/osrg/ OSR General

>My first TPK
>It said, “An Adventure for Character Levels 10-14.” I had players with characters level 10-14.
kek

Ty user, I'm reading it atm. I recall someone posting a 'corrected' version but this seems complete enough to me.

let's do thissss

Right.

Dungeon premise: a small hut wherein a kindly old grandmother lives, turns out to be surprisingly spacy with enough room for all manner of weird creatures to live in the walls, the basements, the cupboards, and the attics. They have alliances and rivalries and feuds, but no one touches the grandmother because she's the only one that brings in the groceries.

The grandmother has no idea any of them exist, and refuses to believe it.

Earlier this morning, I woke up then laid back down. In my state of semi-sleep I actually came with some rules.

>Magical Martial Arts
Any Wizard (and only wizards because I dunno autism or dedication) may choose to consume a prepared spell to empower his body rather that cast that spell. The wizard receives +N to hit, +N to damage, and improves his AC by N, where N is the spell's level. This effect can activated without using an action and lasts until the Wizard's action in the next round. While under the effect of Magical Martial Arts, a wizard can't cast any spells. Most wizards only use Magical Martial Arts when using spells would either be too dangerous (a fireball in a 5-ft wide corridor with an enemy right in your face) or they prove useless (that meteor swarm is a lot less useful when it turns out you're not fighting a white dragon but rather a an albino red dragon).

In no order:

>Adam's Wrath
This is entirely because the dungeon site where Adam and his Flesh Golem buddies lurk is dripping with flavor.

>Web of Illusions
The temple itself is just 2 cool 4 school and the illusions are really fun.

>B4
It's got weird, it's got loot, it's got factions. It can also be expanded into a meagadungeon.

>Caermor (Dragon? Magazine)
Damn creepy low-level investigative adventure with devils and cults.

>Plundering Poppoff (Dungeon Magazine)
A nice little smash-and-grab adventure that can serve as a set-up for future shenanigans.

>G1
M I L I E U

>S3
Best S-series module, great concept, good execution, clever alien artifacts designed to fuck over careless players in funny ways, bonus assrage from MUH TOLKIEN ONLY stooges.

>B4
Do I really need to explain what's good about The Lost City?

>I6
It's just really *competent*, t bh. "Okay, make Dracula as a D&D module" is an almost parodically flat prompt and it seems like that adventure would be shit, but it actually isn't -- even though it's really close to just being I6: Frickin' Dracula.

>WG6
There's an enormous ape. What do you want from me?

> * Magazine
Is there a compilation of the best stuff from those mags?

but where them goblins at??

Interesting,
This is because it is the failing trans-dimensional travel pod of a long dead alien, if you enter through the front door it is a normal hut, but if one enters through a hidden portal from the cellar, then it will seem as if you have shrunk down to an inch high, and the grandmother has become monolithic. This bizarre effect allows you to access the rest of the pod, which stretches on for miles (or a couple of feet for the grandmother)

can grandma be a hill giant?

>Magical Martial Arts
Not exactly what you describe, but the Mystic of Nog kit ties up spells known in exchange for martial powers.

>grandma is half-ogress but nice one
>however her house applies with a parallel dimension where her house is 100x times larger
>the monsters in the walls, the basements, the cupboards, and the attics all seem to be miniature versions
>1' monster in dimension = 5" in normal reality
>PCs get shrunk
>they must survive and find a way back to normal reality

No, sadly. They are really adverse to the whole thing. They were mad about the lethality and the only other survivor besides me was angry that the DM was "railroading us" for three sessions only for us to die in the first combat.
By the way does 18 Dex with scale mail and shield, actually give me a 1 AC in AD&D? We're playing 1st ed. It just seems too low, and I am used to heavy armor & dex being rather incompatible.

-4 AC from 18 DEX, -4 from scale mail, -1 from shield. The math checks out.

And yeah, AD&D understands that heavy armor doesn't turn you into a slow lug. High DEX and a good armor work well together.

Anyway, it's a shame your friends weren't into it.

>By the way does 18 Dex with scale mail and shield, actually give me a 1 AC in AD&D?
Yes. High Dex is brutal in AD&D. One of the reasons a lot of us tend to prefer the lower modifiers from Basic or even the practically-don't-matter stats from LBB OD&D.

Woops, meant to reply to:

>I said something I don’t quite remember and he called me a “wanna be community theater actor.”

>Anyway, it's a shame your friends weren't into it.

Yeah one of them was getting salty over the people in town being greedy fucks and ripping us off, which the DM played very well.

Then we get to the tower, kill the frogs, go inside the keep part with the courtyard and run into a spider, which our druid charmed. Also the half-orc fighter had a horse (not even a warhorse) which the DM allowed to fight anyway. Even with that, 9 bandits just about killed us all. However, due to having a 1 AC I did not get hit at all. Probably helps that the DM let us roll six times for each attribute and keep the highest on 3d6, so I ended up with Str 16 Int 14 Dex 18 Con 14 Wis 17 Cha 12. Everyone else had similar scores.

c

Clearly the goblins live in the walls. They've been shrunk too.

>>however her house applies with a parallel dimension where her house is 100x times larger
Elaborate on this, I don't really get it.

Good hidden lore, let's have hints of that be put incredibly far into the dungeon.

So what are the factions of creatures? There should definitely be rats. And goblins. What else?

>What else?

Ravens right outside the window. When the dimensional fuckery is going on, they too can be massive and dangerous.

Yeah he was sick of it too. There were 6 people: the GM, his youngest brother and me (who were the only two survivors), my other friend and his brother, and my friend's dad. Out of all of them, only my friend's dad wanted to reroll. And he was the one who got one-shotted. The youngest brother of the DM survived and was grudgingly willing to continue. We'll see what happens next week. Most of them just wanted to "try" AD&D.... I actually wanted to play it (because I am foreverDM, partly, but also because I love old school rules, or at least a lot of aspects of them).

I did get to play my friend's basic D&D homebrew, I was the only player but I ran four characters through a world where skeletons and zombies were super-tough and even a 1st level necromancer gave us trouble. He ripped a lot from AD&D and even 3.5 (the game had no skills but it did have feats that gave minor effects), we started at 0 level, the initiative system was a weird experiment. I enjoyed it quite a bit but it was almost too extreme. AD&D is the right mix of lethal but still heroic later on. Whereas Pathfinder.... it just feels like no one ever dies, and the damage scale is so unbalanced. That is actually my favorite part about AD&D: I could use a throwing axe without gimping myself because I'm not using fucking Power Attack / Deadly Aim / Vital Strike, and still being inferior to the spellcaster.

Working on another project and ended up burning a lot of time stocking a megadungeon. Figured I'd turn the fruit of my work into a fat fucking table or two.

occultesque.com/2017/04/stocking-dungeon-monster-activities.html

>tfw you think people are running with your idea but then you realize that you were ninja'd and they're following someone else's ideas

o-oh

Anyway
>giant ravens (pteradon stats)
>giant mice (dire wolf stats)
>granny is vaguely aware of her "little helpers" and loves soiled plates on a special table
>the shrunk creatures gather any food from here

>the DM let us roll six times for each attribute and keep the highest on 3d6
spurdoofdisbelief.jpg

Gimme decent rules for armor/weapon durability.

Right now:
*a crit causes the target's armor (or shield) to save or lose 1 AC.
*weapons don't break unless you force them (sword used as crowbar, etc) - roll its damage die and a 1 means it broke.

idk how you guys can write d100 tables but fuck man I love your shit

The 1d100 content is like, legit low-effort if it wasn't obvious.

If I were serious about putting these in a legit publication, I'd do the 1d100 like I normally do and then trim it down to the ones I think are the top 20. A lot of them are shitty, jokey or out of place for a specific situation. It's still fun to write them, though.

I thought we were going with all ideas so far?

Anyway, should we generate a map in donjon for all this? It'll make the whole thing easier to keep track of.

Traps/hazards that specifically break armor notwithstanding, I handwave maintenance into downtime expenses.

I need ideas for interesting traps and rooms for an Into the Odd dungeon.

I love iod. I'm raising your bid to 5 Yankee dollars.

Can we get back to Spelljammer? I think they would make some awe inspiring movies. I also said the movie studios would never, ever in a million years use the vulture in a Spider-Man movie so what do I know?

A shrine maiden (male) who serves Pelor-sama. But her male nature is actually an illusion and in reality he is an evil high priest (female) of Nerull-sama!

>Can we get back to Spelljammer?

Wouldn't make for all that great a dungeon crawl, though, would it?

Alright, so this is what's in the hole in the wall that the players will (most likely) enter first.

What's in the rooms, /osrg/?

You would be /Amazed/ how many abandoned-and-then-inhabited-by-monsters tunnel filled asteroids carved into the likeness of giant dwarven heads there are in Wildspace.

#1: Skeleton of a wizard whose adventure ended here. His tiny spellbook ended up as a prop for a dollhouse the granny is building for her grandchildren. His flesh is nearly untouched: a few mice made the mistake of having a bite and ended up developing strange and unsettling mutations.

Still has a few silver pieces and tiny spell components in his pocket.

I'm using the WFRP book Renegade Crowns to flesh out my borderland. Orcs, monsters, and undead menaces fit just fine as is, but what will I replace Chaos with?

>22. Giant mouse nest
>filled with straw, scraps of paper, droppings, and the bones of unlucky humanoids
>Monsters: 3 giant mice (dire wolves), 1 weremouse (werewolf). If encounter during the daytime there's an 80% chance per individual that it is asleep
>tactic: the weremouse will order the giant mice to attack any intruders, focusing on obvious warriors first. Once it believes that a target has been tenderized it will order the mice to change targets while it kills and eats the first victim. If a mouse has not gotten its fill it may pursue intruders to room 17 or 18. It will go no further unless the weremouse commands it.

>what will I replace Chaos with?
Genies
Demons
Devils
WIZARDS!

>what will I replace Chaos with?
A lack of sensitivity for the finer shades of morality.

Chaos as written by Moorcock.

Mason jars of preserved homunculi, labled after the strange fruits they were reduced and extracted from. The jars can be opened and the creatures inside given commands that they follows with malevolent literal mindedness.

>Urchin Custard, a wet dripping thing that giggles and sticks.
>Skull Candy, a grinning face with tiny legs, agreeing with you sweetly.
>Peach, Plum, Pear, three fey with insectoid features and bad manners.
>Black Meat, a twisted wretch with needy hands eager to strangle.
>Memory Jelly, the quivering mass of opaque forms that remains familiar but wrong.
>Humour Pickle, eyeballs that bounce and roll as a mass of judgemental stares.

Oh I'm sorry. I didn't mean in regards to your matters at hand, sorry about that.

I wish there was enough content to justify a sj thread every day. Ship to ship combat in this setting was wonky but fun. Also, neogi and The Unhuman Wars were great for mining adventure hooks and ideas.

There was some Pirate Campaign discussion last thread.
You should have brought it up then.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
SJ is essentially just fantasy Age of Sail.

I'm always up for talk of Spelljammer, but, I currently have nothing to talk about it for.
But, talking space piracy, I have been setting up a campaign for when my group's current one ends in the distant future. The Neogi are currently replaced with warhammer Chaos Dwarves. I am going to love this.

>Chaos as written by Anderson.

FTFY

>SJ is essentially just fantasy Age of Sail.
That's what makes it boring.

>That's what makes it boring.
Shut your neogi whore mouth grounder.

Neat as heck, but where are they? Are they in the kitchen or have the factions taken one of each as their leader?

>Dungeon Upkeep

I lol'd. Do you have any d100 low-level dungeon encounter tables? I need one.

Sadly, no. I run LotFP (where I make up weird monsters) and 5e where I mostly use either the 5e MM or old D&D MMs.

All of the xDx tables I've written are on that site. Excluding some of the joke stuff I've done on request for this thread.

Yeah I should have but we were just getting to the Jeff Grubb & Zeb Cook parts, user.

I made it on a really big monitor, so it seemed readable at the time.
Now that I'm on my phone, I have to zoom in /really/ far to read it.

Is the text on the images readable with no zoom on a typical monitor?

I imagine them in the darker recesses of the pantry, pressing against their glass. Like they really want out. The local factions know about them, but have already learned not to use them. Players probably aren't as wise, or are more clever in their instructions than a bunch of goblins living under a stove armoured in pots and pans.

>Is the text on the images readable with no zoom on a typical monitor?
>2434x1175

lol who cares

The text that overlaps the pictures.

Anons? Quick query: after TSR went under, one of the guys who worked on Planescape released two online website-splatbooks that expanded on lore for the Bariaur race; the Complete Book of Bariaur and the Book of Bariaur Belief. Some user in another thread kindly converted them from Scribd to PDF docs, so would you gents be interested in them?

What magical deductive powers convinced you to waste a post on asking.

If you post those here, I will throw a small tantrum and post on my tumblr how horrible it was.

>Planescape

>1 in 6 chance the world croaks when they do

That's hilarious.

Well, they're not in our Trove's Planescape folder, so I suppose we need a copy.
You might want to let the PDF share thread know, too, they have a TSR and WotC trove which will need it too.

Roger wilco.

And here's the counterpart file.

>tfw trying to get a feel for what sort of enemies to use in my first B/X game by reading modules for level 1-3 but all of them have shit like

>9 gnolls
>2-5 ogres

it's an abstract kind of feel.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Reskin them ya dingus.

That's honestly why I prefer 2e's MC entries.
Let's look at the Gnoll
>Climate/Terrain: Any tropical to temperate non-desert
>Frequency: Uncommon
>Organization: Tribe
>Activity Cycle: Night

Alright, now let's switch them out for say, Bakhna Rakhna (lomion.de/cmm/bakhnara.php). A little weaker but a different flavor gets thrown in.

Now Ogres:
>Climate/Terrain: Any land
>Frequency: Common
>Organization: Tribal
>Activity Cycle: Any

This one's a bit tougher but let's say Jann instead of Ogres, maybe dropping them down to 1-3. Alternatively, sub in humans, since they're also common frequency creatures.

It might be easier to go for a top-down approach.

What is the goal of having an encounter here?
What general type of creature should be present? (Large and dangerous, small and swarming, intelligent, magical, bestial, etc.)
What are the associated attributes of the creature?

Example:

The dungeon is a burial complex.
Goal: this room should have a combat encounter in it. The encounter should be challenging, and try to force the players to retreat and get into a better position.

General Type: This room is connected to a larger room, so maybe it doesn't contain any skeletons, mummies, or that sort of thing. Maybe this is was where the royal charioteer's horse were entombed. Ok, so 2 skeletal horses. That makes sense.

Attributes: The skeletal horses were harnessed together, so they move and fight as one creature with eight limbs and 2 biting mouths. It's really more of a skeleton-spider thing. Aside from the buffed move speed, let's also make it capable of running along the ceiling. That'll force some inventive moves.

Thats a really helpful way of looking at it, thanks!

No problem.

Once you've got your creature/room sorted, you can think about questions like:

How did this creature come to be here?
Does it need to sleep, move around, or feed? How does it acomplish these goals?
What is it doing here?

Skeleton horse-spider is easy. It's here because two horse were buried here and then accidentally animated by the corrupting influence of the Netherstone. It doesn't need to sleep, eat, or move, but it can't see in the dark, and the PCs have torches. Its goal is to kill all living things it can see. It's crumpled inside its coffin most of the time.

But for more complex examples, like 2 orcs guarding a pie, or a Beholder, you start to see ecosystem development.

Who has any of the new LotFP stuff? I'm too broke to buy something without skimming it over first.

Has the right of it.

9 gnoles (fight as gnolls, but melee from one room away)
2-5 pygmy fomorians (fight as ogres)

How does osr feel about artifacts and relics.... I'm doing research.

In what context? And maybe define the terms (as you see them).

They need to be interesting, for the player's sake.
They should bypass *too much* shit, for the referee's.

Otherwise, go nuts.
Be thematic or violate your genre if you want, nobody cares.

Anyone got any more cool combat rules?

Please don't let this thread degrade into political faggotry.

They need to be interesting, for the player's sake.
They shouldn't bypass *too much* shit, for the referee's.

Otherwise, go nuts.
Be thematic or violate your genre if you want, nobody cares.

>Please don't let

Why would that happen?

Player's option: combat and tactics
I had actually come up with a way to use hit locations depending on where the die landed after you threw them against a trifold screen. The section facing you represented their front facing. The left side was their front left flank. The right side was their front right flank. It got rather complicated but some player's liked it as it gave their character a mechanical bonus to their hit roll.

Found this dice substitute in the Trove (03_OSR Games/Dungeon Delvers.pdf).
Fixed the table, since it had some crazy ass weighting on it

Not a fan of the Dungeon Upkeep, especially it's frequency.
If I used it at all, I'd make 5. Patrol and 6. 1d6 (1-5) patrol, (6) Upkeep

All and all though, great tables.

>ended up burning a lot of time stocking a megadungeon.
Any chance you'll post it at some point?

House rules to emphasis resource management?

I have a loose assortment of players in my campaign, so it's more open table. There is no big narrative story mode adventuring (although the world is alive of course, yada yada). Only epic adventures in dangerous places.

I love challenging my players, and a part of that challenge can be logistics. So what are your favorite rules (be they house rules or pillaged from one of the OSR systems) that emphasize this?

Currently I have the obvious rules in place (such as encumbrance vs movement speed which affects distance per turn and affects wandering monster checks), as well as a system for weapon and armor degradation.

Um... why wouldn't you just add up the number of fingers, and just flip the scale when you went over 6 or under 1? It doesn't make any sense to me that 2 fingers equals 5 and not 2.

>not wanting to consult a matrix
Blegh!

I'm just saying that if you can read more than two thirds of the results at face value, that seems like a boon to me.

Makes it harder for the players to try to game the system by trying to predict the GM's choice.

Replace Chaos with humanoids, fill the old Chaos table with goblins, ogres, bugbears, gnolls, giants, and yes, orcs. Then replace the old orc result with human barbarians or something.

You guys like tables, right?

I got to play "Roundabout" at the end of the last session, too. It ended with the party being plunged into hell.

...

That's a really nice design method. Kudos!

I actually like class-based damage. It lets fighters be more dangerous with anything they wield while allowing for my favorite cliche of wizards with swords.

/osrg/, I'm having trouble with one thing: Large encounters and tallying off individual hit points.

1. Are there any rules for "mobs" of monsters? Like 5 goblins acting as one unit?

2. I'm thinking of counting HD = hit points for monsters and simply counting every 3 damage done as 1 HD lost. e.g., you do 6-8 damage, monster loses 2 HP, 9 damage it loses 3 HD, etc. Plz no bully.

I want to have race+class, without messing around too much or adding new subsystems. In short, I just need a reason for players to pick humans.
Elves get infravision and detect secret shit
Dorfs get infravision and detect architecture shit
Hobbits get thief-like stealth, ranged bonus, AC bonus sometimes
Humans get...? (a bonus to ability scores is ok by me)

I do swarms as a normal monster, where each hp is one critter. They attack as the swarm HD, but can attack once to anybody inside the swarm area - and they can break formations and reach inner ranks.
I don't use 'mook swarms', but you could do something like this. How I play D&D depends a lot more on individual positioning and making even small enemies a threat -- IMO they don't work that well unless you want a pulp/heroic/cartoon tone (and I mean all three at the same time).

I haven't tested this but here's another idea - mooks have 1hp individually, but as long as they are together, they ignore damage less than (say) 10hp per round. You describe a few dying with each hit and all that -- but actual hit points don't move unless player coordinate attacks to deal more damage, split them, or get lucky and deal massive damage.
Sounds a lot better, right? A monster worth fighting, not just weak meat.
A 1HD mook swarm should be a decent threat for a 1st level party, while keeping the 'cartoon mooks!' feel.

>Humans get...?

If not a bonus to ability scores, then a bonus to experience points.

Where other races would hit a level limit, instead you just throw humans even higher exp bonuses.