/osrg/ OSR General

Moldvay/Cook Basic D&D, which consisted of two sets: Basic and eXpert.

...

It's not in the Trove.
It would be under
>02_Supplements → 03_Magic
or
>__Inbox
if it were.
Or maybe
>03_OSR Games → Into the Odd

But again, not in there.

Probably because it's only available in print.
The author hand-bound every copy.

02_Supplements has most of his other works though.

/osr/, I am sad. My group pushed game back a week. I just got back from a funeral for a guy who built his own Mad Max boat in 1955 by welding scrap iron together and used it to terrorize other boaters.

On the other hand, I'm starting a 3rd group of total noobs on Monday. I'm sad because I had to un-invite 2 nice people for being unreliable, but happy I was able to find 2 non-RPG playing replacements from my friends on 48hrs notice.

So yeah. How are you folks? What games are ya'll in at the moment?

somebodies posting in LFG on discord.

Not in any at the moment but currently learning the rules and devouring modules/blogs/supplements so that I can run a game for 2-3 players who've played newer editions for a long time and 1 complete newbie.

I'm probably gonna run a test game using B4 The Lost City and then try and make my own hexcrawl.

>so that I can run a game for 2-3 players who've played newer editions for a long time and 1 complete newbie.

Godspeed user. That's all I did for 3 weeks before I ran my first game. If you come across cool articles from 2+ years ago, feel free to repost them. "Old" content needs love too.

Making a hexcrawl first might be ambitious. I haven't even bothered filling in most of the map for my games. Stuff happens as needed.

>Making a hexcrawl first might be ambitious.
I was worried I might be biting off more than I could chew. Maybe I'll stick to trying my hand at dungeons first, then.

Thanks user!

No problem. If you search a few threads back for "Learning Dungeon" or "Tomb of the Serpent Kings", you'll find either links to or the PDF of the dungeon I put together to "train" new players on the basics of dungeoneering. It's got stuff you can probably steal and adapt. At the very least, it might point you in the right direction.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/osr-learning-dungeon.html

Worldbuilding is easy and fun and cheap. It's fun to invent kingdoms and religions and temples that the PCs will never visit and the players don't give two shits about. It's trickier to build gamable content. I recommend focusing in and asking "could this come up in the next 2 sessions?" And if not, drop it, and move on.

Oh hey, I've totally read your dungeon and have been reading your blog! I was actually planning on running it so everybody, especially the newbie, could get their bearings.

Honestly though, I feel like it helped me as the DM more than anything, because it was just a really solid stepping stone for me to just have somebody show me the ropes of what an OSR dungeon looks like. Thanks a lot!

Cool, glad it's coming in useful.

I basically wrote it to answer all the questions I had when starting out with this game type/system/mentality. It's kind of cool that it's a double teaching tool - one side teaches the players how to live through dungeons, one side teaches the GM how to build dungeons.

What other stuff is going on in your system? What's the hook to get your PCs a) together and b) into the dungeon.

You know what I used? I cheated. I introduced the area and said (with a lot more words). "There's a reward for killing this owlbear. Your characters, for /whatever reason you want/, decide that this is a good idea. Maybe they need the money. Maybe they hate owlbears. Maybe they have a secret reason. I don't care."

And after that, never say "Your character wants to [X]" again (except for charm, fear, etc.). This is the first and last time. This is the match that lights the fuse.

Dear Fir, Walled City user
I'm trying to edit down some of the entries in the community stocked wilderness map. There's a lot of weird things going on here they are half-mentioned. What are the slimified bodies? What precisely is the City Underground? What does it mean that the guards "...dip directly onto green slime"?

City user here. Current map progress. I'm not a huge fan of the formatting, but at the very least, it's a reasonably workable map.

What'd be the easiest way to do landmarks and districts on a map like this? I can do numbers + sidebar, but how do I outline districts?

Is there a convenient gallery of the best of oldschool black-and-white art?

The DCC rulebook.

Q.F.T.

agreed, Mullen does the best OSR art

although besides him one of my favorite OSR art pieces is the one Timothy Ide did for the cover of Delving Deeper

Didn't he do the Melbonian mythos for the first deities & demigods? His art is really distinctive.

He did. Also much of the Cthulhu mythos.

>Thief was a late addition to Greyhawk, and Gygax didn't get a chance to "playtest" at GenCon before publishing.
It was also originally created by a different group of OD&D players - Gygax just had a rough description over the phone to base his version on.

It was still a mistake.

>who is DiTerlizzi

And if you see someone write B/x, that's because of the B being at the start of its word and x be in the middle of it's.

I just DMd for friends, and I felt like this was the first time I managed to nail the OSR style. We had some pasta for dinner, a quick exposition dump for the background of the dungeon, and then I placed them in front of the front gate. They were reckless at first, then they got more tactical; one of them found a magic ring, found out the hard way it was cursed and then promptly cut of their finger to get the ring off. Then they got by some traps and monsters, got some treasure and found the hidden staircase to the next level.

Btw, if you're playing with new players I really would encourage going against what might be your instinct to present a really intricate dungeon at first. I really wanted to do that as well, but now I ran a straightforward dungeon with just a few encounters and that lasted an entire evening. New players will have enough fun just learning the ropes of interacting with traps through inspection and experimentation, and how to narrate their combat with just initiative-, to-hit and damage rolls.

It really is. Just the getting down the basic iteration of "what do you do" "we do this brilliant/stupid shit" "this happens, now what do you do" "we do more shit" with a new group is pretty important. When that feels routine, spice it up with some hexcrawling.

Here's a PDF version of it.

>It's trickier to build gamable content. I recommend focusing in and asking "could this come up in the next 2 sessions?" And if not, drop it, and move on.

Also, doesn't a lot of this stuff just come up by itself when you play? Like, as long as you have some basic content (town, dungeon, a general feel for the area you're in) it should be easy to extrapolate on what your players have speculated on or made up during the game. Make shit up as you need it, both in and out of session. Less work and more organic.

>You know what I used? I cheated. I introduced the area and said (with a lot more words). "There's a reward for killing this owlbear. Your characters, for /whatever reason you want/, decide that this is a good idea. Maybe they need the money. Maybe they hate owlbears. Maybe they have a secret reason. I don't care."

I feel like this is 100% okay, because as with any game there has to be a premise. The players are free to do whatever they want given the premise, but not outside of it.

I would probably look into some published modules and see how they did it. You know, like Vornheim.

this looks like a good system-agnostic introductory module to RPG's

Same. Although I'd start them in combat with the owlbear, just after the fucker's critted and covered the PCs in small pieces of the one party member who wasn't a PC.

How much experience do people have with a gonzo mix of real european places and complete fantasy stuff? Like, you have the elf kingdoms next to finland, sweden and demon countries?

Damn shame that the DCC rulebook is like 60$ for the silver version available at my game shop. Wouldn't mind having it just for the sweet ass descriptive texts of the monsters and magic, but that's a lot for a curiosity.

What's a good source of imagery for old d&d versions of stuff like orcs, kobolds, bugbears? Obviously old monster manuals and stuff, but is there any galleries that compile this stuff?

Still somewhat a work in progress but this is a thing I've been working on. 1620 saw some witches tear the veil and bring magic into the world, waves of elves, halflings and dwarves and crazy shit hitting the fan from there.

It's 1640 now and the more gonzo stuff is beginning to come out or is being found out more by the powers that be. More sci-fi stuff is going to be found out and such coming up in the setting.

Just seems like a really fun thing to do. Obv, this is going to be a eurocentric, but being able to play in an environment you're familiar with and then introduce weird stuff into it really feels like it would hit home.

Yeah. Players are going to be going abroad plenty though. Lots of crazy shit going on in Africa, Asia, America and something going on in Antarctica even. It's going to be a blast!

Not exactly old school but check out epic spell Wars for some gonzo 70s style stuff.

I suppose the magic and shit would make travel easier somehow? Real world Europeans didn't travel much at all at that time.

Not really. Sometimes it does, most of the time not. Only time will tell. It is leading to a boom in people forming secret societies/cults, and there are groups forming now to take advantage of the crazy ass situations in the world (one group is forming in Plymoth, England with intentions to go to Africa and steal lots of silver and shit for instance).

Okidoki help me out /osrg/. I really wanna keep doing "steal loads of coins from monsters under the ground" adventures, but someone pointed out that that much money circulating in a feudal medieval society should really do a number on the economy.

I think fuck that, there's coins everywhere, but are there some good blog posts or other written down stuff about d&d economy? Like, I don't want to invest too much time, I just want a comfortable way to handwave why it's possible to actually liquidate all that treasure in society.

The easiest way feels like just not going super hard on the stupid early-mid medieval stuff and instead go for a late medieval early modern with early capitalism already established?

For every 50 sp/gp (depending on system) added to the local economy, increase all costs by 1 sp/gp. Once you hit 400 sp/gp, increase by 3, 1000 5sp/gp. All cost increases decrease at a rate of 1sp/gp per two months.

On a larger scale, within one month all wares/goods/food within 1 week travel increase by 1 sp/gp for every 400 sp/gp added.

Remember, taxes are a thing and a lot of petty areas charge for pretty much anything. Enter the city? That's a charge. Any sales you make you must surrender x% to the local magistrates for taxation/fees. Want to go down that specific road? Local baron has a toll on it. Need help from the church? You need to be up to date with your 10% tithe.

Gygax new enough about Gary Switzer's thieves to know that his didn't resemble them.

Gygax knew enough about Gary Switzer's thieves to know that his didn't resemble them.

>not Baxa

plebs

For the curious, Gary Switzer's thieves were an older version of [pic].
At the point Gygax heard about it, they were statted as Magic-Users.

youtu.be/5-l-OkR5yDk

>Russian Wizards wear tracksuits
How does your MU dress?

Any good tables and rules for cooking and eating monsters?

This is my favorite way to start a game.
>present situation
>how did you get here?

Nothing wrong with giving players a prompt for creative input. Otherwise they can slip into spectator mode.

handwave like crazy, or replace coins with portable treasure (jewelry, art, pimp chalices, etc). Realistically modeled inflation is rarely a fun addition to an adventure game.

If I was going to include that, I'd probably just make it a random event that pops up after they dump a bunch of coin into the economy. Boomtown economics.
>the price of fancy hats and ten foot poles has risen 10,000%

And there's no reason your world has to resemble medieval europe. Perhaps the coins of whatever ancient empire used to run the place are still common enough to be used as currency for major purchases (with common people more likely to get by on barter and gift economies).

>Very OSR related
pages.suddenlink.net/therivercampaign/

This has been debated before but this basically boils down to needing dozens of tables to cover broadly similar (goblinoids) and specific weird (beholders, vampires, etc.) creatures.

>Nothing wrong with giving players a prompt for creative input. Otherwise they can slip into spectator mode.

Yeah that's a good note, player's tend to get anxious when they don't hear their own voice

> /osrg/ shills B/X
> B/X has the worst maps

judges guild > tolkien > WOG > outdoor survival >>> B/X "Known World"

do we need to have a discussion about this anons?

We all know Judges Guild a best.

I was incredibly upset until I saw outdoor survival, although if by WOG you mean greyhawk then no.

and outdoor survival > tolkien > judges guild normally, but I'll give judges guild the number two slot because they have hexes.

the wilderlands boxed set is the best 3e product I own, but I still prefer my outdoor survival map for style.

I need inspiration for my first campaign, what kind of weird shit should I add to my game?

A giant underground megadungeon church. The actual followers of the church are dead and have become automatons that keep building the church underground.

The older parts of the church are hazardous, collapsing, and are filled with various squatting monsters (kobold gangs, rust monsters eating at a giant pipe organ, various unnaground cults).

The church's goal is to find the Holy Grail, and they're getting close to it.

> We all know Judges Guild a best.
- larger hexes
- open space for notes and additions
- each hex numbered for when you want to add paragraphs or pages of detail
- hex number is written directly on the hex so you don't have to find the row and column

"Invasion of the Doppelgangers"

Every stone, fire, lighting bolt, cloud, raindrop, mountain, snowflake, grain of sand, and glacier is an elemental.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/osr-what-does-elemental-want.html

Thanks!

>You know, like Vornheim.
Eeeeh.... not that helpful...

>what kind of weird shit should I add
Don't. Don't set out to make weird shit.

When you aim, you miss.
It's fine to have weird shit, but aiming for it kills cohesion.

Darlene's Greyhawk maps do a great job balancing hexes with Tolkienesque cartography.

Here's the first bit of generating a city using the (very neat) Corpathium city generator. Next step is a fine-detail pass with Vornheim and other online generators.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/05/osr-building-city-first-section.html

Featuring: lots of high quality medieval art, historical verisimilitude, and some low-level weirdness.

I just found what to do with my days off!

This. If you purposefully set out to be weird you'll end up with shallow randumbness. Doubly so if it's your first campaign.

> Any good tables and rules for cooking and eating monsters?
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/osr-dungeon-meat.html
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/03/some-other-classic-snacks.html

These are pretty quick to make, but you need to make a new table for each type of monster.

I'm going to shill Beyond The Wall/Further Afield's method of campaign map/world building. Get together with your group, talk about tone, a few things you want to work with, things you for sure don't, then use this. Gives everyone something to grab onto, seems to have more relevance to the players, and they come up with stuff I wouldn't have thought of to riff on.

I made a few corpathium cities too. Did it with paper and pencil, I'll see if I can take decent pics and pop them up.

I did the dice drop on an opposite page and then sketched out the city with the drop-diagram for reference. After that I just wrote the name around the site and crammed short bits from the specific tables and other ideas I had along the side. It looks about how I wanted it to, but if I were doing it again, I'd put a name/number on the finished map and the details/notes on the page with the drop-diagram.

Is this too granular for a 6 mile hex map? Not finished with the right side ofc

Looks fine to me. I've been running a 3-mile hex map and yours looks like it'd:

A: function fine
B: please players aesthetically

Not sure about how a proper cartographer would feel about it, but it looks good.

right lake can't be endorheic because left lake would then have two outlets

right can't be source, since outlet would they flow up into mountains

>I'm going to shill Beyond The Wall/Further Afield's method of campaign map/world building. Get together with your group, talk about tone, a few things you want to work with, things you for sure don't, then use this. Gives everyone something to grab onto, seems to have more relevance to the players, and they come up with stuff I wouldn't have thought of to riff on.

This is super useful for experienced players and an utter disaster with completely new players (especially people without video game experience). But if your group knows what the want, it's ideal. If not, you've got to be a shepherd, not a goatherd.

>I made a few corpathium cities too

It's fun, isn't it?

The plan is to do one pass with Corpathium, then a second pass with Vornheim.

what program you use?

> because left lake would then have two outlets
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_lake

I've been running 5e "Lost Mines of Phandelver" using a homebrew of LotFP and while its fun and all, I hate how much precedence combat takes. Combat has always been my least favorite aspect of tabletop rpgs. What are some good modules I can dump into the world for my players to come across that are solid tests of their wits and skill and not just murderhobo fodder?

I ran the Maze of Nuromen recently and it turned out pretty well. It could be your thing.

Homebrew the combat rules to simplify them?
>What are some good modules [...] that are [...] not just murderhobo fodder?
You can avoid almost every fight in Maze of the Blue Medusa.
You can't avoid the obnoxiously bad art though.

This might help.

Are you doing reaction rolls for encounters? Not everything is going to want to fight. Also if the players are immediately resorting to murder you might be going too easy on them.

I found this list useful for things/problems to throw at players so they have to use their brains.
>goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/03/1d135-osr-style-challenges.html

It's almost irrelevant because they always initiate it. I've actually straight up omitted fights listed because I didn't feel like slogging through another 15 minutes of non-creative, repetitive "I guess I attack with my axe again" shit. Modern D&D modules emphasize combat so much. While I want them to play however they want, it just seems like they resort to wanting to kill everything. That's fine if that's the type of game you wanna run, but I want more sessions where they're faced with explicitly non combat challenges. Tower of the Stargazer was a good example of one such module.

So... talk to them about this? Discuss "Hey guys, we're seeing a lot of combat, and it doesn't seem to be that interesting for anyone. Want to try changing it up a bit?"

>someone on Veeky Forums having a polite and logical discussion with their group about a problem
You should realize by now, given how often this advice comes up, that this isn't going to happen.

I have tho. I'm not going to tell them how to play, but i've told them a billion times that combat isn't the answer to everything.

Two things:

One, I agree with user: . The right lake would probably be best off as an evaporation lake fed by rain, thus explaining the extensive swampy margins.

Two, it's not necessarily "too granular", but you should realize just for reference that at six miles/hex, nearly the entire Czech Republic (medieval Bohemia if you prefer a period reference) fits into that forest.

Easiest thing to do there is have things that will kick their ass if they pick a fight without thinking. If you're doing 5e another problem could be hp bloat. Sounds like they want you to be their positive reinforcement loop combat engine though. Might have to sort that out.

Combat should always feel like a risky proposition. Really make it hurt when the monsters attack back.

>nearly the entire Czech Republic ... fits into that forest

All the better to adventure in.

> upset players fight instead of entering magical realm
don't award XP for killing monsters. Also

And here's version 2 of the map. Street names and landmarks are going in now.

>tfw you shift between like 4 different hobbies and OSR is one of them and you keep abandoning it and then coming back but you never actually end up doing anything because you keep changing your mind constantly instead

So what have you worked on today, /osrg/?

>So what have you worked on today, /osrg/?

I used the Wilderness Survival Guide to roll up some weather for the next few weeks in the campaign.

They're going to get out of a dungeon into a gale. Joy.