Tuesday, June 15, 2021

Mail Call: Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy

I am back at work today after vacation and buried in emails and work.  I am also buried in physical mail too, but among the bills and junk mail, there was a nice little treat.  My Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy books came. 

Old-School Essentials Kickstarter

These books live up to the hype of the OSE Core rules.

I opted for the "limited edition" covers as I did for the first Kickstarter.

Old-School Essentials Kickstarter Books

The Reference Booklet and the Carcass Crawler zine fit into the box, but the adventures do not. Not due to shape or size, just because the box is full!

Old-School Essentials Reference bookOld-School Essentials books and box

I have not delved into the books yet, but I am already very happy with them. 

As I have mentioned with Advanced Labyrinth Lord and Basic Fantasy, these books do not represent the D&D we bought back then, but more likely the D&D we played back then.   An odd mixture of AD&D and D&D. 

Currently, this is the ruleset I am using for my War of the Witch Queens campaign. So for me the rules are just right. 

I got my Swords & Wizardry Complete Boxed Set just two weeks ago but due to vacation, I have not really read through it all that much yet.

Swords & Wizardry  and Old-School Essentials boxed sets

I am going to need to go through them both and compare and contrast them.

Both seek to scratch that old-school itch, but in different ways. So this could be a lot of fun.

Boxed Sets

They do all look nice together.

5 comments:

Cross Planes said...

I wish I'd back these and they look great. As I understand it the Advanced Player's Rules Tome has everything from Classic & Advanced for the Player and the Advanced Referee's Rules Tome has everything from Classic & Advanced for the Referee, correct?

If that is true then the Classic Rules Tome is redundant info, yes?

Cross Planes said...

I wish I'd back these and they look great. As I understand it the Advanced Player's Rules Tome has everything from Classic & Advanced for the Player and the Advanced Referee's Rules Tome has everything from Classic & Advanced for the Referee, correct?

If that is true then the Classic Rules Tome is redundant info, yes?

I'm simply trying to make sure I understand the breakdown not comment on your choices.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

Not a worry!

Yes, this Kickstarter makes the Basic book a little redundant now. So if you have the Classic Fantasy books AND the Advanced Fantasy booklets then you have nearly everything in this.

I need to check to see if there are new monsters or not. I think there might be.

Cross Planes said...

If you get a chance let me know if there are new monsters? I'm trying to do decide how to buy (and trying to see what options the Hyperborea 3rd Edition KS will be offering).

Timothy S. Brannan said...

YES! There are new monsters in the Advanced book.

Here are the numbers

The OSE Classic book has 65 pages of 205 monsters with 35 pieces of art.
The OSE Advanced book has 107 pages of 327 monsters with 69 pieces of art.

Compare this to B/X which has a combined 30 pages of 183 monsters (23 pieces of art) and the AD&D Monster Manual which has 112 pages of 360 monsters with 127 pieces of art.

Hope that helps!