For the sake of clarity Advanced OSE is not a faithful reaction of AD&D (the way Classic OSE is of 1981 BX D&D) and is neither targeted to not particularly appealing and suitable for people who are familiar with and like AD&D. It’s a bunch of AD&D-inspired content (races, classes, magic items, monsters) re-written to be fully compatible with BX D&D, so lower-powered and simplified with a lot of the quirky flavor and detail left out. Probably most significantly, while it adds new spells for the new classes (druid and illusionist) it does not add the magic-user and cleric spells from AD&D that are not in BX - so no burning hands, erase, find familiar, grease, identify, shocking grasp, spider climb, unseen servant, command, sanctuary, and literally hundreds of other spells (including all of the high level spells since Advanced OSE still tops out at 14th level, with a max of 6th level spells for magic-users and illusionists and 5th level for clerics and druids).
I acknowledge that there’s a market niche for this kind of game - basically “BX+,” probably something like the original Companion set might have been (before Frank Mentzer took things in a different direction) but it doesn’t speak to me at all and trying to play it would be a constant stream of frustration and annoyance for me.
It especially irks me because while OSRIC was good for it’s time, 15 years later it’s definitely showing its age - both in terms of its “enthusiastic amateur” presentation and all of the minor rules differences and omissions that were felt to be necessary at the time but not any more (if OSE Classic can reproduce the rules of BX D&D 100% faithfully there’s absolutely room for something closer to AD&D than OSRIC). Necrotic Gnome could have done a faithful recreation of AD&D, but decided instead to do something very different (and IMO worse).
I acknowledge that there’s a market niche for this kind of game - basically “BX+,” probably something like the original Companion set might have been (before Frank Mentzer took things in a different direction) but it doesn’t speak to me at all and trying to play it would be a constant stream of frustration and annoyance for me.
It especially irks me because while OSRIC was good for it’s time, 15 years later it’s definitely showing its age - both in terms of its “enthusiastic amateur” presentation and all of the minor rules differences and omissions that were felt to be necessary at the time but not any more (if OSE Classic can reproduce the rules of BX D&D 100% faithfully there’s absolutely room for something closer to AD&D than OSRIC). Necrotic Gnome could have done a faithful recreation of AD&D, but decided instead to do something very different (and IMO worse).