Old-School Essentials is the 18 Charisma 'face' the OSR desperately Needs
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ธ.ค. 2024
- This video is a 34 minute stream of conciousness, taken from a stream, where I rant a little bit and address why Gavin Norman is the best thing since sliced bread.
Lol this is the exact experience most people have getting into the OSR nowadays. Pretty accurate stuff.
Yeah this is pretty spot on. Thankfully things like Questing Beast, Frog God Games, OSE, etc etc are making it easier, and the information is starting to settle down to make it more easily decipherable, but good hell was it chaos a few years ago.
When it comes to versatility, OSE Advanced is king, yes, it is good looking. But the possibility to a) combine race/class and b) multiclass sets it apart from other BX and BECMI clones. It is well designed, feels good in the hand (the digest hardcover formfactor...) and has important tables in the front of each book. Very nice. As far as I am concerned, OSE and OSE AF are great... I still prefer the RC and Oe though. But it conquered the bronze medal from Iron Falcon, so it is now my favorite Retro Clone...
OSR rules you should look at? If you like it all in one simple book, get Basic Fantasy that is 100% all free (yes, 100%), or printed as super low cost if you want a paper book. If you want more details and more like the old rules, flaws included, get Old School Essentials.
Personally, I like Basic Fantasy. I don't like complexity, and BF is also totally free PDF digitally (not lying about that), and only cost the price of the paper to get a printed copy for just $5.
However, then I found an even MORE rules light game called Pocket Fantasy. The entire rules fit on 4 pages, player stats are just 2 numbers (hit points and fighting skill) and a list of gear. All Dice rolls are just a single D6. It is great.
The third edition of Whitehack was recently announced, and it will come out in PDF.
Hey, that's good to know! I'm glad to see accessibility win
OSE is cool, but B/X is weird for modern sensibilities (Thief Skills and those odd X-in-6 skills?). It needs some system mastery to "fully play it" and I've noticed many get stuck on playing it RAW.
Also, as far as what it is, I think separating it into the "System" and "Principles/Philosophy" helps. OSE and SWN is clearly the System. Games based off the Principles would be Into the Odd, Troika! etc.
Awesome video!
I do agree that pure B/X isn't to full modern tastes, but OSE presents it in a modern acceptable style. As I'm hoping to elaborate over the course of the coming year in this channel, once you cut through to what B/X is trying to do I think most of the system is more modern than people think.
Well, hack it: replace the BX thief skills with the _Specialist_ mechanics from "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" and _voilà._
I am a big fan of OSE and am ‘porting my D&D game over to it.
Barbarians of the Ruined Earth is a full game. I backed it on Kickstarter and got my books a while back. It's a pretty interesting game. Been running it with my group a bit. I also backed both of the OSE kickstarters. The first set is an excellent game. I'm now waiting for the second Kickstarter to fulfill. I'm expecting it to be just as awesome. Also waiting on the new Torchbearer Kickstarter to fulfill.
I hope you turn out to be right about this!
Haha i went through exactly this procedure, over a few weeks
I don't think we want unification. Look back at 5e and how everyone complains that that's all people ever play. Look at how small the other games are in comparison. Besides, we don't need unification. You choose a system with your group. It's not like online games, where more players means faster waiting times and more people to play against. With TTRPGs, you find a group and play a system that you've chosen.
I agree core system fragmentation is a good thing for people to find their perfect game with, this video is focusing on the experience of people knew to the OSR who are daunted by that fragmentation. It's why I call OSE the face in the title, not the entire party
Would Spelljammer work with these rules?
Yeah, anything for AD&D is going to work with these, especially if you get the advanced fantasy rules instead of the classic fantasy ones
there is a new zine out called Planer Compass which is OSE with a very much Spelljammer twist on it. I recommend you have a look at that.
A little secret is that most of these can be easily adapted to each other. That isn't new, in the 80s people would borrow material back and forth between D&D and AD&D -- and now you can use these clones with them too.
Lol just play BFRPG. :)
BFRPG can't be beaten on value for money to be fair. It's a great old school system really quite close in many respects to OSE. It's not aesthetically as pretty as OSE but apart from that it really is a nice OSR system.
Nothing wrong with BFRPG. But for me, I much prefer OSE. The best all-in starting book today is the Advanced Fantasy Players Tome.
@@iolair1973 Yeah, but OSE isn't the greatest game ever conceived by mortal man, gifted to us by the living legend that is Chris Gonnerman... (OSE is actually a pretty good starting point for OSR too.)
@@Aaron-mj9ieWeeeell... if you want the actual greatest TTRPG ever conceived, that would be Mythras. I will (figuratively) die on that hill. But it's not OSR.