(Or “Down the Rabbit Hole of Older School Games”)
…because it has absolutely killed my love of my previous favorite D&D version (AD&D 2nd edition) or my second favorite (5e). Seriously, how did I miss out on B/X? Was it just that marketing in the nineties successfully convinced me that AD&D was for mature people, and basic D&D was for kids? If so, I was highly gullible.
Things I love (B/X in general):
1. Lower power level. I’m one of those weirdos who likes lower power levels in fantasy games and literature. The reduced HD and spell levels are refreshing. They also make more sense from a narrative perspective, e.g. 1st level fighters having a d8 for HD, and weapons doing d6, means that a first level fighter has a greater chance of surviving a good sword thrust, but will be seriously hurt by it.
2. Quickness of character generation. I had my wife and teen daughters roll up some characters for Dungeon in a Box back in December. It was my daughters’ first time. Character creation, with backgrounds and skills, took half the session. This afternoon, I did it using OSE with Advanced Fantasy. Took less than 10 minutes per person.
3. Task resolution. Good heavens, this is quick. You’re an elf and want to listen at a door? Roll a d6, you have a 2 in 6 chance of success.
4. Action economy. I hate how martial classes are now balanced by number of attacks in a round (well, “now” being since 1st edition). I want combat to be quick and deadly. I don’t like combats that take 10 minutes or more to do, as players tend to zone out if it’s not their turn. Having one attack action a round greatly increases the immediacy of combat, and rivets the players’ attention.
5. Strongholds. Good heaven, I have missed this! I love how the nature of the game shifts around level 9. No longer are you some schmuck wandering around ruins. No, now you are a power, and have the headaches that entails!
6. Modeling of what got me into fantasy as a kid. The smaller selection of classes really maps well to the fantasy media that I consumed as a kid. Thundarr, Blackstar, He-Man, that with the lance that turned into swords, The Pirates of Dark Water, all that stuff is far easier to describe using just those four classes (and three race-as-classes) than the debates over whether so and so was a fighter or ranger or paladin of my teen years (and I won’t even include kits or subclasses or prestige classes).
7. Lots of empty space. Seriously, I don’t need a game supposedly only limited by my imagination to cover every little detail. Just cover the task resolution and some more fiddly bits, and let me make the rest. The freedom in this is not something I’ve felt in a long, long time.
OSE specific likes:
1. The books are gorgeous, from the layout (has there ever been a better organized RPG?) to the evocative art (I especially like the more fairytale illustrations, the ones with the magic-user with the long white beard). The charts are a huge help (in the hard bound, they’re in the inside of the front and back covers). Also, two pages layouts for classes? Brilliant!
2. Support. Gavin has been cranking out content for it. Dolmenwood looks fantastic. I’m interested to see what will come of his plans for sci-fi and other genre types.
3. Advanced Fantasy. I…I really don’t know what to say here. This was genius. He reverse-engineered the 1st edition classes into the B/X format, and in a very sensible way. He even made the Bard make sense! Like the 1st edition Bard, the AF Bard uses divine and not arcane magic.
4. Meeting demand. Necrotic Gnome has done a number of Kickstarter productions in order to make these high quality (and they really are high quality) products available for people like me. Sure, I missed the latest, but I can still buy books that I need (er…want).
So, my DragonLance campaign has morphed from 5e (thanks to recent UA), to 2nd edition (because Tales of the Lance did a lot of work to make DragonLance feel distinct, with unique classes on top of races), to OSE with AF because the system is just so darned good and I can easily tweak it without breaking everything else. I can even take the what I learned from the AF write-ups to make the Mariner, Con Artist, and Handler classes from TotL with minimal fuss if I so choose.
Anyway, thanks to everyone here who recommended it. I’m now officially a fanboy.
