OSR General

I've been thinking of getting my players to switch from playing 5e to trying Lamentations of the Flame Princess for my next campaign. The problem is they don't like to read. I had problems getting them to read through the 5e players handbook and I'm worried having them read another player's handbook will just turn them away from trying the game. Is there a PDF or some images that sum up the most important parts they need to know about running the game? Carry capacity, combat and classes and items? Shit like that?

I haven't run LotFP myself, but you shouldn't have to make them read anything. Give them a short (verbal) introduction to the setting and comment on the more obvious rule changes in LotFP, the rest they can learn in the course of play. Rules are for the DM.

CHA shouldn't be anywhere near a dump stat and you need to check how you/BFRPG handle hirelings and reaction rolls if that's an issue.

INT and WIS are trickier because the obvious benefits one might want to give them tend to interfere with player agency. Consider using INT rolls to determine if the PC knows a given fact, I guess, and WIS to... I dunno, to be honest, maybe someone else has a good idea?

INT and WIS are definitely the trickiest stats, though.

My group have never had any hirelings or henchmen so CHA is worthless to them and the can't even bother with it, we only use CHA abscore for social interactions.

I have thought about adding INT and WIS to one stat and then add Luck as a ned stat that gives 1-3 rerolls / day.

WISDOM is used to control and sense magic. It is analogous to Willpower. In the same way Charisma is used to help control hirelings, Wisdom is used to control magic creatures and ongoing magic effects.

For example, the party Fighter sees the animated skeleton of his grandpa, grandpa can somehow resist undead urges and joins his Grandson. So the fighter gets a friendly skeleton pet who he can tell to do things, or resist being turned by holy symbols by using Wisdom.

Maybe somebody in your party used a flame - spell on a scroll and it gets out of control? Wisdom.

Also if you have a spiritual or animist setting let people add Wisdom to their modifiers when dealing with and praying to random nature spirits.

Also also also- Wisdom should be used for initiative and surprise, not Dexterity. Just my opinion, though I'm sure most won't like it.

>WISDOM is used to control and sense magic.
But that doesn't make any sense, as INT is clearly the wizardly magic stat.

INT is the total sum of your ability to learn, memorize and catalog magic spells. Wisdom is your spiritual awareness and power, and in my opinion good settings have magic that is more spiritual then mere rote memorization.

Why would your players need to read anything? Only the GM has to know the rules.

>CHA is worthless to them
Reaction checks? If you're not using reaction checks, you're not running a proper old school game. Reaction checks should be utilized even in dungeons and not only in peaceful social interactions.

Am I the only one that thinks LotFP has some of the most dogshit ugly art in OSR?

Is it supposed to be some kind of inside joke with every blogger talking about the beautiful artwork inside? People make a point of saying they're not weirded out by the gore or whatever, but what about the covers looking like deviant art cancer shat out on commission for furries and the majority of the interiors done by a 14 year old making flash games on newgrounds in 2006? Is this some kind of hipster kitsch I've not been let in on?

Well i am using reaction checks, everybody dislikes them but the often play evil heroes, doing the shit for money and being bountyhunters. And you dont really need good CHA for dungeon crawling....

The art is not bad at all but I've no idea why the game gets so much attention and praise. It's a pretty generic B/X clone.

>And you dont really need good CHA for dungeon crawling....
Good CHA helps with dungeon crawling. That's the point.

>My group have never had any hirelings or henchmen so CHA is worthless to them and the can't even bother with it, we only use CHA abscore for social interactions.
I don't want to tell you that you're playing wrong or anything but... if you don't have hirelings and won't use the reaction roll rules, of course Charisma's going to be worthless. That's like running a no-combat game and not using the encumbrance rolls, of course Strength will be a trash stat in that case. There's not really a lot that can be *done* about a thing like that (and it's definitely not a flaw of the system); you just took out the justification for its existence.

I'm not so used to dungeon crawling, mostly played open camps. in dragonlance so as a dm i dont really know how to handle them, how are you supposed to handle it ?

It's not that i cant do or dont use retrainers and npc, it's that my players dont want to use them so they nerver hire / recruit any.

Say you encounter a small group of goblins roaming the dungeon. The DM then rolls a reaction check for the goblins to see what their initial attitude towards the adventurers will be. It might even be possible to bargain with them, bribe them, use them in clever ways, scare them away without a fight or whatever. If the goblins don't have a valid reason to attack the party on sight, a reaction check should be rolled. The goblins, being intelligent monsters, should gauge their relative strength compared to the party of adventurers and act sensibly.

Every monster being a walking sack of XP waiting to be killed is a modern concept that makes games worse.

>how are you supposed to handle it ?
You're supposed to roll a reaction check every time the players encounter a monster (or human, or whatever). They might turn out to be ambivalent, or even friendly; the idea being the monsters have lives and want to preserve them, they don't just skulk in the same twenty feet of corridor at all times, waiting to murder anything that wanders past or die trying.

Charisma modifies the probability of the roll giving positive results, so it helps you avoid the dangers of combat in favor of say bribing the monsters, convincing them to let you pass, or even recruiting them.

Do you roll for a party in whole ? Do you roll for the one with the highest CHA or lowest ?

>Do you roll for a party in whole ?
Yep.
>Do you roll for the one with the highest CHA or lowest ?
Typically the party leader/the PC of the player doing the talking. You can simplify it to "highest CHA", sure.

Depends on what's happening in the game. If the "leader" character with the highest charisma makes contact with the monsters then that character's bonus should be applied.

What's your favorite way for Fighters to advance?

From the flank on horseback

Yeah this.
The modules have cool stuff in them and I enjoy reading a lot of them, but the game itself seems like nothing to write home about.

It's not about the system, though. It's all about those pre-written adventures.

It's fairly common not to use hirelings (I'd say it's much more common than not that hirelings get little to no use), but pretty rare to run a no-combat game. That doesn't change the fact that Charisma is getting de-powered by playing the game differently than it was intended, but it is a pretty common occurrence.

I have only one mental stat in my game: intelligence. It's mostly just a combination of Intelligence and Wisdom with Charisma rolls being improvised based on backgrounds and such.

>I have thought about adding INT and WIS to one stat and then add Luck as a ned stat that gives 1-3 rerolls / day.
I give something similar with my combined Intelligence stat. Your intelligence bonus adds to the number of talent points you get (4 + bonus). 1 talent point spent before a d20 roll lets you roll twice and take the better result. 2 talent points let you reroll a failed d20 roll. 1 talent point spent before a to-hit roll lets you inflict +50% of damage (should you hit). 2 talent points lets you inflict +50% damage after confirming you've hit. You can only spend talent once on a given task (you can't roll twice and then reroll, or reroll and inflict 50% extra damage). Exception: if you fail a d20 roll by 1 point, you can spend a point of talent to automatically succeed (even if you've already spent talent on the roll)--this is called "following through". To avoid people hoarding talent "just in case", you can only spend talent on saving throws when following through.

I use single-stat saving throws, modified by your appropriate attribute modifier. Intelligence applies to illusions and to some mind-influencing magic, but saving throws relating to fear or sheer willpower are influenced only by level and class.

A lot of which are as shit as the art.

However, Jim "Edge" Goremurder does occasionally publish a module or other book by someone who's a right genius - they're the things worth getting.

>I have a lot of raging swans press's stuff, including dungeon dressing and a couple gm's miscellany. I'll send them to mageguru later today.
Any luck on this? This'd be a lifesaver, honestly.

Hi, I'm that user. I sent the email to MageGuru last night, and he said the files will be up in a couple days since they need to be cleaned.
I sent All That Glimmers, Caves and Caverns, Dungeon Dressing, Urban Dressing, and Wilderness Dressing

Thanks a ton, user, this is great. I owe you a beer!

I prefer the clones because the hardcopy for the originals aren't as easy to obtain as I'd like, and unless I'm buying it in a used book store I have no way of knowing precisely what condition the books are in.

I also enjoy seeing the slight variations in the rules. It is nice to see the basic game slowly evolve

Ha, no problem. I figured it was my time to finally give to the community. And if we do run into each other by chance, I'll hold you to that!

>Retroclone or original games, which do you prefer?
B/X or OD&D LBB for me, plus the complete works of Kevin Crawford and a whole bunch of other OSR stuff, primarily LL-based. So, LL, I guess.

But I don't actually play LL, I just use its third party products in other games.

This only works in OSR where monsters don't give XP. If XP comes from gold, exploration and/or finishing quests, there is a chance to talk.

>the hardcopy for the originals aren't as easy to obtain as I'd like
if you dig around in groggy old-school communities, there are some private but very nicely done OD&D reprints on Lulu. IIRC less than £3 for a nice single volume core set, plus shipping (of course) but if you wait for a good coupon or free shipping (or just place a big order) you can get like 40% off pretty easily.

>It's fairly common not to use hirelings (I'd say it's much more common than not that hirelings get little to no use), but pretty rare to run a no-combat game. That doesn't change the fact that Charisma is getting de-powered by playing the game differently than it was intended, but it is a pretty common occurrence.
Agreed; that's why I wanted to make sure I didn't seem to be saying that he was playing the game wrong. I just wanted to suggest that it was a fairly inevitable consequence of his playstyle, as you say.

Thinking about it further, I do think I was also unconsciously trying to get at that there's a distinction between CHA and INT/WIS in that regard: CHA is mostly a solved problem, in a sense; there are strong suggestions in the rulebook for how to make it useful, almost crucial even. With INT and WIS on the other hand, it's never really been clear, which of course is because they started out being prime requisites along with STR and having no other function. So in a way it's more like STR found a useful, secondary-trait niche like DEX, CON and CHA and INT/WIS never did, than that those two were dump stats all along.

>there are some private but very nicely done OD&D reprints on Lulu
Link to this pls, would order instantly but don't know where to look

Do we have any solutions on how to not make INT/WS dumpstats for Fighters and Thives ?

My group will probably add a simple skill system and therefor skill points that INT could affect.

Well, you could always do something similar to the talent point thing I was talking about. Also, while I'm not overly fond of bonuses to earned experience, it could be affixed to Int/Wis rather than to Str (which is plenty useful for fighters on its own). If you have fighters gaining extra attacks, maybe your Int/Wis modifier could influence how this works somehow (letting you get extra attacks at an earlier level, or reduce your penalty when making multiple attacks--if there is a penalty for using multiple attacks in your game). Awareness rolls and Knowledge/Lore checks can be pretty important, depending on how you play the game. You could also maybe use Int/Wis as 6th sense / intuition / common sense saving throw sort of thing to see if you should warn somebody when they're about to do something dangerous or stupid. If you're using weapon proficiencies or specialization/mastery it could give you more of those, or affect the penalty/bonus. Maybe a high enough stat lets you steal a limited power from another class. You get a thief skill at a lower level (one skill at 80% of what the thief's would be for each +1 modifier, +2 could either give you two skills like that or one at full), or you gain minor spell casting ability (using the magic-user table at 1/4 your level, or the cleric table at 1/3 your level + Int/Wis modifier). Your Wis could represent the strength of your spirit and therefore how tenaciously your soul clings to life, giving you a save vs. death modified by your Wis when you reach the point at which the game says you're dead.

>Do we have any solutions on how to not make INT/WS dumpstats for Fighters and Thives ?
>My group will probably add a simple skill system and therefor skill points that INT could affect.

>wants fighters and thieves to care about INT
>buffs magic-users

you could start by scrapping the thief class and rolling it into fighter, and then note that while wizards have a high int, they don't get bonus skills because all their smartness is devoted to obscure minutiae of magical systems and much as they don't have time to learn how to be a badass with a sword, they don't have time to master heraldry or calculus or wilderness survival except insofar as it directly affects their magic.

>using the magic-user table at 1/4 your level, or the cleric table at 1/3 your level + Int/Wis modifier
That is:

Your casting level as a cleric = (your level + your Int/Wis modifier) / 3

...or...

Your casting level as a magic-user = (your level + your Int/Wis modifier) / 4

An alternate scheme would be to get magic-user spells as a magic-user 1/5 your level for a +1 modifier, 1/4 your level for a +2 modifier, and 1/3 your level for a +1 modifier. For cleric spells, it would be 1/4, 1/3 and 1/2.

oh my god the art on page 5 of broodmother skyfortress is amazing.

that homage to exalted's classic savant & sorcerer cover has changed my life, and possibly altered my eyesight. I need new glasses now.

ilu jrients

>that homage to exalted's classic savant & sorcerer cover has changed my life, and possibly altered my eyesight. I need new glasses now.
I remember that cover. I want to know, but at the same time I don't.

It's in the mega trove, one of the latest items in the inbox, but here you go, friend!

It's really my own fault for clicking, isn't it.

>Do we have any solutions on how to not make INT/WS dumpstats for Fighters and Thives ?
It's tricky: ideally, INT and WIS would be like the other stats: useful throughout the adventure, rather than just in exigencies (such as the death saves suggests, not a bad idea in itself but of too rare application to really fill the niche).

One of my suggestions would be that DEX is kind of overloaded and could probably bear to lose its Initiative-modifying effect to INT. Stupid brutes being slow is a pretty classic fighter/monster cliché, after all. (I wouldn't want to put it on WIS since being rash and foolish shouldn't penalize your initiative.)

WIS could potentially be added to the roll to avoid surprise, but just as with the death saves I wouldn't consider this sufficient personally.

Finally, as much as I dislike the distorting effects of letting attributes modify saves (especially negative mods, admittedly), the LotFP? thing where WIS affects all saves is a great example of it being fairly consistently useful, so if you don't mind it as much as I do you could use that rule.

Good GOD.

>Good GOD.
As always, the best LotFP books are the ones written by other people. jeff is the best other people.

I've always loved Jeff, but not that much or in that way.

It's a really good book and well worth a read, even if bits make your face turn into this guy's.

The second half is basically a collection of his best tables and notes and random shit, and there's great material certain to improve any game, also an illustration where he's dr strange

However, it's not a complete campaign! It requires that you have an existing campaign going on that you're willing to have trashed.

Fortunately Jeff has recognised that you may not have a setting handy to run the module in, and provides some useful tips. Follow this advice, then get back to answering the important questions the module presents:

>What I am asking you to do is to look over your campaign map, pick out some interesting places and ask yourself the following question:
>What would happen if a bunch of giants showed up here and wrecked up the place?

(this is the really important one by the way)

>Can the location withstand attack by giantish bludgeons and hurled boulders? Will it be completely smashed or mostly damaged or relatively unscathed?

>If the Giants attack by surprise at night, as is their wont, is there any possibility of survivors or would visitors find nothing but a collection of bloody smears?

>Will a Giant attack set off a panic, resulting in more destruction and anarchy than the Giants themselves can create?

It also presents options for the nature of the giants and of the older, vanished people who built the skyfortress (spoiler: if you don't pick "jack kirby space gods" you're boring)

>One of my suggestions would be that DEX is kind of overloaded and could probably bear to lose its Initiative-modifying effect to INT.
I'm not sure I like the idea of book-smart geeks (and, you know, wizards) being the first ones out of the gate. Though I don't have any issue taking initiative away from Dexterity, I don't know where you'd put it, unless you make it class-based or something (purely level-based). As far as I'm concerned, you could just have it be a straight roll, or to do team initiative. If you wanted to do something special for fighters though: Int adds to *fighter* initiative, I'd be okay with that.

I am totally lost on what you to are talking about.

The Specialist + Firearms + Encumbrance is really the only reason to run LotFP. The modules are generally overrated IMO.

Help me out here please. I'm looking through the LotFP folders, but can't seem to find it

It's in __Inbox at the top. That's where new stuff usually goes.

Is there any sort of published Alchemist/Apothecary class out there? I'm this close to just stealing the BFRPG Bard and refluffing the songs as various potions and incenses.

I will eventually. But it won't feel new or exciting when I literally JUST read it.

Would it be broken to give all classes the option to cast lvl 1 spells depending on INT / CHA

For example 1 spell/day:13-15 2 spells/day:16-17 3 spells/day:18

And then make the fighters that reaches up towards 15 INT/CHA a EldrichKnight / Paladin ? If a character would have 15+ in both he gets to choose either to have Arcane or Divine spells.

Nothing beats 3LBB's simplicity when it comes to handling ability scores. Each ability is useful but in a very subtle way. I think it's best to keep ability scores bonuses minor at best.

I would argue against using individual initiative because that greatly slows down combat in a game where combat in its abstractness is not very interesting to begin with.

>3LBB
what's this?

You forgot the owo, but LBB is Little Brown Books, the original published version of OD&D. (Unless you're in a Traveller thread, where it's Little Black Books that were the first publication)

The first thing that comes to mind is "A NEW D & D CHARACTER CLASS: THE ALCHEMIST", from The Dragon #2, p.28. It also includes an alternative system for handling poisons, which may or may not be useful.

And it's from the same issue as "Monkish Combat in the Arena of Promotion", for what it's worth. It's a half-decent issue.

Have goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/manrider-alchemist-class.html while I try to find that other blog I remember with a bunch of short, neat little classes.

Basically this - the core set of three books, although since Classic Traveller supplements were mostly published as little black books sometimes people confusingly refer to the whole edition as LBBs, with the core as CT79 or CT81 or just 3LBB.

But a lot of CT fans aren't quite hardcore enough to leave out Book 5 with its rules for (much) bigger spaceships, so there aren't as many people sticking to the earliest stuff.

What's the OSR stance on a TPK followed by a new party (same players) returning to the dungeon?

Of course the new group could find the old one's gear and maps, but won't the players know where all the tricks and traps are?

Would it be a dick move to just say, "Okay, you explore this dungeon, you head to area #39 where you find the bodies of adventurers...", maybe making a few wandering monster checks en route?

Having a really hard time finding it, so hey, have another thing I found while googling and searching old bookmarks.

goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/void-monks.html

(I know it's the same site - I ended up back there via circular linking and I'm trying to find that fucking alchemist. I think maybe I have a hardcopy somewhere, which may help)

I don't think this is it, but it's neat.

9and30kingdoms.blogspot.co.nz/2011/05/alchemist.html
9and30kingdoms.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/alchemist-and-witch.html
9and30kingdoms.blogspot.co.nz/2013/07/the-apothecary.html

I'd change some things up with traps and monster placements assuming that enough time has passed between the two party's trek inside.

>but won't the players know where all the tricks and traps are?
That's the idea, yes.

Remember, the original dungeons were huge megadungeons that you'd adventure in EVERY TIME, and were so huge that you couldn't hope to "clear" them. (And if you got close, they'd be repopulated or just have the map swapped around a bit or whatnot. The other groups also need something to adventure in, y'know.)

And just because they know their way doesn't mean that they know all the tricks and traps - not only can they be waylaid by alternate paths, monster chases, or previously-unseen trapdoors (remember, random chance of activation), but the dungeon doesn't stay in a stasis while the players are away. Monsters move around, repopulate, eat and/or loot corpses, reset traps, don't reset some other traps... Their corpses may very well not be in area #39 anymore, having been eaten by oozes and looted by goblins.

Also, well, if they actually meet some wandering monsters on the way then something might happen to make them unable to proceed. Or their maps are bad enough that they get lost.

Also, if they got TPKed in an area it's entirely possible that they'd simply choose to ignore that area for the moment and go somewhere else slightly less dangerous instead.

The locals will have rearranged things, I'm sure, or may leave the corpses as bait. The inhabitants tend to change dungeons around.

On the other hand, sure, why not let them use Player Skill and justify it as following the signs (deliberate and accidental) left by the previous party? Player Skill's meant to be a thing.

The advice you already got is solid, but I'd even go so far as to say: establish that a month or a season has passed since the last group died; work out who would have happened upon their corpses, and move their shit — perhaps to more than one location.

(This of course is assuming a full and literal TPK; if a henchman or two survived, instead use that figure as a nucleus for the new group, perhaps on the form of him hiring some goons to go find his masters' corpses and give them a decent burial instead of letting them become monster stew, out of loyalty)

I don't know about broken, but it certainly sets up a different dynamic. It could make low-level parties really fucking powerful and intrude upon the magic-user's niche. At the very least, I'd say that you want to phase in the spells. It might still be inadequate, but you could limit the number of spells by level so that a person with +3 wouldn't get all 3 of his spells until 3rd level (having 1 spell at 1st, 2 at 2nd and 3 at 3rd). Or you could do something like the pic, where spells are phased in more slowly according to your level and attribute bonus.

I really want to try this class now, goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2015/08/new-class-really-good-dog.html

>Best Friend
>Pick a best friend. You both get +1 Defense and +1 Save when fighting beside each other. This designation is permanent (until story/DM say otherwise). If your Best Friend dies, you can pick a new one after playing 1 full session as a sad, sad dog.

>Best Friends Never Give Up!
>If your Best Friend is ever at 0 HP, you can lick their face to restore 1d6+1 HP. If your Best Friend is ever paralyzed, mind-controlled, raging, or otherwise out of control, you can lick/bite them (whichever is more appropriate) to give them a new save against the effect. Only works on things that allow saves in the first place.

>Dog Quest
>At a certain point, you will attract the attention of the Dog Barons. They will give you a quest to prove your doggishness. Example quests include killing a Cat Prince (rakshasa) who is hiding in town somewhere, digging into a forgotten barrow and returning with the femur from the wight king who was buried there, or rescuing some asshole prince who fell down a well in orcish territory. (This will probably involve the other PCs chasing after you shouting "Where are you going, boy? Come back!")

>Sniff the Air
>10 in-game minutes before the DM rolls for wandering monsters, he also rolls for wandering scents. The DM rolls on the wandering monster table and describes what one of the monsters smells like. If you've encountered that type of monster before, you can identify it. (Communicating the information, however, might be tricky.)

who's a good doggy you are yes you are you're a good doggy

Yes, I'd call it broken, in that it means that a Magic-User or Elf is shit on low levels compared to an Int 16 fighter. You'd legit have to play to level 3 to have any justification for playing those classes if you were one stat bracket lower.

Yours makes more sense, but it's still a little bit fucked, a potential screwjob.

That class is one of Arnold Punch's high water marks, and that's saying something.

Yeah, that's a guy who gave us this:

>Bards are sorta lame. Yet Noise Marines are awesome. This is perhaps unfair, but it is true.

>I propose that bards are not a class on their own, but merely Thieves that have multiclassed with Some Sort of Undiscovered Wizard, which I will now attempt to elucidate, by inferring from the parts of the bard that are awesome.

goblinpunch.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/noise-wizards.html

Then there's his stuff on dinosaurs, who are in the past. Just... barely... in the past. Right behind you, you might say.

Move the dexterity AC bonus to wisdom.
Have intelligence give a bonus to a lot of skills.
Nothing wrong with charisma. Hirelings and reaction rolls are strong assets.

here, thanks guys.

Good idea, especially since some dungeons have restock tables. Where was that one nothing/trick/trap/monster table? Was it AD&D Appendix A?

Yeah those are some good points. I think the advantage of a megadungeon is that I can physically take the map from the player since their character no longer has it. Of course, they could always get the map back, but it's going to take some work, especially if monsters have made off with the previous party's stuff.

>On the other hand, sure, why not let them use Player Skill and justify it as following the signs (deliberate and accidental) left by the previous party? Player Skill's meant to be a thing.

That's a damn good suggestion, I hadn't thought of that. My worry was that players would do pretty much the opposite and decide, "Uh, we shouldn't go into the room to the north, there might be a brown pudding in there, or something..."

But of course adventurers would leave footsteps, opened doors, pulled levers, etc. That's a really sweet middle ground, thank you.

Definitely, if/when this happens I plan to cut ahead some significant amount of time. This is why I like the inheritance rules in B/X. If so-and-so hasn't returned to town within a few weeks, they're presumed dead, a portion of their stored loot goes to a friend/relative, and they now have an instant hook for exploring the same dungeon.

I suppose my other question is: what if this happens during a one-shot? It's possible everyone will die with the puzzle that killed them fresh in their minds. So another adventuring party comes along, perhaps some time later. Do you think it would be all right to just skip ahead and assume they discovered/solved the same traps/puzzles?

Punch is the only person in the OSR that can actually pull off the whole "irreverent weirdness" shtick without feeling like he's trying to hard or begging us to laugh at his gaming group's lame in-jokes. His more serious stuff, like Orc religion, is also gold.

>That's a damn good suggestion, I hadn't thought of that. My worry was that players would do pretty much the opposite and decide, "Uh, we shouldn't go into the room to the north, there might be a brown pudding in there, or something..."
That's player skill too, although a different sort, and about as easy to justify - "the tracks we're following didn't go that way, so whatever's in there is undisturbed. We can come back later, but let's follow the path we have *some* information about first."

>what if this happens during a one-shot?
To me, that just makes it even less of an issue. Yes, it's a bit unrealistic, but you can say they're a rival adventuring party that was just a day slower getting to the dungeon, and they'll have signs pointing to how not to solve the puzzle. Or maybe they're just better at traps. Who knows! Maybe the ghosts of the previous party are hanging around, or at least vague traces of their spirits.

>Move the dexterity AC bonus to wisdom.
I don't have an issue with the idea of this just like I don't have a problem with the idea of Intelligence being the basis of initiative, but the class implications are again troubling. Clerics become evasive motherfuckers while lightly-armored thieves are now more vulnerable.

>Abiosis: Just as slaad emerged from inanimate matter, so can they be returned to inanimate matter. This is accomplished by surrounding the slaad and shouting "You do not exist!" at it until it ceases to exist. Alternatively, you can dictate what object the slaad will become, such as "You are a chocolate chip cookie!" until it becomes a cookie. This takes a certain number of humans to attempt. (It only ever takes one dragon, because dragons are more real than the rest of the world, and move through it like a shark through the ocean.)

>dragons are more real than the rest of the world, and move through it like a shark through the ocean

Yes, good, I like this.

I like T&T more for its history than its gameplay, unfortunately. Some of the solos are fun, but the actual gameplay doesn't do it for me, and you really need a gm willing to play around with saving throws and let you use them to do stuff to avoid the combat system.

I do enjoy its irreverence, and hell, it was basically a game made up by someone who got his young hands on early D&D and decided "fuck that, these rules are boring, let's just play and have fun."

>I think the advantage of a megadungeon is that I can physically take the map from the player since their character no longer has it.
I'd recommend against that, personally - it's a bit punishing in an out-of-game way, and robs the player of interesting memorablia.

It also turns an out-of-game concept into something firmly rooted within the game, which can get a bit weird if none of the actual CHARACTERS are of the map-making type.

Also, well, it kind of takes away some of that "player skill" progression? Players aren't going to unlearn the properties of special monsters or tricks, and can just (accidentally or purposefully) memorize bits of the map either way. (Rob Kuntz famously never mapped at all!)

>It also turns an out-of-game concept into something firmly rooted within the game
That's the whole point of player mapping.

Then don't change it.

Is it true that chainmail never existed?

I mean the armor type. I keep seeing people say it wasn't a thing.