Welcome to the Old School Renaissance thread, your hotspot for the discussion of TSR-era Dungeons & Dragons and its derivatives.
>Trove: pastebin.com
>Tools & Resources: pastebin.com
>Old School Blogs: pastebin.com
Previous thread: Topic for discussion: Name one common thing that bothers you about OSR games, and tell us how you address the issue, if you've managed to address it at all (even if this is just lifting an idea from a particular retroclone).
Other urls found in this thread:
lastgaspgrimoire.com
twitter.com
Move speeds always feel wrong to me.
I get that you're searching, but still....
Maybe scale up movement and corridor lengths?
>Name one common thing that bothers you about OSR games, and tell us how you address the issue, if you've managed to address it at all (even if this is just lifting an idea from a particular retroclone).
The d20 dice distribution curve and relatively low impact that modifiers and bonuses have on success.
I should mention that I don't actually think it is that bad, but I do think it's a bit of a self correcting problem. If you only roll once or twice in a whole session, as some groups do in OSR games, then a +1 or +2 is a godsend. It only irks me from a design standpoint, which doesn't really matter so much.
It seems like D&D has a general design principle of keeping things exciting by having their always be a decent chance of success or failure. The good thing about this is that the game is harder to break. If modifiers were larger, it'd be easier to crash into the ceiling or floor. It can sometimes leave you feeling like high attributes don't make enough of a difference though.
And thread prior to/ahead of that, for archival purposes.
Prior to. came second.
Magic Users learning new spells. They get all these slots, but no matter how many times I read the book, it seems those slots stay empty. I just ruled that every time they gain a new spell slot, they gain a new spell randomly at that level.
I built the actual checks for traps and secret doors--which the rules sort of imply you're doing to justify the slow speed but don't give you any chance to succeed with unless you stop--into my rules. That way you can keep things the way they are without breaking any of the other important parts that rely on the 10-minute turn.
Oh, there's plenty. What I can think of right now, though...
>Problem: too much money.
Solution: copper standard.
>Problem: I can't remember all of the charts and tables and progressions and all.
Solution: I simplified them drastically until I can remember them. Fighter-types, for example, are now the only ones to increase in combat ability. I'm told LotFP does this as well.
>Problem: Clerics
Solution: >Problem: Staves and wands don't really fit with any sort of fictional conception of magic whatsoever.
Solution: ...I'm still working on that one.
>Solution: copper standard.
I dig thinking gp is too valuable to be the standard of your economy, but at a certain point don't you run into problems reducing the value of treasure made out of precious metals (silver and gold) past a certain point?
>Problem: Staves and wands don't really fit with any sort of fictional conception of magic whatsoever.
>Solution: ...I'm still working on that one.
This ones easy. Just make it required that magic users must have a magic staff, wand, or baton to cast any spells. This means they can be disarmed, and all of them will carry one. Rich ones will deck theirs out in cool gemstones, perhaps granting a +1 bonus to damage or effects from spells cast, or a bonus to the saving throw difficulty of curses they cast on enemy's and so on.
This way, you give magic users another tool to use, something easy to fluff, and gear progression all in one.
I don't really see how you combine those three posts into one system, d'ya mind explaining?
In OD&D you know every spell in the book.
In AD&D you roll to know every 1st level spell and roll to know 1 spell of your choice available to your level every level up.
You can't exceed INT limits and get to roll for a different spell if any of the above rolls fail.
You can roll to learn any spells in scrolls or captured spell books.
If you _ever_ fail a roll to learn a spell, you may never attempt to learn that spell again.
In B/X you roll every time you get a new slot (or pick, if you're got a captured spellbook).
Unfortunately, yes. Very quickly. That's a pretty major flaw of the system. However, it does amazing things with the progression which I absolutely love, so I keep using it. Also provides a major challenge. I am willing to use silver standard, but copper standard is my preference.
On the plus side though, translating out of a copper standard system into silver or gold is easy.
I've considered that, and it's definitely better than the current system, but I'd like it to be possible to cast without.
It's hideous and bastardized and janky and jury-rigged, but sure.
I'm using the abilities from WWCD's as the abilities that the cleric gets, dependent on church. Plus (a weaker version of) Turn Undead. The abilities use the Turn Undead mechanic primarily. (As well as devotion? I remember reading a good way of doing devotion that was more than just "faith points" that if you spent too many of them you became an atheist, but I can't find it any more.) I'm trying to fit in some manner of protective blessing at some point, but I haven't managed that yet. As you progress through the game you'll unlock more of the abilities from your church, or alternatively you can train at another church. Once you've gotten to... Name level or so, you'll be thinking about starting your own church. This will typically be of the saint that you've primarily been following. If you do something awesome in the name of your religion and get martyred for it, and your allies tell the tale, you might end up a saint yourself for another cleric to follow.
The shrines... Well, I'm not really 100% on that since they're kind of later game. But I imagine that you can get spell-like blessings from them, maybe, with the same mechanic of turning undead.
And of course you can attempt to get divine intervention.
Having switched to a silver standard in the past, I have to admit that it did still seem inadequate,* so I can well imagine that a copper standard would be ideal, except for the problem with treasure made out of silver and gold.
*I mainly hate it when people find a bunch of coins and it just feels like a hassle to keep track of them, because they aren't valuable enough to warrant it. It's like getting a bunch of pennies in real life.
>I've considered that, and it's definitely better than the current system, but I'd like it to be possible to cast without.
Maybe it takes extra time to cast without? Or it causes exhaustion / hit point damage. Or, if you're feeling really creative, there are side effects. Or you could make them roll to see if their spell fizzles, but I honestly hate that option.
Can anyone tell me what's the book that has weird monsters like undead dragon hatchlings and kinda-undead based on various maladies? Sorry for being vague but I've only seen a couple pages out of it posted here and there.
I want a campaign where we start as barely above peasants and claw our way to the top but everyone else in my group just wants to start as heroes and play pathfinder and 5e. What do I do OSR?
Veins of the Earth
How do you portray dark vision?
Get a second playgroup.
Infravision: blurs of heat, mostly. Cold things or weird things are tricky to identify. Torches can swamp it; moving water or smoke can also cause havoc.
Magnetic Vision: iron and metals are dense blurs of white-grey light, like balls of luminescent yarn. Everything else is faded, shadowy, or invisible.
Soul vision: faint wispy things inside people, vaguely following the brain and spinal cord. Wizards glow or drip.
PCs don't have any of this by default, but can get it through mutations, spells, gear, etc. I like my light economy.
I've wanted to try replacing the d20 with 3d6
Depends on the type of darkvision.
My dwarves and elves have different cone cells than humans do, which gives dwarves infravision and elves ultravision, but neither helps see in true darkness. They are better in dim light, though.
Dwarves have the ability to see NIR light, but they lose access to bluish colours. A human's primary colours are white/black, red/green and yellow/blue, but a dwarf's are white/black, red/yellow, and nirh/orange. Nirh is the colour of NIR light.
Elves can see ultraviolet light, but they can't see reddish colours. So their primary colours are white/black, yuvë/blue, and violet/cyan. Where yuvë or jylvë is the colour of UVA light.
Naturally, this means that elves and dwarves have very different conceptions of beauty than humans do, as well as different pigments for painting. It also means that trying to disguise yourself as someone not of your race will only work until you mention the colour of something. Not to mention that cross-racial languages are difficult to learn. It's like if someone said in the day time, "wow, look at the bright yellow sky!" or "wow, look at the bright black sky!".
That said, neither of those helps with seeing in the dark, since you need MWIR or LWIR for that.
If your dwarves can see the effects of gravity (which is an idea I love) then you can describe things with their density. It also explains their ability to notice stonework things. Light things like aluminium and leaves are light, heavy things like gold and lead are heavy/dark.
If they have true infravision, is good.
If they have a tapetum lucidum, like cats and dogs do, I'd describe it normally. That, or describe it like you would in the darkness. Humans only have one type of rod cell, which has its range in the blues to yellows area --- between the L cones and the M cones. That's why things at night look purplish. Tapeta lucida work by essentially bouncing light around to increase its amplitude via constructive interference.
The problem with doing that is that not only does 3d6 have a bell curve, but it also has a smaller range (it doesn't go lower than 3 or higher than 18), and the combination of the two means it doesn't run well using the same scores. Using d8s would work much better, but you'd need to shift all the target numbers 3 higher to make it work (since 3d8 averages 13.5 rather than 10.5), which is obnoxious (or just roll 3d8-3, which is even more obnoxious). Or, I guess you could just count 8s as 0s. That would work, as it would give you a range of 0-21 (1 larger in each direction than a d20) with an average of 10.5.
Why not 2d10? It's no bell curve, but it's certainly more curved than 1d20.
That works too. I mean, it shifts your average up half a point to 11, and you take a 1 point hit at the bottom end of your range (minimum of 2 rather than 1), but for a roll-high system like D&D, it should work okay. Like with 3d8-3, you can still run into some issues when you have to roll a 19 or 20 or over, since you're 3 to 5x less likely to succeed than you are on a d20, which is such a drastic difference. But most of the time, you won't be playing at the extreme edge of your range anyway.
What exactly using a copper/silver standard means? How to implement that?
Instead of getting 10 gp, you get 10 cp/sp. All the prices of shit are similarly reduced. So really, you are still paying the same number of base monetary units for the same things, only the names of those monetary units have changed.
What does this accomplish? Well, in D&D copper pieces start of useless and silver pieces aren't far behind. It's honestly kind of obnoxious that they even exist, and once you've been on a few adventures, they just amount to a pocketful of pennies that you feel obligated to keep track of, but which don't add up to much. And you've got so many gold pieces, that you feel like you're paying for shit in quarters rather than twenties, like you should be (assuming there's even anything for you to buy past the standard stuff -- but that's a whole other discussion). So changing to a silver standard gives you a common ten-unit coin, so you don't have to pay for shit with the equivalent of one dollar bills, and it makes every coin you carry around worth ten times what it was in the original system, so you don't get that "pocketful of pennies" feeling.
>In B/X you roll every time you get a new slot (or pick, if you're got a captured spellbook).
"When player characters gain a level of experience, they will return to their masters and be out of play for one “game-week” while they are learning their new spells. … Magic-users and elves are limited to the number of spells they may know, and their books will contain spells equal to the number and level of spells the caster can use in a single day."
...or you could get rid of copper pieces and use silver for the tenth unit? As far as I understand this changes nothing gameplay-wise outside of making copper be worth something at all - XP gains are still the same, except now you're counting silver instead of gold coins? Prices are the same but in silver? I mean I get it but that sounded like something bigger than stepping currency down one magnitude. What I don't get is how it's supposed to solves the too much money problem, if the same number of base currency has the same buying power.
Since D&D has armor as deflecting or avoiding blows; how do you avoid combat being a whiff fest?
I think that having most creatures with an AC of around 10-13 would correct this a lot, but that doesn't seem to be common in practice.
When a wandering monster happens, do you have it literally wander towards the party down a corridor or through a door? Or do you place it in the next room they go to?
>I think that having most creatures with an AC of around 10-13 would correct this a lot
You're talking ascending AC? Because if you're talking descending AC, having most creatures have an AC in the 10-13 range really would address the issue.
Anyway, starting characters are very vulnerable to getting dead after a hit or two, so D&D makes it tricky for low-level characters and low-hit dice monsters to land blows. As hit dice dramatically scale, characters get better at hitting, improving their damage per round. Though even taking this and magic weapons into account, damage output probably only scales about half as fast as damage in B/X (and that's assuming monster AC isn't getting any better). It's a bit better for fighters in AD&D -- since they get to increase their number of attacks, they come a lot closer to keeping up, at least around the points when their attacks increase.
So what all this is saying, is that if you significantly improve low-level characters' ability to hit, you're probably throwing D&D's system for scaling damage output out of whack. Unless you make changes elsewhere, anyway. You could maybe create a system where, instead of improving your chance to hit as you level, you increase damage. That way, you could have low-level characters who are decently accurate, but who don't deal much damage when they hit (and high-level characters who are still just decently accurate, but who deal a lot of damage when they hit). You could also do something like in the pic here, where armor reduces damage rather than accuracy.
give bonuses to hit for ambushing and clever tactics
Casting magic without the proper tools is like working on electric wiring without gloves. If you're really good and have time to be careful, you can probably do it, especially if you have the time to find a breaker box. But if a goblin knocks your staff out of your hand and you just reach out for that fireball spell, you might be in for some trouble.
Personally, I love wild magic tables, and encourage rolling for weird shit depending on school/flavor. Magic SHOULD be weird and dangerous; you're playing around with God's power tools. But Wizards are arrogant, and should have the option to put on safety glasses and keep their hands clear of the spinny bits. Accidents still happen, but less frequently.
Alternately, not a stave or wand or rod, but your actual spellbook. The Wizard has to pull it out and read from it; better hope it's durable.
>Magic SHOULD be weird and dangerous; you're playing around with God's power tools.
Ugh.
Wild Magic/Dooms/Mishap tables are fucking horrible and a blight on this community. Please stop using them.
>Please stop using them.
Nah I'll keep 'em in my game. You don't have to use them in yours, though. I like weird and dangerous magic; it explains why wizards are rare and everybody hasn't learned at least a few spells.
What do you do in your games? Do you like Vancian casting? A spell point system?
>I like weird and dangerous magic
>everybody hasn't learned at least a few spells
Why? Having weird and dangerous magic directly contradicts the idea of a "magic user" class at all- if anything the only people who would use it are people being forced to use it be Kings and Emperors, who employ dumbasses or criminals to be magical conduits FAR away from them, or only to be used in desperate circumstances.
>it explains why wizards are rare
This is bad for a few reasons. For starters, making Wizards rare is kind of bad to begin with, since it directly contradicts the idea of magic users being "common" enough to be a playable class, but even if you prefer the more rare magical stuff it's still shitty for game balance and "story" or concept balance.
The magic user already "pays" for their magical powers be being the absolute shittiest class in every other aspect. The lowest health, the worst armor, and the weakest weapons. Their name-level bonus is even bad too; where as Fighters get a whole fort and army, the Magic User gets just a handful of apprentices in his Wizard tower. He has to work for almost everything else.
I also dislike this concept of negative random mishaps when spellcasting as it once again puts too much emphasis on the magic user class as a whole. Half of the book or more is already dedicated to them and only them with their spellbooks and magic rules; by making them also be the most interesting class to get fucked up you're only compounding the problem.
>What do you do in your games?
Honestly? I'd prefer to lecture others then say. I'm constantly soul searching new systems and ideas all the time; I've probably written up more then anyone. I just seriously have a problem with the mishap table, it's my pet peeve and I think it's a pretty shitty way to "balance" magic users.
>Do you like Vancian casting?
Not OP but sometimes it feels like I'm the only person that actually really likes the Vancian casting of OD&D. feels bad man.
Stop virtue signalling, fag. Most people here like it or at least tolerate it. Don't fish for (You)s.
I dislike the "magic is an innate trait and only people with an inborn spark can use it". It's complicated and potentially dangerous, and most people aren't going to mess around with it, but it's very useful. Old Hob the Peasant knows there are spells to increase crop yield, but he doesn't know them and doesn't want to.
Wizards are rare in the same sense that base jumpers or terrorists or nuclear physicists are rare. It's weird and dangerous and requires specialized knowledge and most folks are too busy doing Normal Things. PC's are rare, too. Old Hob isn't God's Chosen Holy Warrior.
The MU is shitty in everything else precisely because they have Fabulous Secret Powers. It just feels kinda flat to have magic missile just do d4 damage and not miss and that's it.
I agree with you on the emphasis on MU, but I try to give other classes Cool Shit to do and play with.
I missed answering this in the last thread, so pulling it over:
>My players have taken to using what is basically greek fire(military oil from ACKS) and making molotovs out of it.
Where are they getting all this Greek fire? That's the root of the problem to me. Why are you letting them buy just shit-tons of a rare and destructive military weapon without anybody asking questions? How is it even available for purchase?
In this sense, your problem is analogous to "help, I let my players buy wands of Magic Missile and now they haven't made an attack roll in four sessions": yeah, well, stop letting them, then. It was an odd decision and you should roll it back. I'm not saying this to shit on you, mind. On the contrary, I think this is a weirdly common glitch of reasoning, where you just take certain things for granted; but you'll be a lot happier if you just roll back that ruling, remove the Greek fire entirely and let them buy lamp oil (whose primary characteristic is burning very slowly and smokelessly) instead.
Not really. Weird and dangerous is their trade off for how awesome it can be.
Ever read the DCC rulebook? It has a fantastic example of the old man in the party. He might fight a little worse than everyone else and not stand out often, but when it's time to go big or go home he darkens the castle as demons and shadow seep and flood through the windows and cracks as he invokes them.
Yeah, this. Buying up military hardware is gonna attract SOMEBODY'S attention. If you don't want to just say "no, they're all out of Greek fire" have the Elven ATF show up and shoot their dog.
Or, let them try and go into business making it! The manufacturer has fallen on Hard Times since Baron von Unterbeiht undercut him in the Greek fire business. The King doesn't care, because now he's getting Fantasy Napalm for less, and the manufacturer could use some investors! Now get the factory up and running, keep it from exploding, protect it from the Halfling Mafia, and find out what Baron Unterbeiht is doing. 100% chance some PC is going to get maimed in the chaos, something WILL burn down, and maybe everybody gets rich.
>but when it's time to go big or go home he darkens the castle as demons and shadow seep and flood through the windows and cracks as he invokes them.
But what's more likely to happen is he turns himself into a goo girl that radiates a cornfield everywhere he walks.
>magic missle
>auto hit
>feels flat
think that's kinda the point user
i like a balance between weird and/or innate knowledge on one hand, and obtuse learnable knowledge on the other, for magic use. things should have the potential to go wrong, but it should scale and i agree that wild magic tables are a bore and tbqhfam gimmicky. i prefer spell burn or hp/ability score fuckery as an alternative
obscure, not obtuse. you know, missing pages and mirrors and all that
Well memed.
>"magic is an innate trait and only people with an inborn spark can use it".
That's not the only fluff you could use, but fine.
>There are spells to increase crop yield, but he doesn't know them and doesn't want to.
This is already a problem. What do you mean he doesn't know them and doesn't want to? Why wouldn't he? Are you honestly telling me that not once has anyone tried to use magic to increase food production, one of the biggest and most important things in any society?
I much prefer the "everyone is magical" ideas, which also helps along the suspension of disbelief in a setting- the reason fighters are superhumanly strong isn't just from a gameplay abstraction but because they are literally getting superhuman fighting ability as they level up. Remember this is fantasy; you could go bigger. Why not explain that the reason WHY people farm the way they do in a setting isn't already because of magical meddling? Plants in the wilds are carnivorous, hateful things that will quite literally try to strangle you in your sleep. Cows once had 6 horns and shook down walls with their hellish 'moo'. Magic is the only thing keeping the farm a farm instead of a hellscape. Explains away medieval stasis much better then your reason.
>Wizards are rare in the same sense that base jumpers or terrorists or nuclear physicists are rare.
This has been said a million times in a million caster v martial threads too but; it's always been wrong. These are not equivalent. People with specialized skills or knowledge in our world are useful but not nearly as useful or powerful as wizards are in most fantasy games. They're not even close to equal.
>Weird and dangerous is their trade off for how awesome it can be.
They are already the weakest class. They already are heavily restricted by resources. Should the fighter have a chance to cut their dick off on a bad roll as a trade off for how "awesome and dangerous" they can be?
>voodoo farming
>why wouldn't he?
i don't know how about,
feudal society
knowing his place
not pissing off the nobles
not horrifying his wife kids family and friends
not being banished from the realm and only five square miles he's ever known
not offending his gods
not being literate
on one hand you seem to advocate for wild magic ubiquity, on the other you seem to forget the absolute havoc that would wreck on the pedestrian aspects of a fantasy world, which are important to establishing that world in the first place
>signs of autism
Please rate concept and math for my attempt at converting Pokemon to Lamentations of the Flame Princess.
Why? It's becasue I can.
Failure/10
Never try to convert a radically different game into a system it was never meant to be a part of.
Then the same could be said for turning a Dungeon-Crawling expansion into a Space, Superhero and Pirate Game, but B/X did.
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
It solves the too much money problem because if you're collecting 2000 silver a level and most of the high-end activities (building a keep, raising an army, etc) then deciding to do that thing isn't a passing fancy because you can just throw gold at it. You have only a tenth as much currency. Plus, with a silver/copper standard finding gold coins or loot valued in gold coins is more of a big deal.
Here, let me complete my thought
if you're collecting 2000 silver a level and most of the high-end activities (building a keep, raising an army, etc) >are priced in gold
then deciding to do that thing isn't a passing fancy
Skimming through the DCC rulebook and adventures, it seems to me that they're all made for a group of 8 to 10 characters
Does this game really expect me to get that many friend to play or does this count hirelings ? God damn in the first scenario from the core book they playtested it with 28 fucking PCs (i know every player has like 2-3 0 level PCs but still, jesus)
Industry "secret": 80% of playtesting happens in spreadsheets, the remaining 20% happens in manufactured 15 minute scenarios ran by one guy.
They're following the old-school standard. That's really the secret to some of the reputation OSR has as a lethal environment: making or playing modules designed for old-time group sizes when the modern standard is more like half that.
Against the Giants states that “The optimum mix for a group is 9 characters of various classes”; U1 was suggested for 5-10 players.
It's why my homebrew focuses on increasing player to-hit and damage outputs somewhat: not because I want to have a table ful of munchkins, but so I can play these modules roughly as intended but with a group of 4-5 friends instead of 27 of my closest buddies.
Does anyone have any good rules for mining/digging? How long would it take three PCs to dig a 10ft tunnel through standard dungeon rock?
My best guess is ~4 hours if they have the right equipment (pickaxes, spikes, hammers) and ~12 if they improvise with swords and metal scraps.
Alright, I'm working on an Undead Demi-Humab Class for ACKS. Here's what I've got so far:
Undead 0 points.
>Immune to Charm and Sleep spells
>Doesn't Breath, immune to Gas and Poison effects.
>Detectable by Detect Evil or similar abilities.
>Vulnerable to Turn Undead at 0 level adjustment.
Going to create a table based on level that just lists the equivalent undead race that a cleric uses when using Turn Undead on them. Level 1 would be as a Skeleton, 14 would be Infernal, etc.
Any other features a Skeleton should get? Also I'm unsure about EXP adjustment.
Hey folks, I'm looking for those crazy Arduin architecture tables I've heard about, but can't seem to find them anywhere. Maybe I'm blind, or stupid. Can someone tell me which book they're in?
Gracias senor esqueleto.
That's pretty fast even for soft earth, but rock? No way. Without dynamite, and modern drills, cutting through solid rock is not feasible in any reasonable amount of time.
The Romans dug a tunnel to drain Lacus Fucinus over a ten year period, at a rate of about 5 feet per day, using 30,000 men.
15 feet a day through rock became possible for the Mont Cenis railroad tunnel through the Alps around 1860 thanks to explosives and a newly invented air drill.
>who employ dumbasses or criminals to be magical conduits FAR away from them
Skerples! Add a School of Prisoner magic somewhere on your list of things to get around to.
Maybe people should accept that they shouldn't be pushing OSR into such small player groups. The original was balanced for parties of 10+ members, stop trying to be different for its own sake.
3/10
"I'm not a MU, I'm a free man!"
6/10
I want an Orange Alert spell.
You can reduce the prices of things if you like, but I don't.
There's a time and a place for wild magic. It's fun in a cosmic horror game, but not so much in straight fantasy.
Shit name. Numbers would be a decent name for that type of wizard.
You're still trying to justify pokémon. Don't.
There is this but I don't know if it's relevant to your needs. Your idea sounds reasonable to me, though. Rulings not rules.
You can, but you're going out of your way to make more work for yourself when you could just as easilly use a system that can handle pokemon (PTU or GURPS)
If you just wanted OSR pokemon, use GURPS to play a shin megami tensei game
If you want to go by the guidelines in the DMG, 25 cubic feet of hard rock per 8 hours per labourer, with a maximum of 12 miners per 10' wide surface, presumably including rock-carriers, etc. (For dwarves, it's 25 cubic feet and 16 per 10'.) So assuming a 5'x7'x10' tunnel, almost 40 hours of work, or five eight-hour shifts.
I don't know how much research Gygax put into it, but it's certainly a lot more realistic than four hours, that's insane. And you definitely can't mine with swords in the real world.
Get fancier quillons.
Eh, I feel like people are compressing the spectrum. There's a big difference between the wacky shit that DCC and 5e's wild magic sorcerer gets up to and the catastrophes from Wonders & Wickedness and the Mishap/Doom system of the GLoG.
In the former, magic has a very real chance to go horribly wrong every time you cast a spell, it's always a 5% chance at a minimum because of critical failures, raised by the level of the spell.
In W&W, this only happens when you try to push beyond your limits or if you're interrupted while casting. This makes sense because the sorcerers in this system are a little more powerful than your standard MU, but also because casting past your limits /should/ be risky. After all, you can even justify this by saying that normal MUs would work this way too, if they only knew how to push themselves beyond their usual limits. In addition, while the catastrophes have a tendency to hijack the adventure, they're in that sweet spot between being so small that it's obnoxious to keep track of and too big that they just kill everyone in a magic nuke.
In the GLoG, or rather, its magic system, the chances of Mishaps and Dooms are laughably low (pic related). Like W&W, there's a surefire way to avoid them, don't use more than one or two casting dice. The Mishaps aren't that bad (though you might want to change the 1d6 damage to 1 pt because healing's more plentiful in the GLoG) and you'd have to blow your load twice in a row to guarantee getting one. As for the Dooms, they /will/ hijack your adventure but you're much much much more likely to exhaust your mana before you trigger a Doom.
>don't use more than one [...] casting [die]
Houseruling "spells don't return" certainly does Mishap avoiders no favors.
>this only happens when you try to push beyond your limits or if you're interrupted while casting.
Fair. But were are touching on that's my main issue with GLOG Wizards. GLOG Wizards says "big spells are risky."
lastgaspgrimoire.com
>to guarantee getting one
Not how math works.
>he
>Houseruling "spells don't return" certainly does Mishap avoiders no favors.
I'm not skerples and I think that was an idiotic change. The magic system was balanced around having a small repertoire of spells that take time to load up and eventually run out of steam. I've tried it both ways and the latter works /much/ better. Though, if you want to let wizards cast spells from outside their school, you should limit those to once a day and make them hard to learn.
>"big spells are risky." vs "too many spells is risky."
I see your point here. However, I would argue that because of the returning spells and discrete set of magic resources that MD represent, casting a big spell is kind of the same as casting many small spells. The only place this math falls apart is when comparing Dooms and Mishaps because you fundamentally can't roll triples on two dice.
Math Time!
Let's assume that a spell cast with 4 MD is equivalent to two spells with 2 MD. I think that's fair given that Arnold started to build the system because of his frustration that level 2 spells aren't twice as powerful as level 1 spells. Surviving two 4 MD spells unscathed is a 9.61% chance. Surviving four 2 MD spells unscathed has a 47.46% chance. Well shit, this doesn't support my point as well as I thought, but at least the numbers are out there
With those probabilities in mind. Why do you feel makes "too many spells is risky" more palatable than "big spells are risky?"
>Not how math works.
You think I don't know that? I calculated the probabilities in the pic, I know how probabilities work. If you cast two spells with 4 MD, there's a 9% chance of not having a mishap. I said guarantee to simplify it for other anons.
>has
>no
>style
>he
>Why do you feel makes "too many spells is risky" more palatable than "big spells are risky?"
"Big spells are risky" gets punishing at high levels. Finessing what constitutes a "big spell" could help, but GLOG: Wizards isn't built in a way that allows for that.
Okay, I definitely see where you're coming from. So for you, the appeal of a high level wizard is being able to fire off powerful spells with impunity. That's fair.
The reason I sprung for GLOG: Wizards was because I too share Arnold's confusion over spell levels. Don't get me wrong, I like vancian preparation and the gradual learning of more spells, but the separation of spells into arbitrary levels just tickles my autism in a way that I don't like.
If I was going with a slot and rank system for vancian magic, I'd definitely use "too many spells is risky," DCC's system is just too obnoxious. I understand how GLoG:W doesn't allow for much modification because the system is pretty stripped down as is.
However, what exactly would "finessing what constitutes a 'big spell'" look like to you? That's the main thing that's been keeping me from a slot and rank system.
>has
>I much prefer the "everyone is magical" ideas, which also helps along the suspension of disbelief in a setting- the reason fighters are superhumanly strong isn't just from a gameplay abstraction but because they are literally getting superhuman fighting ability as they level up. Remember this is fantasy; you could go bigger. Why not explain that the reason WHY people farm the way they do in a setting isn't already because of magical meddling? Plants in the wilds are carnivorous, hateful things that will quite literally try to strangle you in your sleep. Cows once had 6 horns and shook down walls with their hellish 'moo'. Magic is the only thing keeping the farm a farm instead of a hellscape. Explains away medieval stasis much better then your reason.
OK this is super cool and I'm using it. The little rituals and superstitions of farming are literally subtle magic that tames the wilderness and makes it safe to cultivate. maybe hedges put down a geomantic grid that keeps the land safe. Maybe there are menhirs and chalk figures used to pin the land down. Maybe all those corn dollies and scarecrows keep away the nasty spirits of the wilderness.
Maybe farming is a pure expression of Law, regulating and controlling the Chaos of the wilderness for the good of mankind. .
I like magic to be safe and predictable... mostly. I like giving magic users basic spellcasting that's perfectly safe and vancian, but if they want to they can always push their luck...
Wild Magic tables become a punishment for when they get greedy, not an everyday occurrence.
(I also think that, structurally, wild magic /can/ be good for a campaign. It's point of weirdness where you can fuck with characters to make them feel unique - like, the party who fucked up some magic and now all of them can smell gold has a feel of 'earned uniqueness'. Plus, you can use it to spontaneously create plot elements and complications that keep things moving forward).
>So for you, the appeal of a high level wizard is being able to fire off powerful spells with impunity. That's fair.
Close.
The appeal of GLOG: Wizards to me is that spell quantity and spell quality both scale but don't synergise.
I also like what it does for decision making (they might be free! but I might need something huge later...)
Those are honestly the _only_ things I like about it. I can put up with the rest, but "putting up with" is the term.
Making big spells a false option (or at least, not something worth frequent consideration) kills both things I like about it.
>no
>grace
DCC is pretty well known for suggesting players have more than one character. My group is usually 5 and I've ran loads of DCC adventures where they only had one character a piece and it went fine.