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Old-School Essentials

Created by Necrotic Gnome

A modular adventure game in the tradition of the beloved 1980s role-playing rules. 100% old-school rules, 100% modern design.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules — Final Cover Image!
almost 5 years ago – Sat, May 04, 2019 at 11:56:27 PM

Hey everyone,

Running a Kickstarter campaign is a pretty full-time job, with nary a pause for respite. Today, however, I managed to take a little time out, and enjoyed a trip to the cinema for a triple-bill screening of the first three Alien films. What a treat to see them all on the big screen!

Anyway, upon emerging, bleary-eyed, from the dark realms of sci-fi horror, I was surprised and delighted to find an email from Stefan Poag in my inbox, containing the final cover image for the Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules book!

Feast your eyes on this:

Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules cover image by Stefan Poag
Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules cover image by Stefan Poag

That's all for now. More updates as more developments come in!

Gavin / Moss Master at Necrotic Gnome

€90K! 600% funded! Final stretch goals added!
almost 5 years ago – Thu, May 02, 2019 at 01:34:37 AM

Hey everyone,

Wow, things racked up very quickly yesterday! We've now hit the €90,000 stretch goal and will be adding 8 pages of full-colour art plates to the Rules Tome and the Classic Fantasy: Cleric and Magic-User Spells book!

I've updated the campaign description with 3 final stretch goals. You probably guessed it: more full-colour art plates! The final goals are at €100K, €110K, and €120K.

These full-colour art additions are really the perfect stretch goal, at this stage. Everyone loves more art (especially big, full-colour pieces like these!), the quality of the books is indisputably augmented (for all backers and anyone who might purchase Old-School Essentials after the Kickstarter), and the risk of the extra artwork causing delays to the project is minimal. We just have to find more talented artists to join the team (negotiations in progress!) and invest more money to pay them. Perfect "last third of super successful campaign" stretch goals!

So, if we hit the final €120,000 stretch goal, the Rules Tome will have a total of 40 extra page of full-colour art, and each of the books in the Black Box will have an extra 8 pages! This will bring the Rules Tome up to a hefty 296 pages of deluxe, heavily illustrated lushness! I truly cannot wait to see this thing in the flesh!!

Thank you all for your amazing support, and for making it possible to produce these books at even higher quality than I'd envisaged would be possible!

Gavin / Moss Master at Necrotic Gnome

Artists, illusionists, and the next stretch goal
almost 5 years ago – Thu, May 02, 2019 at 12:47:31 AM

Hey everyone,

I've been super busy the last few days, but just wanted to post a quick update to say that things are progressing behind the scenes! Some progress reports on a few different topics...

Full-Colour Art Plates

Anticipating the need for more full-colour art plates in the near future (see below), I'm in discussion with a few new artists, in addition to those announced in the last update. I'll keep you all posted as more artists come on board.

Right now, I'm delighted to be able to announce that Rachel Quinlan will be joining the Old-School Essentials art roster, bringing her own brand of folklore-inspired fantasy to grace the pages of the books!

The Wise One by Rachel Quinlan
The Wise One by Rachel Quinlan

Advanced Fantasy Layout

Since the Advanced Fantasy expansion books have been unlocked, I've started preliminary work on the layout for them. As you may have spotted from the spreads I've shared in previous updates, the Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules layout is actually quite far along. I've completed the layout for 9 out of the 15 new classes, the Character Races section, and the rules for poisons (essential for the assassin class!). So I'd say the layout of that book is about two-thirds done already.

Yesterday, I started my first pass on laying out Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells. As I shared the druid spell list before, I thought it would be fun to share the illusionist spell list today. Here you go!

Illusionist Spells

A few comments on the illusionist spell list:

  • As with the druid spell list, I've curated the illusionist spell list to have the same number of spells per level as the classic B/X magic-user spell list. The limited number of spells available to spell casters is one of the hallmarks of the Basic/Expert rules.
  • You'll notice a few spells in common with the magic-user. Stuff like light, phantasmal force (though illusionists can cast it at 1st level), invisibility, mirror image.
  • Most of the rest of the spells are based on material from the PHB or Unearthed Arcana. I had to trim some of the spells to fit in with the B/X scheme of 12 arcane spells per level, and also chose to remove some that either didn't feel essential or fitting.
  • I renamed some of the spells, too, for the sake of clarity or evocativeness (for example, change self is glamour and alter self is quasimorph).
  • Eagle-eyed fans of the Advanced game may also notice that there are a few new spells in there, which were added to fill out gaps in the spell lists. Some of these are drawn from 2e, while others are spells of my own creation. For example, we have blacklight, visitation, and dream quest. (It was a lot of fun to be able to squeeze in a few completely new spells!)

Closing in on €90K!

Last but not least: we're rapidly approaching the €90,000 mark and the next stretch goal — another set of full-colour art plates!

Keep on rolling!

Gavin / Moss Master at Necrotic Gnome

€80K! We have full-colour art!
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 26, 2019 at 01:09:15 AM

Hey everyone,

I awake this morning to wonderful news — we've reached €80,000 and unlocked the next stretch goal!

This means that the Rules Tome is going to be enhanced with the addition of 8 full-page, full-colour pieces of art, located at a judicious position in the book. This will seriously up the fanciness level of the Tome, and will make it a delight to browse.

If we reach €90,000, we'll add 8 more pages of full-colour art!

I don't yet have a finalised list of artists who'll be doing these pieces, but (as I mentioned before), they will definitely include Olivia Politz, Sam Mameli, and Tom Kilian. I'm in contact with more artists, but don't yet have a definite "yes!". I'll keep you all posted when I know more about who'll be producing these new pieces of art.

The Black Box Will Also Get This Enhancement!

I mentioned before that we were considering ways to get the new pieces of art into the Black Box as well. My previous intention was to include the full-colour art in the box as a separate folio of some kind. In the sober light of morning, however, my sentiment is: just add them to one of the books in the box! So I reckon that's what we'll do. The first batch of full-colour plates will be included in Classic Fantasy: Genre Rules (making that book 48 pages long now). If we hit the €90K stretch goal, we'll add 8 pages of full-colour art to the Cleric and Magic-User Spells book.

This seems the simplest and — probably in the long run — most desirable solution.

Full-colour art tastiness all round!

Gavin / Moss Master at Necrotic Gnome

Untracked shipping rates to Canada, Australia, Africa, Asia, South America
almost 5 years ago – Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 01:23:47 PM

Hey everyone,

A very quick piece of news: we've been chatting with the fulfillment company about ways to reduce the costs of shipping to some of the regions that are especially hard hit (e.g. Canada, Australia, South America).

The shipping rate estimates listed in the campaign description until now were for tracked shipping. But the fulfillment company reported that they've had good experiences with untracked shipping, and that they'd be happy to provide that as an option to backers. I've updated the list of estimated shipping rates in the campaign description, but here are the new, untracked estimates for those of you who are interested:

  •  Canada: $20 for the Rules Tome, $25 for the Black Box.
  •  Australia: $25 for the Rules Tome, $35 for the Black Box.
  •  Africa / Asia / South America: £15 for the Rules Tome, £20 for the Black Box.

As usual with shipping, there's no need to do anything now. Shipping will be handled in BackerKit, later. Just something to bear in mind, for those of you who were looking for a more affordable option.

We're also discussing the possibility of using local fulfillment hubs in some countries, to further bring down the costs. More news on that front when we have it!

Gavin / Moss Master at Necrotic Gnome

ps. We compared the tracked / untracked shipping rates for the US and EU, and there's not much difference.