Just curious as to what everyone thinks the absolute best works of the movement are. Core rules, supplements, whatever.
Personally if we are talking rules I think Labyrinth Lord just hits a spot of being so well polished it's amazing, and DCC is a great new take on old things.
Supplements wise Yoon-Suin has really stood out to me, Vornheim as well. The d30 companions are pretty nifty as well.
Funny enough, I just posted about Domains at War in another thread. I'd add it to this list, particularly the Campaigns book, which covers everything from raising an army, to strategic manoeuvring, scouting, espionage, different types of engagements, pursuit, sieges, heroes and how PCs can have an impact and potentially turn the tide, the effects of magic, and, of course, resolving battles (the version in the Domains at War: Campaigns book is theatre-of-the-mind, a la War Machine from BECMI, the version in the Domains at War: Battles book is hex-and-counter, a la Battle System). For my money it's far and away the best treatment of warfare in D&D-type games out there.
Full disclosure: I was a backer on the Kickstarter.
Other supplements on my list would be Vornheim by Zak Smith (weird fantasy cities and generating them), Tales of the Dungeonesque & Grotesque (gothic horror tidbits) by Jack Shear, and Red Tide and Scarlet Heroes both published by Sine Nomine (the former for sandbox creation, the latter for solo PCs; I was a Kickstarter backer on the latter).
Picking a particular ruleset (i.e. Labyrinth Lord), on the other hand, is a lot trickier. It really just comes down to preference. I love Adventurer Conqueror King System for all the stuff it does that other OSR rulesets don't, but someone else might hate it for those very same reasons. I'm sure if this thread ran long enough, you could just end up with a list of every OSR ruleset in existence. Still, if I had to pick, I'd include both ACKS and DCC, both for what they do that other rulesets don't.
Quote from: Bobloblah;844073Funny enough, I just posted about Domains at War in another thread. I'd add it to this list, particularly the Campaigns book, which covers everything from raising an army, to strategic manoeuvring, scouting, espionage, different types of engagements, pursuit, sieges, heroes and how PCs can have an impact and potentially turn the tide, the effects of magic, and, of course, resolving battles (the version in the Domains at War: Campaigns book is theatre-of-the-mind, a la War Machine from BECMI, the version in the Domains at War: Battles book is hex-and-counter, a la Battle System). For my money it's far and away the best treatment of warfare in D&D-type games out there.
Full disclosure: I was a backer on the Kickstarter.
Other supplements on my list would be Vornheim by Zak Smith (weird fantasy cities and generating them), Tales of the Dungeonesque & Grotesque (gothic horror tidbits) by Jack Shear, and Red Tide and Scarlet Heroes both published by Sine Nomine (the former for sandbox creation, the latter for solo PCs; I was a Kickstarter backer on the latter).
Picking a particular ruleset (i.e. Labyrinth Lord), on the other hand, is a lot trickier. It really just comes down to preference. I love Adventurer Conqueror King System for all the stuff it does that other OSR rulesets don't, but someone else might hate it for those very same reasons. I'm sure if this thread ran long enough, you could just end up with a list of every OSR ruleset in existence. Still, if I had to pick, I'd include both ACKS and DCC, both for what they do that other rulesets don't.
Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?
Deep Carbon Observatory
The entire Sine Nomine line of products. Great stuff.
Quote from: Arkansan;844086Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?
Domains at War: Campaigns covers raising armies, recruitment difficulties, equipment, construction (siege engines, circumvallation, etc.), moving armies, supplying armies, reconnaissance, intelligence, invasions, conquering, occupying, and pillaging domains, strategic situations (i.e. catching an army on the march, head-on engagement, encircling a rear-guard, etc.), heroes in battle, sieges, blockades, bombardment, siege-mining, assaults, subversion, spying, increasing or decreasing the scale, the vagaries of war (i.e. battlefield conditions and occurrences), command, morale, casualties, desertion... oh, and battles (in a theatre-of-the-mind, BECMI War Machine kind of way, while still allowing for direct PC involvement at the standard RPG scale). You could run an entire fantasy-RPG warfare campaign with this book.
Domains at War: Battles covers fighting hex-and-counter battles, including multiple scales, terrain, magic items and spellcasting, sieges, heroes/PCs, and building custom units from a creature(s) or (N)PCs RPG stats. The latter is extremely useful even if you're using the more abstract battle resolution from Campaigns. The system in Battles is an extremely slick hex-and-counter (or miniature, if you're so inclined) wargame that integrates seamlessly with ACKS (or, with a little more effort, other D&D family RPGs). I can see switching between this and the more abstract version from Campaigns depending on the importance of a given battle.
Both of these books are designed with ACKS in mind, but mostly refer to universal (to D&D) concepts, such as HD, AC, hp, chance to hit a given AC, level, etc. There is some small amount of effort involved with using them with a non-ACKS ruleset, but I don't think it's so great an effort as to devalue how good these books are just because you're not playing ACKS. Now, having said this, I haven't personally
tried to play Domains at War with a non-ACKS ruleset, I'm merely saying I don't foresee any major difficulties if I were to attempt to do so. Particularly with Labyrinth Lord, which is built off the same B/X chassis.
Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.
LL is just B/X and honestly, not as good.
LotFP is pretentious crap and that goes doubly so for their modules.
And don't get me started on White Box.
Vornheim.
Death Frost Doom.
Carcosa.
Deep Carbon Observatory.
Petty Gods.
Yoon-suin.
Anomalous Subsurface Environment.
Planet Algol blog (Planet Algol setting material).
Hereticworks blog (Wermspittle setting material).
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG.
Quote from: JeremyR;844104Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.
You know, I've seen you say this sort of thing several different places now, and really, it's drivel. So you've got a hate-on for ACKS, whatever, knock yourself out. But aside from the fact that ACKS is decidedly not BECMI (it's built off the skeleton of B/X, for starters, and then diverges from there; of course, if you'd actually read or played B/X, BECMI, and ACKS, you'd probably know this), the point here was about Domains at War. And guess what? Domains at War isn't BECMI, either; it does a better job of handling mass combat than either War Machine or Battle System ever did, as well as covering things neither of those ever considered. And I say that having played and enjoyed both of those TSR systems a great deal. I mean really, I have virtually every product ever published for BECMI sitting on my shelves. I've run it within the last few years. Claiming ACKS is 95% the same game is just hilariously stupid.
Don't like ACKS, or think all retro-clones suck ducks? More power to you. Parade your ignorance of facts around on the internet? Well...I guess it just helps you fit in.
BFRPG
LL
Pretty much anything Goodman Games has put out (they managed to make 3.5 feel a bit old school).
SWN (though I'll never actually run it)
Probably doesn't qualify but Barbarians of Lemuria is prime for OS open play.
ACKS
Dark Dungeons
I like all of it, man (except LotFP--for style reasons only)
Since the most popular best-selling OSR stuff is like Red & Pleasant Land and like Kevin Crawford's stuff and Matt Finch's adventures the only excuse I can see for "OSR is just regurgitations of TSR" meme still existing in 2015 that Kai Tave & co spew is some kind of epidemic of people being dropped on their head as a child.
It's like straight-up flat-earth shit at this point.
Anyway, I'll say Yoon-Suin is essential. The early Monsters & Manuals blog posts that led into it inspired most of what I did later and it demonstrates how far from default D&D you can go without just tipping over into gonzo. And it's a prime example of high-dose high-density high signal-to-noise setting design.
I am going to be curious how Red and Pleasant Land, and Glorantha do. Both were OSR products that broke into the Ennies in a big way.
I will say now that I prefer R&PL to Vornheim. It's not that Vornheim was bad (it wasn't) but that R&PL was more . . . inspiring.
Jst look at the photos and you will know: among the must have are:
Fantastic Heroes & Witchery
Dark Albion: The Rose War
Quote from: Arkansan;844086Wait, so do you need both Domains at War books or are they simply different approaches to the same subject? Is it system specific or would any osr system work?
Well they're bundled anyway - you'd have to work at it to get one without the other now. But the point of both is to return numbers similar to what you'd get if you ran a 1-1 scale, rpg-as-wargame session, so you're likely to only use one at a time. I'm guessing
Campaigns will see more use overall.
Quote from: JeremyR;844104Honestly, not much. So much is just regurgitation of stuff of TSR era stuff, but somehow it's now new and exciting thanks to the OSR circle jerk. ACKS most notably, it's 95% BECMI D&D, including all the supposed brilliant economic stuff.
LL is just B/X and honestly, not as good.
LotFP is pretentious crap and that goes doubly so for their modules.
And don't get me started on White Box.
I'm trying to square this with the blog linked in your sig. How do you hold up? Or do you?
The best of the OSR is Yoon-Suin, Red and Pleasant Land, Deep Carbon Observatory, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Vornheim, Qelong... That's not TSR-type stuff. But I don't know if we'd have gotten that without the broader OSR looking into what old school play was and how it hung together. Maybe we would have - I'd be curious to know those authors' answer to that, but from the outside it's not apparent.
As someone who long ago got rid of (and I honestly can't remember how or what or why I did) his original D&D and AD&D books, I think OSRIC, LL, and S&W are all pretty great. I don't see how they can be criticized for being clones of the original games when that is exactly what their authors describe them as. It's note like they are advertised as fresh new creations. However, I think they are improvements in most cases just in terms of organization and presentation and refinement. They are also in many cases quite nice books!
As far as other stuff...Crawford's entire line is really worthy. SWN, Other Dust, Silent Legions, Red Tide. It's all really good.
Petty Gods is a ton of fun. Stuff like Barrowmaze, Stonehell, Anomalous Subsurface Environment...all good. Matt Finch's adventures are real good too.
Everything by Kevin Crawford, his stuff is what got me into OSR in the first place... Starting with Silent Legions and just going to Stars Without Numbers from there, and so on...
Lamentations of the Flame Princess is excellent just for the sheer different take on what A dungeon crawl game can be...
I didn't get started in D&D until really the tail end of 2nd edition...I never got to experience what gritty D&D was...and even if I don't agree with everything said in LtFP it still has improved my games by expanding my horizon and making me be just a little bit crueler to my players (All in good fun of course.)
To me? Either Barbarians of Lemuria, Dragon Age, or Traveller...:D
OK, less tongue-in-cheek, DCC, Beyond The Wall, Scarlet Heroes, An Echo Resounding: A Sourcebook on Lordship and War, Red Tide Campaign Setting, The Crimson Pandect, Spears of the Dawn, Backswords and Bucklers, Backswords and Bucklers: Tavern Trawling, ACKS, ACKS Companion. Going with the above, you'd not need Domains at War, because that's what An Echo Resounding is, but it doesn't hurt to have both!
Barrowmaze.
High grit, high fatality dungeon sprawl.
Quote from: Saladman;844196The best of the OSR is Yoon-Suin, Red and Pleasant Land, Deep Carbon Observatory, Fire on the Velvet Horizon, Vornheim, Qelong... That's not TSR-type stuff.
While the OSR as a whole
still gets accused of being "all about nostalgia", some of the best stuff is about the roads not taken.
And while I, personally, am unabashedly
nostalgic about some things, I've also enjoyed some of the clever new imaginings spun off from TSR D&D cloth.
Quote from: Orphan81;844203I didn't get started in D&D until really the tail end of 2nd edition...I never got to experience what gritty D&D was...
Same here, though making
sense of many D&D tropes, including gonzo D&D as presented in a few, rare latter-day supplements (the macguffin in Wrath of the Immortals is the power core of a starship crewed by frickin' beagles), was a big jump for me. Oh, and getting acquainted with sources other than Howard and Tolkien.
Just to echo that even if you don't want/like ACKS, Domains at War is brilliant for mass combat, sieges, campaigning armies and so on. And is very compatible with most editions of D&D and their derivations.
Everybody's gonna have their own list. Since I can only vouch for what I've picked up and read, and since I'm not much of a shopper these days (hell, I'm compiling a few new suggestions from this very thread), here's mine.
Adventurer Conqueror King System. ACKS is my favorite OSR ruleset because I strongly identify as a Silver Age D&D (http://grognardia.blogspot.com.br/2009/01/ages-of-d.html) sort of DM, and ACKS, from the DM's side, is basically all about setting up and running a consistent and lifelike world. This is not to say you can't do it with other systems, but ACKS offers a bunch of knobs and dials for the enterprising DM (and hopefully, in due time, his or her enterprising players) to move and turn. While sometimes intimidating on first contact, it ends up being a big help. I also love the way it repurposes existing D&D mechanics, fractal-like, into new subsystems. The fact that the default setting (admittedly, so far only hinted at) neatly lines up with everything I think a D&D setting should be, plus a dollop of exotic Near Eastern aesthetics, is a plus.
Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG. If ACKS is the pinnacle of Silver Age D&D, DCC does Golden Age D&D with a ton of flair. It also boasts some great adventure modules. Its chief handicap, to me, is the legwork involved in writing new spells and patrons.
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. Before 5e came out, it had my favorite race-as-class, lots-of-classes AD&D-1e-plus-UA set list of character options. Nevertheless, the setting still rocks. If the Weird Tales three ever gamed, I could see this being Clark Ashton Smith's game, with Howard playing a Kimmero-Kelt Berserker and Lovecraft an Atlantean Illusionist. If you're looking for grim, fatalistic, apocalyptic dark fantasy with a side order of Cthulhu Mythos horror, look no further.
In terms of settings and adventures, I can recommend Qelong for being literally fantasy f'ing Vietnam and metal as all hell (one of the bad guys is a Chaotic dwarf mercenary riding an undead roc); Red Tide for a truly mature, apocalyptic dark fantasy setting that combines Lovecraftian horror and shades-of-gray war against humanoids, among other things (the bits on the dwarf deity, creepy as hell); Anomalous Subsurface Environment for being gloriously gonzo and steeped in pop-culture references (I'm a sucker for those); and even the much-maligned Dwimmermount for being a textbook megadungeon with the sort of Silver Age sensibilities I mentioned above (admittedly I'm not familiar with Barrowmaze or Stonehell which are freequently held up as superior examples of that elusive beast, the published megadungeon).
Also, let's not forget the free stuff! There are two posters in these forums who have put out some amazing stuff, for free; misterguignol's 3-volume Tome of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque (can't find the link right now) is Gothic-horror flavored D&D that feels very different from Ravenloft, while estar's How To Build A Fantasy Sandbox (http://www.ibiblio.org/mscorbit/sandbox/Make%20a%20Fantasy%20Sandbox_111005.pdf) is a fine manual (if sometimes a tad more steeped in detail than I'd care, but I don't think you have to use everything always). But the best free OSR product is probably Stars Without Number, that's even enticed me to buy supplements so I can pillage it for an eventual Traveller game.
The issues of Fight On ! and Knockspell zines containing Gabor Lux/Melan's stuff
Matt Finch's Quick Primer for Old School Gaming
Yoon Suin
Quote from: Sean !;844259The issues of Fight On ! and Knockspell zines containing Gabor Lux/Melan's stuff
I'll second the recommendation for Gabox Lux's stuff.
However (and I know this isn't a widely help opinion), I think the OSR really started with Necromancer Games and their revival of an old-school approach to D&D adventures and settings. Some NG products that really captured that approach:
Rappan Athuk
The Lost Tomb of Abysthor
The Wilderlands Boxed Set
Quote from: Haffrung;844298I'll second the recommendation for Gabox Lux's stuff.
However (and I know this isn't a widely help opinion), I think the OSR really started with Necromancer Games and their revival of an old-school approach to D&D adventures and settings. Some NG products that really captured that approach:
Rappan Athuk
The Lost Tomb of Abysthor
The Wilderlands Boxed Set
Actually, that's pretty interesting. My own return to old-school began with the same Necromancer products (plus a couple others).
Quote from: Sean !;844259The issues of Fight On ! and Knockspell zines containing Gabor Lux/Melan's stuff
Yes. Forgot about those. They were a big influence on me when I burned out on 3.5 and started looking back to my roots.
FIGHT ON! magazine, as a whole, contains a lot of good-to-great stuff. It's all over the place tone-wise, but then so are most campaigns.
Probably my favorite thing is that the essentials are largely available for free. I'd recommend S&W and the SRD for the game for monsters. It's a solid starting point that can give you game play for free for the rest of your life. There are analogues for almost all the D&Ds you could want if S&W isn't your thing.
The other amazing thing is that with print on demand and PDF sales it's possible to pretty much buy the stuff from your favorite authors almost directly. The OSR can easily keep itself from being tainted by commercial domination by a few powerful companies.
S&W
S&W SRD
Microlite74 extended (and companions)
Vornheim
Yoon-Suin
Quote from: NathanIW;844425Probably my favorite thing is that the essentials are largely available for free.
Yes, that's a great point. A newcomer could enter this hobby with no more investment than a set of dice, and that's a wondrous thing.
Quote from: The Butcher;844244Also, let's not forget the free stuff! There are two posters in these forums who have put out some amazing stuff, for free; misterguignol's 3-volume Tome of the Grotesque & Dungeonesque (can't find the link right now) is Gothic-horror flavored D&D that feels very different from Ravenloft
Here's a page with links to all the free stuff I've done (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/p/links.html). Literally hundreds of pages of free stuff, now that I look at it. Good lord, why.
Anyway, thanks for kind mention, fellas.
"must-have" is tricky for the OSR, it largely depends on what you want to do with it. I guess the one must-have thing is some form of rule-set.
That said, of course I strongly recommend both Arrows of Indra and Dark Albion as two of the most interesting OSR settings around, when you get tired of the same-old same-old.
Stars Without Number
Swords & Wizardry (particularily White Box)
Blood & Treasure + Nod Magazine
I agree the must-have OSR stuff is the free content on the blogs.
It's one reasons the rubes have so much trouble wrapping their heads around the OSR "OH BUT THESE GAMES ARE ALL D&D WITH HOUSERULES" yeah, they are, go read Jeff's Gameblog, it's free, that's the OSR.
The products are crapshoots--the real "must-have" is the back and forth froth of ideas and the community.
Quote from: Zak S;845225The products are crapshoots--the real "must-have" is the back and forth froth of ideas and the community.
Well said. For anyone who likes maps made in advance, I'd recommend Dyson Logos' blog:
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/
Though lately I've been generating dungeons on the fly with dice drops and drawing out letters/numbers. Thanks Zak for that idea.
Quote from: NathanIW;845228Well said. For anyone who likes maps made in advance, I'd recommend Dyson Logos' blog:
https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/
Though lately I've been generating dungeons on the fly with dice drops and drawing out letters/numbers. Thanks Zak for that idea.
I cannot fathom the magnitude of the brain-fart that made me overlook
Dyson's Delves. A real life-saver for the time-pressed DM. Two booklets of keyed, ready-to-rock dungeons.
A lot of stuff that started out on blogs eventually turned into some of the great books of the OSR.
Quote from: misterguignol;844674Here's a page with links to all the free stuff I've done (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/p/links.html). Literally hundreds of pages of free stuff, now that I look at it. Good lord, why.
Anyway, thanks for kind mention, fellas.
Downloaded it today. Very impressive. Would recommend to anybody reading this. Congratulations on a fine work.
They really could use an OSR newsletter that compiles "the best of the blogs"; throw in some product reviews, mention of upcoming products, the occasional interview, and maybe even scans of advertisements from the late 70s/early 80s, and you'd have a damn fine zine.
If you like Greek mythos & OD&D, I highly recommend...
Mazes & Minotaurs
http://storygame.free.fr/MAZES.htm
+1 to all the Sine Nomine stuff.
It's interesting, varied and if you don't actually want to use the game mechanics, the various sandbox tables are awesome.
I would love to see a generic fantasy book from Sine Nomine.
I know Kevin Crawford has said in the past he wouldn't do that, as he felt he would be just rehashing existing stuff and recommends using LL or something like that.
But it WOULD be nice to have the Fantasy mechanics for his SWN systems there as well, as well as all the fantasy sandbox tables.
Yes, there's Scarlet heroes, but that's a sort of separate 1 on 1 system and is very setting specific anyway.
Quote from: misterguignol;844674Here's a page with links to all the free stuff I've done (http://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/p/links.html). Literally hundreds of pages of free stuff, now that I look at it. Good lord, why.
Anyway, thanks for kind mention, fellas.
It's really good stuff. The type of work where you can use it as a cohesive whole or just borrow elements here and there. The terror and horror rules on page 57 and onward of the first volume are definitely worth a read for anyone interested in such things.
Quote from: Eric Diaz;846136Downloaded it today. Very impressive. Would recommend to anybody reading this. Congratulations on a fine work.
Thanks! I don't think much of my own stuff, but I always hope someone else finds it useful.
Quote from: NathanIW;846157It's really good stuff. The type of work where you can use it as a cohesive whole or just borrow elements here and there. The terror and horror rules on page 57 and onward of the first volume are definitely worth a read for anyone interested in such things.
Thank you as well. The terror and horror stuff is probably what I am happiest with in that project.