/osrg/ Old School Renaissance General

Welcome to the Old School Renaissance general thread. Here we discuss older editions of Dungeons and Dragons such as OD&D, Basic, and AD&D, as well as newer games mechanically compatible with these.

>Trove:
pastebin.com/raw/QWyBuJxd
>Tools & Resources:
pastebin.com/raw/KKeE3etp
>Old School Blogs:
pastebin.com/raw/ZwUBVq8L

>Previous thread:
Thread Question: What's your favourite D&D video game?

Thread Design Challenge: Make some type of content or mechanic related to your career (or your major or field of interest, etc.).

Other urls found in this thread:

coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/12/osr-lumps-of-sky.html
streamable.com/wtsn
youtube.com/watch?v=O-kHB2fWUS8
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Help me improve this. Right now I'm wary about:

1. Speechcraft: This is usually handled via roleplaying or a Reaction roll.
2. Read Scrolls should maybe have a penalty based on spell level.

Am I missing any other mainstay rogue skills?

>What's your favourite D&D video game?
Neverwinter Nights 2. Or Chronicles of Mystara for a non-RPG.

>Make some type of content or mechanic related to your career (or your major or field of interest, etc.).
Screen Printers Attire: Ink spattered. +2 to saves vs monotony.

Is there a good list of GLOG spells out there?

...

So what kind of world works for a west marches style game?

one full of interesting stuff

Slightly expanded Sanctuary, a staging ground for weird campaigns.

are you tired man?
tired of the shit of the man

How would you describe the feel of systems like AD&D, or B/X? Like do they seem more high fantasy, or more Sword and Sorcery?
Or does it depend on the setting

Updated slightly.

So apparently lotheras.gaiden (Whitebox splats) went crazy/out of business and deleted everything on OBS despite declaring a sale
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What did he mean by this?

Depends on the setting, imo. As written, they're not really LotR high fantasy or Conan low-fantasy. It's somewhere in the middle.

But then you have a game like DCC where, as written and without an implied setting, is very much Sword & Sorcery.

Sword and Sorcery. This is partially owing to the tendency of RPG campaigns to trend towards an episodic format.

There's more to Sword and Sorcery than Conan. It wasn't all low-magic. In fact some of it (the Elric saga for instance) could get downright fantastical.

Not really high or low magic, somewhere kind of in the middle of that. Genre wise, I find it tends towards the more fantastical end of sword and sorcery. Most people push osr stuff either towards "realistic low fantasy", acid-fantasy or the higher magic end of sword and sorcery.

Is DCC pretty much a readable OD&D? I'm looking at the site now and it kinda reminds me of that.

Last thread ended with talk on broken Save system in 3E. With DC's too high for death spells.

DCC uses 3E saves but the DC is determined by the attack roll (fighter moves) or the spell check (spells). And Luck is a resource that gets you out of instant death spells if they come up.

A lot of campaigns end up having a bit of a "western in middle ages clothing" feel to it, probably partly to the episodic nature.
Rules as written, all the ruins everywhere and general lack of high civilization gives it a little bit of a dying earth feel imo.

DCC is kinda its own thing rules wise. It's a lot crunchier than most OSR games with a bit of a 3e feel and an almost warhammer vibe to it.

>Is DCC pretty much a readable OD&D?
Yes, thank you Goodman Games for cleaning up OD&D's messy Occupation, Sign, Crit, Fumble, Corruption, Mercurial Magic, and Spell tables

Okay, I laughed.

DCC has always felt to me like if someone read a bunch of OSR blogs and was like
>What if we used ALL THE HOUSERULES

Frontier, post-apocalyptic of sorts. Fallen empire trope may be worn but it's still the best way I know of to do it. Gives you a reason for low population count, having large ruins, even of entire cities, and for the wilderness to be full of magic beasties. Also you can have "ancient dark magic" be the cause of many things... special areas on the map of malevolent magic, from ancient arcane disasters, or ancient spells you can't get from the PHB, that make for great treasure.

What's the problem there?

Should a random race table use d% for cleaner percent chances (no "62.5% of being human") or 3d6 to fit in better with the 3d6 rolled for stats?

That the games rulebook is ridiculously huge and it can take 20 rolls to do things sometimes.
I like DCC but I prefer to selectively port a few of its rules to different systems rather than play the entire system.

It's very "dude old d&d lmao!" in that it buries the experience of actual old D&D under a pile of wacky tables for crits and fumbles and other faux-retro memery.

How do you do ”the heartland is boring, don’t go there, stay in the marches” in the context of living in a fallen empire?

I was thinking of going more with ”the current empire is very stable and boring, but of course there are ruins of fallen empires in the wilderness”

>the experience of actual old D&D

I should probably make that "the experience of actual old D&D that it claims to recreate," just so we don't have another whole thread about that. It's not really based on old D&D, rather it's an attempt at recreating it.

Related topic: how do you handle critical hits and fumbles? Do you even use them at all?

I've been using James Young's crit and fumble tables and they've been working pretty well so far.

...

the heartland is full of depraved nobles who will, in an eyeblink, turn you into a blood sacrifice to unwholesome entities so that they might prevent their empire's collapse is prevented for another day'.
Like the outskirts of the empire are full of wilderness and ruins and monsters, 'cos the garrisons and infrastructure are no longer there. But the centre of the empire is superficially wealthy and powerful but spiritually corrupt. Diabolism and vice are festering cankers on the nobility, and only by ever greater sacrifices is the whole thing prevented from imploding under its own corpulant bulk.
TLDR: in the marches, your body is under threat. In the capitol, it's your soul, and that's a far worse proposition.

I haven't been so far. If I did it would be either: a simple damage multiplier or force the enemy to roll on a death and dismemberment table. No need to reinvent the wheel.

I just have 20 be an extra dice of damage and a 1 be an auto miss. Nothing more fancy than that.

Tangentially related because I'm thinking about getting art to use for OSR stuff but what happens if you buy something negatively priced from OBS/RPGnow?
>$-7.37

>how do you handle critical hits and fumbles
Exploding damage dice.
1 is automiss.
20 is autohit.
It's the only way I can think of to prevent the "if I get just 1 point better of AC, I will be literally immune to goblins" stupidity.
I like the "bounded damage" of OSR games.
I also like critical hits.
So my compromise: if you get a 20, you autohit, and the damage dice can explode. So it's not really a "critical hit", but it *might* be. The damage die is kinda like the roll to confirm a crit in 3e. So if you hit with a sword for 1d6, and roll a 6, you get to roll again and add it. So you have a in 36 chance of dealing 12 damage with a sword: quite a mighty blow. A 1 in 216 of dealing 18 damage which would be enough to fell an ogre in a single blow. I like the existence of "lucky hits" and unbounded damage: makes the game feel more dangerous. Problem comes with d4s that don't fucking roll and end up with the "super deadly dagger syndrome" of games like Savage Worlds.

You could just set a limit to how many times the dice can explode, varying by weapon type, and maybe remove the limitation for magical daggers

>Problem comes with d4s that don't fucking roll and end up with the "super deadly dagger syndrome" of games like Savage Worlds.

I solved that in my blue-sky houserules document by rolling d4 on a d8, exploding only on an 8.

...

Whatever you do, remove that third column.

Crits should be a PC only mechanic

What's your opinion on Labyrinth Lord and AEC, and how does it compare to B/X and AD&D respectively?

Combined? I don't think so.

Arnold's Wizard PDF has a bunch. The wizard classes on lungfungus' and Skerples' blogs have more. Skerples also did some one-off spell lists but they are kind of silly.

Are your players wise to your tricks? Do they know and fear Veins of the Earth? Do they run from any cave deeper than a broom closet?

Try this. Make the caves clouds. coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2017/12/osr-lumps-of-sky.html

Spoiler alert: it's dumb but brilliant.

This is true. It's worth stealing ideas from, but any book thicker than an anatomy textbook is going to be trouble.

>but brilliant.
It's really not.

I was using it to help me keep the numbers straight, in terms of demographic percentages. Once I get them sorted out, I'll remove it.

Yeah, doing full damage on a 20 is usually enough in my experience

Doing full damage when you roll full damage is always enough in my experience

Skerp, what did we tell you about tooting your own horn?
And this is trash compared to your Olm posts (aka the only good thing you've ever written).

It gets better! In addition to being literally nothing, he solicited it from the thread.

>der0 chemtrail watching code scribbles

Skerples, why don't you go eat a bag of dicks or something?

Which retroclone is the most truest to OD&D? Need some suggestions thank you. Is S&W White Box considered OD&D?

"White Box"

S&W White Box is probably the closest clone to OD&D. It makes a few changes, notably the single save system.
There's also Greyharp's Single Volume Edition of OD&D, which collects all of OD&D in a single book, but it's missing some tables.

What's the city in that pic?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen
S&W White Box

I'm not very informed about OD&D clones, but isnt there also Seven Voyages of Zylarthen?

>Which retroclone is the most truest to OD&D?
do you just mean the original three books, or are you counting the supplement books as well, cause for the former I'd say Delving Deeper, and for the latter Swords & Wizardry Complete

Has anyone made a supplement which makes BFRPG classless?

Not for BFRPG necessarily, but it would work the same.

Instead of 2 points to divvy up for cunning, you'd use this:

"Some players of Thieves may wish to have more control
over their Thief abilities. If you study the Thief Abilities
table, you'll discover its secret: From levels 2-9, the Thief
improves 30 percentiles (total) each level; from levels 10-
15, 20 percentiles; and from level 16 on, 10 percentiles. If
you wish to allow Thief customization, simply let the player
allocate these points as he or she wishes rather than
following the table. Allow no more than 10 percentiles to
be added to any single Thief ability per level gain. Note
also that no Thief ability may be raised above 99 percent."

Holmes

>FRW Saves

I know it's from last thread but I gotta respond to this.

Traditional Fort+Ref+Wil saves are negative in my opinion because they limit what stats are useful. Do this instead;
>Fortitude/Might is Strength + Con
>Reflex/Guile is Dex + Cha
>Will/Mind is Int + Wis

This way the modifiers balance out more and classes will tend to be better at saves that suite them, since usually players will play classes that benefit from high attributes.

Or you could just be a cool guy and use a single universal saving throw with mods.

It's almost worth it for how fun it is. It's been a huge hit every time I cracked it open for a one-shot, but I don't think I could put up with it as a weekly game. I highly recommend running it at least once.

I've noticed that a lot of the arguments against FRW saves note that modifiers make things screwy by prioritizing stats. Which I understand.
...so why not just keep modifiers out of it? Use the target number and that's it. Explain it as your training as a Wizard has exposed you to shielding yourself against magic, or that your experience as a Rogue has given you a natural instinct to dodge surprises.

Solicited? As in, someone was asking how to convince people to run VotE content, and I suggested using clouds, and then I wrote it up in more detail.

So I self-solicited?
Or are you annoyed because I answered a question someone else raised?
I know. :D
Agreed, is trash, but is also not serious.
Can't, too busy sucking my own at /osr/'s insistence. When I'm not auto-felliating I'm also putting my foot in my mouth, so it's a busy day. Plus, dicks aren't in the Paleo diet, and as a good hipster, that's just not kosher.
Dubai.

Yeah, it does seem like a thing that gets better after slightly more than 1 drink.
streamable.com/wtsn

I like it user. Thanks for posting some OC, it's much needed here

The fact that this got no responses probably tells you all you need to know, user.

Hey anons, I'm brilliant, but there is one thing I don't know. Why are my posts always interesting, when your posts are usually boring?

Possibly an odd question, and I know this is all "YMMV" which is fine. But in your opinion,

- Which OSR game has the best art?
- Which OSR game has the most "classic" art? (Pic related.)

You can additionally tell me if the actual game is (in your opinion) good or shit.

>Which OSR game has the best art?
I really like Fabian and Baxa so 2e.

>Which OSR game has the most "classic" art?
Late 1e by virtue of comic book ads. Manual of the Planes, Oriental Adventures, Unearthed Arcana

>Which OSR game has the most "classic" art?
The old Monster Manuals do it for me. Right in the nostalgia button.

user, are you OK? Is there something you need to talk about?

youtube.com/watch?v=O-kHB2fWUS8

>user, are you OK?

He's suffering from Skerples Related Butthurt, or SRB. There've a been quite a few cases on /osrg/ of late.

Do you guys like your magic items to be explicable or inexplicable?

A music box that makes people dance is explicable. A music box that causes it to rain avacados is inexplicable. It might have had a reason (it might not be a music box at all, etc.), but the PCs don't know it.

plz respond

...

Labyrinth Lord sticks pretty close to B/X. See pic. AEC makes attempts to streamline AD&D, which I appreciate, but it doesn't go far enough in my opinion.

How much farther do you think it should go in regards to streamlining? Do you think AD&D should just be the better option?

>How much farther do you think it should go in regards to streamlining?
It just retains a bit too much junk that could be happily jettisoned. Off the top of my head: separate percentages for resurrection and system shock (the former is always just 5% better than the latter, until after it hits 90% and starts slowing down so it won't hit its head on the ceiling), racial (and gender) min and max ability requirements, ability requirements for classes, too many armors, and maybe a few too many weapons (though it is decently pared down from AD&D's list). It's mostly minor stuff, but it still rubs me the wrong way. I don't need the extra rules of AD&D except for class, race, spell, and magic item options. So really just more (but not more complex) options.

>Do you think AD&D should just be the better option?
I definitely prefer AEC to straight AD&D, which never gets played anywhere close to by-the-book anyway. I mean, AD&D is good source material, but in terms of actually play, I'd definitely go with AEC. I just wish it went a bit further.

fuck off

You have a counter-argument, or... ?

>they're Sky Assholes. They scoop babies out of carriages on foggy days and leave jars of farts behind.

This is legitimately one of the least funny limes I've ever seen written, yet I'm still laughing like a child

What's wrong with me? Is it the fart joke?

Also decent post, get working on the der0, blog slave

I also think 2e has the best art.

I was being kind of silly wuth that answer but really, any kind of setting that's packed with stuff worth exploring should work, no?

Yeah, I like the feeling of getting something out of rolling a 20 on a d20, and getting max damage from the attack feels good enough. It's quick, is useful, and gives an opportunity to describe some sweet move the character is pulling off. I don't think crits are for everyone, but it's something that's enjoyed around my table. Only players can crit.

Delving Deeper for white box, Iron Falcon for white box + Greyhawk.

Just get the illicit reprints. There's literally no reason not to.

>- Which OSR game has the best art?
BECMI. Elmore's much better at pen and ink than at paintings, IMO.

>- Which OSR game has the most "classic" art? (Pic related.)
1e. It's not even close.

Is this good GMing, guys?

An NPC elf shoots a PC while the latter is riding a horse.

The bow does 4 damage, while the PC is drained from 7 to 3.

Is it cool that I fluffed it as the PC's horse taking the shot for him, and him being dragged to the ground under his horse?

What I mean is: by Old School rules, how cool is it that I declare a situation with lots of branches in the fiction (PC is trapped under a horse for the moment, he's also lost his fucking horse) instead of just fluffing the arrow by cutting a red line just over his shoulder and scaring him a lot, so he's now 3 HP?

I come from storygame mindset, and I don't know how this kind of things are supposed to work in this frameset

No.

I personally wouldn't. If I wanted the NPC elf to hit the horse, I would have the NPC elf aim at the horse, and then you would have those effects. In OSR, at least how I see it, you can use things like that intentionally to your advantage.

Depends on a lot of things.
Are your players good with that sort of campaign?
OSR tends to stress resource management, so attacking the horse is fair play. If the NPC missed their target and hit the horse, thats fair.
Do you incorporate 'sundered shields' type rules, where a PC can lose an item to avoid damage? Because having the player choose between taking the damage or injuring the horse is good DM'ing.
Does 4 damage drop the horse to 0 HP or lower?
Its cool from a narrative perspective, yes. But the issue most people here have is 'why not just have them shoot the horse?'

I agree with the others that it depends. One of the strengths of simple combat is making up stuff like that on the fly. I would, however, let them describe how they get out of the situation without too much pentalty. It has to feel fair, if it's just dressing it's just dressing. If it has mechanical consequences I'd have the elf aim at the horse instead. "The elf tries to shoot your horse to get you down on the ground".

If your players dig that sort of wild combat stuff, then go for it. I probably wouldn't have the horse take a mortal wound if the elf wasn't aiming for it, but instead have him injured and have the party need to catch him and patch him up afterward, maybe slow their overland speed for the next day or two to take it easy on him while he recovers. Apart from their fragile legs and feet, horses are very tough.

>What's wrong with me?
I think the humour comes from the angst-wracked overwroughtness of the Knotsmen contrasted with the utterly dumb Sky Assholes.

What's the best system for playing soyboys and sorcerors