/osrg/ - OSR General

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Thanks for making a new thread!

Here's a question for the new general: Are there any AD&D rules worth adding to a Basic D&D/retroclone system?

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Hey OSR- I've been working on my urban fantasy game. While I still don't have any psychic powers to show, the draft is almost completed.

Any feedback or advice on improving the rules? I'm especially anxious to see if the starting cash and equipment purchasing rules work, I hope I didn't give the players too much or too little.

>>50355839

The disease rules aren't half bad from AD&D 1e.

So the other thread on /tg/ got me thinking. Which d&d really did focus on gritty swords and sorcery? Or is that just a modern OSR invention?

Anyone got advice or ideas for interesting halfling lore?
I got elves and dwarves covered, but halflings are kind of tough.

>>50356335
Well I think that "dark and gritty fantasy" kind of wasn't a popular thing back then, so I don't feel like original D&D was made with that idea in mind. The RAW does however make low level play very gritty, and modern OSR writers find that that is a good system for gritty worlds and adventures.

>>50356403
I guess it's a bit cliché, but I've always liked halflings that live like Rambo and have jungle farms. Just miles of land with high crops and dangerous traps, and a crazy hobbit with a machete ready to kill some viet cong.

Just throwing this out there -- the next issue of Troll Gods is basically edited and sitting on a harddrive somewhere, but we don't really have enough content to make it worth a release.

If you guys want an issue to come out, we need more stuff.

>>50356335

I'm not familiar with the earliest iterations of D&D, but I'll go out on a limb and say "none of the ones I'm personally familiar with". B/X has magic missile, healing spells, and the like. It's not quite the same as Phoenix on the Sword, or the magic spell that turns you into a rat from the Lankhmar series.

However, B/X does a decent job of making fights really nasty and short at low levels, so that translates well into modern adaptations of the rules to use as a Sword & Sorcery base (I'd say Carcosa's Sorcerers are very S&S in flavor).

>>50356403

In my homebrew setting, one world has a nation where the halflings are effectively property of the king, and they tend his vineyards (which the king profits from) and in return anyone who harms them, or screws them on business deals earns the displeasure of the king.

On another world, the halflings are organized into clans who act something like the stereotypical mafia families you see in movies and TV shows. Protection rackets, murder for hire, illegal substances, etc.

>>50356835
What kind of stuff is accepted?

>>50356882

>On another world, the halflings are organized into clans who act something like the stereotypical mafia families you see in movies and TV shows. Protection rackets, murder for hire, illegal substances, etc.

I like this. I always saw halflings as very family oriented and clannish. This is a nice extension on that. You fuck with me, means you fuck with all of us.

>>50356403
>pirates of darkwater inspired campaign
>dead/petrified gods from before the deluge are giant vertical islands filled with tunnels and covered in cliff villages, weird pirates
>Hanglings are vertical farmers, small climbers with dexterous feet, adept at knot work, climbing and vine tending, often being born with one foot on a line
>clans of semi-nomadic hanglings crawl over the surface of island towers, roving for the best vines to harvest, herding edible insects

>>50356403
Halflings in my campaign are basically just gypsies. Nomadic, wagons, attack dogs, the whole deal.

How i can introduce "Mighty Deeds" to another RPG like basic fantasy?

>>50355839
Random harlot table.

Prolly old News but Wizards has okayed the Print on Demand of back catalog, 1e to 4e.

This week they added:

Ravenloft (3.0)
Hammerfast: A Dwarven Outpost Adventure Site (4e)
Four From Cormyr (2e)
FMA2: Endless Armies (2e)
Fantastic Locations: Fane of the Drow (3.5)

D&D Classics are now available for print options on both DriveThruRPG and Dungeon Masters Guild.

>>50357953

Sly pimps represent!

I have played Basic Fantasy, what is the next step in learning about the OSR world?

>>50355714
Any recommendations?

>>50358981
If you want to continue the Basic route check out any of the following:

> Swords & Wizardry
> Labyrinth Lord
> Dark Dungeons
> Adventurer Conqueror King
> Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Question: let's say I want to do hack up an OSR game that is not fantasy. What is OSR style good at? What does it lend itself to?

>>50359075
is there any other route?

>>50356817
>Well I think that "dark and gritty fantasy" kind of wasn't a popular thing back then
Not familiar with Michael Moorcock and the New Wave?

>>50355839
Combat speed

>>50359238

Well, the AD&D route if you want lots of crazy rules for stuff.

>>50356835
Seconding this >>50356908 guy.

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>>50356908
>>50359605

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>>50359659

>>50359659
Specifically, what kind of content is the next issue short on right now?

>>50356835
>>50359659
>>50359667
Didn't know this was a thing again. I'll see what I can cook up.

>>50357945
Also i see people using the word "gambit" what are they talking about?

>>50359357
I think previous poster is defining 'dark and gritty' less regarding whether bad things happen in the plot, and more along the lines of 'writers who have to constantly remind the audience that people shit themselves when they die.'

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>>50355839
High level fighters in B/X kind of get shafted, so importing the multiple strikes per round thing seems like a good idea.

>>50359838
I think it's an alternative to 'mighty deeds'/stunting involving making two to-hit rolls for non-standard attacks (disarms, trips, etc): if both hit you succeed, if one hits you don't, if both miss something bad happens (you miss your next turn or something).

>>50360246
I'm not too stoked about the mechanical implications of that. Assuming non-standard attacks are somewhat balanced power-wise, that means that when you have a good chance to hit, you'll almost always be better off doing them, and when you have a bad chance to hit, you'll almost never be as good doing them. It seems like it'd be better to give them a flat percentage chance on top of your to-hit roll: 1-4 on a d6, maybe (to pick an arbitrary number). That way, if balanced right, they'd be competitive regardless of your chance to hit.

>>50359110
Dungeon Crawling is, and always will be, the core strength of OSR. Running a game as a salvage crew going into derelict space vehicles and stations makes the most sense to me.

>>50360593
Heists. Banks, art galleries, museums and so on. Random encounters are guards and police and stuff.

>>5036056
It's mostly to give the fighter something to do that they're good at. While I understand the criticism that it gives characters with better attacks more options I don't see how it makes it always a better idea for them over taking a standard attack since it always drops the to-hit chance (needing both dice to succeed) and carries an explicit additional risk (failing both causes a fumble).

Example:
Fighter with +7 attack and Specialist with +2 attack vs. Gribbly with 12 AC.
Fighter, no gambit: 75% chance to hit, 25% chance to miss.
Fighter, gambit: 56.25% chance to stunt, 37.5% chance to miss, 6.25% chance to fumble.
Specialist, no gambit: 50% chance to hit, 50% chance to miss.
Specialist, gambit: 25% chance to stunt, 50% chance to miss, 25% chance to fumble.

Gambits also do not include damage by default unless that is the point of the stunt, a disarm just flicks your opponent's weapon out of their hands (I could be wrong on this last point, I'm having trouble finding my original source on how it's supposed to work).

>>50361047
Crap, I meant to quote >>50360563

>>50357945
>>50359838
yeah, kinda what >>50360246 said.
Just a non-trademarked way of saying "Mighty Deed" that sounds cooler than "stunt".

Here be my adaptation to an already heavily houseruled lotfp:

Gambit: Perform a stunt or called shot. Make two Attack rolls; if both hit then it succeeds. 2 failures causes a Fumble.

And then as a Fighter class ability:

Warrior's Gambit - Replaces the Gambit combat option.
Instead, the Fighter performs a stunt, maneuver or called shot by rolling an additional 1d3 Gambit Die with their Attack Roll.
If the Attack hits and the Gambit Die comes up as 3 then the stunt is performed successfully, otherwise the roll is added to damage. A successful Gambit does not increase damage, but has some other kind of combat effect.
The player is encouraged to use their imagination to come up with unique and interesting uses for this mechanic.
Always be on the lookout for situational opportunities like tripping, kicking into pits, blinding with sand in the eyes, etc.

Which can also be optionally improved from a list of level-up perks:

8 King's Gambit - Increase the Warrior's Gambit Die by one type up the chain. Success on 3 or higher.

>>50356835
>>50359659
>>50359667
I'll try to get something done until later today.

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So I kind of want to do something to change up my setting's and games magic users to something like an Enchanter- this is because I want all the magic users magic abilities as being fluffed as 'per adventure' instead of 'per day'. Most of their magic will be multi-use magic items, weak magic items with unlimited uses that have a sort of breaking condition, summonable minions or creatures that can be killed, or some combination thereof.

However my problem with this thus far is how do I create magical items and artifacts inside of dungeons that make sense? If magic users are arbitrarily limited in whatever magic they can create per level- which is essentially representing their ability to both craft and field those items, then hoarding those items from dungeons don't make sense.

The other solution is to just make them a different 'class' of magic item, but I'm not sure. Maybe there is a better way?

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>>50360593
Now I want to do pic related in a system that actually is about dungeon crawling.

>>50359522
And the best of all, the OD&D route.

>>50360034
AD&D's multiple attack rules are extremely clunky. If I wanted to have something like that I would just give fighters extra whole attacks and not that fractional crap.

>>50362047
>extremely clunky.
What's clunky about 'two attacks every other round'?

>>50362067
>'two attacks every other round'?
This: 'two attacks every other round'

It's just more stuff to keep track of during combat.

>>50362088
But that's not clunky at all.

>>50362093
It is if it adds unnecessary complexity and tedium when there are ways to achieve the same goal with less work.

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>>50362047
I agree that getting an additional attack every other round is a bit clunky, but there are different ways of going about it, and going straight from 1 attack to 2 is a ridiculous power jump.

As far as tracking it goes, you could simply have a tile or something that you flip over at the beginning of each round. If the side with the mark is up, you get an extra attack.

I also came up with a way of tracking extra attacks with poker chips. Once you reach a certain level, you draw a poker chip at the beginning of each of your turns in combat. You can spend 2 chips to gain an additional attack on your turn. You can never hold more than 3 chips (any extra you draw are discarded), and depending on your level, you start combat with a number of chips already in your hand (-1 simply indicates that you do not draw any chips on your first turn). Anyway, pic shows which rounds you would get an additional strike in assuming you always spent your chips as soon as you could.

>>50362118
Alright then, how would you achieve an intermediate step between 1 atk/rnd and 2 atk/rnd without passing through 3/2 atk/rnd?

>>50362136
If there has to be an intermediate increase of the fighter's ability to fight between 1 attack and 2 attacks I would give him a bonus to hit with one attack instead of fractional number of separate attacks.

>>50362197
How is remembering to add a bonus every other round any simpler than remembering to make another attack every other round?

>>50355839
I use some AD&D monsters, just introduced multi-classing (via Labyrinth Lord AEC), the Appendices in the DMG are all great, spells and magic items. So I guess everything but the rules.

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>>50362197
Two strikes, the second one at the worse of 2 to-hit rolls. That roughly halves the effectiveness of your second strike (it halves it if your chance to hit is 50%, but since your chance is normally going to be a bit higher than that, it affects it a bit less). Either that, or you just scale multiple attacks into your THAC0 progression (see pic).

Or

>>50362785
>Or
Not sure where the dangling or came from.

But

>>50362210
>How is remembering to add a bonus every other round
Not every other round, every round.

>>50360563
>that means that when you have a good chance to hit, you'll almost always be better off doing them, and when you have a bad chance to hit, you'll almost never be as good doing them

Sounds right to me. If you're skilled and outmatch your foe, you can do flashy stuff to beat him quickly, but if you're in trouble, you need to stick to fundamentals and save the hotdogging for some other time.

>>50356218
Bumping this because it's pretty okay but I ain't got shit to suggest.

Any recommendations for which retro clone handles spelljammer setting wellish?

>>50367593
OSRIC?

I assume that you'd be able to just plug in the setting material and whatnot, although there's probably some weirdness with converting between 1E and 2E.

>>50361821
If I've interpreted your idea correctly then what you're suggesting is sort of an artificer/alchemist style take on the magic-user, where MUs prepare a bunch of magical items before the adventure.

In that case the solution is simple - magical items found in the dungeon aren't ready-to-use out of the box (those sorts tend to be used up or used by monsters/denizens), but instead might be ingredients, complicated formulae, arcane inscriptions, etc. - they're the building blocks that a trained MU can take home and turn into something useful - and this could be represented by anything - a single-use boost to a specific spell for an adventure, an XP bonus to all MUs in the party, or just turned into a consumable magic item like the rest.

You could extend this logic to equipment as well - maybe the blade of the sword survives but it needs to be fitted with a new hilt.

>>50367593
You know, come think of it I wonder how Spelljammer would interact with Stars Without Number.

>>50367593
Maybe check out Crawljammer? It's for DCC, but a lot of the material can be reused for any kind of game.

>>50358158
>Ravenloft (3.0)

Hell to the yeah.

What is the hourly rest in dungeons supposed to encompass? Does it waste rations or supplies?

>>50356403
I had a campaign where halflings are nomads who ride flail snails and hunt flumps.

Anyone got advice on useful organisational software? I'm writing a megadungeon for my home campaign, and I'm just bad at looking up both a map and room information at all times. So I wanted to ask if there's some sort of tool that'd let me create nodes or openable icons onto a picture so I can easily organize the rooms.

>>50361981
Not sure if it OSR, but I ran a T&T game that was salvaging on a space ship like that.

Is the D&D Rules Cyclopedia in the trove? I'm not seeing it.

>>50367593
Fantastic Heroes & Witchery would probably work, it already has some science fantasy stuff baked in(although you'd need to borrow monsters from somewhere else as FH&W doesn't have a bestiary in it)

>>50369639
TSR > Basic D&D > 91 Basic Rules

>>50369175

I use Zim Desktop Wiki for stuff, I don't think it does that, though. I don't know of anything that does.

>>50369175
OneNote is pretty useful. I've been using it to organize campaign notes.

can you tell me about high level character deaths?

>>50368863
Torches/light sources burn down during a 10 minute rest, and random encounters might also be checked.

how much time does it require to check for a trap, and how much spaces does the skill works?

Dark Dungeons or Labyrinth Lord?

>>50371233
>Labyrinth Lord

Has a better thief skill table.

And this comes from someone who loves the BEMCI/RC rules.

>>50370824
The AD&D rulebook says 1d10 rounds.

And it's usually just any room or hallway the player can clearly see.

>>50371328
Thanks, i though it was retarded that my players needed a check for every tile

Theater of the mind or minis?

>>50372139
ToTM. I might scratch out a quick sketch to show where things are if it's pertinent but I'd rather use the time and effort to figure out other things.

>>50355714
What's the best old school system for a group of newbies to learn? Or should we not even bother and try something like 3.5 or 5e?

Are there any games or books with magical materials like Orichalum, Mithril etc? For making weapons and armor in particular.

>>50372590
If you and your players are actually *trying* to learn they're all pretty easy, and the most difficult wouldn't be any harder than 5E.

As always it's important to get a system that does what you want instead of forcing a system to do something it isn't meant to do, but with that said Adventurer Conqueror King follows D&D Basic's foundation, offers solutions to common occurrences for adventurers and organizes information very neatly.

>>50372590
The thing with old school D&D is that the players don't have to learn the system. At all. They don't have to know the rules. The referee handles the rules while the players tell what their characters do.

What are some must have items from Lulu? I got a nice voucher.

-Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1
-Deep Carbon Observatory

What else?

I've got an unusual situation, can I get some imput?
Been asked to run an 'old school' style game by a friend's group; the catch is that they want to use Pathfinder classes.
Should I humor them and import modified classes based on what they want to play, or just say no?

>>50373762
Yoon-Suin is pretty awesome.

There's a new one out called The Nightmares Underneath that seems good, but I'm still reading through it.

>>50374143
What do they mean by "Pathfinder classes"? All the feats and other mechanics too? If that's the case it's pretty much mission impossible.

Old school D&D and Pathfinder are of completely different types of table top games, both in practice and philosophy, and as such are not compatible in the least.

My advice is to just say no and if the players refuse to play, they don't really want to play old school D&D.

>>50374231
They mostly want more variety of class archetypes. Summoner, alchemist, gunslinger, that sort of thing. People make new classes for OSR all the time, right?
I only expect to shut down one of them, who I know always brings some foxgirl mind wizard. I think he will get the hint that OSR plays differently after he loses the first few characters. I've told him it's more lethal,but learning through fair experience is the best teacher.

>>50374275
Sure you can make your own classes but they can't possibly be expected to function in the same manner in an old school game as their Pathfinder counterparts.

It's A LOT of work though and probably screws up your players' expectations too. There's also the slippery slope of catering too much to the demands of players to the point where the game is actually Pathfinder or just breaks apart horribly.

If you decide to make new classes you should be sure to explain to your players that old school gaming is not about character customization or builds or whatever like Pathfinder is.

>>50374275
What >>50374359 said, set expectations or risk the whole thing turning into a trainwreck of disappointment and recriminations. That said the examples you've given are easy in LotFP, they just wont have x/day powers and a bunch of feats:
>Summoner
Magic-user w/ Summon spell.
>alchemist
A Magic-user, or a Specialist w/ a houseruled skill and some of the rules cribbed from the Magic-user & Cleric item creation.
>gunslinger
Fighter w/ a gun.

So I showed one of my friends The Rogue's March and he's intensely interested in trying it out. I know it's based on LotFP rules, so would I be able to import B/X monsters and just tweak the AC? I'm also looking to see if I can use some treasure tables or if LotFP has dedicated treasure tables, since I expect him to loot the place, too.

>>50373762
I ended up buying
-Peter Spahn: Blood Moon Rising
-Patrick Wetmore: Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1
-Patrick Stuart: Deep Carbon Observatory
-Robert Conley: Scourge of the Demon Wolf
-David McGrogan: Yoon-Suin
-Matthew Finch: DemonSpore
-James Kramer: Arachnophobia!

Excited!

>>50373762
I've been tempted to buy stuff from Lulu but I feel bad about it because the books just gather dust on my shelf and go unused...
Maybe someday I'll be able to run Stonehell or use my BFRPG books.

>>50375873
Why don't you use them? Make a roll20 group or something. I'm sure a few people here would join.

I always love the /osrg/, it's so nice and chill. To that end, I want to storytiem my first OSR game, which I ran last week for a group of dyed-in-the-wool Pathfinder fags.

I used a weird and frankly experimental blend of Exemplars and Eidolons (for the base system), Spears Of The Dawn (for the skill system), and ACKS (for the proficiency system). Proficiencies that had overlap with Skills instead give an Advantage (a la 5e) to the skill, where they can take either a +1 bonus or a reroll, declared before they make the check.

So the party comes out with a Paladin-alike warrior, a more Fighter-y Warrior, and a pair of Rogues, one more a spy and the other an assassin. They all, by happy accident, have similar backstories, and I tie them all together into a nearby Dwarven theocracy's service.

The party is heading to Kester's Hall, a mountain hall made by some old wizard, to clear it out, because it is full of goblins. They spend some time in town and then set off.

Their first encounter is a big, hungry, scarred brown bear. The party, rather than fight the big bear, chooses to feed it, so the bear escorts them through the woods to Kester's Hall, and by doing so they actually avoided some Goblin scouts who would've made the Hall more difficulty.

They come to the foot of the mountain, where a bunch of barrow-mounds for Kester's family have been laid. Several of them are opened. In one of them is an undead, who gives them a disturbing rhyme and asks them to reclaim his ring from the Goblin King so he can rest.

The party agrees. They head up the mountain and reach Kester's Hall, a massive Viking longhouse carved out of rock by the long-dead wizard's magic. They send the two rogues in to disarm traps, and the assassin basically disappears with an amazing stealth roll. The spy doesn't, so he walks forward and immediately several goblins fall from the ceiling. (cont'd)

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>>50375911
I'll think about it, though I don't really feel like my DMing would be up to snuff since a lot of people seem to have far more experience with OSR games than I do.
Maybe I'll toss something together for a casual game using Searchers of the Unknown or The Black Hack, since I found that there was an expanded edition for the former available on Lulu and an online reference doc for the latter.

>>50375923

It's a close fight, sending the assassin all over the place, the spy using his crossbow to disable several Goblins before they can reach the alarm gong, and a bunch of random traps scattered throughout (primarily consisting of stone furniture from the hall rigged up to fall if someone crosses certain tripwires). The party escapes, disarms all the traps, and surveys the hall.

They find a weird throne with the word KING scrawled phonetically in some other language. When the party's (elf) assassin sits in it, they learn that "KING" is phonetically identical to the elven word for "ELF-LORD." They decide to come back later when they have the Goblin King's ring.

There's a hole in the back of the hall large enough for goblins, so the party goes through. They disarm the traps along the way, narrowly avoiding a really long chute randomly built into the ground that doesn't seem goblin-made. They come to a crossroads and decide to go left (and down).

It takes them hours to get to the bottom, where they come upon a massive, smooth slate door. They get paranoid about it, check it for traps, consider if they should leave it because there's a huge ring of dust around it and they don't want to fuck with whatever's inside. Finally they decide that they came all this way so they're gonna go in.

Inside is a library, some casks of extremely fine elven wine, and a skeleton sitting in a bit comfy easy-chair clutching a book and wearing a ring.

The party takes the ring without trouble. They try to take the book, and the skeleton awakens. One of them is smart enough to put the book back, so they don't have to deal with the awakening haunt casting a spell. The skeleton sits down and opens the book to a page about the elven realms (metaphysically) far away, and the party is starting to put pieces together. (cont'd)

>>50375981

The party partakes of the wine and reads some of the books in the library (which doesn't bother the haunt at all, apparently), spends the night refreshing, and in the morning climbs up the massive ramp.

On the way up, they meet a party of goblins descending. Those goblins very nearly kick their asses hard, with everybody coming out of the fight seriously damaged. One of the goblins surrenders after he sees the Assassin and the Spy basically turn one guy into a pincushion and the Fighter-y Warrior turn another guy into two people with one blow.

The Spy uses his ability to turn nonhostile things "friendly" and coerces the Goblin to go up and tell the Goblin King that the nearby town is massing for war outside, and to be ready. The goblin scampers up the tunnels, and the party follows after a bit of a delay.

The party hears a thunderstorm of feet go scampering by when they reach the top. They stay out of sight until everything is gone, and then emerge into the corridor, ready to fight the Goblin King, whom they are convinced at this point is not actually a Goblin.

It is then that the party realizes that, having put the goblins in War Mode, all of those traps will be twice as hard to disarm because there will be twice as many of them, and all the Goblins are out front waiting for someone to come attack them.

And that's where the session left off: with the party about to go fight the Goblin King and then work its way back through a veritable smorgasbord of weird, awful, murdery Goblin traps.

>>50375945
>I'll think about it, though I don't really feel like my DMing would be up to snuff since a lot of people seem to have far more experience with OSR games than I do.
There will always be people better at anything. Just do it and ask people for feedback ever time.
I DM since 2002 or so and is still ask for feedback. I honestly think I'm a mediocre DM, I'm not the best in coming up with flowery descriptions, but who the fuck cares if my players have fun and I have fun.

>>50372590
Anyone got anything?

>>50376414
I'd say that old-school D&D is easier to learn than newer editions of D&D. You probably won't have any problem with any clones of Basic D&D.
Did you need any specific systems? Check out Basic Fantasy RPG, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord, Dungeon Crawl Classics and/or Adventurer Conqueror King System.

>>50375848
Could you submit Blood Moon Rising to the trove maybe? Really wanted to look at it.

>>50376414
I would recommend Lamentations of the Flame Princess for a tidy B/X D&D like system. Play Tower of the Stargazer for a great OSR intro module.

Alternatively use Swords & Wizardry Core and play Tomb of the Iron God.

Or play B/X vanilla D&D with B2-Keep on the Borderlands.

>>50377018
I bought the print version of the books.

>>50376414
Into the Odd, because it requires no learning whatsoever. For more generic version use Maze Rats.

For some reason I really love the AD&D concept of adding an additional d100 stat to STR if an 18 is rolled. I don't know why something similar wasn't made for all attributes. And I know that having a rule that only matters once every 216th time is pretty stupid, but there's just something about it. Maybe it's the knowing that it's there and that it's attainable that makes it exciting?
Am I going crazy, /osrg/?

>>50378300
This is actually how Hackmaster handles ability scores' advancement, you get to roll fractions until you get the next full score. Don't remember how often since I only read rules once. Fascinating take on AD&D, really, but being accustomed to B/X simplicity I don't have the guts to run it.

Hubris: a world of visceral adventure for DCC.

http://www.drivethrurpg.com/m/product/198726

Have any of you read it? It seems like something I would very much enjoy, but I'd like some info or opinions before dumping 15$ on it.

>>50378447
Yeah, thought I got something wrong. You only roll for fractional points the first time, then you can convert the building points you have left (1 BP = 25 fractional ability points).

Looks like I'm reading this beast again.

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>>50374275
Here. Show them this.

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>>50374975
Yo. If you do try out the Rogues March, let me know how it goes. What needs work, what doesn't work, what you house-ruled etc. I've been wanting feedback on anything and everything.

You should be able to import any sort of OSR monster (S&W has a great bestiary), tho the game itself was designed to dissuade combat-for-combat's-sake (no advancing attack bonuses, XP for backstabs and stealth etc.)
Here's a random treasure pdf I have in my folder.

>https://www.docdroid.net/GtTDks6/trm-sample.pdf.html

What is the most readable, yet faithful, clone of 0e? The original books are pretty poorly written and vague.

Lookzing for OSR summoner rules.

>>50379018

http://www.necropraxis.com/2015/01/05/odd-summoning/


White Dwarf #27 (1981)

>>50378974
Probably Delving Deeper.

Requesting recommendations for literature that portrays fantasy environments that are surreal and dream-like. Something in the same vein as Lovecraft's Dreamlands perhaps.

>>50379097
DD diverges from OD&D right off the bat with the ability score adjustments... Isn't Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox much more true to the original rules?

>>50378974
Full Metal Plate or The Single Volume Edition should cover you.

>>50378974
S&W White Box

>>50379401
Maybe but DD does a decent job of explaining all kinds of procedures and tidbits relevant to playing OD&D. After reading all that stuff it's best to just return to the original source and use that.

>>50378964
Hey, thanks! I'll probably use S&W monsters (mostly for guard statistics in case he gets in a fight) and keep the single save for them. I was planning on making monster saves 16 minus their hit die all across the board anyways. As for houserules, since it's gonna be a solo game I'm gonna allow him a max hit die at first level as well as removing the negative hit points to make it less lethal for now, but getting knocked out will definitely have negative consequences.
I'll be sure to post a recap here once I run a session!

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hey guys, I got 2 questions
a) I want to put some capital W Weird in my Weird Fantasy, what are some good setting/system agnostic materials to get me started with that? I'm looking for more of loose collection of ideas than full rulesets, something like this (which is free, btw, and IMO pretty great) http://www.rpgnow.com/product/165657/Broken-System-000
and b) what ARE some fun, short OSR games? Emphasis on short, I like minigames, used to run a small campaign with 2 pages of World of Dungeons, other that I know of are Microlite20, Over the Wall and Into the Odd.

>>50380893
Have you tried Searchers of the Unknown? The entire rules fit on one page and is compatible with most basic modules. There's even an expanded edition posted earlier in the thread (>>50375945) that adds classes, races, monsters, and other rules piecemeal.

>>50356218
I'm just going to make notes in no particular order.

"Each save is governed by a stat that is added to it. Each stat starts at base 5 + modifiers"
What does this mean?

Skill list is either too short or too long. Need a 'write in' option, or guidance for it. Makes huge assumptions about the type of characters which are playable, in a limiting way.

Skill progression through use just doesn't work. If my intention for my character is to be good at doing things, I should be able to choose to become better at doing those things, and not have my progression locked behind chance.

I can't find where you define what 'Gardeners', 'Clout'

Why does everyone get loads of natural ability points? The smallest amount from character creation is enough to get 2 traits. Expand the list of things here, and build in an advantage/disadvantage system similar to weapons. This section is just kinda dull atm.

Weapons section is good, despite the dumb 'chimney' name. Look up 'into the odd' - does a very similar thing with weapon/artifact creation.

With how quickly people will die in melee combat, you heavily disincentivise wearing anything except +2 armour. Maybe expand armour list, or provide options that are good only vs 1 type of attack. Adding combat options like 'duck behind cover' is probably important too.

Seriously, you need to write some basic setting assumptions before the opening of this system. So many things make more/less sense based on general assumptions re world, characters and the main action/plot.

Ditch the optional race grid- it's bad/limiting design. If I want to play a smart crocodileman, let me. It's not even helpful to the GM really. Also add 'normal human' to the list.

The optional hat rule is... gonzo as shit, but great for encouraging people to care about meaningless shit like hats.

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>>50380893

>>50356218
>>50381370
On a second look the skill system is seriously garbage atm. You specify way too much about failure states, which vary hugely in extremity. Just add a section at the start with general advice, and don't try to mechanise each failure in radically different ways.

Particularly egregious is parkour, the failure condition for which is 'getting legs broken, or getting stuck'. If cool parkour is to be encouraged as a potential thing to do in dangerous/pressured situations, encourage it. Currently, if I try to run away from someone with parkour, i probably have a max of +3/4, since you arbritrarily limit how many points people can put into the skill based on character creation.

As a player who invests MAXIMUM starting skill points in this skill i have a 50% chance not only of failing to escape, failing to lose tailing enemies, but of taking permenant injury.

I note also that you don't make provision for injuries in the other section. If you really want to have this system in the game, at the very least make it 'damage' as a part of failure, not 'break leg'.

Honestly, just ditch the skill list entirely. Add a section encouraging players to define narrow areas of skill, putting points in for X/6 (or whatever) chance of success, and then suggesting how the GM should react in the case of failure or success.

>>50381126
i forgot this existed, thanks!

>>50381371
isn't this just a variant of microlite20? thanks anyhow

>>50381487
>>50381370
>>50356218

So to poke holes in character creation further, current rules on melee combat means prioritising armour is a huge deal.

With absolute minimum natural ability, and 1 point above minimum cash resources, you can buy natural armour and lobster armour. This is the minimum of what every character should/will have- if a character really doesn't care about skills or psy, they can take more abilities or equipment, but basically all your players are armour 3.

Oh and making ammo that expensive is totally counterproductive. People will drop like flies as soon as melee-oriented enemies get in their faces (note, no stats for melee weapons atm either, only unarmed and natural claws), so you maybe want to encourage your PCs to actually use their guns. This goes some way to counteract the 'PCs start at armour 3', but with minimum collusion 1 high resource player can fund everyone else's starting ammo.

Oh and you persist in making references to vaguely dnd rules that dont exist in this system- see 'snub' barrels. Needle barrels also have no mechanical function, since firing at an armoured target does no damage but reduces armour instead.

I suggest making hats free at character creation. It's a cool mechanic, and you ought to be getting your players attached to their hats from the get go, so that you can blow the hats up. (btw, dump the 'hats can only be sacrificed for save related to their style rule'- your hat rule is intentionally dumb and funny, don't try to make it realistic too.)

>>50379097
>>50379401
>>50379583
honestly the best way to do a OD&D campaign is to use S&W Complete and Delving Deeper together, as DD has a couple things that are missing from S&WC(like the Wilderness Encounter charts and the Barsoom creatures)

any reason there isnt an #/osrg/ channel on irc?

>>50382308
no one wants to talk to you

>>50382308
if you make one i will be glad to idle there

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Delving Deeper v4 or Into the Odd?

>Delving Deeper
Pros : OD&D Little Brown Books, but with a clear layout, all the important stuff from Chainmail already laid out for you, and a pretty vast bestiary that expands logically onto the OD&D setting. Has a reference sheet that allows me to keep number crunching on the players' side to a minimum (roll ability scores, buy a spear, ready to go). Also, DD feels very much like D&D since it's a faithful clone.

Cons : mechanical idiosyncracies aren't necessarily adding much to play, not necessarily suited for non-traditional gameplay (my players don't want to go in dungeons anymore), extremely lethal.

>Into the Odd
Pro : third wave OSR, fully internalized player agency, system so easy to run you can do it from memory (no referencing needed), classless, focus on doing interesting things, easy yet deep mechanics that build on years and years of theory while being dead-simple to understand and use.

Con : not technically D&D, so it feels different in play, feels more tied to its implied setting than D&D does, which makes me a bit uneasy, no idea how to stat things on the fly (but some guidelines are around).

Delving Deeper appeals to me because it's a fresh and well-informed (scholarly, even) take on the original game which is my favorite edition and game in general. I like going full old-school when I do old-school, and I like how they did it.

But Into the Odd looks like what my own D&D would look like if I murdered all of the sacred cows and kept only the raw essence that makes it fun in play.

So what's best for you, /tg/? Purity through faithfulness, or Purity through minimalism?

>>50381370
>>50381487
>>50381702

Thanks. You gave me a lot to consider.

I'm considering starting up an Undead centric megadungeon. My concern though is that I'm running DCC, and the lack of crits would completely screw over the fighter and thief

>>50382674
so add them lol. it's your game, you're not beholden to the rulebook man

Anyone can recommend me some pantheon write-ups? I want to include one in my game, but the standard ones are too huge. Something more compact would be nice

>>50383527

Make your own. Base it on your setting.

Or rather, what Gods do you need? One per alignment? One per player race?

>>50374143
>>50374275
ACKS - you want ACKS (the Player's Companion, especially).

Tons of class variety. If they still absolutely must have special snowflake classes, ACKS Player's Companion has rules for building custom classes that still roughly fit a B/X power curve.

Most importantly it provides a method to XP cost a class, which is the biggest hurdle in trying to translate 3.x classes backwards. The rules should provide a framework for reconstructing Pathfinder classes to some degree if you're not happy with the 25+ options already there.

>>50381370
>>50381487

>Skill progression doesn't work

The game is a level-less, classless game. How else is a character supposed to improve their skills? Pay for a class from a trainer?

>>50380893
I really like this, but I feel like it could have helped to include a sample bestiary as well as defining more how heavy armor slows a character down.

>>50379018
(nicked from my blog)
Start out with the LotFP Cleric.
Replace the cleric spell list with 'summon' at every level. Saves, HD, Spell-slots all stay the same.
Double effectiveness of sacrifice and thaumaturgical diagrams when casting summon.
Allow to research variations of summon that summon a specific creature, but no other spell research. Allow creation of protection scrolls and holy water. Allow creation of spell scrolls, but only for Summon and variant summons. Halve the time and material requirements for these activities compared to a cleric.
Must be Chaotic.
Done.

>>50382308
we do have a discord, though. It's pretty decent.

here's a question for the thread, if you were to run a OSR game with a setting(and possibly rules) inspired by a Post-Renaissance period of history, what era would you choose?

LOTFP doesn't count for this discussion as it's default setting is already an example of this(being set during the 30 Years War)

oh?

idk shit about discord, is there a server name or anything i'd need?

>>50385071
Cold war era espionage/covert ops. No magic or supernatural elements. Play as a team of Bond-esque characters doing stuff.

>>50382583
Like you said, Into The Odd is not even close to D&D. It's a different game altogether and shouldn't be compared to Delving Deeper which is essentially the same thing as OD&D.

I'm not too familiar with Into The Odd but from what I've read it's just another zero rules indie narrative game.

>>50385071
-Wild West gold rush scenario
-Shadowrun-style cyberpunk espionage game
-Indiana Jones style action archaeology
-post-apocalyptic wasteland/urban sprawl

Tonally these are going to be a bit more muted compared to an actual heist or action movie ruleset (ex. Spirit of the Century) - you'll see much more death/failure/dismemberment using an OSR ruleset. But in generally if the setting features venturing into dangerous locations for treasure with an actually high risk of death (as opposed to "action movie dangerous"), OSR rulesets can probably handle it.

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>>50379392

Have you seen the trip through hell in Nifft the Lean?

>>50385152
Discord is a chat client similar to Skype that integrates voice and text chat. It can be run in a browser off their website if you don't want to download the application (search for "discordapp").

The server is up in the OP >>50355714
>https://discord.gg/qaku8y9

Using the app doesn't require registration (which is free) but some channels are only open to registered users (including the /osrg/ one, mostly to prevent spam I believe).

>>50385672
>the application

Have they released that Linux version yet, or do they still have their thumbs up their butts on that?

>>50385635
>I'm not too familiar with Into The Odd but from what I've read it's just another zero rules indie narrative game.
not even slightly. It's built around the same solid core as other OSR stuff, but pared down to be incredibly simple. The rules a player needs to know fit on one page. Character gen fits on a few page. Most of the book is GM advise and stuff on running the game. This is not a bad thing.
It's lighter on the rules side than I personally like, but it's a solid game and definately OSR, just rather divergent from the standard 'BX with houserules' template.

>>50355839
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Comeliness_(3.5e_Variant_Rule)

Any advice for filling out hexes in a small-scale hex crawl? Mostly just need inspiration for stuff to put in them.

>>50385841
This guy got it.
So would you rather use DD or ItO?

>>50380893
anything else, any other recommendations on either topic, please?

>>50384119
I just interpreted it as movement speed, fights happen in theatre of the mind, but whenever you have two characters competing to get somewhere, the faster of the two just plain wins.
As for bestiary, never bothered me, since it's a hack of Dungeon World I ran it as such, so enemies just had general qualities players had to overcome before they could roll damage on them, and if they dragged their feet, rolling dice acted as a save.
My favorite part is easily the skill system though, really drives home the point that if you have a skill, you're damned competent with it.

>>50383547
It's more that I'd like to grab some predone ones that I can modify or use as inspiration.
The concept of gods is not something my brain can wrap its head around, really.
I guess what'd be really useful are deity personalities and quirks I could use to build off from when having them interacting with their clerics.

>>50383693
Yeah fair enough. I basically just dislike random skill progression. If you're going to have it as the only non buying-things means of progression (although im not sure whether psychics are planned for their own progression system), the least you can do is have an option to spend time/money practising to improve as a secondary method.

>>50387116
There are several crowdsourced hex-maps floating around- I think Zak S did one, and there's another one based off the classic 'Barbarian Prince' map which is semi-done here: https ://docs.google. c o m/spreadsheets/d/15N4beAStRAkS1nqKJ7Dt3owjo1vT_MZXVveh5muYgbc/edit#gid=1446881270

Apart from that, just find some good random generators and plug out some results. Work out local narratives based on that, fill gaps with cool stuff, maybe just plonk a published adventure somewhere and let it leak into the surrouding hexes. Oh and stick an unfeasibly large megadungeon somewhere, because all hexmaps need one.

>>50379392
Try Lord Dunsany's short stories (many of which are the inspiration for the Dreamlands cycle, which Lovecraft himself called "my Dunsany stories"), The House on the Borderland, maybe Vathek. Vathek isn't really fantasy, it's a gothic novel, but a lot of this type of hallucinatory narrative gets classified as horror pretty automatically -- the Dreamlands cycle being a typical example. Some of Clive Barker's stuff would probably fit, too.

There's also a lot of French fantasy comics that have this sort of atmosphere/style, if you can read French or find translations.

>>50387371
That depends on what you want to achieve. If you're after the iconic and codified dungeon exploration game that D&D is, DD is the better choice.

>>50384878
Why is that even necessary? Just play a M-U. Research summon, if it's not on the starting list. Then research variations of it. Done.

>>50385071
Literal Subterranean Fantasy Fucking Vietnam seems like it could be fun.

WW1 could also work fairly well, I suppose, but you'd need to finagle a bit so that the players actually have some agency.

I'm more fond of the standard generic postapocalyptic D&D setting, though, so honestly I'd probably just take whatever tech level and societal feel is relevant and then assume that it's undergoing some serious unavoidable cultural stagnation/decline, and has been that way for a while.

So, basically, WW1 killed almost everyone and we're rebuilding on the ashes of those civilizations, with the wondrous magic items from that era being mysterious and poorly understood. Or World War 3 in the near future, I suppose, if you want to be able to include some of the more fantastical technology from the last few decades.

You know, Dying Earth shit.

>>50385071
I have run a WW2 campaign using CT.

Would be curious to try to bend B/X type ruleset to something like the 1870s

>>50357953
Ready Ref Sheets are third-party but pretty damn fundamentally D&D, and they were doing that a year before the AD&D DMG was published.

>>50368402
Did you ever see the 3e Ravenloft material when it came out? What I remember of it is dull, dry trash. Might be thinking of a different book though.

>>50389004
I want to be able to do anything with the same carefree approach I had when I was a kid playing AD&D 2 without knowing half the rules. That is, no dungeon, no plot, no module, no prepared sandbox or prep at all, actually. Just improvisation and building on the spot and having long-term fun. I'm not sure whether the baroque all-encompassing mystic of DD/OD&D will help me achieve that, or if I should go for the easier ItO (which, still, has a LOT in common with the LBB, from a design perspective)

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>>50391221
In other words. Is this FUN, or is it just the trappings of fun.

>>50391221
Might be that i know B/X well, but LL gives me that total carefree approach.

>>50391337
That's game mechanics. Game mechanics can be fun or not-fun depending on how well they're designed. A game is defined by its mechanics. Discarding mechanics doesn't automatically make for a better or a more fun game, just different.

I would say Into The Odd doesn't have that much in common with LBB from a design perspective. Their mechanics are fairly different after all and Into The Odd doesn't even seem to have spell casting for example. Where they do share some similarities is the philosophy that drives the game: the focus on exploring the unknown.

Sure, Into The Odd is strictly speaking lighter than OD&D because it has less mechanics. That being said OD&D can also be played extremely light because it's pretty much completely modular and thus can be used for zero prep gaming equally well. I would argue that his high degree of modularity also makes OD&D the superior choice for long-term gaming.

Anyway everyone should just play whatever works for them.

In OD&D, you make one wilderness encounter check at the end of each turn:
>At the end of each day (turn) the referee will check to see if a monster has been encountered.
Now, this is clearly just a convenient abstraction for the game mechanics: you get one encounter after you've moved, using the terrain you stopped in. It's dead simple to work with, and doesn't require you to track where exactly you were during what part of the day (as you might be required for AD&D's more granular encounter timings).

Another example of how this is probably a convenient simplification can be found in the one place wilderness aren't at the end of the day, i.e. during waterborne/aerial travel:
>For travel afloat or in the air two die rolls are made -- a 5 on the first one indicates an adventure in the mid-point of the day with waterborne or aerial monsters; a 6 on the second die roll indicates that there is a normal adventure at the end of the day, and the table below is used. Exception: Ships which remain continually in water will roll but once daily for encounters, with a result of 6 indicating such an encounter.
So the one time you get an encounter in the middle of the day is when you're guaranteed to be in a certain list. Not to mention how it's pretty much the only way to actually force aerial encounters, due to the whole "will probably land to camp" problem.

Now, what's my point with all this? Well, when exactly do you get wilderness encounters in OD&D?

The monsters appear as night falls, and the light leaves the land.

That's evocative as all hell, and is probably worth considering if you want to play in the OD&D Implied Setting; much like you can read OD&D as describing a Mythic Underworld, you can read the Wilderness as being safe during the daylight hours but dangerous in the twilight.

It is, indeed, a horrible night to have a curse.

I've been looking at Mordheim a lot and one of the things that I enjoy about it is how varied all the weapons feel. While some are definitely better than others, it really does emphasize that every one fills a particular niche better than the rest.

Has anyone put out something that gives mundane weapons more flavor (excluding the Weapon Speed rules, of course)

>>50391814
Into the Odd has a lot in common with proto-D&D actually. Ability Scores being used as Saving Throws, and gaining a level by merely adventuring were things that Dave Arneson had in his game, back when people called RPGs "Blackmoor" or "Greyhawk" instead of D&D.

But you make a good point, while both games are modular, OD&D is so familiar it's far easier to move its pieces around and know where you're going with it.

>>50392158
This is pretty badass. I read a lot about OD&D everywhere, but never thought about the specific time of day where encounters happen. That's gold.

>>50392282
>Has anyone put out something that gives mundane weapons more flavor (excluding the Weapon Speed rules, of course)
The weapon length, space required, and weapon vs. AC rules?

Only mostly joking. You'd probably be better of doing something similarish to what BECMI tried to do with its Weapon Mastery, and have it so that every weapon (or class of weapon) has some special ability - some examples in Master are, IIRC, swords being able to deflect attacks, two-handed weapons being able to stun opponents with the force of the blow, axes causing the opponent to lose initiative next round, and probably a bunch more I've forgotten.

(Also, speed factor doesn't matter too much in AD&D - it's mostly just a tiebreaker, although if you're WAY faster than the other guy you get extra attacks when you break the tie. The only time you do the "add initiative to speed factor" thing is when you're trying to disrupt a spell, and it's really more of a "subtract initiative from speed factor" thing.)

>>50392158
>you can read the Wilderness as being safe during the daylight hours but dangerous in the twilight.
It doesn't hurt that when you look at the monster list, shit's full of undead and werecreatures.

There are four types of werebeast in OD&D LBB. Four! Someone on some OSR blog wrote a post about how the woods outside the village are full of howls, and that's why you bar your door heavily at night.

>>50392530
Hey, one of them leans towards Law!

...Half the time. The other half werebears are Neutral, like all other lycanthropes. And you can't trust those bloody neutrals, can you? Joining with the forces of Law one day, Chaos the next, and the third they have the gall to be impartial.


I have to say that the nighttime encounters sure make the city encounter list make a lot more sense, though, what with it being 50% horrible undead monstrosities. Bar your doors indeed. (This also ties into the whole pragmatic post-apocalyptic setting, I guess, with the omnipresent darkness and whatnot. Also, weirdly enough, Castlevania II: Simon's Quest - when it's a horrible night etc. etc., the townspeople shut themselves inside and the towns are swarmed with the creatures of the night.)

>>50392502
>weapon length, space required, and weapon vs. AC rules
...damn, I can't believe I forgot about those. Thanks for pointing them out.

I was also browsing some of the OSR fanzines and found a something in Knockspell about the Swords and Wizardry White Box providing special rules.

Dumb question.

Is Classic Traveller/MegaTraveller viewed as OSR games?

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>>50392784
No. But CT is adjacent, at least, and there's definitely potential for overlap.

It's surely no coincidence that both OD&D and CT are so damn good when in LBB form.

>>50392784
Classic Traveller is as old-school as it gets.

But really, there are enough different opinions around so that what is or isn't OSR depends on where people frequent people who talk about the OSR.

>>50392784
Not really. It's more it's own thing, and is usually discussed in the Traveller Generals - /trg/, I think?

It's old, but, well. The OSR thing was more about reviving an old playstyle that D&D had moved away from starting with 2E and most definitely by the time 3E came around - Traveller, meanwhile, has been mostly the same for the entire time. Less the setting.

(It also helped that D&D had the OGL so you could clone it, and much like with OD&D Classic Traveller's LBBs are quite a different game than LBBs+supplements - but for the most bit Traveller's still pretty recognizably Traveller.)

>>50392835
It's OS, and OSR-adjacent, but OSR specifically is D&D and related games.

Although actually it's all a bunch of handwavey nonsense and ten grogs'll give you fifteen definitions, three edition wars, and at least one pelting with dice if you ask them what's OSR and what isn't.

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>>50392802
>>50392835
>>50392844
okay, I have the CT and Mega Traveller CDs, and was going to find a thread on where to start. I guess I will have to wait till a /trg/ gets started.

>>50392870
The best question for starting a flame war is always whether or not 2E is OSR. (Whatever they say, make sure to argue that the Rules Cyclopedia, released two years after 2E, isn't OSR.)

You can also get fun answers from just asking where the time limit goes, though, or by talking about how Dragonlance is your favorite OSR module. Hey, it's 1E isn't it? That's as OSR as it gets!

>>50392941
Probably for the best, really, unless you have the copypasta at hand. They've got their own trove and everything.

>>50392954
>The best question for starting a flame war is always whether or not 2E is OSR.
It's a trick.

All AD&D rules are trash.

>>50392802
would love for this to be a real thing

>>50392954
I stick with the "All TSR D&D/AD&D Is OSR" definition, it's the least headache inducing one

>>50392941
You can talk about it here, or start a traveller general, too.

>>50393294
>>50393294
>I stick with the "All TSR D&D/AD&D Is OSR" definition, it's the least headache inducing one
That at least has a nice consistent easily defined line...

>>50393611
I would need to find the copypasta for it.

>>50393880
>That at least has a nice consistent easily defined line...
exactly

>>50393880
>I would need to find the copypasta for it.
Here's the last thread, I think.
>>50340357

Can any OSR system handle an all caster game very well? I have a pitch for a megadungeon that really only works if everyone's an arcane magic user, and I'd really like to use an OSR system because of the simplicity and the dungeon crawling genre is what these systems do best.

>>50394951
D&D in general can technically handle it, but, well, it's a bit of a challenge run.

Really, if you WANTED you could go into Greyhawk Castle as a solo first-level magic-user who prepared Charm Person and nothing else, like IIRC Gygax once did.

It's just pretty dangerous, since you've got less margin for error in case you fuck up. Less armor, less health, and less damage and accuracy once you've used up your resources.

Honestly, though, what's your pitch? Because depending on what it is, that might change things.

Race as Class or Separated?
ACKS, Sword & Wizardy or Labyrinth Lord?

>>50395629
>Race as Class or Separated?
depends on the system, and certain other details, I prefer RaC in some systems(ACKS, DCC, Pars Fortuna for example as they all handle it in ways that make sense), and Race Separate From Class in others

>ACKS, Sword & Wizardy or Labyrinth Lord?
all three are good, although ACKS is definitely my favorite of the three

>>50392941

Traveller thread's up now: >>50395995

>>50395204
Prospective students for a magical college are sent off, but when they arrive they discover that the whole place is half abandoned and half filled with monsters and mad wizards. They have to explore the place, as well as the vaults beneath the college, to find out what went wrong, uncover arcane secrets, loot the place, and maybe come out of the whole ordeal with more of an education than they intended.

>>50372139
I usually have my group use pathfinder paper minis for their marching order, sometimes we'll use monsters too but usually just theater of the mind. Space is usually at a premium at my table.

What are some good underground/mountain dwarven city supplements? To steal for inspiration and maps

Is ASSH any good? The mix of Conan and Lovecraft seems interesting, and all the list of classes looks neat.

>>50390445
3.5 Ravenloft is one of the few good things to come from that god forsaken edition.

>>50397494
I've heard good things, would have backed the KS for the new edition, but for lack of money

>>50395204
>you could go into Greyhawk Castle as a solo first-level magic-user who prepared Charm Person and nothing else, like IIRC Gygax once did.
I remember that story, but wasn't it someone else? I'm pretty sure it wasn't Gygax.

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anyone taken a look at The Nightmares Underneath, cause it looks pretty interesting, not to mention the physical book looks gorgeous(which is saying something considering that OSR is filled with handsome books), it's also got a free no-art edition available for it's PDF version;

https://redboxvancouver.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/the-nightmares-underneath-rpg/

>>50400909
It might have been Gygax DMing for Rob Kuntz or something, yeah. I'm pretty sure the story's in an old Dragon article - something about a ring, IIRC?

Googling around it looks like Mike Mornard also delved into Greyhawk as a 1st-level M-U with naught but Charm Person, lantern oil, and tons of stamina. Heh.

>>50396610
If you want something more organic and actually lived in etc., it might be worth looking around a bit on this website and seeing if there's anything worth stealing:
>http://mkv25.net/dfma/index.php

As for modules, there's a metric fuckton of underground ones. It's hard to give a specific recommendation.

>>50396102
The problem there, I think, is that they're unlikely to survive and, if it's a proper megadungeon, aren't really able to loot the entire place anyhow. Not to mention that, well, once they've been in and out a few times there's no reason that other groups wouldn't start adventuring into it as Fighters and Thieves and Clerics.

Hell, there's no reason that all the original group would be Magic-Users, either; bodyguards are important if you're traveling in the wilderness.

Also, if they're prospective students then that means that they could just as well be Fighting-Men or Thieves in the first place.

>>50395204
>>50400909
>>50402585
The story you're thinking of is Mike Mornard, yes. His first session with his character Lessnard the Magician. This one:
>I'm pretty sure the story's in an old Dragon article - something about a ring, IIRC?
Is The Magician's Ring, a different story, but also about Lessnard. Easily findable online.

Crowd-sourcing ideas for the title of a book that's basically 'unearthed arcana in the ice age'. Throw suggestions at me?

>>50403560
Thawed-Out Arcana?

>>50403560

Constellations Above, Glaciers Below: Strong Medicine for Wolfpacks & Winter Snow

>>50403560
Cave Mysteries

>>50403933

Hmm. Or maybe Painted Caves?

>>50403950
I thought about it, but then the reference to "Arcana" isn't obvious and I wanted to retain that.

>>50403587
Is 'Unfrozen Arcana' too close to the mark?

>>50403587
"Unthawed" is a word, believe it or not.

>>50404151
But surely "unthawed" has to mean the opposite of thawed, ie "frozen"?

>>50404128
I don't think it's too close, but "unfrozen" doesn't quite seem to have the same connotations, maybe. Makes it sound more like "Defrosted Arcana" or something, like you found it in your freezer next to the fishsticks.

Maybe go with something more descriptive, like Findings In The Ice, or Retrieved From The Melting Glaciers? Something like that.

>>50404237
Looks like it, although the American are weird as always.

From Oxford's dictionary:
>Logically, the verb unthaw should mean ‘freeze’, but in North America it means exactly the same as thaw (as in the warm weather helped unthaw the rail lines); because of the risk of confusion it is not part of standard usage. Unthawed as an adjective always means ‘still frozen’, but it is best avoided because many contexts may be ambiguous, such as use frozen (unthawed) blueberries

Although given that this is about the Ice Age, when things were very much NOT thawed, it lets you have a similar-ish name to Unearthed Arcana while also meaning something entirely different; Unthawed Arcana would be frozen solid, much like northern Eurasia and America. If you read it the other way - "defrosted arcana", incorrect even in American usage - then it still makes sense.

I dunno, there might be a better name out there.

Also, chances are that Unthawed Arcana might be close enough that you trigger the Idiot In A Hurry clause and get WotC's lawyers on your ass. Although maybe not - hell if I know how Monte Cook got away with Arcana Unearthed.

>>50404491
>hell if I know how Monte Cook got away with Arcana Unearthed.
Pretty sure he got away with it through the buddy clause -- being a designer on 3E and knowing everybody in charge. Probably helped as well that he published his expansion at a time when WotC weren't yet planning to have an actual Unearthed Arcana supplement for 3E. (Hard to imagine now, but there was a time when splatbook danmaku hadn't been invented yet, and prestige classes were meant as a minor detail)

>>50404622
>Probably helped as well that he published his expansion at a time when WotC weren't yet planning to have an actual Unearthed Arcana supplement for 3E.

>Arcana Unearthed (properly Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed, ISBN 1-58846-065-7) is a role-playing game created by Monte Cook and first published in 2003.
>The second book to use the name Unearthed Arcana was written by Andy Collins, Jesse Decker, David Noonan, and Rich Redman, and published in February 2004 by Wizards of the Coast, for use with the Dungeons & Dragons third edition rules.

Hm. Maybe? It's hard to think that they hadn't thought of the thing that was going to be released in the beginning of the next year, but I guess they probably had some private chats with Cook on the matter.

>>50404674
I have to wonder if they didn't actually make the 3E UA supplement partially or entirely for the purpose of retaining the rights to the name.

>>50396017
Thanks

>>50403560
Ice Age Arcana

>>50405796
Maybe "Arcana of the Ice Age"? That sounds like it flows a bit better IMHO.

>>50403560
Ice age survival guide.

>>50405808
>That sounds like it flows a bit better IMHO.
You think? It seems like it went from a name to a sentence to me, and it's much longer to say. Arcana of the Ice Age has three verbal pauses in it, where the sounds don't flow into each other. Arcana -- of the -- Ice Age. Ice Age Arcana has no verbal pauses.

Another option: Cave Wall Arcana?

>>50403560
>Beneath The Rime, Arcana
>Arcana Before Time
>Arcana Of The Frozen Wastes

>>50402462

Currently reading through it right now. Here are the things that made an impression on me. The game uses roll under attributes for checks and has mechanics for temporary attribute damage. Saves don't improve by level. Disposition (HP) is based on your hit dice, which you reroll every time you take a rest. After losing all of it, you begin to take damage to your Health score (Con) and actually become injured. Each time your health gets damaged, you need to roll a check to "prevent the wound from temporarily incapacitating the aff ected location" As Health drops, this gets harder since it's a roll under system. There's a hit location table too, if you need help judging where the PC gets damaged.

This sounds cool in theory, but checking each time you get injured might slow down play. Then again, it seems fights were you get Health damaged are unusual. Monsters just have Disposition anyway.

I love Fighters, and I like the Fighters in this system. Here are its perks. Armor doesn't count against a Fighter's encumbrance. If a Fighter misses a monster, he gets to deal his damage. If he hits a monster he gets to deal his damage twice. Naturally, they also get the best damage in the game since damage is tied to the hit dice of the character class. (Fighters get a d10)

The game has a lot of stealable stuff when it comes to communities. Definitely worth a download just to steal from that section alone. There are lots of subsystems and tables for investing in a community, managing your reputation, dealing with inflation, etc.

>>50406034

Setting is totally cool too. It's Persian inspired with a very strong focus on Law vs Chaos. Dungeons in this setting are Nightmare Incursions from Chaos. Stealing the valuable treasure and killing the boss collapses the dungeon and prevents Chaos from spreading. Videogamey as fuck, yeah, but it's a fun way to tie setting and mechanics to me. Incentivizes dungeon delving and looting a lot. It's also a great excuse to play up the Dungeon is a Mythical Underworld that doesn't make sense theme.

Unfortunately, this game is too gritty for my tastes. Saves don't improve per level for one. 3d6 in order strict character generation, so rolling under your scores is gonna be difficult. Dungeon delving means you risk going crazy. You can improve your base stats when you level up but it's not a guaranteed thing. Etc. Plenty of stuff to steal though. It's worth reading and stealing the setting sections and the community bits. Also, the Fighter is awesome. That was a damn nice and elegant way to buff him up. If a Fighter fights, the monster is gonna get fucked up, no exceptions.

So, domains. They've been a thing for the entirety of TSR D&D in one form or another, and there's been a ton of different ways for handling them.

OD&D is famously scarce on a lot of details, since, y'know, "why have us do any more of your imagining for you?" and all. One big thing it's got roughly zero details on is increasing the population of your barony, having only this cryptic paragraph:
>Successful investments will also have the effect of increasing the population of the investor's territory, providing the area of investment does not specifically preclude such (hunting and trapping would do so, for example).
Arneson's First Fantasy Campaign has more details on this exact topic; for the specifics, each 20gp invested in Farming or Fishing gets you +1 family, and investing 100gp in Tourism gets you +10 families in ten years.

AD&D didn't give a rats ass about all that, though, and instead went for a perhaps more natural route:
>They will begin to appear after the player character's stronghold is finished and patrols have generally cleared the area. The populace will match the area and the alignment of the character. When a random monster check reveals some form of creature who properly matches the potential inhabitant type for the territory, then have them move in and settle down, making proper subservience calls upon the master of the territory, naturally.
So, basically, if the weekly random monster check is friendly enough then those bandits might very well settle down in your barony.

BECMI decided to simplify things a bit again: there's a table for a percentile growth rate per month. (It's 30% -5%/100 pop, at 500+ it's +1d5%. Also a flat +-1d10 per month to make things less predictable, I guess.)
Each family is, much as in The First Fantasy Campaign, five people.

Other systems exist for this as well, obviously.

What's your preferred method for population growth? Invest money, get people? Random monster checks? Flat growth rates? Something else?

>>50406034
>I love Fighters, and I like the Fighters in this system. Here are its perks. Armor doesn't count against a Fighter's encumbrance. If a Fighter misses a monster, he gets to deal his damage. If he hits a monster he gets to deal his damage twice. Naturally, they also get the best damage in the game since damage is tied to the hit dice of the character class. (Fighters get a d10)
Huh. Do, unpacking that:

>Armor doesn't encumber
A more extreme implementation of the classic Dwarf perk of unhindered movement in armor, perhaps, but this is also big in letting you just carry more stuff in general. (In some way I suppose AD&D did this with strength bonuses to encumbrance mostly being a Fighter thing, but eh.)
It's definitely a nice thing to consider, but it does kind of make the heavily armored fighter optimal and depreciates the lightly armored skirmisher archetypes.
I dunno what to think of it. It's neat, at least.

>Damage on a miss, more damage on a hit
This is originally from 4E, I think, although I've seen it in some other places as well - usually in a "do weapon damage + strength on hit, still do strength damage on a miss" fashion.

The whole hit die thing is as old as Greyhawk making daggers 1d4, blunt weapons 1d6, and the Fighter's aces 1d8 or better.

Any cleave/crowd control mechanics of note?

>>50403560
(Cave) Wall Scrawl
Fave Cave Wall Scrawl: Allbrawl

>>50406297
The optional Berserker class is the multi for specialist.

Special Abilities:
• Add your level to your attack bonus.
• Each combat round, you may attack a number of different targets equal to your level, as long as they are all within range. Roll separately for each attack, and you may not attack the same target twice in the same round. You may not reload your weapon in between these multiple attacks. You may attack at any point during your movement.
• When you have a weapon in your hands (or something else you can block blows with), your Armour rating is equal to your Ferocity (STR) score

Then again Fighters getting the best hit bonus, best HP and the best damage is pretty sweet. The Assassin class of the game, can only roll damage twice under backstab conditions for instance.

Oh yeah, another thing, in this game all classes can cast spells as long as you pass the check. Wizards are the best at it though.

>>50406220
investments will get you X amount of settlers.
they will naturally grow 1d4-1% per year.

also adventures/encounters can add to it. Or drop it off.

>>50394951
Dungeons & Dragons, a set of three booklets from 1974, allow you to play anything, including Magic-Types, as characters! Check it out!

Anyone run old-school D&D without prep? I'm talking full naked 100% improvised gaming world and reacting to what the players do/using randomly generated content such as random encounters and terrain to build the game world on the fly?

I used to do that with AD&D, but it was back in the days where we cheated to prevent players from dying, so it was easier. I'm wondering if it's possible to reconciliate No-Prep DMing with player agency and "honest" play where you roll the dice and see what happens.

what are some OSR like games worth playing? In example games like torchbearer and the like

>>50406600
>I'm wondering if it's possible to reconciliate No-Prep DMing with player agency and "honest" play where you roll the dice and see what happens.

That was exactly my experience with Dungeon World. You could probably pull it off with OSR, but it'd be harder.

>>50406600
>I'm wondering if it's possible to reconciliate No-Prep DMing with player agency and "honest" play where you roll the dice and see what happens.
I don't see why not. In AD&D's case there's a ton of tools to let you do exactly that, from random dungeon tables to random wilderness tables to reaction checks etc. etc.

Player agency still matters in that case, since the random generation rolls are for exploring the unknown - if you're traversing known territory, if for example you're fleeing from a monster, you have plenty of choices.

Just don't go in expecting a story or anything other than a straight dungeon-crawl, though.

Also, you might want some improv classes. And train yourself to actually let the dice roll as they may and not, say, cheat to prevent the players from dying.

>>50406813
I do it with LL, but I know the ruleset very well and play "DM makes a call go with it" type stuff

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>>50406860
I never did dungeon crawl back when I was doing that, is what I mean. I improvised NPCs and their situations, and the players dealt with it. In the mean time, I learned a lot about both improv theater and RPG theory in general. And yet today I feel less comfortable trying that than back when I was a kid. How carefree we could be.

I may try doing that with Into the Odd, see where that takes me.

>>50406600
>full naked 100% improvised gaming world and reacting to what the players do/using randomly generated content such as random encounters and terrain to build the game world on the fly
This is how I run Wolfpacks a lot of the time. All the stuff in the back of the book is basically the result of me running it in playtests and going 'I wish I had a table for this', and then coming up with a table for it.
If you run this way, however, then DEAR LORD keep detailed notes of what you rolled up after the session.

>>50406600
>No-Prep DMing with player agency
What do you exactly mean by "player agency" here?

So, I have some Amazon gift card money.

What would be a nice OSR things to buy?

>>50407073
Basically, 'player agency' is the property a game can have where the player's get to:
>make choices
>with enough information and power to make an informed decision
>and which have meaningful effects on their characters and/or the game-world.

Pretty much it's 'not being a railroad or just blind luck'.

>>50406600
>I'm wondering if it's possible to reconciliate No-Prep DMing with player agency and "honest" play where you roll the dice and see what happens.
I don't see why not, all the prep does is cut down on the time you have to spend fucking around with making stuff up on the fly during the actual session. (Likewise, I don't really see the benefit of 100% improv given that the only difference is it slows down play)

>>50407443
>(Likewise, I don't really see the benefit of 100% improv given that the only difference is it slows down play)
This pretty much.

File: The Queen In Amber.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

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throwing up a thing I'm working on. still kinda rough and I need to sort out some pictures for it.

>>50402585
>http://mkv25.net/dfma/index.php
That'll already be quite helpful, thank you.

>As for modules, there's a metric fuckton of underground ones. It's hard to give a specific recommendation.
Really, any mention would be helpful just to read up on it a bit and have some idea of how it's supposed to look like.

>>50403560
>Crowd-sourcing ideas for the title of a book that's basically 'unearthed arcana in the ice age'. Throw suggestions at me?
so what kind of content do you think you'll be including in this?

>>50408072
Anything specific you looking for underground?

>>50408732
Well, mostly how to do a somewhat interesting underground city.

>>50406034
>>50406051

Thx for the in depth review! It's posts like this that keep me coming here. Well done!

>>50406804

Adventurer Conqueror King is my personal favorite at the moment. Race is class and plenty of unique classes and rules for custom classes in the Adventurers Companion.

>>50409134
If you need inspiration, check out this thread:
>>50398026
Tons of great material to work with

>>50406220
I like BECMI's, but I would probably use the OD&D one if it were more crunchy.

Apparently Luke Crane made a 17th century supplement for B/X I never heard about before. Is someone familiar with the thing?

img.fireden.net/tg/image/1446/14/1446147637280.pdf

>>50410262
>img.fireden.net/tg/image/1446/14/1446147637280.pdf

Here you can get it for free

https://www.burningwheel.com/store/index.php/miseries-misfortunes.html

>>50407898
Looking great so far!

>>50378964
Anon who was running a game of The Rogue's March here. Finally ran him through a small mission, and while we haven't finished it yet I did notice quite a few things.
>PDF has the text baked in, which made my friend a little lost as he couldn't ctrl+F certain things even with it being 20 pages
>Friend commented that intelligence seemed rather useless, as it only affected spell cast chance and languages
>Unsure of how stat penalties generally work in regards to skills, I ruled that they were at minimum a 1 in 6 chance regardless of penalty
>Friend was a little too eager to roll for his skills, to the point of saying what he was doing then rolling. Probably more of a player thing but I do notice that players roll immediately once they see anything applicable on their sheet
>Unsure whether or not the +4 to Sneak Attack stacks with the +1 Base Attack Bonus, I ruled it did
>Ladders are not an oversized item, but 10' poles are
>Luck went unused, as did gambits and combat feats, so I'm unable to comment on how those worked
Granted I don't really consider my friend to be representative as a typical player, but this is what I managed to glean from our play session. Hopefully this helps.

I've been honestly considering removing daily limits from casters and changing their spells around entirely.

Fighters don't have any kind of arbitrary limits on daily abilities, and neither do thieves. Wizards/Clerics should follow the same course; instead make their magic specific and useful little utility spells.

Some Crypts & Things material, including the remastered version, for the trove.

sendspace.com/file/sih8jv

>>50412049
>but I do notice that players roll immediately once they see anything applicable on their sheet

Indeed they do. 'Search' isn't anywhere on my charsheets now because there's always someone who goes for declaring it as his default action.

>>50412076
The specificness and lower power level is a cool approach. I think it should balance out compared to the standard model, which is way too concerned with wizard's power level at first but then lets him dominate anyway.

Of course, the strategic play around daily limits and limited selection from the hodgepodge of utility and combat spells is pretty iconic and played out at this point.

>>50403560
Arcana Primitive, maybe. At least "primitive" seems like a good word to consider.

>>50412397
>The specificness and lower power level is a cool approach. I think it should balance out compared to the standard model, which is way too concerned with wizard's power level at first but then lets him dominate anyway.
>Of course, the strategic play around daily limits and limited selection from the hodgepodge of utility and combat spells is pretty iconic and played out at this point.

How specific are we talking here? Like 'general' specific or 'this spell turns needles into matchsticks' level specific?

>>50412943
I think if you make them "needles into matchsticks" specific (e.g. each individual demon has its own summoning spell) you could easily make grimoires of whole oceans of such spells and be pretty liberal with distributing them, the only problem I can see with that offhand is that keeping track of the spells becomes a tortuous chore for the player.

What do you guys think is the best OSR dungeon complex that been published?

>>50412397
tyvm CUTT-guy

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>>50412049
Thank ya anon! In regards to some things:

>I made it in Photoshop. Unfortunate repercussion of it being PNG files converted to PDF. Hopefully I can remedy that somehow.
>The occasional Ability check for things would make it more relevant.
>Stat penalties would need some sort of extra modifier to make it viable. 2-in-6 in Tinkering but have a -4 modifier cause of heavy armor? You have a -2 in 6 chance. You'd need something that added a bonus of +3 (spending luck, magic item, some GM created specialized tool) to get it back to a 1-in-6 chance. This is based around the same logic that LotFP has with stuck doors, where some may be incredibly difficult and require aid, by either crowbars or party members. I can see people disregarding that and having a flat 1-in-6 always, tho.
>My players are the same :\
>Attack Bonus is definitely added.
>Whoops! Fix that in the next update.

>>50414995
I'm a big fan of the atmospheric school of dungeon design. The Stygian Garden Of Aemelia Prem or Deep Carbon Observatory are some of my favourites.

>>50414995
That's a tough question. Personally I've got a big hard-on for the Castle of the Mad Archmage, but that's because I'm a sucker for stuff that's appealing to nostalgia in the way it is.

>>50412076
so, imho fighters, thieves and casters follow different styles of play.
A fighter is simple and basic. They've got solid hit-points, good armour and attack well. I actually think that your 'dwarf' classes fit better into this mold, as for some reason fighters get rubbish saves in a lot of old DnD.
A thief is about risk management. They're squishier than a fighter, but have a lot of tricks (backstab, hide, climb etc etc) that they always have a chance of pulling off. The thief's core dynamic is 'is it worth the risk'.
The spellcaster, like the thief, is squishy. However, whilst the thief has tricks they can always try that might not work, a spellcaster has tricks that always work but in limited amounts. The spellcaster is about resource-management; you know you can solve the encounter with a spell, but is this the best time to use it?

>>50415811
I do penalties resulting in 0-in-6 skill rolls as the inverse of having a 6-in-6 chance: you roll 2d6 and only if both come up as a 1, you succeed.
Honestly, make languages more useful. If your players aren't decoding cyphered messages and recording their plans in code themselves, are they really master criminals?
A 'medicine' skill using intelligence is also perhaps an idea: it might be able to heal HP, and it's certainly useful when dealing with all those narcotics your crims will be smuggling.

>>50415811
oh, is a copy of the Rogue's March pdf knocking about somewhere?

>>50416971

While that is true and a potential design goal, it's not always that easy and leads to other forms of poor behavior.

For example; if you 'balance' Wizards by giving them only a few powerful abilites a day, they can outshine the other classes even with a limited resource, especially because as the game goes on they get exponentially more resources then the other classes do basic tricks. I'm also not trying to start a class balance war discussion here, because it's argued about enough, but it's pretty clear that the low amounts of strong stuff is what's causing this problem.

Secondly, the Wizards limitations become a big problem because they slow the rest of the party down, and encourage a 15 minute adventuring day playstyle. It is also simply not fun to have a dead weight Wizard when the rest of you are stocked up and ready to go, even if he doesn't slow everyone down.

The Wizard, one of the few characters capable of magic, should instead focus on the special powers that make them magical. Their limitations should be magical ones instead of resource based; they can make anything glow enough to be bright as a torch, but that's ALL they can do. At least at first. Then the Wizard becomes more about creativity then being a pocket problem solver.

>>50417017
The reason why magic-users are basically magical glass cannons in old school D&D is because characters are disposable and the players are supposed to play the party collectively as a whole, not as several individual characters. The party might have several magic-users and they should be viewed first and foremost as resources for the party. Old school D&D is an enterprise management game, not a character management game.

To better get players to understand this completely different kind of game philosophy I prefer to have each player control at least two player characters when starting out.

>>50417202

Remember, there is a large portion of us in the OSR crowd that like the more gonzo and slightly more character building then the party management side of things. More like using OSR framework to create great character growth with lethal gameplay and dungeon crawling.

There has got to be a solution that works for both parties.

>>50417341
>There has got to be a solution that works for both parties.
If there is please let me know.

What I would like to see is an OSR game that explicitly focuses and builds on the party management game. Maybe I'll have to create it myself.

>>50417458
ACKS's domain rules would be a good place to start.
As would LotFP's retainers.
And DCC's lvl 0 peasant funnel.

Combine them all together and turn up the volume? Lots of interactivity with hero class abilities improving retainers and henchmen?

>>50417017
>encourage a 15 minute adventuring day playstyle
I'm gonna let you finish but I gotta stop you right there. The 15 minute adventuring day is a solidly new school artifact (and I think actually wasn't seen before 3E, but could be wrong on that). As has been covered in many /osrg/ threads before now, the classic-D&D exploration loop prevents that sort of shit very well.

>>50417341
>There has got to be a solution that works for both parties.
Why? On the contrary it seems like the intuitive assumption would be that there's no one rule that can satisfy preferences that are opposed to one another.

Besides which, literally thousands of people have been scrabbling for that holy grail for forty years; I think at this point it's fairly safe to asssume it's not buried anywhere around here.


In general, I've always thought (been here since the start, when these threads were just comfy shared enthusiasm) it's funny how often the /osrg/ houserulers mirror and imitate the people who originally branched away from the old-school playstyle and from OD&D itself. It's the same concerns and dissatisfactions popping up and often the same attempted solutions. I've also noticed that most of the people doing it come from the side that picked up OSR games for the simplicity of the rules and the (insanely, compared to the rest of the field right now) high quality and creativity of OSR products, rather than those who enjoy OD&D for what it is and want to understand it better (we mainly bitch about the Thief, it seems like).

Mind you, I'm not blaming anybody for anything, and in the wider OSR there have been some very good innovations that still work within the framework of old-school play. Still, it's a pretty noticeable trend. A few people in here seem constantly wanting to reinvent Runequest.

>>50418563
>it's funny how often the /osrg/ houserulers mirror and imitate the people who originally branched away from the old-school playstyle and from OD&D itself. It's the same concerns and dissatisfactions popping up and often the same attempted solutions
could you give examples of what sort of houserules you're talking about?

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>>50417001
That is actually a beautifully simple solution. I've just included it in this small update.

>>50417015
https://www.docdroid.net/GtTDks6/trm-sample.pdf.html

>>50385672
a belated thanks

I looked through the trove. I am trying to find a link for The Complete B/X Adventurer - RBG002
From Running Beagle Games specifically I just need the Summoner Class.

>>50420060
it's in the B/X folder

Does armor with enhancement bonuses exist in OSR/TSR games? If so, wouldnt that mean armor class can hit the negatives?

>>50420738
Yes, and it can and does.

>>50420738
>wouldnt that mean armor class can hit the negatives?

Yeah. Generally when you encounter negative AC, it means some magical bullshit is going on.

>>50420188

What is the parent folder?

https://mega.nz/#F!7xdGUDaR!DAHjel-07Eq__KdJAHPgXw

The only folders marked B/X are TSR only.

>>50420870
>>50420821
Alright. And do any OSR/TSR books have rules on magical materials like mithril?

>>50420738
To add to the answer the others already gave, only OD&D without Greyhawk really preserves the bounded accuracy system in pristine condition. It fell victim to powerbloat basically immediately (Gygax appears to have been using negative ACs before the original game was even published).

It never gets to the point of being *really* harmful in Basic, though.

>>50421178
According to 1e, +4 armour is made of mithral-steel alloy.

>>50421223
Also, I only just noticed that while 1e has magical armour as weighing the same as normal clothing (unless it's shields), 2e doesn't mention its weight at all, leaving you to assume it's the same as normal.

>>50421210
>only OD&D without Greyhawk really preserves the bounded accuracy system in pristine condition.
2e kind of does, because it caps AC at -10.

>>50421178
2e has some magical materials in the DMG. Not mithral, though.

>>50421058
They have non-TSR material in them.

>>50421058
02 Basic D&D -> '81 Basic Rules - Moldvay (Bx)

>>50421623

thx I did find them appericate the help.

>>50421660

Thank you kind sir

>>50421304
>2e kind of does, because it caps AC at -10.
Meanwhile, OD&D-without-Greyhawk caps it at an effective AC0. Kind of.

It's really more like AC0 that sometimes turns into AC-1, except you can also get a Displacer Cloak and thus get an effective AC-3, except really it's just always AC2 with the enemy getting -5 to hit.

And then Greyhawk comes and uncaps stuff by letting armor stack with shields and ups both to +5 and WHOOPS you've got AC-10 as something PCs could theoretically get.

Now, if you REALLY want to talk about AC getting out of hand then you'll want to take a look at Mentzer's Immortal rules: the table removes all the minuses from negative ACs, because at those levels positive ACs become irrelevant.
AC20 or bust, baby.

we need a new thread

>>50425247

Ask, and ye shall recieve:

>>50425350