New Year New Game Sale 2023: My OSR Recommendations

   The New Year New Game sale is on at DTRPG, and here's the offers I recommend.

Whether you've never played OSR games, or you're a veteran looking for something cool, here we go.

This year, despite the sale name, a lot of OSR adventures and supplements are included in the sale!

OSR GAMES

Old-School Essentials - Classic Fantasy Rules Tome - 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.

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. And then there's 100+ DCC adventures and supplements that are also on sale.

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.

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.

Maze Rats - a modern classic among non-retroclone OSR games, by Ben Milton.

ZWEIHANDER RPG: Revised Core Rulebook - the Warhammer Fantasy Role Play retroclone... 'nuff said!

AND OSR ADVENTURES & SUPPLEMENTS

Despite the promotion is supposed to be about new games, this year quite a few supplements and adventures made it through the mysterious DrivethruRPG automatic selection and are on offer:

OSE official adventures Hole in the Oak and Incandescent Grottoes. Highly recommended!

And 50+ more third-party OSE-compatible titles are on sale.

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.

Luke Gearing's Fever Swamp - a hex-crawl sandbox adventure compatible with BX d&d and its clones.

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

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.

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

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - A challenging 10 room dungeon for smart players to figure out. Reviewed it here.

Chris Kutalik's Slumbering Ursine Dunes - A widely and wildly acclaimed setting, point-crawl, and sourcebook, compatible with BX d&d and its retroclones.

Ben Milton's The Waking of Willowby Hall - A lovely adventure scenario for Knave.

WHAT ABOUT MY STUFF?!?!?

For reasons I can't fathom, my OSR stuff was not selected for the current sale. No worries though, the Falkrest Abbey adventure for OSE is still up for just $1, and my OSE e-zines are out there as Pay What You Want.

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!

About The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak

 The Frozen Temple of Glacier Peak is a 24 page OSR adventure by Robin Fjärem, for a party of level 1-3 adventurers, designed for Knave, and easily convertible to other OSR games.

I got the PDF and printed it at home as an A5, stapled zine of sort (no POD option is available).

Mr Fjärem has done a very good job at designing a module that in 24 pages describes 32 rooms full of adventure.

What's it about? The adventure offers 3 levels, each with a distinctive theme and flavor. The first is the titular frozen temple with 11 rooms, the second is a a single large cave with an underground lake with 6 areas, and the last is "the spirit realm", a large underground complex with 15 rooms.

Before the dungeon proper, we have the description of a mountain camp, 6 different hooks, and 6 rumors.

The first level is long lost temple. The glacier has melt a bit, and it is now possible to enter the temple again. The contents of the temple fit the theme perfectly, its all abandoned and icy, close to no encounters except a frost centipede and, from the random encounters table, rival adventuring parties and a frost smilodon who has just ventured inside the temple looking for prey.

The second level is fairly linear, with a sequence of islets scattered through the lake. But has a snorting troll sleeping in the farthest islet, and the lake is the portal to the spirit realm, if the group figures out how (and there's plenty of ways to understand how the lake is magical), while possibly avoid waking up the mysterious source of the snorting. 

The last level, the spirit realm, is in fact a perfect adventure in the mythical underworld, with more than a hint at fairy tales and norse mythology. This level is full of fun, interconnected encounters with NPCs, including a Lindwurm (a flightless dragon) and its magnificent hoard.

So how is it? It's a great little adventure, with a distinct pacing and a strong theme. The writing is short and clear, exactly how I like it. You read it once, you're ready to run it.

Is it perfect? No, but close. I didn't like that some secret passages in level 1 don't include in their description an obvious way to suspect they are there. I didn't like that the "spirit realm" level is too small. It feels like it should have been vast, too vast to explore in its entirety (there's world in mythical underworld). And it feels so because there's a lot going on with the fairy creatures and peculiar places described, and also because of the very good random tables included (mushrooms, treasure, NPC motivations, events). At your own risk, you may attempt connecting this to other adventures such as The Incandescent Grottoes, or simply expand the map, adding rooms and paths between the keyed ones, to increase the feel of an underground world. Those tables should make it relatively easy.

All in all: It's a good one, definitely recommended if your campaign has snowy mountains and you like the fairy/norse(ish) themes, and worth the effort of conversion to your favorite OSR system.