OSR News Roundup for April 28th, 2025

It's the last Monday in April, and that means it's time for the OSR News Roundup for this week. I've managed to tear myself away from getting our garden ready to compile a list of some of last week's releases and crowdfunding projects. First off, I'd like to plug a project of my own. I'm currently raising funds for Mind over Matter, a psionics supplement for OSE and other OSR games. I'm pretty pleased with the book -- I think the system I've come up with simplifies psionics, and I've also included a secondary system inspired by the 3.5 book Tome of Battle: Book of Nine Swords. If such a thing sounds interesting to you I can certainly use your support!

• As I'm sure most folks are aware, Knock #5 is currently funding on Kickstarter.

• One of the words of advice I often hear from experienced Referees is the phrase "just use bears". This, of course, refers to the practice of reskinning bear stats when creating new monsters. Now, Dice Goblin Games as published Just Use Bears, or Wolves, or Spiders.

• Dustatron has released a pack of 20 pre-generated characters statted for Cairn, to make it even easier to run one-offs or introduce new players to the game.

• The world can seem pretty bleak these days, so I was pleased to see the Build a Better World ttrpg jam, that launches today. It's organized by the folks at the Lost Bay Discord server, and I'm excited to see what comes out of it.

• Odds & Ents is also hosting an itch jam, this one their first: The Desert Dwelling Jam, where you submit entries based on an asset pack they created. It doesn't start for a month, but I wanted to get it in here before I forget about it.

• Skinkworks Game is running their first Kickstarter, raising funds for Milk Run, a scenario of Mothership designed as a one-shot.

• Another Mothership project is Salvage Run, not an adventure but a toolkit designed to help you create derelict ships and salvage/rescue scenarios.

• And here's another Mothership project (jeez, must be something going on!): Providers. It's a sandbox setting based on a rimward planet controlled by a dystopian mercantile cult.

• Lichyard Games has released their first published adventure, Eye of the Watcher. It's written for OSE, and designed for 1st level characters. It looks nicely done, with hand-drawn art commissioned just for the project by Jantiff Illustration.

• Crossplanes has released Weapon Properties for the Shadowdark RPG, a short publication that adapts the 2024 D&D weapon specialization rules to Shadowdark.

• I've mentioned the works of Marc Braden and This is the Weird; they've just released Issue 1 of Shadowfolk, a zine for Shadowdark (and other similar systems) that focuses on hexcrawls and sandbox-style campaigns.

• I'm not seeing much stuff for Swords and Wizardry these days, so I wanted to be sure to mention Beneath the Ruins of Griffon Keep. It's a short adventure that packs a lot of material into 17 pages, with three dungeon levels and almost 120 keyed locations.

• Tales Forlorn is an rpg that promises an atmosphere of melancholic horror. It looks interesting, and comes with an original soundtrack to help convey the themes of the game.

• I was super excited to see Kaiser, a game based on the Mork Borg rules that's designed for heroic fantasy. Maybe this is a Borg-inspired set of rules that I won't bounce off of! Plus, the artwork is phenomenal, and is worth the purchase based on the cover art along.

• The Chateau Amongst the Stars is a point-crawl adventure written for Shadowdark, designed for parties of levels 6-7, which I think is an under-represented level range for most published adventures. It's also an interesting premise, and looks really well put together.