GMs day sale (2026) - OSR, classic D&D and others

So, it’s that time of year again...

The GM Day's sale has arrived, so here are my picks (same as last years with some additions).

Notice that the usual discount this year is 40%, which is the best sale of the year IIRC.

First, let me remind you that all of my books are included in the sale! 

If your tastes are similar to mine, take a look! They are mostly compatible with OSR games (except for a couple of 5e books - "Manual of Arms").

Here are some big discounts. 

The Dolmenwood Campaign Book looks really cool and it is 50% off! Maybe I'll get it to take a look.

The Halls of Arden Vul Complete is also 40% off again - or $45.00 off. Sounds reasonable for 1.100 pages (!) although it is probably too much material for me to digest.

Now, let's see the old favorites...

Big discounts!

These products seem to be about 40% off and I find each of them interesting. The first two are my own. Some are also mentioned (and further explained) below:

OSR

* Teratogenicon, my monster maker (check the previews!).

* Dark Fantasy Basic, my B/X neoclone.

* Hyperborea (my impressions).

* Monkey Business.

* Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (DCC RPG);

* How to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck; 

* The Monster Alphabet; 

* Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome; 

* Silent Legions; 

* Into the Unknown (my impressions).

* Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells.

* Tales of Argosa.

Classic D&D

This are some of my favorites, also 40% off. Explanation here.

* D&D Basic Set Rulebook (B/X ed.) (Basic).

* D&D Rules Cyclopedia (Basic)

* Dungeon Master's Guide (1e)

* Monstrous Manual (2e).

* Dark Sun boxed set.

* B10 Night's Dark Terror - one of my favorite classic adventures.

Goodman Games

In addition to the amazing Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG (DCC RPG), I really like The Dungeon Alphabet, The Monster Alphabet and The Cthulhu Alphabet. They are near system-less and full of awesome stuff to inspire your games. I still haven't read How to Write Adventure Modules That Don't Suck but it is also on sale. All of them 40% off.

They also publish awesome adventures; alas, few are on sale, but fortunately Doom of the Savage King, the one I am currently running, is 40% off! Recommended! Same for Jewels of the Carnifex, which I reviewed here.

Necrotic Gnome

Several Old School Essentials titles are also on sale in addition to Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy: Rules Tome. I really like Old-School Essentials. It is basically a concise, well-organized version of my favorite D&D (B/X). The SRD is great. the version that interests me the most is the advanced version - it is NOT an AD&D clone, but B/X with many new options taken from AD&D, dragon magazine, etc. For players and DMs.

Sine Nomine Publishing

Worlds Without Number is 40% off. I have only read the free version briefly, but seems very good overall, and I've appreciated many other titles from the same author, including Scarlet Heroes and Silent Legions (maybe my favorite OSR take on horror and Lovecraft).

I think that's it for now. If you know any other books on sale that you'd recommend (especially if it is 40% off), let me know in the comments and I'll add it to my list. Feel free to promote your own products!

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The critical hit "checklist"

As you might have noticed, I really like critical hits, but I dislike complexity. Playing systems such as Rolemaster with extensive crit and fumble tables, where a bad roll could mean your character trips over an invisible turtle (really!), was fun but also slow and frustrating.

This is another idea for critical hits. 

My aim is to pile all weapon complexity onto critical hits, so we don't have to write it down in every character sheet. It makes critical hits lengthy and detailed, but something you can easily change or ignore if you dislike it.

Maybe critical hits activate on a natural 20 (maybe 19-20 for certain fighters), or maybe on a margin of success of 10 or more. Whatever method you use, I think this table would simplify things. Each line can represent an idea that applies to lots of weapons, and you can just skip the lines you don't use.

You start with the idea that a critical hit not only gives you maximum damage, but — if it doesn't outright kill your target — gives you a percentage chance of doubling it.

The chances start at 5% for each point of difference between your d20 roll and your target number (e.g., with ascending AC, if you have a total of 23 against AC 13, you start with a 50% chance).

Then you go through a small checklist, skipping the items that do not apply:

• Using two hands gives you +10%.
• Armor (or tough/brittle bodies) gives swords and axes -10%.
• Shields give swords, spears and arrows -10%.
• No armor (or soft/flexible bodies) gives swords +20% and axes +10%.
• Lack of blood and functioning organs gives swords and spears -20%.
• Spears give you +10% otherwise (i.e., if there are blood/organs).
• Oozes give blunt and small weapons and missiles -20%.
• Large foes give blunt and small weapons and missiles -20%.
• Polearms are combinations of weapons, so it depends. Other weapons might fall somewhere in the sword (slashing) spear (piercing) or mace (blunt) categories. 

You get the idea. You can tweak the numbers, but potentially the entire "weapon versus armor" and "weapon versus large" tables could be included here — and since critical hits are rare, all this complexity only comes up occasionally, keeping the game fast the rest of the time.

When you get the percentage (if positive), you roll the chances of doubling your damage. If you roll doubles, you triple damage. Such a critical hit should always be described in detail, and someone killed in this manner will often suffer a gruesome death (decapitation, disembowelment, etc). If you miss the percentage roll, you still add +2 damage if you roll doubles.

If you like to use fumbles, a natural 1 could give you a fumbling chance. At least here they wouldn't apply to 5% of all attacks. Fumbling chances could be affected by circumstances such as:

Using a flail.

Shooting into melee.

Fighting with large weapons in small spaces or using bows indoors.

Uneven or unsafe ground.

Either way, the goal is the same: keep the complexity tucked away where it rarely surfaces, but it exists and always stays somewhere in the back of the players' heads, making weapons feel more grounded and detailed without slowing your game down.

Note: the GM Day's sale* is on, and most of my books are included! 40% off many titles! Here are some of my picks from past sales. Some deep discounts here, including the Dolmenwood Campaign Book looks really cool and it is 50% off! Maybe I"ll get it to take a look...

* Affiliate link.

The fireball hand grenade

You might have heard me complain about fireballs a couple of times, so I hope you'll forgive me for trying a new fix to a problem some of you might share. The fix is really simple and does not significantly nerf MUs (in fact, I'm not sure it is enough).

Usually, when an MU throws a fireball at a group of goblins, things like saves and damage rarely matter - goblins within blast radius are toast. Which is fine, but it gets weirder and weirder to me when the MU can instantly kill a group of orcs, lizard men or even bugbears.

What if we just roll damage as usual (say, 7d6 for a 7th-level MU), but that is the TOTAL damage dealt. So, against a group of goblins, a weak damage roll (say, 20 points) and a successful save would reduce the number of goblin casualties to only two or three.

The damage is distributed as the GM sees appropriate - think of the fireball like a hand grenade! Most of the damage hits the center, shrapnel spreads outward.

This logic seems to work for groups. Against a single creature, the fireball remains equally effective. If you want to change that, you can just decide that, like a grenade, the main target gets most of the damage but a part of it (say, half of the damage, round down) is spread around.

Lightning bolt could function similarly, but maybe I'd let the MU concentrate all damage into a single creature or create a "line" of damage that diminishes as each creature is hit in a straight line. This spells has not been as common in my games, however. I'm even tempted to treat dragon breath in similar way (well, as a flamethrower) and let fighters jump with their shields in front of wizards when needed.

Anyway, I like this idea because it makes a 10d6 fireball very different from a 5d6 fireball against a group of lesser foes, which gives the wizard a real sense of progression without making him overpowered in comparison to fighters. Thinking of them as grenades makes them feel more grounded and tactically interesting, giving MUs interesting choices of where to aim - and it is also reminiscent of the original Chainmail origins that treated wizards like artillery.

Note: the GM Day's sale* is on, and most of my books are included! 40% off many titles! Here are some of my picks from past sales. Some deep discounts here, including the Dolmenwood Campaign Book looks really cool and it is 50% off! Maybe I"ll get it to take a look...

* Affiliate link.

Maximum Damage

We've been playing with a lot of ideas using D&D weapons and margins of success. Yesterday, a new one occurred to me: maximum damage.

Let's say weapon damage is determined by margin of success, but the maximum damage is unchanged from the original game. So a d4 becomes 4, a d8 becomes 8, etc.

This has several benefits before we get any deeper:

• You don't need a damage roll.
• Damage raises steadily with level, especially for fighters.
• Armor becomes even more significant.
• Armored duels
•  feel a bit slower and more realistic, with lots of wounds.
• Magic users could use swords etc. but it would usually not be worth the effort.
• We'd get more granular weapons (e.g., maximum damage 5, 7, or 9).
• Even a goblin can potentially survive a hit of a +3 sword, although this is very rare.

If we rule that a natural 20 doubles or triples maximum damage (or just raises it by 10 points or whatever), even a dagger can be deadly in the hands of a very skilled fighter against an unarmored foe.

Conversely, we can introduce laser guns with 15 or 20 maximum damage, and he stormtroopers would still have a hard time actually killing someone with it in a single shot.

I'm tempted to add your attack bonus to maximum damage too, so Conan can occasionally kill a sorcerer with a punch.

We'd have to consider how backstab works. Maybe a flat +4 bonus to attack and maximum damage.

Also, how do exact hits work? Maybe 0 damage, maybe 1, maybe some special effect, not sure.

One downside I can see is that average damage is a bit higher than usual even for low-HD creatures, although this is somewhat countered by the fact that in my games, PCs don't die at 0 HP. The fact that high-level warriors deal lots of damage is a plus for me, especially because I don't like having many magic weapons.

The fact that people get used to thinking about margins of success could also be useful if you use this for skills and other checks, which I like.

Another problem is that big foes such as giants and dragons could have their damage significantly diminished if we use this system exactly as written, never being able to actually reach their "maximum damage". Maybe that's a problem for another day, but I can imagine we could have a size multiplier of ×2 to ×4 (maybe "3x6" instead of "6d6"), which could create an interesting effect: a giant will not often hit the fighter, but when he does the damage is massive — one mistake might cost him dearly!

I think I originally had this idea years ago, when playing bell-curve systems, which might have different, but interesting, effects.

There are probably another issues I'm missing, but so far I really like this idea... let me know what you think in the comments!

Note: the GM Day's sale* is on, and most of my books are included! 40% off many titles! Here are some of my picks from past sales. Some deep discounts here, including the Dolmenwood Campaign Book looks really cool and it is 50% off! Maybe I"ll get it to take a look...

* Affiliate link.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (TV series, 2026)

 A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is the best current TV series in the fantasy genre, as far as I can tell, and one of the best I've ever seen.

If you like anything Game of Thrones related, you're very likely to love this one.

It has the right amount of humor, idealism, grittiness, and violence.

Unfortunately, it's not one for younger viewers without some caveats. About half the episodes contain one or two crude (and completely unnecessary) scenes, and there is plenty of realistic blood and violence throughout. So while I'd otherwise recommend it even for 12 year old boys, parents should be aware of both before letting teenagers watch.

About the violence, I have to say this is some of the best medieval combat I've seen in recent memory. In many movies, armored combat is full of quick maiming and even decapitations. Here, an armored knight can survive several sword and dagger blows for quite a long time before falling or dying. Well, there is one quick decapitation that feels somewhat out of place, and some people might bleed a bit more than would be believable and keep fighting, but overall the melee is very impressive.

Why is this so good? I'd guess it has many shades of gray, like most of GRRM's work - and good or bad people are not necessarily fighting on opposing sides - but at the same time the main characters are likeable and moral (although far from perfect, one having limite size and other limited smarts) so you're always cheering for them. It is fun in a way House of the Dragon doesn't always manage.

The realistic combat always plays a part. The most skilled fighters often win, using power, brutality, and skill, which is a breath of fresh air after watching so many fantasy battles of petite warriors doing useless backflips. People are self-serving but rarely amoral or straight up evil, with a few exceptions.

In short, a great balance between chivalry and realism. And that balance turns out to be more than just a stylistic choice - it goes to the heart of what the show is actually about.

Why is Dunk a knight, or a good knight? Because of his weapons and armor? Because he was knighted? Because of his size and courage in battle, yet to be fully tested? Or because he follows the code of chivalry?

Watch it, and form your own opinion.

(BTW, the book is very good too!)

Hiatus, Thoughts and Plans

This is a rant. You've been warned. ;)

Some of you might have noticed I'm writing a lot less these days. A few things have changed in my life, mostly for the better. I finished a long campaign — I definitely have to make a post about that. But I'm rethinking the usefulness of some of the stuff I do, and I think a bit less about RPGs these days (probably because I'm not playing as much either).

Many of the things I write are things I'd like to use myself, or have used. But I still want everything I write to be useful to someone else (or I wouldn't publish it).

I've been through a brief period of AI disillusionment, feeling that now AI can write faster, longer, and sometimes better than me. Well, from what I've seen, it is not quite there yet, but it might be in 2-3 years. So I was asking myself what is the point of taking the effort if AI will do it better in a couple of years.

And I'm still not 100% sure. But I'm seeing something. AI works with an ocean of trash. It can make a quick or detailed review of The Diamond Throne but it will not tell you it is terrible or why it is terrible (if you liked this book, I hope you don't mind my example).

AI is great at writing the easier, most obvious, most popular answer to your question. But it is not really trained to be contrarian, inquisitive, politically incorrect, etc. It can give you what you want but it is not really good at giving you what you didn't know you wanted.

So I guess I still have something to offer. It is a bit niche, but I've always been a bit niche (well, except for some 5e campaigns back in 2016 when everyone liked it).

BTW, the anti-AI sentiment has not been very helpful either. I got some flak for mentioning AI in my latest book, and I barely used it — it was more experimentation, dice-rolling and some brainstorming. But now that I know how to use it, I feel that NOT using it at all would be masochistic luddism at best. The time it saves when it corrects my typing errors is worth it by itself.

OTOH, I will NOT use AI art in my books. Not because of some moral high ground, but because I think it looks UGLY. The thing is, I'm a WRITER and not an ARTIST. So I feel that I can revise anything that AI gives me to ensure I'm not giving you AI slop. If I were an artist, I could maybe work with an AI somehow, but I'm not, so I prefer working with real artists that have real TASTE, even if I have to use stock art.

Which by itself is probably a contrarian view, as it is pro-AI and anti-AI at the same time.

Anyway, here are some future plans.

I'm going to continue working on Prismatic Planet and posting here. I might make the whole book available for free before I publish it. These posts do not get many views but that's probably the seed of my next campaign, and what I want to write.

I might write about a few books I've read: Norwegian Wood (weak and overhyped), The Stranger (not great), Amber (good but not great), etc. I was a bit discouraged for not having many nice things to say about them, but again, the contrarian view might be useful.

BTW, I have another blog called Inspiring Ideas. I haven't been using it but since I've been reading lots of self-help and self-improvement stuff, maybe it becomes more active this year.

Also, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is some of the best fantasy TV ever, and I have to write about that — at very least to discuss the realistic medieval battles.

So, that's what I've got for now. As I mentioned, I write for myself first, and this has been my attempt to convince myself to continue writing. It brought me lots of joy over the years.

And, as always, I'm immensely grateful for everyone reading this.

Dark Fantasy Favorites

I really love fantasy in general, and dark fantasy in particular; however, I have the impression that authors and readers often confuse dark fantasy with violence, gore, nihilism, or sexuality.

The definition of dark fantasy deserves its own post (here is one attempt), but for now it's enough to remember that dark fantasy is an intersection of fantasy with horror — capable of evoking tension and fear — and tragedy, which in turn frequently portrays the fall (moral, physical, social, etc.) or suffering of its protagonists and supporting characters. Nihilism and moral ambiguity appear frequently but are not in themselves defining features of the genre.

The books below are some of my favorites in dark fantasy, which I consider not only very well written, but also examples of a deeper understanding of the genre.

Stormbringer, by Michael Moorcock. This is my favorite book from the saga of the albino prince Elric, which in turn is one of the most important works of dark fantasy, influencing countless subsequent works, like The Witcher, A Song of Ice and Fire, The Chronicles of Amber and so on.

However, this book is (in a way) the conclusion of the saga. So, my recommendation would be to start with the first book (Elric of Melniboné) and, if you like it, continue reading the entire saga. If you don't like it, skip to this final cycle, which is essential.

Worms of the Earth. Robert E Howard, author of Conan, has a darker edge in several stories, although Conan himself is a heroic character. This tale, one of Howard's darkest ones, narrates the story of the tragic hero Bran Mak Morn, the last king of the Picts, in a desperate struggle to save his people from Roman hordes or at least guarantee his revenge.

It's a perfect choice if you want to start with a shorter story.

Black God's Kiss, by C.L. Moore, is a tale about Jirel of Joiry, a (seemingly) French warrior, who finds herself defeated in her own realm and imprisoned by an evil enemy eager to humiliate her. Consumed by hatred, she decides to descend into the hellish Abyss beneath the castle to find a useful weapon against her rival... The plot resembles Worms of the Earth, and the writing is also similar to Howard's in tone, mixing action with fantasy and cosmic horror.

Jirel is not exactly a "female Conan" (nor the stereotypical princess, damsel, or amazon); she is strong and fierce, but has distinct enough characteristics to be interesting. For example, she is Christian and painfully aware that she's not just risking her life, but also her soul, even if she succeeds in her mission. Additionally, she is apparently the first notable female protagonist in the sword & sorcery genre.

Another excellent short story.

The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe, is one of the best dark fantasy books (and fantasy in general) I've ever read. The reading is a bit difficult because of the elaborate vocabulary, but it's incredibly rewarding.

Full review here.

The Broken Sword, by Poul Anderson (seek out the original 1954 version) is one of the best books in the appendix N, and it's been a huge influence on Moorcock and others.

Review here.

Darkness Weaves by Karl Edward Wagner is one of the darkest of the bunch - or at least it has one of the darkest protagonists I've read recently. If you want Conan with a darker vibe, Kane is your guy.

Review here.

Other books and authors. 

I should mention Clark Ashton Smith here; some of my favorite stories are The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, The Beast of Averoigne, The Tale of Satampra Zeiros, The Empire of the Necromancers, The Isle of the Torturers, The Abominations of Yondo.

There are other authors like Poe and Lovecraft that I think fit more comfortably in the horror genre than dark fantasy, although some stories would certainly fit. Borges and Kafka have their own thing going on, that is not the same kind of dark fantasy found here.

I haven't enjoyed The Blade Itself. The Black Company is good but not great IMO; same for The Witcher. A Game of Thrones is great but has no ending so far.

On the more modern side (post 2010s), I enjoyed the Lost Gods by artist Brom and Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman.

I really like dark fantasy, so you'll probably see other reviews here in the future (and some I've already reviewed in the past and didn't mention here). I welcome suggestions!