Dive Into Old-School Essentials Fantasy Roleplaying On Kickstarter
March 17, 2022 by brennon
Exalted Funeral is currently on Kickstarter looking to fund their Old-School Essentials Fantasy RPG collection, giving you a chance to dive into a bit of classic adventuring whilst enjoying updated and modern design ideas.
Old-School Essentials Classic Fantasy // Exalted Funeral
The main focus of this Kickstarter is to create the two slipcase sets that you see above. The first of these is the Classic Game Set which offers up five books to get you started with this old-school inspired roleplaying game, reminiscent of Dungeons & Dragons of old.
Classic Game Set // Old-School Essential Classic Fantasy
The Classic Game Set comes with a book for Characters, Magic, Adventures, Monsters and Treasures. This breaks down into seven classic classes to play as, 100 or so spells, 200 monsters to battle and 150 magic items to loot.
The focus shifts towards players having to make good decisions when it comes to their adventuring and exploration. Traps and combat encounters are not fair and overcoming them is going to be an exercise in cooperation and quick thinking in the heat of the moment. Rules are also included to match classic ways of calculating the likes of Armour Class, Initiative and Damage but you will also find more updated options in there too.
Expanding on this, you've also got the Advanced Expansion Set.
Advanced Expansion Set // Old-School Essential Classic Fantasy
This set doesn't contain more adventures to play (you already have loads of those!) but nine new character classes, 100 new spells for those classes, 120 monsters and 150 new treasures. So, if you want to dive into more options for gameplay then this is what you'd want to turn your attention to.
All of these rules are based on the classic 1970s and 80s roleplaying games that inspired so many. If this is the way that you like to dive into your adventuring on the tabletop then you might find this taking you down nostalgia alley.
Every single one of the books that you see above can then be combined into the Ultimate Dungeon Bundle that comes with seven adventures for you to play
Ultimate Dungeon Bundle // Old-School Essential Classic Fantasy
Stretch Goals and such for this project are being used to enhance the experience offered through these books. You will find new monsters, art and accessories being unlocked by backers of this campaign, adding to this rather fun passion project.
I think this is going to be a great option for those who love this old-school way of roleplaying at the tabletop. I think it's well worth diving into the Kickstarter itself to see some of the ways they have updated the interior artwork and layout which makes it a lot nicer of an experience to read these books than "back in the day".
If you want to maybe give things a go for free, you can check out these downloads from Necrotic Gnome.
Are you tempted to give this a go?
Love the design but a shipping rate guess-timate for EU of 15 – 44USD for a 60USD pledge… Nope. :S
Just buy the original AD&D 1st edition pdf’s and have them printed and bound?
I’ll see some video’s first on game play.
There seem to be a lot of these old school d&d clones out there.
I know it’s where the hobby started for many of us… but the system was not great. Original D&D (and advanced too) was very lethal at low levels and took ages to advance.
It’s gone to the other extreme now… in 5e you gain a level helping an old lady across the road.
If I want old school… I’ve still got my AD&D books.
Swords and Wizardry is a free PDF download from the Frog God site. I’m sure if you search around Drive Thru RPG, or ask on RPG.net forums, you’ll find other free old-school D&D game systems.