Old-School Essentials Classic Game Set

Old-School Essentials (OSE) is an award-winning role-playing game of fantastic adventure, monsters, and magic published by Exalted Funeral and Necrotic Gnome. Players delve into forbidden crypts and forsaken ruins, explore haunted forests and perilous mountain ranges, sail the high seas in search of lost lands, recover fabulous treasures, and unearth secrets of ancient magic.

Light, easily modified rules put the focus of play on shared imagination, improvisation, and fun. Modern formatting and layout make the game easy to learn and a breeze to reference during play. Durable, deluxe quality, sewn-binding hardcover books are filled with evocative old-school art.

Old-School Play Style

Nearly 50 years on from its birth in the 1970s, the original fantasy RPG has gone through many editions (from 1E to 5E), each with its own unique feel, play style, and rules twists. Each edition has its fans, but for many players the flavor of the 1970s and 1980s editions is incomparable. Old-School Essentials brings back the rules and feel of those early editions, presenting them in a modern, easy-to-use style.

•  Quick character creation: From rolling stats to choosing a class and buying equipment, the simple, easy-to-follow character creation rules allow players to jump right into the action. No need to spend a whole session making characters!
•  Exploration, puzzles, and tricks: Players’ ingenuity and creativity are challenged by devious puzzles, traps, and tricks. Simply rolling dice to succeed is often not an option!
•  Creative thinking encouraged: Easy-to-learn rules for exploration, encounters, and combat provide referees with a robust framework from which to make impromptu rulings on players’ outside-the-box antics.
•  Fast, exciting combat: Combat encounters are quick to play out, leaving plenty of time in-game sessions for exploration and role-playing. As in real life, combat is not fair or balanced—players whose clever tactics tip the balance in their favor will prevail!
•  Zeroes to heroes: Characters advance from humble beginnings to heights of great power. Rules for side-kicks, hiring mercenary companies, and constructing strongholds are built in.
•  Open-ended “sandbox” play: Campaigns focus on freeform stories evolved over the course of play, with players driving the action.
•  Adventure design tools: Solid procedures for designing dungeons and wilderness areas are provided, along with reams of encounter tables and referee advice.
•  Modular, easy-to-tweak rules: New classes, spells, monsters, and magic items are easy to create and slot right into the game system.
•  Compatibility: Material written for all pre-2000 editions of the game is trivially cross-compatible. Decades of classic dungeons, adventures, and rules supplements are at your fingertips!

Game Rules

Players of all editions of the original fantasy RPG will find many familiar rules in Old-School Essentials.

•  Ability scores: Roll for 6 ability scores: Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution, Charisma.
•  Class: Choose from 13 fantastic character classes: acrobat, assassin, barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, illusionist, knight, magic-user, paladin, ranger, thief.
•  Ancestry: Play as one of 10 fantasy species/races: drow, duergar, dwarf, elf, gnome, halfling, half-elf, half-orc, human, svirfneblin.
•  Level: The rules cover play from 1st to 14th level.
•  Hit points: Roll 1d4, 1d6, or 1d8 (determined by class) for hit points. Re-roll 1s or 2s. 0hp is dead!
•  Armour Class (AC): Use either modern ascending AC (10 = unarmoured, better protection raises AC) or traditional descending AC (9 = unarmoured, better protection lowers AC).
•  Initiative: Streamlined side-based initiative makes combat fast and exciting: each side (monsters / adventurers) rolls 1d6 each round—highest roll acts first! Or use the optional rule for each combatant rolling their own initiative.
•  Attacking: Roll 1d20, add modifiers (e.g. Strength, Dexterity, enchantments), compare against the target’s AC, roll damage. Use either a modern attack bonus or the traditional attack matrix.
•  Ability checks, saving throws: Roll 1d20 and compare against the number on your character sheet.

About Classic Game Set

Based on the beloved 1980s Basic/Expert edition (B/X), the Old-School Essentials Classic Game Set contains everything you need to play! We are honoured to have a brand new painting by Erol Otus, legendary creator of the original B/X covers, on the Classic Game Set. The set consists of 5 Digest size (A5) hardcovers:

•  Book 1: Characters: An introduction to Old-School Essentials, the rules for character creation, 7 classes (the devout cleric, the sagacious magic-user, the doughty fighter, the cunning thief, the bold dwarf, the noble elf, and the plucky halfling), full lists of adventuring gear, weapons, armour, vehicles, mounts, and more. 64 pages.
•  Book 2: Magic: Rules for spell memorization, spell casting, spell books, deities, and magical research, plus over 100 spells for clerics, elves, and magic-users. 48 pages.
•  Book 3: Adventures: Full rules and guidelines for designing and playing dungeon, wilderness, and waterborne adventures. 48 pages.
•  Book 4: Monsters: More than 200 fearsome monsters to challenge characters of all levels! Dragons and dinosaurs, golems and giants, slimes and oozes, beast-men and unholy spirits, animals monstrous and mundane. Includes complete encounter tables for dungeon levels 1–8+ and all types of wilderness terrain. 88 pages.
•  Book 5: Treasures: More than 150 wondrous magic items to entice characters of all levels! Enchanted arms coveted by every warrior, scrolls, staves, and seeing stones, alchemical concoctions, rings of power, boots and cloaks woven with magic. Includes rules for sentient swords and complete tables and procedures for creating fabulous treasure hoards. 56 pages.

Author: Gavin Norman
Box cover artist: Erol Otus
Book cover artist:  David Hoskins

Deluxe Box Set with fancy gold foil containing 5 books, sewn-bound A5-size hardcovers
*PDFs will be emailed once the physical item ships.