OSR - DRAGONS & DRAGONS EDITION

Like all TSR modules it needs to be toned down in parts and may or may not need to be expanded in others.
IIRC, and going by a quick google for a reminder, N1 had issues with:
Very rich peasant NPCs.
A lot of save or die saves vs poison.
Shitty hiding of treasure (no, I don't want my PCs to be encouraged to remove fucking tiles in the dungeon).
The final boss fight is railroady and almost a guaranteed TPK. Even if you change nothing else (and I encourage you to change the rest) revamp this one.

Would you recommend me using T1-4 or U1-3 over N1? I was staying away from them because they're both significantly longer than just N1.

God no.
T1: Homlett and U1 are all fairly good (as is L1 which can be combined with U1) but imo the rest of those series are flawed to hell and back.
N1 is pretty good aside from those aforementioned flaws and the only one that's really a must fix is the final boss battle.

I recommend you check out Tenfootpole's reviews to get an overview of newer modules. TSR ones aren't bad overall (there's some great ones like the Giants and Drow series, B10 etc) but imo a lot of love for some modules have to do with nostalgia. (though i'm not like Tenfoot who'll shit on Keep on the Borderlands)
Also all the newer Dungeon Crawl Classics stuff (after 66.5 and forward) made by Goodman Games is magnificent imo. (but the level recommendations are from DCC RPG which is higher powered than your average D&D game)
Don't forget that Judges Guild had some great ones as well. (Caverns of Thracia, Book of Treasure Maps, Dark Tower, etc)

Anyone have deep carbon observatory?

It's in the Trove in OP.

>L1 which can be combined with U1
Aren't those two at opposite ends of the map?

Just replace one village with the other. I wouldn't take the module's "offical placement" to heart.

Wizards

Can someone explain to me the appeal of Greyhawk? I just don't understand why anyone would play it with Mystara around, much less now when there are like 50 published settings out there, all kinds of resources to roll your own, and so on.

Is there anything that actually makes Greyhawk interesting?

This isn't a diss of Gygax at all. I just don't get it. I started reading the setting book and was bored to tears.

>Mystara
Are we talking Gazetteer Known Worlds or overexplained later stuff?
>I just don't get it. I started reading the setting book and was bored to tears.
I feel the same about Forgotten Realms and that's despite loving the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series.

I guess a lot of love for Greyhawk comes from the great map(s), the sparse DIY World of Greyhawk boxset and how it explicitly is the kind of setting AD&D 1E implies through it's rules. Although i'm not personally a fan so don't take that as the word of god.
That said TSR settings never did it for me beyond reading about them. Planescape doesn't make me want to run it, quite the opposite, but I think it makes nice reading.
Out of the old published settings Wilderlands is more my thing and even then i'd homebrew it beyond all recognition.

>Mystara
Why play that when there's Tekumel?

Gazetteer Known Worlds.

Also, that's interesting. Any more recent OSR settings you like?

I don't know what Tekumel is, but something tells me it doesn't have a nuclear physicist who became a deity to a bunch of underground elves, a secret nuclear reactor deep beneath the earth, dinosaurs and ancient Egyptians on the inside of the hollow planet, etc.

>Any more recent OSR settings you like?
I quite like what i've seen of Gabor Lux's Fomalhaut, the Hill Canton guy's releases and the Clark Ashton Smith-pastiche setting outlined in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea (I wouldn't use the system though, it's a heavy AD&D variant and i'm more of a Crypts & Things Swords & Wizardry guy).

>I don't know what Tekumel is, but something tells me it doesn't have a nuclear physicist who became a deity to a bunch of underground elves, a secret nuclear reactor deep beneath the earth, dinosaurs and ancient Egyptians on the inside of the hollow planet, etc.
It's a science fantasy where all the Gods are Lord of Light superhuman types, the main setting area is heavily inspired by Mughal India and the Byzantine empire with a heavily clan-based society where sacrificing Chaotic Evil Priests and Lawful Neutral priests tend to get along pretty swell, there's still railcars running underground and aliens hang about. It was a colony of an evil human Space Empire that got cut off due to dimensional fuckery.

Okay, I admit that's pretty cool.

Don't forget they put Hobbits in the Zoo in Bey Su!

The only real issue is that, like Glorantha, it's a fairly heavy setting to take-in and some of it's newer fanbase are fucking assholes who want to tell you how to play and how things "really are". (inevitably some narrativist horseshit or explaining to you how you can't understand it if you're straight, white and male. nevermind the fact that it was created by a straight white male muslim-convert who played it like a pulp setting a lot of the time and explained how to best build a D&D underworld/megadungeon in the very first book released)

>Question: Do you use metallic dragons in your game? How do you use them?

1. Since most can turn into peoples or animals, they can be used to guard a city or something like that while seeming normal, so you don't have to just use classed types to defend such places.
2. When in comparison to chromatic dragons, well, if you look at the breeding rates, dragons can actually outbreed humans. This comes at a terrible environmental and economic price, however, as in my games I require dragons to eat real food. So if good dragons are a force to be reckoned with, evil ones really are.

They're also a good target for evil necromancers and dragon slayers.

lol, Jeff Berry one of the original players has talked on the RPGSite how some retards even did the same to Phil himself.
Telling the author to his face that's not how his setting works. Just amazing.

Is there anything remotely like 3.pfs item familiars, weapons of legacy, bladebound maguseses, etc in OSR stuff?

Generally OSR stuff expects players to worry about stuff ingame rather than customization that happens outside of the game and the availability of magic items are squarely in the hands of the DM.
That said it would be easy for any DM to incorporate similar stuff into any given OSR game assuming they want a higher-powered setting.

Doesn't have to be customization in any way, a wholly linear progression is perfectly fine. At most, the level of customization in a wizard's spellbook is all you'd need.

>they want a higher powered setting

RAW tends to result in you already getting huge amounts of magic treasure, just a lot of it winds up redundant.

>Question: Do you use metallic dragons in your game? How do you use them?
Better question: Do you use gem dragons in your game, and how hard do you fuck with players who mistake them for a different type of dragon?

Also, I'm partial to sticking to Gold Dragons being the only Lawful ones (and also being the strongest). It leaves a bit of uncertainty in the dungeon, especially since Lawful doesn't mean "will go along with the PCs' bullshit".

>Out of the old published settings Wilderlands is more my thing and even then i'd homebrew it beyond all recognition.
I'm not sure that it's possible to NOT homebrew that setting beyond recognition.

Unless you're using the 3E remake that overexplains everything, that is. The old booklets have extremely sparse descriptions that pretty much require you to make shit up as you go along.

Which kind of gem dragon? Psionic or BECMI? Both are cool.

I don't think players are particularly likely to attack even dragons they think of as "evil" on sight, unless there's context that they should, as they tend to be aware that most dragons are intelligent and can be reasoned with, and are also very dangerous.

But the reverse of that is that in general, good and evil dragons (or L/C) will probably react to the PCs in a similar fashion -- ie "Um, excuse me, wtf r u doing?"

I've thought about a campaign that would have like, ten levels worth of session that are just a smallish dungeon, its dragon, and its hoard, which prompts a series of unfortunate events.

>as they tend to be aware that most dragons are intelligent and can be reasoned with, and are also very dangerous.
I kind of prefer the old OD&D/1E/BECMI thing where their intelligence is fairly random - in AD&D even a Gold Dragon only has a 90% chance of being able to speak, for instance.

Also, of course, Treasure Type H (for Hoard, presumably) is probably the best one there is in OD&D. So much stuff. I think the dwarven Treasure Type G (for Gold, perhaps) is the only one that comes close?

Dragons are big and nasty and dangerous to fight, but if you can beat them it's probably worth it.

Although you should probably try picking on the little ones. Preferably, like, a white wyrmling. And avoid sticking together in a group. Maybe see if you can get cold resistance somehow. Oh yeah, and see if you can shoot it down with arrows from a distance. That sounds like a good idea.

>made the ugliest character sheets
Hope they somehow work at the table at least

Do you call Spellbooks Spellbooks or do you change it up with different names like grimoire?

I ordered some 'funky dice' for DCC and i'm pretty sure someone stole them off my porch. I'm trying to imagine their face when they find a bunch of weird dice.

Maybe he'll think you're a wizard and give it back to you.

>Although you should probably try picking on the little ones. Preferably, like, a white wyrmling.
A wyrmling would never be on its own like that.

As the excellent recommendations of suggested,
Definitely watch the Sinbad films, (Eye of the Tiger and Seventh Voyage), and Jason and the Argonauts.
Some animated films like Princess Mononoke, Sword of the Stranger, and the Ralph Bakshi films are great adventure fuel too.
Hellboy and Hellboy 2 are good creepy/ myth heavy settings with a bombastic, modern sensibility hero (kind of like PCs in an adventure)
The recent Solomon Kane film is pretty solid, too! Good atmosphere.
Westerns are also great for "hero/s wander into town, sort out problem, move on". The Magnificent Seven is a masterclass of getting a party together. (and obviously the Akira Kurosawa films that were so influential for westerns)
Also, just go watch Star Trek (the original series) again, especially if you want to do spelljammer or town wandering adventures!

bomp

yo. I know this is an all too common question, but I'm looking for some good modules to run. I use LotFP as a rule system, but don't really use Raggis 16th century Europe setting. I've ran Tower of the Stargazer, DFD and The Grinding Gear. But i'm looking for good dungeon crawls that are outside of LotFP, easy to use, and most of all fun. Are there "must run" DnD modules, besides Lost City? Labyrinth Lord? Swords and Wizardry?

Halp.

tenfootpole.org/ironspike/?page_id=844

Someone recommended an obscure B movie called "As Above, So Below" recently, and after watching it today, I'm gonna second it. It's like "OSR Modern: the Movie" where a bunch of foolish young people climb down into the catacombs below Paris looking for a lost alchemist's treasure, and then terrifying weirdness happens and most of them get killed in unusual ways. The complete dungeon crawl experience, with battery powered head lamps instead of torches.

Did any of them do anything kickass and clever at any point?

I'd say yes. The protagonist's "Aha!" moment and the harrowing action sequence that followed was pretty cool.
It's not exactly a great movie, but it does feel a lot like a dungeon crawl.

The original Conan is hard to beat. The original Beastmaster is excellent for a grade B movie (if that makes sense).

youtu.be/kFXn1KWsZsY

In the humorous category, Mazes and Monsters is a far out game... er... movie. And if you're feeling brave tonight, check out Dragon Strike.

youtu.be/FpcL-fQNPfQ
youtu.be/B8LBpMuSTrQ

Why not? Who says that dragons aren't like snakes: completely solitary, non-social animals that can only stand to be in one another's territories to mate, and that they abandon their eggs shortly after laying them?

Could be that most dragons lay their eggs in such extremely dangerous places that they are relatively safe from danger.

I'm not sure who you are responding to but just to add my two cents;

Even if you make your dragons intelligent I enjoy the concept of making them totally pro-cannibalism of their younger members like crocodiles. It's part of their culture; essentially if a young dragon is weak, slow, or stupid enough to get caught by a larger one it wasn't deserving of reaching adulthood anyway- they care very little for any of their younglings as they haven't proven they are really dragons yet. If they even treat adult dragons any better is mostly up to you.

the primary parts of Oerth that most people associate Greyhawk with aren't all that exciting admittedly(although the City of Greyhawk itself is a good locale, and Oerth does have a pretty good set of deities attached to it), but one of my favorite D&D settings is technically part of it; the Sundered Empire/God War, which is set in a Western portion of Oerth not seen prior to it's introduction in a version of Chainmail that WOTC briefly published early in 3rd edition's existence

take a look for yourself in fact

>Any more recent OSR settings you like?
pretty much any setting published by Hydra Cooperative, as well as Yoon-Suin, and there's some really great ones on this blog(Troll World is my personal favorite of his); gameswithothers.blogspot.de

Does anyone have an evocative name I could replace "spell level" with?

Circle? Tier? Stage? Step? Force? Node? Intensity? Power? Magnitude? Degree? Craft? Secret? Mystery? Rote? Capacity? Discipline? Devotion? Mode? System? Mantra? Truth? Path? Line? Gate? Oracle? Chakra? Form? Order? Rank? Echelon? Mark? Iteration? Stage? Sphere? Caste? Principle? Code? Domain? Frame? Nature? Denomination? Element? Paradigm? Key? Origin? Seed?

> Does anyone have an evocative name I could replace "spell level" with?
Spell circle is my preference. What is the context of the question?

Thesaurus, go home. You are drunk.

Foundation? Stem? Seed? Focus? Revelation? Derivation? Source? Seat? Acclivity? Sign? Cipher? Mark? Revelation? Token? Coil? Vein? Stratum? Rigor? Ordeal? Tribulation? Canon? Foundation? Model? Device? Exemplar? Paragon? Device? Method? Sequence? Ability? Course? Intensity? Eminence? Virtue? Merit? Moment? Axiom? Maxim? Caliber? Stature? Merit? Interval? Limit? Potency? Dominion? Domain? Capacity? Potential? Standing? Station? Status?

>Thesaurus, abscond to your domicile. You're inebriated.
Am not.

So of these, my favorites are: circle, tier, dominion, domain, discipline, devotion, mantra, power and capacity. Order is nice, but it goes in the wrong direction. Paradigm is nice, but it's a bit too long once you stick an ordinal number in front of it.

I can see Spell Tier working well

>look my character sheet
>see that I have 2 Mark circle spells, 1 Coil level spell, and 3 Ordeal rank spells

>look at other player's character sheet
> less than 2 axiom intervals
>not a single order echelon

>laughing_diabolists.jpg

Dick axe?

It has good penetration.

Been playing around with a way to give fighters multiple attacks in a less clumsy way than the 3/2 formula AD&D uses. One thought I had was to simply give them an additional attack each round but to reduce their THAC0 at this point to keep their offensive power in check. They could choose to make just a single strike in order to gain a bonus to their attack that would offset this THAC0 reduction, though this would rarely be advantageous.

So essentially an optional 3.x style extra attack, except optional?

Also this is a nitpick but I'd probably put the THACO on the righthand column, so it's the first thing you read. It "feels" backwards the way it is.

Valence.
"A Valence of the Ninth Order".

>So essentially an optional 3.x style extra attack, except optional?
Well, sort of. All of your attacks would be made at the same THAC0, which makes things a bit simpler. Also, I think of it less an optional additional attack and more like you get two attacks and can optionally sacrifice one in order to get a bonus. I know it's six of one thing and a half dozen of another, but the instances in which making only one attack would help you would be rare, and it'd only even be an option so that there would never be a time when you'd be like "I wish I were a lower level, because then it'd be easier to hit this guy." Think of sacrificing an attack sort of like a careful aim mechanic, where you can spend a round aiming in order to get a bonus to your attack (only you're not spending an entire round to do it, obviously).

>I'd probably put the THACO on the righthand column, so it's the first thing you read.
Left hand, you mean? That seems a bit weird to me as you're referencing your class and level to discover your THAC0, not referencing your THAC0 to figure out your level. The THAC0 column could maybe be set apart somehow though--boldfaced, or boxed, or something. It's still a work in progress at this point though.

It seems like you're replace "level" with "order" there with Valence just adding flavor.

does ANYONE have any of the newer DCC modules in PDF? the Trove section hasn't been updated and I never see them floating around here either.

Does anyone have a copy of Wizards, Mutants, Laser Pistols!

Yeah, I meant on the lefthand, I'm sorry. I think your ideas for making it stand out are better than my idle suggestion. THACO isn't in the same class as level, so it seems "off" to have them look almost identical.

And yeah, I dig your implementation of the attack bonus, I look forwards to seeing the rest of your project.

Aside from "As Above, So Below" mentioned in , are there any good horror/adventure mixture movies that are basically dungeon crawls?

Seconding this, I'm looking for Doom of the savage kings.

This guy does:
lulu.com/spotlight/WMLP

I'm starting to think we should start pooling together money and buying products with the sum and let it be shared by all.

I'd share some of my shit, but it's Watermarked. How do I remove?

Sorry, but that's a Bad Rule. As implemented, at least.

Not through any fault of your own, though - you just didn't check the math, I guess. The extra attacks mean more average damage at all points... except for when the target number is an 18, when they do exactly as much as a single attack, and when they TN is 19-20 in which case the single attack does a bit more.

Unfortunately, you're very unlikely to ever need to fight someone with high enough AC for that to matter - not when your lowest THAC0 for multiple attacks is 18x2! That means that you'd need to face someone with AC-1 for the single attack to be worth it. Subtract by one for each plus your magic weapon has.

If you're interested in variants of the rule, it looks like giving an extra +1 in the exchange increases the AC it's worth using against by one? It still won't completely save it, though, since even +5/attack exchanged doesn't bring the equilibrium beyond TN 16. And your table gives three attacks at THAC0 15/x3. Yeah.

I'm not entirely sure how I'd go about fixing it, to be honest.

Here you go, user.

I tried to engineer it so that single strikes would come into play as seldom as possible. I'd rather not have to contend with them at all. That's why I went from 15 THAC0 to 18 x2, which gives you the same amount of damage per round vs. AC 0, and favors 18 x2 for anything higher. 12 x2 and 15 x3 are similarly balanced.

But while I've tried to minimize the conditions under which you'd actually want to sacrifice a strike, they do still exist. Maybe you've got a one-use item of some sort or are making a special sort of attack that can't be repeated two or three times in a round (dropping onto somebody from above, etc.). Maybe you're a weak character (to hit penalty) striking at an enemy with an excellent AC. Maybe you're striking at an invisible creature or are trying to fight while blind or in darkness. Maybe you've been drugged, poisoned, or wounded to the point where you're suffering from a sizable penalty to hit.

The +3 to hit for every strike you forfeit is a "just in case" sort of thing designed to make sure that you never run into the odd circumstance where being a higher level is actually to your detriment.

>And yeah, I dig your implementation of the attack bonus, I look forwards to seeing the rest of your project.
Thanks. It may be that this is the progression I stick with, but I want to keep tinkering around with the numbers and see if anything ends up looking better in some way.

> I'd share some of my shit, but it's Watermarked. How do I remove?
Did you check 7chan's Veeky Forums ?

Tl;dr: It's a feature, not a bug.

what are some lesser known modules/extras/tools you think should be more known?

pdf related.

What's the best "never played D&D" before introductory module/mini-setting in your guys views?
I've looking a bit at:
OSR ones (Ironwood Gorge, The Darkness Beneath, NOD Hexcrawls, DCC modules),
TSR old modules (N1, U1, L1, T1)
Judge's guild (Trial by Fire, Illhedrin book, bits of the Wilderlands)
Sandboxes (B2, B10, Gaz 1: Karameikos)

But can't really decide on what to use. Any of those stand out to you or any other great introductory adventure you'd recommend?
Swords & Wizardry Complete if that matters.

Tower of the Stargazer. It's got a bit of everything and is specifically made as an introductory adventure. Also Shadowbrook Manor is pretty fun.

I don't recommend using DCC modules outside of the DCC system, myself. But they are fucking awesome. Frozen in Time is a great lv. 1 adventure. As is .

How do you add new players to a given party if they die mid-dungeon? Chained up in the dungeon? Other adventurer whose party died on the way in? Just let them join up no questions asked?
I'm sort of toying with the idea of merc organizations who can be paid to send in new blood at a moment's notice if anyone around is crazy enough to do it (probably stealing those jade slips/tablets that break when you die in Xianxia novels).

Hirelings usually.

For my last run (of Stargazer ) I had "curious patrons from the tavern follow the group to the tower, standing a good distance back." when someone would die, i'd have one of those onlookers get the courage to peek their head in and see what's going on. roll up some stats for em, give em a few random items and plop em in the game.

That's why you give them hirelings. And try to make sure that individual delves don't take too much time. And encourage players to retreat if things go too badly - in some ways, a dead player is just a less obvious death spiral. Encounters that were previously easy are now challenging, encounters that were challenging are now deadly. Not to mention what happens if, say, the last Fighter dies and leaves the Magic-Users to fend for themselves.

Or you could have them encounter a surviving adventurer or a prisoner or something. That also works, I guess. The trust issues can be sorted out on a player level, and probably don't need your micromanagement - let them ask questions if they want, it helps discourage That Guys and keeps PCs on the same level. Philosophically, that is. Give the group as a whole a chance to veto Drizzt D'Edgelord.
It also gives the player in question a chance to introduce the character in a social way against personalities that he's presumably already familiar with.

A third option is to treat things with less of a "I am my character, and this character is mine" mindset - even if a PC is dead, that doesn't mean that the player can't contribute to the group in other ways. They can still map, or give advice, or solve puzzles, or any of the various other things that aren't necessarily "in-character". They might not be able to speak with NPCs, but that doesn't meant that they can't tell other players their opinions of how they should deal with said NPCs.

Or they can go pick up the pizzas while the DM figures out some way to get them into the game and the rest of the group continues. I dunno, there's a lot of very different ways to handle things.

>aren't hirelings only available from level 3 and on?

Nope. Why'd you get that idea? They're available from the moment you have the opportunity to hire them.

Hell, B4 even recommends handing a few hirelings to smaller groups and that's a Basic adventure. I'm pretty sure I remember B1 and B2 having fairly big hireling sections as well.

If I were to play second edition AD&D without the optional rules like proficiencies, wouldn't it effectively be not much different than first edition with THAC0? If that's the case, couldn't I use first edition character sheets?

I mean mechanically. I know that there's differences in classes and such.

Weapons vs. AC. The entirety of the initiative system. The Bard. Psionics.

Not to mention how weapon proficiencies are a 1E thing and NWPs were also introduced in 1E. Although I think they worked a bit differently depending on the book, if I remember some of OA's quirks right.

Overall, though, you could probably use the character sheets without too many issues?
Then again, you could also just use a blank sheet of paper, a pencil, and a ruler. Make adjustments as needed. I don't know if I've ever seen a "perfect" character sheet, to be honest. Most of them could do with some more space for spell descriptions, for instance, not to mention notes in general.

Or you could just print out a lightweight 2E sheet, I guess. Not all of them are ten-page monstrosities. I think I remember seeing some really nice DiTerlizzi ones?

thinking about making a post-apoc skin of LotFP. Suggestions? Thoughts?

...

...

I dunno whether to reduce the amount of saves. I replaced Magical device with Tech and Magic with Radiation, but Radiation is poisoning, so I may as well ditch it.

Are weapon proficiencies officially considered optional in 1E like they are in 2E? I just assumed that they were introduced in 2E.

I'm pretty sure they're non-optional. Weapon proficiencies, that is. "Peaceful proficiencies" are non-optional in Oriental Adventures, I think. NWPs were introduced in the Wilderness/Dungeon Survival Guides, so they're completely optional if you don't have those books for obvious reasons.

One thing I like with how AD&D handled weapon proficiency was that Fighters didn't care too much about non-proficiency - they only get a -2, while Clerics get a -3 and Magic-Users a -5. And they get more proficiencies than the other classes. I don't know that it's the perfect solution, exactly, but I like it better than some others. Partly because it seems like an attempt at nerfing magic-users and buffing Fighters, I suppose.

What are the mutations?

If you're playing rules as written, then one of the biggest changes is in terms of timing and the so-called "exploration turn," that is, the time keeping regarding searching, movement, and cetera in dungeons.