Dungeons & Dragons Basic/Expert vs Old-School Essentials

Compare Dungeons & Dragons Basic/Expert and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Dungeons & Dragons Basic/Expert	Old-School Essentials
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Hexcrawl, Resource Management, Deadly, Vancian Casting, Descending AC, Domain Management, Sandbox, Random Tables	Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support
Core Mechanic	Roll 1d20 with the relevant modifiers and meet or exceed the target shown on the attack or saving-throw table. Attack targets account for the opponent's descending Armor Class.	Attacks roll d20 against an attack matrix or an optional ascending Armour Class target. Saving throws meet a category target on d20. Ability checks roll at or below an ability score on d20.
Dice	d20	d20
Complexity	High	Low
Availability	Paid	Free core rules
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	OGL 1.0a
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	Commercial publishing allowed — Open license
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	TSR Hobbies, Inc.	Necrotic Gnome
Year	1981	2019
Languages	English, French	English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean
Best For	Groups who want dangerous fantasy expeditions built around exploration and managing supplies. Campaigns can grow from dungeon treasure hunts into wilderness travel and ruling a territory.	Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters.
Highlights	Ten-minute dungeon turns make searching and resting consume supplies under wandering-monster pressure. Reaction and morale rolls give encounters outcomes beyond fighting to the death. Stronghold construction and settler taxes turn adventuring wealth into territorial responsibilities.	Treasure recovered from adventures provides most experience points, rewarding successful exploration over fighting alone. Reaction and optional morale rolls let encounters lead to negotiation or flight instead of automatic combat. Stronghold construction and taxation let accumulated wealth support a growing domain.
Considerations	Playing through level 14 requires both the Basic and Expert rulebooks. Class-based advancement offers little customization beyond equipment and spell selection. Characters die at zero hit points, and some failed saves kill them immediately.	Characters die at zero hit points, and failed poison saves are usually fatal. Demihuman characters combine ancestry with class and have lower level limits than human classes. Declared spells are lost if the caster is hit or fails a saving throw before acting.