Best OSR System

PrinceofNothing

High Executarch
Staff member
ACKS is very good if you are really into the simulation and domain-level shenanigans of B/X. Nice-system, B/X derived, a fixed up proficiency system, sweet availability tables for versimilitude, alternate rules for maiming when you reach 0-hp, and alternate tables for complications during the raise-dead system, but still very classic, 4 base classes with additionals that are essentially combinations of the four.
 

Osrnoob

Should be playing D&D instead
:LOL:
OSE IS THE BEST SYSTEM HAVE YOU ACCEPTED OUR LORD AND SAVIOR INTO YOUR HEART

But seriously whatever works for you and your group I use Knave and Jeff House rules. Its easy to ref and players are Batman.

Defined by whats in the utility belt.

Works with everything 5e/ 2 or CR as HD 3e / 4

ODnD, BX, 2e, 1e who cares. AC-19 or 20 to taste.

That reminds me I need to make the monster conversion thread to test this theory. Benoric says this is wrong for 3e due to abilities he is likely right and I am noob with wild speculation.

BFRPG (HEY THABKS FOR COMING HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO DND FOREVER I AM OPRAH YOU GET A RULESET AND YOU GET A RULESET),
YAY PRINTED OBJECTS THE WORLD IS TANGIBLE

GLOG, Bastionland or S&W also good.

Cyclopedia also good. As is delving deeper clone?
 
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Palindromedary

*eyeroll*
It really depends on what you want to do. Sword & sorcery emphasis? The domain game? High crunch? Low crunch? Ultra-light? A gateway drug to OSR for 5th ed players? The great joke of the OSR is that there's as many systems as there are players, so detail would really help. Not much point in recommending OSRIC when your inclination is towards Here Is Some Fucking D&D or Knave or something.
 

Grützi

Should be playing D&D instead
My personal list:

OSE for low magic, fairy tale vibes and quick one shots.
DCC or LotFP for weird, crazy or gonzo stuff.
For Gold and Glory for more mechanical complexity and modules that were written for it (looking at you Malrex... the only dude who ever published something for FG&G :p )
Beyond the Wall to introduce newbies to the game, for folk tale/folk hero vibes and shared worldbuilding.

Though these are specific cases as I DM most stuff in a self written homebrew combining the dice-pool system of Vampire the Masquerade ( 1. ed) with the skill system and tables from FATAL and the coin based system from Kingdom of Nothing :p

And yeah I bought Kingdom of Nothing, I read Kingdom of Nothing, I tried to play Kingdom of Nothing (once)... and I gifted Kingdom of Nothing into a raffle of a local convention so someone else may feel the pain...everything as it should be :)

And I still gotta check out ACKS.
 

Pseudoephedrine

Should be playing D&D instead
My top two published OSR systems are Labyrinth Lord and Beyond the Wall.

Beyond the Wall has a pretty robust system based on a simplification of d20 with a lot of cool procedures for town and adventure building and campaign management added in. There's basically one paid supplement (Farther Afield) that you should get along with the corebook, and everything else you might want (more playbooks, etc.) is free. BtW's main weaknesses are the difficulty of incorporating and converting other OSR material to it.

If you don't go for Beyond the Wall, go for Labyrinth Lord. All the best supplements (Yoon-Suin, the Red Tide line, Theorems and Thaumaturgy, Creature Compendium, etc.) are either for it or are easily converted into it. Most of the better adventures seem to be written for Lamentations / OSE / LL which are all more or less intercompatible, but LL is the least expensive option of the three, and involves purchasing the fewer core rules books (one). I think the expansiveness and customisability of B/X through all the supplements and other material available makes it my preferred system at this point.

I've had great experiences with Swords and Wizardry Complete but a lot of my favourite supplements for it are out of print and hard to find (the original 0e Monster book, Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque) or extremely expensive (Tome of Horrors, Rappan Athuk). If this was five years ago, it would have been my top recommendation, but the support tools for S&W referees feel pretty anemic these days compared to other options.

Personally, I mostly run a homebrew system called Into the Depths, but freely swipe from supplements of the above systems to do it.
 

Osrnoob

Should be playing D&D instead
I agree with you lumping BX together. I am the same.

Re: S and W and suplements. Does that matter? I use this stuff in particular with everything interchangeably
 

Malrex

So ... slow work day? Every day?
I have two favorite systems.

An OSRIC system organized with bullet points, "cliff note" style, just like OSE (but maybe with just one book).
and
A For Gold & Glory system (with new art overhaul) organized with bullet points, "cliff note" style......etc. etc. like OSE.

Or a combination of these 2 systems with the FG&G extras (the 2e stuff that 1e people don't like, etc.) as optional rules. This would probably be my favorite system. If most of the rules were cliff-noted, I'd be ok with a more lengthier description on spell descriptions and monster descriptions for 'fluff'.

Unfortunately, these systems don't exist.

OSE is pretty good, but the lack of spells and whatnot irritate me. I don't want to write up a "new" spell for Grease or Stinking Cloud for OSE, when its not new and people should know what it is, but then I feel I have to explain it anyways for the OSE system if publishing something. Feels like a ripoff...here are some new spells!! psyche, they all look familiar and you have seen them before...
 
My default would be to have a simple system that works with older D&D editions with some of the needless complexity. Thanks much for all your responses and thoughts- I think this is a very enlightening discussion beyond the initial question.
 

Pseudoephedrine

Should be playing D&D instead
I agree with you lumping BX together. I am the same.

Re: S and W and suplements. Does that matter? I use this stuff in particular with everything interchangeably
I think S&W is one of the more challenging systems to convert to and from with other OSR stuff because of the single saving throw and the ascending AC/to-hit. I think a lot of the strength of the OSR is not in its core systems but its supplements, so the richer the selection for a particular system, the more reason to choose it over another.
 

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
OSE is pretty good, but the lack of spells and whatnot irritate me. I don't want to write up a "new" spell for Grease or Stinking Cloud for OSE, when its not new and people should know what it is, but then I feel I have to explain it anyways for the OSE system if publishing something. Feels like a ripoff...here are some new spells!! psyche, they all look familiar and you have seen them before...
This! Like almost all of the new monsters at the back of Barrowmaze Complete are just Fiend Folio monsters reprinted with permission of Necromancer Games by way of their "Tome of Horrors Complete". Do I seriously have to append a New Monster list as long as my module because we're all pretending we don't own MM2 or FF?! boooooo
 

The1True

My my my, we just loooove to hear ourselves don't we?
but yeah. LL has been the easiest system to port in whatever direction you see fit and it is well supported at this point.
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
but yeah. LL has been the easiest system to port in whatever direction you see fit and it is well supported at this point.
I have heard LL is different from B/X --- more so than OSE. Malrex just did the multi-system conversion for PoUR. Get his impressions.

S&W uses the descending AC [ascending in brackets]. The single saving throw is also very convenient to put in a stat block. I found it easy to convert on-the-fly. However, the point made over at K&KA when assessing OD&D-like system was --- by the time you've gotten to S&W Complete, and house-ruled all the situations that come up in a game...then you might as well just be playing AD&D. Many folks, including myself, has walked that same path. Evard's desire for "something simple" is a red herring---none of these games are terribly complex once you make the small initial effort to learn them properly. Are we not men?

I sometimes think, like Malrex, it would be great to write an OSRIC Reader --- and condensed version of the rules as a supplement (not stand alone). I think it would be very short if you focused on the rules (only), and left out the Spell Descriptions, Monsters, Treasure, and Random Tables---just reference their page numbers in the complete text. I would also like to add some nice flowcharts and bullet-summaries/tables to it.

Then I would bloat it up big-time with crappy DIY art and print it tabloid size.
 

robertsconley

*eyeroll*
Are we not men?
Sure but we all have preferences. And AD&D is but one take on the original D&D chassis. An important one to be sure written by one of original edition authors Gygax, but not the definitive word on the subject because of the issue of preference.

Evard's desire for "something simple" is a red herring---none of these games are terribly complex once you make the small initial effort to learn them properly.
It been my experience throughout Western PA, Western NY, and Eastern Ohio, that what most did is use AD&D stuff with the rules of B/X or BECMI D&D. Now folks didn't have copies of either at their table. But instead used what they remembered and referred to AD&D for specialized rules like how to handle ultravison or infravision.

As for complex important portions of AD&D were poorly written or badly designed like initiative in combat and unarmed combat. If Gygax would made it clear that initiative starts on the segment indicated on your opponent's die it would have cleared a lot of things up. But even then there are two main ways to interpret how AD&D initiative works.

On the other, most of the advice, various aides, the stuff (classes, races, items, monsters, etc.) was pure gold so it got used by most.



However, the point made over at K&KA when assessing OD&D-like system was --- by the time you've gotten to S&W Complete, and house-ruled all the situations that come up in a game...then you might as well just be playing AD&D.



Many folks, including myself, has walked that same path. Evard's desire for "something simple" is a red herring---none of these games are terribly complex once you make the small initial effort to learn them properly. Are we not men?
So back circa 2008, I was looking to publish my own stuff after doing a handful of freelance work for other publishers. My interest then and today is mostly settings and adventures. Because I dragged my setting, the Majestic Wilderlands, through several RPGs starting with AD&D. I had a good sense of what in it and what not. Now it will still mostly grounded in D&D style medieval fantasy. But I had dozens of tweaks across the board.

When I decided to publish on my own, I decided to use one of the classic edition as it would be readily accessible to the folk interested in hexcrawl, and sandbox adventures I wrote. The question was now, which one to use.

I considered AD&D in the form of OSRIC but it had several strike against it.

1) By the time switched away from AD&D in 1986 (to Fantasy Hero) I had three years of house ruling under my belt. After several stabs at trying to run it RAW. I said "Fuck it" and started changing to better suit how I did thing with my campaigns. Which largely focused on the players being able to "trash" the setting.

One of the changes I made was combat was now handled using individual initiative and folks were able to do a half move and attack (or cast a spell). Everything else in combat was structured around that basic idea. There were other tweaks as well that I kept in a binder. All of which reflected my view of how things ought to go after a few years of running campaigns.

Which highlight an issue with AD&D and anything based on it like OSRIC. It has a high degree of specificity. If an individual has ideas about of how thing ought to go in a campaign then chances of something conflicting is that much higher with AD&D/OSRIC than the other classic editions.


2) OSRIC is not 100% open content. Which is fine as one of the original goals is the preservation of AD&D. But it is not if the goal is tweak it to better suit the setting that is being written about. You can't cite compatibility even if you stick to just the open content if you use too much of the text verbatim in your work.

So given both, I looked at the other clone and settled on Swords & Wizard, Core (not complete) as the foundation for my efforts. It was and still is what I consider the best expression of an ur-D&D that is out there. Has all the elements that most consider to be part of classic D&D and no more. Making ideal to use it to build on to express what it is I do with the Majestic Wilderlands across the decades.

And it has the virtue of being 100% content, an easy to follow compatibility license, and available in a editable Microsoft Word document.


Wrapping it Up
So what does it mean.

If you want something distinct and ready to run then go with OSRIC/AD&D. If you want something to build on top of then go with Swords & Wizardry Core or Complete.
 

robertsconley

*eyeroll*
I sometimes think, like Malrex, it would be great to write an OSRIC Reader --- and condensed version of the rules as a supplement (not stand alone). I think it would be very short if you focused on the rules (only), and left out the Spell Descriptions, Monsters, Treasure, and Random Tables---just reference their page numbers in the complete text. I would also like to add some nice flowcharts and bullet-summaries/tables to it.
Just keep in mind that no more than 10% of your work can be quoted from OSRIC. Any more than that, then you can not cite compatibility with OSRIC.

1619095355518.png

I ran into this myself when I started to write up reference cards for different retro-clones like this one for Swords & Wizardry Complete. Here is the Preview. And this issue is not unique to OSRIC either, Old School Essentials has a similar issue.

When I get the OSRIC version done I am thinking about calling it OSCAR. Old School Cards, Advanced Reference


1619095379490.png
1619095398755.png

1619095410871.png
 

squeen

8, 8, I forget what is for
Very slick Robert! All of your stuff I've seen so far is polished to perfection.

I was firmly in you DIY and the S&W camp for almost the last decade. Additionally, in the 70's-80's I played a decade of great OD&D (with mods) but was not the DM. A mental switch happened at some point recently to me, and I decided to "stop fighting AD&D, and just use it".

I did the same mental inversion with the C Programming Language back in the late 1990's and it hasn't hampered my creative output, and has also payed some subtle dividends. (People complain that's "hard" too...and have gone on to invent a ridiculous number of trendy C-derivative languages with limited shelf-lives.)

I'm okay with you or any anyone else choosing to house-rule/homebrew. I will undoubtedly do it too, just with the conscious desire to minimize divergence. As Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." I choose to channel my creativity towards content creation for now---not rule adjustments. I think there's ample mental space within the system.

I also have gotten tired of the AD&D-is-poorly-written-and/or-broken refrain. I think the point has been exaggerated (or at least over-made). My counter-point is this: it's equivalent to whining that "math is hard" --- it's not. Get over it. While my position is an intentional over-simplification, I think a hard counter-argument is necessary after too many long years of of the web trash-talking AD&D. It's a masterpiece of design, and worthy to have someone stand up for it---and most importantly it works! Learning curves are what they are. Desire to thinker (and think you've got a better beast) is human. I'm just having none of it (at least for 2021). :)

My desire is not to publish, but instead submit my "Reader" to K&KA as a free OSRIC companion piece, so I don't think the legal issue applys. Either way, I'm a wordy enough bastard, I won't need to quote it much. I am a hobbyist, not a businessman.
 
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