OSE vs BFRPG

[Klorox]

I’m comparing Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy RPG.

What does OSE give you that BFRPG doesn’t (for free)? I’m not trying to crap on OSE here, I’m genuinely asking.

[paladinn]

I’m comparing Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy RPG.

What does OSE give you that BFRPG doesn’t (for free)? I’m not trying to crap on OSE here, I’m genuinely asking.

Honestly not a lot. OSE is likely a more "polished" product and a complete game. BF seems more like a toolkit to create the game you want.

I haven't been a fan of OSE since it started, for quite a few reasons. Price has been one; the early marketing model was another. If the goal is to run "classic" type games, I've gravitated more toward Labyrinth Lord or just used B/X or BECMI. And Advanced Labyrinth Lord is by far the best means I've found of incorporating AD&D classes, etc. into a Classic game

That said, I have used a variety of BF modules in the same game. Like I said, it's a toolbox. And a pretty good one.

[Klorox]

Oh interesting! I’ve heard a few things about Labyrinth Lord, but I honestly forgot about it!

Is it worth picking up if I am already invested in BFRPG? Are there things I can steal from LL and insert into my BFRPG?

One of the things I really love about BFRPG is just how simple it is to house rule anything

[paladinn]

Oh interesting! I’ve heard a few things about Labyrinth Lord, but I honestly forgot about it!

Is it worth picking up if I am already invested in BFRPG? Are there things I can steal from LL and insert into my BFRPG?

One of the things I really love about BFRPG is just how simple it is to house rule anything

How "invested" are you in BF?

My experience is that it's easier to have another OSR-ish game as your chassis and bring in stuff from BF. The BF website has Tons of stuff that can be borrowed and grafted in. Then it's just a matter of seeing how it plays.

The good news is that you can find BF and LL online for free.

[kebusmaximus]

Old school essentials has good layout. The rules are generally presented in bullet points, and grouped together well, so everything is easier to reference at the table. Basic fantasy rpg is written in paragraphs, so it's more like regular reading.

That's basically it, though—the rules themselves vary about as much or little as any other b/x retroclones, and bfrpg is available as at-cost print-on-demand.

[cavalier973]

I would recommend that anyone interested in buying the OSE rules to select the “Advanced Fantasy” Tome and Player’s guide. It mixes in themes and elements from 1st Edition D&D like classes, monsters, and treasures (it includes information on the “Deck of Many Things”, for example).

It gives options for playing Half-elves, Drow, Half-orcs, and the like as race-as-class, but also includes rules for separating race and class.

The thing I am most interested in from Necrotic Gnome is the Dolmenwood campaign setting. https://necroticgnome.com/collections/dolmenwood
When the setting is published, it promises to include setting-specific classes like the Hunter (a sort of ranger), the Grimalkin (a cat person from fairyland that acts sort of like a bard, from what I can tell), and the Friar.

For a taste of what this is like, check out the YouTube podcast 3d6 Down the Line. They do a hex crawl adventure set in Dolmenwood, and use two or three of the Necrotic Gnome adventures, including “Winter’s Daughter” and “The Ruined Abbey of St. Clewyd”.

Sadly, they ended the campaign, but they started a mega dungeon called “The Halls of Arden Vul”, and I find it very entertaining. They use the OSE Advanced Fantasy rules.

One last thing, the Necrotic Gnome digital magazine Carcass Crawler includes classes like the Mage, which is a magic user whose powers are arranged like thief skills (the mage rolls percentage dice to see if he or she successfully casts the light spell, or the read magic spell, for example), the Acolyte (same as the mage, except the class is a cleric), the Hephaestan, which is a type of elf that acts like a Vulcan, and the Kineticist, which is a medieval Jedi.

[cavalier973]

OSE, in itself, is a nearly identical clone to the Moldvay and Cook/Marsh sets, but combined.
As in, first-level clerics in OSE do not get spells.

The only thing that would recommend it over just buying the PDFs of Moldvay is, maybe, the artwork. But, that’s a matter of taste. There are a couple of pieces near the end of the book that show a party (elf, cleric, fighter, and thief, plus a dog) standing on a grassy hill outside a city that I take to be Specularum. A few pages later, we see the party on a ruined temple, fighting a stone golem. It’s pretty cool.