Mythic Bastionland vs Old-School Essentials
Compare Mythic Bastionland and Old-School Essentials side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Mythic Bastionland | Old-School Essentials | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Rules-Light, Hexcrawl, Exploration, Attacks Always Hit, Domain Management, Sandbox, Atmospheric | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | Attacks always hit: roll weapon damage directly with simultaneous combat. Guard absorbs damage before Virtues (Vigour, Clarity, Spirit). Gambits trigger on 4+ damage rolls for special maneuvers. Omen tables guide myth discovery across hexcrawl exploration. | 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 | d6–d10 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Availability | Free core rules | Free core rules |
| Runnability | 4 of 5 book tools | 5 of 5 book tools |
| License | Proprietary | OGL 1.0a |
| Third-Party Publishing | Not yet researched | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Bastionland Press | Necrotic Gnome |
| Year | 2025 | 2019 |
| Languages | English | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean |
| Best For | Arthurian-style campaigns of knights seeking glory, ruling domains, and hunting strange mythological creatures across a wild realm. Great for groups who want structured hexcrawl play with emergent storytelling. | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. |
| Highlights | Simultaneous combat system, detailed hexcrawl and myth-hunting framework, award-winning layout and art (2025 Ennie Gold), domain management adds campaign depth | 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 | Combat has more procedural steps than it first appears, omen system can feel prescriptive, Arthurian tone limits flexibility, setting context buried deep in the book | 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. |