OSR News Roundup for June 23rd, 2025

Welcome to the fourth news roundup in June. Last week was a short release, due to travel plans and storms that interfered with my internet connection, so let's see what we can do this week to make up for it, shall we? I have found that the summer months, especially the month and a half leading up to GenCon, tend to be slow for releases.

• Matt Kelly has released Cities & Towns, an expansion for Cairn and Into the Odd. It provides urban options for adding to domain-level play in those two games, and looks to be a welcome addition to supplements for fleshing out your campaign.

• I had missed this earlier, but there's a No ICE in California game jam going on over on itch that will be ending tomorrow. There are over 500 entries, and when it's done the jam will be collated into a bundle, with sale benefits going towards organizations working for immigrant rights.

• Rat in a Suit has released their first solo play zine: Ice, Snow, and the Quest for Salvation. Inspired by Shackleton, Scott, and the early days of polar exploration, you take on the role of a ship's crew stuck in ice and forced to disembark and journey overland.

• I had mentioned Miasma and Monsters a few weeks back, and the creator reached out to let me know that they've just released the first adventure for it: Sacrifice at Mount Sampo. It looks really well done, and I'm looking forward to more releases from them.

• Solo games have experienced an incredible surge in popularity, and one of the new entries is Solo Compendium, by Sam Bickley, which is less a system and more a toolkit to help folks play solo games.

• Pickpocket Press, the publishers of Tales of Argosa, has just released Adventure Framework 70: The Lost Roads of Dol-Karok. There's a bunch of material jammed into 34 pages, with two really cool adventure generators. I'm a big fan of ToA, and think the stuff PP is putting out is top notch.

• Mudbones is an interesting-looking four page dungeon statted for Shadowdark. It's part of a series of short dungeons by the same author. It's got a pretty broad level range, written for 3-6 PCs of levels 1-4, but I also like that it comes with VTT compatible maps.

• The prolific Christian Eichhorn has released Sinners, a new zine for Mork Borg. They consistently produce high quality, interesting work, and it's totally worth checking out their newest venture.

• The Untitled Runic Manuscript is a neat looking, system-neutral product that introduces a system of runes and runic magic designed to be plugged into an existing game.

• Bog Iron is a mini-setting for Mork Borg based on Swedish folklore. The art and layout is phenomenal.

• Michael Duggan reached out to me at Sabre about carrying Ligaments, and I see that it's also available on Drivethrurpg. It's an interesting premise, a game that blends WWI technology with a post-apocalyptic setting.

• Outcast Silver Raiders is a beautiful game that we can't seem to keep in stock at Sabre, even though it is a bit grim for my tastes. I saw recently that Altar, Issue 2 is now available, sixty-six pages with three dungeons and a bunch of extra material.

• I'm getting ready to launch Hexapalooza, a crowdfunding campaign with two goals: printing an offset, slightly revised version of Filling in the Blanks (this version is designed to be system neutral) as well as a calendar-agnostic hexcrawl workbook that goes along with it. It's the first time I've done an offset print run of Filling in the Blanks, and I wanted to make it more usable to folks using other systems.