The OSR News - Nov. 17, 2018

New Releases

Ford's Faeries: A Bestiary Inspired by Henry Justice Ford by the G+ OSR Community. Published by Studio Kortex. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for Free. 116 pages.

A bestiary inspired by the masterful work of Henry Justice Ford.

Meet the Moon-Headed Giant, the Leechlich, and the Fencer Familiar, and more than 50 other weird creatures fit for campaigns of every level. The full-page illustrations, often taken from fairytale books, have led our 15 authors to create original monsters that will give a quirky twist to your game. They all come with enough material to become the centerpiece of the session.

Contributors: Dan D., Daniel Lofton, Dat Epic Fish, Emmy Allen, Eric Diaz, Eric Nieudan, Goblin’s Henchman, Guillaume Jentey, HD Atkinson, James V. West, Jean-Marc "Tolkraft" Choserot, Ktrey Parker, Magimax, Roger SG Sorolla, Sébastien d’Abrigeon, and Vance Atkins.

Stats are compatible with most early editions of Dave and Gary's game and their retroclones.

Meandering - Across the Radlands #1 by R.S. Tilton, Jeff Scifert. Published by Epic Meanderings. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for $4.50. 26 pages.

Meandering - Across the Radlands #1. Welcome to the GLOW. Where were you when the bombs fell? Did you make it to the ShelterTek Shelter? Are you one of the mutated survivors? Whithin the pages of this inaugural issue, you will find: The Buggeymen, a new sub-class of Insecta mutants. The Vault of the Ancients contains sixteen new artifacts for seekers to find. Expanded weapons, armor, and occupations for games with a more recent Great Disaster; as well as a Bestiary for some common enemies in the Glow.

Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name by Jack Shear. Art by Tenebrous Kate. Published by Dolorous Exhumation Press. Available from DriveThru RPG in Print for $14.95 and in PDF for $9.95. 134 pages.

Discover Umberwell, a fantasy metropolis of stunning strangeness and decadent splendor. Explore a city of urban dungeons, encounter marvelous artifice, and hear the prayers offered to the six goddesses of the City of Exiles. Tour the city’s island sprawl, its underground warrens, its undersea domes, and the rusting towers that lead to its skyward reaches. Mingle with devious wizards, thieving gangs, and creatures drawn to the city from across the planar multiverse. All you have to do is learn to survive the streets, crypt-kicker! Beautiful fiends, deadly assassins, scheming secret societies, raucous cabarets, and horrid monsters await just beyond the harbors. Embark and taste the impossible fever dream.

Umberwell: Blackened Be Thy Name is a system-neutral city campaign setting for picaresque urban fantasy adventures inspired by New Weird fiction. The book includes:

• Art by Tenebrous Kate.
• Details on the city of Umberwell, including information on its demoness mayor, its worm trains, its dangerous gangs and cults, its interplanar zones, and much more.
• Information on the myriad races who populate the city.
• Ideas for genre-appropriate characters and the reasons that brought them to the metropolis.
• Eleven factions and twenty-six NPCs to involve your players in intrigue.
• Advice and tools for running a fantasy RPG in an urban setting.
• Tools for use in game, such as copious adventure seeds, random tables, and a comprehensive adventure generator that gives you the basis of a scenario with little prep.
• A full index of subjects, an index of adventure ideas, and an index of the book's random tables.
• A design philosophy that prioritizes ease of use and speed of play. All "lore" entries are easy to scan, and make use of bullet points and bold text to draw your attention to the important bits so you can get on with your game.
• All pdfs include a bonus pdf of the first supplement: Scardogs and Scapegaces, which brings the described number of NPCs to fifty.
• Umberwell exists on the same world as Cinderheim: The Land Under the Demon Sun, so if you enjoy this product you may with to check that out as well and use them together in your campaigns. Check it out here.

The Indie Hack by Slade Stolar, Herror. Published by Scablands Press. Available from Indie Press Revolution in Print for $10.00 and in PDF for $5.50. 30 pages.

The Indie Hack (TIH) is a minimalist fantasy roleplaying game, build up from the ideas in The Black Hack, that is played with pencils, paper, dice, and imagination. It takes old-school gaming and gives it an indie edge: you get heroes, magic, traps, and monsters but the players get more control over the richness of the story.

The characters are ruled not by abstract ideas of goodness and order, but by Masters (who they try to impress) and Goddesses (who they need to appease when they are near death). The characters have relationships with each other and NPCs that mechanically evolve. Players answer class-centric questions about the world during character creation, to help the GM develop the setting and tone of the adventure.

There are seven classes to choose from: The Veteran wades through battle. The Exorcist banishes the Unliving. The Hunter can find anything in the wilderness. The Scoundrel bypasses traps and locks. The Elementalist manipulates fire, water, and stone. The Occultist summons up dead things. And The Outlander is... well... different.

At just 28 pages, The Indie Hack a light-weight way to shift your dungeon-delving paradigm.

In The Indie Hack, you don't collect XP, you collect scars.

A Night at the Golden Duck by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess. Available in Print for £5.00.

A small zine encounter by Patrick Stuart and Scrap Princess, made in the cut-up style used in Fire on the Velvet Horizon.

A Night at the Golden Duck is an 8 page fold-out zine with five unique NPCs, the legend of a mysterious treasure which might provoke them to secret murder, and when folded out, a map of the Golden Duck Inn.

There is an answer to the mystery but since each NPC has different motives, secrets and abilities and will react differently depending on circumstance, there is no set path to the encounter, it could go differently each time.

B/X Ascending for B/X Essentials by Mark Craddock. Published by Cross Planes Game Studio. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for $2.99. 65 pages.

Do you love B/X Essentials, Moldvay’s version of the World’s First RPG, and Labyrinth Lord?

Do you also love some of the innovations from later edition of the First RPG?

B/X Ascending is a supplement for B/X Essentials that focuses on unifying the game to a roll-high d20 mechanic based on classic saving throws. It updates the Classes while keeping Race-As-Class, and adds Paladins, Monks, Rangers, Illusionists, and Druids. It includes Trained and Untrained Skills and treats them as Saving Throws, it uses Ascending AC, and Attack Bonuses.

B/X Ascending aims to keep the best parts of B/X Essentials while adding some of the modern ideas we’ve all grown to love.

For those curious about B/X Ascending, I know it sounds like I just injected the d20 system into it, but I chose to focus the unified mechanic on the classic saving throw. There are no DCs set by the Referee. Each class and race ability has a target number, just like saving throws in B/X. Additionally, Trained and Untrained Skills are now Saving Throws.

Elfmaids & Octopi Adventures in Space by Chris Tamm. Available from the author's blog in PDF for Free. 116 pages.

OK as i was mentioned in a SF thread im making this shambling space wreck of a unfinished book available. Might work with several games even mothership space cthulhu star frontiers. Will revise it one day and get cover finished. Thanks to my Patrons....share it as helps me be motivated to make more stuff

TFT Adventure: The Chaos Triads by Steven Marsh. Published by Steve Jackson Games. Available from Warehouse 23 in PDF for $5.00. 12 pages.

A dying heir, an abandoned mine, and a closely-held secret figure into this gamemastered adventure for The Fantasy Trip, as a group of heroes set forth on a mission of mercy. But they are not the first to take on this quest, and the actions of their predecessors will bring them up against the edge of Chaos itself. Can they survive an encounter with the Chaostained? The Chaos Triads is an adventure by veteran writer Steven Marsh worthy to kick off the return of the classic Steve Jackson roleplaying game, and includes a labyrinth map, new counters, and new cut-and-paste labyrinth tiles to use with the ones included in The Fantasy Trip Legacy Edition set.

Garadur's Plateau Megadungeon Poster Map by Charley Phipps. Available from Squarehex in Print for £6.00. 

I've just received a very limited print run of this giant megadungeon map by Charley Phipps. The prints are B1 sized (1000 x 707mm 39.4 x 27.8 inches) and printed on matt white paper. I've added some of them to my site (see link below) and I'll be taking the rest with me to Dragonmeet in December.

D240 NPC Careers by Black Earth Press. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for $0.99. 7 pages.

240 random careers for Characters or NPCs. Need to generate NPC careers on the fly?Or just want to award day-jobs to your fantasy Characters or campaign-world setting? No problem, with d240 NPC Careers. 

This product was designed for use with old-school games of first edition, Basic, or Expert rules and includes an optional Class skills system. Feel free to adapt these rules for use with your own games. Enjoy!

Black Earth Press is an independent design studio dedicated to producing innovative game rules and supplements, with that old-school feel.

The Wilderness of Ordurak by Rodger Thorm. Published by Antherwyck House Games. Available from DriveThru RPG in Premium Softcover/PDF combo for $23.95, Standard Print/PDF $19.95 and in PDF for $12.95. 57 pages.

A group of adventurers is sought to aid in unraveling a mystery set in an untamed land. The Barony of Auskenheim is the most recent addition to the Confederation of Baronies, on the frontier where wild magic is more prevalent, and life is more dangerous, than in more civilized lands. 

A quasi-sandbox setting for a group of 4 to 6 Adventurer level characters. The Wilderness of Ordurak is a fantasy role-playing adventure scenario designed for 4 to 6 Adventurer-level characters for use with DragonQuest (and other fantasy role-playing games).

Wilderness of Ordurak Gazetteer by Rodger Thorm. Published by Antherwyck House Games. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for $3.95. 11 pages.

The Gazetteer is complementary with the Wilderness of Ordurak adventure, and provides further information about the setting. This gazetteer describes the geography, natural features, landmarks, cities, and peoples of the region depicted in the Wilderness of Ordurak map. 

The region portrayed in The Wilderness of Ordurak has been developed to be complimentary with The Frontiers of Alusia and serves to extend on the setting and background that was established in that supplement.

The Wilderness of Ordurak - Map only by Rodger Thorm. Published by Antherwyck House Games. Available from DriveThru RPG in PDF for $12.00. 1 page.

Campaign map for the Wilderness of Ordurak adventure for DragonQuest, but can be used with any role-playing game.

Misc. Free Stuff

Slightly less shit animal followers/familiars from MonkeyBlood Design. And some Slightly Less Shit Townsfolk.

Jay Murphy of The Vanishing Tower has some Vornheim Random Generators. 

MistyBeee made an impressive Map of the Middle Earth. 

Tristan Tanner of The Bogyman's Cave has his House Rules V.01 PDF. 19 pages.

Robert Pearce has an update for his Starship Geomorphs PDF. 

Check out Michael Curtis' essay at Goodman Games - Appendix N Archeology: Clark Ashton Smith.

ravencrowking of Raven Crowking's Nest has some DCC RPG 1st level Cheat Sheets.

Luke Gearing of Ant-Lerrr has a Cyberpunk 2020 Post Apoc Hack and DCC Adventures he's put up in PDF. 8 and 2 pages respectively.

Sebastián Calvo of DemogorgoniA made a Frostbitten & Mutilated Unofficial Amazon Tribe Name Generator.

Reviews from Around the Web

Patrick from False Machine has a review of Through Ultan's Door.

Tamás Illés of Vorpal Mace reviews The Meat Grinder.

Joe Banner has a review of A Night at the Golden Duck. 

Melan from Beyond Fomalhaut has a review of The Mortuary Temple of Esma. 

Bryce from tenfootpole.org reviews The Castle that Fell from the Sky. And Campfire Tale. 

Arturs Leitans of AL0 Lair of the Megagorgon has a play report/review of Through Ultan's Door. 

Pookie UK from Reviews from R'lyeh reviews Runequest VII.

DishwasherPossum of DishwasherPossum's OSR Hole has a review of the not yet released Ultraviolet Grasslands by Luka Rejec. (There is an old introduction for this publication on DriveThru RPG available for Free.)

mdhughes of Mark Roles Dice reviews Blueholme Journeymanne Rules.

About The OSR News 

Unless otherwise noted, all links to products and files are to the individual authors sites, pertinent posts, or sales pages. I don’t link directly to files unless that is the only link available. 

I have received no remuneration from any publisher for reporting on their releases, nor is such a requirement for a product to be included in these posts. At times, an author or publisher may send me a complimentary copy of an item, for purposes of review. This is not a requirement for a product's inclusion in these posts. One Bookshelf site links are affiliate links and may provide some compensation from that retail site. 

Please feel free to send me information on any new releases, events, or other items of interest, which you would like to see mentioned.