(Header image by Peter Pagano.)

Seasons greetings! As we rush towards the close of 2024, we felt it was high time for an update on what's coming up at Necrotic Gnome. We have lots of exciting news and announcements to share about our plans for 2025!

Necrotic Expansion

First up, and most exciting of all, we've expanded our development team!

From the inception of Necrotic Gnome, our products have largely been the work of founder Gavin Norman, aided by freelance artists, editors, etc. Demand for new Old-School Essentials and Dolmenwood products has continued to grow, so we've decided to grow our team to keep pace.

We are delighted to announce that Chance Dudinack and Brad Kerr—two of the most acclaimed old-school designers of recent years—have now joined the Necrotic Gnome development team.

With an expanded team of three in-house writers, the rate at which we are able to develop new books is rapidly ramping up. Brad, Chance, and Gavin are currently working on a number of new products, discussed below, and going forward we expect the rate of new Necrotic Gnome releases to be markedly greater than it's been in past years. We're excited to keep our beloved Old-School Essentials and Dolmenwood games growing!

Dungeons of the Undermoon

The largest project currently bubbling in our cauldron is an OSE campaign starter and new player's introduction, featuring a full-length, two-level dungeon codenamed Dungeons of the Undermoon. The dungeon will be accompanied by a flavourful base town packed with rumours, a regional setting, pre-generated characters, a rules intro for new players, and a guide to the old-school play style for referees. This will be a perfect introduction to OSE for those new to old-school gaming, and a great campaign starter for existing fans.

We're considering producing this as a boxed starter set, with dice, maps, character cards, etc, but that will depend on manufacturing options. Our priority is to keep this product affordable, as an entry point to OSE for people curious about old-school gaming.

More Adventures

In addition to Dungeons of the Undermoon, we have several more adventures in development for Old-School Essentials:

• Adventure Anthology 3: A set of four new short adventures written by four authors, each with its own different flavour.
• Beneath the Radiant Dome: A revised and expanded edition of Gavin Norman's adventure of science-fantasy weirdness, originally published back in the mists of 2012. The adventure will be produced as a deluxe hardcover in the typical OSE style, illustrated by the inimitable Andrew Walter. Check out Andrew's fantastic cover here.
• And more: We also have two more full-length adventures in the pipeline, written by acclaimed designers. More news on those coming soon.

Carcass Crawler

Issue 4 of the official Old-School Essentials zine has just been released and work on issue 5 is underway. The next issue will tentatively feature the following (among other articles):

• A short adventure set around a magically corrupted river and dam.
• 8 new horrific river and lake monsters.
• Rules and tables for creating level 0 characters.
• Two new demihuman classes / races: the changeling and the ratling.
• And more...

We aim to adopt a more frequent publication schedule for Carcass Crawler going forward, with at least a couple of issues a year.

Devils, Demons, Necromancy, and Undead

Once work on Dungeons of the Undermoon wraps up, the next big project we have lined up is a pair of tomes for OSE delving into devils, demons, necromancy, and the undead. These projects have been in the early stages of development for some years but have been repeatedly pushed onto the back burner by other large projects (looking at you, Dolmenwood). But those fiends and undead horrors are now worming their way towards the front burner at long last!

These two hefty hardcover books are expected to be around 128 pages each. They will form a rich resource for running campaigns featuring evil powers, including religions, fiend- and necromancy-focused classes, new spells, campaign concepts, rules for diabolic and necromantic rituals, fiendish / necromantic magic items, and of course lots of new monsters, all the way from 1 HD minions right up to demon lords and mighty undead beings.

OSE Player's and Referee's Tomes New Printing

As mentioned in our newsletter recently, we're considering some minor tweaks to the AD&D-inspired assassin, barbarian, knight, and ranger classes in the next printing of the core books (some time in 2025). These classes were first developed in 2018–2019, and we’ve received lots of feedback in the intervening 6 years. As such, we’re considering making minor tweaks based on this feedback. (And we really do mean minor tweaks. These aren't going to be full rewrites of the classes.)

Any tweaks will also be published as a free PDF for people with prior printings of the books to use in their games, if desired.

Dolmenwood Retail Launch

As we write this, the Dolmenwood books, referee's screen, miniatures, and other accessories are being manufactured and will soon be on their way to Exalted Funeral's warehouses. Once everything arrives, Kickstarter backers' rewards will be sent out, before the game gets its full retail release. Prepare for massive, massive quantities of moss!

Much More to Come...

We have many more OSE and Dolmenwood projects planned. For announcements, keep an eye on our Coming Soon page and our newsletter (see signup at the bottom of the page).