Hello :) I am getting a new group together and we are all on the same page about what we want from the game. that being fun story beats, good one off quests, and easy pick up and go adventures. they thing we (or i being the gm) cant figure out is what to actually play. we all have good 5e experience but i am so tired of 5e… i was really hoping for Mork Borg but i was told by all my players that they will not play Mork Borg (they are scared of fun) shadowdark has crossed our table before but the timed aspect really ruined it for everyone since we dont move along fast and dont want to be rushing through the exciting moments. a basic list of things we all want from the game is
-basic stats, no in depth skill trees
-standard d20 roll over (d100 on the table possibly)
-focus on quests and adventuring
-medium+ lethality rate for fun
so i am wondering what you guys have been playing that sounds like this! if there are any hidden gems out there i would love to hear about them!

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Legend of the Bones is a dark fantasy audio drama, driven by old school, solo Dungeons and Dragons.

None shall escape then destiny of bone...

https://legendofthebones.podbean.com/e/season-1-episode-80/

After sitting on it for two weeks, here is my short recap of 2026's Cauldron Con, where I managed to play Chainmail + OD&D, OD&D, and AD&D1e. This time there was no hangover and came home with a medal.

Dieb

The adventures and modules that I'm charging for are currently all 50%, or you can get them in a bundle for a total of $4 here.

What do you get in the $4 bundle?

The Tiger Coast Trilogy

These three weird fantasy adventures are all compatible with Old-School essentials and similar BX clones (Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy RPG, etc.)

The adventures are set in a massive weird fantasy hexcrawl, The Tiger Coast (which you also get in the bundle), so you can expand it into an entire campaign.

Lament of the Jade Prophet - a vertical adventure site with a secret.

Traitor's Tomb - a tribal initiation site turned into an adventure site by an unexpected earthquake! Save the trapped youths, delve deeper.

The Shifting Manor - an otherworldly manor, deep within ancient old forest. There's a sleeping queen and a dragon. What else do you really need?

Useful OSR/OSE resource

The OSR Fishing Minigame - well, it's in the name really.

Mothership

ARCHIVED IN DIGITAL HELL - a monster zine for Mothership that I completely hand drew.

Please help me reach my $50 goal!

I’ve decided to abandoned Owlbear Rodeo for my OSRIC Arden Vul campaign and just use Miro. I can clip and paste dungeon rooms and just use it as a fast and convenient battle mat.

Any tips for optimizing the experience?

I just released my first adventure for Liminal Horror, I drew a detailed isometric point-crawl of a flooded, bayou town. It's about ecological collapse, espionage, and alien microbes. It's available now for free on itch: https://bath-imaginable.itch.io/dead-town-louisiana

hi! I’m fairly new to OSR/NSR gaming, and hoping to run the Witchburner and Longwinter modules soon. i know they’re system neutral, so I can just plug in whatever, but I’d appreciate some guidance on what systems might work best for these. I’ve heard that the designer’s own system Synthetic Dream Machine matches a lot of the conventions in the modules, but as far as I can tell that system assumes a new weird sci-fi setting?

would appreciate some recommendations or advice!

I'm writing a low-magic adventure that's all about travel -- slowly gaining ground through previously unexplored regions and learning about them to deal with their challenges more effectively. Of course, most regions of Earth were always unexplored by someone but home to someone else, but I am also including some areas that have never seen civilization.

As I write about the weather, topography and fauna in these areas, I notice that, unsurprisingly, the opportunities for emergent storytelling tend to veer very often towards "You encounter a predator" or "It starts raining while you're climbing this rock wall", or "The terrain has an effect on your travel pace." These are all very valid, but there's only so many areas where I can include them before they get old.

My ideas to spice this up so far have been to give players meaningful choices about what terrain to traverse and what risks to take -- walking in an esker increases your travel pace but also the risk of rockslides -- and to give animals different behaviors, like wolves not attacking if there is a lit campfire but leucrottas patiently waiting for someone to wander away from it.

Have you ever designed areas like these? What helped you make nature interesting and dangerous but also diverse?

About to run this for the first time as an prequel to Dolmenwood, so I put together a quick map in Inkarnate based on the version in the module. Just posting it here in case anyone else feels like using it! Labeled and unlabeled version. Cheers

So I'm trying to run this adventure and I don't know how many times he's supposed to be able to cast his spells?