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News Roundup: Old School Essentials Gets Rule Update, Chaosium Turns 50
This week's news roundup features plans to change and update the rules for Necrotic Gnome's Old School Essentials TTRPG as well as a celebration of the Call of Cthulhu publisher.
Christopher Hutton
November 02, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
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This week’s roundup features news about Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials fantasy TTRPG. Chaosium also celebrated its 50th birthday on Halloween, while Paizo presented its crossover partnership with the people behind Warframe.
In This Edition
Old School Essentials to Release Updated Ruleset in 2026
Old School Essentials is among the many OSR style TTRPGs that fantasy fans can turn to whehen they want to play something that isn’t as modern as Fifth Edition D&D. The game’s publisher, Necrotic Gnome, announced on October 27 in a blog post that it will be publishing a new version of the game. This version will consolidate its rulebooks down to two copies; a Player’s Book and a Referee’s Book.
The update will also add new art, a rewritten introduction for the TTRPG’s rules, organizational tools like glossaries and indexes, optional rules for play and some tweaks to the classes. Many of those rule changes will be released in a separate PDF for players who do not wish to purchase new copies of OSE.
The game is also re-editing its text to remove all references to the Wizards of the Coast Open Game License, which will make the game “more resilient to any potential future wrangling by WOTC’s lawyers.”
No timeline has been set for OSE’s updated release yet.
Chaosium Turns 50 on Halloween
Chaosium, the company best known for Call of Cthulhu and Runequest, officially turned 50 on Halloween according to the LLC filings that established the company.
“On October 31, 1975 our founder Greg Stafford went down to the Alameda County Clerk’s office and filed the paperwork to officially register the company. Greg named us The Chaosium as a tribute to its birth as a 'house of Chaos' near the Oakland Colosseum,” Rick Meints said in a press release.
“From our humble start in the San Francisco Bay area, with the passing of each year, and with the debut of each new game, the company’s impact has quietly spread around the world. Alongside of that, and most importantly, the number of people who joined our Chaosium community also quickly grew.
"Each Chaosium game, and each book has its own unique story worth celebrating. Describing all of those games, the awards they’ve earned, and all of the interesting times the company has faced since 1975 could fill many pages. Inevitably, one cannot help but speculate about what Greg himself would say on our 50th anniversary: 'Gee, guys, whatever you do don’t make it all about me!', and then he would remind us that 'We are all Us.'
"Whether your fondness of, or connection to the company began yesterday, or decades ago our success all comes down to you. Our wonderful community, the Chaosium Tribe, is our greatest accomplishment. Without all of you the Chaosium would not be the thriving company it is today – the oldest ongoing roleplaying publisher in the industry – with so much to be thankful for.
The company has spent the year celebrating its history as a TTRPG publisher with special releases and events. 2025 has featured the release of two books telling Cthulhian stories in Japan, a Nordic fantasy set in Age of Vikings, and a DnDbeyond-exclusive supplement that brought the Lovecraftian mythos to your D&D table.
Other Stories from This Week
The upcoming Faerun expansion is available to the public if they have a Master tier subscription to D&D Beyond.
An update to D&D Beyond’s language seems to ask users to sign a class action waiver, which means they can’t use class action suits against the platform.
There’s also a new Unearthed Arcana on D&D Beyond, including Path of the Spiritual Guardian and Path of the Storm Herald for barbarians, Cavaliers for fighters, Warrior of Intoxication for monks and Oathbreaker Paladin. This one appears to be redesigns mostly or relabels of former subclasses so far.
Daggerheart has made Bloodhunters playable in Daggerheart. Blood hunters were an iconic class designed initially by Matthew Mercer for Vin Diesel and later expanded for Taliesin Jaffe’s character Mollymauk in campaign 2 of Critical Role. It is available on The Void.
Penguin Random House is releasing Dragonlance Legends, a new hardcover collecting three of the 1986 Dragonlance novels into a single physical volume.
DrivethruRPG now sells offset print books, aka physical copies that are a higher copy than DTRPG’s print-on-delivery model.
Pelgrane Press has released the PDF versions of 13th Age 2nd Edition to backers and intends to get it out to the public soon.
Voidsea, a joint project launched by Loot Tavern, Archvillain Games and Titan Forge focused on an nautical-meets-Cthulhu 5e campaign setting, successfully raised $1 million on Kickstarter; making it the 8th (?) campaign of 2025 to do so
Paizo updated its subscription services, according to a blog post from the CEO.
Paizo Partners Up with the Tenno in its Starfinder x Warframe Collaboration
We’ve mentioned this collaboration in the past, but Paizo partnered with Warframe creator Digital Extremes to release Operation: Orias, a standalone adventure set in the timeline of Warframe: 1999. The book is officially available today for purchase, as are a select number of physical copies.
Orias is a complete standalone adventure that blends the new rules of Starfinder 2e with Warframe’s setting. Players will control one of our “Protoframes”, the game’s protagonists who are humans that are slowly transforming into the aforementioned warframes. The game is a one-shot.
“We are always looking for ways to bring Warframe into other mediums if the stars align, and this stellar collaboration with Paizo is absolutely one of those moments,” said Warframe Creative Director Rebecca Ford. “When Paizo reached out and asked if we would be open to a Warframe and Starfinder crossover, it was such a quick yes. I’m such a fan of both Pathfinder and Starfinder, and know so many others on the team are too. As much as we love telling stories in Warframe's world ourselves, this partnership gives players the tools and opportunity to collaboratively tell a new story with their squadmates, all from the comfort of their own table, virtually or in person!”
It’s the latest crossover for Starfinder, coming off of a fairly successful launch of its second edition ruleset.
Other Stories from TTRPG Insider
What else did I write or publish this week?
First up was an indie spotlight, which looked at the literary solo game SPINE and the sci-fi TTRPG Human No More and the unique twists they added.
Thursday was another indie spotlight as we spoke with the creators behind Welcome to Hole and Unbalanced Encounters.
That’s all for this week. Have thoughts on a recent story? Want to promote your latest product? Feel free to send us tips or emails at [email protected].