Welcome to the OSR General thread! Sadly, the MEGA Trove is (still) down right now

>is it possible to adapt them to Basic?
>is it possible to adapt X to Y?
The answer is always yes.
>What changes are needed for this?
Depends on the kit. Probably do nothing or lower some numbers?

Give me some more details, like
>setting
>splats allowed
>tone
etc.

Just throwing this out there, but Basic has a lot of official classes already.

pandius.com/becmicls.html

And a pile of unofficial ones.

>setting
Wilderlands of High Fantasy
>splats allowed
Mostly anything, though I'm iffy on Skills & Powers and the Elf Handbook
>tone
Closer to serious than comedy, but overall kind of in the middle. The GMT game has a slight dash of horror. There are dinousaurs and hawkmen, as you can tell if you know the setting.

The EST game seems to be centering around following a treasure map to the ends of the earth (but things can change). The GMT one has an inn with at least one room full of portals, and its folks full of quests.

>is it possible to adapt them to Basic?
Fuck yeah, possible and easy.

>What changes are needed for this?
*Needed*, almost none. On the other hand though many kits are mechanically shit as written, for AD&D as well as for Basic, so if you want to enjoy them maximally in play you'll probably want to revise the rules contents.

Is there a backup of the trove? I get a notice that it isn't available anymore

No one knows, most people I think have at least some pdfs, but the complete trove I don't think so

Clean-up-the-trove guy had his own copy, and surely somebody else out there made a mega account and pushed the handy "import" button.
(I did at one time, but then I started running the Traveller General's archive, and a few other things, and suddenly I needed more space.)

No one who uses the general uses the Discord.
No one who uses the Discord uses the general.
There is a Discord has a link in the OP.

Trove guy (et al.) makes his nest there.

How do you make a good OSR setting?

By starting the party in an inn in the middle of empty unspecified void, then rolling the landscape at random as they walk.

Greyhawk way, baby.

Make it weird and use lots of random tables

I see. Thank you.

are there any vidya that do that? and is that the same as 'procedurally' generated shit?

How is the discord chat? Some discord channels from tg are so fast I just can't get into it

How much is AS&SH from AD&D?

In theory, a human running the game creates a filter to the random tables, either by tinkering with the tables themselves (changing probabilities, making their own tables) or coming up with the logic to them ('why are three sad goblins hanging out in this alley with a bag of broken glass?').

How much different is AS&SH from AD&D?*

>No one who uses the general uses the Discord.
>No one who uses the Discord uses the general.

Yeah, you'd think the guy who runs the General's Trove would show up in the general once in a while instead of hanging out in an unrelated voice chat room constantly advertised by and for spergos, but I guess not.

thanks user that makes more sense

Here's a game designer, Ken Hite, talking about Random Tables way back in 2010, when the OSR was still a really new thing and a lot of this stuff didn't have pages and pages of argument and counter-argument regarding its value. (He'd just written some pulp stuff for Savage Worlds that featured some pretty solid Random Tables.) There's probably a better summation somewhere, but this is one of the first I saw, so I tend to default to it.

>But all of this is only half the equation, the player half. The other half is the GM half: how do you get them to pick up the setting and wield it like a battleaxe? (Or a warhammer.) Gary Gygax gave us the answer. And then he immediately hid it from us. The answer is the Random Encounter Table, or Wandering Monster Table, or Random Dungeon Generator, and all those other wondrous time-killers in the back of the DMG. By stocking those tables, paying some attention to the probabilities, and adding modifiers here and there, you create an immediate, accessible method for GMs to understand your setting in the most visceral way possible: by co-creating it with you. They only have to read the setting bits they've generated, and they have a story and an adventure.

What do you do with a character who has become crippled and effectively useless in the dungeon, but who is still alive?

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/osr-game-session-2.html

Tito the Toadling just lost a leg, and is unlikely to go on another adventure for the rest of his life.

The character is helped back out by the rest of the party, recovers in a safe place, retires with his share of the final loot, and becomes an NPC. Later he'll get to give information or even quests.

Just because he can't go on an adventure doesn't mean he couldn't be a part of the game.

I'm down with it user. Is the only critique of Random Encounter Tables and stuff the lack of cohesion they can sew? I've never tuned into the back and forth over why randomized stuff would be good or bad, but as an optional tool, it seems like a pretty legit thing to draw from.

I like the other guy's answer, too, but it sounds to me like it's time for the party to track down a crazy witch up in the hills who will fashion him a new limb if they assist her with some task that really shouldn't be done.

The lack of cohesion is only a problem if you can't improvise around them, provide explanation and backstory, mold the results into the world.

If that's the case, you might want to stick to published 5e adventures.

This is excellent advice.

Steal tables from everywhere. Build your own. Build a lot of them.

A good random table also reveals the tone of an area or setting. You don't need to roll on this table: udan-adan.blogspot.ca/2015/10/random-encounter-tables-streets-of.html
to learn a ton about this guy's setting and city and the people in it.

Excellent quote.

Build some of your world, but leave most of the map blank. Design tools that allow you to quickly fill in the blank spots with interesting stuff, but don't preplan more than required.

Parsimony. Just because it exists in the rules, don't assume it has to exist in your setting. "Fantasy kitchen sinks" are not your friend.

Also? If you're gonna be in a city, get yerself a copy of Vornheim. Very useful in the Random Generation sense. (Yes, yes, Zak S is a howling madman, but a lot of people are, that shouldn't stop anyone from enjoying their work.)

Add "Tito the Toadling (one leg), 4 hp" (cf.) to the hirelings list.
They kludge a crutch, hunch their back, and start hauling treasure.

Tito's old player rolls a new dude and justifies meeting the party mid-dungeon.

I agree that in a heroic game, that would be the best plan.

Problem is... nobody really liked Tito. He was... ok. He dealt zero damage and looted zero valuables during his one trip to the dungeon. The party knew him for less than 48hrs.

That might happen too.

I'm thinking of having Tito open his own gambling den and acting as a shady rumour broker and, potentially, antagonist or ally.

Nah I like the lack of cohesion, it's shit like that which inevitably feels more 'real' despite the absurdity. Kind of a 'truth is stranger then fiction' sort of thing. I just never thought to randomize quite so much. Looks like i need to unearth more random tables.

I do like the phrase "howling madman."

I'd describe his stuff as 60% useful, 40% self-absorbed wankery, but that 60% is very, very good stuff.

Vornheim is very useful, but, like anything else, it's a thing you have to learn.

Haha, Tito only had 6 HP to start with. Poor Tito.

And I don't think any power on heaven or earth could get Tito back into the Tomb of the Serpent Kings or any dungeon deeper than a root cellar. He had a bad time. He lost a leg, a toe, and his shirt and got about 30 silver pieces out of it.

I've never seen a player roll such terrible characters. Tito's life in the game started badly, only got worse, and ended in grisly and unprofitable fate.

Yeah, that's a good way to put it; also applies to False Machine and Goblin Punch, a couple of the other bloggers in that vein. Some really cool uses of imagination, but at a certain point they get way up their own ass. (I was all about the weird Eclipsed Kingdom they were making, even with the Azathoth wankery, until they were like 'there's no metal, everything's made of mice and feathers' and I was just done.)

Yup. Steal what you like ignore the rest. Adapt, rewrite, cobble together, print out, amend, and tie with string.

Though I do think that fey with "our strongest enchantments only work on the flimsiest materials, so we build swords and shields out of dried leaves and feathers" is a neat twist.

I haven't read Z S's books (but I'm thinking about running MOTBM) but I don't think he reaches those levels.
False Machine is great but 91% wankery.

What's your opinion on Dungeon of Signs? I love his adventures and +1 sword elaboration, but everything else is kind of a hit or miss.

You better shut your whore mouth.

Centerra is literally my setting-fu. Don't talk shit. I cry myself to sleep every night knowing I will never get to play in a game where I can be a Gilean patriotic swordsman of Noth.

Oh, there's some excellent wankery around: dndwithpornstars.blogspot.ca/2017/03/the-outstanding-questionsthe-nazi-games.html

Mostly blog-related though. The books are more... focused. A little less of the "cleverest man in the room" syndrome creeps into them.

Every blog is going to be hit or miss. There aren't many writers that produce consistent brilliance, because even if they did, it wouldn't be brilliance for every part of their audience.

So... run it?

I've hacked together a... more playable version of the GLOG and I'm using it now, so it's completely doable.

I feel like out of the trifecta, Goblin Punch just said "Welp, I'm already balls deep, let's see where the hooker bottoms out." And went full steam ahead on the weird gaming. Definitely the most tolerable of the three.

I kind of miss wermspittle. That was a fun blog.

>"Welp, I'm already balls deep, let's see where the hooker bottoms out.

Is... is that a thing people often say?

They do when writing OSR blogs full of weird fiction!

Good to know.

And it's not just weird fiction. It's also weird mechanics and weird side tangents about fruit and SJWs and the history of the rowboat, depending on the author's preferences and desire for conflict. OSR blogs are a real weird ecosystem.

Weird but glorious. I have a folder full of my favorite posts. And my rss feeds are constantly being pruned and revised. So much wonderful insanity out there.

In D&D black box, you can only do one thing in a combat round. You either move, or shoot, or cast, or attack.

Is this fucked beyond any help?
It certainly inverts initiative (going last is better), and makes charging into melee a dumb move - since you can't attack after closing in but the enemy can, in they lost initiative.

OTOH, it's a piss easy system. Sounds perfect for introducing new players but - can you play this without houserules?

One houserule is this: take initiative from AD&D - i.e. you don't know who goes first and who goes last.

It's my favorite initiative system anyway because it really gets just how absolutely chaotic a battle can be.

Hadn't read the blog post yet.
Tito demands (but, if denied, cannot press for) his share of the treasure.
Then lives on what he can get for as long as he can. Maybe tries to pickup a liveable trade.
He still curses the Paladin's (percieved) selfishness 'til the end of his days.
Tito's PC rolls a new dude.

I'm not familiar with AD&D at all but my only interest on the black box is that it's even simpler than B/X - nuff said.

If it's unplayable I'll simply use/adapt B/X rules (move+attack).

>And my rss feeds are constantly being pruned and revised.
Give me your list.

Have you ever played the original NES Final Fantasy? Remember how you first assigned actions for each of your characters, and only then the turn would go through with no further input on your part over who goes when?

It's like that.

Oh cool thanks. That's a lot more oncise than the 20+ pages pdf I just found (A.D.D.I.C.T.kek).
I always declare actions before initiative when there's simultaneous initiative.

But in this system that wouldn't work. For BX it's perfect and cuts down on tactical metagame cheese, but in the black box:
* higher initiative goes first
- move, missile, spells, melee. In this order.
* other group goes
And you can choose what to do at any moment. As phases advance, your options are reduced - it sounds appealing to me, for some reason. Lots of emphasis on movement/positioning, I guess.

Tangent, but I can't believe so few people plays the black box or Rules Cyclopedia. Finding decent info/advice about it is almost impossible.

Oh yeah, I forgot that he technically is owed a share.

The party has been very, very bad about honestly accounting for loot (as tradition demands) so his final share might suffer from Hollywood Accounting, if he gets it at all.

The new dude is a Slugling Illusionist Wizard. Should be a good time.

dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=46327

Broken.
It seems like you could bandaid it flippiing initiative (winner goes last).

>Dungeon of Signs
His adventures and especially maps are stupid good. I liked his boat-dungeon idea. If he has other stuff I kind of didn't even notice.

>In D&D black box, you can only do one thing in a combat round. You either move, or shoot, or cast, or attack.
Are you sure you're not just misreading that? Or, if you're the guy from last thread, that the Spanish translator didn't have a spergsplosion in that section? The way it works in RC is that your entire group all move, then shoot, then cast, then melee on your initiative, then the opponents do the same thing. The way I'm about 90% sure it was MEANT to work is that BOTH sides move, then both shoot, then cast, then melee, with the initiative roll as a tiebreaker within phases only.

Either way, it's not a case of "you can only do one of these things in a round". It's the *order they happen in*.

I don't want to confuse things too much so I chucked this in a spoiler, but I run RC for preference and the way I like to run it personally is the phase order shoot, move, melee, cast and both sides acting in each phase before moving to the next. Makes the most sense to me.

>I run RC for preference
Quite the rarity.

It's explain in 's link.
Black box, the English version at least, "simplifies" a lot of terminology.
By the powers of poor editing, unrelated concepts share names.

You're supposed to be able to do one thing in melee or several things in combat.
Black box recognizes melee and combat as seperate, but calls both "combat."

100% sure. Combat phases are per group, yeah, but each character has only one action per round. If you move you can't attack, etc.
It seems RC says this, and a few pages later 'you can move and then attack in your go'. Whatever. But the black box (and all guides/examples it had) use one action/round.

See this link to see what happens in practice.
I'm extremely intrigued by this type of combat - sounds so so simple that I'm tempted to use it, broken as is.

I don't care too much about the order, honestly. Even if there's simultaneous initiative, I care more about action economy than the order.

Has anyone tried to put in more video-gamey combat systems (such as Fire, Cold, Shock for elements) in OSR?

Obviously for resources it might screw it up, but it could be done with some good balancing. Maybe sacrificing a spell slot gives you mana or something, or counts as like 4 mini-combat elemental spells.

Didn't you ask a few threads ago? Or maybe this is a recurring thing. Idk.

somebody doesn't like drawing girls

Maybe in this thread. On the wider OSR internet I don't seem to be nearly alone in considering it the single best version of D&D. Copies in decent condition also go for a lot on Ebay, Nobleknight and such.

Not sure what you mean? The characters are two male toadlings, a male frogling, a male human, and a female fishling with a charisma of 6, so...

Can't blame the artist.

Occultesquefag here, did a little polishing on an older mini-adventure I did here a while ago and threw it back up on the blog. Here's the PDF if anyone wants it.

Does Dark Dungeons actually do a good job of cloning it or should one go with straight RC? I've been thinking of moving to it for awhile but everyone here just talks B/X.

DD uses ascending AC and lets demi-humans level up 'til 36, other than that it's pretty similar to RC

>Does Dark Dungeons actually do a good job of cloning it or should one go with straight RC?
I actually have no idea, I just have a copy of the RC itself and have never touched the clone.

Who else here has a physical binder of random useful pages? What do you have in it?

I don't play physical games sadly.

Does the Goblin Punch guy ever come to this thread?
The "typical falling speed is constant" is sort of an indicator that he hasn't do physics in a while, but doing the kinematics for this spell:
The impact is 1/10th as normal and your fall take 10x as long, right?

I copy tables from blogs or Veeky Forums posts and print them, then organize them roughly by:

Spells
Treasure
Locations
Adventures
Encounters
Traps
Misc

I don't think Arnold goes on Veeky Forums, but he's had like... five versions of Feather Fall.

The one I'm currently using for his hack reads:

Feather Fall
R: touch T: [dice] creatures or objects D: 0
If you would take fall damage, you can cast this spell as a reaction to negate it.

Ignores the kinematics entirely, because that seems annoying and tedious to deal with during play.

>I don't play physical games sadly.

That's what your girlfriend told me last night.

Alternatively:

>I don't play physical games sadly.

Great! It's good to play them joyfully.

You could retain Wizards having a basic magical combat role as well as an out of combat role.

Converting to mana isn't too bad as long as your mana system doesn't also include the big powerful Wizard spells.

For example;
>First level; start with 4 mana
>Every level after, gain +1 max mana
>Mana returns at a rate of 1 point per exploration turn (10 minutes)
>Each basic spell costs 1 mana, more powerful spells cost 2
>Basic spells include flame stream, cold stream, spark stream. Deals 1d4 damage per round to nearby foe, which can be blocked with shields. Hitting them a second round in a row deals 1d6 damage ever round after
>Advance spells include fireball, deals AoE damage, frostbite, deals a lot of damage up close, and lightning cloud, deals damage to every foe standing nearby each round after.
>Spells also have debuffs; Fire limits health regeneration and healing (useful for trolls, but everyone else too, such as stopping evil clerics), Cold lowers AC (either by making armor brittle or by slowing them down, ether way works), and Shock stuns foes and interrupts other spell casters.
>Rare spells would include interesting combat debuffs, like a Flaming Death spell which deals no damage on its own but if the subject of the spell dies they explode dealing a lot of damage, or Stunning electric bolts or creating a blizzard or something.

I like it. I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I really like Skyrim's basic spells of just shooting their element. I think it's pretty unique and interesting for a 'normal' combat attack.

Looking good. Inspired by Deep Carbon Observatory just a bit, right?

Actually, no. I do love DCO but I asked some people in the thread to give me a few themes to work with and I got 'Underwater' and 'Magic School' so I ended up channeling DCO just a bit.

My favorite part of Deep Carbon Observatory is actually the build-up to the dungeon itself. It's such a great module because there's a horrendous slog to just -get- to the dungeon. The flavor of the observatory itself is fun, but the flow of the module is probably what makes it so great to run.

It's got a lot going for it. I'm certain DCO is going to be one of the all-time classics.

But anyway, yeah, good little module you've got there. No major flaws or gaps.

One note though: the descriptions of the rooms a very much just an inventory list. There's not a lot of sensory detail (sound, taste, smell) or evocative descriptions to build on.

OR you could just do what I do and let everyone, including non-spellcaster characters, use relatively common magical staves as weapons.

Basically they serve as a mid range elemental weapon. Can be used every round and deal 1d4 elemental damage to the target, no attack roll needed. However each time they are used you keep track of how many points of damage you dealt, and each one has a limit of how many points you can do in one combat. If you exceed this limit then the magic rod runs out of charge and doesn't work again until you recharge it after the adventure. Kind of risk reward ammo system, obviously MUs might use up a spell slot to recharge their ammo or something, or maybe they get to deal additional damage with them. Either way.

Does anyone thinke there might be value in trying to eliminate modifiers and instead replace them with simple Advantage/disadvantage?

So having advantage but gaining a disadvantage cancels each other out.
If you had 2 sources of advantage you'd still retain advantage and vice versa.

Fighters could always attack with advantage, with a number of stacks of it equal to their level.

It's common knowledge that RC is BECM, but not I.
But my print copy of the RC does, in fact, have a chapter about becoming an Immortal. It's only a few pages long, so I suppose this is just a really basic, stripped down version?

Advantage and Disadvantage are surprisingly close to +4 or -4.

So... really, you can do it either way.

I kind of want to go for the 'spell slots are per adventure' route, but I think it's kind of lame to restrict level 1 wizards to be THAT shit.

Is there any happy medium?

Just remember that it takes time and peace to memorize the spells. If you enforce that a little more and bring up a bunch of distractions in the dungeon, you can make it harder for him to prepare his lone Magic Missile.

Even if it's not enough to actually have him cast less spells, he'll need to go through some trouble for it.

Similar but simpler mechanics. Classes are fairly different.

>so I suppose this is just a really basic, stripped down version?
M gets stripped down, I is essentially omitted.
The passage you refer to is technically I, but it's more "retiring at M" then anything else.
IIRC, pic related is mostly I?

...

Oh right, so anyway, what did you think of the blog post? Too much detail? Too little?

I feel like I heard too much about the characters, but too little about the players and dungeon.
Then again... you're probably about the post that floor of the dungeon.
If it's not too awkward for you, maybe talk about OoC responses?

How do I prepare for an OSR game? I tend to be a pretty 'off the cuff' GM but I want to do it right. Should I prepare a few extra maps, creature stats, magic items and tables?