OSR News Roundup for March 17th, 2025

Welcome to the third OSR News Roundup of March. This is the week that GaryCon kicks off, so people are plenty busy getting ready for that. The big news this week is the currently funding Shadowdark Kickstarter, shattering stretch goals with their Western Reaches campaign, an exciting setting and game expansion.

• In Ruins is a fun-looking dungeon building game that is currently funding on Kickstarter. It's a neat concept; the player's build a castle, let it fall into ruin, and then populate it with monsters who all fight for control of the Throne Room.

• Written for Wretched & Alone, Covet is a solo-rpg all about obsession, desire, and toxic relationships.

• We carry a couple of titles by Hatchlings Games, and they're currently raising funds for GAST on Backerkit, a boxset collection of short horror games.

• Another project funding on Backerkit is Hit the Road Jack, a solo or duet game of high-speed, highway chases on the open road.

• Ward Against Evil has just released Aketon: Adventurer Options, a supplement for the Aketon rpg. It's free, and even if you don't play Aketon there's bound to be plenty of inspirational material within.

• Harpy Broodmother is a free adventure written for Knave 2e, OSE, Mork Borg, and Shadowdark. It's a short adventure, available in pdf only, but the pdf is set up as printable files, as well.

• Matt Finch recently launched his own publishing imprint, Mythmere Games, and has been releasing a steady stream of new and revised titles under it. I'm a huge fan of his Tome of Adventure Design, and was super excited to see that two of his most recently Kickstarted titles -- The Nomicon and Tome of Worldbuilding are in stock at Drivethrurpg. I hopefully will be conducting an interview with Matt about the upcoming OSRIC revision in the next few weeks, once he's back from GaryCon.

• Knight Owl Publishing has just released The Book of New Gods, a collection of one hundred new gods for use with Shadowdark. Knight Owl consistently produces quality products, and they've got Amanda Lee Franck and Waclaw Traier provided art for the book.

• Titan's Throne: Infested Archives is a new adventure written for Old School Essentials. It's a sandbox adventure designed for PCs of levels 1-3 and includes a 3-level dungeon the mini-campaign is centered on.

• I've mentioned The Ruins of Castle Gygar a couple of times in the past, and the adventure is now live on Drivethru in pdf form. It's a megadungeon written for OSE that was generated as part of the Dungeon23 megadungeon project.

• Another project birthed from Dungeon23 is The Blades of Gixa, currently funding on Kickstarter. It's a gorgeous mega-dungeon with a charming layout, like one you'd scribble in your notebooks during high school math.

• The Extraplanar Vending Machine is a short and sweet system neutral absurd addition to any fantasy rpg. It's very clever, I think.

• Another system neutral little product is The Willow's Tears, a short, low-level adventure designed as an introduction. It's got a great map, and I also like how it is set up to be printed as a trifold pamplet.

• Another game I mentioned awhile back is Mythic Bastionland, the system by well-known author Chris McDowall that is designed as a prologue to their Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland.

• Lixu has released Appendix L: Vol. 3, a collection of material and houserules for Old School Essentials. You may know Lixu for their Spelljammer and Dark Sun adaptions to OSE.

• My own Kickstarter for Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 44 ends on Tuesday. In addition to beginning a look at the kingdom of Negrorn, ruled by seven lich-lords, it also provides rules and guidelines for advancing beyond normal OSE level limits.