On December 16th, I ordered a copy of OSRIC (economy edition) from Lulu. It cost me, in total, under $US25.00, including postage and handling. Pretty good value for a 400 page letter-size book, and not much more than what I paid for the AD&D PHB alone back in 1982. The "economy" version differs from the "softcover" version only in having no interior colour.
It arrived in pretty timely fashion; a couple of weeks in total from the day I ordered it. I have had faster delivery times from the US, but not without paying an arm and a leg for it.
The paper and print quality is excellent. The cover is nice and shiny, and though it does feel a little flimsier than other softcovers of this size I've bought in the past, it should do the job. Only time will tell how the binding will hold up, I suppose, but it looks and feels OK to me. I honestly don't miss the interior colour at all; in fact I think I prefer having everything in grayscale. Mind you, if there were more of Pete Mullen's colour illustrations in there I might change my mind about that.
There are a few bleed errors on some of the pages; I don't know if that's an issue with the layout not allowing sufficient bleed for full-page printing or if it's a trimming problem at Lulu's end. In any case, it's a minor blemish, and I can live with it.
The back cover was very slightly munched on its bottom edge; the damage is inconsiderable though, less than I'd be likely to inflict on the book in the first month or two of use, and it doesn't worry me in the slightest.
All in all, on first contact I'd give the OSRIC Economy Edition a Highly Commended. I'll be pimping it to all my friends :)
So then: would I actually run or play in a game with OSRIC?
Yes, I would, if I were running or playing in an AD&D1e game (which I'm not, right now — I'm using my bastardized Swords & Wizardry rules).
I have a whole heapin' bunch of AD&D manuals from Ye Olde Tymes of course (from the days before TSR started paying the big bucks for cover art) and I have no doubt I would still cherry-pick some bits and pieces from them — mainly monsters probably. However, those books are, if not actually rare, getting harder and harder to find. OSRIC is a perfect substitute that I can use and abuse to my heart's content without the fear that I might lose or ruin some of my nostalgically precious AD&D books. It has pretty much all the information I'd need 99% of the time, and its organisation is a bit easier to follow than the old books too.
So, would I be playing OSRIC? Hell no. I'd be playing AD&D, using OSRIC as a reference. Which is, I believe, pretty much what it was originally intended for.
Peter---
ReplyDeleteIf you can provide some page references on the bleed errors, we can have Jim take a look at them to make sure they weren't layout issues.
Thanks!
Allan.
Having looked through in more detail, it looks like the whole book has been shifted down in the trimming. In other words, any page which bleeds off the top edge has about a 1.7mm white stripe running across the top of the page, and the bottom page margins throughout are compressed. Definitely a trimming error I'd say.
ReplyDeleteYou could probably ameliorate the issue by increasing bleed, perhaps to as much as 5mm -- that's a lot, but it looks like Lulu's trimming isn't as exact as offset printers, so it might need the extra safety space. It's a nuisance when it comes to images that bleed off the page of course, but them's the breaks.
The specific pages affected in my copy are: xii, xiv, 32-34, 116, 146, 150-152, 187-188, 209, 307-308, 358, 374, and the Afterword.
Even though I am more of a 2e fan, OSRIC is one of my favorite OSR books.
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