/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance General

>because, why not?
An existing system might meet your needs.
You might (lol) meet players who know existing systems.
>but I don't want it to necessarily be 100% lethal because that's unrealistic.
Did you read the OP? Death at 0 isn't instant death, it's struggling and failing.
If you have 4 hp and take 3 damage *that's* getting out by the skin of your teeth.
If you're too daft to run away at that point, then you've earned what's coming to you.
>how should I do attack roll progression?
Ascending if you're doing monsters. Descending if you expect people to loot foreign stats.
>the trapfinding rules.
look great, if a bit arbitrary (which, hey! fits the style).
If it's bothering you, switch the meat to "thieves spot traps 'in advance' on a save, and fall for them on a fail."
And maybe codify giving the referee a "we're doing this until further notice" shortcut.
>the wilderness exploration and hunting rules especially
I usually gloss over this. If you've ever seen Survivor, starving makes people bad at thinking.
If you've ever fished up statistics to win an argument, people can go 45 to 61 days without food.
Decrease a random attribute each day?
>should mages be able to cast some sort of jolt/acid splash/ray of frost
No, but they should be able to buy funky reskinned crossbows of three times markup if crossbows bother them.
>is it okay for them to be able to do prestidigitation at will?
If you _strictly_ codify what that can do?
>should there be other cantrip-tier spells they can do at will
/NO/

>the death system. should I just have death at 0 hp?
I like for there to be a buffer zone between up and functioning fine and stone cold dead. If you think a -10 hp death threshold is too extreme, you could always go with -level. Or -die size (so a magic-user dies at -4 while a fighter dies at -10). Or -1/5 or even -1/10 your maximum hit points.

>how should I do attack roll progression?
For what it's worth:

AD&D:
fighter = 2/2 = 1
thief = 2/4 = .5
magic-user = 2/5 = .4
cleric = 2/3 = .67

Basic:
fighter = 2/3 = .67*
cleric/thief = 2/4 = .5*
magic-user = 2/5 = .4*

*technically 2.25/3 (.75), 2.25/4 (.5625), 2.25/5 (.45) since the second increase is by 3 points, while all the others are by 2 points, but if you dismiss the 3 point jump as an aberration, then the original figures are correct.

I like the idea of giving everybody a decent chance of noticing that "something feels wrong" or thinking that this would be a logical place for folks to lay a trap. That way, folks aren't poking and prodding absolutely everything, and pacing doesn't slow to a crawl.

>should mages be able to cast some sort of jolt/acid splash/ray of frost cantrip as an attack v.s. AC for a 1d4 damage? just so that they can do something besides 1 spell/day, and prestidigitation?
I like the idea of level 0 spells that are weak but actually useful (something like in the pic here).

Of course, I also support letting wizards use light weapons like short swords and light crossbows and shit.

...

Let them have their castle. Nothing happens there. Ever. If they want to explore the surrounding area or even delve into the ground, asking them how long they want to do that, and upon hearing their answer say: "nothing happens". If they want to spend money to build a new tower, say: "okay, you do that", and nothing more. Don't engage them on anything they do there. Reply to their questions and actions with the most perfunctory, uninterested manner. Give them nothing to work with there, but give them occasional hooks for other places. Make it boring as fuck to hang around the castle, like it's hardly even a game. Be prepared to spend an entire session doing this, and maybe a bit into the next.

Or, you know, talk to them about it. Tell them there isn't going to be a castle campaign and they need to look elsewhere for adventure.

Thoughts on this bad boy?

>should mages be able to cast some sort of jolt/acid splash/ray of frost cantrip

If we're looking at the topic from a mechanical standpoint, we know D&D is largely about two things that feed directly into each other: risk/reward decisions and resource management. These two facets show up when you look at magic-user's limitation to only use daggers. It is one part resource management (you have have a finite amount of daggers on you and have to make sure you throw them when it counts or if you're confident you can recover them. If you run out of daggers) and one part risk/reward (damage vs running out of daggers). The inclusion of damage dealing cantrips removes this. Knowing if this is important to you will help you decide if you want them in your game.

It can lead to some weirdness with wizards being knife throwers, which hardly fits in with wizard tropes.

Any module with a hammerhead shark-man with nipple chains on the cover can't be all bad.
OH NO YOU FUCKING DON'T

What do lies smell like?
This is a good idea and very handy, but very tedious/very handwavy.

I whipped this up, is it interesting or usable at all? More fuss than it's worth?

>MAGIC NEEDLE Draft 0.1

All magic-users know Magic Needle. The caster makes a normal to hit roll against a creature within range, and deals 1d4 if successful. Magic-Users can cast this spell a number of times equal to 4 + character level. They can choose to imbue this attack with silver essence if they expend a pouch of silver powder (25gp), this makes the magic act if it were a silvered weapon.

I would dearly love more feedback on this class.

And instructions on how to make the text sit on the middle/right hand side like in

Taste is absolute. Things taste of flavors.
Smell is relative. Things smell of other things.

If I had to guess, lies smell like self-deception.

I personally like it, and I've created a similar spell (burning needle), but it doesn't seem like it'd work with as wide a range of wizard concepts as, say, a simple zap or blast. If you're going to go this route, I'd say giving people maybe a half dozen different spells to choose from would be the way to go. Or just letting them fluff the same spell in different ways.

As far as mechanics go, what if instead of having a high number of uses per day, the spell just required a resource to power it. Magic needle uses an actual needle each time it's cast. Ray of fire expends a small glass rod or something. You could say that regardless of the resource, it comes down to 1 copper piece of cost (and the equivalent weight). Either that, or you could just say "fuck it" and make it an effectively infinite cast sort of thing (I mean, maybe you get a headache or become exhausted to the point of not being able to cast the spell if you try to do it dozens of times in a row, but in terms of normal combat, you can cast it at will).

Use a word processor. Find the text layout option. Set it to centered. With word, it should be up at the top of the options bar thingy.

Greetings traveller. That was made by MS Paint user (is he still around?) using MS Paint.

To guide you on your way, the word for what you seek is "flush".
You are trying to make your text flush.

>If I had to guess, lies smell like self-deception.
I declare this non-gameable content, and reject it as art-brain wankery.

Lies smell like burnt eggs.

I don't like it for a couple of reasons. First, conceptually speaking, the whole monk class doesn't fit in very well with the standard western-themed campaign. But if you're making a monk class, you obviously disagree with me there, so let's look at the mechanics.

At low levels, your monk is shit. He has shit armor and does shit damage, and is far inferior in every way to a fighter, having no special thing he does to justify his existence. (Unless, he can just literally be a fighter and wear fighter armor and use fighter weapons, in which case that's thematically weird.) But at high levels, he, well... unless he's really fucking high level, he's still a bit inferior to a fighter in terms of AC, a bit inferior to a fighter in terms of hit points, and a bit inferior to a fighter in terms of damage (assuming the fighter has a +2 or +3 weapon).

What do burnt eggs smell like?

He can use normal weapons and armor, and LotFP is set in the tail end of the Age of Exploration, when Europeans and Asian intermingled across multiple oceans in a burgeoning trade network.

The high level thing gap isn't that big, but the low level gap is an issue. I'd rather the monk be relatively static in terms of AC and damage output, like the fighter is. Just give him a +1 AC (and +1 die level damage) every 5 levels or so to keep up with the magic shit a fighter's going to be getting, and that seems like enough. But it seems like the monk would be more interesting if he were mechanically distinct. Maybe a monk can make two unarmed attacks per round at d4 to start out with (only add half strength bonus to keep it from getting out of hand for characters with high strength?). Stick with the d6 hit points and make his unarmored AC equal to chainmail. Have him only increase his to-hit at half the rate of a fighter, but get a +1 AC at every 2nd to-hit point (every 4th level, that is), Maybe boost the monk's damage by 1 die level every 4 points as well (maybe staggered so it falls midway between each AC boost), up to a maximum of 1d10.

If we figure a 13th level monk has two d10 attacks at +5 compared to a fighter's single d8+3 attack at +10, that seems about right. If the monk has a 60% chance to hit a target for 11 damage, that's 6.6 damage per round. The fighter then has an 85% chance to hit that target for 8.5 damage, doing 7.225 per round, if we give him a +3 sword that only adds to damage, and not his chance to hit. Since LotFP doesn't by default use "plus" weapons, but you refer to them, I don't know exactly how you're approaching things. If you're using standard +3 weapons which affect to-hit as well, then we should boost monks to a 2/3 attack progression instead of a 1/2 progression (ending on +7). In that case.

>He can use normal weapons and armor
Then he's just gonna be a fighter with shitty hit points, wearing fighter armor and using fighter weapons, until he's like 12th level.

New DM here:

How do you guys do prepnotes?

My cheat sheets often become an absolute clusterfuck, is there a trick to making readable map keys?

>How do you guys do prepnotes?
It's just a shorthand jumble: names or events with maybe a few words attached to them to jar my memory.

That's what I do for rough stuff like city intrigue, but as soon as I design a dungeon with some interaction (this lever rotates the bridges in section 3, 4 and 7) my notes start to look like quantum physics calculations.

Like actual Asian monks

paperspencils.com/2012/11/12/changing-my-dungeon-notation/

>paperspencils.com/2012/11/12/changing-my-dungeon-notation/
That's helpful, thanks a lot!

>Like actual Asian monks
If the monk class produces characters that behave exactly like fighters until 12th level or so, I recommend dropping the monk class and just saying that your fighter is a monk.

'Like actual X' isn't really an excuse for shitty game design.

Will borrow and ruminate on.

Just remember not to let monks add their full strength damage bonus to both attacks. That would be pretty broken for monks with a +2 or +3 modifier.

Only because we suck at smelling. There's some tribe in somewhere or another that has specific words for smells.

So /osrg/, something I'm wondering. I'm about to start a new campaign pretty soon.

What rules do players actually need to know? What can I distill the books down to?

Obviously, there's their specific class mechanics like spell descriptions and number of spells, etc., the basic combat mechanics like the order of the turn and how to hit things, and how to save. Is there anything else that they specifically need to know?

I'm not going to be specifically hiding anything, don't get me wrong. If they ask I will tell them mostly whatever they want to know, and I'll tell them about the books where they can find information.

>What rules do players actually need to know?
Very little, really. Sometimes in the old days, DMs would roll all the dice.

>Obviously, there's their specific class mechanics like spell descriptions and number of spells, etc., the basic combat mechanics like the order of the turn and how to hit things, and how to save. Is there anything else that they specifically need to know?
Not really. I mean, you need to give your players some idea of how powerful the enemies they face are, at least if that sort of thing is common knowledge.

In the editions where magic-users are restricted to daggers, you can't actually throw daggers. (They're meant to represent something closer to a shortsword, I think; a cinquedea or swapping dagger.) Only Fighting-Men can use ranged weapons.

You're right about everything else, though.

Moldvay Basic lets you throw daggers.

This is pasta.

B/X doesn't restrict Magic-Users to only daggers, however. They can also use quarterstaves and IIRC darts.

>B/X doesn't restrict Magic-Users to only daggers, however. They can also use quarterstaves and IIRC darts.

From page 10 of the Basic Set:
>RESTRICTIONS: Magic-users use four-sided dice (d4) to determine their hit points. They may not wear armor nor use shields and may only carry a dagger for a weapon.

Darts don't exist, and though staves do get added as weapons the Expert Set, as far as I'm aware, it is never actually stated that magic-users can wield them -- they just get them by convention.

Huh. I stand corrected! I guess I just mentally conflated the BECMI/RC rules with the Moldvay ones.

What makes a game OSR? Is there a check list of things the game must have to be considered to be OSR?

What's the purpose of such a question? If you don't know or enjoy OSR gaming yourself, why do you want to be able to fill out a checklist to "officially make a game OSR"? What's the point?

Uncontroversial is compatibility with other OSR products.

Many people believe it must also have an emphasis on preparation, resource management, and wealth acquisition.

A fair number of people believe it must also be relatively rules-light and easy-to-use.

For there to be a definitive checklist, there would have to be an authority. That's not how aesthetic trends work.

You have literal retroclones of old editions (and the old editions themselves), and then lots of projects and ideas branching out from there.

If you're new to old school gaming and want an "authentic" experience, just start with B/X or labyrinth lord, so you have a baseline on which to compare new material.

>What makes a game OSR?
I will be at Game Hole. I can certify your game for a fee.

I like OSR but I cannot define it exactly, why is 2e OSR but not 3.X or 5e? I know they feel very differently and it probably has to do with a bunch stuff (at will magic, focus on preparation, how combat work, progression), the thing is I can't pin point exactly what makes an OSR game OSR.

If you asked me what makes a pencil a pencil and how's it different from a pen then it would be easy to describe and I wouldn't ramble for 30 mins and use words like "it feels different".

"Can it run Keep on the Borderlands without conversion?"

>If you asked me what makes a pencil a pencil and how's it different from a pen then it would be easy to describe and I wouldn't ramble for 30 mins and use words like "it feels different".
That's a false equivalency. Can you describe the difference between heavy metal and death metal? Can you explain what sets apart one dance subgenre from another in a concrete manner?

Genre definitions are, by necessity, more abstract and fluid than the differences between various writing utensils.

> check list of things the game must have to be considered to be OSR
check #8: all lists must contain 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, or 100 items

>taking the bait

Those were good times.

What about 5, 7, 14, 16, 24 or 30?

Can't be rolled on a standard die, not allowed.

Who defines standard? Wasn't anything other than 6 sided a bit strange when D&D first came out? We only use those specific sizes as "standard" because that's come to be the tradition.

Forgot my pic

Platonic solid(with the exception of d10 and d100, which can still be represented with a d20 or a pair of d20s).

Or 36. Those d66 tables are neat.

>why is 2e OSR?
It isn't. :^)

>2e OSR
Developed by TSR pre-2000

>3.X or 5e
Developed by WOTC post-2000

Compatibility with oldschool D&D systems and playstyles/assumptions.

RE: Cantrips - I like to allow players to choose from any of the non-damage dealing cantrips from the 5e free player's rules if they like.

This means they might try interacting with their environment instead of just deciding whether they want to stab or shoot.

>I like to allow my players to take the Light spell if they like.
Next you're gonna tell me you added Leomund's Tiny Hut to their spell list too.

1 minute rounds imply that there's something wrong with a battle that goes over 10 rounds, since that leads to a wandering monster check, which in turn implies that a battle should be able to be finished in less than 10 rounds. This means that combat balance should be so that the battling parties' hit points should not be above what can't be taken down to 0 before 10 rounds have passed.

It is an excuse to be on the nose with a joke.

I want to get my group to play OSR, but there's one big problem that I sympathize with - Spellcasters (especially wizards) are significantly worse than fighters in every single way. What the hell do the wizards do after they cast their single spell? Curl up and cry? Miss every shot with a sling? Even if I started at say, level 3, they still get, what, two magic missiles and a acid arrow?

And if I were to start at a later level (Say 9 or 10), All of a sudden the opposite is true, fighters are absolute shit. Wizards get fly, fireball and all kinds of great shit, and fighters get +2 to hit and a bit more HP.

I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know hoe to fix this problem, I like the OSR philosophy a lot and I want to give it a try

>one minute combat rounds
>you spend one minute fighting against one target then make a single attack roll, pray it hits, then inflict 1d6 damage onto the creature on the off chance you might roll high enough to kill it
>meanwhile there's no actual mechanical differentiation between skirmishers, heavy troops, etc., they're all just fighting men who inflict 1d6 points of damage
You can do better.

There's no actual problem.

At first level their chance to hit is equal. Even a little later than that it's still only a 5%-10% difference in chance to hit. You don't get major differences until you've got a lot of magic items and several levels. Wizards usually save their spell for when it's necessary. And often don't have a direct damage spell, and if they do it's mediocre. Sleep is one of the better spells since it essentially ends a combat. Hold Portal is great when you've got a lot of things you can't fight yet and need to hide.

No one in their right mind starts at level 9.

>Spellcasters (especially wizards) are significantly worse than fighters in every single way. What the hell do the wizards do after they cast their single spell? Curl up and cry? Miss every shot with a sling?
In B/X magic-users and fighters both hit an unarmored opponent on a 10+ until level 3.
>Even if I started at say, level 3, they still get, what, two magic missiles and a acid arrow?
You're treating this as modern D&D. The point of the game is exploration, not combat.
>I'm not trying to troll, I genuinely want to know hoe to fix this problem, I like the OSR philosophy a lot and I want to give it a try
Just play the game as written and then change anything that you don't like after awhile.
Too many people just assume their are problems and try and fix them without even reading the rules first.

Anyone got a good homebrew bard for S&W?

>they will fight like berserkers
Does this mean something specific in the rules? It's mentioned off-hand in one of the encounter descriptions for Caverns of Thracia, without any explanation.

>pens & pencils true edition
If you really want, people can nerd out about the historical development of pens and pencils, terminology, material construction, regional variation, standardization of writing utensils as it related to writing material, literacy, printing, digital, etc. and that's before we even get into how people will prefer to write with specific pens, pencils, or autistic gurps style mechanical pencil autism or handwavy narrative pencil crayons.

>GURPS
>mechanical pencils
I guess they are equally shitty.

>What the hell do the wizards do after they cast their single spell?
How about fuckin' adventure? This isn't WAR:RPG.

>Miss every shot with a sling?
Magic-Users can't use slings, so no.

>Even if I started at say, level 3, they still get, what, two magic missiles and a acid arrow?
Your totally combat-based approach is just the wrong mindset, bruh. Magic-Users shouldn't generally memorize battle spells first and foremost. Focus on stuff the M-U can do that nobody else can.

>you spend one minute fighting against one target then make a single attack roll
In the rules he's talking about, you get a lot more than one attack roll if you're high level, unless fighting other high-level characters or monsters. There's also a lot of difference between the troop types on the melee table.

A berserker is a monster in B/X.

Sure, but the difference between a pen and a pencil still boils down to "one uses ink, the other uses graphite or other solid material for making marks"

If I had to put it into words, I would say compartmentalized design. TSR D&D, of which 2e is a part has numerous subsystems which often do not touch on each other. This makes modifying or outright discarding systems more predictable. In contrast the more unified mechanics of WOTC D&D require more significant revision because of follow-on effects. It is possible to OSR-ify 3e: Castles & Crusades exists.

In OD&D and Basic, a Berserker is a Man-type enemy ("monster" if you like). In the case of Caverns they almost certainly mean the OD&D one:

>Berserkers are simply men mad with battle-lust. They will have only Fighting-Men with them as explained in the paragraphs above regarding Bandits. They never check morale. When fighting normal men they add +2 to their dice score when rolling due to their ferocity.

Note that "when fighting normal men" is actually quite ambiguous, as a Normal Man is contrasted with a fighting-man of even first level in terms of saves and to-hit; arguably the Berserker effect never comes into play against PCs. However, this seems an absurd interpretation (why bother with transposing a rule from Chainmail if it only matters for large-scale battle?). It could also be claimed, and with far more justification, I think, that it only affects combatants of a sub-Hero Fighting Capability.

Awesome, thank you! I saw the "berserker" entry in the Basic book, but I wasn't sure if the term had a specific meaning in OD&D. Appreciate the clarification.

So I'm making a homebrew bard class for S&W and I'm trying to make it a master of none sort of class. they can use thief skills like an assassin two levels lower, and can cast MU spells like a MU of half their level. Does that sound to overpowered?

Why assassin skills and not thief skills? And what's the HD and attack bonus like?

So I've been working on some art for an adventure I'm writing. Whaddya guys think?

What if they make a bunch of nose and it takes them by surprise?

Attack bonus as a thief, HD is a d4. Assassin thief skills because they're already lower than pure thief skills. I don't want to make the bard too skilled. just skilled enough

That doesn't sound overpowered to me.

Looks pretty good to me. I'd like to see more.

>And if I were to start at a later level (Say 9 or 10),
Starting at name level is pretty insane unless you also give them the boatload of magic items and inflated stats they've probably get if they played that high naturally.

Seriously, magic swords are exclusive to Fighters (and later Thieves) for a reason. And that reason is bullshit magical powers, like save-or-dies on every hit or unlimited at-will flight.

Also, at that point the Fighter probably has a small army following them and a keep to rule from, while the Magic-User is probably spending most of their time and cash on spell research and magic item construction while hidden away in a tower somewhere?

Oh, and level 9+ is basically the endgame in most cases. So that's a thing as well, I guess. In the one edition where it really isn't, BECMI, the Fighter's probably actively broken in how powerful it is.

>(why bother with transposing a rule from Chainmail if it only matters for large-scale battle?)
Chainmail didn't have viking berserkers until third edition, which was almost definitely based on their inclusion in OD&D. 2E Chainmail lacks most of the expanded special units.

Also, well, do note that the wilderness encounter number for Berserkers is still 30-300 men.

Oh, and first-level Veterans are basically equal to Chainmail's commanders, who also get +1 to hit - if you're not using the Chainmail tables, however, the OD&D Veteran has the exact same hit and save table as a 1HD "Normal Man" (an AD&D term).

Of course, when you're talking about B/X Chainmail is a bit irrelevant: the assumed mass combat system there is Swords & Spells, weirdly enough. I'm surprised it was even in print at the time?

Here's one for a giant bee hive in one of the caves.

Is Swordfish Islands in the trove? I can't seem to find it anywhere.

>they can use thief skills like an assassin two levels lower
Doesn't that leave them having Thief skills like four or five levels lower in total? It honestly feels pointless to grant someone Thief skills if they only get them by level 5.

So no, it doens't sound overpowered. It sounds terribly underpowered, actually; compare the Elf, which is just one level behind the M-U in exchange for full fighting ability plus the unique ability to cast spells in armor.