/osrg/ OSR General - Nosfork Edition

>Trove -- mega.nz/#F!3FcAQaTZ!BkCA0bzsQGmA2GNRUZlxzg!jJtCmTLA
>Useful Shit -- pastebin.com/FQJx2wsC


Previous thread:> Anyone got the Hex Crawl Chronicles line?
> When picking a hex size it's more important to think of it as a measure of "narrative compression".
> I'm starting to think we just need 4 classes: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Halfling.
> Is The Black Hack good?
> they don't need to pixelhunt - rather than asking the DM "can I do this?", you go the route of the old soothsayers and roll them bones.

Other urls found in this thread:

the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net
purplesorcerer.com/0_charts.pdf
peoplethemwithmonsters.blogspot.com/2014/08/dcc-rpg-reference-booklet-revised-and.html?m=1
mega.nz/#!i44lXYQT!FQDHT5RC_i7CMl4BOANU4FjCQ8lkpKDhLqoN2-0Aqa0
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

I have nothing to contribute to the above, but I'm keeping an eye on the thread. Definitely interested in seeing the Black Hack stuff and related material, though.

Still looking for some feedback on my game here.

What are some campaign ideas that play towards the strengths of old school systems? Specifically D&D Cyclopedia

Flat out dungeon crawls and hex maps? Or 'sandbox campaigns' as they are called now.

Maybe you could try a sort of hybrid where you have dungeons and adventuring but tied together by a loose overarching plot, like a villain to chase or tracing the steps of a demigod hero of yore.

I just started running the Grinding Gear for my players (LotFP adventure).

Holy shit are they having fun. It's made me realize when playing RPGs, most people truly want dungeons and dragons (not the game, the literal things.)

Hey guys, I was pointed here to ask what the main things I would need to alter/change in the original 3.5E modules for DCC if I wanted to port them to the new edition. Can I get some help?

Might have to wait 'till tomorrow, folks are going to bed now. We do have some DCC fans around, though, so somebody should be able to help you out.

I'd recommend against having an overarching plot that depends on the specific characters surviving, at least until name level rolls around - the game is very much made so that you keep dying and getting replaced by new characters until you reach name level and can Raise Dead.

If you run a lower-level game where one of the players is a deposed prince trying to get back their crown, well, prepare for them to die to a random goblin and leave everyone feeling narratively unfulfilled.

You can get away with overarching plots involving villains, but be prepared for them to die if they ever show their face in front of the PCs and manage to get in combat with them. The lethality goes both ways.

Similarly, you can get away with having an NPC be the deposed prince since it's a lot easier (and more fun) to keep an NPC out of harms way than it is for a PC.


Sandbox campaigns are the way to go, yeah. Dungeoncrawls at lower levels moving into hexcrawls as the players get strong enough to brave the wilderness leading into dungeoncrawls in other remote areas leading eventually into domain-level play and politics and then the Quest for Immortality.

I'm pretty sure the BECMI boxed sets have pretty decent ideas for building campaigns organized in a more level-appropriate way than the RC, but you can also look around to see what adventures are good and maybe nick somethign from them.

Clerics get Raise Dead somewhere between 7th and 10th level, depending on the edition. Which is best?

OD&D and B/X both go for the really early one, which means that adventures in general are going to be more survivable; BECMI decides to link it to name level, which means that it actually interacts pretty well with the whole name level XP thing; AD&D also goes for level 9.

Getting it at level 9 mostly just has to do with smoothing out the progression from the crazy OD&D one, though. (I mean, it makes sense given how you can't prepare third-level spells in fourth-level slots but it's still weird.)

Which edition gives it to them at tenth level?

what are situations or circumstance where a PC doesn't have the opportunity for a saving throw against magic? or is it *always* an option?

>Which edition gives it to them at tenth level?
BECMI and BFRPG

Huh, so it is.

I guess it puts it closer to the XP total of the other classes, at least?

I always allow a saving throw, but I'm one of those weird guys who'd have preferred if Greyhawk didn't remove the saving throws from Sleep and 7th+ level spells.

Question: what's the difference between rolling 3d6 and reducing the total to a modifier and rolling 1d6 and using that as the modifier?

I realized that last night during our LotFP session, I forgot to allow a player to save against a MUs pre-prepped sleep spell. Not that it matters, but he was engaged in combat with someone else. Honestly, it was for the best since he was trying to be an edgy murderhobo and no one else wanted to fight, but I don't like to take away any PCs decision making.

What is /osrg/'s opinion on DCC? I've got a friend who's become obsessed with it for reasons I can't fathom. More importantly, it seems like he's all about that character funnel, which I absolutely hate, as does anyone else I ever ask. I'm all about random chars, that's fine, but to make 10 random characters so that a random one of those will survive is a bit...idk, shit. The game seems pretty neat after that point, but after trying the system once in a test game, and him as a DM, I really have no interest in it.

Did LotFP return saves vs. Sleep? I don't think they were a part of B/X, although I might be remembering wrong.

In most cases, it's up to the spell description. Some allow for a save, some do not.

DCC is one of the games that comes up fairly regularly for discussion. People seem to love it or hate it. Most people will agree that it does some neat stuff. People who dislike it are usually turned off by the funky dice or the excessive charts. I'm in the lattermost camp, personally. A lot of people enjoy them, though.

The funnel thing can be an interesting means to start off a campaign, but the novelty wears off if you do it too often.

Thinking about ordering some stuff from the LotFP store. Am looking at tower of the star gazer, carcosa, qelong and towers two.

Towers two and tower of the star gazer I'm pretty sure on getting, but can anyone comment on the quality of the physical products? I've found the pdfs in the trove, but I'm specifically asking for how the actual product look / feel and how usable you found them at the table.

The LotFP books are hardback, European digest A4 size. High quality. Typically 2 column, smaller fonts but easy on the eyes.

>10 random characters
I know it's hyperbole, but I need to state it's just 3 characters.

It would be pretty funny if it were true. Your party starts with 30-50 dudes in it. You basically begin as a mercenary company or the crew of a pirate ship.

3d6 has a bell curve of results, 1d6 is flat. The odds of a +3 or -3 stat goes from somewhere around 3% to 16%,

If you have five players that's 10-20 characters, you are seriously over-exaggerating it.

It's not that a random one of those will survive, the player characters still have control over all their 0-levels, so they can decide which ones of those take more of the risk. Also its not just one of your 0-levels surviving, that way you still have back-ups when you they hit 1st-level (also if one player was unlucky and lost ALL his, they players can give him one of their extras).

I'm a huge fan of the game. I'm currently playing a 5E game (Curse of Strahd, convinced my DM to let me try Critical Role's Witch Hunter class) but after that is finished we're running a funnel and then running a campaign in a not!Europe setting.

I'm not exaggerating anything. I was responding to what you were responding to, the idea that players would be rolling 10 characters each. I responded by saying that it would be funny, because the group would then wind up being 30-50 characters strong.

My bad, I see what you mean now. Having a starting group that large would be incredibly strong.

Actually that's pretty close to what I do. We use total party kill generator, so it literally takes a second to get a character ready to play. So we roll a dozen in advance and put them in the roaster. In-fiction, it's basically an Adventurer's Society that serves as a pool from which any player can draw any character they want, except if like, some dude falls in love with X character and decides it's his, but it rarely happens.

It seems solid. I don't like the d20 system legacy, especially the IMO boring three saving throws, and it's too fricking long for me, since I usually stop at about a hundred pages except for very rare exceptions like my single volume OD&D (not The Single Volume Edition. I just took the three original booklets first prints and stitched them together to have one big book that serves as my antique rule cyclopedia equivalent)

Here's a general Question for you, OSRg!

Do you write in your books?
I mark down house rules on post-it, mostly, but on books I've printed myself I usually write directly in it, especially games that beg you to house rule them like Sword & Wizardry or OD&D.

I'm and I agree it'd be funny as all hell. Could even be potentially interesting to make a funnel so large in size that instead of proper characters, everyone just has a number of units that get mowed down.
Fantasy vietnam. Literally.

Anyone have a Black Hack PDF?
Someone recommended it to me and I would like to give it a look.

I'm with you in despising the d20 legacy parts of it, although I have to admit that age lessened my bitterness towards the 3 saves (heck, the unified save score from S&W is incredibly popular around these parts recently), but what bugs me to no end is that they used the 3rd ed math and progression. I'd have been fine with the 3 saves working bechanically more akin to older saves, with it serving as a DC, instead of a modifier, but I suppose the decision was made with the goal of supporting the escalating magic system.

DCC is really splitting to me. It has a lot of awesome concepts and ideas, and the imagery and tone is incredibly strong, with the modules itself being some of the best in the business.
The system itself does get bogged down at parts with the tables and what not else. Again, I see why they did it the way they did, and it makes sense, but I prefer it a bit lighter on my table.

Luckily enough it's not that hard to steal its ideas, so it's the best of both worlds, really.

>I usually stop at about a hundred pages except for very rare exceptions like my single volume OD&D
Man, that's just 124 pages.

Comparing it to my PDFs of the Rules Cyclopedia (305 pages) and B/X (136 pages), that's actually kind of slim?

Definitely a far cry from the PHB/DMG/MM model, at least. There's slimmer RPGs out there, but they're mostly intentionally so.

DCC is a bit of a niche within the OSR community. It's different enough from old school D&D and controversial enough that there are less people to help you out than with most retroclones. I'm saying this to explain why you haven't yet gotten an answer, despite the fact that /osr/ tends to be pretty helpful on the whole.

you don't need the PDF, you have the whole rulebook here the-black-hack.jehaisleprintemps.net i said this because i buy the pdf because i want to give a beer to David Black

also i don't like the BH character sheet so i made my own

Not if you play by the book. Sleep gets no saving throw in either B/X or LotFP.

Hey /osrg/, what's a good meat grinder system for a casual faggot like myself? Something to whip out and run a dungeon on when the whole group doesn't show up.

Dungeon Crawl Classics seems to fit the bill perfectly, thematically, but holy blue fuck is the book big. Is there anything with the same mortality funnel and crazy magic critical rules as DCC, but... easier?

Or, better yet, does DCC have an online aid that tracks all the weird dice rolls and tables for you?

Can you direct me to where it states that in LotFP? I'm looking at the spell descriptions and it only states it doesn't work against undead/elves etc.

>1d6 is flat.
I'm pretty sure he's talking about rolling 3d6 to get an attribute score, deriving the modifier from that, and then dropping the attribute score altogether. The 1d6 roll then replaces the d20 roll for attribute checks.

I'm actually in the process of making a homebrew that only uses modifiers without attribute scores, though I'm not using 3d6 for stat generation.

As far as the differences go, well, there will be a decent bit less variance as roughly half of your stats (48.14%) will have no modifier, at least if you use the typical 3d6 method with a result 9-12 giving imparting no bonus or penalty. So maybe it's a bit more boring than having 9s and 11s and so forth to roll against.

In terms of range, there are seven different possible modifiers (-3 to +3) as opposed to 16 different possible numbers for attributes. That means that your attributes take up 16/20--or 4/5, if you prefer--of the range of the d20 you roll for attribute checks. Meanwhile, your modifiers take up 7/6 of the range of the d6 you're proposing to use for checks.

That could, in my opinion, be problematic. If anything, I feel like having an 18 in a stat gives you too great a chance to succeed a standard attribute check. If a standard person (with a 10) has a 50% chance to succeed a check, you (with an 18) have a 90% chance. But on the d6 system, if an average person (with no modifier) has a 50% chance to succeed, you automatically succeed, and a guy with +2 has an 83% chance (meanwhile, a guy with a -3 auto-fails). Of course, saying that under normal conditions the best result (either a 1 or 6, depending on whether you're doing roll under or over) succeeds and the worst result fails, regardless of the numbers involved, does make things a decent bit better. A 1 in 6 chance is still significant (16.67%), if relatively small. If, however, you wanted your modifiers to have a similar effect on rolls as attributes do on a d20, then you'd want to roll a d8 or d10.

Dude, the DCC rulebook is mostly bulked up by the spell section and fluff, almost none of which funnels use. The core mechanics are virtually nothing. To run a 0 level meatgrinder, I suggest using this:

>purplesorcerer.com/0_charts.pdf

(Also, use their 0 Level character generator to speed shit up.)

Along with this:
>peoplethemwithmonsters.blogspot.com/2014/08/dcc-rpg-reference-booklet-revised-and.html?m=1

I don't claim to be an expert on LotFP, but LotFP seems to handle things the same way that B/X does: if you get a saving throw, it mentions that you get a saving throw. In both B/X and LotFP, there is no mention of saving throws for Sleep, therefore you don't get one.

>If, however, you wanted your modifiers to have a similar effect on rolls as attributes do on a d20, then you'd want to roll a d8 or d10.
Technically, you'd want to roll a d8.75, but those are really hard to get a hold of these days. Personally, I'd round up to a d10, because, as I said, I think that the range of your attributes is actually a bit larger than is ideal in comparison to a d20, and I don't fancy the idea of making that ratio larger. And if you go with min/max auto succeeds/fails, then I'm not sure rolling a d8 is really any better than rolling a d6, as 1/6 is obviously larger than 1/8 (you just get there a bit sooner on the d6, as it only takes +2, rather than a +3, to max out a roll that a normal guy has a 50% chance to succeed).

d10 is actually pretty nice though. If a normal guy has a 50% chance to succeed on a roll, a guy with a +3 has an 80% chance (and a guy with a -3 has a 20% chance). That seems about right to me, at least for rolls that you want to be competitive. There are obviously some situations in which you want the guy with the higher modifier to have an enormous advantage. If you're arm-wrestling, the guy with the higher modifier should probably automatically win.

I will say that I'm not very fond of a normal guy having only a 50% chance to succeed on a roll, however (unless PC scores are above normal, on average, that is). I think PCs should have a better chance to succeed than fail, as it's more fun to succeed, it makes the game progress more quickly, and it's frustrating to fail a bunch of times in a row (and that's gonna happen a decent amount if your average roll is 50/50). For that reason, I would favor using a d12 with the average guy succeeding 7 out of 12 times. That's 58.33% as compared to the 83.33% a guy with a +3 would have. It's essentially like you're rolling a d6, but everybody's getting a 1/2 point bonus.

tfw Black Hack is literally OSRified Dungeon World

>It's essentially like you're rolling a d6, but everybody's getting a 1/2 point bonus.
Well, that and everybody's modifier only counts for 1/2. So really, it's not very much like rolling a d6 at all. I stand corrected.

>Dude, the DCC rulebook is mostly bulked up by the spell section and fluff, almost none of which funnels use.
Well shit, that's what I get for being scared off by the size of the book and never reading the damn thing. Thanks, those tools look invaluable!

DCC is fun man. There's a GREAT app from purple sorcerer called Crawlers Companion that auto rolls spells, weird dice etc. It helps speed things up if you hate referencing tables.

Question about The God that Crawls. How are they players supposed to escape? The door at 2:01 is barred shut and reinforced with steel. Are the players supposed to be able to force it open? It sounds rather sturdy.

When I ran it, the players just instantly saw the carvings and followed the directions and escaped.

Tagging on to this:

What are your favorite supplements? Aside from a system to run (be it B/X, 1e, LotFP or one of the other various retro-clones), what should be in every referee's library to truly inspire the OSR? What should be in every referee's library that you consider valuable tool-boxes?

The Dungeon Alphabet
GM Gems
Vornheim

If I'm following the carvings in 1:07 correctly it just leads back to 1:07 right? And the ones in 1:08 lead to the trapdoor in the church?

Does anyone have any concrete examples of how you have handled traps (large room traps or small chest traps) in actual play?

Moldvay B/X mentions stuff like all players being able to detect room traps on a 1 in 6 chance, but I'm having trouble wrapping my head around what this actually looks like in actual play.

Do you telegraph traps in room descriptions - like a groove for a hidden blade or dart holes - in which case, the "search for traps" roll would be finding the trigger mechanism?

Or do you mention nothing about the trap unless the players decide to search the room and *then* you mention the dart holes/groove?

If I remember correctly (and I'm not sure I do, considering it was ages ago), both lead to the trapdoor, but one just takes longer and is a trap option.

Are there classless osr?

I'm going over it and it looks like it takes you back to 1:07.

If a player is actively, thoroughly searching a tiny room or door or chest or whatever (not just casually glancing around), and pass a successful Search check, I usually describe something looking off. Its up to them to surmise its a trap. Ex:

"You notice there is a small hole next to the keyhole on the handle" (poison needle)

"you notice tiny holes lining the roof above the door and small puncture marks on the ground" (dart trap)

"You see the faintest marking of a rune, caked in old dust" (arcane trap)

If it's a much larger room or hall or whatever, they need to be actively searching a particular area. Now of there is an obvious mechanism to disable said trap, they have an opportunity to disable it.

Just to clarify though, you don't telegraph the trap otherwise? The chest is just described until examined, and then when examined you describe the hole next to the keyhole? Also, it seems like you don't roll for detection either?

I use LotFP. Search is the skill for detecting traps as well as "good" hidden things like secret doors. So for example:

"You enter a largely empty room, save for a tattered rug and a simple chest against the north wall."

If a PC chooses to Search the chest and succeeds, they will find the trap/hidden button/whatever. If they fail or don't make an attempt, then try to open it: the trap is sprung.

If they find a trap upon a successful Search, such as a poison needle, and there is a logical way it can be disarmed (you couldn't safely disarm a trap with its mechanism hidden behind stone walls, right?), they roll a successful Tinker skill to do it. On a fail, the trap is (usually) sprung.

Now say there was a stone on the ground in front of the chest that was in fact a pressure plate. They would need to be specifically Searching the ground to find it (I would probably allow its detection on a successful Architecture roll too, if it had good reason to apply). There's no way to disable whatever trap it would cause to spring, since the mechanisms are out of reach. So they would know to simply avoid it.

I'd personally go d20 roll-under relevant stat, rather than having to deal with rules for "saves" as well. It makes the stats themselves relevant, instead of just the modifiers they represent.

You might want to take a look at Ancient Mysteries and Lost Treasures, though it's a single-class game strictly speaking.

Any module recs for a heist scenario?

This is helpful, thanks. So you wouldn't necessarily have them laboriously do Searches for 5-foot square increments, just a rough category (and maybe particular things) is specific enough?

In other words, "search for traps" is not specific enough, but "search the ground for raised plates" would be an acceptable formulation?

>In other words, "search for traps" is not specific enough, but "search the ground for raised plates" would be an acceptable formulation?
It really depends on how you want to go about things. This is something that different DMs do quite differently. I was mentioning last thread how I like the idea of using find trap rolls as a sort of intuition about general areas where the folks in the party need to be careful. As in "it seems like somebody would put a trap here", and then making them search for shit the old fashioned way: by describing everything they do, and poking and prodding until they figure things out. Of course, in order for this to work, you need a fairly high level of success: maybe a 3 out of 6 chance, on average, for somebody in the party to sense that something's up, with the thief's skill being a saving throw if that's failed.

Pretty much. The official rules have a Search roll cover a 10 foot area and take about 10 min/1 turn. I myself like to broaden it out to certain basic areas if the room isn't huge; ie) a particular object, a particular wall, a small length of a hallway.

For a much larger room, like a chapel or auditorium, I'd definitely need them to pick more specific sections than just 'the east wall' (which could be 50'+ long) or 'the floor' (which would be vast).

If your DM style really wanted you to give characters a sort of "6th sense" to danger or hidden secrets in a room (I wouldn't DM that way) I'd just secretly roll under the highest WIS characters ability score. Alternately, you could just roll a check of the highest Search skill in secret, and if it passes, give em a warning.

It's basically "Appendix N: the RPG", and all the gonzo fun and madness that entails. The character funnel is certainly interesting, but it isn't something I ciuld see myself running every single time I started up a new game.

Never ever. My autism will not allow it.

I considered that, but the issue there is it makes players too reliant on stats and brings more unfairness to the character creation- more stats is highly better where as the original has a much bigger spread and was less important.

Secondly, it also makes the option to take or roll for improved saves more alluring.

I'm opposed to making ability scores more important. It was one of 3e's biggest mistakes, and penalizing players for low ability score rolls makes the game less fun.

Class should have a far bigger impact mechanically, in my mind.

Making attributes more important is fine. 3e's problem is that the execution was flawed. MAD vs. SAD and all that.

If attributes become more important, then it becomes harder to justify rolling them. If you're not rolling them, it takes longer to generate a character. If it takes longer to generate a character, they need to be more sturdy so you don't have to keep making new ones at the drop of a hat.

>Do you write in your books?

Jesus christ no!

That shit triggers me so hard. My buddy was using post its in his own book and I was assmad. May as well just wipe your ass with it at that point, sad thing to do to a book.

hell yes write in books - rulebooks are your textbooks, not holy scripture

--

would it be rude to post a pdf of the game I've been writing? It's potentially being published and I don't want to shill.

> MAD vs. SAD and all that.
I'm going to need that explained.

Go for it. /osrg/ supports that kind of thing. Troveguy even hosts stuff (see Wolf Packs and the Winter Snow)

>If attributes become more important, then it becomes harder to justify rolling them.
Oh, I agree. Or at least you need a way that keeps everybody on the same level. carddraw.jpg

> If you're not rolling them, it takes longer to generate a character. If it takes longer to generate a character, they need to be more sturdy so you don't have to keep making new ones at the drop of a hat.
I don't think point allocation dramatically increases the time it takes to make a character. Sure, it takes a bit longer, but not enough to necessitate changing the way you run your adventures.

Multiple Attribute Dependency vs. Single Attribute Dependency. A wizard does pretty well just maxing out his Intelligence. A monk needs a pretty decent Strength, Dexterity, Wisdom and Constitution. So a monk ends up being spread thin compared to a wizard.

>would it be rude to post a pdf of the game I've been writing? It's potentially being published and I don't want to shill.
Not at all. I can't guarantee you that you'll get much if anything in the way of feedback, but it's certainly not going to offend anybody, and chances are that at least somebody is going to get something out of it, even if it's a silent lurker.

> I don't think point allocation dramatically increases the time it takes to make a character.
Honestly, my hatred of point buy stems from optimization issues. You always wind up seeing players with very similar, safe, boring stat lines that are tailored specifically to be the best at the character class chosen.

I absolutely love the results from random ability scores. Some of my most memorable characters have been really underpowered, or really good at things that I would have never chosen for them. You don't get high charisma or wisdom fighters in a point-buy system because it is extremely rare that anyone is going to allocate points that way compared to dumping them in strength, dex, or con.

>Honestly, my hatred of point buy stems from optimization issues. You always wind up seeing players with very similar, safe, boring stat lines that are tailored specifically to be the best at the character class chosen.
Yeah. That I agree with. It's nice because it lets you build exactly the character you want, but it's bad because the mechanics corral you towards a relatively small number of combinations, especially in a system like D&D, which has a pretty strong combat focus when it comes to explicit mechanics.

>I absolutely love the results from random ability scores.
I appreciate the randomness of allocation, but I'm less wild about how some characters end up being strongly favored overall. And it means that you need limit the impact of attributes.

> And it means that you need limit the impact of attributes.
So use something like the "random but fair attributes" chart that shows up from time to time. I started doing a variant of the idea that's class-specific, letting you choose to play an elf first (for instance) and then roll a chart tailored to elves as a class to determine attributes.

>letting you choose to play an elf first (for instance) and then roll a chart tailored to elves as a class to determine attributes.
That's a pretty cool idea.

>what are situations or circumstance where a PC doesn't have the opportunity for a saving throw against magic? or is it *always* an option?
No, it's not always an option. For instance, many spells specify a save against something else, most commonly Death Ray. You don't get to roll both saves, nor do you get to choose which one to roll (but it doesn't make sense to roll vs. spell anyway, as the Poison/Death Ray save is always a better value). And as noted some spells deliberately do not permit a save, such as Sleep. You only save vs. spell if the spell is not cast from a rod, staff or wand, allows a save, and doesn't specify another saving throw to roll against.

But if your question was about situations like being surprised, tied up or knocked out, then yes, in most editions you always get a save regardless of your physical situation. IIRC some editions even let you save against an unwanted Raise Dead even though you'd obviously be *dead* when making that roll.

alrighty, here we go lads

mega.nz/#!i44lXYQT!FQDHT5RC_i7CMl4BOANU4FjCQ8lkpKDhLqoN2-0Aqa0

it's kinda D&D run through WFRP for tone with simplification in mind

You can still make them random.
Me and my group uses cards with numbers as dice, 3 cards become one ability score. We atleast thik it's fair because everybody gets the same total score but still random individual scores

We only have 5 ability scores and uses the numbers 666555444332211

Carcosa is probably the nicest physical RPG product. Like, full stop.

It should be pointed out that this isn't really how it works outside LotFP. In D&D proper the detection chance is meant to be rolled automatically and instantly, and represents "something just catching your eye". If you search a room this takes one turn and it's handled freeform, with the expectation that players will notice anything that's reasonably visible in an area they search. E.g. scanning the floor carefully means noticing any protruding stones, pressure plate seams etc.

> Carcosa is probably the nicest physical RPG product. Like, full stop.
Is it "nicest" or "nichest"? Because I'm not too keen on Carcosa. Spells are literally tied to the hex map of Carcosa, for example.

>In D&D proper the detection chance is meant to be rolled automatically and instantly, and represents "something just catching your eye".
AD&D called - it said something about taking 1-10 rounds to look for small mechanical traps in a specific place.

They also told me to mention that OD&D and B/X also have you take a turn to search a 10'x10' area for secret doors, and that in the former Dwarves only notice slanting passages/shifting walls/traps/new construction "when looking for them".

The instant roll thing is more of a 3E thing, I think? It's somewhat popular to backport, although at some point I think it's probably better to just grab 4E's passive perception instead.

Nicest. As a physical product it's basically unbeatable, unless you count tiny-edition hype shit like those 25th anniversary editions of CoC.

> As a physical product
Ah. That makes more sense.

What are some good aztec-themed modules and adventures, both tsr and osr

What genre doesn't have a osr game to fulfil it? How far can osr games go in terms of wild/crazy stuff?

That's the same logic that plagued the d20 system, y'know.

OSR works best in a logistics-focused fantasy dungeoncrawl - the further you move from that, the better off you are just using a different system as the base.

Fuck, one big answer is "any genre that lacks combat". Next up comes comedy, heroic stuff, and modern no-magic stuff.

As soon as you wander into a genre where hit points are unsuitable, you start to wander beyond the domain of OSR.

So mad maxian osr wouldn't work as well? It could do hex crawly stuff

> OSR works best in a logistics-focused fantasy dungeoncrawl - the further you move from that, the better off you are just using a different system as the base.
That depends on the definition of OSR you are using.

> What genre doesn't have a osr game to fulfil it?
We don't have transhumanist (body-swapping, Ecplise Phase style) OSR, IIRC.

> How far can osr games go in terms of wild/crazy stuff?
As far as you can take it. I don't think many games went as far as Planescape.

Can someone help me.
Why are adventurers needed when there are armies?
I dont get why the keep cannot raise 20 men and storm the caves of chaos

Sure, the wilds are dangerous, but less so to a bigger number of well prepared people

Because while two men could do the job of a second-level Fighter, chances are that one of those would die.

Meanwhile, the adventurer is one of those suicidal fuckers who would probably do it anyway and doesn't ask for payment beyond looting rights. And pays for their own equipment and lodgings.

Also, and I'm not entirely sure if you're aware of this, but the Caves of Chaos are probably actually a superior military force to the Castellan's? The only reason they aren't too much of a threat at the moment is because they aren't united, but if an outside threat shows up...