OSE Unlocks & Downtime

Unlocks & Downtime is a game type for Old School Essentials that begins with the Classic Fantasy book. All campaigns start with these rules. As the campaign progresses, the group unlocks races, classes, and other options from the Advanced Fantasy books, the Carcass Crawler Zines, and any other OSE source the referee wants for the campaign. Every new adventure and discovery should give a "campaign achievement" and "unlock new options" for the players to use.

• All options in Classic Fantasy are what players start with.  

Ideally, if the adventure features the classes and spotlights them, such as the players finding a circus adventure that unlocks bards and acrobats, that is the ideal way to create motivation and also provide a starting point for those character types. Similarly, the Dragonborn (Carcass Crawler Issue Three) can be introduced into the campaign world by finding a city or outpost of their kind, and completing an adventure involving them. If the players never encounter dark elves or paladins, maybe they are not in this world, and those options do not open up for players.

We will also need a copy of the Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy game, since we will use that later. A few optional rules from other books may be added to the game.

• Use Weapon Proficiency and Specialization (AFP23). 

 

The Carcass Crawler Issue One Zine has another helpful option for fighters.

• Carcass Crawler Issue One has combat talents for fighters, and those can be used.

You can use fairness rules for hit points for a more modern-style feeling, if you wish:

• Give maximum hp at first level, and a minimum "half the die size" for hit point gains for new levels; you still roll, but there is a floor to the roll. For example, if your hit die is a d6, and you roll a 1 for hit points for a new level, the minimum if 6 / 2 = 3 hit points, half the die size. You can still roll higher, and consider those a bonus!
• Racial level limits are increased by the character's ability score modifier in their prime requisite (use the STR table). 

The campaign progresses with a system of campaign unlocks.

• Unlocks are like achievements in video games and are tied to quest completions, successful adventures, or discoveries, as set by the referee.
• The options in Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy not in Classic are campaign unlocks.
• Similarly, any race, spell, or class option in a Carcass Crawler Zine or other OSE book we use is a campaign unlock.
• Spells outside Classic need to be researched, unless they are needed for an entire class.
• Track our campaign unlocks in a journal, and those open up for future characters in our current campaign.  

Use On Downtime and Demesnes (ODaD) for downtime rules and the special training options.

• Talents, Skills, Expert/Mastery, Training Proficiencies, Crafting, Research, and Raising Statistics rules are used.
• All the other rules in this book are optional, but very useful.

This gives us a focused campaign to start, with better character customization options than 5E gives us. Characters need thousands of gold for advancement and training, as you cannot rely on class progression alone for specializations and abilities.

Also, if a player really wants to start as a druid and have that unlocked, and offers to bring the pizza for the first night of play, why not let them have it? Do a very nice thing for the group, and we can work together and make something fun happen. 

There is a gamification of the campaign, where achievements are needed to unlock classes and races, but this is exactly the sort of gamification Shadowdark uses in its torch timers, darkness rules, and random progression. This takes OSE and makes it into a "Steam game" where campaigns start in a basic "new game" state (with Classic), and the players need to work to unlock the cool stuff through achievements.

The campaign embraces gamification and keeps players coming back to unlock cool stuff, and as each campaign progresses, each one is different. The players will drive the unlocks and what they work towards. Not only are you exploring the world, gaining power, and finding magic and treasure, but you are opening the rest of the game up for players and character creation through play.

This creates a solid, fair, and powerful framework of unlocks and character power withing the original rules, giving us 5E-like options, but also limiting choice and letting players drive in both unlocking new choices, and crafting new powers via the training system. We get the best of all worlds here.