/OSRG/ THREAD OP

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cavegirl did it well: whenever you encounter a language that's not on your sheet, roll to see if you know it and write the result on your sheet. whenever you put a LotFP specialist point in language, erase all languages listed as unknown.

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>with different levels of understanding
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ write down how far off your roll was?

I'm surprised I forgot to write this class up earlier. Here's my Paladin of the Word.

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/11/osr-class-paladin-of-word.html

Basically, you cast Command. A lot. On things you normally wouldn't be able to command, like plants, seas, the Sun, etc.

>How do you know it's not a wuxia game set in a superimposition of the jianghu onto medieval society?
Because I'm running it?

I mean, that does sound neat, but it's not what I'm running. My players aren't that bright. They'd probably think that a superposition meant they could wear capes and leap over tall buildings in a single bound.

Wait...

It's pretty close to a freeform magic system, and I like that.

Best post-apocalyptic system?

I like Apocalypse World.

What's your method for writing background tables?

I just write down about 5 good ideas and 40 shit ideas, then throw out the ones I don't like or use them in other classes.

They aren't balanced. They are just supposed to differentiate two Paladins. The idea is that if a party of 5 rolled up all Paladins, the results of race+stats+background would be enough to clearly differentiate them all.

And that gives me an excuse to post this photo.

GURPS
But I'd kill for an expanded and cleaned up 3rd edition of Mutant Future.

What do you think of MCC?

What the fuck. This is some kind of strange joke, right?

I should feel honored that you thought my shitpost from a few threads back was funny enough to use in your OP, but all things considered...

Pretty disappointing desu. Everything about it feels pretty slapdash compared to DCC.

>GURPS
MAID

Mechanically speaking, I have no idea. In terms of setting, Gamma World's setting is awesome, but its crunch has varied widely over the years, and none of the versions particularly wow me. That's not to say that they're bad (well, other than the d20 thing), just that none of them sing out to me as being a beacon of whatever from high atop the thing.

Do you specifically mean OSR post-apocalypse?
Otherwise, see

Yeah it's in Inbox

yes, it's in the inbox, seriously people, please go through every folder before asking

>3. You are from Foreign Parts, and you look like it. Start with the Foreign Parts skill and an outrageous costume.
No outrageous lies?

A paladin does not lie.

No outrageous truths?

Paladins can lie just fine. They just shouldn't lie pointlessly or for personal gain.
Seems like a harsh thing to give a level 1 character who can't speak to the rest of the party. Half the fun of the ludicrious lies is telling them to the other PCs and having them go "oooh, how straaaange."

I always imagined it as a sort of low-stakes collaborative world building thing. Boast about Foreign Parts until the referee's tally of secretly rejected statements hits your lie quota. Everything you say that slides is true.

Anyone know of any good fatigue systems?

Fatigue, cold, fat, and madness all take up inventory slots.

mipui.net/app/
From that other thread

I was thinking more along the lines of how fatigue kills you. I've seen this setup before, and I never understood why madness would take up inventory slots. What does your mental state have to do with encumbrance?

>fatigue
yup
>cold
sounds good
>fat
ok...
>madness
wut?

I'm having a hard time rationalizing that.

>What does your mental state have to do with encumbrance?
Oh that's simple. You're mentally unbalanced.

More seriously, certain kinds of madness make it harder for you to carry more stuff, because
1. you keep putting it down and forgetting it
2. you keep throwing stuff away because you're losing your mind
3. you are just really busy being crazy and can't sort yourself out, let alone carry, stow, and protect more things

Not all madness does this, of course.

>>fat
>ok...
Take it you haven't read Blood in the Chocolate.

honestly I'd just use a regular OSR system and do some heavy duty tweaking and refluffing to do it(I like the idea ASE has about "Gods" in fact being various AI's that can somehow grant magic for example), but that's partially cause most PA themed OSR games that already exist are a touch too low power and high lethality(even by OSR standards) for my tastes

basically I picture a mix of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards, Fist of The North Star, some bits and pieces from Adventure Time, Turn A Gundam, and Xabungle, and a big heaping helping of pretty much everything that Jack Kirby, Grant Morrison, and Tom Scioli have ever done

probably some other influences too, but those are some of the main ones to pop in my head

Besides detailed domain management what else does ACKs have to offer?

How it does races.

>My players aren't that bright.
Would you need to tell them?

I've played almost every edition of GW. 1e and 2e are functionally similar as I recall, the main difference just being the polish on the latter.

3e left a lot of the main conventions in place but adopted the big stupid color coded chart from MSHRPG. An attempt to modernize the game further I suppose. Either way it was rushed to print, had a ton of errata, and always seemed a bit incoherent to me.

Didn't even notice 4e and wasn't willing to pick up Alternity to learn 5e.

Then you got Omega World which is one of the better versions by my estimate. It's d20 based and just well detailed enough. It really brings the gonzo. As a mini-game published in Polyhedron it never received any support. But it wasn't really designed to so there you go.

Now 6e gets a bit more flack than it deserves I feel. It did have problems but I think many of those were about perception. It didn't help that it was hung on the d20 Modern frame which was never a well developed system. I think it had some good ideas and some decent execution but it was not Gamma World. It was geared to be more serious and gritty and GW has always been more gonzo science fantasy than gritty post apocalypse.

7e Gamma World was based on D&D 4e and for that reason alone I panned it. The 6 years after its publication I found a physical copy and I actually like it quite a bit. It's weird and silly and makes better use of the 4e game engine than D&D did.

I'll also mention Gamma 5. It's a 5e D&D hack and it's also pretty good. It's slick and goofy and just a lot of fun.

>Would you need to tell them?
Seems to me like good policy to tell your players the tone and setting inspiration of the game to ensure everyone's on the same page. You don't want one guy thinking it's Conan and one guy thinking it's Dark Souls.

I have. It's kinda shit.

I'm not opposed to fat being an encumbrance factor but it seems like a rather specialist application. Sudden weight gain doesn't factor much into my games.

well for one thing it has one of the better OSR Fighters thanks to how it handles Cleave, it offers a nice variety of classes, including what's probably the best way to handle Race As Class(by giving each race several classes instead of just one), as well as an excellent system to make your own classes in it's first supplement

that's just off the top of my head though

>I have. It's kinda shit.
Agreed.
> Sudden weight gain doesn't factor much into my games.
What about six months of downtime, eating well (on sudden vast wealth), and enjoying the high life before another call to adventure?

>You don't want one guy thinking it's Conan and one guy thinking it's Dark Souls.
If one thinks its the Hobbit and another thinks its Baron Munchausen you might have problems, but Conan and Dark Souls seem similar enough.

That seems reasonable. Again, not something I'd have making a regular appearance in any of my games. I'd probably go with stat loss and increased fatigue were such a case to arise.

What game is it for? I'm kinda new to OSR and I've never encountered that "template" thing.

Arnold K's homebrew called the GLOG
goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/05/the-glog.html
goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/09/the-glog-wizards.html

It's for the GLoG, there is a large debate over whether it's "really osr" or not. Basic gist of the system is that you gain templates as you level up. These templates give you cool abilities that make you more of an adventurer. You can have a max of 4 templates and get one each level.

In terms of advancement systems in the blogosphere, it is very atypical.

Thanks, sounds interesting.
>there is a large debate over whether it's "really osr" or not
Bleh. As far as I'm concerned, when I say "OSR" what I really mean is "a high mortality system centered around exploration and with quick character creation". I'm not saying my definition is the best one, or even a good one, but if a game fits these criterias, I'll take it.
Besides, I'm more interested in what I've seen called "neo-clones" than in outright "retro-clones". They're fun too, but when it comes to RPGs I've always liked more experimental stuff.

got a source for that pic?

The one I'm writing.
Not really, it'll be yet another piece of schlock.

I'm trying to create a freeform magic system for OSR play, that way players can freely create magical effects based on whatever specific situation or creative thing they think up. It obviously needs to have daily use limits and ritual components however, and should be more based on ritual/occult style stuff to give it a more legit feeling.

How should I go about this? I want to nick parts of gloomtrain.blogspot.com/2017/07/hocus-pocus.html but I dislike the focus on money to translate power levels. Is there another method?

Having more fighters, wizards, clerics, elves, dwarves and to a lesser extent halflings in the party is pretty much always useful.

But what about Thieves? How could you make it so having more then one thief is always useful?

Dark Souls has some deep tragic hopelessness going on that's a bit different from what you'd see in, say, Conan the Barbarian.

Not to mention how the layman's perspective on Dark Souls is that it's brutally difficult and will kill you at the drop of a hat, while the layman's perspective on Conan is slashing through a dozen men or something along those lines.

Scarlet Heroes vs. Tomb of Horrors, basically.

Rituals taking time seems pretty natural. Spend turns upon turns (and wandering monster check upon wandering monster check) to get the effects you want. That's a natural limit - can you afford to take an hour to erode the wall or whateverthefuck?

Maybe add being able to "hang" spells to trigger later during combat if you need combat magics, I guess - this could also just be magical powders and whatnot, which you should probably limit through resources. (e.g. weight, cost, availability, rarity of herbs, whatever.)

You probably also want the players to choose some broad themes that their magics must adhere to, so you don't get Mr. Fireball casting wannabe Animate Dead or whatever. Unless you like the somewhat incoherent themes of the existing Magic-User, I guess.

Also, you'll want some basic guidelines. At what level can they instantly defeat an enemy, and how easily? How much direct damage can they do? How many enemies can they affect? What can and can't they heal, and when? Stuff like that.

Two boosted Listen rolls are more likely to succeed than one. Two wallclimbers are more useful than just one. Two lockpickers are more useful than just one (especially with the can't-try-again-on-fail rules some editions have).

Also, of course, it's always nice to have a spare in case something unfortunate happens. Like, for example, certain editions having traps be triggered on a failed Remove Trap roll.

dr. Shill returns again. This time with even worse content

Thief skills have a high fail %. Multiple thieves increases the likelihood that at least one will succeed and do the job that needs doing.

This is the absolute worst OSR thread in the history of OSR threads.

Here, have the correct paper sized, bookmarked version!

Can I ask something instead of the shitty question in the OP?

How many of you play vancian magic straight?

I like to do it like: you have 1-4 slots for spells; and spells aren't forgotten but they take HP instead.

Also I wonder how does it feel to have spells memorized and ready to trigger. I feel like a mage with a prepared fireball would be always salty and angry, but another with a teleportation spell can have troubles with walking balanced sometimes

Where in Dying Earth do spells take HP?

Those wilderness encounter tables on page 72 seem pretty unusable - I don't see any of the subtables.

It's also a weird amalgam of printings overall: the Balrog is in, Hobbits and Ents have their names, but Clerics don't need to choose alignment until level 7 (5th print only) and the rules for "other character types" talks about dragons rather than balrogs. None of the Tolkien monsters have notes on that, either, like they do in the pre-Estate C&D printings.

It kind of looks like they just took the 5th print, made the obvious CTRL+R choices for Ents/Hobbits/etc., put in what they knew about the removed Balrog, and called it a day.

The random inclusion of house rules is also a bit worrying - e.g. page 31 suggesting that Morale goes between 2 and 12, when going by Chainmail would have it be between 6 (light, peasants or levies) and 10 (mounted knights) and some monsters have explicit suggestions (e.g. Gnolls have +2 morale).

That's what I caught from skimming through, at least.

Not to invite faggotry, but I don't suppose /osr/ has a discord or other communication platform?

I basically never seen a thief use their backstab ability, at least as it's written in B/X. I'm thinking it might get more use if it's more an option of resource expense. Below are the normal rules and an alteration.
While I think it's okay, it runs into an issue where i can't get the flavor right, it seems like something anyone would be able to do. Anyone got ideas?

Backstab. When striking unnoticed from behind, a thief gains a bonus of +4 on "to hit" rolls and inflicts twice the normal amount of damage.

Cunning Attack. The thief focuses their body and weapon to its maximum to deal a devastating blow. They gain a bonus of +4 on “to hit” rolls and inflict twice as much damage. Whether the attack is a hit or a miss this causes the weapon to break and the thief suffers a -1 penalty to future “to hit” rolls and damage until they rest for one turn.

Maybe just imitate some later Assassin mechanics: the Thief spends one round studying his target and not attacking, and then attacks the next round with +4 to-hit and the backstab multiplier.

If you want to balance it with the original for some godawful reason, make them roll vs. Move Silently to study properly.

Just make sure to include the O/AD&D scaling backstab modifiers.

Go the DCC route: Increased to-hit chance, increased damage for daggers, blackjacks or blowguns, and an auto crit.

So in B/X: +2 to hit from behind, extra +2 if a thief, d10 damage with the dagger, and a damage multiplier depending on level (x2, x3, etc)

Thieves rarely get to backstab, and when they do, it's like once an encounter. Make it special.

there is a discord, I can't work out how to link it.

So, first up, use Flesh and Grit. Do it, you won't regret it!
Then, every attack against somebody who doesn't see it coming goes straight to flesh. Hurrah!

>correct paper sized
Are you the user who made a sweet wraparound cover for printing this on Lulu?

some mechanics I'm thinking lately about that:

Damage has no to hit roll. Instead both contenders roll damage and the difference is dealt to the lowest roller. (any modifiers apply here)

If you backstab or any other sneak attack, your opponent cannot parry this and you deal your full damage. So, if you manage to sneak on your enemy there is a chance that you kill it directly

HP in my rules is rarely higher than 6. Weapons do 1d6 all, +str mod for melee weapons.

First discord got taken over by SJW autists
Second got created by le real 4chinz oldfig autists
Moral of the story is you don't want a discord

>HP in my rules is rarely higher than 6. Weapons do 1d6 all, +str mod for melee weapons.
How high does the strength modifier go?

Also, are monsters also limited to 6hp or is that mostly just for humans?

>How high does the strength modifier go?
up to 3, conan being a +2 and a tough warrior a +1
>Also, are monsters also limited to 6hp or is that mostly just for humans?
monsters can have a little more, yeah. Also the fighter class can raise it up to a max of 8 (so I guess that they can endure a common sneak attack, I'd interpret it as having a high danger sense so they're really prepared for ANYTHING)

>up to 3, conan being a +2 and a tough warrior a +1
Is this generated by 3d6 or is there some other methodology going on here?

>What about six months of downtime, eating well (on sudden vast wealth), and enjoying the high life before another call to adventure?
How the fuck do you guys structure your games where this would happen? In my games, characters are constantly going into dungeons or crawling the wilderness, not dicking around picking bimbos.

How would you do Druids in LotFP?
Reflavoring the Cleric is easy enough, but should I allow a player to choose whether they want to specialize in Shapeshifting or having animal companions? Or just give them both abilities?

OD&D has you heal 1hp/day, has time pass by 1 in game day per 1 IRL day, and has Magic-Users take 1 week/spell level for researching spells and between a week and a year for magic item manufacture.

It adds up. Also, playing with multiple PCs per player is a thing.

But yeah, in a modern campaign with breakneck pacing that kind of rule just won't work.

>having animal companions
Typically a spell in TSR D&D, I think? Give it the Turn Undead treatment.

>I don't suppose /osr/ has a discord or other communication platform?

We do, it's /osrg/.

Can somebody explain to me the science and methodology behind Saving Throw progression? A player asked me what the differences are, I said some are better than others. But had no explanation as to why or how.

>How the fuck do you guys structure your games where this would happen?
Do you not??

Editions move the order of saves around, so a general rule is kind of fucky depending on where you are.

>shapeshifting
spells
>animal companions
retainers

Why complicate things?

Th..thanks, I didn't think of that

Alright, so the way to get this is to go way back to OD&D.

The Fighting-Man is very much the everyman, and so looking at their table is useful to see the "default":
12/13/14/15/16
That's, in order, Death Ray/Wands/Stone/Dragonbreath/Spells.

So from this we can see that outright death effects are the easiest to resist, reversible instant death effects are more difficult, massive amounts of damage are slightly more difficult again, and generic spells are the most difficult to resist.
I skipped wands from that summary, because wands are clearly just easier to save against since they're "worse spells" - probably because you get a hundred shots in this edition. Note how wand fireballs are 6d6/100 shots/Save vs. 13, while staff fireballs are 8d6/200 shots/Save vs. 16. The latter, being the Staff of Power, is better in every respect. It still loses out in firepower to 9th-level Magic-Users, though.

Now that we've established the generic example, let's look at where the other two classes diverge.

Magic-Users are +1/+1/-1/+1/-1. They're worse against death effects, wands, and dragon breath, but better against petrification and spells.
I suspect that this is because they're the class that's going to be dealing with spells and petrification - Stone-Flesh isn't a Cleric spell. Don't ask me about wands, I honestly don't know what's up there. Balance?

Clerics are -1/-1/+0/+1/-1. They're worse against dragon breath, equal against petrification, and better against death rays, wands, and spells.
They're a magical class and Evil High Priests are the primary source of (fingers of) Death Rays.

One thing you'll notice here is that the Fighting-Man actually has a niche: dragonfire.

(cont.)

Progression, then. Generally, progression occurs at the same rate as hit rates increase: every three levels for Fighting-Men, every four for Clerics, every five for Magic-Users. (The Thief later got the Cleric's hit rates with the M-Us saves. It's weird.)

The Fighter's saves against Death Rays, wands, and spells generally improve by +2/+2/+2/+2. Stone get +2/+2/+2/+3. Dragon breath, meanwhile, improves by +2/+3/+2/+3.

Magic-Users get an accelerated +2/+3/+3 rate against Death Rays/Wands/Stone/Dragon, presumably because they improve so slowly. Spells are +3/+4/+5, because magic.

Clerics get +2/+3/+3 against Death Rays, +2/+3/+2 against Wands and Stone, +2/+3/+3 against Dragon Breath, and +3/+3/+2 against spells.

From what I've heard, these values are mostly just there because of gutfeel.

I made some graphs comparing save-by-XP a year or so ago - I'll see if I can dig it up.

>got a source for that pic?
Not offhand, sorry.
>If one thinks its the Hobbit and another thinks its Baron Munchausen you might have problems, but Conan and Dark Souls seem similar enough.
You meet a crazy old witch in the woods who claims she can heal your wound.

Is this likely to require
1. You to bang her
2. You to fight her when she transforms into a snake or a wolf
or
3. A tragic curse that slowly and pathetically (in the original sense) ends your kingdom, your family, and your life, until you are nothing but a hollow shell?

Think carefully - the players would.

At least I'm a doctor now.

What are they doing all winter? Or while the Wizard builds his tower? Or while they wait for reinforcements? Games can go slow-fast-slow if required.

Yep, got it printed a month or two ago. I printed a sleeved hard cover, but I recently updated the Lulu files to fit staple bound because it lays flat on the table.

>cavegirl did it well
Huh?

Wolfpacks and Winter Snow.

I do everything well

in this instance, it was a slight variation on the LotFP version, which boils down to 'roll to see if you know the language when it first becomes relevant'.

>What are they doing all winter? Or while the Wizard builds his tower? Or while they wait for reinforcements? Games can go slow-fast-slow if required.

Going into the mega dungeon. Or do you think castle greyhawk is far from the city of greyhawk?