/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance General

3 dungeon levels (1 page of map + 1 page of key each), a map of the region (1 page), a profile of the dungeon and the encounter tables (1 page), a short paragraph for each district of the main town, nearby settlement, and influential figure (1-2 pages, sketch the main town if you have room).

9 pages, give or take. Plus reference sheets.

jrients.blogspot.com/2011/04/twenty-quick-questions-for-your.html

Here's my wild speculation on the original Cleric spell list: coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/11/osr-clerics-and-sunday-school-miracles.html

Basically, the original cleric was half Dr. Van Helsing and half Sunday School Jesus. I've tried to figure out which bit is which, with lots of citations. Want to learn some stuff about the Bible? Come take a look.

All of the above, but also shitposting.

Keep it small, make it loop in on itself.

>setting is a ringworld

Some dungeon pitfalls drop you into town from the sky? Good thing you brought rope.

Really cool speculation. In my game clerics don't do vancian magic, they pray for help and if they are faithful followers of the tenants of their religions they get it. Either as a numerical blessing to whatever actions they are attempting or a fortunate occurrence if I'm feeling creative.

>Are you here for the sweet content, the sage advice, or just to hear yourself talk?
I'm mostly here to argue about True AD&D and overpowered stone rocks, because I can't make my fucking PCs leave this fucking castle alone.

Oh yeah, it's a bit of weird textual archeology. What did "Protection from Evil" look like back in the day? Did "Create Food" create manna or what? What tradition did they draw from, in game?

Make a tunnel straight down and never stop falling.

Nice article, but it reminds me of why I hate clerics. Thieves and fighters are regular guys, wizards are unusual guys and clerics are Jesus of Nazareth. It doesn't seem very OSR to me.

Obligatory goblinpunch post
>goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2013/12/towards-better-cleric.html
By tweaking how they get spells and making their spells dependent on their religion, clerics become a LOT more interesting. Of course, if you don't like the idea of divine casting, it won't do much for you.

Obviously it's drawing from popular culture and Christian sources, just like Three hearts and three lions or Fhafrd and the grey mouser. I hadn't thought of the Van Helsing link but it definitely fits the pattern.

Absolutely. I like these Mystic rules best, if you want a religion-as-a-tool character: lastgaspgrimoire.com/religion-is-a-nest-of-serpents/
And if you want a generic religious character: coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/09/osr-class-monk.html

Yes, but it's neat because I can provide a line-by-line citation for the spells. I don't have the background info to sort the Magic-User spells by source text, but I sure as heck can do it for the Cleric.

Simular to the way I do things but mine is based on an old crpg called Darklands (set in medival Germany with catholic saints as "spells"). I would recommend Darklands to anyone interested in writing rpgs as it handles everything in a unique and thematic way.

Whoa, thanks for the reading material fellas. Maybe the solution to my problem is in these blog posts.

Or it'll give you more stuff to complain about. Win-win.
I like all 3 of these ideas. The mimic discussion in this thread
was also neat. Photocopy sheets, type up, edit, and give to PCs to have them identify the "dopplegangers".

I'm here because my favourite edition of D&D is 2e, and this place is close enough.

>making their spells dependent on their religion
When did that first appear in the D&D family? It can't have been with 2e and its divine spheres, they just make it easier.

Have you or someone you've played with try using a wiki for information organization? How did it go?

It was AD&D 1e, specifically the Dragonlance Adventures book in '87.

While we're on the subject, what's your favorite old-school religion or deity, and why?

Played Darklands myself, user. Curious how you handled adapting it to tabletop. Did you make up a list of saints for your setting?

How do you run changelings without removing characters?

What if you put a dwarfen thaig down below?

>3 dungeon level
Of the same dungeon or different dungeons?

Or interchangeable?

Talk to one of your player's outside of the game and tell them that they've been replaced by a doppelganger. Or pull doppelganger shennanigans with their hirelings instead.

Same dungeon and three pages of rooms should last multiple sessions. It's a safety net to avoid walking off the map.

Thanks. There's a few other ideas I'm working on that I'm less sure about. Here's a list of other parts of the sheet I want to attack: Time (or perception of time), restfulness, food, water, wood, metals, number of attacks, hands to hold things, containers, pets, vision, intended outcome (maybe they cast the wrong spell or swing the wrong weapon), reputation/clout, move speed, direction of movement.

Here's one I think has promise but I don't know about the execution, so I;m looking for suggestions.

>OOZE OF ORDER Draft 1
HD: 2 (Special)
AC: Can Always Be Hit
Attacks: N/A
Saves: As Normal Human
Move: 3 (1’)
Morale: 12
Attack the Sheet: Random Chance

This Ooze is always perfectly round and always the truest shade of any given color. This creature can be harmed by diseased water, rotten foods, Cause Wounds, and other “impurities”, but cannot be hurt by any other attacks. An Ooze of Order either has 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, or 10 HP (or some other sable number). Once in contact with flesh, it will stick for 1d4 rounds, restraining the target.

Whenever and Ooze of Order is clinging to a creature it is robbed of randomness. Their heartbeats steady, their blinks are regular. The Ooze of Order’s slime coat remains on a creature for 1d6 turns.

VARIANT 1 For the duration they remain clean and orderly, any attacks they make or spells they cast will fail, then succeed, then fail, then succeed…

VARIANT 2 For the duration any time they would roll dice they instead treat the outcome as if it were the average.

>replaced
>without removing

Pantheons convert to saints pretty easily. I handle it through generic bonuses in relation to prayers or specific lucky circumstances. Keeping track of slaps and bennies for behavior and applying that as divine favor.

>Or pull doppelganger shennanigans with their hirelings instead

That's a good idea

My best DMing trick= Make an NPC who is obviously the "DM's pet character" give them lots of cool stuff and piss the players off about it a little bit. Then after the NPC has saved all their lives and taken good treasures and stuff have that NPC killed in a totally gruesome noting left but a grease spot kind of way. Just to remind the players of their character's mortality.

Something good came of Dragonlance? Now I feel dirty.

Moander, for interesting but generic non-serpent evil cults.

>Something good came of Dragonlance? Now I feel dirty.
There's plenty of good things about Dragonlance, it's just easy to forget or ignore them because kender are so terrible.

ALL HAIL ZARGON!!

That seems like a roundabout way to do things.

Also, I don't think I've ever had issues reminding players of their mortality. It hasn't helped. They skill keep dying.

Hireling dopplegangers + memory alteration is great. Who remembers all their hirelings and their names anyway?

A game where the ability scores are Savory, Salty, Sour, Sweet.

I know which score /osr/ is going to be maxing, and it ain't Sweet.

>Are you here for the sweet content, the sage advice, or just to hear yourself talk?

I am waiting for someone to question a very extremely specific design decision I've made or brought up, then argue with them and try to convince them as to the logical reasons why my method is superior, and hope to make it one day common consensus that it's the best method and that tabletop RPGs SHOULD have started with this method in the first place and saved everyone the trouble.

I've been encouraging the new group I run to make more use of hirelings. They'll just hate that so I have to do it.

My favorite doppleganger trick is "change of watch" It's a great time to sew confusion and steal stuff.

Well, what is it? Might as well get this over with.

Remove Clerics and MU
Replace with Sage; Support caster with the lowest health and bad equipment like the MU

Fixes literally the entire game. It's honestly amazing. It fixes the game depending on your complaints of course, but it fixes many of the common complaints I've seen.

If I was creating a more S&S setting/game from scratch and ditching as many D&Disms as I could, I would definitely do that. However, I'm not. And the fluff of my game differentiates between clerics and MUs pretty well. Though, if I wanted religion to be part of the game, I'd probably spread it out to all characters, regardless of class or whatever. Anyone can curl up praying to their gods that they don't bleed out and the monster will think they're dead and leave instead of eating them.

Has anyone found an interesting way to discover what magic items do beyond Sages, Identify, and just swinging them around until they eventually do something magical? I like investigating mysterious shit in my games and magic items feels like a shoe-in for some good mysterious shit to investigate but idk how to do it.

>run OD&D for my group
>first encounter
>3 skeletons
>TPK
>mfw

I like this system.

How about "they should get a cantrip, but the material component for it should be as expensive as an arrow".

I suppose you could use something like the gamma world artifact system. Maybe a set of items or procedures to test items. ie: Throw the ring in a fire and see if something is written on it.

Quick question, what are your favorite oneshots, /osrg/?

The ones you pull out when you just need to run something quick and fast.

personal homebrew
Prometheus, who gave fire to Man, granting him knowledge of Good and Evil, and so sought to raise an army to make war against the Angels of Avalon. He failed, and was crucified in the Crowfields of the distant west for his sin. A Chaotic Evil god, naturally. The one who the BBEG is the high priest of.

>Maybe a set of items or procedures to test items. ie: Throw the ring in a fire and see if something is written on it.
That's the sort of thing I think would be cool, but I just have no idea how to convey the appropriate way to investigate a given item to players. The way to identify the origins of the One Ring is the kind of thing I'd like to have happen, but who would ever think to toss what might be a magic ring into a fire in the first place?
>I suppose you could use something like the gamma world artifact system.
I actually never played Gamma World. Can I get a tl;dr?

OD&D. Classic enough to convince everyone to play along, even if it's not a very good system. Also, even for a oneshot you can expect everyone to have to roll up two characters apiece since only a bad DM lets their OD&D players survive.

I mean oneshots as in adventures, not just the system.

Assuming
1) Magic items are relatively rare
2) Most magic items have distinctive markings or design
3) Most magic items have HISTORY: That is, they've been around for a long time and have been used by great heroes, villains, or otherwise notable persons

History books and folklore should be a good source of clues.

Does Petty Gods count?
If yes, every god in that book. I love Shintô-type religions, with tiny gods for everything and anything.
Speaking of which, is there an other book with the same type of content?

Welcome to Diablo!

Depending on the group, a dungeon of my own design. The Tomb of King Wolomir the Impaler, a short dungeon that I've run for a few groups, and it always produces a good time. I've designed the traps to test critical thinking moreso than pure rolls, and to punish players by taking away their items or putting them in a sticky situation more than just killing them.

Post it.

Don't have a map ready to go, but basically:
The party travels through the town of Catacomb, seeking a tip they've received of an easy entry point to the fabled tomb. Catacomb is a very not-subtle Detroit rip-off, all shitty, half-abandoned slums outside of the trading districts. Very exotic and cosmopolitan to my corn-fed hoosier players, though. Throw a single, all-human random encounter at the party if they care to investigate the slums.

The tip the party recieved is an adress, in the basement of the abandoned house at the address, there is a knocked-down wall leading to the city's decrepit sewer system, barely a meter wide, with a thin path for workers and a trench for sewer sludge, filled with slimes, specifically black puddings. The slimes here are non-hostile, as they are content to eat shit and sludge. This exists to let the party discover that black puddings are weak to fire. Let embers from a torch kill random puddings in the sewer.

The sewers have another knocked-down opening to a Paris-style catacomb, all skeletons and bone-crusted walls.

cont.

I've seen so many people say that B1 is worth reading, but not worth running. Why is this?

throw a single skeleton encounter (~4 skeles) at the party in the catacombs, add another basement accessible by the sewer with, say, a zombie or a skeleton in it, and a chest with a healing potion or some other token-yet-useful item.

The catacombs lead to a staircase downwards, into the dungeon proper. Here's where my 3 traps come into play.

The first trap is a room directly under the sewers. It contains a single treasure chest, and a ceiling leaking sewer filth. A successful spot roll will reveal a black pudding leaking in through the cracks in the ceiling. If the players fail the roll, don't tell them about it besides the leaking ceiling for flavor. If a player opens the chest without noticing the pudding, the pudding drops down onto them, dealing non-lethal damage, but dissolving all (or however much the DM wants) of the player's armor and weapons, if that player fails a dex save to dodge the pudding. The player will be left with very low HP (black puddings deal like 3d6 damage, which should have killed the guy outright, but I don't like save-or-die traps) and is standing in a black pudding, so their boots are automatically dissolved. The black pudding is insta-killed by fire from a torch or such, but this should put the party on edge. Put a decent reward in the chest, but not a healing potion, that's what the one from earlier was for.

cont.

The dungeon should then open up into a hallway, containing the second and third traps.

The second trap is a room full of methane, branching off from the hallway. Describe to your players when they open the door the smell of the room, all rotten meat and rank sewage. Tell them how much worse it smells than even the actual sewers they've traveled through moments ago. If an open flame enters the room (torch or open lantern, any source of fire has already been useful against the pudding so the party should have their torchbearer specified) that flame ignites the methane, filing the room with flame for one turn and dealing 1d6 or 1/2d6 damage to each player in the room, at the DM's discretion. The point is not to kill the players here, it's to trap them in the room. The burst of flame knocks down a secret door to a room with a bit of treasure, but also knocks some rubble loose above the door they entered through, trapping the PC's in the room. The rubble can be cleared with a simple strength check, but the PCs are trapped in a room with no oxygen, with no light since their torch smothered after the trap burnt out. This is designed to scare the party moreso than kill them. Put a decent reward in the secret treasure room, so that they can feel accomplished at having bested this asphyxiation trap. Put a key in the flame room or the secret room for later use.

cont.

The third trap is the end of the hallway. As your players move toward the rooms branching off of the middle of the hallway, describe to them a strange thing off in the end of the hallway. As they approach the far end of the hallway, devoid of doors of any kind, they find that the far wall is covered in spikes. If they approach any further, have them make a dex save. The spike end of the hallway is a trap, the hallway lays on a fulcrum, and when more weight is on the spike-end, the hallway will tilt and send everything in it sliding into the spikes. The players must each save-or-die, based on dex, to jump back to the bit before the fulcrum. Even one player making this save should re balance the hallway, saving the party. This will scare the party, though I have seen PCs lure enemies into this trap to kill them easily. This is to be encouraged.

cont.

There should also be another room branching off this passage, at about the same point as the methane room, but on the opposite side. This is the second combat encounter. Put 2-3 skeletons here, as well as a ghoul. Ghouls will paralyses anything they touch, even if they don't technically score a hit. Even so, this should be a simple encounter for savvy PCs. The ghoul-room has two doors leading out of it, one to a grand staircase leading down, and hidden door, filled and hidden with piles of bones, to a room long abandoned, with some treasure (gp and a gem or two) and a single, not-immediately-hostile giant ant, with tunnels into the room for more giant ants to enter, and piles of dirt and debris from the ant's colony. The giant ant will attack if approached, and if killed, will give off pheremones attracting more ants every turn, at the DM's discretion (1/2d6 ants per turn recommended)

The staircase leads down a great hallway, flanked with countless impaled skeletons, and the embossed stories of King Wolomir and his legendary Black Blade.

The bottom of the staircase is a great door, locked, (the party must have the key from the methane room) and embossed with depictions of Wolomir's greatness and cruelty.

cont.

>I'm thinking about getting a Kindle to put my rulebook PDFs on to use at my game table. Anybody have any experience doing this? Are Kindles good for this type of thing?

Don't do it unless you hate yourself. Kindles are great for reading novels, but terrible for reference material. They're optimised for flipping one page at a time, not jumping all over the place like you do with an RPG book.

If you really want to go digital, do yourself a favour and get a tablet or laptop instead, but even those aren't as good as the real thing.

Wolomir's tomb-proper has no undead encounters; Wolomir sits on a throne atop a skeletal dragon, with his mythical Black Blade embedded in the dragon's skull. Embellish this room all you like, your players will be terrified of it.

Wolomir's Black Blade is the McGuffin the party has been seeking, and once they nut up enough to go grab it, the boss of the dungeon bursts into the room. Korgoth of Barbaria, a high-level human barbarian, and a known servant of the BBEG. he's been seeking the tomb as well, and has been one step behind the party so far, and angry about it. Make him a considerable number of levels higher than the party average. The "point" of the fight is to have the Black Blade be especially effective against him. The blade should be a OD&D-style intelligent blade, with a high int score, but only 1 ego. it won't dominate the mind of its wielder immediately, but with every human and/or lawful kill, give it 1 more ego. At first, describe the blade as being a black piece of iron set in a black stone handle, with a single black gem set in its crossguard. As the sword gains ego, change the gem from black to red, slowly. At first, it is described as a black gem. After the sword kills Korgoth (by disintegrating him, in OD&D fashion,) it becomes "perhaps the darkest shade of red" instead.

The sword makes a delightfully evil plot hook for future adventures.

And that's the Tomb. Embellish it with your favorite stuff if you like, it's pretty short. Didn't take any of my groups more than 2 hours to clear.

I feel like I should clarify, the two rooms branching off of the ghoul-room are the staircase, and a hidden room behind a bone-chocked doorway, which hides the ant-room behind it. The tomb is not hidden at all, the staircase leads down to it quite obviously. Only the ant-room is hidden, since it contains nothing but bonus treasure and potential fights.

Just felt like I could have worded that better.

What kind of encounter or other interesting stuff (apart from books) could be found in a library megadungeon(as in "a megadungeon that is a library" not "a library inside a megadungeon")?
I've got non-conventional ways of storing information (ice cores, weird shapped trees, anthills or beehives built in a meaningful way...), animals linked to knowledge, wisdom, secrets and memory (snakes, elephants, owls...), distorted space-time (because knowledge=power=energy=matters=mass), the obvious secret rooms hidden behind bookshelves abd weird librarian cults. What else?

Collect-a-thon (book series with volumes scattered widely across the dungeon). Some kind of trap triggered by talking too loudly because it's a library. Bugs that eat paper as monsters, like how wasps build nests out of the stuff or so on. Stuff with lots of different languages, maybe factions of monsters that can't communicate until you get them a translation dictionary or something. A GIANT printing press that can like crush you or something. Super tall rooms filled with balconies and ladders with flying monsters.

Oh yeah those are great ideas, thanks! I really like the trap idea.
I already had paper-eating bugs (forgot to list them) and a giant super tall room but it was more a great hall at the center of the library, with a giant staircase (and an elevator that need to be reactivated to be usable) linking (almost) all the levels together.

Clercs are Van Helsing combined with Brother Odo of Bayeux. (with sprinklings of Turpin, Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and Prester John)

It has nothing to do with "Sunday School Jesus" and everything to do with legit ordained medieval clerics who were martial people. Odo, and myths about Prester John, is the reason for the misconception about Clerics not drawing blood which OD&D used for game balancing purposes (since Fighters were balanced around being the guys who could use magic swords).

It's actually first from Empire of the Petal Throne iirc (whose Priests were straight-up Wizards with different spell lists), although i'm not sure if that particular tidbit was published before or after Dragonlance was.

How much of a difference is there between the 3.5e revised edition of CSIO and the original module? I'd like to know since the revised seems more readable and even system agnostic.

Well, just for starters the PDF is 295 pages while my PDF copy of the city-state is 100.

Skimming through the book:
>The first two(?) chapters are largely d20 rules additions.
>Skill checks are present here and there in the Crime and Punishment chapter.
>Rumors and legends are relegated to a random table rather than being place-specific

It's very wordy. Compare The Balor's Eye, first entry in both:
>Bibulis has a Wand of Fireballs and a Scroll of Disintegrate hidden under his blue cloak. He rarely ventures out of his own quarters (Hold Portal on door). Grunting Eudeina the Belly Dancer: FTR, N, LVL: 2, HTK: 3, AC: 9, Dagger. Vederburn the Minstrel: BA, N, LVL: 3, HTK: 5, AC: 9, Dagger; and a 36 girl floor show brings customers of every class (open dusk to dawn) NA 70-120, LVL: 1-12. Rizome the Barkeep is a FTR, LVL: 4, HTK: 13, AC: 9, and Sword. Wine 5 GP, mead 4 GP, Roast Leech 15 GP, Snake Stew 12 GP, Beaver Tail 27 GP, Frog Legs 17 GP. Knucklebones House Odds, 38%, Rat Race House Odds, 29%, Shell Game House Odds, 19%, Fortune Wheel House Odds, 49%, Cestus House Odds 60%. Legend, the Cauldron-Born: A Lich in the Dearthwood is creating an army of Synthetic Giants.
That's one of the more involved entries.

From the remake:
>Lewd paintings clash with abstract tapestries along the outer walls of the massive tavern and gambling hall. Perfumes and scented oils make a concerted, desperate effort to cloak the smoke, sweat and filth of the patrons and personnel, only to lose the battle. Only open from dusk to dawn, customers of various skills and backgrounds (NA [6+1d6]x10; lvl 1d12) can be found gambling or enjoying the shows during regular hours.
This is just the opening paragraph. There's two and a half more of that size.

Also, the bards are defined by their Perform [wind instrument] ranks, the meals are in copper and silver, Gather Information checks get a +5, Crusty Bibulis has double the hit points, and some other cruft.

Oh, also, the original includes a dungeon and dwarven stronghold that got removed in the remake.

I see, I think I'll stick to the original even if it is a bit wordy, the only problem I can see is the actual scan itself. The type is a bit smudgy.

>Fuckin' midgets on my lawn again.

Also, you'll want this since the map scan is pretty awful.

...

, , , , , These could have been a single post with a pastebin link.

>it came from B, not A
>evidence: thing that looks like B but explicitly isn't

So nobs are to gobs as hobnobs are to hobgobs, but what's the bandit equivalent to bugbears?

What does a Sage's spell list look like?

Evidence: Actual words from the game designers themselves.

Remove clerics, remove thieves, recycle turn undead as a possible magic sword power.
Maybe fold some of the old Warlock thief "spells" into the MU list, but that might be overkill.

So.... 4th edition.

If you could have said , why would you bother saying the end of ?

Something like;
>Restore Health
>Restore Attribute damage
>Create Light
>Cure / Suspend poison
>Countercurse and Counterspell
>Ward vs Creatures
>Ward vs Magic or Elemental
>Command / Turn Creatures
>Danger Sense
>Location Sense / Find Water or Nearest Exit to this level
>Bless (grants bonuses to rolls)
>Revive Dead (High level, obviously.)

Something like this. Personally I would use a system where it scales with level and requires a roll, with a negative modifier each time you roll a certain bad number. For example I use 2d6 and each 1 rolled on either die grants a -1 ongoing, but you could use a regular spell list for it too.

The idea here is to give all these Sages these powers as soon as possible, scaling with level and power of the character. That way they will always be a useful support class. There's no reason a level 1 support mage shouldn't be able to take a crack at healing a level 1 poison.

There are a LOT of specific reasons as to why I'm supporting these changes, but you are free to steal them at your leisure.

Reducing the classes down to 2 or 2 + race-as-classes seems reductive enough to just go for a skill or classless system at that point. You're not really getting the point of the reductionist movement here.

Thanks user, have a kobold for your trouble.

You're not really getting the point of the reductionist movement here.