/osrg/ OSR General - Horses Lit on Fire Edition

Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General thread.

>Links - Includes a list of OSR games, a wiki, scenarios, free RPGs, a vast Trove of treasure!
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>OSR Blog List - Help contribute by suggesting more.
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>Previous thread:
THREAD QUESTION:
>What's the most clever use of pets/animals you've ever seen in your games?

Other urls found in this thread:

goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/03/1d135-osr-style-challenges.html
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I"ll DM for the first time and I have six hours to prepare everything, any tips?

Anyone got any advice on my homebrew here?

I've got good responses, bad responses, and have been working on it touch and go for a while now. All I really need is an equipment section and making MU 'feats' and I'll have a good player manual for my game. I'd love any feedback, especially on those two needed elements.

Read the AD&D DMG (by Gygax)
Make sure you and your players are on the same page (have the same expectations, etc.)
Try to settle player disputes out-of-game.
If you have time, read part of Master of the Game (by Gygax)

Don't hesitate to retcon (but run changes by your players first)
If you haven't introduced a setting element yet, your changes to it aren't even retcons

>for the first time
useamoduleuseamoduleuseamodule
>six hours to prepare
useamoduleuseamoduleuseamodule
Read through your module ahead of time

>Read the AD&D DMG (by Gygax)
lol

GM's word is law (but don't be afraid to ask second opinions from your players if they aren't assholes)

Keep options focused: No allowing every BECMI class or AD&D race, although you can make some exceptions to suit your tastes.

Keep any setting ideas concrete enough to convey an image to players (Japan but with psychics and bugmen) but broad enough to expand as play goes on.

Use a module (I like B4). Read it before you run it.

>useamoduleuseamoduleuseamodule
How do I use modules' maps? Should I shown them to my players, or just describe them? Maps like the one in In Search of the Unknown are huge, I'm nore that even reading I will be able to remember over 100 areas, and stopping to check them might slow the game too much.

>Maps like the one in In Search of the Unknown are huge, I'm nore that even reading I will be able to remember over 100 areas, and stopping to check them might slow the game too much.
I mean obviously don't use a huge one then hey
Don't show them the maps, unless they in-game acquire a map. Make them draw their own as they go.

>>Read the AD&D DMG (by Gygax)
>lol
I don't care what system you run. OSR or not, it's a must read.
A dudes who's run shittons of campaigns crammed it full of tips on running campaigns.

Always always always describe it.
AT LEAST one person in your group finds it cathartic to draw patterns of straight lines.

Run Tower of the Stargazer. Easy as heck to read, set up and play.

He has 6 hours to prepare, and you want him to spend that time reading the DMG? He should probably start with the very very basics, that is making sure the session is fun.
>So the dungeon is only partially drawn and I haven't decided the monsters yet, but I know how to use the harlot table and why not wearing helmets will kill you! Let's play!

So I guess this is the best place to ask this:
Why would you ever use a roll under mechanic? I don't see any advantage at all.

My group is using B/X and they want me to homebrew a Bard class for them. Should I just take from AD&D or is there a good B/X Bard brew available?

To settle random shit not covered in the rules explicitly.

"Do I recognize the author of this book?"
*rolls equal/under INT*
"Yes. And you know this book is fiction."

There's a pretty wide chasm ahead of you. You could MAYBE just make the jump with your gear.
*rolls equal/under DEX*
"You make the jump within inches."

"I wanna try to push this big ass statue over"
*rolls equal/under STR*
"You manage to push it over and discover a small hatch underneath."

It makes higher stats or (God forbid) higher skills more meaningful. If you're rolling 3d6 on a roll under system a 12 as opposed to an 11 for a stat is a pretty big deal, even if it doesn't explicitly add a modifier or anything.

pg. 17

But why roll under instead of over? Would counting a 12 in dex as a +12 bonus to a d20 roll just get cumbersome or something?

Thanks. I had this downloaded but never looked inside for some reason.

...because the higher your Stat, the better the success rate. A stat of 12 would have a 60% chance of success. An 18 would have a 90% chance.

Your other method would require a DC (ala 3.pf, DCC etc) which a lot of people don't enjoy using.

As far as I understand it, rolling under lets you know what you need to roll in advance. Equal to or under your stat, whenever you need to do something on the fly. With a d20 + whatever roll, you need to whip up a difficulty, and then you either need to make note of that for consistent future use or improvise every time and run the risk of getting bitched out for being inconsistent.

>Would counting a 12 in dex as a +12 bonus to a d20 roll just get cumbersome or something?
...What? Why would you assume rolling over is some kind of standard to the point where where you think doing it *less* intuitively makes *more* sense?

Look, it's real simple: the most obvious way to check a 3-18 score is to roll d20 (or 3d6, like the other guy said) and see if you roll that value or less. There's no reason to convert it to some roll-over-with-bonus-and-DC thing, so why would you? Why bother?

You can do

>roll + stat > 20

Same math

it's extra steps. roll dice, compare number
as opposed to set difficulty, roll dice, add number, compare.
sure it's not a lot, but over the course of a session or campaign it adds up.

>=20

Rolling under seems extremely unintuitive to me. I would prefer it if everything went in the same direction.
See that makes sense.

Well, you are dumb then.

I miss those old threads where people would post all their charts and tables.

Mostly I miss them because I have none that weren't made for 3.autism. Post random tables and shit pls

...

>Rolling under seems extremely unintuitive to me.
How the fuck is this even possible, are you trolling?
It can't get more intuitive than "look at the number on the die".

Does anyone have any good one-shot (or two-shot) dungeon-crawls or hexcrawls?

For people who don't care that much about rules or the variants, just some basic D&D fun.

>unintuitive
>literally one dice roll with no math

ok

It's not intuitive to have rolling high be good sometimes and bad other times. This is really simple guys.
Especially considering that the only example you have of a use for rolling under can be converted very easily.

Six hours is enough time to skim the DMG, read choice sections, skim several modules, pick and fully read one, take a shower, watch half a movie, then reread the chosen module.

I inserted this into a hexcrawl I was running. My players loved it.

So by that logic, why are you ok with the Thief's skills being a percentile roll-under? Or basic skills like Search, Force Door, etc all being a d6 roll under?

I understand that you want stuff to work the same way, and I have that same feelings when I read and design games. That said, I think most players grok "roll under stat" faster than "roll, add your stat, check if it's 20 or over".

Never liked percentile rolls, always thought the d20 had enough variation. Also never understood why some of them required a d6 roll while others used percentile.

Really most OSR mechanics are garbage that leave me wondering what the justification for them is.
It's because all you retards only know how to ape the older editions of D&D.

>Herein lies Kelkersal,
>traitor and bastard,
>a wizard quite capable
>but easily bettered.

>Once my apprentice
>he thought himself stronger,
>but with a flick of my finger
>the man was no longer.
>With two dozen daggers,
>his body I skewered,
>then orcs smeared his carcass
>with dung and manure.

>I left his corpse for the maggots and rot,
>after I’d taken the treasure he’d got.
>All graverobbers be well advised,
>there’s absolutely no treasures inside.
>Just make yourself bleed and then add a smear,
>and you’ll have access to see what’s in here

Hah, cute. THanks.

Most aspects were heavily, heavily tested. And while I much prefer LotFPs take on a unified skillset (all d6) it's still just a variation of the old mechanics.

If you want a game with nothing but roll-overs to make you happy, I recommend DCC. It's quite fun.

Which of these is easier to grok?
• Add a random number and an arbitrary number, then compare the result another arbitrary number
• Compare a random number to an arbitrary number

That's not unintuitive, that's unfamiliar.

I'm actually just going to kill myself right now, but thanks anyway.

loot dibs

We used to be creative, guys.

>Also never understood why some of them required a d6 roll
Non-thief skills are (sensibly) d6 because you don't need a high range of variability (it's the other stuff that's weird).
Listening is d6 because (unlike every other thief ability, which is thief-exclusive/supernatural/insurance) the thief is just doing (well trained) mundane listening.

>while others used percentile.
Gygax aped the percentile rolling from a guy who took notes of some else's (the Warlock guy?) shitty homebrew.

>always thought the d20 had enough variation.
Either you missed the question or you're pivoting.
>Never liked percentile rolls,
But why aren't you upset that percentiles are roll under?
Why is 95% a 95% chance of success (roll under)?
Why isn't 20% an 80% chance if success (roll over)?

d20 Variant for Roll-Over thief shit.

Why roll over when every other check is roll under?

I really like how different systems, using the same basic ideas, all manage to capture different vibes when playing.

DCC gives you an over-the-top, gonzo Sword & Sorcery vibe.
LotFP nails it's weird alternate historical vibe.
BFRPG emulates and improves upon B/X perfectly for a 'classic' game.
Mutant Future unifies B/X and GW into one cohesive, simple game.
Into The Odd strips everything down to a strange experience ala LotFP.

...

Does anyone have the LotFP gun rules? I can't seem to find them in the trove. Am I just an idiot?

They're in the Appendix section of the latest Players Core Book (p. 157)

Those spells are not creative. More then half of them could be covered by prestidigitation and the other half are just toned down versions of regular spells.

thanks bae

We still are, or at least we're trying.
I did some math and thinking on balancing two threads ago, and nobody responded to my post, not even to tell me how stupid it was. If you want to help with that, I'd love to hear feedback.

tl;dr
Roll under works well for probabilities.
Roll over works well for degrees of success.

You seem to have missed this, maybe I just presented it poorly:
>Why is 95% a 95% chance of success (roll under)?
>Why isn't 20% an 80% chance if success (roll over)?
But what I was trying to get at is that roll under is more intuitive when dealing with probability.


If you need to roll at or under a 3 in a d8, you have a 3-in-8 chance to do it.
If you want to roll at or over a 9 on a d12, you have a 4-in-12 chance to do it.

By the same token, it is always more intuitive to modify the target number when dealing with probabilities.
+3-in-20 chance of success could manifest in several ways, but folding it into to target number (DC-3 for roll over, DC+3 for roll under hey look! one is more intuitive than the other) abstracts it into your probability (because target number IS probability in roll under).


While roll under is good for probability, roll over can be good for degrees if success.
When using a d6 to deal damage you have a 6-in-6 chance of dealing at least one damage, and a 1-in-6 chance if doing at least six.
But the finding the probability (concentration) is faster than finding the degree of success (concentration AND rule memorization), so it makes more sense to pre-map the degrees if success (1 ⇒ 1 damage, 2 ⇒ 2 damage, etc.) than it does to pre-map the probabilities (1 ⇒ 1-in-6 chance, 2 ⇒ 2-in-6 chance, etc.)

I don't really understand your notation or your purpose.

>5 should meet 1d4, 8 should meet 1d6, 5 should meet 1d8, 2 should meet 1d10
What does "meet" mean?

I think you're trying to mathematically set the number of hits it takes for monsters to down people, while providing statistically-predictable variation in the monsters, but if so, that seems a bit... overly controlled. Like, I understand the concept of aiming for a particular range, but quantizing things like this only seems appropriate for some sort of randomly-generated dungeon computer game. In a standard RPG, other considerations are going to cause you to deviate often enough from the carefully-calculated numbers that it seems to me that that level of precision is ultimately pointless.

I honestly didn't know what to make of it then, or now.

It goes in waves. It seems like the people making a fair amount of OC are busy or otherwise not doing so. Could be because the last few months sucked, could be other things.

OSR blogs are a mainstay, here is more of a testing ground for people who don't have blogs yet. Maybe new people will learn to play and start making things. That takes time. Also helps having enough people at the same time who are making things, playing enough to have shit to talk about, and are interested in enough similar things to comment.

That being said, currently there's a few people making their own homebrew tests, The Rouges March, Garden, the as of yet unnamed one, Terrors & Wonders. Those need people to try them. Its easier to crank out random tables. The zine needs someone to organize it, no one's stepped up. Happens. Might come back, might not.

Just bitching doesn't help much though. Play a few games, make a few things, come back with them.

I'll admit that I made it in a sleep-deprived stupor (which I happen to be in right now as well, so I'll probably go to sleep after writing this), but basically I got so fascinated by that user's idea that I tried to find out if it actually would make sense in the game and not just as a guideline.

The idea was to figure out which damage die would be enough to kill a PC at different hit dice and levels within the indicated "hits allowed" as fast as possible.
So a cleric at level 1 has an average of 3-4 hp and should die after 1-3 hits, which means that on average, a hit with a weapon doing 1d4 damage can potentially kill them immediately. That one is pretty obvious, but it might not be as obvious that a level 8 fighter with average hp should assume that there's a possibility that they can die after 4 hits when fighting an enemy that does 1d10 damage.

So basically I just kept going with that math, and I started seeing a pattern in the damage dice which I thought was cool. And then I got a silly idea of how dungeons could be balanced after that.

Which OSR system nails each genre best?

>Hi-Fantasy
>Lo-Fantasy
>Post-Apocalyptic
>Sci-Fi
>Misc (Modern Day, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, etc)

>Hi-Fantasy
You've come to the wrong thread.
>Lo-Fantasy
The little brown books.
>Post-Apocalyptic
The little brown books, using it's own world generation rules.
>Sci-Fi
The little brown books, using tables from Stars Without Numbers.
>Misc (Modern Day, Steampunk, Cyberpunk, etc)
The little brown books.

...

>replying to a troll
For real, when he revealed himself to be the
>OSR mechanics are garbage
guy, you should've just cut the wire.

I mean, it's kind of neat in an autistic way, but I don't really know that there's much of a way for other folks to interface with it other than just nodding and going: "neat". If you want it to be more accessible / useful to people, you might want to use it as the basis of a random dungeon generator of some sort. Come up with random tables of monsters that fit the stats (probably just tweaking existing monsters in most cases). Do that for maybe a half dozen different levels and pair it with random treasure tables and dungeons will basically run themselves. Hell, you could probably even go DM-less for the most part, and just let reaction rolls and morale checks govern monster behavior. If you wanted to get fancy, you could include random room traits (filled with water, full of cobwebs, very dusty, used as a garbage dump and/or bathroom, brightly lit by some light source like wall lamps, littered with bodies/carcasses, etc.).

Anyway, that's all an incredible amount of work, but I'm just musing about what a user-end application of your math would look like.

>Those spells are not creative.
Show us your homebrewed spells

>More then half of them could be covered by prestidigitation
Pretty sure literally none of those things are doable with Prestidigitation BTB

You don't think djinn, dragons and level 5 spells are high fantasy?

Seriously, just use the little brown books, starting all PCs on level 8

>You don't think djinn, dragons and level 5 spells are high fantasy?
That's high magic, not high (epic) fantasy,

ur wrong my dude

>starting all PCs on level 8
start them level 3, but hand out lots of high end scrolls n'shit

pics or ur wrong my dude

I think I'll do what you suggested, and I'll come back with it if I actually manage to get anything done. Thanks for the feedback, I'll try to do a bit more work on stuff before I present it in the generals in the future so people don't have to scratch their heads and be confused over what I'm doing.

>I'll try to do a bit more work on stuff before I present it in the generals in the future so people don't have to scratch their heads and be confused over what I'm doing.
It's not like you're hurting anything as it is; you just may not get much feedback. Pure math, in particular, can be a bit hard for people to plug into, even folks who might do similar calculations on their own (though, depending on the subject matter, sometimes a graph can help).

This. I just want to add to the chorus of anons saying they read the post, thought "yeah, that's pretty neat I guess, don't know what to do with it, though" and so didn't respond. You definitely weren't shitting up the thread or anything like that, though.

Thread suggestion for Anons who want to do something creative: a couple threads back that Prison of the Hated Pretender short module got a lot of positive attention. How about spitballing some similar small, essentially or mainly non-lethal/combat scenarios or locations? I know for my part I find it much easier to fall back on fighty shit that the players then need to overcome by nonfighty cleverness and/or sneaky ways to get the upper hand in battle, I'd love to be able to run a pile of things of that nature, where it's an adventure but not necessarily lethal at all. (I figure as long as you still HAVE lethal encounters the tension will still be kept up of something that could be potentially dangerous, even if it turns out to be just creepy or whatever. Ah, now I'm just getting too wordy, I think.)

what are some games that dont have the mechanics of OSR but have the spirit?

DCC

Final Fantasy classes for OSR gameplay? I wanna make all the FFV classes like this but probably wont.

see retro phaze

Torchbearer (borderline board-game with a narrative bent)
Dungeon World (i.e. shitty Torchbearer)
DCC (but it's "OSR" as content converts easily enough)
4e (if you lay of the social elements)

Fighter ⇒ Fighting-Man
Thief ⇒ Thief
Black Mage ⇒ Magic-User
White Mage ⇒ Cleric
Red Mage ⇒ Bard
Black Belt ⇒ Mystic
...that's 6-out-of-22 straight out the gate.
I sincerely wish you the best of luck with Blue Mage.

Holy fuckerel, those are good saves the Hunter gets. Did you think that through in terms of gameplay or is it meant to represent some sort of ability the class gets in FFV?

DCC, Mazes & Minotaurs, Gamma World 7E, and Microlite 74 all come to mind

>Hi-Fantasy
AD&D 2e with Arcane Age splats.

>Post-Apocalyptic
Gamma World

Dungeon World
World of Dungeons

>Red Mage ⇒ Bard
Elf, innit?

Stole them straight from the Halfling in LotFP.

Final Fantasy (NES) was riffing Advanced D&D, not Basic.

>Blue Mage

One of the very few things that 3.5 got right was the Totemist class, which was basically a Blue Mage.

before I answer that question, mind telling us what your personal definitions for High & Low Fantasy are?

Hi: LotR, Elder Scrolls
Lo: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan

Aside from situations where lethal force isn't socially or legally acceptable, monster imperviousness tends to be the scenario that I most use to force people to be clever--a robot or golem that's immune or nearly immune to standard weapons, for instance.

I'm not a big fan of FATE's narrative style (not that there's anything inherently wrong with it, in and of itself, but it tends to conflict with my sense of immersion), but I do think that the idea that the scene itself has aspects you can invoke is interesting. Without literally borrowing the mechanic, I think you could still run with the idea that there's something special about each fight. Basically, you could upgrade monster toughness by a bit, but have there be some exploitable thing in almost every encounter. This can range from something like stressing that goblins are sensitive to bright light (getting maybe -2 in broad daylight, but also -1 in the face of bright torchlight) to slippery, sloping ground that can be exploited (using missile weapons and forcing the enemy to scrabble up a pebble-covered slope to get at you) to recognizing that a particularly fierce orc is the only thing inspiring the rest of his peers to keep fighting. Now, all of this is the kind of shit that happens naturally, but if you were to specifically assign a special circumstance to each encounter, these scenarios would likely be stressed more and would come up more often.

Anyway, I'm just babbling now, and none of that really has anything to do with non-lethal combat, but it does have to do with making combat more varied and tactical.

Totemist was nice and flavorful, but it wasn't a Blue Mage.

>

>LotR
That is Epic Fantasy.

>Elder Scrolls
This is somehow in the right place. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Conan
Those are Swords and Sorcery.

I just found this today. Its a huge list of weird/interesting/challenging things to use that aren't just combat encounters.

>goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/03/1d135-osr-style-challenges.html

Ok.

>All bard hit dice (and additioanl hit poiunts) are additions to existing hit dice -- none are lost for becoming a bard.
...what in the fucking what? Whhhhhhy. An 18 Con Superhero/Thief/M. Bard 23rd gets like 147hp (8d10+11d6+66)

Red mage would be the fighter/magic-user, so elf yeah.

c

You can play a fighter/magic-user, don't be dense.

>prestidigitation
so remind me when that spell was added? IIRC at least one of the ad&ds had a whole bunch of minor cantrips that got rolled up into one spell in a later rulebook, but your bog standard 3e Least Wish didn't exist in the good editions of d&d.

>Hi-Fantasy
Godbound.

For everything else, LBB.

>Grizzly Graveyard of Grimgortha

>Grizzly

I'm still mad there's no bears in that.

>so remind me when that spell was added?
2e
>IIRC at least one of the ad&ds had a whole bunch of minor cantrip
Three articles in the Dragon.

>Morlock books ignite when exposed to light.
>You must find a way to read them.
Jeez.

i think those were what became the list of cantrips published in the 1E unearthed arcana.

So I've been working on a module lately. I found a dude to draw a view of the dungeon for me. What do you guys think of it?