Anyone pick up OSRIC?

[Jason Vey]

Now that it's in print, anyone have it? How's it look? I was jazzed about the color hardcover, but damn if 90-odd bucks is a little high, even for Lulu's full-color printing.

[wulfgar22]

Yes. Arrived last week. The normal b&w hardback...it looks great.

I'm actually surprised at the lack of interest/enthusiasm on the various old school forums. Even though the PHB, DMG and MM are still readily available on eBay (if you don't have them already)...the OSRIC hardcover is pretty reasonable price-wise. And to have all three-in-one with a vastly superior layout, tables and indices..well, I'm really impressed. And it's great as a resource for old school gaming in general.

[greyharp]

Because of Lulu's international postal rates, it doesn't look like I'll be buying a hardcopy any time soon. And at 402 pages, I probably won't print this beast out in any hurry either, which is a shame as my group is currently playing 1e. To make matters worse, I think a lot of folks are like me and don't like reading large documents on screen. There's simply no way I'm going to sit at the computer for days reading 402 pages.

The release of OSRIC 2.0 is a funny thing. When it happened, I expected a huge fanfare, but apart from a few modest threads here and there, not much fuss was made. Strangely, on K&KA, the home of OSRIC, it's completion barely rated a mention. I don't understand this. Some of these guys worked on this thing for years, you'd think they'd be a tad more excited.

Only yesterday I went to YourGamesNow to download another copy of OSRIC, as I wanted to see if I had the latest version. Bizarrely, the version on the site is the 2006 - 3 YEAR OLD! - 0.04 release. What's going on there? If people are hearing around the traps the buzz of OSRIC's release and they then find themselves with a three-year old copy, I imagine their enthusiasm for the game won't be high. This honestly stunned me. Don't the OSRIC team want people to have the new version of the game?

Then of course there is the common knowledge that some of the chapters aren't Open Game Content. Obviously there have been a variety of publishers who have produced OSRIC material, but most of that was done on the back of earlier versions of the game. I can't help think that the latest version's non-OGC sections will have an impact on the publishing of further OSRIC products by non-OSRIC affiliated folk. I hope I'm wrong, as I've bought pretty much every OSRIC module and supplement produced so far and plan to keep doing so.

I wonder too, although I could be wrong of course, whether some folks have doubts about OSRIC being a true 1e clone. What I mean by that is a clone being a restatement as close as legally possible to the original game. Some of the same people worked on Swords & Wizardry.There is the belief amongst some that S&W, which comes across as a smorgasbord of rule suggestions, rather than a book of official rules, isn't perhaps as much of a clone as it could've been. So by association, without having read it, I'm guessing some are assuming the same thing of OSRIC. Reading around forums and blogs, there is a quiet murmur from some hoping someone will now release a "true" 1e clone.

All in all, I think there are a range of issues and happenings that perhaps explain the lack of any great explosion of popularity. None of the above is intended as criticism of OSRIC, as I said I haven't actually read it, but just some observations and assumptions I've made, some of which may of course be wildy inaccurate.

[wulfgar22]

All in all...very odd!

I'm glad I'm not the only one surprised by the lack of interest, though, Greyharp...I've felt like a lone voice shouting 'This is brilliant! Check it out!" on the various old school forums...only to be met by a pretty thunderous silence.

Just fyi...in case you didn't know...you can download the most up-to-date version from Lulu (although it's a bit of a slow download...on my decrepit computer, anyway).

I also heard that you can (or will be able to) pick up OSRIC from amazon.com and that the international shipping should be cheaper....hopefully, including to Oz. Luckily for me, rates to Europe are now very reasonable...I paid £6 (US$9).

[greyharp]

I'll end up with a copy one day, but it'll have to wait till I get some birthday or Christmas money. ;D

[Jason Vey]

I actually am one of those people who was disappointed with how much of a clone S&W is not. It's a fine game, very solid and looks fun and old-school...but I just don't see it as the second coming of OD&D as it's been hailed. I was hoping for a book that really captured everything about OD&D in one source, that I could put away my OD&D books and use S&W, and I don't see that happening.

OSRIC, OTOH, is indeed a retro-clone of AD&D. It reads, feels, and plays just like AD&D, and 99% of the rules are the same. There are no house rules or suggestions I've noticed, just some omissions (which is to be expected).

Neither of them are as pure as Labyrinth Lord, which is the best of the clone bunch, IMHO, but OSRIC is a close second. I'm a bit surprised myself at the lack of fanfare, and am wondering if they accepted the publication offer that was extended to a lot of the old school publishers...that would explain a lot.

[greyharp]

I feel exactly the same way about S&W. So much so that I lost all enthusiasm for it shortly after release and find myself hoping that someone else will now produce something a lot closer to the original. I'm glad to hear you say OSRIC is 99% 1e Jason, that is good news. Now if the buggers would only learn the art of self-promotion and public relations.

[wulfgar22]

Jul 8, 2009 17:16:57 GMT -5 greyharp said:

Now if the buggers would only learn the art of self-promotion and public relations.

Yeah! I feel I'm doing some of that job for them...

...but I understand that Stuart Marshall passed an almost finished OSRIC (not sure why he couldn't finish it himself) over to Matt Finch to put the finishing touches to and release on Lulu. So with one author unable to work on it and the other busy with Swords & Wizardry perhaps we can understand why OSRIC is an abandoned child...

[benoist]

When talking about Swords & Wizardry, are you guys talking about the Core Book, the White Box version, or both?

I'm asking because I started my campaign with Swords & Wizardry Core and found myself backpedaling from it towards the OD&D rules (by changing back the damage of weapons to all d6s almost instantly, for instance). I have the PDF of S&W White Box and its very close from the original, while not really being the original. It's hard to put into words.

I too have a copy of OSRIC in B&W Hardcover, by the way, and I love it. It's really, really good. There are some differences from AD&D (No monk, no weapon vs. armor table, for instance), but this actually *is*, by and large, AD&D reborn.

[greyharp]

Benoist, since I wrote my above long post back in July, I've read enough now to know that OSRIC has done a good job being a 1e clone (which doesn't change my bewilderment at its lack of promotion). However, I stand by my opinion of S&W (both Core and WB). Some of the differences between the latter clone and the original seem totally unnecessary given the freedom of the OGL. It's a shame, I would've like to have seen the LBB's cloned in much the same way that LL cloned Moldvay. Owning both the originals and copies of S&W, the latter to me feels like a totally different game, although admittedly, given the nature of clones and the ability to take a Word document of the rules and alter them to in any way I see fit, there is nothing to stop me producing a nice, neat, doctored, single-volume copy of the "original" rules (another project of my rather long list of things to do "one day").

[finarvyn]

Oct 4, 2009 17:39:43 GMT -5 benoist said:

I have the PDF of S&W White Box and its very close from the original, while not really being the original. It's hard to put into words.

Well, as the guy who created S&W WhiteBox, I hope you like the overall effect. I was actually trying to capture the spirit of the rules as much or more than the actual letter of the rules. My thought is that gaming had evolved somewhat over 30 years and a rules set should take advantage of this, while trying to remain pretty close to the actual rules at the same time. The second printing will make a few changes that folks really asked for, such as making some of the spell names closer to the original ones.