Labyrinth Lord and Old School Essentials

In the B/X world, the answer to the question, "Which game is the best?" is almost always, "yes." There is another joke along the lines of every referee having their own handwritten and house-ruled B/X game and nobody is playing the same one, so the answer of which B/X game is the best becomes, "Of course, mine."

That said, I don't feel there are "edition wars" in B/X, this is more of a Linux/Unix crowd where most all distributions of the game-slash-operating system can mostly live in peace beside each other, and all the programs people use either work or can be quickly recompiled from source to be compatible. You use a distribution or play a game because of personal preference, and you can quickly switch to another because there isn't all that much to relearn.

I had this article tilted "versus" but I changed it to "and" instead, because I feel the word versus would be click-bait and I feel incompatible with the spirit of the B/X community. Why be fighting when we could be playing? Or writing your own version of the B/X and playing that?

That said, we are close to Old School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy coming out and I can not wait for that to arrive. I am getting a feeling a lot of what is in Labyrinth Lord will be added, and from some of the early releases there is also a good amount of new content in the B/X world (druids, paladins, bards, assassins, and more) that is not (or very different) in Labyrinth Lord so the experiences are diverging.

This is an exciting time for these two rules sets since I feel the future directions of each game are being forged.

Still a Place for LL?

Is there still a place for Labyrinth Lord? There is a part of me that likes this game as a classic heavy metal album from the 1980's. The presence of demons and devils adds to that feeling, and I am eager to see if OSE includes them or does a take on the infernal side of the monster population. This was a huge issue when we transitioned from AD&D to AD&D 2nd Edition back in the day, the demons and devils were gone because of a media-fueled panic. A tribe of vile orcs went from being wicked demon-worshipers to the more politically-correct "followers of an evil god."

And I feel this sort of sterilization has stuck with the the versions of D&D as the years passed by. Of course, the evil gods of D&D were "product identity" and thus they needed to be elevated in status over the more generic demons and devils, because copyrighted content and these unique characters became a way to sell the game. After a while D&D's evil gods and forces felt like comic-book characters and they felt hard to take seriously. Yes, rules wise they were very difficult to defeat, but Tiamat coming back again and again felt played out. By the end of 4th Edition we were tired of the D&D cosmology of evil.

Labyrinth Lord embraces the evil, especially the generic type espoused by demons and devils, and places the force of darkness on a pedestal and dares players to topple it over - which they often do. That is fun. That is "metal" and I love that feeling where the game comes with everything, even the bad parts, and turns the forces of good loose like paladins riding armored holy bulls in a china shop of evil.

OSE is a beautiful, tight, streamlined game - and yes I could just port the demons and other evil creatures into that and have it all. But I am looking forward to seeing OSE's take on the infernal forces. Because OS Essentials is strictly B/X without the AD&D influence, the evil side the latter brought to the game table is sorely missing. Considering how important demons and devils are to the history and perception of the game, allowing players to literally fight the forces of Hell, I feel having these monsters as bad guys is critical to getting the feeling of the B/X retro-gaming right.

This is my perception, mind you, I lived through these times and remember screaming at the TV show Donahue when they equated the AD&D Dungeon Master's guide to a satanic bible. "It is not that way! TV is so stupid! God, Mom, why are they so stupid!"

Of course the first copy of D&D we ever bought was being sold from a Christian book store. We bought both Basic and Expert there and loved the game, along with the shop's owners. I guess they used the game to teach values, and they were kind of ex-hippies anyways so it was all cool.

Is OSE too Concise?

Now as a point of comparison, here is the Labyrinth Lord description of the Lizard Folk:

These scaly humanoids resemble humans but have the heads and tails of lizards. They delight in feasting upon the flesh of other humanoids. They employ any kind of weapon, but prefer spears, tridents, and clubs. Their immense strength grants them a +1 bonus to damage. They often venture into labyrinths, especially if there is an aquatic entrance. They are otherwise found to dwell in marshes and along the banks of bodies of water.

And the Old School Essentials description of the same monster:

Semi-intelligent, tribal, aquatic humanoids with reptilian heads and tails. Often encountered in swamps and dungeons, or along rivers and coastlines.

The Labyrinth Lord Hobgoblin:

Hobgoblins are larger cousins of goblins. Hobgoblins’ hair color ranges from dark reddish-brown to dark gray. They have dark orange or red-orange skin. Hobgoblins’ eyes are yellowish or dark brown, while their teeth are yellow. Their garments tend to be brightly colored, often blood red with black-dyed leather. Their weaponry is kept polished and in good repair. Hobgoblins tend to reside below ground, but often live or venture to the surface, and suffer no penalties to daylight like their smaller cousins.

A hobgoblin king is an exceptional hobgoblin, with 22 hp and he attacks like a monster of 5 HD. All damage dealt receives a bonus of +2. A hobgoblin king is always accompanied by a loyal bodyguard, totaling 1d4 individuals. The bodyguards each have 3d6 hit points, and attack as monsters with 4 HD. All hobgoblins in the presence of the hobgoblin king have a morale score of 10.

And the Old School Essentials Hobgoblin:

Larger and nastier relatives of goblins. Dwell underground, but commonly seek prey above ground.

Now the computer coder in me loves OSE's tight, clean formats. The book is a superior reference guide. But there are other times I like the color and flavor text in Labyrinth Lord, and I can see new players coming into the game being helped by some of the longer, more colorful descriptions of things in the game than a tighter and more concise presentation.

Granted, a lot of the Labyrinth Lord text is fluff and it could be cleaned up to say more with less. The hobgoblin king is a bit over the top. There are some things we really don't need to know. But some of the notes, like the weapon preference for lizard folk, that is good information. If the players come upon the site of an ambush and find spears and tridents? And they are near the water? Yeah, that is some really useful detail, and that sort of information makes the game easier to play and a lot more interesting - especially for new players.

The OSE books can at times feel like one of those "Pocket C++ Reference" guides I have lying around the house. I feel the art does a lot of the talking in OSE to provide flavor and inspiration, but there are other times I just want to read, slow down, and be inspired by longer passages which excite my imagination. This is my only real reservation about recommending OSE to new players, that it may be a better resource for veterans who are used to the material and it speeds through a lot of the detail that makes the world come alive (for me, at least).

For experienced players who have seen enough fluff in tabletop RPGs to last several lifetimes? Yes, even I love how tight the Old School Essentials books are put together. When I read them I get a gut reaction like, "Thank you for not wasting my time!" I can find what I need in seconds.

But I do like to read and be inspired by the words. Will Old School Advanced Fantasy's demons and devils (when they are in the game) live up to the hype with abbreviated monster descriptions? Without other books will they be useful and playable on their own?

Perhaps this is an unfair comparison, as OSE is more of a reference work. But it is being played like a game, so noting the flavor text is lacking I feel is a fair point if you are saying, "Pick one and not the other" or to recommend to new players. But remember, this is B/X, have both, read the flavor text you want, and use the stats from the the book you prefer using.

Use Both!

The obvious answer is use the best of both. There are some things I am really loving about OS Advanced, like the new classes. I love the clean presentation of OS Basic. There is a lot I like about Labyrinth Lord, the flavor text and unique mix of all the classic sources.

So the obvious answer is honestly to use both. Pick a "reference" system, like tell your group Old School Essentials (Classic or Advanced) will be the way things work in this game. Then, as a referee pull out everything you like from all of the B/X sources you collected over the years. Labyrinth Lord's demons and monster lists? Fine, they work with just a few changes (and not every orc or goblin is the same in every world or every part of the world so even minor stat changes between games are okay).

This way you have a fast core game and whatever flavor you want pulled in from the sources you have grown to love. Again, the more you treat B/X like Unix/Linux the better off you are because the best of everything becomes an option.

Or use more than two systems! Most any B/X game works together well. It is a fun world to play in because it is very hard to make a bad choice when buying something. This is a huge problem with games like D&D and Pathfinder, previous versions are incompatible with the newest one, and they do that honestly to sell books. My three shelves of Pathfinder 1e books these days have more worth as reference for the OGL content contained within them so I can convert that to B/X rules. D&D post 4E is more difficult with B/X due to the abundance of non-OGL content, product identity, and the shifting licenses used.

Which game is best? The one you love. It is just in B/X it is way easier to make the games you love work together better.