Welcome to the Bundles, Freebies, and Sales News, the weekly column at EN World that helps make sure you don’t miss out on big tabletop RPG bundles, charity fundraisers, and sales from around the internet.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
Starting on DriveThruRPG, Serotonin Ronin has a new setting for Free League’s Twilight: 2000 with the post-apocalyptic Deadzone. A new particle called Deadlight lingers in the air, causing mutations and anomalies that twist and distort reality. This 60-page book details the setting along with new player options and career paths, rules for psychics and mutants, a bestiary of horrific entities from the wastelands, and more.
Hugh Lashbrooke released an interesting rules option that can be inserted into many different RPGs with Hard Sell: Negotiation Game. Using a deck of cards and a d6, this system adds depth to negotiations when buying and selling items. Also available under a CC-BY 4.0 license to use in your own games.
Speaking of your own games, Land of Mist wants to help you with 5e Stock Art Illustrations Sample including old school inspired line art from Tara Quinn for 11 monsters including the basilisk, bulette, gryphon, mimic, rust monster, owlbear, and more. Also available under a CC-BY 4.0 license.
Gildor Games released ELEMENTAL Adventure Guide featuring a collection of one-shot adventures to test out the system or add to your campaigns.
Play in a superhero game? Then you know the challenge of coming up with a superhero or villain name quickly. Bill Keyes and Harmless Forest Creature Games are here to help with Iron Age Superhero Random Name Generator with a simple table that has over 8000 possible name combinations.
Old School Role Playing has a new adventure for the Cepheus Engine (the rules system behind Traveller), Captain’s Log. Insurance adjustor Alice Yamamoto who needs someone to find the details of what happened to the merchant ship Sea Witch after finding the captain’s log for the lost ship. Some things don’t add up and the accident may not be as accidental as the claim suggests.
Players of Forbidden Lands from Free League may appreciate the release by Andrew Hollis with Forbidden Gear Cards, 146 printable bridge-size cards featuring resources, weapons, and amor available to players including profiles, crafting requirements, and slow/fast action options.
As we collectively mourn the cancellation of Our Flag Means Death, we can take solace by continuing the story ourselves with Kannons & Kisses, a hack of Lasers & Feelings by Pawel Kicman from Heltung Storytelling.
If you want a little more depth to your pirate adventures, Galactic Funk Creations has Returning to Port, a random encounter chart for Pirate Borg. The encounters scale in difficulty depending on how much treasure you have on board as you attempt to make it back to port.
What do cats do while their humans are away? GCF’s Cat Scratch, Cat Nap explores precisely that by exploring the mystical adventures our feline friends have without us.
Over on Dungeonmasters Guild, Thomas Kolar and the Wonderful World of Darklords podcast is back with another Ravenloft Domain of Dread: Mowgli’s Jungle. This jungle full of talking animals is ruled by the great Shere Khan, but there’s one human boy dwelling in the jungle that even the deadly tiger can never kill…
Artem Serebrennikov released Orc Blade & Elven Blood, an adventure that sends the 8th to 11th level party to a cave complex and underground temple full of legal challenges, an ancient mystery to unravel, old school monsters including the pech and wyrds, and two new artifacts as rewards.
Want to play Curse of Strahd but you can’t find anyone who hasn’t already finished the iconic 5e campaign? Drake Rupple has the guide Curse of Strahd for Solo Adventurers with alternate rules to increase survivability, changes to the action economy, tweaks to character creation, 20+ companions with special rules, an alternate start, special tactics and automated actions, and more to help run the adventure as a duet.
Many lament the lack of importance the alignment system has had as D&D’s rules progress through editions. If you’d like to keep alignment in your games but want something more fresh and nuanced than the typical three-by-three square, Tyler C released Re: Alignment with a new spider graph system tracking behavioral tendencies to remove a lot of the ambiguity from alignment and make it a more interesting mechanical system instead of a morality and ethics debate interrupting the game.
Over on Storytellers Vault, Bek Andrew Evans released the guide Dissecting Deviant to help explain the real-world influences of Deviant: The Renegades. Evans seeks to ease understanding of the game and its setting by going into the science of Deviants and explaining the terminology for those without a background in science.
Rage Across Vancouver Island from Epoch Publishing is a setting for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition exploring the island off the coast of British Columbia that acts as one of the last bastions of Gaia attempting to hold the island from the Wyrm.
The first Lightning Round this week features gamemaster/DM resources like monsters, maps, random generators, and more. All products are Free or pay-what-you-want with the suggested price in parentheses.
The second Lightning Round features player resources like classes, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, races/species, and more. All products are Free or pay what you want with the suggested price in parentheses.
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
Paizo has the holiday sale for the Paizo Store running. Use the code holiday24 and you can take 10% off your entire order of Pathfinder or Starfinder products. This discount stacks with Paizo Advantage and other discounts. Not valid on subscriptions, preorders, backorders, Foundry VTT products, or non-Paizo downloads.
Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios announced a flash sale for the award-winning Harlem Unbound 1st Edition. This setting suitable for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu or the GUMSHOE-powered investigative RPGs from Pelgrane Press, this book is chock full of real-world history along with Lovecraftian mythos to explore New York City during the Golden Age of Jazz and the Harlem Reniassance.
DriveThruRPG launched the New Year New Game sale featuring deep discounts on titles including Cyberpunk RED, The Walking Dead RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade, Worlds Without Numbers, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Warhammer 40K Roleplay: Wrath & Glory, and over 7000 other titles.
And where there’s a sale on DriveThruRPG, there’s a similar one on Dungeonmasters Guild. Grab official TSR and Wizards of the Coast classic releases along with the best of third-party created content from DMs Guild with over 3600 titles on sale.
And the New Year, New Game sale continues on Roll20 also with discounts on Pathfinder, 13th Age, Call of Cthulhu, Alien The Roleplaying Game, Blades in the Dark, Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, Star Trek Adventures, and dozens more.
Charity Bundles and Sales
Legendary game designer and artist Jannell Jaquays passed away this week following a struggle with Guillain-Barré syndrome. A GoFundMe that was set up during her recovery is still active seeking to raise money to help with her medical costs and other final expenses.
Over on Bundle of Holding, Black Scrolls Games has the Black Scrolls Modular Map-Tiles Bundle featuring maps from Hungarian artist Antal Kéninger. The maps come in printable PDF files and JPG and PNG format to import on your favorite VTT. The four map sets in the base level alone are enough for a huge 5.5 gigabyte download so be ready with the hard drive space even before the City Collection adds on an additional seven more tile sets for a total of 11.
Pelgrane Press released the Dying Earth bundle based on the works of fantasy author Jack Vance (yes, where we get the term “Vancian Magic” from). The Essentials Collection includes the core rulebook The Dying Earth along with seven other sourcebooks, setting books, and player option books. The Compleat Collection finishes out the entire library of books for the Dying Earth RPG with ten more sourcebooks, adventures, setting books, and more.
Monkeyblood has a bundle for the fantasy OSR setting Midderlands from designer and cartographer Glynn Seal. Designed for sandbox play using your favorite OSR system such as Old-School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry), the late medieval/early renaissance setting is inspired both by Seal’s home in the Midlands of the UK and from original fantasy locations. The Starter Collection features the setting book and its expansion plus the book for the City of Great Lunden, while the Bonus Collection adds on seven more books expanding the setting with more locations and cultures detailed.
Gauntlet Publishing has a bundle for Trophy, their RPG series of tragic ends and psychological horror. The Dark Collection includes the core rules Trophy Dark, the “weird west” incursion Devil, Aim for Me, and the book to act as an epilogue for any fantasy game Candlelight. The Gold Collection adds on Trophy Gold, the stand-alone RPG about treasure hunters pressing their luck for treasure at the risk of delving too deep along with four more setting books and incursions.
Over on Humble Bundle, HarperCollins has a bundle that isn’t directly a roleplaying game bundle but I think will be of interest to many RPG fans: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld with 38 books from the master of satirical fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett. The base level features the first three novels published in the Discworld setting adds on six more while the top tier features 38 novels, just three shy of the entire series (just missing the final two novels, Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown plus for some reason The Last Hero). The downside? You can only access the books through the Kobo app which might not be compatible with some devices, and it’s only available in the United States. But if that’s not an issue for you, this is a great chance to pick up some of the best fantasy fiction ever written.
Chaosium has a library of Lovecraftian horror books in the Call of Cthulhu Bundle. The base level includes the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set along with the Doors to Darkness collection of five introductory adventures, Petersen’s Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, and the Call of Cthulhu The Coloring Book. The second tier adds on six more books including the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook to expand rules options from the Starter Set, and the top tier adds 15 more books including the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook to round out the core rules, alternate setting books Pulp Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark Ages, and the French Revolution setting Reign of Terror, and more adventures, bestiaries, settings, and more.
Humble also has a large bundle of battlemaps for the Alchemy VTT. The base level gets you three map packs plus a 1-month subscription to Alchemy Unlimited if you’d like to try it out, while the mid-tier expands the subscription to 3 months and adds on seven more maps and the top tier goes to a 6-month subscription and expands for a grand total of 26 map sets.
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Freebies and Pay What You Want
Note: While “Pay What You Want” downloads are available for free, please support the creators if you are able!
Starting on DriveThruRPG, Serotonin Ronin has a new setting for Free League’s Twilight: 2000 with the post-apocalyptic Deadzone. A new particle called Deadlight lingers in the air, causing mutations and anomalies that twist and distort reality. This 60-page book details the setting along with new player options and career paths, rules for psychics and mutants, a bestiary of horrific entities from the wastelands, and more.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $8.00)
Hugh Lashbrooke released an interesting rules option that can be inserted into many different RPGs with Hard Sell: Negotiation Game. Using a deck of cards and a d6, this system adds depth to negotiations when buying and selling items. Also available under a CC-BY 4.0 license to use in your own games.
- Price: Free
Speaking of your own games, Land of Mist wants to help you with 5e Stock Art Illustrations Sample including old school inspired line art from Tara Quinn for 11 monsters including the basilisk, bulette, gryphon, mimic, rust monster, owlbear, and more. Also available under a CC-BY 4.0 license.
- Price: Free
Gildor Games released ELEMENTAL Adventure Guide featuring a collection of one-shot adventures to test out the system or add to your campaigns.
- Price: Free
Play in a superhero game? Then you know the challenge of coming up with a superhero or villain name quickly. Bill Keyes and Harmless Forest Creature Games are here to help with Iron Age Superhero Random Name Generator with a simple table that has over 8000 possible name combinations.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
Old School Role Playing has a new adventure for the Cepheus Engine (the rules system behind Traveller), Captain’s Log. Insurance adjustor Alice Yamamoto who needs someone to find the details of what happened to the merchant ship Sea Witch after finding the captain’s log for the lost ship. Some things don’t add up and the accident may not be as accidental as the claim suggests.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $3.00)
Players of Forbidden Lands from Free League may appreciate the release by Andrew Hollis with Forbidden Gear Cards, 146 printable bridge-size cards featuring resources, weapons, and amor available to players including profiles, crafting requirements, and slow/fast action options.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
As we collectively mourn the cancellation of Our Flag Means Death, we can take solace by continuing the story ourselves with Kannons & Kisses, a hack of Lasers & Feelings by Pawel Kicman from Heltung Storytelling.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $2.00)
If you want a little more depth to your pirate adventures, Galactic Funk Creations has Returning to Port, a random encounter chart for Pirate Borg. The encounters scale in difficulty depending on how much treasure you have on board as you attempt to make it back to port.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
What do cats do while their humans are away? GCF’s Cat Scratch, Cat Nap explores precisely that by exploring the mystical adventures our feline friends have without us.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.00)
Over on Dungeonmasters Guild, Thomas Kolar and the Wonderful World of Darklords podcast is back with another Ravenloft Domain of Dread: Mowgli’s Jungle. This jungle full of talking animals is ruled by the great Shere Khan, but there’s one human boy dwelling in the jungle that even the deadly tiger can never kill…
- Price: Free
Artem Serebrennikov released Orc Blade & Elven Blood, an adventure that sends the 8th to 11th level party to a cave complex and underground temple full of legal challenges, an ancient mystery to unravel, old school monsters including the pech and wyrds, and two new artifacts as rewards.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $3.33)
Want to play Curse of Strahd but you can’t find anyone who hasn’t already finished the iconic 5e campaign? Drake Rupple has the guide Curse of Strahd for Solo Adventurers with alternate rules to increase survivability, changes to the action economy, tweaks to character creation, 20+ companions with special rules, an alternate start, special tactics and automated actions, and more to help run the adventure as a duet.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.50)
Many lament the lack of importance the alignment system has had as D&D’s rules progress through editions. If you’d like to keep alignment in your games but want something more fresh and nuanced than the typical three-by-three square, Tyler C released Re: Alignment with a new spider graph system tracking behavioral tendencies to remove a lot of the ambiguity from alignment and make it a more interesting mechanical system instead of a morality and ethics debate interrupting the game.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $2.00)
Over on Storytellers Vault, Bek Andrew Evans released the guide Dissecting Deviant to help explain the real-world influences of Deviant: The Renegades. Evans seeks to ease understanding of the game and its setting by going into the science of Deviants and explaining the terminology for those without a background in science.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $1.50)
Rage Across Vancouver Island from Epoch Publishing is a setting for Werewolf: The Apocalypse 20th Anniversary Edition exploring the island off the coast of British Columbia that acts as one of the last bastions of Gaia attempting to hold the island from the Wyrm.
- Price: Pay What You Want (Suggested: $0.00)
The first Lightning Round this week features gamemaster/DM resources like monsters, maps, random generators, and more. All products are Free or pay-what-you-want with the suggested price in parentheses.
- 3d00 Basic Party (3D printer STL files) from DiegoZap (Free)
- Every Trick Books Bundle 2 (5e magic items) from Every Trick Books (Free)
- Encounter #1: Swamp Orchard (Maps) from Dramatic Dragons ($1.00)
- Cave A: Kobolds (Shadowdark monsters) from Pendragons & Paperknights Pub. ($1.00)
- Subterranean #2: Transition Chamber A (Maps) from Dramatic Dragons ($1.00)
- Print n Play Battlemaps 5 (Maps) from Piranha Squirrel Production ($1.00)
- Canniballista (5e CR2 monster) from Gryphon Games (Free)
- Rose Bouquet of Alligators (5e magic item) from Zakariah ($0.00)
- Sylvan Cloak (5e magic item) from Zakariah ($0.00)
- The Flying Spaghetti Demon Lord (5e deity and CR26 mythic monster) from Idan Kramarge ($0.50)
- Diving Blessings – Raven Queen (5e magic items) from Zrave, Apacolyps ($2.99)
- Magical Banners (5e magic items) from David Van Krimpen ($2.01)
The second Lightning Round features player resources like classes, subclasses, backgrounds, feats, races/species, and more. All products are Free or pay what you want with the suggested price in parentheses.
- Blue Dragon Dual Origin (5e playable species) from Chronicles of Lost Tomes ($0.00)
- Trading Post Operator (5e background) from Quest Weaver Media (Free)
- Way of the Bending Reed (5e Monk subclass) from Leprous Harry (Free)
- Way of the Super Ego (5e Monk subclass for contemporary settings) from Samuel Newnes ($0.69)
- Fame Domain (5e Cleric subclass) from Garrett May ($0.99)
- Esoteric Dragonborn: Aberrations & Astronomy (5e Dragonborn variants and feats) from CypherCA ($0.99)
- Spelljammer Player Options Left Behind Races and Racial Feats (5e racial options and feats) from Maxwell Landolphi ($1.00)
Bundles and Sales
Note: I have included end dates when listed for the following sales, but please be warned that those without published end dates may end suddenly so be sure to plan purchases accordingly.
Paizo has the holiday sale for the Paizo Store running. Use the code holiday24 and you can take 10% off your entire order of Pathfinder or Starfinder products. This discount stacks with Paizo Advantage and other discounts. Not valid on subscriptions, preorders, backorders, Foundry VTT products, or non-Paizo downloads.
- Price: 10% off your full order with the code holiday24
- End Date: January 15, 2024
Chris Spivey of Darker Hue Studios announced a flash sale for the award-winning Harlem Unbound 1st Edition. This setting suitable for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu or the GUMSHOE-powered investigative RPGs from Pelgrane Press, this book is chock full of real-world history along with Lovecraftian mythos to explore New York City during the Golden Age of Jazz and the Harlem Reniassance.
- Price: $4.99 (80% off) with the coupon code HEPCAT
- End Date: January 16, 2024
DriveThruRPG launched the New Year New Game sale featuring deep discounts on titles including Cyberpunk RED, The Walking Dead RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade, Worlds Without Numbers, Call of Cthulhu, Traveller, Warhammer 40K Roleplay: Wrath & Glory, and over 7000 other titles.
- Price: Up to 40% off
- End Date: January 21, 2024
And where there’s a sale on DriveThruRPG, there’s a similar one on Dungeonmasters Guild. Grab official TSR and Wizards of the Coast classic releases along with the best of third-party created content from DMs Guild with over 3600 titles on sale.
- Price: Up to 40% off
- End Date: January 21, 2024
And the New Year, New Game sale continues on Roll20 also with discounts on Pathfinder, 13th Age, Call of Cthulhu, Alien The Roleplaying Game, Blades in the Dark, Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, Star Trek Adventures, and dozens more.
- Price: Up to 40% off
- End Date: January 21, 2024
Charity Bundles and Sales
Legendary game designer and artist Jannell Jaquays passed away this week following a struggle with Guillain-Barré syndrome. A GoFundMe that was set up during her recovery is still active seeking to raise money to help with her medical costs and other final expenses.
- Charity: Medical bills and final expenses for Jannell Jaquays
Over on Bundle of Holding, Black Scrolls Games has the Black Scrolls Modular Map-Tiles Bundle featuring maps from Hungarian artist Antal Kéninger. The maps come in printable PDF files and JPG and PNG format to import on your favorite VTT. The four map sets in the base level alone are enough for a huge 5.5 gigabyte download so be ready with the hard drive space even before the City Collection adds on an additional seven more tile sets for a total of 11.
- Price: $7.95 (77% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- Charity: Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program (10%)
- End Date: January 31, 2024
Pelgrane Press released the Dying Earth bundle based on the works of fantasy author Jack Vance (yes, where we get the term “Vancian Magic” from). The Essentials Collection includes the core rulebook The Dying Earth along with seven other sourcebooks, setting books, and player option books. The Compleat Collection finishes out the entire library of books for the Dying Earth RPG with ten more sourcebooks, adventures, setting books, and more.
- Price: $19.95 (83% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- Charity: Cancer Research UK (10%)
- End Date: January 25, 2024
Monkeyblood has a bundle for the fantasy OSR setting Midderlands from designer and cartographer Glynn Seal. Designed for sandbox play using your favorite OSR system such as Old-School Essentials or Swords & Wizardry), the late medieval/early renaissance setting is inspired both by Seal’s home in the Midlands of the UK and from original fantasy locations. The Starter Collection features the setting book and its expansion plus the book for the City of Great Lunden, while the Bonus Collection adds on seven more books expanding the setting with more locations and cultures detailed.
- Price: $14.95 (75% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- Charity: British Heart Foundation and McMillan Cancer Support (10%)
- End Date: January 25, 2024
Gauntlet Publishing has a bundle for Trophy, their RPG series of tragic ends and psychological horror. The Dark Collection includes the core rules Trophy Dark, the “weird west” incursion Devil, Aim for Me, and the book to act as an epilogue for any fantasy game Candlelight. The Gold Collection adds on Trophy Gold, the stand-alone RPG about treasure hunters pressing their luck for treasure at the risk of delving too deep along with four more setting books and incursions.
- Price: $9.95 (76% off) with variable-cost Level Up option
- Charity: Diana Jones Award Emerging Designer Program (10%)
- End Date: January 15, 2024
Over on Humble Bundle, HarperCollins has a bundle that isn’t directly a roleplaying game bundle but I think will be of interest to many RPG fans: Terry Pratchett’s Discworld with 38 books from the master of satirical fantasy, Sir Terry Pratchett. The base level features the first three novels published in the Discworld setting adds on six more while the top tier features 38 novels, just three shy of the entire series (just missing the final two novels, Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown plus for some reason The Last Hero). The downside? You can only access the books through the Kobo app which might not be compatible with some devices, and it’s only available in the United States. But if that’s not an issue for you, this is a great chance to pick up some of the best fantasy fiction ever written.
- Price: $1/$10/$18 (96% off at top tier)
- Charity: Room to Read (user-defined, default 5%)
- End Date: February 1, 2024
Chaosium has a library of Lovecraftian horror books in the Call of Cthulhu Bundle. The base level includes the Call of Cthulhu Starter Set along with the Doors to Darkness collection of five introductory adventures, Petersen’s Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, and the Call of Cthulhu The Coloring Book. The second tier adds on six more books including the Call of Cthulhu Keeper Rulebook to expand rules options from the Starter Set, and the top tier adds 15 more books including the Call of Cthulhu Investigator Handbook to round out the core rules, alternate setting books Pulp Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark Ages, and the French Revolution setting Reign of Terror, and more adventures, bestiaries, settings, and more.
- Price: $1/$15/$25 (94% off at top tier)
- Charity: World Wildlife Fund (user-defined, default 5%)
- End Date: January 27, 2024
Humble also has a large bundle of battlemaps for the Alchemy VTT. The base level gets you three map packs plus a 1-month subscription to Alchemy Unlimited if you’d like to try it out, while the mid-tier expands the subscription to 3 months and adds on seven more maps and the top tier goes to a 6-month subscription and expands for a grand total of 26 map sets.
- Price: $1/$18/$25 (92% off at top tier)
- Charity: One Tree Planted (user-defined, default 5%)
- End Date: January 15, 2024 TWO MORE DAYS!!
That’s all for this week! If you know of any bundles or sales starting soon, please contact me on the EN World Discord, tag me on Mastodon, or send me a message here on EN World. Discount percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number and are based on the standard retail price provided by the site. Note: Links to Amazon, Humble Store, Humble Bundle, Fantasy Grounds, and/or DriveThruRPG may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
