OSR General - OSRIC IS MY LIFE edition

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Hey OSR general. Last thread there was a bit of discussion about Flesh and Grit based HP systems. Has anyone here actually used them? I ask because I really like the concept and it seems to be really cool from both a gameplay and realism standpoint, but how much does it actually add? Enough to justify the extra bookkeeping and extra new rules everyone has to learn?

I never got a chance to thank CritKeeper Guy for adding RC to the B/X section of the site. Thanks!

I'm looking to play a simple level 1-whatever hexcrawl campaign with some anons. I'm working on a 40x40 mile grid for players to explore, and it similar to KotBL, except a little larger, and with a few surrounding ruins of varying types for players to explore, among other things.

Format will be RC on Critkeeper. I need at least 3 people to be interested, and if they are, I'll kick my production of the map into overdrive.

>why is your favorite OSR game your favorite?
AD&D 2e, for breadth of content and nostalgia.

no troubles. i'm probably gonna add some other B series modules aside from B4, as well. when I can.

critkeeper.site88.net/

>Immediately after combat, once per day, any adventurer can bind the wounds of another PC, restoring 1d4 HP.
One thing I've never liked is how much longer it takes high level characters to heal. I figure they should heal in about the same amount of time. So I like to give characters some kind of healing factor that's something like 1 plus 1/10 of their max hit points. Whenever they get a chance to rest and treat their wounds, they heal 1d4 times their healing factor.

That means that they regain a bit more than 25% of their maximum hit points on average. If you want to reduce that a bit, make it 1d4-1 times their healing factor. That heals them a bit more than 15% of their max. Either way, it means that low level characters don't spring back from the brink of death to fully healed in a day or two, while high level characters languish for weeks.

Why is the Rules Compendium under the B/X section of the site?

>Rules Compendium
Cyclopedia

i can just change the link from D&D B/X to just D&D.

>46983687
>Suggestions for running a game where my players can actually have a long-running character & campaign? Its not easy in OSR.

>Should I be kind when it comes to dying, or just say fuck it and run 5e? Do you have any 0hp house rules (aside from what was posted above)?
I think dying at 0 hit points is frankly ridiculous. The idea that you can go from being fine (or at least acting without penalty) to being stone cold dead in the space of a single hit point doesn't sit well with me. Having people be incapacitated or unconscious at 0 and dead at some lower point makes good sense to me. This point could be -10 or -5, negative hit points equal to your level, negative hit points equaling some fraction of your maximum hit points (1/4? 1/5?), etc.

Also, death checks/saves of some sort.

I don't really mind, it's just that the RC/BECMI is different from the B/X rules.

Maybe call it Basic D&D, so people don't think it's all D&D, Advanced included.

Is that considered OSR instead of just OS? I will say that 2e is the edition of DnD I have had the most fun with, but I think that might have been because of the group and it was my Friday night thing. Then I had to go to college, and then move across the country. Then one of my favorite guys in the group died. I can really never go back.

OSR is usually filled with old guys. Is this what getting old is like? Even remembering DnD sessions is bitter sweet.

2e is the very end of OS until the OSR, and dubiously OS at that. 2e's where story/objective-based XP rewards really come in, but it's simple enough to bring back the xp for gp rules (Return to the Keep on the Borderlands has them built in), and it's 99% compatible with AD&D 1e, so you can break out 'true OSR' content.

DCC. It's amazing to me. The funky-dice and tables usually turn everyone away, but they're missing a great RPG with fantastic adventure modules (and a super creative fan base).

Second would be LotFP. It's incredibly simple and my choice when running most any old-school adventure. It's official 16th century Euopean setting is cool, but I like that it's malleable enough to not need to adhere to that.

third would be Mutant Future, tho I've yet to run it. I just love that it's essentially Gamma World B/X.

Oh hey, DCC is the only one I own. I looked at LotFP and, maybe because I just got the version without art, it was a wall of text that just felt hard to read.

And I forgot to continue after my wall of text comment. Can you give me the elevator pitch of the mechanics of the game? Maybe one for the tone of the game too?

download the with-art version from the trove. It's layout is actually really lovely (aside from Raggi putting certain info in odd areas).

>the elevator pitch of the mechanics of the game?
It's B/X with d6-based skills.

>the tone of the game too?
It's probably the grimmest OSR game on the market. Sort of like WHFRP in tone.

for LotFP? welp...

based off B/X. lots of similarities.
everyone can attempt any skill on a d6, but only a specialist (thief 2.0) can increase odds.
only fighters get better at fighting.
no roll to cast a spell, you just do it.

this image should give you a good idea of the tone.

as should this one.

How do I design an OSR campaign? I've never DMed an old school game, and haven't played any in like a decade, but I want to start one this summer.

>How do I design an OSR campaign?
What do you mean by campaign? You can use things like A1-4, T1-4, and GDQ1-7 as examples.

You can also use DL1-14 as a campaign example of what NOT to do, as the series becomes quite railroady after DL4.

Game wise? Beyond the Wall, probably, just for the atmosphere in the game.
I'm thinking of using it to run a game set in A Red And Pleasant Land.

what are some decent hex mapping tools?

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Yeah, I mean a series of connected adventures/modules a la A1-A4.

Hexographer, though most of the features are locked behind a paywall.

If you want to imitate the TSR clear hex overlay that came in some box sets, you can dump a map into Photoshop and have a hex grid on another layer.

I'd like to make maps in the TSR Blueprint style of map.

Hexographer and Dungeonographer, though they default to colour and black respectively.

Honest question to all the fine 2e anons: what are the things that make the AD&D2 rules special to you? In other words, what are the most evocative aspects?

I ask because I'm thinking of doing some kind of retro-clone or update or compilation or SOMETHING. A lot of the reasons I think of seem to be because of nostalgia and the fact it was my first RPG love, as it were. I look at other retro-clones or reworkings of other editions and they seem so much slicker and streamlined that I wonder if doing such a thing is a fools errand.

What's the best AD&D/OSRIC/LL:AE module for getting friends who've never played an old school game before, into them?

My intro back in the day was Keep on the Borderlands, but it's for Basic.

There's the 2e retroclone For Gold & Glory, but I haven't had a look at it. I generally use 2e itself, because I don't really see the need for retroclones when I've got the books right next to me, you know?

Dark Sun (the proto epic level system like defiler dragons, fighters that interact VERY well with Birthright), Birthright (the domain management) or Battlesystem (for mass combat), Spelljammer (the ships), etc.

An alternate idea: you heal 1 hp per hit die when you rest. So a level 1 character gets 1 hp a day, a level 10 gets 10. Everyone heals at the same rate.

Oh no, Scenarii's links are all dead. I knew I should have downloaded them all while they were still around.

Basic modules can be dumped straight into AD&D with pretty much nil in the way of tweaks. Replace monsters with the AD&D counterpart, convert characters with levels, and done.

My first was was Palace of the Silver Princess in AD&D 2e.

Awesome, thanks! I'll just start them off with Keep on the Borderland.

I haven't played Palace of the Silver Princess, but I imagine retrofitting it back to 1e is a bit more difficult anyway.

Wow this is actually pretty good stuff, a lot of it is surprisingly D&Dish for a sci fi setting

>An alternate idea: you heal 1 hp per hit die when you rest.
That would work pretty decently if you used all d6 hit dice, like OD&D (which I frankly think are superior for other reasons as well). With variable hit dice, it might be a bit wonky. Magic Users would heal 40% of their maximum hit points when they rest, while Fighters would heal only 22% or 18% (depending on whether we're going with Basic's d8 hit dice or AD&D's d10). Of course, that's kind of the way it is now, and to do things differently would be a boost to tougher classes, but then so is moving to AD&D's larger hit dice.

For Gold & Glory pretty much just takes all the old books and mashes them into one with a few other things added in. I get just using the old books, but a system with Ascending AC and To-Hit bonuses and a less obtuse saving throw system might be nice.

So really just the settings they published, not the rules at all?

>retrofitting it back to 1e is a bit more difficult anyway.
Nah. Grab a pdf of GAZ6 or something, they have the rules for converting characters between BECMI and 1e, and everything else is straight replacement.

>but a system with Ascending AC and To-Hit bonuses and a less obtuse saving throw system might be nice.
But I like THAC0 just as much as Ascending AC. Almost the exact same formula in my head. I could take or leave how saving throws are, I kind of like having more than 3.

Actually, while I'm thinking about it, it'd pretty easy to use OD&D-style hit dice as the basis for to-hit bonuses as well, and maybe even saving throw bonuses (you could pad the latter by having magic-users start off with better saves, only to fall behind, which might not be a bad thing considering how frail starting magic-users are). So, for instance, a 3rd level fighter has 3 hit dice while a 3rd level magic-user has only 2. So the fighter gets a +3 bonus to-hit, while the magic-user is a point behind at +2. You'd maybe want to play around with the hit dice progression, but it seems like a nice, simple way of doing things.

Rather the opposite, I find myself using rules from those settings every time we do 2e without the settings.

Obviously SJs are not of universal value, although, say, andeloids (slimes that pull multiple creatures into a single fusion until they reach max capacity and have a joint hellish consciousness) are creatures of universal value as far as making deranged abominations of Chaos.

Defiler dragons may not fit all settings, but half giants and half dwarves are certainly fitting for most all settings (at least, any that have giants, dwarves, and half elves). Defiler magic is also generally fitting as its got a strong necromantic flair, but also witches were blamed for ruining crops etc.

Finally, Birthright is... actually... I'm not sure how well I liked the implementation however they got fairly close as far as how to run a good domain management game.

Yeah, but you can argue that the Fighter can recover from wounds that would kill the wizard, it just takes a little longer. In this way of looking at it, they all have d8 or d10, but for the weaker classes a good chunk of that is in the "unconscious and dying" range.

This sound sucpiciously close to the "HP loss is blood loss" argument. I'm not he, but I prefer the "HP is plot armor/luck. Once it's out it is a blow that could fell a mortal man."

Also, SJs are highly underrated for those who like battlemaps and don't want to make too many of them.

Hmmm, you think pulling the more generally useful things from each boxed set and compiling them into a core rules would give a 2e "feel"?

Maybe I'm asking just what about 2e rules stands out among the others?

Ultimately, I don't know what would go in or what would be universally acceptable for something like that.

Yeah, this is why I like the flesh/grit system, it takes the ambiguity out, and fixes all this wonky healing rate stuff, by just splitting HP into two numbers: one for literal "meat points" and one for "fighting spirit."

As a total aside, has anyone tried out any of the Microlite games? I'm curious to see how they run and if they can work for a long-term campaign.

>what about 2e rules stands out among the others?It was built to be modular and plug and play. So if you're not doing Basic, its the one you can reduce to a really simple framework and then rebuild on top of relatively painlessly, while still having support within existing published materials for doing that.

Appendix N

Mentioned this in the last thread, but in the Trove under !Gm Resources, the "LeBlanc Hex Maps" is giving me errors when I try to download it. "File no longer accessible"

Oh wait, that's the same as the A2XA maps, huh? 'Cause those are down too. Must be a DMCA or something.

haven't run any of them yet, but of the ones I've read, I think Microlite 74 might be the best version, 75 and 81 make some changes that don't sit quite right with me in comparison(and older Microlite 20 material can be a bit disjointed in nature for my tastes)

Is there a Discord chat or anything in use here?

Time/day/method of communication?

So how cancer is my homebrew?
>Races are not classes
>Removal of clerics/they are fused with MUs
>Totally renovated class system
>Damage, To-Hit, and AC have been streamlined and combined into very simple Attack vs Defense
>Only fighters can fight worth a shit
>Thieves have one universal roll under number for skills, learn new skills in game
>Magic System is totally different and magic users are balanced
>No difference between level XP costs between classes

r8

I don't see anything that's necessarily bad.

>Races are not classes
I personally like race-as-class, but separate race and class could be done well (even though they frequently are not).

>Removal of clerics/they are fused with MUs
I'm not a big fan of the cleric concept, so I wouldn't miss them that much, though giving magic-users access to their spells could be a bit broken. One of the big things that kept old school wizards from getting too overpowered was that there were things they couldn't really do with their spells.

>Totally renovated class system
>Damage, To-Hit, and AC have been streamlined and combined into very simple Attack vs Defense
Not enough information to respond.

>Only fighters can fight worth a shit
Eh... maybe. I mean, they should definitely fight a lot better than other classes, as that's their shtick, but if the other classes suck too much, it could make fights pretty unfun for them.

>Thieves have one universal roll under number for skills, learn new skills in game
I'd have to see how it was done.

>Magic System is totally different and magic users are balanced
Different could be better or worse. Balanced with what?

>No difference between level XP costs between classes
I prefer this. The difference in XP costs tend to actually be pretty minor, and not worth the trouble of differentiating. There are other ways of balancing out a strong or weak class.

Is the OSR community mostly made up of hipsters who play 'narrative' storygames or ultra rules-lite RPGs?

Is an example.

Pic fucking related

>I'm not a big fan of the cleric concept, so I wouldn't miss them that much, though giving magic-users access to their spells could be a bit broken. One of the big things that kept old school wizards from getting too overpowered was that there were things they couldn't really do with their spells.
could set it up so Magic Users have to specialize in one to three types of magic

>Eh... maybe. I mean, they should definitely fight a lot better than other classes, as that's their shtick, but if the other classes suck too much, it could make fights pretty unfun for them.
agree

not really, it's just that since most OSR games don't have a central mechanic they can be be made rules lighter or denser as needed for what the DM and his Players want(really don't see how you could construe anything was suggesting for his own homebrew as "hipster" or "narrative" or "storygames" in nature, so I'm going to assume you're either trolling or you didn't think your post through properly)

It's this old thing. Been posted a lot in the threads.

OD&D. It's partially an archeological(?) interest, but I find that I really like the simplicity of its rules.

Pre-Greyhawk, obviously, because Greyhawk fucks up everything I like about it. Magic shields stack with armor, weapons/monsters do varying damage, etc. etc.

This is kind of hard for me to evaluate without knowing what the spells and skills are. Also, deciphering the thing takes some doing, as it's still sort of half-formed and written in shorthand, which is the way most homebrew stuff I've seen is, but usually you have a GM there explaining shit to you, with the notes being more points for you to ask questions about than full explanations in and of themselves. I will say that the weapons rules look interesting.

> I've never liked the assumptions that when the PCs get super high level they would become Kings,
> why not just become even more crazy powerful adventurers?
1) Historical reasons.
DnD was expected to be prequel to playing wargames.

2) Because players want to.
Being adventurers gets stale. Granted, that also means that you should be able to become Kings at low-level, but we get into grognard "we grinded 10 levels uphill in the snow" territory.

Also, there is a limit of how much content you have for crazy powerful adventurers.

I'm just being abrasive, and the fact is that there's a correlation with hipsters, rules-lite and narrative RPGs.

The OSR community in this thread seems dominated by basic D&D, which seems like an aversion to more crunch

> Hexographer, though most of the features are locked behind a paywall.
Yes. Though, their code was easy to break, IIRC. If you really need it, I might try looking into it.

Also - inkarnate.com/ is quite useful, if you don't need anything too complicated.

> 'narrative' storygames
Very explicitly - no. That begun with DragonLance and that's the cutting point for OSRs.

> ultra rules-lite RPGs
I prefer ergonomic. I'm not averse to having rules. I'm averse to having needlessly complicated rules.

Does anyone have the OD&D pdf as sold here: dmsguild.com/product/28306/ODD-Dungeons--Dragons-Original-Edition-0e

The "New prints" in the Trove are actually old prints

I do. You want them attached here (Blackmoor is too big do that with), or somewhere else?

Old school RPGs did have lighter rules, but they were more like "imagine a story game about being the only motherfuckers willing to play the game from Saw for a chance at a million dollars, where doing the wrong thing WILL get you killed."
Narrative "story games" have little to do with Dragonlance, and I think modern D&D and these "story games" are further apart than old D&D is from them, insofar as old D&D encourages creativity, description, and the DM just telling you "it works" or "that's physically impossible" almost as often as "gimme a (very simple) check." Whereas D&D 3.5 and 4e are clusterfucks that reward knowledge of the system over being a clever motherfucker.

Awesome, thanks user! Maybe upload them to mediafire or something?

I put them on MEGA.
mega.nz/#F!RxhlQRZR!-n2_5x--UV5KpT6DxQi0QQ

Hey, /osr/. I'm likely to have two hours this afternoon where I'm chilling with my Kindle, some pencils, and a pad of paper. I'd like to start working on a setting/adventure for AD&D/OSRIC, somewhat like the A1-A4 modules (albeit obviously my own story).

What PDFs (besides the OSRIC rule book) would you recommend I have on my Kindle for MAXIMUM INSPIRATION?

> Narrative "story games" have little to do with Dragonlance
No. The old-school "story as an emerging property of RPGs" was replaced by the "story as artificial addition to RPGs" at this point.

Then we went through the "it's Referee's duty to tell the story" phase (especially evident in White Wolf's Storyteller) into the "narrative rights of players" phase.

> these "story games" are further apart than old D&D is from them
It was quite a bit of evolution, but - no. It all begun with DragonLance's idea that story is the most important thing of the game and should be controlled directly.

> Whereas D&D 3.5 and 4e are clusterfucks that reward knowledge of the system over being a clever motherfucker.
That's bait-level oversimplification.

It's not like you don't need to know the system in the OSRs.

All I'm trying to say is that OS games as I played them were CLOSER to "narrative rights of players" than "it's the Referee's duty to tell the story" games, albeit not really like either. (Caps-lock for emphasis of the word; would've italicized instead if I could.)

>It's not like you don't need to know the system in OSRs.
You're right, but it takes 10-15 minutes to get sufficient knowledge to be a player in OSRs, and in 3.5/pathfinder and 4e, you need to know the ins and outs, avoid trap options, and so on, in order to just be viable, at which point you're a god relative to everyday people. I'd say 5e is much better at this than the preceding two editions.

> OS games as I played them
I pointed out the fundamental difference. Nothing precludes you from playing OSR as narrative games (to some degree), but the basic idea behind them is radically different.

Would you mind at least sharing the idea behind your setting?

Many thanks!

A Question: how important to you is increasing Attack Bonus?
I.e. having scalable with level bonus to attack roll.

LotFP increases bonus to Attack Roll only for Fighters. It seems it works out fine. What would happen if we dropped this?

Would we need to drop Fighter altogether or does the Fighter archetype have something else going for him? Would it be enough to give him flat +3 bonus (and something else, scalable with level)?

Go rooting around in LotFP corner for a start, theres a lot of cool ideas rattling around in there.

I have been thinking a bit about class design for a game currently in concept stages.

One of the things I have always really liked about OSR games is how open each class is. You don't need 6000 different flavours of fighter, you just pick a fighter and fluff them up however you will.

Taking this idea to its logical conclusion, what does /osrg/ think about the idea of having a single base class for which you can select abilities from a pool? Instead of having to homebrew a class or make do with a clumsy approximation, just say
"I take the by-level AB bonus, increase my health die size by 1 and get MU spells at half my level from this list." and bang, instant spellsword.

It would also allow progression outside of level, as characters find new abilities or bonuses and assimilate them.

You could go full-on Fire Emblem and pre-construct classes from those parts. The players can build whatever they like, but would also have access to a pool of ready-made archetypes.
Another thing would be assigning each 'class' an ability or a bonus only they get. The player learns the abilities that make up a class, and bam, bonus. It'd make it easy to make up esoteric disciplines or isolated orders of mystics for players to find.

Bit perplexed as to how Dragonlance could be considered "narrative rights of players."

Mechanically, Dragonlance is a lot more "normal" than AD&D. Multiclassing appears to be wholly nonexistent, and you can usually get unlimited advancement in at least one class per race.

I've got no idea why people would find DL to be controversial. The modules themselves, sure, but Dragonlance Adventures is very normal.

> Bit perplexed as to how Dragonlance could be considered "narrative rights of players."
It's not. It's a precursor to the "DM the Narrator" idea, which caused "Narrative Rights" reaction.

If you take "Narrative is Important" idea as a whole, DL modules would be at the source.

Even DL1-4 aren't really that railroady. DL1, for example, gives no fucks what you do as long as you get to Xak Tsaroth before the Dragonarmy shows up.

Wasn't that the one that, even though it gave you a map to explore, it was essentially impossible to do anything worthwhile except the main plot before the time limit was up?

Wouldn't I6 be the source? Predates DL1 by a year or so.

I like the idea of certain combinations and synergies giving bonuses, although I hesitate to make it too complex outside of hidden mechanics. Prehaps it would be better to give the 'class' bonuses to specific skill combinations rather than to a whole set, so as to prevent additional skills upsetting an archetype.

Having defaults should really help the players, no idea how I didn't think of that one.

Should race be independant or a buy in? The mythos is loosely based on KSBD, so it isn't the conventional elf/halfling/dorf setup.

I'm not sure, everyone I know hates Dragonlance so I never bothered mathing it out.

Another one like that is DL3, which gives you a huge map, 4 or so points of interest, and a timer. I can't even remember the reason you'd want to go to Skullcap anyway. Presumably the dwarves at Thorbardin won't let you in without something from there.

> Taking this idea to its logical conclusion, what does /osrg/ think about the idea of having a single base class for which you can select abilities from a pool?
Wouldn't that be GURPS?

Technically, ACKS does something like this already (Companion book). Though you need Referee's approval (they kinda dropped the ball with the racial level limit thingy and ability to frontload classes).