Dungeons and Dragons - Old School Essentials Review

In this episode we dive into the world of the Old School Revival, and take a look at one of the D&D retro clones out there - Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. 

This is a special part three of our D&D episode - what, you honestly thought in a subject this big that we'd only manage it in two?

Links to the products mentioned in this episode:

Old School Essentials

http://www.necroticgnome.com
@necroticgnome

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
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HOSTS: Iain Wilson
VOICEOVER LADY: Keeley Wilson
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Contact us at:

EMAIL: roll.to.save.pod@gmail.com
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/rolltosavepod
WEBSITE: https://rolltosave.blog

HOSTS: Iain Wilson, Steve McGarrity, Jason Downey
BACKGROUND MUSIC: David Renada (Find him at: davidrendamusic@gmail.com or on his web page).
TITLE, BREAK & CLOSEOUT MUSIC: Xylo-Ziko (Find them on their web page).

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Welcome to Roll to Save, the RPG history podcast. Dungeons and Dragons.

SPEAKER_00: 0:24

We're an RPG history podcast, which means that we usually cover games of years gone by. However, given that our latest episode was about the granddaddy game of them all, Dungeons& Dragons, it was only natural that, in the course of our research, I stumbled upon some of the retro clones of this game. What do I mean by retro clones? Well, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the older versions of Dungeons& and the styles of role-playing, what is often known as the old-school revival or OSR for short. Many fans felt that later editions of D&D or later RPGs in general, definitions of what later constitutes vary from group to group, lost their way and that the older editions captured a purer way of playing. Any perceived snobbishness aside, what this all comes down to is several concepts rolled up into one. Actually, before I start, it should be said that the OSR movement is not a collective body thinking and speaking as one, and what I'm going to mention as being features of the OSR movement are largely what I've gathered from my own research. Like most parts of our hobby, what constitutes the true way for one group is doubtlessly blasphemous heresy for another. Therefore, if what I mention doesn't gel with your definition of what OSR means, please, no scorpions in the post, we are talking about pretendy fun time games here, remember? OSR games, or rather, the OSR style of play, is meant to focus on rulings and not rules, which is to say that the GM is expected not to follow rules to the letter, but instead to make rulings based on player actions. One of the complaints about later editions of the world's most popular are was that there were rules for everything. This tended to tie GM's hands and make the games a lot less free-flowing. It also put GMs in an arms race with their players. Often the person with the most books had the greatest power. Minmaxing and rules lawyers were rife in those systems. OSR games tend to do away with this by having one set of simple, clean, easy-to-follow rules. As a result, OSR games characters are also far more mundane than those found in other systems. In a game like Vampire the Masquerade, a beginning character has a fair edge over most ordinary or even some extraordinary people out there, what with being a dark lord or lady of the night. Starting operatives in slay industries are the best of the best and are armed and armoured way beyond the capabilities of most of their foes. Characters in the various Star Wars RPGs out there are more than capable of duking it out with legions of imperial stormtroopers. A level one wizard in an OSR retro clone though, well, they're pretty weak and they've got one spell, one, that they can use once before spending most of the game hiding behind the party's fighter. Oh, and most characters are randomly generated. Good luck if you roll a character with one hit point. On that same note, OSR games generally forgo the notion of balance. Life's unfair, and if you expect otherwise, you're bound to become a cropper. There also tends to be a focus on the simpler aspects of gaming. Rather than be caught up in some vast web of politics tied back to the game's meta-plot, which in turn is decided upon by the designers, OSR games concentrate on the older styles of play. There's dungeons to be explored, monsters to be killed, and treasure to be gathered. Often, the experience system is based around this. Some people might roll their eyes at it but there is a certain visceral pleasure to be had kicking in the doors to the orcs lair, setting them about them and nicking their stuff. There are a lot of D&D retro clones out there and one of the reasons this has been possible is down to the open game license from Wizards of the Coast which allows the use of much of the proprietary terminology of D&D that might otherwise collectively constitute copyright infringement. As a result, these games look, feel and play like the original D&D from years gone by and are rooted in the same style of play. A lot of them are dubbed BX games, standing for the basic and expert sets of D&D from the early 80s. This has the added bonus of making most of them compatible with the billion or so supplements, modules and adventures from magazines that were released back in the early days of the hobby. So, Why am I warbling on about OSR retro clones? Well, as part of the research into D&D, I decided to take a look at these games, largely in a bid to educate myself about something I knew very little about, but also to see how well we married up with my experience of playing these games in ye olden days. In doing so, I stumbled upon Necrotic Gnomes Old School Essentials, a retro clone of the BX style of play, and decided to take a deeper look. Hence, this review. Old School Essentials, hereafter referred to as OSE, comes in two forms. The OSE Classic Fantasy Rules Tome, which is a 298-page book that covers everything you need to play a BX game, and the OSE Retro Adventure Game, which comes in a black box and contains five hardback books that, between them, cover the same content as the Rules Tome. It is this that I used with in putting this review together, but I understand that the contents are identical across both formats. In terms of presentation, the retro adventure game is a wonderful package. It comes in a sturdy black box and the individual books are hardback with pages made of strong, thick paper. The art is suitably old school, with the majority being black and white and with little in the way of consistency, something that very much screams early 80s. And the rules are laid out across two pages at a time. Each contents page is clear and precise. Every time I had to look something up, I was able to find exactly what I needed to look for. In addition to this, whenever a section references another part of the rules, it provides a page number to refer to. It might sound like a small thing, but for most GMs, this is invaluable. Each of the books comes with two pages at the beginning and the end, which include key tables and references for the concepts discussed within. There are also PDFs available for these, so they can be used easily during a game or slotted into a GM's screen as needed. The books themselves cover the core rules, the fantasy genre, which is to say classes, equipment and the like, treasure, magic and monsters. The most wonderful part of the whole piece though, and this was a surprise to me, is that the books are at A5. Most RPG supplements are A4, but after using these books, I'm surprised more publishers haven't taken advantage of this format. It's incredibly handy when you're squirrelling the books behind your screen as the GM, and it also makes things far less unwieldy when you're handing them to the players. Plus, I can imagine this being far easier to transport than a weighty A4 book. The fact that the rules are spread across five books is nice as it means that if different players are having to reference different things at the same time you can pass out the relevant books rather waiting for one person to finish with the rules tome. All in all it looks and feels beautiful. It should be pointed out that you can also get access to PDF copies of the rule books and they are nicely interactive but I prefer the tactile feel of having a book in my hands to anything electronic. So how does the gameplay? Well, in the introduction the author explains that their intention was to produce a game that was a 100% faithful restatement of the core rules of the classic basic expert game. However, they also go on to point out that any errors in the original material were not going to simply be slavishly reproduced and instead an effort was made to clean this up along with any areas of ambiguity that existed in older books. What follows, then, is exactly what it says on the tin, a reproduction of the basic expert games of years gone by. So, you can say hello to old friends like Lower Armour Class Being Better and Thaco. However, there are optional rules highlighted here and there, like Ascending Armour Class, for example, for people who fancy playing things slightly differently, some might say logically. My group, for instance, made use of the rules for in individual initiative scores, which made for more tense encounters. I should point out, the group I playtested with were not seasoned gamers. However, in our lockdown, coronavirus-fearing world, I was able to use my need to complete a review as an excuse for family fun with my wife and kids. I was therefore pleased that character creation, as laid out in the core rules, was able to be completed in just under 10 minutes. A couple of things to note here, however. Although character creation is quick and simple, it is brutal. You're rolling 3d6 for each characteristic. Yes, there's optional rules for taking points off some stats to increase other ones, but there's very little customisation here. There's also the optional rule to allow people to re-roll their hit points if they rolled a 1 or a 2, which my group did, which is vital if you don't want your players to die at the hands of the first goblin that throws a maiden glare in their direction. With character creation done, it was off on a shopping spree for an adventuring kit from the back of the fantasy genre book and my intrepid adventurers were ready to go. Needless to say, my teenage daughter took to shopping, albeit pretendie fantasy shopping with gusto. It sounds flippant, but the chance to customise the kit that your character starts with was something that the players loved. A special mention should go to the equipment section in the fantasy genre book. In the true spirit of game it is emulating, OSE provides you with a very finite list of things that you can buy. A lot of modern RPGs have entire supplements dedicated to weapons and gear, but this book makes it clear that in the environments you'll be playing in, the stuff on these lists are all you will need. Now, I think it's safe to say that if someone did want something out of the ordinary, a halfway competent GM could probably rule on how much it cost and what it did, but for a brand new group of players, this list was ideal as it set some nice boundaries in the world and did a good job of fixing the technology level of the setting firmly in their heads without the GM having to give them a potted history of the world. Which probably brings me to the next point, the setting. Or the fact that there isn't one. The books make it quite clear that this is intentional. What you're getting here are rules for running adventures within a fantasy setting. There are tons and tons and tons of supplements out there that are compatible with these rules if you're having trouble coming up with your own setting but it's not something you'll be finding within the depths of the OSE starter box. And to be honest that's absolutely fine. At first I was tempted to go and look for some old D&D scenario to run but then I fell back on writing one of my own and do you know what? Creating a fairly simple dungeon for my adventurers to explore complete with simple and wildly mercenary reasons for doing so was actually a lot of fun. OSE includes around 20 pages on how to run an adventure and put together a dungeon, but the main rule mechanics take a lot of the pain out of it for you. There's a list of monsters by level within the, drumroll please, monster book, so finding a challenge appropriate to your player's experience isn't hard. Likewise, each monster includes a code that specifies what type of treasure it's liable to be carrying if it's encountered either one As a GM whose most recent experience has been writing very complicated plots for various World of Darkness games that would unfold over months of play and which came complete with databases for characters, their motivations and relationships with other characters, this plunge back into the good old days was surprising. refreshing. One thing that I really liked was the process set out for exploring a dungeon. In this day and age where roleplaying is often described in fairly nauseating terms like interactive storytelling, it's rather fun getting back to an older style of play that assumes you're spelunking in the bad guy's lair and that in every given 10 minute space of time you'll be moving a certain amount of feet, checking to see if your light sources go out, resting as necessary and avoiding wandering monsters. Is it as highbrow as Mage the Ascension's philosophical heights or Nephilim's serious take on occult ritual and magic? Absolutely not. Is it fun though? Hell yeah. I've literally not played this style of game in decades but I really enjoyed watching my intrepid adventurers decide whether or not to try to open a door, kick it in or ignore it and go down that corridor that seemed to go into darkness forever. Having my 10 year old son snarl you'll pay for that to an orc that had just offed his buddy and the subsequent cry of yes as said orc was bloodily dispatched was a great moment a lot more fun than having to listen to certain players GMs out there you know the type whine incessantly about how they can't decide on whether to carry on playing because I just think my character has reached a point where he's really lost touch with his motivation and is probably overcome with pain and yeah, whatever. When your motivation is that orc over there who just speared your mate in the side, things are a lot simpler. I mentioned before that none of my players were experienced roleplayers. In fact, my two kids had never roleplayed before, but nobody had any trouble with the rules. They are really simple. Not fighting fantasy simple, but simple enough that within about 10 minutes everyone knew what dice to roll for what. Also, true to the author's word about clearing things up, there was little to no ambiguity. Yes, we were playing a very simple adventure, but at no point, as a GM who hasn't run D&D in over a generation and who has never played OSE before, was I left floundering, and the players never questioned why they were rolling certain dice for certain effects. I didn't own the 1981 edition that this is based on, so I can't comment on how faithful they are, but if they were even a fraction similar to what is laid out in OSE, it's easy to see how D&D became so popular so quickly. However, there's always a however, isn't there? If you're expecting long chapters explaining how to craft a story, extensive and rich lore, or an elegant game system that makes use of a single dice type or any of the other features that more modern game designers love, you're going to be out of luck. Ultimately, you're playing BX D&D from 1981. Sure, it's polished and cleaned up and respectable looking in its Sunday best but this is ultimately the same beast. You're going to face things such as the arbitrary types of saving throw that exist for each class, demi-humans having a slower rate of advancement and a lower level cap, and all the other little random design decisions that probably made sense when they were written up in Lake Geneva back in the late 70s, but which probably have more modern gamers scratching their heads. That being said, it's a lot of fun, and I can't recommend it more highly. In fact, I I'm going to be taking a look at their advanced fantasy and druid and illusionist supplements very soon. So, if you fancy strapping on your armour, descending into a dungeon and waving your thacko all about, you could do far worse than picking up a copy of Old School Essentials. It really is a refreshing slice of yesteryear fun.

SPEAKER_01: 17:36

Thank goodness that's done.

SPEAKER_00: 17:40

And that was our review of Old School Essentials by Necrotic Gnome. You can find a link to that in the show notes. We're a monthly podcast about RPG history. If you want to get in touch with us, please find us on Twitter at Save Podcast or via email at roll.to.save.pod at gmail.com or on Facebook by searching for Roll2Save. Hope you enjoyed this episode and please tune in next month month when we cover Star Wars.