/osr/ - Old School Renaissance

>I don't like AD&D.
Why not just use 5e then?

the only system anyone should every be useing for an osr game is lamentaintions of the flame princess

>it's not like there aren't plenty of ravenloft modules already.
Name one good Ravenloft adventure besides I6 and Adam's Wrath.

I've come to appreciate the attack bonus progression, but I still hate the encumbrance.

Why don't you go to the 5E General?

>Name one good Ravenloft adventure besides I6 and Adam's Wrath.
The Awakening, Night of The Walking Dead, Hour of the Knife

>Ascending AC
>OSR
Pick one

Exactly!
⇒, ⇐

well, in the osr thread, because we want to play an osr game.

But fuck that noise, let's talk about something sensible. Magic swords are capable of stuff that other magical weapons aren't. Why is this in your game? What's special about swords?

Because 1E and 5E are both mediocre systems and I'd rather run the module in a game that I don't hate? Because it's far easier to adjust the module than it is to rewrite everything I dislike about AD&D and 5E? I don't get why you're being so willfully obtuse about this, porting things from another system should be second nature to anyone frequenting these threads.

I recall Bleak House being pretty good when I read it like 4 years ago. But yes, most Ravenloft modules are garbage. The value lies in the 3.X iteration of the setting, where they did away with 2e's weird obsession with Gehenna and making every other NPC secretly a CE Lycanthrope.

>we want to play an osr game
If I want to play Keep on the Borderlands I'm not going to grab the 4e version of it and convert it to B/X.
If I want to play White Plume Mountain I'm not going to grab the 3e version of it and convert it to 1e.

>Because it's far easier to adjust the module than it is to rewrite everything I dislike about AD&D and 5E?
It's even easier to just run I6 or HoS.

>Magic swords are capable of stuff that other magical weapons aren't.
>Why is this in your game
>What's special about swords?

It's not, because I hate both it and whatever Weapon Mastery rules people try and push because it pigeonholes Fighters into using one specific weapon above all others. I prefer the idea of "the right weapon for the right job" and fully encourage characters to switch between whatever weapons are most appropriate for each encounter, provided they have them on hand.

>What's special about swords?
Well, the Doylist perspective is simple: Stormbringer was a sword.
More generally, for various complicated reasons swords are basically the standard heroic weapon within western fantasy - and eastern as well, to some degree (the Japanese love their katanas). This also extends to various mythical weapons, so you get your Excaliburs and Durandals and so on.
And then there's also the game balance aspect to it, of course.

From a Watsonian perspective, I dunno. The shape of the blade, perhaps, in how it's (to simplify to absurdity) basically just a sharp metal stick? Note also the similarity to wands, and how they're largely a single piece of metal!
Perhaps you could get just as good magic in a dagger or metal spear, but since the target audience has a tendency to delve alone into cramped dungeons perhaps the sword is a more fitting weapon.

Really, though, since I'm inclined to OD&D it's mostly that they are that way for unknown Ancient Lost Magical Empire reasons and the modern Magic-Users forging new magical swords do so using the templates of old.

you could go all tarot-ish with it, and say there's 4 fundamental forms magic can be bound into:
Cups (potions)
Staves (wands, staffs and so on)
Swords (...swords)
Pentagrams (warding circles on the floor)

>It's even easier to just run I6 or HoS.
Which is likely what I'd be doing if I intended it to be a one-shot. But it's all the other side adventure material that made me decide on CoS, even if I have to do some largely trivial conversion work. It's not like I'm trying to run a fucking Call of Cthulhu campaign using .Exalted or something.

how would a final fantasy inspired osr look like? with the jobs from ff5

BECMI but with mana instead of spell slots and the final boss is an Entropy Immortal

why becmi?

So you can reach level 99

>with the jobs from ff5
Doesn't really port well. Maybe everyone is super elves?
Earlier FF had spells per day.
Doesn't seem disingenuous using it later.

But BECMI stops at level 36 (Immortals use something else).

Session 12 of Tomb of the Serpent Kings is up.
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/12/osr-tomb-of-serpent-kings-session-12.html

The party empowers a chicken, loses their nerve, gains a hat, and involuntarily falls into the Veins of the Earth.

Shh! It was a funny joke.

>only some of the previous session links forcibely open new tabs
Not gonna lie, that's super annoying.

Did you see that your stuff got features in the grab bag this week? dieheart.net/friday-grab-bag-dec15/

Oh do they? Sorry, blogger formatting is shitty. Definitely not intentional. I'll go through and fix them.

You forgot Coins (jewelry)

The user asked you to pick between two systems, not what system would run Ravenloft best. The real question is which one is closest to 5e or AD&D.

Now, to actually answer your question, or give you the tools to answer it yourself. LotFP can withstand a lot of tweaking, and if you're confident with your knowledge of the system, I'd say go ahead and use it. On the other hand, FH&W is designed to encompass a wide variety of options. If I were making the choice, I'd use FH&W, but I'm not you. Hope this helps.

>This wasn't for lack of trying. He's earlier asked another player about borrowing a bottle, but insisted, during the fight, that he'd only asked, and hadn't taken a flask. His plan was to run over, ask for the flask, and then tip the liquid in.
Is it THAT hard to cast the spell with your palm down?

>Is it THAT hard to cast the spell with your palm down?
But that would have drained the acid! He wanted to save it for later, see.

He could have solved both problems by trading hands with the lion.

How? A hand-swap spell? After it mauled his friend to death?

Nah. This wasn't the kind of plan that was worth saving.

Feature swap cantrip. Presumably while getting mauled or after it died.

>Feature swap cantrip.
Hands aren't really a "blemish or feature" in my opinion.

Then again...

Any idea of when we'll get a writeup for the other wizard schools? Or any of the cool articles you alluded to while discussing the Dooms of the various wizards?

Definitely after it';s dead then. One phalange at a time, if need be.

I didn't.
Thanks for the shilling, Skerp. I'll try to bully you slightly less for two threads.

>I'll try to bully you slightly less for two threads.
Oh you tease. :P
(But seriously, keep working on your stuff. Core ideas are good but they need a lot of polish to get great. Hope the views pick up though!)
If he was that clever he wouldn't have died the way he did.
Biomancer and Garden Wizard are next, but I've got a few other projects first. Ah well, soon enough. Is there anything specifically I've missed?

Why would anyone ever willingly apprentice themselves to one of your Outlaw Wizards?

>Why would anyone ever willingly apprentice themselves to one of your Outlaw Wizards?
Would you?

No, seriously, think about it. Your world is shitty. This isn't some bucolic Norman peasant time where every weekend is a festival and every blacksmith's daughter is chaste and apple-cheeked. This is not-14th century not-France. The Plague just passed through in living memory. Everyone is at war. You are likely to have your life fucked with for no good reason.

One day you get really pissed off about something. Your cow died for no reason. Your crops failed. Some foreigners burnt your house again. Something snaps. You pack what you own and march into the hills to go find Old Man Haversham and his Walking House. You camp outside his door for three days before he lets you inside. You scrub pots and carry water for six months before he speaks more than a few words to you.

But in two years, you can fucking /fly/.

Yeah seriously this. Why wouldn't you want to gain otherworldly power if you had nothing to lose? Especially if you were already an outlaw?

There was a bunch of stuff surrounding the Illusionist wizards, like their unified color theory, and the mirror realms.

>Why wouldn't you want to gain otherworldly power if you had nothing to lose?
Or even if you've got a lot to lose. People make really bad calls all the time in real life. You'd probably be depressed to read what people on probation do and then wind up back in jail. Another 5 years in prison for skipping a meeting with your parole officer to go have a drink with someone you only kind of tolerate is pretty dumb. Getting busted for stealing gum is dumb. But so it goes, day in, day out.

I know this was last thread and skerps already drafted up his blogpost about it, but I thought of a way to make/reforge magic items into other enchanted items.

Count up the number of enchanted items you're using into points and apply them to Ars Magica style Forms. Generic +1 or +2 magic swords would count as 1 unit of Terram, since they're magic metals. Flaming swords count as 1 Ignem or Fire magic, and so on. Scrolls count as whatever the spells do; so burning illusion scrolls and adding their ashes to your X item mix counts as adding +X Imagum to the item.

Then, take the basic form/function of the item you are crafting, and take its magical art equivalent. They are Create, Perceive, Change, Destroy, Control. (Creo, Intellego, Muto, Perdo, and Rego). So melting all that shit down into a cannon is obviously a Perdo/Destroy item, and making a crown/scepter/staff is Rego. Creo/Create includes things like craftsman tools or anything related to healing, Muto includes containers since they change and things involving water, Intellego is books, candles, and other thoughtful items, etc.

Finally; you just make the new magic item have an effect related to the Art + Form combination. So if you used 3 extremely tough, sharp magic swords (Terram) into a cannon (Perdo) then the cannon's effect would be related to material destruction. Maybe this cannon can shred straight through castle walls like its nothing, or can fire clods of dirt as hard as cannonballs. If your item was a candle (Intellego) made from the wax of a rare beast (Animal) then the candle lets animals speak if they can see its light, and so on.

Skilled magicians can make a saving throw, roll under Wisdom, or a magic roll to control the effect of any of these DIY magic items and modify its effect, as long as it still uses the same Art + Form the effect already has.

If I had to choose between taking longer than expected to reach the afterlife (student loans) or shorter than expected (outlaw status), I know which I would pick.

>Count up the number of enchanted items you're using into points [method for calculating points]
Why not xp value?

>longer than expected to reach the afterlife (student loans)
Oh it's worse than than. You really don't want to die owing money on your Wizard Student Loans.
I haven't decided what exactly happens, but the players have provided helpful, terrified suggestions.
That's very neat and very sensible. I didn't want my cannons to fit into any existing art or have any existing science. They are a completely new thing. Maybe in 50 years someone will have figured out what works and what doesn't, but for now, in my setting, it's utter chaos. It's like the discovery of electricity; people stick it on everything.

>I already did. magiccards.info/5e/en/169.html

Your blog is what inspired this thread's design challenge desu.

>Why not xp value?

Because the original idea wasn't about crafting the items from scratch, but what happens if you recycle already existing magic items into a new form; the example being melting down magic swords into a cannon.

>It's like the discovery of electricity; people stick it on everything.

Sure- do this for any mechanical device that could be thought of as "advanced" for the setting. Clockwork contraptions would probably be Rego under these rules; but since it's a weird modern gonzo piece of tech in the setting every magical effect that goes through it is random and total bullshit. It creates lightning bolts and always appears a room away from where it actually is and so on.

If I had to choose between my soul getting parcels out to sharpen swords and shine shoes or my body parceled out to make senior apprentices presentable enough to leave the cave, and I would chose the former. Unless I wad devout, in which case I certainly wouldn't want to use banned magic and probably wouldn't want to be a wizard.

>Because the original idea wasn't about crafting the items from scratch
I get that. But wouldn't swords with more pluses be more magical?

What happens if you swap skull meats with someone but leave the souls were they were?

>What happens if you swap skull meats with someone but leave the souls were they were?
That is a very bad plan and probably how you get Intellect Devourers.

T-thanks.
Well, here's an idea I had a while ago but didn't write down until now.

>Tar Pit Warrior
N(E) Giant
HD 10
AC 0
Attack: Unarmed 2d6 or by weapon
MV 9 [30 fo B/X]
This strange giant is usually immune to all attacks and all spells of 6th level or lower. However, every time the players or their characters say something that could be taken as an insult it begins weeping for 1 round and does not act next round, during which time attacks and spells affect it normally. If insulted for four consecutive rounds it continues its weeping catatonia for a whole turn.

That's a pretty cool idea. Almost the reverse of "Attack the Sheet" - you're attacking weird bits of the enemy's sheet, essentially.
Ah yes, but medieval, you see. Probably wouldn't choose to have 2 competing popes either but hey, that's how it goes.

Okay, what's the measurement used for those low movement scores?

That's the best painting I've seen this year at least.

>I've manage to get the one risk-taking player to roll up a character who the other players really can't afford to lose.
Who will mind the minders themselves?

Spell: Angelic Arbiter
Type: Cleric (prolly lvl 5~6)
Duration: per concentration up to a maximum of 6 rounds per level
Range: 0'
Effect:
As the cleric prays, the skies part away and a shinning beacon of light descends over him, in it a beautifully incandescent image of a divine being fills everyone's minds with a sense of serenity. In a radius of 60 ft everyone who had prepared a spell or readied an attack for this round must save or lose the will to fight and fall into a state of inaction for the reminder of the spell. Anyone who attempts to cast a spell or an attack inside the radius while the spell is active, must save or be affected by it.
If some one makes an attack or cast a spell from out side the affected radius and it targets some one inside of it, the targeted creature is freed from the effect.

I'm sure there is a better way to word this

2e MV
>Movement rate--a number used in calculating how far and how fast a character can move in a round. This number is in units of 10 yards per round outdoors, but it represents 10 feet indoors. Thus, an MR of 6 is 60 yards per round in the wilderness, but only 60 feet per round in a dungeon.

>Who will mind the minders themselves?
Apparently, themselves. 'cept they've got stuck in the Veins of the Earth, so medieval taxation mechanics are going to take a back seat to starvation and light for a while.
That's pretty good.

The tax collectors down below don't take light?

>tfw can't stop my brain from assembling an Urza-themed MTG mini-dungeon
I didn't ask for this.

Give in to your urges.

Well yes, but they operate on a sales tax system rather than the windfall tax system I keep blathering on about. :)
> assembling an Urza-themed MTG mini-dungeon
>assembling
>desire to crank intenstifies

I undoubtedly will. The only question is whether to file off the serial numbers and make it OGL or to say fuck it and blatantly use MTG lore.

I'm glad Riggers finally got some support even if the new Un set is lackluster.

This one is relevant to the magical canon convo from last thread.

While in crafting, a few cursed magical items were mixed with non cursed ones for the creation of a magical canon. Be it by mistake or by design the magical canon now it's also cursed.

Cursed canon effect: Self ammo
The canon works as excepted for the first two shots(well that is if one can predict the effects of a magical canon) on the third shot the canoneer must make a save or be compelled to insert himself into the canon as ammunition, the attacck proceeds as normal, but if the hit lands the damage is equal to the total hit points of the creature plus what ever bonuses apply. If a crew is manning it, they all roll a d8 who ever gets the lowest results is the one chosen as ammunition and the rest must save or be compelled to continue normal procedure(they can fire normally if the chose so too I guess)

Only a mini-dungeon?

I don't have enough ideas for a full-blown dungeon.
>entrance, maybe with a wild animal that must be pacified
>some kind of laser grid trap
>pipe-laden hallway with
>library with an inert skeleton and several half-eaten books
>power plant ruins with elemental
>"programming" room with
>construction room with an incomplete iron golem + construction manual

...

>I'm glad Riggers finally got some support
Honestly, this pisses me off.

...

Wait, it needs to spend 800,000cp and build 80 of itself to reach level 2?

The name thing is great though. Stolen.

It's not spending the money. It needs 1000lb of copper. And presumably doesn't need tools.

But 80 of itself? I mean, so one dies in the dungeon. Play another one? And that one needs to get 80,000lbs of copper to level up?

I just have no idea how this would look in play. It seems bizzare.

The numbers are based on Roman legion sizes, but that's the idea.
And its a LotFP class that never saves, the only benefit to level is hp. The doubles are their own reward.

Come to think of it, it would need dies and ovens and other minting stuff if the copper wasn't in coinage.

That's pentacles, dingus

what the fuck am i looking at?

I haven't hacked your webcam yet. You'll have to tell me.

Are you the notorious hacker, 4 Chans?

Also, speaking of hacking, how often do your players start tunneling through walls to get to stuff?

>The numbers are based on Roman legion sizes, but that's the idea.
Yeah...

Also, copper. 80,000lbs of copper is 36 tons. That's 2 and a bit Dardanelle Guns: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dardanelles_Gun

And that's for /one/ character to reach level 2!!

>80,000lbs of copper
is 8,000 gp, which doesn't get an MU to level 4.

The soldiers are also more valuable than the levels.
Compare 45 dudes with 1d20 hp to 2 1st level spells and 1 2nd level spell.

>The soldiers are also more valuable than the levels.
I know they are! Cause they can make more of themselves! You'll get an apocalypse pretty dang fast!

It's a silly thing to balance. It's also a solo minigame. Ah well.

>You'll get an apocalypse pretty dang fast!
Bah! You'll get a currency shortage at worst. Even that seems unlikely.

Speaking of apocalypses, what are some modules with creature apocalypses? I know DFD does zombies and The Awakening does cats.

This guy does bees.
Broodmother Skyfortress does elephant shark things.

I like this, but with instead of pentagrams.
What are other real life symbolics and stuff you guys have used in your games, like alchemical, esoteric or occult things?

Heptagrams, Enneagrams, Decagrams, all the good stuff.

...

Not sure I can make a spell for this one. Seems to be pretty straightforward. If you torture someone, they're tortured. Maybe a penalty to ability scores or something.

I don't have that. There are too many other weapons with good amounts of folklorish background for me to limit to swords. That said, I'm certainly not going to put a magic rolling pin or a magic mancatcher. It'll be primarily weapons people actually used regularly. Though is a cool idea too. I've occasionally considered adding more tarot elements to things. Athames, lead coins, wands, chalices, etc. could all be used by a magic-user.

>If
you wish to reflect the fact that the adventuring types are more likely to
be the cream of humanity, throw 3 four-sided dice for townspeople.
Additionally, women, for strength and constitution only (forgive me,
any liberated women reading this), and children, for all attributes, can
use two standard dice
Huh, so that's how it goes huh. Any other OSR rules on women and children?

Well, I don't know about formal rules, but my rules for children are that young children get 1d6 for each stat, older children get 2d6, and adults get 3d6.