/osrg/ OSR General - Clever Mechanics Edition

nice fantasy heartbreaker.

There's literally nothing to recommend this system. It's generic, basic, has conflicting ideas with itself, and isn't trying to acheive any specific goal beyond 'be similar to BX/Adnd'.

The sanity/stress relief and character flaws are both bad, since they don't actually encourage good roleplaying over bad. You don't help your bad players play an interesting character, you just give them a random gimmick to shout about. Your good players don't need help this basic.

The random commentary about ability scores and alignment, and the ultra-basic implementation of initiative, crits and fumbles all falls together into 'optional rules/houserules'. There isnt a reason these things are included or not, beyond the author's specific nostalgia for specific parts of Adnd/whatever.

I honestly don't know why you'd houserule this system. ACKs and LoTFP are both functionally identical to this, but more cohesive and better generally. Please explain why you like this system enough to spend any time on it, rather than any other similar game.

I would explain but I haven't looked at it yet, just reposted it.

The quick-start rules for ACKS's mass combat system.

I realized they were so broad, they could be used anywhere,

Hello /osrg/.

You may be interested in that thread. It's a little tool I made to quickly design hex maps.

hexdraft.x10host.com/

TL;DR from last thread;

I'm trying to create a magic system for OSR where Wizards have essentially unlimited cantrips for weak and useful utility spells, buffs and debuffs but no big spells. Requires a wand to function. However I need to know how to make it interesting.

Which of the following should be used?
>Some kind of limitation system; such as spells cast per combat encounter, or force an action like 'drawing' mana towards yourself?
>Different power levels of spells, rolled randomly or requiring a 'spell combo' to activate?
>Different classes of spells to put points into upon level up? Maximum number of known cantrips at any given time?
>Power growth = wand growth, find better wands like a magic sword for better spells instead of combat?
>Some kind of sacrifice or mana mechanic to make spells more powerful? Stat or health drain? Blood sacrifice?
>Learn new spells purely from dungeoneering? Invent new spells in downtime? Learn from demonic entities?
>Spontaneous magic? What system?

Have you looked at Beyond the Wall's magic system? It's pretty similar to what you're looking for. Magic is split into Cantrips/Spells/Rituals. Cantrips are minor magic effects that can be cast an unlimited amount of times barring a miscast roll where the magic fucks up and goes out of control, spells are a classic Vancian style system, and Rituals are the major magic effects that require spell components and prep time. BotW has a generally lower level of magical power so a spell like Fireball or Invisibility is considered a Ritual.

For limiting the system maybe some sort of roll under Int test each time. If they fail they've exhausted their knowledge/wizard brain powers for a bit and can't cantrip and/or take penalties to spell casting.

Power level should always be low. They're cantrips.

For learning new ones and casting I'd honestly just let players come up with ideas and as gm make a ruling on if its a cantrip spell or not. I'd include ones I made up on scrolls and in spell books in the marginalia as low level treasure and such.

Being able to amplify your cantrips seems like a bad idea. They're suppose to be sort of useful stuff wizards do instead of getting their hands dirty, like changing the colour of their hat, or making a loaf of bread not go stale for a week.

>blood sacrifice to make the bread last 10000000 years

While we're talking about Beyond The Wall and clever mechanics, pretty much everything about their integrated character generation and world building is worth looking at. Links backstory to stats, gives characters reasons to associate, doesn't take too long, builds a map with the entire group, and has a good use of fronts that are easy to work with for the gm. Basically they took a lot of good ideas from more narrative oriented story games and fit them well into osr. Shit's tight.

Zak S.'s key mechanic: Instead of keeping track of every damn key that the party picks up in a megadungeon, secretly roll a d100 and assign the key that number. When they use that key to open whatever door, it has that % chance of opening the door.

Bumping.

how?

So on average a key has a 50% chance of opening a door, and if you have two it's more like, what a 75% chance? I think that's how the maths work out?

Wouldn't it be easier just to tell the players that the key they get is Key #X, and then secretly note down the relevant door number on the map?

That seems kind of dumb, honestly.

I haven't used it but it seemed like worth checking out. He also uses treasure tables that are fairly key heavy. You're suggestion doesn't sound terribly difficult to implement.

I think it really depends on the size of the map you are using and whether or not you are generating said map on the fly.

user who created the system here.

It's a collection of house rules for my Whitebox games. I simply titled it Advanced Whitebox because it expands upon the core game with classes, races, spells, etc. I personally like the fact that it is streamlined and basic so that others can add or remove aspects.
On the subject of stress, my players love it. It encourages them to focus also on the mental burden of adventuring. Not only do players fear death, but they fear their player feeling too overwhelmed and crazed from their trek.
In defense of the character flaws, it is a tool for character progression and development primarily for players that have trouble roleplaying or building a connecting with their character.

To be completely honest, nostalgia plays another impact on my writing of the book. I take full responsibility of that and have no shame.
I do think that I could factor stress more into certain classes outside of a few cleric spells. I'm open to any and all recommendations

The best Lord Dunsany story collection?

Alright guys. Help me figure out a good mechanic for playing out fast paced chase scenes through a city.

I kinda want to do something where I randomly determine certain abilities or skills to be tested: ie)DEX, Lockpicking, Climb, STR, etc. Start the enemy and the PCs an assigned number away, say 5. For each failure of a test, the number decreases and at 0 the enemy has caught up.

I dunno. Help.

The best mechanic for this is anything with fast adjucation, something like pic related totally works. If you want a good chase scene though, you'll have to be descriptive and factor players' decisions in. For example, getting on the roof can open a shortcut, but can also waste a turn. They're also free to try and delay the enemy using any element they can think of, like scaring the horses near him or shooting the giant carnival balloon which passes right over. This stuff is hard for me personally to come up with on the fly, I need a good sense of place before I can improvise this confidently. Pays off though.

I think boons and banes in Shadow of the Demon Lord is my favorite version of advantage / disadvantage mechanic. You either add d6s to a roll or subtract from it. There can be multiple boons and banes which cancel each other out but you always choose the highest result and TN is always 10. I might actually adopt it, works quite well with B/X modifier scheme.

Forgot the pic, my bad.

sup Veeky Forums, making first level of a megadungeon. What dungeon stocking rules/table do I use? it's gonna be a smaller megadungeon, for a group of 4-7 new players to the game, using LL rules

deltasdnd.blogspot.com/2012/10/random-dungeon-stocking.html

I'm looking at the choices here in particular

I'd alter this to take CON into account. Maybe after a certain number of rounds (Con/3?) you start to tire and get penalties to your rolls, or maybe you can trade Con points for a boost to your rolls? Hmm.

I've not read enough of his material to be able to say, but the Book of Wonder is fantastic.

Here's a table I banged together for Moldvay Basic. It might at least give you some ideas.

what you guys can tell me about tunnels and trolls?

Okay, I enjoy T&T a lot.

So....

Old system, (like 1977 or so)
Only uses D6s
Can easily run both solo and GM adventures
There is about 8 versions but most all are very close to each other.
Outlaw press stole a bunch of stuff
The magic system has goofy sounding spells
character generation and monster descriptions are really easy.
You can learn how to play a fighter in 10 minutes, 15 if you never played a RPG before.
The harder to find Mercenaries, spies, and Private eyes is "Modern" T&T. Which also is a darn good modern system.

which version do you recommend me to start with?

Reading the castles and crusaders fighters makes my autism itches by just thinking in telling the players that an enemy haves 1HD, is the system worth to ignore this?

sorry for the typos

5.5 if you can find it, otherwise deluxe or 7.5

For that matter, does anyone know what editions of Traveller are worth bothering with?

CT, Mega,Gurps, and Mongoose.

There is also a traveller general where you can get a lot of the files to play.

7.5 for more "normal" level games
Deluxe for more High-level games
5th/5.5 for using the old Solo books

>15 Terrible jokes. One of the jokes is so bad it reputedly makes people kill themselves out of shame, but the punchline is missing.
Is it The Aristocrats?

Not Mongoose 2 ed though? God I'm starting to have an itch to play non DnD RPGs but most of them gross me out, Traveller seems good though

Posting just to keep the thread updated. Work is proceeding as usual. Some distances are fucked up, but adapting real world to hexes is harder than it looks.

It's also hard to get reliable info on population size, so for now all cities have only one of two icons depending on if they are capital of the local polity or not.

I've always hated the multiple attacks vs. 1 HD creatures in D&D (though C&C at least scales it down a bit). It seems like a very arbitrary dividing line. Why do 1 HD creatures get further penalized relative to 2 HD creatures? Surely having half as many hit points is a big enough disadvantage.

I say, give fighters a non-specific additional attack. Either have it only happen every other round (like AD&D does), or have it be every round but take the worse of 2 to-hit rolls. Or give the fighter a choice to make 1 strike at full to-hit, or 2 strikes at -2 or -3 penalty. I'd push back this bonus to 5th though. That way, it comes when casters are getting 3rd level spells.

I have not played mongoose 2nd....

Ask the general and I am sure you will get a explanation.

>DnD RPGs but most of them gross me out, Traveller seems good though
Well the nice thing about Traveller is that you can get all the old books here
T&T you would most likely need to get some books, but both deluxe, 7.5 and so on are nice.

This is for times when the players have been moving around between dungeons and just happen to notice a key in the equipment. The DM and the players both don't know what it is, so the mechanic is a way to fix it. It's a mechanic for a more chilled out style of play.

Monsters don't roll their HD. their HD becomes their HP.

Here's how you read the dice. 1=0, 2-5=1, 6-9=2, 10=4.

A Fighter rolls a 10 on his damage roll. That's 4 Hit Dice worth of damage. So he kills 4 orcs in one blow. The one remaining orc rolls a 5 on his damage roll. The Fighter takes 1 damage from his HP.

This makes the PCs a lot tougher, and a lot stronger. Download the free Black Streams: Solo Heroes supplement to learn more.

Do you feel that iterative attacks + cleave is too OP?

For practical purposes probably the Fantasy Masterworks omnibus, which collects a ton of his stories and is easy to get.

Well, in OD&D it's against "normal man-type opponents" or something like that (I forget the exact wording, but it's ambiguous) and appears by inference from Chainmail to be meant to apply to anything that would be a normal "line troop" as opposed to a monster or solitary hero.
So you could use that, although that makes the ability even stronger.

I'd just remove the HD restriction, it's unneeded, Multi-Attacks aren't quite good enough to warrant any disadvantages beyond the level you normally unlock it(now have it work with an ACKS style Cleave and things really take off)

I'm not sure you need both. I'd say do one or the other. Of course, having an intermediate step between "1 attack per round" and "2 attacks per round" would be nice in any case. So if you go for cleaves, you could maybe give cleave at 4th level, an extra attack every other round (or the equivalent) at 8th, and 2 attacks per round at 12th (instead of 10th). But regardless, I don't think you're gonna break the game. But really, I think a bigger issue than being overpowered (because I don't think it'll throw the game either way), is it being obnoxious. You get two strikes and each of them can potentially cleave, leading to 4 different attacks. You want shit to be quick and simple. If you really want to go with cleave, maybe instead of adding additional attacks, you could increase damage. So at some point, you start rolling an additional damage die whenever you hit. But I'm really just brainstorming here.

Getting two attacks per round at 4th level, and three at 8th level is pretty powerful. Other people would really suck in melee compared to you. You could always lessen the impact some by baking your multiple attacks into your THAC0.

You could make it any monster with half your hit dice or less, I suppose, though that's a bit mathier than I like to get. Then again, the GM could just say it's any monster who is a mook / goon / rabble compared to you with the 1/2 your HD thing just being a guiding line.

Again, arguably in OD&D the cutoff is anything below 4 HD. A level 1 Fighting-Man e.g. a "veteran" is clearly still a regular soldier, but the level 4 Hero is a... well, hero. Something like a bugbear (3 HD) is likely a line troop, whereas ogres and trolls are obvious (albeit weak in the case of the ogre) monster types. There's also precedent for this cutoff in the form of the Sleep spell.

where i can find the 7.5 book, i only found 7th edition

>Other people would really suck in melee compared to you.

Well yes. You're a Fighter. That's your deal. You don't really shine anywhere else. Since combat is to be avoided whenever possible, you're there to make sure the party makes it out in one piece.

I don't see the problem in making a class the absolute best at its specialty.

A thought: give fighters multiple attacks as they gain levels, and let them choose how they split their attack bonus between them. So a fighter with a +8 bonus and two attacks could make both at +4, or one at +6 and one at 2, or one at +8 and one at +0, or what have you.

Just give fighters a number of attacks per round minus enemy groups highest HD, +1. Level 5 Fighter against level 1 goblins? 5 attacks. Level 10 Fighter vs level 9 Troll? Two attacks. Easy and encourages party to kill enemy leaders first.

OSR is quick and easy. Applying different bonuses to different attacks, especially if you're dividing a bonus in order to get those two different numbers, seems overly cumbersome to me.

>Well yes. You're a Fighter. That's your deal. You don't really shine anywhere else.
Other classes gain some of their value from being at least decent in combat as well. The gap between rogue and fighter to-hit in C&C is already much larger than in, say, Basic D&D (a 10th level fighter in C&C has a 7 point advantage over a 10th level thief, rather than the 2 point advantage he'd have in Basic). And there are other classes (namely, the barbarian, ranger, paladin and knight) who are almost as heavily focused on combat as the fighter. If the fighter suddenly gets drastically more powerful, they will comparatively suck at what is meant to be their mainstay.

Thanks for feedback guys. I need a bunch of useful cantrip spells now for dungeoneering and combat hexes.

As a DM, how do you organise your notes?
What do you think is the most efficient way to both write them up and reference them at the table. Bonus points if you have actually done it and had success with it.

Handwritten, typeset, electronic. Ring ninders, loose leaf, coil bound, google doc, evernote. Whatever format.

notes?

seriously, my notes are maps and 1-2 lines describing a encounter , and a reference to a page number for a monster if I need more then a name, AC, HP, and Hit Dice.

Not too sure I like the idea of gold spent making the XP but the guy who wrote the big book of dirty tricks that was just on humble bundle used it as a houserule. I definitely am in love with the idea of gold recovered = XP though.

I'm also interested in this question. I have a crap load of wasted prep. I need an efficient way to recycle them for future sessions.

That counts.

But is having to reference different books for different monsters sounds like a pain at the table.

Use binders with general themes, make a cross or checkmark after you use them.

Binders like;
>Encounters and creatures
>Dungeons and traps and maps
>Items and house rules

Don't forget to keep a story notes page to keep track of what's happened.

In OD&D the core classes are Fighting-man, Cleric and Magic-user. If you keep it that way then you can easily have Fighting-man be the fighter specialist and give just him multiple attacks and it works fine.

Monsters in old school D&D are so simple that you don't have to reference any books during play.

HD, AC, #attacks, specialty if any and possibly move speed if needed.

Just have the stats on your dungeon map key and make random encounter tables beforehand.

Okay. I mean, clerics are obviously much better in combat than Magic-users and they can stand up pretty decently against fighters, especially if you're using non-variable weapon damage. So I don't see a huge issue with boosting fighters there. But we were talking about potential changes to Castles & Crusades, and that's a whole different kettle of yarn.

Hey does anybody want a random table, encounters, treasure, character packages, or something similar? Feeling creative.

>character packages
what do you mean by this?

I don't know like 'roll to generate character background, starting spells and equipment, etc. Or maybe random shit to change up a character hit with a Chaos spell. Just an idea.

>RIP Joe Dever
Any fans here? Lone Wolf is pretty old school. It was my first contact with RPGs.

I will miss him enormously. He was my intro to RPGs too.

Just do the 3e thing where you can make attacks at -5 level etc

F6 gets an F6 and F1 attack
F7 gets F7, F2
...
F11 gets F11, F6, F1

What's the hex size?

>different books for different monsters sounds like a pain at the table.
Barring really odd monsters, HD, AC, and attacks is all you need in OSR monsters.

>Magnamund
>Magna Mundus
>Bigworld
I dunno, I could make it easy for myself here and make a crack about uncreativity, but somehow it doesn't feel that way to me at all?

It feels more like an escapist dream. The world you live in is small and boring... but here in these books, there's a whole much bigger world to explore.

This isn't a great idea. It wasn't a great idea when 3e did it, and it's not a good one now.

-5 per iterative attack almost ensures that the Fighter won't be able to hit decent AC monsters with it at low levels, and it becomes an irrelevant penalty at higher levels because ACs don't keep going up forever like in 3e.

The other issue, of course, is whether or not you're restricting a Fighter from moving and attacking with iterative attacks. You didn't say, but I'll address it just in case:

Limiting Fighters to standing still and getting multiple attack locks the Fighter down and prevents them from doing their job. Mobility is a necessary part of fighting, and 3e managed to kill every advantage the Fighter had.

Personally, I think a Cleave/Mighty Deeds ability is far more useful, or even an ability that allows the Fighter to attack an "arc" in front or to his weapon hand side is more useful than weak iterative attacks.

>>Magnamund
>>Magna Mundus
>>Bigworld
It was the 70s, man. Magnamund was based on his homemade setting for his LBB D&D campaign. Cut him some slack.

Besides, the Magnamund setting is DEFINITELY one of my best. It's medievalish where it needs to be, has enough fantasy elements to be intriguing and fascinating, and has some classic yet interesting myths of its own. Plus a lot of interesting, original monsters.

Since the issue is how to give a mid-level fighter a bonus that's less than an extra attack, how about a second attack at half damage? Then it's independent of AC

I'm hacking LotFP into an 80s teen horror game (Lamentations of the Prom Queen!) for a one-shot tonight, and I'd like some feedback on my ideas/houserules so far-

1. Everyone starts as a specialist, re-skinned to "High-Schooler"

2. First-level bonuses/starting gear come from a DCC-style table. I think there'll be only d12 or so?
So far it's:
1. Cheerleader- +1 Melee AB, starts with Dad's Revolver + 6 Rounds Pistol Ammunition
2. Punk- Starts with switchblade, +1 to sneak attack base, +1 Sleight of Hand
3. Jock- Starts with baseball bat, +2 Melee AB
4. Amateur Photographer- +1 to Stealth, +1 to Tinker, starts with Camera
5. Grade "A" Student- +2 to Science, Starts with Textbook (Player's Choice)
6. A/V Club Member- +1 to Pop Culture, +1 to Science or Tinkering, Starts with Monster Manual
7. Band Geek- +1 Tinkering, +1 Melee AB, starts with Instrument (Player's Choice)

If anyone's got ideas or input or criticism or adventure ideas, I'll take anything!

gotta have a metalhead and a christian youth club member

Oh shit, forgot to explain-
Architecture becomes Pop Culture, and Bushcraft becomes Science, since those skills are sort of fantasy/historical setting-specific.

Any PDFs of the setting books?

One attack every other round, AD&D-esque?

You can even keep track of it relatively easily by flipping a card or whatever.

Can steal some ideas from this.

Can't wait to see it
Is there a draft that we can see?

Do you reckon there'd be a way to make Beyond the Wall's chargen system a bit more interactive? I'm thinking something like a much less indepth Traveller?
As it stands, it's interesting, but ultimately the players are just rolling and being told what happens.

Maybe leave the circumstances of birth (parents and shit) up to the dice, but rework the childhood and young adult stuff into short, COYA-style vigenettes?

Camera flash should be able to blind things.

Token minority person
Redneck
Christian Youth
Metalhead

It's probably gonna be all on notebook paper until playtesting is done, but I'll see what I can do with learning how to make semi-presentable .pdfs!

Punk is pretty interchangeable with the first in 80s movies. As an 80s kid, there was a lot of crossover.

Stoner is an important archetype for teen horror films, 'cause there's often that one guy who sneaks off to get high or something and dies, thus reminding us that Nancy was right or whatever.

have a bimbo, a weird kid, a stoner and a confused exchange student maybe?

Goblins or Kobolds, which is the more iconic 1st level monster.

Neither of those two designs, at least.

Probably the goblin, though, because of the greater popularity of it outside of D&D.

I mean, consider how many times the kobold's gotten a redesign.

Now consider the goblin.

Yeah.

I don't care for lizard doggos or brown hairy goblins. Sue me.

However, pig orcs are near and dear to my heart.