OSR News Roundup for February 23rd, 2026

Well, this is the last News Roundup in February, and ZineMonth is wrapping up, although there will be projects still running into March. I haven't really been covering specific projects (for one, there are really too many great sounding ones that would just overwhelm the Roundup), but have been trying to point to resources to help find them instead. I'd like to plug one specific project, though, that ends very soon (I believe on Tuesday): Seedling Games is raising funds for The Sierra Express, a game of hijinks aboard a train in an alternate reality Weird West. I've been a big fan of Seedling Games for awhile -- Procedures to Discover the Paths Ahead is a great little supplement -- and I feel bad that I missed this project until towards the end of its run. You should check it out, help push it over the finish line.

• Sivads Sanctum has been knocking it out of the park recently with their Americana inspired settings and adventures; their new one, The Parent of Fear, is a hexcrawl setting roughly analogous to the New England coast during the heyday of the whaling industry. They're slowfunding it on itch.

• I've been plugging You Can Breathe Now Games for awhile, and they've just released the poetically named In a Tomb of Splendor by the Endless Sea, an adventure for Forbidden Lands.

• Kuźnia Wyobraźni has released a cool looking mini-zine on itch: Ocarina of the Waves. It's designed to be printed and folded, and is based around the theme "waves".

• If I can confess a secret, my ideal rpg would be something like Sid Meier's Civilization (over a much shorter time span): I love the domain play aspect and city management, and was really chuffed to see Of Rule and Ruin funding on Kickstarter. It's a solo game of city management, and seems really worthwhile checking out.

• I'm not familiar with the Great Plains Apocalypse system, but I see they've just released Ahttps://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/549250/survive-this-war-for-the-wasteland-core-rules?src=newest_recent&affiliate_id=253473ntler Valley; it's a hexcrawl in post-apocalyptic Appalachia.

• John Baltisberger has been putting out quality projects for years, and has just released The Catacombs of Dread King Dreg, a mini-adventure for Mork Borg.

• Brett Simpson has released Uppity Bit, the second part of Friar's Keep, featuring absolutely charming art.

• Written for Mauritter, Hearts on the Brink is a fascinating adventure location based on the remnants of a car crash that has been settled by mice.

• In the past year I've seen a lot of projects inspired by the old Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, and Experimental Playground has just released Spellzard, 2nd edition. It's a rules-lite, dry-humored rpg designed (nay, encouraged) to be hacked.

• Under an Irreverent Sky is a short retroclone designed by Orbital Intelligence that seeks to strip the OSR experience to the bare bones while including the core premises of the OSR.

• The Sandbox Generator, by Atelier Clandestin, is one of the projects always mentioned when the topic of populating a hexcrawl comes up; I haven't seen any new releases for it in awhile, but just saw they've released an Urban Expansion supplement.

• A couple of years back Eric Bloat released War for the Wastelands, a mini post-apocalyptic system, and I see they've just released an expanded, almost two hundred page version of the game, adapted to their Survive This! system.

• Outcast Silver Raiders is a really great game that is way too grimdark for me, but I still appreciate it, especially the layout and art. Altar is a 3rd party zine published for OSR, and has now just released Issue 4.

• Every so often a cool looking project drops on a Monday, after the Roundup has been posted, and I don't include it. That happened last week with The Lost Vault of Zarnak is a pretty classic dungeon crawl designed to take characters from level 1-6.

• Gründer: Business Adventure Game is live on Drivethru. It's a Mark of the Odd driven game, in which the PCs seek to found a business. Probably not everyone's jam, but I think even if not there are some useful bits and bobs one can steal, especially when your players inevitably begin talking about starting a business.

• I'm going to be launching a project on Tuesday for ZineMonth. Called The Caverns of Anamosa, I'm toying around with the idea of a campaign to take PCs from levels 1-14, based on the Adventure Path format. This is the first issue of a planned adventure path that takes the classic module B1 -- In Search of the Unknown, and fiddles with it, reworking the dungeon and extrapolating a looming barbarian invasion from the north.