The first major rules supplement for Old-School Essentials, the Demonic Grimoire is a toolkit for enriching your campaign with fiendish adversaries and perilous magic. Within the 176 pages of this tome are found:
8 demon lords: Avaraz, Bethgor, Drazoggoth, Ghursag, Infernus, Ooyxblix, Phranax, Sillith. Each detailed with their diabolical schemes, hellish home planes, and minions.
Demon cults: 8 cults of Chaos that serve demon lords, each presented with new clerical spells available to followers.
Monsters: A horde of 60+ new demonic monsters, fully illustrated, featuring a mix of AD&D-inspired classics alongside brand new horrors.
Demonology: Rules for magic circles, summoning demons, demonic pacts, and devilish familiars.
Magic items: 70+ artefacts of fiendish power to tempt power-hungry players, including demonic armour, shields, potions, rings, rods, staves, wands, scrolls, grimoires, swords, weapons, and miscellaneous items.
Campaign guidelines: Advice for running campaigns with demonic elements, including campaign frameworks and adventure seeds.
Chaos knight class: Warriors bound to serve a demon lord, chaos knights are the infernal mirror of the paladin class.
Cultist class: Evil priests in the service of a demon lord, cultists are masters of magic, stealth, and demonology.
Demon hunter class: Occult warriors who have sworn an oath to roam the land rooting out demons and their sinister influence.
Tiefling race and demihuman class: Humans with a mysterious demonic ancestor, presented with d100 tables of cosmetic and magical traits to make no two tieflings alike.
Compatibility: The Demonic Grimoire is 100% compatible with all versions of Old-School Essentials, including the 2026 core books available in this campaign and the older Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy books and box sets. As long as you have some version of Old-School Essentials you're good!
For the connoisseur of all things diabolical, we are also offering the Demonic Grimoire in a deluxe, limited edition with a black leatherette cover adorned with hellish matte red foil. The limited edition Grimoire is styled to look like an in-world artefact, inlaid with demonic sigils, occult runes, and eldritch script. (And not a barcode or product blurb to be seen!)
This limited edition will only be printed once, so now is your chance to grab it!
Want the complete horde of demons at your fingertips? The Demonic Grimoire Monster Deck is the perfect quick-reference tool for planning adventures, running combats, and selecting random encounters.
60+ cards, featuring all monsters from the Demonic Grimoire.
Art and description on the front of each card.
Stats and combat traits on the back.
Large 2¾″ × 4¾″ card format (tarot card sized).
The Demonic Grimoire Monster Deck is the first in a planned series of monster card decks for Old-School Essentials.
OSE Month collab reward: Back the Demonic Grimoire plus 6 additional OSE Month projects and get a free booster pack of 17 additional monster cards! See here for more information.
A false goddess rises, her cult swelling with gold and devotees. In a half-sunken temple in a fly-infested swamp, miracles mask a darker truth. Followers vanish and wealth flows. Can players uncover the deceit before the Radiant Queen’s lies consume all?
A demon-themed short adventure designed for 1–2 sessions of play, perfect for side quests, one-shots, and conventions.
Suitable for around six characters of 4th–6th level.
The latest printing of the OSE core books is planned for retail release in November 2026, but backers can pre-order a copy in this campaign. Here’s the estimated release schedule:
Backer early PDF access: In mid/late July 2026, backers at pledge levels including the core books will receive early-access PDFs, once pledge manager surveys are sent out.
Retail release: November 2026. Once printed, the core books will be available at retail.
Backer early shipping: Physical copies of the core books will be shipped out to backers in November 2026, when they go to retail.
What's new? While OSE remains the same game, the 2026 printing core books do include some new extras:
Coffee & Coffins Episode 6: OSE and Demons with Gavin Norman
OSE Month Launch Party!
OSE Month at StartPlaying
We've partnered with StartPlaying to celebrate OSE Month 2026, with a horde of experienced referees running Old-School Essentials games online. The chosen referees even have access to our new demon-themed adventure, Golden Lies! Jump in for a chance to experience it first hand.
OSE Month special offer! Use code OSEM6 at checkout for $10 off your first game on StartPlaying during the event.
The Demonic Grimoire was created by Necrotic Gnome—the indie RPG studio known for the critically acclaimed Old-School Essentials and Dolmenwood fantasy adventure games. Writing by Chance Dudinack (Secret of the Black Crag), Brad Kerr (Hideous Daylight, The Dream Shrine), and Gavin Norman (creator of Old-School Essentials). Editing by Noah Green (Dolmenwood). Check out our other projects at necroticgnome.com.
Demonic Grimoire cover painting by Benjamin Marra (Intermediary Mund). Limited edition cover design by Tim Molloy (The Painted Wastelands). Interior art by Brendan Elliott (album artist), Cory Hamel (Barrowmaze), David Hoskins (Swyvers, Isle of the Plangent Mage), Tony Hough (Warhammer), Kennon James (Barrowmaze, Dragonslayer), Justine Jones (Halls of the Blood King), Lucas Korte (Shadowdark, OSE), C. Aaron Kreader (Dungeon Crawl Classics), Chris Malec (The Sunbathers), Penny Melgarejo (OSE), Juan Ochoa (OSE), Peter Pagano (OSE), Tyler Pennington (Pantera), Frank Scacalossi (OSE), Matt Stikker (Metallica, Hideous Daylight).
Exalted Funeral is an award-winning publisher and extensive online store of unique roleplaying games, zines, weird art, doom, horror, fantastic adventure, adorable family games (believe it or not!), obscure pop cultural references, old school revivals, brief corporate bios, and all that sort of thing. They have raised millions of dollars across many successful crowdfunding campaigns and brought a wide variety of unforgettable RPGs to game night such as Dolmenwood Tabletop RPG, Old-School Essentials Fantasy RPG Box Sets, Land of Eem, Our Golden Age, Monty Python's Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme, Herbalist's Primer, and many more! Exalted Funeral was founded in 2018 by Cristin and Matt Kelley, two nerds always looking to bring horror, humor, and heavy metal to the party. Say hi and pick up a rad game at exaltedfuneral.com.
We have distribution centers in the US, UK, Europe, and Australia. Backers in these countries - or countries within the respective jurisdiction - will not pay customs. For backers outside these regions, custom charges may apply, depending on each country's applicable law. The prices are estimates and may vary, although we expect not significantly. Shipping will be charged after the campaign ends via the BackerKit Pledge Manager Survey.
SAVE BIG with DISCOUNTED GROUP SHIPPING!
Eleven of the seventeen projects in OSE Month are participating in group shipping with Demonic Grimoire. This means all rewards from these projects will be grouped and shipped together so that you can back multiple projects without paying a ton for shipping! For instance, if you're in the US and back the Demonic Grimoire Ritualist Pledge Level + 9 other projects, you are paying up to $26 shipping; saving you $94 vs. the approx $120 shipping if you had backed each project individually.
Please note that the values in both tables above are an estimate to the best of our knowledge at the time the campaign launched given the shipping fees and rates from our fulfillment warehouses. Please see the FAQ section for more information on shipping.
The Demonic Grimoire and all other products are 100% complete and ready to go to print shortly after the campaign finishes. All writing, editing, layout, and art are done. We have the final print files. We just need to determine how many copies to print, based on the number of backers. Our projected timeline is as follows:
11:59 PM (ET), June 5th 2026:Demonic Grimoire crowdfunding campaign ends.
June 2026: Send print files to manufacturers for technical checks.
July 2026: Start printing.
Mid/late July 2026: Pledge manager surveys sent to backers. PDFs available for download.
January 2027: Start sending out rewards. This gives us a very generous 6 month window between printing and fulfillment, to make sure everything arrives in the warehouse.
Old-School Essentials Month
Old-School Essentials Month is a group-collab project led by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome, featuring a new 176-page OSE book — the Demonic Grimoire — and sister projects from 16 other renowned creators in the OSE community.
The theme of OSE Month 2026 is: DEMONS! Get ready for hordes of new monsters, adventures set in the realms of hell, fiendish new character options, and lashings of blood-dripping art.
Group Achievements
We will be announcing a series of achievements tied to the success of all OSE Month projects jointly! To start with:
All projects funded: When all OSE Month projects fund, we will arrange a community Ask Me Anything session on Discord, featuring creators from across the projects. This will be a chance to chat with the OSE Month creators about their projects.
Old-School Essentials (OSE) is a role-playing game of fantastic adventure inspired by classic games of the 1970s and 1980s. Players delve into forsaken ruins, battle fearsome monsters, explore haunted forests and perilous mountain ranges, sail the high seas in search of lost lands, recover fabulous treasures, and unearth secrets of ancient magic.
