Old-School Essentials vs Shadowdark RPG
Compare Old-School Essentials and Shadowdark RPG side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Old-School Essentials | Shadowdark RPG | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy |
| Tags | Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Deadly, Sandbox, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Tables, Vancian Casting, Strong GM Support | Deadly, Dungeon Crawl, Rules-Light, Theater of the Mind, Roll to Cast, Random Tables, Resource Management, Inventory Management, Random Character Creation, Strong GM Support |
| Core Mechanic | 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. | Roll a d20 plus the relevant stat modifier and meet or beat the difficulty class or Armor Class. Advantage and disadvantage use two rolls and keep the better or worse result. |
| Dice | d20 | d20 |
| Complexity | Low | Low |
| Accessibility | Very High | High |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | OGL 1.0a | Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License Version 1.1 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license | Commercial publishing allowed — Shadowdark RPG Third-Party License |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | $ |
| Publisher | Necrotic Gnome | The Arcane Library |
| Year | 2019 | 2023 |
| Languages | English, Italian, Spanish, French, Czech, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean | English, French, Italian, Portuguese |
| Best For | Groups who want treasure-driven dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns with fragile starting characters. | Groups who want dangerous dungeon expeditions driven by resource choices and player ingenuity. Suits campaigns where recovering treasure matters more than defeating every monster. |
| Highlights | 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. | Torches burn for one hour of real time, putting a time limit on dungeon exploration. Gear slots make carrying treasure compete with supplies needed to survive the return trip. Procedural generators let the GM create dungeons and encounters during play. |
| Considerations | 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. | Low starting hit points make a few successful attacks potentially fatal. Class talents are rolled at odd-numbered levels, limiting control over advancement. Social interaction relies mainly on spoken arguments and GM judgment rather than a dedicated conflict subsystem. |