/osrg/ Old School Renaissance General

Well done for making the thread searchable.

>Thread Question: How many players are in your group? How many characters currently still alive?
Primary group (5+3 dropins) self-destructed due to RL movements/me going quietly and vigorously insane for several months. Annoyingly, they lived for six sessions with no deaths. Other recent group has 7 people in it, 2 died in a Dunnsmouth one-shot.

>me going quietly and vigorously insane for several months.
Best of luck with all that. At least you weren't slow, passive, and insane. Burns more calories being energetically mad.

Would like some help please:

How would my players know the EXACT magical qualities of their weapons in B/X (using Labyrinth Lord). As in how they would know that the blue sword they picked up is a long sword +1?

They'd use it, and they'd have +1.

Although, personal opinion: you shouldn't be giving out +# swords, especially in an OSR game. That's just boring. Give them interesting magic items that aren't just numbers, and actually encourage thinking and creativity.

Naaaaaaaaaah. Give +1 Swords and make them seem interesting. If players find some odd use in their fluff, power to them.

>How would my players know the EXACT magical qualities of their weapons in B/X (using Labyrinth Lord). As in how they would know that the blue sword they picked up is a long sword +1?
This is really just a matter of how you want to run things. Classically and by the book, even Identify/Analyze only gives one property of a weapon (the most basic, e.g. the + modifier), as well as giving only the apparent one for a cursed weapon; you're meant to have to work out the rest through trial and error. Many people just let Identify fully describe an item, or they just reveal the (apparent) properties of any magic item the moment it's found (IIRC Gygax did this in his last years). Others require NPC sages to be hired to fully identify a magic item, and so on.

All of these work, none are game-breaking, so just play the way you feel is best.

The +1 thing is a meta-mechanic, and the name just mathematically identifies its properties. In-game, it's just a magic sword of some sort. If you want to develop a more sophisticated in-game nomenclature, go for it. I personally like using metals. So a mithril sword might give you a +1, while an adamantine sword might give you +2. You can play around with purities (moonsilver is exceptionally pure mithril and confers a higher bonus, same thing goes for stygian and adamantine), alloys (moonblack being a mixture of adamant and mithril), or other exotic materials (orichalcum, witchwood, meteorite / falling star / stargold, dragontooth, etc.). If you want your players to immediately know what a weapon does without resorting to meta-speak, assigning properties to materials like these is an easy way to go. Additionally, you can identify weapons by their method of enchantment, using rune weapons, holy weapons, hex weapons, charmed weapons, ensorcelled weapons, elemental weapons, wizard swords, glyph weapons and so forth.

>you can identify weapons by their method of enchantment, using rune weapons, holy weapons, hex weapons, charmed weapons, ensorcelled weapons, elemental weapons, wizard swords, glyph weapons
...demon weapons, spirit weapons, divine weapons, shadow weapons, dragonblood weapons, psi weapons...

+1 weapons are "magical" in the sense that they are supernatural or enhanced, but not truly enchanted.

Your +1 longsword has a hilt encrusted with pearls because it was forged by a master mermaid blacksmith as a gift to her human husbando general when he went off to war. Or it was sharpened by a magic stone that fell off God's cart when he was placing the cornerstones of the world, or your bow is +1 because the bowstring was once used to strangle a master archer.

It's magical enough to hurt many creatures otherwise untouchable (or some that can also be hit by silver) like spirits or some planar beings. Not magical enough to hurt some of the nastier critters, though!

Story request. Does anyone have any Drow encounters from games they've played that were particularly iconic, or that stuck with you?

I'm not looking for module references, but stories of what happened and why. How the GM ran the encounter or story, and how the players reacted.

This just gave me an idea of a mechanic in a wilderness hexcrawl. Each month, a piece of moonmetal (mithril) falls to earth in the region. The DM rolls randomly to see which hex it lands in.

It lands in the middle of wilderness? The players hear about shepherds seeing a comet, and maybe they can be the first to recover it if they move fast. A hex with a village? The villagers find it, maybe they can work it or maybe they just tear each other to pieces fighting over it. Monster lair? The monsters add it to their treasure pile.

This is also an easily understandable visual that the game world is changing because there’s literally craters appearing.

How big are the hexes? Because size means a lot when it comes to them.

What's a good default setting for my Labyrinth Lord campaign? I just really want something plain such as a lawful king who comes from a line of benevolent rulers sort of thing. I liked the setting for the Wilderlands Setting but found it too convoluted and long to understand.

Can't cut a five-dimension being with a four-dimensional sword, after all.

That old Gygax article on the planes sure was a thing.

Generally, they wouldn't unless it was an intelligent sword that could outright tell them.

Figuring stuff out by trial and error was the name of the game - note also how B/X doesn't have Identify!
You figure out what a monster can do, its strengths and weaknesses, but actually figuring it out in the game. You figure out what a magic item can do in much the same way - you can cast Detect magic to figure out that it actually IS magical, and a cursed item probably becomes obvious very quickly, but for the exact probabilities and abilities you'd have to go for stuff beyond that.

For example, B/X swords can be divided into a couple different types.
>Sword +1, +Y against X
Here you'd have to actually notice that you're hitting more often against certain enemies. Or not at all, in the case of the basic sword +1.
>Sword +1, does thing on command (also Sword +2, Charm Person)
Trial and error. You need to figure out that this is a thing swords can do (shed light, locate objects, flame, drain life energy, grant wishes) and then try to command it to do that.
If you tell your magic carpet to fly (with a thesaurus: lift-off, soar, ascend, move, etc.) and it doesn't, presumably it's not a flying carpet!
Maybe it's a funky cloak of some kind, I dunno.
>Sword +2, Sword +3
More likely to hit - notably so, in some cases. Not to mention the whole additional damage thing. If you find that your sword is killing things exceptionally quickly, assume that it's got a high bonus (and probably not a special ability).
>Sword -X, cursed
Once you've used this in battle you can't remove it without spells. It's extremely obvious what's going on here, I reckon.

Interestingly, both Moldvay Basic and OD&D use the same magic item to illustrate this trial-and-error mechanic for figuring stuff out: the Elven Boots, which allow silent movement.

...

For reference, here's the B/X rule:
>IDENTIFYING MAGIC ITEMS: A character can only identify the exact time of item by testing it (trying on the ring, sipping the potion, etc.). If a retainer does the testing, he or she will expect to keep the item. A high level NPC magic-user ma be asked to identify an item, but will want money or a service in advance and may take several game weeks to do it.
Note that there aren't any suggestions for the latter in the Expert set, although perhaps a Sage could do (2,000gp/month).

>setting for the Wilderlands Setting
Best run as a bunch of random tables and just using City-State and Wilderlands of High Fantasy, I feel. (Both of which as the original booklets rather than the 3E conversion.)
No need to get into the specifics of stuff.

That's not all that applicable to LL - it relies heavily on the OD&D encounter tables and rules, and Labyrinth Lord runs differently. To be honest, you should probably just read through the product and try to figure out what assumptions it makes? e.g. OD&D tends to assume that there's not really any major government in the area, while BECMI assumes that the moment you claim a barony you'll get intrigue from all the local nobles.
I'll skim through them a bit and post my own observations.

Should I use the Rules Cyclopedia with its optional rule or Moldvay's Basic set?

Depends. How long a campaign can you expect to run? If it's only 3 levels max, I say Moldvay. If it's going to be any longer, the RC is okay.

>How long a campaign can you expect to run?
I dunno, I would run until group loses interest, which could be after first session

>I'll skim through them a bit and post my own observations.
OK, so, first of all? All that stuff about stronghold encounters is completely irrelevant. Labyrinth Lord doesn't have balrogs, and the strongholds seem to be woefully mundane.
For the most part stronghold patrols will ignore you, but Fighters are always itching for a fight and Clerics are as likely to chase you as they are to ignore you or offer you their hospitality.
In most cases, they're a lot more prone to ignoring you than monsters are (generally 67% vs. 44%). Fighters are more prone to fights, though - 50% vs. 28%.

They are also somewhat higher-level, although their patrols are tiny in comparison to OD&D - seven mounted or infantry!

Also, of course, there's the issue of the map. The Outdoor Survival map is nice and all, but you might get more out of using the Labyrinth Lord Known Lands map just for variety's sake.

As for the encounter tables, they're a weird bunch. Weretigers and rhagodessas plague the inhabited lands, the woods have panthers in them, the mountains have sabre-tooth tigers, morlocks and neanderthals... but everything is a single entry on a d20 table, so there's no particular trends that are obvious.
Pirates are only found at sea, rather than in the rivers of OD&D, and hill giants walk the streets of the towns.
I dunno, I'll have to analyze them to see if there's anything in particular that sticks out. To be honest, even B/X is pretty boring in its wilderness rules.

Moldvay. Unlike , though, I'd recommend just introducing the Expert set if you get past level three rather than going for the Rules Cyclopedia. Level 14 takes a long while to get to, and the scaling on the advancement is better.

The RC is a bit of a mess if you're trying to learn the game, and doesn't make a good job of presenting what monsters are appropriate for what level characters. Since, you know, they slapped together thirty six levels.

I'd suggest using either Dark Dungeons or it's own variation Darker Dungeons.

6 miles. But assuming these things light up when they fall, you’d see one falling a couple miles off your home

I want the true D&D experience before getting into retroclones

>To be honest, even B/X is pretty boring in its wilderness rules.
For example, do you want to know one very simple place where they fucked up and made things seem way more boring?

In B/X, running into aerial encounters means that you run into various less-threatening monsters in most places (including flocks of robber flies, killer bees and stirges), with mountains and deserts introducing manticores and making hawks and rocs more common.

In OD&D, flying about might make you run into a dragon or balrog - in addition to the standard large flying types in B/X. Chimerae also get a shout-out, what with having dragon wings and all.
There's also a larger variety than the somewhat homogenous B/X lists, for good and for ill, but overall I find the OD&D one much more interesting.

B/X also banishes more dangerous encounters to hard-to-reach areas - dragon turtles and sea monsters are only in the ocean, for instance, giants are mostly just in the hills and mountains, lycanthropes are only in the woods, etc.

Dark Dungeons is just RC but slightly better organized and such. Darker Dungeons takes Dark Dungeons and throws in a bunch of houserules like swapping the Elf and Magic-User, scaling every class (including the Demi-Humans) to level 36, adding a new class and more. But yeah, Dark Dungeons? Literally just a rework of the RC.

What's the best way to experience OD&D? Should I get all the original books (ugh) or some retroclone?

So I was reading X1 Isle of Dread again recently and decided to use it as inspiration for my own game. Since my world is not really mapped out (beyond just the starting town and nearby woods, coast and the start of a mountain range), I thought that since my players were nearing 4th level (one already is, the "Red Thief" Radclyf) I should hook them into going to "the Lost Ship Isle", a mysterious island region far to the South that where the kingdom's ship keep getting attacked by strange pirates and sea monsters.

Not going to have Aranea or Phanatons or Kopru but monsters of my own design that can sorta fill the same niches.

Anyway, I like the map I made, thought I would share it. It's unlabeled so everyone can make of it as they see fit. Completely crib Isle of Dread or make it your own, I don't really care. Just have fun with it! 6 mile hexes as normal, btw but you can make them larger or smaller for your personal game.

Could try Iron Falcon, which is made by the same guy who does BFRPG. It's pretty solid.

There are a lot of lobsters! More than twice the amount of whales or shipwrecks!

I used the lobsters as place holders for "sea monsters". The whales are there simply to show the aggressive ones. Shipwrecks are, well, shipwrecks but only the ones of actual note (and which may or may not have decent treasures on them). There are more, several are beached or caught on shoals but those ones would be the ones looted by the locals, monsters and the pirates since they are easy access and all.

Original books, IMHO. I figure they're worth reading through at least once, although if you find them hard to understand I'd suggest looking into retroclones.

Just stick to the first three booklets (plus chainmail).

No, those are lobsters, guardian lobsters, no less. They keep people out of the central desert, in the heart of which lies a saltwater spring, where King Shrimp, the Side-dishiest resides. Will the cooking aficionado quartet of ragtag adventurers be able to seize the delicious goodies of His Majesty? Beware though! For King knows of his flavorful treasures and will stop at nothing to thwart the attempts of this mouth-watering aggression! Traverse through Salt Mountains, Ciliantro Jungles and Black Pepper Desert, known for its unrelenting Sneezestorms. A spicy adventure indeed!

Awesome, I've been waiting for a sequel to Gone Fishin'.

I actually like this.

How's this for a resolution mechanic?

You have set of resolution d6 dice per attributes which determined by your score. A 3-6 score means you have 1d6. 7-12 is 2d6. 13-18 is 3d6. These dice are used to roll over a number based on the severity of the threat. The number can go from 1 (ultra simple) to 18 (unfairly difficult).

Rolled 15, 42, 4, 9, 42 = 112 (5d50)

Seems unnecessarily complex. Why don't you leave it 2d6 across the board but modify that by -6 for the low block and +6 for the high block of stats?

That creates a different bell curves and makes it so results can go into the negative.

>save vs wands
>save vs appearing delicious
>save vs unerring weapon
>save vs death
>save vs appearing delicious (again)

Sounds like a deliciously deadly campaign.

Rolled 11, 4, 9, 16, 37 = 77 (5d50)

Going to try though the dice mechanic has been wingy on my end for a while now...

>vs Stampede
>vs Unerring Weapon
>vs Death
>vs Paralysis
>vs Oxygen Deprivation

You're absolutely right. You asked for feed back, I gave it. It seems you didn't actually want any. Terribly sorry for wasting your time.

I thought you asked a question about my thought process so I answered. You're welcome to go into more detail about why it's overly complex.

No need to be a fag, user gave a perfectly reasonable answer why -6/+6 won’t work for what he wants.

Moldvay

Instead of having a 1-18 target number, why not make it a x-out-of-6 chance of success, possibly with increasing degrees of success?

That's the LotFP system, right? It's a good system but I was thinking of using the bell curve of a 2d6 and 3d6 in order to create more varying forms of difficulty challenges. Rolling a 13 and a 18 on a 3d6 is pretty wildly different in difficulty. With a flat curve like in x/6 the increase in difficulty is always static.

>Dark Dungeons or it's own variation Darker Dungeons.
What's the difference between these two?

Idk if it is the LotFP system, never even looked at it. My only concern is with allowing characters with a low attribute to still have a chance of success. Maybe you’d prefer for some tasks to be impossible to weaker characters, though.

Also, if you’re concerned at all with balance (and maybe you aren’t, that’s fine) I’d think it’s pretty hard to come up with DCs for some tasks on the fly this way. Even the difference between an 11 and a 12 is big enough for someone rolling 2d6. The jump from 12 to 13 makes a task impossible for the average Joe, but very much doable for a more heroic character. Again, this might be exactly what you want, but what about the players?

I listed them there somewhat but I'll post some stuff again. Dark Dungeons is much more in line with the RC and pretty straight forward for a retroclone.

Darker Dungeons adds a new class (the Mountebank), swapped the Elf class with the Magic-User class (because apparently the guy didn't like the fact that Elves could be fighter-mages or something so instead he made humans fighter-mages and elves just plain mages), changed the fluff and name for the Mystic (basically a monk) to Lupine (basically a werewolf-like creature), scales all classes (including the demi-humans) to level 36, and a whole bunch of other fiddly little things like completely eliminating the whole "roll for your ability scores and HP", etc.

Author has also suggested he was going to make a game called "Darkest Dungeons" which would be an even more radical departure from the RC but to the best of my knowledge he's not really done anything with it really and it's unreleased.

Sorry, meant I posted some of the differences here

"Would You Like To Die Deliciously?"

Moldvay/Cook is all you need. RC is just bloat.

Yeah, that was kind of the idea with the mechanic. Difficulties over 13 should be pretty rare and for specialized tasks.

This is true, it does take longer to grok and remember it. I don't think my players would mind, they would just want to know what to roll and how high, but I'm sure there are other people who would have an issue with it.

In that case, since you're not dismissively stating the obvious, I apologize for having misunderstood and miscommunicated. My question was meant to be suggestive.
You have three curves (well, two and one flat). Pretty much every alternate is going to be different. Having different groups of dice with different curves is just subjectively and anecdotally worse than a uniform mechanic. As a player I just want to grab the dice and throw not futz around with which dice and how many. As a DM I don't want to have to explain for the umpeenth time that a 12 doesn't get three dice.
I'm not sure my suggestion was at all reasonable in the specific numbers. I was just throwing it out there for consideration, mostly to try to maintain a curve of some sorts across the range and to keep constant dice.

I'm guessing difficulties around 6, 7, or 8 are going to be fairly common, though? After all, most characters are going to use 2d6 for task resolution. For low-ability characters, only the 6 is going to be possible. Bell curves sound cool and fancy, but working with several bell curves at once is not as cool, especially if it is indeed random which bell curve your character is going to be working off of.

In fact, what tasks are going to be resolved with this system? Is this a skills system, or something more involved in the game itself?

Good points, I think I'll have to rethink the system.

>In fact, what tasks are going to be resolved with this system? Is this a skills system, or something more involved in the game itself?
This would be for situations in the game where it appears dice should be rolled, but there is no rule already in place for the situation. Situations not covered by the rules.

>Situations not covered by the rules.
Fair enough, balance isn't THAT important then, but I think a simpler system would be important. For fringe cases where you don't just want to rely on DM fiat, you don't also want players fumbling around to figure out what dice to roll, nor do you want to have to guess what DC to give.

Race-as-class?
Race-and-class, with restrictions?
Race-and-class, fuck it do whatever?
I'm partial to the second one.

Bell curves satisfy autism because they're naturally occurring, but a bitch to work with because a +1 is not worth the same to different people.

Race-as-class up to level limits then race-and-class

The Hyqueous Vaults is good and free and it deserves your attention.

>not following OSRnews
>not downloading it before it became mainstream

>not refusing to download it and telling others not to, so that it'll never become mainstream
>not maintaining the purity of OSR

That's why nobody's getting my copy of ST1 Up the Garden Path. I haven't even read it, just to be safe.

Any tips in regards to making wilderness adventures? How different is it compared to just making dungeon?

Race and Class and throw absolutely all restrictions in a garbage can.

I'm partial to having races as an alternative to class features. For example, if a level 1 fighter in your game has a weapon specialization and a morale bonus, you could forgo one of the two to get elf basic abilities.

It turns the game into a little point-buy, but I enjoy it. It lets demihumans be more naturally powerful than humans, without making demihuman characters an automatic choice for power-gamers.

Best module adventure to start in greyhawk?

B1? B2?
>inb4 Skerpshilling

Nah, TotSK isn't in Greyhawk.

The Village of Hommlett is pretty classic.

B11 - King's Festival

SJR6
By all accounts except TroveGuy's it's an accessory, not a module. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Speaking of Troveguy, has he updated the trove any or has he been gone for like a year now?

Plz respond. I'd really like to know.

And what system is the best for it?

Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set, written by Tom Moldvay

>not LBB + Supplement I
False Greyhawk Enthusiast, get ye gone.

OD&D is shit

You're shit

He's still lurks the thread, but hasn't done it regularly since the Discord left. Doesn't post and mostly just sticks things in __Inbox.

>swapping the Elf and Magic-User
What? Like how?

>the original books (ugh)
What's ugh about them? But yeah, do this. I've lost the links, but some user will certainly be able to tell you the links to the OD&D and Chainmail reprints on Lulu.

>(ugh)
>>>/tumblr/

>+ Supplement I
Why?

>Why would you use Greyhawk for a Greyhawk game?