/osrg/

I've actually used the name "Dran Gorg" as a character name before. He was a also a fighter who wore the heaviest armor he could and refused to fight with anything but his trusty Fauchard-Fork

While I don't think you need anything except knowledge to do a vaguely asian game, things that OSR folks did with the theme are pretty good.

Red Tide is a great setting / sandbox generator by Kevin Crawford (Sine Nomine Publishing). It's not exclusively Asian, but NotChinese and NotJapanese nations are represented, and various tables and spells are flavourful.

Yoon-Suin is an amazing setting toolbox, although the flavour is something Tibetan. But mostly it does its own thing and presents setting solely in tables, which evocativeness just hurts my self-esteem everytime.

I don't think you need specific rulesets, but I looked briefly at Ruins and Ronin and Shinobi and Samurai.

Both games are based on S&W, but the latter has more specific classes and bestiary seemed to be filled with more japanese-themed monsters. Also it has some 4eisms, like author describing classes in terms of their combat role (striker, defender etc.) but it's not like the game became a tactical slugfest that is 4e, there's no mechanics for that.

What is the weirdest, this game doesn't utilize ability scores AT ALL. Seems like your class is the only thing that defines you. Not sure how it works out since I didn't read much more, but at least it piqued my interest.

At last, you can always check out good old Oriental Adventures.

1. A raygun that only charges up once a year

2. A great tusk of the antediluvian mammoth

3. Whip made from strands of hair given by the storm god's daughter

>Skyshouter
A javelin decorated in the old runes that is always warm to the touch and has the faintest of vibrations to it when held. When thrown it flashes brightly and emits a loud crack noise. It has no other powers despite the barbarians beliefs about it, and the tribe that holds it is most often the one currently most powerful over the others. As such, Skyshouter is often fought over as the belief is that a chief who owns it must be the best and most powerful chief.

Hoping this goes well, thanks for posting.

1d10 list of odd shit to find when traveling in uncivilized lands
1 - Hungry pack of 2d3+1 4-foot Terror Birds in a plain of 6-foot high grassland
2 - Loud and pompous band of lost explorers. Well-equipped but dumb as rocks, they blame each other and are almost at blows
3 - Cave-dwelling hermit who can eat memories
4 - Minefield of 4d4 sluggish giant trapdoor spiders, hibernating unless disturbed
5 - Entombed/Trapped Ecophage
6 - Derelict wooden ship, there are no bodies of water nearby and the flag is of no known nation (50% chance something is sheltering inside the broken hull)
7 - Lake of mercury. Watch the fumes
8 - Tribe of Wind God worshipers, engaging in acts of extreme flagellation in their deities' absence
9 - Red magical moss. Smoked or brewed into a tea it produces hallucinations which come to life for their duration
10 - Katamari of skeletons, directed by a plant in the core

youtube.com/watch?v=sP52b11cLNY
This is dope. Makes me want to space-gonzo the fuck out of the next campaign which is happening never

Help me workshop an Initiative houserule:
The Ref and players declare their intended actions at the beginning of the round before initiative is rolled.
Starting with the Ref, then clockwise around the table. Then initiative is rolled and the declared actions take effect on each character's initiative.

This might favor the players too much, as they get to react and counter the Ref, even though their character's may not be able to tell their opponent's intentions. Plus the Ref doesn't ever get to counter the players. Of course, if the Ref rolls higher, then the counter-actions would automatically fail and the player has essentially wasted their turn. If that is the case, then perhaps that player can change their action on their initiative. Unless they committed to doing some kind of full-round-action like casting a spell.

Thoughts?

Follow your dreams user and just DO IT! Also top taste in music; if you haven't looked them up already try Conan.

Do you guys ever fudge randomly placed treasure?

I rolled up some treasure last night, first piece of magical equipment in the game so far, but it won't be something the party can use.
I want magic items to be special, should I fudge it to something they will use? Or should I just leave it up to the dice gods for what they get?

If it's a simple treasure, generally I roll it beforehand, sometimes on the fly. Goes for potions and scrolls too. Interesting magic items are usually the written ones though.

Nice, only just noticed that the newer digitial OCR'd scans of the AD&D 1E books are in the trove now.

Does anyone have their digital versions of the other monster manuals and such?

Mentioned in last thread but FOR10 "Warriors and Priests of the Realms" has a scan error in that there is no page 88 but rather two pages of page 89. If someone has a proper scan, could they please post it.

what do i need to play on said open table?
never played before, want to learn

1. create a roll 20 account
2. click on the link to be added tot he game group
3. download the DnD basic 1981 rule-set from the trove on the OP(the folder says TSR)
4. read the rules for play from the basic book (aka: Moldvay B/X)
5. read the discussion topis and homebrew rules
6. create a charatecter
7. wait warmly
8.???????
9. PROFIT

Any modules similar to Death Frost Doom, with its ability to allow the party to screw the game world over?

You could base declaration order off of a stat, this would give it a degree of variation between fights and let the Ref mix things up with the counter/countered thing.

The boxed set of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, but I don't know how difficult to find it is in english.

How do you handle familiars in your games?

The God that Crawls, provided the players explore enough and don't run away.

Some OSR dudes (people who made the undercroft and petty gods n shit) are putting together a a module called Crypts of Indormancy. It's supposed to be compatible with LotFP and is "Set in a quasi-Polynesian island chain". Might be cool?

I would buy anything like that from the Straits of Anian guy instantly. I don't know if that is this guy, but the art is immediately attractive.

>Straits of Anian
What's that?

I'm planning on running Death Frost Doom and I'm worried about that same problem, especially because they'll all be level 0 peasants.
I'm thinking I'll say they need to get a Mcgufffian from inside the crypt.
Just far enough inaide that they can push it and release the undead, but not so far that they can't just grab it and run.

Just need to think of what the Mcgufffian should be

I was the guy in the last thread posting about my college D&D club. It was okay, I played some 5e but still had fun because it was with a lighthearted one-shot group.
Anyways, I talked to the club head and he seemed alright with me running whatever the fuck I want.

So, if I want to introduce people to Moldvay, what module should I run?

Dead blog, focused on quasi-Polynesian island chain. Very good stuff there, google it.

Thanks to all the players who showed up for the /osrg/ open table game. Sorry for the rules mix-ups - all the little subtle differences between the retroclones can get all mixed up in your head when you're running live. Hope you guys enjoyed it, even if the party magic-user ended up burning himself to death with flaming oil.

Any session recap?

I enjoyed the session and was thinking about running my own game. Just to get an idea, how many people would be interested in playing a LotFP campaign ran over Roll20, weekly on Wednesdays?

Reposting this again.

Anyone have the Lamentations of the Flame Princess Playtest Document 0.1? It's not very big, so if someone has it but doesn't want to scan it, snaps a couple pics I can copy it to a PDF.

Chief's Bite - An immense war club, made of an unknown and extremely strong type of wood, studded with stony protrusions the tribes call "Dragon's teeth", though they share no similarity of shape or texture to any known dragon species. Supposedly claimed as a trophy by the first High-King of the tribes ages ago, after he defeated the greatest chief of the hairy half-men that the tribe's ancestors drove from the land. The weapon is stoutly made, capable of turning steel blades with no damage, and puncturing the most well made of armors. Foes that are "bitten" by the teeth bleed out quickly. Despite these properties, it is more sought after as a sign of power, often being used by whomever possesses it to claim ruler-ship over others. Barbarian legends claim those who truly have a right to the weapon can wield it with one hand, despite it's heavy weight. It was last seen being carried by Skalan the Unrighteous, as he climbed into the ancient mountains of the north seeking a holy place to ask forgiveness of the gods after slaying his children in a rage.

>Coral Fang. A jagged dagger of coral that rests at the bottom of the atoll's foundation reef. Who ever retrieves it will become a cunning killer, but their bones will eventually return to rest under the waves.

The Lost City is my favourite of the basic series, its got a big ass dungeon, a reason for the players to all be there, and enough internal politics and weirdness for them to get into besides just killing stuff. Keep On The Border Lands is classic too, gives the players a home base to plan from if they need.

Interested, but Wednesdays are busy for me.

Rumors of underground city accessible via sewers were investigated by 5 adventurers. Two fighters, a halfling, a magic-user, and a thief.

Upon entering the sewers we found a path to the East and West. After peaking in both direction we find a brass automaton in the room on the east, an 9 giant rats in a room towards the west.

We walk past the golem and it asks us for a password, that we don't know. It warns us of faulty "compatriots" a new path to the north, and refuses to let of travel to the east where many brass pipes were laid. Coast seems clear to the north so we head that way. It wraps around to the west and meets the room filled with rats, but a clever use of Unseen Servant lets us close the door to them.

From here we see a dead orc and an intersection going in all direction. We also hear orc voices coming from beyond a door to the north. We look at the orc corpse laying in a doorway to the west. Not much to it, but the room also has two dead humans, one with a mace and another with a dagger. Our halfling investigated a sconce turned out to be a secret lever and (loudly) reveals a room with heaps of copper coins, 1 necklace, 1 sword, and walls lined with several heavy tapestries.The loud sound alerts the orc voice we heard from the north and we spring to defense.

After a brief encounter we slayed 5 (I think), and one got away. However, in the battle our Magic-User blew himself up with a firebomb. Feeling we were pressing our luck we grab the two items, and as many coins as we can stuff in our pocket. We hear a loud persistent hissing noise and decide to rush out of the sewers, the sound followed us for a few turns but we managed to make it back safely.

All told we made it out with 4,000 copper, 1 magic sword, and 1 unidentified seashell necklace, and the corpse of our fallen magic-user. 37 EXP each [+Prime Req. bonus].

I second the recommendation for Keep on the Borderlands.

I also support using KotB

Count me against - sue me, but I don't think the Keep makes a good first module and is mostly an exercise in nostalgia.

KoTB is an interesting diplomacy exercise and a good example of early choices, but the Caves of Chaos tend to be very dull straight line killboxes that don't really involve any "proper" dungeoncrawling (mostly grinding through waves of mooks in a 10foot wide line) that usually will result in a meatgrinder of PC deaths.

There's just not a lot of classic tactical dungeoncrawling options - there's barely any detours, not very much information about which passage to explore, alternate entrances, or ways around; and barely any doors to bolt closed and obstruct monster movements.

The Caves are rational and realistic as monster lairs go (they're even full of women and children), but that's precisely what makes them not very fun. I'll grant the Keep makes a nice and easy drop-in to any campaign world but the Caves are just not a great dungeon intro.

I think any other module would work immensely better as an introduction. Village of Hommlet's Moathouse works much better as a "realistic" dungeon, while Quasquetron is a nice experience that has a bit of everything.

If you want a big dungeon both The Lost City and Horror on the Hill are much better, with lots of opportunities for careful exploration to pay off and routes that can be chosen to evade encounters.

That being said I don't think KoTB is completely irredeemable. The floorplans of the various caves (see pic for layout) make a good jumping off point for designing a dungeon, but you need to really break up the "straight line 10' killbox" feel of the original by linking a lot of passages and create more interconnectivity and opportunities for parties to bypass encounters. But that sort of thing is probably saved for later after having run a dungeon crawl or two.

For my German comrades:

Lots of "Das Schwarze Auge" old school books.
arkania.ucoz.ru/load/doc/regelwerk/25-2-2

KotB was designed to be an introductory module to get a new DM's campaign up and off the ground. Even at the beginning it says that it expects (and wants) the DM to customize the module for their own game. Don't like women and children monsters in the cave? Drop them. Want more of another? Add them! Want the caves littering the region and not being in one single spot? Do it!

As is, it is still very easy to pick up and run and I'm getting ready to run a modified version of it for my own game tomorrow with some other things in the area besides just the Caves of Chaos (which will be scattered about too) to drop in at any time. Want to go to the valley? Owlbears roam there. The rough hills? Orcs lair there I heard. That weird, collapsed keep? Strange noises can be heard from it at night they say...

>DM to customize the module for their own game
And this is why I think it's not the greatest modules as an introduction. It's an excellent "step 2" for expanding a game world and a good chance for a GM to apply the principles of dungeon design, but in this day and age it's not always easy to find an OSR game that provides a firm introduction for the procedures of play for a GM who has never done old-school dungeoncrawls before.

Slept on it. How about this:
1) Roll initiative first.
2) Each player declares in order from lowest to highest initiative.
3) Resolve from highest to lowest Initiative.

With normal initiative, I've found that rolling low isn't much of a problem as it gives you time to react to the shifting battlefield circumstances. In fact, it is kind of a bonus.
The above should, in theory only reward high initiative. How I see it playing out:

a) A low-init Wizard declares a spell. A higher Init wizard declares a counter spell in response. HighInitWiz makes their counter spell check first and fails. LowInitWiz still gets their spell off.

b) LowInitWiz declares a spell. MedInitOrc declares they are moving and attacking the Wizard. HighInitFighter responds by intercepting and attacking the Orc.
If Ftr succeeds to hit; Orc's action is interrupted and they must instead engage the Fighter all up in their grill.
If Ftr fails to hit; Orc may choose to change their action to engage the Fighter, or continue on to the wizard as planned. Disengaging a melee opponent comes with some kind of penalty, like sacrificing attack actions or AC penalties until their next turn or whatever.
If Orc does the latter; moves and hits the Wizard, then the spell is interrupted and the turn is wasted. Otherwise the spell goes off.

Certain actions are full-round-actions (eg. spellcasting). They must be followed through no matter what, unless they are made impossible before your initiative. Either the turn is wasted or the effort is redirected, etc.
Other actions can force characters lower in initiative to change their action. eg. the successful Ftr interception above. The unsuccessful interception still inhibits the lower Init character, but not completely. Higher initiative is still king because no matter what, you get to affect the lower initiative plebs in some way.

Too complicated?

That sounds fucking great dude, its like an action stack right? First in last out.

It's a pretty intuitive solution. If it turns out to play well I'd even call it elegant.

1d10 list of odd remote villages/hamlets
1 - Preyed upon by fey, will pointedly ignore PCs to the point of violence believing they are some sort of fairy trick.
2 - Aloof but tolerant toward outsiders, they believe they are guardians of an ancient artifact that will be used to preserve the world (it's just a piece of old statuary).
3 - Silent but friendly, the locals have taken vows of silence but will happily communicate non-verbally. If the PCs get one of them to break their vows the rest of the locals will pillory and maim the oathbreaker.
4 - Degenerate, cannibalistic and starving; a curse prevents residents from traveling more than 50 yards from the well in the center of the hamlet. Survivors will try to lure PCs into a trap and are otherwise difficult to reason with.
5 - Full of benign mutants. The natural spring the village is built around is a font of positive energy, spilling over into the crops, livestock and people.
6 - The locals are either quiet and anemic or boisterous and nosy. The hamlet has a symbiotic relationship with a nearby nest of Stirges who clear out the region's virulent pests in the growing and harvest seasons. There is a rotating system of 'donors' and 'peacekeepers' instituted to keep this practice a secret and the settlement running. Not all approve.
7 - Once lorded over by a family of hard but fair nobles who secretly practiced diabolism but now controlled by a grasping royal administrator. Everyone agrees the old system was better, lots of superstitions.
8 - Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery'
9 - Just a normal fishing village. Don't mind the squelching sounds from the basement or all the walleyed children with puffy necks.
10 - Actually a normal fishing village. Some of the locals have heritable Ichthyosis and, in severe cases, sensitivity to sunlight.

It's easier to get players to keep going on DFD, since it's so far away from society. In God That Crawls the goal for many will be to get out of there as fast as possible.

I know a lot of people that use DFD put a MacGuffin in the plant-monster-thing room. Zak Smith put a book there for the players to find for example.

any experience taking out some stats?

I plan on using STR (replaces con in the rare ocasions that con matters) DEX WIS (meaning perception and lore) and SPI (spirit, just for magic and some charisma checks) on my next game.

Chargen is 3d6 in order, maybe swap two stats to allow you customize a little.

Do you think it will break balance too much? Any thoughts¿

I don't think so. Stats in oldschool game impact very little. The main issue with changing them in a game identified as D&D is them being a sacred cow. Courtney Campbell has cut stats down to 4 in his Perdition game and it seemed to work out okay.

Its an interesting take, but its going to require lots of tinkering. You say CON is irrelevant, but if it modified HP in some way then running it off STR seems odd.
Also I don't know what kind of setting you plan on running but it seems a strange to group INT and CHA, two stats that are often opposed in standard tropes, together.

Reworkings of basic stats are always interesting, but I can't help but feel that minor regroupings detract rather than improve. The classic 6 aren't flawless, and if you want to rework them more power to you, but they strike a decent balance so I would encourage you to either rework the system fully or only tweak stat definitions slightly.

Sunless Sea has a nice stat line (Irons, Mirrors, Pages, Veils and Hearts).

I'm doing HPs as everyone having 2d6 at the start, , maybe some more depending on your class.

On the INT + CHA being the same, in my setting magic isn't done by math formulaes, but by an attunement to an inner force, thus SPIRIT. It's useful to impress someone when you are showy or specially sincere; but if you're using manipulation through clever usage of words, you'll roll WIS

The only things you have to keep in mind are 1) how will traditional mechanics work without those stats and 2) one stat might become the uberstat.

For example, let's look at 1). You've chopped out Con. How does (or doesn't) Str work on HP? Maybe it doesn't. Maybe every PC just gets dN HP per level.

2) probably won't come up in your homebrew but it can be a problem. The Fantasy Trip for example made Strength so important that everyone (even Wizards) had to pump every spare point into it.

A battleax. Roughly hewn and very basic in design, it's the last remaining artifact of an ancient goddess of revenge.

Those who wield it while avenging a wrong will find they have the strength of ten men, and unable to die. It currently rests in the hands of the corpse of its last owner, sitting atop a mound of skeletons in the wilderness.

Searchers of the Unknown removes all the stats. A pure OD&D version of SotU would be nice, and I think it would fit very well.

>player keeps rolling a 1 on his d12 hit die

this is getting sad.

The fuck are they playing that gets them a d12 hd?

warrior
DCC

Add a minimum health!

Barbarians in AD&D (and after AD&D for that matter) have d12 hit dice.

Does anyone here play ACKS? It seems like a really good system to me, but with Roll20 being my primary place where I play, I don't know how I would advertise it there...

Doesn't the Barbarian in AD&D get that?

Anyone got some good city encounter tables in the vein of Vornheim/Corpathium?

Yes. 2e TCBH, pg. 8.

There's the very irregular open table that just got going in ; you could try recruiting from there - or you could PM the host if you're interesting in GMing a one-shot or two to get the feel of the system.

One last reminder that the BFRPG game at Roll20 will be starting shortly

app.roll20.net/join/1665230/4UrZzQ

Is the time for this session going to be the time for future sessions?

We'll be working that out real soon. I can't do it Sunday nights or Midday Tuesdays but every other time is good.

Thanks for the replies.

I’ve looked at Keep on the Borderlands a lot, but something about it bothered me as it’s just too open ended for me (which was pointed out). After taking a look at The Lost City, I think I’ll run that. It seems fun, there’s a clear goal and I think players would be able to get behind it. If I get a more steady group (seems like I’ll be doing one-shots/inconsistent player groups for the most part), I’ll probably run KotB to give the players their home base.

Thanks again for the suggestions.

I was thinking about reposting the link but I didn't know if you were still looking for players or not.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by Plant-Monster-Thing?
I can't see anything that fits that description. Maybe the closest i can see is the singing monster that triggers the zombie uprising when you kill it

Game is still wide open as far as I know - think this session was going to be for rolling up characters and finalizing procedures.

>he singing monster that triggers the zombie uprising when you kill it

Based Raggi, so groundbreaking and innovative.

Does BFRPG use Race-as-Class?

No, it's a race-and-class system.

Go away hipster, nobody cares if your garage band did it first.

BFRPG uses the AD&D system of races having certain class restrictions, IIRC.

Your edgelord idol is a hack.

>I'm fighting back against the dirty plebs who like things I don't like!

Get bent, dude.

Raggi's shit is for hipsters, D&D 5e is for plebs.

Your waifu is also worst girl.

That is true, this session is mostly rolling characters, figuring out how you all know each other (which would just be a quick thing, nothing major) and then rolling up towards the starting location for the adventure.

>Your waifu is also worst girl.

You leave Aleena out of this, it's between you and me, Bargle!

>Magic Missles Aleena

Noooooo!

>Laughs maniacally then runs away

>Maybe the closest i can see is the singing monster that triggers the zombie uprising when you kill it
Yeah, that's the one. Sorry the description was bad, been a while since I read the module.

One last bump for this.

what's better for beginners, BFRPG or LL?

Either/or, I'd say. I think I like LL's layout better, though.

Both have their ups and downs, but I would say BFRPG just for it's simple mechanics and adoption of ascending AC.

Told my players they found an emerald. Deciding they had more than plenty of them, they left it and walked away before I could describe it.

That's a little mean, but not picking up gems is pretty dumb.

In their defense they did think monsters were very nearby. That said, I hadn't even began to really describe it and they interrupted and ran off.