what's an OSR? it's a game that's kinda like old-school D&D. or is old-school D&D. or is compatible with old-school D&D. an OSR game generally has some or all of the following principles:
low character power with highly lethal combat. in old-school D&D a 1st-level fighter has d8 hit points and a longsword does d8 damage, and you die at 0HP. this is not to ensure characters die all the time but to emphasize the next bullet point:
emphasis on creative problem solving. most situations cannot be solved by straightforward use of your abilities (such as charging into every situation with swords drawn, if a fighter), so the game tests lateral, outside-the-box thinking.
emphasis on diegetic progression. spells are found, not obtained automatically on level-up. you get XP by finding gold more than killing monsters. most of your cool abilities come from magic items. making alliances & hiring followers is encouraged.
focus on managing inventory, resources, risk, and time. the players are constantly faced with meaningful decisions; this is the heart of the game.
very sandbox-oriented. the focus on creative problem solving means the game must be accommodating to players taking a course of action the GM didn't plan for. use lots of random tables to generate emergent story. some elements of new simulationism.
high tactical transparency, i.e., the optimal course of action is rarely system-specific, and ideally very possible for a new player to intuit.
usually semi-compatible with old D&D, but not always. usually rules-lite, but not always.
what does the OSR mostly NOT do?
focus on character builds. these change the focus too much to be on the rules than the fiction, can create situations where stuff everyone should be able to do is an ability locked to one class, and impede tactical transparency.
resolve everything with a die roll. combat uses dice to be scary, unpredictable and most importantly not your default course of action. everything else should bring up dice rarely - dice are your plan B when your plan A fails. the best plans need no dice.
use linear storytelling or put players into a writer/GM role. linear storytelling gets in the way of the decision-making so core to the playstyle; letting players write details into the setting is mutually exclusive with them discovering it.
rules for everything. 400 pages of crunch is worse at simulating a believable world than the GM and players' shared understanding. OSR games rely constantly on GM ruling.
mostly still applies to all the above. making your system a "pure" OSR game comes second to doing what's best for your game.
System recommendations
old D&D or a retroclone
old-school D&D - or old school essentials or basic fantasy or swords & wizardry, which are old D&D's mechanics repackaged with quality-of-life tweaks (and the upside of not giving WOTC your money) - are usually the go-to when recommending someone's first OSR game. they're actually not my first pick, though!
PROS:
very complete, with more robust rules than a lot of the lighter games on this list.
100% compatibility: most OSR adventures are statted for old school essentials. converting them to other OSR systems is usually simple, but not 1-for-1.
easier to find games for. anyone interested in the OSR space knows what old school essentials is.
CONS:
jank. these games largely still have weird saves, level limits for non-humans, some still have descending AC, etc etc. it's not that bad but it is there
i hate thief skills. lots of essential dungeoneering actions are locked to the thief class as abilities, with abysmally low success chances. this is stuff i prefer being handled without a roll. thieves in this system suck and make everyone else worse at dungeon crawling by existing.
there's just lots of really cool shit in other systems i'm about to go into that you just don't get here
Knave 1e and its various hacks
this is a 7-page super-lightweight system that boils everything down to just the essentials.
rolling a character takes like 5 minutes. roll stats, roll gear, roll traits, go. done. it's great.
characters are defined entirely by stats and gear, no classes. wanna be a fighter, have high strength and carry a big sword and armor. wanna be a wizard, have high intelligence and fill your inventory with spells. item slots are elegant and pretty limited.
initiative is instant: roll d6. 1-3, monsters go first. 4-6, PCs go first. swingy, but god it is so smooth and shaves like the most boring 5 minutes off of every combat
monsters are so very elegant. old D&D gives monsters a "hit dice" rating to determine their HP, e.g. a 3HD monster rolls 3d8 for hit points. knave takes this number (HD) and uses it for attack rolls and saves (aside from exceptionally bad/good saves), so a knave statblock looks something like this.
spells are all one or two sentences long & extremely easy to remember.
7 pages is so light. i have the system basically memorized.
DOWNSIDES: there's no dungeon crawling rules (standard for meatier OSR games & something i consider essential) and no real bestiary, though the second point isn't a huge deal cause they're so easy to make. it also kinda assumes you already know how to run OSR games, so there's very little real advice or guidance.
KNAVE HACKS
knave 1e is in creative commons & comes with an editable word doc for you to publish with modifications, so there's a ton of variants (there was a spreadsheet of them somewhere, but i can't find it).
Grave is a favorite - i'm two years into a grave campaign and it's fantastic. it's a dark-souls-y version of knave with some really elegant innovations.
you have a set number of deaths before you for-reals die, as every character plays an undead as is dark souls tradition. makes it good for OSR beginners! being able to tell when you're close to your final death is really good - it lets you emotionally prepare for losing your character & raises the stakes more the more you die. (though honestly you should probably cut the number of extra deaths in half, it's super generous)
XP and gold are combined into one resource, souls. legendary creatures drop big souls you can make into magic items. this has ended up being the coolest thing in my current campaign. my players love finding powerful souls to make into magic items it's so fun
uses preset packages of stats/gear instead of knave's rolled ones, filling the role of more traditional character classes. has the wonderful side effect of not making you get stuck with low stats cause you rolled bad one time.
you have stamina equal to your empty item slots. you spend stamina on spells if you're a caster, or free maneuvers (on top of your attack at no action cost) if you're not. it's super elegant.
there's 3 classes of spells: wizardry for intelligence, holy magic for wisdom, and witch stuff for charisma. nice and intuitive.
there's a page of 50 magic items each a couple sentences long. this PDF is worth it just for the magic items.
DOWNSIDE: see the downsides for knave 1e. all still apply.
i enjoyed grave so much i made a variant of it with the dark souls bits removed (and some dungeon crawl rules added!) to use for my standard fantasy campaigns.
Knave 2e
sadly knave 2e is not purchasable yet (i backed it on kickstarter so i have access, though). but when it comes out i highly recommend it.
much larger and denser than knave 1e. it finally has dungeon crawling rules, it has GM and player guidance, everything is refined and the layout is so so nice and readable.
combat is a bit more interesting than 1e. you can break your weapon against an enemy to deal max damage. you get a free maneuver on high attack rolls.
there's rules for stuff like alchemy, warfare, building a base. it all kicks ass.
there are so many goddamn tables. i rifle through it anytime i need inspiration.
DOWNSIDES: i personally can't think of any! it's a very complete good functional system.
Mausritter
you play tiny little mice! in a world full of big dangerous things that want to eat mice. cat = dragon. you get it. what more could you want
the mouse thing is just super intuitive. you get the dynamic between you and the big scary lethal world. fantastic OSR game to introduce kids
nice and robust ruleset; nothing feels missing
tons of super nice GM stuff! faction rules, tools for rolling up hexcrawls and dungeons, plenty of tables
super clean readable layout. font isn't too small to avoid being intimidating. guidance is really nice and clear.
combat is autohit. super fast & lethal.
100% free
look mausritter is just. good. i wanna run it so bad someday
Worlds Without Number
sort of a middle ground between OSR stuff and 5e.
lots of classes, at least in the paid version. the free version comes with just the warrior, expert and mage. there's feats and more of a focus on builds than most OSR games. if you like more mechanical build variety than a typical OSR game, this is a great game for you!
extremely good multiclassing. y'know how in most games if you just mash together two classes you think are cool you'll end up with a total mess? not here! every combo is viable and works fine! easily the best multiclassing of any game i've touched
an absurd amount of GM stuff and tables. easily more than any of the other stuff i've praised for also having them. but personally i haven't dug into them as much, so i can't really comment on them
skills the way modern D&D has them. you roll dice and try to beat a target number. i don't tend to like rolled skills, but most people do, so if that's your thing WWN has them
DOWNSIDES
the layout is terrible. everything is a huge wall of text with very little use of bold text or bullet points to draw attention to the important bits. the table of contents has like 15 things in it for a 400-page book! i couldn't find any of the paid-version-exclusive classes for like a month after i bought it! looking up rules is a nightmare.
the way the default setting handles "evil races" is like an exaggerated parody of all the problematic aspects of how D&D handles it. like, it wants so bad for you to have an excuse to genocide sentient free-willed people. but at least the default setting is easy to chuck in the trash
Dungeon Crawl Classics
the goal of this system is to take all of the crazy gonzo moments people remember playing old-school D&D in their childhood and turn all of that up to 11 while cutting the stuff that doesn't add to that. i think a lot of its innovations have ended up kind of standard in newer OSR stuff (like fighters getting maneuvers with their attacks), but it still has more to offer.
the funnel: you start the game with four randomly rolled dipshit peasants that you then throw into a meatgrinder to get horribly killed. you pick one of the survivors to be your 1st-level character.
maneuvers: fighters roll an extra die with each attack that gets bigger as you level. if it's a 3 or higher, you get to do a cool thing on top of your attack. pretty standard for OSR games, but this game popularized it!
crit tables: fighters also get more crits and nastier crits as they level. every crit, you roll on the crit table. maybe you chop off a dude's arm. maybe you just knock them over. maybe you shatter their shield. it's very cool
spell tables: i don't really like roll-to-cast mechanics, generally. but DCC goes so all-in on roll-to-cast that it still looks fun as hell to watch. you cast a fireball and maybe it goes how you want. or maybe you explode, or you nuke everything in a half-mile radius, or from now on you permanently ignite flammable materials you touch, or whatever. casters just have to put up with turning into a weird mutated mess across a campaign
there's no dungeon crawl rules, no encumbrance - this game is all about the big over-the-top wacky shit, and is not really interested in the more down-to-earth number crunching. it's more in the you-die-hilariously-all-the-time area of OSR than the you-avoid-death-through-clever-play area. not really my thing but the system knows exactly what it wants to be and i respect it
iron halberd
this one is mine! as the author i'm not qualified to tell you what isn't good about my system, so just assume it's worse than i make it sound, but here's a bunch of the selling points
semi-random character creation where you flip back and forth between rolling dice and getting your own input. roll stats, pick ancestry. pick starting gear kit, roll different dice based on which kit you picked. etc etc. stats are random but all equally viable (no rolling incredibly low or high stats). every time i run this game the character creation is a hit. seriously go roll up a character it'll sell you on the whole thing
you start out a lot stronger than a standard OSR character but grow way more slowly. i don't like 4th-level characters being 4 times as strong as 1st-level ones; HP never gets that high. emphasis is more on diegetic progression instead.
way too many subsystems for alchemy, crafting, strongholds, warfare, renown, rituals, likes 9 pages of magic items, a whole subsystem for becoming a cleric mid-campaign. i couldn't help myself i love this shit
in my current campaign we had a player permanently sacrifice some max HP to become a necromancer after deliberating on whether that's a good idea for like thirty seconds, which instantly made me think my necromancy system is a success
also free
Adventure recommendations
(in rough order of size)
Moonhill Garden (by Emiel Boven): look at this. look at it! this is like the best template for a little dungeon in an OSR game. all of the little factions are tied together. this would be a great oneshot to introduce people to an OSR system with.
A gathering of blades (by Ben Milton): a system-neutral, one-page sandbox. i ran this for an iron halberd game and it went super well. lasted like 7 sessions. highly recommend.
The Waking of Willowby Hall (by Ben Milton): a single dungeon with a million things going on. it's super chaotic with half a dozen different factions crashing into each other and a big angry goose. highly recommend, especially for kids
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford (by Chance Dudinack): small sandbox with a fun fairytale vibe and a very fleshed-out little town. and a big nasty dragon.
Evils of Illmire (by Zack Wolf): this is a very dense, entire campaign's worth of hexcrawl in a very compact package for like $5. it doesn't do anything particularly new, but the value-for-money is absurd and it's a really good template for how to do a sandbox if you're used to 5e adventures
Ask me anything!
if anything here is unclear or intrigues you, send me asks! i love helping people get into OSR games. i'll link frequently asked questions here if i get any.
I think the adoption of the "old-school blue" map style as part of the aesthetics of the OSR community is a kinda interesting phenomenon of how the defects of a medium eventually become part of its identity and get replicated even when the medium is not bound by those limitations anymore.
For the unaware, a lot of classic 70's and 80's D&D modules had the maps printed in blue ink, which gave them a very particular and distinctive look.
(e.g here's my copy of B4: The Lost City, altho it's not an original, I got it from DTRPG's print-on-demand)
The reason for this is the same reason it used to be a lot more common for illustrators to do their sketches in blue pencil: photocopiers at the time had a lot of trouble picking up things printed in blue, particularly lighter shades of it.
So it was an anti-piracy measure. If you got a module and tried to photocopy it to give a copy to your friend, the maps wouldn't photocopy right.
Which, if you know anything about my politics, you know I consider that an absolutely travesty, completely anti-consumer bullshit.
And yet, for my entry into the Knave adventure jam I briefly considered going with this map style, despite what it represents. And I saw at least two entries that DID decide to go with it, and outside of that there's a lot of modern OSR creators who do their maps in this style.
Because the thing is, divorced from its original purpose (and from the technological landscape that allowed it to be used that way), this style of map DOES have a certain charm to it, and a lot of people are drawn to it because it's a neat little shorthand to aesthetically invoke the trappings of old-school dungeon-crawling. So much so that Dungeon Scrawl (the program I've been using for years to make all of my maps) has it as one of its default preset styles.
Theres a novel by Poul Anderson called The High Crusade, which has an alien spacecraft land in rural England in 1345 during the Hundred Year’s War. The local baron has been raising an army to help King Edward against the French, and immediately assumes this must be some kind of enemy trick.
In a way, he’s correct: the aliens are scouts for a brutal and repressive interstellar empire, which has dominated numerous planets through their devastating technology.
Unfortunately, this reliance on advanced weapons means they’ve completely forgotten all forms of melee combat and Sir Roger of Tourneville leads his militia to defeat the aliens easily.
They spare a single enemy, forcing him to fly the ship at spearpoint. They intend to raid behind enemy lines, capture the king of France to end the war, and then go onward to reclaim the Holy Land using the same tactic.
In an attempt to outwit the knights, the alien pilot actually travels to the nearest Imperial planet, where he expects the occupying military forces to save him.
I won’t spoil the details, but the knights accept this as a challenge and declare the launch of the “high crusade”.
Reminder that in 1983 Ares magazine #16 included a board game based on The High Crusade, with Larry Elmore art and a new short story by Anderson, “Quest,” set in that universe.
I think the adoption of the "old-school blue" map style as part of the aesthetics of the OSR community is a kinda interesting phenomenon of how the defects of a medium eventually become part of its identity and get replicated even when the medium is not bound by those limitations anymore.
For the unaware, a lot of classic 70's and 80's D&D modules had the maps printed in blue ink, which gave them a very particular and distinctive look.
(e.g here's my copy of B4: The Lost City, altho it's not an original, I got it from DTRPG's print-on-demand)
The reason for this is the same reason it used to be a lot more common for illustrators to do their sketches in blue pencil: photocopiers at the time had a lot of trouble picking up things printed in blue, particularly lighter shades of it.
So it was an anti-piracy measure. If you got a module and tried to photocopy it to give a copy to your friend, the maps wouldn't photocopy right.
Which, if you know anything about my politics, you know I consider that an absolutely travesty, completely anti-consumer bullshit.
And yet, for my entry into the Knave adventure jam I briefly considered going with this map style, despite what it represents. And I saw at least two entries that DID decide to go with it, and outside of that there's a lot of modern OSR creators who do their maps in this style.
Because the thing is, divorced from its original purpose (and from the technological landscape that allowed it to be used that way), this style of map DOES have a certain charm to it, and a lot of people are drawn to it because it's a neat little shorthand to aesthetically invoke the trappings of old-school dungeon-crawling. So much so that Dungeon Scrawl (the program I've been using for years to make all of my maps) has it as one of its default preset styles.
stormborns
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