GM's Day Sale 2023: My OSR Picks!

 The 2023 GM's Day Sale is on at DriveThruRPG, and will be on through March the 14th. It is one of the largest sales on the site, with more than 72000 titles, and the OSR titles are almost 4000!

So what to look for? Whether you've never played OSR games, or you're a veteran looking for the hottest new games and adventures, here we go!

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OSR GAMES: THE BIG ONES

Worlds Without Number - Kevin Crawford's masterpiece, and one of the most successful games on the whole DrivethruRPG platform. A great game in itself, and a book with tons of tools to generate everything, from world building to adventures, whatever game system you prefer.

Old-School Essentials - The Whole Line - The best retroclone around, a faithful reproduction of the B/X D&D rules, with an exceptional work done on the text to make it clear and user-friendly, with an egregious layout. Recommended if you're new to the OSR and want the distilled, simple experience of the original B/X rules. Everything you need to play in one book. Also, my favorite OSR game. If you are new to OSE or B/X, go with the Classic Rules Tome. The Advanced Player Tome and Referee Tome are also on sale, if you want to expand your B/X with lots of options without power creep.

Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG Core Book - A glorious OSR game that is not a retroclone but captures the feel of old school games, with unique mechanics that build on a solid d20 system, generally compatible with other OSR stuff. Recommended if you want a more modern cut, while true to the spirit of OSR... and you like crits and fumble tables.

OTHER OSR GAMES

Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, and Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells - Both of Diogo Nogueira's original games are a blend of OSR and modern sensitivity, with streamlined rules and inspired tables.

GROK?! - by Lester Burton, an impressive little system for quick games.

ZWEIHANDER RPG - If you need to scratch that WHRPG itch with a retroclone.

Against the Darkmaster - The clone of the old Middle Earth RPG, minus Tolkien, plus metal!

OSR SUPPLEMENTS

A lot of supplements and adventures are included in the GM's Day Sale, including a bunch of super hot new adventures:

Brad Kerr's latest adventure anthology book, Wyvern Songs. Probably THE OSR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022. It's so good. I've reviewed it here.

Chance Dudinack's Secret of the Black Crag - From the author of the excellent The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (which is on sale too), a big island-crawl adventure with a big dungeon!

Pauli Kidd's big huge Wolf's Head Tor, a 233-page setting, with a megadungeon included, developed from the author's original '70s campaign! Can you imagine going more old school than that?

Peril in Olden Wood - An acclaimed, big huge regional adventure for OSE, level 3-5.

The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak - A nice adventure for Knave. My review here.

Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords - Two third-party Old-School Essentials adventures by Swordlords Publishing with awesome reviews. I've reviewed 1000 Swords here.

Bottomless Pit of Zorth - Another acclaimed adventure, with a slime theme and insane art, for characters level 3-5.

Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier - the acclaimed adventure by Gus L,  set in a fantasy wasteland with western vibes.

The Frost Spire - Another great adventure by Jacob Hurst. My review.

The Gardens on Ynn - A point-crawl adventure set in an ever-shifting extradimensional garden, with a system to generate content while you play.

The Stygian Library - Gardens of Ynn's twin, this time a dungeon set in an infinite, extradimensional library.

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - An EXCELLENT sandbox-y point-crawl adventure for characters level 1-3, very easy to run, with lots of interaction between locations. I reviewed it!

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - A very good 10 room dungeon. I've reviewed it here.

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - Another very good 10 room dungeon with, well, a lot of well conceived puzzles! Here's my review.

And finally, my OSR stuff you may want to check:

Lands of Legends - A zine series with 500 areas and 500 unique encounters for your sandbox. Learn more about Lands of Legends here!

Axian Library - A collection of five zines with options and rules and LOTS of tables for Old-School Essentials and other B/X clones.

Falkrest Abbey - by Andrea Mollica and me. Well if you haven't picked up this adventure yet, you can grab it now for 0.85. People say it's a decent one :)

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!