Welcome to the Old School R. general!
Thread for pirating Original, Advanced, and Basic Dungeons & Dragons, as well as for closely related RufoFaMeWaCaPlawiPaPeMiFis.
>Trove:
pastebin.com
>Tools & Resources:
pastebin.com
>Old School Blogs:
pastebin.com
Prior: and What does the R. stand for?
Other urls found in this thread:
pastebin.com
en.wikipedia.org
autarch.co
strawpoll.me
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.com
throneofsalt.blogspot.ca
blog.trilemma.com
twitter.com
>What does the R stand for?
Role-playing.
I'll use role-playing in a sentence to clarify:
Dungeons and Dragons is properly thought of as a role-playing game.
Renaissance is the by the book answer
Here is your anime dose, let's move on.
R. Talsorian, of course.
Rules, Revival, Renaissance. In that order.
Reposting from last thread. Any things you can find that might conflict with the set rules of ACKs and its Player Companion?
pastebin.com
>get really excited about hexcrawl after reading about it.
>known about it for a while but hadn't ever strongly considered it
>realize that with discrete cells to my map my worldbuilding becomes much easier
>realize I can expand my world without messily trying to tile together multiple maps, just use a larger hex sheet with smaller hexes
>can also do detail maps by just copying over the hexes as well
>read west marches article, feel a sense of wonder and excitement I haven't felt since I started playing RPGs like 10 years ago
>start making hexmaps
>as soon as I go into any detail on the area I lose interest
>just have a list of tropes and elements I want to include, with some fleshed out, as the only thing I still like.
How do I break this cycle? Just plow onward? It feels like no matter how I position the starting town, it's not "right," and no matter how I arrange the hills and mountains (whether I do it in an unrealistic "honeycomb" pattern with breaks between, or a realistic pattern of plate-tectonics-based moutnain ranges and descending from there the hills) it feels... just wrong, compared to other peoples' maps.
I can never work out if I like Kindom Death or not. On the one hand, weird body-horror stone age monsters, yay! on the other hand, ecchi, eww!
It's a dilema, to be sure.
I like cheesecake but KD just feels like it's trying too hard, ARE YOU OFFENDED CHRISTIAN MOMS style. You know, like LotFP stuff. Plus, those prices for a boardgame.
>What does the R. stand for?
Old Rules, New Content
That's gotta chafe
>What does the R. stand for?
Romance.
I quite like it. Especially with the inclusion of muddy Tomoko over here.
You put down a hex then use the 1e DMG to detail it and the surrounding hexes.
>Old School Old Rules, New Content
>OSORNC
Maybe Old School Old Rules New Options so you can have OSORNO.
It's not D&D, it's OSORNO.
>as soon as I go into any detail on the area I lose interest
Welcome to the rice fields mother fucker.
Do crude normal maps until things look 'right,' then hex map
Put the starting town in the centre.
Decide on the terrain of the starting region and the terrain of all regions bordering it.
If there are roads or rivers from the starting town, figure out where those go and what's on the other end of them.
Develop enough random encounter charts to deal with immediate travel nearby.
Otherwise, don't do any more creation than that until it's necessary.
How long should elves live for? I know this thread is more rules than setting based but got me thinking
New thread image, then
Forever
If you're trying to be realistic about it while still staying in the fantasy milieu, this blog post is pretty good.
autarch.co
You can save a lot of work if you put the border of civilization on one side of the map. Then you can plot the town just past the border, and put all your prep out in the other three directions, leaving civilization as the "no treasure here, only taxes and laws" side that players won't be going to.
Depends on the setting.
*put the town just past the border
I can't really enjoy this. They're way too slutty to be hot.
>Ever since the new priest arrived in the village there have been strange happenings at night. Now he has absconded into the backwoods and emptied our church of all its holy relics. You must go into the woods after him and get back our holy symbols, bring him back alive if you can.
Is this a decent 1st level hook? I'm likely to be roped into DMing for the first time soon.
The twist is; at some point when the PC's are deep into the woods there is a sighting of the Priest, pale and gaunt, robes now rags, dragging his feet through the undergrowth, a heavy bundle of holy symbols and relics coiled round his neck and tangled on his bare chest. I was thinking the Priest (who is of noble character) left the village to combat a witch or demon (that took umbrage that such the pure souled priest had began to preach in its territory) that inhabits the backwoods, he took the relics to aid him in his fight.
What could the PC's encounter whilst in the woods? I'd quite like there to be a mausoleum of some forgotten King and that they suffer all kinds of weird-horrors during the night.
Depending on how developed the civilization is, you could still have wilderness within the territory of a given civilization
Certain settings don't work with OSR
>1st level
>hook
Start in medias res.
Depends whether you're doing a West Marches or a hexcrawl, but yeah, that works too.
AD&D elves live forever but feel compelled to immigrate to elfland at some point.
If they could still be killed wouldn't the majority of them kick the bucket before they get past their 200s?
>leaving civilization as the "no treasure here, only taxes and laws" side that players won't be going to.
I had a sandbox idea like that. Basically, players get sent as "plenipotentiaries" of the not-Japanese Empire to not-Hokkaido to establish Imperial law and "pacify" the natives (actually, to get the PCs out of the court's nose) As someone pointed out in here, though, the players can very well decide to go "fuck this, back to the Empire" in a sandbox campaign.
What kind of adventures has /osrg/ run lately?
Oh you know what I mean. I'm phoneposting and already lost the entire post once already. I rushed that one out.
If you tried for Wierd fantasy, what would you put the main races as?
Human only, to make the contrast between the mundane and weird parts of the setting even sharper
Just humans (distinguished by non-fantastic ethnic groups you made up).
It feels weird to let that one bit of Tolkien influence in when D&D elves were generally more Poul Andersen. For the purpose of D&D I would rather have elves that grow old and die like anyone else
I like having more races than just human but keeping them fairly mundane, the problem is that even elves are too fantastical for my tastes though
ok I may agree on you the PC can be only human.
But I wanted another civilization in the setting actively stiring shit. And secluded fey going out of their woods are cliche. They need a logical reason to be aggressive towards humans and not the usual unknowable Cthulhu stuff.
So I want to replace my Clerics magical/healing abilities with potions. I want to make it a class about using potions to heal and buff people.
Now one problem I see with this is the divide between loot based potions and player-made potions. Maybe this could be remedied by simply not handing out loot based potions; or loot based potions are special "elixirs" that have more powerful and direct effects and player made "tonics" tend to be weaker, less reliable, or have a short shelf life.
But what about first level/starting characters? You could fix this pretty easily by just starting characters with X number of random potions, or 1 healing potion + 1 random useful tonic and have all the rest be things they have to make in their journey, from monster parts and rare ingredients they buy or sell, but this works best in games that have a strict timeline instead of one-offs. I also love the idea of an alchemist making potions in a dungeon or just outside in the base camp, but I know some DMs don't want to have to bother with that.
All of this, of course, hinges on having a simple and fun alchemy system to actually make the potions with. What do you think about this idea? De-mystify the class a little bit and make it more Sagely?
Maybe try lizardmen, goblins, kobolds, that kind of thing?
Don't explicitly tell your players the ethnic groups are all humans?
Crows.
You can kind of tell if an ethic group is human
Item-centric classes are a bad idea. They inherently step on EVERYONE"S niche.
Disease, murder, and accident would already keep elves from living crazy long, they could still be biologically immortal, it's just that dying is enough of a possibility that no-one / only an incredibly small percentage make it past a certain age
Why does this village have so many holy relics?
Why is the village just a village instead of a town due to the traffic of pilgrims?
If it's a town then why isn't the town watch/garrison on the case instead of murderhobos?
Who knew the exact inventory of the relics and why?
Why do the PCs care?
What's the reward for catching this runaway priest?
>Holmes
Based OP, too bad the pdf has a terrible quality
You could refluff every race in the AD&D PHB (+ Orcs) to human without changing their outward appearance.
Tolkien Orcs?
My standards of wierd are a littl bit higher/fucked up. My first rpg game a I played a myconid.
So I was looking for more Patrick Stuart kind of things.
Kenku/Tenku are nice. There is onyl one race, males are Tengu and they are sapient and build japanese paper castles and females are Harpies and live in nest and wild. Also the should be somehow related to eyes. Using eyes as currency? Or have magical eyes that transplanted from father to son?
>Kenku
Mundane (if more intelligent than real) crows.
Their civilization isn't secret, but isn't layman knowledge either.
Sure but why would you? I get that having a lot of races in the setting tends to make it more kitchen sink in a bad way but that's because a lot of the races in stuff like modern DnD are both a fairly fantastical and crammed into one area, if you spread out the races and keep them from being too over the top your good
I don't know enough about tolkien's orcs to say
>pirated material in the OP
If it isn't one thing with you chucklefucks it's another
I'm not saying you should. I would advocate for subtler differwnces. But
>You can kind of tell if an ethic group is human
is wrong.
That feels like a bit of a cop-out if you consider elves are generally depicted as the "magical" race and as such the one which would have the most access to magical healing, particularly if you're going for the more mystical depictions of them.
Hell, even Tolkien adresses this somewhat in that centuries could pass between the battles of the wars of Beleriand. IIRC Hurin had to go beg whoever elven king it was to let them do something because else all the humans would literally die before there was another one. It's the same principle here, if you're going to live for centuries, what is the hurry to go dashing into a dungeon in a hyper-lethal get-rich-quick scheme?
Literally who cares? At the very worst the file gets deleted and the thread goes back to business as usual. We already have the trove.
Assuming below modern 1st world country death rates, you still end up with a fairly low median lifespan
Hey you. Pick your fun and interesting races based on what you like, not what contrarian edgelords say.
A civilization of crows... Could be interesting.
They stole something and now PC have to retrieve it.
On the way there many random fights can be fought but what about the king crow? Should he be a normal crow or something magical?
This is why I prefer elves living to around 100-120 years. That's enough for the "I fought with your grandfather, young one, he was a good man" factor without getting into 100-year old children weirdness. A 20-year old elf is about as mature as a 20-year old human, they just have a longer natural lifespan.
>Literally who cares?
Yeah, it's not like functionalities ever get taken away from boards for rule-breaking haha except when /m/ lost spoilers for about 2 years because of "spoiler abuse"
/m/ deserves that and worse, all in all. It's just a petulant /a/ spinoff.
It's common that churches have a number of 'relics', they're more like trinkets and fetishes than genuine, potent artefacts. If all villages are like this then no pilgrims, no town, no guards etc.
No one but the Priest knows the exact inventory (unless a PC is some sort of novice priest) all the village-folk know is they're all gone and the priest was seen leaving with them. Maybe the inventory is known, the relics would be known from constant use in worship.
The PC's care because they live in the village and the 'relics' provide them and their families some protection against the dark influence of the woods (at least in theory).
>The PC's care because they live in the village
Do you really want to put your players on the railroad before the game even starts? I guess you have to because your scenario just completely collapses without a DM fiat background. It's like I'm really in /5eg/
Starting in media res, with some assumptions made about the recent past, is not railroading. It becomes railroading if the players decide they're not going after the priest and he pushes them to do it anyway, or moves the priest to show up in their path no matter where they go, or something like that that negates their choices.
Starting players in a tavern doesn't railroad them into a tavern, it merely starts them in one.
Yes, but if only one class can do them and they are the primary way of healing and providing support, it could be an interesting niche.
Primarily I'm looking for a way to de-magic my Sages and this might be a good method.
Important Question! What are people that are also mushrooms called?
>strawpoll.me
>No option for Funguys
>Primarily I'm looking for a way to de-magic my Sages and this might be a good method.
Why not just steal the Sage from Blackmoor/AD&D?
Granted, that's something completely different from what you're after.
>Starting players in a tavern doesn't railroad them into a tavern
Except that starting in a tavern doesn't force anything on the PCs. They can be wanderers, foreigners, hermits on the town, orphans, family-men, married, single, merchants, criminals, missionaries, moral, immoral, or anything in between.
Saying "you live here, you have a family, and thou must protect the village" does not allow for that range of characters.
>no campestri
Menshrooms or Funguy.
>Funguys
I had to draw the line somewhere.
It's a decent hook. But maybe make it slightly broader. Your players want to go track down the PCs. It's up to the player to explain why. The reward? Love? Jealousy? Piety?
>whilst
You quit that you.
Barrow-mounds, bears, sentient bees, creepy children, deranged deer, vaguely helpful elves, fairy wars.
Would it kill you to only have Fighting-Men?
Could we save time and you just ask us all elsr you plan on mining? I'll get the ball rolling and say you should do something with fairy rings.
What about femshrooms?
Nah, I've got the post mostly done. I just wanted to make sure I was using terminology everyone understood.
I'm partial to "fungids" myself, but I'm pretty much the only one.
Any way, fairy rings, mushmice, puffballs, roots, hallucinogens, parasites/cordyceps, and buried forests are all in there. Anything else?
Just 4U: Shroom-ling
Mold-lings and Yeast-lings would be good too.
But they ain't lings.
People think the mushroom is the fungus but it's not. That's like calling an an acorn an oak tree. A mushroom is something a fungus does. It's a tool it makes. A special, weird, sex tool.
So they aren't really "-lings". They're more like... battlebots with sex toys attached.
Setting constraints are not railroading either. Saying "no, you can't be an elf, elves don't exist" isn't railroading even though it "forces things" on characters, specifically non-elfiness.
It's only the DM's disregard of a player's in-game choices that makes a railroad.
Fun fact. A high profile psycological study I'm amazed got OK'd shows that a single hit of psilocybin will permanently increase trait Openness by a large amount.
>tags broke
That's the last time I best spoilers by phone.
What about your antlings?
So you're saying if I don't play with the exact same classes you do, I should just have everyone be a fighting man?
Not super interested. Classes give everyone a specific role and I like my roles.
>Classes give everyone a specific role
I don't... see that in play, to be honest.
In the vein of published megadungeons, has anyone put out a wilderness hex map with lots of complete, smaller dungeons?
Ideally in one product, not spread across multiple like Judges Guild.
>Setting constraints
But this isn't a setting constraint, it's an adventure constraint. And it's a shitty one too. And there's still no reward in this harebrained scenario beyond fuzzy feelings.
>What about your antlings?
Writing them up too. Just got Antlings, Myconids, and Dverger left to go.
Neat! And yeah, seems to match anecdotal experiences. Fun stuff, brain chemistry.
Less fun when the mushrooms eat you back.
...ASE, maybe? Only ever skimmed it
My point is that ants are a thing ant colonies do.
True, but the colony structure allows for a lot more individuality and discretion than a fungus-mushroom structure. The evolutionary path to get from dumb individual ant to smart individual ant is clear. The path from mushroom to mushroom person is a little less... easy to map to a playable race, at least the way I'm conceptualizing them.
Plus, antlings make /weird/ PCs. They think everyone is female, they get very worried if left alone, they like touching people a lot, and they think hair is hilarious.
It has a nice hex map but it's really about the main megadungeon, plus a smaller side dungeon.
Second link is what got me wondering. First link is damn good, thanks.
How's about this? Each patch of 'Shoom-lings' is actually one individual. When they go too far away to smell each other, they start acting erratic. 'Scout Shroom-lings' are spliced together from several Shroom-lings and can spend a few months away coherently, but their departure and arrival is taxing on the main body.
