/osrg/

>>50082645
I know there are many, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone was dedicated enough to list them all. This is RPGs and the internet after all.

>>50082651
Thanks for the link! I'll check it out.

>>50082760
>>50082583

Not that I'm aware of, but I can give you a rundown on the ones I'm more or less familiar with:

BFRPG has attack bonus and ascending AC. It also separates race and class, and includes a sensible solution to AD&D multiclassing, allowing you to preserve the elf fighter/magic-user combo if desired. Races get a +1 to a particular ability score modifier, meaning a dwarf with 18 Constitution can have a +4 bonus rather than +3. It's all free and there's some neat rules expansions for it (also free) which include more races, more classes, expanded magic, etc. It's not a particularly slick presentation, but the bones are there for you to hang the meat onto.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a much slicker presentation (though some people have an issue with the art for being, in a word, gross). The skill system is superior to the Roll Under systems like secondary skills, and there's just enough skills to make it meaningful without dumping a ton of shit onto the character sheet. It has Race as Class, however. LotFP uses attack bonus and ascending AC. Fighters are the only class that continues to increase their attack bonus as they level, making them a great deal more powerful. Clerics don't have Turn Undead as a class feature - it's a spell here. LotFP also has a really good encumbrance system. Finally, the firearms appendix is great, and for me, it's one of my favorite things because my own homebrew setting is inspired partly on Le Pactes de Loups. However, despite the art and the tone of the writing, the rules themselves are no more weird than any other B/X clone. Summon Monster is a standout, but aside from that it's fairly normal D&D with a few houserules.

Labyrinth Lord (which I'm much less familiar with) has descending AC and (I'm assuming because I can't find it in the book) THAC0. All three, BFRPG, LL, and LotFP use the 5 saving throws.

Been lurking osrg for a few months now.
People in these threads aren't nearly as awful as 4chan's reputation would have you believe.

What gives?
How did this oasis happen in the middle of such a desolate wasteland of shittiness?

File: OSR Comparison Chart.png (4MB, 5028x2288px) Image search: [Google]

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>>50082775

Swords & Wizardry has a lot of AD&D in its DNA. It has Assassins, Rangers, a dedicated Paladin class (rather than it being a straight upgrade for Lawful Fighters like in the RC),race separated from class. It has options for attack bonus/THAC0 and ascending/descending ACs. A big place it differs from the others is the use of a single saving throw number (the number is modified by whatever you're saving against).

I've attached a comparison chart I saved from an earlier thread to help.

Now that I'm looking at S&W's PDF... I'm really tempted to get a physical copy.

So I'm playing a game tonight! We are playing a dungeon that I made in the past 2 days of about 40 rooms, 3 factions and 3 major zones of control. I fleshed the dungeon out; about 13 rooms have creatures in them, about 13 have traps or tricks, and the rest is still empty except for general properties. I have wandering monster tables for the three zones, some random treasure table stuff, and a table for how statues react when investigated. (there are a lot of statues in the dungeon and I wanted to do something with that. Wondering how many session I might get out of this, but more importantly; what could I be missing to run the mini-sandbox smoothly?

>>50082866
Sounds very solid really. Remember to include some entries in the wandering monster tables that have monsters from different factions fighting each other. Also each faction should have an important NPC or two.

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>>50082832

A lot of us are likely older, as there's some who played with Basic back when it was new who contribute. I'm not that old myself. I started with 3.0 D&D, but gained an appreciation for the older editions in my quest to discover why certain things in D&D were they way the way they were (Druids being forbidden to wear metal armor for example - I found the answer in the Rules Cyclopedia).

Ultimately, there's so many flavors of D&D even with just the Basic line that I feel we have a mostly live and let live attitude toward those who appreciate the older style of play. It also helps that we actually do play the games that we talk about in this thread.

>>50082832
There isn't much to argue about, and since OSR inspires so much creativity people would rather talk about that kind of stuff.

>>50082832
It's not only here. Every general thread I visit is polite. What you think of is /b/ and similar related threads, which is just the surface of anonymity generated entropy on every image board. The reputation is also a very good thing as it keeps at least a few of the morale brigade idiots away.

>>50082945
All factions have some kind of leading NPC that is present (but for one faction this is a sleeping / malformed dragon who they worship, so he's hard to get at.). Good call on the monsters fighting each other!

Do you think B/X saving throws make sense? LotFP changed pretty much every thing in B/X which was unnecessary but kept the saving throws with only slightly changed names.
I don't know what to think about that. I don't see much rational in their names. I actually think 3.X and 5ed make more sense while C&C's has mechanical problems and S&W's is just oversimplified.
Is there any good explanation for the five STs to make sense? What do you do with it?

>>50082832
I suspect the biggest reason is that OSR games are generally not very attractive to the younger generations. Also this >>50082832. OSR games don't cater to power gamers and number fiddlers like the character build focused modern games. For some reason, in my experience, people who enjoy those kinds of games are often not very familiar with the concept of empathy.

>>50083390
>Also this
Meant this >>50083091.

>>50083320
They make sense in OD&D, at least - saves vs. dragon breath are used for one thing (dragon breath), but that one thing is an AoE instagib-via-massive-damage effect. Saves vs. Poison/Death Ray are the easiest save, and are basically "save vs. unavoidable instant death effect". Saves vs. Stone are to protect you against the Medusa/Cockatrice/Basilisk/Gorgon, and is harder to resist than some others since petrification is better than death. Saves vs. Wands are easier than Saves vs. Spells, which are for every single spell out there that isn't a death ray of some sort.

The problem only really comes once you start introducing saves vs. effects outside of those, and have to shoehorn them into it - BECMI Fighters rolling saves vs. Death Ray to parry and rolling a save vs. Stone to avoid a cave-in and whatnot.

Having a multitude of saves also gives you some more ways to differentiate the classes, like having Clerics be better at resisting Death Rays (and thus Patriarchs better against Evil High Priests), Fighters being better at Dragon Breath, and Magic-Users being better at Spells.
I think S&W does this by giving classes bonuses to specific saves, though?

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>>50083320

Part of the point of the five saving throws is that there's some wiggle room as to what might fit a particular saving throw.

Spell saving throws tend to be harder to make, but certain spells use the Petrification save or the Death save which is easier to make. The Death save is also used for death effects from monsters, and also as your poison save.

If we were using 3e saves, a lot of "save or die" stuff would be relegated to Fortitude, which screws over all the classes that have poor Fort saves. In Basic (I'm looking at my RC, so bear with me), no class (aside from the Dwarf and Halfling) has more than 2 point difference on their Death saving throws.

Personally, I think the 5 saving throws make the classes more likely to survive rather than less, and I'm not in favor of the single save in S&W because it loses some granularity in my opinion.

>>50083561

>2 point difference*

*to start/at 1st level, is what I meant. Some classes progress their saves rapidly, others in fits and starts.

>>50083561

>Spells and Breath Weapon

Moreover, take a look at the Spell and Breath Weapon saves. In 3e, most damage dealing spells save vs. Reflex, as do most of the Breath Weapons.

This hurts fighters a great deal in 3e, since they're unlikely to save for half damage, whereas as they attain higher levels in the RC, their Breath Weapon and Spell saving throws improve at a rapid pace.

Basic D&D (and even AD&D) have little to no ways in which for magic-users to make their spells harder to save against, which means that as characters get higher level, spells become less and less of a hindrance.

Contrast this with 3e where spell saves are keyed off of a relatively low advancement which is competing with a wizard's ability score increases, the spell's level, and any feats or special abilities the wizard has gained in addition to normal leveling.

Personally, I prefer saving throws that actually make your character harder to kill, rather than 3e where you're in an optimization race and starting from a position of disadvantage.

Yes, you could condense the 5 saving throws down to 3. It would lose some granularity, or make Magic Wands more powerful, or the Death Save less effective. I'm not really in favor of those solutions, but you're welcome to try them out.

>>50083561
Yes, but it's really just nostalgia or interoperability that saving throws are named like they are.
Dragon Breath come on, how often does a character save vs. that. There should be meaningful names and descriptions and some sense why certain roles fair better in some of them. And I don't understand the progression. Look at the M-U he's already the human class who needs most XP. That means he's good at making spell saves at lvl 1 and lvl 19. He's pretty shit at all other levels. Doesn't make any sense does it?

>>50083755
I agree with you and I'm aware of the pitfalls of 3.X. I, too prefer the old school way. What I said was that the rationality behind it and the description and explanation suck. This should be more intuitive while still differentiating classes and saving throws and make them better at saving at higher levels.

Question for the thread. How do folks track time in their games? Especially for dungeon crawling. I'm thinking in terms of wandering monsters and such. Do you track movement rates and exact distances or is it more free flowing, referee's whim? Discuss.

>>50083816
>>50083885

Believe me, I'd love it if there was an in-depth explanation for why they progress at the rates they do. But there isn't one that I'm aware of.

I have no "nostalgia" for any of this stuff. I started with 3e, as I mentioned here >>50082953. The magic-user isn't that much worse than anyone else at Spell saves, but the progression just jumps in fits and starts, and for a few levels in each category, MUs are worse than thieves or fighters.

As for interoperability, certainly. If your intention is to make a game compatible with older versions of D&D, you'll likely want to keep that game's categories and numbers.

Ultimately, "fixing" the saving throw categories is going to be a mess. You could probably do away with Wands, Spells, and Breath Weapon. Collapse that down to a single save. You might even be able to collapse Death and Paralysis to another save. So, you'd end up with two saving throw categories, one which is easier to save with, and another which is harder to save with.

But what would you name them? Physical Save and Magic Save? That's disingenuous because some spells and effects would necessarily need to use the Physical Save (death, ghoul paralysis, etc.) and others would need to use the Magic Save (damage spells, charm, etc.).

Personally, I don't mind the categories, and I think they're evocative of the sort of world that the rules are trying to construct. A place where dragons are so dangerous their breath gets an entire saving throw category to address it.

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>>50084006

>>50084006
>>50084037

Generally, there's a dungeon exploration speed, and the turns are 10 minutes. You check for wandering monsters every ten minutes, and generally searching takes increments of 10 minutes. Picking a locked door takes 10 minutes. The party can travel at the speed of the slowest party member in 10 minutes. Etc.

>>50084037
this is delightful

>>50084147

Simple and effective. That's what makes OSR great.

A lvl 3 fighter in plate wants to run away from a fight. He wants to cross over a dark chasm where just a small tree is lying. Let's say 10 ft over the chasm. The tree will probably not crack but it doesn't look very easy too cross in a haste.
Is he rolling and if yes what is he rolling (in which system)?
After him a slightly overburdened Thief/Specialist in leather and an unarmored M-U are crossing too, all lvl 3, is it the same resolution?

>>50084176
I don't think any OSR system will give you rules for situations like that. Instead you have to make a ruling on the spot.

If you want to keep it really simple and fast (and you should), just decide what odds each character would have crossing the chasm and what are the consequences of failure and then roll a die for each of them. No mechanics needed, just some common sense and a random die roll.

>>50084176
Love the LotFP solution here:

Let him roll Climb (1 in 6 base chance), give him a bonus to his range for how easy you judge the tree crossing to be.

>>50084176
>>50084266

This. But, I'd only have him roll if he's trying to cross in haste. Otherwise, it just eats up time.

>>50084266
Honestly to tie situations like anon described to a mechanistic skill system is really not necessary. But each to their own I guess.

>>50084264
I know, that's why I'm asking. What's your on the spot ruling?

>>50084266
I want to add to myself that BTB LotFP sees the climbing resolution as something for unencumbered characters. But I see the analogue of crossing and climbing, and would just rule that being encumbered in this situation is a penalty on your success range (maybe -1 on the range for each point of encumbrance).

>>50084299
I agree if there is no combat going on. Then it just takes up a turn. But the situation described really means that a roll effects the outcome of the combat, and that is why I would rule like this.

>>50084266
All unmentioned factors are insignificant.
So he and his friends all roll 1d6 and fall if they roll 5-6?

>>50084176
>home brew, pmuch LoTFP+blackhack
>roll under dex with penalties if encumbered, same for everyone
>give everyone the opportunity to ditch gear down the chasm before rolling to lighten encumbrance
>a falling character clings to the side with one hand while the monsters peruse close behind just to see what the other players do

>>50084309
The one I described. If there's a chance for a failure and bad stuff happening, roughly gauge the situation for each character taking their attributes and whatever is relevant into account and then just roll some dice.

>>50084347
Full on sprinting away from combat in the dark? Doesn't seem to unreasonable. Might give him a save if he falls to see if he catches himself.

>>50084319
LotFP p.17 "The Specialist must be unencumbered to use any
of the class abilities involving movement or suffer
a one point skill penalty per level of encumbrance."
BTB it's only for the Specialist.

>>50084437
LotFP p.31 "Characters (except Specialists) must be unencumbered to make this attempt." This is under the climbing heading. We may have found a contradiction in LotFP

>>50084176
How I would do it (I use frankenstein'd DCC)
No roll if he takes it slow.
If going with haste, roll d20 and add level and dex bonus. If over 15 he makes it.

>>50084475
No my bad not a contradiction. The book just doesn't allows non-specialists who are encumbered to make the attempt.

>>50084475
Skill systems like the one in LotFP are inherently contradictory. It should be called Thief Magic to make more sense.

>>50084494
Oh yeah, and if he has armor then give a negative modifier for that. Same if he's carrying a lot of stuff.

>>50084500
See >>50084495, no contradiction, just me reading bad.

I don't know about that claim by the way. I really like the way LotFP presents the adventuring "Skills". It works in my mind, and gives a nice basis to judge how long action take or what kind of chances characters are looking at under pressure.

>>50084495
Right, the fighter would just fall in btb LotFP if you decide it's a climb check (Plate=encumbered).

LotFP or BFRPG? Which do you prefer?

>>50084587
LotFP

Trivia: Raggi played BFRPG before he wrote LotFP.

>>50084561
See, this is why I don't like skill systems. Instead of first trying to figure out what skill to check, one could just simply decide on a target number and roll a die.

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>>50083320
>I don't know what to think about that. I don't see much rational in their names. I actually think 3.X and 5ed make more sense while C&C's has mechanical problems and S&W's is just oversimplified.
3.x has mechanical problems too (and C&C's problems are easily fixed by adding only half a caster's level to his spell's challenge levels.)

As far as S&W goes, each class has something it's good at, which seems like all you really need. Since modifiers tend to be modest in OSR, you could easily do single category saves modified by Dex / Con / Wis in a similar fashion to Ref / Fort / Will.

Pic is my attempt to convert B/X to a single category system, while staying relatively true to the existing probabilities. Most classes have something they're good at and something they're bad at (elf has nothing it's bad at, and magic-user has nothing it's good at). Truthfully, I think it's a bit convoluted, and feel that S&W's bonus categories make a bit more sense than the classic saving throw divisions. But even if you were going to keep the same categories, I think the table could be simplified by playing around with things a bit: most classes have a bonus to death rays and poison, for instance, so maybe you could just say that death rays are easier to save against across the board.

>>50083523
>but that one thing is an AoE instagib-via-massive-damage effect.
Oh yeah, it's damage equal to max HP. Dragons tend to have quite a lot of max HP past a certain age, although still nowhere near as much as in later editions. The OD&D example of play for a group attempting to subdue a dragon ends with them all dying when it breathes on them (but they'd've gotten it, had it survived).

God, I love OD&D LBB.

>>50084613
What's your resolution for the initial question? And don't chicken out like this guy >>50084368
>All unmentioned factors are insignificant.
I.e. regard abilities all as 10 e.g.

How does ACKS play without feats and the extra stuff on top of it?

>>50084941
Chicken out?

>>50084941
>What's your resolution for the initial question?

<A lvl 3 fighter in plate wants to run away from a fight. He wants to cross over a dark chasm where just a small tree is lying. Let's say 10 ft over the chasm. The tree will probably not crack but it doesn't look very easy too cross in a haste.

The Fighting-Man will first make a retreat. Then if crossing the chasm is hard and there is danger involved in attempting it, come up with a target number that fits the situation and roll a die. Resolve the action according to the rolled value.

>>50085253
>>50085746
>Chicken out?
Exactly. Still didn't answer the question. The only thing you said was that the fighter >probably< makes a roll. But I'm not arguing with you, if you can't or don't want to give a specific answer I don't force you.

>>50086618
I don't follow you. If the DM deems the situation roll-worthy, then the player controlling the Fighting-Man makes a roll. If not, then a roll is not needed.

What I'm talking about is making rulings as a DM.

Funding for a couple years has been gathered for Last Gasp, but it'd probably be worth it for some sort of ordered compendium to be made of the site's stuff. "Last Gasp of the Flame Princess", LGotFP, as it were.

>>50086675
>I don't follow you
Come the fuck on. I was asking what you let the players roll if you're the DM, if you let them roll at all.
We got:
1)Roll under Dex
2)D20+level+Dex (DCC)
3)1 in D6 climb skill -encumbrance points (LotFP)
4) Perhaps some roll (Your answer)
Do you tell your players at the table, "hey guys perhaps roll something."?
1-3 answered my question 4 didn't. I'm feeling a bit trolled here.

>>50086952

Speaking of compendiums and stuff.
I was on the Hill Cantons blog the other day, reading an old entry on construction rules, and it directed me to his google docs thing to download a more complete set. However, when I got there, it wasn't there. Apparently he removed all the stuff concerning his domain game in preparation for a proper release in his "Borderlands" sourcebook, but that seems to have turned into vaporware.
Does anybody out there have copies of the Hill Cantons domain game stuff he released way back when?

>>50087363
I have a compendium that I posted just now, but I deleted it because I realized it has someone's name watermarked on it. If you give me your email address then I can send it to you.

>>50084176
2-in-6 chance of springing the trap, as is semi-standard in OD&D. Being armored up doesn't give a penalty because they don't really need to be punished for that - it's already pretty rough with the encumbrance penalties to movement and, well, possible loot.

Seriously, if it's a fighter in plate they'll have one hell of a time running way from whatever's chasing them - most monsters are usually more in the 9' movement section than the fighter's probable 6' move speed. But then that's what turning passages and throwing away shields/helms/loot is for, I suppose.

More generally I also like to assume that the characters have some degree of competence, although I'm also not really fond of trying to rely on character skill rather than player skill.

File: D&D - Hill Cantons Compendium.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>50087363
>>50087466
Hey nevermind. What do you know, I managed to find both compendiums without watermarks.

File: D&D - Hill Cantons Compendium II.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>50087363
>>50087613

>>50082832
Most of 4chan's sub-boards vary wildly in terms of "board culture", mostly because they attract different kinds of people - and these cultures do change over time as people stop posting and new posters come on board.

/tg/ in general is pretty middle or the road; the sort of things you can bait the userbase with are very, very specific to the hobby and generally require some time spent lurking which gives it some resistance to quick memes.

>>50087666
It is worth noting that generals and whatnot tend to act as "sub-sub-boards", so you'll not only have a different board culture in /tg/ vs. /v/ but you'll also have a different culture in, say, /osrg/ vs. /4eg/. Because the generals for specific games and game genres attract different people, and in some cases the ways the games are played are so different that they encourage different ways to go about discussing things - /osrg/ has a lot of homebrew shit, while /4eg/ has more optimization stuff since that's what those editions encourage.

>>50087613
>>50087627

Yeah, thanks, but unfortunately, neither of those have the domain game rules that were supposed to be packaged in the third collection, Borderlands. The two compendiums that have been released are like miscellaneous rules.

>>50087008
Not him, but it was pretty obvious was he meant. He doesn't use character stats. He basically makes up a percentage chance and rolls on it behind the screen.
So, closest to number 3

>>50087008
>I was asking what you let the players roll if you're the DM, if you let them roll at all.
And my answer was
>roll a die
That's a d6, d10, d20 or whatever you like as a DM. Use whatever die that gives you a desirable granularity and assign a target number. It doesn't matter what die you use if the probabilities it produces are fitting.

>Do you tell your players at the table, "hey guys perhaps roll something."?
No. I tell them for example "Alright, what you're trying to do seems very hard given the situation so I'll give you one-in-six chance to make it. Roll a d6 and let's see what happens."

Is there a retroclone using chainmail's battle systems?

>>50087666
desu, 1d4chan brings in too many TV Tropes/SB newfags

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>>50082583
We get this question like every other thread. Here's something to get started:

http://pastebin.com/4uhcDXX8

Give me your edits/additions and lets include this in the OP next time.

>>50088708
>LotFP
>PC power relative to other retroclones is very low. Publishing line features many modules with an emphasis on historical scenarios or horror.
I'm not sure I agree here. On 1st level we have minimum HP we have minimum summed ability modifiers. Casting is more difficult, no blaster spells, no BAB progression for non-fighters. But - summon on level one, you can research any damn spell you want at any level, fighters are not worse than any other system. Specialists can do their shit reliable if they specialize.
All in all not a higher power level but I'd say not significantly lower.

>>50089051
Good point about the Specialists. I was thinking in terms of pure brute force - I guess an LoTFP party is probably a little better at subtlety.

>>50082832
/tg/ is one of the more chill boards in general, takes a lot to rile us up compared to other boards usually

Any good supplements for The Black Hack? I'm liking the Race Hack but I'm wondering if there's any that stand out.

I remember seeing an image that said that a good recommendation for understanding Law was Three Hearts and Three Lions, for understanding Chaos you'd read Stormbringer (or some other Elric book - I don't remember which!), and then for Neutrality you'd read... some other book I don't remember. By Vance, I think? Maybe?

Does anyone have the image, or at least know the name of the last book?

>>50089235
Rad-Hack looks pretty cool.

>>50089208
quests

What are the OSR with this features?:
Ascending Armor Class
Race and Class separated
More than the 4 basic classes

>>50090191
...I think Swords & Wizardry covers that? IIRC it's based more on AD&D than Basic, so there's Druids and stuff. Also, ascending armor class and a single saving throw.

Assuming that I'm not confusing it with one of the other retroclones.

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>>50090191
Basic Fantasy Role Playing Game
BFRPG

the base game only has 4 classes BUT it has additional class PDFs you can download.

All of its stuff is free and if you want print, you pretty much pay the cost to have it made (dirt cheap)

A very good introduction to OSR imo

http://basicfantasy.org/downloads.html

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>>50089792

That'd be the Dying Earth, specifically the Cugel books, Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel the Clever. Cugel the (self-titled) Clever doesn't care about cosmic battles, he wants to get paid and get laid and get out before her husband comes home.

>>50089051
>>50089156
I shifted my games fairly early from B to LotFP and I haven't noticed that much of a drop in power. Granted, I don't make Turn Undead a spell and I give bonus spells for ability scores but all in all there hasn't been an uptick in character deaths that wasn't related to players doing dumbshit.

>>50090409
What are some downsides to bfrpg?

Alright, I'm finally getting back into DCC. Originally blew it off due to the crunchiness and tables, but I learned to stop worrying and just enjoy the insanity.
Now, what I really want to do with it is design a megadungeon around the system. I just wanted to ask people for some system-specific pitfalls and considerations that'd have to be kept on mind? What'd be the system's strengths and what'd be its weaknesses when it comes to the megadungeon format

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>>50090657
I was about to go on a whole rant about how Cugel is clearly Evil rather than Neutral, but then I realised we were talking about the Lawful-Chaotic axis, not the Good-Evil one.

Fuck.

>>50091842

Even so, I don't know if I'd fit him into the Evil end of the nine axis set. He's close, but I dunno. He's definitely selfish and amoral, but is too lazy and disinterested to really be Evil with a capital E, if you ask me.
He doesn't usually set out to hurt anybody, just appropriate their stuff (which they obviously have too much of) to the less fortunate. (IE himself) It's just that things always go wrong, and then people get rude and start doing nasty things, and then he has to try to get revenge on them for their cruelty.
He's less evil, more petty and shortsighted.

>>50092103
He's the kind of evil that could actually work in a mixed party of PCs.
Capital E - Evil never made much sense in the context of PCs anyway.

>>50092296

Yeah, I'd agree. But then I never thought the nine-segment alignment worked too well anyway.

>>50092103
To review eyes of the overworld:
killed a sprite for splashing him, sold a woman into slavery, tricked a man into selling his treasure for a worthless magi balm that got him killed, bribed priest to trick pilgrims into following him (dying to a man), raped a woman, awakened an ancient evil which destroyed a village, tricked village to killing an innocent man so he could take his stuff, attempted to extort dying foes

He cares about absolutely no one hut himself. He is waiting for the right time to use whoever he meets. And by use, I can mean kill, sacrifice, rape or ruin.

He's Chaotic Evil. Capital C, capital E. He's just an affable chaotic evil.

>>50091663
Formatting is kinda ugly? It doesn't do anything special with the Fighter? There's really not anything major that I can think of.

>>50092515

I suppose so. But almost everyone he meets is a similarly nasty person, so it's pretty easy to feel like they deserved it.
The Dying Earth books are largely just a long string of seeing assholes get what's coming to them. Sometimes it's Cugel delivering it, sometimes it's Cugel receiving it. But it's always great.

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Do you listen/watch any RPG podcasts or videos? Do they play an OSR game?

>>50090657
>tries to rob a wizard
>wizard casts a spell that has him picked up by a roc and dumped halfway around the world

>eventually gets back, steals the spellbook, tries to cast the spell on the wizard
>gets picked up by a roc and dumped halfway around the world

Working on a Beyond the Wall hack. Has anyone played an OSR/D&Dish game that gives players an Attack score instead of a BAB modifier? I'm considering giving players an Attack of 10+their class' BAB, and just having them roll under (as with all other checks) to see if they hit shit. If the monster's particularly fast, they take -2 to Attack, if it's slow, +2, and just give armored monsters a few points of DR. Is this a stupid idea?

>>50093269
Should explain some other elements. Basically, I'm trying to unify everything to use a roll-under d20 and get rid of modifiers as much as possible. I'm going to be playing with RPG newbies, so I'm doing my best to cut out as much cruft as possible.
>No saving throws. Warriors get a Fortitude skill, Mages get a Willpower skill, and Rogues get a Reflex skill (skills in BtW grant +2 to a stat before you make a check)
>No XP, just group levelling (GP=XP makes no sense in the genre BtW is trying to emulate)
>AC replaced with Defence. Quick players cause penalties to monster's attack rolls, players wearing tough armor get damage reduction.
>Fixed HP per level

>>50089051
Yeah, I'd say LotFP powers up PCs slightly if anything -- faster BAB progression for the Fighter than in any other OSR game I can think of, HP minimums, capable Specialists all adds up. Frankly I'd suspect that whoever said that about PC power was hard gay for Magic-Users and only compared those.

>>50091730
>What'd be the system's strengths and what'd be its weaknesses when it comes to the megadungeon format
You could do a really Gygaxian thing of having several of the magic patrons be imprisoned in the dungeon itself.

A weakness is DCC isn't really very well suited for any long term game and that would include exploration of a truly megatic dungeon.

>>50092103
>He's less evil, more petty and shortsighted.
He's pompous, vain, self-aggrandizing, cowardly and prideful at the same time, and relentlessly cruel to anyone he feels has slighted or wronged him in the least. I'm not sure what more he's supposed ot need to qualify for the big E.

Dark Albion Funnel Adventure: Friday November 04 10:10PM GMT+8 (9 hours from now)
Link is https://app.roll20.net/join/1762692/2nzqqA
Let me know if you're interested, cos I think thing's will go a lot faster if we make your characters beforehand.
Also, full disclosure: I'll be DMing without a mic since I haven't purchased one yet.

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I feel like I'm at a DM impasse. LotFP is by far the easiest system for players to learn, and my group is just that: 5 people who don't have a mote of interest in reading a rulebook. That's ok. Sometimes I wanna run DCC or BFRPG but even THAT might be too crunchy for them. I like the little things about other OSRs that LotFP disregards. Keep going or...what else? Not the Black Hack, as simple as it is.

tl;dr: LotFP is great; I want more as a DM sometimes. Aide from houserules.

>>50095208
you could ask people here in this thread or maybe the discord to try various systems but keep your core group playing their thing

>>50095208
i mostly play BFRPG with my players, what does LotFP disregards of other OSR?

>>50095208
How do you feel about Labyrinth Lords?

Also, have you tried just.. Explaining this to your players? Pitch it seriously and bribe them. That's how I get my group to try new systems/games; I offer to make dessert and bring beer to a game if they'll commit to trying something scary and new.

Probably a dumb question but what should the PCs levels be for The Cursed Chateau?

>>50095208
Beyond BFRPG having tables placed in inconvenient locations, I think that it's on-par with LotFP for simplicity.

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>>50089792

So, here's something silly: betting comes pretty frequently in RPG, but I don't actually know how betting works? Like if someone betting on a particular person to win a fight, I just make something up?

>>50095208
Sounds like you should give Swords & Wizardry a whirl. It comes in three flavors, from simple to complex: S&W Whitebox, S&W Core, and S&W Complete. In D&D terms, these would roughly compare to OD&D (first three books only), Basic D&D, and Advanced D&D.

>>50093054
Saver or Die. The podcast is dedicated to basic and original D&D. It's not an actual play podcast though, they just discuss about stuff.

>>50093882
Patron thing is a great idea.
Also I keep hearing it's not suited for longer play but I just don't see why that's the case

>>50095208
I was in a similar position to you. LotFP was comfy but I liked ideas from other systems. Some players don't like changing systems. Or learning any rules in general.

Houseruling the shit out of LotFP was the answer for me. Since I usually tell the players what they are rolling, they just go along with it. Getting them to re-write character sheets was the hardest part.

>>50096755
in my experience, the tables are why. Everyone starts to get bored of it ~lvl3 and it becomes tedious by lvl5. Especially wizards.

>>50095208
Often in OSR it's not really necessary for the players to know the rules of the game. It should take almost zero work from the players' side when switching to a different game.

Still thinking about the power level in LotFP. Are you playing spell casting by the book? It is pretty fucking hard.
-Spells only go off next round
-M-U needs two free hands, Cleric his symbol
-Not even a minor action allowed, like letting a dagger fall to the ground
-completely helpless while casting, i.e. auto hit and max damage for melee attacks against the caster. Curiously that is only for melee!

Casting in melee range of enemies is a pretty bad idea.

I read so many fiction recommendations. Is there a OSR top ten books to read list?
Authors I see recommended often and can be found in Append. N:

1)Howard
2)Leiber
3)Tolkien
4)Lovecraft
5)Ashton Smith
6)Vance
7)Moorcock
8)Anderson
9)de Camp & Pratt
10)Zelazny ?

I'm not going to read all their bibliographies, the best or most influential book (collection) from all of them?

>>50097079
>Casting in melee range of enemies is a pretty bad idea.
That's why you have a squad of men-at-arms or fighters in front of the magic-user.

>>50096840
Was it just the fact that you felt tables were fighting your own creativity or the fact it takes so long?
Because I solved the latter

>>50097079
As opposed to, say, Basic's "can't cast in melee", which when combined with the missing-but-assumed declaration phase means that you whiff?

Although the auto-crits are an interesting case, I guess. >>50097282's right, though - that's what hirelings are for, and the reason that you keep the Wizard in the back (but in front of the Cleric, because surprise checks).

>>50097079
>Casting in melee range of enemies is a pretty bad idea.
That's the whole point. The rules you described are part of LotFP's strong niche protection as well as contributing to eliminating quadratic wizardry.

Are 8000-10000 gp of treasure enough for a (shortish) dungeon module meant for "a party of level 4-6" under B/X rules?

>>50097690
Lemme do the math a bit and I'll get back to you - really, the important question is "how big is the dungeon?"

>>50097802
Single floor, 17 rooms, map fits roughly in a 100x100m square? I'd say a decent party could get through it in 3 sessions.

>>50097935
Alright, so here's what you'd get on average if you just rolled randomly on the tables in B/X (assuming it's a 4th-5th level dungeon):
>5.67 rooms with monsters, 2.83 of which contain a total of 2142.14gp
>2.83 rooms with traps, 0.94 of which contain a total of 1467.34gp
>5.67 empty rooms, 0.94 of which contain a total of 1467.34gp
>2.83 "special" rooms, which don't necessarily have treasure

All in all, 5076.81gp.

However, that's the average - on the high end you'd end up with at least twice that, assuming that the rooms were still the same. If every single room had eight trolls then you'd have 68 THOUSAND gp! (And also 126 trolls, so, well, good luck?)

Your dungeon looks perfectly fine, although do note that if the XP is split evenly then four fourth-level Fighters are getting slightly less than halfway to level 5.

>>50097247
Tolkien: Umm i forget what its called, The Ring Lords or something...
Lovecraft: There's three great Penguin classics collections out there - The Call of Cthulhu and others, The Thing on the Doorstep and others, & The Dreams in the Witch-House and others.
Smith: There's a series of Ballantine fantasy collections starting with Zothique.
Vance: The Dying Earth, & anything with Cugel the Clever in it.

How do people handle M-Us and scrolls in their games? Can the M-U, 1) cast any level spell with a scroll, 2) learn the spell on the scroll, 3) one or the other, 4) both, or 5) something I'm not thinking of?

>>50098808
Also, for Smith there's a Penguin classics collection called The Dark Eidolon and others which is a mix of short fiction, prose poetry, & poetry.

>>50097247

>Howard

Conan. In particular the The Coming of Conan The Cimmerian, The Conquering Sword of Conan, and The Bloody Crown of Conan.

>Leiber

Fafrhd and the Gray Mouser/Lankhmar/Nehwon series. The versions I have starts with Swords and Deviltry.

>Lovecraft

At the Mountains of Madness, Rats in the Walls, Dreams in the Witch House, Shadow Over Innsmouth, Pickman's Model, The Colour Out of Space, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, and the Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath are a couple of my favorites. But really, Lovecraft is best explored at your own pace. Some stories are better than others, some have aged better, and still others have been warped or misunderstood by their entering into popular culture (the Call of Cthulhu comes to mind).

>Tolkien

Personally I like the Hobbit more than I like the Lord of the Rings, but both are classics for different reasons. I highly recommend not reading the Silmarillion unless you find you're super into Middle-Earth. The Silmarillion was never meant to be published, and were Tolkien's own world building notes (and it spoils the plots of both the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, if that even matters in a world where the movies exist).

>>50097247

Howard: The Conan stories ("The Tower of the Elephant" and "Red Nails" are most recommended)
Leiber: The early Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser Stories ("Swords Against Death", basically)
Tolkien: "The Lord of the Rings"
Lovecraft: Any collection featuring "The Call of Cthulhu", "The Shadow over Innsmouth", "At the Mountains of Madness"
Smith: The "Zothique" stories
Vance: Can't decide between "The Dying Earth" and "The Eyes of the Overworld"
Moorcock: "Stormbringer" is probably the best of his Elric books
Anderson: "Three Hearts and Three Lions"
De Camp & Pratt: No idea
Zelazny: "Nine Princes in Amber"

>>50098904
Totally agree about the Hobbit btw. I've been rereading it lately and noticed it has a lot more in common with OD&D themes than Lord of the Rings does.

>>50098808
>>50098904
>>50098907
Thx for the recommendations!

>>50098907
>Moorcock: "Stormbringer" is probably the best of his Elric books
I'd get "The Weird of the White Wolf" as well as "Stormbringer" since those two collections consist of the original seven shorter Elric stories, which are much more readable than Moorcock's frankly wooden and over-prosy novels.

>De Camp & Pratt: No idea
I think they only wrote one thing together, namely the Compleat Enchanter series, so any Appendix N reference is almost certainly to that.

>>50098837
1) M-U's cast from the scroll at their level.
2) Can use a scroll to boost their chances of researching a spell
3) one or the other uses up the scroll

but I'm using Wonder & Wickedness mashed into a heavily houseruled LotFP. So my way is by no means accepted as "canon".

>>50098339
>if the XP is split evenly then four fourth-level Fighters are getting slightly less than halfway to level 5.
And if they're 6th level, it's firmly in "why bother" territory.
Still trying to get a handle on XP for gold with geometric XP for levels - it works if you have a centerpiece megadungeon where the 6th level party can just match on down to level 6 to get level 6 treasure, but smaller plot-based adventures may need XP for goals.

>>50096384
I read 3H&3L and I can't remember a damned thing about it. But I do remember Cugel and Elric very, very clearly.

>>50097247
>1)Howard - The Tower of the Elephant
>2)Leiber - Ill Met in Lankhmar
>3)Tolkien - The Hobbit
>4)Lovecraft - The Color Out of Space
>5)Ashton Smith - Zothique
>6)Vance - The Eyes of the Overworld
>7)Moorcock - Stormbringer
>8)Anderson - The Broken Sword
>9)de Camp & Pratt - The Compleat Enchanter
>10)Zelazny - Nine Princes in Amber

>>50099534
That seems sensible. I'm using S&W but this seems a pretty reasonable use of the rules to me.

>>50096399
AFAIK betting depends on the 'odds'.

Let's say there's two outcomes you can bet on, A and B. Ten people bet on A and one bets on B.
So the odds are 10A : 1B

The amount of money that has been bet on each outcome is Xa and Xb.
You bet an Y amount of money on B.

If B is the resulting outcome, you get money equal to Y+[(Y/Xb)•Xa].

Anybody, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

>>50100277
>Tolkien - The Hobbit
Also pick up the Silmarillion just to read Of Beren & Luthien, shit's wonderful.

Good choices overall, especially picking the Hobbit over the trilogy.

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Share some of your houserules, /OSR/

My houserules for LotFP:

- Max HP at lv. 1
- Always heal 1HP per restful night's sleep.
- Medicine Skill (requires expendable medkit. Modified by INT.)
- XP for treasure immediately upon finding.
- 3 torches per encumbrance slot. 5 rations per encumbrance slot.
- Animal Companions: Assigned a Morale/Loyalty score (usually 9). Any command to attack requires a morale/loyalty check.

- Mighty Deeds-esque Combat Feats. Available to any PC.
>Announce intent and roll to attack along with the appropriate Feat die.
¤ If the attack is successful and the Feat Die rolls a 5 or higher, the attempt is a success.
¤ A successful d20 attack with a Feat Die roll under 5 is a failure in plan, though weapon damage is rendered as usual (if applicable.)
¤ A failed attack, regardless of the Feat Die’s roll, typically results in a problematic setback or predicament for the PC (Referee’s discretion.)
>Feat Die Per Level:
¤ 1-3: d6
¤ 4-6: d8
¤ 7-9: d10
¤ 10+: d12

>>50101540
- 1 HD monsters have 1 hit point.
- Shields shall be splintered.
- Silver standard.

>>50101540
Wizards can use a spellbook like a scroll, pretty common back in the day.

>>50101540
Clerics and M-Us get a random freebie Scroll when starting.

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>>50101540
Simple stuff, but opinions and suggestions are encouraged.

>>50101891
>extra attacks at lvl 10 and lvl 20
Do you expect anyone to realistically get to those levels?

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>>50101926
Well it's BFRP, and that's the highest listed level for every class. I figure that if they get that high then they deserve something nice.

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I've been using this to spice up combat. It's pretty sweet.

>>50101540
Generally max hit die at first level and at 0 HP, save vs. death ray. Succeed and you're only knocked out, failure is death.

Do you have your characters roll for the Search skill, or do you do it behind screen?

>>50102191
Behind the screen, like you're supposed to. Ditto for stealthy things and disarming traps.

>>50083320
I (over)simplified them to just magic and non-magic saves. It's a weird addition to an otherwise streamlined character sheet when new players roll up a character.

>>50090657
Cugel always struck me as a kind of mr bean type character, if perhaps a bit more sly.

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>>50098907
>Moorcock: "Stormbringer" is probably the best of his Elric books
You might as well start the main saga at the beginning and not in the middle of things, even if the stories were written piecemeal. Stormbringer is going to have a lot less impact if you just start there, and Elric of Melnibone sets things up nicely. Also, the six books are short--mostly falling within or just outside of novella length--and an easy read, so you can plow right through them.

Elric of Melniboné (48,000 words)
The Sailor on the Seas of Fate (24,000 words)
The Weird of the White Wolf (39,000 words)
The Vanishing Tower (48,000 words)
The Bane of the Black Sword (45,000 words)
Stormbringer (71,000 words)

By way of comparison, Dune is 186,000 words, which gets you past midway in the 5th book. And Dune is a very dense book, so people tend to overestimate how long it is. Fellowship of the Ring is 177,000 words, which still gets you more than a third of the way into the 5th book, and page for page, LotR is much more of a slog.

>>50093068
That part is so fucking great. It really feels like the anti climactic end of a long d&d campaign that was completely derailed by a critical failure on some roll (maybe a save to use the spellbook as a non-magic user?).

>>50102331
Cudgel is a pretty good example of a high-intelligence, low-wisdom character, albeit one who has very few scruples. As far as Chaos vs. Neutrality goes, I suppose it depends on the context in which you're viewing those alignments. On the two-axis alignment scale, he's definitely Chaotic (probably either CE or at least CN with evil tendencies) on account of how little respect he has for honor, tradition or order. He is, however, unaligned with any sort of greater cosmic force.

>>50101992
I'm not sure I'd ever use it, but that is pretty cool.

>>50102440
>Cudgel
Whoops. Accidentally turned him into a club.

>>50097247
>4) Lovecraft

The complete works of H. P. Lovecraft:
pdf -- http://cthulhuchick.com/?dl_id=6
epub -- http://cthulhuchick.com/?dl_id=2
mobi -- http://cthulhuchick.com/?dl_id=3

Some good stories to read are listed below. You might want to alternate between the two lists to get a balance between the longer, heavier mythos stories and the (mostly) shorter, dreamlike, otherworldly ones. Of course, when it comes to Lovecraft, "longer" tends to mean novella-length.

DREAMLIKE, OTHERWORLDLY & SHORT STORIES -- read in any order, but put the longer Dream-Quest towards the end
The Outsider
The Doom That Came to Sarnath
The Colour Out of Space
The Nameless City
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
The White Ship

CORE MYTHOS (all longer stuff) -- probably better if read in roughly the order listed
The Shadow Over Innsmouth
The Call of Cthulhu
At the Mountains of Madness
The Shadow Out of Time

The files come from here: http://cthulhuchick.com/free-complete-lovecraft-ebook-nook-kindle/

>>50101540
If you bring me a beer, you get to roll a d30 once per game.

Hey, are any of you interested in filling out this form? It's for "special" rooms in random dungeon generation. I figured that crowdsourcing it might give a pretty decent collection of rooms and traps.

>https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd2RWB8ZkcDaMYdHl-A-6S0bEHBU_1rNFrMHnUha69QvCeSzQ/viewform

>>50102956
For the record, I think mostly the special rooms should be "toys" for the players. Something to experiment with and figure out. Initially it could be dangerous, but there should be some advantage in learning what it does.

For instance, Goblin Punch presented a really neat one where a devil face has two holes about the size to stick a limb inside. If you do stick an arm into one of the holes, it simply disappears, leaving you maimed. If you put something into the other hole and your own limb in the first hole, they change place.

A trick/trap would be a different kind of room, something that is almost always of ill intent. It's a puzzle of sort, something to drain resources. It's not there to be useful to the players in anyway other than purely tactical (luring an enemy into the trap).

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>>50102956
>>50103963
Just for reference, here's the sample tricks/traps from OD&D.

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does anyone have the pic detailing encumbrance in stone?

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>>50104032
Also, the key for the sample map. Gygax (or Arneson?) was big on mapping challenges.

Did Arneson and Gygax ever talk about some of the early suggested names for the game until they settled for Dungeons and Dragons?

>>50101540
I'll just go ad and pist my tire houserules doc. I went nuts and overhauled lotfp top to bottom.

axewizard.blogspot.co.nz/2016/09/d-axe-wizards-roleplaying-game.html

>>50105842
* post *entire.

Mobile typing is beyond me

>>50104569
Bandits and Butt Sex

>>50104569
I don't think so? There's "Here Be Dragons", but I'm pretty sure that's just an illustration title rather than an actual WIP product name.

Dungeons & Dragons rather sells the concept of the game, I think - the big idea it was selling was that of the dungeon, after all, and the "dragon" part helps establish the genre.

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I'm digging this overloaded d6 encounter dice. I'm trying to get my players to stop being pussies and fucking adventure instead of searching EVERY goddamned thing for danger.

flumph

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>>50109703

Flumphs are cool. They're like otherworldly horrors that just want to be friends.

>>50104038
Are you asking for the LoTFP or the ACKS one?

The ACKS system is
1 stone = 6 misc. items/1000 coins/1 "heavy" item (ex. a two handed sword or shield)

Armour weights 1 stone per point of AC (in an ascending AC system; in a descending AC system get the encumbrance via subtracting the Armour AC from 10, so AC7 leather is 3 stone)

<=5 stone = 120'/40'
<=7 stone = 90'/30'
<=10 stone = 60'/20'
<=20 stone = 30'/10'

>Dwimmermount
>Barrowmaze
>Stonehell
>ASE

What other megadungeons are out there?

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>>50104038

>>50100889
Correcting you anon since your result is applicable only to the special case.

In organised betting odds have nothing to do with the amounts bet by the punters. Betting odds, comparing payoff to bet, are made up by the bookie or the house and are announced before the bets are made.

In games like roulette the odds are close to but slightly less than the probability of winning, eg, pays 35 to 1 for any single, chance of winning 36 to 1 against. Here the house knows the probabilities exactly. Bookies on things like sports, horseracing, boxing, football, will bank on their experience in making up odds, and on human greed such as trying to entice punters to take long odds, offering large payouts for low changes of winning of offering short odds for fan favourites, who are favourites because they are likely to win.

In games without a bookie or a house, your formula is correct but that's not so much odds as one person putting up a stake and inviting others to put up a similar stake on the contrary outcome, splitting up the combined stake on a pro rata basis for the winner(s).

What's the consensus on the AD&D Fiend Folio?

>>50110676
I want to run a setting with Fiend Folio shit as the default

>>50110719
As do I, which is largely why I'm asking about it. Seems fun.

>>50110328

Maze of the Blue Medusa
Castle Gargantua

Why use any system other than BFRPG? (Not a troll question, I'm asking about the possible advantages of other systems)

>>50110576
Thanks anon, that was very interesting.

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I bought pic related for the Trove. It's watermarked, though. Can someone remove that for me so that it can be shared?

It's a B/X monster reference index, containing over 500 monsters converted from various sources to be B/X compatible.

>>50111698

Lamentations of the Flame Princess has a great encumbrance system, the Fighter is incredibly badass, the book is well organized and has a slick presentation. The firearms appendix is also fantastic.

Adventurer, Conqueror, King System has extensive domain rules for those who like that aspect of the mid-high levels.

Labyrinth Lord has the Advanced Edition Companion (might not be correct on the name) giving you the simplicity of B/X in the core system, and all the bits of AD&D you might want to add.

Swords & Wizardry is 1e AD&D streamlined and organized, with lots of options you can turn on and off.

But honestly? BFRPG is a solid product. It may not have the best organization, the most complete collection of extra bits, or great illustrations... but it's simple, is expandable, is a good way to introduce someone to OSR games, and has an excellent price point.

>>50111933
And best of all, these and other OSR systems are all mostly compatible with each other with very little changes needed. You can mix and match without any issues. You like BFRPG as a base system but want LotFP encumbrance system, ACKS' domain rules S&W single saving throw? No problem, just use them as is, and then smooth out any issues that crop up.

>>50102370
It's not a critical failure, though. It's just a spell to summon a roc to carry away THAT ONE PARTICULAR DUDE. That's why you shouldn't use stolen spellbooks without double-checking everything.

>>50111933
>Swords & Wizardry is 1e AD&D
Swords & Wizardry Complete is. SW Core and White Box are a different matter.

>>50092515
Here's an important thing - Dying Earth is filled to the brim with dicks and assholes.
Murder & slavery isn't the worst thing out there, so Cugel's deeds kind of... pale in comparison.

>>50112202
>>50111933
Pretty sure S&W complete is OD&D with all the supplements, which is the same thing that AD&D is based on (like Basic is based on OD&D with just the Greyhawk supplement, just like S&W Core).

>>50112218
Right, and S&W Whitebox is based on the first three booklets of OD&D only. I like to think of S&W as an OD&D clone in various stages of maturity/complexity. Both Basic and Advanced sprouted from these same stages but I wouldn't say S&W is a direct clone of those.

>>50110328
Castle of the Mad Archmage is an obvious one.

There's also a few that were published by TSR back in the day, like Undermountain, but I'm not sure how detailed/good they are. TSR's Castle Greyhawk is shit but Greyhawk Ruins is better, I think?

Also, of course, ten levels of Castle Blackmoor can be found in The First Fantasy Campaign (albeit with some pre-D&D terminology and missing keys for the greater expanse of tunnels and caverns), and the recently released El Raja Key archive should have a bunch of levels of, well, Rob Kuntz' El Raja Key. If you're willing to shell out a bunch of money to buy the CD or wait an age and a half for someone to rip the files, that is.

And then there's the old modules that aren't quite megadungeons but are still pretty damn big and intricate - Caverns of Thracia and The Dark Tower, for instance.

>>50112218
>(like Basic is based on OD&D with just the Greyhawk supplement, just like S&W Core).
...Unless you're talking about BECMI, where Mentzer was a sneaky fuck and actually included most of OD&D's supplements in one form or another. (This was because they couldn't mix the lines for legal reasons, so he had to take what material he could get.)

Off the top of my head, the only thing that wasn't included was the hit location rules from Blackmoor - even psionics got included in a limited form, although I'm pretty sure that was just because some of the gods in Gods, Demigods & Heroes were psionic. (The Immortals have point-based magic powers and also use those powers to fight a kind of intricate magical rock-paper-scissors game.)

He also didn't include the proper 1:20 scale Chainmail mass combat rules, instead shilling BATTLESYSTEM(TM)(C)(R) and jsut making the WAR MACHINE work better for huge battles on a strategic level (also a later SIEGE MACHINE supplement, pretty similar to the Chainmail siege section).

Oh yeah, and the stuff from The Strategic Review and whatnot (Illusionists, Rangers, Bards) didn't get in, I guess. But I imagine that the legal situation vis-á-vis Arneson was complicated enough that those wouldn't have worked.

>>50112473
>proper 1:20 scale Chainmail mass combat rules
ehhhh, much as I dislike Battlesystem, 1:20 isn't really what you want for D&D mass combat. 1:10 is a much better ratio if you want powerful individual characters to be meaningful.

>>50112498
Yeah, that's true - I think even Swords & Spells used 1:10 scale.

I more meant that, well, while Chainmail is a 1:20 miniatures War Machine is more a 1:579 resolve-a-battle-in-one-roll strategic-level thing. It's hella abstract, but I guess it's useful for resolving large wars and battles the PCs have no part in. You know, rather than spending a couple hours in BATTLESYSTEM(R)(TM)(C) for every single one of them.

>>50112538
Yeah, the War Machine and Chainmail (relative to D&D, anyway) are solutions to different problems. The War Machine is for when there's a battle in the story and your players want to get on with the roleplaying; Chainmail's for playing out battles led by the PCs.

(Remember, D&D started out as a sideline to the warfare in Arneson's fantasy Chainmail campaign.)

>>50112704
>(Remember, D&D started out as a sideline to the warfare in Arneson's fantasy Chainmail campaign.)
Ayup. And the dungeons of Blackmoor Castle were a way of financing the armies, to the point that when the players ignored it they ran into the issue of not having the funds to muster the troops necessary to fight off the encroaching baddies.

>>50111879
That looks really nice. I love the Swords & Wizardry Tome of Horros and Monstrosities books but it'd be cool to have them with the legit B/X statblocks.

>>50112538
>>50112498
Under Chainmail rules, OD&D chars were MUCH more powerful than in any other edition, by a longshot.

Its speculated that the reason orcs are described as coming in groups of 20-200 was due to Chainmail as well.

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>>50112836
It's pretty cool, I've attached a snippet to get an idea of the contents

>>50111879
I can look into it but atm the guys at 7chan's /tg/ seem to be the de-watermark experts.

>>50112870
>Its speculated that the reason orcs are described as coming in groups of 20-200 was due to Chainmail as well.
If by "speculated" you mean
>LAND COMBAT:
>The basic system is that from CHAINMAIL, with one figure representing one man or creature. Melee can be conducted with the combat table given in Volume I or by the CHAINMAIL system, with scores equalling a drive back or kill equal only to a hit. Battles involving large numbers of figures can be fought at a 20:1 ratio, with single fantastic types fighting separately at 1:1 or otherwise against but a single 20:1 figure.

>Battles involving large numbers of figures can be fought at a 20:1 ratio,

So, yeah. Those 40-400 goblins in the lair, or 30-300 bandits (40% light foot, 25% shortbows, 25% light horse, 10% medium horse)? Totally meant for Chainmail-scale mass combat.

Especially since that's only the wilderness encounter rates, with the dungeon encounter rates seemingly being much smaller.

So has anyone here ever actually played in a megadungeon?

>>50112878
I really hate what Basic did to D&D monsters with the high prevalence of multiple attacks per round. Claw/claw/bite makes monsters too deadly.

>>50114777
That wasn't Basic, anon - Claw/Claw/Bite has been a thing since Supplement I: Greyhawk.

Although technically it's since Chainmail, I guess, in its handling of horses in man-to-man combat - they attack as if with two maces, IIRC? And OD&D references that rule?

>>50110719
>>50110738
If you're planning on using only the Fiend Folio, the wandering monster tables make reference to the Monster Manual, so you'll either have to ignore a lot of rolls or build new ones.

>>50115119
That's easy enough with the rarities and 1d12+1d8 encounter table format, though.

Also, it really wasn't meant to be used without other material - a lot of it is just expanding and building on previous material, so there's a bunch of thematic holes if you just use it.

Also, a fuckton of small evil humanoids.

It does make for an interesting and weird world, though!

Is high fantasy incompatible with OSR style dungeoncrawling?

>>50115319
No but it's definitely not the default vibe. The Tolkien-ish stuff is all there but when it comes to slugging through a dungeon it doesn't really feel like LotR.

>>50106813
I really like this. I might use this as a template for a similar system I'll use.

Are reaction rolls in early D&D really supposed to work so that the enemies leave you alone if you manage to roll well enough? Has that changed in retroclones or is it supposed to work like that too?

The reason I ask is because I imagine there would be situations, even in a simple dungeon crawl, where it would be hard to explain why the monsters would leave the PCs alone. Am I just supposed to ignore the rules in those situations?

>>50115940
Well if you don't attack them, why shouldn't they sometimes not attack you? They don't want to die. If you're just passing through, and maybe bribe them (food, gold, loot - food is especially handy) then why not let you go deeper? Hey, if you survive you may pay them off for safe passage on the way back out, too.

Or be weak enough to be a safe target.

I don't like Vancian casting. How do I implement spell points into an OSR game?

>>50116246
In that case, shouldn't player skill be used rather than a dice roll?

>>50116331
You don't, you might as well let people cast spells freely.

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How well do you suppose this could work?

>>50116384
The reaction rules make for a highly gamist (as opposed to simulationist where things have to make sense) system and it's essential to use them for dungeon crawling to work like designed. That being said DM discretion should be used -- Zombies for example will always be hostile.

I wrote some stuff, so I'm gonna shill it here. Let me know what y'all think.
http://dyingstylishly.blogspot.co.nz/2016/11/the-hollow-ones.html The primal void infects people and turns them into empty vessels for its hunger. Also a neat path wendigos can go down.
http://dyingstylishly.blogspot.co.nz/2016/11/drider-teeth.html A magic item that turns you into a drider.
http://dyingstylishly.blogspot.co.nz/2016/10/the-six-rites-of-eloi-creation.html Morlocks perform forbidden rites to turn into post-human Eloi.
http://dyingstylishly.blogspot.co.nz/2016/10/neanderthal-apothacaries-work-in.html Neanderthals can't cast spells, but it's cool because they can do alchemy.

>>50116619
I always figured that reaction rolls are for when its not clear how monsters might react. If they'd be obviously hostile (they just found you nicking their stuff, say) or obviously friendly (uh... they're prisoners who want rescuing, I guess?) then you don't roll.

>>50116619
>>50116723

This. Only roll if there's uncertainty. It's also there to so that DMs can occasionally be surprised and take the game in an unplanned direction. This is a good thing.

>>50116331
That's a tricky question. There's been literally hundreds if not thousands of attempts over the last four decades.

The big thing is that it's hard to do so while still keeping the strict procedural resource management aspect, but I'm pretty sure that all that's required to fix that is to get the point costs and available spells right.

Well, I guess it's pretty easy to do if you also make the magic-user a lot weaker with a lot less effective spells per day, but that's usually not what people are after when they make a spell point system.

(Implementing a spell point system is piss-easy if you don't care for the resource management balance, of course.)

Perhaps 3E's psionics is worth looking at? Needing to pay power points to make the powers scale is an interesting method to make spamming low-cost high-value stuff less of an issue.

>>50116723
AFAICT the reaction rolls are meant for a)intelligent monsters b)that don't have a predetermined-by-the-DM attitude (e.g. a minotaur in its maze), possibly also just c)ones that happen to be outnumbered and/or outclassed.

Also, of course, if the players act hostile to them they'll respond in kind - the question is whether or not they'll attack if the players don't.

IIRC the 1E DMG elaborated a bit on the topic?

>>50116827
I'd pay good money for someone to modify 3.x style Psionics into a B/X compatible format. Hands down the best thing to come out of that edition. Far superiour to the mess that is OSR psionics.

>>50116978
Hey, OD&D psionics isn't - alright yeah it's pretty bad.

One thing with the 3E psionics, though, is that it's pretty much an entirely different thing than OSR psionics - or, well, 3.5e psionics is. 3E psionics is a workable and balanced spell point system, while OSR psionics is something completely different and more like having RPS life-or-death gambling with a side dish of at-will weak-ish superpowers.

I'd imagine that it's easy enough to rework, though - just take a list of spells you want to use, force people to pay extra spell points to increase the caster level of them (up to the maximum of their actual caster level), and then just go balance the base amount of spell points casters get.
The problem mostly comes in the strong spells that don't scale at all, like Charm Person - you'd need to introduce a limited duration on those, I suppose.

Which OSR game has the best monster-creation rules? I'm looking for really good stuff, like random trait tables and stuff like that.

>>50116463
Curious to see how this might work as well, I'm liking OSR more and more, but I miss the whole race/class distinction

>>50118140
Lamentations has the whole "roll up your clusterfuck" table

Sup, /osr/.
Assume i wrote a small adventure module i intend to publish as a pdf download.
What would be the best way to go about it?

>>50117213
>>50116978
Part of the balancing factor of 3.5 psi was that they're a spellpoint system, okay... but not only that.

It was that 3.5 psi did the shit you expect magic to do, without the stupid gimmicks, and was often more powerful than magic, at the cost of it usually being at short ranges and susceptible to very common resistances (mind effects or energy effects).

Much of this would be lost in OSR.

>>50118701
I think it's more the augmentation thing - a tenth-level Wizard can throw around Fireball, a 3rd-level spell, and do 10d6 damage.

A tenth-level Psion can throw around Energy Ball, a third-level power, and do... 5d6 damage. But they can make it the equivalent of a 5.5th-level spell and have it do 10d6 damage, if they want.

That entire thing - the lack of automatic vancian-style scaling - is IMHO the most important bit in making 3.5's psionics work. Without that, well, they could choose between casting one fifth-level "spell" or TWO third-level ones - or, in the extreme case, one ninth-level vs. seven-fucking-teen first-level powers.

That's one of the big issues you get in common spellpoint variants, I think - that you simply get such an overwhelming amount of low-level abilities, many of which are still competitive due to good scaling.

Like, say you just toss the "point cost = level you get it" rule onto a B/X magic-user - it's broken as fuck, because at mid-levels Magic Missile is actually doing more single-target damage than Fireball at times, and costs a fifth of the points. (Not to mention the elephant in the room that is Charm Person, which doesn't scale but doesn't really get weaker either. 3E made "charm, psionic" be augmentable into affecting more creature types of even more targets, I guess, but 3E also nerfed the fuck out of Charm Person in general and moved most of its shit to the higher-level Dominate Person.)

Shit's complicated.

>>50119026

A spell point boosted magic missile wouldn't outpace a fireball, an augmentation to 9th level magic missile is still 5d4+5, not beating 9d6.

>>50119026
I don't see what the fuck is the big deal over magic damage. Direct damage is amazing in OD&D, okay in 1e when it comes to expertly reflected double hitting lightning bolts, but other than that, largely secondary compared to control effects, which often disallow saves altogether.

Reminds me of the interview with that one guy who played with Gary and considered it a great victory that he got Gary to finally consent to an auto hitting 1d4+1 magic missile, and not, say, fuckin Sleep or Charm Person...

>>50119133
Yeah, but saving throws though. for a sixth-level B/X magic-user, that's 3d6+3 damage (av.13.5) - for an eleventh-level B/X M-U, that's 5d6+5 (22.5).

While the Fireball at those levels does 6d6 (21) and 11d6 (38.5), when you account for half damage on a save and aim at fighters of equal level (a close approximation for relevant monsters), i.e. save chance: 35%/55%, then the average damage goes down to 17.325/27.9125 - roughly +4/+5 damage over Magic Missile.

As a third-level spell. Versus a fuckin' first-level spell.

And if you're up against a Red Dragon, say, then they'll always succeed on their saving throw against Fireball - in that case Magic Missile is just straight-up superior.

Fireball is still strictly superior for crowd control, of course, but Magic Missile gets downright beastly as you go up in levels. Turns out +9 damage/5 levels actually adds up over time, whodathunkit.


My argument is that these spells aren't a problem in the slot-based system, since there's a significant opportunity cost and in any case only so many you can prepare in a day - but if you had no augmentation mechanic in a spell point system, and used those point costs? One fireball is superior to one magic missile - but five magic missile spells are superior to one fireball, for the same cost.

So, casual thread question: When do you guys hand out XP for combat? After the battle? When they get their XP for SP brought back (for B/X-friends)? In the middle of combat after they kill a thing?

>>50119859
When they get back to civilization and get a chance to rest up a bit.

>>50116692
Awesome! Love your content.

>>50118383

Sorry, I can't seem to find this table. Which book is it in?

>>50115424
Have something specific on mind? because this seems interesting but I'm not sure how to implement it without being immersion breaking.
Is this for each turn or every 2 turns?

>>50084176
I wouldn't make a thief in leather or lighter roll for that. Auto-success.
Otherwise, roll under dexterity score.

>>50118668
Find an interested publisher?

>>50118668
Isn't that what rpgnow is all about? Self-published pdfs?
If you really believe in your module, maybe you should consider contacting some OSR publishers?

File: random esoteric creature generator.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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>>50120138

>>50118668
I cannot stress highly enough how easy it is to sell stuff on RPGnow.
I've got an actual in-print book for sale and it was dead simple, they have tools to get the right templates for your covers and stuff.

>>50120451
You're a gentleman and a scholar. Or a lady and a scholar. Or some third thing, but still a scholar.

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>>50118383
You may want to try the compromise situation in ACKS, where each race gets a different set of classes. Elves can become Nightblades (thief/mage hybrids) or Spellswords (classic B/X elf gish), while Dwarves can become Vaultguards (goblin-slaying fighters) or Craftspriests (cleric analogues but with a very different set of powers).

The Players Companion adds other archetypes that can be used in addition to or in lieu of the other racial classes, like Dwarven Furies (essentially WFRP Troll Slayers) or Elven Enchanters.

I like the approach myself - it gives demi-humans distinctiveness but allows for player choice, although it can result in a very big class list.

>>50120468
Are you actually getting any sales?

>>50120843
700 dollars worth since I put Wolfpacks up. I suspect that it would be higher if the pdf wasn't pay-what-you-want but I want it to be available for free on principle.

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Updated a bit to match LotFPs general vibe.

>>50120902
Out of curiosity, how long ago did you put it up?

>>50120953
may this year

>>50120988
..I need to finish my game. Congrats on the success!

>>50120939
Neat!
Is the thing about halflings not being able to be magic users a balance thing or a "LotFP implied setting lore" thing?

>>50121365
A little of both.

I honestly wasn't gonna include class restrictions, but things like Elves being Clerics (who are always Lawful) even tho they are naturally in touch with the arcane (Chaotic) wouldn't work. A Dwarven Magic-User would be a tank and unbalanced after a bit with that d10 HP and CON mod.

Since the book says Dwarves are non-magic using and it's usually implied Halflings are a superstitious simple-folk, it seemed fitting using LotFP as a basis to restrict their class options.

I'd be just as quick to ditch the restrictions tho because Muscle-Wizard Dwarfs and Elven Van Helsings are cool to me.

i had a pdf copy of chainmail that had a yellow cover. Anyone have that file?

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>>50121785
Second edition Chainmail, coming your way. Enjoy the Balrogs.

>>50122070
Danke!

What's everyone's favorite AD&D module?

>>50120138
>>50118383

For whatever reason, I was thinking of the table provided for the "summon" spell.

>>50120633
don't forget that the Player's Companion includes a system for creating classes so you could make new ones for Dwarves, Elves, and Gnomes as well(and the Lizard/Dragon Men that are introduced in that supplement too)

>watch YouTube RPG reviewer randomly while brushing teeth
>he tries to act like "he was there" when 2E came out
>says Monstrous Manual came out a month after the PHB and DMG

These fucking children

>>50122070
At the tables in the back and it mentions -1 die per man, does that mean -1 die per man of difference?

>>50125898
How could he get it wrong if he's lying? It's gotta be pretty easy to find out when the books were released.

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>>50123024
Not sure. Something in the S-series? White Plume Mountain, maybe.

What you guys can tell me about Retro Phaze?

>>50123024
Expedition to Barrier Peaks
Ravenloft

>>50126324
Expedition to the Lost White Plumes of Ravenloft Mountain

>>50119859
>XP for combat
Disgusting.

I'd hand it out with the rest of the XP: at the end of the expedition, which is normally the same as the end of the session.

http://jrients.blogspot.co.nz/2016/11/ard-times-for-mus.html

This seems entirely accurate to me.

Does anyone have the "everyone is an adventurer" rules for LotFP? I swear I had it somewhere, but I cannot find it in my files or in the trove.

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>>50127799

I read that every old D&D version assumes enemy free attacks on a retreating character. It's only spelled out in AD&D. Do you agree?
Moldvay is definately vague here. The only thing he writes is enemies get +2 to hit when a character retreats.

>>50129621
In Moldvay/Mentzer, disengaging from melee means that you don't get to attack - however, there's nothing stopping them from following you and attacking. (At least not until the RC stops you from moving and attacking, that is.)

Well, there is something stopping them - if you retreat and move the full distance, you might be too far away for them to attack you. If they are also engaged with someone else, you don't have any problem - they need to spend their turn disengaging and thus couldn't attack you.
And if you make a Fighting Withdrawal, well, you actually get to attack them back if they attack you but you also don't get to move as far as with a retreat.

If by "free attacks" you mean that every old D&D version lets you attack retreating characters without having to worry about counterattacks, you'd largely be correct - it's an old Chainmail rule that stuck around. If you mean 3E/4E/5E-style attacks of opportunity - e.g. "if they disengage, you get to attack them immediately", then that's not entirely true I don't think?

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https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxDTRbvgaiZGN3gzYVVIbEd4WlU/view?usp=sharing

Check out the skill system I made for AD&D (also will be using it in my LotFP campaign, but only Specialists get Skill Points). It's basically a hack of LotFP's skills.

Feel free to critisize and burn me at the stake for being a heretic

>>50129914
Make sure to actually open the file, Drive won't show the skillpoint table for some reason.

There is an OSR bundle of holding with some nice stuff if you want to support some writers and artists:
e.g.
-Deep Carbon Observatory
-The Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom
-Yoon-suin
https://bundleofholding.com/presents/OSR4

>>50130099
>The Pod Caverns of the Sinister Shroom
That sounds interesting, but I've never heard about it before. Does anyone know what it's like and what it's about?

>>50130237
Evil mushroom man is fucking shit up with evil mushroom clones. Segues into further modules based around exploring an underground river. It's pretty decent.

File: dd4lotfp.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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p cool

>>50083755
Reading this while watching the NFL pregame show and he sounds just like another commentator. I'm reading this in Howie Long's voice.

>>50084016
Saving throw vs.
>Area Effects
>Death & Poison
>Rays
>Petrification & Paralysis
>Spells

>>50130619
My goddess, thank you for this suffering you have given us.

Should a spell's effect happen during that round of combat (like a weapons attack damage), or the following round at their turn?

>>50130892
Depends on the rest of your initiative system. If it happens on the same round but you have a declaration phase, you're limited in rounds where you lost initiative; if it happens on the same round but you have mixed-up initiative phases so that all movement and/or ranged combat happens before spellcasting, that limits casters; if it happens in the same round but the casting begins and ends at the casters initiative then you start to get issues.

I'm fond of just having a "spells are cast" phase at the end of every round, in cases where rounds aren't that simultaneous - it gives people a chance to fuck up casting even if they lose initiative.

What're your opinions on variable weapon damage? i.e. rather than everything doing 1d6 damage like in OD&D or base Basic, you have stuff like daggers doing 1d4, swords doing 1d8, etc.

Does anyone have "The B/X Rogue" (Necrotic Gnome Productions)?

If it's in the (new) Trove, I can't find it.

>>50133558
I like the idea that a sword is more dangerous than a dagger, though the difference is a bit more severe than I think is optimal. What would you guys think about upping damage by a die level across the board? If daggers do a d6 and swords do a d10, that means that daggers do 64% as much damage rather than a mere 55%. More importantly, it means that a strength modifier has a less drastic effect on dagger damage (-2 damage on a d4 dagger means your damage array looks like: 1,1,1,2 whereas on a d6 damage: 1,1,1,2,3,4).

>>50133737
How does chainmail handle ranged combat in tis seperate battle systems?

>>50134264
tl;dr: in mass combat you cross-reference how many archers are shooting, the armor of the target unit and a die roll to see how many figures are killed; in man-to-man you make an attack cross-referencing range and armor, with a hit killing; in fantasy combat, magic arrows let you engage in the table at range (and thus without consequence) and (super)heroes can also use mundane arrows to shoot down flying dragons.

In the initiative sequence you get pass-through fire if a unit passes close enough to the ranged units during the movement phase, and then one or two attacks depending on whether or not your unit can split-move or has a crossbow or whatever. Heavy crossbows only fire every other round.

Also there's guns but they use a somewhat separate system that ignores armor in mass combat and just has a chance to kill based on range.

Siege weaponry is an entirely different question and somewhat complicated.

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Decent post-apocalyptic systems and adventures to run? My group is dying for a Fallout esque game.

>>50134508
http://ruinations-rpg.tumblr.com/

>>50127972
>MP are stat based
>an entirely average starting M-U will be able to cast 21 spells on level 1 instead of one
I don't think this is as well designed as whoever wrote it thinks it is.

>>50135828
Good. Vancian magic is tired bullshit.

>>50135860
>he thinks Vancian casting is worse than a single M-U casting 21 Sleep spells per day
Are you from California circa 1974? Have you written butthurt fanzine articles about how D&D is too important to let Gygax explain how the rules were meant to work? Are you currently considering, or have you ever considered, the feasibility of using heroic doses of LSD to make yourself permanently hallucinate that you live in a medieval-fantasy world, under th ename Project Flipback?

Because if not you should probably rethink your maximally-tired whine.

>>50135860
To each their own. I like low magic.

>>50135828

Yeah, the other parts are neat, but the magic part is ass.

>>50136009
Wut.

>>50136767
Believe it or not, Anon's actually just recounting a bunch of shit crazy D&D fans in California said and did in the mid-'70s. Project Flipback always gets a laugh out of me because it reminds me that sperglords always existed and were just looking for something like D&D to latch onto with their cheeto fingers.

Alright, looking over a ton of OSR stuff and 5e, getting increasingly paranoid/spergy at every system I look at, so I've got some questions:
>Where does something like 5e fit into the OSR?
>Given the sheer amount of pdfs I've got, how hard would it be to convert OSR modules to 5e and vice versa?
>More generally, what are some of your recommended houserules for OSR systems?
>As DMs, what kind of adventures/stories do you tend to run?

>>50136929
What exactly was Project Flipback?

>>50137206
>What exactly was Project Flipback?
That was the guy who wanted to use LSD to self-induce a permanent hallucination that he really was his (pre-D&D) fantasy alter ego, living in the medieval (hence "flipback", I guess) sword and sorcery setting he shared with a couple other fic writing nerds.

There are more details about all this shit than you can shake a stick at in PatW.

>>50137206
>Where does something like 5e fit into the OSR?
It doesn't really. I guess it "fits in" as a ?

>Given the sheer amount of pdfs I've got, how hard would it be to convert OSR modules to 5e and vice versa?
Not too hard, I'd think, especially if you're okay with heavily OSR-inflected gameplay (extensive character death, in particular).

>More generally, what are some of your recommended houserules for OSR systems?
It's hard to give any generally accepted answer to this, but one thing I do think has consensus support is changing how the Thief's skills work, or at least improving his starting success chances. If you want specific implementations to look at, people were posting their houserules earlier, take a look at those.

>As DMs, what kind of adventures/stories do you tend to run?
I tend not to. This is as close to divisive as anything gets in these threads, but to me OSR gameplay is all about sandbox exploration and letting the dice fall where they may: there's no plot, and no story except the stories the players tell about stuff that happened in-game, after the fact.

What I do in practice is prepare a megadungeon and then draw at least one wilderness hex map of its surroundings -- all maps keyed, and then I let the players loose on that.

>>50137435
>It doesn't really. I guess it "fits in" as a ?
Fucckk
"I guess it fits in as a new edition you can steal the content from old modules for?"

>>50129914
>Check out the skill system I made for AD&D (also will be using it in my LotFP campaign, but only Specialists get Skill Points). It's basically a hack of LotFP's skills.
I really like how you've done 'ability checks' as 3-in-6 plus modifier, so that they use the same skeleton as skill checks. I might nick this for Wolfpacks 2e.
Physician is /interesting/. I like how you use it to increase the rate that HP is regained by resting. I'm a little iffy on the first aid option, though; what's stopping you just rolling indefinately to heal them? Adding some sort of limiter to it (using a full turn, using up materials, or that you can't heal any more after a failed roll, maybe) might be an idea.
I'm not sure I like divorcing the social skill from charisma. I'd use charisma checks for this stuff, personally.
I might be tempted to roll Scholarship and Lore together, personally. I like them both, and like the implementation.
You should totes give Illusionists Stealth as a class skill.

I'm not familiar with how ADnD does race, but I can see your race adding to/altering your class skills - all dwarves get engineering, for example.

>>50137206
>Where does something like 5e fit into the OSR?
5e clearly has some influence from OSR ideas, but I wouldn't call it proper OSR. It feels most like a cleaned-up 3rd ed to me. But! It shouldn't take much hacking and houseruling to give you a much more streamlined, basic experience from it.
>>Given the sheer amount of pdfs I've got, how hard would it be to convert OSR modules to 5e and vice versa?
Not too hard, desu. You'll have to re-write some specifics, but the basic framework is similar. Your biggest problem is the massively inflated hitpoint pools in 5e.
>>More generally, what are some of your recommended houserules for OSR systems?
Have a 'healing' skill so that mundane first aid actually does something. Various variations exist. Simplify the fuck out of encumbrance; LotFP is a step in the right direction, but doesn't go far enough imho: I much prefer the set-up in Wolfpacks, and it's still not perfect.
>>As DMs, what kind of adventures/stories do you tend to run?
Me? I like procedurally generated exploration games. I roll up maps and dungeons for my players as they go, and they encounter stuff as it happens. There's not initially an overarching story or adventure beyond 'here's a world, survive and prosper in it', but over time weird shit will creep in and I'll retroactively tie it together to form something more cohesive.

>>50135828
What if a caster simply gets 2 skill points per level they put into learning?

You probably want to bring the number of spells known down as well to 2 per level you put into learning.

>If you pick learning, you get d6 HP, 2 points lost from the saves of your choice, 2 magic points (MP) and 2 random spells from any class and level you choose.

>>50133558
Generally in favor of variable damage. I think it's worth it to differentiate weapons and give the fighter something none of the other classes get (at least in some editions).

>>50133737
Perhaps if you up the value of HD as well (from d6 to d8). The thing that would stop me from doing it in my game is simply the hassle of converting stat blocks.

>>50138742
Compared to a magic-user in B/X, this would mean you could cast more spells before 6th level, and fewer after 6th level. I'm okay with that. Note that after 6th level in B/X, you start getting two additional spell slots per level, instead of just 1 (at 7th level, for instance, you gain a 4th level spell slot, and an additional 1st level slot as well). Also keep in mind that the more spells you know, the greater an advantage it is to be able to freely cast them, without having to memorize them beforehand.

>>50138911
>Perhaps if you up the value of HD as well (from d6 to d8).
I wouldn't worry too much about monsters. For PCs, you could just modify your rolling method a bit. If you have them roll their hit points from scratch each time they level, but keep their old total +1 if it's higher, then you could just give them 2 hit dice at 1st level. (They'd also get 2 HD at 2nd level, but they'd still be gaining an average of about 2 hit points for d6 HD due to taking the better of their 2nd roll and their 1st roll +1).

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>>50139210
>>50138742
>>50135828

Feedback?

>>50139935
Nice!

I think it'd be better not to complicate the magic point acquisition by making it 3 + read magic at 1st level. If you want to throw read magic in there for free, make it a separate thing. Each time you pick learning, you get 2 randomly determined spells. The 1st time you pick learning, you also get read magic for free.

Oh, and instead of referring to spell progression charts you have to access, maybe it'd be better to just say that your spells cannot exceed 1/2 your level, rounded up. Because that yields the same thing as the magic-user progression does, and the only reason the cleric progression is slower is because clerics are tougher, something that isn't a factor with this system.

--------------

This might just be me, but I'd rather have a standard d6 hit dice, and then give fighters a +1 hp bonus. It amounts to the same thing in the end, but you only really have to pay attention to stuff in fighting. No biggie either way though.

I hate old school save categories and I'm not sure this system works great with them, but if you're trying to retain maximum compatibility, I'm not sure there's a whole lot you can do about it. I think I would feel rather irritated at having to go with poison and breath whenever I picked fighting, though that's not because I was getting shafted so much as all the other kids got to choose their toys. Also, if you left the categories open, it'd be easier to pretend it wasn't tied to the old school save categories (and yes, I realize you can just house rule things, but the flaw wouldn't be on the actual page). But not everybody feels the way I do.

>>50133558
>What're your opinions on variable weapon damage?
Gygaxian cancer.

>>50140318

It wasn't even Gygax's idea. Mike Mornard talked him into it. (Mike later considered it a mistake.)

Or was it Rob Kuntz? I forget.

>>50082726
Has /tg/ tried to create an OSR game? We got a real lack of Cyberpunk OSR standalone and I believe most of us are probably autistic enough to get one shit out.

>>50140466
I started working on a Cyberpunk OSR, then quit when I realized I was far more interested in a post-apocalyptic system.

>>50140570
Idk, man. Maybe it's my inner faggot, but nothing makes me happier than playing Cyberpunk, but I despise shadowrun and cyberpunk. I thought that b/x might make a good system base.

>>50140672

Might be easier to mod Traveller. It already has solid gunplay and a good skill system. Base it off Cepheus Engine and you don't even need any license or royalties in order to publish it.

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>>50140466
>Has /tg/ tried to create an OSR game?
I know I'm not the only one knocking around with projects I'm interested in. A dude I was talking to was interested in a sort of apocalyptic cyber-fantasy setting, which sounds awesome.
In the mean time, have BLAM! for inspiration.

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>>50140672

>>50140694
I'll have to look into that. Does traveller run off the Cepheus Engine?
>>50140755
Well this looks interesting. Is this just based off shadowrun and older d&d?

>>50141029
>Does traveller run off the Cepheus Engine?
It's a clone so people can put out compatible stuff.

>>50140342
>Or was it Rob Kuntz? I forget.
Nah, it was Mornard. And maybe a couple other players? I think I remember Mornard saying that a lot of the players liked the idea, but Gary didn't.

>>50140672
Someone here made a cyberpunk OSR game. I'll see uf aci can find find it find it and find it and post finditandpostit finditandpostitwhen I return.

>>50141029
It's based off World of Dungeons.

>>50126272
someone?

>>50140466
what are the basics of an OSR?

>>50141533
>>50126272

Oh, hey, I've actually played it.

It's really good if you hate descriptive battles, prefer your PCs a little higher power than most, and as a DM love creating sandboxes off of the bat.

It works as a very, very simple OSR. If you're looking for a JRPG flavor, though, look away unless the only JRPG you've ever played is a Wizardry clone or Final Fantasy 1. Despite claims of being for "early console" RPGs like Dragon Quest, it only captures the feeling of FF1, and does absolutely nothing beyond that.

Leveling is incredibly quick paced too, and if you play it correctly, except at LEAST 1 or 2 levels per session, if not more. The only really bad thing about it is it assumes you're an expert-level DM just to play, because there are absolutely NO standards, helpful suggestions, or even a DMing section beyond magic items that helps you figure out how these rules balance with each other, and a lot of it is going to be wonky until one or two sessions later when you have the skill necessary to figure out what's good and what isn't.

i still can't wrap my head around the LOTFP summon spell

>>50141829
Why? It's described point for point. Just follow along.

>>50140318
Do you use a d6 for fists? D6 for rifles? D6 for a trap with a gigantic blade? d6 fir a thrown rock?

someone needs to make a new thread

>>50142036
You can do that too, you know?


>>50142219
New thread.