What do you think?
Rate this book
Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy Player’s Tome
The essential old-school game of fantastic adventure, monsters, and magic — expanded with advanced character options and spells!
Complete Player's Tome
This book contains the complete game rules, 13 fantastic classes (acrobat, assassin, barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, illusionist, knight, magic-user, paladin, ranger, thief), 10 classic races (drow, duergar, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, human, svirfneblin), full equipment lists, and over 200 weird and wonderful spells (complete cleric, druid, illusionist, and magic-user spell lists).
Simple rules let imagination and fast-paced action take the spotlight.
Clear, modern presentation makes the game easy to learn and quick to reference.
Compatible with decades of classic adventures and supplements.
Referees Also Require the Companion Tome
Referees also require the companion book, the Advanced Fantasy Referee’s Tome.
Classic Fantasy or Advanced Fantasy?
Old-School Essentials comes in two flavours: Classic Fantasy (based on the 1981 Basic/Expert rules) and Advanced Fantasy (the same game, massively expanded with content inspired by the 1970s Advanced 1st Edition rules).
This book includes everything from the Classic Fantasy Player’s Rules Tome plus the Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules and Druid and Illusionist Spells supplements!
Complete Player's Tome
This book contains the complete game rules, 13 fantastic classes (acrobat, assassin, barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, illusionist, knight, magic-user, paladin, ranger, thief), 10 classic races (drow, duergar, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, human, svirfneblin), full equipment lists, and over 200 weird and wonderful spells (complete cleric, druid, illusionist, and magic-user spell lists).
Simple rules let imagination and fast-paced action take the spotlight.
Clear, modern presentation makes the game easy to learn and quick to reference.
Compatible with decades of classic adventures and supplements.
Referees Also Require the Companion Tome
Referees also require the companion book, the Advanced Fantasy Referee’s Tome.
Classic Fantasy or Advanced Fantasy?
Old-School Essentials comes in two flavours: Classic Fantasy (based on the 1981 Basic/Expert rules) and Advanced Fantasy (the same game, massively expanded with content inspired by the 1970s Advanced 1st Edition rules).
This book includes everything from the Classic Fantasy Player’s Rules Tome plus the Advanced Fantasy Genre Rules and Druid and Illusionist Spells supplements!
248 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2020
4 people are currently reading
25 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
April 3, 2025
A well organized clone of BX D&D, with tons of cool options, but certainly a different game than modern dnd
August 7, 2024
A BX inspired book that has some AD&D ideas like race & class divide and a bunch more classes and spells than the Classic Fantasy version of the game.
Like with all OSE books, the biggest selling point is the layout and editing. It is really tidy, easy to find what you are looking for, well written rules and illustration inserts and text air is just perfection. It might not be a page turner when it comes to just reading, so if you want a big wordy book this won't be it.
The game plays out just like I want OSR to play out and this book pretty much has all the options I normally want (and the ones that didn't have shown up in Carcass Crawlers). If I had to pick at something, it would be some spell bloat and it didn't stop my eyes rolling at the illusion spells. But that's just personal preference in the end.
I seriously doubt I will ever pick up an rpg rulebook that covers both my gaming need and layout need to the same extent again, unless they are pulling a Shohei Ohtani on the Dolmenwood books.
Like with all OSE books, the biggest selling point is the layout and editing. It is really tidy, easy to find what you are looking for, well written rules and illustration inserts and text air is just perfection. It might not be a page turner when it comes to just reading, so if you want a big wordy book this won't be it.
The game plays out just like I want OSR to play out and this book pretty much has all the options I normally want (and the ones that didn't have shown up in Carcass Crawlers). If I had to pick at something, it would be some spell bloat and it didn't stop my eyes rolling at the illusion spells. But that's just personal preference in the end.
I seriously doubt I will ever pick up an rpg rulebook that covers both my gaming need and layout need to the same extent again, unless they are pulling a Shohei Ohtani on the Dolmenwood books.
August 19, 2021
This adapts the classes, races, spells, and other player facing rules of first edition AD&D to the scale and mechanics of the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh edition of Basic/Expert D&D, contrasting with Labyrinth Lord: Revised, Advanced Edition Companion, and Advanced Labyrinth Lord, which does it the other way around and adapts the B/X rules to the scale of first edition AD&D.
I must admit I miss the monk, and the two Hit Dice at first level of the Ranger from AD&D 1E, but I suppose the former is out because of the common perception that it doesn't thematically fit the pseudo-medieval setting of most D&D games, and the latter is part of adapting to the scale of B/X.
The OSE Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome is another excellent presentation of the classic rules in a well designed and sturdy hard back book. I'm impressed with the organization and clarity of the presentation. I think that this is an excellent choice for someone new to D&D to learn the classic player rules.
I must admit I miss the monk, and the two Hit Dice at first level of the Ranger from AD&D 1E, but I suppose the former is out because of the common perception that it doesn't thematically fit the pseudo-medieval setting of most D&D games, and the latter is part of adapting to the scale of B/X.
The OSE Advanced Fantasy Player's Tome is another excellent presentation of the classic rules in a well designed and sturdy hard back book. I'm impressed with the organization and clarity of the presentation. I think that this is an excellent choice for someone new to D&D to learn the classic player rules.
June 1, 2021
Good if you are after a very simple BX version of AD&D, but misses a lot of what makes 1E great. Also cool that you can easily use it with the normal BX etc stuff if you want a little bit more character complexity
December 4, 2022
Prefect if your trying to figure out how many D4 enemies can get caught by a sleep spell and whether a save against spell is possible/necessary. Really a good thing to have on no matter what you’re up to these days…Thanks for the gift Steven
May 23, 2022
By far the best and easiest version of the BX Rules to use.
October 1, 2023
A good summary of the original but very clear what positive changes have been made since
January 14, 2026
Sistema di gioco clamoroso, pubblicazione curatissima.
July 29, 2023
Much better than the previous advanced companion that was released for OSE. My favorite thing about this is how they give you tools to fix some of the things that are most complained about or house ruled in standard advanced games (race restrictions and multi-classing come to mind).
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews