Into the Unknown  is an Old School game that seeks to blend the Basic & Expert rules and style of play of the '80s with the current 5th edition ruleset of the world's most popular roleplaying game. Get it here in print and pdf! (Also,  Pick up your free character sheet here ) What does the Game have? The game is divided into five digest-sized booklets, optimized for use at the gametable: Book 1: Characters  holds all you need to quickly create a new character (52 pages) Book 2: Playing the Game  has all the essential rules for players to get going (28 pages) Book 3: Magic  is strictly for those players whose characters are spellcasters (54 pages) Book 4: Running the Game  has everything a Game Master needs for running old-school games (85 pages) Book 5: Monsters  holds a selection of ready-to-use critters, complete with morale scores and treasure types (65 pages) These are all laid out and edited to be as quick to scan and find what you are looking for

I took the rear cover art from Keep on the Borderlands and cleaned it up for a 3200x1800 resolution. Clicking the link below each image takes you to google drive where the full 4k image is stored. Click here for 4k resolution Then I ran some filters and played around with those to create four variations on it. Enjoy! Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution Click here for 4k resolution I think I like no 3 and 5 the best.

Writing a bit again for the Mythlands of Erce, I am contemplating alignment languages again.  I wrote on this topic a while back  and I am still a fan of them.  For one because I like the idea of alignment having tangible impact on the game world in a world of "alignment as [cosmic] faction". Secondly, because having a multitude languages are mostly just a sucky obstacle to problem solving in D&D - Having a few pervasive languages that chart well to the broadest possible enemy/ally lines in the setting is a big positive. Thirdly because it's D&D and I am somewhat committed to making sense of the various D&Disms in my game world. I find myself wanting to re-work it from "granted by divine inspiration" model I previously went with due to it failing a critical litmus test: Anyone walking up to the [secretly chaotic] cleric in the Keep on the Borderlands and speaking Lawful to him would instantly know he is a fake. SO... Something a bit m

when it comes to non-Advanced D&D, The internet, and in particular the OSR blogosphere, has deserved praise galore for the B/X sets for D&D. And whilst not quite as enthusiastic, the Mentzer editions for those Basic and Expert sets also get plenty of praise for its art and way of introducing the game. The Holmes set also has its fair of passionate fans. And of course the original brown booklets themselves. Of newer releases, the Rules Cyclopedia also has a large following of fans. One release that hardly ever gets a mention is the 1991 'black box', by Timothy B. Brown and Troy Denning. Actually, the Rules Cyclopedia was published as a sort of companion to this set. Together  they represents the fifth and final edition of non-advanced D&D. "The New Easy to Master Dungeons & Dragons Game" also labelled "Classic Dungeons & Dragons" It's short, 64 page booklet, so much the same as its predecessors, comes with a simple dungeon m

"You all meet in a tavern" is classic stale D&D fare that no one minds and no one loves. Reading  Martin Kallies' gripe with tavern meetups over on Spriggan's Den  not long after reading  Blackrazor's musing on Luln, the original B/X home base  got me thinking. Let me first re-quote the passage about Luln before we get into what that says about the assumptions of the starting setting: "Composed primarily of persons who have fled Black Eagle Barony, merchants who have come to trade with the Baron, and some non-humans who have left the wilderness, Luln is a base town for adventurers exploring the Haunted Keep, also called Koriszegy Keep and the surrounding land. Somewhat lawless and open, the town can provide most of the basic needs to any group of adventurers. The town is poorly defended, relying on the goodwill and capabilities of both the Baron and the Duke for its defense. Approximately 500 people live in the town." (from Cook/Marsh, page X60)

Today, I finished the last bit of writing, editing and proofreading on the last book, uploaded the files to onebookshelf and am now awaiting approval (which will go through no problem I expect) before I can order proofs. When they come in, and assuming they look as I expect them to look, I press the button for release and they are released! I expect this will be no more than two weeks away. In between there is a few hours work with fitting the pdf products with cover and back cover, writing product descriptions and setting up bundle deals. But the files I have on my computer are basically the ones I expect to go on sale in two weeks or so. I can't quite believe I am finished. This started out as a small scale project I thought I wrap up in a few months, grew into a complete game with ambitions for proper layout, plenty of artwork and all that jazz that people would enjoy having at their game table. The last year of sickness I've battled with didn't exactly speed things

The OSR is an odd beast. On one hand, it is a game philosophy that has spurred tremendous creativity over the past decade or so (OSRIC was first made in 2006) that anyone with similar inspirations can DIY riff on. This is the wave I've found myself riding on as well. On the other, it is very much a community  of people exchanging and commenting on each other's ideas and gaming together online. This last part, I'm probably a bit on the outside of. I am not a frequent commentator, and I don't think my thoughts generate much traction with the 'it' people of the OSR. And I don't actually game online. So, how does one participate in the OSR movement? Is it enough to blog? Or should one also participate in the community? An opaque exercise of tracking down the right blogs, noticing the crowd that comments across them and join those discussions. And perhaps also sign up to join some of their games online. Google Plus was a kind of hub for the OSR. In a for

Having reviewed some oldies in Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk , the time has come for a setting from the 90s. The early 90s saw TSR embark on the most ambitious period of setting creation that hasn't been matches before or since, releasing no less than seven settings in boxed sets with full support in five years. One of them, developed under the working title of "War World" as a setting meant to support the Battlesystem rules, was Dark Sun, released in 1991. Dark Sun has a special place for me personally. It was the first setting I bought that was brand new when I picked it up. Settings like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance all had history by the time I discovered them, but Dark Sun I got to explore from the beginning of it when I picked up the original boxed set at my local game store. Grognard retrospectives typically argue that this period was the start of the nadir for old school gaming as sandbox exploration, resource management and deadly encounters set in

I am far enough ahead with Into the Unknown being print-ready, that the first two booklets just needs proper cover formatting to be print ready. And am basically 90% done with the remaining three. SO should be only a few months away now from a POD release. Which also means I've set up O5R Games at onebookself.com. And at this point, I think the game needs a more focused platform than the blog I set up originally to riff on my homebrew setting. So I've set up a new blog: https://o5rgames.blogspot.com/ That is where all items related to Into the Unknown will go. But also anything OSR related and of general rpg interest. Basically this blog will go back to being a blog about my homebrew setting and stuff I think only I would care about. I've migrated most of the posts I think belong in the former category to the new blog as well. You can expect the new blog to be busier than this one.

I received  +Jeff Talanian 's Magnum Opus in the mail last week - The 2nd edition of ASTONISHING SWORDSMEN & SORCERERS OF HYPERBOREA (Jeff was a real gentleman and let me get in on the kickstarter run even though I missed the deadline). It's kinda the opposite of what I am trying to do with Into the Unknown . It's built on the chassis of Advanced D&D 1e, while I am trying to build a modular 'un-advanced' edition of 5e. I am going for as lean as at all possible, with six booklets optimised for table play and 200 pages of gaming material being my top limit. ASSH is a massive 608-page hardbound single volume. I am quite in awe of what Jeff has made though. The feel  of the book alone, heavy from quality paper and binding, gives it potential to become one of those treasured tomes on many a gamer shelf. And the content is dead-on. I'd like to 'un-advance' a few bits here and there. But the classes, setting, monsters and spells are just dripping w

I've basically finished the DM Handbook - Still missing the treasure and monster book, but these should not be needed for review and testing. All the player material, save a bit of art and layouting in the magic booklet, is done. SO - Anyone who would like to try out, or simply take a look at, a hack of 5e that harkens back to the simple days of B/X - where the rules properly support old-fashioned dungeon crawls and hexcrawls (and make them easy to run). Where reaction rolls, morale and race-as-class is still a thing. Sign up to playtest "Into the Unknown"! Just join the playtest group here, and all the files will be made available to you. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. https://plus.google.com/communities/104545421866073203092 Both there and on the blog, I will also be sharing designer notes in the upcoming weeks. The proposed cover for the boxed set

Writing the GM's guide for Into the Unknown  has definitely been the biggest challenge of the project, forcing me to examine hard my own assumptions and understanding of what is good game mastering. But at this stage, I think we're close enough that playtest is only a few weeks away. All sections are laid out, page count is finalised - It just needs some text added to a handful of sections. Blending 5e and B/X has been an excellent study in the differences between the two and trying to understand the implications of some of the changes. Reaction rolls and Morale for example, are among the more beloved parts of B/X that were abandoned in 3e and haven't been seen since. I've spent a fair bit of time examining both sides of the fence and figuring out which way to go. Here's a sidebar I ended up adding to the section on social interaction that sums up how I feel social interaction should work in D&D: “Social Combat” The reaction roll is not a structured

After Forgotten Realms, we move further back in time to take a look at the setting it knocked off its perch as the de facto setting at TSR - Gary Gygax's very own World of Greyhawk (I will, at times, be comparing the two settings for the very same reason). Quick intro to the setting (See also my  review of the map of greyhawk  - Incidentally, the most visited entry on my blog) The world of Greyhawk is a Sword & Sorcery setting built on a proper medieval chassis with just a light sprinkling of Tolkien influences.  It is built around a dichotomy of the lands of Men being relatively mundane, with the history and cultures of these having a suitably 'realistic' feel and the wilderness being home to the Weird - The place where adventurers go to experience the fantastical. Here, Greyhawk has a strong 'anything goes' approach where spaceships, timetravel, contact with other worlds, from the silly to the serious, are all within the tone of the setting.