/osrg/ OSR General

Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General thread.

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>OSR Blog List - Help contribute by suggesting more.
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>Previous thread:

>THREAD QUESTION:
What lurks in the Oceans of your setting?

Other urls found in this thread:

occultesque.com/2017/07/1d100-magical-items-of-shallow-daramitz.html
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/2017/07/plains-wilderness-encounters-and.html
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/p/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-world.html
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/07/osr-death-and-dismemberment-table-early.html
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

I'm considering making players purchase XP in my next game. It's not enough to just acquire it, you gotta spend it on a specific character motivation Arneson-style. What does /osrg/ think? Too harsh?

I was gonna use Dungeon Painter since a few anons brought it up many threads ago. Chose "Oldschool D&D" to be thematic and realized I don't know what the fresh hell half these things are. I assume you're meant to play it by ear, but to make sure, there's no accepted nomenclature or anything right?

>Smith would open his "tripe and keister" (display case on a tripod) on a busy street corner. Piling ordinary soap cakes onto the keister top, he began expounding on their wonders. As he spoke to the growing crowd of curious onlookers, he would pull out his wallet and begin wrapping paper money, ranging from one dollar up to one hundred dollars, around a select few of the bars. He then finished each bar by wrapping plain paper around it to hide the money.

>He appeared to mix the money-wrapped packages in with wrapped bars containing no money, and then sold the soap to the crowd for one dollar a cake. A shill planted in the crowd would buy a bar, tear it open, and loudly proclaim that he had won some money, waving it around for all to see. This performance had the desired effect of enticing the sale of more packages. More often than not, victims bought several bars before the sale was completed. Midway through the sale, Smith would announce that the hundred-dollar bill yet remained in the pile, unpurchased. He then would auction off the remaining soap bars to the highest bidders.

>Through manipulation and sleight-of-hand, he hid the cakes of soap wrapped with money and replaced them with packages holding no cash. The only money "won" went to shills, members of the gang planted in the crowd pretending to win, in order to increase sales.

The sideways S is for secret doors.
The square with an X in it is for pit traps.

Is there a d6 pool or d100 osr? i am thinking in making one that use one of them

>d100
Heroic Age of Tekumel
RuneQuest
Mithras

Ooh, makes sense

well but they are more brp than dnd

>Comeliness 14 to 17: Causes anyone of the opposite sex to be Fascinated unless their wisdom is at least 50% of the comeliness total (i.e. 7 to 9 or more)
>Even higher comeliness scores have all the more serious consequences
>A character with high comeliness + low wisdom + mirror = ?

Does Unearthed Arcana explain narcissism?

HAoT is B/X with percentile dice and skills according to the author.

Alright, so I didn't bother to edit it much, but I did wrap up my little side project on magic items and cursed stuff for my home campaign.

occultesque.com/2017/07/1d100-magical-items-of-shallow-daramitz.html

Also pretty happy with how the food document turned out and I have some revisions for that coming soon. Any requests for stuff you guys would like to see?

I haven't written up the wilderness encounters for coasts and abyssopelagic terrain yet but here are a bunch of monsters and their lairs/spoors/tracks/traces for wilderness encounters in the plains.

melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/2017/07/plains-wilderness-encounters-and.html

I found an image from the guy who made them, in case anyone else needed it

Fireplace, open archway, arrow slit, altar, barrel, bed, crate, table, chair, chest
Dunno, concealed door, covered pit, curtain, well, false door, fireplace again, fountain, illusionary wall, railing
Dunno, one way or double locked door, locked door, natural stairs, one-way door, one-way door, one-way secret door, open doorway, open pit
Pillar, pool, portcullis, railing again, revolving door, quadruple door, secret door, white door, narrow doorway, spiral stairs
Square stairs, stairs down, slide down, statue, smiling barrel, trapped chest, lever, ceiling trap
Floor trap, secret trap, trap, well again, bench

Just my guesses.

Oh, you were actually really close

What's an OSR rule that most people hate but you like?
For me it's Exceptional Strength.

I've never rolled an 18 for a single stat, does this rule ever come into play at all..?

B/X encumbrance. People keep trying to come up with simpler systems when it really comes down to:
>armor
>weapons
>everything else weighs 80 coins
>"carrying treasure" has its own rules on the encumbrance table

Race as class
Clerics
Thieves and B/X skills
The multiple saving throws
Weapon proficiency from 2nd Ed.

What is the exceptional strength rule?

>Race as class
Pretty sure most people here like race-as-class.

When you roll an 18 on strength (which happens about once every 216 rolls) you get to roll a d100 for exceptional strength with higher bonuses and so on

Of course, it's what makes races stand out

Are GURPS treasure tables worth it for OSR?

Also it's a way to granulate the levels of "regular people" versus giants and the like. You could increase strength past 18, by a wish spell and the like, but each increase would only it by 1/10th of a full point and thus you'd go from 18 to 18/10 and the like with 18/00 being the strongest person possible. The only reason I'm hesitant about it is that a few of the people I play with compete in powerlifting and working backwards from the metrics listed for each measure of exceptional strength each have 18/00 strength. It just strikes me as a little weird to have them play characters who would be mathematically weaker than them.

>Of course, it's what makes races stand out

>When dwarves are just fighters with 1 or 2 more HP
>When elves are just a fighter/wizard multiclass

>Dwarves: more HP
>Elves: multiclass
and there we are

Back when there were no multiclasses, even a fighter/wizard stood out. No excuse on the dwarves, though.

We all like race-as-class.
Hating thieves is a meme.
Most of us like the saves.

Would OSR with a dice pool really work?

You could give GURPS Dungeon Fantasy a go.

3d6 is a dicepool now?
In that case, I recommend Heroes & Other Worlds

>spoor, tracks, traces
This is really cool. Going to steal this for sure. But I'm confused where it says 'roll a d6' in brackets after the anecdotes. I think currently I'd roll a d20 for what type of creature, then a d6 for what type of anecdote. What's the d6 for?

Also something for if you collect enough traces, tracks, etc. you could go looking for trouble or try to avoid it on further encounter rolls.

Keeping track of what has spoor, tracks and such on a map seems like a fun thing to do as well.

Dwarves get a shitton of languages and infravision, plus all sorts of special features in a dungeon 1/3 of the time.

This games looks interesting, what is your experience with it?

Ascending AC.

Dont know if it would work well with the OPEN D6 system/Minisix i think that system tends to high power, also how would saving throws work? it cant be roll higher because there are going to be characters that could roll that much

I've never run it, unfortunately. It's solid but it is ambiguous in some places. It's not easy to convert things from D&D and the combat is very crunchy, being a tactical hex-based affair with facing rules.

A fighter pointed out that since he doesn't have a strength bonus, he doesn't see much reason to not just hurl flasks of oil

> 1d6splash damage
>1d8 on direct hits, burns for an extra round for another 1d8 on the hit target

And since, as a warrior, he has excellent to-hit, he doesn't worry about lighting the party on fire since he's usually the only one at the front lines.

I've already established this weaponized oil as being cheap and common so I won't backpedal on that, but does /osrg/ have any ideas for 'solving' this 'problem?' Is it even a problem?

I'm currently leaning towards throwing the guy a +1 weapon but with splash damage and damage over time, I don't think it'll convince him to stop hurling oil like some sort of medieval granadier

I don't think you can throw anything while you're in melee yourself. At the very least he's going to suffer the splash damage.

Also, some enemies are immune to fire.

To prevent splash damage from being pretty much an always hitting AoE magic missile I said that splash damage only hits if the unmodified d20 roll beats the AC of the target. So he's usually fine, and has a lot of HP when he isn't.

Might do the 'if you're in melee and do something that isn't melee your action might get interrupted if you get hit.' Spells, potion drinking, climbing a ladder, etc.

He can only hold so many flasks of oil. I'd also roll d% at the start of every session, on 1 his next flask that deals a fatal blow spawns a Pyre Spirit (treat as CE Fire Elemental) hellbent on killing him.

Oh, that's me copying the table from a previous post and not editing things. If you look at the post linked in the 2nd entry it has a different distribution based on encounter type rather than what is encountered. It skewed what is encountered to be humans rather rthan monsters.

The goal was to give players information on what is in each hex when they don't roll a wilderness encounter. Rolling a 2-6 results in almost no interaction for the players when traveling through a hex, if you add all these "lairs/spots/tracks/traces" it present some options other than "you travel for 3 days with nothing cool happening". It also allows you to add monster lairs/villages/noble estates/churches into a hex as the characters travel through them rather than when making a Hex-Map.

if he ever falls there is a % the flask will break, throw some enemies that use fire and bum

Give him a useful magical weapon or something like gautlets of ogre power

He can hold enough for 1 fight, and his pack animals/henchmen carry many more.

I think it's unfair to sic a spontaneous fire elemental on him specifically because I'm bootybothered by the weird mental image of his combat style, but for a haunted side-level of the dungeon I could have things revive as thematically appropriate vengeful spirits when anyone kills them with anything. That's a fun idea.

>thrown oil flasks
>not molotov cocktails

Don't you want to bundle the twin hilarities of potential drunkeness with flaming death?

>animals
What kind of animal doesn't run away when deep underground and surround by a maniac throwing fire everywhere?

What makes a game old school mechanics wise? What about lore/theme/setting wise?

"old school" by itself encompasses a shitload of wildly divergent games, including OD&D, The Fantasy Trip, Traveler, BRP, etc. but the general trend is intentional clunkiness to convey certain feels.

If you're asking about "OSR" then broad compatibility with TSR D&D including
>some version of HP
>some version of AC
>ability scores
>classes or skills that emulate classes
>level progression
>some sort of Save system
>a magic system
>concrete in-game wealth
>an Initiative system

Yeah I meant OSR, but 5e has all those things as well doesnt it?

Do you think classless OSR is acceptable?

What about for science fiction or modern games?

D6 pools tend to go high, i know there is a game called BRUTAL but dont know nothing about it than that is uses dice pools

I feel that classes and levels are a pretty important part of the whole thing as is, but without them you'll have much harder time with the truly essential mechanic of experience points for gold.

>gold = xp
>not dungeons = xp

I love their faces. I wish you could see more art with human (or humanoid) characters that had so good and vivid expressions on them.

I guess with humans and such you just get all too scared about the whole cartoon style to get that going.

I'm trying to hack a classless OSR together without falling into pointbuy or some sort of feat list

My inspiration is the roguelike Brogue, where there's no class or real level-up, just adapting to what you find in the dungeon- though for an RPG, it can be more flexible than just 'advancement via equipment' like brogue is

>dungeons = xp
How would this work? Party goes into a dungeon, jacks off in a circle, leaves empty handed and gets xp?

I think it's more like
>Party goes into a dungeon
>retrieve fabulous treasure/defeat boss monster/accomplish goal
>survivors level since they have a dungeon under their belt

There was some system that actually used this but I forget what it was.

I still don't see why experience isn't just rewarded as normal for all of the things inside of that dungeon?

You have to complete the dungeon's goal. Any extra treasure or special items or friendship you get in the dungeon is just extra, and even if you do most of the dungeon but don't finish you don't get experience.

Dungeons have levels or rough experience points. You level up when you do enough dungeon points equal to your level. So finishing a 1st level dungeon at 1st level makes you go to level 2. You could take a level 1 guy to a scary as fuck level 10 dungeon and if he survives he'll come out as a level 4, very scary rookie.

The original idea was over on the Basic Red roleplaying blog, but it never said exactly what counts as 'doing' the dungeon. So I thought giving it a goal might keep the gameplay similar enough; you're still encouraged to get in and get out with your objective and avoid fights and all that. It's just focused on a single thing instead of grabbing all the treasure you can. Even though treasure is still quite good.

Gives the players more freedom to go after a goal how they want to rather than encouraging them to hoover up every coin and valuable and defeat/overcome every challenge as they desperately try to get all the XP crumbs. Makes for more natural roleplay behavior and less gamist 100% completionism 'gring the dungeon for max XP' nonsense.

And of course, less book keeping.

I like it. I'm always down for things that involve adding landmarks and things for the players to do on the map as they go.

I'd argue that it gives them less freedom, actually. With gold=xp, they can go into a couple rooms, get some treasure and then leave. With dungeons=xp, they can't leave until they've done whatever they're "supposed" to do.

...

...

They can still do that and get gold and treasure, and they should have better goals for their characters than 'ugh I want to level up so we HAVE to do this dungeon.' They should be stealing the eyes of the toad god because they WANT to steal the eyes of the toad god, not because they want to level up.

The point is that they won't 'level' until they accomplish something meaningful.

Maybe you're fine with players getting levels by doing no-commitment grazing from 6 different locations, but that just sounds like the equivalent of 'grinding on rats for levels' to me and I'm not interested in that sort of thing.

An SUV, an F1 racecar, and a Humvee all have engines and four wheels.

But in that case it isn't dungeon=xp, it's accomplishment=xp.

>They should be stealing the eyes of the toad god because they WANT to steal the eyes of the toad god, not because they want to level up.

But the DM won't let them level up if they don't do the important thing in the dungeon, which is taking the eyes of the toad god anyway.

Hell, isn't the experience (xp) that you get from stealing the eyes of the toad god not just a good motivation anyway?

Presumably stealing the eyes of the toad god is the main thing in the dungeon- its guarded by the fiercest foes and most fiendish traps, so if they can steal the eyes, they could probably clear the rest of the dungeon.

In terms of XP it might be like if they overcame all the obstacles and stole the eyes, that's 50% of the XP to the next level, and sniffing through the dungeon for the other 50% isn't necessary if they've proved they can whip the best part of the dungeon. So it's just condensed into '1dungeon=1 level

If they want to level up via another dungeon or adventure they can do that instead, it's not a matter of the DM saying 'heh heh HEH, I'm not gonna let you level until you do this one specific thing!' it's a matter of the DM saying 'you've braved the worst of one of the many fiendish dungeons, have a level'

I mean seriously guys this ain't rocket science. If you like keeping track of xp do that, this conversation was to explain how dungeon=xp works, not to proselytize that dungeon=xp is the ONE TRUE WAY

Really? Sounds like proseltyzing to me.

>Too harsh?
No, unless you do that faggoty thing Arneson implies in the FFC that he did with the PCs' Special Interests and just used it as an excuse to fuck the players over.

This is a circular argument.

Obviously there might be a group of players who just go around to a bunch of shitty dungeons and never clear them or brave dangers beyond the first few levels so they can get just enough gold to level up. Then there are those who would just rush to the bottom of the dungeon and rush back out with meta-gaming, just so they can level up.

Obviously both these groups could exist. Using gold for xp or dungeons for xo won't change that.

However dungeons for XP WILL let you keep track of less points and numbers, it will allow you to make dungeons where treasure is not an exclusive focus and will encourage the same OSR gameplay loop everyone likes. It's a superior system to gold = xp, but don't make up reasons as to why its superior.

that wasn't me so I can't help you

>Floor trap, secret trap
Pretty sure these two are floor hatch, secret hatch.

It's less demanding in the sense that you don't have to write as many numbers down but more demanding in that the GM now has to arbitrarily assign values to various events. Which is more impressive? Being able to see through the spells of the wizard to find the treasure that he buried or fighting off his vampire servant? It's the sort of thing that comes down to the fiat of the GM which is fine, in a sense, but it may not be as reliable.

The gold = xp mechanic is fine and the improvements that dungeons = xp gives don't really justify it. A poorly designed dungeon will still be poorly designed and a well designed dungeon will still be well designed no matter how the XP for delving it is awarded.

Does anyone have Stonehell supplements and additional dungeons? I'm pretty sure there's supposed to be several but I can't find any in the trove.

You literally don't understand what I mean by dungeons = xp.

At no point, ever, did I ever imply that you get xp for 'various events'. you get XP for finishing the DUNGEON, which is its goal. You don't get xp for fighting the vampire butler unless killing the vampire butler was the goal of the dungeon. You'd still want to avoid a fight with the butler just like in regular OSR dungeon crawlers. But now instead of players being encouraged to kill the vampire butler because he has a silver clasp because it will give them more experience, they would only be encouraged now purely out of greed. If your dungeon goal was to steal the Wizard's treasure, then that's the goal. You wouldn't be fucking around in his kitchen thinking about stealing his rare octopus liver for money unless you actually wanted it yourself. You would have the exact same gameplay with the exact same parameters, but now all the players just have to put a tally mark or two on their character sheet instead of copying down all the gold and shit they get and writing and erasing over and over.

If you don't understand even the basics of what I am talking about, then you shouldn't be talking.

First one is free on Lulu.

What system do you guys turn to when you want basically the opposite of OSR?

In the same way improvisational heroic fantasy gets boring and you just want a solid dungeon crawl, sometimes I find dungeon crawls get boring and I want some more character-driven, collaborative storytelling.

I'm thinking either Dungeon World or Burning Wheel, any thoughts/recommendations?

Dungeon World is mechanically trash, it's a hack of Apocalypse World with cosmetics of dungeon crawls tacked on. I would recommend either Beyond the Wall or Risus.

Who sets the goal? Why? It seems it isn't the players, because if they were already invested in the goal, they wouldn't need the XP incentive.

Burning Wheel's all right. Dungeon World isn't. I don't know any others to recommend.

Thanks guys. Beyond the Wall sounds good.

Has nobody else tried to do D&D style fantasy with the Apocalypse system? Reading through Dungeon World I actually thought it was a neat system, it's just all the D&Disms that let it down.

I like a good cursed item table. Nice work!

I really need to sit down and brain at your system because it looks very, very good. It's just kind of conceptually dense for casual reading.

At some point I'll have it edited and formatted to be easy to understand so that I can publish it as PDF. I know that I'm going to have to go back and change a few things like differentiating between Coast and Open Sea Terrain hexes among other things and probably put the rules for wilderness exploration and downtime in settlements at the very beginning. Until then the link below is a rough draft of the entire system.

melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/p/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-world.html

Also, I've posted my Death and Dismemberment table, plus a few Early Retirement Tables for PCs that are mangled, injured, or driven insane while dungeon crawling.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/07/osr-death-and-dismemberment-table-early.html

They seem adaptable, but needlessly, pointlessly detailed. So much effort to get such a minor result.

>What kind of animal doesn't run away when deep underground and surround by a maniac throwing fire everywhere?
Giant salamander
Antiphoenix
Drake
Pyroclastic Ghoul
Abyssal Goose (they never run; they only charge)

Most dungeons don't have inherent goals. They're just dungeons.

Ah, I see you've finally passed the "death and dismemberment" threshold, which all OSR bloggers are destined to one day pass.

Then nobody would go there.

People go searching in dungeons because they're looking for THE lost manuscript, or A bandit lord's treasure. Nobody goes down into a ghoul infested hole unless they are being paid to go in there and kill all the ghouls.

The rumors or setup for WHY people go into dungeons is what is important to the dungeon goal.

>Ah, I see you've finally passed the "death and dismemberment" threshold, which all OSR bloggers are destined to one day pass.
I was using Arnold's for ages. My tweaks are very slight.

Guess I'm finally part of the club now.

The 1/2 finished Fallen Empires pbta game is mostly functional. Goes for a magical post-roman empire collapse vibe.

I would be excited for your stuff in pdfs.

>Then nobody would go there.
>Nobody goes down into a ghoul infested hole unless they are being paid to go in there and kill all the ghouls.
>The rumors or setup for WHY people go into dungeons is what is important to the dungeon goal.

No, that is just one way to go about it. You can place a dungeon in your world and there will be a lot of players who will go there without much other info other than "it's there and nobody knows what's in it".
The idea that dungeons have inherent goals actually takes away from them, in my opinion. Often dungeons are much deeper and dangerous than the players can handle, and part of the challenge (and fun) is to see how far you can push yourself into the dark before you flee or die.
Having a goal can be helpful if players don't have that urge to push onward and see what else they can find, but many groups just don't play like that.
Dungeons=xp incentivizes finding the macguffin and then leaving immediately, but gold=xp incentivizes finding the macguffin (because it's probably the most valuable thing in the dungeon) but to also keep going and see what else happens. Which one is more fun?

I'd rephrase that to "dungeons = XP incentivizes completing GM-constructed narratives, while gp=XP incentivizes less structured, player-driven narratives."

If that makes sense.

I just asked my PCs, "Old tombs like this are full of treasure, you've heard. You all decide you want to go in. Why?" And I get all sorts of answers: ancient cults, dungeon botanists, barbarians out to fight things, Paladins out to tame things, and lots and lots of broke people.

It seems to work out.

What about dungeons = xp but not based on goals?

I like this idea too but I'm not sure when a dungeon would be considered 'completed', when you get most of the treasure out? Or just make any successful trip? Or do you have to literally clear the whole thing?

The silver clasp (one of a kind, incredibly expensive) provides a decent reward for actually taking the risk to face the vampire butler instead of avoiding him. It's a decent motivation for the player to do something they may not have otherwise done.

Similarly, if they're wasting time in the wizard's larder, just give a good roll on a wandering monster table. Make them work for the liver.

>I like this idea too but I'm not sure when a dungeon would be considered 'completed', when you get most of the treasure out?
Exactly. It's "whenever the GM feels it's been completed." It's a GM-driven narrative, not a player-driven one.

If tomorrow, my PCs decided "Fuck this whole Steam Hill business, we're going east to chase down that ant colony," they aren't aren't penalized. They get to keep all the gp=XP loot they got so far, plus pursue what they want to pursue, for good, sensible, IC reasons.

Diving deeper because it's "how you level" seems awkward, like 4th edition's power mechanics.