/osrg/ OSR General - Be Nice to Each Other Edition

But who is Tenryu?
What is finger-zen?
Why do people achieve enlightenment when they see a finger?
What is a word of zen and why can't people utter it?

Self whoring my homebrew update again. Ruinations (Alpha 2.0), a post-apocalyptic take on LotFP (with bits from just about everything.)

This update sees a new d12 Skill system that accounts for ability modifiers, some class adjustments and a simple alternative character creation ruleset for creating a Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy game with Elves and Dwarves, Fallout and Rifles.

>docdroid.net/FrxCKOl/ruinations.pdf.html

A link to an old collaborative hexcrawl project

save.vs.totalpartykill.ca/grab-bag/synthexia/#0913

A neat format--each hex is hyperlinked to the description.

Roundabout - Yes

Who did the cover art?

That's the wrong meme, you want MACINTOSH PLUS - リサフランク420 / 現代のコンピュー for these situations

>But who is Tenryu?
Koshu Tenryu was Gutei's teacher.
He was also wiser than Gutei.
>What is finger-zen?
A facade (or aplomb?) of wisdom.
>Why do people achieve enlightenment when they see a finger?
They don't, that's from thinking about why the finger is raised.
>What is a word of zen
A branch of Buddhism with strong Taoist influences.
>and why can't people utter it?
People who are "good at math" have just done lots of math.
People who are "good at reasoning" have just done lots of reasoning.
The best way to get good at something is practice.
Forcing people to look for insight trains them to be "good at finding insight."

Philippe Caza, a fantastic French artist. The piece in particular is from the 70s.

Looking for a PDF of the Lotfp playtest doc. Anyone got it?

Doesn't exist. However you can get the gist of it from this blog's review:

>dragonsgonnadrag.blogspot.com/2016/03/initial-thoughts-on-lotfp-playtest.html

I was going for the TO BE CONTINUED effect.

>Speardude using giant bottlecap as a shield
Wow, pixies are fucking hardcore.

So the story is how Gutei, even though he supposedly found enlightenment (I mean, that's what it says in the story), was actually unenlightened and was a total dick and pretended to know the word of zen?
And was the kid enlightened or was that untrue as well?

Orientalism time.

>To the Prefect Wei Chih by Wang Wei
>Desolation of an abandoned city
>Void of a thousand miles of river and hill
>Far up in the sky an autumn sun
>Cries of wild geese that return
>Withered grass gleaming on the wintery bank
>Last foxglove littering the courtyard
>With this the evening of the year is come
>And I look at it all and hum 'The Sad Old Man'
>My friend is not to be seen there
>East of the desolate forest vast on the plain

D10 things that have delayed the Prefect

1: As the Empire slowly collapses the Prefects must travel to cities that are becoming abandoned to remove/destroy any precious artifacts so they are not taken by barbarians.
2: The Curse Of The Serpent River has befuddled their maps, trapping them in permanent travel.
3: The sun hangs red and heavy in the sky but will not fall beneath the horizon until the proper sacrifices and rituals are completed by the Prefect.
4: A massive seasonal migration of Grey Harpies flys overhead the chorus echoing through the land and causing a mirrored migration of enchanted followers. The Prefect and their caravan has been added to the horde.
5: The Mandate of Winter has begun exceeding its Seasonally Allocated Domains and has gently frozen the Prefect in place by the riverside.
6: Intoxicating flowers of rare and alien breed that can only be harvested once a decade have been sighted in the Courtyard Of The Eastern Sigh. The Prefect is caught in their stupor.
7: A mountain witch prognosticating on the coming year has kidnapped the Prefect and will read the future in their organs before the week is done.
8: Unable to reconcile their differences between political officers, the Prefect has avoided visiting the local. Corruption and lawlessness have spread as a result.
9: A misfiling in the Celestial Bureaucracy during transition from Dream States to the Waking World has rendered the Prefect and cohort invisible/immaterial.
10: The Wooded Desolation is dark and exceeds character count.

He was enlighted, but not when he was younger, and some yound kid started doing the same mistake he did when he was younger (finger-zen), so he cut his finger off

>Caza
GOAT taste, my bro. The third point of a triangle with Druillet and Mœbius desu

Gutei was enlightened by the time the story took place, but he took a bumpier road than he would have if he hadn't picked up that bad habit.
>And was the kid enlightened or was that untrue as well?
If nothing else, the kid became enlightened as to why Gutei habitually raised his finger.

My reading was that the kid learned that he wasn't wise just because he mimicked someone who was wise.

Maybe an easier to understand version would have a crabby old grognard quoting Gary Gygax every time someone asks for an explanation. Then the old grognard has a young player in his group who starts doing the same thing, and he starts to realize how annoying that is.

So the old grognard sucker punches the kid every time he tries to quote Gygax like gospel, instead of thinking for himself.

If someone says he's going to include misogyny, gore, mutilation, sex, and fetishes because he's a self-proclaimed transgressive and offensive artist fighting against censorship and desiring to broaden the horizons of the genre/medium but he lacks the guts to touch actually offensive and transgressive elements such as racism because that might hurt someone's feelings then he is both a poser and and a cuck.

And that's not even going to the hypocrisy behind not doing it yourself but still supporting Varg when he does it.

>Be Nice to Each Other Edition

So Gutei cut the child's finger off because he projected his own failure on the kid?

And the bad habit was mimicking his master, yes?
>If nothing else, the kid became enlightened as to why Gutei habitually raised his finger.
That doesn't seem to be the "enlightenment" that most Buddhist teachings refer to. Or is it?

>So Gutei cut the child's finger off because he projected his own failure on the kid?
He did it so the kid doesn't lose as much time as did with this finger bullshit

>Being Nice to Raggi
lol?

>projected his own failure on the kid?
He wasn't projecting, the kid objectively had the same shortcoming.

>the "enlightenment" that most Buddhist teachings refer to. Or is it?
It is. Enlightenment is just having a deep understanding of something.
There are spiritual implications to being enlightened about *everything* but enlightenment is generally on smaller scales.

Okay, wait. So the story is:

>Gutei can't into buddhism
>Master Tenryu comes to visit, raises finger
>Gutei is "enlightened" (not actually enlightened)
>Starts raising his finger and acting enlightened to everyone
>Actually achieves enlightenment at some point, but is still doing the finger thing
>Some kid starts mimicking him
>Because he knows that finger raising isn't what leads to enlightenment, Gutei cuts of the child's finger to teach him this
>Raises finger to the child, who now realizes that Gutei was bullshitting with the whole finger thing and that fingering isn't good for trying to achieve enlightenment

Am I correct?
If so, then I gotta ask:
Why did Gutei keep raising his finger after he achieved enlightenment, even though he knew that fingering would hinder the progress towards it?

Because old habits die hard.

So the moral of the story is that even though you might be super smart and enlightened, you might still have old and counterproductive habits which those who look up to you can start copying and become harmed by?

How does /osrg/ feel about semi-random starting equipment?

I really liked the idea when I saw it in games like Maze Rats or Into the Odd, and I'm considering implementing something like that in my next campaign. Has anyone else done something similar?

>To advance results in ignoring truth; to retreat results in contradicting the lineage.
What does this mean?

A lot of zen koans aren't supposed to "mean" something, they're supposed to surprise you into a specific state of mind as you try to grasp their slippery surface. Like Jedi mind tricks to wake you up from your everyday sleepwalking state.

This is amazing stuff, user

I don't know exactly how you define "semi-random", but I like rolling for equipment better than buying it with starting gold. In an OSR game, the initial shopping *easily* takes up the majority of chargen, so just dicing for stuff a couple of times (preferably on a table with some nice pictures) is vastly preferable. Even if it's like ten throws per character, it's faster.

I understand, I mean specifically what do "results" refer to in this context and is the line proposing it as desirable (in the way that 2 & 4 are not)?

The moral of the story is, "acting wise isn't being wise."
"Don't form bad habits" is an underlying theme.

I used these equipment packs last game I ran and told them to select 2 other items of choice if desired. I appreciated it quickening the chargen.

>I don't know exactly how you define "semi-random"
I like the idea of equipment generation being mostly random, but the players still having some amount of choice.

e.g. I was thinking that I would give each player a few options like, pick one of these backgrounds, and you get a few piece of starting gear based on that background. Or do it like Dungeon World and give each class a short list where you get to pick X things. THEN roll for random other equipment.

I think you're reading "results" as a noun, when it's actually being used as a verb in koan.

>advancing = ignoring the truth; retreating = contradicting the lineage

>In an OSR game, the initial shopping *easily* takes up the majority of chargen
Agreed. It's fundamentally uninteresting for me at this point even without considering the likely possibility that all the time spent on poring through equipment lists can be undone in a single bad roll during that PC's first jaunt. Though rather than semirandom I prefer fixed loadouts for characters in the interest of chargen speed. I even wrote a few for the S&W Complete classes:

pastebin.com/WdtVhwAC

Oh. In that case I like it fine, but I find it inferior to fully random starting equipment from class-specific equipment tables. (Well, "fully random" with the caveat that it's hardly truly random since the tables are curated).

As points out, all time invested on equipment often turns out to be a total waste, so I like to deemphasize it (and indeed all player choice) in generating characters.

I appreciate the examples, guys! I was curious to see how other people had implemented the idea, 'cause this is gonna be my first time running OSR.

I see your point. I'll definitely take that into consideration.

Microlite20's and B4's Fast Packs.

Plz don't laugh at me.

Would RuneQuest 2 be considered part of the "Old School"? It was released around the same time as AD&D.
Or does OSR only refer to retroclones of D&D?

It's cool, friend. OSR is just D&D and retroclones, though. The term comes originally from OSRIC, which was a clone of 1e AD&D, where "Old School Rules" was a euphemism for the trademarked brand.

>Would RuneQuest 2 be considered part of the "Old School"?
No, and
>Or does OSR only refer to retroclones of D&D?
Yes. Or, well, it also refers to the original old editions themselves. A lot of retroclones only or mainly exist as excuses to serve those with adventures.

>Plz don't laugh at me.
Don't worry, you're all polite and shit.

Great. More pretentious OSR bullshit. Speak simply.

Yes. They're supposed to make you feel smug and pretentious.

>have a peek in OSR
>dharma combat
>mfw

>/osrg/ OSR General - Be Nice to Each Other Edition

He got lost on the way to the No Fun Allowed edition.

Actually yes, it is old school. But it isn't "OSR"
I hope that makes some sense.

honestly this whole Buddhism conversation kinda highlights how much of a bullshit nonsensical philosophical system it is

In practice, most OSR content revolves around TSR editions of D&D. But if somebody has something interesting to say about Runequest or Tunnels and Trolls, or whatever, I'd like to hear it.

more_like_guidelines_than_rules.jpg

Are there any supplements for egyptian themed settings? I'm pretty sure I could make a compendium of all creatures that would fit by digging through everything, but it seems like such an obvious setting that I'm positive someone else has already done it.

Why does Kevin Crawford write such mediocre ripoff RPGs but design excellent subsystems?

He's an excellent exponent of OSR design. That's exactly why.

>it seems like such an obvious setting that I'm positive someone else has already done it.
You'd think that, but TSR never touched it, save for a few expies. Judges' Guild stole deities but other than that kinda left it alone.

A lot of Egyptian lore (along with Aztec) underlies Tekumel, so that's a good place to start. You can also hit up Dark Sun for some interesting desert critters.

I know there's a few Egypt-themed modules, just need to do through my collection and see what I can find. Off the top of my head, "The Charioteer's Tomb" is up for free on RPGnow, and "The Diamond of Hishep Ratep" is somewhere in the trove (the LotFP section?)

>Judges' Guild stole deities but other than that kinda left it alone.
Isn't Dark Tower Egypt-based? And Temple of Ra Accursed by Set definitely is.

What, in /osrg/'s opinion, are the best low-level OSR adventure modules?

What adventure would you run if you were just getting your usual group together to for a pickup game? Would you run a different adventure if you were introducing a group of new players to OSR for the first time?

Doesn't Forgotten Realms get a Egypt transplant from our Earth at some point? Ravenloft also has an Egypt-themed domain.

I'd be more interested in a Mali Empire setting than an Egyptian setting

If you want inspiration for an Egyptian setting, I'd recommend the tomb of Psusennes the First (the "silver pharaoh")
It's the only completely intact tomb found by archaeologists the outer portions of Tuts tomb was robbed twice
He reigned for 46 years (versus Tut's 9) during a much more prosperous time in Egypt's history than Tutankhamun
So in addition to having a lot (orders of magnitudes) more stuff than Tut's tomb, Psusennes was buried with *nicer* stuff

But Tutankhamun's tomb was found in 1922, while people were (coincidentally) interested in Egyptian history
While Psusennes' tomb was found in 1940, while people were wondering why France still had an archaeology budget during World War 2

>Would you run a different adventure if you were introducing a group of new players to OSR for the first time?
The Keep on the Borderlands, there is a reason the cover says:
>It has been specially designed for use by beginning Dungeon Masters

yeah it was in FR10 I think. Can't remember if it just used the original monster manual for all its encounters of if you needed another supplement.

What are the traits of an old school RPG compared to a modern one?

See this primer >> (warning: may contain smug)

>Keep on the Borderlands
I'm already having flashbacks to the last few threads.

Dunno, to me his subsystems pretty much define his games. Liked all of them.

Also Spears of the Dawn makes for a great combo with the World of the Lost.

>Mechanically?
Combat notwithstanding, most activities don't have rules and (usually) aren't resolved with die rolls.
You just say, "I'm doing this" and the referee says, "sure, that sounds reasonably doable."

>Thematically?
Old school assumes a Swords and Sorcery vibe (knight-types notwithstanding; every man, woman, and child is a thief. life is cheap. magic is spooky).
New school tends to assume Heroic Fantasy (big damn heroes) or High Fantasy (good versus evil. fate of the world. magic is common-place).
It's also assumed that you'll be dungeon delving (or hex crawling) instead of questing. There's no focus whatsoever on "narrative."

Hey, speaking of which... what's the deal with N2 - The Forest Oracle?

>Liked all of them.
I wouldn't go that far but most of them are very good.

My issue is like, beyond doing two or three good subsystems for a game he doesn't seem to put a lot of effort in. It might be that he needs a co-writer for setting stuff, but eh.

He does seem to me to make "concept" games -- "What if I made an OSR game for single PCs", "What if I made an OSR Exalted" and so on. I think that attitude really lends itself to a way of thinking where you write a couple (possibly brilliant) core mechanics and then half-ass the rest to get it out the door, for instance, it used to be pretty common here in /osrg/ to recommend Scarlet Heroes (is that the name?) for its PC handling or its domain rules but advise disregarding the rest.

I think fundamentally this is because his thing he likes is "making gimmick games", not any particular one of those games. Like if his main thing was that he really liked the basic concept of Godbound and he continually worked on just that, I'm sure it would be a much tighter game, because he ultimately is a good designer.

This is just the vibe I get off him though.

Has anybody here played Godbound? I have it, and it looks cool, but I haven't run it yet.

I was going to run it for my group, but then is split up due to various issues.

Yes and no. I'm referring to two things:

1. Moldvay makes a reference to using treasure types to stock attended rooms, and many of the references aren't "wilderness only" but for lairs and that the treasure tables are intended for a lair full.
2. You get reduced XP for encounters that are too easy, treasure XP and all. I am sure the wiseasses will say "Sure, that's a rule in OD&D, 1e AD&D, and BECMI, but where does it say that in B/x?" Whatever.

Thanks for these. Though I still have some questions.

How would a DM be able to distinguish between player and character knowledge? I thought that skills for knowledge and spotting would be useful in modern RPGs because they help to show that the character is in a different world, and would be aware of things that the player doesn't know, like history or the weakness of a monster.

Second, how would a DM keep track of player improvement over time? It makes sense to allow a player to try a new trick in combat if they're ingenious enough to think of it, but how would you determine how skilled they are at doing it? For example, any fighter can swing a sword reasonably well, but how would you know when he's capable of doing the dropping attack described in the PDF?

And last, can you still have games where the goal is to kill monsters instead of avoid them and get treasure? Could treasure be removed as a motivation entirely and still have it be old school?

Give them the CoC

>And last, can you still have games where the goal is to kill monsters instead of avoid them and get treasure? Could treasure be removed as a motivation entirely and still have it be old school?
Hoo boy, that one's gonna divide people. Personally I'd say probably not; the gold-for-XP rule is extremely elegant and in a way the bedrock that the OSR playing style rests on.

>Temple of Ra Accursed by Set definitely is.
Yeah, it's one of the ones I was trying to find. For some reason I thought it was a TSR module. Still, it's an interesting delve with some cool shit going on.

>Dark Tower
Has about as much to do with Egypt as Stargate:Atlantis did. Very standard "Euro"-delve, although some of the elements of the Tower of Set could be lifted for an Egyptian campaign (the Children of Set in particular).

I've gotta go take care of some errands for the wife, but I'll be back later with some more ideas.

>1. Moldvay makes a reference to using treasure types to stock attended rooms
Oh yeah, I forgot that Basic does have a line to that effect. I think there's something kinda vaguely implying the same sort of thing in BECMI.

Still, that's not really how it was meant to work, though. And it gives extremely weird results, like 1d6 goblins who can potentially have tens of thousands of GP in gems -- especially with the RC treasure tables.

>How would a DM be able to distinguish between player and character knowledge?
That's up to the referee. The two schools of thought are:
• you know everything reasonable for adventures*, plus anything you note (with referee approval) at character generation
• you know everything needed for daily life, plus any activity your OOG knowledge allows you to reasonably explain

*in OSR, each level of each class has a title. Level ONE (1) Fighting-Men are "Veteran"

>Second, how would a DM keep track of player improvement over time?
They don't get better at it, unless it's tied to a statistic that increases with character level (THAC0, etc.)
If you do it habitually and the referee were generous, they might say "write '+1 to-hit attacks for attacks while falling' on your character sheet" at some point.

>where the goal is to kill monsters instead of avoid them
No.
>Could treasure be removed as a motivation
Maybe.

What's the best intro scenario for a group to give them an idea for LotFP?
I want a scenario they can play quickly to try and get and understanding of what's it about so they can decide if they want to stay on.

>How would a DM be able to distinguish between player and character knowledge? I thought that skills for knowledge and spotting would be useful in modern RPGs because they help to show that the character is in a different world, and would be aware of things that the player doesn't know, like history or the weakness of a monster.
The DM can just make a ruling on whether a player character knows a certain thing or not. A cleric would for example know of a lot of obscure religious stuff, and would know more the higher their level is.

>Second, how would a DM keep track of player improvement over time? It makes sense to allow a player to try a new trick in combat if they're ingenious enough to think of it, but how would you determine how skilled they are at doing it? For example, any fighter can swing a sword reasonably well, but how would you know when he's capable of doing the dropping attack described in the PDF?
The DM makes a ruling based on the information they have at the time, and then tries to stick to that ruling.

>And last, can you still have games where the goal is to kill monsters instead of avoid them and get treasure?
I'd say no. The D&D rules really aren't made for constant successful battling, so I think another system entirely would be better for that kind of stuff.

>Could treasure be removed as a motivation entirely and still have it be old school?
Maybe, as long as that positive feedback loop is kept intact. I don't see what treasure would be replaced with though.

Tower of the Stargazer if you want to be nice.
Death Frost Doom if you want to be meaner.

I would suggest starting with your own research into ancient egypt. There's lots of popular histories out there.

There might be a GURPs supplement along those lines, for which you might check the pdf thread. GURPs splats are usually full of well researched detail.

>How would a DM be able to distinguish between player and character knowledge?
It depends on the kind of knowledge. In the case of monster weaknesses, like fire against a troll, forget it, it's pointless, don't even try. It's ridiculous to see players try to feign not knowing about the fire thing and then "coming up with it at the last moment". It adds nothing. For this kind of purpose, just use new monsters instead, and use trolls when you want trolls because they look cool or you want that race between fire and regeneration (or when you just want to scare the piss out of players -- in short, use that stuff to your advantage).

If the player's like, an expert tracker or top geologist, the veil of fiction creates a handy divider between the player and character knowledge. "Is this schist or gneiss or what?" "You have no idea, you're a 19-year-old mercenary, a veteran of the Lombard wars, how would you know."

So in either case, it's not really a problem in practice. The former can be if you decide to get asshurt about it, and the latter can be if your players decide to get asshurt about it, but realistically, no rules could fix that.

>Could treasure be removed as a motivation entirely and still have it be old school?

Arguably, though you'll need to think about what you're replacing it with, and what that behaviors that incentivizes in players. For an example, check out Wolfpacks and Winter Snow, where treasure doesn't exist because caveman, and instead you adventure in large part to find new locations to expand your tribe.

Thanks for the responses. I ask because I'm interested in creating my own game system, and as someone who only experienced 3.5 and 5 D&D, I wanted to find a way to create a balance between a setting that makes combat scary for players, but also rewarding to win by managing resources and strategizing. So I came to this thread to learn more.

PCs would also potentially gain access to new items through adventuring, but the goal of the PCs would most likely be to kill monsters because they are a danger and they hate them, not to obtain money or because someone ordered them to do it. So that's why I asked what would happen if money wasn't a focus.

>Wolfpacks and Winter Snow
Oh fuck yeah, good point. Totally slipped my mind. That does have rewards for killing beasts and making shit out of them as well, doesn't it? And it seems to work great.

It's much more carefully done than just "regular D&D but with the XP for smacking gobbos in the face" though, which was what I was envisioning.

>There might be a GURPs supplement along those lines
www62.zippyshare.com/v/JvtrZaTG/file.html

>How would a DM be able to distinguish between player and character knowledge?
Often, you don't. It's an element of player skill. If the player knows that trolls can't regenerate fire damage, then his character knows it.

It's more difficult if, say, the group is split up, or one character perceives something that the others don't. If you really must isolate who gets what info, I have had players whose characters aren't present step out while we handle a turn.

>Second, how would a DM keep track of player improvement over time?
Some of those "maneuvers" should be situational. The guy was in just the right place at the right time that your swinging chandelier attack worked marvelously. Nobody becomes a trained specialist in chandelier swinging.

Just one user's opinion, but I generally just get more generous with players as they level up.

Yes, the level five fighter should be able to swing from a rope or scare a couple bandits through sheer badassery. The level one guy will have to roll for it.

>And last, can you still have games where the goal is to kill monsters instead of avoid them and get treasure?
Sure. It's your game. Unless you're a purist, "Old School" is really just "rough compatibility with oldschool content", whether it was written in 1984 or 2015.

Start your party at level three so they're durable enough to do more fighting, and set 'em loose to hunt the king of the dire wolves. His pelt is worth 10,000 gold pieces to the right buyer, but it's illegal for anyone but royalty to wear it. The beast's bile can be brewed into a potent Protection from Cold potion.

>So I came to this thread to learn more.
c Talking about playing isn't one-tenth as useful to you as playing.
Getting the mindset is important, but *play* a few OSR systems before you start homebrewing.
Also, reinventing the wheel is a fool's errand. But you're welcome to learn that on your own.

Oh! And here's a book you should read.

>www62.zippyshare.com/v/JvtrZaTG/file.html
thanks mate

youtube.com/watch?v=BllIODb81Q8

Crappy music?