Old School Renaissance General - /osrg/

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Finally getting to proper playtest Ruinations. Did a bit of a freeform hexcrawl using a loose module I'm writing and some Wasteland Garbage tables. Turned out pretty fun. For anyone interested:

‘Dead North’ session recap.

A motley crew, they were: A Wastelander with a battleaxe forged from an Old-World stop sign. An Adept thirsty for sneak attacks. An impossibly old looking, albino Sullied with a penchant for teleportation. Another Wastelander with a taste for bashing faces in with her spiked baseball bat. And a sad vampiric Sullied with translucent skin, able to blast cold energy from her hands.
Walking into the town of Curtain Falls they immediately stumble towards the shady northern bridge-district, Saints Row. After quaffing a few pints of booze (no doubt made from questionable ingredients), they found their way to an enigmatic junk vendor who gladly trades a DVD copy of Snow Dogs 2 for a few feet of chain. Asked where to find work, he directs them to the tower in the center of the market to talk to ‘Big Man’.
Built from stacked buses, trailers and a rail-cars, it was a four story sight to behold. Guarding the entrance is a hardened human guard and his Sullied partner; a mute beast of a Sullied nicknamed Grunt, with one massive, massive arm. Refusing the adventurers entry, the female Sullied reveals a bit of naked, translucent shoulder to Grunt who, for the first time in his miserable life, is utterly smitten. Wrapped around her finger, he bashes the door open to let them in; but not before drawing her a crude map to his home in crayon.
The climb to the top was largely uneventful, save for the female Wastelander trying to perform a ‘magic card trick’ on the guards inside. They were indifferent however and continued on playing a nonsensical card game and smoking.

>>51534292
Bursting through the safety-hatch to the final floor, they see a small, elderly asian woman in a room swathed in ornate rugs, sitting upon pillows drinking delicious smelling tea. She is impossibly calm to the intrusion. They demand to talk to Big Man. “And you are. Now give me one reason I shouldn’t have my men tear you apart? You have 30 seconds.” (Referee pulls out a small hourglass here.)
The adventurers fruitlessly argue or try to make demands. The two Sullied however feel brash. Blasting the tea from her hand with cold energy, the second teleports immediately behind her and catches it; all in under seconds. She cocks an eyebrow. “Perhaps you have use to me after all.”
Telling them of a beached submarine off the coast, 20 miles west, she promises them a reward and a permanent place to stay in Saints Row should they bring her back anything of great value from the sub. They agree, but not before the Adept demands aid in the trip. She provides him with a vial of fine orange crystal powder, it’s use unknown to anyone.
Trekking west, they stop in the Northern Ruins to artifact hunt. A Wastelander finds a decrepit bike which he takes an immediate shine to. Further west, they stumble upon an inorganic monolith in the middle of a swamp, it’s base glowing with writing from an impossible language. The male Sullied touches it but finds his hands fused to the object as his mind is clouded with a vision of an alien world with a dying red sun and a creature attempting to communicate, only to end the transmission in disgust. Trying to use his feet to pry himself off, he finds those fused as well. A last resort of teleporting away finds the flesh from his palms and feet ripped from his body, still stuck to the monolith. Fortunately, a Wastelander used his keen knowledge in bushcraft to find a mutated aloe-Vera plant, soothing these wounds temporarily. Onward they march, disturbed only by a long Mansquito that found itself cleaved in half by a stop sign

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>>51534301
They approach the sub and using cleverness, light 4 torches and place them around the sealed hatch to weaken the metal. A massive bash of the Sullied’s warhammer (a massive monkey-wrench) easily caves the blockade and they shimmy down into a dark tube. They find a Captain’s skeleton adorned in Old-World military uniform surrounded by various bones, ammunition, and Yerba Mate cans (one still pristine). Further brute force in opening a footlocker reveals a small, wired solar-panel and a lovely umbrella. As they collect these goods, they hear quiet rasped whispering: “0-6-1-4-1-9-8-5” over and over as three fish-belly colored hominoids emerge from the shadows. A battle ensues, wherein 2 are slain without much hurrah. The third however, has it’s skull utterly pulped from it’s body when the nail-bat wielding Wastelander scores a critical hit.
A lone console sits, flashing a flickering text input (ala MS-DOS). One adventurer types in the numbers whispered and 3 round hatches open; two empty and one containing a torpedo from the Old-World. Grabbing this incredible find and finding themselves utterly spent, they make camp in the submarine for the night. They discuss their plans: Return this to Big Man for their rewards....or threaten her power by wielding this force of destruction?

To be continued!

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>3/2/1/5
>1 poster

>>51534219
Everyone get in the real new thread

>>>51533178
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>>51534545
/osrg/ is slow, what else is new?

>>>51533178
>>>51533178
>>>51533178

Get in here, don't let these faggots laugh at you. They lure you in claiming it's the new thread then their little faggot balls get all tight and they guffaw.

Don't let them have the last laugh. Post up in the TRUE /osrg/ now.

I miss those Fill the Hexcrawl thingies in these threads, let's bring'em back!

>What's the deal with those ancient stone pillars?

>What lurks in the huge meteor crater beyond the hills?

>What's the truth behind the geoglyph south of town?

Do you use similar rules and aesthetics for all your dungeons or do each of your dungeons have their own specific internal logic and style?

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This again

>>51534703
1. Actually the broken ribs of a massive skeleton. They jut out of the earth bleached by the sun. Over centuries, they have been carved upon by various _________.

2. The, quite literal, dead and rotting body of God.

3. The field itself is trying to send people a message. Perhaps a warning of some kind.

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>>51534493
>You also have to come up with a new edition name
>that's a lot of pressure
Unlike the filename, the edition doesn't have to be clever.
>and a thread question
That goes in the first reply, not the OP.
The next thread is GUARANTEED to copy that by mistake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGp9P6QvMjY
>or else you're a fag.
As a 4Chan user, you area dag either way.
ESPECIALLY if you try to be OP.

>>51534703
>What's the deal with those ancient stone pillars?
1. Ribcage of an (un)dead giant. Sometimes he tries to move.
2. Boners of petrified giants. A cult of fetishists gathers around them.
3. Shell casings that fell from a God's gun. The great gunsmith lives nearby.
4. Pistons in an ancient machinery. If cleaned, oiled, and powered, they can launch people into space.
5. Yard sale of a pillar god. He keeps best ones under the counter.
6. A bunch of nuclear missiles. They are useless due to age, but the local techomancer warlord doesn't know that.

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How do you actually impart a specific kind of feeling to your locales and inspire your players to really see what what it is you want them to see? tl;dr, what makes your dungeons not boring?

What is the one, singular thing above all that can make a game go from OSR to not?

Like, if you took B/X and added ONE thing to make it no longer OSR in spirit, what is that?

>>51535034
Is there more to that comic?

>>51535055
Thieves. jk Player-facing mechanics, specifically fronloaded in chargen, e.g. significant class customizability

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>>51534703
>What's the deal with those ancient stone pillars?
They hold up the sky.
They're taller at the top than at the bottom (a la. Bugarup University).
The used to be part of a palace. A historian (sage) could tell you were to dig to find the dungeon underneath.
The're an elaborate calendar.
Obelisks that fell (and broke) during transportation.
Carven on every stone: "After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I too have known."
A foreign Magic-User commissioned them, "to fix the fēngshuǐ."
>What lurks in the huge meteor crater beyond the hills?
An antlion.
A lightning breathing lion made of steel.
A regular lion.
A rust monster, guarding a stainless steel cooking knife.
A personable blue midget with 7 arms and 7 "wands of death."
30-300 Orcs.
A foreign Magic-User commissioned, "to fix the fēngshuǐ."
>What's the truth behind the geoglyph south of town?
A demon has spent years inciting parts of the ground to erode, inch by inch.
Drunk wizard's apprentices put them there as a joke.
It's a note dropped by a Cloud Giant princess, imprisoned against her will.
If you dig beneath, lo and behold! A dungeon!
They don't think the universe be like it is but it do.
A psionic ant colony is trying to parlay with the birds.
A foreign Magic-User commissioned them, "to fix the fēngshuǐ."

>Who is the lord of this land?
>The shapeshifting monsters looks like ___
>What are the rooms at the inn like?

>>51535055
Editing, storytelling and shared fun

>>51535125
Does the LotFP Specialist count as significant class customizability?

>>51535034
>there are people who are literally angry that BotW is trying to capture in full 3D what wandering around in the lonely world and dungeons of the first Zelda game felt like.

>>51535170
Fucking wiz... I mean, fucking magic-users.

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>>51535125
>Is there more to that comic?
It's a fan comic for Zelda (the NES one?)
• http://adambrycethomas.deviantart.com/gallery/43473918/TLoZ-Comic

Speaking of Zelda, here's some concept art for the early games (mostly Zelda 2?)

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>>51535195

>nerds angry about video games

Color me shocked. This is why I'm more into tabletop now, to get away from that stupid, entitled, venomous culture of "gamers."

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>>51535221

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>>51535232

>>51535176
No, I don't think it's much more choice then when you let first level MU's choosing their starting spells. It'd be a different story if each of the 8 or so classes had similar progressive choices available, and it'd be even worse if you had race-and-class. The measure is chargen time, all the multiple layers of choice exponentially extend player options leading to a build style of play.

Alternatively, I would've said replacing Gold for XP with Combat for XP as the primary source of XP.

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>>51535195

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>>51535034
Give descriptions that make the place feel lived in and realistic, even if its some technically impossible super crystal fortress.
Give discriptions of the smell of the place, what the players themselves sound like with their voice echoing off the walls, even mundane things like discribing how tacky the decorations look.

Take my picture, for example. Imagine discribing to your party's fighter what its like to descend those stairs and see what's on the lower floor. Word it in a way that would effect them personally (if they're the cautious type, draw attention to the tentacles they see slip back into a recess in the wall; if they're hot blooded, point out that they can run ahead and test what the monster in the wall might do based on how it retracted).

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>>51535255
>when you let first level MU's choosing their starting spells.
You should probably be dicing for those?

>>51535221
>>51535195
>>51535125


Retro LoZ, especially the old art by Katsuya Terada is a huge inspiration for me when it comes to worldbuilding. it's a goldmine of ideas. I really like what this guy did with the first game:

http://nathanandersonart.tumblr.com/post/149845044314/the-legend-of-zelda-redux-enemies-in-high-school#149845044314

>>51535255
Can one balance the two then? Maintain the spirit of OSR while offering customization? And I'm not talking about PF shit. I'm talking about having a Fighter who is actually a decent pick-pocket or a Cleric who is a wiz at bushcraft?

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>>51535034
>to really see what what it is you want them to see?
Poor lighting usually helps.
The less they can see at once, the more you can get away with telling them.
And the more likely they are to search around why asking about what they see.
>tl;dr, what makes your dungeons not boring?
Reward paying attention to the dungeon.
• The PCs realize two goblin tribes live on opposite ends of the dungeon, then pit them against each other
• The PCs can make reasonable judgements about what they'll find next based on what their current room was built for (old kitchen ⇒ old storage room, etc.)
• The PCs find a secret door left open, when they come back it's closed

>>51535055
>What is the one, singular thing above all that can make a game go from OSR to not?
honestly I can't really think of any one thing that would, it takes a bunch of things at once to do so, but then I find any attempts to define OSR beyond the very simple ones stated last thread in >>51502033 & >>51487131 to be utterly meaningless wastes of time that generally only exist to start arguments

>>51535125
>Player-facing mechanics, specifically fronloaded in chargen, e.g. significant class customizability
honestly I completely disagree with this, especially since most of the time when I've seen people be against "Player Facing Mechanics" what they really mean is that they're against the players' having any significant input in play or indeed mechanics in general(not to mention their ideal character systems tend to result in completely flat and boring characters, especially in the hands of your average player who literally can't roleplay their way out of a plastic bag)

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>>51535348

>>51535300
>dat wizzrobe
That's EXACTLY the vibe I'm trying to get for the Wizard King in one of my dungeons; just this force that exists with the sprawling bricked dungeons of a forgotten age.

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>>51535353
We really aught to stick that definition in the OP...

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Question: Is it wrong to backwards engineer roguelikes into OSR?

I'm absolutely enamored by the idea of dungeons that are unfair solely because Players are literally fresh out of the village and diving into an unknown tomb of monsters and magic, surviving literally only because they actively pay attention to what's going on and not just trying to slaughter wave after wave of baddies and believing that the next treasure chest will be the answer to their problems.

>>51535436
Naw, you go for it, m80. Also dang, I am so down for all the art in the thread tonight.

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Moldvay monster

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>>51535436
Not at all! Rogue and its closer ilk were proper OSR.

>>51535478
What's the most/best OSR roguelike? I've only ever played nethack

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>>51535436
Nah. Sounds fun.

>>51535459
There's really something to be said about western fantasy re-interpreted through the eyes of non-westerners and then brought back over.

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>>51535379
>"The knight who lives in the labyrinths.
> He has lots of attacking power.
> He repels Link's attacks from the front with his shield."
> -The Legend of Zelda Manual
Are these guys adventurers who never came back up?

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>>51535500
Especially fitting since FF is literally a massive Japanese copyright infringing D&D ripoff. And it's great.

>>51535436
Play some DCC.

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>>51535497
>What's the most OSR roguelike?
Angband?
Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is pretty good.
Sane for Tales of Maj'Eyal.
>I've only ever played nethack
You. Have. Got. To try the original Rogue.

>>51535436

Roguelikes are literally just OSR games, though.

If you're playing OSR games the way they're meant to be played (that is, old school dungeon crawling), then you're playing a tabletop roguelike.

Remember, rogue was literally an attempt to translate D&D into a computer game. Back then, in the days of 1E AD&D, games were much more about dungeon raiding and surviving against the odds than epic storytelling and the likes.

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>>51535516
We stole Kimba the White Lion from them. It all evens out.

>>51535353
Creativity and tactics belong in roleplay, not in their character sheet. Munchkinism is binary.

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>>51535608
OSR game with oldschool JRPG fantasy style art fucking when.

>>51535634
>Creativity and tactics belong in roleplay.
>not in the character sheet
And yet you probably still do roll-under-ability to check shit, don't you?

You're gonna have to face it; the majority of players, even in the OSR, balance the two. OSR leans towards RP side, PF shit leans towards relying on stats and the sheet, the rest of us meet in the middle.

>>51535634
>Creativity and tactics belong in roleplay, not in their character sheet. Munchkinism is binary.
honestly I've long come to believe as little as possible should be left to roleplaying in an RPG, 99% of all people whether player or DM are absolutely abysmal at it and shouldn't even bother with attempting to do anything involving it

>>51535713
What I mean by roleplaying is just the part where you declare actions besides dice rolls, not, like, trying to be an actor or something. Good roleplay, imo, is realistically occupying your PC's perspective, using the tools available to follow through on their motivations. I don't think players have much trouble with that. The trouble with role-play comes when players have to fake their motivations to match their PC's. Both PC's and players want the gold, so it works perfectly but when you have some dumb backstory about saving the princess, you have to force yourself to act it out, which is why mechanically arbitrary XP handouts are a thing.

And when you have shit like a skill for lockpicking or spot checking or ability/feat bonuses, it stops players from using their creativity to solve problems by controlling actors in a situation in favor of pressing a button to activate abilities or discussing tactics in a situation based solely on the mechanical buffs on their character sheet.

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>>51534703
>What's the truth behind the geoglyph south of town?
It's a clue to help the party decipher the ancient map. The glyph reads, "north."
It was put into the ground ages ago, before the most recent flipping of the magnetic poles.

Let's say we want to switch the magic users and clerics for the romantic notion of the division between High and Low magicians. What should be the capabilities of each?

>>51534292
>>51534301
>>51534317
>Actual play
Top good, Ruinations Guy!

>>51535391
>that pic
"So, how long until the baby's due?"

>>51534733
It depends on the game. If I'm running a fairly straight medieval fantasy campaign, everything will stick more or less to that setting (even if the far east is Yoon-Suin, or the Red and Pleasant Land exists in a parallel dimension). If I'm running something more gonzo, though, it seems to me like there's no good reason for something to be its own dungeon if it doesn't have its own style -- in that case it can just be part of a previous dungeon.

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Post more art!
Show me your ideal level 1 OSR character!

>>51535677
>You're gonna have to face it; the majority of players, even in the OSR, balance the two. OSR leans towards RP side, PF shit leans towards relying on stats and the sheet, the rest of us meet in the middle.

Quoted for truth.

>>51535674
I'll be honest, that kind of art gets me more pumped for old school style games way more than a lot of other fantasy art out there.

I'm new to these games and wanna know:

If a monster is worth 50 XP upon defeating, is that 50 given to each player or divided?

Could you guys explain to me what the problem is with percentage-based thief skills? Not the thief skills themselves, but rather the system. Many retroclones change it around but I'm still not so sure about what was wrong with the original.

>>51539868

The small increments meant the Thief took way too long to start becoming useful.

The Thief in BECMI for example is pretty much the objectively worst class.

>>51539868
Nothing is wrong with d% systems. The numbers were just laughably low.

It's be like having a fighter who starts with a 15% chance to hit someone.

>>51539797
I'd say it depends on how fast you want your players to level up as a group. If you want everyone to be equally strong, then give them all the 50 XP individually, but if you want it to be a "You've got to pull your weight; throwing a pebble to get the cave spider's attention isn't the same as wrapping your boots in its webbing so you could walk on its web to stab it" sorta thing, divide it based on what they did.

The problem with the second one is that it opens up OoC conflict. Say you have a party of three: a human, dwarf, and drow. You run into a giant spider, but the drow does nothing to fight it. Instead, they know how to move and speak to it to have it ignore them and the drow moves past its lair, while the human and dwarf kill it. You can logically split the XP given from the ENCOUNTER to everyone (the drow tested a method to avoid conflict and it worked, while the dwarf and human engaged in conflict and won), but the human and dwarf's player might argue otherwise.

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Japanese '80s fantasy art owns.

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>>51537375
It's ya boi

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>>51539940

>>51539916

What?

By the rules, you always divide XP among the party. A 50 XP monster would grant a party of 5 PCs 10 XP each.

I've never heard of anyone complaining about party members who aren't useful in combat getting XP, and I've never played with a group that didn't divide XP either.

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>>51537375

>>51539892
>>51539913
Would you say that the numbers are better in Basic Fantasy RPG, or is that still too low?

>>51539956
I have. I've had arguments where the group's hotblooded fighting man insisted that he's logically learning more from stabbing goblins than the illusionist was basically just using the same spell over and over to dazzle them, and deserve a lion's share of the XP.

>>51535055
To me, OSR just means compatibility with old editions. I don't believe there's any real ideological root shared by everyone--just a desire to fuck around with the old games and use interesting material from the TSR days and modern writers.

So throwing out a core mechanic of the system would make it "not OSR" to me.
>throwing out d20 rolls or substantially changing the scale of damage and HP (or changing those subsystems so much that they can't relate to earlier material)
>switching to dice pools or some other mechanic

Even dropping core attributes doesn't substantially change the game, as Into the Odd demonstrates.

Not because it's bad design or because I hate... but literally because I can't be bothered to go through dozens of statblocks to update shit.

>>51540057
>I don't believe there's any real ideological root shared by everyone

You'd be wrong. The OSR movement is both about mechanics AND ideologies.

All retro-clones are OSR, but not all OSR games are retro-clones. You could have a game that is mechanically distinct enough from D&D, like say, Torchbearer, be present in many OSR discussions because it has the spirit of OSR down to its core.

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>>51539984
Better, but still kinda shitty. There is a supplement for racial advantages/disadvantages that can tweak things a bit.

>>51535301
I suggest one layer of customization, if any.

>cleric/mu choose spells
>specialist chooses skills
>fighter chooses weapon and armor
Or have them roll randomly for all that shit.

If you really dislike giving the specialist too many choices at chargen, just give him a package with the traditional thief skills, or let him choose from packages like "ranger", "thief" etc.

Whether it does or doesn't fit some ideal of OSR purity is irrelevant, as long as the guy can muddle through Keep on the Borderlands.

Of course everyone has to choose weapons and armor, but the fighter is the one with the most options, and is most often on the front line. And hell, you could even roll weapons randomly.

>>51540131
Neat, thanks!

>>51540115
>shared by everyone
>shared by everyone
>shared by everyone

Fair point about torchbearerer, since it clearly is inspired by the old school dungeon crawl, but because it aims to broadly reinterpret the themes of old school D&D with wholly different mechanics, it's still set apart.

>>51540174
>Of course everyone has to choose weapons and armor, but the fighter is the one with the most options
This is something I see posted now and again but what does this really mean? Unless you're using Chainmail or AD&D variable weapon vs armor tables, there's no real reason for fighters not to wear the heaviest armor they can afford and the strongest weapon they can wield (or second strongest, in case they prefer to go sword and board) OSR systems aren't crunchy enough to differentiate the exact effect of a long sword striking mail as opposed to a flanged mace, and yet the fighter's ability to use all weapons and armor tends to be compared to the variety of spells magic-users or clerics get.

>>51540316

>but because it aims to broadly reinterpret the themes of old school D&D with wholly different mechanics

Exactly, that's my point. If there is such a thing as an old-school D&D "spirit" or "feel", which Torchbearer clearly evokes, that means OSR can't be purely a mechanical definition, and has an overall ideological drive.

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>>51539892
>the Thief took way too long to start becoming useful
the only things thieves can do that other players can't are pick locks and pick pockets (and climb without the aid of tools).
Pick locks has no limits on retries*(except wandering monsters), better is just faster.
Pick pockets just isn't that useful, but it's still retriable in some contexts.
And for everytjong else can be do 'the normal way' and the thief ability simultaneously, which is strictly better than non-thieves.

*Also true of 'climb' (at small (safe) heights) and 'remove simple traps.'

>>51540575
I keep thinking if it'd be possible to take something like Riddle of Steel's battle system, simplify it, and graft it onto DnD

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>>51540575
If with CHAINMAIL man-to-man it's not that much of a choice.
You'll carry 3-4 wrapons, and switch to whatever's most appropriate.

>>51540575
Some retroclones, like DCC and LotFP, add in mechanical differences in the weapons.

>>51535713

Roleplaying is a skill, and it can improve with practice. But give a player a crutch and it will help them in the here-and-now, but it might also teach them to lean on it permanently, and hinder them from learning to do without it.

>>51541309
Which is why players are so bad at describing their attack maneuvers. Without the to-hit roll in which they rely, they would be forced to actually consider how their attacks are made.

>>51535497
Try
Brogue
Tales of Maj'Eyal
Ancient Domains of Mystery (ADOM)
Caves of Qud

>>51539940
>>51539954
nice!

>>51541715
http://mystara.thorf.co.uk/jrc.php
They're from the Japanese Rules Cyclopedia.

>>51539916
>divide it based on what they did.

IMO, you should never, ever do this. It damages your appearance of impartiality, and sooner or later results in hard feelings between players, like they feel like Dave didn't pull his weight in the last fight and should have gotten less experience, while Dave feels he was too badly hurt to risk getting in there and the other PCs had it, and they're all mad at each other, and some of them think you really gave him that much XP because you're playing favorites, etc. etc.
Split it evenly among them, every time -- the party is the basic unit, not the individual characters. Reinforce that at every opportunity.

>>51540575
Encumbrance and roleplaying are the major things I can think of.

Sometimes it plays as petty DM niggling, but it's a legitimate tactical problem that most people get nervous around someone in full battle gear.

>>51540582
I don't mean to belabor a small point, but Torchbearer is just one guy's idea of what old school D&D "feels like". I disagree with the notion that he's distilled the essential qualities. It's just another take on a fantasy game (and I can't use my old books with it). If Torchbearer is OSR, then so is GURPS Dungeon Fantasy.

>>51540006

Point at the rules, and tell him he's part of a team. If he wants to have a bigger share of XP, he can go as a party of one sometime.

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Hey, /osrg/, I did a little thing. inb4 feats
https://ywgahn-shaag.tumblr.com/post/156765204543/but-what-if-we-like-mix-dd-with-apocalypse
Or you can just look at picrelated.

>>51535713
It's terribly unfortunate you feel that way. If it weren't for the roleplaying and open ended creativity, I'd have never bothered with D&D, and all the best experiences I have in traditional games came from people getting invested in the situations and characters we were depicting. I've never seen a ches player try to take revenge on the queen for taking his favorite pawn.

I suppose if I were you I'd just play fantasy themed war games instead.

>>51541840
Are you using pbta moves and binary pass/fail?
The mechanics of Mighty Deed seem like a weird thing instead of pick from a list of results.

Being more specific about what reloading faster means would help.

He Who Fights Monsters could be uses based on the HD of the monster defeated rather than level of the player. Makes it a resource that depletes and seems more proportional? Eating the heart of an ogre for its strength 4hd ie 4 times before it runs out vs the eyes of an orc with only 1hd giving you dark vision once.

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Reposting in hopes that someone can share a DDL to pic related since the Trove got scrubbed.

>>51542038
>Are you using pbta moves and binary pass/fail?

It looks like he's using straight D&D mechanics, but overlaying these "moves" on top. That Mighty Deed thing is basically what I do to import the thing from DCC.

>>51542038
>The mechanics of Mighty Deed seem like a weird thing instead of pick from a list of results.
I was thinking about that, yeah, don't really remember why I chose to do it differently.
>Being more specific about what reloading faster means would help.
I've seen a few different ways to handle that, so I didn't specify. Halving the times seems to be the most straightforward way, though.
>He Who Fights Monsters could be uses based on the HD of the monster defeated rather than level of the player. Makes it a resource that depletes and seems more proportional? Eating the heart of an ogre for its strength 4hd ie 4 times before it runs out vs the eyes of an orc with only 1hd giving you dark vision once.
That's... much more interesting way to do this, huh. Gives more reasons to hunt down bit tough baddies, like dragons or demons. Neat.

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>>51541766
>Rules Cyclopedia
Closer to B/X, actually.

is heroes & other worlds in the trove?

>>51542255
The link says they're from the Japanese RC with pictures of the books.

>>51542292
Sadly no, but let me know if you find it anywhere: It's a system I'm incredibly intrigued by.

>>51541840
I kinda dig this. It's a good way of handling what is essentially afeat system
Looking forward to other classes/races, anon.

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>>51541766
This is really nifty.

>ywn teach japanese schoolkids the joys of oldschool D&D

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>>51542361
Well the link is wrong, they probably guessed by the release date.
It's abridged Moldvay/Cook Basic with noticeable RC influences.

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>>51543136
Anon, the covers say "Rule Cyclopedia" in front.

>>51541788
Seconding this opinion

If the players really want to penalize one of the characters, they can try to deny him loot in character.

Sounds like a shitty group dynamic but I think it's better than the GM trying to split hairs over who did more.

>>51540006
Would he have survived that fight if it weren't for the illusionist distracting all those creatures? Should the cleric get less XP just because he turned undead rather than spending a dozen combat rounds smashing their heads in?

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>>51543136
This is Japan's Basic

>>51540057
>So throwing out a core mechanic of the system would make it "not OSR" to me.
>throwing out d20 rolls or substantially changing the scale of damage and HP (or changing those subsystems so much that they can't relate to earlier material)
So to you the guys in /osrg/ who have been advocating using Chainmail combat aren't OSR? To me they're basically the groggiest of all of us.

I personally think any OSR definition that leaves out the actual play style that the original OSR people wanted to recover is bullshit, fgor pretty much this exact reason. I don't want to start another flamewar about it, but I don't like the idea of dropping some limp definition made only to avoid shitposting and which doesn't match the generally accepted usage online into the OP.

>>51544353
>the original OSR people
Those only wanted a legal fiction to publish stuff for the game they really never stopped playing in decades. It was later comers that got interested in the playstyle and sought to replicate it for its own sake.

>>51540589
>Pick locks has no limits on retries
False.

>>51543500
Meathead Fighting Man's explanation is that XP is making him stronger because he's learning how to better kill things from hands on "experience" and that magic-users have to apply their spells in different ways each time for them to learn anything from casting them.
I think a major problem is that people new to TTRPG in general is that they believe that XP works like it does in vRPG and that XP is a flat number given to everyone, so when they hear "No, it's split between the party" they think it means that you get more based on what you do; with what you do being interpreted as "fighting".

I've serious had people in later editions of D&D insist that there's a difference between Dungeoneering XP, Close Combat XP, Supportive XP, and Social XP.

>>51545656
Its osr the main body of xp is from loot though. So they're wrong, dumb and miss the point. Be the gm, tell them no, and move on.

Question, /osr/
I have the group being a bit unpleasant towards one character/player by denying him his loot.
It's similar to the previous argument but it was a case of "he contributed less so he gets less loot"
Felt it was bullshit, but let them do it in-character.
Instead, I decided to lower the xp they gained through that, and enhanced the xp the other player got.

Was that a bad decision?

>>51545899
Probably a better idea to talk to the group, see what the problems with the player are, talk to the player about it and see if it can be resolved by everyone being reasonable.

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>>51545899 #
tRPGs are little more than social lubricant. You're there to have fun together.
A general rule of thumb is, "don't let people piss on the food."
Its reasonable to expect that people to act mature, but it's not reasonable to assume they will.
As the Master of Ceremony, the referee needs to keep the social gathering running smoothly.
That can, and often does, involve out-of-game discussion about not being a cunt.

>Was that a bad decision?
There were better ways to handle it.
But if you told them about the xp penalty (and why they got it) before they finished making the decision, then that's an OK resolution.

>>51546268
>tRPGs are little more than social lubricant.

I'd argue they're more than that, I don't play tRPGs just to hang out, I'm there to play the game because I genuinely like the games themselves.
(But you're right that the GM should step in and try to mitigate this kind of conflict where possible. "Fixing" it afterwards is becoming impartial and taking sides in a fight, though, so you gotta be careful about doing that)

>>51546355

>becoming less impartial

is what I thought I wrote

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>>51546369
What I do, in that situation, is delete and repost.

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Why do Rules Cyclopedia Mystics have to deal with their progression bullshit if they only get 9 hit-dice?

>>51546268
I would ask the party what they expect from the player and the specific reason they docked his pay. Then see how said player can mitigate any of those issues. Try not to take sides except in rulings about rules (remember, the DM is always right until they are not).

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>>51545060
Anon refered to the grognards who first played what we now call OSR, not the developers who started the OSR movement.

I don't like the thief class because I feel like it encourages one player to be the only one who looks for traps and is a step in the direction of "roll to detect traps and secret doors." At the same time, I like the idea of a sneaky bastard character who is sneakier than average and whose skills (not in the sense of a "skill list" but in the sense that a fighter is skilled with a sword) are based on that.

Is there any way to reconcile this?

>>51549296
stop drinking the /osr/ kool-aid and realise that a tasteful skill system is fine

>>51549457
What makes a skill system tasteful?

>>51545060
>>51548463
>Anon refered to the grognards who first played what we now call OSR
Yeah. And the people who never stopped playing were still playing old-school style in most cases, and wanted to publish new stuff for AD&D so they could cater to that play style. The play/publish distinction doesn't really make sense from that perspective.

>>51549521
Garlic salt.

>>51549296
>it encourages one player to be the only one who looks for traps
Thieves a la. Greyhawk only detect small/simple traps (needle launchers, etc).
Proper trap detection has to be roleplayed, and thieves get no bonus to it.
>Is there any way to reconcile this?
I give them:
• 100% chance to successfully pick pockets (+5% per HD, -5% per target's HD)
• for each observer, 20% chance to be detected while picking pockets (-10% per level, +12% (+15% for target) per bystander's HD)
• 15% chance to pick locks (+7% per level)
• 25% chance to be jam the lock after a failed pick (-3% per HD)
• +1 to surprise (+2 at name level)

>>51549602
>picking pockets: +5% per *level
>being detected: -10% per *HD
Mixed those up, sorry.

what could be a good prize for winning a fishing tournament? something magic that helps with fishing

What is a good introductory game that will put the newschool "I'm invincible!" players quickly and firmly in their place until they shape up? I don't mean something that would give an old hand at this difficulty like say Tomb of Horror. I just want something that really stresses "This is different from how you normally play, and playing normally will get you killed", yet is still easy enough for beginners to triumph over.

>>51550887
D&D 1974, or Holmes, Or AD&D, really. Or do you just mean adventure modules? The original editions would kill dumb PCs ezpz.

>>51550887
Tower of the Stargazer.

>>51550718
>magic item
>fishing tournament prize
A-Are you... on the Plane of Water, or something?

A fragrant knife with a sticky blade. The pommel has a hoop through it.
A fishing priest. Striking the water with it lowers the water.
A lure. Once you see it, you can't avert your gaze (save if you deliberately avoid looking, no save once you've looked).
A small vial. If sealed during a full moon, an ethereal worm wanders in. Use it to catch ethereal fish.
A cork hat, looted from another world!
A jade coin, sitting with it on your lap (try not to lose it!) protects your boat from the weather.
A spinner with Continual Light cast on it.
A whistle that projects Silence 15' while blown.
A magic ring. While gestruing the size of your catch, it produces an illusion of the fish between your hands. You can direct the fish as long as you hold the gesture.
An spool of endless fishing line. Cannot be respun (use a separate spool).
A third arm.

>>51550887
Lamentations of the Flame Princess as the RPG, use the adventure "Tower of the Stargazer" or "Death Frost Doom".

>>51550718
>Ornate fishing lure that if left be for over an hour spawns a strong but tasty fish that bites the hook. You can eat it if you can catch it.
>Gutting knife. Nasty looking knife that gives +1dmg against anything already stunned.
>Weather Rock. Well worn skipping stone that can be cast over the water. If thrown well, it guarantees clear weather for a day per skip.
>Goblin Chum. Its a horrible mess of bones, toenails, nail nails, 4 different kinds of worm, bat shit and other things goblins think fish like. But fish do like it. Dump a container of this stuff into the water to attract many, many fish to you. Sometimes dangerous fish.

>>51550887
I tend not to aim for putting people in their place. I just explain the premise of the game is different, character mortality is real, and not to be defeated when a character dies. They usually get it after a few. Try Tower of The Stargazer, mess around with it a bit. Its dangerous, but not overly retarded and has some cool stuff in it. Well, some of its retarded, but I changed those parts.

>>51551092
>Gutting knife. Nasty looking knife that gives +1dmg against anything already stunned.
Seems really odd, thematically. The fish is dead once you've clubbed it.
Really digging the other 3 though. Especially the skipping stone.

>>51551223
I probably just sucked at clubbing fish when I was a kid.

The spool of endless line is definitely a thing I have experienced. These all seem good for that hobo osr people were talking about last thread.

>>51551371
>I probably just sucked at clubbing fish when I was a kid.
Even a kid should be able to hit hard enough to deliver the last rites.
Were you swinging with just your shoulder, or something?
Pivot your back, shoulder, elbow, AND wrist. Gives *a lot* more speed.
Same deal if you ever need to punch someone.

>>51551485
I was smacking it on the deck of a boat till it stopped moving or I realized how weird what I was doing was. So probably just from the elbow.

>6 year old kid swinging a fish around like a slinky having a great time till he realizes he has to now kill it

>>51535497
Dwarf Fortress

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True AD&D™

>>51542104
It's NBDGI, they seem to have someone constantly monitoring these threads and the Trove in case someone posts one of their books. You're honestly better off just paying what they want if you really want something of theirs, because at this point nobody wants to deal with their shit anymore and get whatever troves they may have DMCA'd or otherwise taken down.

>>51535677
>And yet you probably still do roll-under-ability to check shit, don't you?
Not only have I never personally used that rule, I have never even heard of somebody using that rule in live games. Other than the one, single anon that posts "I use it!" every 7th or so time I post this statement.

>>51539868
Thief skills are fine as long as you remember that everything except pick locks and pick pockets were intended to be basically supernatural versions of the skills used normally.

Anyone can hide in a shadow, but what a thief is supposed to be able to do is literally hide IN the shadow. And when they move silently, they literally do not make sounds as they move, as opposed to someone who is just tip toeing around.

The pick pocket and pick locks skills should be rolled as normal, I think, just because they seem to be purview to the thief alone.

>>51539913
1 in 6 chance is roughly 16.something% chance. While still low, that's what most OSR characters generally start off with.

>>51552743
Then they win. Just post an email and wait for someone who has it to send you an upload.

>>51543348
Not that Anon, but
>goes to level 9
who's bright idea was this?

>>51539868
It's needlessly granular for one thing. Also, the skills are way too low. Also, many of the skills are close enough to others that there's no sense in having separate scores. Also, that level of specificity without any ability at customization seems less than ideal (it'd be different if it were a simple, uncustomizable system).

>>51553709
Gary's. Why do you think you gain followers and stop getting real HP at level 9? The crew at TSR would just plain stop playing at level 10 and reroll, cause they didn't even imagine wanting to play the game past that point.

>>51553905
>The crew at TSR would just plain stop playing at level 10 and reroll,
Nope, the folks at TSR consistently shot for 20. If they made it, the referee forcibly retired their character and bought them dinner.

>>51553965
Here's my source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9vECzikqpY

>>51540611
I'd love for this to happen, it'd replace Mighty Deeds of Arms as my favorite thing to make fighters cool again.

>>51553965
Also, after the fact, but to add another sting in your hat, most classes stopped leveling in general around 10, like the basic classes, and even in 1e, racial classes had severe level limits well below 20. Hell, even as humans, the Assassin and Druid classes in 1e had a hard cap of level 14 that could not be gotten around in the first place.

The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to realize that you just contradicted me for literally no reason. What the fuck is wrong with you?

Occultesque-anon here, gonna take suggestions for tomorrow's 1d100 topic if anyone has something they'd like to see me try my hand at. First reply gets to pick the theme of a 1d100 ____ table.

>>51554528
Secret doors.

>>51554577
That's a lot of doors. It'll be done sometime tomorrow.

>>51554116
Huh. Is THAT why Drizz't is considered only a god in AD&D? I had friends who would laughingly say that you can't port Drizz't over to any anything past 2e because he'd only be a mid-level character.

I'm guessing that he's mechanically stuck as a Lvl 14 character?

>>51554766
Putting that into context, the best adaption of Conan is a level 10 Thief with 18 STR and 15+ CON
Most gods tended to be around 10-15 HD. Lolth, for instance was 16 HD (a whopping 66hp!)
>I'm guessing that he's mechanically stuck as a Lvl 14 character?
14 is the level cap in B/X, pretty sure Drizzt Do'Urden was intended for AD&D though?

>>51554766
1-3 ⇒ Low Levels
5-8 ⇒ Mid Levels
10+ ⇒ High Levels

>>51552290
>>51535468
From what book are these? Is this currently in the making? I'd love to see a "collected works" of all the TSR stuff like that!

>>51553965
>Nope, the folks at TSR consistently shot for 20. If they made it, the referee forcibly retired their character and bought them dinner.
You've confused the originators again. This was the practice in the Blackmoor campaign, mention in the First Fantasy Campaign book by Arneson.

In the Greyhawk game the highest-level character was Robilar, who reached level 16. Later, in the TSR-is-a-real-company era, guys like Kask and Mentzer played the way the other Anon described: rerolling at level 10. That's because they weren't interested in wargaming with their guys, and the domain-level part of the game had begun to fade by then anyway.

>>51554116
>The more I think about it, the more I'm starting to realize that you just contradicted me for literally no reason. What the fuck is wrong with you?
He just mixed his stories up, don't blow your top.

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Is this... is this funny? I was thinking this could be funny. RAW could suggest that "group" doesn't mean "the fire temple, the earth temple, etc." but "each individual group," so if the PCs take a month off (such as to train for levelups), it could be interpreted as:

Room 135: 8 guards->38 guards.
Room 147: 3 bugbears->13 bugbears.
Room 149: 12-18 guards + 2-3 level 3 leaders-> 42-48 guards + 2-3 level 3 leaders.
Room 204: 5 bugbears->15 bugbears.

It notes that while the PCs are pressing them, they can only replenish losses, not grow. So I'd interpret that as so long as the PCs continue to attack the temple, their numbers won't grow, but every time the whole party goes off to train etc., BLAMMO, they start increasing in numbers unchecked again. Could be interesting to see how a group tries to handle that sort of opposition, not sure.

>>51553905

I seriously, seriously don't think stuff like "you can knock a clay golem backwards with an Earthquake spell targeted at it specifically" with the intent that nobody would ever use such a spell, etc.

>>51555943
This is an interesting idea on paper, but the way I remember the module it's plenty challenging already. I'm pretty sure that without upper limits the procedure would reach the tipping point of overwhelming the PCs very quickly.

>>51555997
>I'm pretty sure that without upper limits the procedure would reach the tipping point of overwhelming the PCs very quickly.

True, though no matter what, so long as the PCs are "pressing" the Temple (which I take to mean, basically any form of maneuvering and attacking), by the above logic, they can't grow in number.

>>51554766
>Huh. Is THAT why Drizz't is considered only a god in AD&D? I had friends who would laughingly say that you can't port Drizz't over to any anything past 2e because he'd only be a mid-level character. I'm guessing that he's mechanically stuck as a Lvl 14 character?

Yes, pretty much. It was a mindset thing, like the voluntarily retiring characters when they reached certain levels. We didn't need or even think that stuff needed to continually get bigger, badder, better, etc. It's hard to explain and hard to understand if you never played that way.

Case in point: The 1st time I played "Against the Giants" in '79(?), we had a TPK about 30 minutes into the first module. What did we do? We laughed, put together characters one level higher, and started over again.

This summer, I ran the module at my FLGS and watched some seemingly normal player in his late 20s CRY when his character was killed.

Different times, different mindsets, different ways of playing. Not better, not worse, just different.

>>51554766
>>51556543
Drizz't also would have super high magic resistance (something like 78% -- though AD&D was iffy about whether drow PCs kept MR, Unearthed Arcana says no but I think a few 2e books say yes) and near peak damage capability, whereas in 3e a lot of spells flat out ignore magic resistance, its a lot harder to interrupt casters, two handed swords do way more than two one handed swords, etc.

So a lot of the elements that make Drizz't badass just don't translate.

1e rangers and AD&D elves in general also basically appear out of fucking nowhere with surprise a huge proportion of the time so they're ready to carve you up, whereas their stealth advantage is iffy at best in 3e onward.

>>51554806
Lolth was a pretty wussy demon princess that could be encountered as a random 10th level foe, so she's not intended to be THAT much stronger than liches, iron golems, high tier titans, etc. Actual gods are significantly tougher in 1e.

She did, however, have AC -8 and, iirc, a large aoe web attack that also forces a separate save vs instant death as a penalty.

So despite her 66 hp, she's still going to be one of the toughest monsters you could possibly encounter -- I think she had a good surprise chance, and she'll lob instant death webs on everyone, wiping out a huge proportion of the party.

>>51556643
>>51554806
And in comparison, Orcus or Demogorgon, iirc, have few means of nuking a high level party. They're big boys, but I don't recall any particular great AoEs. Maybe a Symbol of Death or Power Word Kill or something?

>>51554806
Nah man, basically any noteworthy S&S char is going to be way, way more bad ass than that. I seriously doubt a level 10 thief is going to be able to take on two frost giants himself, for example.

>>51556794
You could just as well say that's a flaw of the monster section, with the Frost Giants being written too tough (TBDESU the ones in the Conan story seem more like ogres to me stat wise than D&D frost giants).

Of course, if Conan's an OD&D Superhero instead, he only needs to roll 9 or better to kill a giant. That's not too implausible to pull off twice.

>>51557042

>You could just as well say that's a flaw of the monster section

I absolutely don't get the benefit of weakening Conan + weakening frost giants so that... why? So Lolth's low HP looks better? She's an anomaly.

>Of course, if Conan's an OD&D Superhero instead, he only needs to roll 9 or better to kill a giant.

Well, a Chainmail superhero anyway. OD&D can use the fantastic combat tables etc., but they sure seem to only do standard OD&D melee damage (1d6).

>>51557467
>I absolutely don't get the benefit of weakening Conan + weakening frost giants so that... why? So Lolth's low HP looks better? She's an anomaly.
I wasn't really intending to connect it to the Lolth thing, that was just a thing I'd been thinking about before.

>they sure seem to only do standard OD&D melee damage (1d6).
I'd say it's pretty unclear how Fantastic Combat is meant to work with OD&D, but sure. He'd still have a fairer shot, I think.

>>51555921
>don't blow your top.
Don't tell me what to do.

I'm stealing the whole passage of time thing from One Ring and Pendragon to give my world a sense of advancement, change and to get the players thinking about heirs and retirement. But I haven't figured out how I'm going to do aging yet.

Let's say the party adventures once or twice a year to get enough money to live comfortably, over time they got old and around 45 years old for humans they start having level decay. Around once a year there is a chance that they lose a level and all associated bonuses. When they hit level 0 or negative 1 in games with a level zero they pass from the world.

I'm not sure what that chance should be to reflect dying of a decent age for a medieval fantasy world, and of course it should be different for every race.

What do you guys think? It's still a rough idea but I think it'd be interesting to run a multigenerational campaign like that.

>>51555956
What are spell scrolls?

>>51556543
I think it has to do with newer players hearing stories of older players remembering their old characters fondly and not understanding that they're more remembering how they managed to get this characters to survive module after module that should have killed them, instead of them being characters that are suppose to complete a character arc.

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>>51556543
>>51559224
It's actually more along the lines that newer players are simply not trained to handle loss half as well as the older generations. Every time I go hang out in /v/ and start telling people "Yeah, in the older days of gaming, enemies could permanently drain levels away from you and you couldn't get them back without training for them", they tend to retch and vomit. Pic related. This was a good thread.

>>51556794
10th level thieves fight as well as 10th level fighters.
10th level thieves with 18STR fight *much better* than average 10th level fighters.
And thieves with 15CON have slightly better up than average same-level fighters.

>>51558865
>What do you guys think?
Sounds obnoxious. They should eat 2 drains. 3 if they live to be crotchety old men.

>>51559360
>>51559224
Are we doing the "in my day we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways AND WE LIKED IT" unironically, again?

>>51559360
I wonder if the mentality of "Wow, I fucked up, didn't I" vs. "Wow, the game fucked me over" affects this, too.

I know that people who play the Souls games only git gud when they understand that it's more their own fault they get curbstomped instead of blaming the game.

>>51559639
No, it's more of a "different mindsets for different games". It's the difference between someone playing FF7 (where anyone can do anything and you can easily keep a party alive) vs. FF1 (where you have to play your playstyle at the start and will have to take a few heavy game overs).

>>51559593
I figured most players would retire their characters by the time they got the second or third drain anyway. The death thing was just to have a way for them to not be immortal mechanically.

>>51559743
Most people 'dying of old age' wither over a week or two.
Because you don't die 'of old age,' you die of diseases or disorders.
It all seems odd, thematically. Especially with how many NPCs are level 1 or level 0.
>have a way for them to not be immortal
Don't see anything wrong with PCs getting immortality.
I would even assume it of high-level Magic-Users.

>>51559874
But people certainly get less capable with age don't they, I know people can work really hard to stay in shape which is why they could level back up to fight the drain. Maybe I should encourage retirement when it's thematically appropriate rather than find a mechanical solution.

I don't like the idea of immortal magic users who didn't do something either pretty amazing or pretty awful to get there, preferably the latter because there being a "good" way to become immortal make Liches seem kind of dumb.

>>51559639
I'm probably younger than you, geezer. This is just objective truth. My generation isn't taught how to deal with loss.

>>51559677
>I wonder if the mentality of "Wow, I fucked up, didn't I" vs. "Wow, the game fucked me over" affects this, too.
There's a term for that actually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control
Summary: The higher your Locus of control is, the more you believe that it's your own fault that bad things happen to you.

>>51535516
It is the one, true, Temple of Elemental Evil adventure that we were promised but never got.

>>51539971
Wait...which person is the level 1 character?

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Where and for what purpose do you add in hidden and locked doors in your dungeons? I don't want to do it at random and I need to understand the game design around it.

>>51557874
Eat your damn asparagus, anon.

>>51559971
Give them re native immortality tied to a weakness.
Maybe something like: http://whatwouldconando.blogspot.com/2016/12/wizard-weaknesses.html?m=1
>make Liches seem kind of dumb
Liches have always seemed kind of dumb. If you want 'undying evil wizard' to be interesting, you usually have to do it a new way each time.

>>51560737
Hidden doors are either for bonus rewards (good job finding this treasure!) or useful options (go /around/ the room with 30-300 Orcs!)
Locked doors can enforce sequential progression through the dungeon
Both are great path for reinforcements, ambushes, and escapes

>>51561020
>300 orcs in one room
Well, if you ever needed a title for those erotic scrolls you recovered from the bandit outpost...

>>51554971
They're from the True AD&D™ project, an endeavor to bring True AD&D™ into this plane of existence moreso than it currently exists.

This particular work will be a 64-page Monstrous Compendium, MC20 or so, named the Creature Catalog. It features monsters primarily from the 3 Creature Catalog supplements from Dragon Magazine (there are 51 non-sheet monsters in these supplements so 2-page monsters notwithstanding it may require some extra monsters).

Eventually all monsters should be entered into an Encyclopedia Monstronomicon or some such. 1E monsters that can't take a 2E conversion will be left as-is and given their own volume(s).

>>51561066
>300 orcs in one room
That was a joke. I know how you were actually supposed to use the NO. APPEARING: 30-300

>>51561146
His was a joke as well, which was funnier than yours.

>>51561146
What's their % IN LAIR though

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>>51561423
35%, but the 19-195 Orcs out-and-about aren't necessarily in one group.

>>51561589

Now, if they were herd animals.

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>>51549296
LotFP's Specialist class and skill system is a pretty good balance of simple but versatile. Specialists are just that, specialists. They are exceptional in some areas of dungeoneering and adventuring. This doesn't exclude other characters from performing in those areas and it doesn't make the Specialist vital.

>>51549521
I'm really with this guy. The one-true-wayism of some of the osr fandom is an obstacle to fun. Use what works for you. Don't follow the dogma.

>>51549296
Do thieves even detect secret doors? I though that was elves.

>>51562088
You're right. Thieves detect hidden traps, but have the same chance to find secret doors as any non-elf.

>>51561146
>>51561589
>30-300

How do yo roll that? Usually I can figure out what dice combination that can get you every result between, but this one is throwing me. 3d10 x 10 is the closest thing I can think of, but that skips all of singles digit.

>>51562693
>3d10 x 10

Is what ya do.

>>51562725
>but that skips all of singles digit.

Surely, with the 40 years of math between when this was probably printed and right now, we could come up with a solution to get 270 unique results between 30 and 300 using dice, can't we?

>>51562783

We could, but what would be the point? It's not like players are going to count all the orcs scattered around the countryside and go "hey, 130, that's a round number! That damages my suspension of disbelief and reminds me that we're playing a game! Oh, hey, quit hogging the cheetos, Craig!"

>>51562863
But not using random encounter generation is how you end with predefined encounters and then STORIES.

>>51562902

Well, yeah, you use it, and you don't worry about the fact that it generates 120 or 130 orcs, and not 124 or something.

>>51562693
>3d10 x 10 is the closest thing I can think of, but that skips all of singles digit.
So roll 30d10 then, if it matters that much.

>>51562967
It works! Thanks anon.

>>51562863
And YOU! You're a failure to humanity for not asking the basic questions of life.

>>51562693
2d% + 24d4 + 4

>>51563016
>You're a failure to humanity

Ouch, that hurts anon.

Okay, okay. Roll (2d10 x 10+1d9* x 10)+1d10. Range 3-130, inclusive.

* d9 = a d10 with a 0 instead of a 10, where you count the 0 AS a 0.

>>51563100
>* d9 = a d10 with a 0 instead of a 10, where you count the 0 AS a 0.
1d10 - 1

What are some modules with some good and flavorful magical weapons and items?

>>51563100
Also who the hell was asking for a number range between 3 and 130?

>>51563154
In Search of the Unknown is good for beginners, as there is a very rich lore attached to the dungeon. Only downfall is that you have to manually fill the rooms with treasure and monsters yourself. They provide you a list to choose from, but still.

>>51563147

Yeah, that is correct. But it's easier if you have a 0-9 painted d10, since you can just use that.

>>51562693
How about (3d10*10)-d10

>>51563160


Typo, it's 3-300 - look at the math.

>>51563195
(2d10 x 10+1d9 x 10) + 1d10
>Min rolls
(2 * 10 + 0 * 10) + 1
21.

>Max rolls
(20 * 10 + 9 * 10) + 10
300

You need to go back to the drawing board for that minimum stat. Even if I assume that 10+1d9 is meant to be in parenthesis, you still wind up with
>Min
(2 * (10+0) * 10) + 1
201

>Max
(20 * (10 + 9) * 10) + 10
3,810

>>51563183
That's 29-299, you want (3d10 * 10) - d10 + 1

>>51562693
1d% - 2d20 + 6d8 + 14d6 + 7d4 + 42

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>>51562693
30d10

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>>51563277
Not that Anon, but
((2d10 + 12) x (1d10 - 1)) + 1d10 + 2

>http://anydice.com/program/a9ef

>>51563550
The minimum is supposed to be 30, not 3. NO. APPEARING: 30-300

>>51563578
Tangential discussion. We digressed.

>>51563320
>That's 29-299
Actually 20-290

>>51563718
Correcting myself, it's 20-299

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ITT: /tg/ is bad at dice

>>51563792

Usually we're much better at this. But I suspect some of these people are being silly on purpose.

>>51563792
Clearly we have not yet comprehended the platonic form of True AD&D.

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>>51563881
The real issue is all these d10s.

Rolled 174 + 29 (1d271 + 29)

>>51563879
No no, I assure you we are all quite serious about this.

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>>51564028
>probability 'curve'

>>51563792
what the fuck is link doing here?

>>51564131
It's a wizard handing him a d271 so he can solve the orc appearance paradox.

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>>51564131
ITT: nobody checks upthread

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>>51564191

>>51564198

that's a fucking lot to read

>>51564131
Short Answer: The original two Zeldas are pretty OSR

Long answer: Someone posted a picture of Link delving into dungeons asking for help making a dungeon not boring, others remarked on how the 80s concept/Nintendo Power art for Zelda helps them visualize their settings better, and everyone started posting old Zelda art.

>>51564261
Those were the 11th and 12th pieces of old LoZ concept art posted in the thread.
There's a link to a well drawn LoZ fan-comic, a blog full of fanart for the NES LoZ, 7 pieces of FF (1 and 2) art, and 5 pictures from nipponese ports of TSR D&D.

>>51564358
yeah I got that part, but like, what is going on in that image. Why is freddie mercury taking magic from link? or shooting him with it? it's not clear.
I tried googling it but I could not find it.

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>>51564391
It's Link learning magic spells in Zelda II.

>>51564426
Ok. Thanks.
Now I can sleep easily.
and I will definitively use freddie mercury to teach players spells now

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>>51564426
Nope, that's >>51535232.

>>51564391
He's fighting Carock.

>>51564590
But >>51535232 is Impa telling him what the Triforce on the back of his hand is.

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>>51564618
Was Impa even in Zelda 2?

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>>51564676
Yep.
Here's her art in the manual telling Link why he has the Triforce on his hand.

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>>51564723
She's not physically in the game, but in the opening text, it explains that she's the one who knows the backstory of Sleeping Zelda and is the one who sends Link on his quest to find the Triforce of Courage.

>>51562693

3d20+3d12+3d10+10d8+10d6+11d4-10

Does anyone have a location write-up or module about a village church?

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>>51565340
Might be one in >>51511091?

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>>51565340
This is a cool monastery setup, Cry of The Gravegod for undead church times is another cool 1page or A Single Small Cut from lotfp if you're in the mood for accidentally the whole party.

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>>51565791
>Strong rumours [...] will cause it to collapse

Does anyone here use multiclassing in their games? Which system do you use? How well does it work?

>>51566809
Track xp for classes separately, you may reclass instead of leveling up (old classes xp reverts to minimum for their level).
Your (modified) Prime Requisite in the new class must at least match the (unmodified) Prime Requisite for your old class.

You can reclass as many times as you'd like (even to old classes). Classes you haven't leveled advance from Level 1, 0 xp.
You can only reclass if below a certain level in your current class (unmodified Prime Requisite ⇒ max Level you can reclass from).
15 ⇒ Level 2
16 ⇒ Level 3
17 ⇒ Level 4
18 ⇒ Level 5

Classes contribute HD separately. A 2nd Level Cleric, 8th Level Fighter has 10 HD (not 9).
½xp for any adventure where you use an old class's special abilities. The sum of your levels can't exceed 14.

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Are we still doing this?

>>51567235
You just did it, so yes. Please continue.

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>>51567252
If you insist. I wonder what retroclone would be best for emulating that old Nintendo fantasy feel. Beyond the wall? BFRPG? Maybe just plain old LL?

>>51567330
Retro Phaze?

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>>51567330
flickr com/photos/historyofhyrule/albums has tons of scans of old LoZ art, most of it so hi-rez I can't post it here.

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>>51567330
Best class for Link would be elf, appropriately enough.
Refluff his spells to 'magic items' then everything's golden.

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>>51567391
Ehh. Not a huge fan of it.

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>>51567443
Dunno, I figure plain old Fighter loaded down with magic items would be the most appropriate. But let's not try and translate videogame characters into D&D terms, for that way lies madness.

>>51567506
>madness

That's a funny way to spell entertainment!

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>>51567506
A (non-OSR) blog I follow made part of a homebrew for that:

>Note that Homebrew was abandoned
http://www.paperspencils.com/2013/08/05/not-everything-needs-to-be-finished/

>Combat Rules
http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/08/27/legend-of-zelda-adventure-system-combat-notes/

>Adventurer class, advancement rules
>http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/09/19/legend-of-zelda-adventure-system-levels-and-adventurers/
http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/09/12/rationaile-behind-lozas-leveling-system/

>Sage class
http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/09/03/legend-of-zelda-adventure-system-notes-on-magic/
http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/09/05/legend-of-zelda-adventure-system-sage-spells/

>misc. notes (non-rules)
http://www.paperspencils.com/2012/09/09/lozas-problems/

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>>51535170
>Who is the lord of this land?
The mayor Yorc, and ex-adventurer and Thief of the 6th level of experience. He killed his old party then stole credit for their deeds.
A foreign Magic-User commissioned, "to fix the fēngshuǐ" 120 years ago. He stuck around getting everything PERFECT. He leaves unannounced when he finishes in three weeks.
The late Baron's (12th level fighter) second son (2nd level Magic-User). The quite upset first son (5th level fighter) is gathering an army.

>The shapeshifting monsters looks like ___
A tapestry worth 200sp.
The viewer, at their future time of death.
3d8 goblins.
A key.

>What are the rooms at the inn like?
5 rooms with beds that sleeps 2 (3sp per night), 2 communal rooms where 30 can lay down (5cp per night).
12 rooms on the ground floor, 8 on the 2nd story. One room is fit for a king, he stays twice a month while whoring. (5sp, for any room)
A repurposed crypt ⅔rds of the way down the dungeon. Over 500 alcoves (no charge), most have been exhumed. "Innkeeper" wards against ghosts for 40sp.

Link is clearly an Elf

>Starts with 6hp (6 half-hearts)
>Has magic bar in many of the games
>Is good at finding hidden doors
>Has pointy ears
>Never wears heavy armor, only uses better armor if it's magic
>Uses sword & board, isn't trained in heavier weapons

But then again, he doesn't have infravision so I guess I'm wrong.
...But what if all the darkness in the dungeons is created through magical means?

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>>51568380
>infravision being useful
>in The Mythic Underworld
Read up on the literature.
• http://www.grey-elf.com/philotomy.pdf

>>51568407
Well that settles it then. Link is an elf.

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>>51568457
Was that ever in dispute?

>>51550718
A brooch shaped like a shark, you breath water instead of air while it's in your mouth.
Swallowing it polymorphs you to a dire shark (until you shit it out) for 4d6+12 hours.

>>51568457
As I like to point out (even though Hyrule lore has changed since the old days) that, according to the Silmarillion, Elves are the firstborn race, beloved of the gods, skilled with sword, bow, and magic, involved in a long war against a being of evil that centers around the greatest Elven treasure, which has three parts.

>>51567443
The first time somebody ever explained DnD to me as a kid, the immediate thing that came to mind is playing as Link.
>I never did.

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>>51568923
You grasp at straws, buddy.

>>51568967
Oh, completely and totally!
Still, it amuses me.

>>51567506
Unless, of course, its the first Final Fantasy.

I never understood why the Sorcerers could kill you in a single hit that barely did any damage until I played AD&D and realized they were Mind Flayers doing that attack where they just rip out your brain.

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True AD&D™

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>>51569337
They also paralysed you with Mind Blast.

>>51569410
Mind flayers in FF1 were two separate monsters. One has the instant death brain rip, one has the stun.

>>51568407
He is most certainly NOT an OD&D char.

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>>51570308
>One has the instant death brain rip, one has the stun.
Nope. Mind Flayers (Sorcerers) use AoE paralysis (Trance), hit for almost nothing, and sometimes insta-kill on melee.
The palate swap Piscodemons (Wizards) are immune to spells except lightning. Also Piscodemons hit like a truck.

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True AD&D®

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>>51570660
>®
™, right?

And how to you choose which to do?

>>51570787
Duplicate posts from same IP are disallowed within time frames©

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>>51570971
Isn't the duplicate post cooldown 5 minutes?
>And how to you choose which to do?
Sorry, that was a bit ambiguous.
How to you choose which *monsters to do?

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Trying to make hexcrawl modules, with huge maps.

I can't find any application online that will create a custom numbered hex grid for me that I can use as an overlay for me to draw on and make a proper hexcrawl map in Krita. I know something like that must exist, cuz I have no idea how anyone can be expected to individually label potentially hundreds of hexes with tiny numbers/letters. In fact I haven't been able to find a program that will create a hex grid, period. I'd have to make one of my own somehow, or just copy an existing image.

There's that incompetech thing, but it's for making printable pdfs and it doesn't have customization options because it doesn't actually care about RPG's. It just shits out a grid to print and calls it a day.

Autorealm does not have a numbered grid option, at least not that I can tell, and holy shit I am not using that weird ass vector graphics and fractal stuff I just want to draw with my tablet using regular old brushes on a numbered hex grid.

Not using hexographer because it's just not intended to be used for this purpose. It's for making tile based graphics images, and the blank maps it generates might be useful if they had a transparent background, but they don't.

I found two free downloadable applications which have been popularly linked, and neither of them work. One of them won't even start (just opens the command line and crashes instantly), and the other won't do anything (the previews are blank, and even though it says it saves a png file, there is no file, it does nothing).

Even those gimp brush tools seem to have disappeared, but I don't think they'd do what I want anyway, since that is just like hexographer tile graphics, except in gimp for some reason.

I just need the grid so I can draw on it lol seems like everyone has some finicky solution to get around needing to hand draw, and I just want to draw everything myself, but I'm physically incapable of drawing a perfect hex grid, so it's the only thing I need.

>>51570420

...huh. for about... two decades I have thought the sorcerer was based off the mind blast element and the wizard was the instant death element.

Somewhat curious as to how much work it'd be to make an FF1 module...

>>51572565
If you have Hexographer pro, you could make a custom hex that's a solid color, do a huge numbered map with only that tile, number everything, and then use photoshop to turn that color transparent.

>>51572650
I don't, I also don't have photoshop, and I am confused how this process you describe would work, would I have to individually type in the number of every hex?

>>51572758
Hexographer can automatically label every hex. It can also apply a hex grid as an overlay to an image, I'm fairly certain.

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>>51572758
Here, I went ahead and did a sample for you with the most basic, default settings possible. You can customize a lot of it, but this'll get the point across of what Hexographer can do.

>>51572650
>If you have Hexographer pro, you could make a custom hex that's a solid color
Why bother? Free Hexographer will let you create an arbitrarily large map consisting only of blank tiles already.

>>51572986
I've never used the free version so I have no clue what functionalities it's missing. And I was trying to think of some way to work around the strangely arbitrary requirements that guy had. I have no clue how Krita works but if he can't turn a white background transparent, I thought I'd offer a workaround that might be easier with some ghetto image editing software.

>>51572986
>>51573019
I could just use hexographer if someone can figure out how to get the weird off-white background to turn transparent. Because I'm too stupid to figure out a way apparently.

Krita is just like paint tool sai basically. Like all I wanna do is draw using a simple paint program, and not have to basically teach myself how to use a new type of software just to draw little castles and shit, you know?

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>>51572758
>I don't
Well now you do.

>>51573134
Just use something that isn't the equivalent to mspaint. If you're trying to do something that involves layers and transparency, you're making things really hard on yourself for no good reason.

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>>51539984
This table is what happens if you treat the thief skills in the book like saving throws (as some suggest they were intended) on top of a base 2-in-6 chance for failure, but combine them into a single roll. The skills still start off a bit low, but if applied against easy tasks that give a decent bonus (maybe +20% to pick the typical sort of lock you'd encounter in a low-level dungeon) and/or attribute bonuses (+5% per +1 attribute modifier), that should make things a little bit more doable.

>>51573173
Holy shit thanks.

>>51573208
>This table is what happens if you treat the thief skills in the book
The skills from the Moldvay Basic rules, that is.

Is there a OSR (or even non-osr) setting with strong folkloric themes?

>>51573366
What kind of folklore?

>>51559971
Stat adjustments for old age is perfectly acceptable. Level drain is a completely different thing. Sure an old man might be weaker, and slower, and be more susceptible to illness, but he isn't dumber, less skilled, or knows less magic, and progress isn't nonexistant for them either. There's plenty of musicians in their 70s and 80s who are still improving.

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>>51559971
Liches are dope regardless of whether there are flimsier ways to become immortal.

Not even going to touch how odd it is that becoming a withered carcass/skeleton makes you insanely durable.

I rather enjoy the idea of a setting in which its not too unusual and somewhat celebrated for archmages to become liches, who then omit themselves from society following something like a wake/retirement party, and are now able to pursue knowledge and research forever with no interruptions, likely also while guarding a great repository of forbidden lore, imprisonment site of a powerful eldritch evil, etc. Only to return in the most dire of situations.

>>51573921
>I rather enjoy the idea of a setting in which its not too unusual and somewhat celebrated for archmages to become liches, who then omit themselves from society following something like a wake/retirement party, and are now able to pursue knowledge and research forever with no interruptions, likely also while guarding a great repository of forbidden lore, imprisonment site of a powerful eldritch evil, etc.
Sounds a bit like those Buddhist monks who mummify themselves alive.

There is this ancient Dragon Magazine article in which they talk about building a dungeon beneath a town to keep out subterranean invasion, and suggest having three levels:

1. An ooze pit, also useful as a sewer/garbage dump. They're mindless, so they're not too likely to try to escape and wreak havoc.
2. A level for petrification monsters, to keep out ethereal/astral travelers. Aside from petrification, these creatures rarely have strong magic abilities that would let them escape very well.
3. A necropolis, works as a combination potter's field and prison, full of undead. The condemned can be simply placed inside.

The article put forth the notion that adventurers breaking in and letting the undead out are one of the few situations where a paladin and an evil high priest may work together, to funnel them back inside.

>>51575268
that's neat

>>51573366
I use a variation of Midgard a really good third party Pathfinder setting that is based on Germanic and Slavic Folklore.

>>51576294
tfw I am doing the exact same thing

>>51576588
Oh really?! Awesome.

Did you go ahead and convert the stuff for your game of choice? I have some rough notes on doing it for LotFP and DCC but nothing concrete but we're 3 sessions in with using DCC and nothing seems too broken yet. The important thing for me was Race/Class distinction and then figuring out how to rebrand the race classes as just classes.

Still looking for 2-3 more players for a S&W game. Skype is kbalanera. Message me if you're interested.

>>51576733
I've never been to our Discord, but OP advertises it as a game finder.
Maybe check there?

>>51576655
I mostly cherry picked the stuff I really like and wouldn't break my view of the intended world of DCC, and it's working well so far. The way it handles its cosmology and elves is really fitting to the setting itself, so there were no issues so far.
I mostly just took the fluff though, and build new mechanics around it only when needed.

What's a good amount of gold for a 1st level party to get hired by a village to check out a dungeon which they also get to loot?

>>51579044
50?

>>51579044
That depends. On a lot of things.
How big is the village? Who's hiring? Are they expected to turn over any of the loot?

>>51575268
The idea of having to make subterranean moats to defend your shit is pretty cool.

Locking a cockatrice in your basement seems less like a good idea. Although maybe a temple with medusa oracles that also keeps the underground caverns 'safe' but filled with petrified invaders, reading the future in how mosses grow on them.

Basically you have to have a way to live symbiotically with the monsters you're keeping so they don't just eat you instead or team up with invaders.