OSR General

Let me ruin this thread before it has begun by forcing my obnoxious magic-system workings up on everyone.

Basically I'm already set on how the actual spellcraft is going to work in my game. Vancian without spell levels, memorize spells freely up to your magician's level- Level 4 Magic User can prepare up to 4 spells. It's great, simple, I like it alot.

However intended in part of this plan was the secondary attribute of magic users; because I enjoy both really weird magic user characters and because I like magic that is more then just mere 'spells', essentially the idea is that magic users can trade in their spell slots as they grow in level to gain other benefits.

These benefits can be permanent magic items they create, powerful bound minions, permanent enchantments on locations or special powers/mutations on their person and beyond. You essentially 'trade in' a universal spell slot to open the door for other kinds of growth.

Example- 6th Level Magic user. He can memorize 4 spells a day. He also has the power to turn into a shaggy black dog at will and his house is haunted and serviced by his ghostly butler.

This very simple example is how magic users can grow organically instead of just forcing them to get more and more spell slots to worry about. How does this sound as a concept?

Things that need discussion and ironing out;
>Is this 'fair' to other classes? MUs have always been the class with the most options so is this excessive? Should other classes be given a similar mechanic?
>Is it alright to hand out weirdness like candy? Should these require quests to complete or is the sacrifice of a spell slot enough?
>Only on level up or can you 'trade in' arcane power whenever the opportunity arises to get a weird benefit like that?
>What happens to the mage who just keeps every spell slot? What about the one who trades all of them in for benefits? Too weird or totally fine character choices?

Has anyone else used real-life occult/esoteric texts as inspiration?
Considering looking for a really nice printing of The Key of Solomon, Dogme et Rituel de la Haute Magie, stuff like that.

>Is this 'fair' to other classes? MUs have always been the class with the most options so is this excessive? Should other classes be given a similar mechanic?
Since this system has the possibility of crippling characters if players aren't careful, I wouldn't say that it's unfair. If anything it breeds player skill and intelligence (and intelligence is the wizard's thing) although it seems unforgiving.

>Is it alright to hand out weirdness like candy? Should these require quests to complete or is the sacrifice of a spell slot enough?
If I used this system, I would make it a quest to get the new power/item. It's cooler if they get a reason for why they get the cool thing instead of just, like, suddenly getting it.

>Only on level up or can you 'trade in' arcane power whenever the opportunity arises to get a weird benefit like that?
I'd say do it when the opportunity arises. The game is about questing anyway, so make it related to that. Maybe there could be many places to get these things though, so the players can decide for themselves how to get it. Maybe it can even be added in as an arbitrary encounter in an otherwise unrelated dungeon.

>What happens to the mage who just keeps every spell slot? What about the one who trades all of them in for benefits? Too weird or totally fine character choices?
I don't see why anything else should necessarily happen, or maybe I just don't understand this question.

>>what recent OSR relevant purchases have you made?
Just got my softcopies of Broodmother and Cursed Chateau, and I'm picking up a couple of Zzarchov's non-LotFP things shortly.

>>Is this 'fair' to other classes?
I would say "yes". If you want, you can fluff it off as spells that continuously suck up part of the MU's capacity for magic.

>MUs have always been the class with the most options so is this excessive?
Technically, it decreases their options by locking them down to a specific powerset, while also reinforcing the whole "wizards are not MU's" thing. I strongly suggest reading the Seclusium of Orphone, if you haven't already, it has some excellent stuff on the difference.

>Should other classes be given a similar mechanic?
Eh?

>other questions
Ultimately I'd set it up to require "spell research" or a special tome (like Golem creation) to actually do it, plus some magical components and time. Alternately, the wizard can pledge their spell strength to some patron and gain a boon, but at the cost of advancing their master's agenda.

Either way it should take time, adventure, and sacrifice, but tying it to something as banal as level-up ruins the flavor of the choice. I believe that answers the "candy" question as well. You should hand it out like cake, not candy.

>What happens to the mage who keeps all his slots?
He's an Archmage, someone jealous of his power and more interested with the minutae of all arcana than with one subset of powers (even if it's technically more "useful").

>The one who trades them all in
He's a fuckin' Wizard now - a magical being, not a Magic-"User".

>Make permanent magic items and bindings eat spell slots, permanently, instead of just taking a long time
I like this a whole hell of a lot. It's a better way of simulating the Wizard pouning a chunk of his soul into something than just shagging his XP total, by a Hell of a stretch. I'm definitely stealing this.

I got you pham. Real Man True AD&D 1E Core Gygax Only DF UK Mod Rules Only G1–3 Giants, Entire Series. These are wizards playing a game of wizards. No memespouting nonsense here. It is ACTUAL play.

dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/46445073/giants/giants.xml

Glad to see you in the thread, True AD&D-guy.

Does anyone have an OSRIC/1E comparison like the LL-B/X one?

Too broken to use? Or alright?

This is neat. Thanks.

Thanks for the podcast, I'll check it out.

I'm sick to death of rolling d20s. Are there any OSR inspired games that don't use d20s for everything?

What dice do you prefer?

It's so hardcore that it's not even a podcast, it's just hundreds of hours of a real campaign on audio. There was video too but it had to be removed due to privacy concerns. So this turned it into a "podcast" of Actual Play, somehow making it superior to those that seek to make such things.

There are a couple of systems that use a D100 setup.

Threadly reminder that Magic-Users are fine as is. Add in "more useful" magic systems or freely spammable cantrips and you're playing something that's not even OSR anymore.

Threadly reminder that no one should give a fuck about what user thinks is """"""OSR"""""" when the entire movement is about DIY rulings.

Dungeon World

But seriously, I feel similarly. I'd like to write/play (if it already exists) an OSR with a 2d10 roll-under system. Something simple but robust, with a "something really awesome/horrible happens" rule for doubles. (Creates some really exciting moments.)

I like the spells/level thing. I feel like spells still need to have their own levels/circles/intensities/whatever? And if the spell is above your level you have to perform a check and lose the spell or take some damage.

Holy fuck I'm stoned right now

>the entire movement is about DIY rulings.

No, the movement is about bringing back the old-school playstyle, and DIY rulings are but one component of same.

I find DCC to be a real good one to introduce people to.

DCC says piss off.

It also says "use a phone app to roll dice at your gaming table!"

How do you handle torches in hand? I'm currently using player is using secondary hand to hold it, drops torch to equip shield/go 2 hand; lantern (non bullseye) is assumed to be attached to the belt.

Should the torch go out if it's dropped? I tend to just let it be forgotten altogether, as if it was still being held by the player, with the only penalty is they sacrifice a half-turn (move turn) if they're going to equip a shield or anything else after dropping the torch. Everyone forgets to declare they're picking up the torch after combat anyway. It only really comes up if they run from combat.

I'm making it. Just you wait.

Trimming the fat of the old school Vancian system with something more flavorful and less bulky is not a bad thing.

Check your rulebook. I believe in Basic it goes out on 2-in-6 when dropped.

Or just get some actual dice.

Or just buy dice from the guy who founded GameScience, who were both one of the first heartbreaker publishers and one of the first groups to put together third-party supplements for OD&D. Which I own quite a few of, I might add. A huge component of the OSR is adapting and adopting what works to modern tools and needs. Like, say, running games online, or using phone apps to reduce the amount of shit cluttering up the table. I enjoy the tactile experience of rolling dice, but you also never have to hunt for a cocked d7 under your table if you're using the phone app.

I roll a d6. Dropped torches or candle lanterns go out on a 1-3, on a 6 they starts a fire if there's flammables about. Dropped oil lanterns go out on a 1, set a fire on 5 and break and set an oil fire on a 6. Dropped candles automatically go out unless you're in extremely flammable conditions (hay-loft, gasses, dried moss) in which case they have a 50% chance of starting a fire but still go out automatically.
I re-roll each subsequent turn until they're all dead or the fire starts.

Setting down a lantern safely is easy if you're not getting jacked, but there's a reason my party goes for linkboys. Also, one of the Fighters likes to do the Aragorn thing and use his torch as a flaming club in his off-hand occasionally, which I'm okay with (choose which weapon to use each round, roll to see if it goes out or lights the thing you're hitting on impact, otherwise does 1d4 damage like any other Minor weapon).

How do you make a nautical campaign with a focus on exploration not boring? I feel like a random encounter every hex of open ocean would get tedious with no clear destination.

This is everything recent that I've bought, Nightmares Underneath looks pretty fucking sweet I'll have to add that to my list of things to get.

any definition of what OSR means is always going to be more of a vague guideline than any hard rules

your haul also looks pretty good

GameScience dice will be rendered obsolete when someone learns to MASHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEN polyhedral dice to 1:5000th of an inch tolerances—or 1:10000th to beat the requirements by TWICE.

>Physical version of Carcosa
>Physical version of Vornheim
Fffffffuck, the envy is killing me.

Does anyone have a high res undoctored version of this Erol Otus artwork?

>Those new publications of AD&D
I didn't know there were physical versions of the those, where did you buy them?

My players can get into the OSR mindset in basically all ways but with the magic system, so I personally use the DCC magic system to fix that problem.

I bought the AD&D books from Amazon for about 35 - 40 USD each. They are very nice, pages and print are great and they have these nice little ribbons attached for bookmarking purposes.

Best / most balanced / fun spellcasting system for osr ? I have given a look at DCC but if you are unlucky you may not eve get off a single spell on a day.

>best
Classic D&D vancian

>most balanced
Classic D&D vancian

>fun
DCC

>Bryce liked Arsenal of the Warrior Princess
user, congratulations!

Swords & Six-Siders uses only d6.

Check the thread before last.

I can't figure out what name to use for my OSR blog

Pushing d30

You should give the party a rough large goal to get to. Columbus fucked up his numbers and thought the planet was much smaller, which is how he would get to the Indies by sailing west and ended up coming across America. Once the party is sailing somewhere definite, you can add random and planned encounters on the way.

You don't have a random encounter every hex. You roll to see if there is a random encounter.

>a random encounter every hex of open ocean
Jesus christ, why. Lower the encounter rate a bit - not even AD&D was that bad.

(An AD&D large galley, for instance, is doing 4mph, with an encounter being 5%/day in deep saltwater. So 5%/48 miles, if it's sailing nonstop 24 hours. That's eight six-mile hexes and nine five-mile hexes. With an encounter averaging every 160 6-mile hexes. But then again, when you actually get an encounter your best bet is that it's a fleet of pirates and your worst that it's the kraken or some other sea monster, because the AD&D wilderness is terrifying.)

>5%/48 miles
Whoops, sorry, that's for 12 hours of sailing.

A full day is 96 miles, or 16 6-mile hexes/19 5-mile hexes.

How's Slugs?

Great! Has 15 different SLUGS! that you can add however you want into your game, all of them are pretty great and really hilarious.

That looks awesome. Do they all have adventure hook generators like that one?

Most of them are just really interesting encounters unto themselves, here's another from the book, if you like it you should consider buying a copy for your self, I don't know if he is still doing the deal, but I picked my copy up for like .50 cents.

>Slugatron
I guess "Metal Slug" was a way too low hanging fruit.

If you had to include only one in your setting, would you choose Orcs or Hobgoblins?

You fucked up not snagging World of the Lost (if you don't already have it)

If we are talking about standard D&D orcs and hobgoblins then I'd go with the latter. Tribal orcs seem easier to replace then militaristic hobgoblins.

Hobgoblins.

Orcs, but that's using the OD&D/AD&D ones where they have fortified villages and caravan trains and whatnot.

I have gone with only goblins where goblins and hobgoblins being one race. I like the feel and name of hobgoblins more then orcs.

Plz dont trash my homebrew :)

probably Orcs, cause Hobgoblins can be relatively easily folded into regular Goblins as just being a term for larger ones

Like i have in ?

Newfag DM here. What's the fluff for secret doors?

What does it mean for a PC to search the wall? Are they searching for seams and knocking to check for hollowness? Then could a PC not simply describe doing so and avoid the skill check/time loss?

If they're magical, what does that mean? They're purely visual illusions? Does a player reach for stone and instead feel wood? If the door is open, can be feel a breeze of wind through the illusion? Is the illusion dispelled as soon as the deception is understood? Or is it just a sort of hologram you walk through?

Aside from 2E's Spelljammer what are my choices for a setting of fantasy space travel?

>What's the fluff for secret doors?
The short answer is it depends.
>What does it mean for a PC to search the wall? Are they searching for seams and knocking to check for hollowness?
They are basically doing everything they possibly can to discover secret passages. That is why it takes so long for such a small area.
>Then could a PC not simply describe doing so and avoid the skill check/time loss?
Yes, if they happen to describe themselves doing the exact thing necessary to find the secret door.
>If they're magical, what does that mean? They're purely visual illusions? Does a player reach for stone and instead feel wood? If the door is open, can be feel a breeze of wind through the illusion? Is the illusion dispelled as soon as the deception is understood? Or is it just a sort of hologram you walk through?
Once again, it depends. All of those are perfectly valid. If you are running a module and want these questions answered you would have to come up with how the door works yourself.

Settings of Wizardry or Might&Magic

You need to work on your imagination. Just saying.

>What does it mean for a PC to search the wall? Are they searching for seams and knocking to check for hollowness? Then could a PC not simply describe doing so and avoid the skill check/time loss?
Well, I'd let them do it without a roll. Door-finding skillchecks are, at least in my interpretation, just characters simply noticing suspicious detail, like "hey, that tapestry has wind coming from behind it!" or "hey, that bookshelf has weird marking under it, maybe it moves!"

>If they're magical, what does that mean? They're purely visual illusions? Does a player reach for stone and instead feel wood? If the door is open, can be feel a breeze of wind through the illusion? Is the illusion dispelled as soon as the deception is understood? Or is it just a sort of hologram you walk through?
Well, for starters, there are quite a lot of variation in magical doors. Maybe they need a password to be opened. Or some common spell cast at it. Or a special amulet. Or yeah, just illusions. Only you decide(or the writer of an adventure).
Speaking of illusions and what can they do, that's just good old "depends on the setting", really. Though usually that spell mentions immateriality of illusions.

Ninth World from Numenera. The system is dragged into the depths of Monte Cook's personal hell, but the setting is pretty nice for sci-fantasy.
Robot succubi, man.

Even if all the systems Monte works on are shit, he usually makes pretty nice settings.

Well, I mean, Numenera was nice when it was just a corebook, but then they just started publishing books full of equipment, incredibly repetitive character options, and worst of all - finally turning it into his own twisted version of 3.PF.
Dude really needs to learn when to stop.

At least I can steal some fluff and flavour from it.

yeah pretty much

The check is to lessen the impact of obsessive pixelbitching and also introduce some uncertainty since it's entirely possible to miss a secret door. That's pretty important when you've got a megadungeon with multiple groups adventuring in it.

As for how they're hidden, that really depends. Maybe you tweak the ear of a statue to make a bookcase swing open, maybe you poke a particular brick, all the classic secret doors from movies and comic books. Or it's a relatively ordinary door hidden behind an illusory wall. The important bit is that they're hard to find.

Maybe during those ten minutes of searching a 10'x10' area you just never happened upon the correct trigger - that's what happens when you fail the check.

(Also, most of the "secret doors" out there tend to be of the more mechanical sort, for obvious reasons - Detect Magic and various other spells kind of trivialize illusory walls and whatnot.)

If you're into Doctor Strange-level stuff, Mentzer's Immortal set is weird as hell. Probably not exactly what you're after, though.

Pathfinder and 4E also had some stuff expanding on their own weird cosmologies (The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea for 4E, Distant Worlds for Pathfinder), and given that you'd be adjusting stuff from Spelljammer either way they may or may not be worth taking a peek at to nick ideas from. Crunch is hard to port, but fluff is mutable as all hell.

If you're willing to steal there's a bunch of Sword & Planet books out there as well.

And, of course, there's nothing really stopping you from inventing your own stuff. It's probably better, really, since you get to avoid all the baggage something like the Forgotten Realms brings in.

>The check is to lessen the impact of obsessive pixelbitching
To clarify: the reason I'm saying this is because Gygax seems to really have hated when the players just futzed around poking every ten feet for traps and stuff. He gives advice that amounts to, IIRC, "if they waste a bunch of real time of in-game nonsense, ratchet up the wandering monster checks until they stop".

That's not the attitude of a guy who wants players to obsessively poke every single detail in a room or corridor to find a secret passage.

Wizardry and early Ultima were the things I was thinking of.
I might try to steal some stuff from it but Monte's stuff just makes me wince reflexively these days.
Yeah, I think making shit up will have to do. I might use the mini-Spelljammer setting that Polyhedron put out for a start.

Dragonstar by Fantasy Flight might have something for you.

Is there something like Stars Without Number's factions system for generic/fantasy play? Maybe in ACKS?

Basically something to do between sessions instead of just winging it. "The lizardmen used your gold to buy troops and take over the village" rather than "I got a 5 on the random encounter table".

I seem to recall hearing that someone was hacking those tools for fantasy, but I don't know if anything came of it.

Choose your character
From left to right:

Sneaky Steven (Thief):
+Disappears behind any object completely, allowing perfect stealth
-Nobody EVER notices him

Reckin' Ross (Barbarian):
+Can perform inhuman feats of Strength
-IQ is about that of a newt

Timbo (Magic-User):
+Highest intellect of the group
-Severe social anxiety

Richie Richards (Bard):
+Able to woo any woman in all the known lands
-Doesn't actually like women

Hank (Fighter):
+His gaze turns all who meet it to stone
-He can't turn it off, even in bed

was in reference to

Oldfag DM here.
So, I also use rolls as a "save" of sorts. Search rolls are what I use for when the players are passively searching for stuff, in the course of normal exploration. Those are at a -1, and done secretly using the pointman's skill. Further negatives apply if the players are doing something that would hamper searching. Savages/Halflings/Elves get similar chances to see hidden trails in the woods, incidentally.

>Players pass a "passive" roll while dicking around
They notice something out of the ordinary (a breeze, hollow-sound, excessive wear/lack of dust in an area) that suggests something is up.

>Actively searching without further details
If the players are >actively< searching, each searcher gets a normal search roll, but it takes a full Turn of work. Passing means they find a mechanism or the actual door, though not necessarily how it works depending on the dungeon. I'll also put clues as to how it operates and let them figure it out. For example, a dungeon I ran recently had a "statue of Death that opens the secret door". I added in that its outstretched hand was worn, and had small chips in the wrist and shoulder. When the party thief found it, they spent about ten (real-time) minutes figuring out that they needed to rotate the palm-up hand to the left and shake hands with the statue to open the door, so I made the whole jaunt take 2 Turns.

If the party fails the roll, they need to spend three times as long searching again, basically blowing the whole hour between WanMo checks and burning a torch or three.

>Actively searching with specifics, or the party has correctly deduced that there is a secret by clever mapping
I give bonuses if the party is barking up the right tree, or just auto-success if they guess the mechanism "close enough" while searching. Fiddling around trying to find loose bricks in the fireplace and the "real" trigger is supposed to be pulling on the candle sconces on either side? You've got that one.

If the party is specifying the >wrong< shit, I'll still give them the location, but not the mechanism, on a successful roll.

>Finally, if I'm running with newbies, younger kids, or people who don't like puzzling out shit: Active searching is part of dungeon exploring. Any player can make a search roll while moving through the dungeon, but the party moves at half-speed. Success means I give them a note with the location of the door and how it works, and give the player a chance to describe how they found it.

>Then could a PC not simply describe doing so and avoid the skill check/time loss?
Not the time loss. That's a critical part of the game - time is another resource they're managing. And depending on how you want to play, pixel-bitching means that if they decribe the wrong thing they're screwed (hence why I'll usually give them "close enough" stuff). I want to encourage creativity, but I >do< mind players trying to evade the mechanical consequences for actions they're clearly taking.

>If they're magical, what does that mean?
Could be anything. Say a magic word and the wall fades out for thirty seconds. Draw a door in chalk and knock along the right section of wall and a magical butler opens it for you. Could just be a hologram covering a real door, as you say (in which case, I'd have the texture be a giveaway). Some illusions are indeed dispelled by a save vs. Magic - at least for the guy who saves - while others are permanent.

You could even go with the Erik the Viking route, where the Pagan Erik and his allies can see the gates to Valhallah, but the Christian priest with them can't see or touch them. That's the kind of thing a Magic-user might do to protect his Sanctum; only people bearing a certain enchantment or alignment could see and use certain doors, though in the interests of fairness they should probably be able to drag party members through on a successful save.

Has there every been any sort of Cleric type stuff for Wonders and Wickedness?

Doesn't even need to be the same system as Wonders and Wickedness. Just any sort of cool Cleric type system?

>the four Wormskin zines
Never heard of this, can you break it down for me?

>tfw grabbed the first printing of both
>got the Carcosa cloth map and everything
It's glorious t b h

Hobgoblins, and in fact I usually do ditch orcs. They just feel too Tolkien to me for some reason (yeah, I know it's bizarre that I don't feel the same way about elves and dwarves; I do about hobbits, though. There's something about those two that's just too rooted in Middle-Earth and nobody ever really got them out of it)

This is a really good answer though, I fucking love OD&D for that type of monster treatment. Secretly I believe it's an Arnesonian influence

AD&D explicitly states DIY.

>Secretly I believe it's an Arnesonian influence
I'm not sure that it's so secret, to be honest, although it might also be a Tolkien thing. Goblins have a Goblin King, cave-dwelling orcs are led by ogres, trolls, dragons and balrogs, and village-dwelling orcs are lead by Lords and Wizards...
One can't help but think back to the industrial nature of Isengard and Mordor.

Really, though, it's weird how orcs get so much detail when most other monsters get maybe a paragraph at best. I guess maybe it's an Arnesonian thing.

Interestingly enough, it's not until AD&D that hobgoblins become samurai. OD&D hobbos are just big goblins, with a hobgoblin king and everything.

That doesn't alter my point.

I've read a couple of blogposts about it. The first being Goblin Punch's style- which is literally just praying to your God and getting it to answer you. Basically it's more or less likely to occur based on how in line it is with the God's teaching and domain. As in a God of plants will always help you heal a sacred grove or entangle nature-hating orcs, but will never start a forest fire so you can run away.

Here's the post.
goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/12/towards-better-cleric.html#more

I misread your comment.