Book 4 Running the Game makes this set worth it on it's own.

I love that it's printed in separate volumes, to be able to have a player working on spells and another working on thier character at the same time while a third looks up rules is way more useful than one would expect. The booklet format, too is nice, it gives it an old school feel to it, almost like it's own white box.

Book 6... Honestly, I don't know if it was intentional, (I highly doubt it) but the fact that a companion volume was promised but not finished echoes B/X pretty closely.

This system is a 5e game with a B/X tone to it. I personally was born 6 years after B/X was printed, and find 5e more comfortable to run. However, I recently purchased "Into the Borderlands" from goodman games and wanted to try it with a game that had an OSR feel with 5e mechanics. This works pretty well for it.

Great old-school hack of the modern (2014) D&D rules. I would give five stars, but this 'complete' product bundle does NOT include a print copy of Book 3: Magic

Edit: Publisher has reached out and made good on this mistake. Looking forward to more Into the Unknown! Five Stars!

Best version of 5e. Some of the things that really sold the game for me were:

• Game actually gives you concrete and solid exploration rules for both hexcrawl and point-crawl
• Different areas of gameplay are codified really well
• Power level is tuned just slightly down without losing compatibility with 5e
• Monster list is condensed and usable at the table

There were two things that bothered me. First, XP based on damage received/dealt is way too cumbersome and should be rewritten completely. Fortunately there are two other ways to award XP. Second, the demihumans are objectively better at everything compared to the core classes so I wouldn't use them in the same campaign. There are also some typos which should be addressed, but generally the books are well-written and laid out.

Overall, ItU is highly recommended for anyone willing to keep running 5e but with old-school tone. I'm really looking forward to the Companion expansion.

This is a great book for those that enjoy 5e but wish to play/explore a more OSR style play. The game uses 5e, but adds some b/x inspired mechanics to help it play a little closer to those early edtions of D&D.
You dont need the 5e core books to play as the necessary rules are all stated again across the books. I find the presentation of the 5e rules in Into The Unknown to be much less wordy and easier/quicker to digest then the core 5e books. To highlight some of the changes to vanilla 5e there is:

*** • The return of the 10min round for dungeon exploration, which is a helpful formal structure to keep pressure on the pc's, and keep track of supplies etc The threat of Wandering monsters, dwindling light sources, and the need to rest are all devices that keep the tension going in old school Dungeon explorations. Theres a clever table to roll on which takes care of these aspects, making it easier for the DM to run dungeon crawls without too much book keeping.

*** • Slower healing rates to make dungeon exploration more dangerous.

*** • Paired down classes, and race as class. With some nice new feaures that can be taken at 1st level which replaces the addtion of the 3rd level archtypes in standard 5e. You'll recognise the basic classes from 5e, but the new feature at 1st level gives some good flavour and options, retaining some variety to characters.

***• A strong emphasis on improvisation in game play akin to that engendered by the older rules lite addtions of d&d. This I really liked. it opens up the 5e rule set to a more open ended style of play. In fairness to vanilla 5e it has been designed to allow this sort of improvisation along side class abilities, but the text heavy nature of those rule books and myriad of class options somehow gets that message a bit lost. Into The Unknown puts that aspect front and centre, and has great advice on how to improvise actions within the 5e rule set, something only lightly hinted at in the core wizard of the coast 5e books. If you find yourself getting repetitive & overly perscriptive in your 5e PC options this is worth the price of the books alone.

*** • In place of individual skills there is the option to just use areas of proficiency.

All in all if you like 5e but want to try a b/x inspired flavour of 5e i'd recommend it. Thanks to its suggestions its made me reappraise standard 5e ( for the better). The suggestions and options can inform vanilla 5e and vice versa thanks to its compatibility. Also worth considering if you fancy running any of the Goodman Games 5e conversions of classic D&D modules, or even better make up your own dungeon crawls old school style.

I love this game. I've got two 5e D&D campaigns that I'm currently running and have been looking for a way to introduce more old-school play to my group. This may do just the trick. When my current games are over I'm thinking of using to either run Rime of the Frostmaiden or one of the Goodman Games Original Adventures Reincarnated series. I'll say more about it once I've run it, but from an initial read through it is a very exciting marriage of the best features of old school games with modern mechanics.

The print production quality is my only complaint. I wish it were available as saddle-stitched booklets rather than perfect bound. As it is the text really crowds the center margins at the spine of the book making it a little bit of a strain to read. But the content is good enough that it is worth the minor annoyance and if it became available in saddle-stitched booklets I would buy it all over again.

I think this is my new favorite RPG.

It preserves the streamlined, intuitiive gameplay of 5E, which means no wonky, crunchy saving throw or to-hit tables (or THAC0), just straightforward ability + proficiency rolls vs DC, or (ascending) AC, for just about all checks.

Characters classes, meanwhile, are scaled back to the B/X or Rules Cyclopedia style fighter, rogue, priest, and magic-user, with options for race-as-class dwarf, elf, and halfling. All classes are simplified from 5E and there are no archetypes or subclasses to choose from. There are, however, a few meaningful options for each class which adds some nice variation and flexibility to the game. The fighter gets a fighting style, for example, while the priest and magic user each have a few options that determine which spells they can use and a few other features.

Monster and spell lists are truncated from the 5E core rules. You get just about all the classic material you could want, though I would have liked to see the inclusion of certain spells (Fire bolt cantrip) and at least one metallic (gold) dragon. Stat blocks and spell descriptions are also more concise and simpified, but they remain 5E at the core.

The game is designed to be fully compatible with 5E and I think is largely accompishes this. The default rules-as-written are designed to be slightly harsher and more "old school" than 5E. A long rest only restores 1 spent hit die, rather than full hit points, and optional rules are included to make the game even more old school. There are options for eliminating at-will cantrips, or reducing bonuses for high attributes to B/X table (where 18 only gives +3 rather than +4). At the same time, the written rules are pretty transparent with their differences from 5E, so it's easy to house rule just about anything back to 5E rules if preferred.

The DM's section on designing and running dungeons, adventures, campaigns, and so on is concise but packs a lot of good tips for getting started.

The game supports play up to level 10, so there's no "high-level content"... no age categories for dragons in the monster listings, for example, or any other insanely overpowered monsters or spells. Personally, I think this is fine. 10 levels of core D&D gameplay is plenty. More of the same at higher levels can bog down the gameplay with excessive number crunching, though 5E is much better about this than its immediate predecessors. On the other hand, back in the old Rules Cyclopedia, the game changes into something almost completely different at 9th level, aka "name level"... with rules for domain management, mass combat, and paths to immortality.

While I've always enjoyed the concept of a successful heroic adventurer eventually owning a castle, leading armies, and so on, core D&D gameplay wasn't really designed for that. Still, Into the Unknown is simple enough that you could probably fiddle around with Rules Cyclopedia content or later third-party supplements if you really wanted to include domains, warfare, etc., in a campaign at or after 9th or 10th level.

5E made a lot of improvements to the D&D "engine" that I'm personally fond of. These generally get lost or ignored by most "OSR" games, even the ones that aren't straight "retroclones" of the original cumbersome rulesets. Into the Unknown is different. It achieves its goals of playing streamlined like 5E while recapturing the simplistic design and feel of the much older editions of D&D.

All in all, an excellent RPG.

Into the Unknown takes the mechanics of the 5E system, strips it down to the essentials, and melds it with old-school playing style, creating a lean but complete system for low level (1st through 10th) adventures. The game is fun, well-organized, and should appeal to gamers who like the 5E system but may want a bit more simplicity. I highly recommend this game.