/osrg/ — Old School Renaissance General: Back to Basics edition

Where ideally you'd actually cut it back to Fighting-Man and Magic-User (Thief came after the fact and was objectively a mistake), I'm gonna actually say Bard.

The weirdo cultist. Has religion, but not mainstream religion, so they're always creeping around robbing tombs and accepting converts from the ranks of scum and monsters.

>The weirdo cultist.
I'm gonna actually say Bard.

Ooh, both good answers. Both have "weird knowledge" skills, both are kind of shady... yeah, I like it. Thanks anons!

>Have you ever done a wavecrawl -- that is, a hexcrawl at sea?
That is a great idea, which system would be the most suited for it?
Is there an OSR title with fun things for sailing?

Why thief at all?

If you go fighter/mu, you can do a lot more interesting things with it.

>Paladin = clergy fighter
>Cleric = clergy MU

>Thief = sneaky fighter
>Illusionist = sneaky MU

etc.

>What is the weird church Thief equivalent?
Assassins. Or at least a particular flavor of them.

>would it be meritous to make Tieflings essentially Thiefs with a truncated skill list and a Cleric's turning ability, just focused on Law instead of Undead?
Undead are a class of monsters you run into a fair bit. What creatures would fall into the Law category? Or are you talking about anybody with a lawful alignment? Because that seems way too broad.

I'd like to, the idea sounds really cool, but I haven't found a good way of doing it. Like with hexcrawls you have different types of terrain and their difficulties and travel times and monsters, wilderness encounter checks, and such... But with a wavecrawl? I guess every once in a while you could get attacked by pirates, sea elves, sea monsters, or have weather, but it just seems kind of boring.

>Why thief at all?
see
(if you disagree, fine, sure, but that's not important here)

More seriously, because three is a very convenient number to build around. Three allows for 4 blended classes (half fighter-half magic user, etc.) as well as nice neat mirrors.

Besides, Fighters are for dealing with physical problems like fights. Wizards are for dealing with weird problems. And Thieves are for avoiding the problem entirely and not dying stupidly because you tried to use a hammer to turn a screw. Thieves are the planning class, and it's important to have a class that says, to one player "your main job is to think, listen, observe, sneak, steal, and not die. You have no survival tools but your brains - no fancy sword, no fancy spells -so you'd better use those brains."

It's a good balance.

Considered, but I'd put Assassins as just a different kind of thief, rather than the difference between Cleric and Magic-User. Assassins are just thieves who steal lives.

Real thread:

>I'd like to, the idea sounds really cool, but I haven't found a good way of doing it.
c

New thread:

...And bards are just thieves who steal hearts...

>Skerples plans a heist module
vimeo.com/230559377

>Considered, but I'd put Assassins as just a different kind of thief, rather than the difference between Cleric and Magic-User. Assassins are just thieves who steal lives.
I'm saying that if you go with a hashashin vibe, you've certainly got a religious vibe going on. If you're talking about slapping cleric spells on a thief, that gets a bit trickier. Maybe some form of mystic / monk?

>...And bards are just thieves who steal hearts...
Funny, I could have sworn the heart was much further up.

>I'm saying that if you go with a hashashin vibe, you've certainly got a religious vibe going on. If you're talking about slapping cleric spells on a thief, that gets a bit trickier. Maybe some form of mystic / monk?

>Wouldn't that be an island crawl and therefore more of a pointcrawl than a hexcrawl?

Sure, but "wavecrawl" and "saltbox" have been bandied about the OSR blogosphere for a while. "Island crawl" just doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely.

>Religion/Holy Family
Fighters are Paladins
Mages are Clerics
Rogues are Inquisitors

>Noble Family
Fighters are Knights
Mages are Court Wizards
Rogues are Jesters

>Criminal/Occult Family
Fighters are Thugs
Mages are Witchs
Rogues are Assassins

/osrg/, what demon is best to scare the absolute shit out of your players?

But the important question: How do you build Cat class to best fit each of the three roles in the picture?

>Rogues are Inquisitors
Ok, can you break down this class concept a little more for me? I'm used to 40k Inquisitors which are... different. (And the historical inquisition which is useful but probably too weird)
>Rogues are Jesters
As a class?
Speak Truth To Power
Fool's Wisdom
Turn Up Unexpectedly
Dodge Like A Motherfucker
... oh, I like this.

>: How do you build Cat class to best fit each of the three roles in the picture?

Race: Catling
At character creation, reroll Dex.

Bonus: you may reroll any failed Saves vs Death. You have 9 rerolls. You automatically fail your next Save vs Death after you use your 9th reroll.
Penalty: you are an asshole. If someone gives you a direct command, you have to Save to obey it. Otherwise, you'll fuck off, do something more fun, fall asleep, or ruin things just to spite them.

>/osrg/, what demon is best to scare the absolute shit out of your players?
The demogorgon. Because then they'd have to roll 13.

Rogues are Inquisitors because 'Rogue/Thief' class is usually about skill and dexterity or similar concepts. While the Inquisitor could easily be considered a scholarly caster type, you could also argue its more about the social/investigation aspect along with torture devices and so on, which you could fluff it that way, especially if you like your Rogues more on the specalist/skill monkey side.

If you really don't like it, just make them a special kind of church thief- the Antiquarian. This is the type who houses and fetches the relics of a religion, polishes the floors, and generally puts an ear to the door whenever high level bishops talk about their spending excesses. If you're feeling spicy you could just name the church thief class a 'Choir Boy' instead.

No, sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. What /is/ and Inquisitor?

Like, what's a normal average everyday session/dungeon look like for an Inquisitor? What do you do, in the party?

Side note: relic thieves were a legit profession for a while. I have a copy of "Furta Sacra: Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages" somewhere around here. It's very, very good.

OC from last thread; some door traps.

>The demogorgon. Because then they'd have to roll 13.
I'm tempted to rewatch Stranger Things and restat the Demogorgon accordingly.

First off, it can only be hit on a 13 (or a crit). Ever. Unmodified.

Succubus with the soul of a murderhobo and no interest in behaving like a stereotypical succubus.

>Dimension door everywhere
>charm spam
>can fly
>reads your mind to know if your spell list/equipment makes you a safe target or not

Seriously. A succubus arriving in a village should be far more terrifying than a dragon. You can't outrun it. You can't hurt it. And its going to mindrape all those level 0 commoners about as fast as it can find them. Instant minions from any faction she infiltrates, and she can leave the players to clean up the mess without ever so much as looking their way. She doesn't even have to ever use a single ability on the players and I bet it can be the most horrible thing to ever happen to them.

Undead spawn apocalypses are bad too, but a succubus could be like a kill satellite lurking overhead, listening to your thoughts, and eventually, after causing attrition or simply waiting for the inevitable, she swoops down and charms everyone, and that's the end. Or the beginning of your time working for a succ if you have players who are good sports and wouldn't prefer death than the ignominy of being minionized.

Of course you'll have to be indirect to make this scary and not a bullshit TPK, or worse yet an unkillable pet villain.

The Inquisitor is a presser of truth and arm of the church. They are not the head, nor the feet. Nor are they the judge of any crimes; the bishops and holy men are those. The Inquisitor is the hands of the church, the calloused and cruel, unfeeling hands. You were sanctified or at least baptized to get your job, but you are not held to an especially high standard due to your amoral nature. It is said the best inquisitors are ex-criminals and sodomites, as to better understand the mind of a sinner, since they were one. During mass you sit in a special box underneath the pews, with only a tiny slit of light between the feet of other church goers letting you look out at the priest and alter.

>Inquisitors get bonuses to sneak attacks and blades through their experience with torture, just as Rogues do.
>Inquisitors get a bonus to stealth, as they often sneak by prisoner's cells to here them confessing their sins to one another, or to almighty god.
>Inquisitors are skilled with lockpicks and disarming traps, as they know their way around a rack or iron maiden. Devices are well understood by them.
>Inquisitors replace Roguish guile and cunning with a more brute force interrogation method; but are still very good at extracting information from others.

You sneak around, picking locks, and attacking people with torture instruments. Maybe the Relic thief is more tried and true to the D&D thief, and I didn't really give the inquisitor any special abilities, but there you go.

>>What is the weird church Thief equivalent?

Monk. Mystic power of an inspired or semi-divine nature combined with stealth and scouting.

>weirdo cultist

It could also be a witch-hunter type. I've often seen the lawful thief archetype gear toward bounty hunter

retrievers are pretty terrifying
relentless giant spiders that shoot rays out of their eyes

>retrievers are pretty terrifying
>relentless giant spiders that shoot rays out of their eyes
I'm pretty sure all spiders can do that. I can't say for sure because I try to never get too close.

Can I pour my soul out to /osrg/?

no

go write in your blog

why have the latest ops not included the discord

it's a valuable resource for workshopping

The kind that's the size of a man and twice as deadly.

It's obviously the assassin, especially historically speaking. But your view on classes is already flawed and you already wrote that you didn't want to use it so I guess you won't use that. How about "sneaky priest"?

Don't they have energy drain too?

Nothing scares a player like energy drain.

Why stop there? Magic is for the bad guys anyway, just have one class and call it 'Conan'.

Why not have four classes and call them Conan, Gandalf, Loki, and Clerky McPriest Dungeon Doctor

>not Van Helsing

>energy drain
Delete this.

>LotFP
>better than ad&d or 2e
Are you on a heavy dose of antipsychotics by chance?
>your homebrew
I have to agree with that one tho

Has /osr/ done any collaborative dungeon or hex stocking in the past?

low level gameable OC

Is there an OSR equivalent to Mekton Zeta?

if you post a more serious picture, maybe. That one invites derision and shitposting.

Not that I know of. You should start something! I think a hexcrawl would be more fun, dungeons require more adherence to a unified theme and there are also a few very complete random dungeon generators, which makes it a bit less necessary.

Weird Church Thief = Dark Brotherhood from Elder Scrolls.

What system handles Thieves best?

I hear a lot of praise for LotFP in this regard. But I'd also like a system that has lots of class options, the way BFRPG does. Do I just settle for d% based Thieves or try to mash the Specialist (and LotFPs d6 skills) into another system?

Yes, but it was the idiots on the discord server who did it. On top of that, it was for Gamma World out of all possible settings.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jQp3-1kAcvzpovHUWsjdS-PDMjsM--NEMS4fs2W7nA/edit?usp=sharing

I'll try to post something later this weekend or on Monday. I agree that a hexmap might be more suitable since it doesn't require the same level consistency as a dungeon. The workload of filling a whole wilderness map is quite heavy as well and it would be nice to split the burden. Suggestion for where to place already published or created dungeons could easily be included.

I think you could start of by either establishing a concept for the area and the world (such as high fantasy, dying earth or something along those lines) or treating as a blank canvas and letting the tone or concept arise spontaneously.

How hard would it be to add stuff from Skerples's Monster Menual into the game, mid-campaign? Looking at some of this stuff, you'd think a lot of people would've tried eating some of the weird shit already, meaning it probably should've come up in the past as it is.

I mean, from what I've read of dungeon meshi, everyone thinks Laius is crazy for eating monsters, and either a kind of taboo or downright illegal

Maybe it's something only known to high-class gourmets, or even a secret society, and people so poor they have to do it in order to survive.

Gamma World is best world.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-jQp3-1kAcvzpovHUWsjdS-PDMjsM--NEMS4fs2W7nA/edit?usp=sharing
>it's the post-apocalyptic remnant of an advanced civilization. grab Gamma World, Mad Max, Thundarr the Barbarian, Yor Hunter from the Future, Fist of the North Star and He-Man and put them in a blender. Probably with a fair helping of Carcosa and Fallout. Fallout 1 and 2, not Fallout 3 and 4.

Like Gamma World isn't gonzo enough to begin with.

That is how unusual food usually starts. Look at the Orange Roughy, formerly known as the Slimehead or Deep Sea Perch. It is poor in nutrition, high in mercury, and was basically a fish you would not normally eat due to its depth and taste. But in the 1970's, when commercial fishing became viable, they were rebranded as Orange Roughy and almost fished to extinction.

Consider the potato as well. It took a posting of guards and royal endorsement to become the widespread staple it is today.

Making cooked monsters a delicacy of the royalty will make the eating of monsters popular and legitimize the desperation of the poor.

I heard the finished PDF for this went out recently, still waiting on the book to come out. Anyone ever get a copy of the complete PDF?

"LotFP" is false edition. Most like it's YOUR homebrew and you're some sort of "purple prose" shill. Forsake your false editions.

wtf are you even trying to say

Retroclones are false edition.

It's AD&D memeing

try again

AD&D is truth.

Correction: It's True AD&D memeing. Gotta get it right, man.

false editions:

• 3E
• 3.5E
• Pathfinder
• 4E
• 5E
• retroclones
• house rules

True Editions:

• OD&D
• Holmes
• B/X
• BECMI
• RC
• AD&D 1E
• AD&D 2E

...

Agreed, complete truth.

But D&D is shit, so the false editions are better games.

>D&D is shit
>So false editions are better games
>Even though the false editions contain all the D&D in them
>????

False editions aren't D&D at all, user. Only True Editions have any D&D.

>false editions
>• house rules

You are so deluded and out of touch with these supposed true editions

Oh look, another heretic whose laughable RPG worldview seats his own headcanon nonsense rules above those immutable Truths known and embraced by all for decades.

But OD&D can't be played without some house rules.

you've missed the point of my post if that's the response you came up with

You don't get it, man, you have to play by the rules as set down by TSR. All of them. Only then will you know True AD&D enlightenment. Also something about Tupac.

You're fucking too stupid to hold a dialogue with but try to understand, if your false edition mind can handle it, that adjudication of rules is not house rules.

As someone that genuinely prefers 2e over B/X, your "True AD&D" memeing is making me sick.

another false assumption

I suppose you'd prefer that HasbrotC paid shills continue to attempt to fracture the "OSR" community by promoting 5E, retroclones, and the notion that 2E and 1E are different editions "at war" with one another.

What in the holy hell are you smoking?

No, I don't much like that either.

In fact now that I think about it, the whole "True AD&D" meme is probably a part of what you just said.

Yo, you can get paid for this? Awesome.

2E doesn't even belong in /osrg/. Why would a Hasbro employee shill for retroclones?

This poster is the paid WotC shill who's been endlessly promoting 5E in these threads lately, attempting to impugn the Truth of the real editions.

A quick primer for the noobs: True AD&D guy was this crazy dude who hung out around Veeky Forums preaching the unity of all TSR publications; now he's become a meme.

This current guy's not doing the meme right; he kinda sucks at it.

I don't think anyone in Hasbro would bother with OSR at all: it's probably nice enough to imagine that we're some kind of a threat to them with our objectively better play, but the truth is that we're too niche to pay anyone to further fracture us.

Because True AD&D™ is the greatest threat to profitability that WotC has ever imagined. Ever since 3.0E. They realize that an edition with more content than 3E, 3.5E, 4E, and all that 5E will ever have combined will destroy demand for their current false edition.

Should RPG players see the light, wake up and realize the truth, they will embrace the True systems as a unified whole and obviate the need to give any further money to WotC. They must shill against True AD&D™ by any means necessary to prevent their own intellectual property from competing with themselves.

Found the Shill.

It's not an OSR quick primer without drab descriptions of 3.x play.

That would be shilling AGAINST retroclones, not FOR them.