/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:
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>Previous thread:
Thread Question: How would you adapt your favourite module to another type of setting? (Space Opera a la SWN, prehistoric fantasy a la WP&WS, etc.)

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> mechanically compatible

>mechanically compatible

Isn't that the whole point of OSR systems, that they're all able to run each other's content?

If you have a better description of OSR, I'm open to changes. I just took the one I threw together three threads ago. People may argue about whether 2e is OSR, but it's pretty universal that if you can't use content made for a specific game in an OSR game then that game's not OSR.

>mechanically compatible

>favourite

He's right though

What thread faction are you guys even? I've never seen OSR-expansionists act so aggressive or act in such unison.

>People may argue about whether 2e is OSR,
2e is literally 1e but better

>What thread faction are you guys even?
youtube.com/watch?v=2XzFNLJIpUQ

More seriously, people who don't give two shits about defining what OSR is and would prefer to focus on content creation and discussion rather than hair-splitting and arbitrary community sorting.

The more disgusted she gets, the more mechanically compatible Marcille is with my dick

Useful content cannot be created without community sorting, and sorting rooted in concrete mechanical terms is hardly arbitrary.
False OSR Enthusiast, get ye gone.

Both are true; neither are particularly useful. Starting "true OSR" fights right out of the OP seems like bad practice.

>neither are particularly useful
Nor are DCC, GLOG, DW, TFT, and Traveller materials when I run TSR D&D clones.

Trying to fix Birthright

Issues with Birthright domains that need to be addressed, with possible fixes

>Rebalance Provinces so each province can support only a certain number of holdings. i.e. Province is level 3, Source is therefore level 2, There are 3 Law, Temple and Guild Holding slots for the entire province. The regent owns 2 Law Holdings and the local Baron owns 1. The High Priest owns all 3 Temple Holdings and two in the next province. The party Thief controls 1 Guild Holding and is competing with the two merchant families who each control 1 other Guild Holding. Level 0 Holdings are called ‘Stakes’ best represented by labelled dots or asterisk, as to better represent a claim rather than concrete presence.
1. The "starting domains" for PCs have no sense of balance to them whatsoever. In Anuire alone, you could choose for your PC to start off as regent of the small little "recommended" domain of Roesone... or you can start off in control of "the most powerful church in Anuire," the Western Imperial Temple of Haelyn, or the massive megacorporation that is the Heartlands Outfitters (which also has its own city-state).
>Find a select few provinces and choose them as the starting options. Or have the party work their way up to provincial control, which makes weaker holdings a more viable entry.

2. Wizards are actually underpowered here. They are mistrusted by the populace to start with, their realm spells start off middling, and by the time said spells become strong, they are hamstrung by the fact that developing provinces reduces magical source ratings. (This can be circumvented by playing an elven domain, but elves are locked out of temples.)
>No clue, like the idea of creepy old wizards trying to preserve their natural park from developers.

3. Priests, on the other hand, are godlike for their ability to wield priestly realm spells (many of which, especially those from the supplements, are on the level of wizard realm spells) without having to deal with magical source reductions.

> Priests are limited by number of holdings as all are now except wizards. Still an issue.

4. Some classes are objectively superior than others at the domain management subsystem. For example, fighters collect Regency only from Law, while rangers collect Regency from Law and Guilds (and have overland map mobility benefits), and paladins collect Regency from Law and Temples. Halfling ranger/priests can collect Regency from Law, Guilds, *and* Temples (while keeping the overland map mobility benefits), and are probably the single best character type at domain management.

> A class must focus on which type of holding to earn Regency from each domain turn, if they can earn Regency from more than one type of Holding. i.e. a Ranger must decide whether to devote his time to communing with the gods or doing paperwork for the realm.

5. The game claims that a government type wherein the province-owner delegates Law holdings to others is viable (and indeed, this is the case in the Rjurik Highlands), but this actually screws over province loyalty tremendously (and makes the Rjurik Highlands ironically quite disloyal despite the delegation of Law holdings, which goes against the lore).

>Government types like Crusader Kings 2? Don’t know how to fix this without laying another level of complexity.
edit: An religious/magical Oath system would fit, The Regent gives each major provincial vassal 1 Regency and in return the vassals supply him back 1. This creates a mystic bond of fealty which allows the Provinces to ignore the lack of Law Holding Control from the Primary Regent. But requires everyone to gather once a year of to reaffirm fealty.

For what it's worth, I mainly included that in the OP so that people know what exactly an "OSR" is for people who've never heard of it before.

6. Some domains have less detail than others, which is a bad thing for a GM who has to manage a massive world. Some domains have listed treasuries, Regency accumulated, armies, and fortifications, while others go into no detail at all on such things. In fact, the writers were so lazy with some domains that they declared their holding values to be "unknown" and up to the GM to decide.

> DM problem, part of life running a AD&D game, I would roll a few times on An Echo Resounding table to get some benchmarks for flavour and roughly assign a Province Rating, which should determine much of the reworked provincial level of holdings.

7. The action economy is completely screwed. No matter how expansive your lands are, you still have the same allotment of actions (and scale for those actions) as you did when you were starting off. This means that your lands are bound to rapidly spiral out of control once you start expanding... unless you make *every* new land you expand into a vassal state under your control (because then they get your own set of actions). However, since vassals can be disloyal and/or passive-aggressively be unhelpful, the DM is the one to control them; this means that eventually, the DM is playing out the majority of your little empire's actions.

>Players can nominate non-landed Chancellors/Wives/fellow unlanded players to gain more domain actions for themselves, at the cost of court intrigue, possibly them gain Regency points from your Provinces, lessens but does not prevent DM overwork.

8. The DM controls only a few other domains each turn. Every other domain is simply assumed to be zero-summing itself and not accomplishing anything, but also not losing anything. In other words, the PCs' domains and their DM-controlled vassals get to steadily improve, whereas the vast majority of the rest of the world is completely stagnant for no good reason.

>Have a random event table for the rest, so some go up and down in fortune, think about how NPC actions effect in game values rather than just plot. Still limited in fixing issue.

9. I have not studied it too in-depth, but I have not heard good things about the mass battle system at all.

>Use ACKS Domains at War Quickstart for simular levels of depth.

Have you looked at Pathfinder's Kingmaker rules? There's a 1% chancer there might be something useful there.

Birthright's rules were designed only to mesh with how the Birthright map is designed.

Kingmaker and ACKS are on a scale too small for the setting and are hex-related, while Birthright is by Province.

Each dotted line separates one province.

>Birthright's rules were designed only to mesh with how the Birthright map is designed.
I guess that's why people never use it with other settings.

Thoughts on this? Waiting on it to come from Amazon.

inb4:
>it's free

It's also tied to how the magic kingship stuff works.

>races separated from classes
Shit homebrew

If you absolutely need race-and-class and ascending AC you could do worse. The modules are all bland and the HP tick-boxes take up a lot of unnecessary space in them.

Well I'm using it's rules and stuff to make a homebrew Warcraft based campaign so I don't mind lol.

Thinking of a variant magic system, at least for a more blaster-y, elementalist style of wizard.

At 1st Level, said wizard has X magic dice (X is min. 2, but could be influenced by Intelligence modifier, in order to reinforce the concept of smart wizards?). Magic dice could be used for various variables in a spell, such as range, duration, or just straight damage. All dice used to cast spells would be restored after a good night's rest, but some dice may also be restored (after combat taking a breather/in combat via potions/by sacrificing HP/by burning reagents/insert method here). Hell, maybe not have the magic dice expended except on certain rolls, almost like a reverse recharge mechanic from 4e (so the wizard loses the die on a roll of, say, 5 or 6).

At each level up, the wizard gains an additional magic die to add to their pool permanently. The kicker is, in order to learn a new spell, the wizard must permanently sacrifice at least 1 magic die per spell to be learned (maybe more, depending upon the spell), even at level 1.

To be honest, I'm trying to figure out a way to model the various Etrian Odyssey elemental offense classes (Alchemist/Runemaster/Warlock) without having to have the entire leveling system revolve around skill points and skill trees (which are kind of a pain in the ass anyways). However, I'm not entirely sure how to go about it without making the class seem either horrendously underpowered early on (like, moreso than normal D&D wizards) or blowing everything out of the water effortlessly at higher levels. Any suggestions?

so what do magic dice actually DO
it sounds like you're building a framework before you've built a foundation

what are you trying to model? what is your intended mode of play for the class using this mechanic? How do you want the mechanic to feel? what out-of-character skills should the class draw on? What is its in-world presence?
also you might want to think about magic more in terms of utility. Typically, OSR magic has a comparatively low focus on combat (and often combat spells are just limited use 'i win' buttons, such as Sleep or Charm). A blaster-type is certainly doable, but somewhat orthoganal to normal osr magic's priorities.
I'm interested in the framework you've presented, but I'm not grocking it yet: give me some details on your goals and no doubt I will have better commentarry.

>A prepared GM should be able to answer these important questions about the dungeon:
>Who built the dungeon?
>Why was the dungeon built?

Do you agree that these question need to be answered?

No, this is a game

>THE U L TI MA T E I N BAD DE S I GN
>It's Magic! This is the ultimate rationale for lazy design. "It's magic" can sweep away almost any logical inconsistency. All it says to me as a publisher, though, is that either the freelancer doesn't care about creating a plausible dungeon or he doesn't know he's failed horribly. (Of course, some extra‐planar dungeons or the lair of a powerful wizard could prove the exception to this rule, but such examples are few and far between).

So I want to make 5E OSR flavored since I can't convince anyone to play a different game. How do I do it?

Good thing this thread is not only for you, then

Remove XP budget and encounter construction rules
Add reaction checks, morale, and xp for gold

Pick up the rulebook, slide it out, then slide in a B/X-based system.
Seriously, 5e will fight you every step of the way if you try to do OSR style in it. It's not worth the headache.

If you're ForeverDM, then tell 'em you're sick of 5E and you're not running it anymore. If they're afraid of OSR specifically, run something else for a while then ease them into it.

It doesn't seem impossible, the biggest problem is the resting mechanics

It seems like it would be easy, but the more you play, the more you find you have to change.

Such as? I'm not talking about a strict OSR hack but rather something that would work for dungeon delving

For the DM, just to know so they know the answers to the dumb questions players ask? Might help. Do the players need to know the answers to your questions? Absolutely not. They might be able to find out if it's knowable, but then, they might not.

Yes, how are you going to properly design a dungeon if you don't know what the bits are supposed to be?

A is useful but unnecessary. B is neither.

4/5
Pros:
-Free
-Large amounts of additional free content of varying qualities
-Consistently updated
-Just enough QoL improvements taken from more modern games while still being "Old School"

Cons:
-Layout and editing are atrocious although better than it used to be

Anyone else find it annoying to have several AC values?

>worn armor + dex + 1 from shield for melee
>worn armor + dex + 2 from shield for ranged
>worn armor + shield for determining weapon effectiveness
>also crossbows pierce your AC down to a minimum of unarmored + dex

Oh yeah and surprised AC which is just worn armor, no dex or shield.

I just use Worn Armour [+ Shield] for all attacks and 10+Dex bonus for anything hit you couldn't tank or unarmoured AC.

AC is 10 + Dex bonus for unarmoured or hits you can't dodge or
12 for leather
14 for chain
16 for plate
+1 for shield.
In all other cases.

Armor reduces damage taken. Shields reduce chance to be hit by a fixed amount, whether against melee or ranged. I'm not sure what "weapon effectiveness" means. Crossbows either just do high damage, or disregard half of armor. Problem solved.

Give me weird monsters that have a weakness that can potentially be reasoned or discovered by clues! So more like "vampires only come out at night and sleep underground, so maybe their weakness is sunlight" than "vampires are obsessed with counting rice"

Is there an OSR game like 2e?

Any given AD&D-like OSR game, since the two editions are so similar. For Gold and Glory is specifically based off 2e, I think.

It's personally in my top 5 OSR (the others being Dark Dungeons, LotFP, DCC, and the shit homebrew system I've been working on and will probably never finish).

Anyway, I find BFRPG pretty good. It's free for everything unless you want the printed versions in which case it is dirt cheap (Gonnerman has flat out said he wants to make no money from it since it's more a fun project than something he wants to do for a living). Like, I bought several copies of the cores rules, the extra bestiary and all of the print copies of the adventure modules that there were and I paid less than $30. And, because it does have a number of modern conventions to it (separate race and class, ascending AC, etc) it makes it really easy for new people to pick up and play as well as introduce people used to only modern D&D and other games to get into as well. It still adheres closely to the classic style of game we all know and love.

I'm actually planning on using it to run a campaign using only the modules for some friends of mine just to show them how OSR works (like loading up on marbles, 10 foot poles, extra sacks and hiring minions and such) since it's really easy to just make a character and go (like 10 minutes tops).

For Gold and Glory and, depending how far off you want it to be, HackMaster sorta. That said, I'd stick to 1e OSR games since there is a great abundance of them. Just a small list off the top of my head
>OSRIC
>Microlite78
>Labyrinth Lord Advanced Companion
>Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea

Just finished reading it myself. Overall it's pretty great and was worth the $5 for a meatspace copy. If I was forced at gunpoint to run one OSR game as written with zero house rules, I'd pick BFRPG.

Things I really liked about it:
- Improved thief skills at lower levels
- Giving all MU Read Magic at level 1
- Great optional rules for death and poison

Things my group will really like but I don't really care one way or the other:
- Ascending AC
- Race & Class
- No Alignment

Things I thought were not so great:
- Turn Undead d20 is just worse than 2d6
- The b/x roll under ability score thing is FAR superior to the level based DC check nonsense in BFRPG
- The art is laughably bad, I mean the PDF is free and all but holy shit is it an eyesore

But the best part of all is that BFRPG really feels like it knows what it's doing. I'll give an example: The wonky Cleric spell progression gets smoothed out so you don't have that one weird level where you're getting level 3 and level 4 spells at the same time. But unlike LL, LotFP and so many others, they don't proceed to fuck it all up by giving Clerics a spell at level 1. Stuff like that really pushes BFRPG ahead of the crowd for me.

1e has some good things that were cut out, but otherwise I agree.

>1e has some good things that were cut out
Half-Orcs, assassins, demons/devils and some stuff from Unerthed Arcana. Is there anything else that 2e is missing?

A lot of people says 2e has too much crunch, but 90% of the rules are actually optional

Segments in initiative (but it's got its own system for that), and the weapon vs AC to-hit adjustments, which it replaced with damage types which fuck over 2H swords. Maybe alignment languages too.

Does the trove have Veins of the Earth? Trying to get in to check but Mega enters a perpetual loading loop

Yes it does.

Saving throws, for one example. In B/X, characters get better at saves in absolute terms. In later editions, you might barely keep up with the spells and saving throw arms race.

I almost think it'd be easier to modify B/X with your favorite 5e mechanics, because there's less material to start with.

But if you just want a few old school trappings, then I'm guessing 5e still has resource and time tracking systems.

good. do you happen to know where it is in the trove? Mega doesn't have a search function iirc

Inbox.

Hey! I'm planning on a campaign based on pic related. And would like some help in a couple of things, but first a little background:

My Idea is to make a game where a court of vampires are the main antagonists and are antagonizing a settelment close to their lands for generations. But instead of the classy tyrannical vampire trope I wanted them to be a bunch of inbred sadists that are more of a mockery (or exageration) of nobility. Their estate would be drowning inside a swamp and over the centuries the constructions are getting more and more ruined, as well as their phisical apperance. The older the vampire te more bestial it looks. But since they still have some standing with othe rnoble families (they rule over what is basically a backwater region with not much of value) they are left well alone to keep on with their degradation and degeneracy.

The PCs would first encounter them maybe because thy are travelling through the village and are asked by the people there to help them save some of the youths that were sent as a tribute to one of the courts parties (thinking of a wedding or something simillar) or maybe they are the escourts of a noble that was invited to said festiveties. the first "dungeon" would be the parties trying to get out of the estate and saving the people there. But htey would get embroiled unwitingly or not in the courts games. And I'm having trouble thinking of compelling games for the vampires to play with them and their escalation throughout the night.

>TL;DR: games played in a wedding party by a texas chainsaw/the hills have eyes style vampire familiy

Only really if you're into dungeon ecology, I think. They're entirely irrelevant for a funhouse dungeon, for example.

However, do note that the answers might be "a crazy wizard" and "for mysterious crazy wizard reasons".

It's by far my favorite system for running a game with that classic D&D vibe.

I know it was Raggis preffered system before he made LotFP.

Blind knife fights where (for example) a brother and sister are thrown into the ring blind folded and forced to fight to the death. A painter stands by to capture the survivor's horror.

A courtly dance where anyone who misses a step or otherwise disrupts the evening is torn apart by ghouls

A dark comedy skit filled with decapitations, torture, painful pratfalls, and so on. Of course, all the death and pain is real, and occasionally accompanied by a slide whistle, or an undead comedian cracking jokes.

>race and class is bad
Not everyone wants to play in Middle Earth

I consider it to be for a serious campaign. Not necessary for fun old dungeon crawling. "Ancient empire build lots of temples and citadels and underground cities" works perfectly fine as a blanket excuse.

If you actually can't convince them to switch, then start using encounters at least 2-3 CRs above their APL. 5e is built on resource management, except that the resource refreshes whenever they want (long rest). So you need to push them harder to have more lethal fights. Also give them ways around the battles. For example, a 40x40 room surrounded by a hallway that goes all the way around it, with corridors leading to and from this hallway. In the 40x40 room is a monster, preferably one of CR=APL+3. Don't tell them what it is, just describe it. Now if they fight it like retards they will get beat up badly but maybe still win. Whereas if they just go around the hallway they can avoid the monster and continue onward. Put a few of these in your dungeon they might start getting the message.

Wandering monsters, tables and checks.

Never make a dungeon conveniently close to a safe place - require at least some wilderness exploration, so the 15-minute adventuring day makes you have to camp outdoors (and risk monster attacks that don't give treasure). Use 1-hour encounter checks in dungeons so you can take a short rest but probably don't want to take a long one indoors.

Use 5E's crappy morale rules. At least they're something, and they'll allow you to include more and bigger encounters.

Make a megadungeon, or steal one. It's alright to start small and expand later as needed. If all else fails, use the random dungeon generation tables in advance. (This also actually tells you how many treasures to hand out - something the rest of the game is cagey about.)

Adjust XP a bit - you can keep combat XP if you really want to (it makes encounters a bit less of a bummer), but maybe use milestone XP for recovered treasure hoards?
Directly using GP=XP doesn't really work, by the way, because 5E's treasure tables give somewhat weird values.

Make sure to enforce encumbrance limits.

Use the More Difficult Identification variant.

Make players actually map - don't draw it for them. If you've got a large group, consider whether or not the role of Caller is useful - someone who acts as representative for the players to relay their final decisions to you.

I got sick of that in 3E, so in OSR I generally just have armor+shield be universal. (Dexterity just gives a bonus to ranged attacks, nothing else.)

Theese are great!
Here's one I thought: the characters are told to hunt one of the brides to be in one of the gardens, but are themselves hunted by the court's hounds. (A little cliché I know)

Non-optional GP=XP is nice, but it's technically still in 2E.

A lot of the good stuff in 1E is really just a case of the 1E DMG being a hell of a lot better than the 2E one. Lots of advice and whatnot.

>Non-optional GP=XP is nice, but it's technically still in 2E.
>A lot of the good stuff in 1E is really just a case of the 1E DMG being a hell of a lot better than the 2E one. Lots of advice and whatnot.
Yeah, 2e made a lot of rules optional but never explained when you should use them

You can get endlessly twisted, but know when to stop.

You don't want simple gore or terror - what you want to create is moral distress. Corruption, not just destruction.

Find what the players care about, and hurt it.

You could also make the vampires vulnerable. Perhaps insulting one of the lady's looks (ie, reminding her that her face is rotting off and her fancy dress is moldering and filthy) has the effect of turning undead. Of course, any male vampires will instantly spring for their swords and demand a duel.

Check out the movie Hour of the Wolf for some character ideas.

Race as Class has no purpose except to expedite character creation. And it reinforces a "humans are the majority, these are the few rare explorers of the demihumans" setting that your game might not even have. It's fine for introducing people to OSR games, but once people have played for years they want more options.

Shouldn’t be too hard to add, for example, cantrips and extra attacks for a more high-powered game. And semi-vancian casting (slots are only chosen at casting time, not preparation.

>2e is literally 1e but better

Yeah, like you move through dungeons at 10x the speed, so there's not all that dumb "crawling" through dungeons to get in the way of your preplanned story events!

Can't you just rule that there's combat movement which isn't careful at all, and then crawling movement where you have the chance to detect traps and carefully examine everything? Then you would have both use 120' as a speed. Those ten minute adventuring turns are pretty abstract, you don't have to break everything down into combat rounds.

>2e is literally 1e but better
you spelled 'bloated' wrong

That's almost like putting the 1e rules back in, though it's now (only) doubling your regular dungeon movement speed for previously explored areas to match the 1e "fleeing" speed.

See >A lot of people says 2e has too much crunch, but 90% of the rules are actually optional

2e was made by soyboys who hate the people they're selling to

>Too big of a soyboy to keep demons and devils

>No required GP to XP

>Got rid of half orcs until later

>Fucked up bards

>Thac0

>Incentivizes combat over everything else

What are the key differences between 1st and 2nd edition AD&D and which one is better/worse for it?

Burples, when are you writing up that der0 post

Objectively the best OSR system

I'm not sure anyone's ever sat down and mapped it all out. It really is a Herculean task, considering all the rules.

>Fucked up bards
wat

What's wrong with vancian magic? It's objectively one of the best magic systems, there's no need to replace it

>Objectively the blandest OSR system

FTFY. Even Labyrinth Lord has more flavor.

>fuck it all up by giving Clerics a spell at level 1
I don't understand why this is such a sticking point for so many people. A single 1st level spell in the grand scheme of this is really not that big a deal, and it makes a lvl 1 Cleric something other than a regular Fighter, but worse.

Not only are they not as strong as they used to be, they tool away all the mystique from being a bard, sort of like how planescape took away the mystique of the planes. Bards used to be this unique class option only the best of the best could take, representing massive adventuring experience, while 2e turned it into pansy soyboys frolicking around in skirts

Clerics still get Turn Undead

What system would work the best for playing a game set during Dominions' wars of ascension?

Because it's not OSR

>B-but it just makes clerics worse first level fighters!

Turn undead, and clerical investment will get them help at local temples

Go back to playing Soyboys and Sorcerors, cuck

What if turn undead is a spell like in LotFP? What are your thoughts on that?
Also
>Because it's not OSR
Sooo...LotFP isn't OSR, wew, lad. These are some new heights of "muh compatibility" autism.

>Got rid of half orcs until later
Gygax was already planning on doing that.

I agree with your point, but your use of "cuck", "soyboy" and stutter greentext in the same post makes it very hard for my eyes to not instinctively glance over what you wrote

Godbound, I suppose

I made a mention of basically filling in variables in the spell, such as using the result of rolled magic dice as the duration in rounds, or how much damage it does, stuff like that. I know that GLoG does something similar, but I'm not too interested in aping if wholesale due to the various Dooms (as I'm looking for a more upbeat, heroic fantasy).

My goals, as mentioned in the first couple of sentences, is to take a class based around blasty elemental spells from a skill-tree, point-buy videogame and translate it into a system that retains that feeling of having to unlock more spells and higher tiers of power without ripping the entire skill tree system verbatim (as it's supposed to model up to Level 99, and that's a bit excessive in old school play). I'm looking to move the wizard away from the Save-or-Die/Save-or-Suck model of spells, and make them more elementalists, not entirely dissimilar from 4e's Sorcerers. If that means leaning a little more toward high fantasy, and a little farther away from Fantasy Fucking Vietnam, that's a direction I don't entirely mind going.