Old-School Essentials Online Tools and SRD

My 2nd favorite incarnation, OSE, of my favorite D&D rule set, B/X.  [My 1st favorite is Necrotic Gnome's previous, B/X Essentials, cause it was soft backed, handier and cheaper.]  Have released the Old-School Essentials SRD (System Reference Document)  And a slew of cross-linked  Treasure, Encounter, Spell, Magic Item, Retainer OSE generators.

The /r/osr announcement.

Generators include:

• B/X Treasure by treasure type.
• B/X Treasure by dungeon level.
• Loots at end of treasure map.
• B/X Encounters by dungeon level.
• B/X Encounter by terrain type.
• B/X adventuring parties, including the special types of party led by a high-level cleric, fighter, or magic-user.
• B/X Memorized spells by character class and level.
• B/X Magic items, including sentient swords.
• B/X Retainers by level including level ranges (1d6) !!! Really this is excellent for generating any kind of leveled NPC.

These generators are cross-linked with the Old-School Essentials SRD.  Optimised for desktop, mobile, and tablet. Formated for Cut and Paste.

My initial review, Necrotic Gnome have rolled a nat 20!

VR Digital Table Top

Been lot of OSR / Nostalgia posts here recently. Just to show I'm also hip to new fangled things too.

Virtual Reality isn't as smooth and effortless as other digital tools / aides.  But my neither was my IBM 286 clone nor was my high school's Apple ][ I used to program a robot arm.

[Guest Post by my friend and game buddy, Steven Clark]

I've spent the past two weeks exploring an old PLATO mainframe that is publicly run, called "cyber1". Not sure if any of you are familiar with these, but these system were created in 1960, and widespread through Universities throughout the 70's. They finally went away sometime in the late 80's.

Why you might be interested in getting a log-in and trying out this system is that some of the earliest D&D games were written for them starting in 1974, up until about 1984. The graphical simplicity hides some pretty complex and deep simulations going on as well; and the way these games approach their subjects is novel in many of the same ways as OD&D is novel compared modern RPG's; the most successful elements have been rehashed and reimagined to death in modern games, but there is some true creativity in this old stuff.

I made a video on PLATO Terminal to pique interest.

The mainframe functions much as a BBS would; the "notes" lesson (program) is used as a bulletin board. It can be access through the internet via a PLATO terminal emulator.

http://www.cyber1.org

Steven Clark