OSR News Roundup for July 28th, 2025

It's the last Monday in July, and the week is rolling right into the biggest week in gaming: GenCon. I hope everyone lucky enough to be going has a great time. The big news from last week, as I'm sure many of you have heard, is that due to pressure from payment processors, themselves under pressure from a small, Australian anti-smut group, itchio has de-indexed, as far as I can tell, all of their games -- both crpg and ttrpg -- labelled NSFW. As is often the case, this has affected a number of LGBTQ-positive products that are deemed NSFW simply because of queer themes and not because of explicit content.

If you feel that a small group of people in one country should be able to influence what the rest of the world might want to enjoy, Lin Codega posted a link to a website outlining concrete actions we can take to put pressure from the other direction.

• A Vampire in Neraka is a short adventure for low-level characters, written for OSE. It's almost something of a funnel, or 0-level adventure, and can be used as a stand-alone one-shot, a sidequest, or as part of the author's Neraka series of adventures.

• I'm not going to link to all of them, but the incredibly talented Dyson Logos has added a number of their map collections to Drivethrurpg, these from 2024. Dyson is very generous with the licensing of these products, and they're a true resource to indie gamers.

• TLHP Games has released a Random Adventure Generator for Medieval Games, a collection of tables and worksheets to help guide the adventure creation process.

• Most of what I've seen released for the Appendix N game jam has been on itch, but I noticed one released on Drivethru: The Astral Ship is about a fairy astral ship trapped in the mortal world, and warping reality around it.

• I don't see that much stuff for Dragonbane, which is a shame, 'cause it's a really cool system, and I was excited to see Wonderful One-Shots: Kobolds Stole My Babies up on Drivethru. It's a short adventure designed as a one-shot or a session cleanser.

• Vasili Kaliman, the author of DNGN and the Xanadu series of zines, has just released an official OSE adventure published under the Necrotic Gnome new line of Quick Delves: Milk is a short adventure designed as a one-shot or sidequest (boy, lot's of those this week!) for characters of levels 2-4.

• I really love Teresa Guido's art (I've used her on a number of projects), and I see she's released a packet of ten black and white character illustrations.

• Floodplains of Illamoor is a hexcrawl written for Cairn. It's PWYW over on itch, and the layout and art is really charming.

• Another submission to the Appendix N jam is Invaders of Atlantis. Written for Cairn, it imagines a reverse invasion, where after centuries of Atlanteans attacking surface dwellers, the tables have turned and it's time to invade the underwater kingdom of Atlantis.

• Another Appendix N submission is Raiders of the Crystal Keep. When a mysterious giant crystal appears in the nearby mountains, does it portend woe or weal?

• The Crypt of Atan-Thu is currently raising funds on Kickstarter. It's written for a variety of OSR systems, and is a mid-range adventure featuring an ancient undead necromancer.

• With the new release of Dolmenwood we're likely to see a bunch of 3pp written for the setting/system; the second one I've seen thus far is The Swallowed Saint. It brings the characters to a swamp and a forgotten holy shrine that has been subsumed by the muck and mire.

• We're working on clearing out some backstock, and have started to put together some zine bundles. If you're looking for a great deal on some great zines we've got you covered!