/osrg/ - OSR General

That's an underwhelming size of Twizzler for a product of Valhalla, to be honest.

Lightning, ya twit.

OP clearly said lighting, even put it in a spoiler as a cute lil joke

youtu.be/h1BsKIP4uYM?t=2419

Your weak shit false gods cannot defy Odin.

I am pretty excited by the norse cultural revival going on right now

The abandonment of christianity is interesting to say the least

I mean, it isn't video game music. Though I guess you could say it has to do with Vidya.

youtube.com/watch?v=kjl1B-HcvbE (wait for it)

I was a little into Asatru for a while. Now I worship Shiva and intend to start regularly going to a Hindu temple in my city.

Last thing to do is steal Norse (and Celtic) symbolism back from those fucking Nazis.

Mjolnir. Ravens of Odin flag. Valknug.Tyr and Odal runes. Celtic Cross.

God I fucking hate Nazis.

Same. Can't try to get in touch with my european roots without everyone thinking I'm a fucking skinhead

How do you guys feel about "roleplaying" in the sense of acting in character and such?

It's optional, but fun.

It's like a lot of things: if you're good at it, it can be fun or even enthralling to watch, and if you suck at it then it's just an awkward trainwreck.

Depends. If it's over the top Imma-Do-My-Dwarf-Voice shit, it makes me cringe.

It's like wasabi on sushi. A bit of it is good for spice, and people have different tastes as to how much, but you can't eat it as the actual food.

Not that user, but funnily enough, skinheads weren't a white nationalist movement to begin with either, and in fact, I think Jamaican culture had a big effect on early skin culture. Then neo-Nazis shoved their way into it like they do everything.

That's why you have RASH (Red and Anarchist Skinheads) and SHARP (Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice).

It's fun. As a DM, having to keep track of every character's motivations and thoughts drives me a bit nuts. Given the effort I put in, it's nice if the players roleplay back. That said, its more imbalance that's the problem. If I'm putting a little intonation into my voice and choosing my words carefully, I expect you do the same but at the same time, don't try out your full suite of thespian skills on me if I don't do the same.

Though...making all the screeching, gurgling, and grunting noises for the monsters is kinda fun.

>holding the hammer without the special glove

Kind of hard to hear.

Yeah, the video quality's rather poor, oddly.

Leave it to a barbarian to bar-bar.

>Then neo-Nazis shoved their way into it
I think it's more that oi! skinhead culture caught on among young working-class Englishmen at a time when they were about 90% racist shitkickers. It's true that there ended up being a split but it's not some sort of weird entryism where the Nazis figured they could really use some of that ska for lebensraum.

L to R:

Barbarian, Halfling, Rogue, Elf, Magic-User, Bard, Fighter, Cleric.

How do you feel about this magic system?

Tell me about it

I got me some Norse and Scottish blood and am a right winger. People peg me as a nazi if I talk to them about literally any of this.

See all I'm thinking of now is some Weird War shit where magic ska fuels the Blitzkrieg, instead of meth.

>tfw a demented part of your brain immediately starts planning out the Chunk-Oaf class

But wouldn't the piano-playing bitch be the Bard? She's the only one who plays an instrument to adventure-relevant effect, after all.

I just couldn't ignore Feldman's "Purple Rain" shirt.

I'll stick with Vancian casting instead of mad libs magic, thank you very much.

I assumed you were basing it on his motormouth and smooth hand with the ladies.

Been really curious about the role of prep in the "OSR" experience as opposed to the way people prep for modern games.

I have always been told that OSR prep is heavier due to the fact that player skill is more heavily emphasized and they need a plethora of gameable things to interact with (a DC 15 perception check vs solving a puzzle through the fiction) and yet despite this pervasive idea, I hear about DM's that simply go off of random tables or wing it completely! Is there any blog, pdf or whatever media of choice that explores OSR prep at length?

If you are saturated in the media and methods of running a dungeon or a game, you can run it on the fly. The density of content flows naturally.

If you're not, use tables, modules, etc. to get saturated. It's just a practice thing. Some people can recite from memory. Some people need cue cards. Some people need full notes.
Yeah, well, not many Americans in Valhalla, sorry. Can't get through the doors.

Really thick gloves.
30' radius light, further 30' radius dim shadows. Torches last 1hr, lanterns last 3hrs/oil.
Candles 10' light, last 3hrs.
No darkvision, very rare "extra" vision, usually with downsides.

>Are there any good tutorials / examples online of a Solo game being played / ran? Video blog or otherwise?
Search for Lone Wolf Roleplaying on Google Plus, the biggest and only solo-roleplaying community on the web.

KtA sales update, for people who want to see how sausage is made in the self-publishing industry. Still $170 american from breaking even. Sales picked up a bit after Bryce's review. Hopefully, they'll get a nice boost once the print version is up, but I'm not too hopeful. So... just in case you thought being a 'best seller' was a ticket to eternal riches...

Also, beseeching parliament user, how're your sales doing?

If you put out another good module, maybe Raggi will offer you work.

Now I know why Kevin Crawford doesn't write adventures.

Nah, I'm good.

Kevin Crawford is a very clever person. He might be some sort of dwarf. If you want to make money, follow his path of righteousness.

he pays royalties user

>2-axis alignment
FOH-GUY-GH

...

>magic ska fuels the Blitzkrieg
2 fast, 2 rude

Hidden axis: Roman de la Rose
Yeah, I'm Ok

...

Is patrick a cardboard cutout from the sleeves up?

>CAN'T UNSEE
What have you done to me, user?

With Arnold Goblin propping him up with a broom, no doubt.
Useful tool. I tend to have players who speak mostly out of characters, (e.g. "James says we should move on...") but some people get really into it.

The main thing is to have the players make decisions that their characters would make, and not semi-omnipotent board-game-playing humans watching from above.

How many giants are too many dragons?
How many giants are too few dragons?
What types of giants do you use?

Aww, you guys...

It would be useful for someone like me to distinguish between these two behaviors and why. In a modern game, there are usually several premeditated combat encounters that may branch off depending on if the party successfully clears them or not. In my mind it is because there are more rules & abstractions and they have a larger place in those kinds of games.

As far as I can tell, an OSR game the DM will come up with a petri-dish of things independent of any adventuring party and allow the players to do whatever they like.

>How many giants are too many dragons?
>How many giants are too few dragons?
What did he mean by this?

That would explain why he's just kinda standing there like an awkward dork instead of joining in the fun.

youtube.com/watch?v=xzpndHtdl9A

>As far as I can tell, an OSR game the DM will come up with a petri-dish of things independent of any adventuring party and allow the players to do whatever they like.
Yup.
More or less, the world is built on an as-needed basis, using tables, intuition, other modules, etc. The world is more... real.

Some typical modern storygames seek to emulate films or books and bake a narrative structure into the core gameplay loops.

OSR games allow a narrative to develop, but through interactions with the world. It's more like a nature documentary crew observing a tribe of chimps. There are stories, and they can be dramatized, but the media doesn't generate the story.

youtube.com/watch?v=R_NwWFleDlo&feature=youtu.be&t=473

How many giants are too many giants?
How many giants are too few giants?
What types of giants do you use?

>It's more like a nature documentary crew observing a tribe of chimps

I know that mixture of humor, pity, and amazement.

>light
In darkness you're basically blind.
Torch light illuminates 20', dim lighting an additional 20'
Lamps illuminate 30', dim light an additional 30'
Lanterns illuminate 45' straight ahead, and 45' dim lighting.
In darkness you're pretty much blind to your surroundings. -4 penalties to attack and AC, -1 penalty on surprise checks.
In dim lighting you'll miss out on traps, secret doors, the works. You'll basically just see large objects.
Dwarves have dark vision, which basically just means they're always carrying a torch. Given the drawbacks of dim light that isn't as huge an advantage as you'd think.
Elves can see clearly in dim lighting, but do not have dark vision of any sort.
Clerics have lesser powers they can use a number of times equal to their level, one of which lets them create torchlight which lasts a whopping 1 turn. Might extend that though.
The Orb of Light spell lasts 3 hours and illuminates twice as far as a torch. Might change duration.

I think that's about it.

I have big horrible slithery cave giants. Boneless, horrible, slithery. Slides around, stuffs people in its mouth, chews moistly. Moves a bit like this: youtube.com/watch?v=ZBvbNs7WSII

That was horrifying, but I have a /lot/ of new monster descriptions.

In theory, I imagine you could have the petri-dish and create "events" (as opposed to encounters) and run them alongside the sandbox to give people that narrative structure?

I don't quite understand what you mean. Could you give me an example? "In theory", do what you like.
Oh good.

Interested in hosting an online OSR game of some sort. Would be a very standard game, at least to start--dungeons and plot exposition inbetween mainly. That all being said, I'm a fan of d100 systems.
First off, any interest in playing, knowing that it'd be both fairly lethal and a GM inexperienced with the particular system?
Second, any good systems other than WHF/knockoffs?

I noticed that old TSR modules (especially the often maligned DL series) have events and encounters where the latter are tethered to specific sites and the former are usually triggered by a certain time frame but often involve characterization or dramatic tension between the characters. (That were all... Characters from the damned books)

True patricians watch Meerkat Manor

Yeah... you /can/ do that.
You probably should not do that.

Fancy Map user, any luck on the new blog?

what did we do?

Few threads back I was trying to post about dragons and giants (a la Fafnir) while extremely tired and fucked it up.

What books have the most / best random tables?

Ya want tables?
elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.ca/
campaignwiki.org/wiki/LinksToWisdom/HomePage
They're free!

What's the name of the movie in your pic?

Cunning Single Lady

The Hero Yoshihiko and the Demon King's Castle.
>I literally found it by googling the phrase in the first panel.

What's you favourite OSR setting user?

>the phrase in the first panel.
Every panel's quote finds it.

>weaponized autism
The one I homebrew every session, with a bit of input from the players.
Yeah, but is also good, so you should watch that too.

Hot opinions but most/best from books is Yoon-Suin and Stars Without Number in terms of utility and ease of transposition to whatever you need.

Wolfpacks & The Winter Snow, Hubris, and the D30 GM/Sandbox series have all been good for me and have a wide range.

ExtraFOE but the GM's Miscellany yearly collections can be useful too.

For monster specific stuff, the Random Esoteric Creature Generator is fun. The Metamorphica is great.

Seconding elfmaidsblog for sheer volume of random tables. The blogosphere has tons of them, but you have to root around a bit.

Whoa, what's with that map? The Rocky Mountains have gone all apeshit. (I think my house is on a giant mountain peak there)

Look, it's better than most medieval maps by several orders of magnitude.

Why is there such a hateboner for Planescape here?

The adventure setting is fun, tons of opportunities for interesting adventures, and Sigil is a neat concept for a campaign hub. Sure, the factions of.sigil are kinda first year college philosophy, but there's nothing wrong with them, and make for interesting NPC's

This map is unquestionably accurate

Fun reminder, any question in the format "Why does everyone hate X?" is bait.

It's presupposing an opinion to get maximum replies.
1. If you do hate Planescape, you'll explain it.
2. If you like it, you'll defend it (and reply to 1.)
3. If you think /osrg/ doesn't have a hateboner for Planescape, you'll say so, possibly replying to 1. and 2).

It's formatted for maximum (you)s. Treat all such questions with deep suspicion.

Especially since this isn't their first rodeo.

>Why is there such a hateboner for Planescape here?
Because it's an oWoD rip-off without any of the stuff that makes oWoD cool

What kinda tables you want?

>TSR, as written
Classic Dark Sun and Al-Qadim

>TSR, tweaked
Ravenloft

>OSR, as written
In The Shadow of Mount Rotten

Too many is when running into a 4 meter tall potentially violent weirdo is somehow not interesting. Too few is none? I like giants.

They're titanspawn in my campaign, so I take them geographically based on the old dnd forms and pick a random classic greek titan and figure out a way to model the giant as their technomagically mutated descendant.

So Sykeus, the hidden fig titan, spawn have stats as hillgiant with lumpy holehive blisters on their backs that can sprout wasp swarms for ranged attacks. Didn't have to rewrite anything, just used the throwing boulder attack. Described them as having insect eyes, and they use doric columns as clubs.

so basically the giant from Deep Carbon Observatory then?

Yup. And The God That Crawls.
It's a trope now or possibly was before.
>the hidden fig titan,
>hidden fig

Yeah. I think there's odd stuff about figs because of the fig wasp gestation cycle, even before Aristotle wrote about it. But edible plant seeds in general tend to have weird connotations in classic greek stuff.
>Don't eat beans, they're like penises, which aren't for eating because they're like spears.
>only loser Trojans eat spears

Good taste

Don’t eat beans because Trojans suck dick, got it.

What classes would you most like to see alongside the 7 presented in B/X? Orc? Psion? Monk?

And butter spread too thin.
And planes you aren't meant to visit.
And where's there a megadungeon?

Cannoneer!

Orcs and goblins, maybe monks too just to keep the human options over the demi-human ones.