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Sales

• Paizo is selling 34 Pathfinder books for $30.

• Andrew Kolb’s setting books Neverland, OZ, and Wonderland are all deeply discounted right now in print. Wonderland is under $15 for the hardback!

• Jon Peterson’s magisterial Playing at the World 2e, Part 1 is 25% off.

• Free League’s CY_BORG is 20% off.

• Justin Alexander’s So You Want To Be A Gamemaster is 36% off.

• The Troika! RPG is 72% off.

• All of the Dungeon Crawl Classics Lankhmar books are 50% off, like the Boxed Set, Tome of Adventure, The House of Jade and Sorrow, and The Greatest Thieves in Lankhmar.

• Almost everything at Frog God Games is 50% to 75% off, including the megadungeon Rappan Athuk.

This Month at Questing Beast

• On the channel, I reviewed The Dark Crystal, a complete RPG/Setting that followed up the Labyrinth RPG that I worked on. Turns out it’s really good! Unfortunately it sold out and is unlikely to be reprinted, but physical copies might still be found at places like eBay and the PDF is still available.

• I also reviewed the Dolmenwood Core Books and all of the new adventures for the setting!

• Sorry for the lack of bonus posts recently, I’ve been working on a new dungeon in the background! More info coming soon…

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

• The dead are hungry, and we are all edible. Can you survive the Extinction? Coming soon to Kickstarter - Extinction 2nd Edition! Rules Lite, Highly Lethal, Kinda Gory…ok, it’s really gory.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (116k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Justin Alexander reviews a ton of Mothership zines over two posts. A common theme seems to be adventures with cool high concepts, but which simply aren’t developed into something playable.

• Valeria Loves reviews The Menagerie of Unbearable Things, a monster book by the author of Crown of Salt.

• Playful Void reviews Turn it Off, a module for Knave 2e!

I think Turn It Off slaps. This is precisely what I’m looking for in a one-shot. I do think it might do better with pre-generated characters, particularly given the hopeless outcomes associated with the devil’s bargains your characters are forced to make. If you’re looking for a one-shot and your table is one that takes delight in hard decision making, then I wouldn’t hesitate to pick Turn It Off up.

• Wyloch’s Armory reviews Shadowdark!

• Professor Dungeon Master reviews his top picks for the best TTRPGs of 2025.

News and Gaming Culture

• Dave Thaumavore interviews Sam Sorensen, the creator of the Over/Under megagame experiment that took the RPG world by storm.

• Primastic Wasteland has a free dungeon: The Keep on the North Pole.

• The Bloggies, the yearly celebration of excellence in RPG blogging, is coming back! Submissions open on January 1.

• But prior to the Bloggies we have the Gloggies! These are awards for blog posts from within the sub-sub…sub community that focuses on Goblin Punch’s The Goblin Laws of Gaming. Confused? Don’t worry, it’s still fun to read all the nominations, as they point you towards lots of great posts.

• Weird Place has the game show I’ve always wanted: “Is This a Borg?”

Theory and Advice

• Grinning Rat: Just tell them what they need!

• Puzzle Dungeon: Mastering the Puzzle Dungeon Through Challenges and Lessons

• The Dododecahedron: The OSR Onion and Crossing the Dungeon Rubicon

• Murkmail: The only 12 NPCs you need

• Blog of Forlorn Encystment: B1 and Toyetic Dungeon Rooms

• Skeleton Code Machine: Everything is pointcrawl!

• Explorer’s Design: The Jackian Magic System

• Sam Sorensen: Sam’s Three-Question Taxonomy and Ten Intangible Tips for Development Editing Your RPG Manuscript

• cryptickeyway: Dungeon Rooms are Nouns, Dungeon Corridors are Verbs

• Was It Likely?: the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen

• Save vs Total Party Kill: Advice for Running a Hexcrawl, A Decade Too Late

• Kill it With Fire!: Level Titles as Quests

Worldbuilding

• cryptickeyway: An Even Closer Look at the Medusa: Seven More Variant Gorgons

• Murkmail: Let’s burn down Dolmenwood

• Daniel Sell: Relics of the Saints

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It’s time for the monthly link roundup! Get email updates and help support the channel by subscribing.

Black Friday RPG Sales

• All of the print copies of my RPGs (including the Premium Edition of Knave 2e) are 30% off until Monday (PDFs are included)! Physical copies don’t usually go on sale, so grab them while it lasts.

• Jacob Hurst’s edition of Jack Vance’s novel Wyst: Alastor 1716 is also 50% off.

• Exalted Funeral also has some crazy steep discounts on physical OSR RPGs. Make sure to use the coupon code QUESTINGBEAST at checkout to get an additional 10% off of any books that they publish, on top of the Black Friday sale. Standouts include the Ultraviolet Grasslands bundle, The Land of Eem Combo bundle, the OSE Advanced Referee’s Book and the Dolmenwood Core Books! (There seems to be a glitch on their website where it sometimes adds 2 copies of a book to your cart, so watch out for that).

• ALL of Patrick Stuart’s print books are 50% off, just use the discount code HOHOHO. Useable once per email address, expires Christmas day.

• Humble Bundle is selling 25 Dungeon Crawl Classics books for $12.

• Amazon has a big selection of boardgames and RPGs on sale, some up to 45% off. I’ve been stocking up! I especially recommend Heat, Splendor, and Mysterium.

• DriveThruRPG has a ton of PDFs on sale (including some of my games). Here’s the whole sale, and here’s just the OSR books.

This Month at Questing Beast

• MAZE KNIGHTS, the evolution of my Maze Rats RPG, is getting revived. Questing Beast supporters will get updates as it develops!

• On the channel, I reviewed WotC’s new setting guide Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun. I don’t normally review official 5e material, but I was curious to take a look at the current state of adventure design in 5e. Despite some layout improvements, I was not impressed. This one sparked a lot of debate on the RPG and DnDnext subreddits. Jorphdan even posted a rebuttal video!

• I also reviewed the 2nd edition of the landmark OSR setting Yoon-Suin, the spaceship-building book An Infinity of Ships, and a collection of new dungeon adventure zines.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor…

• The final Terror of the Stratosfiend is coming! A planetwide adventure through the insides of a god, leading to the birth of a laughing titan. Call down Starships and Beasts from the Drop-Astral Plane in a mess of tentacles and sorcery. Follow Now on BackerKit!

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (115k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• TenFootPole gives “The Best” to Manic at the Monastery.

• Professor Dungeon Master at Dungeon Craft reviews Chris McDowall’s Mythic Bastionland.

• Ram at Save vs. Total Party Kill reviews Trench Crusade, Space Gits, and MAC Attack. It’s great to see him wring long-form reviews again.

• Playful Void reviews the Oubliette megadungeon zine.

News and Gaming Culture

• Early Wyrm pricing is still available for Green Dragon Fest, the convention where you can play in games run by your favorite YouTuber gamemasters like Baron De Ropp, Professor Dungeon Master, Bob World Builder, and Kelsey Dionne! I’m planning on attending the next one as well. The price goes up on January 1, so reserve your spot now.

• Among Cats and Books has put together an enormous interactive map of the TTRPG blogosphere. You can see how different blogs group together, and even how the network has evolved year by year. A really incredible feat.

• Mothership’s text-based MMORPG Over/Under has concluded, and the stories emerging from it are wild. Onslaught Six explains one event, The Chokespawn Incursion. Valeria Loves explains How to Replicate Over/Under.

• Chris McDowall has fired up his podcast again, discussing obscure tabletop games with guests like Luke Stratton (Pirate Borg), Amanda Lee Frank, and Cole Wehrle. I’ve been having a great time with these.

• Weird Place looks at the history of play-by-mail games.

• Legend of the Five Rings has started a series looking back at 30 years of the game. So far Part 1 and Part 2 have been released.

• In 1994, a player videotaped his experience at a Magic: The Gathering tournament.

• Zedeck Siew released a free RPG where you play a Chapter Serf, a lowly servant of a Space Marine chapter doing the menial work of keeping all those candles lit.

• Seth Skorkowsky breaks down all three waves of RPG Moral Panic.

Theory and Advice

• Mindstorm: Pocket-sized Powder Kegs

• Dododecahedron: The OSR Onion

• All Dead Generations: Dungeon Design Note: Obstacles Support Exploration

• Prismatic Wasteland: I’d Rather Be a Mouse Than an Elf

• Rise Up Comus: Stepladder Tables

• Widdershins Wanderings: Play Style Preferences: The Hand You Are Dealt

• Matt Colville: Community

• goblin.zone: Making Hacking an OSR-style problem

• Sage’s Sanctum: Expand the Possibility Space and My Hole Theory of Interesting Combat

• Subjunctive Moods: Unfair Initiative

• The Alexandrian: D&D: Designing Backwards

• Rotten Pulp: Mythic Dungeons

• Bastionland: Ludum ex Ludo

• Dice Goblin: You’ve Met Me At A Very Flux Time: More Flux Dungeon Thoughts

• Mythic Mountains Folk Gaming Blog: An epic Classic Traveller campaign of 17 players all at once?

• SPGD: Meaningful Player Choice

Worldbuilding

• Spiceomancy: 24 Sun Gods

• Beneath Foreign Planets: d20 dungeon critters you can just snatch up and gulp down

• Rise Up Comus: d10 Special Doors

• False Machine: Currencies of the Dark

• Throne of Sale: The Polyps

• I Cast Light: LAW, ORDER, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Gameable Suggestions from English Medieval Law

• The Greatest Poster in the World: 1d10 martial arts manuals found in the Stygian Library

• Wifies: Searching for a World that Doesn’t Exist

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Sales

Tons of sales are on right now for Halloween! Here’s some of the standouts.

• My highly-acclaimed haunted mansion crawl The Waking of Willowby Hall is 50% off (only $3.75) for a limited time!

• Exalted Funeral has a 20% off sale on their horror titles, and if you use this link or the code “QUESTINGBEAST” at checkout you should get an extra 10% off the books they publish, like OSE’s Halls of the Blood King.

• At Humble Bundle, World of Darkness has a Physical Bundle and a Digital Bundle where you can get hundreds of dollars worth RPGs for a fraction of the MSRP. Magpie Games also has a massive bundle of 27 of their games.

• DriveThruRPG has a big Halloween Sale here, or you can check out just the discounted OSR titles here, including titles like Ashes Without Number, The Stygian Library, and The Shrike.

This Month at Questing Beast

• I published several new articles for Questing Beast supporters. If you would like to read them, as well the rest of my locked posts, consider becoming a paid subscriber here or on Patreon! Building the Real-Time Dungeon explores how far we can take Shadowdark’s real-time torch mechanic by applying it to other subsystems and Truman Show Campaigns asks: “What happens when RPG worlds revolve around the PCs’ lives?”

Building the Real-Time Dungeon

Ben Milton

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October 23, 2025

Read full story

Truman Show Campaigns

Ben Milton

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October 10, 2025

Read full story

• I published five new book reviews on YouTube: The Land of Eem Boxed Set, 28 Collected (a look inside the grimdark Warhammer subculture), Parsely (a text-adventure party game that my kids love), Magic Realms: The Art of Fighting Fantasy, and Barrows & Borderlands.

• I also attended two conventions: GameHoleCon in Madison, WI and TsunamiCon here in Wichita. I played a ton of games, including Mythic Bastionland, DCC XCrawl, Daggerheart, Nimble 2e, and five games of Shadowdark, including one set in Barkeep on the Borderlands! I got to meet and hang out with James Maliszewski, Mike Mearls, Ben Riggs, Dave Thaumavore, Justin Alexander, Travis Miller, Tyler Stratton (of Pirate Borg), Esper the Bard, and many others. Thanks to everyone who said hi, came to my panel, or played in my Knave game!

And Now a Word from Our Sponsor…

• ISLANDS OF WEIRDHOPE: EcoMofos sets sail! Adventures from Leo Hunt (Vaults of Vaarn), Zedeck Siew and more. Windwaker meets Waterworld in this rules-light psychedelic adventure game, solo and group play. Explore a hazardous but hopeful world, discovering Mecha beneath the waves. OSR that’s weirdhope not grimdark. Follow now for free pdf.

Have an upcoming Kickstarter or an RPG project you want to promote? Advertise in The Glatisant (23k subscribers) using this form or on the Questing Beast channel (113k subscribers) using this one. If you want to send me books for review consideration on Questing Beast, mail them to Ben Milton, 6446 E Central Ave #127, Wichita, KS, USA 67206.

Reviews

• Mythlands reviews James Spahn’s White Box: Cyclopedia

. . . if you could only ever game from a single rulebook for the rest of your life, it’s hard to imagine a game that would yield more good times at the table than this one. I don’t think I can give higher praise than that really.

• Playful Void reviews the delightfully weird What Ho, Frog Demons!

Overall, What ho! Frog Demons is a flawed but fascinating module, that innovates on a few interesting things that clearly haven’t caught the popular imagination . . . The series as a whole is probably one of the consistently strongest I’ve read, despite my criticisms.

• Valeria Loves has a very interesting take on how to make Fabula Ultima work by playing it completely “wrong.”

• Old Men Running the World reviews the free game False Kingdom.

IN A SENTENCE: It’s Medieval Forged in the Dark Paranoia.

• Deficient Master reviews Taryn Pound’s (Indestructoboy) game Vagabond.

News

• The biggest news in RPGs right now is the completely bananas Mega-wargame OVER/UNDER that’s being run as part of Mothership Month 2025. I can’t wait to hear about what happened once it wraps up.

• Two adventures that got their start on the Knave 2e Adventure Jam are now crowdfunding! Check out Duginthroat Divided (amazing art) and Turn it Off: An Eldritch Horror Adventure.

• James Spahn is developing a solo RPG called Torch and Blade based off of my game Maze Rats!

• The recent Appendix N Jam ended and produced a ton of excellent, free adventures to run. Here are some of the best.

• Direct Sun will be launching the Puzzle Dungeon Jam in 5 days!

• Cats Have No Lord has launched the Onegeon Jam, which is all about creating a single interesting dungeon room.

• Patrick Stuart’s books are once again shipping again to the USA.

• DriveThruRPG is apparently now selling offset books as well as POD ones. Curious to see what the quality looks like.

• Gavin Norman announces an important update to OSE.

While publishing the game in these multiple formats caters to different tastes and preferences, it’s also proven to be confusing for new players, not to mention logistically complicated keeping all the different formats in stock. Going forward, we’ll be consolidating Old-School Essentials into a pair of core books: the OSE Player’s Book and Referee’s Book. These two books form what we’re calling the 2026 Update of OSE.

Theory and Advice

• Fae Errant: The Lost Art of Getting Lost

• Puzzle Dungeon Design: Themes and Gimmicks

• Dungeonfruit: Zero Sum Game (A Magic System)

• Cryptickeyway: SOMETHING Happens on Every Watch

• Patchwork Paladin: Making Good Choices

• Traipse: The 10 types of special rooms

• Pointless Monument: Bastion Station Mall: Alternate Mothership Starting Equipment Loadouts

• Tales of the Lunar Lands: Modules as DM Screens

• Among Cats and Books: Glory as Reputation

• Grinning Rat: 100 Ways to Improve Your GMing

Worldbuilding

• The Nothic’s Eye: Consumerism, Consume Me (Treasures from the Maul of America)

• I Don’t Remember That Move: STRANGE AEONS - SYDNEY

• The Alexandrian: Elven Teeth

• Nerd of the Rings: ArdaCraft: A Tour of Middle-earth in Minecraft 2025! This might be the most astonishing worldbuilding project I’ve ever seen.

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