/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance General

Why do you like race as class?

One time we tell bandits, don't take rock. Beg them not to take rock. Eventually they gave up searching for our purse and took the rock.

I've almost finished writing up my homebrew retroclone.

Wish me luck! It has been exhausting, especially the stuff involving hp and experience points.

Most people like it because it makes non-human races feel more different. A lot of people say they like to play elves or dragonmen or whatever because they are more interesting then humans, but then they play them exactly the same as humans.
Race-as-class doesn't 100% stop this but it helps.

Hot and fresh homebrew 4 (You)

Depends on the game/setting/whatever but generally because it really drives home the point that "these guys are alien and different and weird". Race-and-class tends to make everyone feel like a human who has point ears, etc.

It makes the races feel more like distinct cultures IMO. Basic wasn't great at doing this, but it was there. Games like Beyond the Wall and ACKS really embrace it and do it well. A Dwarven Runecaster in Beyond the Wall feels very different from a human magic user, unlike a Dwarf magic user in other systems.

What monsters can I throw at a first level party besides the typical goblins, kobolds, rats, and fire beetles? I don't want the first level of my dungeon to be a slog through enemies everyone's seen a million times before.

For more out-there races it works, though I do prefer races having their own subset of classes.

Giant centipededs

Crawlng slime

Bandits

undead chickens

Sheep

wild dogs

ghouls

lolipire

space fungus

a brain-like mushroom that seeks a symbotic relationship with an ambulatory being

>Many [wererock] families roam the underground by rolling down inclines, much like common rocks. In fact, this has caused many common rocks to be accused of being wererocks.

Gee, I must be really mad, 'cause I cannot stop laughing at this, you wonderful looney.

Thank you very much!

So basically any weird shit that I feel like?

basically. If you're using standard oldschoool dnd type game, ehre's the stats for pretty much everything levels 1-3

1 to 3 dice of hitpoints
thaco18-19
single die of damage

interestiing special ability and habits

saves as a fighter.

Can be anything from a flying shart to an apple golem.

so long as the pcs have a fair shot at dealing with it in some way, yeah

And remember this aception of "dealing with it" includes outrunning, outsmarting and completely evade.

and if its slow, "deal with it" can mean "wise up and run the fuck away."

>Games like Beyond the Wall and ACKS really embrace it and do it well. A Dwarven Runecaster in Beyond the Wall feels very different from a human magic user
I love both games because of this, is there any other retroclone with multiple racial classes

It's a setting book, but Red Tide has the Scion for elves.

When drawing your dungeon on a grid paper do you avoid making irregularly or oddly shaped rooms just to save yourself from having to describe those rooms to the mapper?

I was reading the Alice class in ARaPL, I liked how random it was, does anyone know more classes like this?

>werepebbles

>prefer races having their own subset of classes
I agree, and even just slight variants to the basic classes can make races feel infinitely more unique. Like giving new/uncommon spells to casters, or racial weapons and combat techniques for martial classes.

I enjoy it because it helps to minimize bloat, being easier to manage the unique features of a single race-as-class than having to combine the unique features of a race and a class. Unfortunately, this also means that sometimes characters can feel generic or similar (especially if multiple people, say, want to play a Dwarf). My group always tries to find ways to fluff race-as-class in ways that two people can play the same race and feel unique, but sometimes you just can't avoid that one stocky stone-midget is gonna fight the same way as another stocky stone-midget.

Having the two bundled together means that you can tweak each one to work just the way you like it, instead of having unintentional weird interactions between racial features and class features. It also lets the writers give a distinct flair to each race/class thing.

Some races can be stronger in the lore, but in game terms you can easily mitigate that for PCs by things like what kind of class features they have access to, or what their XP progression looks like. So we can have one race be particularly smart, but that doesn't have to mean they're the only sensible option for magic-users.

I'm glad to see that OSR has finally recognized the awesome destructive power of a fist-size rock. I'm actually working on a semi-related GURPS supplement that you guys might be interested in.

Sweet! Now instead of having to use a dumb spear or something, you can use a stick that's just as powerful! It may be even more powerful because sticks are literally everywhere!

Imagine how broken it would be if you just gave magic users an unlimited supply of pointy sticks! I'm pretty sure that's a Tier 1 Pathfinder class in a book somewhere!

I'll try here then, does anyone have any experience playing some of the classic entry level boardgames (Dragonstrike, Heroquest) in Tabletop Simulator? I picked it up, in hopes of playing some of those games, but I can't find anyone who plays them. Fairly new to tabletop, would love to try those two out, always saw them in stores but never bought them.

>The Stickmaster
>With this brand new OC Donut Steel Class:
>Wield impromptu stick weapons, they're just laying around!
>Craft superior sticks from every day sticks
>Learn to throw sticks as a powerful ranged attack
>Craft special throwing sticks that return to the wielder
>Use sticks to build items that can allow you to overcome challenges
>Such as:
>Bridges made from bundles of sticks!
>Long sticks to increase jumping distance!
>Sticks to trigger traps!
>Sticks to provide heat and light!
>Sticks to build boats and power them!
>And much much more!

Too OP. Nerf please.

Nah that's fine. Magic-Users should always be better and have more options then any other class at all levels.

That's not an MU you great walrus.

Yeah, when will PF allow martials access to pointy sticks? Or is that "too anime?"
Oh god I can't stop, this meme is too funny

Does anyone have; Blood & Treasure 2nd Edition Monsters?

It's not in the OSR Trove

For some reason I assumed it was some MU-subclass that magically enhanced sticks.
Thanks for saying I'm great at least.

Yes, Zak wrote a bunch of similar treatments of base classes, they're posted on the blog, there's a tag for them but I forget what it is.

Sticks are too easy to acquire and completely destroy the resource economy of OSR. You have to add some sort of Stick-Eating Monster that can quickly rid a party of their valuable pointy sticks that they've come to rely on for all things, so that they are forced to come up with new ways of doing things.

There's nothing to be done about the stones, though. They're good for a high-fantasy anime tactical action game like 4E, if that's your thing, I guess.

Whatever you do don't let players combine them. The combination have superior bone breaking power, and grants immunity to spells with a verbal component.

It stopped being funny few threads ago.

Does anyone else want to give Rogues/Thief characters good bow/ranged weapon powers? I like the idea of making them like video game Rogues with good ranged/dagger weapons.

>a few threads ago

It only started at the end of last thread, dude. This meme was born last night, if you're trying to call it stale already I'm forced to wonder if you're just doing damage control because the thread is laughing at your position.

There was this exact same cantrip discussion a few months ago.

Sort of, but it didn't spawn the Overpowered Stone Rock thing until last night. The discussion a few months back was fairly reasonable; yesterday's took it to the point of ridiculousness.

I'm not but if you're referring to the guy who originally said for a rock to do 1HP damage it would probably be fist sized, that would be me. My reasoning was that I felt like it would be silly if it did the same amount of damage as a thrown dagger.
Not once did I say rocks are OP, I even joined in on that joke because I thought it was amusing.

Sure, I'm laughing at the other guy, who after the cantrip was nerfed to be roughly equal to picking up rocks and tossing them, was still arguing it was overpowered "3.pf cancer." Plus the idea of rocks being a scarce resource to be used carefully, and fighting in closets, and so forth
It was a good thread for goofy shit.

Spurred on from discussion many threads ago; 50 ways to fluff magic missile.

[51] Caster picks up a fist sized rock and hucks it.

So I asked this last thread, but that was when it was almost dead.

Which setting/game should I focus my creative energies on?
>Modern 'Weird' fantasy game with aliens, psychics, set in a single fantastical city. Classless 'neighborhood-crawl' style game.
>Traditional High Fantasy with unique combat moves and very generalist classes. Weird cosmology and gonzo cultures.

Could you expand on both of these?

>>Modern 'Weird' fantasy game with aliens, psychics, set in a single fantastical city. Classless 'neighborhood-crawl' style game.
Go for the stuff that hasn't already been done to death a thousand times. Nobody needs another fantasy heartbreaker, and the market's so saturated it's hard to make your one stand out.

I'll say that the first one seems more interesting, but will probably be more work than the second one.

I'll expand a bit, didn't want to text wall. I actually wrote up the draft for the first one's rules.

>City set in another dimension
>It is always night time, only the electricity that nobody really knows where it comes from keeps the darkness at bay
>City is where 'lost' people end up, not just humans but alien creatures from a million different worlds
>Weird animals, plants and technology ended up coming to this world from this. Around the city is just a generic pine forest that somehow lives and grows in near total darkness
>City is filled with gangs, enforcers, scrap-gun wielding adventurers trying to make some cash.
>Technologically anachronistic- people use hand-made scrap guns that overheat easily but the cars all hover and float.
>City districts are diverse and meant to feel as though it could be any city from history; suburbs, cramped inner streets, maze like factory buildings, kowloon walled city-tier apartment super complexes, etc.
>Service tunnels beneath the city are home to all kinds of weird creatures and ancient 'lockers' with weird things inside
>Some people develop psychic powers (like a super power, you get one and that's it), there are also mystic items for sale that do strange and unnatural things plus monsters

That's the simple setting primer.

Sounds a little like a|state.

Seems fun. Why are you thinking of changing focus? If you feel like you're done with this for now then I don't see why you couldn't give it a break and work on that high-fantasy thing.

>yoon-suin has a crabman class
I'm gonna play this shit

What?

I don't know. The rules are mostly complete but I'm not 'sure' about it. High fantasy just feels 'safer' and the rules for Sword and Sorcery come together easier then trying new territory with the gun-based action of the city concept.

Besides I feel like every GM has a high fantasy setting they've been working on for like 10 years and mind is this wimpy little collection of fluff with nothing really developed yet, makes me feel kind of inadequate.

Just do what you feel like man. If you look at what most OSR setting are like you'll see that they are pretty damn weird. so you're no exactly in the minority. I think a lot of them make those kinds of campaigns because they're tired of standard fantasy though, so if you're not then why not explore it until you feel like you're done with it?
But another thing you can do I guess is ask your players what they would like, assuming you have a group.

For the record, once I stopped thinking super hard about what kind of campaign I wanted, and just started running a campaign and throwing in what I liked, I immediately enjoyed the DIY process more. It doesn't solve everything but I think diving in headfirst is probably better than never diving in at all.

drivethrurpg.com/product/54874/

Indie RPG, hits similar beats. Y

Allowing Sneak Attack to be ranged seems good enough imo.

both, Dreamlands bitch

He's arguably kind of broken, though. In exchange for mild XP increase and giving up magic items and stuff, you get better HP than the Fighter, excellent natural AC, crazy damage (1d8x2), and saves that start out equal to the Dwarf/Halfling saves from Cook, who have the best saves in B/X, and he actually gets better than them at high levels.
I bet it's because he resembles a large rock.

There's also the trade off of being unable to speak and being a slave.

Does anyone know where the Wizard and Sorceror Spell Compedia is in the Trove?

>roleplay drawbacks
>relevant to game balance

lol

True, and not being able to manipulate anything that requires fingers. I just feel like it would be like playing the autistic fighter from a bad heartbreaker, except instead of just being a dunce outside of combat, you're actually unable to function on your own.

TSR -> AD&D 2e -> 08 - Wizard Spell Compendium
09 is Priest Spell Compendium

Danke!

Any requests for Encounters/Monster lists?

Encounters along a fantasy Great Wall, please?

Ohh, I like that one.

How about some creepy Native American creatures?

Thirding this.

Roll 1d20 and consult the table below
>1-5 a few barbarians
>6-10 a moderate amount of barbarians
>11-15 a lot of barbarians
>16-20 a shitload of barbarians

I was thinking more like barbarians, peasants revolting, horse riders, messengers, hobgoblins, strange mystical creatures, even stranger mystical creatures, monkeys, monks, dragon(s) or soldiers (1 in 6 chance they are also revolting).

I was thinking L5R's Kaiu Wall, complete with built-in geisha houses and the peddler's row behind the wall that sells everything from mess kits to monster bits to take home as a prize (though surely you didn't just run the fuck away without killing one monster, right?)

...You know I already started writing it thinking you meant along as in 'traveling on top of' the great wall. Don't know why I thought that.

This is also acceptable.

Hey! I've never played OSR anything before, so I thought I'd jump in for some advice on running one of my settings. In brief...

>Players are crown agents sent to investigate an expansive colony on a distant continent.
>Players are assumed competent at basic combat and either fieldcraft or social negotiations.
>17/1800s tech level. Muskets and sailing ships with rare advances
>all magic is crafting

Really, i just want something rules-light to encourage players to think "how would *I* track this monster" rather than just rolling investigation checks.

That's what OSR is good for.

Try to get your players into the conversation of what the monster's tracks actually are like and how they go through the woods. As in just tell them that directly and lead to questions, don't ask for a roll. If they ask to roll just tell them to listen instead.

>all magic is crafting
This requires elaboration.

Witches, lots of Witches and related creatures

What wrote. For early modern tech OSR games you probably want to check out Lamentations of the Flame Princess and (I think?) Into the Odd.

Peep this, sounds right up your alley.

>Picked up "King Solomon's Mines" for cheap from used book store
>Love the pulpy classic action
>Want to convert it to an OSR game somehow
>Don't know which game would be best

Such is suffering. Any suggestions?

Basically, there's no "magic missile" or even any "cure wounds"
Instead you have to perform a ritual to make an object that contains charges of "cure wounds".

Items I made include a flask of vigour, which restored HP (but didn't cure injuries), a firebug (small living creature that ate meat and could breathe fire) and a monocle that shot lightning bolts (equivalent to a musket round, but blinded you on a misfire).

I used Into the Odd as a basis for it in the one session I ran, but it didn't quite feel... appropriate. Still a cool system.

Posting Megumin with her once per day nuke is very apropriate to osr m-u

Read it, find all the gameable ideas, make a setting from it, THEN pick which game to use for the setting.

She's more 3.P though, since it's obvious she has put every single feat into maximizing, enlarging, burning, empowering and heightening it.

ACKS might be perfect for you

Guns of war has rules for guns
Players companion has rules for crafting and class creation

I heard ACKS has some rules about guns? Where could I find them exactly? I plan on including firearms and combination weapons as a staple piece of weaponry for my game.

Oh, never mind then! Thanks for the assist.

Doesn't LotFP have rules for muskets and stuff?