Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General, the thread dedicated to first-decade, Gygaxian D&D, its faithful modern clones, and content created for use with them. Later editions (2e and newer) should be discussed elsewhere.Broadly, OSR games encourage a tonal and mechanical fidelity to Dungeons & Dragons played as intended by its creators from 1974 to 1983 — less emphasis on linear adventures and overarching metaplots 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. We also have two excellent beginner guides created by Anons with feedback from the thread that you can check for help:>n00b DM's Guidehttps://pastebin.com/EVvt6P0B>n00b Player's Handbookhttps://pastebin.com/XALkXkV0>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 >>97143009>Thread QuestionThat one dungeon you truly love. It might not be the best, but it's your favorite anyway. What is it?
Want 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
>>97182268Answering my own question:Borshak's Lair. I love it so much, it's such a wonderfully deranged place.
>>97182268>that one dungeon you truly love Picking one is very difficult but I think if I had to it would be this one. >great vibe, monsters, curses, a dragonlike thingIts a bit cramped for hallways and not quite enough faction stuff but one of my favourite to have run. Runners up would be>Tomb Robbers on the Crystal Frontier >Through Ultan's Door L1>Tomb of the Dragon's Heart Are all great but something about Cragbridge does it for me.
>>97182268>TQOut of printed modules it's got to be Khosura. It's just peak in every way.As for a module that I specifically like in spite of its flaws, I think the map to the Ruins of the Inquisitor's Theater in Through Ultan's Door #1 is somewhere between bad and utter shit, but I still really like the module overall.
>>97182291>Borshak's LairI personally prefer Caverns of Thracia>>97182335>Curse of CragbridgeOoooh that's a classic! Good taste.>>97182459>KhosuraWritten by an extremely talented author who is personally rather a bit of a dick. But he's good at what he does so I'll overlook that.
I'd just like again to thank the person that recommended me Fandonia and I hope you didn't get banned for it. I have no problem with Shadowdark.
Got one of these for the work secret santa and it was surprisingly fun for a few minutes. Considering using them as elven puzzle keys for my holiday one-shot coming up. How annoying vs how amusing would it be to have a door or treasure open on completion?
>>97182268>That one dungeon you truly love. It might not be the best, but it's your favorite anyway. What is it?Kingdom of Dolg. It's a fucking massive dungeon map of a dwarven city, great for oldschool dungeon crawling. I used to have tons of fun populating every page and ran a number of campaigns based on it, with the city occupied and abandoned/infested.
>>97182586It consisits of around 40 pages of maps, with over 2000 rooms and chambers.
pardon me if off topic, but im trying to do an OSR-styled hexcrawl game for my aftermath group after a long time away from the campaign. I've kinda gotten sick of planning these grand adventures that they don't seem to interact with, and also think a more player-agency focused game will encourage them to read the damn rules a bit more. How would you guys run a post-apocalyptic landscape in OSR? technology level is gonna be unevenly early modern, so black-powder firearms, swords, and a mixture of organic and metallic armor.my best guess is-survival and encounter checks in the overworld (food, water, raiding parties, animal encounters, structural integrity, etc)-dungeons being akin to enemy strongholds or mutant animal filled buildings with potential old world lootthe main thing I'm struggling with is how to create an analogous system of gold-to-xp for the players since aftermaths main method of progression is the player characters taking downtime to study, or learning through practical application of skills. would love any other advice for applying osr principles to this kind of setting though
>>97182594>>97182586Looks awesome, any chance of a PDF? I couldn't find one easily
>>97182629One key theme is recovery, both in terms of material items from the wilderness, and in terms of the area from collapse. So you need some sort of commodity measurement beyond study, although archival records and books of pre apocalyptic times could serve as one of the various tradeable commodities. There has to be something that ties into both narrative value and increasing player character power for the gameplay loop to work. You can get some mileage out of motivation but it works better tied into mechanics. You'll likely at some point have to make a concession to gameplay and just call them bottlecaps or whathaveyou. Haven't read it but Mutant Future might be worth looking into for post apocalyptic currency.
>>97182629>I've kinda gotten sick of planning these grand adventures that they don't seem to interact with, >survival and encounter checks in the overworld (food, water, raiding parties, animal encounters, structural integrity, etc)I feel like this specifically raises flags. Are you sure your players are on board with survivalism in general? And if they are, do they like or even have any experience with the mechanics you've chosen for them? A party that's already inclined to check out on adventure content might be a hard sell for mandatory survivalist busy work, the mechanics for which are often theorycrafted without playtesting.
>>97182524You know your group better than us. If you think they're the sort of people who would think this is fun then go for it. Probably ought to just make it a one-off. Maybe something players can work on in the background when other players are doing stuff
>>97182268Gawd, I love these books. That is all.
>>97182467>personally rather a bit of a dickNah, Melan's cool. I've never seen him be even slightly dickish.
>>97182629>AftermathThis seems to be a trad FGU game from the 1980s, it's pretty much guaranteed to be a bad fit for OSR principles. If you want your OSR-styled game to work out, use an OSR system, e.g. Gamma World or Mutant Future.
>>97182268>TQAnomalous Subsurface Environment. It's not the only dungeon I'd ever run but it's got something special and irreproducible. Even being a pretty middle-of-the-road take on far-future science fantasy it still bursts at the seem with inventive ideas and fun, exciting remixes on familiar tropes. There's also something cool about it never having been finished.
>>97182727Not the guy you're replying to, but doesn't he think Jaquays is a genius but won't call her Jennell anyway? And loves to rant about wokes ruining D&D?
Thoughts on my OSR alchemy rules?
