Just curious as to what everyone thinks the absolute best works of the movement are. Core rules, supplements, whatever.

Personally if we are talking rules I think Labyrinth Lord just hits a spot of being so well polished it's amazing, and DCC is a great new take on old things.

Supplements wise Yoon-Suin has really stood out to me, Vornheim as well. The d30 companions are pretty nifty as well.

Funny enough, I just posted about Domains at War in another thread. I'd add it to this list, particularly the Campaigns book, which covers everything from raising an army, to strategic manoeuvring, scouting, espionage, different types of engagements, pursuit, sieges, heroes and how PCs can have an impact and potentially turn the tide, the effects of magic, and, of course, resolving battles (the version in the Domains at War: Campaigns book is theatre-of-the-mind, a la War Machine from BECMI, the version in the Domains at War: Battles book is hex-and-counter, a la Battle System). For my money it's far and away the best treatment of warfare in D&D-type games out there.

Full disclosure: I was a backer on the Kickstarter.

Other supplements on my list would be Vornheim by Zak Smith (weird fantasy cities and generating them), Tales of the Dungeonesque & Grotesque (gothic horror tidbits) by Jack Shear, and Red Tide and Scarlet Heroes both published by Sine Nomine (the former for sandbox creation, the latter for solo PCs; I was a Kickstarter backer on the latter).

Picking a particular ruleset (i.e. Labyrinth Lord), on the other hand, is a lot trickier. It really just comes down to preference. I love Adventurer Conqueror King System for all the stuff it does that other OSR rulesets don't, but someone else might hate it for those very same reasons. I'm sure if this thread ran long enough, you could just end up with a list of every OSR ruleset in existence. Still, if I had to pick, I'd include both ACKS and DCC, both for what they do that other rulesets don't.

Quote from: Bobloblah;844073Funny enough, I just posted about Domains at War in another thread. I'd add it to this list, particularly the Campaigns book, which covers everything from raising an army, to strategic manoeuvring, scouting, espionage, different types of engagements, pursuit, sieges, heroes and how PCs can have an impact and potentially turn the tide, the effects of magic, and, of course, resolving battles (the version in the Domains at War: Campaigns book is theatre-of-the-mind, a la War Machine from BECMI, the version in the Domains at War: Battles book is hex-and-counter, a la Battle System). For my money it's far and away the best treatment of warfare in D&D-type games out there.

Full disclosure: I was a backer on the Kickstarter.

Other supplements on my list would be Vornheim by Zak Smith (weird fantasy cities and generating them), Tales of the Dungeonesque & Grotesque (gothic horror tidbits) by Jack Shear, and Red Tide and Scarlet Heroes both published by Sine Nomine (the former for sandbox creation, the latter for solo PCs; I was a Kickstarter backer on the latter).

Picking a particular ruleset (i.e. Labyrinth Lord), on the other hand, is a lot trickier. It really just comes down to preference. I love Adventurer Conqueror King System for all the stuff it does that other OSR rulesets don't, but someone else might hate it for those very same reasons. I'm sure if this thread ran long enough, you could just end up with a list of every OSR ruleset in existence. Still, if I had to pick, I'd include both ACKS and DCC, both for what they do that other rulesets don't.

Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?

Deep Carbon Observatory

The entire Sine Nomine line of products. Great stuff.

Quote from: Arkansan;844086Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?

Domains at War: Campaigns covers raising armies, recruitment difficulties, equipment, construction (siege engines, circumvallation, etc.), moving armies, supplying armies, reconnaissance, intelligence, invasions, conquering, occupying, and pillaging domains, strategic situations (i.e. catching an army on the march, head-on engagement, encircling a rear-guard, etc.), heroes in battle, sieges, blockades, bombardment, siege-mining, assaults, subversion, spying, increasing or decreasing the scale, the vagaries of war (i.e. battlefield conditions and occurrences), command, morale, casualties, desertion... oh, and battles (in a theatre-of-the-mind, BECMI War Machine kind of way, while still allowing for direct PC involvement at the standard RPG scale). You could run an entire fantasy-RPG warfare campaign with this book.

Domains at War: Battles covers fighting hex-and-counter battles, including multiple scales, terrain, magic items and spellcasting, sieges, heroes/PCs, and building custom units from a creature(s) or (N)PCs RPG stats. The latter is extremely useful even if you're using the more abstract battle resolution from Campaigns. The system in Battles is an extremely slick hex-and-counter (or miniature, if you're so inclined) wargame that integrates seamlessly with ACKS (or, with a little more effort, other D&D family RPGs). I can see switching between this and the more abstract version from Campaigns depending on the importance of a given battle.

Both of these books are designed with ACKS in mind, but mostly refer to universal (to D&D) concepts, such as HD, AC, hp, chance to hit a given AC, level, etc. There is some small amount of effort involved with using them with a non-ACKS ruleset, but I don't think it's so great an effort as to devalue how good these books are just because you're not playing ACKS. Now, having said this, I haven't personally tried to play Domains at War with a non-ACKS ruleset, I'm merely saying I don't foresee any major difficulties if I were to attempt to do so. Particularly with Labyrinth Lord, which is built off the same B/X chassis.

Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.

LL is just B/X and honestly, not as good.

LotFP is pretentious crap and that goes doubly so for their modules.

And don't get me started on White Box.

Vornheim.
Death Frost Doom.
Carcosa.
Deep Carbon Observatory.
Petty Gods.
Yoon-suin.
Anomalous Subsurface Environment.
Planet Algol blog (Planet Algol setting material).
Hereticworks blog (Wermspittle setting material).
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.

Quote from: JeremyR;844104Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.

You know, I've seen you say this sort of thing several different places now, and really, it's drivel. So you've got a hate-on for ACKS, whatever, knock yourself out. But aside from the fact that ACKS is decidedly not BECMI (it's built off the skeleton of B/X, for starters, and then diverges from there; of course, if you'd actually read or played B/X, BECMI, and ACKS, you'd probably know this), the point here was about Domains at War. And guess what? Domains at War isn't BECMI, either; it does a better job of handling mass combat than either War Machine or Battle System ever did, as well as covering things neither of those ever considered. And I say that having played and enjoyed both of those TSR systems a great deal. I mean really, I have virtually every product ever published for BECMI sitting on my shelves. I've run it within the last few years. Claiming ACKS is 95% the same game is just hilariously stupid.

Don't like ACKS, or think all retro-clones suck ducks? More power to you. Parade your ignorance of facts around on the internet? Well...I guess it just helps you fit in.

BFRPG
LL
Pretty much anything Goodman Games has put out (they managed to make 3.5 feel a bit old school).
SWN (though I'll never actually run it)

Probably doesn't qualify but Barbarians of Lemuria is prime for OS open play.

ACKS
Dark Dungeons

I like all of it, man (except LotFP--for style reasons only)

Since the most popular best-selling OSR stuff is like Red & Pleasant Land and like Kevin Crawford's stuff and Matt Finch's adventures the only excuse I can see for "OSR is just regurgitations of TSR" meme still existing in 2015 that Kai Tave & co spew is some kind of epidemic of people being dropped on their head as a child.

It's like straight-up flat-earth shit at this point.

Anyway, I'll say Yoon-Suin is essential. The early Monsters & Manuals blog posts that led into it inspired most of what I did later and it demonstrates how far from default D&D you can go without just tipping over into gonzo. And it's a prime example of high-dose high-density high signal-to-noise setting design.

I am going to be curious how Red and Pleasant Land, and Glorantha do.  Both were OSR products that broke into the Ennies in a big way.

I will say now that I prefer R&PL to Vornheim.  It's not that Vornheim was bad (it wasn't) but that R&PL was more . . . inspiring.

Jst look at the photos and you will know: among the must have are:

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery

Dark Albion: The Rose War

Quote from: Arkansan;844086Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?

Well they're bundled anyway - you'd have to work at it to get one without the other now.  But the point of both is to return numbers similar to what you'd get if you ran a 1-1 scale, rpg-as-wargame session, so you're likely to only use one at a time.  I'm guessing Campaigns will see more use overall.

Quote from: JeremyR;844104Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.

LL is just B/X and honestly, not as good.

LotFP is pretentious crap and that goes doubly so for their modules.

And don't get me started on White Box.

I'm trying to square this with the blog linked in your sig.  How do you hold up?  Or do you?

The best of the OSR is Yoon-Suin, Red and Pleasant Land, Deep Carbon Observatory, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Vornheim, Qelong...  That's not TSR-type stuff.  But I don't know if we'd have gotten that without the broader OSR looking into what old school play was and how it hung together.  Maybe we would have - I'd be curious to know those authors' answer to that, but from the outside it's not apparent.

As someone who long ago got rid of (and I honestly can't remember how or what or why I did) his original D&D and AD&D books, I think OSRIC, LL, and S&W are all pretty great.  I don't see how they can be criticized for being clones of the original games when that is exactly what their authors describe them as.  It's note like they are advertised as fresh new creations.  However, I think they are improvements in most cases just in terms of organization and presentation and refinement.  They are also in many cases quite nice books!

As far as other stuff...Crawford's entire line is really worthy.  SWN, Other Dust, Silent Legions, Red Tide.  It's all really good.

Petty Gods is a ton of fun.  Stuff like Barrowmaze, Stonehell, Anomalous Subsurface Environment...all good.  Matt Finch's adventures are real good too.