/osrg/

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

Trove Status:
>Original Trove
Down
>Secondary Trove (thanks to Clean-up-the-trove-guy!)
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>Links
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Previous thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/dinosaur-clerics-new-class.html
goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/imaginary-dinosaur.html
goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2016/06/nature-is-horrible.html
mystara.thorfmaps.com/
basicexpert.info
tabletopaudio.com
d20srd.org/
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Thread question!

>Published modules or no? Which do you use for your games?

And along with the thread question, the hexcrawl filler hook: What's in the heart of the extinct (or still active, if you prefer) volcano?

>The Heart of Hate

The elemental lord Flaer'Rok was felled by the ancient dwarves and his molten heart claimed to heat their forges. But the longer the heart remained in use, the hotter it got and forcing the dwarves to continually lower it further and further into the mountain and away from their homes. But then, one night, it flared and seared the majority of the dwarven hold, forcing those who lived to flee. Even now, the heart flares up and spews molten rock from it's flashes into the air, a reminder to those who live near the place of it's presence.

Published modules for oneshots and the odd stolen idea, own stuff for campaigns.

Published if it's the first time I'm running a system, own stuff otherwise.

The "elemental plane" of fire. No, not a portal to it, the actual thing.

If the volcano's going extinct, well, that's going to have effects.

Well, if it's *that* module, it's totally getting used!

I usually cannibalize modules whenever possible, never really run them "as-is".

That's a pretty great map. Where is it from/who made it?

And regarding modules, I use them quite a lot but I never run them as-is. The easier it is to modify it to your own setting the better.

>Where is it from/who made it?
I think it is from Pandius, a wonderful website for the Known World/Mystara setting

There are a lot of 2ed "black book" guides, like guides to equipment, castles and campaign etc. Are these worth checking out or do they offer bad advice?

How do people run dungeons in Beyond the Wall or similar systems (no grid, specifically). I have difficulty conveying the idea of the dungeon to the players without a map. Do most people just draw a map regardless?

I used to go full-verbal-description, but nowadays I draw out a map in whiteboard marker on laminated paper. Before that I used jenga blocks to demarcate the dungeon, which was really effective, but a bit awkward to carry to and from game night.

Not particularly accurately, mind you. And I don't worry about distances or movement speeds unless people are fleeing.

I just use a whiteboard.

A fun D&D deity and monster option:

goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2013/10/dinosaur-clerics-new-class.html
goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/imaginary-dinosaur.html

>Few people realize how close they are to hungry dinosaurs at all times. Tyrannosaurs lurk only a few months behind them. Yesterday, ankylosaurs are angrily destroying their houses. And packs of deinonychus lick their lips and watch you from only a few minutes ago. Time travel isn't difficult, but the even travelling a few minutes into the past is dangerous, since you may find packs of sarchosuchus tearing up your kitchen.

Dinosaurs of Tindalos, and clerics trying to bring their god into existence.

More from that guy, who is cool.

goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2016/06/nature-is-horrible.html

>The Bear That Is Madness

>This is a monster, but it is also an insanity. Sometimes you are fighting a bear, but sometimes you have amnesia.

>It is possible to encounter the bear as a madness. If you do, skip ahead about ten minutes (because it is amnesia, they have forgotten the last ten minutes). When amnesia skips the game ahead this way, each character has a 1-in-6 chance to have taken 1d6 damage (exploding d6, but no more than once). When amnesia skips time this way, the bear is nearby, and it has taken 1d6 damage as well (exploding d6, but no more than once). The party can hear it (perhaps they were running from it) and unless they flee immediately, it will find them and kill them.

>It is possible to encounter the bear as a beast in the woods. Combat starts normally. After 1d3 rounds of combat, the bear turns back into madness, as detailed in the previous paragraph.

>And so the encounter with the Bear That Is Madness alternates between forgotten spots (where everyone finds themselves in a new location, some with new damage) and regular bear combat. This ends when the madness is cured, the bear is killed, or the party escapes.

Arnold is my absolute favourite. He's a killer writer and absolutely pumps out the blog posts.

To be presice it from this guys site
mystara.thorfmaps.com/
he does recreations and updates for many of the origianl maps [and in some cases corrects some that had errors such as incorrecty placed locations or boundaries].
one of his biggest works was his attempt to lineup the hollow world map with the known world map].

Is there any DragonLance in the Trove?

B/X Dungeon Master Tools

Dungeon Turn Tracker
Player Character Generator Wandering Monster Encounter Generator
Dungeon Stocker

basicexpert.info

Enjoy and let me know any suggestions for content or improvements.

How are you linking to blogspot? What wizardry is this?

Veeky Forums can't see hobbits, just change the URL to .co.nz.

I know the castle guide is like the book to have if you want to know some detail about castles. It's pretty in-depth and well written. TSR may not have been doing as much playtesting in that period, but they apparently took their research seriously.

Didn't have much faith in my creativity before so I only ran modules as is. Nowadays I usually adapt them or rip off ideas. I still use some for one-shots but there's a continuity established so new groups always face the consequences of the previous group' actions.

Check out AD&D2e in TSR folder.

>Check out AD&D2e in TSR folder.
I looked but I didn't see any DragonLance in there.

Can someone tell me about Tunnels & Trolls? What do I need to know before getting into it? How easy is it to homebrew for? How well does it do dungeon crawling?

A dark mode would be pretty handy.

I've been tempted to have the players map out the dungeon themselves on graph paper as I describe it to them, but it seems like it'd slow down play.

Ya, thats guaranteed to make things annoying.

I've tried to do that but I just get so tired of how much gets lost in translation that I either map it out beforehand or just map as I go.

It's common for player-side mapping to not be exact and instead focus on flowchart-style mapping (like you'd do for say an adventure game). If you design your dungeons with this in mind things can go quite quickly.

If you want a game with player-side mapping you need to accept that maps will not be exact and simply give players a layout of the dungeon with the room they are currently in, rather than their precise position.

Much like a hexcrawl, you can give their rough location in a room but it's not narrowed down to the 5ft square. If you intend to play tactical combats with miniatures, use a separate board setup for miniatures, rather than trying to do combat on the map.

Presumably if you're letting players draw the map part of the purpose as well is that they can get the map wrong, which may be a level of ruthlessness you're not prepared to enforce. In other words, if players get the map wrong, let them get the map wrong.

If you're only doing this to save time, there are better ways of saving time.

I'd appreciate a loot/XP share calculator of some sort, actually where I could enter in X PCs, Y Henchmen, stipulate each person's share, and then calculate how much gold/XP each person gets.

If the purpose of the mapping is to create a "fog of war" element, then you can print out the dungeon and then cover areas the party cannot see with black paper.

If you want to simulate the ability to get lost, simply cover up all areas that the party's lights cannot reach. If the torch goes out, cover everything, including the party's location. It's a pretty good way of communicating dungeon claustrophobia.

I have about 5 sets of the old Mage Knight Dungeons floors & walls. I always wanted to set them up like pic related but cover each section with cut-out sheets of black cardboard and reveal each room as PCs enter it. I have little flickering battery powered tea lights that I'm making into different fires and other effects to place in rooms. It should make for an interesting dungeon crawl.

I spent most of my DMing life running almost full-on improv, with sometimes a sticky as prep.
But three years ago, as I discovered the OSR and LotFP in particular (I'd been playing various obscure games and AD&D before that), I decided to try using modules, since there were a lot of great material just laying there, ready to be plundered. I use "as-is" but forget then make shit up.

A fuck lot of volcanic rock that can be traded for actual gold to the burning people inside the mountain. The closer to the heart, the more they're willing to give to get their hands on it. They don't actually survive fire, they just have an unhealthy obsession with it.

The party has a Mapper. I give her the dimensions and shit if they're at exploration pace and have measurements tools. I answer her questions. In complex situations like weirdly shaped room, I'll draw something on paint quickly, make a screen cap and send it to the group. We play using Skype and Rolz.org (I hate Roll20)

It's a very cool system in its earlier editions, then it suffers greatly from system bloat. I recommend using the earliest edition you can and treating it like you'd treat OD&D or Classic Traveller, that is, don't have assumptions, just read the game book like you've never seen an RPG before, and run it as is. Then change shit as needed, on the fly. You need to know nothing else, and it does things in a different way than D&D but it's also pretty fun.

A Question.
In HQRPG, there are no Hit Points : after an opposed roll-over thing, one of two foes get hurt, and rolls a d6 with maybe +1 to +3 if the attack was really overkill, and the result says what happens (1-3 : standing, 4-5 shock, 6 : dead). Assuming you're very lucky, you can take more blows than a first level D&D character, but at how level does a D&D character gets more chances of surviving a number of blows than an HQRPG one?

I will then proceed with a very short reskin of LotFP.

Theater of the Mind or Grid and Minis?

Trying to decide which I want to do for a S&W oneshot dungeoncrawl I'm planning on running

>oneshot dungeoncrawl

I'm this user , I like 3d representations, visuals help.
But if it's a oneshot, go Theater of the Mind. Since you're relying on imagination, you'll want to stoke that. I'd recommend atmosphere sound effects like this: tabletopaudio.com
Maybe play in a dim room with candle light.

Turn Undead using morale-check rules: great idea or terrible idea?

To elaborate an idea I've been kicking around:
>Undead enemies normally never check morale. However, certain signs of the divine (such as a cleric holding aloft a holy symbol) may make them hesitate, cower, or flee, just as the death of a bandit might give his companions pause.

>To turn undead, a cleric must confront them with signs of divine power, for example by brandishing a holy symbol, intoning a prayer, or taking on an aspect of their god's visage (flashing eyes, head wreathed in flames, &c &c). By doing so, the cleric forces all undead creatures present to make a morale check. For the purposes of this check, an undead creature's Morale score is considered to be 6+HD. Undead creatures take a penalty to this check equal to the cleric's level.

>Just as with a standard morale check, creatures rolling equal to or less than their Morale score may act normally, while those rolling above their Morale score must retreat or cower. If the penalty from the cleric's level reduces an undead creature's Morale to less than 2, the creature automatically fails the check, and may be destroyed (incinerated by divine radiance, &c) if doubles are rolled.

Thoughts? (pic unrelated)

Was I the only kid who thought that "Turn Undead" meant "Turn INTO Undead"?

"Theater of the Mind" sounds so pretentious. I must have been living in a cave because wherever I went in my life of Roleplaying, nobody ever asked this question, we just didn't use a grid or miniatures because we wanted to play RPGs, not, well, wargames. And I played D&D, not fancy storygames.

Nope, Jeff Rients thought that too, I think. Or some other great blogger of the DIY community.

That's an interesting mechanic. I prefer the LotFP+Necropraxis way, which is, Turn Undead always works but is a Spell.

>Run the Jewels Like Antennaes Up to Heaven

Noice

That sounds great, I might steal it.
Though I'd make the cleric destroy trivial undead if both dice are even. That makes it a 1-in-4 chance instead of 1-in-6.

What are some good modules with interesting villages and villagers?

I think one alternative I saw was based on a reconstruction of the original Arneson idea - having Turn Undead create a "circle of protection" around the cleric that prevented undead from crossing.

Theater of the mind + scenery and miniatures if it seems fun/helpful

Hello OSR. How can I donate to the trove? I dont want my name on the PDF, i used my facebook account with my rpgnow account, but i have the newest halloween module for DCC.

I don't understand. What is dark mode?

I think he means an option to make the background dark, and the text white. Kinda like the Tomorrow style here on Veeky Forums.

Got it I'll see what I can do

Anyone got access to the Amazing Adventures Book of Powers or Companion? I'm in the mood for some pulp.

Had some PC issues, followed by some life issues.

I'll be setting the trove back up properly in the next couple days now that I've recovered the drive. Post me anything that needs to go up that isn't in the backup troves that I'll be downloading/merging into the proper one.

For now, bed.

So I have a question about OSR.
Why does the community seem to love Google Plus so much? I've never seen other people talk about it non-ironically except in OSR circles.

My only idea is that Blogspot forces you to use it. Nothing else makes sense to me.

Sup TroveGuy! Hope shit is getting better for you. Take your time, no major hurry.

I had a bunch of social tools that made it good for community, discussion and running games. Eg. Hangouts.

Some of the useful stuff has been crippled by google over the years, but it is where the community made its home, so nobody is about to leave

What other options are there? I'm talking here about "normal" people too, in the sense of how most internet users nowadays use Twitter, Facebook, etc.
Veeky Forums's demographics skew more towards people who tend to prefer anonymity and value privacy.

Google Plus has really taken off in the RPG community, for various reasons. I hear it's also big with amateur photographers, and some other odd demographics.
There are some folks for whom G+ is really well suited, it seems.

bump

That image looks like it needs an update.

Hello! Upload your contribution on something like zippyshare and then send a link to [email protected], then delete the letter and your zippyshare after I respond . I'll clean it up.

Meanwhile my trove is down again and since I'm in a hospital currently, I can't bring it back for 10 more days I think. Some of the latest contributions are on my notebook though, so I can add them if TroveSenpai is bringing the trove back the next week or so.

Secondary trove's down - someone back up the Temporary trove in case that gets hit too.

Does anyone have a downloadable version of d20srd.org/ as it is currently. It has some updates.

I occasionally use printed adventures but mix and mash them together into my own adventures.

bump

So what's the deal with Mystara? It's just a hex map for generic fantasy land? Why are the not!Arabs right next to the not!Vikings? And how is a "Grand Duchy" as big as an empire?

>So what's the deal with Mystara?

It's literally "make shit up as we go along": the setting. The only setting with a more mind-boggling geography is Ravenloft's Core, especially pre-Grand Conjunction.

>Ravenloft's Core, especially pre-Grand Conjunction
Wut? I'm lost here...

Where could I get some of those floors and walls? I perused Amazon, but wasn't sure what was the best thing to order? They look great!

Imagine for a moment, an arid land in the grips of constant famine, ruled by brutal priests who extort food from the peasants while growing fat, where starving to death is seen as the only way out of life.

Now consider that this land (G'henna) was in fact surrounded by temperate lands with shitloads of farmland and merchants who would no doubt eager to tap that starving market. But they never did. G'hennans keep starving and don't even flee despite greener pastures a day away from their homes.

And that's not even getting into tech levels.

I should really look into that setting more. Always thought it was probably weirder than I thought.

This needs updated, and badly.

World with it's own history and background or just a generic retelling of a generic and generalized european history (ie Barbaric states conquered by a powerful empire that then collapses and the world is now in a dark age of petty kingdoms, etc etc)?

This should be color coded for TSR games.

>Dungeon World

Fuck no. It's not OSR. It may be some pretentious ultra rules-lite hipster/indie RPG, but it's more of a "storygame" than a D&D retroclone.

>Fuck no
I agree it's not a proper retroclone but it certainly plays a lot like an OSR game (at least in the game I played).

I thought nobody left their realms in Ravenloft either because they were trapped there, or feared their lords' catching on and being rewarded with eternal punishment as opposed to death by starvation?

They actually aren't trapped in most Domains. People went back and forth all the time. The G'henna situation is just the result of very bad planning.

Lol, triggered.

Whether it pisses you off or not, it fits all of the dude's inclusion criteria. Hell, if he added "won't make nerds on Veeky Forums unreasonably upset" as a criteria he couldn't have included any editiosn of D&D at all.

>Lol, triggered.

You can kill yourself or go back to tumblr.

The narrative mechanics and taking away control from the GM is a very modern thing. It's not Gygaxian. It's not retro.

What books aside from PHB, DMG, and MM should I have to run a successful AD&D 1E campaign? The only other book I have at the moment is Fiend Folio. I want to keep it as close to core rules as possible, but I also want to use THAC0.

>durr go to tumblr

Maybe you should go there if you need a safe space where you'll never have to see any mention of stuff you don't like. You could make /r/whinybitch, post your rules, and live there.

Those are all you need but my table includes the Unearthed Arcana and some of tables also include Oriental Adventures for the proficiencies.

>Must be percieved as a DnD variant

I mean, it's inspired by DnD sure, but I wouldn't call it a variant

>Look guys I'm such a Veeky Forums I don't know the difference between tumblr and reddit

It uses the same stats, fantasy races and classes and focuses on dungeon delving.

I know this isn't a PDF share thread but does anyone have the Dark Albion PDFs?

>I'm in a hospital currently

hope all is well CUTTguy

Still doesn't make it a variant. It's an Apocalypse World/PbtA variant that's trying to emulate DnD.

Freebooters on the Frontier / Perilous Wilds brought the OSR feel to Dungeon World. The original DW philosophy doesn't really qualify, but whatevs, we still have core DW in the trove.

The output might be similar but the means of getting there is not, at least if I understand DW correctly, and I feel it depends a lot more on how freewheeling an individual GM running Dungeon World handles it.

It seems pretty important to OSR to have outcomes be "clean" - that is, consistent and based on clearly established prior circumstances rather than retroactive fiction. Running into goblins because you fail a bunch of lockpick rolls and triggering a wandering monster check is identical output-wise to a situation where a DW Thief rolls poorly and the GM springs goblins on the party, but the former method requires a roughly simulated environment (in terms of rules governing the passage of time, wandering monster tables, etc.) rather than nebulous narrative outcomes.

DW-style play has the referee as much more directly "responsible" for the fate of the party and the challenges, rather than as an impartial referee of a previously designed structure (although it may be a poorly designed one). It's the difference between playing Satan and playing God, so to speak. I'm sure you could run DW games as God rather than Satan, but the structure of it definitely has the DM as the explicit architect of the party's woes, rather than the dungeon designer (which often ends up being the same in many campaigns, but that's an important distinction to make).

DW doesn't have a benny-type system AFAIK, but that sort of thing would also run counter to OSR ideals - players able to spend or gain bennies in exchange for retroactive changes to prior continuity ("your torches run out and you forgot to buy more - take a benny if you accept this").

critical mass

when google plus was brand new, still invite only, mandy morbid was up in canada and she and zak stayed in touch by video chatting through hangouts

zak realized this might be a valid way to play d&d, and then he tried it and it was.

and then flail snails happened. everyone who was into the osr joined google plus because that's where the games were.

and once everyone was there that's where they stayed, because there was a critical mass of people to make up some kind of community

There are a whole bunch of setting supplements, the Gazetteers. They're all pretty good and worth a read. Fun setting.

I'll check them out. Are they in the Trove?

...

Still. It's not OSR, in that a module written for an OSR game such as Labyrinth Lord wouldn't really be compatible with it without significant hacking, which is the general criteria for OSR.

I'm hosting a game for some friends later tonight. We're playing LotFP, and this is our first osr game. I have Tower of the Stargazer as a module , but I'm also kind of in the mood for a table-generated dungeon crawl.

What do you think would be the recommendation here? Run Tower of the Stargazer since it's a nice module that Ragi wrote exactly for people like me who want the vibe and some hand holding, or should I try to wing it with a more B/x like undeground maze filled with monsters from a table and a bunch of really heavy to carry around treasure?

I'm toying a little with the idea of just putting a little town in the middle of a map and put some cool locations (like the underground maze and the tower) around it and let the players wander around.

Might put the bar too high. Really we just want to roll some dice and see greedy characters with poor judgement get cut down by a hostile environment in a fun and gruesome way.

Just wing it you buttplugg. Read this:
/hackslashmaster blogspot /2012/11/on-guide-for-new-dungeon-masters html

In my practice, if you have a choice between an ambitious idea and tested idea, when it's your first rodeo, choose the latter.

okay that sounds reasonable. getting fucked up in a spooky wizard tower it is.

What's the best OSR sci-fi/space opera game?
I'd just play Traveller, but my group (and myself, honestly) has nowhere near the level of expertise to actually handle it in play, but we want some sci-fi in our games.

What do, /osrg/?

I cannot emphasize enough - do hexcrawls later if this is your first time. Start with dungeons and dungeons only! OSR play demands tracking a lot more things, and getting to grips with hexcrawls will come easier if you introduce things one step at a a time.

This is mainly because hexcrawling requires even more content creation from you - even if you're winging it you'll still need to populate your wilderness with monsters and the like.

If you want to introduce player choice, put a few dungeon options first, but focus on building and running dungeons.