/osrg/ OSR General - Cipher Edition

I think I might have sounded too hostile on this post. Let me correct that my tone is more "confusion" than "anger".

>Carcosa
Well, yeah. Because what is going to fuck Carcosa over harder than it already is?

Posted a bit in the last thread, but I've realized how much my players love skills.

They're not even gamers. Only one knows of anything outside of the name "Dungeons & Dragons." Never played a tabletop before I sat them down for LotFP. It's kind of incredible to me how much they have a modern D&D mindset when it comes to referencing skills, but you know...alas and shit. Anyways, I tried to suss out a way to combine the vast skill options of 4e/5e with LotFP without reeeeeeeally breaking the OSR spirit too much. This is what I've come up with. I'd love some feedback:

CONDENSED MODERN D&D SKILLZ for LotFP featuring THE POOR FORGOTTEN d12.

[DEX] Acrobatics [Balance, Climb, Jump, Tumble]
[WIS] Bushcraft [Survival, Handle Animal]
[INT] Knowledge [Appraisal, History, Religion, Lore]
[INT] Language [Forgery, Decipher]
[WIS] Medicine [Heal]
[STR] Open Doors
[WIS] Search [Find Traps, Investigate, Spot]
[DEX] Sleight-of-Hand [Pick-Pocket, Hide Item]
[CHA] Speechcraft [Bluff, Intimidate, Perform]
[DEX] Stealth [Hide, Move Silently]
[DEX] Tinkering [Lockpicking, Remove Traps]
Sneak Attack [d6 damage multiplier]

- Replace the d6 with a d12.
- Skills start at 2.
- Let everyone add their relevant ability modifier to the skill (minimum score of 1). Viola! A more aptly diverse group of non-Specialists.
- Only let the Specialist freely upgrade skills; 4 Points per level (8 at Level 1.)
- Success is a d12 roll equal-or-under your total Skill+Modifier.
- a 12 in 12 skill fails on 2d12 rolling SNAKE EYES or DOUBLE TWELVES.

- Keep Sneak Attack a "d6", but require 2 points per pip.
- Make Open Doors non increasing and strictly Ability Score based.
(Both these start at 1 pip, as per usual.)

As for Demihuman class bonuses, just double the numbers. A Halflings 3-in-6 Bushcraft becomes 6-in-12. Replace the Dwarves' Architecture with Search and the Elves' Search with Knowledge.

Encounters along a shoreline full of shipwrecks.

its just the lotfp thing, sort of like how dying in droves for the honor to become a mutilated (melee) or mutated (magic) husk is the dcc thing

>I don't get the point of having these.
>Ending the campaign isn't something I need any help as it is

That's the thing, though. All of those "Apocalypses" set in motion a chain of events with massive, unpleasant consequences.. but don't actually >end< the campaign. At least, not initially. There's ways to reverse them, or ameliorate them, and they leave the PCs (or, depending on the event, at least the ones smart enough to run) alive to deal with them.

Better than Any Man is one of the weakest overall, for this and other reasons (and falls firmly into the
>"watch out kids, this dungeon crawl is so hardcore it can cause the apocalypse!"
category.

But the one in Scarecrow (for instance) makes the PC Magic-user involved incredibly powerful, and induces a brutal and massive witch-hunt for him as soon as someone figures out what's happening. Same goes for God that Crawls.

England Upturn'd and NSFW are both an "Apocalypse-in-progress" that the PCs may or may not prevent, divert, or alter to their own ends. NSFW is even intended to keep the world intact and livable, but change its power structure. Forgive Us, as-written, will peter out after a short and horribly-bloody holocaust if the players fail. Towers Two is the only "game-ending" one, and that's because it presents the players with the possibility of preventing a horror far in the future by sacrificing themselves now

So overall they're things that cause Interesting (but frequently deeply awful) shit to happen if the players fuck up or let the bad guys get away. They present real, lasting, and ugly consequences to your actions, but don't arbitrarily end the game.

No worries. I figured that was it.

I see. I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

Speaking of, I wish there was a version of the DCC spell casting rules without all the mutation stuff. That shit just doesn't fit a regular D&D campaign setting.

Do you have to roll between each adventure to see if some *other* party caused the apocalypse while you were gone?

Now I wonder how LotFP adventures play out with that Snails shared game worlds thing people mentioned in the other thread.

"Well, in my original world things got kinda fucked when we unleashed the Soap Bubble God. Glad to see you guys didn't--- oh wait, you took the Infested Pod Thrower out of its containment field, didn't you. Fuck."

>That shit just doesn't fit a regular D&D campaign setting

wut.

Mages universally becoming weak, retarded, pathetic piles of tumors isn't really a D&D thing and isn't an element in most S&S, not even Moorcock or HPL.

I mean no offense but
>every time you cast a spell, you have a chance of being horribly mutated
>every high level wizard looks like a tzeench sorcerer from warhammer fantasy

Doesn't really fit in with the assumed D&D setting. I know everybody loves gonzo but I like my gonzo to be more subtle.

Hey now, Warhammer mutations on average INCREASE your power while DCC mutations are solely meant to be punishing.

What, you mean Mordenkainen doesn't look like a disgusting abomination?

No and that's a good thing. Muh magic corruption and mutation is shit game design and shit worldbuilding to boot.

Ah, see that is where we differ.

I like my gonzo to punch you in the face.

It would be acceptable if it was something like Realms of Chaos and it made you better, instead of strictly making you worse. But its not in-genre for S&S. Its just shit tier Warhammer wannabeism.

Well, I like my gonzo like I like my women
not punishing spellcasters for casting spells

It is a shame they choose that dumb mechanic, because I like the whole "you can cast a spell by making a spell check, and if you fail, you can't cast the spell anymore for the day".

But the whole thing being balanced by "and if you roll too low, you get corruption!" is just not my cup of tea.

Ah yes, we're finally back to the old days of /osrg/ and hating on DCC for trying something new.

Shitting on DCC for being needlessly malicious to PCs, above and beyond the way the 0 level funnel and the modules themselves do so.

Never see any cosmology discussions here.

...

>for trying something new

Er, ripping off Warhammer (but only the bad parts) isn't "something new"

>civilization is beset on all sides by CHAOS CRIPPLES, a bunch of fuckups who used their class abilities and are now slowly crawling into our lands, oozing all over everything and making us feel uncomfortable as they shit themselves and moan in agony

...

>for trying something new.
Man I love several of the new mechanics on DCC

I use mighty deed of arms and thieves getting luck dice on my own games. I'm shitting on their dumb wizard corruption rules.

Just because something is new doesn't make it better.

>cosmology
because everybody is running different settings.
I myself am running mystara circa the 2e version (so dukedom of karameikos is now kingdom of karameikos and the elven nation got fucked), including immortals instead of gods an all.

That's more of a worldbuilding thing. Though I do wonder how much OSR would like to discuss worldbuilding sometimes. At least in the function of OSR games.

I've built all 3 (THREE) of my settings to basically help along the OSR playstyle more or less, which I really enjoy.

Cosmology tends to make me uncomfortable, since we tend to wind up with a bunch of mostly empty or samey planes antithetical to the usual OSR experience.

I wonder how one could do other planes so that they are at least as interesting and useful as the dungeon or the wilderness, which so far has not been done.

>antithetical to the usual OSR experience.
I use the Rules Cyclopedia cosmology, and it tends to not deviate from "typical" play.

Describe them briefly maybe? Why 3? Do they facilitate the playstyle in a different way?

Continuing to stack the deck in favor of quadratic wizards, I see!

The Rules Cyclopedia/BECMI experience is largely what I had in mind when I said that, although the Planescape/MotP cosmology is fairly similar.

They are largely big undifferentiated planes of nothingness inhabited by uniform blobs and a couple of nifty critters. There really isn't much to do with the planes.

I am sorry to be excessively negative but its like the town, wilderness and dungeon are well tuned and well analyzed for every angle of the play experience, but there is no real planar experience to speak of.

>If you don't punish Wizard PCs for using their basic class abilities which they already paid for by having the worst saves, worst HP, worst AC and generally having the most limited power in the entire game with spell slots; you support OP quadratic 3.5 wizards!

Kill yourself asshole.

Have you tried just not playing 3.x?

Show me on the ball where Monte Cook touched you.

>never actually played b/x in his life

>Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place
~just outside the Vesuvius gate

>big undifferentiated planes of nothingness inhabited by uniform blobs
Not sure about BECMI off the top of my head, but that's decidedly NOT how Rules Cyclopedia does it. At least for the inner planes.
They're "run of the mill" Swords and Sorcery settings, same as the Prime Plane. Expect everyone's made of clouds, or whatever.

And vortexes/wormholes are pretty handy.
You can stick one anywhere without too much fuss. Boom! Naturally occurring dungeon.

Sure, why not.

>High Fantasy
In this setting there is a divine bureaucracy that runs everything. When people die they go to heaven; the idea being that a PC can freely give a large portion of their wealth and loot to a new character to help them level up easier because they can literally get permission from their ghost.

Also I've built this setting with the whole law v chaos thing inside of it, which supports traditional DnD alignments and races and such. I think a Chinese style heavenly bureaucracy really fits well with a Lawful society.

>Modern Fantasy
This setting isn't really 'modern' it's mostly just gonzo bullshit set in another dimension. It's always night time, set in a single scrap-metal city, 'lost' people from other dimensions end up here. Mostly though its focused on the scrap metal guns and neighborhood crawling stuff going on. This setting's cosmology is mostly about the world, how once you end up in the City beyond spaces you can never return? Plus the weird entities explain where monsters and the mysterious magic items in the service tunnels come from. The idea being to encourage players to explore dangerous place for artifacts from home or from strange new magic objects to collect, since magic is not normally available to players.

>Science Fiction setting
This one is really supportive of the OSR playstyle based on its structure. It's a gonzo as shit sci-fi world where the rules state in the first session players have to get their own spaceship. Everyone has a role both on the spaceship and off it, aiding exploration and combat missions. The idea behind the actual 'cosmology' supports the endless war between the BICOs (biological intelligent communicating organisms, which are you) versus the SICOs (solar intelligent communicating organisms, who are the 'bad guys'. Also pronounced like 'psychos')

While not technically cosmological in all of these, the idea of the actual worldbuilding supporting an OSR playstyle.

Mostly I'm referring to the fact that the planes are pretty superfluous and almost totally DIY, in comparison to strongholds, cities, dungeons, and wilderness. The very most people have done that I am aware of is come up with planes as "flavored" versions of the material plane, which is decent I suppose.

Anyone here have any actual stories or sessions of OSR gameplay?

I'm heading into a group blind and I'm really worried that I'm going to fuck it up.

Why not just remove the Cleric if its such an issue?

Fighter, Thief, Mage is a great class triangle.

>Why not just remove the Cleric if its such an issue?

Its not. Plus it has more history with the game and is a discrete archetype, while thief is not.

Uh....no. Clerics were specifically made as an anti-vampire class at the request of one of the players. Thief existed before that in the chainmail games - they were sabotuers and well poisoners in the game.

Is AD&D really that miserable of an experience as some here claim?

not necessarily, but it requires more work than BX/BECMI/RC D&D does if you want to have a smooth experience

>Thief existed before that in the chainmail games - they were sabotuers and well poisoners in the game.

You got that backwards. Clerics were in First Fantasy Campaign, thieves were not.

Irrelevant. Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard is the quintessential archetypes in fantasy, myth and gameplay. Each one represents something anyone can do (fight, sneak, use magic) but that class alone excels at that task. Clerics do not fit in this triangle. There is a reason almost every RPG video game offers these three as their choices, not four like 'fighter, thief, mage, cleric' or 'fighter, cleric, mage', but Fighter, Thief and Mage.

You are wrong. Stop shitposting.

>Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard is the quintessential archetypes in fantasy, myth and gameplay.

Let me correct you.
>Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard is my personal favorite trinity of archetypes. My tastes = God tier, your tastes = shit tier.

>Each one represents something anyone can do (fight, sneak, use magic)

Two out of three aint bad, not unlike your triumvirate.

> Clerics do not fit in this triangle.

Pray or heal fits better. By your logic, it should be fighter, thief, cleric.

>There is a reason almost every RPG video game offers these three as their choices

They really don't, and an appeal to popularity is useless.

>Stop shitposting.

You are the shitposter, and worse, you didn't even know basic facts about the origins of D&D. Completely fucking pathetic.

And yes I am fully aware that you are trollplaying and are merely pretending to be retarded because I saw the thread this shit is from, but I have nothing better to do.

Anyone can use magic?

50 secret doors.

Prayer or heal does not fit the archetype. Making a dedicated healing class is cancerous, and the cleric got a bunch of extra shit bolted on just because.

Why do Clerics have supportive spellcasting, a turning ability AND good armor and weapons? They aren't part of the squishy but magical or strong but mundane archetype. It fucks everything up.

>They really don't
Wrong. Play literally any video game, what classes can be play? Unless it's DnD, there is usually a magic, strength and dexterity style triangle for what you can specialize into. While it is true that appealing to the popularity of the archetype isn't a good argument, there are mythological reasons as to why.

There are thousands of mythological characters that are excellent fighters, up to and including hurling mountains and Killing Gods with swordplay.

There are tons of mythological thieves, some of which are able to steal songs, stories, or even more obscure and abstract things.

There are loads of witches in mythology as well, being able to control or create magical items and shape shift.

How many great clerics are there are in fantasy? How many mythological exploits of the mace wielding not!Christian cleric are there? I rest my case.

Using things like minor magic items like scrolls and potions, manipulating magical creatures and magic equipment, etc.

Anyone can be a tricky shitter like a Wizard, but not everyone can mystically heal wounds as appointed by a deity like a Cleric. Clerics do not fit the archetype.

Where's that bingo image? We can already start crossing some squares.

>Using things like minor magic items like scrolls and potions, manipulating magical creatures and magic equipment, etc.
>Anyone can be a tricky shitter like a Wizard, but not everyone can mystically heal wounds as appointed by a deity like a Cleric. Clerics do not fit the archetype.

But everyone can use cleric scrolls/potions as much as everyone can use arcane ones.

I mean, the single most iconic potion in the game is 'Healing Potions' and those are made by clerics.

>How many mythological exploits of the mace wielding not!Christian cleric are there? I rest my case.

...I believe we call those 'Saints'. There are rather a lot of them.

>I mean, the single most iconic potion in the game is 'Healing Potions' and those are made by clerics.
>Potions
>Made by Clerics

Yes, Healing Potions are made by clerics. So is Holy Water. Wizards tend not to be able to heal.

Well fuck this thread already.

What is your favorite method of advancement for the Thief class (if you so choose to implement them in your games?)

So who does make healing potions if not clerics?

Wizards should!

I prefer characters like alchemists and old wise men being the types who make magic potions. Mixing together weird ingredients, low chanting and murmurs of mystic powers, and so on. Clerics creating and selling holy water/potions of healing seems lame. Too commercialized for a religious order. Same with any clerical healing.

Doors, traps, sneaking, backstabbing/assassinating creatures
What we tend to do is give the party some exp when anyone does their class goal, to encourage teamwork (warriors don't rush in to kill more if the thief can sneak by and open another route, encourages being sensible rather than grindy)

>Prayer or heal does not fit the archetype.

It does. Divinity plays a far bigger role in terms of myth/archetypes than... whatever the fuck a magic user is. In S&S literature clerics are rare, but thief is not an archetype at all and refers to all S&S chars other than strictly knightly types.

>They aren't part of the squishy but magical

Not an archetype. The only squishy but magical dude I can personally think of from Appendix N is Elric, but he's also EXTREMELY choppy. Maybe Professor Armitage, not like anyone isn't squishy in HPL stories.
>Unless it's DnD, there is usually a magic, strength and dexterity style triangle for what you can specialize into.

If there is magic, there is usually fight, magic and fight + magic.

>there are mythological reasons as to why.

If you're going to argue mythology, the magic user is omitted (finding heroic stuff that isn't divine in mythology is difficult). If you're going to argue S&S, the thief is omitted.

>There are loads of witches in mythology as well, being able to control or create magical items and shape shift.

The amount of magical figures not deity related are wholly eclipsed by those who are.

>How many mythological exploits of the mace wielding not!Christian cleric are there?

How many mythological exploits of the wax boiled leather dude with lockpicks that can't find traps are there?

Well, I approve of using a d12 scale with attribute modifiers, and from a quick glance over, I approve of your skill list, but I really don't understand skills starting at 2 out of 12 (or 1 out of 6 for that matter). A 16.67% chance to succeed is just ridiculous. Granted, if you're got a high attribute modifier (+2), you can pull that up to 33.3%, but that's still godawful. What's the point in having skills if they're all next to useless?

In MY world, clerics and thieves advance by autistically screeching at each other and fighting to the death.

So basically 'This isn't actually how RPGs work but I think they should'. As that's not how they've worked before.

>selling
>healing potions
>OSR

How often does this even happen? I mean, just about the one productive thing to spend money on for mid level and up would then be healing potions.

>old wise men

like guys who specialize in wisdom

>Using Clerics & Thieves
>Not just using Fighters and MUs

in all seriousness having clerics as separate from magic users and thieves separate from fighters does seem to make a lot of homebrew ideas I have needlessly hard

Depends on how you look at things really. If you are looking at just a binary scale with might magic, having fighter on one end, wizard on the other, and cleric in the middle makes sense.

If you are looking at the game as a fighting -adventuring skills - utility triangle, the fighter-rogue-wizard are on the end points, and cleric could be considered to be the jack of all trades; can fight, but not as well as the fighter, can cast, but not as well as the wizard, has some skills because of deity, but not as many as rogue.

Dedicated healing, and requiring dedicated healing to be a thing is cancer though.

The distinctive thing about the cleric to me is this:

He has the defensive potency of a fighter, nearly the same melee potency, and pretty poor ranged effectiveness.

In many ways his spells are as good as those of a magic user, typically single target, better reactive spells (though these are of questionable use), and touch spells. He is pretty bad for control and area effect.

He essentially always has good reason to always have melee weapons ready and is a great 'hardpoint.' I like the idea of a party having a cleric in front and in back in tunnels, and the fighter with a bow, ready to dart behind the cleric and switch to melee. Presumably in that setup, the magic user has the light. Similarly, a polearm or spear fighter works well behind the cleric.

His heavy armor makes him unsuitable for retreating, for scouting, or for sneaking. So he is very versatile, but he has to commit all-out and has few tools for whittling crowds down to size, other than of undead.

All in all its a pretty interesting role, IMO.

I think our views align on this. Basically, the cleric can do something in each area of expertise of the other 3; OD&D enforced this by limiting weapon, armor and spell choices, leading to some interesting gameplay using emergent mechanics, but I'm looking at a more meta level. The reason is, this makes breaking the classes down to their component parts simpler, which in turn makes reimagining and rearranging them and their abilities easier.

Basically, this is my breakdown currently:

Fighters fight. They are simple, but that means they don't really have any weaknesses. They should be at home when shit hits the fan and the weapons get drawn. Even if they fail at something because it is beyond their skills, they should be able to fall back on being tough and being able to kill whatever comes their way in a fight.

Rogues are best at stacking the deck in their favor, tipping the scales in their favor so heavily that even their meager skill at arms is enough to win. Rogues should be the best when they have prep time, being able to create temporary advantages through scouting, setting traps, gathering and creating consumable items, figuring out an enemy's weak spot. Rogues should be able to fall back on being able to run away from fights to fight another day, or just avoiding them altogether.

Wizards can use magic which can deal with basically everything, but this comes at the price of having to be supported when not using magic by other classes. He needs the fighter in a fight to defend him, and the rogue out of fights to get what he needs for the spell he wishes to cast; be it information or rare ingredients. Wizards without magic don't have a fall back; they _are_ the fall back for everyone else.

>cont
The 4th class then would be for those who want some mix of the above. Be it a Bard who has expertise with ranged fighting, his knowledge of monsters and legends, and some amount of illusion magic, a Cleric who can wear heavy armor to bash in head, is a master of the art healing and banishing undead with prayers, and has divine magic to protect allies, or some other combination of features from the 3 "base" classes, which results in a character that always has something to do, be the task at hand fighting, preparations and adventuring, or magic-utility, but that something is more limited in scope.

>is the quintessential archetypes in fantasy, myth and gameplay
Not when it comes to D&D. Especially in gameplay.

The bit on rogues definitely applies FAR more to wizards.

Fighters also have huge weaknesses. They either have thief tier AC or they generally can't escape, while clerics and mages both have escape spells, and mages and thieves both have "can run the fuck away."

Another huge fighter weakness is they don't have auto successful actions like the cleric and mage do. They have to hope they're in luck to do damage, clerics and mages can create effects that are near automatically successful.

Finally, the cleric has the distinction of spells that can be used to repair a bad situation.

Stuff like prep time and creating consumables is definitely far more a mage/cleric thing, though, and most of the other stuff isn't particularly rogue related.

So I have a question about stealth.

What's a good method to determine how easy it is to sneak past/sneak up on enemies? I've never been a huge fan of the generic X in chance. What about something like rolling OVER the enemy's morale? More organized fighting forces would therefore be implied to be more on high alert. Perhaps enemies without morale, like mindless undead, are really fucking easy to sneak past as long as you don't directly get into their line of vision. Sound like an interesting concept?

Use of morale as perception sounds like a REALLY interesting mechanic.

You could also use 1d12 rollunder vs UNMODIFIED armor class.

This is my current Fighter advancement (minus HD growth)

How does it look? Good, bad? Balanced?

just make it cleave-> great cleave, taking any more than one cleave in your scheme is a tremendous waste

You may wish to look at superiority a bit closer, dude.

I think you don't know what a combat move is.

It's like a trip, blind, or disarm. Not an attack.

That sounds really neat, give it a try! IIRC morale in OD&D was in the 2-12 scale, so rolling d20 might be bit too good. Maybe 10+morale vs d20+thief levels?

Sorry, I don't know game terms defined in the documents of your homebrew I have never seen and you probably have never posted.

What's the /osrg/ consensus on Godbound?

And on Nightmare Underneath, if any?

>What's the /osrg/ consensus on Godbound?
It has its own thread and shouldn't be posted about here.

>All this talk about Fighting-Men, Magic-Users, Clerics and Thieves
>Nothing about Elves, Dwarves & Halflings
For shame!

Race-as-single-class was a mistake.

I want to run a simple combat scenario for 20 players, what is the most simple osr like game?

Not at all.

Basic D&D

Fuck
You
Race as class is the best