Great product. Super useful zine for old school fantasy games. Well written, high quality.

It lacks automation. Some features like drag and drop seem to work. Also, none of the monsters have any art to them. This is why the module gets 3/5

Very helpful and the develop is quick to respond to issues. No complaints really

A very useful addition to Foundry VTT for your OSE games.
A great ingame reference.

What would make it 5 stars? More tutorial content.

Quick Equipment is one of the most useful variant rules I have ever seen in a fantasy role-playing game. This is a must-buy.

I like the layout of it, and have used it for several of my other OSR games such as Scarlet Heroes and Shadowdark.

Figured I would finally write a review of this. Honestly, this has become my favore B/X retroclone. Great, concise writing. Good layout. Good art. Good play aids.

All around, a very well done game. Also takes the cake for my second longest running campaign (ended after two years) only seconded to AD&D 1e.

The gold standard for old school fantasy RPGs! It was this with the addition of "Deathbringer" that make my favourite fantasy RPG experience. I am pretty excited about discovering "Lamentations of the Flame Princess" though. So this game might have a competitor!

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2018/09/class-struggles-necromancer-part-2.html

One of the newest necromancers on the block and designed specifically for Old School Essentials. This is designated as "Play Test Material" but it really is ready to go. There have been necromancers for OSE before and there is at least one necromancer for other B/X-Basic games written by Gavin Norman already. Here the Necromancer is a subclass of the Magic-user, as would be expected, and some notes are given about using these new spells for the magic-user. But thematically they fit with the necromancer much better. The new spells are from 1st to 6th level and there are 12 of each. I see why there are twelve of each; to fit the style and layout of what Gavin does with his OSE games. But I would have been tempted to make it a nice 13 per level myself.

The spells are good and fit well. Some we have seen in other forms and formats over the past few years, but that does not detract from this book at all. Do you want a great OSE necromancer? Well, here it is. The format used here could be adopted for all sorts of other magic-user type classes or subclasses like the Illusionist or Enchanter for example.

You always need more character sheets and with Old-School Essentials you have a few options. This sheet follows the design philosophy of OSE. Make it functional, make it simple and make it work.

You always need more character sheets and with Old-School Essentials you have a few options. This sheet follows the design philosophy of OSE. Make it functional, make it simple and make it work.

Fantastic system. I was glad to grab all of these before OSE came out. Now redundant, but I still love having my copies.

OSE is my number one RPG. It is so familiar. It feels natural.

Setting elements that I'd scrap (living/advanced machinery). Overbeaten on the nose puns. Writing that doesn't jive with me. Most basic map.

RAW characters are not very incentivized until roughly day 3 in the events, per the "escelation" section you add 1d6 to a "collapse" table for every watch (12 watches per day) so you'd be rolling 36+d6 on a table that has its worst problems marked at a roll of 18+.. there are simple fixes to this but it is a major part of the module and as written, to me, reads completely broken and unusable. "Challenges" list is short and rolled on many, many times and is composed of many different variations of "save or take damage" while the many unique and more interesting "regional challenges" as written has a slightly higher than 30% chance of happening per watch.

In an attempt to make everything as compressed as possible it seems necessary rule clarifications have been cut. During a watch there are rules to explore new locations and despite having a mechanic of further exploring an explored area to "find everything else" there isn't a set watch time for this, only for new locations. This is a small gripe, but I already felt I needed to change the major mechanic of the dungeon to make it work and now have to fill in blanks for the minor mechanics.

I would not run this, if I were to I would have to change it so much that I'd rather just fully make my own content. Maybe it's worth picking up for some of the ideas? It's a cheap book and some of the ideas are interesting which is why I give it a 2/5. Other content from OSE has been so good that this was a major let down to me.

It's like a MUST BUY product. OSE books themselves and the SRD website are perfect with layout but still, this booklet makes to prepare games a way easier and faster!