Sell Me on OSE

[Malmuria]

I still overall find a lot to like about Dolmenwood, such as its more localized dark fairytale Europe feel. This world-building detail, however minor, was a bit off-putting of a design choice. Also this is no way detracts from my recommendation of OSE.

why does everything have to turn into a gender based attack?

@Aldarc does not seem to be attacking OSE, but rather giving it a recommendation while noting, for a prospective buyer, one small aspect of the setting that they found to be off-putting. And it might be off-putting on any number of accounts; if I were playing OSE with my nephew, for example, I would likely exclude that bit of setting detail.

 

[Malmuria]

Along these lines, Gavin Norman rewrote the intro to Winter's Daughter to make it less...intense. I much prefer the new intro to the adventure, especially as it is a good starting point or one shot for OSE

Winter's Daughter — Revised Initial Encounter

If you have the PDF version of the Winter's Daughter adventure from DriveThruRPG, you might have noticed an update a while back with couple of changes: The interior art and layout are now in colour. (The original version of the adventure had a purely black & white interior.) The cover now...

necroticgnome.com

 

[Umbran]

But over here in Europe the whole discourse is a lot less, shall we say, "hysterical", and more rational and grounded.

Mod Note:
If you want to have a rational discussion, do not start it by insulting people.

 

[overgeeked]

Alright, people really seem to love OSE as an alternative to B/X and other early versions of the game and retroclones. If you are one of those people, tell me what I should get OSE versus using my Rules Cyclopedia or my old B/X books? Also, tell me about the much lauded support for OSE, especially support in the weird fantasy/genre mashup space, if it exists.

Note that this isn't going to be the hardest sell in the world. I have some extra Christmas money, but I want to know why folks love it so much.

To bring things back around a bit...

OSE is as direct a retroclone as is legally possible to make of B/X. It has no content from the BECMI line or the RC, as far as I know. As mentioned, the books are new and designed in a great, easy to read layout. A few minor things that were inconsistent between B and X were smoothed out and they include charts for using either old-style descending AC or the newer ascending AC. They also make great use of space by printing on the end papers. Usually the charts and tables you'd have with a DM's screen.

There are a lot of adventures and 3PP writing for OSE now. It's kinda staggering for a "small" retroclone. Even a few award-winning adventures. Dolmenwood is great, except a few bits that have already been mentioned. Halls of the Blood King is a great adventure. The Incandescent Grottoes is another great one. As is The Isle of the Plangent Mage. The thing I love about OSR games, especially OSE, is the level of weird that goes into it. I really miss that. As mentioned, Planar Compass is their Planescape / Spelljammer mashup.

If you want pure B/X, pick up the Classic Fantasy black books. The Rules Tome is all you need as it contains all the rules for the game. The Player's Rules Tome is handy to pass around the table and only includes the player-facing rules, so no monsters or treasures, etc.

They recently did Advanced Fantasy. Which takes the races, classes, spells, etc from AD&D and fits them to the B/X rules. You can have either race as class per B/X or have race and class separate per AD&D. It's important to note you'll need both the Player's Tome and the Referee's Tome as the full contents are split between the two books, akin to the PHB and DMG.

There are some quibbles about the conversion of AD&D stuff to the Advanced Fantasy rules. Like the paladin's stats. In AD&D the paladin needs a 17 CHA, but in Advanced Fantasy only needing a 9 CHA. As far as I can tell there's a few oddities like that, but you're not dealing with wildly different abilities between AD&D classes/races and Advanced Fantasy classes/race. A paladin's a paladin and a barbarian's a barbarian.

ETA: To be clear. Advanced Fantasy has everything Classic Fantasy does plus their conversions of AD&D stuff into the B/X rules.

 

[Aldarc]

To bring things back around a bit...

Thank you.

There are a lot of adventures and 3PP writing for OSE now. It's kinda staggering for a "small" retroclone. Even a few award-winning adventures. Dolmenwood is great, except a few bits that have already been mentioned.

Just to add more regarding what I like about Dolmenwood: While Dolmenwood is written so that one can play the pre-existing B/X (and converted AD&D) classes (e.g., Fighter, Bard, Ranger, etc.), it also makes more genre-appropriate variants that help capture the medieval fairytale flavor of the setting better: e.g., Knight, Minstrel, Friar, Hunter, etc.

Halls of the Blood King is a great adventure. The Incandescent Grottoes is another great one. As is The Isle of the Plangent Mage. The thing I love about OSR games, especially OSE, is the level of weird that goes into it. I really miss that. As mentioned, Planar Compass is their Planescape / Spelljammer mashup.

Winter's Daughter (for Dolmenwood) also gets a lot of praise as an adventure.

 

[schneeland]

Another nice thing about OSE is that it is apparently popular enough to receive translations. The German version has just been announced and according to the Necrotic Gnome info page, there are also versions in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

This also includes some of the adventures (e.g. Winter's Daughter is available in German and more is to come with the above-mentioned translation).

 

[Nikosandros]

Another nice thing about OSE is that it is apparently popular enough to receive translations. The German version has just been announced and according to the Necrotic Gnome info page, there are also versions in French, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

This also includes some of the adventures (e.g. Winter's Daughter is available in German and more is to come with the above-mentioned translation).

In Italy it has indeed proven quite popular.

 

[Mezuka]

OSE combines the B and X books in a single volume with crisp and clean modern-day graphic design. The author also fixes some omissions and inserts minor errata that are explained at the end of the book. He offers ascending AC and other optional rules. I also bought Advanced OSE, which separates race and class but also gives you extra race-as-class character choices.

The character sheet is really well made. It has useful boxes to record important info about exploration skills, like finding secret doors. Something the original D&D sheets didn't have. In other words, it's hard to forget about them. It is a better teaching tool when explaining how to play Original Basic D&D to those who never played the game.

I've never played beyond level 14. At that juncture, characters retired to their castle, hired new adventurers to go out and defend the kingdom, while they are miserably caught up in court intrigue, paying the bills and looking for spies!

I really enjoyed reading it and using it. OSE is a great addition to my collection.

 

[kenada]

There are a lot of adventures and 3PP writing for OSE now. It's kinda staggering for a "small" retroclone. Even a few award-winning adventures. Dolmenwood is great, except a few bits that have already been mentioned. Halls of the Blood King is a great adventure. The Incandescent Grottoes is another great one. As is The Isle of the Plangent Mage. The thing I love about OSR games, especially OSE, is the level of weird that goes into it. I really miss that. As mentioned, Planar Compass is their Planescape / Spelljammer mashup.

Can confirm. I just finished running Halls of the Blood King for my group today, and we had a ton of fun. As far as horror fantasy adventures go, my players felt a sense of unease the entire time, which is not something one typically finds in a D&D game (and I ran it using WWN rather than OSE, so their characters were more powerful and resilient than the typical OSE character). We’ve also done Winter’s Daughter, which they liked too. As a referee, I like how in both adventures what happens depends greatly on the actions the players take as their characters.

 

[LoganRan]

Can confirm. I just finished running Halls of the Blood King for my group today, and we had a ton of fun. As far as horror fantasy adventures go, my players felt a sense of unease the entire time, which is not something one typically finds in a D&D game (and I ran it using WWN rather than OSE, so their characters were more powerful and resilient than the typical OSE character). We’ve also done Winter’s Daughter, which they liked too. As a referee, I like how in both adventures what happens depends greatly on the actions the players take as their characters.

Remind me...why did you stop using the OSE ruleset in favor of Worlds Without Number?