/osrg/ OSR General

Aaaand then I read the filename.

...

I'm eventually going to build my own PDF, with some preamble notes and stuff, but for now this is pretty darn good.

> How was your world created?
In the beginning the Deity Major said "Let there be a world". Then he said "Let each hex of the world have a terrain type". And so it was.

Still absorbing the ACKS endgame rules.

High level ACKS M-Us get these abilities:

* research spells
* creating magical items
* a few high level "ritual spells"
* creating constructs
* creating crossbreeds
* creating undead

This is fine. How magic items and some monsters come into existence has been explained. But just treat them as spells like any other. For example, make "research magic" and "create magical item" 3rd level spells if you want (as ACKS does) M-Us to acquire those abilities at 5th level.

On the rules for castle construction, why just a list of structures and GP values? Make the players hire labor, both skilled and unskilled. Make them calculate the amount of stone they need to quarry and how much hewn timber they need. Make them find sources for those materials and transport the materials to the site Distance to the sources will determine cost. If they need to have the castle built by a certain time, then make them plan everything out and find opportunities to do things in parallel. If there are oversights, make sure their schedule slips when the oversights are discovered.

You guys ever have the player's map out the dungeon as they go along? Any advice on how best to handle it?

>How was your world created?
The first thing realized that it was an infinite maze, so it set out to build itself.

>You guys ever have the player's map out the dungeon as they go along?
It took me a second to realize what you asked, because the thought of doing it any other way is absurd.
>Any advice on how best to handle it?
There will be at least one spastic autist in your group who draws catharsis from drafting organized lines.
Tell your group to pick a mapper, and they will volunteer themselves. Then describe rooms and passages.

>I doubt the Dwarves commissioned the magic door.
But they literally did that, you dingbat. That's why it has Elf writing all over it!

>On the rules for castle construction, why just a list of structures and GP values? Make the players hire labor, both skilled and unskilled. Make them calculate the amount of stone they need to quarry and how much hewn timber they need. Make them find sources for those materials and transport the materials to the site Distance to the sources will determine cost. If they need to have the castle built by a certain time, then make them plan everything out and find opportunities to do things in parallel. If there are oversights, make sure their schedule slips when the oversights are discovered.

Someone get a priest, he is possessed by Gygax!

Dingbat (AC between 4 and 8; HD 1+2; MV 55' (flight); #AT 1; D 1d4; SA extinguish torch 1%/round/bat (as bat); SD -2 AC in swarm (as bat), 1-in-6 chance Feeblemind when hit; Save T1; ML 7; AL N)

> walks into castle store and takes 2,500gp out of purse. Merchant hands over Rampart, earthen (10' high, 100' long, 15' thick).
awesome roleplay user

So you're saying use this book?

I've used that book.

That's part of the rules for most OSR games. Hand them a sheet of graph paper and describe the rooms, make sure to mix dimensions with the room descriptions.

There's an AD&D (?) play example that illustrates describing maps, but it's very mechanical: "The next room runs ten feet north from the entrance, then twenty feet east, then there's a door, then it runs another ten feet, then..."

Remember that the mapper probably has an eraser, and it doesn't have to be exact. Filling in details and correcting mistakes is a good way to fill dead time. Plus what said, chances are in a group of 4+ people, one of them will like mapping. Reinforce that it's useful.

Cook makes it fairly obvious it takes time as well as money. Do you really want to act out or roll Charisma for every time a contractor gets involved?

Plus that section has a lot of "DM decides" and "if the DM approves" moments that could make for potential adventuring. It's not as simple as going to the Plot of Land Store then the Monster Extermination Shop then the Castle Outlet and voilà, a day later you have a stronghold.

>There's an AD&D (?) play example that illustrates describing maps,
Little Brown Books, actually. It's the /original/ example of play.

All this business about castle building has got me wondering

>You reach the fortress building level of play
>You hire a bunch of laborers and slaves
>You have all the materials you'll need
>Now what?

How do you choose where to put a castle? Where would YOU out it? What would you use it for, exactly?

>Where would YOU out it?
Depends on how the CHAINMAIL campaign is going.
>What would you use it for, exactly?
The CHAINMAIL campaign.

Where in the CHAIN MAIL campaign would you put it, based on your current knowledge?

What would you use it for within the CHAIN MAIL campaign?

Hello everyone. About to run my first long term campaign. And I have decided on running Stonehell + B2 Keep of the Borderlands. Replacing the Caves of Chaos with Stonehell.

Was wondering if if any of the other DMs here could provide your favorite resources to running a game. Specifically a megadungeon.

Mainly looking for tables that you find yourself referencing the most.

>Make the players hire labor, both skilled and unskilled.
you do have to hire labor, including an engineer

the gp price is just for the materials
and the game does have rules for increasing price of materials based on market prices

My main world was the remains of several worlds that were destroyed and then locked in magical orbit around each other. I based it on some really crappy books but I knew that in game or in universe either way it would be a fun concept and I've linked every game and campaign I've run to it in subtle and not so subtle ways. The players seem to get a kick out of seeing their old retired (omg I thought the monk died!) characters have a cameo in the game. One became a per. Another became a domain Lord of Ravenloft! She took the werewolves domain iirc.
Yes I always bother with that setting element. I don't know why sometimes but for me personally I enjoy seeing things I created being brought to life in the game, even if it's just a new spell or the umpteenth intelligent two-handed sword. I throw random stuff in too just to keep everyone, including myself, guessing!

>How was your world created?
doesn't matter
there's dungeons, there's dragons, you have a sword, a shovel, a 10ft pole, and a bunch of sacks. Go become rich

I don't play CHAINMAIL, I was just being facetious.
Bear in mind, /is/ the reason name level characters originally got Strongholds.

And here's the very first example dungeon.
Notice how 3 of the set-pieces specifically say, "added this just to piss off mappers lol ex-dee"

I like this one for useful random stuff to leave laying around so the players have things to mess with.

This is great. Exactly the kind of stuff I am looking for.

Thanks

Going to run an old school session in a few hours. I have LOTFP but I haven't read the referee book. Should I switch to B/X?
Which is the simplest and most deadly?

archmagev.com/2nd_Ed/TSR 2114 - DMRG2 - Castle Guide.pdf

I see merit in the "Castle Modules Table" on p. 54 with its 34 castle components and their "tech", "time", and "gold" values.

The rest of this supplement looks thin. Is there anything else I should pay attention to?

>Should I switch to B/X?
It's pretty much the same.
If you mix up rules by mistake, no one will notice.
>Which is the simplest?
Huh ...probably LotFP?
>and most deadly?
And again, the same.

>How do you choose where to put a castle?
Most defensible place in the fief/the area you want to control. Hills or other prominences, rivers, coasts are good starting points.

>What would you use it for, exactly?
Territory control and defense, base for raids, staging point for larger strategic maneuvers are the basic categories. In a medieval technological context (the only one where castles make military sense) defending a strong point is much, much easier than assaulting one, so once you have a castle up even a modest garrison can tie up a stupid number of enemy troops -- or if they just pass by the castle the garrison can make sorties against the baggage train, supply lines etcetera and fuck the enemy's shit up to a preposterous degree *while simultaneously resupplying*. (There's a parallel here to how personal armor is more effective than weapons, which is why guys clonking around in metal suits is another one of the defining features.)

Basically, once you have the castle, the nearby territory is now yours de facto, and anyone who wants to contest that is going to have to get into a drawn-out assymetric fight in which he expends far more resources than you do. This is the case even for simple wooden castles, which is why the first big wave of castle building in England, for example, was right after the Norman conquest -- the invaders shoring up their power in the country.

I liked these too. I use the tables in Hubris for weird hexcrawling, Stars Without Number (especially Dead Names) and the AD&D dmg's appendix tables. There's a lot of neat shit there that's easy to use and convert.

Oh and Yoon-Suin. It would be hard not to come up with something useful from Yoon-Suin.

Yes! Yoon-Suin, I have been going through it so much. Luckily, I own a physical copy so I have that on hand at all times. This stuff is great, really appreciate it.

I love having stuff at the table to just roll on and go from there.

Better than the cockbat.

How does /osrg/ feel about Zendikar?

You wouldn't happen to have a link to stonehell?

Did you check the Trove?

I did not, but thanks.

Is there some easy way to search mega folders? Since a lot of stuff is nested inside other stuff.

There /is/ a search function, but I have no idea where.
I've heard it's really shit though. Especially for nested folders.

The mega is pretty well organized though.
As long as you know what the thing you're looking for is, it's not hard to reach the folder it should be in.

Admirable attitude. If it doesn't affect the game, it doesn't matter.

Want to invent fabulous elven kingdoms? Cool. Make them gamable or fuck off and write a novel. An entire pantheon? Cool. Are your players going to interact with it or care? No? Then into the trash it goes.

If you're writing a generic setting guide, sure, throw stuff in. But if you're designing from the bottom up, skip world building beyond the basics aspects that affect /your/ game.

youtu.be/mdo5ErnXH3E
youtu.be/116JEVCIAsk
youtu.be/daksqex8zUE

>Lindybait

>some Britbong's hot opinions

Generally speaking tactical combat using squares and/or miniatures is near incompatible with detailed player mapping - at the very least, you can't use the player map for that. Consider a separate battle sheet that can be quickly customized to fit the terrain at hand.

Player mapping comes also on a spectrum of detail. On one end are quick flowchart style maps where players are simply keeping track of where they've been and the exits; on the other hand are full on attempts to get everything on graph paper in faithful dimensional recreation.

If you are letting players map you may want to adjust your descriptions to make best use of the intended mapping style. Dimensions are of course important in the graph paper style, whereas exit orientations are generally of higher importance in the flowchart style.

It says a lot that his mid-period example started to come out just 3 years into what was, at the time, D&D's 37 year history. That was also the exact same year that his example of early D&D was released. He's not exactly presenting an informed point of view.

D&D isn't perfect, but Lindy mostly misses the flaws, preferring to focus on ridiculous shit (like the classes in 4e having different enough powers that one can't masquerade as another). Even when he does hit on a legitimate flaw, he tends to do a rather poor job of making his case.

>Roger Rabbit
>Not Buster Bunny

Thanks skerples. Will try to run this dungeon for some newbies in a week or so. Looking forward to level 3.

I think I've got the hang of it, that door to the left, across the passage on a northwest wall is a bit of a mystery though.

Also, I think you make it pretty simple in actual play. For instance;

"You walk into a 3 by 5 room, with a door in the middle of the south wall where you came through. There's a campfire in centre of the room, and 3 rough looking figures cooking something on a spit. It smells like pork. They all turn their heads toward you".

I've been considering it, but ultimately think it'd make the game a bit too abstract and take too much time.

Here's what I do - I dump the complete dungeon map down on Roll20, then player tokens on top of it. Dynamic lighting ensures they will only ever see what their characters would: the rest is up to memory. It's incredible how quick this can make the game.

If they can still navigate in the dungeon without a map, then evidently a map wasn't needed. And occasionally, particularly in the case of larger dungeons, they still manage to get themselves lost - or even separated from one another because they can't even see each other unless they're in direct line of sight! It gets funny sometimes.

Not giving them a map at all, and instead describing all rooms to them and tasking them to draw a map of their own, can I'd imagine result to them getting lost even in such a simple dungeon where the actual adventurers - who can see around - would not be lost. I guess this could get funny and kind of scary but it'd also paint the adventurers as even more incompetent than they actually are.

>Infinite trinkets

Technically this isn't going to be infinite. How many could you actually create with it?

Yeah but that doesn't work when playing in person now does it

The last part does (personally, I'd be up front about fielding 'so, like this?' questions as they go if I went that way).

Alternatively, you could print chunks of the map on sheets of paper and then plonk down the ones they can see as you go.The biggest downside is that you'd need to keep it all filed properly so you can access the parts you need at a moments notice, but it would be good for modularity.

>post-'74
trash

You buy land from someone who's got some. No? Of course not.

You get granted land by a mighty lord. No? Of course not, you're bloody adventurers mate.

You go out into the wilds and pick a spot that looks good, subdue the local wilderness, and start building. Keep it secure, peasants move up and start farming and hunting and mining and villaging and paying taxes to you, and congratulations: you're doing it!

First Fantasy Campaign has a lot of the rules for this that didn't make it into OD&D, incidentally - OD&D specifies you can spend gold on vague "improvements" to your land, FFC has the rules that brief note was based on. It also has populations and road-building and all that fun stuff. It was published by Judges Guild and is in the Trove - it also has a lot of stuff about the actual Blackmoor campaign.

Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition Causes Brain Damage.

Yeah, "left" and "northwest" clearly aren't compatible, it's presumably a typo. The "across the passage" part always made me assume (as in not even registering the contradiction) that it's supposed to say northEAST wall and that the door is in the triangular chunk of wall. (Notice that the caller guy says they *ignore the door* and walk down that corridor)

>old D&D is bad because the PCs are weak
>old D&D is bad because my DM made a bad dungeon
>old D&D is bad because the concept of a dungeon with monsters and treasure doesn't make sense to me
>Runequest is better than D&D because it's "realistic"

Pic related.

You have to admit though, him preferring Runequest is exactly the kind of horseshit you expect out of Lindy. Not to mention how appropriate it is that he claims it's based on a realism which the system doesn't really have.

Runequest is good and cool, 70s d&d is good and cool, that guy's kind of an idiot.

Agreed, Runequest is good. The reasons he has for liking it over D&D are stupid though.

Black Pudding is a pwyw/free osr zine on dtrpg, I'm reading issue 1 and it's p. good

oh

1e>4e>everything else
Whew. Had to get that out of my system.

You must be one of those weirdos who call OD&D and the Basics "1e." That's silly, but I forgive you.

No. Becmi and that dreck is straight booty, son. 1e is life. The a in ad&d doesn't stand for accident.
>pic is of a giant wall of shit

2e is better than 1e. It's got the "advanced" thing and it's also a second edition, which always means it's first but better. They've fixed things.

then why isn't ad&d in the pic i know there's a lot of 3e but you could probably make room for some of it

>Implying anything in ADVANCED Dungeons & Dragons needed "fixing"
Ah, you'll be the first against the wall. I'm literally more advanced than you. It's in the friggin' name, buddy ol friend ol pal o"mine, pally wally.

Because that is a wall of shit, user, of which ADVANCED Dungeons and Dragons is not. Read the post until it makes sense.

How does /osrg/ feel about Whitehack? It's my favourite of the retroclones I've seen so far, since it's a bit more traditional than Black Hack. I like how it stole 5e's Advantage mechanic and applied it to chargen so you're compensated for if the dice fuck you there.
Still never doing 3d6 down-the-line, fuck that noise

>publication date 1975 or later
It's shit mate.

all editions have some things of value in them, even 3e had some stuff worth nicking. just not the rules. or most of the fluff.

This may sound silly, but could you use the nethack wiki for monsters / items?
Monsters are toned down a notch (goblin = d4 hp, ac 10, damage d4) and come with interesting bits like resistances, weight, nutritional value*, and sometimes interesting bits of fluff. No tactics, though.

*I might be planning a dungeon meshi campaign ran under lbb...

Example: nethackwiki.com/wiki/Kobold
>All kobolds are poisonous to eat, but do not convey poison resistance. Each kobold has a 25% probability of being generated with 3-14 darts.[1]
>In German mythology, Kobolds normally start out as benevolent nix, but are either ignored or angered by humans, causing them to act out, or in this case, attack.
>Kobolds will "grunt" when #chatted to

>A kobold:

>has a head, a couple of arms, and a torso.
>is poisonous to eat.
>can eat corpses and fruits.
>is normally generated hostile.
>can pick up weapons and food.
>has infravision.
>can be seen through infravision.

>The race of kobolds are reputed to be an artificial creation of a master wizard (demi-god?). They are about 3' tall with a vaguely dog-like face. They bear a violent dislike of the Elven race, and will go out of their way to cause trouble for Elves at any time.

Why ask? You seem to have it figured out.

I have to admit, this may be a rather clever idea.

all of the "-hacks" come from a mentality that "less rules is always better" which I disagree with

The clone is shit and since I'm a swefag I also know the creator is shit, to the point where even if it were great I wouldn't want to play it for that reason. Fortunatley though, shit is as shit does, so I dodged that bullet.

B/X for life

>Becmi and that dreck is straight booty, son.

It... depends.

When I hacked together a bestiary, I created categories that went:
Worms
Vermin
Goblins
Men
Ogres
Owlbears
Wyrms
Dragons

And each category had a full statblock. All other entries referenced those stats if needed. Fungoids, for example, are "As goblins, morale 8, better constitution and total immunity to poison" or something like that.

The deciding mark is "will this ever be used in play?". Does anyone care if the Owlbear's Int is 4, 5, 10, or 12? Does that number actually help you play and use the Owlbear, or could you use that space better?

there's a middle ground. And I'd say b/x manages to be in that perfect spot. All of the monster stats have things the you will actually use. Lair percentages, treasure, xp, hd, ac, attacks, morale.

Though desu I'd rather have more rules that I might one day want to use than no rules. So ACKS(tm) is the ideal for me. I never thought I'd ever use mass combat and domain rules but suddenly, I'm using them and they're great.

The nethack wiki is a great source of ideas

Like reading the wiki page about thrones, inspired me to add a magic throne to my next dungeon.
nethackwiki.com/wiki/Throne

I'm half tempted to drop a scroll of genocide in the next dungeon too
nethackwiki.com/wiki/Genocide

I dunno, I prefer less rules. I'm one of those people who thinks the simplicity of OD&D is its main strength, there's a lot I'd want to chop out and replace that just makes little sense from a modern standpoint.

>since I'm a swefag I also know the creator is shit
Oh? Do tell

> →
> →
My quest began long ago when I was young and sat at the feet of a wise sage who told me of the lost D&D endgame:

> Only by restoring the endgame can Dungeons & Dragons again become the game it was meant to be.

Three years later I had cause to rejoice, as the endgame had been found.

> What makes ACKS unique is that it makes good on D&D's largely unfulfilled promise to take characters from lowly insignificance to the heights of power

The heights of power! Dare I climb them? But I was still young and frivolous and did not seek out this endgame until now I hold it in my hand and turn to p. 127 ATTRACTING PEASANTS AND FOLLOWERS.

I was mystified by these strange rules. If a fighter establishes a domain, then the population must be determined so questions of tax revenue and levying soldiers can be answered. However would it not be better to include a generic set of such rules with the terrain/wilderness generation tables? Such rules would be general purpose, whereas including them amid rules for domain building and saying that domain building is the endgame of fighters seems like railroading.

However, the wise sage said that ACKS is
> just about anything a high-level, power-hungry fantasy character might be interested in pursuing
so this must be ok. He knew all this before the rest of us because he received an advance copy.

Message - Turns to live
"You don't feel very well." 9
"You are turning a little green." 8
"Your limbs are getting oozy." 6
"Your skin begins to peel away." 4
"You are turning into a green slime." 2
"You have become a green slime." 0

Because I don't have lots of experience with D&D (nor nethack for that matter). Idk if the stats are too different or if they are plain whack monsters.
At a first glance ACs seem way too low for 'normal' monsters. Also lots of monsters are fairly different - beholder is just a passive thing that paralyzes you when hit, full stop.

sinks and fountains are great too
and graves
and shop walls
and shopkeepers

>Oh? Do tell
There's not really a lot to tell, he's just widely known to be a hugely pretentious douchenozzle and a bandwagoner on game trends (he made a steampunk game when steampunk was big, this alegedly OSR game came out after the OSR became popular in Sweden etc).

I've been considering OD&D for a super light game. Do you use the original game or which clone? What did you houserule?
Is it really THAT lethal? Getting +1hp every instead of a HD roll must suck a lot... (when I play BX I use AD&D HD sizes)

OSR blogs poll, URLs taken from the Pastebin:

strawpoll.me/12856929 (1/2)
strawpoll.me/12856933 (2/2)

I've not even gotten the chance to run any yet, but I'd probably just use Whitehack. Like I said, despite saying the designer's a bit of a cunt (I agree on that, steampunk is fucking cancer) it seems mechanically solid with the possible exception of the magic system.

I'm probably the worst person to ask on this, I'm probably a new-school OSR fan if such a term exists.

So I started a game using fucking dnd rules and castle of greyhawk module for shits and giggles. And one player is, I guess, really loves neverwinter night games, so after first party wipe he compelled me to start implementing treats and talents and all manner of newer things, which I was okay with to a certain extent back then, but now game is an stitched abomination of all editions.
Now, after a second party wipe, players made 2 clerics and this neverwinter guy starts discussion about more spells and more spell usage as I was using "fucking dnd" «x times a day» rule, so do you think it’s going to be okay to give them more? I felt like 4 cleric casts on level 4 is not much, but will make players careful with their decisions, and I did allow then to have their own spells from 3.5 list, 2 for each level, not only random roll spells from "fucking dnd". But according to player it’s just too little for a full caster?

Does anyone have a solid reaction table they can post?

Is it possible to have an NPC use geas or quest on a PC without it feeling like railroading?

Sure, if it's something (or something along the way to something else) they were going to do anyways.
Or go with more traditional geas, "eat all food offered by women" etc.