Welcome to /osrg/ – the OSR General, devoted to pre-WotC D&D, retroclones, and all other related systems.
>Trove: pastebin.com
>Tools & Resources: pastebin.com
>Old School Blogs: pastebin.com
>Previous Thread:
Traps have always seemed silly and obnoxious to me. Convince me I'm wrong.
Other urls found in this thread:
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca
youtube.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
Continuing the discussion of solo play, anybody have any advice for what to sort out in advance in order to have the best experience?
What are some good scifi/post-apoc style modules? I'm starting a campaign, and some buffer material between my own content would come in handy.
Traps are fun and you're boring.
What type of campaign is it?
Nowadays for that sort of thing a lot of people are recommending ASE (Anomalous Subsurface Environment). And of course there's S3, but I assume you already know of that one.
Survival centered around a surviving settlement in a dying, insane world. Basically, the PCs are the people who go out into the surrounding world, deal with threats, get resources and what have you.
It's going to have a horror flavor and a lot of grit. Most of the technology in the campaign won't be too advanced, but there will be exceptions, in the vein of insane techno-dungeons that will make very little sense for most people in the setting.
And a lot of fleshy mutant horror, because body horror is good and proper.
Haven't done it, but a good few random generators you like the feel of, npcs, treasure, locations, seems like a good idea. Stuff like this and/or a larger book with a well indexed table set.
>flesh mutant body horror post apocalypse
mans have I got a link for you
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca
Get your tables ready before play. If possible, print them out. It kills my flow when I have to switch from PDF to PDF while playing. Don't go in with a preconceived notion in mind. Allow yourself to be surprised by the dice and random events. Go with the flow.
Lots and lots and lots of random tables, tables everywhere. Don't know what to do next? Table.
Besides that, go with the flow, it makes it a more fun experience. You may want to just change that roll into a success, because hey, it was one off and it's such a minor thing...
When you start fiating things, you might as well be writing a novel rather than playing a RPG
On that note, using attacks and hp loss more as an indicator of the flow of the battle than just people standing in battlelines hitting each other can be intresting.
I've recently started going for a more free-flowing style of combat where things are always in motion. Like, if the round went well for you and your opponent didn't succeed in retaliating well, you're obviously driving him pretty hard.
We've had some fun narrating people jumping around, things and foes getting knocked over and all kinds of silly acrobatics. I know it's not the most tactical thing, but it's fun if you're going for a relaxed gaming table where the exact details don't matter so much.
Yes, instead of rolling on tables for everything you can make up cards. In short, draw items, monsters, traps, and everything you would normally put on a random encounter or dungeon chart on the cards. Then you can shuffle them for random creation. This is great for both solo and group play. Take a look at YouTube for videos of Index Card RPG. You'll get some idea of how people have used drawings on cards to enhance play. This idea is really only limited by your creativity. If you're not artistic, you can print other peoples pictures out and make them into cards.
Also if you're playing solo, you can go hog wild doing things that you want but may not be feasible normally. Like playing 1e rules as written exactly. Or being really really strict with light, time, and torch duration tracking and encumbrance. Resource tracking isn't a problem and won't slow down play if you are solo.
>Traps have always seemed silly and obnoxious to me. Convince me I'm wrong
This video should illuminate things:
youtube.com
In my experience, you should kind of approach it like writing a story. I've done solo play a couple of times, and it works best, in my experience, when you narrate a lot of it. Writing it in narrative form gives you a lot more context and is pretty fun if you're into creative writing in general.
You don't really need to start grandiose with it. Just writing down as much as you can be bothered with is good. If it starts feeling like something you like doing, you'll get more into it without even noticing.
Roll the dice, and possibly even record the dice rolls as out-of-game notes for clarification, and let that dictate what direction things take. Some creative intrepretation can also go a long way. Maybe your character failed at something because there's actually an unexpected factor involved?
Do it the way you find most enjoyable, since you're literally only beholden to yourself in solo play.
How do you justify the fact the hardest characters to hit are also the ones with the most HP?
HP and low AC are both signposts of being tough to kill. Both means you are REALLY tough to kill.
How many dragons are too many dragons?
How many dragons are too few dragons?
What types of dragons do you use?
Unique and few, the oldfag option.
I only use dragonlance dragons
Dragons should be Proper Myffic and frightening. If you want little scaly things to fight, use wurms.
But a real dragon is more real than anything else. The world looks like cardboard scenery. It bends reality. It thinks lightning-fast lizard thoughts, breathes death, and hoards neuroses. They're all crazy in one way or another.
Each one is unique. The bestiaries have catagories; they are like saying "tree with needles" and "tree with leaves" and expecting it to reflect reality.
Dragons are Dark Souls boss fights if you fight them, but it's often more interesting not to. They are patrons, mystics, tutors, bankers, and, quite frankly, fun to talk to. And then you can rob them and run like the blazes.
This. All of them are named too. Dragons are NPCs that can affect the gameworld, not monsters to kill.
>Dragons should be Proper Myffic
>Dragons are Dark Souls boss fights if you fight them
I want hipsters to leave.
My dragons tend to be very dumb animals adventurers kill for sport (and loot). Haven't had a smart dragon in a long long time.
>muh hipsters boogeyman
I want YOU to leave.
youtube.com
Also, Proper Myffic is from Pratchett, a dingus. You know, the one Gygax liked?
>tumblr filename
>wheeling out Gygax's corpse
I re-iterate my previous desire.
Serious question, why do people hate hipsters?
Gygax was a fascist.
If you want a real answer, it's because every generation finds a sub-crowd just different enough to hate on but not intimidating enough to do anything about it (except maybe the punks).
The 60's had mods.
The 70's had hippies.
The 80s had punks.
The 90s had goths.
The 00's had emo kids.
And the 10's have hipsters.
Whee.
If you want a bullshit answer, it's because "they like shit (we) don't."
I haven't rolled any yet, so not enough imo, but there was a wyvern. Felt pretty good, players tried to fight it, realized they were probably fucked and ran away while it ate one of them.
I refluffed it as a mix between a centipede and a dragonfly but HUGE because it worked better for sword and planet, called it a Banefly. I keep it for encounters in that area because they only wounded it.
I'll probably stick to them being a variety of fucked up flying death insects.
>HUGE
>Banefly
Grogs are almost hipsters. Into old things before they were cool, hierarchy of secret knowledge, buying shit as identity, cliquish, think they're too smart for mensa, etc. But they lack the current sex appeal/hype so its upsetting.
>Why does he wear the helmet?
Ohshitgoodpoint. Welp, time for some masked riders with chemicals and breathing problems.
>he system in Dungeons & Dragons of awarding experience for killing monsters suffers from extreme underspecification; although Gygax had authored a clarification for GPGPN #12 (September 1974), surely that obscure periodical remained unknown to most Dungeons & Dragons players, including those in Los Angeles.
Anyone know what was said in there? I can find references to Gygax's first revision of the thief in GPGPN #9 all over the net, but not a thing on issue #12.
Dare ye travel to the ruins of Old Toronto?
No, who wants to go to Canada
TIL Portland is where Astoria is
I think there is way less forest on this map than there should be.
There's forests and then there's forests.
Cascadia, baby!
I don't understand why Canada hasn't been annexed yet, it's such a useless nation
Why do you prefer OSR to other systems?
We have our ways...
Forests are badly done in most RPGs. Hiking speed in forests can be as slow as your swimming speed. It's trivial to end up on the wrong ridge or hill. Line of sight can go from 100' to 10' and back again.
Then, there's the rain...
Rule simplicity.
Simplicity
Ease of homebrewing
Ease of accommodating material
Fast Chargen
I think sometimes the influence comes from people who design things that haven't lived in a heavily forested bioregion.
City kids should not write wilderness survival or exploration rules. Spend at least a week camping and hiking. You'll get much better content that way. I'm not much of a stickler for realism, but there's no better way to get ideas about the outdoors than going outdoors.
Rules simplicity, ease of brewing content, density of new content created, ability to reward /player/ skill and progression, fair balance of risk and reward.
everything and several others said
What kind of mechanics would you like to see in an OSR-adjacent game about surviving a zombie apocalypse?
Yes, I have read Necropalyx
Good rules for succumbing to a zombie infection. Also hit location rules, at least for the zombies.
Simple.
No "builds."
People play normal characters I can actually identify with.
Combat actually has consequences (note: people don't have to die for this to be true).
First, before you start, watch a zombie-based TV series and note all the stupid tropes they need to use to introduce a plot. Short-term zombie plots are fine. Long terms, not so easy.
I'd like to see some sort of Trust mechanic (from Apoc. World, maybe?) where characters with low Trust don't work together so well... but players are mechanically incentivized (XP?) to have low trust, so they'll have their PCs act in stupid risky ways to create drama.
What kind of grand adventures have you as players went on, or that you, the DM have created?
How so?
I think it's from some cyberpunk storygame. Apocalypse world is the one where you get xp for having sex with everything.
There's also a (fairly silly) History mechanic... but you ain't wrong.
What are some quests that a king or local lord could send adventurers to do once they have made a name for themselves? Does it always have to be a dungeon?
>you get xp for having sex with everything.
I'll take memes that never happened for 1000, Alex.
Collect a "gift" from an unresponsive vassal of his. Said vassal probably lives in the middle of nowhere and has most likely turned himself into a monster or done something similarly horrible. There have also been rumors that he plans to rebel.
>memes that never happened
Not xp, but there are explicit "sex moves"
We're secondary resource extraction export with a highly established government focused on stability. Its easier and cheaper to let the government here take care of citizenshit while buying beverskin, trees, oil, fresh water, etc. from here at low cost. Its not like we'll stop selling.
Plague Master facing rules for dice drop city generation and vectors.
Its a game for making violent sexy hbo style melodramas. It would be weird if there weren't consequence based rules for sex.
They've made too big a name for themselves. The local lord sends them to deliver bad terms to a rival, aiming to both remove a potential threat and give pretense for armed conflict.
>like getting two birds stoned at once
Plus you know, Vincent Baker made AW for and plays AW with his wife. Frank discussions of sex and including sex in role-playing games aren't a problem with that level of intimacy.
Why people consider rules cyclopedia the best dnd edition? what it does better?
I dunno, it's Basic D&D with a ton of options? It's not that popular really. Personally I think it has too much stuff in there, and 36 levels is way more than I'll ever need. B/X is my kind of Basic.
Nostalgia and everything you need for DnD in in book. As for what it does better, I love Weapon Mastery myself.
15 hexes left! 114 done! Woo!
Given up on dark depressing media for the time being. Watching the Great British Bakeoff instead. Haters below.
It's everything you could ever need for running old school D&D all in one book. It's also better organized and realized compared to AD&D while still offering similar options.
How does weapon mastery works?
Increasing to hit, AC, and damage bonuses as you master a weapon as well as unlocking special abilities for the weapon. Some of the weapon special abilities are cool, like arrow shots pinning enemies to the ground and delaying them, bolos choking foes to death, nets entangling them, axe blows stunning foes, swords deflecting blows, and more. Weapon Masters can also force morale checks depending on circumstance.
Everyone gets weapon mastery but Fighters will master the most weapons. Fighters in RC also get other special abilities like Smash.
mmm i think i am reading rc this night
Sadly the presentation in the RC is pretty poor. They present the data in charts and symbols. The presentation is clearer in the retroclone Dark Dungeons. Unfortunately, that retroclone has a few missing rules like the Despair effect.
Forgot to mention another benefit of mastering a weapon. Most special abilities cause a foe to save. As you start mastering a weapon, the foe you hit start getting save penalties.
Any tips for doing wilderness based adventures? I never tried one before and I'd appreciate some idea as to how to go about it.
c
Despair effect?
I don't have the rulebook with me, but I remember that disarming or deflecting an attack forces a morale check.
Ok... can you walk in a ghost city?
Like, if the entire city is a ghost or made of ghosts (ghost buildings, ghost milkmen, ghost pigeons), can you walk on the second floor of a building?
Do you need to tie magic weapons to your feet?
Is this why boots of elvenkind are useful (cause they're magic)?
Inquiring minds want to know.
I think the answer being no is more interesting. Like, let's say something the party needs is up on top of a ghost building or something. Let them be creative in figuring something out.
Can someone remind me what this comic is called?
Good good, that's what I assumed. Tie a magic sword to a rope, use it as a grappling hook.
boku no pico
Sorry, old habit. Oglaf.
ty
Do you make your players buy stuff like "Case, map or scroll", "Blanket, winter", "Waterskin/Wineskin", "Bedroll", or are they assumed to have them automatically?
What other systems have combat like the one in osr?
Where being surrounded by a group of 6 goblins is serious shit and players start thinking in options to survive
Mostly of making players think out of the box and look for creative options because their character sheet wont solve all their problems for them
Runequest.
GURPS not even memeing
What are some nice rules on the pricing of various buildings? (no, ACKS does not have this)
In Dark Sun, what is "The Black"? Couldn't really find anything on it (not that I tried that hard). I was first thinking it'd be the Negative Material Plane/Plane of Shadow, but since it's Athas, that doesn't fit.
Umbra the Shadow Giant is from The Black. Is it the Far Realms or something?
D&D color dragons a shit, desu. I just have Dragons; they breathe fire and are normally green, but can be other colors. I don't use them often because I don't want them to get too mundane.
>I'm going to crash this party with no survivors
Hey, I've seen a lot of discussion of solo play in the last few threads, but nobody's mentioned Kabuki Kaiser's stuff. Is that because he's such a cunt, or do you solo anons just not know about it? In any case, I think both Ruins of the Undercity and Mad Monks of Kwantoom have fairly extensive provisions for solo play.
So here's a shitty house/writing rule;
Always describe prices as coins, then let the players or DM fill in whatever coin they want for the setting. It can use the gold, silver, or copper standard; or coins can be made of clay or porcelain instead, or whatever else works.
Thoughts?
Thoughts?
Well partially it's hipsters that hate hipsters. This is nothing special, just plain competition. But that's such a general question that Veeky Forums is probably not the best place to seek an answer. If you're asking why people who like Veeky Forums hate hipsters there are a few good reasons.
Your bog standard encounter involving hipsters could:
>Involve quite a lot of pabst, which tastes like shit
>Produce bants about whatever you like, but never with the commitment to be sustaining of growth and friendship, mostly just pushover egotism. It's not fun to talk shit with these people because they think they're inherently worth more than having to talk to anyone they see beneath them.
>present an inability to separate Jim Carrey from his film work, and therefore no capacity to understand what a fucking creep he is
>Drift onto the subject of bikes because they can't afford cars
>Invariably shift to some truly retarded opinions about the gender dynamic. Often with a facade-centrist appearance that really comes out after a good half minute of them lecturing you about whatever limp gay shit they committed to memory.
>Involve suggesting that you Veeky Forums together, to which they will almost never follow up.
>Get into some retarded shit about black metal and the fashion industry, both pinnacles of shitty taste. They've literally never listened to anything remotely tolerable, or worn anything anyone really gave a shit about.
>Involve the misuse of 'irony'.
>Lead to an eventual reveal of how well off they are, in contrast to their self-romanticized lifestyles.
>Be completely unfunny, as they invariably have basically no sense of humor outside of limp snark, which everyone hates.
>Reveal how freakishly competitive or demanding they are over the most trivial thing possible, mostly to attract girls.
>Shift into a complete microcosm of ass backwards feminist rhetoric, if female.
I like Mystara's Dragons
>Thoughts?
B/X RAW or bust
It's hard to get it to make sense. It would be one thing to state XP in "coins" and leave it to the referee, but a price list, no. An as just doesn't buy as much as an aureus.