Old-School Essentials: The Big "What's

New" Post
So I've been going on about this Old-School Essentials thing recently, which I'll be bringing
to Kickstarter in a few months. As you are probably aware, this is the revised edition of the
original B/X Essentials books. But some people may be wondering what exactly is different.
This post is for you!

What's Not New?

Weird to put this first, but it's important to state up front: the same as B/X Essentials, Old-
School Essentials is a streamlined, easy-reference restatement of the classic B/X rules of
yesteryear. Same rules ... new, improved presentation.

So with that out of the way...

What's New?
1. The Name
This one is pretty obvious. The game has a new name (Old-School Essentials) and subtitle
(Retro Adventure Game) to make it more immediately obvious what it's about. This is
especially important to make the game a bit more accessible to people who'd potentially be
interested in old-school gaming, but who aren't familiar with the esoteric term "B/X". That's
the sole reason for the new name.

2. A New Layout
Redoing the layout wasn't a major design consideration in the revised books, but came
about because I decided to switch the books' format to A5 (instead of the 6" x 9" of the
original editions). The reason for this was simply that A5 is an international standard, so is
cheaper and easier to print around the world. (This connects to point 3, below.)

As I'd decided to change the physical format, the entire layout needed to be redone, so I also
decided to change the style to something fresher, while I was at it. (Fortunately, I love doing
layouts, so this has been a super fun part of the development process of the new books.)

3. New Art
The redone layout means that a lot of new art will be needed. Some favourites from B/X
Essentials will also be returning, of course.

Andrew Walter is working on a new cover for Core Rules, as we speak!

4. Designed for Offset Printing

The original books were printed by Lightning Source as print-on-demand. The new books
will be printed by an as yet not finally decided printer as a traditional offset run. There are a
few reasons for changing the printing process:
1. Quality. PoD quality is mediocre. Offset printing offers far better quality.
2. Flexibility. Offset printing opens the way to fancy features that aren't
possible with PoD, for example things like printed end-papers and ribbons. (More on
this later.)
3. Economics. Per unit, offset printing is much, much cheaper than PoD.
5. Expanded Introduction
As noted in Capt. Corajus' recent review, the B/X Essentials books are not that great for
beginners. (Indeed they were explicitly designed for experienced players.) There's no
explanation of a lot of fundamental concepts like AC, hp, HD, etc. which are familiar to all
experienced players. This puts up an entry barrier. One of my primary aims for the revised
books is to make them more accessible to people who aren't hardcore old-schoolers, so
addressing this was a must.

To that end, the introduction to Core Rules has been expanded, covering the following
topics:
• About the game.
• Very brief suggestions for people who are new to RPGs or new to old-school
games.
• A discussion on why the game is split into several books, and which books are
required to play.
• A discussion on compatibility with other games (e.g. the original
B/X, Labyrinth Lord, etc.).
• A brief section on the basic terminology used in the game.
• A section describing the assumptions about the kinds of adventures that the
rules are based around.
• A full rundown on the game statistics that make up a player character.

6. Clarified Text
This might come as a surprise, given that B/X Essentials was already supposed to be a
clarified reference for the B/X rules. The fact is that I learned a lot over the 2 year
development cycle of BXE. By the time it was finished, looking back, I could see a lot of
things in the earlier books that could be improved. So I took this opportunity to improve
them. I'll post some comparisons of the original vs revised rules over the next weeks, so you
can see what I mean. For now, suffice to say that I'm super happy with the way things are
looking now.

7. Control Panel Layouts

This is probably the biggest change of all to Core Rules. In the original book, the main
adventuring rules were listed alphabetically. So you had Ability Checks, Air Travel, Chases,
Climbing, and so on. While this makes sense as a means of organisation, it's not a very
intuitive order for rules to appear in. Ability Checks then Air Travel... huh?

The revised Core Rules instead lays things out on 2-page spreads of related content -- also
known as "control panels". Here's the list of the PC and adventuring rules control panels, in
the order they appear in:
1. Player Character game statistics.
2. Character creation.
3. Ability scores.
4. Alignment, languages, experience, and wealth.
5. Domains, hirelings, and party organisation. (The latter now describes the
roles of the Caller and Mapper, which weren't mentioned in B/X Essentials.)
6. Time, weight, movement. (Including encumbrance.)
 7. Hazards and challenges. (Including ability checks and saving throws.)
8. Dungeon adventuring.
9. Wilderness adventuring.
10. Waterborne adventuring.
11. Encounters.
12. Evasion and pursuit.
13. Combat.
14. Other combat issues and morale.
15. Retainers.
16. Vehicles.
The rest of the book continues in the same manner, with rules for Magic, Monsters, Running
Adventures, and Treasure.