Hi!

This is my first drawing in OSR style. Trying to play with light and and shadow.

What do you think about it? Do you have any tips or advices to improve my skills?

Thanks for your answers!

Gorth is a sci-fantasy comic, traditionally drawn, inked, and lettered by me. Issue 1 features a one page old-school dungeon adventure on the back cover. Pay what you want PDF available here.

Three years after taking the plunge in the OSR, I have released my first OSR adventure, The Hive Under Eisenstead! This was funded via Kickstarter as a part of Zine Quest 2026, and is now live on DriveThruRPG.

In addition to some amazing art and maps, some key features are:

• Designed for characters of 2nd to 4th level.
• Statted for both old school systems (OSRIC, OSE, Swords & Wizardry) and modern systems (5E, Shadowdark, Pathfinder).
• 84 keyed locations across four areas. 
• Four new monsters and several riffs on classic foes.
• Two rival adventuring parties.
• Several unique magic items and two new Magma Sorcery spells in D&D and DCC compatible formats.
• Five adventure hooks to tie player characters to NPCs immediately.
• 48-pages in a 5.5" x 8.5" zine format, easily printed at home. 
• 14 handouts, both digital and printer-friendly. 
• Player-ready maps and digital tokens for a virtual tabletop. 

It was a blast to make, and it has been incredible to see it come to life. I hope you will check it out.

Happy Friday,

Mushrooms and fungus. An integral part of many adventures:

Welcome to the weekly r/osr blogroll - come share your great ideas!

The mission: to be a showcase and clearinghouse of blogposts where we share in the DIY principles of old-school gaming. So drop in links to your writings, gaming theory, advice, play reports, and whatever other creativity you have posted on your blogs to share with our community.

Also, if you have favorite blogs you follow, or find interesting blogposts that you want to share, feel free to post them here, as well!

Happy blogging!

There is a French teenager who was very active here under the name Zonreiryd. He loved AD&D and posted pictures of fantastic maps he drew and play reports of old modules like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. I always enjoyed his stuff but don't think I have seen anything from him for some time. Does anyone have any news about him?

I'm talking about books like Veins of the Earth, Wyrd and Wyld, Vast in the Dark, Skycrawl, books about building a specific personal version of a kind of setting.

I currently own The Staffortonshire Trading Company Works of John Williams, Fungi of the Far Realms and The Perilous Wilds. I am looking for similar system neutral books that can enhance games with world building tools and tangible descriptions of interesting stuff. Not necessarily in-game artefacts/books as they tend to be only useful through one campaign but any idea of the sorts are welcome.

They will be bought with our "table tip jar" so I want a book that will see use during play and not only during GM prep work.

Thanks for your ideas!

Hi all, and thanks to for letting me share this.

This is Whisper Creek, a little Indiana town that’s been quiet since 1958. It was the town map for the first version of The Drowned Bell, a module I’ve been writing. Six kids in the 80s find a homemade dungeon booklet in a shoebox, written by a boy who vanished years ago, and start playing it in a basement. The more they play, the more the game bleeds into their town, and the more the town bleeds back into the game. In the final version the town became a different place, but Whisper Creek is where it started.

I drew it with the 80’s Suburbia kit. That’s one of three rubber stamp kits my wife and I are launching on Kickstarter this Tuesday, October 20, alongside high fantasy and a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Every stamp is drawn by hand, then traced and laser cut. The idea is one plenty of you already use: draw the map at the table as the players poke around, not before. This version was assembled digitally from the stamp illustrations so it prints cleanly (I also included the map base we include as part of the suburbia kit so you can make your own isometric town).

The map is free to use at your table. If you’d like to see the stamps, the project is here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingdomsofink/kingdoms-of-ink

Happy to answer questions about the stamps, the process or the town.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hilanderrpgs/fletchwind-out-of-the-cities

Hey folks!

9 authors and artists got together to make an Urban Adventuring-focused zine, including 3 fresh adventures and a bunch of tools! Stats are for Cairn, but the tools are universal.

Adventures by Arnold K, Willem-Jan, and Wuggy

Tools by Hilander, Phlox, and GeekChef

New Backgrounds by Cats Have No Lord

Art by Karly Andersen

Comic by Labjer

Hi fellow judges, I'm back to share the city I have been developing. That setting, Akawatten, is still under development, but previous posts here have encouraged me to share my progress, so I wanted to share my latest achievement: I recently finished the map and made it available for free download. Regardless of what system you use, it may be useful for your game. The file is a 24"x18" PDF at high resolution, so you can even print it at poster scale.

I plan to do a little bit of a dev log series on my blog about Akawatten, since designing the city has been the largest-scale project I have undertaken as an OSR game designer so far. It's been a really rewarding challenge, and researching all the old city modules and learning from them has been a ton of fun as well. I think it's a space that is still a little underdeveloped compared to all the mega dungeons and adventures out there, so hopefully something like this gives you more tools to work with in your games.

As a bonus, the post also links to two free adventures I wrote this past summer for adventure jams, so there is something free for basically everyone!

Happy gaming!

After 40+ years of enjoyable game play - in the same scenario that started 1982 - I am still inspired by the basic OSR art. This is my latest drawing from the story "The Witch of Myrkholt", one of the first scenarios I created in the 80s and the very first that started a campaign that has been going on for 45 years :)

So I’ve been cooking this one for a while and wanted to see if it lands with you lot. Your players run two people each: a kid in Corwin Mills, Pennsylvania, the last week of October 1984, and that kid’s character in a homemade dungeon their 13-year-old DM bought at a yard sale for a quarter. The booklet was typed in 1977 by a kid the whole town has somehow forgotten. Thing is, stuff bleeds between the two. Light a torch down there and a bulb pops upstairs, get your character soaked and your sneakers are full of river silt next morning, sneak into the fenced-off flood ruins by the river and next session your sneaker prints are in the matching dungeon room. A single hidden number called Static tracks how bad the leak’s getting, and on Halloween night the bell at the bottom rings whether you’re ready or not. What it rings depends on whether the kids figured out who that forgotten boy was.

Under the hood it’s plain B/X for the dungeon (3 levels: a drowned abbey, flooded cellars, and a bell tower buried upside down in the earth) plus a dead simple 2d6 roll-under system for the kids, where the real dangers are getting grounded, getting disbelieved and having your mom call the PTA about “that game.” Kids never get hurt, characters die like normal. Nothing ever walks down Main Street; every weird thing has an explanation an adult would buy. It’s built for 5–6 sittings, comes with 6 pregen kids, maps, handouts, and it’s free, not for sale. Would this hit your table? Mostly curious whether the two-layer thing sounds fun to actually run or just fun to read, and if folks want it I’ll drop the PDF.

[SELF PROMO]

Something is crawling out of the grave. Different but with that same cigarette, blood, and pizza craving fever soul. The new breed clashes with the old bloods and no one ever learns any lessons till its too late and then some Morningstar burns the sky up and the swarms of slayers start showing up. Might as well enjoy the moonlight while it lasts and get ready for the next show.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deathandthewerewolf/into-the-night-a-goth-punk-city-monster-rpg

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for advice on how to run a rival adventuring party/faction that is in the dungeon at the same time as the players.

CONTEXT: The dungeon is a ruined war-torn magic academy, there's evil magic cultists in the academy, and there's a band of fed-up villagers / warriors turned witch hunters that have entered the dungeon seeking to destroy everything and everyone magic. Burn the library, capture all the items, kill any cultist they find, etc.

The witch hunters are a threat to the PCs of course because the PCs want the magic books and items.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to simulate the witch hunters' progress through the academy as a time pressure and threat to the PCs. Some ideas:

• The witch hunters have already destroyed the rooms they can easily access and are kept at bay by an obstacle. Roll % to see if they get further in X day(s) (or if the PCs clear a path)
• For the reachable rooms, roll % to see if the witch hunters have sacked it or not (etc).
• Have a basic timeline, like day 1 of the PCs' arrival, the witch hunters will have made X progress, on day 2, this much progress etc, (of course the timeline will change if the PCs do something major).

Do y'all have any ideas?

Thank you for your time!

EDIT: To be clear, while I am considering a bit of a 'race' theme with this, this dungeon is meant to be at least 3 levels big and there are 2 dangerous factions to worry about, so the witch hunters will not be clearing the place out no matter what.

Well, it doesn't happen as often as it used to, but I recently found myself enamoured with a video game. Last time it happened, near the beginning of the year I think, the game in question was Cyberpunk. This time it's all about Suzerain.

For those of you who don't know, Suzerain is a political simulator visual novel that puts you in the shoes of Anton Rayne, the newly ellected 4th president of the Republic of Sordland. The country is on the precipise of economical collapse, internal political tensions and external threats of both military and economical war. You are in charge of navigating this environment and you have a somewhat free hand to do so in a multitude of way, as you can try and be a reformist, a traditionalist, left wing, right wing even a full blown dictator.

So I am having a good time with the game, "what's any of that have to do with TTRPGs?", I hear you ask. Well, as I tend to do with most media I enjoy, I quickly started to think of ways in which I can bring the things I like about this game into the games I run.

This article is the result of that particular thought excercise and the answer I arrived at is, if you will indulge some degree of self flattery, as simple as it is brilliant. Have politics be a B plot for your games. With factions, with a main conflict and all the song and dance. But not in the limelight. The players go about their adventuring, and from time to time they get offered a job by one faction or another and by doing said jobs they tip the scales of power.

I go into quite a lot of detail on how you should go about making this work and making the most out of it and honestly, I think most of you will like it! At least I hope you do! Till the next time, thank you for reading and have a wonderful weekend! Cheers!

The third installment of my Orc Mini Dungeon series features Clan Tasgu; a clan of orcs living in the foothills of the Orc Fang Mountains, recently striken by a terrible malady. Their leader, Zugil Blackbile, violated an ancient clan taboo and called upon an Eldritch entity to impart him with knowledge to craft a remedy. Letting his lieutenant T'vanc become infected, (for research purposes) he now waits for new "research assistants" to let him test his cure. But from where did the pestilence arrive?

Hey folks!

After a year of writing, drawing, designing, and playtesting, I'm incredibly excited to finally share BOG, my own tabletop RPG!

In BOG, you play as brave little frog knights venturing into a dark, cursed Marsh filled with ancient ruins, strange creatures, forgotten magic, and dangers far greater than yourselves.

The rules are lightweight and straightforward, leaving plenty of room for creative problem-solving and emergent storytelling. Combat is fast and brutal, and even the bravest frog knight is fragile in the face of the Marsh's many dangers.

The rulebook includes everything you need to play:

• A complete, easy-to-learn ruleset.
• Random tables and tools to help Bogmasters create their own adventures.
• A bestiary featuring dozens of creatures.
• A ready-to-play quest site to kick off your first adventure.

I've also hand-drawn every illustration in the game myself. No AI was used. Some of you might recognize the artwork from illustrations I've shared on this subreddit during development!

BOG has been playtested by groups from around the world, and their feedback helped me shape the game into what it is today. It's been a long journey, and I'm thrilled to finally put it out there.

You can get BOG here: https://marius-niezgoda.itch.io/bog-a-game-of-frogs

It's currently available for a special launch price of $4.99.

Finally, a huge thank-you to everyone on r/osr who has encouraged, supported, and helped me along the way. This community has been a wonderful part of the journey, and I genuinely appreciate it.

To everyone who ventures into the Marsh: may your frogs be brave, your oaths unbroken, and your adventures unforgettable!

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy BOG!

Felt cute, so I made some covers for a hack that doesn't exist... yet.