The ruleset for my next OSR campaign, Ben Milton strikes again. The tables in this book are a goldmine, so I implemented them on this page here with my own composite rolls for ease-of-use, whether during session prep or at the table.
The TTRPG Zine to end all Zines. Filled with great art and essays mostly focusing on OSR play mostly targeted at GMs or roleplayers who want to become GMs.
Amazing introductory OSR module for level 1 PCs. This is a great module to run if you’ve never run a tabletop RPG before or if you’d like to introduce new people to the tabletop roleplaying hobby.
The best OSR system for introducing new players to tabletop roleplaying and OSR-style play. Maze Rats’s randomized magic spell system really shines. I recommend strongly encouraging your players to start with at least one spell slot.
A TTRPG stripped of all extraneous parts, leaving you with the only the essential. Seems like a system built for one-shots if you’re willing to put in the effort to support the loosely defined “depressing steampunk” setting.
Off-brand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TTRPG. Great idea, but seems a little uninspired and too crunchy for its own good. The multiplicative math with percents using non d100 dice is particularly egregious.
The primer on tabletop roleplaying we needed — great for both new and experienced players and GMs and everyone in between.
This book has 25-50 pages of interesting ideas — sadly it’s 239 pages long.
The focus on GMing tips for fantasy games doesn’t help because I’m not interested in tropey fantasy stories told “straight” — most of the book assumes that’s what the reader is interested in.
1/2 systems-agnostic tight and informative GMing essays with contributions from half a dozen GMs dropping knowledge bombs dense with decades worth of GMing experience — 1/2 Rifts-specific stuff that I skimmed through but could be mined for some ideas.
This book is a trainwreck and I enjoyed watching it crash — even though I would’ve been better off stepping away from it and averting my eyes. But I couldn’t help myself.
A bunch of short articles on various Savage Worlds-related topics catering more towards GMs.
Many roleplaying systems claim to support play in any kind of setting but few really do — Savage Worlds is an exception. It’s got crunchy-enough systems that are only as relevant as you want them to be.
Savage Worlds is the most “more than the sum of its parts” tabletop roleplaying system I’ve played — it rocks.
A monster manual with some information on opposing factions’s mooks and bigger baddies that PCs can run into working for the Tomorrow Legion. This book also includes a few simple missions that you can run in a pinch or use as a starting point for more complex sessions.
The Savage Worlds roleplaying system smashed together with the Rifts Megaverse setting (a post-post-apocalypse kicked off by the cataclysmic return of magic on Earth and the opening of inter-dimensional portals all over it) seems like a match made in multi-planar heaven.
A wacky absurdist one-shot roleplaying system that would be impossible to improvise but running a premade one-shot might be a lot of fun.
The tabletop roleplaying game that inspired so many others (through their Powered by the Apocalypse branding) including games I’ve played and enjoyed like Blades in the Dark.
I’m a big Doom head. An academic game studies / history book about Doom is right up my alley. 3/4 of the way through it so far and I’m enjoying it! It’s getting me excited to play the original Doom levels again and giving me some ideas on how I could go about writing about Doom levels.
Dark Avant-garde OSR module that would be a perfect fit for the bleakness of a system and setting like MÖRK BORG.
The PCs will delve deeper and deeper into the madness of a drowning village, a broken dam and an ancient evil that’s underneath it all.
A collection of essays about GMing. Offers some good tips and tricks but it’s not as comprehensive or as much of a must-read as So You Want To Be A Game Master?
An extremely efficient yet thorough guide to running tabletop RPG games. I would have loved to have read this back when I first started GMing over a decade ago! It’s got everything you need to give you the confidence to start run great games.
Even if you’ve got experience GMing, there’s so much knowledge in this book and it’s expressed so clearly that you’ll undoubtly learn a bunch reading it, no matter what kind of games you’re interesting in running.
A tiny collection of punched up blog posts on DMing from Micheal Shea. The “Session Zero Checklist” was useful but there’s nothing here that’s mind blowing or worth going out of your way to read.
An abstract, surreal, mythical, weird sadhouse megadungeon — a perfect fit for old school rennaissance tabletop roleplaying games, as long as you’re open for things to get a little bizarre.
OSR RPG system that cleaned up the Ennie awards in 2024. There’s a succinctness and clarity to the rules which also seems to cover all the bases unlike other OSR systems I’ve read. I’m excited to finally do some old school dungeon crawling with these rules.
Superhero anthology with great art. Focuses on bringing heroes down to earth while maintaining the wonder and awe of superpowers. Astro City is a reconstruction of the superhero genre instead of a deconstruction. It’s a precursor to comics like Invincible and the Boys.
In Screaming Planet, Jodorowsky collaborates with artists recommended to him by his publisher on short comics with 10 pages or less very loosely related to a flaming planetary object flying through space. The art styles of each short comic are varied as you can imagine, and some are surprisingly good.
Junji Ito’s art combined with Osamu Dazai’s haunting story is a match made in hell. Absolutely brutal read.
Gorgeous art by Dongzi Liu can’t save the horrendous writing by Jodorowsky. The extremely taboo and fucked up premise for this is one thing, but I’ll read a story about anything. It’s just so bad.
I cannot begin to imagine what sort of circumstances would have led to the production of this comic. That’s the story I want to read about.
Jodorowsky and Moebius being horny on main and getting into some Freudian hijinks.
I’ve seen Moebius black and white art appreciated by some, and I can see why after reading Angel Claws.
Two angsty teens having just finished high school don’t know what to do with themselves. They walk around town, being angsty, people watching and talking shit about everyone. Really ugly art. A little surreal.
Whenever he [Moebius] finished a page, he would call me on the telephone. Driven by an irresistible curiosity, I would immediately get in my car to go see him. Every time I saw a new page, I swear on the life of my cat Kazan that I experienced a spiritual pleasure exceeding that of an orgasm. There before my eyes, I had the undeniable proof that comic book art was great art, just as respectable as the paintings hanging on the walls of museums.
— Alejandro Jodorowsky, July 29, 2011
Collection of academic articles in comics studies. Starts with a great comic strip introducing the collection itself followed by comic panels drawn by the authors of the articles themselves. Very cool!
Collection of academic articles in comics studies.
Grant Morrison’s run of Doom Patrol focuses on the misfits, the weird and the broken and how they are fit to fight evils that other more conventional and sane heroes aren’t equipped to deal with.
A Delta Green scenario about a viral video of a woman disappearing in thin air and the small town cult that might be responsible.
A Delta Green campaign module based on the King in Yellow, where investigators start with an investigation into a missing persons case tied to the King in Yellow and get sucked into that world.
Lovecraft X The X-Files tabletop roleplaying game. Delta Green has been kicking around for decades and so it has so much modules written for it, critical for an investigative RPG like this where the devil is in the details and it’s much harder to run a game like this without any supporting material.
Interviews with a bunch of science fiction writers. It’s great if you’re interested in getting to know your favorite author’s perspective or if you’re interested in getting recommendations from them.
A sci-fi horror tabletop RPG with some of the most evocative RPG modules I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to play this!
Metal Gear / A-Team inspired tabletop RPG. Seems like this would be great for one-shots (or potentially longer campaigns) with people with any level of experience in roleplaying because the rules are so simple yet exciting.
I’ve played the Paranoia RPG more than a few times, it’s always a blast. If you’re into chaotic, goofy, absurdist, comically dystopian settings and cooperative/competitive roleplaying systems then you’ll love Paranoia.
These illustrations are kind of whack. All the characters look like little goblins.
But Le Guin’s Earthsea series is fantastic.
Humm…
It was OK.
Unlike The Galaxy and The Ground Within (also written by Becky Chambers), this novella doesn’t have a lot of space (see what I did there?) to develop its characters and have you care about them.
MÖRK BORG is a pitch-black apocalyptic fantasy RPG about lost souls and fools seeking redemption, forgiveness or the last remaining riches in a bleak and dying world.
WICKED ONES is a Forged in the Dark tabletop RPG about a group of fantasy monsters building a dungeon, launching raids on the surface to gather a hoard, and pursuing your nefarious master plan.
We all enjoy (and love to comment on) our experiences with media, cuisine, design, games and more. Clearly, aesthetic pursuits are an integral part of the human experience, this book tries to tell us why from three different points of view.
Reference guide for experienced climbers who want to further hone their skills. Has newspaper comic-style characters as well as photos to show off the various techniques. Expresses a lot of information succinctly, it doesn’t waste your time.
A bunch of mistakes climbers (apparently) make and how to avoid them. Not as concrete and concise as I would like but if you’re willing to filter out the fluff, there’s some interesting information here.
Monster of the Week is a standalone action-horror RPG for 3-5 people. Hunt high school beasties a la Buffy the Vampire Slayer, travel the country to bring down unnatural creatures like the Winchester brothers of Supernatural, or head up the government investigation like Mulder and Scully. It seems OK, nothing extraordinary or unique other than the conceit.
Heart: The City Beneath is a tabletop game about delving into a nightmare undercity that will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of – or kill you in the process. It is a dungeon-crawling, story-forward tabletop RPG that focuses on what characters have to lose in pursuit of their dreams in the chaotic darkness beneath the world. Weird but in a good way.
As someone who’s been suffering with chronic pain issues for years now, I’m always on the lookout for anything I can do to help myself feel less pain. Underneath all the quackery contained in this book there seems to be a grain of truth (for me, at least). It helped helped me reduce my chronic pain symptoms considerably in just a short amount of time. If you (or someone you know) suffers from chronic pain, I would highly recommend this book.
Sandcastle is the french comic book that the recent M. Night Shyamalan’s movie Old was based on. A bunch of different people arrive for a relaxing day at the beach and find themselves aging extremely rapidly, babies become teens and older folk die. Hijinks ensue. I don’t get it.
Junji Ito is cool. Uzumaki is great. A lot of his other work is just OK. I think Remina is also just OK.