A Review of The Into The Odd rpg System For Your Old School Post Industrial Campaigns

I received the Into the Odd Rpg as part of a Christmas gift haul that a friend brought over to my place on Christmas eve.Into the Odd – 48 pages of postindustrial adventures, horrific hazards, and cosmic meddling, written by Chris McDowall.  This is a horrific little romp through post industrial ruins and there's lots of down in the dungeon survival horror action in forty eight pages. There's an extremely active community on G+.
GRAB IT RIGHT HERE

Into The Odd  by Chris McDowall. and company is about as minimal OSR dungeon and ruin exploration as you can get. This is what a third wave OSR title looks like and yet it owes very little to D&D on the whole. It has everything you  might need under one cover and even has its own campaign setting baked right into the book. Everything from the ground up is quick and fast survival horror with a old school  style twist but its not. Here's the overview from the website.  "Into the Odd contains everything you need to create a character and explore an industrial world of cosmic meddlers and horrific hazards. This is a fast, simple game, to challenge your wits rather than your understanding of complex rules.

You seek Arcana, strange devices hosting unnatural powers beyond technology. They range from the smallest ring to vast machines, with powers from petty to godlike. Beside these unnatural items that they may acquire, your characters remain grounded as mortals in constant danger.

The game is 48 pages, containing:

Original artwork from Jeremy Duncan, Levi Kornelsen, and others.

The fastest character creation out there, getting you playing as soon as possible.

Player rules that fit on a single page, keeping a focus on exploration, problem solving, and fast, deadly combat.

The complete guide to running the game as Referee. From making the most of the rules to creating your own monsters and Arcana.
Sample monsters, arcanum, traps, and hazards"
This is a very well done game and there is a lot to recommend it if you a.Don't have time for a ton of the old school crunch and b. want to set up a campaign where David Lynich meets Dickens for tea and your adventurers are staring down occult cosmic dread in the middle of a dungeon.  So what makes the game so great? Well its pretty much less prep time then you might have for other old school rpgs. The take down for a campaign might be as long as players and the DM might like. Over all I liked the game and might run a game or two but this isn't going to replace my old school games weekly games. This is a great game for pick ups when you want to run something really different and need an old school replacement. Mick Reddick

over on Google plus has written a great little gem of an adventure called Tom Foolery that has some great concepts in it.
In addition there are some sold fan support materials in the form of  Odditional materials

which is well worth the time and energy for download for the sheer genius of some of the ideas in the book! I would definitely throw the folks at Lost Pages a few shekels for this genius download.


Why I like Into The Odd, it creates sound occult and weird  reasons for adventuring and makes whole of play and solid ruin exploration far more dangerous then many would expect. It does this with a style and grace of game design that I don't see too often. On the whole a great little game to have as part of a DM's tool box! five out of five for Into The Odd