/osrg/ OSR General - Jungle Gym Edition

>If that's both snow and desert in the span of 40 miles, then yes, probably too much stuff.

Stuff on the south is just hills. Hexographer makes them look a bit like desert, but it's actually fairly rocky and stuff.

>On a map of that scale, I would only have a single proper town in the entire area.

It has two towns with about 2000 people on each. The rest of the villages have like 200 guys at most.

apparently they used to chew coca leaves in the spanish colonies to increase labour output and decrease the pain of starvation

...

So is this just for OD&D?
Does advanced ed 1 count?

Even the 2nd edition does.

OD&D, Basic D&D, AD&D 1e, and AD&D 2e. Also retroclones.

Aren't OD&D and Basic D&D the same?

Nope. Behold!

Are there any good OSR-themed YouTube channels? Genuinely informative, funny, or otherwise worth watching?

It's the B/X cult center, although other D&D games and "old" games sometimes get discussed.

After OD&D, TSR decided to split up D&D into AD&D and BD&D. BD&D used simpler rules and kind of faded out in the beginning of the 90s. A lot of OSR people really like it, so it's pretty often discussed here.
There are three versions of Basic D&D: Moldvay/Cook B/X, BECMI, and Rules Cyclopedia. B/X is the version that is discussed most around here.

Counter Monkey.

Anyone got a copy of Veins of the Earth?

>Renegade Crowns
I like you.

I think it's in the trove, or at least available somewhere. There was a post about it a couple threads back.

*that upload new material more than once a decade.

Can't find it in the trove. I'll go search for a mention of it in the past threads.

Turns out it was shared in the pdf thread.
mega.nz/#!EIcTEZIK!Z1CZUOfXwQ-ZKtaRqm34A9l2uQvqvG24WCnKW8o1bWU

Still hopin' for a copy of this. Anyone?

In LBB Intelligence gave bonus languages and Wisdom did jack shit.
It gave every class bonus xp, but so did Intelligence.
Unless you were a Cleric, it gave xp at a /worse/ rate than Intelligence.

>How many players is TOO many players?
Fifty one.

Okay guys... so on page 82 of the DMG for AD&D 1e they talk about dying at -10 hp, bleeding out, etc.... yet in the PHB they say a character at 0 hp dies? How does it work? Did a bunch of characters die in our last session for nothing? I was the guy who posted by the way. I am curious if some of our characters might be saveable, we left off right after a battle with nine bandits from Hommlet adventure with a lot of the characters reduced to 0 hp. Which we had assumed meant they were dead.

Some people lump them together, I think primarily because they were both just called Dungeons & Dragons, while AD&D was nomenclaturally set apart by the "Advanced" in front of its name. So it kind of looks like there's a continuous D&D line running from OD&D through Basic, with a separate AD&D line being more of an off-shoot. And to be fair, the first edition of Basic (Holmes Basic) was as much an OD&D starter set as anything else.

If you want to trace Basic's lineage back through Holmes to OD&D, that's easy enough to do. Basic is essentially a cleaned up, tweaked, repackaged version of the core OD&D (the so-called "little brown books") plus the Greyhawk supplement. But you can do a similar thing with AD&D, which is a continued development of OD&D with all the supplements.

Did any of you even check, IC, or did you just leave them there to die? If it's the latter, then I'd say they were killed regardless of any rulings.

>Is WIS a dump stat? The base rulebooks and supplements don't seem to give it much to do.
Unless you use Greyhawk, all the Prime Requisites are dump stats.
But Wisdom is extra dumpy, its description is even "this influences player actions in the same Intelligence does."
It wasn't even in the game for most of development, they tacked it and Clerics on at the last minute.

>they tacked it and Clerics on at the last minute.

Does this mean the true OD&D experience would only have two classes - fighting-man and magic-user?

Magic-Users were also a mistake.
t. Gygax

youtu.be/7UjXi1HKjms

>Okay guys... so on page 82 of the DMG for AD&D 1e they talk about dying at -10 hp, bleeding out, etc.... yet in the PHB they say a character at 0 hp dies? How does it work?
I've forgotten exactly what 1e says about it. I was thinking it was an optional rule, but it might be that it's simply something that changed in between the time the books were written, like how the Monster Manual is based on an "AC 9 is unarmored" scheme while the PHB moves to AC 10. Regardless, almost everybody uses the -10 hit point rule when playing AD&D. Really though, it all comes down to what the DM decides.

In ACK can Thrassian 4 dive attack? Is dive attack exclusive to talons as the rules seem to state excluding clawed creatures?

Flowchart.

No, but OD&D and AD&D are essentially the same.

Well the campaign ended immediately after the last bandit ran away. Maybe 3 or 4 rounds have elapsed since then. So we could heal some of them and save their lives (at least those who are still interested in playing, which might be our halfling rogue).

Fixed.

*missed two arrows, sorry

Was it autism?

The arrow colors are arbitrary and necessarily subjective anyway. The thing you should've changed is the date on Moldvay Basic, which should be '81 instead of '79.

Is this the video of the guy who says Magic Missile was somehow "the one concession for the little guy" while overlooking fucking Sleep and Charm Person?

In 1e its not presented as optional rule in the DMG, but what is optional is how much you can be reduced to and not die (in one hit). From 0 to -3 is the default.

hum... I like it.

As D&D Minis had a HUGE impact on 4e it may be worth slipping in there somewhere.

How did you manage the conversion from a grid based map to a hex based one?

Yooooo, what's the best module to run based around a Thieves Guild?

>Sleep
LBB sleep doesn't have rules for waking up, but I was under the impression it was mostly used for sneaking in that version.
>Charm Person
LBB charm person hires a bipedal monster, as a hireling, in a hireling slot. You have to pay them a salary and everything.
It's a lot like knock, insofar as it's a flashy but guaranteed way to perform an action that you're free to do without it.

Yeah you're right, Charm Person is RADICALLY stronger in 3LBB than in later editions. Like crazy-go-nuts more powerful.

>an action that you're free to do without it

In LBB its totally up to the discretion of the DM whether you so overwhelmingly and visibly outclass the enemy that you can get a chance to do a reaction roll at all. So yeah, Charm Person is more of a big deal in LBB than in any subsequent edition, depending on time frame and coincidences (a campaign with no downtime and a 3 int high level fighter is of course going to be a golden opportunity for Charm Person I suppose).

>In 1e its not presented as optional rule in the DMG, but what is optional is how much you can be reduced to and not die (in one hit). From 0 to -3 is the default.

Are you referring to this section? Because I'm not at all clear on what he's saying. Like many of the bullshit complexities of AD&D, this is something that seems to always be ignored in actual play.

>Zero Hit Points:
>When any creature is brought to 0 hit points (optionally as low as -3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0), it is unconscious. In each of the next succeeding rounds 1 additional (negative) point will be lost until -10 is reached and the creature dies. Such loss and death are caused from bleeding, shock, convulsions, non-respiration, and similar causes. It ceases immediately on any round a friendly creature administers aid to the unconscious one. Aid consists of binding wounds, starting respiration, administering a draught (spirits, healing potion, etc.), or otherwise doing whatever is necessary to restore life.

>Any character brought to 0 (or fewer) hit points and then revived will remain in a coma far 1-6 turns. Thereafter, he or she must rest for a full week, minimum. He or she will be incapable of any activity other than that necessary to move slowly to a place of rest and eat and sleep when there. The character cannot attack, defend, cast spells, use magic devices, carry burdens, run, study, research, or do anything else. This is true even if cure spells and/or healing potions are given to him or her, although if a heal spell i s bestowed the prohibition no longer applies.

>If any creature reaches a state of -6 or greater negative points before being revived, this could indicate scarring or the loss of some member, if you so choose. For example, a character struck by a fireball and then treated when at -9 might have horrible scar tissue on exposed areas of flesh - hands, arms, neck, face.

You're free to hire like-aligned monsters at any time, reaction rolls or combat be damned.

Right.

Default: Brought to 0, you can get Death's Door rules.
Option: Brought as low as -3 in one hit, you can get Death's Door rules.
If an ally spends an action, you can be saved and become weakly mobile (think "disabled" condition in 3e) after 1-6 turns.
Heal immediately counters it.

At -6 or worse you'll come back retarded.

That's how I'd interpret it, seems straightforward.

...

Plundering Poppof from Dungeon if you're starting out.

The arrow between Holmes and Moldvay should be green.

The D&D Adventure game from '99 is just an AD&D 2nd ed. starter set, not a revision of Basic.

I'm running out of MS Paint.
You'll have to buy me some more or get someone else to do it.
Speaking of which, MSPaint_LotFP_Class_Guy, I leave to you this request: Revisionist Historian.

Two things combine to make it unclear to me.

First, it doesn't specifically specify what the alternative is. If you're reduced to 0 (or optionally as low as -3) then you're unconscious. Does the optional rule A) expand the range (if you land anywhere in the 0 to -3 range, you're unconscious, which probably means you're dead if you land anywhere lower), or B) simply lower the point at which you're deemed to be unconscious (so if a single blow lands you at -2, you're still up).

The first way seems to make a bit more sense to me, except that it means that if you don't use the optional expansion of the unconscious range to -3, the only way that the death's door rules come into play is if you somehow manage to land *exactly* on 0 HP, and it's all kinds of retarded to go into that much detail over something that's hardly ever going to happen.

>First, it doesn't specifically specify what the alternative is.
ded

>the optional rule

The default is, only if you are cleanly reduced to 0, you are at Death's Door. The option is if you are reduced to as low as -3 in one blow.

If you are dying for 6 minutes straight with no help in the default, you come back retarded in some way. In the optional rule it can be 3-6 minutes, since you can have been reduced to up to -3 and still dead.

And exactly 0, or exactly 0 to -3, doesn't strike me as bad. You know why? Measure orc damage to death's door ranges in 1e vs 3e. Its pretty much always a slim window of opportunity, thing, pre 4e.

>And exactly 0, or exactly 0 to -3, doesn't strike me as bad. You know why? Measure orc damage to death's door ranges in 1e vs 3e. Its pretty much always a slim window of opportunity, thing, pre 4e.
An orc does d8 damage, which means they only have a 12.5% chance to hit 0 on the nose. It's really not worth cramming in all the extra rules for something that only happens 12.5% of the time.

Optionally, it can be 0 to -3.

>Optionally, it can be 0 to -3.
And that's fine. But it's optional, so he obviously thought that 0 could stand fine on its own.

A lot of optional rules are for corner cases. Its imo more like a 1 in 6 probability, which is the same frequency of weapon speed factor coming into play.

>Revisionist Historian
HD as Priest
THAC0 as Wizard
Proficiencies as Wizard
Spells as Wizard of (HD-3, minimum 0) level

Once per session may attempt to Correct The Record:
Level 1: may force a player or the DM to re-do one dice roll just made and abide by the results
Level 3: may force a player or the DM to re-do one dice roll made within the current session and abide by the results
Level 5: may force a player or the DM to re-do one dice roll made within the last two sessions and abide by the results
Level 7: may force a player or the DM to re-do one dice roll made within the last five sessions and abide by the results
Level 10: may force a player or the DM to re-do one dice roll made within the campaign and abide by the results

If the re-roll would result in a living character dying or a dead character living then he dies/comes back to life as the case may be but has no recollection of how that happened.

REEEEE

Rolled 5, 3 = 8 (2d6)

I'm forcing to re-roll his reaction check

Uncertain. What is the offer again, and do we share a common alignment?

The offer is this class write-up for FREE. I assume we are both True Neutral.

Those *are* relevant, but Hiring Reaction =/= Reaction Roll

>Its imo more like a 1 in 6 probability, which is the same frequency of weapon speed factor coming into play.
But even if it's the same percentage chance, you're gonna be figuring out who goes first a lot more often than you're gonna see people dropping to 0 hit points or below.

Sounds great, I'll take it.

>I assume we are both True Neutral

I will assume so as well.

Probably about the same, actually. In many, probably most, cases in 1e, determining who goes first rarely requires a roll. Especially when the PCs are at mid levels.

>Is there an 'intended' way to cross-pollinate bonuses from one combat system (STR damage bonus in M2M) to another (20:1 HD-per-man)? I have some solutions but they're not elegant
AFAIK you're meant to apply the same bonuses to both MTM and 20:1 (and Fantastic Combat, where that applies). Sure, they don't give the same exact outcomes in each case, but close enough; the only real trouble's transferring them straight over to the OD&D Alternative Combat System (e.g. the d20-based one we all know as "D&D combat"), because on a straight d20 scale they're all far too low. (For example, the goblin -1 penalty to fighting in daylight is a huge deal in Chainmail and a shrug in the ACS.)

>Why do halbards [sic] get a +1 Man in 20:1, but nothing reflective in M2M?
They do; the equivalent they get is that halberds hit like a motherfucking mule in Man-To-Man, like all polearms. If you compare it to the efficacy of a sword or mace with some test fights, you'll see that it's a clear superiority.

>Is WIS a dump stat? Even supplements don't seem to do anything with it
Wis is like the other Prime Requisite stats in LBB OD&D: it's only directly mechanically useful to the class it's tied to. The rest is up to the individual referee's house rules on adjudicating various types of actions (that is, although the rules give no explicit mechanic for it, the referee might give a character with high strength a higher chance to bend an iron bar, for instance, or lift a heavy barrel). So no, it's not a dump stat more than Int or Str are.

Broadly, the way the abilities work in unmodified OD&D is that each class has a main one which gives them the bonus XP, and then the three other abilities grant game-relevant bonuses to all characters if their roll was high enough. Of course, this symmetry was broken immediately, with the Thief in Supplement I keying off Dexterity.

How is the lotus stuff from the Conan setting?

>Is this too much stuff to an area of this size?
No, that's fine. The upper bound is really just how populated you want the region to be. (If you can, find a map of some area of medieval France and see how many things are a league(≈3 miles) apart. It'll be a lot.) This map gives me the impression of an icy wasteland above a mountain chain, all sparsely populated, so your amount of stuff looks good.

>2e counts
NEIN

Aside from the Moldvay date thing which user pointed out, I'm almost 100% that the Classic D&D Game box predates the black box and not the other way around.

>like-aligned
This is the crucial bit. If you want to hire an ogre, you either have to play a faggot chaos sucks or a Magic-User who picked the best spell.

>I'm almost 100% that the Classic D&D Game box predates the black box and not the other way around.
Not if Wikipedia is to be believed.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_&_Dragons_Game_(1991_boxed_set)

That card's missing discussion of d20 roll under ability checks.

We blew up that hissy fit after we swore off Bingo.

>you either have to play a faggot or a Magic-User
Umm. youtu.be/2z29Rk8814w

Work in progress. I was inspired by all the shitty charts ITT

What issue?

Dungeon #72

Master Set was more Gygax than Mentzer.

youtube.com/watch?v=HtvIYRrgZ04

Did a few tweaks.

You might consider denoting which node inspired the other. without existing knowledge of the material going into it, someone might not know if Rune Quest inspired 2E, or if 2E inspired RuneQuest.

(well you just edited the post to make a little easier to read. arrows could still help anyway.)

How good is Adventurer, Conquerer, King? I've been thinking of reading up on it to have a different system to run with.
Also is it balanced (particularly magic)? I've had a less-than-stellar experience with games like 3.5, and even 5e has a tendency to grind my gears every once in a while.
If I sound like I'm asking the wrong questions, I'm basically completely new to OSR.

has anyone ever played an immortals game from becmi?

aight

I feel like I might be screwing up the 2e divergences a little. Like, it's pretty easy to see when LBB OD&D becomes proto-1e or when 1e becomes proto-2e but 2e has big shifts like kits and planescape that change the game as a whole which then kinda peter out.

Thanks for the info. I've been bending myself over backwards trying to avoid using the Alternative system, so anything to inspire some confidence in Chainmail is appreciated.

>Halberds hit like a mule
But that's the thing--in the M2M tables they're largely comparable to polearms (worse against AC9/8, better against AC3/2). But on the 20:1 scale they're arbitrarily stronger.

My problems are obviously stemming from trying to use Chainmail while being inclusive of the supplement classes and attribute bonuses (which don't use it). I'm tempted to just go vanilla, save perhaps the exception of Thieves.

Not anyone I know, but goddamn do I want to! I want to do a max level one and have it fight it out with another, just to see who comes out on top!

man these images youre posting are fucking sick, where did you get them from?

I would say the left-to-right timeline makes relationships clear.

Honestly seven is too many players. When I was young I could DM to larger groups but I can't assure you that it was fun. It was for them but that was more a byproduct of us all just having fun, having no responsibilities etc.

I have friends who try to pull off big groups and they just can't do it. The last big group I died dmed to was seventeen. I was 32 at the time and it was a hot mess. Luckily almost every player I had knew the rules nearly inside and out so they basically entertained themselves with the ridiculous amount of crap I had to throw at them.

I'm going to assume that 1e and up aren't very welcome here, it seems?? I've lurked a bit but never the osr threads. I sorely regret that now as I've been addicted to reading it for weeks now.

c

They bleed out. They're not dead until they hit -10. 0 should read as dying, not dead.

Hey its MANCAT! or CATMAN