/osrg/ OSR General - Gone Adventuering Edition

>51905947
>seperate learning into arcane and clerical casting
What could that POSSIBLY add if you've removed archetypes?

>51906098
As with all unfilial communists, he named names. Go look.

Have you tried google? Fastpacks are pmuch what you want. Took me less than 30 seconds to find out.

On a scale of 1-10, how interested would people be in a campaign setting based on the premise that in the mid 80's a continent full of magical bullshit just appears in the middle of the pacific. For political reason, east and west both want to keep the other out of it, so each sponsors small mercenary groups to explore and retrieve shit. So you have modern technology up against magic and monsters, and the potential to grow your own mercenary group. This would all be done in a hombrew system that basically a blend of LotFP and the wound mechanics from Song of Swords/Call of the Void. Is this idea terminally retarded or does it sound at least vaguely promising?

6 or 7. It's more than vaguely promising. I wouldn't try to write it, but I'd love to play it. Be careful tho.

>Martial classes gain 2 attacks at level 13+
>Never get more

>Casters keep getting spells, never stop

How is this fair

Spells can be interrupted and spells give initiative penalties.
And you probably retired after level 10.

Sounds tite.

I know this is more /worldbuilding/ territory, but how do you guys map your worlds? Right now I'm literally using craftdesignonline.com/pattern-grid/ and copying a topographical map of Germany.

As a side note how the fuck do rivers even work what is this madness? I never stopped and considered how retarded I was until I googled "where do rivers come from?"

Sounds cool. Give it a synthwave aesthetic, though. Pastels and neons on black.

>martial
>casters

You need to crucify those false edition terms from your vocabulary, they're obscuring your thinking. That's a false dichotomy. How do you know I'm not a human dual-classed fighter/psionicist/invoker of levels 13/14/29?

I've read too many korean WNs to not like this.

I didnt see the new thread announcment till just after i posted or i would have posted it here so i figured it'd be easier to just cut and paste it over to the new thread before anyone noticed - or so i though....
Because SOMEONE will inevitably complain about giving mages access to both clerical and magic user spell lists [MUH BALANCE REEEEEEE and all that].

Because you're level 10/10/10 while everybody else is already level 25

>there's only one class
>some one will complain
>about class balance

Is a six player party too large for Stars Without Number?

I like that 60 second timer thing. Might give it a try soonish.

Pathways into Darkness: Pacific Edition would be sweet.

No.

Really, all I wanted was a setting where you could fire on fleeing primitives races from the door of your helicopter and fight orcs with AK's. Something like a mishmash of Vietnam and the soviet wars in Chechnia and Afghanistan, but with mercenary looters. Fantasy fucking Vietnam, but in a more literal sense.

> modern technology up against magic and monsters
Is a bit different from:
>fight orcs with AK's

But you do you, user.

>I'm to intelligent too google

It was a different time.

Eh, what I was thinking was at the start of the game you'd be up against fantasy creatures that have never seen tech before and as you continue they adapt technologies and eventually you wind up with industrialising orc nations and whatknot.

This thread is 3 hours old, and the previous thread hasn't died yet.

It's been surviving on page 10 for a while then.

In Matt Collville's recent West Marches video, he touched on this. The idea was that one referee would have a consistent world/setting that up to fifty people played in, but each session would involve 5-6 players.

It'd dead now. But it actually bounced *up* from page 11.

Plenty of sessions definitely involved more than 6 players.

For those among you who want to help a humble DM out with his custom magic system;
>Instead of spells, MUs bring along magical items to adventures
>These items are usually charge based; having a limited number of uses, or there is a minor element of recharging or sacrifice to recharge them
>Anyone can use these items, but MUs get the most power and longevity from them.

Any ideas on what the items should be? Right now I'm settling on a basic elemental set even though I'm not usually a fan of elemental magic, but it's pretty simple and easy to understand. Also makes it easy to let magic users manipulate the rods to do alternate uses. Like using a Fire rod to heat something up, or an ice wand to freeze a puddle of water to make someone slip or for a safe crossing, etc.

What do you think? What elements should be used for this kind of system? Or ditch the elements and make it more traditional spell based charges?

If we might riff ourselves some Zelda: the fire rod summons a large, sturdy cube for puzzle'n'shieet. Which is can detonate.

Brogue does something similar.

Don't pick up the Bible, user. It turns the fireball wand into a shitty magic missile wand.

I'd certainly put that under a 'Blunt' or physical damage wand.

Maybe include a 'Cutting' damage wand as well which could cut ropes or paper from far away.

This might be too complicated/storygame for OSR, but the skill system I'm thinking of using:

When success is uncertain, roll 2d6. Each die that shows up as a 4+ gives you one success. If you take a long time and work patiently, roll +1d6. If you are really good at the task at hand, if you have an item that works perfectly to help you, if you roleplay really well, or if you have a really clever / smart / off-the-wall-but-feasible idea, add +1d6. If the task is really hard, -1d6.

0 successes: dramatic failure.

1 success: weak success, things don't go quite as planned.

2 successes: success, you get what you want.

3+ successes: awesome success, you get a little something extra.

I dont think it is too complicated. While I wouldn't use it myself, I am not horrified by the idea and I would play in a game that uses such as system.

I really need some good 'feats' for my homebrew Magician/Magic User class.

Any ideas to accompany regular spellcasting?

How do you make getting injured matter in your games, /osrg/? Players seem to shrug off HP damage as a temporary setback at worst.

Well, it is. Hp is the buffer between "I'm okay" and "I'm dead."
OTOH, getting it healed is difficult until you get a Cleric up to level 2.

If you want a grittier game, make it where PCs who reach low HP [or get crit against] have to roll on the Chart of Creative Injuries which can ONLY be cured by higher level magic.

Zero hp maims you and puts you out of the fight for 2d6 rounds.
You act at ½level for the rest of the adventure, and eat a level drain afterwords.

Negative hp is outright death.

Simply change how healing works.

Here's what I do:
Make it take much longer naturally. Make magical healing cause incredible hunger as a sideeffect so the players have to manage their resources.

Ok so maybe somebody can rate my idea or tell me what's wrong with it. I'm going to test it next week, and without having tested it I really like it in concept.

So armor doesn't affect AC or to-hit rolls. Armor is just an HP pool you wear, and the better the armor, the larger the pool. Sneak attacks by-pass armor, as do some "called shots" which is anything that gives a special effect (it gives you -4 to your attack roll).

I also added a "defensive stance" which consumes a half action to double the dex bonus you get to your AC. My game no longer resembles D&D but it seems interesting. You all can go ahead and tell me why it's shit now if you'd like.

forgot to add: the HP pool from armor is called Protection Points (PP), and when you hit 0 PP you roll to see if your armor breaks or not. If it breaks then it doesn't protect you anymore. If it's fine then you get back your PP after 8 hours of rest.

The break chance of armor depends on what kind of armor it is and how well it was crafted (with better-crafted armor costing more, naturally).

>Just in someone at TSR's eyes thinking they needed to kiddy it down.
They weren't wrong. As you said yourself, it's only from our point of view and for our purposes that it's an inferior product. (Which it definitely is, though.) It was meant to be a *starter* set, remember. TSR's main intention with it ever since Holmes was to funnel players into AD&D; they also acutely needed to start teaching kids to play on their own, without being taught by someone else. From that point of view, Mentzer was infinitely superior to Moldvay -- there's a reason they sold millions of the fucking thing. The extent to which it was never meant to be a table reference first and foremost is illustrated by the fact that they published the Rules Cyclopedia to be just that, for players who had decided to stick with Basic instead of moving to AD&D.

>as do some "called shots"
Called shots are silly.

An attack rolls is not "an attack," but the aggregate result of a minute's worth of fighting.
And you would aim for special weak points, it's already assumed that you go for the best target.

Everybody will immediately break all their armor forever.
You had me right up until your armor breakage rules.

So in defense of called shots: I too understand an attack roll as striking at whatever looks good. The reason a character can take a called shot is that it gets a penalty because the character is purposefully striking somewhere specific rather than at the best target. The -4 representing the fact that you didn't just strike at his helmet where he was open, but that you tried breaking his guard to go for his groin or some other such thing.
I mean maybe you can convince me further as to why this isn't good, I'll admit that I mainly only added it because my players always want to do something special for special effects.

So as far as armor breaking not being cool, we're talking about a 30% chance at breaking armor, and padded armor is immune to breaking (because seriously, how the fuck are you going to break padding?). But if breaking armor at all is bad practice do you think you could explain to me why? I mean I'll take it out if we all agree it's bad but I'm trying to understand why.

this was meant for this:

Have you had a look at the GURPS setting Technomancer? It's a lot like what you're describing.

>TSR's main intention with it ever since Holmes was to funnel players into AD&D
Then why do any of the sets from Expert on even exist?

>sunshine wand is green
>starlight wand is yellow
My autism is strongly convoked.

>but that you tried breaking his guard to go for his groin or some other such thing.
Well, there's two ways that can play out with abstracted combat:
• Roll Poor ⇒ your poor results are the result of your poor idea, so much for that
• Roll Well ⇒ your high damage isn't hitting well, or even the fight going faster, it's your opponent having less opportunities to retaliate while distracted by the pain

>(because seriously, how the fuck are you going to break padding?)
That's the one armor I would reasonably expect to break. At some point gambesons are just tatters.

>I'll admit that I mainly only added it because my players always want to do something special for special effects.
I'd generally say, "make up a ruling" when they try to do something neat and interesting.
If they're doing something merely neat *or* interesting ("I go for his eyes!") there's probably no need.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
More my fault than yours.

Your autism isn't scattered about, It's not being called together.
It was being called to a location (this thread). So it's actually been invoked.

>Your autism isn't scattered about, It's not being called together.
What do you know about it? My autism is all over the place.

But this focused it into a laser beam of sperging out.

Fair enough on the called shots. I'll consider rethinking them.

>That's the one armor I would reasonably expect to break. At some point gambesons are just tatters.

Hm. Interesting point. See I was thinking that no matter how many times you whack cloth with a hammer, it'll kind of still be, but I am pretty confident in my ability to wreck anything other than full-plate with a sledge hammer and some time.

Of course, naturally catching fire and special circumstances like that would burn it, but that's more of an OSR mindset of 'this makes sense and therefor X'

>with a hammer,
Fair enough, hammer trashes most armor.
I was mostly thinking in swords and claws.

Makes sense, I mean you'd think there'd be lots of that going on too.

>Then why do any of the sets from Expert on even exist?
I'll be honest and say I have no idea, and it confuses me too. Maybe they just figured they were leaving money on the table? Or maybe their idea was to enable kids to play "easy D&D" indefinitely until they were old enough for AD&D?

>So armor doesn't affect AC or to-hit rolls. Armor is just an HP pool you wear, and the better the armor, the larger the pool.
All indications are that this is how armor worked in Blackmoor, so you have the best antecedents.

>seriously, how the fuck are you going to break padding?
Literally anything sharp?

Presumably it has something with the Arneson lawsuit.

Almost certainly not. Arneson's lawsuit was to get royalty money from the sales of AD&D core books -- which he got. AFAIK there was never any discussion about Basic (Classic in the official teminology, which I figure is relevant here) D&D, and he always received payouts for these.

Wow, there really is nothing new under the sun. Glad I'm clearly in that old school direction though.

>Literally anything sharp?
Yeeeaaah, as another poster pointed out I'm literally retarded for not considering that battle weapons are generally sharp.

>Maybe they just figured they were leaving money on the table?

Bingo, D&D was a money making machine and anything with the name: AD&D or not was going to put numbers in the bank with little to no risk involved.

We also can't forget that TSR was one clusterfuck of a hydra, and honestly I doubt any of the heads knew what the other was doing. The internal politics at TSR were insane at the time and what actually went down is probably anyone's guess. But I figure nearly everything was ultimately just a race to get money before the implosion.

>probably anyone's guess
There's a bunch of videos of Tim Kask on youtube which offers a lot of insight for those curious about some of the things that happened.

Kask left shortly after Mentzer came on board, though, so he probably doesn't have much insight into that particular era.

(That said, as a general recommendation that video series and his QA thread on Dragonsfoot are both recommended reading for TSR shenanigans)

You are Sisyphus, and you must run B/X for eternity. By the book, to the last rule.

You're allowed to one houserule, also to be used always. Which one?

Ascending AC is not an option, greek deities love them negative numbers

Easy: revised Thief skills.

Maximum hit points at level 1

That's vage. You mean:
revised % values?
switching from d% to another roll?
changing the skills? adding more, removing, merging?
adding a brief text explaining clearly what they do, why they are unique to the thief, and how/when to use them in relation to other rolls and other classes attempting the same, with a couple of examples? imho, THIS
something else? explain

Altered and clarified so people don't sperg over Y ONLY THIF CAN DO????, significantly raised success chances from level 1 for most skills, optionally changed to D6 values rather than d%.

Or just using Warlock-type Thief skills.

While only tangentially related to your post; why can't the thief be the only person capable of doing thief things?

Like why would a burly fighter or wise old wizard know how to pick locks or climb sheer walls and stuff?

I give an exception to stealth/moving silently because I think everyone should be good at that, but the thief should be the best.

burly fighters can climb sheer walls, once they get a grappling hook
wise old wizards open locks when they get the Knock spell

You don't get the thief skills. They are not skills like in a modern game, they are superheroish stuff.
Clerics banish and destroy undead and nobody says anything, but the thief is hiding in a fucking shadow and suddenly everybody wants to do that?

>but the thief is hiding in a fucking shadow and suddenly everybody wants to do that?

Huh, never thought about it like that before.

Because it's shittily explained, so it sounds like it's just the thief standing in a shadow, which any schmoe can do.

>those mage names

This.

Yeah, exactly. The thief's skills are supernatural. When he fails his "moving silently" roll, he doesn't make a loud noise, he just literally wasn't *completely silent*, and instead is detected to the same level other characters trying to sneak would. The thief climbs sheer walls like spider man. He blends into shadows as if invisible.

That's the beauty of B/X, imho. Things either happen, or don't - as common sense dictates. If they don't and your class has something to make it happen, you roll. Rolls decide if you can or don't, but if you don't you can try again after gaining a level.
And that's all you need to know as a player, the rest is written on your sheet.

If you hide behind a barrel, you are hidden. If there's nowhere to hide except a dark place, a thief can try an stunt, hiding there. If light reaches that spot, thief is detected always.
When isn't that obvious, I decide a x in 6 chance with my players (usually 1 or 2) and we roll. Once.

I'm a new convert. I run B/X strictly by the book, ruled like that - and now my games are 3 times better and I'm generally a happier person with more free time on my hands.

I've yet to find a game that works so flawlessly and elegantly as this. And makes me sad that 100% of the OSR games miss the point, and instead just downgrade 3.5 into something a bit simpler that uses cowboy font in the logo.

>why can't the thief be the only person capable of doing thief things?
You misunderstand me; I'm totally comfortable with the Thief having exclusive skills. I've never understood why I ought to assume anybody can pick locks either. However, tons of people in OSR claim thief skills have a chilling effect on other people even sneaking, and they may have a point there. So for the purposes of handling those OSR posters and people like them, I'd like to clarify that as the other posters already mentioned, Thief skills are either specialized knowledge or supernatural in every case.

Despite understanding Hide in Shadows to be effectively supernatural I still think it should start at a higher success rate, though.

Anyone tried Ruins of the Undercity? Does it get better as you advance?
I gave it a try and it's slow, tedious and the tables are poorly organized. You have to make lots of rolls to generate stuff, switch pages constantly to find different tables, plus all the DM's bookeeping, plus playing and player's bookeeping.
Results have been kinda boring too, but I'm playing with 1st levelers.

However, it sounds like a cool method for generating detailed (but nonsensical) dungeons that you can turn into a less nonsensical thing on a second pass -- but still harder and more tedious than making shit up.
If you want to run a gonzo dungeon, that's donjon...

Rivers are one of the hardest things to get right about a map. They're actually super complex, taking into effect things like local rainfall, rain shadows, elevation, and a dozen other things.

If you get your rivers wrong, don't worry, everybody does.

Anyways, I use Hexographer because it works well enough and the results aren't hideous. You can always freehand a map and then superimpose a hex grid over it later in paint.net or any image editor that supports layers.

Honestly, unless you're intentionally including a hexcrawl in your game a freehand map with a real-life style scale (1" = 20 miles, or something) is more than good enough.

Just found this curio while googling for Dark Spire:

success-corp.co.jp/software/ds/genmunotou/download_sheet.html

They made this sheets to be used while playing the game in your DS, it seems.

BTW, what edition of D&D would be Dark Spire? Feels like a mix of Moldvay, Holmes and AD&D to me.

>tfw no-one knows about bravd and the weasel

>No, because you need general living stuff as well.
If they hadn't blown all their money on swords and shit, they wouldn't be desperate enough to go into the dungeon.

remove thief

Why?

because it's a question about being forced to play b/x for eternity, but I'm an lbb grog at heart.

OSR-adjacent at best, perhaps, but anyone have the Hacklopedia of Beasts? It's a Hackmaster 5e thing, and I don't like Tellene much, but it still looks interesting.

Something, something, tremors through an astral plane.

Gimme a good OSR system that isn't fantasy.

>OSR that isnt fantasy

for what purpose?

Define fantasy.

Both of you retards know exactly what I mean.

c (c also, the poster they were replying too)

Is the Complete Book of Necromancers in the mega?

Actually I do not, because I could say Mutant Future and you would claim that it is fantasy, which at a point it is, being a sort of science fantasy.

You should try looking.

I went to go look for him, and I can't find it either.