I personally LOVE race as class. It simplifies things a ton and makes sure, as you said, that humans are used. When race and class are split there's almost no mechanical reason to ever pick a human. You can say..."Humans have no level limits." Well that single advantage only takes place if your campaign goes into higher levels. I find most campaigns don't go high enough where that advantage ever matters. And the "class" of demi-humans is already factored in. An Elf is a Fighter/Magic-User. A Dwarf is a Fighter and a halfling is a Fighter/Thief of sorts. The only system, based on BX, that I think handles split race & class well is Basic Fantasy. In that system only humans get an XP bonus which is +10%. And the author has even stated that it should probably be +20%. So humans will level up extremely fast no matter what the class. Otherwise when race and class is split humans will really only get chosen for roleplaying reasons which is okay to. Just my 2 cents of course. :)
@@DMTalesTTRPG I'm with you. It's a fantastic system. I think of it as a marriage of BX and 1e. That being said I'm also a huge OSE fan and tend to prefer descending AC better if you can believe it. But as much as I dig advanced OSE, I still prefer the core 7 classes. But I would say OSE, BFRPG, and S&W are my favs.
Yah, I tend to like some more nuance in the classes, and you can do that with the supplements in BFRPG so it’s there for people who want it (which I really appreciate about that system). I describe BFRPG as “OD&D, B/X, and AD&D got put into a blender and turned into a smoothie.” And I have to say I REALLY appreciate how OSE has woven their own additions into B/X without breaking the system even a little bit. It’s pretty remarkable.
@@DMTalesTTRPG Great description. I just sometimes find the 'advanced' classes to be too niche in some cases. The Assassin is a great example of this. Unless you're playing an urban type campaign the class is lacking in my view compared to the Thief. The same goes for the Ranger or Druid which a lot of their abilities require being outdoors in forest areas. So due to the simplicity of the BX chassis I find its often easier to simply roleplay these type of things out with the core classes. Maybe have the Thief roleplay more like an Assassin and use poison. Maybe the Fighter grew up in a forest type environment so feels at home out in the wild etc...But I realize that many players enjoy niche classes.
I’m starting to warm up to this, especially since the kids in my group want more race/class variety. My hard copies will arrive soon as there was another print run recently.
I've been running OSE for almost a year on Roll20. I started with the Classic Fantasy PDF and switched to the Advanced Fantasy rules about 6 months ago. Players were running multiple characters over different games and some had Race as Class characters. I kept the Race as Class rule when switching to Advanced just to maintain continuity. Recently I've started using the separate race rules. I've even allowed a character to progress as dual-classed from AD&D (human who switches to a new class: in this case, Barbarian turned Thief).
I hope i'm not intruding here. I bought the classic fantasy books and have been wanting to play more of it for a while. But then i see the advanced fantasy line and got to thinking what the differences between the classic and advanced rules are. I was wondering if you could explain some of that, wether it's just class as race changes or are there any other rules changes. Thx :)
Not an intrusion, SPOT ON. I looked at the TOC at DriveThruRPG and it looks like the key differences are the addition of some races (and race classes for a classic game), the split race class rules, and the optional rules for secondary skills and weapon proficiency. if you get the advanced supplement, and the illusionist spells supplement, you can run and advanced game by using your classic fantasy book as the door rules. Thanks for commenting!!
Advanced Fantasy tries to emulate AD&D. It introduces familiar concepts/rules like Secondary Skills, Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Specialization, new classes and more. Many OSE players have their background in the Moldvay/Cook material. I started playing when OD&D was shifting to AD&D. OSE Advanced Fantasy captures the excitement of the expansion of old D&D to the rules and resource packed game of AD&D.
OSE Advanced is great. I do like a more human-centric campaign, so one house rule that goes a long way to making Human PCs more attractive when using the race AND class rules is to give Human PCs a Save vs. Death Ray when they reach zero HP. But only Humans get this. With B/X's death at zero HP rule, Humans suddenly become a much more viable option when choosing a PC's race in this game.
I have the original OSE box set, and didn't think I'd be interested in the Advanced, until I watched this video. I had no idea it's a mix of basic and AD&D That is an amazing feat. I've got to get a set now. I wonder how long until they are available on the market? Great video.
Dear DM's Tales, I'm looking to dump modern D and D and go back to my roots playing A D and D. A couple of questions for you; is the Advanced OSE a 'cherry picked' rules version of A D and D or a port of those rulebooks to OSE? Do I need a copy of OSE or is this Advanced version a self contained game like A d and d was? Cheers Gamma world - Pure Strain all the way.
It is not a cherry picked rules of AD&D. It’s B/X with optional rules for Advanced flavor, but it’s still B/X. If you get the two books I review you will have everything you need to play either the “Classic” or the “Advanced” flavors of OSE, or both at the same time.
Heh, race as class was always the ONE thing that irked me about B/X, but I have warmed to it. The books are just stunning, though, so I can’t knock the expense.
When I was first introduced to the idea, I was not a fan of "race as class". It just didn't make sense that non-human player-character clerics or magic-users, etc. weren't allowed in a world. As I've gotten older, I came to understand the "why", but there are so many other rulesets that bypass this limitation.
Yah, it’s the one thing I don’t like about B/X, even though I do get the point behind it. And, really, an Elf is a Fighter/Magic User. But the way OSE manages to add in that AD&D split between race and class while holding on to B/X mechanics AND freeing people to play race-classes at the same table is pretty remarkable.
Moldvay Basic was even simplified more from the Holmes Basic rules, which WAS set up to "graduate" people to AD&D (and, like OD&D, had race and class split), it's even mentioned in the text of the Holmes rules. But by the time Moldvay and Cook came around the two games had split (royalty issues to Dave Arneson were part of the issue). And so B/X, and then BECMI, never really intended to shuttle folks to AD&D.
Their presentation is so great that I just had to convert 5e to this style of presentation. Asked Necrotic Gnome for the fonts, fired up a pdf editor and started converting 5e to this style of presentation just for personal use alone.
Interesting. And they didn’t mind giving up the fonts? I know that if they aren’t in house custom people could figure it out, but that’s pretty cool of them. If I may ask, what do they use?
@@jan0195 I actually can't really get into old school play but their presentation alone sold me the product. I now have a 500+ page tome with all my Homebrewed rules, 800 creatures, magic spells and items in that style.
It's an appealing presentation but all the OSE books have been vaporware since they came out. The fact that there's no prospect of getting the books and the steep price will likely lead to me to stick the real old school 1e & 2e or Basic Fantasy RPG. Good review though!
Thanks for the compliment on the review, but “Vaporware” is an excessive statement. The current print run ran out as they fulfilled the Advanced Kickstarter, the Classic rules tome was back in stock the last time I checked, and Sept 1 has been set for release of the print books. Not a mass press run? Sure. But vaporware is a statement that they had not intention of fulfilling the print, or no way to do so. OSE fits neither of these descriptions. I would say they probably iterated too fast, and it made it difficult to buy in. Advanced seems to have cracked the code in some ways.
@@DMTalesTTRPG I have to eat my words! 👻😉 My FLGS has them in stock! So I bought both of the big books a couple days ago. Very nice! I'm not sure if I'll ever use them for gaming (depends on if I can find anyone interested in a group) but as a collectible they hit it out of the park.🙏
@@DMTalesTTRPG Well, I actually found a local group that wanted to play OSE! Our campaign only lasted a short time, two months or so, before it was discontinued in favor of an AD&D 1e game. But everyone had a lot of fun. The physical books are indeed beautiful and well laid out. I will likely keep them in my collection.
@@robbabcock_ cool. I kinda like the mechanical simplicity of B/X over AD&D, but dislike being forced to use race as class, so OSE Advanced kinda hits a sweet spot for me.
This whole thing abot "races being ckasses" in the classic D&D always sounds out of tousch to me. The first thing in the red box, in the "how to use this book" its the pirate rule that say they are more guidelines to create anything you want and not be restricted to the book, You can say that dont have imagination to create anything outside of the book, But say that races are classes like you cannot change goes against the first rule of old D&D.
![เปิดบ้าน โคตรสวย ป๋องกพล รู้จักตั้งนาน เพิ่งรู้ว่ารวย!!! l [Nickynachat]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tmgCF_2HfYI/mqdefault.jpg)
This is such a thorough and well articulated review of the awesomeness that is Old-School Essentials. Thank You!
Thank you!
I personally LOVE race as class. It simplifies things a ton and makes sure, as you said, that humans are used. When race and class are split there's almost no mechanical reason to ever pick a human. You can say..."Humans have no level limits." Well that single advantage only takes place if your campaign goes into higher levels. I find most campaigns don't go high enough where that advantage ever matters. And the "class" of demi-humans is already factored in. An Elf is a Fighter/Magic-User. A Dwarf is a Fighter and a halfling is a Fighter/Thief of sorts. The only system, based on BX, that I think handles split race & class well is Basic Fantasy. In that system only humans get an XP bonus which is +10%. And the author has even stated that it should probably be +20%. So humans will level up extremely fast no matter what the class. Otherwise when race and class is split humans will really only get chosen for roleplaying reasons which is okay to. Just my 2 cents of course. :)
That’s awesome, and I’m glad you find it a great way to play!
Ah, I missed your props on Basic Fantasy. That’s actually my favorite OSR system!
@@DMTalesTTRPG I'm with you. It's a fantastic system. I think of it as a marriage of BX and 1e. That being said I'm also a huge OSE fan and tend to prefer descending AC better if you can believe it. But as much as I dig advanced OSE, I still prefer the core 7 classes. But I would say OSE, BFRPG, and S&W are my favs.
Yah, I tend to like some more nuance in the classes, and you can do that with the supplements in BFRPG so it’s there for people who want it (which I really appreciate about that system). I describe BFRPG as “OD&D, B/X, and AD&D got put into a blender and turned into a smoothie.”
And I have to say I REALLY appreciate how OSE has woven their own additions into B/X without breaking the system even a little bit. It’s pretty remarkable.
@@DMTalesTTRPG Great description. I just sometimes find the 'advanced' classes to be too niche in some cases. The Assassin is a great example of this. Unless you're playing an urban type campaign the class is lacking in my view compared to the Thief. The same goes for the Ranger or Druid which a lot of their abilities require being outdoors in forest areas. So due to the simplicity of the BX chassis I find its often easier to simply roleplay these type of things out with the core classes. Maybe have the Thief roleplay more like an Assassin and use poison. Maybe the Fighter grew up in a forest type environment so feels at home out in the wild etc...But I realize that many players enjoy niche classes.
I’m starting to warm up to this, especially since the kids in my group want more race/class variety. My hard copies will arrive soon as there was another print run recently.
Cool!
I've been running OSE for almost a year on Roll20. I started with the Classic Fantasy PDF and switched to the Advanced Fantasy rules about 6 months ago. Players were running multiple characters over different games and some had Race as Class characters. I kept the Race as Class rule when switching to Advanced just to maintain continuity. Recently I've started using the separate race rules. I've even allowed a character to progress as dual-classed from AD&D (human who switches to a new class: in this case, Barbarian turned Thief).
Conan... :)
Sweet. I like how you can use the advanced rules and still have race-classes in the game. OSE has done a really good job.
I hope i'm not intruding here. I bought the classic fantasy books and have been wanting to play more of it for a while. But then i see the advanced fantasy line and got to thinking what the differences between the classic and advanced rules are. I was wondering if you could explain some of that, wether it's just class as race changes or are there any other rules changes. Thx :)
Not an intrusion, SPOT ON.
I looked at the TOC at DriveThruRPG and it looks like the key differences are the addition of some races (and race classes for a classic game), the split race class rules, and the optional rules for secondary skills and weapon proficiency.
if you get the advanced supplement, and the illusionist spells supplement, you can run and advanced game by using your classic fantasy book as the door rules.
Thanks for commenting!!
Advanced Fantasy tries to emulate AD&D. It introduces familiar concepts/rules like Secondary Skills, Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Specialization, new classes and more. Many OSE players have their background in the Moldvay/Cook material. I started playing when OD&D was shifting to AD&D. OSE Advanced Fantasy captures the excitement of the expansion of old D&D to the rules and resource packed game of AD&D.
OSE Advanced is great. I do like a more human-centric campaign, so one house rule that goes a long way to making Human PCs more attractive when using the race AND class rules is to give Human PCs a Save vs. Death Ray when they reach zero HP. But only Humans get this. With B/X's death at zero HP rule, Humans suddenly become a much more viable option when choosing a PC's race in this game.
Huh, fascinating.
I have the original OSE box set, and didn't think I'd be interested in the Advanced, until I watched this video. I had no idea it's a mix of basic and AD&D That is an amazing feat. I've got to get a set now. I wonder how long until they are available on the market? Great video.
Thanks! The website just went up with September 1 as a release date, so hopefully then!
Dear DM's Tales, I'm looking to dump modern D and D and go back to my roots playing A D and D. A couple of questions for you; is the Advanced OSE a 'cherry picked' rules version of A D and D or a port of those rulebooks to OSE? Do I need a copy of OSE or is this Advanced version a self contained game like A d and d was?
Cheers
Gamma world - Pure Strain all the way.
It is not a cherry picked rules of AD&D. It’s B/X with optional rules for Advanced flavor, but it’s still B/X. If you get the two books I review you will have everything you need to play either the “Classic” or the “Advanced” flavors of OSE, or both at the same time.
My favorite game, just very expensive books😂 But now I got them all! Race as class rules!
Heh, race as class was always the ONE thing that irked me about B/X, but I have warmed to it. The books are just stunning, though, so I can’t knock the expense.
thanks a lot for the information
Glad you enjoyed it!
When I was first introduced to the idea, I was not a fan of "race as class". It just didn't make sense that non-human player-character clerics or magic-users, etc. weren't allowed in a world. As I've gotten older, I came to understand the "why", but there are so many other rulesets that bypass this limitation.
Yah, it’s the one thing I don’t like about B/X, even though I do get the point behind it. And, really, an Elf is a Fighter/Magic User.
But the way OSE manages to add in that AD&D split between race and class while holding on to B/X mechanics AND freeing people to play race-classes at the same table is pretty remarkable.
Thats why it was called " Basic". Rpgs were pretty new, so it was kept simple.
There was then Advanced.
Moldvay Basic was even simplified more from the Holmes Basic rules, which WAS set up to "graduate" people to AD&D (and, like OD&D, had race and class split), it's even mentioned in the text of the Holmes rules.
But by the time Moldvay and Cook came around the two games had split (royalty issues to Dave Arneson were part of the issue). And so B/X, and then BECMI, never really intended to shuttle folks to AD&D.
Their presentation is so great that I just had to convert 5e to this style of presentation. Asked Necrotic Gnome for the fonts, fired up a pdf editor and started converting 5e to this style of presentation just for personal use alone.
Interesting. And they didn’t mind giving up the fonts? I know that if they aren’t in house custom people could figure it out, but that’s pretty cool of them. If I may ask, what do they use?
@@DMTalesTTRPG minion pro 10, council 34/60 and futura condensed 12/14. No they did not mind at all.
@@pedrobernardo5887 I too love their presentation! I just can't have enough. Also, how cool of them to tell you the fonts they used.
@@jan0195 I actually can't really get into old school play but their presentation alone sold me the product. I now have a 500+ page tome with all my Homebrewed rules, 800 creatures, magic spells and items in that style.
@@pedrobernardo5887
That is an awesome project. Do you show yer stuff off anywhere?
It's an appealing presentation but all the OSE books have been vaporware since they came out. The fact that there's no prospect of getting the books and the steep price will likely lead to me to stick the real old school 1e & 2e or Basic Fantasy RPG. Good review though!
Thanks for the compliment on the review, but “Vaporware” is an excessive statement. The current print run ran out as they fulfilled the Advanced Kickstarter, the Classic rules tome was back in stock the last time I checked, and Sept 1 has been set for release of the print books.
Not a mass press run? Sure. But vaporware is a statement that they had not intention of fulfilling the print, or no way to do so. OSE fits neither of these descriptions.
I would say they probably iterated too fast, and it made it difficult to buy in. Advanced seems to have cracked the code in some ways.
@@DMTalesTTRPG I have to eat my words! 👻😉 My FLGS has them in stock! So I bought both of the big books a couple days ago. Very nice! I'm not sure if I'll ever use them for gaming (depends on if I can find anyone interested in a group) but as a collectible they hit it out of the park.🙏
@@robbabcock_ I ordered mine, too! And you have my respect for coming back and saying this.
@@DMTalesTTRPG Well, I actually found a local group that wanted to play OSE! Our campaign only lasted a short time, two months or so, before it was discontinued in favor of an AD&D 1e game. But everyone had a lot of fun. The physical books are indeed beautiful and well laid out. I will likely keep them in my collection.
@@robbabcock_ cool. I kinda like the mechanical simplicity of B/X over AD&D, but dislike being forced to use race as class, so OSE Advanced kinda hits a sweet spot for me.
This whole thing abot "races being ckasses" in the classic D&D always sounds out of tousch to me.
The first thing in the red box, in the "how to use this book" its the pirate rule that say they are more guidelines to create anything you want and not be restricted to the book,
You can say that dont have imagination to create anything outside of the book,
But say that races are classes like you cannot change goes against the first rule of old D&D.
Interesting take on that.