/osr/

>Going by the mass of rules, not incredibly, but the changes they did make destroyed the play style and changed it to a different one that doesn't even work well or fit AD&D.
Could you give other exemples other than the EXP rules? I don't think flavor or fluff can destroy a playstyle and Gold = EXP is something easy to introduce I think

Thanks for the reply btw!

In case you're still around, there's fantasticmaps.com/. It helped a lot more than going to world building threads. Take a look at the tutorials and practice.

>outside the osr thread everyone memes this about osr
mhm

Wade RIGHT into my magical realm some more, why don'cha. Pic related.

Thread Questions:
As said, at least a couple, but perhaps not all at once. For example, for a mountain-based delve there might be two different entrances, one at sea level and one hidden and overgrown about 20' up the mountain, where the original entrance used to be.

As for the other questions, I like to concept of both, though I'm not a fan of either's presentation.

Referring back to the other guy's post again, I don't like the idea behind "get smart, get psionic powers" or really any of the actual powers themselves. My thoughts on the subject are that while magic can affect the unliving world (i.e. traditional elementalist wizards), psionics and psions themselves should be able to affect the living world.

To give an example, spells like Cat's Grace or Bear's Endurance from the 3.5e cleric's list would be lower-level psionic abilities (for the user only, to affect others would be higher-powered stuff), while the pinnacle of an introspective psionic would be, say, Dio Brando from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Part 1. Supernatural abilities described as the full, unbound potential of the human body.

Whereas Clerics, I don't really like many of the older editions' spell lists for them, basically giving them a few healing spells, some neat utility stuff and a smattering of biblical abilities. Not every cleric should be able to perform miracles pulled from the Christian bible, as not every fantasy religion stems from it.

However, tailoring each religion's spells to that religion and that religion alone is far more work than necessary, and would be a significant timesink. I'm actually a huge fan of the cleric boons from Necropraxis instead of actual spells, as there's a decent list of abilities to pull from and can easily be tailored to allow religions to be different with a minimal amount of work.

They hollowed out the DMG and shit into the empty covers, that was pretty bad. I don't really agree with the other user that it wasn't a big change, however.

As I continue to design my high fantasy OSR setting, I keep bumping into issues with races.

Just to go off the bat, I don't like Race-As-Class for the type of game I'm running. I'd rather have some kind of high fantasy stuff. But the problem of races still comes up.

Should I create a few specific, classified races with actual mechanics? Or let the players play as "anything" they want but just make it cosmetic/base it on their stats and such?

>There's literally no reason,
Loadsacontent.
>Could you give other exemples other than the EXP rules?
2e has gp:xp. Labelled optional, but it's there.
TSR2011 > TSR 2160, but TSR2112 >>> TSR2011

>and your brain gets bigger
Every version of psionics is keen on saying, "it's not from big brains."
Though the only version with a reason says "concentration and yoga."
>and have clear ways to advance- favor with their god [etc.]
Basically just the "favor with their church" one.
Clerics advance by indoctrination into mysteries.

...

I'd say have a handful of races to start with. If you want to go really high fantasy you could have a few 'template' races (tough race, magical race, sneaky race, etc) that players can refluff into whatever they'd like.

Has anyone made a Not!Ars Magica / Mage: The Ascension OSR magic system? And if so would a kind user mind posting it.

What stops you from lifting that directly?

I know people keep showing up here hoping to find talk about 2E, even though the guys who coined the term OSR considered the "old school" style to have ended circa 1983. But my curiosity is piqued.

Why do you want 2E to be considered OSR?
What do you like about 2E?
I like that 2E streamlined the rules, but why are the 2E manuals THE SAME LENGTH AS THE 1E MANUALS?

as always this is the best OSR definition;

best OSR definition incoming;

A game or supplement is OSR if it's one or both of the following;

1.) an edition of D&D(or AD&D) published by TSR Inc(certain other games published by TSR are also counted)

2.) is broadly compatible with any TSR edition and/or anything else calling itself OSR

or to TLDR it;

>A game or supplement is OSR if interchangeable with OSR and/or TSR D&D.

What would be a good way of doing clerical magic in the Middle Ages?

Also, can someone recommend a good, grid-based system for skirmishes and small-scale battles?

>Semantics drivel
Not to disagree with you, but shush.

Do not reply to anyone who replies to you.
Let's nip this powder keg at the bud.

>What would be a good way of doing clerical magic in the Middle Ages?
Behind closed doors.
You can get back there, blindfold, if you give the right alms and grease the right palms.
Don't even mention how it works.

>Also, can someone recommend a good, grid-based system for skirmishes and small-scale battles?
Strike!

>clerical magic

I'm not sure what you mean, exactly, but in the meantime:
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/osr-three-estates.html
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/06/osr-indulgences-and-clerical-services.html
might help.

Is it too late to start my own OSR blog?

> Is it too late to start my own OSR blog?
Of course not! I just started 5 months ago and look at me now. 10s of views, people regularly calling me a faggot on Veeky Forums... it's a dream come true, really.

I don't know, will it be a OSR = TSR blog?

I'm not sure how you'd want to work in rote or ritual spells. Maybe rote spells give you a bonus to casting spells so you don't have to make a control or spell craft roll when you cast, and ritual spells can be done at downtime.

I haven't worked out the system entirely, but my basic idea was basically like this. Every day your Wizard characters prepare Forms instead of spells. Spell slots go up to level 6, and in the Ars Magica rulebooks that I've seen at least it seems spells go from about 5 to 30 in terms of power. For this, I'd just divide the spell power effect by 1/5 and turn that into the spell slot. So anything that a roll of 5 effect in Ars Magica is now a first level spell, anything that's a 10 is a 2nd spell slot, etc.

So anyway your caster prepares say two first level Ignem and a second level Terram. You can do any combination of techniques from this point; You can use Creo Ignem to create a torch-like light, boil water, or light something flammable on fire. You can use Perdo Ignem to quickly extinguish enemy torches, or chill something.

Terram in this case is a bit stronger, since you can do any effect up to level 10. You could deflect metal weapons, with Rego Terram. You could fill an empty stack with sling stones with Creo Terram, and so on.

Obviously the good part about this system is it's very easy to do some freeform and on the fly magic. The issue I see as of right now is Magic users don't really get differentiated much mechanically, but that's never been much of a thing in OSR anyway.

Just stop. Seriously.

Bump

Kind of want to try that. I haven't played any WoD in a very long time, but off the top of my head this might work:
>magic user having 1 dot in a school at level 1 >extra dot for int bonuses, can be a different school
>gaining a new spell means gaining a dot in a school already known
>gaining a new spell level means gaining access to a new school

The gm would have to adjudicate the shit out of it, but it could be fun. Maybe instead of per-day limits you have a number of uses/spell burn sort of system that if you go over causes paradox, aka weird neutral demons coming to get you.

Doesn't help or answer my question in any way.

why it's pretty much the only OSR definition that makes sense

c

See

>Were psionics or Clerics a bigger mistake?

Psionics, hands down. Clerics at least make some sense in a quasi-medieval fantasy setting (being men of the cloth and all); psionics are blatantly copy-and-pasted from sci-fi, with no reason for existence other than one of Gygax's (or maybe Arnesen's?) players got fanny-flustered that he couldn't play a Jedi.

Eldritch Wizardry is a year older than Star Wars,

How should I design my first dungeon?

...

5 rooms, traps in 2, chest at the end

>Any tips?
youtube.com/watch?v=I8Xc2_FtpHI
Start at 50 minutes or so. Or earlier, if you're bored.

If map user from last thread is still here I'd say look into vector graphics programs instead of the more traditional photoshop or gimp. Since you can zoom in and out of vectors as much as you want you can make true scale maps of states complete with city layouts, which is a really great reference for running games without faffing about with a bunch of different map scales.

This guy makes pretty decent map tutorials as well. youtube.com/playlist?list=PL83FKhfEDI1J0FJhhxP3PVzM-vtTgWPKU

I've been reading Discordian shit all day, and I intend to have one-axis alignment: the strange and incomprehensible, and that which is clearly understood and under our control. The former is dangerous and scary, but also where change and new things come from. The latter is easy and safe, but can easily become stagnation or even tyranny. Humans call these Chaos and Law respectively, but those are just human ways of describing a much deeper, richer duality.

After all, it is cities that are strange and wild to the elves, full of horses pulling great boxes full of people, folks who'll smile at you while their friend steals something of immense personal value from your bags. Give them the forest, where the bears emerge the same time every year.

So chaos shouldn't be used for the forest, or described as the opposite of order. Order and disorder are just ways of experiencing the same things. Chaos is the complex system, coherent but unpredictable. It's sensitivity to initial conditions. It's dropping the same group of adventurers in the same dungeon in two identical universes, and the difference between a PC making it out alive and dying horribly comes down to a dice roll that comes out differently because a player stopped to scratch his cheek before tossing the dice vs. waiting until after.

And so, in my setting, the druids worship not-Eris, the Goddess of what lies behind apparent duality, and attempt to maintain a kind of harmony between nature and civilization.

The elves, meanwhile, live in a kind of harmonious anarchist utopia in the forest, wary of human cities and their slow (by human standards) expansion.

Also there are goblins and shit but I'm running out of space in this one post and I don't want to hijack the thread. But what do you think?

Read the book Play Unsafe by Graham Walmsley. It's about applying improv techniques to role-playing games. A lot of the examples demonstrate what you're looking for, such as how being completely obvious or not shooting down ideas can make for a much more entertaining experience than a preplanned set piece.

What is your honest opinion on Unearthed Arcana classes?

These comics are great, where can I find them all? The author's website is confusing.

... I should check these threads more often.

Needless to say, seconding.

I'll go ahead and be the devil's advocate and say Clerics. They overlap with the Fighting Man (being able to wear heavy armor), and they are the source of the "there must be a healer!" meme. Psionics can easily be just played as wizards with a different fluff, adventuring to find psi-stones and discover new psi-techniques or whatever.

I like them as concepts but I don't like the execution.

youtube.com/watch?v=G53n4r7eAHo&t=1h17m59s

God damn this whole conversation from here on.

tl;dw: D&D players now hate dungeons.

I'm uploading all of them for you

mega.nz/#F!Us1SgQoJ!BI4FdZjsG2gI8jKjoBUaew

Also here: rendedpress.blogspot.fi/2016/11/list-of-d-module-walkthrough-maps-by.html

Looking at the best settings (TSR and OSR alike), each has its distinct "flavor."

>Planescape is this weird place where abstract concepts take physical form.
>Ravenloft is a land of nightmares and dread.
>Voivodja is a fever-dream wonderland.

What are some vibes you'd love to get from an OSR setting but haven't found one that does it yet? I'd like to take a crack at one.

This is missing Blood in the Chocolate

But Tamoachan is there

Much appreciated, thanks!

Has Lovecraftian horror been done yet?

I mean, it has to have been, but has it?

Adam seems reasonable and like he does enjoy and have respect for old school play. The other players seemed more confused than anything.

Finished the upload, every comic (as far as I know) is on mega now

Carcosa.

Dying world swords and sandals, think Zothique or Nightlands.

I know people have made them for personal play, but I've never seen anyone actually publish a Dreamlands/Dunsany setting.

What's everybody's favorite tables for generating content?

I didn't need to see that.

Clerics.

Second-biggest really early mistake - it's nowhere near as bad as the Thief, but it came first. Psionics are fine, just implemented awfully.

It also uses the same spellcasting system as the M-U, which established a pattern. Even a fucked-up Psionics system would have been different.

So if they hadn't made either of those mistakes and neither clerics nor thieves had come to exist, how would you then have done classes at all? Just fighters and wizards seems empty.

Then perhaps classless gaming would have sprung into existence earlier and with greater strength, and we'd have no classes anywhere at all altogether.

Good riddance.

...

Fighters are Thief-types, after the pattern of Conan, Fafhrd and the Mouser. They're also protagonist-types (in sword-&-sorcery stories, the sword is normally the hero while the sorceror is sinister). The modifications of these basic (stereo-) types would come from ability scores and alignment: an agile Fighting-man is an adept thief, a strong one a barbarian, a clever one a tactician (or by all means, another type of thief) and so on. A Lawful Magic-User is something like Ganbalf or Galabriel.

As a duality it actually makes more sense, and probably would have inhibited the avalanche of bullshit like rangers and so on. In the ideal case, one might hope that a profusion of special abilities for PCs would have flourished instead; a guy who wants to play Beorn gets shapeshifting in exchange for an XP hike or something similar, for example. Rules produced for the balanced addition of this type of thing. I know it sounds dangerously close to feats, but the difference is that these would be at-creation modifications, with major effects, and not appearing repeatedly during play as a buffet of small tweaks that can be combined to break shit. (I mean, presumably some people would still do that. But they'd be the recipients of Tim Kask's frustration in Supplement IV and nothing more would need to be said about it.)

There shouldn't be a division between sci fi and fantasy

You could check out Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea if you haven't already, it's an AD&D clone but its contained setting is very dying earth like

Ditch clerics, and when you add a new type of magic or psionics or divine stuff you don't have the precedent of "yeah of course it uses the same rules as the m-u."

Fighters & wizards & monster races works pretty well. Fucking balrogs and vampires and dragons for the weirdos, swordhavers and bookreaders for most people, maybe add druids as something unique, and the monk would probably still turn up (based on The Destroyer, naturally)

>A Lawful Magic-User is something like Ganbalf or Galabriel.
And her husband, Teleborno!

I have no idea how he stays so chipper and receptive during moments like these. Dude has the patience of a saint.

I don't know. Two of those players have played B/X with Adam before and seemed to enjoy it and One of them said he probably would have enjoyed the dungeon with a different group of players.

Even one of the ones who hadn't played any old school games said that he was into it until they rolled up new characters to tackle the same dungeon after dying instead of going and doing something else.

One of the things both Adam and a bunch of the players also noted is that coming from 5th edition and playing that module was weird because 5th has a ton of combat oriented abilities. A lot of the dislike seems like it stems from that mismatch, rather than a strict dislike of an oldschool playstyle.

youtu.be/-2SOc_JxT-o?list=PLTj75n3v9eTmoXmgjFS8hP0cFXAd5MR_f

Crumbling reality in floating islands over the maelstrom of possibility? Sort of like Bastion or the later parts of that French Dungeon comic. It might be hard to mesh up the floating fairytale like qualities with a tendency to focus on grit, but now that I'm typing it, Beyond The Wall seems like it could be made to work.

For the people in these threads who say that clerics and/or thieves were mistakes, have you actually removed them from your games?

Given most games are balanced around the core classes from the ground up, I'd imagine it'd be far too much trouble for its worth.

What is this balance you speak of?

Vaguely reminds me of the only unless you count Frostburn, et al. D&D setting WotC made.

Most 2e and many later 1e modules expect certain party compositions.
At the risk of being a true Scotsman, no proper OSR modules expects "party balance."

You know, play balance. As described on pages B53, B56, especially B60 and B63, X4, X7 and X8, (these two directly address classes' special abilities being balanced by worse combat ability and other restrictions), X43, X51, X55, and X59 of B/X.

Disclaimer: I did just Ctrl+F for "balance", and you should too.

Any Roguelike fans here?

One thing I've been toying with is doing away with classes and doing something more like Brogue- everyone starts as a guy in leather with leather armor and a dagger. What you develop into depends on what you find in the dungeon. So you could load all the wizard stuff onto one guy and make them be an uber wizard, or spread it out so everyone has a few magical tricks up their sleeves. Maybe you'll wear that plate armor, or maybe you'll stay lightweight to be fast and stealthy.

My concern is that the players would feel like they're not adapting to dungeon junk, but to DM fiat, and wouldn't feel like they owned their characters

Look into DCC funnels if you haven't already.

...

>Any Roguelike fans here?
You might find a few neuteals, but I would sooner eat a hat than expect you to find someone here who dislikes them.

>everything else
Maybe take a look at Into the Odd?
>and wouldn't feel like they owned their characters
It amazes me that I need to say this. Find out what to prepare before you start preparing.
That's just good prep.
And ask your players (probably out of game?) what they're interested in. Block out some time at the end of every session for that.
Then make sure similar things are decently weighted on your tables.

But that's all about the DM balancing the game around the characters, not the game being balanced around what classes there are.

goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2014/11/last-night-i-dreamt-of-monsters.html

Anyone ever do a dungeon will only one monster in it?
Not one type of monster, just straight up one monster.

I have, and that's sortof the feel I'm going for, but i want it to last through the whole game- not the wanton slaughter part but 'I found a piece of equipment- this could change everything!' feeling

Thanks for the tip, and into the odd is a nice inspiration
'

You could try the ACKS-style compromise, where each race is given two or three racial classes. So Elves might be an Elven Spellblade (the classic B/X Elf), an Elven Enchanter, or an Elven Nightblade (a Thief/MU hybrid). This avoids some of the issues with "all characters of X race are the same" while still establishing something defining about elves (they're all good at magic).

So, my setting is basically one in which the planet itself is essentially a slumbering deity that hates all life on its surface (with much of the horrible shit in the underdark being manifestations of its dreams).

Clerics don't work because the god/planet prevents their prayers from being heard. Arcane magic has all but been destroyed, and remains mostly in the form of artifacts. But psionicists exist, latent psychic energies awakened after a hellish nightmare encounter with the world or one of its many servants while sleeping.

My question is, where can I find a decent, relatively simple, well-described psionicist class?

Anyone have any tips on converting Pathfinder's artillery and guns from Modern Firearms into ACKs using Domain of War? Is this a hopeless endeavor?

here.

For a campaign inspired by sword-and-sorcery fiction, especially Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and the Elric stories, I'm thinking of restricting players to these classes:

>Barbarian
>Fighter
>Bard (has no magic; knows lore and can inspire allies and charm enemies with a successful skill roll; all skills use 2d6)
>Psion (still need to find a streamlined, straightforward version of this)
>Thief (skills are used like saves, on top of what anyone can do; also all 2d6-based)

All arcane magic is either granted by demons and the like or in the form of artifacts from long ago. Divine magic doesn't seem to exist.

Thoughts? Advice?

udan-adan.blogspot.com/2015/07/denizens-of-wicked-city-7-blighted-and.html
udan-adan.blogspot.com/2015/09/denizens-of-wicked-city-8-mindblade.html

That first one, with a few tweaks, looks perfect! Thank you!

>on top of what anyone can do
Suggestion:

Unless they do out right supernatural things (hide in shadows, etc) just give them automatic success.
Non-thieves advance chance of success, thieves advance speed. Apropos of nothing, call them Jewellers.

It's been awhile, how's /osr/ doing? Got a minor shock when I looked up /osrg/ and saw no threads.

Planning on starting a B/X megadungeon over discord using a rollbot and voice chat. One thing I'm unsure about is how to handle mapping. Should I suggest players do it by hand and upload photos if another player wants to look at it? or is there some convenient way for them to do it on the computer?