/osr/ - The Old School Renaissance

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Write me a table for what happens when an MU casts a random spell he finds in a dusty tome without having any idea of what it does.

Getting ready to DM my first game in 10 years. I told myself I'd save some time by having a mostly-random western marches hexcrawl, but now i'm finding myself doing more work with random tables. It'll pay off but boy oh boy is this a change of pace

Mad Irishman's replica has layers, so you can remove the border and change the background. Plus you can click on the character sketch box to add a picture (might only work in Acrobat).

Towards the end of the last thread we were talking about bringing up any good adventure modules and other such stuff in the thread, to keep it more alive.

With that in mind, anyone else picked up the Night Wolf Inn? I rather like it, and figure it's big enough an adventure to talk about for a good while, provided I'm not the only one here that grabbed it.

My GM is letting me do some interesting things in regards to Muscle and Magic in her D&D homebrew.

>Muscle and Magic
Could you elaborate further?

I have two PCs, a fighter (who has an interesting twist on level progression) and a wizard whose entire deal is modifying and creating life. He gets essence points per level that he can use to do stuff like add poison damage to monster attacks, increase their HP etc.

I'm allowed to swap them out for sessions and XP is earned by spending currency.

I've heard of a super secret print of B/X D&D somewhere on lulu, but I haven't managed to find it.

Does anyone here know anything about it?

Currently making an adventure that involves the party searching for a castle up in treacherous, maze-like mountain passes full of mist, forgotten monstrosities, bandits and sudden cliffs. What do you think would be the best way to do this? I don't really feel like a map (any precise map at least, a general map is of course good) would work very well. It's a big, mazey area you can' treally map like a dungeon.

I'm thinking I should just include rules for searching, as well as a lot of encounters and description of what active opposition there is, and how it behaves if it becomes aware of the characters. And so on. Just general material for playing this part of the adventure more than precise, exact details of the trip.

Thoughts?

Ones that I make up on the fly.

That is a cool idea - also makes me think of a product idea.

NPC cards - Business cards with a random NPC printed on it. Or you could make it with a playing card with art if you wanted to really go high end, but I was thinking buying a box of 500 NPCs where you could just pull out random cards for NPCs.

Anyone else made homemade DM screens?

Here the one I use for online chat games.

There were the LBBs posted here a few months ago.

Why not just buy it? It's not expensive or hard to find.

A few companies have done these. Paizo do "face cards" that are just pictures.

There was a Kickstarter a few years ago for a set where you draw from different decks to generate a NPCs (names, jobs, quirks, etc.).

Reminder that OD&D characters with good attributes could switch classes (with separately tracked levels) between sessions.

yes but that doesn't let me play out my master/slave narrative or make 'look what the cat dragged in' jokes

Wasn't there some convertion chart for 5e to OSR or am I remembering wrong? I swear I saw it in the trove.

This one's neat looking.

I'm just waking up, but I'm thinking if you did a decent sized encounter table, and after each encounter replaced the slot with getting closer to/clue to finding the castle. After enough exploring they'll do enough encounters that they have clues/find the place.

Like
1.Harpy Vagrants
2.Murder of Crows
3.Magma Fissure
4.Bandit King skirmish
5.Nightmare Mist
6.Ogre Guru
7.Donner Party
8.Poetic Rockslide

and after each encounter replace that spot with a variation on 'you see the castle looming closer 4 peaks away' or 'the nightmare mists lead you to a crumbling path'. After you roll X clues, they reach the castle.

Too gamey?

I would say make "Find castle" one of the rolls, even if it is one that is plugged in later.

Yeah, that'll probably keep it from taking too long. I wasn't sure how long/hard you want it to be. You could just plug in 'find castle' instead of clues.

Could anyone help? I have some questions:

- Where do you get inspirations for random tables and maps? I feel I'm not creative at all, just shit ideas

- This might be a silly question, but what software do you use to write your stuff? Word?

- Why there are so few AD&D clones? I'm not familiar with AD&D at all, but I'm curious to know why...

- Why there are people still using G+?

>- Where do you get inspirations for random tables and maps? I feel I'm not creative at all, just shit ideas
Books, other modules, chatting with players.

>- This might be a silly question, but what software do you use to write your stuff? Word?
LIberoffice

>- Why there are so few AD&D clones? I'm not familiar with AD&D at all, but I'm curious to know why...
AD&D is a very specific ruleset. the one clone does it well. Most come off B/X BECMI or OD&D as it turns out a lot of players loved that.

>- Where do you get inspirations for random tables and maps? I feel I'm not creative at all, just shit ideas

Blogs, random generators (there's a shitton), tv shows, books.

>- This might be a silly question, but what software do you use to write your stuff? Word?

I'm very low prep these days so I'm using an actual notebook and a pen complemented with some random tables / encounters and whatnot printed out.

>- Why there are so few AD&D clones? I'm not familiar with AD&D at all, but I'm curious to know why...

As user above noted, it's a very specific ruleset. It's Gygax's lovechild so much less people want to use it as a base as opposed to clear-cut B/X. Some people import race and class separation but that's it. A lot of people essentially played AD&D as B/X with race and class separation back in the daay.

>Where do you get inspirations for random tables and maps? I feel I'm not creative at all, just shit ideas
If it's not your thing, don't worry about it. Just get a reference books. A lot of the classic DM guides have an encyclopedia of random tables. No need to do all the legwork yourself.

The early Gygax DM books from the 70's and 80's were fantastic for this sort of thing.

>inspirations for tables
Write anything, even if it's shitty. You can revise it later.
Consume as diverse a variety of media as you can.
>what software
Lamport TeX
>few AD&D clones
No market. The people who want to play AD&D want to play AD&D.
Houseruled perhaps, but their own. They won't pay for houserules.
>G+
Don't know, but OSR aside: Why there are people still using Facebook?

>Why there are people still using Facebook?
People invested too much on Facebook to leave

Oh, yeah. I pencil most of my prep into spiral-bounds.
I figured they were asking about making nice .PDFs

Read fantasy and adventure stories, watch films, etc. Most of what winds up in video games is hyper derivative.

I write in a rich text editor unless I need some complex layout or pictures in the document (TextEdit on apple).

A lot of OSR bloggers write on Blogspot, which is a google product integrated with G+. I'm guessing a lot of people use Google Plus for "internet friends", and Facebook for people they see often in real life.

>Where do you get inspirations for random tables and maps?
Generally speaking, I ask "What would be interesting?"
My last hexmap (still WIP) consisted of superimposing four separate maps on top of each other.

>This might be a silly question, but what software do you use to write your stuff?
Word. It's relatively easy and once you figure how to fiddle with it you can make some presentable stuff.

>Why there are so few AD&D clones?
I think there are two main reasons. First, the people who are the biggest fans of AD&D 1e are also Gygax-worshippers (cf. Knights n Knaves Alehouse and Dragonsfoot). Second, B/X is really easy to fiddle with using little forethought whereas AD&D requires careful thought, which is big turn-off to both hipster artistes and greedy publishers.

>Why there are people still using G+?
>Why there are people still using Facebook?
Hell, I've used IRC

>What is your favorite OSR table?
This is probably a bit of a tangent (not being technically RP nor probably old enough to be "oldschool"), but I always thought the Encounters Chart from the original Mordheim was neat.

The gist was that after each battle, the party would make a search roll, and get stuff based on what you rolled. Doubles, Triples, etc would trigger these special encounters. Young parties only got to roll a couple dice, and you'd get more search dice as you leveled your team, so it wasn't even possible to hit the scary endgame shit (eg "The Pit") until deep in the campaign.

Similar mechanics have been used elsewhere with tables that slowly escalate you toward higher results (Injury tables are done this way a lot), but I always thought this particular implementation was very elegant.

After reading up on Speciality Priests I now have the desire for some more diverse clerical spellcasting. I'm thinking that using a Domain system that gives a handful of bonus spells and maybe a special ability like 3.x/PF is the simplest way to go.

Out of curiosity, has anybody on here tried using a current game engine with an old school skin on it? Apologies in advance if this is OSR heresy and would be better asked elsewhere.

We had some new people hanging out a couple weeks back, and on a lark, ran a one off Keep On The Borderlands using Fate. Ended up being pretty fun and (more surprisingly) relatively hiccup free. Ever since then, I've had this itch to write a Fate doc implementing the classic D&D classes, monsters, etc. But then, it's probably already been done. Just need to track it down. =)

I've seen some people OSR-ify D&D 5e in these threads, but I don't think the results are that interesting.

How did you handle the equipment, encumbrance and wandering monsters in fate?

That's odd. FATE and most OSR games seem diametrically opposed.

>How did you handle the equipment, encumbrance and wandering monsters in fate?
So, in our trial session, we just didn't deal with equipment, encumbrance, etc. Ignored it, it was a one-off. Wandering monsters were still done with the tables from KotB and the starter box.

It's definitely something I'd like to look at though. The standard Fate approach is that equipment isn't explicit - you're assumed to have the gear appropriate to your character concept, and it doesn't affect rolls (except as a penalty if you lose it for some reason). Special equipment like your family's ancestral magic sword is handled by taking a Stunt and/or Aspect for it.

BUT gear is part of what defines the "feel" of oldschool games. You can't just leave it out. So I want to do something crunchy with it, just not yet sure what.

I'd say that gear and time rules are more essential to old-school D&D than the combat rules. Definitely try to implement them.

>YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT

Yeah. It's a game of exploration and strategy first, combat second. Taking away encumberance, time records and encumberance severely hinders that part.

I think the problem people have with that quote stems from the word "meaningful". I think the game becomes for fun, more tactical, more of the intended experience, but meaningful just seems too subjective.

It requires context, sure. I've seen it misused a lot (up to and including someone claiming it means you need to keep a fantasy calendar so that people get more immersed in the game), but as far as it pertains to Gygaxian, challenge-oriented dungeoneering, it's solid advise. In that context, removing time constratings makes the game a lot less meaningful.

Of course, if you're not Gygax, or someone who wants to have a game similar to his, where these strategic choices and strict resources are very important for the experience, it's less absolutely true.

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There are a few explicit attempts, to mixed results and opinions. Dungeon world is mostly marketing and doesn't have a lot to do with old school dnd imo, but it did lead to World Of Dungeons and Freebooters On The Frontier, which do a better job of it. Torch Bearer is suppose to be a mechanics heavy, resource management game re; burning wheel, but I haven't looked at it. The Black Hack is arguably trying to incorporate more of the abstraction oriented narrative mechanics for resource management, some of them I think work well, some I like less. Beyond The Wall incorporates playbooks and group world building/character generation (I think from apocalypse world, but that's just by feel).

Being a gm and just riffing on ideas from random tables and procedural generation should work fine for pretty much anything though.

Not 5e specific, but certainly worth a look: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/2050/roleplaying-games/revisiting-encounter-design

I don't think that's necessarily true. My first RPG was the '81 starter box shown in the OP. I remember it fondly - but the mechanics of the combat aren't what sticks out. The things that define the experience to me are:
1) narrative convention - quest / dungeon / loot
2) mapped dungeons and maps themselves
3) classic classes, races and gear
4) classic monsters and random tables
5) character progression by loot, xp, and levels

I don't think you technically need a THAC0 stat on your sheet to recreate any of that feel.

The time aspect is interesting. Not sure how to implement off the top of my head. I do definitely want that pressure, but in Fate and similar systems the timekeeping is very abstracted.

Player progression is likewise kinda tricky, since Fate isn't really built for that small-incremental-boosts mindset. There was a sorta-kinda skill point based leveling system in the Dresden Files RPG I might try to modify for this.

Cool, thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely take a look at some of these.

After some googling around, a good solution to the XP for treasure problem in 5E is to halve monster XP and award 1 XP per gp of treasure, divided as usual.

More simplified encumbrance would be nice (adventuring gear weighs 30 lb, done). The only remaining problem is the high/swingy hp and damage values: combat can be just as deadly, but it takes half an hour instead of five minutes.

Plus deadly combat isn't as cool when it takes an hour to make a character.

Really interesting read, thanks for reposting.

Is King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard good OSR music?

youtube.com/watch?v=Rd3vwwXArMQ

That's actually pretty cool. With a name like that, I was expecting some strummy filk crap.

Anyone know of any scans of translated TSR stuff? I'm interested in German scans and I might put some stuff into the mix too, even with a shitty scanner. They will never sell them here anymore.

>critkeeper.site88.net/
I guess this dead page can be deleted from the pastebin.

What was it? Can we have an elegy?

I'm not sure what's going on with that, other parts of the site are still up.

I want to make a retroclone mini(?) setting/adventure and make it like a bad movie from the '60 to '80. Should I or is too dumb a gimmick? Pic related.

Okay so, I think I need to expand on my idea beyond being 'lolsorandumb, Zardoz is funneh'. Basically, all the setting elements would be shit you'd see straight out of B-movies, especially fantasy and scifi. All the races and monsters and even spells would be described in a way that would help visualize them as a bad movie effect. In other words, if it couldn't have been done in a B-Movie it's not in the game.

>Starring: Darth Traya

Technowizards in giant flying stone heads fucking with post apocalyptic peasants sounds fun. There's a decent amount of psychedelic osr stuff, Misty Isles of the Eld, DCC's purple planet and Narcosia come to mind. I think one of the characters in dcc's comic is a bell bottom wearing barbarian. I find it can get a bit too much, so I'd do it as a one-shot or an adventure someplace that's not part of the main setting personally, but ymmv.

>Misty Isles of the Eld, DCC's purple planet and Narcosia
Thanks for the recommendation, user. Much appreciated.

Take it a step farther. The characters are performers on a stage, if they die they walk off and change costumes.
Let them interact with the stage. Let them interact with the audience. Let the NPCs do the same.

Maybe the guy who does all the villain roles messes up a scene by dressing up as a villain from something else.
Maybe one of the stagehands changing out the room is actually an extra dressed as an orc disguise as a stagehand.
Maybe the frequent no-show player gets attacked by their understudy when they finally attend a session.

Just don't diminish the players in the process.
If shitty fireballs can "kill" the rubber-mask goons, they can kill the audience members storming the stage.

zardoz isn't bad though.

This... this is one of the best ideas I have ever heard. Thank You.

>Mad Wizard Sharkespire's Tower
>entering transforms your clothing into theatrical garb
>curses within force you to speak in rhyming couplets
>ethereal pit band follows your party around, heckling
>he watches your progress through the acts of the dungeon, directing, criticizing your delivery of 'lines' and lack of pathos
>finding secret doors and passages between rooms makes him berate you for going off script

What you're proposing is basically Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, the RPG. And that's fantastic.

its odd.

I normally play and design stuff that very standard (Think Tolkien or perhaps a bit Conan).

Today I started on a idea of doing a odd combo on combining Carcosa, Lovecraft, Guardians of the Galaxy (don't laugh), and Anomalous subsurface environment. And for some insane reason I am really loving the results that range from Day-glow humanity, orbital AI's as Gods, to replacing the normal demi-humans.

There's an entire Ravenloft domain based on that concept. Scaena

>Guardians of the Galaxy (don't laugh)
I won't as long as it's not the MCU, DnA, or current version.

>Originally known for his comedies, his first tragedy provoked only laughter. In revenge for this slight, he locked the audience into the theater and burned it to the ground, earning his darklordship.

I am mostly just borrowing the idea of human races in day-glow colors (that Carcosa also has) and then I replaced halflings with a race called Procyonids who are talking Racoons.

...

Sometimes you have to switch it up. The current campaign I'm running is bonkers, but something more low key next time and a little more grounded will be a good change of pace.

>who are talking raccoons

I like this idea

>I am mostly just borrowing the idea of human races in day-glow colors
I've been slowly ripping off those ideas of near-humans who could be played by dude in makeup you'd see in pre-reboot Star Trek. Somehow that just seem something which you'd see in cheesier fantasy, scifi and scif-fantasy settings and isn't really super alien. It's certainly no more or less alien than elves which are basically just pretty people with pointy ears.

I do wish Carcosa would have fleshed out the thirteen races a bit more, however. Then again I'm quite the sucker for fleshing out humanoid (or at least sentient) races.

Procyonid

The Procyonid are short bipedal animals that have a resemblance to Racoons. They are smart, hardy, and very good fighters and thieves. While most of them have a good nature, they are by there nature Chaotic and many will do things to entertain themselves in the short term, even if it may harm them in the long term. However once befriended a Procyonid is VERY loyal to his or her friends.

Generally the Procyonid have a very gender based society. Males work alone or in small groups (1-4) to protect turf and earn shiny things to impress female Procyonids. The Females live in small communities (called barrows) to raise the young together, and only deal with the males when breeding.

(Same stats as Halflings per ruleset.)

Right now I have Humans and 7 "Color" races

Augustines (Golds)
Kri (Blues)
Pakka (Purples)
Ikar (Ivory)
Bonesmen (Bone)
Bereet (Pinks)
Drax (Green)

And starting to flesh each out.

>I am mostly just borrowing the idea of human races in day-glow colors (that Carcosa also has)
Then you should use LOSH races instead. Marvel aliens suck, DC's have a lot more variety.

Movie!Drax is more grey, really.

I am not using the Marvel (or DC races for that matter). Just borrowing the idea of human races that look human but just are a odd color.

For example, a quick writeup is stuff like

Bereet (Pinks)

Famous courtesans and dancers, Bereet (or Pinks) have a pink tone to them. They are all female and noted for their good looks (+1 Charisma) but weak stature (-1 to Strength). They do not believe in marriage as other races do, and instead will sign a exclusive contract for up to 10 years. Needing other forms of humanity to provide male members means they are found across almost all nations living with other forms of humanity.

>Carggites are a race of humanoid aliens from the planet Cargg. They all have the natural ability of Bio-Fission allowing the split their physical form into three independent bodies. The Carggites triplicates possess the exact same emotions, those who don't are considered something of a social outcast, requiring psychological treatment.

>Multiple Personalities: Their is a risk Carggite can develop a multiple personality disorder such as Luornu Durgo. Each of her bodies have their own will and personality.

Yea, I might change the name. the Drax are based off Gamora then Drax.

...

I've got a sort of "adventures on Mars" kind of game on the back burner where the races are all named using obscure color/dye words like mazarine, argaman, cutch, puccoon, etc. I want each race to have one very distinctive thing about it (4 arms, adamantine skin, flexibility/a bit stretchy, etc.), but I'm having trouble coming up with enough stuff that I'm satisfied with.

>Ikar (Ivory)
>Bonesmen (Bone)
Aren't those essentially the same color?

>>Ikar (Ivory)
>>Bonesmen (Bone)
>Aren't those essentially the same color?
Yes, but they do not look the same.

Ikar (Ivory) are bone white with black eyes, live out in the deserts.

Bonesmen (Bone) have clear flesh and you can see their bones though there skin. They are the outcasts and live like gypsies.

The penis is evil

But the gun is good.

My darker brother

Okay. Just checking.

>I've got a sort of "adventures on Mars" kind of game on the back burner where the races are all named using obscure color/dye words like mazarine, argaman, cutch, puccoon, etc. I want each race to have one very distinctive thing about it (4 arms, adamantine skin, flexibility/a bit stretchy, etc.), but I'm having trouble coming up with enough stuff that I'm satisfied with.
That I can understand.

Why I am sticking to 7 "Color" races for now. better to flesh them out then add more then to get too many races that are not fleshed out.

Are there mechanical differences or is it just for flavor?

So, I'm gonna have my party be show a massive ancient machine below a main Empirical City that scholars, through "archaic tomes", have surmised holds back a "great force". The machine is beginning to falter though, and they fear it's just a matter of time. It's main focus is a black window displaying, flickering orange runes made from light that often spastically garble up.

What this machine is, is a large 70's era computer detaining the explosion of an electronically sealed vault of nukes. Basically pulling a subtle "this fantasy world used to be old-earth" thing that they will slowly begin to uncover. Anyways.

What are some good adventure hooks for helping quell this machine? A Fallout-esque search for some "ancient part"? Magic relics to do...something? I'm kinda stuck on how to make it creative. Good side-quests or encounters?

Some of it is flavor, some of it is mechanical.

For example, Bereet have -1 STR but +1 CHR.
Bonesmen have huge reaction penalties but have infravision.
While say, the Kri and Pakka are more for flavor.