/osrg/ OSR General - Dungeon Design Edition

Dungeons don't always need to make sense. Towers of mad wizards need to be nonsensical and unpredictable.

The idea that everything needs to make sense and be 'realistic' is a modern view that does not apply to original D&D. D&D is not a physics simulator.

>>49915536
No one's arguing for physics simulation, but consistency in theming can have great results. A necromancer's tower has a different flavour than a diviner's tower or a conjurer's tower.

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Also a hexcrawl seed question for the new thread:

Who - or what - is the merchant who's set up shop in this dungeon? What kind of dungeons does the merchant favour, what is for sale (and what is required in exchange) and where do they tend to set up shop? (ex. the entryway, near a water source, etc.)

>>49915683
I agree with this.

Ofcourse it shouldn't have to make "real world sense"; It's a fantasy game. But stuff like your wandering monster tables etc., especially in bigger dungeons, need an internal logic that they adhere by.

If you can achieve that, your player get an added sense of immersion: "Oh crap it's time for a wandering monster check and we are still in the crazy medusa layer, we are so screwed".

http://pastebin.com/L2VAb4NX

Requesting for comments for my rough idea regarding handling combat in OD&D. My goal is to get rid of the d20 Alternate Combat System and reference tables but still utilize the existing monster stats like HD and AC. I also would like to make the combat scale from one-on-one fighting to skirmishes with 20 or so combatants on each side with no problems.

I still haven't decided on how to differentiate between weapons and how to handle missile combat. Because monsters can potentially score multiple hits with one attack, this kind of combat would be quite deadly especially for the lightly armored PCs like Magic-Users and I would probably allow MUs to wear non-metal body armor.

>>49915259
>very linear and bad
kek

>>49915536
It's a matter of having a system for the players to interact with. The dungeon can be nonsensically layed out and stocked but adjacent rooms should still be related somehow, to preserve player agency. The door to the west must indicate some difference from the door to the east, otherwise there isn't any actual choice made, just an arbitrary decision.

>>49916772
>The door to the west must indicate some difference from the door to the east, otherwise there isn't any actual choice made, just an arbitrary decision.
Initially when exploring the level it might not be apparent at all what lies behind any given door. That's a big part of exploring the unknown and that by itself has tremendous potential for entertainment value.

When one room in a wondrous dungeon might be a bath house with magical pools and the room next to it a nature-themed cavernous chamber inhabited by blood-sucking gnomish vampires, trying to tie everything together into a coherent whole is a futile effort at best.

I'm not saying all dungeons should be magical worlds like that but some of them should.

>>49916772
>The door to the west must indicate some difference from the door to the east,
And it doesn't always need to be a visual difference. You can have a character listen the muffled voices from each door and decide which one to take, or peek the keyhole/under the door, or anything really.

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Bump.

Also does someone have actual play experience with any kind of mass combat rules for D&D?

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>>49915259
Any good supplements I should use for my AD&D Greyhawk (2nd) campaign? Anything that will "enhance" combat?

So my campaign's PCs have leveled up quite a bit, and they no longer get hurt much from battles so they charge in more often, slaying everything. What should I do now to challenge them? What's the "canon" thing to do?

>>49918336
Throw more and bigger enemies at them. You know, dozens of gnolls and some nasties thrown in to the mix would probably do the trick. Just a handful of monsters won't do it.

>>49918370
I've tried to do that, sort of. It's more dangerous but the battles take forever now. Is that supposed to happen?

>>49918411
>Is that supposed to happen?
Well, it's not really supposed to happen but that's what happens when you try to use the now default d20 combat system for anything bigger than a small skirmish. There's a reason why the d20 system was originally referred to as the Alternative Combat System. It's not meant for mass combat.

Old school D&D is a game in which high level PCs are expected govern strongholds and even baronies and to lead troops into combat and face off with armies of men and monsters. That comes from the wargaming roots of D&D.

AD&D pushed the game towards the modern trend of making the adventuring party the be-all and end-all of D&D. To avoid tedium in this new system less monsters have to be pitted against the party. That means the monsters need to be made progressively more powerful the higher the PCs get and for that you'll find lots of nasty things in the AD&D Monster Manual.

Basically if you want to stick to d20 the only way to make things harder for the party without making things needlessly tedious is to use few but big baddies.

>>49918632
Thanks, this is informative. I guess what I should do now is pit them against a lone, very strong opponent? Are there any non-combat challenges the players should be facing at this point?

Also, since i don't know much about Chainmail and OD&D, what was the original combat system like? Can it be used it retroclones still or is it too far out there?

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>>49918632
How did old school D&D handle large mass battles?

>>49918800

You played Chainmail, as far as I understand.

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>>49915703
He's a quiet, non-violent Kenku who sells stuff taken off the bodies of former (dead) adventurers in the dungeon. Usually trades in the dungeons entryway (cause he likes watching the animal life outside) but can be sometimes be found locked in a small room by those asshole Kobolds who push him around.

He'll trade for food or anything pretty and will give you a discount if you kill that Kobold bully motherfucker Snozud inside; he's making his life a living hell.

>>49918694
>I guess what I should do now is pit them against a lone, very strong opponent?
Sometimes sure, but don't make it the default. A single powerful monster like a giant could make for a good villain. Just look for a balance where the players have engaging tactical considerations while keeping encounters manageable. You as the DM playing intelligent monsters effectively also goes a long way to increase the danger level of seemingly simple encounters. Use tactics and tricks to the monsters' advantage whenever they're intelligent enough to do so.

>Are there any non-combat challenges the players should be facing at this point?
This is mostly up to your players. What do they want to do within the campaign world that you're creating?

>>49918821
Fukken sweet. Where can I find a group of RPGers who want to play a game like that?

>>49918898
>You as the DM playing intelligent monsters effectively also goes a long way to increase the danger level of seemingly simple encounters. Use tactics and tricks to the monsters' advantage whenever they're intelligent enough to do so.
I'll try to do this. They recently fought against some pretty strong mindless opponents and seemed to survive mostly through good rolls, and they never really took tactics into consideration. I guess It's time to drop a clever group of bandits on them or something.

>This is mostly up to your players. What do they want to do within the campaign world that you're creating?
I guess what I meant more was, is it okay to throw save-or-die situations on them yet? But I guess that stuff's relative too.

Just bought the wizard softcover of DCC. What am I in for, /osrg/?

>>49918985
Gonzo, fun-as-hell nights. You'll have more memorable sessions with DCC than any other system.

>>49918753
This is fucking sweet, man.

>>49918800
With Chainmail. Basically units are given a classification like light foot, heavy foot or light horse etc., troops do some maneuvering, cupfuls of d6s are rolled and then stuff dies.

Nothing stops one from playing dungeon encounters like this too even though the maneuvering aspect is probably not going to come into play as much because whole armies aren't involved.

>>49918821

There's also War Machine and Battlesystem for Basic and AD&D, respectively.

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>>49919166
Thanks.

>>49918753
>>49919382
You are great and you should feel great.

>>49919221
>>49919234
Has anyone done something similar with DCC?

>>49913897
>>49915259
Reposting this for the new thread.

The Darkness Beneath
http://www69.zippyshare.com/v/awikev6Y/file.html

Alright, I did it (mostly). I'm still missing Fight On! 14. I bookmarked the each level and slapped the map on the very first and last pages. I also put a short note page at the beginning, and blank pages for the missing levels.
I'm pretty certain that there are errors in here somewhere, so reply to this and I'll try to fix 'em.

>>49919221
>>49919234
Don't forget that OD&D supplement! Swords & Spells or something?

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>>49915259
I made a thread about this the other day, but it quickly devolved into a really bizarre argument about Swedish politics or something, so I'll post it here.

I've been itching to get a more low fantasy, gritty RPG going for a while now, and Torchbearer is something I've had my eyes on for a while.

What kind of experience have you guys had with it? It sounds like a barrel full of monkey to run, but I'm worried that my players might not have fun playing it (they mostly have only ever played 5e). Will someone who's only ever played something like 5e have fun with it, or will it likely be too hardcore for them?

Also, how does it compare to B/X? That's another system I've been looking at running.

>>49921085
I would use osrsearch (blogspot, google it) to look up some reviews on it.

My understanding is that it's a cool system, but really fucking crunchy. I've never run it but I try to steal a lot of ideas from it.

>>49921085
Systemwise it doesn't really compare to D&D at all. It's a Burning Wheel hack after all and inherits many of the quirks from there.

The whole point of the game is resource management while diving deep into dank dungeons. If that is something your players would have fun with then they will probably enjoy the game.

>>49916257
I like this. For weapons, depending on if they're good or bad against the armor in question, one die is treated as hitting max or min value.

How do you handle Dex's contribution to AC?

>>49921085
>how does it compare to B/X?

Make no mistake, while both games are about gritty low-level dungeoncrawls, they're vastly different. I'd say the opposite, actually.

You see, Torchbearer being a Burning Wheel offshott, is thoroughly mechanized. Everything is a test (roll). Tests is something you do to avoid an obstalce. Gear helps to avoid tests or gives a bonus to a test. Basically everything risky provokes a test. Various conditions are a price you pay for a failed test. Conflict goal is determined at the start of the conflict. There are also phases. Camp phase, town phase, each has its own minigame. That sort of thing.

It's a very rules-intensive game, it requires everyone to know the rules well to be effective, something which is inherently opposite to B/X, where the point is to circumvent the mechanics with your player skill.

I would definitely start with B/X. Much easier to wrap your head around because it's still D&D, not something else taking the appearance of it.

What are some resources for making the terrain itself interesting in a forest? I've got some ideas for making the forest in my next session a point crawl with a node graph (hidden from the players). The interface for the players is a bunch of interesting locations, and possible paths they can choose to keep wandering down by.

I really want there to be a good sense of space in the forest, so I'd like to get some help in flavoring the forest. What kind of terrain would the forest contain? Rivers, giant trees, caves, mushroom circles etc.

I want a point of interest to be actually interesting.

>>49921426
>How do you handle Dex's contribution to AC?
I wasn't planning on including that rule at all so I haven't really given it any consideration. The basis for all this is that mundane protection can get you only up to AC 2. Beyond that you would need magical bonuses. Handling magical armor is something I need to think about too.

Anyway, 2-handed weapons for sure need a hefty bonus because wielding one means giving up a whole step of Armor Type for not using a shield. Maybe rerolling some, or even any number, of attack dice or + bonus to a die.

>>49921426
>depending on if they're good or bad against the armor in question, one die is treated as hitting max or min value.
Hmm. I don't think I'd handle attack rolls this way because getting a max roll on a die would mean at least one automatic hit no matter what armor and I think it's a bit too drastic. I kinda like the idea though. An attack with a dagger against Heavy or Elite types might get -1 to an attack die. What I would like to do is to keep all damage rolls strictly 1-6 if I can so all bonuses or minuses would go to attack rolls.

Anyway thanks for you comments and please do chime in if you have more ideas.

Is DCC good for a megadungeon game, or should I switch to something like Swords and Wizardry or Labyrinth Lord?

>>49921536
>it requires everyone to know the rules well to be effective
Ooooooh, that's a big fat red flag.
My players are mostly lazy illiterates, so any 'assigned reading' as they call it is a nono.
Guess that makes sense. B/X was made with the intention of being played by little kids, so it follows that it would be simple to grasp

>>49921210
>>49921297
>>49921536
Thanks anons!

>>49922269
The beauty of basic D&D is that players don't really need to know ANY rules at all. It's actually better if they don't.

>>49922260
It should work with megadungeons pretty well. It does a lot to fix the "15 minutes adventuring day" problem which I feel would slow a lot of big crawls down. I haven't used it for a megadungeon myself though so I have no practical knowledge.

>>49922371
>"15 minutes adventuring day"
What do you mean by this?

>>49922430
Players blow all of their big spells/abilities on one encounter, usually the first one of the day, and then make camp to rest and recharge immediately afterwards.

>>49922557
Oh, but there are wandering monsters to stop them from camping in the dungeon all the time.

>>49922430
players go into room, fight enemies and use spells, rest for a day, then go in the next room and so on.

>>49922579
That's true, but even then it doesn't always happen, and the players can often have the advantage by setting traps and such in the room before sleeping, or setting up camp in a heavily protected room that they've already got past.

>>49922758
Sorry, that was for >>49922575

>>49922371
>the "15 minutes adventuring day" problem
Doesn't actually exist in OD&D/Basic if you play by the book. Wandering monsters totally rule out sleeping in the dungeon (even if you spike doors and so on, the first group that isn't surprised by you (and thus arguably doesn't find you there) try to break down the door, bang on it, possibly use a secret passage etc etc which stops you from getting the benefits of rest that night), repopulation of cleared rooms means you can't return to town and then come back to the same game state in the dungeon, and especially on low levels, if you don't make a decent score fairly quickly, eventually your living funds will run out.

>>49922840
I suppose that's true. How did they even do megadungeons back in those days?

>>49923272
Usually there would be shortcuts to lower levels so you could get where you were going fast, plus if you're all level 7 you can pretty much just walk through any kobolds that might be infesting level 1. There would also be entrances outside the dungeon which led directly to deeper levels, a classic example in Greyhawk Castle being a dry cistern that opened onto (I think it was) the Black Reservoir, and so on.

Supposedly there were at least eleven (eleven discovered by the players) entrances to the Greyhawk dungeons; four of those were the tower descents to level 1, and the rest went to other levels. So exploration to find quick passages to deeper levels was an element of the gameplay.

Of course sometimes they'd just skulk and shit. Mornard has a great story about his first Lessnard the Magician session, where he had his 2 HP-or-whatever level 1 magic-user with his single spell (Charm Person), sneaked down to level 3, and came back up with a Charmed ogre servant and enough money to hit the leveling cap (i.e. in any one session you can only level up once, so no matter how much treasure you get you can only score enough XP to put you one point below the next leveling threshold after that).

>>49923455
Did treasure also repopulate together with monsters in Greyhawk?

>>49923576
I don't actually know anything concrete about that, but I think probably Gygax mostly just let the new arrivals have whatever random treasure they carried. Not placing any new big hoards motivates players not to hang around low levels longer than necessary, but always probe deeper in search of greater treasures and unexplored areas.

>>49922840
honestly I really don't like that or a lot of the hardships OSR authors like to throw on adventurers, cause while it makes sense that adventuring isn't easy, many of them like to pile on so much bad stuff that it kinda makes the idea of anyone going adventuring completely stupid in such contexts(at least not without taking literal armies down into the dungeon, and that's beyond the scope of the level that most OSR games are played at)

>>49923455
honestly I kinda think the way people often played in the early days of the game to be really boring, but then I'm one of those people whose interest in the game on the actual gameplay side of things to be almost entirely on the combat and character creation parts, but that just might be because I'm admittedly completely awful at the roleplay parts of the game, and the same can be said about pretty much every person I've ever played with(except like one of my DM's, but he was kinda a huge ass)

For games where 1 gp = 1xp, what (if anything) do you use as a gold sink?

I started running a Swords and Wizardry game and my second level party has no idea what to do with all the cash.

>>49923809
Level training.

Payment of annual Cormyrean adventuring party authorization fees.

>>49923809
>use gold to buy magical items for their GP value
>take them into a dungeon
>take them back out
>gain more XP

>>49923809
>I started running a Swords and Wizardry game and my second level party has no idea what to do with all the cash.
Either use Jeff Rients' carousing rules or the classic "I'm saving for my own castle".

Since we're sort of on the topic of both DCC and money, does anyone know why the DCC writers don't seem to want to add a lot of money and treasure in their adventures? I think it even says something about it in the rolebook too. The reason I don't get it is because money doesn't translate to experience in the game, and there isn't really an established table for how much things should cost, so you'd think it would be whatever right?

Showing how new I am, but how exactly am I supposed to use the challenge level and encounter level tables in games like Swords & Wizardry, or Blood & Treasure? The text about them makes like no sense to me in context with everything else.

>>49925679

yeah that's not your fault, reading these books without context, especially if you haven't played RPGs before a lot of things will come out like that

>>49924722
yeah I find that kinda confusing too, without money and treasure there really isn't much point in the party going adventuring most of the time

>>49926174
Well, DCC isn't the best game for timid souls. "Adventure is it's own reward."

And that's literally true, as characters in DCC advance simply by facing adversity and surviving.

>>49926488
>it's
lel

>>49926488
Adventure is indeed its own reward, but why not throw the players a bone and let them make some dough on the way? It has no mechanical benefit other than letting the PCs get some new toys, after all.

>>49924722
I kinda get the impression that the setting and feel their going for is that everyone is dirt poor and the adventurers are risking life and limb because they're just a little out of their mind.

>>49926545

Just add some money into the adventurers, but I have a feeling is the same reason that's used for the LotFP adventure "Dungeon of the Unknown". The author liked to imagine adventurers as being like Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, really skilled and talented, and by DnD standards, high level, but constantly poor and just trying to make a quick buck to get by, you know how much Goodman Games likes the Fritz Leiber stuff considering they do modules in his Lankhmar now.

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>>49926545
From the Core Rulebook:
"The author suggests you adapt an existing treasure system of your choice, but carefully and deliberately evaluate the randomized results. Always ask yourself: 'Where did the monster acquire such wealth? And what happened to the local economy in the process?'"

So the concern is for economic realism, which may seems funny for a game like DCC, but I can dig it.

By all means, though, if you want to bust out pic related, go nuts.

>>49926787
That's fair enough, I understand the relation to Leiber. I didn't really mean that all dungeons should have a myriad of wealth, but I'll probably place a bit more than what's written in the modules.

>>49926809
I feel like the "why is there a bunch of treasure?" question can easily be answered by the fact that like all D&D worlds use that "old fallen empire" trope. Some dudes way back built the dungeon/temple/thing, after they disappeared monsters started inhabiting it and they gathered all the shiny stuff in little piles.
Also, I didn't know about that book, I'll check it out.

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>>49925679
For Swords & Wizardry: Challenge level is how tough a monster is. Each dungeon level has a default level of difficulty. This level of difficulty can be met by having fewer challenging monsters or more not-so-challenging monsters.

So let's say the party is on dungeon level 1 and you want to generate a random encounter. You roll a d10 and come up with a 4, which indicates that the party will encounter 1d6 challenge level 2 creatures (which you can then roll on the challenge level 2 table). If you had rolled a 3, the party would have encountered twice as many (2d6) creatures of challenge level 1 (because challenge level 1 creatures are weaker and need greater numbers to pose the same level of difficulty).

Basically, anytime the wording of the text looks a bit confusing, look at the tables and piece together what they're doing.

>>49923809
XP banking for new characters. Money wasted carousing counts toward the XP of the replacement PC

>>49926887
The issue is what happens when the PCs return to Mudville with more money than God.

You can always handwave it -- but if you think about it long enough, it might nag at you a bit.

>>49922758
I don't get why a DM would allow this? Just rule that there's no way the characters are getting a good enough rest while sleeping in a monster infested hole in the ground to recharge a spell.

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top 3 and why?

1. LotFP: So simple, I can have friends who never played join in and have fun.
2. DCC: So absurd and great that the RPG stories they tell always come back to it.
3. S&W: Perfect mix of B/X and ADD. For those who wanted more crunch options after LotFP.

>>49927965
Have a bedroll? Yer comfy. Ate a meal & water? Yer sated. Fire for warmth? Good. 1-in-6 surprise not happen during the night? You lucked out and got alright sleep.

Seems fine to me, with those requirements.

>>49923657
>honestly I really don't like that or a lot of the hardships OSR authors like to throw on adventurers, cause while it makes sense that adventuring isn't easy, many of them like to pile on so much bad stuff that it kinda makes the idea of anyone going adventuring completely stupid in such contexts(at least not without taking literal armies down into the dungeon, and that's beyond the scope of the level that most OSR games are played at)

Can you give some examples of these kinds of hardships?

>>49927424
>XP banking for new characters.
Characters don't get XP for gold that's handed over to them. XP is only awarded for treasure that's earned by adventuring.

>>49923809
>For games where 1 gp = 1xp, what (if anything) do you use as a gold sink?
Stronghold and an army.

>>49927920
I think this is sort of one of the primeval problems of dnd. What the fuck do you spend the money on? How are things not going ballistic after some people just ten doubled the local economy?

I'd much rather do something like switching to 1 copper = 1 xp. It sounds stupid but it let's you throw money at players without ruining a sense of economical progression. ("Now I can finally afford that new shield / better room at the inn").

>>49927994
But that shouldn't happen if you are in a mythical underworld or at least a place of real danger.

I don't like it. It should at least require a somewhat big feat of the players to truly create a safe space.

It's crazy deadly already when they're awake. Now they're going to lie down and shut their eyes? The characters should be nervous and paranoid.

>>49928132
To be fair, every time it's happened for me as a DM, they found a room, did their best to block the doors and took watch shifts. I allowed it.

>>49928234

Yeah, if you're smart, you use that one secret room you found with the dust and the pile of gold and the trap that hadn't been set off, because the monsters don't know it's there.

>>49928234
That's fine then, because it motivates people that play to be clever and makes certain rooms more valuable.

>>49923809
I find the best sink is some sort of carousing rule, where gp can be spent for additional XP (either on the current character, or "banked" towards a backup character). D&D leveling can be fairly slow as is, and the curve is definitely designed around wargamers with lots of time.

I'm sure it's not an original thought, but inspired by King Pest (Edgar Allan Poe), I think that using a section of city quarantined due to plague as a dungeon could be an interesting idea. I recall Neverwinter Nights did something along those lines, but the plague city was largely just an obstacle to reach an actual dungeon; I think in this case, the plague ridden city could be the actual dungeon.

>>49928854
So, Dishonored.

>>49928890
or Bloodborne, as he's basically describing Old Yharnam(and to a lesser extent some of the Chalice Dungeons, especially Loran)

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Opinions on Basic Fantasy RPG? I just bought the paperback cause it's like $5.

Seems legit so far. I like the race/class division and the thief's skills being vamped up a bit (tho I do prefer the LotFP specialist)

Thinking of trying an OSR title. What would be the most popular titles and what in your opinion are the best 3?? Thanks in advance!!

>>49927968
1. ACKS, because its literally a huge D&D B/X playground wich covers EVERYTHING I COULD EVER WISH FOR. Also provides incredibly good advice on how to handle everything from adventuring to being kings and waging war.
2. LotFP: For exactly the same reason you like it.
3. Basic Fantasy: Easy and nice blend of classic gameplay. Cheap as fuck books and a gorrillion of adventures are out for free.

On XP sinks, this is what I do:
- every gp spent on something useful/permanent is an XP gained. (Equipment, hirelings, subscription to a guild, etc)
- every gp wasted is 2 XP gained. (Carousing, church tithes, etc. A player tossed a GP into a well to "make a wish" once when he found himself literally 2 XP from leveling up!)
- training. I don't do level up training, but you can allow wizards to buy access to libraries to learn spells from, and let classes not trained in all weapons (like wizards and whatnot) acquire skill in a weapon by paying a trainer and investing some downtime. Gandalf made sword-carrying wizards cool.
- guilds, taxes, tolls and tithes are a good moneysink and remind the players of the world they live in.
- offer the PCs the chance to buy a ship. (Maybe they need to cross the sea for some reason, too)
- hire craftsmen to get custom equipment. No magic item shops except in special cases, but alchemists (potions) and magical scribes (scrolls) are a thing.
- encourage casters with "you could do [impressive thing] if you want, but you need [expensive component] and a [laboratory/temple/etc] to work on it." especially if you allow them to research spells or craft magic items before they hit name level.

>>49927968
BX -- The original foundation on which so many retroclones are built. Nice and concise.

Swords & Wizardry White Box -- No frills, super-minimalist goodness.

Castles & Crusades -- Streamlined, (d20-)systematized and tweaked AD&D.

Honorable Mention: Lamentations of the Flame Princess -- Has some good innovations in the various Basic subsystems that are nice to steal.

>>49929579
People are already listing their top 3 games, so I guess that leaves the most popular ones. As far as non-original editions go, I would guess that Labyrinth Lord, Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess are the big ones, but I could be wrong. I have absolutely no idea which original editions are the biggest. Not OD&D and not Holmes Basic. The Basic line seems to be very popular here (and as a basis for retroclones, but that's natural, as it's a simpler foundation to build from), but I don't know that that's always the case. Five or ten years ago, I probably heard more people talking about 2e than anything else, but 2e seems to have receded greatly (though maybe it's just less a part of the OSR community; I don't know).

Any non-DCC modules that'd fit right into the style and feel of tge world?

Bloody Basic - Weird Fantasy Edition is watermarked.

>>49927994
>1-in-6 surprise not happen during the night?
The night is 8 hours minimum, you're talking about 48 wandering monster checks.

>>49928070
>Characters don't get XP for gold that's handed over to them.
You're misunderstanding him. He's saying that if your current character blows [X] gold pieces on booze and whores, if he dies your next character gets [X] XP to start with. It's a house rule, and it makes a lot of sense. Effectively, it's very similar to having a henchman on a half-share of loot.

>>49930812
That's an interesting point, I usually handle it with at least one or two random encounters, depending on how well players hid themselves. Then again, I'm going a bit easy on them.

>>49930885
You mean you roll random encounters only once or twice, or you ignore the random checks and just cause one or two encounters to happen?

If a party can be reasonably expected to rest anywhere in the dungeon, then you've got the 10-minute-adventuring-day problem all over again.

>>49927968
1. Rules Cyclopedia. Probably the best published D&D book. One hardcover gives you virtually all of Mentzer (with a better layout!).

2. ACKS. More or less the same concept as RC, but based on B/X with extra domain rules and some 3E-esque character options. The hard level cap is frankly the best way of handling both human levels and demihuman level limits.

3. LotFP. The edgelord style and Raggi's personality are a dumpster fire, but many of his rules ideas are great and the supplemental material's about 90% of the best stuff coming out of the OSR.

>>49930929
Yes, one or two encounters. Possibly more.

>party can be reasonably expected to rest anywhere in the dungeon

Not anywhere. But I do have a few of those spots where they can rest more or less undisturbed. They do have to earn it, usually rooms like this are somewhere on the 2nd level, although shortcuts are possible. These rooms are usually very well hidden too, so that monsters rarely find them. Encounters represent those rare moments.

>>49930885
>Then again, I'm going a bit easy on them.
Correct. The point that was being made was that if you actually follow the rules, sleeping in the dungeon is virtually impossible, and that's one factor that prevents the fifteen-minute adventuring day.

That doesn't mean you have to follow them, but if you don't, and then you start having problems with the players using that kind of strategies, it's your own doing. The game comes out of the box designed to prevent that kind of shit, it is the way it is for a reason.

>>49927920
You're right, and that's probably a good reason why certain places should be more interested in other goods rather than money. Doing deals in wealthy cities however should be a good way to burn away the cash they've found, I mean where else are they gonna find that huge ship they want to buy or whatever anyway?

>>49930933
>Raggi's personality
Is he having a problematic personality?

>>49931468
He doesn't, really. He actually seems to be a pretty down to earth person. I'm guessing what that anon meant was Raggi's interest in putting in gore and dicks into many of his adventures.

>>49931554
I was thinking more of his vocal "I hate fun" shit as well as the fact that he spergs out pretty hard every time someone e.g. doesn't want to sell a module called "Fuck For Satan" in their webshop or whatever, like it's vital for democracy that goredicks are available on every hand.

I've seen him be pretty chill too, sure, but he goes way too hard on the histrionics in every situation like that, like in the Carcosa controversy. There were tons of people then posting sensible rebuttals to the moralfags, but Raggi went apeshit instead. It's clear that he has a personal problem with the US Christian-right types that goes way beyond just disagreement into wanting to deliberately provoke them and force them to watch, and I have to wonder sometimes if his X-TREEM Cannibal Corpse shit isn't originally some kind of allergic reaction to them.

>>49931554

Different anon, but, it's not so much gore and dicks as the attitude he has about gore and dicks. It's great that someone is making RPGs that aren't at all meant to be censored or family-friendly. That's a niche that should exist in the hobby. But Raggi has to preface every adventure with an edgy disclaimer about how everyone but him is a bunch of easily-offended social justice warriors, trying to censor his art.

It turns out people can find something stupid without being offended. Or have something offend their sensibilities in the sense of taste, and not the pearl-clutching sense. I don't think writing an adventure about a penis-shaped alien whose psychic aura makes a bunch of men have a gay orgy is offensive and needs to be censored for decency. It's just juvenile and dumb.

Sometimes he comes up with awesome weird fantasy that pushes on what's acceptable in a perfect way (Better Than Any Man, Death Frost Doom), and sometimes you just wonder if he's writing for middle-school boys (Fuck For Satan, Doom Cave).

>>49931648
>>49931702
I have very rarely seen Raggi comment on people not liking his books, other than when his books won't be sold in a store. I can honestly understand that frustration seeing as he's a small company that tries to get by and having stuff stop being sold at just one store could be a huge loss.
But I have not seen him "sperg out" about stuff like that. If you have any examples of him doing it, I'd like to see it.

>>49929290
I personally really like it. It's still very similar to the 1981 Basic game so it's compatible with old modules, you just need to convert AC. There are a few things I do change, like adding back in the GP for XP rule and telling my players that Thief skills are explicitly supernatural abilities that can kick in if doing things normally fails. Fighters are also a little lackluster compared to other retroclones, but there are options and supplements to make them better.
I do wish the guy would add in bookmarks for each new PDF release though, the book's layout is pretty bad for creating characters.

Raggi made a comment that he sold a lot more rules books this year than anytime before. LotFP seems to make its way to being king of OSR rules.

>>49919528
Crom bless you, anon.

>>49932506
In my opinion that's probably the best thing that could happen to the OSR market. Raggi gets good writers and artists for his books, and the system is basic and allows for a lot of modification. I wonder how his sales compare to Goodman Games and DCC, they somehow feel "bigger" to me.

>>49931648
Have you actually read the "I Hate Fun" post? It's less about sperging out for others having fun and more about what The Oatmeal wrote about being perfectly unhappy. Both Raggi and Inman seem to feel that doing "fun" things and being a "happy person" pales to the notion of happiness derived of fulfillment (exemplified by the completion of a creation after hard work).

But people read the header and made a big deal out of it. Truly sucessfull clickbaity header for a rambling post that, looks to me, people didn't care enough to follow.

(If someone's curious about the post, it's here:
https://lotfp.blogspot.co.nz/2008/06/i-hate-fun.html )

I remember him beng frustrated, not furious, about shit like Carcosa or LGS refusing to give LotFP products for Free RPG Day due to fear of alienating the audience (and dumping the products, to boot). I'd be frustrated too, to be honest.

>>49930812

From Moldvay B/X page B53:

>Wandering Monsters should
>appear more often if the party is making a lot of noise or light, but
>should not be frequent if the party spends a long time in one out-
>of-the-way place (if they stop in a room for the night, for example).

I wouldn't even roll them if they're in a secret room that was clearly undiscovered. (IE there's treasure laying out in easy grasp inside -- if the monsters were coming through here they would have taken it back to make their tribe's horde more impressive)

>>49933411
>and dumping the products, to boot

Okay, that makes ME a little bit pissed off, I can see how it would make Raggi pissed off. Those things cost money to produce, and while Free RPG Day is supposed to be a loss leader, that makes it into a pure loss. They could at least have returned them; dumping them is a really shitty thing to do.

>>49933897
>They could at least have returned them; dumping them is a really shitty thing to do.
Uh, *he's* the guy who sent a bunch of unsuspecting FLGSes his dickgore horror games, why should they spend their own money to send his free ad handouts back to him?

I *like* the LotFP lineup and I still think that's silly.

>>49934215
What do you mean *he* sent them and that they were "unsuspecting"?

Free RPG Day is hosted by Goodman Games who obviously check the stuff they send, and LGS:es have to sign up and pay money to be a part of the Free RPG Day.
If they didn't want to hand it out to just anyone, they could've handed it out under the counter or at the very least sold them on eBay. Honestly I don't understand the notion of not wanting to sell or even give away certain things in a store made to sell such things. Do they want to lose money or something?

>>49927968
-BFRPG: Near perfect fusion of old and new school mechanics. Loads of free resources.

-LotFP: Makes it onto my list simply for the Specialist Class and skill system alone.

-ACKS: Fantastic class design that actually makes racial classes feel unique.

Honourable mentions: BtW, AS&SH, SWN

>>49934623
Oh shoot, I forgot to add DCC onto there. Has great stuff like Spell Duels and especially Mighty Deeds.

>>49932874
GG sells more than just DCC products. They've been designing modules since 3.0 and have a ton of system generic splats.

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>>49934615
>What do you mean *he* sent them and that they were "unsuspecting"?

Probably a case of pic related.

>tfw the system thinks my post is spam
Am I just not allowed to say Free RPG Day or what?

>>49934615
I mean the average LGS that signed up for it probably didn't realize that there would be a visceral deathmetal horror module as part of the offering. (I actually didn't know that it's arranged by Goodman Games, but I still doubt *they* checked with everybody who was signed up.)

Raggi's the guy who's responsible for making all the decisions about the advertising for his definitely-not-for-everyone game, and as far as I can see nobody owes it to him to make his decisions successful. If vendors actually *pay* for the packet that they then give away for free (seems weird, tbqh), even moreso; in that case they paid for it and can do what they like with it. Either way they certainly don't owe Raggi anything.

>Honestly I don't understand the notion of not wanting to sell or even give away certain things in a store made to sell such things.
Maybe it wasn't made to sell such things as LotFP? Maybe some of these guys don't want to get a reputation as a place where you can't get that kind of stuff under the counter? They might honestly figure that might be bad for them in terms of sales, if they have a lot of kids coming in (especially with their mothers), or maybe they object to it themselves on moral grounds.

>>49934776
Again, I like LotFP. I like Raggi. I just don't think it's weird that some guys who just run a shop were grossed out by the LotFP offering and chucked it, that's all.

What would you guys suggest for a campaign setting for a first campaign? I have a specific idea of what I want, but I've never made one before, should I take an existing one and adapt it to my needs?

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>>49935447
Doing something like this. Beyond The Wall/Further Afield's character, village and campaign generation is really well put together. You can easily get some ideas you want in, it helps the players get into the world more because they make some of it, and the combination of the two ends up with cool shit you wouldn't have come up with on your own.

>>49935447
Just start off with a generic stuff made by yourself. Ready-made fantasy settings are basically the worst thing you could do.

>>49935302
They pay for shipping of the package, and they hope they get enough people to come in to make a profit, and thus creating mutual benefit for the store and the creator. Creators involved with Free RPG Day often encourage people coming in to actually go and buy other stuff and not just grab a free book and go.
Anyway, the game stores can do whatever they want and throw out free 160-page books like Better Than Any Man because of false beliefs like it being about killing children, but I personally find that to be both disrespectful and pretty stupid. If I heard that happened at my LGS, I would just stop going there. Seeing as Raggi does a lot to make these free books look as good as possible in terms of writing, layout and art, I would be a bit pissed too if I was him.

>>49935597
>they're disrupting the free market by censoring me! reeeeeeee
>they're freely choosing to not distribute my product! reeeeeee

can't have it both ways

How would OSR stuff be affected by a change in wealth/currency?

E.g. what if I wanted to use Reign's system of tracking loot vs the standard?

>>49935657
I don't think he's annoyed that they're "disrupting the free market", I think he's annoyed because he spent a lot of money to make a good free product and people don't want to give it away because of false ideas and weird beliefs. You'd be annoyed at such a net loss as well.

>>49935777
Then he made a bad business decision. Happens. Get over it. Doesn't even seem to be making much impact on his sales or popularity, more just that he's upset for the sake of being upset.

>>49935597
>I personally find that to be both disrespectful and pretty stupid.
That's fine by me, I guess the only thing we really disagree on is this:

>Seeing as Raggi does a lot to make these free books look as good as possible in terms of writing, layout and art, I would be a bit pissed too if I was him.

To me, it's silly for the guy who makes the deliberately offensive game to get his ass in a twist when some people get offended.

>>49935836
It seems like it was a bad business decision, but it's bound to make you jaded when you put your faith in game stores being friendly and tolerant. Would you rather have a market that participates in a free rpg day by including everything and celebrating it, or a market where things are taken away because of beliefs that destroyed the public perception of the hobby once upon a time?

>>49935916
Dude puts out products to specifically offend people he disagrees with based on his beliefs. Not really sure he's putting faith in people being friendly and tolerant.

>>49935851
Better Than Any Man wasn't even that offensive, and Doom-Cave was made in response to game stores thinking that BTAM was about killing children. I don't think he ever complained much about the reception to Doom-Cave, but BTAM was a huge project (and honestly he should've just sold it in his own store, but I guess he was just too ambitious about making Free RPG Day a really cool event).
Anyway, there's a big difference between getting offended and throwing out free books.

>>49936029
The only stuff he's made with the sole intent of offending people is Fuck for Satan and Doom-Cave (which people really seem to get hung up on, considering he's published way more stuff). And he might not put faith in the easily offended, but he sure puts his faith in the RPG and OSR hobby. Honestly I think it's great that he does that, that kind of faith was part of the reason for me returning to roleplaying games after being burned out on crappy formulaic games and modules.

>>49936095
lolokay james

>>49936107
lolokay easily offended LGS owner

>>49935777
>not liking gratuitous gorn is now a weird belief

What?

>>49936306
"not liking" is not the same thing as "not liking so much that you'll throw it in the trash and complain".

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>>49936306

>implying Better Than Any Man is "gratuitous gorn"

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>>49918800
BattleSystem. Fully fledged miniatures battle game. Don't be fooled by the cover. This came out for first edition when D&D was still current and you could convert your D&D or AD&D characters.

>>49936095
>with the sole intent of offending people
SOLE intent. Meaning other works had intent of offending people and something else.

>>49936594
No, not many of LotFP's modules have the intent of offending people. Easily offended people will be offended by anything though.

>>49936518
Sweet. Do you know if anyone has used this system with DCC?

>>49935916
The negative public perception of RPGs came from the general public, people who didn't know anything about them other than insane crusade by a mad woman. Rejection of a game by a store whose business is trading in RPGs is not public perception. Rejection of a game by a store who doesn't want the public to exposed to a game that the store owners see as undesirable is also not public perception and prevents public perception of RPGs from going back to the way it was when it was due to the mad ravings of a lunatic.

>>49936030
>Anyway, there's a big difference between getting offended and throwing out free books.
They're not free books. The store owner paid for them. If the store owner doesn't think they're good quality the store owner can dispose of them in any way he wants, same way as grocery stores can throw away rotten vegetables.

>>49936787
>Rejection of a game by a store whose business is trading in RPGs is not public perception.
That's not what I wrote, I wrote that the store owner and the people that crusaded against d&d in the 80s have eerily similar beliefs. It's sad that people with these beliefs now take care of the stores that sell RPGs.

>They're not free books. The store owner paid for them. If the store owner doesn't think they're good quality the store owner can dispose of them in any way he wants, same way as grocery stores can throw away rotten vegetables.
The difference is, those books were not rotten tomatoes. Treating them like they were was the stupid thing they did. But as I wrote before, they have all the right to do it just as much as they have all the right to be idiots.

What're some really good rules for wilderness travel, that includes stuff like hunting for food and getting lost? Preferably done in a manner where there's player input and is fun to play at the table.

>>49937015
I've heard that The One Ring rpg has pretty great rules for traveling, but I can't speak from experience.

>>49935747
What do you mean by tracking loot?

>>49936629
Don't see why you're saying no to me anon. The post I quoted
>with the sole intent of offending people
implies
>others had intent to offend plus other intent
Is plain and simple rules of inference in English.

Especially don't see why you're saying no when you also add
>not many of LotFP's modules have the intent of offending people
as that implies some do have the intent. Which is exactly agreeing with what I pointed out.

I'm not saying it's a point I agree with, just drawing the natural conclusion which your post, or both your posts if you wrote both of them, agrees with. I didn't say "all" other works. I sjust said "other" which only implies "at least some" "All" is not something that can be safely inferred bu I suspect you did infer it which is why you said no. Seems like you're over sensitive to criticsm of LotFP and inferring too much.

>>49937050
Instead of gold/silver, you'd have a "pile" of wealth 2, and you can afford anything of 1 or 0 wealth without denting it.

Could I have something like that and keep in the spirit of OSR?

>>49937082
I guess I misread your post. Alright, I agree with you: a certain amount of LotFP books at least partially intend to offend.

>>49937098
There are already OSR games that use wealth abstraction.

I mean, experience would have to be handled differently than RAW Basic (which primarily was based on the amount of loot you got), but I'm sure you can figure that out.

>>49936914

I'm not a prudish person in the least, but I can totally understand shop owners not wanting to stock copies of an 18+ adventure, even one as relatively tame (and very well done) as Better Than Any Man. The introduction outright states that LotFP as a whole is meant to be edgy and shocking and says you should watch Dario Argento films and read Oglaf to get a handle on the intended tone. And if you're a shopkeeper who's primary source of income is probably more along the lines of 12 year-olds buying Space Marines with mom's money and less like raunchy 35-year old metalheads, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't copies sitting around where any thin-skinned person can get a hold of them and kick up a fuss.

>>49936787
>They're not free books. The store owner paid for them.
I'm not sure if Free RPG Day stuff should be judged in the same vein as regular goods sold by a retailer. It's not like the publishers are making money from it.

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>>49937126
no such thing as bad publicity

if ten people hear about somebody bitching about LOTFP content and check it out and one of them decides "Hey this shit seems kinda neat!" and buys stuff, then Raggi gets a sale from do nothing but making his own tasteless jokes and publishing them.


his edgiest stuff

Death Love Doom (Catharsis piece for some bad break up)

Fuck for Satan (haha penis monster)

The Doom-Cave of the Crystal-Headed Children
(somebody called Better than any mana game about child murder?!? I'll show them! magic spawn of a wizard humping a magic crystal adventure for Free RPG day!)

Better than any man is pretty great though. he did a whole campaign for free RPG day the children are just a random encounter and iirc isn't necessarily violent

>>49937298
I've never seen a LOTFP in FLGS outside of the Slugs bestiary for Free RPG day. but I don't see much RPG products in the FLGS, mostly board games and MTG, RPG is a niche hobby to begin with and OSR is even more niche, I can't see store owners giving much shelf space to a B/X clone when a couple of copies of the 5E core books and some Pathfinder junk will sell more copies than OSR game.

I think he sells most of his shit online through RPG pdf sites and his own site and using crowdsourcing for projects. he makes low six figures a year by his own testimony iirc. Seems like a cool guy to work for, I hear he pays good for art and lets them go nuts.

>>49937275

Yeah, so why not sell them on eBay, instead of tossing them in the trash? It wouldn't be associated with your store, you'd make some cash, and the books would get to the people who wanted them.

>>49936914
> I wrote that the store owner and the people that crusaded against d&d in the 80s have eerily similar beliefs.
I wrote whatever I wrote. Something about store owners who are in the trade of RPGs, who presumably either don't consider RPGs objectionable or realise that there is a market for RPGs consisting of people who don't consider RPGs objectionable, and have an informed opinion about product they think is suitable for marketing. IE, they are are not similar to the people who made the hysteria of the 80s since they actually know what RPGs are. These people are not crusading against RPGs, they are making an informed decision after inspection of a product to not stock it, even as a free givewaway because for some reason, possibly adult themes, they find it doesn't agree with the image of their store. Likening this to the 80s is a false analogy.

>The difference is, those books were not rotten tomatoes.
You're right that they were not rotten tomatoes. You can put barcodes and brand logos on them but even fresh tomatoes are really hard to print 160 pages of text on. Let's consider that I was using rotten vegetables as synecdoche for any product deemed unsuitable for sale by the store owner. In which case it's very hard to argue that the owners were stupid.

If you can demonstrate that not giving away a few copies of one free product measurably drove down the profitiability of the store then I'll reconsider my position. You have to prove that the stores that did give it away gained positive sales, doesn't have to LotFP sales, just sales in general, and the stores that didn't lost sales. Both of these must be directly attributable to the giving and non-giving away of the product in question. Failure to prove this just marks your opinion as the prejudicial biggotry you seem to be opposed to. Good luck.

Sorry unrelated, but how the heck do I use the link to the Trove at the top of the page?

>>49937588
Base64.

>>49937298
Be unsure no more. Free RPG stuff shouldn't be judged in the same vein as it's not the same stuff. Items for sale count as stock. Items for give away count as promotional material. They have different functions but the publishers are intending to make money from it, that's the point of advertising. Here though one publisher evidently misjudged the market for his advertising.

(The publisher could make money from the exact same thing they produce for free rpg day by selling it so it could be the same stuff but that takes us away from the free rpg day discussion.)

>>49937275
It's still shitty to throw books in the trash because you heard a false rumor about them. Especially when that book is 160 pages. Like come on, most of the other books sent to them are like 30 page booklets, why would you throw out 5-something books that big without even confirming what it's about. It's absurd.

>>49937547
>they are making an informed decision after inspection of a product to not stock it
They didn't though. They thought BTAM was about child killing. Kind of like how some people saw a demon on the AD&D player's handbook and thought it was a book on how to become a satanist.

>If you can demonstrate that not giving away a few copies of one free product measurably drove down the profitiability of the store then I'll reconsider my position.
Clearly I can't since I don't know what store that was nor would I be able to get their sales figures, but I also don't care much for what your position is. And no, that doesn't turn my opinion into bigotry just like how your opinion that Raggis books are the equivalent of rotten food isn't bigotry. Calm down with accusing people of that kind of shit.

>>49937424
It's in the name: free. Free RPG isn't allowed to be sold by the store. Some store owners might want to do this but if discovered they could be sued, for much more than the paltry few hundred dollars they make on the items, and would be barred from future participation. You'd need at least one dummy account not associated with the store and making up several dummy ebay accounts is probably more trouble than it's worth.

Alright, we've all vented our opinions on Raggi, I don't want to take sides at all, but maybe we could just halt this conversation here and get back to talking other OSR stuff? It seems unlikely that anybody will convince anybody else right now and I hate to see /osrg/ turn uncomfy.

t. obnoxious hobbymod

>>49938268
Yeah I agree. I'll stop.

So what are you working on at the moment, /osrg/?

>>49938295
Working on a hexcrawl. Not feeling amazing about my map, which is about halfway done.

>>49938295
>>49938420
>Working on a hexcrawl.
Same, actually. Fleshing out my map with the castles of robber barons, trolls under bridges, knights demanding tolls, and so on. I'm pretty happy with how mine's getting on, though.

>>49938295

have to start on this campaign because I'm too picky and have a very specific idea for my campaign

Jack Chick died recently.

Is Maze of the Blue Medusa in the trove at all? If so, where?

>>49939142
So he doesn't exist anymore?

>>49939207
Supplements>Adventures

>>49939207
>>49939331
Some of the Lamentations stuff is pretty scattered. There's also some stuff under "04_Settings"

>>49939388
Well, Maze isn't Lamentations though. It's published by another company and is system neutral, although I assume it is balanced towards Zak Smiths personal AD&D/3ed hack.

>>49938295
Hexcrawl out from a safe city, adventurers returning at the end of the session. Found out that it's a thing people have done work on already (West Marches), so I'm pilfering tables and other material. Using LotFP for the system.

>>49937215

I have to admit, I'm a newfag to the OSR outside of the blogs, what systems have been using wealth abstraction? I've only seen small bits in Reign's rules and the stuff on Goblinpunch

>>49936650
No, sorry, barely know of anyone actually using it at all. It wasn't bad just different. It was a minatures game being marketed to role-players.

A 2nd ed set was released and Dark Sun was meant to have been an epic setting with players fighting world changing battles between the city-states but BattleSystem wasn't popular enough and was excluded. Then BS faded away quietly.

But since BS was stand alone conversions are pretty simple. Units in BS gain Attack Dice, Armour Rating, Hits etc by straightforward conversion of THAC0 to Attack die; Armour Class to Armour Rating; Hit Dice to Hits.

Individuals do the same and get Command Diam. based on level and charisma (fighters use full level, others use 1/2 level, but necromancers could probably use full level when commanding undead they've raised; because screw everyone who's anti-necro).

While there are effects like dragon breath weapon noted, for other monster abilities the rules say you're own your own. Like how to treat a displacer beast's displacement or how much is a unit of rust monsters going to reducing a unit of knight's AR.

Spell lists are very limited, about three dozen spells. Those with obvious mass effects like fireball, fear, cloudkill, cure hits (equivalent to a cure wounds spell). You could expand the list without too much effort. The rules say it's best to ignore spells that affect only one target.

On second thought, let's skip back about four paragraphs and I'll change conversion is simple to conversion is simplistic. It didn't feel like a battle where my PC was fighting. It was like, here's us playing AD&D, now let's stop for a moment and play this fantasy board game featuring a unit with your character's name.

Because it's a separate game 3e conversions shouldn't be hard. There are only five stats in BS. Hardest will be looking up morale, needed, in a 2e monster book and dealing with spell-like abilities. Way easier than trying to convert to WFB or something.

>>49939142
>>49939331
No, not Jack Chick! No, No!

How many 6 mile hexes would be under the control of a city state? I'd like to have a few civilized areas and a lot of dangerous wilderness, and I'm trying to figure out a good ratio - especially in a world where I don't want humans to be top dog, inspired by the OD&D-Wilderness Survival setting

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>>49940673
If you go by the area claimed by ancient Athens / Attica, maybe 5 hexes across. I don't know how much of that area was firmly controlled though, and in a world full of mythical beasts and monsters, I'd imagine that the area a city state even just made a show of controlling would be a decent bit smaller. We're also talking about Athens and not a run-of-the-mill city state, so I think 3 hexes across seems like a pretty appropriate area for you to use: one containing the city proper, and the adjacent hexes being almost exclusively farmland and undeveloped land.

>>49940673
No idea about official rules about these things, but I would imagine that the hexes immediately connected to the city hex would be under its control. Maybe more depending on what kind of city state it is.

>>49940460
This is some neat info. Can Battesystem be used in dungeoncrawling situations? How big does "squad" have to be?

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>>49941280
Maybe something like this, if you want to stick with symmetrical areas.

>>49940673
Are you looking for a number that makes for good gameplay or historical sense? Because you will get varying, varying answers on the latter and that's even if you can define "control" in a solid way.

>>49941280
>>49942021

Keep in mind "control" here is a very loose word - if you're going by just "tributary relationships and these guys are generally reliable at showing up" then the area can be quite wide, but areas shrink if you start thinking in terms of controlling infrastructure/policy/taxation. It also varies depending on geography/transportation as well.

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>>49941938
Here, I prefer this.

>>49942021
>good gameplay

Absolutely. I want a West Marches-style home base in the form of a civilized city state and a lot of unclaimed wilderness to hexcrawl on an island.

>historical sense
Ideally. I think in terms of tribute and mutual defense against monster encroachment and the raids of goblinoid warbands.

I have a question/request /osrg/. I have some monarchs in my campaign that can't have a lot of hit points because of their level 0 normal human status, so they obviously need a lot of protection against dangerous things like magic and beasts. Let's say the PCs decide to fight the monarch, what would be some cool defenses he/she would have?

>>49937925
>demon makes you a satanist
I think it was more the fact that AD&D made use of the names of real, canonized Demons known to the Catholic Church. Known to be invoked via their names, which were everywhere.

>>49942726
Helm of Brilliance

>>49942726
-clones/body doubles
-legions of fanatically loyal soldiers who would gladly sacrifice themselves to avenge their ruler
-has a extremely powerful mystical mcguffin; only he knows how to use it
-dude is just plain lovable

In LotFP, can anyone cast a Clerical scroll?

Magic-User scrolls require 'read magic', Clerical scrolls require the reader to know the written language.

Can a character, not logically on the God's bad side, be able to use one?

>>49942726
The monarch has an ace propaganda program.

They kill the guy with a couple rounds of easy combat--maybe a few guards throw themselves onto the PC's blades, seemingly with no regard for their own lives.

After a few months, every town they visit is in mourning as the news makes the rounds. Statues are erected, funeral dirges are sung, and the slain king becomes the cornerstone of a national mythology.

Countless churchmen and courtiers take up his cause, so it's as if his influence lives on beyond the grave, and his assassination ensures his immortality, while the PCs are remembered only as a gang of petty murderers.

>>49942726
>evil vizier and his apprentice stooges don't want to lose the good thing they have going and fight the PC's

>>49942726
I think there's a good case to be made for many monarchs to have a few level in fighter, especially if you're talking a medieval approach where the king is basically the head warlord. Even just a couple of levels would make him much more durable. Throw in the magical protection he can afford on with his kingly-riches, and the requisite guards and he's no longer a pushover. Maybe throw in a Lancelot-esque champion and/or a Merlin-esque court magician and the PCs are in some serious shit.

>>49942726
Personally, I usually figure most adult lords and kings can at least manage level 3 as a Fighter, but beyond that I just let 'em die if they die. I prefer a low-magic/most magic comes out of the dungeon game, and besides, being a feeb explains why the king needs dragonslayers and a castle with heavy walls instead of going out and chumping it himself.

Really his main protections will be his hosts and his castles; civilization, essentially.

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here's a thing I made that will be useful for my specific use case and probably no one else's, but I figured I'd share - it's a character sheet for Beyond the Wall with spots for your all your magical abilities added, and saving throws + XP removed (since I won't be using those in my next game).

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>>49942612
Okay, so this is still a question with no right or wrong answers per se, but I'll throw out some thoughts on the theory.

1. First off, a lot of this goes hand-in-hand with the hex scale you're at and how you handle wilderness encounters.

Using ACKS as an example (because it's got good detail and also lots of clarifications from the creator on how it's supposed to go), the game assumes:
-6 mile hexes
-night encounter checks every day/week/month for uncivilized/borderlands/civilized regions
-in completely uncivilized regions, check for an encounter every time the PCs leave a hex
-a very frightening wilderness encounter table taken from B/X (where even an orc encounter is like d6 x 2d4 orcs, and you can get stuff like wyverns)

This creates an environment where wilderness encounters are really scary but also very rare in civilized regions. The extent of your civilized areas thus generally indicate how far low-level PCs can safely travel. PCs are in great danger if they try to travel through wilderness regions before level 4+

Thus one aspect

2. Another aspect is the "realism/naturalism" angle - especially important for the domain scale. Again, not many people are really going to care whether there's the correct ratio of agricultural land:population (although if you do care about this, more power to you), but if you do specify what kind of territory this city-state controls (ex. "twenty hexes of farmland") this gives PCs levers to interact (more significant at the domain level), even if this interaction is "starve this city state into submission by burning their croplands". Note the scale of this action is thus dependent on how many cropland hexes this domain has.

If the domain has only one or two crop hexes, this suggests the PCs can be massively disruptive if say, they decide to found a bandit gang that preys on all commerce in one agricultural hex. On the other hand, PCs will need to marshal more resources to affect a large domain.

Are there any particular considerations for converting a game to a gold based xp system, or am I fine with just having 1gp = 1xp?

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I use the LBBs and Wonders & Wickedness for magic-user rules. It reminded me of my strong dissatisfaction for the cleric. I asked around a bit and discovered no alternative to "memorize spells", despite the plethora of ideas that came out to change how the MU works.

Thus, I made the Prophet class for OD&D.

Prime Requisite : Wisdom (usual trading allow.)
Alignment : Lawful or Chaotic
Weapons : Dagger, Staff, Sling
Armor : None
HD, Saving Throws, Attack Matrices and XP as Cleric.

Prayer : a prophet may ask guidance, pray for a miracle or shout angrily at the sky to get his God to accomplish a miracle for him. This works a number of time equal to the prophet's level without further issues. If you're the kind of person that worries about balance or lack common sense, use the cleric spell list to get an idea of what kind of things the prophet can get by praying.

After that limit, any request requires a reaction roll on the God's part. Furthering the god's interest or providing an appropriate sacrifice will improve the reaction, but all prayers after the limit will incur a cumulative penalty to the reaction roll.

Score Reaction
2 Silence
3-5 Wrath
6-8 Request
9-11 Guidance
12 Miracle

Silence : the god has seemingly abandonned the prophet, but don't worry, he'll come back in d4 game sessions.

Wrath : the god is angry and the current situation gets worse (sunny day turns to a downpour, a windy sea turns into a calm, deadly standing water, all the food turns bad, ect.)

Request : the god will grant the prophet's prayer when he completes a request to prove his faith.

Guidance : the god will grant the prophet's prayer and provide guidance for his course of action. Disrespecting said guidance will result in worsened reaction rolls for the rest of the day.

Miracle : the god does the thing without needing to be asked twice. It's a miracle! (that's the usual reaction until the limit is achieved).

>>49947103
Complementary house rule : turning undead is accomplished by finding the right method for the right creature, and may be done by any character. Again, if you need balance or common sense, use the cleric turning table to get an idea of what can be done, but I'd scratch that entirely and use reaction rolls.

Or you know, let udead be the terrifying foes that they are as unliving, unstoppable representations of the inevitability of death, and make most of them un-turnable. They're already quite slow and/or stupid, I think that's enough weaknesses personnaly.

I came up with the prophet because the idea of a warrior-priest is too manichean for my games, where adventurers are essentially greedy and slightly unbalanced people who go down murder holes to try and leave with treasure and most of their limbs. Prophets have this fine balance between being insane, delusional, egotistical and, you know, heroes. Plus, they probably won't beat the shit out of the Magic-User, while the Judeo-Christian Cleric of OD&D would probably do so.

>>49946658
The obvious consideration is that you need to give out rewards in GP. Player progress is also completely dependent on rewards in GP, which encourages amoral, mercenary behaviour (something to keep in mind if you want a more heroic game).

Since most OSR games involve advancement at later levels requiring thousands of GP, you also might want to consider some sort of money sink - some have already been discussed, but common ones include building a castle, carousing for extra XP (or XP towards a backup character), and magic item creation.

>>49947534
Mostly I want to encourage exploration and discourage murderhobo-ism, which people say GP for XP is good at doing.

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>>49947757
GP for XP doesn't intrinsically do this alone - it simply doesn't give XP (or far less XP) for fighting monsters, making combat a means to an end, rather than a primary method of character advancement. Not every player is incentivized by system advancement either.

Creating an exploration focus equally has as much to do with player mentality, character motivations, or the design of your areas.

If there's no way to get the incentivized objective (whether it be gold, a quest objective, or whatever) other than fighting monsters, the players will fight the monsters. Alternately, players may choose to play characters that have some sort of internal motivation (i.e. hates orcs, will always choose to kill orcs) - players like these might be interested in simulating a virtual character.

Alternately, areas might be designed to fundamentally discourage exploration. If everything is hyper-lethal and players have little information on how to navigate safely, they'll err on the side of caution and not venture into the dark corner where something could jump out at them.

>>49947757
>>49948038
Will be around again later, but I also wanted to clarify what you mean by "exploration". On one hand, exploration is the simple facet of "finding stuff" - players automatically do this in every campaign. Nothing exists until the players experience it and you as the GM bring it into being (or collectively do so in say a story-game). So to some extent I'm not sure how your game can be lacking in exploration - *something* is always being explored.

On the other hand it seems like what you might be driving at is more "engagement with the fiction" - encouraging PCs to interact with the created content further in ways the rules do not define. Rather than simply saying "yeah, there's a room with a chandelier and a crooked painting - let's take the door", perhaps you want them to push further - maybe look behind the painting, and so forth, rather than interact with the obvious.

This latter bit is a lot harder and won't easily be solved by a ruleset - because fundamentally a game is about rules of interaction, and this is the tension behind RPGs. A game is a social construct where all participants agree to a certain set of conventions and rules - both explicit and implicit. Getting more of the latter requires changing the implicit rules, not just the explicit ones.

>>49939388
Everything published by LotFP is in the LotFP folder. Settings have duplicates so that anyone interested in which settings OSR has to offer finds it quickly.

I can agree that Maze can be stationed somewhere where it's instantly visible, bit then again there's always a Search function for which you just need a free account.

I'll think about it once I get backup trove, well, back.

>>49937588
>>49937791
On Linux just type in this, replacing $code with the code:
echo "$code" | base64 -d | xargs firefox

>>49938295
Building a tiny level 1 to 5 sandbox, about the size of a hex. It'll be my first time GMing, actually. It'll also be my first time, as well as the groups first time, trying to do an OSR game. It'll be interesting, I bet.

>>49938295

I've just run a session of B/X / LL, open table, via chat.

People coming and going, rolling characters while the game goes on, leaving the dungeon with an excuse when it's too late in their timezone and they have to go sleep, other people walking in with their characters rolled for other campaigns and stumbling into the party.

Very light game, not in the sense that it was a comedy, but in the sense that no one gives a shit about backstories or motivations: you're here to explore the dungeon and get rich.

It was really fun, and I think the players enjoyed it. Maybe I'll do a storytime later.

I'll probably continue it, too. I had the players write "advice for the next adventurers" on a paper and nail it to the city's tavern so the next party I run the game to will have some extra "rumors" and hints. A bit dark-souls-y, especially considering that the players have not been 100% truthful with their hints! (one of them even wrote them in cipher)

I've got a question actually: I'm running JG102 Caverns of Thracia for them, which was meant as an OD&D adventure, but we're using B/X.

I'm not a big expert on OD&D, but I have the feeling that it balanced XP-for-monsters and XP-for-treasure. Am I right?

I'll have to convert it to B/X, then, considering that B/X leans HEAVILY on the "XP-for-treasure" side. Add a lot of cash and stuff?

As an aside: holy shit JG102 Caverns of Thracia is METAL.

>>49938295
Nothing, my OD&D game basically runs itself.
And when they all die, I'll start an Into the Odd campaign. I love the OSR because I spend far less time prepping and far more time having fun with my friends.

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>>49915259
What is a good example of a comprehensive price list in for more generic items? Any standard is fine - I need something to work from when adding setting-specific items.

>>49948850
The AD&D DMG is pretty good for that stuff.

>>49948818
>I'm not a big expert on OD&D, but I have the feeling that it balanced XP-for-monsters and XP-for-treasure. Am I right?
Afaik nothing in 3LBB hints at monsters awarding XP.

>Add a lot of cash and stuff?
Depends on how fast you want characters to level up. It's not meant to be very fast in OD&D.

>>49948993
>Afaik nothing in 3LBB hints at monsters awarding XP.
Monsters give 100 XP per level, according to the Experience Points section on page 18 of Men and Magic.

>>49949025
So it seems. I think it's pretty much the same in basic too.

>>49949046
Basic's massively lower, at something like 10-20 XP per HD (it changes as you go up the table). They kept the XP to level up the same, though.

>>49949046
>>49949061
I think OD&D might actually give the most XP per monster HD of any of the TSR versions of D&D.

>>49946658
>Are there any particular considerations for converting a game to a gold based xp system
Not really, or none that aren't extensively provided for in OSR games -- most XP in most old-school games come from gold.

>am I fine with just having 1gp = 1xp?
Yeah, absolutely, that's the "gold standard" and it's the most common way. LotFP uses a silver standard and some guys have liked to do that in their homebrews for a long time, too.

>>49949061
Ah. That's a big difference then. I have to admit every time I ran OD&D I awarded XP only for recovered treasure.

Giving 100 XP per HD does make leveling up a bit faster and more "reliable" I guess since characters would be getting pretty decent XP from 1 HD monsters in addition to treasure.

>>49949126
>every time I ran OD&D I awarded XP only for recovered treasure.
Just like most people, I'd guess. The only thing that hints at it is one part of one sentence in the massive block of text that is that paragraph. Did you use the fractional XP thing, or give that up as too complicated?

I'd also guess that most people who run OD&D don't realise that it has falling damage rules (buried in the naval combat section).

What would you do? Run Thracia in b/x but with an od&d xp awarding scheme (100xp per HD, etc), or change Thracia so it has more treasure in it?

>>49949142
I've never used that fractional XP rule because it's just unnecessary complication without really adding anything to the game. Besides I think there's certain elegance to the way how XP for gold (and HD) works and it shouldn't matter where the treasure is found.

I guess it encourages players to delve deeper instead of loitering near surface but the same can be achieved by just limiting the amount of treasure available on each level.

>>49949159
Use the OD&D XP awarding scheme, but make sure to use the fractional XP thing so your PCs don't get too much XP from low-level monsters.

OD&D's XP formula is (G+100H)*(H/L), where G is the GP value of the treasure got from the encounter, H is the HD (partial or total, so 6+2 is H=7, etc.) of the monster, and L is the level of the player. If H>L, remove the H/L multiplier.

You'd have to keep track of which treasure belongs to which monster, though, to make sure you get the right multiplier for each character. I'm also not sure how you handle splitting XP over multiple characters.

>>49949240

That sounds like a hassle. I'd say just either use "100XP per HD, 1XP per GP", or give more treasure, or give more XP per one GP.

>>49949239
Word.

>>49949283
Consider that when your players go from level 1 to level 2, suddenly everything they've been fighting before is now worth half as much XP.

Really makes them want to set out across the sea of faces, in search of more, and more, applause.

Thraciafag here. Just went over JG102 Caverns of Thracia.

The first level of the dungeon has about 3180 GP of assorted treasure.

(Amusingly, I'd say about half of that treasure is in the form of statues having gems for eyes. Someone REALLY liked that trope.)

Considering how goddamn lethal that first level is (as it houses an 8th level evil cleric, among other things!), I think it's alright to increase treasure if you're running Thracia under B/X and therefore treasure weights far more heavily on XP than monsters.

Because it has a lot of really scary monsters.

>>49949360
>3180 GP of assorted treasure.
I'm not familiar with Thracia but that sounds like a VERY low amount of treasure for a dungeon level.

>>49949402
It is, for B/X. Heck I think it's very low for OD&D standards as well.

>>49948993
There's an example where a troll is worth 700

There's a whole big thing about that XP for monsters in OD&D thing. It doesn't take as long as Basic for the XP values to be revised, that happens in Greyhawk, i.e. the first supplement to come out. The only real indication of the 100 XP/monster level rule is reverse engineering the value of the troll IIRC (seventh-level monster, 700 XP).

According to Mornard, monsters were never worth that much in the Greyhawk game and it was never the intention to imply a 100 XP/level standard -- trolls just have hype powers like regeneration that make them worth far more XP than average, Gygax picked an example that happened to be awful, and as usual, the LBB writing is terrible and vague. (The fact that the Greyhawk supplement is the one that contained the monster XP tables gives credence to Mornard's claim.)

Still, the assumed rule does mean you move up levels at a pretty fair clip when you're low level, and it's almost certainly the case that Judges' Guild and Paul Jaquays assumed that was how it worked when Caverns was published.

Either way, feel free to add extra treasure, of course, >>49948818. Not only is it fair to adapt any module to the leveling speed you want, but it's also much easier to just add more loot than it is to keep count of all the monsters slain and their XP values.

>>49949442

Yeah, Gygax had a real problem with clarity, unfortunately.

I think I'll follow your advice and increase treasure, because that, I think, appeals to players far more than more XP in general.

Sure, XP is something you want, but it's fairly ephemeral, whereas "Under the dull fire of the torches, the demon statue's eye sockets gleam at you maliciously, yet alluringly. They are set with brilliant-cut garnets the size of your clenched fist." has ROMANCE to it.

>>49949360
>The first level of the dungeon has about 3180 GP of assorted treasure.
Fawk, Thracia's levels are practically megadungeon-size. That's not even enough to level up a party if they find everything!

I always liked the megadungeon rule that each level should contain 3-4 times the treasure required for a party (I usually figure based on a party of five fighters, but obviously if you want to adapt it more to your players' actual party that makes a ton of sense) of the same character level as the dungeon level to reach the following level.

The reason being that you can't expect and don't really even *want* players to explore every nook and cranny of level 1 before they move on to level 2, nor can you really assume they'll find all the treasure or that nobody will die and waste his XP gains. There has to be a lot of padding for it not to feel bullshit to the players.

So for instance level 1 should have 30-40k gp of treasure, level 2 should contain between 60k and 80k, and so on. 3180 is... a little shy of that. Of course if you want them to scour the whole caverns (God knows it seems worth it, it looks a great module although I've never read it through), you could go for more like 15-20k, maybe.

>>49949504
Agreed on all points. Besides, if you pry a jewel out of an evil statue's eye socket, the last thing you want to hear is that it's worth like 50 gp. Probably just raising the value of shit like that's the best solution, a win/win.

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>49949535

Keep in mind that the ENTIRE level has 3180 GP as in "if you grind it to dust and sift it with a sieve". A lot of it is very cleverly hidden, behind secret doors, behind lethal traps (my players found a chest trapped with a 2d6 lightning bolt that terrified them so much that they didn't even touch it after it nearly killed the thief), or behind RIDICULOUS monsters like the aforementioned 8th level evil Patriarch.

Normal adventuring parties will probably stumble in less than a third of that on an average run, so that's about 1000GP.

So... yeah. I think that, on the next run, I'll stock it with a hell of a lot more treasure.

Treasure is fun, and I'm a big fan of the idea of "treasure is storytelling". Caverns of Thracia has a really intricate backstory, and the right kind of treasure is a great way to tell it and bring the atmosphere.

Pic related, it's level 1 of Caverns of Thracia.

This "treasure problem" aside (which is only a problem if you don't do XP for HD, really), I'd argue that Thracia is one of the best dungeons out there. It's vast, sprawling, atmospheric, heavily non-linear, and with amazing vertical design.

Does the Trove have the original Temple of the Frog? I can't seem to find it, but maybe I'm just retarded.

>>49950170
The original Temple of the Frog is in Supplement II - Blackmoor.

>>49948818

So here's the storytime for Thracia, since thread is going slow.

Party starts out with Elf, Dwarf and Thief, at the small fortified city on the edge of the jungle that is their base. They heard the wild tales of fantastic riches in the Ruins of Thracia, and a story about some poor suckers who emerged from the caves carrying large bags of gold, and promptly got knifed in the back as soon as they returned to civilization.

The thief off-handedly suggests that they might've been the ones to do the knifing to outfit themselves. I decide to go with it for color.

They gather some rumors, the thief by listening, the elf by carousing in the tavern. They hear about a mythical pool (rumor #9) and decide that it must be a pool of wishes, and spend some time arguing how could a civilization featuring a pool of wishing ever crumble and fall.

Some good old elf-dwarf-human banter ensues, and they depart for the ruins.

They find a corner of a ruined building on the edge of a suspicious swamp, and the thief climbs the building. At this point everyone is talking loudly to each other, relaxed, and the thief even shouts a call to the others, so they immediately draw attention.

A party of gnolls exist the ruin the thief was standing atop of, and he barely hides, rejoining the party and urging them to be silent.

The party stacks up around the corner of the ruin, scooby-doo style, to look at the monsters, four gnolls and one jackal-man, discussing and eventually deciding to move... straight in their direction.

Hilarious miscommunication ensues. The thief goes "SURPRISE ATTACK!" and leaps at the beastmen, while the dwarf and elf fall back and hide. Furthermore, the thief's "surprise attack" fails miserably on the gnolls' shields.

He miraculously manages to survive one full round of combat without damage, but is being surrounded, The Gnolls clearly intend to capture him alive!

(continued)

>>49918753
what would be a good LoFP module to run a 1 shot. one that captures the dungeon world feeling would be best. I want to try the LoFP rules and i am wondering what module to read since this darkest dungeon pdf helps me with the Pregen part i have been reading reviews of the recommended modules. but they all say that have 20+rooms and stuff.

>>49950562

Grumbling, the elf decides to help and, hidden in the foliage, lobs a Sleep spell at the monster party. Two gnolls fall asleep, and the rest fail morale, fleeing south! the elf looses an arrow at their backs scoring a grazing hit before they vanish.

Still, the thief is less than pleased with his comrades leaving him to face the gnolls alone. Meanwhile, the dwarf searches the ruin, finding a captive human cleric of a peaceful god (a new player!) whom the beastmen had captured, as well as the diary and remains of a previous dwarven explorer, writing about a secret entrance to a lower level of the ruin in a black building far to the south.

The sleeping gnolls are dispatched, much to the dismay of the cleric, who nonetheless joins the party in their excursion. He is better-prepared than they are (having rolled well on the random rumors table) and he knows that the ruins conceal a cursed sword. Furthermore, he knows some of the languages spoken by the local human savages.

Further south, the party stumbles into a large temple complex of white stone, half-collapsed, overgrown, and unguarded. They found the entrance!

The dwarf complains that this is not the black-stone entrance that he read about. He very much wanted to climb directly down to the lowest levels of the dungeon and take the fight to the heart of the beastmen civilization. Fortunately, he relents, and inspects the stairs.

He warns the party of the presence of bats, which, if spooked, easily panic and swarm, causing much noise and perhaps drawing attention. Nice to notice that the party is slowly realizing that they should be cautious. (All of the players are new to OSR, so they're still figuring things out.)

They find a chamber frescoed with images of ancient gods and deities, with corridors going in all directions. (Room 1). Moving cautiously, they explore the western passage, and find it a dead end. They find this immediately suspicious.

(continued)

>>49950665
20 rooms is pretty standard for a 1st-level starter dungeon.

>>49950714

While the cleric examines the fresco (a marred depiction of Zeus), the dwarf notes that the wall hides a revolving door as a secret passage!

(Yes, I know that there isn't a secret passage marked there, but look at the map! tell me it doesn't make sense.)

They crack the door open, and are assailed by a horrifying stench of death, It takes them quite a while to work up the stomach and courage to look into the room, where they immediately see a black stone chest along the wall. (the x in room 27b)

They move in, with the elf scouting around thanks to Darkvision while the rest of the party minds the chest. Meanwhile, the door is closed behind them when the elf notices a bunch of giant rats moving into room 1 from the east. (random encounter)

The instant the thief touches the black chest, a magical trap is triggered, and electricity rocks his body. He barely survives with 1 HP, thanks to his constitution of 18. From this point on, the PCs spend a full turn hovering over the chest without really doing anything, terrified.

Meanwhile, the elf notices that the room is a cathedral, cleft in two by a ravine, and that an enormous pile of festering corpses is piled in front of the south exit. One of the corpses is twitching.

After some time spent watching, the corpse slides off and from under it peeks a carrion crawler, burrowing in the pile, sucking the corpse's spinal cord out happily.

It stares at the elf.
The elf stares back at it.

Both turn around and go back to their respective business.(positive Reaction roll, the Crawler is not hostile.)

Meanwhile the party has hatched a plan for moving north of the chasm. The thief is to carry rope on the other side, and tie it to a column to give the other characters help in crossing. There is much fear and paranoia.

Finally, the rest of the party goads the thief into jumping, and he does! The party subsequently crosses the chasm and finds a circular altar on the north end of the cathedral.

(continued)

The dwarf spots one more secret passage, leading north. Meanwhile...

...When the cleric attempts to clean the altar, however, he hears clanking noises and a whirring mechanism.

Everyone else ducks for cover. He does not. One Round later, a fiery conflagration erupts all around him, nearly incinerating him and his equipment (down to 1 HP) as a giant statue of a demon rises from the flames, laughing mockingly at him, precious gemstones in his eyes.

The party, terrified (at this point I really imagined them like Scooby Doo characters bumbling around the dungeon), jams themselves in the secret passage and emerge north of the cathedral, in a long corridor.

(random encounter) From the west, they hear chanting and footsteps, and see candles in the dark, lit by blue fire. They realize that an evil procession is afoot, and after some deliberation, decide to move ahead of it.

They move through corridor 8, finally reaching a corner where to stack up and prepare an ambush, but, having both thief and cleric wounded, they are hesitant to intervene, especially once they see that the procession (blind monks carrying a skull-shaped carved stone icon, escorted by warriors in plate mail) is numerous and strong.

A lit room, further south, is appealing, but the yipping noise of gnoll conversations puts them off the idea. Searching desperately, they find another secret passage, and stumble in room 5, where a hunting party of lizardmen has set up camp.

The lizardmen roll a double 6 on Reactions and a double 1 on Morale. They attack.

The end result, a few rounds later, is the thief dead, his skull splattered, and everyone else hovering on death's door apart for the elf, who barricades himself in the room and tries to nurse his comrades back to at least enough health so that they can walk their way out of the infernal dungeon.

Thus ended the first foray of this party into the Caverns of Thracia. One dead, a lot of wounded, some beastmen killed, 0 GP of treasure recovered.

How does this armor chart look for a Bronze Age/Ancient Greece inspired setting?

Unarmored = AC 10
Shield Alone = AC 9
Shield & Greaves = AC 8
Linothorax = AC 7
+ Greaves/Shield = AC 6
+ Shield & Shield = AC 5
Bronze Cuirass = AC 4
+ Greaves/Shield = AC 3
+ Greaves & Shield = AC 2

>>49950961
Final DM notes:

1) Thracia is HARDCORE. Many encounters, even on the first dungeon level, are with 2HD, intelligent monsters with very good AC.

2) The players were generally unlucky. Their damage rolls were consistently very low, whereas the lizardmen, wielding 1d8-damage clubs and attacking with 1d6-damage large rocks, only rolled 8s for the clubs and 6s for the rocks.

3) The trapped chest and then the fire trap made the party very cautious, perhaps too much. I was surprised that they elected to just leave the chest closed, even once they figured out what the trap was, and didn't make any second attempt on it.

4) The players never searched the bodies of their fallen enemies for loose cash or (more importantly) clues. I know they mostly come from more modern gaming, but is this really not a thing anymore? For all that matter, they never searched the rooms for hidden treasures, only for secret passages. (I mean there were no hidden treasures, but they did not know that.)

5) The players were really pleased when I informed them that the OSR system of exploring in 10-minute turns always implies that they are moving around as quietly and cautiously as is reasonable. When they realized this, they stopped giving me highly specific, repetitive actions ("I move very carefully, one step at a time, and after every step stop for a moment to listen if I hear any noise", or "I look up, down, left and right") and started paying more attention to my room descriptions, trusting that they contained any hints they might've needed.

6) The atmosphere of a pulpy underground temple inhabited by dog-headed people and a terrifying death cult was great, and the players praised it.

>>49951077
For an AD&D comparison, Age of Heroes had the Linothorax at AC 8, studded leather at AC 7, and the full Hoplite armour (helmet, breastplate, greaves) at AC 6, 5 with shield.

>>49951155
I basically wanted to refluff the standard AC progression rather than accurately reflect their protection level in comparison to late-medieval armor

>>49951199
You'd probably want to rejig stats for things like centaurs if you do that, to account for the change in AC scale.

>>49951225
Which approach do you think is easier?

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I thought it would be more prudent to ask here than the PDF share thread, since not many other people are into OSR.

Does anyone happen to have the second / advanced / revised edition of Wizards, Warriors & Wyrms? All I have is a 30-something-page PDF, which appears to be an earlier version.

I'm pretty sure there's a revised edition out there somewhere that should span around 50 pages. The only site I could find it hosted on was scribd, and the site won't let me access anything unless I cough up credit card info. It's probably a shitty opt-out scam, so I'm not even going there.

>>49951266
Personally, I'm incredibly lazy, so I'd just break out the 2e Age of Heroes supplement and fix things if I have to.

It depends on whether you think having the whole AC scale to play with, as opposed to a few bits of it, will be something your players will want. Having that whole scale also gives you a bit more room for AC progression over the game, while having the shortened one means it's easier to control your players' ACs, beyond the usual method of 'that item is not available here'.

>>49951285
>the site won't let me access anything unless I cough up credit card info.
Put a bunch of junk data in a text file and upload it. Doing so will get you one free download, which you can use to pull your file. That is, unless they've changed things recently.

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I'm running World of the Lost. LotFP says XP for treasure should be rewarded after its taken to a secure place...problem is, they're on a plateau surrounded by a forcefield full of dinosaurs and robots. There really are no civilised outposts to sell this shit. So should I reward XP as they FIND the treasure?

I'm on my first read through of DCC (really more of a skim through desu) and while I am really liking what I see so far, I've also noticed that there don't seem to be many rules to support a continuing campaign.

For instance, there don't seem to be rules or tables for stringing adventures together from one to the next, nor for populating your campaign world. Do the boxed sets (Purple Planet and Chained Coffin) support that sort of thing for their settings?

I know that there are resources out there for traveling rules and random encounters but I don't know where to look, and I don't know what's of usable quality. What would you guys recommend?

>>49951348
I'm also running that adventure. My players haven't gotten much, treasure and are still off the plateau. My plan (should they make, it their about to roll into Akabo) would be to have them establish a camp with one of the various factions on the plateau and have them returning there with stuff as a safe place. Probably they won't do that though.

> Soviet D&D campaign (1945-1970)

I'm not sure if this is deliberate, and if not - should I point out that this category name may be a bit misleading.

Any advice on how to handle (or not) this situation?

>>49951433
I think DCC assumes that you already have the resources to do a lot of those things, so they don't bother to make any new rules/systems. Can't help you with finding resources though, I'm still struggling with it myself.

>>49951314
What page is it on? I'm looking at it in trove, and can't find the AC table

>>49950733
just realized after picking the stargazer.

>>49948038
>>49948069

I suppose the biggest thing I want to push is the idea that combat isn't the be-all end-all since the focus I want is more on dungeon delving and less about sweeping through everything as a execution squad. Like it might be easier to just pickpocket the key to the gate that the ogre is guarding instead of funneling him into a chokepoint and killing him, just like the players did to the goblins in area 3, just like they did to the lizardman shaman in area 7, just like they did etc etc etc. But I'm worried though about how you'd motivate players to take any risks beyond those that have a promise beyond immediate financial reward, just like I worry if XP for monsters would predispose players to treat every NPC interaction as just a default to combat.

>>49951077
I think the aspis, helmet and greaves combination should give better AC than just 8, desu. Those shields are huge and fucking thick.

So there has been some talk about this, but I would like to further discuss it: do you give your players the option to "bank" experience? I'm thinking of adding it as a house rule that a character can spend gold in a manner that suits that character (so a cleric donates it to a church for example), and that 10% of the gold spent this way is "saved" for if the character dies and the player rolls a new character. This adds a choice when a new character has to be introduced: roll a fresh one, pick a henchmen, or pick your "protege".

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>>49952194
One of the biggest things that can help here is uniformly applying reaction roll mechanics.

If everything the players see is immediately hostile and something they cannot intimidate or communicate with, or if monsters form a united front and generally do not give in to negotiation, then players who are smart will try to lay ambushes and do their best to get the first strike.

On the other hand, if encounters with monsters don't immediately default to hostility or if monsters can be communicated with and parleyed, then. Consider having humanoid monsters be able to speak the English-equivalent of your setting, if only a broken one.

It's also important to note that the rules and your scenario need to also show tangible benefit of taking a route other than killing the monsters outright. There's lots of advantages to slaying the monster outright - you don't have to watch your back after, for example. On the flip side, pickpocketing the orc comes with a ton of risks - the risk of discovery will lead to a fight anyway, so why not just ambush him?

One thing that helps is making monsters cowardly and greedy - these make them easy to exploit and outwit. Rather than pickpocketing the orc, perhaps the players could bribe him. This also can help avoid "funneling into chokepoint" issues - humanoid monsters at least should be intelligent enough to recognize the possibility of a trap.

I will note however if you want complete alternatives to combat you may want to consider other systems. At the end of the day, most stuff in D&D is fairly easy to kill (including the players) and only get easier to kill as you level up - the game is about a certain level of heroic play.

>>49953509
10% is super punishing. That means if I spend 1000gp I'll get a lousy 100xp towards the next character; I might as well blow this on supplies that will keep my current character alive.

Most games that use an XP banking system, like ACKS, just simply give you 1 gp spent = 1 xp towards the next character.

>>49952194
I'm very tired and keep fucking up my syntax.

>>49953661
>I will note however if you want complete alternatives to combat you may want to consider other systems.

I'm fine with them fighting monsters most of the time, I just want them to try other approaches every once in a while.

>>49948850
Only True AD&D can help here, for you require Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog.

I'm planning to run a Lankhmar-ish urban campaign and was wondering id there was good supporting material for such cities,
Adventure generators, npc and encounter tables for example

>>49954364
All AD&D material printed for Waterdeep, Raven's Bluff / "The Living City", and Lankhmar itself.

>>49954364
Check out Corpathium, its on the Last Gasp Grimore blog. Sadly the blog itself is pretty dead, but there a lot to be found sifting through whats there.

>>49954364
The Vornheim City Kit has a lot of fun things, ranging from urbancrawl rules to random tables for shopkeepers.

>>49954364
While it's not a kit or anything, I'll always recommend Judges Guild's City-State of the Invincible Overlord. Even if it's just to nick the map.

>>49955126
>City-State of the Invincible Overlord
I keep seeing it praised, but may I just ask what exactly makes it so special?

>>49955261
Take a look at it. It is gigantic and full of weird shit.

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>>49955261

Honestly? The map.

>>49955261
It's a fairly detailed city with a big-ass map, a good system for random city encounters (with general ones, district-specific ones (e.g. thieves in the thief quarter, a beggar in the seafront quarter), street-specific events, lots of events in general in the tables) and a neat thing where rather than having some kind of positive/negative reaction table there's a bunch of tables for figuring out what exactly they want and, if they attack you, why. Maybe the robber in the merchant's quarter just wants to offer you a job, and maybe the paladin who attacked you did it because they didn't like the way you looked.

Really, there's a ton that could be said about it just from an OD&D houserule perspective - there's a hell of a lot of rules you could nick if you wanted to, although most of them got into the Ready Ref Sheets that are also very highly praised for anyone looking into OD&D.

The city itself is also a nice hive of scum and villainy, a true sandbox filled with sparsely detailed shops and houses.

Also, of course, it helps that it's the first city supplement ever published and the first product in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting.

It's hard to explain what exactly makes it so praised, though, so I recommend that you just check out a copy in the Trove yourself. Just be prepared for awful 1976 formatting and a bad scan.

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>>49955803
Here's a better scan.

>>49955854
Not him, but does anyone have a copy of the Ready Ref Sheets on hand?

>>49954009
Maybe just give them a super easy scenario? Have monsters of A rob monsters of type B and show how they're greedy. Also show how they cover from monster of type C. Noe you've established greedy but cowardly monsters that could be bargained with.

>>49951602
What fucking situation

>>49955976
It's in the Trove and a 16MB file (and thus too big for 4chan).

>>49955976
>>49956029
Have it here, anyway.
>https://mega.nz/#!AZxWUbRK!JLnMUhKdss28KHJ0Dyvgx8gfTudtpuL7MbdrJXzFib4

>>49954364
Fever Dreaming Marlinko has cool stuff!

>>49948076
> there's always a Search function for which you just need a free account.
Whenever I use it, it only searches for matching text if the given folder I'm in, and won't look inside sub folders. Am I missing something?

I'm building a setting that only has psionics as it's source of "magic". The problem is that I don't know the first thing about OSR psionics besides the fact that everyone seems to hate it. Is there a game or 3rd party supplement I could use for it?

Is there a PDF/epub of Playing at the World anyhwhere, that any of you guys know about?

>>49940384
I think he's long gone, but Kevin Crawford seems to be a fan of abstracted wealth (he's done games with "points" as well as "levels"). I know Silent Legions has abstraction.

In the end if you crib Reign's or Feng Shui's you should be fine.

>>49953509
Like the other Anon, I'd bank 1:1 if I did. But I don't exactly; at present, I just run henchmen on the rule that you owe them a certain amount of your cut (instead of factoring them into the main party division on a half-share, which would mean that everyone pays for the one guy who wants a ton of henches), but they don't get XP for it automatically; you choose for yourself how much of your earned XP goes to the henchman with the exception that they can only ever be lower level than you. Then if your main guy dies, you can play the hench.

>>49957285

There's a few reworked psionics books out there. The hosers at New Big Dragon Games Unlimited (the dinguses responsible for Trove takedowns) made PX1 the Basic Psionics Handbook.
There's another one by Courtney Campbell, called Psionics: A New Old-School Supplement.
I'm pretty sure I've seen a psionics section or book for one of the major OSR games, too.

>>49957414

Playing at the World by Jon Peterson.zip
http://www19.zippyshare.com/v/cy6F8maF/file.html

Here's a .epub and .mobi. I couldn't find a .pdf version. I tested the .epub on some free windows software and it can read it, but the bookmarks are all messed up. If TroveGuy or CUTT guy want to through it in the Mega feel free.

>>49957863
Would anyone be willing to drop a separate link to PX1 since it's not available in the trove?

>>49951837
71, in the little paragraph labelled 'Armor' at the bottom of the left column.

>>49958201

No way, man, that would be wrong.

http://www.uploadmb.com/dw.php?id=1477439560

>>49958392
You wouldn't download a car, would you?

Thanks anon.

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I love DCC.
I don't love the huge book it's in. Why didn't Goodman Games publish this as 3 books? I need to go the magic section all the time, but it's always so tedious.

Anyway, I have a question for /osrg/
What format do your like your systems in?
Boxed with booklets?
Separately sold books?
One huge book?
Something else?

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>>49915703
-small portal to a faerie market. The faeries are small and diminuitive and only one adventurer can enter to barter at a time

-talking carrion crow (or other bird) has precious gemstones in gullet, will regurgitate them in trade for monster delicacies

-djinni banker stuck in bottle sealed to the wall - offers magical services, loans, and futures contracts but legalese is complex and there's lots of fine prints

-enterprising dragon whelp slowly amassing small hoard; willing to barter trinkets that he can't wear for bling that he can

-mechanized trading golem looking for gold or materials to fabricate replacement parts; offers blacksmithing services in exchange.

>>49960306
I love DCC too. I never thought about it being multiple books, but that could work out. I'd pay to get a new version split up like that.

There's something fun about pulling out a giant tome, though.

is the caverns of thracia in the trove?

>>49918753
bless your heart

>>49962637
Sure is, look in supplements.

>>49962664
thank you, friend

>>49957902
The layout is broken as fuck in that file. Is there a proper download available somewhere?

>>49963138

I checked on IRC, and only found the same two PDFs. Straight-up sucks, man.

>>49953686
Its 90% actually, but close enough.

we're going to need a new thread here soon

Did anyone ever try to run open-table-style OSR games on Roll20?

I'm kinda considering the idea.

>>49960306
One small book. LotFP wins for me.

As much as I love DCC, the book is a pain in the ass. Especially since it is being constantly referenced for the tables.
I know someone made a handy table reference booklet. But if fan-created solutions are required to make your game a smooth process to play, then you've probably fucked up.
Purple Sorcerer's level 0 generator and crawler's companion app are also pretty much required.
Same problem with Rules Cyclopedia. I was raised on B/X and BECMI. As useless as BECMI is to reference, RC is just too massive.

>>49964903
>As useless as BECMI is to reference
If you don't know where something is, you can just thumb through the rules. It's only nine books, after all.

>>49964903
>One small book. LotFP wins for me.
>Same problem with Rules Cyclopedia. I was raised on B/X and BECMI. As useless as BECMI is to reference, RC is just too massive.
Man, at least the Rules Cyclopedia lies flat on the table and stays open on whatever page it's turned to.

I don't know if you just have a puny play surface or what, but I'll take a letter-size book I don't have to hold open over a small one that has to be held open.

>>49965578
Fair point.
counterpoint: the rules are simple and minimal enough that you don't need to reference the book all that much. Especially if you have been running it for a while. Entire sessions can go by without needing it opened once.

I ran a DCC game for a couple of months and players still found it necessary to reference the book constantly.

Generally I don't reference the book during the play. Except when we really need to get rules right because they're new and shiny and we need to get their feel. Like DCC, yeah. Honestly, it's always a tradeoff. A great deal of care has been put into DCC's aesthetics and feel. It's organized fairly well. If anything is the problem, it is the wordiness. But you can't avoid it with all of the ideas they presented and with the feel they were going for.

I don't see app as a negative side, on the contrary, I welcome utilizing technology to smooth things out. And come on, people still use bookmarks, right? Those things people used for pretty much ever? I can't be the only one.

>>49965936
>counterpoint: the rules are simple and minimal enough that you don't need to reference the book all that much. Especially if you have been running it for a while.
But... that's almost precisely equally true of BECMI, so...

>>49966106
>feel
>feel
>feel again

Sorry for being tautology-kun, guess I'm tired.

Any suggestions for inn/tavern floor plans?

Someone even tried to do a Not-World of Darkness OSR?

>>49967654
That doesn't seem like a good fit for OSR rules and general vibe. What kind of dungeon crawling are vampires going to do in the the Not-World of Darkness?

>>49967654
What would that even be like? I honestly have no idea.

>>49967761
You even gone to São Paulo? That place is a fucking Maze. And Rio de Janeiro is full of murderhobos.

>>49968750
Fair enough.
>Moody vampires and angsty werewolves stalking the favelas.
>When will you rage?

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1. How do I make combat more interesting? Especially the ones that just tend to drag on, miss after miss? Our LotFP hexcrawl last night had only 2 encounters and both seemed to take a fucking eternity.

2. How do I get my players to stop being huge pussies? It's one thing to be cautious and another entirely to avoid interaction with everything suspicious or interesting they come across.

>>49969087
Encourage your players not to attack everything. Make good use of reaction and morale rolls. If you're hex crawling, maybe roll up another encounter and have the two results interact.

Bad rolls are bad rolls; there's not much you can do about that, especially given that only fighters get better at combat. If things aren't going their way maybe they should just try to run away.

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>>49969208
Yeah, I had my players stumble upon a baby hippo by the river. After a minute, a protective mother hippo shot out of the water towards them...and they still decided to fight it. Nearly kills the Witch. The Thief's flintlock missed the target and killed the baby hippo on accident (mortifying the her IRL). Massai warrior had a rune carved stick that asks favors of a plants spirit and asks for vines and branches to be lowered down so they can escape. They do. And they decide to keep attacking it from the trees.

A hippo. Protecting its baby. I think maybe they are just retarded.