OSR General - Troll Gods Live Edition

Anyone have the DCC Judges Screen PDFs?

Random Table Entries:

> What's stealing all the corpses from the graveyard?

most OSR bestiaries should work fine in LOTFP with minimal adjustment

>1d4
1. The unknown underground village that burrows tunnels to freshly planted coffins to loot for meat and textiles.
2. Graverobbers under the employment of an affluent, neglected and lonely child. He plays pretend necromancer with them in his parents basement.
3. New chef in town with an absolutely astounding pot-pie you just have to try.
4. A powerful Golemist living on the fringes of the woods. He is collecting enough bodies to create a 50' tall Corpse-Golem to unleash physical and psychological hell on the local town.

Had fun contributing. Glad it came together so well in the end!

>amnesiac necromancer widow who keeps forgetting who her husband was and keeps digging up the wrong guy
>escaped flesh golem looking for new parts to replace what is rotting off
>town watchmen trying to stir up the village so they get paid more to watch overtime
>cult that believes souls are only freed from the mortal realms if the body is dissolved
>illusionist conmen who need new faces no-one will recognize in the big city
>savage humanoids who secretly sell the bones to various tribe's younger warriors as fake battle trophies
>a private investigator/witch has been hired and needs to interrogate witnesses from long ago
>bandits accidentally unleashed an ancient horror and they are placating it with corpses, but they're running out and will have to start making fresh ones soon

Hey guys! You may remember me from a few threads back, I asked which OSR game would be best for a group of guys who hadn't gamed for 2+ years. The answer said the most was Lamentations of the Flame Princess, so today I ran my first RPG in two years! Most of the original gang (except for one) who I had actually wanted to run this for bailed on me last week so I had to find new players. Luckily there were a bunch of guys I had met this past semester at college who were open to gaming, and we had a blast.

Should I tell you all the story?

of course!

Alrighty then!

So, a bit on the world and the lore: I used a homebrew setting called Pendowmin. I had drawn a shitty sketch of a map last week which my sister is currently turning into a full-on painting. I stole a lot of lore points from Christianity and Warhammer 40K. Basically, there were four Chaos Gods long ago who created the universe and magic, as well as four servant gods called the Starspawn. But the Starspawn had a good nature and overthrew the Chaos Gods, turned them into dragons, and cast them down to Pendowmin in a deep slumber. Time passed, and a lot of things happened. Firstly, the main religion, Hariosis, broke into four sects, each worshipping a certain Starspawn as their main deity. Some think the Starspawn will be incarnated to wage a final battle against the Chaos Gods, and others don't.

Also, there was a war waged by humans against demi-humans which lasted about 493 years (Note: That war marked the start of the Third Era, and the game starts 7 years after the war ended. So it's the 500th year of the Third Era and there's still plenty of racism). The war wiped out a vast majority of Dwarves, Elves, and Halflings.

Anyway, there's plenty more than that, but that's the basics.

The party consisted of a Fighter, a Cleric, an Elf, and a Halfling. Since most of the players were new to RPGs I started off with the most basic opening ever: "You all are in a tavern..."

So the PCs were in a small tavern when four very experienced looking adventurers walked in with sacks of gold and offered to pay for everyone's meals and drinks.

I was kind of hoping that someone would ask them where they had gotten their gold from, but none of the players did, so I had the leader of that higher-level adventuring party gather the whole tavern around to brag about how he and his party had found the gold (from a nearby dungeon). One of the players got the hint, and started to ask the other players if they'd want to form an adventuring party.(1/?)

Honestly, you can't go wrong with a Tavern intro, haha

The Elf, the Halfling, and the Fighter were arguing at first and spouting in-game racism at each other, which was great to see how easily they all got into character. But the Cleric calmed them down and said that they should work together and go find some treasure.

"Even if it's just for one dungeon, at least we'd have gotten something."

The players asked the other adventurer how much of the nearby dungeon he'd cleared out with his party, and the answer was that most of it was cleared but there were still some rooms unexplored.

At this point it was about 5 in the evening in-game so the players hiked for about a mile and made a campsite with the dungeon in eyesight.

The next morning, they went in and very quickly learned to check for traps and use a 10 foot pole; I had them go into rooms with disarmed, but still slightly functional traps which did no damage, and a room with a trapdoor that had been activated by a previous explorer.

As they went through the dungeon, they used the 10 foot pole to poke the walls and activated a secret button. It made a trapdoor open in front of them, but none fell in. It also caused the main door to the dungeon close (they couldn't see it but could hear it clank). At first they started to panic, but another, secret side door opened. They went inside and found a room with 3 Kobolds.

The Kobolds nearly killed the Halfling, who wasn't wearing armor, but he was healed back to full health by the Cleric. The Fighter then cornered the Kobolds and rolled a Natural 20. I went ahead and said all three Kobolds were killed by it, just because I wanted the guys to have a fun time. They all loved that and gave each other high fives.

In the next room, though, was a starving Vampire and a huge pile of gold. They fought the Vampire and killed it easily. They then got the gold and left the dungeon. But they also realized that they hadn't left the same way they came in. (2/?)

Luckily though, they were by a trade road. They hitched a ride with a trade caravan consisting mostly of Elves, so the Elf player was able to get some good roleplaying in there to convince the caravan that the others meant no harm and they just wanted a ride to the nearest town.

By the time they reached the town it was night, and the only things open were an inn and a small shop. They went into the shop first. I had actually made a prop of a blank scroll, and so the Cleric bought it with the intent of using it to write his own spells with it.

They then went to the inn and stayed the night. Next morning, the Cleric wanted to walk around town while the others ate breakfast. The Cleric PC was a Cleric of Hario (one of the Starspawn), and I happened to plan for the church in town to also belong to Hariosis. So he went in and talked to a monk there.

The monk noticed how ragged the Cleric looked. The Cleric then explained he had been adventuring with a party and that they had slain a Vampire. The Monk was taken aback. He told the Cleric of a prophecy which said that "when the creatures of evil begin to resurface, the Chaos Gods will soon awaken. The only ones who can defeat them are the Starspawn!" The Monk began to weep, saying that the End Times were coming because the Starspawn had yet to be incarnated in the way the prophecy foretold.

The Cleric promised that he and the party would find the Starspawn and help them destroy the Chaos Gods.

He then went back to the inn and told the other PCs what they were in for.

And that was the end of our first session! Lasted from about 6:30 to 10, and everyone had a blast. I plan for many twists and turns in the story.

I had lots of fun. It feels good to get back into gaming.

So, experienced my first OSR game today. Ran half of a session of Dungeon Crawl Classics, just me and the forever GM, to give him a break and let him play.

We both loved it. Only got to the mouth of the underworld, but half the team is already gone and I tossed in an encounter with Death and the Deck of Many Things for added chaos--only every single card drawn was beneficial, go figure.

DCC is so much fun, guys

Damn right it is. Did you run a 0-Level Funnel or him playing an actual class/race character?

Does /osrg/ ever have sessions or anything? If so I'd love to join

I'm planning on running a game very soon, about a week or so. But you will have to play with my very snowflake homebrew game system.

can you give me a more in depth description? I'm interested, of both campaign and a bit of a description of the system.

If troll gods is looking for some ideas of things to post, they could post hex crawl stuff. But specifically single hexes at a time that people could throw into their adventures. In the way they will post only one or two monster entries per issue.

I think I'll submit some now.

>A powerful Golemist living on the fringes of the woods. He is collecting enough bodies to create a 50' tall Corpse-Golem to unleash physical and psychological hell on the local town.

So sort of like this guy here?

Sure. The system is pdf related; Fearsome Gods. It features a to-hit and damage roll in one combat system, races not as classes, and a magic dice system for mages.

As for the campaign, that was a bit the part I wasn't sure of. I know I want to have all the PCs hail from the same village, or maybe all hired from the same baron to do some minor task, or something. I'm always terrible with the start of a campaign kind of stuff, but I want dungeons to be the focus so maybe just a kind of random dungeon crawl that can grow a story as it goes?

Oh and speaking of;

Can anyone take a look at the 10 basic spells I have for utility spells in here and tell me if I missed any of the real basic adventuring stuff? Because I tried to cover all the major bases.

Basically you can't possibly get in legal trouble if you don't charge money, because rules can't be IP. If you give credit for your shit you won't get into community trouble either because the OSR scene is chill.

I want to run an idea past the thread.

How about taking some traditional video game-y concepts, and putting them into OSR? and I don't mean the gameplay or anything, but one specific thing I don't know I've seen in OSR games.

Basically- add socketable items and special gemstones or runes that can give properties to otherwise mundane gear. This gives you more stuff for the party to spend their money on; and can give some more small bonuses and personality to player gear.

Also; give anyone playing a Dwarf race-as-class a chance to socket these gems into items so they don't have to spend money on a crafter.

Also could give an interesting option of either keeping or using the gemstones, since they tend to be very valuable treasures (high value but small and easy to carry). Interesting choices for players to make.

Ran the Sailors of the Starless Sea funnel, yeah. Had him make eight characters and I made another eight, with both of us controlling two people to fake a four-person party.

Of course, since he was the only player, he got by with pushing my peasants in front of all the traps. But now my guys are all dead, so I'm excited for what comes next.

>rules can't be IP
Mechanics aren't copyrightable, but their presentation through text or visuals is. The idea of rolling 3D6 to generate an attribute is not copyrightable. The rules text, "Determine each attribute by rolling 3D6," is.

If you are just straight up taking something someone else did and reproducing it without explicit permission to do so, then it's a violation of copyright regardless of whether you charge money or not. If you were right and "rules can't be IP," it wouldn't matter if he charged money or not.

Please don't go around giving people bad advice about the law. Even if a person is unlikely to ever get in trouble for it, promoting misinformation is incredibly irresponsible and damaging to movements that seek to reform intellectual property law.

The start of a new campaign is such a great feeling. Sounds like your players had fun. You'll have to keep us posted.

One of the better things in the last issue was that neat side quest thing with the fish. Encounters and locations seem to fit very well in the theme.

I could see it working if that's your taste. I tend to like my magic items rare, weird, and wondrous, but if you're playing a setting where they were more minor and mundane I could see that working as a system.

Found it right here:
drivethrurpg.com/product/102457/Perils-of-the-Sunken-City-DCC-RPG

It's less than $4.

Yeah man, definitely. I've been thinking of making a blog to document all the group's adventures. What do you think?

Share some quality 1-2 page Dungeons Crawls plz.

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>blog.trilemma.com/search/label/adventure

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the only two I saved.

Couldn't hurt anything. If nothing else, your group will get a kick out of it later. Half the fun of this sort of thing is reminiscing about stuff after the fact.

Does anyone here have PDFs of the Designers and Dragons series that chronicles the history of RPGs?

You have now been in at least 3 threads. You could always google a torrent, user.

I got you, senpai. Gimmie five minutes or so.

Thanks, user.

Trove Guy, I'm adding you to my game - a mysterious but extremely helpful scholar with books on any subjects the players need so long as they pay with rare books, scrolls or tomes

It's now under /!GM Resources/Designers & Dragons
There are ultimately 25 items in there, including the four core books in every format I could find, and the platinum index in three formats. Also some ads? or something.

..Awwe shucks. I'm touched. You clearly need to name him Tigerious Gyre or some other Veeky Forums initials.

I'm a bit confused about healing rules in OSR systems and D&D systems in general. It seems like characters should heal at most 1 or 2 hit points each day of rest, but doing that can make a break in an adventure last like a week. Could anyone help me understand the justification for this? Is something supposed to happen during this time? Is it just a way to punish players and telling them to act more careful?

Different people will house-rule this in different ways, but I think the whole idea is to use it as a resource tax.

When you're level 1, 2HP can be a third of your total health, easy. So that's a big deal. If you're later level, you probably have access to potions, healing magic, and so on.

You don't want to make natural healing too strong, because part of the natural limit of "how much can be done on this expedition" is your access to healing supplies. It helps keep the pressure on the party and forces a point where the adventurers will need to go back to town.

Between adventures, though, it doesn't matter so much. Healing 1 or 2HP per day just means your adventurers might take a week or two off between one expedition and the next -- which is exactly what people would do in real life. Rest, blow of steam, spend their ill-gotten gains, etc. This is doubly handy if you're running a sandbox or west marches style game, as you can then turn around and charge living expenses per day between adventures -- which provides a gold sink that incentivizes people to get back out there and do some more adventuring.

>Tigerious Gyre
Done!

Does anyone in /osr/ host online games? I want to give old school a try

Any system you are feeling partial towatds?

Dear Cavegirl.

Update your blog.

Sincerely,
user.

Not particularly.
I just want to feel challenged and actually have a real chance of dying for once.
In modern systems even if you have an "unforgiving" dm they seem designed to keep you alive.

I want the "roll new characters until you're grateful a character survived to higher levels" feeling.

Give me the top 10 most useful Wizard spells for OSR

> What's stealing all the corpses from the graveyard?

> A furious widow swore her adultering husband would never rest in peace. A botched curse keeps the dead awake. They aren't being stolen, they are wandering the countryside in search of some grave that will grant them sleep.
> A sentient swarm of tunneling black beetles has devoured the corpses, one by one, consuming bones and all. A recent bout of plague has given them plenty of fresh meat to feed upon... and they've developed a taste for it.
> An adventuring party has tracked down the burial place of a famous bandit who late in life decided to go straight. Rumor has it that the only clue to the whereabouts of his equally famous treasure was buried with him, but they aren't sure in which grave he was buried.
> The land is a meeting point between two dimensions. Any creature, man or animal, living or dead, that spends two consecutive nights in the graveyard wakes up Elsewhere. Until recently, graves were not left open long enough for anyone to notice.
> Kharus, the servant of death, has made a terrible mistake and crossed over someone whose time had not come. Unfortunately, he can't remember who it was.
> The bodies are being stolen and sold to masked men who are members of a secret society. The grave keeper takes their money, even believing they are part of some dark cult practicing vile necromancy. In actuality, they are a society of debutantes, aristocrats, and rich provocateurs. The stolen corpses are for a transgressive art display on the futility of reverence.

Check out B/X for a pickup game.

just reposting my tiny lil hexcrawl map.

How do I DCC it up and make it fucking cray?

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Did you make this user? It's really good.

They're from the 1-Page Dungeon Contest. There's a bunch of cool free shit there.

What type of magazine and content are you aiming to put out? Something like Dungeon Magazine where its a bunch of different small modules for DM's to use, or just different and interesting ideas that can be incorporated into any campaign?

Jesus Christ. Every thread on Veeky Forums about D&D that isn't the OSR General is a shitshow.

Hey /osrg/, were any of you around for the BugWorld threads that popped up here earlier this year? I've been planning on taking the setting and fiddling with it to make it more OSR. If any of you happen to have any of the art from those threads it would be greatly appreciated. I think the setting really fits as an OSR game, really disappointed that the threads died out.

True that. They either devolve into edition war bullshit or guys stroking over certain rules and builds.

Check out the last issue for reference, but it's basically a grab bag of ideas. Encounters, items, monsters, whatever. It's meant to be a creative inspiration and a drag-and-drop source of content. If you wanted to do one-page dungeon kinda stuff to include, so much the better.

I don't bother with other threads anymore.

>I don't bother with other threads anymore.
I still check out the CYOA threads on occasion but beyond that, yeah, very few others.

That sounds doable. Maybe have it so that magic items are all powered by runes/gems, so the magic of the item can be transferred to something else if you have the expertise.

Also you could have gemstones for weapon enchantments and runes for non combat weapons, such as a magic torch or a helmet or waterbreathing.

1. An ancient, elder thing beneath the graveyard is starting to wake up, and is raising the dead. Why? To get the highly complicated ritual implements to put itself back t o sleep until the stars are right.
2. A vampire in fear of local vampire hunters has started putting corpses in coffins all over its castle to throw them off in hopes of a successful ambush.
3. They're starting to aggregate into one grave to complete a vile metamorphosis into a horror of flesh and coffin wood.
4. Damn local teenagers getting into black magic.

5. Thieves steal mystical sword and replace it with a replica. Sword actually had divination aura so town guard can track down thieves of the sword.

And the sword's magic was keeping the corpses in the ground, I guess?

Bumping with content creation:

Sideplots
> D100 secrets of a sleepy village

Not what you wanted, but relevant. There's cults all over this table.

[email protected] thursdays 1700-2000 GMT, voice requred

Are you looking for a live game, or would play-by-post suit as well?

Not the same user, but I would be pretty interested in a pbp game.

There are a couple of active pbp games over at snw.smolderingwizard.com/

1. Everyone in town sleeps 14 hours and are up 8 hours every day.

2. The villagers have accessed the dreamscape and are living out a perfect reality there while being mindless husks just doing what they're supposed to in the real world.

3. Shrieks from the underground caused by an unholy purge makes sleep difficult.

4. The sun is "artifically" white around the village, and so is the moon. This suppresses melatonin and makes the villagers tired and strained, but they refuse to admit it.

5. Everyone in the village sleeps on the job, but nobody admits it, not even to the other villagers.

6. All the coffee in the village is decaf. All sugar is artificial.

7. The villagers believe they are vampires, and sleep upside down like bats. There are no normal beds at all. They're not actually vampires and sleeping really sucks.

8. The villagers use dreams as fuel for odd rituals, and children have the most potent dreams. Therefore they keep the children asleep for the most of every day.

9. A house in the middle of the village is called the sleephouse, all villagers sleep there in a big pile. There is no such thing as private sleep.

10. A law in the village states that if a person sees another person sleeping, he must be punished through 100 whiplashes after being forced to be awake for three days.

That's all I can come up with for now.

InDesign question:

Is there a way to make InDesign make new text boxes automatically when I make a new page so I don't have to match up 2-4 boxes on ever page every time I add some? I feel like it's costing me tens of minutes each session collectively.

There is probably a more professional way to do this, but the way I tend to do it is to design my default spread before I put any text down at all, just putting boxes where I want them to be by default for the two pages. Then I go into the pages window, select those two pages, and then drag them down to the new page icon, duplicating them boxes and all. Then I drag those four pages down and do the same. Now I have 8 identical pages. Then 16 and so on until I figure I'll have all I'll need for the project. Only then do I go back and start placing text where I need it and linking boxes together for flow-of-copy. That way you only ever have to do the default layout once.

>
>1. Everyone in town sleeps 14 hours and are up 8 hours every day.

Now you brave adventurers need to find out what the hell happens with the remaining 2 hours.

user.. are you having trouble sleeping?

So a lot of people have made

Somethingation of the Something Princess games. Has Raggi taken an official stance on people basically reskinning his game and selling it? I know Machinations of the Space Princess is actually a commercial product.

Well considering LotFP is a reskinned B/X I don't think he cares much.

can anyone post the highest resolution picture they have of that black and white image of a bunch of colorful characters standing in line behind a table of who I presume are two player characters? it is an image from one of the old d&d handbooks and I believe and I'm putting it on a "players wanted" ad for my local shop

> What's stealing all the corpses from the graveyard?
> D100 secrets of a sleepy village

Let's try this game in reverse. Suggest questions/topics for random tables!

Be gentle.
If you hit any blank/mostly blank pages it's because those pages are just for lists.

The first draft of the poke'dex isn't finished yet; I just made it to dugtrio.

The zine is pretty cool, good work. Looking forward to the next one.

Are there any OSR games that use a d6 only? I have some friends interested in paying RPGs but I don't want to "overload" them with tables upon tables and dice of all varieties.

I think Permanency is one of the most useful.
Shape change too, since it grants you spider climb if you ... well, turn into a spider, and can also grant you flying.
I think I'll go by LotFP, so Read Magic is definitely needed.
Magic Jar, so you can extend your lifespan by sacking a younger body.
Animate Dead or Animate Dead Monster for that sweed shambling army.
Charm Person is also nice.
Comprehend Languages to have communication with everyone possible.
Contingency to have some safeguard that triggers on harm.
Creation, Major, to get utility things you need easily.
Mnemonic Enhancer, to get a few more spell slots.
Ah, damn. I wanted to put secret chest, Telekinesis and Teleport on here. And some kind of Polymorph. Polymorph others or Polymorph any object. I think it's obvious that Polymorph any object is more versatile and this more useful, so I guess I would take that.

Unrelated to that: What's meant with 'dweomer'? I read it here and there in LotFP, and I think I'ver seen it in LL.
And another LotFP-specific question: What is the duration of spells with the "instant" duration descriütion? Like Creation (Major, Minor)? I get that it takes effect instantaneous, but how long does the created object persist in that case? Forever (or at least until destroyed)

And another Question: Which OSR game would you actually recommend? I like, that LotFP is quite light on the rules, quick to learn and everything. But once you are firm in the rules there doesn't seem to be much expansion to it. No new classes or something like that. Which game is comparatively light and easy but has more content supplements? Like, not adventures, which seems to be the only thing there is for LotFP, but character options and such.

Swords & Wizardry Whitebox and Delving Deeper only use d6 and d20 dice, which could give a lightweight introduction to the different types of dice.

You could just steal things from ACKS and other BX/BECMI/RC clones

I'll check them out, thans.

1d6 random tables to make

1. 1d100 odd things in the night sky

2. 1d100 more stuff in pockets after exhausting yet another "stuff in pockets" table

3. 1d100 weird dimensions that portal just opened up to

4. 1d100 royalties and their personalities

5. 1d100 free items with every sale at the general store

6. 1d100 things at the very very top of the tallest tower in the city

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Try again...