Great discussion everyone! Here’s my 2 cents: the fantasy OSR ruleset as a concept distinguishes itself for the play style it encourages, like player skills instead of character skills, etc. Any fantasy light rules set could potentially fit any setting once you’ve adapted the item list. The problem arises when it’s time of running an adventure: you either play dungeon crawls in other settings or you need a different type of adventure. I think that the community would really benefit from a set of procedures to run and write scenarios in different settings that don’t support dungeon crawling, but still keeping the OSR play style.
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@jasonabdin already linked to my list if you want to dig in, so let me just mention the most well-known of them:
- Esoteric Enterprises is a fun occult urban fantasy game. Dark Streets & Darker Secrets is also in a similar vein. Arcana Rising is a forgotten gem (based on the sci-fi dungeon crawler Hulks & Horrors), but it’s more straightforward.
- Eldritch Tales is basically Call of Cthulhu powered by Whitebox. Silent Legions is more “generic” cosmic horror (and as usual for other Sine Nomine titles, it has loads of tools for generating your own aliens/cults/elder gods).
- Engines & Empires is steampunk fantasy.
- Ghastly Affair is rules light gothic romance (my personal favourite not-traditionally-OSR-but-recognisably-so game).
- If you’re into military fiction, Ghost Ops OSR is modern black ops, I believe, and Operation Whitebox is WWII stuff (there’s also The Front, but I don’t know much about that one).
- White Lies is an espionage game.
- The most well-known sci-fi game is probably Stars Without Number, but there’s also White Star as well. Plus Tales of the Space Princess, a literal sci-fi dungeon crawler. Solar Blades & Cosmic Spellsis pulpy space opera.
- As for superheroes, there’s Sentinels of Echo City, Guardians, Mystery Men, and Vigilante City.
- BX Mars and Warriors of the Red Planet are inspired by planetary romance.
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Awesome and thank you for the list of rulesets, I’ll have to look into them.
I think the 5-room dungeon might be a contender for a procedure like that. It’s essentially five categories of challenges and some ideas about arranging them. Not tied to a specific location or activity like delving.
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Interesting! I didn’t know about it, thanks for sharing it!
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White star is a lot of fun.
I played in a game where the DM had us use Mothership rules for a play through of Death Frost Doom. It was awesome!
Bloat Games has created 3 OSR games who are not fantasy:
- Survive This!! Zombies (obviously about zombies)
- Survive This!! Dark Places and Demogorgons (inspired by Stranger Things)
- Survive This!! Vigilante City (a vigilante games who work for superheroes)
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this is a really cool and original idea!
Isn’t it? Like, story emerges from OSR play in the same way it does from sports. A bunch of stuff happens, (Ball hits bat, ball is caught, Runner tags and scores, Goblins are encountered, bargined with, etc…) and afterwards we construct story from it. So why shouldn’t we use some of the same tools to play those events out, which can be turned into story after the fact. It’s genius.
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I look forward to seeing what you come up with.
There are a few stabs at this already out there. Take a look at “Guardians” by the folks at Night Owl Workshop or “Mystery Men” by John Slater. Both are on D-T RPG. Eric at Bloat Games has also adapted his Vigilante City to DCC. The beauty of OSR is how easily it all fits together.
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David Baymiller 's blog The OSR Library has done OSR adaptations and rules tweaks for Victorian gaming, Star Wars, Prehistoric Cavemen campaigns, Cthulhu, WWII, Pirates, Westerns, Pulp Adventure, and 80s Slasher Horror - check him out, too.
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Wow, these are awesome! Thanks for sharing.
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Two that I’m surprised to have seen go unmentioned are Mike Davison’s excellent and concise WARBAND! conversion of WH40K, and Jeff Russel’s HERESIES WITHOUT NUMBER. WARBAND!, in particular, gets my dice-hand feeling itchy.
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I’m surprised that nobody has yet mentioned Electric Bastionland or the Ultraviolet Grasslands.
The former keeps much of the same rhythms of OSR games (venture to location, seek treasure, return) but locates everything in a very crowded, urban setting that is also somehow very modern-British. The latter foregrounds trade, movement and weird sci-fi.
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I always thought sci-fi elements are pretty standard in old-school D&D.
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Hmm…you’re right! I suppose it depends on what is considered the ‘fantasy norm of the OSR’. Both EB and UVG are weird fantasy and fantasy sci fi, but i took the topic to mean generic fantasy.
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