d20 Curses for OSR Games, and Some Zine News!

What with the holidays and my baby girl being sick, I've missed a couple of my usual Saturday tables, so here I am to make amends.

In the meantime, though, a lot has happened! ZineQuest4 has been officially postponed to August, but the creators' community has organized an alternative for this February: ZineMonth, or ZiMo!

And that's not all! I've set up the pre-launch page for Axian Library, my contribution to the ZineMonth! If you've enjoyed my random tables and OSE-licensed electronic/print-at-home zines, the project is definitely for you: more information in Axian Library post.

And that's not all, again! My friend & designer Danilo Moretti has launched his very first Kickstarter with a cool OSR offering: a series of Pamphlet Islands, which just got funded!

I think that's enough for today, whew!

So here's the table: d20 curses for OSE and other OSR games. These are also a preview of my upcoming Pious Prayers & Powerful Prodigies.

1. Hands tremble (-4 to attack rolls).
2. Crippled, movement halved.
3. STR halved (minimum 3).
4. INT halved (minimum 3).
5. DEX halved (minimum 3).
6. CON halved (minimum 3).
7. Painful sores: 20% of the character’s total hp don’t heal in any way.
8. Bad luck, -2 to saving throws.
9. A permanent Blight spell on the character.
10. The character cannot lie and must always tell the truth.
11. Vision is obfuscated past 40’.
12. Daylight imposes -4 to all attack rolls.
13. Nightmares disturb the character’s sleep: healing from rest only works after a successful WIS check.
14. The character can no longer read (includes scrolls).
15. The character’s spoken words become an unintelligible gibberish.
16. Magic items don't work for the character. Cursed items are not affected.
17. All retainers, followers, hirelings, specialists, etc, turn their back on the character.
18. All shields and armor fall off from the character, who can no longer use them.
19. The character’s words are only understood by creatures of the same alignment.
20. Roll and combine two results, or devise something based on the character’s story and current situation.

If you enjoy this type of content, check my other random tables posts, and my OSR stuff on DrivethruRPG: the Land of Legends series and my pwyw e-zines for Old-School Essentials: Wondrous Weavings Warped and Weird, Mysteriously Missing & Merrily Met, and Notable Novices & Notorious Newcomers!

My next pwyw Old-School Essentials e-zine will be released this month! To find out what it'll be about, and grab it as soon as it's out, follow me on Facebook, Twitter or Telegram!

New Year New Game Sale: Savage Worlds Recommendations!

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

Whether you've never played Savage Worlds, or you're a veteran looking for something cool, here we go!

SAVAGE WORLDS ADVENTURE EDITION

Well, the core game is on sale,  and if you were on the fence, this a great time to grab the PDF for a reduced price. The latest edition, released three years ago, is a distillation of almost 20 years of gaming, and is my go-to rule system when I'm looking for something different from OSR games. I love the modularity of it, and the potential to bring to the table any kind of action-oriented adventures and settings I can think of.

AND SUPPLEMENTS

Despite the promotion is supposed to be about new games, a lot of supplements made it through the mysterious DrivethruRPG automatic selection and are on offer:

Savage Worlds Adventure Edition: Mini Settings - If you missed this, it's worth checking at a special price: four mini settings complete with setting rules and savage tales! 

Deadlands the Weird West - Arguably Savage Worlds' most popular setting. This is the latest edition, released in 2020, and features a retconned version of a setting that is incredibly rich and deep, combining horror, steampunk, and alternate history into an exploding mix.

Rippers Resurrected Players Guide - Victorian era monster hunters, willing to pay the ultimate price and sacrifice their humanity using rippertech in order to win the war against the forces of darkness. Gothic horror meets Van Helsing action, with one hell of a plot point campaign.

Crystal Heart - The fantasy setting with heroes changing their hearts with crystals to gain more power, includes a full plot point campaign.

Burning Seas of Hell - A mini setting (30 pages) with pirate, swashbuckling action, in hell!

Tropicana - A contemporary setting of action heroes, special agents and troubleshooters in San José, a (fictional) Caribbean state consisting of a tropical metropolis, its wild jungle hinterland and a small archipelago of paradise islands. Written by Mauro Longo and me, Tropicana is currently yours for less than $3!

Toy Troopers - War action, but with animated toys, fighting inside a house! A title that has received little attention so far, but worth considering for fun games!

Titan Effect - A superhero/spy thriller setting with lots of high tech gadgets and pyschic powers to fight against global conspiracies in the present day, as part of the SPEAR (Special Executive Assault and Recon).

Heroes of Terra: The Mushroom War - A Super Mario-inspired fantasy setting!

Nothing caught your interest? Well, you can still browse the 4270 titles included in the sale, and the 122 in the Savage Worlds category!

Into Savage Worlds? Check out my other Savage Worlds posts!

New Year New Game Sale: OSR Recommendations!

 The New Year New Game sale is on at DrivethruRPG, 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!

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.

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.

Sword & Wizardry Complete Rulebook - The 1974 Original D&D rules are the root of this great retroclone, currently priced $0,33! 

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.

AND OSR SUPPLEMENTS

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

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.

OSR Solo - One of the many best-selling Parts per Millions supplements to play your favorite game without a GM. And most of them are included in the current sale.

OR REAL OLD SCHOOL?

The New Year New Game sale is on a lot of actually old titles! Here's a few titles I recommend:

Rules Cyclopedia - The BECMI D&D rules combined in one volume (except for the Immortals set).

The whole B1-B12 series of adventures is on sale, with some must-have scenarios for the Basic D&D set. Note that the current sale makes them cheaper than the regular bundle with the all series!

So if you want to only pick up a few, I'd go with those that are the best in my view: B1 In Search of the Unknown, B2 The Keep on the Borderlands,  B3 Palace of the Silver Princess, B4 The Lost City, B7 Rahasia, and B9 Castle Caldwell and Beyond with its five mini adventures.

And then there's a little less known supplement that's worth checking:

AC10 Bestiary of Dragons & Giants - Despite the "Bestiary" in the title, this actually is an adventure anthology, with a dozen or so quick scenarios involving, of course, dragons and giants. A great pick for sandbox campaigns!

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Nothing caught your interest? Well, you can still browse the 4270 titles included in the sale, and the 238 in the OSR category!

Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts!