In followup to my post from last Friday, there is big news on the OSRIC front. (I think I rolled 1 on the d30 for psionics last week...)
http://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?p=101572#p101572
I'm thrilled to see OSRIC get a little love from them and some "oomph" in terms of making books available. Having worked with both BBP and UP, I have a lot of confidence that they'll do an awesome job.
We were just discussing on K&K that there's an anecdotal ratio of about 6:1 between old school AD&D players still playing, and those people who are active on the Internet participating in the old school discussion. Having OSRIC available to bring in more new players, bring in people who don't know the old books are available... it's all good news for this old edition of D&D.
4 comments:
Interesting.
--I may have to pick up a print copy of OSRIC, if only to make certain my AD&D Urutsk adventure is 'current'.
I know there are little differences throughout the rules, but how much different is Osric from AD&D?
Mostly from the OGL perspective - so monsters that TSR/WotC have deemed trade dress, like beholders, mind flayers - they are not in OSRIC.
OSRIC is meant to be the 3 core - so any supplemental books like Dieties/Demigods, UA, etc., are not emulated in OSRIC.
Monks and bards are not in OSRIC - not enough OGL from the SRD to make them doable, from what I understand
Little things like XP requirements were changed to not mimic trade dress.
OSRIC combines the Monster Manual and Players Handbook with some aspects of the DMG. A good chunk of the DMG is not there - mainly due to that it's not SRD'able.
Treasure Types are not done in OSRIC. They'll give percentages for lairs and some indication of individual treasure.
There's a few more - but the bottom line is that without the AD&D handbooks, I could quite effectively run an AD&D game just from OSRIC and never need the original. Truth be told, I mainly use the DMG + OSRIC. I do have the others and I'll refer to the Monster Manual when just wanting the flavor/text from it.
I'm pretty excited about this. I'm trying to work up some new art for the release of the Black Blade edition. I did quite a bit for the original release. At any rate, it'll be nice to see an OSRIC release that is stocked at the game stores with Labyrinth Lord and the other clone/OSR systems.
Michael,
Thanks for the details. :)
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