/osr/ - Old School Revival General

>What is something in the OSR community that everyone else seems to like, but you think is overrated?

Classes

I'd love to run a game where everyone started out as just a dood with a knife in a dungeon, developing based on what they found like someone playing a blind deprived dark souls run. Or Brogue.

>What is something in the OSR community that everyone else seems to like, but you think is overrated?
Collaborative, play-driven homebrews customized to the tastes of the GM and players, then posted online for everyone to enjoy, adapt, or critique. That's the worst.What a waste of time.
JK, I love you guys

>be autistic NEET
>too dumb to work
>too stupid to apply for autismbux
>decide your life is so pathetic you want to roleplay as another person in another world
>no money to buy a system that people actually play
>decide it would be much cheaper to buy a bootleg "clone" of a 40 year old system complete with stock art
>stave off ADD long enough to read through the mess of a book
>it's shit
>decide it wasn't that much money so it wouldn't be the end of the world to buy a different bootleg game
>it arrives
>it's shit as well, go figure
>try again
>it's fucking shit
>somehow your stupid autistic mind is too dumb to see the pattern
>keep buying these dumb fucking bootleg games with your parents' money
>eventually you've spent enough money that you could have just bought 5E or Pathfinder or any other reputable system that people actually play and isn't made by some other autistic NEET
>brain finally catches up to the real world and you finally realize your stupidity
>immediately descend into denial
>hop on /osrg/ to find other autistic retarded NEETs
>it's perfect
>it's a circlejerk filled with "people" like yourself, all convincing themselves that the good games are actually bad, and your bootleg versions of them are superior and that you didn't all just waste your parents' money
>go to bed at 2pm
>fall asleep as a tear rolls down your cheek, not because you're smart enough to realize how pathetic your life is but because the core of your biology is screaming at you for being such a waste of space tendies-munching NEET piece of shit
i wish i never bought these dumb games with my parents' money... i am such a piece of shit. anyone know any good OSR games to immerse myself in to get rid of these feels?

>55028153
Dungeon World.

I just play 5e and influence my game with OSR concepts. It's easier to find groups and my IRL friends all prefer to play something with a more active community.

Sshh.

>What is something in the OSR community that everyone else seems to like, but you think is overrated?
Retroclones. Beyond the ones that exist solely as legal loopholes to publish content compatible with older editions of D&D, I just can't get on board the hype train so many of them have built around them. Many of them are good games in their own right but they're not D&D anymore to me, and a big part of what I find interesting about OSR is the way it interacts directly with real, extant products from the past.

So I played 5e recently, and while I still like Old school D&D more, I really liked how different classes had widely different bonuses and fun mechanical abilities.

Any ideas on how to implement those in B/X or any retro clone?

Would it be considered imbalanced if I had cleric able to cast at level 1 but put limits to what they can do? Wizards get a big selection of spells to use anyway.

For the millionth time, YES it would be imbalanced. But feel free to keep asking until you get the answer you want so you can justify your decision.

Has anyone else read The Nightmares Underneath? It's an overly wordy beast of a book, but it's got a lot of interesting stuff to steal, my favorite being that dungeons are nightmares, a combination of human pain and extradimensional evil fuckery. And if someone dies in a dungeon, it creates a new level based on their insecurities and shattered dreams.

Not even slightly. "Unbalanced" isn't really an issue in OSR games, most of time. You have to really, really work at it.
The GLOG has a bunch of mechanics that each class gets that are 5E-like, in a way, but with an OSR twist, and with less complexity and strangeness.
Done through play, not through level.

Level 1, or 20, depending on what happens.

>What is something in the OSR community that everyone else seems to like, but you think is overrated?
Expanded combat systems.
Taking inspiration from video games.
Thief skills.
Old-school saves.

>a game where everyone started out as just a dood with a knife in a dungeon, developing based on what they found

PDF related may help.

Make a new class which gets them. Just figure out what hit die, attack bonus/attack matrix, equipment/stat restrictions and level advancement from the base classes you're gonna use, to make it easier.

GLOG's templates are a good example, even if they don't really immediately translate to other OSR stuff, it's there conceptually. Particularly the "wizard schools". It's easy as shit to slap something together.

There was also the 50 classes pdf mspaint user did, and the class pyramid one he posted 2 threads back

Never heard of it, but that does sound like the sort of stuff to give a look.

Is it in the trove?

>Race as class.
I think race-as-class is still controversial, though maybe a little less so here on Veeky Forums than other places. For my part, I used to think it was dumb, but as I've grown older, I've begun to appreciate the idea, if not always the implementation. It's still a mixed bag though. It has some advantages and some disadvantages when compared to race and class. Personally, I like how the Basic elf is essentially a fighter / magic-user, but I think that the dwarf and halfling are a bit dull, being fighters with a bit of extra stuff.

Alternatively... maybe some people would think it was unbalanced. Who knew?

That level of minor mechanical tweak never struck me as a vital one. Systems do these things very differently; some have no clerics, some have clerics who cast all the time, or never, or via taxes. And since those all seem to work out in play... I can't be bothered.

Gonzo/postmodernist stuff.
Thieves.
Halflings.
Thief skills.
Pic related.
Probably other stuff.

Yeh, I'm familiar with the funnel, but it's a dead end for me because I want scavenging to go on for a long time, not just as a tone-setting meatgrinder session 1

>Halflings.
>Gonzo/postmodernist stuff.
>Thief skills.
You get to agree with Skerples again, congratulations. I hear it causes confusing feelings.

Well, then you just need to figure out how to extend the funnel.

Don't think so, but there's a free legal artless PDF version available.

drivethrurpg.com/product/196352/The-Nightmares-Underneath-Free-Edition

It is a bit weird, I have to say.

On the plus side, I offset it by mentioning pic related.

>On the plus side, I offset it by mentioning pic related.
Using a mis-saved gif that I posted.
But it's all good friend, it's all good.
Ooh, good find! Didn't know about that.

More specifically, I have to figure out how to make scavenging for arms, armor, and arcane shit exciting and meaningful and not an exercise in picking through whatever jank I the GM have magnanimously decided to sprinkle through the world as I fap furiously to my classless equipment railroad which is in fact even MORE restrictive and no-brainer than a class system

To be honest, I very rarely see any praise of halflings.

I think a pseudo-point buy system to get class features would work best to simulate the thing Brogue has going with enchantment scrolls and potions of strength. So everyone starts like, essentially, a magic-user who can't use magic, who level fairly quickly and can "upgrade" their mechanical bits and pieces step-by-step like hit dice or attack bonus, from worst to best. These would still increase with level normally.

Magic would likewise be handled entirely by magical devices, maybe something like that skill to read scrolls from Rogue's March. Using magic by yourself could be left to NPCs, but this would require clarification up-front so the players don't get salty about it.

>Gonzo/postmodernist stuff

Honestly I don't understand what's the point of playing a fantasy setting that isn't at least a little bit gonzo? I feel like anyone who says that they're not into weird postmodernist stuff haven't played the Maze of the Blue Medusa module - you CANNOT go back to generic Tolkien stuff after that

Other things I like about The NIghtmares Underneath

-The way the did Law/Good/Chaos/Evil both for PCs and NPC organizations which grow as money is pumped into them, and I normally hate alignments.

-weird interplays of narrative and mechanical stuff- like, if you get lost, you can reveal a DARK SECRET that you were here before and did something distasteful and shameful to get un-lost. And this brings a nightmare incursion down on you if you're near one.

-A setting that is simultaneously pretty flavorful and completely blank and open to interpretation. Less of 'This is how it is' and more 'here's some stuff to tickle your brain.'

-What I don't Like
It's like 333 pages long and honestly not all that more complex than the GLOG or BFRPG. Guy doesn't know the meaning of brevity and loves his own words a little too much I reckon.

Maze of the Blue Medusa isn't gonzo, it's just weird. Gonzo, as I understand, is basically what you fashion into necklaces to keep Skerples and his history textbooks away at night. Stuff like white plume mountain, which is intended to be fun without putting much thought into it.

The average D&D setting also has extremely little to do with Tolkien other than demihuman races, not least because Gygax hated Tolkien and preferred pulpier, more action-oriented fantasy

Does anyone here have anything good to say about halflings? I'm not a real fan of any of the D&D races but halflings always seemed really extraneous and out-of-place to me in every single setting.

>You're like a short sneaky human with bad infravision
Just yuk
Like, I'd rather have child soldiers than halflings.

Halflings are small. They've got no reach or strength of arm, are always kicked around by bigger people, like children. Weak and useless.

Therefore, they're underdogs. And by that note, they always have my favor.

And of all the small normal races, they're probably the best: all the gnomes and kender and shit are even worse.

I mean, kid heroes are good too. But they grow up eventually, thus losing the underdog status.

Dwarves are also of questionable value since they're literally just fighters with better saves and infravision. The only demihuman race I see having significant gameplay value is the elf since you're always gonna get the "DUDE I WANNA BE A FIGHTER WHO ALSO KNOWS MAGIC LMAO" guy, but everything other than that is disposable at best. They've just stuck around very long because no one cared to remove them, and eventually, people began to expect and like them, so now there's no point in fighting against the current

No argument re:gnomes and so on, I had actually forgotten they were an option because even in my bad old 3.x days I deleted them from existence

But I feel like the players in OSR are underdogs by default, and halflings aren't mechanically all THAT weak and useless so while I agree with your idea in spirit, in practice, meh.

But maybe that can be solved with different mechanics. Hmmm.

brb making a GLOG halfling class with this in mind.

I just google image searched for "garbage fire" and didn't think about it too hard. But thanks for the better version!

It's not so much that people say good things about them as I rarely see any criticism of them. Like, people will say all the time that they use the normal 7 classes or whatever. Which includes halflings. So I kind of assumed people liked them.

I've never really felt that they fit into non-Tolkienian fantasy, honestly. Like they don't really fit a good niche for me.

Why not kobolds for the same effect?

>Saint? 10ish, which is also the typical 'retirement' time for characters
Nice. I like the way you think

Kobolds are my single favorite race, because they combine the underdog effect with the fish-out-of-water slowly redeemed monster race: they go out there, no one likes them, they don't like anyone, they have no idea what to do, but slowly they become heroes and earn their place in the world.

They're not really a part of the traditional six or seven character races, though, so I didn't count them for the purpose of this conversation.

I mean they do have some pretty sick saves, so there's that.
I have no problem with them in the world, in fact I rather like the cultural place that halflings occupy in most D&D settings. But in the BECMI paradigm they, along with dwarves, are not mechanically exciting.

>Does anyone here have anything good to say about halflings?
As I mentioned earlier, I think the actual race-as-class execution of halflings and dwarves is a bit boring, but conceptually, I think they're fine. I like the idea of demihuman classes essentially being multiclasses. Elves are already fighter/magic-users, and halflings make a good fit for fighter/thieves. Honestly, I like the idea of halflings as jacks of all trades. Like, thieves are very good at specific skills. They're specialized. Halflings, on the other hand, are fairly good at just about everything. But regardless of whether you do them as straight-up fighter/thieves, or more as fighter/jacks, their size tends to make them a bit more interesting than they might otherwise be, shifting their weapons down one size, and often affecting how they interact with the setting they're in.

I'm new to this but I think it's kind of weird that you can just roll 1 or 2 hit points and die in any attack that hits you at first level- it must be a typo.

Don't you add your constitution score or some other number to your health? That surely can't be right that in all these old games your character can just die in 1 hit like that.

It's not as bad as it looks: you'll also have only about 50% chance of being hit in the first place, and even that's only if you're stupid enough to wander off in front of the 6-8hp meatshields.

>Don't you add your constitution score or some other number to your health?
Nope. You roll your hit dice and add your constitution modifier, if any, to the result. It's a fairly common house rule to automatically give people the maximum roll for hit points at 1st level though. Personally, I think the extreme ramping of hit points (where a 9th level character has literally 9 times as many hit points as a 1st level character) is a bit over-the-top, but that's how it's done. You can, of course, do something like in the picture here, reducing the progression of hit points and making 1st level characters significantly more durable, but if you do that, you really need to mess around with damage spells as well, or shit will get out of whack.

Six cockatrice corpses and seven eggs. How much could they fetch on the black market?

I feel like to make it any more than an exercise in GM-wank that you'd have to incorporate some pretty hardcore gear porn rules. Weapon and armor degradation, quality levels and all that razzamatazz.

I get the appeal though, my best friend is really into games like Terraria and Dark Souls precisely because of how much gear can affect your build and playstyle, and he got me into them using that as the pitch. But I think you'd almost be better off building a game from the ground-up to do it, or at the very least you'd need to heavily rework the entire equipment section of whatever game you're playing.

My favorite game ever, a Japanese dungeon crawler called Meikyuu Kingdom, is very much this sort of game, but it's also very much not OSR. Almost every item and weapon fills a unique mechanical niche, all treasure is random (you can buy things but there are heavy limits on what, when, and how much), and it's very build-oriented in that sense; the game is all about combos and synergy, and making the most out of what you have. I think it would be a lot harder to make that sort of play as meaningful in an OSR context, but for what it's worth I do think it's an idea worth exploring.

who killed goblin punch?

It was me

Melancholies and Mirth-guy made a GLOG hack and then I made a hack of that hack that is d6 based and you just roll damage vs damage reduction with max damage bypassing DR
And also you can take class templates in any order rather than ABCD encouraging freeform multiclassing

arnold died soon after

[ goblins sawing lumber for a dungeon noises]

What are some good monster manuals to use with BFRPG (other than the actual BFRPG one)?

What's going on with Goblin Punch anyway? The blog's still up at least.

He hasn't posted anything on his Google + either, (but who does). I don't donate to him but I dont think his pateron has been updated either. maybe is kill?

He died from cringe when he saw how everyone started using his group-specific rules in their own games.

...All of them? easy conversion is kinda the point of OSR games, innit?

Yeah I'm aware, but I'm asking for recommendations. Like what should be my first buy? The AD&D monster manual? 2nd ED monster manual? An OSR one maybe? It'll be my first so I want it to be comprehensive.

No discord link. Hmm.

Little Person [1/2]
Each template of Little gives you-
-1 HP
-1 Encumbrance Slot
-1 Damage dealt
-1 Move (but only for running speed, agility is unaffected)
Also, d8 weapons probably take 2 hands, and d10 weapons are just too big to wield.

A- Beneath Notice
B- Mostly Harmless
C- Pity Luck
D- Willing Meatshields

Beneath Notice- If you're trying to hide from something bigger than you and have a reasonable hiding spot, it won't find you*. This applies to magic crap as well- if Dark Beige Wizard Sauronemon tries to scry for you in his crystal ball, so long as you're trying to be stealthy and not rampaging around in combat or a party, he shouldn't be able to find you.
*But I'm trying to encourage a certain kind of gameplay, so. If you've attacked someone when you had the option to sneak by or otherwise avoid them, you lose this protection against them. So sure, go ahead and backstab wildly, but once you're stained with blood, well, whatever you've offended will be coming to get you and you are no longer Beneath Notice. Maybe you should have just taken a thief level.

Mostly Harmless- You get +1 to reaction checks for each level of Little Person when attempting to appear harmless, sympathetic, innocuous, etc. People let their guard down around you and don't expect you to be some sort of psycho killer or uber wizard (pretty much the only options for characters) and are more prone to treating you nice. In combat, you'll usually be the last choice of target (unless you just shanked someone in the junk) and even stuff like maneating alien squidmonsters from beyond whose first action against Gruff McStuff would be to eat his face will probably ignore you so long as you don't bother them or interfere with their plans and don't linger about TOO long.
Again, this sort of protection vanishes once you break the 'truce.'

Pity Luck
Whenever something notably bad happens to you (like getting smacked for max damage or having your in-laws show up to visit), you get a Fate Point. You're not actually playing Fate but that's okay, you're playing a janky frankenstein homebrew. You can only have 1 Fate Point at a time, and it's technically called Pity Luck because copyright, just in case. Spend it to tweak a roll by +1 or -1, or do narrative Fate Point stuff, like declaring the window has curtains to hide behind or you remind the cultist of his dead daughter whose death turned him to dark rituals of resurrection in the first place or something.

Willing Meatshields
Retainers, pet dogs, sympathetic NPCs, etc can sacrifice themselves for you like a sundering shield+the ability to move you a few feet out of harms way, so long as they've grown to have even a little fondness for you. Other players can do this too if they wish. If you become a ruthless murderhobo exploiting the nurturing instincts of others for the sake of mechanical benefits you lose this level and have to take something else, you little monster. This is for good little children/hobbits/goblins who make connections with the world and learn the value of friendship, not munchkins.

Though come to think of it, it could be funny to go that route. Howzabout there can be a 'Manipulative Psychopath' class that has a nasty version of this ability so you can continue your NPC sundering with fake smiles and a cold heart. But that's for later.

>buy
Oh. Oh no.

That's entirely the wrong way to go about this.
Even a quick google search for the "AD&D Monster Manual" will get you a free PDF!

The 1st edition AD&D Monster Manual is what I've always considered the gold standard, but that may partially be due to when I got into the hobby.

Question for all you old farts out there that have compiled pdfs of stuff you made, or whatever.

I have a... well, an encyclopedia of sorts for my game world. Its all in 1 pdf, and its really unwieldy coming in at 250 or so pages. I have it broken down into sections, but now I feel it needs split into two books, and im not sure what to put in what book. Not counting the forward that I wrote or the introduction, the sections are:

People
>this includes major races and languages
Calendar and Major Holidays
>obvious stuff
Brief History
>brief, theres an expansion in an appendix, below
Geography
>mountains and rivers and shit!
Political Divisions
>nations and descriptions
>also includes major monastic and knightly orders, mercenary charters etc
Modern Viewpoints
>This chapter asks a list of questions that are answered by a person from a specific geographic region. Things like Who are You? I am Pavel no Mara, Khan of the Belsharev Tribe etc etc.
>Theres a ton of em. Really sets the tone of who feels what about this and that.
Religion
>split into pantheons for races and all that fun stuff
>descriptions are short, there is zero crunch
Then come the appendices. These are easier to break up as they go with chapters already presented
Listing of Dieties by Pantheon
A full history appendix
An detailed history of the world war that just finished wrecking shit

I know this probably isnt the best place to ask, but /wbg/ is dead atm....
How would you split it, or organize it?

Have one book be filled with the stuff you think you'd need during the actual game. Have the other book be filled with everything else.

I don't want a PDF. I want a physical book.
Thanks I'll check it out.

The actual mechanics are a super-crunchy abomination, but if you're just looking for fluff, the Hacklopedia of Beasts has some great detail to it (though it can be a bit edgy at times).

Since it seems mostly based on worldbuilding and not in game rules or material you want your players to read, I don't really think you need to split it. You could extrapolate a couple of tables for random rolls for NPCs or factions and such, but for the actual document of facts I don't see a need to separate it.

Holy shit that's a lot of fluff. I'll check it out, thanks man.

Thats a thought for the players copy for sure. Im going to go with that for now and keep fiddling with the main book.

Thats pretty much where I'm at, and ill whip out the above for the new folks coming to the group. We play 1e with some stuff from 2e thrown in like proficiencies (and we've been doing ability checks since like 83 or so) so theres not even tables in it to random anything, that all comes from the DMs guide or just pulled out of my ass ... i usually go with the ass option.

>Thats a thought for the players copy for sure.
You don't have stuff in there that you personally would find useful to have around during play?

I don't know that there's an obvious way to break up those sections. It really depends on the particulars of the material. Political Divisions goes with Geography, and it makes sense to have the Brief History in there too, as well as People. The more esoteric/ personal / philosophical / psychological stuff can go in the second book: shit like Modern Viewpoints and Religion, probably with most of the appendix stuff (though the history appendix should probably go in the book with Brief History). Calendar and Major Holidays would probably go in the second book, unless that book was looking a bit too long, in which case it would work fine in the first.

But that's just me spit-balling based on limited info.

Fair warning: humanoids get more space than other monsters, so don't expect every description to be quite that detailed.

Alright thanks man. Cheers

Does anyone here have the hardback version of BFRPG? Is the paper better quality than the paperback version on Amazon?

Honestly, its all fluff. Its 250 pages of my refinements to a setting that I think got f-ed in the a when things went off the rails with D&D in the mid 90ies: Greyhawk
>boooooooo, i know
I remember when the Ghawk wars came out and we had already done that with our epic level characters back in the day. We did, I have to admit, adopt it a good bit of it when we rebooted the campaign about 15 years or so ago.
>we were crazy monty haul campaign kids that carved out massive domains that were laughable at best.
There's some differences, and definitely its somewhat detail lacking on purpose. We don't want another FR situation where every single blade of grass has a mary sue ridden backstory. We use the non-marked ghmaps stuff and have our own boundaries and stuff like that.
>pic related is the brandiest new pc map that im doing up with my 2nd grader level photoshop skills

I appreciate the feedback. I think that I'm just going to keep it in one giant volume and write separate campaign level sourcebook type shit from now on. I think once I get it into a giant binder itll look good on a shelf.

>pic related ... im tired

Ok folks, here's my "Steal the Pope" heist module, version 0.2. It's nowhere near done, but there are now:
-fancy maps
-fancy art (hastily tossed in there)
-NPCs galore

And a general structure to the document that I like so far.

I still have to finish the room descriptions, make a few edits, and finish the Escape section (plus Complications tables, Pope Debauchery tables, etc.) And then write a bit on how I designed the module in general, so you can do it too (stealing from last thread)

Thoughts?

Is there a basis for stating peasants and commoners? I've never GMd before, should I just make them level 1 characters with no gear?

...

>Is there a basis for stating peasants and commoners? I've never GMd before, should I just make them level 1 characters with no gear?
8 Int, 10 in all other stats, 1d6 HP (or 1), a weapon that deals 1d4 damage, low morale, and a good deal of folk wisdom. They might be country rubes, but they ain't /stupid./ Some of them have been to war.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/07/horrible-peasant-npc-generator.html

Thanks!

...

NP. Also, I love describing peasants by smell. Get the players to make all sorts of faces.

These might be useful too:
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/07/osr-1d100-peasant-grievances.html
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.ca/2017/06/50-reasons-why-peasants-are-revolting.html
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/07/osr-poem-of-peasant-grievances.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca/2017/02/d100-terrible-letter-from-home.html
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca/2017/02/d100-horrible-prison-convicts.html

Damn thanks man this is great! A real treasure trove of sorts.

It's handy to have lots of bookmarks.

Anyway, if you want to return the favour, read and tell me where and how I fucked up.

I've haven't even played a game yet, man. I'm just gathering knowledge in these threads for when I do. I wouldn't know where to start. It looks well formatted and put together, and I like how the NPC section is very descriptive; would be great for setting the stage. The map, as simple as it is, looks functional enough. The rumor table looks like a good resource in general.

Hey man, good to know that after he liked my blog post about the eel-cultists he realized that his time was up. Any chance I can see the hack you made of my hack? Also I hate that you're encouraging multi-classing USING MY HACK but super interesting which classes you're using to have it happen because I have like 18 and I doubt you're using that many
Was this inspired at all by udan-adan.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-class-noncombatant.html ? Because I made a class for a mermaid princess which reads alot like your write up on little people. Also the idea of -1HP per template is a really cool idea and now I want to experiment with negative template effects.
For what purpose? Is this to inform yourself or other Referees in running a game in your setting or is it for players to know what any character may know? I think the Modern Viewpoints section is really cool btw.
:( no hexes You do you man but I think if you;re writing source books from these 250 pages you're gonna need hexes
OH SHIT! I like the idea of selling schemes to the players. Also I would take out the outermost squares on the maps on 19-21. I would also make those maps much larger so that a greater amount of detail can be seen. I'm a big fan of how you have loot written out as a consequence of time and the number of PC's. Can I playtest this as is?

...

>generic Tolkien stuff after that
I hate it because it makes people say stupid shit like this.

Please don't respond to such shitty bait.

>implying he actually used them in his games or even played at all for that matter

Looking through his stuff was the worst example of "shit someone thinks from their armchair"