/osrg/ – Old School Renaissance General

Welcome to /osrg/ – the OSR General, devoted to pre-WotC D&D, retroclones, and all other related systems.

>Trove: pastebin.com/raw/QWyBuJxd
>Tools & Resources: pastebin.com/raw/KKeE3etp
>Old School Blogs: pastebin.com/raw/ZwUBVq8L
>Previous Thread:

What OC did you make for your game recently? Post it!

Other urls found in this thread:

youtube.com/watch?v=4EbQBwyManc
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.de/p/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-world.html
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.de/2017/12/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-redux.html
discord.gg/RbUzmD
twitter.com/SFWRedditImages

Huge stone chapel (made by stone giants), carved into the side of a hill. Entrance is 20' high, no door. Engraved is a map of the local terrain (surrounding hexes), and on top, a giant king. A handprint in blood on the exit, and blood stains.
Inside there is a 150' long gallery (30' high), with giant benches, full of stalactites. Dim light is provided by four crystal braziers with glowing gems (worth 250gp, 1 stone each). At the end, a giant jewel encrusted altar with 52 amethysts worth 25gp each, and a giant stone hammer on top. White-Witch's soldiers hang upside down from the ceiling, their throats slashed and their blood poured into (some) buckets.
Cloister-Workshop: on the center of it all, there is a stalactite-stalagmite (joined). There are big tables, with all the art the lamia doesn't like: statues, marble bracers, stone, 5 crates worth of giant porcelain,
Living space: a chamber where the monks used to sleep. The lamia has made a bed here, with 1250gp, 162 100gp gems (peridot, lapis lazuli, amethyst, turquoise, pyrite), one whorled nephrite jade stone (1,500 gold), five amethyst seal cylinders (6,000 gold), one star ruby stone (750 gold), one topaz stone (500 gold).
The lamia is likely recovering from her wounds on her bed.

Kjallven: a section of abandoned forest, where the trees are dead and the vegetation rots. The remains of a small village have been taken over by undead, lead by a Draugr called Vaenirr. Vaenirr once tried to conquer these lands, founding this village. He died in a gnoll raid many years ago. He doesn't know what brought him back, but is determined to fulfill his destiny this time.

The Garbage: half mile radius of waste (rotting meat, bones, broken tools, shards of plates, splintered furniture) Broken down hut, filled with garbage. Inside is gargantuan, super-fat momma rat (cannot move). Around her, broken hand mirror, destroyed book, spilled ink, incenser. Used to be female wizard trying to find cure for were-rat friend. The were-rat can sometimes be found around this place, or feeding the momma-rat.

Small crypt with 3 stone tables, one corpse laid on each. Each of the corpses wears a ceremonial engraved nasal helmet, inlaid with gold, worth 500gp, and rusted chainmail armor. Eachs holds on their chest a magic (acts as a steel sword) bone sword, with moonstone pommels, worth 1000gp. At night, they rise up and attack as 3HD fighters. Small wooden Chest, reinforced in bronze, with dragon-shaped lock. worth 300gp Inside a small sapphire, worth 161 gp. On the wall, hangs a large mural (40 stone). It is made out of orichalcum and platinum, and depicts three men doing battle with a great army. It would be otherwise unremarkable, were it not by the fact that it moves. It was made by Vortol the Enchanter (who is rumored to still live) 104 years ago. It is worth 20458gp.

A hex description. Not much, but here it is.
35.24 - Hills - Polite
Terrain: Rolling hills covered in tall grass. Snakes hide and slither to the tops of the hills to sunbathe, 1-in-6 chance of a snake being venomous.
Civilization: 3 villages
Obvious Feature: A blackened tower on a hill. There are three floors, though the wood has rotted away, and two ladders have been placed to allow access to the roof. There is a brazier up there and some arrow slits.
Hidden Feature: Cleaning off the floor of the tower reveals a trapdoor that leads into a musty basement. Five charred skeletons kneeling in a circle around a sword stabbed into the ground. When set on fire, the flames burn blueish-white and it counts as a magic weapon.

>
At a glance, I think armor could be expanded back into a more complex model by granting a bonus to combat saves, with magic armor granting some other bonus to avoid number bloat, and the combat save could be tied to a specific save (something warriors are good at) to include the possibility of compatibility with single-save systems.

Ok, anyone here familiar with ACKS Race Creation guide? How many points is straight up immunity as a power worth?
I'm working on an Undead Skeleton Race at 0 racial value, and the only requirements for an ACKS undead creature is that they are:
>Immune to Gas or Poison
>Immune to Charm or Sleep
>Vulnerable to Turn Undead.
I can do the last one, it seems to fit as a -2 vulnerability, but I'm stumped on the immunities.

For single save systems, I'd just have it be +2 and -2 for worst and best save, as that's the typical adjustment for saves in 5 save systems.

Well since my group hated AD&D, and I know they will hate B/X even more, and I am failing over and over to make Pathfinder do what I want and will probably burn out on GMing completely if I have to run another game of it, and the GM who took over for me ran one (1) session before deciding he needed more "time" to work on the campaign and it's been almost a month now, I am / have been working on an OSRPG system that will appeal to them while still being OSR-ish. As in: the player-skill focus, the grounded-ness (no "lol I rolled a 58 Jump check and jumped on someone's head"), the lethality, the focus on getting good gear that *isn't* magical. But, my problems are myriad:
>what damage should the weapons do?
>should skills like ranger tracking or rogue lockpicking be % based, d20 based? or d6-roll-under based? (like LotFP)?
>what should happen at 0 hp?
>what hit die should fighters have?
>how should I do spell levels?
>how do I allow for cool spellcasters without them being overpowered?
>how to make smite evil work?
>how to make XP work in a way that makes leveling up gradually grow slower?
>how to make attack progression work?
>HOW DO I DO SAVES FOR CHRISTS SAKE
Anyway I know I'll get 10 different answers depending who I ask, but I will throw my hat into the ring and ask for feedback again. I think I've removed most of the errors / copypaste laziness by now. I'm closing in on a more serious draft.

What'd they hate about AD&D? I can read your document, but I'll provide better feedback if I go into it with the right mindset.

A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

>getting good gear that *isn't* magical
what

Yeesh, I sympathize with you buddy. But I have to think user has a good point here.

>A strange game, the only winning move is not to play.

I'll take a look, with your very particular criteria in mind.

What about AD&D do they hate? It may just be DM style things

Other than that:
Try a OSR adjacent / inspired systems like DCC, GURPS dungeon fantasy or BFRPG to ease them into the real stuff

Or find a new group

>getting good gear that *isn't* magical
Implement some sort of weapon quality system. On a fumble, your weapon takes a notch. Shitty weapons roll a d4, normal weapons roll a d6, and masterwork weapons roll a d8. If you roll over the number of notches, you don't take an additional notch. Each notch applies -1 to-hit and damage.

I'll be terribly honest with you. I think you (and your players) will have more fun if you grabbed Pathfinder and did Pathfinder stuff, rather than force the square player into the round system.

>Well since my group hated AD&D
I bet they hated 1e, you should try 2e

in my setting there is a difference between dungeon crawlers and adventurers.

Dungeon crawlers are ordinary people, who go about clearing ancient ruins of monsters and traps, essentially so lords can upgrade their castles, in exchange the dungeon crawlers get to keep 5% of all money found and are generally treated like garbage, where as adventurers are less a career and more the uptakers of a lifestyle. though they do tend to get jaded and fall into heavy profiteering as they get more experienced.

It's like comparing a cashier at burger king to a rockstar

what do you guys think?

What specifically do you want from OSR that pathfinder is lacking? Because you may just want to shift to another modern system. If you want more lethality for example, you may want to check out something like Shadows of the Demon Lord

Hello /osrg/ ! Hoping I can get yall's expert opinion on some stuff. I'm going to be running a one on one game of Ryuutama (I know, pretty much the exact opposite of what you guys play but stick with me here) and wanted to a randomly generated as you go hex crawl. What should I look at for good random hex tables? Are there any in particular that you guys like to use or recommend?

>Ryuutama (I know, pretty much the exact opposite of what you guys play but stick with me here)
Ryutama is more OSR than DCC

I'm not aware of any random hexcrawl tables, oddly enough. I know there's a lot of products out there with premade hexcrawls in them, however, and by their very nature they tend to be transportable into whatever you're doing.

You can get Nod Magazine #1 free from the author's website, and that has a whole hexcrawl in it that you can plunder for stuff to use. Many other issues have full crawls in them as well (2 and 3 continue the crawl begun in #1).

Additionally, Frog God Games did a seven-volume hexcrawl series (by the same author as Nod). The books aren't expensive, and can be got in PDF just like Nod for even less. Overall you'd have more than you would probably ever use. It's what I use, anyways.

Hey guys

youtube.com/watch?v=4EbQBwyManc

Really? That's honestly surprising to me. It seems like such an obvious thing to do at least in my mind. I may have to make my own. Though the whole point of this game was to try and reduce the amount of world building I can do (I love world building, but should be focusing on finishing my RPG first.)

An Echo Resounding has a good bunch of tables for generating hexes/regions.
The D30 GM and Sandbox Companion have a lot of D30 tables to use for that.
If you want to do a deep dive there's tons of random hex/idea tables in the osr blog scene, but that takes a bit to find the ones you like and loot through their shit. Elfmaids and Octotpi is probably a good start. Motherfucker can't stop making tables if their life depended on it.

Also Stars Without Number, its more scifi, but the Dead Names book has a neat series for generating locations that's easy enough to transpose to fantasy.

To be fair, I might just have missed them. But while hexcrawls are a fully accepted element of the OSR, it's stlll a niche of the niche, so I'm not surprised that there's less content for them. Wouldn't mind seeing some more myself.

Speaking of. Thanks!

>"too complicated"
>"rules didn't make sense"
That was the majority of it. They are PF fags (they even bought starfinder) so I know they also didnt like the lack of customization.

>"too complicated"
>"rules didn't make sense"

So why wouldn't they like B/X? Seems like an easy fix to me

You've nailed my feelings on the matter. Also I meant that most fighters should quest for a decent suit is full plate, rather than getting +1 plate by level 3. I structured the costs so that the advantages of leather armor (being cheap) actually matters. That's another big goal of mine: a high level fighter wear wearing leather and having reason to do so.

>So why wouldn't they like B/X?
"too simple"
"races as class is dumb, why can't I be a dwarf wizard"

The system seems fine, but if what they're looking for is customization and that grind, then it may not work. Anyways.

>should skills like ranger tracking or rogue lockpicking be % based, d20 based? or d6-roll-under based? (like LotFP)?

D20. Percents or d6 may be a bit much for 3PF babbies, d20 give the feeling of a skill check while also being granular

>what damage should the weapons do?

Same they do in every other OSR game

>what should happen at 0 hp?
Knocked out at zero, die at negative maximum, every round not treated -1 HP

>what hit die should fighters have?
Same as ever other OSR

>how should I do spell levels?
Same as every other OSR

>how do I allow for cool spellcasters without them being overpowered?
Your prestidigitation thing seems pretty neat. Maybe include a weak magic dart (range attack with int mod, 1d4 damage) and let wizards roll for lore (regular ability check under int)

>how to make smite evil work?
Extra d8 on evil boys. Can do once per level

>how to make XP work in a way that makes leveling up gradually grow slower?
Use AD&D XP charts

>how to make attack progression work?
Just use 3.PF attack progressions, makes life easier for them

>HOW DO I DO SAVES FOR CHRISTS SAKE
Unified S&W save or bite the bullet and port over Fort Ref WIll

>what damage should the weapons do?
Per BX/LotFP went fine in my group.

>should skills like ranger tracking or rogue lockpicking be % based, d20 based? or d6-roll-under based? (like LotFP)?
Again, LotFP went fine. Roll under attribute checks for non-specific situations also went fine. Failing on 20 breaks off the routine, plus with 3d6 and BX modifier scale it makes more sense than figuring out DCs.

>what should happen at 0 hp?
Death. Alternatively, LotFP rules or various dismemberment/wounds options. I opt out for the latter with death if you're hit and damage goes further than your first hit die value.

>what hit die should fighters have?
LotFP/BX hit dice are fine, although feel free to AD&D stuff for them.

>how should I do spell levels?
As default, or Wonder & Wickedness (worked really well in my group)

>how do I allow for cool spellcasters without them being overpowered?
Wonder & Wickedness is cool, but you'll have to work with the spells quite a lot. I did and I don't regret it. Also look up The Nightmares Underneath.

>how to make smite evil work?
Smite Chaos, use one axis alignment (L/C/N)

>how to make XP work in a way that makes leveling up gradually grow slower?
On your own here. Too long for me to explain from phone plus all of my stuff is in Russian. Hope somebody helps.

>how to make attack progression work?
As per BX.

>HOW DO I DO SAVES FOR CHRISTS SAKE
Personally, single save is cool for those. One of my group was fine with LotFP saves, the other autistically screeched even after I explained the concept. Single save is fine, class bonuses at your leisure. Fighter gets bonus against Death, Magic-User against Magic (wewlad) and so on.

Don't have time to review your stuff, sorry about that.

Use ACKS then it's B/X but the include a system for crafting any class, be it Dwarven Wizard or Elven Barbarian.

I'm working on a homebrew (like everyone in this general) with simplified stats and merged Abilities and Ability score modifiers (probably also like a lot of people in this general)

Getting a point of DEX lets you choose a new skill mastery, getting a point of INT gives you a new spell slot. I'm trying to think of something for a point of STR to do, besides just bumping your HP, to-hit and damage. I want it to be a fun choice that doesn't add too much complexity and isn't too powerful, some kind of weapon mastery or fighting art.

"yeah but i wanna play a tiefling"

Just run S&W CL or it's derivatives (PDF related)

Thank you all kindly friends! I appreciate the help, hope you guys have wonderful games.

There's a Tiefling race in the trove, and a guide and a digital tool for creating any other race you want.

So I skimmed through your draft and noted one particular thing: monster rules in the end. If this draft is supposed to be shown to the players, make sure there's no DM-intended section or somesuch. This is not to screw them over and withhold information, this is to clearly demarkate a line between you and a player. If they don't have the trust without complete transparency, this OSR thing really won't work out.

why don't the dungeon crawlers keep all the gp for themselves?

you could try this:
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.de/p/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-world.html
melancholiesandmirth.blogspot.de/2017/12/procedural-generation-of-hex-crawl-redux.html

next session i'm gonna play a hexcrawl on sea with my group, i'm using different tables about stuff that can happen on sea from both the ultimate toolkit and the tome of adventure design. don't know if its gonna work out, though.

Because they dont wanna piss off people with dosens, hundreds, or thousands of trained soldiers

These look really good. I'm gonna go through and start plundering! You have my many thanks.

Is that a sharkman taking home a mermaid bride after a successful raid?

Yessir. Well, bride, food. Tough concepts to distinguish sometimes.

Tell me a good Bleedout / Hovering at Death's Door rule

>What OC did you make for your game recently?
user...

user, just play board games with them instead of DMing. You can’t DM for people you are not willing to kick out if they don’t enjoy the game. It’d be like hiring employees you can’t fire.

You should DM the system that you enjoy DMing and find players who want to play it. If your friends don’t want to play that system, do a different activity with them.

I'm seriously throwing out most of my houserules and shit and just going barebones B/X. Fuck complicated shit.

Is there a table for creating random beast?

Like number of eyes and other features

Fuck that and play dcc or 5e

it really feels shitty if you are not enjoying what you are playing

Tell the dude if he wants to play pathfinder, get his work on the campaign done already, otherwise you're running the game you want

Congrats, you've achieved actual zen.

Fuck B/X, I'm going bare bones RPG. No Dice, no Stats, only talking, true OSar

Supplementary trove room, always for your needs until more permanent solution. Should you encounter something missing from the trove and this little collection here, consider donating.

v0l@
/r/gxk98efr

What are the easiest books to stick into lite for specific campaigns? I know that one user made GURPS zombies lite, I also find for PSI campaigns it's easy to just slot in the PSI's book

What are some other easily inserted books / systems? What magic system can you stick in easily? Something for fantasy or horror? Action or Historical?

What?

I want to come to the table with minimal prep. What are some nice tables that can help me out whenever the PCs stumble upon something I have not prepared?

You like OSR games because you're lazy DMs

where can I find a copy of hot springs island?

Did you even /look/ at the filesharing thread?

>you only like thing i don't like bcuz you bad person.

>hexcrawls aren't a huge amount of work

???

How is prepping for an OSR game any easier than prepping for other games

If anything, it takes more time (stocking dungeons and hexes, random encounter tables)

Besides the archive thread, the post with my vola room is right above.

Maybe somebody will eventually add that to the thread op, so I don't have to spam it.

You don't FORCE COHERENCE on your NARRATIVE PLANS and you don't CAREFULLY WEIGH your player's SCENES to ensure proper SPOTLIGHT SHARING

I don't do any of that in my AW game and it trucks along nicely. I do use ALL CAPS at times though.

You could do that.

Anyone here looking for players?
The last group I was DMing for flaked on me because real life and shit, so now I'm thinking it might be time to change things up and be a player in some one's else game for once.
However I haven't had any luck in finding OSR-style gametables.

Any system is welcome I guess, my timezone is GMT-6

Ask in the discord, friend

>discord

An alchemist gave sentience and ice powers to a giant spider, the spider read in the temple she lives that there is a entity named "the true king" she needs to sacrifice 5 wizards to bring that entity to the temple

What kind of creature can this entity be?

Besides having resort to phone posting, I'm rarely present for the new thread appearing because somehow I'm not here 24/7, who woulda thunk.

>greentext

Good point, I'll make sure to separate the two.

A really fucking huge spider with ice-age level powers.

There is no link to the discord at present, and I do not wish to dishonour my fine discord of great prestige with the False OSR Enthusiast likes of you. Therefore I will send you the discord of that horrible fiend, THEDICEMUSTROLL.
discord.gg/RbUzmD
now GET YE GONE

A literal true king - the platonic ideal of a King. All of the land's kings are in one way or another shadows of the True King. Which means that by divine right, the True King is monarch of all realms in existence. Banished by a conclave of wizards in ancient times because the True King's rule, while divinely ordained and supported, quickly becomes intolerable to mortals under the King's command.

Your discord is cancer and so are you

is this the furry bird admin discord?

I've been running it for 2 years. I hate it. They don't. Well, I dont hate it, but I sure don't like it.

a shitty 5 room dungeon, it contains around 4000 copper and 5000 silver and a +3 shield. Mostly full of 1HD skeletons (24 of them) and a "boss" with 5 hit die.

Even worse than that trash, it contains evil spirits and autistic furries. An appropriate place for FOEs such as you.

I mean if I rush him he's just gonna be pissed and shut it all down. I was hoping to escape forever DMing. I made the entire campaign based around what one of them waned, the rest said ok, but now I hate the world and the setting and the characters are okay, it's a good campaign it's just not what I want. So I'm hoping to wrap it up soon. After almost 2 years. But as soon as I quit DOing the whole group falls apart and we've been just playing magic or board games for the past month.

How are you doing today politeanon? Did you get around to taking a walk outside and getting some fresh air? It's important to get up and get going every day, since that builds habit. Are your meds helping you? If they're not, you might want to speak to your doctor or therapist about getting a different treatment. I once knew a girl who had bipolar disorder (type B, the less difficult to handle type), her medication didn't work so well but eventually she started using lithium and that helped her immensely. Also make sure you eat breakfast when you wake up, that meal can really help if you have a stressful day ahead of you. Basically it stops you from crashing as hard as you would otherwise. Anyway, I just wanted to make sure you're alright. It's good to see you're still frequenting these threads and continue being social. Don't be afraid to reach out to someone if things get worse. You can get through this.

You don’t like to DM the games they like to play and they don’t like to play the games you like to DM. It’s unlikely that there are mechanics that both of you will like. It sucks, but you need to find new players.

I'll never understand Discord, what about it attracts the most degenerate individuals a community has to offer?

What's it to you?

That's OD&D without houserules.

I want my entertainment to take as little preparation as is reasonably possible because I work over 40 hours a week and have very, very little free time besides. Bite me.

Prep the new pastebins (or better yet, fully tuck the tools and blogroll behind the piracy pastebin) and drop a pseudo-OP for us to copy.

Check out the esoteric creature generator, it's in the trove.

Hey guys

They're making Pathfinder 2e

And they're making people pay for the playtest


God am I glad I left the modern RPG scene behind

Why are you always talking about PF? Did it hurt you?

>And they're making people pay for the playtest
Well, Mr. reddit-spacing, a lot of vocal Pathfurries previously expressed the attitude that they were going to drop PF if another edition came out so Paizo's gotta squeeze every cent they can out of 3e's corpse before all the autismos skedaddle.

>Where the changes really shine through is in how the game is played. Gone are the confusing action types like move, standard, swift, and immediate, instead replaced with a simple system of three actions and one reaction each round. All of the varied systems and formulas for determining your character's bonuses and statistics, like saving throws, attack bonuses, and skills, have been unified in a single, easy-to-use proficiency system based on your choices and your character's level. You no longer need to collect a specific set of magic items to be a balanced character, relying on specific magical statistic bonuses. Instead, you get all of the bonuses you need from your regular armor and weapons, allowing the rest of your items to be truly wondrous.

LOL, literally 5e

This is the first time I'm posting about Pathfinder

>Well, Mr. reddit-spacing

I space out comments so it's easier to read, instead of throwing gigantic paragraphs. If you really want, I can start doing that, if it makes you happy.

I don't believe you, and I'm not even going to check if your actually correct because I don't want to know.

>Maybe somebody will eventually add that to the thread op, so I don't have to spam it.
Shit, OP here, that totally slipped my mind, sorry about that shit, bro. Keep it up!

I'm and can't believe in the time I left and came back there was so much shitposting about discord when my post wasn't even related to it.

I'm still looking for anyone hosting a table, but I guess this will be my last post related to this matter.

You're not from around here, aren't you.
Buddy, you should check the Game Finder thread instead of here. That thread is specifically for finding games and players.

It's not your fault, just some folks are determined to make "the /osrg/ discord" be a thing, even though twice now it's been tried and twice it's turned into a garbage fire, resulting in two terrible /osrg/ discords.
And our Trove Guy disappeared into one and never came back.