Product Design: Old School Essentials vs. Labyrinth Lord

So I am creating my first PDF/POD product for OSR games (currently playtesting), and I am feeling a few limitations on the Old School Essentials spell lists. With OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord, the spells I need are there, but in OSE the game's spell lists are drastically simplified and I will have to add the spell to the product if I want it to play nice across all OSR products.

You go through this phase where you are editing powers and abilities and making sure they fit correctly with some classes you want, and you discover the spells are not in the game you want to target.

I want an OSE expansion with the higher levels and expanded spell lists! I know, I already have it, and it is called Labyrinth Lord. I treat LL as my unofficial OSE expansion and it works well, but for product design, you need to pick a primary and stick with it in order to reduce confusion.

I love OSE's simplicity and presentation. There are times I feel the game is too cut down in both maximum level and the lists of spells you get with the game. While I prefer OSE's classes, progression, and combat systems if a player ever wanted to pull in a spell or magic item from Labyrinth Lord I would likely say yes, just like I would feel free to pull in monsters from that tome for any OSE adventure.

Of course, OSE is the current standard-bearer for a lot of the OSR gamers, so I shall playtest with that.

And I will need to add and convert the missing spells and abilities and provide conversion and compatibility notes for the games I would like to target.

What Is It?

I am not ready to say yet. I need to go through this playtest and "see if it is fun" phase. If not, these shall remain house rules I may share here. If this is super fun, then I will go through product design, art, layout, and OSR compatibility and get this out soon.

There is a difference between releasing products without playtesting and taking the time to take your creation out on a few adventures and see how it works and plays. Nothing on the first design ever is truly fun or great, and it takes a few iterations to work out all the unfun, boring, mistake, silly, and stupid parts.

And even after all that, it still may not be fun!

But this feels fun enough to do this preliminary design phase where I build a prototype and take it out for a few spins. More soon.