/osrg/ OSR General - Mystery Edition

In the frame of the much larger door.

>>52588632
Nah, but druids make good NPCs.

>>52588568
>PRE-ADVENTURE
Beverly under preparing.
>IN THE DUNGEON
Most of that shit is kosher.

>>52588687
Third stair from the bottom. It can be removed and within is the realm of the faerie. You need to shrink yourself in order to fit in.

In the toilet bowl.

In the nostril of the magically sleeping princess.

>>52586534
>>52585135
That guy's right though. There are plenty of good reasons to dislike FR, the fact that you can't name any without getting defensive shows that you're ignorant and overemotional.

I'm thinking about using simplified morale, on a d6. Something intuitive that doesn't require a table lookup, just assign a troop quality and it the d6 rolls above it, they retreat.

>wild animals 2
>casuals (goblins, orcs) 3
>organized group (npc party, orcs w/ leader) 4
>elite groups (gargoyles, paladins) 5

Y/N?


>>52588687
Inside another door. Unlock turning the key counter/clockwise to access one or the other exit.

Going to repost this for the new thread then, bunch of monsters for use:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhotil8im7n5nrw/MonsterRefSpreadsheet10.xls?dl=0

>>52588425
>Or do you guys all memorize the save #s for the Fighter?

Yeah, 12,13,14,15,16 at 1-3, but saves vary by edition, leaving it a crossreference keeps it more neutral and saves space. but eh. It's an excel file so work with it what you will.

>>52588895
Not a big fan of the curve. Stick to 2d6.
>Something intuitive that doesn't require a table lookup,
You can always pick an appropriate number instead of looking one up.

>>52588895
>>52589002
1d6 is not a curve. 2d6 is a curve.

I like it, it's simple. But how about using the same 1in6 chance mechanic as skills/abilities? Ie,

>wild animals 1 in 6 chance (roll of 1) of fighting on
>elite groups 5 in 6 chance (roll of 1-5) of fighting on, etc.

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I wrote some tips for players new to OSR on how to get and use equipment. It's a short but succinct list for now.

Got anything to add?

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My quest for finding a simple, non-random, non-fancy, just white cubes on black, dungeon creation program continues. Something like donjon except without the random bit would be ideal.

Like what did they use to make this map? Would be basically perfect.

>>52589275
You could try emailing the person who made that map, if it's published somewhere. People often respond, you'd be surprised.

How does /tg/ feel about adventure tracks/supermodules/adventure paths?

>>52589275
I know you want a simple drag and drop tool, but you can learn to do all that in a graphics program like Inkscape (free) or Illustrator in an afternoon. Then bam, you have a life skill you can use for designing your own resumes, posters, business cards, etc.

Or use the GIMP if you're determined to be a raster pleb.

>>52589275
I see you posting in every thread. Here's your answer: Adobe Illustrator
It's expensive and difficult to learn but you can find a pirate copy and learn with free tuts.

However, I paid for it and I have mastered it already. You want something professional, that's obvious. Why don't you hire me?
Or use pen on paper like everybody else?

>>52588889
And the fact that you take some light teasing accompanying a genuine request for information as some sort of personal attack and then extrapolate it into a baseless assumption about someone's emotional state and level of education doesn't reflect badly on you? From now on I'll be sure to attach a sourced and peer-reviewed dissertation whenever I talk about Forgotten Realms if it pleases you.

>>52589545
>Why don't you hire me?

Because I'm poor.

>Or use pen on paper like everybody else?

Because that shit doesn't look remotely professional, and because I don't own a scanner anyway.

Honestly I'm just baffled there's not a single good program made to make maps that doesn't force me to learn the whole goddamn photoshop hog. It's like I'm the single first person to show up in thirty years to be this lazy.

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>>52589627
Your laziness and whininess is indeed exemplary and an inspiration to the rest of us lazy bums who didn't even think of this.

>>52589682
Also a lot of the maps I've seen in the OSR modules have been incredibly similar, which has led me to believe there's a program for it.

If there isn't, then I suppose I will just continue to be lazy and ditch the whole maps altogether.

But I will also stop whining.

>>52589587
>>52589627
If you are poor, you don't need pro quality.
If you plan to sell something with a pro map in it, you should be able afford it.
If you don't, you don't need pro quality.
If you make cool shit I'll give you a discount.

I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.

>>52589713
>I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.

How does that work? If you paint traditionally then you need to get them on a computer somehow, don't you?

>>52589736
Or mail it to his client.

>>52589779
>Snail mail
>in 2010s

>>52589795
Not him, but I'm a painter as well.
Usually the point is to get the actual canvas over to the client. It's part of the novelty.

>>52589187
Very nice. Write a few more so you we can use it as a rumor table? A d66 Ex-Adventurer Tips table maybe?

>>52589779
>>52589795
>>52589850
>mail awkward treasure to the collector
>get xp
checks out

>>52589568
>light teasing
Whatever you say, Mr. Assmad McToolazytoreadbooks

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>>52587846
>BX uses a base ac of 9, not 10, so the conversion starts at 9(DAC)->10(AAC)
No, the conversion is the same as with AD&D, it's just that there is no AC 10 on either the descending or ascending side.

THAC0 20 is the same as having a 0 attack bonus. If your THAC0 is 20, then in order to hit descending AC 9, you need to roll an 11 or over (20 THAC0 - 9 AC = 11). You have a 50% chance of doing that.

If your attack bonus is 0, then in order to hit ascending AC 11, you need to roll an 11 over (roll of 11 + 0 attack bonus = 11 AC). So descending AC 9 = ascending AC 11. Using a AD&D scale, descending AC 10 would also equal ascending AC 10, but that doesn't affect anything else.

Unless, of course, you change the attack bonuses around or something.

>>52590429
>Unless, of course, you change the attack bonuses around or something.
But there you end up with a normal man having a -1 attack bonus.

Hi OSR me and my group mostly play 5e but i am in love with the OSR stlye, so is theere a way that i can give the OSR feel to my 5e campaign? what kind of adventure or story makes the game feel that way?

>>52589138
No, I understand.
But rather than a rule of thumb, you should pick an appropriate number each time.
An animal sick or guarding children would have higher morale, the last surviving goblin would have lower, etc. etc.

>>52590330
Now you're getting the hang of it.

>>52591234
To badly misquote a 2009(?) children's fantasy novel,
"The fools who came before you were wiser than you'll ever be."

https://boards.fireden.net/tg/search/text/5e%20OSR/

>>52591376
Holy fuck , free will is a lie, i am legitimately spooked right now

Where can I see Zak S running a game? Not the webseries he made, I mean actually running at length and unedited. Link if possible?

>>52560022
i need that list senpai

Bluepill me on philotomy.

>>52591532
He's running Tales from thje Yawning Portal - White Plume MOuntain in 5E on roll20 here:

(not allowed to post link but just look for "roll20app" on twitch dot tv)

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For your OSR games, do you play in your own made-up settings or do you use established ones like Greyhawk, Hyperborea, Lemuria, Wilderlands, etc.?

>>52592194
Usually Wilderlands for me, sometimes border areas of Forgotten Realms. The rest of the settings never really struck the right chord the way these two did, and I'm too lazy to make up my own stuff.

>>52592235
Which parts of the Wilderlands or FR?

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SUCCINCTLY ARGUE
ASCENDING OR DESCENDING AC
WHICH ONE
AND WHY
ALSO WHY SHOULD I USE THAC0

>>52592473
Ascending AC is slightly more simple and therefore should be used, but if your game of choice already has descending AC it's probably not worth houseruling.

If your game has descending AC, then you will need to use THAC0 as well. Again, it's not so hard that you'd need to houserule it away.

>>52592473
I like THAC0 because I like attack matrices.

>>52592414
With Wilderlands, I like to start in Elphand Lands, Ament Tundra, or Ebony Coast: They're far away from shit that truly matters yet are still full of flavor and good starter adventures.

With FR, I like Savage Frontier, especially Icewind Dale. Shining South is a close second.

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What made Damascus steel so good?

>>52592548
Cool. I thought the Ebony Coast was described as being tranquil farmland? Have you played in the City-State of the IO?

>>52591818
No senpai, the other Zak S

>>52592677
Yeah, I've got another game going on around the surroundings of the City-State. Getting into the affairs of the Conclave of the Twilight Anvil, southern pirates, and a bit of orcs and Altanians.

It's fun, though I guess I prefer travel and exploration a bit more: it feels like it'd get more out of the setting since there's so much to see all around.

>>52592569
It's superplastic (extremely hard to fracture) despite being very hard.
We have better materials these days, but inventing similar materials generally requires large teams of chemists and engineers.

tl;dr
Syria lucked into a recipe that forms carbon nanotubes inside crazy magic steel.

What happens if you have a B/X MU that uses the 5e spell list? Remember, no captured spellbooks.

>>52592235
Can you sell me on the Wilderlands?
I really can't get a "feel" for it.

>>52593290
The feel, I guess, is the sort of seventies scifi-fantasy a lot of OSR settings go down these days: with aliens and Flash Gordon and shit. Dinosaurs and ape-men. Hawk people, bare-chested barbarians, nubile slave girls, cave men, amazons, the whole thing. It was also the first third-party setting.

But Wilderlands has a crapload of detail to it, probably a lot more than any of those settings, with nearly twenty cool maps to define the area in a great deal of detail, hexes full of awesome shit - yet it never goes overboard like Forgotten Realms and lets your party do basically whatever they want in it.

>>52593290
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Wilderlands_of_High_Fantasy

>Elphand Lands - If you're looking for all that Lost World stuff, this is where you'll want to go, right to the northwestern edge of the maps. They've got cavemen, dinosaurs, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, amazons (sometimes riding those saber-toothed tigers), the biggest and most unexplored forest in the entire setting, mountains full of giants and hawkmen, and three moronic tribal leader brothers trying to assemble a mighty magical staff left behind by their much wiser father - obviously by killing off the other two brothers or stealing their staff piece.

>Not much civilization, though: there's a few towns and fortresses that're lucky if they're past iron age, plus the ancient trading city of Damkina in the middle of a lake. It has been standing there unconquered for thousands of years because it doesn't even bother to defend itself: anyone's that got stuff to trade can come in and trade that shit.

I think I'll start my players somewhere in here.

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>>52593290
>red-skinned barbarians
>winged apes
>halflings flying on giant yellow wasps
>polite ice sorcerors
>green-skinned immortals
>demon empires
>chromatic wizards
>orc hordes led by amazon warrior-queens
>city-states instead of kingdoms
>endless wilderness & adventure

Shit is off the hook.

>>52593509
Why? Doesn't that sound just amazing?

It was where the very first old-school game I ever played was set on.

>>52592732
Speaking of the Conclave, do you have a list of all the secret societies in the Wilderlands, and a list of how the Chromatic Wizards map to each school of wizardry?

>>52593724
Not really. Part of the whole schtick of the Wilderlands is that there are no big secret societies such as the Harpers to dictate what happens next: It's all on you. There are still plenty of them but they're very localized, just about impossible to keep track of, and really not that special compared to your usual pirate gang anyway.

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>>52591580
To run a proper old school game in 5e, here's a rough idea of what you'd need to change, probably missing a few things:

>Reduce monster XP to a fraction of current levels.
>Remove other sources of XP, replace with XP for treasure
>Rework the methods whereby treasure is generated - monsters generally drop squat unless you track them to their lair
>Enforce strict, unified time tracking for movement, hunger, light sources burning out and other actions
>Reduce player power and capability to prevent short-circuiting the resource management - no free light sources, no free food, no cheap healing, no cheap ways to bypass obstacles
>That includes combat, so while you're retooling, ensure that their feats and other abilities are nerfed so that combat is dangerous in a way that 5e does not natively support
>Move search and miscellaneous other rules to the DM side to encourage roleplaying solutions over mechanical ones
>Hirelings, as above
>Strict encumbrance tracking, with weight slowing you down, meaning you'll need those hirelings both to hold torches when you're fighting, and to help carry out the thousands of coins you'll need to level.
>More exploration
>You're not really the center of the world
>Skill checks are better hints, they're not solutions, unless it's simple enough that you should succeed without
>Casters are meant to be rare
>Read the level tiers, read them again. Epic levels start after 11-12, not at 20.
>A smart enemy can fuck you up, be careful
>Buy mounts you morons, a servant of some sort can also be a good idea down the line
>Even if you have cantrips, people fucking know you're using magic. Yes your incantations are that obvious, yes your somatic components are that obvious. Bonus action and reaction spells are slightly less so but still, people will know the fucker who does fancy gestures is doing magical shit.
>Most people's awareness with magic is a level 2-4 village witch with a few rituals and spells at most, if even that.

>>52593794
I get it, they're not huge or world-spanning, but they are out there and I wanted some info on them as the GM. Like the Black Lotus for example.

>>52593873
I know, my point is that on top of my head I can't remember all too many at all.

Why is everyone so scared of rolling 3d6 for stats?

>>52593939
A leftover from later editions, presumably, combined with being literally barred from playing half the classes if you can't match the rolls.

Personally I've actually recently come to find 4d6-as-arranged as incredibly boring. It used to go fine, depending on the game, and if I wanted to do some specific character type, but I dunno, these days it's just sort of worn out to me.

>>52593939
>Nice pairs.

People new to gaming want choice, freedom and no limits. After gaming for a few decades they realize that restrictions and boundaries can be fun too.

>>52593404
Just to ask - which version would be the best to start reading?

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>>52593939

Too fun for them.

>>52593939
In OSR games that stats don't really matter I don't rolling.

>>52594310
Third edition. It sticks mostly the entire setting together in three thick books. Later on you can go on to City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Tegel Manor, then a bunch of old Pegasus Magazines, in about that order.

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What does OSRG think of weapon speeds?

>>52593907
Ah, well, point taken then.

>>52594429
Agreed. It's much more concise and extensive, and easier to read with better organization and layout.

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>>52594559

I have no idea if those weapon descriptions are meant to be b8 or like the actual ruleset to a tongue in cheek meme game.

I honestly can't fucking tell.

>>52594559
I don't have a problem with two-handed weapons putting you at the end of initiative, if that's what you mean.

>>52589466

Bleh. Too railroady. Give me a sandbox with just enough details to spark my imagination so that I can fill in the rest, and I'm happy.

>>52593939
Because a lot of system place more value on attributes.
Not sure about 5e, but you'd have to be a moron to want 3d6 (in order or not) in 3.pf

>>52593859
>That includes combat, so while you're retooling, ensure that their feats and other abilities are nerfed so that combat is dangerous in a way that 5e does not natively support
Or just scale up the enemies.

>>52593859
>Move search and miscellaneous other rules to the DM side to encourage roleplaying solutions over mechanical ones
>Hirelings, as above
No need to hide the rules. Just make it clear that they lean on roleplay and fiat.

>>52594559
Even Gygax was willing to hate on weapon speeds.

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>>52589187
I like this, but more as a "things to teach your players during game, via dungeon design" rather than as a handout.

>To badly misquote a 2009(?) children's fantasy novel, "The fools who came before you were wiser than you'll ever be."

Too goddamn spooky.

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>>52589713
>>52589850
>I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.

Got a gallery or something, or do you not own a camera either?

>>52595311
>or do you not own a camera either?
Dude doesn't even own a computer.
He semaphores his shitposts to a 3rd party.

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What're some good places to stick traps into?

Can't have them all over the place or else the game will slow to a crawl and the traps will seem arbitrary, but can't get rid of them either because they're an integral part of the old-school play. So where to put them and how?

>>52595420

Obviously where people will be forced to be in a certain area.

So doorways, long hallways, chests, etc. You can be sure people will get into these areas so you can set up traps there.

>>52595420

Ancient temples, kobold territories, pyramids.

Goblins don't do traps, they're too stupid, and orcs too fond of roving around. Kobolds are the big trap makers.

>>52595420
Doorways.
Hallways.
Near containers.
In containers.
Near monsters.

How does the d20 Caverns of Thracia hold up to the original?

>and how?
Latches.
Tripwires.

>>52595577
It's looks better and is better organized, but is marred by basically the single worst ruleset in the history of D&D. Use it as a reference material but switch to an OSR system of your choice.

>>52595603
Well, I can always just convert the mechanics. God knows it's not difficult.
I'm mostly curious because I heard it added stuff and fixed some of the original issues.

>>52594738
Didn't he invent them?!?

>>52594998
>things to teach your players during game
If I had consistent players willing to stick around for a whole campaign I would teach them these things via gameplay, but...

>>52597495
>Didn't he invent them?!?
Hence "Even"

>>52597495
>Didn't he invent them?!?
Well, Gygax invented D&d and Hated it too

Play Lejendary Adventures

>>52597548
But why? Too slow and complicated or some other reason?

>>52597568
Every part of the weapon speed rules are nonsensical.
Mechanically.. Thematically... Balance wise... etc. etc.

Someone did a hack of Barbarians of Lemuria for B/X, called it B/XOL:

http://spriggans-den.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/BXoLv0.1.pdf

>>52597568
Bogs down initiative (slowest part of combat already)
Does not play nce with the abstraction of the combat system
Did weird things to weapon balamce
All speeds were arbitrary, so most were weird

>>52597567
>Play Lejendary Adventures

It's always grimly amusing to see his dragonsfoot posts that segue into shilling his game.

>>52597636 If he hadn't croaked, he'd still be writing those.
Did *anyone* *ever* play that system outside of games he hosted at conventions?

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>>52589275
Dungeon Painter Studio on Steam has a few different tilesets, including black and white and old-school blue and white. It's basically just painting polygons and ellipses with different textures, very stripped down with few bells and whistled.

Pic related, made it in DPS, a dwarven reliquary and tomb build into the side of a mountain.

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Today I will remind them.

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>>52597684
>jesus christ how horrifying.jpg

I don't know if I even want to read all that commentary...it's going to spit on my childhood hobby, isn't it?

>zeb the destroyer

yup

Today I will remind them.

>>52597674
Why are the stairs blurry?

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>>52597726
>As a matter of fact I was planning a revised AD&D work, one that would have included most of the UA book and some new classes--Mystic, Savant, and likely a Jester. the new work would not have been akin to 2E, although some expansion and detailing of Secondary Skills was planned.
>Jester class

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What do you guys think of Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea?

>>52597785
seems pretty interesting, second edition looks like it's going to both a fun game and a gorgeous gigantic book

>>52597808
>gigantic book
Yeah, it looks a bit much for me, I prefer simpler systems and less overhead.

But just out of curiosity has anyone compared DCC to ASSH?

>>52597754


Rescaled them.

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Are +4 and +5 weapons a part of OSR gaming or is the +1 to +3 range (like in 5E) a better reflection of lower-power-scale play?

>>52598326
Rather than lower-scale play, it's a holdover from when attack rolls were 2d6.
That said, larger bonuses tend to be versus specific monster types.

>>52597832
Apples and oranges anon. I like them both.

>>52598425
What are the main differences then? They both seem to have mountains of meticulous rules and charts, although DCC seems intentionally far more random.

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>>52597600

Neat!

Is Flying Swordsmen any good? I'm looking to crib its Martial Arts system in particular and use it in conjunction with SWN's for some stuff.

>in the Grand Conjunction adventure track, a big deal is made of the sequence
>in fact, Azalin forcing a stanza to occur out of order is a plot point
>but it's actually almost impossible to play through them as written since the levels for each module swing wildly

What did TSR mean by this?

>>52599160
have a shit ton of characters at varying levels
...or play that at "inappropriate" levels

both are fine choices in any osr context

a quick inventory question for Lotfp.

I get how inventory works for characters, and inventory for mounts function the same. but if the mount is pulling a cart. do I treat the cart like a new characters inventory (ex, +1 encumberance per five items, each oversized item is +1, and nonencumbering are 0, etc etc.) Then subtract 10 encumberance points per axil and add the final total to the horses encumberance?

these are the kind of questions that come to my head as I slave away on an automated character sheet.

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I really love the shit where you need a specific weapon to hurt some creature. It makes them feel so much more fantastic and powerful and even weak magic weapons to mean something.

How do you get the full impact out of it, though? How do you ensure the monster won't just kill the players when they can't yet hurt him? Or how to make the rest of the party feel useful while one of them swings the magic sword around?

>>52600561
You can make it more interesting than a sword, for one. It's classic shit and it works, but there are other options.

I use modified DCC trolls in my campaign, they're basically Gumby, solid green meat with no bones or internal organs whatsoever which makes them almost impossible to kill. They also implacably stalk a single human target for days so the PCs have plenty of time to figure out what they're going to do when the thing.

The mark led it into a dungeon where they managed to get it to fall in lava.

Or you could have phylactery style monsters where the target is some object somewhere, or pseudo-vampire style where the special weapon has to strike a specific place that the monster protects.

Party has to smash through its armor or beat it into submission before it can be finished, or it'll just regenerate and come back.

Do it like thuggee cultists where your friends hold its arms and legs down while you jam an enchanted crucifix up its ass.

Is it possible to manage the sort of walking-the-earth globetrotting game style in OSR? Because by what I've seen and experienced, most of the time and expenses tend to go on a lot of stationary research, guild managing, and estate.

Could the party have nothing to bind them on, and then what would they spend all their money and time on instead?

>>52600828
I mean, hexcrawling is a thing. I guess most expenses would go into hirelings then, creating a full caravan of dudes specialized in different things.

>>52592194
Outdoor Survival map, baby.

Currently with three cloud giant domains floating above, a volcano with a massive spiralling ramp leading deep into the earth to hell so the elves can send their tithe down, and the big river gets spatially weird and significantly wider on a lunar cycle. Don't go crossing it on a new moon, you might not have supplies to reach the far side, and don't even know which far side it'll be.

But the basic map's the same.

>>52593939
Because idiots insist on doing it in games where stats are more meaningful.

Even Gygax in his later days, when he'd chilled out, didn't do 1st level 3d6 in order shit, and it's worth noting that neither OD&D nor AD&D 1e used strict 3d6. AD&D tried to talk you out of using 3d6 at all.

>>52595559
You can have traps in goblin areas, but it's mostly because they're bad at building and if you nudge a support pole a bunch of crap'll fall on you.

This happens to them regularly as well.

>>52598458
AS&SH is basically a takeoff on AD&D. DCC is fundamentally 3E. There's no direct comparison to be made, they're spinoffs of two different games that only really have the OSR attitude in common (and even then they're in fairly different places tone-wise, IMO).

>>52600828
>then what would they spend all their money and time on instead?

Getting really buck. Year long magical potion benders, buying whole roasted beasts and eating three bites before throwing it out, voyages across boiling oceans, increasingly bizarre prostitutes in an attempt to keep up with your increasingly jaded tastes. Somewhere along the line, probably level 8, when everyone you started with is dead, you're surrounded by flunkies, sycophants and corpses of whoever's castle you wandered into and took over. The fire grows dim and you realize how dark its gotten.

Maybe you pull out of it, your alignment shifts back towards lawful, you take what's left of your plunder and invest it someplace, get a nice keep, tavern, trade caravan, white fence, kids. Get together with the gang every other friday and raid a high level dungeon, trying to capture the feeling of your youth. Maybe it works for a bit before you realize the only thing you have in common with your friends is you got old together.

Maybe you don't do that. You just keep pushing it, marauding around taking what you want, killing whoever gets in your way. It comes naturally to you at this point. The parasites and hirelings change to suit you, you grow wicked with arcane secrets. Eventually, in the depths of some abandoned temple, you're wielding a sacrificial dagger, chanting in the tongues of the forgotten gods, spilling blood on the stones for more power and a bunch of young heroes kick in your door. They too look familiar.

Better to have stayed home. Better to have farmed dirt.

>>52601726
>Getting really buck. Year long magical potion benders, buying whole roasted beasts and eating three bites before throwing it out, voyages across boiling oceans, increasingly bizarre prostitutes in an attempt to keep up with your increasingly jaded tastes. Somewhere along the line, probably level 8, when everyone you started with is dead, you're surrounded by flunkies, sycophants and corpses of whoever's castle you wandered into and took over. The fire grows dim and you realize how dark its gotten.
Ah, the traditional road trip through the young kingdoms for melnibonean youth.

>>52600668
>they're basically Gumby, solid green meat with no bones or internal organs whatsoever which makes them almost impossible to kill. They also implacably stalk a single human target for days

That's pretty nifty. What DCC modules are these trolls introduced in?

>>52597785
I got ahold of the rules the other day and started reading.
It may be a good game, but I'll never know because I couldn't stomach reading more than a dozen pages.
Holy hell this guy loves the wall of his own text. Fucking unreadable dreck trying to pass off as Gygaxian or Appendix N prose.
I know nothing about the creator. He could be a nice guy with great ideas about elfgames but jesus fuck is he wedged firmly up his own ass.

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Do you use rules for orgies? Or do you just give the players experience for their gold as soon as they acquire it?

What's your favorite set of rules for this stuff?

>>52602360
I don't mind it personally since I just skimmed all the setting information. But there is some serious exposition overload going on for what's basically "there were lots of people here and now there isn't". Still, I'm quite a big fan of the rules and the game overall and I think the 2nd edition looks really good. I hope someone here donated to the kickstarter so I don't have to wait too long to get my hands on the PDF.

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>>52601726
Are you me? That is my life in a nutshell.

Oh, how I regret so many things.

>>52602589
Even the rules are a slog. He says in a paragraph what could be conveyed in 1 or two sentences.

I'm on George Orwell's side when it comes to writing. Especially in game rules. There is plenty of room to be evocative but succinct.

One of the most common tips in "how to write a good adventure" is to keep it simple, readable, easily referenced at the table. I think it should be extended to rules. There is a time and a place for gilt prose and an instruction manual is not it.

>>52602537
No, because the last thing I want to do is rp some magical realm shit with a bunch of dudes. Just steal some carousing rules and roll a poison save to see if you catch an STD.

>>52602537
The fuck is wrong with you

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>>52601476
>DCC is fundamentally 3e

Reposting this before the GGIDF shows up to argue

>>52602537
>all the men are green goblins
>all the women are white elves

really makes me think

>>52599518
>if the mount is pulling a cart. do I treat the cart like a new characters inventory (ex, +1 encumberance per five items, each oversized item is +1, and nonencumbering are 0, etc etc.) Then subtract 10 encumberance points per axil and add the final total to the horses encumberance?

That's pretty much it.

>>52603026
>>52603066

You guys know "orgy" is what Romans called any wild party, right? It's not just a group sex thing.

How's Death Frost Doom?
Does it have lots of gotcha moments? Can you handwave resource tracking? Can it fit in a 3 hour session?

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Do you use prime requisites for classes?

I'm kind of torn on it. On one hand, I like the idea that players should be able to play any class regardless of stats since that lets them play against type which is fun. On the other hand, I've noticed that some of my players really like when they get the "chance" to play a certain class, and it also stops other players forcing a class on someone in order to make the most balanced party possible.

>>52603026
>>52603066
Orgy is literally just carousing. It's what they used to call it back in the day.

>>52603373
Yes, yes and probably yes.

>>52603425
There was some good character development one time when a paladin-lite goodness-fanboy fighter met this one rude older asshole he really hated, but that turned out to be a genuine paladin. It wouldn't have been possible had the fighter been able to be a paladin from the start.

>>52603373

Pretty cool. Maybe not "lots" but enough for a solid horror feel. I don't see why not. Yeah, it's been done in three hours.

>inb4 Lichway fan

>>52603159
>Reposting this
I don't get it. The 3.5E stat block is the longest?

>>52603699

I think it's intended to give you an idea of how similar each is, and how difficult it would be to import monsters from one to another. Basically saying that it's easier to bring a 3E monster into DCC than a 1e AD&D monster, because you don't have to alter or invent as many things.

>>52603699
The DCC stat block is literally the 3.5 statblock minus the Skills/Feats, Possessions, and some edits.

>>52594559
>Naginata
>"A top-tier weapon in any situation"
I know whoever made this is trolling, but this is pretty good bait

>>52603829
>literally 3.5
>and some edits

You keep using that word...

I've been looking into ACKS lately, and rather like how it does things - but a lot of folks here seem to prefer B/X, which I in turn have never opened. though I'm pretty sure ACKS is based on it.

Can you sell me B/X, in comparison to ACKS? What's it got that the other doesn't?

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>>52604271
B/X is a foundation for a bunch of retroclones, and ACKS is built on that foundation.
Not everyone likes everything about ACKS, like the proficiencies for example, and they'd rather play or build upon the B/X foundation rather than removing a bunch of stuff from ACKS.

What's a good way to encourage players to come up with their own thing to do?

Right now I'm running a SWN game and they won't do anything without an npc with an exclamation mark telling them to do it for some reward.

>>52604271
ACKS to me feels like it very strongly pushes the game towards everyone becoming some sort of warlord and doing nation building instead of adventuring.

>>52604775
Even though it has barely no rules at all towards all the warlord stuff?

>>52604740
I usually just straight up ask the players what they're into. I ask them to think about it at the end of a session, check again a few days later and build prep around that. I've found it helps to have a few rough suggestions/ideas like 'urban intrigue' or 'exploring X direction on the map' or 'dungeon crawling'. After a while some of them start suggesting their own ideas. Some don't but they're usually fine with just playing.

>>52603971
If you can't see it then you're either retarded or a GG shill.

>>52604835
But lots of rules and suggestions towards the nation building, management and in splats warfare.

Not a knock against it, I like ACKS and you can totally ignore all that. It just feels like there's an intended slant to the game.

>>52604902
All I'm saying is, you can't say "literally the same" and then add "oh except with some edits". It's not literally the same then.

>>52605014
Fine
>DCC uses 90% of the same rules text as 3.5 but with minor omissions, re-arrangements, and re-naming

>>52600561
DM fiat, famalam.

>>52605014
Not even that guy, but this is just you interpreting his syntax extremely selectively. He wrote, effectively,

>[The DCC stat block is literally] [the 3.5 statblock minus the Skills/Feats, Possessions, and some edits.]

and you're insisting on reading this as

>[The DCC stat block is literally the 3.5 statblock] [minus the Skills/Feats, Possessions, and some edits.]

It's neither hard to understand his intent if you read the post with any kind of charity, nor is the post itself somehow syntactically indefensible. Particularly when he explained himself, the correct response was "oh. Okay".

TL;DR: ur teh sperg

>>52605364
Whatever. People use "literally" way too liberally anyway. Whatever meaning the word once had has long been purged by the non-spergs.

Somebody has to hold the line.

>>52604980
Still, though, can't you ignore these parts? Is it not better to have something in the game that you don't care for, rather than something you'd like to be there to be missing?

Is there something you prefer in B/X over ACKS that you might like to be there more than the nation building stuff?

>>52605364
If only English had punctuation to make that more clear.

>>52602537
XP on getting it out of the murderhole, no rules for orgies, Mongoose Conan 1st Edition rules for blowing all your money. You spend half of your wealth a week down to 50gp (it's sp in Conan), unless you have something you're actively working on or saving for as a project. Generally if you need to get a bunch of money for something, going out looking for a big haul is a better bet than saving... but uncommon gems don't count as wealth for those purposes, so you can stockpile bling and have a pouch full of diamonds.

basically if you're pulling a bunch of money out of a murderhole, blow that shit and remind the local villagers why they like you. It won't wreck their economy, they're villagers, they don't tend to trade in hard currency as much as modern authors would have you believe - they'll save it for the travelling merchants, and it'll fuck some distant city's economy instead.

>>52603425
od&d prime requisites mostly just gave you an xp bonus if you had a high stat. they didn't block the class off, and didn't give you major boosts to power as that class - you were a better m-u because you were gaining more xp, not because you had an extra spell a day and an extra point on saving throws or whatever.

you could also trade points from other classes' prime reqs to boost yours.

Can you jam 5e skills into BX (and keep the rest more or less intact)? How?
I'm not fond of 1/6 chance (2/6 if you're the shit) rolls.

>>52601417
>Even Gygax in his later days, when he'd chilled out,
Gygax didn't even do it in his early life days.
He fudged all sorts of numbers while rolling all the dice for everyone behind his full-body screen.

>>52606015
I remember something about his od&d houserules in the 2000s though, they were basically high stat rolls and starting at 3rd level. Bit like the Dark Sun stuff. I also think he talked about mostly going back to od&d rather than any of his other games, which... well, it probably is the best-designed game he ever wrote.

>>52603425
I do bonus xp as:
Fighter: ( STR + INT/4 - 12 ) * 3%
MU: ( INT - 12 ) * 3%
Cleric: ( 2*STR/3 + INT/2 - 12 ) * 3%
Thief: ( 2*STR/3 + 2*INT/3 ) * 3%
xp penalties have a further *2

with no Wisdom attribute and no other (mechanical) benefits for Strength and Intelligence.

>>52605463
I would say that the classes are the biggest appeal to me personally, but those are easy to adapt to any other B/X clone of one's choosing.

>>52606235
That's interesting (although a bit too convoluted for my taste). How did you come up with those equations?

>>52601758
The gumby thing is core dcc book, the implacable stalker thing I added

>>52601726

This is the only real answer.

Your friend took a bag of gold off an altar and a trapdoor spider grabbed him and pulled him into its tunnel. You grabbed his arms, held him up, looked him in the eye as you took the bag out of his hands and let go.

An hour of average osr adventuring and you're too fucked up to ever go back to normal life or do normal things.

You can make more gold in a day than your brother will make in his entire life, and the things you do to get it. How can you ever think of money the way he does? Does it mean nothing to you, or are you the only one who knows what it's really worth?

>>52606335
>although a bit too convoluted for my taste
If it makes you feel any better, the bonus (or negative) xp gets allotted in full at the start of each level.

>>52606235
>Fighter can have anything from -24% to +30% exp bonus
>MU can have anything from -27% to +18% exp bonus
>Cleric can have anything from -27% to +27% exp bonus
>Thief can have anything from +12% to +72%(!) exp bonus

These numbers are all over the place.

>>52589138
Nitpicking, a line is mathematically also a curve. (Statistics is maths!)

Rec. me a simple skill system for BX (that's not lotfp's)

>>52607607
Basic Fantasy's skill system.

I'm designing a thieves' guild. Are there any random generators available, besides the one in the Compete Thief's Handbook?

>>52607390
>>Thief can have anything from +12% to +72%(!) exp bonus
>These numbers are all over the place.
Typo. Thief also has minus 12.

>>52607674
Alright, so it's -24% to +36%. That's not as bad but the numbers are still pretty different. Why not just use the same equation but change which stats are used for it depending on the class?

>>52607619
Nah I mean a general skill system, not a Thief ver. 1.2

>>52607607
there's always a chance, in the back of the book, but write down some skill names and backgrounds instead of just assigning them by fiat

>>52607853
Yes, exactly like that. But someone already did that for me, right?

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I'm putting together some content for adventuring (and eventually hexcrawling) on the Moon, heavily inspired by Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath. Most of the crunch is still forthcoming, but I wanted to get y'all's opinion on what I've got so far.

>The Moon
A vast expanse of silver-grey dust, separated from the inky black sky and frozen stars by a razor-sharp horizon. In the distance, dark crags rise. Beneath your feet, deep rifts vanish into stygian caverns. What horrors await you in this silent, lifeless waste?

>Vacuum
The Moon has no atmosphere. Characters sent to the Moon without preparation will die within minutes as they suffocate and their blood boils (see next post for ways to avoid this fate).

>Eldritch Radiation
The Moon is constantly bombarded by sorcerous radiation emanating from vast eldritch intelligences in the darkness between the stars. Each full day of travel on the lunar surface carries a 1-in-20 chance of contracting a random mutation as these energies warp and corrupt the body.

>Quick-Dust
The Moon's surface is coated in fine silver-gray dust that can conceal deadly pitfalls for the unwary; one false step can lead to a headlong plunge into a dust-filled crevice or crater. When disturbed by footfalls or meteorite strikes, the dust hangs in the air for hours before slowly settling back to rest. Many lunar predators use such dust-screens to stalk their prey.

>Polypous Toad-Beasts
As tall as a draft horse and twice as wide, the toad-beasts' hulking bodies are a mass of convoluted rubbery flesh, supported by stubby, many-jointed limbs. In place of a head, the toad-beasts have a writhing mass of polyps, coated in a vile enzyme that melts and absorbs flesh. The polyps are acutely sensitive to psychic emanations, allowing the blind toad-beasts to hunt even in the unending darkness of the lunar night.

>>52607908

Of all the Moon's dangers, the lack of oxygen is likely to kill you first. There are a few ways to avoid this:

>Protoplasmic Mantle
A loathsome lunar slime that feeds on cosmic radiation and magical energy. Let it settle across your shoulders, envelop your neck, and bond with your flesh; the unwholesome energy it excretes will sustain you in the absence of breathable air. Any magical effect that targets the wearer also feeds the mantle, causing it to grow. Track the total number of spell levels that the mantle has absorbed, and roll 1d20 each time a magical effect strikes the wearer. If the roll is equal to or less than the total absorbed spell levels, the mantle blossoms into murderous pulsating protoplasmic mass that dissolves flesh, with the hapless wearer trapped inside (treat as ochre jelly with HD equal to absorbed spell levels). When you try to remove the mantle, lose 1hp for every hour that the mantle was worn, and save or lose an additional 1hp for each spell level that the mantle absorbed.

>Radium Circlet
A delicate circlet of luminous pale-green metal. Its sickly luminance replenishes the body's vital spirits, allowing the wearer to survive without drawing breath, but causes a tingling pins-and-needles sensation in exposed skin and a sour metallic taste in the back of the throat. For each hour worn, save or acquire a random mutation.

>>52607844
NWPs

>>52607944

>Stone of Aspiration
A chunk of purple crystal the size of a man's fist. When the proper incantations are recited over it, the stone will rise to float elegantly above its master's head, projecting a small bubble of breathable air below it. These stones are artifacts of a crusade launched against the Slavers many millennia ago, and their ancient magic is fading and unreliable. Each stone has a limited number (d6) of remaining charges; for each hour that the stone is active, there is a 1-in-6 chance that a charge is expended. When all charges are expended, the stone crumbles into glittering dust.

>Sanguineous Mask
A bloodstained plague doctor's mask covered in eldritch runes and sigils. When a reservoir concealed in the beak is filled with blood, foul sorcery slowly draws out its vital essence and transfers it to the wearer, allowing them to breathe freely. With a full reservoir, the mask can sustain its wearer for two hours. Each time the mask is used, the wearer must save or develop a thirst for blood. This affliction will progress with each failed save, as follows:
- Lose 1 point of Constitution each day that you don't drink blood.
- As above, but the blood must be from a sapient creature (e.g., another human).
- When blood is spilled in battle, you fly into an uncontrollable rage, attacking friend and foe alike with no regard for self-preservation.
- Food and drink no longer sustain you; only blood can satisfy your hunger and thirst.
- There is not enough blood in the world to satisfy your unholy hunger. The hunger pangs drive you permanently insane.

>>52607961
Can you give me a rundown on how they work, and how much they will clutter the game?

>>52593859
I really like that style of old comic book maps, are there more?

>>52608038
Generally:
>Basically an ability check
>roll 1d20 and if you score equal or less than the appropriate ability
>some NWPs treat you ability as higher (easier) or lower (harder)
>and other NWPs actually don't use rolls (Blind-fighting, Reading, Writing)

>>52608105
Oh cool. Can you use something general like the 5e skill list, or do they have to be specific things? I don't mind those but I want something simple and abstract.

>>52605994
>I'm not fond of 1/6 chance (2/6 if you're the shit) rolls.

If a regular schmuck with no training has a decent chance of doing the thing, then you shouldn't be rolling, just let the player do it and feel competent. The 1-in-6 should start with stuff that your average townie would fail miserably at.

>>52608202
Then use something general and abstract, the world is your oyster.

1 recommendation tho:
Instead of rolling under stats with a slight modifier,
use static numbers and slightly modified by stats.

>>52608202
BTB they're general categories (like Appraise and Gemcutting). Some skills overlap with others (you can try to estimate the value of gems with either Appraise or Gemcutting). It definitely is possible to go as broad as 5e skills with them.

>>52607908
>>52607944
>>52607964
Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath is the shit. I salute your efforts. However, not knowing how bad a thing getting a mutation is in your system, it seems like your methods of surviving the vacuum are more likely to kill you than anything else. In order, they seem to be
>wear this thing for more than a few hours and die, die if hit by spells
>wear this thing and mutate
>wear this thing and have to carry around another thing that will kill you or suffocate without warning
>wear this thing and develope an insatiable blood thirst
So while the idea of exploring the moon is cool as fuck, I feel like you're punishing anyone who tries it.

>>52604271
ACKS is focused on late game empire building. It does shine in that aspect, so that part is worth harvesting.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't use it on its own because the way it handles character classes is - in my opinion - awful. Proficiencies introduce the 3.5e "character builds" idea into oldschool, but somehow manages to make it more restrictive and decidedly un-fun. If you want to try anything that you could normally do in say, B/X you'll have to have the proficiency or suffer massive penalties.
Huge misstep, imo and ruins what is otherwise a very solid system. It's too hard to remove it, as it applies throughout the game. Much easier to add the good stuff into an existing system that you enjoy playing already but is lacking good domain level rules.

>>52608798
>Unfortunately, I wouldn't use it on its own because the way it handles character classes is - in my opinion - awful. Proficiencies introduce the 3.5e "character builds" idea into oldschool, but somehow manages to make it more restrictive and decidedly un-fun. If you want to try anything that you could normally do in say, B/X you'll have to have the proficiency or suffer massive penalties.
>Huge misstep, imo and ruins what is otherwise a very solid system. It's too hard to remove it, as it applies throughout the game. Much easier to add the good stuff into an existing system that you enjoy playing already but is lacking good domain level rules.
not sure what you're talking about Proficiencies are completely optional, they aren't hard to remove at all

>>52608356
Yeah, good point. I like the idea of the Moon being fundamentally hostile to life and really underscoring its essence as a Place Man Was Not Meant To Venture, but I'd rather that sense of threat and inhospitality to come from "outside" rather than from the player's equipment.

I think I'll dramatically reduce the odds of each piece of equipment fucking up your shit, as follows:
- Protoplasmic Mantle: roll to beat absorbed spell levels with a d% instead of a d20. Potential of surprise flesh-melting jelly attack is something to keep in the back of your mind, not an immediate threat. Lose 1 hp for every four hours worn.
- Radium Circlet: roll vs. mutation once per day, not once per hour.
- Stone of Aspiration: players get a sense of how many charges are left in the stone from handling it. When it gets down to the last one, they know they're gambling with their lives.
- Sanguineous Mask: saving throw once per day, not once per hour.

>>52608798

I think An Echo, Resounding's domain rules are better, actually. But I guess that's a matter of taste.

>>52608827
It has a whole 8 page chapter dedicated to it and the fun toys of every character class tend to be interwoven with it.
The chapter doesn't even mention that it is optional.
I know that technically anything is optional because Rule 0, but if the game doesn't encourage it and dedicates an entire chapter to it, then it is safe to say they encourage its use over not using it.

>>52608866
Those adjustments seem alright to me. They have a sense of "stopgap" about them. Like these will keep you alive but really aren't meant "for" you. Some further questions/thoughts:
Is the hp loss from the mantle all at once when you take it off, or just slow damage over time? Because the damage all at once kinda encourages you never to take it off, but then you're even more fucked if you do take it off.
The amount of time you can breathe with one unit of blood in the sanguineous mask seems very short. However, you don't specify how much blood "fills" it. If you can just keep drawing blood from yourself to fill it, it seems much more reasonable. Also, a cult of Sanguineous mask wearers who are all going mad/totally mad from the masks might be a neat thing to run into.

So proficiencies get a lot of flak, but how do you decide what a character can or can't do, or knows or doesn't, without them?

Couldn't someone just completely out of nowhere decide he knows how to do something?

>>52608957
Based on the character's background.

>Couldn't someone just completely out of nowhere decide he knows how to do something?
Yes. That's the bit where the DM asks how your character knows that.

>>52607390
You also skipped the
>xp penalties have a further *2

It's Fighter -49.5% to +31.5% (avg. +0.027%),
MU -54% to +18% (avg. -11.125%),
Cleric -51% to +27% (avg. -2.643%),
and Thief -48% to +36% (avg. +3.293%).

>>52607760
>That's not as bad but the numbers are still pretty different.
So are the the "xp needed to level up" tables.
>Why not just use the same equation but change which stats are used for it depending on the class?
Because there only two of the attributes are "archetype aptitudes."

Okay Everyone. In need of emergency help. I have been learning how to DM by reading and everything for the last few weeks. But I have not really prepared a session at all because I had no group.

WELL suddently, I have a couple of friends that want to play in 30 minutes from right now. I am looking for a quick little adventure I can run them through with very little prep or tables that I need on hand.

Thanks!

>>52592523
Why can’t you have attack matrices with ascending AC?

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>>52609121

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>>52609121
Read this for 25 minutes.

>>52606235
Why's there no wisdom attribute, and how come thieves don't get anything out of dexterity?

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>>52609139

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>>52609200

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>>52609209

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Anyone else here got Beyond the Ice-Fall?

I'm planning to run it to my group, but the at the end the dungeon's going to probably kick off the material plane, and there's a pretty good chance the party will not make out in time. So where do they get send off instead?

Should be somewhere worthy an adventure or two but able to eventually return back home.

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>>52609121
Try this one. It gets very high marks from most people who read it and it's probably better fit for your purposes than most suggestions you'll get, unless your players are already heavy into the high-lethality game style.

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>>52609167
>Why's there no wisdom attribute,
Because the best justification Gygax could give for it was "Intelligence, but not all good Clerics make for good MUs."
>and how come thieves don't get anything out of dexterity?
They do get something out of dexterity. Everyone does. They just don't get bonus xp for it.

>>52607908
>When disturbed by footfalls or meteorite strikes, the dust hangs in the air for hours before slowly settling back to rest.
Without atmosphere, dust falls as fast as a bowling ball.

>>52609451
>Because the best justification Gygax could give for it was "Intelligence, but not all good Clerics make for good MUs."

So? It's been made to work well enough since. Who cares what Gygax thinks or how he justified his weird nonsensical pseudo-D&D?

>>52609478
>been made to work well enough
Seriously tho. Try running only one mental attribute.
Well enough is well enough, but better is better.

>>52609456
My takeaway is that bowling balls take hours to fall, and that walking speed > escape velocity.

>>52609478
>Who cares what Gygax thinks or how he justified his weird nonsensical pseudo-D&D?
Kek

>>52609501
>>52609557
If it were so terrible it would've been ditched long ago.

>>52609588
DCC combined it with charisma, and spent the resulting extra space to luck.

>>52609588
Now that! /That/ is comedy.


Something, something, laffin like this guy -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDiB4rtp1qw

>>52609611
Speaking of which, how do you all feel about luck as a stat? Could it ever be good or is it objectively terrible? Couldn't it be used to fix the also near-universally awful thief class?

>>52609618
Do you have any real arguments to make or are you just going to spout inane bullshit?

>>52609501
GURPS was right again!

>>52609638
>Do you have any real arguments to make
Yes.

>If it were so terrible it would've been ditched long ago.
There are far worst sacred cows, but it *is* terrible.

>>52609689
That's not an argument at all. Try telling me *why* wisdom is terrible.

I've never even heard anyone make such a claim before now.

How do you do traps, /osrg/?

I'm just getting into OSR after years of 3.5 and other RPGs burning out all the wonder and mystery D&D had when I was a kid, and now I'm trying to unlearn shit I developed with modern games. One of the big ones is traps. I'm still in the paradigm that traps are mostly an annoying game-slower that doesn't really do anything except "oops, you didn't check for traps, HP tax."

How do you make traps interesting and scary? More fun than just "you noticed the pressure pad or you took 3d6 damage." I thought 4e's trap stuff was pretty good, though the giant traprooms it suggests might be too elaborate for some OSR games.

>the newfriend outed himself

Welcome to OSR!
This general is for discussion shitty homebrews for TSR D&D,
homebrews for psuedo-Chinese knockoffs of TSR D&D,
and for shilling systems with a similar aesthetic to TSR D&D.

The OSR movement is mostly concerned with AD&D, but the thread can't get over B/X.
Twice per thread, a 5e DM discovers us and (without switching systems) begs advice.

>>52609799
>The OSR movement is mostly concerned with AD&D, but the thread can't get over B/X.

You know, this has always been bugging me. How come this one specific channel of random anonymous people tends to prefer such a different system to what the vast majority of old-school movement does? How'd that ever happen?

>>52609821
The minds of /tg/ are too small to appreciate the grandeur of AD&D.

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>>52609799

I am switching systems though. Planning on DCC but I'm not married to it. The funnel system is sexy as hell though.

>>52608954

>Is the hp loss from the mantle all at once when you take it off, or just slow damage over time?
Looking at it again, I think I'd have the mantle deal slow damage over time, and have the save be to avoid taking the damage from accumulated spell absorption when you finally do take it off. That way, if you've absorbed ten spell levels, your odds of it coming alive and eating you are still (relatively) low, but you'll need to take precautions to remove it off without killing you.

>The amount of time you can breathe with one unit of blood in the sanguineous mask seems very short.
Yeah, I feel like I need to experiment with the duration a little bit. The idea of drawing blood from yourself to fill it is pretty badass, but I feel like mechanically it would end up being too similar to the mantle (i.e., oxygen at the cost of hp drain).

>A cult of Sanguineous mask wearers who are all going mad/totally mad from the masks
Aaand there's the first entry in my encounter table.

>>52609880
DCC has a lot of good stuff going for it. It's got some great flavor, magic item tables, distinct and all-around awesome classes, and of course, just about universally amazing adventure modules.

And yes, the funnel stuff's great.

>>52597684
Amazing that such a horrible DM made such a good game…

>>52609821
>the vast majority of old-school movement does?

I doubt that's been true for years. The early OSR was big on AD&D, but what was the last time you saw an AD&D-based retroclone come out? Basic's been the shit in OSR for an age now.

>>52610032
>what was the last time you saw an AD&D-based retroclone come out?

It's probably got less to do with the popularity and more with the fact that AD&D is just a lot harder to mess up with, because it's so much bigger and bulkier.

Which is a shame, because I'm a fan of AD&D but acknowledge it has a lot of great flaws for some clever game designer to smooth out.

>>52609781
I basically have 1 or 2 per dungeon these days and use them more as puzzles. When we were starting I explained traps as a thing to look out for/descriptions aren't always traps but they are always something they can mess with, a few people died, they figured it out and look for them now.

I tend to put them in doors, twisty hallways, on treasure rooms, stuff like that. On the ceiling is fun sometimes but I don't do it too often. I've been avoiding grimtooth style gotcha traps or overly dependent on magic traps, tends to rely too much on game knowledge and my group's new.

I think they're more interesting to my group when they're noticeable and they have to come up with a way around it so I tend to telegraph more. My favourite thing they came up with was when put a cement shoe zombie in a contemplation pool. The cleric noticed it, took out two coins, blessed them and tossed them to the zombie. I figured it was smart/creative enough and the zombie grabbed the coins, put them over its eyes pass on.

>>52609557
to be fair for as many good ideas Gygax had, he had like 20 bad ones

>>52609799
>fishingpole.jpg

>>52609821
that is definitely not true, once other systems besides OSRIC became established(almost all of which were one of the following; OD&D derived, BX/BECMI/RC derived, or D20 SRD/OGL derived), using AD&D(or a derivative) as the system of choice became a lot rarer, heck ASSH's 2nd edition is pretty much the only AD&D derived OSR game of note in about 4 years

>>52610166
>grimtooth

What is "grimtooth"?

>>52609905
As far as using your own blood to fuel the mask goes, you could have it have some detrimental effect. Perhaps it's intoxicating in some way, a side effect of the alchemical processes at work. So you could do it, at the small cost of being essentially drunk. Though then you could just use your friends blood. Constitution damage maybe? That way it becomes more of an emergency procedure, and if you intend to stay out for a long time you'd bring some blood with you.

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>>52610195

Series of books with crazy traps in them.

>>52610216
I can only read about half of that but it sounds like the most arbitrary kind of bullshit.

>>52610195
meme deathtraps
>the door is actually blocked by an invisible nanofilament net lol
>the tripwire triggers a ramp which throws the player into the nanofilament net for instant death lol
>then the ramp swing 360 degrees around, spreading the flesh-eating mucus spores onto all who weren't dead already lol
>and then a rock falls from the ceiling and crushes the players lol

>>52610239
You're correct.

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>>52610195
Trap series. I think they're mostly suppose to be jokes or got that way after the first few, but I can't tell. You could probably have a fun time if everyone was in on a super high lethality funnel game with them and a benny hill soundtrack.

Working on a home-system where you rolled-under your ability scores for all checks, and the GM subtracted the difficulty of the task or a target's defenses from the score and if your roll was still lower than your modified score you succeeded, but if not you failed?

Like
Challenging = Roll
Difficult = at -4
Hard = at -8
Incredible = at -12

Defenses are the 3e Saves + "Guard" for vs. attacks.
Fortitude = Strength Bonus + Constitution Bonus
Reflexes = Dexterity Bonus + Perception Bonus
Willpower = Intellect Bonus + Charisma Bonus
Guard is = Attack Bonuses w/ Weapon + Guard Bonuses from Weapon + Armor Bonuses
(if you're wielding more than one weapon you chose what to defend with when attacked).

So if you've got like STR 12 you'd have a +1 to hit with 2h weapons, so your to-hit with a great axe would be <13. Say your target was wielding a shield (2) and wearing medium armor (3), so you'd roll a <8 to hit them with your great axe (13 - 2 - 3).

Combat Proficiencies giving you a bonus to fighting with spesific kinds of weapons
Non-Combat Proficencies giving you bonus/special actions you can roll to perform

thoughts?
is this alreay a system?

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>>52610194
>fishingpole.jpg
t. #52609716

>>52610265
>meme deathtraps
Best one was the rope woven around razor blades, suspended over a pit.

>>52610385
Guard seems weird if the attacker only rolls attack bonuses but the defender gets to stack attack bonuses, guard bonuses and armour bonuses but I don't know what numbers you're working with. In your example wouldn't the target get its attack bonus and its weapon guard? Or did I miss something?

How are you rolling stats? I think the first thing to look at is comparing % to hit with this from levels 1-10 fighter vs goblin and bxadndwhatever.

>>52610265
>meme deathtraps
Can't go wrong with the classic
>Have the party fight their way down many levels of a dungeon to track down the cruel mastermind of the place
>Burst into the last room, weapon and spells at the ready
>Be greeted by a wonderful and genial man who has nothing but praise for the party, noting one major event each character has taken part in in the dungeon
>Party is rewarded with many goods, treasures and more, almost to the point that the can barely walk
>Man walks behind desk, congratulated them one last time
>Pulls lever which makes the floor fall out from beneath them
>Party falls for around 30 minutes only to be deposited on the far side of the world

>>52610592
That's a good one, but I prefer:
>Antagonist reveals themself to be a powerful illusionist
>Monsters were paid actors
>Dungeon was smoke and mirrors
>Dude broadcasts a game show
>Nobody even died
>Look! Here's all the disqualified contestants
>Thank you for playing!

>Campaign ends
>before you can verify the antagonist's claim

>>52609821
>How come this one specific channel of random anonymous people tends to prefer such a different system to what the vast majority of old-school movement does? How'd that ever happen?
/osrg/ is strongly connected to the PART of the OSR movement that's sometimes called "DIY D&D" (a Zakism). It encompasses LotFP, D&DwP, Weird style, "gonzo", Goblin Punch, False Machine, grit, high lethality/high gruesomeness (e.g. people who don't like PCs to die too quickly but do like death and dismemberment tables, flesh and grit, and so on), strategy, player inventiveness and cunning. These things pretty much imply B/X or BECMI for a number of reasons, but mainly because Basic was identified from a very early point as the lightest and most easily moddable edition. The current population of /osrg/ seems to consist largely of people who came to the OSR quite recently, predicting a preference for a system that's less heavy to learn and faster to run (notable subpopulation: 3.pf types who detest the entire OSR style and just want to play D&D with fewer and less retarded rules), and who also have the kind of personality that likes to visit 4Chan, implying Weird.

The two other main flanks of the OSR are the AD&D guys who tend to be more associated with medievalism, detail, Grognardia, Dragonsfoot, Gygaxian Naturalism, TSR-employee FAQ exegesis, old modules, Blackmoor trivia; and the OD&D-focused guys who are frankly the truly odd and also smallest grouping, OD&D requiring notorious amounts of wrangling but also being the often most rewarding to work on.

(Mind you the divisions are by NO MEANS airtight, the AD&D guys for instance also have a strong affection for Weird and a perhaps even stronger contempt for the pat, glazed Elmore-2E style, but they tend to be less into straight-up Miéville shit and more into flying saucers and MiG guns in a fantasy world.)


The main connecting vein between the groups is Judges Guild. On a group level, everyone reveres JG.

>>52610385
>Challenging = Roll
>Difficult = at -4
>Hard = at -8
>Incredible = at -12
These adjustments are awfully large for a game where your rolls aren't increased by level. Or at least the adjustments are awfully large for folks with middling attributes, but the difference between an 18 stat and a 10 is just ridiculous. I'd recommend that you either change your method for stat generation (with maybe a 6-15 range but similar bell curve) or base checks on attribute modifiers rather than the raw attribute scores (of course, then you might want to have modifiers scale more quickly than typical in old school, or even roll checks on a d12).

But looking at a typical score of 10, a -4 "difficult" penalty cuts your chance almost in half, taking you from 50% to 30%. Meanwhile a -8 "hard" penalty drops you from 50% to 10%, which is a bit extreme. Basing things on typical scores, I'd lean towards using steps of +/-2, with maybe a few extra steps involved (or +/-3 at the absolute most).

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>>52610761
>>52610385
Also, I think your adjective ladder could use a little work. If pressed, I would put "challenging" as easier than difficult or hard, though there isn't that big of a difference. Meanwhile, difficult and hard mean the exact same thing to me.

Maybe...
challenging -2
difficult -4 (or -5)
very difficult -6 (or -7)
extremely difficult -8 (or -10)
incredibly difficult -10 (or -12)
etc.

Or just...
challenging
daunting
heroic/overwhelming
legendary
mythic

It's not exactly the same thing as we're talking about, but people have looked into "adjective ladders" that rank how good something is. Pic is from http://www.mcdonald.me.uk/storytelling/lichert_article.htm though I highlighted the purple ones because I think they're too close to other values and therefore should be dropped (the jump from fair to poor seems no bigger than the jump from good to fair, so you don't need mediocre intervening between the first two).

>>52607944
>dolmantle from Prophet

Sick reference, dude.

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>>52608095
I've only got this other one. Do a search for Kamandi.

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I think the thing that puts me off a lot of traps, especially the Tomb of Horrors/Grimtooth meme traps, is that they try to subvert players' understanding of the game world's logic.

That's bad, especially in OSR. My favorite part of the old school style is the sense of interactivity and exploration that comes with setting the dice aside and IC describing how you make your way through the various obstacles and puzzles, where you're rewarded for thinking logically and coming up with clever solutions, instead of rolling the highest number.

When you have subversive traps (Three Chests and Demonface in Tomb of Horrors might be the most egregious violations here) what you're basically doing is killing that trust in the logic of the game world.

The DM has so much more information about the world than the players, and he has a responsibility to provide that information to the players, which makes this whole "look how clever I am" game memetraps play pointless and one-sided. Three Chests is only a couple steps away from straight up lying to the players and killing them when they act on your false information.

It's a giant "fuck you for behaving rationally" and it'll make the players wary of logical solutions. And without logical solutions what do they have?

Everybody knows about Tomb of Horrors now, but imagine if you'd never heard of it. The hole is obviously trapped but such an immediate and unavoidable trap is completely out of left field and basically instantly destroys your party's Thief for thinking his thief skills are useful.

I really like the suggestion in >>52610166 to make traps more visible to the players, and make puzzling out how to evade them the main challenge, because it avoids the problem of information-disparity between the DM and players, which is what makes a lot of old-school traps so shitty.

>>52611137
bear in mind ToH, like most early published adventures, is a lightly edited TOURNAMENT adventure. Meaning the goal was to 1) make PCs fie quickly, and 2) offer them enough loot in the mean time that you can clearly pick a winner. Most published adventurers are completely atypical of the megadungeon experience that they were running in their home campaigns.

>>52609632
>Couldn't it be used to fix the also near-universally awful thief class?
I think that's what DCC does, right? There's a fuckhuge luck table in there.

I personally don't like it except in this case.

>>52610529
The attacker's basically using their Ability Score as the roll-under value, and then the defender's Attack Bonus + Shield + Armor is subtracted from that score.
If the attacker has a particularly high or low score it's modifier, along with any relevant weapon proficiency, will adjust their score too.
Like, Great Weapons 1 and Strength 15 would be a </=17 to hit.
Say that same guy's wearing medium armor (AV: 3) their guard would then be 5 (3 + 1 + 1), so if they were fighting themselves they'd need to roll </= 12 to hit that identical character.
Say the character were identical, but their weapon were a Sword & Longsword, but they have Long Blades 1 instead of Great Weapons 1. The Shield's +2 would mean their Guard were 7.
In this instance the Longsword character would need </=12 to hit the Greataxe character.
The Great Axe character would need a </=10 to hit the Longsword character.

>>52610761
Ability scores would advance much faster than in regular D&D. The current plan is that every even level lets you advance a proficiency, and every odd level advances an ability's score.
The idea is that if you're rolling at all it's already a notably complex or demanding task; going from 100% chance of success to 75~25% chance of success. -4 Difficult isn't "hard," difficult is, "the majority of people will probably fail. That said, it one of the things at the top of the list of things to be adjusted.

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>>52611137
The traps in ToH and a lot of the famous "killer" modules are designed for experienced players who have already seen it all. They're designed to catch the party that has a marching order, a tactical retreat plan, a crowbar, a bowling ball, and chalk. They're rubix cubes with 19 sides.

It's not "fuck you for behaving rationally", because it's no longer about rationality. In real life, bishops don't move diagonally all the time. It's about thinking about worst-case scenarios and acting on them. It's not about logical solutions, it's about gamified solutions.

Is this good game design? Is it fun? Depends on the party and the GM.

>>52611239

Yes, and it's pretty nice, mainly because it can be used after a roll. So if you fail a check by a small margin you can burn luck to make it a success, so you don't just burn your limited resource for a bonus and find out you're still fucked.

>>52610940
>>52611317
If i do bring them down it'll probably go like:
Difficult -2
Very Difficult -4
Incredible -8

>>52611281
Cool got it. It feels unintuitive adding a str derived bonus to a str roll under, but that might just be me being autistic.

Seems like it would add more granular weapon options/combat if that's what you're into.

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>>52609781
Traps should be:

1. Findable. Give the PCs a chance. If they are close to saying the "magic words", let them have it. "You don't see anything weird about the lock or the hinges, but there is a fine layer of stone dust around the bottom of the door."

2. Sensible. The trap needs a reason to exist. The builders must have put it there, and they must have evaded it or used it somehow. Add a layer of shitty goblin traps on top of ancient tomb traps. The traps should protect something, alert someone, or otherwise be /designed/.

3. Solvable. The PCs can use ropes, pulleys, 10' poles, mules, water, or spells. The trap needs a solution once encountered, even if the solution is really, really difficult. If a giant boulder traps your friend, then allow the players to move it or teleport it. Don't shut down reasonable ideas, but don't offer "easy outs" either. Let them find their own way.

4. Useful. The PCs should be able to re-purpose the traps, salvage them, or at least learn more about their creator. This is part of "dungeon mastery" - learning the dungeon and its safe zones, escape routes, tricks, and traps.

>>52611281
>>52611480
I said Sword and Longsword, but I meant Shield, but you get it so it works.

>>52611073
I'm pretty sure that's just half of the board for Barbarian Prince.

>>52611545
Top half. I like the full board, personally.

>>52609121
3 hours seems like enough time for a trainwreck.
How'd it go, conductor?

>>52610734
That is some fascinating commentary on how people in niche groups can further sub-divide themselves into even more niche sub-groups.

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>>52611889

>>52611137
What is subversive at all about Demonface? It is detected in the same exact way the PCs will have been searching for traps for 10 levels, ie wave a 10 foot pole around.

imo the subversive shit, which I have yet to see ANYONE but me bitch about, is the instant death pit traps that *suck you in* if you search them with a pole.

>>52611959
Hah. So I guess the OD&D hobbyists can be further subdivided into those who think Wisdom is a bad attribute and those...oh forget it.

>>52611990
Pretty sure
>those who think Wisdom is a bad attribute
are a subset of those who think Clerics were a mistake.

>>52612042
Clerics, thieves and magic-users were a mistake.

>>52612084
The Chainmail Fantasy Supplement was a mistake.

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>>52612111
Quite frankly, everything went wrong when they started writing the rules down.

>>52612111
CHAINMAIL in general was a mistake.

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>>52612127
Agreed. Lacquered leather was where it was at.

>>52612127
Wargaming was a mistake.

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>>52612145
Japanese armor was a mistake.
And that's Fish Scale, not Fish Leather.

>>52612154
Recreational wargaming was a mistake.
Kriegsspiel, much like sex for procreation, is a necessary evil.

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Can we talk about the good ol' days?

Back when I was starting out, we couldn't afford a fancy-pants d20, so we used a dartboard. It made critical hits fairly exciting, but you could only roll 6 attacks before you needed to stop and get the darts back.

>>52612220
This is exactly why those sheet of number you drop pencils on exist.
You can also replicate 1d20 with 2d6 (and some re-rolling).
Or make a teetotum.
Or use chits.

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>>52612277
Ooh, look at mister fancy pants over here, with his printable paper and his math skills.

Back in my day, we didn't hold with your fancy ideas about "paper" and "complicated probabilistic math".

You know how we rolled a d12? 2d6. Fuck it.

A d10? Also 2d6. FUCK IT.

d8? That's a little easier. 2d6, but with the "5" and "6" coloured black to reroll them. Use 1 to make a d4.

We had 3 d6 scavenged from monopoly sets, plus a weird dice we found somewhere with the "1" replaced with a pirate's hook.

And we LIKED it.

>>52612393
>You know how we rolled a d12? 2d6.
This works, but only with one die as a stabilizer.
>A d10? Also 2d6.
This also work with a stabilizer. Re-rolling tho.
>d8? That's a little easier.
It is, you can actually do it with no stabilizer or rerolling.
Takes 3d6 though. Or, better yet, 3 coins.
>Use 1 to make a d4.
2 coins.

>Fuck it.
>FUCK IT.
What exactly are we fucking? The unused polyhedra?

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>>52612442
>This works, but only with one die as a stabilizer.

Nah man, 2d6 straight. Results of 2 through 12. Who wants to roll a 1? Nobody, that's who.

>Takes 3d6 though. Or, better yet, 3 coins.

Oooh, if we had coins, we could have SPENT THEM on DICE! But we didn't, so we couldn't.

>What exactly are we fucking? The unused polyhedra?

Back in the day, we weren't fucking anyone.

>>52609799
>The OSR movement is mostly concerned with AD&D, but the thread can't get over B/X.
You could've fooled me. List what you think the five biggest retroclones are and then count how many of them are based on Basic vs. how many are based on AD&D.

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How does this sound for a class idea?

God Eater Paladin
Progression: like a normal Paladin

You gain spells and abilities by destroying the temples, followers, and icons of other gods. There's a table of what each thing gets you. Kill a devout follower or priest? Get a buff that lasts a few days. Destroy an ancient but active site of worship? Get a permanent ability. Kill a god's incarnation, avatar, messenger, or whatever? Get a major permanent ability.

Abilities are related to the gods you destroy. Kill a fire god? Shoot fire from your hands. A storm god? Summon storms. An ancient squamous sea-god? Tentacles in places you don't really want tentacles.

Basic abilities are to track someone who you've seen before, a minor version of Command, a sword, and armour.

>>52612393
>You know how we rolled a d12? 2d6. Fuck it.
Sure. I mean, you could do it exactly (with the 1st d6 determining if you add 6 to the 2nd d6), but 1d6+1d6 is easier and close enough.

>A d10? Also 2d6. FUCK IT.
Now you're getting sloppy. Should be 1d6+2, or 2d6-1.

>d8? That's a little easier. 2d6, but with the "5" and "6" coloured black to reroll them. Use 1 to make a d4.
Reroll? Just make it 1d6+1 and be done.

>>52612641
Are you Skerples?

>>52612502
Are you Skerples?

>>52612393
Are you Skerples?

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>>52612644
>Now you're getting sloppy.

Ah, but 1d6+2 only gets you 3-8, where as 2d6 gets you 2-12, which is obviously much closer to 1d10.

2d6-1 would have been a good idea though.

>Reroll? Just make it 1d6+1 and be done.

Our system discouraged minmaxing weaponry to get d8 damage dice by making d8s a pain the ass to roll. And we LIKED it that way.

I bet you had a Monster Manual too.

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>>52612669
>panics noisily

How're you doing?

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>>52612673
>his system had variable weapon damage

>>52612683
Fair to middling.

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>>52612726
It was extremely variable. It varied almost every night, depending on the number of d6 available and how much of the rules we remembered.

>>52605364
>Spergs fighting spergs

Goddamn I love 4chan.

>DCC is finally launching Lankhmar

Has there ever been an expansion you wanted more?

SHUT THE FUCK UP NO THERE ISNT

>>52612765

Well I suppose it's like fighting fire with fire, sometimes it's your best option.

>>52612992
Well, I'd love to see an official thing for Mystara (maybe with the serials scratched off).

>>52612992
Enh, I have the old TSR books, they were okay.

Better to make your own Lankhmar-like city than be spoonfed 400 pages of city detail that is really unnecessary. It wasn't the city of Lankhmar that made Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser interesting, it was the other way around.

>>52608866
Am I correct to imagine hex crawling happening in vacuum, with everything else indoors?

>roll to beat absorbed spell levels with a d% instead of a d20
d20 was fine. Spells aren't necessarily rare, but that usually won't kill you in one spell and surrender is easy.
>Lose 1 hp for every four hours worn.
1 hp every day, or add some safe way to remove it (douse it in vinegar, or kill it, or whatever).

>saving throw once per day, not once per hour.
Not to knock on once per day, but once per hour is actually fine there.
It's a tedious set-back, but not a major one.

If I might make a suggestion for the mask though,
"After 5 failed saves, treat your bare face as a Sanguineous Mask"

>>52612673
>Ah, but 1d6+2 only gets you 3-8, where as 2d6 gets you 2-12, which is obviously much closer to 1d10.
Average damage is much more important than range. 2d6 ups damage by 27%.

Meanwhile, 2d6-1 only ups damage by 9%, which is only like going up a half-die-step, which I'm okay with. Meanwhile, 2d6 is like going up 1 1/2 die steps.

>>52611757
Actually fuckin great. Ran the old tooley one, players loved it and we had a bunch of laughs.

>>52613812
Describe the party.
Did they hire the goblin?
Piss off the Wolf Totem?

Any noteworthy events?

>>52610211
Hmm, so maybe bleeding yourself to fuel the mask doesn't drain HP, you just get woozy from blood loss? That makes entirely too much sense.

>if you intend to stay out for a long time you'd bring some blood with you
Exactly. The idea for the mask came about because I wanted to have something that functioned like an oxygen tank + mask, but weird and creepy.

>>52613170
>hex crawling happening in vacuum, with everything else indoors
Pretty much, although not all indoor locations will necessarily have O2; most caverns are still in hard vacuum, for example. The slavers would logically have some way to keep their air-breathing chattel alive, so parts of their cities and black galleys are bound to be pressurized.

>a suggestion for the mask
Fuckin' radical. Totally using that.

>>52611511
>Sensible. The trap needs a reason to exist.

I disagree with this one. This is OSR - nothing needs a reason to exist.

Sometimes shit's just there.

>>52612992
Wilderlands of High Fantasy actually getting some love again.

>>52612992
Ankh-Morpork.

>>52614093
>nothing needs a reason to exist.
>this shit meme again

>>52614120
But the Discworld RPG's already out, isn't it?

>>52609821
it's not true, the osr has largely moved on from its starting ad&d phase?

>>52611990
>>52612042
It's mostly "thief was a mistake," "cleric was a mistake," "supplements were a mistake," and "TELL ME MORE ABOUT ARNESONIAN BLACKMOOR SPELL CASTING SYSTEMS HOW DID SPELL BALLS WORK"

with a tiny niche of outdoor survival map-users.

>>52614621
also the whole variable weapon damage or just d6 thing, and the people who consider the monster manual more or less an od&d supplement

anyway back to the odd74 boards for me

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199KB, 600x450px

If Darkest Dungeon isn't the most OSR video game ever made, then what is?

Dumb question, but if I'm using THAC0 in a first edition AD&D game, is that system different than what's actually in the to hit tables in the DMG? I'm asking because I assumed that THAC0 was a mathematical simplification of what's in the book, but I was just looking at the tables and noticed the long strings of 20s, which obviously can't really be done mathmatically.

I don't know if I'm simply misunderstanding something or if my question even makes sense.

>>52614864
THAC0 is simply your chance to hit AC 0, and you can calculate things from that just like you think. The 1e DMG actually uses the term (but not the acronym) for the monster stat listing starting page 196. So you're not misunderstanding things.

However, AD&D gets a bit fancy once you hit the wall of 20, because Gygax never met an extra complexity he didn't like. So after you go past six successive 20s, you get to 21, where you have to roll a 20 and then roll again and get at least a 1, or some shit. I honestly can't remember how it works, because it requires a 1st level character to be striking at something like a -5 AC target.

So I say, why even bother with the extra bullshit? Just say it doesn't get any harder than 20. But if you really want to math it out, calculate your target number against your target, if you need to roll a 21-25, no you don't: you actually just need to roll a 20. If you need to roll a 26 or above, no you don't: subtract 5 from that number to get the *real* number. Then figure out what that means, exactly, because I forget.

>>52614695
>makes crusader kings 2 mod based on outdoor survival map

>>52614991

Okay, thanks. That clears everything up.

>>52610734
This anon knows what's up. Very nice summary, might as well be part of the FAQ.

Does anyone here want to play Wilderlands of High Fantasy on 2e? I've got a couple games running and both could use players.

One of the games goes on around this time, the other on noon EST, and both of them run on tuesdays -and- fridays.

Why aren't saving throws a number you roll under? Why isn't it "4-in-20" rather than "17"? It would make it so much easier to grok and keep track of raised saving throws.

>>52615360
Yeah, but then THAC0 would be left all alone as the single roll-over portion in the game.

>>52615371
But is having a balance between roll-over and roll-under mechanics more important than having all bonuses be additive rather than subtractive?

>>52615371
Then flip THAC0 around as well. A level 1 character only hits upon rolling a 1, and enemy AC is added to the target number rather than the roll.

Might actually be a little easier than the current one.

>>52615590
>A level 1 character only hits upon rolling a 1
Surely you mean "10 or lower"?