If I could combine a whole bunch of games to make the ideal OSR experience, here's how I would personally do it. SETTING: THE NIGHTMARES UNDERNEATH
The Nightmares Underneath has the most brilliant idea for a campaign setting I've ever seen. Essentially, the world of the game is facing encroachment from the Realm of Nightmares, which take the form of themed dungeons. When dungeons appear, evil things and deleterious effects leak out into our world, and normal people begin to suffer, die, vanish or what have you. All the heroes are (for whatever reason) immune to the negative health effects of entering the Nightmare Realm, and so they must join together--whatever else their differences may be--to put an end to these incursions. Every dungeon has a crown (that is, a boss monster) that must be defeated to stop the dungeon from growing, and an anchor (a significant treasure) that must be removed in order to detach it from our world. This ingenious setup not only makes dungeon-crawling a sensible thing for adventurers to do, and not only explains why there are dungeons lying around in the first place, but it also guarantees group cohesion and motivation (they'd be called in to help precisely because folks immune to nightmare damage are the only ones who can), and it also keeps dungeons relatively small (1-2 sessions each, with very little emptiness or filler), while giving ample room for variations on the standard dungeon. What if the crown/boss monster can't be killed, and must be "defeated" some other way? What if it's a swarm instead of a single creature? What if the anchor/treasure is too heavy to move, or is unusually fragile, or is divided into many parts across several rooms? It's a simple idea with a lot of ways to tweak it. Throw in the fact that there are also rules for developing the players' reputation in their home town (rewarding players for using their wealth to improve others' lives), and the fact that the world itself is not a standard European-inspired Forgotten Realms clone (it's more of a steampunk-adjacent Arabian Nights setting), and you've got a genuinely interesting world I would love to help players explore.
CHARACTER CREATION, TASK RESOLUTION, & LEVELING: KNAVE
Knave does so many things so well it's astonishing to realize it's only 7 pages of rules. Here are the parts I especially love:
1. Stat Generation. Players roll 3d6 and take the lowest single die result (usually a 1). Add ten to this to get the actual stat (usually 11). The bonus for the stat is the stat minus 10. Most players will start the game with a series of 11s and 12s, meaning they'll have a +1 or +2 on relevant skill rolls. As players gain levels, they add points to their stats--a simple, elegant, and class-neutral way to make all players more powerful as they rise in level.
2. Classless System. Players have a number of equipment slots equal to their Constitution. Heavy things like armor and two-handed weapons take up multiple slots. Spells are all cast from bulky spellbooks (or potions or runestones or what have you) that anyone can use. But each spellbook contains a single spell that can be used once per day and which takes up an entire slot. As a result, players tend to be characterized by what they're carrying. It's very Skyrim. 3. Player-Facing Resolution. Because of the way the math works in this system, you can have players roll for their armor against an opponent's attack value (instead of the GM rolling an attack against a PC's armor), so the GM never needs to roll dice. This is exceptionally helpful in an OSR game where high risk and potential lethality is desirable, and no one can blame the GM for fudging something.
ADDITIONAL COMBAT AND TASK RESOLUTION: INTO THE ODD
Into the Odd does two things that speed things up beautifully. First, you don't make attack rolls; everyone always hits, and the only question is how much damage you do. (The PCs almost always have initiative and get to choose whether to engage an opponent.) Second, you never roll for perception or detection, but simply reward good questions with accurate information. As creator Chris McDowall notes, rolling whether to detect a trap or not isn't nearly as interesting as knowing a trap is there and figuring out a way around it. It makes combat simpler and faster than anything else, which also allows the focus of dungeons to be more on exploration and creative thinking.
MAGIC SYSTEM: THE NAMELESS GRIMOIRE (NIGHTMARES UNDERNEATH) AND/OR WONDER AND WICKEDNESS
The Nameless Grimoire and Wonder and Wickedness are two truly fun books that pull off the tricky balancing act of making magic strange and alien without making it silly or gonzo. Everyone's taste is different, of course, but I personally want magic to feel like something I might read in a serious novel. Some of the weirder spells in some OSR games feel either too science-fictiony for me (like Into the Odd's Heat Ray arcanum) or too absurd (like many of Knave's randomly rolled levelless spells) or both (like pretty much everything Dungeon Crawl Classics puts out--sorry, DCC! Love your work, but you're not quite my genre.).
The Nameless Grimoire has wonderful spells and exciting background details (if you want to be a warlock, you've got a LOT of options), but for simple spell lists I think I give a slight edge to Wonder and Wickedness, which has a smaller and more manageable number of spells and spell colleges, and the (for me) preferable feature of the spells all being levelless and easily randomized. The Nameless Grimore has all the cool magic items, though!
ADDITIONAL DETAILS: FIVE TORCHES DEEP
Five Torches Deep s lovely clean through, but if I'm letting it have a support role here, I'd note that it does a few tiny smart things I'd love to add to a Knave/Nightmares-based campaign:
1. Every Stat Matters. Folowing FTD's example, I'd make the CHA bonus determine your maximum number of attuned magic items, let the CON stat be the maximum number of hours you can handle in a dungeon, and use the INT-for-Supply rules (see below). Probably a few other things, too. (For example, I love the single roll that determines if and how you get injured between dungeon and home base when you're running back to recharge.)
2. Player Abilities. Although I like the classless, anyone-can-use-magic system of Knave, it also seems important to allow players to personalize their characters with special abilities, and Five Torches Deep has a lovely and discrete set of lists players can choose from every two or three levels.
3. Supply. Instead of tracking every single thing a player owns, FTD has a Supply stat (based on INT) that can be used to produce new ammo, new torches, a handy spike or rope, et cetera. But it gets used up no matter what you're using it for, so
4. Magic Requires a Success Roll. You can cast a spell as many times as you want...as long as you succeed at the DC check to cast it in the first place. A critical failure is quite catastrophic, which is the most fun you can have with magic!
OPTIONAL ENCOUNTER MANAGEMENT: INDEX CARD RPG
Finally, I'd love to try the rule from ICRPG that gives every room an encounter level (usually from 11 to 16) that establishes the Difficulty Class/target number for everything that happens in that room. If the encounter is a Level 13 encounter, everything is a 13: the targets' armor class, the lock on the gate, the roll to climb over the gate, any spells you want to cast...all of it. I understand that it might beggar believability a little, but it might be worth it for the way it simplifies and speeds things up. FINAL NOTES
I realize that some of these notions are actually self-contradictory. How can you set an encounter difficulty if no one actually rolls to hit? Are spells levelless or not? Can you cast spells once per day or unlimited times with sufficient success? This is simply an initial inquiry done mostly to help organize my own thinking. I'll work out the details later if I ever get an interested OSR group going.
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