A Guide to Free OSR Stuff on the Web

A by no means exhaustive (yet) list of links to free OSR gaming materials. This is a collection of links to material in PDF, Word or Open Office format. Except for cases with mixed collections, I’m not yet attempting to catalogue blog, webpage or forum resources. My tentative plan is to update this once or twice a month, until it turns into something truly monstrous!

Unless otherwise noted, the links are to the pages hosting the files and not the files themselves.

Retro-Clones

Swords & Wizardry Core Rules PDF.

Swords & Wizardry Whitebox PDF.

Labyrinth Lord – No Art Version.

LL Advanced Edition Companion – No Art Version.

Mutant Future.

Osric.

Osric – High Res Version.

Spellcraft & Swordplay.

Microlite 74.

Basic Fantasy.

Rules Supplements

Monsters of Myth (Osric).

Companion Expansion – Barrataria Games.

The Swords & Wizardry Companion.

0E Swords & Wizardry Monster Book in doc format.

Supplements from the Eiglophian Press.

Supplements from the Underdark Gazette.

The Holmes Treasury.

The Holmes Blue Book Companion.

Meepo’s Holmes Companion (direct link.)

The Gray Book.

Creatures From Unknown Lands (LL).

Modules

The Outpost on the Edge of the Far Reaches by Paul Fini.

Under Xylarthen’s Tower by Jeff Rients.

Castle of the Mad Archmage.

The Lost Staves of Maurauth.

Fabled Curse of the Brigand Crypt.

The Courtyard of Gerald the Red.

The One Page Dungeon Codex 2009.

The Fane of St. Toad by Michael Curtis.

Sham’s The Dismal Depths link 1.

Sham’s The Dismal Depths link 2.

Sham’s The Dismal Depths link 3.

The Mines of Khunmar (direct link.)

Temple of the Ghoul.

Mixed Collections & Misc.

AntiPaladin Games’ Old School Fantasy Section.

Dragonsfoot.

Classic Edition Fantasy Resources. (Jason Vey’s Conan Supplements & More!)

A Quick Primer for Old School Gaming.

Star Frontiersman Downloads.

Greyhawk Grognard: Best of the Blog 2008 – 2009.

Beyond the Black Gate Compendium 2009.

Setting Supplements

The Carcosan Grimoire.

Color Carcosa Map.

The Metal Earth Resources.

Index of Freely Available Planet Algol Campaign Resources.

Encyclopedia Subterranica.

Engines & Empires.

The World of Thundarr supplement for Mutant Future.

Reference

Kellri’s PDF Downloads.

Campaign Journal from The Warlock’s Home Brew.

Magazines & Zines

OD&Dities Archive at Breeyark.org.

The Oerth Journal.

Encounter Magazine.

Other Games

Encounter Critical.

Mazes & Minotaurs. 

Dungeonslayers.

 

A New OSR Release, Some Links, and More

Robert Conley at Bat in the Attic Games has announced the release of The Majestic Wilderlands. Dubbed Supplement VI, you can read more at the link above, or check out his blog. 

Every OSR release is a cause for celebration and in the past few weeks we’ve been treated to a number of wonderful, new publications. Congratulations to Mr. Conley!

 

 

I was tooling around on the web earlier and stumbled across an essay I’ve been searching for: Don Herron’s "Conan vs. Conantics."  I’ve seen this essay referenced by REH scholars and I’m pleased to have finally found a copy. So, if anyone else is looking for it, here it is.

I also found Kings of the Night, a Swords & Sorcery webzine.

The John Carter of Mars Official Site has all the novels online, art, scholarship and more.

Remember Powers & Perils, the old Avalon Hill RPG? I have no idea if it’s any good or not, but, here it is! Web version, as well as PDF’s of the originals. The Campaign Setting set is here, also. The whole thing is organized a little strangely, but, a little poking around will show what’s going on. There’s even a player directory for the game, though, it looks to be out of date.

My Recent Comments & Recent Posts widgets have quit working and have been removed. I’m not sure what the issue is, but, I’ve missed some comments which were made on other than current posts. So, for those who left a comment and didn’t receive a reply, my apologies and thanks!

Odds & Ends – Free REH Book and More!

First of all, I hereby award A Paladin In Citadel 3d10 +5 Cool Points for his new Banner. Groovy!

For the past month or so, I’ve been using Windows Live Writer for blogging. It’s pretty cool and free. You can save drafts locally; post directly to your blog; edit something after posting and repost it without creating a double post or screwing up your formatting or anything; edit the pictures, etc., you’re using; insert tables, links, videos, and other things; create various types of headings; and a lot of other stuff! No, no one has paid or strong-armed me into writing this. I found Blogger’s posting software to be a bit of a pain, and just wanted to share. BE SURE to uncheck all the crap you don’t want installed!!!! Lamentably, they try to get you to install a bunch of other programs as well. If anyone knows of any other free, quality blog posting software, please leave a comment.

I recently found a copy of Michael Moorcock’s essay, Epic Pooh, online. Taking Tolkien, et al, to task.

Crimson Shadows - The Best of Robert E. Howard Vol 1 is available  as a legal, free pdf download on Scribd. A part of the Suvudu Free Library. Over 500 pages of REH goodness, including the Conan tales The People of the Black Circle and Beyond the Black River; arguably, the finest Conan story ever written.

That’s it, for tonight. I think I’ll tool around on the laptop and go link hunting. I’ll let you know if I find anything good.

Knockspell # 3 is Out - And a Few Odds & Ends

I am really digging Peter Mullen's art!

Just in case any of these ramblings might be construed as a review, no one has asked, bribed, paid, coerced, or otherwise enticed me to write any of the following. I purchased pdf’s of all three Knockspells over the past week from Black Blade Publishing. Go thou, and do likewise! The PDF’s are $4.00 each. A saddle stiched print version of # 3 is available for $10. I had trouble using Google Chrome to download from Black Blade, so, I pulled up Explorer (ugh!) and it worked just fine. I didn’t check Firefox, as I haven’t yet reloaded it after having to reformat my laptop a couple of weeks ago.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably very familiar with the Old School blogoverse and the more famous denizens thereof. So, you’re already well aquainted with the writings of many of the contributors and already know if Knockspell is up your alley or not. It’s up mine and I’ll be purchasing future issues.

That reminds me, Philotomy's OD&D Musings site has disappeared. Fortunately,  a version of his oft quoted essay, “The Dungeon as Mythic Underworld” appears in Knockspell # 2.

My links section is shaping up nicely. I’m trying to provide the best, content rich collection of links I can, serving as a truly useful resource for my readers, as well as myself. If you know of anything that should be listed, please leave a comment. Recent additions include The Motherload of Greyhawk maps, The Motherload of Mystara maps, and The Isomage's House, which doesn’t have a whole lot of content, but, does feature a very nice color hexmap that will please fans of Joel Rosenberg’s The Guardians of the Flame series. Also, Jason Vey has produced a Hyborian Age OD&D Supplement, which can be downloaded in pdf form at his Classic Edition Fantasy Resources site. I haven’t read it yet, but, it looks quite nice and is formatted in the style of the old TSR publications. Thank you, Mr. Vey.

And a very special thanks to the folks who have added me to their blogroll.

Starting a New Map; Also, a Few Odds & Ends

I decided to create a new world for my upcoming AD&D campaign. Not sure of much, yet. I doodled out a map outline and decided to see what I would do with the thing.

It turned out kind of strange, but, I  scanned it and loaded it into Gimp. If you haven’t tried your hand at digital mapmaking and are interested in doing so, graphic editing programs are an excellent way to go. You can spend several hundred dollars on Adobe Photoshop, or, download Gimp - Gnu Image Manipulation Program. It’s free and awesome. You might also want to check out The Cartographer's Guild, a forum for fantasy cartography enthusiasts. The people are friendly, helpful and there are several tutorials to get you started. Some of the Guild mapmakers produce work that puts to shame a lot of what you see in professionally done RPG supplements (like the butt-ugly Forgotten Realms 3.0 map.) This is only my second map using Gimp, but, I’ve already learned quite a bit and I’m looking forward to tackling a city map in the near future.

Here’s a low res copy of what I’ve gotten done so far:

I need to play with the water layer a bit more. It’s a little too busy.

Other than that, I’ve added a few more links. Speaking of which, other than the excellent Candlekeep and the Forgotten Realms Wiki, I can’t find any decent Forgotten Realms sites. If you know of any quality FR links, let me know.

Speaking of sites worth visiting, if you haven’t checked out Planet Algol, you’re missing a treat!

Getting Back Into the Swing of Things. (Complete with Maps and lotsa links for the Laptop DM.)

Wherein my New Used Laptop inspires me to begin DMing again. 

So, a few weeks ago my wife says to me, “I think I want a new Laptop.” At the time, we had five computers in the house: the desktop in the den which my son and I use, my wife’s work computer (she’s a programmer and works from home), an old obsolete Compaq that was serving out the rest of its days as an overly large paperweight, the decent backup computer which my wife found at a yardsale for five dollars (Woo-Hoo), and the old Laptop.

We purchased the old Laptop about two years ago and we were quite excited. I had never owned a laptop and was rubbing my hands together in excitement at the prospect of being able to Toilet Surf, ride around on long trips while playing Neverwinter Nights, and having a cool new toy in general. I began dming with our laptop and was thrilled with the organizational powers that were now at my disposal. But, due to health and other issues, I put my Campaign on hiatus and not long thereafter my wife had to ship her work computer to the home office so her supervisor could perform some esoteric programming ritual on it, thus necessitating her using the laptop for work. When the work desktop came home, my spouse decided, for various reasons, that she needed both computers. In her off hours, she would use the laptop to play Toontown and pursue other interests; thus, I no longer got to use the laptop as my wife had totally appropriated the thing.

So, when she purchased her shiny new laptop the old one fell to me; I was quite giddy at the prospect of being able to wallow in my Big Man’s Recliner with my New Used Laptop surfing the web, playing games, and wasting time in general. I began setting the thing up, loading my software, etc. When I got around to loading Gimp, I got to thinking about my homebrew campaign world and how much I missed playing D&D.

Gimp is graphic editor, kind of a free version of Adobe Photoshop. http://www.gimp.org/. I was turned onto Gimp by the fine folks at The Cartographers Guild http://www.cartographersguild.com, a forum for fantasy cartography enthusiasts. The Guild has some incredibly talented mapmakers, some of whom produce higher quality stuff than I’ve seen in the vast majority of professionally produced RPG products. Photoshop, Gimp, and CC2 are the tools of choice for most of the mapmakers in the guild, and since the Gimp is free…

Back before the hiatus, I was running a 3.5 game set in Kastmaria, my 23 year old Homebrew world. I had usually drawn my maps by hand, but decided that a digital map would be more convenient. So, armed with the various tutorials posted at the Guild, I set about learning to use Gimp and making new versions of the maps for Kastmaria. I was about two-thirds of the way finished when I stopped running games, and the map in progress sat stored on the desktop for over a year. About two months ago I played with it a little more, finally finishing everything except the text layer. 

I like the way it turned out, but now that I have a little bit of experience with Graphic Editors, I know I can do much better next time.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how much I missed DMing, and I decided to run another game. For various reasons, it wouldn’t be practical to begin until the first of the year, which gave me plenty of time to get things set up. So I dug out my old files, and began setting up my New Used Gaming Laptop!

The first thing I wanted to set up was DM Secretary http://barncatsoftware.org/dmsec.htm, a free Campaign Manager. Version 5.whatever had been released and amongst other changes had been set up for 4E. At the time, I was still planning on a 3.5 game, but the best features of the program weren’t system specific anyway, and it was still usable for any RPG. I then loaded the old AKS Hexmapper program, another free piece of software (Sorry, you’ll have to google this. Be sure to get the tile sets made by various users, as these are superior to the ones that come with the program. If you can’t find any of this email me.) The hexmapper is rather useful for making quick area maps. Here’s an AKS Hexmapper map of the Country of Triested from my campaign world.

The program makes old school style hex maps, which are guaranteed to warm the heart (or tickle the, er, fancy) of any Gygax Era Gamer.

I had misplaced my copy of the Waterdeep Event Generator, so I went to Candlekeep to download another copy http://www.candlekeep.com. This neat little free program can be used with any large fantasy city, and will generate random big city street scenes, as well as pick pocket results. Candlekeep has a lot of cool stuff, including an AWESOME pdf Waterdeep map which is incredibly detailed, featuring maps going all the way down to individual streets! I wanted to use this map so badly that I almost decided to run a Forgotten Realms campaign and I’m still toying with the idea.

I then spent a few days scouring the web for more programs. (I excel at finding creative and useful ways to waste time.)

Next I downloaded Dungeon Crafter III, http://www.dungeoncrafter3.com, a free dungeon map and tile maker; not many objects come with the program, but if you head over to the Dundjinni forums, all the fanmade objects work in DC3, so you can get a ton of stuff. I haven’t tested this program yet, so I’m not sure if I’ll end up going with it or shelling out the cash for Dundjinni http://www.dundjinni.com.

Then there’s Tavernmaker; http://www.tavernmaker.de/eng/men-eng-inf.htm, another free program which generates taverns complete with patrons, rumours and a map! (God, I’m such a Geek.)

Still planning on running 3.5, I set about recreating another lost file, my huge NPC database. Scouring the web, I began amassing as many NPC’s as I could find. For those looking for NPC’s, here’s a good place to start: http://d20npcs.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.

God knows, creating NPC’s for 3.5 is so labor intensive that DM’s need all the help they can get. With a good NPC database, you can find something close enough to what you want that with a little modification they’ll work just fine, thus, saving hours of time.

I then loaded my Homebrew files, and began going through everything, noting what needed to be finished or modified. “Maybe I should run a 1st edition Campaign…” I mused. I missed the atmosphere of AD&D and found DMing 1e to be more enjoyable than 3.5. The Pathfinder Beta looked pretty good as well. But looking over the 4th ed stuff was giving me some ideas, and if it was more pleasurable to DM than 3.5 then it was time to give it a try. But, did I really want to go to the time and effort of learning a new system and revising my world to work with 4e?

Learning a new game system and revising campaigns was the exact sort of thing I used to count as enjoyable, kinda like Mr. Scott getting excited at the idea of being confined to quarters and having an opportunity to read his technical manuals. Back when 4e was on the horizon, I had a generally crappy attitude about the whole subject. My health problems had me tired and depressed, so I reacted like the generally cranky person I had become and was firmly anti-4e. Now that I had some time to calm down and improve my state of mind, maybe it was time to give 4e a chance. Maybe.