Necrotic Gnome and Exalted Funeral have been working on something wondrous. You may have heard rumours that something big is brewing. You may have seen various teasers I've posted. You may even have seen tasty-looking renders of mysteriously nameless products. All will now be revealed!
The Kickstarter pre-launch page is live now—sign up to be notified on launch!
Coming to Kickstarter soon: Old-School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy!
Advanced Fantasy
As part of the Old-School Essentials Kickstarter in 2019, we produced the first two books in the Advanced Fantasy line (Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules and Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells). These two books build on the content of the core Old-School Essentials game, adding new spells and character options inspired by AD&D, all carefully adapted to the power and complexity levels of the Basic/Expert game which OSE is based on.
We're now ready to complete the set, with the addition of a horde of 120 AD&D-inspired monsters and a hoard of 140 AD&D-inspired magic items.
Tomes and Modular Books
All of the Advanced Fantasy content will be available in two forms:
- Modular books: Like a set of slim books to pass around at the table? This is the option for you. The complete set of Advanced Fantasy books consists of the following, building on top of the core Old-School Essentials books in the Black Box: Advanced Fantasy: Genre Rules, Advanced Fantasy: Druid and Illusionist Spells, Advanced Fantasy: Monsters, Advanced Fantasy: Treasures.
- Chunky tomes: Like everything compiled? This is the option for you. The complete Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy game compiled into two massive tomes — one for players and one for referees. Together, these tomes form a complete game, compiling the core Old-School Essentials game with the new Advanced Fantasy material.
(Some people are probably asking at this point "why two tomes? why not put everything in one tome?". The reason is simple: if we compiled all of the player's and referee's content into a single book, it'd be over 2 inches thick. With a digest sized book, this is just unusable.)
So How Many New Books is That?
This will be a monster project! Check out what we're going to produce:
- Advanced Fantasy: Monsters: A 56 page book containing 120 AD&D-inspired monsters statted for Old-School Essentials.
- Advanced Fantasy: Treasures: A 56 page book containing 140 AD&D-inspired magic items statted for Old-School Essentials.
- Advanced Fantasy: Player's Tome: A 240 page tome containing the core rules of the game, 13 character classes, 10 character races (with rules for race-classes and separate race and class), 200+ spells (cleric, druid, illusionist, and magic-user), full lists of equipment, vessels, mounts, and hirelings, and rules for stronghold construction.
- Advanced Fantasy: Referee's Tome: A 250+ page tome (page count not yet finalised) containing 300+ monsters and nearly 300 magic items, along with guidelines for refereeing and adventure design.
What's more, the tomes will be available in two editions: a standard edition and a collector's leatherette / foil-stamped edition.
And That's Not All!
We're also going to produce a set of brand new adventure scenarios for Old-School Essentials! We're engaging a crack team of renowned authors to each write an adventure for OSE. If you've been waiting for more official OSE adventures, the wait will soon be over!
There will also (of course!) be a tantalising selection of stretch goals, add-ons, and extras!
Alright Just Show Me the Pictures!
Ok, here we go. Product mockups!
Standard edition tomes, with art by Peter Mullen.
Collector's edition leatherette tomes, with foil stamp art by Andrew Walter.
Modular books, with art by Stefan Poag. (The cover art for Advanced Fantasy: Treasures isn't quite finished yet, so no mockup of that one.)
When, Where, What, How???
I imagine there may be a lot of questions racing through people's minds right now. We'll be releasing more details over the coming weeks. We don't quite have the launch date for the Kickstarter lined up yet, but it'll be some time in August*. Rest assured, we will blast out updates on this project from the highest towers in all social media platforms!
Follow us to keep up to date:
- Old-School Essentials Facebook group
- Necrotic Gnome Twitter
- Exalted Funeral Twitter
- Necrotic Gnome Discord
- Exalted Funeral Discord
- Necrotic Gnome Facebook
- Exalted Funeral Facebook
(* we're waiting for the big shipment of Necrotic Gnome stock to arrive with Exalted Funeral in the US before we launch into this next project.)
36 comments
Hi Gavin! Very good news you bring! And there are so many questions… and so little space… First of all, are you going to put this on Kickstarter or just skip that part straight to selling it (it’s always nice having some extras when buying) . The deluxe DM Screen will be reissued under this new books or will be fully compatible? (asking before buying it). Also, this will affect the schedule for the Dolmenwood books? (And when will they go on Kickstarter, because I haven’t seen anything on them yet). Could I skip the old Rules Tome and straight buy the new Referees and Players tomes? Finally, your books are amazing.
>Given the ongoing discussions regarding racially insensitive material in D&D, how will you be tacking the more…‘problematic’ monsters?
Speaking about Old-School Essentials in general: the base game (the Classic Fantasy material) is a direct clone of the 1980s Basic/Expert rules. It presents monsters in exactly the same way as they were back then. (Changing anything there would defeat the point of the project, i.e. it would make OSE a new game, rather than a clone.)
About chaotic humanoid monsters: the Basic/Expert rules are very brief/vague in their descriptions of these monsters. Virtually nothing in the way of “ecology” is presented. Are they actual evolved biological species? Are they in any way related to humans or not? Are they the product of insane magical experiments? Were they created by evil gods? Are they supernatural manifestations of hate/greed/violence? It’s undefined and left open to each group to decide how these things work in their campaign world.
About the new Advanced Fantasy monsters: they’re presented in the same way as the Basic/Expert monsters, with the same degree of vagueness regarding their ecology.
Given the ongoing discussions regarding racially insensitive material in D&D, how will you be tacking the more…‘problematic’ monsters?
>Hi Gavin. Will the demons and devils book be part of this or is it going to be pushed back?
The hypothetical book of fiends is much further in the future.
>Are you going to introduce 2ed elements?
In the Advanced Fantasy books? No, they’re purely inspired by 1e.
>Can you do a reasonable OLD-SCHOOL ESSENTIALS adaptation for the weapon mastery concept described at The Rules Cyclopedia?
No plans for anything like that currently.
Hi Gavin. Will the demons and devils book be part of this or is it going to be pushed back? Are you going to introduce 2ed elements?
Apart
Can you do a reasonable OLD-SCHOOL ESSENTIALS adaptation for the weapon mastery concept described at The Rules Cyclopedia?