Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells: OSR DnD Book Review

[@QuestingBeast]

Join the Questing Knights on Patreon: bit.ly/QBPatreon Download my RPGs and adventures: bit.ly/ItchStore My favorite OSR books: bit.ly/TopOSRBooks My favorite RPG-related products: amzn.to/30kfamM

[@DiogoNogueiraXP]

Oh, and about how this was inspired by your work. Maze Rats showed me a game can be more than a system but a tool to male the experience of those playing it much easier. The way the rules are presented, the funciona of the tables, and the spirit of the game itself is very inspiring. Thanks a lot for your work.

[@QuestingBeast]

Thanks man, that means a lot.

[@DiogoNogueiraXP]

Thanks for taking the time to review the books, Ben. About the issue with characters with 18s having 90% chance of success right out im the beginning, that’s one of the reasons I chose to include rules for Difficulty, making their lives not so simple. I am experiencing with some tweaks for the second edition and for Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells (which will be a science fantasy equivalent of this). One of them is maybe rolling 12d6 for Attributes and let the player assign them to Attributes, maybe even putting more or less than 3 dice for each.

[@QuestingBeast]

Solar Blades is looking really badass so far.

[@thiagobrazolin]

Diogo, tem uma versão em português?

[@thiagobrazolin]

Já achei em português. Você já jogou o Black Hack?

[@DiogoNogueiraXP]

Thiago, o jogo é baseado no Black Hack, White Hack, DCC RPG, Advanced Fighting Fantasy, FATE, Call of Cthulhu, Beyond the Wall e muitos outros. Lendo o Black Hack eu vi que eu podia pegar a base dele e fazer algo mais do meu jeito, pegando partes de outros jogos que eu gosto e dando mais "corpo" ao sistema. :)

[@thiagobrazolin]

Legal...eu estou pensando em fazer um play by post, vou ver se uso o Ss&Ss

[@BTsMusicChannel]

9:54 I like this observation -- the hallmarks of an OSR game are: monster reaction table, morale mechanics, and random encounter table. those elements make it much more interesting than "hack, slash, grab the cash" and random encounters/events are a great way to punish PCs that go off task (esp. if you don't give experience points for killing stuff), increase the danger of a mission, or stall for time when the players change their mind in the sandbox. Love the art in this book, and the DM tools. I love that OSR games are creating tools for DMs instead of more stupid player options. I'd like to see less published spells but a spell generator -- I am working on this tool for myself so no one knows what the spells are until I give them to the players (will make magic more mysterious, more esoteric, and cut down on the power gaming).

[@lazylitch8035]

Have been following the guy who wrote this on instagram and he lives and breaths osr, its great to see hes taking all the parts he loves from different games and putting them together, while also designing it in such a way that other people can modify it to get their favoirte forumula. Also great to see the investment that has gone into getting all the great art, shows its a work of love.

[@TheNubiS]

Very much looking forward to running Willow/Woodfall/The Haunted Hamlet inside Dolmenwood with OSE ❤️

[@norbertfranz2702]

Thank you for the nice review and discussion of the game. After a lot of recommendations (and both encouragement and discouragement), I am actually running this for a large group later this week. I'm quite excited about it. We wanted a very fast, easy system and also wanted to keep it to sword & sorcery-like low fantasy. I had used Barbarians of Lemuria for this before, but now we wanted to try this one as a system that was closer to older versions of D&D and had a method for characters to also level up.

[@tobarstep]

I downloaded this a while back and never got to read it until very recently. I wish I had read it earlier. It hits almost all of my own preferences for rules, and the addendum makes it even better. I'm in love with this rule set.

[@mjolasgard2533]

Fifty plus twenty is eighty? Take 3 points of madness, QB!

[@pspboy7]

One of the things I was thinking about when using a roll under system is apply a difficulty modifier range from zero (0) to negative six (-6) whereby the level of difficulty increases by subtracting a value from the applicable ability score.

[@DiogoNogueiraXP]

The game actually does that. :)

[@markfaulkner8191]

I list you and other you tubers as influences on the piece I am writing. Not for what you wrote, though I do have some of that. The wisdom and advice you offer is much bigger than your writing.

[@Mankcam]

This is a great set of rules, highly recommended!

[@neilbenson3430]

I ran this at Grogmeet last year, it really is a lot of fun and combat is very fast and the players enjoyed it. Perhaps the only bit I didn't like was monster/NPC attacks having to roll over a characters stat.

[@benodell654]

Alternity used a roll under system back in the 90s. Probably got it from BECMI skills checks in the Rules Cyclopedia. It also modified the roll using various sized dice. It also differentiated success, good success and superior success by how low the roll was. Also, armor in Alternity reduced damage, but a not 1 bypassed armor

[@dearbornsavoy]

Great, great game with a few doubtful choices, such as the Spell List not being alphabetized.

[@MikeJohnson-xw9ig]

Great video as always thank you! Would you ever do a review for four against darkness or d100 dungeon?

[@wgapease]

Love your videos! How about reviewing old-school clones that were around in the old school days, like Empire of the Petal Throne and the Arcanum (the Atlantis RPG by Bard Games?) These are simple versions of D&D that were made in the late 70's/early 80's, and hence have the old-school feel built in. EPT is very setting based, but is classic and has that weird / science fantasy part built in. I'd like to hear your take on them.

[@QuestingBeast]

I actually do want to review both of those at some point, I just don't have physical copies.

[@verityverri6506]

Mathemathics freestyle at 14 minutes, eh? Still, AMAZING review, really considering playing this.

[@phyllisbergenholtz2541]

Great Video!

[@itsprobablydean]

I love the varied art, personally. Too late for the dev to ever see this but meh

[@thiagobrazolin]

Vai Brasil! BR hue

[@mestresg6601]

RPG TUPINIQUIM, É NOIIIISSSSS