Leyline Press Blog

This is the next in a series of articles exploring various OSR RPG systems. This week we're taking a look at Mork Borg by Fria Lingan.

METAL is the aesthetic that Mork Borg  oozes, from it’s jagged, black and white art style reminiscent of a death metal album cover to its themes of decay, Vikings and hideous monsters.  The unique style of Mork Borg bleeds into the layout of the rules themselves, with art work splashed across the page and words off kilter as though you’re reading some forbidden manuscript that is oozing from reality.

In respect to the rules it's old school D&D turned up to 11.

Swords & Wizardry (S&W) by Frog God Games is ostensibly a retroclone of Original Dungeons & Dragons. However unlike retroclones such as Old School Essentials it does not attempt to be faithful towards the original system. Instead it both considerably cleans up the original OD&D rules whilst adding various additions of its own. Some of these gleaned from the writers own imagination as well as the long, varied history of Dungeons and Dragons.  It's worth keeping in mind that Original Dungeons & Dragons was not a complete system, it was intended as a toolkit that players would utilise and fill...

This is a series of blogs that will explore the various 'OSR' table top roleplaying games. You can read the previous blog on Old School Essentials here and you can read about some key principles of old school games that bind these titles together here. 

This week we're looking at Mothership a Sci-Fi Horror RPG by Tuesday Knight Games. 

Within Mothership you play as members of a spaceship crew attempting to survive in inhospitable environments crawling with alien monstrosities. Characters further have to contend with other humans twisted by their environment and situations into deadly threats. All this whilst managing their their own internal stress as the increasing weight of their horrifying predicament drives them to panic.  

This blog follows our previous discussion of some tenents of 'old school' RPG play. We are now going to explore the various 'OSR' systems on the tabletop RPG market. To begin we're taking a look at Old School Essentials (OSE) by Necrotic Gnome.

Old School Essentials is a retroclone of the Basic & Expert D&D Rules by Tom Moldvay, published in 1981. These rules were a revision of Holmes Basic and intended to introduce D&D to new players. 

This is the introduction to a series of articles that will comparatively explore the slew of tabletop roleplaying games that have spawned from old school gaming movement. This is often known as the 'OSR' which means 'Old School Revival' or 'Old School Renaissance.'  This article will be discussing some of the key design principles that tie these many varied games together.

These roleplaying games are ostensibly inspired by the original versions of D&D such as original D&D, the Basic & Expert line of D&D as well as AD&D. You can read more about those here.