Looking for the Old School: Tell my group what to play

FATDRAGONGAMES · Feb 17, 2009

I gotta chime in for Castles & Crusades as well. It's kind of a 'best of all worlds' situation, 1E feel and rules with some modern fixes thrown in.

Korgoth · Feb 17, 2009

Like Philotomy, I'm into OD&D (1974). It is not entirely like 1E, though... it's a toolkit for designing your own custom fantasy game. If you want to give it a look, either buy the PDFs from WOTC (I think they're on DriveThru or whatever that's callled) or check out the latest retro-clone, "Swords and Wizardry WhiteBox":

S&W Whitebox

It may or may not be to your liking, but you should check it out. But I'll also echo Philotomy and say that if what you're aiming for is exactly the feel of 1E, use 1E or OSRIC.

The old school game I'm currently running is Empire of the Petal Throne (1975), a close relative of OD&D that went a slightly different direction with D&D than did 1E. It is also worth checking out, though it isn't free. The game is great fun:

Tita's House of Games | Tékumel Items

S'mon · Feb 17, 2009

I'm having great fun running a Castles & Crusades "Classic Greyhawk modules" campaign, for which it's perfect. The unified SIEGE mechanic makes GMing a breeze and is easy for new players to grasp (attribute mod + level vs target number).

jdrakeh · Feb 17, 2009

Braunstein!

maddman75 · Feb 17, 2009

Its not fantasy, but you could always go for good ol' Call of Cthulhu. The game has barely changed since the 70s. I'm running Shadows of Yog-Sothoth right now, one of the old school mega-adventures. Copyright 1982 baby. Really, hardly any changes, and those that are there are easily worked around. All CoC feels old school to me. I mean last game the PCs put out an ad for more help (new PCs) and within an hour one of them had been shot in the face with a shotgun and the other had gone psychosomatically blind. What's not old school about that.

Remathilis · Feb 17, 2009

If it was a short-term game, I'd highly suggest the D&D Rule's Cyclopedia.

A longer-term game would be Castles & Crusades.

Nostalgia aside, I see no reason to go back to AD&D 1e or 2e.

smootrk · Feb 17, 2009

Basic Fantasy RPG (Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game) is a worthy option. It is my favorite retro-inspired game... yet it includes some of the most intuitive improvements of the newer editions.... and so very easy to mod to suit your own ideas of how the game should be or include.

Man in the Funny Hat · Feb 17, 2009

Old School: It ain't what you play - it's how you play it.

Aw heck, I'm just gonna put that in my sig.

tylerthehobo · Feb 17, 2009

Oh, we certainly do play a lot of CoC. We were looking for something of a fantasy clone of old school games that's currently supported. No doubt we can just crack out the old books, but we were looking for something "new" that felt "old".

Sounds like a lot of votes for C&C...

Grimstaff · Feb 17, 2009

Not knocking C&C at all - its a great system! - but it does have enough modern conventions to somewhat inhibit the old-school vibe, such as skill checks.

I'd heartily recommend Swords&Wizardry. Based on OD&D, it should give your players the authentic old-school vibe they're looking for, and OD&D rules are just different enough from B/X/1E that it won't be "same ol same ol" either.