OSR News Roundup for September 22nd, 2025

We're heading into the tail end of September, and staring down towards the end of 2025. First, I'd like to apologize to Ron Sparks of BoredtoBoardGames. He reached out to me over the summer and asked me to mention his new release Against the Dark!, and I totally dropped the ball on it. Sorry! So, he gets a special shoutout. Against the Dark! is written for Shadowdark and has two new ancestries and five new classes. Most intriguing to me is that it includes grafting rules, for players interested in grafting different monster parts onto their body to gain supernatural abilities.

With that out of the way, and my sincerest apologies, let's jump into the meat of the Roundup, shall we?

• Few have done more to support and promote the OSR-style of gaming than Jason Hobbs, and he's just released Bite the Bullet, and Into the Odd-adjacent, We Deal in Lead (by Colin Le Sueur) inspired game of post-apocalyptic gunslingers.

• The deluxe version of What Dust Remains, by momatoes, is now available on itch. This is a GM-less game for 1-3 players that explores legacy and sacrifice, and is absolutely gorgeous. The layout is stunning. If this doesn't get an Ennie nomination next year I'll be shocked.

• Belly of the Beast is an adventure for Cairn 2e, set in the soon-to-immolate corpse of an enormous, ancient dragon. Can you retrieve the many treasures contained within its bellies before the great wyrm bursts into flame?

• Roundup favorite Amanda P was kind enough to send me an advance copy of Orestruck, their new adventure. It's a whirlwind of an adventure, sent in the same Tannic forest as her previous adventure, and has a number of sub-plots and tales woven together around the central theme. It's available on itch and Drivethru. It's a delight, and while I've just read it and haven't had a chance to run it I strongly suggest checking it out.

• Rune-Borg is a background inspired by the Cairn 2e Science-Fantasy Background jam, and itself is inspired by the TV show Arcane, speaking of grafting.

• Promising to release before Halloween, A Haunting in Glass is currently funding on Kickstarter. It's an adventure for Shadowdark, designed for characters between levels 3-5, with strong themes of horror and madness.

• Empedocles the Wizard has released Rest and Recovery in Bathhouses, a little pamphlet with system-agnostic mechanics for health and healing using bathhouses, saunas, and relaxation.

• I thought I had posted about Glatistant, but it looks like I didn't. It's a two-player Arthurian rpg, where one player takes the role of the knight errant and the other the role of the questing beast. It's a neat concept, and I really like the art.

• Pest Control is a mini-dungeon published by Neoclassical Geek Revival, available in print from this booth at GenCon2025.

• Invasion of the Space ROBOTS is an expansion to Forbidden Psalms, a miniatures game based on and inspired by Mork Borg.

• Written for Shadowdark, Veilstone is a gothic western, set on an alternate Earth, during the California gold rush.

• The Morksons is a Mork Borg hack that lets you play morbid families of TV: the Addams Family, the Munsters, Beetlejuice, and more.

• One of my first rpg purchasers as a youngster was the collected B1-B9 In Search of Adventure, and I remember The Journey to the Rock clearly. Journey Under the Rock is inspired by that module, with a little bit of Donkey Kong country mixed in.

• I've released the Ranger for Bree-YARC, levels 1-4 of the ranger class for the Bree-YARC Quickstart. It's my take on a magic-less ranger.