OSR News from the Underdark Gazette - Sunday, January 30, 2011

(Note: The Link to the S&W WB Draft has been updated.)


Two New 1st Edition Modules From Dragonsfoot!

DF29 Ruins of the White Watch by Andrew Hamilton. Cover art by Paul Fini and Christy Cameron Smith. Interior art by C. Wesley Clough. Maps by Andreas Claren. Available as a Free PDF. 29 pages.

Centuries ago the White Watch defended the land. Then it fell and it's location was lost... until now. Who knows what treasures could be found in its depths. An adventure for a party of 6, of levels 5 to 8.

DF28 The Banked Swamp by Steve Temple. Art by Antti Hulkkone. Maps by Andreas Claren. Available as a Free PDF. 20 pages.


A thick mist, a splash heard in the distance, the lure of treasures untold... Welcome to The Banked Swamp, an adventure for a low-level party, that can be dropped into nearly any campaign.


A complete list of modules and supplements available from Dragonsfoot may be found here.

Joe's Going To Entice Me To Pick Up This Game, Yet!

Creatures Below The Shattered Moon - Volume 4 by Joseph Browning. Art by David Esbri, Joan Guardiet and Rick Hershey. Expeditious Retreat Press. Available in PDF for $3.00. 5 pages.

After the cracking of the moon and before the rise of Atlantis the world was a place strange to the thoughts of honest men. The death throes of science amid the birth of magic sculpted new generations of conquerors who strode the lands forging civilizations of steel, sinew, and sorcery from the decrepit hulks of the ones that fell before. Tyrannical wizards, amoral super-scientists, charismatic catalysts, and multifarious mutants battled for wealth, power, and honor. It was ten thousand years of barbarity; ten thousand years spent in the shadowy shells of past glories, hiding from horrible creatures that scratched and skittered for blood; ten thousand years of tyranny and injustice, ten thousand years of Sorcery & Super Science!

This short PDF provides a harried GM with 18 new creatures, suitable for various power levels and certain to bring additional life to the world under the shattered moon.

Don't forget to pick up the Sorcery & Super Science! Core Rules as well as download The House of Blue Men, a free adventure featuring quickstart rules. Also don't forget about Creatures Below the Shattered Moon - Volume 1, 2, and 3 and Objects Below the Shattered Moon - Volume 1 and Volume 2. Finally, drop by our Sorcery & Super Science Blog for additional Sorcery & Super Science goodness!

Fight On! With Some Swords & Sorcery Fiction!

Roll the Bones edited by Ignatius Umlaut. Available in print for $19.99 and in  PDF for $8.00. 379 pages.

With Roll the Bones, Fight On! Publications takes its first foray into fantastic fiction! These 22 thoroughly thrilling tales feature weird enclaves, black pits, dragons, knights, faeries, love, hate, vengeance, apotheosis, lepers, ostriches, Cerberus, bush nazis, a prodigious golden horde, several curses, and much, much more! If you are looking for weird tales to inspire your own adventures, read on break at work or before falling asleep at night, or simply for sheer pleasure, look no further! With exceptional art by Mark Allen and stories from Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Michael D. Turner, Duncan Sandiland, Alicia Rieske, Tracie McBride, Andrew Knighton, Kristen Lee Knapp, Aaron Kesher, Robert E. Keller, Eric Juneau, A.H. Jennings, John Hitchens, Lance Hawvermale, Julie Frost, Mark Finnemore, James Dorr, Raven Daegmorgan, Melissa Cuevas, and Del Beaudry, this is one anthology of swords & sorcery you won't want to miss. Fight On!

Antediluvian Printworks

Richard Tongue A.K.A. Methuslah of OD&DITIES fame, has announced he is launching a Swords & Wizardry Whitebox 'zine, Unknown Sagas:

I am launching a new fanzine, to be called 'Unknown Sagas', that will cover Swords & Wizardry: White Box. I aim to publish this fanzine quarterly, at least for the moment, and it will be produced in the digest-sized format, to match the newest release of the White Box rules, which are impending. This magazine will be distributed for free in PDF format, and a hardcopy version will be available through Lulu at cost – this will be a free fanzine, just as in the earliest days of OD&DITIES.

Now, naturally, such a fanzine is nothing without submissions, so I'm calling for writers and artists! No submission restrictions on content, this fanzine is to be by the fans and for the fans; that's the whole idea of a fanzine. I'll take spells, monsters, adventures, house rules, classes, rants, poems, campaign write-ups, short stories, anything in fact that the readers wish to send in! The rules system used in any article should be 'White Box', naturally, and submissions, ideas, questions and comments should be in Word, Open Office or rtf format, to methuslah1@yahoo.co.uk.

Richard has consolidated his blogs into the Antediluvian Printworks site, where you can keep up with Unknown Sagas and his other projects.

And Speaking of Swords & Wizardry Whitebox

Matt Finch has posted a link to the review draft of the new Mythmere Games version of Swords & Wizardry Whitebox.  Kudos to Matt, Marv and the gang at the Swords & Wizardry Forums for jumping on this so quickly! Available as a free PDF download.

Need A Sandbox and Dungeon To Go With That Whitebox?

R. W. Chandler of Black Hole Diaries has a 5 page PDF available for free download, Crypts of Aezoul Vhezian Level 1. As well as a very handsome worldmap, The Land of Numendyr.

For The Star Frontiersman

Adventure Idea Factory by William Logan. Art by Shane Tyree and William Logan. DwD Studios. Available in PDF for $5.00. 24 pages.

Fantasy adventures are so easy to make up… slay the dragon, save the princess, stop the advancing goblin horde. But those of us who love science fiction role-playing games have a lot more work to do in coming up with imaginative adventures in the vastness of space.

Until now.

So grab your dice and this booklet… and in a few minutes you’ll have a new and imaginative adventure concept sketched out and just waiting for a group of intrepid players. This book will spur on your imagination, will give you new ideas that you may not have come up with on your own.

This book is compatible with all science fiction role-playing games and contains a large amount of inspiration for game masters. It is the first of DwD Studios Game Master's Accessories.

DwD Studios are the guys who bring us Star Frontiersman and the Star Frontiers Remastered PDF's, which are available for Free. They've also recently put out a Minor NPC Cards PDF, for free download.


The Times They Are A-Changing

And Greg Christopher of the Errant RPG blog has a character portrait Smartphone App for free download.

I'm Going To Be Lazy And Just Forward Dyson's Forum Post

Dyson Logos of A character for every game posts a weekly link recap for his blog to the Goblinoid Games Forums. What, with all the cool maps, geomorphs and other goodies he posts, it'll be a lot quicker if I just forward this:

Another week, and a tragedy for me - my hard drive AND backup drive both got blown out somehow last night during a routine backup. So Dodecahedron 2 will be delayed a bit.

But this week we did get some cool old-school stuff out... and a LOT of mapping goodness (3 maps in one week? Madness!)

• Geomorph Madness! (seriously, you have to say it like Ren Hoek saying "Space Madness!") - a photo of over 250 geomorphs put together into one megadungeon to end them all!

• Dungeon Creation Game - A map and a link to the game elf23 started on these very forums!

• The Zombie Cabs of Parrain - A bit of flavour material from my D&D campaign setting - giant undead ogres as taxis.

• One Hour Dungeon Map - One of my best maps. In only an hour!

• Random Thursday - Brigands, Bandits & Highwaymen - a d12 table to add a bit of spice to the Bandits wandering monster entry.

• Friday Map - The Great Underground - A map of a huge underground complex - or a series of complexes linked in various ways.

Thanks Dyson, for sharing all this great work!

D&D Without Funny Dice? 

eggofcoot posted an RTF file of his Big Brown Book, a few months ago. The BBB is a clone of the LBB's, which only use d6's. If you scroll down, he's recently put it in PDF format as a Free download. 

Oops! Sorry Samwise! (I May Be The Only Person Besides Frodo To Have Ever Said That.)

But I've been relying on your posts to the Goblinoid Games Forums to let me know when you've updated the video blog. I haven't seen such a post in a few weeks and sure enough, I checked the channel page and you've got more stuff up! Head over to Samwise7's Youtube Channel for some gaming goodness!

One Grognard's Opinion: Lovecraft Edition

Johnathan Bingham of Ostensible Cat has a review of Charnel Crypt of the Sightless Serpent. 

Beedo of Dreams in the Lich House has a review of LotFP: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing. 

ckutalik of Hill Cantons has a review of Realms of Crawling Chaos, Part I and Part II.

JDJarvis of Aeons & Auguries has a review of Realms of Crawling Chaos. 

Pookie of Reviews from R'lyeh has a review of All the Treasures of the World: Jewels. 

Carter Soles of The Lands of Ara has a review of The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft. 

Tenkar of Tenkar's Tavern takes a first look at Realms of Crawling Chaos.

FrDave of Blood of Prokopius has a review of Realms of Crawling Chaos. 

Paul Gorman of Quickly, Quietly, Carefully has a review of Realms of Crawling Chaos.

White Haired Man has a review of the Errant RPG. 

We Need More Quixotic Bastards

Alexis of The Tao of D&D posted an overview of the recent updates to the Same Universe Wiki. 

Meet The Delving Deeper Team!

John Adams of Brave Halfling Publishing posted the first installment of his Delving Deeper Development Blog. Here's a tiny excerpt, which tells us who's doing what:

Here is our team:

• Writer: Cameron Dubeers

• Editor: David Macauley

• Artist: Mark Allen

• Layout: John Adams

Groovy! Click this link for more.

A Character Sheet!

Chris Creel of The Polyhedral Dicebag has a Generic Fantasy RPG Character Sheet you might like. 

Time For Some Gamer Porn

Scadgrad of The Savage Sword of Scadgrad has A Campaign Map for Stonehell Dungeon. 

JDJarvis of Aeons & Auguries has another Dungeon Map for you. 

sirlarkins of The RPG Corner has made and posted a really, really sweet post-apoc map you might want to yoink. 

I linked R. W. Chandler's World Map: The Land of Numendyr already, but I'm doing it again because it's so awesome!

Convention News!

It's all about Cyclopeatron this week, who has kindly made an Upcoming Games page, to keep us up to date on what he's running at various Conventions. He also has a page on the O. C. Gameday, taking place on March 20, so if you're in California you might want to check it out.

What I'm Pimping This Week

This week, I'm pimping the Draft release of the new Swords & Wizardry Whitebox PDF. Matt's asking for input, so if you're a Whitebox aficionado, head over to the forums and throw in your two coppers!

About The News

Unless otherwise noted, all links to products and files are to the individual authors sites, pertinent posts, or sales pages. I don’t link directly to files, unless that is the only link available. The OSR News is produced as a service to the community and is entirely a non-commercial endeavor on my part. I have received no remuneration for advertising, reviewing or reporting on any of the items appearing herein. Please feel free to send me information on any new releases, events, or other items of interest, which you would like to see mentioned.

As always, the What I’m Pimping This Week section of the OSR News and its accompanying blog widget, feature products which I have purchased (or items which are available for free download) and wish to support. No one has asked me to spotlight their material in this section and I have received no payment of any kind for doing so.