no acks editionwelcome to the New School Revolution General, the thread dedicated to games derived from the OSR movement >What is the NSR?the NSR is a subcategory of the OSR, it mostly follows the same play style but experiments further with the mechanics and settings*broadly NSR games**have* a gm, a interesting setting, living world*are* rules light, deadly*and focus on* emergent narrative, external interaction and exploration >What is this thread for?this thread is for system, adventure, setting, mechanics, ongoing campaigns, anything that related to the *actual* gamePOST ART ALSO, inspiration and for the tg threads >What is this thread NOT for?meta discussions or drama of the games and its creators aka shadowboxing with twitter, reddit and the OSRG (frens with osrbros)>stay on topic >gamesshadowdark, into the odd, mausritter, cairn, mörk borg (and its hacks), dungeon crawl classics, mothership, knave, troika!, whitehack, blackhack, old school essentials (we know this is just a retroclone) >links, resources, more games!, etc:https://pastebin.com/0W8WmbCk >previous thread:>>96607787>thread questionwhats the last game you've played (gm or pc) and what is one nsr game you want to try out
Have you had any experience with the Black Sword Hack? What are your impressions? I want to run a mini S&S campaign and am wondering which ruleset to use
>>96652418>As in, if 2,500 people live in X place, I should roll 6d10, every single month. What do we accomplish by this? That many people getting added or subtracted, because the mean result of this dice roll is 0. Also these are exploding dice because there isn't enough fucking dice being rolled already, for a dice that has an impact of <1% each time and an average impact of ZERO.LAUGHED SO HARD MY ASS IS LITERALLY FALLING OFFthank you rule-anon for doing the gods work of pointing out all the fucking amateurish design decisions
>>96652488ACKS is so fucking based
>>96652848Favorite ACKS class? For me its the hafling bounder, hope ACKS2 has a halflings book!
>>96652976Yeah ngl it's the best nsr game
>>96652986Vaultguard. Dorfs are always best
>>96652488last sunday i played mothership as a pc my gm is running some triptech modulesi want to play orbital blues though, cowboy bebop style
>>96652986for me it's the humble fisherman who has mastered the art of trolling the line
>To get to the higher levels of the industry — where Dungeons and Dragons, the Star Wars and Marvel licensed tabletop RPGs and other household names live — you have to get through the “indie” levels of the industry, which is made up of isolated up-and-coming creators and acronymic sub-scenes like the OSR (“Old School Renaissance”), PBTA (“Powered By the Apocalypse”), and FKR (Free Kriegspiel Revolution) etc. Navigating that is not easy.>To further complicate things, the harassers are all a circular firing squad. That is, they are all constantly accusing each other of harassment and worse. Here are just a few examples, to put it in focus (deep breath):> ... while Brian Yaksha concurs in his interview that Cavegirl is a “a piece of work” and “racist”, Yaksha also says Chris McDowall (founder of the OSR Discord forum, as well as author of indie games Into the Odd and Electric Bastionland) is an “egotistical jackass”, and further says that two of early indie darling PH Lee’s games (Bliss Stage and Hot Guy’s Making Out) promote child abuse, but Ash Kreider (author of Our Traveling Home “A Ghibli-inspired fantasy tabletop RPG about queer romance, found family, and finding healing through belonging”), in their interview (in addition to attacking two creators behind the ten million dollar Avatar: Legends Kickstarter respectively as “soulless and toxic” and a “tenderqueer” who made a name for herself by being “nice” but not “kind”), claims PH Lee’s enemies used “GamerGate-level harassment tactics” against Lee including contacting mutuals on Twitter and asking them to unfollow Lee, which, however, is a tactic PH Lee’s ally Whitney Beltrán (who formerly worked on official D&D’s recent Ravenloft supplement with her partner Ajit George and who, last I checked was working on an official triple-A Dungeons and Dragons video game) definitely did to yet another designer.wew lad
>>96654477I have no problem with the people who play NSR / rules lite / artpunk privately, but behind the curtains many NSR creators, reddit mods of the largest subreddits (e.g. r/osr), and OSR-styled discord admins are extreme levels of toxic. The worst I've personally ever come across, at least.The more "old school" side of OSR has its share of dickheads, Gillespie, EOTB, Griff, and Jeffro come to mind for different reasons, but that's NOTHING with respect to the amount of NSR toxicity.
>Cavegirl is a “a piece of work” and “racist”,I always feel vindictive satisfaction when people who already annoyed me get cancelledalso how many RPGs about LGBT teenagers could anyone possibly need, that's like the default PbtA theme at this point
Anybody else play this? This was my first exposure to RPGs as a kid, recently found a cheap used copy so I jumped on it. It's a 2e starter set, rules are definitely simplified (single saving throw for example) but it's hard for me to compare to the full game because my only exposure to 2e was Baldur's Gate. Pre-gen characters but suprisingly you can take them up to level 5 which seems generous, especially since they were so stingy with dice (only six in the box, not even with a percentile die). Pretty cool TSR dice bag though. Back in the day I played with two friends, we made it as far as the first combat encounter and got TPK'd and then shelved the game and never played it again lol.I don't think anybody would be interested in playing this now, if we're going old-school then we'd probably just play OSE or something, plus pre-gen characters are a tough sell. I'm just going to play it solo and try to succeed where I failed as a kid and take Thaddeus the Wizard, Niles the Thief, and the big-boob elf chick through the adventures.
>>96654800A couple more observations as I'm leafing through it: The dungeon crawling isn't as perfunctory as /osr/ led me to expect from 2e. I was super confused at first because it says to check for wandering monsters every 60 ft. of corridor and EVERY MINUTE of time the players spend searching rooms, which seems insane!But I guess by 1999 a lot of people weren't carefully tracking time in the dungeon anymore, so all it's really saying in effect is "WM check once per long corridor, and again when players spend time doing something in a room." Which is pretty close to how it works in my OD&D games. Also there's a 1-in-10 chance of WMs instead of 1-in-6, but a 3% reduction is nbd.Torches are weird. It still says they last an hour, but we're not really counting dungeon time anymore so why bother? Not counting torches is a cardinal OSR sin, but honestly OD&D doesn't bother telling you how much a torch weighs anyway, or how far torchlight casts, to say nothing of "Continual Light." I think the whole "count every torch!!!" thing is a bit overblown.The biggest fuck-up is with the XP system. They use checkpoint XP for completing story objectives, and no XP for treasure. So if the players decide to try and get off the rails of the adventure, no XP. It's honestly pretty disappointing since the first adventure gets your hopes up by starting in medias res right in the first room of a dungeon, and there's even a cool random dungeon generator! But what happens if the players decide they want to leave the dungeon and go explore the wilderness? Just a bit of XP for defeating monsters. Individual players can be awarded bonus XP for "good roleplaying", which... ew.
>>96654800>>96654970THAC0 is actually WORSE than I remember as a kid. See I thought it was presented as "d20 + mods >= THAC0 - AC". Which is maybe a little confusing but not too bad.What the book actually says is "THAC0 - (d20 + mods) = highest (i.e., lowest\best) AC hit." It's mathematically the same, and I get the logic if you're trying to keep monster AC secret: The player does all the math on their side and just announces the best AC they hit to the DM, who compares it to the monster's AC. But imagine how much slower it is to have an eight year do this for every attack:>okay so d20... that's nine. Niles has a THAC0 of 19, so 19 - 9 = 10. Oh wait, plus four because he's making a sneak attack... 14? That doesn't sound right. Oh right, I have to subtract bonuses (or add them to the die roll BEFORE I subtract the total from THAC0, not after). So actually it's six. Okay DM, Niles hits at most AC 6!And then the DM still has to remember that with descending AC, "a most AC 6" of course actually means "no lower than AC 6." We're all adults now and we get the idea, but this is supposed to be Babby's First D&D.
>>96655115>this is supposed to be Babby's First D&DWhen Babby was a boomer or gen-x, it worked reasonably well. It's Zoomers who have trouble with addition and subtraction.
>>96654477>GamerGate-level harassment tacticsThis cracks me up every time. Not only still being fixated by GG but also thinking they used some kind of evil harassment sorcery as opposed to just asking some obvious questions of journalistic collusion that made the targets of those questions shit themselves.
>>96652986The Aztec Smoker. Incredible profit gainz.
>>96655670Solid choice, but the main drawback of the class is that it's ineffective unless there's also an Aztec Angler in the party. That would be my first choice, since Anglers can operate okay without Smokers.
>>96655733Bah, you can just buy the raw materials in local villages you pass by.
>>96654970>1-in-10 chance of WMs instead of 1-in-6, but a 3% reduction is nbdI know this is the remedial thread but lol.
>>96652976>>96652986>>96652995>>96653002>>96653064Samefag.
>>96656231You really need medication. Try talking about games instead of crying. What's youre favorite ACKS class? I would guess it is the venturer, the one who is in charge of increasing your capitalist gains :)
>>96656640>>96653064These classes have any good synergy?
>>96652488Is this the ACKS thread? It's definitely my favorite system, still available through Kickstarter for only $249!
>>96656640>What's youre favorite ACKS class?Not a fan of most ACKS classes, to be honest. I use it for other things.
>>96652768I'll ask again. I've seen favourable reviews, but I haven't seen anyone play the campaign, no session reports, no conclusions after 50, 25, or 10 sessions, co community, one 3rd party adventure. It seems, just like Whitehack, like a great game, but also like Whitehack dead.
>>96659249I'm pissed I didn't buy the book last year when I was looking at it because you can't fucking get it now.
>>96655283All human beings, regardless of age, find addition easier than subtraction, Grandpa.
>>96654477>>To get to the higher levels of the industry — where Dungeons and Dragons, the Star Wars and Marvel licensed tabletop RPGs and other household names live — you have to get through the “indie” levels of the industry, which is made up of isolated up-and-coming creators and acronymic sub-scenes like the OSR (“Old School Renaissance”), PBTA (“Powered By the Apocalypse”), and FKR (Free Kriegspiel Revolution) etc. Navigating that is not easy.hwat? No?Just publish 5e trash on DM's Guild and D&D Beyond and shit. Indieshit is a circular firing squad because it's 100 people competing over 1,000 customers.
>>96656220Well that's embarrassing. For some reason I was thinking 1-in-6 was 13.33% instead of 16.67%. Oh well. All the more evidence they should have used an easier THAC0 formula for mathlets like me!
I ran a one shot of Orbital Blues and the charmisma skill was like 80% of the rolls. I don't think it's well designed.I still want to give it another shot because I like the style and pitch too much. I might just insert the blues mechanics and complications into Mothership.
>>96652768I ran it twice, I really liked itThe text was evocative enough to hype players who had no particular interest in classic S&S. It's an even slimmer Black Hack, you could say it doesn't get in the way, it doesn't add too much neither. I took out the clockwork stuff because I didn't like it, the second time I forgot to mention it wasn't included and no one brough it up.I don't know if I could make a campaign, I like the text for it but it doesn't read like something usable in game. More tone advice than design.
>>96653040which one did you play?I ran the water park and drug cave ones. They both felt like they could have a couple more minutes in the oven, but if I run them again I know what to do.
>>96654477That article makes them sound like demons when the process is pretty universal>Be a rando with no career>Say whatever bullshit comes to mind, do whatever>Get success>People demonize you for things you did when you had zero powerYou have some psychos anywhere, but the article makes it sound like the ItO discord is kiwifarms.
>>96659249I replied super late to your first post, but I'll add a bit more.I ran the one shot included in the big book and a Cairn adventure. I had to change some stuff on the go in the later to make it compatible, but mainly lore and inernal logic. Mechanically it's pretty stand alone, you can use he included monsters as a guide but since it's all player facing and damage is standarized there's no particular need for convertions. I would say it lacks low risk enemies, I think it's not meant to have goons just big fights.Campaing play has some big concepts but not a lot of tools. Even the extra zines focus on one shots, the first one has a couple cool archetypes like nobles and aliens so check them out.
>>96660860not really, people are always promoting each other and trying to make things bigger. The MoSh discord has a whole section to hire people and another to guide new people into crowdfunding or printing, there's some movement now and then even outside of big events. If you're not an asshole you can talk with most of the big names in the industry and if you catch them with time they'll give you a hand or shoot the shit.
>>96660860>Indieshit is a circular firing squad because it's 100 people competing over 1,000 customers.This is an interesting point where you're right but you're also kind of wrong, because those hypothetical 1000 costumers will actually spend money on multiple games they are interested in and try new shit, instead of sticking in whatever singular ecosystem they are in like 5e or Pathfinder players. Also, at least for some of this stuff, it's quite a bit cheaper than trad game releases. It isn't as much investment to buy a zine or a pdf (or wait for a humble bundle with a bunch of shit in there) than it is to throw down for a big hardback/multiple hardbacks.
>>96660841Not all human beings experience the same degree of difficulty with basic operations, and age is definitely a contributing factor, kiddo.
>>96661247>takes being absurdly bad at basic arithmetic as further evidence for whatever other dumb idea they had instead of reevaluating their bad take on wondering monsters This is why no one like you fags. You can't even have a genuine discussion about games because you're more interested in fronting as being right than in figuring anything out or actually playing the bad ideas you want to be lauded for.
>>96661498>the ito discord had some problems
>>96661549>If you suck up to people they'll pretend to listen to you Its a small clique with specific interests. If you're interested in ladder climbing its very obvious the routs and plays. If you're interested in games its less good.
Did anyone try The Indie Hack?For what I heard it'ss The Black Hack meets Dungeon World. I heard that as a comliment but I'm not even sure.>>96663092Are you sure that's the ItO discord?Are you sure that's any different from /tg/?
>>96663102>>If you suck up to peopleThe text was >if you're not an assholeIf not being an asshole means the same as sucking up to people then I don't think any space will be good enough for you, anon. I hope you can have your own business where all your employees will hate you because you don't sound like something fit to survive in society.
>>96663023Yes, in that your old, tired brain is bad at math and thus thinks it is in any way beneficial to do a formula that outputs the exact same results, but slower, dozens of time per night. Then, because you have so little going for you, you have to pretend to be superior because of this.Anyone can do THAC0. There is just literally no reason to, because the distribution is exactly the same as d20 + bonus >= target AC.
>>96663359>because you have so little going for you, you have to pretend to be superior because of this.he's not doing thathe's telling himself he's superior because you keep replying to him.
>>96663185You're dealing with a crowd who thinks any criticism or honest discussion is being an asshole.its classic 'all revelations are slights against my image' sort of shit you get in cliques.
>>96663176Yep. I'm sure its different from parts of /tg/ where they actually play and discuss games. If you can't fin those its because you don't do those things. We've already seen how little this general plays.
>>96663185based
>>96661479i think it was another bug hunt were still not done but ive had fun so far
>>96663509Another Bug Hunt isn't from the triptech jam, it's one of the first party modules.
>>96663359>Anyone can do THAC0. There is just literally no reason to, because the distribution is exactly the same as d20 + bonus >= target AC.I can't disagree, but really the point I was getting at is that even if you're going to do THAC0, there are easier and slower ways of doing it. "Roll a d20, add/subtract modifiers, subtract THAT entire result from your THAC0 score, report that value to the DM as the best AC that you hit" is probably the slowest and most prone to errors.
idea for a cy_borg campaign, use the grinding the mmorkg supplement (connects original mork borg to cy_borg as if it was a mmo), until the last miserable headline when they world is revealed to be a simulation and they wake up in death in space (they were part of a fallout style vault, but instead of a vault a lonely ship floating in space that got separated from their fleet), what do you guys think?
>>96664183my panic engine gonzo shit for personal use has a random afterlife table that includes waking up in different settings. Out of the MBs cy_borg is the one that people manage to keep going for whole campaigns the most, I wouldn't start with that one as the default. It could be a fun chain of oe shots if you have them prepared and your players manage to survive them all.
>>96663037The WM chance is reduced by about 7% instead of 3%. But to be fair you're also rolling at least x2 more often than in OD&D, where you get two moves to a turn, on top of rolling after every minute spent doing things vs every ten minutes in OD&D.I don't know about B/X or 1e AD&D, but it's hard for me to tell if you actually want to discuss this or if you just have some weird axe to grind.
>>96663359>Anyone can do THAC0.Sadly, there's a bunch of people who have actual difficulty doing that. Most of them Zoomers.
>>96663176>Did anyone try The Indie Hack?Yeah, I played a game with the creator as GM back in the Google+ days.Unfortunately it's not great. There's the outline of something interesting in there but it fails the landing. Like someone did a first draft and published it as a game without really doing the ground work and revisions you need to do after proper playtesting.I best remember when we got in a fight. TIH tracks damage and conditions by adding 'details' to things (a bag gets torn, an armor gets chipped etc) until you reach a certain threshold and then the thing gets destroyed. The idea is that you can have conditions spring from the fiction and blend HP with conditions to easily keep track of them. I chopped at an enemy, can't remember which, and asked if I could add the detail 'has no head'. There was a moment of silence clearly indicating the creator had never even tought of this possibility and he went "... huh, I guess you can". Fights got a lot eaiser than intended after that. So yeah,
>>96665017are you sure it hasn't been updated since the G+ days tho?I feel it's the exact game that could feed like crazy from PbtA concepts.
Is anyone preparing to run something on halloween? So much stuff is already horror tangential that I'm not finding anything that feels like it should be run as an event
>>96666957I'm thinking of running Turn it Off after the last Between Two Cairns sold it to me.
What games make you roll under your Attributes, Skill or Attributes+Skill? How does these games handle difficulty increments? Malus to the roll I guess?
>>96669615>Malus to the roll I guesspretty muchCastles and crusades is an explicitly roll under system as far as skill checks go.I think a few nusr games like Whitehack also have you rolling under your statsAre you looking for something specific?
I was gonna run Nobunaga today but I'm sick, pray for me
>>96669615Doesn't really fit with nusr, but I've always liked the idea of a game where you roll under stat+skill, but the difficulty is determined by the amount of d6s you roll.
>>96669661>>96669637Thanks, yeah I was thinking of my own shitty homebrew for my kid and his friends, plus game design in general.I like the idea of roll under because it gets rid of some GM fiat. The better you are, the easier it is. But as is, it implies that for an expert fighter, fighting a swordmaster is as easy as fighting a child. So the natural counter is to apply malus but then you reintroduce the GM fiat into the equation (nothing wrong with that per se but in my specific case I'd really like to minimize that).On a design note, I could simply chose to scratch off difficulty ratings for anything PVE and makes anything PVP into an opposition roll instead of roll under (like roll above your opponent stat instead of under yours). But they're rather young and I'm introducing a whole new dichotomy (PVE/PVP) with a whole new opposite rule (roll under/roll above).So I was thinking, maybe I'll have a better time with Free League' style (or is it Alien RPG specific?) of having a datacard for each enemy type with predetermined reaction rolls for when it's their turn to act (like a masterswordman will have roll 1-6: attack at full damage, 7-8: counter-attack at previously suffered damage + 1, 9-10: disarm the closest opponent).It's mostly for discussion's sake though, since you guys confirmed the most common form is malus I could simply declare every challenging situation fits in a Tiers system where malus go from -1 to -3 so there's not too much granularity therefor not too much headscratches nor debates.
>>96669979this sounds a lot like dragonbane. it also uses cards or something to simulate certain things in combat (i think). it's a roll under d20 system that i recommend you check out. it is possibly exactly what you need
>>96664342>its hard to tell if discussing the difference between 3% and 7% is the subject This isn't the thread for maths, that's pretty clear.
>>96669615like someone already said, not really a nsr thingYou want Modiphius' 2d20 system, it's pretty cool
>>96669979The trick would be to make every attack roll opposed, and use blackjack rules (so the highest roll without going over wins), or you could introduce a rule were the difference between the attacks combat skill and the defenders combat skill is used a modifier. So, if I have a 50 attack and I'm fighting a swordsman with a 55 attack, I functionally have a 45, but if I attack someone with 30 swordsman skill I have a 70.
