/osr/ - Old School Renaissance General

I see your Bard's Tale and raise you an Alternate Reality

>Let me tell you of Thoreandan
>the man who bit off the dragon's hand
>no blows from his sword ever did land
>so he bit off the dragon's hand!

>paws and claws could be the cause of anyone here's demise!

>Alternate Reality: The City

Never played that one, but I did play Ultima II! 2 and THHGTTG.

I always liked how Ultima had the Shrines of Virtue and corresponding Dungeons of Sin, like Dungeon Covetous and Dungeon Destard.

Those were some pretty good dungeons.

Nah. Here's my proposal for a kickass Fighter that's not another wizard (as is often the complainant on Veeky Forums).

Armor doesn't have weight.
Damage on a miss. 2x damage on a hit. (Both from the Nightmare's Underneath)

Save or suck effects. +Strength score on hit special attack. Multiple Attacks. Enemies check morale when Fighter fights so damn good. (RC or Dark Dungeons)

Parry (Delving Deeper)

This all makes Fighters a fucking heavily armored weapon master. Hits like a truck, attacks like a blender of steel. Consistent as fuck too. Still, they're the best at fighting but not that versatile. That's the Wizard's role and time to shine.

It all highlights a problem though. It's trivially easy to mix and match retroclones and create heroically badass Wizards and Fighters. How about Thieves and Clerics?

As long as you don't make dwarves useless in the process. So if you buff the fighter, bring the dwarf along!

Has anyone tried stealing ideas from 13th Age for their more heroic OSR games? There are a lot of interesting things to steal there. The Escalation Die reduces whiffing, for instance. But I'm most interested in the monsters there. 13th Age monsters trigger attacks based on their d20 roll. The trigger condition can be something like a natural odd hit, a 16+, a natural even miss etc. Seems like a good way to spice up monsters without having to create a whole tactics table for them.

I'd just take it for granted that anything that applies to the Fighter applies to all the demihumans.

Just let Fighters save vs any spell, in various ways, just like novel warriors usually do.

>Fireball? He dodges it.
>Mind Control? His iron will resists it while he thinks of his quest.
>Magic Missile? His sturdy shield absorbs it.
>Web? His sword cuts through it like butter.
>Stinking Cloud? He holds his breath.
>Monster Summoning? A thrown dagger kills the wizard before he invokes the last syllable. :)

>saving vs. magic missile

>That sacred cow steak sure is delicious!

most spells already ask for a "save vs spells" tho. I guess you can buff his save vs spell or something.
Besides, you want to buff the fighters ability to deal with monsters and other dungeon-crawling related problems, not buff his ability to kill his fellow party members.

I don't know why OSR is obsessed with trying to fix what ain't broke. The fighter is already one of the best class of b/x for 90% of games. When's the last time you played a game where the wizard guy survived until level 5 and got fireball? Have you ever leveled up from level 1 to level 10?

Classes from b/x that need a buff:
>Thief (a lot of retroclones already solve this problem)
>Halfling (everybody seems to hate halflings. They're shitty fighters with low max level, and can't do anything that the thieves can do besides a half-assed version of stealth)

Classes that are good enough as it is
>fighter
>dwarf
>cleric
>wizard

Slightly Overpowered classes
>elf (the level limit of 10 rarely comes to play, but the huge amount of XP needed to level up does balance things up)

If I were to make my own OSR game I'd flatten the power curve of the wizard (fuck suffering at level 1-4 in the hopes of getting OP at level 7), give the figher and the dwarf "Mighty deed of arms" from DCC (because it's fucking awesome), buff the thief (change his % to something sensible) and buff halfling somehow (make him good at fighting at least), and just give the cleric a level 1 spell at level 1 because I think it's silly that he needs to be level 2 to cast healing spells.

>I don't know why OSR is obsessed with trying to fix what ain't broke.
>"Mighty deed of arms" from DCC (because it's fucking awesome)

You answered your own question. Not everyone is playing the same game, and some people just want different power levels for the perceived weakness of Fighters.

Additionally, just because Fighters are good doesn't mean they are fun. Some people want to give them more interesting combat moves or special mechanics just to spice them up.

giving them abilities is one thing, just straight up giving them "better numbers" is what bothers me. They don't need better numbers. You don't need to make them the only ones that can learn to fighter better like in LotFP. The b/x numbers are already good enough.

>Armor doesn't have weight.

Breaks the balance of crawling. The protection vs move rate is a major consideration you have to weigh when doing a dungeon run.

>buff the thief (change his % to something sensible)
% chance is awful because it's supposed to be insurance.

What is this new-school hipster shit?

>7 years younger than whitebox
Try 1 year, faggot.

>Halfling
Dude, B/X Halflings are awesome. Being limited to level 8 doesn't matter that much when you're the B/X equivalent of a fuckin' Ranger.

-2AC vs. large creatures, +1 ranged attacks, +1 initiative, 90%/33% hide chance? That's all pretty damn good.

And then they also don't get beaten save-wise by the Fighter until level 13, and their ranged to-hit ends up at just one point behind a 14th-level Cleric.

Who cares if you can't use longbows or zweihanders, just rock that plate & shield and becomes an invulnerable juggernaut.

Every level, Fighters get another 'thing' they can add to their special attack. They can also make a new special attack instead. They can use each special attack once per battle, day, or adventure depending on which your GM likes most.

>Special Attacks
Roll d20 vs enemy AC. Add +1 for each Fighter level above enemy HD. On a miss deal 1d4 damage anyway, on a hit deal 1d6+fighter level, counts as a magic attack.

This is only the base power though. Every time you level, add one of these powers. You can pick different powers or the same ones multiple times
>Hits +1d4 more enemies (monster HD of highest monster as leader determines monster group Hd)
>Knocks enemies prone, silenced, blinded, or unable to move for 1 round per time taken
>deals +1d6 more to enemies weak to a specific element
>Fighter heals 1 point if attack huts per tike this is taken
>Fighter gets +2 AC the round he uses this attack each time this is taken

The Fighter gets +1 to hit if the player screams the name of his special attack at the table

>Auto-mapping.
Revisionist trash.

>Slightly Overpowered classes
>elf
"Slightly"? They're only a bit more than half a level behind magic-users for most of their run. They have the same spell progression. They have d6 rather than d4 hit points. They have better saves. They can wear plate armor and use any weapon. They have infravision, can detect secret door, and have the minor bonus of being immune to ghoul paralysis.

I support playing around with XP progressions.

>I don't know why OSR is obsessed with trying to fix what ain't broke
This really. So many people in these generals are trying to come up with all kinds of new rules for the games but I bet most of them haven't even first tried out the games as designed.

Homebrewing is fine but much of the stuff suggested here deviate from old school gaming in a pretty radical way.

>I don't know why OSR is obsessed with trying to fix what ain't broke.
It's PTSD from 3E, their adrenaline response is fried from overstimulus and now their nervous system is convinced that fighters are nerfed no matter what they think rationally. It's the same with people who want to "make the saves logical" as if it somehow inherently made more sense to tie saves to ability scores and many other things.

I mean, you yourself seem to believe the M-U is weak on low levels and then becomes OP in mid-high. You probably need to check your own blood enzyme levels.

Automapping was a thing in early D&D computer games, though not all of them admittedly.

youtube.com/watch?v=KgoonTyjKoc

new to BFRPG

does it say how many spells you get per day?

>make the saves logical
but "make x logical it's only common sense" is what CAUSED so many of 3e's problems!

Yes, in the class descriptions. At level 1 a wizard gets 1 first level spell per day and a cleric gets 0, at level 2 a wizard gets 2 first level spells and a cleric gets 1 first level spell, etc etc. Pages 7 & 8 show the listing.

Oh ok I see it, thanks user.

How are your adventures going so far /osr/?

Yes, it certainly was. There's quite a lot of "repeating the mistakes that make you come here in the first place" in /osrg/ for some reason.

It's a constant slippery slope, from LBB to supplements to AD&D to AD&D2 to 3e to Natural Spell. Every step of the way, it just makes sense to make a few changes, a few tweaks, surely it's common sense how things should work, it's realistic, it's verisimilitudinous, it's reasonable.

And then you pack it all in and go back to the OSR, and add a few things here, tweak a bit there, and before you know it you're rating Two-Weapon Fighting as an 11/10 feat again.

So you go back again, this time to Moldvay, but you just want tweak this one thing to make it more realistic...

There's nothing wrong with tweaking, house-ruling, and adding stuff. Sure, add a teleporting eladrin swordmage class to your basic and duct-tape on an advantage system and have a spellcasting system that makes a mage's character sheet look like an SFB SSD. Cool. Just... if you ever feel that you're changing things just to make them more realistic, or because it's how it should be, or it just makes sense, then take a step back and consider it, and think about how the original rules worked. Sometimes you need to add some bullshit rules to play as baby balrogs who grow up and have a whole balrog social class system with relationship modifiers and balrog valets like balrog jeeves, but make sure you're doing it because it's good and cool and fun, and not because "but of course it should work that way."

Hell, see what you can do with refluffing existing material, first.

We're 4 adventures in, but I can't seem to fit in the time for our group to do another one. It sucks, because I had to call the last session mid-way through on a cliffhanger ending- and at this rate we won't be doing another game until NFL playoffs are finally over :(

They're sadly non-existent. I tried to get my group to try BFRPG once but they didn't quite jive with the playstyle.

I had to quit running my campaign due to failing my save vs real life. Just as my players were finally getting the hang of it, too.

Tried to run a repainted version of A Stranger Storm with Ruinations of the Dust Princess rules.

Couldn't get my players together. It's like I'm cursed or something.

Anyone else think that /pol/ would make for cool, pulpy old-school antagonist?

The idea of cultists of a frog god using numerology and ouijia to influence current events is one that I think is flavorful and appealing

>if you ever feel that you're changing things just to make them more realistic, or because it's how it should be, or it just makes sense, then take a step back and consider it, and think about how the original rules worked
In other words, apply Chesterton's Fence, a principle that our entire modern world needs a stronger dose of
>In the matter of reforming things, as distinct from deforming them, there is one plain and simple principle; a principle which will probably be called a paradox. There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

it worked for indiana jones

In the summer, there was a large thread on 8tg discussing just that concept. There might be some screen caps floating around.

Does anyone have any articles on Japanese reception of D&D? Hearing about the way 3LBB were misread compared to Gygax & Arneson's play, I wonder what character D&D took on there. If it did at all, maybe it was just the cRPG's coming in from the west.

I like this post a lot.

Check out this page:
>mystara.thorf.co.uk/jrc.php

Also, of course, it's probably worth pondering upon Record of Lodoss War and various other "replays" out there. (i.e. actual play sessions rewritten into a light novel of sorts and later adapted to other stuff.)

I remember seeing another good article on the history of D&D in Japan, but don't remember enough to google it up. IIRC it only really exploded with 3E and then now with 5E it's a bit rougher since they didn't allow translations or something? Fuck, I don't keep up with this shit.

>Chesterton's Fence

Thank you, that is brilliant. I'm afraid I may annoy other people with bringing that up all the time now.

Hear, hear.

There's far too many people who remove something just because they don't like the look of it and then don't consider the ramifications of doing so. The prime examples here being, what, GP=XP, morale, and hirelings? Everything that makes Charisma a dump stat, really.

Removing those things work just fine, it's just that you need to know why they're there in the first place so you can get an idea for what other stuff needs to be changed to compensate. If you remove GP=XP, quadruple monster XP or introduce other XP sources that equal it. If you remove morale, don't use large groups of trash mobs. If you remove hirelings, take into consideration the lowered group encumbrance, number of torchbearing hands, and lost fighting capability.

While D&D has a ton of subsystems, they're often more interconnected than they may first seem and need to be handled with care.

This might sound stupid, but I wonder if anyone has made a mindmap or something of all the OD&D subsystems. I guess I know most of them pretty well but it might be helpful to have just one image to check whenever I think about changing something, and what that would mean to the system as a whole.

I don't know if I've seen that, sadly, but it probably wouldn't take too much effort to make one - I've been interested in it myself, but I know fuck-all about making flowcharts so I never really got started.

Here's a neat complete RAW 1E combat flowchart, though:
>mediafire.com/file/0i6e652sjvk0mcn/ADnD BtB Combat Flowchart.pdf
It's fucking insane and kind of amazing?

I'm thinking of trying to make a draft of one, then come back here and ask everyone what I got wrong or forgot.

Off the top of my head, remember to point out how the inheritance rule interacts with henchmen and castles.

Are there any OSR modules that doesn't feature any supernatural stuff? And if not, are there any that feature magic in a mostly subverted and subtle way? I think my group needs a bit of a break from meeting weird monsters.

>OSR modules that doesn't feature any supernatural stuff
You do realize what you're asking for, right?

The best you'll get is probably something that exchanges magic for sci-fi tech, I suspect, although I think I've seen a few one-page-adventures that were mostly mundane.

>magic attack
>deals +1d6 more to enemies weak to a specific element
>Fighter heals
so they're just weeb magic knights from your average underage panty quest XVIII now?
no thanks

Orc And Pie.

I agree, but I feel like making the first few levels take even longer is no good. Perhaps the extra XP should trigger from level 4 onwards?

>I mean, you yourself seem to believe the M-U is weak on low levels and then becomes OP in mid-high.
I have never survived to get to levels mid-high, so I'm just going from hear-say.

I KNOW they're weak at low levels tho. I experienced it personally. 1 spell and nothing else is too painful. That one time you get to solve an encounter by yourself is great, but the rest of the time you're just a level 0 human with delusions of grandeur.

>You do realize what you're asking for, right?
I do, but I'm doing it because the players are traveling halfway across the map and I find it to be a bit silly that every place they find on their way has some amazing supernatural thing going on with it.
So yeah, I'm favoring narrative over game right now, but I also want to know how well D&D tackles a perfectly mundane adventure.
Also, I guess any adventure that has supernatural stuff that can be exchanged to more mundane things is useful too. Like, a cave full of goblins can be exchanged by a cave full of raiders. Dungeon structures and weird (but mechanical) traps are fine too. Just as long as there isn't some magical thing that the adventure depends on to be interesting.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

>Thanks, I'll check it out.
...I checked it out. Will use it with some modification.

Dwarves take a bit longer (2300 instead of 2200 to get to 2nd, 5000 instead of 4400 to get to 3rd), but the cost of Elves is actually reduced at low levels (2600 instead of 4000 to get to 2nd, 6000 rather than 8000 to ge to 3rd). Granted, elves are also depowered a bit (lagging behind in spell progression), but elves still being 1st until fighters reached 3rd was one of the things I wanted to remedy. Essentially, elves start off really powerful at 1st level, lacking only a fighter's d8 hit dice, but otherwise having all their advantages plus a spell, slightly better saves, infravision and so forth. But when an elf is only 1/2 way to 2nd level, fighters reach 2nd, and then have 2d8 hit points compared to an elf's d6. I'd rather smooth that out a bit and not have an elf overshadow a fighter so much at 1st, but not lag so far behind that they get overshadowed after the fighter reaches 2nd.

I got two groups.
group 1, running a campaign loosely based on BG1 (some dude wants to become the new god of murder) 8 adventures in, suffered a TPK 2 adventures ago at the climax of the campaign. So now there's a new god of murder who murdered the god of justice, baldurs gate has been destroyed, and neverwinter is under siege.

The new characters are a group of wannabe super-heroes themed around birds (called themselves the Carrion Brids) who are gathering allies to save the sword coast.

The other group is running a modified X1 - isle of dread. Rather than going to the place to loot it, the players are mercenaries hired to help the kingdom of karameikos colonize it. We're two adventures in. Just finished cleaning up a secure safe bay for the pioneers, now exploring an ancient temple in the jungle (that I added to the adventure)

Also the players got 3 owlbear eggs and are going to try to tame them.

What exactly do you mean by "magical thing"?
Would a murderous masked cult that tries to summon a dead god/demon/faerie with lengthy rituals count as "magical thing"? I mean, it's just some people with weird beliefs...

>I do, but I'm doing it because the players are traveling halfway across the map and I find it to be a bit silly that every place they find on their way has some amazing supernatural thing going on with it.
I think it's less that there's crazy magical shit every two feet, and more that you skip over all the parts where there's no adventure.
If the players want to fight some regular brigands that's fine, but if they're like the players I know they'll probably be asking "Why doesn't the town guard just handle this?"

Oh yeah, that makes sense. I'm gonna steal it.

>The other group is running a modified X1 - isle of dread. Rather than going to the place to loot it, the players are mercenaries hired to help the kingdom of karameikos colonize it. We're two adventures in. Just finished cleaning up a secure safe bay for the pioneers, now exploring an ancient temple in the jungle (that I added to the adventure)
This sounds really cool. Do players get any say in how the colony is run?

>Like, a cave full of goblins can be exchanged by a cave full of raiders.
What's supernatural about goblins? They're fictional, but they're not fantastic.

Yes. I stole a bit from One ring: adventures on the edge of the wilds, where at the end of the adventure, I relate "the tale of the years" where a year pass and I say everything that will happen during the year. And each player can interrupt one event, and explain how his character being in the event would alter it.

Like say, the lizardmen attack the village. The figher says "I was there and I helped the militia defend the place", and so on. If it makes sense, they help make the colony more prosperous.

That's fine as long as they aren't practicing real magic. They might think they are, but they're doing it wrong. The problem with that though is that it probably removes a lot of the danger from the situation, but I guess the players don't have to find out.

My players haven't really thought that far, they generally just do what they're told.
But you're right that I can make them aware of the non-adventure parts. Any advice on how to do that without boring the players?

My campaign is set in "the real world, but there are hidden mythical beings". I blame James Raggi and my friend who wanted history rather than fantasy. Basically every instance of supernatural and mythical stuff just makes it more and more odd that it just happens to be the PCs who run into these things and not anyone else.

>But you're right that I can make them aware of the non-adventure parts. Any advice on how to do that without boring the players?
If they have a set destination they are traveling to then I would just tell them a few interesting things they would have encountered in between adventures. Try to keep it short, just a few sentences unless the players want to interrupt. It doesn't have to be much, just what they would've seen or heard along the way.

What would be a nice class feature for the Ranger class in BFRPG that isn't Favored Enemy ?

Favored Terrain? With the ability to track things, gather resources, etc. while in their Favored Terrain.

Just heads up, there's a Traveller general up now. (I'd be interested in OSR folks' take on the Rule 68A thing I just posted, which is a set of guidelines for making on-the-fly rulings within the Classic Traveller system.)

>He doesn't want animu fighters with awesome cool special attacks
>He doesn't want his players chucking a handful of dice and screaming "ONE MILLION SLASHES OF THE DIVINE TEMPEST!"

I pity you. I really do.

yeah but to be fair a good player can do that by rolling a regular fighting man, dwarf, elf, or even hobbit. or cleric except for the slashing thing. hell even a wizard, they can shank people and you can get pretty big knives, just save the spells for boring stuff and go crazy on stabbing people. no-one expects the wizard to stab people, hang out at the back and throw stones and complain loudly about having cast your one spell for the day until the goblins focus on the rest of the party, then KNIVES FOR DAYS

just remember to wear a red robe

Is Chainmail and Wilderness survival the only things I need to read and learn before OD&D to understand it, or are there other games that I should take a look at that has important things that aren't clearly laid out in the OD&D rules?

Netheril map #2. The Realms from on high, 1491 NY.

You know, in Runequest 6, this was this type of magic called Mysticism, which was basically all kinds of martial arts well mysticism, mind-over-body, mastery of yourself kind of stuff. Basically, you could focus yourself in different ways and activate effects that either boosted your capabilities in some way, or gave you supernatural capabilities like being able to stick to climb on any surface, hold your breath nearly indefinitely, see in the dark, sense things and suchlike fairly low key, nonflashy powers that only affect the user.

I really liked the idea, and it jived well with the kind of aesthetic I like in my fantasy. I always liked the older, original trilogy -style of depiction of the jedi, for example, where they're more like dudes who have useful abilities if you apply them correctly, and less like all-powerful superheroes. I want more of that in my stuff.

Sadly, RQ6 as a system just didn't work for me. But I've been thinking that something like that would work pretty well for OSR. A class with tools that can be very powerful if used correctly, but that can't just be used to bruteforce every situation feels pretty much straight at home here. Maybe I need to homebrew something like that in, unless someone has already done it.

Netheril map #2. The Realms from on high, 1491 NY. Fixed a dark area.

Is there a version without the notes?

Literally psionics.

Heh, I guess, at least if you cut off the more telekinetic-y stuff and focus on the personal side of things.

Are there any good psionic rules in any OSR system or just OD&D rules? I haven't seen too much of that stuff in anywhere.

Is there a wuxia OSR system?

Flying Swordsmen is as close as it gets, I think. Though since it's a retroclone of Dragonfist it's not strictly OSR.

lordgwydion.blogspot.cl/p/flying-swordsmen-rpg.html

You don't need anything else but the three booklets. Chainmail is useful to read through, I give you that, but it's not needed at all.

neat

just dl'd it.
>it's not strictly OSR.
it does say "OSR compatible" on the cover.

I was thinking about the source. Dragonfist was this weird 2E/3E hybrid that came right before 3E.

>it does say "OSR compatible" on the cover.
Whatever that means.

I always take that to mean that you can grab a monster from b/x and it works with little to no conversion (max amount of conversion needed for OSR compatibility in my mind is changing AC from going down to going up).

But that's just me. Who knows what the authors mean.

On some old ZIP Disc at WotC's TSR storage unit maybe

Shame
I wish more campaign settings provided noteless world maps alongside their regular world maps. One Ring: Adventures over the edge of the wilds does that.

The Eldritch Wizardry psionics are workable, but you'll want to reread it a few times to get through the godawful editing.

You may or may not actually want to keep the psionic combat - I'm personally not too fond of that way of handling it, but I've seen some arguments vis á vis the demons using it as a psuedo-sanity system that warmed me up to it a bit.

Feel free to ask questions if it confuses you - god knows it confused me.