/osrg/

Welcome to /osrg/ - the OSR General, devoted to pre-WotC D&D, retroclones, and all other related systems.

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Discussion starter:
Would you allow Warforged in your OSR game?
Why (not)?

>Add your HD and your foe's AC to a d20 roll to attack, roll 20+ to hit

This just makes THAC0 more opaque than it already is.

Pros:

I really like Warforged. I think they're one of D&D's best races, in that they are weird enough to justify being a race but also have strong, basic cues to roleplay from so people can get a grip on them pretty easily. I like weird fantasy and warforged fit in weird fantasy. They open up a lot of plothooks to go with for characters and adventures.

Cons:

The armor, endurance and long list of immunities don't really fit the OSR playstyle. There are dungeons and traps you could overcome just by making your warforged walk into them. You can argue you can do that with some other classes too, or spells, but there's always a risk or resource element to lose.

Solution:

Race-as-class. Even in a game which isn't doing race-as-class, race-as-class. This fits Warforged to a tee: they are literally built for a function, so to play a Warforged is also to play a Warforged of a particular type, and that whole package is a class. You can make this more interesting by allowing Warforged PCs to choose how they improve/customise themselves as they level up, or (if they make the change to a completely free Warforged, trying to escape their purpose) let them roll for improvements randomly or at that point take on another established class.

I don't think I would, and there's two reasons why:

>The RP baggage

They come from a single setting, and in order to transplant them, I need to create a history for them in my own worlds. While that part isn't difficult, it does change the flavor of the Warforged. What if, for example, they're like the golems in Dragon Age? People who have been violated and bound to a construct for all eternity to fight a specific foe? They once knew the pleasures and pains of flesh, but these are now closed to them. Changes the psychology of the Warforged a bit, doesn't it?

>Rules

Warforged have a number of advantages over normal PCs. They don't have to eat or drink anything, they're more or less immune to the elements (aside from really extreme heat and cold) and so this affects hexcrawling and wilderness adventures, because those necessary preparations for meatbags don't apply to Warforged.

There's also the fact that if you include them, they're going to be immune to most poisons, diseases, etc. They're a magnitude more powerful than even elves. Additionally, there's all the optional bits for Warforged from 3e, like additional armor and stuff built into their bodies.

I can sort of see it working as a class where they become the ultimate tank, but that leaves out some of the cool things like psionic and magic-user Warforged.

HP bloat - is it a problem? How do you deal with it?

yes, honestly I can't think of a single humanoid race(besides full blooded Demons/Angels/Other Outsider Races) that I'd disallow from an OSR game if there's rules for them(that aren't garbage) unless the setting wouldn't allow for them, but then I feel the wide diversity of races is one of D&D style fantasy's biggest strengths, and honestly settings that restrict things to "human only" or "humans & demi-humans only" I often find incredibly boring

except Kender obviously

I don't think it's a problem but I do like the alternate grit/flesh thing that Wolf-packs & Winter Snow has going on.

>How do you deal with it?
Use a Wounds/Vitality system instead of a straight HP system.

For the right campaign, absolutely! I'd streamline some of the immunities.

One weakness I've considered is that they cannot be healed with magical healing (and if you really want to be a hardass, they don't recuperate with rest either). They must be healed by a craftsman or a specialist with the tinker skill, and it costs gold for spare parts and material.

Could lead to a fun dynamic--the big tough guy who needs his little buddy to fix up the dents.

I've got a flying race of halfling sized creatures in my homebrew that can solve a lot of problems, but they're regarded as animals by most people, and are fairly weak in combat against human size opponents.

Nah... if everybody has a d6 HD, what I see is that by level 6-10, they start to have enough endurance to handle a number of mook battles, but anything with some bad ass magic or a powerful attack can quickly put them right back on the razor's edge.

>I've got a flying race of halfling sized creatures in my homebrew that can solve a lot of problems, but they're regarded as animals by most people, and are fairly weak in combat against human size opponents.

Sounds pretty cute to be honest.

I've actually been tinkering with an OSR system and I've been wondering if everybody should get a d8 HD.

Why do you prefer a d6 HD?

Not him but making the D6 the default size for both HD and one handed weapons makes combat less 'swingy' because the overall range of values that can be rolled on the die is smaller. I personally wish every game did it.

This is why I like /osrg/, there's always some interesting mechanical discussions.

New hexcrawl hook question:
The PCs have stumbled across yet another goblin (or humanoid enemy of your choice) lair in the wilderness and you want to do something different from "warren of twisting tunnels with 1d10 warbands inside".

What's the central gimmick behind this lair that sets it apart from a typical warren?

Here's a couple of questions on running the game for all you GMs out there

-When do you award XP for treasure, assuming you're using a gold-for-XP system? Back in town?

-What about jewelry or gems - is the gold awarded at the time of sale or the time of recovery? Finally, do you award gold for the actual value of the item, or how much it gets sold for?

-What do PCs even do with all the gold they earn, considering there's no magic item market in older games? You can haul out at least 5000 gp from Keep on the Borderlands alone. Obviously you can bank it for a castle - but what are some other gold sinks that you can give players?

These goblins were once uplifted by a kindly elf, now long dead. They have continued his teachings, expanding with a plan for the future. They have carved the mountain's slopes with terraces for agriculture, keeping their society from prying eyes. Their warren honeycombs the mountain itself, and the lower depths are where they get their metals. Fresh water can be found in underground rivers.

Though it has been many generations since the elf who uplifted them died, they still speak a hybrid of elven and goblin, and their script is a simplified elven one. They will be shy of the adventurers at first, but if the adventurers overcome their natural suspicion of goblin-folk, the goblins will invite them to rest.

Sometime late the next morning, the council of sages will request the adventurer's presence. A cave in has trapped some miners below, and while the rest of the goblin teams hack at the mountain's bones to clear the rubble, they want the adventurers to delve into an old, unused passage that connects to the same general area. They can pay the adventurers for their trouble, and even provide a guide.

They warn though, that something lurks down there, and it is the reason that mine was abandoned.

If the adventurers rescue the miners, they will not only be paid, but the goblins will throw them a raucous party. If the adventurers return in a few months, they'll be greeted warmly, and shown a palatial warren that has been carved especially for them, with three entrances: One that connects to the goblin warren, one that opens to the slop of the mountain, complete with garden and veranda, and another that connects to a cave near the foot of the mountain, so the adventurers may come and go as they please.

Couple of solutions.

1. Don't make them immune to disease and poison, just give them a bonus on saving throws against such.

2. Warforged still need energy, so instead of eating and drinking, they must consume X. X can be magical batteries, spell scrolls, potions, whatever.

3. Warforged also come with some pretty strong drawbacks. Sneaking? Swimming? Lol good luck giant golem of metal armor.

>HP bloat

Increase damage as characters level. You can do this with straight-up damage bonuses (thief's increasing sneak attack multiplier) or you can give out extra attacks.

Power Attack is one of the not-bad ideas that 3e had, too bad they shit the bed with it.

>when to award treasure as XP

When they successfully being it to civilization (town, city, etc.).

>jewelry and gems

This is trickier. But I'd award the full XP for the GP value of the gems and/or jewelry, and encourage the pcs to sell the gems. They probably won't get them for full price, but they can haggle for it. Merchant will offer 50% base price at first, and will likely be willing to pay as much as 75%.

If used as barter, you're more likely to get the full gp value, but the downside is you can't make "change".

>gold sinks

It sucks, but taxes and tithes should probably be considered. Taxes, so you can stay on the right side of the law, tithes so that the Church is willing to provide services.

LotFP has some investment rules you could use.

Other than that, you may want to remind your players that their PCs can die fairly easily, and that banking their money so that someone else can claim it might be a good idea.

In a 2e game I ran for a while, all the PCs were part of a thieves guild. The guild took 20% of every take, but offered training, housing, and support for its members. Donating more than the guild's 20% was considered an upstanding thing to do (the guild maintained a stipend for higher ranking members, and in particular, members who had retired - also, a widows/orphans fund).

You also couldn't get promoted if you didn't donate, since greedy thieves are no one's friend.

Main gold sink is training (which can be waived in exchange for a favor for the NPC of course) and mercenaries in my game. In AD&D 1e you gotta pay for their gear normally, so they're very expensive.

I've NEVER seen gold proliferate out of hands. More often they're barely scraping by.

Rolled 1 (1d8)

1. Lair made of ruins from underground transport system of an advanced civilization. Lots of trams/automated walkways that can be activated accidentally or on purpose.

2. Lair is half-inside vast subterranean worm, slowly eating it. Goblins essentially parasites to the creature, but raid surface for valuables which are made into strange wondrous objects as pearl farmers make pearls.

3. Lair is ancient fossil of enormous monster. Necromantic wards mean the goblin leader can raise the whole dungeon as undead at last resort.

4. Lair is goblin hell, populated by the souls of dead goblins forced to suffer eternally at the hands of adventurers. PCs are actually agents of divine punishment for the goblins' cruel gods. This fact may not be immediately obvious.

5. Lair is front of slow war being fought by two parasite species - 1 endoparasitic insect, 1 fungal. All goblins 'died' long ago but their bodies are animated by competing parasites. Each species is adapted to goblins, but may opportunistically infect other hosts. If left alone centuries from now one side will win war and emerge to spread across the world.

6. Lair is sporting event that the secret capos of the goblin mafia attend 1/year to bet on. PCs have unwittingly been manipulated into entering and many other parties of adventurers may be in attendance. Chance of huge reward if PCs can figure out how to bet on themselves.

7. Lair actually mid-construction wedding prep for delicate political marriage between chieftains of two powerful goblin tribes. If bride or groom are killed their tribe will explode outwards into civilized lands in an orgy of self-destructive violence, but wedding will be inevitably interrupted if critical elements (rings, blood sacrifice, high priestess of Maglubiyet, chastity of bride and/or groom) go missing.

8. Lair is goblin mental asylum, presided over by elven psychiatrist who believes he can cure goblins' innate antisocial behaviours w/ sufficient conditioning.

>another gold sink to consider

Arming retainers/henchmen. They don't generally come with gear, and once you get into stuff like vassalage, you're expected to equip and house huscarls/bannermen. Some knights were household knights. The slept in the lord's home, ate from his table, and were paid and equipped by him. Occasionally he would give them some land with a small income to pay for things (but it wasn't "theirs" and they couldn't give it to their own son, nor did they generally build a house on it. They were supposed to make sure it was turning a profit, since that's where their pay and equipment was coming from).

I would definitely not say warforged are a magnitude more powerful than elves.

Well, it depends. AD&D 1e elven fighter magic users are, beyond a doubt, superior in most regards to, say, a warforged fighter. Simply +1 to hit with bow and sword and boosted surprise chance is INSANE, plus of course magic that lets you end encounters in one action, plus Mirror Image and Stoneskin work as immunity to poison just fine.

Also see the amazingly powerful Half Orc Fighter Assassin and Gnome Illusionist Fighter or Illusionist Thief.

Overall they're part of 3e's flavor and I never use them outside of 3e.

In B/x or BECMI, however, it could be fun to do Warforged-As-Class that is basically a Warforged Artificer. I could see shifters: the class and changelings: the class too.

Warforged fighters would overshadow plain fighter-dwarves, but then again midget demi-fighters are largely inferior to both elves and humans, imo.

The roguelike Dungeon Crawl had a "Deep Dwarf" race which I could tell was inspired by Warforged, as they were included in the same update that added Artificers, and their signature ability was minor damage reduction (but that stacked with armor, and that is HUGE), immunity to most levels of poison, recharging of devices, and ... no natural healing.

How do you handle training costs in AD&D1e? Flat fee to level up? Gold cost commensurate with XP?

Just what it says, gold times level multiplier. However the official rules are actually rather damn brutal, with parties typically just barely squeaking by (at least at low to mid levels), esp if you charge deminiggers for each of their classes.

What I will do next time is have guild leader type NPCs that the PCs can do quests for, and anyone in the party with an apropos class can gain free training. Training costs would often then often be for people who just don't wanna bother, or we're in a hurry, or the storyline is leading somewhere else, etc.

So, how about scrolls. How does everyone handle them in basic dnd and it's retroclones?

-is read magic free or does every M-U get it?

-can scrolls be used to learn a spell through transcription? If yes, does that use up the scroll?

-Can spellbook pages be used as if scrolls?

-Can an MU learn from a scroll outside of leveling up?

All in your campaigns, of course. Lots of different rulesets and I can never quite decide what I like best.

Don't all mages have to know Read Magic in virtually all editions?

I think use of spell pages as spell scrolls is just an AD&D thing and beyond not sure.

Sorry completely new guy to OSR here.
I heard there are games that handle hp with things like dismemberment tables and such.

What are some good games that do this?

People tend to overlook the fact that Warforged also have plant-based bits beneath their metal armor. It's possible to give them immunity to most normal diseases but giving vulnerability to molds and plant diseases. Maybe add a fungal infection like Thri-kreen suffer.

You could always use a slowed progression of some sort. Of course, you might have to modify the damage spells do to compensate.

How do y'all feel about exploding dice?

...

Anyone have a good article/guide/tutorial to statting up monsters or converting monsters to the OSR (Swords & Wizardry/Lamentations/Osric)?

I'm trying to get back into blogging gaming stuff as a means of stimulating productivity, but I could use some help getting back into the swing of things.

flesh and grit, user, flesh and grit.

Never experienced an issue with it.

ACKS is probably the ruleset you're thinking of - it incorporates it into the core rules.

Honestly I consider this one of the best retroclones in that there's a lot of stuff you can port over into another ruleset, even if you don't use the ruleset - domain management, market classes and demand modifiers, tables for generating trade goods as a part of treasure hoards, racial classes (nice compromise between race-as-class and race/class division), magical research, and the Player's Companion also gives methods for building classes and remixing spells that still feel appropriately B/X.

Has anybody experience playing ACKS?
Got the book cheap and i don't know if its good.

they're far too dangerous. I don't want my players getting hurt by plastic shrapnel, even if it is thrilling.
Seriously, though? I'm not sure what they add. They're a cool dice mechanic, but in the more rules-light feel that osr goes for, that's not automatically a plus. I can see it working for the right system, though.

It's solid. If you don't like any of the additions you can strip out Proficiencies and then you're essentially playing Basic/Expert D&D.

The only criticism of the system I've seen is that it can get fairly crunch heavy if you try to math out everything by-the-book, and some people don't enjoy that as much. On the flip side it's not like eyeballing things ever hurt anybody in B/X D&D and at the very least ACKS gives you some numbers to base estimates on. I find it very helpful from a GM perspective because the procedures for setting up towns and cities focus in on relatively campaign-relevant mechanics and get me thinking about them from the prep stage (rather than having to come up with an answer on the fly that might not be well-considered).

Ex. "how much can I sell these ancient silk tapestries for here?", "what kind of criminal underworld can we find hanging out in seedy dive bars", or "how much force can the Count's men muster against rampaging adventurers" are not usually things I think about first when planning a location, but these are very relevant questions for a party of adventurers and ACKS at least gives you some benchmarks to improvise from.

The other issue I've run into is that there's a couple of confusingly worded sections - rules for random encounters could be a little better laid out.

There's a rule way in the back of the book that tells you how often to roll encounters when the party is traveling through civilized, borderlands, or wilderness terrain, but it's buried pretty deep and easy to miss (and if you do this can result in some pretty incongruous outcomes like running into a wyvern 1 day out from a major city).

Some other areas are also ambiguous - ties on initiative are to be resolved "simultaneously" but that's left to your interpretation. This is still pretty par the course for most OSR rulesets though.

Proficiencies are probably also not to everyone's taste - there is a sort of lingering 3.x "char-op"-ness to them (for example with reaction rolls) but they're entirely optional, and their strength will also depend a lot on your rulings (reaction rolls again are a good example of this).

Patric Smith wrote a review for Wolfpacks, and my sales have shot up.
I'm pretty much bouncing up and down with happiness right now.
falsemachine.blogspot.co.nz/2016/08/wolf-packs-and-winter-snow-by-emmy-allen.html

>Also presumably at some point during the game you are going to have to bone a Neanderthal in order to get that Neanderthal DNA that most non-Africans still have knocking about in our Genome.

Do we dare ask for rules for this? Or better yet a random table, something with a suitable title like "Consequences of Inter-Species Inbreeding?"?

...

Out of curiosity, do you have a home game running for your own game right now? What's it like?

I've seen games that only award it when it's spent.

I tend to notice that a lot of the good modules are for beginning characters or low-end characters at least. This is understandable, since it makes them more accessible, and usually the OSR stuff leans towards lower levels anyway, but I've been looking for a bit higher-level stuff.

Turns out, playing one-on-one, even if the character musters a lot of henchmen and the like, is a quick way to get some levels under your belt. When your experience isn't divided (as much) and you can basically focus all your survival efforts on one character and have others literally die for him if need be, you're going to live. Combined with an unexpectedly savvy and capable first-timer (seriously, this one gets this stuff), most low level dungeons and adventures have been rather easy. I'm thinking I'm going to have to start seeding some nastier stuff into the game. I'm all for sandboxing, and I'm operating on the assumption that most of the world is level 1, but freaky dungeons in freaky places obviously aren't "most of the world" anyhow. There needs to be actually risky places so that risk analysis and risk-vs-reward actually works.

Any suggestions for good modules around levels 5-10? Hell, I would be open for suggestions above that, provided they aren't just "It's the same dungeon, but every goblin is now an ogre" -type of inflation bullshit. In general, good, dangerous modules where you have to play it smart and think.

>1

For treasure, depends. If the treasure is plausibly modern coin, usable as such and undamaged (I.E the location it came from isn't some sort of an ancient hellhole where everything has lain moldering for countless years), you get XP for money (silver standard, btw) for entering civilization. Civilization defined as any area where you don't roll encounters or otherwise need to see if living ends up killing you.

On the other hand, if the coinage is obviously unfit to be sold at current price (gold usually doesn't go bad, but its rarer. Other precious metals might be harmed by time), and treated like any treasure to be sold and haggled over.


>2

Silver, but yes. Things you can't use as money are worth as much as you can get out of them. If you have an incredibly valuable treasure but don't realize it and sell it for a lot less, like a jewel that's worth 3000sp, but it's inside a tacky statue you sell for 50sp, then 50 is what you get. Conversely, if you sell something above its value (because it was important to the buyer or whatever), then you also get what you can get.

That being said, sometimes we don't bother and just lay it out right from the book. My players like the haggling, though, so usually only when we don't have the time.
>3

My players have a tendency to generate logistics around themselves. Mercenaries, for example. Mercenaries with all the associated finicking are fucking expensive. Also, we tend to consider your actual holdings and whatever you actually manage to GET with your money unrelated to adventuring your "high score" of sorts, and the person who retires in most glory and opulence has the highest score. So money piling up isn't normally a problem.

I want to play a 5th Edition OSR style Megadungeon, but i want a finishable one.

Any good really big dungeon in 5th edition (can be fanmade or third party). I prefer dungeons that are easy to DM aka short descriptions (like Barrowmaze and Stonehell).

I do. It's going alright, actually. Interestingly, the dynamic is wilderness > dungeon > domain (where normally it's dungeon > wilderness > domain), and the players aren't bothering with some stuff (like herbalism, say). But like any game, different groups will play different ways, I figure.
The Abberant class already exists, user.

is there any 5th conversion of Barrowmaze?

Converting them from what? There's no hard and fast rule since source systems can vary so much.

HD are a decent proxy for the power of the creature. They scale in toughness pretty much like characters do with levels.

Then you just need to draft something describing their special abilities. OSR statblocks are pretty thin.

I know this is not something anybody makes money from, but would you mind sharing some stuff about sales and how you promoted your game?

Like how big a jump was the review on false machine? Did you send out review copies or speak to people reviewing it, or did it just happen naturally? What did you do to put the word out?

Are you still planning to put out your module?

Bit of a weird question that people may not agree with: do you have a platonic ideal of a dungeon for different D&D monsters? Like is there a specific type of goblin dungeon, kobold dungeon, orc dungeon, dragon dungeon that is the right one for you?

Keep on the Borderlands is probably what a lot of people think of when it comes to old-school dungeons with monsters like kobolds goblins and orcs, but I dunno if I personally see it as an ideal, more as a framework.

Someone recommended me LotFP, but the rulebook seems like it's missing a lot of stuff. Is that purposeful? Does it just assume a certain level of OSR familiarity? Or are the books in the trove early editions / stripped down ones.

I love exploding dice to the point of having saved this image just to use to discuss them.
Got any idea how one could make anydice.com do, say, roll d8! (the explodey kind) twice and take higher result?

I first used 3d6, then realized exploding d8 offers nearly identical probabilities (except at the lowest ends).

You may want a system with more granularity in terms of probability. IT only existing in 5% bites can be kinda nasty.

Keep on the Borderlands is to me the platonic ideal of the D&D adventure.

Depends on what you mean by missing. There's no monster listing or magic items or the like. You're officially supposed to come up with those yourself. Unofficially, you just look at some other monster manual book.

Or are you talking about something else missing?

Bumping for my question. Any good recommendations for adventures level 5-10 or higher?

If the character is mustering plenty of henchmen then they should be leeching experience off him. Also, the game system you're using probably limits the number of henchmen he gets which will keep down the amount of resources he can bring. If he's bringing more people in then he's got full-blown party members that get equal shares of XP.

Another important source of challenge is rival adventurers (with differing levels of "scumbag") - if your player has all the time in the world to deploy a limited number of resources then he'll take it slow and carefully for sure. Rival adventurers might get to a dungeon before him, or alternately ambush him while he's leaving with the loot.

Secondly, mid-levels in OSR play is when characters start leaving civilization proper. The idea is that the "easy" dungeons are near civilization, but slowly they get cleared out and/or camped out by nearby adventurers, which means players now have to trek out into the wilderness proper - and wilderness encounters are considerably larger. This also lets you put freaky dungeons with high rewards in appropriately freaky places - they're away from civilization so no one has plundered them yet.

Generally speaking though if a player is good at the game, they're good at the game.

It's mostly just player side rules in the LotFP core rulebook. There's a referee book but it's more just advice for running a game, rather than specific procedures for building a dungeon, creating treasure, etc. - although LoTFP's approach for new GMs is more about helping them through providing concrete modules.

Start with B/X or ACKS if you want a more exhaustive treatment in one book and tables for generating treasure and the like. If you're set on using LotFP you may have to do a bit of currency conversion, however.

The henchmen (proper, she's got like five at this point) do leech off her. They get half shares since she's the boss and all. The mercenaries she hires are subtracted from battle experience, but don't get shares. They get stable (figuratively, anyway) pay and usually start to whine for extra money if they see any real loot being found.

Haven't really used rival adventurers though, it always starts to feel a bit silly when adventuring starts to feature as an actual profession. But I might look into that, it should provide some additional continuity.

I was more or less thinking along those lines as well, with "easier" dungeons being closer to civilization. Thing is though, I'm having a harder time actually finding good modules that are higher level to put farther away from civilization. I'm building some stuff myself, but it'd be nice to have existing stuff as well.

Of course, she's about to start delving into Stonehell, which should get harder pretty quickly. The first levels will be easy, but it gets pretty nasty farther down. I've been thinking of finding some well-received megadungeons and seeing if I can just use the levels piecemeal for smaller dungeons.

On a sidenote, I don't really have any experience with official old D&D (or AD&D) adventures, but there's a lot of stuff there. Any recommendations for any of that?

Secondary Trove is down fellas

An add-on to the second question - when do you award the *XP* for gems and jewelry?
Is it at point of sale or point of recovery?

For example, if PCs can only pawn this huge emerald here for 2000gp despite it conceivably being worth much more, do they get 2000xp only? Or do they get whatever the emerald's "objective worth" is in xp?

There's a function on anydice that will explode dice. I think I'm going to convert all damage dice to d6s and have them explode.

What are you looking for specifically?

>Does it just assume a certain level of OSR familiarity?
It does a little bit, but you should check out the LotFP referee guide as well. Other things could most likely be found in the Labyrinth Lord books if you need them.

Officially no, but conversion should be relatively easy.

I'm As with jewels and objects, you get as much xp as you can get out of it. If you agree to sell the biggest, most valuable emerald in the world for 2000, then you get 2000xp.

I guess the exception would be if you would conceivably be never selling it, and for example flaunting it at your house or some such. I'd give you the full amount for that. Not for storing it away like a miser, but for actually doing something accomplished with it. That's still "High score" worthy stuff, so you get XP.

(If you sold it later since you're forced to, you'd get no xp for that of course. If you'd try to abuse this like a git for surefire full xp, you'd get penalized. XP-wise, I mean. Because you're not being a cool, accomplished guy at all right now.)

Hasn't come up too often though. Usually they're happy to sell anything remotely valuable. Usually they can't really afford to just waste it like that. Generally, your fortune is what you can make of it, and so is your xp.

This caused some intresting things when they did Tower of the Stargazer, and none of them realized they'd come into the possession of 40 000 fake copper coins. I rolled for each of them. And amazingly, the merchant they pawned the lot off to failed to realize this also. So they got the money for it, and they got the xp.

And then they got into a fuckload of trouble a couple of days later.

>The mercenaries she hires are subtracted from battle experience, but don't get shares
Are the mercenaries actually going down into the dungeon with her? If they are, of course things are going to be incredibly easy.

Generally speaking most OSR games assume only the PCs and their henchmen are crazy enough to make the delve. Mercenaries and the like will gladly take your coin to escort you to your destination, and watch the horses and stick around for you outside, but they're not getting paid nearly enough to go down into the tunnels - in order for them to do that, you need to induct them as proper henchmen. They're also people of unsteady loyalty (since their goal is cash) so morale checks should be quite frequent, especially if they notice they could simply double-cross their employer and make out with all the money.

Mercenaries should be relatively unreliable compared to henchmen - professional, sure, but at the same time there's no way they're not paying attention to the vast hauls of treasure that they're not getting.

Surprisingly I think Lost Mines of Phandelver is probably one of the greatest examples of this. You got your goblins, your bugbears, your hobgoblins, your ghosts, your aberrant creatures, your bandits, your evil mages, your orcs, your evil cultists, your undead, your slimes, your mimics, your giant bugs, and more. Mind your not all of these are in one easy to get to location, but they are all readily accessible and low level 5e is surprisingly deadly, not unlike earlier editions.

Also, I use "adventurers" in a loose sense. They don't have to be professional tomb robbers; they could be elite advance agents of a distant empire scoping out bases of operations, a hedge knight and his retinue on deeds of daring, a vampire slayer rooting out evil, etc. etc.

Tomb robbing for loot is always a good default assumption but the key thing is a rival group of NPCs with class levels, high motivation, and organization.

People really rave about LMoP but I've never been able to get into it. Something about the location, the villain and the friendly NPCs really turns me off.

You can adjust it as needed, like any other module. Want more intrigue? Maybe not all of those friendly NPCs are actually friendly and work for the villains. Don't like the main villains? Just change them and the players would never really know. The locations can be completely overhauled as well to fit wherever you want including your own homebrew setting.

I'm honestly thinking about converting the rules over to an OSR game (most like BFRPG or Darker Dungeons or akin to them).

Hey, /osrg/, can anyone think of a cool city name that has a similar kick to it as "Lankhmar"?
Such a good name, really.

Bressus
Parnat
Tor Ferin
Vekora
Ghethen

Just made those up on the spot and I rather find them having that "city of mystery and adventure" feel.

Dormen
Lurhin
Herroch
Uven Ur
Nidridge

Ramhknal

Jalmekh
Morwald
Bel Kyrth
Myrtram
Sartain

Also "Vornheim" as a name really hits the same tone as Lankhmar I think.

Not that user, but your suggestions don't really help with feeling lukwarm about the original conent.

LMoP I think is an alright hanger module. In a sense that it provides stucture you can easily "hang" your ideas on. But I'm not sure if I had any troubles coming up with structure like that myself. And If I needed one, a lot of OSR modules do that much more efficiently.

I did contemplate shifting it around to fit this insane BBEG idea that I love that I read on a blog recently.

DCC's Punjar is probably the one that came closest to it.

Which comic books would you fit into Appendix N?
Jack Kirby's New Gods and Doctor Strange would be interesting

Punjar to me just sounds like a swear jar but for puns.

>1. Don't make them immune to disease and poison, just give them a bonus on saving throws against such.

How is a magic robot going to be affected by, or even catch, something like rabies or the plague.

ACKs and Dungeon Crawl Classics have wound and crit tables that wouldn't look out of place in a Warhammer game.

Magicly?

it's magic.
Or, just say there's some fleshy bits deep inside it ( just a brain, maybe), that can still be infected.

Or that the deseases and viruses have adapted to the physiology of the magic robot. I mean it seems to effect all sentient species, right? You can have a diseased (lets just say) Elf that spreads it to other populations of other species. so why not effect Living Constructs? Maybe to a lesser extent? Have them resistant to disease and half the time it takes to get over it, or what have you.

OR! OR OR OR! Have them not be able to be carriers. once the virus/bacteria/hellspore has effected the Living construct, it is too changed to effect normal people.

You could ALSO have Living Construct diseases cross over into the full living world. Imagine going to a party with some LC's and coming home with a case of THE CLAMPS!!!!

That's a cheap cop-out and you know it. And it makes the whole gimmick of playing a magic robot moot if you're subject to the same sort of limitations and ailments as an organic being. Why bother introducing them as a playable setting element if they're functionally identical to other races?

You could go for the happy medium and have Construct-only diseases, or diseases that only a being made of metal/wood/stone/magic would have to worry about. Warforged Bob doesn't have to worry about catching the herp, but he's pretty sure that low-rent repair joint gave him a bad case of the Rusting Waste and maybe even some dry rot to go with it.

As a player race? No, but that is because I'm biased against having anything but the four main races in most of my games. As an enemy faction, sure, I could see using a race of sentient iron golem like beings who were just as adept with spell and blade as a man and could literally forge new equipment onto themselves.

My players are at level 2-3 in DCC (which I guess is a 4-5 in most other retroclones) and have yet to meet an enemy that does more than one attack each round. Do you think it's time to break out some monsters like that?

Yes. Or you could have a small swarm of monsters attack them as well.

A couple of hours late, but hey.

I don't know why you assume I have a problem with this. I don't, it's fine if you actually utilize your resources (like hire a lot of manpower to help you get this shit solved) instead of simply waltzing into fucked up deathtraps. This has been the case in our games over here for a long time, and it works for the kind of game we want. If you have money, you have means. And if you have means, you don't need to be a shitkicker who's first to every traphole. It creates its own problems and challenges as well, and keeps the game dynamic in many ways. It also means dungeons aren't often so much personal adventures as they are operations, which is a feel we tend to like. Hell, more than once it has turned into actually besieging a dungeon and smoking the inhabitants out to a killing field of crossbow bolts. Sometimes it turns into almost literal fantasy Vietnam if they can dig themselves in and fight back.

There's been a lot of mercenary army play, and the two honestly aren't too different. In both, you have violent men getting hired to facilitate violence for someone else, with a considerable risk of personal injury or even death. Dungeons are weirder, sure, but as long as shit doesn't go all lopsided and the risks feel manageable, then men of action do as men of action do.

As said, I don't have a problem with all this, and I'm just talking about the fact that I find myself looking at higher-level stuff and noticing that there's a lot less of it than there is low-level stuff. A lot of the recommended stuff is also low-level, and I've heard a lot less about the harder things. I'd be intrested in throwing in really lethal stuff (trust me, from experience, 1HD shitkickers start losing their edge pretty quickly when it gets actually nasty) to facilitate better risk analysis and all that.

So, simply put, I'm just looking for module recommendations, not gaming advice. That part is working out pretty well for us.

any good random tables for generating mercenary companies?

Dwimmermount is pretty good if you want a long term Mega-Dungeon crawl. It has lots of differing enemy factions in it too if you like adding some politics into your fantasy Vietnam. The only issues I can see is that it has a pretty strong in-setting flavour and assumptions. But most of that can be cut or altered pretty easy.

Barrowmaze is also pretty fantastic, and fairly unique in that it's all spread out vertically instead having layer on top of layer.

I've never been too keen with Mega-Dungeons. I prefer delves and overland games more than anything. What do Dwimmermount and Barrowmaze bring to the table?

>but that is because I'm biased against having anything but the four main races in most of my games
boring

So...I had a very stupid idea.
I just watched The Raid again, and, well...
youtube.com/watch?v=ARYmqzWPCdk

I want to run something with that kind of IMPACT during fights. I want characters that can take hits but still die "reasonably".

I know of Wushu, and I think it's a pretty cool game, but it lacks what makes The Raid's violence really cool to me : it's got grit, despite the over-the-topness. And D&D has grit.

I'm currently thinking : what if I stole Wushu's main mechanics of adding detail and forced it onto D&D dead simple combat system, somewhat? I'm very tired at the moment, so I can't really get into more detail, but anyway : do you see something like this working, or is that completely retarded?