u/thirdkingdom1

This weekend marks the third full year that Sabre Games and Cards has been in business. We opened three years ago on July 1st. About a third of our business is related to rpgs, and we've grown to having one of the best selections of OSR and indie gaming products on the east coast. Believe it or not, those sales outweigh official WoTC sales by about 4 to 1, a ratio that has remained fairly constant over the past three years.

Anyway, to celebrate, we're having a sale! Use the code "Birthday" at checkout through end of day on Monday and get 15% off everything in your cart. We offer fast shipping and, if I do say so myself, excellent customer support. https://www.sabregamesandcards.com/products

Welcome to the last news Roundup in June. Saturday was FreeRPGDay, when a number of FLGS around the world have free products their giving away. By all reports this was an extremely successful year (although customs delays means that stores in the UK don't have their product yet); I ordered for Sabre at the same time I always do, and was only able to order one box instead of two. I also have a submission in the bundle, From Here to There, an OSR hexcrawl. You can download the pdf for free from Sabre or Drivethru, and an at-cost POD version should be available this week.

• Bartosz N has been releasing some really neat hexmaps that are created through collaging public domain images (no AI!); they're inspired by Mythic Bastionland, but are system agnostic and really beautiful. They just released a compiled bundle of the hexes on itch.
• Written for Cairn, Liquid Euphoria is a one-shot adventure that funded earlier this year as a part of ZineMonth, and it's now available on itch.
• Originally written as a One Page Dungeon, The Sundial Siphon is a rotating puzzle dungeon that has been expanded into a 20-page adventure, and includes a printable rotating dial to make and use as a prop for your players.
• Expedition 4155 is a mashup of Liminal Horror, Into the Odd, and Swyvers, a turn of the century found-footage dungeon dive. It's a fascinating premise, and I'll be curious to see if it is able to pull it off.
• I'd mentioned Sword& awhile back, the official zine put out by the NSR Discord community. They've just released Sword& Vol. 2 on itch (it will soon be released on RPGTrader, as well). The theme of this issue is "space wizards".
• Seekers, Keepers, Explorers, Wanderers (SKEW) is a new ttrpg mixing old school vibes with new school mechanics. It's in the beta phase, and the author is currently welcoming feedback.
• mucilage has just released Vol 2 of their Gadzooks! Zine for Shadowdark. House Auxor is an adventure for 2nd level characters, designed to be played through in 1 or 2 sessions, exploring the palace of an ancient doomed noble family.
• Another adventure written for Shadowdark, Hulk of the Dying Ship is a 1st level adventure that puts the PCs press-ganged into the service of a living ship.
• Slime Mind Studio has released Outcast Unseelie and the Ooze Between. It's an adventure statted for a variety of BX-style games, but there's no level range given in the description. There's a decent preview available, though.
• Nemesis Vol. 1 is out in pdf. It's a fanzine for the excellent Liminal Horror system.
• I haven't seen much coming out for the excellent, and seminal to the hobby, Black Hack recently, but I did just see the unaffiliated with Peter Regan but inspired by BH, Black Jam Post-Apocalyptic Adventure. It's a self-contained system and campaign.
• Onelung is currently funding The Cliffhanger, a zine adventure for Shadowdark. It's got a micro-hexcrawl, plus a decaying ship that's teetering on the edge of a cliff.
• I released Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 57 last week in pdf, print on demand, and retail. It finishes off the mini-dungeon from Issue 56, looks at another ruined town on the road to the abandoned city mega-dungeon of Zizdul, and has extensive rules for adding Madness to your OSR-game, with an escalating system of rolls instead of tracking sanity.

The Kickstarter for the Bree-YARC Core Ruleset is now live. It takes BX and 3.x D&D, and mashes it up into an old-school game with plenty of customization and options, without sacrificing ease or style of play. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdkingdom/bree-yarc-core-rules

I've already commissioned the cover art (above, by Juan Ochoa), and have commissioned the five starter adventures that go with it. A rough draft of the Player's Handbook is also available through Drivethru.

As many of you may have noticed, there was no news roundup last week; I was out of town and decided to take a break, but I'm back today and I'll try and cast my net back through time and cover releases from last week and the week before.

The one thing I wanted to plug in advance is a new pdf platform designed specifically for rpg sales, RPGTrader. It launched last week to some fanfare, and from everything I've gathered online is a joy to use for both publishers and consumers. The interface is certainly easier to search than itch. From what I can tell, it looks like there are mostly indie game publishers on the site now, although there are plenty of favorites from the OSR-sphere, as well. One of the immediate selling points for me as a consumer was their AI policy, which restricts products being sold on the platform to handmade only; no more wading through the rising tide of AI slop that is consuming Drivethru. You all should check it out!

Also, it's not live yet, but I wanted to give everyone a head's-up that, starting July 1st and running through August 1st the second iteration of the Appendix N jam will be live on itch. There was so much really cool stuff for it last year, a backlog of fantastic entries that I still haven't managed to get through, and it's a short window, so if you want to participate you should start brainstorming now.

• Vanishing Vault has released a really neat-looking Dungeon Generator that functions offline using inspiration from Mythic Bastionland and Bite-Sized Dungeons.
• One of my favorite things of the year-long game jams (Dungeon23, etc.) are the sparks that are generated by it to create a larger whole. This year's is City26, and participant Riles is turning their work into a monthly zine where they expand on their WIP content. It's a neat idea, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of it.
• Shaggy Sage Express is short dungeon written for Dolmenwood, designed specifically to be used as a one-shot or short campaign filler.
• Yochai Gal, the driving force behind Cairn, recently set up a Cairn Press publishing platform, and they're currently Kickstarting their first official product, a double feature of two adventures for Cairn.
• I don't think I've plugged this yet, as it went live on the Monday the roundup dropped, but Kevin Crawford is crowdfunding his latest project: The Book of Unnumbered Worlds, a collection of tools to build and populate a fantasy world. I expect this book to be in the same category as Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design, and indespensible aid to world-building and design.
• We've started to carry Vagabond recently in store, and it's been flying off the shelf. Taron is currently raising funds for an expansion to Vagabond, Spellbook: Hero Expansion!
• Troika! gets a fair number of 3rd party adventure, and a new one is Forgotten Histori-Naughts, a fun-house style adventure with a fair amount of "build-it-yourself" content.
• Mystic Bull Games has released Witch-Lords of Skull Mountain, an adventure that's written for a bunch of different systems, including Shadowdark, OSE, OSRIC, and a couple of others. I'm usually not a huge fan of this, but thought it was worth a shout-out anyway. The link is to the Shadowdark version.
• Dead Men Walking is a supplement for Mork Bork with 36 new character classes you can grab to use in your games.
• I plugged Marlo's Mire and its publishers, Swordfish Islands, in the past, and they've just released Shipwrecked in the Swordfish Islands, a system agnostic island sandbox.
• Prolific publisher The Tabletop Engineer has released Delver #20 and Runes #10; Delver is written for Old School Essentials and Runes for Shadowdark.
• Mark O'Toole has released a revised thief class for BECMI, an attempt to make the . . . unfortunately unbalanced thief work over 36 total levels.
• Mellow Golem Games has released Lair of the Swamp Beast, an OSR, system-neutral adventure designed to be dropped into an existing campaign or used as a one-shot.
• I've uploaded an art-free, not yet edited version of the Bree-YARC Player's Handbook. It's a system based on a mashup of BX and 3.x D&D, and includes the classic four classes, an additional twelve classes (bard, berserker, hexblade, etc.), spells, and a robust system of downtime activities that is integrated into leveling requirements.

Drivethru links are affiliate links.

It's the first Monday in June, and time for the first Roundup in June. Time has been flying by, as it always does. I don't seem to catch as many of the Bundle of Holding deals as I would normally like, so was glad when I caught wind of the current one, featuring the works of Dyson Logos, map-maker extraordinaire (I also really dig their other stuff, as well).

Also, since it is the beginning of June, happy Pride month, everyone! The LGBTQ community adds so much to gaming, and without you the hobby would be poorer.

• Grok (named before Musk ruined the word forever), by Lester Burton, is one of my favorite gonzo rpgs, and they've launched a Kickstarter for the 2nd edition, vastly expanding on the original zine.
• I apologize for missing this, but the Melsonian Arts Council is raising funds for a Swyvers Miscellany, an expansion to their very slick and very innovative Swyvers urban fantasy/heist system and setting. There's about a week left from the publication of this issue, so back it now before it is too late!
• Steve Cooper has released an interesting set of tables on itch, designed to generate random names based on real-world locations and dialects. They can be mixed and matched as well.
• Siblings of the Sweets is a short, tri-folk adventure for any OSR-adjacent system, inspired by Hansel & Gretel.
• I always love to promote projects with charming art, and Joe Krausz has outdone themselves with the art for Another Ocean, a one-shot scenario for Cthulhu Dark. The watercolors are outstanding.
• The Sea King's Treasure is a short hexcrawl written for Mythic Bastionland. I'm happy to see more stuff released for MB in recent months.
• Currently funding on Kickstarter, A Road that Knows your Name is a one-shot, card based ttrpg inspired by A Quiet Year that prompts you to build a vehicle out of Legos or similar materials.
• Janky Goblins, by Knight Owl Publishing, is a low-level adventure for Old School Essentials that wonders what happens if the lowly monsters tasked with guarding powerful treasures . . . use the treasures to make themselves more powerful.
• Jim Wampler of Mudpuppy Games has released Scientific Barbarian Issue 6, a wide-ranging zine devoted to MCC and other gonzo, post-apocalyptic settings.
• I interviewed Frank Reding back in February about their ZineMonth project, and it is now out: Knightcore is a set in a dark world where the characters are beacons of hope.
• Nolan-Ryan Rose has released Caribbean Encounters, a supplement for Pirate Borg that brings new encounters and monsters to the system.
• Among the Bones of Giants is a new d6 setting/system that takes place after a magical apocalypse.
• Specifically written as a one-shot for kids to introduce them to the hobby, Marcus the Mad Missing Mixologist is a short, island-based adventure written for OSE.
• It is not infrequent that I see projects released that had their germination in a game jam of one sort or another: The Isle of Ruk is one such project, a sandbox-style island adventure written for BX-style games that was inspired by the author's entry into the OSE class jam.
• Sabre has curated a pretty decent selection of queer and queer-authored rpgs that we're highlighting for Pride Month, and for the month of June all of these titles will be 20% off. We can always do better, though, and if you'd like to recommend us a title we should carry -- or if you've written such a thing -- please let me know!

Please note that the Drivethru titles are affiliate links.

Welcome to the last News Roundup for May. One of my goals for this Roundup is to promote small press and indie creators, people who may not otherwise get much publicity, or are dipping their toes into the world of publishing and have just released their first title. If I have the choice between highlighting someone's first release versus a big, well-known project like the OSE demon month, I'll pick the former every time. The OSE project has plenty of eyeballs on it, and a small blog like mine isn't really going to help them out. But smaller creators I can potentially give a much larger publicity push for.

I bring this up because of a comment someone made on a platform about their work; I wasn't aware of their work, and apologized for not mentioning it, and they responded "they're the smallest of the small". Well, two things: first, if you're a publisher, no matter how small, and have released something you'd like promoted, please let me know! As long as there's no AI or bigotry involved, I will happily do so. Second, Fenris-77 has just released the Alchemist Class for Shadowdark. It's available on both itch and Drivethru (I try to promote itch links over Drivethru, because creators get a larger cut), and is a pretty chonky, detailed supplement. Everyone should check it out!

• Weird Heroes of Public Access is a consistent best seller for us (reminds me that I need to restock!), and there's currently a project on Backerkit that's raising funds for Visitors to Fairhaven, a trilogy of zines written for WHPA. Everything's written, edited, and laid out, and just needs to go to press.
• I saw on socials a release called Sghorbi with just the most adorable illustrations I've seen in awhile. It's built off of DURF, and looks like it is going to be great fun to play.
• The Ossuary has just been released on itch. It mixes Gritty Fantasy and Undead Apocalypse, and is by Jim Pinto.
• Gourd_dwarf has just released Star Marauders: Peril and Plunder on the Stellar Seas, a game of spaceway robbery and skullduggery.
• It's not new, but it's new to me, and germane to my interests in general, so I wanted to plug Dungeon Architecture's Hexcrawl Tiles on itch. They're really cool looking.
• Donjons & Darons has released Triptyque #5, an infiltration/dungeon crawl of a notorious prison. It's available in both French and English.
• A friend of mine from high school, Aaron Dill of Jolly Lark, has been helping out with the Noir 1933 Pulp RPG currently raising funds on Kickstarter. It focuses on the unheard, marginalized voices from that time period, and reminds me a bit of Chris Spivey's excellent Haunted West.
• mucilage has just released the first issue of Gadzooks, a zine for Shadowdark, with the aim of releasing a regular series of short adventures that can be completed in a short amount of time.
• Speaking of Shadowdark, David Okum has just released The Goblinoid Incursion. Exploring an abandoned orcish temple leads to mayhem?
• I'm not aware of their work, but Kobold King has just released a supplement called "Mini Settings", a guide to creating small sandbox regions larger than an adventure but smaller than a campaign. It's also their first release on Drivethru, so I'm curious to see what folks think of it.
• Will of Forbidden Psalms fame has just released Invasion of the Daemons of Disorder, a short supplement for their line of products that adds demons to the setting. As a reminder, Sabre is now fulfilling Forbidden Psalm products in the US, so if you order from Will's webstore we'll be the ones shipping it to you. They've also released Legitimate Salvage, a game of corporate space horror, and its supplement Dead Silence.
• Simple Coastal Boat Mechanics is a supplement for fantasy games that pretty much does what it says on the tin.
• Wytchin Hour has just released a bundle compiling all of their terrain generators, which is a useful resource for folks creating a hexcrawl or setting.
• Tower of the Mothman is an adventure for Shadowdark set in an abandoned lighthouse.
• I interviewed Grim Games a couple of months ago about their zinequest project, and it has just been released. The Colour Out of Space is a 68-page, Lovecraft-inspired adventure for Shadowdark. If anyone's wondering what happened to the Sabre Rattlings podcast, the city has been doing roadwork outside the store for the past month and a half (where I record the episodes) and it has just been too loud to properly record. Once the roadwork is done (hopefully by the end of June) I'll be resuming my interviews.
• Populated Hexes Monthly Issue 57 is currently funding on Kickstarter, and includes rules for adding madness and insanity to OSE and other similar games. I'm pretty pleased with how the madness rules worked out, inlcuding an escalating scale of intensities triggered by stress.

Please note that the Drivethru links are Affiliate links.

The fan Necrotic Gnome Discord server will be hosting an AMA tomorrow evening (Wednesday, May 20th, EST) about the current Demon Month Backerkit event, the new 2026 OSE release, and more. We're still not sure of the exact starting time, but if you'd like to come join us the Discord invite link is here: https://discord.gg/8GVfus9fV3

Welcome to the second news Roundup in May. As I'm sure most readers are aware, it is OSE Month on Backerkit, and there are a number of projects being funded in conjunction with two official Necrotic Gnome releases: the Demonic Grimoire and the new 2026 Core release. There are a lot of really cool projects being funded, and a lot of community enthusiasm for the collab.

For fans of the Casket of Fays fanzine, the publishers have provided this code to get 1.50 off the print version of Issue 18.

• directsun crowdfunded A Familiar Tower during this year's ZineQuest, and it is now out and available on Drivethru. They've become synonomous with puzzle dungeons, and this release is no exception.
• haboobies has released wizardbong, a system-neutral, tongue-in-cheek, supplement for more modern games, written as a school report. More importantly, it's their first release, and I will always plug first-time creators and their work!
• Deserting the Illusions of a Safe Rest is a collection of random events that can happen while the party is resting for the night. It's specifically for the author's system, but can be easily adapted to other games, as well.
• SDDND has released the first in a series of 6 planned themed one-page dungeons: Dungeon Cookbook Delves #1, using Cairn.
• Another adventure for Cairn is Toxic Tangle, with delightful art, featuring a possible dead moonshiner.
• The Red Plague, by Dongons and Darons, is a point-crawl adventure for OSE that is available in both English and French! It's also urban-based, which is something I see a lot of people asking about.
• Written for Mork Borg, the Dreadful Citadel of Urzengotz is a multiplanar urban setting location inspired by weird science fantasy.
• Flailing in Style has released two short adventures for Pirate Borg: The Lightless Sea and Tropical Terrors.
• Fated is a system-neutral, tarot-based system for generating NPCs and encounters.
• Whispers of the Burrow Gods is a setting expansion for the Mice of Legend publication, exploring the pantheon and worshippers of the Portal Lake region.
• Ever & Anon, the spiritual successor to Alarums and Excursions, has just released Issue 11 of the free fanzine.
• FLAIL is a cool system by Games Omnivorous, and I'm glad to see it's getting some 3rd party support. The Horrors Beneath Zamorcia is a short dungeon for use with FLAIL, available as PWYW.
• Games Omnivorous themselves have released Cult of the Mutant Mutton for FLAIL.
• Might as Well Jump is a Mausritter sci-fi adventure released in conjunction with PocketQuest month on Drivethru. My guess is that, due to the richness of the theme and content, this will be expanded in the future.
• Every so often I'll plug a crowdfunding project that doesn't look like it will hit its funding goal, but is interesting enough that I think it deserves some exposure: Into the Barrowlands is such a project, a low-fantasy hexcrawl setting inspired by Arthurian legends. It's only got a couple of days left to fund, and is a ways off from their goal.

Welcome to the first News Roundup for May, 2026. To forestall questions, yes, I am aware that OSE Month, but I try not to plug stuff until they go live, so I'll be looking at those projects next week, since the official launch date is the 6th. Last week was pretty heavy on the releases, compared to the previous few weeks, and it really seems like back to normal.

• The Lone Legend has released Gloam, a stand-alone system using tarot that is inspired by His Majesty the Worm, Burning Wheel, Forbidden Lands, Dolmenwood, and the excellent Neverland by Andrew Kolb.
• swanandravenstudio has released Tradlife, a short, psychological horror rpg based on the current trend of tradwifery.
• The excellent Machine Gods of the Noxian Expanse is getting the Mork Borg treatment, and is currently funding on Kickstarter. It's set in a post-apocalyptic, feudal society, ruled over by god-like AIs that once served man before the world fell.
• Shrine of the Cabbage God is an interesting, BX-style dungeon written for a party of 4th-6th level. It involves the shrine of a petty god, which always piques my interest!
• Published by Hellwinter Forge of Wonders, The Seventh Star is a pretty neat adventure written for Dolmenwood.
• I'm not familiar with Experimental Playground, but they've just released Kosmos, a rules-lite science fantasy game that looks pretty intriguing.
• Kaiser is a heroic fantasy hack of Mork Borg, and Heroes of Yore is a newly released player supplement for that system that adds tons of new options.
• The Lone Adventurer: Failed Harvest is an adventure written for OSE designed specifically for two person play -- one Referee and one player -- which between solo and traditionally party assumptions is not something we see that much of.
• The illustrious Rob Conley has released Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: The Northern Reaches, a massive, much-anticipated release that expands their setting.
• Pickpocket Press has released the Argosa NPC Deck, a seventy card deck used to generate NPCs for fantasy games (it's technically system neutral).
• Swyvers is an excellent, urban rpg that centers around thieves, heists, and cons, and I was excited to see Rare Birds, a heist written just for Swyvers.
• Written for Shadowdark, The Strangled Wood is a forest-crawl adventure that features art by one of my favorites: Carlos Castilho.
• The Fantasy Trip is a classic, innovative (for its time) game that has seen more love over the past few years, and just learned there's a free fanzine dedicated to it! The Heresy zine is on it's 4th issue.
• The Last Broadcast is a fascinating hack of Mork Borg, a game of doomed pilgrims and decaying transmissions.
• Rod Waibel is crowdfunding Shadow Fables, a bestiary for Shadowdark based off of real-world mythology, fairy tales, and legends.
• Mythworks is winding down a Kickstarter for Breathless, Frighmare edition, a game of survival zombie horror.
• The reprint crowdfunding of the Into the Wild Omnibus is still ongoing, with a little more than a week to go. I'm almost out of the original print run of this book, and decided to order another run, but it's a large up front outlay, so I decided to run a quick Kickstarter for it.

Note that the Drivethru links are Affiliate links.

I had posted a few months ago here about the death of one of the customers to the FLGS that I own. Mike Brindle was a fixture in the gaming community here in Charlottesville, for long before our store opened, and brought a wealth of lore and kindness to the gamers in the area. He was especially fond of Battletech, and when he died this fall we decided we wanted to do something to honor him.

We held a memorial tournament for him on Saturday, with a dozen Mechwarriors participating, packing our small store to the brim. I've included some photos from the event. Would also like to thank u/swankmotron for donating several copies of his books, signed.

If anyone's in the Charlottesville area, we have some of Mike's painted BT minis on display (Sabre Games and Cards).

Welcome to the last News Roundup for April. I don't usually post links to software-related projects, but I've got two this week that were brought to my attention: a simple turn tracker on itch, and there's also One More Adventure on Steam, an explicitly OSR hexcrawl rogue-like game. Otherwise, it's a short one this week.

• Halls of the Witch Queen is a free adventure for Cairn 2e, in which the adventurers are enticed to explore a ruined castle that is rumored to contain a relic of the witch queen.
• There's likely to be increased interest in Mythic Bastionland as 3d6 Down the Line prepares to jump into their new campaign, and I saw the other day that Bart has launched The Watcher, a new myth for Mythic Bastionland.
• The prolific Joseph R Lewis has just released Kneel Before the Goblin King!, an adventure for Shadowdark.
• Hunted House is another adventure for Shadowdark, designed for characters of level 0-2.
• Will has released Invasion of the Space Troopers, bringing an invasion of space fascists to Forbidden Psalms (which Sabre is now carrying!).
• We've just started to carry Vagabond in the store, and I've seen the first 3pp supplement for it this week: Thrall is a warlock-themed class for that system.
• Yochai Gal has released a collection of pregens for Cairn 2e, for free, on Drivethru.
• Joel Hines has launched Citadel of the Sun Kings, a sword and sorcery desert adventure written by rpg luminary Michael Curtis.
• Brian Shutter, of Neon Lords of the Toxic Wastelands, is crowdfunding for Neon Bastardz, a Mork Borg compatible . . . riff, I guess, on NLoTW? It's a stand-alone game, but very similar to their earlier, excellent work.
• I'm crowdfunding another print run of the Into the Wild Omnibus, since I'm almost out of my last print run. The Omnibus is an almost 400 page hardcover, smyth-sewn book that combines A Guide to Thieves' Guilds, Filling in the Blanks, and Into the Wild.

Please note that the Drivethru links are affiliate links.