In this post, I’ll tell you about several limited-time offers and sales that PnPG readers may want to jump on before they end. Included are two amazing deals on the fifth edition of the cyberpunk fantasy RPG, Shadowrun, an OSR sale, and a special discount for PnPG readers on my own old-school magic supplement, Cantrips!
I haven’t posted for a while—sorry!—even though I have several longer features half finished. However, there are several special offers, sales, and bundles that I thought you might want to get in on. Since they are due to end soon, I thought I’d better stop waiting to mention them until after I finished the tutorials and features I’ve been working on. So, here goes!
More Awesome OSR Sale at DTRPG
PnPG NOTE: This sale has ended, but I stand by my recommendation of these excellent products. They are still worth picking up at regular price. —Jeff
This sale is billed as covering Basic D&D and Labyrinth Lord, but it includes almost 900 products from dozens of publishers. The sale runs through February 24, so get over to DriveThruRPG quick to take advantage of these deals. Here are a few of my recommendations:
Advanced Labyrinth Lord (Orcus Cover), $3.99
Labyrinth Lord bills itself as “the Rosetta Stone of old-school fantasy rules,” which is pretty close to accurate. In any case, this book combines the basic version (OD&D-style race-is-class characters) and advanced rules (AD&D-style race-and-class characters) into a single volume. Regular price for this 270-page PDF is $14.99, so the sale price is 73% off! Word of caution: DTRPG has other versions of this book which are not discounted as steeply. The only difference is the cover art, so definitely stick to the Orcus version!
Red Tide Campaign Sourcebook and Sandbox Toolkit, $6.79
I’m a huge fan of Kevin Crawford, designer of Stars Without Number, and his company, Sine Nomine Publishing. In fact, Sine Nomine’s many great products are one of the feature posts I’m planning. But right now, his great Red Tide sourcebook is on sale, so you should snap it up while it’s cheap. The first half of this 171-page book is an amazing and amazingly original old-school campaign setting which draws inspiration from both European and Asian cultures in a smooth, seamless way. The second half is a super-versatile, system-neutral toolbox for GMs running a sandbox-style RPG campaign. Altogether, the book is one of my favorite RPG supplements of all time, at any price.
And if you already have Red Tide, the More Awesome sale is a great chance to pick up the companion volumes. An Echo, Resounding extends the Red Tide setting and toolbox to cover higher-level characters who are establishing keeps and becoming lords. The Crimson Pandect greatly expands the arcane arts in OSR games, with several new, unique casting classes; rules for building magical lairs and conducting spell research, and much more. The Crimson Pandect was written with the Red Tide setting in mind, but its contents can easily be used in any OSR campaign. And while we’re on the subject of magic, the More Awesome sale also includes The Codex of the Black Sun: Sorcery for Stars Without Number, a new supplement bringing the arcane arts to Crawford’s great space-faring RPG.
Tome of Horrors Complete, $25.49
This massive monster manual runs just shy of 700 pages, and includes over 700 monsters, complete with stats, descriptions, and adventure hooks. It’s one of several dozen adventures and supplements from Frog God Games included in the sale, written for their popular Swords and Wizardry OSR rule set. Also on sale are the classic megadungeon, Rappan Athuk; the ENnie-Award-winning campaign, The Lost City of Barakus; and many adventures set in Frog God’s Lost Lands and Northlands campaign settings. Frog God products seem pricey, but they are generally huge books offering massive OSR value. They are seldom marked down, so jump on this 15% discount while you can! Oh, you can also pick up the Swords and Wizardry Complete core rulebook any time, for free!
White Star: Galaxy Edition, $8.49
Barrel Rider Games’ White Star is an OSR rule set for rollicking, swashbuckling space opera adventure, and it’s the best one I’ve seen for running a science fantasy campaign in the style of Star Wars, Flash Gordon, or Buck Rogers. (If you’re looking for a more gritty, hard-tech SF vibe, like The Expanse or Aliens, you want Kevin Crawford’s Stars Without Number.) The Galaxy Edition is the latest, best version of White Star, featuring 25 character classes, complete rules for starship, vehicle, and mecha combat, and much more.
Extrastellar Set One: Space Adventurers, $2.08
Okumarts provides the perfect printable miniatures for your new White Star campaign with the Extrastellar line. Set One: Space Adventurers includes star knights with laser swords, space scoundrels with wry grins, rag-tag rebel soldiers and eccentric androids. Extrastellar Set Two: Space Colonists populates your moon base with range of jumpsuited specialists. Like all of David Okum’s miniatures sets, these include about a dozen core minis with several color variations on each, plus bonus figures or terrain. And if you’re looking for NPCs to populate your White Star worlds, pick up Okumarts Extrastellar: Non-Player Characters book for character and class write-ups for the minis in the Extrastellar sets, plus encounter tables and David’s notes on 80’s-style SF to inform your campaign building.
Beyond the Wall and Other Adventures, $6.79
I’ve recommended this wonderful OSR game several times before here at PnPG, so I won’t repeat myself too much here. Suffice it to say, this is one of the best marriages of old-school conventions and modern RPG techniques I’ve seen. It’s marked down a bit from the regular price of $7.99, so this might be a good time to pick it up.
Two Opportunities for Shadowrunners!
The classic RPG Shadowrun first appeared in 1989, combining cyberpunk and fantasy tropes into a unique and exciting franchise that has spawned novels, videogames, and a collectable card game, as well as five editions of the tabletop RPG. At this moment, there are Shadowrun 5e offers at both Bundle of Holding and DriveThruRPG.
Shadowrun Bundles
In fact, there are two separate Shadowrun bundle offers at Bundle of Holding, available until February 25. The Shadowrun 5e Essentials bundle includes the core rules and several supplements covering cyberware, nanotech, magic, vehicles and the Matrix. The basic version of the bundle includes the core rules and two supplements, and goes for $22.95; the bonus collection adds three more major supplements, and has a price of $36 as of this writing. The Shadowrun 5e Runs and Guns bundle adds even more supplements to enrich your Shadowrun campaign, including advanced magic and combat, medicine, planar travel, and tons more monsters, gear, weapons, abilities, and spells. The starter collection of four supplements costs $14.95, and the bonus collection adds four more supplements at a price of $27.50 as of this writing.
Note that while the minimum price for the basic collections in each bundle is fixed, the cost of the bonus collection is a threshold amount, based on the amounts already contributed. This is because Bundle of Holding offers always benefit a charity chosen by the publisher; for the Shadowrun bundles, Catalyst Games has designated the Electronic Frontier Foundation as the beneficiary for both offers. At the moment, Bundle of Holding has two other bundles available: The Bundle for Two, a collection of two-person RPGs, ending February 26th, and Ironclaw, the anthropomorphic fantasy RPG, through March 11.
PnPG NOTE: These offers ended as of February 25, but Bundle of Holding always has two to four new bundle offers for sale, each of which benefits the charity of their publisher’s choosing. And Shadowrun’s still a cool game, even when it’s not on sale!
Shadowrun 5e Sale at DTRPG
The Shadowrun Complete Your Collection Sale runs through the end of February at DriveThruRPG, and includes 110 rulebooks, supplements and adventures for Shadowrun 5e at discounts of up to 60%. If you’ve got the core rules, either from Bundle of Holding or your own bookshelf, this sale is a great opportunity to shop a la carte for specific Shadowrun books. A great adventure to start with is Shadowrun Missions: Chasin’ the Wind, which kicks off a series of adventures set in the wasteland that used to be Chicago. If you’re looking for some fiction to get to know the Shadowrun’s Sixth World setting, try the four novellas that make up Sprawl Stories Volume 1. And if you’re the kind of player who likes cards for reference at the game table, check out Shadowrun Gear Cards or Spell Cards. Finally, you can complete your collection with the Shadowrun 5e Core Rulebook Errata free of charge!
New from PnPG: Cantrips, an OSR Magic Supplement
Finally, I’m thrilled to announce the release of PnPG’s first “real” game product, Cantrips. This 32-page, digest-sized PDF book includes rules for incorporating minor magical spells for arcane casters into OSR campaigns. Not only does the supplement provide 16 spells that Magic-Users can cast at will, it covers how cantrips function in the campaign as a means of mastering higher-level spells. For example, in order to learn any spell in the Summon Monster family, a mage must first master the Summon Vermin cantrip. Similarly, the illusory cantrip Parlor Trick prepares a wizard to master more complex illusions such as Mirror Image and Phantasmal Force. The rules also cover how many cantrips a single spellcaster can maintain at once, based on his intelligence or level. And since various OSR rule sets handle certain aspects of spellcasting differently, alternate rules are offered so you can choose the method that best matches the systems used in your rule set. Guidelines are also provided for creating additional cantrips if your campaign includes spells or classes not covered in the Cantrips rules.
Obviously, my Cantrips supplement draws inspiration from later editions of D&D, which include cantrips as minor, at-will spells that give a low-level magic-user something to do before or after he casts his one first-level spell. But the actual cantrips included in the book are original, and I think more in keeping with old-school aesthetics than a simple copy-paste of the 5e cantrips. Of course, purchasing Cantrips through DriveThruRPG helps support the PnPG blog, but I hope you’ll find they make the old-school game more enjoyable, especially for the rookie mage in your party!
Special Offer: Cantrips at half price through Feb. 28, 2019
Click this Cantrips Special Offer link to receive a 50% “friend of PnPG” discount on the Cantrips OSR Magic Supplement. The product will be automatically added to your cart on DriveThruRPG at the special price of $1, half of the regular price of $1.99. If you change your mind, just delete Cantrips from your cart. Thanks so much for your interest and support!
I hope you find these recommendations useful. A large part of my mission here at PnPG is to point out top-quality downloadable gaming material, especially when it’s available at special prices. Even if you aren’t interested in the products I’ve recommended—all of which I own and paid for with my own cash—there are hundreds of great OSR games, adventures and supplements available right now at DriveThruRPG at significant discounts. I’m sure you’ll find something that you and your gaming group will enjoy. So, until next time, keep on printing, and keep on playing!