Previous Thread >>48409511 >Trove -- https://mega.

Can't get the trove to load >>48475140

I'd very much like to find a PDF of Dark Dungeons, assuming it's somewhere in the trove.

Is this trove also hosted on a more bandwidth-friendly site by any chance?

>>48475507

I don't think it's just you. I can't get it to load either. Might be a mega issue today.

Someone just turned me onto this whole OSR thing, but the amount of options is overwhelming. I can't really see the substantive differences. Which is generally the most popular? Sorry if this is basic stuff but your pastebin didn't really have any info for the casual passerby.

I'm running a zero fantasy campaign set in 13th century England need help on what I should replace the thief ability "Use Scrolls" with. Also while we are at can anyone recommend any good supplements for my campaign? I've checked out the historical source books sets by TSR but could use some more information on classes and kits.

>>48475593
do you want Basic or AD&D?

>>48475593


Yeah, you've got choices. There are clones of OD&D (Swords and Wizardry is best IMO), clones of Basic (Labyrinth Lord is best here), and clones of one or the other that kind of veer off and do their own thing. (Lamentations of the Flame Princess and Beyond the Wall are my favorites here.)
There are also AD&D clones, but they're less popular as AD&D is more complicated. You can get most of the good stuff from AD&D without the rules bloat by using Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion, AEC, which translates that stuff into Basic, and lets you apply what you like.

>>48475746
I've never played either, but I hear AD&D has more options in terms of approaching situations and with personalizing characters. Is this even true? If so then that's what I want.

>>48475782
Original D&D as written in the Rules Cyclopedia has a lot of customization when it comes to weapon skills, personal skills and everything else, so it's cool too.

>>48475593

I recently uploaded Labyrinth Lord for another thread, so may as well drop it here: https://www.sendspace.com/file/p0enb3

LL may be a good place to start since it's not as restrictive as White Box clones. It's all very pre-1E though, so demihuman characters still aren't allowed to choose from an assortment of classes like their human counterparts. e.g. The elf is a fighter / mage hybrid, and that's all an elf character is allowed to do.

Although there's an optional "Advanced Edition" companion that expands the game to something similar to 1E.

What are the must play OSRs?

i have already played basic fantasy

>>48475940
ACKS, DCC, OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry, LotFP, Castles & Crusades Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyborea

>>48475940
Basic Fantasy isn't that great compared to other early D&D clones, and the author is a major sperg. I mean, to such a degree that I actually feel compelled to bring it up at all. I would recommend literally anything else over BF.

>>48475940
I like LOTFP but its not for everyone

>>48476270
You are in a minority, I can tel you that. How is he a sperg? His game is basically BX with ascending AC and separate class/race but is otherwise a good and solid game.

What are the best OSR blogs and podcasts?

Alright, guys. I've left my blog to rot for a while, but I want to get back into posting at least semi-regularly, and I'm looking to go for a more OSR-vibe than I previously had.

What kind of OSR content do you guys want to see? Settings, mechanics, more random tables, whatever - what do you think the OSR needs more of?

>>48477243
random tables

>>48477243
random food tables.

Though houserules and settings are always welcome... actually, though we all will probably say random tables I think most of use enjoy anything and everything that can grease our creative gears.

>>48478117

I totally have a few of those!

Random Tavern Delicacies and the now-infamous You Found Some... Meat table.

My players are never happy when I whip that one out.

>>48478158

I end up having to deal with food a great deal, especially since I have two players who have gone full Dungeon Meshi on me.

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>>48475782
AD&D has more options, and restrictions, and stats, and fiddly rules. And generally speaking, I think the extra stuff it has up on Basic isn't as well put together, though I'm sure some would beg to differ. But while I think the weapons and armor lists are excessive, I do appreciate the expanded number of classes and spells AD&D has (even if the added classes tend to be derivative and AD&D makes most of the spells--even the ones it shares with Basic--more complicated). But all old school D&D is built on the same core system, so it's pretty easy to port things from one edition to another.

With this in mind, Moldvay Basic (B/X) makes a great foundation on which to build, as it's nice and streamlined. The one big issue you might have with it, is the race-as-class approach, where "elf" is a class just like "cleric" or "thief". I used to think that was dumb, but I've grown fond of the idea over the years. It makes demihumans more distinctive, and given the small number of classes in Basic, and the idea that the world is human-centric, it's about the right number of classes to devote to demihumans (3 out of 7 are demihuman race/classes). There are, however, retroclones of Moldvay Basic that split race and class, like Basic Fantasy, for instance, so you have options as far as that goes.

But if you prefer a more involved, AD&D-based approach, there are games that streamline it and reduce the amount of clutter it has. Labyrinth Lord's Advanced Edition Companion is designed to give you the options of AD&D on top of Basic's simpler, more streamlined foundations. It frankly doesn't go far enough in its simplification for my taste, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. Castles and Crusades also streamlines AD&D, but it does it by using the unified d20 mechanic of new school D&D (without the same math built on top of it though), and by liberally tweaking the rules.

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>>48478549
But things aren't nearly as confusing as the number of games and editions out there might lead you to believe. There are a lot of games out there that are "Moldvay Basic, with a tweak to [X] or [Y]", for instance. So it's clusters of related games that you can choose from on the basis of whether you want race-as-class, ascending AC, single category saving throws, or whatever. Though as I was saying before, it's pretty easy to port things from one system to another, so if, for instance, you wanted to use Swords & Wizardry's single-category saves, you can just drop them into Basic Fantasy, for example. (If you wanted to use them for a game with race-as-class, you'd have to figure out what to do for the demihuman class, but asking here in the OSR thread would probably get you some help about that -- I'd say have elves use the fighter progression and halflings and dwarves use the paladin progression).

>>48475470
Hey, you should always put "OSR" in the text or title of the opening post, so that people searching the catalog for "OSR" can find the thread.

>>48478689
To be fair, I found this thread by typing OSR in the catalog search.

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>>48478689
Sorry. I meant to but started chatting with my roommate and absentmindedly submitted the thread. Won't happen again, I hope.

>>48478757
Yeah, it shows up if you use /tg/'s search (I guess the title of the image registers) but if Control-F the catalog page, it doesn't.

>>48478831
S'okay. I wasn't fussing--just trying to inform you in case you were unaware of the reason to do that.

>>48478831

that's one sweet map. I know it's WotC, but where is it from?

>>48478968
One of the Dungeon Magazines from the 2000's before 4E and Pathfinder being a thing. Paizo made an Adventure Path for Greyhawk that used the Isle of Dread (which pissed me off because the Isle is so dear to my heart as is Mystara).

>>48478117
Driftwood Verses is coming out early next year and it looks like a really neat setting

For some reason I can't access the trove. I just built a new PC and I could get to it fine on the old one, but MEGA is stuck on decrypting folder data. Anyone know what the problem is?

>>48475681
Its the 13th century, you could just have 'read latin' and it would be a big deal.

Take a look at Dark Albion if you haven't. Its 15th century so still too far forward, but there might be something there. What about the 13th is specifically important to you?

>>48475940
For a wide range of stuff >>48476258 +Beyond The Wall for well integrated collaborative character and hex-map generation, Into The Odd for pickup and go games, The Black Hack for the new hoteness that might actually have some cool ideas, and Stars Without Number for scifi traveller update but uses classes which sometimes bugs people.

>>48476342
False Machine, Goblin Punch, 10ft Pole, Dungeon Of Signs, 1-page dungeon contest, Last Gasp Grimoire, Dieing Stylishly, +1 Sword... I'm sure there's more. Find a few you like and follow the links.

>>48477243
Inspirational stuff, be it maps, random tables, encounters to plug into/steal for hex crawling, interesting magic items. In depth discussions of homebrew mechanics if you're up for laying out why you made them and how they worked out in play. Art helps even if, or sometimes especially when, its rough.

>>48479846

Those are all solid options! And I can do some seriously rough art, when I have the time...

The only issue I have with encounters is that you have two choices - make them accessible but generic, or make them cool and unusual, but limit their useability.

I tend to err towards the generic, but I'm thinking about making things a little weirder and seeing how that works out.

>>48480038
I think, might be wrong, that we have tons of generic options already. Might at well make it weird and interesting. Minimum it'll be fun to read. Making it weird but still portable seems like a delicate art for sure tho.

Do you guys like running wilderness exploration? Do you do hexcrawls or do you just map out a region the size of a dungeon or two?

I really want to learn how to make interesting or original monsters.

Monster Hunter is a good example of what I'm going for; but I have no idea how to copy it.

>>48479732
Trying to tailor it around Edward Longshanks and the fourth Crusade.

Anyone have the Troika! pdf? It just came out a few days ago I think. It's pay what you want/free but I don't want to make an account to go get it.

I want to balance ability scores more. Dexterity gives a bunch of neat bonuses in most games but charisma and constitution give like one bonus at most. How to fix?

>>48481278
As DM or game designer?

Make checks for things like traveling or carrying a heavy load rely on CON, throw in diseases and poisons and other hazards more commonly. Implement a fatigue system like Warhammer 40k rpgs buthe based on CON.

>>48481331
>As DM or game designer?
As both I guess? I want to make a better system for my players.

>Make checks for things like traveling or carrying a heavy load rely on CON
But then Strength loses one of its advantages.

>throw in diseases and poisons and other hazards more commonly.
I'll probably do this.

>Implement a fatigue system like Warhammer 40k rpgs buthe based on CON.
I'd rather not further complicate the system with more mechanics like that.

>>48475507
Dark Dungeons is available for free on its creator's website, IIRC.

>>48481278
Constitution is actually reasonably powerful. A +2 dexterity modifier might multiply your chance to hit with ranged attacks by 120% (going from a 50% to a 60% chance to hit) and reduce your chance of being hit by a similar amount, but a +2 constitution may multiply your hit points by 157% (that's what it does, on average, if you have d6 hit dice). That's fucking huge. And sure, dexterity tends to get the most skill check usage of any of the attributes, but constitution can affect plenty of checks or saves for things involving stamina, health, remaining conscious, and resistance to things like poison (depending, of course, on how you run your game).

Charisma, on the other hand, is kind of a bullshit score unless you're using hirelings, retainers, followers and such, which many people don't. If you are, then it can affect their morale and the maximum number you can employ. If you aren't, then you can do what I like to, which is to drop the stat and base any reaction rolls purely off a person's background and character description. Then again, I've also combined intelligence and wisdom into a single stat, so maybe this alteration on a scale you'd be uncomfortable with.

>>48481278
Charisma is ridiculously good. Reaction checks and the whole henchman number+morale thing adds up to a lot. It can literally make you win a fight before it starts.

Constitution also has the thing where it might literally double your hit points depending on class. It's "just" one bonus, but it's one hell of a bonus.

Dexterity, meanwhile, gives... AC, ranged attack bonus, and a bonus to individual initiative. Yeah. It's a bit powerful, but it's easy enough to "solve" by just going with group initiative - compare Strength's +hit +damage to nuDex's +hit +AC.

For ability scores that do jack shit, though, there's always Intelligence (Prime Requisite that gives bonus languages) and Wisdom (Prime Requisite that gives bonuses to saves vs. magic.)

>>48479092
How do you feel about 4E sticking it into the Feywild as some kind of weird disappearing island located where the veil of reality is thing and 5E sticking it in the middle of Faerûn's Elemental Plane of Water?

>>48481583
Not who you're asking, but:
4E made some really cool and interesting changes to previous lore, and had some cool ideas of its own.

That wasn't one of them.

>>48481583

Make Wis = Initiative and give each positive modifier point of Intelligence add +5% exp.

Boom, done.

>>48481581
>>48481583
I see your points. So how do we fix intelligence and wisdom then?

>>48482129
>+5% exp
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I always thought that bonuses to earned experience were one of the more obnoxious things in old school D&D. Of course, I'm also in favor of undifferentiated experience point requirements (there are plenty of other ways to balance out the classes).

>>48475507
>>48481518
His site is down it seems. I grabbed it and other things he did and uploaded them. So if Dark Dungeons is not yet in the trove, whoever manages it can grab DD here and add it to the trove >>48481660

>>48475593
I too just started looking into OSR because of the Lamentations Bundleofholding. And LotFP really seems neat for a start. Very easy to digest, not at all complex.
But you have not bestiary, but you can easily make them yourself, and use them sparingly, to make monster encounters more memorable.

>>48476258
>Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyborea
Im really a sucker for Conan-esque stuff lately. Is that in the trove? It doesn't load for me at the moment, so I can't look myself.

>>48480038
Well, like someone said last thread, d100 tables can do both on the same table. Simply give unusual encounters less space. Maybe a range of three values, as opposed to 10-15 spaces for regular encounters.
Like, 1-15 Gobbos (mayby even more space for them), something something, 96-99 Something Rare, 100 Dragon

>>48482129
Good job breaking magic-users, man. Remember who's going to have high intelligence.

>>48482279
Personally I don't think they're broken in the first place, especially if you're not playing so that you can choose which stat goes where. One stat being better than another doesn't actually matter if there's no way to actively choose that stat at the detriment of others.

>>48482291
AD&D did it better than Basic, I think - rather than putting the bullshit -20% XP penalty in, they just disallow you from playing characters with shit stats for the class in question. And also lets you choose what stats are good in the first place, unless you're playing 2E in which case oh shit nigga.

The XP bonus is a nice feelgood thing, I feel, but I understand that it has the weird thing where a carrot you don't get feels like a stick.

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>>48482279
Well, I subsumed wisdom into intelligence, doubling the application for the score. That's a big step, though unless you do a lot of attribute or skill checks, that still it kind of weak. The combined score could potentially cover both languages know and saving throws though, so at least that's something. I like spreading my saving throws out though, essentially making them a bit more like the fortitude/reflex/will saves of new school D&D, though without the bad math, and with all the attributes playing a part, including strength (pic is from Rules Cyclopedia and is similar to what I'm talking about).

A lot of people would consider it sacrilege, but I actually like players to have a limited pool of "talent", which operates sort of like fate points, if rather limited ones. Basically, you can spend them to boost your rolls in various ways. An easy way to do this is that spending one point of talent ahead of time lets you take the better of two rolls, and spending two points of talent after a roll lets you reroll it (though you're stuck with the new result and you can't spend any more talent on that roll). Personally, I find that rerolling doesn't really fit with D&D as well, so while I'm okay with the "spend 1 talent to get the better of 2 rolls" thing, I rather prefer to limit the back end a bit, and have it be "spend 1 talent to add a single point to your roll after seeing what it is". That way, it only applies to rolls you almost made, and represents your extra focus carrying you through (you can call it something like "follow through").

So I have intelligence modify that number. You get something like 4 talent points plus your intelligence modifier. When you recharge them is up to you. You could have them be a daily thing, like spells, or you could have them trickle back somehow (maybe after every fight or short rest, you roll a d8 vs. your maximum number of talent points, and if you roll equal to or under the number, you gain a point back).

>>48482386
Anyway, even if you kept wisdom and intelligence separate, they could both modify talent. That's assuming, of course, that you wanted to add something like that to your game.

If you have wisdom (and nothing else) applying to all saving throws though, that's at least decent by itself. It might not measure up to something like dexterity, but it's more useful than intelligence. With that in mind, you could let wisdom stand on its own and have intelligence and charisma modify talent (assuming you don't really have henchmen in your game, leading charisma to be weak).

But keep in mind that if you don't let people pick where their scores go, having precise balance between the attributes is less important.

>>48482386
>>48482439
Oh, and I tend to base the number of talent points characters get on whether they're casters or not, something like: casters get 2+modifier, partial casters get 3+modifier, and noncasters get 4+modifier. Actually, my system is a bit more complicated than that, with caster intelligence modifying the number of spells they get instead of modifying talent, but that's an easy way to go about things.

>>48481278
I'm doing some houserules atm. One of the things I'm doing is trying to make ability scores less important for combat and more important for adventuring in general.

To that end, ability scores only modify the following:
STR: number of items per encumbrance point (LotFP encumbrance rules)
CON: hit dice type (max d12)
DEX: Initiative dice type (max d12)
INT: Languages known at chargen and chance to know/learn new languages. This is only as important as the DM makes it. I intend to make it important.
CHA: Base hireling morale. Number of re-rolls in negotiations (a reaction check-like houserule).
WIS is gone and replaced with LUCK. LUCK gives points that can be spent on re-rolls, advantage and a bunch of other shit.

All of these are important to any adventurer, imo. However, STR might be important to fighters wanting to wear platemail and use 2h weapons. INT is useful for M-U's, as spellbooks are likely to be written in ancient/dead languages that need translation before they can be used.

All of the combat and class ability related modifiers will be in the actual class options. So you pick a fighter if you want to fight good and you choose the fightiest fight options for the fighter if you want to be the fightiest fight mans that ever fought. But you don't need an 18 STR to be that fightiest fightmans.

Is TroveGuy hovering around? I remember asking about Blood & Treasure PDFs a while back, but found a source - thought you might like to know

https://mega.nz/#F!GgZGlKAY!MRRUIHUqlPNXS58UTppRIQ!uow22KQC

>>48482649
So strength and dexterity are gutted, but constitution stays as powerful as it ever was?

>>48482649
That looks pretty good.

>>48482787
define gutted?
Removing damage bonus from STR and letting class abilities handle it means that rolling a high STR don't mean you should be a fighter. Now you can be a wizard with high STR and you aren't being "sub-optimal" (I use this argument because you consider losing a +3 to hit/damage as "gutting" an ability). The high STR wizard can carry around more potions and scrolls and spellbooks and maybe even wear a little armour. The high STR /anyone/ can make use of that benefit and feels the disadvantage equally as much as anyone else.

As for DEX, dex was pretty much required for all characters. Everyone wanted it. Now it is good, because you act faster in combat and everyone wants to have the luxury of choosing when to act (delayed actions), but it isn't required for all characters to not get hit.

And CON? More ways to kill a PC than just HP damage.

The idea is that all abilities are important and desirable for all characters - not just specific classes.

The only one that is a bit iffy is INT. But I'm going to try and make a point of making languages matter.

>>48483158
It's a comparative thing. In RAW, constitution is competitive with strength and dexterity in terms of power. You took the biggest advantages away from strength and dexterity, but essentially let constitution be. Now, maybe that puts strength and dexterity more in line with something like intelligence, but it leaves constitution towering over the rest.

>And CON? More ways to kill a PC than just HP damage.
There are, but no other way happens with nearly the frequency that hit point-related death does. Basically, there are two options. Either constitution is dramatically weaker than strength and dexterity in the RAW, or it's dramatically stronger under your rules. And I really don't think it's underpowered in the RAW.

>>48483158
>More ways to kill a PC than just HP damage.
Like with the spell-based saves that the characters now no longer get a wisdom bonus towards?

Removing the AC bonus from dexterity also makes hit points from constitution that much more important, since you're going to be hit more often. And hit less often. And do up to half the damage you used to do.

I hope you bake those bonuses into the classes themselves, is what I'm saying.

>>48483324
Seems like what he wants to do. See:
>>48482649
>All of the combat and class ability related modifiers will be in the actual class options.

>>48483336
>>All of the combat and class ability related modifiers will be in the actual class options.
Y'know, I think I said this some threads ago, but if that's the case then constitution giving hit points and dexterity initiative dice really shouldn't be a thing. Don't go half-way with it.
Fuck, moving hit die size and initiative dice into the classes themselves wouldn't exactly be revolutionary unless you're stuck in, I dunno, 1974. It also lets you force the bit with wizards being squishy, fighters tough and thieves fast without falling back on the soft encouragement of Prime Requisites.

>>48483374
Hmm, I dunno.
How effective you are with a weapon is mostly dependent on how well you trained with that. And that's kinda what classes represent, is it not? What you have trained. That's why I think moving attack bonuses to the class makes sense. Though, I'd admit that training with a weapon would probably result in a high dex.
How much blows you can take however is mostly up to your physical build. If you pit Köksal Baba (or hell, even myself) versus Hafthor Björnsson, there's no way köksal (or I) can train to take hits better that Hafthor. So having that in con makes sense for me, too.

But from a game design point, I guess you are right.

>>48475681
>I'm running a zero fantasy campaign set in 13th century England need help on what I should replace the thief ability "Use Scrolls" with.
Feels like you're starting at the wrong end here, anon: can you tell us something about what you've done with classes in general, first? It's easier to come up with good ideas that fit into your system if we know what the system is.

>>48475940
Gonna differ with the others here and say that one of the points of OSR style is that the exact system doesn't matter so much, so there's nothing really like a must-play. Most of the big clones/variants available are pretty much just Basic bundled with the author's house rules, and you pick your favorite bundle.

The only real must-play I think there is is OD&D. If you like OSR you really should try out the pure, uncut stuff some time, just so you know how it handles.

>>48482649
>>48482787
etc.

Here's an idea of how to reduce but not eliminate CON's affect on hit points, but it requires you to switch to all d6 hit dice progressions, like OD&D used.* See pic. Then, you'd use the following scheme for CON affecting hit points...

+1 mod = reroll 1s
+2 modifier = reroll 1s and 2s
+3 modifier = reroll 1s, 2s and 3s

-1 mod = reroll 6s
-2 mod = reroll 5s and 6s
-3 mod = reroll 4s, 5s and 6s

In all cases, you would keep rerolling as long as you kept getting results inside the reroll range. This method halves the effect of constitution on hit points.

*I don't think this is a sacrifice at all, as I find it to be a superior system to variable size hit dice. It means that a constitution modifier will always affect you by the same percentage, rather than a +1 modifier meaning approximately half as much for a fighter as it does for a magic-user with variable size hit dice (a +3 modifier increases a magic-users hit points by 120%, while it only increases a fighters hit points by 67% or 54% depending on whether we're looking at Basic d8 HD fighters or AD&D d10 HD fighters).

File: Hit Dice all d6s (Basic D&D conversion).png (12KB, 876x319px) Image search: [Google]

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>>48484900
Forgot pic.

So, on a whim I searched YouTube for "fudging dice rolls" and watched a number of YouTube videos discussing it, and not ONE person said, "Hey, fudging dice is cheating your players." Not one opposed doing it. Every single fucker basically said, "hey, just do what's thematically appropriate," and one person said he just plays audio of dice rolling behind his fucking GM screen and then makes shit up. Though this was also the guy who said that player agency doesn't exist and every GM railroads like hell, but some are better at hiding it.

Jesus Christ.

>>48475940

Try Dungeon Crawl Classics. It's at least worth reading.

So, I'm the anon who was talking about a setting where the planet itself is an unconscious god that hates the people who live on it, and aberrations like Illithid and so on are manifestations of its restless dreams.

I was thinking of doing the following:
>take Swords & Wizardry Complete
>use LotFP's encumbrance system
>add psions (humanoids who are in some respect touched by the mad dreams of the earth itself, and who manifest powers as a result)
>remove clerics (the only god who would grant them spells is dead)
>remove magic-users (I don't care for Vancian magic and their role can be filled by psions)
>paladins get Turn Undead (but it shares "slots" with the paladin's healing ability, such that if a paladin can heal once per day, and turns undead, that healing has been used up)

>>48484900
Or you could do something like this:
+1 mod = 1s become 3s
+2 mod = 1s become 5s
+3 mod = 1s become 7s
-1 mod = 6s become 4s
-2 mod = 6s become 2s
-3 mod = 6s become 0s*

*You must end up with no less than 1 hit point per hit die after you tally up all your dice results.

Under this method, each +1 modifer adds 1/3 of a hit point per hit die, on average.

>>48485265
Well, I don't know anything about psions, but it sounds like an interesting game. Are paladins really much more thematically appropriate than clerics though? Maybe you should have some sort of healer / witchdoctor / witch to fill the role. Or give healing to the ranger, who heals using herbs and shit.

>>48485339
The idea was that paladins would get their power from sheer force of will and refusal to succumb to the grimdarkness of the setting's cosmology, but some kind of folk healer might make sense. Good idea.

>>48485081

There's an argument to be made that it's a tool in the toolbox man, not substantively different from any number of other things the GM changes on-the-fly without the players' knowledge.

I personally think it's too much trouble, runs the risk of overuse, and robs me of the chance to be surprised by an outcome on account of me just being able to veto it. It also de facto makes every PC death into GM fiat, because if you reserve the right to save them when you feel like it, then when they die it was because you decided to let it happen. It takes away that buffer of irresponsibility that random chance provides.

But I can see how another player might not share those views. They might argue that random chance is a tool used to create tension and provide fun, and there are some things that might happen randomly that are just shitty and boring for everyone involved. They might say that the rules are there as a framework to assist in cooperative storytelling, not to constrain the narrative, and while the players don't have the ability to prevent that kind of stuff, the GM does. It could be argued that it's not only acceptable, but maybe even a part of the GM's job to keep the game running by vetoing results that hinder fun rather than help it.

Of course, then you have to start deciding what counts as "fun" and what isn't, and you're walking a fine line between "modifying outcomes for the betterment of the game" and "this is my pillowbox where no PCs are allowed to die."

Shrug.

>>48485458
I get what you're saying. My problem wasn't that some people are okay with fudging dice. It was that there wasn't a single person who argued the opposing viewpoint, even in the context of specific games/systems/styles of play, and that on the contrary, most seemed to take it as a given that all DMs should and do fudge dice on a regular basis, to make sure things fit the DM's vision for the game.

Last thread there was some debate about what weapons a cleric should be allowed to use based on them overshadowing fighters if they could use magic swords. Given the above debate..what if we just said that any class could use any weapon, but based the damage die on their class?

>>48485794
The mace is the holy weapon of a holy man. Swords are for amateurs

>>48485794
>what if we just said that any class could use any weapon, but based the damage die on their class?
It's slightly trickier than that as magic swords outshine other weapons. They're more common and you're more likely to find a more powerful one. So there's a bit more to it than just the 1 point of average damage difference between a sword and a mace. Still, I'm okay with your idea in principle. What if you democratize magic weapons (so you're just as likely to find one weapon type as another) and fighters gain some sort of added bonus from magical weapons? Like, they double the damage modifier or something. So a +1 sword in a fighter's hands becomes +1 to hit and +2 damage. Granted, you'd see an overall upwards shift in damage output, but give the way hit points increase in D&D, I don't think this would be a big issue.

>>48485794
Go with the weird OD&D interpretation where you can use whatever the fuck weapon you want, it's just that you can only use a certain subset of magic weapons.

Of course, this leads to the problem of encroaching on the weak ranged monopoly the Fighter and Thief have. Also, it gives the magic-user the option of just plinking away with a crossbow from the back row, or alternatively run around with a zweihander.

It also depends greatly on the system in question - in OD&D this would actually matter since zweihanders have impact on initiative and give to-hit bonuses, for instance, while in B/X it would either not matter at all or be a +3 damage bonus.

The Fighter can't use the Cleric's Staff of Healing, and the Cleric can't use the Magic-User's Brazier of Summoning Fire Elementals, so why should eht Magic-User be allowed to use the Fighter's Chaotic +2 Lifestealing Sword with Flight and Detect Gems and Detect Secret Doors?

>>48486201
>>48485794
So would you just put a cap on the size of damage dice you could use while keeping the weapon damages the way they were? Like a longsword is still a d8 weapon, but in the hands of magic-user, it can only do d4 damage? that would mean that while a fighter would do d8 with a longsword, he'd continue to do only d4 damage with a dagger.

Or were you thinking each class would do X damage regardless of what weapon they were using? Or maybe something in between, where each class had two or three different damage categories for light/medium/heavy weapons?

What kind of OSR game would be good for someone who wants dungeon crawling but without stupid shit like traps and puzzles? What if I just want encounters with monsters, either indigenous or marauding, and 'traps' in the sense of crumbling staircases, cave-ins and bad air?

>>48486372
Play any game and just don't put any traps and puzzles into your dungeon? I don't include them very often, myself, because they either don't make much sense or seem like they should be reserved for special occasions.

>>48486372
Torchbearer, perhaps?

>>48486405
>>48486411
Thanks

>>48482310
>His site is down it seems
No he changed sites. Google "Gurbintroll Games"

>>48486085
> The mace is the holy weapon of a holy man. Swords are for amateurs
Unless you go with the discussion in last thread in which A) Clerics should basically be crusading knights instead of priests in armor, in which case it makes as much sense for them to use swords as maces or B) you're literally a priest of anything that isn't NotJesus in which case the "don't shed blood" thing is nonsensical.

>>48486201
> They're more common and you're more likely to find a more powerful one.
Admittedly, this isn't a problem for me simply because all of my magic items are more or less unique hand-placed things. Very, very rarely do you get a <genericweapon>+1 in a game I run, so the default random table results aren't something I have to worry about.

Giving a fighter more of a bonus from magic weapons might be something to think on though.

>>48486362
>So would you just put a cap on the size of damage dice you could use while keeping the weapon damages the way they were?
The most.. consistent route would probably be have a "small" "one-handed" and "two-handed" damage for each class. Then it wouldn't matter what weapon you were using, just if it was small, one-handed, or two-handed. for the fighter, it might be d6, d8, d12. For a cleric, d4, d6, d8. The magic user might be d3, d4, d6. You could probably fine-tune that if you really wanted, but you get where I'm going.

>>48486353
I don't think I've ever had a "Chaotic +2 Lifestealing Sword with Flight and Detect Gems and Detect Secret Doors" in a game I've played or ran, but if the only kind of restriction built into it is the fact that it's a sword, it wasn't a fighter-specific item to begin with. Thieves can already use it in Basic. If you are playing AD&D, then the fighter is already sharing it with rangers, bards, and so on.

>>48486662
Yes, but he doesn't have direct downloads there. Only links to dtrpg. And for anyone who doesn't want to make an dtrpg account I uploaded them to zippyshare.

File: Gary_Gygax_Remembrance_02.jpg (37KB, 469x430px)

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Happy Gary Gygax day.

What are you doing to honor the father of our hobby?

>>48486829
prepping for a short little adventure to introduce my friends into OSR

>>48480102
I love wilderness exploration, most of the rest of OSRG rather enjoy it as well it seems. As to your question I have always done a mixture of the two you just said, hexcrawl with certain areas mapped out dungeon like.

>>48486829
Joining the OSR

>>48486855
Good man.

>>48486874
Welcome to our cozy corner of /tg/. We have a magazine and shit.

>>48475470
To be OSR does it specifically need to be based off some early version of D&D or just any old school RPG? Like would RQ2 be considered OSR?

>>48486704
>I don't think I've ever had a "Chaotic +2 Lifestealing Sword with Flight and Detect Gems and Detect Secret Doors" in a game I've played or ran, but if the only kind of restriction built into it is the fact that it's a sword, it wasn't a fighter-specific item to begin with. Thieves can already use it in Basic. If you are playing AD&D, then the fighter is already sharing it with rangers, bards, and so on.
I was just stringing together a bunch of OD&D sword options, but lemme go through the B/X ones (way more boring) - when I say "Fighter", try to mentally add "and Thief, Dwarf, Elf and Halfling";

>20% chance of Sword, 5% of Misc. Weapon
>65% of Misc. Weapons are fighter-exclusive

>Most Misc. Weapons are boring +X to hit/damage

>There's a 40% chance of a vanilla +1 Sword, 3% +2, 2% +3
>32% chance of +1 sword, +2/3 vs. X monster type
>4% chance of cursed sword
>19% chance of sword with magical effect (e.g. flames, light, charm, drain life energy, wishes)

>All swords have an alignment - 65% Lawful, 25% Neutral, 10% Chaotic
>handling does 2d6 damage to opposite alignment, 1d6 to adjacent

>34% of swords are intelligent enough to tell you their powers, and have extra powers
>Primary powers are usable mostly at-will, generally detection spells as well as thief/demihuman detection skills and treasure (i.e. XP) detection
>4% of primary powers roll on the Extraordinary table, also available to ~10% of swords in general
>Extraordinary powers are 3/day, but include everything from healing and temporary quad damage to teleportation and flight and illusions

>5% of swords also have a Special Purpose, those being to either slay a specific non-Thief class or a non-Neutral alignment or monsters in general
>When used for its purpose,
>Lawful swords paralyze
>Neutral swords give +1 saves
>Chaotic swords petrify

>Sometimes, intelligent swords will try to mind control you. They do petty shit.

>>48487129
Some people will argue that things like Traveller and RQ should be considered OSR because of the "Old School" part of the title, but in common usage it refers to the TSR-D&D family and games that are based on those.

>>48487162
> When I say "Fighter", try to mentally add "and Thief, Dwarf, Elf and Halfling";
There are only seven base classes in Basic. If you name one of them, and it's supposed to also represent another four, then you aren't arguing about exclusivity at all. If five out of seven can already use it, then it's not an issue of exclusivity. Fighters were already competing for use of said magic item with 57% of the potential classes.

If you want fighter-exclusive magic items to make up for the fact that there were cleric or magic-user exclusive magic items, then add some, as I'm not sure they exist in Basic by default anyway.

>>48487262
>There are only seven base classes in Basic.
Wrong - there's four classes in Basic. Dwarves and Halflings are literally just Fighters with some extra bits stapled on - hence why the first level of each is "[RACE] Veteran". Elves are multiclass Fighter/Magic-Users, hence them ending up as Elven Wizard Lords.

Thieves intrude on the Fighter's niche, but they do so in a relatively inoffensive way - you see, they don't actually get any magic items of their own. The mundanes get to share the special weapons, while the Cleric gets his staves and the Magic-User all his exclusive shit.

Also the thief is a garbage class only liked by subhuman scum that should be wiped from the face of the earth, but that's mostly for unrelated reasons. There's not a bone of originality in that class - it doesn't even have all of its own tables, it just (fittingly enough) steals them from other classes.

Either way, though, giving a magic sword to a Cleric is a different deal than giving it to a thief. You see, the Thief has a d4 hit die and leather armor. A Cleric with a sword is literally a Fighter with slightly lower numbers and spells.

is there a way to play-by-post?

Is Maze of the Blue Medusa in the trove yet?

>>48487604
Probably? What specifically are you asking for?

There's a ton of forums out there of various quality that have built-in dice rollers, so all you need to figure out is how to handle mapping and whatnot and how to get it all flowing fast enough that the pace doesn't get fucked.

>>48487604
Yes! No idea how, sorry, but its something I see constantly brought up here and on OSR blogs.

>>48487647
Yes! Has been for awhile to be fair. Under OSR MISC.

>>48486704
What if every class had a sort of crux as far as weapons go, and if you use a lighter weapon, it's a die less, and if you use a heavier one, it's a die more. That's kind of like what you were saying, except for magic-users, their crux would be daggers and staves, and there's nothing lighter than that. It also means that they'd gain no advantage from using a longsword over a shortsword. Sure, they could do it, but it'd be the same amount of damage.

>>48487604
check out http://snw.smolderingwizard.com/ for some PbP games

>>48487525
>Clerics using swords
That cock won't fight, bro

>>48487525
Tell us about the Dickass Thief who bullied you, anon.

>>48486829

Nothing.

>>48487882
It's more about how the introduction of Thief Skills led to Proficiencies and Skills and the current climate where you roll Diplomacy to persuade a guard to let you pass and roll Search to find hidden objects and generally can't do anything not listed on your character sheet.

Also, it's kind of a worse version of the Warlock thief that it was cribbed from. Hell, I even prefer the playtest version - it has some interesting peculiarities, like being able to pick through wizard locked doors.

Also, the whole thing with just reusing the Cleric and Magic-User's save and attack tables and the general laziness in weapon selection.

It's mostly just the whole "ruined the future of the industry forever by creating the concept of rolling for skill checks" thing, though.

>>48486829
I honestly don't really like the stuff that he wrote, so not much really?

>>48488016
How would you resolve attempts at something where both a success and a failure would result in a fun continuation of the game?

>>48488016
>It's more about how the introduction of Thief Skills led to Proficiencies and Skills

I'd say that was the Fighter's weapon proficiencies. The Thief's stuff was just a class ability from the get-go, but when Fighter got weapon proficiencies, they also started adding them to other classes, and then non-weapon proficiences, and then it all went to shit.

>>48487525
There are seven classes in basic, because races are classes. Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User, Thief, Elf, Dwarf, and Halfling. They are listed as classes and have individual XP tracks and abilities. They are classes in every sense of the word. You are factually and demonstrably wrong.

>>48488056
Either go with a standard universal flat chance of success or just let them bloody well do it without needing to roll for every damn action. Or don't! If either option would result in a fun continuation of the game, you may as well just flip a coin.

>>48488071
It's shorter than that, really - proficiencies were universal from the get-go in AD&D, and NWPs got added in the X Survival Books although they didn't have that name. I know that Oriental Adventures called them "Peaceful Proficiencies" but also noted that it was a misnomer due to siege weapon use being one, for instance.

They were also pretty different than NWPs, since you had a static target number to roll for to do the thing rather than an attribute check.

NWPs then come in 2E, and are followed by 3E's clusterfuck of a skill system.

Really, though, thief skills are the point where people look at them and say "oh, I don't have Climb Walls, clearly I cannot actually climb walls."

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>>48475593
The initial thing to understand is that shortly after Gygax's orginal D&D, the lineage split into two directions - Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (AD&D), and Basic/Expert Dungeons and Dragons (also known as B/X).

AD&D's lineage includes AD&D 1e, AD&D 2e, and eventually became the flagship line, later succeeded by 3.x, 4e, 5e, etc. Notable clones include Swords and Wizardry.

B/X's lineage includes Mentzer B/X, Moldvay B/X (named for their primary authors), and BECMI (sometimes called the Rules Cyclopedia). Notable clones include Labyrinth Lord (almost a copy/paste job), Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Adventurer Conqueror King.

One of the key differences in both is that B/X systems and clones tend to more explicitly assume a "gold for XP" system of level progression, where XP earned is tied to gold carried out of a dungeon. This sort of system is arguably seen as a central pillar of OSR style play because it emphasizes the use of planned and lootable dungeon locations.

In contrast, AD&D started the move out of the dungeon by linking XP to class actions performed.

You can easily bolt on one XP system to another, but keep in mind the XP system used and sources of XP has an enormous effect on the feel of the game. If XP is only gained from gold hauled out of dungeons, this is going to mean your campaigns will be very dungeon focused.

>>48488916
Wasn't the 2010 Basic Box set just a repackage of the D&D 4e quickstart?

>>48487129
There's no hard-and-fast definition much like a lot of movements, but I'd say common elements you see in blogs and products touting themselves as "OSR" include:

-emphasis on emergent plotlines out of a confluence of player choice, dice rolls on preset tables, and pre-planned setpieces (i.e. "sandbox" play), rather that scripted story arcs or by collective table agreement
-gold for XP systems or other systems that encourage venturing into dangerous locations to extract treasure
-such locations generally demand resource management, resulting in a push-your-luck situations where in order to push deeper for greater treasure you may have to risk running out of resources
-chance of character death/maiming that can only be mitigated by player decisions (rather than expenditure of meta-narrative currencies like Fate points, collective table bargaining, etc.)

Most of these are found in older TSR D&D games, but the mentality and approach can be adapted to other systems.

OSR tends to be against RPGs that focus on meta-storytelling rules or games that focus on creating stories through some sort of structured bargaining process (like FATE or Powered By the Apocalypse).

>>48488948
It's not my chart - you'd have to take that up with the author on the bottom right.

>>48488916
>In contrast, AD&D started the move out of the dungeon by linking XP to class actions performed.
That's 2E - AD&D was still all in on GP=XP.

And the Ruels Cyclopedia also includes a bunch of ruels for roleplaying experience and story-based experience and whatnot, IIRC. It's less a Basic/Expert split and more just company policy in the nineties, I think.

>>48488948
Mmmaybe? I thought it was linked to Essentials in some capacity?

I remember hearing that it had some kind of BECMI-esque CYOA chargen system, for what it's worth.

>>48487129
In these threads it's generally just D&Dalikes. It's a contentious issue, though.

>>48489083
It's cool bro, just curious is all. I wanted to make sure it was the same box I'd seen at B&N a couple years back and not an ACTUAL reissue of the original box, because if that was the case I'd buy it. Just like I'd buy a reprint of the Rules Cyclopedia.

>>48488916
>Notable clones include Swords and Wizardry.
Swords & Wizardry is three different flavors of Original D&D and belongs with the Basic lineage as much as the Advanced, if we're only sorting things into two columns. S&W Complete would sort with AD&D, but Core and White Box would sort with Basic.

>>48489093
>>48489211
Thanks for the corrections. I haven't done a whole lot of AD&D1 or S&W myself so getting the finer points is helpful.

>>48489162
>and not an ACTUAL reissue of the original bo
Nah, it was a 4e thing with the same cover for nostalgia reasons or something. I don't really think it was related in any other way (aside from being a low level starter set), but I could be wrong, as I'm not particularly up on my 4e.

>>48489162
>Just like I'd buy a reprint of the Rules Cyclopedia.
Never gonna happen.

>>48489257
S&W White Box is a very minimalist, brass tacks version of the OD&D base rules (the little brown books that came in a white box). S&W Core adds in the Greyhawk supplement and takes a bit less of a minimalist approach. Since Basic D&D is derived from the little brown books plus Greyhawk, it's easy to understand why the two are so similar (and why people often think S&W Core is a retroclone of Basic). S&W Complete draws from pretty much all of OD&D, not restricting itself to a single supplement. This is what AD&D descends from and contains most of its pieces.

>>48489355
>S&W Complete
I don't remember, do they have a psionics system?

>>48489399
Nope. Psionics tend to get ignored by retroclones and, well, everybody. I'm not sure I've ever actually seen them get used in a game.

>>48489487
Were Psionics ever even in AD&D before the Handbook? It must have been part of some campaign setting first.

>>48489622
Pretty sure they weren't added in until Dark Suns

>>48489693
>Dank Suns

Makes sense.

>>48489622
They're in the fucking Player's Handbook of 1E, man.

They're from OD&D Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry originally, the same place that gave us the Druid and artifacts and demons (including Orcus and Demogorgon, hence why those are the two in BECMI).

>>48483324
as I mentioned (but didn't stress), the stuff you'd get from STR and DEX are folded in to optional class abilities that the characters may choose when gaining a level. Same goes for saving throws, which have a class mod and an optional level-up mod.
Also, I've changed combat to an opposed d20 roll, so AC is more swingy. d20+ATK vs d20+AC.

>>48486201
No weapon restrictions at all work just fine in some games. Look at LotFP, for example.
Then again, LotFP essentially taxes some classes, requiring clerics to splash out for a holy symbol, and magic users to REALLY spend for a spellbook. So the classes get less gear, but get the same choice as everybody else.

To eliminate HP bloat; I'm not letting anyone gain any HP past level one except for the fighter, and only if they specialize in 'defense' in each level.

How much did I break the game?

>>48491117
I think the big thing working for LotFP's is that only the fighter gains AB, so it doesn't really matter if the cleric is using a greatsword, they aren't going to be able to swing it anywhere near as good as the fighter can.

>>48491207
How much HP bloat are you really dealing with in an OSR game? Your average fighter has d8 HP/level +Con bonus. If we assume an average con (most players will put their highest bonus into strength) we'll say d8+1/level.

At name level when you're one of the most legendary warriors in the setting (usually), you've got maybe 45HP? A greatweapon in these systems will do d10+strength bonus damage. Some monsters will do way, way more damage.

You're still going down in a very small handful of hits.

Also, limiting everyone else's HP to their initial roll is basically going to allow every class to be one-shot by anything of substance for their entire career.

So I don't really know that the problem you're trying to fix exists in most OSR systems and your solution seems like it would absolutely cripple everyone.

>>48491207

I hope you do something similar for monsters, or fights are going to be really short.

Also, without a way to compel monsters to attack a "defensive specialized" Fighter, they are completely free to ignore the damage sponge and attack weaker characters like Clerics, Thieves, "non-defensive specialized" Fighters, and Magic-Users.

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>>48491207
I mean, it could maybe work, but you'd have to rework spell damage and probably monster damage as well. Here's a slowed hit dice progression, in case you might be interest in or inspired by something like that.

>>48491664
>I think the big thing working for LotFP's is that only the fighter gains AB, so it doesn't really matter if the cleric is using a greatsword, they aren't going to be able to swing it anywhere near as good as the fighter can.
I too think that works greatly to make the fighter good. But the Elf doesn't get any bonus to AB as far as I can see, so the only thing seperating him from a MU seems to be that he has less spell slots but more HP.
Or have I again missed something? As far as I can see the Elf is not a good Fighter/Magic-User hybrid, but just a spin off from MU

>>48491664
>>48491697
>>48491953

I probably should have mentioned the intention was to give players more HP at level one, with level one threats being a little bit weaker then normal to compensate.

I don't know why I want to remove HP bloat so bad, but something about it just feels wrong that a mid level Wizard, the wimpiest class, can get a 1d6 sword stuck up his ass by a peasant multiple and not die. It just seems wrong.

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>>48491975
Fighters, dwarves, and elves are the three combat-oriented classes in the game.

The three categories of "things that make you good in combat" for LotFP are
> AB
> Hit Die
> Combat Options

Fighters start at +2AB, and are the only ones who get better at it through levels.

Everyone else starts at +1AB, but that still technically makes them all better at combat than a normal human, who is level 0 and has 0AB.

Fighters get d8 for hit dice. Dwarves get d10s. Elves get d6s (but also magic).

All three get the "fighter combat options." Check the character sheet or pic related.
> Everyone gets the standard attack.
> Everyone can give up their attack to parry that round. Clerics, Mages, and Specialists get +2 AC for it. Dwarves, elves, and fighters get +4.
> Only Fighters, Dwarves, and Elves get the Press option
> Only Fighters, Dwarves, and Elves get the Defensive option.

>>48491975

Combat Options. Like Press and Parry.

>>48492080
Hit Points for PCs were never meant to be meat-points. It's a mixture of luck, fatigue, ability to avoid damage, etc.

That said, you might also want to check out last gasp grimoire's Flesh and Grit rules:
http://www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/id-hit-that/

>>48492080
I completely understand, but it's baked into the system in a rather fundamental way, so you may need to make some serious changes to get things to work.

>>48492122
>Hit Points for PCs were never meant to be meat-points.
Either way, there's little sense of immediate danger as the guardsman points his crossbow at your 8th level fighter and tells him to drop his weapon or die. "Oh no! If he reloads and does that 7 more times, I might be in serious trouble! Assuming he hits with every shot he takes, that is."

>>48492080

I'm not sure exactly what to tell you, but have this off the top of my head:

You may want to have a base of 5 hp + Con, and redo weapons so that,

1d4 does 1 + Str
1d6 does 2 + Str
1d8 does 3 + Str
1d10 does 4 + Str

This would still require changing spells. You may want to modify the base HP up or down depending on character class, making Fighters and Dwarves tougher, and Magic-Users and Elves weaker.

I'm really tired of storefronts captcha.

>>48492365
> "Oh no! If he reloads and does that 7 more times, I might be in serious trouble!"
This is why I'm a fan of the Flesh/Grit thing.

>>48491975
It's worth mentioning that the elf is overpowered in Basic, and so could lose some ground and still be a worthwhile class.

As someone who has just decided to start an OSR campaign with some as yet to be recruited friends, and who's only familiarity with anything old school is a few skims of AD&D 2E, whats a good jumping off point for an old school dungeon crawl. I'm looking for something simple to learn, because everyone but me is new to RPGs, but I personally like a little crunch in my games. With those incredibly vague parameters, what would you folks reccomend? Any PDF links/ games in the trove would be a plus.

File: The Craft Dungeon of Reynaldo Lazendry.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>48492570
I tell everyone interested in OSR to try Lamentations of the Flame Princess (itself a tweaked B/X clone) and run Tower of the Stargazer (a tower crawl). The Grinding Gear makes for another good, traditional dungeon crawl. Death Frost Doom has a dungeon as well, the module as a whole more horror-themed. I haven't ran the God that Crawls, but I hear great things.

If you want something that deviated a bit from B/X try DCC. Its spellcasting system is AMAZING and my players have the most fun/laughs playing it out of any other OSR.

You could also run this module with pretty much any OSR system with a little bit of tweaking. It's a fun none-too-serious dungeon crawl with plenty to see and do.

>>48492677
Coincidentally, I apparently downloaded the core book for that a year and a half ago in a PDF share thread. I'll give it a read. On a related note, what are these 0 level funnels I hear about in the thread, and would they be a good idea for totally new players to get the idea of character permadeath and the threat they're under?

>>48492570
Normally, I'd point you towards the simpler end of the spectrum (both because of your relative lack of unfamiliarity with old school and because I personally prefer it). Swords & Wizardry Complete and Labyrinth Lord Advanced Edition Companion both give you most of the options of AD&D without a lot of the unnecessary clutter. Castles & Crusades uses the unified d20 system of new school D&D (without the bullshit math stacked on top of it) to simplify and streamline AD&D. I also like the fact that it isn't afraid to tweak things, though this may make it a bit less "authentic" in some peoples' eyes. And then there's shit like Dungeon Crawl Classics if you're at peace with a lot of crunch and tables and shit (I'm personally not)... and Hackmaster for those who like crunch so much they want to kneel there while needlessly involved bullshit lines up to bukkake them.

>>48492764
So, just for reference, how would you rate the crunchiness of Hackmaster as compared to D&D 3.5? Because I've got a decent amount of experience with that, and it doesn't seem too crunchy in my opinion.

>>48487129
primarily D&D, but a couple other early systems are considered OSR to some extent(Gamma World, Metamorphosis Alpha, Boot Hill, Empire of The Petal Throne, Marvel TSR are some examples of this)

>>48492733
you basically roll up 4-5 level-0 nobodies and throw them in some sort of fucked up situation. the idea is to have a surviving character or two that will go on to become an actual, regular character class. It's fun.

I'm working on a menu-based management sim centered around dungeoneering. The basic idea is that you're just an average dude trying to get rich by delving into dungeons. You start with some gold and in town, you can hire adventurers (warriors, thieves, mages, and priests who all have different stats) and buy supplies.

Encounters take the form of choose-your-own-adventure-like decisions. Each decision will either tell you that you'll get or lose some amount of specific supplies, or give you a percent chance to succeed, with a risk/reward element.

Above ground travel is node-based, with pre-planned and random encounters as you travel. Below-ground travel is similar except that you just face increasingly difficult encounters as you travel deeper, and have to decide when to turn back (and deal with any encounters you stumble onto on your way back).

The idea is to encourage the elements of exploration, emergent story, and resource management from old school RPGs, rather than the mechanical elements that computer RPGs in the past have tended to borrow from them.

Does this sound cool? What are some supplies I should definitely include?

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>>48492790
I would consider 3.5 to be rules-heavy and I think that they fucked up the math on a lot of things, so I'm not hugely in favor of it. On the other hand, most all of its rules actually do something, even if that something is screwy. Hackmaster seems to revel in crunch for its own sake, and much of it seems to add very little to the game. Pic is a character sheet from the Hackmaster Basic rules.

>>48492861
Are there any prewritten examples? Just to get a feel? Is the goal to be survivable with smart play, or is it more an exercise in whittling them down until there's few enough survivors for a normal sized party?

File: hackmaster 'basic'.png (1MB, 1660x1680px) Image search: [Google]

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>>48492928
More Hackmaster Basic shit.

How to make fighters do more damage?

At least in most games I've seen, they only deal weapon damage and just have a higher chance to hit, and beyond a few extra attacks they may get, they don't really seem to do more damage then anyone else.

How do you reconcile this?

>>48492928
That looks like something out of dark heresy. I like dark heresy, but holy hell am I starting to appreciate the simpler things in life.

>>48492929
go to the trove at look at Sailors on the Starless Sea.

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>>48492928
>>48492943

>combat actions measured out by individual seconds
>d10,000 dice

This is a level of granularity so fine that it's on the level of subatomic particles.

>>48492961
steal DCCs shit and roll a d3 with the attack/damage rolls instead of giving them a regular 'attack bonus'. add STR mods as usual.

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>>48492961
Extra attacks can actually be pretty powerful. I mean, if you get two attacks every round, you've doubled your damage. Of course, you could also have them add some fraction of their level to their damage (half level maybe).

Since it's related to our discussion, attached is an alternate scheme for giving fighters additional attacks (and in particular, smoothly transitioning them from 1 attack per round through to 2 attacks per round). Basically, you draw 1 poker chip per round of combat and can spend 2 to get an additional attack. You start a battle with a variable number of chips depending on your level and can never hold more than 3 chips at a time. The "extra attack on round X" bit is just showing you the rounds on which you can get two strikes in if you blow your chips as soon as you have enough of them. The total attacks in 5 1/2 rounds is just so you can compare your power with what you'd have in the RAW in AD&D.

>>48493044
To be fair, I'm not sure what d10,000s are actually used for in the game, if anything at all. I think they might have just included the blurb on them because they fetishize needless complexity.

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>>48493098
Oh, and a -1 starting pool just means you don't draw a chip on the first round of combat.

Here's another way to do multiple attacks, by decreasing THAC0 once you get them so as not to suddenly double your offensive power. It's an alternative to the clumsy "three attacks every two rounds" method that AD&D uses.

>>48493098
>>48493187
Also, instead of having fighters get two attacks, you could always have them do double damage instead, if this makes them feel more real.

Maybe fighters roll a d6 along with every attack, and if they get a 6 or higher, they do double damage, assuming they hit. And as they level, that d6 turns into a d8, then a d10, and finally a d12.

Does anyone have a good link to Swords and Wizardry ReArm Yourself? The one in the trove isn't downloading properly for me.

Is the Trove broken, or is it just me?

>>48493666
I'm having trouble with some things, but not others. It's pretty random what will work.

>>48493666
>trips confirm devil
I see why you cant use it.

More seriously its working fine for me, sorry man.

>>48492961
Give them cleave.
>Fighters can make an additional attack if they reduce an enemy to zero hit points. They can cleave again (level permitting) if they reduce the target of their cleave to zero hp. A fighter can make a number of cleaves up to their fighter level per turn.

>>48493924

I wasn't referring to multiple attacks, I already do that. I meant more damage in a single attack, or on one creature. Smashing through a crowd of low level minions is something they can already do, but how do they slay the big strong dragon monster with a bunch of health points?

So what are the mechanical benefits and drawbacks of using a roll under system for attribute checks as opposed to flat DCs?

>>48494268

Roll under favors high ability scores, since they're more likely to roll under said ability score. Flat DCs however allow you to set the chance of success +/- 15% (-3 to +3 from attribute modifiers).

Higher ability scores will still be beneficial, but not as beneficial as they would be with roll under.

>>48492900 here.
Any thoughts?

>>48494783

I'll bite. You need torches, water, and food at minimum. Rope would also be useful, but inventory (sacks, barrels, bags, chests, etc.) should also be a resource.

You might want to consider morale as well. Being dirty, tired, hungry, thirsty, and stressed isn't likely to make expeditions easier.

>>48493871
Spooky.

Thanks for clarification, at least!

>>48494855
Good thoughts. Thanks. I'll put it all in a document and start with what seems most essential (gold, water, rations, torches, morale). Everyone will come with a sack that can be expanded for a certain amount of money. Other things will be able to be used to unlock certain options within encounters (either multiple-use or being expended upon use).

Thank you for the suggestions.

>>48483445
If your getting into the logic of stats you can't reasonably have scaling HP that represents the hits you can take.
It's the pool of energy to avoid otherwise deadly effects. HP is a mix of skill, stamina and willpower.
As a character levels up he's not just getting more resistant to blows, he's learning how to use his energy, building up grit and determination.
It's also the more useful stat in most combats and dungeon crawls compared to to-hit.

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so if someone were to write an OSR game for Mecha campaigns, what would be some things you'd want to see in it?

>>48484900
I fucking love this.
Thanks anon. Stolen!

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Do OD&D 1e or AD&D 1e (*not* any retroclones) have any rules for explosive weaponry? If so, where can they be found?

>>48475470
How come mega stalls on "decrypting folder data" for me?

>>48492900
So, you've taken a look at Torchbearer, right?

Am I the only person who likes HP as flesh points?

Let your players get hacked to bits. With the magic in the setting they cam avoid the worst of infection and wounds healing wrong. It also gives more stock to unnerving or weapons that don't miss, which messes up the fluff otherwise.

>>48496009
Just keep refreshing, happened a few times for me

>>48496237
Hasnt helped, yet other mega links work fine

>>48496337
I was able to fix it by registering and logging into an account.

>>48496079
The major problem then is that the literal interpretation means that a ninth level fighter is capable of taking a forty foot drop and a few arrows at point blank range without so much as missing a beat. If they rolled well and had a high con, they could be up to 99 HP at name level. You could shoot them point blank with 12 crossbow bolts and they would have no penalties or problems.

The meat interpretation makes for a really messed up narrative situation as characters advance in level.

>>48496935

That's why you lower HP maximum and gain

Do any of you gents happen to know how to get ones hands on a good hexmap of europe and russia? I want to do some hexcrawling.

what is the best OSR to play by post in a forum with a dice roller?

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Throwing out this question again - what random tables see the most use in the campaigns you've been in, either as a GM or a player?

There's tons of tables out there and I have no problem writing my own, but I'd like to hear what sort of tables have proven actually practically useful in your games.

What are your favorite resources for designing dungeons?

>>48497792
I'm a big fan of the tables in Vornheim, I use them quite a lot.

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>>48495217
bumping this in hope of getting some replies

>>48495217
>>48498039
I'd like there to be rules and tables that make it so that adding mechas to my campaign is fun for the players in more than just a "reskinned older enemy/tool" way. Make mechas interesting and unique, make it so the players will have to think differently when encountering or piloting one. Turn the game on its head.

>>48498039
I'd like to be able to build mechs from different parts that give different abilities. Like, different torsos, arms, legs, heads. That sort of thing

>>48496079
>Am I the only person who likes HP as flesh points?
It's a damned if you do, damned if you don't sort of thing. If you use them as an abstraction that comprises luck, fatigue and so forth, it promotes detachment from the game and leads to some nonsensical results when the fatigue concept really can't apply. But if you use them as meat points, high level characters can suffer preposterous damage and walk around like nothing has happened.

Me? I prefer meat points concept, and it's one of my issues with D&D that it has too many of them for them to work well like this. And sure, there are workarounds, but they require you to dramatically reformat the game, which is less than ideal.

>>48496079
I think that thinking of them as an abstraction helps roleplaying more. Sure you can have a hit be an actual hit if you want players to be hacked to bits, but it might be weird if you've taken 10 arrows in the shoulder and still haven't had your head cut off yet. So if a situation like that comes along you'll probably abstract it anyway.

>>48496079
I think Last Gasp Grimoire had a flesh point system. Or rather, HP was split in to two numbers: Flesh and Grit. Flesh was quite low and would only go up 1 or 2 points a level, wheras the majority of your HD would go into Grit.
Flesh represented your physical wounds and grit represented all the abstract stuff like stamina, glancing blows, etc.
Damage comes off grit first, then you start taking flesh wounds. Once you start taking flesh wounds you get various penalties like slower move speed.
Crits and sneak attacks would bypass grit.

Seemed cool, but probably too much hassle with not enough payoff.

>>48495217
>>48498039
A big thing is this >>48498562
If you're going to make a mecha game, you need the mecha to feel different than just a bigger version of your own character with its own HP/AC.

>>48498600
I'm also a big supporter of this. If you're making mechs, make them customizable. Give me shitloads of parts to play with. Different armor plates, weapons, limb setups, subsystems. Think along the lines of the Armored Core series. Fortunately, if you do this it really helps with that first bit.

>>48476290
I found the rules pretty general. What makes it not for everyone?

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>>48475470
> The first issue of Troll Gods was released and given a home on blogger.
Lo and behold!

Noticed it in my RSS (daily snapshots) and wasn't even certain if that's what I thought it was. Decided to drop by and congratulate (somewhat slowpok-ishly, I guess) everyone.

>>48500322
Thanks anon!

Anyone working on anything to submit?

>>48500213
I think not having a bestiary is a downer for many. But I can't really tell, I like LotFP too.

>>48497920
Graph paper and a pencil.

>>48500213
As someone who runs LotFP as their primary game, I would say that if there was a bone most people will pick with LotFP it's the choice to make Fighters the only ones who gain AB. As much as I personally like the choice, I can see how it could be divisive.

So, how do you have your players roll?

I tend to say "roll 3d6, six times in order, then one more time. Now switch any two, and then drop the extra one."

>>48501085
My group uses roll20. I made a macro that generates 3 characters who have 3d6 down the line, as well as 3d6x10 starting wealth.

You may pick one of the three characters generated, and switch one pair of ability scores around if you like.

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>>48497792
This. Lots of stuff from GM's Miscellany works well, just ignore the pf parts. The Metamorphica and Esoteric Creature Generator. Tables of random motivations and characteristics for npc, usually just as a list for inspiration.

I've been looking at AD&D again and I'm curious to give it another go after all these years. The thing that immediately bothers me though is that demi-humans just seem inherently better than humans in almost every way. An elven or dwarven fighter is just plain better than a human fighter.

Theoretically, there are three balancing mechanisms for this.to some degree
> Racial minimums/maximums on ability scores
> Class restrictions
> Level limits

Racial minimums/maximums are fiddly at best, and rarely actually constrain anything, coming up only at the furthest outliers. Most groups drop these immediately because they don't seem worth the hassle.

Class restrictions work to some degree and help give a little flavor to the racial choices, but this doesn't help the human fighter problem above.

Level limits are arguably the strongest balance, but they are huge mixed bag. They only come up at all if the campaign goes on for a significant amount of time (most caps fall in the 7-8 range), and after that they just stop the character cold. Until the cap is hit, it might as well not exist and the human is just plain worse. After the cap is hit, it just sucks to be the demi-human who can no longer advance.

So this neither really balances things, nor is it any fun.

Has anyone ever come up with a decent way to deal with demi-human balance in AD&D?

Are there any games that take a lovecraftian (or Babylonian) style "star magic" approach to spells?

>>48501647
So what you're saying is that if you ignore an Elven Fighter getting
>-1 Constitution
>Max 5th level, 6th with 17 STR, 7th with 18 STR
>Max 18/75 Strength (16 Strength for females)
they're objectively better than a Human Fighter? Yeah, that follows.

Also they need 8 Intelligence, 6 Dexterity, 8 base Constitution, and 8 Charisma. And 9 Strength to be a Fighter and 6 Wisdom since they're not a Thief, obviously.

Also, it's worth noting that 7th level is a breaking point that gives you +1/2 attacks and +2 to-hit.

Also Duel Classing and Paladins and Rangers, I guess. Humans get exclusive access to a lot of the special classes that the demihumans, well, don't. Gnomes get Illusionists and half-elves Druids, I guess.

Not saying that it's a perfect system or anything, but the Elf really isn't the best Fighter out there. AD&D has humans be much better in the long run specifically because at low levels they aren't. It's the same school of thought that gives you the magic-user - you might not be that impressive now, but by golly you'll show them once name level comes around.

And level seven isn't even that high, really.

>>48489067
>chance of character death/maiming that can only be mitigated by player decisions (rather than expenditure of meta-narrative currencies like Fate points, collective table bargaining, etc.)

>collective table bargaining

It's funny, because Dave Arneson used this in place of saving throws for quite a while.

https://forum.rpg.net/archive/index.php/t-286043.html

>>48502001
> -1 Constitution
Why are they at -1 Constitution? If I rolled a 14 Con I have 14 con no matter what race I chose, no?

>>48501149
Would you be willing to share that macro?

>>48502127
Sure. The way I have it written presently, it's two Macros. The first is called SummonWarboyz. The code of which is:

----------------------
/me I live, I die, I LIVE AGAIN!
/me Shiny

#StatArray

/me and

#StatArray

/me Chrome

#StatArray

----------

It references a second macro called StatArray, which reads:
------

**Cha** [[3d6]] **Con** [[3d6]]
**Dex** [[3d6]] **Int** [[3d6]]
**Str** [[3d6]] **Wis** [[3d6]]
[[3d6*10]] **Silver Pieces**
------------------------

If you REALLY wanted, you could make it a single macro but I like having them separate so that if I change something to how the individual array is rolled, I only have to edit the one set of text.

Also the /me parts aren't just for show - they help format the output text so it shows up as three separate boxes of arrays, rather than muddling them all together. Feel free to change the exact text to something else though.

>>48502079
Nope, Elves get +1 Dex -1 Con in AD&D.

Dwarves and Half-Orcs also get +1 Con, although they have their own penalties - both have weird race-specific charisma penalties that only count for the purpose of other races, for instance.

3E onward didn't pull racial ability adjustments out of nowhere, y'know.

>>48502223
I somehow overlooked that bit. Interesting.

When is the new S&W book coming out?

>>48501085

If we've got time, I like the"unlucky 13" method. Roll 13 ability scores and arrange them in a ring. The player can choose any 6 consecutive, clockwise numbers to be his stats, and may select one of the numbers as "unlucky 13" which is discarded.
This means you can shove the numbers back and forth but can't rearrange them except by dropping one.

So suppose you've got a portion of the ring that looks like:

..15 12 16 11 9 13 6 10..

Let's say you want to play a thief and have that 16 for your DEX. You may have to pick whether to drop that lousy 6 CHA in order to get the 10 that comes after it, or drop that 12 STR to get 15 STR and 16 DEX, but still have the 6 CHA.

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Does anyone have the Creation's Edge Games modules?

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>>48502218

>>48502337
That's cool as hell. Is this from anything specific?

So, I was talking about this in another thread but I'd like your thoughts on whether S&W's initiative system helps reduce caster supremacy.

Initiative goes like this:
>each SIDE rolls 1d6
>reroll for ties
>winning side's casters declare spells if they want to cast
>losing side does the same
>winning side non-casters can move or fire a ranged weapon
>losing side does the same
>winning side non-casters who have not fired a ranged weapon this turn can melee attack
>losing side does the same
>winning side's spells go off (except any casters who took damage lost the spell)
>losing side does the same
>go back to beginning, rerolling initiative

Since a 7th level caster (when it was suggested that magic-users start to become insanely powerful) is going to be in a party with a 9th level fighter (based on different XP rates), if they were to fight each other, the fighter would have a literal army at his/her back due to the stronghold and the men-at-arms that come with it.

What that means is, if the fighter can direct an army such that even one soldier gets a hit in on the magic-user each round, no spell will ever even be cast.

>>48502407

The 12-numbers ring method is old as dirt, the unlucky 13 thing is my own personal variant. I like it best for when a player has died and it's going to take a bit before I can bring a new PC in, so he's got a little while to think about his next character. It gives him something to mull over.

>>48502660
Won't lie. I kinda want to steal that for my home brew.

>>48502660
You could make it so that they pick seven consecutive ones and drop one (that way if they're willing to keep all six consecutive numbers, they can choose to drop one from either end), and the dropped number x10 is how much money they start with.

>>48502218
That's awesome, thank you.
I'm running my first game soon, this'll help a lot

>>48502564
That seems like it would work. Though any time we start talking about caster supremacy, I feel it's worth noting how vulnerable and low on resources low-level casters are. I've always thought that magic-users starting with a single spell was a bit cruel. What about starting them out with 2 spells at first level, 3 at second, and then just continuing on with 3 first level spells until the point where the RAW gives them 4? This would give them a boost where they're weakest and maybe make up for the fact that they're gimped by acting last and losing their spell if they get hit.

>Since a 7th level caster... is going to be in a party with a 9th level fighter (based on different XP rates)
Meaning that you've modified the XP tracks?

>>48502894
>Meaning that you've modified the XP tracks?
No, I just misremembered. Holy shit. Why do fighters level so much slower than Magic-Users?

>>48502894

OTOH, a low level caster with Sleep or Color Spray is about as OP as they come. At later levels monster saves get high enough that he'd be lucky to just end an encounter once a day the way he can routinely do at 1st level.

>>48502964
> fighters level so much slower than Magic-Users?
I think you've got that backwards, no?

>>48503037
No.

>Magic-User
>Experience Points Required for Level 9
>100,000

>Fighter
>Experience Points Required for Level 9
>256,000

>>48503037
I haven't read S&W, but given that it's an OD&D clone and that OD&D gives magic-users an experience bump near the middle levels? Nope.

>>48503054
>>48503072
Fuckin' weird. I'm used to Basic, where that's completely different.
> (Moldvay) Basic
> Fighter - Level 9 - 240,000
> MU - Level 9 - 300,000

Curiously, AD&D also has MUs on a weird curve.
> AD&D
> Fighter - Level 9 - 250,000
> MU - Level 9 - 135,000
The hell is that all about?

What would be a good stand in bestiary if I'm using LotFP as my system? I get that it's supposed to be weird, with rare monsters and whatnot, but I suck at making monsters. Too new to GMing.

>>48500213
Also, the art and the general nihilistic writing coupled with the unforgiving, save or die gameplay in Raggis own adventures is a bit much for some people.

>>48503244
S&W has solid Bestiaries. Also, Raggis has a book called the Random Esoteric Monster Generator (or something to that effect). All are in the Trove.

>>48503183
>The hell is that all about?
O D & D

Fighting Men have a constant doubling of their XP recs until name level, starting at 2000 - M-Us do the same until level 6, starting at 2500.
Level 6 is 32k for FMs, 35k for MUs.

Level seven, however, just has them get +25k XP rather than +35k - they also get +25k to level eight and nine, and then go for +100k to ten and eleven.

This also means that the M-U reaches level seven at the same time as the Cleric, and level eight before them.

Do note that the Fighting-Man still reaches name level (level 9, 240k) faster than the M-U (level 11, 300k), though. Also, levels don't really mean much when comparing classes. They're good for comparing within classes, but once you go outside?


As for why Basic changed it, I'm pretty sure that that's just part of the whole standardization thing Basic does all over the place. Having everyone level like the Fighter makes things easier to remember and leads to less table-checking, not to mention the whole (un)intentional feature with letting low-level replacement PCs "catch up".

>>48502989
Yeah, but that's if they have either of those spells (and if the second even exists in the edition you're playing). And even then, it's one-and-done at first level. But then as far as sleep goes, I tend to nerf it, allowing saving throws so it's not so desirable relative to other spells of its level.

>>48501941
What exactly constitutes "star magic"?

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>>48503890
OD&D does some weird shit for seemingly no reason. Take the weirdly uneven hit dice progression (magic users go from being 2 dice behind clerics at level 8 to 1 die behind at level 9, and actually lead clerics by about a hit point once they reach 11th level), or the XP progression we've been talking about, or the jump in cleric spells that Moldvay Basic inherited from it (see pic).

>>48501941

4e had a star pact warlock

If I'm not mistaken, the ranger class appeared in pre-1E D&D, either through supplements or rules interpretations like Basic. Anyone have any idea where the character's first appearance in D&D was?

>>48503697
Thanks man

>>48504656
According to Wikipedia:
>The ranger was introduced in The Strategic Review Volume 1, Number 2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons)

>>48504437
The jump of spells kind of makes sense - fourth level has healing while third doesn't, meaning that you get some utility in addition to your dedicated Cure slot. The early fifth-level slot, then, is to quickly speed through to 2/2/2/2/2 spells at name level (level 8). Why level 8 and 100k XP? Who knows, man. Presumably that's the way it worked out in playtesting, and they figured that they wanted Raise Dead at level seven-ish.

It's worth noting that AD&D went with spells at first level and a new spell level every other level and all kinds of other weird little changes that seem to indicate that maybe this was an Arneson thing? Either that or Gygax just felt dissatisfied with it after the case.

>>48504478
The lore for the Star Pact is fucking amazing.

>>48504753
It's worth noting that it's even more obviously Aragorn-with-spells than in later versions. They get to use crystal balls!

>>48502024
Maybe "collective table bargaining" is the wrong term to use - plenty of OSR games feature ad-hoc bargains, justifications, and decisions by fiat - what I wanted to emphasize is that OSR tends to reject formalized systems that dictate narrative control in the vein of something like the Apocalypse World systems.

>>48505001
what is this lore

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>>48507480

Dear OSR General,

How do resist the siren call of over priced hard copy books, boxed sets and supplements? I know most every supplement is available in .pdf and still I pay scalper prices on the resale market for old musty paper on eBay. I am an addict.

>>48507714
Try out all the systems. Pick one you really like. Buy it in hardback. Do the same with supplements. Only buy your absolute favorites.

It is very nice to have a physical version of something you're going to consult a lot, but unless you just can't quickly consult a PDF of a module that will last you three or four sessions, don't bother buying a physical version.

There. A happy medium.

>>48507714
I'm going to take the potentially contrarian position here and say don't resist. Yes, you have access to more pdfs than you'll ever need, but if you enjoy them go buy a copy from the people who make it. When you support people who make shit you like, they will make more of it.

My only caveat is that I'd try to stay away from resales and ebay unless you really want a thing that's completely unavailable otherwise. You want your money to support the artists and writers.

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>>48475470
Pitch me your fantasy settings /osrg/!

I'm curious as to whether the creativity of OSR bloggers is representative of the community (and also need a measuring stick to tell me whether my own shitty homebrews are anywhere near the high standard set).

Do you run premade settings or your own? How far down weird fantasy lane does it wander? Have you run the setting long, or do you jump around?

>>48507818

I'm interested in out of print 1st and 2nd Ed AD&D and other 1980s games.

>>48507921
Ah. fair enough. If you're going for old TSR stuff, have at.

>>48507714
I don't most of the time. But I haven't went as far as to buy overpriced sold out books on ebay. I think books are generally worth as much as the seller demands (unless that sum is ridiculous) so buying overpriced stuff isn't my thing.

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>>48507852

Well I don't think I can compete with the likes of Goblin Punch or other bloggers, but I do try.

Basically my setting I play in is the semi-standard medieval fantasy thing but is very anachronistic. It's also less grimdark then most settings; for instance I run HP as flesh points but don't worry about things like disease and infection as those things are cleared up by simple healing magic.

For the most part things have a pretty mythical and supernatural context. Characters levels can scale to infinity (though I don't intend to run campaigns that high), and the whole setting is not run by the same natural laws as our world. Instead everything is run by the Divine Bureaucracy, based somewhat on Chinese myth. Magical spirits go around and do basically everything, everyone also has a spirit that can take the form of a rat that measures all your actions and figures out how much reward and/or community service you'll have to do in the afterlife. It is for this reason people don't tend to kill rats, they prefer capture and release, as the rat was probably just doing some important paperwork anyway.

Magic is also meant to be semi-common. It's more common then in low fantasy settings, but not ubiquitous. Most villages probably have a wise man, priest, or that weird blacksmith who seems to complete just a little bit too much work in one night that seems off. There are many different races, though I have taken the liberty of combining most of the traditional fantasy races into overarching races that have all or most of their features together, to keep things less cluttered.

All in all, I've been working on it for probably over a year and I quite like it a lot. Also I really love Porcelain coins and money, hence I used it.

>>48507852
Well, I had a campaign setting that was on the inside of an Earth and instead of a sun, light was provided by a ring of regenerating woods that had been set afire aeons ago--it would burn forward, leaving behind it ash, which would have regenerated into full grown trees by the time the fire circled the (inside of the hollow) planet.

Your soul is contained within your lower chest and is released if your chest cavity is punctured (causing you to die). Short of that, everybody is very tough and can shrug off serious damage. In terms of mechanics, you can't really kill people by hacking at (or off) their limbs, only put the limbs out of commission so they can no longer fight or defend themselves. If you do enough damage to the head, though, that could finish them off, though the chest cavity is an easier way to go.

For one thing, the skull contains not a squishy brain, but a mindshar--a large crystal that houses an individual's intelligence. Each individual's life force--their soul--is in harmony with a different element depending on their temperament, and this elemental energy permeates their mindshar over time so that by adulthood, it too is aspected to that element (stone shar, flame shar, sea shar or wind shar).

These shar are thus effectively reservoirs of elemental energy and--once cut out of somebody's head--can be expended to power spells (or used as power packs to power wands). They thus form the basis elemental magic--the only overtly powerful form of magic--and are traded universally as a form of currency. Thus, killing people directly gives you money and power.

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>>48507852
Mine is a dying earth science-fantasy setting. The races and some of the monsters are based on Pliny's Natural History and are intended to be the degenerate descendants of humans. So there's cannibalistic Blemmyes (men with no heads, that have flesh sculpting magic), Sciapods (One-legged ascetics) and Cyclopes. There's also Goorm (knuckle-walking ogreish pack animals) and human-faced Mantichora.
In addition there are several normal human cultures: The desert-dwelling Ibnan, the Masked Men of Thex, the people of the City-State of Akkash, the ceramic smiths of Temil-Tan and the Dwellers in the Deep Cities.
The world itself is tidally locked - people only live in the twilight area between the dark side and the sun-facing desert. Iron is very rare, most people use bronze for weapons or more exotic materials. There's no mammals except human relicts. The people travel by means of giant caterpillar caravans bred by the Silk House of Thex or via Lantern Ships or Sand Ships - both of which are powered by solar sails sewn from the scales of giant space moths.
Spellcasters are limited to Warlocks (who worship giant alien statues), Dreamers (drug-fuelled illusionists and enchanters), Vivimancers and Astromancers (space-maths wizards).
Pic related is an illustration I did to give an idea of the aesthetic.

>>48507678
that's pretty great

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>>48507852
Still hashing it out but I posted the map here a while back.

It's a big world that's just starting to claw out from a near apocalypse from around 1000 years earlier. Each of those areas on the map are filled with petty kingdoms, nascent city-states, barely-held-together empires and vast wilds. There are 4 civilized races that banded together before the fall and can generally get along now as well (Humans, Halflings, Elves, Dwarves) but each have a smattering of countries around the realm.

Not much more than that now as I'm now on Revision #128874

So, the only "watch/listen to people play" of old school D&D or OSR that I know of is "Old School Adventures" on roll20's official YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zyhTObVjjY

It's pretty cool. Moldvay D&D, if I recall, and they're playing Keep on the Borderlands.

But I'd like some more. Any others you can recommend?

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>>48507852

I haven't developed the world outside of the Eastmount. That's right, the Place East of the Mountains, fuck you.

Basically, 600 years ago, four massive Black Ships arrived and began trading with the small rebel colony there. They were essentially hillfolk, imagine if someone did Australia and then said fuck it ten years into settling due to the costs. The danger was...too high. So the people there got warped and sort of became a bunch of assholes who called everyone that wasn't Kin, Kith. Then these four ships arrived, and they were patrons of magical power nobody had ever seen before. One creates objects and can create any device asked for, one can change someone's physical form, one can change someone's circumstance as in financially, socially, politically, etc, and the last one is a mindless snakelike being that can grant you True Magic, but most practicioners go insane long before they even reach a millionth of the being's power. These beings are cunts, they don't do this for free and they have no remorse for human life, being not human themselves.

So basically people began to actually flood to move here as the Black Ships had stated intentions of staying put(for reasons only known to me) and so people built a massive city around them, called Merkantus. The Kin found their adopted homeland and their people slipping out of their grasp, so they set up a deal and became the Avicated, think like Witchers in terms of speed and reflexes and lifespan and that all have a psychic connection to each other. The avicated's price was harsh: conquer and civilize the eastmount/. They were doing well, and even forcibly making other people into avicated, when things happened, a religion was born and a holy order of knights formed to stop the avicated. 400 years of war followed, the avicated were almost entirely wiped out, and the knights assumed control of the Eastmount. 100 years later they vanished overnight. Nobody knows why

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>>48509518

Anyway, so this means the world is different in these ways:

There are no nobilities, only the Elevated Familes. The knights literally just picked people and made them nobles, so most noble lines are only 150 years old, we're looking at 4 generations tops. All nobles have "harrow" in the name somewhere(Harrowmont, Darharrow, Duskharrow, etc).
- The Eastmount was once filled with castles, forts and more from 400 years of constant warfare, but over the last 150 years most of that has collapsed into ruins and The Roads Are No Longer Safe, a common saying hearkening back to earlier times. The Knights had a thing about respecting the dead heroes of their order, and so they built statues of exceptional leaders everywhere, and those people have begun to be worshipped as gods. Oddly enough, people actually get magical spells from worshipping these dead people, so some believe in the power of the Lords, which is what they call them.
-Lords are real, but their exact nature is a secret, but essentially, they can actually be killed and have stats, so high level characters can challenge a lord and kill them all!
- The land is plagued with these things called Thimmers. They're like the living dungeon monsters from 13th Age, but they're more like the room from 1408. I had players go 9 sessions before one of them realized something was up, the illusion crumbled and they were still inside that "piss easy" dungeon, but now they were starving to death 6 days later, and the PC that died from a monster had had its blood drunk by the party. These things have really cut off the various lands around the Eastmount and so I build "campaigns" in little, 100 square mile regions filled with shit.
Merkantus is still massive and the black ships are still there, and it's become a disgusting decadent city of competing sorceror-kings, puppets dancing for the seeming amusement of the people of the Black ships.

>>48507852
> whether my own shitty homebrews are anywhere near the high standard set
Who cares. Write what you love and share it with everyone

> Do you run premade settings or your own?
I run my own, though modules and pre-made stuff often gets reskinned and placed inside of it.

> How far down weird fantasy lane does it wander?
It reads about like a lovecraft or robert e howard setting, for the most part.

> Have you run the setting long, or do you jump around?
Off and on, depending on who's GMing.

> Pitch me your fantasy settings /osrg/!
Bronze age Sword and Sandals with Cthulhuian mythos sorcery.

On a scale from one to ten, how lazy it just to use normal words spelled backwards as names for places? I'm astonishingly uncreative.

>>48510373
"Erewhon," which is just "nowhere" backwards with the h and the w switched, was the name of a fictional land and also the title of a book about said land, published in the 19th century.

As a play on that, Fritz Lieber named his world "Nehwon," which is "nowhen" backwards. And Lieber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books are the best fantasy ever published.

So it's fine.

>>48510527
I was thinking of using Muirotidua as the name of my fictional land. It seemed vaguely french or spanish. Not bad for being auditorium.

>>48510569
Is it underground? Or with a cool dome roof?

>>48509371
Unbearable.

does anyone have any experiences with the different editions of Metamorphosis Alpha?

What should I check out besides that for some gonzo sci fi old school goodness? I know Gamma World and MCC, anything else?

>>48475593
Only hipsters play "retroclone" games or add "house rules" to the table. Only hipsters play OD&D or other incomplete / objectively inferior rulesets. Real Men play True AD&D, comprising all material ever printed by TSR through the summer of 2000. All rules included, no alterations.

>>48507852
Punk Alice in Wonderland battling a hidden alien menace in 17th century earth, during the 30 year war. I'm switching from LotFP rules to DCC so there will probably be more and more Appendix N influence as we go along.

>>48513488
Keep practicing, you'll get it right someday :)

>>48513488
I really wonder if anyone at all played AD&D btb. The fucking weapon vs armor table alone...

>>48514522
No one plays AD&D completely by the book, let alone all additional materials.

>>48512966
All I know is that the original edition and the later ones have quite a different setting - the original has you play a long time after the original disaster, so you're all tribesmen who think all the technology is magic or whatnot. The later editions IIRC have you play during the whole disaster?

And then even later editions are just Gamma World.

>>48513488
>printed by TSR
>through the summer of 2000
u wot m8

>>48514522
Weapons vs. Armor isn't that bad, really, especially if you actually use the attack matrixes - if you use THAC0, though, it's a bitch and a half.

But if you use the tables all you need to do is write down the relevant AC10-AC0 numbers and adjust them at most once every other level.

Also, the most popular weapons don't really do much adjusting. IIRC longswords only have a -2 to hit plate or something like that, with the rest being +0 across the board?

>>48513488

I'm just imagining someone fumbling around and trying to make the 1e Ranger and 2e Ranger options available. AND including both 1e and 2e psionics. All of them, from 1e PHB appendix, to the Complete handbook, to the original Dark Sun, AND the revised Dark Sun rules.

What a clusterfuck that would be. But it brought a smile to my face thinking about it.

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>>48514808
It's overkill. It's very granular, but the granularity doesn't really accomplish much. It doesn't even make much sense. Assuming you're only looking at the AC of the armor alone (because it really doesn't make any sense if you're including dexterity and shield bonuses), studded leather and ringmail are treated the same. Also, splint and banded, as well as leather and padded. And how do you apply this to the AC of monsters, where it isn't always clear what type of armor they're wearing and how much of their AC comes from armor alone? And what of the non-humanoids who don't wear armor? It's all a big, overly-involved mess. You're much better off going for something simple like in the pic here (though admittedly, it's a bit easier there because it uses Basic's streamlined system with only 3 armor types).

>>48515141
Don't forget the three or so mutually exclusive weapons vs. armor adjustment systems, all the varied martial arts, the Bard, all the variations on mass combat - Battlesystem 1, 2, or the War Machine? BECMI was printed by TSR before the summer of 2000, after all, and is largely compatible.

Also, good luck with all those races. IIRC the half-dragons in that political dragon setting were somewhat overpowered in an ordinary setting where the rest of the PCs weren't dragons, for instance.

>>48515171
>Assuming you're only looking at the AC of the armor alone
That's how it explicitly works, yes. Or, well, armor+shield. Remember that a +1 on a shield AC pretty much just means that the weapon ignores the shield for whatever reason.
>studded leather and ringmail are treated the same.
That's because they dun fucked up by moving away from the OD&D thing where e.g. AC4 always means chain+shield. Armors on even ACs muddle things up somewhat terribly.

>And how do you apply this to the AC of monsters, where it isn't always clear what type of armor they're wearing and how much of their AC comes from armor alone? And what of the non-humanoids who don't wear armor?
If they don't wear armor, you don't get any adjustments whatsoever - although you might get a damage bonus or penalty depending on your weapon and their size.

It helps to think of it as Man-To-Man vs. the Fantasy Combat Table.
By the way, where would a rhinoceros fit in that table you have? Also, why the fuck does stabbing get a penalty against mail - the thing it should be good against - but is neutral against plate? Shit makes no sense. Also, what the fuck's up with chopping vs. slashing?

>>48503486
Yeah the art is pretty edgy in a stupid lowbrow kind of way.

>>48513488
This would be less objectively dumb if the person posting it realized there were two editions of AD&D published in that time.

Wouldn't a gothic/cosmic horror combo work sort of well for LotFP? Make for less monsters, most of them sort of variants of ordinary people (vampires, lychantropes, cultists) and only occasional sightings of fishpeople and tentacles.

>>48515512
It's just old metal head shit, really. In many cases, literally. Some of the artists he commissioned he first saw doing album covers he liked.

>>48515763
Perhaps picking nits, but gothic and cosmic horror are two different things with perhaps antithetical ideas behind them. Gothic horror is an intensely personal thing about temptation, damnation and redemption... it's a drama about moral failings projected onto the supernatural. Good and evil as active forces in the universe. A light in the darkness, and all that.

Cosmic horror is actually the opposite. That there is no god as we know it or understand it. The universe is an infinitely vast, strange, and uncaring things. Humans are neither the center of the universe nor are even significant compared to older, stranger things. Even our own planet is home to older races still that now sleep or dwell in dark and hidden places.

The point of gothic horror is that the universe is watching us and reacts to our failings. The point of cosmic horror is that the universe doesn't give a shit about us, and that we are ignorant and insignificant in a world where the truth of reality is so strange it drives us to madness.

>>48515763
>>48515815
Yeah, Gothic horror has a big thing where ultimately, man is the real monster - or the real monster comes from man, at least. Werewolves, vampires, Frankenstein - it's all very human, in the end. All very metaphorical for the human condition, filled with heavy allegory - what are vampires, if not the cruel aristocracy feeding upon the peasantry? What is the wolf-man but a person with very extreme mood swings, a Dr. Jekyll who nobody suspected anything wrong with until the moment they snapped? Frankenstein is entirely about his fear and rejection of his own creation, and how the monster takes revenge for it.
It's extremely human, uncomfortably so in some cases. Man is the real monster, and that's shown by making them into literal monsters.


Cosmic horror, meanwhile, is all about the incomprehensibly inhuman, and the ultimate futility of human endeavor in the face of it.

A good example from outside the genre is from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The Total Perspective Vortex is a torture device that shows a complete to-scale model of the entirety of the universe, with a microscopic dot with the legend "You Are Here" - the sense of perspective is the only known way to crush a man's soul.
It's a comedy series, so the ego-filled guy they put into it survives by getting confirmation that yes, they are the center of the universe, but the concept it's lampooning is very Cosmic Horror.
In the end, you are a single human being on a small blue marble in the vastness of the universe.
The big theme, in cosmic horror, is "you do not actually matter in the long run, and nothing you do ever will. Nobody will remember your name."

Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains.

>>48504230
> what exactly constitutes "star magic"?
This anon got it >>48504478

>>48505001
>>48507678
>>48508671
Okay. That is pretty amazing.

Now I need to adapt it to an OSR format.

>>48515983
> Ozymandias
I sometimes wonder what ancient people would make of it if they could understand that their names would be spoken thousands of years later. Could you imagine speaking to the historical basis for Achilles in, say, 1300BCE and explaining that thirty-four centuries later people would still be talking about him?

>>48508572
I like it.

>>48515815
>>48515983
Have you guys not played bloodborne or seen the latest mtg set? That kind of genre smashing seems to be what Anon was thinking about.

>>48516272
I don't follow either.. but .. even if you try to smash them together, you're smashing together antithetical messages. One is defined by projecting moral failing onto the universe. Man is the central focus of a divine morality play. The other is literally the horror that man is cosmically insignificant and the universe is entirely without meaning. It seems like smashing the two together would just fail to do service to either.

>>48516272
>>48516310
Bloodborne had the first part be about gothic horror and the second about cosmic horror. The cosmic horror thing is supposed to be a bit of a twist.

Work has begun on this month's issue of Troll Gods. I'm submitting a couple things. The OSRG spells will be featuring as an article, as will the "what's stealing corpses from the graveyard?"

I have two other submissions so far. If anyone else is working on something, toss it at me.

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>>48516032
Dude was angry as fuck already, and then they killed his friend. Its an old story.

>>48516272
I haven't really been following MtG for a while, but isn't the current Return to Innistrad thing more just a case of crossing over their gothic horror setting with their cosmic horror villains?

Although from what I seem to remember they're not even cosmic horror as such in these recent sets - they actually get beaten and their corrupting nature is more akin to the Zerg or Tyranids or, hell, your bog-standard zombie apocalypse. I don't really know what you'd call that, to be honest, although to go out on a limb I'll just guess it has something to do with the Black Death and plagues in general? Maybe something about STDs as well for the early stage of the zombie apocalypse where the problem is dumbasses letting the infected get too close and getting infected themselves, although really STDs are more a vampire thing these days.

Cosmic horror is more than tentacles, much like gothic horror is more than vampires. You can have cosmic horror without any monsters whatsoever, and just a crushing sense of humanities' hopelessness in the face of the inevitable end - imagine Asimov's The Last Question if they failed to find the answer. Fuck, you could easily make Horton Hears a Who into the basis for a cosmic horror story.

But I wouldn't call The Thing cosmic horror, for instance. They aren't powerless, and there's no greater cosmic implications - there is hope for the rest of mankind. It's just science fiction horror.

The people of Zendikar and Innistrad actually fight back against the Eldrazi, and are not powerless - the Planeswalkers involved shift the balance of power even more. You're not really talking about cosmic horror in the case of the latest MtG things, I don't think - you're talking about gothic horror with some betentacled gribblies mixed in.

And there's nothing wrong with that, either! In fact, that's probably what Anon was after, and from what I've heard that would probably work fine in LotFP.

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>>48516032
>Now I need to adapt it to an OSR format.

OSR Star Pact Warlock, eh? I've got something like that. The PDF was too big, so I split it into two PNGs.

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>>48517201

>>48517201
>>48517228
Did you make this?

>>48517292

Nope, got it from a blog somewhere.

>>48517315
The whole handwritten thing is kind of charming. I almost want to see an entire rulebook done this way.

>>48517228
>Giving the stars stats
Goddammit, when will they ever learn?

>>48517352

I know, right? Giving stars an AC is silly.

I do like the use of reaction rolls, though.

>>48517392
Personally I think the whole double reaction roll thing is, well, kind of dumb? First you roll to see what your relationship is to the star, which could be neutral or hostile or friendly or whatever, and then you... roll again whenever you ask it something?
>Your plea + a reaction roll + the star pact will guide the GM in ruling on the outcome.
Well, gee, thanks with helping make my job as a DM easier. That's really helpful. It would be better as just a straight reaction roll, I think, like that dude who made a bunch of casters based on the idea of Turn Undead just being a reaction roll.

I'm kind of against the whole idea of the stars giving a fuck about your relationship, to be honest, but I think I get what they're going for.

The once-per-day ESP is also pretty weak and boring, the 1d3 Astral Projections/day at name level is weirdly random, and holy hell do you really need to make the ritual to talk to a star take a random amount of turns? That's acting directly counter to the whole resource-planning thing Basic has going.

Also, gotta love how the level titles just keep going and they keep getting abilities until level eleven.

There's also little reason to actually build up your tower, and the stars have randomly limited powers that are absurdly powerful (20-400 damage within 10,000' once per day? Really?)

No sir, I do not like it.

>>48517632
> not wanting to be a space master
I love some of the ideas involved, but the execution leaves something to be desired.

>>48517632
>First you roll to see what your relationship is to the star, which could be neutral or hostile or friendly or whatever, and then you... roll again whenever you ask it something?

I think the idea is that the stars are capricious. On some days they may give you what you want freely, and on others they may say "No, fuck you." The first roll is their general attitude towards you, so that is used to color the day-to-day roll, to make it more reliably good or bad.

>>48507852
I just rip off Dwarf Fortress every time. Playable races are: Humans (4 classes), Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Kobolds

>>48512313
I Googled around for an actual play podcast or YouTube series called Unbearable, and couldn't find one.

What do you all think of the weird mix of subtle personal and more explicit cosmic horror with an oddly fun and sometimes even heartwarming vibe, as found in works like Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser?

>the planet itself is jealous of mankind and one day will wake up and snuff out all life on its surface, as predicted by the cult that worships it
>NOT TODAY MOTHERFUCKER
>they kill all the cultists then high five and go on about their business

>girlfriends' ghosts start appearing to them and they can't handle it, so they go and find these bizarre wizards they know, and make a deal to steal Death's mask in exchange for their girlfriends' ghosts no longer haunting them
>they end up bringing half of the mask to each of the wizards, and they still miss their girlfriends, but aren't haunted by them
>unbeknownst to them, their girlfriends were living every day in terror in the afterlife, but now that the mask is gone, they can look on Death without fear

How can I create this grim but weirdly sweet vibe in my games? Is it possible? Is it even worth aiming for?

>>48520982
The problem with horror - any kind of horror - is that you need players who are willing to play along with it.

...And that's all I've got for advice, which is pretty shitty.

>>48520850
Lol, I was talking about the series you linked.

>>48517325
It reminds me of the Forest Mims "elementary electronics" books from Radio Shack (any EE/Electronic hobbyists in here?)

Man... Now I'm getting all nostalgic...

Now that WotC is selling classic D&D stuff in PDF format, is there any chance we'll be able to get 0e or any other stuff in a physical format again?

Is it legal to print your own if you buy the PDF?

It would be cool as shit to have my own Whitebox D&D and my own copy of the Chainmail rules to really play me some old school shit.

>>48522952
>Is it legal to print your own if you buy the PDF?

As long as you're not selling it, you're good.

>>48516566
>The Thing cosmic horror, for instance. They aren't powerless, and there's no greater cosmic implications.

I would beg to differ. The Thing has cosmic implications. If nothing else that there is life out there, that is intelligent and that by its nature, entirely antithetical to humanity. Even if we grant that they kill the alien at the end (which is ambigious.) The implication that there is more of them out there and that we are powerless to stop them from invading. Humanity as large is not even aware that there is anything out there. There is no hope for humanity, only a ticking clock.

>>48522952
>Now that WotC is selling classic D&D stuff in PDF format, is there any chance we'll be able to get 0e or any other stuff in a physical format again?
They actually released OD&D in a collector's box some years ago. Seventh print including all supplements, although IIRC without Chainmail or The Strategic Review. They're mostly like the last TSR print except I think they removed the vestigial references to Balrogs in Supplement III and Underworld & Wilderness Adventures.

Good luck getting a copy, though. Last I checked those boxes were pretty damn expensive.

>>48513488
>All these people replying who don't even know True AD&D from Adam
This is our resident... uh... attempt at a troll? I don't even know how to describe what's going on here. But he's been here awhile. Took a long break, but now he's back, apparently.