OSR General

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>>47626099
> Question: In LotFP, one of my players wants to be a witch. Should the 'class' be Cleric (a witches powers come from deals with the devil) or Magic-User?
Why not make her a Witch?

Other than that - Magic-User, obviously. LotFP MU are the side of Chaos. They even get damaged by holy water.

>>47626477
what game is that from?

>>47626099
There's already an OSR thread >>47623190

(Though there's no "OSR" text in the opening post, so if you searched for it...)

>>47626778
Some LotFP homebrew, I think.

>>47626779
> no "OSR" text in the opening post
That's not OSR thread then.

I'm not even asking for standard blue logo anymore, but - KEEP THE GODDAMN LETTERS.

not OP

>>47626969
I mean, the pic is "OSR" in big letters, but that's obviously not searchable.

I'm looking for Mayfairs The Batman RPG from 1989. It's adC Heros system not sure if it's old enough to be called old school.

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>>47626099
I always feel that shields should be a lot more useful than just -5% to be hit (pic related). Anyone have house rules for shields?

>>47626099
Any of you gents got your hands on the Cursed Chateau yet? Is it worth the price? Any thoughts on how it measures up to the original?

Got any clue what the political alignment rules from england upturned are about?

>>47629762
One popular houserule (that I personally hate, but whatever) is that you can sacrifice your shield to prevent the damage from a single hit. All Shields Must Be Splintered is the common name, I think?

Besides that, though, even the +1 AC can be a bigger deal than you think it is. It's more like a -25% chance to be hit at level one, for instance.

Also, of course, how good shields actually are is highly dependant on the rules for two-handing and dual-wielding and whatnot.

Also, if you play with Weapons vs. AC then shields can have an ever bigger impact than usual.


One houserule you could backport from 4E, IIRC, is that having a shield gives you a bonus to your "reflex" save - a bonus towards Dragon Breath, for instance. They had it be the same bonus that you got to AC, but that's also a very different system so I don't know how well it'll translate to whatever you're playing. A +6 bonus to a save is a pretty huge deal, after all, since saves actually get better as you level up rather than merely keeping up with monster attacks like in 3E+.

>>47629762

Last Gasp Grimoire's Shields Shall be Splintered rule: A warrior who has a shield may choose to ignore damage from any one blow, in exchange for his shield being destroyed.
Simple, effective, and handy. LGG's extension of those rules to armor got fiddly and dumb, but this rule is nice.

>>47629762

I have a couple.

Basically square, round, or kite shields give your Strength Modifier +1 to AC. Tower sheilds give your Con modififer +2 to AC. This way, your shields are greatly boosted but only if you have the right attributes.

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So I'm writing up a rough draft here but I need a little help.

How much health should everyone get using this combat system?

>>47626477
>>47626778
ACKS (another B/X retroclone) Player's Companion has a Witch class.

>>47626099
what is the 3.5 of OSR?

>>47633418

Hackmaster?

>>47626778

It's from this website: gloomtrain dot blogspot dot co dot uk/search/label/san%20seraf%C3%ADn

OSR is quite slow recently

>>47637080

Yeah, really. No replies to dumb homebrew ideas either.

have someone here played an AD&D 3e campaign?

>>47629762
I like shields improving AC by 2 and compensating by either boosting two-handed weapons to 2d6 damage, or allowing you to add twice your strength modifier to them.

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Can't decide if I want to run Grimmsgate or Tower of the Stargazer for my friends. I have a feeling most will lean heavily towards Stargazer though.

>>47626477
I really really really like this way of doing XP.
Where can I have more of this way of doing XP?

>>47629762
Here are uses for a shield : you can put it on your head to avoid a shower of rocks/arrows/frozen rain daggers, you can ride on it on snow, you can bash people with it, you can put it under your blanket and you for emergency defense, you can polish it until it reflects stuff and beat the Medusa with it...

Just as helmets have a tons of uses, but no mechanical counterpart in most systems, I don't think it's an issue or a design flaw.

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>>47637484
I like this map. What software did you use?

General Question : do you guys know and enjoy Hexographer? Have you accepted it as your lord and savior? Do you show or hide the wilderness map? Why?

Other question : Into the Odd is great, why haven't you tried it out yet? Here's a character sheet for it (not by me).

>>47637484
Also I've run Tower of the Stargazer with many different types of players : casual gamers, total noobs, veterans of many years, veterans of the old guard (actual grognards), people who said they hate D&D before trying D&D and ended up liking it, curious girlfriend, curious mom and dad...Anytime I need a quick module actually, I take out ToS.

>>47638673
I liked it too.

Unfortunately, that's not mine and I couldn't find any more of that.

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>>47638801
No idea, it isn't mine. I found it on a /tg/ maps thread some months ago, I believe.

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>>47640136
>Iranistan

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>>47638853
I'll keep that in mind, actually. After comparing the two, I'm thinking of maybe incorporating ToS into Grimmsgate itself.

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>>47640155
>Asgard
>Pictish
>Amazonia

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>>47640155
>>47640550

I really, really hope you both know where that map is from.

Either way, it is amusing.

>>47640155
In its slight defense, it was made at a time when Iran was called Persia and Iran was a fairly uncommon name in English.

>>47640155
Yeah, there are a few Howardisms that bother me, and that one is the worst. Honestly, the way he mixes historical and fantasy names throws me off, as midpoint between them comes off as "history done wrong".

>>47629977
I've ordered the book but I haven't gotten it yet. I have the pdf though. Cursed Chateau seems really fun and I'm already planning to run it. It cost a bit because apparently the book will have metallic colors which is cool I guess. Illustrations and layout are great. I never read the original so I can't tell you if it's better.


I haven't managed to read much of england upturnd'd because the layout and illustrations are really meh. The political alignment wasn't very interesting, D&D has you being a lawful evil character or whatever but this just has you being a royalist pissant or similar. Basically he just converted the alignments to better fit his world.

Someone posted both the book pdfs a couple threads back, check the archive and see if it's still there.

>>47620151
New Godbound beta

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What kind of charsheet do you prefer (and what kind do you actually use)?

Do you use print-outs, or prefer to make your own?

What about using dice pips to show the skill rating? Is it better or worse than the numbers?

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>>47640638
Was thinking the same thing.

>>47640936
I have a hard time being too critical of Howard, seeing as it was an early time for "world building."

How do you guys feel about the Spell Duels section of DCC? It seems interesting, but I don't know about it in actual play, I feel like it would really slow down game play and prove not worth time time/effort.

Has anyone seen the Dark Sun supplement "Dragon Kings" in the trove?

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>>47646737
Should be in Accessories.

Bumps

>>47626477
What the fuck. She's intended to get to level 4 after roughly 4 sessions? That's fucking bullshit.

>>47649113

Perhaps either the game ran by the GM is unusually lethal, or "enemy killed" has to have the final blow dealt by the witch. (maybe unlikely due to be a support caster?) It's possible the GM and their players don't get to meet up often so a quick levelling system works better for them?

What should I get into in particular if I am fond of AD&D 2e but want something somewhat more streamlined and organized.

>>47651265
most retroclones will result in a similar style of play. Doubly so if you toss in whatever it is you like about 2e (ie, higher HD for warriors, add'l spells).

Labyrinth Lord Advanced and Swords and Wizardry Complete have similar options, I think.

>>47644449
more people need to read The Night Land

>>47651265

There's For Gold & Glory. It's essentially 2e clone, though since you're asking for more streamlined and organized...

... I would recommend Basic Fantasy RPG. Check out their website (all the PDFs are free, bless them) and see if the rules are what you're looking for. They have some additional classes and races as one to ten page PDFs that you can download and examine individually.

They even have a PDF that discusses what amounts to kit classes (in case you like those). Most of the other OSR clones have free PDFs as well (Swords & Wizardry Complete, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc.) so you can check them out before buying and pick the one that suits your taste best.

Personally, I like Lamentations because the encumbrance rules are great, I dig the weird stuff, and the Fighter is the best at actually fighting things.

>>47653110
Everything past the intro is stupid

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>>47638673
It's not exactly the same, but I'm working on a somewhat similar system designed to keep XP values low and manageable. The GM awards a small number of points based entirely on his judgment of what a task / encounter / challenge / achievement is worth, with the average value being 8. This takes the party's strength into account, so while a small group of goblins might be worth an 8 to a 1st level party, it'd be worth considerably less to a higher level one.

The "8 is average" figure applies if you're lumping everything together. If you wanted to, say, separately award XP for both fight strength and treasure found, you could reference the values on the far right, awarding an equal half of experience for each, or a big "half" for one and "small" half for the other (approximately one third and two thirds, respectively).

You start of needing to accomplish 8.75 average tasks / encounters / challenges / achievements to gain a level (to get to 2nd), and end up needing 25 (for any level above 10; it takes 20 to get to 10).

>>47654762
what makes you say that?

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https://www.docdroid.net/kHgwIZv/rotdp.pdf.html

Post-Apoc LotFP 'reskin' I'm working on.

Input?

>>47656868
It seems less like a LotFP reskin, due to entirely lacking any sense of the "Weird", and more like an OSR game you made after reading through LotFP and ripping the mechanics from other systems.

That said, it seems like it could be fun.

>>47657787
But LotFPs 'Weird' is primarily based of the adventure modules tho, no? The book itself is just B/X with eerie pictures.

But yer right: it's essentially LotFPs core mechanics, S&W saving throws, and Mutant Futures mutations.

>>47630031
Don't want to be a douche here, but just so you know LGG didn't come up with the rule. It was a guy called "Trollsmyth", I think.

any Dawn Patrol?

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So for you guys who prefer ascending AC, how big a difference does it make for you? Would you go through the trouble of converting from descending AC / importing an ascending AC system from another game?

>>47661105
I prefer Ascending AC, but I prefer not having to-hit tables even more.

That being said: I would call the conversion trouble. It is literally figuring out the base chance for your baseline (for example a level 1 character from class X) to hit your baseline AC (say AC 9), and converting from there.

Typing that sentence cost me more mental gymnastics than needed to perform the initial conversion, after which you just need to create three tables: a table with attack bonus per level for characters, a table with attack bonus per HD for monsters, and a table with AC bonus from armor.

>>47661450
>would
Typo: Wouldn't**

>>47661105
I'm indifferent to which one is used, but will often use ascending AC for the sake of players, who are much more likely to intuitively grasp ascending.

I literally just do what S&W does since it offers both descending and ascending AC:

>subtract AC from 9
>add result to 10
And you have your new AC!

So if an enemy's AC is 3, you do 9 - 3 = 6. 6 + 10 = 16. Its AC is now 16.

It even works with ACs below 0. Ac is -2? Okay. 9 - (-2) is the same as 9+2, which equals 11.

11 + 10 = 21.

>>47661471
>Subtracting AC from 9 rather than 10. Subtracting THAC0 from 19 rather than 20.
I mean, it works, but the conversion numbers are a bit less intuitive. Of course, unarmored being 10 rather than 11 is nice, though it probably doesn't matter much because few people will have a base-line unarmored AC.

Does anyone have the Black Hack pdfs?

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Slowed spell progression?

>>47656868
Only 7 words, and you have a typo already
Alpha

>>47658575

Hey, you're right. I checked my links and it is Trollsmyth. I think what happened is that I was reading LGG's houserules and clicked a link to Trollsmyth without realizing that it led offsite, so I thought I was still on LGG at the time.

Why did blogs become so huge in the hobby?
It's literally the only thing I see them used for these days.

>>47663133

OSR had a huge blog presence for whatever reason.. Blogs are pretty big for RPGs, though Google Plus is even bigger.

>>47663233
Yeah, but I wonder what triggered that?

>>47663335

I don't know. I understand Google Plus, because its particular feature set is really well suited to developers and fans sharing stuff, but blogs?
I guess maybe the grandpa effect, where the old farts who were the biggest on the OSR were likewise a generation or so behind on technology and not interested in the newfangled social media doohickeys, and so they started blogs instead?
I'm still not on facebook

>>47663410
I'd say it's a bit of that, but keep in mind Google Plus didn't launch until 2011/2012 and even then was in that sort of perpetual beta typical of Google products - many of the long running OSR blogs predate that.

The roots of the OSR really started in like the mid-2000s as people started posting about their D&D campaigns and people who still played B/X and older editions came online. Blogs were just the natural candidate at the time to post stories about your campaign and your houserules; forums are too ephemeral, Facebook is too personal, Twitter is too limited. This is all way before stuff like Mythweavers, Roll20, and Obsidianportal too for keeping track of the campaign, which is another reason to start logging things on a blog.

I'd also say the big shifts to 3.x and also to 4e also drove a lot of traffic - people disillusioned with the latest flavour of D&D went online and started looking at older editions. And people might see someone's blog and then get inspired to start their own campaign log.

where the fuck do i get a physical copy of DCC

>>47665086

Well, first you need to roll a d13 plus a d7 and get a result of pi.

>>47665178
sounds legit

>>47665178
You. I like you.

>>47663410
> I'm still not on facebook
Bah.

> I don't know. I understand Google Plus, because its particular feature set is really well suited to developers and fans sharing stuff, but blogs?
Okay, grasshoper - what is this feature? I did try looking at G+ a few times (once I've seen people mentioning it), but all I can see is an extremely annoying way to display content.

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Does anyone have Adventure Fantasy Game or Chthonic Codex (by the same company)?

Trying to find Go Fer Yer Gun, an OSR Wild West game. Used to be free but looks like it was pulled from RPGNow and Drivethru. Help?

>>47665086
Check out Noble Knight or pre-order the new printing directly from Goodman games.
Watch out for the shipping charge though.

Somebody help me. I keep getting pissed at anti-D&D threads that assume 3.5 is the only version that exists.

>>47669393
As far as RPGs go, D&D is huge. There are tons of people out there who would rather play something else but have to settle for D&D because it's the only game they can find players for. It's like that song that, in the old days, got played over and over on the radio or MTV to the point where, even if you thought it was okay to begin with, you found yourself wishing painful and creative deaths upon every member of the band who created it.

So you have to cut the haters some slack. Yes, a lot of people incorrectly treat 3.5 as if it's indicative of D&D in general, and that can be annoying. But that song that got played over and over that I was talking about? That's 3.5. OGL swallowed a lot of the game market, and the 3.5 crowd proved particularly obnoxious, resistant to change and so on. And *they* tended to treat 3.5 as if it were the only edition of D&D.

I do enjoy some D&D, especially if we're talking about OSR, but if I could halve the popularity of D&D and in the process elevate some other games, I wouldn't hesitate to do it (though I'd hope that OSR's popularity remained relative consistent and would damn well target Pathfinder if I were allowed that sort of specificity).

>>47655446
It's just him dragging a girl around and he tells her not to do stupid stuff and she does so he yells at her.

>>47632067
ranged and melee attacks working totally differently rubs me the wrong way, personally. Why not use the same system for both?

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>>47670102
This is one of the better posts I've seen on /tg/ in a while. I tried to improve a common /tg/ image for you.

Is there an OSR class anywhere that's based on the whole "raised by wild animals" Tarzan shtick?

If not, is there anything that goes into detail about how to make your own class for OSR, and actually do it well?

>>47666205

From what I gather, the main thing is the ability to include or exclude content based on circles, so you can get updates from designers and homebrewers you like, without the minor "I ate a pie today" horseshit that you get from facebook. You can get a much better signal-to-noise ratio because of the way it works, or something.

I don't really use G+, but I know it's hugely popular with RPG nerds, it's one of the niches where G+ really took off, it seems.

>>47671345
Wolfpacks and Winter Snow has a class of feral children who get sneaking and survival skills and tame animal companions rather than building a tribe.
I mean, it's a stone-age setting and a slightly odd ruleset, so it might be a little difficult to adapt for your own game, but still.

am i just an idiot or are hackmaster 5e pdfs impossible to find?

>read ACKs
>fall in love with it
>nobody to DM
>nobody to run it for

>>47673802
Welcome to OSR!

>>47663024
well help a guy out! photoshop doesn't have any auto correct.

>>47670366

It makes melee attacks more reliable, but have the negative of making them weaker where as ranged are less reliable but bullets deal more damage when they do finally hit.

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>run LotFP: the Grinding Gear
>players inspect statue
>inspect plaque (door trigger) with grime and dust from the elements
>fresh body near it has grime and dust on fingers
>characters split to 2 groups
>proceed to thoroughly inspect a mostly empty inn and surrounding forest for the next 3 hours.
>mfw

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>>47673818

>>47638673

It's a lot like how Dungeon World does XP.

>>47673717
The former. Check PDF thread.


>>47673802
Did you try online groups?

>>47657852
Some things, like class descriptions, are still pretty "weird".

>>47673802
That makes two of us. Maybe sometime next year we'll have a party of four, at the rate we're going. I do notice it doesn't get discussed very much - LoTFP and LL seem to be the go-to retroclones for B/X (or people just play B/X). I imagine it's because there's less interlocking parts and they're more safely house-ruleable.

>>47674109
>Did you try online groups?

It really seems like the sort of game you'd be better of playing IRL.

>>47674381
You have, tentatively and schedule-depending, my dice.

So is OSR all about homebrews or what?

>>47675047

Not really. OSR is about getting back to basics, in this case, basic D&D (particularly B/X). However, because the rules are so light, and the rule systems are so independent of one another, it's fairly easy to hack the rules to taste, and this lends itself well to homebrews.

Creating a sword and planet setting, but there's no existing rules for androids? Make a new race, or even a new race-as-class.

The other part is that your class and race are so basic that they barely have any rules presence at all, meaning that it's up to you to fluff your character. Want to be a Fighter who was raised by wolves? No problem. Wear leather armor re-fluffed as skins, and maces or hammers re-fluffed as clubs. Ask the DM if you can have a skill that lets you speak with wolves, and have wolf henchmen. Ask if you can give up access to heavier armors to have some sort of wilderness knowledge/tracking skill. Maybe even gain a bonus to surprise.

I used to be a 3aboo, but OSR converted me. I never want to run 3.PF ever again.

>>47675486
I just got that 3.PF works as an abbreviation of "three point five" and references 3.5/Pathfinder.

>>47676374
I think it's a continuation of 3.x standing in for 3.5 and 3e.

I'm so torn.
LotFP is a breeze to run. Super relaxing as a DM.
But I love the fun mechanics of DCC. Those mechanics can bog the game down a bit though, and take up more headspace as a DM.
I've tried mashing the two together, but once you get in to magic, it becomes a bit of a chore to sort through all the little subsystems.

>>47676697
Are you me? Are you literally me?!
How does your fix look like currently?

>>47676764
brief rundown is:
Started with a base of DCC.
all DCC classes as is. Except thief skills, which works like the LotFP specialist. As does the rest of the skill system. Trying to remove "difficulty class" rolls as much as possible and instead just let players roll off things keyed to their character's attributes. Arbitrary target numbers are a pet peeve of mine.
Stuck on cleric and wiz/m-u and magic as a whole.
LotFP encumbrance.
LotFP henchmen/morale.
Homebrew movement rates and exploration.
Homebrew saving throws (save vs attribute).
D10 initiative. 10 second combat rounds.
Probably a whole bunch of other minor changes.

>>47676696
Treefinder.

>>47676884
Pretty similar here as well.
Started with DCC but had to rework most of the funky dice mechanics and ended up with classes that work closer to their LotFP counterparts mechanically. Stole some concepts from Last Gasp Grimoire and reworked every spell to use the DCC corruption tables and spell misfires.
Encumbrance is a modified LotFP system, but I kept the movement rates.
Saving Throws are one value called Luck that is modified both by a Lucky Roll Bonus that's class specific and the appropriate Ability Modifier, depending on how the character wants to get out of the situation. Luck can also be burned for rerolls and bonuses, but refreshes to is value with each level gained.

Also removed the DC rolls because I don't find them elegant.

I'm curious though, how do your homebrewn movement and exploration rates work?

>>47677867
Also changed the Skill system to be d20 based and everything being roll-under.

Real life drug me off again for a week or two. Haven't had time to keep up on threads.

Anything anyone wants to shove in the Trove, hit me up.

>>47671345
I've seen several "Beastmasters" out there.

>>47678574
youre a good dude

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Where can I find good miniatures?

>>47681907
in the 4e aisle

you just got roasted by the ~*theater of the mind*~


seriously though check out:
https://www.reapermini.com
http://www.avatars-of-war.com
http://sciborminiatures.com/
and i guess https://www.heroforge.com/

>>47681907
>>47682462 here, i forgot
http://otherworldminiatures.co.uk/shop/
http://www.darkswordminiatures.com/
also http://paizo.com/pathfinderbattles/ the Paizo folk sell prepainted minis which I think Reaper makes for them but if you're really not into the painting side of things it could help you out

>>47671345
ACKS Player's Companion. I cannot recommend this enough - it has guidelines for creating classes that are in line with B/X power levels and have a mostly appropriate XP cost that reflects their power curve.

Also included is a points system for building your own spells with effects.

One drawback is that these are mostly focused on re-mixing existing abilities and powers into a new class (granted, there are quite a lot as ACKS has a number of optional classes). There are a few guidelines for suggesting the possible cost for a brand-new power that has no precedent at all in the OSR tradition though.

>>47678574
https://mega.nz/#F!Y04xHISZ!EuyR2lJpyQAQYg0sglDwsA

The two new LotFP adventures, courtesy of your boy LotFPanon. Stygian Gardens can go into the 3rd party folder too.

I used to follow OSR, but from the past few months til now, I was really occupied. Was there anything new? Some "big" release like Red pleasent land, Yon Suin or a new game?

>>47683317
Wait, you didn't hear about the discovery? For real?

>>47683317
Did you at least hear what they found in Gary Gygax' basement? It was over national TV for a while. That absolute madman

>>47677867
I gave humanoids a base speed of 50ft/rnd, calculated from googling aberagr human walk speed.

As for exploration; start at full move speed (3000ft/turn) and reduce move speed by 10ft/rnd for every procedure the party wishes to perform (10ft pole poking, fiddling with wall fixtures to find secret doors, moving quietly, stopping to listen, etc) down to a minimum of 600ft/trn.

Anything their procedures cover just happens. Characters with trap/search skills can roll to account for anything their procedure didnt cover.

Movement rate is obviously irrelevant, so turns tick over after the party stops to interact with anything. Which happens a lot with my players. Most dungeons have something to do within 60ft of anything else so it just works.

>>47683840
Yeah a well formatted, easy to read PDF version of the 1e DMG, a national treasure!

>>47683317
From LotFP, we've got World of the Lost, Towers Two, The Cursed Chateau and England Upturn'd. They're all pretty interesting. Check them out.

>>47683866
Shame he hid it in that death dungeon he spent decades building.
They say the first party to make it through will be allowed to keep it too.

>>47671345

There's the Beastmaster from Blood and Treasure:

matt-landofnod.blogspot DOT co DOT uk/2011/02/beastmaster.html

>>47683831
>>47683840
>>47684007
I really dont know what you guys are talking about, I'm not american, so didnt see anything on TV.

>>47684428
It's insane. Basically the family came out about Gygax making an underground Tomb of Horrors with a new and edited DMG as the reward.

I'm actually trying to put together a party to try it soon.

Is Gold for XP really worth it?
I'm considering switching to something closer to DCC's approach with smaller XP requirements and situations where danger was avoided rewarding XP . But modify it a bit more so it also includes looting

Anyone have any arguments FOR gold to xp besides it really carrying across what the game should be about?

>>47685691
I strongly prefer it. It both incentivizes the players to make certain kinds of decisions, and really makes it a risk-reward situation on the player's part. I like to be as impartial an arbiter as a DM as possible, so gold-for-xp gives me a means to let players essentially decide their own rate of advancement. Big risks get big payoffs. Smaller risks mean slower advancement. It also translates very easily when dealing with amount of xp vs number of people in the party, henchmen, etc.

>>47685691
Giving XP for other things makes players more likely to try and play in ways that don't focus primarily on the gold, for purposes of getting XP.

Gold for XP also really, REALLY emphasizes that if you don't get out WITH some shit, there was no point in going down there.

Also, giving too much XP for things besides gold would lead to modern game shit where people care more about the system.

>yfw your party camps outside a dungeon and farms for XP

Is this a potentially bad mechanic?
Simplifying thieves by giving them a specialisation rating.
Actions work by rolling under your ability score, but thieves get one extra roll that serves both as a second chance and as a bonus effect in case both apply.

>>47685691
Depends on the kind of game you want to run. High fantasy dungeon crawling is good with gold for xp. Incentivises the thing you want the players to do and works with the game economy.

Doesnt work so great for low fantasy or "realism" or narrative focus. Just give out some xp for the act of extracting treasure regardless of amount.

So, if I wanted to play an Assassin in an otherwise neutral and good party, would James Bond be a reasonable interpretation of Lawful Evil?

>>47685691
I tend to give half XP for bypassing an encounter with a non-combat solution, and then the rest of the XP for beating it in a fight.

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>>47683220
Downloaded. Uploaded. Danke.

Anyone know anything about pic related?

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Any good Kobold OSR classes?

I got a player wanting to play one, and want to see if there's any good ideas I can cop

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>>47682462
>>47682609
Thank you kind sir!

>>47685901

>but thieves get one extra roll that serves both as a second chance and as a bonus effect in case both apply

This was the original intention of the thief rules. It was just never explicitly stated due to bad editing and assumptions on the game creators' parts. But now that we have players who were in those games, they mention that that is how thieves were run in those games.

The percentage chance was just an assurance over the normal roll that the thief could accomplish the task.


Even then the percentages are pretty low.

>>47687931
Violent Media had one for LotFP. You take the Halfling and change its skills from 5/6 Stealth to 5/6 Tinkering and 3/6 Bushcraft becomes 3/6 Stealth.
BFRPG also has a Kobold race. Combines some of the special abilities of elves, halflings and dwarves but they roll one die size less for HP along with a few other limitations.

>>47685901
Attribute checks can be a bit troublesome because of how wide the range is. If you've got a guy with an 18 dexterity, he only has a 10% chance of failing an unmodified roll. How much better than that do you want a typical thief's chances to be? Or is everything going to have a sizable penalty attached to it? Because that would be not only obnoxious but it would also means that most people (non-thieves without really high stats) shouldn't even bother rolling. So I think you either need to narrow the range of attributes a bit, or just use attribute modifiers for skill rolls like this, rather than raw attribute scores.

>>47687103
IIRC pdf is out, but none of the regular sites have it.

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Looking for pic related. Also, what do people think about The Black Hack in general?

>>47689369
Apparently pdf is sold via Gumroad ($5-$10) who have their own DRM.

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>>47687103
>>47689369
LotFPanon here again, I actually grabbed that and totally forgot. Shame I don't really like megadungeons. Also this doesn't really belong in the LotFP folder despite Zak Smiths previous work being mostly LotFP based. See pic related. No idea if it has DRM at all? Starting upload now, eta about half an hour.

PS. Thanks for your hard work troveguy.

God I wish I had enough money to buy physical copies instead of just pdfs.

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>>47689587
> Also this doesn't really belong in the LotFP folder despite Zak Smiths previous work being mostly LotFP based.
No stats for monsters? How the mighty have fallen...

Well, misc folder then.

>>47689719
Very vague stats and it uses Descending AC, honestly I'd say it's definitely designed for LotFP but they don't mention or market it as such. It uses the gold standard unlike LotFP though.

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>>47689587
Alright it's done: https://mega.nz/#!kpJUwLjD!yCDHnBBj3S78zfPboG9SAJdPkon_a05PEhREpHflElA

>>47689810
LotFP uses Ascending AC, doesn't it?

>>47690048
Nope. Ascending = high numbers, descending = low numbers or thac0 whatever.

>>47689810
>>47690048
>>47690077
Nevermind I'm an idiot. The module and LotFP use Ascending AC. Durr hurr durrrrrr. It's been a long day.

>>47684003
do you have a link to the World of the Lost pdf?

>>47690109
https://mega.nz/#F!olRimI5Q!SHmAzPVX_MYi7J08vFUYZw

Here is World of the Lost (and Towers Two). I swear they were both in the trove...

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>>47689955
> 147 mb
And 21 mb (8892 x 12630 pixels) of art. That's excessive.

I'm not sure if I have any larger pdfs (some bad old scans, maybe?).

Oh, well. Let's see what's inside.

>>47687083
I give more XP for creative solutions than for fights

>>47688703
Anyone got any idea for a simple alternative mechanic here?
I don't want to bog it down with a full-blown skill system, but I do agree that the math is off here.

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>>47690796
Not sure if it's more involved than what you're looking for, but here's this thing. It should be pretty easy to strip it down a bit further (dropping strong and weak skills, for instance) if desired.

>>47689955
Thanks, I didn't even know about this coming out - just bought the Hardcover after looking through the PDF, really nice stuff.

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>>47690864
Also, a d12 system without a whole lot of skill advancement.

>>47685691
Giving XP for gold encourages finding treasure, lugging it out of the dungeon, and getting greedy and taking too much so that you're weighed down and can't escape from the monsters you're too exhausted to fight.

Giving XP for killing monsters encourages killing monsters (duh) rather than running away from a fight, seeking peaceful solutions, or otherwise avoiding them entirely.

Giving XP for roleplaying encourages roleplaying, but it also encourages players to pander to what they think will give them points and penalizes players who aren't that great at the social aspects.

XP for map exploration encourages seeking out the unknown, XP for achieving "quests" or other milestones encourages staying on track for such, XP for avoiding encounters encourages not only sneakiness but also paradoxically seeking out encounters (so that you can avoid them), XP for session participation encourages people to come to sessions but can penalize those who miss one excessively depending on scoring, XP for acting for ones alignment has alignment bullshit, and that's the ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

There's ups and downs to all varieties of XP systems, but the big thing to remember is that giving a carrot for a thing means that the players will probably do that thing.

One thing to note about GP=XP is that if you take it away there's not really that much incentive to grab treasure anymore. Unless you're expecting to reach name level at some point, that is. 3E/4E can get away with it by having gold be directly tied to power in another way via the magic item economy (including crafting, note!), but that's not really quite as big a thing in OSR I don't think?

Seriously, once you start getting into the tens of thousands you can probably buy most mundane items pretty easily. It's armies and castles that really eat into your budget, but by name level you're expected to have wealth ten times that.

>>47691239
>One thing to note about GP=XP is that if you take it away there's not really that much incentive to grab treasure anymore.
You could maybe skirt the issue and require large amounts of GP for training in order to reach a new level.

>>47690890
Or, if you want a simple formulation:

Roll under system. Roll a d12 if you've got a skill or are attempting a task that doesn't require one. Roll a d20 if you're an unskilled guy attempting a skilled task (a non-thief picking a lock), unless the DM rules that you have no chance to pull it off without a skill.

Score = 5 + attribute modifier + 1/4 level

Task Difficulty:
+8 = Incredibly Easy
+6 = Extremely Easy
+4 = Very Easy
+2 = Easy
+1 = Fairly Easy
+0 = Moderate
-1 = Fairly Difficult
-2 = Difficult
-4 = Very Difficult
-6 = Extremely Difficult
-8 = Incredibly Difficult
-10 = Phenomenally Difficult
-12 = Supremely Difficult

>>47690796
This is what I'm trying, based on LotFP and DCC:
No skill list, except for thief skills.
Mostly an explanation will suffice to perform a task. No check is required.
When the situation warrants a skill check: PC has a [1] + [Ability Mod] + [Training] + [Modifiers] in [6] chance to succeed.
+1 Training bonus if a logical connection can be RP'd to skills/training a PC has, or if any adult could reasonably attempt it.
Race/class skill bonuses replace training.
Thief's Skill Rank (LotFP), if higher is used instead of Ability mods and Training.
If the chance is 6-in-6 or higher, roll 2d6 and only fail if both dice are 6.
If the chance is 0-in-6 or lower, then LK must be burned (DCC) to bring the chance up to 1 or more, or accept automatic failure.

>>47690890
Thanks for the input. I've peen thinking about this over the day and I think I may have found a solution that's simple and doesn't step on the thief's toes
You have a base skill rating of 3 that doesn't improve as you level. On top of that you pick a skill you're proficient with which gives you a +3. And that's it. When making a skill check under stress you use your base rating + a fitting attribute modifier + the proficiency if you have it.
So a lvl5 fighter who tries to climb a sheer surface with +2STR and proficiency would have a 8/20 chance of making it

Thieves on the other hand gain 3 proficiencies and their base skill increases as they level.
(Basically 3+lvl)
So a lvl5 thief with climb proficiency and +2STR would have a 13/20 chance
A lvl5 thief without climb or any STR would still be as effective as the fighter from the previous example

Demihumans would get a second proficiency that levels with them. Like improved spot for elves that starts as +4 but goes up with levels.

>>47691239
One thing that always bothered me about gold-for-xp and the magic items arms race in later editions is the narrative gap.

On the one hand, a generic fantasy setting implies feudal medieval subsistence economy. Cash poor. Barter and trade are more common.

But players have to drag out thousands and thousands of gold pieces worth of treasure - even at low levels - to level up and disseminate it in to the economy to buy supposedly ultra rare magic gear. 1st level PC's could live like sultans off the loot from their first dungeon.

I've since ditched gp-for-xp, gone to a copper piece standard, removed magic items for purchase, fewer coins in treasure and more objects of high value.

A first level dungeon might have enough treasure in it to support a family of 5 peasants for a year, at most.

>>47691655
So a thief with a +2 modifier applicable to the skill he's proficient would stat out like this?

level 1 = 9
level 4 = 12
level 8 = 16
level 12 = 20
level 16 = 24
level 20 = 28

>>47691855
Pretty much. By name level he should have a major chance to pull such things off.

>>47691935
My inclination would be to make the base increase by only half his level (and maybe start a few points higher to compensate?), thereby keeping the numbers from getting well above 20, but if you've got crazy, mystical shit thieves can do at big penalties (walking silently across dried leaves half a foot thick, running up walls at full speed, etc.) that would validate the high scores.

>>47691999
20 is technically max for the base number, but any excess can be used for mitigating penalties.
Thing is, thieves are usually really suboptimal so I'd say giving them some decent and fast progression akin to before thieves skills' progression got halved to accommodate for higher levels would be fair enough.
I'll think about it and do some calculations to check what's closer to what I have in mind. Increasing the base and slowing progression sounds reasonable, but I was kinda modelling it after how LotFP treats fighter attack bonuses, with starting one higher and increasing by level until they max out and he just keeps getting other things like saves and HP

>>47692168
Actually, on second thought, thieves' skills at higher levels reaching the levels of the mythical is kind of an appealing concept.

>>47651265
There's a lack of 2e-specific clones. There's For Gold & Glory, as mentioned above, and Might & Magic, which is a 2e neoclone that's the aborted child of a failed Kickstarter.

LotFP and Basic Fantasy are more of a B/X clone, and (I think) Swords & Wizardry Complete is OD&D+supplements, so Labyrinth Lord with AEC should be closer to what you want. I'd still check them out, jsut to get nice stuff, particularly BF and LotFP.

>>47663335
It's easier to cross-reference and achieve stuff in blogs. Well, wikis could be a better idea for that end, but blogs are easier to set. Besides, OSR people tend to prefer essays over encyclopedic content creation.

>>47692209
Well, good luck with your system. It seems pretty simple and straightforward, and I think it'll work out fine whether or not you slow the progression.

My only real concern (and it's one that applies to most of the systems out there) would be how non-thieves work out, and how you transition from specialist-type skills (making a skill check to pick a lock) to commonly performed tasks (rolling against your dexterity to jump over the narrow ravine). Because non-thieves are going to tend to have pretty shitty skill ratings, but you want them to still be able to do stuff.

>>47651265
Castles & Crusades is a streamlined AD&D that uses the unified d20 mechanic of new school D&D.

>>47692209
>thieves' skills at higher levels reaching the levels of the mythical is kind of an appealing concept.
I suppose there are a few ways of doing that. One is to just to give mythical stuff a big penalty. So maybe you could try it at mid levels, but with almost no chance of success. Personally, I kind of like the idea of unlocking your mystical abilities. Whenever your score reaches 20, you can, at that point, start doing freaky shit. It would still probably have a fairly large penalty associated with it (-10?), but it wouldn't necessarily have to be reconciled with the other difficulty adjustments, since it's a mystic ability you have special access to.

File: Guns of War Sneak Preview.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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Guess what got released

>>47692387
And here is the draft edition of Lairs & Monsters

>>47692294
Yeah it's my biggest concern as well. Skills are so contradictory to OSR, but in case of thieves they are needed, but banning them to others is a bad move that hampers creativity.
I actually did it this way because I realized it's exactly how my saving throws work and just reducing it all to a few numbers would perhaps work surprisingly well.
Which is why I'll try to keep the skill list focused on really specialized things you need proper training for and are mostly rolled when time is of the essence, and for other things either offer an automatic succes or a attribute roll which should offer really good chances of succeeding.
While it does bother me that the difference between 10 and 18 is literally a +40%, I think I'll go with it because my main goal is for the characters to succeed jumping over that damn ledge. 50-90% is a big difference, but both are higher than that base 15%
10 would be the assumed minimum so nobody gets too gimped.

So yeah, bottom line, automatic success or really high chances of success if the skill isn't something really specific and hard to do like pickpocketing, defusing dangerous traps or climbing a wall without tools.

>>47692372
I'm currently considering just using the overflow.
For example if your rating would add up to 24, the overflow is 4 so you have a 4/20 chance of pulling some mythic level stuff.
Might be simpler than just adding penalties to it, I think?

>>47692429
>For example if your rating would add up to 24, the overflow is 4 so you have a 4/20 chance of pulling some mythic level stuff.
The problem with that is there is a rather large gap between maxing out your skill as for as ordinary tasks are concerned and being passable enough at the mythic stuff for it to be worth trying. Like, say you've got a 25. It isn't usually worth attempting something you only have a 1 in 4 chance to pull off unless failure carries little or no penalty.

>Might be simpler than just adding penalties to it, I think?
Well, -10 is a bit different from, say, -7. Anytime you have a 20-something stat and are attempting to do something mystical, your chance to succeed is going to be in the teens (with the same ones digit as your score) before you factor in situational modifiers. 24 becomes 14. 22 becomes 12. It's hardly even math.

But then maybe it's just intuitive to me because I came up with it (or vice versa).

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>>47692404
?

>>47692429
>Skills are so contradictory to OSR,
I'm okay with them as long as they don't hog the spotlight or detract from your ability to do things without them.

>>47692404
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/988yw59tjjl4sft/AAC27V64hFPlcOZYzLJbin10a?dl=0

sorry

Can't be bothered to >Reply every relevant post, but for you thief guys, have you considered the Warlockesque solution? Thieves having thief skills in the same form as M-U spells: on level 1 you might have Open Lock I and Stealth "memorized" (but obviously they don't call it that) and then you can automatically succeed at picking one rank-I lock and one stealth attempt that session.

I think it's really elegant in many ways; it gets around all the confusion about how thief skills work, since they're clearly set apart, and it prevents other characters from having to keep up since regular attempts are made with a different system which thus doesn't need to bloat.

>>47689587
> Thanks
Don't thank me. You guys are the ones actually collecting the shit for the most part. I'm just archiving.

> Hard copies
That's the dream, man. One day, a physical library of basically everything. And then I'd sit in the middle of a hundred bookshelves like a bibliophilic Scrooge McDuck.

>>47689955
Uploaded and placed into OSR Misc.

>>47690109
>>47690218
Somehow, these got moved into the wrong trove folder. Fixed now, under LotFP > Modules.

>>47692209
That's how Red Tide does it, IIRC. There's no actual mechanical change, but it's mentioned that thief skills are beyond the capabilities of normal people. Anyone can try climbing a wall with rope and harness, and anyone can try sneaking behind a foe; only a Thief can try to climb a sheer wall with nothing but bare hands, or disappear in a sliver of shadow no wider than their torso.

>>47691842

Even though this is linking to your comment, don't take this as a direct comment regarding anything in your post, but rather me rambling about my thoughts on the subject after pulling an all-nighter...

>buying magic items

Magic items aren't for sale. Ever. This should always be the default assumption - no one would want to part with them, not for humdrum wealth (not that there isn't the occasional farmer-with-a-heroic-ancestor who hocks his ancestor's magic halberd).

>copper standard/fewer coins/objects

Well, in LotFP at least, there's the silver standard, AND PCs don't need to distribute wealth into the economy. They only need to retrieve it from the dungeon. It's one of the myriad of reasons why coinage should only be found in small amounts.

The best way is to put trade goods, art objects, and other large, bulky, but pricey items as treasure in various crawl-types. They get the XP for the actual value, but they need to sell it to turn a profit to fund more delves (but do NOT gain XP for selling the loot).

>PC wealth

LotFP has an investment system that I've glanced over. It seems like it would help alleviate the "what the heck do you do with all this money?" question. I would also consider what kind of banking the setting has (if any).

At worst, the PCs can simply build a vault and put their wealth in the vault, paying for whatever they need as they need it.

Something I'm keen on getting my hands on is a hardcopy of ACKS. I really want domain management at higher levels. Which gives PCs something to do with that wealth and magic they've acquired.

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>>47692575
Not the guy who's trying to come up with a system, but while I think the Warlock system is interesting, it does make things significantly more involved and I'm not entirely happy with all its aspects. I feel like the system is a bit too freeform and a bit too incrementalist. Having 6 different levels of abilities seems like overkill, and I think a simpler system with fewer levels (maybe three or four) would work better. That'd be a decent bit of work to knock together, but I'd be interested to see the end product.

>>47691423
That's really just GP=XP by another name, to be honest.

Just like the whole "get XP by spending GP on ale & whores" thing.

>>47691842
But none of that is inherent in GP=XP, is it? Let's ignore the magic item economy bit for the moment since that's pretty much a completely separate issue, and focus on the bit about disseminating it into the economy.

Because you don't, really, in the "classic" D&D formula. You go find a mountain of gold in the dragon's lair, and then rather than spending it all in town you just hoard it yourself until you spend it building a castle and raising an army. Which costs a ton, but also spreads the money out incredibly thinly and likely to people who already have money (mercenary captains, chiefs for construction workers, the local aristocracy and church).

1st-level PCs couldn't live like sultans off the loot from their first dungeon, since sultans lived incredibly extravagantly - seriously, remember that "feudal medieval subsistence economy" doesn't mean that the upper class go around bartering.

Also, I'd argue that the "generic fantasy setting", inasmuch as that's a thing (it's more "generic D&D setting", to be honest), is anything but cash-poor. Fantasy novels and stories are all about the piles of golden coins and bags of loot, when they don't have other stories to tell and largely ignore the economy entirely. Or do both, like Tolkien - do you have any idea how much treasure Smaug actually has? It's ludicrous.

Fantasy settings in general tend to have pretty hand-wavey economies, to be honest, and much like D&D will break down into tears if you poke at them too much. (Seriously, those pricelists that have been handed down since the early '70s are bonkers. Mercenary hiring costs are literally conversions from Chainmail point costs.)

There's a few fantasy settings I've seen that actually do the whole economy thing right, but there's not a lot of them. Also, it feels like they're more Rennaissance for some reason?

>>47693798
>That's really just GP=XP by another name, to be honest.
Similar results, but the implementation might feel different to people. It also has some minor differences. You need both gold and XP that you can only get from other means, and it means that you gold past a certain point is superfluous as far as level advancement is concerned. More importantly, it actually takes your gold away from you rather than it giving you XP and purchasing power.

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>>47693581
Just the list of abilities.

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>>47689955
Goddamn, this is some good fucking shit.

>>47693798
>Also, I'd argue that the "generic fantasy setting", inasmuch as that's a thing (it's more "generic D&D setting", to be honest), is anything but cash-poor.

Yeah, the implied setting of early D&D is one where there was a golden age of incredible wealth and power across the world, then some terrible catastrophe happened and it all fell into ruins, and now many centuries later, a few small surviving groups are rebuilding into nations and you have brave souls venturing out into the howling wilderness to reclaim lost riches from the monster-haunted ruins of long ago.

>>47694934
Yeah.

D&D isn't just medieval - it's Europe in the 14th century.

Y'know, with the 60% reduction in population and roving bands of mercenary aristocrats and generally Law falling to Chaos.

It's probably not the direct inspiration - that's more likely to be Conan and Vance and whatnot - but it's a good real-world reference.

>>47694985
You think? The 14th century is pretty distant from the days of the Roman Empire. I always thought the set up more resembled the so-called Dark Ages, when Rome still hung heavy in the minds of Europe, but only vestiges of its civilization remained. But like the tales of King Arthur, later Medieval anachronisms are mixed into the setting.

Added to the LotFP folder
> Intro Sheet.pdf
> Recommended Reading.pdf
> Modules/Worldofthelost.pdf
> Modules/Towers_Two_3PF_Stats.pdf
> Modules/Towers_Two_PDF_Final.pdf
> Modules/3rd Party/Ars Goetia - Classical Demonologie for ye Olde Schoole [CH666 oef 2014].pdf
> Modules/3rd Party/Flavors of Fear.pdf
> Modules/3rd Party/Sleeping Place of the Feathered Swine.pdf
> Modules/3rd Party/The_Stygian_Garden_of_Abelia_Prem.pdf
>Zines/Undercroft 01-05
Green Devil Face has also been moved to the Zines folder.

>>47662891
>>47689451
pls respond

>>47693581
Guy you responded to here and I agree, Warlock itself (especially the Complete Warlock system which was released in PDF, which is AFAIK a very late, involved version of what began as the Caltech shared house rules) is way too fucking complex -- and that goes for all of it, too, not just the Thief skills. That's why I wrote "Warlockesque", but I suppose it wasn't clear enough: I'm roughly 100% sure that a much simpler system can be made using the same basic principles. Agreed that it's a bit of work, though.

>>47694934
And some cataclysm the proverbially bombed things back into the stone age so that the treasure of a thousand years ago are still contemporary in style, especially in terms of weapons and armor

>>47695102
Post-Rome, pre-Carolingian is the other option, yeah, but the Black Death lines up better with technology and generally being medieval and whatnot.

Also, it was kind of a big thing?

> “Outside Paris the breakdown of authority was reaching catastrophe. Its catalyst was the brigandage of military companies spawned by the warfare of the last fifteen years. There were the Free Companies who write “sorrow on the bosom of the earth” and were to become the torment of the age. Composed of English, Welsh, and Gascons released after [the Battle of] Poitiers, as soldiers customarily were to avoid further payment...
> Along with German mercenaries and Hainault adventurers, they gathered in groups of 20-50 around a captain...In the year after the truce they swelled, merged, organized, spread, and operated with ever more license. Seizing a castle, they would use it as a stronghold from which to exact tribute from every traveler and raid the countryside.
> They imposed ransoms on prosperous villages and burned the poor ones, robbed abbeys and monasteries of their stores and valuables, pillaged peasants' barns...As the addiction took hold, they wantonly burned harvests and farm equipment and cut down trees and vines, destroying what they lived by, in actions which seem inexplicable except as a fever of the time or an exaggeration of the chroniclers.”

I took that quote from a Hill Cantons post where he talked about the matter, but damn if that's not D&D.

Both the fall of Rome and the Black Death fit very well into the D&D archetype of the world recovering from some apocalyptic disaster - the Rain of Fire in Greyhawk and whatnot.

>>47695131
What is the intro sheet? I am not seeing it in the LotFP folder.

>>47695334
Makes me want to play with the 2E historical books.

>>47695396
Apparently, it was just a piece of paper that was included in the box sets? I thought it was a nice (if ridiculously completionist) easter egg to throw in the root folder of the game. Nothing worth worrying about one way or the other. Should be in there now, though. Sometimes things get hung up a bit before showing up.

>>47662891
>>47689451
>>47695173
> Black Hack
I've been wanting copies of this as well. Haven't seen anything yet though.

>>47695624
I have it but it's watermarked, unfortunately. Would upload if I could remove it.

>>47695624
I see, thanks. That's a neat (if pointless) tidbit to throw in.

>>47695772
Oh absolutely pointless. But yeah. I get a kick out of stuff like that.. so if I have it, it might as well be in the folder.

>>47651265

ACKS?

2e is my jam, but there isn't really anything mechanically like it. For Gold and Glory gets the nominee by just being there.

>>47662891

>Does anyone have the Black Hack pdfs?

I thought it was just one, no?

Been looking for that, Misty Isles of the Eld and PX1 Basic Psionics.

>>47696423
>PX1 Basic Psionics
Yo.
>https://mega.nz/#!8NJ1AagK!tmjg-OyGVlhlNXJSfP6oYAvcW6WWJHZsQz5UQz5Nv_4

I don't remember if this is in the Trove or not, but if it isn't I guess it should be added? Pinging TroveGuy, I guess. >>47695624

>>47696744
In there now under /supplements

My OSR interests are mostly bent around TSR games and LotFP, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm not quite as thorough in tracking/cleaning/sorting some of the other stuff like DCC, S&W, or LL. There's massive amounts of material for all of the above and I'm not all that familiar with any of it.

>>47695173
It's $2, come on :/

How do you keep track of the time spent moving around in a dungeon? I don't wanna count yards or (god forbid) squares.

>>47698119
Counting yards is kind of a pain, but I've come to accept it as a necessary evil. Time and distance are kind of intertwined as part of the iron triangle of dungeon exploration.

Weight is the natural check on loot/equipment/supplies, and the primary effect of weight is slowing down the speed with which you can travel/explore. If you want to keep track of time, then you're going to need a way to reckon distance.

I just checked the trove and found there is a lack of setting books dedicated to Mystara.
I have all of them, so what I do for share them with you all?

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Here's the at-least-vaguely-OSR-related part of this morning's haul from IRC:

0one's Blueprints - Ironfire Fortress.pdf
AD&D - Lost Handbook (dragon magazine articles).zip
Archaeologist's Handbook - A Guide to Archaeology for Roleplaying Games.pdf
Arneson v. TSR, Inc. 1985.pdf
Blueholme - Necropolis of Nuromen (dewm).pdf
Common Spacecraft for Traveller (deck plans).pdf
Crawford, Kevin - A Brief Study of TSR Book Design (2015).pdf
Labyrinth Lord & LotFP - Castle Gargantua (dewm).pdf
Mongoose Traveller - Ship Book - Chiron Class Hunter.pdf
OSRIC - (JMD01) Beneath the Ghoul Lair.pdf
Swords & Wizardry - Starter Adventures.pdf
Traveller - Fire Opal of Set (from Imagine #14) (reduced).pdf
Traveller - Grenadier [1001] - Imperial Marines (scenario).pdf
Traveller - Grenadier [1002] - Adventurers (scenario).pdf
Traveller - Grenadier [1003] - Alien Animals (scenario).pdf
Traveller - Grenadier [1004] - Alien Mercenaries (scenario).pdf
Traveller - Posted Missing (from Imagine #19) (reduced).pdf
What Came Before - 25 Fantasy Backgrounds.pdf
White Star - Distress Signal Tundara - Map Pack.zip
White Star - Distress Signal Tundara.pdf
White Star - Gods of Air and Water.pdf
White Star - Mail Call - Map Pack.zip
White Star - Mail Call.pdf
White Star - Star Temple of Saturgalia.pdf


Trying a new hosting site, let me know how it goes. Uploading and downloading seems quick to me, though the site's ad framework is a little annoying even with blockers enabled.

http://uploading.site/rcws2phb5ju8.htm

>>47698345
Get a mega account. Upload them all to a folder. Alert troveguy.

>>47698119

I'm new to gming but I tend to just describe the general architecture, terrain, flora, rough distance etc. of the nearby area and ask the players how long they want to spend getting from point a-b. They describe how they move, I make a guesstimate of how long it would take them to move that far based on how careful/reckless they're being, how much stuff they're carrying, terrain.

It takes an Olympic athlete around 11 seconds to do the 100 meter dash, it takes me considerably longer, so adventurers carrying a lot of gear, being at least decently fit, don't take too long. But comparatively, if I were taking time to check corners, look for traps and be quiet carrying a decent amount of stuff, it would take at least 20 minutes to get from my apartment (4th floor) to the ground floor. That's sort of how I've been basing it.

Squares on the map I've found handy to know how far things are quickly though.

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>>47696744

My nigga!

>>47698349
anyone else having trouble getting this site to not be dumb? Almost anywhere you click on the page wants to open another window, and it didn't want to give me a link even after I got the captcha to work.

>>47698581

Same.

I'm guessing you have to register. So I'll be waiting for a mega or something probably.

>>47673818

Ouch. I know this feeling. No one will play Spears of the Dawn.

>>47698119
I think i mentioned my houserul earlier, but it bools down to: ignore movement rates. Ask the players what precautions they are taking. Turns tick over whenever players stop or are stopped to interact.

>>47698349
> let me know how it goes
Spent ~5 minutes trying to download it. Didn't work out.

>>47698794
It's easy to say that interactions are one turn each: picking a lock, searching a room, getting in a fight, etc.

How do you deal with distance, though? And how do you deal with weight? One of the more useful regulations in the risk/reward system in dungeon delving is that the more armor/supplies/stuff you carry into the dungeon the safer you are but the less treasure you can carry out without slowing down.. the more you slow down, the more danger you put yourself in, etc.

What is the best way to set up a wizard's starting spell book or the spheres a cleric is permitted?

>>47698930
Old school. You have all the spells.

>>47698794
>>47698920

See: Torchbearer

>>47698930
>>47698986
If we're going to argue "old school" then most editions give wizards 1 or 2 randomly known spells. Clerics can know whatever spells they can cast, but several editions don't give first level clerics any at all.

Not sure I know of any that give wizards all of the spells by default.

>>47699046
Don't suppose want to give us the cliff's notes version?

>>47699062
Is there a limit to how many spheres a mythos can have?

>>47699112

Oh, sure. It's not a D&D-based game, but is inspired directly by B/X editions, done in the same system as Burning Wheel and Mouse Guard.

Time in the adventure phase is measured in turns, but they don't represent any specific amount of time. Each turn has one test or conflict, with some exceptions. Like a hazard that requires everyone to test a stat only takes up one turn. There's also no explicit movement rate in terms of feet.

The balancing part of turns is a mechanic called The Grind. Once every four turns, the players take a condition. Hungry and Thirsty, Angry, Exhausted, Sick, Injured, Afraid, and finally, Dead.

>>47699112
It has a super simplified gear load out, with limited vidja' like slots for gear. Like you can't wear a ring and gloves. And your backpack has 6 slots.

No wearing a second back back, not putting a lantern in you shield hand, no putting a two handed weapon across your back etc.

It's sort of a major failing of Torchbearer in my opinion. But, being overly restrictive makes things go faster, in theory.

Since you're highly restricted on gear, how long it takes to get there can be arbitrary.

>>47698581

It's using this new thing that some ad-based sites are using. When you click anywhere in the window, it reopens the current page in a new window/tab, then makes the current window/tab into the ad page. I assume to get around popup blocking. Just leave the first tab/window up to display the ads, and use the new uploading.site tab/window. The ad window will update every now and then when you click.
Uploadrocket is the same way now.

>>47698903

Yeah, I'll just go back to anonfiles, then. Should be uploaded in a while.

Since there has been so much debate about thieves in this thread, what about running OSR with no thief? Ive always been curious about it and would like to hear from someone who has ran a session/campaign like that before.

Hey guys. Can we just, you know, take it easy. Relax a little bit. I decided to get into OSR today. I've been looking into Labyrinth Lords and LotFP, anyone willing to help me into the right direction? Tell me about these systems, to a guy who never played an old school rpg.

>>47699718
Also been looking into OSRIC a little bit.

>>47699718

Okay. LotFP is really good. It has a great encumbrance system which works basically like this:

>Chain armor, +1 encumbrance
>Plate, +2 encumbrance
>Carrying 6+ different items? +1 encumbrance
>11+? +1
>16+? +1
>21+? +1 (so, total if carrying 21+ would be +4)
>carrying oversized item (ten foot pole, ladder, two handed sword, etc.) +1 point per item

>Encumbrance and movement
>0-1 encumbrance = unencumbered movement
>2 = light encumbrance
>3 = heavy encumbrance
>4 = severe encumbrance
>5+ = over encumbrance (and unable to move)

Fighters are the only class that advances in attack bonus (attack bonus is ascending. AC is also ascending, so starting Fighter has +2 attack bonus, +2 say from Str for a total of +4. Chain armor has a base AC of 16. Thus, the example Fighter needs a 12 or better on an attack roll to hit chain armor, assuming the defender has no other defenses).

Magic spells are more dangerous and flavorful than standard D&D. Summon spells in particular can be apocalyptic when they go awry.

LotFP also has race-as-class for Halflings, Dwarves, and Elves. The other classes are Fighter, Specialist (a simplified Thief), Cleric, and Magic User.

Turn Undead is a spell in LotFP rather than a Cleric ability.

>Labyrinth Lord

It has race-as-class. Clerics have Tun Undead as an ability. It uses attack tables like older editions. Negative AC, a to hit number based on said AC.

LL and LotFP use basically the same saving throw system.

I am not familiar enough with LL to regale you on the minutiae regarding the differences in the rules sets beyond what I already highlighted.

>>47699642
>no thief

This always makes me so sad. Played a thief more than any other character.

I believe it's OD&D that gives everyone a 1/6 chance to do thief shit like finding secret doors and such and the thief was just better at it and/or got another crack at it.

So I guess I'd probably do something like that. Or possibly just a straight up dex check depending on the system.

>>47700094
Thanks

>>47700094

LotFP is my go to OSR, because I like so many of the rules decisions, and the appendix on firearms is great if you like the pike and shot era (the assumed setting is a weird 30 Years War era).

The benefit to both is that the PDFs are free, so you can read up on them and make up your own mind.

I also highly recommend Basic Fantasy RPG. It has races more in line with AD&D 1e, and there are free PDFs on their sight that add classes like the Ranger, Assassin, Paladin, and Druid. It's also completely free, and the print books are reasonably priced at a little above cost.

I personally really like the option to run LotFP with the BFRPG races, though I have yet to do so.

>>47699466
>anonfiles

I'm now reminded of one reason I wanted to move away from anonfiles: it waited until I had spent the whole hour uploading the file before it announced that it won't let me upload a .7z file.
Starting over.

>>47700094
>I am not familiar enough with LL to regale you on the minutiae regarding the differences in the rules sets beyond what I already highlighted.

Labyrinth Lord is a much more faithful clone of Moldvay Basic D&D than LotFP. Its strong points are that you can use TSR Basic stuff right out of the box, while other clones require some adjustments, and that LL has a ton of supplemental and third party stuff available, because it was easily the biggest and most popular retroclone for years.
(LotFP is the hot new thing though)
LL is better if you want a more traditional D&D campaign, while LotFP does its own "weird fantasy" thing.

>>47698920
So, after lots of arguments about how slow people would realistically move, even when encumbered, i decided it was pointless to track when exploring or traveling overland.

Encumbrance factors in (in my game) only during combat and chases. I use a slightly modified LotFP encumbrance system which works fine under those circumstances on a round to round basis.

>>47700581

The dungeon movement rate isn't just straight movement. It's movement in the dark, along with searching, mapping, discussing, and any other minor actions. It's slow because of a gamist decision, because otherwise tracking all the piddly stuff players do will be too much work for a harried DM.
Taking this into consideration, the dungeon speed very clearly shouldn't apply directly to overland travel, but I don't think that means you should throw out the whole idea of tracking overland travel times at all. Strict timekeeping is important to maintaining the old verisimilitude, and every milieu needs that or the timing of things start to feel arbitrary and unnatural.
We know about how fast someone can hike over easy terrain with a backpack, i.e., a top speed of about 25 miles or so in an 8 hour marching day. Reduce it according to terrain, and you're good. Odds are you'll be too easy on then, so folks who complain too much about "realism" will end up getting the party's speed nerfed even more when you look up the actual rates and show it to them, and then they'll shut the hell up from there on out.

tl;dr: Realism lawyers are like rules lawyers, but even dumber. Don't let 'em wear you down.

>>47698349
>>47698581
>>47698628
>>47698903

Here we go, one copy on anonfiles.

anonfiles com/file/f9c5e8e8e6ad89193b3869d8603b3b93

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Anyone have a good, simple system for utilizing damage reduction that they'd like to share?

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>>47701428
You mean changing armor to a damage reducing apparatus? If so, here's this.

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>>47701604

This seems like it's actually kinda workable. I've never been a fan of DR, because of stuff like pic related, but I don't think I'd hate playing a game with this. Bumping up the damage dice so daggers (IRL the weapon of choice for killing heavily armored dudes) don't become worthless is a good idea.

The more I think about it, the more I wish to OSR-ize everything Pathfinder to create a gateway between Pathfinder and OSR. I'm not sure about which game to use though but I'm leaning towards Labyrinth Lord so that there can be both a basic and an scabs Hanne without fiddling with two different games.

Thoughts?

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>>47701732
Here are the specs to show you the comparative effectiveness of attacks under the old (standard) and new (alt DR) systems. The percentages are new damage per round divided by old damage per round, so that 103% indicates a 3% increase in damage output. Overall, the two systems produce results that are pretty similar, and the biggest outliers are uncommon match ups (like somebody with a 9 THAC0, no strength bonus and an ordinary sword striking at an unarmored guy who has no magical protection).

>>47701870
Have you looked at Castles and Crusades? Because it seems like that's the obvious bridge between old school and new school, as it uses the unified d20 system, attribute base saves and so forth. (Just make sure you fix saving throws by adding only half a caster's level to the challenge level of their spells.)

>>47701909

Nobody plays C&C, though. Go Basic or go home.

>>47701870
> and an advanced game
Fixed

I also forgot to mention that Basic Fantasy is the other major frontrunner.

>>47701909
Huh. I have heard of C&C but I have not checked it out yet. Looks like that will change. Thanks.

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>>47701960

>>47702024
Why no S&W Complete on there?

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>>47701936
BFRPG does have a monster conversion supplement, though I don't know how well it would work.

>>47698349
>>47701092
Could anyone reupload these to a decent site like mega.co.nz, gboxes or uploadmb?

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>>47698349
>>47701092
Seconding >>47702298
anon files pic related.

>>47702168
Limit amounts of dedication?

>>47702298

As long as TroveGuy can get it, it should be up on the trove sooner or later.

>>47701066
Exploration speeds as written in most oldschool editions of d&d are absurdly slow. Something like 2ft per round. That is scrubbing a gymnaisum with a toothbrush kind of tediously slow. nobody ever buys it. No matter how much you explain it with adventuring procedure and encumbrance.

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Can anybody give any advice on how to make a random level up table for city-slicking urban/classes adventurer dudes.

Beyond just 'get a bonus to hit with guns' and 'get more health' I'm at a fucking loss.

>>47703192

How fast do you think you can measure a room and draw a map of it? How about when you can't see all of it at once and need to have a friend hold a torch nearby?
What about when you have to move carefully because the floor may be uneven and treacherous, and might even contain tripwires or things that are almost invisible in the dim light?

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>>47701604
That works wonderfully. Cheers.

>>47703396

Urban contacts could be a thing. Thieve's guild contact, barrister contact, city watch contact, city councilman contact, tax collector contact, banker contact, merchant guild contact, etc.

Loyalty/morale bonus for hiring henchmen and hirelings from certain social classes. Ability to build a hideout in the city (rather than, or in addition to a stronghold).

That's just off the top of my head.

>>47703396
Knowing the city. Just because people live in a city doesn't mean they know it. The character starts knowing the backstreets, alleyways and shortcuts better than the rest - at high levels, he's got an almost preternatural knack for just knowing where to turn to show up at the right place and time. (Or hell, maybe fully preternatural - city walkers that can lose themselves in the urban maze only to appear when and where they want to.)

Ability to maneuver around large throngs of people in tight quarters with ease, and further on outright use them to their advantage. Put a crowd between them and pursuers, weave around bystanders in the middle of a fight, trip people so that they get in the way of a foe.

How often do people lose hands, feet, or limbs in your dungeons? I'm thinking of having a trap of a giant skull with a gem in its mouth, that snaps shut when you reach in. I just don't know whether to take a hand off completely, or just deal damage instead.

>>47703769

Even though that trap seems extremely obvious, it's still kind of a dick move. Taking a hand or foot or an eye is basically going to totally gimp and ruin the character, and while the game rules may not support it in the fiction and in the players mind they are going to be running around with a shitty cripple forever and its really going to ruin their character.

I would only take away something like that if there was an extremely low chance like on a crit table or if the character was heading towards that due to an important character art; like getting his hand cut off for being a thief or having the trap snap shut on his hand only because he was reaching not for some gem but for a magical antidote for his dying sister or something.

I tend to run OSR games slightly more story-driven because I like having the players keep interest.

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>>47704059

>Throwing Jaime Lannister's character sheet in the trash and ragequitting halfway through the campaign

>>47704059
True, but at the same time I'm always trying to balance the abstract damage vs real lasting damage, so they don't just walk into a fireball because they think they have enough hp to tank it.

>>47704230
Well admittedly >>47704059 did say they were do it for an important character arc.

And I'm doing more of a straight forward dungeoncrawl.

>>47704299

Fair enough.

But as long as I can strap a shield to my stump, being one-handed won't cripple a Fighter, and probably not a Mage either. A thief might have trouble with his climbing, though.

>>47704317
I could always have some magic / bronze articulated hand as treasure later - give the player the hard choice between selling it for cash or getting a hand back.

>>47704345

Yeah, that can be a plot hook. Find the reclusive gnome artificer who can rebuild your missing buttocks, or whatnot.

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>>47689451
I got this. It's got some neat ideas like making everything roll under stat and using dice rolls to measure supply usage instead of tracking bullet by bullet and gallon by gallon, but it could use another editing pass. It's also weird that there are rules for tanks but no anti-tank guns of any sort. Apparently an expanded version should be out this month, so wait for that I guess.

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>>47703769

Despite what >>47704059 says, that is a perfectly OSR trap. If I were a player in your game I would attempt to knock the gem out with a pole, or with my weapon.

Ain't never gonna be seeing me put my hand Silent Hill style in any fucking hole in a dungeon, no sirree bob.

If your players are dumb enough to do so, they will learn fast with their next character. THAT is OSR.

As for "story-driven", my players still tell stories about the dwarf who got turned into fucking Jerboa when he spun the wheel of fortune, or the Cleric who died to the fish fountain that spewed poison out of its' mouth when the elf stepped inside it's basin. Character deaths make great stories, so whatever. Don't be afraid to kill characters.

>>47704513
>THAT is OSR.
That is only one flavor of OSR, and not necessarily a preferred one.

>>47704561

K.

In my experience, it only takes any new player to my game one character death before they learn how the game works and don't do blatantly death-or-dismemberment worthy actions. Then suddenly something amazing happens: They become hyper aware of their character's position, become more descriptive of their actions, and they value their characters lives a lot more, running from fights, debating over whether sticking around to try and more treasure is worth it or if they should just leave.

Those elements really only emerge from deadly Risk/Reward gameplay, and they don't preclude overarching narratives, either. My game has one, but I let the dice fall where they will.

>>47704561
>not necessarily a preferred one.

Says who?

>>47704513

No, it's not 'OSR', it's garbage dungeon design.

Why would anybody carve an obvious looking mouth/skull around something that is a trap? If anything it would be a more secretive looking beartrap style device, or put in a small inlay in the wall with blades, not some huge hand-chopping thing.

The problem is, once again, killing characters is usually preferable to players then gimping them, because then they are forced to go around with this shitty, ruined character. Even if mechanical changes to their sheet aren't bad enough, in their mind they have to imagine some incompetent one armed fool trying to fight monsters and shit? It's stupid.

It would be like having a potion labeled 'cure light wounds' in a monster's stash and when a player drinks it it was actually acid. "LOL that's OSR, gotta identity your potions bro. They'll learn next time >:3'

Your edgy elitist attitude is neither acceptable nor wanted. Fuck off mate.

>>47704611
IME, all that it does is punish involvement with the character and turns everything into a glorified boardgame. Which can be fun, and it's how I run event games when I get to, but it's not conducive to actually caring about the game. When game time is more limited, it's pretty disheartening to burn a character sheet over a single bad end, no matter how fast it is to reroll it.
>>47704618
Says me.

Save or dies and killing characters over a single choice are not exclusive to OSR. People like John Wick made a career of character-hostile games and that guy has a major hateboner for D&D and murderhobos. There is more to OSR than Tomb of Horrors and James Raggi adventures.

>>47704667
>>47704697
Calm down, boys, nobody said anything about save-or-die, just a trap that potentially disfigures whoever falls for it.
Losing a hand might seem like a harsh punishment, but when the trap is, as you say, obvious, it's hard not to blame them for being surprised when a big monstrous head with a jewel in its mouth bites their hand off.

>>47703769
As you can probably guess, it's a polarizing subject. If you think your players would be okay with their characters losing limbs, go for it, otherwise, just make it a damage roll.

>>47704841
It was >>47704611 who brought character death into it.

Personally, I'm not entirely against limb-losing, but I'm also a fan of "and he lived to wield his sword with his left hand, and became much deadlier than with his lost right hand" kinda stuff. I agree with >>47704667 that hobbling a character can be just as shitty or even worse than plain losing it.

>>47704841
>make it a damage roll.

Alternately, make it a damage roll, and if the damage would kill the character, give the option to just lose a hand instead.

>>47703769
Save vs. death maybe?

>>47703405
How many anal retentive architects go adventuring? How many perfectly drafted maps do you find on the bodies of failed adventurers that came before?

Blind people seem to have a pretty good pace and they often have those sticksthey sweep in front of them. Kind of like mini 10ft poles. Those can find trip wires pretty well without slowing you down a lot.

My point is not that one side or the other of this argument is the right one. My point is that this argument will continue until the heat death of the universe, since neither side will ever convince the other - only shout them down temporarily.

In my experience, the method that keeps both sides quiet and frees up brain power to argue equally as divisive and pointless things is to ignore the exploration movement rate and just mark turns by interactions with the dungeon.

>>47705407
>just mark turns by interactions with the dungeon.

That throws the balance of OD&D/Basic off, though.
There are arguments to be made on either side, but the unarguable point can still be made: it's a gameplay convention. Realism can sod off.

>>47704667
>No, it's not 'OSR', it's garbage dungeon design.
>Your edgy elitist attitude is neither acceptable nor wanted. Fuck off mate.

You're the one coming in the thread telling people what isn't acceptable and calling people elitist. All I said how I play and why its perfectly fine. Might want to deal with that projection issue there, "mate."

>>47704697

As I said, I've never had a player who didn't make an initial mistake and not learn quickly. No dismemberment or death after the first. Sometimes all it takes is their character fucking up and killing a beloved henchmen (I love giving them all personality traits, which invests players emotionally) to wake them up to the reality of the situation.

>>47701870

Check out Blood & Treasure in the trove - its an OSR-ified version of 3.5. Classes are relatively similar, with slightly lower power, three saves which work like most old school ones (I.e. a Target number to hit, not a bonus to your roll), and some cool stuff like converted Prestige Classes to give you an idea of how the developer does things like that.

Its the best option for converting between OSR and 3.P, IMO.

How much could you remove from DCC but still maintain the fun factor from the various class mechanics?

All the table lookup tomfoolery is definitely fun, but does slow things down a bit. I also find stuff like patrons can rip focus away from actually playing.

>>47706021
>Its the best option for converting between OSR and 3.P, IMO.

Mechanically, maybe, but what's the user base for that? Labyrinth Lord has variants for both Basic and AD&D style play, the benefit of a wide user base, and the tons of support and content that comes with that.

>>47701732
I do it so that a dagger isn't really effective against armor unless you manage to wrestle the foe down and stab the fuck out of him

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>>47706121

Right on.

>>47704317
Magic users need both hands free to cast spells. Losing one is absolutely horrible

>>47706149

Which edition? I believe LotFP only requires one hand.

>>47706159
B/X iirc
LotFP being on hand, I just glanced at the book and it's also two hands unless you're an elf

>>47706189

Ah, I was remembering the elf.

Well, that's a cue to bargain with some terrible entity to give you a new hand.

>>47706237
Now THAT's the right attitude!

This is my DMs website and I thought it might be of use to some of my fellow Grogs here:

Free Basic & Expert Dungeon Master Tools

-Dungeon Turn Tracker
-Die Roller
-Player Character Generator -
-Wandering Monster
-Encounter Generator
-Dungeon Stocker

http://www.basicexpert.info/

>running N1
>realise that, despite worshiping a spirit naga, and not a deity, the clerics in the module still get spells
What is it that really got you thinking, anons?

>>47692554
I'm working on a thing where every class gets a number they need to roll on a d20 for their saving throw. This might be modified by an appropriate attribute modifier, depending on the situation.
Likewise, you get a 'skill throw' that's a target number on a d20 roll. It works just like a saving throw, but is used in different situations.
Basically the save is for 'bad things happen when you fail' whilst the skill is for 'good things happen if you succeed'.

>>47706091
I'm in the same boat. I love the ideas DCC puts forth, but tracking spell misfires, patron taint, and mercurial magic just seems like an excessive amounts of bookkeeping. And this is coming from someone who likes WFRP and it's endless tables and absurdly dangerous magic.

>>47703769

I use disfigurement and serious maiming as basically a get-out-of-jail-fucked card for failing a save or die roll. Everyone gets one, it adds potential for interesting roleplaying and makes the party deal with wounded, had a player with a missing hand keep trying to do two-handed things instinctively like catch a ball and getting sad about it, they saved the hand until they got back to town and found a necromancer to reattach the hand in exchange for services. The hand was skeletal and kept doing sort of evil things if left to its own devices.

Waiting for someone to lose an eye and see what the players try to jam into the socket.

I think I found a way to keep track of the time when the party is exploring a dungeon without having to resort to counting yards, and keeping speed relevant.

Divide exploring speed by 30'. That's how many rooms you can explore in a turn (corridors and the like are not counted unless extremely long). Of course, special circumstances may change this: maybe you're exploring a fuckhuge room and it takes two "room rounds"; two tiny rooms very close by would take one turn in total, and such.

What do you think about this? Is 4 rooms per turn (for unencumbereds) too slow?

>>47709198
I actually kinda dig this

>>47708312
AD&D Clerics don't need gods for their 1st- and 2nd-level spells. IIRC it's not even until level five or so that you need actual gods rather than anelic representatives or something? The highest levels are also locked behind worshipping something that isn't a demigod.

>>47705447
I think you could probably just measure corridor distance in turns and maybe mark a turn for any alternate passages that you need to choose direction for and whatnot. Basically, turn the dungeon into a pointcrawl.

>>47708800
Same too.
Im writing a homebrewn system that steals some of the ideas I like but makes them manageable.

What specifically is the appeal of LL compared to other OSR games, because I've looked through the book and it's just not grabbing me.

>>47704059
uh, no. Crippled or otherwise severely changed characters make for great stories and can provide unique situations. Even if only aesthetic.

>>47709306
>AD&D Clerics don't need gods for their 1st- and 2nd-level spells.
The PHB and DMG are in disagreement about this. PHB says 1-4 are from deific servants, 5-7 are straight from the deity. DMG says 1-2 are from training, 3-5 are from deific servants, and 6-7 are straight from the deity.

Not that that matters, two of the clerics have access to 4th level spells.

>>47706189
MU can cast while holding a staff.
I'd allow a one-handed character to still cast.

>>47709324
I'd say mostly just being very close to the original, really

>>47709324
it a copy-paste of B/X with very minor numerical tweaks. It doesn't stray: That's about its only appeal.

>>47709324
It's "authentic". It sticks very close to B/X (while expanding from 14 levels to 20). So basically, it's a version of B/X that they can put out new material for. Also, it has the Advanced Edition Companion, which allows you to transition to (or import pieces from) a streamlined AD&D that's compatible with the regular (Basic) stuff.

>>47709433
Well if he installs some kind of source of power in his stump that channels energies, then yes

>>47708722
Sounds good to me. Hell, I don't have a problem with folks having specific skills / specialties, as long as they don't cast too long a shadow. Like if they give +2 or something, that's fine, because folks without them can still do stuff. It's when you get into 3.x sort of skills, where by mid-levels, you might have a +10, that things start to get problematic, because it makes folks without skills completely useless in comparison.

>>47709436
>>47709454
>>47709461
I can see the appeal if that's the case, but I guess I'll just stick with LotfP/ACKS/OtW then.

>>47709630
Honestly, so many retroclones are essentially interchangeable that it makes good sense to grab the best bits from different games. Single stat saving throws from S&W. Encumbrance from LotFP. Homebrew thief skills. Etc.

Of course, you need something to serve as the base upon which you build stuff (unless you want to write a full game out, which takes more dedication than most of us have), and B/X works pretty well for that, especially since so many retroclones are drawn from it. And since LL is so close to B/X, that would work pretty well too.

File: Fantasy Ireland.jpg (1MB, 800x966px) Image search: [Google]

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>>47709726
This is true, but I'm trying to get some semi-normie friends into RPG's and i don't want to shove a big lump of a home brewed system at them that requires cross-checking six other games.

I think I'm gonna go with Over the Wall, since it's low powered with a magic system that I personally really like, balanced around only needing three players, and the rules are written very clearly and concisely with a minimum of Gygaxian weirdness. mmmaybe I'll graft on LotFP encumbrance.

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>>47626099
Hey guys, I've been looking into Deep Carbon Observatory. But I'm sort of lost on something.
Who is Sorla Ghyll? Pic related.

>>47709904
Nevermind, I figured it out.

File: Roger a Muirebe.jpg (97KB, 642x414px) Image search: [Google]

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>>47709897
Someone dislikes Munster it seems.

On a serious note what setting is that map from?

>>47709630
> OtW
>>47709897
> Over the Wall

Was that BtW - Beyond the Wall?

File: tumblr_nh5ecvQjPP1tovd4do1_1280.png (688KB, 555x810px) Image search: [Google]

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>>47710269
Yes, I'm constantly mixing the title up with Over the Garden Wall. It keeps happening.

>>47710263
No clue, I got it off of a map thread here a while ago, and all GRIS links me to is Pinterest.

>>47710269
It's obviously a Testament-inspired OSR game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITWXnzcQFV4

Though, personally, I'd far prefer to play Alone in the Dark, which is much more in keeping with the standard fantasy setting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vbKnPFFkA8

>When I was but very young, sorcerers came to claim my mind, leaving death and hatred to unmask.

>>47709306
>I think you could probably just measure corridor distance in turns and maybe mark a turn for any alternate passages that you need to choose direction for and whatnot. Basically, turn the dungeon into a pointcrawl

The problem is that movement speed shifts. Wearing heavy armor? You're slower now; you'll encounter more wandering monsters. Carrying a ton of stuff? Even slower. Players need to make tactical decisions about how much loot they want to try to carry out, because piling a ton of gold in their backpacks and every pocket will weigh them down and and make it harder to escape.
Presetting the turn points means it always takes the same amount of time, and there's no need to worry about encumbrance anymore, and the game's balance falls apart.

>>47709324

Seconding that the Labyrinth Lord AEC is excellent, since it gives you the AD&D stuff without making Basic clunky.
Also, tons of cool classes and stuff are made for LL.
I like LotFP a lot, but it's really not built to do the classic Gygax/Arneson dungeon crawl with all kinds of wandering monsters and stuff.

>>47711032
>it's really not built to do the classic Gygax/Arneson dungeon crawl with all kinds of wandering monsters and stuff.

What would you say it's meant to do then?

>>47711142

Weird Fantasy, without bugbears and orcs and goblins, where monsters are unusual and unique freaks of unnature, rather than an ecosystem that players have to deal with.
In a classic D&D style game you might make a deal with the goblins to help you kill the kobolds. In an LotFP game, there's no dealing with monsters because they're not like people.
It's different in style, both the thematic kind and gameplay kind.

>>47704667
>No, it's not 'OSR', it's garbage dungeon design.
>Your edgy elitist attitude is neither acceptable nor wanted. Fuck off mate.
>>47704697
>IME, all that it does is punish involvement with the character and turns everything into a glorified boardgame.

>Get out of /osrg/ with your actual old-school playstyle

As funny as it is in a way to see people enter the OSR and immediately set about recreating the new school RPG: no, u

>>47711032
>>47711142
>>47711233
I'd both agree and disagree. LotFP is fairly explicitly about dungeon crawling and a lot of the material for it is huge on exploration and wandering bullshit charts. They just aren't generally using orcs and goblins and Gygaxian monster tropes, instead palette-swapping them out for weird fantasy creatures instead. The tone is different, but most of the gameplay conventions are the same. You're just going to be negotiating with brigands or other intelligent weirdness instead of greenskins. There are plenty of intelligent monster encounters in LotFP's books.