/osr/ - Old School Renaissance

Much appreciated, but you're missing Carnival of the Damned as far as I can tell.

Hi /osrg/

I've been bored working on an OSR system that I intend to be very light. I want to make something that will appeal to my Pathfinder group (or give me reason to dismiss their taste in RPGs forever), so I've decided to include feats. No skills, just feats. I like 5e for what it is, but I hated how they sidelined feats when they already had backgrounds and skills and class features. I also hate the 5e class features with a burning passion. I want to make a barebones system that will satisfy their itch for customization (while making what feats they pick have very little effect on their power level) and bound in damage so I dont' end up with 5e-tier insanity where by level 5 a monster needs 100+ hit points to even survive the first couple rounds.

So, take a look at what I've got so far, it's basically nothing. Silver standard, magic users HAVE to find scrolls to learn new spells. Don't know if I am going to do gold-based XP yet or not. I like my games to have a narrative to them beyond treasure hunting, and I also like low-treasure games. I want the tension that an OSR fight has, but I'm not sure if death at 0 hp is the best way to accomplish that. I was thinking a table to roll on to see if you die, or a con check. I've also included permanent injuries and probably a crit hit table. I'm also curious to see what you think of my critical hits rule: I know that crits are generally anathema to OSR anyway, but I figured I'd give them a shot.

Any feedback you have would be nice. I don't expect to make anything wildly original, just a system that will feel comfy for me to run games in. It needs to be simple and easy for my group, even AD&D 1e pissed them off. Yet pathfinder is okay for some reason...

Kinda reminds me a lot of the homebrew I've been doing lately. It's a bit more complex but some pertinent things might be the idea of folding death/dismemberment mechanics into each other and whatnot.

How do you capture the feeling of a classic dungeon and old-style worldbuilding?

By glossing over the bits of the world that aren't dungeon.

Most people here like crits and death/dismemberment tables actually. I think what you have is cool, but I'd take a long look at how races are handled. Humans get practically no racial power, halflings get a really niche one that may even turn out to be counter-productive (it's actually weaker than 5e advantage), and half-elves get the weakest elf power. Elves meanwhile get 3 strong powers, and dwarves get 2 decent ones.

How do you want your saving throw system to work? When you say poison and disease, do you mean poison and disease in the literal sense or a saving throw category called Poison and Disease? Is it a modern DC save system or a saving throw matrix?

Also, if you were running 1e RAW, it's understandable if it pissed them off. Should've gone with B/X or BFRPG

ME! Happy Halloween I;m shitfaced.

melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com/2017/07/4d10-2d8-natural-landmarks-for-each.html

>>This game contains XXX classes
Zak S, please desist
>>You may notice there aren’t a huge number of
spells in this game.
We could give more feedback to your wizard if we know what his possible spells are. But seriously, I like the idea of exploding damage dice I would add that thieves automatically do exploding damage dice on sneak attacks which would work with them using d4 weapons (daggers). I think the fusing of Movement scores to 5' squares is a eloquent fusion of new school and old school movements. I like the dying table but I'm curious how someone rolling a 7-8 would interact with a med kit. I can see the pathfinder influences, but in a good way.

By only focusing on things that are relevant to a player. Like if I make notes about a town, I won;t write about anything that a player couldn't interact with like the number of plumbers or such.

>Who's your favorite OSR artist?
you posted him, Peter Mullen's art is amazing, would love for Goodman Games to publish a nice coffee table book of his art

Doug Kovacs.

>Who's your favorite OSR artist?
>Not OSRtist or OSartist

Missed opportunity, OP.

His PS stuff was top notch.

Considering what the old D&D systems were like, has anyone tried dropping ability scores altogether?

I feel like they don't really add much in the end besides some wank and could, at best, be abandoned entirely

So...I was reading a bunch of goblin posts on dwarves and then read the post on designing races. Do you guys have any interesting ideas on how to represent a lack of creativity beyond roleplaying? So far I was thinking of a penalty to surprise or learning new skills, but those don't quite fit.

It's called Searchers of the Unknown and all it's variants.

The guy from talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque
did a hack of that; but he deleted it. I liked it so much that I kept it on a PDF.

pic related.

...

Not bad, I'm probably going to tweak to taste but that's a fairly nice guideline for a Microlite D&D

BEST SHITTY MICROGAME COMING THROUGH

I'm thinking about using a pathcrawling system in my game
(detectmagic.blogspot.com/2014/04/pathcrawl.html?m=0) but I'm having trouble implementing it. I'm wondering how many roads to put in when the country's geography is basically Great Britain's but the size of India. Not to mention the addition to train railway systems and how they fit into all this.

>I feel like they don't really add much in the end besides some wank and could, at best, be abandoned entirely
Your belief is wrong. They are in the games because of mechanics and fluff reasons. They can't be abandoned unless you want to change the game in a pretty significant manner.

>1974 Style Rules
>does away with like half of what 1974 games were about
What's the point? Marketing?

They're not even 1974 style. It's just standard, modern D20 bullcrap.

>Considering what the old D&D systems were like, has anyone tried dropping ability scores altogether?
I haven't tried it but it's definitely a better idea than making more shit reliant on them.

Combining ability scores and saves seems like a pretty obvious improvement to me. But then you have to drop the "3d6 in order" which is sad as it carries lot of cultural baggage.

So much cultural baggage that Gygax literally only used it for minor NPCs and suggests a player character should ideally have two 15s in the 1e books...

Who cares what Gygax thinks? Actually having to roleplay a flawed person shouldn't be considered an NPC only thing.

When I was laying down earlier an idea came to me, I got this far and I'm not sure where to take it.

Maybe it can talk to snakes, or cut off a finger and it becomes a snake. Someone suggested maybe they can convince normal snakes to be one of tier fingers.

3d6 in order's average roll is literally 3.5's commoner array

3.5 has different design goals regarding abilities. They're far more mechanically important, so 4d6/elite array makes more sense as shit stats messes with the game far more than they would in a OSR game, and given PCs are supposed to be relatively hard to kill in WotC editions, for far longer

3d6 makes for literally "average" people, 4d6 makes for exceptional outliers aka PCs

>no improvement after level 5
Wat de fug

It's a draft, I'm specifically asking for suggestions on what to do with it. Do you have any ideas?

Gygas used 3d6 in OD&D, it's only in 1E he used 4d6.
An important difference since ability scores are not very important in OD&D but is given greater importance in 1E.

>at level 5 the ensnakened hand fuses into one big snake; the bite is now venomous rather than doing regular damage
>character obtains ability to speak with serpents at some point
>snake hand (or maybe whole arm?) becomes detachable; can be launched to do battle independently, spy or whatever else you want
>hair begins to turn into snakes like Medusa
>snake arm can coil and extend; may strike from second rank or otherwise at spear distance

Is he /ourguy/ ?

Is there a cool OSR game that is not a retroclone? A steampunk game perhaps?

Anyone have any experience with OD&D?

I've been thinking of a henchman class for Kobolds, where they are instead of being shamans, they act like mages who consume other beings and get some sort of power up from it. When they consume a creature, they have chances to getting improved perks with it.

So at level one, they will have one slot open up, level 2, they will have two spots, so forth and so forth.

I'm going to give them 1d6 dice everytime they level up.

An example of some of the benefits they get by consuming monsters.

Dogs: stage 1, get a 1d4 bite attack. Stage 2, Pack mentality, +1 to hit on the side. Stage 3, Fur that acts as if you are 20 degrees hotter in cold weather.

Giant Toad: Stage 1: Stronger Leg muscle, able to hop in 60' and attack during any one of those moments. Stage 2: Water breathing, Your neck enflates to hold air to act like a pseduo water breathing. Stage 3: Able to Croak, get a spell like a bard.

Dragons: Stage 1: Fire breathing, able to cast fire breath once a day. Stage 2: Improve spell resistence. Stage 3: Depends on dragon type, get basic resistence.

It makes Kobolds unqiue in the magic usuers department and uses there cannablisim.

Any thoughts?

You'd need to make a power progression from anything the players could try eating. You're making a class which revolves around eating things, so that's probably everything. Personally, I'd restrict the funky mechanically complex effects to rare or magical creatures and make a blanket mechanic for anything that's not exotic enough to fit the bill, like Skerples did for his monster manu-all and "normal meat". Or otherwise, just improv something for normal animals

*menu-all

By the way what happened to Skerples?

Yes. What do you want to know?

>I didn't read the last thread at all
Read the previous thread.

I'll admit I haven't browsed these threads as much the last few days

What is a good spell list that feels both comprehensive (that is: that most possible effects can be worked up somehow) but also short? I'd like to pack it beside this:

In response to : Bob Pepper. Didn't illustrate any OSR game, only some 70s fantasy novels and boardgames, but has got the vibe.

>56162490
>Around here I see B/X as being the preferred version of basic, but elsewhere, I see BECMI. Which do you use and why?
B/X has less clutter and a far superior layout. It's also divided into 2 books rather than 9 (though granted, there are only 3 books in the BECMI sets that cover same levels as B/X). I do like BECMI's standardization of cleric spell progression, but that's something you can easily swipe. BECMI's thief skill percentages are lower than B/X's, which are bad enough as it is ( shows that a 2nd level thief in B/X has a 1 in 2 chance to die each time he encounters a hidden save-or-die trap). Also, I think BECMI adds a fair bit of material that isn't strictly necessary in order to pad out its additional sets. If I were going to go with BECMI rules, I'd prefer to use the Rules Cyclopedia, as it's a single volume that's actually referenceable, but the problem with the extra material remains. If I'm going to play Basic, I'd rather it be basic, and not a third of the way to AD&D.

I've found this is a non-issue in practice. Complex things like lairs or dungeons or stone archways in the middle of a field with some kind of mysterious backstory are recognizable enough to be landmarks, and simple features with no backstory like a pile of rocks or a big tree are also recognizable enough to be landmarks. Anything that's a landmark is something players will return to in order not to get lost, regardless of its complexity. Making them more complex is fine if you want but there's no real reason to assume they need to be complex in order to attract return visits just because they will naturally attract return visits for navigation purposes.

>Most people here like crits and death/dismemberment tables actually
Death tables I'd buy but I've seen a lot of complaining about crits.

I remember somebody once had a ring that when you put it on turned that finger into a snake as a magic item. Forget where I saw it. If you can track that down maybe it had some more ideas for snake hands.

Tramp

That's an early piece of magic loot from Skrubalos' Tomb of the Serpent Kings.

How do I design a fun dungeon for my 1st level players?

Would B2 be usable with 4 characters? Or would it be too deadly for players new to this style of play.

Design something you think seems kind of cool, then playtest it and change stuff that wasn't fun. That takes the most work but it's also the most reliable way.

Definitely, keep in mind that the players let go of the assumption that things are balanced. They will get creative and find a way.

So I was thinking of introducing some new players using beyond the wall. What advice do you have as far as scope for the game goes? Can it be used for a long running campaign or is it too suited to one shots?

They were literally not in Basic

What did he mean by this?

>having vestigial numbers that literally don't impact anything
Holmes having ability scores was pointless

>but muh stats
Oh boo hoo, 3d6-in-orderfags almost always cheated.

>Most people here like crits and death/dismemberment tables actually.
Fuck no. Especially not crits. Crit odds are so extremely stacked against players that they really should not be used at all.

It was more of eating of monsters aka, things you fight. A blue mage sort of, not eating mage.

They were in basic and had mechanical importance. On top of mechanical importance, stats are used for fluff purposes. They are in the game because it defines the role you're supposed to be playing.

Homebrewing hipsters don't realise the roleplaying potential 3d6 attributes have. Probably because these homebrewing hipsters never even play any games.

I'd rather not be infliced with a bunch of nerds who think Int 8 is barely functional retardation

Huh? A crit is equally likely for both parties, one-in-twenty chance. And then there are all the house rules that expand the players' crit ranges. How is that weighted against the players?

Monster usually have more attacks, or they outnumber the players.
Therefore the DM is rolling more d20s which gives him a higher chance at critting.

I may be retarded, but I can't wrap my head around what they mean by "spiking a door closed/open". Could someone explain this to me or maybe make a crude drawing?

In general, are there any decent OSR youtube channels?

Shoving iron spikes inbetween the door and the walls/floor making it impossible to open without breaking the door down.

Weirdly enough, Matt Colville sort of fits the bill. He plays 5e (yes, yes, everybody groans) but he repeatedly espouses old schoolish philosophies. The monsters want to win, he's not afraid to kill off a PC, he puts the party in situations he hasn't explicitly designed a solution for. You just have to ignore the few things he says about monkeying with stats in the middle of a battle.

1 finger → d2
2 fingers → d4
3 fingers → d6
4 fingers → d8
5 fingers → d10
6 fingers → d10 + d2
7 fingers → d10 + d4
8 fingers → d10 + d6
9 fingers → d10 + d8
10 fingers → 2d10

>Is there a cool OSR game that is not a retroclone?
Almost by definition: no.

I've seen a number of bloggers and the like in the OSR-sphere go on about OD&D as their favorite iteration, but I'm not sure I get why. The posts tend to be in general terms that (at least to my mind) would also apply to B/x or the like. Reading OD&D, nothing jumps out at me either. I'm wondering if anyone who has actually played it could share their experiences and maybe try to opine as to the above.

>How is that weighted against the players?
It's because it adds up in the long term. Crits make combat swingier. For the players, it doesn't typically matter at all if they defeat some goblin slightly faster than they otherwise would have; that one goblin is never reappearing anyway. On the other hand, for a PC to get killed is something between an annoyance and a serious asspain, so each combat having a slightly higher chance of killing them works out as a negative to the players, even though on paper they have the same chance as the DM to roll crits.

Okay, obviously you might think all these differences from B/X are just trivial, but the main differences are:
>OD&D is totally chaotically and incompletely written and forces you to effectively design large chunks of the game for yourself by making judgment calls -- this is a kind of "fruitful void" situation that appeals strongly to a certain kind of referee, even though in practical fact it's just a result of utterly shit editing, not deliberate design
>Chainmail combat is very different to the Alternative Combat system that ended up getting used in every other edition
>ability scores are even less important than in Basic -- except Charisma, which is stupefyingly good
>in general, the rules are simpler than even in Basic and typically more drastic: besides random tables, only d6 and d20 dice are really used; all weapons do the same damage and all hit dice are the same size; spells like Sleep and Charm hit like mules; monster stats are simpler than at any later point

There's a bunch of other minor details, like magic items and monsters working considerably differently and more "true to source" than in later editions, and the neat/bizarre writeups for orc settlements and the inhabitants of castles, that also differ.

I've heard the chainmail angle before, but how many people actually use it? How does that wind up working out in play?

Whitehack.

>Who's your favorite OSR artist?
EO

He died in a freak accident while moving.

Yeah it was pretty fucked up.
A bunch of old junk went a-light sent him and his house up in a blaze.

>How does that wind up working out in play?
2d6 to hit, 1d6 on hit.
Men versus Men: table of target numbers - columns are armor, rows are weapons
Men versus Fantasy: fantasy creatures get multiple attacks (high level fighters get one per level, etc)
Fantasy versus Fantasy: table of target numbers - columns are creature types, rows are creature types

Eh really want to dump crits and fumble rules but my players are the type of people who want to go autistic when a player lands a natural 20.

>Is there a cool OSR game that is not a retroclone? A steampunk game perhaps?

Lots of OSR games aren't retroclones: LotFP, ACKS, Castles & Crusades, Engines & Empires (that one is steampunk), Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea, Ghastly Affair (gothic-punk, has some minor steampunk elements), Whitehack, Retro Phaze, and a great many others.

Are any of them "cool"? ASSH is pretty cool, but that's just a subjective opinion.

Do you use crit/fumble tables or do you use a variant of double damage / maximum damage on a natural 20?

I dumped crits and fumbles for another reason. Unless they only apply to PCs, they are going to ultimately screw the PCs. NPCs will tend to get way more attack rolls in than PCs will, so PCs will be crit against way more than PCs will crit.

>that's just a subjective opinion.
As opposed to objective opinions?

No, as opposed to a true fact.

We went through a couple of systems, tried out some we found on old grognard sites, used the Player's Option rules and tried out a few systems we dug out in old Dragon magazines.

But for now when you crit you roll an extra damage die, if the weapon uses 2 dices for damage (i.e. broad sword 2d4) then you still roll an extra die (3d4 in the broad sword example). On a natural 1 you lose grip of your weapon, with 1 in 6 chance of it breaking or being unusable, meaning when your turn comes up in the next round you either attack with a backup weapon or spend your turn picking up your weapon.

I don't know I think it's fair and simple, open to new suggestions though.

...

I don't like fumbles because experienced warriors wind up lobbing their swords across the room 5% of the time like some kind of Keystone Kops dungeon explorer's league.

The extra dice would come out weird because some weapons use lower dice with the intent of giving a better damage floor, like the broad sword. This winds up punishing weapons that are meant to do more damage (e.g. 2D4 is significantly worse than 1D8 with that system).

I like skipping critical failures and just using simple critical hits. Players only (because of the claw/claw/bite thing on monsters), automatic hit and max damage on a crit. Not unbalancing because that amount of damage was always possible, still gives the players something to look forward to and get excited about, and unlike the vast majority of crit systems is actually faster than a normal hit, because it skips the damage rolling stage.

Erol Otus rocks. He's not the most technically proficient artist out there, but, man, does he have style.

>I don't like fumbles because experienced warriors wind up lobbing their swords across the room 5% of the time like some kind of Keystone Kops dungeon explorer's league.
This. Though the worst experience I had with fumbles was a DM who did it for any roll below a 5.* That shit was fucking retarded.

*I think. It's possible it was anything below a 4, but either way, it was awful. Battles were really just a succession of fuck-ups. And while you could tell he found it amusing, it's not like the game, itself, was comedic or anything. When one of the players irritatedly challenged him about it, he rationalized that there was furniture and shit to get in your way, so the high fumble rate made prefect sense.

>A fumble makes you drop your weapon lol

Pretty much NEVER happens in actual weapons combat.

If you need critical fumbles in your game, a natural 1 better represents a momentary overreach, misstep, or hole in your defenses that provokes an immediate free attack from the enemy that you just whiffed.