The More I Read, the Less I Need

With B/X games, I started with my original preference, Labyrinth Lord. This hybrid mix of D&D and AD&D gave clerics a spell at the first level and had the best support with dungeons and expansions written for the game. This also had the -3 to +3 ability score modifiers I was used to and all my favorite AD&D monsters. The second edition of this is coming too, which is nice to see.

Then I was all over Old School Essentials. This had it all; the best organization, art, incredible presentation, and ease of use were second to none. The expansion classes are excellent and fresh takes on the classics through a B/X lens, including one of the best OSR bards.

It lacked the demons I expected, so it always felt incomplete - especially when Advanced came around, and this started to pull in AD&D concepts. The base game is limited to fantasy and generous with ability score modifiers. There is no percentage-based magic resistance.

This is still the best edition of B/X you can buy - especially if you are coming off of 5E and need to have rules support for many things. This is both a strength of the system and a weakness; if you need a rule - it is there. But B/X from earlier days was designed for you to just make it up as you go along. There is a difference in the B/X community between the "fully ruled" later editions and the "make a ruling up" earlier editions of the game. There is still much room in OSE to make up rulings; I just lean towards more freedom and my own rulings.

These days, I am gravitating back to Swords & Wizardry. This is a hacker's game, made to modify, and there are some genius-level simplifications here. A lot is left up to you on how to handle; where OSE will have rules for everything, S&W lets you make a ruling. This has the AD&D monsters, and it has percentage-based magic resistance. This also limits ability score modifiers to a lower range and limits STR bonuses for melee to fighters only.

Giving everyone ability score modifiers for every little thing pushes stat inflation. Straight 3d6 characters feel playable in S&W, whereas in many other games, they do not. The universal +3 modifier at 18 (for all classes) feels too powerful. I like fighters as the only class getting the hit and damage modifiers from strength. Late-era B/X had a lot of "gimmes" that I feel made the game too easy, and since the D&D game of that time was targeted toward kids, the B/X games that emulate late-era D&D feel like they give too much when they shouldn't.

The hardcovers are a bit tricky to find, but they are still being sold on Lulu.

Also, this is 100% compatible with White Star, and all that sci-fi goodness comes in, and you have a Starfinder-style magic and sci-fi game. This is awesome since I love the "science-fantasy plus magic" genre, and I have a game that does that and can pull from sci-fi and fantasy sources and have everything work with no conversions. Laser bow-armed space elves fighting space orcs in powered armor? It works.

The awesome Beyond Belief White Box-based "X!" minigames also play well with S&W, which are expansions to the game if you want them to be, or fun standalone one-shots. Mix those with any S&W material, and your game feels vast.

I need less to have fun with, and massive shelves full of 5E or Pathfinder books these days feel overkill. More is less. And the reverse is true. My imagination and game design skills are superior to "rules written in a book." I know, for some, the rules are a part of the fun - and if that is your game, Pathfinder 2 is a blast.

So I gravitate towards games that give me more creative freedom, with fewer rules written. This isn't "rules light," and I find some of the newer games are more rules heavy in that they impose so many "creative frameworks" on your imagination they limit your creativity and replace it with a rigid "author-approved system of creative play."

Astounding! Amazing! Incredible! Non-stop action using familiar rules! Who wants to read through reams of text just to get to the action? No-one right? These rules assume you know how to role-play. They assume you know about “Golden Age” comic book space fantasy adventures. (Sword & Planet rules through a retro lens). They assume you know how OSR products work. There, it’s done. You know how to play already. Just get on with it. Ray guns set to kill! Flash! Bang! Zoom!

Like the X! games say, and as the above excerpt from Jarkoon says, you already know how to play a roleplaying game.

Give me a box of Legos.

And watch me toss the instructions.

Labyrinth Lord Second Edition Preview

Labyrinth Lord Second Edition preview is up and FREE for download!

Check it out here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/419358/Labyrinth-Lord-Second-Edition-Preview

Labyrinth Lord Second Edition

https://goblinoidgames.com/

Got this news off of Facebook, and Labyrinth Lord 2nd Edition is coming out! I still love that game; it started my OSR journey and led me down an incredible path of discovery - and rediscovery.

Very few people can do what Dan did, inspiring countless others to live and dream with the games they love. And as the first real OSR standard-bearer, Labyrinth Lord is one of the all-time greats.

Welcome back.

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.

My Go-To Games

Of the two B/X games I keep coming back to it would have to be Old School Essentials: Advanced and Labyrinth Lord. OSE at this point has become something of a D&D-like cultural phenomenon and is becoming the de-facto OSR rules set, and deservedly so because of its organization, clarity, art, and quality. OSE is very B/X, and even with the "advanced" style additions to this version it still feels like a new game to me, a B/X "what if" AD&D never happened and the ideas logically flowed into the original B/X rules and there was never a brand split.

The new additions to the game are balanced and "fit" well within a B/X world and design philosophy. There are some great additional classes that just beg to be played, like the bard and paladin, and they have been reworked to fit within the overall class balance of the game. OSE is also very approachable for those coming from 5E and other games and can replace 5E in many situations for that old-school experience you can't get with a more "play experience" engineered game like 5E.

Not to say that this is a fault with 5E, it is just very slick and does things to enhance the fun much like a videogame, MMO, or casino slot machine does. For example, death is hard because the game is designed to keep you engaged. Quitting or changing games is very hard if your story does not end. Your character can be an extension of your identity, and that is a further design choice to increase your emotional investment and keep you engaged in the game. Again, not bad things, but game designers know how to manipulate your feelings through an experience and they naturally want to keep you involved.

I still like Labyrinth Lord as my AD&D replacement (I know about OSRIC, I need to check that out). There are grumblings here and there about there not being any new developments for the game, how people wish it was as cleanly presented as OSE, and how it feels like it is getting on in years and needs a revision. I would like to see a cleaner and better organized edition, yes, but to me part of the charm of the game is "it is what it is." AD&D was by no means cleanly laid out, and if you can print out a few "quick reference sheets" you will have most of what you need. By the book reference will always be easier in OSE, but once you do it enough you know the book by heart.

If you grew up with AD&D, Labyrinth Lord feels more like that type of experience than OSE. I like it almost like I would an "AD&D emulator" where OSE feels like a "B/X emulator with reimagined AD&D content," they are not the same thing nor do I want them to be. There are things Labyrinth Lord does by keeping some of the class and build imbalances that I like, and once you start adding in variant classes from third parties that are not as cleanly balanced things feel right to me for an AD&D style experience. Pathfinder 1E to me is like this, there is plenty broken and unbalanced in that game and that is why I love it, even with Pathfinder 2E on my shelf.

When I want something balanced, the players may be new to this, and where every choice is great: OSE (either basic or advanced) and Pathfinder 2E are my top picks. And yes, OSE: Basic is still a great game, and not "less of one" now that OSE Advanced is out. I feel OSE: Basic is the more focused, classic and compatible game, where advanced is an evolution of that into an entirely new experience.

When I want something with the classic imbalances and an almost "modded Skyrim" level of customization with third party material: Labyrinth Lord and Pathfinder 1E are my top picks.

I don't feel I have to replace Labyrinth Lord for OSE, both can coexist and they are mostly cross-compatible.

When I want to play "what everyone else is playing?" Well, 5E, no question and no problem. I still appreciate the original version of that game, but we never really got into it, which I regret some. There is a new version coming anyways, so time to wait and put it aside to see what they do. And I have plenty to do while I wait with all these great games.

Swords & Wizardry vs. Labyrinth Lord

https://www.reddit.com/r/osr/comments/fkfs0g/advanced_labyrinth_lord_vs_swords_and_wizardry/

https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/14309/how-does-swords-wizardry-differ-from-labyrinth-lord

http://flamingtales.blogspot.com/2010/07/rpg-smackdown-swords-wizardry-vs.html

Above are three great discussions on the differences between Swords & Wizardry (S&W) and Labyrinth Lord (LL), and yes I know, so many have moved on to Old School Essentials (OSE) as their B/X game of choice. But I recently got into Swords & Wizardry just because of all the cool games based on it and wanted to check out the base rules out and to see why the game inspired so much hacking and custom games that started with these rules.

In short, Swords & Wizardry was the old-school hacker's paradise before Old School Essentials came along and built B/X as a modular experience. In S&W a lot is left up to your imagination and interpretation (like the old days), and the game is even supplied as a MS Word doc (so I have heard, I have not found the current link yet) so you can remix and rebuild the game any way you would like.

So a plethora of games were released using S&W as a core rules set, including a lot of the X! games mentioned previously, a WW2 game, and many others.

In regards to community choice, it does feel as if Swords and Wizardry came first, that was replaced by Labyrinth Lord, and that was replaced by Old School Essentials. Dungeon Crawl Classics still is in there somewhere doing its own thing. I get this feeling the more your game emulates the original rules and acts as a replacement for them, the easier you are to replace when the next cool thing comes out. Games that do their own thing (DCC and others) tend to stick around and maintain fans.

One Save to Rule them All

There is one feature of Swords & Wizardry that I feel is a genius simplification: the unified, singular saving throw number. You get one saving throw that improves as you level, and there is no chart reference or odd progression for this or that. No difference between saving versus spells or a wand. You just "save" and that is that, and there are optional "plus this versus that" sort of exceptions, like a class getting a save bonus versus something or the other.

You can even use the saving throw as a backdoor skill roll. Would a magic user know how to read those runes? Saving throw. Would an assassin know the handiwork of another assassin? Saving throw. Could a ranger or druid identify a plant? Saving throw. Basic Fantasy has a skill roll mechanic like this, but this way feels much more unified and sane.

I like the one save concept a lot, and it makes the "save versus..." charts on many other games look like unneeded minutia and cruft. I just ask myself why do saves really need to differ by a couple points in either direction for all these classes when you could just average them all out and give a bonus or penalty to a couple situations per class and be rid of all that complexity and have more flexibility.

It makes me wonder why the original designers of D&D felt the need to divide saves like this and if that was even the right choice or just pointless detail. If you wanted a species to be magic resistant, give them a plus on magic saves. Make that stack with a class also magic resistant for another plus. Or give assassins a bonus on just poison saves since they nick themselves constantly. Or give clerics a save versus opposing alignment (good or evil) magic.

You get a lot of flexibility here and a lot more options when designing races and classes versus having to print, update, and reference dozens of tables of saving throws. And these tables are huge, slow, and require a lot of recording and bookkeeping.

The one save number rule alone makes me a fan.

Very AD&D and Close to LL

Before Old School Essentials came along many were split between Swords & Wizardry and Labyrinth Lord for the mixed D&D and AD&D sort of mash-up experience. Then we had a lot of great B/X games released and rapid development of base games and new experiences. With the "advanced" companions for OSE coming out this year I suspect both S&W and LL are further going to be relegated to hardcore fans, but both always given props in the community.

You also have the demons in here where OSE's advanced edition removed them, so if you wanted the classic AD&D style experience with the demons and devils being the evil masterminds of wickedness in the world either LL or SW are great choices for your game.

S&W does feel like a 70's version of AD&D to me, sort of a stripped-down, pre-basic/expert set version of the rules with quirks and balance through taking away some of our standard assumptions (like all classes getting a STR modifier to damage in B/X land; only pure fighters get that damage bonus, and not rangers or paladins). The more tricky social classes (bards and illusionists) are not here, and this is feels like more of a retro-retro clone with some of our B/X assumptions turned on their heads.

It does challenge some of those B/X assumptions we have come to feel are genre standards, and it helps show you that breaking some things in B/X cannon (like the saving throw tables or assumptions of ability score bonuses) can actually make a better or at least more interesting game in some ways.

I feel it also highlights one danger of homogenizing on one B/X rules set as a standard, and forcing every B/X design to account for everything in one rules set over all others. Personally, I am happy owning, reading, playing all these B/X games and S&W makes a fine addition to my B/X play and game design toolkit.

Missing Bards and Illusionists

For some not having these classes is a deal breaker, and LL does not have a bard class either. Though I found a great S&W bard here:

http://swcompanion.wikidot.com/resources

...and I am sure if you really wanted an illusionist you could always use LL's, or find another one like this one that took me seconds to search for:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/140543/The-Basic-Illusionist

This is S&W, the community of hacking is your friend and will fill in most of what you need. And there is also B/X to pull from as well. Since S&W is closer in spirit to the old days you are supposed to mod and hack and get playing. It is a different attitude from the "complete" type games like Old School Essentials where all of what you need is in the books (but you can mod there as well, TBH).

Still Worth Having

For all the game hacks and games created off this base, I still feel S&W is worth owning and playing, or at least as a companion resource to games based off of the core system. The system feels more 1970's D&D than Labyrinth Lord's early 80's AD&D feel, and that is something to consider. LL feels more like a nod to today's B/X conventions, while S&W keeps things old school (and thus has a more distinct identity in my feeling, especially when LL is compared to OSE).

There is also a lot of great high-quality content written for the game and worlds of content to explore here, and it is all B/X so it can be reused anywhere you eventually end up. So while OSE is the current game of the moment for the B/X world, I still feel S&W is a strong choice with some cool custom games developed from the core rules.

While I do like OSE a lot, I don't feel I need to play it exclusively. I will probably change my mind when the advanced books arrive, so there is that.

I could see myself designing a game originating on this rules set over Labyrinth Lord or even Old School Essentials, just because the system is designed to be ultra hackable and modifiable. There isn't much baggage here once you strip everything out beyond a handful of core B/X style conventions. OSE does a great job modularizing things, but S&W lets you tear down to the metal and rebuild.

The PDF is free too, so the price is right. I picked up the softcover too, just to have the book, and it was a great deal - and something I will be using.

Basic Fantasy: Monopoly Style Rules

Flipping through my wonderful spiral-bound copy of Basic Fantasy (a format I honestly wish more publishers would use) it struck me how universal this set of rules has become. One could say that about all of B/X, or at least the B/X core rules, as many games have went off in a million different directions as of now. But this set of rules sticks to the most basic of basic 4+4 setups: cleric, fighter, mage, thief and human, elf, dwarf, halfling. Nothing else, no race-as-class options, no paladins or rangers, no 9th level spells, and no AD&D options thrown in there just because - the rules set feels to me like the best of what you need to have fun, and nothing extra.

Now, I like my extras, but there is a point where you put so much on a hamburger it becomes a salad on a bun with an inconsequential piece of protein lost in there. More is not better, and as B/X matures I feel we are entering this "more is more" phase where retro content is mined for an ever-expanding product line for each game. Pathfinder 1st Edition became that for us, two shelves full of books that I feel these days are honestly only good for mining for OGR content. The game got too big, with too many options, and it felt like it collapsed under its own weight (along with one of our shelves holding it).

Basic Fantasy sticks to the basics, and it throws out everything that isn't needed. All of the options around "this or that" such as ascending vs descending AC are tossed out. It feels like the original set of Monopoly board game rules to me. It isn't 100% B/X, but it is B/X enough with modern mechanics that all the confusion has been removed and just the best parts retained.

Also, I feel no pressure to include classes and spells from expansions outside the basic book. These days I buy a game from a big publisher and I know a year or two from now the game will change entirely, players with the new book will want to play that, and as a referee I will feel bad about not supporting "official" content. And other players will want the book too, and the entire experience as a referee will suffer.

The business model for games written by big companies are 100% dependent on the number of referees in the community, and it gets harder and harder to manage the larger the game becomes. It is like shipping a video game console and having a controller shortage that gets worse over time. Somehow I feel the timing of a release for a new edition of the game is an entry point likely determined by a graph somewhere tracking the number of referees left in the game. I assume a longer-term graph instead of one at launch, as all games tend to follow a decrease in interest curve.

The Advanced Content

Old School Advanced Fantasy feels like that to me, a set of rules in a different universe where the D&D and AD&D split never happened. We have B/X Bards and Paladins. We have most everything from the Monster Manual. More is more, and while I love all the new options and content, the core experience feels slightly lost in the bun. I look at the Old School Essentials Basic Fantasy book and see a simpler game. I have both, so it is a choice now, but the difference exists.

I would still play the Basic version of OSE, just to keep the experience focused and having that classic feel.

I suppose when it comes down to it, Old School Essentials feels more like a traditional role-playing game, where Basic Fantasy feels like a set of rules for a board game. I could break out the original Dungeon! board game and play that with Basic Fantasy. If I want to tell a story, give a group a plethora of options within B/X, develop a colorful world and setting, and have lots of different factions and pieces to play with I will definitely go with Old School Essentials. Labyrinth Lord always sits there in the darkness calling though, and it is a solid option too if you really love that "D&D is evil" heavy metal vibe going on with that game.

Thinking back, I seem to recall that AD&D was created by TSR to create a new game from the original rules and there was something about royalties and creators - so it was messy. A lot was added and changed, there were rules tweaks everywhere, and the systems were made different to a point where the two games were not compatible. If there was no pressure from the business side, I wonder how many of the AD&D changes would have made it into D&D if the two had stayed one game.

Historical note, Wizards did buy the rights from both sides and D&D 3.0 unified the game back into one system, and brought us the OGL - which is a historical and brave moment that helped build the world we see today.

As creators build new games from the shadow of the additional content introduced by later products, I feel there is a valid question here about crafting a product that is unified and does something well versus a more kitchen sink approach.

Some B/X games are more boxes of Lego bricks that can be crafted into anything, while others do a specific setting well. Some building block sets come with a few blocks, while others come with many. One game can't be everything to everybody (but some do come close). I really am a fan of many B/X games, and there are times I am in the mood for one and not the other.

And since they are all B/X, I only have to keep a few differences in the way they work in my head. Or not. It all just works well and is similar enough if you cross-pollinate rules and concepts nothing will be broken.

The Board Game

One thing I love about Basic Fantasy is it is printed (from what I know) at-cost, so there is no commercial need to keep new books coming out. They are there if you want hard copies, and this is done as a convenience. No salaries or advertising budgets need to be payed, next year's books don't have to be planned, and the rules just stay what they are. No expansions are planned - other than the ones you make yourself or download from other people.

That is a simple, user-focused community that I love, like a group of Unix users all contributing programs, scripts, and utilities to help each other out for free. While I love my art-filled, stitch-bound, beautiful professional quality books that other games bring to the table - there is a side of me that craves the simple, user-focused, open-source style community of Basic Fantasy and the no-extras and no-nonsense base set that everyone begins with. It is like the Raspberry Pi in a way, you build a community around a common piece of "hardware" that works well and is well-supported, and all of a sudden a lot of cool things start happening.

No, it doesn't have all the cool things my other games have, but what it does have is a strong and vibrant community without the motive to produce more and better content. The game is free from commercial pressure, and that, along with this beautiful spiral bound edition, are key features the game ships with.

Even in these days of the incredible offerings out there (and on my shelf), I feel there is still a place for a simple set of rules like this in my gaming world. These are my Monopoly-style rules, perfect for hacking or just messing around with.

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.

Mail Room: Advanced Labyrinth Lord

The Advanced Labyrinth Lord book came today, and it is a nice collection of everything in one place. All the monsters in one list, consolidated treasure tables, and one spell list. I got this book and instantly...

...I wanted a higher quality stitched binding, heavier stock paper, a bookmark, and a real "deluxe" edition with more artwork and content. More OSR art. Art for all the monsters. That sense of quality and drama. Celebrate the hobby and genre by going all out. I swear some of the newer really high-quality roleplaying books are spoiling me. You take one look at Alien, OS Essentials, or Zweihander and you instantly want that. Something to pass down. Something permanent, you know?

If there was another version of AL&L I would love it to be this "going all out" ultimate version and I would kickstart support this at a premium level.

LL: The Linux of OSR

Old School Essentials feels more like the Unix version of B/X, while Labyrinth Lord feels more like a user-experienced Linux release. The support among 3rd party products for Labyrinth Lord is good, and this delivers a version of the game that is a mash-up between D&D and AD&D that I remember when I started playing in the late 70's. Back then, we had our campaign, and every new book that came out - D&D or AD&D was mashed into our world.

I do like Old School Essentials as the lower-level compatibility layer for B/X, and both can co-exist. Labyrinth Lord is that distribution of Linux with the MP3 and video player, solitaire, games, a media center, Libre Office, all the browsers, the dev tools, and a web server built in. There is a lot in Labyrinth Lord and it can do a lot of stories and fantasy genres easily, even if you do not use it all. Demons? Devils? Cthulhu? Dragons? Undead? Vampires? Evil cults and gods? Orcs and goblins? Barbarians? Your campaign bad guys are all in the book (or one easy to find).

Keeps Me Coming Back

Labyrinth Lord is the game that keeps me coming back to OSR. Of all of the games I own, even Basic Fantasy and Dungeon Crawl Classics, Labyrinth Lord is the game I have on my desk. These days, it is "D&D" for me, the way I think of fantasy adventuring, and the framework I use for thinking about this type of dungeon gaming.

With a lot of modern games, they are over 1,000 pages to read and learn just to get started, optimized builds and combat strategies, and designed to take all of your mental effort to be a part of and absorb. Pathfinder eventually got too big for our group to play, and it was more fun to read and look at the art.

To "think" in OSR plus have a lot of options, plus compatibility with older adventures, and feeling like how I started with the game while keeping that simplicity, Labyrinth Lord hits a sweet spot.

Labyrinth Lord: The XXL Game

So...part of the fun behind playing a OSR game is playing it, but another part is collecting books you can use in the game. A 2XL game means Xpansions and Xtra stuff to me. I need a few more parts to make things happen and some of the characters I want to play. I have a preference for printed books, especially hardcovers, but I will make a few exceptions for some really helpful resources. Let's take the base game of Labyrinth Lord and expand the heck out of it until we can't recognize it anymore, and try to build an interesting setting and world.

Class Compendium

First up is the excellent Class Compendium, which gets me an interesting mix of B/X classes. I get a nice version of the bard, an acrobat, a barbarian, fortune tellers, pirates, bounty hunters, knights, and gladiators. Some of these classes don't really fit in or I would do another way, so this wouldn't be a "take everything" sort of book. Just the best parts of the classes I need and want for a couple characters. One thing I like about these really specific classes is I can create a unique NPC such as a Investigator or Rune-Master and have that be an NPC unique to the world.

I would probably make all of these classes "by GM permission only" to start, with some being easier calls to allow players to use, such as the bard. Some, like the angel, familiar, or death knight would be NPC only. And a couple like the shootist and automation would be more steampunk and likely disallowed for a more fantasy setting. Some are also more setting specific, such as the samurai and gladiator. I would be careful and make sure they match the flavor of my setting.

Creature Compendium

Another must-have is the Creature Compendium, we need more monsters, and this book is densely packed in the same way the original AD&D Monster Manual was - and the creatures are terrifying, different, and at times just plain strange. Which is what you want in a Monster Manual, players wondering...um, I haven't seen that in a previous edition, should we be running?

Realms of Crawling Chaos

How much Cthulhu do you want in your game? If none, skip this book. If you like the idea of monsters from the Eldritch Realm showing up and causing terror, dive right in. If anything, you can pick and choose here and avoid the overly Lovecraft style bits and still have serpent people, lamias, cave beasts, other monsters you can rename, and a psionic system you can use without summoning an old god.

Opening the door to Cthulhu does flip a huge "campaign bad guy" switch, and I can see entire groups of villains sighing and saying, "Not more Lovecraft please!" Demons throw up their hands and say, "Why be afraid of us?" Evil gods shrug their shoulders and ask, "Our cults are evil too!" Evil dragons let out long, disappointed growls and say, "Not more aliens, geeze, there isn't even a societal progress as evil force narrative going on here that is so early industrial era, they don't even make sense in fantasy since no one is afraid of magic!"

Evil GMs nod their head, make every faction a TPK force players should be afraid of, toss the Cthulhus on top like a side dish at a buffet, and smile.

Barrowmaze & FC of Archia

Every time I pick these books up they becomes harder not to use. While these aren't stuff books, either are a compelling start for an XXL version of Labyrinth Lord. They are region-based campaign settings, and you don't have to use the mega-dungeons within 100%. Little parts could be home bases for villain groups, plots, and stories. Wait, what? Don't use it all? Yes, please.

One doesn't need to clean the book, room-by-room, and and vacuum up every last copper piece off the floor, kill every monster, bleach every surface, put up warning signs on all hazards, and disarm every trap. Part of the problem of mega-dungeons are that "completest" mentality going into them, and what I find is a better approach is to use parts of them during the campaign as stories are told, and to weave them into the campaign's narrative.

Plus I would rather have the freedom to venture out to a bandit fort or lost temple every so often, something of my creation, rather than feel obligated to go to the last bookmark and check off some more rooms. Then why use a mega-dungeon? Well, hundreds or pre-created locations can be re-used in millions of ways, especially if they are easily accessible.

Petty Gods

A strange entry to this list would be the quirky choice of Petty Gods, a compendium of minor, oddball, strange, and forgotten deities in the world. I know, this begs the question, who are the main gods of the world you are building? We will get to that, but the wonderful thing this book adds to the mix is a whole catalog of gods once worshiped, but now forgotten. Ruined shrines and lost temples now can have meaning, strange puzzles on who may have been worshiped there, and the entire world's backstory takes on a different and interesting tone.

Who knows, perhaps one of these long-dormant gods could be reawakened? For trouble, or perhaps service giving our heroes missions in exchange for secrets and valuable knowledge of old.

d30 DM and Sandbox Companions

Downsides? There are no printed books, and you need a d30 for these. Otherwise, these are a solid set of tables for just about anything you would need, and especially when you do solo play. These are purely for filling in things you may not think of, and to add some color and spice to the game.

I am working on house-rules for this project as well. More on those as I get them done.

A Table Full of Options

Labyrinth Lord makes this easy. A lot of cool adventures and supplements are designed to use with the game, and while other games may have simple implementations or other unique mechanics, Labyrinth Lord brings a lot of third party support to the table. Over time this will likely change, but some of what is already out there are classic books with some really fun options and choices.

And a Setting...

So is OSR better with or without a setting? I would say start your sandbox small and worry about the larger world later. I want to stay away from traditional D&D settings or anything linked to a system. Maybe I will cover OSR settings in another post, since a deeper dive will be needed to examine the possibilities.

It is a needed choice, since setting will determine many things, such as gods, factions, and many other aspects. One problem of a lot of settings is that they throw too much at you, and all of a sudden all those gods, factions, conflicts, and other things going on in the world players should know about become the only things they worry about and they feel like world ambassadors having to take it all in and solve the load of it. Starting small, on a local level, puts blinders on you and keeps the players the most important force in the game.

For now, this is a good base set of sources and  tools I will need to get started.

Advanced Labyrinth Lord

 

So I heard about Advanced Labyrinth Lord, which is basically a "all the books in one" edition of the game. I love this game because it replicates my first encounter with D&D. Starting with the basic D&D set, adding the Expert set, mixing in AD&D parts as needed, and generally loving the dangerous mess until AD&D 2nd edition came along and sanitized the game for the mainstream market.

And I will call the game AL&L in this discussion, since I am getting a laugh out of saying Advanced Labyrinth and Lord out loud.

Yes, I picked up the Flossing Orcus cover for AL&L, since that is the coolest. The notion of Hell should always be hovering over an old-school game since in those days your parents forced you to go to church on Sunday, but the night before you and your friends were just in Hell fighting the forces of Satan. There is also the notion of "why Satan isn't listed as a monster" in these games, because honestly, that is the character the Dungeon Master plays.

That was a joke. But the metaphor fits perfectly.

That Cover Though

Yeah, that Orcus cover on AL&L is pure metal. You have sex, violence, and an elf who doesn't know what they are doing and firing off the page. There is also a sharp object pointed at Orcus' private parts. Seriously, since the fighter and the elf are looking away from Orcus, I get the feeling the wizard is summoning Orcus to help with this fight. Boss fight or summoning a greater demon to deal with a TPK, your choice, and just as metal each way.

There is another cover with a dragon head, but that to me looked like a party fighting a giant hand puppet so I opted for Orcus. A party fighting a giant hand puppet is also an apt metaphor for the game as well. The Orcus cover has that "evil" feel and also a mystery and open question hovering over it. It invites you in to see why, who, and how. The dragon head is a nice cover too, it just did not sing to me as much as this illustration of Orcus, which I feel is one of the iconic images for AL&L and Labyrinth Lord in general.

This is honestly a piece of art that elevates the game, even if the rules inside are 100% the same as the two-book edition. I love the two-tone tan and blue shading on the Orcus cover, along with the PCs who pop against that unholy blue fire. Excellent job here.

No Learning, More Room to Grow

Compared to some of the rules I have been working through, most notably Rolemaster Classic and Zweihander, there is nothing to learn here. There are no articles to write to decipher rules, no real way of getting a combat wrong, very little ways to create a character incorrectly, no complicated combat action system, no conditions, no crit charts, no complicated armor systems, no arcane magic systems, no game terms that leave me scratching my head, and interrupt based play is limited to holding actions after winning initiative.

The game is also free to grow with plenty of B/X supplements, and the rules framework simple enough I could write my own. If I wanted a sanity or corruption system for a dark fantasy game, write one myself or bolt it on from another game. I could take GURPS Horror's fear and sanity system and port that over with minimal effort, or even Call of Cthulhu's sanity system and add that as a d100 score and be all good to go. To explain that to players would be something like, "B/X with Call of Cthulhu's sanity system, let's play." 

Nothing to pour over, and nothing to learn.

I have add-on books with classes such as bards and hundreds of others made for this game. I have dungeons. I have books of monsters. I am ready now and let's just play.

Now, I do like reading and playing new things, and the B/X style of combat can feel a little dry at times. But there is a huge red line between dry and gets the job done, and complicated and you will rarely play it right. A lot of games are like that, I just have no hope of ever feeling I am playing it competently. There is too much to learn. They drag and drone on forever. At least in a simple game, I have the room to expand in the places I feel the game lacks detail. In a complicated game, you need to take everything or leave it.

Labyrinth Lord = Core B/X

I keep returning to Labyrinth Lord as the essence of the B/X experience. I have other games, such as the great Dungeon Crawl Classics, but again that game feels heavy with charts and add-on concepts (which I know people love), when all I want for B/X is the core experience. I need to get into DCC more to understand it, since that game has a huge amount of love in the community and I respect that. I kind of get the feeling DCC is the "most popular mod" to B/X that has captured the hearts of millions and enhances the core experience.

More on DCC soon as I have recently found my copy that was lying around here.

But for book-standard and simple B/X that runs like a well-oiled machine, I feel Labyrinth Lord captures the feel of those early days I experienced the best, and maintains compatibility with older material and is expandable in a million different ways. This game is like a metal part to a machine that fits well, works well, and never really breaks.

Mail Room: Realms of Crawling Chaos

Imagine, if you will, a medieval 'fantasy' world where there are no mages and there are no clerics. Man does not have the power nor the mind to wield magic, nor do the gods listen to the prayers of the devout. There are no holy knights, no druids in secluded glades, and no elves nor dwarfs in the deep forests or the mountains yonder.

Just humans, be them thieves or soldiers. Weapons of iron and souls steeled to the nightmares from beyond.

And a world of horrors from beyond time and space who prey upon these souls in a manner so callous and uncaring it is as if our race were ants under the heel of these cosmic beings.

Realms of Crawling Chaos

This is another cool book from Goblinoid Games of Labyrinth Lord fame, completely compatible with the Goblin-verse of games including the fore-mentioned, Mutant Future, Starships and Spacemen, and even Apes Victorious. It is as if the world never moved on from the B/X ruleset, what we knew is what worked, and things like the TSR d100 systems never came to be and AD&D 2nd Edition never happened. Things just stayed kind of the same, and what we had was how the world worked.

This is a book that meshes a unique interpretation of the Lovecraftian myths with the B/X sensibilities of Labyrinth Lord and it works. It is as if that banned section of the original Deities and Demigods took on a life of its own, spawned a dark and twisted fantasy world, and all sorts of horror and beasts lurked in the darkness of fantasy worlds as black as night and as dark as the souls of the evil which lurks in mankind's hearts.

It is a book when I read it it feels as if I should not be reading it, and that is a cool feeling. It is very different than the more well-known Call of Cthulhu, with a B/X sensibility and a bunch of creatures unique to this interpretation of the mythos. That said, I am not sure I would want to mix these in with orcs and trolls as a monster manual expansion for the base game, though it would be fun for an adventure or two as a one-time-only diversion for a party that thought they have seen it all. Maybe they would never make it back from a place inhabited by creatures such as this.

The Dark Fantasy Campaign

I like the idea of the no player magic of the dark fantasy idea presented in this book - it feels entirely unfair and punishing, but a part of me thinks there are players out there up for such a challenge. No ultimate power 'I win button' magic spells and no 'pray to my god' party heals. Just iron and bone, flesh and sheer will, and the mastery of weapons smithed in the forge and the guile of rogues ready to stab evil in the back.

I did not see any insanity rules, though that in a way fits in with my feelings about B/X and the referee should run the game to make the players feel the fear and go insane when they argue among themselves if they should open that next door or not. Though if you wanted to, there are two or three easy ways around this:

• Save versus Death for insta-kill situations
• Save versus Paralyze/Petrify for fear or insanity effects
• Save versus Spells for resisting curses and eldritch magic

Done. There, you have most of what you need for a sanity or fear system with the base game's saving throw system. Save versus petrify, roll random flight or freeze whenever a horror is encountered. Allow the character a Wisdom saving roll modifier on those fear saves (if you want) and you are all set.

Save versus death modifiers? Strength for crushing traps, dexterity for falling to your death, constitution for poisons, intelligence for things which would utterly destroy your mind, and so on. I am a fan of the flexible death save like this, and these should come often enough that if you go pokeing around in a bastion of alien power and infestation a couple insta-death books, snake filled pits, evil soul sucking mirrors, deadly traps, death magic doorknobs, look at the symbol and die, flying metal sigils with razor blazes, falling racks of nails, peer through a keyhole and a poniard thrusts out, and other scary horror-show traps of instant death lurking about that players should be very afraid of random and uncaring peril awaits around every corner, ready to strike.

As a referee, if I ran these death traps the less logical I mad them the better. Hurald the Brave brushes his bare arm against the black tapestry and he beings coughing violently, only to disintegrate into a ashen pile of dust. Jontik peers into the dark hallway, only to have his soul sucked out by the darkness beyond. Tranard tries to squeeze between the stones, but misunderstands the geometry of the space and is crushed to an infinite thinness between planar walls. Rejik suddenly collapses to the ground, and the high pitched whine only he can hear scrambles his consciousness as it leaks out his ears in purple ichor.

Curses too can be used, like a magic curse affecting a character that randomly blanks out a character's memory of what that character did when they were sent off alone in a certain room. Another magic curse that makes a character hear howling noises behind them, and just when they thought those were just noises...bam! A curse that makes a character stand there stone still instead of fight. A curse that makes a character afraid of the sun. A curse that turns a character against the townspeople, causing mistrust and anger towards them. You are but an ant in this world of alien cosmic power, you could not know nor understand the powers upon which you touch nor could you predict what they would do to your fragile mind. That.

Insanity too, if a character is unlucky enough to fail two fear saves in a roll, give them a temporary insanity. Critical fail or a failed save while temporarily insane? Permanent. Make up their affliction and have the player run with it.

Nothing has to make sense, it only has to be deadly and strange enough to give players the creeps. They may not want to play with you again because you are such a weird and creepy dungeon master, but they will be back for more.

Better With Simple Rules

I get the feeling if I ran this the body count on the player's side would be pretty high. At the beginning of the night there may be grumbling that we aren't playing this with  a more character-building friendly game such as Pathfinder. At the end of the night, they will understand why they will need to be able to spin up a new character in 5 minutes because their last four characters did not make it out of the strange hole in the ground alive. This is better as a horror game where your character starts off expendable, and if you ever manage to survive an infestation, you hold onto that second or third level hero with dear life. If we end up with an even mix of laughing and sheer terror with characters dropping like this was a crazy session of the game Paranoia I know I will have done a good job as referee.

Really, I like these retro clones because they are crazy, indie, creative remixes of what came before with a new spin on things - and they excite my imagination in ways other game's don't. I feel I don't have that freedom to invent strange insanities, deathtraps, and curses in normal Lovecraftian games - but because of the Tomb of Horrors make up whatever killer trap or deadly curse legacy of B/X games, I do feel a lot more free with this game to just say it and do it.

I don't need every scary effect vectored out with rules and character options to defend against them. Trust me, this is how dungeon masters back in the day ran things, and as long as we were fair, cool about things, and listened to players when things got too intense our group could handle and play anything. We could make up rules for lots of things and have fun. The game became ours in a way, with our own tweaks and mods, and we played it how we wanted to play it.

That is what I love about B/X style rules, they left a lot up to us and we loved the freedom.

More is Worse?

There is this trick the big publishers pull on us and I feel we (as consumers and game buyers) tend to fall for it every time.

More is better!

By the end of D&D 4th Edition there were literally thousands of feats and powers, dozens of class choices, a near infinite variety of equipment (each piece only being good for a few builds), and so much choice you felt like you had it all. I get this feeling Pathfinder 1st Edition is in the same place, and when you add in all the web content for D&D 5th Edition you are getting back to that point of a massive amount of choice- though I could be wrong since I haven't been keeping up on 5th Edition since my player base has dried up recently. I do like they limit D&D 5 to the basic three books, but I don't feel this can be kept up forever and we will someday see choice creep come in as the pressure to sell new things (and the demand for it) increases.

Even if everything is great, there is a point where the sheer quantity of it all makes the entirety of it less great. If there is a mix of good, great, and average, I get this feeling it is all average.

I feel the original AD&D was built from the 'more is better' sort of feeling, where the more options you had the better the game became. But more, really, is it better?

Characters as Deck Builds

By the time you get to D&D 3.x you get the concept of a Magic the Gathering style of 'deck building' as character design, and the game became polluted with 'bad choices' to create less-optimal paths for the game design concept of system mastery to be a thing. The double-ended two-handed weapons as I remember were put into the game expressly for this purpose, and a game already heavy with great, good, and okay choices now becomes cluttered with bad and worse choices everywhere to sort through.

Magic cards are one thing, you can put the ones you don't want in a box somewhere and you are left with a deck of your best stuff. You can control complexity by physical exclusion. Your deck is 'just the stuff you play with.' With role playing games, what options do I have to control complexity? Rip the pages out of the book? Permanent marker? I feel this is the biggest failing of the 'deck building' style of pen and paper RPG character creation games, you have to physically carry around every 'magic card' and rule with you in order to play the game (or you need programs like Hero Lab to sort through them all).

Printing a character sheet helps players keep everything together, but as a referee? I need to know this all or be able to reference it quickly should it come up, and there isn't an easy way for a GM to limit the rules they need to know. We need to know everything, be able to find a rule or feat in a collection of dozens of books out of thousands of entries, and it only gets worse the longer a game is around since expansions endlessly add complexity.

By D&D 4 this sort of data overload for referees was even worse, even though we liked that game at the time. Not so much now. D&D 5 thankfully rolled back the madness, but it is still AD&D-ish in the amount of choice and complexity in my feelings. I wish I had more experience with D&D 5 though, so I probably have more work and reading to do (along with finding opportunities to play) so I can have valid thoughts on that subject and be fair to the game.

And I feel when I read most of these modern post 3.x games, 'too much.' I get choice paralysis and walk away to play other games. Computer games do all this better. I simply don't have the time these days to wade through all of this, read through a thousand pages of game, and figure all this out.

B/X by Comparison

OSR and B/X games by comparison feel like a 'best of' compilation of the traditional dungeon game experience. Labyrinth Lord for me hits that AD&D level of complexity and choice while still keeping the B/X simple game feeling, so right now that is my game of choice. I don't want characters that are these two or three hour design session enshrined masterpiece of math and story background.

Roll 3d6 for three ability scores, pick a race and class, and let's get you to the shop to buy some gear. This character may not live that long so name them only if you want to. Pick something silly. Have fun. I could run this myself!

I get this feeling as I have less times to play games, the ones I get the most out of are the simple ones. The more a game has, the more it asks for me, and the more I just can't find the time to play it no matter how fun having all of those options are for players who have the time to master the system. I am just not one of them anymore. System mastery is ultimately an exclusive force, along with being a lock-in tactic for publishers.

Story Mode

Another aspect of modern post D&D 4 games is the mixing in of narrative mechanics into the character design mix. Mostly I feel this is borrowed from FATE, the master of the narrative-based action game and I hold that game in very high regard for being a 'so what happens next' sort of story game that pushes aside complicated character design and math (as story) to building characters out of 'story tags' and letting the mayhem go from there. D&D 5 has this sort of a system (I feel) bolted on through a background and inspiration mechanic which I feel doesn't really go far enough for the narrative-as-action mechanic. I read it and wanted more, but another part of me wanted less.

I am conflicted about this, as if I want narrative to influence the action through mechanics, I will play FATE or even Savage Worlds. Toss those huge spell and feat lists away, we are just letting the narrative and mad-lib action rule the game and not worshiping on the altar of d20. In my experience, games built around narrative play do the best job of creating that 'story as game' experience.

Narrative mechanics add complexity, going into the more is more area, and I feel the more modern narrative-focused games do a far better job at this than a system bolted on to what should be a more simple B/X affair - where the story is, "do you open that door?"

Strip out all narrative systems and put the fear of what's behind the door in the player's hearts - not is some artificial storytelling system. That is B/X to me. But I still love my pure storytelling systems as well, I am not so convinced they need to be in dungeon games because I love that one to one player to referee relationship of 'what do you do next?' Risk. Reward. Puzzle solving. Danger. Pushing your limits. Going that extra room and possibly losing it all. That, to me, is the story of a great dungeon game. Again, we go back to that playing piece Monopoly feeling of the thrill of doing well in the game more than having to write a backstory for the car, dog, and the thimble.

So...personal stories. Extra detail? Yes. Interesting? Possibly. The focus of the game? I am not so sure. For the overall dungeon, yes, I feel there should be a story there. For characters? If they want, yes and I can play along, but I would never force a story on a player if all they wanted to do was hack and slash. My feeling, personal stories are optional and interesting, and those should be up to the players.

But an extra layer of complexity if codified into the rules, so it is worth asking are narrative rules really needed for a fun game.

B/X Essentials

B/X Essentials, especially when compared with Labyrinth Lord, is a fascinating thought process for me. You could call B/X Essentials a "subset game" in comparison to many other B/X inspired games, as the core of the rules work and you can pull in as much as you want from other B/X games and have everything work.

But more so, you can play B/X Essentials straight and have a 'best of' experience since all of the unneeded fluff and extra options are stripped out. I get this chess-like feeling when I read the game, that everything has been boiled down into a molecular purity of thought and decision. This is that missing dungeon style game box set I would buy at Target and have everything I need for years of play, and no distractions in the game weighing it down. It gives me that Monopoly feeling where the best is all that remains, and the distractions have been cleaned out.

A reset, if you will, and a fresh start.

I Want to Control What's 'More'

Bringing this all back around to the original thought, I want to control the 'what's more' in my games. Too often, and this is especially true with Pathfinder, you will get a lot of junk with the few things you want. We are back to the magic card deck again, and having that ability to throw away the cards we don't want. In this thinking, having a game like B/X Essentials gives me just a base set of cards I can expand upon in any way. If I want to play a Arthurian fantasy game with some Robin Hood mixed in, I can do that easily, have a Knight class, a Robber class, a Sheriff class, maybe a Friar, and we are good to go. I don't need to worry about Druids or Halflings running around Sherwood Forest mucking things up. If I want them, they are there, but I have that choice.

If I want a narrative rules set for story-based play I can add it in, and I don't have to use it for every game I play. I can have a different narrative rules add-on for another game if it makes sense to change things, and I have that freedom with a modular system.

And more so, going forward, I want to be able to control complexity and add-ons, and not have to take everything. While I love the Class Compendium for Labyrinth Lord, there are parts I won't use and don't need. I can pick and choose, but I would love for things to be more modular without me having to create lists of what is being used versus what is not. I can envision a time when I collect so much stuff for Labyrinth Lord that I am at the same point as I was with Pathfinder, although the starting point will be B/X and I will be in an ultimately less complex and better place, my problems of 'too much' will return.

Again, it is why I like B/X Essentials so much, because it gives me a plan to escape this mess. This feels like a set of the old 'little black books' that I loved about the old Traveller game, but for dungeon adventures, yet better thought out and ready for expansion without breaking under the weight of the inevitable. There is even a 'reset' option for complexity. I could even throw out all of the expansions I added in, go back to the base rules, and start again if I so desired, something impossible with games like D&D or Pathfinder (without needing an entirely new edition).

Computer languages evolve like this, and they go from these very-low level and monolithic Towers of Babel to more modern, smaller, cleaner and more expressive designs that let you do more...

...with less.

Mail Room: Class Compendium

Another box from the mail room is opened today, and look at what we have!

This is a cool one from over at Barrel Rider Games, the Class Compendium which was designed for Labyrinth Lord but can be used for any B/X game really. I got mine over at RPG Now, and opted for the PDF and hardcover printed book combo. I like hardcover books, but I  like PDFs for my phone when I am somewhere outside and want something more intelligent to absorb than a mobile game.

Want to turn Labyrinth Lord or any B/X game into something more like Pathfinder, but still keep the tried-and-true B/X sensibilities? This is your book. It adds 52 new classes, some profession-based and others are the traditional race-based, and I love reading through these and seeing a B/X take on some of the traditional expansion classes (Bard, Barbarian, Acrobat) and getting some really fun new classes (Pirate, Friar, Explorer).

We also get some fun race-classes, such as dragons, angels, treants, and goblins. We also get race-specific classes for dwarves, elves, and halflings like the elven greensinger or the halfling burglar. You can even play as a familiar and I find that enchanting and sounding like a blast for some of the players we had the joy to play with over the years.

Balance

I feel a lot of work was put in balancing the classes against a lower-powered B/X framework, and I get a good feeling on my first look on a lot of these. My first impression is "these are a bit sparse and low powered" but remember, each one of these has to compete and be balanced against a B/X fighter, cleric, thief, or magic user. Going overboard means the expansion classes will be great power-creep choices, so I like the limited feel and lower power level of a lot of these designs.

The Bard is Cool

I really like the non-magical bard here, and this class fits my vision of a singing and on-the-side thief who has a good basic singing power and can stand alongside a party of other B/X heroes and not outshine them. I have had other games where the bard class clearly outshined the party's thief, and we got this feeling the bard did everything better as a superior thief+ class. More on the bard later, because I would love to do a comparison of different B/X bards in different books and how they were designed. This one, while basic, feels the best to me and I am still collecting data for that bards in B/X article.

Expanded in Many Directions

A feeling I get from this book is that the classes aren't really expanded in any one direction, they go all over the place. This is essentially a collection of classes that were once individually published, and that is a great value in itself. But if you are looking for something that has a singular focus on presenting something where the classes all augment and fit together each other you may feel a little confused about this book and adding it to your game. The book starts with a Lovecraftian alienist class that seems something out of an insane version of Cthulhu in Wonderland than it does traditional B/X, and then the book goes in so many directions it gets confusing and a bit wanderlust at times.

In my mind, I was trying to think of a game world where all of these classes can exist together, and it came off in my mind as a fantasy version of the Mos Eisley cantina where anything goes and random bar patrons can step up and meet their doom in places like Barrowmaze, including the wanderer in the back corner, the town's watchman by the door, the mad scientist alienist who gets them all killed, the fortune teller, and the lost boy who follows the group around like Short Round out of The Temple of Doom.

This is a good thing and a bad thing. Good if you like fruitcake mixed parties where anyone and anything can join in and participate, but bad if you are more the serious type who likes things to make sense and have an overarching and meaningful theme to the group of heroes sitting around your table. Pathfinder got this way by the end of its first-edition run, you could make an anything class being an anybody and sit at the table and join in the fun. I get that vibe here as well with Class Compendium, and this is the first book I can say I would add to my Labyrinth Lord expanded collection to make the whole game feel more like Pathfinder without the problem of dragging the system down into endless complexity and back-breaking amounts of reference.

You can add a lot of options without a lot of complexity, although this feels a bit random I can deal with it. Plus, I am one of those rare people who love fruitcake and those off-the-wall adventuring parties where someone literally plays a house cat. And you can do that here.

Choice vs. Focus

I get this feeling you can have too much choice in a game and things are ruined by being a mile wide and an inch deep. In a normal B/X game when you encounter an NPC they can really only be one of the few chess pieces available. Solving problems doesn't mean choosing the right class for the problem, but using what you have in intelligent ways. If you have a mystery-style adventure, you don't need an 'investigator' style class to solve it - everyone can play Sherlock Holmes and figure things out. You get a purpose-built class for one type of problem and all of a sudden the rest of the party feels minimized.

You also run the risk of watering down a party's core competencies in the standards, like fighting, thieving, spell-casting, and healing with classes like these. If everyone is playing a specialist, you can get parties that are more like a Las Vegas buffet of random tastes than you have a focused and complete meal or team that works together. By the end of Pathfinder's first edition run that's the feeling I got from the parties we encountered, they were more ensembles of strange 'I wanna be a' classes than they were traditional fighter-mage-thief parties.

Ultimately it comes down to taste, but if every player is picking a specialist then I suspect that the referee will need to make adjustments to the adventure for balance, play-ability, and also supporting the classes and making things interesting. If one player picks an investigator class and the dungeon is a straight up combat grind, you are going to have that player feeling their special abilities won't be used. Yes, this is ultimately the player's fault for picking an oddball class which may run against the theme of the adventure and/or campaign, but good referees can adjust and throw in some mysteries every now and then to compensate.

Then again, without these classes you don't have these problems of specialists. Again, it really is about choice versus focus, what your group prefers, and how the referee likes to run things. I like a lot of choice by default since it creates a richer world, but I know the problems this can cause so I am better prepared for the times when the entire table picks strange classes and expects the game to be able to hanlde that.

Of course, this is OSR we are talking about so if everyone picks a housecat and wanders into the Tomb of Death it is going to be a housecat slaughter, so it is ultimately easier to deal with players that want to be strange classes. But then again, who am I to take away that chance of the housecats actually pulling it off and becoming feline legends? To each their own and it is good to have options I say.

More Soon

More on this book soon as I crack it open and start reading it from cover to cover, but this is one I feel is a keeper and a worthwhile addition to my now expanding collection of Labyrinth Lord OSR goodness.