It's the second Monday in August. GenCon is over, and here in the States kids are getting ready to head back to school. New releases seem pretty light this week, but let's see what we can cover.
I mentioned a new game called Dungeons of Galora a few months back; there's now a free version available on itch, with a bunch of new content, including some really nice art. It's a solo OSR dungeon crawl, and really evokes some of the old rogue-like games. The author is Brazilian, so the game is inspired by South American folklore. There's some amazingly creative stuff coming out of the indie rpg zine in Brazil right now.
Chicken Pod #1 is available on itch right now, and will, at some point, be available in print. It's by Mobile Hut, a collective of trans game designers (including Roundup fave Evlyn Moreau). The first issue of the zine lays out in broad strokes the goals of the collective and what they're working on for the future.
I am about the furthest thing from working in IT, but The Awful Weekend On-Call made me chuckle. It's a one page solo rpg about working the IT call center on weekends, and includes mechanics to replicate a descent into madness.
Umbra Arcanum is a system-neutral OSR adventure set in a dark fantasy world on the brink of Armageddon. It's the second in a series of adventures by the author but can also be run as a stand-alone scenario.
Pirate Borg is another Borg hack that, in my opinion, is one of the best of the variants that has been released to date. Rough Seas is a supplement for PB that brings a bunch of new stuff to the table; random tables, new monsters and NPCs, and a short hexcrawl.
The Bounty Hunter is a new class for OSE with an interesting take on rangers whose alignments shift to Chaotic.
As popular as Mork Borg is, and as well designed and beautiful the book is, it's something that I just bounced hard off of when I tried to get into it. Perhaps if I had this short primer by KJJ Publishers I would have had better luck! How to play Mork Borg is a 6-page introduction to the system and setting designed specifically for new players.
I wish I was able to name my products with catchy and poetic names, instead of just prosaic descriptions of what they contain. I saw the title A Spear Brings Sorrow and was immediately intrigued. It's a short, system neutral OSR supplement that presents an NPC that can be used in game, and their backstory to incorporate into the campaign.
Shadowdark cleaned up at the Ennies, and just this week I saw the first (to me) hack of the game: Neonbright, a Cyberpunk Fantasy Hack. It's a short work, and requires Shadowdark Core rules to use.
I'm loving this new art style that seems to be popular these days, inspired by works such as Ultravioulet Grasslands, The Painted Wastelends, and others. Ruthless Heavens, Boundless Fates is another new release with this style of gonzo, pastel art. In it, the characters play as Ascendants, near god-like beings that rule nations but soon learn they are still at the bottom of the pecking order. It also includes rules for solo play.
The Dream Shrine is the first collaboration between Brad Kerr and Skullfungus, and is a dreamy, psychedelic adventure for OSE and Cairn. It's meant to be a low-level "escape room" style adventure.
Currently funding on Kickstarter is the solo game Necrovenge, in which you play a necromancer who awakes from a long slumber only to find that pesky adventurers have trashed your dungeon!
Vol. 2 of the BX Advanced Bestiary is now live in pdf and hard and softcover POD options, with the offset version coming to the Sabre Games store in a few weeks. The second in the series, it covers the monster entries E-K in the OSE Classic book and expands them with options and variants. Each of the monsters is fully illustrated, and it also includes new classes, spells, and psionic abilities.
As a companion to Volume 2, the Kickstarter for Issue 37 of Populated Hexes Monthly is ending today. This, the first issue of year 4 (!), contains material that didn't make it into the Bestiary, and includes four new classes, new clerical spells, and more.
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