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Issue #001 — Week of July 07, 2026

issues ttrpg  2026-07-07

This Week’s Verdict

The industry spent the week doing paperwork: ENnie nominees posted, an expo shoved a year down the calendar, and the discourse settled into the eternal question of whether a ten-foot pole earns its slot in the pack. If you were hoping for errata, you will leave hungry. Bring bundles.

Releases & Announcements

The 2026 ENnie nominees are out, per EN World, which also carried the week’s practical bread and butter: another Freebies, Sales, and Charity Bundles roundup spanning D&D, Star Trek Adventures, Free League, Paranoia, Shadowrun, and assorted OSR.

On the product side, WizKids put out a D&D Spirit Board, a physical replica of the Ravenloft magic item, which is either charming or the most inevitable merchandising decision of the year. MonkeyDM’s Steinhardt’s Guide to the Eldritch Hunt now has player-facing content live on D&D Beyond. Beadle & Grimms will happily sell you the Silver Edition of The Horrors Within for $225.

Third-party and indie output continued at its usual clip. Icarus Games announced A Night of Adventure Vol. 1, seven short 5e adventures for the prep-starved. Philip Reed Games shipped Stranger Danger for Shadowdark RPG, over 200 NPC hooks for the barmaid your party will interrogate for twenty minutes. ND Hobbies released Black Jam, a post-apocalyptic OSR game built on The Black Hack. Bat in the Attic put out a Maps and Reference Sheets book for the Northern Marches. EN World’s print news column noted a new Warhammer: The Old World RPG alongside supplements for Áth Cliath, Star Trek Adventures, and a Spelljammer AD&D 2E item, plus D&D 5.5 material.

A note for the trade watchers: ICv2 reports RPGs were up in a quiet spring, which is the kind of sentence that keeps distributors calm.

Rules & Errata

Nothing official this week. Wizards of the Coast ran its first quarterly “season” model in 2026, per a German-language thread from Arkanil, wrapping Season of Horror (April through June) as a themed bundle of core book, store program, and digital extras rather than standalone releases. That is a publishing structure, not a rules change, but it is the closest thing to news out of the D&D machine this week. Shadowdark and DCC produced no errata. Read the book you already own.

The Community

The eternal debates ran on schedule. Lair of Secrets polled whether the ten-foot pole deserves its place in the adventuring kit, then went on to geek out about polearms in D&D Unearthed Arcana, so at least the commitment is consistent. Thoughtpunks posted an earnest defense of rules-light systems against their usual critics, part of a small run of posts on what the author calls “dice modes,” the idea that dice simulate, narrate, or answer questions depending on the game.

Ruckerworks argued that players and DMs across D&D, Shadowdark, Daggerheart, and Old-School Essentials all want the same thing, namely cool characters, which is hard to dispute and easy to publish. The OSR crowd stayed busy: flyrefi posted an OSR/NSR survey analysis, Xenograg excerpted the perennial “as armor improved, swords became less effective” argument, and Seed of Worlds ran capsule reviews of the Kala Mandala zine line. A character generator for Dolmenwood surfaced at dlmnwd.com. MattyBoomBatty reviewed Return of the Ripper for DCC. And randomwizard asked the only question that matters: how many war dogs may a party buy.

On the Horizon

Sly Flourish launched the Kickstarter for Rise of the Lazy Gamemaster, complete with Patreon discounts and a downloadable preview, which is your reminder that even the calm ones fundraise. So Many Robots entered the final three days of Machines of Bone & Blood, a necroindustrial 5e campaign already past a dozen stretch goals. Nerdronomicon continued crowdfunding The Sorcerer’s Conundrum, a level-2 DCC adventure zine.

Further out, EN World flags Merryshire Detective Club, a Hobbit-meets-Midsomer game whose crowdfunder is about three weeks away. Less happily, London’s D&D Fan Expo 2026 has been postponed to September 2027, which is a long time to hold a ticket.

Resources