OSR General - Troll Gods Soon Edition?

Last Thread >>48527073

This Thread: Anyone working on anything for Troll Gods?

My players are all old men. Every person I know who plays RPGs, especially OSR, are nearing their 40s. Are there really younger people trying OSR over D&D 5E or is it all a meme?

>>48576279
I'm 26 and everyone in my group is younger than me.

Reposting my question from >>48575974
>What OSR has the best modern/sci-fi firearm combat rules?

>>48576323
MotSP?

>>48576263

I already did. Mine was a system to port something like diablo 2 or other similar game's item sockets into OSR worlds.

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Redwall OSR fucking when?

Also for a related question; would it tear people up too much to have their precious cutesy rat and mouse characters get rekt by dungeon traps, or is that suitably edgy for an OSR game?

I currently have two official subs and two pieces of content that were crowd-generated by TG.

I'd like to have a few more pieces before we release something to get a decent page count. Ideally, the next issue would come out before the 15th.

>>48576395
> cutesy rat and mouse characters get rekt by dungeon traps
Make sure you bait them with cheese.

>>48576279
I'm 23 and all my players are around the same age. If I want to play modern D&D I'll play a videogame or something.

>>48576279
22-year-old here. On the other hand, Swede here. Also, no active games and I'm in a bit of an antisocial rut right now.

>>48576263
I've been hammering on and off with a short article explaining how the fuck OD&D Psionics works, but I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what Troveguy is looking for. Also, it's not exactly ready and would be for next month at the very earliest.

Maybe I'll end up with some tangential plug-and-play system for psionic combat that could end up in the zine or something, I dunno. Probably based on BECMI, since Immortals did it the best - the answer, as it turns out, is rock paper scissors. Add in some of the effects from the standard system (insanity. Id Insinuation's mind control, Psychic Crush's instant death) and you're good to go.
Also a table with random powers, 'cause why not. Maybe figure out some fancy stuff to make it actually work like it's supposed to, so you end up getting related stuff.

>>48576279
I'm under 30, and I have 4 regular players and two once-in-a-while players. One is in his early 30s, the other four are in their early 20s.

>>48576477
> the other four are in their early 20s.
other FIVE

>>48576279

Nearing 40 = old men?

I'm 36 and hardly feel like I am some greybeard old grognard. I've been playing since 1989. Cut my teeth on AD&D 2nd Ed.

My weekly group is ages 45, 38, 36, 34, 25, 23.

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Just posted this in the last thread, but that was right before this one started, so please excuse my copypaste.

Okay, so, an idea I've been bouncing around in my head for a hacked version of OD&D-

A sort of Red Dawn/Buffy the Vampire Slayer/ Recently Stranger Things-inspired campaign set somewhere in Middle America.
Basically, there's a Hellmouth-type portal somewhere under your average smallish town, that leads into a fantasy world's Mythic Underworld. Somehow, the characters (High-school students, probably, to use the cliche) find one of the entrances (steam tunnels under school? Manholes in the cul-de-sac?)

Ideally, I'd wind up using the rules from the 3LBBs plus some houserules, using d6 damage/hit dice. Everyone would start as 0-level, and any teenager who survives their first foray into the Underworld becomes first-level.
I think out-of-dungeon roleplaying would be really interesting, due to the characters having to figure out how to deal with loot, supplies, and character injuries (the hardware store probably won't take gold pieces, and the school nurse is gonna call the cops once students start showing up with ghoul bites).

So, does this sound good to anyone? Any ideas?
I've got no idea how an adventure hook would work, which would be the biggest obstacle in actually running the game.

>>48576552
It kinda sounds like you're building the whole game around the DCC funnel, which is pretty cool. You'd have to do some tinkering to make classes work properly with the setup. The concept is interesting, it'd just need some fleshing out. It'll make or break based on the execution.

>>48576591
I forgot to mention the DCC influence! My other idea was to reskin it into the game, but that would be much, much harder than OD&D.

Yeah, classes are easily going to be the hardest part. I was thinking either standard high-school archetypes (Athletes as fighters, nerds as M-Us, Punks as Specialists or Thieves, maybe Hippies/Jesus kids as Druids/Clerics?), but that just feels kind of gross and overly cliche in a bad way.
The other option would be to have each player have a Highlander-type magical awakening after surviving the funnel, where they either choose or roll for a class, but that sounds pretty janky.

>>48576395
>Squirrel isn't Rakkety Tam MacBurl

The drums aren't beating braw....

>>48576279
I'm 24 and OSR-style D&D is my favorite playstyle. Shame none of my friends really share that same sentiment.

>>48576395
Woodland Warriors was recommended in the last thread, which is fairly Redwall-esque.

>>48576460
>I've been hammering on and off with a short article explaining how the fuck OD&D Psionics works, but I'm pretty sure that's not exactly what Troveguy is looking for. Also, it's not exactly ready and would be for next month at the very earliest.

I'd like to see that.

>>48576591

Fuck my life DCC didn't invent the character funnel. It goes back to at least AD&D N4 Treasure Hunt module.

>>48576552

What is motoviation for teenage children to keep journeying into certain death?

Will you allow modern firearms?

>>48576711
>Woodland Warriors was recommended in the last thread, which is fairly Redwall-esque.

I heard of that, but I'm a pretty huge faggot about homebrew, as in I'm usually only going to play my own.

Mostly though I more interested in Ghost of a Tale- which is a game where you play as a sneaky mouse bard in a fortress full of rat guards. Reminded me of Redwall a lot so I guess I've been in that mood.

Still in the market for OSR samurai material. I have Shinobi and Samurai printed and ring-bound, I just need more adventures and the like.

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>>48576395
I like the aesthetics in that picture overall(feels like a good compromise between Anthro and Realism), but the scale seems all screwed up, Badgers, Foxes, and Wildcats all seem too small for one thing, and Moles, Hedgehogs, and Squirrels all seem too big, also I figure Rats are all over the place size wise, ranging from only slightly bigger than your average Mouse at the small end, to Hare sizes at the biggest


also I would love a Redwall style OSR game, have thought about making one by modifying ACKS(although rather than it being a straight port of Redwall, it'd be more Redwall meets D&D in terms of setting, so there'd be more explicit magic than Redwall normally has, also the "Vermin" races would be treated more fairly than the Redwall books tended to do)

>>48576711
>Woodland Warriors was recommended in the last thread, which is fairly Redwall-esque.
that game is okay, but at the same time I think we could do better

>>48576776
Have you met teenage children?
Sorry, I work around teenagers and had to toss that in, please continue your conversation

>>48576279
28 here, my group has one old man and a bunch of early 20s

>>48576829
>that game is okay, but at the same time I think we could do better
I agree, there are some good ideas but you'd probably do better by porting the races to B/X, S&W or BFRPG and going from there.

>>48576776
>What is motivation for teenage children to keep journeying into certain death?

There could be lots of reasons.

>chased by bullies, make a wrong turn to escape them and fall through the Hellmouth
>goth kids/metalheads think it's cool
>artsy kids are called in a Siren-esque fashion to the Hellmouth
>gremlins kidnap Johnny Football's girlfriend

etc

It's not my idea, but I certainly wouldn't allow a new character to bring a gun with them. It's kinda in poor taste; the only reason a kid would have a gun with him at school BEFORE going in the Hellmouth is like a school shooting scenario.

Likewise, someone that survived going into the Hellmouth and became a level 1 character probably doesn't want to be caught with a gun at school, but I'd be more willing to make an exception like "stole my dad's gun, gonna go in the Hellmouth now".

Golems and shit don't really care about firearms though.

>>48576815
have you looked at Ruins & Ronin;

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/146256/Ruins--Ronin?manufacturers_id=7124


as for adventures, probably wouldn't be too hard to reskin existing adventures for your needs

>>48576776
>What is motoviation for teenage children to keep journeying into certain death?

That's my big problem. Maybe saving their town from certain doom? But that feels a little too generic/forceful. That's the main reason I'm asking for advice.

>Will you allow modern firearms?

Definitely! They'd use d6 damage, but would have bonuses in combat, LotFP style. I'd probably keep it simple at handgun/shotgun/rifle (the hardware store and the pawn shop taking the place of the blacksmith/trader),
Like OD&D, the combat would be pretty simple, and I wouldn't have to stat the terrestrial weapons with d6 damage.

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>>48576758
Since it'll be a long while until I can actually post that, I'll just give you these psionic combat reference tables I made for some analysis work ages ago.

Comeliness - why aren't you using it?
> Area not really defined by any other ability score that would provide instant and useful information about the character's appearance
> Ends the argument about whether or not charisma makes you hot
> Shuts the fuck up players who demand their female characters be unrealistically attractive

>>48576875
if it's set in the 80's like several of it's inspirations, could just have the kid be into hunting if they live in a rural enough area

>>48576815

AD&D 2e Kara-Tur Monstrous Compendium Appendix

>>48576896
>Comeliness - why aren't you using it?
besides the fact that Comeliness is an incredibly awkward term to use, attaching physical appearance to a Stat just seems like a bad idea in my opinion

>>48576884
Most kids don't give a fuck about their town.

There's a shitload of hooks available though.

>kid has a sick mom or dad with something like cancer or turbo aids, and modern medicine can't cure it. The possibility of getting some super cure magic item from the Hellmouth, on the other hand...
>student lives with an abusive step-dad or some shit, has no money, bad grades, willingly goes into the Hellmouth
>PC's dog runs into the Hellmouth and they chase after it
>nerd obsessed with the occult is super stoked to just go in it

>>48576875

I took a gun to high school ever single day of deer season growing up in the 1980s in SW Missouri. I certainly wasn't the only one.

>>48576875
>It's kinda in poor taste; the only reason a kid would have a gun with him at school BEFORE going in the Hellmouth is like a school shooting scenario.

Original guy here-
Yeah, I've thought about that a lot. I think as a DM I'd have to take that really seriously, and bring up the real consequences of that scenario. Having to deal with cops/parents/other authority figures might make for interesting role-play. Alternative entrances to the Underworld would allow for sneaking around with more heavy-duty equipment, too.

On the other hand, one if my big influences here is the Reagan-era Red Dawn-esque visual of strong-willed, big-haired teenagers valiantly facing down all manner of foul creatures. I'm tempted to go for that idea and handwave that whole aspect.
Knowing players, though, I'll probably have to take things pretty seriously to keep people in line at the table.

>>48576933
Stats already cover how brawny, fast, agile, intelligent, wise, tough, healthy, cunning, and knowledgable you are. Why would "how attractive are you?" be sacred ground?

>>48576896
I do use it.

>>48576933
>having physical appearance be tied to stat is a bad idea
>having intelligence, nimbleness, strength, wisdom, constitution, etc, tied to a stat is a good idea

HMMMM

>>48576460
>Swede here
>no active games
vilken stad bor du i?

>>48576950
Yeah, that's exactly why that hook wouldn't really work. The whole "save mankind from e v i l" doesn't work with a loot-heavy dungeon crawl. I want to avoid plot railroading as much as possible, but there'd of course need to be a narrative at some point.

>>48577012
Well, like I said, it makes sense, ala Red Dawn, for them to grab the guns and go BACK into the portal after they already survived being in it, but not much sense for them to just have guns on them sitting in class when the portal opens (depending on where the entrance is and how they go through it).

>>48576829

How's about just limiting the races to Rats and mice then? That way the races are more focused.

>>48577062
Definitely. I think it'd be great for them to have to go to the town pawn shop to trade their treasure and gold for better equipment, since the Dick's at the mall isn't going to take dubloons.

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>>48576552
You pretty much want this. I mean, not exactly what you said, but it's good for ideas.

It's late 70s/early 80s. You're a teenager/YA of some sort (roll occupation table) and you see a kidnapping in a movie theater, run after the kidnapper and find a stoner van in a parking-lot with a tunnel to an underground lair with cultists. They're sacrificing women. At the end you discover an opening to a DCC Fantasy World. You can wind up with Rockabilly Wizards or Skateboarding Thieves or a Babysitter Warrior. Whatever. It's pretty fun.

>>48577117

>05-06 Cook (Chinese) Chopsticks, hairnet, eggroll
>07-08 Cook (Mexican) Spatula, hairnet, tortilla
>09-10 Cook (“American”) Spatula, hairnet, tater tots
>11-12 Cook (Italian) Spatula, hairnet, dried pasta

My fucking sides.

>>48577117
That's exactly what reminded me in the last thread! I think I'm gonna nab that character generator table, for sure.
If you're the anon who posted it last thread, thanks a ton!

>>48577117
Were you the one who posted this pdf last thread too? I think I'm going to use this to introduce my players to DCC before I switch rules for my campaign. I really like it.

>>48577019
>>48577032
everything else covered by a stat is gameplay relevant, what you look like on the other hand shouldn't be handled through RNG, should be up to the player, so a Stat for appearance is counter-intuitive

>>48577109
nah that's just boring, might as well just play Mouse Guard in that situation, one of the primary appeals of Redwall as a setting is how diverse in races it is, and a OSR game modeled after it should reflect that too

>>48577221
>>48577207
It was me. I just got it a few days ago and I thought it seemed like a fun introduction to DCC besides the standard fantasy-peasant funnels. It could lead to some pretty cool back and forth too: Characters becoming fantasy classes in the DCC world and then heading back to 80's suburbia to battle Spielberg shit going down.

>>48576880
R&R is just Swords and Wizardry Whitebox with the same monster list that Shinobi and Samurai uses. S&S has more classes and they fit better in fantasy Japan.

>>48576776

It's a small town in the midwest, what the fuck else would they do?

Seriously all the dumb shit kids do anyway is basically the same thing. Especially when you consider the average level of supervision a kid in the 80's is going to get.

>>48577253
>nah that's just boring, might as well just play Mouse Guard in that situation, one of the primary appeals of Redwall as a setting is how diverse in races it is, and a OSR game modeled after it should reflect that too

Well how do you suggest you keep everyone balanced which such a range of sizes and races?

>>48577390
honestly I'd take a note from FantasyCraft and have it so while the larger races do have some advantages to being bigger, it isn't enough to invalidate the smaller races, also since I'd be modifying ACKS for this, and as such be using Racial Classes, Mice would basically count as human in most regards and thus have a wide array of classes, while the other races are more limited in what they can choose

>>48577253
> in a game about player skill, how smart the character is should be determined by RNG over role play
> in a game about player skill, how wise the character is should be determined by RNG over role play
> in a game about player skill, your characters ability to influence and motivate NPCs should be determined by RNG over role play.

I'm not seeing how comeliness is different.

I'm starting to dig into the old school style of play, where most of the non-combat stuff is handled by "common sense" rulings. However, I'm questioning the lack of rules for things like sneaking and diplomacy. Why have rules for things like "attack rolls" but not "stealth rolls"?

>>48578007
depends on what you're playing. When I run B/x, it basically boils down to the following:

Ambush:
Get somewhere where you can't be seen. When your target comes out, force a surprise check on them. If you win, you get a free round. If they were particularly clever, you get it for free.

Sneaking up on an opponent
> Are you coming up behind them? No? proceed to the next.
> Are you wearing anything that would make a lot of noise? armor heavier than leather, absurd amounts of shit on you, etc. If no, you can make a Dex check. Thieves get their move silently as a saving throw if this fails. Success means you sneak up on the target. If you're noisy, you auto fail.
> If they are looking in your direction AND you would have qualified for the above, BUT you have enough obscured line of sight (heavy brush, whatever) then you can go ahead and make the dex check, but at half your dex. Thieves can use Hide in Shadows as a saving throw for this if there is sufficient shadow.
> If they are looking in your direction and there is nothing obscuring line of sight, you aren't going to succeed at stealth. The best you can hope for as a thief is a Hide in Shadows roll.

Diplomacy is handled by an initial reaction roll to determine the other side's mood, and then role played. If something is particularly squirrely, I'll throw a Charisma roll in there.

I'm thinking on making some small adventure sites that can be dropped into a campaign to be used as-is. They'd more than likely have a couple random encounters associated with them as well as one or two plot hooks. Since I'm kind of a bad DM when it comes to creating anything, what are some good guidelines for designing old-school adventures?

>>48578007
I'm a bit of a noob myself but I think how it works is like this;

anyone can attempt to sneak past enemies. The GM will probably just assign a random value based on how tough it would be to sneak past the guards (really easy for sleeping guards, easy for dumb guards, hard for smart guards, bonus if dark, etc.) that the player must then roll on a d20.

Then you have thieves, who always get the value of their sneaking skill before the random value on the dice, so the GM can't fuck them out of it and say its really hard, the thief can deal with it anyway because they are a thief.

Personally I don't know how well this rule actually works in practice, I would probably give thieves a different form of resource to work around it.

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>>48578007
I don't know what system in particular yer looking at, but every OSR I've ever played has sneak rules.

>DCC has skill modifiers to d20 DC rolls for thieves & halflings; d10 for others.
>LotFP has a d6 skill dice for everyone that benefit specialists and halflings for Stealth.
>Black Hack has roll-under DEX.
>B/X has % increase for thieves and halflings

Anyone can attempt sneaking as long as the effort is logical, but the rogueish types have better odds.
No plate-mail clanging Warrior is gonna be sneaky.

Charisma [Diplomacy] is typically settled by the players actual roleplaying, not an arbitrary stat. If you need a set number and dice roll, you'd either opt for a CHA roll-under or some sort of DC check.

>>48578007
>However, I'm questioning the lack of rules for things like sneaking and diplomacy.
Depends on which OSR ruleset you're talking about.

B/X already handles stealth via the surprise rules (the X in 6 chance to surprise), and handles diplomacy by using the reaction roll, which indicates the monster's disposition towards PC requests.

>>48576279

I'm 30. I'm one of the oldest in the group, but not THE oldest. Everyone is younger, mid 20s-ish. So no, it's not a meme. There's a lot of appeal to OSR over other forms of RPGs.

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Speaking of DCC, does anyone have the new 'reprint' PDF? I know they added a few things.

>>48577974
It isn't. He's just one of those people who can't stand the thought of their snowflake OC being ugly because they didn't roll high enough or are unwilling to dump something else to pump their comeliness stat.

>>48578431

I'm curious about what a Comeliness ability score would provide mechanics wise.

Modifier to NPC reaction rolls? Charisma already does this.

Modifier to NPC (henchmen/retainer) morale rolls? Charisma already does this.

Would it prompt a roll against certain monsters? They might target the beautiful out of spite (hags), or lust (ogres?), or jealousy (fae)? Would the ugly be hated by fae? Suspected of being a witch if the PC is female and a spellcaster?

>>48578431
>>48577974
>>48576896
>>48577032
Okay. Let's take this from the other end. What would a comeliness stat be used for, and how would it interact with Charisma? How do you set up the actual uses of it in such a way that it isn't a second charisma stat?

>>48578514
Charisma is leadership and Comeliness is attractiveness. If nothing else, it would simply provide a mechanical weight to a character's looks. You could do a few fun things with it, like random distinguishing marks.

-3: three negative distinguishing marks.
-2: two negative distinguishing marks (or three negative, one positive).
-1: one negative distinguishing mark (or two negative, one positive).
0: one negative distinguishing mark, one positive (or two negative, one positive).
1: one positive distinguishing mark (or two positive, one negative).
2: two positive distinguishing marks (or three positive, one negative).
3: three positive distinguishing marks.

You could have stuff like "bright eyes" and "broad shoulders" vs. "paunch" and "slouches."

What is the gamiest OSR?

>>48578798
wat

>>48578820
More inclined o the game aspect

>>48579009
I still don't understand. They're all role playing GAMES. Are you looking for a D&D boardgame or something?

>>48579048
An osr with aspects of a boardgame something like that

>>48579114
you should play the online game Card Hunter.

>>48579168
non online option?

Okay, so I was working on some rules for automatic weapons in an OSR game, and I came up with this-

So, the theoretical weapon would have magazines with, say, 30 rounds. Each time the weapon is fired, the player could choose an amount of attempted hits to make. For each additional attempt to hit, the player would receive a progressively higher penalty to hit (say -1 for each), and would then roll a higher die for the amount of expended ammo (assuming they're firing short bursts. One attempt would warrant a roll of a d4, two would warrant a d6, etc.

Is this just pointless, or do I have something here? Any suggestions?

This all came up because I was thinking about having a secret enclave of time-travelling Nazi defectors stranded in the fantasy world in my game, with all their gear (and stolen Nazi gold!) transported with them.

>>48579413
Realistically, full auto isn't used to target specific dudes. It's used for suppressive fire. My house rules for it presently are:
Single shot - normal attack roll.
3 round burst - 3 attack rolls at -3 to hit each.
Full auto - targets in area make a saving throw or take d4/d6/d10 hits depending on how much ammo was spent.

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Dearest Troveguy,
Please delete all the older versions of Ruinations of the Dust Princess from the Trove whenever you have a moment and add this current one. Thanks!

>>48579539
Dearest RotDP,
The attached is a .png. Do you have a current link?
Xoxo,
TroveGuy

>>48579687
Dearest Troveguy, I am an idiot.

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

>>48579699
We all have our moments. I'll get it taken care of in a few.

>>48579496
Ooh, that's really good. That was what I was going for with my system, but with mine being more abstract and less succinct.

You mind if I steal that?

>>48579810
Sure. Have at. Some pistols can also double-tap, 2 attack rolls at -2 each.

>>48579862
Awesome. How do you handle shotgun spread? I'm also the guy who posted about the Red Dawn-type game earlier in the thread, so hunting shotguns and rifles will be pretty common in the dungeons under Middle America.
Also, reloading? I was thinking one-shot per round for single-fire weapons like bolt-action rifles and shotguns, and one round for reloading guns with stripper clips, and maybe two rounds/round with shotgun shells/individual bullets.
Am I over-complicating at the sake of fun, at this point?

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>>48579955

>>48579989
You're a gentleman and a scholar, man. Thank you so much.

>>48579955
> Shotgun spread
I had shotguns doing 2d6 damage. At close range, this was 3d6. At long range, it was 1d6. If you're using a slug it's 2d6 regardless.

> RoF
Bolt action, pump action, lever action, etc - one shot per round.

Semi-automatic, single shot or double-tap.

Select fire uses the rules above.

> Reloading:
In the system I was using for it (a hybrid LotFP hack) I gave people an attack and a movement option. Magazines could be replaced as either your movement action or your attack (so you can shoot and reload or move and reload, but not both.)

Clips (and speedloaders for revolvers) are a full-round action to replace.

Loading bullets by hand lets you reload d3 bullets in a round. If you were the combat class, you get 2d3. (If i were doing it again, I'd make it d6+1)

>>48576424
Do you have an open Google Doc or something? I meant to paste my contribution to a pastebin, but I realized it would kill a bunch of basic formatting and you'd have to put it back in by hand, which might be an unnecessary pain in the ass.

>>48580063
For a submission? I've had people either sending me docs at the email (now [email protected] ) or just sending me a link to a google doc of their own here or otherwise.

>>48576279

21 here, I like OSR. Feels like ... well, old school RP. Like when I used to get comfy and listen to my dad DM for his friends.

What is your most fun experience with osr?

>>48580086
Yeah, for a sub. My problem is I'm a shithead and can't be bothered with making a throwaway Google account.

>>48580052
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
Thanks for answering all these questions, man. I don't know of anyone else besides Flame Princess fans who's using guns in their OSR games.

Can I ask what context you used them in? Just curious how other people are implementing similar rules to mine.

In most games, HD improves every level until 9 or so.

XP requirements go up every level.

Spells per level, thief abilities, and some other class-specific abilities seem to improve every level.

Saves and combat bonuses (THAC0, AB, whatever) seem to advance in groups. For fighters, this is usually ever 2 levels. Clerics are usually ever 3, and others will often be every 4.

Should saves and combat ability increase every level like other class features? Or do you prefer bigger jumps less often?

>>48576279
I played an osr when i was 19 now i am 20 and still like it>>48576310

>>48580175
I have a half-finished cyberpunk game built on LotFP. I should really do something with it.
Augmentations of the Chrome Princess

>>48580132
> I'm a shithead and can't be bothered with making a throwaway Google account.
Save it as a word doc or an RTF or whatever and just email it to me. I'm not going to publish your email account or whatever. I won't even give you a byline unless you ask for one.

Is the reprint stuff for Against the Slavelords and Dungeons of Dread available in PDF? What about castle zagyg?

What are some of the best third party delves/modules for OSR stuff based on b/x rules?

>>48580242
Damn, that sounds really good. Go for it, dude! Put it in Troll Gods or something, at least. Make us proud!

Cyberpunk RPGs aren't really my thing (I'm boring and just like fantasy and horror), but I'd read it just for all the firearm rules in one place.

>>48580303
> Damn, that sounds really good. Go for it, dude! Put it in Troll Gods or something, at least. Make us proud!
I might go back and actually finish it after I finish my current project.

If all of your players know whats up with a module is it okay for them to use that knowledge with new characters?

favorite S&W module recs, please?

>>48580124

Beach landing in a longship fighting giant crabs in the sand and surf. Island infested with giant centipedes and other giant bugs. Cult of yuan-ti trying to end the world inside a volcano that later erupted.

I didn't get to play in any of this cause it was my dad's adventure for his friends, I just got to hear stories of it.

>>48580124
As an adult, my favorite experience running the game was a clusterfuck of introducing my players to LotFP.. an experience we still fondly refer to as "Fear and Loathing in Death Frost Doom." The whole thing went downhill the moment purple lotus powder got involved.

As a kid, we played so much AD&D that I couldn't even pick out something to point at. It was just a whole lot of lazy summer afternoons in a friend's basement throwing dice at stuff. We must have gone through a thousand characters.

One of the things that really intrigues me about OD&D is that there were no variable hit dice. Everyone got the same d6 for HD, but gained additional HD at different rates.

This was especially neat as it seemed to line up with the fact that all of the weapons were doing d6 damage (different weapons made it easier/harder to hurt dudes in armor).

Was the former dropped just because the latter get dropped, or is there a more complex reason behind it?

Would you play a game that kept the OD&D style of HD/Damage?

>>48576279
20 years here, been in the OSR since I was 16.

The playstyle is just too compelling, and the ease with which you can create adventures and creatures is almost poetic. I've ran entire sessions with just a hex map and a bunch of tables.

I mainly GM LotFP and Mutant Future, my current group has players between 19 and 38 years.

>>48576460
You mean asocial

>>48576812
Then never play any game ever because they all started as homebrews

>>48580124

Running Carcosa for my friends. I killed them three times that night. No one got very far in the dungeon I spent hours making, but it was definitely worth it just so that they could all have a great story about a night with three TPKs where their DM learned how freeing it is not to fudge the dice.

If you guys are in the thread: Thank you. You've made me a better DM.

Just read torchbearer. It has a ton of good ideas, but the crunch is absolutely unworkable.
Did anyone ever import some of the decent aspects into an OSR game?

>>48582510
I considered putting the tired/hungry/whatever mods in there, as they do actually help make the exploration feel inherently foreboding and miserable. The problem is, I'm not sure stacking a bunch of -1 penalties actually make it the fun kind of miserable.

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needs a filename

Would you play an OSR that only used d6s?

>>48582812
>grognard schools the new kid.jpg

>>48582897
I love polyhedral dice too much, so probably not. Maybe if I would introduce RPGs to kids.

Anyone can recommend a good system that's classless, fits with the OSR tropes, is simple, and still allows for sorcerous characters.

>>48577036
Borlänge

ska börja studera igen snart, dock, so kanske blir det nått ändå

>>48581333
>Would you play a game that kept the OD&D style of HD/Damage?
I'd play OD&D, so yes?

The reason it got dropped was as part of a simplification in Greyhawk that also incidentally nerfed magic-user hit points while buffing the fighting-man's. Also, buffing monster hit points and damage in general, while incidentally also debuffing magic-user damage (fireballs no longer equal hit dice, daggers now do 1d4 vs. 1d8 rather than 1d6 vs. 1d6) while buffing the fighting-man (1d6 vs. 1d6 became 1d8 vs. 1d8, sometimes up to 3d6 vs. 1d8 against large monsters).

>>48583524
Jag bor i Uppsala, det är alldeles för få som uppskattar OSR här

Har du en blog eller nåt som jag kan följa? Skulle vara kul att få veta vad andra svenskar tycker om OSR och rollspel

>>48583493
Into The Odd.
There's a hack (two even) for LotFP in the zine The Undercroft that makes it classless.

>>48576279
25 and head over heels for Lamentations. Sucks though, because the only people who want to play OSR with me are back in my hometown.

>>48580242
>Augmentations of the Chrome Princess
>Ruinations of the Dust Princess

You guys make me want to do a Weird West version called something like Tarnations of the Prairie Princess

>>48584466
>Har du en blog eller nåt som jag kan följa? Skulle vara kul att få veta vad andra svenskar tycker om OSR och rollspel
tyvärr inte - de här trådarna är de enda stället jag skriver om OSR

har väldigt lite koll på svenska rollspelsculturen i allmänhet, desu

>>48582812
>welcome to osr.jpg

>>48584578
Do it.

>>48582812
>fantasy fuckin' vietnam.jpg

>>48582897
Sure, I'd give it a shot. I've actually been pretty interested in Tunnels and Trolls because it only uses D6s. I like the idea of D6-only systems because they're easy to get, so everyone always has at least one die laying around.

>>48584640
Working on it right now.

What are some fun magic items to give to players? Nothing too overpowered or too generic like +1 swords, rather something that makes players think differently and give them another "ace up their sleeve".

>>48584578
I'd play the shit outta it.

I chose RotDP to make it blatantly obvious I stole most of it from LotFP, hah.

>>48584870
A tiny bonsai tree on a pot. When a character meditates on wanting to be close to the tree, they'll find themselves reduced to tiny size and next to the now very large tree. If they walk away from it, they return to their real size. Imagine feeding an entire caravan on a single apple, or counterambushing raiders by hiding your forces with the tree and making them appear from literally nowhere right on their flank.

>>48584884
LotFP makes a pretty damn good foundation, though, so I don't blame you. Hey, what program are you using to make your PDF? I've never attempted to make my own PDF before.

>>48584919
I'm using Photoshop CS6. Not ideal, but it works. I convert them to PNGs, then combine said PNGs to a PDF file online.

>>48584981
Ah, gotcha. Guess I'm gonna see what I can do with the GIMP. If you got it, I think InDesign is better suited for this stuff. I remember making fake magazine covers in a 'multimedia' class I had back in High School.

>>48584918
That seems a bit too overpowered, but I guess it could be fun if the players just comes across the tree without knowing what it is, and with no hints just happen to take it with them and decide to meditate next to it. Could be mindblowing.

>>48584919
>>48584981
Scribus is a neat free and open source PDF maker I guess. Espeacially if you want neat layouts and stuff. If you just want to write text and make tables LaTeX can be used as well to do that pretty easily imo.

Huh, doing it in PS and exporting it as picture means you don't have searchable text, doesn't it?

>>48576539
Yes, you are a greybeard grognard.

>>48585364
What about me? I'm 29, have a beard but it's bright-ass red, and learned to play OD&D from my grandfather in the mid-90s when I was eight.

>>48585380
Just a standard grognard.

>>48579955

The rule of thumb for patterning with 00 buckshot is 1" of spread every yard. Contrary to pop culture shotguns do not spray a wide cone of shot. They are very lethal against I armored soft targets inside of 25 yards, slugs for up to say 100 yards. Other then that Shotguns have limited utility beyond breaching and bird hunting.

Slow to load, low capacity, semi autos are ammo picky, manual action requires 2 hands. At the end of the day they are fowling pieces and I would hate to go into a combat situation with one.

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>at FLGS
>some guy tells me D&D is just a shitty version of tabletop wargames and I should play a "narrative" game
>I say GNS theory is bullshit, story games are fine but not what D&D was ever meant to go for, and I like it
>he says you can't tell a story with it
>I say you can. It's just going to be one that emerges from the decisions the players make in response to an open world rife with challenges. Think Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser instead of Lord of the Rings.
>he says that's a good analogy, since Lord of the Rings is way better than Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.
>I say it isn't, and he has those backwards.
>He looks PISSED.
>I push, and say that Lankhmar is a better setting than Middle Earth, Ningauble and Sheelba are cooler than Gandalf, and Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser are more interesting characters than any of the main characters in Lord of the Rings.
>he looks like he's about to have a meltdown
>I feel bad, try to diffuse the situation
>"Tom Bombadil is really interesting, though."
>"...who?"
>"Tom Bombadil, the weird forest spirit dude who's never really explained."
>He looks at me like I've grown a second head, starts packing his shit up, and says, "That explains everything. You've never even seen Lord of the Rings," then leaves.

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>>48585478

>>48585478
What the actual fuck, man? I mean, even for people who just watch the movies I'm pretty sure old Bombadillo pops up as a trivia thing for things that they changed (perhaps for the best). It's a pretty long sequence that gets cut between the Shire and Bree, so I kind of got the impression it usually got brought up alongside the elven archers at Helm's Deep and the Scouring of the Shire.

Although thinking on it I guess he didn't know shit about Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser either and was probably bullshitting all the way.

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So, the 2nd edition of Blood and Treasure just got released (unexpectedly) today.

Anyone excited?

>>48583524
>Borlänge
>Varenda jävla gång
Hur kommer det sig egentligen att 80% av Sveriges rollspelare antingen bor i eller kommer från Borlänge?

>>48576395
Wow, what a furry shitshow. Get outta here.

>>48586200
Huh, I'll have to check it out!

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>>48586580

>he doesn't like Redwall because "muh furries"

Absolutely plebeian.

>Just don't play AD&D and you're fine. Swords & Wizardry Core would be perfect. It's a clone of 0e, which is not rules-heavy at all.

>Ask in the OSR general thread that was linked before, for them to tell you about S&W Core (and clarify you've never played OSR before but it was recommended to you).

I got this advice in another thread. I was under the impression that early RPGs were basically built upon miniatures war games and were thus fairly rules heavy.

I'm looking into expanding my roleplaying horizons. I have played 3.5, PF and 5E. I have no experience with other systems other than reading through the CoC rule book.

I am hoping to play a rules light, heavy roleplay, narrativist system but to use it within the context of a traditional DnD dungeoneering setting. Things like mimics, oozes, traps, glowing mushrooms, underdark, strange cults and troves of treasure.

>>48577109
How about mice get different classes like humans, and the others are race-as-class?

>>48584467
>The Undercroft
I don't suppose it's anywhere in the Trove?

>>48586200
May I ask what Blood and Treasure does that makes it interesting?

>>48576279
Just convinced a group to try out B/X and they're all under 30

>>48586697
It depends on the edition you look at. Basic D&D (B/x in particular) is very light overall. The entire basic rulebook is only like 60 pages including spell lists, monsters, etc. The Expert expansion to B/x is another 60 pages that includes additional rules and monsters, and takes the characters to level 14 or so. 120 odd pages and it would last you years, if you wanted.

AD&D is certainly more complicated. OD&D isn't so complicated, but it's rather byzantine.

Of the modern OSRs, LotFP is an even more cleaned up version of B/x but with a slight weird horror bent and slightly more brutal combat. Sword&W white box (or Core) are based on cleaned up versions of OD&D. Both are very light and quick in play.

The problem you're going to run into is the idea of a "heavy roleplay, narrativist system." You can roleplay to your heart's content in OSR - I do as much RP in B/x as I do Apocalypse World - but it's no OSR is going to be a narrativist system in the modern design sense of the term where there are actual mechanics around giving players narrative control or placing the story first as a matter of importance. There is certainly a story in OSR, but it's the kind of stories that people tell in real life -- relieving the glories and defeats they have experienced after the fact.

If you want something that is more explicitly story-gamey that explores the same themes, look at Dungeon World or Torchbearer. There's also a fantastic mouseguard hack called Realmguard which is basically the game recast as gondorian rangers instead of mice.

>>48576279
My grp that I run are mostly in their mid 20's,we started with 4th and then went to 5th for a bit. Since they really loved how 5th played I had them check out LOTFP and since then we have been playing an extremely modded version of the game.

I think they really like the aspect that death is a real threat with all the older modules we run with this hack so they play a bit smarter then 4th/5th editions.

>>48586958
Fair enough. Thanks for the input. I actually bought Dungeon World and the whole conversation started because people told me not to bother with it.

I'll check Torchbearer.

>>48585478

I'm not really that surprised. My oldest friend hadn't read LotR when he started playing D&D, and hell, he barely read anything until his twenties when I started pushing him to read more from my library.

tl;dr People don't read as much as they should.

>>48587050
If it's 4chan people, then ignore them, and give it a read. It's generally a splitting game, but on /tg/ it's absolutely impossible to discuss it properly, thanks to people trying to ruin the threads all the time.
It may be right up your alley
I had my fair share of fun with it through the years

/ost/, how should I get started about making a dungeon on my own?
I'm ashamed of admitting that I never really did one from the grounds-up, and every time I try to, I get blocked at the start.
Any advice, articles, books that can help?

>>48587050
>>48587082

Seconded, I'm an old-school grognard who cut his teeth on Basic D&D with classmates back i the day, and I think Dungeon World is a neat system.
Most of those guys hating on it are just regurgitating other people's opinions IMO. (Especially since most of them bring up shit that's not even true, like the "you can't dual wield" meme.)
Basically, fa//tg/uys gonna fat.

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>>48587124

These are the tables from the 1e AD&D DMG.

I highly recommend both these tables and that particular edition's DMG.

Just a word of warning, you are occasionally going to need to veto something the dice roll on these tables. They occasionally make too many 45 degree passages and other odd things.

>>48586697
>I was under the impression that early RPGs were basically built upon miniatures war games and were thus fairly rules heavy.
To add on to what the others said, Chainmail isn't actually that rules-heavy a wargame? It's pretty light, actually, all things considered.

It just gets bogged down in the post-melee morale rules, which didn't really survive the transition to Basic (although I think AD&D took some cues from them, IIRC?)

For the most part, though, non-fantastic combat is mostly about you pushing a bunch of miniatures up against other minatures and looking at a table to figure out how many dice you get to throw at them.

>>48576460
>22-year-old here. On the other hand, Swede here. Also, no active games and I'm in a bit of an antisocial rut right now.

Senpai! 22 y old as well. This weather has been nuts last two weeks.

>>48587194
I've been thinking about turning Morale into a resource that attacks are made against. So that mobs are less likely to completely break down at the first sign of danger, but are ensured to do so after realizing they're way over their head.

>>48587160
>too many 45 degree passages
No such thing.

More seriously, though, you should probably be aware that those tables are very much oriented towards making a megadungeon and you'll need to put some predefined limits on it to stop it growing out of control - "each level can't go off the sheet of grid paper", for instance. Oh, and the table won't tell you this but the exits of rooms are doors and the exits of chambers are passages - this was explicit in the Strategic Review tables that predated it, but got lost in translation.

Also, despite the entrancing image those starting areas aren't the standard way to do things - that's to just open up by rolling on the room table. Sticking to the starting rooms will just make all your dungeon entrances kind of samey after a while.

>>48587194
Looks to be mellowing out a bit where I'm at, but yeah there was a bit of a heat wave recently.

>>48587241
So the BECMI thing where individual critters will check when they first take damage/reach half health, but the entire group will check when one of theirs dies or they lose half their group or their leader dies? (Also stuff like "the enemy has strange magic", IIRC, but it's been a while since I looked at the conditions. It's a little more broad than B/X's, at least.)

>>48587273

My recommendation to >>48587124 is that they make their own starting room, rather than using the pregen ones.

>>48578137
I'd probably check out old TSR modules and try to reverse engineer those.

>>48579539
That cover art is really nice.

Anyone can upload the Black Hack please? Seems like mega doesn't let me download stuff, due to my IP downloading enough alreay.

>>48584578
wolfpacks was initially titled Tribulation of the Cave Princess
the name got changed for copyright reasons, basically.

>>48580608
You could just handwave it as the characters having done research about the place they're going. You can also add a twist here and there, change positions of rooms, enough to keep the players on their toes.

>>48587426
Machinations of the Space Princess is being sold commercially. I don't think you'd have to worry about the copyright so much. On the other hand, Wolfpacks and the Winter Snow is a good title.

Anyone have any familiarity with chainmail for OD&D?

>>48587124
I'd politely reccomend a variation of the 'dice drop' caves in Wolfpacks. I've found I can roll up a dungeon at the start of a session in about ten to fifteen minutes: about the same amount of time as it should take to roll up characters.

>>48584593
I think that's a shame because Sweden has a pretty good RP history and culture in my experience.

We've got a bunch of old games and current games that got played and are neat.

>>48586580
Whats up with all the rageposters lately?

These threads are usually chill and comfy.

>>48586697
IMO if you find B/X a little too simple it's not hard, nor taboo to pick certain things from AD&D or other rules you like in particular and seems to be what a lot of people do anyway.

>>48587583
What are your questions?

>>48579114
The RPG supplement to the original Warhammer Quest.

>>48580124
When this guy>>48582455
Killed my friends and I three times in one night. I will never forget my jale man evaporating under an alien's ray gun.

>>48587605
Yeah, I've played a bit of... I think it was third edition Drakar och Demoner? The one with the Expert expansion.

It was pretty neat, but I'm pretty sure we didn't play it anything like the creators intended and had to fight the system a bit!

>>48587637
I'm curious if anyone has tried OD&D with chainmail combat or sorcery.

>>48587679
The problem with talking about "chainmail combat" is that there's, like, three separate systems in there - the one most relevant to OD&D specifically is man-to-man, but that's not actually that different from "standard" D&D combat in later editions. Beyond the whole thing with weapon accuracy and smaller weapons getting multiple attacks, that is.

Third edition Chainmail's magic system is slightly more interesting, but I'm unsure how well it would actually work in OD&D - beyond the whole groggy thing about how it's not the "intended" way and whatnot, making magic unlimited-but-unreliable goes straight against the hard logistics focus that I personally think is the core of OD&D.
Also, it lets lowest-level MUs cast sixth-level spells and probably gives them a huge out-of-combat boost that they really don't need? Not to mention stuff like the at-will fireballs that make sense when you're talking about a fancy catapult but less so in OD&D.

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>>48585478
>I say you can. It's just going to be one that emerges from the decisions the players make in response to an open world rife with challenges.

This is the reason why I tend to see "high fantasy" DMs or "narrative GMs" as unimaginative control freaks who want to railroad their players and see them all as marionettes for his/her amusement.

Now add to that list, "illiterate."

>>48585478
>Only knows the LotR movie
>Knows Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser
And people in this thread will believe this actually happened.

>>48587835
I think games that are story-oriented in their design are fine. I just hate the attitude that they're the only good games.
>>48587845
I don't think he knew Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but was just pretending and was mad I thought anything was better than Lord of the Rings. Especially something that I associated with D&D, which he saw as "for plebs."

>>48587845
To be fair, nothing in that conversation would indicate that the guy in question knew who Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser actually were. He could have just heard "think this thing that isn't what you like" and responded "yeah, what I like is better."

>>48587583
>>48587793
>three separate systems
Use them for different things. Man-to-man is significantly different than the way most games handle D&D combat, in that it's entirely based on the likelihood of a weapon to man a meaningful blow against armor. The chart doesn't take the character's stats into account at all. Instead, the fighter's combat prowess determines how many times they get to roll on the chart.

In a really fascinating way, this actually solves the problem a lot of people have with HP vs. Damage as you gain levels, as every character could in theory be landing multiple blows per round. Man-to-Man fights would be over very quickly.

Troop combat is used for dealing with mooks. Any 1HD enemy. It's also dead handy if you have a ton of mercenaries with your party. Very fast, doesn't need to worry about HP.

The only one that bugs me is Fantasy Combat, as it seems anticlimactic compared to the others, which is the opposite of what it should be.

Chainmail sorcery is interesting. Then, I've always been a fan of unreliable spellcasting.

>>48587835
Narrativist GMs are actually the little-prep, let-the-players-shape the-happenings kind of folks.
The preplanned-"plot" people are the cancer of the hobby

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>>48587867
>I don't think he knew Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but was just pretending and was mad I thought anything was better than Lord of the Rings.

Seconded. It actually lends to the credibility of the story. Also, I've seen the same thing happen IRL. They must continue to push their argument for pride's sake, even if it means pretending to know Lankhmar. But he blew it and had to play the "get mad & retreat" card.

If it were me as the FLGS owner, I could at least fake it, since I read the comics adaptation (pic related).

>>48587985
Yeah, that's the most likely scenario.

That said, I know some people who have an encyclopedic knowledge of Howard but never read LotR because they couldn't stand Tolkien's dry-ass writing.

So it's not impossible.

>>48587624
>Whats up with all the rageposters lately?

Folks pretending to be angry and retarded have been all over the board the past week or so, probably just bleed over into our thread.

>>48587835
This >>48587981
I basically only play OSR and Hipster indie nar games. I consider myself a very narrative-heavy GM even when I"m playing OSR stuff. The thing is, most of the major nar games out there (Burning Wheel, Apocalypse World, The Riddle of Steel.. more recently Blades in the Dark. Hell, even Sorcerer, which started the infamous Forge culture) are actually about creating situations and watching the players sort them out.

The pre-planned plot thing is very much a product of post-dragonlance mainstream RPG culture. We didn't do it.

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>>48587981
"Narrativist GMs" are "actually" hard to define. Still looking for a non-arbitrary source. Wanna be part of the solution or part of the problem?

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>>48587845

Hey, no greentext story that has appeared on 4chan has ever been disproven, anon.

>>48587981
>The preplanned-"plot" people are the cancer of the hobby

Then what's the specific name name for that, since you're going to be all jargon-nazi?

>>48588072
Anyone can call themselves a "narrativist GM" so that's not really a good bar for anything anyway. But if you want to look for where the whole "narrativist" thing started, look at the games that came out of Forge culture.

I will absolutely grant that most of those people are assholes and particularly uppity about their style of gaming being better than everyone else's, but that's not the issue at hand. If you actually look at the games they made >>48588061 the overwhelming trend is about RPGs being player-driven narratives.

This is the exact opposite of dragonlance style "DM writes the plot for you to follow" gaming that is being bitched about.

There's a lot of stuff you can complain about RPGs with a narrative agenda, and you're welcome to it.. but "plot railroad" is not really one of them.

>>48586931
Its an interesting look at combining things from across all editions of D&D, with a focus on hexcrawls and dungeon-delving.

The classes include old-school versions of some 3.5 classes, like the Assassin, the Duelist, and even the sorceror.

It's a fun game that stays rules-loose while giving lots of options.

Good stuff.

>>48588186
Is it OSR-compatible?

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>>48588141
Since their into railroading maybe we can call them train conductors

>>48588150
>Anyone can call themselves a "narrativist GM"

^ Still

>so that's not really a good bar for anything anyway. But if you want to look for where the whole "narrativist" thing started,

using

>look at the games that came out of Forge >culture.

terms

>I will absolutely grant that most of those people are assholes and particularly uppity about their style of gaming being better than everyone else's,

without

>This is the exact opposite of dragonlance style "DM writes the plot for you to follow" gaming that is being bitched about.

objective

>There's a lot of stuff you can complain about RPGs with a narrative agenda,

sourcing

>and you're welcome to it.. but "plot railroad" is not really one of them.

And I should listen to you because you're the authority on it, amirite?

Thread Question:

What is the BEST OSR system out there to date?

>Well, really, it depends on...

No, don't be a pussy. Assert yourself. What is THE BEST system out there for OSR?

>>48588332
S&W Complete.

>>48588150
Whether they're playing "mainstream" (what a word) RPGs or OSR stuff or narrative storygames, no one wants to hear that they're playing elfgames wrong, and there will be jerks that share your tastes for every possible interest.

I guess the stereotype of SWINE GAMES REEEE comes from stuff like Polaris or Grey Ranks, which have a very limited scope of play: in Polaris the ice knights will fall and their civilization will be forgotten, and in Grey Ranks history will not be changed and the Warsaw Uprising will fail. How you get to those ultimate endpoints is where the game is, but if you're already predisposed to look down on those uppity hipsters then it's easy to see how you can get those misguided complaints.

I mean, hell, people use OSR for everything even though you get people (in this thread, even!) that insist on the rigurous dungeon crawl with dwindling resources, high lethality and "player skill" as the cornerstone of OSR.

>>48588332
Swords and Wizardry. Yes, it's hackey, but it's also cleaned up. The authors were faithful to the original material.

And you can make it as crunchy as you want. . .or not.

>>48588319
What do you define as an objective source? I literally said "go back to the source." Go look at the games that sold themselves as having a narrative agenda. You'll notice that they are overwhelmingly about player-focused stories.

I don't know how much more of an objective source you can really look for when arguing unofficial terminology based on a design trend in a niche hobby other than going back and looking at the people and things that championed it.

>>48588353
> no one wants to hear that they're playing elfgames wrong, and there will be jerks that share your tastes for every possible interest.
I did literally say that those people were often assholes. I wasn't defending the elitism. Since I spend time in both OSR and Nar/story-game communities, I hear shit-flinging from both ends, sadly. Both groups have their assholes who think the other camp is having badwrongfun.

> I mean, hell, people use OSR for everything even though you get people (in this thread, even!) that insist on the rigurous dungeon crawl with dwindling resources, high lethality and "player skill" as the cornerstone of OSR.
I'll acknowledge that those themes are a big part of the OSR movement and it's origins, but this is exactly why I support the very practical definition of OSR as "compatible with early D&D games" rather than try to make it about a playstyle.

>>48587985
That shit is surprisingly unheard of, despite being the primary inspiration for this shit.

I like asked in the book store and could not find any proper anthologies. I ended up ordering old paperbacks off of Amazon.

>>48588449
What do you define as an objective source?

Please. Don't be evasive. I'm trying to learn here, and you're playing the game jargon professor. If the mortarboard fits, wear it.

OR, if the term is truly vague, and subject to multiple interpretations, then don't go pedantically correcting others as-if it weren't. If GNS really is bullshit, then "narrative" would be one of the more confusing terms.

Not only that, but then you suspiciously try to shoo me off when I hold you accountable as a self-appointed gaming authority. . .

>I literally said "go back to the source." Go look at the games that sold themselves as having a narrative agenda. You'll notice that they are overwhelmingly about player-focused stories.

You're literally saying, "Narrative gaming is defined by these games I played, which are all overwhelmingly my definition of narrative gaming. Go look at them for several days and leave me alone."

FUCK! o_o

>>48588332

Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

Setting aside the art (which is a matter of taste), and some of the fluff descriptions, it's a really tight, clear, well presented version of B/X, and I like the encumbrance system and the firearms appendix a great deal.

I like the assumed early modern setting. I like the Fighter being a terrifying juggernaut in combat. I like the Specialist more than I like Thieves, and I think the Specialist's specialties are a better skill system than say, NWPs are.

It's easy to hack, and I intend to hack it to allow race to be separated from class (particularly for my homebrew setting - for which LotFP is perfect. Better at least, then my attempts to make 2e AD&D to work).

However, the game is incomplete and needs a GM book and a guide for creating proper monsters to fit with the tone of the game.

>>48588332
OD&D. Mostly because it's the root of what all the others build upon, though, and because in trying to hack it to actually work (combat rules and torch duration are the big two) you'll naturally change it into something you actually like.

Also, it's way easier to change than something like LOTFP because chances are that you already know half a dozen popular houserules without even thinking about it - when to roll hit dice and how big those are, for instance.

Also also, I just really like the relatively bounded math it's got. ACs stay in the 9-2 range, magic items only get to +2-3, only six levels of spells, and so on and so forth.

And, of course, no thieves.

>>48588584
There is no game pope. There is no design bible that on the third day declared that the kinds of RPG would be broken down into the following categories. You still didn't say what you would accept as an "objective" source. Objective would have to imply impartial and official, which you're never actually going to find for a design movement within a hobby.

The only way you can come close to determining a functional definition of the thing is to look at how it was used by the people who made a movement out of its usage.

> but then you suspiciously try to shoo me off when I hold you accountable as a self-appointed gaming authority
I summarized an observation as someone who actually has experience playing a number of these games. You realize that giving you examples of what I'm talking about and telling you to check for yourself is the exact opposite of declaring oneself "a self-appointed gaming authority." I'm literally telling you that you don't need to take my word for it. You can go look it up. Here are good example games.

More impressively, you're asking for sources and then dismissing examples you can look at as sources as me evading accountability for authority I never claimed.

Can you imagine this in some other context?
> "New York is such a weird little small town."
> "New York isn't really a small town. I've been there."
> "Do you have an objective source?"
> "Well, I mean.. You could go there."
> "Oh, so now you're evading me when I hold you accountable as a self-appointed small-town authority."

I wasn't even the person who posted the correction in the first place.

At this point, I don't know what else to tell you. If observations don't count because you need to be some kind of authority to give them any weight, and you aren't willing to look into the matter for yourself when given the sources to look at, there's nothing that can be done to help you. You're free to disagree.

>>48588332
Darker Dungeons

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>>48588803
>"Oh, so now you're evading me when I hold you accountable as a self-appointed small-town authority."

I was not ready for this post.

>>48588332
Honestly I feel pretty strongly about ACKS. The problem with OSR games that I've always found is that the style is all about avoiding quantum bullshittery, which means prepping things with detail - maps, populations, etc.

I dislike LoTFP for the same reason - it's very slick and the presentation is great, but it gives the referee very little in terms of concrete numbers, procedures, or tools to build his own stuff.

Sure, I can make up content myself, but I don't appreciate that as a selling point of the system. "Look, we didn't include a bestiary so your imagination is free!" is a really lame cop-out for not doing more work. If I'm shelling out cash for a B/X clone I'm expecting that it should *save* me work over playing regular B/X. All LoTFP really innovates in is saying "hey, you can do adventures in 15th century Europe, and you can make Thieves into generic Specialists" and then doesn't really give you much more than that.

>>48587981
>>48588072
I'm not fond of "narratavist" either - it never got tossed around all that much outside the Forge in my experience; and seems to be used at times to describe:
1. GMs who rely heavily on a script or railroad players, or alternately
2. to describe games like Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE or the like (which are all about *avoiding* scripting)
which again, are both complete opposite usages.

>>48588859
> I dislike LoTFP for the same reason - it's very slick and the presentation is great, but it gives the referee very little in terms of concrete numbers, procedures, or tools to build his own stuff.
To play devil's advocate, I think the reason that LotFP (and many other OSR games) don't bother with stuff like thorough bestiaries, castle-builders, population data, whatever.. is because it's all OSR compatible anyway and you're at best just re-creating material that's already out there. Is there a good reason to release a comprehensive bestiary as an OSR game when there are more monsters floating around for D&D than you could ever actually use? Would you pay me money for a new book that gives you the same stats for dragons, orcs, goblins, and kobolds again? The only time it's particularly useful is if the OSR in question changes things enough that it's worthwhile to have the version-specific stats at hand rather than try to convert them as you go.

Maybe I'm looking at this too closely though. Could you elaborate on some procedures, numbers, and tools you would have wanted for, say, LotFP that aren't present in either the core book or referee guide?

>>48588859
>"Look, we didn't include a bestiary so your imagination is free!"

That's not the reasoning. The reasoning is that A) monster ecosystems don't fit the themes of the game, and B) there are shitloads of compatible bestiaries already out there if you want Gygaxian monsters-everywhere gaming. Just buy one of those and use them.

>>48589004
>1. GMs who rely heavily on a script or railroad players, or alternately
>2. to describe games like Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE or the like (which are all about *avoiding* scripting)
>which again, are both complete opposite usages.

Usage 1 is just people bitching on the internet about stuff they don't like, though.

>>48588803
>There is no game pope

Then posters should stop behaving like one.

>>48589004
>I'm not fond of "narratavist" either - it never got tossed around all that much outside the Forge in my experience; and seems to be used at times to describe:
1. GMs who rely heavily on a script or railroad players, or alternately
2. to describe games like Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE or the like (which are all about *avoiding* scripting)
which again, are both complete opposite usages.

In B4 gamepope.

>>48589004
The two features that seem to define "narrativist" systems from what I've seen seem to be:
> 1. A stated goal that the game is about making stories (as opposed to something like OSR dungeon-crawls where stories happen, but the real goal of play is to overcome challenges and get loot, per the xp system as an incentive).
> 2. The inclusion of narrative mechanics that give the players some kind of ability to influence the outcomes of things outside of either their character's in-world decisions and abilities or the dice. Fate points, Spiritual Attributes, etc. These games also very commonly give a mechanical incentive to role-playing your character in a given away according to their personality or motivations.

> 1. GMs who rely heavily on a script or railroad players, or alternately
> 2. to describe games like Powered by the Apocalypse or FATE or the like (which are all about *avoiding* scripting)
which again, are both complete opposite usages.
Every game I've come across from that camp falls into 2. 1 sounds like it has nothing really to do with any kind of system and more to do with a specific problem of the GM, though if you know of any games that were pushed by Forge-people that bills itself as narrativist that pushes a "Follow the GM's plot" system, let me know. I'm happy to be proven wrong.

>>48589094
Out of that entire post, that's the best counter-argument you could come up with? I'm at this point just assuming you're a troll..and.. not a terribly good one.

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>>48587981

>>48589141
>which again, are both complete opposite usages.

Then there is no authority on the definition.

Thanks for settling 48587981's dick-waving. We can move on now.

>>48588141
Novelists?

>>48588704
Are there any redeeming qualities to OD&D? Other than as an exercise in gaming archeology, does it have anything to offer?

>>48587835
You could just as easily argue that OSR or "emergent narrative" GMs are unimaginative and unprepared losers who can't think of anything better than rolling on a table and would be better off playing Skyrim.

But I'm guessing you'd find that a pretty offensive and untrue take down of your preferred gaming style.

>>48589199
Chiming in here. In this case I'll start using OSR as a new word for wargaming. OSR games only have combat rules after all, therefore we can conclude it's all about the combat, right?

While I feel like everybody in this thread has overlooked the part where >>48585478 compliments Tom Bombadil.

What have we learned today? Buzzwords are great!

>>48589329
Last thread we learned that OSR can be anything you want it to be because imagination is magic. I guess that applies to narrative gaming as well.

>>48589290
>But I'm guessing you'd find that a pretty offensive and untrue take down of your preferred gaming style.

Not offended. After all, I really can't force anyone to notice their failure to recognize improvisational storytelling and/or granting a player their free will. Can I?

>>48589254

That's about it. The narrativist movement that I've seen over the years has nothing to do with railroading, it's about building games where the rules aid the narrative, which is either orthogonal or antagonistic to railroading.
There aren't any Forge storygames built on railroading, as far as I'm aware. If someone made one the other Forgers would have shat all over it.

I'm sure some That DM somewhere probably tries calls himself "a narrative GM" in order to whitewash his railroading, but I'd say he's pretty much all alone on that, and using the term wrong, like a script kiddie who calls himself a "hacker" because it sounds better than the truth.
"Novelist" is a better word for that.

>>48587624
>IMO if you find B/X a little too simple it's not hard, nor taboo to pick certain things from AD&D or other rules you like in particular and seems to be what a lot of people do anyway.
And if you go with Labyrinth Lord, which is a fairly faithful retroclone of B/X, you can dip into it's Advanced Edition Companion, which is designed to give you the options of D&D (more classes and spells, etc.) without all of AD&D's extra rules, restrictions and convolutions. And given that the AEC is specifically designed to be compatible with LL's standard rules, you can freely pick and choose shit.

>>48589367
I would like that, but >>48589142

>>48589427
>"Novelist" is a better word for that.

Which (a.) strongly implies a predetermined plot and/or ending, and (b.) a single author.

So then how is this any different from a railroad?

>>48589427
Novelist is a pretty good term, agreed. And the "hacker" comparison is spot on.
I don't even blame people mixing all into the same bag, but with the Storyteller system and Dragonlance making it so big back in the day, people do usually refer to exactly that when they mention being all about the story.
It's such a dirty word around here for a reason after all.

>>48589509
He means that novelist is a perfect fit for the dragonlance modules, and all the trash that came after it. Because those have a predetermined plot and/or ending, and a single author.

>>48589367
>Last thread we learned that OSR can be anything you want it to be because imagination is magic.
I'm imagining a world where it's not.

>>48587624
>Whats up with all the rageposters lately?
The kids are back from their family vacations but still not back in school, so they come here to pass the time by being dicks?

>>48588332
DCC. It's simply the most fun to play for my group. They love the magic effects, the gonzo modules and occupation perks for skills.

We switch between it and LotFP for different OSR styles (they love LotFP for its ease of use, light rules and simple skill system. Plus, spooky modules.)

>>48589011
Not him, but in the case of LotFP's case, it's less the actual numbers and more about the lore. They don't even necessarily need stats, I just want to hear more about the types of creatures inhabiting this fantays world.

>>48588319
You're being difficult, man. You're not listening to what he's trying to convey because you're too busy nit-picking the delivery.

>>48589596

Scan of Slügs when?

>>48589596
That's sort of the thing about LotFP. The intention wasn't really to sell the system as much as the modules. That's why it's available for free now. It's a base set of mechanics that can be used for traditional elves-and-dwarves fantasy, or the 17th century setting that the modules use. The latter is where most of the flavor is solidified. Writing about the types of creatures in a way defeats the implicit idea that the monsters are all unique. Of course, he DID actually write a whole esoteric creature generator, so that's worth checking out.. and the Summon spell has a whole system for generating terrifying gribbly things.

None of this is an argument about mechanics though, really. It's about setting fluff. That's a whole different issue. How many OSRs come packaged with strong fluff?

IN YOUR PERSONAL OPINION (no OSR terminology debate need apply) How far can something deviate from the standard OD&D/Basic/Advanced mechanics before you no longer look at it as OSR?

>Does it need to have vancian spellcasting?
>What if they change, increase, or decrease the number of ability scores?
>AC a requirement?
>Core rolls made on a d20?
>How far can they tweak saves before they are no longer "OSR"?
> HP scaling with level?
> Other sacred cows I haven't mentioned but you think of as necessary

>>48589619
Because it's delivered as an authoritarian "actually" as well as (purposely) vague, which is contradictory.

All I asked for was an objective source, as-in "RPG lexicon" or something that wasn't ambiguous. But there was waffling instead, etc.

Can you help?

>>48588332
B/X, anyone saying otherwise is lying through their teeth.

Been reading through Spellcraft and Swordplay and it just shocked me as a surprisingly sensible retroclone that tries to both modernize and incorporate the original chainmail combat system.
Recommended.

>>48589740
Greetings. It may be worth mentioning that the person you've been arguing with never mentioned that oh-so-triggering "actually".
That was me.

>>48589740
>All I asked for was an objective source, as-in "RPG lexicon" or something that wasn't ambiguous. But there was waffling instead, etc.
What is this supposed to mean, anyway? A peer-reviewed paper from the Transactions of the Fucking Obvious Society (Tr. Fu. Ob. Soc.)?

>>48589837
now now. he already covered this. Asking for him to define his terms when he's demanding you define your terms is evasive.

>>48589717
>Does it need to have vancian spellcasting?
No
>What if they change, increase, or decrease the number of ability scores?
This is fine
>AC a requirement?
Yes
>Core rolls made on a d20?
Mostly
>How far can they tweak saves before they are no longer "OSR"?
A lot
> HP scaling with level?
Must have
> Other sacred cows I haven't mentioned but you think of as necessary
Limited number of classes and/or abilities

>>48589717
No.
DCC did that.
Needs AC.
DCC uses different ascending or descending dice for core rolls.
S&W reduced saves to one number.
Gamma World/MF have Robots with no advancing HP.

All are OSR and changed those things.

>>48589717
>Does it need to have vancian spellcasting?

Not really, because OSR terminology would also imply the early debates between Vancian magic and spell point alternatives.

>What if they change, increase, or decrease the number of ability scores?

Then we would necessarily have to draw a hard line where OSR begins or ends to determine the date this all started and then began to "gel" as "post-OSR" ability scores. Yes. Seriously.

>AC a requirement?

Per Playing At The World, that is definitely OSR.

>Core rolls made on a d20?

This being a staple of OSR.

>How far can they tweak saves before they are no longer "OSR"?

The type of save, or number as a result of level advancement?

> HP scaling with level?

As far as I have read, I've seen this from the beginning.

> Other sacred cows I haven't mentioned but you think of as necessary.

Boiling it down, you must be asking if a Braunstein is OSR?

>>48589807
No solution. Therefore not worth mentioning.

Anon is about impersonal objective discussion. Not your personal pride.

>>48589837
Literally states "RPG lexicon"

Anon hand-waves with even more evasive ambiguity.

Your trolling is in fine form. I salute you.

*applause*

>>48589740
>Can you help?
Not overly much, no. I've looked over games described as narrativist, but I've never played any. This is partly because I'm a control freak as a GM and an immersionist as a player, so I really don't really like the idea of the players having too much control over the game outside of their own characters' actions. And the games seemed to all share that "influence things from a meta/story perspective" approach. I don't know that this is necessary for a game to qualify as narrativist--I suppose you could have a top-down approach to exploring character narratives--but it seems to be present in the narrative games I've seen to varying degrees. And giving the players more narrative control does seem to be antithetical to the sort of pre-planned railroad you see in Dragonlance.

Still, it could be said that Dragonlance is focused on character narrative more than is typical for OSR stuff, so if you go back to narrativism as a concept rather than narrativism as seen in practice, maybe you could call GMs that run games like Dragonlance "narrativist". But how things work in practice is going to influence people's understandings of things and it's why most people understand OSR to be in the family of old school D&D and not just any old school game (despite what a strict reading of the actual words that comprise the term indicate).

>>48589864
Of course. Otherwise, the terms you use so carelessly wouldn't matter to begin with.

>>48589983
He was probably only pointing it out because the poster in question was using accusations about behavior in his argument "don't go pedantically correcting others" -- when the person he was talking to wasn't the one doing it. That person makes personal actions relevant by bringing them into the debate.

Not that it matters. The guy seems to be a troll.

>>48590024
Be careful anon, your evasion is showing

>>48589717
I don't think it needs to be any one thing. Rather, it's a constellation of things that can vary in any one particular way, but which has to have a similar composition overall. You could have an OSR game without levels. You could have an OSR game without hit points. You could have an OSR game without classes. You could have an OSR game without magic. But you can't have an OSR game without classes, levels, hit points or magic.

>>48590086
Which is bad. . .if we're actually trying to get anywhere in discussion.

Apart from everyone else's circlejerk, >48590024's honesty was quite refreshing.

>>48589717
is 5e an OSR?

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>>48590086
>your evasion is showing
My training is not yet complete.

>>48590203
No. But it takes some hints.

>>48590203
No, but they did manage to blend the qualities of the previous editions together nicely and you can run classic modules with it with only minor tweaks

>>48588061
>>48589515
>>48589535
>>48588061
>>48590024
Can someone please elaborate on what specifically these Dragonlance (or is it post-Dragonlance) modules did? I've only really played 3E stuff (unfortunately).

>>48590403

To sum it up:

>Choo! Choo! ALL ABOARD!


They were "story focused" not in the way that you have games where the rules are supposed to help build interesting stories, oh no. They were "story focused" as in "here's the story. Tell it to the players."

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>>48584870
Bumping this question. Would love to hear what kind of fun stuff you guys have given your players, I need inspiration.

>>48590403
Dragonlance and other modules that followed in its steps changed the way the game was assumed to be played.

Dragonlance started the trend of modules being pre-written set pieces, where the players were to step into the role of characters in what was essentially a barely-interactive novel where the emphasis was on following the plot and doing what you were supposed to do, with the outcomes more or less pre-determined.

It was very much like "you're going to be the heroes of this story! -- no, you're not writing your own story, you're going to be the heroes of this story. The one we've already written for you. Play along."

>>48590508
This. And it was incredibly popular. As-in "best selling ever."

So they kept cranking 'em out ad nauseum.

>>48590203
I like the "is this compatible with old-school D&D" definition of OSR, so I have to say no. Outside of that, I have a hard time accepting anything with numerical skills (as opposed to proficiencies) or feat structures as OSR simply because it changes the way fundamental mechanics are assumed to work.

The moment I have to add skills to an NPC's stat block, I'm not interested in it as an OSR work.

>>48589281
It's got pretty solid math in the THAC0 department - I don't know if it's intentional or unintentional, but I like that it's not actually impossible to hit someone unless you've got a cursed weapon. Like, literally - the worst melee to-hit you can get is THAC0 19, and the best you can get with magic armor and Bless is AC -1. Plus getting -1AC 1/3rd of the time from your +3 shield.

You're really hard to hit, but you can be hit - and they didn't even need to make a "always hit on nat 20" rule.

It's weird little mathematical oddities that make me like it, honestly.

It's also a pretty damn lightweight game once you actually get down to it - you could probably sum up the entirety of the gameplay rules in a relatively small flowchart if you wanted to, assuming that you left out the random treasure/encounter/castle inhabitant charts.

However, there's also not that much that it does that B/X or AD&D doesn't also do. I just like it because, well, gaming archeology.

It's worth taking a peek at, though. Just make sure to not get too confused about it, and to skim through Chainmail first.

>>48590601
Have you ever tried playing it with the chainmail combat rules?

>>48590501
Not as much in the way of magic items, but the party's Wizard is currently riding on the back of a 7' Yeti shooting magic missiles everywhere. He's pretty pleased about that.

>>48590601

Don't forget all the rules for running away. Those didn't get into later editions, which is a shame.

>>48590508
>>48590536
Is there a particularly egregious example I could read to get an idea about this? And maybe a run-of-the-mill OSR one for contrast?
Not because I'm too lazy to google, I'm just afraid I'll end up reading something that isn't representative.

>>48589339
That's because people like Bombadil. He's whimsical and strange and makes Middle Earth feel like it has some mystery to it.

>>48589717
>Does it need to have vancian spellcasting?
Nyet. It doens't need spellcasting at all, really, but you could make it at-will or point-based or time-based with long rituals and that wouldn't necessarily stop it being OSR.
>What if they change, increase, or decrease the number of ability scores?
And still have ability scores as a concept? No conflict there.
>>AC a requirement?
Not necessary - it's a somewhat poor fit as-is, being IIRC designed for a naval wargame and all.
>>Core rolls made on a d20?
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE GET OUT 3EEABOO SCUM
>>How far can they tweak saves before they are no longer "OSR"?
As long as they actually get better rather than WotC's scaling DCs I'm fine with them, be it remodeling into Reflex/Will/Fort or a one-save system.
>> HP scaling with level?
Not really necessary, although it depends on how it's done. I can see the argument for keeping everyone at 1st-3rd level durability, although I don't agree.
>> Other sacred cows I haven't mentioned but you think of as necessary
Really, all I'm after is something that's recognizably based on some OD&D variant and has a similar type of gameplay. Old School Hack changes a fuckton but still looks recognizably BD&D, for instance, but the experience system changes a lot in how it's played - I lump it in as "OSR-adjacent" since it doesn't actually play similarly.

>>48590744
A great OSR example is goign to be B2, keep on the borderlands. The players are adventurers at a keep. There's stuff in the surrounding countryside to explore, and a giant dungeon to crawl through. Stuff can happen along the way, according to both encounters built in the caves and random encounter rolls.. but there is no "plot" per se, even if there is something of a reveal about what's going on in the area that could be construed as a climax.

For Dragonlance, I'm not sure what would be a quintessential example. I'd have go to digging to remember. Maybe another anon has one handy?

>>48590758
> Core rolls made on a d20?
> REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE GET OUT 3EEABOO SCUM
...Aren't almost all rolls in Basic and AD&D made on a d20? at least the core ones -- attack rolls, saving throws, ability checks...

>>48590744
Compare one of the later DL-series with B2.

>>48590806
Yes. I don't know what that anon is on but if it makes you have meltdowns like that, I don't want any.

>>48588803
I'm just a passerby, but "the games that call themselves narrativist are nothing like you think narrativist games are" is a pretty "objective source".

It's not "go to New York", because that's not what the issue is. You're saying that narrative games are all about focused plots and railroading, when... as he says, the narrativist games--the ones that sell themselves in that way--are about the kind of emergent narrative that OSR lauds.

>>48590403
They followed along with the story from the novels, or at least I think they did. I never read the novels, so I can't say for sure, but they did have a sequence of events they wanted things to follow. And the main characters--*their* main characters that you had to play--had roles to fill, so you couldn't let them leave or die. And if somebody died, you were supposed to make it an obscure death, so that it could later be revealed that they weren't dead after all and had just rolled down the icy embankment and later awakened and limped to safety or some shit.

>>48590685
They did, though! B/X has them in the combat section, IIRC, under something like "Chases and Evasion" or something like that. They even simplified the overcomplicated 90%/50%/10% thing for throwing gold/food at intelligent/semi-intelligent/animal monsters.

>>48590628
No, sadly. To be honest, I'm not really sure how the fuck you'd make the fantastic monsters work in that system. I think I'd prefer just using the man-to-man combat rules with the ACS tables.

>>48590806
d6s, Xd6 rolls and d100s also show up pretty frequently.

The problem I have is more the implication that using a d20 to roll is essential to the OSR experience - it's not really. You could use a d12 or 2d6 or 3d6 or whatever as long as you made the system mathematically rigorous.

Fuck, as a player you could run OD&D entirely with d6s with the right hacks and it would work fine. Better, perhaps, depending on your Chainmail opinions.

The frogposting was just shitposting.

>>48589407
My point is that it's inaccurate to what you do, isn't it?
You're basically doing the same thing from a different angle. Having a plan isn't some evil thing. Giving your players a story isn't badwrong. And that's one of the attitudes that keeps me from even trying OSR.

This notion that anything but OSR is railroading and wrong.

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>>48576248
Ok /osrg/, lend me a hand with some firearms rules.

Been working on a kind of post science-fiction setting about weird sciency ruins and technological cargo cults based on the LotFP ruleset. While the musketry and single-shot rifles of desert regions is pretty easy to do, I have run aground trying to come up with good rules for the automatic weapons and occasional tank of the scattered industrial fortress-towns.

My current system for automatic weapojs is that, while they have by default low damage and lowered To Hit chance, every additional bullet fired adds +1 to hit AND +1 damage. Does this work? Is there a better way?

The tanks I am entirely stuck on how to do. I doubt just inflating their AC will be a good solution.

>>48590782
>>48590825
Thanks for the recommendations. Come to think of it, I did play one module that was kind of like what B2 sounds like back when 3E was fresh and the FLGS still had AD&D stuff in stock. I didn't have the rules for it and I was too much of a newbie to attempt conversions, so we used rock, paper, scissors as the only method for resolution and it was still some of the most fun I've had roleplaying.
>>48590897
Wow, that sounds so patently horrible.

>>48590754
Nobody likes Tom Bombadil. The people who claim to like him secretly hate themselves and embrace him only because on some level they think they deserve to suffer. Bombadil is suffering.

>>48590886
I'm not that anon, and I agree with your post entirely (at least without having read the context), but I would be careful to make it clear that so-called "narrativist" games tend to give players more story control, be less focused on the players themselves overcoming challenges and managing resources, and in some cases have mechanics that directly reflect narrative goals (for example, Savage Worlds' interludes or Misspent Youth being divided into scenes, with the players having worse and worse chances of succeeding as they approached the big climactic scene, and then better again during the falling action at the end of a session, and with scenes being framed around individual characters' goals and relationships).

>>48590946
I had bought the module because, being a newb, I just saw that it was "for D&D".

>>48590897
The first four modules were written before the first novel, why is why they're less 'roady than the other 8.

>>48586200
neat, although that cover art is atrocious

>>48590952
Are you serious? Bombadil and the Scouring of the Shire, the two big things which were (probably rightly) cut from the movies, were my two favorite things from Lord of the Rings.

>>48590886
> You're saying that narrative games are all about focused plots and railroading, when... as he says, the narrativist games--the ones that sell themselves in that way--are about the kind of emergent narrative that OSR lauds.
You've got your positions backwards.

I was advocating that the games that call themselves narrativist were NOT about railroading, but rather about player-driven narratives. At least, all of the ones I have seen. I'm open to be wrong if someone knows of popular forge-esc games that came out that were about DM railroads. The other person was declaring that I present some authority to appeal to outside of actually just looking at the things themselves to decide for themselves.

Hence the "new york" bit. It's a thing. It exists. You can read about it or go look at it. I can even give you directions. If you don't want to investigate it for yourself, and the observations of a third party aren't enough for you, then I can't help you.

>>48590946
>Wow, that sounds so patently horrible.
They had a colorful setting and some cool ideas, so maybe you could use them as seeds for an adventure, ignoring the railroady bullshit, but yeah, the "follow along with the story at home" principle on which the operated was pretty terrible.

File: tom bombadil.jpg (54KB, 300x355px) Image search: [Google]

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>>48590990
Extraneous Mary Sue with no relevance to the story pops out of nowhere and Mary Sues? Also, have you never seen this pic before? There's a reason it gets circulated.

>>48590975
Ah. I did not know that. I remember the 1st module being decent, but each successive one being more railroady as they further established the role of characters within the larger story. I thought it was pretty bad by module 3 or 4, but it's been a really long time since I looked at them, so I could be wrong.

>>48590933

I haven't weighed in on this, mostly because I'm not even really sure what is at stake in this, and having read through the Forge's GNS article, I'm really skeptical anyone in the thread has. I don't have a well developed opinion on GNS, so I'm not even going to bother commenting on it until I've had time to digest it.

In my current game, I have a plan for NPCs and nations, and what they're doing to do over the next couple of in-game years. Whether or not the PCs interact with them is up to them. When we started the game, I had a whole town written up, NPCs, locations, possible subplots they could engage in.

Had they ridden away and gone somewhere else, I would have been disappointed, but I would have rolled with it and let them do it. I'd have looked at which plots had wide-ranging consequences, and decided what happened.

And then I would have begun writing new stuff for whatever location they ended up in, if any. I'm not "giving" my players a story. There are events they can become entangled in, events that will affect them and others no matter what they do, and whether they choose to pursue or care about such things is up to them.

The story is produced by their choices and interactions, not my writing a linear plot and using a combination of the carrot and stick methods of encouraging them to follow it.

That's not only how I play OSR, but how I approach running RPGs in general.

>>48591053
>Mary Sue
He's a bizarre, almost alien, weird old man who lives in the forest, and is meant to show you just how much the characters don't know about the world they live in. He didn't take over the book and run shit until the end. He dropped in briefly and acted all jolly in an almost unsettling way, and then disappeared. A major part of what LotR was about, was the setting. The story is pretty clearly in large part an excuse to make them travel through the setting and show it off.

And that image gets circulated because people think it's funny. You're the only person I've met who's genuinely butthurt about the existence of Tom Bombadil in the story.

>>48591022
This. Outside of DL1-14 (5 is a sourcebook-thing, 11 is a board wargame, 15 & 16 are books of short adventure seeds), DL is a fine setting. Even some of the main-sequence modules like DL3 are fine.

I'd even go so far as to say that DL3 is actually pretty good.

>>48590955
I don't get what you mean about being less focused on the players themselves overcoming challenges.

Also, I'm not a fan of Savage Worlds (Dogs in the Vineyard is the only game of summing up multiple funny dice that I've enjoyed), explain this system in more depth? It sounds like playable flashbacks or something.

>>48591120
I don't like LotR enough to be butthurt, but I found Bombadil to be an annoying waste of time who detracted from the overall feel of the books.

>>48590920
> No, sadly. To be honest, I'm not really sure how the fuck you'd make the fantastic monsters work in that system. I think I'd prefer just using the man-to-man combat rules with the ACS tables.
Man to Man and Troops are great systems. Fantasy combat is somewhat lame by comparison.

>>48590933
> And that's one of the attitudes that keeps me from even trying OSR.
> I'm not going to try a style of gaming because a dude who in no way impacts my gaming experience or ability to play has an opinion I don't like.

>>48591128
Explain Savage Worlds in general in more depth? Or the Interludes?

When there is a lull in the story, the GM has a player draw a card from a regular deck. Depending on the suit, heart, diamond, club, or spade, the player tells a story in-character, about his or her experiences with love, desire, tragedy, or victory respectively. In exchange, that player gets a small mechanical benefit to be used later (a benny, which is basically a reroll, or an adventure card if the GM is using them, which itself has a kind of narrative thing on it, for example, maybe an old flame of the character's drops back into his or her life at an opportune moment).

>>48590935

I would give the tank AC (but not a lot) and HP based on facings. The AC reflects the accuracy necessary to hit and damage the armor, but the HP is the actually armor/underlying structure itself. Puncturing this would cause all kinds of damage to the crew and interior mechanisms, many of which are quite fragile.

Personally, I'd make a couple of tables depending on the side attacked, with different chances (really unlikely to strike the engine when you're attacking from in front of the tank, for example). Each internal component might have between 1-5 "hits" before complete failure. Crew would have 1 "hit" each.

Antitank weapons would have a damage die they roll against tank armor, and also a number of hits they apply to internal components (say, d6s do 1 hit, d8s do 2 hits, d10s do 3 hits).

You wouldn't need to make tanks huge piles of HP this way. They are more or less impervious to small arms fire (which is not 100% realistic, but maybe a 20 with small arms would allow you to roll damage against the armor, but only allow 1 internal hit if the HP on that location is gone).

>>48591110
>I don't have a well developed opinion on GNS, so I'm not even going to bother commenting on it until I've had time to digest it.
I'd recommend reading through some non-Forge GNS stuff as well. Even they eventually gave up on the system, as it's kind of made up bullshit?

>>48591120


This.

There is a tremendous amount to gain from both a story AND a tabletop RPG game as well from having weird or unexplained things occur. It gives the world more weight, more mystery, and makes the game less like a bunch of numbers on your sheets.

For example, say that your entire setting is based around that idea that death is permanent. There is no magic or god that can bring people back from the dead. Even the greatest sorcerers can only sustain a dying person to try and save them, but once the soul has passed it can never be recovered.

Then, you met Jerry. Jerry is a random farmer somewhere who died 3 years ago, but now lives with his wife again happily.

He was dead and buried, but then one day he just showed back up. They dug up his grave to make sure he wasn't a wraith or a doppleganger, but the corpse was gone. Jerry had returned. Beyond being the subject of many sorcerous researchers and even divinites came out to see it, Jerry is just fine living his quiet life. When pressed, Jerry's wife will just say that when he died she prayed and wished very hard that he would come back, and he did.

That's it. No further explanation needed. Maybe the players go looking into it to try and find the truth, maybe they don't. But this is far more interesting then autistically making sure that the entire setting follows this one specific rule.

>>48587124
I don't remember how to find it anymore, but a guy named Benoist on the RPGSite forums wrote up what I still think is a pretty solid guide to how he thinks and works when designing a megadungeon.

It's not so good as a point-by-point checklist, though, so don't read it just as a guide to follow, more like inspiration for the underlying concepts (if that makes sense and doesn't just sound like pretentious drivel).

>>48591305
To add on to this: sometimes, you don't need to have a "truth" behind it. After all, wouldn't finding out the answer to the mystery of Jerry the Farmer just ruin the whole thing?

>>48591476
Here's a repost of that thread. I'm pretty sure it's the one you're looking for, at least.
>http://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=61829

Also worth checking out is Melan's little essay on dungeon linearity:
>http://www.darkshire.net/jhkim/rpg/dnd/dungeonmaps.html

>>48590935
>My current system for automatic weapojs is that, while they have by default low damage and lowered To Hit chance, every additional bullet fired adds +1 to hit AND +1 damage. Does this work?
That seems a bit predictable. Some games have a set number of bullets for different firing options: single shot, three-round burst, nine-bullet full auto, or something like that. Then you could just attach values to each.

Alternately, you could randomly roll how many bullets hit on a successful attack roll. If you shoot one bullet, you obviously hit with that bullet when you make your attack roll, but when you fire 6 bullets, you roll 1d6 to see how many hit. Hell, you could take the lesser of two rolls (roll two d6s and take the smaller result) if you wanted to skew things towards one (and make firing more bullets grant somewhat diminishing returns). Then, maybe you add +1 damage for each additional bullet that hits.

Some games also have different firing options within full auto. You have suppression fire or strafe. You can fire a burst at a single target or small area. Those sorts of things.

>>48591570
>Alternately, you could randomly roll how many bullets hit on a successful attack roll.
One simple method I've seen is that every X points above what's neccessary to hit means that you get another bullet hit, hence +Y damage. So, say, you attack someone that you need to roll a 14 or better to hit and you roll a 16, so you get, say, +2 damage.

>>48591570
Another thing you could do is to have a set number of rounds fired by a burst, doing X damage, but if you miss by only 1 or 2 points, the target still takes a stray bullet for reduced damage.

>>48589011
I would have liked to see bestiary entries for monsters drawn from 15th century lore and actual late medieval/early modern bestiaries as one concrete example.

Sure, I can look that stuff up myself and come up with lore and stats off-the-cuff, but having someone go through stuff like Pliny and figure it out would've been a great time-saver.

Other tools that would have been helpful would be generators, tables, charts. Again, I can always come up with this stuff on my own, but having ones that fit with the intended flow/setting of the rules helps a lot. The Summon table was great - more stuff like that.

By comparison ACKS is chock full of helpful ways to break down your campaign - there's methods of building settings, setting market classes for cities, and other rudimentary approaches. Further splats give you methods of generating custom spells, magical research, or building player classes.

Sure, not everyone might find a use for those approaches, but it's a product I'm much more willing to fork over cash for as they represent solid guidelines that give me a check on assumptions.

>>48591542
>To add on to this: sometimes, you don't need to have a "truth" behind it. After all, wouldn't finding out the answer to the mystery of Jerry the Farmer just ruin the whole thing?

Yeah, this is a good point. But you have to be careful, if Jerry the Farmer is going to be important and show up a lot, you should probably have an answer in mind, especially if this sort of thing might happen again, because you don't want to end up in a situation where you made up a bunch of random stuff without thinking, and now have to fit the pieces together somehow, a la The X-Files series finale. That was a clusterfuck precisely because they thought they could skate by on "IT IS A MYSTERY" for way too much of the shit they made up.

>>48591661
Yeah, it doesn't work too well when it's something that reappears again and again. If Jerry is like Tom Bombadil, where he appears once and gets mentioned twice IIRC, one of those times being when they say that he can't help with the Ring on account of being a weird-ass lackadaisical forest spirit, then that's no problem. But if, say, Jerry makes a reappearance or perhaps even gets resurrected again? Yeah, the players will want an answer there. (There's also a corollary where if the thing the "truth" is about is big enough it stops mattering again - a sun being permanently eclipsed becomes just a part of the setting rather than a mystery to be solved.)

Perhaps it's not so much that you don't need a "truth" as much as it is that you don't need a DEFINITE "truth" - make up some reason that makes sense now, and later down the line if they didn't find out that "truth" you can surreptitiously change it to something more appropriate for the situation. Perhaps at the time you intended for him to be an angelic doppelganger, but since then your campaign went into a pretty gonzo vibe so you decide to bring him back as a robot and/or clone.

It's like secret doors - if you want players to find out, don't hide it, but if you're alright with them missing something forever then hide it all you want. Just remember not to put hours of work into something they might never see.

Also, of course, if the players come up with some theory that's leagues better than anything you could've come up with then you should probably note that down and consider having that be the "truth". It might even make 'em feel better since goddammit they knew all along (or, alternatively, "my idea was good enough to be used/better than the DM's" - depends on how transparent you are at the time.)

>>48591645
With LotFP at least, the Ref's guide actually -was- all about how to run a weird horror game. How to make it feel genre appropriate, which was the important part. It also gave advice on writing and running adventures, using the real world as your setting, how to weird-horror the real world, and also some guides on making weird settings up. It discusses how to make NPCs and some advice on playing them, monsters and advice on making them, and magic items. The latter two have examples attached. It then has a whole section on other OSR games (including the original D&D games) and how to reverse-engineer for compatibility.

I can see an argument for a 17th century bestiary drawn from folklore as a neat idea, but I don't actually think it's appropriate for LotFP. The game isn't trying to be Brother's Grimm. It's Call of Cthulhu with dungeons. So I can see why a decision could be made that giving you tools and guidelines on how to make unique monsters would be more useful and thematically appropriate than just giving a book full of monster options.

I can see why the other bits would be useful, though LotFP really isn't a system that has a lot of room or use for other classes to make their niche unless they are radically different, but the main selling point of OSR is that you can bolt on whatever from where-ever. I wouldn't argue that every new OSR game needs that level of detail and back-end support for logistics and hacking when that territory is frequently covered. It's nice to have, but at least for me not necessary. I don't know that a more robust economic system, for instance, would really do anything to add to my enjoyment of LotFP.

>>48591110
>I'm not even really sure what is at stake in this
Me either. It seems to be an argument that "Narrativist" games means railroading and tons of prep. Which... as someone who plays what I like to think are narrative games (though not systems) and yet doesn't really prep all that much and mostly determines what to do by asking "so what do you want to do in this game", I find it a little disingenuous to go with that old "OSR is best because there's no railroading" schtick.

>>48591181
>> I'm not going to try a style of gaming because a dude who in no way impacts my gaming experience or ability to play has an opinion I don't like.
No, I've tried to get into a style of gaming, but the culture surrounding it seems to be very unwelcoming. For instance, your post.
I want an old fashioned SNES jRPG feeling game, but apparently if I don't do everything randomly and make no plans and do anything but play an archaic hack of D&D with four different mechanics, I'm doing it wrong.

>>48591197
I meant the interludes. Sounds neat. More games need flashbacks. Also sounds like it encourages you to have a backstory, or better yet to think of one as you go along. I like improving characters. I once played Star Wars and made shit up on the fly using Wookieepedia. Fun way to make a character.

>>48591542
>>48591305
I feel like that works in a very specific type of game.

>>48592085
> For instance, your post.
My post was calling you out on listening to dipshits rather than just playing the game you want to play.

> but apparently if I don't do everything randomly and make no plans and do anything but play an archaic hack of D&D with four different mechanics, I'm doing it wrong.
Case in point. People can argue all they want about what they like and don't like, but if you're letting other people's tastes prevent you from playing a game you're interested in, that's on you.

Go grab whatever edition of whatever game you want to play and play it. If someone doesn't like it, tell them to get fucked. No one's words prevent your actions.

how do you manage players wanting to dodge or hitting specific body parts?

also, do you ask players to create a story? do your players roleplay their characters?

>>48592202
>how do you manage players wanting to dodge or hitting specific body parts?

Roll twice. If both attack rolls hit, they can strike the body part they want. (If both attacks fail, they'll have overextend and get into some kind of trouble, usually the enemy gets a free shot)
I use the same thing for "feats." Wanna trip a guy? Two attack rolls. Both hit? Deal damage and trip him. One hits? Pick A or B. Neither hits? Look out, he's on to you.

>>48592202
>how do you manage players wanting to dodge or hitting specific body parts?
They dodge when they don't get hit, they can hit a specific body part when they've gotten a monsters hp to 0.

>also, do you ask players to create a story?
No, I just let them loose in the world sort of. I guess the agreement is that I let them go have cool adventures and they'll play.

>do your players roleplay their characters?
If they feel like it.

>>48592202
>do your players roleplay their characters?
I've noticed this is a thing in OSR games. I'm playing a game right now with an OSR fan and it's... Not bad, but I feel like it's not for me? Lots of talking and discussing but not much roleplaying.

>>48592202

>ask players to create a story

In what way? Their interactions with NPCs and events create the story. Do you mean a backstory? I'd prefer it, but I don't force anyone to.

They usually create at least a paragraph. Some do more.

>do your players roleplay their characters?

Yes. Some of the get really into characters, and some don't. There's sometimes out of character discussion, but this is fairly normal.

Most of the time, if they're discussing in character knowledge, they make a point of getting their characters together in the same room.

>>48592488

*Some of them really get into character, rather.

I probably should have given that a proofread.

Any good ways to kickstart a campaign? I ask because OSR seems to really boil down to just 'go to dungeon, get money'. But what's a good impetus or starting point for the players? WHY do they decide to go to dungeons?

>>48592575
>WHY do they decide to go to dungeons?
For Glory and Gold!!

>>48592575
>WHY do they decide to go to dungeons?
Shit's expensive.

>>48592488
>In what way? Their interactions with NPCs and events create the story. Do you mean a backstory? I'd prefer it, but I don't force anyone to.
As the person who isn't an OSR fan but is trying it, I think he means more along the lines of "so do you guys wanna rescue a princess or fight a dragon or anything?"
But at least from some of the posts in this thread I'm getting the impression that a lot of OSR folks dislike that. You interact with NPCs and the world and that's it, no "plot" at all. As >>48592575 said it seems to boil down to "go to a dungeon, get money" and anything other than that is random interactions, not thought out long term plots.

In fact, some of the OSR literature I've read seems to discourage any of the sort of "save the world" shit that a lot of people are interested in doing in fantasy games.

>>48592575

A churchman has gathered the PCs in order to retrieve a holy relic for the church. It is the gold encrusted severed hand of St. [Suitably Pious], and, if the rumors and various bits of historical information can be believed, it is contained in the crumbling ruin of a heathen holy site.

Not only would the party be able to keep whatever heathen treasures remain as payment (barring an appropriate tithe to the church, and any lawful taxes), the church will also provide them with an indulgence for each person.

>>48592575
I always start a new LotFP campaign by asking some variant of "What in your character's life went so long that this is what they are doing?"

Instead of trying to tell the player why their character is doing this, you let them tell you -- and in the process, they fill out the character a little more.

>>48592678

I don't think that "save the world" is impossible with OSR, but I don't think its something you intentionally set out to do.

For example, maybe in the scenario here >>48592759 the PCs discover a moldy journal penned by a long-dead heathen priest, whose plans include infiltrating the religion that is trying to wipe them out (the religion the PCs belong to).

The churchman sends the PCs out to other heathen holy sites, and gives them instructions that they must bring back any other evidence they find that might corroborate the tome (and meanwhile, the churchman begins making inquiries, trying to see if this infiltration actually occurred and what their goals might be).

The PCs can just ignore, and say "No, we'll take that indulgence and go. This is your problem." Or they can work with him. It doesn't ultimately matter, but maybe just maybe the conspiracy is real, and if they pursue it (or not) their religion's hierarchy is destroyed (assuming they don't prevent it) and the ancient heathen god is reborn/unleashed from its astral prison/whathaveyou.

I would discourage setting up OSR games out the gate as "save the world" plots, because PCs die. A lot. And, there's no guarantee that the PCs care all that much, and... are you willing to pull the trigger if the PCs don't save the world?

I am. But that's just me.

>>48592202
Roll attack. If you hit, you do half damage and whatever special effect you wanted (trip, disarm, etc.). If you crit, you do full damage and special effect.

>>48592888
>are you willing to pull the trigger if the pcs don't save the world?

I recently had the entire multiverse end because the players all died when trying to prevent an invasion of an endless stream of eldritch monstrosities that exist in the aether between multiverses from being allowed into Sigil via a statue that shouldn't exist on any plane whatsoever.

This includes all the past campaigns they'd taken part in, as an NPC from one of those campaigns had gotten stuck in Sigil and was hoping for a way to go home.

They were told by a LN religious sect that the multiverse was being backed up in a way that the players recognized as like backing up a hard drive, and heroes implanted in the backup multiverse, in case they failed. But in reality, they were the heroes who had been created to save the backup multiverse, and the sect simply believed this would happen because it would have created some weird shit with time for anyone within the multiverse to know that it wasn't the original

If the party had succeeded, the God of Doors whose worship was banned was to be resurrected. He was going to bless their souls such that they would be reborn into infinite lives past, present, and future in other worlds whenever a champion was needed.

I'm a sucker for weird meta shit like that, though, and my party agreed it would have been awesome.

Right now I'm working on a setting inspired by Nehwon, which is meant to be the seed from which a multiplicity of universes will be born. The players are going to hexcrawl and their successes and failures will shape the development of parallel earths.