/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance

...

>tfw you have a superior water content to women

I'm gonna chalk that up to muscle mass.

Ah, never mind then

>gender-based stat limits
I thought we'd moved past this shit, guys.

>he doesn't play OAD&D anymore
Gary would be rolling in his grave if he had died before releasing Lejendary Adventure™

If it doesn't have a good enough mechanical difference, then it's a bit of a waste. I'm all for OSR simplicity but I still like class options beyond the traditional 7.

My homebrew LotFP-based campaign has race/class separation:
>Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Half-Elf, Halfling, Human, Kenku and Orc.
Each offers an Ability modifier bonus plus a skill bonus, and maybe one other thing.

Classes are
>Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Magic-User (schools: Wizard, Witch, Necromancer, Illusionist), Ranger, Rogue and Trickster.
Each of these applies the HD used and gives some kinda class ability.

It still keeps the ease of OSR character creation and adds a bunch of options to make a character they are interested in playing.

Don't pretend to be me.

Won't stop me from enjoying my water-content privilege.

Is this from Mario Odyssey?

What's your Witch class do?

I'm a big fan of Witches.

Honestly, it just gives them a different set of spells to choose from. No mechanical difference otherwise. It's from this B/X supplement.

archive.4plebs.org/dl/tg/image/1401/88/1401882258184.pdf

>reading the Ghastly Affair books after some user mentioned them
>"this is a game for adults"
>"this is a game of horror"
>"if nothing terrible happens then you're playing wrong"
>and then
>"the group should agree to a Safe Word. If the Presenter’s description of a situation ever becomes too disturbing for a Player, the subject matter becomes distasteful, or the role-playing becomes too intense, a Player can say the Safe Word to immediately stop the game. The Player should then explain to the Presenter what they found excessively disturbing. Play should then continue, with the Presenter glossing over the disturbing situation and proceeding to the next situation."
wew

Overpowered Stone Rock

$5 says if you ever get into some real kinky shit you'll die because of poor communication.

>Do you think it's bad to add additional classes for the purpose of player variety?
I don't have a problem with it, at least as long as each class has a niche of some sort

>I'm all for OSR simplicity but I still like class options beyond the traditional 7.
agreed

You gotta get a girl that is into it user.

They really don't give you much guidance, but judging by the nomenclature alone, I'd say no, as I wouldn't consider water an object. Objects have a fixed shape. They're items or structures. Water is a formless blob. (On the other hand, the fact that they felt it was necessary to clarify that creatures couldn't be detected might indicate a broad usage of "object".)

For what it's worth, 5e doesn't define what qualifies as an object either, but it gives examples of particular kinds of objects--apparel, jewelry, furniture, tools, and weapons--and all of them are man-made.

>Overpowered Stone Rock
Don't make me demonstrate my finger-Zen.

Have you seen Zak S' post about witches?
/2014/08/d100-witch-traits.html

youtube.com/watch?v=cjCu-pZxp4k

Anyone got any feedback or suggestions for improvement for this little game?

>Roll 3d6 and grant bonuses per number rolled, stacking.
"Roll three d6s", or "Roll three 6-sided dice." By common convention, 3d6 indicates you're totaling the results of the dice.

>[1] +1 to hit, load, and starting equipment.
I'm assuming "load" means encumbrance, meaning that when paired with the +1 to-hit, we seem to be looking at a strength score, basically, but the bit about starting equipment seems like it's completely unrelated.

>By common convention, 3d6 indicates you're totaling the results of the dice.
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
It makes sense as written and I've seen plenty of similar uses of the notation.

>You're not a class of entity - you are your own unique and horrible thing.
That's the idea. Every Spook is it's own thing. Undead spooks have some stuff in common just because 'not having biology' produces similar strengths. But there's no such thing as a 'Vampire' as a meaningful thing. Just lots of individual monsters.

It's not innately a vampire. It's just some corpse that's still walking about. When it realises it can drink blood and benefit from doing so, it's behavior means people start calling it a vampire. But if a normal person started drinking blood (just because they were weird), they'd get called a vampire. Vampire is something you do, not something you always were.

Drinking blood heals you. Which is useful since undead don't heal at all easilly (thanks, thread!)

>there's no "vampire" to base this on. You're not a vampire, you're a Count Dracula. You are your own unique non-classifiable folklore thing.
got it in one

Work out what archetypes you want in the game, and have a class per archetype. No more than that. Honestly, in 5e say, the difference between a bard, a warlock, a sorcerer and a wizard is so fucking arbitrary that players just pick for mechanics. Fuck that.
Lots of classes covering the same thematic ground just results in decision paralysis and diluted themes.
PCs can distinguish themselves with gear selection, attributes and perhaps spells known. That is fine.

they do if you fight enemies that magically age you. I've seen it.
Attack every part of the sheet etc etc

isn't that just 'comunicating well and not being a dick'?
I wouldn't run SPIDERS IN YOUR CLOTHES for an arachnaphobic player. Same idea.

question: is the 'each roll of a 1' in sage magic
>each time one of the d6s shows a 1
or
>each time the roll's total is 1 or less?
Those will produce veeery different results in play, and it's a little ambiguous.

Also, you might consider naming the bonuses. Even if it doesn't even get written down on your character sheet and contributes nothing to the game, itself, it can relay the concept of what it is so it's not just a bunch of bonuses that people might not instantly connect together.

>Add level to Combat saves Whenever you make an attack roll, add your level to that roll.
Unnecessarily verbose. Just say "Add level to combat saves and attack rolls."

>Add level to Hazard saves If you have an appropriate tool, you can add your level to any skill checks you perform. Add your level to sneak rolls.
How about: "Add level to sneak rolls, hazard saves, and skill rolls (when using an appropriate tool)." It's shorter and makes them items in a list of things that behave the same way, as opposed to three separate sentences that you only notice afterwards adhere to the same mechanic.

>All rolls of 6 or better have advantage on their attack
As in 5e advantage? You probably want to note this at least parenthetically: "All rolls of 6 or better have advantage (better of 2 rolls) on their attack...."

>Creatures usually take their number of HD in order to kill of weakening or wounding blows
You mean that creatures can take a number of hits equal to their hit dice?

>If the attack stated is intended to be lethal and the attack roll > enemy remaining health it's lethal.
Okay, now I'm confused. Do you have to hit something a number of times equal to its hit dice to kill it, or just roll over its health (hp?)?

>It makes sense as written and I've seen plenty of similar uses of the notation.
I mean, I pretty quickly figured out what it meant, but I had a brief "huh?" moment as I tried to fit together things that, using conventional terminology, don't. Why not be as clear and easily understood as possible?

>Difficulty HD = number of points of damage of a wound, HD of creature's special move or poison, number of steps to cure this curse normally, amount of damage dice this trap does to sense it, or the size of the die of this bless. (Bless difficulty HD: +1d4 = 1, +1d6 = 2, etc.)
Uh... what?

Anyone else absolutely love the gm sided stuff to 7 Voyages of Zylarthen, the Hex Crawl resources, the great random encounter tables. The fact that you can just randomly encounter a Longship filled with Vikings is pretty awesome.

Probably going to use alot of it's stuff on a project in the near future. It just seems more traditonal and folkloric compared to most other products of it's nature.

What's the ideal size for a hexcrawl hex?

It showing how to calculate the HD / difficulty of Sage magic rolls.

>Embarrassing question; what's the name of those roaming medieval bard/troubadour/student guys?
Since you said "student", I think you mean the goliards. Ordo vagorum! They weren't really bards and definitely not troubadours, but there were notable poets among them, like the Archpoet and Hugo the Primate. Mostly they were reprobate monks, wandering, drinking, and making a living as occasional secular scribes with their rare and valuable skill "writing". The Carmina Burana are actually goliard drinking songs, just set to really weird incongruous music by a weird Victorian-era German.

The Confession of Golias is worth looking up, it's still good poetry.

What's your favorite OSR game and why?
I'm asking because I'm kinda new to all of this (I played OD&D and Donjon de Poche but only a couple times and I don't remember playing anything else of the sort) and I'd like to know where to start.

Not that user, but thanks. I periodically forget and re-learn the word.

>scrolling down, user discovers he's a day late

>I'm asking because I'm kinda new to all of this (I played OD&D and Donjon de Poche but only a couple times and I don't remember playing anything else of the sort) and I'd like to know where to start.
Most people here will advise you to start with Moldvay Basic. For my part, I'm going to advise you to start with Moldvay Basic.

If you're totally new, don't even bother with the attached Cook Expert set yet; get the hang of Basic first.

OD&D without the supplements is extremely fucking neat but it's also virtually impossible to get into starting from zero, so don't go there until later.

Oh. I have a book I thought was a french translation and simplification of OD&D but it is actually a translation of Moldvay Basic. Which means I never played OD&D, but played Moldvay Basic.
I should probably clarify: I'm not new to RPGs, I'm new to OSR.

I feel like 90% of the hypothetical rpg problems people like to complain about on the likes of rpg.net are caused by being unable to communicate like a regular human being.

The OSR one of the few communities that seems to assume a baseline level of good-faith negotiation between the players.

Yeah.
I think for Ghastly Affair it's worth stating 'respect your players' boundries' in the text, since that sort of subject matter is more likely to have bodice-ripping ravishings and other sexy stuff, and sexy stuff at the table is disproportionately likely to squick people out.

FWIW, even Raggi, he of the canibal corpse art in the core book, explicitely says 'and obviously don't do shit that makes your players uncomfortable' in the ref book.

Which of this design choices is most against OSR style:

1. a mechanic that allows for a partial success range on a check
2. the addition of a Resources stat that allows you to roll for having any certain piece of equipment on yourself

2.

2.

6 miles across

2.

2

that seems unambiguous

Registered Sex Offenders.

Think that if the "Resources" stat depletes by using it, its also resource management. But is sort of quantum resources (you get just what you wanted for a specific situation)

Is very useful, for example, for a ninja class. You don't have to carry a desert camouflage blanket, a jungle camouflage blanket and a palace wall-patterned camouflage blanket. You just have some camouflage clothes that are magically appropiate for the place you want to use them.

Limited resource-altering special powers are not inherently bad as class abilities. Saying, "this particular class gets a unique way to bypass a certain part of the usual resource economy," is not an unreasonable way to distinguish one class from another. I've seen a few examples floating around of Specialist-type characters getting a limited "quantum item" like you describe in other people's houserules, and in some sense even Magic Users and Clerics have something like this with the ability to trade undefined spell slots each day to produce certain resources or circumvent certain obstacles.

However, as a general rule? The more you abstract resource management AS A WHOLE, the further you are moving from one of the core ideas of OSR play. Those classes above are noteworthy specifically because they give you a new vector to interact with the resource economy: they, if anything, reinforce the importance of resource management by giving certain players the limited option to trade one resource (spells, quantum items) for another.

Yeah. I agree. I should have specified in "a piece of equipment that somebody of your [background] would have on its bag"

that said, I forgot to shill the blog entry for today. My question was totally related to it.

daylands.blogspot.com.es/2017/11/1d6-osr-ultra-lite-small-dungeon.html

Fighters can be differentiated by what weapon they are wielding.
Magic users can be differentiated by what spells they choose to use.
Priests can be differentiated by spell choice as well. Or you could let each priest pick one (1) domain and be able to do spontaneous conversion of spells into domain-related spells like in 3.5 for healing.
There. There's all the differentiation you need.

how you differentiate thieves?

inb4 "thieves were a mistake"

how do you differentiate elves, dwarves and halflings?

LotFP-style selection of which thieve's skills you focus on.
DCC does this by giving lawful/neutral/chaotic thieves different thief-skill progressions.
I can also see it working with thief progressions in all the potential skills mapped out, and then you pick which of them you're actually going to get that bonus in.
So like, maybe there's: Hide In Shadows, Hear Noise, Climb Sheer Surfaces, Open Locks, Backstabbing, Follow Tracks, Move Silently, Read Scroll, Mimic Sounds, See In Darkness, Recognise Dungeon Features and Speak With Animals. And you get to pick seven of those that you get the skill progression in, and the rest you're just as untrained as a fighter or whatever.

Just spitballing ideas here.

>elves
Spells known
>dwarves and halflings
weapons used, and perhaps secondary skills like hiding and spotting dungeon construction.

If you are playing a horror game, but get butt-blasted because it got too "disturbing" for you, then you are either playing with actual children, or mental children (women and nu males). In the latter case, suck it up. No one gives a fuck if you are offended. No one cares if someone is getting fed slowly into a meat grinder, or forced to masturbate to their daughter's rape or else she'll be executed, or being ripped apart by a spell that makes their bones swell in size until their skin stretches and tears off. If you didn't want that shit, you shouldn't have joined a horror RPG game. Fuck your safe space faggotry.

It's okay. I like your saving throw categories.

Well, here are my opinions:
1) race as class is boring
2) thieves are a typecast enough class that they don't really need much differentiation. Should only have 1 thief per party, too, imo.
3) thieves weren't a mistake. Skills were a mistake, as in when I play 5e and my ranger is useless because anyone can take a background to get Survival.

Is there any games like Dungeon Crawl Classics where I don't need to buy funky dice?

DCC with the TheCrawler app.

Went over it and made some notes. Hope it helps. Presumably there's a page missing or yet to be written, because some things made no sense (what is talent 4, for instance). Things highlighted but not noted are changes I made.

Thank you user!

"half day's travel by a reasonably experienced adventurer"

I read somewhere that the entire skyrim map fits inside of a 6 mile hex, though, so IDK if this is actually true

Here's a question - my previous experience with other editions of D&D made me assume that the 6 attributes always improve as a character levels up. I put together a few character sheet templates for a BX game I ended up not running, and I rerolled a few numbers because I thought they were too high. My assumption here was that the characters would start off kind of shitty, which would be fun and appropriate for level 1 adventurers, and then would become more powerful and capable as they leveled up.

However, after reading through my manuals again, I haven't been able to find any kind of improvement to the 6 attributes as characters level up in OSR. Am I missing something, or is this correct. Do any of you include something like this in your games? Or is Thor Grunknar the fighter never going to get any smarter no matter what level he reaches?

The in-game map probably does, but Skyrim's map doesn't accurately represent the province itself, which I figure would be a handful of hexes.

What really blew my mind about hexcrawling once was some post about porting ACKS domain management to 3.5, which showed that real-life nations are large enough that it would be practically impossible to make a domain as large as Italy with 6-mile hexes

My thoughts exactly, although apparently we're in the minority. I blame the nu-OSR hipsters.
>Do any of you include something like this in your games?
No. It's also pretty pointless since OSR systems have less meaningful modifiers (9-12 = +0 as opposed to WOTC's 9 = -1, 10-11 = +0, 12 = +1).

You are correct.

Increasing ability scores in some way seems like a relatively common houserule, though. A method I've seen in a few different places is allowing players to roll against one or more of their ability scores on a level up: if you roll over your score on 3d6 or 1d20 or whatever, it goes up by a point. Of course, there's no reason you couldn't just implement the modern D&D method of letting the players chose one or more scores to increase every so many levels.

But like many things in oldschool D&D, I think it was assumed that ability score increases, if they did happen at all, were the kind of thing the DM would choose to give out as a special reward: a faerie boon increases your DEX or CHA, say. They weren't meant to be "built in" to the system.

As points out, ability scores aren't even supposed to be that important in OSR games anyway, so your game will run just fine even if you never let your players increase those scores.

1. Happens all the time, usually as 2d6.
2. Has no precedent, but fits the style.

I'll say 2 is less OSR from the no precedence bit.

>It showing how to calculate the HD / difficulty of Sage magic rolls.
I recognize most of the terms used there; it's just that they're strung together in a manner that's mostly incomprehensible to me. I think it's probably just too shorthand-y for somebody who doesn't already know the basics of what's going on.

Does anybody have a link to the hex kit torrent? There was an user asking about it in the last thread.

>if you roll over your score on 3d6 or 1d20 or whatever, it goes up by a point
I like the opposite, which I swiped from Bruce Heard: Roll 3d6 and if you get a roll lower than your ability it increases by 1 point. Makes it easy for subpar scores to improve but hard for good scores and caps nicely at 18.

>what is talent 4
I think that's referring to the section where you roll "stats":

>[4] Roll +1 health die & take highest

>Makes it easy for subpar scores to improve but hard for good scores and caps nicely at 18.
Uh... it's easier to roll under a high score. You will always roll equal to or less than 18 on 3d6, while you will only do it one out of 216 times if it's a 3.

You're mistaken, buddy. Other way around. The system I outlined does what you want.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Needs keywording then to make that clear, I think.

The system really isn't designed for increasing scores. It could invalidate direct ability checks (roll score or under on 1d20), it could be rather powerful with some stats (a +3 strength can more than double your damage output), and the stats aren't stratified the right way (it gets increasingly easy to advance past each successive modifier level because 13-15 = +1, 16-17 = +2, 18 = +3). If you want to make stat increases a significant part of your game, you'll probably want to regularize your stats' relationship to modifiers, like modern D&D (every 2 stat points increases modifiers by 1, or every 3 points if you prefer--the latter might be better if you want to keep things from getting out of hand*). You'll also probably want to come up with an alternative system for attribute checks. Personally, I like the idea of doing d12 checks modified by your attribute modifier (see pic for a roll-under system that does this).

*Maybe:
3-5 = -2
6-8 = -1
9-11 = 0
12-14 = +1
15-17 = +2
18-20 = +3
21 up = +4

h-haha y-you fell for my trick I w-was merely pretending!

Not a torrent, but...

What are yor feelings about World of Dungeons?
Is just me, or if it wasn't for the fact that Dungeon World exists and is tied to it intimately, would work perfectly as an OSR game?

I gave it a cursory glance once, and wasn't impressed.

Help me /osrg/, you are my only hope. How do I deal with a party that is super careful and therefore terribly slow to advance through my dungeons? They are terrified of springing any traps, as they should be in some way, but this way play becomes boring and sluggish...

Random encounters and strict records of time.

Give them a time limit of some sort. Also, random encounters if they linger too long.

WRITE DOWN THEIR STANDARD SEARCH ROUTINE
(a) you don't need as much back and forth (b) you know their blind spots

You still gives cues for things they might miss and still give dummy cues to cut down on metagaming
But try not to give too many dummy cues or they'll get caught up int them

You mean there should be a penalty to spending too much time searching for traps? But how would they know they are about to enter a part of the dungeon that is worth it to spend some time searching?

Add more traps.

>The in-game map probably does, but Skyrim's map doesn't accurately represent the province itself, which I figure would be a handful of hexes.
It depends on what measuring rod you use. Vvardenfell in Morrowind (game and province) is several times larger than the Skyrim gameworld IIRC but smaller on the Tamriel map; the Iliac Bay region (part of High Rock, part of Hammerfell) in Daggerfall is massively larger, like, several times the size of Great Britain. So it's really a question of which size you consider "canonical". It seems like a lot of fans think the Daggerfall scale is the "true" one and the others are Disneyfied in-game representations for playability purposes, but I don't know for sure since I'm not a huge TES guy.

1) This is probably your fault.
2) Wandering monster checks.
3) Have an honest discussion with them asking them to cut back on the paranoia while agreeing to cut back on the lethality of traps.

Like the others said, this is happening because you're not rolling for random monsters properly. Run correctly, you can let the players take all the time in the world to search, but if they do, they'll get wandering monsters right up the dickhole and get hurt probably worse than a trap's worth. Just knowing that that timer's on their asses should organically make the players search more selectively and only when they feel risk is heightened.