Welcome to the Old School Renaissance general thread...

This was my first RPG so i am biased

I would really like to add this magic system to OSR

>They're full of overcomplicated mechanics that don't add anything to the game but retro-feels
I don't know much about OSR, admittedly, but I'm not sure what you're referring to.

>five saves? six stats?
Well, I'll give you stats, they seem to be irrelevant for the most part. But I don't know what the problem with having different saves for different things is. Maybe you could reduce the number of categories, but don't you agree in general that it's better to have some people be better at resisting bodily effects than mind control and vice versa?

>three rolls for each side on combat?
What do you mean? I genuinely don't know which rolls you're talking about. Unless you're rolling initiative at the top of each round?

>percentile skills?
AFAIK a lot of clones do away with this. I don't like percentile rolls either.

>monsters having a totally different stat system than players
Hmm, so monsters don't have abilities, but their HD/AC/AB/saves/move seem to me to be exactly equivalent to player characters. Ability scores seem to be something that's rarely needed for them, so the'yre just relegated to "make them up or roll 3d6 if you do happen to need them". I'm not sure but I think I prefer that because it makes statblocks so much more compact than e.g. 5e.

But yeah, I think you should identify the problems precisely, then define your design goals, and hack that shit my dude/tte. I'm sure there's people (like myself) who would be interested in an even more lightweight OSR game.

Someone here haves blueholme journeyman rules?

>What makes a RPG a RPG for you?
That's not an OSR question.

>????? ughhh
are trying to ironically sound like a soyboy or unironically sound like a soyboy because you're succeeding either way

>If anyone's got an idea for a book to do next that isn't the AD&D MM1 or Veins of the Earth, let me know. I made an attempt at Fire on the Velvet Horizon but the monsters are too weird and often conceptual.
Maybe The Unknown Gods or Deities, Demigods & Heroes and similar books, because you just KNOW that if you include those rules and also include fightable dieties of some sort some smartass is going to ask "so what happens if I finish the job Uranus started?"
(As a Nethack player, I certainly already know what happens if they eat Thanatos.)

For other books... well, the Fiend Folio is sufficiently weird that you could probably have some fun with it. Although a lot of stuff is just going to be, say, "eating a Colonial Insect-Formed Artificial Life is just going to give you a lot of protein".
The non-undead undead are also interesting (what the hell's up with Crypt Things?), and Crabmen are probably delicious.

>d20 dice pools
wat
>Cerebrality, Adroitness
Man this is starting to sound like some fancy pants hipster bullshit
Dials seem like a decent way of presenting things so far though
>In all honesty, [a non-human centric campaign] is an inferior way to play Donjon and should be frowned upon
Ok I'm starting to like you
>’Ok – that’s fair. But, you can only use it once per encounter,’
D I S S O C I A T E D
>Nikola, the GM, stops him. ’Hold on there. ’Master?’ I don’t think so.
So it's a negotiation game
>Combat is measured in what we call flurries. A flurry does not correspond to any sort of time measurement. Instead, it is a full exchange of blows
I always try to think of it like this but honestly it cannot be stated enough
I think the "lull in which to parley/run away each round" thing might be usable in other games actually!
>You are always one of the following distances from your opponents: • Out of range • Two actions away • One action away • In close
I've honestly been working on stating something similar, I don't really care about the difference between 45 feet and 60 feet, or 15 and 25
>The character then defends, rolling his Adroitness
See, you're trying to make shit more "light", but you're actually doubling the number of rolls per round of combat. IMO, any increase in the number of rolls required to resolve something needs some SERIOUS justification. Rolling a pool of d20s is already pretty swingy, did they really consider whether having adroitness+worn armor give a static target number or negate a static number of successes would make it significantly worse? You might be reducing the number of pages required to explain the rules, but you might also be making the game run much slower at the actual table.
>8.1 The Gameplay Flowchart
Where's the chart tho?

>Crabmen are probably delicious
delet this

>Monsters and NPCs
So monster creation seems actually MORE time-consuming than OSR, where you only really need a few numbers. (And you have a wealth of sources to grab shit from). Here you need to make up a bunch of unique verbal descriptors AND then divide 15+5xLvl points between everything. And you only have a dozen example monsters to steal from.

Verdict:
2/5 not actually playable, would steal a couple ideas from

But hey, at least it fits into 60 pages instead of LotFP's 150 which includes 12 pages of ship and finance rules you can skip?

Hahaha, it is quite playable or it was in my mind 10 years ago

has anyone used the Stars Without Number faction turn for non SWN games as a way of making your campaign worlds feel more alive and generate adventure seeds? How did it go? What would you have done differently?

Into the Odd is the most stripped down OSR game I've seen, that doesn't feel like a "toy" system. Whitehack is a close second. Both subtract heavily from the complexity of B/X, and even OD&D, but still have enough rules to feel like you're not just flipping a coin.

Have you played B/X itself? It's light, but it's not like it's all theater of the mind--dungeoneering procedures in particular are pretty detailed. Alot of retroclones are just restatements, with tighter editing... for example, B/X has this problem with thief skills, where there's multiple contradictory statements about who can search for traps, and how. Alot of retroclones are worthy just for cleaning up things like that.

I gave it a skim. It's poorly written--reads like a meandering monograph more than a rulebook.

I think it's in the trove? Check the inbox, perhaps?

I got my copy around Christmas, haven't given it a full read over yet though

Weird Adventures or Strange Stars seem like they'd be good ones, or maybe Yoon-Suin

So DCC skills are managed like this:
If your PC profession is related roll 1d20 if it is unrelated roll 1d10

Do you think it is good or would you replace it with other ruling?

Also has anyone replaced the spell list with the ones on DCC?

What are you rolling under, your ability?

How about...
1 in 6 chance as a baseline
2 in 6 chance if it's related to your profession

>Causey-WeirdAdventures.pdf

Heh.

A DC, like 3e on.

DC 5,10,15 etc..

you add your score modifier

Ah, right, misread the order of related/unrelated

I don't know, I feel like skill DCs are what we're trying to get away from

Do you also get triggered by Conan?
Fuck off, Skerp.

A question for OSR.

What was the first "commercial" RPG to not be heavily grounded in wargaming (using miniatures on maps and so on)?

Nice buzzwords, faggot. I like Weird Adventures okay, but to tell the truth there's fine line between the right way and the wrong way to do the retro-racist Yellow Peril thing, and Weird Adventures misses the mark.
.

OD&D.

Maybe Tunnels and Trolls in 75.

I was just reading Conan the other day, and it went out of its way to point out how the "Shemitic" people have big hooked noses and lie all the time. I didn't mind because it's really old but if that was written today I'd think it was pretty fucking stupid, yeah.

I've heard of people doing it, and I thought about doing it myself, but I've looked at the SWN faction turn mechanics and I personally would have to modify them heavily if I wanted it to make much sense. That said I do like how it works for SWN.

Arguably OD&D, although miniatures certainly had their place and it was directly descended from a wargame.

It was definitely an early thing, though. By the time Traveller came around in '77 it didn't really assume miniatures except for a momentum-based space wargame thing (which probably counts), but before that you have Metamorphosis Alpha in '76 which... I don't think had much of that? And Empire of the Petal Throne was in '75 and IIRC doesn't either.

It's hard to tell with just the rules, of course - OD&D doesn't have miniatures in the list of equipment, after all, although some early players still used them since they already had them handy!

Yeah I mean there's always a bit of a grey area I guess cause for some players miniatures are always going to help them understand what is going on in a scene even if the rules don't specifically mention them.

With that in mind it's probably always worth putting a little section in any rule set about miniatures even if you don't really have it in mind when creating a rule set.

would you look at that, a perfectly square patch of dirt

I think some changing of terms may be all that's really needed.

I guess if you play on a really high level scale. But low scale I find it hard to believe that you'd care that a country two hundred miles away declared war on a country three hundred miles away. That's the thing here --- SWN's faction system is designed for, essentially, multi-planet-wide governments who are constantly in conflict with each other. I don't know what scale you were planning on, but in my games it's either way to high of a scale for the players to care about until well past name level or it's way too low of a scale for anything to make any sense. When you have factions that are small enough that low level players might notice, what exactly are factions? Does a single noble family count? Or a thieves' guild? It just seems out of place to me for a noble family to be buying infantry in order to attack a merchant guild for control over the ports. That feels like something that should be political. And yes, I know you could do a Wealth or whatever the other one is, but it still just feels out of place.

>funnel where the PCs are (fantasy) slaves on a (fantasy) plantation and must escape from a mummy and an evil conjer man
Is this a good idea or a great idea?

The intent for me using this system is to have my world be changing regardless of player input, and so providing adventure seeds for the players. The things that happen in the Faction turn will have effects in the game at the table. It would happen between sessions or major chapters of an adventure of an ongoing campaign, and can provide the seeds for the next direction for the players.

I'm going big scale, major factions and players, using a hexmap of my world. Using your example, the players may hear about the distant war, either through travelling merchants, sailors, and refugees. They may or may not want to get involved, there is gold in mercenary work.

>It just seems out of place to me for a noble family to be buying infantry in order to attack a merchant guild for control over the ports.

Replace "buying infantry" with "hiring bandits or vandals" and you're getting somewhere.

I do agree that Weird Adventures does kinda handle human ethnicity kinda weirdly actually(and non-human races too in fact), that's one of the reasons I suggested it, to see if you could patch over those aspects without negatively impacting the rest of the setting

so I got a copy of the Thundarr The Barbarian series set for Christmas and am finally getting around to watching it, and I'm definitely seeing why it's so influential among the OSR crowd

strawpoll.me/14732675

Anyone watching ProJared's play through of D&D: Order of the Griffin? It's based on Basic D&D rules (as opposed to most games of it's era using AD&D rules) and is even based in Karameikos.

Pretty solid game so far as I've seen.

Actually, yes. In fact, that's why the thread question a few threads ago was about D&D video games. I was so surprised that there was actually a game using Basic rules rather than AD&D, I was wondering if anyone else knew of others.

Warriors of the Eternal Sun for the Genesis I think is the only other one...

>kvetching about OSR rules
>not realizing that the rules are there because they have to be to create the old-school style of emergent gameplay
I honest to God don't think you can make a game that's meaningfully more stripped down than LBB OD&D and still plays OSR. I mean yeah, you can clean up some wordings and file off a burr here and there, but nothing worth remarking on. MAYBE if you did it Arneson proto-D&D style holding the gestalt of the game in your mind and improvising rules from there based on what you want the game to be, but even there, his surviving rules and notes are usually complicated as shit tables with percentile rolls and stuff, so...

Even the mid-Seventies systems that made things simpler, like Grasstek's Game of Dungeon, have big gaping holes in them; it's pretty telling that the contemporary responses to D&D were either "saw off big chunks" or "let's make everything 30,000% more autistic in the name of a realism we actually know nothing about".

>delet this
>et this
>et crabmen
Will do!
>Maybe The Unknown Gods or Deities, Demigods & Heroes and similar books
Not a bad suggestion, but I think I'd be hard pressed to find a personal use for them. Thanks though.
>Fiend Folio
I'm on the fence here. Some of the stuff is pretty forgettable. But maybe.
>Yoon-Suin
Is the current winner

>Weird Adventures
Never really got this. It's pulp, sure, but the race and sex stuff seems a little less like a reference to the source material and more like an excuse, if that makes sense. The discussion's been done to death before.

But for the purpose of a Monster Menu-All... including different flavours for Yianese and The Black Folk would be both in-setting, in-tone and unpleasant. So I think I'll pass.

oh you meant specifically for that Monster Menu thing you do, I thought you meant just in general for doing some articles for

Nope, specifically to number and devour, as God intended.

Ascension Island would be a pretty cool adventure site.

Oh No Galapagos could be cool. Basically, it's a few tiny islands where everything evolved in isolation, except in some sort of arms race. But there's gold there. Gold and lost volcano temples. And lots and lots of black volcanic basalt. And godzillas.

Ascension Island seems more inherently gonzo, but both would work.

>Ascension Island
How so? Biodiversity-wise, it's not terribly special, aside from the crabs and turtles. Geopolitically though...

>Biodiversity-wise, it's not terribly special,
What about all the shit Darwin and Hooker had imported?

> five saves?
Do single category saves (with a possible special "strong vs." category for each class if you want some variety).

>six stats?
Six stats really isn't that many, but you could easily drop a few and just improvise off background and role-playing, just going with a single mental stat: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Wits. And drop the rolled number and just express them as modifiers while you're at it.

>three rolls for each side on combat?
Three rolls? Are you including initiative? Because you can just do team initiative. And damage rolls are only necessary when you hit, so it's more like 1 1/2 rolls per combatant.

>percentile skills?
Yeah, those are dumb. Just go with a d20-based system.

>monsters having a totally different stat system than players?
Uh... what stats?

What about it? It's just a little cloud forest. Darwin found the whole place intolerably bleak.

Got a damn fine map though. I'd adventure there any day.

What would you lads say is the strength of AD&D when compared to B/X or Cyclopedia?

And what about 2nd Edition and how it stacks up

The DMG with all its glorious tables. In fact, I'd fully recommend using some of that even in B/X.

It's gotta be Polearm/00

>What would you lads say is the strength of AD&D when compared to B/X or Cyclopedia?
More options and info. Of course, that's also its weakness.

>2nd Edition
Is fucking great

Okay, so I was thinking about doing a Birthright campaign, centered on conquering a part of the world (conquering as in the "become a king" sense, not the "explorers in the new world" sense). Probably will be running King of the Giantdowns.

Thing is the party will probably have a bunch of followers soon. Of course, I'm all up for the party themselves tracking their own equipment, ammo, consumables... But I'm not sure I want to get bogged down in minutiously tracking every single thing that each of their twenty hirelings carry. On the other hand, they should obviously be carrying something: they must take their own supplies. If a PC were to somehow lose all their stuff, they could borrow food from one of the NPCs. And perhaps if the PCs didn't think to bring 50ft of rope, one of their followers could have. Also, they could carry additional stuff given to them by the PCs (basically use them as mules). But I'm not sure how to adjudicate all this without it being overly complicated or feeling like I'm just handwaving everything.

One way to do it: have a handful of ”kits” and assume that every follower is always carrying one of the standard kits?

This is a good plan. I have a standard Soldier kit, an Archer kit, a Squire kit, and a Torchholder kit. All of them are cheap. Items like extra rope and lanterns can be added at PC cost.

I just finished rewatching these for like the fourth time.

Yes, if you play GAMMA WORLD or any other Post-Apocalyptic RPG this will give you lots of ideas...

Did you know there is a THUNDARR THE BARBARIAN RPG set out (fan-made)?

What said. Personally I like Weapons vs. AC and all the other fiddly weapon stats, as well as the increased time to prepare spells (10 minutes/spell level/spell), and also Fighters getting extra attacks against 1HD critters.

Not to mention stuff like % In Lair, all the random generation tables, the ease of making new random encounter tables with 1d12+1d8 and the rarity system, and just a lot of the guidelines in general.

Like, let's say your players want to hire an Elf as a hireling, and another wants to put out ads for a whole bunch of mercenaries. How much does that cost, how long time does it take, and who shows up? B/X is relatively silent, IIRC lacking even OD&D's price guidelines for hirelings, while AD&D has exhaustive rules in every sense of the word.

It's also higher-powered in general, with PCs who are stronger than equivalent B/X characters fighting enemies who are roughly equal (at least in MM1, MM2 onwards escalates things a bunch). This is for good and for ill.
Then again, it also has larger encounter sizes than B/X does.

A lot of this does not apply to 2E, but some of it does. The monster rarity system, I guess. Most of the rest that I mentioned got trimmed out.

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

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.

> 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).

> 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. Also limits the number of oaths to the regency of the Regent. Creating a very feudal chain of Regent->Lesser Regents->Their lesser Regents. That could blow up in their faces if not careful.

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.

Mom got me Swords & Wizardry Monstrosities from Frog God Games for Xmas. It’s a $50 Book I’ve wanted for a long time. We don’t have a lot of money, This was my big gift this year. I open it. The art was orginally done in color and is printed in B&W over 50% is so dark the details are a muddled mess. Looks like shit. 50% of entries take up less than half a page. Just white blank space under the text. I hate you Bill Webb!

>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.
Sounds like you need some random tables, yeah.

>The art was orginally done in color and is printed in B&W over 50% is so dark the details are a muddled mess. Looks like shit. 50% of entries take up less than half a page. Just white blank space under the text.
That sucks, man.

As inspired by Retrophaze:

"Your charisma modifier let's you have as many contacts in-world. You can describe them prior to play or during it. It will be loyal to you no matter what"

What problems and possibilities spring from here?
>Wizard knowing a personal spirit
>Fighter having a pet tiger, becoming party's ranger.
>Cleric declaring to be the queen's secret lover
>Thief having a twin brother who is a cop

>The art was orginally done in color and is printed in B&W over 50% is so dark the details are a muddled mess. Looks like shit. 50% of entries take up less than half a page. Just white blank space under the text.
Bruh

>I hate you Bill Webb!
I also hate Bill Webb now.

Are the actual monster stats decent at least? If they're not I think you have a legal right to mail him a bomb if you live in Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee or Ohio.

>not trying the pdf for free before buying the dead tree version
Let this be a lesson to you.

Intelligent swords as a contact

>>Maybe The Unknown Gods or Deities, Demigods & Heroes and similar books
>Not a bad suggestion, but I think I'd be hard pressed to find a personal use for them. Thanks though.
I think you could probably do a simpler version otherwise - "here's a bunch of 2E Spheres, what happens if you consume the divine flesh and/or blood related to that".

Drip some holy healing-related blood on the wound and heal any injury a la the Bleeding Lance, eat a death god and die instantly (no saving throw), eat a god of pestilence and catch the plague, eat a god of the sun and shine incandescently (presumably vaporizing any vampires you happen upon).
Although the effects should probably be permanent since, you know, you ate a god or godling of some sort?
I dunno, there's definitely some stuff you could do with that concept. I understand if you aren't interested, though, since your stuff seems much more grounded.

Not Skerples but at the point your players are regularly eating gods you've surpassed dungeon meshi and become a classical mythology character. I don't think regular tables like his previous posts would suffice for that

Heed the speaker of truth.

I was on the shower pondering the god-eating business, and actually, maybe it would work on a setting if you statted gods as tweaked Godbound characters. They apparently already more or less become gods as they level up with the Apotheosis gifts. That way you can assign Words to the gods, and cannibalizing them would allow the players to pick one Word if it is appropiate for their character (at this level of play it's probably fine for a bit of narrative stuff to seep into the campaign). Alternatively, the gods have some sort of nondescript divine spark, and by eating their flesh it is transferred to the PCs, allowing them to get a Word of their choosing.

Besides that, you can adjudicate special properties to the dead god's corpse based on how many Apotheosis gifts they had at time of death

Beats me how a fucking B/X character would actually kill a high level Godbound though

is it good?

Check out the Umerican Survival Guide.

Okay, /osr/, help me out. I hate DM screens. They're big and get in the way of my arms when I go to roll dice. This wouldn't be a problem if I didn't like to roll all my dice (except for secret checks) out in the open. But I do, so it's annoying. However, I can't just have my notes sitting out in plain view of my players. Not because of any "muh secrecy" but it's no fun if you get up to go to the bathroom and accidentally look at all of the dungeon's maps (yes, personal experience) and spend the rest of the session trying to wipe the maps from your memory.

>player rolls awful stats, like the worst stats I have ever seen
>says his character kills himself before the game even begins because he couldn't stand a life of constant failure
Would you allow this?

i found the apprentice rules only

Only if his new character has 10s in every stat.

For the "walking past the maps" part, we always set the table up so that the DM sits the furthest at the back, so that anyone else getting up does not walk past their place.

I also don't like screens anymore and roll mostly in the open. A laptop helps with this, though admittedly you do need at least some things on paper. Do you think the screen could be replaced with a smaller stand/holder like this? You'd still have to remember to cover maps when you leave the table though.

There are rules in b/x at least for rerolling stats if you roll super garbage. I can't remember them off the top of my head but it's something like "If you have no stats above 12 and your average is under 10"

So I was thinking about silver standard. Luckily found this thing!

dieuncast.wordpress.com/2017/09/17/silver-standard-treasure-tables/

Maze of the Blue Medusa GM from yesterday. It actually went pretty well and the players are loving it. First time they've done this style and they've thankfully avoided anything that might tear their heads off so far.

Contacts are friendly but not loyal, suicidal, or interested. They'll loan you up to 1gp, give you 30 minutes of advice, or perform some minor task... for free.

Otherwise, you've gotta pay. Your brother wants you to visit your narcissistic mother for Hogswatch. The Wizard's personal spirit wants souls. The Queen will happily throw the cleric under the bus at the first sign of a scandal; she's got counter-blackmail lined up. The cleric isn't her only lover either.

Basically, make it like real life. Who are your real-life contacts? What would they do to help you?

That is monstrously dickish.

You just want a set threshold for what's "unacceptably bad" in your game. So people aren't tempted

Another strategy I've read about is having a really neat class that can only be played by someone with shit scores.

basicredrpg.blogspot.com/2017/08/hobbits-as-consolation-class.html

I don't like that class per se, but you get the idea. Give them some treats to make up for being a wimp.

*tempted to roll twice and take the best set every time

If I feel like a character's stats make him totally unsuited to diving into a murderhole, I have the player name him, and he lives in town now, often as a drunk or beggar.

"Sure! So you've wandered into this dungeon to kill yourself..."

But knowing my players, they'd take a 5 in every stat as a challenge. They've had a lot of fun with 1 HP starting characters.

Use a manila folder, facing towards you like a laptop. You can fold it flat to conceal your notes or open it to check.

I think eating gods is a situation where case-by-case adjudication works better than tables.

But if you'd disagree, I don't have a monopoly on the concept. Go ahead and write 'er up! :D