Christmas in July Sale: My OSE Recommendations!

 The Christmas in July sale is on at DriveThruRPG. For the next 14 days, more than 70.000 rpg titles are available at reduced price!

The list of OSR titles currently discounted counts a big 3716 items, which is still a lot.

And to those, we must also add 109 official OD&D/BECMI titles, and 135 AD&D1stEd titles! 

The sheer amount of titles available makes it hard to create a list of OSR recommendations, so this time I'll focus on some of the 169 titles listed for Old-School Essentials as it is my current go-to ruleset.

OSE Rulebooks

As with other large DTRPG sales, the core OSE books are discounted, both the Classic Rules Tome and the Advanced rules (Player's tome and Referee's tome). If you're reading this, you're probably already a fan (like me), but don't forget sales are a great occasion to spread the word. Tell your friends!

Adventures

Well, the whole Old-School Essentials line is part of the sale, which means you can get some great adventures too, like Incandescent Grottoes, the Ennie award winning Halls of the Blood King, and Isle of the Plangent Mage by Donn Stroud.

The Palace of Unquiet Repose - An acclaimed level 3-5 dungeon adventure that got some stunning reviews.

In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe - A regional module in zine format written by Jacob Fleming, with lots of dungeons and lots of hours of play. Reviewed here.

Ominous Crypt of the Blood Moss - is a very good 10 room dungeon which develops the cliché theme of "crypt with undead" with interesting twists and consequences. I've reviewed it here.

The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford - An exquisite, sandboxy point-crawl adventure for characters level 1-3, very easy to run, with lots of interaction between locations, and guaranteed to offer a huge number of hours of play. I can't wait to run it. My review here

Puzzle Dungeon: The Seers Sanctum - Another very good 10 room dungeon with, well, a lot of well conceived puzzles. I've reviewed it here, and if this dungeon is a great opportunity to connect your existing campaign to the setting outlined in the best seller Planar Compass zine series which, by the way, currently is on its own sale and is less than $1!

Hideous Daylight and Temple of 1000 Swords - Two third-party Old-School Essentials adventures by Brad Kerr 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, which is a less frequent level bracket in comparison to level 1-4, and makes it definitely worth checking.

Tannic - A just released level 1-3 adventure set in a haunted forest, by Amanda P., that looks pretty cool (seriously, check the preview).

The Frost Spire - An excellent fairy-frosty level 3 dungeon adventure with an interesting moral dilemma. Reviewed it here.

Sourcebooks, Supplements & Zines

The Dungeon Dozen, collecting over 200 system-agnostic d12 tables full of awesome inspiration, from the blog of the same name.

The whole Third Kingdom line of hexcrawl supplements is out there, including the great Filling in the Blanks guide.

The unusual A Groats-worth of Grotesques bestiary, which I've reviewed here.

The Delver Magazine zine series, full of awesome random tables, along with its Tavern spin-off.

My very own Lands of Legends zine series, with the five zines also currently bundled up in PDF + Print on Demand.

The Old School & Cool zine series by Knight Owl Publishing. Reviewed issue 3 here!

Bonus Offerings

While not part of the CiJ Sale, I'd be a very bad person if I didn't point you to the Classic Gaming Negative Space Bundle which collects the three masterpiece supplements for classic OSR play by Courtney Campbell: On Downtime & Demesnes, Artifices, Deceptions & Dilemmas, and Bestial Ecosystems Caused by Monstrous Inhabitation. Cool thing is, this is a PoD bundle!!

If all those sales don't whet your appetite, you can check some free or PWYW titles, such as The Prison of the Hated Pretender adventure (reviewed here), my own Old-School Essentials e-zines, or the stunning Black Pudding zines by James West!

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

Morrigan for the Frost Spire adventure

 Last week I reviewed the very very good adventure The Frost Spire by Jacob Hurst.

As pointed out in the review, for some reason the module doesn't include statistics for the final encounter, so I thought, why not make them?

As I wrote in the review, the quickest way is to generate a high level elf with the official OSE online tools, so let's start with that.  Considering all there is to the scenario (which is for a level 3 group), I have no problem shooting for a level 10 elf. Of course a less powerful version might be viable as well, but I really would not go below level 6. 

Here's what I got:

Level 10 Elf (NPC)

Armour Class 2 [17] (plate mail + ring)

Hit Points 36

Attacks 1 × crossbow (1d6) or 1 × spell

THAC0 12 [+7]

Movement Rate 60' (20')

Saves D6 W7 P8 B8 S8

Alignment Lawful

STR 16 INT 9 WIS 10

DEX 10 CON 7 CHA 10

Spells

read magic, shield, floating disc, mirror image, esp, mirror image, fly, protection from evil 10’ radius (mu), invisibility 10’ radius, dimension door, growth of plants, wall of fire, wall of stone, transmute rock to mud (transmute mud to rock)

Items

Broom of Flying, Potion of Heroism, Ring of Protection +1, Spell scroll (protection from evil 10’ radius (c), cure disease (cause disease), find traps, growth of animal, create water) , Crossbow bolts +1 (9)

Is that ok? Well I guess it could work if in a hurry, but this is not the case here, so I'll try and make it more in tune with the scenario.

That STR 16 doesn't really seem to match with the art in the adventure; and Morrigan's job makes me want to change the Alignment to Neutral.

I don't like the magic items I got, so I'll try and put some more frost-themed stuff here and there. Ok I like the flying broom, as it is a very convenient means of traveling to and from the spire, and offers a great option for retreat in case of hostile adventurers, so I'll leave it there.

A quick search on the OSE SRD for "cold", "ice" and "frost" gives me two things worth adding: a wand of cold and the wall of ice spell.

Some other cold-themed items? I have a bunch in this post with Diablo-inspired magic items: the Ravenfrost ring seems the right fix, as well as the Skin of the Viper Magi armor.

So here's the edited girl:

Morrigan - Level 10 Elf 

Armour Class 5 [14] (leather armour +2)

Hit Points 34

Attacks 1 × short sword (1d6+2, +1 from STR) or 1 × spell

Base THAC0 12 [+7], 9 [+10] with short sword +2 and +1 from STR

Movement Rate 60' (20')

Saves D6 W7 P8 B8 S8 (+2 to all from armour; +1 vs spells from WIS)

Alignment Neutral

STR 13 INT 9 WIS 14

DEX 10 CON 7 CHA 16

Spells

read magic, shield, floating disc, mirror image, esp, mirror image, fly, protection from evil 10’ radius (mu), invisibility 10’ radius, dimension door, growth of plants, wall of ice, wall of stone, transmute rock to mud (transmute mud to rock)

Magic Items

• Broom of Flying
• Short sword +2, Charm Person 3 times a week
• Wand of cold (7 charges left)
• Skin of the Viper Magi (leather armour +2, +2 to saves vs spells)
• Ravenfrost ring (Cold damage heals the wearer by the same amount, instead of harming them. Cold spells and effects never affect the wearer in any negative way)

Strategy

Well the first thing to do to run the encounter decently is to carefully read the page about Morrigan and prepare to defend her position and her job with discussion. If conversation fails to end the encounter, it's time smash the PCs.

With this set up, I can see Morrigan attempting various strategies if conversation with the PCs turns to violence. She can Charm with her sword; turn invisible; dimension door to safety; or fly out of the room and lock the party inside inside with a wall spell, then gather reinforcements such as the harpies or the bear. Or she could just mirror image and then hack at the group with her sword or freeze them to death with the wand.

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Into OSR? Check my other OSR posts and reviews!

About Kosmosaurs

You are a dinosaur. You are a Kosmo Ranger. You are a Kosmosaur—a protector of the galaxy. You and your companions travel through the stars to help all sorts of people, planets, and organizations by preventing disasters, battling assassin robots, banishing chaos mutants from the Void Dimension, and facing all kinds of weird dangers. [From the blurb]

Kosmosaurs is Diogo Nogueira's latest rpg.
If you don't know him, he's the author of several acclaimed games, including the Ennie-award winning OSE adventure Halls of the Blood King and big hits such as Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, Dark Streets & Darker Secrets, and Lost in the Fantasy World.

A few months ago Diogo asked on his socials for bloggers etc to check and review his upcoming game, so here I am. I received the work-in-progress pdf and had the opportunity to check it. Now the game is available both on Diogo's itch.io page and on DriveThruRPG.

Here's some basic facts:

• Written by Diogo Nogueira
• Lavishly illustrated by Łukasz Kowalczuk, with a colorful layout by Guilherme Gontijo
• Format is A5 or similar (guessing this from the pdf)
• At the time of writing this it is an 80-page full color sweet little book

It is inspired by Saturday morning cartoon shows and as such is a perfect game to play with younger players. The characters are Kosmosaurs, i.e. dinosaur space rangers and protectors of the galaxy. While it is not stated explicitly in the game, it's very well suited for children. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with it even with a group of adults, of course.

Let's see how the game works.

The core mechanic is inspired by John Harper's new classic Lasers & Feelings. Kosmosaurs only have two numerical statistics: Kosmo and Saurs, which represent intellectual and physical capabilities, respectively. When you create your character, you divide 5 points among these two stats, and that's the pool of d6s you roll when you make an attribute test. Characters are further defined by the type of dinosaur they are, of course (a pterosaur can fly, for example; an a ankylosaur can bash things with its tail, and so on), and they must also choose a role (pilot, scientist, xenologist, commando, etc), and two extra things the kosmosaur is good at and one thing they are bad at. Furthermore, each character can choose a number of significant items equal to their Saur score, and a number of knowledges equal to their Kosmo score. That's it for characters.

You roll your Kosmo or Saur pool of d6s, and add an extra die if the action is typical of your role, if that's something you're good at, or if one of your significant items or knowledges applies to the situation.

Things you are bad at, and stuff that your role would be bad at, reduce the die pool by one. Same goes for difficult actions, which is determined by the GM.

So you roll your pool and take the die with the highest result.

Results have five degrees of success and failure which can be described as:  No, and / No, but / Yes, but / Yes / Yes, and. These are not the terms used in the game, but I guess most of my readers get this type of thing. The game explains the results fairly clearly.

The rules are player facing, meaning the GM never rolls. Combat is quick with players rolling to attack and to avoid damage. Damage is handled as markings on your Kosmo or Saur scores, and the default rules dictate that characters don't die: they are just taken out for the scene, as appropriate for Saturday morning shows. Players also have the option of (temporarily) losing a meaningful item instead of taking Saur damage (which can be later repaired or replaced), or one of their knowledges instead of Kosmo damage (representing temporary self-doubt). 

The "combat" rules apply to any type of conflict really, so Kosmo damage can represent the outcome of a failed social conflict.

Beside their characters, the players get to create the group's spaceship, which is handled with similar stats as the Kosmosaurs.

This is pretty much all there is to it as regards rules. I didn't go into the details of the consequences of damage but I think you get the idea.

What I've found especially good is the large set of tables that accompany each section of the game: types of dinosaurs, roles and names, for players, and then a whole lot of tables for the GM: mission objective, antagonists, locations, supporting cast, complications and rewards are the tables you get to help you quickly set up a scenario. All of these are d66 tables, which means there are 36 results, a reasonable number for the scope of the game, and also a way to have tables with many entries in a game that only uses d6s. 

The book also contains a series of five detailed enemy factions, a sort of recurring villain organizations that help define the setting. They are: the Robot Empire, the Voidsaurs, the Undead (space) Pirates, the Slime Lords, and the Broccoloids. Each has a fun general description, a list of associated themes, and two d6 tables: one with what they want, and one with what they are doing. The first is more of a possible long-term objective which can be the subject of an adventure or even a series of adventures, while the second can fuel a scene or a single scenario.

The final pages of the book are the colorful character sheet and space ship sheet. 

Is this game for you?

I think there are two possible ways of playing this.

One way is to play with a group of kids of any age as soon as they can read and write a bit. Rolling a bunch of d6s is something children can do long before they can read, and the game requires zero math skills, but they need to be able to write a few things on their character sheet... unless you write stuff for them.

As a game for adults, it certainly is a great choice for a light-hearted game night for players who enjoy the joyful silliness of Power Rangers and similar shows.

What I find very good is that:

- the rules match very well the spirit of the "source material", with heroes that don't die, simple action, and no simulation or realism whatsoever;

-the same goes for the fabulous art which is colorful, full of action, and fun with a lot of goofy details and over the top characters;

-considering the two types of gaming groups I see this for, the suite of player and GM tables are very helpful and definitely help to get quickly into the game. You want all the help you can get to run a game for kids who are absolute beginners, and it's also good to have tables to quickly set up a scenario for them (or for adults, of course).

- The game has the potential to be a very good introduction to RPGs both for kids AND for parents who have never played rpgs before, so I've especially appreciated the few pages devoted to explaining how the game flows, and what are the task and responsibilities of the players and the GM. These include the who does what in game terms, but also some advice on the social aspects of the game. These recommendations may seem obvious to experienced role-players, but I think they are very precious for beginners.

So, yes, Kosmosaur seems like a great game. Frankly, I hope some Italian publisher will localize it. I see it as a perfect game for me to play with my 7yo, and as a gift I could give to my gaming friends who have children of similar age!

So yes I think you should definitely check it out!