It's my 1st OSR RPG and I already love it so much! The rules are easy, yet, much more things to do with compare to typical rules-light systems.

However what it makes me to love OSE so much is for their perfect layout. Everyone talked about the layout of this book is superb and I could understand why. Seriously manytimes the layout matters a lot whether the system's good or bad. I had suffered a lot with few rulebooks with bad layout even if the system itself was simple. Not just about the layout but their adventures and zines are truly useful! Even the OSE generator helps me to save so much time!

Before buying this game, I wanted to try an OSR game and I was a bit stuck to make the decision, among OSE, Basic Fanstasy, DCC and other OSR games. Now I feel like I made a right choice!

Originally posted here: https://theotherside.timsbrannan.com/2022/02/review-old-school-essentials-advanced.html

Arguably one of the biggest success stories of the late OSR movement has been the publication of Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy (2019) and Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy (2021). Indeed I feel that OSE has supplanted Swords & Wizardry, the darling of the middle OSR movement as the old-school game of choice. It is the old-school game of choice here in my home game, alternating between it and D&D 5e, and seems to be the most talked-about game in the old-school discussion areas.

This is all with good reason. OSE is well designed, superbly organized, and has wonderful art. There is a minimalist approach to the rules and presentation that does not detract from the experience, instead, it rather enhances it. You can see my enthusiasm in my review of the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy Boxed set back in 2020. So imagine my surprise when I learned I had not given OSE Advanced a proper review yet.

I have detailed my introduction to D&D many times here. But briefly, my "first" D&D was a poorly copied version of Holmes Basic with an AD&D Monster Manual. My first "true" D&D, the one I could properly call my own was Moldvay Basic/Cook & MArsh Expert (commonly referred to as "B/X"). I would over the course of a year or so add in elements of AD&D. Most importantly the Deities & Demigods, the Fiend Folio, and a copy of Eldritch Wizardry. My D&D was always a mish-mash of Basic D&D and AD&D. I later discovered that my playstyle was not at all unique.

Old School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Edition really strikes at the heart of what this sort of play was like. The familiar and easy Basic/Expert rules with AD&D layered on top. Layered is the right word, AD&D had a lot of situational rules and rules used in tournaments and rules designed to cover what looked like medieval realism. As real that is in a world where half-elves fought dragons with magic. OSE-AF strips this down back to the B/X style rules found in OSE-CF and then adds in what people used the most from AD&D. No weapon speed factors, no tournament scoring, just D&D-style play.

OSE-AF is divided into two books, the Player's Tome and the Referee's Tome.

For this review, I am considering the hardcover books I got via the Kickstarter, the PDFs from DriveThruRPG, and extra copies of the Player's Tome I picked up at my FLGS. All books were purchased by me and none were submitted for review purposes.

OSE-AF Player's Tome

Hardcover. Black and White and color interior art and covers. 248 pages. Bookmarked PDF with hyperlinked table of contents and index. $40.00 for the hardcover print (retail). $15.00 for the PDF.

The Player's Tome covers everything an OSE-AF player needs to know. The book details a lot of the same rules that are found in the OSE-Classic Fantasy (or read: Basic) rules. This new book though integrates the "Basic" and "Advanced" material together with some notes on the "Advanced Fantasy" sections. One might be tempted to say that this book is not needed if you have the OSE-CF book, but that is not really the case. While there are certainly more classes, and more monsters in the case of the Referee Tome, there is still quite a lot of new material here. Enough to make AF twice as large content-wise as CF.

The main feature of this book, and indeed all of the OSE line, is the layout. All material is laid out so that everything you need to read is on facing pages. So a character class always takes up two pages (even and odd) so that when laid flat everything can be read at once and easily. There are very few exceptions to this rule and it gives OSE it's unique look and feel. Add in the art, sparingly but effectively used, the feel is elegant, if minimalist, efficiency. This is the same design that made D&D 4e a joy to read. The same feeling is here.

Advanced Fantasy follows its Advanced namesake and splits character race and character class into two separate things. Basic combined race and class so you got Clerics (always human) and Dwarves (always fighters). Here is the option that most folks want in the "Advanced" game. In addition to the four classes and the four races of Basic, this book introduces six more races and nine more classes.

In the OSE-AF book, we get: Acrobat, Assassin, Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Knight, Magic-user, Paladin, Ranger, and Thief.

There are also the "race as class" variants of: Drow, Duergar, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-elf, Halfling, Half-orc, Human, and Svirfneblin. The level maximum is 14 for humans and variable for others. All race/class combinations are detailed. This covers our first 80 some odd pages.

What follows next are guides for character advancement, equipment, animals of burden, transportation, and crews.

The next biggest section is Magic and this covers all the spells for the magic-using classes. Since the max level for any human is 14, spells are limited. Divine spellcasters are limited to the 5th level of casting and Arcane to the 6th level. The advantage here is the clerics and druids are on more equal footing with each other and so are magic-users and illusionists. Unlike their Advanced namesake, this book does not require spell components nor are their other details given. The spells are firmly in the Basic format.

The book wraps up with Adventuring, Hirelings, and building strongholds.

The feel is solid B/X Basic with enough "Advanced" added in to make it feel just a little different. Or in other words, exactly how we used to play it from 1980 to 1983.

Throughout all these books and the entire OSE line, the art is both evocative of the old-school style and still modern enough to please new audiences.

This is the game of choice for me to introduce old-school style play to players of modern games. My regular 5e group took to it like ducks to water. They love it. They still love their 5e games, but they also like to do this one. None of them had ever played B/X prior to this and it was a huge success.

I know that Gavin Norman and Necrotic Gnome have more material to give us for this, I hope it all lives up this new gold standard I set my OSR book to.

I like to be prepared, so I think it would be a slight exaggeration to call this and the accompanying Referee's Tome the only thing you need to run an advanced old-school game. Instead, in my view, this little book, the Referee's Tome, and a good, solid adventure module are the only things you need to buy to run an advanced old-school game. Combine this with the freely-available advice and writings you can find online about the mindset to get into for these kinds of games and how to run them, and you're pretty much set. The layout in these PDFs is almost unreasonably good; I was initially sad to know there was no SRD-equivalent for the Advanced rules, given the great wiki-like layout of the OSE SRD, but the formatting of this PDF makes up for that in spades. Well worth the asking price.

Great book. If you're into old school games. I highly recommend this. The rules are a combination of Basic D&D and AD&D. Well edited and great illustrations. The layout makes the rules easy to find. Compatible with Labyrinth Lord, Basic D&D and Swords & Wizardry.