Last month I put up my review of the new Blue Rose Adventurer's Guide, which allows you to play a Blue Rose game using D&D 5th Edition.
Now. I love Blue Rose. I love D&D 5e. But I also love my old school games. To be blunt, I am an old gamer and these games fill me with nostalgia. Can I run a Blue Rose game using the systems I have here?
Short answer? Yes!
Longer Answer? HELL Yes!
Everything I need is right at my fingertips. So how would I do it? Let's have a look. Now I have talked about how to take Blue Rose and run the AGE system like an old-school-style game already. Here I want to talk about how to take your old-school rules and run them like a Blue Rose game.
Setting
Grab the first Seven chapters of the Blue Rose Adventure's Guide and use them as-is. Append with details from AGE or True 20 as needed. I mention the True 20 since some things will be easier to convert from that.
Classes
Blue Rose True 20 and AGE have only three classes, Adept, Expert, and Warrior. Blue Rose Adventure's Guide has all the classes from D&D 5. Older versions of the game don't have all of these. No problems let's see what we do have.
In the Blue Rose Adventure's Guide, we have the following Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Monk, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Thief, Warlock, and Wizard.
By using the "Advanced" versions of both Old-School Essentials and Labyrinth Lord, plus a couple of my witch classes, we could cover every class. It pains me to even say it but we might not even need my witches here!
| True20 / AGE | D&D 5e | OSR / Basic |
| Warrior | Barbarian | Barbarian(LL-A) |
| Expert/Adept | Bard | Bard (OSE-A) |
| Adept/Warrior | Cleric | Cleric |
| Adept/Expert | Druid | Druid |
| Warriror | Fighter | Fighter |
| Warrior/Adept | Monk | Monk (LL-A) |
| Warrior/Adept | Paladin | Paladin |
| Warrior/Expert/Adept | Ranger | Ranger |
| Adept | Sorcerer | Magic-User |
| Expert | Thief | Thief |
| Adept | Warlock | Witch |
| Adept | Wizard | Magic-user |
Ancestry, Culture, and Backgrounds
What old-school games call race we will now break up into Ancestry, Culture, and Backgrounds.
Essentially we can map them like this, rules-wise:
Humans are Humans, Night People use the rules for Half-orcs, and the Vata are essentially Elves rules-wise. Sea folk are humans with some perks, I'd use the half-elf rules for them. Small Rhydan can use the rules for halflings and medium Rhydan use the rules for Dwarves. Alter movements and attacks as needed.
Monsters
Every monster in the Blue Rose books has something similar to it in the D20 SRD. This is an artifact of the Blue Rose True20 days. If it is in the SRD then there is likely an Old-School version somewhere. I could do a search, but I am pretty confident that every monster in the BR-AGE core can be found somewhere in the Old-School world.
Relationships
Blue Rose pays a lot of attention to how the characters interact with others. This absolutely should be part of an Old School Blue Rose game too. Here though mechanics and rules will have to give way to good roleplaying and XP bonuses for characters who play their roles well. While some old-schoolers may balk at this idea, seeing the characters as only a collection of numbers, the truth is the role-playing aspects that both Blue Rose and D&D5 players love so much today were already all there back in old-school play. Some of us did it then and didn't need the rules to tell us how or why.
Still, I would offer some XP bonuses for good in-character inter-personal relationships. Especially the bonds. OR if I REALLY wanted to get old school, XP penalty for not doing it.
I might also replace the Law-Neutral-Chaos alignment with Light-Twilight alignment. Effectively there is not much difference in terms of how one plays a character, but it would give a different feel.
Everything Else
In truth what I have above covers nearly everything. What remains can be handled by the DM/Narrator in their own games. I have already talked about how to use Blue Rose in conjunction with several old-school adventures.
- Palace of the Vampire Queen
- B1 In Search of the Unknown
- B3 Palace of the Silver Princess
- X1 The Isle of Dread
- X2 Castle Amber
My family really enjoyed playing Blue Rose so I might add some more elements of this game to my old-school games.
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