OSR News Roundup for January 6th, 2025

Welcome to the first News Roundup of 2025. As I write this we're staring down the barrel of a winter storm that is promising to dump a bunch of snow on this tonight and tomorrow; hopefully I'll be able to post this before that hits. Last week's releases were pretty light, so let's take a look and see what they're like this week.

• I'd somehow missed Justin Sirois's (of Severed Books) OSR Booster Zine project of Backerkit (in my defense, I'm still getting used to looking for projects on BK), and it's only got a day or so left as of this release. It's written as a general OSR/Mork Borg release, and is a hefty 56-page zine with d20 armor and weapons. As with all of Justin's releases you can expect top-notch production values and a fast turnaround to fulfillment.

• Thanks to a reader for pointing out (that's not an email I check much anymore, btw) that there's a Cloud Empress itch jam starting today (the 5th). Apropros for the season, it's a winter jam, so is themed around winter in the setting.

• The other Todd has released Of Wood and Wold, a hexcrawl guide for Shadowdark, which introduces rules for hexcrawling as well as creating the locations.

• Big Bang is a pretty cool looking scenario designed for a variety of spy/thriller games. It's written to be largely system agnostic, and is set in secret volcanic lair.

• Prudence Publishing has released Whitesparrow Village and the Night Blade, an adventure written for Cairn. It's an adventure scenario that revolves around a bandit chief that has been released from prison; is he responsible for the renewed bandit attacks on Whitesparrow Village?

• Richard Kelly has released the charming and impressively long Radish Knights, an rpg where you play animate vegetables.

• The Tabletop Engineer has released Issue 16 of their Delver zine series. Like of all James's releases, there's a ton of useful, system-agnostic content to be found in here.

• Inspired by Mausritter, Halfjinks is a cozy-style game of mischief in the Shire, written by James Spahn.

• The talented Gavriel Quiroga has released The Black Rainbow Society, their sequal to Hell Night, a psychedelic journey and adventure. I've been following the development of this on social media, and it looks really sweet.

• Against the Hydra is a swampcrawl and dungeon featuring the eponymous hydra. It's written for OSE, and includes printable paper minis.