Cleric and Magic-User Spells for Old School Essentials

"Old School Essentials - Cleric and Magic User Spells" by Gavin Norman Published and Distributed by Necrotic Gnome ISBN-13: 978-3-96657-008-4 -- 48 Pages The Third Book of the Retro Adventure Game Books

There is currently a revival of "Old School" type rules for Dungeons and Dragons. I've bought and/or looked at and/or played and/or ran several of them, and this is one of the better ones!

This remake takes the old Tom Moldvay Basic and Expert ("B/X") rules, and dissects them into five Retro Adventure Rulebooks. This volume is available separately and as part of a great boxed set! This book covers the Genre Rules for Spells within Necrotic Gnome's Fantasy Retro Adventure Game.

As it says on the cover, the large majority of this book is to give Clerics and Magic-Users the spells that they can use. The Cleric section gives players up to 5th Level Spells, and Magic-Users up to 6th Level Spells. A very handy Spell list at the front of the main part of the book shows a list of the Spells available for each class.

After a two-page spread picture, it gets right into the spell names and descriptions. Including the reversible spells, Clerics get 43 spells, and Magic-Users get 78 spells.
Now, here's a section that really appeals to me! I frequently play some type of magic-user, and an overview of this section shows it to be almost verbatim from the B/X rules. If you want to run an old school type of campaign, you have to look at this book, and, for that matter, this whole system!

The Open Gaming License and a handy index of Spells complete this work.

Once again, Necrotic Gnome packed this book as full as they could get! Even the inside front cover, and the inside back cover have important tables for easy access!

I've played other games, and I've been gaming for over 40 years! I started in 1976 with what is commonly known as "The Little White Box" which contained four digest-sized booklets: 1) "Men and Magic", 2) "Monsters and Treasures", and 3) "Underground and Wilderness", and a small white pamphlet with necessary tables repeated. I feel my experiences with gaming and role-playing in particular, gives me memories of the game as it was originally published, and thus real life experiences to use in this review.

I supported this through Necrotic Gnome's Kickstarter, and also received a module for the adventurers to explore called "The Hole in the Oak". Right now, I cannot think of a better retro-clone of older D&D. It reminds me of the original red booklet which was one of the first types of first edition. Highly Recommended.