oh and as far as I’m concerned, the best of the strict ‘re-releasing classic dnd rules’ is Old School Essentials because its the best edition of dnd (B/X) now with a layout that’s easy to use and understand
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I’ve also heard a lot of good things about Trophy Gold but I haven’t bought or read it yet, so I don’t really know anything about it other than its a very different take on dungeon crawl design
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That line looks great! I think you (perhaps in this very thread) were successfully hyping the old Basic line to me and the Rules Cyclopedia is going for ridiculous amounts of collector money these days. As someone who’s never made the e-reader* jump I kind of dig that these recreations with the serial numbers filed off are available.
*are e-readers a scientology term and not the generic term for a nook/kindle? I realized I called an ama, a “reddit q and a” a couple posts back so I don’t trust myself here.
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You’re safe, ereader is indeed the generic term
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Whew!!!
I dunno if every scenario is the same but I wouldn’t even remotely classify it as OSR after a session I played of it, except half the rules light fantasy games coming out these days love to say they are for the cred or whatever reason.
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I saw it come up a lot in the context of “here’s another way to play through all those classic dnd adventures” so I think it’s comfortably in OSR territory (mind you that “basic dnd clone with nothing else going on” is no longer a usable definition of OSR games since too many of them have very little resemblance to dnd now)
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I don’t count converting adventures to other systems to be a meaningful connection. Because the game is vehemently not an OSR game in any lineage. There’s certainly Uknown Armies adventures you could fit into Trophy Dark too, and that isn’t OSR at all.
Hell, Shadowrun could work well as a Trophy Dark hack depending on the adventure.
trophy gold literally says in its description that it is adapting the rules of trophy dark to make it compatible with “old school, campaign-style play”, so whatever I guess it’s not “technically” OSR except that the authors want to make that connection
Trophy Gold takes the collaborative, push-your-luck rules and rolls of Trophy and blends them with the survive-by-your-wits mentality of old school fantasy games.
as distinct from trophy dark which no one is saying is osr but is also… a different game
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Cepheus has been my OSR game of choice for a while (outside of Dungeon World) and it’s pretty much just Traveller treated as full generic game instead of sci fi at all times
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I hadn’t even heard of this one but I love Traveller and have always wanted more retroclones and ‘osr’ interest in non-dnd games from the 70s like Traveller and Runequest
edit: lol I love the trademark dodging going on in this copy:
The Cepheus Engine RPG comprises the core rules for a Classic Era Science Fiction 2D6-Based Open Gaming System . Inspired by the original three books of the oldest 2D6-based science fiction roleplaying game
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The Traveler at home:
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I kinda want to bang out some clone games just for funsies, but I’m not sure I’d want to support them, and not sure if it’s worth throwing them up on drivethru if they go on itch too. I just don’t know a lot of things, like how much art I’d have to commish for a pdf.
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Looks like one of the Runequest guys released a Creative Commons version called Fire and Sword a couple years back. I can’t find a pdf of the latest version but one of the earlier ones looks a bit intimidating but I think I’m still shell shocked from trying to figure out Rolemaster when I was like 12.
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the problem is a lot of the later/fan editions of runequest decided to go a rolemaster-ish route of too many rules and overcomplicated subsystems. In that way they’re not really osr-ish so much as a hangover from 90s game design
runequest 2e is a perfectly playable, normal game that I would say is somewhere between b/x d&d and ad&d1 in terms of complexity, but with a good combat system, GREAT magic system, and the best setting in fantasy rpgs
anyway I’ll look at Fire and Sword and hopefully it is at least a simple 2e retroclone instead of trying to be too much
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I wouldn’t worry about putting stuff on dtrpg unless you think it’ll give you significantly wider reach. There are still ttrpgs that are released exclusively on lulu and people still find them and play them.
similarly, art is whatever you think you can afford, there’s no hard and fast rules here, except that more art is a good way to convince people to spend more money on a pdf
in other words I encourage you to do this!
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Have you guys played Shadowdark?
Haven’t even heard of it, what’s it like?
It’s a really clean OSR compatible indie game.
There’s no rules cruft, and the models for character classes are easy to follow to create your own. It feels kinda like a more straightforward, less grim Mork Borg.
The game also encourages limited items and uses torches which burn out in real time. That rule is really cool because it really pushes the players to have a sense of tension.
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It is probably more the organization than the actual complexity, but i find runequest 2e quite a bit more complicated than rolemaster! Admittedly, I am more familiar with rolemaster and started with merps, which is a nice intro to the basic mechanics.
Well, this is probably more true for rolemaster 2 than rolemaster standard system. rmss tried to make everything more “logical”, which adds a bit more complexity for not much gain. rm2 is pretty straightforward, but does have a ton of optional rules that it would be easy to get bogged down in. The only thing I find a little confusing about base rolemaster is how new spells are selected.
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