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Saturday, May 17, 2025

Free OSR - Tarnhelm's Tome of Wonder (An Original Edition Toolkit)



A bit of an OSR Kitchen Sink of a supplement, Tarnhelm's Tome of Wonder is a collection of optional rules for the OSR ruleset of your choice. New classes, new magic, psionics, super powers, and much, much more. Make sure this is in your toolbox, and use what you like and ignore the rest.

Tarnhelm's Tome of Wonder: An Original Edition Toolkit is large collection of optional rules and subsystems for the original 1974 (0e) version of the world’s most popular tabletop fantasy roleplaying game (and modern clones), with a selection of new monsters, treasures and ideas for dungeon and wilderness hazards tossed in for good measure. Many of the optional rules are modern renditions of the better house rules the author used with his Original Edition games in the 1970s. This volume may be considered a revised and greatly expanded edition of our free Tarnhelm's Terrible Tome (from 2014) presented entirely as optional modules instead of as a supplement revising the game.

Tarnhelm's Tome of Wonder is full of options -- some of them mutually exclusive as they provide different ways of doing basically the same thing. It's a toolkit for an Original Edition Referee to select from to use as written or as a starting point for homebrewed material that better fits their needs.

  • Section I provides many optional rules and systems for Backgrounds and Talents, Heroic Characters, Psychic Gifts, Variant classes, Combat Stunts, Mobs, Hit Point Powered Magic, Common Magic, Divine Intervention, Funerals and Tombs, Mooks, Property and Finance, Psionics, Death and Dying, Encumbrance and Movement, Allegiance (replacing Alignment), Wound Points, and about 40 more!
  • Section II covers the “endgame” where PCs run their own domains and provides two systems: one simple and one more complex. Basic rules for mass combat are also provided.
  • Section III has more monsters (mythos monsters and human cultists) and guidelines for NPC adventuring groups.
  • Section IV provides over 18 pages of new treasures, including some designed for use with some of the optional rules in Section I.
  • Section V talks about “hazards” for both dungeons and wilderness areas.
  • Section VI provides two different system for mutations -- one simple, one complex. Although these guidelines are mainly intended for Referees to mutate monsters, these rules can work for mutated player characters.
  • Section VII gives a selection of comic book style superpowers designed to work with the Original Edition. While brief, experimental rules for superpowered PCs are included, this section is really for the Referee to model comic book superheroes should the PCs ever encounter any.
  • Section VIII gives some simple rules for firearms of different eras.

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Friday, May 16, 2025

Free OSR - Return to Fel'Valashar (Swords & Wizardry Adventures)



Wow! Return to Fel'Valashar [Swords & Wizardry] was written for Swords & Wizardry Appreciation Day way back in 2017. I kinda forgot that was a thing for a couple of years, even if I was the one to think it up. I'm curious what the flavor is now - a particular system, or maybe an OSR Appreciation Day...

Written in celebration of Swords and Wizardry Appreciation Day 2017, Return to Fel’Valashar picks up where Dungeons of Fel’Valashar left off.  In this book is a collection of mini dungeon adventures with a small region called Fel’Valashar that they take place within. Each of these adventures is written in such a way that they don’t have any ties to each other or to Fel’Valashar. This means you can easily drop them into your own world with no fuss.

Includes:

  • Details of the south-western region of Fel’Valashar.
  • Four mini dungeon adventures.
  • New monsters.
  • New magic items.

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Thursday, May 15, 2025

Deal of the Day - Pestilence at Halith Vorn (OSR Adventure for Levels 4-6)



Okay, everything I've read about Pestilence at Halith Vorn is that it is one of those rare modules/adventures - rave reviews across the board and written for that sweet spot for the party, where their powers are coming into focus but aren't overpowering just yet. This looks to be a fun one, not just to play in, but to run.

Pestilence at Halith Vorn is 40% off in PDF (7.20) until tomorrow morning

An Adventure for six to eight 4th to 6th-level characters:

In the days before the rise of the Jade Empire and the rule of the serpent men, the enigmatic axolittians reigned in Halith Vorn and there built their cities amongst the reeds in the swamps and caverns below. They mastered sorcerous arts and paid homage to devils and terrifying elemental beings. In the end, their serpent men slaves rose up and rebelled against their rule, driving the axolittians into the lower caverns; there they lingered on, slowly degenerating to a primitive and base level. In turn the Jade Empire was cast into ruin, and the former slaves of the serpent men occupied parts of the once great city. Finally came the Cultists of Thul, worshipers of disease and inheritors of serpent man sorcery, enemies of civilization and the Baron in Longfelt, searching for a weapon of great power...

This is an adventure of warring cults and lost civilisations. This module presents a time—and exploration-focused site that can be used with existing Gunderholfen campaigns or slotted easily into any other milieu. It consists of 300+ keyed areas detailing a disease-afflicted and doom-laden village under assault by corrupted, power-hungry cultists; a hex-crawl region; and a main adventure site of ruined temples, tombs, a five-level dungeon, and two planar complexes. 

Review:

"I’m a big fan of this. I wish I could better convey all that makes it work. The factions, the cultists proper. The interactivity and variety of types of things to do and explore. It’s really all of the components integrated as a whole, working together to bring something more than the sum of its parts. Design.

Generally, I think, I might find one adventure a month or so that is not terrible or even good. Then something like this comes along; something that is not just good but is F*$&ING GREAT." Tenfootpole.


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