Can anybody break down the "best" OSR systems out there...

Can anybody break down the "best" OSR systems out there? I looked through the OSR resource thread and I'm more than little overwhelmed by all that I saw.

What do you mean by "best"? Most faithful retro clone? Grooviest house rules?

When you say OSR, are you talking about stuff that's actually been published as part of the revival (2004 or later) or vintage D&D systems?

I'm happy to help, but say more about what you want.

Best TSR is Moldvay/Cook's Basic/Expert sets, aka B/X.

Best OSR is subjective, though. And pretty much anything that's OSR is compatible with everything else, so it's more "pick the set of houserules you like the best and go with it."

Popular choices are:
B/X, because it's easy to learn, lean and well designed. Basically the Gold Standard of the OSR.
Labyrinth Lord is pretty much a straight B/X clone, but it has an Advanced Edition Companion that lets you take the AD&D bits you like and bolt them on.
LotFP does a weird horror/metal thing in its modules, but its core rules are mainly B/X with better encumbrance rules and a nice take on a thief replacement. Its core rules are free.
ACKS puts a lot of emphasis on the high level domain game that was not well fleshed out by B/X. Personally I prefer the way it was done in An Echo Resounding for Labyrinth lord, though.
Basic Fantasy is a B/X clone which adds a few minor houserules. Its core rules are free.

Part of the revival and best original rules. I'm looking for the spirit more than a clone of D&D 1st edition.

Reading LotFP right now and it seems pretty neato. The default setting is not really my bag but it’s still got elves and halflings and dwarves if you wanna use those. Replacing thief with a generic skillmonkey class is probably a good thing if you play with idiots that think rogue means ”greedy and steals from the party”. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt excited about the idea of tracking encumberance before now.

Disclaimer: I haven’t read many other OSR or TSR systems in detail.

Yeah, it's my favorite of the modern clones. It knows what it wants to do and it does it, I respect that.
The specialist can fill in for a lot of other classes just by picking the right skillsets. And it's easy to extend if you want to add more skills. I dig it.

As for encumbrance, one of the big gameplay challenges in Basic was always "how much of this big pile of treasure do we want to try to get out of the dungeon?" where the more you carried, the slower you move, and thus the more wandering monsters you were going to run into before you hit the surface. (and it's harder to talk your way out of a fight when you've got a ton of that shiny stuff with you -- every monster knows you gotta decorate your lair with some of that if you wanna look good for the harpies)
Having encumbrance rules that don't also encumber the game is a big improvement for that whole deal.

I really like the Sine Nomine games (Stars Without Number, Silent Legions, Godbound, etc) because they do something new and interesting instead of regurgitating tired fantasy cliches.

If you have played 3.5 or 5e dnd, basic fantasy is going to be the easy entry point

if you like weird fantasy go for LOTFP

DCC is also good

ACKs and Sword and Sorcery

But that’s haram to the osr taliban.

Welcome aboard the OSR train. I like LotFP for the rules, there's nothing really except some spells that actually are weird fantasy. It's a nice take on B/x

It is not, cease your butthurt already.

SWN really nailed what I consider to be an OSR mechanic. 2d6 for skills and d20 for combat is a great way to encourage non-combat solutions because they are reliable and not as wild.

what do you want the system to run? Answer that and I can give better reccomendations.
Personally, I'm partial to LotFP myself.

...really, though, the 'best' OSR system is 'a frankenstein of the bits you like from lots of different games all spliced together to suit what you want the game to do'. Because that's the best thing about OSR: the homebrew culture.

Funny thing is the 2d6 skill system is not OSR/TSR in origin, it's borrowed from Traveller.

I really, really like how The Black Hack simplified all the math, so I'm going to go ahead and mention that.

Depends on your definition of OSR, I suppose. Traveller is definitely old school.

Traveller is old-school but not OSR.

I don't think Traveller is OSR under any definition. The usual ones are the playstyle (which is all about dungeon-crawling, resource managing and all) and rules compatibility, which is the only really useful definition -- "You can use this with anything else that's labeled TSR or OSR."
Neither fits Traveller, although it is very old school in many ways, and has a lot of similarity in its gaming ethos, especially Classic Traveller.

Best TSR is Mentzer Basic & Expert. It's nearly the same as Moldvay/Cook, except that it actually lets magic-users add spells to their spell-books.

Alternatively, one can play Labyrinth Lord (which also fixes the magic-user) and just delay the cleric's spell progression by one level. The effect is pretty much the same.

Mentzer screws up the thief's skill progression though.
We always either handwaved the spell-book addition thing or used the AD&D rules depending on who was DMing and how much he cared.

BFRPG is my fav 'classic D&D' retroclone. It has tons of supplements.
LotFP has the best "thief", encumbrance and layout.
DCC has the best take on the original classes and magic.
- MCC is Gamma World meets DCC.
- The Umerican Survival Guide is DCC meets Fallout and Ralph Bakshi's "Wizards".
Fantastic Heroes & Witchery is a wild 'kitchen sink' ruleset.
Labyrinth Lord is the most faithful, but I hate descending armor class.
S&W is fine, but doesn't really bring anything new aside from a single save number.
Mutant Future is Gamma World meets B/X.
AS&SoH is good if you really fuckin' love Conan.
The Black Hack is simplistic to a fault, imo.
Dark Dungeons is basically Rules Cyclopedia with a terrible layout.

Most OSR games are essentially a tweaked / house-ruled version of an original TSR edition. So different games based on a particular edition are usually pretty similar, and which one you prefer may come down to just one or two tweaks. (Do you prefer ascending to descending AC? Do you prefer to divide race and class? Etc.) There's really not much difference between Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, and Moldvay Basic, for instance. I personally hate it when all spells are listed together in alphabetical order (instead of organizing them by level), so that right there makes me prefer Moldvay Basic over the other two, but rule-wise, the systems are 99% the same.

Really, I think the best way to approach OSR games is to get a basic understanding of the original editions and then just figure out what the various retroclones change around.

>Mentzer screws up the thief's skill progression though.
Well, it further screws them up. Thief skills were already pathetic, but Mentzer makes them even pathetic-er. Honestly, my main complaint with Mentzer Basic is that the organization is fucking atrocious. Rule-wise, it's mostly the same as Moldvay though. Mostly.

The one that I am working on currently. Plan for it to be 30 pages. Got about 10 written so far.

Everybody always says that, but…

Yeah. Here's what Mentzer's expert set does. It starts off the same, but Mentzer wanted to add extra levels above the 14 of Moldvay/Cook, and instead of figuring out something to give high level thieves, he just stretched the top level of the thief skills out to level 36, which took thieves, already a rather weak class, and made them that much weaker.
14th level Hide in Shadows goes from 99% to 56%, hooray.

Huh. None of my copies of Mentzer Expert have that.

Sure you're not looking at Cook Expert?

Don't be obtuse.

Also, this:
In case you weren't paying attention the first time, top table in the Souvenir font is from Cook, bottom table with the Book Antiqua font is from Mentzer.

>Don't be obtuse.

I'm not the one posting what appears to be Cook's tables and claiming they're Mentzer's.
I just figured maybe you clicked on the wrong pdf and didn't realize it. If your book says it's Mentzer, I suspect it's been edited by some well-meaning person to "fix" Mentzer's changes to thieves.

Here's the list from Mentzer's Master set, notice that it again gives 56% for Hide in Shadows at level 14.

The original print of Mentzer Expert retained the Moldvay progression. I suppose that once they started contemplating a Companion Set, they realized they had nowhere to go once thieves had maxed their shit out, and went back and changed shit in every subsequent print (which comprise the vast majority of Expert books out there, and the only ones consistent with later sets).

Ah, that's a bit of trivia I guess neither of us knew!

If you've got a light-blue Expert, that's got the revised thief stat. If it's darker blue... I can't remember if it's all original stats, or if some of them are original and some are revised. But I'm pretty sure about the lighter blue all being revised.

Damn the art was really good back then.