/osrg/ OSR General

Which one(s) did you write? I liked all of them. I did #2 so I'm kind of in the same boat as you, I'd like to see others write something.

I did #5 and #8. Glad you liked them.

I'm ready for this osrg. Bring it on!

>There's less than 60 regular posters in these threads.
How can you tell with such accuracy?

Friggin phoneposters. Bottom right corner of the screen on a proper monitor, there are 4 numbers separated by slashes. Replies / Images / Posters / Page.

Just before I posted this, there are 12 replies in this thread by 9 people.

It stops recording for archived threads.

>takes 5 minutes to roll up a 2e character
Tell my wife that... she takes a day

At least you have a wife

Planning to get into OSR games with my group. Gunna start with LotFP and run The God That Crawls. It'll be 5 players, should I have them roll up two characters each? Or just stick to one each?

>At least you have a wife

That would work, but then you run the risk of not wanting to kill a player's characters because it'd take out both at once. Alternatively, Just write a d20 or d50 table of reasons someone could be in that dungeon (drunk priest, escaped sacrifice, smugglers, tomb robbers, etc.) and have replacement PC roll on it.

Does Korea have those reversed? I have often seen black sect to mean bad or left handed with assassination and white to mean good or right handed with duels.

Black -> Unorthodox
White -> Orthodox

I wrote each pair in the way that flows naturally in English.
Sorry for the ambiguity.

stars without number is solid

Thanks for the bump, almost forgot about this. I liked all the entries, keep 'em coming.
I'll post an updated map with the lava lake later on -- I'll wait until it's keyed, in case newer entries change it. Then compile a pdf or something usable.

>not marrying a witch

>trying to set up a game in 2e for a friend who loves the system
>still not confident creating characters, take like fifteen minutes for minor characters
>not even dealing with wizards, priests, thieves or bards yet

TEACH ME YOUR WAYS

Can you give me a quick overview of what the ones that have been done are? I'd love to add something to this, but I want to know what the region is like so far before I start. I'm currently planning a game involving a giant forest that secretly contains a rift in the center that seemlessly transports travellers into the faewild, and I could use a break from fucking fae shit, seriously, fuck those goddamn pointy eared curly toed bastards for a while.

IF YOU'RE IN MY GAME YOU'LL KNOW AFTER THE FIRST SPOILER, DON'T READ THE REST AND SPOIL IT FOR YOURSELF YOU ASSHATS

fuck, I fucked up my spoiler

shit

well, hopefully they won't come in

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>not marrying a witch

I'd still refer to her as my wife first and a witch second. It's only polite.

I swear there was a screencap that explained this.

7. Ancient Phoenix Power Plant
You can't kill a phoenix, but if you wack 'em on the head and stuff them into an (incredibly valuable) shell of rare metals, you can trap their next incarnation. The heat they produce is immense. There are three phoenix eggs in this plant, each fed by a vast network of rivers, pipes and gates. The network collapsed centuries ago. Most of the plant is flooded. The 4th egg cracked a few decades ago and exploded half the plant with a massive blast of magic-tainted steam. Every room is at least half flooded, or damp, or scalding hot. Lots of metal though, and bottled lightning elementals, ceramic golems, and scald zombies.

I need yugoloths in my life, for real. Like, not literally just more info about them 'cause there's precious little out there.
≥What are your favorite monsters to spring on people?
From any game, IDC.

Phoenix Power Plant Encounter Table:
1. 1d4 (exploding on a 4) scald zombies. As regular zombies but immune to fire. They look like bright red meat seared and shrunk to bones. Hideous (might cause fear). They still smell like boiled bones.
2. Bottled lighting elemental. Glass sphere the size of a cabbage, glowing with plasma. Makes a noise like an electric guitar in a tin silo. Explodes if broken. Wants to touch you. Not hostile, not even angry, but completely alien.
3. Rumbles, then temperature shifts. Something changed in the piping. Expect 1)hot steam 2) cold water 3) sloping floor 4) a wave of hot water
4. 2d10 bath pilgrims. Worship a giant yellow duck god (vestigial cultural memories of phoenixes). Wear only towels, wield scrubbing brooms to poke back the scald zombies. Friendly but extremely lazy, fat, and pink. Won't talk to dirty people, but will talk dirty to clean people.
5. 2d10 Aquatic goblins in shitty scuba gear, diving for rare metals.
6. Ceramic Golem. Repairing, guarding, marching, crushing. Dumb but tough. Every part is as light as chalk and as strong as steel. Will break your arm like a toothpick.
7. Broken Ceramic Golem. Half shattered, stumbling in a circle or bashing head against wall. Inside, it's just more glass and ceramic bits. Wants to die.
8. High pitched hissing, then steam explosion.
9. 1d4 wizards, trying to figure out the source of the steam. They appear friendly but are extremely treacherous when it comes to magical loot.
10. 1 succubus and 1d20 succubus trainees, currently enjoying a "beach episode", whatever that is. Will flirt and cause hilarious situations but won't so much as glance at anything actually lewd. Pick a fight and they'll chase you into a scald-pit.

I also have that, and i've used it, but it's turned out rather sparse, with systems that rarely have more than one thing in it.

It's too much like an actual dungeon room, with a high probability of containing nothing, and usually only has one sort of challenge to it.

Stars Without Number is interesting, but it's results are too scifi. This is distinctly much more D&D/Fantasy in space.

Has anyone here played or read Castle & Crusades? Does it have anything worth stealing?

I like its monk, but the Siege engine is kinda dumb.

>I swear there was a screencap
I've got the "how Wuxia settings work" screencap.
I'd post it, but I'm in hell and hell is in a Faraday Cage.
>that explained this.
I don't remember it going into detail on the factions, beyond "the evil blokes are noy, and do not pretend to be, honest."
The jist is:

Several overlapping societies.
It helps to thinks of them as planes.
• Mortal World: Wars and Warlords
• Jianghu: Muggers and Mafioso.
• Wulin: Dojos and Duelists.
• Taoist shit: Sorcerers with swords.
• Actually Other Planes: Deities and Devils.

Supernatural things fall into a few categories.
• Yao: Monsters.
• Mo: Demon.
• Gui: Ghost.
• Guai: Gonzo.
• Xian: Post-human nerds.
• Shen: Born powerful.

Morality/Confucianism:
Wuxia blokes have skewed their moral priorities for the cultural norm.
This puts them at odds with the everyone else.
On the other hand, they follow their morals. Even the "evil faction" blokes.
The non-Wuxia blokes tend to be judgemental amoral cunts.

Giving Face/Lip Service:
• esteem is a de facto currency, you can spend it to resolve social encounters
• but this is not!China; even though people go along with it, no one honestly values society

Genies, especially Dao.
Thri-kreen
Weirdo Dragons (Cobra, Cloud, Sea, Linnorm, Spider, Yellow/Salt)

Digging this and the wight tomb. Will keep updating this PDF if people make more.

I'm writing my own OSR type of of game ( aren't we all?).
Everything is in d6, including all weapon type damage.
What's a good way to differentiate them?
First thought is +/- damage, but that's no fun because weapons with -'s are at risk of doing 0 despite hitting.

I think bigger weapons do more damage depending on the targets HD, with the cap depending on the size of the weapon.
So dagger and a sword does 1d of damage against a commoner
But against something a bit stronger with 2HD the dagger will still do 1D of damage but the sword will now do 2D of damage. And against something even bigger the sword will still do 2D of damage while a 2 handed weapon would do 3D of damage.
But that slows the game down.
Is it a decent idea anyways?

As for pluses and minuses, why not say a hit always does at least one point of damage?

That sounds very unpleasant at the table and also kind of counterintuitive. If the weapon is bigger and badder shouldn't it do more when "punching down" so to speak? And less as the target scales up? A six inch deep gash is gonna be bad for me, but super deadly to a gnome, and a scrape to an ogre.

The way I thought it is that a you're just as dead if a dagger, longsword, or greatsword slashes your throat open. But a dagger isn't going to open the throat of a dragon, while a greatsword could.

Just make weapons with -s min at 1.

Though, ill be honest, if its not dicepools I don't like systems with only one die. There really is no way to meaningfully differentiate things the way your different weapons, health for classes, etc.

I'll write up the Phoenix Power Plant as a dungeon once I'm done with the Tomb of the Serpent Kings.

Sick. Can't wait.

Hey user, would you be alright if the underground networks in #7 connects with the lavacaves in #2? I'm thinking of doing a longer writeup on that and I feel that it's fitting considering they both have heat as a theme and are very close to each other.

Oh yeah, sure, absolutely. All that water has to go somewhere, so it's totally feasible for there to be channels and caves.

What are the main tropes/themes/mechanics for osr?

i think listing them would be a good guideline for creating alike games

Cool dude, thanks. It'll just be a short mention like "the caves continue on toward the flooded phoenix power plant to the west" or something.

>tropes
• John is dead, but you meet his cousin Bron just around the corner
• [looks up from screen] "hmm, that *is* a good question."
• the enemy of my enemy is my friend

>themes
• dungeons full of loot
• dungeons full of empty rooms
• untamed wilderness
• life is cheap
• us versus them

>mechanics
• xp for gp
• loose guidelines for combat
• arbitration for most else (roleplay searching, etc.)
• time management (Wandering Monsters, etc.)

>A focus on emergent storytelling (world reacting to PC choices)
>Medium lethality (PCs die a lot but TPKs should be rare)
>Monsters can be bribed/bamboozled/cajoled
>Sometimes running is the best option
>Sometimes running is the only option

>noy
*not

Anyways, here's the cap.
Lets see how well I remembered it, I guess.

Can I get an opinion on a table im using to generate goodies for planets in my science fantasy campaign?

Planet Goodies: Roll 1d100:
01-10 - Single moon, roll again.
11-15 - 1d4 moons.
16-20 - 1d4 moons, roll again
21-25 - Double planets, locked in ring orbit. Roll individual goodies for each planet.
26-30 - Cluster of asteroids
31-35 - Trojan asteroids, before or behind planet in orbit
36-40 - Planetary Ring 1d3 (Earth, Fire, Water/ice)
41-50 - Planet hotter than normal. Greenhouse effect, deserts.
51-60 - Plant colder than normal. Current or leaving ice age. Frozen surface.
61-70 - Vacuum. Civilizations will be protected or underground.
71-75 - World Empire Civilization. Spelljammer tech.
76-85 - Orbital Spelljammer port. On asteroid of size Class A object
86-90 - Homeworld
91-99 - Roll twice
00 - Roll three times.

>Spelljammer
>science fantasy

That's the genre.

You have anything to actually contribute?

You could refluff wildspace any way you'd like without effecting Spelljammer's aesthetic.
Which is a fancy way of saying, "space travel isn't a core aspect of the setting."

Spelljammer is Age of Sail.

3 gigs of anime girl reaction images, I suspect.

Anyway, how many dang planets do you need?

There's only so much interesting content you can generate before it either becomes fully procedural or you start getting lazy and/or unenthused. How much planet-hopping are you expecting in a game? Is it worth it to generate them using a table, or would it make more sense to write them ahead of time?

I expect a great deal of crystal sphere travel, considering the nature of the setting.

The table is used to both help my creative process when writing material for existing spheres, and to generate something on the fly when my players go somewhere unexpected.

Any good aquatic adventures out there? My players need the help of a sea god's temple, and I figure I'm going to throw a quest at their direction. Kinda playing around with the idea that there's something in the ocean they need to go mess around with. I was wondering if there were any good, existing adventures I could just throw in.

Alternatively, any good ideas as for what they're going to have to do?

has some one use ability score increasement at fast rate for their games? like 2 points per level

Sea Queen Escapes, as all DCC modules, is pretty good.

Doing just one more.

#4 - Monastery of the August Order of the Ochre Mantis.
This tower is the home of an order of (lawful evil) monks. They have discovered a dark and secret elixir that allows them to shed their human forms and become mantis-like creatures.
Only monks of 8 HD or higher are allowed to attempt the transformation. Those who imbibe the elixir must make two system shock tests (or two saves vs. death). Failure on the first means immediate death; failure on the second means transformation into a trin; success on both means a transformation into a thri-kreen of 8 hit dice.
The monastery currently houses fifty 1-HD candidates, twenty-seven 3-HD apprentices, twelve 5-HD masters, three "enlightened ones" (trin), and one "grandmaster" (thri-kreen with 8 HD).
The enlightened ones and grandmaster are very hungry creatures and their subordinates send out constant hunting parties to find meat (animal or otherwise) for them. Failing that, candidates will be feed to them (followed by apprentices) at the rate of 1 per day per creature. The enlightened ones and grandmaster will refuse to eat masters of the order or each other.

lomion.de/cmm/trin.php
lomion.de/cmm/thrikree.php

Attributes only exist to help the referee decide on what is or isn't reasonable.
Levels already help the referee decide on what is or isn't reasonable.
Frankly, levels should have more influence on that than attributes.

Unless you're playing AD&D, there is absolutely no need to boost attributes.
Even within AD&D, it wasn't /that/ important before 2e.

>Unless you're playing AD&D, there is absolutely no need to boost attributes.
Bringing an attribute bonus from +1 to +2 is a little more than "absolutely no need", I'd say.

...

Any idea on how level can affect? like +1 on things?

I'm not sure how to interpret your use of "things".

You know like:
some sort of skill checks,giving a +1 to them
doing damage equal to your level + str+ bab

and more

Running a wilderness game pretty soon here. Have a hex map prepared with encounters linked to them, I understand that the view-able horizon for most adult humans is around 3 miles, is there a formula where I can calculate how far away you could discern terrain types or large objects based on their height/relative height of the observer.

Your average damage already scales with level.

"Skill checks" is still pretty ambiguous, (maybe name a system?) but the ref should be more lienent with higher level players.
Whether that's lesser penalties for failure, more favorable arbitrary chances, or outright being told "yes" to dumber ideas.

>Calculating relative heights of objects for perception checks

Do you really need to be THAT meticulous about it? You can easily abstract it without any real issues.

Anyhow, viewable horison is at around 3 miles on flat terrain, but the human eye can see much farther than that. At three miles, you can pretty easily make out general facts about something. Unless your eyesight's bad.

Unless there's actually something blocking your sight (bad weather, vegetation, hills, whatever), you should probably be able to discern the type of terrain in the horizon or spot large objects without real difficulty. Of course, most ground won't be all open.

Eh, I'd prefer a generalization about the visibility of terrain types. Like, "mountains are visible from 60 miles or 5 hexes away". Visibility is really important to have so that players can make meaningful decisions when they're exploring the wild.

>I understand that the view-able horizon for most adult humans is around 3 miles,
That has nothing to do with humans, and everything to do with how far away the horizon is.
After a certain distance, air gets opaque, but you could not draw a long enough line for that through the atmosphere if you tried.
So the short answer is, "you can see until things block your sight."

>s there a formula where I can calculate how far away you could discern terrain types or large objects
You won't see anything unless it's looming over the horizon.
Figuring that out whether or not something is doing that is trivial triginometry requiring
(a) your distance from the center of the earth to your eyes,
(b) the radius of the earth, and
(c) your distance from the center of the earth to the point you want to look at.
Which, honestly, are fairly arbitrary numbers.

(a) will probably be (b), unless you're on a mountain or tower, but what (b) and (c) are is entirely up to your setting.

tl;dr We don't care, and neither will your players.

Sorry, I meant "adult human" as a shorthand for a 6 foot tall observer at sea level. I'm not asking for a particularly simulationist shorthand formula that I will refer to everytime a player asks me "what they see" but rather a useful generalization to suss out how tall something has to be in order to see it from a 3 mile horizon.

The visibility of a mountain (or a castle, or a person) would totally depend on the type of terrain between you and that thing.

On an open steppe, on a tall hill, you could spot a person from incredibly far away. In a dense forest, you won't necessarily spot a mountain within a short walking distance.

There's so many variations and factors that trying to get some strict rules down about it is just futile. You really don't need those either. If you know what's in the hexes, you already know what would be reasonable to see from where. You don't really need math for that.

DCC modules are written for 3rd, aren't they?

Is it worth putting in the effort to convert them, and if so, which would you recommend?

Within that 3 mile horizon, if you assume literally nothing is blocking your view, when you're level, you can see pretty much anything the size of a large animal or larger. This will more or less never actually be the case.

This is also a very, very silly and autistic way of thinking about visibility. The size of the object is a factor, but it's sure as hell not the biggest factor. There's so many other things that affect visibility.

The earlier ones are. The later ones are for the DCC system. Which is a pretty gonzo, kind of a wacky thing where everyone rolls ten different kinds of nonstandard dice and every spell has a subtable for casting rolls.

Generally, they're good adventures and not too hard to convert.

DCC is a system of its own, and all the later adventures have been written for it.

I'd say just about all of them are worth converting to OSR, but Peril on the Purple Planet is the best.

I was gonna be like "hey man, don't be so quick to put down that guy's idea" but then while I was thinking about how to defend it, I totally saw your point.

>1.22*SQR(feet) = horizon line in miles

That's what you want. It's simple to do if you don't worry about the details too much, and it can be used in reverse, as well.

If you've got a 100 foot tower at sea level, then 1.22×√100 = 12.2, so from the top you could see about 12 miles over flat ground, but you could also see the top of the tower peeking over the horizon form about 12 miles away as long as nothing's in the way. So on a six-mile hexmap, you could mark the tower with a "2" to indicate it can be seen from two hexes over instead of the usual one.

The early DCC modules (which are generally considered pretty bad) are for 3e.
Current DCC modules are for the DCC RPG, a heavily homebrewed version of 3e.
Converting from DCC to TSR D&D is generally less work than converting from 3.PF to TSR D&D.

That sounds fun as hell. It's Goodman Games, right? They're the publisher that did the Judge's Guild reissues I think. Sounds like they put out some quality stuff.

I rather liked (and even own) their "Saga of the Dragon Cult" module series (which was more them stringing 4 modules together into a cohesive storyline with the inclusion of a 5th booklet). I'm also kinda wanting to get their megadugeon "Castle Whiterock" modules but I've heard mixed reviews on it.

Neat. Not that guy but thanks.

Sometimes it helps to see a formula first to know what/how to wing it from.

> SACRIFICE*
> Cleric Level 3
> Duration: Instantaneous
> Range: Touch
> This spell allows the cleric to transfer any desired
> number of Hit Points from himself to the target. The
> reverse of the spell, Drain Life, allows the caster to
> drain 1d6+1 Hit Points from a creature, with a suc-
> cessful attack roll. The Hit Points are transferred to
> the cleric through healing.

Permanently?

as permanent as any other damage or healing

If the cleric transfers 10HP to a fighter, can the fighter go above his natural HP? If the cleric heals, does the fighter unheal?

>can the fighter go above his natural HP?
Spells is ambiguous, that's up to the ref. I'd rule it takes you above max.
It's worth noting that the reverse /will not/ take you above your maximum.
>If the cleric heals, does the fighter unheal?
If the cleric heals, the fighter loses 1d6+1 hp.
Fluff that however you feel "being less alive" should be fluffed.

I don't see why you would treat it any differently to a Cure Light Wounds

Hm. Is Cure Light Wounds a 1st LVL spell which increases total party HP and Sacrifice is a 3rd LVL spell which doesn't?

Sorry for talking about rules on /osrg/ btw. My other post contained original content. Anthropomorphic animals and fruit. Very creative check it out.

Has there been another release of B&X? I have 03/23/2017.

In the homebrew system I've been fucking around with (which has Basic as its base, but which has deviated rather drastically), each time you gain a level, you randomly roll 2 attributes and choose which one of those you want to boost by a point (every 2 attribute points increases your modifiers by 1 -- through convergent evolution, I ended up with the same model that 3e uses for this). The game only has 4 attributes (strength, dexterity, constitution and intelligence) and your ability to hit people does not improve when you level (except by increasing your attributes). Of course, you start out with significantly more hit points (essentially 10 hp + your hit dice), so things don't need to scale as drastically.

I haven't seen it posted in a while. 3/23 is the version I have. I just assumed that the guy is taking a breather, because formatting all that shit would have to be maddening.

>Remember when rolling a character took 5 minutes?

Dungeon World has that in spades, longest part is picking a name.

Say what you want about the system but that character creation is so streamlined that even a 7 year old can pick up a sheet and know how to fill that fucker out.

If I wanted to play a narrative dungeon-crawler, I would play Torchbearer.

Can anyone explain why all OSR seems to be inspired by OD&D or AD&D 1e? I hardly ever see any OSR that embraces 2e's shitty design ethos, but I see 1e and OD&D's shitty design ethoses all over the place, and given that 2e is my favourite, it really disappoints me.

I would have them start with base characters and let them bring in some followers that can end up becoming PCs in a pinch if/when their's dies.

Also if you are looking for some cool LoTFP houserules to use or steal from I would highly recommend www. lastgaspgrimoire.com/ the guys rules/tables for magic users makes casting fucking fun and super dangerous and I cant play any RPG without stealing them from both Wizards and Clerics and sticking them into the new system.

that's nice and all but I don't see what it has to do with osr

Because fans want to play REAL D&D as penned by the Prophet Gygax (PBUH). Holmes/Moldvay/Mentzer is for babbies and 2e is for fake gamers.