/osr/ - Old School Renaissance

What is everybody's favorite system and why?

My homebrew, 'cause I made it by myself and I'm proud of it.

5e, it's tons of fun

I think its already there in appendix c, clerics turning undead, magic items that do things to specific creature types, etc.

Focusing on it too much seems not so great imo, and referring to them as their creature type in game is for sure verboten. Although sages with all kinds of weird ideas about how to categorize the world is fun.

My favorite OSR system is straight B/X. Labyrinth Lord+An Echo Resounding and LotFP can come too.

I don't know if I have a favorite system.

>The list divides all animals into 14 categories:

> Those that belong to the emperor
> Embalmed ones
> Those that are trained
> Suckling pigs
> Mermaids (or Sirens)
> Fabulous ones
> Stray dogs
> Those that are included in this classification
> Those that tremble as if they were mad
> Innumerable ones
> Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
> Et cetera
> Those that have just broken the flower vase
> Those that, at a distance, resemble flies

I know it's kind of like asking a group of anarchists what their favorite form of government is. But it's not quite like that.

Grew up playing B/X and HeroQuest, maybe that's why I like DCC.

I dont know if favorite but i discovered myth and magic the system is great, it is everything i have ever wanted it haves bad reputation but who cares

Human pattern recognition can get up to some funny shit.

>edible
>poisonous
>delicious
>intangible
>spicy

For OSR? BFRPG, hands down.

You can do a lot with DCC, so I can see why people would like it.

BFRPG when I want a, well...basic fantasy setting.
LotFP when I'm running weird-historical stuff.
DCC when I want a gonzo fuckfest.

What's the best OSR system for a Dark Sun/Swords & Sandals campaign?

>Considering your Gnomes, that can't be right.
Gnomes are proven to be Gnomes. Guilty, but Gnomes. But people know what they are. It's the unknown stuff that gets Goblined.
>I really hope this post isn't implying that bkub's Chen isn't a parody of Pop Team Epic.
I recognize some of those words but I have no idea what this means.
Usually slippery slopes lead somewhere. This just leads to more content. As long as stuff is reasonably non-specific, sure, I'll use """5E""" OSR content. Most of it's shit... but most OSR content is shit anyway, on average. What can you do?
Arguable... but pointless. And if you think I intend to get me gone you've got it wrong.
I like it.
I like it! I mean, it's not much, but it'll do. Good tables are nice.
If you join the GLOG side you'll find that the rules aren't nailed down at all. Instead of Jesus Good Friday they're Jesus on Easter Sunday. The rules are so un-nailed that they need a pilots license to operate.
These are not bad Useful Skills. I like 'em.
>So /osr/, have any rules on spicing up combat?
Rules, no. Ideas, yes: falsemachine.blogspot.ca/2017/07/held-kinetic-energy-in-old-school.html
GLOG

>There's no new content where we're headed.
SPACE!

Crypts & Things

>How would you feel about creature types (Constructs, Elementals, Fey, Undead, etc.) being implemented in an OSR game?
Creature types were good in theory, terrible in practice. Aberrations were an enormous clusterfuck, Giants as their own type (which encompassed ogres and trolls) was silly, and codifying what a shapechanger is/isn't limits DMs and players alike (that +1 shapechanger bane spear doesn't work against Rakshasas by RAW)

What about Old New Content?

2e

So 'goblin' just means mysterious midget bastard to you?

bkub is the mangaka behind PopTeamEpic
Chen is the character in and

>hecate
>taste: horse
Into it. Also weirdly useful for my campaign.

There's two reports of it, both on that page.

>So 'goblin' just means mysterious midget bastard to you?
To my PCs, but yes. Any mysterious midget bastard is a goblin unless it gets another name. From the monster manual: baboons, brownies, bugbears, small gargoyles, fetus ghouls, goblins, hobgoblins, homunculi, imps, kobolds, leprechauns, possibly otyughs and neo-otyguhs, short orcs, perytons, pixies, quasits, satyrs, ugly sprites, stirges, troglodytes, and xorns would all - potentially - be called "goblins".

>How would you feel about creature types (Constructs, Elementals, Fey, Undead, etc.) being implemented in an OSR game?
I like the idea provided the categories are
a) weird (as in and b) in fiction only.

The real world is messy and complicated. We invent categories, but making things like "Construct" and "Undead" overly dominant categories, both in and out of fiction, leads to soul-crushing boredom and cosmologies that need "The Negative Energy Plane" and stuff to function.

Things are what they are. In the fiction, categorize them. But in the GM bits, describe and list and let the GM fill in the blanks as needed. Let things be weird and unknowable and properly strange.

>bugbears
7 feet tall
>otyughs
7 feet wide

Bugbears have notoriously bad posture and otyughs are so shit-covered and half-buried that you probably can't judge their height accurately. You might think their tentacles are heads, for example.

youtube.com/watch?v=JIZ12EQ2SFg

Cirno
Fairy of the Ice - Easy Mode
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral
HD 3 (18 hp)
MV 9/fly 18
Int 9
AC 9
Attacks: Unarmed 1d3
Special: Double damage from fire, immune cold, spell cards
Morale 9
Treasure: None
XP: 99

Cirno cannot truly die as long as the concept of cold exists. If slain she revives 1d3 weeks later.

In lieu of attacking, Cirno may use one spell card per round:
-Ice Sign "Icicle Fall" deals 3d6 of ice damage (save for half) to everyone within a 30-ft area center on her. Those directly in front of her and within 10 ft. take no damage instead.
-Hail Sign "Hailstorm" deals 4d6+3 cold damage (save for half) to all within 50 ft and damages Cirno for 1d3.

>Cirno

>Beloved Tomboyish Girl
Was Beloved Tomboy already taken?

wat
No wait, don't tell me. Hawk your memes elsewhere.

I was complaining about the song name, but since you asked so nicely...
>danbooru.donmai.us/wiki_pages/6240

>not knowing Touhou in [current year + 2]
en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Touhou_Wiki
Come to think of it, Godbound might be a good system for a Touhou game.

I want to use E&E for a light hearted anime dungeon fantasy thing myself. Maybe something isekai/virtual MMO based.

I can't be expected to keep track of every hat-wearing bint on this mongolian cheese-sorting board! What in the Sam Hill does this have to do with OSR anyway?

It just got a stat block. If you can't figure out what to do in your game with a tiny fairy that could wipe out a party but is dumb enough to be entertained endlessly by a frozen frog, welp.

>If you can't figure out what to do in your game with a tiny fairy that could wipe out a party but is dumb enough to be entertained endlessly by a frozen frog, welp.
See, why didn't you just say that? Stats are no help. Dumb fairies and the stuff they fall for is very helpful.
(Plus Int 9 isn't that dumb.)

It was you who chose to go among weaboos. Also Touhou has been big for like 20 years now.

They keep to their boards (of which they have many) and I'll keep to mine.
>What about Old New Content?
How many of those gods have your players eaten?
Aww yuss.

Original 2hu-statter here, I figured people Veeky Forums aka /touhougames/ would have already learned about Cirno, Chen, et al via meme osmosis.

>They keep to their boards (of which they have many) and I'll keep to mine.
Man, how new are you?

>How many of those gods have your players eaten?
>having players
haha get a load of this loser

I second this.

The "9. Baka" is an awful meme that should have died on arrival. It's been 12 years, and it's still going strong.

>i don't want our over-focused monoculture to degenerate in it's echo chamber
>but don't go bringing in outside influences
Have your cake or eat it.

He's a True Blue Crusty Old Faggot and he uses at least one other general, but he basically just comes to the sight for generals. I don't think he even crossboards.

I mean, Skerples has been here for ages or so he claims, but meme osmosis only goes so far. I've been here since 14 and I know said memes exist, but I have no idea what they mean.

Man I only just learned the name of the one in the pictures with the Chinese characters under them.

I have seen these memes but I figured they were completely irrelevant to my interests and moved on.

Glad to be proven right.

Anyway, sorry for dragging things off topic. For those of us losers cursed with players (not you, ), how did last session go? And what's the average PC death per session rate of your games?

He's been changing up his posting style lately, but that did not used to be the case. Poke through the archives. He's there.

I still don't know that one's name. But my poor taste in tripe literature has taught me a lot of the foreign memes.

Couple threads ago we discussed crowd sourcing deaths in popular OSR dungeons, for a dark souls style ghost thing. I started a google doc.

docs.google.com/document/d/17e1ltFE_rjXfBHI1HRXiU5GIngrO35BlqHMD9s3M578/edit?usp=sharing

Uhhh...we can't edit it.

>no tournament modules

>Fujiwara no Mokou (藤原 妹紅) was formerly an ordinary human, but she became an immortal being after drinking the Hourai Elixir about 1300 years ago. Now she is never able to die, though she still feels the pain of injuries as normal. She's considered to be very powerful, given her long life, the power she earned through her life, and her immortal status since she can keep fighting until she can no longer stand the pain.

Basically a retired high-level PC.

Interesting.

Last session...everyone died. On the bright side, this means I get to use Arnold's fucking awesome one page dungeon "The Isles of the Dead." So far the average PC death per session rate is 0.02, they've come /really/ close to death a lot of times.

Last session was dope. Finally got out of/looted the Titan's Torment revamp I did. 50% fatalities, not even blue on blue fire this time. Which is a bit high but they stood and fought for once instead of running away. Usually someone eats it every 3 sessions or so. The survivors are level 5ish now so I'm running out of B series modules/intro stuff to reskin.

Which brings me to asking about mid range adventures. Anyone have some to recommend that's an interesting mansion or something similar enough to one for levels 5ish? I'm basically running LotFP.

Not terrible. The party continued their delving into the dwarven city and returned with a reasonable quantity of loot. The time before they emerged with just barely enough to live off of (30 sp of devilstrand cloth), but this time they got a fair chunk of money out of the deal (mostly in the form of dwarven clothing).

PC death has been lower than it should be because I keep forgetting to do wandering monster checks.

What's a good way to keep track of mana or 'uses' of low level weak wands?

I want my starting or low level players to be able to buy a 1d6 rod of flames that requires an attack roll + int to hit to give the game a more JRPG vibe, but I'm not sure how to handle ammunition. My idea as of now is that they recharge every dawn and dusk, but have to exposed to the light of the changing skies or something to be recharged, meaning they have less of a maximum then arrows (to which you can carry potentially hundreds) but come back for free and you don't have to carry them around.

What's a good method?

Fixed. My bad

Start them off at a high die of damage, say d12, but whenever they roll a 4+ they go down a die size, to d10, then d8, then d6, then d4, then finally they just snuff out. Or just, I dunno, tally marks on the character sheet?

The current year was 2015. Get with it gramps. It's [the current year + 3] now.

Is it weird that I want to use the old tabletop mordheim rules to run a standard dungon crawl? It seems like using the stats for leaders/champions would allow the PCs to start at least somewhat survivable, there's room for growth, and it would be perfectly easy to handle retainers/henchmen/etc. Thoughts?

Eh, could be fun but I don't imagine there'd be much depth.

How do rounds/turns work in OD&D? I'm using Greyharp's book and 3 originals as reference. Thanks.

Rounds are 6 seconds, Turns are 10 minutes

>Rounds are 6 seconds
>OD&D
60 seconds.

I don't know why you would use Mordheim instead of actual WFRP for it, honestly.

I've played the 40k rpgs and skimmed WHFRP. I like them they're also just too damn crunchy sometimes. Everything being d6 based seems light and refreshing. Plus it has that oldschool vibe, using wargaming rules to follow individual characters.

Tally marks or sprindown a dice should work fine for tracking. seems neat too, like a good use of the desu hack's useage dice.

But the sundown/sunup thing makes me want to do some silly game bullshit with an hour glass as the day's charge or something like that.

do warhammer quest

>Old Rules, New Content
you're bringing tears to my eyes OP

Any thoughts on this?

I don't see myself using this, but a cauldron weight in terms of coins (and of LotFP inventory slots) seems important.

Needs more subcategories. That way you can have Resistance - Roll d6 instead of 4 different resistances.

Alternatively, ingredients should be themed like in BotW. Moth found on mountain side helps resist flame because it's from cold environment. Gain electrical attacks from eating a firefly. Et cetera.

True. You could probably use a big goblin camp's cookpot as a make shift cauldron. maybe lower the effect by -1 or have nasty goblin sideeffects from drinking some of their grease.

I somewhat agree, but one of the main appeals is simplicity. I don't really have the time or desire to figure out exactly what alchemy ingredients exist in each and every biome of my game world, and how they should interact. I could see a special type of ingredient that doubles duration/strength but has no effect on its own, perhaps carrying a negative side effect, or a potency roll from using multiple ingredients of the same type. Perhaps letting you reroll the potency 1 more time every time you double the number of ingredients.

Neat. The flat increase in dice size for more ingredients in interesting. Seems like adding a bunch of ingredients has the potential for a higher result but not in a very dependable way, which might be on purpose? Made me think of having a single dice size, but increasing the number of ingredients increases the number of dice rolled. Highest number is what becomes X, and fell consequences for rolling 3 or more 1's or something similar.

I know, dice pools, get ye gone, etc I'm sorry

Lamentations
It's AD&D with most/all the bullshit removed, but doesnt pussyfoot around spooky magic and weird monsters
literally what I wanted to make when I was working overtime all the time. major kudos to the dude who wrote it, it's what I wanted to make.

is 2e better than 3.5?

>Splitting AC into 'to hit' and 'to hurt'
I've not encountered this before, how does it work?

Lamentations is pretty much B/x, I thought?

Yes. 1e is even better, albeit hard to reference. OD&D is better (and harder to reference) than 1e. B/X beats them all.

Yeah, LotFP is based on B/X with some changes to fit the weird horror thing.

>I've not encountered this before, how does it work?
I'm assuming they're talking about armor as damage resistance, which leaves shields and dexterity and shit as performing the traditional role of armor class. But I could be wrong.

What do you think of a -8 to hit penalty to hit for decapitating a foe?

Sounds like if you hit their better AC (or their worse AC while they're out of vitality) they takes wounds
and if you don't hit their better AC but do hit their worse AC they lose vitality.

Like auto-decapitate on a hit? Because that could be broken at higher levels where your THAC0 is very good and enemies have a lot of hit points that decapitation would circumvent. Basically, it would be something you'd never do at lower levels, but something that might be too sweet at higher levels. Now, if you give enemies a saving throw vs decapitation, that could at least counterbalance things a bit, since saves get better at higher levels, but I don't think the slope is extreme enough, and it'd still be useless at lower levels. I'd be happier making it do extra damage (x2 or x3 or something) and have the decapitation only happen when hit points reach zero. You'd still have to work to balance the math, but at least then you'd be working within the existing hit point system.

Huh. Seems needlessly complicated.

Okay, what about this? To attempt a decapitation, you need to be using an appropriate weapon that inflicts at least 1d8 base damage. Accompanying your roll to-hit (at the same time as, before or after; it really doesn't matter), you must roll a die equal in size to your target's level / # of hit dice, round up. So levels 1-4 = 1d4, 5-6 = d6, 7-8 = d8, 9-10 = d10, 11-12 = d12, 13-16 = d16, 17-20 = d20.

If you hit and get a 1 on the decapitation die, you've successfully decapitated your target. Otherwise (if you roll a miss on your to-hit roll, or get a roll higher than a 1 on your decapitation die), you miss and inflict no damage.

Or, if you want to get fancy:
If you hit and get a 1 on the decapitation die, you've successfully decapitated your target. If you hit and get a 2 on the decapitation die, you've scored a normal hit (roll damage as normal). All other combinations result in you missing, but if you roll maximum on your decapitation die, you have also exposed yourself and your target gets a free attack against you.

What purpose does a decapitation rule serve?

A chance for a quick death? But I wasn't really advocating for it, just trying to provide a mechanically-balanced system to achieve it in response to the question about it.

so make a crit (nat 20 that hits) an auto-kill.
Remember, increasing the influence of randomness in combat biases against the PCs in the long run.

>so make a crit (nat 20 that hits) an auto-kill.
So 1 out of 20 times your character gets attacked, you auto-die? That's all kinds of fucked.

>Remember, increasing the influence of randomness in combat biases against the PCs in the long run.
Which is why you shouldn't make a to-hit roll of 20 an auto-kill.

This was my idea! Why did I say it out loud, now I will never be able to claim credit for it on the blogosphere!

I mean, I don't think it's a good idea, but user seemed to want a chance for a decapitation, so there you go.

> how did last session go?
Running our group’s first ever OSR session today. Wish me luck!

If you get enough data, you could even do a ”heatmap” of deaths, and maybe a spell that allows players to sense which rooms havea lot of death about them.

Although, unless you have some ”intersecting realities” fluff going on, you probably want to hand-pick only the deaths that are reasonably distant enough in time. For example, an ancient dungeon may have killed other adventurers before, but less so the goblins who just moved in last week.

Selective rather than accidental decapitation works better. That way it only happens when folks are actively trying to decapitate you, and the GM can control the frequency with which enemies try to do that to PCs (and can make that frequency zero, or close to it).