They also don’t have many spells at low levels and can only prepare 1 at 1st level with no 0-level spells or Arcane Rays to back them up. They need 2500 for 2nd level, have the worst combat skills, and lowest HP. I think my favorite part of this design though is the XP track for Magic-Users (mages). For long-term play, that also helps balance level limits, as characters will roughly keep pace with each other. If you’re unfamiliar, you might wonder how things balance out between Classes when Elves can run around in plate armor casting spells – each Class has its own Experience track, so Elves need 4000 for 2nd level and Fighters only 2000. However high scores also gain you more experience, so you’re rewarded additionally for those rolls and it encourages you to place your higher rolls on your “prime requisite”, even if there’s only minor mechanical benefit. Since there are no skills, Ability Scores specify what situations they benefit, though they cover the same basic situations you might expect from 3.0-5th Ed. The traditional Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief (not Rogue) are all default Human (Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling make up the three demihuman classes.) HP and Saving Throws are dependent on Class, some Classes have a maximum level they can reach (14 is the general maximum, so Elf at 10 won’t be too far behind), and the nonhuman Classes have an Ability Score requirement – rewarding lucky rolls during character creation. They have Classes, Levels, Saving Throws, Hit Points and Armor Class – but races are classes unto themselves, so Elf is a Fighter-Mage type, able to use swords and spells skillfully, while decked out in armor. Compared to the last 20+ years of D&D-esque fantasy roleplaying it’s very stripped-down, although therein lies the draw.Ĭharacters have the 6 standard ability scores. It uses a lot of the same language, but there are no feats, no Advantage/Disadvantage, separate races and classes, proficiencies/skills, etc. If you started with D&D in any of the post-2nd Edition games, you’ll find some deceptive familiarity in these rules. Gamers returning to this style of play are reassured of the faithfulness of the rules to the original version and that they are very compatible with material from older editions of D&D, which is one of the draws for me, and I do like knowing that it’s relatively compatible with current OSR material, allowing me to pick and choose (and promote) what I want from that design ethos.
What I do like, however, is it clears the table and effectively creates a blank slate for new players to explore and make their own, much as many of us did when we first began – so there’s a deliberate design goal in play here that evokes the era in which the game first appeared. I think it’s a pretty good summary of what these games are like, though I may be in too deep to know how it would look to a complete newcomer. It does, however, define what the game is: a fantasy adventure game where “adventurers” explore wilderness and dungeons in search of wealth and wonder, all taking place in a world of the fantastic in the players’ imagination. If you’re just getting into roleplaying games, the book recommends watching live-play, or joining an established group as the text itself lacks the traditional example of play that is semi-ubiquitous. It’s a streamlined and rules-light version fantasy roleplaying game designed to facilitate a smooth play experience and promote a style of “rulings over rules,” as not every eventuality has had a mechanic assigned to it. OSE is a repackaging, with some cleanup, of the old B/X D&D rules. What I found in these pages was a clean, concise, and modern version of classic D&D, that gives plenty of options for play and actually avoids a number of problematic elements of earlier editions. It’s for a version I never played (having started with the BECMI Red Box), but the oft-touted advantage of some of these games is how compatible they are with other older D&D content.
With that in mind I looked around the OSR titles to see what appealed most, and Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials had received much praise. However, my old AD&D 2E books are long-lost and while my 1E books are great to have on the shelf, they’ve got a bunch of outdated stuff I wouldn’t feel wildly comfortable with these days.
So I succumbed to the urge to look deeper and pick up a few. I remember the ads and being intrigued, but either cost or over-investment in other games held me back. Browsing around DriveThruRPG I looked at, and read the histories of, scores of old D&D products that I missed out on the first time around. Recently I got hit with a real bout of nostalgia.