OSR General

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

QUESTION OF THE THREAD
>Your ideal mashup system would take bits from what?

Skills: LotFP
Saves: S&W
Spellcasting: DCC
Encumbrance: LotFP
Classes: LL - AEC

Other urls found in this thread:

nerdomancerofdork.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/flavors-of-the-osr-part-2-swords-wizardry/
dandwiki.com/wiki/Hexblade,_Variant_(3.5e_Class)
osrcompatible.org/osr-compatible-logo/
b.reich.io/tuooov.pdf
twitter.com/AnonBabble

That looks disturbingly like my home brew. Good taste, user.

What Bestiarys are most useful for OSR games? Or just plain fun to read.

Some of my favorites are AC9 Creature Catalogue and DMR2 Creature Catalog.

Fun to Read: The lavishly illustrated Hackmaster Hacklopedia of Beasts which is for D20 games.

Is Advanced Fighting Fantasy considered an OSR game?

Is it compatible with TSR's D&D stuff? If so, then yes. If not, then, no, it's just old-school, not OSR.

(Damn google, why you have me identify 20+ storefronts before you let me post?)

Previous thread: (It doesn't have OSR General in the subject and will be hard to find in the archives. It should have been linked in the OP)

Anyone have a one page dungeon or a short adventure? Want to try out Labyrinth Lord with my group tomorrow and want to focus more on running the game than building it out.

No not compatible at all but came out in mid 1980s. Very well known in UK as it is a spin off of the Fighting Fantasy Choose Your Own Adventure paperback book series by Steve Jackson (no relation to the American game designer of the same name).

>Encumbrance - LotFP
>Everything else - S&W Complete

Still looking for magic I like. I know DCC adds some interesting stuff but I really want weird, surreal, magic the players don't fully understand, that takes way longer than six seconds to cast, more like in Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

Do you mind telling me what the difference between the S&W Core and Complete books is?

...

You could look into Carcosa and how it handles magic with sacrifices and shit.

I'm not entirely sure. I've never read through Core.

According to this website, Core has OD&D + Supplement 1 and Complete has OD&D plus all the supplements:

nerdomancerofdork.wordpress.com/2013/12/12/flavors-of-the-osr-part-2-swords-wizardry/

Thanks!

I think that every class should get interesting skills and powers whose primary use has nothing to do with combat. Reason being: the D&D combat system is pretty solid at its core (a few tweaks here and there) but I think fighters get shafted while casters get all the fun toys. But there shouldn't be a "skill" system in the game, exactly.

DCC added some nice bits.

Warriors get Mighty Deeds and a broadening Crit Hit range (no real out of combat perks)
Wizards get spellcasting
Clerics heal in myrad ways and have divine magic
Thieves get re-accruing luck and out of combat skill bonuses
Halflings get luck & can use it on others. Also they get stealth bonuses.
Dwarves can smell fucking gold and bash skulls with shields. Also Mighty Deeds
Elves have spellcasting but also get to fight decent and search like champs

Can I get any feedback on my mostly finished game here?

I'd like some finishing touches before I actually set up a group and get to playing it, if at all possible.

I'll give it a read through, give me a bit to post back thoughts.

Thanks! I await eagerly.

I'll take a look at it in the morning. Need to crash tonight though.

Hey, /osrg/, what is your favorite module and why?

Tome of Horrors 1-4 is pretty good for the sheer number of monsters on display. I like to raid 3.5/PF books for monster ideas too, since it's easy as pie to simplify them to an OSR level.

I've posted a map very, very similar to this one before but I went back and have slightly redone it (mostly added a few more points of interest and got rid of political lines). This is a huge 60x60 hex map (each hex is 6 miles) which means this map is 360x360 square miles or an area slightly larger than New Mexico.

I'm already fluffing it up, but I thought I'd post the map here for you all to steal and use as you see fit.

(Part 1/2)

(aka Fighter) (aka Specialist) (aka Magic Users) seem pointless additions.
Where is the stat modifier table for new players? I know them already but having it is helpful.
What is currency in this game? All I see is "XP = Money spent"
"You can choose any starting equipment" on Warrior, but other classes don't have restrictions listed.
"You also get a number of bonus attacks against enemies per level over their HD" are the players going to be aware of enemies HD at all times or will the GM have to keep track of this and let players (Warriors) know?
"All saves go up by +1 every 10 levels" are you going to be leveling a lot in this game? To get to level ten that's 45,000 "Money"
"increase your Attack by +1 or your Defense AND HP by +1" other classes don't have this, are Warriors the only class with scaling Attack bonus/HP?
What is focus die for? I assume for skills (both starting ones at d6), so when you roll a skill you add that skill's stat modifier (Focus die?) needs clarification.
What is a Magick Die (d4/d6/d8/etc.) I assume 6 since "you lose them on a roll of 6." and how many do you start with?
"You start with 1 combat spell, 1 utility spell, and 1 arcana." I assume this means you start with 3 Magick Die at 1st level?
When you lose a Magick Die how do you recover?
Defense should be changed to something like "Defense Score", so it reads as "Defense Score is 12 - Size Modifier + Armor Die + Etc." I assume this is how it works, and was confused at first trying to find out how to calculate, as "static defense" I assume is "Base Defense" located in Secondary Attributes.

(Part 2/2)

When you roll a max result for Attack "You get a free weapon die worth of damage if the attack wouldn't have hit." How do you determine if attack wouldn't have hit? You just rolled highest possible number, how often would a 20+ attack not hit?
"Weapon (weapon die) The damage penetrates Defense." So if you miss the overall attack (d20+weapon die) you can still deal damage (d4,d6,d8)? do you reroll the Weapon Die or does the attacked person take maximum damage?
"... or add the Block number to a combat save roll." how long can you hold onto this "Block" and does it stack if you happen to roll your Armor Die at maximum result twice in a row?
"Size Modifier is based purely on your race's physical size and height in cubits. (humans = 4 Cubits)" cubits = size modifier?
Shock is size mod - 4, so a Gnomi's Shock is (-2), so if a Gnomi Charges a group of enemies on the first round of combat, he takes a -2 to Attack and Defense?
Gnomi's Wisecraft skill works different than Expert's skill system, may cause confusion.
"Equipment is full priced in cities and towns..." but no costs listed for weapons/armor/items, is this part missing or not added yet.
Weapon's rules seem weird/confusing, determining of a new or improvised weapon questions read strange/weird.
If all three questions are answered then its a d8, but "Any weapon held in two hands is boosted up one die size." does this mean that an new/improvised d8 weapon is now d10?
A player wants to use a giant tree branch as a great club, it isn't sharp or piercing so it only gets d6 (but d8 when actually used two handed?), seems strange?
Weapon traits look nice, but "Dagger - Concealable", no other weapon is concealable? Do you make up traits for improvised weapons?
Armor descriptions very specific, maybe I'm reading to much into it.
"*Flip Flops must be done on your turn and do not revert until your next combat turn begins." I don't understand.
How do skills work for other classes?

Didn't read magic section

Thats all I could think of so far, I'm pretty tired at the moment and going to sleep after I post this so if anything I said is wrong/already there, let me know or ignore it.

I like the race's listed, very nice alternatives from the usual three (Elves, Dwarves, Halflings)

Thank you for the feedback. There's a lot there to cover but I'll attempt to fix anything missing.

That's a hard one. Personally I really like B4 since it's got so damn much material in those thirty pages and a pretty cool setting, but I also realize that the map isn't the greatest and has some problems with linearity and generally not making too much sense if you think on it too much. The only way to tier five being through the room where the (untouched!) ghost-possessed shroud is, for instance. Or those inexplicable unmapped secret passages all those factions seem to have down to the city.

However, it's still really cool and I really like the do-it-yourself nature of the second half - it's very cool how they just remove the training wheels and just give you a bunch of material that you could work with yourself. I totally understand why it's no longer a thing, but I still think it's pretty cool.

There's other great modules out there as well, of course - I'm pretty fond of Caverns of Thracia, for instance, mostly because the mapping is fucking amazing and there's so many obscure interconnections and secret levels and hidden areas and great NPCs.


There's also, of course, the one in your image - the Keep on the Borderlands. That's a good'un. The best thing, I think, is all the advice on how the caves change with repeated visits and the details on how you can get hirelings and such in the Keep - the worst thing is the fucked-up scale of the map, though.

G1. Pretty much undefeated as a fully realized monster lair.

>How can I create this grim but weirdly sweet vibe in my games?
My belief is that all you can bring to the table is the grim, and something like the CSIO (which, of course, is essentially a Lankhmar knockoff). You can't really *force* your players to be incongruously cheerful, you can just hope that's their attitude (or choose your players very carefully).

The good news as I figure it is that most players naturally tend toward the HIGH FIVE, BRO! style, and it's much more likely for a referee to get his serious horror game "shit up" by Fafhrd-and-Mouser types than the reverse. You just gotta remember that if your players kick the lich off the rooftop in mid-speech, before he can even reveal the ominous dooms of the outer whatever, and throw his tibia to a passing dog, that's actually a *good* thing for your purposes.

I guess the other thing is to run with it if one of the PCs decides to quit adventuring and become the acolyte of a jug god.


(A response to user from last thread, that I didn't want to post then because the thread was spiraling the drain already)

In no particular order, my favorites are :

Caverns of Thracia, City of the Invincible Overlord and Dark Tower from the old days, but my favorite ones nowadays are Maze of the Blue Medusa, A Red & Pleasant Land and Deep Carbon Observatory.

Could you turn the grid off and send another pic, lovely?

Yeah, if the City-State counts then it's definitely one of my favorite modules. There's so much stuff there! It's a great little hive of scum and villainy.

This: I didn't count CSIO as a module, but if we do it's solidly at the top, even despite all the balls-crazy stuff. (And in some cases, because of it. I love the autocannon the Overlord salvaged from a MiG.)

Thanks, user. I'll just tell the players that I'm down for them railing against the grim nature of the setting. Also, somehow I didn't know the CSIO existed. Totally going to run a campaign there.

Match it with the Wilderlands of High Fantasy for a really classic game. Not very Lankhmaresque, though. (I'd love to see a more Nehwon-like overland map matched for the CSIO. Not literally Nehwon, that is, just something with the same type of groove.)

For anyone who's interested in running a game in the City-State and wants to be able to read the map on their computer, I took that 100MB scan someone generously posted here some months ago and made a shitty 1/8th 4-bit greyscale version of it.

Still better than the one in the PDF, though!

Tower of the stargazer is pretty beginner friendly for DM as well as group right?

I'm playing AD&D 2nd edition with a party can someone recommend a kit which closely mimics the following 3.5e variant class.

dandwiki.com/wiki/Hexblade,_Variant_(3.5e_Class)

Fuck dude, this is nice work, even with the slightly hinky assembly. (I'm guessing that's not even your fault, the scan's just a bit weird?) On my screen this comes out to actually a little bit bigger than my print copy of the map.

Very much so. Tho I will say it has a thing that beginners will probably not understand: why setting up the telescope and doing everything "right" in turn kills them.

To be fair, that's kinda Raggi's thing, tho.

Also, does anyone have a copy of CSotIO that is bookmarked?

Has anyone ran this bad boy yet? I just picked it up and it looks amazing.

Yeah, the scan's not exactly lined up properly. Mostly in that a bunch of the sheets were scanned at an angle, but there's also this big chunk near the middle-right where I don't have anything at all - luckily it seems to be pretty empty.

I'm pretty sure that you'd need to actually cut apart the huge map to get a better scan, though, so I understand why they instead just folded it to scan sixteen A4s(?) worth of map.

Working on it extremely slowly! Until someone's done I'd reccomend just bookmarking page 81 (82 in my PDF), which has the index.

By the way, what exactly do you want bookmarks for? Just streets and specific rules, or also something for every location?

CSotlO?

I assume what is meant is City-State of the Invincible Overlord.

I can't get over that cover art, it's just so silly

You mean badass.

It can be both.

HackMaster's Little Keep on the Borderland. It's basically a retelling of B2, but it adds a whole hell of a lot more.

Here you go, hope it works for you.

What program did you use to make this? I really like the individual hexes and all the colors

>Skills: LotFP
But they start so low. I mean, sure, you can focus on a few things and get pretty good at them pretty early on, but then you really suck at everything else. It's nice not having to deal with percentile dice with a system that doesn't otherwise use them, but the actual scores are a bit problematic in my view. Also, it would be kind of nice to have the skill system elegantly extend to unskilled people, and not be a pathetic 1 in 6 chance (where you're better off not even trying something if there are any sort of repercussions associated with failure).

Hexographer free edition. It's really easy to use but can get a little slow at times (click a hex to add something and it takes 4 or more seconds to register the click), but still very solid system.

I wouldn't make you roll at all unless it was a task so difficult that the average person would be unlikely to succeed at it in the first place. Which I think is the idea.
The "roll for everything that happens" thing is a modern attitude.

thanks! Is it worth paying for, or is the free version good enough?

Well, you can get Hexographer 1 for a discounted price right now, and the new kickstarter is up for Hexographer 2, which you can get the upgrade to Hexographer 2 when it's out for a pledge of $3.

>click a hex to add something and it takes 4 or more seconds to register the click
The fuck? It's not at all that slow for me. Have you tried giving it more RAM when it asks for it in the settings, or something?

I have. I'm not the only one who has this issue, one of my players who has it as well has a similar issue (though only with putting out lines and not terrain). Maybe we just have shitty computers, I dunno.

Death Frost Doom as DCC 0-level funnel. Yay or nay?

It's better as a 'rocks fall everyone dies' module than a funnel imho

Any mega-modules I should look into? Things like GDQ and the compiled A series.

Actually writing my mashup now.

Skills: LotFP
Saves: sorta S&W homebrew. Single save of 16-[Lvl] with bonus to most of the standard 5 from class.
Spellcasting: Haven't decided yet. Probably Wonders & Wickedness. Clerics are no longer spellcasters and instead the highlights of their spell list have been turned into class abilities.
Encumbrance: LotFP ofc.
Classes: Base of LotFP with heavy homebrew rules, inspired ZakS's d100 table classes and DCC.

Other highlights:
Trying to decouple ability scores from class choice.
Luck replaces Wisdom. Luck Points get spent on gaining advantage or re-rolling and several other things. Each class has an optional extra benefit to spending luck.
Race & Class.
DCC's Level 0 funnel.
No skill list. Specialist skills are a "serving suggestion", though only they can train Sneak Attack.
Some dungeon exploration moves that essentially stop tracking movement speed and instead tick over turns any time the party stops to do something.
Opposed combat rolls. d20+Atk vs d20+AC (no base AC anymore).

link to Zak's d100 table?

It's not one table, it's a series of classes he did where you roll twice on a d100 table each time you level up, instead of getting bennies the normal way. (Except hit dice, I think? I think you just get your class HD automatically because it's too critical for operations)

> Also, it would be kind of nice to have the skill system elegantly extend to unskilled people, and not be a pathetic 1 in 6 chance (where you're better off not even trying something if there are any sort of repercussions associated with failure).
I've actually got something for this, I think. It's a WIP I'm chewing on.

I need to get my weeaboo fix on. What are good and cool OSR samurai things? Rules, adventures, settings, whathaveyou.

While it is old school (which is what the old school revival is all about!) as opposed to OSR because its from the 80s, this user isn't exactly correct, being OSR is larger than just being compatible with TSR D&D.

True. If the only qualification for OSR was to be compatible or emulate in some way old school D&D, wouldn't it be a better to call it "Old School D&D Revival"? Show me all of your classic 70's, 80's and 90's games!

2 OSR Monster Books I have found highly useful are:

Adventures Dark & Deep Beastiery
Swords & Wizardry Monstrosities

Both are nicely illustrated and large tomes with tons of monsters new and old.

No, this is wrong. I don't know why one or two of you keep insisting on doing this periodically, but as has been explained many times, "old-school" in this context DOES imply D&D. This thread didn't invent and doesn't control the term. It refers specifically to the playstyle facilitated by the first few editions of D&D. It IS the Old School D&D Revival.

Wow, not often you see a full on grognard of such caliber now adays.

You can do whatever the hell you want my friend, I started playing on WFRPG 1st edition and don't feel the need to hold D&D holy.

So I really don't care what you or Dragonsfoot or whatever or whoever else tries to claim, OSR has grown beyond the simple "lets remake old D&D!" to include a large number of old school and old school clone offerings.

Like his table for the Alice? Has he made any more? Or are you just making your own?
Because if you're making your own I will ask politely to steal said tables

No man, he's made one for fighters, mages, alices and I think maybe thieves too. Not sure about clerics. It's on his blog.

>OSR has grown beyond the simple "lets remake old D&D!" to include a large number of old school and old school clone offerings.

And basically all of them are still compatible with TSR era D&D, even the weird ones. If they weren't, it wouldn't be OSR. You can call people "grognards" for disagreeing all you want, it still won't change the fact that if you want to market your stuff as "OSR compatible," people are going to expect to be able to run it with other OSR systems.
If you publish a Runequest book or Fantasy Trip book or something, and slap "OSR" on it, you'll be misusing the term and getting a lot of people annoyed when they find out that you really don't know what OSR is.

>Like his table for the Alice? Has he made any more?
Correct on both counts. He posted a bunch of them, way before RPL came out - mostly (possibly entirely) variants of standard classes. He has a tag for them on D&DWPS, but I forget what it is. I think if you search the blog for "random wizard" you'll find that one, and then the tag will be in that post, obviously.

thanks, imma go check that out

1) This thread does not determine what is and isn't OSR. It's a term widely used in the RPG community to talk about a certain style of game.
2) This certain style of game is almost always directly related to TSR-era D&D, usually to the point of being mechanically compatible

> osrcompatible.org/osr-compatible-logo/

OSR as a term for a specific game refers to games compatible with the old TSR era D&D systems.

OSR as a movement refers to the revival of "old school" play in a broader sense.

Which this thread is intended to refer to is, I suppose, up for debate, but I wouldn't begrudge discussion of Traveller Runequest or anything else like that in these threads.

Look guys, we are getting our version of edition wars now!

"OSR" is slapped across a half dozen PDFs I've gotten from the Trove, and I'm sure there's tons more.

Nobody is saying you can't enjoy other old school games, and even talk about them right here now and then. But they're just Old School, not OSR. Why is that such a problem for you? Why are you so upset about that?

Runequest is literally the start of the new school.

I could see WFRP, though. The first two editions actually play very well as gruesome dungeoncrawlers, similar to low level Basic.

OSR edition wars are bullshit. They don't even feel like edition wars anymore. People have participated in edition wars all their adult lives, and they have certain reasonable expectations when it comes to them. You can't just upend everything and expect everybody not to get upset. I, for one, will not be participating in the OSR edition wars, thank you very much. I'll stick with my tried and true 3.5 vs. 4e shitfests and be very happy about it. Thanks to the horrible decisions involved in creating the OSR edition wars, you won't get another ounce of my bile, nor one iota more of my righteous indignation. I hope you're happy.

Anyone know of any good sci-fi or alien OSR bestiaries? I mostly run X-plorers and White Star. It'd be nice to have something to pull from instead of always creating creatures from scratch.

please no, this is the comfy corner of Veeky Forums

Yeah, but every eight threads or so, somebody asks about what OSR is, and then a dude (or dudes) gets really butthurt that "OSR" doesn't include every single system made before 1992. It's like clockwork now.
I love Traveller, but it's not OSR.

how is traveller? I've never looked into it but it's talked about a little here.

Traveller's weird and interesting. When Marc Millar wrote it, he had a copy of OD&D on one hand, and a copy of the wargame Lensman on the other, and would look at them to see how they approached things, then design his own solution.
The result is a game that's really different from other early RPGs. It's classless (though you could argue for careers as a vaguely class-like structure) and skill-based, and uses physical stat damage rather than HP. Chargen is very rapid and done with a lifepath minigame.
One big philosophical difference with D&D is that of stat and skill advancement. It's done in chargen; there are no levels or XP or even any personal improvement mechanics at all in the first printing. Characters generally start out as older veterans who've already reached the peak of their personal prowess and exit chargen looking not at an upward power slope, but a battle against steady decline. It's more a middle-aged outlook than the adolescent one D&D has. Your best "levels" are behind you.

There's a Traveller thread over here if you want to talk more about it, though I'm off to bed soon:

I wonder if this guy is going to come back.

There was a hack posted semi-recently, maybe the black hack or I think it might have been called 'Souls' something that had a million really awesome classes and was made by someone here on Veeky Forums.

Could somebody post that please? I forgot to download it last time and don't remember how many threads ago it was. Would really appreciate it. If you need more specifics it had circular pictures in the book and had a 'rat man' race as class, just for some details I remembered.

Anyone have the pdf for the Sixteen Sorrows supplement for Godbound?

Thanks, sounds pretty interesting, I'll go check that thread out

Found only the beta.
b.reich.io/tuooov.pdf

From an outsider's perspective, the notOSR and isOSR side of the argument are both pretty butthurt. Probably because the OSR crowd is opinionated and crotchety as well as divide between creative and technical types. So you stick people who are technical and precise in a room with people who are creative and philosophical, both of whom won't give an inch, you get arguments like this. You can find the same sort of stuff on the blogs too.

is there an OSR that is built around being 'pulp' in its style? You know: Hollow Earth, Indiana Jones, Jungles, Nazis, etc.

Something like this, but old-school.

It's not really an issue of "edition wars" so much as, whether one agrees with it or not, when the majority of the internet says "OSR" they are talking about D&D stuff. If I advertised a game as "OSR" on a kickstarter, and then it turned out to be based on traveller or WHFRP, people would feel mislead.

You can argue whether or not it SHOULD refer to something more than D&D stuff, but in practice, not so much.

This. The definition of OSR is settled at this point, has been for nearly a decade now.
OSR is not just nostalgia for the old days (though that's a part), it's also resurrecting a specific type of game that was killed and replaced with modern D&D, and which wasn't really a thing anymore since all the other games that had sprung up had tried to be "not D&D," leaving the D&D's original niche of tactical dungeon crawling totally unfilled.

These two are proving my point nicely.

You can slap "butthurt" labels on people all you like, but it's not an argument, it's just a thought terminator.
Redefining "OSR" to mean "old" makes the term both useless, since it doesn't describe anything specific anymore, and confusing, since nobody uses it that way outside of a couple of weirdos on this thread who can't stop arguing for it.

Except I'm not. I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't give a flying fuck about what OSR is or should be. I'm simply pointing out what the most common usage is. Go look at how products are branded.

Acknowledgement that a thing exists is neither advocacy nor endorsement.