/osrg/ OSR General - Adventurers New and Old Edition

Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General thread.

The entire Trove is being reuploaded. Probably be up soon. Might have luck looking in the Share Thread.

>Links - Includes a list of OSR games, a wiki, scenarios, free RPGs, a vast Trove of treasure!
pastebin.com/R67ZA8Q1

>Discord Server - Live design help, game finder, etc.
discord.gg/qaku8y9

>OSR Blog List - Help contribute by suggesting more.
pastebin.com/ZwUBVq8L

>Webtools - Help contribute by suggesting more.
pastebin.com/KKeE3etp

>Previous thread:
THREAD QUESTION:
>What's the average age of your party members?

Other urls found in this thread:

goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-glog-wizards.html
savevsdragon.blogspot.com/2016/02/free-pdf-download-exploration-time.html
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

Time to shill

www kickstarter com/projects/autarch/heroic-fantasy-and-barbarian-conquerors-collection

How do I get OSR players?

I tried to recruit for a homebrew, but it's not working. Maybe I should suck it up and fun White Box or something.

The art seems nice.
Maybe I'm missing something on the page,
but are they both ACKS supplements?
Is the first for something else?

OSR or not, it's impossible to recruit for a homebrew.
Pretend you're making a group for a published system.
Don't tell them otherwise. Transition after a few months.

Their both ACKS books running on the same kickstarter

>it's impossible to recruit for a homebrew.

Yeah but y tho

Should I back kickstarter stuff or just wait for someone to upload it to here?

Recruit non-gamers.

Seriously, between Community and Stranger Things you can get all sorts of people interested in "Dungeons and Dragons".

They don't know the difference between your homebrew and a popular game. They just want a good, fun time.

Q u a l i t y A s s u r a n c e
e c n a r u s s A y t i l a u Q
or a sense of it, at least.

Would an OSR with a dice pool work?

Not even the shill, but back it if you want it.

We were throwing a hissy fit about trying to do that last thread:
>goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/09/the-glog-wizards.html

Also, not (mechanically) OSR but, Torchbearer uses dice pools IIRC.

Considering we don't have Blood in the Chocolate

or even the two free supplement, one even after a year. I think backing the kickstarter is wise.

Reading last thread atm

>it's just an adaption of The Black Moon Chronicles, a French comic series of the authors D&D campaign. He was going to write the Original OA supplement and eventually the guide to the western half of Oreik, but TSR went through it's first crisis before he could.

Is this translated anywhere? This comic sounds interesting as hell.

Good good. Post if you've got questions or concerns.

Do you know the artist for this?

Sure, I can't see why not.

Sorry, no. It's from a relatively recent drawthread.

[grumble mode on]
> brings the flavor of heroic fantasy to your favorite role-playing game
What did we have before? Flavour of Venetian guild intrigues or of greedy Sogdian magistrates? Maybe we were playing Judge Dee campaigns, investigating cases of three-headed flying monks?

I want guild of thieves stuff, you assholes. Smuggle silk and wine. Bribe government officials and poison tax collectors. Sell faulty magical artefacts to intrepid (and retarded) adventurers. I need more rules for this, not twelve new ways you can stab dragons.

> Subtle but powerful, eldritch magic brings a new arsenal of effects into your game. Low-level eldritch casters can infuriate their foes, summon minor demons from the Outer Darkness, or call wolves from the forest. High-level eldritch wizards can call giant eagles from distant mountain lairs, lead foes into madness through corrupting dreams, or unleash the hounds of hell to hunt down their enemies.
Yeah. Summoning demons and *ahem* natural allies is a new effect. Also mind-affecting spells. Wooo.

> A new way of casting spells, spellsinging, that allows characters to spontaneously weave together new spells on the fly.
It better be polished-up magic from Black Company (aka True Sorcery, aka Spheres of Power), not wordcasting.

> torture them body and soul with iron maiden
Put them into iron maiden and force them to listen to iron maiden?
[grumble mode off]

Well, I liked ACKS books, but this seems to be generic setting material. I'm more curious about Veins of the Earth.

Here's my time tracking sheet, made fancy.

Every round, check off a round box. When you get to 6, check off a minute box. When you get to 60 minutes, check off an hour box.

You'll go through a fair number of sheets, but it's handy for keeping thing sensibly organized. You can also draw lines and make notes to list the duration of spells or effects, or torchlight.

I want to run LotFP but more want to run it in a high fantasy setting and with less edge. Is it possible?

*Pssst*

The only justification I can give for LotFP over B/X (et al.) is the modules.
You'd have to give those up, but there shouldn't be any other issues?

> How do I get OSR players?
First you get players. Then you play OSR with them.

> I tried to recruit for a homebrew, but it's not working.
Yeah. Wonder of wonders. People don't like work (and that's what playing homebrew usually looks like).

Advertise it as "simple early DnD game". Provided it is, of course.


> Should I back kickstarter stuff or just wait for someone to upload it to here?
If you have spare cash - back it. My personal cash goes to dentist right now, for example.


> We were throwing a hissy fit about trying to do that last thread:
I'm considering throwing one right now.

The line is drawn at rolling three dice, people. Anything over this limit is bad wrong fun you should be ashamed of. That way Exalted&Shadowrun lie (rolling 20+ dice).

Suffer not the dice pool!


> not grouping minutes into 5-min groups and hours into 6-hour
Why?

...

It seriously bothers me that labyrinth lord gives clerics spells at 1st level.

Why?

Why haze cleric players? Why make them wait to have a core class ability?

On one hand, starting clerics are pretty close to fighters in terms of combat abilities. Same chance to hit (like everybody), same level of armor, one fewer hit point on average, one fewer point of damage on average. Then, of course, they have have the ability to turn the undead. So do they really need to be able to cast spells to strengthen them?

On the other hand, one 1st level spell isn't going to make that big of a difference.

My issue with giving clerics a spell at 1st level is not what they look like at 1st level, but how far ahead of magic-users they get in terms of spells per day at higher levels. At 300,000 XP, a cleric has spells per day of 5/4/3/3/2. At 310,000 XP, a magic-user has 3/3/3/2/1. Granted, magic-user spells are considerably more powerful, but does the cleric really need so many more spells given that they're pretty good in combat too? But then some of this just comes down to high-level clerics requiring fewer XP to gain levels than any other class (which seems fucked up to me, considering that they may be gaining 3 new spells per day at various different levels when they level up).

I'm copying the text from over here for you, so that it's harder to miss.
>I don't really know any other place to ask, so I have a question about a specific kit in AD&D2E.
>One of the members of my group is playing a class called "Amazon Huntress" this class apparently gets full warrior THAC0, rogue skills D8 hit die and levels at rogue speed.
Frankly this seems horrifically broken and sounds a little too good to be true.
>Is this a real class? Or just something the player has made up?

Sadly, 2e, especially with all the supplements and shit, is probably what folks here at /OSR/ are weakest on, in terms of old school D&D.

As someone that hasn't actually played AD&D 1e but has read the books a fair bit - the fuck's a segment?

It's brought up a lot all over the place but to my understanding isn't actually explained anywhere.

Or maybe it is explained somewhere but I can't fucking find it because the book's a mess.

I don't really get this. And I use a VERY similar visual system.
That wording is... idk, impossible to parse?

A segment's six seconds. Defined on the bottom of the left column of PHB p102.

Right column, sorry. Start of the surprise section. It's also defined in the section on casting time on p43 as 10 to a melee round, and in the section on time on p40 as 6 seconds.

All right. For the past five minutes I've been theorizing a duel system for the game. Because I love a good duel, but the only one I've found anywhere - in Player's Option: Combat & Tactics - is incredibly shit.

Here's what I've got so far: rounds aren't counted in minutes, or even in segments, but in -fractions of seconds-. Even swinging your weapon takes several rounds: maybe around as many as the weapon's speed factor, during which you're helpless. Then the weapon's speed factor again before you've gotten completely over the swing and can do something else again.

If you get multiple attacks, then your speed is divided by your amount of attacks. So if you've got a battle axe (speed factor 7), and you get to attack 3/2 times with it, then your final speed with the weapon is 5.

Naturally, you should be able to react to things: dodge or block during the former, then attack yourself during the latter part. Blocking, dodging, flanking, all these things take a few rounds too - but you have to time it right.

Both you and your opponent will privately decide how many "rounds" they wait before attacking.

Go too early (maybe before half the weapon speed, rounded up) and the enemy can cancel their attack and be prepared. Go too late and you end up getting hit. There should be some partially-random way to decide at which "round" you act: the higher your level is, especially as a fighter, the better you can do it.

If you can completely pinpoint the timing when the strike comes through, you can parry-riposte.

I dunno, so far I've just been rambling and spitballing. Am I on to something here, though? And if so, could you help me to form it into something coherent?

What luck have people had converting 3.PF products to OSR style stats? Anything from classes to monsters. I'm interested in seeing if there's any formula for it or if it's more of an art.

Are there even any 3.PF modules that don't involve railroading, setpieces, and immediate battles without the possibility of diplomacy?

I'm sure there are, but even if there weren't, I'm not interested in just the modules.

Hence "Anything from classes to monsters".

I don't know about the classes myself. A big part of OSR to me is that there are only four at most: fighter, cleric, mage, maybe thief. The rest would just be a bunch of optional stuff added to these, or multiclasses.

If the new class fits to one of those, then it's just one of those. If it doesn't, it's not very old-school.

Would it fuck up LotFP if you kept the racial classes in but renamed them to something like 'Spelunker' for Dwarf and 'Spellblade' for Elf and let people just pick races with maybe a bonus to attributes?

I play B/X. I do normal combat, but with +dex to initiative (this is called paired combat I think). *Actions are declared before inititative is rolled. This is important.

Called shots (disarming, tripping, shoving...) are a normal roll, on a success defender chooses to take damage, or whatever the called shot is.

And that's it. The rules btb cover the rest. You can dodge hits by withdrawing. You can use called shots to parry-riposte Dark Souls style, by forcing a flee move (I allow one extra, instant attack when enemy retreats without withdrawing).

K.I.S.S.

You don't even have a group, right?

>You don't even have a group, right?

Why would you assume this? My group wants some new options but we're currently playing in a camping setting where there are no elves and dwarves, and we already settled on races having different stats instead of being classes.

Because that sort of this it's kind of obvious if you know your players. You can also ask them.

And no, a small bonus to ability scores won't break D&D, but kind of defeats the whole point of 3d6 in order. In classic D&D scores aren't human-centric, they are an absolute measure; race differences come from quasi-magical abilities, infravision and languages and the like. Which makes them a lot more alien and interesting, and less 'humans with pointy ears'.

My 2cp. Go with what your group says.

Any OSR that use universal d6 hit dice?

LBB OD&D and anything based on it.

I'm not sure if your complaint about rolling 3+ dice is genuine or sarcastic, but if it's genuine, could you explain why? I'm curious why you wouldn't want the feeling of slinging a fistfull of dice.

I'm not sure about LotFP in particular, but it would be pretty easy to convert the racial classes in B/X into just the sort of thing you're talking about by just dropping the few things that are inextricably racially-based (you wouldn't even have to adjust the XP costs, as they tend to be a bit on the low side in the RAW). Honestly though, Dwarves and Halflings are mostly just Fighters, so I'm not sure how worth it it would be to include them once they're stripped of their racial identities. Elves, on the other hand, have obvious worth as multiclass fighter/magic-users.

For what it's worth, you can pretty easily convert variable hit dice to all-d6 hit dice.

There's this wonderful game called Song of Swords you might be interested in. They have a general up right now.

The more I think about it, the more La Mulana looks like it would make a fairly decent megadungeon. Lots of labyrinthine paths connected into discrete parts, multiple entrances and exits for each section of the ruins, tons of lore that draws from ancient cultures, and devious traps and puzzles that would require a very meticulous mapper and note taker.
Just gotta figure out how to translate the verticality to something more crawl-oriented.

Might want to add piles more treasure, and do something about all the boss monsters.

Probably dot the ruins with various treasure troves around where you find the health upgrades. As for the bosses, I rather like the idea of sealing them away through a different means than killing them. Possibly by performing ancient rituals discovered in town and in the ruins?

Whoa, one of the few general setting AD&D books to excite me in awhile -- Monster Mythology. One way to make humanoid type foes more distinct that I've fallen in love with was using more spellcaster types, esp after reading Volo's stuff on orcs, and I found this book to be really clever in how it keeps in mind the original monster and keeps the hit dice in proportion.

Its also neat how it'd let me use all sorts of humanoid types as mid level threats rather than "sub-war dog" threats, and let me use semi analogous stat blocks in campaigns, whether its AD&D, 3e, or 5e.

Monster Mythology expands on one of my favorite things about 2nd edition AD&D - specialist priests. Therefore, it's automatically great.

A big thing with OSR is that you can often try talking to monsters, so perhaps there could be some way to convince even some of the bosses to back away, if you have the right relics or have completed the proper rituals.

Others would only awaken to attack you if you did something to displease them.

Definitely, I was considering the possibility of actually recruiting intelligent monsters in the ruins to serve as translators, emissaries, and bodyguards as well. I imagine the boss fights could be similar in that regard, using rituals, relics, and even plain old trickery to make them perceive your party as too dangerous to fight or not a threat.
Or just go full murderhobo and spill their ancient blood.

You'd need to do something with factions, too. As I recall it La-Mulana didn't have much of that.

Spinning down (or up) a die is iterating through which face is pointing up.
I mostly see it in the context of M:tG life tracking, but it's not an exclusive concept.
(Prereleases give special d20s where each face is adjacent to the next number down, etc.)

Two other addendum:
* you don't need an Othello stone, you can mark alternating wedges instead
* labeling at least one wedge by actual time (top of the hour) is a good idea

1/10th of a round. But most references to segments actually mean "initiative penalty" IIRC.

Casting time is also measured in segments.

>around where you find the health upgrades.
Maybe leave "level up" items in key (or hard to reach) places?

Spiffy treasures individually worth a full level,
journals of previous explorers,
possession by talented hospitable ghosts (seeking revenge?),
straight up "potions of go up a level," and so on.

Unless you have less than a full round of segments to work with, that's an initiative penalty.

Oh crap, you guys switched thread ages ago. No wonder nobody has been posting for the last five hours.

Anyway, I posted in the other thread. Would love to hear if anyone has any insight regarding my conundrum.

When settling more arbitrary issues that face failure, do you opt for d20+Mod DC checks or Roll equal/under Ability scores? Which is better?

Neither. I pick a chance (usually -in-6 or -in-36) then dice d6s.

Just pull reasonable numbers out of your hat:
>Let's say a player declares that his PC picks up a sword from a fallen enemy, does that take a round?
Unless the fallen enemy is on the other side of the room, that takes less than a segment.
I wouldn't even give an initiative penalty for that (an AC penalty though...)
>What if he's looting the corpse?
That's enough of a round that I'd say "you do nothing else."
Even if you're still fighting, you're barely keeping your AC up (with a steep penalty).
>What if he's looting the corpse slowly and quietly so he doesn't alert other monsters?
1d6-1 rounds (min. 1), if they have less to search through (wearing less, etc.) just pick a number.
If you're out of combat, I'd say half a turn? (unless they've just got loincloths, etc.)

I see, and I get your way of coming up with how long stuff takes. I still don't really get whether people actually do that for everything or not. Picking up a sword is one thing at one time, but there are probably one or two dozen things that each player wants to do in a room. Like, they want to inspect something, pick up something, sit on something, tinker with something, say something, eat something, doublecheck something etc. Are DMs really supposed to take each of those things, translate them into rounds and mark them on the time tracker? I kind of feel like that would ruin the flow of the game a lot.

>Are DMs really supposed to take each of those things, translate them into rounds and mark them on the time tracker?
They are not supposed to do that. You do as much as you'd like, and the referee occasionally decides "this feels like it's been 10 minutes."
>I kind of feel like that would ruin the flow of the game a lot.
OoC disputes notwithstanding, always always always act in a way that preserves the flow of the game.

I'd say if they're doing something that requires them to stand still during exploration, it either immediately is something that takes them a full turn(which should be obvious) or will take a full turn if they spend long enough doing it.
EG, searching through the gear of fallen enemies.
If they say they're going to search until they find something useful, have them roll the appropriate skill or w/e(Whatever works best); on a success, they find something immediately and can keep moving along or keep searching which will take a whole turn. On a failure, they spend a whole turn searching before they find anything. (This is assuming that there is anything useful to be found that isn't immediately obvious, like a glowing sword as opposed to a magic-user's spellbook stashed in his bag which is one of 4 or 5 that need to be checked.)

On the other hand, if they're just doing a quick once-over while the group moves through the room, you could easily say it happens while whoever makes the map is taking their measurements or w/e.

Just ask how thorough they want to be/how much time they want to spend doing it.

If that's the case then I don't have any confusion over how time is tracked. I guess I just assumed that other people play more rigorously than me, and I felt like there was something I was missing.

Big maps with lots of smaller dungeons scattered about, or small map with fewer, bigger dungeons?

Both work, the important thing is that it's dense with stuff to do.

If you're making abstract judgement calls, more abstract judgements won't raise accuracy.
Why waste the bookkeeping?

I lean towards smaller dungeons that interconnect.

Now that Sakkara has been liberated, I'm feeling good about future Autarch products. However, this feels like a complete 180 on the implied ACKS setting, which is actually pretty cool.

Plugging this time tracker again. It's far easier to reference than a bunch of square boxes.

savevsdragon.blogspot.com/2016/02/free-pdf-download-exploration-time.html

I like bigger maps, because they make it look like the world itself is larger and has more old ruins to poke in.

How do I indulge in my love for dungeon traps without turning the game into an unfair TPK meat grinder, or even worse, a boring slog from paranoid players obsessively checking every 5 foot square?

Magic-users get a spell and that's pretty much all they get.

Clerics get a d6 for hit points, armor, shields, a few weapons, and UNLIMITED turn undead.

Even if undead never appear, it's pretty shitty to take the one thing that makes magic-users special at first level and give it to another class. Especially when "I can only cast one spell?" is a common complaint from new players.

>or even worse, a boring slog from paranoid players obsessively checking every 5 foot square?

Because if they try to do that, that's a wandering monster check every two turns.

Make traps reactionary (e.g. you open the door, the trap goes off) or give hints as to their locations/triggers (e.g. a hole in the opposite wall).

Give your traps some distinctive sign.
It doesn't need to be obvious, but it does need to feel out of place.
The first time the party trips them, clatter some dice and describe a hireling dying.

I restrict clerics to Med. Armour, slightly nerd their attack progression, and restrict Turn Undead to once per encounter. I dunno how well it balances it out in the long run but it addresses my own personal issues with the class.

I'm fine with the armor since it restricts movement, although it should be a little pricier in most games. Weapon restrictions are fine (and classic D&D logic). Turn undead could use a fix like once per encounter/turn (maybe clerics regain it in their "rest" turn?) but honestly it's never come up much.

Barrowmaze did a cool thing with turn undead becoming more difficult each time it's used. That definitely makes the decision to use it more interesting.

Building a megadungeon, and I can't think of a good starting area. I have zero problems coming up with weird gonzo shit for later levels, but I really don't want to start the players off in gray hallways and force them to slog through goblins before they get to the good stuff. What do I do?

Make it a goblin city. They start out suspicious and borderline hostile, anything can spark out a full-on war, or if you manage to keep them friendly you could help them out with their problem in the deeper levels.

My players (and me) are pretty new to OSR, but so far they really like the dungeon crawling. The thing is they also like boss monsters. How can I make a dungeon boss without it feeling too video gamey?

Give him a lot of henchmen and allies. Otherwise the party will just gang up on him, and then he'll need to be a HP sponge to last more than a round.

Nothing wrong with boss monsters in cool areas. That's pretty much what dragons are.

How would you adapt OSR to /v/ in general? Which edition, which house rules better convey an OSR feel in a digital media without a human DM?

Hard Mode: no roguelike, since it will be about a party.
Thief Mode: How would you do thief's skills and most of free form?

Darkest Dungeon is pretty good, though it fails Thief Mode.

>no roguelike, since it will be about a party.
You *can't* make it about a party unless you go arcade-esque.

Sell me on Blood & Treasure!

yeah just run it

with monsters and shit

So, how many of y'all use porcs in your settings?

What are porcs?

Wizardry is the closest you'll get to /v/ osr I think. Thief skills are only relevant when checking for traps on a treasure chest though.

Pig like orcs

Oh. Nah.

All the japanese fantasy killed them for me long before I got around to see them in actual OSR games at all.

Orc like pig too.

I use both. One kind is a race of boarmen and the other is a cousin of the goblins. They don't get along together very much.

I don't even have orcs. Some extra feral elves goblins are just big.

How does on use beast men in a setting without making lycanthropes superfluous?