OSR General

One popular houserule (that I personally hate, but whatever) is that you can sacrifice your shield to prevent the damage from a single hit. All Shields Must Be Splintered is the common name, I think?

Besides that, though, even the +1 AC can be a bigger deal than you think it is. It's more like a -25% chance to be hit at level one, for instance.

Also, of course, how good shields actually are is highly dependant on the rules for two-handing and dual-wielding and whatnot.

Also, if you play with Weapons vs. AC then shields can have an ever bigger impact than usual.

One houserule you could backport from 4E, IIRC, is that having a shield gives you a bonus to your "reflex" save - a bonus towards Dragon Breath, for instance. They had it be the same bonus that you got to AC, but that's also a very different system so I don't know how well it'll translate to whatever you're playing. A +6 bonus to a save is a pretty huge deal, after all, since saves actually get better as you level up rather than merely keeping up with monster attacks like in 3E+.

Last Gasp Grimoire's Shields Shall be Splintered rule: A warrior who has a shield may choose to ignore damage from any one blow, in exchange for his shield being destroyed.
Simple, effective, and handy. LGG's extension of those rules to armor got fiddly and dumb, but this rule is nice.

I have a couple.

Basically square, round, or kite shields give your Strength Modifier +1 to AC. Tower sheilds give your Con modififer +2 to AC. This way, your shields are greatly boosted but only if you have the right attributes.

So I'm writing up a rough draft here but I need a little help.

How much health should everyone get using this combat system?

ACKS (another B/X retroclone) Player's Companion has a Witch class.

what is the 3.5 of OSR?

Hackmaster?

It's from this website: gloomtrain dot blogspot dot co dot uk/search/label/san%20seraf%C3%ADn

OSR is quite slow recently

Yeah, really. No replies to dumb homebrew ideas either.

have someone here played an AD&D 3e campaign?

I like shields improving AC by 2 and compensating by either boosting two-handed weapons to 2d6 damage, or allowing you to add twice your strength modifier to them.

Can't decide if I want to run Grimmsgate or Tower of the Stargazer for my friends. I have a feeling most will lean heavily towards Stargazer though.

I really really really like this way of doing XP.
Where can I have more of this way of doing XP?

Here are uses for a shield : you can put it on your head to avoid a shower of rocks/arrows/frozen rain daggers, you can ride on it on snow, you can bash people with it, you can put it under your blanket and you for emergency defense, you can polish it until it reflects stuff and beat the Medusa with it...

Just as helmets have a tons of uses, but no mechanical counterpart in most systems, I don't think it's an issue or a design flaw.

I like this map. What software did you use?

General Question : do you guys know and enjoy Hexographer? Have you accepted it as your lord and savior? Do you show or hide the wilderness map? Why?

Other question : Into the Odd is great, why haven't you tried it out yet? Here's a character sheet for it (not by me).

Also I've run Tower of the Stargazer with many different types of players : casual gamers, total noobs, veterans of many years, veterans of the old guard (actual grognards), people who said they hate D&D before trying D&D and ended up liking it, curious girlfriend, curious mom and dad...Anytime I need a quick module actually, I take out ToS.

I liked it too.

Unfortunately, that's not mine and I couldn't find any more of that.

No idea, it isn't mine. I found it on a Veeky Forums maps thread some months ago, I believe.

>Iranistan

I'll keep that in mind, actually. After comparing the two, I'm thinking of maybe incorporating ToS into Grimmsgate itself.

>Asgard
>Pictish
>Amazonia

I really, really hope you both know where that map is from.

Either way, it is amusing.

In its slight defense, it was made at a time when Iran was called Persia and Iran was a fairly uncommon name in English.

Yeah, there are a few Howardisms that bother me, and that one is the worst. Honestly, the way he mixes historical and fantasy names throws me off, as midpoint between them comes off as "history done wrong".

I've ordered the book but I haven't gotten it yet. I have the pdf though. Cursed Chateau seems really fun and I'm already planning to run it. It cost a bit because apparently the book will have metallic colors which is cool I guess. Illustrations and layout are great. I never read the original so I can't tell you if it's better.

I haven't managed to read much of england upturnd'd because the layout and illustrations are really meh. The political alignment wasn't very interesting, D&D has you being a lawful evil character or whatever but this just has you being a royalist pissant or similar. Basically he just converted the alignments to better fit his world.

Someone posted both the book pdfs a couple threads back, check the archive and see if it's still there.

...

New Godbound beta

What kind of charsheet do you prefer (and what kind do you actually use)?

Do you use print-outs, or prefer to make your own?

What about using dice pips to show the skill rating? Is it better or worse than the numbers?

Bump

Was thinking the same thing.

I have a hard time being too critical of Howard, seeing as it was an early time for "world building."

How do you guys feel about the Spell Duels section of DCC? It seems interesting, but I don't know about it in actual play, I feel like it would really slow down game play and prove not worth time time/effort.

Has anyone seen the Dark Sun supplement "Dragon Kings" in the trove?

Should be in Accessories.

Bumps

What the fuck. She's intended to get to level 4 after roughly 4 sessions? That's fucking bullshit.

Perhaps either the game ran by the GM is unusually lethal, or "enemy killed" has to have the final blow dealt by the witch. (maybe unlikely due to be a support caster?) It's possible the GM and their players don't get to meet up often so a quick levelling system works better for them?

What should I get into in particular if I am fond of AD&D 2e but want something somewhat more streamlined and organized.

most retroclones will result in a similar style of play. Doubly so if you toss in whatever it is you like about 2e (ie, higher HD for warriors, add'l spells).

Labyrinth Lord Advanced and Swords and Wizardry Complete have similar options, I think.

more people need to read The Night Land

There's For Gold & Glory. It's essentially 2e clone, though since you're asking for more streamlined and organized...

... I would recommend Basic Fantasy RPG. Check out their website (all the PDFs are free, bless them) and see if the rules are what you're looking for. They have some additional classes and races as one to ten page PDFs that you can download and examine individually.

They even have a PDF that discusses what amounts to kit classes (in case you like those). Most of the other OSR clones have free PDFs as well (Swords & Wizardry Complete, Labyrinth Lord, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, etc.) so you can check them out before buying and pick the one that suits your taste best.

Personally, I like Lamentations because the encumbrance rules are great, I dig the weird stuff, and the Fighter is the best at actually fighting things.

Everything past the intro is stupid

It's not exactly the same, but I'm working on a somewhat similar system designed to keep XP values low and manageable. The GM awards a small number of points based entirely on his judgment of what a task / encounter / challenge / achievement is worth, with the average value being 8. This takes the party's strength into account, so while a small group of goblins might be worth an 8 to a 1st level party, it'd be worth considerably less to a higher level one.

The "8 is average" figure applies if you're lumping everything together. If you wanted to, say, separately award XP for both fight strength and treasure found, you could reference the values on the far right, awarding an equal half of experience for each, or a big "half" for one and "small" half for the other (approximately one third and two thirds, respectively).

You start of needing to accomplish 8.75 average tasks / encounters / challenges / achievements to gain a level (to get to 2nd), and end up needing 25 (for any level above 10; it takes 20 to get to 10).

what makes you say that?

docdroid.net/kHgwIZv/rotdp.pdf.html

Post-Apoc LotFP 'reskin' I'm working on.

Input?

It seems less like a LotFP reskin, due to entirely lacking any sense of the "Weird", and more like an OSR game you made after reading through LotFP and ripping the mechanics from other systems.

That said, it seems like it could be fun.

But LotFPs 'Weird' is primarily based of the adventure modules tho, no? The book itself is just B/X with eerie pictures.

But yer right: it's essentially LotFPs core mechanics, S&W saving throws, and Mutant Futures mutations.

Don't want to be a douche here, but just so you know LGG didn't come up with the rule. It was a guy called "Trollsmyth", I think.

Bump

any Dawn Patrol?

So for you guys who prefer ascending AC, how big a difference does it make for you? Would you go through the trouble of converting from descending AC / importing an ascending AC system from another game?

I prefer Ascending AC, but I prefer not having to-hit tables even more.

That being said: I would call the conversion trouble. It is literally figuring out the base chance for your baseline (for example a level 1 character from class X) to hit your baseline AC (say AC 9), and converting from there.

Typing that sentence cost me more mental gymnastics than needed to perform the initial conversion, after which you just need to create three tables: a table with attack bonus per level for characters, a table with attack bonus per HD for monsters, and a table with AC bonus from armor.

>would
Typo: Wouldn't**

I'm indifferent to which one is used, but will often use ascending AC for the sake of players, who are much more likely to intuitively grasp ascending.

I literally just do what S&W does since it offers both descending and ascending AC:

>subtract AC from 9
>add result to 10
And you have your new AC!

So if an enemy's AC is 3, you do 9 - 3 = 6. 6 + 10 = 16. Its AC is now 16.

It even works with ACs below 0. Ac is -2? Okay. 9 - (-2) is the same as 9+2, which equals 11.

11 + 10 = 21.

>Subtracting AC from 9 rather than 10. Subtracting THAC0 from 19 rather than 20.
I mean, it works, but the conversion numbers are a bit less intuitive. Of course, unarmored being 10 rather than 11 is nice, though it probably doesn't matter much because few people will have a base-line unarmored AC.

Does anyone have the Black Hack pdfs?

Slowed spell progression?

Only 7 words, and you have a typo already
Alpha

Hey, you're right. I checked my links and it is Trollsmyth. I think what happened is that I was reading LGG's houserules and clicked a link to Trollsmyth without realizing that it led offsite, so I thought I was still on LGG at the time.

Why did blogs become so huge in the hobby?
It's literally the only thing I see them used for these days.

OSR had a huge blog presence for whatever reason.. Blogs are pretty big for RPGs, though Google Plus is even bigger.

Yeah, but I wonder what triggered that?

I don't know. I understand Google Plus, because its particular feature set is really well suited to developers and fans sharing stuff, but blogs?
I guess maybe the grandpa effect, where the old farts who were the biggest on the OSR were likewise a generation or so behind on technology and not interested in the newfangled social media doohickeys, and so they started blogs instead?
I'm still not on facebook

I'd say it's a bit of that, but keep in mind Google Plus didn't launch until 2011/2012 and even then was in that sort of perpetual beta typical of Google products - many of the long running OSR blogs predate that.

The roots of the OSR really started in like the mid-2000s as people started posting about their D&D campaigns and people who still played B/X and older editions came online. Blogs were just the natural candidate at the time to post stories about your campaign and your houserules; forums are too ephemeral, Facebook is too personal, Twitter is too limited. This is all way before stuff like Mythweavers, Roll20, and Obsidianportal too for keeping track of the campaign, which is another reason to start logging things on a blog.

I'd also say the big shifts to 3.x and also to 4e also drove a lot of traffic - people disillusioned with the latest flavour of D&D went online and started looking at older editions. And people might see someone's blog and then get inspired to start their own campaign log.

where the fuck do i get a physical copy of DCC

Well, first you need to roll a d13 plus a d7 and get a result of pi.

sounds legit

You. I like you.

> I'm still not on facebook
Bah.

> I don't know. I understand Google Plus, because its particular feature set is really well suited to developers and fans sharing stuff, but blogs?
Okay, grasshoper - what is this feature? I did try looking at G+ a few times (once I've seen people mentioning it), but all I can see is an extremely annoying way to display content.

Does anyone have Adventure Fantasy Game or Chthonic Codex (by the same company)?

Trying to find Go Fer Yer Gun, an OSR Wild West game. Used to be free but looks like it was pulled from RPGNow and Drivethru. Help?

Check out Noble Knight or pre-order the new printing directly from Goodman games.
Watch out for the shipping charge though.

Somebody help me. I keep getting pissed at anti-D&D threads that assume 3.5 is the only version that exists.

As far as RPGs go, D&D is huge. There are tons of people out there who would rather play something else but have to settle for D&D because it's the only game they can find players for. It's like that song that, in the old days, got played over and over on the radio or MTV to the point where, even if you thought it was okay to begin with, you found yourself wishing painful and creative deaths upon every member of the band who created it.

So you have to cut the haters some slack. Yes, a lot of people incorrectly treat 3.5 as if it's indicative of D&D in general, and that can be annoying. But that song that got played over and over that I was talking about? That's 3.5. OGL swallowed a lot of the game market, and the 3.5 crowd proved particularly obnoxious, resistant to change and so on. And *they* tended to treat 3.5 as if it were the only edition of D&D.

I do enjoy some D&D, especially if we're talking about OSR, but if I could halve the popularity of D&D and in the process elevate some other games, I wouldn't hesitate to do it (though I'd hope that OSR's popularity remained relative consistent and would damn well target Pathfinder if I were allowed that sort of specificity).

It's just him dragging a girl around and he tells her not to do stupid stuff and she does so he yells at her.

ranged and melee attacks working totally differently rubs me the wrong way, personally. Why not use the same system for both?

This is one of the better posts I've seen on Veeky Forums in a while. I tried to improve a common Veeky Forums image for you.

Is there an OSR class anywhere that's based on the whole "raised by wild animals" Tarzan shtick?

If not, is there anything that goes into detail about how to make your own class for OSR, and actually do it well?

From what I gather, the main thing is the ability to include or exclude content based on circles, so you can get updates from designers and homebrewers you like, without the minor "I ate a pie today" horseshit that you get from facebook. You can get a much better signal-to-noise ratio because of the way it works, or something.

I don't really use G+, but I know it's hugely popular with RPG nerds, it's one of the niches where G+ really took off, it seems.

Wolfpacks and Winter Snow has a class of feral children who get sneaking and survival skills and tame animal companions rather than building a tribe.
I mean, it's a stone-age setting and a slightly odd ruleset, so it might be a little difficult to adapt for your own game, but still.

am i just an idiot or are hackmaster 5e pdfs impossible to find?

>read ACKs
>fall in love with it
>nobody to DM
>nobody to run it for

Welcome to OSR!

well help a guy out! photoshop doesn't have any auto correct.

It makes melee attacks more reliable, but have the negative of making them weaker where as ranged are less reliable but bullets deal more damage when they do finally hit.

>run LotFP: the Grinding Gear
>players inspect statue
>inspect plaque (door trigger) with grime and dust from the elements
>fresh body near it has grime and dust on fingers
>characters split to 2 groups
>proceed to thoroughly inspect a mostly empty inn and surrounding forest for the next 3 hours.
>mfw

...

It's a lot like how Dungeon World does XP.

The former. Check PDF thread.

Did you try online groups?