Heroic House Rules for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons or OSRIC

The OSRIC™ System (Old School System Reference and Index Compilation™) exists as a tool so independent designers can create adventures and expanded content compatible with classic First Edition games. However, those game systems were first published in 1970s and over the last 50 years, many changes to how combat, time, ability scores, skills, spells, and many other elements evolved, changed, and adapted to create more character-centric play actions, adding great depth to player choices, but perhaps excessive complexity.

In this book, I am going to share my Heroic House Rules which I hope you enjoy. Consider this chapter as non-commercial content and opinion.
Heroic House Rules (HHR for short) provides a cohesive set of rule changes for both players and game masters looking for a heroic feel to their First Edition games game, but also enjoy a modern and updated flair to some of the later editions and OGL systems such as 4th Edition and Pathfinder Second Edition and its Remastered version. HHR aims to capture the feel and nostalgia of playing the classic modules and adventures without major changes to enemies, core combat numbers or dice, armor class, or spells, but instead focusses on speed of play, convenience, and infusing a sense of heroism and power to both the enemies and the player characters. HHR characters are powerful masters of their craft, driven by personal narratives and ambitions as if they leapt off the pages of a pulp Sword & Sorcery novels by Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, or Fritz Leiber. They also come from settings many players grew up with or have rediscovered with the rise in popularity in old school role-playing game rules.

The goal of Heroic House Rules is to add a frenetic yet tactical pace to combat while amplifying the heroism of your player characters and their adversaries. The result is the ability to run epic, conflict inundated First Edition game session with less players and incredible degrees of brutal carnage. The beauty of HHR is it plays seamlessly with the endless library of First Edition adventures and sourcebooks with minimal modifications, while adding alternate rules and systems for magic and combat that infuse tactics into the moment-to-moment tabletop experience. I personally ran these rules for decades and my players love them.

Now granted, you could play the original First Edition game with the “rules as written” and the goal is not to merely change things for the sake of changing them, but to modernize the pace and feel of combat without disrupting the core balance. You will find changes to things such as how initiative works, time, movement, spell casting, hit points and so on, with optional rules for spell memorization and combat defense, attacks, and counter attacks all of which do not overpower the players in the face of the enemy, but increase the threat and action on both sides of the battle lines.
With so many rules, a game that evolved into a pillar of gaming history and literally hundreds of thousands of published materials, why change anything? To capture the nostalgia from our childhood while adding modern combat sensibilities without compromising existing content.

This booklet uses trade paperback format (5-1/2” x 8-1/2”) which is inexpensive to print if you enjoy having a physical copy. This format is easy to read on mobile devices in single page view and on laptops in two page view while serving as nostalgic homage to Marc Miller’s Traveller.
One final word here. Remember, these are house rules. I’m not selling you anything. I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m sharing what I found to be fun with the game that changed my life and inspired my career.
Allow me to quote from the Dungeon Master’s Guide on page 9 of the introduction by Gary Gygax,

“The game is the thing, and certain rules can be distorted or disregarded altogether in favor of play.”



T. Elliot Cannon
Version 1.0 updated December 2024