Meme-Free Zone

This is a bundle of the Ker Nethalas "single-player dungeon crawler" from Blackoath Entertainment, a system for creating single-player solo adventures with a good deal of complexity.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/KerNethalas

  

This is an interesting system, but my impression is that it is complicated to play, with a lot more dice-rolling than most solo adventures and a fairly steep learning curve. Unless I'm missing something some of the details added during character generation don't actually affect play - for example, the crimes that characters are supposed to have committed aren't mentioned again unless I'm missing something. My feeling is that that this system may have originally been intended for a more normal RPG, in which background detail like this would affect reaction rolls etc., but got repurposed at some point.

The bottom line - It's not really my sort of game, but if you like rather more complexity than most solo systems it might be for you.

These are two bundles for the RPG Household, a "wainscot-fantasy" RPG of little folk in an abandoned house published by Two Little Mice - one's a repeat from 2024, the other is all-new.

HOUSEHOLD (from Nov 2024)
   https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Household2026

HOUSEHOLD VOLUME II (new)
   https://bundleofholding.com/presents/HouseVol2

  

Last time I said (of the basic Household game) "This is quite nicely done, with some humour in things like the sample adventure Pride and Prejudice and Centipedes, but slightly lacking in acknowledgement of prior work such as The Borrowers, The Carpet People, and Phil Master's Small Folk RPG. It isn't very expensive and I think it's worth a look if you're into the idea of this sort of role-playing."

The new volume takes the characters outdoors to combat truly vast monsters of one sort and another, though you'd think that by now some of them would have found their way indoors, and introduces new concepts such as seasons and weather. It also continues the history etc. set up in the first book, and has material for sagas involving various "historical characters". including a campaign, The Long Winter, which has a background involving a cold war between various fairy factions. Like it's predecessor it's relatively cheap and very pretty, and (if you don't count the squirrels and owls gigantic monsters) not noticeably horrific, a nice change from the last month's bundles. It's definitely worth getting if you already have the first bundle - but you really do need the material in the first bundle to play it, it isn't a stand-alone game.

This is a new bundle which (slightly surprisingly given the month) isn't horror as such; it features Death in Space, the "Stockholm Kartell game about uncertain journeys in the void" and the worst enemy in this one is the (doomed) universe itself and its implacable hostility to life, with evil cults etc. just making things a little worse.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/DeathInSpace

  

This comes from from Stockholm Kartell (the collective behind Mörk Borg) and Free League Publishing but for once has typography and layout that doesn't make my eyes want to bleed, and it looks reasonably playable. It's also relatively cheap and is probably worth a look if you're in the mood for some downbeat space adventures.

This is a repeat of the June 2021 bundle of the RPG of the novel The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (an annotated version is included if you pay for the "scholar collection"), which shares a lot with Call of Cthulhu and other horror RPG settings. It's based on the Gumshoe system.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/YKRPG2026

  

When this was first listed I said "As I've said before, I managed to get a little burnt out on horror after writing and playing way too much Call of Cthulhu in the eighties and nineties. I'm also not a huge fan of the gumshoe system - I'm not entirely sure why, I think it's simply that I'm more comfortable with other systems and really like some of their mechanisms, e.g. the sanity rules of Call of Cthulhu. But if you're into horror and/or the Gumshoe system this is probably for you." I don't see any reason to change that.

This is a bundle of solo "choose your own path" Cthulhu Mythos adventures from a Scottish publisher, Blue Fox Publishing, along with several comics based on the Cthulhu mythos.

 

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/BlueFox

  

These really aren't my sort of thing, but if you want to read The Mountains of Madness (the "At" of the original title has run away screaming) as a comic or die horribly and repeatedly in solo Mythos adventures, this is one way to do it. They're cheap, and you get a fair bit for your money.

As expected, Bundle of Holding has kicked off October with a new horror offer, Cthulhu Awakens, which is a new (to me) Cthulhu Mythos RPG based on the Adventure Game Engine system from Green Ronin Publishing.

bundleofholding.com/presents/CthulhuAwakens

  

I've been "off" horror RPGs, especially those based on the Cthulhu Mythos, for a long while, due to spending WAY too much time writing them in the eighties and nineties. I'll play them occasionally if someone else runs them, but I don't feel any great urge to get back into them on a regular basis. This one seems to be fairly high-powered with characters regularly using magic etc., and for once avoids the stereotypical "encountering the mythos drives you insane" idea - in this game UNDERSTANDING the mythos and the total indifference of the universe to human life and aspirations is what actually drives you into despair and possibly eventual insanity. It's a subtle difference but an interesting one.

There's a good amount of material included, and it seems reasonably well organized. Unfortunately I'm not a big fan of the typeface used for the rulebook, which may sound like an odd objection but ties into long-standing issues with my eyesight - I have a retinal problem in one eye that can make straight lines of text look wavy, the typeface used is actually designed that way deliberately, and initially had me worried that my other eye was going the same way...



See what I mean?

Starting in 45 minutes or so, another repeat bundle, three long magazines for the Old School Revival, RPGs that run in the style of D&D etc. - Knock! Magazine from 'The Merry Mushmen'

Dubbed "an Adventure Gaming Bric-à-Brac and a Compendium of Miscellanea for Old School RPGs," KNOCK! showcases breathtaking layouts, dazzling color, and a barrage of articles, essays, tables, rules, maps, monster stats, and adventures that range from weird to – well, no, they're all uniformly weird. Every overstuffed 200+-page issue features the most audacious designers in the Old School Revival.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Knock2026

  


Last the blurb compared this to the Mörk Borg games and I said:

Unfortunately this isn't my style of gaming at all, and to be honest it feels a bit expensive for what it is. One of my other problems with it is the layout; reading Mörk Borg actually gave me a headache, and to me at least Knock! is just as hard on the eyes. But if you like this sort of thing your opinion may differ.

While the description has changed, I'm not seeing any reason to change my opinion.

We're probably headed towards several weeks of horror games since October will soon be upon us. Watch this space...

A few days ago I was reminded of the "How David Weber Orders a Pizza" parody, In Ovens Baked by Roger M. Wilcox. Since it's now 25 years old I thought it might be fun to introduce it to anyone who has somehow missed it:

In Ovens Baked

Enjoy...

This is an offer of material for Pirate Borg, an offshoot of the Mork Borg rules focusing on pirates. The main Pirate Borg rulebook was in a 2025 offer, the rest is new.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/PirateBorg

  

In 2025 I said "It's a popular system, but my eyes and brain have a lot of trouble coping with the typography and layout this company prefers, to the point of getting a headache if I look at some pages too long, and I don't think it's for me. Those of you with less tired eyes ought to find a reasonably comprehensive system with a fair amount of potential." Unfortunately this still applies - my sight is not improving and the combination of garish colours and weird layout makes a lot of this material physically painful for me to read.

I went on to say "The price seems reasonable, but as always check what you actually want - if you already have some of this material it may be cheaper to get anything else you want as you need it, rather than buying the whole bundle."  Again, this may still apply.

This is a new bundle, the 2019 edition of the Trinity Continuum action/adventure RPG from Onyx Path Publishing core material. A 2019 bundle had the 1997 edition of the game (then published by White Wolf) but a lot has changed.

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/ContinuumCore

  

In 2019 I said "It's a long time since I've looked at this game setting; my impression of it was that it used a lot of White Wolf's general tropes such as multiple competing cliques, and looked like it would be fun but difficult to get into. Having looked briefly at the PDFs I still think that's still the case. But I know that a lot of readers out there will want to add to their White Wolf collections, and this seems a cheap way to do it. Recommended, but as usual I have to emphasise that I get these games free if I want them - if you don't your mileage may differ."

At a fairly quick look this looks a little more accessible than the original, though still probably a steep learning curve.

More for this system coming soon!