OSR I never should have picked up Old School Essentials…

[overgeeked]

If you're looking for something like Spelljammer in your OSE, check out Planar Compass. Good stuff.

 

[Blue Orange]

Possibly she was playing someone's homebrew? People like to customize their OSR games a lot from what I can see.

 

[overgeeked]

Possibly she was playing someone's homebrew? People like to customize their OSR games a lot from what I can see.

Or the DM simply let creativity and enthusiasm flourish.

 

[deganawida]

Either case works for me. I'd just have preferred it spelled out as homebrew. I get she was just playing, but had I already not purchased it, I'd have been a little miffed at misrepresentation of the rules.

Regardless of my nitpickiness, I really did like her video and how excited she was about OSE.

 

[kenada]

I don't see what's harder about "roll a d20, add a number that should be written on your character sheet, does it meet the target number?" except in cases where that "should" isn't met. Which I get if you're playing with, like, very young kids, but otherwise that's a player problem. Plus it lets you vary the difficulty. Why would every secret door be equally difficult to find? I'm not necessarily convinced that d20-plus-modifiers was the ideal choice, but give me some kind of unified, scalable mechanic any day of the week.

I agree with your first part (that OSE has too many ways to use dice), but I don’t think variable difficulty is necessarily a good thing. It makes things more complicated for the referee when creating content, contributing to a perception that it’s challenging, so one should use pre-written content because it’s easier. Systems featuring variable difficulty also tend to have progression treadmills, so effective improvements in character ability are actually much less than what the raw numbers suggest, assuming char ops doesn’t ruin everything. I’d much rather dispense with the extra complexity and go with a number that’s on the characters’ sheets (or a static difficulty, either works).

 

[Weiley31]

Just a quick question, with the Elf, 2 in 6 chance means you rolls a D6 and if you roll a 1 or 2, you spot the hidden door or what not?

 

[overgeeked]

Just a quick question, with the Elf, 2 in 6 chance means you rolls a D6 and if you roll a 1 or 2, you spot the hidden door or what not?

Exactly.

Old-School Essentials, Classic Fantasy Rules Tome or Player's Rules Tome, or Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome. p6.

"X-in-6 Rolls
Some rules specify an X-in-6 chance of success (e.g. 2-in-6, 3-in-6, etc.). This indicates that 1d6 should be rolled and the result compared against the specified chance. If the roll is less than or equal to the chance of success, the check succeeds."

 

[Yora]

I've been working on a sandbox campaign for the last weeks, and recently started to wonder why I wanted to run it in 5th edition in the first place. OSE just seems so much neater.

I think a big advantage with OSE (and of course B/X) is that it's lightweigt nature makes it particularly well suited for improvisation and procedurally generated situations. When you realize you need an encounter with a certain type of monster right now, you can put it together in a minute. No need to go through a whole monster description to check what abilities it has and how they work, and how that all translates into useful tactics. If some kind of challenge comes up that you had not thought of before, there's not much in the way of special rules that you could look up. You could of course just make something up on the spot with other editions as well, but I always find it really annoying when I know a mechnic for this situation exists but I would not use it because I'd have to look it up. Making something up that's not covered by the rules feels very different than making something up for something that already has a default rule.

I feel OSE is so simple that when the players have a random encounter with goblins and decide to track a fleeing goblin back to its lair, I could put that lair and the rest of the goblin tribe together while the players are still talking and have it ready by the time they enter the cave entrance in the forest.
Even with the simplicity of 5th edition, I think I would have to take a 15 minute break for that. Which isn't so great if that's the kind of thing that happens once or twice every time you play.
The super simple rules open up new possibilities for running a campaign.

 

[Musing Mage]

I've been working on a sandbox campaign for the last weeks, and recently started to wonder why I wanted to run it in 5th edition in the first place. OSE just seems so much neater.

I think a big advantage with OSE (and of course B/X) is that it's lightweigt nature makes it particularly well suited for improvisation and procedurally generated situations. When you realize you need an encounter with a certain type of monster right now, you can put it together in a minute. No need to go through a whole monster description to check what abilities it has and how they work, and how that all translates into useful tactics. If some kind of challenge comes up that you had not thought of before, there's not much in the way of special rules that you could look up. You could of course just make something up on the spot with other editions as well, but I always find it really annoying when I know a mechnic for this situation exists but I would not use it because I'd have to look it up. Making something up that's not covered by the rules feels very different than making something up for something that already has a default rule.

I feel OSE is so simple that when the players have a random encounter with goblins and decide to track a fleeing goblin back to its lair, I could put that lair and the rest of the goblin tribe together while the players are still talking and have it ready by the time they enter the cave entrance in the forest.
Even with the simplicity of 5th edition, I think I would have to take a 15 minute break for that. Which isn't so great if that's the kind of thing that happens once or twice every time you play.
The super simple rules open up new possibilities for running a campaign.

Yes indeed. One of my major gripes about 5e is how unwieldy the statblocks are. In old school games, they are so simple. One line in my notebook tells me everything I need.

I too am really feeling the pull to OSE. I've even suggested converting over to it with one of my AD&D groups and they're half inclined... Regardless of that group's status, I do plan to run an OSE game in the near future too.

Maybe a video comparing and contrasting about the 3 major systems I run (AD&D 1e, 5e, and soon OSE).

*edit: Also really champing at the bit for my OSE materials from the kickstarter... The PDFs should be coming my way any day now.

 

[LoganRan]

Yes indeed. One of my major gripes about 5e is how unwieldy the statblocks are. In old school games, they are so simple. One line in my notebook tells me everything I need.

I too am really feeling the pull to OSE. I've even suggested converting over to it with one of my AD&D groups and they're half inclined... Regardless of that group's status, I do plan to run an OSE game in the near future too.

Maybe a video comparing and contrasting about the 3 major systems I run (AD&D 1e, 5e, and soon OSE).

*edit: Also really champing at the bit for my OSE materials from the kickstarter... The PDFs should be coming my way any day now.

Do you have a YouTube channel (and willing to share it)? I would be interested in seeing your thoughts on this subject.