/osrg/ Old School Renaissance General: Back to Basics Edition

Tip #1 Take an OSR module and replace most of the fantasy elements with weird sci-fi equivalents. "It's not a Dungeon, it's an ancient techno Fallout Bunker" etc

Tip #2 Steal something from Pulp sci-fi and Fantasy, alter the details to fit your purpose.

Maybe even steal stuff from popular Post-Apocalyptic Games but with new ideas that interest you. Are you using the MCC book as written? In my current game inspired in part by Hyperlight Drifter I just merged everything from DCC and MCC, everything is odd techno-fantasy.

>Race-and-class or race-as-class?
basically what says

agreed

As someone currently running an ACKS campaign and from Canada: You're fucked. Amazon worked for me. It's a PoD series.

thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-1a.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-1b.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-2a.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-2b.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-2c-one.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/09/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-3a.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/10/adventurer-conqueror-king-system-3b.html
thedicemustroll.blogspot.ca/2017/10/adventurer-conqueror-king-4a-lil.html

MCC is easy AS FUCK. It's not like DCC where you're looking for lewt, it's MCC, where you're trying to find lewt for your tribe to survive. Write a tribe into existence. Have 5-6 major player NPCs. Provide minor tribal intrigue.

I'm planning on writing a shitty ultralight ruleset. What are some layout and writing rules I should follow?

>Race-and-class or race-as-class?
Race-as-classES

ACKS did it the right way, you should play ACKS

Write the rules before you fiddle with layout. The way you ask makes me think it's too early in the project to work on presentation.

Write your document in Times New Roman in 12pt. Bold your headings. Use any common word processor.

Wish Lulu had more shit, least then I can stack some 20% off and free shipping coupons.

>Whats the best place to get the physical book in Canada, anyone know?
You're better off printing the bits of the PDFs that you want and mashing it together with other systems.

Stories!

>Well, for a generic setting and inexperienced/new-to-OSR players I'd use race-as-class.

See, I found the opposite. My players die so often than 30 races with minor bonuses/perks + 6 classes gave the game so much more variety than you might expect for a high mortality game.

But then I wrote some race-only classes like Elf Wizard and Surly Gnome anyway... so I don't really have a clear line on the topic.

Write the rules. Rewrite them again. Test it by pretending to be really dumb and unable to understand basic instructions. Layout last, dead last.

>As someone currently running an ACKS campaign and from Canada: You're fucked. Amazon worked for me. It's a PoD series.
>It's a PoD series
Wat? ACKS is a hardback, I'm almost 100% on this.

PoD and Hardcover are not mutually exclusive.

Didn't they kickstart it? are you saying they ran a Kickstarter to print the fucking game on Lulu?

I'm confused at what is confusing you so much.
They ran a kickstarter and printed off some nice books for the KS backers, yes. Now if you want to buy a copy of the book you can buy a hardcover PoD version through drivethruRPG.

>I'm confused at what is confusing you so much.
It's the terrible habit of using Kickstarter as a preorder service for limited editions, I guess. It's supposed to be for *kickstarting a product launch*, so my expectation is, if you get backers to finance you printing nice hardcovers, the whole *point* is so you can sell those same nice hardcovers yourself later, not just make exactly as many as the backers ordered and then pivot to selling a shit version on a POD site.

Get Other Dust, steal the tables and GM advice section. The adventure themes and community rules (don't remember exactly what they're called but you'll notice when you see them) are useful. Add gonzo and weirdness to taste because Other Dust is a bit straight-laced.

New idea: build a mini-dungeon based on the Seven Cardinal Virtues of the local culture. It's designed to test/inform applicants/initiates.

>I'm finding it's harder than a traditional fantasy campaign.
Why? My longest running campaign ever was in Gamma World and it seems to me that the post apocalyptic environment lets you run the same sort of isolated missions that are possible in fantasy RPGs. Maybe literal dungeons are a bit harder to do (though Expedition to the Barrier Peaks may suggest otherwise, and it's not like dungeons make an incredible amount of sense anyway), but overall, it seems to have the same broad range. You just have technology instead of magic items and mutants instead of mythical beasts.

>Race-and-class or race-as-class?
I used to like race-and-class. Now, though, I tend to prefer race-as-class. Whether there's one as in the original or more than one as in ACKS it doesn't really matter to me. But elves should feel elfy and dwarves should feel dwarfy.

Campaign idea, brought to you by very good scotch.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/10/osr-medieval-things-part-2-moderately.html

tl;dr: medieval time travel, except every time you time travel you leave a machine behind for other people to use, meddle with, and follow you. Gonzo adventures in history.

Does your writing process start with pages with nothing but "OSR: Medieval" written on them?

It's cute that you think I have a process.

I like it. It's a better way to inform players about the world than through an infodump.

>But elves should feel elfy and dwarves should feel dwarfy.

That comes down to roleplaying. If your player wants to play an elf as a ditzy valley girl, it wont matter if they're force to play their elf as a fighter -mage or not.

found this "adventure seed" and thought you guys would like it

page references and numbered tables to save flipping through the book looking for stuff.
have a proper index. Dear god.
(these want to be very late in the process of layout, until then use 'page XX' and 'table XX' as placeholders)

Pick a 'tone' and stick to it. High gygaxian prose is fine, conversational tone is fine, detatched passive voice is fine. Veering wildly between them sounds incoherant.

Make it clear early on what your 'pitch' is, and what the game's expectations are.

use transparant .tif files for pictures. .png sometimes prints weirdly, and non-transparant files will give you different tones of white that look wrong.

If you intend to have a print version, check what page sizes your printer does BEFORE going into layout. Or you will have to lay out all the pages again when the printer tells you they don't do that size paper. A4 is not always accepted. Don't assume.

Start getting art assets early. You won't use all of them, but having a food selection to work with gives you wiggle-room. Wikimedia commons is your friend. Google immage search has a tool for public-domain and creative-commons images only, use it.
Don't be a skeeze and use people's art without permission. It's just unprofessional.

You need a total of two fonts: body text and headers. Body text wants to be fairly neutral (times new roman, calibri, etc). Header text can be weird fonts. Keep the same fonts throughout and vary size, boldness and italicization.

Spellcheck thoroughly. Get your friends to spellcheck. Pay a stranger to spellcheck. The little red wiggly line is not good at its job.

Two columns is good, the eye parses it more easilly. One collumn on small page sizes. Justify your text or it will look like total mess.

Consistancy is everything. Use the same font sizes, the same format for tables, the same wording for rules meant to work the same, the same format for stat-blocks.

Spellcheck some more.

>Pick a 'tone' and stick to it. High gygaxian prose is fine, conversational tone is fine, detatched passive voice is fine. Veering wildly between them sounds incoherant.
>tfw you're such a shit writer you don't even know what that means

>conversational tone
chatty informal writing
>high gygaxian prose
writing like gygax with archaic stuff and formalisms and so on
>detatched passive voice
writing blandly and descriptively

pick a style and stick to it or you'll sound like you don't know what you're doing.

If that user means what I think he means with "ultralight", chances are that his thing is going to be a page long at best and most of what you posted is irrelevant. e.g. Microlite20 and its ilk.
Maybe two pages. I've seen some ultralights printed on both sides of the paper.

Fantastic post for longer work, though, and if "ultralight" means something like a Black Hack hack then it's all relevant.

Also, don't forget: if you're writing using the OGL or something similar, you'll need to both keep to the rules in the license and also (depending on the licence) put a copy of the license at the end of your product.

Be happy with it yourself; there will always be those who find flaws on it.
Put it here as soon as you have something, if this world needs more of a thing it is ultralight dungeon crawlers. Seriously I'm addicted to reading that shit.

I need blogs by people with a bit of edge to them.

People in the blogosphere tiptoe too much, I need someone who looks at a module and is like "this fucking sucks" and isn't afraid to say it

What is your definition of Ultralight dungeon crawler then? Is there some genre conventions I am unaware of? I was just thinking of something that's like 2-3 pages of basic class/combat rules and little else.

>2-3 pages of basic class/combat rules and little else.
Not that user, but IMHO fitting everything on a single page is the holy grail of ultralights. Every extra page is a page more than your competition needs.

Another user here. I think brevity should also be balanced with uniqueness. I could state the core rules of b/x on a notecard if I wanted, but nobody's buying that because everyone can already re-state the b/x rules on a notecard. For me I need something new, not just a one page cliff notes of obvious rules or ones that already exist. If that needs 2-3 pages then fine by me.

What kind of props or resources do you allow your players to use out of the game that applies to IC actions?The basic example is letting any PC with a writing tool and paper in their inventory to make a map and take notes. How would a player drawn bestiary or PCs journal fit in your game?

Sometimes I write out letters and draw bounties on paper so I can enthrall my players a little more and am looking for suggestions on what else I could use.

A group almanac on all the stuff they find could be neat. Just a regular notebook shared between everyone that has encyclopedic entries on stuff they find. Reward its use by repeating a percentage of the things they encounter (for example, they encounter the same kind of monster a couple times), but don't make it predictable which ones.

>I could state the core rules of b/x on a notecard if I wanted, but nobody's buying that because everyone can already re-state the b/x rules on a notecard.
I dunno about that - if you're succinct enough and have good enough production quality, I could see it working out.

Obviously it'll be hard to sell it for much, but people love the 4E "Monster Manual 3 on a business card" thing where some guy just summarized all the updated math. If you manage to fit the important rules - and the rules the players actually want! - on a notecard, that could be a product.

Note that there's more to the core B/X rules than just "an 18 means a +3, if it's Strength it adds to hit rolls and damage" - there's all the timekeeping stuff, for instance. Lots of important tables of hit rates and saving throws and experience.

But also, well, you'd need it to be more than just a notecard. Probably at least a five-pack, so you can buy one for every player in the group. Maybe packaged with cards describing classes, individual spells, and monsters - all the stuff that's hard to reference, but important to reference nonetheless. Especially without getting a second copy of the book to hand to each caster.

Like, seriously, imagine selling a deck of "wandering monster" cards: the backside is the dungeon level, the cards are in the right proportion to match (twenty cards per level for B/X), the front side of the card has all the info you need to run the monster neatly formatted.
Maybe you could even have it work with markers, so people can keep notes on hit points, or you could just sell small cardboard chits with it, or something. Whatever's profitable.

just personal opinions on this; there are no conventions on what you should do, of course. This said:

- assume that your readers know what is an rpg, a save roll, a damage roll, hit points, etc. Don't waste time explaining this to nobody.

- Go straigth to the thing you really want to do. If what you wanted was having a game with lots of player races, don't be afraid of giving this half the wordcount if you want.

-skip what you usually improvise, or don't feel like writing. If you don't want to make a bestiary, its ok. People loves adding their own things to games. They'll do it.

- Do some examples and let others fill the rest. Is preferably to make three good monsters than 20 one liners which are no more than stat blocks and a vague skill.

- IDK, surprise me. If I see something original in your game I'll keep it, even if I never run it.

- There is nothing as useless and space consuming as an XP / lvl up matrix. But if your game is about really balancing classes, just put them there. Do what you feel that you want to run/play. Nobody's the OSR king to decide what's good or not. But if it works for you, it will probably work for other people.

yeah, 3 pages is ultralight to me. Its more about density of usefulness, not really about size. You can squish D&D in 10 pages if you make the font size small enough

Alright you got me, literally you probably could sell it. But I just mean that on principle I'm more interested in something new if I buy a new game.

Like, don't make the Ultralight-Fantasy-Heartbreaker just so it fits on one page. The fact that it uses tropes or conventions that will work themselves out (and thus reduce your page count) in my opinion should be subordinate to making an actually original new game worth playing for its own original sake, even if that means needing another page or two to explain new concepts.

>There is nothing as useless and space consuming as an XP / lvl up matrix.
To echo this: you can get away with mathematical formula. Fighter is 2000XP, double per level, Cleric 1500, Magic-User 2500, at level 9 stop doubling and just add the level 9 experience.

...You'll need to write that out in a better way, of course, but it's possible. See also how Microlite20 IIRC condensed 3E to "a monster gives XP equal to its level, once you get XP equal to your level*10 you level up".

Oh yeah, if you're making an ultralight it's probably less because it's a heartbreaker and more because it's not a strong enough concept to support an entire book. Big Mutherfuckin' Crab Truckers, for instance, is a fun one-shot one-page one-joke game, but if you tried to stretch it out into, say, ten pages? Yeah, it would probably lose its flair.

But on the other hand, the ultralight format works great for systems the players already know: the original Microlite20, for instance, just says "if you want spells, look 'em up in the SRD" - but it's popular nevertheless since, well, one page is a hell of a lot easier to handle than the hundreds of pages in the Player's Handbook!

The more that you can assume that the players already know, the more you can get away with not writing.

But ultralights are also a bit of a challenge in writing something short and complete. I suppose the step above that is the 200 Word RPG Challenge? Maybe I'll try to see if I can fit a B/X clone in 200 words next year, I dunno.

Ten-foot pole is literally a blog devoted to reviewing modules and saying "this fucking sucks". Been around for years. Beneath the snark is a solid set of review criteria, too.

People who play that kind of character are an issue, yes. But game mechanics should work to enforce and reinforce the themes and tone of the game. In this case, that elves and dwarves are rare and inhuman.

Game mechanics should systematize stuff that A) happens often and B) cannot be solved by talking. E.g. combat.

If A) doesn't apply, no mechanics are needed since the GM can make a ruling. If B) doesn't apply, no mechanics are needed since you can roleplay instead.

If mechanics try to cover things outside of this narrow scope (e.g. "enforce and reinforce the themes and tone of the game"), the game becomes needlessly complicated and static.

This applies to OSR games, other games follow different design philosophies.

The thing is, in order to have an OSR game, you have to either have classes or make a decision to not have classes. And if you have classes, you have to decide which ones. Already, the idea of classes represents the game mechanics --- MUs aren't as good at fighting as fighters are, fighters can't cast magic. Sure, you can have a classless game where if you want to play a "wizard" you just fight with a staff if you fight at all and try to buy scrolls and all that, and where being an "elf" is just something you bring up every now and again. But most people here play games with classes. Since there are classes, it's necessary to decide which ones.

With regards to this, you get a distinction between "elves are just humans with funny hats" and "elves are distinct from humans" in the mechanics. You can roleplay your character however you want. You can roleplay your human just like you roleplay an elf. So what's the point in having elves at all if you can just roleplay a character like an elf and that's the only distinction between them? There's none. Even if you have minor elvish senses, there's little besides our preconceived notions from playing D&D, reading/watching Tolkien and other books, etc. to make being elvish mechanically distinct from being human.

Classes by their very nature enforce and reinforce the themes and tone of the game, as do many other rules. For example, if you want to set the tone of the game as a heroic high fantasy, where you have heroes chosen by the Light of God to do battle against the evil darkness, it's not going to fit the themes and tone of the game to have a character dying every other session in some dungeon because the characters are broke. Likewise, as in most OSR, it doesn't fit the gritty tone of most of the OSR that I've seen people play here to have characters go to -10 HP before dying and get XP only from story rewards and maybe combat.

Rules by their nature either reinforce or reject the themes and tone of the game.

Last night one of my players touched a cursed chest and randomly got turned into a vampire. I made a ruling about vampires ("You take, eh, 1d6 damage from sunlight, and you can drink blood to regain HP!") and went on with the game. The game didn't need mechanics for vampires. The game would have been worse if there had been mechanics for vampires, since it would have meant a more complex rule-set for little benefit (since I was perfectly capable of making up the Vampire myself). The same goes for elfs. The game doesn't have to tell me that elfs live in the forest, have strong magic and can talk to birds. I already know that stuff.

>So what's the point in having elves at all if you can just roleplay a character like an elf and that's the only distinction between them? There's none.

This is not true in my experience. The fiction matters. If you tell someone they're an elf, they'll play differently then if they play a human, even if the character sheets are the same.

I think the RPG hobby over relies on "solve things with mechanics". You can make a game were elfs and humans are different without having mechanics for how elfs and humans are different.

But maybe we are just talking about different things? I define mechanics as "what is written in the rule book". Scenario: If the GM rules that the dryad tries to charm the elf in the party since elves are more attractive, would you say that this is a mechanic? (I would not)

>Even if you have minor elvish senses, there's little besides our preconceived notions from playing D&D, reading/watching Tolkien and other books, etc. to make being elvish mechanically distinct from being human.

At some point you have to rely on presentation. The mechanics for being an elf (besides "elf senses", however they translate) are only inimitable by humans in a system with no multiclassing. Dwarves, meanwhile, are just human fighters with infrared vision, better saving throws, and slower level progression.

>I define mechanics as "what is written in the rule book"
For what it's worth, I use "mechanics" to mean anything that is handled systematically whether it's a written rule or a ruling I make on the spot.

I don't honestly care whether the rules are in the books or not. I barely touch the rules in the books unless I'm looking something up (usually monster stats) between games. I think I've only read them once or twice at all anyway. But in play? Whether the rules are written down in a book or just as a note in my campaign notes and on the player's character sheet, there are rules.

(cont)

(cont)

>Scenario: If the GM rules that the dryad tries to charm the elf in the party since elves are more attractive, would you say that this is a mechanic? (I would not)
No, I wouldn't. However, I'd need the mechanics of the game to back up the part where
>elves are more attractive
because it's fiction breaking if the elves have CHA 5 and 7 and the two humans and the dwarf have CHA 11, 13, and 15 respectively. I wouldn't be able to justify the dryad trying to charm one of the elves for being attractive when they clearly aren't.

So based on that, there has to be some mechanical relation between "elves" and "being attractive" if I want the fiction (that elves are attractive) to be in any way meaningful when you have 3d6-in-order stats.

AD&D paladins are another example. The ability score requirements to become a paladin are extremely difficult to attain. At the same time, they are legitimately more powerful than an ordinary fighter. They also have their restrictions. Thus, you rarely see paladins in games, but when you do, they're significant and notable.

Likewise you made up mechanics for your vampire so that it would mechanically be a vampire. You could instead have had your vampire be a vampire in name only. But if you did that, there wouldn't be any curse or reason why the vampire PC was distinct from any other PC, other than roleplay. It's the same with elves. You can play a game where the race doesn't matter at all mechanically. But if you do, you'll find that race doesn't really matter at all.

The thing is, both mechanics and fiction influence the themes and tone.

>The game doesn't have to tell me that elfs live in the forest, have strong magic and can talk to birds. I already know that stuff.
Elves living in the forest, sure. That's fluff. Elves having strong magic and being able to talk to birds in the fiction only makes sense if they actually have strong magic and can talk to birds.

But what does "handled systematically" mean? Since it's pretty well established that CHA ≠ "attractiveness", at least not in my games (i use CHA to determine the number of hirelings a player can have and their base save rate). If it is possible to have a CHA of 5 in my game and still be pretty, would you agree that attractiveness is "handled systematically" if I rule that elfs are in general prettier then humans?

But this breaks down the definition: everything I do as a GM becomes "handle things systematically" (as long as I'm consistent, and I always try to be).

>You can play a game where the race doesn't matter at all mechanically. But if you do, you'll find that race doesn't really matter at all.

I think with should ban the term "mechanically" and see where the discussion takes us. It is possible to play a game where elfs and humans use the exact same character sheet, and where there are no written rules about elfs and humans, and still have huge differences between elf and human characters.

There's more to being an elf or a dwarf than that, though. That's just the surface reading.

If you're an elf, you:
>are good at combat
>can cast spells
>have "elf senses"
>are better at being an elf if you have high INT/DEX*/CHA* (whichever it is in your game)
>comparatively you are worse if any of those are low
>therefore, assuming a character is an elf, they are more likely to have a higher INT/DEX/CHA than a character who isn't an elf
>and depending on system may require a 9 INT to even be an elf
>are therefore rarer than other classes
>they CANNOT effectively train towards a clerical or criminal path, or at least not in the same way humans can (if you're using, say, ACKS's system)
>slower progression
>less tough than fighters on average, but tougher than MUs on average

Likewise dwarves are:
>as good at combat as fighters
>tougher than fighters and everyone else
>more easily able to resist Bad Things than other characters
>infrared vision
>are better at being a dwarf if they have better STR/CON*
>and worse at being a dwarf if either of those is poor
>thus are more likely to have a better STR/CON than a character who isn't a dwarf
>or depending on version, require at least a 9 CON
>not to mention they are therefore rarer
>CANNOT be a priest or a criminal like humans can
>are INCAPABLE of casting magic

And that's just with the, what, three paragraphs of content in the book? Plus a couple of tables?

*I use a slightly different system of prime requisites than the book does. Actually I use a different system for a lot of things, but on the whole it's similar.

>ban the term "mechanically"
Sure.

CHA != attractiveness, but that doesn't mean they are entirely unrelated. Have you ever laughed at a joke made by an attractive person that wouldn't be funny if someone unattractive said it? Or have you noticed other people doing that? I'm fairly certain they've done research on attractiveness and, well, pretty much everything to do with what D&D calls "Charisma", and found that being attractive helps even if you don't have a commanding presence or force of personality. Reactions, for example --- people act nicer to people they think are attractive (unless they're jealous?).

That said, that's entirely a side note. If you don't have CHA have anything to do with attractiveness... Sure. But at the same time, since you've ruled that elves are prettier than humans, that's what I'm talking about when attractiveness is "handled systematically". It may not be written down, but if elves are more attractive than humans and that has an effect on the game, that's a rule, not just roleplaying. Specifically, it's a system for determining who is most attractive in the party.

Systematization is the opposite of arbitrariness. OSR is common law.

(cont)

What spells can a Rope Wizard cast?

Lets say I play a game of LotFP, and that I ban the demihuman classes. My two players roll two fighters: Alice and Bob. But right before the game starts, Bobs player decides that he really want to play an elf, and I cave in a moment of weakness. To save time, he keeps the same character sheet. Here''s some situations that could happen:

* The PC get stuck in a time paradox for 200 years. Alice dies of old age but Bob is basically unaffected (but very bored), since elves don't age.

* The PCs encounter a party of rival elf adventures on a wandering monster check. Bob manage to convince them of the evils of kin-slaying, and they leave the PC party alone.

* The elf party from earlier kill some goblins. The surviving goblins start hunting elves in revenge. They put up an ambush that targets Bob and ignores Alice.

* Some cultist tries to kidnap Bob for use as a sacrefice, since elves are clearly magical.

* Some villagers refuses to sell a cow to the party, since they are fearful of the fey.

* As previously mentioned: A dryad tries to charm Bob since elves are prettier.

Are all of these examples "mechanics"? Because if so then everything I do as a GM is "mechanics". My game is improved by the rules not explicitly saying: "Elves are pretty. Elves live long. Elves look like other elves. Elves are a bit magical in an undefined, doesn't-affect-stats way. Superstitious villagers are afraid of elves." etc. I can handle all this information in the fiction. I don't need mechanics for them (e.g. "You must have >13 CHA to play an elf. Elves live 10d100 years. Elves has +1 save against magical staffs. Reaction rolls for superstitious villagers are at -2 if there are elves in the party")

(cont)

>It is possible to play a game where elfs and humans use the exact same character sheet, and where there are no written rules about elfs and humans, and still have huge differences between elf and human characters.
See, the point I am making is that it doesn't matter whether the rules are written down or not so long as they're rules. Because what you're saying here has two interpretations: either
>you can play a game where elves and humans use the same character sheet and there are no distinctions beyond roleplay between them
or
>you can play a game where elves and humans use the same character sheet and there are no rules *in the books* that distinguish them
Now, myself personally, as I've said, I only read the books when I get in arguments on here or during character creation because I don't know saving throws off-hand yet.

Here's an example of what I mean when I talk about rules that distinguish them:

Let's say you've determined that elves have some sort of proficiency with magic in the fiction. Okay, sure. What does that mean? If when it comes down to it an elf is no better at magic than a dwarf with the same stats and class choice, then it's pretty clear: elves aren't better at magic than dwarves. And thus, it will fall by the wayside just like the 200 page setting document that some people make and their players never read.

Then you arbitrarily define "role-playing" as "things that doesn't affect the game". Why do you have a part of the game that doesn't affect the game? My games have no division between "the game" and roleplaying", or between "mechanics" and "fiction". They both affect each other.

>just like a fighter
>just like a magic user
Maybe you're someone else, and I consider it an absurdly arbitrary distinction, but I thought this was just a "funny hat"?
>just like everyone
>just like everyone
>metagaming
>metagaming
Granted
Why not?
We covered that already.
Not very evocative, now, is it?

And repeat for the dwarves list.

This isn't 4e, you don't have to worry about fluff getting in the way of your number contests.

It is possible to play a game were elves are very rare, while simulataniusly forcing every player to paly as an elf.

It is possible to play a game were elves are better at magoc, while simultaneously making elf PCs worse then human Pcs at magic.

IMO: you seem to think that "setting" and "fiction" is fluff that doesn't affect the "real game". This is not true in my games.

Most of them, sure, they don't need to be part of the rules. But let's say your characters fight a ghost. Or ten. Ghosts deal damage by causing their targets to age. In order to adjudicate this properly, Bob is pretty much unaffected by the first ghost and Alice is now old and grey. What about the tenth or twentieth? Or if they fall into a time paradox for 800 years? Regardless of whether it's written in the books, you need to have a handle on roughly how longs elves live in order to adjudicate that. What you don't need is a "10d100 years" thing.

Rules don't have to just be numbers.

Anyone got a scan/pic of the sample Character Sheet insert of Mentzer's Basic Set? The one for the CYOA fighter? It's not in any scan/PDF I've found.

Roleplaying certainly affects the game. But it doesn't affect the game in a systematic way. That's the difference.

And yes, mechanics and fiction affect each other. That's the point I've been trying to make since the beginning.

Considering this is pretty poorly laid out, I'm going to have to guess at what each of these is referring to. But if I'm guessing correctly...

>funny hat
A "funny hat" to me is like playing a black person in a game. Who cares? The rules don't.

People are better at things if they have better stats, but I was referring to XP bonuses here.

I don't know what you're referring to by "metagaming" because I rarely find that to be a useful term. It sounds from the position like you might be referring to where I'm doing statistical analysis? Sure, that's metagaming, and sure, someone can play an ugly, slow and stupid elf. They'll just be really bad at it.

>Why not?
This is a consequence of the rules, just like how if the rules allowed for elf clerics then elves being able to be clerics would be a consequence of the rules.

>you seem to think that "setting" and "fiction" is fluff that doesn't affect the "real game"
No, actually. I definitely think that setting and fiction affects the game. What I also think is that rules affect the game and the setting and fiction, which I think is where the issue lies.

Find out in Marvels & Malisons, the companion piece to Wonder & Wickedness.

Minidungeon of 7 Orcish Virtues.

1. Unrelenting Violence
There's a flesh golem in the room. It starts off passive with 1HP. Every round past the first it gains 1HD (1d8 HP), all Saves and attacks improve, etc. Eventually it starts spewing acid and fire. If you kill it, you can pull the red key from its heart and open the next room.

2. Clarity of Purpose
The red key opens a door to a hexagonal room. The 5 other hallways leading out are lined with gold, silver, iron, bronze, and stone. The answer is obvious; go straight ahead (iron) and don't muck about. The other hallways are electrified or something equally awful, I don't know.

3. Contempt of the Gods. The next room is full of statues. Like, crammed full. No room to move unless you climb over them. It's full of gods and saints. If you make eye contact, they'll attack.

4. Family.
Three alcoves with a sack of gold, a sack of grain, and a huge enchanted axe. The gold and the axe will animate to attack you, but they can be tricked to attack each other. The grain is safe and contains the blue key to the next room.

5. Honorable Combat between Orcs
There's a war golem spawning pool (like the liquid metal terminators but magic) in the next room. It has twice the weapons, spells, tools, and AC you have. The trick is to strip naked and fight it by tearing its head off. Reward: liquid metal skin.

6. Clarity of Thought
A 10'x10'x 10'x room. There's a door with a riddle written on it in every language.
Reading the riddle aloud or saying anything in the room makes the walls move in 1'. Smash the door to escape. It's only made of wood and iron.

7. Bloodshed.
Your reward. Pipes spray out sickly, pale creatures that rapidly grow to full murderous size. Slaughter one for every year of your life to exit the dungeon, exalted as an orc initiate, a worthy member of the elite of your tribe.

Or... just some schmucks who stumbled across an old door in a mountainside and decided to check it out.

>Reading the riddle aloud or saying anything in the room makes the walls move in 1'. Smash the door to escape. It's only made of wood and iron.
Oh man I'm stealing this for sure

I'm not any of the anons discussing the topic here, but personally I find that a great example of rules dictating the fiction is Paladin stat requirements.

The way it's all set up, you have a vanishingly small chance to actually roll up a paladin - the joke has always been that "if you have a paladin character, you cheated". While this is mostly just an annoyance in a smaller group, in a larger Greyhawk-esque game where you've got maybe twenty+ PCs running around this means that very few of them will actually be paladins.

So because of those rules, paladins are rare in both fiction and actual play experience.

Now, when you remove those restrictions all that's actually making paladins rare is some reluctance among players to not just make twenty paladin PCs in a row or whatever. If they do that, then regardless of what the fiction says paladins are clearly all over the place.

The stat reqs also enforce yet another aspect of the fiction: if you meet an AD&D Paladin, he's going to be one charismatic fucker. He'll be one of the better knights you've met merely by virtue of having at least STR 12/INT 9/WIS 13/CON 9/CHA 17.
Paladins will all have an encumbrance bonus, know a second language, have enough Wisdom for a bonus spell, will be at least average in health, and be on the upper rungs of the Charisma table where shit starts scaling hard. (10 henchmen, +30% Loyalty (in addition to that from being LG), +30% Reactions - it's all crazy good.)

It's pretty boring, sadly.

I don't think that's it - I'm talking about the detachable insert with the class/alignment, etc. filled in for the CYOA.

Hmmm. Good point. That's the one I have in my PDF, anyhow, and it's both in the detachable insert and also has the right ability scores pre-written (but not the adjustments, since you're supposed to write those yourself) - however,
>Your fighter is one of the "good guys," so your Alignment is Lawful. This has already been filled in on your sheet, and shouldn't change.
>The Class of your character is the type of adventurer you are playing. Fighter has already been filled in, because once a class is chosen, it will never change.
>Since your fighter is wearing sturdy armor, your Armor Class is 4; write that number in the shield shape.

Also, looking at it again the ability scores are off - the ones in the book are
17/9/8/11/16/14
while the ones on the sheet are
16/7/9/13/14/8

So I dunno, maybe that's just some guy's half-made character that happened to get scanned? But there's a blank Character Record Sheet at the end of the booklet, so what the hell.

Thanks!

Side note, anyone know what happened to the MSpaint user(s)? I miss them.

He's still publishing and still around, I think. He just doesn't say anything about being that guy.

He was apparently the guy who did the 100 different classes several threads back and also the guy who was doing the fighter/thief/sage thing recently.

Well that's just great news.

What would say to the idea of ditching the thief and making a skill system that every class gets to partake in?

Has anyone tried a West Marches game? Which system would work best?
I need to use combat mats and minis for it to work probably.

As a big fan of the LBBs, what Thief?

Also, and this is just my opinion, but you might be better off just scrapping the skill system altogether. All you're doing by making one is saying that "no, you can't do X, you didn't take that skill".

Meanwhile, doing a roll-under-attribute system gets you weird shit like the 18 Strength Fighter being unable to lift the barred doors while the 3 Strength Magic-User got lucky and opened the way.
This even goes for shit like Open Locks, by the way. If the Master Thief fails to pick a lock and is forever unable to pick it again until he levels up again and then his shitty first-level apprentice goes and successfully picks it, well, that's a thing.

It's also typically all binary - you succeed or you fail, and the only difference between being stupid and a genius is how often you succeed - the degree of success is the same, so there is no task that the great mind can do that the dotard is incapable of.
You can adopt one of the many nonbinary resolution systems out there, of course, but at that point you might want to just steal it entirely.
Also, you run right back into the issue of "oh hey, not all classes get to partake in this".

A map and sense of place are important, I wouldn't say minis and mats are.

I'm running one on my campus with 3 parties all doing stuff on the classic survival map and Blackmoor merged together with Blackmoor being the North. We've got myself 2 other GMs and about 16 players at a given time. we're about 3 months in and have been fairly fluid with participation.

Nice, thanks. My friends can't have a regular schedule so we've never gotten more than a session in. This way I hope to play like once or twice a month.

Play with irregular groups, I recommend having a place to post updates to the world, events, timelines, and discussions to keep everything consistent.

Try a subreddit

I'll either do a sub, a board on infinitechan, or a Wikia probably.

I would say it's a bad idea. Having 1-3 thieves in the party is interesting. Having a fighter with lockpicking and a wizard with wall climbing is not.

>Having 1-3 thieves in the party is interesting. Having a fighter with lockpicking and a wizard with wall climbing is not.
Can you elaborate on that? Because at face value I'm not sure that I agree.

There are 3 primary archetypes for fantasy roleplaying.

You have the fighting man, the magician, and the thief/Rogue. Each solves a unique kind of problem and has unique skills. You can make more classes by combining them, like Fighter+Mage to make a Cleric, but removing any of them makes the game feel stilted. Letting everyone learn skills removes the entire pillar from the game's primary challenges (combat, bypassing hazards, mystery).

All games harken back to this class triangle. You can build from it, but you can't reduce it. It's the purest form of character building.

That's not really an elaboration on the previous statement. You argue that the F/M/T trifecta is better design, but that doesn't necessarily mean that having 1-3 thieves in the party is more interesting than magic users and fighters with skills.

Also
>All games harken back to this class triangle
This is blatantly false so I'm feeling that you're pulling a fast one on me. Thinking of, I feel like I've seen this exact post with the same image several times in these threads. Is this like a variation of the True AD&D thing?

A R C H E T Y P E S

Not, but 2 points

First, he's not arguing that
>having 1-3 thieves in the party is more interesting than magic users and fighters with skills.
Notice how he never uses the word "more". It's just "interesting".

2nd, three of any class in a typical party is interesting, because it forces each player to find a niche, and limits one of the three problem-solving strategies while highly emphasizing the other.

Fighters solve the combat problem. Wizards solve the orthogonal, "wtf is that and what do we do?" problem. And thieves avoid problems entirely via stealth and planning (and solve some problem with locks and traps).

So with 3 thieves, the focus is /really/ on the stealth/planning aspect, and not at all on the fighting/weird aspect. It's like a challenge run in a video game where you can't use a certain type of weapon or a certain move; difficult, but also interesting .

Everyone stand back, the best class system coming through. The very essential archetypes and the purest form of character.

>all mean and women are created equal.
Sounds about right, but it's a little blunt.

>Notice how he never uses the word "more". It's just "interesting".
I guess I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. Saying that a fighter with lockpicking inherently isn't interesting is an ever more kooky stance to me.

>2nd, three of any class in a typical party is interesting, because it forces each player to find a niche, and limits one of the three problem-solving strategies while highly emphasizing the other.
Or it bottlenecks the players and makes them feel less important for the team overall. It depends heavily on the skills of the players to make it interesting.

>Wizards solve the orthogonal, "wtf is that and what do we do?" problem.
Not really, wizards just solve problems in general. Their spells are perfect solutions to specific problems reaching into essentially every area of play.

>And thieves avoid problems entirely via stealth and planning (and solve some problem with locks and traps).
I'd say that they *solve* problems via stealth and planning, but that's semantics. More importantly, their thing is that they have more problem-solving tools, but they're also unreliable. In many ways they're just a risky wizard or skilled-but-weak fighter. Planning also isn't exclusive to that class, especially since there's no "planning" skill.

>three of any class in a typical party is interesting
For fighter (and dwarf), I wouldn't call it interesting but it's useful. More frontliners is always good.

For magical classes like MU, elf, and cleric, it's useful and interesting. Choice of spells by nature creates distinction between different casters even of the same class.

For thief? Not so much. Unless I'm missing something, all thieves are mechanically the same and you really don't need more than one most of the time. I can't think of any party that's less interesting in D&D than having more than one thief.

>Planning also isn't exclusive to that class, especially since there's no "planning" skill.
Absolutely, but Thieves tend to encourage planning for a few reasons:
-avoiding/overcoming problems rather than facing them directly
-few class tools for solving problems with violence and/or magic
-a mindset that rewards inventory management
-a certain level of weakness in combat
-information gathering (via listening and scouting)

All of that combines to make Thieves the ones who tend to have a plan. Plans aren't exclusive to thieves, but they have all the tools and incentives to put one together, mostly because they don't have any other options.

>Or it bottlenecks the players and makes them feel less important for the team overall. It depends heavily on the skills of the players to make it interesting.
Go home, armchair GM. Your theorizing isn't that useful.

>For thief? Not so much. Unless I'm missing something, all thieves are mechanically the same and you really don't need more than one most of the time. I can't think of any party that's less interesting in D&D than having more than one thief.
Stat variance is a thing.

Also, have you never run an urban heist/thieves guild game? You're missing out. Class mechanics are some of the least interesting things about a character.

It's not like the fighter and magic-user have a bunch of possibilities to solve problems through their class benefits either, so I think planning is absolutely just as encouraged by each class since it benefits everyone. A fighter is not supposed to run in and start attacking something if there's a way around it. A magic-user is not supposed to use up their spell slots on problems that could be solved differently. Clearly they also need to keep things like inventory management in mind too. Especially the fighter. These are not at all thief-exclusive things, it's the essential idea of what the game is.

>Go home, armchair GM. Your theorizing isn't that useful.
What did he mean by this?

>It's not like the fighter and magic-user have a bunch of possibilities to solve problems through their class benefits either

>magic-user
>not a bunch of possibilities to solve problems through their class benefits
What did he mean by this?