Preview of Dark Albion released

The upcoming game set in Dark Ages fantasy England from RPGPundit gets a preview over on his blog. Mostly the appearance of the book, not content

New OSR Products at DTRPG—June 25th, 2015

Not that busy a week, at least if you like adventures.

Adventures

RL1 - The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry - A module from me intended to be a starter dungeon (and was, actually). Includes a home village. 30 pages, PWYW or get it free (scroll down a couple posts).

Rules

Beyond the Wall - Across the Veil -  This is an undead sourcebook for Beyond the Wall. 25 pages, free!

From the Vats - Free supplement about Vivimancy. 54 pages (and crashes my tablet)

Hyperspace Messenger 04 - Skills -  This is a skill system for White Star. 12 pages, $1

Paladins of Space - New character class for Labyrinth Lord with a space knight theme. 8 pages, $1. (Kind of funny, since one of the classes I was using in my game was the Stellar Ranger, basically a space ranger)

Relics of the Akashics - This seems to be a collection of psychic themed stuff. 16 pages, $2.99

Wor Born #1: Atlanteans -  This is a supplement from Three Sages games about Atlanteans, who are part of their setting, Wor. Free, 2 pages.

Misc

Drongo: Ruins of the Witch Kingdoms -  Didn't this come out last week, too? $6.99, 64 pages.

Dungeons in Blue - Megatile  5-pack #4 - Geomorphs. $4.19.

Kirt Needs Money Bundle - A compilation of several products from Ivanhoe Unbound

From the Vats — New Free Labyrinth Lord supplement from Gavin Norman (and others)

 I was a big fan of his Theorems & Thaumaturgy, so was a bit disappointed when he stopped doing OSR stuff in favor of 5e (which I have less than zero interest in). But apparently he hasn't given up the OSR entirely, as he's back with something of a supplement to the Vivimancer class, From the Vats.

Essentially a Vivimancer is like the opposite of a Necromancer - dealing with creating new (and often icky) life forms and modifying life.

My contribution to Free RPG Day — The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry

Was originally going to be "Hobby Dungeon", but then I realized that was too close to the Hobby Shop Dungeon. It's a fairly large dungeon that I made a couple years ago when I started up a new game. I had originally used a free map from Tim Hartin from his website, but ended up changing a lot of things and re-drew it, much less artistically.  It was going to be the first module I released, but it was rather large and never got around to finishing polishing it up.

It's the first level of a larger dungeon. The premise is that an adventuring wizard retired, but grew bored. So he took up a bunch of hobbies, which the first level is devoted to. It also comes with a village that I used as a home base. All in all, 30 pages.

You can get it free from TinyUpload, or MediaFire or as a Pay What You Want title at DTRPG

New OSR Products at DTRPG—June 18th, 2015

It's been raining non-stop this last week, not just water apparently, but adventures. 7 of them this week.

Adventures

Drongo (Planet of Peril) - This is a adventure setting for White Star. 25 pages, $2.99, presumably inspired by Flash Gordon's brother Dash.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko  - This seems to be a city adventure, part sourcebook, part toolbox, part module and includes two new classes, including the robodwarf. 72 pages, $9.

FQ4 - In the Caravan Service - Mid level adventure from Adventures in Filbar, 27 pages, $3

The Alchemist's Task - Mini-dungeon for Swords & Wizardry from Creation's Edge games.

The Howling Mesa - Short 4 page adventure apparently about Jar Jar Binks. (No, not really, about gnolls). Pay What You want.

The Wizard of the White Hills - Short adventure from the Frugal Gm. 4 pages, Pay What You Want.

WishTaker - Not a lot of details about this, since the publisher didn't enable preview. But it's for 2nd-4th level characters who wake up after a night of drinking in a tavern with something odd happening. 24 pages and a whopping $6.99 (won't be buying this any time soon).

Rules

Outer Space Raiders Volume 2: Aliens, Creatures, & Foes - 8 pages of stuff for White Star. $1.49

Misc

Adventures Dark & Deep Deluxe Bundle - If you want to play with Joseph Bloch's houseruled 1e, well, then this is for you. $99.95 gets you hardback versions of the three books, as well as PDF copies.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko Map Pack - Free maps for the book of the same name.

Patricia Smith Presents: Barbarian Anna - This is actually just stock art, but really one of the best pieces of old school style art I've seen, in the style of Frazetta. Pricey, though, at $10. I would love to use it in one of my classes (Amazon Warrior), but if you added up all the money from all the classes, it wouldn't quite add up to $10

Saga of the Splintered Realm Map Pack - Already mentioned this, but a bunch of free maps you can use.

Saga of the Splintered Realm Map Pack 1 available

Saga of the Splintered Realm was a kickstartered rules-adventure combo, and thanks to the kickstarter, the maps for it have been released under terms of a Creative Commons Share-Alike Attribution License and thus reusable for private and commercial purposes as long as you give credit.

There seem to be about 25 different maps by Michael T. Desing, mostly dungeons of varying size, but also a coastal city, a couple of villages, and even a map of a ship. They are done in the crosshatch style found in old magazines.

Betrayal at Lucir Review

Betrayal at Lucir is the second module from Sundered Blade Games, the first The Shrine of Sruukor is Pay What You Want, while this is priced at $2.99. It's meant for Swords & Wizardry, level 2 or so, but could possibly serve as a starter adventure.

It's something of a semi-sandbox. The basic area (the town of Lucir and the surrounding area) is detailed somewhat, and then there are two events which lead to the PCs running off to two different dungeons. One of these events is what the title refers to.

The area has something of a Celtic feel to it, at least the names do. The town has an apothecary, inn, church (dedicated to a forrest goddess), smithy, and market square. Perhaps more, but those are the things that get a write-up. There is no town map as near as I can tell, but the level of detail for things described is quite good, with the exception of stats for the mentioned NPCs (there aren't any).

New OSR Products at RPGNow—June 11th, 2015

A whole bunch of new classes this week, as well as the quick start guide to the 3rd Edtion of the World of Synnibarr.

Almost missed Sentinels of Echo City, a B/X based super hero game

Adventures

Against the Goblins - A large adventure from Creation's Edge Games. 65 pages, right now for $3. Excellent adventure, should have a review of it next week end.  (Thanks for the correction)

Hexed Places - Ash Woods - Hex crawl about a region where a mysterious meteor fell. $2.69, 12 pages

Mail Call - A Sci-Fi Extended Encounter - This is an adventure for White Star. For 3rd to 5th level characters, 30 pages and a whopping 116.5 megabytes, presumably because of the included maps for Virtual Tabletop use. $1.99

Rules

Gamblers - A new class for Labyrinth Lord. 7 pages, $1

Hyperspace Messenger 03 - Aliens - Tables for randomly generating aliens for White Star. 20 pages, $1

PC4 - The OSR Dervish - This is a variant of the cleric class I use in my games for a more middle eastern/mystery religion feel. PWYW or get it here for free

PC5 - The OSR Tomb Robber - This is a class I came up with to replace the thief in my games (I hate the thief). Has tables for 1e, 0e, B/X, and BECMI. PWYW or get it here for free

Psionics - A new class and rules for psionics for White Star. $1.99, 11 pages.

Sentinels of Echo City -  Super heroes using B/X style rules. 120 pages, $4.95

The Carven - A new class for Labyrinth Lord, this seems to be like a Pinnochio class. 7 pages, $1

The Rocker - New class for White Star. 99 cents, 9 pages

Wanderwoods - A new class for Labyrinth Lord, this seems to be a racial class for a treant type character. Love the cover art.

Misc

PM3 Basic Monsters Set 2 - This is a set of 37 printable stand up counters of monsters. $5

Chaosium having a huge warehouse clearing sale

More old school than OSR, but Chaosium is back under control of Sandy Petersen and Greg Stafford and as part of trying to get the business back into shape, they are having a huge warehouse sale

 we have 50% off the Following: All BRP and Call of Cthulhu Monographs! Novelties & Accessories! All licensed Call of Cthulhu products, including Fantasy Flight Games boardgames and miniatures, Cubicle 7 books, Golden Goblin, Arc Dreams, and more! All non-English language books! Nephilim!  (These books will not be reprinted or reordered once they’re gone!)

Also, we have 75% off all the remaining stock of Eternal Champion games and D20 Call of Cthulhu Gamemaster’s Packs! (Last chance!)

Plus, look for special bundle packs of Eternal Champion and Nephilim books!

Call of Cthulhu was pretty much my third love as a game (after AD&D and Traveller). But the Eternal Champion stuff is also quite nice

Find the Lady — Old AD&D adventure now on Scribd

From littlemute at the OSR sub-reddit comes this find, Find the Lady by Graeme Davis from 1985, originally published in Gameplayer magazine in the UK. Apparently the rights have reverted to the author, who posted it to Scribd (which always seemed to me a very dodgy service)

Creation's Edge is back with a full sized Module, Against the Goblins

At the end of last year, Creation's Edge published 8 mini-modules for Swords & Wizardry at about one a week or so (maybe longer, don't remember). I was a fairly big fan of them, I bought over half of them and reviewed a couple (will eventually review the others). I was a bit disappointed to see them stop, so I'm really happen to see a new module from him, Against the Goblins, this time full sized at 60+ pages,  Right now it's priced at only $3 (regular price $6) and is for 1st-3rd level characters.

The Witch of the Tarriswoods Review

The Witch of the Tarriswoods is an OSR module from John Fredericks and Sharp Mountain Games. It's a short low level (3rd or so) adventure meant for Basic D&D, though of course it works reasonably well with any OSR game. It does seem to rely a lot on both ability checks and open doors checks, for what it's worth.

The plot is fairly simple (and there is one, it's not a sandbox), basically the town of Adela is having problems and it's up the PCs to solve them. As can be guessed from the title, the problem is the doings of a "witch" (actually a 5th level MU), who has unleashed (perhaps somewhat unwittingly) an evil at a ruined shrine in the woods. So the PCs must go to the shrine and solve the problem.

On the way they have three encounters, one involving the rescue of a farmer, one with skeletons, and the last is really more of an obstacle that they must get through using ability checks. Once they reach the shrine, it has two small levels, the first with 5 areas and the second with 3, including the final showdown with the witch.

The Maze of Nuromen is now The Necropolis of Nuromen

The first (and I think only) adventure for the Blueholme was The Maze of Nuromen, a pretty decent dungeon crawl. It's now been revised and expanded into The Necropolis of Nuromen which adds something of a home base as well as another mini-dungeon, a bandit's lair.

Still Pay What You Want, so check it out.

Lesser Gnome's stuff is also on sale

Don't have any of their stuff, actually, so I dunno if it's worth it or not. I am skeptical of stuff that is dual statted, but sometimes it works out okay. Whisper & Venom is now only $7.79 (that's a big setting, I think) and Bird of a Feather, a short adventure is $2.99.

The Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence on sale

While not really worth the $18 it normally sells for, at $9, The Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence is probably worth it. It's one of those things I've been meaning to review, but stuff that is "meh" is really the hardest to review. If you like something it's easy to review, if you hate something it's extremely easy to review, but if it's meh, it's really work to review something.

Basically, it's a hex crawl (of sorts) over strange, wacky islands with a lot of crazy gonzo stuff. Some of it good, some of it silly, but the good outweighs the bad.  Not for the easily offended/traumatized, though.

New OSR Products at RPGNow—June 4th, 2015

Relatively quiet week, with an expansion for Castle of the Mad Archmage being the most notable product, though there is also a 100+ page adventure for 1e.

Curiously, there's also a new supplement for DragonQuest...

Adventures

Castle of the Mad Archmage Expansion - Level Three East - This actually sounds pretty interesting, it's a museum level. 32 pages, $4.95 and 74 encounter areas.

The Gar'Haden Family Crypt - 1 page mini-dungeon that can be used on its own or to expand Shrine of Sruukor. PWYW

Tower of the Elreli - Mini-expansion for Betrayal at Lucir. PWYW, 1 page

Vaults of Obryn Sapravda 1e - This is a curious adventure. It says it's for 1st edition, so I'll believe them, but it has an immense amount of detail, showing views of the rooms (computer generated) and featuring lots and lots of battlemaps. For 4th to 6th level characters. 111 pages, $7

Rules

Alien Elves - New racial class for Labyrinth Lord based on space elves. $1, 7 pages

Outer Space Raiders; Space Amazons - Two new classes for White Star. 99 cents

Ships of Shade Space - Spaceships for White Star. $1, 10 pages

The Machine Symbiont - This is a new psychic discipline for...wait, Stars Without Number. 4 pages, $1

Misc

Metamorphosis Alpha: Book of Handouts -  Apparently this is a bunch of things described by Jim Ward and then illustrated by Jim Holloway. $5.99.

Percent in Lair: Ants, giant - All sorts of advice and ideas and rules for using giant ants in your game. Perhaps not the most useful, but very funny, worth a download. PWYW, 12 pages

New PWYW product about Giant Ants

Want to use Giant Ants in your game? Probably not, though it worked well enough in Them!. If you do though, there is Percent in Lair: Ants, Giant a new PWYW product from a new company.

Probably should have said they were "Space Ants" and for use with White Star...

Bard's Tale IV Kickstarter live

Hasn't reached its goal yet, but is halfway there.

Tower of the Elreli—New PWYW Adventure

From Sundered Blade Games comes Tower of the Elreli, a one page adventure which can be used on its own or to expand Betrayal at Lucir (which is on my wishlist, but haven't bought it yet)