It's awesome to see people in the 5e community talk about Old-School Essentials! There are a couple innacuracies here that I think could be worth clearing up. Old-School Essentials _is_ a D&D game, it's explicitly a clone of B/X D&D from 1981.
There's also OSE: Advanced Fantasy, which adapts some other content from Advanced D&D 1st Edition into the B/X format. It does a really good job of adapting a lot of the character tropes players are familiar with from modern editions into the ruleset.
@@donniehoffman4738 Between 0e and B/X, you mean? There are certainly some changes in there, although they are very similar games (mechanically, if not in writing or presentation).
@@ryanbaillie11 He means between B/X and OSE. Mechanically, they are identical. Of course, OSE lacks the WotC intellectual property, the flavor text, and a bunch of the explanations / examples / etc.
@@ryanbaillie11 OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Cyclopedia are pretty much the same game. OD&D + first three supplements is the base for all those that follow up until AD&D hits the market.
I would argue that it does NOT have less flexibility and definitely doesn't have to be less story-focused at all. In fact, by not having skills or tons of other abilities, characters are differentiated by roleplay. And it's nice having a simple character sheet. I loved Professor Dungeon Master's comment (at least I think it was him) about how in the old days, players would show up, pull a folded-up, single-sided character sheet from their pocket (that was me), and play, whereas modern D&D looks like a bunch of accountants sitting at the table doing their taxes together. For people who are unsure of what old-school games are like, I think one of my favourite examples used vampires (again, courtesy Prof DM). In many modern games, encountering a vampire might cause the player to roll to see if his character is afraid, while in old-school games, it's not the character who is afraid, but the *player* because a single touch from a vampire would drain two levels and *could not be resisted*. If your level 6 fighter was touched, you became level 4. Period. Consequently, players would be very hesitant to engage such a creature without a solid plan to take advantage of all of its weaknesses. And even then, they'd be nervous. That, for me, is what old-school games are about: the emphasis is put more on the player's abilities than the character's. Modern D&D characters are (comparatively) superheroes, while old-school ones tend to be somewhat-better-than-average people trying to survive.
"whereas modern D&D looks like a bunch of accountants sitting at the table doing their taxes together." I don't really get that with 5E (and I have plenty of complaints about 5E) but I did get that feeling with Pathfinder.
@@icebot1 I'm not sure I uderstand your comment. Are you saying that the notion of the players being scared vs the characters being scared is nonsensical? That may be the case in your experience, but not mine. I find it quite accurate.
@@jcraigwilliams70 the quick example of 5e's flexibility in the video is that it can go from a wizard school to a vampire's castle, implying that OSE can't successfully portray both of those settings. That's what's nonsensical.
@@icebot1 ok. For whatever reason, the mention of a vampire threw me off, as I had also mentioned a vampire in my comment. Got it now and I agree completely.
Nice video. Really does a good job of breaking down the differences. Personally, my campaign is MUCH more role-play-y than dungeon explory, but I'm weird that way.
OSE is fantastic. I've been playing a campaign in it for years and love it so much. It's not based on the first edition - its based on Basic/Expert editions which were released in 1981. Also, it literally is the B/X rules, not a reinterpretation. Other OSR games attempt to reinterpret the rules, but OSE stays 100% faithful to the original ruleset. Great video!
@@DMTalesTTRPG OD&D, Holmes, and B/X are essentially all the same branch. AD&D (1/2e) are the second branch and 3E, 4E, and 5E are the most recent branches.
As others have stated, OSE is based off of Moldvay B/X D&D, not the first edition of AD&D which 5e is descended from (WOTC just dropped the "Advanced" off the name). It should be emphasized that OSE is a masterclass in game presentation and everything is formatted to be *the easiest* to use at the table without a bunch of flipping through pages and having to burrow through paragraphs to find the one relevant role you needed - it's almost always in bullet-points the pertinent information you need to find, and not split across multiple pages. OSE also has an "Advanced" set which separates race from class (fighter/thief/cleric/magic-user are all humans while there's elf/dwarf/halfling classes). AOSE still has time option to play race-as-class while introducing half-orcs, half-elves, gnomes, drow, duergar, and svirfneblin as either classes or as player character races. *In addition* a lot of the "Advanced" classes are added: assassin, acrobat, barbarian, bard, druid, illusionist, knight, paladin, and ranger. As for the people who've been playing since the 70s/80s and wondering "what's old school then?" the Questing Beast channel is one of the best resources on here to figure out what folks are getting at with OSR namely open-worlds, player-led, exploration based sessions, rather than a solely DM-written plot or "adventure path" that players have to play through. The key is "emergent storytelling" rather than prescribed.
Thanks Anthony! As someone who started playing back in the early 80s (primarily AD&D 1st edition, but with a lot of Champions and Chaosium products as well), I'm a little baffled about the "it was so freeform" rhetoric I'm hearing. Of course, as someone who started playing back in the early 80s, my memory is now a bit foggy. ;-) As far as "open-worlds, player-led, exploration-based sessions", that strikes me as a function of the GM's approach to the game rather than something inherently baked-in to the rules (ruleset depending). You can play that way in (say) Fate and 5E if you want. Clearly, I need to do a bit more research to understand what the attraction is.
@@edgarbucksnortesq.5106 the old school primers mentioned in the video help explain a lot. Yeah there is a master of playstyle, but there's also a master of which rules support which playstyle better. 5e with its lists of skills for investigations and bluffing immediately stands in contrast to OSE which doesn't have skills that allow for players to basically skip these parts of exploration and negotiating hostile environments, as a huge difference. I mean *sure* you could ignore those, but why are you going to bother with purchasing those books if you're just going to end up ignoring chunks of it to begin with? Also, it's very much glossed over until the very end of the video but GP for XP + less XP for combat + weaker characters really does begin to have an effect on how players approach, well, everything. Game recaps are replete with first time players from 5e trying OSE getting just hosed in their first sessions because their first instinct when encountering monsters is just to charge in and fight them when that is very much one of the things of last resort that you'd want to do in an old school game because of the aforementioned reasons and because there's guarantee that the encounter is going to be "balanced".
@@edgarbucksnortesq.5106 I feel like there is a notable difference between AD&D with it's long list of very spesic rules and Gygax talking about how it's essential to do this and that vs say Home's Basic set where he talked about how players can play as anything they want as long as the DM allowed it and started the book by pointing out the rules have to modified and interprated to conform to what people have to do at the table. So while it's ultimatly down to DM playstyle I feel these encouraged very different playstyles and when people talk about how freeform old-school stuff was they refer more to Basic and the White Box.
As someone who began gaming with the stiflingly crunchy 3.5 in the early 00's the OSR and old school games in general have been a liberating revelation of how free and creative the RPG medium, and the D&D dungeon-centric milieu specifically, can be. To nit-pick though, OSE isn't based on 1st edition (what people usually refer to AD&D 1st edition as), nor the original version of the game from 1974 (OD&D). Rather, OSE is an extremely faithful recreation of the Tom Moldvay and David Cook/Steve Marsh editions of the Basic and Expert games from 1981, commonly known as B/X (The versions with the Erol Otus cover art), not to be confused with the more famous edition from 1983 by Frank Mentzer (the famous Red Box with the lunging red dragon on the cover).
@@paavohirn3728 This is true. Beyond the presentation and the thief skill tables they're basically the same system. Nevertheless, B/X is often upheld, over BECMI, as the single greatest version of D&D within the broader old school community, I think largely due to the more grounded scope of the game from levels 1 to 14, rather that progressing to the dizzying heights of level 36 (and beyond if you use the Immortals rules).
@@Hushashabega Yeah. As much as I thought the CM stuff was cool as a kid (i don't have I) I prefer the BE or B/X scope. I've yet to look into the changes (clarifications?) in RC.
Great video! I was so pleased to see 3 of my illustrations for this game included too! The Rope dridge, the Dwarf getting eaten by a slime, and the Cockatrice! Cheers!!
OK, so my players were exploring a forest/hill hex, they came upon a clearing with a great mound of earth in the middle and upon it a great tower of onyx. "I wonder what loot is in there?" My players ruminated, however they were stopped by the 10+ harpies circling the tower. So my players stepped back into the tree line, had their hirelings tie ropes to the trees and had the magic user make the sound of a large monster with one of his spells. As the "monster" skronked viciously, the hirelings pulled their ropes to "marionette" the trees to give the harpies the appearance of a large monster moving towards them. I rolled a modified morale check and the harpies got the hell outta there. In a game like 5e, they would have far less incentive to do something like this, every Saturday night of play in my group has moments like these and we love it.
I chuckled at the "Magic School to Vampire's Castle" comment. _The Principalities of Glantri_ is a 1987 sourcebook for this edition of D&D *all about* a magic school, and 1983's _Ravenloft_ - as an *AD&D* adventure - is 100% compatible with this game as well. Great video, though! You've certainly got the old-school spirit!
It's wonderful seeing people discover the OSR! Just to be clear, OSE does not target Original D&D (1974), but the 2nd version of Basic D&D ("Holmes Basic" or B/X) which came out in 1981. Even though technically Original is D&D 1st edition, when people say "1st edition" they're usually referring to AD&D (1977), and to avoid confusion it sometimes gets called "0th". Basic D&D follows the feel of Original D&D without most of the expansion material, but they do differ in several important ways (e.g. Race as Class, variable HD size rather than number of HD, changes to spells etc.). OSE isn't so much a love letter as a clean and modern edit of B/X, attempting to keep the material as similar as possible but in a much more presentable way.
@@medusaminiatures4006that's right. Also, when she's mentioning those editions, a cover page is shown. That is Mentzer's Basic edition (red box, 1983, the first in the BECMI series). But I don't complain. I like very much to see non-grognards like myself even giving a chance to OSR. Good job! Thanks for the video!!😊
A few other OSR systems to check out: - *Dungeon Crawl Classics.* Imagine a game where every wizard was a wild mage. Throw in super-cinematic fighters, a sword & sorcery feel, and world-class adventures: that's DCC. - *Hyperborea 3e.* Take Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, modernise it, and dunk it in a soup of Conan and Dying Earth. Play as astonishing swordsmen and sorcerers in a world of high adventure, weird fantasy, and science-fiction. - *Stars Without Number: Revised.* By acclaimed author Kevin Crawford, this science fiction TRPG melds classic Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller into a very modern-feeling OSR experience. Chuck in a whole back-half of incredible GM tools and you have a system that anyone running games needs to read. Adventures to look into (both new and old): - *Tomb of the Serpent Kings.* A masterful dungeon designed specifically for players new to the OSR. - *The Tower of Faces.* An award-winning DCC adventure where the party must defend a mad mage's estate for five whole days while a mighty ritual is underway. - *B10: Night's Dark Terror.* A classic D&D adventure where the players need to defend a homestead against a goblin siege, hunt slavers through the wilderness, and delve into ancient civilisations. - *X2: Castle Amber.* The most fun of funhouse dungeons, with the PCs finding themselves in the deadly home of the insane d'Ambreville family. A whacky horror dungeon delve that will drive your PCs as mad as their hosts.
We are testing Esoteric Enterprises right now. Cheap modern day gangsters and underground occultists who explore a megadungeon underneath the city streets, filled with were-butterflies, dero, drug dealers and cults.
@@simonfernandes6809 I disagree. I also have played AD&D 1:st/2:nd Ed, D&D 3.0, 3.5 and 5.0. The sluggishness started in D&D 3.0 and got worse from there on.
@@merkron2680 Bloat. of both mechanics and lore. It actually started with 2e. When they stopped putting out books full of tables and charts, and started publishing novels.
I do find it amusing that you use "Curse of Strahd" as a example of something that OSE wouldn't be able to do, given that that adventure is mostly just a 5e adaptation of the original Ravenloft module...which was written for 1st edition (which is fairly close to OSE mechanically).
@@williamlittlefield4749 I've done Ravenloft in B/X, but my closest to Glantri is Castle Amber. I've had the thought of running something in the nation proper, but I could never quite suss out how that dynamic would work considering the system encourages most PCs to be non-magical.
As an old-timer I'm glad to see people discovering the Old School style. Old School Essentials is particularly good. My main go-to is AD&D 1e, but sitting in on an OSE game has reinvigorated even my jaded PoV. The DM was also brand new to OSR style, being only familiar with 5e. But he's adapted to it very well and it has been an absolute howl.
Old School Essentials Advanced is just about the perfect system. It fully supports old-school exploration while still allowing for as much story-telling as you want. It shows you how to flip AC and trade THAC0 (or tables) for attack bonuses.
I'm glad you like the game but, OSE is not a modern 0 edition dnd. It isn't based on the original at all. It's just the Basic/Advanced dnd sets that have been edited with a much clearer layout, and with a conversion for ascending AC. I would also argue that the lack of rules offer much MORE flexibility than 5E. Rulings Over Rules basically. Other than that I think you did a great job talking about the strengths of the system.
Glad you liked it - but you said it's not a D&D game and it definitely is. It's a pure retroclone of B/X from 1981 - it's just cut out the BS and made the rules explicitly clear to references, but it's literally the exact same as B/X D&D - the only difference I can think of is that it adds the option for ascending armor class. Also - I don't get the flexibility comment - if you look through the OSR published adventures it can take you to all of the places you mentioned (Wizard's school. vampire's castle) and more. If you're looking at it just in terms of published adventures, it's in fact way more flexible than 5e - there's a ton of compatible adventures you can use for this system (literally all the old D&D modules, anything published for OSE explicitly, or Labryinth Lord and other B/X retroclones - and really anything OSR with minimal if any conversion needed). Also - unless you're specifically looking at pre-published adventures than the flexibility of an RPG game is all down to the DM's imagination and the game they want to run.
Glad to see new 5e players try the old school Dnd. Having played Basic, Advanced and adnvanced 2nd edition i can say the feel is pretty different from todays 5e. 5e is cool but feels like a different game to me, like a video game.
Great that you're showing an interest, and by all means, look forward to welcoming more 5E spelers in the OSR/OSE. But just to clarify OSE is a B/X retroclone, not an original D&D retroclone. Just a minor inaccuracy, overall a great video.
The draw of D&D to me is that you can do anything you can think of. I think OSE (and other Old School games) do a great job of this by just letting the DM decide if what I'm trying to do is reasonable. I love all of the examples you gave of this (looking for loose flagstones, lying to the guards, throwing jellybeans) and how fun it is!
I enjoyed your video. I started playing D&D in 1979 when I got the basic D&D box set for my 13th birthday. Nice to see people enjoying the new and old versions. They all bring something to the hobby.
Thaco is often misunderstood, but not as complicated as most people think. Your thaco score is what you need to roll on the d20 to hit, plus you add the target's AC to your roll. If you don't know the target's armor class, you take your thaco and subtract what you rolled. The answer is what AC you hit.
Nice one, Maddie. Credit where credit’s due, Old-school “Essentials” is merely a clone of the Moldvay/Marsh/Cook rules written in 1981 (B/X D&D). Its claim to fame is being an exact “reworking” of those rules, so those who have the originals have likely been playing in this style for many long years. It’s not for everyone, but it is wonderful.
The Advanced Fantasy line does take some adnd dna (lol) but it's more from 1e and significantly simplifies it. But there is a growing crowd interested in 2e these days too
I’ve never understood the hate for thac0. It was a genius improvement over having to check a table EVERY time you swing at a monster. It’s also not the least bit complicated to calculate in your head.
I’m not sure which edition or manual did this, but THAC0 was eventually simplified to a formula without the need of a chart. That’s when it became useful.
I use thaco to this day and i suck at math...its not at all hard, its just been blown up into insane mythical cypher undecodable by any but grognards...
I always used it as THAC0 minus target's AC equals the minimum d20 roll required to hit. Sure, it's an extra step on the DM's part but it puts the requirement out there before the roll. Thankfully OSE (and Basic Fantasy has it as default) also includes the option for using ascending AC, as in modern D&D, so it's all just preference or material used. In using old modules for BX or BECMI, for example, you can just subtract the old AC from 19 to get the modern ascending style AC.
And lastly, the myth that the game was not inclusive or there were these mythical Gatekeepers that tried to keep women out at cetera at cetera back in the day... Utter crap. Don't believe the lie, I was there and we were just grateful when anyone male or female of any color wanted to actually share in this brand-new and super exciting form of gameplay. Glad you had fun, please keep seeking out the osr games... Dungeon Crawl classics will blow your freaking mind now that you have open this portal into the Glorious and super Majid of world of retro styling Adventure. Cheers.
@@johnathanrhoades7751 and you would be right. I cannot presume to speak for the entirety of RPGs over all those years, I can only comment on what I saw firsthand. I remember the first time it really dawned on me that other people who were into the same hobby I was, but for entirely different reasons. Whether they were adolescent power fantasies, or trying to feel better about themselves at the expense of someone else... Or whatever... we're entirely different from my thoughts on it. In my early teens it was interesting to see that these people love the same thing I did.. but for entirely different reasons. Very much an eye-opener. The problem now is that everyone has a outlet to blather their opinion 10 seconds after they've felt it so they are just gushing with raw emotion rather than actually spending the time to try and see from her perspective outside whatever echo-chamber they are dwelling in. Information traveled much slower back in the day, for good or evil.. but oftentimes there was a bit of a cool down. Between stimuli and reaction. Not the case anymore.
More OSR games need to be highlighted. Games like Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG (my personal favourite) that have been around longer than OSE have reshaped the gaming community over the last decade and are an attractive reminder of how these games were more about imagination and roleplaying than rules and simulations. BFRPG in particular is great because the game is 100% free on its website.
I got into some of the OSR ideas from a friend's OSE. As you said, much of it is more the attitude to not using the rules when there is a more common favourite, along with hacking the rules to your personal taste being even more assumed than most TTRPGs. It does have a bit of Old-D&Ders who grumble about 5E players wanting to play wish fulfilment superhero catpeople, but beyond that there's lots of cool ideas. My personal favourites are Maze Rats and Knave by Ben Milton, who co-wrote the Principa Apocrypha, they're modern system with lots of OSR inspiration, they're short systems for less than £3 on DrivethruRPG. Maze Rats frames the ideas as "Danger Rolls" - you reach for the dice only when something has gone wrong rather than the main method to see if something succeeds. MR also has a really fun magic system where you randomly combine two words together from some charts and you and the GM decide what it does. (Also yes, technically OSE is just a cleaned up version of the 1981 basic D&D set rather than the more complex 1st Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that was about at the same time, editions of D&D were weird before 2000)
I don't see in any way how it's less flexible. It's less constrained by rules for starters and story wise I would say that's more up to the DM more than the system itself.
If you are used to a big publisher handing you yer campaign world in a 50$ hardcover, you don't even think of creating yer own world. That changes after players have been in OSR for even a short while.
@@vincejester7558 You seem to be forgetting how inflation has shaped people's understanding of the relative prices of game materials. $50 USD in 2022 is equivalent to about $16 in 1981, when the Moldvay Basic Edition rules were published.
@@vincejester7558 I can partially agree with that. On my side I've played mainly 5e and dipped my feet into PbTA games and recently bought OSE. But I have been interested from the start in building my own setting. Though the books are convenient for time constrained DMs and people that just want to get up and running quick.
My point was more that the one book is the setting, the mechanics, and the campaign all in one spot. It's packaged up nice and tidy and complete. Not that the 50$ is super over expensive or anything.
Something I like about OSR is that the PCs progressions are more about what happens to them in the adventures than whatever the class table say they will learn to do
Great video! It's really cool that you're giving the OSR a try. Something to keep in mind...newer editions (or any system for that matter) are not more "flexible" because they have more rules or fiddly-bits, in fact it's quite the opposite. The more rules you have, the more confined you are. Also, rules will always fail to provide accurate simulation with regard to any aspect of reality...thus again, the fewer the better. Early editions were constructed with the assumption that the people playing would build and add to it. There's literally nothing that one can do in 5e that you couldn't do in OSE. Just simply...make it up;) As for another OSR-flavor system to try....I personally think DCC "Dungeon Crawl Classics" is an incredibly fun (and unique) approach. It's entire layout/vibe is more old-school than old-school...lol...and the artwork is absolutely second to none.
As someone who never played a game of D&D before the 5th Edition became established, I just don't see what the idea behind THAC0 was when you could just as easily say, "Hit this target number or over on d20!" I'm glad both options are used throughout OSE. Also, dungeon adventuring with OSE rules sounds so much more exciting and even more creative than modern games. If somebody had ever explained D&D or AD&D this way to me, and been able to relate how much fun could be had with the old rules, I probably would have played such a game as early as the 1980s. It is, however, only now, that I discover OSE and other retro-clones for myself. Thank you very much for making this video about it. While I am on the topic: I wanted to add that you can currently get all the Basic Rules and the character sheets for Old-School Essentials for free - they are on DriveThruRPG as free PDFs. I got them earlier this week. With only those 60 pages of rules in PDF, I can immediately make my own OSE adventures while I still waiting for the books. Also, the book editions of OSE are extraordinarily pretty.
THAC0 isn't hard to use, once you understand one simple thing: it's a *target number* (or what modern D&D calls a *Difficulty Class*). THAC0 is the number you're trying to beat with your "1d20 + modifiers" roll; that's all there is to it. In modern D&D (3e and later), you attack by rolling 1d20, adding a modifier (your attack bonus or proficiency bonus, Strength or Dexterity bonuses, magic bonuses), and trying to equal or surpass a TN or DC which happens to be your target enemy's Armor Class. So, for example, if your total bonus to hit is +5 and you're attacking an enemy with AC 18, you know that you need to roll 1d20 + 5 and get a total of 18 or better (which would be a natural 13 or greater on the die roll) in order to hit. In older D&D (2e and earlier), you attack by rolling 1d20, adding a modifier (which is *the target enemy's Armor Class!*), and trying to equal or surpass a TN or DC which is your own THAC0 number. So that same attack situation in classic D&D would be rendered as a character with THAC0 15 attacking a heavily armored foe with AC 2. You roll 1d20 + 2, and you need a total of 15 or greater (which will happen on a natural 13 or more - imagine that!) in order to hit. Just that simple. The only thing that really might throw modern gamers off is the fact that both THAC0 and AC get lower as they get better. For AC, this makes a certain sort of sense. AC 1 is better than AC 3, because wouldn't you rather have first-class armor than shoddy old third-class armor? Likewise, once you've internalized the fact that THAC0 is just the DC of the attack roll, you'll intuitively know that you *want* to push it as low as you can via Str/Dex and magic bonuses. You just have to remember that bonuses lower these numbers, and penalties raise them. If you're a 4th level fighter (base THAC0 17) wearing plate armor (AC 3), and you have a Dex 16 (+2), your ranged THAC0 gets pushed down to 15 by your Dex (i.e. lowering the DC you need to roll to hit enemies), and your AC gets pushed down to 1 (i.e. lessening the bonus you give to enemies trying to hit you!).
Old School RPGs required more role playing than roll playing. Your playing your character, not your character sheet. Your characters were almost never optimized, you rolled your attributes and then checked to see what class you were able to play. Eventually you became good enough that you could play any class equally well. This was a great video, you really hit all of the major selling points of the OSR.
You see a 20 foot deep pit in front of you. At the bottom you see a door on the southern facing side. I jump in. I almost died laughing when that happened.
I have played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons since 1980. I am 58 and my son is 30. We play regularly when he and his mates are around, he first DM'd a game at the age of four and did a good job, I was so proud. The AD&D rules clearly stated that you can change rules if you think they are wrong, as long as you can justify the change. Over the years there are just a few changes I have made, all based on common sense and with the players agreement. I'm glad you liked one of the older versions. It is about imagination and enjoyment, and not rules.
All your adventures don't have to be in a dungeon. Exploring the outdoors, finding old shrines and secret portals hidden in caves is all a part of the adventure. Finding towns, villages and city states for rare components for spells or making new contacts to sell rare items that you find. That 100 gold piece bird statue may be worth 200 to a collector. Seeking out rumors and tall tales at the waterfront for further adventures. Things like that make it a necessity to keep notes or a journal with scraps of information about people, places and things. Finding maps that may lead to treasure or a dungeon or it could be a false map leading them on a wild goose chase. Then going back to find the thief who sold it to you and get your revenge on them! Getting a letter from a relative asking for help in your home town is a great way to expand on a characters background and have an adventure at the same time. Many of my characters have maps to old dungeons that we only partially explored. It may be time to go back and finish exploring for that treasure you never found. The list go on and on, only your imagination is the true limitation!
Been playing alot of Swords and Wizardry complete and Stars without number, they are both great OSR systems that each offer different things, i would recommend looking into them especially since the core rules are free
I`ve been playing original D&D since 1974.... and yes, THACO rules :-) Never needed to switch editions, as nothing compares to the experience of the original game.... all anyone needs is imagination and those three classic books.
I have Delving Deeper (and just about all the retro clones) but having been there from the very beginning, I can honestly say that none of them capture the integrity, tone and true essence of the real deal. Delving Deeper is cool and does the job, but its got many minor changes that are a little off target. My original ODD is actually a signed Gygax copy hehe :-))
Oh absolutely. I met the guy and played in one of his convention games once (gosh it seems like a lifetime ago now). He used to use a lot of private wit in his games, and a lot of that snuck into the rules ^^ ah the good old days (pre THACO even lol).
I actually prefer how OD&D handles attacks (the d20 to hit tables) to how AD&D did it (with Thac0 introduced in the 1e DMG, and later standard for players with AD&D 2e). If I'm ever in a game that uses Thac0, it's nice to be able to create an Original/Basic style to hit table and forget about Thac0. BTW, OD&D is the first edition of D&D that I ever actually ran, even though I started with 3e, and it's incredible just how much material is stored in those little books, even though it often takes a bit of reading around to understand where it came from and what it meant. I think that's one of the benefits of the OSR, in that it's been able to figure out what a lot of it meant and make it a lot more clear.
Having started D&D in 1980 when I was a wee lad and playing every other edition except that truly pathetic 4E, I feel I have to state that many people are missing the beauty of early D&D. The DM is the story teller, not the antagonist. If it wasn't in a rule and DM might say Roll a strength check, or a dex check, it was ridiculously easy. It also didn't have the massive HP bloat that 5E has. It also allowed the DM to better gauge an encounter because today's players have so many resistances, feats, class special abilities and on and on that what should be a tough encounter, often gets trivialized when the players just two round kill the big bad. The only way to fix this is to HP bloat the baddies and that leads to frustratingly long combat encounters and very bored players. This is why Hard Mode D&D is becoming more popular.
I try to recommend a trio of books to anyone who's interested in OSR retroclones: these were three books put out by Bard Games back in the early 80's that included a bunch of new classes compatible with both OD&D and AD&D: The Compleat Adventurer: Included the Beastmaster, Buccaneer, Bounty Hunter, Gladiator, Harlequin, Knight, Martial Artist, Rogue, Scout, Spy, Swordsman, Warrior, and Witch Hunter classes. The Compleat Spell Caster: Included the Witch ,Warlock, Mystic, Necromancer, Sorcerer, and Sage classes. The Compleat Alchemist: This one only had the Alchemist class, but it introduced a bunch of rules for making alchemical elixirs and potions and the like. Given that most retroclones tend to cleave pretty close to the original D&D rules, these additional classes can offer some really interesting new content that most of the OSR rulebooks won't have.
Glad to hear another group enjoying OSR play! Here are some dungeon suggestions for you: - UK3 The Gauntlet: published in '84, this adventure provides an awesome castle to explore, sneakily hidden foe, and a really fun 3rd-act twist that your players will talk about for years to come. While technically the sequel to UK2 (The Sentinel), it's easy to modify it so you don't need the previous adventure. - N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God: There's something wrong in a small village and it's up to the PCs to figure out what it is. This one starts with a heavy investigation element that's a lot of fun before climaxing with a classic dungeon crawl. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you might also want to check out Scenic Dunnsmouth, which includes a clever, card-based cursed village generator. - A4 Dungeon of the Slave Lords: facing a TPK? No worries! Once all the PCs are down, tell them they wake up, stripped of their belongings in a dark cavern. They're in the Dungeon of the Slave Lords and need to find their way out, without all their cool gear. A nice one to have handy just in case. - A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons & Dragons: There are small adventures here, but also amazing magic items and wonderfully atmospheric monsters that will add a very fairytale touch to your adventures. hamsterhoard.blogspot.com/ Also be sure to check out Taichara's new blog: hamsterhoard.home.blog/
A couple of books in the Old School pantheon are Ultraviolet Grasslands, Hot Springs Island, Neverland, and Rackham Vale. Each totally different from one another but all top of their class in their own way.
A very superior exposition. OSE is not exactly what Maddie describes....IT IS MORE. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to make and publish this video. Stay well, stay safe and may all your rolls be successful. AND you have a new sub....lol
I started playing/DMing in 5e and just picked this up today on the recommendation of a friend who has been a DM for 40+ years. After the first read through, I'm glad I purchased it!
Great video! I recently bought OSR to teach my 7 year old grandson how to play D&D. I started with Basic 40 years ago. In my opinion, most modern players don't like that a non-human race IS a class, and ONLY humans can be a wizard, cleric, or thief (rogue). I love that aspect, but I seem to be in a miniscule minority. For that reason, my current group of 5e players, most of whom players Basic and AD&D, are willing to play an AD&D clone, but not a Basic d&d clone, which Old School Essentials is. Mores the pity!! I got all the Basic modules off DTRPG and I can't wait to run them!
Thank you. This is a video that needed to be made. The OSR movement has been stonewalled and marginalized for several years. I am glad you enjoyed yer experience with OSE. If you keep at it, you will get to play the most interesting part of the genre, Domain building. It's exploration on steroids. Where you take on the role of a ruler and create an empire in the larger world. It is lots of fun.
I always find it interesting that THAC0 is viewed as overly complicated when the reality is that the numbers work out exactly the same as the current system. In one system you roll a die and add your hit modifier to determine if you succeed. In the other you roll the die and subtract the target's AC from your THAC0 to determine if you succeed. They are both equally simple in practice. THAC0 just turns people off but it's not actually complicated.
Great job taking about the OSE style of play! Three absolutely FANTASTIC OSE dungeons I've read in the past year: Stygian Library- an endless dungeon in an extra planar library where players can go to search for knowledge. Absolutely brilliant. Through Ultan's Door- Super solid dungeons. Factions, weird creatures, history, sewage, and dreaminess. The Hall of the Blood King- A Castle full of vampires appears out of nowhere. The PCs are totally outclassed, but the is a lot of potential for cleverness and pitting power hungry vampires against each other. Any of these will just make your brain explode with possibilities.
I'd also recommend watching Questing Beast's advice videos, there's a playlist on his channel, if you're interested in playing OSR. As a GM who went back to old school games I found he explained ideas about combat, XP, etc that really helped me get my head into the play style alongside the pdfs you suggested.
Barrowmaze, The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, and Highfell are great OSR Mega Dungeons by Greg Gilespie. They use the Labyrinth Lord rules which are B/X clone like OSE.
Was actually thinking of dropping some of these into my campaign world and seeing how the players react if they come across them, without telling them that they're mega dungeons.
My favorite dungeon from AD&D is Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. It ties into the lore of Greyhawk and specifically Iggwilv (Tasha by another name). It is a dungeon that can be outsmarted as much as beaten, but still boasts a very impressive boss fight that feels earned.
A variety channel with great production values is such an awesome thing to have on TH-cam. I'm looking forward to that video about building better dungeons, and more stuff about Blades in the Dark too
It's great to see people in the 5e community taking the time to learn about the OSR and 1e and 2e AD&D. i'd highly recommend that you might want to look at the sheer quantity of material that 1e and 2e offer as well. I'd suggest hitting the Encyclopedia magica... a collection of tens of thousands of magical items (every magic item from all versions of od&D AD&D and all the dragon magazines, dungeon mags, and all the modules. It's a 5 volume massive collection. In addition you could talk about the massive number of spells (far far far more than in 5e) available in the multi volume complete wizards and complete clerics spell compendiums (if you need, please reach out to me and I'll get you some digital copies to review if you like) most 5e players assume that 5e is the most complete, most fully formed version of the game. This is not true. 1e and 2e together are 100% compatible and had the most active period of creative work of all of the versions. There are more spells, items, adventures, settings, etc etc etc created for 1e and 2e than any other version ever. In point of fact, every single setting except Strixhaven and Erberon were all originally 1e and 2e settings. Spell jammer 2e, greyhawk, forgotten realms, ravenloft, mystara, planescape, dark sun, maztica, and more and more and more in addition were all 1e and 2e. OSR has far more content than most 5e people could consume in their lifetime. If you unwind it, it's like this never ending ball of string, you could go down rabbit holes just reading the content for decades and decades. Ask me if you want someone to help guide you through it. I knew and worked with Gary Gygax himself and I'd be happy to help you out.
Actually OSE Fantasy Genre ARE the actual BX rules word for word, just organized better. Only the Advanced Genre adds/changes materials to the game. Also, despite so many people's apparent math phobia, THACO really isn't all that much harder than using ascending AC. With THACO, you simply subtract your modified roll from your THACO, giving you the AC you can hit. So if you are a first level fighter with a THACO of 19 and roll a modified 16, you can hit an AC of 3 (19-16) or above. Using ascending AC and rolling a modified 16, you can hit an AC of 16 or lower (=AC 3 or above). So ascending AC seems a little easier until you go up in levels. If you are a fourth level fighter, your THACO is now 17. So if you roll the modified 16, you can hit an AC of 1 (17-16) or above. With ascending AC you must remember to add in the additional +2 to your roll because of your level. So the same 16 roll now becomes 18 meaning that you can hit AC 18 or below (=AC 1 or above). So not really all that different, and certainly nothing to be afraid of. And it's a lot easier to use THACO than having to convert ACs when using older published modules. I think that the truly confusing part about descending AC has more to do with the inconsistent way that modifiers are applied, rather than the actually attack math. Characters with high dexterity scores have lower (better) armor class. A character with chain mail (AC 5) and a 13 dexterity (-1 to AC) ends up with an AC 4 (5-1). However, if the armor is magical (+1) chain mail, the plus indicates the bonus to your armor class. But even though it is written as +1 rather than -1, you still SUBTRACT the magical bonus from your AC. So the same character with the 13 dexterity ends up with AC 3 (5 -1 for high dex -1 for magic). Its unfortunate that they chose to go with "+" for items that actually reduce AC, though I think it was to remain consistent with magic weapons who gain pluses to hit. So while they are not the same mechanics-wise, they are consistent in that magical pluses are improvements and magical negatives are impediments.
OSE is so much fun! I'm so glad to see more 5e people try it! WAY easier to get into I'd heavily recommend Shadowdark for a more modern game, Knave for a class-less ruleset, and The Electrum Archive for a weird science fantasy game like nothing else!
Awesome vid! Love the diversity of this channel, and how much y'all are working to encourage folks to enjoy more games! Kind of like the SU&SD of TTRPGs. =)
The core elements of what this game are recreating is what was the popular incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons I learn to play back in grade school. There is an inherent joy in the open-ended Covenant of the table that says rulings overrules as in... Don't slow the table down with a bunch of rules lawyer Shenanigans if a ruling from the DM can accomplish what needs to happen at the moment. You can always go back and finalize the actual rule set for the future reference but in the moment play play play play. Secondly, there was an emergency and a Vitality that existed in the older forms of play when you don't have access to Long rest, or coming out of the gate with plus sixes in your stat bonuses, you simply had to play by your wits and you found that being an effective dungeon adventuring group was really reliant on quick thinking, and the tactics of trusting each other to work together for a common goal. People assume that somehow this was less roleplay intensive back in the day, and it was all about combat but that could not be further from the truth. Did that just because we had less character classes to pull from did not in any way shape or form mean that you weren't utilizing personality elements within those parameters to accomplish the goals and achieve Quest fulfillment. What you did not have was the safety blanket of infinite resurrections, there were no death saves, if you screwed up... You were super invested in the fact that this character was going to die. Without the threat of challenges like that it is as if the player characters didn't actually live. What would be the point? I know this comes as a slap in the face reality wise to people who came into the game v-fib but 5e encompasses a great deal of elements to accommodate people who came in to awareness of fantasy through video games. And the tropes of video games that the Superhero level stat blocks, internet restarts or resurrections is a case maybe, at that if you obey the silliness of challenge ratings that your characters are going to survive... combine that with things that take away roleplay elements such as passive perception checks and things like that where you don't actually have to State what it is you're doing you're just making a Arcana roll Etc blah blah blah tend to deprive you of the more personal roleplay elements. I played 5e when it was being developed as DND Next... and the system's fine, I think the culture that has developed around 7stw elements of it are pretty lame but that's just the times we live in. However let me say that if you want to really feel an adventure at your gut level... You really want to move it at a pace that ensures it is Cinematic and exciting, you really want to be part of a living world that isn't Bound by a bunch of mathematical contrivance has that really only serve to limit what your character could do ultimately as opposed to the old-school Covenant of the table which is if you can explain it to the DM and the dicer with you you can do it you don't need a power, you don't need a specific skill, or combination of variant permissions to do anything. You dream it, you roll it, you can do it. That is infinite variety
I wanted to clear up a bit on inaccuracy early on in your video. No offense meant, the editions of D&D have a very strange and convoluted history. 0e is usually used to refer to 1974's "more first than first edition" Dungeons & Dragons....D&D has had a very strange edition history, with a two-pronged approach that began relatively early on. There were both "Basic" and "Advanced" D&D games being published simultanously - both evolved from this 0e original D&D....Basic had 3 editions (and a revision of the third edition) on it's own; while Advanced had the two editions that modern D&D takes it's edition numbering from. OSE is basically a perfect clone (minus flavor text and WotC intellectual property) of the 2nd edition of "Basic" D&D - Basic/Expert D&D, also generally refered to as B/X D&D. This came out in 1981. Depsite coming this early in D&D's history, these two books actually were very well organized and laid out. They also included a lot that's actually lacking in OSE - much MUCH more extensive examples, advice, etc. That said, for the system itself, OSE replicates B/X D&D exactly...it's not really "inspired by", it's a complete mirror. I'd also like to suggest you taking a look at another "retro D&D" game - Swords & Wizardry. This game actually is based on the original 1974 D&D, albeit with some tweaking here and there...and vastly better layout and organization. Unlike OSE, it does provide a lot more substantial examples, advice, etc...I personally think it's a much better introduction to old-school gaming. You can also download a PDF of the full rulebook for free. (www.froggodgames.com/product/swords-wizardry-complete-rulebook/) It also has a TON of support from the publisher, Frog God Games...who also produce a lot of 5E stuff as well.
One nice thing about OSE is that you can plug in some of the rules to 5e and still get more of an OSE experience with those rules, especially the structured exploration rules, and ability to verbally declare actions and improvise the results, rather than robotically rolling skill checks constantly.
One of the things i loved about the attack matrix which was Pre- Thaco is it largely kept players from doing math in their head and calculating the enemy AC. It is still a more immersive system. Thaco made it simpler to understand by removing the matrix and making it a matmatical system based on AC=0, and the newer ascending AC once again made the process simpler and completely removed the shield hiding the monster AC, once you hit it you know its AC after all. However with a Matrix, and even Thaco and the descending AC it takes quite a bit more thought to discover the monsters AC quickly, and going ohh i can hit it 65% of the time CHARGE!
My favorite two OSR games are Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool Edition and Star Adventurer. Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool is different as it mainly uses the dice chain system for skills and ability/attributes. Everything starts as a D4, and upgrades to D6, D8, D10, and eventually to a D12. Roll your ability/attribute and your skill dice. However, every character class has something like 20 special abilities you can pick from to customize your PC at creation and leveling up (many abilities have 3 tiers). Those usually add more dice to the mix. Roll them all, pick the best 2 results. 2nd game is Star Adventurer. It is OSR Star Wars. It is more traditional D&D style rules using a D20 and ascending armor class, but leveling up has you use a random table for your class, and powers are not treated as Vancian spells, but are more like skills as well. Skills that go on a cool down if you fail a roll. However, it is not a long book, only 35 pages, so it is quite simple to play.
For an adventure I'd highly recommend B10: Night's Dark Terror. It was designed to take players of Basic D&D (levels 1-3) into Expert D&D (levels 3-14) play, going from exploring dungeons to the wilderness. Tons of fantastic content in 64 pages. I recently ran it with OSE for 2 groups alternating fortnightly over 2 years and it was an amazing experience.
Simple THAC0: Your armour class is your opponents to hit bonus against you. AC 10? You opponents have a +10 to hit you, AC 0? Opponents have no bonus, AC -3, opponents attack at -3. That's it.
This sounds like it captures all the stuff that I loved about running a looser house rules game in high school. Once my party fashioned a wolf guillotine out of a door taken from its hinges.
OSE is just a re-presentation of B/X D&D. It is essentially the same. (pun intended). It is popular because the presentation is well done - generally liked better than similar predecessors like Labyrinth Lord, but not really any different than Basic D&D (or Labyrinth Lord). Old school games preserve the sense of cinematic wonder that rules heavy games like 5e compromise. One important difference is the lack of 5e's "action economy" which overcomplicates a turn and interferes with player immersion.
If there's one thing I'd like to tell 5e players, know this: Less rules means more freedom, not less. You don't need a subclass to tell you what specific kind of Fighter you are, you can come up with anything and it will work just as well. You can try anything because you'll never hear "You need a feat for that" The rules give you just what you need and nothing more. If you want more support, the Advanced Fantasy and Carcass Crawler Zines will help you out, and the decades long passionate community will have an answer. This is the DnD that you heard tales of, the wild, fantastic, unpredictable game full of danger of suprises!
I LOVE seeing other people who started playing modern editions (such as myself who truly started with 3rd Edition) discover the older versions. The only thing that must be corrected here is that OSE isn't a "love letter" to D&D. It is a painstakingly reorganized and clarified copy of Tom Moldvay's Basic and Expert rules that were published in 1981 (Often called "B/X" for short). Many (but of course not all) followers of old-school D&D regard it as the single best version of D&D ever released. The only reason I want to clarify this is that anyone like me who is looking for an "authentic" experience should rest assured that OSE is most definitely authentic D&D, not a copycat with loads of alternate rules. I hope that scores of modern D&D players get to see this video and realize that OSE and other old-school games are not merely archaic relics perpetuated by the nostalgia of stubborn elders. They are truly fertile playgrounds for those of us who want to maximize our creativity and imagination on both sides of the DM screen.
THAC0 is not that complex...lol.. Don't understand why people get so confused with it. Its just subtraction vs. addition. Especially from a players perspective, mechanically they just roll a.dice and the DM says if they hit or not. Just to newer players low armour class good, seems counterintuative. Players THAC0 minus Targets AC equals target to hit. simples. :)
It’s been fascinating seeing the OSR style of play expand from simply feeling nostalgic to experimenting with the style of play and the vibes of that kind of exploration. Personally I’m hoping to see more coverage of Trophy Gold in places as that’s a quite narrative-first version of OSR style desperate delves into dungeons.
It's awesome to see people in the 5e community talk about Old-School Essentials! There are a couple innacuracies here that I think could be worth clearing up. Old-School Essentials _is_ a D&D game, it's explicitly a clone of B/X D&D from 1981.
The only difference is formatting for clarity and usability, the actual rules are unchanged
There's also OSE: Advanced Fantasy, which adapts some other content from Advanced D&D 1st Edition into the B/X format. It does a really good job of adapting a lot of the character tropes players are familiar with from modern editions into the ruleset.
@@donniehoffman4738 Between 0e and B/X, you mean? There are certainly some changes in there, although they are very similar games (mechanically, if not in writing or presentation).
@@ryanbaillie11 He means between B/X and OSE. Mechanically, they are identical. Of course, OSE lacks the WotC intellectual property, the flavor text, and a bunch of the explanations / examples / etc.
@@ryanbaillie11 OD&D, Holmes, B/X, BECMI, Cyclopedia are pretty much the same game. OD&D + first three supplements is the base for all those that follow up until AD&D hits the market.
I would argue that it does NOT have less flexibility and definitely doesn't have to be less story-focused at all. In fact, by not having skills or tons of other abilities, characters are differentiated by roleplay.
And it's nice having a simple character sheet. I loved Professor Dungeon Master's comment (at least I think it was him) about how in the old days, players would show up, pull a folded-up, single-sided character sheet from their pocket (that was me), and play, whereas modern D&D looks like a bunch of accountants sitting at the table doing their taxes together.
For people who are unsure of what old-school games are like, I think one of my favourite examples used vampires (again, courtesy Prof DM). In many modern games, encountering a vampire might cause the player to roll to see if his character is afraid, while in old-school games, it's not the character who is afraid, but the *player* because a single touch from a vampire would drain two levels and *could not be resisted*. If your level 6 fighter was touched, you became level 4. Period. Consequently, players would be very hesitant to engage such a creature without a solid plan to take advantage of all of its weaknesses. And even then, they'd be nervous.
That, for me, is what old-school games are about: the emphasis is put more on the player's abilities than the character's. Modern D&D characters are (comparatively) superheroes, while old-school ones tend to be somewhat-better-than-average people trying to survive.
"whereas modern D&D looks like a bunch of accountants sitting at the table doing their taxes together."
I don't really get that with 5E (and I have plenty of complaints about 5E) but I did get that feeling with Pathfinder.
Yeah... The "wizard school to vampire castle" example is nonsensical. Of course you can do those things in OSE.
@@icebot1 I'm not sure I uderstand your comment. Are you saying that the notion of the players being scared vs the characters being scared is nonsensical? That may be the case in your experience, but not mine. I find it quite accurate.
@@jcraigwilliams70 the quick example of 5e's flexibility in the video is that it can go from a wizard school to a vampire's castle, implying that OSE can't successfully portray both of those settings. That's what's nonsensical.
@@icebot1 ok. For whatever reason, the mention of a vampire threw me off, as I had also mentioned a vampire in my comment.
Got it now and I agree completely.
Nice video. Really does a good job of breaking down the differences. Personally, my campaign is MUCH more role-play-y than dungeon explory, but I'm weird that way.
Same here. No need to focus on dungeon exploring too much ;)
OSE is fantastic. I've been playing a campaign in it for years and love it so much. It's not based on the first edition - its based on Basic/Expert editions which were released in 1981. Also, it literally is the B/X rules, not a reinterpretation. Other OSR games attempt to reinterpret the rules, but OSE stays 100% faithful to the original ruleset. Great video!
Well not 100% to be nitpicky but very very close.
Yah, OSE is really a re-presentation of the third edition of the OD&D branch. OD&D ==> Holmes Basic ==> Moldvay/Cook.
And GREAT video.
@@DMTalesTTRPG Interesting perspective to those early edition. And yes, a great video. As are yours good sir 🙂
@@DMTalesTTRPG OD&D, Holmes, and B/X are essentially
all the same branch. AD&D (1/2e) are the second branch and 3E, 4E, and 5E are the most recent branches.
@@williamlittlefield4749 right, that’s what I said. OD&D’s end is the Rules Compendium.
As others have stated, OSE is based off of Moldvay B/X D&D, not the first edition of AD&D which 5e is descended from (WOTC just dropped the "Advanced" off the name). It should be emphasized that OSE is a masterclass in game presentation and everything is formatted to be *the easiest* to use at the table without a bunch of flipping through pages and having to burrow through paragraphs to find the one relevant role you needed - it's almost always in bullet-points the pertinent information you need to find, and not split across multiple pages.
OSE also has an "Advanced" set which separates race from class (fighter/thief/cleric/magic-user are all humans while there's elf/dwarf/halfling classes). AOSE still has time option to play race-as-class while introducing half-orcs, half-elves, gnomes, drow, duergar, and svirfneblin as either classes or as player character races. *In addition* a lot of the "Advanced" classes are added: assassin, acrobat, barbarian, bard, druid, illusionist, knight, paladin, and ranger.
As for the people who've been playing since the 70s/80s and wondering "what's old school then?" the Questing Beast channel is one of the best resources on here to figure out what folks are getting at with OSR namely open-worlds, player-led, exploration based sessions, rather than a solely DM-written plot or "adventure path" that players have to play through. The key is "emergent storytelling" rather than prescribed.
Thanks Anthony! As someone who started playing back in the early 80s (primarily AD&D 1st edition, but with a lot of Champions and Chaosium products as well), I'm a little baffled about the "it was so freeform" rhetoric I'm hearing. Of course, as someone who started playing back in the early 80s, my memory is now a bit foggy. ;-) As far as "open-worlds, player-led, exploration-based sessions", that strikes me as a function of the GM's approach to the game rather than something inherently baked-in to the rules (ruleset depending). You can play that way in (say) Fate and 5E if you want.
Clearly, I need to do a bit more research to understand what the attraction is.
@@edgarbucksnortesq.5106 the old school primers mentioned in the video help explain a lot. Yeah there is a master of playstyle, but there's also a master of which rules support which playstyle better. 5e with its lists of skills for investigations and bluffing immediately stands in contrast to OSE which doesn't have skills that allow for players to basically skip these parts of exploration and negotiating hostile environments, as a huge difference. I mean *sure* you could ignore those, but why are you going to bother with purchasing those books if you're just going to end up ignoring chunks of it to begin with?
Also, it's very much glossed over until the very end of the video but GP for XP + less XP for combat + weaker characters really does begin to have an effect on how players approach, well, everything. Game recaps are replete with first time players from 5e trying OSE getting just hosed in their first sessions because their first instinct when encountering monsters is just to charge in and fight them when that is very much one of the things of last resort that you'd want to do in an old school game because of the aforementioned reasons and because there's guarantee that the encounter is going to be "balanced".
@@edgarbucksnortesq.5106 I feel like there is a notable difference between AD&D with it's long list of very spesic rules and Gygax talking about how it's essential to do this and that vs say Home's Basic set where he talked about how players can play as anything they want as long as the DM allowed it and started the book by pointing out the rules have to modified and interprated to conform to what people have to do at the table. So while it's ultimatly down to DM playstyle I feel these encouraged very different playstyles and when people talk about how freeform old-school stuff was they refer more to Basic and the White Box.
As someone who began gaming with the stiflingly crunchy 3.5 in the early 00's the OSR and old school games in general have been a liberating revelation of how free and creative the RPG medium, and the D&D dungeon-centric milieu specifically, can be.
To nit-pick though, OSE isn't based on 1st edition (what people usually refer to AD&D 1st edition as), nor the original version of the game from 1974 (OD&D). Rather, OSE is an extremely faithful recreation of the Tom Moldvay and David Cook/Steve Marsh editions of the Basic and Expert games from 1981, commonly known as B/X (The versions with the Erol Otus cover art), not to be confused with the more famous edition from 1983 by Frank Mentzer (the famous Red Box with the lunging red dragon on the cover).
This is correct - it is a pleasantly written and well supported B / X. Thank goodness!
Although there's very little difference between B/X and the BE in the BECMI.
@@paavohirn3728 This is true. Beyond the presentation and the thief skill tables they're basically the same system. Nevertheless, B/X is often upheld, over BECMI, as the single greatest version of D&D within the broader old school community, I think largely due to the more grounded scope of the game from levels 1 to 14, rather that progressing to the dizzying heights of level 36 (and beyond if you use the Immortals rules).
If you look at advanced OSE it's a mash of b/x and ADnD1
@@Hushashabega Yeah. As much as I thought the CM stuff was cool as a kid (i don't have I) I prefer the BE or B/X scope. I've yet to look into the changes (clarifications?) in RC.
Great video! I was so pleased to see 3 of my illustrations for this game included too! The Rope dridge, the Dwarf getting eaten by a slime, and the Cockatrice! Cheers!!
Great illustrations, hoss!
Venger Satanis thank you!!
Hi Maddie, I met your mum and dad earlier on the train to London and they told me about dice breaker its very good keep doing videos
This could be the start of the great 5e migration to the land of OSR!
Who knows the OSR isn't everyone cup of tea, always nice to see new people showing interest though
Nah, the control-freak DM's that infest the OSR will drive many of these people away
Or maybe people will enjoy both.
OK, so my players were exploring a forest/hill hex, they came upon a clearing with a great mound of earth in the middle and upon it a great tower of onyx.
"I wonder what loot is in there?" My players ruminated, however they were stopped by the 10+ harpies circling the tower. So my players stepped back into the tree line, had their hirelings tie ropes to the trees and had the magic user make the sound of a large monster with one of his spells. As the "monster" skronked viciously, the hirelings pulled their ropes to "marionette" the trees to give the harpies the appearance of a large monster moving towards them. I rolled a modified morale check and the harpies got the hell outta there.
In a game like 5e, they would have far less incentive to do something like this, every Saturday night of play in my group has moments like these and we love it.
Love these sorts of war storys, its definitely a great way to play
I chuckled at the "Magic School to Vampire's Castle" comment. _The Principalities of Glantri_ is a 1987 sourcebook for this edition of D&D *all about* a magic school, and 1983's _Ravenloft_ - as an *AD&D* adventure - is 100% compatible with this game as well.
Great video, though! You've certainly got the old-school spirit!
It's wonderful seeing people discover the OSR!
Just to be clear, OSE does not target Original D&D (1974), but the 2nd version of Basic D&D ("Holmes Basic" or B/X) which came out in 1981. Even though technically Original is D&D 1st edition, when people say "1st edition" they're usually referring to AD&D (1977), and to avoid confusion it sometimes gets called "0th".
Basic D&D follows the feel of Original D&D without most of the expansion material, but they do differ in several important ways (e.g. Race as Class, variable HD size rather than number of HD, changes to spells etc.). OSE isn't so much a love letter as a clean and modern edit of B/X, attempting to keep the material as similar as possible but in a much more presentable way.
Just to be that pedantic nitwit - "Holmes Basic" came out in 1979, this is based on Moldvay basic (aka B/X) from '81.
@@medusaminiatures4006that's right.
Also, when she's mentioning those editions, a cover page is shown. That is Mentzer's Basic edition (red box, 1983, the first in the BECMI series).
But I don't complain. I like very much to see non-grognards like myself even giving a chance to OSR.
Good job! Thanks for the video!!😊
Next Video : Dungeon Crawl Classics! Awesome 🤩
A few other OSR systems to check out:
- *Dungeon Crawl Classics.* Imagine a game where every wizard was a wild mage. Throw in super-cinematic fighters, a sword & sorcery feel, and world-class adventures: that's DCC.
- *Hyperborea 3e.* Take Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, modernise it, and dunk it in a soup of Conan and Dying Earth. Play as astonishing swordsmen and sorcerers in a world of high adventure, weird fantasy, and science-fiction.
- *Stars Without Number: Revised.* By acclaimed author Kevin Crawford, this science fiction TRPG melds classic Dungeons & Dragons and Traveller into a very modern-feeling OSR experience. Chuck in a whole back-half of incredible GM tools and you have a system that anyone running games needs to read.
Adventures to look into (both new and old):
- *Tomb of the Serpent Kings.* A masterful dungeon designed specifically for players new to the OSR.
- *The Tower of Faces.* An award-winning DCC adventure where the party must defend a mad mage's estate for five whole days while a mighty ritual is underway.
- *B10: Night's Dark Terror.* A classic D&D adventure where the players need to defend a homestead against a goblin siege, hunt slavers through the wilderness, and delve into ancient civilisations.
- *X2: Castle Amber.* The most fun of funhouse dungeons, with the PCs finding themselves in the deadly home of the insane d'Ambreville family. A whacky horror dungeon delve that will drive your PCs as mad as their hosts.
I just ordered Tomb of the Serpent Kings print edition. Thank you very much for the recommendation. It looks tremendous.
perhaps the most well thought out and well written series of recommendations, all of these are great
@@FreshmanSells Thanks!
DCC FOREVER!!! 🤓🖤
We are testing Esoteric Enterprises right now. Cheap modern day gangsters and underground occultists who explore a megadungeon underneath the city streets, filled with were-butterflies, dero, drug dealers and cults.
So stoked about OSE. The simplicity compared to the sluggishness of 5e is wild!
Really? I don't find 5e sluggish and I've played AD&D 1e, 2e, 3.0, 3.5.
@@simonfernandes6809 I disagree. I also have played AD&D 1:st/2:nd Ed, D&D 3.0, 3.5 and 5.0. The sluggishness started in D&D 3.0 and got worse from there on.
@@merkron2680 Bloat. of both mechanics and lore. It actually started with 2e. When they stopped putting out books full of tables and charts, and started publishing novels.
I've been playing since 1981. 5E isn't "sluggish", at all.
@@simonfernandes6809 Sooner or later, every 5e game begins to experience the dreaded three-hour combats. I'd certainly consider that sluggish.
I do find it amusing that you use "Curse of Strahd" as a example of something that OSE wouldn't be able to do, given that that adventure is mostly just a 5e adaptation of the original Ravenloft module...which was written for 1st edition (which is fairly close to OSE mechanically).
Plus _The Principalities of Glantri_ (actually for B/X) is all about a magic school.
Yep. I've done both The Principalities of Glantri (a wizard school) and Ravenloft with B/X. ;)
@@williamlittlefield4749 I've done Ravenloft in B/X, but my closest to Glantri is Castle Amber. I've had the thought of running something in the nation proper, but I could never quite suss out how that dynamic would work considering the system encourages most PCs to be non-magical.
and honestly the game is way more gothic horror and threatening with OSE compared to 5e.
@@Sammo212 Yeah. I've made the comparison before that classic D&D is essentially Survival Horror from way back before Resident Evil coined the term.
As a note this is the original dnd not an inspiration, this IS dungeons and dragons
As an old-timer I'm glad to see people discovering the Old School style. Old School Essentials is particularly good. My main go-to is AD&D 1e, but sitting in on an OSE game has reinvigorated even my jaded PoV. The DM was also brand new to OSR style, being only familiar with 5e. But he's adapted to it very well and it has been an absolute howl.
Old School Essentials Advanced is just about the perfect system. It fully supports old-school exploration while still allowing for as much story-telling as you want. It shows you how to flip AC and trade THAC0 (or tables) for attack bonuses.
Not sure what I like more: Old School Essentials, or watching Maddy talk about Old School Essentials with such enthusiasm.
I'm glad you like the game but, OSE is not a modern 0 edition dnd. It isn't based on the original at all. It's just the Basic/Advanced dnd sets that have been edited with a much clearer layout, and with a conversion for ascending AC. I would also argue that the lack of rules offer much MORE flexibility than 5E. Rulings Over Rules basically. Other than that I think you did a great job talking about the strengths of the system.
Glad you liked it - but you said it's not a D&D game and it definitely is. It's a pure retroclone of B/X from 1981 - it's just cut out the BS and made the rules explicitly clear to references, but it's literally the exact same as B/X D&D - the only difference I can think of is that it adds the option for ascending armor class. Also - I don't get the flexibility comment - if you look through the OSR published adventures it can take you to all of the places you mentioned (Wizard's school. vampire's castle) and more. If you're looking at it just in terms of published adventures, it's in fact way more flexible than 5e - there's a ton of compatible adventures you can use for this system (literally all the old D&D modules, anything published for OSE explicitly, or Labryinth Lord and other B/X retroclones - and really anything OSR with minimal if any conversion needed). Also - unless you're specifically looking at pre-published adventures than the flexibility of an RPG game is all down to the DM's imagination and the game they want to run.
Glad to see new 5e players try the old school Dnd. Having played Basic, Advanced and adnvanced 2nd edition i can say the feel is pretty different from todays 5e. 5e is cool but feels like a different game to me, like a video game.
Great that you're showing an interest, and by all means, look forward to welcoming more 5E spelers in the OSR/OSE. But just to clarify OSE is a B/X retroclone, not an original D&D retroclone. Just a minor inaccuracy, overall a great video.
We quibble, yes? But it is a nice review, well done. It puts some youthful energy into our support of OSR.
"I had more fun playing classic D&D" - I strongly agree! Love the red/blue/green/black boxes!
The draw of D&D to me is that you can do anything you can think of. I think OSE (and other Old School games) do a great job of this by just letting the DM decide if what I'm trying to do is reasonable. I love all of the examples you gave of this (looking for loose flagstones, lying to the guards, throwing jellybeans) and how fun it is!
I enjoyed your video. I started playing D&D in 1979 when I got the basic D&D box set for my 13th birthday. Nice to see people enjoying the new and old versions. They all bring something to the hobby.
Thaco is often misunderstood, but not as complicated as most people think. Your thaco score is what you need to roll on the d20 to hit, plus you add the target's AC to your roll. If you don't know the target's armor class, you take your thaco and subtract what you rolled. The answer is what AC you hit.
Nice one, Maddie. Credit where credit’s due, Old-school “Essentials” is merely a clone of the Moldvay/Marsh/Cook rules written in 1981 (B/X D&D). Its claim to fame is being an exact “reworking” of those rules, so those who have the originals have likely been playing in this style for many long years. It’s not for everyone, but it is wonderful.
I'm don't play much DnD anymore but I always liked 2nd Ed the most from what I played. Glad OSE has some of that in its DNA!
The Advanced Fantasy line does take some adnd dna (lol) but it's more from 1e and significantly simplifies it. But there is a growing crowd interested in 2e these days too
@@seanfsmith I’ve noticed a big increase in interest in AFF recently too. Glad I’ve had my copy for around 10 years
I’ve never understood the hate for thac0. It was a genius improvement over having to check a table EVERY time you swing at a monster. It’s also not the least bit complicated to calculate in your head.
The complexity of THAC0 is always overstated. It's just THAC0 minus die roll equals armor class hit!
I’m not sure which edition or manual did this, but THAC0 was eventually simplified to a formula without the need of a chart. That’s when it became useful.
@@commandercaptain4664 AD&D did this.
I use thaco to this day and i suck at math...its not at all hard, its just been blown up into insane mythical cypher undecodable by any but grognards...
I always used it as THAC0 minus target's AC equals the minimum d20 roll required to hit. Sure, it's an extra step on the DM's part but it puts the requirement out there before the roll. Thankfully OSE (and Basic Fantasy has it as default) also includes the option for using ascending AC, as in modern D&D, so it's all just preference or material used. In using old modules for BX or BECMI, for example, you can just subtract the old AC from 19 to get the modern ascending style AC.
@@NefariousKoel Either way works.
I crave to play a game of Ad&D like my early days when i was discovering rpg
And lastly, the myth that the game was not inclusive or there were these mythical Gatekeepers that tried to keep women out at cetera at cetera back in the day... Utter crap. Don't believe the lie, I was there and we were just grateful when anyone male or female of any color wanted to actually share in this brand-new and super exciting form of gameplay. Glad you had fun, please keep seeking out the osr games... Dungeon Crawl classics will blow your freaking mind now that you have open this portal into the Glorious and super Majid of world of retro styling Adventure. Cheers.
+1 for DCC
Considering there are many non-inclusive gatekeepers today, I find it hard to believe they haven't been present throughout the history of RPG's.
@@johnathanrhoades7751 and you would be right. I cannot presume to speak for the entirety of RPGs over all those years, I can only comment on what I saw firsthand. I remember the first time it really dawned on me that other people who were into the same hobby I was, but for entirely different reasons. Whether they were adolescent power fantasies, or trying to feel better about themselves at the expense of someone else... Or whatever... we're entirely different from my thoughts on it. In my early teens it was interesting to see that these people love the same thing I did.. but for entirely different reasons. Very much an eye-opener. The problem now is that everyone has a outlet to blather their opinion 10 seconds after they've felt it so they are just gushing with raw emotion rather than actually spending the time to try and see from her perspective outside whatever echo-chamber they are dwelling in. Information traveled much slower back in the day, for good or evil.. but oftentimes there was a bit of a cool down. Between stimuli and reaction. Not the case anymore.
More OSR games need to be highlighted. Games like Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord or Basic Fantasy RPG (my personal favourite) that have been around longer than OSE have reshaped the gaming community over the last decade and are an attractive reminder of how these games were more about imagination and roleplaying than rules and simulations. BFRPG in particular is great because the game is 100% free on its website.
I got into some of the OSR ideas from a friend's OSE. As you said, much of it is more the attitude to not using the rules when there is a more common favourite, along with hacking the rules to your personal taste being even more assumed than most TTRPGs.
It does have a bit of Old-D&Ders who grumble about 5E players wanting to play wish fulfilment superhero catpeople, but beyond that there's lots of cool ideas.
My personal favourites are Maze Rats and Knave by Ben Milton, who co-wrote the Principa Apocrypha, they're modern system with lots of OSR inspiration, they're short systems for less than £3 on DrivethruRPG.
Maze Rats frames the ideas as "Danger Rolls" - you reach for the dice only when something has gone wrong rather than the main method to see if something succeeds. MR also has a really fun magic system where you randomly combine two words together from some charts and you and the GM decide what it does.
(Also yes, technically OSE is just a cleaned up version of the 1981 basic D&D set rather than the more complex 1st Advanced Dungeons and Dragons that was about at the same time, editions of D&D were weird before 2000)
I don't see in any way how it's less flexible. It's less constrained by rules for starters and story wise I would say that's more up to the DM more than the system itself.
If you are used to a big publisher handing you yer campaign world in a 50$ hardcover, you don't even think of creating yer own world. That changes after players have been in OSR for even a short while.
@@vincejester7558 You seem to be forgetting how inflation has shaped people's understanding of the relative prices of game materials. $50 USD in 2022 is equivalent to about $16 in 1981, when the Moldvay Basic Edition rules were published.
@@vincejester7558 I can partially agree with that. On my side I've played mainly 5e and dipped my feet into PbTA games and recently bought OSE. But I have been interested from the start in building my own setting. Though the books are convenient for time constrained DMs and people that just want to get up and running quick.
My point was more that the one book is the setting, the mechanics, and the campaign all in one spot. It's packaged up nice and tidy and complete. Not that the 50$ is super over expensive or anything.
Something I like about OSR is that the PCs progressions are more about what happens to them in the adventures than whatever the class table say they will learn to do
Great video! It's really cool that you're giving the OSR a try.
Something to keep in mind...newer editions (or any system for that matter) are not more "flexible" because they have more rules or fiddly-bits, in fact it's quite the opposite. The more rules you have, the more confined you are. Also, rules will always fail to provide accurate simulation with regard to any aspect of reality...thus again, the fewer the better. Early editions were constructed with the assumption that the people playing would build and add to it. There's literally nothing that one can do in 5e that you couldn't do in OSE. Just simply...make it up;)
As for another OSR-flavor system to try....I personally think DCC "Dungeon Crawl Classics" is an incredibly fun (and unique) approach. It's entire layout/vibe is more old-school than old-school...lol...and the artwork is absolutely second to none.
As someone who never played a game of D&D before the 5th Edition became established, I just don't see what the idea behind THAC0 was when you could just as easily say, "Hit this target number or over on d20!" I'm glad both options are used throughout OSE. Also, dungeon adventuring with OSE rules sounds so much more exciting and even more creative than modern games. If somebody had ever explained D&D or AD&D this way to me, and been able to relate how much fun could be had with the old rules, I probably would have played such a game as early as the 1980s. It is, however, only now, that I discover OSE and other retro-clones for myself. Thank you very much for making this video about it. While I am on the topic: I wanted to add that you can currently get all the Basic Rules and the character sheets for Old-School Essentials for free - they are on DriveThruRPG as free PDFs. I got them earlier this week. With only those 60 pages of rules in PDF, I can immediately make my own OSE adventures while I still waiting for the books. Also, the book editions of OSE are extraordinarily pretty.
THAC0 isn't hard to use, once you understand one simple thing: it's a *target number* (or what modern D&D calls a *Difficulty Class*). THAC0 is the number you're trying to beat with your "1d20 + modifiers" roll; that's all there is to it.
In modern D&D (3e and later), you attack by rolling 1d20, adding a modifier (your attack bonus or proficiency bonus, Strength or Dexterity bonuses, magic bonuses), and trying to equal or surpass a TN or DC which happens to be your target enemy's Armor Class. So, for example, if your total bonus to hit is +5 and you're attacking an enemy with AC 18, you know that you need to roll 1d20 + 5 and get a total of 18 or better (which would be a natural 13 or greater on the die roll) in order to hit.
In older D&D (2e and earlier), you attack by rolling 1d20, adding a modifier (which is *the target enemy's Armor Class!*), and trying to equal or surpass a TN or DC which is your own THAC0 number. So that same attack situation in classic D&D would be rendered as a character with THAC0 15 attacking a heavily armored foe with AC 2. You roll 1d20 + 2, and you need a total of 15 or greater (which will happen on a natural 13 or more - imagine that!) in order to hit. Just that simple.
The only thing that really might throw modern gamers off is the fact that both THAC0 and AC get lower as they get better. For AC, this makes a certain sort of sense. AC 1 is better than AC 3, because wouldn't you rather have first-class armor than shoddy old third-class armor? Likewise, once you've internalized the fact that THAC0 is just the DC of the attack roll, you'll intuitively know that you *want* to push it as low as you can via Str/Dex and magic bonuses. You just have to remember that bonuses lower these numbers, and penalties raise them. If you're a 4th level fighter (base THAC0 17) wearing plate armor (AC 3), and you have a Dex 16 (+2), your ranged THAC0 gets pushed down to 15 by your Dex (i.e. lowering the DC you need to roll to hit enemies), and your AC gets pushed down to 1 (i.e. lessening the bonus you give to enemies trying to hit you!).
I'm more Swords & Wizardry, yet OSE is a fun game. OSE is actually B/X from 81, 82. Mix with Black Pudding and you have an awesome game.
Old School RPGs required more role playing than roll playing. Your playing your character, not your character sheet. Your characters were almost never optimized, you rolled your attributes and then checked to see what class you were able to play. Eventually you became good enough that you could play any class equally well.
This was a great video, you really hit all of the major selling points of the OSR.
You see a 20 foot deep pit in front of you. At the bottom you see a door on the southern facing side. I jump in. I almost died laughing when that happened.
It's so good! 🖤 Old-School Essentials
I have played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons since 1980. I am 58 and my son is 30. We play regularly when he and his mates are around, he first DM'd a game at the age of four and did a good job, I was so proud. The AD&D rules clearly stated that you can change rules if you think they are wrong, as long as you can justify the change. Over the years there are just a few changes I have made, all based on common sense and with the players agreement. I'm glad you liked one of the older versions. It is about imagination and enjoyment, and not rules.
Great video! Also good job Maddie, you already feel like a natural fit to the Dicebreaker team and I hope that's how it feels on the creative end!
All your adventures don't have to be in a dungeon. Exploring the outdoors, finding old shrines and secret portals hidden in caves is all a part of the adventure.
Finding towns, villages and city states for rare components for spells or making new contacts to sell rare items that you find. That 100 gold piece bird statue may be worth 200 to a collector. Seeking out rumors and tall tales at the waterfront for further adventures. Things like that make it a necessity to keep notes or a journal with scraps of information about people, places and things.
Finding maps that may lead to treasure or a dungeon or it could be a false map leading them on a wild goose chase. Then going back to find the thief who sold it to you and get your revenge on them!
Getting a letter from a relative asking for help in your home town is a great way to expand on a characters background and have an adventure at the same time.
Many of my characters have maps to old dungeons that we only partially explored. It may be time to go back and finish exploring for that treasure you never found.
The list go on and on, only your imagination is the true limitation!
Been playing alot of Swords and Wizardry complete and Stars without number, they are both great OSR systems that each offer different things, i would recommend looking into them especially since the core rules are free
OSR is SO broad! "5 Torches Deep", "Knave", "Death bringer", so many others. "Genial Jack" and "Neverland" for more light hearted fare.
I have Stars Without Number, but haven't heard of Swords and Wizardry. You just gave me another game to look at.
I`ve been playing original D&D since 1974.... and yes, THACO rules :-) Never needed to switch editions, as nothing compares to the experience of the original game.... all anyone needs is imagination and those three classic books.
Those three little books are awesome! Have you taken a look at Delving Deeper RPG? It's the closest ODD clone out there and completely free.
I have Delving Deeper (and just about all the retro clones) but having been there from the very beginning, I can honestly say that none of them capture the integrity, tone and true essence of the real deal. Delving Deeper is cool and does the job, but its got many minor changes that are a little off target. My original ODD is actually a signed Gygax copy hehe :-))
@@stephengilbert8166 Gygax was a real showman. His prose in the DMG are a riot. People still don't get that half of what he wrote was an inside joke.
Oh absolutely. I met the guy and played in one of his convention games once (gosh it seems like a lifetime ago now). He used to use a lot of private wit in his games, and a lot of that snuck into the rules ^^ ah the good old days (pre THACO even lol).
I actually prefer how OD&D handles attacks (the d20 to hit tables) to how AD&D did it (with Thac0 introduced in the 1e DMG, and later standard for players with AD&D 2e). If I'm ever in a game that uses Thac0, it's nice to be able to create an Original/Basic style to hit table and forget about Thac0.
BTW, OD&D is the first edition of D&D that I ever actually ran, even though I started with 3e, and it's incredible just how much material is stored in those little books, even though it often takes a bit of reading around to understand where it came from and what it meant. I think that's one of the benefits of the OSR, in that it's been able to figure out what a lot of it meant and make it a lot more clear.
Having started D&D in 1980 when I was a wee lad and playing every other edition except that truly pathetic 4E, I feel I have to state that many people are missing the beauty of early D&D. The DM is the story teller, not the antagonist. If it wasn't in a rule and DM might say Roll a strength check, or a dex check, it was ridiculously easy. It also didn't have the massive HP bloat that 5E has. It also allowed the DM to better gauge an encounter because today's players have so many resistances, feats, class special abilities and on and on that what should be a tough encounter, often gets trivialized when the players just two round kill the big bad. The only way to fix this is to HP bloat the baddies and that leads to frustratingly long combat encounters and very bored players. This is why Hard Mode D&D is becoming more popular.
I try to recommend a trio of books to anyone who's interested in OSR retroclones: these were three books put out by Bard Games back in the early 80's that included a bunch of new classes compatible with both OD&D and AD&D:
The Compleat Adventurer: Included the Beastmaster, Buccaneer, Bounty Hunter, Gladiator, Harlequin, Knight, Martial Artist, Rogue, Scout, Spy, Swordsman, Warrior, and Witch Hunter classes.
The Compleat Spell Caster: Included the Witch ,Warlock, Mystic, Necromancer, Sorcerer, and Sage classes.
The Compleat Alchemist: This one only had the Alchemist class, but it introduced a bunch of rules for making alchemical elixirs and potions and the like.
Given that most retroclones tend to cleave pretty close to the original D&D rules, these additional classes can offer some really interesting new content that most of the OSR rulebooks won't have.
Glad to hear another group enjoying OSR play! Here are some dungeon suggestions for you:
- UK3 The Gauntlet: published in '84, this adventure provides an awesome castle to explore, sneakily hidden foe, and a really fun 3rd-act twist that your players will talk about for years to come. While technically the sequel to UK2 (The Sentinel), it's easy to modify it so you don't need the previous adventure.
- N1 Against the Cult of the Reptile God: There's something wrong in a small village and it's up to the PCs to figure out what it is. This one starts with a heavy investigation element that's a lot of fun before climaxing with a classic dungeon crawl. If you enjoy this sort of thing, you might also want to check out Scenic Dunnsmouth, which includes a clever, card-based cursed village generator.
- A4 Dungeon of the Slave Lords: facing a TPK? No worries! Once all the PCs are down, tell them they wake up, stripped of their belongings in a dark cavern. They're in the Dungeon of the Slave Lords and need to find their way out, without all their cool gear. A nice one to have handy just in case.
- A Hamsterish Hoard of Dungeons & Dragons: There are small adventures here, but also amazing magic items and wonderfully atmospheric monsters that will add a very fairytale touch to your adventures. hamsterhoard.blogspot.com/
Also be sure to check out Taichara's new blog: hamsterhoard.home.blog/
Maddie could probably sell my own feet to me with her enthusiasm
A couple of books in the Old School pantheon are Ultraviolet Grasslands, Hot Springs Island, Neverland, and Rackham Vale. Each totally different from one another but all top of their class in their own way.
A very superior exposition. OSE is not exactly what Maddie describes....IT IS MORE. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to make and publish this video. Stay well, stay safe and may all your rolls be successful. AND you have a new sub....lol
What do you mean it's inspired? It is a exact replica of B/X D&D just with a modernized look
I started playing/DMing in 5e and just picked this up today on the recommendation of a friend who has been a DM for 40+ years. After the first read through, I'm glad I purchased it!
Great video! I recently bought OSR to teach my 7 year old grandson how to play D&D. I started with Basic 40 years ago. In my opinion, most modern players don't like that a non-human race IS a class, and ONLY humans can be a wizard, cleric, or thief (rogue). I love that aspect, but I seem to be in a miniscule minority. For that reason, my current group of 5e players, most of whom players Basic and AD&D, are willing to play an AD&D clone, but not a Basic d&d clone, which Old School Essentials is. Mores the pity!! I got all the Basic modules off DTRPG and I can't wait to run them!
This is a great overview and will help bring folks new to OSR play into the hobby. Good job!
And maybe get them into Cairn too! :)
Your game, Cairn, will help bring many people to RPGs for less than $5 :-)
@@Pokarface7 and wouldn't exist without the long tradition that led to this video! We're all winners!
Thank you. This is a video that needed to be made. The OSR movement has been stonewalled and marginalized for several years. I am glad you enjoyed yer experience with OSE. If you keep at it, you will get to play the most interesting part of the genre, Domain building. It's exploration on steroids. Where you take on the role of a ruler and create an empire in the larger world. It is lots of fun.
OSE is d&d as it was originally played. It’s actually modern versions that are more focused on stories and less on exploration
I always find it interesting that THAC0 is viewed as overly complicated when the reality is that the numbers work out exactly the same as the current system.
In one system you roll a die and add your hit modifier to determine if you succeed. In the other you roll the die and subtract the target's AC from your THAC0 to determine if you succeed. They are both equally simple in practice. THAC0 just turns people off but it's not actually complicated.
Just because it's new doesn't mean it's good.
Old School forever!
Great job taking about the OSE style of play!
Three absolutely FANTASTIC OSE dungeons I've read in the past year:
Stygian Library- an endless dungeon in an extra planar library where players can go to search for knowledge. Absolutely brilliant.
Through Ultan's Door- Super solid dungeons. Factions, weird creatures, history, sewage, and dreaminess.
The Hall of the Blood King- A Castle full of vampires appears out of nowhere. The PCs are totally outclassed, but the is a lot of potential for cleverness and pitting power hungry vampires against each other.
Any of these will just make your brain explode with possibilities.
I'd also recommend watching Questing Beast's advice videos, there's a playlist on his channel, if you're interested in playing OSR. As a GM who went back to old school games I found he explained ideas about combat, XP, etc that really helped me get my head into the play style alongside the pdfs you suggested.
Barrowmaze, The Forbidden Caverns of Archaia, and Highfell are great OSR Mega Dungeons by Greg Gilespie. They use the Labyrinth Lord rules which are B/X clone like OSE.
Was actually thinking of dropping some of these into my campaign world and seeing how the players react if they come across them, without telling them that they're mega dungeons.
My favorite dungeon from AD&D is Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. It ties into the lore of Greyhawk and specifically Iggwilv (Tasha by another name). It is a dungeon that can be outsmarted as much as beaten, but still boasts a very impressive boss fight that feels earned.
A variety channel with great production values is such an awesome thing to have on TH-cam. I'm looking forward to that video about building better dungeons, and more stuff about Blades in the Dark too
It's great to see people in the 5e community taking the time to learn about the OSR and 1e and 2e AD&D. i'd highly recommend that you might want to look at the sheer quantity of material that 1e and 2e offer as well. I'd suggest hitting the Encyclopedia magica... a collection of tens of thousands of magical items (every magic item from all versions of od&D AD&D and all the dragon magazines, dungeon mags, and all the modules. It's a 5 volume massive collection. In addition you could talk about the massive number of spells (far far far more than in 5e) available in the multi volume complete wizards and complete clerics spell compendiums (if you need, please reach out to me and I'll get you some digital copies to review if you like) most 5e players assume that 5e is the most complete, most fully formed version of the game. This is not true. 1e and 2e together are 100% compatible and had the most active period of creative work of all of the versions. There are more spells, items, adventures, settings, etc etc etc created for 1e and 2e than any other version ever. In point of fact, every single setting except Strixhaven and Erberon were all originally 1e and 2e settings. Spell jammer 2e, greyhawk, forgotten realms, ravenloft, mystara, planescape, dark sun, maztica, and more and more and more in addition were all 1e and 2e. OSR has far more content than most 5e people could consume in their lifetime. If you unwind it, it's like this never ending ball of string, you could go down rabbit holes just reading the content for decades and decades. Ask me if you want someone to help guide you through it. I knew and worked with Gary Gygax himself and I'd be happy to help you out.
I love OSR content, just starting digging into Dungeon Crawl Classics myself!
Actually OSE Fantasy Genre ARE the actual BX rules word for word, just organized better. Only the Advanced Genre adds/changes materials to the game. Also, despite so many people's apparent math phobia, THACO really isn't all that much harder than using ascending AC.
With THACO, you simply subtract your modified roll from your THACO, giving you the AC you can hit. So if you are a first level fighter with a THACO of 19 and roll a modified 16, you can hit an AC of 3 (19-16) or above. Using ascending AC and rolling a modified 16, you can hit an AC of 16 or lower (=AC 3 or above). So ascending AC seems a little easier until you go up in levels. If you are a fourth level fighter, your THACO is now 17. So if you roll the modified 16, you can hit an AC of 1 (17-16) or above. With ascending AC you must remember to add in the additional +2 to your roll because of your level. So the same 16 roll now becomes 18 meaning that you can hit AC 18 or below (=AC 1 or above). So not really all that different, and certainly nothing to be afraid of. And it's a lot easier to use THACO than having to convert ACs when using older published modules.
I think that the truly confusing part about descending AC has more to do with the inconsistent way that modifiers are applied, rather than the actually attack math. Characters with high dexterity scores have lower (better) armor class. A character with chain mail (AC 5) and a 13 dexterity (-1 to AC) ends up with an AC 4 (5-1). However, if the armor is magical (+1) chain mail, the plus indicates the bonus to your armor class. But even though it is written as +1 rather than -1, you still SUBTRACT the magical bonus from your AC. So the same character with the 13 dexterity ends up with AC 3 (5 -1 for high dex -1 for magic). Its unfortunate that they chose to go with "+" for items that actually reduce AC, though I think it was to remain consistent with magic weapons who gain pluses to hit. So while they are not the same mechanics-wise, they are consistent in that magical pluses are improvements and magical negatives are impediments.
OSE is so much fun! I'm so glad to see more 5e people try it! WAY easier to get into
I'd heavily recommend Shadowdark for a more modern game, Knave for a class-less ruleset, and The Electrum Archive for a weird science fantasy game like nothing else!
"Live. Laugh. Loot." Can I borrow that? 🤣😂🤣
I have heard of it.I need to take a closer one .It is intriguing
Awesome vid! Love the diversity of this channel, and how much y'all are working to encourage folks to enjoy more games! Kind of like the SU&SD of TTRPGs. =)
The core elements of what this game are recreating is what was the popular incarnation of Dungeons & Dragons I learn to play back in grade school. There is an inherent joy in the open-ended Covenant of the table that says rulings overrules as in... Don't slow the table down with a bunch of rules lawyer Shenanigans if a ruling from the DM can accomplish what needs to happen at the moment. You can always go back and finalize the actual rule set for the future reference but in the moment play play play play. Secondly, there was an emergency and a Vitality that existed in the older forms of play when you don't have access to Long rest, or coming out of the gate with plus sixes in your stat bonuses, you simply had to play by your wits and you found that being an effective dungeon adventuring group was really reliant on quick thinking, and the tactics of trusting each other to work together for a common goal. People assume that somehow this was less roleplay intensive back in the day, and it was all about combat but that could not be further from the truth. Did that just because we had less character classes to pull from did not in any way shape or form mean that you weren't utilizing personality elements within those parameters to accomplish the goals and achieve Quest fulfillment. What you did not have was the safety blanket of infinite resurrections, there were no death saves, if you screwed up... You were super invested in the fact that this character was going to die. Without the threat of challenges like that it is as if the player characters didn't actually live. What would be the point? I know this comes as a slap in the face reality wise to people who came into the game v-fib but 5e encompasses a great deal of elements to accommodate people who came in to awareness of fantasy through video games. And the tropes of video games that the Superhero level stat blocks, internet restarts or resurrections is a case maybe, at that if you obey the silliness of challenge ratings that your characters are going to survive... combine that with things that take away roleplay elements such as passive perception checks and things like that where you don't actually have to State what it is you're doing you're just making a Arcana roll Etc blah blah blah tend to deprive you of the more personal roleplay elements. I played 5e when it was being developed as DND Next... and the system's fine, I think the culture that has developed around 7stw elements of it are pretty lame but that's just the times we live in. However let me say that if you want to really feel an adventure at your gut level... You really want to move it at a pace that ensures it is Cinematic and exciting, you really want to be part of a living world that isn't Bound by a bunch of mathematical contrivance has that really only serve to limit what your character could do ultimately as opposed to the old-school Covenant of the table which is if you can explain it to the DM and the dicer with you you can do it you don't need a power, you don't need a specific skill, or combination of variant permissions to do anything. You dream it, you roll it, you can do it. That is infinite variety
I wanted to clear up a bit on inaccuracy early on in your video. No offense meant, the editions of D&D have a very strange and convoluted history.
0e is usually used to refer to 1974's "more first than first edition" Dungeons & Dragons....D&D has had a very strange edition history, with a two-pronged approach that began relatively early on. There were both "Basic" and "Advanced" D&D games being published simultanously - both evolved from this 0e original D&D....Basic had 3 editions (and a revision of the third edition) on it's own; while Advanced had the two editions that modern D&D takes it's edition numbering from.
OSE is basically a perfect clone (minus flavor text and WotC intellectual property) of the 2nd edition of "Basic" D&D - Basic/Expert D&D, also generally refered to as B/X D&D. This came out in 1981. Depsite coming this early in D&D's history, these two books actually were very well organized and laid out. They also included a lot that's actually lacking in OSE - much MUCH more extensive examples, advice, etc. That said, for the system itself, OSE replicates B/X D&D exactly...it's not really "inspired by", it's a complete mirror.
I'd also like to suggest you taking a look at another "retro D&D" game - Swords & Wizardry. This game actually is based on the original 1974 D&D, albeit with some tweaking here and there...and vastly better layout and organization. Unlike OSE, it does provide a lot more substantial examples, advice, etc...I personally think it's a much better introduction to old-school gaming. You can also download a PDF of the full rulebook for free. (www.froggodgames.com/product/swords-wizardry-complete-rulebook/) It also has a TON of support from the publisher, Frog God Games...who also produce a lot of 5E stuff as well.
One nice thing about OSE is that you can plug in some of the rules to 5e and still get more of an OSE experience with those rules, especially the structured exploration rules, and ability to verbally declare actions and improvise the results, rather than robotically rolling skill checks constantly.
My players really enjoyed Hideous Daylight for OSE. Really awesome adventure.
One of the things i loved about the attack matrix which was Pre- Thaco is it largely kept players from doing math in their head and calculating the enemy AC. It is still a more immersive system. Thaco made it simpler to understand by removing the matrix and making it a matmatical system based on AC=0, and the newer ascending AC once again made the process simpler and completely removed the shield hiding the monster AC, once you hit it you know its AC after all. However with a Matrix, and even Thaco and the descending AC it takes quite a bit more thought to discover the monsters AC quickly, and going ohh i can hit it 65% of the time CHARGE!
My favorite two OSR games are Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool Edition and Star Adventurer.
Dungeons and Delvers Dice Pool is different as it mainly uses the dice chain system for skills and ability/attributes. Everything starts as a D4, and upgrades to D6, D8, D10, and eventually to a D12. Roll your ability/attribute and your skill dice. However, every character class has something like 20 special abilities you can pick from to customize your PC at creation and leveling up (many abilities have 3 tiers). Those usually add more dice to the mix. Roll them all, pick the best 2 results.
2nd game is Star Adventurer. It is OSR Star Wars. It is more traditional D&D style rules using a D20 and ascending armor class, but leveling up has you use a random table for your class, and powers are not treated as Vancian spells, but are more like skills as well. Skills that go on a cool down if you fail a roll. However, it is not a long book, only 35 pages, so it is quite simple to play.
OSE isn’t 0e. You need Swords & Wizardry for that. OSE is B/X which was 1981 and very different from 0e.
For an adventure I'd highly recommend B10: Night's Dark Terror. It was designed to take players of Basic D&D (levels 1-3) into Expert D&D (levels 3-14) play, going from exploring dungeons to the wilderness. Tons of fantastic content in 64 pages. I recently ran it with OSE for 2 groups alternating fortnightly over 2 years and it was an amazing experience.
Simple THAC0: Your armour class is your opponents to hit bonus against you. AC 10? You opponents have a +10 to hit you, AC 0? Opponents have no bonus, AC -3, opponents attack at -3. That's it.
"Huge flexibility of 5e." That made me laugh.
Huge fan of OSE and other OSR games. Happy to see the coverage here.
This sounds like it captures all the stuff that I loved about running a looser house rules game in high school. Once my party fashioned a wolf guillotine out of a door taken from its hinges.
OSE is just a re-presentation of B/X D&D. It is essentially the same. (pun intended). It is popular because the presentation is well done - generally liked better than similar predecessors like Labyrinth Lord, but not really any different than Basic D&D (or Labyrinth Lord). Old school games preserve the sense of cinematic wonder that rules heavy games like 5e compromise. One important difference is the lack of 5e's "action economy" which overcomplicates a turn and interferes with player immersion.
I really loved the way you share your discovery with us, seems like a friend telling another friend about this great game you just played!
Index Card RPG is another brilliant system. Not based on D&D, but very D&D friendly, with rules lighter than even OSR retro-clones like Basic Fantasy.
I mean it kinda is based off d&d, uses all the same stats, d20 + modifiers for everything etc, runehammer may not call it OSR but its very similar
If there's one thing I'd like to tell 5e players, know this:
Less rules means more freedom, not less. You don't need a subclass to tell you what specific kind of Fighter you are, you can come up with anything and it will work just as well. You can try anything because you'll never hear "You need a feat for that"
The rules give you just what you need and nothing more. If you want more support, the Advanced Fantasy and Carcass Crawler Zines will help you out, and the decades long passionate community will have an answer. This is the DnD that you heard tales of, the wild, fantastic, unpredictable game full of danger of suprises!
Thank You Maddie! Hope it’s going to inspire other 5E influencers to do the same. Your video is complete and accurate. Well done !
downloaded the basics right away!
Great video, I recommend an additional reading for OSR; Philotomy's Musing.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is another fantastic rules set for old school style.
I LOVE seeing other people who started playing modern editions (such as myself who truly started with 3rd Edition) discover the older versions. The only thing that must be corrected here is that OSE isn't a "love letter" to D&D. It is a painstakingly reorganized and clarified copy of Tom Moldvay's Basic and Expert rules that were published in 1981 (Often called "B/X" for short). Many (but of course not all) followers of old-school D&D regard it as the single best version of D&D ever released. The only reason I want to clarify this is that anyone like me who is looking for an "authentic" experience should rest assured that OSE is most definitely authentic D&D, not a copycat with loads of alternate rules.
I hope that scores of modern D&D players get to see this video and realize that OSE and other old-school games are not merely archaic relics perpetuated by the nostalgia of stubborn elders. They are truly fertile playgrounds for those of us who want to maximize our creativity and imagination on both sides of the DM screen.
OSE is an insane work of genius, and the only one I think compares to it in the space and deserves the same praise, is Worlds Without Number.
THAC0 is not that complex...lol.. Don't understand why people get so confused with it. Its just subtraction vs. addition. Especially from a players perspective, mechanically they just roll a.dice and the DM says if they hit or not. Just to newer players low armour class good, seems counterintuative. Players THAC0 minus Targets AC equals target to hit. simples. :)
It’s been fascinating seeing the OSR style of play expand from simply feeling nostalgic to experimenting with the style of play and the vibes of that kind of exploration. Personally I’m hoping to see more coverage of Trophy Gold in places as that’s a quite narrative-first version of OSR style desperate delves into dungeons.