Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General thread.
>Links - Includes a list of OSR games, a wiki, scenarios, and a vast Trove of treasure!
pastebin.com
>Discord Server - Live design help, game finder, etc.
discord.me
>OSR Blog List - Help contribute by suggesting more.
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>Webtools & Resources - Help contribute by suggesting more.
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>Previous thread:
THREAD QUESTION:
>Where's the secret door hidden?
In the frame of the much larger door.
Nah, but druids make good NPCs.
>PRE-ADVENTURE
Beverly under preparing.
>IN THE DUNGEON
Most of that shit is kosher.
Third stair from the bottom. It can be removed and within is the realm of the faerie. You need to shrink yourself in order to fit in.
In the toilet bowl.
In the nostril of the magically sleeping princess.
That guy's right though. There are plenty of good reasons to dislike FR, the fact that you can't name any without getting defensive shows that you're ignorant and overemotional.
I'm thinking about using simplified morale, on a d6. Something intuitive that doesn't require a table lookup, just assign a troop quality and it the d6 rolls above it, they retreat.
>wild animals 2
>casuals (goblins, orcs) 3
>organized group (npc party, orcs w/ leader) 4
>elite groups (gargoyles, paladins) 5
Y/N?
Inside another door. Unlock turning the key counter/clockwise to access one or the other exit.
Going to repost this for the new thread then, bunch of monsters for use:
dropbox.com
>Or do you guys all memorize the save #s for the Fighter?
Yeah, 12,13,14,15,16 at 1-3, but saves vary by edition, leaving it a crossreference keeps it more neutral and saves space. but eh. It's an excel file so work with it what you will.
Not a big fan of the curve. Stick to 2d6.
>Something intuitive that doesn't require a table lookup,
You can always pick an appropriate number instead of looking one up.
1d6 is not a curve. 2d6 is a curve.
I like it, it's simple. But how about using the same 1in6 chance mechanic as skills/abilities? Ie,
>wild animals 1 in 6 chance (roll of 1) of fighting on
>elite groups 5 in 6 chance (roll of 1-5) of fighting on, etc.
I wrote some tips for players new to OSR on how to get and use equipment. It's a short but succinct list for now.
Got anything to add?
My quest for finding a simple, non-random, non-fancy, just white cubes on black, dungeon creation program continues. Something like donjon except without the random bit would be ideal.
Like what did they use to make this map? Would be basically perfect.
You could try emailing the person who made that map, if it's published somewhere. People often respond, you'd be surprised.
How does Veeky Forums feel about adventure tracks/supermodules/adventure paths?
I know you want a simple drag and drop tool, but you can learn to do all that in a graphics program like Inkscape (free) or Illustrator in an afternoon. Then bam, you have a life skill you can use for designing your own resumes, posters, business cards, etc.
Or use the GIMP if you're determined to be a raster pleb.
I see you posting in every thread. Here's your answer: Adobe Illustrator
It's expensive and difficult to learn but you can find a pirate copy and learn with free tuts.
However, I paid for it and I have mastered it already. You want something professional, that's obvious. Why don't you hire me?
Or use pen on paper like everybody else?
And the fact that you take some light teasing accompanying a genuine request for information as some sort of personal attack and then extrapolate it into a baseless assumption about someone's emotional state and level of education doesn't reflect badly on you? From now on I'll be sure to attach a sourced and peer-reviewed dissertation whenever I talk about Forgotten Realms if it pleases you.
>Why don't you hire me?
Because I'm poor.
>Or use pen on paper like everybody else?
Because that shit doesn't look remotely professional, and because I don't own a scanner anyway.
Honestly I'm just baffled there's not a single good program made to make maps that doesn't force me to learn the whole goddamn photoshop hog. It's like I'm the single first person to show up in thirty years to be this lazy.
Your laziness and whininess is indeed exemplary and an inspiration to the rest of us lazy bums who didn't even think of this.
Also a lot of the maps I've seen in the OSR modules have been incredibly similar, which has led me to believe there's a program for it.
If there isn't, then I suppose I will just continue to be lazy and ditch the whole maps altogether.
But I will also stop whining.
If you are poor, you don't need pro quality.
If you plan to sell something with a pro map in it, you should be able afford it.
If you don't, you don't need pro quality.
If you make cool shit I'll give you a discount.
I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.
>I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.
How does that work? If you paint traditionally then you need to get them on a computer somehow, don't you?
Or mail it to his client.
>Snail mail
>in 2010s
Not him, but I'm a painter as well.
Usually the point is to get the actual canvas over to the client. It's part of the novelty.
Very nice. Write a few more so you we can use it as a rumor table? A d66 Ex-Adventurer Tips table maybe?
>mail awkward treasure to the collector
>get xp
checks out
>light teasing
Whatever you say, Mr. Assmad McToolazytoreadbooks
>BX uses a base ac of 9, not 10, so the conversion starts at 9(DAC)->10(AAC)
No, the conversion is the same as with AD&D, it's just that there is no AC 10 on either the descending or ascending side.
THAC0 20 is the same as having a 0 attack bonus. If your THAC0 is 20, then in order to hit descending AC 9, you need to roll an 11 or over (20 THAC0 - 9 AC = 11). You have a 50% chance of doing that.
If your attack bonus is 0, then in order to hit ascending AC 11, you need to roll an 11 over (roll of 11 + 0 attack bonus = 11 AC). So descending AC 9 = ascending AC 11. Using a AD&D scale, descending AC 10 would also equal ascending AC 10, but that doesn't affect anything else.
Unless, of course, you change the attack bonuses around or something.
>Unless, of course, you change the attack bonuses around or something.
But there you end up with a normal man having a -1 attack bonus.
Hi OSR me and my group mostly play 5e but i am in love with the OSR stlye, so is theere a way that i can give the OSR feel to my 5e campaign? what kind of adventure or story makes the game feel that way?
No, I understand.
But rather than a rule of thumb, you should pick an appropriate number each time.
An animal sick or guarding children would have higher morale, the last surviving goblin would have lower, etc. etc.
Now you're getting the hang of it.
To badly misquote a 2009(?) children's fantasy novel,
"The fools who came before you were wiser than you'll ever be."
Holy fuck , free will is a lie, i am legitimately spooked right now
Where can I see Zak S running a game? Not the webseries he made, I mean actually running at length and unedited. Link if possible?
i need that list senpai
Bluepill me on philotomy.
He's running Tales from thje Yawning Portal - White Plume MOuntain in 5E on roll20 here:
(not allowed to post link but just look for "roll20app" on twitch dot tv)
For your OSR games, do you play in your own made-up settings or do you use established ones like Greyhawk, Hyperborea, Lemuria, Wilderlands, etc.?
Usually Wilderlands for me, sometimes border areas of Forgotten Realms. The rest of the settings never really struck the right chord the way these two did, and I'm too lazy to make up my own stuff.
Which parts of the Wilderlands or FR?
SUCCINCTLY ARGUE
ASCENDING OR DESCENDING AC
WHICH ONE
AND WHY
ALSO WHY SHOULD I USE THAC0
Ascending AC is slightly more simple and therefore should be used, but if your game of choice already has descending AC it's probably not worth houseruling.
If your game has descending AC, then you will need to use THAC0 as well. Again, it's not so hard that you'd need to houserule it away.
I like THAC0 because I like attack matrices.
With Wilderlands, I like to start in Elphand Lands, Ament Tundra, or Ebony Coast: They're far away from shit that truly matters yet are still full of flavor and good starter adventures.
With FR, I like Savage Frontier, especially Icewind Dale. Shining South is a close second.
What made Damascus steel so good?
Cool. I thought the Ebony Coast was described as being tranquil farmland? Have you played in the City-State of the IO?
No senpai, the other Zak S
Yeah, I've got another game going on around the surroundings of the City-State. Getting into the affairs of the Conclave of the Twilight Anvil, southern pirates, and a bit of orcs and Altanians.
It's fun, though I guess I prefer travel and exploration a bit more: it feels like it'd get more out of the setting since there's so much to see all around.
It's superplastic (extremely hard to fracture) despite being very hard.
We have better materials these days, but inventing similar materials generally requires large teams of chemists and engineers.
tl;dr
Syria lucked into a recipe that forms carbon nanotubes inside crazy magic steel.
What happens if you have a B/X MU that uses the 5e spell list? Remember, no captured spellbooks.
Can you sell me on the Wilderlands?
I really can't get a "feel" for it.
The feel, I guess, is the sort of seventies scifi-fantasy a lot of OSR settings go down these days: with aliens and Flash Gordon and shit. Dinosaurs and ape-men. Hawk people, bare-chested barbarians, nubile slave girls, cave men, amazons, the whole thing. It was also the first third-party setting.
But Wilderlands has a crapload of detail to it, probably a lot more than any of those settings, with nearly twenty cool maps to define the area in a great deal of detail, hexes full of awesome shit - yet it never goes overboard like Forgotten Realms and lets your party do basically whatever they want in it.
1d4chan.org
>Elphand Lands - If you're looking for all that Lost World stuff, this is where you'll want to go, right to the northwestern edge of the maps. They've got cavemen, dinosaurs, mammoths, saber-toothed tigers, amazons (sometimes riding those saber-toothed tigers), the biggest and most unexplored forest in the entire setting, mountains full of giants and hawkmen, and three moronic tribal leader brothers trying to assemble a mighty magical staff left behind by their much wiser father - obviously by killing off the other two brothers or stealing their staff piece.
>Not much civilization, though: there's a few towns and fortresses that're lucky if they're past iron age, plus the ancient trading city of Damkina in the middle of a lake. It has been standing there unconquered for thousands of years because it doesn't even bother to defend itself: anyone's that got stuff to trade can come in and trade that shit.
I think I'll start my players somewhere in here.
>red-skinned barbarians
>winged apes
>halflings flying on giant yellow wasps
>polite ice sorcerors
>green-skinned immortals
>demon empires
>chromatic wizards
>orc hordes led by amazon warrior-queens
>city-states instead of kingdoms
>endless wilderness & adventure
Shit is off the hook.
Why? Doesn't that sound just amazing?
It was where the very first old-school game I ever played was set on.
Speaking of the Conclave, do you have a list of all the secret societies in the Wilderlands, and a list of how the Chromatic Wizards map to each school of wizardry?
Not really. Part of the whole schtick of the Wilderlands is that there are no big secret societies such as the Harpers to dictate what happens next: It's all on you. There are still plenty of them but they're very localized, just about impossible to keep track of, and really not that special compared to your usual pirate gang anyway.
To run a proper old school game in 5e, here's a rough idea of what you'd need to change, probably missing a few things:
>Reduce monster XP to a fraction of current levels.
>Remove other sources of XP, replace with XP for treasure
>Rework the methods whereby treasure is generated - monsters generally drop squat unless you track them to their lair
>Enforce strict, unified time tracking for movement, hunger, light sources burning out and other actions
>Reduce player power and capability to prevent short-circuiting the resource management - no free light sources, no free food, no cheap healing, no cheap ways to bypass obstacles
>That includes combat, so while you're retooling, ensure that their feats and other abilities are nerfed so that combat is dangerous in a way that 5e does not natively support
>Move search and miscellaneous other rules to the DM side to encourage roleplaying solutions over mechanical ones
>Hirelings, as above
>Strict encumbrance tracking, with weight slowing you down, meaning you'll need those hirelings both to hold torches when you're fighting, and to help carry out the thousands of coins you'll need to level.
>More exploration
>You're not really the center of the world
>Skill checks are better hints, they're not solutions, unless it's simple enough that you should succeed without
>Casters are meant to be rare
>Read the level tiers, read them again. Epic levels start after 11-12, not at 20.
>A smart enemy can fuck you up, be careful
>Buy mounts you morons, a servant of some sort can also be a good idea down the line
>Even if you have cantrips, people fucking know you're using magic. Yes your incantations are that obvious, yes your somatic components are that obvious. Bonus action and reaction spells are slightly less so but still, people will know the fucker who does fancy gestures is doing magical shit.
>Most people's awareness with magic is a level 2-4 village witch with a few rituals and spells at most, if even that.
I get it, they're not huge or world-spanning, but they are out there and I wanted some info on them as the GM. Like the Black Lotus for example.
I know, my point is that on top of my head I can't remember all too many at all.
Why is everyone so scared of rolling 3d6 for stats?
A leftover from later editions, presumably, combined with being literally barred from playing half the classes if you can't match the rolls.
Personally I've actually recently come to find 4d6-as-arranged as incredibly boring. It used to go fine, depending on the game, and if I wanted to do some specific character type, but I dunno, these days it's just sort of worn out to me.
>Nice pairs.
People new to gaming want choice, freedom and no limits. After gaming for a few decades they realize that restrictions and boundaries can be fun too.
Just to ask - which version would be the best to start reading?
Too fun for them.
In OSR games that stats don't really matter I don't rolling.
Third edition. It sticks mostly the entire setting together in three thick books. Later on you can go on to City-State of the Invincible Overlord, Caverns of Thracia, Dark Tower, Tegel Manor, then a bunch of old Pegasus Magazines, in about that order.
What does OSRG think of weapon speeds?
Ah, well, point taken then.
Agreed. It's much more concise and extensive, and easier to read with better organization and layout.
I have no idea if those weapon descriptions are meant to be b8 or like the actual ruleset to a tongue in cheek meme game.
I honestly can't fucking tell.
I don't have a problem with two-handed weapons putting you at the end of initiative, if that's what you mean.
Bleh. Too railroady. Give me a sandbox with just enough details to spark my imagination so that I can fill in the rest, and I'm happy.
Because a lot of system place more value on attributes.
Not sure about 5e, but you'd have to be a moron to want 3d6 (in order or not) in 3.pf
>That includes combat, so while you're retooling, ensure that their feats and other abilities are nerfed so that combat is dangerous in a way that 5e does not natively support
Or just scale up the enemies.
>Move search and miscellaneous other rules to the DM side to encourage roleplaying solutions over mechanical ones
>Hirelings, as above
No need to hide the rules. Just make it clear that they lean on roleplay and fiat.
Even Gygax was willing to hate on weapon speeds.
I like this, but more as a "things to teach your players during game, via dungeon design" rather than as a handout.
>To badly misquote a 2009(?) children's fantasy novel, "The fools who came before you were wiser than you'll ever be."
Too goddamn spooky.
>I'm a illustrator/designer/traditional painter and I don't own a scanner either.
Got a gallery or something, or do you not own a camera either?
>or do you not own a camera either?
Dude doesn't even own a computer.
He semaphores his shitposts to a 3rd party.
What're some good places to stick traps into?
Can't have them all over the place or else the game will slow to a crawl and the traps will seem arbitrary, but can't get rid of them either because they're an integral part of the old-school play. So where to put them and how?
Obviously where people will be forced to be in a certain area.
So doorways, long hallways, chests, etc. You can be sure people will get into these areas so you can set up traps there.
Ancient temples, kobold territories, pyramids.
Goblins don't do traps, they're too stupid, and orcs too fond of roving around. Kobolds are the big trap makers.
Doorways.
Hallways.
Near containers.
In containers.
Near monsters.
How does the d20 Caverns of Thracia hold up to the original?
>and how?
Latches.
Tripwires.
It's looks better and is better organized, but is marred by basically the single worst ruleset in the history of D&D. Use it as a reference material but switch to an OSR system of your choice.
Well, I can always just convert the mechanics. God knows it's not difficult.
I'm mostly curious because I heard it added stuff and fixed some of the original issues.
Didn't he invent them?!?
>things to teach your players during game
If I had consistent players willing to stick around for a whole campaign I would teach them these things via gameplay, but...
>Didn't he invent them?!?
Hence "Even"
>Didn't he invent them?!?
Well, Gygax invented D&d and Hated it too
Play Lejendary Adventures
But why? Too slow and complicated or some other reason?
Every part of the weapon speed rules are nonsensical.
Mechanically.. Thematically... Balance wise... etc. etc.
Someone did a hack of Barbarians of Lemuria for B/X, called it B/XOL:
Bogs down initiative (slowest part of combat already)
Does not play nce with the abstraction of the combat system
Did weird things to weapon balamce
All speeds were arbitrary, so most were weird
>Play Lejendary Adventures
It's always grimly amusing to see his dragonsfoot posts that segue into shilling his game.
Dungeon Painter Studio on Steam has a few different tilesets, including black and white and old-school blue and white.
It's basically just painting polygons and ellipses with different textures
Pic related, made it in DPS, a dwarven reliquary and tomb build into the side of a mountain.
If he hadn't croaked, he'd still be writing those.
Did *anyone* *ever* play that system outside of games he hosted at conventions?
Dungeon Painter Studio on Steam has a few different tilesets, including black and white and old-school blue and white. It's basically just painting polygons and ellipses with different textures, very stripped down with few bells and whistled.
Pic related, made it in DPS, a dwarven reliquary and tomb build into the side of a mountain.
Today I will remind them.
>jesus christ how horrifying.jpg
I don't know if I even want to read all that commentary...it's going to spit on my childhood hobby, isn't it?
>zeb the destroyer
yup
Today I will remind them.
Why are the stairs blurry?
...