The Shifting Sands of Fantasy Gaming - OSE, DCC, and the Rise of Games that Are Better at D&D Than D&D Is

 So over the last couple years this has been a gradual process that has built up for me, with opportunity to run Old-School Essentials, Swords & Wizardry, Shadowdark and other sundry old school games and systems, even going back to 1st edition Gamma World for a campaign at one point. In 2026 my entire perspective on what I find fun has more or less snapped in the wake of D&D 5.5 and to a lesser degree Pathfinder 2E, which I happen to like, but it just pales in comparison to the more organic and satisfying engagement you can get with the OSR and actual original editions of these games.

Take, for example, Dungeon Crawl Classics which once long ago I would hold up as an example of just how interesting altenative takes to D&D could get, while lamenting that it nestled itself in the core conceits of a B/X era of D&D with race-as-class and minimal to no skill systems. For me, at least, and for a long time I was very invested in the more mechanically deep and rigorous sort of gaming experience you could get out of D&D 3.5 or Pathfinder 1E, and while I loved AD&D 2nd Edition (my primary game of choice in the 90's outside of GURPS) its messy application of endless splatbooks bade a return to that edition unwieldly and, well, unfun.

Well now these days Dungeon Crawl Classics looks like about as much game as I can (and want to) handle, and the notion of simplified classes such as you have in B/X has been renormalized thanks to Old-School Essentials in a way that doesn't feel weird, it instead feels liberating. When I run my mashup of OSE and B/X D&D it is a weirdly liberating experience, and strange things can happen on the fly, by design, or as part of the inherent randomness of the system that shadow just how mundane and uninteresting the current era of fantasy games are. D&D 5.5 is nothing if not boring and predictable. Pathfinder 2E is marvelous in its balance and rigor, and equally condemned for it.

Running Pathfinder on one day and OSE-B/X on another day is what I think is breaking me, and also what is fuelling my fascination with what DCC's goal is. When I am designing for Pathfinder I am looking for level appropriate items, not because those items make sense in the world but because they mantain the mechanical grace of the system. Combat is fun, and even a bit exciting at times as PF2E can generate more tension in battle fairly easily (unlike D&D 5.5 which kills tension wherever it sees it), but when I run the OSE-B/X game it is truly marvelous to watch the players actually strategize and consider alernative approaches to potential combat situations, think strategically and work to execute actual plans rather than synergize feats. The first time they got their asses almost handed to them by wights and then trolls and they decided it was time to camp in the woods for a while to recover was a special moment....no one ever stops to think about the need for recovery in modern editions of the game anymore, its been done away with in favor of video game combat pacing. 

I still like Pathfinder, in so far as current modern game editions go, as it tries to at least make sure the game feels challenging....but designing scenarios for it means designing within the scope of the rules, not around them. For example, in my OSE game the players found some random loot which was on its face a sword +1, +3 vs. dragons. But in short order I decided it was actually a cursed blade, one which had a 5% cumulative chance for every foe slain with it that a dragon would hear the song of the elven maiden spirits trapped within, and come to immediately seek to destroy the blade's wielder. 

I mean, you can do that in Pathfinder 2E, but it will probably break the system, require you spend time mechanically plotting out what the blade's properties are, havw to justify its existence to the one or more rules lawyers at the table demanding to know what level the blade is and if they can farm it for runes, and then wonder if the blade allows them to effectively summon level appropriate dragons for XP farming. More importantly, it is much easier to do something like this ad hoc in OSE than it is in Pathfinder.

Anyway....that is a lot of text to say "I will be writing more about OSE and DCC in the blog now!"

Increasing Appreciation for Old-School Essentials

 Laat night I managed to get our Friday group to start a classic B/X D&D campaign using a blend of the Erol Otus edition Basic and Expert rulebooks, with a few extra resources, including the BX Blackrazor Companion and Adventurer books, and some material (the skill sytem) from the D&D Cyclopedia. It was fun! I think we'll be playing this game for at least the length of the adventure I have set up, which has enough content for several sessions.

We did run into some interesting hiccups, though. I learned, for example, that the Basic and Expert books are awfully vague about things like: fighting in darkness, what blindness means mechanically, how darkness the spell works when used to cause blindness, and what those penalties look like. In looking through later editions (Mentzer era books, the D&D Cyclopedia, and then the OSE rules) it became clear that a creature with the blindness condition can't attack at all. If you're in the darkness area, does that mean you are considered blind? Also, if you are shooting into the darkness, what sort of cover penalty is that?

Little questions like this....as well as movement rules during combat, are a little difficult to parse out in the older B/X books. The clarifications get better in the later versions of the ruleset, and then the complexity magically starts to ramp up in the D&D Cyclopedia, which I noticed manages to take an inherently straight forward ruleset and make it more complex (but hey, that is supposed to be the definitive edition of the BECMI rules so that is to be expected). 

Where I found the best clarity, and developed a strong appreciation for what it is doing, is in the Old-School Essential rules. The deliberate clarity that the OSE rules focus on is excellent, and I suspect that the ease with which I could find answers to these questions (or at least guidance) is probably because the author's goal was to address exactly these issues of needed clarity. And the OSE rules succeed to great effect in this manner.

Moreover, it's been long enough since I last messed around with B/X D&D that reading through and running it again, then reading through OSE for comparison has really hammered home to me that the OSE rules are a shockingly exact translation of the classic rules in almost every possible way. There are little oddities; I notice an absence of electrum pieces, for example; and devil swine are recategorized as proper lycanthropes with associated traits in OSE, while their original counterparts were more like "lycanthrope adjacent," as examples. I am looking only at tbe B/X component of OSE, too; I am much more familiar with AD&D and so realize that the Advanced elements introduced in OSE are a bit more fluid in their reinterpretations of those rules elements, more a blend of B/X with AD&D elements wedded to them....which honestly is a bit closer to how I ran the game in the early eighties. 

Anway.... I let the group know that going forward I will be keeping the OSE rules handy for quick reference as they are just so much easier to find clarity in, and that PCs can be built from original rules or OSE rules and both are accepted in the game. 

EDIT: As an afterthought, I realize that had this rule been presented in a more, shall we say, "mechanics and ruleplay vs. reality-based rules and roleplay," then I would probably just accept it. So, for example, game systems like D&D and Pathfinder often have rules that have no functional basis in reality, but are grounded in the mechanical contrivances of the game system. It is possible this Mythras rule is intended to dissuade players from just trying over and over on a task....a rule attached to a stick with a soft, suishy rationale for the GM to lean on when the player argues with them over it. But that's technically not how its presented...it is trying to make the case that trying a task twice in a row increases the odds of failure, but that just doesn't mesh well with real life, which is what systems like Mythras are trying harder to emulate. So....yeah. Hmmm.

The B/X D&D Tipping Point

 I spent a fair amount of time accruing both Old-School Essentials books and Shadowdark books over the last couple years, and vascillating between which system I generally preferred. OSE because it is more of an emulator? Shadowdark because it is more of a focused modern experienced in retro sheep's clothing? OSE because it's got a blend of B/X D&D and AD&D mechanical elements, or Shadowdark which is brutally honest in its desire to focus on dungeon crawling and loot acquisition? OSE for its quaint retro-graphical aesthetic that suggests artists influenced by Erol Otus, or Shadowdark with its stark black.white/silver design ethos that reminds me of those full-page black and white splash images in the AD&D manuals?

Of course, in the midst of this I managed to almost completely rekindle my AD&D 1E collection, thanks to a lucky find at a game store out in Roswell. That alone was enough to get me mulling over pulling off a classic AD&D style campgin, but also somehow not quite as motivating as I might have imagined. There was a piece of the puzzle missing for me....and last month Wizard of the Coast finally completed that puzzle with a print on demand edition of the Basic D&D book, with the Erol Otus cover. They Expert set was already available, but hard to use that without the Basic set, you know? And finding halfway decent copies of either book for less than an arm and a leg on Ebay is hard to do these days.

So now I have the proper B/X D&D set, and this is what I was missing. While I did favor AD&D 1E back in the day for the more flexible character options, I actually consulted with the B/X rulesets, a lot....like, all the time, because when the DMG or PHB was proving to be inscrutible to my young gamer mind (this is specifically the time when I was around 10 years old to about 14) the B/X rules allowed for simple clarity. My favorite recollection on this was combat, starting with initiative and surprise. Clearly and simply explained in B/X, a sharp contrast from the nightmare exposition that Gygax laid like a trap for the unwary in the DMG. 

Sure, we noticed all the differences in the two systems, but back then chalked that up to being "here's the basic/expert version of the rules....there's the advanced version of the rules....mix and match until you get something that works and everyone understands." One thing I did not do back then was run either B/X or AD&D in pure form, at least not until I was high school age (around 15 and up) when I by that time was familiar with more complex systems, and began to study AD&D and B/X for what they were as unique games rather than complimentary sets. By that time I was playing Palladium Fantasy, Runequest, Tunnels & Trolls and even eventually GURPS 1E with more regularity. In my fanzine publishing days I had a spurt of interest in treating B/X D&D similarly to T&T, concocting material for the game as written, including solo adventures. It was a fun exercise in working within the boundaries of a system rather than finding ways to break it. During this time and right up through my college years I continued to buy B/X (and later bECMI) sourcebooks and modules, even if I mostly used them with AD&D 2E by then.

Anyway, fast forward 35 or so years to the present, and my interest in B/X D&D is rekindled with the new print on demand edition. It's a compelling third contender in the arena where the young whippersnappers OSE and Shadowdark have been duking it out. For one thing, a lot of the material I have on my shelves aimed at either OSE, Labyrinth Lord or other B/X retroclones is pretty compatible with original B/X. For another thing, a shocking amount of classic B/X material has made its way back into POD, meaning I have also managed to begin restoring my collection of modules, including many I never managed to snag back in the day.

This is not an unusual thing for me; I have a habit of "rediscovering" B/X every few years and looking at it on its own merits, a sort of "what could have been" had I not dived into AD&D instead of B/X early on. My entire Pergerron, the River Kingdoms of Anansis campaign setting actually started as a creative exercise in desiging a campaign which assumed only the character options, magic and monsters of B/X and source books were available for the world design.* Now I am feeling that creative urge to do something new within the boundaries of B/X again....but this time I am older, have less time, and am growing more fussy with overly rules-laden systems which is leading me to appreciate the more streamlined qualities of B/X even more. We shall see! I have ideas.....I will likely post them as they come here. This new venture may or may not cannibalize from OSE and Shadowdark. 

*Technically the first shot of Pergerron started in Magic World, but then became the basis for the B/X iteration. Now Pergerron is a weird D&D 5E/Cthulhu hybrid mashup, so is distinctly its own thing.

Old-School Essentials vs. Shadowdark - Battle of the Retro OSR Giants???

 As I assembled all of the many half-size tomes I have on the shelf, realizing I had bought a disproportionate number of books (and booklets, and brochures, etc.) for a few games in particular (Mothership, OSE, Shadowdark, Mork Borg and to a lesser extent Liminal Horror), I started comparing the crop of Shadowdark books to the Old-School Essentials tomes. I've run a couple campaigns or multi-session adventures with both systems, though not as yet been able to commit to picking one of them for a long-haul. In many ways these two games are extremely similar, at least in terms of their overall goals, but in other ways they are surprisingly different. Here's a few of the more interesting differences I noticed, with the caveat that I won't talk specific rules too much, because both systems are mechanically quite different. Anyway:

Design Goals:

OSE: it's goal is to create a retroclone emulator for Basic/Expert D&D and the Advanced version gives you the tools to bolt on an AD&D style experience. It's not restricting itself exclusively to true emulation, though it does so surprisingly well, and expansions and 3PP content offer a really diverse array of interpretations of fantasy powered by OSE (Planar Compass, Kalinga Plateau, The Painted Wastelands and Dolmenwood being the four I am most familiar with). A lot of weird settings get the OSE treatment, though other weird settings seem to gravitate more toward the Into the Odd mechanics. I think it depends on the depth to which the designers of a setting want to plumb the rules; Into the Odd seems to be the preferred choice for player groups that are extremely shy of mechanical depth, while OSE ends up attracting a broader range of interest for those who want an old school mechanical feel, but are inspired by weird art, themes and interpretations of fantasy that may have been popular in their style but were too "out there" for D&D's early era shepherds (TSR).

Shadowdark: It looks to me like Shadowdark's core intent, which was to provide numeric compatibility with older editions of D&D as well as D&D 5E resources, ended up really being about creating a tightly defined set of rules for a very specific style of play: dungeon crawling, completely unapologetic, with all of the traditional bells and whistles, or at least those as perceived through the lens of a new age of gamers who love the notion of what D&D was without having actually been there. Most of the Shadowdark players I know aren't picking it up because they want a reasonable facsimile of original D&D or B/X D&D, but rather they want a D&D 5E experience without all the clutter. For this reason Shadowdark has a lot of interesting but weird little rules that are designed to streamline the experience, but also trip up older gamers or those used to early D&D (such as the way leveling works, or the way magic works) and don't in actual play feel very old school. Shadowdark is to OSR what a modern computer game that touts its amazing pixels s being Playstation One era style graphics (while being totally better looking than the actual original PS1 games of its time) are like....simulacra.

Winner: OSE wins by a slim margin, because it really is closely backward compatible and very customizable within a time-tested framework of rules. But Shadowdark is its own special beast, and if you think of it as being like the RPG equivalent of Hero Quest, its role makes more sense.

Rules Presentation:

OSE: OSE's core strength is that it's the most pragmatic, no-nonsense presentation of a OSR ruleset I have ever seen. There is no authorial intrusion, there is no empty chit-chat, there is precisely as much flavor text as is necessary, no more and no less. It's incredibly clear and well-organized (across all its rulebook iterations), and finding what you need is a breeze. So Necrotic Gnome's core presentation was to make OSE very, very user friendly. This is a huge plus as I see it; when I pick up this book and browse through it, I find myself urgently interested in playing it, which is something a lot of RPGs out there fail to accomplish. 

Likewise, adventure design for OSE is concise, driven by necessary information only, and laid out in a clean and to-the-point format designed to make GM prep smooth and easy. OSE has borrowed heavily from the indie zinerpg scene to manifest a module design approach which works incredibly well, and I feel like even Wizards of the Coast has noticed this and tried some half-baked attempts to emulate this with recent books (such as Forgotten Realms) recently.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark seems interested in brevity almost to a fault. Many rules are explained with the barest possible amount of information, often leaving the players and GM to parse out the implied results of what are in general basic rulings. This work against it at times if you are reading it from the perspective of one familiar with older D&D editions or the OSR movement, as Shadowdark is a modern game in OSR clothing, which means you can't assume anything with it. Shadowdark's communication style is so brief that it can be bothersome to people who prefer a more comprehensive or detailed explanation of mechanics, and also requires at times a lot of GM adjudication due to the lack of guidance it provides. This contrasts with the OSE rulesets in that OSE usually conveys to you the exact amount of information you need, while Shadowdark conveys the minimum amount of information....an important but subtle difference. 

On the other hand, Shadowdark's module design is heavily influenced by the Indie zinerpg scene, as is OSE. As a result, the actual modules for Shadowark are often using identical approaches to conveying necessary information in modest bites, and this leads to a sense that you could easily use Shadowdark modules with OSE and vice versa, just swapping out stat blocks as needed. 

Winner: OSE again, because it's friendly organization and "just the right amount of detail" approach to information makes it incredibly functional as a table resource. Shadowdark's brevity and bare-minimum approach to explaining anything will work best when you really are preferring a lot of interpretive freedom, though. It's almost a tie as I see it, but for my own personal tastes: OSE hands down.

Graphical Design:

OSE: OSE's art is an homage to B/X D&D and AD&D of the 80's. It's got a vaguely fetishistic approach to reimagining Erol Otus inspired artwork, and often relies on artists like Peter Mullen to accomplish this. I like it's approach more than with Dungeon Crawl Classics, which does something similar but often leans into a Retro 70's Kitsch aesthetic of a time that only existed in the doodles on the back of your High School textbooks (or so I imagine, as I was 10 years old in 1981 so I am definitely a product of the 80's rather than the 70's, when I was a little kid).

That said, OSE leans on a lot of art styles across many tomes, and some of the best and weirdest art manages a style that feels to me like "Erol Otus, if he was responsible for Adventure Time." So it's got a wide range within its deliberate aesthetic.

Shadowdark: Shadowdark is heavily focused on white-on-black aesthetics and a art style that feels divorced from B/X D&D and firmly rooted in AD&D 1st edition. It's art style is surprisingly uniform, across even third party publishers, to the extent that I think out of a couple dozen Shadowdark books I have, only one or two even bother to use real color at all....I haven't seen the 3PP design guide, but maybe there's a style guide somewhere they have to follow.

The good news on this is that Shadowdark books all look like they are part of a set; you can tell a Shadowdark book just by looking at it most times. The even better news is that a surprising amount of this art is actually really cool and evocative. The downside is I have also noticed a disproportionate amount of AI generated art in third party Shadowdark books, sometimes bad enough that it impacts my desire to even consider using the book (as is the case with Gammadark, the post-apocalyptic hack of Shadowdark, where the AI art is basically just "We have Warhammer 40K At Home" armored troopers in every other image). Luckily (so far) this does not seem to be an issue for the core books coming out of Arcane Library, though. 

Winner: Tough call! I will say Shadowdark for its stark white on black design aesthetic and imagery that feels very, very old school to me while still being quality art, but OSE is also very good at this, so its almost a tie. The third party content is more disappointing with Shadowdark, however, as too much AI generated art detracts from the books that use it, whereas that does not seem to be a problem with OSE's third party content at all for some reason.

Actual Play:

OSE: So I ran a bit of OSE a while back, a fun little campaign that ran for several levels and took advantage of one of my own campaign settings, mixed with some published modules, including maps from Trilemma Adventures (one of the greatest dungeon map books ever next to Dyson's works). It ran smoothly, it felt very old school even with using lots of third party content to "upgrade" it to some modern conventions in terms of the fantasy options available, and it was very fun. I don't think it felt terribly like the actual experience of playing AD&D I had back in the day, mainly because the core B/X emulation at the heart of OSE is just not as complex as the actual AD&D experience as it once was, but we all did have fun. I recall some of my players, far too enmeshed in modern game design, actually sat out the campaign for the most part. My own experience as a GM was pretty satisfying, though, and the play experience was not marred by 30-45 minutes of rules lawyering and lookup as tends to happen Every. Single. Session. with pathfinder 2E. Fun enough that I am now thinking about running a new OSE campaign soon, this time using The Panted Wastelands campaign setting.   

Shadowdark: I ran a short campaign last year.....a lengthy dungeon crawl, really, also set in my oldest campaign world (Lingusia), but not really using too much of it. We had fun, it was an entertaining system and its interesting quirks (including deciphering the level/XP process, the way magic casting works, and the disparity of power creep between the core book and sourcebooks) wasn't overly bothersome. It felt like a game system that wanted to just be played and get all the micromanagement out of the way, unless it involves light sources. It clearly works best for very dungeon-delve heavy gaming, although some soucebooks try to expand on wilderness delving and a few even dare to entertain using it as a "full featured" RPG though never enough to make one feel like Shadowdark would be a proper substitute for long term campaigning. I know its a style and feel preference, and Shadowdark may just be a little too simplistic for my own tastes; I know of at least two groups locally that play this game all the time, and abandoned DCC for it. For me....I kinda like it, but only maybe enough to crib some content from it for use with OSE, which really is the nicer overall product. That said....if I didn't feel like diving deep into the OSR experience and just wanted a fast play dungeon crawler for a session or two with tons of randomization, Shadowdark is pretty well the best option out there. In a sense that puts it next to Mork Borg, a system which I love running in spurts but never for long term campaigns. 

Winner: I have to give it narrowly to OSE as I really enjoyed running a couple campaigns with it and want to do more. But I also enjoyed running Shadowdark, even though the system itself often felt janky a times....but both are eminently playable. Because I prefer slightly more granularity in my OSR experience though, and also prefer the broader compatibility of OSE, I will give it this prize for being more playable.

Conclusion:

So, overall, for what I need at least I find OSE simply works better as a more well-rounded D&D OSR experience. Shadowdark works well as a pickup and play game for a session or three, but for me at least lacks the depth I need to feel like it is more versatile. OSE is on the edge of what I consider "acceptable" for versatility, but it is lovely because its close compatibility with older editions of D&D means if I really wanted to I could just hack the proficiency system from AD&D 2E into it without any fuss or muss, stick to descending AC for flavor, and grab a copy of The Night Below or Queen of the Demon Web Pits and run it pretty much as-is. I'd need to do some hacks on these modules to get them to play nice with Shadowdark, by contrast. As for adding rules from older editions, I could do that with Shadowdark, too.....but with OSE it feels like that is an option I can take if I want and its intended to work, while with Shadowdark it feels like I'd be defeating the point of the system's deliberate brevity, and also would probably find it easier to weld the 5E skill system onto Shadowdark instead of the AD&D proficiency system and kits and such. 

So! I'll talk various products on these over the next few weeks or so, including Shadowdark....which does have a lot of good sourcebooks out. I may be looking at them from the angle of "How can I get this to play nice with OSE?" though, so there ya' go!

Reviewing the Print Edition of Hollow World (Updated with Pics)

Hollow World is one of the first reprint-on-demand books available at Wizards of the Coast's dmsguild.com site, and also the first one I ordered to check out the quality of the print. The book arrived today, and here's the lowdown:

What is it?

If you're wondering what Hollow World even is, it's a sourcebook for a literal hollow planet in a D&D setting called Mystara, although the book provides guidance on placing it at the heart of any fantasy realm if you so desire. The setting is one of D&D's more unique visions: a domain of lost kingdoms and fallen empires, a population of each sequestered away inside the hollow planet, with a strange day/night process, in which ancient Immortals have decided they will keep a record of these fallen empires. The many empires of the Hollow World are based on analogs of ancient civilizations of Earth, and in their default setting represent a who's who of the ancient history of the B/X universe of Mystara.

My suggestion is to grab the Duchy of Karameikos from the Gazetteer series to establish a "locale" for PCs to be familiar with on the surface world, then let them stumble upon a means of reaching the Hollow World from there (the core book includes scenarios for just that purpose).

Hollw World contains a lot of useful information for a B/X or BECMI era D&D game, but you could easily convert this to D&D 5E with minimal fuss, mostly through substitution (i.e. use the appropriate D&D 5E monster stat in place of the one in the book). It would also run just fine with current OSR systems like Labyrinth Lord, White Box or Swords & Wizardry Complete with almost zero fuss.

Print/Paper

In the original release it was a boxed set with three books and a fold-out map set. The new print on demand edition is a single soft-cover volume with a full color interior on nice quality paper...the description on the product page says its standard heavyweight, but not premium...but it looks pretty damned good.

Resolution

The resolution/quality is pretty much perfect. This does not look like a print from a scanned copy....it looks as good as any current release. It's got a tiny bit of that POD-level graininess (mainly to color illustrations) you might be familiar with, but I had to really stare at it a while to notice. The readability of this is A+ though. Only exceptions I can note are a couple regional maps in the Player's Section are too dark for my tastes.

Functionality

The core three books of the original boxed set are bound in one volume. In the back are eight full color pages of the Hollow World maps. It's a very usable format. You will want to either grab the old BECMI rulebooks to run this baby, Labyrinth Lord (or similar) or pull out D&D 5E and start converting (my plan).

(UPDATE!) Some Pics:

I have many more of these new reprint-on-demand editions on the way. Hollow World has bolstered my confidence in the anticipated quality!

The New Big Dragon GM Screen for B/X D&D is Here

Actually, I've had it for at least a week, but just realized I haven't mentioned that bit.

The Screen is in two parts, with gorgeous artwork. They're durable, tough screens....not quite like the Savage Worlds style heavy board screens, but still very sturdy. Two spell books, character sheets and a collection of tables in book form round out the package. It's designed for B/X D&D but I think you could pull off a Labyrinth Lord game with this easily enough.

Either way, with this in I now realize I have a LOT of new stuff for B/X D&D, enough to run a fairly robust game, especially with all the B/X NBD books I have now (check out Richard LeBlanc's site here to see what is available and coming soon). I can guarantee you I would never have thought this to be a "thing" ten, fifteen...even twenty years ago. Ever, really.

Unfortunately I don't see a retail page for this one yet, but hopefully the funding was enough to make plenty of copies for sale post-Kickstarter.

Class Compendium Random Setting-by-Class Generator

Using Class Compendium as a Setting Generator

You could actually pull a random selection of classes from the Class Compendium and core rules to make thematic campaigns pretty easily....try it! Here's a random generator to get you started....roll 3D6+3 times on the chart to get a selection of classes, then imagine what sort of weird campaign would result in an adventurer selection like that. I've added the LL Advanced Edition class options as well for extra fun:

Campaign by Class Generator:
Roll 3D6+3 for # of classes available (or roll 2D6+3 or even 1D6+3 to limit total choices). Then roll D100 that many times and determine class options from the following; re-roll duplicates.

Special Option: Default Core--if you roll a class under one of these cores (marked in bold) then you include the core class in your list (i.e a knight option will de facto include fighter).

Roll/Class
1-3 Magic-User
4-5 Illusionist
6 Alienist
7 Familiar
8 Thopian Gnome
9 Wild Wizard
10-13 Dwarf
14 Raging Slayer
15 Rune-Smith
16 Warchanter
17-20 Elf
21 Dark Elf
22 Greensinger
23-24 Half-Elf
25-26 Sylvan Elf
27-30 Halfling
31 Burglar
32 Feast Master
33 Huckster
34 Lucky Fool
35 Tavern Singer
36-39 Cleric
40-41 Paladin
42-43 Druid
44 Angel
45 Friar
46 Inquisitor
47 Undead Slayer
48-52 Fighter
53-54 Ranger
55 Commander
56 Dragon Slayer
57 Knight
58 Barbarian
59 Berserker
60 Gladiator
61 Samurai
62 Sword Master
63 Dragon
64 Goblin
65 Half-Ogre
66-67 Half-Orc
68 Treant
69 Fairy
70 Lost Boy
71 Pirate
72-76 Thief
77-78 Assassin
79 Acrobat
80 Explorer
81 Fortune Teller
82 Wanderer
83-85 Bandit
86-88 Bard
89 Bounty Hunter
90 Watchman
91 Cultists
92 Damphir
93 Death Knight
94 Eidolon
95 Automaton
96 Investigator
97 Metaphysician
98 Shootist
99-00 Monk

Example:

I roll 3D6+3 and get 11. For my 11 classes I roll for each and get:

Raging Slayer, Druid, Monk, Elf, Angel, Undead Slayer, Knight, Feast Master, Alienist, Thief, Samurai. I'll use the core class option, which means magic-user, cleric, dwarf and halfling are de facto included.

So...what does our class selection tell us about our new setting?

Core classes allowed are all there (fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief, elf, dwarf, halfling) so that's good. But some clerics can in fact be angels, druids and undead slayers. Fighters could also be monks, knights or samurai, and magic-users could also be alienists. Halflings could be feast masters, while dwarves have a special group of raging slayers in their midst. This world has some interesting implications!

1. There's a war between law and chaos that's more pronounced...with alienists, angels, and undead slayers wandering about.

2. There's probably an east-Asian setting or something comparable, which is where the monks and samurai come from.

3. maybe the dwarves use their raging slayers to stem the tide of evil that the alienists also seek to harness?

With this idea, I envision a setting where magic is generally accepted, but the world is threatened by alien forces..the Old Ones, perhaps...and some mages have learned to harness their magic as alienists. This threat is pervasive; the forces of good have even called upon angels of their gods to defend the world from this evil encroachment beyond the stars.

Amongst elves, they stand resolute and quiet in their woodland kingdoms, while dwarves have an entire culture of raging slayers dedicated to fighting the monstrous evil which is most likely to manifest in subterranean realms. Haflings remain an innocent and prideful folk known for their food, especially with their trade as feast masters.

The human kingdoms of the west (sure, why not) are dominated by a feudal society of knights. clerics and fighters; an entire special order of undead slayers has worked long and hard to stop the encroaching undead that are a byproduct of the Old Ones' manifestation. To the east is an island kingdom of isolated but powerful warrior samurai and their enclaves of militant monks. Thieves are everywhere, of course, that there is civlization. Lastly there is an old way, the pagan beliefs the druids vehemently adhere to with their elven allies.

Campaign by Class Example #2:

For this one I go limited (1D6+3) and exclude core classes except if it makes sense. I roll and get 8. For the classes I roll D100 and get:

Alienist, Half-Elf, Shootist, Ranger, Watchman, Fighter, Illusionist, Commander.

Nice list!

This is a world without demihumans...except for half-elves. I'm excluding regular elves (so no core classes that aren't rolled), which means in this world elves are an aloof mystery race of fey who are unsuitable for mortal minds to play as characters....but the idea of half-elves being viable is cool, so they are the product of baby-swapping unions with elven fey and humans; half-elves in this world are changeling, essentially.

Mages are limited to illusionists and alienists....this is a world where magic is either insubstantial and limited to the trickery of illusion and enchantment, but real mages go for broke and contact alien entities to secure their powers.

For fighter types we have the shootist, ranger, watchman, fighter and commander....this is suggestive of a magic-light world, one in which swordsmanship and a brace of pistols make right over magic. I'm inclined to allow thieves in to the mix as well, but for now, they can sit this one out (thieves exist, just not as honorable adventurers unless a player convinces me otherwise). There are no noble classes, either: this world is a rough place, and it is likely that skill and determination make a man rather than bloodline inheritance.

The shootist suggests a higher level of technology, which could play into the weak magic idea; magic is no longer a force in this world, or never was, but alchemy has turned in to chemistry and engineering for many, leading to a renaissance period and the development of more efficient and deadly weapons. Watchmen are another interesting idea: in this world they may be the ordinary men and women who not only look out for thieves and cut-throats but also keep a vigilant eye for the evils of alienist magic or the ever-dangerous fey which steal children and bring them back "touched."

Rangers meanwhile remain a "wilderness" version of the watchmen.....looking for the monsters in the wilderness that might rise up to destroy remote settlements on the edge of civilization.

Best of all, this is a world with no religion or gods of any import: there is no clerical magic at all! With no PC clerics or healers, the world really is a grim land, a universe where whatever gods are worshipped are uncaring and bequeath no power to followers. The alien minds the alienists reach out to for power may be as closes as it gets....and even they may find little interest in this universe. Or...maybe they have already destroyed the benevolent gods of this realm, and quietly bide their time for when the world is ripe for their cosmic arrival at the end times.

I kind of want to run this campaign now.....hmmmm.....!