/osrg/ Old School Renaissance General

Nah. What do you think the town is made of?

Blackmoor did it.

>but it doesn't have anything about gods
Here's something workable
youtube.com/watch?v=_uIv7elByXY
not!Set and not!Isis -> Chaos
not!Horus and not!Osiris -> Law

It has odd implications, but they don't matter if you ignore them.

How is Isis chaos? She's Osiris's wife.

Thanks, user. I forgot that TFT turned into Man-to-Man which turned into GURPS.

Thanks again.

She's the chick who floods the Nile (which is important, but is out of human control and can go very very badly) and she's associated with some nasty animals.
If you're willing to take contemporary Roman writing at face value, she's also Mother Nature. Which is about as close as you can get to archetypal chaos.

Ah, I was just watching the video, and she hardly seemed Chaotic in there. Guess I'll have to read up on the rest of Egyptian mythology. Thanks for sharing.

So last couple of threads the question of stocking dungeons and putting them full of monsters and treasures were brought up a few times. Many suggested tables upon tables.

How do you make tables that are interesting and don't feel repetitive or lame and generic? How many rooms should be generic 'stock with a random roll on a table when the players get to it' or should be written in advance?

For cavernous dungeons is there a way I can accurately describe my Player's locations and outlines of rooms or do I have to resort to just rough estimates?

Also how should I treat mapping for them?

Would anybody be interested in playing a modestly sized LL one-shot in the near future, even if it's just something kind of thrown together?

Tables wont do ALL of the work, you know. If you roll a strong monster, give them a weakness. Roll twice and have the two beings fighting one another. Give a weak monster a cannon. The Bulette just finished gorging itself on the last party to enter, and it is having some sort of allergic reaction. Tables are only as lame and generic as you make them. Write them in advance, write tons of them in advance, and start to skip them when the players start to get bored.

Has anyone written a better Domain system for Birthright?

Hopefully based on CK2.

Nah, it's practically necessary, actually. I'm surprised nobody pointed this out already; the dungeon needs to be close to town or low-level players will get buttfucked just traveling there. In fact putting it *under* the town has the strongest antecedents; not only Blackmoor like the other user pointed out, but also Jakálla, the City- State and even Waterdeep work this way.

>not!Isis -> Chaos
Strongly disagree with this. As consort of Osiris and maintainer of the hierarchy Isis has a clear connection to (social) Order, especially for women. All of her magic and such are really about conquering and taming Chaos.

The chaotic Egyptian gods would be Set (definitely and most clearly), Apep (literally the embodiment of chaos according to the Egyptians themselves), and probably Sobek although that one's pretty arguable.

Or you could just not have retarded wilderness encounter tables. There is no reason for the average road to be constantly attacked by bandits, orcs, and manticores; keep it to the wild wilderness.

What town is that in the background?

Tristram in the game is always to the left of the cathedral entrance, not behind the cathedral.

What are some cool racial bonus alternatives for elves, dwarfs and gnomes?

Remember one 2nd edition setting supplement allowed gnomes to travel through 5' of stone per day.

Elves: can eat a creatures heart to learn one random spell they had.

Dwarves: ability to smell gold from 60' away.

Gnomes: ability to tinker together a toy-like animal companion.

Tristram's little talked about neighboring village: Sistram.

>What is your favourite published setting
From TSR?
The Known World/Mystara/UKKW/Blackmoor was pretty great. Granted, it's a giant goddamned mess, but it always felt like people actually played in it. Also it lets me fuck around in Pellucidar. And hide Maztica/Al-Qadim there

Non-TSR:
Veins of the Earth. Hory sheet. The Rapture alone is worth the price, and it's a sixty-dollar book.

Honorable mention goes to the Slayers verse. Yes, I'm a giant weeb, I know. The series feels like all the stupid shit we did when I was a teenager (including the literally retarded dragon paladin hanging out with the party and the MU/Cleric who out-Paladins her). The cosmology is great when the PCs actually run into it. There's a massive apocalypse quietly hanging in the background, in which the forces of Law >lost

A while back I got the Red Tide Labyrinth Lord supplement on Humble Bundle, and I only now got into the minutia.

God the cringe is real, but then it comes out with some really good advice about DMing...

I really don't know how to feel about it.

I want to convert the magic sorceries from the Souls seriea (like Soul Arrow, Soul Stream, etc) into OSR spells. How would I go about that?

So, uh, Slayers. Here's a >very< short summary of the 'verse, since wading through some thirty novels, manga, five TV series, and over a dozen movie/OVA episodes is a pain in the ass.

All worlds are born from the Sea Of Chaos, "bubbles" of order suspended on pillars. They have an evenly-matched pantheon of Dragon and Demon gods who struggle to either uplift or destroy the world; each is led by a "chief" and has several deputies. Law and Chaos gods each choose a Sage and a General to be their representative in Mortal affairs.

The Slayers world borders on four other Prime Material Planes; one has been destroyed by Chaos, and most of the third season revolves around the Demon God from that world trying to eat the PCs' plane. In another one, Law appears to be winning (Lost Universe is set in the Dragon God Vorphied's universe, and it's heavily magitech).

The Chaos and Dragon gods grant various spells; the "ultimate" Black Magic spells call up the Creator from the Sea of Chaos and ask her nicely to erase something from existence. If she gets bored or annoyed she erases the entire world and goes back to sleep.

There's a lot of Patron Bonding and some interesting Clerical magic scattered through the series.

DCC actually uses a BUNCH of material from Slayers in its fabric (there was an abortive D20 supplement that uses many of the same themes and seems to have shared a dev or two).
In the series you have multiple examples of Patron Bonding for more powerful and unique spells, spell checks dependent on class levels and Spellcraft, countermagic duels, Patron Taint (though less horrifying than DCC's), and modifiers to spell checks for things like full incantations or special material components. Lots and lots of Mighty Deeds of Arms, too, not to mention hireling abuse.

The novels make it clear the original author read a lot of Lieber and Moorecock, and there's a LotR parody out there as well. Lina nukes the Balrog.

Take what's good, ignore the bad? It's the only way you can get through a lot of the RPG material out there anyway - first or third-party. Raggi put one hell of a DM tutorial in the Grindhouse boxed set (check the Trove) even if you don't like his tone. "A Stranger Storm" and the Farmhouse from "Better than Any Man" are both excellent intros to the hobby.

What cringe are you talking about? The only thing that made me roll my eyes is that the Shou/Orcs/Goblinoids are just Polynesians with tusks.

True, very true.

Well, for anyone else trying out Red Tide, here's what I got.

Setting:
The Titular Red Tide is a neat take on Chaos, a reality devouring maw that turns it's adherents into gateways for it to enter the world. It also gives a good reason for Orcs/Goblins/Etc to exist, namely that they were genetically engineered by a proto-Orc race to be resistant to corruption and advantaged against their minions.

And then rest of the setting comes into play. Most of the focus is given to the China and Japan equivalents, which makes sense as if you don't know how to roleplay vikings and knights you deserve to be smacked. The problem is that the Xian are... boring. Really boring. Meanwhile, the Shogunate are essentially the Drow of the setting, a Lawful Evil devil worshipping group, only unlike the drow they're an actual polity within the political landscape. Honestly, a book that just dealt with these would be fine, but then it goes back to the traditional elves, dwarves, hobbits combo and the game is just kinda sitting there in a void of missed potential.

On the mechanics side:
The corebook has some neat tables, cult creation, name-place, dungeon dressing. Fairly standard. The bundle I got came with something far more useful, the map creator for building a borderlands, including faction rules and the creation of domains, and mass combat. Once again, the lore is crap but you can easily adapt the advice anywhere. A city, four towns, five lairs, et cetera.

>The bundle I got came with something far more useful, the map creator for building a borderlands, including faction rules and the creation of domains, and mass combat.

Are you talking about "An Echo Resounding"?
It's fucking amazing and the only way I'll ever run domains, etc. again.

plz respond

By cavernous dungeons what do you mean?

Like a multi-layered cave system, in which case I guess you could just draw the major z-levels and use co-ordinates for their exact location if not on the map, provided you give them a defined range end-point so they can estimate relative depth (this can be variable if they are testing the depth of a cavern and it turns out to be deeper than it seems from the surface).

If it's just drawing caves, jagged lines for rough stone walls, straight lines for smoothed, carved or artificial. Drop your grid on top and using the scale work out where you can stand based on where each square is cut off.

How would it change the game if I replaced "Detect Magic" as a spell?

Sweat sap.
Abrasive beard.
Hide in kitsch, 44%.

Talk to plants.
Talk to rocks.
Talk to animals.

That's not short at all!
>law and chaos fight a la. law and chaos
>law is losing badly
>being a cleric is a shit job
>other planes have other law/chaos pantheons
>a foreign chaos pantheon is enroaching

Replace it with what?

When writing up a room description, what order should sentences go in?

Exits. Miscellany. Room shape. Monsters/traps. Treasure.

The stat block are highly visible and make the treasure easy to reference.
The rest of the stuff is in order of importance.

Bear in mind: this is the order to write it, NOT the order to recite it.

Bumpu
That actually sounds really cool if not weebish. Any recommendations in getting into it since it feels like such a massive series?

Anything, really. Or nothing. Currently I'm thinking either Affect Normal Fires or Alarm. I was mainly asking about the effects not having Detect Magic would have on the game.

Wouldn't change much. At high levels it might be worth while before ambushing NPC parties, but even that's questionable.
Frankly it's not a very good spell. It points out magic items and sometimes magic traps, but considering the short duration it's more of an "appraising the haul" downtime spell.
Even Read Magic has more value mid-crawl.

Diablo did it

Do you want to extrapolate mathematically what they would be in an OSR system, or do you just want to transfer them over thematically? Either way, I'd have to know more about the target system, but the second option is feasible even if it's a homebrew I get a few sentences of description for.

Mostly thematically. I'm using the ACKs system right now and wondering how much Homing Soul Arrows would differ from a magic missle that always hit.

user, I...

HMA and Magic Missile are the same thing.

Soul Arrow is a lvl 1 Magic Missile. At higher levels when it gives extra missiles, if you target different creatures it's Homing Soulmass. If you target the same creature with multiple missiles it upgrades to Heavy Soul Arrow, Soul Spear, etc. depending on how many are used.

Magic Weapon allows you to hit ghosts and shit. Better versions may give you a to-hit bonus.
Magic Shield allows you to block ghosts and shit.
Fall Control, Cast Light, Aural Decoy, Hidden Body, Chameleon, etc. just work like normal.
Remedy/Resist Curse aren't MU spells.

What about spells like Soul Stream, Old Moonlight, Soul Bolt and the like?

To be fair, in basic you need a to hit roll for magic missile

The DoT is just variable damage in minute long rounds. Variant spell based off Cone of Cold (which itself is a variant of Fireball)?
Variant of Burning Hands buffed for a higher slot?
That last one is tricky.

I can't name an OSR game where most of the spells are damage spells. There is a reason for that.

>Soul Stream
Spell that does damage in a straight line

>Old Moonlight
Weapon summoning spell

>Soul Bolt
Stronger magic missile but longer cast time

The first movie is a prequel, and if you like it you'll probably like the show. Slayers: Next is the second season of the TV show, and the most accessible. There were some major RL problems with getting the first season translated and produced in the States, so a lot of the Central Park Media DVDs are physically corrupted and the dub for the first fifteen episodes is an atrocity. After that things smoothed out a lot. It does do some major world building, so if you're okay with subs I'd just go for the first couple seasons. Phone posting right now, will put more detail up later.

What day and time?

What's your opinion on The Nightmares Underneath?

I haven't read it, is it more then just Dungeon World 2: The Dungeoning?

Thanks brah. Will watch after I'm done with exams.

All right, here's my current draft list of 1st-level spells for a game I'm going to be starting "soon".

affect normal fires
alarm
charm person
floating disc
hold portal
light
magic missile
protection from evil
shield
sleep
grease
mage hand

Any problems anyone foresee with using this list?

>protection from evil
>shield
If they're not too different from each other, can they be merged in a single spell?

What is affect normal fires? I feel like that might be better named Fire control and then just make it harder to cast on magic fire. Is it supposed to stop from dragon breath cheats?

2nded as long as it isn't some gay discord shit

What sort of spells based on Dark Souls sorcery just under ritual spells would you give high level mages?

From my initial glance, it looks like it's loosely based off of B/X. The is a *world hack for it, though.

Stuff that has long term unexpected apocalyptic consequences.

Elves - are never in doubt and can never be made to doubt.

Gnomes - can turn invisible if they close their eyes, hold their breath, and stand still.

>Hopefully based on CK2.
What bits of CK2, because CK2 is based on, you know, history.

>are never in doubt and can never be made to doubt.
That sounds like a crippling disability.

You might have something there. I did think about that --- that's why there is no mage armour in my list --- but I didn't think about applying it to protection from evil as well. That's something that was left in from the Moldvay Basic spell lists. Fine with me, since honestly protection from evil sounds much more clericky than wizardy.

I have no idea why it's called that, but that might be part of it. I just skimmed over the 1e and 2e lists for utility spells that seemed useful.

Basically it makes fires bigger or smaller (but doesn't change their heat). So you can make a torch less bright but last twice as long, in a pinch. Or twice as bright but last half as long.

I could add in some stuff from pyrotechnics which might be fun, but that's a second-level spell.

I'm looking at maybe running a Rainbow Six-inspired game with PCs as counter-terrorist operators. Would White Lies work for this sort of thing?

Protection from Evil honestly feels most redundant with Hold Portal to me.
It's not a combat trick, it keeps things out of a space. Pentagram type shizz.

>Elves - are never in doubt and can never be made to doubt.
I feel like this goes against the whole "taking ages to come a to a decision" thing that many long-lived races have, but I doubt it would ever come up in game.
>Gnomes - can turn invisible if they close their eyes, hold their breath, and stand still.
Hi Skerples.

His elves are way into conceit.
>Hi Skerples.
Reminds me more of svirfneblin than anything.
His image is the giveaway.

Hi, I'm now to RPGs and kinda don't understand one thing. I'm using DCC as a reference btw:

When a spell says it takes one action to cast, does this mean that on the Wizards turn, he basically starts chanting the spell then on his NEXT action the effect of the spell actually happens?

Like, it technically takes 2 actions for a spell to fully manifest and happen? And this is to provide the chance that he gets hit while casting and his spell gets fucked up and fails?

Elves can automatically return to life at no penalty to attributes or XP but they permanent lose one of their classes. Fighter/wizard/thieves become some two-class combo, fighter/wizards come back as a fighter or a wizard, and single-classed elves come back as level 0 elves.

I feel like that's what it should be, but in the rules it's basically just a +1 to saves vs. enemies and -1 on enemy rolls to hit, and can be broken if you attack that enemy. And protects against summoned or created creatures. Which, come to think of it, sounds rather underwhelming, if I'm honest.

>Reminds me more of svirfneblin than anything.
He has stated before that is how gnomes work in his world.

It goes off one the same round.
I'm not sure about DCC but in most games you state your intention to cast a spell at the start of the round and if anyone hits you before then you could lose it.

>Gnomes - can turn invisible if they close their eyes, hold their breath, and stand still.
Nah, that's more of a halfling thing.

That's just kosher. The main effect is that Spooky Shit CANNOT CROSS THE CIRCLE.

Anyone here has played Fantasy! - Old School Gaming?

is it good? care to share pdf?

>The rules
>For char gen four stats; Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence and Presence, are either rolled with 1d6 each, or bought point-buy style. In addition to that each character selects five special abilities that give small bonuses under specific circumstances. For those who would prefer to get started quickly there are templates with pre-selected abilities for the usual bunch of killer and thief PC professions. Not counting the traditional purchases of starting starting equipment char gen can be done in a matter of minutes.
>Checks are done by rolling the value of the corresponding stat in d6’s and counting the dice showing 4+ as successes, the more the better. Simple rules for character advancement and a turn based system for physical combat (no grid or minis needed) make up the rest of the rules body.

So back to
>is it good?
It isn't OSR

Not sold on the checks, but stats are the sort of thing you can get away with adjusting. They're not relevant to monsters and almost never have anything to do with room write-ups.

Thieves should never have been a d4 HD class.

>Thieves should never have been a class.
FTFY

Shoo, grog.

>someone tells Gygax about variable weapon damage
>he fucks it up
>someone tells Gygax about thieves
>he fucks it up
>someone tells Gygax about psionics
>he fucks it up
>someone tells Gygax about weapon speeds
>he fucks it up
hmn really makes you think

Wasn't psionics his own can of ass fairies?

What do you guys think of white box fantastic medieval adventure?

LotFP + Last Gasp Maleficar Tables = The best shit ever.

I think it and The Black Hack are too simple for their own good.

You couldn't spring for LotfP + Last Gasp Maleficarum?

>someone tells Gygax about variable weapon damage
>he fucks it up
Just curious, but what's the un-fucked-up way of doing variable weapon damage?