This is a cool cookbook for people really early in the worldbuilding / 5e-variant-designing process. Lots of options for how to reinterpret the rules and add a little complexity, or have an underlying base system for you to put the appropriate reskinning on top of for your game.

If I were going to write something like Red Lily's Supplement 1: Armor Overhaul from scratch, I'd go to this after initial brainstorming when it's time to systematise; for my current project I'm more likely to start with the Armor Overhaul, cut it down 20%, then review this to see if there's anything I want to add or rationalise. Useful!

This product is two bits in one. Part one is an overview of a method to handle the mechanics encounters in your OSR (or any RPG, actually) game. For less experienced GMs, this is a major plus.

Part two is a list of encounters (# appearing, what, time of day, about how far away, suggested motivation, etc.) broken down by terrain. For those that recall the old Judges Guild products with micro-plot hooks on their maps- this is that but in table form and with a bit more detail.

This is my favorite OSR supplement to date. Simple but allows you to customize the basic 4 classes. Some of the feats i have altered to suit my own preferences but all in its well worth the price. I hope you someday make a second book.

I really like how this book turned out. The feats are not just recycled third edition feats. If you combine this book with OSE or BECMI you theneed for multi classing or assassins paladins or Rangers.

I really like how it deconstructs the class abilities and serves it in simple and OSR compatible way. Based on these feats one could easily construct new classes.

I was excited to find this book. I am making my own homebrew RPG, and the title of this book fit my design perfectly. By the time I found the book, I had already crafted more than 100 custom and themed feats for PCs.

My excitement turned to disappointment.  Basically, if you peruse 5e class features and a few of the feats, you have everything that this book has to offer.  Worse, the author immediately lowers expectations by declaring that this book "focuses on non-magical features, especially for fighters and thieves."  Gosh, that's a pity.  The title suggests a well-rounded offering.  

So what does the book have?  It has 10 general feats.  Twelve cleric feats. Twenty fighter feats.  Twelve magic user feats.  And 20 thief feats.  There are some additional fluff pages that are of marginal use.   But as I said, you can get almost all of these feats by reading the 5e PHB.  I bet most people if they just make a list for half an hour will arrive with the same set off the top of their head.  

This is the sort of list made on a reddit thread that someone decided to monetize via drivethrurpg.  It has a small sum of utility for someone who is willing to pay five dollars to save a few minutes of thinking or reading other sources.  

I can't recommend the title. 

This is an interesting take on expanding variety in classes in B/X type games. Using these, your players can differentiate their characters a bit from one another so not every fighter looks the same. In addition, these feats can be used to create psuedo classes or subclasses. They can be used to recreate archetypes without adding too much complexity to the simple ruleset of B/X type games. Add a feat to one of the basic classes (fighter, cleric, magic-user, thief). Want a barbarian? There's a feat for that. Want a paladin? There's a feat for that. Want an acrobat? There's a feat for that.

That's all good stuff. Now, for the reason I am only giving this four stars. As written, this product will be difficult to implement. Some feats might unbalance your game a bit. You will likely want to tweak some of the feats to make sure your game stays on track and not cause headaches for the GM. That said, the author provides a great deal of insight into the design process and some ideas of how to adapt and implement these feats. With the content in this product, you can easily adjust things to fit your desired outcomes.

Let me put it in perspective. I spent an hour or less reading this product, adjusting a few things, and came out with a solid framework. For those familiar with Old School Essentials, these feats made me think, "With these feats, I could use the basic fantasy rules rather than the advanced fantasty rules while giving the players access to lots of variety and customization without much complexity."

I think this product is well worth a read, though you may want to pick it up when it is on sale. Just know going in that you will want to make some changes. That is the beauty of B/X clones, though, because you can make some changes without breaking game.

Excellent resource for retro-clones, that lets you expand character options through feats rather than classes. Although the further you get from B/X, the more house-ruling it'll require, the systems presented are fairly flexible so it may still be worth it. Left me wanting more; since it's OGL, I'm hopeful about seeing some homebrew expansions to this system.

I posted some longer thoughts on my blog: https://pseudonymwrites.wordpress.com/2022/09/29/review-old-school-feats-by-eric-diaz/

This is a summary review of what I have posted on my site, AdamDreece.com.

I first have to commend anyone who takes an idea and gets it out. As an indie author myself, it is immensely hard to do.

For me, Old School Feats puts forward the interesting idea of bringing feats similar to 5e to the Old School world for the purposes of adding flavour, differentiation between say two 10th level fighters or thieves, and avoiding the endless creation of more and more custom character classes. So this provides a really good starting point for the idea.

It suffers for significant imbalance between the feats presented and will create some headaches for Referee's trying to balance characters fairly who have and don't have feats. Granting the ability for a Fighter to have half-level clerical spells and abilities, and/or magic-user ones, without significant XP cost to restore balance is going to create a problem.

Is it worth it? When I picked it up, it was on promotional pricing for release week and I would have said a simple yes, if you are interested in bringing in something like Feats. However, depending on the price and your interest, note that I don't really put this under the category of those supplements you can just pick up and use right away without concern for balance or impact to your campaign. It's more in the "food for thought" type of category.

I love old-school D&D (B/X, LL, Swords & Wizardry, OSE, etc) . . . except for the way that spellcasters have to memorize/pray for their spells each morning and magic is very predictable rather than mysterious and often dangerous. I've tried lots of variants and alternatives over the years: spell points, spell checks, spell mishaps, rituals, etc., gathering ideas from all kinds of sources, including the D&D books themselves, third-party supplements, other RPGs, and blogs and internet forums.

It seems that Eric Diaz has done that research, too, and synthesized the best ideas in one handy supplement. Alternate Magic is 32 pages in total, but the main alternatives to spell slots are covered in the first 11 pages, and they are what I'll be using the most. That's followed by descriptions of specific spells to go with some of the options (flexible/level-less spells, metamagic spells, cantrips, rituals), some alternative rules for clerics, and then descriptions of 5 new classes (Alternate Cleric, White Mage, Blood Mage, Chaos Sorcerer, and Pyromancer) that use some of the alternative systems. It ends with a couple pages on ideas for saving throws vs. spells and broad-stroke ideas for how characters find and learn new spells and for "living spells" that really follow different rules.

This is the most comprehensive yet concise resource I've found for someone who wants to spice up how magic works in their old-school games.

Like DarkSouls, this game will give a deep hardcore darkness to my players and I would like that!

"100 Undead" lives up to its title. The undead are are a nice mix of skeleton and zombie variants, creepy but non-hostile, and more powerful hostile / horrific / evil undead. It was just what I needed to make my life easier giving some depth to a home-brewed city ruled by intelligent undead and necromancers. Definitely worth the price!

I discovered that this rule system works well with Dungeon Crawl Classics Adventures. The module I used was DCC 87.5 Grimtooth's Museum of Death. The game system I used to play this was Dark Fantasy Basic. The solo engine that I used is one that I have been testing out. The adventure module does contain some "mystery" rooms. I used some encounters from another module to "populate" these areas. I used six first level thief characters from Dark Fantasy Basic to play through the museum. They did rescue a second level spy character (she was cursed). All seven characters died on levels two and four. Maybe you will have better luck . . .

I used the tables in my recent Ironsworn campaign, fits in perfectly! I'm considering buying some of the other tables as soon as I know how to implement them.

A solid, workmanlike look at 5e weapons, the gaps in the lineup, and duplications. The author adds a few weapons and discusses the various properties (including adding a new property). To my mind the book goes a little overboard in trying to differentiate weapons (example: giving the trident the new "trip" property to differentiate it from the spear) but that's a minor complaint. The biggest value I see is giving newer DMs an example of how to think about weapons systematically.

I bought it on sale for $1.99 and think it delivered good value for the money.