As a younger gamer, I enjoyed ever more complicated games. Basic D&D took me to Advanced D&D, Palladium Fantasy, Rolemaster, and GURPS. Palladium had a different fighting style for each fighting class (this was before the RIFTS-ification of their 2nd edition), Rolemaster had those amazing critical tables, and GURPS combat rounds were second by second, with an allegedly "realistic" approach. I ate it up. Loved every minute of it. On the not-fantasy side, I loved crunch in other games. I built many ships for Star Trek and Traveller, designed BattleMechs and Car Wars cars, and even tinkered together my own set of rules for the old Wheeled Warriors toys to give stats to all the interchangeable gear included with the toys.
At the pinnacle of this love of crunch in my rules, I had a spreadsheet for tracking maintenance hours for a BattleMech company, down to assigning individual techs to individual 'Mechs and prioritizing certain repairs. I had a set of parts compatibility rules for BattleMech parts - need a knee for your Wasp? Well, that Stinger knee is nearly identical, but the Locust knee will need a lot of modification. I had a spreadsheet to calculate the prices of parts and ammo depending on location within the Inner Sphere - it took the table from MW 1e and expanded the variables to include Traveller-type planet classifications. I even used The Robotech Reference Guide to engineer GURPS stats for Robotech weapons by mathing out explosive yield to mega-joules of energy and cross referencing that with GURPS existing stats for sci-fi weapons, and their rules for damage based on TNT.
I look back now, and I'm proud of about half of it, and horrified that I wasted time on the other half. This brings me to where I am now in my head.
There is still a big part of me that wants to know if the players are carrying enough rations, water, arrows, etc. for their journey. I played enough Oregon Trail as a kid and did enough backpacking in Scouts to feel like being prepared is an integral part of any adventure. I like the need to plan an expedition, to give the situation some thought. At the same time, though, my gaming time is extremely limited in comparison to my younger years. Gotta get the bang for the buck, time-to-fun-ratio wise.
Enter my growing love affair with BX and derivatives thereof. The Basic/Expert rules set is cleaner (arguably) than Holmes, is the bones upon which the BECMI edition was based, but only goes to Level 14 for humans, rather than the 36 of BECMI. This has many effects, not the least of which is a less punishing (but still frustrating) Thief skill progression, less disparity between the Demihuman class level limits vs. humans, and less of a massive gulf between starting characters and max-levels. Remember, Level 3 is more or less a fully trained professional if you take the level titles into account, like Priest, and level 4 is Hero according to the Fighter progression.
The more I read the editions before mine, the more I grew to respect their place in the D&D lineage, and understand more about the hobby as it was, and as it is now. Now that I've played the original 1974 rules with Chainmail, and Holmes, and Moldvay, I find that there are things I enjoy quite a bit about all of them, but especially Moldvay's BX. This has been cloned quite a bit - Labyrinth Lord, B/X RPG, and more. But the version that has stolen my heart is Old School Essentials.
Now, I won't turn my nose up at the D&D Rules Cyclopedia as my "Desert Island" all-in-one-volume book. But I find that I rarely use levels above 9 or 10, if that high, and that while I love The War Machine rules for mass battles, I don't use the weapons expertise rules as written in BECMI as they are sometimes quite overpowering to the campaign, especially at high levels. This is where the current single-volume version of Old School Essentials comes in. OSE takes the form of a smaller-than-standard book, A5 or Digest size, clocking in at 296 pages. It's got some color plates, and sewn-in cloth bookmarks. Swanky.
Why choose OSE over other implementations of BX, or BX itself? Well, it's a one-volume hardcover that takes those rules and restates them with 100% fidelity where possible, and when there were contradictions between the Basic and Expert rulebooks, or between two entries in the same rulebook, a decision or correction was made. The end result is an eminently easier volume in which to find things, with a full index and straightforward organization. There is also a player's version of the rules, with the DM-specific information excluded.
This book gives me a solid foundation for a simple D&D game that lacks the arcane complexity other versions of D&D, even other vintage versions, include. AD&D is something I also love, and OSE scratches that itch as well with their Advanced Fantasy books. These take the BX core and add concepts from AD&D to it. So, this isn't OSRIC, it's not a rules-faithful AD&D clone, it's a rules-faithful BX clone with AD&D concepts. And that's... pretty cool, actually. Like, if you want full-on AD&D, you can go with AD&D or OSRIC. But if you want something where you can remember all the Ability Score modifiers in your head, go OSE with the Advanced Fantasy books.
There is a big part of me that wants to go back to the simplicity of a straightforward fantasy campaign like the ones we played in the 80s. Like the pure joy we see in the Stranger Things crew or Michael's friends in E.T. gathered around a table and rolling dice. I am those kids - I remember many carefree evenings and afternoons with close friends, tossing dice and slaying foul creatures. Before I had to worry about bills, or pandemics, or diabetes. Hell, all we worried about back then was nuclear annihilation. No big.
I'd love to sit down with a band of chosen family, roll up characters, and save the world Old School. I think the BX iteration of D&D strikes a pretty clean balance between enough rules to do stuff, and not so many rules as to get in the way. I still love my BECMI, but 36 levels is just excessive in practice. I say that, and still want to run a game where the players ascend to immortality. Maybe I can make that happen at BX levels... Hmmm...
Anyway, Old School Essentials hits a sweet spot with me. A nice, well-organized hardcover that can supplement my Lulu one-volume prints of Moldvay Basic and Cook/Marsh Expert. Thumbs up from me.
