/osrg/ - OSR General

>On another world, the halflings are organized into clans who act something like the stereotypical mafia families you see in movies and TV shows. Protection rackets, murder for hire, illegal substances, etc.

I like this. I always saw halflings as very family oriented and clannish. This is a nice extension on that. You fuck with me, means you fuck with all of us.

>pirates of darkwater inspired campaign
>dead/petrified gods from before the deluge are giant vertical islands filled with tunnels and covered in cliff villages, weird pirates
>Hanglings are vertical farmers, small climbers with dexterous feet, adept at knot work, climbing and vine tending, often being born with one foot on a line
>clans of semi-nomadic hanglings crawl over the surface of island towers, roving for the best vines to harvest, herding edible insects

Halflings in my campaign are basically just gypsies. Nomadic, wagons, attack dogs, the whole deal.

How i can introduce "Mighty Deeds" to another RPG like basic fantasy?

Random harlot table.

Prolly old News but Wizards has okayed the Print on Demand of back catalog, 1e to 4e.

This week they added:

Ravenloft (3.0)
Hammerfast: A Dwarven Outpost Adventure Site (4e)
Four From Cormyr (2e)
FMA2: Endless Armies (2e)
Fantastic Locations: Fane of the Drow (3.5)

D&D Classics are now available for print options on both DriveThruRPG and Dungeon Masters Guild.

Sly pimps represent!

I have played Basic Fantasy, what is the next step in learning about the OSR world?

Any recommendations?

If you want to continue the Basic route check out any of the following:

> Swords & Wizardry
> Labyrinth Lord
> Dark Dungeons
> Adventurer Conqueror King
> Lamentations of the Flame Princess

Question: let's say I want to do hack up an OSR game that is not fantasy. What is OSR style good at? What does it lend itself to?

is there any other route?

>Well I think that "dark and gritty fantasy" kind of wasn't a popular thing back then
Not familiar with Michael Moorcock and the New Wave?

Combat speed

Well, the AD&D route if you want lots of crazy rules for stuff.

Seconding this guy.

...

...

Specifically, what kind of content is the next issue short on right now?

Didn't know this was a thing again. I'll see what I can cook up.

Also i see people using the word "gambit" what are they talking about?

I think previous poster is defining 'dark and gritty' less regarding whether bad things happen in the plot, and more along the lines of 'writers who have to constantly remind the audience that people shit themselves when they die.'

High level fighters in B/X kind of get shafted, so importing the multiple strikes per round thing seems like a good idea.

I think it's an alternative to 'mighty deeds'/stunting involving making two to-hit rolls for non-standard attacks (disarms, trips, etc): if both hit you succeed, if one hits you don't, if both miss something bad happens (you miss your next turn or something).

I'm not too stoked about the mechanical implications of that. Assuming non-standard attacks are somewhat balanced power-wise, that means that when you have a good chance to hit, you'll almost always be better off doing them, and when you have a bad chance to hit, you'll almost never be as good doing them. It seems like it'd be better to give them a flat percentage chance on top of your to-hit roll: 1-4 on a d6, maybe (to pick an arbitrary number). That way, if balanced right, they'd be competitive regardless of your chance to hit.

Dungeon Crawling is, and always will be, the core strength of OSR. Running a game as a salvage crew going into derelict space vehicles and stations makes the most sense to me.

Heists. Banks, art galleries, museums and so on. Random encounters are guards and police and stuff.

It's mostly to give the fighter something to do that they're good at. While I understand the criticism that it gives characters with better attacks more options I don't see how it makes it always a better idea for them over taking a standard attack since it always drops the to-hit chance (needing both dice to succeed) and carries an explicit additional risk (failing both causes a fumble).

Example:
Fighter with +7 attack and Specialist with +2 attack vs. Gribbly with 12 AC.
Fighter, no gambit: 75% chance to hit, 25% chance to miss.
Fighter, gambit: 56.25% chance to stunt, 37.5% chance to miss, 6.25% chance to fumble.
Specialist, no gambit: 50% chance to hit, 50% chance to miss.
Specialist, gambit: 25% chance to stunt, 50% chance to miss, 25% chance to fumble.

Gambits also do not include damage by default unless that is the point of the stunt, a disarm just flicks your opponent's weapon out of their hands (I could be wrong on this last point, I'm having trouble finding my original source on how it's supposed to work).

Crap, I meant to quote

yeah, kinda what said.
Just a non-trademarked way of saying "Mighty Deed" that sounds cooler than "stunt".

Here be my adaptation to an already heavily houseruled lotfp:

Gambit: Perform a stunt or called shot. Make two Attack rolls; if both hit then it succeeds. 2 failures causes a Fumble.

And then as a Fighter class ability:

Warrior's Gambit - Replaces the Gambit combat option.
Instead, the Fighter performs a stunt, maneuver or called shot by rolling an additional 1d3 Gambit Die with their Attack Roll.
If the Attack hits and the Gambit Die comes up as 3 then the stunt is performed successfully, otherwise the roll is added to damage. A successful Gambit does not increase damage, but has some other kind of combat effect.
The player is encouraged to use their imagination to come up with unique and interesting uses for this mechanic.
Always be on the lookout for situational opportunities like tripping, kicking into pits, blinding with sand in the eyes, etc.

Which can also be optionally improved from a list of level-up perks:

8 King's Gambit - Increase the Warrior's Gambit Die by one type up the chain. Success on 3 or higher.

I'll try to get something done until later today.

So I kind of want to do something to change up my setting's and games magic users to something like an Enchanter- this is because I want all the magic users magic abilities as being fluffed as 'per adventure' instead of 'per day'. Most of their magic will be multi-use magic items, weak magic items with unlimited uses that have a sort of breaking condition, summonable minions or creatures that can be killed, or some combination thereof.

However my problem with this thus far is how do I create magical items and artifacts inside of dungeons that make sense? If magic users are arbitrarily limited in whatever magic they can create per level- which is essentially representing their ability to both craft and field those items, then hoarding those items from dungeons don't make sense.

The other solution is to just make them a different 'class' of magic item, but I'm not sure. Maybe there is a better way?

Now I want to do pic related in a system that actually is about dungeon crawling.

And the best of all, the OD&D route.

AD&D's multiple attack rules are extremely clunky. If I wanted to have something like that I would just give fighters extra whole attacks and not that fractional crap.

>extremely clunky.
What's clunky about 'two attacks every other round'?

>'two attacks every other round'?
This: 'two attacks every other round'

It's just more stuff to keep track of during combat.

But that's not clunky at all.

It is if it adds unnecessary complexity and tedium when there are ways to achieve the same goal with less work.

I agree that getting an additional attack every other round is a bit clunky, but there are different ways of going about it, and going straight from 1 attack to 2 is a ridiculous power jump.

As far as tracking it goes, you could simply have a tile or something that you flip over at the beginning of each round. If the side with the mark is up, you get an extra attack.

I also came up with a way of tracking extra attacks with poker chips. Once you reach a certain level, you draw a poker chip at the beginning of each of your turns in combat. You can spend 2 chips to gain an additional attack on your turn. You can never hold more than 3 chips (any extra you draw are discarded), and depending on your level, you start combat with a number of chips already in your hand (-1 simply indicates that you do not draw any chips on your first turn). Anyway, pic shows which rounds you would get an additional strike in assuming you always spent your chips as soon as you could.

Alright then, how would you achieve an intermediate step between 1 atk/rnd and 2 atk/rnd without passing through 3/2 atk/rnd?

If there has to be an intermediate increase of the fighter's ability to fight between 1 attack and 2 attacks I would give him a bonus to hit with one attack instead of fractional number of separate attacks.

How is remembering to add a bonus every other round any simpler than remembering to make another attack every other round?

I use some AD&D monsters, just introduced multi-classing (via Labyrinth Lord AEC), the Appendices in the DMG are all great, spells and magic items. So I guess everything but the rules.

Two strikes, the second one at the worse of 2 to-hit rolls. That roughly halves the effectiveness of your second strike (it halves it if your chance to hit is 50%, but since your chance is normally going to be a bit higher than that, it affects it a bit less). Either that, or you just scale multiple attacks into your THAC0 progression (see pic).

Or

>Or
Not sure where the dangling or came from.

But

>How is remembering to add a bonus every other round
Not every other round, every round.

>that means that when you have a good chance to hit, you'll almost always be better off doing them, and when you have a bad chance to hit, you'll almost never be as good doing them

Sounds right to me. If you're skilled and outmatch your foe, you can do flashy stuff to beat him quickly, but if you're in trouble, you need to stick to fundamentals and save the hotdogging for some other time.

Bump

Bumping this because it's pretty okay but I ain't got shit to suggest.

Any recommendations for which retro clone handles spelljammer setting wellish?

OSRIC?

I assume that you'd be able to just plug in the setting material and whatnot, although there's probably some weirdness with converting between 1E and 2E.

If I've interpreted your idea correctly then what you're suggesting is sort of an artificer/alchemist style take on the magic-user, where MUs prepare a bunch of magical items before the adventure.

In that case the solution is simple - magical items found in the dungeon aren't ready-to-use out of the box (those sorts tend to be used up or used by monsters/denizens), but instead might be ingredients, complicated formulae, arcane inscriptions, etc. - they're the building blocks that a trained MU can take home and turn into something useful - and this could be represented by anything - a single-use boost to a specific spell for an adventure, an XP bonus to all MUs in the party, or just turned into a consumable magic item like the rest.

You could extend this logic to equipment as well - maybe the blade of the sword survives but it needs to be fitted with a new hilt.

You know, come think of it I wonder how Spelljammer would interact with Stars Without Number.

Maybe check out Crawljammer? It's for DCC, but a lot of the material can be reused for any kind of game.

>Ravenloft (3.0)

Hell to the yeah.

What is the hourly rest in dungeons supposed to encompass? Does it waste rations or supplies?

I had a campaign where halflings are nomads who ride flail snails and hunt flumps.

Anyone got advice on useful organisational software? I'm writing a megadungeon for my home campaign, and I'm just bad at looking up both a map and room information at all times. So I wanted to ask if there's some sort of tool that'd let me create nodes or openable icons onto a picture so I can easily organize the rooms.

Not sure if it OSR, but I ran a T&T game that was salvaging on a space ship like that.

Is the D&D Rules Cyclopedia in the trove? I'm not seeing it.

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery would probably work, it already has some science fantasy stuff baked in(although you'd need to borrow monsters from somewhere else as FH&W doesn't have a bestiary in it)

TSR > Basic D&D > 91 Basic Rules

I use Zim Desktop Wiki for stuff, I don't think it does that, though. I don't know of anything that does.

OneNote is pretty useful. I've been using it to organize campaign notes.

can you tell me about high level character deaths?

Torches/light sources burn down during a 10 minute rest, and random encounters might also be checked.

how much time does it require to check for a trap, and how much spaces does the skill works?

Dark Dungeons or Labyrinth Lord?

>Labyrinth Lord

Has a better thief skill table.

And this comes from someone who loves the BEMCI/RC rules.

The AD&D rulebook says 1d10 rounds.

And it's usually just any room or hallway the player can clearly see.

Thanks, i though it was retarded that my players needed a check for every tile

Theater of the mind or minis?

ToTM. I might scratch out a quick sketch to show where things are if it's pertinent but I'd rather use the time and effort to figure out other things.

What's the best old school system for a group of newbies to learn? Or should we not even bother and try something like 3.5 or 5e?

Are there any games or books with magical materials like Orichalum, Mithril etc? For making weapons and armor in particular.

If you and your players are actually *trying* to learn they're all pretty easy, and the most difficult wouldn't be any harder than 5E.

As always it's important to get a system that does what you want instead of forcing a system to do something it isn't meant to do, but with that said Adventurer Conqueror King follows D&D Basic's foundation, offers solutions to common occurrences for adventurers and organizes information very neatly.

The thing with old school D&D is that the players don't have to learn the system. At all. They don't have to know the rules. The referee handles the rules while the players tell what their characters do.

What are some must have items from Lulu? I got a nice voucher.

-Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1
-Deep Carbon Observatory

What else?

I've got an unusual situation, can I get some imput?
Been asked to run an 'old school' style game by a friend's group; the catch is that they want to use Pathfinder classes.
Should I humor them and import modified classes based on what they want to play, or just say no?

Yoon-Suin is pretty awesome.

There's a new one out called The Nightmares Underneath that seems good, but I'm still reading through it.

What do they mean by "Pathfinder classes"? All the feats and other mechanics too? If that's the case it's pretty much mission impossible.

Old school D&D and Pathfinder are of completely different types of table top games, both in practice and philosophy, and as such are not compatible in the least.

My advice is to just say no and if the players refuse to play, they don't really want to play old school D&D.

They mostly want more variety of class archetypes. Summoner, alchemist, gunslinger, that sort of thing. People make new classes for OSR all the time, right?
I only expect to shut down one of them, who I know always brings some foxgirl mind wizard. I think he will get the hint that OSR plays differently after he loses the first few characters. I've told him it's more lethal,but learning through fair experience is the best teacher.

Sure you can make your own classes but they can't possibly be expected to function in the same manner in an old school game as their Pathfinder counterparts.

It's A LOT of work though and probably screws up your players' expectations too. There's also the slippery slope of catering too much to the demands of players to the point where the game is actually Pathfinder or just breaks apart horribly.

If you decide to make new classes you should be sure to explain to your players that old school gaming is not about character customization or builds or whatever like Pathfinder is.

What said, set expectations or risk the whole thing turning into a trainwreck of disappointment and recriminations. That said the examples you've given are easy in LotFP, they just wont have x/day powers and a bunch of feats:
>Summoner
Magic-user w/ Summon spell.
>alchemist
A Magic-user, or a Specialist w/ a houseruled skill and some of the rules cribbed from the Magic-user & Cleric item creation.
>gunslinger
Fighter w/ a gun.

So I showed one of my friends The Rogue's March and he's intensely interested in trying it out. I know it's based on LotFP rules, so would I be able to import B/X monsters and just tweak the AC? I'm also looking to see if I can use some treasure tables or if LotFP has dedicated treasure tables, since I expect him to loot the place, too.

I ended up buying
-Peter Spahn: Blood Moon Rising
-Patrick Wetmore: Anomalous Subsurface Environment 1
-Patrick Stuart: Deep Carbon Observatory
-Robert Conley: Scourge of the Demon Wolf
-David McGrogan: Yoon-Suin
-Matthew Finch: DemonSpore
-James Kramer: Arachnophobia!

Excited!

I've been tempted to buy stuff from Lulu but I feel bad about it because the books just gather dust on my shelf and go unused...
Maybe someday I'll be able to run Stonehell or use my BFRPG books.

Why don't you use them? Make a roll20 group or something. I'm sure a few people here would join.

I always love the /osrg/, it's so nice and chill. To that end, I want to storytiem my first OSR game, which I ran last week for a group of dyed-in-the-wool Pathfinder fags.

I used a weird and frankly experimental blend of Exemplars and Eidolons (for the base system), Spears Of The Dawn (for the skill system), and ACKS (for the proficiency system). Proficiencies that had overlap with Skills instead give an Advantage (a la 5e) to the skill, where they can take either a +1 bonus or a reroll, declared before they make the check.

So the party comes out with a Paladin-alike warrior, a more Fighter-y Warrior, and a pair of Rogues, one more a spy and the other an assassin. They all, by happy accident, have similar backstories, and I tie them all together into a nearby Dwarven theocracy's service.

The party is heading to Kester's Hall, a mountain hall made by some old wizard, to clear it out, because it is full of goblins. They spend some time in town and then set off.

Their first encounter is a big, hungry, scarred brown bear. The party, rather than fight the big bear, chooses to feed it, so the bear escorts them through the woods to Kester's Hall, and by doing so they actually avoided some Goblin scouts who would've made the Hall more difficulty.

They come to the foot of the mountain, where a bunch of barrow-mounds for Kester's family have been laid. Several of them are opened. In one of them is an undead, who gives them a disturbing rhyme and asks them to reclaim his ring from the Goblin King so he can rest.

The party agrees. They head up the mountain and reach Kester's Hall, a massive Viking longhouse carved out of rock by the long-dead wizard's magic. They send the two rogues in to disarm traps, and the assassin basically disappears with an amazing stealth roll. The spy doesn't, so he walks forward and immediately several goblins fall from the ceiling. (cont'd)