/osr/ - Old School Renaissance

Welcome to the Old School Renaissance general discussion thread.

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Thread Design Challenge: Pick a demon from this painting and stat it.

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rodoflordlymight.blogspot.com/2009/03/skills-middle-road.html?
tenfootpolemic.blogspot.com/2017/08/death-and-dismemberment-redux.html
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what's the most fuckin' metal OSR setting, or D&D setting in general? I want my players to say "fuckin' metal" under their breath multiple times under their breaths each session.

is it Darksun?

I've seen "Skills: The Middle Road" hailed as the holy grail of skill system, but frankly, I don't understand what's going on with it. Could someone be kind enough to provide an in depth explanation with better examples than rodoflordlymight.blogspot.com/2009/03/skills-middle-road.html?

>I don't understand what's going on with it.
This system looks pretty garbage, but here's the rundown:
• If your skill seems relevant to a roll, your probability increases by 0.15, 0.25, or 0.4 (rounded up awkwardly to sort-of match your gameshape).
• If you're the Best Fiddler ever and Some Nobody challenges you over a golden fiddle, you roll a d12 and they roll a d6. Higher number wins.

So I've seen a lot of discussion of 1-mile hexes, 6-mile hexes, and 12-mile hexes, but chicagowiz has written up stuff with 24-mile hexes. What do you think about that.

Mazzagoth, Despoiler of Innards
Chaotic (Evil)
HD 16
AC -3 (hit only by +2 or better weapons)
Immune to drowning, fire, and fear
MV 12, Fly 24
Attacks: Beak (2d4 + infestation)
Magic Resistance: 60%

This demon appears as blue humanoid bird wearing a long white loincloth, clay jugs as shoes, and an iron cauldron as a crown. Those hit by his beak must save or in 1 round 1d6 birds will shoot out of his rectum dealing an additional 1d6 damage per bird.

I think Dark Sun is the most metal by TSR. Planescape fits if you're a prog metal guy.

If you want fuckin' metal OSR stuff, check out bdsmrpg.blogspot.com
Pretty cool imo & 100% metal

>Death Metal
Trash

I'm not seeing how this is better than ability checks.

...

The opposed roll bit looks okay. Just roll the appropriate die for your skill level and add your attribute modifier: higher roll wins (presumably with the active person / person initiating the challenge winning on a tie).

I'm not a big fan of the time and money aspect to skill advancement, but then I generally prefer something that's either more story- or level-based, and less economically- or resource-based.

As far as the bonuses to skill-related rolls -- like "+2 bonus when making skill-related rolls with a 1d10 or 1d12" -- I'm assuming that's to pre-existing dice rolls, like morale checks, surprise and whatnot, though I'm not sure how many of them there are to be affected, or whether it's really worth having a list of different bonuses for different dice values. The percentage thing seems completely obnoxious, and rather than giving people probabilities in percentages, I'd just do opposed checks, with the difficulty of the task determining the opposing die.

>Mazzagoth, Despoiler of Innards

Amazing.

I only know one Swing Metal band, do you know any others?
>I'm not seeing how this is better than ability checks.
You only roll the "skill die" as an opposed roll against someone doing the same thing.
Beyond that, it's supposed to modify rolls you'd be doing either way.
But most "rolls you'd be doing either way" are on the spot rolls so it's not

Oh. Misread your question. Wow. OK. No. Rolling under attributes is B.A.D.
In a just world, attributes would be mostly fluff to help with characterization.

>I'm not seeing how this is better than ability checks.
Well, ability checks don't have different levels of skill baked in, except through GM improvisation. I think the system is a bit too cluttered for my taste, but I see what it's going for. Personally, I'm okay with a simpler skilled / unskilled system that doesn't have 4 different levels of mastery.

>Rolling under attributes is B.A.D.
>In a just world, attributes would be mostly fluff to help with characterization.
False OSR, get ye gone.

>In a just world, attributes would be mostly fluff to help with characterization.
While I do think that the difference between attribute scores can be too pronounced in a system where you roll directly against them, it's silly to have actual numerical scores that do essentially nothing.

>Those hit by his beak must save or in 1 round 1d6 birds will shoot out of his rectum dealing an additional 1d6 damage per bird

and this children, is why you don't worship fucking demons. assplosion by reverse bird anal antics.

We're playing 1e AD&D for the first time in a long time.

I rolled these ability scores in order: STR 11, INT 13, WIS 14, DEX 9, CON 13, CHA 10

We're allowed one swap. What should I play Veeky Forums? Cleric or Druid would be okay I think but I'm not super experienced with AD&D and don't know what my best option is.

>not super experienced with AD&D
Swap STR for WIS and play a fighter. But choosing Cleric or Druid would be good with those stats.

>best option
That's a very 3e mindset. Does the party actually need a cleric or druid?

When Gary played OD&D in his twilight, an attribute was 3-14 (no bonus) or 15-18 (minor bonus). There were no further subdivisions.

Wouldn't be the first time Gary made a mistake.
cf. thieves, psionics, half-orcs, and weapon speeds

?
The dude mostly posts black metal so I don't know where you got that from
unless you misread the title Blood death satan & metal as death metal or something
>reading comprehension, bitch

Well, none of your scores are really in the penalty or bonus range (unless you put the 14 into Charisma, where it gives you a +5% loyalty and +10% reaction), so they really only matter as far as class access, class powers (bonus spells or spell level caps), or progressive shit like System Shock and Weight Allowances. Really, that means the field is wide open to you, as long as you meet class prerequisites. If you wanted to be a magic-user rather than a cleric or druid, you could just swap the 14 into intelligence, so you're all set there. Honestly, a caster is a pretty good idea, as you'd probably be a slight disadvantage when it comes to playing some noncaster like a fighter, as you'd normally expect to have at least a +1 bonus going towards something to boost your capabilities (like a +1 to-hit from having a high strength). But it's only a little thing, so if I were you, I'd just play whatever I wanted to.

weapon speeds are total trash
psionics are a cool idea but a mess
what about half-orcs tho?

>what about half-orcs tho?
The gateway to tieflings which are in turn the gateway to half-dragon half-fiend pixie and awakened incarnate half-iron golem yuan-ti pureblood PCs

>muh slippery slope
And Holmes was talking about Half-Human/Half-Snake characters before AD&D even came out.

Fair.
All of those teenage halfblood edgelord races are indeed trash.

>before AD&D
And after Dragon had rules for Half-Ogres by Gygax.

user, I...

>user, I...
>...got tricked.

>awakened incarnate half-iron golem yuan-ti pureblood
Dammit, I shouldn't have thought of this now I want to see what it would look like and if it's worth converting to OSR.

Rolled 1, 2 = 3 (2d6)

>It was only a ruse
Rolling to Turn this fiend.

>awakened incarnate half-iron golem yuan-ti pureblood
Now for OSR:
4 HD snake-y girl whose arms are covered with metallic skin, AC 7, no special powers or abilities, AL N.
Still the same CR as a normal Yuan-ti Pureblood despite losing all powers. lol?

>CR
?????
???????
"?

?
?
???

3.5 has Challenge Ratings that are supposed to be indicators of monster strength. According to it, 4HD and no powers is just as strong as 4HD with shapechanging, magic resistance, and several spell-like powers.

I'm gonna do 6 mile hexes because it seems like the easiest to measure travel. However comparing it to real life I've realized one hex is the size of a small national park with several lakes, forests, roads, a couple big hills and so on. So should probably stock each hex with at minimum one site. Most natural formations will be abstracted into "yeah you can find a high spot or a water source if you search for one." And then it becomes part of the hex key so the players can return. Whereas in a 1 mile hex you could have each lake and big cliff be its own hex probably.

Still not sure how to handle discovery with several sites per hex. Do you roll one discovery roll per site in the hex, or do you roll once for discovery and then have an even chance for it to be any of the sites (e.g. d6: 1-3 site A, 4-6 site B).

Unless someone asked for directions, I don't even put sites on hexes until they're rolled off the shared table.

Yeah, we know all that. What're you doing pulling out CRs in the OSR thread?

See :
>I want to see what it would look like and if it's worth converting to OSR.

Oh, nevermind!

I was going to used attached as the base for my first ever campaign. I don't want to come of as lazy (I have almost finished writing up my version and it's slightly more complicated/detailed than the original) but can anyone suggest something to add extra spice? Items, encounters, set-pieces,

Setting tldr: Jungle-Swamp Island infested by a large tribe of jade-skinned polynesian orcs who are ruled over by a crazed, portly, were-boar Wizard masquerading as the Orc's pig-god. The Wizard lords over the orcs from a base he has established in a dungeon atop the islands volcano. The dungeon and the island were once inhabited by a now-extinct race of ancient, alien beings.

I thought it would be a good first campaign because it has a city-hexcrawl-dungeoncrawl format so I get to give all them all a try.

So what type of campaigns i can do with godbound?

Stick a few of these in?

Is there a folder or compilation of these somewhere?

Sounds really cool !

lol what's up with that exit entry?

Are there any examples of how wilderness adventure actually play out?

What does the DM describe during travels? What are the players doing? I can imagine what they do at an adventure site, but not between them.

Best Dungeons I could run as an one-shoot for a 4 Level party of 4 players, go! We are using Lamentations, none of them so far wanted to play a MU or a Cleric, I wonder why..

>weapon speeds
You know that those are mostly just tiebreakers, right?

>What are the players doing?
Spending days travelling and getting lost, basically. No need to describe stuff too much - they're covering tens of miles per out-of-game minute, so going into details on non-encounters just slows stuff down.

Also mapping, I suppose.

Looking for some feedback on the setting (not character creation) for this LotFP setting I made.

tl;dr - Witches are real, they fucked everything over and now we have magic and demihumans.

24-mile hexes are probably intended to be the distance one can walk in a day. This is entirely useless unless you're walking unencumbered on a road going through flat land.

1-mile hexes mean that a good portion of your map is within a day's travel. If you want everything nearby, that's fine. If you don't, you might want a different system. It does allow for better granularity in your terrain, though.

I personally use 6-mile hexes.

I usually describe the terrain, the road or rivers that they're on, if they get a random encounter (which may be just signs of a creature; I had them see a clutch of hatched giant turtle eggs once), and if they encounter civilization, a dungeon, a lair, a landmark, or an ingredient.

Personally I'm more into just measuring movement speeds in hexes rather than faffing about with miles. Use whatever scale you want as long as it works well with the speeds you're using.

How do you determine the ratio of tracks/signs? Like, does your primary encounter table have "tracks, roll again to find which creature" as an entry, or do you have a secondary table for "activity" (resting, fighting, hunting etc) that includes an entry for signs/tracks?

I want to make myself a better designer by helping others design things.

Please present me with your current design problem.

How do you chums feel about different or unique classes in your OSR games? Do you prefer the standard cleric-magicuser-fightingmen-thief or do you guys like more esoteric ideas?

Weird classes are both fun and classic. I think the game would get pretty boring without new and interesting classes, even if your players don't "need" them to have fun.

The one I've been using for wilderness encounters has a d6 roll to determine what you find: the lair (on a 1); some sort of evidence be it spoor, traces, or tracks (on a 2-5); or the creature itself (on a 6). One of my tasks is to come up with better encounter tables, but they may be similar. Though if the characters aren't moving (if it's night, for example) I wouldn't have this be the same way. Maybe skip the intermediary roll. I might also have separate encounter tables for nighttime.

I've also seen it just as a general entry on the encounter table, although that was for a dungeon wandering monster check. Like, 1-4 and 8 are different types of wandering monsters, but 5-7 are each sounds of a monster or something like that.

I'm fiddling with my homebrew skill system for like the thousandth time, the only reason being that no one's actually used skills in game so I can get away with tweaking them.

I'm trying to design them so they have an endpoint that makes sense. Previously, I was doing it with diminishing returns, but...that kind of math really makes it hard to mess around.
People have to be able to learn new skills, get better at them, and have some sort of resolution mechanic for when they don't have a skill. The only thing I don't want is a defined list of skills.

I use fighter and mu as a base, and add in elf, dwarf and cleric. I also have rules going for adding in an illusionist class, a white mage class, a paladin class, and a "mage of the cerulean order". If you can fit it thematically so that it doesn't disrupt things then it's probably fine.

I use BFRPG + Supplements.

Class-wise, we've got: Assassin, Barbarian, Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Illusionist, Jester, Magic-User, Necromancer, Ranger, Paladin, Scout, Sorcerer, Thief.

Race-wise, we've got: Dwarf, Elf, Halfling, Human, Gnome, Half-Elf/Ogre/Orc, Bisren (Bull-Men), Caneins (Dog-Men), Faun (Goat-Men), Kappa (Reptile-Men) and Phaerim (Faeries).

Depending on the style of campaign, I might omit some options. I like more variety. It's the spice of life and whatnot.

Let's assume I want to allow players a chance to stay conscious and escape in a somehow weakened state when they reach 0 HP.

I could implement this in two ways. A pure player choice: you can just decide to stay conscious but take some penalty and risk. Or have them make a roll, modified by the number of excess damage, and have a range of penalties and even positive results, all the way up to instant death.

How do I decide whether to go random or player choice?

Go with player choice as long as it's easy and quick to grasp the concept. Keep fighting, or hold your guts in. If you keep fighting, you'll have to roll to see if your movements make things worse. If you hold your guts in, you roll to see if you can start to recover.

If they're walking into an unexplored hex with no directions, I usually just have them trigger whatever event or place is keyed (or at least find a clue if it's not something you'd easily observe from a distance).

An abstraction to be sure, but it works fine since most of the time, they have some notion of where they're going. And wandering aimlessly around the hex is not my idea of "adventure".

Random encounters add in some unpredictability, and you can decide there's more than one thing in a hex, as long as it doesn't directly conflict with what was previously established (ie, a huge obsidian tower they obviously would have noticed from two hexes away).

Where were you when I was asking people about investment rules?

Anyway, I'm currently working on a couple things.

One:
I want to have a cleric class. I like the thematic niche that clerics occupy. However, I'd like to have the game still be challenging and require people to spend time recuperating from dungeons, especially at higher levels. But if the party has a cleric, then they essentially are at full HP at the beginning of every week just from having a cleric, regardless of how you handle healing.

Two:
I'm trying to develop a realistic model of an economy for domain-level play. I like the ideas in Alexis Smolensk's economic system. However it's designed for a top-down creation of the world: you need to know all of the cities and towns and villages and all of their resources from the beginning. My world generation, on the other hand, is typically procedural: I don't generate new terrain, cities, towns, villages, natural resources, etc. until I need to.

Looks interesting wnough at a quick glance.

What specifically do you want feedback on?

My first thoughts was that it’s markedly ‘broad’ rather than ‘deep’. There’s a lot of big stroke stuff on the state of the world. But there’s not so much detail on what all this means for the players and the societies they live in.

Knowing that France is strong and the Ottomans weak does not tell me much about what kind of world this is. A small detail like ‘the forests of France are haunted by snail demons out on revenge for generations of snail eating. Units of musketeers armed with salt combat this new threat’ or ‘the janissaries were disbanded and exiled after failure against the Persians, now they roam Europe as mercenaries’ would give me more fun to work with when creating a character.

You know that the slippery slope is a real phenomenon in precedent-based systems like d&d or common law?

Have you seen tenfootpolemic's rules? They might do what you want.
tenfootpolemic.blogspot.com/2017/08/death-and-dismemberment-redux.html

The only change I make to this is that I require players to make a save vs. Death if they go to 0 HP so they might just die.

I'd add the Isle of Dread and Saragoss (Ravenloft) to the world map as future adventure locations.

Depends on the setting.

>investment rules
Did you read this Dragon article?

No, but I doubt it would have helped anyway. I've come up with decent rules by now anyway.

What is that comic?

Rat Queens.

If you make a case for each jump, your argument is weaker than the weakest jump.
If you miss justifying even one jump, your use of the slippery slope is fallacious.

Pretty great. Map of demihuman enclaves is a really nice touch. Being an uneducated swine I am, I do like the whole quick run down on how history turns out to be when magic is involved.

The author is too much of an asshole for me to enjoy RQ.

The author is a solid guy. It was the original artist who assaulted his wife.

Jesus, what an asshole.

OSR questions:

1) Is rolling a Charisma check to persuade a guard to let you in OSR?
2) Is rolling spot check to realise there is a black goo on top of you OSR?
3) Can cantrips be OSR?

Any cool settings coming out soon? Something like Yoon-Suin or A Red & Pleasant Land?

Depends, depends, depends.

Charisma checks are basically just a modernization of the oldschool reaction check.

If there's a black goo (pudding?) on top of you, you probably don't need to roll a "spot check". It should probably be pretty obvious, and if it isn't it will be soon.
This can also be handled with surprise checks, which (surprise surprise) turned into spot checks in later editions.
Also, searching in general has had dice-based alternatives since OD&D. 1-in-6 to find a secret door when searching a 10' square for a turn, for instance.

Cantrips were created in AD&D 1E, son. Their implementation was a bit different, though.
Really, there's been so many implementations of the damn things that I'm unsure what you're asking. Unearthed Arcana's minor spells for apprentice magic-users? 3E's superweak spells that give you a handful more things to do before falling back on the 3E-standard crossbow wizard archetype? 4E's single generalized Prestidigitation power? 5E/Pathfinder's at-will spells?
Since resource management is such a huge part of OSR, I'd argue that while you could make the 5E/PF method work you'd have to work hard on making it gel with the rest of the systems.

1. I roll on the Reaction Table and add a characters charisma modifier. I might add a penalty if the guard is headstrong.

2. I'd definitely require the player to ask about the ceiling or declare they're specifically looking for enemies in ambush. If you really wanted a dude roll for it, I'd just roll 1d20 equal or under Wisdom.

3. I use cantrips in my game. Mostly mundane spells. But they can only cast them their Level+INT/WIS modifier a day.

i think it is like those cheating "bugs" that some games have, it want to dissuade you from playing 5e

Yeah, looks like somebody hates 5e. Which is funny cause, you know, if you're running it in 5e you can just not include it. It's basically a "fuck you" from the author.

The original version of it didn't have it, but then someone made a comment about it so he stuck it in. I don't remember what the comment was exactly though.

>f you're running it in 5e you can just not include it
5heads aren't capable of that level of independent thought.

Isle of Dread's definetly going in there. I like Saragoss, but I'll have a think about how I can adapt it, so I would feel comfortable running it.

Seconding the other user, where can I find more of these?

Thanks!

Man I'm just reading goblin punch and there's some pretty good stuff in there. Any other blogs I should read for inspiration? no not yours

They're up on his blog.

>In this case it's Conspiracy - basically an attempt to bring drafting to more casual tables
Nah man, the point of Conspiracy was to help newer players build cubes.

>

>Cantrips were created in AD&D 1E
Older than that, Gygax submitted them to the Dragon.
Though, in all fairness, he was working on them for AD&D.

Nextbeards, user. They're called Nextbeards.

I like that it uses No Salvation for Witches as the origin point, but where is the City of Khirima located geographically? And how would it have sprung up in just 20 years without magical assistance?

Going from /osrg/ to /5eg/ sometimes feels like I went to the fucking twilight zone. I've seen people there argue that the only good way to run a game is to use a published adventure, and most people there absolutely hate even the concept of homebrew but are willing to defend Mearls and Crawford's UA brainfarts to death

1. 2d6 reaction roll is ideal.
2. Unless the module calls for something like 1 in 6 chance they notice it, I'd say they only see it if they say they are looking up. Then it has a chance to surprise them as normal.
3. It's not about whether or not they can or can't "be" OSR. Cantrips are not usually found in OSR games, no. But you can houserule them in if you want, and a lot of people here do that.

No.
Yes, but it's not the only way.
Wouldn't be a big deal.

>1) Is rolling a Charisma check to persuade a guard to let you in OSR?
Only if you attempt to bribe him first, or seduce him, or give him any actual reason to let you in other than you telling him to.
>2) Is rolling spot check to realise there is a black goo on top of you OSR?
No. You can say your character looks up at the ceiling, and then you would see the goo. Otherwise you just don't notice it.
>3) Can cantrips be OSR?
Only if the cantrips are for little other than simple parlor tricks with no reasonable use in combat situations.

Whose blog?

You have the tools!

>Otherwise you just don't notice it.
Doesn't this lead to players running down a checklist every time they enter a new space?
>I check the ceiling
>and tap the floor with my staff
>and whiff the air from the doorway to make sure its not poison
>and shine my lantern around to look for hidden arrow slots

Yes. Those are the habits you want to cultivate when going into a place you've never been, and is actively hostile to intruders.

...

How many of you here omit class restrictions based on ability scores? What about based on race?

I've never ran a campaign with either and have never seen any kind of drawback or 'imbalance' to doing it.