/osrg/ - Old School RPG General

They can die against hill giants and demons just fine. No need to artificially label modules as "high level." Player skill beats numbers every time in OSR.

Classless OSR characters.

Help me make this the best it can be.

>Player skill beats numbers every time in OSR.

Meme, You will at some point have to fight, and then dice will come in to play.

If you fight, you die. Then you make your 3d6 rolls down the line again. You've learned from your failure now. What's more OSR than that?

This makes me feel things. What drove you to do this?

>Claseless
>no mention of combat matrices
>LotFP-based
>actually isn't classless at all
Need I say it?

>If you fight, you die.

That's hardly how even Gygax intended the game to be played.

>What's more OSR than that?

This is not a more OSR approach than anything else. The inane fetishism of a playstyle that never actually was is not the essence of OSR. Some of us prefer actually functional games.

>d6 MU

Aside from the hideous blaspheme that is "classless OSR," you're still taking a level in Fighting-Man, MU, or Skillmonkey.

Get thee to a nunnery

>first two

OSR is not about idolization of mechanical idioms. Experimentation with and questioning of the basic assumptions is perfectly valid.

>third point

LotFP is widely considered OSR basically everywhere.

>fourth point

But it is classless, you choose which areas of expertise you advance in at each level.

How is a classless RPG blasphemy in OSR?

I sorta like OSR fights to be like rocket-tag. I appreciate the sentiment behind "a goblin with a knife is still dangerous" but I also want it to be modified with "but a competent party will still roll over an equal number of goblins". If you're stupid and chase the gobbos down the dark hallway, you're going to fall into some kind of trouble, and then be shanked.

I wouldn't call it classless, I think most people would understand it better if you just said that you could take a level in one of 3 classes every level. It's simple multi-classing.

It is functional, you just don't like it. That's fine - not everyone can play OSR as it's meant to be played, not after most people's first approaches to RPGs are MMOs and 5E.
But, why are you still here?

F... O... E...
(F! O! E!)
Get... Ye... Gone...
(F! O! E!)
Get... Ye... Gone...
In a day or twoooooooooooooo

>"but a competent party will still roll over an equal number of goblins
This shouldn't be a given. No matter the party's competence, there should be no enemy they get to "roll over." Combat should always be a dangerous gamble with little to show for it.

>It is functional, you just don't like it.

No, it's not functional. It's a playstyle that would be better served with total freeform.

>That's fine - not everyone can play OSR as it's meant to be played, not after most people's first approaches to RPGs are MMOs and 5E.
But, why are you still here?

Once again, even Gygax didn't run games in this fashion.

>But, why are you still here?

Because I like rules-light fantasy RPGs and the gatekeepers don't own the entirety of a broad design movement of games.

Daniel Sells "Everyone is an Adventurer".

It's classless in that yeah, you're opting for one of the standard class boons, but aren't strictly relegated to them. I guess it's just multiclassing then.

I guess I don't really understand the combat matrices thing. Explain?

And I included B/X percentile skillchecks too. It doesn't need to be LotFP based at all.

Don't bother telling people how to determine HP totals: they'll only ignore you and do it their own way anyways.

I'd change "open stuck doors" to "force doors"

Magic: "is no longer division" --> "is no longer a division"

You give a new save structure but don't describe how it progresses.

Dwarves: they get +5 (10 lbs) to their encumbrance, but what does the +5 mean? I can't link it to any encumbrance system off the top of my head.

Skills: How does anyone get a 6-in-6 skill? I see base 1, +2 for Proficiency, +2 for being human.

>But it is classless, you choose which areas of expertise you advance in at each level.
No, each level you take a a level of fighter, op mage, or useless skillmonkey. You're using penalty-free 3e multiclassing and calling it classless.

>with little to show for it
I don't know about this. I think just ONCE in a while there should be treasure that's more or less impossible to get without busting some heads. Just to make the players decide whether it's worth it.

Each class represents a broad area of expertise, it's not different from picking up a skill at each advancement.

Yeah, that is absolutely a part of the game as TSR designed it.

>I guess I don't really understand the combat matrices thing. Explain?
OSR games that aren't hipster or soyboy-pandering trash use combat tables, you'd know this if you had read any.

>it's not different from picking up a skill
Except for the hit dice, abilities, and attack bonus, so it's actually nothing like "picking up a skill"

It is, though?

>You give a new save structure but don't describe how it progresses.
15 in everything, each leveling option reduces it over time. You roll a d20 equal or over that number, like always. If your system adds INT/WIS modifiers to that roll, then add that too.

>Dwarves: they get +5 (10 lbs) to their encumbrance, but what does the +5 mean? I can't link it to any encumbrance system off the top of my head.
LotFP.

>Skills: How does anyone get a 6-in-6 skill? I see base 1, +2 for Proficiency, +2 for being human.
...by investing your skillpoints, my dude.

>it's a "False OSR Enthusiasts wheel out Gary's corpse to justify their shitbrews" episode

They'd wheel Arneson's corpse out if they didn't recoil at his touch.

Yes, but where do the skill points come from? That's not described.

At times this seems to be a LotFP add-on, and at other times it shies away from that, and the result is awkward. If this means to directly bolt on to LotFP, then say so; if not, you need to add more rules support to what's there, because there's a lot of assumptions underlying this that not everyone reading it will share.

>it's a "False OSR Enthusiasts pretend their way is the One True Way" episode
I'll be completely honest with y'all, the "OSR means B/X compatible" guy might have been a tad obnoxious, but at least he had a point. Without a clear, objective definition, OSR is just a meme label.

From the "Proficiency" option when leveling. You get 2 (or 30%) skillpoints to invest each time you pick it.

I use LotFP and BFRPG, so this was written with both of those systems in mind.

>OSR means B/X compatible
I've unironically came to believe this.

Oh Yeah? Well Are Your Modules Gluten Free?

I see it now. Apologies: that part is clear if you read it more attentively.

>"you don't instantly kill the whole party if one of them even mentions attacking a monster, even hypothetically? NOT OSR"

>Except for the hit dice, abilities, and attack bonus, so it's actually nothing like "picking up a skill"

Skills in many systems give benefits beyond just increasing success probabilities.

Yeah.

>It's a "gatekeeping idiots try to tell people what's acceptible to do with elfgames" episode.

Life is full of broad labels that can only be understand in social context, words themselves are utterly baseless in their meaning, relying on a web of related and opposed concepts, and sustained by the social context in which they're used.

>Life is full of broad labels that can only be understand in social context
And this absolutely isn't detrimental to discussion, by way of being extremely easy to take advantage of to promote your agenda and providing means to derail discussions...

>February 9, 1974
>Mike Wood, another Minneapa member who attended the Minn-stf meetings where Fallert unveiled the Castle Keep game. He writes of this first foray, “Blue Petal was directing Tatge and a couple other people in a game he’d just put together [based on Blackmoor], sort of a simulation of intrepid heroes wandering around in a dungeon seeking to find treasure and avoiding death at the hands of trolls, orcs and other perils.”
- Playing at the World

>seeking to find treasure and avoiding death at the hands of trolls, orcs, and other perils

Boy, people sure bought into that false gameplay style meme early on, huh?

>"you mean you don't put three instant death, impossible to see traps in every room? wow go back to your storygames"

No, user, those games are too new. You gotta go even further backwards. The one true way to play OSR is by pitting armies of men at arms against each other.

If you let a little enthusiastic post about false osr derail an entire thread, that says a whole lot more about you than it does the poster.

>"you let parties enter dungeons instead of having their characters die due to infections as children? FOE, GYG!"

That does say a lot about this general

FOE GYG spotted: this is OSR, not Polish WFRP.

It isn't, if you don't nitpick about labels or just define your terms before speaking. This was why Socrates spent so much time going on about this particular detail of discussion.

But in this case, the people derailing are the pedants who refuse to accept a broad label.

You mean that shit they do even in 5e? Also did you miss the "interpid heroes" part?

Slightly revised.

I don't know what to call it aside from Classless.

I don't even know what wfrp is you foegig.

I'd include AD&D-compatible, but yeah, there's good reason to believe that. And it's way more than just some guy in this thread who thinks that, no matter what the "everything is OSR if you just believe" crowd wants to think.

>that shit they do even in 5e?

5e isn't about seeking treasure or avoiding monsters, just look at the XP rules.

There's a big difference between "everything's compatible if you just believe" and "playstyle is worth discussing even if your system isn't compatible."

So if the OSR compatible label is proof of your position, how about the big OSR symbol on the back of the Retro Phaze book? Is that proof of it as a broader idea?

>define your terms before speaking
Define OSR

They didn't say "avoiding monsters." They said "avoiding death' and slaying the monsters before they can do likewise is a way to do that.

define define

Playstyle is Old School (and should be discussed here), not OSR

>Turn Undead is now relegated to being a spell
So what level is it? How many undead can you affect per casting?

OSR

-A broad movement of games inspired by aping the mechanical styles or ideas of old school D&D.
-A series of games compatible with TSR era D&D.
-A specific playstyle emphasizing the exploration of dangerous locations in pursuit of wealth.

"state or describe exactly the nature, scope, or meaning of."

That's true, but we were talking about the OSR definition guy, who was clear that it had nothing to do with playstyle discussions or "get ye gone" memes. Discussing non-OSR stuff can be productive, calling it OSR isn't.
Or this user just did a tl;dr version of my post:

1. An rpg system or piece of content compatible with TSR D&D and systems derived directly from them.
2. A movement within the rpg industry focusing on a return to an "Old School" playstyle.

We've had very good attempts at people defining OSR in previous threads, why ignore those?

That's the mindset that gave us /tsrdnd/
youtube.com/watch?v=iS-0Az7dgRY

Fair cop, with all these different threads of discussion and stale memes, it's hard to keep track of what's going on.

>it's another "OSR has no fact-based meaning, instead existing as a solely subjective descriptor that encompasses all the things I like" episode

OSR game =/= Old School Reinassance Movement

Yet the OSR acronym stands for both.

Then it's a shitty definition that explains nothing and should be changed

Palace of the Silver Princess seems a bit railroaded. Am I being overzealous or is that a common sentiment?

It's confusing to conflate playstyle and rules, though. The playstyle should just be called "old school" and "OSR" left for a set of mechanically compatible materials.
So the OSR movement sought to resurrect TSR's old rules, largely to facilitate the old-school play style in D&D, but the old-school playstyle existed outside those rules, and those rules can be used for more things than just the old-school playstyle.

>He provides a charming illustration of how the events in dungeon expeditions may “verge on the downright bizarre,” an instance when a horde of rats took one character hostage, which eventually precipitated a trade agreement where the party exchanged large quantities of cheese for the gold scavenged by the rats in the lower reaches of the dungeon. Unfortunately, as the rats dwelled on the far side of a vast underground lake, this posed significant logistical challenges and at least one cry of, “We carried that goddamn boat full of cheese down 12 flights of stairs!”
- Playing at the World

Level-1. Use your rulebooks Turn Undead rules.

What did he mean by this?

OSR = No Burgers in Thread Thank You

What do you mean?

I'll have you know my orcs have the finest ratmeat burgers in the entire dungeon, sirrah.

I was told that I could find OD&D pdfs here. Checked the pastebins, am I just stupid?

Ahhh, fresh meat.

What's /osrg/'s opinion of Rifts? The setting? The system?

I want to start a game, but don't know if I just remember it fondly or if it really works for a campaign.

Didn't care for the setting or the system.

Yep, they're in the trove.

I started with it when it was released, played for years, used to own some two dozen books; you couldn't pay me to play in it now. The rules are a complete garbage fire from character creation to combat. The sourcebooks are endless parades of OCCS, RCCs, and weapons, most of which are useless except as local flavour. It's just plain bad.

Some cool art though.

Check /Traveller

N O I C E

Last revision. Sorry to shitpost.

I'm a newfag. Is that a separate thread?

It still says "classless" though.

Alrighty, gents. Thank you for saving me from my rose-tinted glasses.

>Without a clear, objective definition, OSR is just a meme label.
But it's fun either way. I delight in seeing various interpretations and implementations of the rules.

Maybe we need a "we like OSR materials and playstyle but would like to play in systems that iron out some of the mechanical quirks" general thread.

>Combat should always be a dangerous gamble with little to show for it.
I disagree. If the party actually sets up a proper ambush against outclassed enemies, they deserve their easy win. Doing so is not, after all, easy. Player Skill, etc.

Honestly, I think DIY D&D is a better label for what I'm doing. But the overlap with OSR is big enough that the ven diagram's almost a single circle, so here I am.

Iiinterersting. Downloading.

Those people aren't interested in a OSR playstyle though, they want to be apart of the OSR community because it's the only place they can discuss their fantasy heartbreaker under the guise of OSR compatibility.