In my experience, I finally "got" the Old School D&D playstyle when I read the Basic D&D (Moldvay, 1981) rules. The thing that made everything clear to me was the explicit procedures of play: this part of the game is about dungeons, nothing more (out of the box); this is how you handle exploration, turn by turn; this how you handle encounters, from the distance to the reaction of monsters; etc. In that regard, if you're a newcomer to OSR and want an explicit "how to play, minute-by-minute", Old School Essentials might be your flavor of choice.
Some other great options if anyone is looking for some are Low Fantasy Gaming which is very similar to 5e but with a old school twist, Dungeon Crawl Classics very zany but alot of random fun, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess a dark twisted take on B/X.
I agree! Nice list, but missing some of the best games in the OSR. In addition to LFG, DCC and LotFP I would include Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea for its AD&D and swords & sorcery feel.
Also worth mentioning: OSRIC (literally the first retro-clone published under the OGL), a 1E AD&D clone; Labyrinth Lord; Lamentations of the Flame Princess; and my own Adventures Dark and Deep, a 1E clone with all the extra stuff Gygax was intending to include before he left TSR.
Ah, too bad, I was looking for this vid a few months ago. Now I'm playing a homebrew Lamentations of the Flame Princess setting with strong Veins of the Earth influences. Good seeing this now though, time to pick up some more rule books to shred and mix into my Papier-mâché system.
Great list and video! I would also recommend "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea", an old-school retro-clone with a distinct Swords and Sorcery / weird fiction setting and tone (along the lines of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft).
Castles and Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics. For your first group of selections, and DCC for the last. Also, per a comment below, C&C and nothing to do with 3rd edition. It's purely 1e with ascending armour class, a unified attribute check system and a lot of 2e options.
Ditto on DCC and LotFP both are fantastic. I want to toss Harkerin Ferinale’s ( Runehammer) ICRPG into the mix, it’s not OSR but it is rules light, super fast, easy to learn and has some very neat and interesting concepts that speak to folks who like the OSR
I agree completely that ICRPG belongs in the conversation. I expect that most folks watching this channel will at least have heard about it, but if not it’s definitely worth a look.
@Andrew McGuire for sure. Hate it when people use acronyms instead of saying what they mean. I wouldn't have known what LotFP was if you hadn't said, so thanks for that.
Thanks Ben, I've been watching a lot of your videos lately as my passion for 5e has just decreased more and more. I picked up electric bastionland in print and checked out the OSE SRD and feel like i've drank from the golden cup of what RPGs can be compared to what I've experienced thus far in 4th and 5th editions of D&D. The closest I think I've come to playing an OSR type game, which I loved at the time was the early playtest for 5e, which felt very different to the product we ended up with. You've turned me into a full on supporter of the OSR and the great people out there making content for us all to enjoy.
Your observation of early 5E is exactly how I felt about it. I remember getting the starter box for 5E for 20.00 at Target when it first came out and I was blown away by its simplicity. I honestly thought it was the best system ever produced. My kids were little so I didn't have time to play back then. 6 years later I tried to play 5E after that many years of bloat and was horrified by what I saw. 3 hr combats, pages and pages of feats and rules for different speed actions. Look what they did to my boy...
I think what creates a lot of confusion is the naming. There's Basic D&D, B/X, Holmes, Moldvay, OD&D, etc etc, but each of those is really just one person's take on how they like to play the brown books.
@@Aaron-mj9ie And each retroclone has its own idiosyncratic interpretations of the old rules, or sets of house rules the author codified into the main text. The only way for a prospective player to know what those variations are - and whether they like them - is to read through the whole book. With as many OSR books out there, "ain't nobody got time for that".
The Holmes book was developed at the same time the first red box was being developed. All of the stuff starting with Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer are literally the same edition. Mentzer broke the single book into a player and DM book. Expert was never done that way, but you need it to continue to the Companion set and onward. It is one system and edition that evolved over time as things were added. Then the Cyclopedia came out which is just a compilation of all the box sets except they dropped the Immortals. The actual name is Dungeons & Dragons. That's it. No advanced or edition numbers. If you liked something you put it in. If not, you didn't use it. If you have the Moldvay basic book you can literally jump to the Cyclopedia. Although you miss a bit of the other stuff from the box sets. The Cyclopedia was not meant as a beginners book. It was a compilation for the DM's. It's only one edition that evolved. Appears to be a tough concept for others.
I disagree completely. The Brown Books (white box set as we called them, ymmv), were an incomplete ruleset that you really needed the Chainmail combat rules to play correctly. Basic, Expert, and Advanced all had similar pedigrees and were based on the foudnation that the white box set created, but they all had some differences, mainly in character races, level limits, and classes. Expert allowed for some in depth outdoor adventuring, but it was rather limited as well. The "basic" sets were good to get you started and familiar with the concepts and basic rules, but the Advanced set was really where it all came together and took off. Then 2ed came out and streamlined most fo the stuff from original AD&D.
@@fightingfortruth9806 plus the Basic books, regardless of edition, simple werent brown books. The brown books werent exactly books either. They were more like brown pamphlets.
A few honorable mentions: Dungeon Crawl Classics is great Gonzo fantasy but don't be intimidated by the book size. Spell system is fun and the game itself is very Van Art. Castles & Crusades is very much like an interesting take on 3rd ed D&D with a ton of 1e seasoning. Lastly, Mork Borg is very light, very fun, and very artistic punk. Another game to not be intimidated by.
I was going to ask why I never seem to C&C mentioned in these reviews (Ben's or others). Not OSR 'enough'? I'm just getting into it (have only played one session) but I like the feel so far. Doubt I'll stick with it but I backed the latest KS so I guess I'm committed for a while.
@@dirigoallagash3464 I think it might be the age of the game as it's arguably the first OSR game. It could be the loose build similar to 3rd edition. Personally I love C&C as a take on AD&D 3rd edition.
@@dirigoallagash3464 To some folks, OSR implies the original D&D rules, pre-“Advanced.” So a lot of the focus is on stuff up to the Rules Cyclopedia, but not the stuff after that. C&C is made to play similar to AD&D 1e, so some groups don’t count it in the OSR category.
A cool book and a super cool game, but a lot more complex than many of the games here. That said, maybe that suits well for someone coming from 5e or Pathfinder very well, if they're experienced with rpgs beforehand.
I think another thing to mention is one of the best rulesets is available for print on demand. Rules Cyclopedia is still a fantastic book to this day in my opinion.
Really surprised you didn't mention LotFP, given it's one of the most popular OSR rulesets and also the publisher behind many award-winning OSR adventures. (And is remarkably newby friendly given an art-free PDF of the rules is available as free download, and without the art the rules are actually perfectly SFW and fairly player-friendly, despite the reputation for provocative, grotesque and ultra-dangerous adventures.)
I think it's reputation sort of works against it. Even if the art free version, it's still pretty "grimdark" in tone. I mean, cloudkill is literally described as being a miasma straight from hell. Of course, you could completely ignore the flavor text, but if you're new to OSR... And more importantly if your players are, have not idea what they are in for, and they read the book, they might get the wrong impression of what OSR is.
How do you know it's one of the most popular ones? I've been searching online which OSR are the most popular ones but can't find a conclusion, real data
My favourite OSR system is Castles and Crusades, which is just basically A D&D rewritten for D20 and skills replaced with attribute checks. It's very fast and simple and is also very easy to convert adventures written for classic D&D.Also, The Troll Lords have made the last printing of the system available as a free pdf download from their website. Worth checking out.
Right on!! C&C! 2004 folks - OSR started 20 years ago!! C&C was the first OSR-like game (although some will argue OSRIC 2006 was first if you go by the stricter retro clone definition of OSR). I think it's just that this post is a year old -- it's the 7th printing of C&C that is available for free as a PDF on their web site (with what I call the Umberhulk cover), they have since done an 8th printing (the AD&D homage cover). So it's the 7th print that is free. Check it out! C&C is an incredible system (a simple definition is D&D 3E mechanics without skills and feats).
Hey, thanks for the kind words! I have to suggest though that you may have oversold the compatibility of Basic Fantasy RPG with modern games; the mechanics are hardly "unified," and the only nod to modern-style games is ascending AC. But I'll admit that descending AC is the main thing people complain about when I run my other game, Iron Falcon, so I suppose it's still a big deal.
Whitehack is my favorite and thanks to this channel I discovered it years ago. I love this one along with Five Torches Deep, Maze Rats, and Index Card RPG.
i love how slim the rules are for knave and into the odd. it really helps my games stay focused on what the players are doing rather than looking up endless stats and edge cases. i am really keen to try out the magic systems in white hack, maze rats, and beyond the wall though!
Adventurer Conqueror King System is my favorite OSR game. It's old D&D but notably adds a realistic economic system, has fleshed out rules for mass battles and forming and running your own domains, and has an entire supplement for populating hexes with all kinds of lairs. This Lairs & Encounters book even has a prepared lair for every kind of creature listed in the game and also has rules for taking on monstrous henchmen and capturing, taming, and training all manner of beast. It also breaks down the old spells mathematically and so has a consistent system for creating your own spells. It does the same for player classes.
This felt bizarrely refreshing. Had the privilege of interviewing Sandy Petersen from Petersen Games a while back... Very interesting delving into the history of Chaosium and old school RPGs... 👍
Great video as always, but I feel you should really have covered Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Dungeon Crawl Classics. These games have more support and larger fan base than some of the other games you talked about.
Lamentations is a hard newbie recommendation. Many find the art off-putting, the adventures (Fuck For Satan!) and other supporting materials are full of gore, sex and sleaze, and some the authors involved in the scene are toxic AF. I don’t think there’s actually enough unique rules content to make the recommendation. What’s in there: essentially just a skill system, a tweak to make fighters “better”, no class equipment restrictions and no spell levels. The summoning spell itself takes up multiple pages, so there’s that. In exchange you get a slimy vagina creature giving birth to monsters and people melting in graphic detail right in the middle of the book. I also don’t remember the book being very good at conveying the style of play intended by the OSR. Having run some open tables at game stores and for dozens of different gaming groups, the inclusion of sex (beyond the fade-to-black player-driven barmaid seduction) and body horror is a non-starter. It’s a solid game with solid support, but a bad OSR introduction.
@@aaronhamric7679 I agree that LotFP can be really confusing if you're not familiar with other retroclones but that criticism applies to most OSR rulesets. One of the many merits of OSE is that it did a really good job at codifying the actual gameplay. LotFP is still an excellent B/X ruleset with modern tweaks and just enough "crunch" so that it's easily up there with S&W, BFRPG, LL and OSE. Art and the tone are a matter of preference, and at least for me they were the things that drew me into the game, but they can be easily ignored if that's not your thing. And the last thing you should bring up to a new player is some toxic creator or drama involved in this scene.
@@Fhuul I love LotFP for the presentation, too. I also don’t bring up the sleazy weirdos associated with the game when introducing it to someone. With only a few exceptions, people have been instantly put off by the gory grindcore art. If I run Lamentations these days, I just keep the book to myself and point people to the artless free pdf if they want a reference to use. Almost exclusively, I run 5e these days because it’s what the youths crave.I tried explaining race as class, picking classes based on what stats you roll, and stuff like random traits or backgrounds to one group and they were in disbelief that someone would play a character that they hadn’t lovingly hand-crafted from concept to completion. Buncha young punks.
Haha, I forgot that Lamentations does have spell levels. It’s just the 9 page long summoning spell that can potentially end the world that you can cast at 1st level
White Hack Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game is also a very entry friendly OSR system. Falls somewhere between the 1st and 2nd category. Full of old school flavor and art, also worth taking a look into. Selling points is that it is very faithful to OSR spirit, keeping the rules overhead at a bare minimum while also being as close to retroclone as i can
I love Maze Rats. I picked it up a couple of years ago when I was getting back into the hobby after a nearly 25 year hiatus. Currently, I’m using it for my solo Ironsworn campaign. It’s a great resource. Thank you.
Castles & Crusades has been my go-to. It’s, as they say, the “Rosetta Stone” of gaming-d20 meets AD&D/D&D. Easy resolution system, and the Player’s Handbook and Monsters & Treasure PDFS are now free. It’s a great, well-supported gateway into OSR gaming or keeping the “classic D&D” feel.
Great quick summaries! No love for Labyrinth Lord, though? I was a little dissppointed with OSE because of the lower spell level limits. LLs presentation isn't nearly as nice as OSE, but the higher spell level limits suits my campaign better. I've run S&W (WB/Complete), OSRIC, BFRPG, and LL in the last few years. BFRPG is probably the easiest of those to pick up and run for a raw beginner, the presentation is decent, and the cost of the books in print is remarkably low. S&W is great if you're looking for a looser framework. LL (and OSE) are handy if you want to run old B/X material with minimal conversion.
In fairness, OSE is pure B/X, hence the lack of high-level spells. I think LL got skipped because Ben can only list so many, and OSE is his favorite B/X retroclone. Arguably, LL is more of a BECMI clone, so it's a good go-to replacement for that. That being said, I personally would just go to straight to the RC for BECMI, because it's pretty damn coherent. However, ALL is definitely worth a mention as a high-fidelity 1e retroclone.
@@Semiotichazey I get that OSE is Ben's favourite. It's a fine clone in its own right. OSEs spell level limit choice was arbitrary. It offers rules for ascending AC, why not an extrapolated spell list? There was a companion volume planned for Moldvay/Cook that would presumably have had that much, but it was pre-empted by the Mentzer edition. After "arguably" I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or just haven't played the games and their clones very much, sorry.
@@RodBatten You must have been trolled hard in the past to be so suspicious. If you disagree my interpretation of the older editions, feel free to dispute me, but there's no need to bristle. I'm not going to list my nerd credentials so let's stick to the facts. The ascending AC rules were offered as an option because they DO NOT fundamentally change the game at all. Probabilities are unchanged. The point of OSE is to be *100%* faithful to B/X as published. You're free to not like this, of course. But the choice was NOT arbitrary. It was very deliberate. I suspect that OSE will extend the spell list anyway in the near future, but it won't necessarily be 100% faithful to any edition. Like what Gavin did with the advanced volumes i.e. an interpretation of select 1e mechanics in a B/X style. But maybe they won't. I personally prefer lowered-powered games, so I'm OK with that. By all means stick to LL or RC or whatever floats your boat.
A very old game Tunnels and Trolls also skips rolling to-hit. Each side in a fight rolls their combat dice, and totals it up. The side with the llowest damage total takes the difference in total damage rolled as damage to their characters hit points divided almost the characters in that group. Armour worn is subtracted from damage directly as it is taken. So kind of want tankier characters wearing better armor to take damage first because that leaves less damage for the naked noob who couldn't afford armor. There are no class based item limits your characters strength and dexterity scores limit the armor and weapons you can wield. As your characters level they can increase stat scores so it's not much a problem being stuck naked except for a robe because your strength being 4 assuming you can survive those low levels.
This is the episode I've been waiting for ❤️ I've loved watching your videos just to discover the unique and wonderful works that are out there. But so far it's been too daunting to think about actually playing / running any of them.
Ben : We need a hardcover Knave with fancy illustrations !!! It is now a "classic" in the OSR community. My suggestion will be to add some rules/ideas for new abilities when levelling up.
i just found your channel and am currently binging all of it. thank you so much for this wealth of information! I've been really interested in OSR and original DND for a few years now but haven't been sure where to start digging in - and your videos are just perfect!
Whitebox Roleplaying is completely compatible with Swords & Wizardry, it's basically the same rules cleaned up a little bit more and arranged in a nicer way, in a smaller book that's easier to hold and is much less expensive on Amazon.
Fantastic video!!! At the end of the video I realized I retained like 2% of this so I watched it again. So I watched it again and took notes. Retro Clones: ODD- Swords and Wizardy few tweeks, just cleaned up ODD, very minimalistic. BX/EX- Old School Essentials, highly authentic, but re organized for ease of reference. There are optional ascending AC rules. Most organized rule set. Basic Fantasy- takes core essence but mechanics are streamlined D20 like later addtions. (My note: and FREE to download.) Departures from Retro: Knave- classless, inventory system on slots, to speed, wizards need to carry a library of spells. White Hack- roll under system (roll under your abillity score); 3 main classes but tremendous amount of customization, custom magic spells Black Hack- another roll under system; player facing combat- players make all rolls, roll defense vs monster attacks. Usage die (for # of arrows etc) Five Torches Deep- 5e rules with power level dropped to give OSR feel. OSR lethality and resource management. Very modular if you want to add custom rules. (My note: seems like Shadowdark is entering this space too, with more speed mods.) Maze Rats- random wizard spells, strong random tables ** (My note: I always find that these are worth the squeeze just to have DM tables.) Into the Odd- weird fantasy, short rules. Speed rules, no to hit rules, just damage rolls. Excellent GM advise especially Electric Bastionland version. (My note: I keep hearing Into the Odd listed as one of the best GM sections available anywhere.) Troika- Fighting Fantasy 2d6 based. Initiative random tokens. 36 different classes. I know that Index Card RPG isn't considered OSR, but it is rules light, with much of the mechanics summarized and averaged, and probably no more of a deviation from Old D&D than Maze Rats or Into the Odd. I actually do own this and the speed of play and DM advise sections and random tables are FANTASTIC.
Thank you Ben, this video is badly needed. You have inspired me to delve into the OSR scene, but it's so hard to find anything that gives you a general overview over the rulesets, without having to buy every single one to get an idea what the differences are. I've watched a lot of your reviews, but it takes sooo long to get a good idea of what I want for myself.
Exactly the video I was looking for! I've heard great things about all of these games but I had no idea how one would go about choosing which one to try!
Awesome-- i just posted a question on one of your threads earlier on this exactly. After a 20 year break (started in BECMI '86 - till 2001ish 3e) I'm currently running two 5e campaigns. I love DMing and I'm actually better than i was in the past at it, but I'm not loving 5e, or what WOTC/Hasbro is doing. I found this channel and really like your straight explanations and presentations but the topic of OSRs is intriguing but overwhelming and after I posted my question i realized it was waay to broad for you to answer. I somehow feel heard none the less by this video!
Big fan of this video, as it and the comments provide a great starting point for players old and new to OSR to find out which systems/mechanics might be fun to play around with. For example, I've personally been a huge DCC fan for years, but reading about implementations of usage dice and slot-based inventories have gotten me reading up on other systems. Naturally, I'm going to be ripping them off to use in my DCC games. :p
I usually play Basic Fantasy with the Frog God support books for Swords and Wizardry. Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Dark Dungeons, and OSRIC all deserve some love, too. Yeah, I have a thing for single-volume OSR systems.
Do you have any recommendations for live plays to watch to see how some things play out on the table? I'd like to see how some things play out, especially how monsters chasing down characters and the characters using different ways to get away. Thanks for the videos!
Having started playing DnD in 1978, we had a players hand book, DM Guide, and Monster Manual. We took turns as DM and created our own modules / scenarios. Beside basic THACO, we , had one major rule.... No arguing with the DM.
Ever talked to someone who's played for over 40 years. Dungeons and Dragons was played very easily by a whole generation of 13 and 14 year olds. The armor class system was very easy compared to today's 5e and creating encounters of different types was a lot easier to do than play with a calculator to figure out CR levels. Dungeons & Dragons was one edition with a few revisions starting with Holmes. Every form of basic in either red books is compatible with the Expert set which is followed by the Companion, Masters, then Immortals set. It was also only as deadly as your DM made it. 5e is actually the closet to it in feel strange enough.
I started playing d&d at age 11 in 1978 then switched to ad&d a year later When there were combat charts and in 2nd edition I had no problem understanding THAC0 it's just simple math counting up for negative a.c. and down for positive a.c. . So a THAC0 of 16 and you are trying to hit a -2 a.c. would need an 18 . I never understood how people get confused with it . There really was no balance to encounters especially wilderness encounters and the players knew when an encounter was to much and figured out ways to deal with them besides combat . Most Dm's knew how to balance things when needed so as to not overwhelm the characters and didn't need CR to do it plus combat was deadly and players had characters die sometimes by not paying attention or just rushing into combat . And there was no long rest ( 8 hours ) to regain all your hp's back because you gained 1 point a day without magical aid and there were no 3 death saves once you hit zero hp's because you started to bleed out 1 hp per combat round until you were bandaged or had cure lt wounds cast on you . It was brutal of you didn't play smart
AC number then look at the chart to find the to hit number is silly. Glad it's dead. 5e's core mechanics are solid, it's the insane 6000 pages of other rules that are insane.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess has very old school D&D mechanics, but the aesthetics of most of the material for it is quite niche, shall we say, so maybe not a good start point for the unsuspecting OSR newbie. In contrast, Dungeon Crawl Classics doesn’t really have old school mechanics, but its flavour is super old school cranked to the max and a ton of fun.
You make a good point. I think that LotFP is a great rule set, but the art and attitude of the game can be off putting for some gamers. So, as I am surprised that it wasn’t mentioned, I understand why.
I just started playing 5e. I grew up playing AD&D. A few years ago, my daughter wanted to learn to play, but I could not afford the books. We started with Basic Fantasy. I love that game system, and the fact that if you order the book, it includes the user manual, the GM manual, and the Monster manual all in one tome. The gameplay is streamlined and there are a lot of free resources (campaigns), plus it's easy to convert AD&D modules to it. Thanks for your video, it was very informative.
I know it's been mentioned below, but I also would have added Dungeon Crawl Classics...it's my favorite of the bunch! I've ran Into The Odd a few times and really like it...you've inspired me to check out Troika.
Scarlet Heroes is great if you want to run an OSR adventure designed for 4 to 8 PCs, but you only have 1 to 2 players at the table. SH includes unique monsters, has its own coastal Asian-themed setting (but can easily be ported into any fantasy setting) and has fantastic oracle tables for creating your own adventures.
Great video, thank you - this classification is very comprehensible, and I will definitely use it to explain OSR games to others. My favorite OSR Game at the Moment is clearly "Beyond the Wall" (and its sister-game "Through Sunken Lands") by Flatland Games, the followups are "Basic Fantasy RPG" and "Sword & Wizardry Complete". I also very highly recommend the current "Master Edition" of "ICRPG" (Index Card RPG) by Runehammer Games - technically not an OSR game, but it is very much in the same spirit.
thank you for the video, as many said, I needed it a lot. I'll received the Spanish translation of OSE soon, and I'm very excited to play it. specially because I come from 5E
OSE is the easiest old school ruleset to parse. It's easy to read and to use at the table, and importantly to find the rules in the books. My OSR game of choice.
Hackmaster 4e was arguably the first of OSR, or at least the prototype for it, especially given their legal victory over WoTC. Hackmaster 5e is still very old school, but would be in your third category.
Conrad's Fantasy aka Barony and Rogue Swords of the Empire from Space Gamer / Fantasy Gamer Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 1992 are playable with any OD&D Module. Might be easier to teach to people coming over form other game systems. The simplicity astounds most people and the fact that it works / has worked since 1979. Add in Designing Fantasy Scenarios & Encounters Book along with Fantasy Scenarios + tarot deck and you have endless adventures for your group. No 2 characters are ever alike.
I have Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy. The two are very similar, except Basic Fantasy is very cheap and Old School Essentials has amazing presentation. The rules are what people called B/X. To be honest, both the advantage and the disadvantage of the rules is that they are very simple. I always find myself adding homebrew rules, never mind how detailed the initial set of rules are. The advantage of Old School Essentials over something like D&D 5E is that I am mostly just adding rules rather than changing existing rules, so it is much easier to explain the rules to people: I can say, everything in here, plus this; rather than, everything in here, but ignore these sections, plus some other bits. Also, for much the same reason, it is easy to translate monsters, treasure and entire modules into Old School Essentials. For example, I can take a 5E monster and just give it OSE hit points and saving throws. Basic Fantasy has a lot of cheap modules that are immediately compatible with OSE (although I find them mostly average, nothing special) and OSE itself has a small number of very good modules. I have to confess to not being a big fan of some of the other retro clones that have their own rules. Many of them make the rules even simpler, which I find too simple. Some, like Dungeon Crawl Classics (which I own) make the old school rules much more complicated. In my mind, the goal of old school rules is to make the game accessible and fun, particularly with an eye to speeding up play. DCC has some great concepts but it adds a lot of things that slow the game down, to the point where there is no advantage over 5E (other than the rules generally being better). Other retro clones do a similar thing, where they make one thing more simple, but another thing more complex so that there is no real improvement. Personally, I like to use Old School Essentials and add homebrew rules, which can include taking good ideas from other old school games. Plus OSE in printed form really is a work of art, so much so that I had to borrow the style for my homebrew rules and modules.
I've been wanting to play something that captures the feel of D&D as I remember it from when I played (BECMI). I picked up my old Rules Cyclopedia and started flipping through it, but I wanted to include other classes such as rangers, bards, etc, and don't really want overpowered characters that can reach level 36 and even become gods, so I have been considering getting OSE. Then I came across Microlite20 and Microlite81, both of which are pretty appealing and I started to think maybe I would use one of them, or take ideas from them and add in some stuff from the Cyclopedia. Now I am stuck with too many options, unsure of how I want to proceed.
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I found it strange that none of three options I thought were obvious were even mentioned. 1) buy actual B/X d&d and play it. The books are still accessible today. I recently bought them. 2) DCC or Dungeon Crawl Classics. Immensely popular game that is probably the easiest to find groups for as well as being well supported. 3) Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Another very well supported system with very creative writing. A very easy system to use.
Many of us refuse to put money in the pockets of Wizards of the Lawful Evil Corp and their overlord, Hasbro, so buying BX/AD&D is out. Much love for DCC. Im reading it now and Im going at least homebrew many of the rules.
I would say if hitting BX OSE is probably the most expensive and obtuse option. BX Fantasy Roleplay is BX ordered and simplified. Or S&W plus Supplemental Lore or WB with White Box Heroes has a MUCH better buy in, is easier to grok and works well with add-ons like Black Pudding.
Same here , I tried to play 5e but it felt like I was playing a fantasy superhero mmo rpg instead of playing d&d . Plus none of the Dm's I talked to knew what open world/sand box was and only played one huge adventure with plots and twists that the players went through . It was rather boring to play in a Dm's story where our characters were railroaded for the sake of him telling his story and there was zero exploration besides what the story offered which was minimal at best . It just didn't feel like d&d at all to me
Unfortunately, there only seems to be one based upon BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia: Dark Dungeons. Which honestly kind of removes one of the key features of BECMI, the basic set gave you everything you need for dungeon crawls, from combat rules to mapping advice, the expert added wilderness exploration in a digestible chunk, same with companion and ruling, etc. Maybe I should make my own system...
I don't fully understand. I like Dark Dungeons very much. Don't you think it's a good RC clone? It seems to me it is RC but more organized and with Immortals (hence we are "back to BECMI", while the RC is icky BECM). Is that not cool? All the best, V
@@vinimagus I honestly enjoy Dark Dungeons and really don't have any real problem with it. What I'm saying is that the Box set system BECMI had, by its nature, broke the systems down into digestible chuncks for new players. All-in-one rulebooks are fine, but they do kind of miss out on accessibility for new players.
I recommend an old school game made by SPI called Dragon Quest. It is classic fantasy and a d100 system. there are no classes or alignments. It was bought out by TSR in the early 90,s and they pretty much killed it, but if you can find 1st edition it IMHO is the best as it has an action point system like fallout 1 and 2.
It should be mentioned that Troika! Without art is free or you can give a tip $ to the creator if you like the game, or even better, buy the art version! The White Hack's PDF is now on sale at Drivethru as well!
Watching this video in 2024. Just getting into old school dnd. I wonder how some new games would fit into these categories: like Knave 2e, Cairn, and Shadowdark.
Nice intro, although someone coming from 5e or 3.5 might not know what B/X means. What I really need is a revised retroclone of AD&D2, to use with all their amazing settings.
@@hoogmonster Yeah, but that's not really a retroclone is just ad&d2e re-packaged (probably there are some variant rules that i missed), but you can just go and play the original one.
Hello, Ben. Love the channel so far. I wanted yo ask 9f you have raf or played Castles & Crusades? This game predates the OSR, but is the first case of using OGL to emulate old-school D&D, specifically AD&D 1E. It utilizes the good mechanical innovations of 3.5 ro create a new system. I'd love to hear your thoghts on C&C.
I still find it hard to pass up Lamentations of the Flame Princes. 'Delving Deeper' is good too. Castle and Crusades has a real AD&D feel (in fact the castles and crusades GMs-guid is better then any other imo). Lastly "Five Ancient Kingdoms" is sweet too. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th ed is an excellent old school rpg with a new school system. Talislanta: A true OSR game that isn't D&D yet is still a D20 game - it's pdfs are free and its awesome I Love your 'Spell Sword' and wish you would pick that up and develop. Talisman Adventures is a new school production but is super Old School. For Babies first rpg Lone Wolf Adventure game is perfect.
I decided to peruse TROIKA! mainly to check out the art, and just realized that it is Book of the New Sun inspired! I think you should have mentioned that as it will be a BIG draw for Gene Wolfe fans.
Love black hack but have not managed to get a game in yet. Have mostly been running short games of OSE. Do you include DCC in the mix of OSR or is it too modern with its 3.x roots?
I'm starting a new Questing Beast drinking game. Every time Ben says "flavor" take a shot.
i dieded
F
In my experience, I finally "got" the Old School D&D playstyle when I read the Basic D&D (Moldvay, 1981) rules. The thing that made everything clear to me was the explicit procedures of play: this part of the game is about dungeons, nothing more (out of the box); this is how you handle exploration, turn by turn; this how you handle encounters, from the distance to the reaction of monsters; etc.
In that regard, if you're a newcomer to OSR and want an explicit "how to play, minute-by-minute", Old School Essentials might be your flavor of choice.
Some other great options if anyone is looking for some are Low Fantasy Gaming which is very similar to 5e but with a old school twist, Dungeon Crawl Classics very zany but alot of random fun, and Lamentations of the Flame Princess a dark twisted take on B/X.
I feel like the LotFP and DCC omissions were unfortunate.
And don’t forget Delving Deeper, the most faithful OD&D retroclone!
@Jasper Jaguar Me too! Lamentations is like a gourmet meal and DCC is like a Vegas buffet (in the best sense)
I was fully expecting Ben to mention LotFP and DCC.
I agree! Nice list, but missing some of the best games in the OSR. In addition to LFG, DCC and LotFP I would include Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea for its AD&D and swords & sorcery feel.
Also worth mentioning: OSRIC (literally the first retro-clone published under the OGL), a 1E AD&D clone; Labyrinth Lord; Lamentations of the Flame Princess; and my own Adventures Dark and Deep, a 1E clone with all the extra stuff Gygax was intending to include before he left TSR.
It seems as if these games were not mentioned on purpose. Weird.
Basic Fantasy RPG was available in PDF (and source format) before OSRIC's release; OSRIC was in print before BFRPG. 2006-2007 was interesting.
I love OSRIC
@@arnman2093 yup, quite unfortunate as they are all important.
And For Gold & Glory, AD&D 2e retro-clone, and Dark Dungeons, BECMI retro-clone.
Ah, too bad, I was looking for this vid a few months ago. Now I'm playing a homebrew Lamentations of the Flame Princess setting with strong Veins of the Earth influences. Good seeing this now though, time to pick up some more rule books to shred and mix into my Papier-mâché system.
Yep. Power to the People! Make it your own. Its what everybody did back in the day.
Just about the start of the video. At this point OSR stands for "Old School Really whatever word you want to put here"
Accurate
Great list and video!
I would also recommend "Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea", an old-school retro-clone with a distinct Swords and Sorcery / weird fiction setting and tone (along the lines of Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H.P. Lovecraft).
Castles and Crusades and Dungeon Crawl Classics. For your first group of selections, and DCC for the last. Also, per a comment below, C&C and nothing to do with 3rd edition. It's purely 1e with ascending armour class, a unified attribute check system and a lot of 2e options.
Ditto on DCC and LotFP both are fantastic. I want to toss Harkerin Ferinale’s ( Runehammer) ICRPG into the mix, it’s not OSR but it is rules light, super fast, easy to learn and has some very neat and interesting concepts that speak to folks who like the OSR
I agree completely that ICRPG belongs in the conversation. I expect that most folks watching this channel will at least have heard about it, but if not it’s definitely worth a look.
@Andrew McGuire for sure. Hate it when people use acronyms instead of saying what they mean. I wouldn't have known what LotFP was if you hadn't said, so thanks for that.
OMG, I'm from Brazil and I have the Knave physical version by Pensamento Coletivo. It's great to have an actual book, instead of the PDF!
Thanks Ben, I've been watching a lot of your videos lately as my passion for 5e has just decreased more and more. I picked up electric bastionland in print and checked out the OSE SRD and feel like i've drank from the golden cup of what RPGs can be compared to what I've experienced thus far in 4th and 5th editions of D&D. The closest I think I've come to playing an OSR type game, which I loved at the time was the early playtest for 5e, which felt very different to the product we ended up with. You've turned me into a full on supporter of the OSR and the great people out there making content for us all to enjoy.
Your observation of early 5E is exactly how I felt about it. I remember getting the starter box for 5E for 20.00 at Target when it first came out and I was blown away by its simplicity. I honestly thought it was the best system ever produced. My kids were little so I didn't have time to play back then. 6 years later I tried to play 5E after that many years of bloat and was horrified by what I saw. 3 hr combats, pages and pages of feats and rules for different speed actions. Look what they did to my boy...
I think what creates a lot of confusion is the naming. There's Basic D&D, B/X, Holmes, Moldvay, OD&D, etc etc, but each of those is really just one person's take on how they like to play the brown books.
@@Aaron-mj9ie And each retroclone has its own idiosyncratic interpretations of the old rules, or sets of house rules the author codified into the main text. The only way for a prospective player to know what those variations are - and whether they like them - is to read through the whole book. With as many OSR books out there, "ain't nobody got time for that".
Brown books are very different from Basic. Race as Class is probably the biggest.
The Holmes book was developed at the same time the first red box was being developed. All of the stuff starting with Holmes, Moldvay, and Mentzer are literally the same edition. Mentzer broke the single book into a player and DM book. Expert was never done that way, but you need it to continue to the Companion set and onward. It is one system and edition that evolved over time as things were added. Then the Cyclopedia came out which is just a compilation of all the box sets except they dropped the Immortals. The actual name is Dungeons & Dragons. That's it. No advanced or edition numbers. If you liked something you put it in. If not, you didn't use it. If you have the Moldvay basic book you can literally jump to the Cyclopedia. Although you miss a bit of the other stuff from the box sets. The Cyclopedia was not meant as a beginners book. It was a compilation for the DM's. It's only one edition that evolved. Appears to be a tough concept for others.
I disagree completely. The Brown Books (white box set as we called them, ymmv), were an incomplete ruleset that you really needed the Chainmail combat rules to play correctly. Basic, Expert, and Advanced all had similar pedigrees and were based on the foudnation that the white box set created, but they all had some differences, mainly in character races, level limits, and classes. Expert allowed for some in depth outdoor adventuring, but it was rather limited as well. The "basic" sets were good to get you started and familiar with the concepts and basic rules, but the Advanced set was really where it all came together and took off. Then 2ed came out and streamlined most fo the stuff from original AD&D.
@@fightingfortruth9806 plus the Basic books, regardless of edition, simple werent brown books. The brown books werent exactly books either. They were more like brown pamphlets.
For 5e players, Low Fantasy Roleplaying is great.
There are also Warlock, Mork Bork, White Star, Stars without Numbers that deserve a look
*Mörk borg
A few honorable mentions: Dungeon Crawl Classics is great Gonzo fantasy but don't be intimidated by the book size. Spell system is fun and the game itself is very Van Art.
Castles & Crusades is very much like an interesting take on 3rd ed D&D with a ton of 1e seasoning.
Lastly, Mork Borg is very light, very fun, and very artistic punk. Another game to not be intimidated by.
I was going to ask why I never seem to C&C mentioned in these reviews (Ben's or others). Not OSR 'enough'? I'm just getting into it (have only played one session) but I like the feel so far. Doubt I'll stick with it but I backed the latest KS so I guess I'm committed for a while.
@@dirigoallagash3464 I think it might be the age of the game as it's arguably the first OSR game. It could be the loose build similar to 3rd edition. Personally I love C&C as a take on AD&D 3rd edition.
@@dreamakuma Gary himself started C&C which is why it is the way it is.
@@dirigoallagash3464 To some folks, OSR implies the original D&D rules, pre-“Advanced.” So a lot of the focus is on stuff up to the Rules Cyclopedia, but not the stuff after that. C&C is made to play similar to AD&D 1e, so some groups don’t count it in the OSR category.
Labyrinth Lord Anyone ? :)
I like Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of HYPERBOREA, based more on AD&D 1E.
Not Conan enough for me
A cool book and a super cool game, but a lot more complex than many of the games here. That said, maybe that suits well for someone coming from 5e or Pathfinder very well, if they're experienced with rpgs beforehand.
I think another thing to mention is one of the best rulesets is available for print on demand. Rules Cyclopedia is still a fantastic book to this day in my opinion.
So you'll love "Dark Dungeons."😊
Really surprised you didn't mention LotFP, given it's one of the most popular OSR rulesets and also the publisher behind many award-winning OSR adventures.
(And is remarkably newby friendly given an art-free PDF of the rules is available as free download, and without the art the rules are actually perfectly SFW and fairly player-friendly, despite the reputation for provocative, grotesque and ultra-dangerous adventures.)
Agreed.
I think it's reputation sort of works against it. Even if the art free version, it's still pretty "grimdark" in tone. I mean, cloudkill is literally described as being a miasma straight from hell.
Of course, you could completely ignore the flavor text, but if you're new to OSR... And more importantly if your players are, have not idea what they are in for, and they read the book, they might get the wrong impression of what OSR is.
@@spaceranger7683 not to mention the general blacklisting of the game due to the controversy with the (one of?) Creators.
How do you know it's one of the most popular ones? I've been searching online which OSR are the most popular ones but can't find a conclusion, real data
My favourite OSR system is Castles and Crusades, which is just basically A D&D rewritten for D20 and skills replaced with attribute checks. It's very fast and simple and is also very easy to convert adventures written for classic D&D.Also, The Troll Lords have made the last printing of the system available as a free pdf download from their website. Worth checking out.
The grandfather of all D&D competitors.
Right on!! C&C! 2004 folks - OSR started 20 years ago!! C&C was the first OSR-like game (although some will argue OSRIC 2006 was first if you go by the stricter retro clone definition of OSR). I think it's just that this post is a year old -- it's the 7th printing of C&C that is available for free as a PDF on their web site (with what I call the Umberhulk cover), they have since done an 8th printing (the AD&D homage cover). So it's the 7th print that is free. Check it out! C&C is an incredible system (a simple definition is D&D 3E mechanics without skills and feats).
Hey, thanks for the kind words! I have to suggest though that you may have oversold the compatibility of Basic Fantasy RPG with modern games; the mechanics are hardly "unified," and the only nod to modern-style games is ascending AC. But I'll admit that descending AC is the main thing people complain about when I run my other game, Iron Falcon, so I suppose it's still a big deal.
Wow, I was actually surprised you said your game was fan-translated to portuguese. I had no idea the OSR scene was strong over here too.
Whitehack is my favorite and thanks to this channel I discovered it years ago. I love this one along with Five Torches Deep, Maze Rats, and Index Card RPG.
i love how slim the rules are for knave and into the odd. it really helps my games stay focused on what the players are doing rather than looking up endless stats and edge cases. i am really keen to try out the magic systems in white hack, maze rats, and beyond the wall though!
I like Labyrinth Lord, Swords and Wizardry and White Box: Fantastic Medieval Adventure
And then how do we decide which to run?
@@nrais76 roll a d6, lol?
Adventurer Conqueror King System is my favorite OSR game. It's old D&D but notably adds a realistic economic system, has fleshed out rules for mass battles and forming and running your own domains, and has an entire supplement for populating hexes with all kinds of lairs. This Lairs & Encounters book even has a prepared lair for every kind of creature listed in the game and also has rules for taking on monstrous henchmen and capturing, taming, and training all manner of beast. It also breaks down the old spells mathematically and so has a consistent system for creating your own spells. It does the same for player classes.
Absolutely. Also love the customizable race/class rules, makes it easy to tailor to your campaign world.
This is the video I wish I had when I first joined, and answers the questions I see most often about OSR
This felt bizarrely refreshing. Had the privilege of interviewing Sandy Petersen from Petersen Games a while back... Very interesting delving into the history of Chaosium and old school RPGs... 👍
Great video as always, but I feel you should really have covered Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Dungeon Crawl Classics. These games have more support and larger fan base than some of the other games you talked about.
Lamentations is a hard newbie recommendation. Many find the art off-putting, the adventures (Fuck For Satan!) and other supporting materials are full of gore, sex and sleaze, and some the authors involved in the scene are toxic AF. I don’t think there’s actually enough unique rules content to make the recommendation. What’s in there: essentially just a skill system, a tweak to make fighters “better”, no class equipment restrictions and no spell levels. The summoning spell itself takes up multiple pages, so there’s that. In exchange you get a slimy vagina creature giving birth to monsters and people melting in graphic detail right in the middle of the book. I also don’t remember the book being very good at conveying the style of play intended by the OSR.
Having run some open tables at game stores and for dozens of different gaming groups, the inclusion of sex (beyond the fade-to-black player-driven barmaid seduction) and body horror is a non-starter. It’s a solid game with solid support, but a bad OSR introduction.
@@aaronhamric7679 I agree that LotFP can be really confusing if you're not familiar with other retroclones but that criticism applies to most OSR rulesets. One of the many merits of OSE is that it did a really good job at codifying the actual gameplay.
LotFP is still an excellent B/X ruleset with modern tweaks and just enough "crunch" so that it's easily up there with S&W, BFRPG, LL and OSE. Art and the tone are a matter of preference, and at least for me they were the things that drew me into the game, but they can be easily ignored if that's not your thing.
And the last thing you should bring up to a new player is some toxic creator or drama involved in this scene.
@@Fhuul I love LotFP for the presentation, too. I also don’t bring up the sleazy weirdos associated with the game when introducing it to someone. With only a few exceptions, people have been instantly put off by the gory grindcore art. If I run Lamentations these days, I just keep the book to myself and point people to the artless free pdf if they want a reference to use. Almost exclusively, I run 5e these days because it’s what the youths crave.I tried explaining race as class, picking classes based on what stats you roll, and stuff like random traits or backgrounds to one group and they were in disbelief that someone would play a character that they hadn’t lovingly hand-crafted from concept to completion. Buncha young punks.
Haha, I forgot that Lamentations does have spell levels. It’s just the 9 page long summoning spell that can potentially end the world that you can cast at 1st level
White Hack Fantastic Medieval Adventure Game is also a very entry friendly OSR system. Falls somewhere between the 1st and 2nd category. Full of old school flavor and art, also worth taking a look into. Selling points is that it is very faithful to OSR spirit, keeping the rules overhead at a bare minimum while also being as close to retroclone as i can
I love Maze Rats. I picked it up a couple of years ago when I was getting back into the hobby after a nearly 25 year hiatus. Currently, I’m using it for my solo Ironsworn campaign. It’s a great resource. Thank you.
Castles & Crusades has been my go-to. It’s, as they say, the “Rosetta Stone” of gaming-d20 meets AD&D/D&D. Easy resolution system, and the Player’s Handbook and Monsters & Treasure PDFS are now free. It’s a great, well-supported gateway into OSR gaming or keeping the “classic D&D” feel.
Great quick summaries! No love for Labyrinth Lord, though? I was a little dissppointed with OSE because of the lower spell level limits. LLs presentation isn't nearly as nice as OSE, but the higher spell level limits suits my campaign better.
I've run S&W (WB/Complete), OSRIC, BFRPG, and LL in the last few years. BFRPG is probably the easiest of those to pick up and run for a raw beginner, the presentation is decent, and the cost of the books in print is remarkably low. S&W is great if you're looking for a looser framework. LL (and OSE) are handy if you want to run old B/X material with minimal conversion.
In fairness, OSE is pure B/X, hence the lack of high-level spells. I think LL got skipped because Ben can only list so many, and OSE is his favorite B/X retroclone. Arguably, LL is more of a BECMI clone, so it's a good go-to replacement for that. That being said, I personally would just go to straight to the RC for BECMI, because it's pretty damn coherent. However, ALL is definitely worth a mention as a high-fidelity 1e retroclone.
@@Semiotichazey I get that OSE is Ben's favourite. It's a fine clone in its own right.
OSEs spell level limit choice was arbitrary. It offers rules for ascending AC, why not an extrapolated spell list? There was a companion volume planned for Moldvay/Cook that would presumably have had that much, but it was pre-empted by the Mentzer edition.
After "arguably" I honestly can't tell if you're trolling or just haven't played the games and their clones very much, sorry.
@@RodBatten You must have been trolled hard in the past to be so suspicious. If you disagree my interpretation of the older editions, feel free to dispute me, but there's no need to bristle. I'm not going to list my nerd credentials so let's stick to the facts.
The ascending AC rules were offered as an option because they DO NOT fundamentally change the game at all. Probabilities are unchanged. The point of OSE is to be *100%* faithful to B/X as published. You're free to not like this, of course. But the choice was NOT arbitrary. It was very deliberate.
I suspect that OSE will extend the spell list anyway in the near future, but it won't necessarily be 100% faithful to any edition. Like what Gavin did with the advanced volumes i.e. an interpretation of select 1e mechanics in a B/X style.
But maybe they won't. I personally prefer lowered-powered games, so I'm OK with that. By all means stick to LL or RC or whatever floats your boat.
A very old game Tunnels and Trolls also skips rolling to-hit. Each side in a fight rolls their combat dice, and totals it up. The side with the llowest damage total takes the difference in total damage rolled as damage to their characters hit points divided almost the characters in that group. Armour worn is subtracted from damage directly as it is taken. So kind of want tankier characters wearing better armor to take damage first because that leaves less damage for the naked noob who couldn't afford armor. There are no class based item limits your characters strength and dexterity scores limit the armor and weapons you can wield. As your characters level they can increase stat scores so it's not much a problem being stuck naked except for a robe because your strength being 4 assuming you can survive those low levels.
This is the episode I've been waiting for ❤️
I've loved watching your videos just to discover the unique and wonderful works that are out there. But so far it's been too daunting to think about actually playing / running any of them.
Ben : We need a hardcover Knave with fancy illustrations !!! It is now a "classic" in the OSR community. My suggestion will be to add some rules/ideas for new abilities when levelling up.
i just found your channel and am currently binging all of it. thank you so much for this wealth of information! I've been really interested in OSR and original DND for a few years now but haven't been sure where to start digging in - and your videos are just perfect!
Whitebox Roleplaying is completely compatible with Swords & Wizardry, it's basically the same rules cleaned up a little bit more and arranged in a nicer way, in a smaller book that's easier to hold and is much less expensive on Amazon.
Fantastic video!!!
At the end of the video I realized I retained like 2% of this so I watched it again. So I watched it again and took notes.
Retro Clones:
ODD- Swords and Wizardy few tweeks, just cleaned up ODD, very minimalistic.
BX/EX- Old School Essentials, highly authentic, but re organized for ease of reference. There are optional ascending AC rules. Most organized rule set.
Basic Fantasy- takes core essence but mechanics are streamlined D20 like later addtions. (My note: and FREE to download.)
Departures from Retro:
Knave- classless, inventory system on slots, to speed, wizards need to carry a library of spells.
White Hack- roll under system (roll under your abillity score); 3 main classes but tremendous amount of customization, custom magic spells
Black Hack- another roll under system; player facing combat- players make all rolls, roll defense vs monster attacks. Usage die (for # of arrows etc)
Five Torches Deep- 5e rules with power level dropped to give OSR feel. OSR lethality and resource management. Very modular if you want to add custom rules. (My note: seems like Shadowdark is entering this space too, with more speed mods.)
Maze Rats- random wizard spells, strong random tables ** (My note: I always find that these are worth the squeeze just to have DM tables.)
Into the Odd- weird fantasy, short rules. Speed rules, no to hit rules, just damage rolls. Excellent GM advise especially Electric Bastionland version. (My note: I keep hearing Into the Odd listed as one of the best GM sections available anywhere.)
Troika- Fighting Fantasy 2d6 based. Initiative random tokens. 36 different classes.
I know that Index Card RPG isn't considered OSR, but it is rules light, with much of the mechanics summarized and averaged, and probably no more of a deviation from Old D&D than Maze Rats or Into the Odd. I actually do own this and the speed of play and DM advise sections and random tables are FANTASTIC.
I find "Into the Unknown" to be a better bridge of B/X and 5th edition than "5 Torches Deep".
Informative video, thanks.
Honestly I discovered swords and wizardry sometime last year and I have been loving it.
Adventurer Conqueror King system is another excellent B/X derived game
Fantastic system, as is Barbarian Conquerors of Kanahu.
I LOVE MAZE RATS. A great set of rules.
Great rundown of quite a few different games. Great format, and I love your RPG alcove for the backdrop.
This video is great! As a newcomer to OSR I have definitely found it hard to know where to start. Thanks very much!
Thank you Ben, this video is badly needed. You have inspired me to delve into the OSR scene, but it's so hard to find anything that gives you a general overview over the rulesets, without having to buy every single one to get an idea what the differences are. I've watched a lot of your reviews, but it takes sooo long to get a good idea of what I want for myself.
Exactly the video I was looking for! I've heard great things about all of these games but I had no idea how one would go about choosing which one to try!
Awesome-- i just posted a question on one of your threads earlier on this exactly. After a 20 year break (started in BECMI '86 - till 2001ish 3e) I'm currently running two 5e campaigns. I love DMing and I'm actually better than i was in the past at it, but I'm not loving 5e, or what WOTC/Hasbro is doing. I found this channel and really like your straight explanations and presentations but the topic of OSRs is intriguing but overwhelming and after I posted my question i realized it was waay to broad for you to answer. I somehow feel heard none the less by this video!
you have a very clear way of explaining things and i appreciate this. thanks
Big fan of this video, as it and the comments provide a great starting point for players old and new to OSR to find out which systems/mechanics might be fun to play around with. For example, I've personally been a huge DCC fan for years, but reading about implementations of usage dice and slot-based inventories have gotten me reading up on other systems. Naturally, I'm going to be ripping them off to use in my DCC games. :p
I just bought Knave and Maze Rats through your links, along with some of the other suggestions. Thank you for a great overview.
I usually play Basic Fantasy with the Frog God support books for Swords and Wizardry.
Advanced Labyrinth Lord, Dark Dungeons, and OSRIC all deserve some love, too. Yeah, I have a thing for single-volume OSR systems.
Do you have any recommendations for live plays to watch to see how some things play out on the table? I'd like to see how some things play out, especially how monsters chasing down characters and the characters using different ways to get away. Thanks for the videos!
Hey, thanks for this. I've been contemplating running some short games for our regular group and wanted something easier to start with.
Having started playing DnD in 1978, we had a players hand book, DM Guide, and Monster Manual. We took turns as DM and created our own modules / scenarios. Beside basic THACO, we , had one major rule.... No arguing with the DM.
Great vid, a bunch of interesting stuff there. Thank you!
Ever talked to someone who's played for over 40 years. Dungeons and Dragons was played very easily by a whole generation of 13 and 14 year olds. The armor class system was very easy compared to today's 5e and creating encounters of different types was a lot easier to do than play with a calculator to figure out CR levels. Dungeons & Dragons was one edition with a few revisions starting with Holmes. Every form of basic in either red books is compatible with the Expert set which is followed by the Companion, Masters, then Immortals set. It was also only as deadly as your DM made it. 5e is actually the closet to it in feel strange enough.
I started playing d&d at age 11 in 1978 then switched to ad&d a year later When there were combat charts and in 2nd edition I had no problem understanding THAC0 it's just simple math counting up for negative a.c. and down for positive a.c. . So a THAC0 of 16 and you are trying to hit a -2 a.c. would need an 18 .
I never understood how people get confused with it .
There really was no balance to encounters especially wilderness encounters and the players knew when an encounter was to much and figured out ways to deal with them besides combat .
Most Dm's knew how to balance things when needed so as to not overwhelm the characters and didn't need CR to do it plus combat was deadly and players had characters die sometimes by not paying attention or just rushing into combat .
And there was no long rest ( 8 hours ) to regain all your hp's back because you gained 1 point a day without magical aid and there were no 3 death saves once you hit zero hp's because you started to bleed out 1 hp per combat round until you were bandaged or had cure lt wounds cast on you .
It was brutal of you didn't play smart
AC number then look at the chart to find the to hit number is silly. Glad it's dead.
5e's core mechanics are solid, it's the insane 6000 pages of other rules that are insane.
Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game is the 3e AD&D we never got but always wanted.
lol...no.
Lamentations of the Flame Princess has very old school D&D mechanics, but the aesthetics of most of the material for it is quite niche, shall we say, so maybe not a good start point for the unsuspecting OSR newbie. In contrast, Dungeon Crawl Classics doesn’t really have old school mechanics, but its flavour is super old school cranked to the max and a ton of fun.
You make a good point. I think that LotFP is a great rule set, but the art and attitude of the game can be off putting for some gamers. So, as I am surprised that it wasn’t mentioned, I understand why.
Excellent concept for a video review/overview
Dungeon crawl classics is also very interesting to explore. Great compilation, very useful
I just started playing 5e. I grew up playing AD&D. A few years ago, my daughter wanted to learn to play, but I could not afford the books. We started with Basic Fantasy. I love that game system, and the fact that if you order the book, it includes the user manual, the GM manual, and the Monster manual all in one tome. The gameplay is streamlined and there are a lot of free resources (campaigns), plus it's easy to convert AD&D modules to it. Thanks for your video, it was very informative.
Basic Fantasy is also available as a free download.
Both your voice and elocution are mesmerizing, glad I found your channel thanks to your reddit post
I was just looking for something like this, funnily enough.
I know it's been mentioned below, but I also would have added Dungeon Crawl Classics...it's my favorite of the bunch! I've ran Into The Odd a few times and really like it...you've inspired me to check out Troika.
Scarlet Heroes is great if you want to run an OSR adventure designed for 4 to 8 PCs, but you only have 1 to 2 players at the table. SH includes unique monsters, has its own coastal Asian-themed setting (but can easily be ported into any fantasy setting) and has fantastic oracle tables for creating your own adventures.
Great video, thank you - this classification is very comprehensible, and I will definitely use it to explain OSR games to others. My favorite OSR Game at the Moment is clearly "Beyond the Wall" (and its sister-game "Through Sunken Lands") by Flatland Games, the followups are "Basic Fantasy RPG" and "Sword & Wizardry Complete". I also very highly recommend the current "Master Edition" of "ICRPG" (Index Card RPG) by Runehammer Games - technically not an OSR game, but it is very much in the same spirit.
THANK YOU, i do a review blog of Tabletop RPGs and this gives me a ton of things to try and play and review!
thank you for the video, as many said, I needed it a lot. I'll received the Spanish translation of OSE soon, and I'm very excited to play it. specially because I come from 5E
OSE is the easiest old school ruleset to parse. It's easy to read and to use at the table, and importantly to find the rules in the books. My OSR game of choice.
You can also just pick up and play any old D&d adventure book or campaign because it’s all compatible.
Hackmaster 4e was arguably the first of OSR, or at least the prototype for it, especially given their legal victory over WoTC. Hackmaster 5e is still very old school, but would be in your third category.
Conrad's Fantasy aka Barony and Rogue Swords of the Empire from Space Gamer / Fantasy Gamer Magazine Volume 2 Issue 2 1992 are playable with any OD&D Module. Might be easier to teach to people coming over form other game systems. The simplicity astounds most people and the fact that it works / has worked since 1979.
Add in Designing Fantasy Scenarios & Encounters Book along with Fantasy Scenarios + tarot deck and you have endless adventures for your group.
No 2 characters are ever alike.
I have Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy. The two are very similar, except Basic Fantasy is very cheap and Old School Essentials has amazing presentation. The rules are what people called B/X. To be honest, both the advantage and the disadvantage of the rules is that they are very simple. I always find myself adding homebrew rules, never mind how detailed the initial set of rules are. The advantage of Old School Essentials over something like D&D 5E is that I am mostly just adding rules rather than changing existing rules, so it is much easier to explain the rules to people: I can say, everything in here, plus this; rather than, everything in here, but ignore these sections, plus some other bits. Also, for much the same reason, it is easy to translate monsters, treasure and entire modules into Old School Essentials. For example, I can take a 5E monster and just give it OSE hit points and saving throws. Basic Fantasy has a lot of cheap modules that are immediately compatible with OSE (although I find them mostly average, nothing special) and OSE itself has a small number of very good modules.
I have to confess to not being a big fan of some of the other retro clones that have their own rules. Many of them make the rules even simpler, which I find too simple. Some, like Dungeon Crawl Classics (which I own) make the old school rules much more complicated. In my mind, the goal of old school rules is to make the game accessible and fun, particularly with an eye to speeding up play. DCC has some great concepts but it adds a lot of things that slow the game down, to the point where there is no advantage over 5E (other than the rules generally being better). Other retro clones do a similar thing, where they make one thing more simple, but another thing more complex so that there is no real improvement. Personally, I like to use Old School Essentials and add homebrew rules, which can include taking good ideas from other old school games. Plus OSE in printed form really is a work of art, so much so that I had to borrow the style for my homebrew rules and modules.
Isn't OSE a retro clone of 1st edition and Basic Fantasy a modification of 3.5e but more OSR/Deadly?
OSE is a straight b/x clone and Basic Fantasy is b/x with some treaks
Love the Time Bandits map, got a small one myself.
I've been wanting to play something that captures the feel of D&D as I remember it from when I played (BECMI).
I picked up my old Rules Cyclopedia and started flipping through it, but I wanted to include other classes such as rangers, bards, etc, and don't really want overpowered characters that can reach level 36 and even become gods, so I have been considering getting OSE.
Then I came across Microlite20 and Microlite81, both of which are pretty appealing and I started to think maybe I would use one of them, or take ideas from them and add in some stuff from the Cyclopedia.
Now I am stuck with too many options, unsure of how I want to proceed.
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I found it strange that none of three options I thought were obvious were even mentioned.
1) buy actual B/X d&d and play it. The books are still accessible today. I recently bought them.
2) DCC or Dungeon Crawl Classics. Immensely popular game that is probably the easiest to find groups for as well as being well supported.
3) Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Another very well supported system with very creative writing. A very easy system to use.
Many of us refuse to put money in the pockets of Wizards of the Lawful Evil Corp and their overlord, Hasbro, so buying BX/AD&D is out.
Much love for DCC. Im reading it now and Im going at least homebrew many of the rules.
@@nemooh Buying b/x books won't put any money in their pockets as long as you are buying the books and not the pdfs.
Great video. May I suggest also doing OSR guide for 5e players? Like how to play 5e in a old school way?
Just combine 5e and OSR. That's what I do and my players love it.
this. i also am taking some stuff from five torches and many other sources :) heck 2d20 Conan stuff too
Basically 5 torches deep. He mentioned it in the video
Can't say enough good things about Troika! I've just started a game of it, we played yesterday.
Awesome video!
I would say if hitting BX OSE is probably the most expensive and obtuse option. BX Fantasy Roleplay is BX ordered and simplified. Or S&W plus Supplemental Lore or WB with White Box Heroes has a MUCH better buy in, is easier to grok and works well with add-ons like Black Pudding.
This list seems a bit incomplete. No Labyrinth Lord? No Castles & Crusades? No OSRIC?
I'm only showing books that I have copies of and have reviewed in the past.
Been watching this channel for months and I just realized your name is an Arthurian reference. Nice
At least you don't think it's a MTG reference
Been playing for about 40+ years and still prefer the AD&D rule set and have played all the editions. Do like the OSRIC book.
Same here , I tried to play 5e but it felt like I was playing a fantasy superhero mmo rpg instead of playing d&d .
Plus none of the Dm's I talked to knew what open world/sand box was and only played one huge adventure with plots and twists that the players went through .
It was rather boring to play in a Dm's story where our characters were railroaded for the sake of him telling his story and there was zero exploration besides what the story offered which was minimal at best .
It just didn't feel like d&d at all to me
Unfortunately, there only seems to be one based upon BECMI/Rules Cyclopedia: Dark Dungeons. Which honestly kind of removes one of the key features of BECMI, the basic set gave you everything you need for dungeon crawls, from combat rules to mapping advice, the expert added wilderness exploration in a digestible chunk, same with companion and ruling, etc.
Maybe I should make my own system...
I don't fully understand. I like Dark Dungeons very much. Don't you think it's a good RC clone? It seems to me it is RC but more organized and with Immortals (hence we are "back to BECMI", while the RC is icky BECM). Is that not cool?
All the best,
V
@@vinimagus I honestly enjoy Dark Dungeons and really don't have any real problem with it. What I'm saying is that the Box set system BECMI had, by its nature, broke the systems down into digestible chuncks for new players. All-in-one rulebooks are fine, but they do kind of miss out on accessibility for new players.
Dude that Sigil map is siiiick.
I recommend an old school game made by SPI called Dragon Quest. It is classic fantasy and a d100 system. there are no classes or alignments. It was bought out by TSR in the early 90,s and they pretty much killed it, but if you can find 1st edition it IMHO is the best as it has an action point system like fallout 1 and 2.
BlueHack (I don't use the writers attribute rolling rules)
+ Narcosa
+ Caverns of Thracia
= Fun Gaming
My Favorite OSR is Hackmaster 4th Ed. Super fun!!
It should be mentioned that Troika! Without art is free or you can give a tip $ to the creator if you like the game, or even better, buy the art version! The White Hack's PDF is now on sale at Drivethru as well!
Watching this video in 2024. Just getting into old school dnd. I wonder how some new games would fit into these categories: like Knave 2e, Cairn, and Shadowdark.
Nice intro, although someone coming from 5e or 3.5 might not know what B/X means. What I really need is a revised retroclone of AD&D2, to use with all their amazing settings.
You probably know by now but if it's ADnD 2e retroclone then For Gold and Glory is what you want.
@@hoogmonster Yeah, but that's not really a retroclone is just ad&d2e re-packaged (probably there are some variant rules that i missed), but you can just go and play the original one.
Hello, Ben. Love the channel so far. I wanted yo ask 9f you have raf or played Castles & Crusades? This game predates the OSR, but is the first case of using OGL to emulate old-school D&D, specifically AD&D 1E. It utilizes the good mechanical innovations of 3.5 ro create a new system. I'd love to hear your thoghts on C&C.
I still find it hard to pass up Lamentations of the Flame Princes. 'Delving Deeper' is good too. Castle and Crusades has a real AD&D feel (in fact the castles and crusades GMs-guid is better then any other imo). Lastly "Five Ancient Kingdoms" is sweet too. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4th ed is an excellent old school rpg with a new school system. Talislanta: A true OSR game that isn't D&D yet is still a D20 game - it's pdfs are free and its awesome I Love your 'Spell Sword' and wish you would pick that up and develop. Talisman Adventures is a new school production but is super Old School. For Babies first rpg Lone Wolf Adventure game is perfect.
EZD6 is worth a mention.
I decided to peruse TROIKA! mainly to check out the art, and just realized that it is Book of the New Sun inspired! I think you should have mentioned that as it will be a BIG draw for Gene Wolfe fans.
I am sad that Beyond the Wall didn't make the cut.
Have you done a review of Torchbearer?
Maze rats is excellent. I use it to play with my nieces every once in a while.
Love black hack but have not managed to get a game in yet. Have mostly been running short games of OSE. Do you include DCC in the mix of OSR or is it too modern with its 3.x roots?
this channel is awesome