Rant: The OSR has been Usurped...

I was at a game store recently and noted that while the shop believed they were on the cutting edge of indie and the OSR scene, and perhaps they were, the meaning of the OSR had escaped them and they were peddling only games released since 2018.  In strictly OSR terms they were only selling some of Old School Essentials.  Everything else they were selling were 5e-lites and/or minimalist trash like Electric Bastionland, Ultraviolet Shitty, and Mork Borg.  There was, of course, an entire shelf devoted to ShadowShart.  TSR products were relegated to a locked glass cabinet.  I had to annoy a perplexed employee there to have him open said cabinet for me to look at his proper TSR wares, then he made comments betraying the fact that he had no knowledge of these products and, like Ron Swanson, I assured him that I knew more than him and therefore he needn't fucking say anything at all.  

This interaction was not why I began typing this post.  The shop was full of libtards and normies.  Bitches with blue hair and septum piercings.  Women dressed like whores with their skin hideously decorated with tattoos betraying their whore nature even if their attire didn't give it away.  Every male within was a simp and/or a theater kid and/or a beta male.  One of these sterling representations of the modern man was conversing with a more conservatively dressed woman in the shop and was remarking on Mork Borg.  I overheard their conversation while pretending to look at the pitiful trappings of the shelves.  

To summarize he stated that Mork Borg was one of his favorite new games because it was stylish and killed characters.  And then I had a stark realization.  The OSR has become a summer camp for 5E players.  We're the drug-addicted, tattooed black guy 5E's blonde daughter fucks to get back at her parents.  A stop for the tourists touring outside of where they normally tour.  That's right, the OSR is Pigeon Forge TN.  And like the locals of Pigeon Forge, I'm sick and tired of these fucking tourists.  But worse than that, I'm annoyed my neighborhood has been ruined by them.

The OSR still means what I say it means, but I don't have control of the underlying zeitgeist.  It's been subverted and turned into a goddamn meme.  The meme of low level PC fragility attached to the DCC funnel and now, probably, the ShitorFart random bullshit level gain mechanic stolen from Jim Raggi's bullshit LotFP playtest or, less likely, 1pot.  I can't do dick about it but wait for the tourists to leave.  

Luckily none of these games have any staying power.  DarklyDark's garbage fake hexcrawl will fade into the sands of time like every copy of Sorcerer's Dictionary of Mu.  Ten years from now Noble Knight won't know what to do with all the thousands of copies they have been traded in.  Because the tourists will leave and the core fans will remain, and all of us realize what a fucking joke these shitty low effort games are.  Turdburgler, now on kickstarter, will be yet another waste of $125-$250 per person buying garbage they don't need, shouldn't want, and already fucking own.  It is guaranteed to be a dust collector in 5 years and completely forgotten about in 10.  Just like ShadowDark.

Gorging on Thought, Starving on Play

Anyone who actually runs a RPG knows one thing for absolute certain - there is no time to consider your DM style or "how you DM" while you're DMing.  You simply DM how you DM, thinking about how you DM is a between-sessions thing, or your game is incredibly boring and your table is credibly empty.  And thinking about how you DM between sessions will not necessarily change how you DM.  It's an overly pointless endeavor, really.

There are hundreds of idiot content creators on YouTube who believe otherwise.  They think that thinking about it hard will change what happens during the game itself and it will, but only for the worse.  Because 'good right now' is universally better than 'better in a minute'.  Because time is the most valuable commodity at the table.  Any prep that shortens downtime or 'dead air' immediately increases the quality of play.  There is no getting around this.  Any resource that pretends it's for use at the table is wrong.  At the table if an adventure module is used it should be the only thing used.  

The corebook shouldn't be.  Generally the core should be held by the player with spells if you don't happen to have spell cards that explain the entirety of the spell's description.  As an aside: if you have spell cards that don't explain the entirety of the spell's description, you should throw them away, because they are garbage.  Get the correct spell cards for the job.

As a DM you should have the rules memorized.  Those you haven't memorized should likely be charts printed on a screen for reference.  If it can't be memorized or put on a screen, you're running the wrong game.  Or you haven't invested into it properly to be able to effectively run it yet.  I keep Hackmaster 5E on my shelf as a reminder of the kind of dedication it should take to master a ruleset and memorize every element of it to the point it is intrinsic.  Some people have a better tolerance for rules ingestion than others.  I envy those who can competently GM Hackmaster 5E.  It'll never be me.

But there is a stark difference between Hackmaster and something insane like ACKS.  Hackmaster realizes and details things important to the game.  ACKS was written by a lawyer who would very much love to spend his free time pretending to be an accountant.  There is a difference between necessary-but-boring design and minutiae design for the sake of minutiae.  ACKS is in the later camp.  And that was before it's current expanded edition I haven't bothered to read and I presume nobody has ever bothered to play it.  My guess is everyone who pretends to play ACKS actually plays B/X and pretends otherwise.  And my guesses have a tendency of being better than other people actually knowing things.

Back to the point: You shouldn't be thinking about rules during play, you should *know* them.  You shouldn't be thinking about how something will play out, you should just *react*.  Your gut will get you there.  The system will provide.  If it doesn't, you're playing the wrong game

Also, content creators don't realize this because none of them are really being honest with their audience or perhaps being honest with themselves.  And the majority of them don't play.  They spend their potential play or prep time... creating content.

Review: Delving Deeper v4

I hear a v5 is coming, anyone who needs this many renditions to get a white box clone "right" is really the first red flag.  There is only one opponent in the ring now, White Box FMAG. since S&W White Box proper decided to take it's place in a chair in corner while watching other games fuck its girlfriend, and other white box clones generally include Greyhawk additions and therefore take themselves out of contention.

But this isn't about that.  This is about some 5E gamers touring the original game and rewriting it - same story as Barrows & Borderlands, but a bit more autism and the attention to detail autism brings.  I know that because my last sentence in that previous paragraph isn't correct.  Like FMAG and Iron Falcon, DD4 includes the thief and therefore puts itself in contention with games like these and Blueholme Journeymanne.  While it sources that from Greyhawk, it doesn't source variable weapon damage, which means Iron Falcon leaves contention by actively winning the contest.

Looking through this book, I really see no reason for this game to exist.  It's nearly identical to FMAG.  Where it's different it's generally worse.  The game uses the same lazy non-percentile thief skills on a d6 roll that FMAG uses, but doesn't have the decency to include incremental advancement, starting the thief at 4-in-6 (66%) at all thief skills (and secret doors checks) and never advancing from there.  This is what I call white board design, making a class advancement boring by accident due to lack of table play and hashing out bad design considerations through play experience.  I realize we're 4-5 iterations into this fucking game but I think this game may have seen less meaningful playtest sessions than it has editions.  Such is the way

Let me be clear, like Hyperborea 1E this isn't 1975 so there's no fucking reason to limit the dice in your game to something more restrictive than the traditional 7-die set that everyone has.  If you want percentiles and want to be some sort of nostalgic pussy and only use d20s and d6s in your lame white box clone, perhaps use the die that best used for flat percentages.  The d20.  You could then even have it increment over time to make the class less boring.  It's stupid and you should just use d% or discard the thief but it seems everyone has the wrong idea on purpose and just wants to dice everything outside of combat with d6s because otherwise "that's not white box" or some stupid pseudo-nostalgic shit.

But the people that wrote this aren't being nostalgic.  They're younger than me and started playing with 3E or later.  You can tell right off if someone started with WotC editions or TSR editions.  I can smell it in the text, this book was far less subtle than the last fake nostalgic game I read.  This is performative nostalgia in a product looking for trappings of OD&D.  And it's not a very good performance as the book reads like stereo instructions.  The Handbook for the Recently Old-School.

The only piece of this entire game worth looking at is the procedural shit for creating a dungeon, underworld exploration, wilderness exploration, and campaigning.  Even then it's mostly just gap design, looking for spots where there's a hole in for example Iron Falcon and filling it up or using it as an example to build something better in IF.  

Review: Blueholme Journeymanne

Blueholme came back into my radar as I had previously discounted it due to it's over-reliance on the original, IE it's "first-generation" clone status.  And for the most part that's correct in regards to Blueholme Prentice, which is basically a 1:1 remake of Holmes Basic D&D, what I consider the worst D&D edition, chiefly due to it's nature of being a proto-starter set and the ridiculously fervent nature of it's miniscule fanbase.  Blueholme Journeymanne is both better and worse, mostly better, and is worth talking about.

Now the first thing that dinged my bullshit detector was the game calling races "Species".  It's been well known as a dog whistle proclaiming the author has political biases and believes the developmentally arrested blue-haired non-gamer hypocritical bigots of Blusky have a point that the word "race" is racist.  This may have been the first published D&D clone to make this change, possibly before the dog whistle was invented.  I'm not giving it a pass for that.  I'm giving it a pass because it means it.  Basically the section is named differently so you'll read it and figure out why.  And then you're pointed to the monster section to determine your character "race" out of the entire gamut of options.  If you want to play a Dwarf or Elf you're given the building blocks but told to put it together yourself.  Which I think is rather ballsy.  Humanocentrism hidden behind a requirement for excessive effort to make an Elf or Dwarf is an interesting bit of meta-design.  

So in this one instance, I will reverse my decree for this one game.  Blueholme Journeymanne is OSR, and pushes DIY harder than some other games in the sphere.  Now that's not to say there isn't some dumb shit in here.  But as I skimmed the game I ran into lots of elements that are expressed which I wish I saw in other versions of the game - burning oil & holy water mechanics, Fighter damage bonus married to level instead of strength or anything else, creating scrolls are baked into the magic-user class, actually limiting ranged weapons to be nearly equal to melee weapons, outlining subdual damage, lots of cool shit that's important and usually ignored. 

I just hit the creatures section leafing through, it has a somewhat good explanation on how to implement "run any monster as a character race" which requires heavy adjudication on the part of the GM.  This can be both good and bad, but it does make real the passage in OD&D about playing any monster as long as you start comparatively small.  I would personally put a cap on all monster class levels if I chose to allow any monstrous PCs at all.  Probably should be setting dependent, like most things.

The bestiary itself includes several entries - Amazons, Berserkers, Cyclopeans, etc. that gently tap on the idea of using the system for Wilderlands of High Fantasy.  The "play any monster" aspect itself explores this setting stronger than OD&D does. 

So intrinsically this game is based by association.  There are bad rules, sure, but there isn't enough bad rules to ruin the overall chassis of the game.  The amount of allowances allotted to the GM absolves at least some of these bad decisions, as is relegating them to "optional" status.  

It is frankly a very tough race between this game and Iron Falcon as to which is the best game in the OSR.  Both essentially walk the line between OD&D and AD&D1E, and I think Iron Falcon has the edge due to Blueholme's reliance on monsters having Dexterity ratings.  But I think Blueholme's initiative system is worth testing to verify if it ends up being faster and more fun than Iron Falcon's traditional side-based d6 initiative.

On magic items: I think Blueholme has a clear style to it, there are cursed items of every type so testing the waters with an item is dangerous no matter the item.  This was sorta true WAY later in the game (2E really) but in early editions especially those without ability bonuses, cursed items were often back-burnered.  

Periphery: I bought everything ever produced for BlueHolme which isn't much.  The Ref Repository seems to be a DM screen of sorts, consolidating all the tables and the like from the core into a short booklet.  So much so that you could possibly run the entire game from the booklet without context (missing a few important elements but a baseline D&D would be secured)

The Explorer Encounters is incredibly worthwhile especially when you get to the Encounters section and you're given example Dexterity scores for many or all the monsters in the game.  There's also some fun cameos such as David Bowie's Goblin King from Labyrinth.  

While the Necropolis of Nuromen isn't much of a necropolis, it fits well within the Blueholme Brochure's light setting guide and does the job it was supposed to do, be a short example dungeon.  The setting is better than the adventure, pulling a "Greyhawk" by having the game's title also be the name of a city/castle.  

This OSR basically fell the wayside and has been discarded to the sands of time, but those of us looking into micro-design rather than macro/baby-design and therefore see what miniscule differences to the game can result in during play are obligated to pick this up and give it a shot, if nothing else to determine if initiative is not worth the rolls and going by Dexterity would be good enough.

Review - Barrows & Borderlands: Men & Mutants

As always I will not bury the lead, Barrows & Borderlands is the most stealthy NSR game I've come across IE it's got the trappings of the actual old school but does so like a hipster listening to 70s music on records.  On the face of it, it seems fine, but if you ask the hipster why they're listening to the music on records instead of their phone like everyone else the answer will be "..." and the real reason will be because records are kitschy/trendy/en vogue.  So it's not about putting thought into the medium, even the thought that vinyl sounds better than MP3s.  And that's were we're at.  Ex-5E fans are creating OSR games ironically or rebelliously for the approval of others.

And I didn't know this until I watched the author's YouTube channel for a bit and got the history of this game.  I read through it and something was very "off" about it, but I just couldn't put my finger on it.  And then the puzzle came together - like many other non-OSRs this game has no design work done by living men.  It's entirely copied off the notes of the dead, and indiscriminately so without any thought put into quality whatsoever.  There is maybe one piece of design in the entire game, and we'll get to that.  Starting with the format is ripped off straight from OD&D but that is generally fine as far as callbacks go.  What isn't fine is putting your name on the cover twice like an idiot.

Second sign this is a trojan horse - No thanks to Gary or Dave.  You're literally ripping off their trade dress and not thanking them?  Just calling them "those old Midwesterners"?  

So, is there some kind of fear from invoking the names of Gary and Dave?  You know they weren't very old when they actually produced the game you're shamelessly ripping off.  And they're dead now, so you could have been more accurate leaving out the "old" statement or saying the "dead" statement, or even better just saying their fucking names you child.

Another shameless ripoff of OD&D which was a product of it's time and hasn't been relevant since before this author was born.  They likely have no idea why this paragraph existed in OD&D and have never even seen a set of dice missing the d10.  Don't worry, I'm just getting warmed up.  These are the light taps before I start throwing haymakers.

First obvious as in even a baby gamer new into the world would understand: Why add Radiation Resistance as an ability score?  Why not just affix it to Constitution?  It doesn't even make thematic sense to be an ability score, it'd be more at home as a Saving Throw if it had to be a separate number at all.  

One of the reasons why this game initially nearly fooled me was the inclusion of Race.  The modern retard is so scared of Blusky that they are scared of using this word.  It's weird that this word is in the game but the author is scared of invoking the names of Gary and Dave.

More alarm bells, everyone knows ascending AC is better than descending AC. I will get into why very shortly, because the rules themselves are broken trying to trip over themselves with regards to bonuses and penalties later on: 

Here's the first time the cracks open up and we see piss-poor design shining through.  This game is a one-save system as popularized by Sword & Wizardry, but it pretends to not be:

I'm skipping all the world stuff.  I'm not here to judge creative writing, I'm here to judge mechanics.  Speaking of which, let's marry Radiation Resist ability score to the following mechanic: 

Does it make sense?  No.  There's another mechanic specifically interfacing with Radiation Resistance further along making the preceding entry completely unused and superfluous in regards to that score.  But I'm not done.  Not by a long shot.  Let's continue on to races:

First problem immediately apparent: there's no baseline race.  It should be Humans.  How you fix this is simple, apply -1 Cha and -1 Con to every race.  This will make Humans a baseline and mathematically keep their "bonuses" in tact.  This takes zero thought to notice and implement.  A lot of games get this wrong on a lot of fronts, even the much hated Weapon vs Armor AC tables from 1E don't have a proper baseline weapon (which should be the Longsword, and to that game's credit the Longsword is the closest to a baseline weapon).  I digress into better games designed by better men, who's bad elements of design I despise still have more thought put into them than the above table and what I'm about to express further on.  Kinda lame renaming Elves to Starborn but not giving Halflings and Dwarves the same treatment.  Kobolds mechanically seem similar to beastmen or apemen, and even those names are cooler.  Just bizarre choices abound.    

Next we move into ability scores.  And yes, there are bad design choices again:

OK, this is the surest sign there's no design at the wheel - the benefit of ranged weapons is that they are RANGED.  Nothing should ever benefit the weapon's damage in a light system, getting bonus damage is the benefit of MELEE weapons.  Doing this makes there be no point to melee weapons mechanically.  I wish people were less retarded than "those old Midwesterners" and didn't require explanation as to why Dexterity didn't benefit damage in the original game or any of the TSR editions.  At least by necessity of this OSR Tourettes Design 3d6 in order was made to be the core mechanic which mitigates people dumping Strength for Dexterity unlike Dragonslayer, but I'm again digressing to... eh... games by eh... others.  

Second problem is Defense Modifier is listed with an ascending AC bonus, not a descending AC bonus.  Believe it or not Zeb Cook had this shit figured out in 1989 and AD&D2E's Defensive Adjustment chart starts with positive modifiers and moves on to negative for higher Dexterity values.  But that game isn't cosplaying as an old school game.

Lastly, we now know that Death saves have something to do with Radiation as well, and for some reason Constitution benefits these specific types of saves instead of the Radiation Resistance ABILITY SCORE which this section forgets exists.  So Radiation interaction at this point, seems to be being designed bad on purpose.  As such I feel less need to even point out via imagery from here on out.  Let me just start listing the bad or stolen design:

1: XP Progressions are awful on most of the classes  Half-Caster is probably the worst offender, because it's basically the Fighter progression and the Mage progression added together and divided by 2, which is not how you intelligently judge this.  If I was just winging it I'd say add both together and divide by 4, then times by 3, giving you the XP cost of 3/4 of both classes.  The others were probably mostly ripped from early editions without thought, these were mostly fixed later on.  I know the MU table was fucked back then, so I can't blame the author for information he mindlessly ripped off.  
2: Thieves - LotFP Specialists.
3: Gammas - probably Gamma World 1E or 2E.
4: Birthsigns - Dungeon Crawl Classics
5: Social Class & Origins - Appears to be Empire of the Petal Throne
6: Radiation Resistance Chart - Metamorphosis Alpha
7: Silver-based economy - LotFP, but lots of stupid games do this like it matters when it doesn't
8: Armor having both AC and Damage Reduction: This is just a bad mechanic that slows combat and robs the AC mechanic of it's abstract nature.
9: Firearms "ignore the first 5 points of Armor" which is vague on purpose, considering DR and AC are both in the mix.  And all firearms do the same 1d8+2 damage (+ more based on Dex I guess)
10: Pistol-whipping and rifle-clubbing stolen directly from LotFP. Guns probably were too.
11: On page 43 Armor Class is written as such, and likely everywhere else except the Combat Matrix on 51 where it's depicted as "Armour Class".  This is a copy/paste error.  This chart was copied from somewhere British.
12: Fighting Stances & Defensive Techniques: was half this game originally LotFP?
13: Dead at -10 HP: can't always ape OD&D apparently, gotta bitch out sometime.
14: Dueling Matrix: Not sure if this is stolen from Flashing Blades but doesn't make any fucking sense here.  Was initially in a musketeer game of some kind.

And that's it.  I'm not going to bother reviewing the rest, I grew tired of the rampant brainless design put forth by this dullard.  Whatever popularity this game has is a sign of how far the bar has sunk since the Simp Age began.  This is the opposite of a unified artistic vision.  This is several OSRs thrown against the wall to see what sticks.  

I'm not reviewing the rest of the boxed set.  I'm not looking any further into this trash game for retards.  My mind has been sapped enough by this one puny plagiaristic pamphlet.  If I didn't know any better I'd say the game was the first OSR completely generated by AI.

Rant: Luke Gygax Won't Fix Anything.

In the 30+ years I've been involved with RPGs, I've heard of Luke Gygax twice.  Once was him cashing in on his name for the now defunct Gygax Magazine, and the other was when he was cashing in on his name just recently with the new "white" "male" lead vice president in charge of D&D bullshit at WotC.  I think that this was the opposite of a inclusivity/diversity hire.  It was an exclusivity hire, because the guy in the chair is the most "standard nerdy" guy still left at WotC with all the troons and blue hairs.  They had one white guy, probably sweeping floors and dumping bins until they needed him to stand in front of a camera and look like an actual person who actually plays actual D&D across the entire country outside of Seattle, Washington.  

I only watched a little of their recent press conference, but he said something telling.  He said the words (paraphrasing) he'd been "playing since the original red box".  My ears perked up.  Because original D&D can be described in one of three ways: Brown Box, White Box, and by slightly dumber people Blue Box (indicating Holmes Basic, which was just a starter set before starter sets were a thing).  There is no "Red Box" original D&D derivative.  In a room supposedly full of nerds nobody corrected him, which is especially telling for the guy sitting right next to him.  Luke fucking Gygax.  

There was a lot of things said at the conference after that, but this alone told me not to trust anything coming up.  Mentzer red box wasn't even the original "Basic D&D".  Any real nerds in the entire audience would know that.  Meaning none were there.  At Gary Con, supposedly.  Which makes me want to avoid Gary Con.  But I digress.

Let's talk about Luke.  He's 55.  Spent most of that in the Army.  I can respect paving your own way and having your own career.  That being said, if he had any talent in the RPG sphere beyond loaning his name out to give products bona fides like his dad had something to do with them, we would have seen that by now.  Hell if he had passion and no talent we would have seen a lot of shitty stuff because his name alone would give him an opportunity.  We have not.  This just tells me he's retired from the army and looking for income, and what did he have?  He had his family name.  Not only that but he's the last living male with his family name, which triggers some imperialist fibers deep in the brain of every male.  He is the Gygax patriarch, like it or not.  Just like the guys in charge of the Tolkien estate, it's his name to ruin.  And I feel he will, if given the chance.

So, long story short, Luke will do what he's told by WotC as they are fitting the bills.  He'll put his name on whatever they ghostwrite for him, and cash their checks.  Nothing will fundamentally change.  I feel this is probably the safest prediction I've ever made.  He will not champion the old school, he will not defend his family name, he won't even get the fucking disclaimers taken off the TSR catalog at Drivethru RPG.  He won't bring "races" back.  He is a non-entity.  His employment exists to trick the core fanbase into coming back to WotC.  If anything had changed the first thing they could do is burn all the disclaimers at DTRPG and they haven't.  Fire Jason Tondro and they haven't.  Issue a public apology to the true core fanbase of D&D and they haven't.  Start firing their marketing & design department and hiring those positions in the Midwest, far from Seattle politics... but they haven't.  They haven't done shit but have a press conference and effectively say nothing worth hearing.  

Meet the new boss.  Same as the old boss.  Luke is selling out, but that's really all he's good for.  And good for him.  I hope he milks them dry and they get nothing for it because old schoolers aren't stupid enough to fall for it.  

Is the OSR Dying?

I see this question from time to time the last 20 years.  The OSR has been stated to be dying since it began.  That's because the core methodology is obsolete.  In that obsolesces is purity.  TSR is dead.  The OSR explicitly is stating TSR D&D compatibility, so there's always going to be this idea that is dying or dead because it refuses to evolve with the times.  But those who make that statement don't get the point.  The movement began on the idea that "evolving with the times" wasn't a worthwhile means to measure procedure.  Because of the OSR evolved with the times, it would become the same as the modern era of games.

That's not to say there isn't a draw, or an invading force in my kingdom trying to belittle the OSR by pushing safety, diversity, minimalism, and the low-effort, high-style, low-substance games and gameplay that result from that.  Oh no, that group is stronger now than it's ever been.  But it won't be around forever.  Because those aren't real fans.  The sheer lack of substance to their favorite "OSR" games means they have little attachment to the overall movement, design strategy, or playstyle.  It's a flight of fancy for them.  They're merely tourists.  And like tourists, they'll move on sooner or later to the next thing.  

And when they leave, people will ask if the OSR is dying again.  No.  The real fans will remain.  The OSR is like the exclusive party at the back of a night club.  Not everybody in the club can go to the party.  They might even think they're at the party while dancing at the club with cheap strobe lights and cheaper drinks and an automated DJ running "Now That's What I Call Dance Party Music 4" on loop.  They may even be having fun in the club.  But the party is where the real fun lives.  That's where the celebrities snort blow of model's asses and everybody is drinking the expensive stuff and listening to live music and all the girlies are getting their tits out.  That party's going to be there regardless of how busy the night club is.  

Review: Outcast Silver Raiders

So I saw this turd making it's way through the usual channels, IE the sewer that is YouTubers review columns, and noted there was no push behind it so I decided the best thing to do was review it after literally everyone stopped talking about it or paying attention to it's existence forever.  The same thing that should have been done to ShadowDark, but we weren't that lucky.

This is, more or less, the same game.  Its a 5E lite with death saves, no actual Saving Throws, advantage/disadvantage, a skill list, etc.  About the only thing OSR about this is actually using a different die (the d6) for ability checks as well as using the d10 for what this system calls "saving throws" that are actually just reactive ability checks.  This game even has an action economy in combat.  It's the definition of a 5E lite.  OSR is just a short for the title, it is not OSR in any way, shape, form, or idea.  

It wanted to ride the Shadowdark train by doing the same format - good art, piss poor rules that were close enough to 5E to hook some suckers.  That's the player's book in a nutshell.  Moving on to the Referree's book, we hit some paydirt as to how retarded this author is, likely on purpose:

This is what the king calls bullshit.  I have made no secret that OSR stands for "TSR D&D Compatible" full stop.  This game isn't it, so this game isn't that.  This is an attempt to co-opt and subvert the term, redefining it into something murky and nonsensical.  Then idiot normies who hear it think it's a murky nonsensical term when in fact it's been made clear many times before and they've been effectively gaslit.  DIY is a big part of OSR, that's why TSR compatibility is important. 

DIY also sadly does not include a gate to keep, or else I would keep it.  There are people out there who should be coloring well within the lines, and basically everyone should start playing a given game RAW and diverge from that based on actual table experience and issues, not the perceptions of the GM as to what could become issues at some point in the future.  Tinkering is fun but books of houserules have a bad reputation for a reason.      

Like Shadowdark, there was no design work done in this game.  Everything was borrowed from elsewhere, including stupid gimmick mechanics:

The language throughout this set of books is extremely weak and feminine, which gives some tonal whiplash when juxtaposed with the artwork which is great and bloody.  In fact I would love to see this art in a game that actually warranted it:

Do you see the problem?  What a referee does is call for a check or call for a save, not ask.  Asking implies the player can say no.  It's the pussy form of these sentences.  I didn't bring this up earlier but in the player's guide female pronouns are predominantly used.  I noticed a few too many and decided to do a CTRL+F and figure out exactly how many each were used (putting a space before and after, to make sure the word was used in it's entirety.  Sure I'll miss some "she's" and "he'll" but this is good enough of an indication.

He 2
Him 1
She 21
Her 52

Most of this was due to a female player and character used as an example.  But you seriously make a game called Outcast Silver Raiders and have female pronouns dominate?  Who the fuck do you think you're trying to sell this game to?  

So the majority of the Ref book is actually a solid understanding of the underlying OSR philosophy, the problem is it doesn't fit the metamechanics of the 5E-lite in the Player's book at all.  The author has the gall to put the following in this book:

When the following was present in the previous book:

This is an ocean of text to be a lesser mechanic than "hit 0 HPs your character is dead" or even "hit 0 HPs and you're unconscious and lose 1 HP/round, dead at -10" that most actual OSRs use.  This is all straight from 5E.

Another reason this product seems schitzophrenic, or that someone based wrote the GM guide but some pussy libtard wrote the core, was that there is a section on "fantasy races" at the end of the book.  The math for racial bonuses is fairly poor, so that tracks.

Plus the extended class list in the GMG includes 5E-isms like the Warlock and every built class seems like a 5E-lite class.

And with that, I'm on to the last book in the boxed set.  The Mythic North.  The book that should be good enough to make me want to buy this boxed set and throw the other two books in the trash where they belong.  

"The Mythic North is a hexcrawl" Immediately after this, the map is so tiny that the hexes are almost invisible and all the points of interest are marked as if it's a pointcrawl, not a hexcrawl:

Bear in mind this is a page in a digest-sized hardcover, so ridiculously unusable at an actual table.  The "Hexploration" charts aren't bad but I own the original (non-cucked) Tome of Adventure Design and Ultimate Toolbox so I'm not hurting for inspiration.  Another issue is that the hexes are TINY.

Then we hit the factions which is where this book goes off the rails entirely.  

The leader of the Southerners is an impotent king.
The leader of the Northern rebels is a woman with no real personal issues.
The leader of the Order of the White Hawk is a bisexual dude.
The leader of the Clergy of St. Lewiston (male) consorts with, and/or has trapped, a demon.
The leader of the Monks of Debrooken has an illegitimate son and consorts with demons.
The leader of the Cult of the Ram is a woman with no real personal issues.

So, this is not at all a shades of gray sort of setting it's selling itself as.  The Cult of the Ram is basically Robyn Hood and she/her merry they/thems.  Both women are painted as the heroes (at least in this section), men all the weak/villainous other than the gay dude who's sorta just there waiting to respond to the highest bidder.  He is the closest this setting has to a gray character and we frankly didn't need to know his sexuality to say that.  

Now I said all that but in the next section we get to a giant random encounter table, one of which drops this shit like a hammer: 

Which makes me think this entire boxed set was written by someone with schizophrenia.  There are points where I am Jack's complete lack of surprise and others where Tyler Durden takes over and writes some shit I probably wouldn't use even at my table.  

I feel like if these two could meet somewhere in the middle, and someone who didn't suck was actually designing an OSR game, we could get a really good product out of this.  As it stands every other page is too woke and lame, and every other other page is sometimes even too based.  This entire module is tonal whiplash: the RPG.  Maybe they'll make a second edition that's actually an OSR game.

Review: OSRIC 3E

Well, a few years ago I posted a "review" of the product I expected OSRIC 3e to be.  Last year, I appended to that review because of certain developments.  This year, the game has been produced and for a hefty sum of $0 it can be yours too!

If you buy it then, like me, you'll have overpaid.

OSRIC 3 fails on a base level.  The initial development of this "game" was actually a smokescreen to continue producing AD&D1E content.  It wasn't even intended to really be playable initially.  2E "fixed" that and made the game into a sort of near-perfect realization of an end goal.  I say near-perfect because it was missing some stuff they should have included, but it was also missing some stuff that really shouldn't be included.  And it was officially better off out of Matt Finch's hands, who dropped the project because he wasn't in the UK.  Long and dumb story, not going to bother telling it.

So what does OSRIC 3E do?  It brings back some of the shit that should have stayed gone, and turns the game into 2 books to do so.  So it's not even convenient anymore.  It also does something else that's awful.  It pisses on Gary Gygax's grave.  That's the part I'm focusing on here.  Not Finch's bizarre need to change the word "race" to "ancestry".  Quick aside, there's an actual explanation, kinda:

The question is begged, why the fuck can't you just use "race" Matt?  HMMMMMM?  Seemed good enough for OSRIC 2E.  Is it because your girlfriend's other boyfriend told you not to?  Where are your balls man?  It's not like anybody gives a shit what they say on blusky and none of those woke retards are going to buy this book anyway.  Plus it's FREE now.  This is just to be a shithead and potentially kill OSRIC by cucking it into irrelevance.  Admit it, bitch.  You did this same shit to Swords & Wizardry.  All the balls were in Bill Webb's court when you worked with FGG.

Since the last time I shit on Matt Finch's name, I learned he has a much younger girlfriend and she may be the reason why he's swan dived off the woke retard tree and hit every fucking branch on the way down.  Well I hope the BJs are worth it, because she sucked your fucking brain out, dude.  

I thank god I had the wherewithal to know with utmost certainty that Matt Finch's inclusion would fuck this edition of OSRIC up, in every sense of this sentence.  The Player's Guide has only one mention of Gary Gygax, that being: 

Which is absolutely fine.  This is the normal sort of thing to see in an OSR product.  His name is not repeated elsewhere in the Player's Guide, which is also fine.  He didn't need to be peppered throughout both books to maintain the old school spirit, it's an overly good statement to stand in solidarity with the forefathers that basically designed the game you are regurgitating and, to be frank, the very reason I or anyone in the entire world knows who the fuck you are.

As you can tell by my tone, this is not maintained in the GM Guide.  Of course this acknowledgement blurb is copy/pasted, but there are 2 more instances of Gygax name in this book.  The first is on page 30:

So, the first time his name is brought up it's to make a joke of the harlot subtable on the DMG page 192.  A subtable you didn't include in this, what is supposed to be a reproduction of the AD&D1E rules.  Not only did you not include the subtable (which could be forgiven if you weren't such a dick about it as it was itself a joke by Gygax), you omitted your own expanded variant of it from OSRIC 2E (page 174):

This is proving that there was a time Matt Finch and/or Stuart Marshall realized the original table was funny.  I miss those guys.  Instead, we have men standing on the shoulders of giants to merely have a better vantage point to piss on the giant's face.  Both versions of OSRIC broke up the City/Town Encounters Matix and into two and actually created a less useful design in the process.  This would be something I would fix in my own index of AD&D, should I have made one.  Making part of the product less useful than the original should probably not be a design goal.

So where does the other instance of the big man's name occur?  I'm sure if Finch is somehow reading this he rushed to his PDF copy to CTRL+F it. I'll save you the trouble, it's deep within this half of a wasted page on the GM Guide (p 86, an apt placement as it should be "eighty-sixed")

So this drek could easily be cut.  Like the terms "men" and "women", old schoolers have no problem understanding the difference in the terms "evil" and "good".  Actually mentioning changing terms from something understandable to something incomprehensible isn't justified by a lame paragraph, even if the subtext is that your girlfriend told you to from the next room while fucking another dude.  The entire next page is wasted text as well.  I'm not going to bother reposting it here, it's an entire page to say "monsters don't have to be the alignment given but usually are." 

This is all so effortlessly bad.  How did we go from S&W complete 2nd print to this?  144 pages with nearly all the options from AD&D as well as good layout and masterful writing to this bloated 600 page pile of horseshit that can't even manage to keep hardly any tables on one fucking page.   

So I will now explain exactly what OSRIC should have in it.
1: A plain English translation of the vast majority of AD&D1E.  Even the stupid hooker table, preferably without commentary.  This is a historical reference text, not an opinion piece and especially not your libtard girlfriend's opinion piece.
2: Instead of the bullshit initiative system, the one everyone actually used instead (d6 individual, monsters use "side" initiative or "type" initiative, high roll goes first).
3: An integrated option of ascending AC, the only objective mechanical improvement on the game post-TSR.  When I say integrated, I mean you don't have to hunt for it.  Finch managed to do this in S&W as well, though the explanation of BAB was hidden at the very bass-end of the combat section.
4: Other than the core three, monsters also sourced from the MM2 & Fiend Folio, for a more complete view and usability.  
5: Editing to where all this fits inside a 300-page book.  I think you can easily fit the entire game system in a 300-page book (maybe 400), sparing every word you can throughout.  It absolutely doesn't need to be 600 pages across two books, and frankly doesn't need any art outside the cover.  This is a reference and index compilation, it's not supposed to be a sexy game book or books.  
6: An index.  That meaning, this book directly has references to the source material.  So the harlot table would reference the DMG page 192.  It would be drastically easy to do: PHB is "P", DMG is "D", MM is "M1", MM2 is "M2", and FF is "F".  In order to avoid copyright issues you'd have to omit the actual explanation of these references, but accepting the intelligence of your audience goes a long way.         

I will now explain exactly what OSRIC should not have in it:
1: Psionics
2: The Bard
3: The Monk
4: Weapon v Armor AC adjustment tables.
5: Non-weapon proficiencies, skills, or anything else created outside the core of AD&D1E other than the aforementioned ascending AC rule.

This endeavor would not be difficult for even a second-rate technical writer with any experience at all.  Fuck I could have done this as a high school kid.  It's stupid this hasn't already been done.  This is what everyone wants out of OSRIC.  It's basically "OSE but for AD&D".  Minus a bunch of shitty color plates, multiple formats, and stupid rules-expansion books.

The Unsung Genius of Iron Falcon '75

This is not a review.  It's gushing in autistic detail over a brilliant minimalist solution to an age old problem.

That being, generally, Hit Points.  In the beginning you have too few, at the end you have too many.  Hit Points are also the reason Demihuman level limits mostly don't work.  There's a clever solution for all of this on pages 6-7 of Iron Falcon '75.  I think it revitalizes OD&D and is a much better, cleaner solution than previous efforts.  But it's hard to articulate without showing off.

In the system you don't get extra HP for high Constitution.  Because your Constitution itself dictates your starting HP.  From there on you gain 1HP/level if Fighter, 1 HP/2 levels if Cleric or Thief, and 1HP/4 levels if Magic User.  

So let's do some math.  2.5 Mil XP for a 20th level fighter.  That's a fighter with 3-18 + 20 HP.  So the majority of even the capstone XP class will be inherent HP from their origin, for at least half their leveling career if not more.  This fixes A LOT.  But let's not belabor the math.  Oh, to be clear, I will operate as HP usually operates here, we keep seperate totals for each multclass and the best result is what the character gets.  If there's a Fighter class in the mix, it'll almost always be the Fighter class.

2.5 Mil XP (what's required to make a 20th level Fighter, the benchmark):

18th level Human Cleric: 12-27 HP Avg: 19.5
20th level Human Fighter: 23-38 HP Avg: 30.5
18th level Human Magic-User:  7-22 HP Avg: 14.5
20th level Any Race Thief: 13-28 HP: Avg: 20.5

Now this actually synergizes with another mechanic - Doubles and Triples.  Rolling 10+ to hit grants full double damage.  Rolling 20+ to hit grants triple damage.  Fighters are the only ones who can logically get there, so it's an added boost to them.  Back to math though, let's interface this with Race-Class level limits:

2.5 Mil XP: Dead Ends:
4th level Halfling Fighter: 7-22 HP, Avg: 14.5 DEAD END
7th level Dwarf Cleric: 6-21 HP Avg: 13.5 DEAD END
6th level Dwarf Fighter (<17 STR): 9-24 HP Avg 16.5 DEAD END
8th level Dwarf Fighter (18 STR): 11-26 HP Avg 18.5 DEAD END
6th level Elf Cleric: 6-21 HP Avg: 13.5 DEAD END
4th level Elf Fighter (<17 STR): 7-22 HP Avg: 14.5 DEAD END
5th level Elf Fighter (17+ STR): 8-23 HP Avg: 15.5 DEAD END
8th level Elf Magic-User (<18 INT): 5-20 HP Avg: 12.5 DEAD END
9th level Elf Magic-User (18 INT): 5-20 HP Avg: 12.5 DEAD END
4th/8th level Elf Fighter/Magic User (<17 STR, <18 INT): 7-22 HP, Avg: 14.5 DEAD END
4th/9th level Elf Fighter/Magic User (<17 STR, 18 INT): 7-22 HP, Avg: 14.5 DEAD END
5th/8th level Elf Fighter/Magic User (17+ STR, <18 INT): 8-23 HP Avg: 15.5 DEAD END
5th/9th level Elf Fighter/Magic User (17+ STR, 18 INT): 8-23 HP Avg: 15.5 DEAD END

Non-Dead Ends: 1/2 and 1/3 speed XP to advance
6th/14th level Dwarf Fighter/Thief (<17 STR): 10-25 HP Avg 17.5
8th/14th level Dwarf Fighter/Thief (18 STR): 11-26 HP Avg 18.5
4th/14th level Elf Fighter/Thief (<17 STR) 10-25 HP Avg 17.5
5th/14th level Elf Fighter/Thief (17+ STR) 10-25 HP Avg 17.5
8th/14th level Elf Magic User/Thief (<18 INT): 10-25 HP Avg 17.5
9th/14th level Elf Magic User/Thief (18 INT): 10-25 HP Avg 17.5
4th/8th/12th level Elf Fighter/Magic User/Thief (<17 STR, <18 INT): 9-24 HP Avg 16.5
4th/9th/12th level Elf Fighter/Magic User/Thief (<17 STR, 18 INT): 9-24 HP Avg 16.5
5th/8th/12th level Elf Fighter/Magic User/Thief (17+ STR, <18 INT): 9-24 HP Avg 16.5
5th/9th/12th level Elf Fighter/Magic User/Thief (17+ STR, 18 INT): 9-24 HP Avg 16.5

Adding the half-elf would be absurdly complicated and I already went through most of that for the Elf, Let's give the best case scenario for dead end and non-dead end:

8th/8th/6th level Fighter/Magic-User/Cleric: 11-26 HP Avg 18.5 DEAD END
8th/6th/12th level Fighter/Cleric/Thief: 11-26 HP Avg 18.5

Ok so lots and lots of basic math later we can see that surprise surprise the worst deal on HP isn't the Halfling Fighter but the Dwarf and/or Elf Cleric.  Well it's the Elf cleric because he doesn't get 4th level spells AND his HP is the worst of the entire grouping (Constitution roll permitting).  The Single Class Fighter has the best at average 30.5 HP at this benchmark.  The fact that Thieves run a little faster than everyone else up the level chart makes them better than the cleric outside of the absence of Armor.  

Thieves get two more boons on these 2 pages.  The Thief Abilities Option makes their first level more survivable with a low ability of Hide in Shadows at 25%.  Their starting Picking Pockets is boosted to 40%, which means a starting Thief may actually be fun to play.  Perish the thought!  

Lastly we have the Unarmored Combat option, which basically says your BAB is also a Defense bonus if you're unarmored.  I'm not sure how well that works out.  

So I said ALL that to say this is a masterclass in minimalist design for maximum impact.  The only real downside I see is all those dead end class decisions.  The simplest solution being that they aren't maximums, but instead we double all XP costs for levels higher than those.  This works but is hard to visualize, as with multi-classing you're dumping XP in multiple experience buckets so making unattainable levels cost twice as much you're multiplying multiples, meaning the XP is 1/6 value for those who have exceeded their level limit and are multiclassed thrice.  The math is somewhat hidden because of the experience buckets vs doubling numbers after a time.  Prime requisites become more and less important, as they make a few early levels easier to obtain but it all evens out when the later levels cost the exact same regardless of ability scores.