# [[Old School Essentials]] [site](https://necroticgnome.com/) Old School Essentials is a [[Tabletop Roleplaying Games|TTRPG]] system based on [[Basic Expert D&D]]. It is an [[Old School Revival|OSR]] game that attempts to remain as faithful as possible to Basic/Expert while updating the layout, rewriting some rules for clarity, and adding optional rules that modernize the system. It is widely considered to be the best "retro clone" [[Old School Revival|OSR]] game that is out today. ## What makes it different? ### The layout The Old School Essentials (OSE) rulebooks have probably _the_ best layouts of any TTRPG system I've seen. Every two-page spread has been optimized for looking rules up quickly. The character spreads have everything you could possibly need for each character. The structure of the rulebook is intuitive, visually simplistic but with enough differentiation to find things quickly, and the right things are highlighted to call attention to each section. The rules themselves are succinct and clear. Honestly, if I were going to run or play an OSR game and I wanted to stay mostly faithful to [[Basic Expert D&D]] rules, I would make a beeline for this one _on the basis of the layout alone_. ### Modern alternative rules OSE stays faithful to the rules as written in Basic/Expert, but it also presents the more modern versions of those rules as optional supplements. For example, the [[THAC0]] rule ("To Hit Armor Class 0") is there, but [[Dungeons & Dragons|D&D 5e]]-like attack modifiers are also listed in all the player and monster statblocks. [[Ascending Armor Class]] is described as well. ## Versions ### Classic Fantasy The "Classic" edition of these books are cleaned up versions of the [[Basic Expert D&D]] ruleset. ### Advanced Fantasy The Advanced Fantasy rules are the interpreted version of the Classic rules.