One thing that weighs favourably towards TSR D&D rulesets for me is the different experience of character levels. Character levels in TSR D&D just strike me as having far more heft  to them, than levels in 3e onwards.  I remember being much more proud of my AD&D fighter reaching 5th level than I ever was of reaching much higher levels in 3e or 5e. And it's not just due to nostalgia. The achievement felt more significant, as if 5th level in AD&D meant more than 9th level does in 5e. Not only in terms of my investment as a player, but also in terms of what that meant for the character in the world. A 7th lvl fighter in B/X or AD&D setting is a big deal to my mind. A force in the world. A 7th lvl fighter in 5e strikes me as a somewhat more run-of-the-mill character. The AD&D 7th lvl fighter seems somehow further removed from 1st lvl than the equivalent 3e/5e character, It's a nebulous impression that is hard to explain or justify. And I am partly writing t...

On reddit, I was alerted to another 05R game, BA5IC, an OSR adaptation in 54 pages that was released in October and is PWYW. I shelled out the recommended 2 bucks and decided to have a look. I will do a basic review and also compare it a bit to Into the Unknown and 5TD. tl;dr - A whiteboxed Epic 6 treatment of 5e that has some good stuff in it, but ends up looking a bit more like the author's heartbreaker than a fullfledged game. Presentation & First Impressions: Clocking in at 54 pages in letter format (23,000 words), this is another candidate that goes even slimmer than whitebox. The layout has generous whitespace on the outside, a bit too much for my liking considering the narrow space between columns and slightly cramped space between paragraphs. It is not so much worse than Into the Unknown in this regard though, but still a noticeable difference coming from 5TD's generous spacing on every page. Still the layout is mostly neat, paragraphs mostly don't ...

It's time for the.... Battle of the 05R games! Into the Unknown squares up against Five Torches Deep and we take a look at how these two games differ and what they have in common. Introductory remarks: As I summarised in the review post on 5TD , If Into the Unknown is a 5e adaptation that seeks to emulate the "non-advanced" B/X style of play, then 5TD is the 5e equivalent of S&W Whitebox, an even lighter retroclone than the famously brief B/X. This difference is evident in word count. Into the Unknown clocks in at 133,000 words (B/X had 113,000). Significantly less than the 'Advanced' version of 5e it compares itself to (the 5e PHB & DMG together clock in at 410,000 words, add in the Monster Manual and it probably comes to around 600,000 words).  Meanwhile 5TD has a mere 18,000 words (whitebox, for comparison, has 33,000). So what do you get for the difference here? The most obvious are number of monsters and spells. 5TD has a on...

When I first learned of Five Torches Deep, it was seeing their kickstarter launch just as I was preparing to release Into the Unknown and I was wondering just how much overlap there was going to be between this 'O5R' game and my own. After reading  Robot Goblin's comparative review of both systems, I decided to pick up the pdf and do a review of it myself. I will of course be comparing it to Into the Unknown as well, but will leave that for a follow-up post. Without further ado, let's go: tl;dr - a "whitebox" style  adaption of 5e. Even slimmer than whitebox, it is missing essential parts for running a full game, but wins out with superb layout and usability at the game table. Presentation & First Impressions: Five Torches Deep (hereafter 5TD) is a 5e-inspired OSR system in a mere 49 pages. Despite its short page count, it doesn't skimp on rich full color art, makes generous use of whitespace, has large fonts and a dedication to smal...

Robot Goblin has posted a short review of three old school games with modern mechanics. Games as gateway drugs: Five Torches Deep, King of Dungeons, and Into the Unknown. I am slightly peeved that 5TD gets full credit for "every class, and all core rules fit on a single spread or page" when I've sweated blood, sweat and keyboard-ink to achieve the same for ItU (if I hadn't been so slow to produce the thing, I could have claimed credit ahead of Necrotic Gnome for this!). But mostly I am glad to see someone else recognise the effort I put into book 4.  "But Book 4: Running the Game is worth the price of admission, even if you ditched everything else. I think it may be the cleanest, most interesting guide to running a game I’ve ever read and incorporates outside thinking like Fronts from Dungeon World. Its sections on dungeon and hex crawls are short and solid as a beer keg." It was definitely the hardest to write of the five. In the other ...

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...

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 ...

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'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...

Quick intro: "Into the Unknown" is my hack of 5e to make it run more like B/X - Old school meets modern. Many simplified mechanics; Race-As-Class; reaction and morale rolls are back; spend-gold-for-xp combined with downtime activities; simple but central hexcrawl framework; terse and short writing - And fully compatible with 5e. Click the tags below for more. The player booklets are basically finished. Works has stalled a bit as I am working hard on the GM booklets. This is turning out to be a lot harder than the player booklets, but I want it to be good - And this is really demanding the best of GM wisdom from me! We're still a couple a months away from completion, but I have the structure of the booklet and just about every chapter and section lined up, so things should be proceeding more smoothly from here. There are other good news though. The player booklets look quite good, even just printing it with a regular printer. And I've been researching the cost of ...

In the grognard-sphere,  you can find many examples of grognards decrying the loss of D&D's endgame. As I am working on B/X-ing 5e for  Into the Unknown,   a cursory look at end-game approach is also on the menu (though mostly for a later Companion supplement since the core will only go to 10th level). I've never really played with domain and stronghold rules. I was certainly aware of them and of the fact that the game was supposed to move in that direction. I just didn't understand how non-wargamers would think they are anything but an exceptionally boring endgame. "You have over countless sessions fought everything from orcs to dragons, progressed from saving villages to saving kingdoms. Now, as you move into high-level play, new destinies and high level rules appear. Forget about resource management of rations and arrows. That's for noobs! At high levels, you get to manage the resources of an entire keep! Track the cost of building a new wing of the ...

Short follow to my previous post  on this. I think I've arrived at a good format that strikes a decent middle ground between the simplicity of B/X and the long format of 5e. Note the addition of Morale and numbers appearing. Those rules should never have become 'OSR'. No idea why they were cut from 3e nor why they didn't return for 5e. They are lifeblood of D&D encounters, imo, and certainly for B/X and are back for  Into the Unknown . On this note - What do grognards make of the numbers appearing stats in B/X? Do you use them as is? I've always felt they tended to be on the high side. ---------------- Thankfully, Labyrinth Lord's monster descriptions are open content (though I am shortening them), since the SRD has none - Another one to add to the credits. It's all formatted pretty tight now. Only thing left now (groan) is find the right monsters to cut, add descriptions for the remaining 180 critters and rewrite the overly verbose ...

I known I said that  making the Magic Book was without a doubt the most editorially demanding of the set . But the monster's book is not far behind. Might be more demanding in the end. I've done all the rough trimming and editing by now. Removing monsters that are obviously not a fit for B/X, removing those of unsuitable challenge ratings and trying my best to make the stat block simpler and take up less space. this has trimmed my original 140 page draft down to 63 page working document (for comparison, magic went from 122 page draft to 39 pages). I want to get down to 50 pages or less, but the choices from here are harder ones. I currently have 198 unique entries - Compared to the 186 entries found in B/X. It is not a like for like list of critters. And there is a few I will have to create on top of that (dwarf, elf, halflings and of course - Devil Swine). Not to mention, most of these have no description in the SRD! They will have to be added on top (groan). And cu...

The Dwarf is up for review. Full version at the bottom of page The Dwarf in B/X is basically the fighter with better saves. I decided to let Extra Attack be a unique feature of the fighter in Into the Unknown.  So the Dwarf is instead based around being a a good mook horde breaker (from 3rd level onwards) and otherwise being a reliable hard damage dealer against solitary foes, who can also take a good amount of punishment. I've tried to focus on mechanics that doesn't require extra die rolls or new mechanics to learn (or if they do, ride on existing ones - two abilities look at the ignored die of advantage/disadvantage for their effect - And two other abilities involve invoking advantage and disadvantage for nice synergies). Oh and I added favored enemy. Because it's well known that dwarves carry a mighty grudge against their enemies. Overall, I am really happy with the result. I think it would be would to play (combining free shoves on advantage with opportuni...

Throughout the proccess of developing Into the Unkown  I've been resistant to the idea of splitting the rules set into staggered releases the way B/X and BECMI did. The 5e SRD has rules going all the way to level 20 for free, why impose limitations on what should be in ItU's ruleset when the material for higher is already there and just need some adaption and editing? If it's there, put it in. One rules set to rule them or or staggered sets for different tiers of play? I am getting close enough to the finishing line now that I did a projected page count, minus cover, toc and formalia (but including internal artwork), for the player booklets. Book 1: Characters - 55 pages Book 2: Playing the Game - 23 pages Book 3: Magic - 72 pages Spread out like this: 40 pages of intro and character creation 26 pages of rules 15 pages of equipment 69 pages of spell lists and spells So basically 150 pages of player material. For comparison, the equivalent chapters in the...

Making the Magic book for Into the Unknown is without a doubt the most editorially demanding of the set. 5e magic is verbose  and overly focused on spelling out everything. Re-arranging (I am sorting spells by level) and cutting superfluous stat blocks helps, even if it takes a lot of time. For comparisons, here is the B/X presentation of two simple spells: And here is the 5th edition presentation of two simple spells: Here are two simple spells in Into the Unknown: I am pretty happy that most 5e spells can have their stat block simplified to B/X standard of range/duration with mostly just a different approach to presentation (unless otherwise specified, casting a spell takes an action and requires verbal and somatic components - and I've eliminated material components without a cost). The screenshots here aren't so bad as they are all simple. But there are just so many spells in 5e that are ridiculously detailed. Paring them down is a lot of work. And 5e'...

Saving throws have always been quirky in D&D - The original categories were.... eccentric to say the least. Why is save vs wand different from save vs staff? Is petrification really widespread enough to get an explicit mention? And what is a death ray anyway? Finger of death? What else? That said, it was charming and that has its own sort of saving grace. It is a lot more menacing when the DM exclaims "save vs DEATH RAY" than "make a fortitude save". 3e did an admirable job of simplifying and clarifying saves. 3 instead of 5, keying it to dexterity, constitution and wisdom gives you an idea of how you are trying to save yourself, making saving throws a lot less disassociated. Good job allround. The only recurring complaint against 3e saves were lacking the charm of older editions. Which, as complaints go, fall somewhere between obstinate and petulant. For me, it is mildly aesthetically displeasing that there are 2 physical saves and only 1 mental save. Bu...