Old-School Essentials - Classic Fantasy (OSE) - a review

[kuburanar]

Old-School Essentials (Classic Fantasy) is an absolutely killer clone of Moldvay/Cook/Marsh Basic/Expert, my "home" ruleset.

Pros:
+ Cleanest presentation of any D&D ruleset ever, even better than Moldvay.

+ Serial numbers are not filed off like every other OSR clone.

+ Use B/X rules without the clunky two book split.

+ Functional endpages.

+ Sound justifications given for minor rule changes/additions to B/X.

+ Super high quality hardcover print.

+ A lot of righteously old-school art (Matt Ray, Peter Mullen, Stefan Poag, et al).

Cons:
- A lot of unrighteously new-school art. When I think "Old-School", "Essential", and "Classic Fantasy" I think...
full color full/double page art, multiple times, in every section of the rules, not even old-school in style?
In a clone for a ruleset lauded for its economy and brevity? I wish Necrotic Gnome kept to line art in the interior,
and used larger pieces or single pages only where the layout allows it. Surely it would be a plus if the double-page
pieces were dropped, considering the smaller 6x9 format already pushes the page count way up over B/X. I know I'm
not alone when I say the art is a crucial (one might say essential) part of what defines old-school. It's like,
is this a Nintendo DS guidebook or an 80s TTRPG? (Get off my lawn, etc.)

- Font is roughly 0% old-school. I think the earlier iterations (B/X Essentials) used Souvenir or something close.
Makes sense to choose something neutral, but it would've been an easy way to score old-school points.

- Inclusion of ascending AC. Makes sense considering its popularity, but if you're not of a mind it just takes up space.
Target20 is the way (shout out to delta).

- Monster listings include save values rather than referencing class/level,
i.e. "SV D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (1)" instead of high purple gygaxian "F1".


Overall, OSE is outstandingly great and a dream OSR ruleset.
But it's forced me to realize the importance of the art, the tone.
One can play War Pigs on a ukulele, except the part when the sound starts.
Maybe I'll just glue stick the double-page art together.

Anyone else check these rules out yet?

[hamurai]

I have backed all their projects so far and I'm very happy with the results. I 100% agree with your Pros.

If they put doodle art into it, the new generation would probably not have been as enthusiastic about this project. While I'm not a fan of all the art in the OSE books, I think it still fits the overall tone of old school.

Personally, I'm put off (by now) by hard-to-read pseudo-old school fonts and text walls without page breaks. OSE structures its info very well, I think. And the fact that you can have either a huge tome with everything or several small booklets with parts of the info is a nice idea. In my group, the DM uses the tome, the players share the booklets.

[thomden]

OSE is all around the best retro-clone on just about every level.

I happen to love the art and graphic design, but then I'm a bit biased.

The digest format is cool and all, but I'd love to have OSE in the Rules Cyclopedia size.

[kuburanar]

@ hamurai
I suspect you are totally correct about the enthusiasm for the project.  Not everyone is into the old art.
Moldvay was a foundational ruleset for many, so maybe a truly-old-school OSE would have been big, but surely not as well-received as its current form.
After reading OSE and going back to the TSR rulesets the text walls are notably jarring.
My love for the OSE structure alone dwarfs any and all of the cons I listed.
And it's really cool to have the option of booklets vs. single book. That should've been in the Pro list.

@ thomden
I thought about putting the 6x9 format in the Con list for that reason.
A slightly skinny hardcover RC-size OSE would've been great.
But 6x9 almost evokes the 3LBBs, and takes up less space on the table.

[thomden]

There are times I like the 6x9 size and times I like the Letter size. I think to just sit down and read I prefer the larger. To have at the table the smaller size is handy.

[Deleted]

Black and white line art did appear often in classic D&D, yes... But the weird insistence that all osr products adhere to early 80's aesthetic baffles me. I enjoy that style of art but there's absolutely nothing wrong with glossy full page color paintings. I think of 2e AD&D and classic Runequest and to me those have a legit old school cred as well. It's also simply more marketable to a wider audience, and if one of the goals of a system like OSE is to sell b/x to a new audience, I'm all for putting more butts in the seat.

[geoffrey]

I have not seen the interior art of OSE, so I can have no opinion of it. What follows are my general observations regarding D&D art:

I'm OK with interior, full-color art of the right sort. I would love to see an old-school D&D clone with full-color Erol Otus art on every single page. But "pose for the camera, adventurer-chic" type art is a big turn-off to me.

[kuburanar]

@ ampleframework
100% re: butts in the seat. Also true about 2E - it was after my time, but still old-school. Like double-page Elmore? - hell yes.

@ geoffrey
If Erol Otus did all the art in OSE I'd be amped. Who could possibly be better suited for the task? To OSE's credit, the adventurer-chic stuff is confined to the double-page pieces, IIRC.

[thomden]

Oct 31, 2020 14:33:31 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

"pose for the camera, adventurer-chic" type art is a big turn-off to me.

This is the only "pose for the camera" piece of fantasy art that I like.

[Bastet1002]

I don't usually like color art in my OSR books. The problem is those of us who grew up with D&D played RPGs first and then computer games. The reverse is true for the modern gamer who likely played computer games first and then RPGs.

But I actually liked the old LL books art more than the art in OSE. That said, I can see from the discussion here how a lot of people really like OSE. The layout of OSE tables and information simply looks great.

But I am still waiting for a B/X OSR that is bold enough to throw away a few old rules. One of them is to wholly eliminate race limitations rather than putting something in a footnote or optional rule. Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy Oe and S&W:FMAG and games like that...

My feeling though is that a game like Basic Fantasy is probably will continue to be the best BXish game for me despite its less glossy layout. Also, it is accessible in terms cost, and open participation by interested community members.

That said, the new LL looks different enough that it might peak my interest, however.

[thomden]

I've been beating the drum that level caps and race/class limitations do not belong in the core rules. In a setting book, fine, if there is a reason in a particular fantasy world that a Halfling can't be a Magic-User or can't go higher than 6th level, alright for that world.

I think most here do not agree. It is one of those curmudgeonly sacred cows for some reason.

[Vile Traveller]

That's one of the freedoms I enjoyed when writing BLUEHOLME - everything above 3rd level is extrapolated, if there were no hints in Holmes's play record. His games never went that high level, so no level caps for me!

[thomden]

Dec 14, 2022 1:56:26 GMT -6 thomden said:

I think most here do not agree. It is one of those curmudgeonly sacred cows for some reason.

btw. I'm a curmudgeon too. You have to be or you end up in a stormy sea adrift in an ever changing sea of gray goo that has no standards.

ljoe pg mjlf pofe&e.

[cadriel]

So I'm not really a fan of OSE, and I've been trying to articulate exactly why. It's clearly well done for what it's trying to accomplish: a complete, unambiguous restatement of the B/X D&D rules, well organized and easy to access in game. But what I'm not sure is that this is the greatest thing for an old school game.

There was a general trend toward spelling more things out in detail as D&D went from the OD&D booklets, to Holmes, to Moldvay. And OSE represents that trend. Spells, for instance, are considerably more detailed. And for some people that's good, and for others it's not. I like the more concise descriptions in Swords & Wizardry, for instance, over the detailed rules and edge cases in Old School Essentials. It strikes me that the shorter versions of the rules are better for the referee who wants to decide how their own game works, and the longer versions are for the person who wants more done for them in advance.

For someone coming from 5e, of course, OSE is relatively light in many of its rules. It doesn't have page upon page of class abilities and so on. But I think B/X does have a lot more rulings made in advance for the referee, and that OSE winds up codifying them and making it an "official" way to do everything. Like with the aesthetic of the book, I think this is partly just psychological; having that 296 page book detailing all of these things makes it a lot more "official" seeming than in the little brown books or in the minimalist text of Swords & Wizardry.

But there are clearly a lot of people who dig it, so that's a question of taste. I still find that S&W is my preferred clone even though I'll acknowledge that OSE Is very thoroughly thought through in its presentation and layout and writing.

[Finarvyn]

I'd like to reopen this discussion. I've seen OSE at game stores and thus far have been able to resist the purchase. My thought is that I don't really need another edition and my group isn't into non-5E stuff at the moment anyway.

However, my local game store (which I really like to support) got an OSE boxed set in the other day, plus a DM screen, and now I'm really fixated on the thing. Sight unseen.

So I would like to hear more about the thing. I'll probably end up buying it, but I'd like to know beforehand what others think about the rules.

[cadriel]

Dec 17, 2022 7:26:46 GMT -6 Finarvyn said:

I'd like to reopen this discussion. I've seen OSE at game stores and thus far have been able to resist the purchase. My thought is that I don't really need another edition and my group isn't into non-5E stuff at the moment anyway.

However, my local game store (which I really like to support) got an OSE boxed set in the other day, plus a DM screen, and now I'm really fixated on the thing. Sight unseen.

So I would like to hear more about the thing. I'll probably end up buying it, but I'd like to know beforehand what others think about the rules.

The rules of OSE are almost exactly the B/X rules. In terms of what the rules actually are there is an almost negligible difference between using OSE and using reference copies of the Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert rules. The big thing that OSE has going for it is that it is written and laid out in a way that prioritizes clarity and in-game utility of the same rules. This means that, for instance, big paragraphs are broken down into bullet points, key terms are highlighted, and so on. It's not a fun-to-read game text, but people who use it like its emphasis on functionality, down to the end papers.

[ochrejelly]

As said above, it’s said to be an exact clone rules wise of b/x (there are a few ‘clarifications’ I can’t recall off the top of my head that I disagreed with). The organization and layout are fantastic, so it’s very good for an at table rules reference, but I agree that it is nowhere near as enjoyable to read as the original rules.

[hamurai]

Finarvyn  you might want to take a look at the free basic rules here: www.drivethrurpg.com/product/272802/OldSchool-Essentials-Basic-Rules

So you can see the layout, how it's written and presented, the artwork etc.

The boxed set has the booklets of OSE, not the all-in-one tome.
It has some space left for you to add other booklets later, for example the Advanced classes backported from AD&D, or some adventure modules. (I recommend Winter's Daughter, I ran it at a con and it was great fun.)

Personally, I prefer B/X slightly over any other edition. I have an old Basic set for the fun of it, for nostalgia, to flip through the pages.... But at the table I prefer a cleaned-up version. A product that lets you reference stuff quickly. The OSE booklets are a good way to do this, the caster can keep their Spells booklet, someone might want to look up their character class, another booklet. The DM has the Rules booklet maybe, or looks up stuff on the DM screen, which is really good in my opinion. It has nice artwork to look at for the players, and nothing but clean info for the DM.

I guess if I had to find a bad thing about OSE, it would be the "clean" aspect. If you're used to the sometimes charmingly confusing old booklets, the unprofessional artwork, the small text and walls after walls of it, and you like all this - well, OSE doesn't have that. Which is good when actually playing, in my book.


If you see the old Basic box sets as a piece of art which takes some time to make sense of, then OSE is more of a modern tool which is easy to use. B/X for the younger generations, I guess.

[machfront]

Marv… I can add very little to what’s been said already, as everyone has wonderfully and fully expressed the great and less than great of OSE.
I love it, and it’s a great resource..and attractive and solid and quality (physically) resource…
But…ya know what?
After all these years using B and X….as much as I wanted it all put together…I’ve found…I’m so old that…I already know where everything is already! LOL!
I do better with my originals. Haha!

Anyway.
You’ll dig it regardless and your players will find it valuable….if…IF your main/go-to game is B/X.