OSR General - First time creating thread edition

Clerics are already pretty good fighters and gain levels quicker than anybody but thieves at low to mid levels, and quicker than anybody at all at high levels. I don't think they need to surge ahead in spells like that. A magic-user with 50k XP has spells per day of 2/2/2, while a cleric with 50k XP has spells per day of 2/2/2/1/1. That's two full spell levels ahead of magic-users despite the fact that clerics start off behind, as they don't get any spells at 1st levels. That's just screwy in my book.

Do you OSR-playing grognards play in old settings or use new ones or your own homebrews?

Yeah, but the Cleric's spells are of an entirely different nature than the Magic-User's.

Mostly because, well, they have a certain tendency to help the group as a whole. Cure Serious Wounds and Protection/Evil 10' radius and Neutralize Poison at level 4, Dispel Evil and Raise Dead at level 5, and so on.

They also get their only real offensive spells in Sticks to Snakes and Insect Plague, I suppose, but neither of those are anywhere near as powerful as the M-U equivalents at those levels - Charm Monster affects the same critters as Insect Plague, for instance, but also scales upwards and is goddamn Charm Monster, while fifth-level spells start getting dangerously powerful with shit like unlimited Animate Dead, Cloudkill, Teleport and Magic Jar.

Spell levels aren't really all too relevant when you're comparing two different classes, to be honest - the most obvious example here is seventh-level spells, of course.

Also, they're not really that far behind magic-users in slots even in BECMI? The lesser XP needed kind of adds up.

>Misty Isles of the Eld

Stick around, user, I'll have it up for you later today.

Huh, I don't see it posted. Either way, I've got a ton of stuff off IRC I'm going to upload to Mega today, I'll leave it in the pile anyway.

Wilderlands of High Fantasy is just old-school, but definitely OSR related.
You should also check out regular non-N Carcosa if you haven't.

I use my own homebrew setting.

Is that a reference to The Forgotten Beasts of Eld?

I know it on the trove, but Rappan Athuk is on sale for 8 bucks.

>Lawful Evil space elves with a taste for bizarre bureaucracy, biomancy, and (David) Bowie

Speaking of which, does anyone have Cyclopean Deeps Volumes 1 and 2?

Distinctive subsystems or a unified mechanic?

Oh! I thought that was for Pathfinder, so I didn't grab it, but the website says Pathfinder and Swords & Wizardry. No problem, I've got it now. I'll post it with the other stuff when it's all done uploading.

Only go for a unified mechanic if you can actually get the math working for everything.

3E couldn't, for instance. (Also, it still has a bunch of extraneous roll-under d100 rolls here and there, like with concealment and whatnot.)

I appreciate unified mechanics as something you can fall back on, but me and my players get a huge kick out of devising and negotiating resolution methods for various things.

I do like to feel that mechanical base is solid for me, otherwise I'm not comfortable making rulings.

Great - thanks!

anyone have/read Hackslashblog's book Perdition?
Also, what systems is it built for compatibility with, and what would require conversion?

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So /osrg/, I'm thinking of running a 2e campaign for my friends (I've heard the argument that 2e isn't osr, but I'd rather not start my own thread for this) and I'm curious about which supplements I should include, which optional rules to look into and what I should scrap.

I'm going to include domain rules from BECMI/RC later on as the setting is a homebrew stemming from a generic fantasy land at the start and passing through a mysterious gate and winding up in a new world (old world is modeled somewhat on Forgotten Realms, the new world is basically the Americas+East Asia in the north with South Asia+Africa in the south).

Party is tasked first to go through and explore, meeting and fighting the locals and local monsters before eventually establishing their own regencies in the new world.

Player's Option: Combat and Tactics has some neat stuff if you want more detail in combat. On the other hand, Player's Option: Skills and Powers is best sent straight to the incinerator lest a powergaming munchkin get his grubby hands on all that horrible, broken nonsense.

>the new world is basically the Americas+East Asia in the north with South Asia+Africa in the south
Get Maztica, Oriental Adventures (AD&D), Nyambe (3e). Dark Sun's Tohr-Kreen realm detailed in Thri-Kreen of Athas could be on the other side of a big desert. Ravenloft's G'henna might work too.

>Do you OSR-playing grognards play in old settings or use new ones or your own homebrews?
Yes. I've run games in Oz, Narnia (although I WAS 15 at the time..), Narcosa, The Land of Unreason AND Wonderland, the Hyperborean age, a good dozen worlds of my own creation, and Mystara. I've played in Dark Sun, FR, and even Dragonlance. Right now I'm running an R&PL campaign off-and-on, and doing a bunch of stuff in a pseudo-historical Age of Discovery campaign that's getting pretty ugly. One party is about to let Queen Mabh loose on North America (in Dunnsmouth), and the other is in the middle of a brewing slave revolt in the Canary Islands that may or may not be the result of Fae interference in the government of France and Spain. Oh, and most of Tangier is under the sway of a massive, and rapidly-spreading, plague-cult with an artifact that has given them control of the demon Ose.

Anybody else get the new LOTFP modules?

2ed without splatbooks might be one the best D&Ds along with the RC.

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Ah.

So I've been reading Labyrinth Lord all evening and it's pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Also glanced through the Advanced guide and glad to see it has things like Paladins and whatnot for extra options - love me some Paladins. All those supplements in the trove are encouraging as well. Originally I was just going to see if I could find a copy of basic or adnd at my FLGS, glad you guys recommended this.

The only thing I need to figure out is some minor details for when I eventually try setting up a campaign like non-combat encounters and RP moments. The handful of times I've played an OSR it's all been very combat and dungeon focused. Don't know how I'll handle when the party wants to spend a night in town getting into all sorts of bizarre shit without combat, which always seems to happen. How do old school dnd and OSR games handle stuff like diplomacy and bluffing and whatnot without resorting to massive skill lists like modern games, just all at the DM's discretion? I'm very used to modern games with lots of non-dungeon stuff going on I guess, so the switch to focusing on sword and sorcery adventures is both welcome and a bit intimidating.

Then again this all assumes I can actually convince any of my buddies to play something other than 5E, Pathfinder, and FFG RPGs.

Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas, folks! Here's all the crap I've downloaded recently, including Cyclopean Deeps.
I tried to sort the OSR and other Trove related stuff into a subfolder, but I may have missed some, so here's a big ~2 gig pile of everything. Go nuts.

This stuff will be up in this folder at least a week, maybe two. (The Traveller stuff will probably get filed on Friday in time for the next Traveller General.)

mega.nz/#F!xVdz0IrB!oSBtajYqiOMr06o6cd79lA

Ive always liked roll under ability scores with bonuses increasing the target number at my discretion. I also generally let one roll ride the entire scene unless sometjing significant changes.

For persuading an NPC, I don't require then to act it all out unless they want to. I just ask them to tell me what approach they're doing to persuade em.

This is generous of you. Thanks user!

I seem to recall that Skills & Powers actually had some redeemable material related to Psionics

Makes sense, factoring in ability scores depending on the approach. Too used to systems that have massive skill lists for everything.

>Green Law of Varkith
Goddamn. Thank you. Never thought I'd see that in the wild.

Have any of you actually played Mutant Future? I'm dying for some good post-apocalyptic OSR time.

I question the possibility of a truly OSR supers game but Base Raiders is a perfect premise to bring the two together. If only it was not a half-baked attempt to make a supers game *and* a dungeon crawl game out of Fate. Nothing against Fate but it quite simply does not do proper dungeon crawls.

Might want to look at Swords and Wizardry as well, my group liked it more that LL

All of the above

It is okay.

we ended up switching to GURPS

Just talking works. I sometimes invent a roll if I want something like that but I kinda like being able to lie and have them be uncertain.

>Don't know how I'll handle when the party wants to spend a night in town getting into all sorts of bizarre shit without combat, which always seems to happen. How do old school dnd and OSR games handle stuff like diplomacy and bluffing and whatnot without resorting to massive skill lists like modern games
I very strongly recommend you pick up Vornheim. It's in the Lamentations of the Flame Princess folder. Some of the stuff in it (while really creative and cool) kind of requires you to have a physical copy or a printout, and it's worth the money anyway. It's a general guide to running shit in a city, and has a bunch of useful tables and ways of adjucating stuff.

In the Judges' Guild folder, there's the Ready Ref Sheets, which is one of the ways the OD&D guys originally handled city adventures and diplomatic shit/ Or, as my Dad said when I showed him my copy "Damn, haven't seen one of those since 1982".

Oh, and I do personally adjucate a lot of stuff. It all depends on whether failure has serious consequences or not. Dice only come out when they do.

Hey guys, d100 chart guy. Gonna do at least one tonight, first reply to this thread picks the topic of the chart.

I'll also post the last 3 I did, in case anyone missed them.

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>first reply to this thread picks the topic of the chart.
omens and signs

You want I should do just the omens themselves, or omens and their meanings?

Wandering post-apocalyptic scenarios.

3e intentionally had d% rolls for rolls that weren't supposed to vary with skill or anything

Honestly watching the players try to interpret them is like 90% of the fun

Alright, how about the "Complete" books? Anything I should look into with those? Was thinking maybe making the new world have other humanoids besides humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Things like Kobolds, Saurials, Beastman, and Firbolg, more or less. Would it make the setting more interesting, especially considering if the players die and need to make a new character from the new races...

I did once, but found it too random at the time. Maybe I would find it better now, I don't know.

Here ya' go. Thanks for the inspiration, gonna do some writing for my campaign now.

Rolled 51 (1d100)

I'm getting really into OSR zines. What are people's favourite ones?

Complete Humanoids and the class books offer some pretty cool options, but they clutter the game up immensely. I'd poke around in Complete Fighter, Thief, and Magic-user. Some of the Historical books (the "green-backs") are cool, but most are really badly-put-together. Most all are subtractive rather than additive, I.E. telling you what rules >not< to use but giving you nothing more than some historical framework for the setting.

That said, the Classical Greece book has some cool stuff on making >actually< tragic heroes. The Northern Reaches (TSR GAZ-07) also has a really cool NPC generator in it, that's much less-clunky than the 1e Page 100 table clusterfuck.

Thanks much.

These are rad, man. A lot read more as adventure hooks than encounters, but I guess that just means they're especially evocative.

It's probably just a byproduct of the way I run games. Lots of weird loose ends that I keep track of and tie in to later things.

Fight On! is golden, Vacant Ritual Assembly and Undercroft are perfect for LotFP. Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad is pretty inspirational although I don't run DCC.

I've ran it and played it a few times. Due to the random nature of the game you'll usually end up with a character you really enjoy, or really hate. It's entirely possible to be so deformed you have -2 tohit and can only attack once every 2 rounds. It's also possible to roll a plant that does 10d6 nuclear tomato damage.

Confession: I generally find the D&D 4e Gamma World to be more enjoyable.

Happen to have a PDF? My supers group would probably like this.

What are differences between all the versions of City State of the Invincible Overlord and which one is the best? Which one is worth getting a physical copy of?

if you use Complete Book of Humanoids, you should either ignore the Class/Level restrictions or at least lighten up on them by a lot, if you don't then most of the races end up being rather useless compared to rolling a bog standard Human

Has anyone been able to make a xp = gp house-rule or similar incentive for old-school exploration in 5e?

In the same vein; do you think 5e delivers (or can deliver) an old-school playstyle? I seem to remember a lot of OSR blogs talking about that during it's release.

You probably could, but without 5e books of my own, I can't advise you of the pitfalls.

Basically, you'd need to compare the treasure tables to the XP needed to level up. How many encounters would they need to defeat? How many lairs would they need to loot to level up every level?

What other assumptions does the game make about treasure and XP that you need to take into account?

I think 5e can do okay, but in general I'm not fond of it.

>Alright, how about the "Complete" books?
Complete Elf (or whatever) is generally viewed as power-gamer fodder because of one kit with lots of mechanical advantages with only a few mechanical disadvantages.
Complete Necromancer is apparently pretty good.

>Kobolds, Saurials, Beastman, and Firbolg
Complete Book of Humanoids.

I like & Magazine

>In the same vein; do you think 5e delivers (or can deliver) an old-school playstyle?
No. At least not without huge fundamental modifications and additions.

It has no rules for dungeon exploration and resource management in the game is nonexistent. It's also heavily based on character building and combat. D&D 5 is best suited for plot-based adventuring with set piece encounters and that's pretty much the opposite of what old school D&D is supposed to be.

To the Lesser Underworld requester; here it is. Hope you enjoy.

If you take requests: fungoid forests?

Here's a poor bastard of an user who's up against 6 ghouls. Wish him luck.

Do you want a spore infection mechanic where many encounters, some of the wandering monsters and even some of the loot turns you slowly and surely into a fungus zombie cordyceps thing?

Oh you do? Really? Sounds great, thanks.

You are genius.

I'm doing a short OD&D campaign based around a derelict castle built by a deranged occultist baron. What could be in the courtyard?

>the courtyard is an overgrown map based on movement of the stars, the characters must move in the correct arcs and patterns to cross safely
>a series of fountains that all convey different effects if filled with obscure, obscene and violent fluids
>slowly moving statues of humanoids with animal heads that can converse simple philosophical problems with who ever offers gifts into their open hands

Statues, perhaps? Think the White Witch.

>1d6 Occultist Courtyards
>1; Eighteen wooden poles arranged in a circle. Each has a coil of rope around its base.
>2; Grassy, uneven ground. Underneath is a mass grave, more bodies the deeper you go. The bodies are human on the top, but get much worse as you go down.
>3; Raw dirt that smells like ozone. During a full moon, a flickering doorway appears that leads to another realm.
>4; Dusty pieces of furniture, old sewing wheels, boxes and priceless trinkets and artifacts litter the ground, as though there was something far more important to be stored in the attics and basements of the castle.
>5; Inner moat with a miniature castle. The baron built his castle around it to siege the tiny castle, and they've almost given up.
>6; Huge furry beast, staked down with ropes and its bile routinely harvested from a calcified abscess on its belly. It cries black tears and looks at all who come across it as if begging for mercy.

This got me thinking about Clark Ashton Smith's story The Maze of The Enchanter.

I might have to go full bizarre with this.

I plan on starting a game with an old group. I'm looking for a system that isn't too much a fuss to run, specially since that'd be my first time GMing. Some fairly simple that is preferably focused on dungeon crawling and still somewhat crunchy. Is this the right place or am I better off with a more modern system?

Any of the systems mentioned up thread would do. Moldvay Basic, ACKS, Swords & Wizardry, Beyond the Wall, etc.

B/X
Labyrinth Lord
Dungeon Crawl Classics
Swords and Wizardry
Basic Fantasy

Pretty much anything that gets mentioned often.

Depends what part of the crawl you want to focus on. If it is the exploration side, then this is the place for you! If you want a combat focus, maybe a more modern game.

Now, what kind of crunch are you looking for?

Gonzo, random tables, big criticals and wild magic crunch? Try Dungeon Crawl Classics.

Economy, base building, realm managing and some light player building crunch? Try Adventurer Conqueror King System

Modern iteration of B/X? Lamentations of the Flame Princess.

I would recommend Moldvay Basic. It's a very tidy set of rules. Make sure you use morale rules though as they really shouldn't be optional.

Thanks, I'll take a look. Guess I'll check out Dungeon Crawl Classics, Swords & Wizardry and Moldvay Basic first

Just grab Swords and Wizardry or Labyrinth lord.

Not that user but what's a good system if I want to run a game that's a decent balance of gritty dungeon crawl with modernish style non-combat roleplaying - like exploring, political sorts of situations with diplomacy and whatnot. Lots of these osr systems seem to favor the dungeon crawl aspect the most.

So I'm converting to LotFP. Do people really not use a bestiary for this game? What bestiaries do you use, if any?

I play a lot of LotFP. If I need monsters, I just make them up. Doesn't take long, and I guess I've just memorized a lot of monsters from other systems and convert them on the fly.

You can use a lot of bestiaries though - the rulebook talks about it, if I recall.

Raggi expects people to make up their own monsters but you can use any bestiary that you like.

Depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for a mechanical solution, I don't know any good unified mechanic in the OSR.

If you are looking for more inspirational / verisimilitude solutions; LotFP has a great bit on hireling cost and stuff like what kind of quarters they require and ACKS has amazing rules regarding realm and domain structures.

Usually OSR games tend to focus on exploration in a dungeon / wilderness, so I'm not sure what kind of rules you are missing there?

I don't know if this is the good place to ask, but, what can you tell me about Castles & Crusades? I know it isn't straight retro-clone but is somewhat similiar in feel

The Basic Fantasy RPG monster stats probably work well.