Attronarch's Athenaeum

News

OSRIC 3.0 Player Guide PDF has just been released for free on DriveThruRPG. Offset print and print-on-demand will be available next year, as well as GM Guide, adventures, and a host of other material.

OSRIC, Old School Reference and Index Compilation, was the first retroclone of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Released almost 20 years ago, it led the charge during early days of OSR, providing means to legally publish content compatible with AD&D.

OSRIC 3.0 brings a host of improvements, focusing on providing more explanations and examples of play, replacing dense blocks of text with more accessible layout, discards OGL, and brings the rules even closer to AD&D, just to name a few.

Learn more about OSRIC 3.0 on BackerKit.

#News #OSRIC #OSR

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Fight On! issue 17 now available on DTRPG and Lulu (POD and PDF)!

Massive issue counting 164 pages (!)—twelve pages more than the titanic third issue—featuring adventures, monsters, classes, artwork, and essays from over thirty contributors. Scroll down for full table of contents.

I contributed 7 Contrarian Practices for Running Online Games essay, outlining practices from our long-running sandbox game. This is a continuation of the 21 Lessons Learned After Running 100 Sessions essay published in the previous issue, which resonated with many readers. Several wrote to me and asked if I could write more about how we play online.

Bigger than a bull baluchitherium barreling through Bucklebury, Fight On! is BACK! Writers and artists old and new proudly present a whopping 166 PAGES of men, magic, monsters, treasures, underworlds, and wilderness adventures for your dreamworld delectation! It’s never been a better day to Fight On!

Discerning dungeoneers and daring dilettantes alike will be DAZZLED with articles, adventures, and art by Toren Atkinson, Attronarch, Zhu Baijee, Rick Base, J. Blasso-Gieseke, Calithena, Paul Carrick, Dr. John Cichowski, Jasmine Collins, Geoffrey O. Dale, Patrick Farley, Graphite Prime, Idle Doodler, Kelvin Green, Allan Grohe, Philipp H., Dave Hargrave, Cameron Hawkey, Kesher, Gabor Lux, Ripley Matthews, James Maliszewski, James Mishler, Michael Mornard, Peter Mullen, Prince of Nothing, Steve Queen, Glenn Robinson, DeWayne Rogers, Frank Scacalossi, Daniel Scherrey, Robert Scudder, Settembrini, Dan Sousa, Oakes Spalding, Anthony Stiller, Paul Swanlund, Del Teigeler, Andrew Walter, Bill Webb, Jennifer Weigel, Alex Zisch, and many more! Don’t delay – score your copy today!

Here is the table of contents:

Article Author(s) Page
Reptiles and Samurai Calithena 5
Martial Stances Jeff Hollifield 12
Grognard’s Grimoire: Codex of Droon Matt the Bastard DM 14
Knights & Knaves: Stumble Paul Swanlund 18
New Kindred for Tunnels & Trolls! Kesher 20
Return of the Ancients Prince of Nothing 22
Creepies & Crawlies: The Thoul Allan Grohe 42
Spiders, Spiders, Spiders! James Mishler 50
Lobogolem “Laster” Del L. Beaudry 61
Gems of Zylarthen, Part II Oakes Spalding 62
Black Powder Firearms Jack Griffis 68
Artifacts, Adjuncts, & Oddments Various 72
The Eshkom District James Maliszewski 75
Under Samora: Al’Murtok’s Refuge Philipp H. 85
Contrarian Practices Online Attronarch 101
Running for Large Groups Bill Web 103
Portal Fantasy Protagonists Will Mistretta 105
Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne H. Kazantzakis 108
The Charioteer’s Shrine Gabor Lux 111
Tables for Fables Reilly, Koed & Blasso-Gieseke 116
Lady Omen’s Island Glenn Robinson 122
Memories of Dave Sutherland Michael Mornard 143
Demonweb Savanna Alex Zisch 145
Rose Bush Hedge Maze Geoffrey O. Dale 151
Chainmail / Sarissa: Fomalhaut Settembrini / Gabor Lux 155
Doxy, Urgent Care Cleric Linneman / Green 162
Humor & Art J. B-G, Cal, Queen, and Scherrey 163

Back issues are available via DTRPG and Lulu.

#News #OSR #FightOn

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Labyrinth Lord: Revised & Expanded is now available on DriveThruRPG!

#News #OSR #LL

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After five decades of continuous publication, the legendary Alarums & Excursions APA has come to an end. Lee Gold shared so with us, regular contributors, in late March, and then officially in the April issue of A&E (no. 593).

A&E begun its incredible run in June 1975, and continued all until April 2025. Lee's incredible tenacity and dedication is laudable, and I am forever grateful that she—with the help of other long-time contributors—was also able to make the back-issues available for as long as she was publishing new issues. I had an honour of contributing to A&E since August 2022, publishing a total of 33 issues of the Overlord's Annals zine.

Wikipedia and Fanlore entries provide a good summary of A&E APA for anyone interested. Grossly oversimplified, it was a bundle of individual fanzines focused on role-playing games. Each contributor would send in their zine, and then Lee would edit, collate, and distribute. Contributors would often address each other in their contributions, thus creating a community. At the time when there were no blogs nor forums, this was huge.

Lee was incredibly prolific. Fight On! issue dedicated to her includes a nice little essay “World Creating as a Hobby” as well as short interview. I also recommend Meet the Woman Who by 1976 Was the Most Important Gamer in Roleplaying After Gary article and Game Design History with Lee Gold video interview.

Thank you for everything Lee!

#News #Zine

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Majestic Fantasy Realms by Robert Conley, the spiritual successor to the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, is launching soon on Kickstarter. It is a sandbox fantasy setting perfect for hexcrawl games.

Crowdfunding campaign will include:

  • Setting guidebook
  • 5 Judge maps (12” by 18”)
  • 5 Player maps (12” by 18”)

Rob will be releasing the whole setting under Creative Commons so anyone can adapt, modify, and contribute to their desire.

You can learn more about the setting on Rob's blog, and sign up to be notified upon launch at Kickstarter.

Really looking forward to it!

#News #Crowdfunding #OSR #MFRPG

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OSRIC, Old School Reference and Index Compilation, was the first retroclone of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Released almost 20 years ago, it led the charge during early days of OSR, providing means to legally publish content compatible with AD&D.

OSRIC 3.0, brings a host of improvements, focusing on providing more explanations and examples of play, replacing dense blocks of text with more accessible layout, discards OGL, brings the rules even closer to AD&D, just to name a few.

Campaign includes:

  • Player Guide (hardback smyth-sewn, landscape orientation)
  • GM Guide (hardback smyth-sewn, landscape orientation)
  • Curse of the Crooked Tower adventure by Steve “Zherbus” O’Connell (paperback)
  • Whispers of the Death God adventure by Gábor Csomós (paperback)
  • Fortress Tomb of the Ice Lich by G. Hawkins (paperback)
  • GM Screen (four panel, landscape)
  • VTT Resources (tokens and complete Foundry integration)
  • Compendium (paperback print on demand, portrait orientiation)

Learn more and back on BackerKit.

#News #Crowdfunding #OSR #OSRIC

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Update: following the reaction of fans, Goodman Games released two official announcements on their website (first, second). More details available on EN World topic.

Apparently Goodman Games shared the following at DungeonCon:

The implication is that the legendary Judges Guild module City State of the Invincible Overlord will be re-released by Goodman Games as part of the Original Adventures Reincarnated line. That is a deluxe line that reprints classics in letter-sized hardbacks, includes historical commentary, and conversion for either D&D fifth edition or Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Judges Guild produced some of the best material that hasn't been surpassed—Wilderlands of High Fantasy, City State of the Invincible Overlord, Ready Ref Sheets, just to name some—but was ultimately an unsuccessful company. They spent most of their company life lingering and licensing out their most attractive IP. That is how we got Wilderlands of High Fantasy boxed set by Necromancer Games, and then later two deluxe compilations by Goodman Games. Bud Judges Guild got cancelled hard when son (Robert Bledsaw II) and grandson (Robert Bledsaw III) of the original owner, Robert Bledsaw, went all anti-Semitic on social media. Due to this Judges Guild was removed from DriveThruRPG, and everyone in the industry broke ties with them. Goodman Games reached a special agreement to finish the second deluxe set without paying any royalties to the living Bledsaws. But all of that was in 2020. See here, here, and here for more details.

We know that Goodman Games later acquired all Judges Guild IP tied with Jaquays (see OAR7 Dark Tower, OAR9 Caverns of Thracia, and OAR9.5 The Hellpits of Nightfang), but it is unclear if that is the case with Wilderlands material as well. According to Aaron James Bledsaw, Goodman Games has licensed multiple Wilderlands IP:

We don't know much more since Goodman Games still hasn't announced anything yet—at least not officialy. Perhaps Bledsaws will use the money to refund backers they delivered nothing to.

As a big fan of Wilderlands, I must say that I am a bit surprised by including the Invincible Overlord on the cover. That tells me Goodman Games (or rather, the person responsible for the project) doesn't understand what City State of the Invincible Overlord is about. I hope they will reprint the original as they have done so far. But then again, they decided not to reprint the originals for OAR8 Grimtooth's Old School Traps and OAR9.5 The Hellpits of Nightfang, breaking the promise behind the line. I was not impressed by how OAR9 was done, nor with all the bloat that came with it. City State of the Invincible Overlord is about the map and terse key. I hope they reprint the original map in addition to whatever else they create. Either way, I will be backing this in order to get high-quality digital version of the originals.

Whatever happens in the end, the more Judges Guild material we manage to preserve, the better. I am looking forward to the official announcement from Goodman Games.

#News #GG #OAR #OSR

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OSRIC, Old School Reference and Index Compilation, was the first retroclone of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Released almost 20 years ago, it led the charge during early days of OSR, providing means to legally publish content compatible with AD&D.

New version, named OSRIC 3.0, brings a host of improvements, focusing on providing more explanations and examples of play, replacing dense blocks of text with more accessible layout, discards OGL, brings the rules even closer to AD&D, just to name a few.

Crowdfunding campaign will include:

  • Players Guide
  • GM Guide
  • Curse of the Crooked Tower adventure by Steve “Zherbus” O’Connell
  • Whispers of the Death God adventure by Gábor Csomós
  • Fortress Tomb of the Ice Lich by G. Hawkins
  • GM Screen
  • VTT Resources (tokens and complete Foundry integration)

You can read more about OSRIC 3.0 at Mythmere Games website, and sign up to be notified upon laucnh at Backerkit.

#News #Crowdfunding #OSR #OSRIC

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Wizards of the Coast have just updated the System Reference Document to include v5.2 licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License:

The purpose of the SRD is to provide a foundation of Dungeons & Dragons content on which third-party publishers can build their products. It allows creators to reference and use the base game rules of Dungeons & Dragons in their products without the need to pay a licensing fee to Wizards of the Coast.

Direct download links:

More information is available at D&D beyond SRD page.

Great news for creators focused on retroclones and similar, although most of them have moved on after the OGL debacle.

#News #OGL #AELF

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Brink of Calamity by Trent Smith is now available from DriveThruRPG:

As of about 15 minutes ago Brink of Calamity is finally live for sale at DriveThruRPG in both (softcover) print and pdf versions. Note that DriveThruRPG is increasingly their print costs substantially on April 1st and the price of the print version of this book will go up by $3 to compensate (from $22 to $25), so if you're planning to buy the print version and want to save $3 you should place your order today, tomorrow, or Monday at the latest.

Since the adventure assumes you're using the rules and content from The Heroic Legendarium anyone who doesn't already have that should consider buying the pdf bundle that includes both titles at a substantial discount over buying them separately.

This book has been long in gestation and I had doubts at several points whether I would ever get it across the finish line (and I suspect some of you readers did as well) but I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out and hope people who read about the Perlammo Salt Mines on Prince of Nothing's blog way back in September 2022 will consider it to have been worth the wait.

Also, while I'm here, I wanted to note for posterity that at some point last fall The Heroic Legendarium became a Gold bestseller at DriveThruRPG (meaning over 500 paid sales on their platform), which is pretty nice. I'm surprised by how it continues to sell, and actually sells as many or more copies per month now as it was 2 years ago, which I can only assume is coming 100% from positive word of mouth because I'm certainly not doing anything to promote it.

I greatly enjoyed reading Trent's Heroic Legendarium and consider it one of the best modern AD&D 1e supplements. Trent's writing is clear and to the point, based on many years of gaming experience. That he is a nice guy is just a bonus on top. Brink of Calamity looks great after cursory skim. It is a genuine old-school sandbox module with locales and dungeons to explore. It reminds me a bit of L-code modules for AD&D, but much better developed and presented. Looking forward to studying it closer!

#News #OSR #OSRIC #ADnD

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