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About Old-School Essentials

Old-School Essentials is a role-playing game of fantastic adventure, monsters, and magic!

Simple, robust rules: Old-School Essentials has light, easily modified rules, putting the focus of play on shared imagination, improvisation, and fun.

Easy to learn and reference: Old-School Essentials is meticulously edited and laid out, with the aim of maximising ease of reference during play. Everything is logically organised and presented in a quick-to-read format based on "control panels" — side-by-side pages presenting a single topic in its entirety.

Compatible with decades of material: Old-School Essentials is based on the classic 1980s Basic/Expert rules (B/X), the most popular edition of the game among connoisseurs of old-school RPGs. All material written for the B/X rules over the last four decades can be used with Old-School Essentials, without any conversion effort whatsoever!

100% old-school rules, 100% modern design!

See our website for full information about Old-School Essentials.

About the System Reference Document

This online document provides a full reference for the Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy rules (a complete rendition of the classic Basic / Expert game).

Old-School Essentials Generators

Tired of rolling everything by yourself? Check out the Old-School Essentials generators, a set of tools to quickly roll encounters, treasure hoards, magic items, NPCs, and more.

• Treasure generators by dungeon level, treasure type letter code, or treasure map type
• Dungeon and wilderness encounter generators
• Memorized spell list / spell book generators
• Magic item generators, including full sentient sword generation
• NPC adventurers by class/level
• Retainer generator
• Full adventuring party generator, including equipment, magic items, and memorized spells

Support

Found a mistake or encountered a problem?

Use the Talk/Discussion feature on the corresponding page or email us at webdev@necroticgnome.com.