It is the third Monday in March and we have begun the relentless "march" towards convention season. GaryCon starts at the end of this week, as does PAX East, and my social media feeds have been filled with people heading to a bunch of smaller local cons as well. Let's take a look and see if the approaching convention season has affected releases.
I saw the title Arsenic & Old Lace pop up on itch and at first I thought it was a game about poisoning husbands, but took a look and saw it was something even cooler. It's a game set in the age of sail, with the English 30-Year War as a backdrop, but adds a soupçon of Mythos horror and the supernatural. Right up my alley.
Brimstone is an interesting OSR approach to fantasy, using some traditional OSR aspects like classes but eschewing others (instead of a level-based magic system it is much more free-form and allows the creation of spells on the fly). Plus, it's got art by Carlos Castilho.
I've got something of an unspoken rule that I don't promote crowdfunding projects before they launch, but hey, rules are meant to be broken, and in this case I've been looking foward to Cairn 2e for awhile. Yochai will be launching this on March 27th, and it's a project I've been waiting for with bated breath since he announced it last year. I'm especially looking forward to it being a boxed set.
I'm sure long-time readers are aware that one of my favorite indie creators is taichara, author of A Hamsterish Hoard of Monsters (seriously, this is one of my all-time favorite bestiaries for B/X, and it's free!). They've just released Lindwyrm, a minimalist take on OD&D that is designed to be printed and folded into a 16-page zine.
I mentioned Dynasty of Blood awhile back in a previous Roundup. It's an interesting work by Austin Wilson that melds fiction and gaming. It's set in the 80s, and is focused on a fictional rpg Dynasty of Blood (the rpg portion of the product uses Cairn). Volume Two, Betrayal at Indier Mountain, is now available.
Cairn is just representing today! The newly released The Devil Choked on a Whale is a supplement with folkloric coastal backgrounds, rules for naval combat, bestiary and monster harvesting table and enough encounters for a small campaign.
Shadowdark is another system I see a lot of releases for, but not that many releases on itch use it. The Wanderer's Guide to the Wild looks like it is right up my alley, though, and system-neutral enough that it can be ported over to a variety of OSR-systems. It provides tons of stuff for wilderness and nature-themed games, including some new classes, random tables, and more.
Matt Finch and Stuart Marshall have released a free OSRIC Player's Guide pdf on Drivethru. I've been hearing rumors that new edition of OSRIC is in the works spearheaded by the newly formed Mythmere Games.
The Wizard's Tower is part two of an adventure series set in the Greymarsh. There's no system indicated for it, so my assumption is that it can be used for a variety of OSR-style games.
I think many folks, myself included, have a difficult time running urban adventures, and while there are plenty of supplements written for wilderness exploration, there aren't that many designed for urban adventures. CWP #39 -- Urban Adventures, is an addition to the urban role-playing supplements that looks very interesting.
home? is a journaling supplement for Mork Borg, two phrases I never thought I'd hear, but with the popularity of both I suppose it's just a matter of time.
I often see folks asking about OSR-style games accessible to children, and the newly released Take Courage aims to address that niche. It's a pdf, but laid out (like Lindwyrm, above) to be printed and folded into a zine.
Alan Bahr is a prolific creator (author of For Coin and Blood, among other titles) and he's just released Tombpunk: The Mausoleum Edition. The artwork that I've seen is pretty stellar.
Diogo Nogueira is one of the Latin American authors producing some of the most interesting and innovative products in the OSR scene, and he's just released Fire and Fang, a mythical stone age setting that has a stunning cast of artists involved with it.
Hex 24.26, the Temple of Bathrymrala, is on sale at Drivethrurpg for half-off through the month of March. It's got four mini-dungeons, new monsters, and rules for adding summoning circles to OSR-style games.
I've launched a Kickstarter for Volume 2 of the BX Advanced Bestiary. This release will cover and expand on monsters E-K, including new classes such as the awakened giant ferret, garuda, and loxon (elephant-folk with a psionic stomp attack).