[Free RPG Day 2026] Creature Curation Presents #1

Now in its nineteenth year, Free RPG Day for 2026 took place on Saturday, June 27th. As per usual, Free RPG Day consisted of an array of new and interesting little releases, which are traditionally tasters for forthcoming games to be released at GenCon the following August, but others are support for existing RPGs or pieces of gaming ephemera or a quick-start. This included dice, miniatures, vouchers, and more. Unfortunately, due to vagaries of International Customs, Free RPG Day in the UK did not take place until Saturday, 22nd August.

This review is possible due to the generosity of Waylands Forge in Birmingham.

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Creature Curation Presents #1 is a slightly different product for Free RPG Day because it is an anthology of three adventures for three different roleplaying games, all three of them compatible with Mörk Borg, the Swedish pre-apocalypse Old School Renaissance retroclone designed by Ockult Örtmästare Games and Stockholm Kartell and published by Free League Publishing. One of the three roleplaying games will be familiar, it previously having appeared as support for Free RPG Day with Into the Würmhole back in 2021, whilst the others will be less so. One thing to bear in mind with Creature Curation Presents #1 is that whilst it states that the quick-start rules are included, this is not actually the case. Instead QR codes are provided for each of the three roleplaying games as well as either a QR code to a character generator for the roleplaying game or a set of pre-generated Player Characters. This makes preparation a little slower than it ordinarily might have been if they had been included, but not overly so.

The first scenario, ‘Impaled Obelisk’, is for Vast Grimm, the pre-apocalypse Science Fiction roleplaying game set in a very future in which cultists have unleashed the infection of THEY, whose infection of Würms and the Grimm have hollowed out and shattered worlds, including the Earth. Humanity’s last hope is the Gate of Infinite Stars, through which the uninfected survivors can escape and find a universe where they will be free of the Würms and the gnawing… In the meantime, pirates and cultists prey on the survivors as desperate men and women gather together in Legions and explore what remains of the universe, perhaps hoping to find something that will towards humanity’s continued survival and the construction of the Gate of Infinite Stars

In ‘Impaled Obelisk’, the Legion answer the distress call of the Gallant Obelisk, a starship that went missing nine decades ago and is found to have crashed nose first into the surface of the planetoid, Caladron 7. It is unlikely that any of the original crew are still alive, but there may still be much to scavenge, some of which will be valuable, some of which might help mankind. Caladron 7’s low gravity means that the Player Characters can easily propel themselves up its length, exploring its corridors, research facilities, scientific laboratories, crew quarters, engineering spaces, and more. Everything seems to be covered in a Web Goo and none of the bodies of the crew can be found. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ is a classic ‘wrecked spaceship as dungeon’ scenario, not a little like Alien, but ‘Grimm’ in its own way. It is easy to run as a one-shot or add to a Game Master’s campaign.

The second scenario is for Raptor Ruckus. This is inspired by 1993’s Jurassic Park and is a survival horror roleplaying game in which the Player Characters are staff at the world’s new and greatest theme park about to excite the world about dinosaurs once again! Of course, things can go wrong. There can be storms or breakdowns or worse, agents of Basilisk, the anti-human doomsday cult, working to sabotage and undermine the whole project!

In ‘Airborne’, the Player Characters are returning to the island park after showing off one of the dinosaurs to investors on the mainland. They are travelling aboard a Lockheed C-130 transport along with a kentosaurus, sedated and caged. Suddenly, there is a bang and the aeroplane pitches nose down—is it about to crash? Just as bad is that one of the creature handlers draws a gun and points it at the Player Characters! Thus, the adventure starts with a bang and carries on from there as they are faced by one dangerously dinosaurous situation after another. They have to get out of the aeroplane, are attacked by Pteranodons on the way down, and find themselves on the wrong side of the fence back in the dinosaur park! And even when they get to the other side, it looks like saboteurs have been hard at work whilst the Player Characters have been away on the mainland. The scenario includes the stats for some dinosaurs, a pair of fanatical cultists, and an entertaining NPC to portray. Pleasingly, it does include a dinosaur chase, exactly as you would want, and overall, this is an excitingly tense chase scenario from start to finish that can lead into Fragmentation, the first campaign for Raptor Ruckus.

The third scenario is for Neon Bastardz. This is a near future roleplaying game inspired by Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland and all of the bad ‘B’ and straight to video trashy Sci-Fi movies of the eighties and noughties. The Player Characters are Skumdogs, lowlife-not-quite-scum pushed to take the dirty jobs no one wants to do, from cleaning the sewers of CHUDs to finding radical treasures in the wastelands for the Detroit-Prime Hyper-Lux.

In ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’, the Player Characters are gangers, members of a war party perhaps hired to do a job for BioRent Worldwide, Detroit-Prime’s leading biotech manufacturer. The offices of BioRent Worldwide on floor #207 of the city’s megablock have been taken over by Ninja. It is up to the gangers to break into the building, ascend to floor #207, find the Ninja and beat their ass before sending them back to their dojo in body bags. Floor #207 is large with separate areas that might take up whole floors in lesser blocks, but whether the cubicle maze, client consultation room, organ storage, executive offices, and so on, the gangers will find Ninja. The gangers can earn ‘Friendship Points’ by saving civilians who are at risk, sparing an enemy who surrenders, giving an emotional speech, fighting back-to-back with an ally, and so on. They can be spent to re-roll any die, heal a downed ally, add a bonus to an ally’s attack, and so on. All very eighties buddy movie and cinematic. ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is a beat ’em up scenario, very much more style than substance and easily the easiest of the three scenarios in the anthology to prepare.

Physically, Creature Curation Presents #1 is a blast of bright neon colour. Of the three, ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus is underwritten in places, but otherwise, all three are easy to grasp. The artwork is decent throughout, but the cartography is plain if serviceable.

Creature Curation Presents #1 packs in three easy-to-run scenarios that a Game Master can each run in a single session. ‘Impaled Obelisk’ for Vast Grimm and ‘Airborne’ for Raptor Ruckus are the best of the three, as ‘Killing Detroit Prime Style’ is Neon Bastardz is simplistic, but all three are solid introductions to their respective roleplaying games.