/osrg/ - Old School Renaissance General

So let me get this clear: that's a d10 with one 1, four 3s, four 4s, and one 6?

Why?

>4e
Damage types are barely relevant in OSR

c
I like enchanted weapons dealing [damage] + [some other kind of damage] because it's nice and thematic. But I don't have specific types of damage. Fire, acid, ice, and poison are reasonably common, and their extra bonus effects are adjudicated on a case-by-case basis.

But you could have a sword that does 1d6+1d6 Moonlight Damage, which transforms werewolves and kills solar elemental. No "Radiant" or "Evil" or "Cursed" damage or whatever.

God, refreshing until smcheck goes away is a hassle. Fuck you, hiromoot. Paying anime tax.

Most OSR is too abstract for many differing damage types, but they're still used with regards to fire, cold and other elemental damage sources and monster types.

I'm brainstorming for an OSR-derived campaign that draws heavily on outrun/synthwave/retrowave aesthetic.

Any tips for how to do this?

youtube.com/watch?v=er416Ad3R1g

Nah, that's some unholy WotC fusion - I'm pretty sure that 4E removed Slashing/Bludgeoning/Piercing damage types, but they're a thing in 3E and 5E. "Wounded" is a 4E thing - basically just "at half HP" - but Near Death isn't.

I do kind of wonder how that's supposed to work, though. Do you get to choose which effect to apply or what?

Mutant Future style post-apocalyptic campaign setting with super-science, and healthy dose of Fashwave.

historicgames.com/learnmore/knuckstats.html

Fashwave is the best

It honestly looks more descriptive and fluff-oriented than anything.

Synthwave has a very clear sense of momentum, so maybe make it less about dungeon exploration and more about dungeon sprinting. A sort of smash and grab type thing. Mirrors's Edge, but underground. Moving cautiously and disabling traps replaced with moving quickly and dodging traps.
youtube.com/watch?v=er416Ad3R1g

Make it modern. Like BLAME, but with the sense of stillness replace with frantic movement and life. Neon berzerker bots. Writing parasitic roadways.

/pol/ pls.

I like the idea. You want to take your time, but you can't because incoming guards/relentless monsters/timed curse/whatever. It's not an expedition, it's a heist or a raid.

You say that, but you have stuff like "slash on minor extremity" being distinct from "slash on weapon-holding hand". Or, you know, stuff like "hits near eye, blood clouds vision" as opposed to "goes through heart or head".

It never stops. You rest on the top of railcars or inside elevators. There are no fixed points on the map. Maybe use multiple overlapping paper wehels to map the larger circuits?

Power-ups and magic items are all about speed and pace too. Bullet time medallion. Dangerous booster juice.

And you also have "last-second dodge" as an effect, and I assume these all happen on hit. In rules as abstract as OSR a slash to the weapon-holding hand or blood on your eyes just represent different remaining values of HP - when you're gone, you're gone. Note that there's no entry for actual death inflicted by the damage sources, only "target near-death"

The sleek thief weaves and dodges around traps and enemy blows while the fighter is James Bond during the Casino Royale parkour chase. The wizard is always casting ahead because nobody can stop running, while the cleric brings up the rear to keep those who fall from lagging behind.

Yeah, I guess it's just a bunch of suggestions for how to fluff attacks based on the hit points of the target.

Or invent new classes or rename them. Whatever you want, man.

I kinda like the idea of the traditional D&D character class names still being a thing in modern or pseudomodern worlds. Did you ever watch Avalon? People were rocking AKMs and tacticool gear in the brutal virtual reality MMO while still making parties and facing "monsters". IIRC Wizardry was an explicit influence.

Honestly, I think there's a lot that can be done just be re-naming or re-fluffing classes.
Like, take b/x. Re-fluffing the elf/dwarf/halfling as high/dark/wood elves changes the world and the assumptions of the game without any mechanical alterations, you know?

>ca
vegirl?

I have considered renaming Elf as Spellslinger or something and removing the elf-specific bits to make it open to all races, because I dig the "sword in one hand, magic missile in the other" archetype but don't want it tied to elves alone.

Yup, it's a powerful tool.

Though I do think keeping Wizard is a good idea. In one of my games, anything even remotely supernatural is labelled as "wizard business" (i.e not the fighter's problem). This includes:
-writing
-northern lights
-enchanted items
-zombies
-steam
-math more complex than addition and subtraction of whole numbers

You're Skerples.

Elves: Spellsword/Battlemage
Dwarves: Barbarian
Halflings: Ranger/Scout

Yeah, I like this sort of thing.

Im an idort

In my home LotFP game, elves were countess-bathory nobles, halflings were pith-helmetted explorers, and dwarves were bodyguards and butlers. It worked pretty nicely.

oooh, dwarf as barbarian works really well, actually.

I'd play using that.

I normally use humans/elves/dwarves as the main races, but it's been a thought of mine that if I wanted halflings I could reskin them as ratlings and that would work better than halflings since I don't really feel like halflings have a good thematic niche really. I haven't done that yet because I need to figure out what I'm doing with thief first, but that's another issue.

where's this picture from? I'm currently GMing a Mazes & Minotaurs game, looks useful.

Took it straight from pic related. It mentions an inscription in Limyra but not where the author got a copy of the entries.
I have found scholarly references to a table of 24 cleromancy results that were found there, but none that list them.

thx, mate. maybe i can find out using that lead.

How many hours do you spend prepping per session? Is there a certain point where you may feel like it is too much? How do you know when you reach that point?

for anyone interested, here's more info:
opsopaus.com/OM/BA/GAO.html

kinda off-topic, anyone else playing mazes&minotaurs?

>but none that list them.
Scratch that, the original starts on thr bottom of this page --> books.google.com/books?id=o2FTAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA437#v=onepage&q=311&f=false
The people who transcribed it thinks entries were drawn by selection from 24 pebbles. The author of
archive.org/stream/cu31924058563259#page/n234/mode/1up
thinks you jabbed your finger at a patch of letters with your eyes closed.

It's certainly not Roman, but reading the I Ching would probably be inspiring.
biroco.com/yijing/survey.htm

20 minutes mapping, improv all else.

What do you run out of curiosity?

I haven't had a group in years. I played 3.5 and ran 2e in highscool. 2-3 hours of prep a session as I recall. They were long and crappy sessions.

I am having a difficult time setting myself up for excellent sessions. The players are otherwise absolutely enthralled or they are bored and dragging their feet. Both outcomes sometimes happens with both high-prep and lower-prep sessions.

Only advice I can give is ask what they want next at the end of each session.

Everytime I ask that I get shrugs and "I liked the session"

Dig deeper. What parts did they like.

Hard to say without knowing more.

Is there anything all the exciting sessions have in common? Anything all the clunker sessions have in common?

Feeling out the momentum of the group is one of the hardest parts of running the game. Prep has little to do with it as long as you're doing enough so that you're not scratching your head trying to think of what happens next.

Make them tell you a thorn and a rose from each session. That way you get what was good about the session and what was bad.

>a thorn and a rose from each session
have you been reading too much CoD?

>rose
But my spirit animal is the hyacinth

It sounds like prep has nothing to do with the problem. Sometimes you're grabbing them and sometimes you're boring them, that sounds less like a prep problem and more like a drama problem.
I might suggest perusing the GM rules for Dungeon World and try keeping some of the principles and things in mind during a session. It keeps things tense by basically following Raymond Chandler's advice: "When in doubt, have two men with guns burst in the door." Have things happen, throw them into trouble, make the world feel dangerous.

>"When in doubt, have two men with guns burst in the door."
MAID has good tables for this.

the single most important thing to prep is random encounter tables. When in doubt OH SHIT SKELETONS or whatever.

Let's get this show on the road!

...

1hourish tends to be as much as I end up using. Once every 4ish sessions or so I end up making a new dungeon/dungeon level that takes 2ish hours that I go back and noodle with more another hour after its sat for at least a day. I like making more, but it ends up being overly self indulgent/things we don't end up using because its far away enough from what the players get up to. Its not so bad making 'too much stuff' because its easy enough to re-purpose and good practice but I'm wary of letting my world builder's disease get out of control.

"Weapons lock"? That shit never happens. Terrible meme.

Anyway, I prefer it OD&D style: magic has damage types (fire, lightning and cold); weapon attacks are handled per-weapon by the Man-to-Man table, rather than being sorted into categories.

Does anyone know what happened to that spellsandsteel guy who was trying to revamp basic combat to be more realistic?

2 posts last year and nothing else until 2015. Looks dead. Pic completely unrelated.

What do you all think of technology as a tool in tabletop RPGs?

I was thinking about the idea of running a campaign where players never roll dice and have only in-character information.

The easiest way to do this would be if there were a program DMs could use to quickly generate results. Kind of like roll20's macros but easier to use, with more functionality, and able to be used offline.

Imagine:

>A dungeon turn passes and you click the button for that. It rolls to see if there is a random encounter. There is, it's a [number] on the random encounter table, the reaction roll is [number] and the [players/monsters] have initiative.

>The players are divvying up treasure. They tell you who gets what, you click and drag the gear onto the players, and a little "Enc!" appears next to the cleric's name. You turn to the cleric. "When you hoist your bag up onto your shoulder after filling it, you find that it's just a little too heavy to carry with ease. You can get around, but not as effectively if you might if you dropped a few things or passed them to someone else."

>Fighter says, "I draw my longsword and swing at the goblin." Since the fighter has the longsword in his inventory, the button exists for him to attack with it. You click it, and then click the goblin. The attack is rolled, and if it hits, the damage is shown. When you click to confirm, the damage is subtracted from the goblin's HP. All that's left is to report to the players what happens.

I do realize this would be a huge undertaking, but would anybody here be interested in it if it existed?

Sounds like a pain in the ass and an excuse for people to play hearthstone. GoogleDocs spreadsheets for characters/inventory/encumbrance doesn't sound too bad though.

I was trying to figure out a way to streamline a no-player-facing-mechanics situation so they aren't sitting there forever while the DM handles things.

I do think being able to do one thing and get the full result instead of rolling "yes, there's an encounter" and then rolling again for what it is, etc., sounds nice, but I suppose that's a personal preference.

Sounds like a lot of work to keep your players from using a pencil or rolling a die? Why would you want this?

>I do think being able to do one thing and get the full result instead of rolling "yes, there's an encounter" and then rolling again for what it is, etc., sounds nice
Colour code your dice for different parts of the table. And/or roll about 6-8 random encounters for that area ahead of time and pull them as needed.

Roll each die type a bunch of times and write down lists of numbers. Scratch off numbers as needed, it saves time on rolling mid session. While things go slow or the party argues, you can add to the lists.
Fetch and write down an wandering monster at the start of the session. If the party changes floors or meets it, fetch and note a new one at your leisure. When you roll an encounter, just whip it out. Also gives you time to brood over what it's doing.

>Sounds like a lot of work to keep your players from using a pencil or rolling a die? Why would you want this?
It seems to combine the structure of rules with the ability to just imagine and not worry about "what's my charisma stat" and such that something more freeform would allow.

Why would you worry about that in routine play?

Or save vs. wands, or whatever.

I think it would be cool to have players just be able to hear the situation, say what they do, and get feedback, and let them worry entirely about "how am I going to survive in this dungeon?" without having to pull themselves out of the game to check numbers.

At least as an experiment.

I usually find having quantifiable value reference for stats, gear, etc. helps players describe and imagine more than constrain as long as the rules are decently light. Big part of why I like osr. Still have values to make judgement, doesn't have so many making judgement becomes about juggling the values.

To be honest, guy, while I know you mean well this would actually set off alarms in my head if a GM tried to pull this on me as a player. It reminds me and not in a good way of GMs raised in '90s games that "simplified" systems so that players could "freely roleplay" without being "bound to numbers." All those scare quotes are there because the end result was that it ended up being pseudo-improv with the GM using a really heavy hand in leading the plot where they wanted it to go.

But anyway, it's good to remember that this is a game. OSR doesn't care about builds and whatnot, but part of an RPG's allure is the diceroll, the character sheet and the numbers. Be sure your players are looking for an experience that doesn't include those before springing this on them.

If you don't have your player's important numbers clipped to your screen, you're inept. You should not need to ask for them during play.

>At least as an experiment.
just say you have one, pretend to click stuff on your laptop and freeform it

Ah, the Arneson method!

>Much like when he witnessed The Siege of Bodenburg at GenCon I, Gygax was hooked, and quite naturally the first thing he requested was the rules.

>Arneson recorded his reaction as: “Rules? What rules!??!” [DW:#3] Instead of deliberately designing a Chainmail variant, Arneson accumulated rulings from day to day without constructing any coherent overarching system.

(from Playing at the World)

Describe Flavortown.

Pretty close. The answer is "exactly as much as I need". I tend to prep by thinking and going on tangents and building tools, not by planning events or building maps. So I might practice how to design boss fights without ever locking in any one boss idea until it becomes relevant. Saturate yourself with ideas. Running a cave game? Documentaries and movies. Running swords and sorcery? Read Conan.

You'll never feel ready, but as long as everyone had fun, you did a good enough job.
Ask them what's going on or try and study the circumstances. Sometimes it can just be timing or something outside of game entirely. Everyone has off days; don't obsess over it.
Also, this. The bigger the better. Put EVERYTHING on the table or on /a/ table. Weather, terrain, rival parties, rooms. Yeah, put a room on your encounter table. Work it in via a secret passage or a trap door or something.

goblinpunch.blogspot.ca/2016/01/regional-classes-kaladar.html
>Wizard Variant - Hundred-Year Chef

>So there's this space dragon called Forganthus Valore. Centerra holds nothing that he desires, except perhaps some tasty food. But not just any food. He needs a stew cooked to his specific specifications--which are so exotic and precise that it usually takes about a hundred years to assemble and cook them all.

>So Forganthus shows up every hundred years or so, eats a huge stew brimming with exotic flavors and impossible alchemy, gives instructions for the next stew which is to be served to him in 1d20+90 years, and then flies back into space.

Is Basic Fantasy that good? If YouTube is any indication, a ton of OSR players see Basic Fantasy as their go-to game.

I can't speak for others, but it's the first OSR system I ever came across. I imagine it's the same for many others.

>"Weapons lock"? That shit never happens.

>boss fights
These aren't in steal the pope, right?

Not even slightly, unless you want there to be one. It's not that kind of module.

No module should be that kind of module.

For my randomly generated / improv game, not very much. Ranging from 0 to an hour.

For my (hopefully coming soon) non-improv game, I spent quite a while going through the module some weeks ago and we still haven't played the first session. The improv game probably counts as prep for that as well.

Technology should stay as far away from the table as possible.

Knowing what their charisma, etc. stats are is an important part of the character. You can't really role-play as well if that information is hidden from you.

If you don't have a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses, let alone anything else that's on your character sheets, you aren't going to effectively be able to survive in an OSR game.

...

I like games that are as close to 100% associated mechanics as possible (especially OSR), and games that are full-on storygames, but holy shit I hate when games bounce frequently between the two, or throw a few weird dissociated mechanics (especially those applied during the middle of play, as opposed to when leveling up or something) into a game that's otherwise almost entirely about in-character decisions.

Captain Tylor > Crest of the Stars >>> LotGH

*Banner

Decrease those arrows before LotGH by 2 and you'll be good.

Captain Tylor > Banner of the Stars > LotGH

...

Now you got it.

Anyone here tried BFRPG? It's really caught my interest lately

It's a solid system. Just enough modern mechanics that newbies can get in no issue but classic enough to scratch my OSR itch. And you can't be free for PDFs or super cheap for price.

ACKS, BtW, LL AEC and BlueHolmes are all better clones

I never got what the fuss was about.