/osrg/ OSR General - New OC Edition

>tfw no group

Is Fire on the Velvet Horizon in the trove? I can't find it if it is

Behold! Postwald (the Tin Dragon)'s 10 Cunning Deathtraps!
coinsandscrolls.blogspot.ca/2018/02/osr-postwalds-cunning-deathtraps.html

Can you solve them? (Hint: yes.)

Do you think having more flexible Wizards (capable of casting any spell they know, no preparation) with less daily casts would be balanced?

Yes- I know that's what a Sorcerer is. I'm just wondering if anyone's made a good one for OSR play.

Please rate class

Devilman/Demon, henceforth referred to as the Biodemon class for LL/B&X. Spirits from a savage time come forth to destroy the god-bothering humanoids of the present, but for class balance have to start from scratch.

Biodemons Save, Fight and Progress like Elves, but cast no spells and must be of Chaotic Alignment.

They utilise Blue Energy like the Blue Mage, hackslashmaster.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/on-blue-mage.html, but can only use Azure Consumption, listed below for clarity.

Azure Consumption: The Blue Mage can attempt to learn attacks, passive or defensive abilities from creatures by eating them. They must save versus poison after consuming a corpse to learn the ability. Otherwise they are sick and vomit up the corpse which is ruined. A whole corpse must be consumed and this takes 1 turn.

Each of these attacks and abilities counts against the total number of abilities the Blue Mage can learn. However unlike the Blue Mage, the limit of abilities a Biodemon can learn is restricted to the number of Hit Dice the Biodemon posses, they may swap out an attack or ability for a new one at any time, but once done that ability must be relearned.

Examples of Azure Consumption:
Eating a Fire Beetle, will grant the ability of biolumisence. The caster can cause a part of their body to glow, casting light out to a distance of 10'
Eating a Displacer Beast, will grant the ability of displacement, subtracting 2 from all opponent's to hit rolls and giving a bonus of +2 to all saving throws

After battle, the DM should delineate the complete abilities available for the Biodemon to learn, and allow them to decide if they want to learn them or not. It takes 1 turn to learn an ability. The ability is a magical effect which means, for example, the Biodemon doesn't actually have to fly around opponents to confuse them.

Conversions should be made so that the Biodemon can have useful abilities of the opponents in the spirit of the original ability. Dragons can use their Breath weapon 3/day, and so can the Biodemon, with damage based on the Biodemons HD. The stinger of the killer bee doesn't kill the Biodemon, but does hurt him.

Bro. Just let MUs cast any spells they know, same spells per day no prep. If you use AD&D spells known limits things might get silly. But otherwise there won't be issues.

This was actually my original idea. I just don't like most of the spells in D&D is all.

>What's the best material you've ever made for the thread?
I didn't make it, but me asking for some ideas for a OSR Mecha campaign led to Skerples coming up with his Flame Pomerium concept which I think is probably his single best concept and has some of his strongest writing

How does not like g tje spell list have anything to do with ?

Why is the thread so dead?

Not enough shitposting

I'll start

Raggi is a pedophile neonazi

How do you determine the chance the elf slaves you captured are pregnant after raping them?

tips for adapting to OSR style of play and conventions from 5E? leaning towards B/X
and tips for converting stuff when the group says they want to stick with 5e?

Daily reminder that HP, XP and levels are not dissociated

Treat levels and HD of monsters as is, rebuild monsters or find them in MM.

In OSR, you character is a piece of paper, they die easily so hold off with the backstory. Resurrection is your friend but costs a lot of money.
Save or die spells.
Most adventures are written for 7-10 characters of a wide range of classes, so introduce your group to the Henchmen rules early.

Once you get to level 6 or so 1 HD are a speedbumb for Fighters and should be treated as such.

>Most adventures are written for 7-10 characters of a wide range of classes, so introduce your group to the Henchmen rules early.

This for me is the big one. We've gotten so used to smaller player sizes in modern play that the fact that old modules were made for huge parties (with the possibility of retainers on top) just doesn't sink in, even when it's written right at the front. I think part of the OSR's reputation for lethality is due to this.

>What's the best material you've ever made for the thread?
I’ve made lots of OC but I don’t post it in the thread, just G+ and reddit. I guess sometimes anons ask for ideas and I shit some out off the cuff and sometimes they like them.

G+Fag, how active are the OSR groups on there?

I put up a blogpost there maybe once a week, and read new stuff from there, but don’t really discuss on G+. I do my discussing in this thread or sometimes reddit

>balanced
No.

You're stupid.

Go away Monte, magic-users are already strong enough.

Why is the concept of abstraction so foreign to people?

Irony!

Sorry, I misread that. They’re pretty active I think, but somewhat fragmented across different groups. More active than the OSR subreddit, so the second most active OSR discussion forum I know of.

Daily reminder that dissociation is an abstraction you don't like.

>with less daily casts
Even LESS?!

Can you run a Cowboy Bebop game in SWN?

They don't really discuss OSR on g+, It's more about discussing people that are/were involved in OSR with a good percentage of the people commenting solely for the purpose of attempting to receive attention from LotFP or shilling their products. It's disappointing and most of them begrudgingly post on /osrg/ anyway.

When are the new LotFP modules supposed to come out?

Deepwood Verses is over a year delayed and Raggi and friends haven't made any updates for months on the promised adventures developed in house.

Look at his g+ page for updates on stuff like that

Everything got set back because basically nobody liked the LotFP 2e playtest which new modules were supposed to be compatible with by default.

Frostbitten and Mutilated is supposedly at printers.

Sine Nomine G+ group is the best place to get news from Kevin Crawford and homebrew content. He also regularly posts previews of content he's working on and once in a blue moon he even takes time to answer questions. Once upon a time Touhoufag took advantage of this and it was a right goddamn mess though

Looks like yet another edgy art book by Zak pretending to be a campaign settings.

GHOST TRACKER!!!!
docs.google.com/document/d/17e1ltFE_rjXfBHI1HRXiU5GIngrO35BlqHMD9s3M578/edit#heading=h.54b8q5byby8z

Why do you think edgy equals quality?

I don't see why not. Just run it with Heroic rules and describe combat and other things stylishly. Melee has perks too, so guys like Vicious can be pretty effective.

Nobody liked it? Source?

Afaik, it had clerics and demihumans relegated to the appendix, saves on 3d6, what else?

Tfw nobody died this session either.

>saves on 3d6
Actually it's dice pools not just 3d6, also specialist has been neutered, group initiative is gone, Vancian magic has been replaced with psuedo-spell points with spells that scale with level, scrolls are gone, DCC style burning.

Basically, Raggi fell victim to one of the classic blunders: he thought he was bigger than the thing he was piggybacking on. I'm not saying this to shit on him, it's a really common mistake for people in his position; an analogy might be a pop star thinking her fans are fans of her first and pop second, so they'll still buy her album if she switches to country.

Similarly, Raggi thought the fans of his B/X clone and the buyers of his B/X modules would stick with him if he chucked the B/X compatibility. This was a mistake; it pretty much always is.

It's in the inbox

What happened to troveguy? Is he alive? Is anyone in contact with him?

Gone. The trove is not maintained. We are fucked if it disappears.

>What's the best material you've ever made for the thread?
I think this is the only thing I've made that was really exclusively for the thread.

I said it last thread and I'll say it again
>Devilman nameslap on an edgified Final Fantasy class
0/10

Should we just make a new trove and start stocking it? We can even remove the "non OSR" games everyone hates so much

I wouldn't be surprised if a vast majority of the thread doesn't have the trove backed up locally, it isn't even large.

I don't think we need to at the moment, there hasn't many releases since it was last updated.

The only actual OSR is AD&D, everything else can go and stay go.

>a wild Kank-A appears

>A relief that helps get rid of sores
That doesn't sound like a bad thing.

>another Zak book
>Literally incoherent when read through
>and yet, flip randomly to any page at all, and instantly find an idea worth adding to a campaign
god damn it

Blue Medusa was god awful for this, how in the actual fuck are players who haven't read the book supposed to know what to do in the very first room without the DM being incredibly unsubtle, every actual play I've seen people metagame the fuck out of the module just to advance.

In example, I pick up my Blue Medusa and flip to.. page 74 at random. Oh look a really cool Orrery that can give the players fortunes that they find on tiny slips of paper in their meals, and you have to compete to fulfill your fortune before the DM does it for you.

Except you need to trigger the device then have an astrological almanac with you to solve the puzzle then make an int check to even be able to use it then you get a fortune which could be very usable or completely never useable.

>then you get a fortune which could be very usable or completely never useable.
If fortunes are never usable, do PCs even get XP out of them?

I'm not seeing XP from them, it looks like they give you a fantastic bonus (5e Advantage on your next 3 saves), and the opportunity for a fate-style narrative twist based on your Fortune.. but some of them are pretty out there.

It's totally worth it, but probably pretty hard to get use out of.

Road Warrior post-apoc or Gamma World post-apoc? Which is more enjoyable to you?

Apocalypse World apoc. Actually, 2300AD post-post apoc.

Fallout post-post apoc

I kinda prefer a mix. Been kinda working on making guns more available in Mutant Future.

Mad Max mid-apoc

I am a False OSR Enthusiast. I prefer d6s to meme dice like d20s and d12s.

>false OSR game based on PbtA
I'm just gonna say that PbtA is the new fantasy heartbreaker and leave it at that. I'm not down on the system, but I am skeptical that this game is going to draw OSR players or PbtA players. PbtA games work off of specific moves that reinforce genre. I don't see moves (or playbooks, for that matter). OSR games do a few things for me (relatively rules light, zero-to-hero gameplay, high lethality, classes). PbtA games do different things for me (rules light also, characters are stars of the show, moves reinforce thematic elements of the game). The self-described "kludge" does neither.

OSR stuff works because the game and assumed setting is baked into everything: spells, races, etc. PbtA works for similar reasons. Vagabonds of Dyfed...does not.

Sure, I can see how changing things too much when they ain't broken won't go down too well with people.

Still, aren't things like dice pool saves and spell points something that completely doesn't affect B/X compatibility? As long as the stuff that's in modules - AC, HP, damage - works the same?

Well, yeah, but they're different.

OSR to me is about clever plans that minimize risk and maximize rewards. I don't see how that can mix with a game that embraces and requires success at a cost as a cornerstone.

>I prefer d6s to meme dice like d20s and d12s.
Then why not map the d20 target numbers to d6 and use it for every roll?

Raggi was on to something when he built his business off new adventures. His audience doesn't want or need new rules, but they do want new scenarios for those rules. Aside from adventures, the only other thing you could sell to old school GMs really are good random tables and ways to make prep easier.

It's all about convincing people there's a need. Show Business and all that.

>His audience doesn't want or need new rules
Bruh, the rules are his best seller.
The mistake is entirely in thinking that people like his vision or whatever, instead of liking his particular set of B/X houserules.

Wasn't necessarily your fault. They might have earned it.

>aren't things like dice pool saves and spell points something that completely doesn't affect B/X compatibility?
They have a cumulative effect.Yyou can't run tournament modules with "spell points" but that's fine barely anybody ran them anyway, "dice pool saves" well I guess I'll have to rewrite all spells and traps, magic-users can now cast cleric spells? what the actual fuck, how is that going to work in my campaign setting, better homebrew that out.

>"dice pool saves" well I guess I'll have to rewrite all spells and traps
Do you, though? If the spell/trap says "save vs. paralysis", and you still have a save category for paralysis on your sheet, what does it matter what dice you roll to resolve it? For all the module cares, I could say that every character automatically succeeds on 2 saves of each category per day, and automatically fails them after that, and it would still be compatible.
>how is that going to work in my campaign setting
Now that is more of a problem, yes.

Wouldn't a lot of equipment and items be unusable with dice pools? a +2 bonus on all saves vs something is absolutely fucking massive if your rolling 3d6's.

>unusable
Sounds like somebody needs to read the old school primer.

Some day.

>Wouldn't a lot of equipment and items be unusable with dice pools? a +2 bonus on all saves vs something is absolutely fucking massive if your rolling 3d6's.
The dice will always betray you.

Just because something is a meme doesn't make it bad. The d20 is the die of TTRPG gamers. I personally like it for it's history and how iconic it is. It's also way easier to think about the chances of success than a d6. It makes me go "Oh shit, that's only going to work maybe 10% of the time, maybe I'm retarded"

I like it because d100 is a fucking idiotic degree of granularity. Nobody cares about a +1% bonus.

d20 is pretty good, it's easy to think in 5% increments. A d10 would probably be even better, but I'm not too bothered.

The d100 is the embodiment of the term false precision.

I've made a bunch of stuff like pdf related, just for myself though. Some small dungeons and maps and whatnot too. Someday I'll make something big.

It's already better than Engineering Castles, good job.

Here's another that just puts all the dungeon-stocking rules from LL on the same page.

I like this. My only quibble is that your village populatin is too large: I'd use a D4 instead of a D8. Thanks.

Here you go buddy.

You rule. Thanks!

>Deepwood Verses
You mean Driftwood Verses? What happend?

I blogged about the sage meme.

Are BRP considered OSR?

>just because it is inexplicable in world and causes player behavior that doesn't make sense from the pc's point of view doesn't mean it's dissociated

>no wait that's exactly what it means

>okay new definition: it's only dissociated when I don't like it