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!

[This post contains affiliate links]

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!

ZineQuest 5 + ZineMonth 2023: Here We Are!

 It's February and ZineQuest is back on Kickstarter, with a load of small but awesome ttrpg zines.

It's ZQ number 5, and the event returns to the regular February edition after last year's shift to August, which brought us the ZineMonth event, so now we have TWO platforms to check! But don't worry: I've done that for you.

Let's see what's going on, beginning with my OSR game of choice: OSE.

The Old-School Essentials Projects

Advanced Ancient Academy - An expanded version of the classic one page dungeon adventure by Stuart Robertson.

Old School & Cool Vol. 4: The Undead Issue - The fourth issue of Wind Lothamer's OSE zine focuses on undeath, with options to use undead creatures as player races, plus an undead-themed city, tables to create new unique undead monsters, new spells and magic items, and a mini adventure. Volumes 1, 2 and 3 of Old School are already available at dtrpg, and you can check my review of vol. 3 here.

Gary's Appendix - Issue 2 - A Thoughtful Zine for Old School Essentials - The second issue of Jeffry Jones' unique zine, offering essay-like articles on DMing, world-building, and other OSR topics. This issue focuses on languages, currency, and religion, among other topics.

Delver 7: Resources for the Random-Rolling Referee - Delver hits issue 7, continuing the series of collected random tables of all kinds. The first 6 issues are up at dtrpg.

The Doom of Blackwinter - An OSE (and Zweihander) adventure set in frozen mountains, against fey creatures, by Mark Meredith. 

CANDLE III: Fantasy Audio Magazine - The third issue of this unusual zine + cassette (and digital audio) combo. Check out issue II, which also features Kaptain Carbon, Danger Bear Art, Luka Rejec, and even me!

Ziggurat of the Blood God  - A zine adventure for OSE,  DCC, and Mork Borg, written by Christopher Willett, with strong horror vibes.

Odyssey - Black Tales RPG - A grim take on Ulysses' journey, for OSE, Mork Borg, and even 5E.

Other OSR Zines

Plenty of interesting OSR projects!

Dungeon Malarky - Levi Comb's new zine: a guide to hazards, magical items, strange plants & bizarre spell components for GMs.

The Electrum Archive - Issue 02 - Expands issue 1's science-fantasy tabletop RPG written by Emiel Boven and inspired by games like Morrowind, Ultraviolet Grasslands, Mothership, Dark Sun and Cairn. 

Cloud Empress: Ecological Science Fantasy Roleplaying - a Nausicaa-inspired fantasy campaign setting for the Mothership RPG.

Loot Hunters - Pouch of Gold - A system-neutral maps, adventures, and random tables, just perfect for OSR games. Also check out last year's Loot Hunters - First Coin.

Bio-Drones & Cryo-Clones - A biopunk facility-crawl zine for Mothership RPG by Chris Airiau, with insane art.

MisAdventure Games: Horror Compendium (upcoming) - apparently a collection of spooky adventures.

A Home Reforged (upcoming) - A dwarven-themed OSR zine, based on The Black Hack.

Carapace & In the Heart of Oz - a Hex Flower RPG Bonanza - A double-features zine project by Goblin's Henchman.

Quick and Dirties #4: The Priory of Red Peitor - A solo adventure for the Marching Order game.

Beneath the Sea of Dust 1 - A a revised, re-organized, and even play-tested compilation of Ray Otus' Dungeon23 journal.

AMMU: A Whimdark Adventure (upcoming) - A system neutral RPG adventure through the corpse of an eldritch god.

GRANDMOTHERSHIP - A sci-fi TTRPG about senior ladies in space - With a title like that, this deserves a look.

Other Zine Projects

TLD RPG - An indie RPG with OSR influences, designed by Billy Blue.

La Masseria (upcoming) - An investigative RPG Zine set in the folklore of a farm in Southern Italy, designed by Alessio Spalluto. I'll have to check this because it's set where I was born and grew up!

Electrocube War Adventures - A transformers zine for Erik Bloat's Valor Knights RPG.

MEKKAKONKRETE - A chiptuned fantasy RPG - A zine project on the new Crowdfundr platform, with Mechas in a medieval world, with insane art!

Dungeon Delver: A Card+Zine Crawl (upcoming) - Dungeon tiles + a generation system? Sign me in! Looks like something I might use with HeroQuest!

Candied Blood - An adventure set in a hungry candy factory, playable with both To Change and Trophy Dark. 

And More!?

Well, while you're checking crowdfunding, here's a bunch of projects which are not zines but you should definitely take a look at.

Yoon-Suin: The Purple Land, 2nd Edition - The new edition of the 2004 acclaimed, seminal OSR setting toolbox by Noisms Games.

Cities Without Number - the cyberpunk RPG from Kevin Crawford, the creator of the acclaimed Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number games.

Wrapping Up

Lots of interesting projects here, and lots more I've probably missed. Use the comments below to add to the list!

Expanding HeroQuest: The Hammer of the Beast

 So I got this cool minotaur mini and, it being bright red plastic, I started to wonder how to use it as a HeroQuest hero...

Mightier than the barb!

I feel a minotaur hero would be completely wrong in the game canon. So how about some kind of transformation effect? Look at that awesome hammer! So here comes...

The Hammer of the Beast

A hero wielding the Hammer of the Beast attacks with 4 combat dice. If all the dice roll a skull, the hero becomes a raging minotaur!

While transformed, the hero attacks with 5 dice and defends with 5, regardless of the previous statistics and gear. He must always move towards the nearest enemy with a free adjacent square and attack it, and cannot move away from the enemy until he kills it.

The transformation ends as soon as there are no more monsters on the board.

Cannot be used with a shield, can only be used by the Barbarian.

Transformation Effects In Your HQ Game

Of course the Hammer of the Beast is designed to suit my specific model and personal taste. But you can introduce similar effects, based on the cool models you have around, or if you feel you need an excuse to buy new models, of course!

The easiest way to add a transformation effect is to make it the special property of a magic item. It can be a ring, amulet, mask, etc.

Then you may go one of two ways: the transformation can be activated voluntarily by the wielder, or it can have a specific trigger, like my Hammer, or it can have a specific "cost".

For a voluntary activation, I would make it available once per quest.

If you go with a trigger, you can choose a lot of different situations. For example: losing 1 BP; losing more than 1 BP from a single attack; having only 2 or less BP left; rolling all skulls (or black shields) on an attack roll; rolling all white shields (or black) on a defense roll; slaying an enemy; slaying a monster of a specific type; being targeted by a spell... the possibilities are endless really.

A "cost" activation means the hero must sacrifice something in order to activate the effect. It could be a BP or MP, or a specific type of potion, or a piece of metallic equipment, etc. Of course a "cost" should only be applied for a really powerful effect.

Then you must of course define the effect of the transformation. It can be as simple as granting a single extra skill (flying, becoming immaterial, ranged attacks, and so on), or a boost to the dice (extra movement, or attack dice, or defense, or a combination), or a complete substitution of statistics ("you become a gargoyle", for example).

The official Druid heroin, for example, has a (bear form) Shapeshift spell card that grants +1 AD and +1 DD. The effect ends as soon as she loses 1 BP, but she can gain the spell card back again if her BP are healed back to the starting amount. This is the type of simple design that I love in HQ. You don't really need a ton of fiddly rules, they rarely add to the fun!

If the transformation is really powerful, you may want to add some sort of drawback, as I did with the minotaur, who must charge into enemies all the time.

Finally, you probably need a condition that ends the transformation. This is the same as the trigger above.

Once broken down into steps, the creation of such items or effects is quite easy. The best way to do it is to always start from the concept you want represent (or the mini you want to use!). Figuring out the game statistics is usually fairly easy from there.

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Into HeroQuest? Check out my other HeroQuest posts!