Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General, the thread dedicated to TSR-era D&D, derived systems, and compatible content.Broadly, OSR games encourage a tonal and mechanical fidelity to Dungeons & Dragons as played in the game's first decade—less emphasis on linear adventures and overarching meta-plots and a greater emphasis on player agency.If you are new to the OSR, welcome! Ask us whatever you're curious about: we'll be happy to help you get started.>Troves, Resources, Blogs, etc:http://pastebin.com/9fzM6128>Need a starter dungeon? Here's a curated collection:https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/86342023/#q86358321>Previous thread:>>94745240>TQUnderground empire edition: how big can factions get in your dungeon? How do you handle faction interaction? Faction conflict? And how does it impact your players?
>>94780679Want to contribute to the thread but don't know where to start? Use this table.>1. Make a spell>2. Make a monster>3, Make a dungeon special>4 Make a wilderness location>5. Make an urban set piece>6. Make a magic item>7. Make a class, race, or race-as-class>8, Make a 4-10 room lair.>9. Make a trap>10. Roll 2D10 and combine
Do you have a favourite one-page or extremely short dungeon/adventure?I'm interested in low-prep recall-light scenarios that have a simple set-up but interestinginteractions.It seems like many that I read are either a convoluted mess of strands, or a pile of rubbish the players will never learn that present as a pretty standard dungeon.
>>94780856Paolo "Tsojcant" Greco - Axo's Dungeon.Attached.
>>94781071That is a lot of stuff.It doesn't seem to be very interesting, it just has a lot of stuff.
does anyone know if your spell components are used and disappear with each casting in ad&d 1e?
>>94781276It depends on the component.
>>94781276>>94781341Look up the article on Dragon Magazine #81 for more information.
>>94780856>>94781242Were you looking for something more like a five-room dungeon?
>>94781276Short answer: yes.
>>94781276>>94781496Long answer: Yes (unless otherwise specified (except when Gygax forgot to)).
If one wanted to run official adventures, is it bst to place them in your own world or greyhawk?
>>94781346perfect answer, thank youand what a brilliant article, too>>94781341>>94781496>>94781610thx
>>94781660Yes.
>>94781739Huh?
I should cram all my dungeons and fortresses into one underground megadungeon.
heavily modifying lesserton and mor for my players and its becoming fantasy stalingrad. in almost every house near the breach there is a cellar that leads into a mini-dungeon, occupied by the undead. theres trenches near the center next to ziggurat i added. this shits gonna be so much fun
>>94781746You are correct, if one wanted to run official adventures, it would indeed be best to place them either in your own world or in Greyhawk. Wilderlands of High Fantasy would be bester.However, what's not necessarily best is running official adventures. TSR modules are almost always "dungeons" in the modern (1980s) sense of the world, so they are just too small, more like biggish lairs. And they are often not quite as good as the best "mega"dungeons (actually dungeons) out there, e.g. Stonehell, Xyntillan, and Barrowmaze. What's even better than all afore-mentioned is any old school dungeon you make yourself, one without a bottom or end of any kind, that grows as players explore it.
>>94781786>heavily modifying lesserton and morIs it true it requires a lot of work on the DM's part before being able to use it?
>>94781928oh yeah, a lot.i tried to procedurally generate stuff as the players entered teh hexes and it took me a fair bit of time, scrolling back and forth between the pages.so this time I just pre-generated a bunch of hexes that I think the players are heading too next, each one takes me like 10 minutes or so, maybe more depending on buildings and such. the way ive modified it im just completely ignroing most of the plot inherent to Mor and just stuffing in whatever I want
>>94781962>im just completely ignroing most of the plot inherent to Mor and just stuffing in whatever I wantBased. How would you rate it on the classic-gonzo axis?
>>94781962Also: Are you even using Lesserton, or just Mor? Can one be used without the other?
>>94779009I could do that in theory, but in practice I'm retarded when it comes to computers and can barely type on 4chan.
>>94779009>I use "PDF Arranger" on Linux but I'm sure there must be options on windowsI find that a good windows alternative to PDF Arranger for Linux is PDF Arranger for Windows.
>>94781886Yeah, but I'm trying to learn ad&d by running it. I've heard secret of saltmarsh is quite good for beginners, but that's ostensibly located at Saltmarsh, in greyhawk
>>94782168Like discussed extensively in the last thread, the best starting module is B2. Check out the discussion about adapting it to AD&D (one file was uploaded), the Dungeon under the Keep fan expansion, and the link to the Dragonsfoot post on scattering the ruins if you want to make room for Stonehell.
>>94781071>no stats because gimmick>cramped text because gimmick>no elaboration on encounters because gimmickOPDs once again exposed as trash.>>94781276Yes unless specified otherwise.
>>94782179The map that scatters the ruins removes the canyon entrance for stonehell entirely and in its place is the shrine of chaos atop a hill, next to the gnoll lair. Not gonna work.
>>94782058>1 hex = 2 miles>simultaneously, the terrains are all chunky as fuck and nothing is granular enough to require low hex scaleWhy in the absolute nigger aren't they just using standard 5-mile hexes in a case like this? I hate this kind of shit.
>>94782358>standard 5-mile hexesRelax, newfag. There's many "standard" hexes: 5 miles, 6 miles, and their integer subdivisions and multipliers. Nothing wrong with a 2-mile hex whatsoever, it's perfectly natural for B/X. If you are using AD&D or OD&D, treat it as if it said 1.7 miles (one-third of a 5-mile hex) and you're good.
>>94782021Dummy, classic *is* gonzo
>>94782101Look the PDFs in the cover files are already out there to get your own printed up, it's easy and I got mine from Lulu for 20 bucks. Figure out the basics, or languish in this world of your own fecklessness
>>94782021>>94782935Gonzo isn't classic, it's another reaction to modernD&Dslop like mudcore is.
Thinking about pushing out a campaign setting for B/X style play, should I just make a Zine or work on a big PDF. It nothing fancy, just something to offer for free.
>>94782187You don't need stats if you have a monster manual or imagination. Yes I do not like cramped text. Encounters don't really need elaboration, Stone hell has pretty bare Bones and counters but they are also top shelf. Overall I would not recommend this dungeon and I'm not the one who posted it.
>>94782747>>94782358Three mile hexes are supreme and anyone who disagrees is wrong.Same with 1d10+2d6-2
>>94782187>OPDs once again exposed as trash.All the other ones are worse than this one.
>>94783005You're looking to make something to distribute and not something for your own personal use? Just make a PDF that is like an atlas/gazetteer / encyclopedia and include a hyperlink to be added to a mailing list for a zine containing extra material that gets released every now and then
>>94783252All gonzo is science fantasy, but not all science fantasy is gonzo. Gonzo possesses an excessive sense of self-referential LOOK HOW WACKY WE ARE (just as mudcore an excessive sense of self-referential LOOK HOW REALISTIC WE ARE). Carcosa, Stonehell's coffee machines, and even ASE aren't gonzo: Operation/Completely Unfathomable are gonzo and quite cringe.tl;dr alium in greyhawk might not be gonzo
>>94782058Just Mor. I toss a bunch of shit in I steal from whatever pdfs I have lying around. I tossed in the waterlogged moat fort from T1 the Village of Hommelet in the middle of Mor.
>>94783265Good idea, I am trying to be effective in this so actually making a outline and so on.
>>94782021I would say pretty classic with a hint of Gonzo. The players have found that this city was unearthed by an earthquake about a week ago. The inhabitants believe they were in there for a day- but judging from their archaic calendars and language, they have been inside the muck for 3000-5000 years, asleep by a curse. They were under siege by a necromancer warlord and his undead army, alongside a group of mercenaries who are questioning their loyalty after realizing how long they've been interred. The Orkin (i stole the name) are a small people, a lost and strange human offshoot, and thought extinct in their earthquake, but now struggle to survive as the players attempt to herd them toward an escape of the city or simply surviving the hard conditions of a wartorn, sarajevo esque city. Right now the players are only near the breach, which has porous ground with a ton of pits and microdungeons of 4-8 rooms, but other features include-the central tower of the death lord-the radius around it akin to the zone from STALKER, anomalies, undead, strangeness-submerged part of the city-a giant hole entrance to a sewer system-a seawall manned by skeletons with longbows-the ziggurat of the great Orkin Priest who is locked in psionic and physical combat with the deathlord, and the land between them being a giant no mans land of skeletons, orkin fighters, mercenaries, and pits of death-Mercenaries boarded up in a large administrative building, surrounded by the zombies of their former allies, questioning their loyalty-a huge stretch of the city cloaked in perpetual shadow-a neighborhood of town turned entirely to stone filled with hateful ghosts-a gigantic pit in teh earth reaching in the cities catacombs where skeletons mill about in a grotesque industrial process of assembling each other-metal deposits within the earth that have raised themselves in giant, spiky towers, assailed by the flying undead1/2
>>947834182/2Like I said, I just toss in stuff from random modules, ideas I had, randomly generated dungeons, a huge sewer macro-dungeon connected to some of the micro dungeons, and whatever else comes to mind. It's a torn apart city caught in a war from 3000 years ago, in a strange and foreign world. It'll probably take my players forever to clear it out but thats good I think. The deathlord is quite a few levels above them.another minor conflict is that they only paid their carriage to wait for them for 3 days, and they're trying to figure out what to do with the huge amount of Orkin who are in a city with dwindling resources and ever increasing terror- do they stay behind and loot and fight the city, and risk having to walk 45 miles with this huge mass of people, or do they leave and return, and hope that the orkin can hold out for a week?
Any good gladiator material aside from The Complete Gladiator's Handbook?
>>94783334I guess we just have different personal definitions of Gonzo then because I tend to lean more towards the strict definition of it meaning unconventional strange exaggerated and outlandish. I would very much so say that ASE is gonzo. Because its hard to envision the second floor of your mega dungeon having a giant circus full of mutant clowns and a rampaging T-Rex that gets loose, and being down the hallway from a chamber filled with statues of real life heavy metal musicians and a magical ax that is actually guitar and cast different spells for you when you play different heavy metal rhythms, that shit is extremely gonzo to me.Stonehell is on the border of Gonzo for myself. You mentioned the coffee machine, and yeah that's a little bit sciencey, but coffee has been drank for centuries, and I would reckon that those crafty Arabs probably had some type of device for brewing and serving the coffee, so a magical version of that the automatically replenishes, isn't too far fetched imo. It's definitely a lot more Gonzo when you consider the ancient alien hyperborean aryans on level five, but you can easily explain there technology away has just being enchanted artifacts (which really they basically are anyways)
>>94783465ACKS? Thyatis/Karameikos boxed set?
>>94782168Here's the list of best official adventures to introduce someone to D&D. Have fun!https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2020/09/osr-introductory-adventures-list.html
>>94783450>It'll probably take my players forever to clear it outDo you restock if they don't take measures to keep the cleared sectors clear?
>>94784181yeah absolutely. as more Orkin die, they by necessity get raised as undead and fill the microdungeons and sewers. more adventures seeking loot come by, die, etc. vermin and monsters wander in, searching food and seeing collapsed walls, and find their way into dungeon. The players are still too small scale to consider settling such a city and calling it their domain, so I don't think they'll clear it out in the sense of settling ground for a fortress, but I just mean clearing it out in the sense of looking for loot and getting what they want out of it.
>>94784219Sounds like an excellent campaign, thanks for sharing.
>>94784231thank you anon. running it again tonight and very excited.
Update on my hexcrawl map. I added sheet metal and a frame, and glued magnets to the bottom of each hex. The next step I want to do is make the map topographical. Each hex will have a letter and number underneath. I could use some suggestions on how I can make the map look “realistic” on top, while keeping the hexes removable. I’m thinking either I do a layer of cork or foam, then tear up the topside? Or I do something with glue, sand, and kitty litter. Not exactly sure how.
>>94784959You might get some terrain-building-derived advice on this /wip/, /awg/, and /hwg/.
What adventure would you use to run an open 1e table where you anticipate both 5efags and players who have never played d&d before to show up?
>>94785574>What adventure would you use to run an open 1e tableNone because the point of 1e is long-term play with reliable long-term players.
>>94785652But the only way to get any players for 1e is an open table, especially if you don't have an IRL playgroup already. I refuse to play online. An open table is the only way to gain interest in the age of 5e players in any area with isn't an urban metropolis.
>>94785574I'd play D&D, where you have a town and a dungeon and a wilderness, and let 'em go nuts.
>>94785724trvth nvke: people won't fucking play osr games unless you tempt them with an open table. Then you ask the repeat open table players to play in your closed table campaign. It's the only way to play any OSR game unless you have an existing closed table game of another game or consign yourself to the hell that is online play
>>94784452session went terribly. almost no one paid attention besides my one irl friend. everyone was busy eating, or tired (at 9PM est!), or i had to call their names multiple times to get their attention like a fucking child. as though it werent obvious enough before, the fact no one read any of the fucking rulebook at ALL was incredibly apparent tonight. "uhh do i roll d6 to see if i hit with my bow" "uhh what AC do I have" "uuhhh how much exp did i have from last session" YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO KEEP TRACK OF THOSE THINGS!eventually one player gotr so drowsy i just called it and said we'd regroup next week. im thinking of just saying im busy with school and work so i can only run my other campaign right now with people who actually give a damn. this shit sucks man.
Hello, anons. I'd like to ask you a question, or rather find out how you deal with the following situation.Considering a dungeon, regardless of the type of random encounter, such as 1 in 6 every two turns, 1 in 12 every one turn, etc., how do you deal when a group wants to take a break? There are various reasons for this, but I'd like to know how you maintain the chance of an encounter. Do you reduce it, keep it the same, and if there's an early encounter, does it interfere with what you're doing, or something else.There are different contexts too, such as taking shelter in a room, an open room/corridor, etc. If you have different specific approaches I'd love to read about them.
>>94784959wow this looks like an exciting project, best of luck>>94786483that fucking blows anon, my sincerest condolences. may your other campaign go better>>94786518i would rule that the chance of an encounter doesn't go down just because the characters needed a break - if it benefited the design of the dungeon, i would assign "quieter" zones where the chance of encounter is lower or the time between encounter checks is greateradditionally, once a portion of a dungeon is cleared out, you could reduce the chance of wandering monsters there accordingly
>>94786683>if it benefited the design of the dungeon, i would assign "quieter" zones where the chance of encounter is lower or the time between encounter checks is greaterIn one specific case, that's what I considered doing. Since it was a closed room, the door was nailed shut and the group wasn't doing anything noisy, there wasn't much chance of a random encounter.>additionally, once a portion of a dungeon is cleared out, you could reduce the chance of wandering monsters there accordinglyThat makes a lot of sense. I hadn't imagined that possibility.
>>94780679>the slow spell stacks with itself and other slow effectsACK
>>94786518Wandering monsters pass through the dungeon, that's what the rolls are for. If something's changed in their home they're gonna notice it."Why is this door nailed shut, and why are there torches crackling on the other side when we all have darkvision?"If you try to rest in the dungeon proper, you're going to get interrupted by wandering monsters.This can be done in specific circumstances -- suppose your players find a secret room that's full of treasure that none of the dungeon denizens had carried off to adorn their lairs; that's probably unknown to the locals, so if you close that door behind you and rest quietly, I'd reduce or even skip the wandering monster check, and if one did show up I'd roll to see if it notices the recent footprints in the dust going into the wall, and go from there -- I wouldn't have them pop into the previously sealed secret room. Of course depending on what's in the dungeon the "secret room" may be a secret hoarding spot for something, in which case we're back to "it's not a good idea to try to sleep in the dungeon unless you're a monster who lives there"
>new dungeon features forced sex conversion cultitsts and human sacrifice
essential DM reference for surprise in AD&D
>>94782974If you looked at early D&D and not just be buttblasted about modern D&D you would see that it had stuff one would call Gonzo. Expedition to the Barrier Peaks comes to mind.
>>94782974>>94782974Since it's very first incarnations d&d (odd, 1e, BX) has included science fantasy and been quite "Gonzo" indeed.Just because you don't like the extremity of modern D&D gonzo, doesn't mean that it didn't exist in the past.
players keep lighting shit on fire with flammable oil (lvl 1 so in dungeons of weaker nature is somewhat viable) and making ever more complex strategies to use flammable oil (using bards to mesmerize people so they can lather them up) wat do
>>94787468let them, enjoy their engagement, and roll with it. It will carry them until it doesn't.
>>94787468Enemies start using itEnemies immune to fire start showing up
>>94783334Good take. Science fantasy that isn't constantly introducing new elements for novelty or surprise probably isn't gonzo, just as science fantasy that maintains consistent rules of logic probably isn't gonzo. Arduin Grimoire is the archetypical example of gonzo D&D—people were already calling it gonzo 20 years ago, though I'm not sure who was the first to call it gonzo.
>>94785652No, it wasn't you fucking nogamer. AD&D was used for tournament play the moment the books were printed. You know, sit down at a table for four hours, play a game with a character completely new to you, have fun and you're done.
>>94787468>players engage in game and come up with creative ideas on how to face challenges >how do I fix it??You said it yourself, it’s an early level party and dungeon, it will stop working as they progress and they will have to think of something else
>>94787506yeah you're right i need to let go of my other-RPG tendencies>>94787469truth nuke. must remember to roll with the OSR philosophy. this is my first osr campaign so i am struggling with some adjustments>>94787474also good idea
>>94787202Nice, thanks for sharing, but while I agree it's supported by an example in the PHB, I'm not so convinced that someone silent and invisible only surprises on 4 in 6. That implies that Elves and Halflings scouting are the equivalent of silent and invisible. Seems like an exaggeration.
>>94787496Tournament play with 5etards with a twelve second attention span who don't read the rulebook. Right.
>>94787742then why are you even posting if youre just gonna bitch and moan?
>>94787734what chance of surprise would you say someone invisible has? silent? both?
>>94787734>I'm not so convinced that someone silent and invisible only surprises on 4 in 6its another one of those rules that come from players scumming up garys od&d campaign, so he nerfed it in ad&d. each of those are +2 in 6 originally, but this results in inv+sil being essentially perfect, so he nerfed it to +1 in 6 each
>>94787781as a note on the subject, an invisible stalker has a 5in6 surprise (and is an air elemental type)
>>94780679I want to make a tutorial dungeon like tomb of the serpent kings. Whats a good way to do this in the sense of, what core lessons should i be conveying? What are some key rooms, traps and scenarios i need to include? The very basics are obvious>manage resources like light and time>look for hidden stuff>watch for traps>combat is dangerous, set it to your advantage>Undead are scary>save or die is scary>solve problens with unconventional solutionswhat else should i cover? Also, im looking to integrate a sense of verticality to the dungeon (aka can see floors below it) any tips to incorperate that & on a map?
>>94787496>AD&D was used for tournament play the moment the books were printedTSR's misguided attempt at monetizing D&D isn't actually important
My hunt for pic related continues.Context: This used to be a PDF you could download to use on POD sites like lulu. However at some point the files been altered/corrupted and when you go to download it from its source, the cover is grey with strange ugly black bars around certain parts like the logo.Anyone got any ideas on where to find this? im trying to find the paperback/perfectbound specifically but iill be very happy if both are found.
>>94788334I have it, but what do I get in return?
>>94788334https://gofile.io/d/ytzTjY
>>94788418THIS ONE HAS THE SAME GREY BARS! ive looked back in the post archives and all of them do, whats wild is that anons and other people online Posted pics of the printed covers that are all black. so it has to exist somehow.>>94788395My Gratefulness. I would appreciate it greatly if you shared.
>>94788431At least one anon also printed with the same imperfect cover, and it understandably looks shitty. i dont want my PODS to look like this.
>>94787751I was NTAYRT. I was saying I agree with him, not bitching about anything.
>>94787761+2 each? That depends a bit on how you understand surprise, since it includes factors like morale and readiness, according to Gygax, but it seems to be reasonable that if you are both silent and invisible you should surprise 100%. I understand that there's factors like seeing dust move and smells, but that I feel is included in detect invisible for high level and intelligence. +1/+1 might be okay against monsters with exceptional smell.>this results in inv+sil being essentially perfect, so he nerfed it to +1 in 6 eachIs that a huge deal?
>>94787781>its another one of those rules that come from players scumming up garys od&d campaign, so he nerfed it in ad&d. each of those are +2 in 6 originally, but this results in inv+sil being essentially perfect, so he nerfed it to +1 in 6 eachIt sounds to me that at that point it's the granularity of using a d6 for surprise that is showing its limits. I kinda understand not wanting 100% surprise, but nerfing invisible + silent to 67% is an overcorrection. Perhaps one should switch to a d20 or d100 and tweak modifiers so it's 90% for silent + invisible.I get that the d6 is a holy cow and rolling a d20 for activities gives us the hives and makes us feel like we're WotCfagging skill checks.
>>94787800>as a note on the subject, an invisible stalker has a 5in6 surprise (and is an air elemental type)So maybe +2 for invisible and +1 for silent might be a good compromise? With "quiet" being +0, that's the bare minimum to even be able to surprise in the first place, and concealed-but-not-invisible at +1.
>>94788431You could always use the image you posted as the cover and then just print pages 2+, silly anon
>>94788431It seems I'm the only person to have saved the google drive covers before they got deleted. You have DCF and the FAGs to help you out though. >>94788528439 KB, 1600x1029vs9.91 MB, 5775x3825
>>94788688ANON YOURE A DAMN HEROyou got the other one? i cant check if this is the softcover one
>>94788730its the only one of the black covers but I have other covers too. i can also post the raw black cover jpg and you can expand or reduce the center slightly before converting to pdf (to upsize for hardcover or downsize for softcover) The cover I used is 38 MB! And yeah, us FAGs always try to help out fellows out. Hoohoo!
>>94788763May you please post what you've got thats related to it? im wanting to donate this to the O-S-Rchive so other anons can use it for the future (and ill throw it on some other assorted archives.)
>>94788785Indeed the drive of files was deleted!https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hkfpvFS8JqSItd2gMlS3qlAKy845ckF1it was mentioned herehttps://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=82058Im uploading all I have onto a mega, will post after sleepies. FAG, out
>>94788872God bless anon
>>94785357>Oh yeah, NOW, it's not about the map.Why do you keep bringing up the map? The problem with that module is that it is a series of extremely specific challenges that the players have to take in a specific order, while attempting and failing in a specific way, and learning a specific lesson at each step before moving on to the next step that they are supposed to fail in new way #2, stir and repeat. It's pedantic, infantilising, and unnecessary.
>>94788957NTA. I guess the dungeon *might* be useful for completely new players with the understanding that's it's training wheels
>>94789009Except D&D doesn't work like that, because it's not a series of problems you can't avoid, each with exactly one solution, that you have to solve in order, building up each time on the last problem solved. If it's training wheels, it's training wheels for a different vehicle.
>>94789017A "tutorial" is not unheard of, and doesnt per se predicate the actual game or it's world. I'll leave it at that though, as it seems you feel very strongly on the matter.
>>94789023>A "tutorial" is not unheard ofD&D is not a video game.
>>94787084>carefully stack Slow spells to take down the toughest of foes>gone in a dispelACK
>>94789042This. People treating d&d like a video game is why 5e is so shit. The 2014 rules weren't terrible, but the community started treating it like a video game. I remember going to a 5e open table at an LGS 8 years ago and a guy asked if he could throw his sword. Throwing your sword is retarded, but it is plausible that you can do it, it just probably won't be effective. The situation isn't covered by the rules of 5e. So instead of coming up with an on-the-spot ruling for a dude throwing his sword, the DM says:>"You can't throw your sword, there's not any rules for that in 5e. But you can in pathfinder, pathfinder has rules for that. Pathfinder is awesome."It was fucking awful
>>94784959How flat do you want them when not in use? Because you could always do something simple like a tree for a forest, flocking for plains, a rock or 3d printed mountain for mountains. Simple things like that can let people know what a tile is at a quick glance and is simple to do.
Anyone know of any systems for inventing mundane technology in AD&D/BX?
>>94784959You should definitely talk to terrain thread and /wip/. They're the giga niggas of this kind of work.
>>94787742Where's that anecdote of Gygax coming out of running a tournament shellshocked after like a hour, having already killed off all the groups he was refereeing because not one of them had basic dungeoneering procedures in place and they all died to a stair trap in the first room? Anyone have a link to that handy?
>>94787800This post encapsulates the art of good refereeing. Find a representative example of the thing being done, and apply it. Reflecting on the Invisible Stalker is also useful in that it shows why you wouldn't want silent invisibility to be too effective (namely, for players to have some reasonable chance at apprehending it). The tendency of both realism and fairness toward players would otherwise be to emphasise how hard it is to detect such a figure, but in practice it's bad for gameplay, just as allowing NPC assassins to kill a sleeping PC without letting the player react, as long as the assassins roll well.
>>94787829>secret exits/entrances>secret shortcuts>negative space on player maps revealing possible secrets>deeper = more danger>not everything wants to kill you>the goal is treasure>THE GOAL IS TREASURE
Why did OSE remove the fighter niche protection and make it so so many other classes could use magic swords? Actually retarded
What's the weirdest shitbrew piece of autism you've seen?Castles and Crusades made the fireball spell a cleric spell. I dont understand because every other spell works the right way, but fireball is specifically only something a cleric can use
>>94787829B1, In Search of the Unknown
Random generator I'm working on as an experiment. It is the unholy child of davesmapper.com and Paolo "Tsojcanth" Greco's one-page dungeon linked here:>>94781071Does this kind of dungeon look like something anybody might actually want to use?(It's three dungeons on three pages)
>>94789042And yet it is the foundation that modern fantasy games are built on. Either way, your post is completely irrelevant to the subject.>>94789357>schizo ramblings about 5e for some reason. Not just irrelevant, but off topic as well.
>>94792076NTA but I'm pretty sure the ramble was about 5e players treating the game like a video game, and that's something sets old-school play apart from modern "traditional" style gaming
>>94792102Sure, but it still seems like a bit of a stretch. I've got no skin in the game, but if you have new players and you tell them you are specifically running them through a couple of encounter scenarios designed exclusively to teach them some of the basic principles of the game, with the explicit understanding that this is not the normal gameplay style, but merely a introductory exercise, I don't really see what the issue is. Maybe it's because I've been playing with experienced players for so long, that I forget what it is like to try and get new players acclimated, so maybe I'm totally off the Mark.
>>94787468Like others said, let them. But make sure you're tracking their number and weight. Who is carrying that much flammable oil? Better hope they don't miss a save involving flames. Also there should be penalties to see and maybe saves to avoid coughing fits when they're lighting oil fires in enclosed areas.>>94791892Yes absolutely. This is how I picture 'jaquayed' dungeons in my head but its hard to convey it on paper.
>>94792140>I don't really see what the issue is.I think it's that a namefag did it
>>94791892Behold the marvels of technology!Nice, but I never really god how to use dungeons which are not "top down", they seem strange to me.
>>94791892i'd be more likely to use it if it included a grid
something interesting to note: at character creation, i offer my players clothes (for free, as their character is assumed to already have "the clothes on their back") or robes (at 6sp cost, as per ad&d 1e, the system we're using)the clothes weigh 30gp weight, the robes 25gp weight. no one has picked robes. all of my players would rather have an additional 5gp weight than pay a 6sp costthere's no comment or lesson here, just thought it was interesting to ponder
>>94792332Turns out that just like in real life, when people go on adventures they prefer a shirt and pants instead of a relaxation garment
>>94790750Knave making lockpicking an INT based skill.
>>94792140NtayrtPart of totsk I don't really get is why a tutorial has to be dumbed down. All the basic concepts of exploration and osr play work fine in an actual dungeon like B1-4. There's no need to db things down, you can literally explain as you go.
>>94792444>There's no need to *dumb things downI dunno, have you been on the internet before?
>>94792489If you play with people from here you get what you deserve.
>>94790750The usage die. Unironically does not make even a little bit of sense for its stated purpose and this is completely obvious from ten seconds of examination.
>>94792249Skerps was never a namefag.
>>94792517If that's your experience, then I'm sorry that's happened to you. Personally, my group is made up almost exclusively of people from osrg, we have been playing BX for almost 2 years of weekly sessions, and the end of this month marks the beginning of our third year playing. In that entire time there has only been one or two times of social friction, and the group has never had any in-game static either, even magic item distribution has only ever had one point of contention, and that was still resolved completely amicably. I suppose as in all cases though, your mileage may vary
>>94792613You're either lying out of your ass or a group of trannies
>>94788910>>94788872Here you go buddy, courtesy of the FAGs over at Dungeon Crawl Frenshttps://mega.nz/folder/VjMw1SjC#6WTUzEZ_3YQriPuUqGsiBw
>>94792280>i'd be more likely to use it if it included a gridPreferences? 10%, 20%, or 30%?
>Players opted to make buddies with the undead guarding some sacred tombs rather than looting it>Instead did them some favours and are now using the place as a well defended vault while trading with the undead /offering tithe>Even managed to wangle an intelligent, magic item sword out of the place through pure 'It's not doing anything down there, we'll build a temple to your goddess in a city if we can have it'Luv' me players, they're such a crew.
>>94793264An interesting and contentious assertion. Regardless of the objective answer, the person I'm replying to is specifically asking for the items I've posted, so your autistic petulant pedantry is not necessary.
>>94793094NTA but id go 30. >>94793099how did they make friends with undead? were they intelligent?
>>94793439Also nta but I completely agree with 30%. It helps a lot so that you don't have to squint as much so you can read the distances without having your face on top of the map
>>9479309430% is good, hell, 40% might even be goodmuch more useable now
>>9479309410% is good, 20% is enough, I would not go higher than 30%.
B2 stonehell with osric/1e or barrowmaze using b/x?
>>94794071Why are you making that dungeon / edition association in the first place? You can play either one with either edition.
>>94794143Okay, barrowmaze or stonehell?
>>94794227NTA. Personally I would say stonehill, but I have only read Barrow maze and not played it. But I did play Stonehell for 20 weeks all the way down to level five, and it was a fantastic experience. It's also very well constructed and well written. I like what it does, a lot
>>94794367I've heard that the amount of treasure provided kind of blows. Is that true?
>>94794382Possibly, but my party was already fairly leveled when they started, so I beefed up the treasure all around. Not really a big deal in my opinion
>>94794071>>94794227Rappan Athuk converted to OSE Advanced but with 2e spells
DCC question:I've seen the Quantum Traveller and Quantum Wanderer classes in the compendium, and I'm wondering if anyone has ran or played in a Sliders/dimension hopping/planeswalking game?Or is there a blog or module out there where someone had actually hacked out a legit campaign and/or dimensional travel rules other than planar step and the "usual" planes? It seems like an untapped gold mine of a campaign. >>94781772That's close to an idea I had for a game. War happens .Magic nukes get dropped, but spread across the entire world. The earth is scorched by radiation and harsh sunlight, and anything that was aboveground dies, reanimates, or horribly mutates. On the other hand, most kingdoms have wizards on-staff who saw how the weapon would get out of control, so word travelled and people fled underground with anything they could carry. Most didn't make it, but some were insightful enough to grab books, maps, and notes on the Underdark before it fully hit the fan. Now the colonies are trying to grow/cultivate underground using magic to emulate sunlight, experimenting with resistance to the elements outside, and connect with other colonies via the Underdark, gruelling tunnel work, or what brief overland routes they can handle. The PCs would be trained up as explorers first and foremost. I also thought it'd be neat if most of the Underdark were uninhabited ruins, since (logically) drow, duergar, etc societies would easily collapse in an isolated, resource-sparse environment and their idea of functionality in government is "fuck everyone but me." They'd still be found in isolated enclaves here and there, and have a bone to pick with the surface races now that they're on roughly equal footing.
>>94795253Also: inb4 "hot dog suit masterrace."
>>94795253>DCC question:>I've seen the Quantum Traveller and Quantum Wanderer classes in the compendium, and I'm wondering if anyone has ran or played in a Sliders/dimension hopping/planeswalking game?tbqhwy those classes/concepts did not seem playtested to me (came from GFA 2024), and extremely loosey-goosey even by DCC standards. I think it would be much simpler to just physically teleport characters to other places.
>>94795283I get that, it just seems that the implied campaign behind both classes of, "hodge-podge group from across time and space thrown into alien settings" isn't done enough. If someone wanted those specific classes, fine, but I was thinking of whoever from wherever on a serialized Isekai.
>>94795350As gonzo as you make it, tbqh. There's weird shit build in (magical mishaps, especially), but you could just as easily give it a coat of paint and go hard mudcore, high fantasy, or even LeGuin-esque social low fantasy. The team are the first to admit their inspiration from 70s cartoons, but they left it flexible enough to just work on its own. There's also a FUCKING TON of homebrew and 3rd party out there, which is always fun to dig through.
>>94795347There are better options, particularly gods and patrons, such as MCC's Tetraplex who is canonically multiversal, or Crawl's Van Derwhatever who is operating in multiple timelines using versions of himself, or the XCC Greco-Roman pantheon who can just grab people from wherever without warning. Quantum Leap is not as interesting as that in my view.>>94795350Some are gonzo, some are crap, but very few are gonzo crap (Completely Unfathomable being one of the notables of that category).
>>94795425That's not what low fantasy means. LeGuin wrote high fantasy novels.
Tomb of the Serpent Kings is a mediocre adventure. Additionally, the idea of a step-by-step tutorial to learn how to play D&D is inherently flawed. D&D is about free-form play in an open world. Setting the players in a situation in which they have to solve a series of problems one by one, each time with a correct prescribed solution, sets the wrong tone and player expectations.You learn D&D by playing D&D, not by having to go through what is ultimately a series of boring riddles.
>>94796486That seems like a reasonable take to me, anon. If that anon upthread hadn't tried to imply that there was something wrong with only having one entrance to a one-floor dungeon I would have been more receptive to his dislike of the module, but it felt like there was more going on there than an honest criticism.
>>94796502>If that anon upthreadPretty sure it was multiple Anons. One brought up the "one entrance" thing, but it wasn't the only criticism that was brought up.
>>94794382Kind of. I just doubled it.
how do you describe dungeons, landscapes, etc?running a hexcrawl right now and I fear that i skip over too much detail when I speak and my players just kinda imagine wandering from featureless plain to featureless plain. do you anons have a process for description?i tend to do more writing then i do speaking so its hard to get across what i want when i verbalize it
>>94796413Why was this comment deleted? It didn't break any rules.>>94797027>how do you describe dungeons, landscapes, etc?Odd question, it's just a matter of providing the available information.1. Describe the terrain in the hex. That's usually one word, like:>This hex is Hills.2. If the hex is smaller than the horizon distance, taking into account weather and visibility describe the terrain of adjacent hexes:>The adjacent hexes are also hills, except for the one to the north, that is mountains.3. Describe if there are roads or lakes on or rivers:>There's a road going northeast to southwest.4. If any have been found, say if there are any dungeon entrances, villages, lairs, or other relevant features:>Apart from this, there are no special features here that you can see, but you can search the hex.
>>94790335I think this was a recollection from Mike Mornard about the black hole in the wall in S1 but I cannot remember where it was posted.
>>94793439>how did they make friends with undead? were they intelligent?They are.And the NPCs aren't too bad either, dohohoh!Jokes aside, the undead are wraiths that were created by a shrine of priests being executed by a cult. They're now advanced-HD spectres with a seethe-on about the people that did it.The PCs introduced themselves by bringing the severed head of the cult leader while safeguarded under a circle of protection against undead.They then pitched teaming up as>We avenged your deaths, either you can keep seething at us and we fight for nothing more than its own sake and this shrine becomes a ruin, abandoned by your people and forsaken by your god>Or>We bring you acolytes to train and in 20-30 years time you move on to the happy hunting ground satisfied that everything you knew in life has been passed on and the Shrine still lives.As DM it fit with pretty much everything the ghosts wanted, for the most part undead in my settings might be dangerous (especially when pissed off) but they're not hateful of the living.Especially when the living do them a solid and are homies about things.
>Forgot to add the relevant pages. Enjoy!I have mixed feelings about the Heroic Legendarium: It takes post-1983 AD&D (Unearthed Arcana, Manual of the Planes, and so on) and ramps it up a ton, with lame-ass character options such as "catblooded", "dhampir", and "dragon-blooded". Ew.There's still a few good things. One I do like and I (re?)discovered recently is the full humanoid - demi-human racial preferences table on pages 113-115. It quantifies something I've always felt, that (evil) Humanoids have, on average, more negative reactions to Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes than they do Humans --- in general and beyond the specific ones listed in the M&M.This acts as an additional balancing factor for demi-humans: A party full of Dwarves and Elves will, on average, elicit worse reactions from humanoids, whereas an all-Human party might manage to parley often enough.Ceterum admoneo DCC non esse OSR.
>>94797538>"catblooded", "dhampir", and "dragon-blooded"You mean things that could and probably should have been added to AD&D instead of "elf but more magic", "gnome but more magic", and "dwarf but more magic"? Hell, we never even got an "official" half-ogre in the books. The issue with race saturation/freakshit isn't that they exist, it's that the worlds they're in don't acknowledge how weird and unsettling they are. To use a more concrete example, my current OSE PC is an Enlightened Giant Crab on the Isle of Dread. Is that weird? Yeah, but the islanders are used to weird shit so the torches and spears don't come out immediately, the same for a zombie retainer another player has. On the other hand, we would/will find difficulties back in the party's home region, which is roughly on the level of 1500s Europe and is rife with anti-demi-human sentiment.DCC, qui cum OSR et D&D ludunt et gaudent, antecedente ex FAG, ut Gygax et Arneson.
>>94797950>>94797538you boys are speaking in them weir devil wordsin terms of expanded races one of my players is a monkey made sentient by mutational-magic energies, trained by a wizard who found him in the desert. he's cool, and can climb at the level of a first level thief, but has a -2 to most reaction rolls
>>94797950There's a difference between a DM allowing players to play whatever they want but on a case by case basis and adding a bunch of races and classes in the core books turning a setting with its own theme and internal coherence into a kitchen sink fantasy freak show. The former maintains an internal distinction between what is ordinary and what is exceptional in-world, the latter turns your setting into a 2025 school classroom in LA, and deserves to end the same way.Not that a fan of WotC D&D like yourself would understand the difference.
>>94798048>setting with its own theme and internal coherenceMan, this is such a hard thing to explain in words sometimes.It's not easy to explain what delinates a consistent setting from any-bullshit-goes, all you can do is kind of thumb it really sometimes. But hearing you put it like that explains something I've been trying to put words to for a while, especially given the setting for my current game is basically 'Giants vs Dragons'
>>94798048Which setting is Heroic Legendarium changing? If you're instead whinging about my support for new humanoids instead of demi-humans v2, then how do you cope with Gygax 1) retconning in the great grand druid, 2) retconning druids to be all male, with an all-female druidess order existing off-screen all along, 3) creating the hierophant, 4) turning the paladin into a cavalier sub-class, 5) barring thieves from starting as Good, and 6) ignoring 80% of established precedents in D&DG for the Greyhawk pantheon?>Not that a fan of WotC D&D like yourself would understand the difference.Hey pal, I'm not the one who needed some literal who's charts to extrapolate racial attitudes for every race because I'm unimaginative and can't read old issues of Dragon. Save the attitude for your (non-existent/imaginary) playgroup.>>94798106>the setting for my current game is basically 'Giants vs Dragons'That's not a setting, that's a gimmick, exactly the kind of thing 3e/5e games would use.
>>94798106>Giants vs DragonsI like it. Classic and generic enough to be relatable and comprehensible without necessitating a lore dump, not overly specific to the point of constricting player agency.People tend to use "Gygaxian naturalism" to refer to this idea that a setting should have its own internal coherence, ecology, theme, factions, and so on. In an ideal world the concept wouldn't deserve its own name because every author worth his salt already knows this. Let alone be attributed to Gygax who obviously didn't invent it, not that he ever claimed he had.But the RPG scene is plagued with tasteless talentless wannabe screen directors, so yeah, it's a useful term in practice.
>>94798272>how do you cope with Gygax having written UAIt's the millionth time you try this "gotcha", troll. You already know the answer, but it may be useful to repeat it for any n00bs passing by, so thanks for asking:The reason the topic of this general is the first decade of D&D is that much in D&D declined after 1983, including Gygax' own output. UA is from 1985, most regulars here agree it's for the most part not as good as the three core books, although some things may be salvageable.
>>94798272Janitor-supported namefag troll fuck off.
>>94798331>UA is from 1985And Manual of The Planes is post-Gygax TSR, and Heroic Legendarium is from the 2010s. So why were you posting non-OSR content in >>94797538 just to complain about it? Seems like you were shitposting, perchance even off-topic shitposting.>>94798281>Classic and generic enough to be relatable and comprehensible without necessitating a lore dump, not overly specific to the point of constricting player agency.If a dragon-giant war is so underemphasized as to be a mere background element then it's non-existent. G1 is one region getting raided by a relatively small force of giants, actual armies of giants should leave swathes of devastation, to say nothing of dragons.
>>94794071Module-wise it's up to you. Read both. System-wise, OSRIC. Weapon choice is more meaningful, 1st level characters are less likely to outright die immediately to a shitty goblin arrow, lots of gold sinks. It's meaty, and most of the added complexity is DM-facing rather than player-facing.
>>94798281>Classic and generic enough to be relatable and comprehensible without necessitating a lore dump, not overly specific to the point of constricting player agency.Well, the full lore dump version of the setting is:>World is cyclical>Titans create>Various things destroy, mostly dragons, fuck dragons>The last cycle though hasn't gone according to plan since the Titans started fucking humans>Now their degenerate, inbred heirs, the Giants and Ogres, rule over mankind and the stagnant hub of creation>Meanwhile things have cooled down enough that the Dragons have stopped being raving forces of raw destruction and gained sentience (Which is why they gather gold, for some unknown reason things of civilizational value keep them sane, a dragon without a hoard is a dragon that's going to start suffering from city-destroying-dementia)>Mostly hang out in the wild-lands further from the stabilizing forces of the Giants and have become an unexpected source of civilization in such places since no one tends to fuck with a dragonThe players themselves are Dragons and their various servants who go off and do things that require opposable thumbs. Council of Wyrms style. Big domain play aspects combined with faction play and dealing with the layers of ancient bullshit left over from past worlds that wasn't cleaned up by the Titans after they decided to play Tenga-toy with mankind.Players like it so far, I think I've hit the sandbox stride rather nicely and they've got a sense of place in the world.
Why is Seven Voyages of Zylarthen so PEAK?
>>94795469Word. I'll check out XCC. Dunno about Quantum Leap specifically, I was thinking more along the lines of Farscape but drawn from various "trope" dimensions and ship optional. Chrichton with a barbarian, a 70's daredevil, a literal black cat, a hacker/cyborg, etc tagging along. While I was away, though, I stumbled across "The Tribe of Ogg and the Gift of Suss" funnel from ravencrowking and it very nearly fits the bill. >>94795765I'd say that's debatable. High fantasy tends to be...let's say "cinematic" which I wouldn't use to describe the Earthsea series. There's definitely high stakes and exploration in the overall story, but about 95% of the time the characters are in very mundane-level circumstances and interactions. Like when the gang of thugs harassed the priestess (can't remember her name), it was very tense in a "woman alone at home talking with strange men" way. The wizard among them doesn't have crackling purple energy waving around,he just kinda menaces a bit like she's wasting his time. Hell, Ged himself is mostly walking, thinking, sailing, or watching things unfold in front of him. It's made abundantly clear that he's not super powerful, he's just fairly gifted, and gets knocked around a bit because - again - he's just a man. He never leads a charge of Valkyries wielding a flaming sword to save the world, he basically just goes somewhere to talk with the reality-ending horror. I LOVE LeGuin, but Earthsea is fairly low. If you're looking for me to adjust my previous comment, I'd say "DCC is great for Vance, and good for others with a little work."
>>94802306Correction: Tribe of Ogg is from Mystic Bull games.
>>94802306Anon is most likely using the original definition of high fantasy as any fantasy story set in a world that isn't Earth. Power level has nothing to do with it, so everything you wrote here is beside the point.
>>94803788I would call it the "literary" definition before calling it the "original" - but that's semantics on my part. Your post is objectively correct. A better delineation for other anon might be Leiber's definition of Sword & Sorcery compared to Epic Fantasy - where one concerns itself with more grounded and more individual, the other with more heroism and collective... but even then, that fails to illustrate a relative preponderance of magic: for which, off the cuff, I'm not sure what a "better" label would be.
>>94803811>even then, that fails to illustrate a relative preponderance of magic: for which, off the cuff, I'm not sure what a "better" label would be.Unironically, "literary" vs. "D&D" fantasy would seem to fit the bill here. Rare indeed is the pre-D&D fantasy story with as rich a proliferation of magic as even OD&D.
Starting to fill in my next dungeon. Under a lighthouse a war goes on between Troglodytes and Fish-Man for the attention of their patron Dagon and the right to execute a bunch of captured sailors. The third floor is meant to be their ruined city inside a giant cavern, but I'm not sure how I'm gonna map that quite yet.
Dead thread
>>94806712>Dead threadKilled by the janitor and his sockpuppet. When the namefag troll's comments are left up while all around him perfectly reasonable, on-topic, and fact-based comments are being deleted, Anons lose the desire to post.
Anyone know any good OSR Youtube channels or podcasts? Could be module overviews, actual plays or whatever, I just need something to play in the background while I paint dungeon tiles.Pic related, my progress so far.
>>94783579>ACKS>good
>>94806860Actual Plays, a bunch of them reviewed / recommended here:https://clericswearringmail.blogspot.com/search/label/actual%20play%20cast%20reviews?m=1In terms of podcasts / talk channels: BECMI Berserker is good - did a whole series on the Gazeteers for Known World; Wizard Goes Boom was interesting, though he's slowed down a bit; I've also been listening to captcorajus, TRILL, and there is always Tenkars Tavern.For podcasts, The Evil DM updates regularly and talks 1e; I've been listening to Monsters & Treasure; and Monster Man is very regular.Happy listening!
>>94804919For cities, you might want to use hexes - maybe 200 yard scale. Have the city in a big underground chamber.In terms of maps - I use this to make an initial layout:https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator...and then trace over it, move stuff around, to taste.
>>94806860>Anyone know any good OSR Youtube channels or podcasts?Listening to this interview right now. Good discussion.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYUS5MA11E8
>>94807017200 yards seems like a good range. either that or 40 yard hexes so each one would be a 10m turn of exploration. maybe 200 yard hexes subhexed into 5 40s(if im not mistaking my math)? I remember Lesserton & Mor did that with the city of Mor but with a septhex
>>94806860If you're intereated in chamai (and some other war games), there's purple druid games. Also delta's recorded how he plays his book of war stuff.
>>94807115>>94807050>>94806996Awesome, thanks fellas
>>94804919struggling to fill out more monsters for this. what other aquatic/semi-aquatic monsters might troglodytes and fish-man keep as slaves/attack dogs?
>>94808473crocodiles maybe, octopi are very intelligent for animals and can spend quite some time out of water so giant octopi perhaps, could use giant toads or frogs, those are my ideas for attack dogsaquatic elf slaves could be good
>>94808609shit those are great. thanks anon i was having a creative block
>>94808473take the true D&D route and make a bunch of aquatic versions of other monsters
>>94808473The oceans are full of nightmares.See pic andanglerfishpoisonous sea slugsswarms of crabshelicoprion and countless other extinct monstersstands of animated kelp
whats a good amount for a ruler to offer GP wise for the living return of hostages saved by the players? 15GP per body?
>>94809327According to the relatives' means.Peasants 1gTownsfolk 10gMerchants 100gNobility 1'000gRoyalty 10'000gYou get the idea.
>>94809327>whats a good amount for a ruler to offer GP wise for the living return of hostages saved by the players? 15GP per body?That depends on the economic assumptions in your setting. If you go with the ACKS assumptions, picrel give you the expected monthly expenses by level / social class, which is basically the same as the wage, given that savings will be negligible.From this you need to compute the value of the person. Again, by the ACKS assumptions, the value of the person if they were a slave is:>33 Ă— monthly wage - 36 gp.Paying the value of the hostage *as a slave* would be appropriate if the ransomed person then became a slave to the ruler, which, unless you want to play it that way, would set an upper bound to the ransom value, you'd have to keep much lower than that --- that might be perhaps what the family might be willing to pay, given the means. If you use three monthly wages for each, you get:To stay between those extremes, I would ballpark it at 10Ă— the monthly wage. So>Unskilled labourer 6 gp>Skilled labourer 40 gp>Journeyman 75 gp>Master artisan 200 gp>Baron 3,000 gp>(Vis)count 20,000 gp>Duke/Prince 150,000 gpSaying that DCC is not OSR is a correct, on-topic, and perfectly appropriate comment to make.
>>94809327>>94809737>I would ballpark it at 10Ă— the monthly wage(But then I listed 3Ă— the monthly wage, for some reason.)
>>94787829Most important lesson is to look for solutions that don't involve combat.>feed the monster>bargain with monsters>intimidate monsters
>>94801158>ayo I heard you like some appendix n so I put more appendix n in your od&d
>>94809737>>94809634>>94809767these guys are sailors, so i think im gonna ballpark it at 10g or so. vital to the economy, but relatively unskilled outside of things dealing with the sail.thanks for the advice yall!
>>948068603d6 down the line
>>94809737>1st level adventurers>12 gp monthly costI love ACKS but I've seen high level PCs insist on eating gruel and pigeons and sleeping in barns.
>>94809737>the last post talking about Goodman Goyslop was 35 hours ago>I better make a snide comment right here to remind everyone that Goodman Goyslop exists and I don't like it!You're either a turbo-retard or falseflagging and want people to talk about GG, either way you should touch dice.
Most functionalities are there, need to clean up the interface, do some debugging, complete the download/upload procedure.Page 1 is the pattern editor (decide which shape goes where), page 2 is the tile editor (given the shapes, populate with random tiles, can replace and rotate / mirror each one).I've settled on 25% grid opacity, seemed like a good compromise. Higher than that and the grid started too look too much like some of the features.
>>94811466This is why I like 0e/1e upkeep - you don't worry about food/taverns/hookers: its a flat fee based on level per month.
>>94811466While you're not forced to pay monthly expenses the players lose a lot of the social advantages of being high level. Up to and including retainers not respecting you and leaving if you aren't spending as much or more than they are on wine/women/food/tithes.>>94811423Jon straddles that line gaming vs storyfag for me but I give it a listen occasionally and enjoy it well enough.
>>94812162great work anon, keep us updated
>>94812286>Jon straddles that line gaming vs storyfag for meI feel like you have to have at least a tiny bit of storyfagging or players will get bored. personally I'd be perfectly content with a game that was just>You enter a 50 foot by 50 foot square chamber. There are 7 goblins with spears. There is a treasure chest in the southeast corner. What do you do?over and over again but I think I'm in the minority
>>94812553so long as you remember that the story is these three elements only>what is generated by the results of the dice>what the players do>what happens if the players do nothingthen you can do as many silly voices and in depth villain motivations as you desirea "story" is only bad if it becomes a thing that compromises the important parts of the game (fair and neutral refereeing, player agency etc) instead of enhancing it
>>94780679Anyone has recommendations for "classic" fantasy settings? I know the "classic" doesn't really mean anything, but in general any setting books which are not too gonzo, don't have too much sci-fi and are not Earth with monsters.A friend of mine asked for this, but I personally despise the FR, plus it's not really fine for OSR.Would Greyhawk be fine?
>>94812734>plus it's not really fine for OSRA world full of hyper-magic ancient wizard-king ruins with a focus on mercantilism isn't fine for OSR? u sure?In any case, yes Greyhawk is good.
>>94812734just use the Outdoor Survival map, that's all the setting you need
What's a good horror adventure for someone who has never run a horror adventure?
>>94812826NTA, Forgotten Realms sucks
>>94812734I guess this could be considered gonzo, but besides that...
i think forgotten realms is pretty good if you pretend the novels don't exist and only use selected information from before 3e
>>94813577this is fascinating holy shit
>>94812734The Phoenix Barony is pretty neat--very familiar, straight-forward but interesting material and just the right size to get you going.
how different are the rules from OSE to Dolmenwood? I am new to the hobby, and want to play some OSE, but everyone always recommends doing B/X cause of the examples of play and shit, but Dolmenwood books seem to have all that, could I essentially just read the dolmenwood books an it work?
>>94815854It depends on what you count as working.The TL;DR is that the guy who made OSE originally made it so he could publish Dolmenwood as a product for it (i.e. with his own system labeling). But then Dolmenwood became very popular for reasons I'm not clear on and he decided to capitalize on that by publishing it not as one setting book, but as its own complete three-book game, and so he added new rules tweaks to justify that, I think especially to those who had already bought in on OSE. It's meant to work in basically the same way in terms of rules procedures and such so in that sense it'll work, presumably, but if what you want is the exact BX/OSE experience, you won't get that because the classes are different and so on.Also, why in the shitfuck are you so resistant to just reading B/X if that's the universal advice you keep getting? OSE is literally just a B/X rules reference with an optimized layout for ease of lookup.
>>94815971I'm not resistant to reading B/X, in fact that's what I'm doing right now. I was just curious about Dolmenwood/OSE cause I was looking at the books and noticed they had examples of play, which was what OSE books were lacking, and why B/X was always suggested to read instead from my understanding
>>94815971>But then Dolmenwood became very popular for reasons I'm not clear onWidespread influencer shilling campaign. It was in development during the OGL fiasco and all of the 5e charlatans jumping ship from 5e latched onto it because of the whimsical cartoonish manbaby FOE nature of the setting. Right place, right time, or all of the KS money went straight to advertising.
>>94816020>I'm not resistant to reading B/X, in fact that's what I'm doing right now.Alright, cool. The main reason B/X is suggested instead is probably that it's the closest the OSR has to an accepted baseline, a lingua franca. Since Dolmenwood is one guy's homebrew – which is fine – it obviously doesn't fill that same function due to his house rules.>>94816104>all of the 5e charlatans jumping ship from 5e latched onto it because of the whimsical cartoonish manbaby FOE nature of the settingSee, this is the kind of narrative that makes me uncertain about it. You've got the chronology backwards here; Wormskin is edgy, not heccin' manbaby shit, and Norman changed Dolmenwood in *response* to the influx of disingenuous 5heads demanding to be coddled.I would totally agree that Shadowdark rode the exact wave you're talking about for those exact reasons, but I don't really see it with Dolmenwood.
>>94816020Please just play vanilla BX instead of starting off with somebody's homebrew system and special campaign
>>94816263Vanilla BX kinda sucks for the fighter though. They get a lot more to do in AD&D and retroclones which backport some AD&D or extra rules vs 1HD creatures.
Open Table Play Report #3.5Previously: https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/94609427/#94624952tl;dr elf's patron tells him to go kill meteorologists, every single enemy in the building dragged into an encounterDespite having previously dished out a heaping helping of pain on the last round of combat (back in 2024), the Weather-Watchers strangely lost momentum and failed to do much of anything on the first round of resumed combat, and at the end of the round the dwarven duo of Lumpy and Stumpy arrived to further bolster the party. The green elf tried to regain enough sense to flee but did so too late and was cut down as he ran, his axe glowing with weird purple energies for a while. The Weather-Watchers were cut down to a man, defiantly screaming about the POWER OF SCIENCE even as the intruders butchered them. Then, the party did their standard procedure of piling corpses in front of the door and taking a nice long nap.After they, they used flung corpses as improvised battering rams/trap bait throughout. The kitchen was staffed by two strange creatures with crystalline bodies but mechanical limbs, devils from a service-industry Hell; Although they made some tasty sandwiches for the party, the request for hallucinogens was answered with a moldy, rotting, and physically-corrupting cheese wheel. The party left them to ransack the rest of the tower, with one wizard finding a prophetic scroll apparently describing the party's triumph, while the cleric accidentally got psyop'd by a storm-demon cult's schizo ramblings. They found the great armillary sphere on the upper floor, which they were tasked with destroying. Then they started jamming corpses into the parts until it stopped moving. It will know take a full year for it to be functional again.Now content, the party decided to turn this tower into their base, and after cutting deals with the kitchen devils to allow them to corrupt some customers, is going to open a cursed bed and breakfast.
>>94816288It's weird because everyone agrees that the B/X Fighter is fucked but also that the B/X Thief is fucked. Is this just regular caster supremacy? Or is someone willing to go to bat for the idea that e.g. the Dwarf is fine as-is but the Fighter isn't?
>>94816373>the B/X Thief is fuckedNot if you run it correctly. Thieves didn't invent sneaking and stuff, you could do all that in Gary's OD&D games before the thief class arrived. Thieves were meant to do the same thing that regular adventurers could do, but better.
>>94816373Probably because the BX Thief isn't that different between OD&D and BX. It's only AD&D and BECMI that mess with the skill ratings. AD&D thieves are just way more component.
>>94816288it's so funny how I've heard b/x toddlers cry about how extra fighter attacks "slow down combat". it's literally the opposite
>>94816590How slow is it to roll a few attack dice against a bunch of goblins? The most I'll admit weapon speeds and segments is fiddly to use but that's AD&D not BX.
>>94816595I'm not accusing anyone itt of this idiocy but I've had this discussion with B/X players who disliked the idea of AD&D style sweep attacks/multi attacks because >It slows down combat!>In OSR, the answer isn't written on your character sheet! Special abilities are bad!>Balance doesn't matter so it's okay to make fighters weaker
>>94816639> I don't want this thing that makes the fighter fucking sick, like a whirlwind of deathWill never understand the thought process. I will mince on exactly how the fighter should get that extra ability, whether its sweeps, cleaves, or multi attacks. Haven't quite found which feels best.
>>94816639>In OSR, the answer isn't written on your character sheetLike every OSR precept, this one becomes cancer if overstated. "Combat is a fail state" is a classic other example of the same principle: totally accurate if you understand old-school play but constantly misinterpreted by newfags and outsiders in ridiculous, exaggerated ways.
>>94816681This man speaks truth
>>94816595>The most I'll admit weapon speeds and segments is fiddly to use>to useNobody with an interest in AD&D beyond jerking off to its apocrypha and "le RAW" is using that shit in practice.
>>94816723Watch out, you're gonna conjure up some AD&D poindexter who actually does that at his poindexter table.
>>94816681"Combat is a fail state" isn't a cancerous overstatement, it's an outright falsity with no real roots in the hobby. Combat is often times the only WIN state in the vast majority of early D&D adventures - the game evolved from a wargame after all. Combat needs to be approached with cunning and numbers advantage and risk assessment but to say it's a fail state is a sentiment only uttered by nogames nu-SR subversives.
>>94816806Congrats, you don't understand the term "fail state"
>>94816288>They get a lot more to doShut the fuck up with the WotC push buttons on character sheet bullshit. Play actual B/X with the actual B/X rules and treasure tables. See what happens when the Fighter starts to find intelligent swords. Something you *won't* get with Disneywood, by the way, because Gayvin Notman removed them.
>>94817035No, he's right and you're a moron and a newfag who's taken a NuSR primer as gospel.
>>94817100You're as dumb as the NuSR guys
>>94816681>Combat is a fail stateComplete lie and not a convincing one either. How would you go about running B2 without engaging in combat? The power of friendship? >>94817035What do you consider 'fail state' to mean then?
>>94817135Said he, while quoting NuSR "wisdom" he learnt on plebbit and Bin Miltard's YouTube channel.
>>94817139A fail state is a non-ideal option, the one when your ideal choice is not possible. No matter what scenarios you spin, the ideal option is gonna be to get the gold free and easy, without the danger (at low levels) or resource costs (at any level) that come from combat. Combat can be the best option available to you given specific circumstances, but nobody but an idiot would pick it if they could just walk in and take the gold and walk away scot-free."Fail state" as a term is similar to "fallback" or "plan B." It doesn't mean "YOU SHOULD NEVER DO THIS, GUYS!" like the NuSR retards and the I-hate-NuSR retards above think it means.
if "fail state" doesn't just mean "undesired outcome or situation" then i honestly don't know what it means either. I googled it and just for results for some movie
>>94817318Would it help illustrate the idea if I say that running away is a fail state for combat? And the fail state for running away would be "hauling the corpses back and paying for resurrection." A TPK is not a fail state, that's just a dead end.
>>94817313Combat is frequently the best option available from the realistic choices the players have - if the definition of "fail state" is so broad that it includes unrealistic or impossible choices then it doesn't seem like a very useful phrase. By that logic, wouldn't negotiating with the monsters be a fail state too, because the REAL best outcome would be just stumbling on a room overflowing with unguarded treasure?
>>94817361>because the REAL best outcome would be just stumbling on a room overflowing with unguarded treasure?That's not a plan, so it's not a state.The problem here is that some nerds (RPG design theory nerds) used some nerd jargon (from computer programming) that was common in their circle to describe stuff, safe in the knowledge that the other nerds they knew would readily follow along, but they neglected to consider the vast number of dorks out there. Dorks are just as socially awkward as nerds, but they're neither smart, nor are they technically inclined. However, they do like to pretend they're nerds, so they latch on to nerd jargon they don't understand and wave their misunderstandings around like idiots. And that's what we call the NuSR!
>>94817313D&D is a wargame.
>>94817399You keep saying that like it's going to accomplish something in this context. The only thing I can respond with is a hearty "No shit, Sherlock."
>>94817313If I've got sleep prepared and 2-3 armoured fighters the easiest way to get all the gold out of a goblins den is to break in and start killing. You are correct to say that the best defence is simply not getting attacked but assuming there is some magic Monkey Island style solution to every encounter will just slow the game down to no ones benifit.If you want to emphasise non combat options that's fine but 'combat is a fail state' doesn't communicate that.
>>94817453>assuming there is some magic Monkey Island style solution to every encounterNobody is saying that.>'combat is a fail state' doesn't communicate that.Only because the term is not well understood outside the original context. It could have been worded "Combat shouldn't be your first choice" and that would convey the difference of mindset between modern and old-school games just fine, but then nerds wouldn't have been able to show off their cool nerd words.
>>94817077> WotC push buttons on character sheet bullshitWas literally talking about AD&D, what are you on about.
>>94816247Shadowdark is not OSR. Shadowdark is 5e smeared with B/X black-face.And the pejorative is "Nextbeard" - dammit.
>>94816806I can see why that caught on but yeah, it's got no basis outside of something like The Gem & The Staff (which is a puzzle module). Combat is a danger state, its risky, but you're not guaranteed to fail. Its like saying an XCOM mission is failed if you don't wipe the enemy pods in 1 turn. It sits alongside people thinking OSR D&D is an all-the-time murder-fest for characters, which is only really the case at level 1 and 2 if you're over-extending or expecting your 1 HD character to take more than a few hits. Combat is another part of the game to be thought-through and played.
>>94817313I like "Combat is Plan B".That has a much better ring to it.Going to steal that, Anon.
Pretty much all of the OSR Rules that you see out there make sense if, and ONLY IF, you're using them to contrast the game to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. "The Answer Isn't On Your Character Sheet" is a pretty dumb thing to say about a game where every class gets special abilities and half the god damn Player's Book is dedicated to magic spells, but it makes sense when you're explaining it to a 5e zombie who wants to solve every puzzle by switching off his brain and making an Insight check
>>94817525> "The Answer Isn't On Your Character Sheet" people sweating when asked how I determined what armor class I can hit.
>>94817471>It could have been worded "Combat shouldn't be your first choice"Just say that then 5head. Fail state is clearly being interpreted very differently than you are clearly intending it to be understood.+the fact the nusr poison everything they touch mean that no matter how much insisting and clarifying will change how that phrase is being understood.>>94817077>no intelligent weapons in disneywoodWhy are modern game designers so scared of intelligent swords?
>>94817562>Why are modern game designers so scared of intelligent swords?Cursed Items in general, and Magic Swords have the whole ego-rules associated with them.
>>94817313>>94817381>No matter what scenarios you spin, the ideal option is gonna be to get the gold free and easy, without the danger (at low levels) or resource costs (at any level) that come from combat.Sure but if you're in a position where there are monsters guarding the gold - you presumably need the gold to fend off starvation or advance your character in some way and failure to secure it potentially leads to a termination state, which logically means the game world and by extension most/all encounters are always in a default failure state and you're merely managing and handling the degree(s) of failure. >"Fail state" as a term is similar to "fallback" or "plan B."Plan A is a perfect combat plan with contingencies because the true "failure state" is being caught with your pants down when combat breaks out because whatever ideal option you cooked up to get this whimsical free and easy treasure has gone sideways and changed the variables of the encounter.Plan A prepares you for the best outcome of combat which was (mostly) an inevitability anyway, plan B is when you attempt to secure it free and easy and plan C is just executing plan A while hopefully having secured some additional advantage during the execution of B. But most of the time combat would have been a less risky plan in the first place. All that said I stand by my initial position; "combat is a fail state" is poor terminology even when using programming metaphors and is only parroted by people who don't play games.
>>94817562>Just say that then 5head.Why are you so retarded? I'm not the guy who wrote the Primer we're discussing, dummy. I can't retroactively go back and rewrite it to sate your autism.
>>94817448>Combat is a fail state in a wargame.Okay retard.
>>94817525>Pretty much all of the OSR Rules that you see out there make sense if, and ONLY IF, you're using them to contrast the game to Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition.Good point.
>>94817695BrOSR confirmed for short bus riders!
>>948175253rd Edition originally, but yes.
>>94817587>I'm not the guy who wrote the Primer we're discussingBut you are the one quoting a document that is benign at best and compels low iq story gamers to believe silly shit like 'combat is a fail state' at worst.>>94817565That's it. I'm putting magic swords in my game right now.
Intelligent swords can be fun, but require the ref to do a bit more cognitive load, as they are essentially their own NPCs. You can offload a bit of it on the PC - same as you can have the PC run their own hirelings - but you still have to keep the "take control" thing into consideration. IMO - its only about as draining as using morale on henchmen, but some refs don't like taking control of player characters because the player can feel cheated or become indignant.
>>94817711>Doesn't understand the basics of logical deduction.>Calls other people short bus riders.Since you're thins fucking stupid, I'll break it down in the simplest terms.If combat is a failure state, then the creators of the game would not have put nearly as much effort as they did into making it enjoyable.
Guys I am really nervous about running my first dungeon crawl. I used a mixture of random generation for maps and of course some of my own additions/tweaks. It's going to be 2 layers and I will be using a dry-erase battlegrid for player map progress. I realize that I won't be able to fit everything so I am nervous that this may be an issue if the players decide to retrace their steps a bit. Regardless, is there any tips for a first time dungeon crawl? Things I should be conscious of? Things I can expect the party to do that won't be so obvious? Basically I am just asking for advice of any kind, even if it may be an annoying question I do appreciate it and all the work that went into the sticky. These tools have been invaluable for my first design.
>>94818279You sound pretty well preped. Pre roll the random encounters, check the marching order and who has light when they go in, and most importantly make sure you have fun with your Fantasy Adventure Game
>>94818279>Guys I am really nervous about running my first dungeon crawl. Best of luck!>I will be using a dry-erase battlegrid for player map progress.No, you won't. The players map, not you.>Regardless, is there any tips for a first time dungeon crawl? You may get rules wrong and you'll certainly forget/skip procedures (wandering monster checks, reactions, surprise, morale, encounter distance), and it's okay. Focus on making the game run smoothly as best you can. Review after the game to see what you've missed, do better next time, but again without sweating it.
>>94818279>>94819474 has really good advice, especially on "make the game run smoothly". Do your best to remember the key procedures, but don't let your attempts bring the game to a screeching halt: momentum is the key thing to keep players engaged. If they're interested and have a fun time, they'll come back and you'll get the chance to practice further, and it will come in time. If you lose them due to a fumbling, rules-bound book-checking session, you're not getting that chance.I suggest a time-tracking sheet, to make it easy to track turns. Also, I don't know what your players' background is, but the one thing I found most striking for modern players in all the package of rules differences to remember early on was reaction rolls: the first time gnolls wandered up to their campfire and asked for food instead of trying to stab them it brought home the difference in a way me telling them ahead of time couldn't do.Good luck, anon.
>>94817888>But you are the one quoting a document that is benign at best and compels low iq story gamers to believe silly shit like 'combat is a fail state' at worstCorrection: I am /explaining/ the quote from the document to people who misunderstand it. It's not my fault that it was worded in a "clever" way that confuses people who don't know the terminology, that's an actual, real problem with the document. Other posters' reluctance to accept a straightforward explanation of what it was actually saying is their problem, however. On cue:>>94818259>logical deduction?>I've heard of it, so I are smrt>they put a bunch of fighting rules in the rule book>so that means you have to use them all the time!Whoa, we got a genius right here! Watch out, he'll cogitate at you!
>>94820720>It's not my fault that it was worded in a "clever" way that confuses people who don't know the terminologyIt's not the first time you try to defend that retarded idea by claiming it's some obscure advanced concept Few Understand™, you've already tried this weeks ago and you were ridiculed for it.Pretty much everybody here understands what that means, you're nowhere as smart as you think you are.
>>94820900>you were ridiculed for it.Good for you guys. Ridicule doesn't change facts
>>94820900>Pretty much everybody here understands what that meansthe conversation up there says different
>>94790750>>94790750>Castles and Crusades made the fireball spell a cleric spell. I dont understand because every other spell works the right way, but fireball is specifically only something a cleric can useNo, never seen that. t. C&C GM
>>94792876What a Chad
>>94794227Place White Plume Mountain in the center of the Isle of Dread.
How well does ACKS fare at lower levels? Is the kingdom-scale stuff the main draw? I'm still fairly new to OSR and trying to settle on what would work for my group.
>>94821272Works fine. It's mostly BX with homerules, like any retroclone is. The cleave rule is pretty nice for fighters, otherwise there's not that much different from usual OSR.
>>94808473Trogs are gross. Keep everything around them that way too or risk losing the gross vibe.
>>94813341Unironically, I6 Ravenloft
>>94813669>forgotten realms ... if you pretend the novels don't exist and only use selected information from before 3eThat is what I do for my campaign world - has worked well for decades now.
need advice on if this is railroad faggy or notplayers accidentally stepped on a teleporter that took them to the other side of the continent (Dungeon Magazine's Towers from Issue 10), and found a Pseudogiant (homebrew genetically engineered resident evil nightmare creature from ages long gone) under the tower, killing it and taking all his loot. They then hoofed it to the nearest town two hexes away. We're coming up on my next session and I'm thinking that the town mayor tells the players they cant sell the gems because1. trading boats are not coming by because a number of sailors were captured by fishman, who are holed up under a lighthouse2. they can choose to walk a good 80 miles to the next town, or they can help the village retrieve the sailors, 15gp per living body, who will allow trade to start coming by the town again, give them a ride up to the larger port-trade city where they might exchange goods, etc. Although they do have the option of walking that distance to the town, I'm worried it will feel like they are being railroaded to go into this dungeon.
>>94821523>2. they can choose to walk a good 80 miles to the next town, or they can help the village retrieve the sailors, 15gp per living body, who will allow trade to start coming by the town again, give them a ride up to the larger port-trade city where they might exchange goods, etc.As long as they have a choice, it's not a railroad.I mean shit, they could go 'Ay, fishfuckers, you want to Innsmouth this shit? We'll help you if you pay us.' and start a cult.As long as they have choices, it's fine for NPCs to also have their own goals and motivations..
>>94821523The players still get a choice so its not railroady, it's just the state of how the town is. Just don't get angry if they bring up some method of cutting down the 80 mile journey, and be prepared for them to go sell the gems and then come back anyway because they wanna handle the money first before helping the sailors. The players get to choose.
>>94821523Why won't you give them the gold? You can give them the gold for this and then tell them that the town is running low on coins and they need help with the main quest you wanna run or they won't be able to carry out further business in the near future.
>>94821523Oh and don't forget, bartering is 100% a legit option. The locals still have plenty of shit that belongs to them after all and some of that shit could probably help with the Fishmen.
>>94820720Oh, you're THAT retarded. Sorry, I thought I was talking with someone with a modicum of intellectual adroitness.
>>94821523>the town mayor tells the players they cant sell the gems becausecool, we sell them to thieves guild/corrupt nobles/nearest humanoid tribe instead
>>94821644>>94821580these are both good points.>>94821558>>94821549this is very true>>94821565for one the town is low on gold reserves as a result of decreased business due to sailors avoiding the place, and the mayor thinks by refusing to buy these goods or offer the players transport, he can leverage them to help him out. He's trying to play the "my way or the hard way" route.
>>94821615>I can't construct an argument that holds water, but I can use big words, see?
Matt Finch's original OSR Primer was a fucking garbage fire full of bad examples. Every single one of his pithy sayings was wrong both in terms of comparison and context, to say nothing of history and actual rules. That's why S&W is for faggots.
>>94821801>Matt Finch's original OSR PrimerIt many region-sized hexes better than the revised version, which is just an ad for revised S&W.
Important OSR news: Due to acute OD&D overexposure, "throw a die" now sounds more natural to me than "roll a die". I even caught myself using "dice" as a verb once, as in "the referee dices for random encounters after every turn". Is this fixable or is my brain like this forever now?
>>94824415As long as you don't start saying "dice" in the singular I'm fine with it.
>>94824415I'm sorry to tell you that the next stage of your disease is to use "hit die" to denote both the attack roll and the die used to determine HP.
does anyone know any simple software for battlemaps? something that doesnt require a bunch of chinese software bullshit, can just be a ssimple as pegs on a board, but for online playing.
>>94830627owlbear.rodeo is a very simple but robust vtt, free to use with (unneeded) features with subscription. Much more accessible than using a full vtt like foundry etc.
>>94821272Not bad, it's a pretty smooth transition from 'me and 1d3 guys' to 'me and 1d3 platoons of guys'.
>>94826970I love this lol. reminds me of a parody game.
>>94781772Link them together with underground hex maps.
players lit an entire room of mesmerized troglodytes on fire