I present to you the weekly news with OSR articles, products and free gaming material (spell books, new settings, etc.), some 5e stuff (e.g., the Swordfish Islands Bestiary) plus some story games (Henshin!). And don’t miss the solo gaming offers (Pocket Dungeon, They’re Onto Me).
Bookkeeping Notes: Some of the links below are affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase, I will earn a commission. This commission comes at no extra cost to you. But please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them.
Old School Gaming
Esteemed OSR writer James Spahn wrote a Review: Midlands Low Magic Sandbox Setting. It is a setting book for Low Fantasy Gaming.
Midlands Low Magic Sandbox is available as a PDF for $10.
A Book of Miscellaneous Spells II is published! It’s a free PDF.
Inferno Road is a zine for Dungeon Crawl Classics and other OSR games. 15$ shipped to the USA. The pictures look sweet. I don’t have it, so I can’t say anything else about this.
The Horn of Kardos (PWYW) is a campaign starter to be used with Swords & Wizardry Light.
The original Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay First Edition Core Rulebook is now available as a PDF for $9.99.
Fully OCR’d, bookmarked and cleaned up to look amazing […]
And here is more news: New OSR Products at RPGNow/DTRPG — December 6th, 2017.
This article was in Jens D.'s G+ stream: Against Gonzo Dungeons and Total Party Kills (or Some Old-School Tropes Overturned)... I found it to be an insightful read into different play-styles.
Gavin Norman has some thoughts about how to use the hex-crawl Fever Swamp in the mystic setting of Dolmenwood.
I like the idea of the quick A-Z City Key by Elfmaids & Octopi.
Michael Bacon created a simple free Rules Reference for Maze Rats (v0.2). Cool.
Anne Hunter made a free Death & Dismemberment Table for DCC.
And there is a new hack of The Black Hack on the table: The Quest Hack (free, in development).
More TBH? Bonus Episode – Black Hack at Dragonmeet - an interview with David Black and Chris McDowall (author of Into the Odd).
Jayson Gardner collected some Megadungeon Resources.
Last week I reported that a new B/X Essentials product was released - B/X Essentials: Classes and Equipment. It’s now also available as print-on-demand.
Eric Fabiaschi wrote a review: Review & Commentary On B/X Essentials: Classes and Equipment From Necrotic Gnome Productions For Your Old School Campaigns.
Designing D&D Adventures with Kiel Chenier: Old School Academy Ep. 4 is an interview by Ben Milton.
D&D 5e
The Dictionary of Azurth is an “abbreviated (but free) guide to assort people, places, and things in the Land of Azurth”. Azurth is the setting of Mortzengersturm, The Mad Manticore of the Prismatic Peak
How NOT to Teach Newbies D&D is a lengthy article by The Angry GM. I like his stance, but his writing is very verbose.
Someone statted all Swordfish Island monsters for 5e: I created 5e stats for all of the monsters in the bestiary of A Field Guide to Hot Springs Island on reddit - free PDF here.
Story Games/Narrative Games & Rules-Lite Games
Here is a free pocketmod 2-player-game by Scott Slomiany: Wild One.
Blades in the Dark website (including SRD) is live! The SRD is also hosted on Github.
Jonathan Hicks created a free simple sci-fi game called To The Stars, Cadets!. It uses three attributes (Strength, Smarts, and Skill) and a simple d6-system (roll 1d6 + attribute score ≥ 7).
Henshin! is a storytelling game where a group of teens transforms into masked heroes. PWYW PDF.
In Henshin!, players narrate episodes about a team of heroes with dual identities and awesome power. Most participants play a Color, a hero designated by archetypes as described in their playbook. One participant is the Narrator, describing the world and all other characters as needed, in addition to guiding each episode through a satisfying arc.
Solo Gaming
Dan Clark used my free Miso RPG for A Solo Dungeon-Crawl: Vorin’s Labyrinth. Yeah!
This old-school adventure generator was recommended by Alex Yari on G+: CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Adventure Generator. At the moment, it’s on sale for $0.99.
It has a nice structure to outline adventures, and I thought it could be useful to frame scenes, come up with ideas for NPC patrons, and cool, evocative titles for fantasy adventures.
Pocket Dungeon is a free print-and-play dungeon-crawler. I found it on G+ where Tarcisio Lucas recommended it.
It is a very creative game. One of the great things about it is that this game was designed to be played at work, and it has many tools to “camouflage” the game, including the dice - you substitute dice by a small block of post notes. It is kind of 4 Against Darkness “pocket version”.
Speaking of Four Against Darkness: Spencer Salyer wrote a thorough review of this game on his blog. If you’re interested in this dungeon-crawler, take a look at Review: Four Against Darkness – A Solo Dungeon-Delving Game.
Spencer’s 4AD Game Board is now on DTRPG as Pay-What-You-Want product.
In the free solo game They’re Onto Me you play a conspiracy theorist.
Every day, you will be filming yourself on your phone. Each recording session will be up to a minute long. That is how long you have to talk about the oncoming parasitic alien invasion. The game ends when you’ve recorded yourself every day for twelve days. On the twelfth day, you will decide why this is your last video post.
Flash Fantasy: A series of mini fighting fantasy playable in 5 minutes is a free mini-game based on the Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone.
In this video a gamer explains how she uses The Fantasy Trip for solo gaming: Melee The Fantasy Trip RPG. (Thanks, Kent H, for pointing this out.)
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