCs are a group of misfits who have found each other in the wastes and ruins of a fallen world. The past is just a hazy legend, the story scattered over thousands of USB sticks and servers, but the future is theirs to be written. Based on Cairn. Rather than gaining Fatigue, PC Punks fill their inventory with emotional baggage that has specific requirements to be removed. Ok, that is really cool. Cathedral of Hope is a homestead base for PC Punks that can be upgraded. If not taken care of, it will develop in unpredictable ways by itself. The homestead starts out as a small village of small shacks led by an Elder named Estaine Alloy. Tower into Elsewhere provides details on the overgrown halls of Viridian House and beyond the thresholds of reality to the Mountain Underground. People go missing on the full moon, virulent fauna spreads over the town, and a strange wind howls from the derelict tower at the town’s heart. Also includes a selection of new art-themed Adaptations.

Charlie is a participant in the Noble Knight Affiliate Program and the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, both of which are affiliate programs that provide a means for participants to earn money by advertising and linking to Noble Knight Games and DriveThruRPG respectively. Charlie is on Facebook. Posts and articles posted here by others do not reflect the views of Charlie Dunwoody. If you like the articles at EN World please consider supporting the Patreon.

 

[Sossij]

I like the Dying Earth/post-apocalyptic science fantasy stuff, so I'm glad there seems to be a lot of it. More than I keep up with, but that's a silly thing to complain about.

 

[Rawhead]

Are you referring to an Alternity pdf bundle on DriveThru, because I can't seem to find it ?

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Typically, Charles links to Noble Knight, with whom he has an affiliate relationship with (no shame! No one's getting rich in game journalism here. My guess is any proceeds go towards his game habi... ahem game hobby. And probably eventually inform his work on ENWorld, so we all win. Anyway...). I'm not sure why some listings in his articles have multiple items in them though.

On topic, the Memento Mori game sounds cool, would play at a con; but would never run.
Also love that Tales of Argosa cover!

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

Are you referring to an Alternity pdf bundle on DriveThru, because I can't seem to find it ?

Each Alternity title is a link to a copy available on Noble Knight as of the time I wrote the article. Therefore, these listings are print copies of the game if you are looking for them.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

Typically, Charles links to Noble Knight, with whom he has an affiliate relationship with (no shame! No one's getting rich in game journalism here. My guess is any proceeds go towards his game habi... ahem game hobby. And probably eventually inform his work on ENWorld, so we all win. Anyway...). I'm not sure why some listings in his articles have multiple items in them though.

On topic, the Memento Mori game sounds cool, would play at a con; but would never run.
Also love that Tales of Argosa cover!

Each listing in the article is a link to that specific print product somewhere online. Noble Knight, other online hobby stores, or a publisher who also sells in hobby stores, etc. This week is unique with some links to Drivethrurpg for POD which this column doesn't cover normally.

Fun fact. In 1941 a young budding writer named Issac Asimov sold Nightfall (this story in Asimov's own words and that short story available on Amazon). He expected a penny a word but was bumped up to a penny and a half for his brilliance. In 2025, that same story adjusted for inflation for a, at the time, relatively unknown young author with less than 3 years of experience, should be 20 cents a word bumped up to 30 cents a word. Most of the time if I sell a short story or a game article to a publisher I haven't worked with before, I get about 4 cents a word. The same amount Paizo paid me a couple of decades ago for some articles for the then in print Dragon Magazine. So no, I'm not quitting my day job.

I think the advantage of a campaign of MM would be a slow pursuit of each PCs' Dream. I don't have a copy though, so can't confirm.

I have run two sessions of Tales of Argosa so far. It is a wild and brutal game. One PC death each game and most of the pets have been killed. Player tactics are steadily improving though, and next session is in a settlement so we'll see if all the PCs can live this time.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

I like the Dying Earth/post-apocalyptic science fantasy stuff, so I'm glad there seems to be a lot of it. More than I keep up with, but that's a silly thing to complain about.

There are many amazing ones out there, some I have and some I don't. Some might lean heavily into sci-fantasy but have post-apoc vibes also include Cloud Empress, UVG, and of course the classic Mutant: Year Zero is completely post-apocalyptic.

 

[Sossij]

There are many amazing ones out there, some I have and some I don't. Some might lean heavily into sci-fantasy but have post-apoc vibes also include Cloud Empress, UVG, and of course the classic Mutant: Year Zero is completely post-apocalyptic.

UVG looks very cool and it tempts me on a regular basis. I missed the Bundle of Holding for it, but Troika looks like it's got that gonzo Jack Vance feel, although I don't know if it's necessarily a Dying Earth sort of thing.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

UVG looks very cool and it tempts me on a regular basis. I missed the Bundle of Holding for it, but Troika looks like it's got that gonzo Jack Vance feel, although I don't know if it's necessarily a Dying Earth sort of thing.

It kind of is, but instead of everything dying everything is slowly decaying from infrastructure to institutions. From an interview with Troika!'s creator:

Charles Dunwoody (CD): Troika! has an amazing implied setting where flights through the star-studded home of void beasts can be as dangerous as trying to take an elevator or stairs to the sixth floor of a hotel in the city of Troika. For those new to Troika!, what do player characters and GMs do in game?
Daniel Sell (DS): Troika! is what would have happened if RPGs Appendix N was British New Wave rather than American Pulp. The players play characters, the GM moves the world, but instead of exploring the wilderness and beating up the locals we’re moving through a world that’s very old and set in its ways; everywhere is cities and obscure people doing the same thing they’ve been doing forever. You might still beat them up though.

CD: One of my players described Troika! as horror Dr. Seuss: colorful interesting beings living loud, jubilant lives while body horror and violent death lurk in dark corners waiting to tear off jawbones and commit bloody murder. How would you describe the tone and theme of Troika!?
DS: It’s a colorful, dense, decaying and joyful utopia where anything feels possible but not for long.

 

[Charles Dunwoody]

You can sign up for a newsletter and get a Troika! PDF for free and lots of print books are on sale: here.