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Saturday, May 24, 2025

Free OSR - Cyber Sprawl Classics (DCC RPG)

I know. Goodman Games has been in the gaming news recently. This is a riff off of Goodman Games' DCC RPG. If you ever thought the DCC RPG would be a good fit for the Cyberpunk genre, Cyber Crawl Classics is for you.

You’re a Runner: a rigger, an infiltrator, a street samurai, a cool-headed hacker executing programs in the metaverse. You seek corruption and creds, winning it with console and chrome, bathed in the blood and filth of the oppresive, the megacorps, the police, and the artificial. There are payloads to be won deep in the Sprawl, and you shall have them.

Return to the glory days of cyberpunk with Cyber Sprawl Classics. Adventure as 1984 intended you to.

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Friday, May 23, 2025

BackerKit - OSRIC 3.0


I have a genuine fondness for OSRIC. Upon my return to active gaming, when I was thrust into the DM's seat on short notice, I opted to run OSRIC. AD&D 1e is my system of choice, and OSRIC is the clone that cleans up 1e and puts it into an easy-to-reference volume. That worked well with Rob Conley's Blackmarsh (Free OSR Sandbox).

Matt Finch is currently crowdfunding OSRIC 3.0 on BackerKit. So, so tempting...

The 2006 retro-clone of first edition AD&D, rewritten and reorganized for 2025! OSRIC 3 is easier to learn, with more examples of play. This is the beginning of a new product line for Mythmere Games, to include adventure modules and much more!

OSRIC 3.0 is a tabletop fantasy roleplaying game that sweeps you back into the days when roleplaying was an art, when rules were simpler, and when epic adventuring was at its height — this is the game of the 1980s!

OSRIC is a “retro-clone” of first edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.* This release is geared toward the 20th anniversary next year. Originally published in 2006, OSRIC has spawned thousands of adventures, sourcebooks, and zines — many of them distributed for free.

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Thursday, May 22, 2025

Deal of the Day - The Dread Laironomicon (System Neutral)



I love Raging Swan Press. Full stop!

I own The Dread Laironomicon in print, and I use it and love it. Period.

The Dread Laironomicon, System Neutral Edition, is today's Deal of the Day. Until tomorrow morning, it is 50% off - $10.73 in PDF. I heartily recommend!

Are you a busy GM? Does session prep take too long? Do you never have time to work on the cool little details that bring your adventures, dungeons and campaign to life? 

Fear not.

This dread compilation gives you, the time-crunched GM, the tools to effortlessly add verisimilitude and detail to 100 different types of monstrous lairs. Use the material herein either before or during play and bask in your players' adulation.

You can use the lists herein before or during your game to help breathe life into a monster’s lair. Adding depth and verisimilitude to your game helps the players’ (hopefully willing) suspension of disbelief and leads to a better game.

Use the system-neutral material herein either before or during play and bask in your players’ adulation.

This product is a Dual Format PDF and comprises two versions, one optimised for printing and use on a normal computer and one optimised for use on a mobile device such as an iPad. The download for this book now includes individual text files complete with markdown formatting for each of the Monstrous Lairs instalments presented within.

This book is compatible with every edition of the world's most popular role-playing game!

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Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Free OSR - Wormwood (Setting - OSR Edition)


I'm a sucker for "historical" based settings. Make it free, and it's for me :) You can also grab Wormwood in a DCC RPG version. Wormwood is priced as Free.

"For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year.” So wrote Byzantine historian Procopius of the year 536 A.D., the year the first of three catastrophic volcanic eruptions in Iceland would drop global summer temperatures by 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius and herald the beginning of the coldest decade on record in 2,000 years. Migrations of Germanic, Hunnic, and Slavic tribes have swept aside and now pick over the remains of the Western Roman Empire, sacking Rome itself and establishing a network of “barbarian kingdoms” across the west. Crop failure, famine, the Justinian Plague will devastate a fractured Europe for the next hundred years. Of all the time periods called the “Dark Ages,” this is surely - both literally and figuratively - the darkest.

This historical context is interwoven with both “authentic” medieval folklore and the classic elements of 19th- and 20th-century fantasy fiction found in your typical Appendix N. This ‘Dark Year’ and all of its tumultuous events provides players and Judges a compelling backdrop upon which to project historical fantasy adventures. While based upon historical context, these are works of fiction: liberties have been taken where doing so would be entertaining. Weave fiction and fantasy as you please, and above all: Fight On!

This book contains 95 pages of rules for: expanded character creation, cultures, languages, soubriquets, mass combat, social status, equipment, estates & strongholds, trade goods & services, crime, punishment & trials, medicines, poisons, and retainers - - everything referees and players could want to set their old-school fantasy role-playing campaigns within a 6th century Europe historical fantasy setting.

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Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Deal of the Day - Formoria: The Dark Age (ShadowDark/System Neutral Setting)



I seem to collect RPG settings. Ever since AD&D 2e, with its endless proliferation of settings, it seems like I collect more settings than I'll ever use in multiple lifetimes. I have a special affinity for darker settings, like Dark Sun and Midnight, because they make heroic characters seem even more heroic in nature, as they try to hold back in the inevitable tide.

Formoria: The Dark Age leans into that dark side, which I like. Normally, 29.00 in PDF (ridiculous to many, I know) until tomorrow morning, Formoria: The Dark Age is 14.50 - a bit more reasonable.

Rune & Relic Press invites you to the Lands of Formoria; a campaign setting in the world of Asterra with a rich history that has been developed through decades of game play. This guide offers a detailed milieu in which to place your adventures. It has a particular flavor, detailed locations, cultures, religions, politics, npc’s, and history. Although this book was written for use with Shadowdark the RPG. Most of the content here is system agnostic and entirely usable in other systems. 

The setting of Formoria echoes 4th century dark ages Europe in flavor and theme. It lies on the northern fringes of “civilization” having been settled and colonized by civilized peoples from the Katalian Empire roughly 150 years ago. The world of Asterra was developed and written by Bryan O'Doherty over the span of two decades of actual game-play. The history of heroes and great deeds, magical items and artifacts and the current state of cultures, kingdoms and empires is the result of actual at-the-table gameplay since '99.

THE FORMORIA MAP PACK IS NOW INCLUDED WITH YOUR PURCHASE OF THE PDF!

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Monday, May 19, 2025

Bundle of Holding - OSE Advanced Fantasy


OSE is probably "Thee" OSR Ruleset, having unseated Labyrinth Lord (or rather, LL simply fled the field of play). I have everything in the OSE Advanced Fantasy Bundle. If you don't, grab this bundle now!

Adventurer! This Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Bundle presents Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy, the complete and definitive version of the Old-School Essentials tabletop roleplaying rules set from Necrotic Gnome. Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy is a complete "best of" retelling – it's the Basic/Expert Dungeons & Dragons rules, streamlined and expanded with reams of new character options, monsters, and magic inspired by Advanced Dungeons & Dragons First Edition (1978): assassins, poisons, drow, half-orcs, mimics, xorns, vorpal swords, ioun stones, and even the dreaded tarrasque. Presented in the clear and elegant Old-School Essentials style, and 100% compatible with the Basic/Expert rules, these voluminous digital tomes are perfect for anyone new to Old-School Essentials. And if you already love OSE, check the twelve complete adventures in this lineup, designed by old-school luminaries like Brad Kerr, Diogo Nogueira, Luka Rejec, and many more.

For just US$7.95 you get all three complete rulebooks in this offer's Starter Collection (retail value $37.50) as DRM-free ebooks, including the Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome, Referee's Tome, and Advanced Fantasy Reference Booklet, along with several free play aids.

And if you pay more than the threshold price of $19.98, you'll level up and also get this offer's entire Bonus Collection with six more titles worth an additional $65, including Old-School Essentials Adventure Anthology 1 and Anthology 2 plus four full-length adventures: Halls of the Blood King, Holy Mountain Shaker, Incandescent Grottoes, and Isle of the Plangent Mage.

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Sunday, May 18, 2025

Free OSR - Hulks and Horrors (SciFi Ruleset)

 


Not only are the rules for Hulks & Horrors PWYW in PDF, but they are also PWYW in Print! 

Are you looking to play some science fiction, without straying too far away from classic dungeon crawls and/or hex crawls? (unless you want to!) Hulks & Horrors may be the very game for you.

We are not alone in the Universe, but we have few friends. As we emerged on the galactic stage, we found a universe stripped bare of sentient life by a great Plague, leaving only the wild beasts and twisted plague horrors wandering the ruined hulks of lost civilizations.

We are the Surveyors. We explore the uncharted sectors of space and hunt these ruins for the treasures they contain and the riches they might bring to what sentient life remains. We are not brave, merely foolhardy and desperate. Those who survive become rich beyond dreams. Very few survive. Hulks & Horrors is a science-fiction roleplaying game of galactic exploration and adventure for 2 or more players ages 13 and up. Inside you will find:

  • Complete rules for characters up to Level 6 and beyond
  • 7 character classes: Pilot, Scientist, Soldier, Psyker, Hovering Squid, Omega Reticulan, and Bearman.
  • Easy to learn old-school inspired game rules and combat system
  • Weapons, armor, and equipment inspired by classic science-fiction
  • Spaceship construction and combat rules
  • Random tables for creating whole sectors of space
  • Loot generation rules
  • Dozens of alien monsters as well as guides for designing your own
  • Dungeon-mastering advice for sandbox space exploration
  • Optional rules for customizing Hulks & Horrors

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