I finally unpacked my OSRIC 3.0 books. Both portrait and landscape versions turned out great. PDFs are free on DriveThruRPG (player guide, gamemaster guide), while offset print versions can be purchased directly from Mythmere Games.
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.
DriveThruRPG is running a massive site-wide sale for Black Friday. I spent three days making a list of adventures, bestiaries, and supplements that I am happy to recommend and that are going for a good discount. I tried to stay away from super-popular recommendations, and focus instead on forgotten and overlooked publications I found useful.
Adventures are broken into three brackets: levels 1–4, levels 4–9, and levels 9 and higher. Bestiaries and supplements are a separate list. For the latter I focused on sandbox and world-building material. For little fun, each list has an assigned die that you can roll to determine what to look into first. :)
All the Worlds' MonstersVol. 1, Vol. 2andVol. 3. One of the earliest published bestiaries. Has that true vintage typewriter look and nonsensical monsters.
Malevolent & Benign and Malevolent & Benign II. Collects all monsters published in the Expeditions Retreat Press OSRIC modules. Each book contains 150 monsters, so 300 new monsters in total.
Monstrosities. Nearly 500 monsters. Each monster comes with an example encounter/nano-adventure. Includes tables with monsters by challenge level, guidance on creating new monsters, tables of monsters by terrain, and tables of random encounters (3d6, so normal distribution curve).
Tome of Horrors Complete. More than 700 monsters (no duplicates from Monstrosities). Again, each comes with a small encounter. Includes mundane animals as well. See Swords & Wizardry bestiary analysis here.
Hacklopedia of Beasts. Detailed bestiary with a lot of reusable details like size comparison charts, combat tactics, habitat & society, ecology, and yield.
The Monster Overhaul. Inteded to be a generic monster manual for a generic OSR system. Includes a little bit over 200 monsters, many with associated random tables.
Supplements — 1d6
How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox. Practical step-by step guide on how to create your own sandbox. Written by Robert Conley, a Wilderlands legend. (Watch out for his Majestic Fantasy Realms as well, forthcoming.)
Book of Lost Tables. Includes 348 random tables for generating random wilderness terrain, random wilderness encounters, random dungeon terrain, random dungeon encounters, random urban terrain, random urban encounters, character parties, and more. Very much in the styled of AD&D 1e tables.
HârnManor and Medieval Manager. Detailed procedures and guidance on creating and managing a manor, including simulating economy. The latter includes conversion to gp for ease of use.
Even more recommendations
Here are previous sales recommendations: 2024, 2023, 2022. Don't hesitate to reach out should you have a great recommendation yourself.
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)
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)
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!
Advanced Adventures OSRIC (AD&D 1e retroclone) line by the Expeditious Retreat Press is on sale for 50% off until end of February. At the moment it counts 46 modules. Here are some of my favourites that I am happy to recommend (sorted by level range instead of module code):
Modules have nothing to do with each other (except few exceptions like Shadowvein and White Dragon Run), and they are easy to integrate in any sandbox game. Page counts are small, text is dense, maps are play-oriented. Just how I like it.
