Links: DriveThruRPG OSR Good Ol’ Games Sale

When it rains, it pours, I guess; last time I had to post a sale alert for OSR stuff, it was also crammed into a busier than normal posting schedule. This time is no different. I’m in the midst of a Hill Cantons bonanza and DriveThruRPG wants to spring this on me – kinda rude, honestly. It’s a pretty big sale, at least in terms of how many items are on offer. Let’s see what noteworthy products or huge discounts we’ve got:

Finally use the cool dice that nobody sells! Roll up a dozen characters and throw them bodily into the horrors of dank crypts until only one remains! Enjoy gonzo adventures designed as love letters to the 70s! Everybody knows DCC at this point, and if you haven’t tried it out, you definitely should. And to that end, here are some of the fan favorite DCC adventures that are on sale, so you can one-stop-shop:

66.5: Doom of the Savage King
68: People of the Pit
69: Nice.
70: Jewels of the Carnifex
74: Blades Against Death
75: The Sea Queen Escapes
76.5: Well of the Worm
78: Fate’s Fell Hand
81: The One Who Watches From Below 
82: Bride of the Black Manse
83: The Chained Coffin
84: Peril on the Purple Planet

ALL was a long-awaited Kickstarter from Dan Proctor last summer, finally combining the Labyrinth Lord rules with the Advanced Edition Companion rules in a single book, clearing up errata, and improving the monster XP values to be more consistent across high HD monsters. It’s like 33% off (more or less) so grab it while you can. If $10 is too rich for your blood, you might want to consider…

Back in the day most of us played a weird mish-mash of B/X and AD&D, running our favorite stuff from the AD&D books in B/X with little concern for the math involved. Dan Proctor of Goblinoid Games did all the thinking for you so you can experience that same style of play today, but in a way that makes some semblance of sense. The basic rules of Revised Edition are very close to the newest revision (Advanced Labyrinth Lord) and can be had a little cheaper here – with all the same internal art and such.

C&C is essentially d20 unified mechanics remixed and stripped down until they resemble original D&D in a passing sense. It’s a lot of fun according to the folks who play it extensively, and at the very least it’s a good stepping stone for people who just can’t bear to give up d20 just yet. Plus: nearly every possible supplement to this is on sale as well (Castles and Crusades makes up like >50% of this sale, I swear) so if you need various culture codices or adventures, you’re in luck!

One of Matt Finch’s beloved adventures. If you play AD&D 1E/OSRIC or you play a B/X-derived game like LL, you should probably play this, and it’s like 33% off approximately so how can you lose?

Michael Curtis writing about classic D&D monsters, to inspire you and demoralize your players, for $3.00 – 75% off. Why are you still here?

  • Hubris – DIY RPG Productions
  • Hubris (Limited Edition Cover) – DIY RPG Productions

Hubris is a DCC RPG-derived setting of weird fantasy. It’s kind of like if Gamma World and DCC took a bunch of acid, listened only to 60s psychedelia, engaged in a strange cult orgy and ended up having a baby? Kinda? Like, sure, there’s some lizardmen, but they shoot blood out of their eyes defensively like a horned lizard. And there’s mutants like you’d find in Gamma World, but they’re probably going to spit worms on you. It’s full of cool ideas to steal for your world if you play more towards the wild stuff side than the Tolkein side. It’s only a few dollars off, but hey, a discount’s a discount.

Blogger, DCC aficionado, game designer, and all around great dude Joshua Burnett made this DCC RPG zine and sold out of the limited run physical copies at conventions last year. It’s still available as a PDF, and it’s the price of a large fancy coffee so I’m not saying you should do it as an impulse purchase but I would definitely do it as an impulse purchase.

One of the best starter modules out there for getting into old school play. Very atmospheric, interesting, level 1-2ish adventure that does a good job of introducing core concepts to new players just getting their toes in the water.

Peter Spahn’s delightful starting level sandbox for Labyrinth Lord. Good to play in conjunction with Shadowbrook Manor, above.

  • Crawl Fanzine – Straycouches Press

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
A classic zine from a few years back for Dungeon Crawl Classics, but full of great ideas for any system and valuable enough to check out anyway at 15% off. You can get a dozen issues for the price of a dinner and enjoy a ton of content for your DCC or other old school game.

I’m surprised there wasn’t more variety to this sale. If you’ve ever wanted to buy a bonkers number of DCC, OSRIC, or C&C supplements, now’s your chance – because there’s so many of them at reduced prices, looking for anything else in this sale was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. It’s over 600 items in total, but a vast number of those truly are DCC adventures and so many C&C products. I went through all 13 pages and collected everything of note, I think.

DriveThruRPG is going through some growing pains right now as they complete a shaky server migration, but fighting through the weird errors and slow loading times that occasionally crop up could be worth it for these deals on OSR stuff.

Addendum: Added 2127, 07 Feb 2019

I felt a bit sad about how few varied items there were in the sea of C&C that comprises the majority of the big OSR sale. The New Year, New Game sale wasn’t even OSR-themed and they had Cavegirl’s adventures and whatnot – that’s some cool stuff! This time around the most unexpected stuff was Crepuscular and Finch and Spahn adventures. So I went looking for other sale items outside the big event category. The below items aren’t part of the 11-day OSR sale seen above, but they are OSR-related, they’re final copies (sorry Main Gauche and Low Fantasy Gaming Deluxe Edition) and they are on sale at the time of this writing. By the time you read this, they may not be, so double check. Anyway, here’s some more items:

Diogo Nogueira’s (Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells) new sword-and-planet game based on a loose structure of old-school rules. It just came out and I haven’t had the slightest chance to read it yet, but it’s 25% off for those of you interested in giving it a try!

Play Stranger Things with your friends and never worry again if the next season will live up to the hype or spell Netflix’s inevitable tumbling downfall. OSR compatible so if you’re the DM you’re essentially free to throw a Beholder from your AD&D Monster Manual up against a bunch of schoolchildren.

An expanded Holmes Basic retroclone offering levels 1-20 instead of 1-3, with rules for broader campaigns beyond the expected dungeon delve.

One of the big megadungeons that comes up in any conversation about gigantic campaign-in-a-box megadungeons. This version combines Barrowmaze I and Barrowmaze II into a single book, and includes Erol Otus artwork and layout.

Daniel Fox’s love letter/retroclone of WHFRP 1E. It’s old school, it’s grim and grimy, it’s super lethal, and it’s a little bit funny. If you liked Warhammer Fantasy, you’ll probably like this version of it; it won a bunch of ENnies and GenCon awards.

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2 comments on “Links: DriveThruRPG OSR Good Ol’ Games Sale

  1. Dungeons and Possums

    Thanks for the kind words! It feels a little more limited in breadth than the selection at New Years, but it makes up for that in huge depth (several complete zine runs, all that C&C stuff, and all that DCC stuff.

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