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How to fix the problem of Magic-Users being much easier to create new material for than martials?
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conjure shit elemental
>not creating dozens of fencing schools, martial arts, and combat manoeuvres for you fighting-men
>How to fix the problem of Magic-Users being much easier to create new material for than martials?
It's just the way it's going to be. Fighting is something we can all do. Magic is something nobody can do. When creating fantasy content we know basically everything a fighter can do without it becoming magic itself.
>How to fix the problem of Magic-Users being much easier to create new material for than martials?
Focus on making really good martial classes?
Make Wizards a bit dangerous (so the variety is cancelled out by the exploding)?
How do you incorporate these into mechanics without castrating the regular fighter via feats-in-all-but-name?
I would love to have like "Scroll of Secret Technique" and such as possible loot/rewards, but I've never been able to figure out how to do it without badly restricting the standard fighter.
>defeating half the point of OSR
Invent a heavily abstracted magic system where MUs only have a few broad fluffless mechanical options.
Any comments on these hexes? What's good? What's bad? What's boring?
>Baron [X]
Really skerp?
And then you end up with the L5R 1E issue where a good portion of those cool schools and martial arts become chaff because in systems as lethal as these fighting is not something you want to get on often.
>When creating fantasy content we know basically everything a fighter can do without it becoming magic itself.
Correction: we think we know basically everything a fighter can do. Which ends up usually underestimating them quite a bit, and gives us extremely dumb rules design like Pathfinder's weapon cords nerf.
The problem with such martial abilities is when they fall into the "You can do x" trap. Which implies people without that ability cannot do x otherwise the ability you made is worthless.
To give martial classes a unique style without encroaching on other classes freedom you just give bonuses to already existing mechanics.
If you have a class that is meant to represent a swashbuckling style fighter then giving extra bonuses for attacking from highground is going to encourage all of those feats of acrobatics that are common to the archetype: jumping around on tables, swinging on ropes, etc. In addition you can give them a bonus to dex checks made to jump around like this and maybe give them a climb walls check like a thief. Then just limit their armour usage and maybe scale back their HP or attack progression til you make them believable and not too imbalanced as to break the game.
I was under the impression that you were supposed to meet a different Baron every time you explore the hex, but
>Baron [Y]
cropping up later throws that right out.
Really skerp?
Heh, I'm never going to forget their rigorous mouse testing process on that one.
Ah! Thanks! I just didn't go back in and fill in the names. I usually use # for incomplete things, but I broke my own rule there I guess. They are 2 different barons with 2 different names.
Meeting a different Baron every time you explore the hex sounds fun.
Yeah, but then you can't play one baron off the other, make allies, etc.
Not a bad idea at all. I just don't think it works in this context. Maybe I'll move that and have a Table of Deposed Emperors for the Village of the Blind Pretenders.
>Will burst open, spilling out rubies and black liquid poison
so random XD
I just upped Chthonic Codex--check the share thread.
It's a Drow thing. You wouldn't understand.
Not sure if sarcastic...
NAYRT
It's one thing if the players have no idea what's going on. It's another thing if the referee doesn't know either. I mean, sure, we can pretend, but our players aren't idiots. They can tell when we're just pulling shit out of our ass and saying it's all part of their master plan, at least my players can.
That's what rubs me the wrong way about your Drow. Every other sort of "villain" you've written up makes sense. The archpriest is a heretic, the lousy barons and nobles you run into on your travels are dicks, the dverger have a plan and don't really care that you're in the way, the der0 are legitimately insane so you can get away with that. But the drow just have this secret spooky plan that's "beyond your comprehension." That's just lazy writing anyhow. Either come up with something and tell us or say, "I'm not gonna tell you what they're doing, come up with something that fits your campaign."
For what it's worth, I'm giving my drow a spiteful master plan to conquer the surface or something. It's not big or particularly fleshed out but it exists and it makes things easier. But your drow being "lol so random XD" makes it hard for people to use your stuff.
They're immortal, insane, and bored. They live on beauty. They don't need to take over the world. They just need to outlast everyone else and maintain an acceptable standard of beauty.
And yeah, it's not for everyone, but you can sub them out for any other variety of Drow without any significant issues.
They're all evocative, but they're kind of useless in their current state. You've marked one as [mini-dungeon] like you're going to expand on it, but frankly, half of those hexes need writeups, sketches, or maps to be useful. I understand that hexcrawling is abstract, but explorable spaces, particularly ones where you're surrounded by rock, require a degree of specificity,
I'm not sure most of them need maps, but there will be a few minidungeons.
For most hexes, you can "zoom in" and set the encounter by using the cave generation rules on VotE pg. 221, the general cave shapes and stone types from VotE pg. 258, or the fancy caves from VotE pg. 263. Plus, this table.
You're a good man, user. You can fuck my goats.
Uh, user...
I'm not sure if this has ever been brought up, or if people care, but does anyone use older figures exclusively in OSR games?
I've been getting a lot of older grenadier, GW, ral partha, and other ranges for pennies. I was just wondering if anyone else has done this in the past and what they thought of it.
I think it's an excellent, flavourful idea and it's what I'd do if I used minis.
With maaaaaybe some modern stuff.
It kinda Started When I was gifted a Demogorgon from Grenadier.
Then I just kept finding old lots of figs at various sales.
All I can think of is running A B/X game with just these figs to add to the experience.
Where are you getting old miniatures from?
I like the Dungeon Crawl Classics method of basically letting a warrior describe any physical manouver with every attack based on your deed dice (up to the disgression of the dm of course). Puts the onus of creativity on the player.
FLGS had a few used gaming auctions and a bazaar.
I snagged a bunch of early 90's and older GW stuff in a tacklebox for $20. Then I found the Introduction to AD&D 2e plastic figs for $3.
Yesterday I walked out of a bazaar with a dozen grenadier 1980's models for around $5.
So now I have a bunch of these weird, but cool 25-30 year old figures and I haven't heard of anyone specifically doing old figs only for OSR games.
It's very sad that "scroll of secret technique" is such a foreign concept to westerners.
Read some chinkshit. It's not particularly good (many would say it's outright bad) but it can give you clues on how martials can work and advance. Though knowing the retards that are westerners you'll just dismiss it as anime shit then continue to wonder why martial ability development space is so limited. You guys want something unrealistic but then get upset when the ideas offered are unrealistic.
>So now I have a bunch of these weird, but cool 25-30 year old figures and I haven't heard of anyone specifically doing old figs only for OSR games.
Otherworld Miniatures does a line of Old School style miniatures;
not quite as cheap as the stuff you got, but not super expensive either, all things considered
>It's very sad that "scroll of secret technique" is such a foreign concept to westerners.
Ten dollas for the book!
>How to fix the problem of Magic-Users being much easier to create new material for than martials?
for me at least it's easy; in pretty much all of my homebrew settings it's firmly established that all Character Classes are in at least some form explicitly supernatural, albeit not always in flashy Arcane ways(for example the Thief skill Hide In Shadows is literally hiding inside a shadow, and even a level 1 Fighter is the equivalent of multiple non-classed human warriors in a fight)
so basically since I'm not trying to be "realistic" with martial or skill based classes, it opens things up in what I can do for them
Splinter-light miniatures as well, but some might be too small.
That's... a very good starting point.
How about instead of Postmodernists you make them all Arsène Lupin?
Speaking of giving martials more development space, has anyone ever tried out the Blademaster from the Sandbox 2?
Hello /osrg/, I ran my first osr game today and they all hated it. They like all the non-combat parts of it though so I am going to running a heavily modified 5e to ape as much OSR shit as I can. Just thought you should know.
>BFRPG
>Pretty much a direct copy of BFRPG
>Except that like in LL there's 20 levels
>But unlike LL Saves and Attack progression are spread over the full 20 levels
Why would they do this?
>>BFRPG
>>Pretty much a direct copy of BFRPG
??????????
of B/X, my mind slipped and crashed
The secret technique lets the fighter do impossible kung-fu bullshit like run up walls or pluck out eyes with their spear or hold red-hot metal without getting hurt. Not just get better at things they can already do
Anybody had any success converting a running Burning Wheel campaign to a OSR compatible system? I've heard Godbound has similar meta-currency system.
What did they hate in specific terms?
Are OSR games good for horror styled games? I feel the very high lethality / avoidance of fights would help that atmosphere
Go look at Ravenloft or Silent Legion for ideas.
Horror is a extremely broad genre, you gotta provide a little more information on what type of horror.
From my experience running a Ravenloft-style one-shot it emulated a supernatural "hunting" horror experience extremely well; one wrong move and you'd be instagibbed most of the time so players had to spend a good amount of time preparing and investigating exactly that they'd be fighting.
Yes, yes they are.
LotFP and its modules are built on the idea of running osr as horror, and plenty of other games do similar things.
Literally what is the point?
I don’t want anything unrealistic though. It’s ynrealistic enough that a man can possibly slay a dragon, but a high enough level fighter can.
I don’t really need more “material” for martials because combat, attacks, HP, are already an abstract. It’s not a tit-for-tat thing where each attack roll is a single swing of the sword and that’s all. All those techniques are wrapped up into the fighters general ability to be good at and withstand combat.
Miss me with that chink shit ya weeb.
What about the mythological route of subscribing special abilities and powers to weapons?
It's funny how people don't like the concept of "artefacts with special properties" in OSR despite them being extensively in appendix N.
As much as some anons love it (for... separating race and class, apparently? I never really got why, but good for them) BFRPG is pretty sloppily hacked together, yeah. That save thing's egregious, like BECMI stretching the Thief skills. Bad move.
What are some good Megadungeons with ridiculously long play time and lore?
I already know and appreciate Dwimmermount.
Rappan Athuk exists in an OSR version (S&W, I think?). Besides that I'm not sure if anything else measures up to Dwimmermount right now, but keep your eyes out for the release of Arden Vul in a year or so.
What the fuck? Has neither of you seen a D&D magic item section?
After about 10 sessions my players have accumlated a total of 10,000 gold pieces. Of course I won't let them carry it around but what would be a good way for me to get them to spend their money? Maybe buy a house in the main city?
Yeah, at this point they ought to be pretty worried about where to stash their loot between expeditions anyway, right? People are going to start getting curious about the huge coffer full of SOMETHING that weighs unreasonably much. Having their own house will at least mitigate that shit.
Maze of the Blue Medusa. We just finished our tenth 7-hour session and are maybe 20% through in terms of content, tops, just going by what's written.
They really don't alter how a character interactions with enemies often providing only a bonus modifier and sometimes enabling the fighter to cast a spell a couple of times a day or inflict a status effect.
Barrowmaze son
>10,000 gold pieces
>buy a house in the main city
Wouldn't even make a dent, It's boating time user.
Don't be dumb. Send bandits to steal the gold. Dock their XP until they recover it.
>Wouldn't even make a dent
Are you joking? Even the vastly overpriced OD&D price list has regular stone buildings at 2500 gp per 120' of wall, and that's for a two-story house with attics and cellars. The same exact thing in AD&D costs 500gp.
That's when the Real Estate market collapsed...
And soon the PCs get nightly visits from legbreakers belonging to merchants and nobles. Content!
BARROWMAZE
Or stonehell.
Or "The worlds biggest dungeon", though it's for 3.5, complete and utter shit, and over 800 pages. It may may actually be the largest dungeon ever made though, so there's that
>market collapse
Well, let's see. BTB, a coin weighs 1/10 of a pound. That implies the minimal house in OD&D costs 250 pounds of gold. At this moment, the spot price of gold is 1,318.23/oz. That gives a value for the gold pieces of $5,272,920 at today's values. Does it seem like a market collapse to be able to buy a house for five million dollars? And remember, the PCs actually have the equivalent of $21m kicking around.
Footnote: in lists of actual medieval prices the cost of a house with a courtyard, i.e. a noble house, is about 90 pounds *silver*, approximately NINE pounds of gold as opposed to the 250 claimed by OD&D. Even AD&D's claimed expense is breathtaking in comparison. This is basically because gold coins in D&D are of a preposterous size, but the fact that land and construction used to be comparatively much less valuable than they are now also factors in.
Haven't played or even read it. But I have heard Torchbarer is descendant from burning wheel via Mouseguard. Might be worth looking at if that's your interest.
"Combat" in Torchbearer is truly awful, It's essentially rock paper scissors.
Beats me mans, people do all kinds of stuff for fun. user asked for Burning Wheel OSR adjacent, which I'm under the impression Torchbarer is.
THE ANOMALOUS SUBSURFACE ENVIRONMENT
It's not that long, only two floors as of now
Also labyrinth lord is utter shit
People who love it (like me) do so because:
1. It's B/X meets AD&D with the bullshit removed.
2. Ascending AC and Race/Class separation.
3. Awesome supplements on the website. (This is probably my main draw to it)
4. $5 physical copy.
Lesser trove, up and running now. Thanks for everybody's recent donations, especially Chthonic Codex.
m3g@
/#F!084UFSDJ!ziMmwFfvYPwnMvkKKLRk_w
/#F!9R1EiSLS!NLMpy3BHl6zeLKmkvIqoRg
Not that long? It's 3 floors, so far, and they get more and more massive. There's more on the way. There's an entire city-state and surrounding world to be explored as well.
lol skerps don't argue with the Asperger robot on the social back pat forum, he's too fucking stupid to take anything lightly.
Shit's hilarious he thinks penny arcade is Veeky Forums tho.
????
He wants to talk with skerp about skerp stuff but doesn't want to use email, PM, IM, discord, skype, or the blog, instead shitting up the thread with love-letters to his favorite e-celeb
user apparently wants to comment anonymously on some G+ slapfight. Lord knows why. Seems to dislike Zak S though.
Only its modules
>It's 3 floors
4. ASE1 is 2 floors, on account of all the rooms on the surface.
it
I'm not saying it's not a flaw, but if you wanted a quick and dirty way to make BFRPG saves more closely parallel those in Basic, subtract 1 point from all saves for every 5 levels your character has. Thus, at levels 10-14, you'd take the saves in BFRPG and knock them down 2 points. With the exception of levels 13 and 14, where the average revised BFRPG save ends up lagging 2 points behind B/X and LL (but only 4/10 of a point behind BECMI), the averages stay within a point or so of each other.
Of course, you could just steal the save progressions from somewhere else, or play a different retroclone entirely.
>VOTE is artsy-fartsy gonzo garbage
>Operation Unfathomable is le whacky cross-genre gonzo garbage
>Underworld Survival guide is muh realism muh maths garbage
I guess I have to write my own Underdark if I want something I like.
>VOTE
>gonzo
I'm not saying that you're wrong, but you're super fucking wrong.
What's wrong with the original D/Q modules if you want vanilla Underdark?
Buzzclaw, o'Buzzclaw, what's it like, to super fuck a monad?
A race of lava robots is pretty gonzo
>Underworld Survival guide is muh realism muh maths garbage
It's only slightly worse than AD&D, just handle it the same way
>super fuck a monad
what did he mean by this
I don't want vanilla Underdarks though. VOTE and OU are both chocolate Underdarks (espresso-mint and oreo rocky road, respectively) and USG is vanilla with raisins Underdark. I'm looking for strawberry or at least neapolitan Underdark. You get me?
>You get me?
I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about. Maybe try plain english rather than an extended metaphor?
>what did he mean by this
Elaborate? I'll grant you that it's artsy-fartsy but not garbage and I keep hearing about the lava robots.
By not using it?