This thread is for the discussion of TSR-era D&D and its various clones and derivatives.
>Trove: pastebin.com
>Tools & Resources: pastebin.com
>Old School Blogs: pastebin.com
>Previous Thread:
Poll about the future of /osrg/ (please vote) -- strawpoll.me
Topic for discussion: What interesting things have you done with dragons?
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>posting the divisive poll
trolling thread confirmed.
Before this thread turns into a shithole
How much treasure do you actually give out?
Hopefully the poll will show a majority (or at least a strong plurality) for one option. At the very least, it should give us a better idea of what folks want, rather than just judging by who shitposts the most.
...
>How much treasure do you actually give out?
I tend to be very stingy in almost every game of anything I run. I've had my players ready to lynch me in Gamma World, but come on; it's post-apocalyptic -- you're supposed to have to really scrounge.
see
As much treasure as the party takes from the dungeon
I run B/X with carousing rules to transform GP into XP, so I usually leave about 3/4 as much treasure as required to get the players to next level if we're doing a dungeon crawl heavy game. It also depends on the 'dungeon's' size. So... I guess "An arbitrary value not necessarily helpful to user's question."
>Descending AC, substracted from roll
>To-Hit Bonus, added to roll
>20 or higher is a hit (nat 20 is always a hit I guess)
>Every point over 20 adds +1 damage
Yay or nay?
>Poll about the future of /osrg/ (please vote) -- strawpoll.me
Other: Either /osrg/ should ditch all the patreon / kickstarter / LotFP / other commercial product shills and focus only on old-school D&D, or just stop making these threads and concede that /tsrdnd/ is a suitable replacement for /osrg/ since /osrg/ is terminal cancer.
I don't have any stake in the basic D&D versus 2e debate, but /tsrdnd/ has been a far more suitable thread to discuss D&D canon without being drowned out by LotFP faggots. So I'm perfectly willing to accept welcoming 2e into the fold.
Still here, still adding.
Supplementary trove room. Updates are encouraged. Trying to consolidate stuff until more permanent solutions.
v0l@
/r/gxk98efr
see
Nay, you took all the worst aspects of both options and combined them.
>Every point over 20 adds +1 damage
This is the actually important thing that matters to me.
Does this break anything?
It'll massively increae your average damage over the course of a session.
I'd argue that you should vote for splitting the thread into /tsrdnd/ and /diydnd/. It's not like you have to participate in the other thread, but I can guarantee you that other people will want to be able to discuss shit like LotFP, which will lead to there being another thread if you restrict the first purely to discussion of old school D&D.
>Using friends on every NPC to get advantage on any persuasion, running before it runs out
>Using mage hand to build bridges across gaps, get pass forcefields and pickpocket keys at a distance (doesn't matter if they get caught, just run)
> Fire bolt being much better than a fighter or cleric attacking for the first few levels
And this one is more of a personal thing, but one player of mine is constantly using thaumaturgy to bang shut doors or windows at random points to freak out NPC's. Sure, fun the first time but he does this FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING NPC JESUS CHRIST
Is 2E considered renaissance? Never played any other version very much.
To repeat something I said earlier: I'd rather naysayers fuck off to their own thread than constantly shitposting about every retroclone that doesn't meet their particular standard of authenticity.
What's wrong with LotFP? I picked it up this weekend and it seems like a decent B/X remake (albeit heavily modified).
Some people are angry purists who insist that anything that varies from B/X is garbage faggotry and that nothing other than direct retroclones and OD&D should be discussed here. LotFP changes too much for their autism
People generally don't like the attitude it gives out. Actual mechanical complaints are much rarer, though one guy gave some a thread or two back. It has some good mechanical bits worth stealing.
>This thread is for the discussion of TSR-era D&D and its various clones and derivatives
>and its various clones and derivatives
>derivatives
There's your problem.
It's not "pure" enough for some people. It changes some shit and is therefore heretical (also: trolls). I mean, I have an issue with a few of its rules, but it does good things too, and should certainly be a legitimate topic of conversation.
Daydream if you want, but don't act. You don't have the means.
I've heard about the "attitude" of the writer, and after reading the core book I don't really understand. Is it the amount of sorta-existentialist bits that people don't like? Feels pretentious or something?
Maybe, but I think part of the problem up until now has been that the non-assholes / non-trolls haven't had a clear consensus to rally around. If the community expresses a clear preference for doing things one way, then the reasonable majority can support that. I'm not sure if it'll make enough of a difference, but it should make at least some difference.
They'd rally to no end. Even with numbers, they have no means. If you don't like it you can go somewhere else. We're still here because we don't dislike it to the point of leaving the site.
So what you're saying is that you're a faggot who'd rather shit up other people's threads for not being good enough to your standards rather than go to your purist idiot containment thread?
What did he meme by this?
I think you've had an issue up until now where non-assholes haven't known which side in some matters to support, and this has exacerbated the problem. Basically, I have preferences, but I'm going to respect the consensus for what a thread should be about, but I can't do that if I don't know what the consensus is. So I could get in a fight with somebody who has different preferences than me, but the same respect for consensus, because we both believe we're in the right, and we have nothing to show us what the consensus is, or to indicate which of us is being disruptive by going against it. Like I said, I don't know if it's enough, but it seems like it will at least help more than it hurts.
It's more the art and knock-on effects from the modules. The base rules themselves are pretty innocuous, and if you have the free (no-art) edition and nothing else you won't get it at all.
What do you guys do when one of the players refuse to go into a dungeon because "It's a stupid idea"?
That's like signing up for a game of Star Wars and saying, "you know guys, realistically it's silly to try and fight the Empire".
I've never had what you describe happen because I've never had such a colossal disconnect between what the game is about, what I'm running, and what the players are there for. I can't imagine how you could fall into that.
The Dungeon comes to him, railroad him to the local village and when they rest for the night have all the monsters from the dungeon attack the village and slaughter everybody.
>it's silly to try and fight the Empire".
Well... if you can't beat em join em. Rebel scum need to die too.
Kick him from the game.
/tsrdnd/ was like a dozen people, plus a few in both threads. Now it's everyone, but only a dozen or so are just in /tsrdnd/
/diydnd/ was literally a shitpost, but "tsr and not-tsr dual threads" appealed to some people (nevermind that /tsrdnd/ and /osrg/ already supplied that dynamic)
The obvious solution, because everyone is in /tsrdnd/, is to just go there
Worst case scenario, you refer to LotFP as B/X for a few months while everyone mellows out
I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. It lets fighters do much more damage than the rest, and has armor mitigate damage.
Talk to him first, but
Playstyle deviates from the old-school style, but its rules are fully OSR compatible.
On the one hand, some people hate its edgier modules' subject matter and would like an excuse to exclude a modestly houseruled B/X clone from the thread, and on the other hand, trolls "ironically" mocking folks who say this or that game is or isn't OSR.
>What do you guys do when one of the players refuse to go into a dungeon because "It's a stupid idea"?
I'm a firm believer in explicitly setting the parameters of a campaign / adventure beforehand. "This is a story about a group of adventurers who plumbed the depths of the underground fortress of Ukultheth", or whatever. I mean, you need to make sure that your group is cool with the focus of your game, but if you go through the trouble of setting up an adventure in a particular place and then a player just goes "nah, let's go somewhere else" at the last minute, he's just being a disruptive prick. Anyway, in your particular case, I'd probably tell the player that that is what the "tale" is about, and that while his character certainly doesn't have to enter the dungeon, that just means he won't be participating in the adventure. If he has an issue with that because he feels his character lacks the proper motivation, first try to to make sure that you haven't put him in a weird situation where it really doesn't make sense for the adventurers to do the mission you've set out for them. You don't need to jump through hoops or anything, but if you've got a hook or enticement you could throw out, that could help the situation. Hell, sometimes it can be as simple as just sitting down with the player and discussing the situation, and asking him why his character wouldn't want to go on the mission, and together rationalizing a thought process whereby the character might come to a different conclusion. In the end though, it's a player's responsibility to come up with a character who is going to cooperate with the adventure and work well with his group. And he needs to compromise the integrity of his character (or roll up a new one) if that's the only way to make things work.
>What interesting things have you done with dragons?
I like to go whole-hog and give them acid blood or make them plague carriers. Or go spooky and have their blood survive as a sort of ooze entity after their death and impregnate women to give birth to a future dragon, or something.
Remember when these threads were full of creativity and brainstorming?
Fuck all of you for ruining this general. It was really nice when it lasted.
inb4 they never were
You're right. Lets actually talk about games and not meta garbage.
/osrg/ how do i convince a modernist rpg friend of mine that race as class isn't as dumb as he thinks it is?
I put 4-5 times the amount of gold needed for a group of players to all level up on each level of the megadungeon (i.e., dungeon level 4 contains 4-5x as much gold as a fourth-level party needs to reach level 5, and so on). You want some maneuvering room for when characters die, and you don't want them to have to sift through the entire level before going places.
>Is 2E considered renaissance?
It is not. The cutoff for the old-school is the publication of the Dragonlance modules. Like the other user said, though, if you absolutely have to use 2e it's not hard to convert it into compatibility, it's mostly a question of a few house rules and a changed sensibility.
>s 2E considered renaissance?
Yep, barely any difference from 1e
>/osrg/ how do i convince a modernist rpg friend of mine that race as class isn't as dumb as he thinks it is?
Why don't you use the example that was posted here several threads ago; that class, levels and feats are actually used in real-life blue collar jobs.
D6 skills or % ? Or does it not matter?
God help me, I know you're shitposting and I shouldn't respond, but I can't help myself: the main issue with this argument is that /osrg/ used to be a slow, ultra-comfy thread that consisted of relatively few posters who all knew more or less where the line was from other OSR boards and blogs: Dragonlance cutoff, old-school play style, DCC as the red-headed stepchild but accepted, etc. Then a few retroclones caught on with disillusioned 3aboos and 5heads who openly admitted that they didn't care about play style and just wanted to keep running their story-heavy games with less mechanically fucked rules, and because we didn't tell them to GTFO but tried to help them with their questions instead, the thread swelled with these people until it became a massive, churning hive of shitposts. These people don't give a fuck about the actual OSR, it's from one of them the whole compatibility argument originates, and they could very easily form a majority of /osrg/ posters right now; nevertheless, they're somewhere between clueless and antagonistic, and letting them "decide" (which nobody on Veeky Forums can actually do since the term isn't remotely Veeky Forums-specific) what OSR means will only lead to confusion and decay.
TL;DR your idea is shit and will hurt far more than it helps. Drop your shitty poll.
>Remember when these threads were full of creativity and brainstorming?
Yes. Yes I do. For months it was by far the greatest thread on Veeky Forums. I'm pretty sure that's why shitposters decided to wreck it.
It doesn't matter if your using the same percentiles.
rolling for a 6 on a 1d6 is the same as rolling under a 16 on a d100.
It doesn't *really* matter, but I (and I think a lot of other people) prefer the d6 skills because they're just that much easier to manage and measure at a glance. Also, each ability gain is a meaningful increase (~17%) in chance of success. Nobody really needs the granularity of percentile skills IME.
Purely preference, IMHO. Sure, probabilities are somewhat different, but the real diffence is in the fact d6 skills are easier to use on the fly and keep in your head than the exact pecentage.
I would argue it is, but ONLY if you're just using core and some non-intrusive splats, like the Barbarian or Chronomancer class books.
Player's Option is the cancer that began the gradual descent into 3e.
>Chronomancer class books
This isn't even official, is it?
I guess: "...Well okay. Bye everyone, that's the adventure!"
You do need to make them CARE about going into that specific dungeon. When I ran a 2e game, I just made a friendly NPC that the players liked and cared about, and put the NPC's daughter in mortal danger. All the NPC had to do was plead for their help, and they suddenly turned from a band of careless murderhobos into actual heroes.
It required them to be in person so they could see my facial expressions, but trust me. Manipulating their emotions works.
Either that, or just have the dungeon dripping with treasure, which is easier.
It certainly looks official. Is it not?
I tell the guy to make a new character who doesn't think it's a stupid idea, using the same stat line.
OSR from its roots has always included games that included a variety of mechanical styles and ideas (Mazes and Minotaurs was published a mere year after OSRIC and focuses primarily on Greek fantasy in the style of Jason and the Argonauts).
We have already established that arguing about what OSR is is not OSR
Sorry. The OSR that can be told is not the eternal OSR.
No. GP as XP, one of the cornerstones of OSR gameplay, is delegated as a mere optional rule. It's symbolic of 2e heavily pushing DnD to new style snowflake gaming. 2e is not OSR and has no place in this thread. Fuck off to /tsrdnd/.
I prefer d6 skills since they're easier to deal with.
How would you differentiate wibbly-wobbly spears from normal spears?
>Snowflake gaming
Neck yourself old man
Did I hurt your little snowflake feelings? Why don't you go back to /5eg/ or Tumblr (what's the difference, actually) where you can enjoy some "rule of cool" games there.
-1 attack, enemies can't use shields to defend against them because of their wibbly-wobblyness.
>This butthurt
>This elitism
>These buzzwords
This is why /osrg/ deserves to die
>crying about elitism
Did you enjoy the latest Critical Role episode, user? Maybe one day they'll have you in as a guest star.
>The cutoff for the old-school is the publication of the Dragonlance modules.
I wouldn't use the term "cutoff," that's just when the official move away from the original playstyle towards story-focused railroads started.
>hey those guys have an opinion!
>let's take a shit on that opinion by telling them they are wrong!
>why are they angry? elitist pricks!
>OSR from its roots has always included games that included a variety of mechanical styles and ideas
Yes? How and when did I argue with that?
IMO Mazes occupies roughly the same terrain as DCC, and to a lesser extent EPT and Wolfpacks: a non-D&D but OSR game.
I'm saying I'm *against* the dumb, reductive compatibility argument.
In practice it's a good cut-off because there's not a single worthwhile post-Dragonlance tabletop that isn't a derivative or a retroclone.
Those games aren't OSR, they're just old-school. (Except for Wolfpacks, which is compatible.)
Because M&M also isn't strictly OSR in playstyle, since it's not about beancounting torches in a dark hole.
>Two Shitposters Meet, Each Supposing the Other to be a Mark, Paul Klee, 1903
>trying to claim that Petal Throne doesn't belong in the OSR
Kek, do you even visit any OSR sites outside of this general? Read any blogs?
It was a quick move, there were almost no TSR products published after that point that catered to the original style of play, due to the overwhelming success of Dragonlance. And nobody else was really supporting original play by then, so...
How many turns does it take to complete Tomb of Horrors? Are there any archived game convention plays? How many turns it took Robilar to go through? How can I devise a ranking system to serve as an additional incentives for players?
>had it not been for the laws of this land, I would have slaughtered you
>Some guys on blogs said it's OSR so there
Well, Wikipedia says Dungeon World and Torchbearer are OSR, so there.
EPT is old school as hell, but it still requires conversion to use OSR content with it.
>Well, Wikipedia says Dungeon World and Torchbearer are OSR, so there.
Yes, and? Do you have the authority to claim otherwise? Terms are defined through use and social context.
I really wish this thread would study philosophy of language. We've known how baseless this shit is since Antisthenes, that's why people like Plato and Aristotle always defined their terms.
Depends on how careful the players want to be.
I don't think the number of turns was recorded for Robilar's ToH run, but he reported that he was extra careful and paranoid about EVERYTHING.
Could have taken him quite some time.
>Wikipedia
I didn't realize random, anonymous Wiki editors were established authorities of OSR canon. Any idiot can edit their opinions into a Wikipedia article. That doesn't give their opinions any more weight than mine or yours.
>trusting wikipedia even though its liberal bias is very well known
kek, back to tumblr with you
They're not authorities, but it does show evidence of how the term itself is used, which is how terms become defined.
Well, that's true. But that also means no opinion here holds any weight, less so when everyone is anonymous.
How is the Bible retranslation going?
I'm going to propose a new term: ORC, which stands for Original Roleplaying Compatible. There's a lot of contention over whether something is "OSR" since some people say it's more a matter of style and such rather than mechanics, but ORC would specifically mean that something is B/X compatible with little to no conversion necessary.
Pretty good. How's your attempt at injecting marxism into our schools and tabletops going?
Does that make not-ORC things ELF?
Yes. Expanded LudoFunctionality, or more/different game mechanics.
I hope you realize that the "OSR Compatible" label that some guys made isn't meant to privilege B/X over BECMI or AD&D, or even LotFP.
>Dungeon World and Torchbearer
I feel like I've travelled back to 2016 with this pearl clutching from the story game community.
>Well, Wikipedia says Dungeon World and Torchbearer are OSR, so there.
Except it doesn't.
Well, whatever. Point being it's generally mechanically compatible with the various flavors of OD&D's lineage, as opposed to something like DCC or Torchbearer, which are part of the OSR but not ORC
>DCC or Torchbearer, which are part of the OSR but not ORC
Neither of those games sell themselves as being part of the OSR.
Narratively speaking it's honestly a little silly unless you really write it well, so I manage to convince people through how it's usually mechanically quite a bit better. In 99% of games where race/class are separate, most races get stuck in a small handful of classes due to their stats (eg very few people in 3.P/5e play an Elf Barbarian) so race as class cuts out the middleman.