Category Archives: Hidden Gems

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D&D Theory: How The OSR is Re-Writing D&D History

I count myself lucky to have lived through the golden age of tabletop role-playing—the glorious trifecta of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s. It was a time of wild imagination and fearless design. From the old-school grit of 1st Edition Dungeons & Dragons to the brooding elegance of White Wolf’s World of Darkness, from the sleek reinvention of the d20 system to the rebellious birth of the OSR—those years were, in a word, glorious.

But I was there for the hard times, too. The day TSR gasped its final breath. The strange, gamey detour of 4th Edition. And the day we lost Gary Gygax, the original Dungeon Master, the man who kicked off this beautiful madness in the first place.

It’s been a hell of a ride—but today isn’t about D&D’s past.

Today, we’re talking about the future. Specifically, the way this community—scrappy, brilliant, and unrelenting—is seizing the reins and dragging Dungeons & Dragons forward, not with bloated corporate rulebooks, but with raw creativity. Today we are talking OSR games!

Because while Wizards of the Coast seems hellbent on tarnishing the game’s legacy with one corporate faceplant after another, the real torchbearers are out here in the trenches, putting out some of the most exciting, innovative, and downright fun material the hobby’s seen in years.

So yes, we’ll throw a little well-earned shade at Wizards of the Coast. That’s dessert. But the real feast? It’s the creators. The OSR authors, artists, and designers who are resurrecting the heart of D&D with zines, hacks, modules, and games that feel like they’re alive. This is a love letter to them—and a look at the bold, weird, and wonderful future they’re building for all of us.

Let’s get into it!

What Is The OSR Really?

Let’s get some discourse out of the way for those less informed. Once upon a time, this was a pretty straightforward question. The OSR—Old School Renaissance (or Revival, depending on who you ask)—was a movement of grognards and die-hards who loved the old-school D&D systems so much, they used the Open Game License (spawned in the 3rd Edition era) to breathe new life into them. They published retro-clones, retooled classics, and sprinkled in house rules like spice on a well-worn stew.

But that was just the beginning.

Today, the OSR has evolved into something bigger, weirder, and far more powerful. It’s still about preserving the spirit of the old ways—sure. But more than that, it’s become a sandbox for unfiltered creativity. It’s where designers and dungeon masters throw off the shackles of corporate oversight, social media discourse, and sanitized storytelling. No HR departments, no focus groups, no trend-chasing. Just pure, undiluted game design.

Think of it like the indie film scene: raw, passionate, and often a little rough around the edges—but in the best possible way. The OSR is where the Tarantinos and Lynches of tabletop design hang their weird little hats, crafting games that are as bold and bloody as they are beautiful.

In a word? It’s a movement.

But more than that—it’s the movement that’s shaping the future of tabletop gaming. And, oddly enough, because of Wizards of the Coast’s seemingly inescapable inability to get out of their own way, it’s also very much the future of Dungeons & Dragons itself.

The True Catalyst – Relevance

You might look at the endless headlines—Wizards of the Coast tripping over its own feet, again and again—and think, “Ah, there it is. That’s why the community is turning away”. Sure, their shameless blunders haven’t exactly earned them any goodwill, but that’s not really the whole story.

The truth is, fans are oddly loyal. Painfully loyal. People love Dungeons & Dragons—even when they don’t love the people making it. Even when they can’t stand the current edition. There’s this almost irrational tolerance in the community. As long as Wizards of the Coasts keeps evolving their game, their first love, people are willing to grit their teeth and smile through the nonsense.

So no, the shift we’re seeing isn’t just a reaction to Wizards screwing up—though they’ve done plenty of that.

Dungeons and Dragons 2024 edition is now fully released. To quote Padme, “so this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause”. Yes, I’m being a bit dramatic!

The real problem…. the one that haunts Hasbro boardrooms like a slow, creeping death… is relevance.

You see, for all its drama and divisiveness, every edition of D&D up until now brought something new. Something big. Each version was both an evolution and a revolution. First and Second Edition laid the foundation for the OSR and that gritty old-school feel. Third Edition gave us tactical depth and rules mastery not to mention the OGL, spawning entire empires like Pathfinder and Castle & Crusades. Even Fourth Edition, the black sheep, gave rise to bold designs like 13th Age and, more recently, MCDM’s Draw Steel. Fifth Edition opened the floodgates to mainstream success and spin-offs as well, but it also gave birth to Critical Role, which opened up millions of creative minds to the world of storytelling possibilities.

Love them or hate them, every edition mattered.

Until now.

Enter the 2024 Edition. D&D’s big 50-year celebration. A chance to show the world that the game still has teeth and that Wizards of the Coast still leads the most prolific franchise in gaming.

And what do we get? A rebrand. A soft reboot. A product that feels neither evolutionary nor revolutionary—just… there. Polished, sure. But also sanitized, safe, and stifled by corporate oversight and performative politics. It’s a game trying to be all things to all people, and in doing so, has managed to feel like nothing at all.

It landed with a whimper. A shrug. A yawn and we are all left holding this hefty, overpriced book wondering… is this it?

Unlike during the Fourth Edition era, when choices were limited and OSR was still in its scrappy youth, the landscape has changed. The OSR has exploded into a kaleidoscope of systems, zines, hacks, and heart-pounding one-shots. What was once a trickle is now a flood. If anything, we’ve gone from too few options to so many that you’ll need a torchbearer just to navigate the shelves.

But, enough prelude. You’re caught up. That’s what’s happening in D&D, a whole lot of nothing and the OSR is here to save the day.

I have made a list like the following before. see this article back in 2021, but here are five more awesome OSR games paving the way for the future of tabletop RPG’s.

Shadowdark

I knew, without a flicker of doubt, that when I reached this point in the article, Shadowdark had to take the lead. From the wildly imaginative mind of Kelsey Dionne, founder of The Arcane Library, Shadowdark isn’t just an OSR game, it’s the answer to the question: What if classic Dungeons & Dragons were designed today, with modern sensibilities but old-school soul?

This game doesn’t merely pay homage to the golden age of RPGs; it resurrects it, reforged in the fires of streamlined design and accessible play. It’s a masterclass in how to respect the past without being shackled by it. Everything about Shadowdark screams purpose- it’s a true dungeon crawler, built from the torchlight up to emphasize danger, tension, and immersive play.

And yet, it’s more than that.

It’s intuitive to run, brilliantly supported by Kelsey and her team, and evolving fast. The game’s Kickstarter success is the stuff of legends, raising over a million dollars in a single day for its upcoming expansion. That’s not just popularity; that’s momentum. And with that momentum comes growth. The system that began as a love letter to torchlit corridors and lurking horrors is now expanding into a full-fledged, grimdark world rich with lore, cultures, monsters, and mystery.

I’m super psyched for this one, it’s very high on my must play list, and I’m certain I’m not the only one if that Kickstarter is any indication.

Mörk Borg

Designed by Pelle Nilsson & Johan Nohr, two guys from my neck of the woods (Sweden), this one falls into the category of a little bit creepy, a little bit gonzo style RPG. While the game is rules light, it has a considerable amount of crunch to it’s combat with a rather viceral doom metal approach to its world design.

In essence, you’re playing in a world that is ending, living out your last days in a brutal and nihilistic setting that forgives your sins but shows you no quarter. It’s full of amazing art and takes a very direct, pick-up-and-play approach that doesn’t feel “one-shotty” thanks to having meat on the bones where it counts and an awesome, addictive grimdark world. Read all about it HERE.

Castles and Crusades

Imagine what would happen if Gary Gygax made a 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons using modern game design techniques, that in a word is Castles & Crusades. A game that takes all of the modern mechanics and streamlining of 3rd edition but with 1st and 2nd edition AD&D sensibilities. That is what the work of Stephen Chenault and his brother Davis Chenault from Troll Lord Games gave us. A true and pure gift.

Castles & Crusades is a reasonably crunchy, yet distinctively Dungeons and Dragons in what I think is probably one of the truest and most honest attempts to re-write Dungeons and Dragons edition history. In so many ways, this is the real 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Everything you think D&D is, is in here but without all the nonsense Wizards of the Coast put us through in the last few editions of the game. Pure, unfiltered Dungeons and Dragons!

The amazing thing is that it’s a free game, you can get it here and check it out yourself.

Dolmenwood

I have talked a lot in the past about Old School Essentials, having run the game for the better part of 3 years in a single campaign. It is an awesome system that is essentially a Dungeons and Dragons construction kit, but also, when you get right down to it, it is effectively classic B/X 1st edition D&D.

Dolmenwood takes that base and builds upon it an entire setting with a very focused playstyle geared towards exploration of the world but also of an underlining history and story of the setting. Gavin Norman, the creator of both Old School Essentials and Dolmenwood, is probably one of my favorite OSR designers because he has an uncanny sense of order and organization, understanding the base principle of creating content and systems for the practical exercise that is playing a tabletop game.

Bringing that same approach that made Old School Essentials such a pure joy to run and applying it to a setting is exactly what I hoped to find when my Kickstarter PDF’s arrived. This is an excessively easy game to prepare, a vast setting with tremendous attention to detail that is easy to access thanks to this amazing organization and, most of all, absolutely inspiring writing.

I can’t wait to run this game for my friends because I know that this sort of attention to story and detail is exactly what my players crave. They love stories that break expectations, that are based on the characterization of a unique world, and most of all, they love long campaigns that they can lose themselves to.

Hyperborea

Of all the games on this list, Hyperborea is perhaps the most likely to have had an affair with old school 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons. There is clear Dungeons and Dragons DNA burned deeply into this game, and perhaps not surprising given it comes from the creative mind of Jeff Talanian, a known Gygax collaborator.

This game is heavily influenced by Appendix N, the famed list of pulp fiction upon which Dungeons and Dragons was based, but it’s clear from the setting design that Robert E. Howard’s Conan was among the author’s favorite.

You live in a decaying civilization where magic has gone terribly wrong in what I can only describe as a savage mix between Mad Max and High Fantasy. Grim, moody, and overflowing with danger, in Hyperborea, life is cheap, and your characters are less heroes and more survivors as you navigate your way through the primeval denizens that populate this setting. It’s a fantastic game with a big focus on the creation of unique fantasy characters that will undoubtedly break the expectations of even the most veteran tabletop groups.

Conclusion

Ok that’s it for today, hopefully, you found something on this list to explore. There is no question that there are far more games that deserve mention here; trimming this list down to five took considerable restraint. Perhaps I will do another one of these in the near future.

Gaming Articles, Hidden Gems, On The Table

Hidden Gems: Warcrow Adventures

Miniature gaming, role-playing games, and board games are becoming more and more difficult to neatly categorize these days as we see more and more cross-over hybrids. Warcrow Adventures, the latest take on the adventure game genre from Corvus Belli has been my gaming group’s latest obsession, and for good reason as this hybrid adventure game has a lot to offer.

Warcrow Adventures is based on the new miniature war game of the same name (Warcrow), using the same setting background and actual miniatures for the miniature game. An app-assisted story-driven dungeon crawler, players take on the roles of adventures using the classic Dungeons and Dragons formula in which they follow along a branching storyline, make decisions, fight monsters, find treasure, and level up!

Corvus Belli, has an outstanding reputation for producing fantastic miniatures and Warcrow is no exception. Dynamic poses, highly detailed, and a good chunky size all contribute to the wonderful quality of these mini’s.

This game borrows from quite a few different gaming genres, but the attraction is the D&D DNA-inspired treadmill. It boasts a lot of very streamlined mechanics that are deceptively simple yet impactful. Every choice you make in the game, every task you complete, and every interaction you have unveils part of a unique story while creating hurdles for you to jump through in a pretty challenging risk vs. reward structure.

I will be doing a full review of Warcrow Adventures once my group completes the adventure, but beware that this is very much a legacy-style adventure game that will take many sessions to complete.

App-assisted games are becoming more and more common and the production values of these apps are improving with each new generation. Warcrow Adventures app delivers fantastic voice-overs, a simpler interface, and a very organized structure that makes it easy to use at the table.

Already now however I can tell you that if you are a fan of adventure games, if you love Dungeons and Dragons, this is an outstanding platform for bringing that classic dungeon crawl feeling to the table.

The hybrid nature of the game, being part miniature game also offers the opportunity for everyone to do some hobby painting. Know that these are not “board game pieces”, these are actual, fully detailed miniatures, and well worth your time to paint. In fact, every miniature in Warcrow Adventures is getting a full profile and will be used in the Warcrow miniatures war game so if you are already collecting and playing Warcrow the miniature game, the adventure game has the side benefit of giving you new units for that game as well.

The Warcrow miniature game on which Warcrow Adventures is based has also indoctrinated itself into my gaming club largely based on the already well-established reputation of our beloved Infinity (the other Corvus Belli miniature game we play). We just can’t help it, one look at these amazing miniatures and you know you just need to own some!

My group immediately got to work painting these mini’s and not only has it built up the excitement to play Warcrow Adventures, but it’s got us all buzzing about Warcrow the miniature game as well the setting itself. If there was ever a setting that deserved to be an RPG, this is it!

In either case, whether you do or don’t get into the miniature game, Warcrow Adventures as a stand-alone product is already proving to be a great time, Corvus Belli has done a fantastic job building an atmosphere with its amazing setting and building a story I think any role-player would enjoy sinking their teeth into.

I’m no master miniature painter, but great minis inspire great paint jobs and I have to say, I’m pretty proud of this one!

Look for a full review shortly, but for now, if you are on the fence about Warcrow Adventures, I can tell you here and now, it’s a fantastic package!

Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems: The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game

In the world of miniature games, there is but one king of the throne and that is Warhammer 40k, but what if I told you that even among the fiercest 40k fans, almost unanimously, most people will agree that The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game is widely considered to be the best game GamesWorkshop makes.

Originally released in 2001, this miniature game based on the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies has been the oddly-kept secret at GamesWorkshop for over two decades, and while its following pales in comparison to some of GW’s larger franchises, the cult status of this game supported by dedicated fans has kept it afloat for years. Over two editions the game has thrived and recently GW has announced and started pushing the game with an updated 3rd edition.

Unlike many of GW’s games, however, The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game was made right the first time, and over the editions, very little has actually changed. The game has been streamlined sure, but the rules have remained largely the same for going on a decade now and the new editions is mostly just a repackaging of the same game. Minor tweaks so small if you already have the 2nd edition rules there is hardly any reason to upgrade.

Now the exciting part isn’t the new edition, GW is famous for its grandiose books, that is certain, but it’s the miniatures you want!

The books as you would expect from GW are absolutely over the top. Illustrated from front to back, carefully edited and printed using the most excessive methods available. The books are pure joy to read.

On the heels of this new edition, there is a new starter box set coming out as well as a general refurbishing of the entire line which is likely going to go on for a couple of years at least. The quality of the miniatures is outstanding from the images already released and we know from the various announcements that there is going to be a regular stream of new stuff to buy. Get your credit cards paid off people, this shit ain’t gonna be cheap!

The quality of miniatures coming out of GW is unmatched in the miniature market, they not only make the best miniatures, by they do so by a margin so wide, there is nothing that comes even close by comparison. They quite literally have no competition in this area and no one even tries to compete with them anymore. Painting GW miniatures is pure joy, they make you feel like a pro.

Now there are some very important things to note about this game before you consider diving into it, because this game is…. different.

There are three things that really make Middle Earth Strategy Battle Game unique, and it’s really important for fans of miniature games, especially those accustomed to the standard objective-based, list-building style games looking for a good balanced gaming experience to know them.

First is the fact that this game, while it offers a sort of list-building match-play mode, it’s very clear from the design that this is a game designed largely to support narrative play. The concept of narrative play drives your approach to collecting miniatures.

This isn’t a game where you “pick a faction” and then buy units to support your preference or “list”. What you do is pick a scenario or a group of scenarios, typically either scenes directly from the movies, or presumed battles that took place in the middle-earth history (off-camera) and then collect the miniatures you need to create that scenario. The goal is to effectively play the scenarios and collect the mini’s you need for that.

As such a typical player in this game might not say “I have a Mordor army”, they are more likely to list the scenarios their army is built for.

The second thing to note is that this is a “cinematic miniature game”, which is to say the goal of the game is to tell a story of a battle, by playing it out, but more than that, the mechanics are designed to reflect the action you see in the movies. Characters for example are extremely powerful and have unique abilities that let them take on entire hordes of enemies. The detail of the mechanics are designed to cover actions like hopping over a chasm and fighting on a ladder, there are rules for siege engines and running sieges, and special rules for magic even though there are only a small handful of characters that can perform such a thing. There are special timing rules for dueling and more importantly, the action is focused on individual models, so there are no weird grouping rules for movement or attack actions.

In the end the game plays out more like a tactical battle out of a role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons with a wide range of special actions and unique effects. All of these rules are carefully crafted to bring that cinematic feel of the movies to the table top and the game really nails that concept but this really comes at the sacrifice of balance and you really feel that if you try to convert your army to work with match play and list building. This concept of match play was tact on to the game after the fans insisted it be added, but the game originally had no such thing.

Which brings me to the third thing. This game is crunchy as fuck! As the goal is for the game to be this cinematic, scenario-focused game, there are a lot of special rules and unique elements designed into this game to bring the right feel. This comes with some rules weight, the game can get quite fiddly and while there are scenarios of all shapes and sizes, there is no sort of standard play length or game. A scenario might be small with just 5-10 miniatures that lasts for 20 minutes or it can be a massive siege that can take several days to finish.

Suffice it to say, the scope here can be quite grand and yet the rules drill down to bring this scope to your table using a lot of minutia.

Is the game any good? Well, this is where answering the question gets kind of tricky. I would say, first and foremost, that you must be a die-hard Lord of the Rings fan, this might seem obvious but unlike a lot of miniature games, much of the game is not going to make much sense or even feel balanced unless you understand the context of the movies and its many characters. The story is really crammed into the mechanics.

The second thing is that you have to make your peace with the scenario style of play and collection. I see a lot of disappointment coming from the quasi-competitive scene. Match play and open play are fine concepts here, but the entire balance of the game is super iffy and there are clear winners and losers in the list-building department. This hasn’t been and likely isn’t ever going to be addressed because as already mentioned, its crystal clear that the primary way this game is meant to be played is scenario-based.

The current available product line for this game is huge and there are tons of scenarios that depict every scene and much more from the movies. There is so much to potentially collect, so many different experiences to have here that you could easily spend in excess of 10,000 dollars and thousands of hours and come up short of experiencing everything. It’s a bottomless pit and this is a good thing!

Finally, I would argue that this is the single most expensive game to collect in existence, even more expensive than 40k because there is no such thing as a 2,000 point army and done. It’s kind of a never-ending thing as you expand to include more and more scenarios your army can do and you are often collecting multiple factions. This includes tremendous efforts to paint as you are often working with a lot of models.

All that said, personally I tend to agree with the consensus, this game is without question the best thing GW makes. It’s addictive, something you can really obsess about and because it’s scenario based, the concept of balance and fairness really aren’t a thing in this game. Scenarios are built to depict the scenes and cinematics of the movies and this is where the games loyalty lays. It’s not for everyone but if re-creating the battles of the movies sounds good to you, no game does it better.

Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems: The Witcher – Old World

I got a chance to play The Witcher – Old World this last week and I have to say right up front, I was not disappointed.

Adventure board games fall into many different categories, I would say it’s a genre with quite a few different sub-genres, but The Witcher – Old World kind of felt like a new sub-genre was invented and that is perhaps what attracted me to the game.

In a way, Old World is a very strategic game that combines deck building, resource management and time-pressured competition. You have some of the classic things you hope to find in adventure board games via story telling through cards and other things that create a relationship with role-playing games like special abilities, leveling up, finding loot and fighting monsters, but at the heart of the game it’s all about that most optimal move each round. Trying to squeeze as many actions and gain as many benefits as possible each turn because to a certain degree, the game is a race to the finish line, giving the entire experience a more gamist feel, more like a competitive board game than what you might expect from a typical adventure game.

You can’t just sit back and do things when you are ready, the pressure comes from the other players progress and as soon as one player pushes forward, you are left with little choice but to do the same because if you’re not keeping up closely with the leader, you start to fall behind and are essentially in catch up mode.

There is also this harshness to the games monsters that you fight. There aren’t many of them and the adventurers you represent in the game are initially pretty ill-equipped to deal with these monsters. Your goal is to get yourself prepared as quickly as possible and it becomes a game of risk vs. reward. Go in to early and you get crushed, go in to late and someone might beat you to it.

I also really liked the built-in catch-up mechanic that worked very well to counterbalance players who get too far ahead of the pact. Each time you lose a battle, you gain a lot of benefits for the effort, while winning a battle costs your resources and reduces your strength, forcing you to take time to rebuild yourself. This gives the game a nice tight feel and makes taking bigger risks a plausible effort which results in you getting more of those exciting “let’s see what happens” moments.

The quality of the game components are outstanding, the art especially captures The Witcher franchise with perfection, they just nailed it with the presentation of this game.

Altogether, I really enjoyed this one, a big improvement over the last Witcher game I tried called “The Witcher Adventure Game”, which I thought was pretty shit.

Hidden Gems

Hidden Gems: Shadowdark

Among the OSR, Shadowdark is a household name already. An old-school style RPG built in the style of classic 1st edition B/X D&D but using modern 5th edition D&D rules. It won several Ennie’s including Best Design last year and stands as one of the premier OSR games for the modern era.

What makes Shadowdark special in my eyes is the fact that it brings back that classic “Dungeon Survival” playstyle popularized by classic 1st edition D&D, but without all the weird (funky) rules that make most modern gamers eyes roll to the back of their head.

This is for the most part a very stripped-down version of 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons, which means that if you are a 5e player or have a 5e group, you could run Shadowdark with minimum explanation required.

Shadowdark is supported by the arcane library, a fantastic site with tons of great material already published for this specific game. If you’re like me and you need a bit more “umf” than most OSR games offer, here you can find tons of additional classes, races and options to give this very simple game a little extra juice.

Shadowdark also borrows heavily from the brilliant editing done on other modern OSR translations like Old School Essentials giving us this amazing book that is table-ready. An easy-to-use reference that allows players to go from “I know nothing” to “Having fun playing an RPG” with virtually no effort.

Considering modern games like the 2024 Edition of Dungeon and Dragons are going the other way with its 600+ page player handbook, personally I think the timing of Shadowdark is impeccable. Right now players and GM’s are faced with the daunting task of having to figure out another D&D ruleset that has more instructions than a Boeing 747 flight manual. In contrast, Shadowdarks pick up and play ultra-light ruleset is looks very attractive by comparison.

If you are a 5e player and you are looking for something a bit lighter, with a bit more focus on rulings over rules and some clear meta-game goals, Shadowdark may be the right game for you and since the basic book is a free PDF, it costs you nothing to check it out!