This game took me by surprise. This is like if AD&D never became AD&D 2nd Edition, the old school feeling was kept, but the rules were modernized to a unified and simple system like a D&D 5E. What I find amazing is the game "feels" like a modernized AD&D, and not something more modern like a 3.5E, 4E, or 5E with the exponential curve in hit points and damage.
I wish I would have discovered this game sooner. My brother and I would have had a lot of fun with it, and we would have solved the "what happens after D&D 4th Edition" cliff our game fell off of and never recovered from. This would have been the game that replaced everything.
What Do You Get?
We have roll-high AC, unified ability saves, and the classic spells, classes, and monsters all in a package with modern, slick presentation, great artwork, and that perfect old-school feeling without some of the legacy cruft of the older rules. There is a primary and secondary ability system that takes care of skills, saving throw bonuses, and proficiencies. I like a system with ability-based saves, and I find a system with separate saves versus wands and spells (both are magic, if one is weaker give it a DRM) to be a little repetitive and I don't like to have all that record-keeping.
This game is in a cool genre of games that hits that AD&D sweet spot for me, such as Labyrinth Lord, Old School Essentials Advanced, Adventurer Conqueror King System, and Swords and Wizardry. I will leave Dungeon Crawl Classics out of this since that is something else entirely. Every cue is taken from an AD&D style of presentation and approach, like AD&D was the model starting point for the look and feel, but then the game was modernized and cleaned up a great deal.
This feels like a game 5E players could drop right into and find a lot to like, but old school players could jump onboard and have a great time and get that classic feeling. It truly is a great middle-ground game between more modern games and the OSR.
OSR?
Is it still OSR? Well, it wants to be. I laughed when I wrote that, but it is true. It has the OSR heart while still being a more modern design, which is cool. A lot of the newer games are doing this, taking a classic feeling and streamlining the rules for ease-of-use. Could you play OSR modules with this? I feel you could, a lot of the lower-level character rules stuff is different, but as you get to monsters, treasure, and combat things start to feel more compatible. Use the same monsters, the same B/X damages, convert the saves to the ability ones, the new stats, and play.
This feels like one of those NES or SNES emulators that plays those classic games perfectly, but underneath is an entirely modern and new engine driving the action. No it is not a classic console, but it gets the job done and offers some improvements (you are not swapping cartridges, the pins never corrode, and the batteries never run out on your saves). So in a way, it is an AD&D emulator that delivers a modern play experience with a lot of needed improvements.
Improvements Made
Old School Essentials did a little of this "cleaning and improving" in their Advanced Edition (the new classes especially), but they still remained rules-compatible with B/X. They offered new classes and takes on the classic AD&D material and branched out where things could be made to feel and play better. So it is not unheard of, and is in fact something B/X creators are starting to do. Instead of being so tied to the old ways, where can we tweak and make new things to make the game play better? While this doesn't maintain rules-compatibility with B/X, it doesn't really matter since a unified engine is driving things underneath and it all feels the same and once you drop in monsters you are playing.
The "product improved" content I feel does a lot to make the OSR into "its own thing" and not as dependent on the legacy material. It is a very positive development and I love it when OSR publishers say "it plays better this way" and make those changes, and have their game go its own way on that solid base. It is a market becoming mature and defining itself as something different.
C&C goes a little farther than B/X and unifies the underlying mechanics, with something more like 5E, and yes I know C&C came out in 2004 with this mechanic and 5E used a similar one many years later, but hey, the great ideas always rise to the top. It is honestly a good thing, since a lot of 5E players will feel at home here and the long-time C&C players will just nod and smile. We are all gamers and we want the best.
Does the unified mechanics take away from the OSR feeling? Only if that is what is important to you. If you need the B/X way of doing things, play Old School Essentials or one of the other great B/X games. Then the question becomes, do they add anything or are they just different for being different?
I like them because they do away with the traditional limited use saving throw tables, and allow you to roll versus charisma for reaction checks, constitution for sickness, strength to break free of entanglement, dexterity to grab onto a ledge, and anything else you can imagine an ability score doing. That feels like Tunnels and Trolls to me, and I loved the save versus ability system there and how simple it made adjudicating actions.
For me, used to running Star Frontiers, Gangbusters, or Top Secret and other games where you directly check ability scores for everything and anything that comes up, with a primary/secondary ability system to simulate skills and feats, it feels right at home and an improvement over B/X. Yes, I can always "roll under" an ability in B/X to check, but this makes those same checks your skills and saves all in one, so it feels unified and streamlined. Strong characters can break free easier from entanglement and paralysis, and so on.
The Way We Played
The game is very aware of the way it used to be. They have supplemental books covering demons, and the settings and gods of many classic pantheons (Greek, Egyptian, Norse, and more). You could play a Germanic or Norse campaign, Egyptians or Greek, or mix them all together. That is what we used to do back when we had the PHB, DMG, MM, and Deities & Demigods - all the cultures and pantheons were in the B/X world of Mystara and they fit perfectly.
They have a world called Airhde that is every bit as detailed and well laid out as the classic settings of Greyhawk, Mystara, or Faerun. They have adventures written for the world to take you through it. The depth of everything to explore beyond the basic books is astounding.
It is a game I feel could have replaced our D&D 4th Edition game and kept going without running out of steam or running into the balance issues we had and overpowered splat books that took away a lot from the game. And the end of 4th Edition with the Essentials line changing everything again was a mess and took all of our original love for the first three books and crushed it. It also feels like a game that could recreate our original run with D&D and AD&D and do it justice.
This is one I am collecting and enjoying, and I wish I would have discovered it sooner.
More soon.
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