I just bought the OSE Tome pdf file this weekend. 

I'm not planning on playing it, but since it's so popular I want to know what's the big deal.

First impressions are good, but I'm still more likely to try Basic Fantasy with some of the expansion options like more classes, or skills. 

That being said, I get why OSE is popular.  It is a good set of rules, only missing out because BF books are so cheap, and I dislike race as class.  Or I am more likely to try weirder stuff like Star Adventurer or Shinobi and Samurai.

It is just how the OSR scene is.  There are too many good games to pick from.  It's great, right?

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 20, 2023, 03:02:25 PM
I just bought the OSE Tome pdf file this weekend. 

I'm not planning on playing it, but since it's so popular I want to know what's the big deal.

First impressions are good, but I'm still more likely to try Basic Fantasy with some of the expansion options like more classes, or skills. 

That being said, I get why OSE is popular.  It is a good set of rules, only missing out because BF books are so cheap, and I dislike race as class.  Or I am more likely to try weirder stuff like Star Adventurer or Shinobi and Samurai.

It is just how the OSR scene is.  There are too many good games to pick from.  It's great, right?

Yes, the sheer number of options is great.

Up until the whole OGL tempest, it appeared to me that OSE was the current OSR clone champion. Now things will probably be up for grabs again.

Honestly though I SMH when I read about folks in recent years who prefer some variant of Basic / Expert D&D to 1e Advanced. When 1e AD&D came out I didn't know anyone who'd buy or even play one of the Basic game line rules sets. Maybe because I'm older, and my contemporaries weren't introduced to the hobby through a Basic boxed set. Sure, anecdotal, but I was part of a huge gaming community and played with up to seven different groups at a time in those years, in multiple states. Why play the version written for kids? I guess there's a nostalgia element for that generation.

I'd prefer to play an original game to a re-written clone or even a house-ruled variant. So while I'd still play the occasional OD&D game just for a lark, I play 1e AD&D for campaign-length fun by preference; but I'd never play anything on the Basic or Holmes side. As I've written many times, I like Gygax' 1e AD&D for the races, classes, alignments, even the fiddly bits like AC adjustments and psionics and all the rest. I wouldn't toss those out and play the Basic line.

Many of the recent OSR clones may be based on a non-1e chassis, but if I play them it's because they bring something really new to the table. I'm thinking of things like LotFP, Ghastly Affair, Mad Monks of Kwantoom, Apes Victorious or Warriors of the Red Planet.

I acknowledge the effort to play old-school and not give Hasbro any money. Great sentiment. But I teach players 1e AD&D, and provide them with the reference material they need. If some of those folks wanted to move on to recruiting their own players and running their own campaigns, and thought a retro-clone would be a good option, I'd steer them towards a true 1e AD&D clone for all the practical reasons folks have touched on.

But not a Basic clone. SMH.

I wrote a comparison of "Basic" clones here. TBH, I think games such as, say, LotFP are more interesting, as they at least try to fix some B/X mistakes.

OSE advanced is another beast. I think it is a great game in the sense that has lots of options and a simple system. I do think it would work better in stronger chassis (e.g., LotFP or even LL) instead of just B/X.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-glance-at-basic-d-bx-and-some-clones.html

Quote from: weirdguy564 on February 20, 2023, 03:02:25 PM
First impressions are good, but I'm still more likely to try Basic Fantasy with some of the expansion options like more classes, or skills.

BFRPG is great, and has great free supplements. Equip Emporium is a must have.

Other than that, I wrote a book ok B/X feats; the idea is allowing rangers, barbs, monks, even warlords using only the four basic classes. And it has rules for class separated from race. Works with OSE, BFRPG, LL, etc.

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2023/01/a-glance-at-basic-d-bx-and-some-clones.html

(I hope you guys don't mind me pimping my stuff again - I mentioned it six months ago, when it was only an idea).

Quote from: Baron on February 24, 2023, 06:21:17 PM
Honestly though I SMH when I read about folks in recent years who prefer some variant of Basic / Expert D&D to 1e Advanced, though. When 1e AD&D came out I didn't know anyone who'd buy or even play one of the Basic game line rules sets. Maybe because I'm older, and my contemporaries weren't introduced to the hobby through a Basic boxed set. Sure, anecdotal, but I was part of a huge gaming community and played with up to seven different groups at a time in those years, in multiple states. Why play the version written for kids?

I thought like that when I was fourteen, too.

I mean, at the end of the day, OSE is quite literally just BX D&D. It all depends on if you like BX (which I do). If you do, you will, if you don't, you won't.

Quote from: Baron on February 24, 2023, 06:21:17 PM
Up until the whole OGL tempest, it appeared to me that OSE was the current OSR clone champion. Now things will probably be up for grabs again.

Honestly though I SMH when I read about folks in recent years who prefer some variant of Basic / Expert D&D to 1e Advanced, though. When 1e AD&D came out I didn't know anyone who'd buy or even play one of the Basic game line rules sets. Maybe because I'm older, and my contemporaries weren't introduced to the hobby through a Basic boxed set. Sure, anecdotal, but I was part of a huge gaming community and played with up to seven different groups at a time in those years, in multiple states. Why play the version written for kids? I guess there's a nostalgia element for that generation.

I'd prefer to play an original game to a re-written clone or even a house-ruled variant. So while I'd still play the occasional OD&D game just for a lark, I play 1e AD&D for campaign-length fun by preference; but I'd never play anything on the Basic or Holmes side. As I've written many times, I like Gygax' 1e AD&D for the races, classes, alignments, even the fiddly bits like AC adjustments and psionics and all the rest. I wouldn't toss those out and play the Basic line.

Many of the recent OSR clones may be based on a non-1e chassis, but if I play them it's because they bring something really new to the table. I'm thinking of things like LotFP, Ghastly Affair, Mad Monks of Kwantoom, Apes Victorious or Warriors of the Red Planet.

I acknowledge the effort to play old-school and not give Hasbro any money. Great sentiment. But I teach players 1e AD&D, and provide them with the reference material they need. If some of those folks wanted to move on to recruiting their own players and running their own campaigns, and thought a retro-clone would be a good option, I'd steer them towards a true 1e AD&D clone for all the practical reasons folks have touched on.

But not a Basic clone. SMH.

I started in the mid-80s and pretty much everyone I knew read the Red Mentzer boxed set even if their ultimate intention was to play AD&D. I believe my introduction to D&D was basic, but I was young and only saw things from the player side of the screen (I do recall the module looked like a basic module but could be wrong). Mostly by 1990 the groups I was in all used AD&D 2E. But there was still a substantial fanbase for basic, and the rules cyclopedia in particular. We had one GM in my high school who strictly ran D&D using the rules cyclopedia. I also remember joining a game with some seniors who I normally didn't play with, who used basic as well.

Quote from: S'mon on February 25, 2023, 06:00:29 AM

Quote from: Baron on February 24, 2023, 06:21:17 PM
Honestly though I SMH when I read about folks in recent years who prefer some variant of Basic / Expert D&D to 1e Advanced, though. When 1e AD&D came out I didn't know anyone who'd buy or even play one of the Basic game line rules sets. Maybe because I'm older, and my contemporaries weren't introduced to the hobby through a Basic boxed set. Sure, anecdotal, but I was part of a huge gaming community and played with up to seven different groups at a time in those years, in multiple states. Why play the version written for kids?

I thought like that when I was fourteen, too.

My point exactly. I was in my twenties.

I purchased the OSE Classic Fantasy Rules Tome; specifically because I wanted to own BX in a hardcover, and to compare it directly to 1E AD&D.

Personally, I also love the handy, digest-sized books.

As for the AD&D/BECMI divide, where I grew up, it was probably about a 75/25 split in favor of AD&D.  I had one friend who was way into BECMI so we always played that.  When the gazetteers started coming out, I got them all, and through most of college that was my primary game.  In the 90s, during grad school I switched to MERP & CoC and ran those with a few exceptions until around 2001.  Then it was back into AD&D & some BECMI & WHFRP 2e.  Finally learned about the OSR in 2016.

But it is rather interesting to see how B/X-derivatives came to be so huge in the OSR market when a lot of the evidence suggests that AD&D was the "bigger" game back in the day.  Not sure what the actual sales figures were as the places I shopped always had both.

Quote from: Persimmon on February 25, 2023, 04:06:27 PM

But it is rather interesting to see how B/X-derivatives came to be so huge in the OSR market when a lot of the evidence suggests that AD&D was the "bigger" game back in the day.  Not sure what the actual sales figures were as the places I shopped always had both.

Usage of AD&D and preference for exactly AD&D are not quite inline.  There's at least 4 broad camps:

- Thought AD&D added rules and options in all the right places.
- Thought some of the AD&D rules and options were great, others not so much, but it merged with a B/X game alright.
- Still preferred B/X, but there was some bits and pieces of AD&D to port over.
- No thank you, B/X is the preference.

That's not even taking into account those who got it because it was the latest thing, or because of those nifty covers, or only because of the monster selection. Or liked a specific setting and went with the default rules for it.  Let alone those who started in one of those categories and ended up in another, maybe with stops in a third along the way.

I've probably had some form of D&D as my first choice for most of my campaigns somewhere between 60% to 80% of the campaigns that got pitched to players as something I'd seriously consider doing. (That doesn't map to hours prepared and played, because some of the non-D&D stuff has run a long time.)  D&D is pretty well centered for what I want to run.  Yet, I don't ever recall a single campaign where the rule set was a perfect fit.  There were times when I'd just ignore the parts that didn't fit as more trouble to change than to gloss over, but I was still aware that they didn't fit.  I suspect I'm far from alone in that experience.

I got OSE (both Classic Fantasy and Advanced Fantasy) after watching the YouTube channel, 3d6 Down the Line. They did a campaign through the Dolmenwood, which I quite enjoyed), and are currently running through The Halls of Arden Vul. They use the OSE advanced rules, with, I think, some house rules that the DM created.

It was the Dolmenwood setting that drew me in, with its goat people and strange beers and unappetizing cheeses. It had its own setting specific classes like friar and hunter. There are saints days and bonuses to your character depending on his birthday. Unfortunately, none of the products available for sale right now includes this stuff. I saw someone upthread mention that Dolmenwood was being changed to its own game.

The appeal of B/X style rules is the simplicity. It may "be for kids", but, ironically, I don't have the time, now, to dig into AD&D to learn the rules properly or to create adventures and run them. I use the Moldvay rules or the Rules Cyclopedia whenever I do get a chance to play with the tax deductions. They are simple to learn and run, and they are the only set of rules that I know that have step-by-step instructions for building a dungeon.

Quote from: cavalier973 on March 01, 2023, 07:19:48 AMt may "be for kids"

Nahh, that's some crap we came up with when we moved to AD&D and told everyone else still playing B/X or BECMI they were playing a baby game.

I think that if Drive-Thru would make Basic and Expert D&D Print-on-Demand the retroclones would not be as popular.