/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance

>B/X vs BECMI is just the table "stretched" in the latter in the wrong way?

Yes, it's the same skill progression as B/X's 1-14 thieves, but dragged out to 1-36, so by the time everyone else is a demigod, you're finally good at ordinary thief stuff. It's just terrible, really.

B/X is great. OD&D is excellent, too, but hard to figure out by itself.

I don't think so, but you can read a lot about early games from folks like Mike Mornard and Rob Kuntz.

In regards to specialists/thieves I'd keep the standard thief skills but give them a knowledge skill of their choice as a way to distinguish each thief so they aren't all bog-standard burglars while still being rogueish: architecture, history, herbalism, demonology, etc. Which would work like the other thief skills--get the standard intelligence roll, then the thief skill roll if you fail that.
D6 hit die makes them a bit more capable as well.

I've considered giving them a resource "luck points" where they can reroll percentile/skill/attack/saving throws. Not grant them at the start, but maybe the first one at level 5. To represent the almost supernatural luck skilled thieves/rogues have.

It's not exactly OSR, though: not much dungeon crawling, avoiding monsters for treasure, or anything like that. More of the usual story stuff new-school brought in.

2e shed away all OSR modules, and has none of them.

>Any good low-level adventures set in northern climates with a lot of snow and few inhabitants?
I like Frozen in Time if you feel like converting from DCC.

Pretty much all DCC adventures are great.

You could also just play DCC. It's a pretty decent OSR system.

I'm actually just getting started on my first DCC campaign (or rather, it will be a campaign if my players enjoy Sailors on a Starless Sea enough to let me keep going.) My plan at the moment is to run a bunch of published DCC modules until everyone is settled in.

I need an adventure with a blue dragon. Any ideas?
And a setting where thery are common/relevant?

Try Volos guide to North?

>I don't think so, but you can read a lot about early games from folks like Mike Mornard and Rob Kuntz.

I remember some YouTube video that edited together a bunch of news footage and interviews with kids about the whole Satanic panic. There was a doctor who attested to the whole "it causes suicide" thing, then the author spliced in footage showing he turned out to be some sort of scam artist. Does anyone have the video I'm talking about?

And surely in this age of 70s/80s nostalgia, there's D&D-related news or home video footage floating around somewhere?

Thanks. I played BECMI but we played all the classes in varies campaigns, barring that one.
I have only seen them as NPCs. I actually had a fantastic experience with BECMI, especially with the weapon mastery.

What do you think about the x3 or x4 backstab of AD&D? Would do more damage than help?

Volo's Guides aren't really adventures, more like just general guides on what the places are like.

i had an idea for a whole mini-campaign where the party are hired by a local mining trade guild (the 'indigo guild') to take down a clutch of wyrmling blue dragons whose mother had died.

the basic premise would be that they each were following their core instinct to amass a horde, but without guidance or the ability to go much further than the region they were in they were kind of playing it by ear. so one of the dragons would have an army of kobold followers who steal iron from the mine he's settled in near - because it's the most precious thing in that area. another one might be leading some bandit attacks in a forest in the region to amass his horde - but all the trade caravans are carrying food and other essentials from the south, not gold and gems.

the payoff would be that the head of the guild was the eldest of the dragons, and you were being used to murder its siblings and claim the whole area.

The Awakening is literally a dungeon crawl. And the Undermountain modules are part of a subline called Dungeon Crawl.

>I need an adventure with a blue dragon. Any ideas?
Drawing a blank.

>And a setting where thery are common/relevant?
Dragonlance or Al-Qadim?

>Al-Qadim

Al-Qadim has no dragons at all. There was a background fairy tale where a bunch of dragons tried and got scared away by the djinni.

Honestly if I was going to do thieves in BECMI I'd use the B/X advancement for 1-14, then start giving them special abilities after 14. Maybe start a new 14 level progression of more powerful abilities like shadow-walking and stuff.

>Al-Qadim has no dragons at all.
Maybe they immigrated from Faerun

Found it, worth a watch if you're interested in the whole suicide/Satanic panic aspect of early D&D:

youtube.com/watch?v=yShqF1YSfDs

I think a hunch roll is better.

>Roll 1d20 at the start of each session
>At any point during a d20 roll in the session, you can use that number instead. Only works once.

Basically this is great if you use a mix of roll over/under stuff. If the Rogue rolls a 1-3 they KNOW they can pass any saving throw that comes their way, and if they roll a 18-20 they KNOW they can succeed a critically important attack roll. It gives them the edge of supernatural luck without being too annoying with the rerolls, since rerolls are boring and lame.

It's worth playing. The magic and critical hit tables will slow the game down until you get the hang of them, but playing without them after that will feel bland.

Pick up one of the box sets! Perils of the Purple Planet if you want something more gonzo and Sci-fi, or Chained Coffin if you want something a bit more dark and hillbilly feeling. Both sets have a 0-level funnel and several adventures in them, along with maps and world guides for running an extended campaign in the setting.

>dat rule

I like improved backstab abilities for thieves and additional strikes for fighters. Having thief skills that don't completely suck balls would be nice too.

Sounds nice, too bad I like my dragons as solitary lazy animals.

I think I remember something like that, but it was more of a mention ("they live in the desert!") than anything else.

I seriously can't believe there's not an adventure out thre that exploits a giant electric winged lizard. There's a mech / scifi campaign waiting in there.

This is nice.

Fighters, Elves and Dwarves (and halflings?) have multiple attacks if they it with a 2+ in becmi. Looks retarded, but with a magic grand master weapon is relatively easy.

Another way to fix the rogues in BECMI is to allow to strike double (TWF) only to them. Other character can wield 2 weapons but only to parry.

>fix the rogues by having them encroach to the fighter's territory

>Encroach

Nigga you dumb.

In OSR- everyone can sneak, everyone can fight, everyone can support, and everyone can solve puzzles. Certain classes just do it better then others.

Besides, Fighters, Clerics, AND Wizards all have useful combat abilities that the thief lacks. Give them something to make them useful. Makes literally no sense at all not to add in the stealth combat ability like every other secret agent assassin guy throughout all of media that the Rogue is clearly supposed to be.

They can use way less weapons types, have the d4, and no armor.

Did gamma world have rules for robot and mutant plant characters or was that something Mutant Future introduced?

Reposting my earlier question, can anyone point out any good Illusionist classes?

>Running a hexcrawl and I need some constructive criticism of this map.
The main thing I'd say is use a lower hex scale than 12 miles. It's unnecessarily hard to use hexes that big for travel purposes and the way you've drawn your map (e.g. that valley between mountain ridges in the SE quadrant) implies a much lower scale. (As just one example, alpine valleys tend to be about 3 miles wide at their widest points, so wouldn't even be marked on a 12mile-hex map; you one valley including the mountain hexes would be about 1/6 the size of Bavaria.)

Should some weapons do 1d10 or more damage?

Old school blog clickbait generator:
kellri.blogspot.co.nz/2009/09/burn-baby-burn.html

Here we go!
50-52: Stop picking on [7: Dave Arneson], he’s the most level-headed [19: Narrativist], after all.

Heh.

Way way back someone suggested overlaying multiple hexmaps to create a truly bizarre hexmap. What about overlaying multiple dungeons?

Like for example

>Module A, Area 1. The courtyard of the castle, with a moat and drawbridge
>Module B, Area 1. This is the church graveyard, littered with worn tombstones. 4 Ripper Skeletons lurk on the ground near their empty graves, hungering for the living.
>Module C, Area 1. This large cave is the "welcome area" for the Troll King's guests. It is guarded by two troll wearing chainmail and armed with battleaxes.

Combine that into

>Area 1. This large cave is the "welcome area" of the Troll King's church-castle, with a moat and drawbridge. It is littered with worn tombstones. 4 Ripper Skeletons lurk on the ground near their empty graves, hungering for the living. It is guarded by two troll wearing chainmail and armed with battleaxes.

>that one adventure where you character secretly dies and is replaced by a Doppelganger if you talk to an NPC alone
>that one adventure about a cat apocalypse
>that one adventure where you die get turned into flesh golems but get better
>that one adventure were you become werewolves and/or freeze/starve to death

The more I read it the less Ravenloft seems like "Gothic Fantasy" and the more it seems like "Nightmare Psychedelic/Gonzo Fantasy"

Yes.

When you use the sword of flames against the ice golem, or when you take a potion of giant strength and swing a donkey at someone, or when your artificer buddy makes you a chainsaw sword that gets clogged by gore if you roll max damage with it.

Agree with this, IIRC Cook Expert promised something of this sort, even more explicitly supernatural Thief abilities? I'd do shit like percentile chances of Invisibility (not like that isn't already trivial by level 15 so...), wuxia-type leaping on water, treetops and even walking on clouds (lightfoot skill, or whatever that's called in wuxia?), and contortionist tricks like slipping through a 3" wide gap.

>Sounds nice, too bad I like my dragons as solitary lazy animals.
Rather than the guild head, make it a valued backer of the guild.

>Only works once.
Let them trade reuse the worse number:
Swap a 10 for a 14, then swap an 8 for the 10 later, etc.

>Let them trade reuse the worse number:

But if it's sometimes roll-over and other times roll-under, either extreme could be worse.

>Try to imagine how SWINE would play TEKUMEL and do the opposite.
Can't even say I disagree tbqh, definitely looks like a real baitpost that may have actually been written as well

No. OSR is at its core about resource management and in most OSR games you roll far less often. With a good DM, you may only roll once or twice a whole session.

Your method does not make the lucky power of the Rogue a resource, can lead to abuse/infinite free successes, and makes the game less about the exploration and dungeoneering and more about trying to roll and reroll good numbers.

Good job missing the entire point, numbnuts.

Chainmail is completely broken because of the Descending Armor Classes

>infinite free successes
>infinite

what about multiplying the time needed at each reroll, even by x5/x10? The third attempts is impossible and the second is at an high risk of random encounter.

Some weapons already do 1d10 damage, like two-handed swords and pole arms. Really though, two-handed weapons like these should do 1d12 or 2d6 damage to make them competitive with a sword and shield combo.

Doesn't work for combat or saving throws. The intention is that it gives the Rogue character an awesome surefire move once per game, and it changes their behavior slightly because they know what they are gonna do with it.

Hell I'd even let them use it as a substitute on a d20 roll, though I wouldn't tell them if high or low is better. Maybe I'd be nice and advise them on using a low roll on a monster checklist but a high one on a treasure table. Lots of possibility here.

How are fantasy veitnam wilderness adventures done in a way that's awesome?

By making it like actual Vietnam.

I'd let them have an extra one every two or three levels, so they could swap out a die maybe three or four times a session by name level. Combined with the fact that you sometimes need a high die and sometimes a low one, this doesn't seem OP to me, and makes for an interesting resource for the thief to manage during play.

You don't necessarily encounter everything in a hexmap or at least not at once.
It would take more discretion, especially for doors and busy rooms.
Could lead to some neat mashups though.

Name 5 "Gothic" domains in Ravenloft.

Does pic related seem like a decently designed dungeon?
First time ever trying to make one, myself. Probably gonna fiddle with names of stuff and change numbers around by the time my players actually get to it, but I mostly mean the nature of the puzzles and the layout of it.
It's mostly to introduce the concepts of non-euclidean dungeons to them, so I can use them again later.

>non-euclidean dungeons
Go read Euclid's Elements some time.
It won't be anything new, but some of the definitions and explanations are fun.
Anywho, a dungeon with a staircase is non-Euclidean. Euclidean just means "on a flat surface."
>so I can use them again later
Bad idea. Explore all concepts fully when you bring them up.
Then don't bring them up ever again, or at least not for the rest of the campaign.

>Does pic related seem like a decently designed dungeon?
Waaaaaaaaay~ too linear. Also really small.

Lesee
>Barovia
>Lamordia
>Mordent
>Staunton Bluffs

Outside of those four it's kinda hard to find. Sebua, maybe?

>Euclidean just means "on a flat surface.

Well... no.

There are 5 Euclidian postulates. The first 4 are pretty much "set in stone".

1. A straight line segment can be drawn joining any two points.
2. Any straight line segment can be extended indefinitely in a straight line.
3. Given any straight line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as radius and one endpoint as center.
4. All right angles are congruent.

And then you get to the 5th postulate.

5. If two lines are drawn which intersect a third in such a way that the sum of the inner angles on one side is less than two right angles, then the two lines inevitably must intersect each other on that side if extended far enough.

The 5th postulate doesn't /have/ to be true. You can build alternative versions of it where the lines intersect: hyperbolic and eliptic geometry.

Now... imagine you're Lovecraft. Or another writer in the same era, trained very carefully in "classical" geometry. You're told "this is how the world works". Geometry defines the world.

And then some crazy people say "Actually... no. These forms of geometry - of ordering all of space - are also valid."

This revelation took a long time to hit popular consciousness, just like relativity has become slightly more "mainstream" while quantum mechanics is still on the fringes of popular understanding.

But for a while... it was properly horrifying.

>The 5th postulate doesn't /have/ to be true.
I was aware; however, it *does* have to be true on flat surfaces.

>This revelation took a long time to hit popular consciousness,
Popular consciousness flunked geometry. And likes misinterpreting.

>Euclidean just means "on a flat surface."
Euclid didn't even call his geometry Euclidean geometry. The adjective Euclidean is a modern term that has never meant "on a flat surface". The term we use for that is "plane geometry".

>Go read Euclid's Elements
You go read Elements. Books XI - XIII. Solid geometry. That's three dimensional stuff, since you obviously don't understand even basic terms I thought I should clarify.

Can you nerds go debate trivia somewhere else?

This is Veeky Forums, right?

Seems like a pretty good place.

>you baptist shit
Still one of my all time favorite asshurt slurs

>US TRADITIONAL GAMERS AMIRITE XD

Reminds me of this a little bit.

Also, cursing, and curse vocabulary, are excellent to use in OSR games. People won't remember being called a "motherfucker". They will remember being called a "monk whore" or "so ugly you were jilted by a sheep"

Yes. You are right. This is a very distractable board.

It's not like the OSR thread is running out of posts at a ridiculous rate. We can afford a few tangents.

Just because you have a blog doesn't mean you're entitled to shitpost.

That's the best you've got?

Look around, user. Shitposts everywhere you look. Posts complaining about any discussion that's slightly off topic. Edition wars. Bait. Lazy posts.

This includes you, user. If you've got stuff to talk about, you're sure stingy about it.

You invalidated his excuse, whats yours?

Resource management.
Horror.
Fear.
Player buy-in.
Fire. The Jungle. And an enemy that's at home where you are least comfortable.
Ideological drain.
Death.
Random orders.
Traps.
Wildlife.

Holy shit the feathers make it even more terrifying. Fucking saved and ready to unleash on the group later. Thank you for that based user.

It moves faster than your horses. It might hunt in packs.

The smartest ones are natural spellcasters. They can cast Invisibility and Gaseous Form.

Oh, and Speak with Dead. They interrogate their prey to find where the herds will go, and where they will hide. If they catch a PC or a hireling, they will probably know where the party is going next and will set up an ambush.

...

I have an unhealthy attraction to Al-Qadim and want to expose my friends to it.

Any tips for newbies to ADnD? Roleplay and general system knowledge is fine, we've played other systems before.

I assume you mean 1e AD&D. Have someone play an assassin, preferably a half-orc. Read up on One Thousand and One Nights, read the setting books several times, etc etc.

is it to Al-Qadim specifically or just Middle Eastern flavored D&D, if the latter you might want to go give The Nightmares Underneath a look as it's probably one of the finest OSR books to be published last year

burtoniana.org/books/1885-Arabian Nights/

Actually, most of burtoniana.org/books/ deserves a glance.

>AD&D 2e (I'm assuming 2e because that's when AQ was published)
Don't use NWP. You can just use ability checks if you really need them, modified by a +2/-2 if the PC seems like he would know that based on fluff.

Only use core options at first. Kits will muddy the waters of character generation, especially the sha'ir, the wizard who actually isn't anything like a wizard. "Unlock" more options as they get into the grove.

>Al-Qadim
Make sure they understand that humanoids aren't monsters to be killed on sight.

Also make sure they understand that slavery in AQ isn't Evil as it is in many other D&D settings.

>tfw no dao gf

So I'm currently working on my own OSR game though I am taking some ideas from other games and editions of D&D. I've decided I need an iconic monster, something like the owlbear to D&D, goblin to Pathfinder, etc. Basically something that can be used on the back cover and some of the inside artwork and stuff.

Any ideas? I was thinking it should be the kobold (classic dog version rather than reptilian) but my fiancee and friends say it should be something else.

As far as luck goes, I was thinking of ripping off Warlock of Firetop Mountain and having the roll 1d6+6 for the luck stat and doing 2d6 roll under for success. The difference being, you can only get back expended luck when you face bad luck seperately. Like falling off a tower you were trying to scale, or setting off a deadly trap. To further keep this in check have unlikely successes automatically drain luck even if it wasn't used.

Thanks, I'll see what I can do for them.

How about Gnolls instead?
Or how about Gryphons?

try half-naked shotas

>Kits will muddy the waters of character generation, especially the sha'ir,
Sha'ir is probably the most tame of the "not actually a wizard" wizard kits in Sha'ir.
Clockwork Mage, Jackal, and Spellslayer all deviate farther.
Ghul Lord and Mystic of Nog are pushing it, too.

How about no? LotFP already gets the creepy shit, let them have that.

>boys
>creepy
also i take back the half naked thing
give them fancy noble clothes

>kits in Sha'ir.
kits in *Al-Qadim

Not strictly OSR related, but I'm working on a module and I want to commission some art.
Anyone here worked with a quality fantasy artist, or can recommend one?

Exactly how much are you willing to spend?

a couple of hundred, depending on quality

Fuck man, what are you wanting to commission specifically? With that much you could get a number of really good art pieces done.

A number of really good pieces is exactly what I'm after
also I'd rather overpay then underpay, art is undervalued imo.

>Refluff most any low level adventure.

Yeah, but the less refluffing it'd need, the better. If it's already based on snow and dark and winter, then that'd be great. If it's set in Icewind Dale as it is, then that'd be awesome.