/osrg/ OSR General - Barrier Peaks Edition

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
Lots, but they're all hidden under the surface.

Lately Ive been wanting on run a cyberpunk game, but with the relative simplicity of OSR, are their options?

Also, one thing I wanted to fix about cyberpunk was hacking and stuff. I figured a way to fix this was make all characters able to do hacking stuff, but related to their classes. Every character can choose a 'digital' action before their physical action. fighters might use it for attack bonus, rogues to help backstab, etc etc.

I figured I could fluff this as being in a cyberpunk world where all the tech is now wireless. less grunge and more Apple-like smooth panels and handsfree tech.

Someone mentioned ruinations in the last thread - where to find it?

>>53591005
This is the best option

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Alright /osr/, coins&scrollsguy, I'm 3 hours and 30 minutes away from running my first game in ~10 years.

The plan is as follows: make characters, buy equipment, a few rolls of getting lost, getting sick and falling into some witch's trap on the way to the tutorial dungeon, then death in the tutorial dungeon. I have exactly 3 players and I think this might just work. I think I prepared all I could.

>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
Not much, but it's adventure-time-style post-apo, something I hope players will reveal eventually. There's a robot class, ala The One Electronic and high-level goblins reach a scientific enlightenment, but I think warcraft made those mundane.

>>53591246
Who will die?

>trove has Neoclassical Geek Revival misspelled as Greek
Pirates can't spell, huh?

>>53591968
Yes.

>>53590848

Depends on the setting I'm running at the time, but I usually go with >>53591005

One of the more memorable ones included an aborted attempt to build a god in a spaceship that had been there since the world began (and probably was the cause of life existing at all, though I never said as much to the players). The players wound up solving the clues like it was Starship Titanic, put the god together, and then found themselves owed a favor by an entity built to contain divinity. They proceeded to squander that favor, but were suitably entertained, so hey.

In general I tend to have my settings go either subtle sci-fi or full-bore Phantasy Star IV. I've always wanted to write a straight-out science fantasy OSR setting that wasn't garbage.

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>>53591147
>github
Explain.

>>53590848
I'm not distinguishing too rigidly between scifi and fantasy. There's city states of technospartans, liquid state-ghost drives, crystalline rainbow pistols and barbarians with sacred astral helms. Looking back on that sentence, 'lots' I guess would be another answer.

>>53591103
Its in the pastebin trove, Lamentations of the flame princess based games.

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
"Hey guys we should take a break from our Traveller campaign and play D&D."

"Sure, pick one of those low-tech worlds out in the frontier sectors and we'll play there."

No significant SF elements have come up yet. They're currently dealing with basically a large area full of ruins and barrows and trouble, which has weird shit going on in it. Of course it does. Party m-u's trying to write a paper on how the layout of the graves is affecting local magical flows, because rival npc m-u back in the big city is getting famous for his universal theories of necromantic energy and they're totally wrong and soon he'll have the proof and then they'll recognise the rival as a hack. One of the fighters is mates with the cleric and they came together to update the church's maps of the zone. The other two fighters just blew every penny they earned on their last trip in and have bills to pay, so they're along for the ride.

/osrg/ I want your best stuff on how to make the torches and light feel totally present at the table as a real factor in the dungeon crawl

>>53590848
Running SWN, so lots. There's Dead Space and Destiny level space magic in some parts though.

>>53593727
Get a lantern with a dimmer/flame control, keep track of their light source usage, when it starts running low dim the lights. Depending on your group, if their lights go out, douse it/make it really dim until they get it together and light another. If everyone's on board it could be really fun, but I can see some people getting annoyed with not being able to see their sheets, dice, stuff like that.

Open flame candles are mostly a pain in the ass and you need a bunch of them to light anything well so I'd skip those.

>>53593995
I was thinking more mechanics than mood. Thanks.

>>53594004
What's the difference between a fighter and a cavalier, and between a cavalier and a paladin?

>>53594129
Oops. That reply was unintended. Sorry.

>>53594004
Ohhhhh. There's a few people I've seen do variations on wandering monster/dungeon encounter rolls where some results are their torches/light sources going out. The Black Hack's resource dice actually does pretty well here I think. Into The Odd uses light source as initiative, it seems neat but haven't tried it.

I mostly let the players keep track of who's carrying lights, what their marching order is, etc. and I make little ticks on my notes to keep a rough idea of time. Each light source has 3 ticks per/fuel. If they're mucking about, weather/climate changes, they do something that makes keeping their light alive hard I ask how they're taking care of that.

>>53594004
Time tracking. Use something like that b/x turn tracker, when someone lights a torch you put a token x spaces ahead to make sure it runs out on schedule, assuming nothing else happens.

Resource management is a key element to dungeon light.

>>53594129
Cavaliers aren't multiclassed fighter-clerics, and may have a slightly larger focus on romance and couched lance damage.

>>53594129
>fighter
Joe Hittum, whether that be a samurai, a pikeman, a gladiator, or a farmer's son with a rusty axe.

>cavalier
Traditional knightly knight, stupid rules of engagement and all.

>paladin
Literally St. George.

>>53594376
I'd really like a version of the time tracking that isn't as fiddly. That sheet is good, though. The question is, when do I move it forward? I guess a decent hand waving is to make exploring a room one turn, and moving a couple of rooms one turn (i.e by the book but rounding everything to what feels appropriate)

>>53594212
I like the idea of abstracting it to a degree, I'll check out those rule systems.

>>53594477
>I'd really like a version of the time tracking that isn't as fiddly. That sheet is good, though. The question is, when do I move it forward? I guess a decent hand waving is to make exploring a room one turn, and moving a couple of rooms one turn (i.e by the book but rounding everything to what feels appropriate)
B/X has fairly good time definitions, IIRC, and in general you skip to the next period after combat even if there were still combat turns unused, taking the time to regroup and catch your breath.

I forget how turns/rounds/etc work off the top of my head, though.

>>53594402
>>53594414
Thank you for answering. I was more interested in knowing the specific mechanical benefits (and disadvantages) of being a cavalier though. Why would a player pick it over a fighter or a paladin? What's the niche?

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>>53594510
I'll be perfectly fucking honest I haven't actually played it by the book. I saw this one and just found it daunting. I'll try do it proper and come back and see what I learnt.

I met a whitebeard mechanic who saw the dice in my car and started talking about d&d with me.
He referred to remembering "when they started to introduce the d10" and how cool that was.
What time would that have been? He said that for the first year they'd use nothing but d6's and d20's, then "all kinds of funky dice" started to get introduced to the game.

>>53595269
When the basic set came out, they still used a d20 as a d10. Wikipedia referred me to this link regarding d10s: http://planescape.outshine.com/official.planescape-torment.org/oldnews/greg_0507.html
" The first GenCon I attended, back in 1980, was strictly a pen & paper / board game affair buried in the labyrinthine corridors of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside campus. (The big news of the year was that someone had 'invented' the ten-sided die)."
It might have been after 1980 then.

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>>53595402

>>53595402
Ah okay. He might have had difficulty finding the other dice and then strongly remembers when "d10's became for real dice and not just modified d20's" He also referenced that they were already playing for a while before getting their hands on a players handbook because it was hard to find.

So it sounds like 78-79 is when he started playing then.

>>53594665
Cavaliers get attribute bonuses as they level, but aren't allowed to run away from fights and have to pick who to attack using a flowchart.
Paladins were a subclass of Fighter, but were retconned to a subclass of Cavalier when those got added. They get a ton of bonuses when using really nice magic swords, but they can't own more property than they can carry.

Also Cavaliers (and Paladins, even without using Cavaliers) get special mounts.
Not that high level Fighters aren't expected to just go out and tame manticores, mind you.


>Why would a player pick it over a fighter or a paladin?
Because Paladins have insanely high attribute requirements. Not quite as bad as Bards, but still really bad.

>>53590848
Is there a conversion of Dark Sun which use an OSR game as it's 'engine'?

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>>53595683

>>53595814
AD&D is not OSR you dipshit.

wew lad

>>53595848
>ad&d
>not osr
Are you a millennial?

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?

Im running an ASE game. It's very explicitly sci-fantasy.

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>>53595848

First edition is OSR, but a lot of anons agree second edition isn't. Dark Sun is a 2e setting, so...

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>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?

I have a related question. I'm looking for fiction with middle age tech right next to space age tech. So there would be knights and castles, but also lazer guns and surveillance drones.
The one media I know that has something similar is Strife. It was a Doom clone with some RPG elements, and a interesting, if not fully explored, setting.

There might be an easy to google label for this that I don't know of, even that would be helpful.

>>53596286
The books have not aged well, but look up Vampire Hunter D. TLDR, 10,000 years in the future, vampires took over the world and reset everything to the good ol' Dracula days with super advanced tech to let them replicate their old magic.
There's a part in the first book where ghouls are going after a farmers livestock, so he takes down his antique plasma cannon off the fireplace mantle and scares them off.

>>53595171
yeah that's not the one I meant. I was thinking of this one: http://www.rpgnow.com/product/110506/Basic-Turn-Tracker

which, of course, I don't know if is available for free, but it was a neat circular clock-style thing. https://goblinbau.wordpress.com/2013/01/27/basic-turn-tracker-gepimptes-oldschool-gizmo/ may not be written in common, but it has some photos that show off the style even if it doesn't explain shit. You basically have segments for combat turns, exploration turns, and hours, then advance the clock hand each turn. When you light a torch, for instance, you'd put a marker however far in the future a torch lasts for, and slowly get closer and closer to it. Also good for "you need to rest every x exploration turns" (iirc it's one rest in every six ten minute turns in b/x), so you can see the fatigue coming in.

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>>53596286
>forgetting about quake

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>>53593406
>>53591103

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

The one in the trove is horribly outdated.

>>53596158
>this again
2e is OSR. The DMG is shit, and many of the splats are shit, but it's OSR.


The only complaints about we are that it prefers Epic Fantasy over Swords and Sorcery.
Dark Sun is about as Swords and Sorcery as it gets. Dark Sun is OSR.

Even if it wasn't, the original question was about conversion. And no conversion is needed to use 2e content with AD&D.
So, to answer >>53595683, there is so such conversion because the Dark Sun content works unconverted in any OSR system.

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Why is DCC so divisive when it clearly kicks all kinds of ass? Why are so many people so resistant to the changes it brings to OSR?

>>53597584
It's too close to third edition, bringing in perception checks and spell checks and simple saving throws and such. It skirts rather far away from the true OSR mindset.

I'll agree that it's awesome, but it's not the purest form of OSR.

>>53597584
It's way too crunchy in ways that look fun at first glance but start to wear on you really soon, it tries far too hard, and frankly you can just steal the better ideas and run them in od&d lbb with far less bloat.

>>53597734
>just steal the better ideas and run them in od&d lbb with far less bloat.
Pretty much. Hell, it's not hard to remove 90% of the crunch when you port one of its subsystems in a different edition. DCC feels complicated for the purpose of being complicated sometimes.

>>53597734
Trouble is, I really love its magic system, but I can't really see how to cut it out of the rest of the game and adding it elsewhere: it seems too much trouble for its worth.

>>53597584
>Why are so many people so resistant to the changes it brings to OSR?
I think this question is the wrong question. People aren't resistant to *DCC's* changes, I think by and large they are opposed to most foundation changes. The most popular retroclones (Labyrinth Lord, Lementations, etc.) still rest of the frame word of OD&D, Basic, or AD&D where DCC rests on the frame work of D&D 3rd Edition with a heavy old school flavor.
When you change the skeletal structure that's when you see the most resistance. Dungeon World would be another example of this. It's resting on the Apocalypse Word foundation, with some dungeon crawling flavor. On a personal note I think DW's largest mistake is the reintroducing HP instead of the Wound Clock from AW.
I think a better question to ask is "what is it about the old foundation that catches people so strongly that new system foundations have a hard time catching people in the same way?"
In some ways I think DCC would be more popular if viewed outside the lens of OSR, appreciated in it's own right.

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
Not much, but UFO's are always a great inclusion. I quite easily unsettled my players with mysterious lights in the sky, unexplained headaches and lost time. All of which was unrelated to the main plot, other than that they had to traverse a region known for that sort of strange occurrence.

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Hey guys, how do you usually deal with a party wipe and/or returning to a partially cleared out dungeons? I'm planning to run a small Castlevania-inspired campaign using Swords & Wizardry, and I thought about the possibility of opening up some shortcuts and passages between parts of the castle to allow for quicker and safer trips back to town, but I'm not sure how I would handle a TPK - should they be able to reclaim the corpses of previous party to get up to speed with their gear? Should they restart completely, with some randomization thrown into the dungeon? Should the characters that die "disappear" completely so they can't just loot their gear? I don't have a lot of experience running retroclone dungeon crawls so I'd appreciate some advice on edge cases.

>>53598909
I'd rule that if they were killed in an accessible place i.e. not under a rock fall or whatever, roaming monsters would either eat the corpses or scavenge the equipment. Distribute the more important gear among the treasure hoards in the dungeon, and have the dungeon change somewhat to accommodate the passage of time between TPK and the arrival of the new party.

>>53590848
>>53591246
Is this game good? Is it OSR like?

>>53599331
It's pretty great, if hard.

>>53598909
>Hey guys, how do you usually deal with a party wipe and/or returning to a partially cleared out dungeons?
Dungeon ecology is nonsense, but you /should/ use No. Appearing rolls to generate factions in the dungeon.
If the PCs kill a whole bunch of one sort if thing, consider how the other factions (including factions beyond the dubgeon) will react.

>opening up some shortcuts and passages between parts of the castle to allow for quicker and safer trips back to town,
Altering the dungeon layout at milestones can work, but feels cheap if you do it more than... twice?
Generally speaking, you want to give shortcuts through secret passages or alternate entrances.
Exiting the dungeon should always be a bigger deal than entering, so things like pitfall-chutes work especially well.

>but I'm not sure how I would handle a TPK -
They should either have multiple characters in reserve, restart completely, or else adventure in the land of the dead (or as undead).
Scattering their old crap around the dungeon is a nice continuity nod, but there's no need for it to be there when they come back.

>>53591246
>but I think warcraft made those mundane.
Not quite the same thing, but reminder that Tolkien's Orcs' shtick was being industrialists.

>>53596371
Really like that little clock thing

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
depends on the setting(as I have a lot of different settings), but generally quite a few(for one thing many of my settings have a full Solar System laid out, complete with native races on most of the planets and moons), although when I say Sci-Fi, I generally mean older Pulp era stuff

>>53595814
I keep seeing these characters but I have no idea where they're from

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>>53600675
Pop Team Epic, it's getting an anime soon.

>>53597964
I think DCC would be better if it broke off more from OSR. Right now it wants to stay in between OSR D&D and 3e, which is kind of a problem.

>>53595619
Doesn't that make the classes pretty pointless in most cases of standard dungeon crawling games?
Are there any retroclones that do the cavalier differently?

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>>53602958
>he doesn't bring mounts into the dungeon

>>53591246
>robot class
tell me more. I'm trying to figure out a good robot class for my setting

>>53606464
I thought of having a table with all the robot parts on it, so you rolled to see what kind of hands you had (fine manipulators, pincers, crude blocks, needles instead of fingers, etc), what kind of "feet" you had (legs, tank treads, wheels, spider legs...)

Then I figured out it was a lot of work and I'm no closer to a solution.

>>53606766
>Then I figured out it was a lot of work and I'm no closer to a solution.
Give them flat attributes (possibly with adjustments from some parts) and it's roughly the same amount of work.

Can someone please recommend a module with good dungeon crawls and some role playing sprinkled in for 2nd edition.

>>53597584
There are plenty of people who are more than willing to rip ideas from DCC, and there are plenty of people who are willing to consider DCC an "OSR" ruleset. There are also people who don't.

The posts before yours were already arguing whether AD&D constitutes "part" of the OSR. The whole thing is a broad movement that's only loosely affiliated over the net at best, and you'll find partisans and anti-partisans for each corner and ruleset.

Part of the reason these threads are enduring is that they're less worried about navel-gazing and arguing about which ruleset to use, but instead talk about actually preparing for and running games.

>>53607489
Castle Ravenloft is perhaps one of the finest modules for AD&D; it really feels ahead of it's time in many ways. The only real issue is that it can be tough to integrate it into your campaign, since it's got a very distinct gothic horror flavour, but from a design perspective it's got a lot of interesting things going for it.

>>53607678
>talk about actually preparing for and running games.
Speaking of which, what's the worst good DCC module?

>>53597584
I despise having to look up inane charts every time I roll the fucking dice.

>>53607723
Zarovich Castle, and by extension Barovia, technically doesn't need to be in Ravenloft to work on its own.

>>53607898
It helps that they came before Ravenloft.

What's the best way to convert from the gold standard to LotFP's silver standard? Just replace 'gp' with 'sp'? Which module had the sidebar about this?

>>53599237
>>53599460
what about the riches? You know, with XP granted mainly for looting, every time they lose the wealth they accumulated, if they appear in that same bit of the dungeon they looted with previous characters, they'll be plainly lower-levelled. On one hand levels aren't THAT big of a deal in S&W, but on the other, fucking hitdice, man. Should I just roll randomly to "repopulate" some caches and containers with valuables to have them advance up, to the point where they left off?

>Altering the dungeon layout at milestones can work, but feels cheap if you do it more than... twice?
>Generally speaking, you want to give shortcuts through secret passages or alternate entrances.
>Exiting the dungeon should always be a bigger deal than entering, so things like pitfall-chutes work especially well.

Noted, but this being a castle, and an adventure I want to model after Metroidvania style, I think it would only apply to SOME parts of the castle. Of course the DUNGEON of the castle will be harder to get out of, but would the tower also be?

>>53599460
>you /should/ use No. Appearing rolls to generate factions in the dungeon.
Remember that No. Appearing is usually meant for wilderness encounters. Can't remember if S&W rejigged it for dungeon encounters, but if you're using monsters from elsewhere you should keep that in mind.

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Related to the question in the OP, I was wondering if there are any examples of Sci-fi OSR games beyond Stars Without Number and Mutant Future.
I'm especially interested in anything even remotely Cyberpunk.
I'm especially interested in how one could adapt stuff like "hacking" to the OSR approach of the 10ft pole without needing the players and referee to be actual hackers themselves. Maybe inventory items that allow to surpass certain electronic countermeasures? More complex stuff like an "alternate dungeon" à la Shadowrun seem to be a bit too removed from the spirit of OSR.
>>T. Guy who wants to run a Nihei-esque games but doesn't want to use /tg/'s Blam!

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?

Basically none at all. I even have a dislike for clockwork devices and black powder.

I fully admit this isn't due to balancing or realism or anything, but just because my aesthetic sense is autistic.

>>53609944
Right, but why is that of significance? I thought dungeons were supposed to have wandering monsters as well.

>>53610591
>why is that of significance?
Because sometimes the No. Appearing entry is 30d10.

>>53609274
>What's the best way to convert from the gold standard to LotFP's silver standard? Just replace 'gp' with 'sp'?
Yes. That's exactly what LotFP expects you to do, and it's also exactly what the XP tables are adapted for.

>>53610100
I'm going to speak OSR heresy here. Look into some rules lite or narrative cyberpunk games, cut out the better designed and least intrusive systems and use those.

>>53610100
>I lash my torch to the end of the 10ft pole and use it to look into the dark archway.
>Cool, the flickering orange light reveals carved leering demon faces, cruel mouths slowly dripping green fluid. In the eyesocket of one, you see the glint of a red gem.

>I piggyback my Illuminati:Index on the mnemonic probe and investigate the node.
>Cool, the rush of filtered data reveals a gatekeeper program of leering demon faces, cruel mouths slowly dripping green pixils. In the eyesocket of one, you see the glint of a red encryption key.

You can do it. Someone asks for cyberpunk osr every few threads, there are a few one page's I've seen floating around and the Black Hack has Mirror Shades. Haven't looked at it. SWO# has polychrome specifically for your cyberpunk osr desires.

To me, it seems like while there is some crossover between dungeon crawling and corporate infiltration, there's also enough differences that it doesn't quite mesh up easily. Lots of cyberpunk focuses on being cool professionals with lots of experience before they plan, haveing cool technoshit, and go in being able to do a lot. Most level 1 osr characters are not that competent, experienced or equipped. They're more like the street punks who got kicked out of their habcomplex and need to take over the abandoned warehouse, inhabited by a gang of RaZors, an escaped biowar project and find out the sewer access leads to a deeper black-ops corp research facility. Which as I write it, makes me want to convert the street urchin funnel from Crawl zine. Its workable, but there are some specific genre differences that need to be addressed.

>>53611917
eh, doesn't have to be corporate infiltration. could be fucked-up arcologies, stalker-like zones created by fucked-up experiments and abandoned, iirc one of richard k morgan's novels has a literal continent (on a colony world) full of fucked-up nanotech and warbots that have gone rogue and need to be regularly culled.

shadowrun had renraku arcology, which may be a bit hardcore for newbies, but you could easily have the wreckage of one or one that's more survivably insane and not quite so brutal.

it can definitely still be cyberpunk and osr-style. just, instead of awarding xp for gp spent on booze and hookers, award xp for credits spent on hair dye, new chrome, and gear customisation. if you don't specify brand, model and colours/patterns for your rifle's sling, you haven't truly earned those xp.

>>53610100
>I'm especially interested in how one could adapt stuff like "hacking" to the OSR approach of the 10ft pole without needing the players and referee to be actual hackers themselves. Maybe inventory items that allow to surpass certain electronic countermeasures?
>the decker uses Turn Robot (Off) to deactivate the sentry bots

>>53590848
>How many science fiction elements does your setting have?
My current campaign was inspired by HLD, so that should give you an idea.

>>53609944
>is usually meant for wilderness encounters
Maybe you should re-read Underworld and Wilderness Adventure?
It was meant for generating adventures, not encounters.

If 30-300 bandits operate in a hex, they probably aren't all in one spot.

>>53611393
I've heard good things about Cryptomancer.

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>>53590848
>Sci-fi elements
A lot of it is standard high fantasy, but then we got:
Illithids from space
Progenitor races uplifted by another space-race
Lemurians who harness solar power for their tech
Dwarves who harness coal for their tech
Devils and Demons who use guns
Weapons and armor with onboard AI that just appear to be sentient weapons
And lots of old cities swallowed up by the planet

>>53599331
It's fucking amazing, though i don't know if I'd call it OSR-like... It's most clearly a love letter to Link to The Past, with a bit of Dark Souls thrown in (emphasis on reading/predicting enemy actions, good interconnectivity of dungeon regions). So I guess it's OSR to the extent you consider Dark Souls to be OSR

>>53609944
>>53612788
eh calm down, i'll most likely write my own, separate encounter tables for each part of the castle anyway

>>53612788
What OSR game should I use if the 30-300 bandits are in one spot so that the party can go Dynasty Warriors on them?

>>53613854
And actually stand a chance? AD&D 2e.

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>>53613854

>>53613709
Dark Souls is all about being paranoid, avoiding unnecessary fights, resource management, looting everything, and player skill.
Its a good teaching aid for OSR.

>>53613854
That seems antithetical to the OSR style.

>>53613951
Is there something other than Godbound? It's a bit too Exalted for me.

>>53614336
Eh, that. I mean that sounds fun and all, but not really sword&sorcery at all. Unless we're talking endgame characters, I suppose.

>>53614575
I'd take it over MI of BECMI.

>>53614846
Has anyone ever gotten to play a MI tier campaign?

>>53614575

There's Exemplars and Eidolons, also by Sine Nomine. It's free and it's pretty solid at doing "higher-level" fantasy adventuring without going all the way into Godbound. I think it'd do pretty well.

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Been working on a homebrew that combines aspects of LotFP, 5e and DCC. I want to be able to run modern style adventures using OSR mechanics; somewhere between the simplicity of The Black Hack and LotFP.

Uses the layout from an abandoned project I was working on. Doesn't have a spell list yet.

Give me any advice or feedback, please.

>>53617141
I still think your money symbol is cancer.

>>53615953
Exemplars and Eidolons looks right up my alley, thanks.

>>53617383
i like it!

>>53610100
The key design principle behind D&D dungeon crawling is resource management. Parties expend and/or wager resources to venture deeper and further into a dungeon to receive nice and better treasures.

Different classes handle the resource game in other ways - Fighters wager their HP directly in combat, while thieves gamble on their percentile skills to bypass obstacles. Wizards are wonderworkers - their spells are usually a near guaranteed solution to a problem ("fireball" for a pack of orcs, "Fly" traverses a crevasse, "Knock" opens a locked door, and so forth), but also do not come back once used (until a rest, at least). Finally, the Cleric acts like a combination of the Fighter and the Wizard

Looked at in this way, you could handle hackers using a Fighter model (where the hacker risks his own life in some form of "cybercombat"), the Thief model (where hacker skills are modeled in a probabilistic manner) or in the Wizard model (where hacker skills are essentially one-shot items).

One caveat - D&D's structure gives rewards that scale with progress, generally speaking. D&D adventurers generally plunder as they go - loot is on every level. This is different from a traditional heist-style game where the party is getting one thing of great value only and ignoring everything else. D&D is where you descend into the Louvre and do a smash-and-grab, looting until you run out of room or time. On the flip side, most Cyberpunk scenarios and narratives involve picking out the most valuable art object before hand and taking that thing only.

>>53590848 https://youtu.be/zQg9oJ7paS8

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>>53618021
>extra credits

Does Birthright have gimmicks like Dark Sun or Ravenloft?

>>53618341
Worse.

>>53618341
That's a an extremely broad question. What do yo mean by gimmicks? Things about the setting that stand out or are unconventional? Gameplay systems that are unique to the product line? It's your average high-fantasy setting with the slight twist that the players are literally divinely chosen to rule and have powers and in-game mechanics reflecting that. I'm not a huge fan of it but there's not anything egregiously terrible about it either imo.

>>53618366
How so? I'm digging through the setting guide out of curiosity but haven't found the gimmicks yet

>>53618468
>with the slight twist that the players are literally divinely chosen to rule and have powers and in-game mechanics reflecting that
Well, that's what I meant by gimmicks. Thanks for clarifying

>>53618490
Bloodlines and regency points, neither of which are well implemented.

>>53618510
You're expected to engage in statecraft alongside adventuring, as that's the premise of the setting. You could just play a group of independent Scions or commoners but why bother at that point?

>>53617141
I'll tell you right now, free darkvision is a bad idea for OSR-style games.

>>53593727
Veins of the Earth

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Would anything be harmed if PCs were allowed to pick their familiar? Presumably, some should be rebalanced, of course.

>>53617141
What's the font you use for headlines and the ability names? I really like it.

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>>53593727
>>53619185
Yes, this. It's the best book I've read on the topic.

>>53611393
>>53611917
>>53612385
>>53617964

Thanks for the input, guys, I was thinking about Hackers being close to either the Wizard or Thief model, it's some food for thought. I'll post something once I got the basics down.

>>53619103
I'm trying to mash new and old-school. So some things will step on toes.

>>53619456
BlackCastleMF

>>53619538
>BlackCastleMF
Thanks, breh! Downloaded.

>>53619601
You might dig DwarvenAxeBB too. The font they used for Darkest Dungeon.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/blambot/dwarven-axe-bb/

>>53617141
>I want to be able to run modern style adventures using OSR mechanics
What does this mean, exactly? What's a "modern style adventure" to you?

>>53619815
Long campaigns with the same characters played. My table obviously has so much more fun when they get to invest in a character and not have them bite the dust every other game. But they also aren't invested in the rulebook. So I wanted to mix 5e style adventures (ie: good mix of story + dungeon delving) with the more simplified mechanics of LotFP/BX. This means:

More forgiving healing.
More magic access.

I've been running Lost Mines of Phandelver for them using this, and honestly I'm pleased with how its turning out.

>>53619918
You might want to look to 2nd edition AD&D, then. It came out around the transition point where old-school was fading away into epic story-based adventures like you speak of.

Both LotFP and DCC, that you base your hack on, are pretty bad examples: they're deadly as all hell.

>>53619918
>. My table obviously has so much more fun when they get to invest in a character and not have them bite the dust every other game
Your table isn't doing OSR then. That kind of identification with their PCs is a hallmark of new school design. They should be detached from their characters, shrug and make their 3d6 rolls when they inevitably die.

>>53620057
You're not wrong. I ran World of the Lost for LotFP RAW for like 8 months, and while it was an absolute blast, I could tell they wanted a more 'Skyrim' experience. My love of OSR is not in it's gameplay; it's in the mechanics. This is just my effort to meld the two.

>>53619515
What is the meaning of intent in this context? Intent of the players? The DM? The system?

>>53620411

I think it's to do with player agency. Players forget the rules under stress, and all they can think about is "I want to [have my character] do this thing." Forgetting /how/ to do that in-game shouldn't be a hinderance.

This interpretation might be wrong, but I think it's true anyway.

>>53620909
>but I think it's true anyway.
It refers to any intent and accompanied rules, so yes.

>>53620909
>>53621382
So basically it's "don't be a dick to your players just because they're too stressed out to remember the rules for stuff"?

>>53620411
You remember the atmosphere of the game more then the mechanics. Nobody cares what the DC was of that save, they care about somehow surviving that death spell and cutting down the big bad. They remember the panic when some nameless thing tore through the PCs like paper more then the number of dice each tentacle attack did.
There's a bit of >>53621644 there too, but it's mostly that you remember the tense moments.

>>53621644
It can be that too. It's not limited to games though.

Think of it like this:
>ends generate means
>no comment on justifying
>but ends generate means

>if you lose sight if your ends, your means will take you to the wrong place
>if you lose sight of your means, your ends can always generate more

>>53621961
Let me tell you about Gutei's Finger.

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>>53622186
Surprisingly on-point.

Instead of cyberpunk, has anyone done a modern setting? Either crime/narcos, special forces, gangbangers, war, bank robbers, etc?

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>>53622720
There's this, which is kinda Tomb Raider-esque.

>>53622791

Cool. Will check it out.

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>>53622186

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>>53620909
>>53621856
Pretty much. In context, in Veins of the Earth, it's talking about darkness. Patrick's saying "Think of the darkness as a malevolent liquid creature that hates light."

And in that revelation, it's simple. You don't need to remember exact intent and how long torches last if soaked in water and all that stuff, when you're busy and stressed, if you remember "the darkness is a creature that hates you."

Same thing goes for a lot of other stuff, in game design and real life.

It's got nothing to do with "remembering tense moments" as written, although I'm not trying to say that's not valuable advice. Its more about "rather than memorizing mechanics, chose your intent, and allow your GMing to follow".

>>53623040
Wow Penny Arcade's art is really bad.
What the fuck is with that guy's face?

>>53623911
Well, one of them is a weird mutant creature from some pastel nightmare world.

And the other one is from No Man's Sky.

>>53614575
just use higher level d&d characters with sine nomine's original solo heroes rules?

>>53620411
Intent of the designer. That is, if the designer says "oooh this game is soooo spooooky" and slaps in a mediocre table o' spoops then writes a totally generic dungeon, you'll forget it and run a generic dungeon. If they actually go out of their way to express the spook throughout the module and have the dungeon dripping with style and unexplained fluids, you won't need a table of d66 spooky things (although one may be nice) - the designer having successfully expressed their intent means that you'll remember, when the party fumbles and drops their torches, that something spooktacular should happen, rather than forgetting that the generic version of the module had a d666 things what happen when the lights go out table that was buried under a mass of 10' rooms with an orc and a pie.

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Is there a B/X conversion for Dark Sun.

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What would need to be converted?

>>53626205
To repeat a broad and dubious generalization,
>A game or supplement is OSR if interchangeable with OSR and TSR D&D.

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https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/table-of-rulers-byzantine-edition.html

It's finally fucking done. Now I can move on with my life.

Here are 5 glorious 1d100 tables for use in any OSR game. Generate rulers, events, wars, and deaths quickly and with style.

>>53627264
Now do one for China. /s

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>>53627364
If you find me a history book for China with the following criteria, I'll be tempted.

-On Amazon
-Also has an .epub format I can download/pirate/buy
-Written by a British author born between 1900 and 1955
-Covers at least 500 years
-Minimal citations and footnotes

>>53626205
No, but it's easy enough to port with an evening's worth of work. Or you could just do what everyone else did back then and strip down as much of the useless AD&D baggage as you want and run it like that.

Any recommendation for an introductory module, one with a strong hook, and possibly being about a sort of escape from a place?

>>53628021
The Fall of Whitecliff will hit every notch you're looking.

I'm making a Monk Class for Lamentations of the Flame Princess
Here's what I have so far:

Fighter with d6 HD
Inflict Minor, Medium, or Large weapon damage with their bare hands at levels 4, 7, and 10, add half Attack Bonus to AC, Must be Lawful
Speed over short distances: 60’ in a round; 160’ running per round, must be unemcumbered

I'm having trouble thinking of Secret School Techniques, that I can put on a d20 table and have the players roll if I want the monks to be a little more Wuxia.
Any Ideas?

>>53627264
Good work dude

>>53628637
Take the dodge skill from RC and make it a 3-in-6 skill just like architecture for dwarves and bushcraft for halflings.

>>53628637

>Fighter with d6 HP
>Frontline character
>with d6 HP
>that won't be wearing armor

Why would you do this?

>>53629308
There's nothing about them NOT being able to wear armor, if fact they just have to be unencumbered to move fast. They'll always be a point less wearing nothing than armor of the closest AC.

The same for weapons.

But I was thinking of a random table of mystic powers to give them a bit more kick.

>>53629337

You should, otherwise they'd be as shitty as 3.5 monks.

>>53622720

Also spies would be cool

>>53622720

Payday 2 has some good inspiration. However I would never play in a setting unless it had some kind of supernatural element personally, but that's just me.

>>53628637
>Any ideas?
Stun blows, lightfoot (that shit like in Crouching Tiger where they can stand on leaves and shit), psionic abilities like telepathy or astral projection, variant of fighting offensively where you get an extra attack instead of a to-hit bonus, flat bonus to grappling, ability to slow down metabolism to "feign death" levels (useful for surviving eg a gas trap in a locked room), ability to make an automatic grapple check on any successful unarmed strike, shattering strikes (can break through doors, stone, maybe even metal armor), deep-concussion blows (ignore armor, but don't use this unless eg maces have a similar ability), assassination strikes (unarmed sneak attack damage), if I come up with more I'll add them.

I'd like something like a d30 or 2d20 table that each monk would roll on three times to generate his school or style.

>>53629977
d30X3 sounds interesting

>>53629977
>>53630101
>Astral Projection, Flurry of Blows, Grappling Strike
>Disciple of Eight Tentacle Azathoth Boxing

>>53628637

Rip off fist of the North Star (Hokuto no ken) schools/styles

>>53629715

You mean the videogame, right? That be a fun tabletop

>>53629977
>>53630344
How long should effects last?

I'm thinking equal to the level of the monk

>>53630591
Depends on the effect. For a stunning blow? Sure, you get stunned [level] rounds. For something like telepathy or a backstab, that's harder to give a directly level-based duration.

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>>53629073
Thanks! Feel free to roll up some dudes.

>>53628209
>checks it out
>pathfinder
I guess I'll trust you on this one

>>53630858
It's still a pretty good one and easy to convert to OSR.

LotFP Mystic Monk d30 power table is drafted and will be up tomorrow.

So, for fun I'm trying to optimize/streamline oldschool D&D as much as possible. To turn it into a "pocket" game.
As a young lad, my friends and I would play Advanced Fighting Fantasy on the go. The rules were simple enough to memorise, and we just kept little pocket notepads, a pair of d6 and a pencil in our pockets. We'd wander around our neighborhood and local parks, stopping to make rolls on the ground.

I always liked how compact AFF was, without being too "lite" that it didn't feel like a proper RPG. Unfortunately, I see the flaws in its rules now, so I wouldn't run it these days.

Long story short, I want to streamline D&D. Distill it to the most important stuff, but still make it backwards compatible (or "unpackable").

I'm thinking of turning all modifiers into stacks of (dis)advantage. Depending on the sum total of all modifiers, you either have advantage, disadvantage or neither.

Good idea, or would it remove a lot of the "feel" of oldschool D&D?

>>53630964
Goddamn, you guys work fast. I was thinking of writing something down once I had enough time.

>>53631128
Delta's Book of War, but use it for 1:1 combat. The core rules are here
>https://deltasdnd.blogspot.co.nz/2011/09/book-of-war-core-rules.html
and the full book's in the trove. It basically streamlines you down to a d6 roll.

Also if you buy a set or two of dominos and stick the ones with a single blank into a bag, you can generate d6 rolls by drawing a tile, which is sometimes more convenient than rolling. You can do 2d6 on a single tile-draw with two full sets of dominos, discarding some, and 3d6 by having a 2d6 and a d6 bag. You may want to add a couple of extra sets if you want to be able to draw a couple of times without returning the tiles, but that's up to you, and better if you use tiny travel dominos or something.

You now no longer need a flat surface to roll on. Congratulations.

>>53631691
Unfortunately it mostly boiled down to copying powers from the magic section, but it will be revised with stuff from here.

And here it is, feedback very much needed.

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>>53631835
Better version

>>53631963
Rolling randomly I got 24, 15 and 7
Slowly Digesting Meditation of
Rumination and Eloquence
Healing Meditation
Will of the Tao

All these involve sitting down and not moving so, I will name my school:
The Large Mind and Body School.

>>53632280
Also known as the Lazy Monks?

>>53631963
30, 14, 10

The Death Hand School

>>53631963
Fuck Instant Transmission, that was overpowered even in Dragonball Z

>>53632300
Sleeping monks might fit better since they would spend most of their powers in trances.

>>53631963
Crane Poise
One with the Tao
Hungry Ghost Filling Fist

The Spirit Crane School

>>53628637
I read enough wuxia to not really like any part of this.

I can forgive unarmed attacks for being a D&D staple, but they generally use all sorts of weapons.
Good on you for raising damage instead of giving multiple attacks, multiple attacks are cancer.
I associate wuxia with people taking forever to die. The AC bonus is OK, but I'm not a fan of the hp.
And qinggong is less about running fast and more about magic parkour. Running on treetops or spiderwebs or not breaking twigs underfoor, etc.


d10 HD, +d4 after level 9
+1 AC bonus/2 levels
at 3rd level, run on top of anything (at 6th, while encumbered)
at 1st, 5th, and 9th level, gain a spell (custom list?)
free casting, spell levels cast/day can not exceed your level

xp slightly slower than Fighter
average paralyze save, awful poison save, other saves fantastic

no to-hit bonus, no damage bonus

LotFP has 1-axis alignmemt, right?
must be Lawful or Chaotic (maybe give them different spell lists?)

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>>53630344

>>53633292
That's the actual wuxia vs. monks in D&D problem, isn't it? It's pretty much a D&D trope to have unarmed fighting monks side by side with fully armored and armed warriors with their feet firmly planted upon the ground, but in wuxia stories everyone is doing lightfoot work, swordfighters and bare-fisted martial artists, even the mooks at times. Look at something like Dragonfist: the usual D&D classes are there, but even the wizards can run up a wall, backflip and launch flying daggers at their enemies - they just will be less effective at it than the dedicated physical combat characters.

>>53631963
>Expelling Wind Push
>Cloud Body breathing
>Flurry of Blows

The Raging Tornado School

>>53633408
>His left torso half is almost twice as thick as his right side.
Quality animation right there.

>>53634107
He's not facing straight on, but that is pretty bad.

Are there any Psychedelic Fantasies in the trove? Many of them come highly recommended, but for some inexplicable reason precisely those recommended ones aren't available online anywhere. It's infuriating.

>>53634107
>this still from an old low-budget anime based off of a manga that already has highly stylized anatomy and crazy proportions is off model

You don't say. Thanks for pointing that out, I would have never noticed. Stay away from Grappler Baki, it might give you an anuerism.

>>53631963
Looks good, but there's a bunch of minor stuff that could use tightening up (which I guess you know since you called it a draft).

>Snake Fang Strike is strictly better than Acupuncture Jabs AFAICT, maybe explicitly state that Jabs do normal damage as well while Snake Fang Strike does none
>Fat Stripping Cut shouldn't be (S) unless you actually mean that the monk has to hit with an attack to get the attack bonus
>same goes for Eye of Eagle, Concussive Crab and Hungry Ghost Filling Fist (the last one could also be rephrased as a specific strike that hits ghosts, if you don't want it to combine with other strikes)
>Ki Channeling should be touch range IMO, which I think the Heat Metal spell isn't
>a lot of the "as spell" abilities don't specify how often they can be used
>Flurry of Blows specifies the AB of a Cleric even though in LotFP all non-Fighters have BAB +1 on all levels; I also prefer this guy's flurry variant >>53629977
>"Meditation of Rumination" is a really weird sequence of words, those effectively mean the same thing
>I suggest calling #25 "Battle Aura"
>not sure if it's deliberate but Sword-Catching Moment is about a million times better if you also rolled Flurry of Blows
>Quivering Palm is retardedly OP (but since it's OSR, possibly who gives a fuck, some swingy shit might be fun. If you do care though I suggest giving unarmed backstab damage instead)

Rolled 21, 21, 17 = 59 (3d30)

>>53631963

>>53634775
>2x Yama Picks Up Sack of Rocks
>Hungry Ghost Filling Fist

Hell King Conquering Fist School

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Has anyone here read this? Is it worth paying 7 dollars for?

>>53635252
I've seen people ask that in osrg, but I've never seen them get replies.
If the file share thread has any idea, could you link their answer?

What modules by Gabor Lux are good? There are several in Fight On magazine.

>>53634107
It's eighties Toei. You can't expect much. The animation gets much better a few arcs later, and more so in the final one, but the most noticeable bump is in the sequel series. Coincidentally, the sequel series sucks past the first arc.

Cassandra arc (which probably had the best animation in Hokuto no Ken barring individual important fights)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF3dUsE2R6k
HnK 2 (the actual main antagonist of this arc is very obviously based on Dolph Lundgreen if you're wondering):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjj5XejutCE

>>53636052
Noticed I contradicted myself. The last arc was good in that they mostly abandoned the awful stock footage, but the coloring and shading in Cassandra was very good and there was a fairly limited usage of stock footage

>>53635984
Pretty much all of them. Melan is one of the most consistently good creators in the OSR.

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>>53635252
I wouldn't bother, just look at new wave OSR shit and realise you should do whatever you want so long as it's:
a) easy to use at the table, and
b) not some bullshit I could write myself with minimal effort

Following some rote guidelines is bullshit. The main strength of the OSR is raucous non-standardised content.
Hell, a bunch of big OSR names published a dick-based adventure last month and people seemed totally ok with it.

>>53635252
I don't know, but try this http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/13085/roleplaying-games/jaquaying-the-dungeon

I've been toying with the idea of a dungeon stocking mini game, but I'd like to check if this already exists out in the wild; you roll for some monsters, place them out, and then you go over two-three generations of them fighting for territory (in a quick abstract sort of way) to quickly give some history to the dungeon and determine what monster groups will have bigger numbers and tougher leaders etc.

The entire process should take like 10-15 min max, and should be usable for dungeon restocking as well.

I basically wanna pick out some cool monsters, and then quickly generate a good reason why different groups occupy what spaces and what the relation between them are.

How do I make a OSR feeling setting using a modern system (D&D 5e)?

Why there is no OSR forums instead of that shitty odd74?

>>53636394
Use not overused convention, like science-fantasy or sword&planet, or mix conventions.
Start small, create a wilderness hex map and a sandbox.
Read about the idea of Points of Light. D&D Essentials Dungeon Master Kit had good example of points of light setting.

>>53636393
How To Host A Dungeon takes longer than 10-15 minutes, but its pretty much what you're talking about. Its a fun game, worth taking a look at.

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>>53636394
5e is never really going to click in as OSR because of its over-reliance on stats and focus on combat. If you want to do it that badly, talk with your group, getting them to play something like Labyrinth Lord or Swords and Wizardry can't be that hard

http://www.welshpiper.com/hex-based-campaign-design-part-1/ This is the best English resource for learning sandbox.

>>53636283
>Hell, a bunch of big OSR names published a dick-based adventure last month and people seemed totally ok with it.

Because Raggi and pals making edgy shit revolving around penises is old fucking hat. It's less that we're fine with it, it's that we don't fucking care.

>>53636509
I might see if I can modify that to be a much smaller scale dungeon. If I remember it, how to host a dungeon is for a really big megadungeon?

>>53631128
I'd suggest taking a look at Whitehack

>>53631128
Why bother having mechanics? Roll 1d20, high is good, low is bad. Hurp.

>>53637240
Edgy shit is by the by, it's more that Raggi lets everyone do their own thing in terms of layout.

It's not like Raggi has written anything himself for a while. He peaked with DFD (which Zak updated better) and BTAM.

Basically my point was -
Don't follow convention. There are no conventions.
OSR is doing cool shit and only caring about whether it's good and useful.

>>53638017
It seems suited for megadungeons for sure. It doesn't really get into specific magnitude/scale but yeah, they feel big and ancient when I made them. You can probably do it in chunks, taking part of the whole thing and just focusing on that. Your idea of them fighting over generations made me think of how2host.

Tables of what the various monsters get up to over time would be cool though.

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>>53638447
I kinda like the mongrel thing, because they seem earnestly stupid or something?
Raggi and Chandler are all "wow so edgy I put a dick monster in a module", mongrels are all "ha ha dicks".

I'm not regretting buying Munticore is what I'm saying.

>>53636352
That's map design, not module design.
It's good info, but it's not "how to avoid padding 28 pages."


>>53636473
>create a wilderness hex map
This is a thing nobody ever explains how to do, so
>>53636394
here's the rundown:


Draw a map, not a hex map, a map. Put roads, rivers, elevation, and political boundaries on it.
The map should be realistic enough that it doesn't rustle any of your player's jimmies.
If you're playing with a geography major, run a few maps by them to get the hang of it (etc).

Lay a hex grid over the map.

For each hex, pick the first appropriate hex type on this list, Swamp - Woods - Plains - Desert - Hills - Mountains

Write an encounter table for each hex type. Copy each table for each relevant region (whatever feels appropriate).
Roll a few times for each region, replacing those entries with something you wouldn't find elsewhere.


You don't need to nail locations to the map unless PCs have found/heard where they are.
You can stick most (or all!) unknown set pieces on encounter tables.

>>53638679
I'd really think it would be handy to have a simple tool that lets you quickly get a feeling of the dungeon being alive. I'll post something later in the week. Thanks for reminding me of how2host

>>53639975
A random generation dungeon ecology/politics game would be really neat. Deep Forest is kind of like that too.

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Just altered it with 12% less words this time.
Any ideas on things I could do to improve it?

>>53636437

Folks yell at each other on either Google+ or via their blogs. There's RPGNet but drama happens there and I think a few of the big names fled. ZakS used to post on somethingawful until they triggered him with talking about Dungeon World too much.

>>53641021
>ZakS used to post on somethingawful until they triggered him with talking about Dungeon World too much.
Nah, Zak only ever posted on SA when grognards.txt decided to make it their lives' mission to shit on him and his girlfriend for some reason, AFAIK.

>>53637240
>>53636283

>Hell, a bunch of big OSR names published a dick-based adventure last month and people seemed totally ok with it.
Or maybe everyone realised it was an obvious joke and they were just having fun

>>53642370
fun isn't allowed here

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>>53635252
No idea, but dude.. $7.

Just go find out if you like it or not.

>>53641021
>a few of the big names fled
Got banned more like.
Actually in Raggi's case it was more like a principled suicide-by-mod.

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>>53642650
>Actually in Raggi's case it was more like a principled suicide-by-mod.

The stakes have never been lower.

>>53631963
Excellent work.

>>53617141
Ugh, you ditched Rogue's March? Actually ran a heist over three sessions with my group. Was a solid project. Why'd you dump it?

>>535975984
Wha...? There aren't perception checks in DCC. And the spell checks are TOTALLY different than how they're done in 3rd edition. They're in place to see how powerful the spell manifests.

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https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/osr-teleport-spells-and-also-math.html

While writing up Sessions 5 and 6 of Tomb of the Serpent Kings, I realized that I needed to discuss how teleport spells work in my setting.

There's math involved.

>>53643141
>There's math involved.
You MONSTER!

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>>53642895
I wouldn't say I ditched it. It's just been sitting on the backburner for so long and I wasn't feeling very...inspired.

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

I may or may not get around to finishing it. That other thing I posted was just a visual skin for the homebrew I've been running at my table. It'll prolly be the last anyone ever sees of it haha

>>53643141
Not in the same vein, but I read http://www.wuxiaworld.com/isbbtw-index/isbbtw-chapter-20/ earlier today and was vaguely reminded of it by your post.

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>>53643172
I already did all the difficult math (the bits involving cosines). All you need to do is addition and/or division.

does anybody here happen to have the 1st issue of that magazine Axioms, run by Autarch, the guys who make Adventurer Conquerer King? Specifically I'm looking for the rules they give for creating new types of spells.

>>53591005
The part is sent to loot a recently uncovered ruin built by the Ancients, before the times of fire and death. The Fighter and Rogue hold off an ever-growing horde of zombies as the Wizard attempts to translate the carvings on a huge monolith just outside the entrance. First paragraph: WE BELIEVED OUR CULTURE TO BE POWERFUL. WE BELIEVED THIS KNOWLEDGE WOULD BE IMPORTANT TO FUTURE GENERATIONS Fighter and Rogue tactically retreat almost to the Wizard. Second paragraph: NO KING OR HERO IS BURIED HERE. NOTHING OF VALUE IS BURIED HERE. Fighter and Rogue are putting themselves between the zombies and the Wizard as he tries to discern what important clue the Ancients were trying to leave. Third paragraph: GROUND AND WATER LOOKS SAFE BUT KILLS. DO NOT DIG OR DRILL HERE. Fighter, Rogue and Wizard flee into the ruin, slamming the door behind them. Right as the door closes the Wizard looks back. AREA SEALED YEAR TWO THOUSAND. WASTE SEVEN HUNDRED METERS DOWN. The party turns as the automatic lights of facility hum to life...

>>53643600
I've used that exact concept in my planetary fantasy hexcrawl; I didn't use the text, though, just the pamphlet instructions on how to make a dread-inducing environment and so on. I replaced the text with illustrations.

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A teleport spell that can only take you to places you've heard of but never visited would be neat.

>>53643141
>The direction is due west (if moving closer to the equator) or due east (if moving further from it). I think. Someone check my math here.
That's correct, provided Creation spins east like Earth does.


Tangentially related, the Earth's rotation is a main causes of wind (temperature difference is also big, there are many smaller reasons).
If you take a sailboat west then, in a very real sense, you are tethering yourself to the sky and letting the Earth move under you.

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It's nearly finished...

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More of a /tg/wbg/ thing than /tg/osrg/ thing, but /tg/osrg/ talks about worldbuilding a lot:
The last* hour or so of this was golden https://youtu.be/04wyGK6k6HE
*the rest was good too, but the first hour is really more of a /pol/ thing

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>>53645222
You're going to have to give a little more info than that before I sit down to an hour of two americans talking into microphones. What exactly am I signing up for?

>>53645260
>two americans
A leaf does most of the talking.

>give a little more info
It starts on about Canadian laws regarding "proper pronouns" then bridges around ideology, Marxism, and post-modernism.
The last hour is (largely) unrelated. He ties it back in at the end, but it's about psychology, narrative archetypes, and society.


>before I sit down to an hour of two
Sit down for ten minutes. if you find it interesting, keep going.

>>53641609
Zak posted everywhere and his distinctive posting style got him run out of a few places. Dude is fucking hell to argue with, and he makes everything into an argument.

>>53644003
>A teleport spell that can only take you to places you've heard of but never visited would be neat.
Makes a weird kind of sense. You need to know the place well enough to teleport there, but places change over time, and once you've been there the reality of it as it was when you visited before is too firmly lodged in your mind for the spell to get you to the place as it is now.

The solution is to get a bit drunk so your memory blurs.

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>>53645472
I like the idea of a group of wizards who try to come up with plausible descriptions of places and try to teleport hirelings there. They dream of gold cities - but not to golden - and treasure halls - but plausible halls.

Or some wizards who are trying to crossbreed scrying spells with teleport spells to let you see your destination before you arrive. This is difficult work. Teleport spells are notoriously fidgety. So far, they've found a spell that lets you teleport to anywhere no one can currently see, and a spell that teleports the caster's eyeballs 10' to the left.

Or the Dolmen Gates, lined up very, very carefully east to west. You can use them as teleport markers and not have to worry about exploding on arrival. They were used by the Ancient Empire to transport armies and war-beasts, it is said.

>>53645032
Also, session 5 and 6 are written up:

https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/osr-tomb-of-serpent-kings-session-5-6.html

Spoiler alert: it's not looking good. On the other hand, the survivors are rich, and they've learned to listen at doors.

>>53640935
Nice a flavour, albeit a bit wordy. More inspiration read than something for the table I feel.

Has anyone here ever managed to make sense of how to use Chainmail with OD&D rules?

>>53646020
Too ~*elegant*~ for me.

>>53645032
Really nice map dude, good looping

>>53645445
>his distinctive posting style got him run out of a few places

That's a generous interpretation. The man is a self-important asshole with no end of axes to grind. I like his art and there is a certain charm to his written work but it's unfortunate that he is a public face of the osr.

>>53645623
>(A wand stores 1 spell, and provides a free MD to use that spell. The number of charges = the number of MD the wand can provide, ever. You can use a wand like a spellbook and store )
Missing the end of your sentence.
>They divided up Thomas' belongings (Antonia kept the spellbooks)
Anyone nick the spells from his skull?

>>53646020
Nah, I found out about the Adventurer Conqueror King: Domains at War rules. Since then I have never used another mass-combat system.

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Revised Lamentation of the Flame Princess Monk Class

>>53647690
9 more Techniques and I can make the chart 2d20

>>53593333
The author is into open source.

>>53636283
>Following some rote guidelines is bullshit.
Following some rote guidelines is bullshit if you already know what you're doing. Not everybody's a vet (though admittedly probably a lot more vets on /osr than elsewhere). I haven't read this particular example, but guides of this sort can be pretty handy when you're starting out. There's a lot of "obvious" pitfalls that aren't necessarily that obvious to someone with less experience.

The point being - you've got to learn to color in the lines before you start trying to figure out when you should ignore them. Books like this can be useful for getting over that first step.

>>53646020
You mean for D&D combat? Because using Chainmail to run minis battles set in a D&D campaign is really straightforward.

>>53646020
Assuming >>53649466, here's how it works. Part 1 of 2 because I ran up against the character limit.

• You use the MTM and Fantastic Combat rules, as well as the Chainmail morale rules. Regular Chainmail combat is not used. (You do also use the jousting rules, when NPC Fighting-Men leave their castles to demand a joust -- but that's a detail.)

• All hits do 1d6 damage unless otherwise specified -- which is *rare*. Ogres, giants and dragons are the only exceptions I can think of off the cuff.

• Rather than advancing in attack bonus, the primary means of improvement in fighting ability is to gain extra attacks as you level up. These apply to anything you fight using the MTM rules, not just "monsters with 1 HD or less" or any other reworking from later editions. Again: *Anything that fights using MTM rules*, anything that isn't on the FCT, is subject to multiple attacks. This is absolutely necessary because if it didn't work this way Fighting-Men just wouldn't improve at all at fighting regular humans, for most of their leveling (and would also get worse at it a few times).

• Fighting monsters that *do* appear on the FCT, you use the Hero, Superhero, or Wizard entries to determine your chance to hit if you've achieved those levels; hits still do 1d6 damage. Starkly opposite to MTM, weapon and armor types are not relevant for Fantastic Combat; only skill and magic equipment matters. You get only one attack per round against monsters, regardless of level.

>>53650001
Part 2.

• If you *haven't* reached requisite levels to be on the FCT table it's a bit less clear; this is the only real ambiguity in using Chainmail rules in D&D. Arguably, you can't do shit against these monsters unless you have at least a group of 20 men to attack with (so that you count as one figure in ordinary Chainmail combat). How you resolve this must ultimately be up to you as referee; the only thing that's entirely clear is that you *can't* use "counts-as" rulings for the MTM rules, that is, for example saying that a dragon counts as a plate-armored target. The reason you can't do this is that it, I believe universally, makes the monster easier to hit for low-level combatants than for heroes.

• Heroes and Superheroes gain a bunch of brutal special abilities in accordance with Chainmail rules that you have to pay attention to; they were fairly clearly meant to be used. In general, the Fantasy Supplement's decriptions must be read carefully, as OD&D implies that all of that stuff is used, and refers to it at times.

• Optionally you *can* also decide to go full Chainmail and disregard hit points entitrely, deciding that fighting as "3 Men" means you can survive two blows before dying to the third. This solves a bunch of problems, doesn't meaningfully change survivability (the average blow still kills the average level 1 when using HP) and arguably is also very fun, but it does mean that from level 4, Fighting-Men become stupendously powerful against normal men and lesser monsters; they then require 4 *simultaneous hits in one round* to go down, and on Superhero level, 8.

• D&D magic rules entirely supersede Chainmail magic rules, except where the latter explain shit like "what is Hallucinatory Terrain even for?".

Did I forget anything?

>>53643600

This is cool. And makes me ask "what's the closest thing right now to Thundarr the Barbarian?"

>>53648188
No, you dolt! Why use a git repo at all?

It seems mad to use version control on discreet PDFs.

The author knows they can just stick licenses in their books, right?
And they should consider gitlab, considering github ignores the GPL when following takedown notices.

>>53646020
Yeah, don't. Chainmail's a mediocre set and the interaction between 1:1 and larger scales is royally fucked when you try to include fantasy stuff.

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>>53646761
Fixed. And nobody nicked his skull. He only had Dissolve loaded, so it's not a huge loss.

The "Light (Octarine) (Enhanced)" spell is still in Spackles' spellbook though...

This is a long shot, are there any Paranormal exterminators Old School game with more modern setting than middle ages.

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What do y'all think of OSH?

I feel like it streamlines a lot more than other OSR stuff and I like it.

>>53652474
To be honest, I've never ended up liking any game with "Hack" in the name. I think the people who like to describe shit as "hacks" must share some sort of pretentious/retarded subenvironment that makes them bad at writing games.

>>53652474
>I feel like it streamlines a lot more than other OSR stuff
>1st-level characters have half a dozen special abilities to choose from
>"spend Awesome Points!"
>sets of combat cards
>Inherents and Limitations
>streamlining
I don't think that word means what you think it means.

>>53652474
Seems terrible and you should feel bad. I'm not gonna play a game that let's you use "awesome points" to recover powers. I get that this system has encumbrance rules, but in what other way is this old school?

>>53652801
I do actually like the weapon rules though and the encumbrance isn't terrible. I think bonuses basedan on situation makes a lot of sense to distinguish weapons instead of different damage dice.

>>53652801
>in what other way is this old school?
I agree. This doesn't seem old school at all, and it definitely isn't OSR; how is this compatible with 1970s D&D?

Hell, even Tunnels and Trolls is more OSR than this, and that fag keeps getting shouted out of here.

>>53645445
>Dude is fucking hell to argue with, and he makes everything into an argument.
I've seen people claim this probably literally a hundred times, and yet I've never seen him do it, or seen him use any rhetoric worse ad more obnoxious than "asking what exactly someone means when they try to slip some insane shit past him", or for that matter seen him start an argument at all.

Frankly it's really hard not to see this kind of claim as trying to brigade against the motherfucker, even here.

>>53636437
There's Dragonsfoot, but they tend to focus more on AD&D (1st and 2nd). They do have sections for B/X and clones

>>53652474
>once you choose a class it belongs to you

Wow, I've never dropped a game so fast.

>>53636437
>Why there is no OSR forums
There are a ton, actually. Kank-A (http://knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/), The RPG Site, Dragonsfoot, The Comeback Inn, The Piazza, to name but a few.

Most of them are shit, but they exist.

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>>53653322
Have you... seen him comment on stuff on the internet? He'd be laughed off of here for being a tryhard, that's for sure. He's like Fightman. He'll fight all day, he'll fight all night, he'll fight until the cows come home and then he'll fight the fucking cows.

His books are OK, but he seems like an unpleasant person to interact with. I'm not sure why people bother.

Plus, how the fuck are we going to brigade anyone? There are 49 unique posters in this thread. We couldn't organize a piss-up at a brewery.

>>53652330
Silent Legions. Cryptworld.

>>53653662
>49 unique posters
82 currently

>>53653662
>Have you... seen him comment on stuff on the internet?
I have, that's why I wrote that. He doesn't seem bad to me at all, the only difference between him and a regular guy is he won't stand for being shit on to an unlimited extent -- like when those dunces lost their minds over him being a consultant on D&D and claimed he was a transphobic racist or whatever shit it was, he actually fought back instead of taking the socially accepted fag option of just soaking it, apologizing and getting blacklisted. Whenever nobody's actively shitting on him he seems perfectly reasonable to me.

>He'd be laughed off of here for being a tryhard, that's for sure.
I wish, but the state of bait on /tg/ nowadays seems to put the lie to that pretty resoundingly.

>Plus, how the fuck are we going to brigade anyone? There are 49 unique posters in this thread. We couldn't organize a piss-up at a brewery.
I totally agree, thus the "even here" part. I can't understand why anyone would bother trying.

>>53652474
What do you like about it that relates to osr? Seems more style over content in relation to osr. The extent of the style they're using is 'there are fighters and wizards like there are in dnd'. More streamlined than 3.5 for sure though, so there's that?

The weapon and arena type is an interesting mechanization of a thing hopefully players and dms are up to already. Not too into the way the class moves are implemented, just feels like a poorly written pbta move while trying to stick with 3rd edition combat actions. Don't really like the way it handles getting knocked out most of the time, one of the things about abstracting combat to a harm clock variant is to make it bloody and fucked up, as is, its just wifflebats 70% of the time. Cards, hexes and tokens seem out of place for how abstract its trying to make things, just clutters up what it was trying to slim down.

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>>53653809
Ah, I hovered over images. Looks like we've got a brigade. I'd like to suggest a raid. Let's all be really encouraging and nice and post OC and then, when people, least expect it, we'll strike... with compliments.

>>53653825
>I wish, but the state of bait on /tg/ nowadays seems to put the lie to that pretty resoundingly.

Now that I can agree on. It's shameful.

>>53653988
>OC
You clever devil
>Compliments
Incredibly fiendish, I like it.

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>>53654036
Let's be honest, it's the last thing they'll expect.

>>53591073
Unfortunately I dont have any suggestions, but might I ask why the Apple flavor new mellinium style tech over old hardlines, huge clunky server rooms with floppy disc, and crt screens peaking out of a wrist mount? In my mind OSR cyberpunk would be best suited to classic cyberpunk tropes. Just wondering why you made this decision.

>>53653988
The edge between minor defeat and siege should be stalemate.
The center should be religious strife.

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>>53654179
>The center should be religious strife.
Considered that, but I figure that if you're rolling once per year, and strife is ongoing until resolved, it works. Besides, it's a joke.

Feel free to give me 10d6 and I'll give you a Byzantine decade.

>>53654277
>Feel free to give me 10d6
Can I get a mailing address.
You P.O. box or whatever?

What's an adventure with a good home-base, a sort of place with a bunch of personality and charm?

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>>53654359
I know his address. It's 'his mom's house, down the stairs, in the basement'.

Seriously though, we had this joke last thread.

Gonna run ASE on roll20.
Anyone ran it? Wondering if it will work out to let the players do all the mapping or if I should prepare. I have a few bad experiences with letting the players do it but that was with kids and newbs, who weren't very attentive to my descriptions.
Any other experiences or tips regarding the module?

anyone gotten Swords of Kos? What's your experience with it?

>>53652474
OSH is a cool game with some fun ideas but it definitely doesn't fit into the box containing osr.
OSH is derived from a game called Red Box Hack which didn't gain much traction. Even RBH is pretty far removed from osr sensibilities.
All that being said OSH is a fun little amalgam of old school aesthetics and new school design in the vein of Fate, PbtA, and 4e D&D.
It doesn't really merit discussion in this forum but don't let the detractors quell your curiosity.

>>53653662
>I'm not sure why people bother.

He's so COOL and AVANT-GARDE. Plus he's had SEX with ACTUAL WOMEN. That's why he's face of the OSR because afhl;ueuohfejfoife

Let this be known as the /osrg/ thread where one anon died from a stroke while typing on his keyboard, and nobody acknowledged it for two hours.

>>53657923
Must've taken immense mental effort to still click "Post" and let the rest of us know of his sacrifice.

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>>53657961
Let alone solve the fucking captcha...

Besides, I figured those were his orgasm noises. Just typing "SEX with ACTUAL WOMEN" pushed him over the edge.

>>53654463
>What's an adventure with a good home-base, a sort of place with a bunch of personality and charm?
Counter-questions: What kind of personality do you want? and does it have to be an adventure AND a homebase packaged as one? Because I'd want to suggest CSIO and Yoon-Suin's Yellow City but neither of those has a finished adventure boxed in, just tons of material to generate adventures from and in the case of CSIO, associated separate adventures.

>>53652474
>>53652801
>Seems terrible and you should feel bad
It's not terrible... it's just that its relationship with old school RP starts and ends with the name. It's really just a modern RPG with a few old school conceits... more in common with Savage Worlds or Fate than with OD&D.

>>53653662
>not sure why people bother
I'm more curious to know why people have such a hate boner. Maybe it's because he gets to have real sex with ladies, gets paid to do that and similar pursuits, gets paid for his art, and wins awards. Maybe it's just whiny neckbeards that spent 3 billion hours in a word processor with no acknowledgement for their D&D heartbreakers assblasted for life.

I'd rather just be angry about elves and run campaigns.

Who are the chess hypermodernists of the OSR?

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>>53660293
That seems plausible, except Patrick Fucking Stuart also is sick of him >>53653662

Magic 8 ball says "Try Again Later".

>>53660400
>chess hypermodernists
What does this even mean?

>>53660748
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermodernism_(chess)
Socrates, but with games and without hemlock.

>>53660400
If I had to nominate somebody, it might be Chris McDowell/Into the Odd.
>slays sacred cows left and right (class, levels, magic spells, attack rolls, goldpiece incentive)
>hyperlight game engine
>results in fun, playable game rather than a demonstration of minimalism, that still feels old school

>>53660400
I think it's False Patrick and Arnold Punch. Constant weird bullshit, but somehow they end up being some of the strongest players in the field.

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>>53662418
>False Patrick and Arnold Punch

>>53590848

What's that image from?

>>53660400
Skerples and Alexander Macris

>>53662601
Hyper Light Drifter

>>53662601 c >>53591246

>>53662646
t. the Skerples name-dropper

>>53662239
This guy knows what's what.

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>>53662646
>Skerples
Disagree. Aside from my system-light stuff and a bit of weirdness concerning elementals/spells/souls, I think my content is pretty "standard".

>>53662239
Chris is a strong contender. I'd also mention
>early modern dreamlands setting

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>>53591246
Oh man, I totally missed this post! My bad. Guess I missed the whole "3.5hrs" thing...

Anyway, how'd it go?

New thread? New thread

>>53665094
>>53665094
>>53665094

>>53653322
>or seen him use any rhetoric worse ad more obnoxious than "asking what exactly someone means when they try to slip some insane shit past him"
This is it. You say anything, even the most basic and fully supported stuff, and he derails into asking "what exactly do you mean, please elaborate" and nitpicking tiny details and doing the same on your replies and utterly refusing to address the actual point.

just so yall know the MCC kickstarter is coming out in PDF form sometime this month.

I'll send pdfs to the troveguy the day it comes. :)