/osrg/ - Milk and Cereal General

Anyone recall the name of the GLOG? class where you built your character as a unique monster, level by level?

N...no? I don't think that exists (at least on anyone's blog). The closest thing I can think of is Cavegirl's "Spook" class for Esoteric Enterprises.

Closest Arnold made was goblinpunch.blogspot.com/2016/01/new-class-demon-blade.html
but that's clearly not what you want. Do you at least remember what blog it was from?

Ah, that was it.
Thanks!

Is it resonable to increase the amount of weak debuff or curse effects in dungeons? Things like stat reductions or minor poisons. I feel they're really uncommon.

Sure, but throw in more minor buffs.

Ok, I'm kind of stuck for an idea for a GLOG class.

I want to do a sort of mirror-Paladin who doesn't use command to shout the world into order. Instead, this paladin uses whispers to ask the world what to do.

Level 1 class features are:

Vow of Instrumentality
You gave up of your ability to act freely. You cannot shed blood or do harm. Even indirect harm you personally cause (setting a trap, pushing someone into water, etc.) is forbidden. Mechanically, you cannot personally inflict damage. If you do, you suffer an equal amount of damage and lose access to all other Witch Paladin abilities for a number of days equal to the damage inflicted. More serious offenses may result in permanent loss of abilities, etc.

Whispers
You whisper to a creature or elemental and ask it to do something for you. You cannot offer any exchange or reward. You just appeal to its better nature. This isn't a command. The target can refuse. At the end of the duration listed, the target must make a Morale check or obey. Neutral or helpful targets will obey without requiring a check. This effect does not appear to be supernatural; the target is helping you out of a sense of duty or kindness.

Things you can speak to:
-All living or undead creatures
-Ghosts, spirits, angels, summoned entities
-All spells
-The Elements: Water, Ice, Fire, Lightning, Air, Stone, Acid

Things you cannot speak to:
-Dead creatures
-Dead material (bones, dried hay, grain)
-Metal

Side Note: You may need to think outside the box. If you can't ask a rope to untie itself, can you ask the air to do it?

The time it takes to make the target take a Morale Check is indicated on the table below (attached). You can continue trying if the target passes the first test, although they gain a +2 bonus for each attempt.

+++
Does this make any sense at all?

Why can't Paladins draw more inspiration from the 12 Peers?

Because that kind of paladin is for Knights. "Paladin" as "Chivalric Exemplar" is for them. It's just like how the word "cleric" or "monk" means different things in different contexts.

The real question is, why can't Paladins draw more inspiration from the 12 Chairs?
youtube.com/watch?v=Wt1lHyuTDWE

First off, this kind of functions the same as Paladin of the Word, only it's kind of worse. The vow is really restrictive. Characters can suck at combat, but they should at least be able to try. The table is pretty complicated, I can't see any defined pattern to it and I'd assume you'd have described it to us if it existed. Nothing is under any obligation to obey you (or when they are, it takes a long time before the effect sets in) and you are limited in what you can "whisper" to.

Maybe a paladin of silence would be more fitting? Something revolving the void and nothingness or zen meditation. Also, silence is more of an opposite to shouting than whispering is.

Kind of? I'm trying to get a different take on the idea.

Paladin of the Word
-Shouts small (1-4 word) commands in the voice of God which must instantly be obeyed. Since they are short their effects don't last very long, usually.
-Fights with sword and chainmail too.

-??? Paladin
-Whispers requests of any length and complexity. You could ask a storm to start chucking lightning bolts at any redheads it sees. You could tell a moth to to find some eagles. You could tell a king to adjust his taxation policy. Subtle, long-term stuff.

What are some resources in creating rival adventuring parties? Like in terms of classes and backgrounds and stuff?

OK. You know how you're supposed to keep your players' sheets? (or at least master copies)
Photocopy the sheets. Replace the name. Mix-and-match sentences from their backgrounds.

Is Jesse Custer a Paladin of the Word?

From the limited, amount I know, yes. And Kilgrave would be closer to a Paladin of Whispers, except with no time limit.

>game based on OSR but with no class/one class (slightly gimped fighter)
>anyone can learn spells but scrolls are rare and spellbooks rarer
Should I try to write this up or nah? It's basically Searchers of The Unknown but with less handwaving.

Are there any rule changes/additions from Veins of the Earth that are worth incorporating into non-subterranean Lamentations of the Flame Princess games? Considering using the new encumbrance/inventory rules, since it seems pretty intuitive, but I'm worried about how it handles armor encumbrance and people who just got unlucky rolling stats.

>Maybe a paladin of silence would be more fitting?
Paladins of the Word *run on* a magic vow of silence.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vow_of_Enclosure
Paladins who never, ever leave the megadungeon, but get to mess with the map?

Was it for undead? I saw that here a few weeks ago.

>Subtle, long-term stuff.
That's bad guy stuff.

That's a Daihatsu Hijet, those just do that if you leave the back empty.
>tfw read the filename as "the nigger has arrived.gif" until just now

What's the deal with the sun?

He gets 12 sluts and a palace annually to make sure the plants grow.
Someone hired him for a war once, but he showed up to the wrong one.

I've played Shadowrun for a long ass time and I still misread that.

...

>That's bad guy stuff.
So is giving people unbreakable commands from God if you use it the wrong way.

Subtle, long-term stuff is important.

>Look at that, Dougal! A perfectly square bit of dirt

What are some downtime things my players can do when they're in town and not dungeon crawling?

yes please.

- Look for other adventures, tasks, jobs, assistance
- Rest
- Carouse
- Worship
- Shop
- Repair
- Replace
- Adventure while in town (necessary for the quest to be setup and appropriate for the town's size)
- Deal with random encounters more appropriate for being in town than in a dungeon or the wilderness

Anyone have or read the first issue of The Wizard's Scroll?

For games that use ability checks, does including skills as "like ability checks but with a bonus for those with proficiency" really add anything to the game? The wizard is already better at arcana than the rogue just from his intelligence modifier.

Could someone please explain OP's pic for me? I somewhat know the story of TSR but not precisely.

The only thing I know is that Don Kaye is funny because the only significant thing he did other than being a co-founder was that he died, and Boot Hill was published in memoriam of him.

who's been naughty and who's been nice

...

These memes are supposed to be ironic, you dip

gettin' the fonts right

>calling a macro a meme

Dank.

Lorraine Williams was the person sent in to save TSR from impending bankruptcy in its latter days. Famously ended the get-your-friends-on-the-payroll 24-hour party playtesting at TSR, and got loads of products on the shelves fast enough to keep TSR alive for several more years until it was bought out.
(Without her work, TSR would likely have crashed and burned and RPGs might have wound up next to their cousin, the CYOA book, on the pile of forgotten 80s fads, along with legwarmers and girlwatcher sunglasses)
She could be portrayed as malicious, but it's also reasonable to see her as the grownup who came in to make all the children get off their asses and clean their rooms. They hated her for it, sure, but that doesn't mean she was wrong to do it.

The Blumes were the ones who took TSR away from Gygax and kicked him out, which may have had a lot to do with the downward spiral of the company, and certainly was the most malicious and greedy thing any of these four actors did. They were also the ones who brought in Lorraine Williams.

Gygax kicked Arneson out, but largely for the same reasons Williams ended playtesting -- Arneson was on the payroll for many years, and only had one dungeon module and a stack of unfinished notes which would be published (still unfinished) as "The First Fantasy Campaign" by Judges' Guild. Guy was a great DM, but it was a valid question to ask just what TSR was paying him to do all those years. Answer: ???
Gygax also made the bad decision to get the Blumes involved, then ran off to Hollywood for months while they plotted to steal his multimillion dollar company from him.

Don Kaye's fault was to die and leave all his shares in TSR to his wife, who hated his dumb wargaming hobby and thought nothing was going to come of this TSR thingy. This led to Gygax scrambling to find someone he could "trust" to buy the shares, which led to the Blumes and that led to... ALL the bad shit that happened later.

So basically, Lorraine was a necessary evil, Gygax was a fool, and the Blumes were pricks?

Yeah, pretty much. Gygax had no business sense, which was supposed to be Don Kaye's area of expertise, and the Blumes sharked him hard.

Did the 1st edition aD&D DMG have the best procedures for stronghold play?

>No mini game nonsense for players
>Still dependent on players rolling up their sleeves and patrolling their territories
>Simple

Yes.

I've dreamed of a game like that, user.

>Fighter is the only class
>A "wizard" is just a dungeon delver who's collected a fuckton of scrolls

Sounds perfect.

Jokes aside, has anyone made an OSR class out of that yet?

Anyone have any methods for "dressing" hexstocks?

I use the aD&D 1st ed random dungeon room table for stocking hexes (empty/landmark,treasure,monster/lair,special,trick,trap) and it's easy enough to make them into game-able entities, but I am a little stuck on how to make them interesting or to help give rise to an interesting "milieu"

Do you guys ever feel like playing out these fantasies of being murderous thieves might be kind of unhealthy? Like even a little?

Absolutely, and that's why I do it.

TFW I want to read through Elfmaids & Octopi and Planet Algol, but the white letters on black background hurts my eyes.

The Paracelsian adage applies: the dose makes the poison.

That's basically Dungeon Robber.

I use a reader called Atril which has an "invert colors" option. Check your reader, it might have something similar.

On Mac: System Preferences | Keyboard | Shortcuts | Accessibility | Invert colors

>Dungeon Robber class
>leveling up makes you better at getting hit and better at running away
>appendix in the back full of alternate classes

Thanks for the suggestions fellas, but I'm using a laptop running Windows.

Update: I found a Firefox add-on called "No Color" that makes everything readable.

Alright, I'll get cracking. Just don't expect any miracles.

Good. Clerics were a mistake.

You're the mistake, Clerics are the best class, you fucking heathen!

Illusionists you mean, surely?

A close second, but clerics remain the best of the original three classes in the LBB.

I'm sure you'll get use out of this too.
This could be post-ironic. I hear it's all the rage.
Good luck!

I currently use this, compiled from LotFP and several blogs.

I. SKILL TRAINING. 2000gp per pip level (1=2000, 2=4000, 3=6000). 1 month per pip. Max 3/6 for non-Specialists.

II. LANGUAGE TRAINING. 2000gp per standard. 5000gp per exotic.

III. WORKING ODD JOBS. 2d6x10gp per day.

IV. RELAXING. Doubles healing rate.

V. PROPERTY/CONSTRUCTION
Upkeep 50gp per month. Taxes 1d4+3% of value per year (1d10+3% per year if no accountant).
Wood. 50gp per 10'.
Stone. 100gp per 10'.
Each story increases the base cost by itself.
One laborer can perform 50gp worth of construction per week.

VI. INVESTMENT
Stable: Grow 1d8-4% per month.
Risky: Grow 1d20-10% per month.
Wild: Grow 1d100-50% per month.
+1d10% if have accountant.
If final growth is positive, received that much money in cash.

VII. CRAFTING/SPELL RESEARCH
Holy Water. Cast Bless for 10 days.
Writing Scroll. 50gp per day. Tier# x1d4+1 days.
Researching Existing Spell. 20gp per day. Tier# x1d6+1 days.
Creating new Spell. 100gp per day. Tier# x2d6+2 days.
Potion. 50gp per day. Spell Power (#CD) x1d4+1 days.
Wand. 50gp per day. Spell Power x10 x1d6+1 Days.
Weapons cost 1/5 their base price. Number of days depends on the size.
Armor costs 1/4 its base price. Number of days varies on size.
Adding a magic enchantment costs 500-2000gp depending on magnitude. 2d6+2 days.

Each day must make a successful Craft skill check.
2d6 + Successful Craft/Arcana check
11-12 Great Success! 8-10 Success. 4-7 Failure. 2-3 Terribly Wrong!
Great Success or Failure: When using potion or scrolls, DM rolls a "trigger dice." On a d6 roll of 1-4, it either fails or something awesome happens.
Apprentice +1 bonus.
Master +2 bonus.
Smith/Library/Laboratory +1 bonus.

VIII. PRAYER. Gain a blessing.
1. Speed +10
2. Haste - double speed, AC +2, Adv ST
3. Ability Score +2
4. Attack Bonus / Damage Bonus +2
5. Weapons count as Magic
6. Luck - reroll any attack, ability check, skill check, or ST.
7. Saving Throw Bonus +2
8. AC +2
9. Magic Resistance
10. Darkvision
11. Heroism (+15 HP, +1d4 to attack/ST)
12. Rejuvenate (removes exhaustion, poison, etc)
13. Bane (enemies suffer 1d4 penalty on all rolls in your presence)
14. Resistance (vs damage type)
15. Quick Casting
16. Skill bonus
17. Hidden in Shadows
18. Truesight
19. Mind Shield
20.Casting Dice +1

IX. PHILANTHROPY. Money for 80% XP, Spend d4/6/8 x100gp, small possibility (1-4/10).
1. Recipients are a front for a sinister organization. You are their dupe.
2. Your donations attract the interest of thieves.
3. Your donations arouse envy. Gain an enemy.
4. People know you by name in this town. +1 reactions / reputation
5. Everything you buy here is 10% cheaper.
6. You gain some good information that could be useful to you.
7. You save a merchant from declaring bankruptcy. Money is now invested.
8. You gain an ally
9. A local institution honors you and becomes your ally.
10. Your name is recognized throughout every settlement within 30 miles. Previous result, plus people make a statue of you and you gain +1 to reaction rolls when dealing with people within 5 hexes.

X. CAROUSING. Money for XP. Spend d4, d6, or d8 x100gp. 1-4/10, 1-6/10, 1-8/10 chance something happened.
1. Fire! you burned something down on accident.
2. Shanghaied. Wake up on a pirate ship.
3. Friendship, you saved their life and they owe you. 1d6 for importance.
4. Animosity! you insulted a noble or hit on the wrong girl. Roll 1d6 for importance of enemy.
5. Windfall. Gain 1d6x100gp in a risky gamble.
6. Loss! you lose 1d6x100 gp in a risky gamble
7. Wake up in bed with someone. d6: 1 servant, 2 dead hooker, 3 super model, 4 random other PC, 5 important local NPC, 6 1d4 gnomes.
8. Horseplay, d6: 1-4 lose your mount to thievery or gambling. 5 gain a horse. 6 gain an exotic mount.
9. Arrested. 2d6x10gp bail, public punishment. 10% chance execution.
10. Wounded
11. Unusual gift (baby, taxidermied pegasus, slave, pet cat, obviously cursed item, tavern)
12. You adopted a pet monkey
13. Wanted for crime (framed?)
14. Fall in love.
15. Combat! Barfight, thieves, cage fight
16. Robbed! Lose 2d6x10gp or magic item.
17. Disease from hookers
18. Inducted, accidently joined secret cult.
19. New tattoo
20. Man of the Town. Double XP.

(3/3)

Lorraine WIlliams was pretty incompetent though. And those "loads of products" were actually a bad thing, because they diluted the fanbase. WOTC excising a bunch of the gameworlds was painful, but neccesary.

They might have been a bad thing for fans, but they provided a much needed inflow of cash at the time.
You could maybe say she's incompetent, but TSR did much better financially once she came in than it had for years. She certianly didn't know much about gaming, it's true, and she didn't know much about the RPG industry, but on the other hand, nobody knew much about the RPG industry at that point, it was largely people just winging it.

Williams is responsible for TSR putting out all those big, beautiful box sets that 2e is famous for.

No they were bad for the company as a whole. There's a good article opn GameSpy explaining it :

>"Picture it this way," Slavicsek says, "it's raining money outside and you want to catch as much of it as you can. You can either make a really big bucket or waste your time and attention by creating a lot really small buckets -- either way, you're never going to make more rain." In plain English, TSR, by putting out a lot of product lines instead of supporting the main Dungeons & Dragons line, fragmented the marketplace. The same audience was giving the same amount of money to TSR every year, which had taken on the additional financial burden of creating, producing, and supporting hundreds of products. It needed to grow the marketplace, and these brand extensions weren't doing that.

>The many settings also contributed to something called "Brand Dilution." The original Dungeons & Dragons brand stood for something. You knew essentially what you were getting when you bought a D&D product. All of these new settings began to play havoc with the rule sets and philosophy of the game. As the settings grew more popular, they began to diverge from one another, advancing along their chosen philosophical paths, essentially becoming their own separate games.

>In not too many years, players had stopped identifying themselves as D&D players and were instead identifying themselves by the setting they played in. A Planescape player was very different than a Forgotten Realms player, and their rule systems were beginning to become incompatible with each other. More significant from the company's point of view, though, was that players would never buy a product set in any other setting than their own. Far from catching more money in their small buckets, TSR was actually making the audience smaller!

pc.gamespy.com/articles/539/539628p2.html

fellow-pro-cleric-user here. The only thing that gives me pause about a PC cleric is shouldn't they be taking orders from a higher level cleric, or the deity itself if they are high enough level? This conflicts with PC free agency.

Even accepting the conflict—maybe embracing it, after all, secret agents take orders and people love playing spies—there is the burden on the DM of playing another NPC, and a critical one that must be played with gravitas at that. That's why I've had the thought that the cleric's deity should be played by a player who does not attend the session. The player can submit questions to an oracle, and the DM resolves them between sessions with this non-session player.

>and only had one dungeon module and a stack of unfinished notes
3 modules, no?

That Gamespy article's very much a long term analysis. But when she took over there WAS no long term; TSR was losing money fast and was likely to be out of business soon, and there weren't going to be any buyers because it looked very much like RPGs had had their moment in the sun way back in 1982, and the fad was over and there was no money to be made selling elf games.
None of the RPG companies operating then were notably profitable. TSR was the 900 lb gorilla that owned most of the market, and it was collapsing fast.

You can say, looking back, that diluting the brand was a bad idea, but not diluting it wasn't working at the time either. What TSR needed was to get people to buy new stuff, and quick. Afterward, there was enough of a proven track record of TSR making profitable products that potential buyers actually had an interest.

That seems very much like a win to me. Since then the market has learned not to "dilute the brand" so much, but that kind of hindsight wasn't available yet.

There was the Blackmoor book, which contained Temple of the Frog.... And that's all I can think of published while he was with TSR.

He published Dungeonmaster's Index and First Fantasy Campaign outside of TSR. When he came back in the mid 80s he published a few things, but that was with David Ritchie there to do all the finishing work.

I've just never seen those things as an obstacle to a good game, or to playing a cleric PC.

In a world without telephones or even reliable mail service, it's going to be hard for the church elders to maintain a strict hierarchy outside their immediate domain. Unless they player seeks out vatican style intrigue, they can basically ignore it.

If the setting has a highly organized church, they may have to acknowledge the authority of their church hierarchy, to the same degree the fighters and magic users have to acknowledge the authority of a duke while visiting the castle.

As for the deity... well, I just don't care to play deities as if they were corporate CEOs, with specific directions for their "employees". Our own world has held gentle mystics and brutal vagabond crusaders who worshipped in the same church without contradiction.

Who /weetabix/ here?

Maybe, but I have another bone to pick with you anyway. Gygax was committed to cutting the waste before Lorraine took over, that arguably was what rescued the company more. The Blumes were just awful.

Yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable argument to make. I'm just pushing back against the "Lorraine Williams is evil!" meme, which was silly.

What are the best spells for a level 3 chuuni wizard?

>Yeah, that's a perfectly reasonable argument to make. I'm just pushing back against the "Lorraine William
Fair enough. Just so long as you understand you're defending a woman who tried to enforce a copyright claim on the word "dragon".
That alone is enough for me to consign her to the Blood War forever.

[Charm Person] so people will humor you.
[Sleep] so people will stick around for your speeches.
[ESP] to avoid people who refuse your greatness.

At level 4, pick up [Phantasmal Force] to live out your fantasies.

I can't come up with a good set of keywords to find it, but someone once tried to patent patenting offices.

>to the same degree the fighters and magic users have to acknowledge the authority of a duke while visiting the castle
Other classes are free to acknowledge authority, but because a cleric's spells are granted by a deity I don't see how they have this choice.

...

>a cleric's spells are granted by a deity
I mean, not nessesarilly. They could be powered by the cleric's raw faith, be the result of ritualized rites the church knows rather than direct intervention, be pacts whereby if the cleric keeps up their side of the bargain they're granted the power, or all sorts of other things. It depends entirely on the metaphysics.

novelupdates.com/series/i-work-as-a-healer-in-another-worlds-labyrinth-city-wn/ is a guilty pleasure read of mine, but I like how it handles it.
The MC is a powerful cleric because he was the head of a New Age Cult before getting Iseaki'd, and the recent chapters involve higher-ups from an established religion staging performances with shills to gather faith.

>leveling up makes you better at getting hit
What?
>appendix in the back full of alternate classes
Well yeah, but it's optionnal. Playing the flash version, I had plenty of dungeon robbers (as in characters with the "dungeon robber" class) who basically became wizards, fighters or clerics solely through the gear they accumulated. Never got a character that really felt like a thief without actually being a thief though.

>leveling up makes you better at getting hit
Sounds about right.

They can take more hits.
>I had plenty of dungeon robbers [...] who basically became wizards, fighters or clerics
Mine always became gimped fighters.
>without actually being a thief though.
Thief always feels worse than Dungeon Robber to me, since you only get one chance at sneak.
I could maybe see a high level hiWIS thief working, but even that sounds sketchy.

Every level get 1d6 hit points.

Every odd level, including level 1, get +1 to hit
Every even level, get +1 to sneak

Why does it need to be more complex then that?

I put together a general adventurer class. It's basically a cleric without any cleric spells. Instead, they get a handful of non-combat skills and MU spells up to spell level 3.

I wanted to make something that would fit in with the rest of the classes but not step on any toes. I may have made the spell and skill advancement a little weak to make up for this, though.

This is the first thing like this I've ever put together, so please take a look and let me know if you have any advice on how to improve it.

Take out Detect Secrets. Roleplay and search rules cover it well enough.
Pidgin as-written also sounds better as roleplay, though I could see a smattering-type skill working.
Gouge the spell casting and add an X-spelllevel chance to preserve scrolls skill.

That would give every adventurer every skill (hide, tinker, bush, scroll) but still leave 6 options for point distribution.