OSR News Roundup for October 5th, 2026

Welcome to the first News Roundup for October, as we start down the home stretch to the end of the year. I wanted to remind everyone about the Orctober itch jam happening right now, sponsored by Forlorn Skulk. There's still plenty of time to come up with an entry. Also, I'd like to shout out Reddit user u/lokeshdhakar who compiled a website with almost 1.5 million searchable public domain engravings. It's fantastic, and a great resource for anyone, especially folks who want to publish without AI art but don't have funds for commissioning.

• The Trials of Simal-Baragach is a setting agnostic Cairn adventure designed for seasoned adventurers. It was written specifically to be fairly vanilla fantasy in tone.

• Released about a month ago, but just discovered by me this week, Dom Bosco has released an art asset pack of his partner's fantasy artwork, adapting them to VTT-style tokens. They're released under the Creative Commons license, and are available in two flavors: Renaissance-style woodcut creepy creatures, in the vein of Bosch and Bruegel the Elder, and a pack of character art that's specificall female and non-binary coded.

• Beneath Ice and Snow is a one-shot Mothership scenario in which the players explore a frozen alien ruin armed with just a camera.

• I think one of the most important things I do using my (extremely limited) platform is promoting the work of first-time creators and publishers. Everyone has got to start somewhere, and I know (as having been in that position once myself) it is a daunting task to expose your work to the view of others. I say this because I would like to plug the newly launched Fortress of the Goblin King, an adventure for 3rd-4th level Shadowdark characters. It's met its funding goal, and is pretty close to going to production.

• I've plugged the work of Donjons & Darons before, and they've just released Triptyque #9 In both English and French), entitled Panic in the Mines, a low to mid-level adventure inspired by Aliens.

• Jeffrey Jones of RPG Ramblings is funding Dark Mythos, adapting Lovecraft's work and horror to Shadowdark. Writing is complete and editing and artwork underway.

• Spacer is a Traveller clone and is available as a free, no-art pdf. There's a bit of a preview available in the listing, and it looks clean and well-done, a sort of throw-back to the early days of rpgs.

• It seems like it has been awhile since I've seen anything by Barrel Rider Games, but they've jsut released White Box Quarterly #4, a collection of new rules, adventures, classes, and other goodies for White Box.

• Admiral Mara Veil's Feild Guide to Bad Decisions is a Pirate Borg-compatible supplement that introduces guidelines for smuggling, and all of the troubles sumgglers can find themselves in.

• I plugged the Year 100 Million BC jam last week; the "primitive edition" Quickstart is now available on Drivethru. I really like how the art is reminiscent of the Far Side.

• Beyond the Black Stars is a chunky adventure and supplement for the excellent Outcast Silver Raiders. It's good to see OSR get some extra support with adventures and supplements.

• Crumbling Keep has released A Hoard of Dragons, a supplement all about dragons for OSE. It's "funding" through Drivethru, with the publisher adding content the more purchases there are. I've seen a couple of other publishers do this as well, and it seems like a nice, low-key way to both promote your work and gauge interest without the stress of a crowd-funding campaign.

• Reptilian Owl Dad has released Gestalt Flux . . . and I'm honestly not sure how to describe it, other than it is weird and wacky and has some of the most charming art I've seen recently (also by the author). It's PWYW, too.

• Nate Treme and the Highland Paranormal Society has releasd Dogtooth Valley, the first in their series of "Pocket Realms", a small region with adventures and points of interest, designed to be plopped down into an existing campaign or world. They've also just released FAR, a pared down, simplified version of 5th edition. Like A Hoard of Dragons, Nate expects to be expanding the content -- and the price -- over time, so if you get in now you should be getting all that additional content for free.

• Cursed20 Games has just released Scalemail, an OSR game where all of the rolling is done by the players. It looks like it's got some interesting concepts, and there's a Quickstart Guide available for it as well.

• Now that it's out to backers, my remix of B1 -- In Search of the Unknown is up in pdf, print on demand, and staplebound offset. It takes the premise of B1 -- adventurer heroes beat back a horde of barbarians, found a stronghold, and then vanish after journeying to the land of the barbarians, and spins it into the first book of a longer campaign. You can get it on Drivethru as well as the Sabre website.