Welcome to /osrg/ – a center for pre-WotC D&D and all things related

What is "Mythic Underworld"? Is it actually a thing, apart from a short way to call Underdark and other such strange underground places?

>quirky autistic lava robots are more interesting than the mythic underworld
Patrick, get ye gone and taketh Zak with thee.

It's a place where darkness is now magical and all those darkvisions and infrareds are now obsolete.

>spoiler
It's salt from the Raggihaters. Who knows what the fuck their problem is.

It's a kind of half assed way to make some dungeons more than just holes in the ground, I believe it was first pitched by Jason Cone in his Philotomy's Musings. Basically, the dungeon can be part of some mythical otherworld and thus doesn't have to play by logic or reason, and can have it's own rules and laws and ways of being. Dumb shit like , where you can just go "ooh it's magic mythical spooktown it doesn't have to make sense ooooh!"

Explain to me why mythic underworld is good. Sell me on it not being tripe

The way you say it, Mythic Underworld sounds exactly like Veins of the Earth.

>/osrg/ is now all about hating new and original content
Projectile shitting on cavegirl when

They are trying to look cool in front of their peers. Hating things is cool and clearly the OSR way.

Is it? Can you, like, bring up some examples?

>magic mythical spooktown that doesn't have to make sense

That's practically the mission statement of VotE, isn't it?

It's basically a less tonally consistent version of the same idea as Veins. A lot of mythic underworld stuff tends to just smack of fuckyouism, of the DM changing things up to make things hard for you without any rhyme, reason, or logic because "lolmythic". Stuff like doors are hard to open for you but are automatic for monsters because fuck you, your darkvision doesn't work down here because fuck you, your rations spoil in hours because fuck you, etc.

Nothing about Veins is original, it's the same tired "NOT YOUR DADDY'S D&D" shit that hipsters constantly pull, an attempted subversion that's become as cliche as the material it tries so hard to subvert. Same goes for Operation Unfathomable.

>Who knows what the fuck their problem is.
I don't know, but honestly I do sometimes get a feeling there's a dedicated group of people whose mission it is to push LotFP and they aren't exactly subtle.

>I believe it was first pitched by Jason Cone in his Philotomy's Musings
Strictly speaking it was first pitched by Gary Gygax. The Mythic Underworld is just an analysis of the rules for dungeon exploration that are actually in OD&D and what they imply about that environment; it's the equivalent of the implied OD&D Setting as derived from the wilderness rules.

Philotomy was the first guy to formulate it in the OSR though, yes, much like that other guy wrote the OD&D Setting posts.

It's just regular old popular, man. You don't have to like it, but about half of everything Raggi puts out becomes a bestseller by OSR standards.

I mean, LotFP is a pretty good system and has a number of decent-to-great ideas, even discounting the less than pleasant habits and opinions of its creators. I feel that people would be allowed to play it and like it, and that most people who cry against it do so out of spite and in order to show how little they care about this popular thing.

As with everything, haters are infinitely more obnoxious than the fans.

Eh, they still wind up feeling like weird 'Hard Mode' rules

>NOT YOUR DADDY'S D&D
Yeah, that's not new, I'll grant you that, but I can't think of any other underworld supplement that does quite the same thing. It /is/ a shame that a lot of the monsters aren't quite gameable in the traditional sense.

Okay, but they're literally just OD&D's "normal mode" rules. Philotomy was one of the first guys to really look into playing LBB OD&D.

>Anything that isn't Keep on the Borderlands is unoriginal

Name a legitimately original OSR book. I'll wait.

>Nothing about Veins is original
Your kneejerk Raggihate made you go full retard, bruh. The caving rules alone would be original even if everything else were derivative.

Dungeons & Dragons: Men & Magic

Does nothing Chainmail didn't already do.

Try again.

But it clearly, very clearly did. Have you not read either of them? You should.

Speaking from personal experience LotFP has problems with sycophants; often amateur designers themselves, they regularly get warned and banned on more strictly moderated forums.

What your witnessing is a backlash against "modules as art" fuelled by a couple of recent blog posts that pointed out most of the people praising and reviewing these modules aren't actively playing them. Blame Skerples.

>because a paladin can remorselessly pursue evil, that means he can't fall for pursuing a personal vendetta
Okay buddy.

>Blame Skerples.
t. Zak

You need nothing more to play OSR. It's arguable whether modules that don't follow the Keep on the Borderlands format are OSR in the first place. Fortified base, dungeons, factions, emphasizing player skill over mere numbers - yeah, anything outside of it shouldn't be considered.

The aesthetic changes. It's weird without being gonzo.

It's kind of a weird through that a module would have to be picked up and played through by every single player in order to be successful. That's impossible. Is it not enough that some people put it to good use, and have fun with it?

Indeed, how many game modules in the history of D&D have achieved more than that, at least since the classic ones (Keep, Against the Giants, etc.)?

>short way to call Underdark
Mythic Underworld refers to megadungeons (or dungeons in general), but the underdark.

It's the idea that the dungeon is asymetrically hostile to PCs but not Monsters.
Or rather, it's a broad spanning asspull to explain OD&D's visibility and door rules.

Keep being more than enough to play with and everything else simply being unoriginal are unrelated.

>"my way is the one true way to play"
>RPG products as anything else than shit to use at the table

These people need to be purged

Whatever you want to say about Raggi himself, it must be admitted that the modules he's written and published for LotFP, even the ones that aren't very good (Death Love Doom, for instance), have a truly unique style to them. Even though I've only actually played a handful of them and there are some of them that I will probably never use in an actual game, just reading them definitely got me thinking about ways to use the rules and possible scenarios outside the standard dungeon crawl. Even if they aren't always practical, they can at least serve as inspiration so you can make something of your own that is.

I guess the thing to remember is that RPG material is only useful insofar as it is gameable. The issue with 'modules as art' like says is that, unlike most art forms, good RPG supplements have to practical for actually playing the game.

Anybody wrote about the logical conclusion to this concept? Why are thieves allowed to manipulate the unreality of the Mythic Underworld and even bypass the concepts of megadungeons? what the fuck are they.

Theives mantle the cosmic trickster archetype, foiling the plans of gods and devils and sowing havoc where they may

I'm just glad thieves got to be able to do something useful and flavorful for once, besides stealing away abilities other classes should've known how to do by default.

Explain what you mean

Thieves are the only class that is capable of manipulating the mythic underworld on a metaphysical level, isn't that spooky?

What are some cool ice cult related traps?

A trap that summons winter. You open up the chest, a chill wind blows, and BAM! Winter is here several months early. It's also a lot worse and spooky monsters show up. Put something awesome inside the chest and foreshadow that the chest is cursed.

How so, though?

Do you mean their abilities to make use of darkness in ways others can’t, to thwart traps and bypass locks, etc? I guess the whole “cosmic trickster” archetype works here.

>poorly written
You can call Veins of the Earth a lot of things, but not "poorly written".
What are you comparing it to, exactly?

A monster that feeds on heat, and can leech heat energy from anything it touches.

A room full of glass bottles containing clear liquid. A sign in a language the PCs don't know say "no drink"
The bottles contain liquid nitrogen,just a sip will render the drinker mute, drinking more than that is instant death

Frozen prehistoric creatures in pillars of ice/sections of wall. Need to be wary of using fire nearby or else they'll thaw

Attached: Boy I'm glad he's frozen in there.jpg (1280x720, 73K)

What's a quick way to cook up a rifts character sheet?

Or better yet
It's Ice IX

A magic crystal idol that radiates cold is used by the cult to keep captured water elementals frozen. Stealing it will thaw them out and they'll be really pissed off.

All cult initiates must place their tongues against the magical flagpole of divine eloquence in order to absorb its power. But it's just a regular metal flagpole, so everybody has a good laugh before abandoning them there.

>the snow conceals the fragile cover of icicle filled pitfalls.

>The room contains a big pool of chilly water, at it's bottom in some kind of pedestal (insert shinny bauble here) rests, when removed the trap springs and the surface of the water freezes into a one inch thick ice sheet.

>A large ice carved idol adorns the room, it has precious gems for eyes, if any heat source(body heat, flame,etc) touches it, it animates revealing it self to be an ice golem.

> A large polished ice Box, treasure can be seen inside do to it's clarity, however it does look slightly blue. if broken the Alchemical Ice(liquid nitrogen) inside it bursts in a 10foot radius immediately freezing anyone that fails a save. The treasure can still be picked up afterwards and tilting the box reveals it's filled with some kind of liquid

>general), but
general), *not

>i rolled a 20! you have to let me dm

>it's a 'lol nat 20' episode

Okay, but it could be interesting to let a high level enough thief in a weird enough game try to steal your session notes.

That's what divination is for.

Wouldn't they be able to feel how cold it is just by touching the bottle? Or looking at it since the water condensation collected around the glass would frost over?

It's a reflection of a thief's combination of luck and skill, which together can appear supernatural to others, and may in fact be so.

It's just popular, there's no need to invoke a conspiracy.

magic bottles ain't gotta explain shit

Do you all agree that OSR allows for more sandboxy games and more "narrativist" games allow for a focus on creating a story with a clear arc and such, while new-school D&D kind of offers the worst of both worlds, with more durable characters meant to allow for a heroic story but no procedures for creating such a story, such that in order to have one the DM basically has to railroad?

Well now I have to include them in the expanded Tree of Gygax.
Rather the point, unfortunately.
It's possible.
Also possible that humans be humans.
I have my doubts.
Fairly sure that's not how that phrase goes.
Got it.
Not sure it really matters though. It's a cool idea, right? I love that table. Fuckin' brilliant piece of tabluating.
I put mine a mile down.
Is there a big Table of Mythic Underworld Entrances out there somewhere? It seems like I've read that table but I can't find it.
The xenomorph in Alien doesn't make any sense and it's still a great film.
I mean... you can always run D1.
D1 didn't go anywhere.
I'd even recommend using it alongside VotE or Operation Unfathomable.
>Blame Skerples.
Fair enough I suppose.
That is some proper evil stuff. I approve.
Big jug of it in your games. Cause all sorts of havoc. Beats Death Frost Doom by a mile.

Attached: Bad Caves 1.png (135x2352, 13K)

Parts of LotFP are better than B/X. There are also parts that are worse, plus subjective stuff, but there _are_ reasons to like it.
The guy who keeps suggesting Death Frost Doom though ...

Yes, I'd agree with that.

Attached: He knows what's up.gif (245x136, 494K)

Sounds about right.

Attached: suddenly.png (399x299, 230K)

>"my way is the one true way to play"
when my way is OSR and yours isn't, yeah, it's the only true way to play and you can GYG

>while new-school D&D kind of offers the worst of both worlds, with more durable characters meant to allow for a heroic story but no procedures for creating such a story, such that in order to have one the DM basically has to railroad?
I'd say that it allows for different procedures to create a story. I wouldn't say it's the worst of both worlds either.
It's a specific tool for a specific job. It does what it says on the tin and that's fine by me.
That's exactly what a conspirator would say. Quick, get him!
Pan, oil, butter. Little bit of finely minced garlic. You want the paper to crisp up nicely but not burn, so make sure to keep the heat low.
>The bottles contain liquid nitrogen
Ok, this is my jam.

You're going to notice. Liquid nitrogen sounds ominous. If you shake it or slosh it, it sounds "wrong", like metallic water. The ice it forms has that horrible fine-grained squeak, like nails on the a chalkboard.

And the vapour feels unpleasant. Not as bad as CO2 fog (which is vile and suffocating), but it's still cold and feels like it's choking you. The Darwin Awards of people drinking liquid N2 are from people who knew what they were drinking or were trying a party trick (you can put it in your mouth and blow smoke rings. You shouldn't) and fucked it up. You couldn't do it by accident unless you were powerfully drunk.

Attached: jeff-simpson-fantastic-planet-jeffsimpson.jpg (766x900, 132K)

>Not sure it really matters though.
It's nice to know the range you're supposed to be generating for.

>It's a cool idea, right?
I agree.
>I love that table. Fuckin' brilliant piece of tabluating.
For the quantity, there are remarkably few bad entries.

Have to sympathize with +Yami Bakura though.
I was expecting Spelljammer-tier "stars are wizard towers" stuff.

>I'd say that it allows for different procedures to create a story.
Aside from railroading, what procedures?
>specific tool for a specific job.
What job?
>what it says on the tin
Again, what's it say on the tin?

Genuinely, I used to play 3.5 and while obviously you can roleplay with anything, what's it do well in terms of creating a good story?

Not trying to start a fight. Other people are allowed to enjoy what they enjoy and if they aren't hurting anybody, I'm happy for them.

No. Most of that sort of business comes from GMing style. There's nothing encouraging a sandbox in OSR, nothing discouraging a sandbox in Fate (to use a specific example). The key distinction is whether the environment and objectives are primarily driven by character aims and interaction, and that pretty much entirely comes down to the DM.

I'm the best DM.

Attached: 1511505203004.jpg (600x849, 58K)

Those heels are awfully impractical.

>There's nothing encouraging a sandbox in OSR
The rules focus specifically on overworld travel and dungeon exploration. OSR in general often has rules for hex crawling.

My point was that the newer editions were created with modules of the more "story-focused" sort that came along in 2e in mind. Consequently, it became important for characters to be more durable and such. But 3e for example was designed as a followup to 2e, and while it's very different in terms of mechanics, it's made to add player choice in customizing one's character, presumably because the designer's assumption was that the majority of DMs would have this story-focused style of game in mind and thus players would be pulled along a specific track and need something to do to make it interesting.

You can do more or less anything with any system, sure. That doesn't mean that a game that spends a bunch of time and focus on exploration and morale rolls and such isn't mostly designed for simulating exploration and worrying about morale and a game that spends almost no time on rules for creating a space for exploration and a bunch on giving characters lots of cool abilities isn't mostly designed for seeing how character powers work.

>Not trying to start a fight.
I like your style, user.

I have never seen such Terrible taste, ever in all my years. This is bait.

As somebody that has mostly only played Pathfinder, a few sessions of CoC 7th, and maybe 6 sessions of SW Deadlands, what OSR game do you guys recommend as a good starting point?

None. You're irrevocably tainted.

B/X, the answer is always B/X.

5E is pretty OSR, go with that.

B/X

B/X is a good way to purge everything you know about roleplaying games.

Or maybe Lamentations of the Flame Princess if you'd like to keep a bit of the Call of Cthulhu mood in. It's about as easy to learn and has a couple neat mechanics.

You'll eventually move on to the king of all games, AD&D 2nd edition, but no need to rush that.

Off topic, but D&D 5E is basically "You and your cool friends go on an adventure, gradually escalating from small good deeds to saving the world."
The tools it provides to do this are:
-enormous character customization
-growth of power through leveling
-low lethality
-high mechanical synergy between party members

You want to play a guy who throws wolverines at his enemies and rides a giant snake? Cool, you can do that at level 1. You want to be a creature made of fire who shoots fireballs? Done. Conflicted demon-dude with a dark secret? Done. Bigjohn Fizzdick the Peeping Gnome? Done.

And for that particular kind of game, the "D&D" that grew out of 3E and 3.5 and Pathfinder... 5E does a good job.

The adventures also help. Some are railroads, sure, but the best ones, the open-world ones, are designed to carefully create a relatively low-challenge experience that /looks/ like it's a challenge. It's the high-quality frozen dinner of the RPG world. Nothing wrong with frozen dinners if that's what you want.
I'm happy you're happy.

Attached: marc-simonetti-arkane-cm2.jpg (1552x2000, 657K)

Well, he said he's played CoC, so it's not exactly like he's a stranger to lethality.

>The rules focus specifically on overworld travel and dungeon exploration. OSR in general often has rules for hex crawling.

Are not required and do not facilitate a sandbox (which is characterized by independent player choice and pursuit of individual objectives rather than scripted events focusing on a story narrative). They facilitate accurate timekeeping of overland travel, nothing more.

>Consequently, it became important for characters to be more durable and such.

People vastly overstate the durability of post 2nd edition characters, particularly in regards to 3rd where they're still quite susceptible to save or lose effects (more so at high levels, actually).

>it's made to add player choice in customizing one's character, presumably because the designer's assumption was that the majority of DMs would have this story-focused style of game in mind and thus players would be pulled along a specific track and need something to do to make it interesting.

These two things are completely unrelated. Modern "narrative" RPGs are actually comparatively light on customization, and you're of the opinion they're primarily to field story-based campaigns. Meanwhile GURPS has more character customization than any edition of D&D, and absolutely no built-in ideas of play style.

Basic Fantasy is free and cheap if you want a hard copy.

I recommend OD&D (only first 3 booklets) or Holmes Basic and 2e

>what OSR game
B/X

>It's another "2e is OSR" episode