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/94994969/#95006768>Previous thread:>>96671493>Thread Question:Have you ever gotten a friend into OSR games? If so, which one?
In this thread we won't have any shit-flinging or baby-tier retorts.
>What's an OSR?>Don't know how to get started?The friendly n00b guides can be found here:>n00b DM's Guidehttps://pastebin.com/EVvt6P0B>n00b Player's Handbookhttps://pastebin.com/XALkXkV0Want 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
An Anon has shared an awesome AzteCKS campaign report. Check it out!ttps://mega.nz/file/id51UZqa#9pZoBcVtOF3vssbZ4kON2WN9XAbGvSi-TStiB9nKTxY
RC > B/X.For one, it has actual wilderness survival rules.
>>96704041>Have you ever gotten a friend into OSR games?Got my old group back together to play Dolmenwood. One dropped early on for scheduling reasons, one dropped after about a year when his second character died and one is still playing coming up two years, it's been fun. The real prize will be the other DM I'm friends with but I give that a proper go till his current 5e game has run it's course. >If so, which one?How am I meant to answer that? You don't know any of my friends.
>>96705781Just tell him if it's John.
>>96705639>it has actual wilderness survival rulesNo, it doesn't. What it has is proficiencies, and those don't make the game any better.
>>96705781Which game, ya doofus.
>>96705924It's not John.>>96706029Dolmenwood, ya doofus.
I recently rediscovered hackmaster 4e. I wish there were more warstories online about accredited play. Does anyone have any hackmaster stories to tell?
>>96707102Off topic.
>>96705639Fuck no lmao. Are you both retarded and ignorant?
>>96706029Can you not fucking read, retard?
>>96707278
>>96707497Looks like we're having two different conversations here
I really wish I could get into an OSR game but I live in Vietnam. I don't even know anyone who plays tabletop.
>>96704448>>Literally tells you what to look for and where to find it.Except you literally did not you fucking lying retard. You said "it's in dragon magazine somewhere!". Now produce the issue number or go kill yourself
>>96707592Play online. If you can stomach Discord, there's plenty of choice of communities offering open table nights one or more nights a week.
>>96707592And you obviously have access to the internet, so fucking do something about it instead of complaining into the void.
>>96707614>If you can stomach DiscordI've never even touched it. I'm kinda old.>>96707617Is online play actually fun? Seems awkward and gay but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.
>>96707757I'm kinda old as well. Online play isn't as good as IRL play. And playing with strangers isn't as good as playing with friends. And Discord sucks.But maybe not playing sucks more? This is up to you to decide.Another option is playing solo.
Is Dolmenwood OSR appropriate? The game looks really cool, have any of you played it? Would it be a good introductionary game to the our?
>>96709013Dolmenwood is mostly okay. Sadly, it didn't live up to its promise as it transitioned from the traditional English folklore of Wormwood to Disneywood.As an introduction to OSR, it's not as good as B/X, OD&D, and AD&D the real one, not the 2e knockoff, of course, but it can work for the most part, and we'll be happy to help.We have written two guides, one for the DM and one for players, on how to get started with OSR. All of the advice in there applies to Dolmenwood as well. You can read them here:>>96705108Do feel free to ask any questions.
>>96707592Get some friends together and introduce them to it. Total newbies take to it better than people weaned on later TTRPGs and critical role.
>>96707607I'm not gonna fault you for arguing with a crazy person, 'cause hey, sometimes it's fun, and we've all done that. But please don't drag the argument forward into a new thread, just let it die.
>>96704041>If so, which one?>>96705781>>96707497I see the misunderstanding. Op meant which osr game which I interpreted as which friend. Kek. >mfwIn my defence I did actually answer the question, if only accidentally.
>>96709013Ignore that first guy who replied to you. He's this general's ass wart.
>>96709013You already got some good, solid advice here:>>96709161I'd add that Dolmenwood CAN be run as a setting using BX (or AD&D or OD&D), it's just a matter of ignoring the freakshit classes and reducing the excessive freedom to mix and match races and classes in Dolmenwood (and OSE Advanced). If you're interested in doing that, we can talk about it. But you can just run Dolmenwood as is, of course.Either way, I'd STILL read B/X for the invaluable examples of play and explanations.A separate issue is that the DW hexes are a bit overcrowded with features out of the box, which does not encourage you as a DM to populate the hexes dynamically with in-lair checks and e.g. stuff from Wilderness Hexplore, but that's not what you want to concentrate on in the beginning anyway as a new DM, I would mostly just focus on getting the main procedures right.Do let us know how it goes!
>>96709013Dolmentard here. It's good. Race as class is better and I recommend starting with just human and have the party 'unlock' the other races as the game goes on.My party is most bat people currently but the hirelings are all human or goatmen.As other anon said the hexes are waaaaay over crowded. Still if you chuck down some dungeons (Winters daughter and St Clewyds Abby are alright Necrotic Gnomes other dungeons are meh) and use it to teach yourself procedures from BX and other reputable sources you'll have a good time.
>>967113512etard, shoo shoo.
>>96709368It's not an "argument". You made a claim, I asked for evidence, and you can't present it. Simple as.
>>96707237On the fucking contrary, Hackmaster beats even C&C as a progenitor of OSR.
Just started running ACKS and I feel like the players are already learning the rules better than me. Also some of the rules, like requiring 1 week just for a cursory asking around as to where to find a mage locally, don't make sense, when just using the recruitment rules. I feel like B/X with some extra rules for that sort of stuff would be better. There's also nothing in there for stuff like alchemy, no foraging tables to get ingredients, or anything else cool like that. The magic item crafting system just seems to be "find 100 troll skulls and now you can make a +1 sword, except if you managed to kill 100 trolls then did you really need that extra +1 to hit / damage?"I don't know what to do. It feels tempting to try to write something that is basically ACKS but better. Less spread-sheety and more focused around some kind of cellular-automata-based system for simulating domain play, plus a crafting / magic system with actual depth to it.
>>96712192So you're ALSO a crazy person, then? I never made any claim, except that it's not good for the current thread for you to continue arguing with the crazy person from last thread. Whatever, this is my second and final reply to you, please go be upset somewhere else.
>>96712293Yep, you are discovering in real time why it's better to just play D&D and add your own house rules as they're neededACKS is a source to mine for ideas for better games
>>96712293>Less spread-sheety and more focused around some kind of cellular-automata-based system for simulating domain playBe sure to look at An Echo, Resounding for an alternate, more abstract idea of how to run domains.
>>96712293>ACKS but better.You could wipe your ass and end up accomplishing that.
I'd like to play in Dolmenwood, but I'm the only one who DMs amongst my group of friends, and all of my online buddies are AD&D 1e purists more or less - although I'm not complaining there, I live 1e, they just don't play much else.
>>96713194Why not adapt Dolmenwood to AD&D?
>>96713209This, you don't really need their "we have B/X at home" rules
>>96713209>>96713226I don't think my AD&D guys would be interested in running it. I doubt they even know what Dolmenwood is.I think a lot of them are like 40-50+.
>>96713240Could pique their interest. Otherwise, if you have the capacity, running an open table, perhaps play-by-post in AD&D could be feasible, DW has bones for it you can use to achieve a proper open table.
I was hunting for a board game among my cardboard horde (got well over 200 board and card games) and stumbled upon an old beat to shit box with old D&D artwork. Turned out it housed a Basic rulebook (missing the cover) and Expert Rulebook, plus a blank character sheet for AD&D and some sheets filled out and such. Plus a copy of the AD&D Core Rulebook 2.0 CD-Rom. I NEVER bought this. I live alone and always owned this house. I didn't even start D&D until 3e.Where the fuck did this come from? I recognize none of the names on anything. The only used stuff I ever bought was some 3e hardback books I picked out by hand at a flea market once and this was nowhere near any of that stuff. It was sitting in a dark corner of a closet in my game storage room.Here's the thing, I never even owned a PC with a CD-Rom drive. I jumped from floppy disc to SSD because I just didn't game on PC at all.I'm kinda weirded out by it, if I'm being honest.
>>96713436Scan the filled sheets and post 'em!
>>96713436The spirit of gyxax placed it there. It is a spiritual calling.
>>96713445Doubtful, the AD&D CD-rom was 2e, and the 2.0 version featured the real garbage like Skills and Powers. Probably the work of Satan, not Gygax
>>96713450That's why I wrote gxax not gygax
>>96713459kek, what's the lore for Gygax's Evil twin Gyxax?
>>96713436Be very careful. If you play a game of that Basic set, using that character sheet, and that character dies, you'll go insane and wander inside the heating tunnels of your local college for all eternity.
>>96713515
>>96713240Just plonk it in your setting, it's just a place they can go to if they want to. If you're playing AD&D the real one, not the knockoff you're well past the point in development as a DM in which you need to make some kind of contract with the players about a specific adventure box they should stay inside of. Offer options, see what they do. Place it between two important points of interest, e.g. main cities offering different services, and see how they react to it when they travel through it.
>>96713474Gyxax was the dumb storygaming cousin who was triggered by demons, not the evil twin.
>>96713474"John Wayne" Gacy Gyxax was born under a full moon, on a California community college theater club's stage, during a production of Oklahoma! The fine gentlemen playing craps in an alley thee blocks away found that all their dice rolled nothing but snake eyes that night. Two of them were suspected and subsequently shot, but were saved at the last moment by a paramedic named Daniel-May P. Carachter.
>>96713536>>96713253I don't want to DM it, I want to experience it as a player with no OOC knowledge.
>>96713720 I'll say that anyone one with their head screwed on straight can run it via any osr with no more work to convert than it would be for converting a BX book. But if your friend group isn't into running it you might be shit out of luck, friend.>>96713536>the real one not the knock off.We, FUCKING, know. Stop bringing up off topic games.
>>96704041That's the Rules Cyclopedia art.That was my favorite version of DnD.That's it. That's the post.
>>96712366You made a claim about this rule existing in dragon magazine, but you refuse to state the issue number.You're just a worthless little weasally worm
>>96712219Wrong, retard. It is wildly off topic. Go start a different thread.
>>96713515>>96713522None of that shit ever happened
>>96715380Yeah but it's a funny joke man, lighten up.
I played Hackmaster back when it was new, and it was fucking peak. You have to understand that a lot of the stupid rules like honor loss and encumbrance audits were deliberate hammers given to the GM to punish idiot players. They only came up when you flirted with too many barmaids or wiped out a town. Most of the time it was pretty normal 1e with crazy crits and a 20hp kicker on everything.I ran a campaign up until level 15 or so. My players decided to pack up and leave the Little Keep on the Borderlands and start up a business, instead of going through the rest of the module. They ended up going south to some jungles to capture War Gorillas to sell for profit. We played with the protege rules, so unless you had a trainee that you had invested time and money into levelling up, you started back at level 1 if you die.
>>96712219he fears hackmaster because hackmaster IS GOODlegend has it some redditor automated the entire game on foundry. sounds comfy as fuck. the only game to sell player screens alongside GM screens, to keep those nosy GMs away
>>96715740sounds like hackmaster is where games like 4e, 13a, pf2 get their big starting hitpoint pool from. thats a pretty cool legacy. It looks peak. I wonder if they still certify gamemasters
>>96715740>it was pretty normal 1e >with crazy crits >with a 20hp kicker on everything.>with a lot of stupid rules >with honor loss >with encumbrance audits>with a protegé to protect you from having to start over at level one if your PC diesIn other words, it was nothing like "normal 1e", but rather a pile of steaming garbage.
>>96715760Quality has nothing to do with whether or not something is or is not on topic for this general you fucking retard
>inb4 the Touting of the Spiral
>>96713910>We, FUCKING, know. Stop bringing up off topic games.One of the common traits in people with autism is persistently-repeated phrases. He can't help it.
Ran my first session of Stonehell on the Borderlands last night. Party: Dwarf with 18 Str, two Clerics, a thief & a MU. They roll up to the keep & hit the tavern. They hear about how the guildmaster is offering a reward for the rescue of a merchant, that the merchant was abducted by Hobgobs & that another party of adventurers have been gone for about a week. They also hear that the Priest seems like a cool guy.A One-armed halfling by the fire laughs at the party for saying they're adventurers, calls them noobs & offers to take them to a baby dungeon, the party acquiesce. They also go visit the priest and he volunteers to come along as well.On the way to the dungeon the Halfling points out cave A, says there's a bunch of dog-men in there. They reach the gatehouse & because it's daytime they can just walk through the gate unmolested (annoying flipping back between 0A & 0C, also that the gates map is in 5' squares, made it hard for the mapper & I). It was about this time I began running the game in turns, was kind of clunky but I think once everyone begins to get familiar with the procedure it will run more smoothly. The party cleans house, find everything (which is good? Still only ended up with 27gp & 33xp each which seems like fuck all). Rolled a 12 on the phantasm's reaction roll so I played it as they had a moment of clarity and were able to communicate with the players, talked as if the dungeon was still a prison. This was juicy lore as the party were already asking why the gatehouse was even here. We ran out of time to play through them returning to the keep, would have been nice to trigger a wilderness encounter that clues them in on the caves. I think they're expecting to find the merchant in the dungeon, not sure how I can disabuse them of that. I didn't get a chance for ||The priest to betray them|| because there wasn't really a good opportunity, seems cruel anyway but if they go out together again I will play it out.
>>96718270linefeeds, my man, it's hard to read without 'emdon't let newfags bully you with that "reddit spacing" horseshit, either
anyone got cursed scroll 1? just started getting into shadowdark and I don't feel like paying $20 for a pdf
>>96718602>shadowdarkA, off topic here, and B, go ask the folks in the PDF share thread
>>96718602Wrong thread, friend. Nice minis, though.
>>96718270Great! Keep it up, and keep us updated with session reports.>Still only ended up with 27gp & 33xp each which seems like fuck allThe upper levels of Stonehell are well known to be treasure-poor. People oftensay it's to show that the place has already been looted by other adventurers. I don't think it's spelled out explicitly anywhere, but you could comment something to that effect.>talked as if the dungeon was still a prison. This was juicy lore as the party were already asking why the gatehouse was even hereNice!>I didn't get a chance for ||The priest to betray them||That's cool, I don't think you're in an hurry for that.
>>96718602Like other anons have said, shadowdark is off topic on /osrg/, but it's on topic on /nusrg/>>96652488
>>96718270Just checking: You DO have supplements 1 and 2 to Stonehell, right? The Brigand Caves are a must have because they provide an additional entrance, and I've done the same with the Nest of Otrogg, adding a connection from there to level 1.
>>96718602How about you shoot yourself in the face instead of any of that
>>96712542>Yep, you are discovering in real time why it's better to just play D&D and add your own house rules as they're neededYeah. the problem is that I *do* need those rules, and want them frontloaded. I just don't like the stupid changes ACKS makes. Like, you can't shoot into melee AT ALL without a feat? Not even a penalty / risk of hitting your allies (the latter is more fun)? Just annoying, even if it makes some degree of sense.I feel like the "ideas" in ACKS are worthless outside of the structure of the game that's there. Unless I just rewrite his rules to be "ACKS, but different" and without the gay pseudo-feats.>>96712562Is it B/X compatible?>>96712608Then were is the domain-level play system that /osrg/ WOULD shill for?
>>96719443>Is it B/X compatible?Yes, 100%Also "wipe your ass" guy is a local shitposter with a hateboner for ACKS. Take him with a grain of salt
>>96718843Thanks, I think a big part of what is motivating me to run the game is to have something to report here.No one was overly bothered by the small take, but it did seem like level 2 was a looong way away when we tallied it up.>>96718873I have them both, haven't looked at them though.
>>96719517The general consensus of not just this board, but humanity in general is that ACKS is a tedious joke of a system.Methinks your diet of nothing but fried salt may have affected your brain a bit.
>>96719862>the dumb shit I spam and spam again pretending its consensus is ACKS bad mkay
>>96719443>Is it B/X compatible?Pretty much. Its for for LL. Its okay as a generic tags based hex/domain setup, wouldn't use it as is but not the worst if you're in the mood for some-numbers-but-not-too-many-numbers. Semi tied to the asian setting but not hard to abstract. There's a good discussion between the Echo guy and the ACKS guy talking about their design goals and how they ended up doing different things from back in the day.
>>96719443I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSR; it's not a core component since the basics of the older D&D editions are centered around skirmish-scale combat and exploration, and most groups never bother with anything but the thinnest pastiche, often with the game ending before it became a practical consideration. While you can find domain rules scattered around the official editions, such as the rules provided in the BECMI Companion books, the general approach has been to leave most of those decisions in the hands of the DMs, and in a fairly abstract fashion. Remember, this is long before GRRM asked "What was Aragorn's Tax policy?" When fantasy heroes became lords, the idea was that the decisions they should make should be more akin to the CEO of a company, rather than one of his accountants. What alliance should you pursue, what oath must be called upon; not whether the brothels should be slapped with a penny tax. When a fighting man became a lord and started collecting taxes, the rules around that were left incredibly abstract and broad, alongside rules like constructing a castle where they tried to be semi-realistic and ended up being impractical for use in most games.>Then were is the domain-level play system that /osrg/ WOULD shill for?You've got lots of choices. Birthright if you want an official D&D ruleset (albeit one with a lot of baggage), WWN or An Echo Resounding for a fairly straightforward OSR approach, system-agnostic guide books like Reign, or some chimeric creation built alongside the good judgement that is the prerequisite to being a DM in the first place. I wouldn't say any should be shilled for, because Domain play has a way of being better in the mind then it is in reality, kind of like actually running a country. If your heart is set on it, you probably want to work your way into it and have a sense of what you're looking for, making recommendations something of a moot point.
>>96720386>There's a good discussion between the Echo guy and the ACKS guy talking about their design goals and how they ended up doing different things from back in the day.Link?>>96720414>Birthright if you want an official D&D ruleset (albeit one with a lot of baggage)What's wrong with it? It DOES look cool and I know some people who play it (online creators not personally, sadly, of my IRL groups I have only gotten them into ACKS, and only so long as they don't learn too much about Macris personally...)
>>96720422Baggage in the form that it's a setting more than a rule set, and presents a lot of assumptions based on that and your characters having the divine right to rule and what not.It's pretty fun, but it's definitely not something you can just casually recommend because it does things like implementing large-scale abstractions but turning them into divine powers. It works in the Birthright and Tolkien-esque settings, but might not mesh so cleanly with a more grounded setting.
>>96715350He didn't make that claim I did. Also once again I told you where to look. I COULD look it up and tell you but honestly it's funnier watching you sperg out and fling tardcum all over the place.
>>96720483Ah that's fair. Yeah idk if I want the "birthright" to be a literal divine thing. Thanks for the headsup
Would you play an OSR version of Sundered Skies that was basically a mix of B/X and Traveller, but with airships and floating islands?
So after 2 years away from RPGs, my passion project is dead. Now that I've returned I have new ideas I want to bring to life. Much of what is in here will probably get reused, but I figured I might as well share with you guys.I've posted it before and feedback from anon helped me a lot. That's why I'm giving to you guys. Use it or don't. I don't care.The random encounters probably don't make too much sense as they were imported from another project and looking at it now I probably wasn't done with readjusting them./file/5mt5kn
>>96721147Sendspace
>>96720414>Birthright>WWN>An Echo ResoundingWhile ACKS is too spreadsheety and detailed for me out of the box, I still find lots of stuff to steal from it, while there's absolutely nothing of use for my table in those three examples you give. In fact, I kinda detest them. To each his own, I guess.
>>96720622Depends on how you do it. If you take the best parts of B/X and Traveller, I'm extremely interested. If you take the worst parts of them, like SWN did, I'm not.Namely, it should be 100% compatible with B/X out of the box with zero adaptation needed, including e.g. no or minimal shitbrew classes, no or minimal shitbrew spells or even traditional spells driven faggot names to sound fancy to retards, and of course XP for gold.I have no idea what the fuck a sundered sky is supposed to be.
>>96721195>or even traditional spells GIVEN faggot names to sound fancy to retardst. phonefag
>>96720414>I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSRThat's kind of a moot point though because there isn't any specific set of actions that is intrinsic to OSR.Put down the guns and hear me out, I'm not saying 'OSR is just a vibe UwU' or any shit like that.But the original idea of OSR was that your characters could grow and develop based on how you interacted with the world, which was treated as a real, living, breathing place.Dungeon delving is of course the de facto XP maker but things were fairly foot loose and fancy free and the main reason it became the focus is because it was the first thing pitched to low levellers as a way to get towards mid-levels and the reason they were all in the area.In another world, where Dave Arneson went "Fuck it, the early level hook is going to be working for the infamously dangerous Blackmoor Merchant Caravan Company which runs goods through the ass end of the wilderness", we'd all be raving, hooting and shaking our dicks about how the Caravan Phase is essential to the OSR experience since it gives your players opportunities to mark the known trade routes, begin introduction to important NPCs, find dungeons close to the routes, engage in some light dickass banditry on each other, ect.The rules were broad and abstract, mainly because you and the DM were meant to hash out the specifics since the DM was one guy who made all the calls himself. And a major part of why those higher level rules remained abstract and vibes-y is because, like you said, most people didn't climb that high.Personally I do feel ACKS gives the complete view of a kind of 'What if more people had reached higher level and they'd written shit down'But yeah the central and core component of OSR is "Player driven rather than DM driven" rather than any specific action. The story is about what the gigglefucks are currently up to.
>>96720414>I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSRI can't say I agree. Domain-level play is intrinsic to OSR, and I'm fairly confident that the reason Gygax and Arneson didn't spell out how to to run it is that there were already systems for it that were very popular. Specifically, Tony Bath's book is from 1973.While I don't have hard proof for my belief, there is some circumstantial evidence: Not elaborating on this kind of thing is exactly what Gygax did when he talked about "figure ratios" in the PHB without explaining what it means or how to do it: He just assumed everybody knew what he was talking about, and he wouldn't be adding anything new enough to the scene to be commercially successful.Just a case of the curse of knowledge.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge
I can't take anyone who likes ACKS seriously.
>>96720422>linkiirc it was on reddit, can't find it with a quick search of >kevin crawford and alexander macris discussionwhich may be related to macris being b& topic there.
>>96721147I remember this. Music themed things don't do it for me but cool you're working on stuff again.
ACKS sounded promising, but there are so many weird decisions. 5d6 pick 3 for an ability score of your choice, with two more scores of your choice at 4d6 pick 3. You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time. Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll. Death charts instead of instant death at 0 hp. I might steal some of the domain management stuff for a normie OSE game I'm planning, but the other rules are autistic and gay.
>>96722766>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.I actually rather like that personally, since the actual rule is "Reroll all dice, if it's higher, use that, if it's not you get a +1 instead."It means you don't get absolutely fucked by rolling a 1 at 1st since you might roll a 6 on the same dice later. It does weight things towards the higher end of the potential HP curve since you always take the highest, but you can always change that.
>>96722766The domain management rules are also not really something you can trust. Fairly basic things like trading breaks down pretty frequently, especially as you increase in scale and all the little "fees" accumulate to a point where trading becomes unprofitable. I really don't think they playtested the systems anywhere near as much as they should, a symptom of the size of the game.
>>96722766>>96722797>>96722803I've noticed a weird trend over the last decade of osr stuff. Essentially there has been a shift from the expectation being to read and use source material that is then modified to suit the DM and campaign, to buying a prepackaged game that's someone else's house rules. I don't really get it, but I do see it. Always struck me as weird. There's usually an interesting bit or two in most retroclones but they've never been a thing I even considered running out of the box. The entire point of osr stuff was to get more modules and tables , even then expecting to modify those.
>>96722766While I generally agree with your criticism, I don't with this specific bit:>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.That's not how it works, the distribution doesn't converge to any value, let alone the average --- in fact, the average is increased a little bit, for example from 31.50 HP to 33.76 at level 9 for a character with d6 hit dice.Its main effect is to reduce the left tail of the distribution, which I think is good because there is ample evidence that Gygax tended to avoid giving very low HP to monsters, so why shouldn't players get something like that as well?https://anydice.com/program/3fba2
>>96722766>Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll.This is my only true issue, it's mind boggling
>>96722897I think practically everyone here agrees with you, but yeah, that's definitely a phenomenon in more mainstream "OSR" spaces.
>>96722908I think his goal was to have a system that would make it easy to determine whether somebody has hit unarmoured AC for the odd spell that requires that. But yeah, I agree that the solution is worse than the problem he tried to fix.I still think >attack bonus + descending AC against a fixed target (be it 19, 20, or 21) is by far the best way to calculate attack rolls.Personally, my preferred target is 21 because then the bonus equals the probability to hit exactly, which means that when I'm in the mood to have the players roll to defend instead of the DM rolling for the monsters to attack, the roll high target is trivial: The defender has to roll over attack bonus + AC.
>>96722970>the solution is worse than the problem he tried to fix.This seems to happen a lot. Likely linked to the playtesting gap noted above. >rereads green txt Shit I'm an old guy now.
>>96722766>5d6 pick 3 for an ability score of your choice, with two more scores of your choice at 4d6 pick 3.>Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll.gay>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.>Death charts instead of instant death at 0 hp. basedIn conclusion, ACKS is a land of contrasts.
>>96722522Yeah... Got that feedback from a couple of people, so next project will just have regular fancy names.Like the Wizard, Wor'khan the Vicious, who rules the cursed woods where the crawl takes place.
>>96722499An Echo Resounding was Crawford of SWN? Damn. I think I knew that but never connected the dots because it was before Worlds Without Number came out that I even last looked at AER...and yeah that figures. Okay I will try to find it myself. Fuckin' reddit, man...
>>96723921NTA, it was rpg.net. Also a hive of scum and lefty faggotry, but not run by the actual leftoid illuminati at leasthttps://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/domain-play-an-echo-resounding-vs-acks.692077/
>>96709013I've been having fun with it for the last 7 months.Dolmenwood is OSR, it's system end is quite literally OSE Advanced with the optional and Carcass Crawler rules checked. thank the OGL debacle for NG deciding to fully decouple it.It's a pretty easy introductory game as a player. The GM side doesn't quite cover everything you need but there's a plethora of information out there.For adventures without ascending armor class listed, you'll need to convert it but it's as simple as 20 - AC = ascending AC
>>96725754I think this is just a link to a bigpurp thread that has a link to the rpgsite discussion. Its been a while since I did anything with therpg site but the link there isn't working. I think we're getting closser though.
>>96727809>you'll need to convert it but it's as simple as 20 - AC = ascending ACNo, it's 19 - AC = ascAC in OSE
New pic for the OP. Made using Neverwinter Nights with CEP
Hopefully this is a bigger pic
>>96722907>there is ample evidence that Gygax tended to avoid giving very low HP to monstersSource? Stuff I've read suggested he was very strict about rolling HD for all monsters
>>96728998The only Gygax module I have is Keep on the Borderlands and it sure doesn't look like he was rolling there. I haven't played any AD&D modules, maybe he rolled for those.
Anyone got any "funhouse" ideas for me to put in a dungeon?I was thinking of putting in a spinning room or something that takes them a level above or below without them realising.
>>96729167Traps that close off the way you just came from is a classic. Grimmtooth has a bunch of wacky things you can include.
>>96729251Neat. Thank you.Combining that room with that trap where the character steps on a stair and it snaps, making their foot fall into a snare of spikes that prevent removal would be devilish indeed...
>>96729167>I was thinking of putting in a spinning room or something that takes them a level above or below without them realising.oh that's real good, I'm stealing that.I've had a little idea bouncing around in my mind of a "gravity-defying webwork of floating rivers" for vertically connecting certain high rise rooms and balconies within an old aquamancer's grand palace. Explorers would have to swim "up/down" the water to reach certain spots, all the while risking aquatic encounters within the roughly 20' diameter cylinders. No casting spells and no burning torches while in the water and really cunning creatures would try to push invaders out of the floating water to their doom below.
>>96729371As someone who despises heights and swimming, you had better have a damned good reason for making me swim up those rivers. Fuck that.
>>96729251Grimmtooth had a book full of fun traps to use. I think I see have the books somewhere in storage.
>>96729371So basically the sky tubes from Ecco 2: The Tides of Time? Neat
>BattleaXe anon hereI'm finally done making a retroclone of warhammer fantasy in my own language and now I'm back to build >OCKVLT>a sandbox hexcrawl for B/X levels 1 to 9.>it's based on a re-purposed hexmap from the SPI hex-and-counter game MechWar '77I've played in this setting both solo and as DM with other people.Is there anything I'm missing in the ToC?It's supposed to be sword & sorcery, bronze-age setting with demons, making use of AD&D demons
>>96704041Allright, maybe I´m fucking stupid, but where in the archive is the damn Mystara stuff? I want to read about that setting straight from the gazzetters and I can´t fucking find any of them.
>>96730547Nevermind, found it in my rage fueled state. Now off to read.
I have no explanation for why I like Mystara so much, yet hate Forgotten Realms. They've got similar vibesMaybe it's because most of the Gazetteers have a sexy Caldwell babe on the cover
>>96730623Honestly, it´s probably the amount of lore and freedom to truly build in Mystara compared to the forgotten realms. I wasn´t there 40 years ago and my only complaint of the setting is the existence of immortals instead of gods, but that´s just me
>>96730645The Known World was good.The Gazetteers and Mystarda were crap.
>>96730779Pardon me, but aren't they one and the same?
>>96722766It sounds so promising that you give it up before you even try? Honestly what's the point of you actually doing anything?
>>96720544You stupid loser faggot, you make some stupid outlandish claim, you get btfo when somebody calls you out on it, and then you spend literally 4 days dancing about how "I could tell you the answer but I'm actually just too retarded to admit that I'm wrong!"You should honestly just kill yourself instead of posting about retarded nonsense like how your dad works at Nintendo or something
>>96722424You're an incel posting anonymously on 4chans dungeons & dragons thread. Nobody respects you in real life let alone on this board even
>>96719862That's fine, we don't actually care about what your opinion on my game system is, you just want a space to be able to discuss and play it without you shitting in pissing yourself every time it gets brought up
>>96721147If you've given up this easily it's probably not worth the bandwidth to even look at
>>96730806>aren't they one and the same?Nope. The Known world was the default setting of the 1981 B/X edition. It was pretty nice and minimalistic although nowhere as good as Greyhawk or Wilderlands of High Fantasy and it stayed that way for a few years.Then it was progressively enshittified and Hickmanfaggotted during the second decade, in two waves. First with the introduction of the Gazetteers in 1987, books clearly intended primarily for reading and only incidentally for playing, with very little in the way of gameable content*. Then it was renamed Mystarda deep in the 2e era, in the 1990s, under Bruce Heard.(*) If this statement confuses or surprises you, you probably need to take a look at Wilderlands of High Fantasy, to see what a setting meant for playing looks like. Or even at Dolmenwood, for that matter: Even though it didn't keep all of its promises, it's still definitely a setting meant to be played in.
>>96719517>"wipe your ass" guyhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWMOpqSBZXg
>>96731117>>96731132lmao at fishfag provoking himself in desperation after nobody bit on his bait for 24 hours. Either that, or you're a fucking imbecile for feeding him.
>>96731188Well, I am willing to take a look. I heard of Wilderlands, but Dolmenwood is news to me. I´ll go and look for them. But just so I understand, Holmes and Moldvay have the Known World and Mentzer is the start of the Mystara added stuff?
>>96731321>I heard of Wilderlands, but Dolmenwood is news to me. I´ll go and look for them.If you do that, do check out Wilderness Hexplore, a "retroclone" that organises all the generators scattered around a dozen different Judges Guild products and making them into a usable whole. Truly one of the best RPG products ever written, and it's free:https://archive.org/download/wilderness-hexplore-revised/Wilderness_Hexplore_revised_112913_us.pdf1/2
>>96731321>>967313212/2>just so I understand, Holmes and Moldvay have the Known World and Mentzer is the start of the Mystara added stuff?No. Here's the timeline:>B/X is 1981. It's the Known World.>BECMI is 1983. It's still the Known World.>Between 1984 and the 1986 the Dual Tragedy happens: the Hickman Manifesto begins to spread and Gygax leaves TSR.TSR starts to switch from a model of selling products to play RPGs to a model of selling products to read, because that's where the money is.This ruins everything, and sets the stage for the mainstream D&D we know today, from AD&D 2e all the way to 5e, centred around narrativism, story arcs, railroading, single-party campaigns, character building, and so on.>The Gazetteers start to be published in 1987They are STILL called the Known World, and they are "just" fleshing out what was already in the Known World to begin with, although in a direction that is heavily Hickmanfaggotted and pretty much useless at the table. There's even a couple Gazetteers that are wholly dedicated to stuff like references to TV series like Magnum PI and Paradise Island The one with the magical midget that fulfils your wishes.>In 1991, the Creature Crucibles start to get published.The setting is still called the Known World, but now it takes a full furry turn: Tens of race-classes that practically nobody ever used.>Around 1991 Bruce Heard starts to publish some stories about some kind of flying ship touring the planetor something like that. Basically bad fiction. This is when the name is finally switched to Mystarda, but the enshittification of the setting had already started in 1987 and accelerated in 1989.Picrel is the timeline of the first decade.
>>96731507>In 1991, the Creature Crucibles start to get published.The setting is still called the Known World, but now it takes a full furry turn: Tens of race-classes that practically nobody ever used.Typo. I meant to write 1989.
Is Dolmenwood OK here? Seen a lot of videos pop up lately on it. And been skimming through it, and it seems interesting
>>96731507How can you spew such idiotic bullshit so confidently?Have you been diagnosed?
>>96731597Dolmenwood is definitely on topic here, yeah.
>>96731507Thanks for the hexplore.And that´s... certainly an interesting take. I´d argue that setting books are quite good for campaign backdrops. Also what´s the problem with the Hickmans? I don´t really like some of the stuff like the gods whole attitude in that setting and the killing off Soth, just because he took a vacation near Ravenloft, but otherwise there doesn´t seem much to complain about them.
>>96731813>what´s the problem with the Hickmans?https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-dragonlance-ruined-everything.html
>>96731813>>96731830https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2012/03/hickman-revolution-and-frustrated.html
>>96719443>the problem is that I *do* need those rules, and want them frontloaded.AD&D
>>96731830>comments are mostly just people telling the writer that he's insaneKind of funny that even the people who read his blog had to tell him he's dumb.
>>96731945Oh no, 2etard is sad again, so he has to make shit up.
>>96731813>I don´t really like some of the stuff like the gods whole attitude in that setting and the killing off Soth, just because he took a vacation near RavenloftStoryshitter detected.
>>96732637You're trying to perform something like five levels of gaslighting. Stick to one or two if you don't want to make it so obvious.
>>96732647"Storyshitter" is too generous, storyshitters at least play. He only reads setting books and adventures as if they were novels, the prototype of post-Gygax TSR customer.
>troll hopes to pretend anyone doesn't know that only trolls say "storyshitter"It's getting sad.
