Meet my new OSE party! This is Clarence the Cleric, Daphne the Druid, Doug the Dwarf and Maria the Magic-User. They just finished buying their equipment and are heading over to the Mush-Chow Tavern for a snack. Hopefully, they'll find a couple of Retainers they can hire before heading out to explore a dungeon.

An experimental adventure with 177 words and 14 timeless paintings.

Ok, hear me out.

Ever since I played my first OSR games, what really stuck with me was the tangibility of play: how lethality and danger make even the smallest, most mundane things matter. After all, if one attack could kill you, when to reload your crossbow is an extremely important tactical decision, just like it is whether to carry that one coffer of coins or leave it because you need one hand to hold your torch.

You know what other game makes all of these decisions meaningful and might kill you at every turn? Helldivers 2, which I have played way too much. Without going into the details, I have great respect for the game's core design, so how about we take our OSR adventurers and airdrop them into an all-out war?

And what about we give them airstrikes? This is the craziness in the pictures above: the PCs can call down "Long-Range Spells" from an airship that are basically amped-up versions of common spells with some added effects for interesting interactions, and then some original stuff for fun. You can call down a tactical meteor to deal AoE damage and make a crater, which could actually give you access to what's underneath. There is also a list of "Tactical Equipment" which includes stuff like Drum-Fed Crossbows and a Portal Wand. All of it comes with rules for how many you can actually bring into a mission and a limited amount of uses.

I've playtested these in OSE and was very pleased to find out that they did not feel overpowered in the hands of Level 2 characters. Every encounter was still potentially lethal (and some PCs did die), but having additional options for creative plays and a bit of mass-murder actually encouraged them to take risks and make those plays.

So far, I've written two system-neutral adventures that include these, but you can take the lists and plug them into whatever you want to run. If you want to check out the adventures, feel free to do so here and here.

If you have any ideas for crazy fantasy airstrikes, I'm all ears. I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface here.

"The clanking of his armor resonated differently. They knew what was about to happen. Blood had already been spilled on the ground, yet not a single sword had been drawn. The armor itself bit into his flesh: that vessel of pain took the first step, and so it began".

Hi all! Wanted to share this big bad guy I illustrated for an awesome project I'm working on, hope you will like it!

And for those wondering: I am open for commission, feel free to DM me for badass dark art!

No Name on the Bullet is a Wild West roleplaying game in which player characters are fortune seekers, bounty hunters, and laborers of the frontier. The first issue covers core rules for character creation, danger rolls, and combat. The ingenuity of both player and character is rewarded and a resourceful adventurer builds their reputation and lives to fight another day.

Polish your boots, load your dice, and shuffle a deck of cards!

Core Rules based on DURF by Emiel Boven. Other influences include In the Light of a Setting Sun by Jon Davis and Frontier Scum by Karl Druid.

Game is PWYW on itch: https://roach-worlds.itch.io/no-name-on-the-bullet

A new Age dawns! Twenty years have passed since the Knights saved the Realm by sacrificing one of their own, and the Expanse has changed considerably in the interim. Jon lays out the details of not only the new lay of the land, but also how the Knights have invested in the Realm over the past score of years.

Click here to access everything 3d6 Down the Line, including both video and audio podcast versions of this episode, our Patreon, Discord server, socials, past campaigns, character sheets, and lots more!

From right to left, we have Diogo Nogueira (Old Skull, too many games to list, everyone knows diogo), myself Andre Novoa (Games Omnivorous, FLAIL, etc), then Calle of Death in Space, then Svante (Free League freelancer), Johan Nohr (MÖRK BORG), Mattias Johnsson Haake (Symbaroum), Christian Sahlén of CY_BORG fame, Tania Herrero creator of Fomoria and Karl Druid of Frontier Scum.

New collection with my biggest and most time-consuming map to date.

Grab it, it's free: CHMC2 (itch link). If you like the maps, leave a good word or rate the project, it will make my day better.

Was interested in the system as I've see talk online that one of its main inspirations is the video game Arcanum Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura but it seems that the rules have been taken off the internet and John's blog seems to be gone.

I've released a horror adventure for Cairn!

CAS-4: The Forgetting of Lockwood Manor is a gothic horror adventure about an estate where the crimes of its past residents live on, even after death!

Taking inspiration from the Winchester Mystery House, Swamp Thing, and Slavic folklore, this adventure is sure to provide a haunting experience for even the most seasoned characters, who must rely on their wits, gear, and resourcefulness to survive.

Get it as digital + PoD:

• Cairn Store: Digital Only
  
• Lulu: Print
• RPG-Trader: Print + PDF
• Itch: Digital Only
• DTRPG: Digital Only

Prints coming to the Cairn Store soon, and more PoD are on the way!

Edit:
I've added a Markdown version (with art) to the Cairn website!

https://cairnrpg.com/adventures/first-party/cas-4/

Finally got the zine that features my catography today, available on Drivethru.

I have been running the level-0 funnel Lair of the Lamb by Arnold K as a one-shot for several years. I've always had an itch to make my own slimmer version after seeing it released CC BY-NC-SA. So I finally did it. The featured sketch is by Luke Stratton, who drew it during my game at Gary Con 2024. He helpfully sent me over the scan and released the image under the same license.

I've converted the adventure to markdown format with my house rules, suggestions, and modifications. Runnable in 3-4 hours as a spooky one-shot. Here's a list of everything I changed.

There are two versions. One in an ultra-lite system I call Don’t Worry About It (DWAIT version here) and another in Old School Essentials (OSE version here). While I personally feel that Lair of the Lamb gets a lot of juice from the lightest rules, I included both versions since the OSE stats more closely resemble what every other adventure from the past 50 years looks like.

I want to make it as easy as I can for folks to take this and make it their own, like I have. Here are the markdown source files and here are some guides for standing up your own version of the website it's running on.

I hope you scare some players this Halloween! Cheers. 👻

Lair of the Lamb: One Shot Edition

Welcome to the third News Roundup for October. We're getting into the home stretch for the end of the year, and there's nothing specific I want to plug this week, so let's dive right in!

• One of my favorite memes is Ea-nāṣir, the copper merchant from Mesopotamia, and I was tickled to see that David Blandy has published Ea-nāṣir Must Die!, a Bronze age house crawl where the PCs play as bounty hunters tasked with assassinating their target. It's written to be played with Mark of the Odd games, but of course should be easily adaptable to other OSR systems.
• Bog, a game of frogs, is set in a Marsh where the frogs have Awakened and discovered chivalry. It's absolutely charming, and I've enjoyed the art sneak previews the author has been posting on Reddit.
• Library Rats is a short adventure set in a library, written for Cairn, containing another one of my favorite things: random book generators! I've really become enamored with the idea of using books for treasure, and love that this really leans into that.
• Hilander is a publisher who has been putting out consistently good products for a number of years, and they and other folks in the OSR are Kickstarting Fletchwind: Out of the Cities, a system-agnostic toolbox for creating cities and urban-based adventures and encounters. It hasn't funded yet at the time of this writing, which I'm really surprised at. Go back it!
• Not quite Whalefall, but Inside the Whale is an adventure for Liminal Horror all about a missing person trapped in an abandoned aquarium in the Pacific Northwest.
• Gourd_dwarf has released the ashcan version of Heroix, a setting/ruleset based on Wayfarer. I'm a sucker for lo-fi art like what is featured here, so am looking forward to checking it out!
• I've plugged Bartosso-N's collage hexmaps before, and so I was excited to see they've just released a second collection of their work. They're super evocative, and designed for games like Mythic Bastionland, but really they can be used for pretty much any hexcrawl-style fantasy game.
• Mellow Golem Games has released Tables & Lore Vol 7, a collection of, well, tables and lore that does pretty much what it says on the tin.
• Far Relay is a system agnostic sci-fi game that looks like it would be ideal to run in something like Mothership or Stars Without Numbers, designed as a low to no combat scenario centered around problem-solving.
• Written for Pirate Borg, Lair of the Frog God is a one-page adventure with a giant emerald protected by frog-people.
• Barrel Rider Games has released White Box: Pirate Adventures, a supplement for pirates and sail for your White Box or similar games.
• Ziggurat is a pamphlet adventure for Mork Borg in which the PCs must resist the attempts of a dying sorcerer to use their (still-living) bodies as part of his mausoleum.
• I'm not sure how I missed this, because it's one of (or used to be, when it was in print) best sellers at Sabre, but Racoon Sky Pirates is currently funding a new edition, with tons of new content, on Kickstarter.
• A Game Master's Guide to Poisons is funding on Backerkit. It's a short, 16-page zine all about poisons -- from harvesting monster venom to synthesizing poisons to buying and selling -- and includes rules for GMs to randomly generate poisons that are more interesting than "save or die".

Much like one of the early Italian role-playing games, Fosse & Fracassi employs a concept known as "player projection."

While your character takes shape with their own stats and gear, the mind behind the character (your intellect, problem-solving skills and instincts) sheet is explicitly yours. You aren't just controlling a puppet from behind a screen; your consciousness is thrust directly into Artea.

The journey to Artea begins when your day in the real world comes to an end. Overcome by crushing fatigue, you drift off to sleep and slip into a vivid state of lucid dreaming.

Your awareness of your physical body fades away. You float through an expanse of blinding light, drawn toward a luminous threshold where an indistinct shadow awaits you.

Upon crossing the threshold, the GM introduces you to the Guardian, a serene, reassuring figure who welcomes you to this new reality and offers you a choice destined to radically alter the course of the campaign:

• Accept the ritual of Rebirth: this fully integrates the players' minds into Artea, granting them basic cultural knowledge, the language, and an intuitive understanding of the world.

or

• Reject, flee from, or kill the Guardian: if the players choose this path, they are denied the gift of Rebirth. They enter Artea as the "Lost", strangers in a hostile land, unable to communicate or comprehend local customs and traditions.

If the players become "Lost," the GM's attitude at the table shifts: they cease to act as a collaborative arbiter and become a purely neutral, impassive describer of facts.
No clues, no context, no narrative safety net. They are completely alone in a hostile world.

What do you think? A radical choice from the very beginning.

If you haven't checked out the free Quickstart yet, grab it here:

👉 DriveThruRPG

👉 itch.io

This is an adventure for Swords & Wizardry for characters of 4th to 5th level.

Several days ride to the northwest of the Free City are a series of hills. These hills have been the burial grounds for kings, warlords, emperors and other rulers for centuries. More than a few of these ancient tombs have been raided and plundered by adventurers over the years. Much of the richest men, and women, in the city made their fortunes from these places. Once in a while, however, a new crypt is discovered.....

But on more than a few occasions they are overlooked entirely. One such example is the Old Tower Cairn.

The Old Tower is a crumbling structure that rises above one of the many hills. While the tower itself is well known what is less known is the purpose for the tower in the first place. It once stood watch over the tomb of the old King Jurexxus III. Jurexxus III was one of many petty warlords that declared himself king over portions of this region long ago. For a short period of time this ruler dominated other local barons and nobles and was paid tribute by all of them. But his reign ended the way so many did in those days. He was assassinated by a rival and laid to rest in an unknown location.

Until now.....

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/589876/old-tower-cairn

A malignancy festers deep in the wilderness, a blight on the land like an infected wound. At its center - a temple of stone, where foul things creep under the moon and those who enter do not return. The undergrowth is thick where few men walk, and stones which once rolled gather moss.

Some Stones Gather Moss is a one-page dungeon designed for four to six third-level characters, suitable for up to one night of gaming. Packed with traps and monsters, Dungeon Masters can adapt it as they need to fit their party. Let the adventure begin!

You can get this adventure, four issues of the Dungeon Almanac, and so much more by joining our Patreon for free today!

www.basementgames.com
www.patreon.com/basementgamesrpg

Or is it enough to have some sort of town, a hub for the players to regroup, stock up and rest, besides the dungeon and that is it?

Would you be bored as a player to have "nothing to do", besides the dungeon? Would you rather have short excursions into the surrounding lands from time to time?

As DMs, how have you ran your megadungeons? What worked for you, what didn't?