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:>>97628711>Thread Question:Have you ever attended a D&D/TTRPG convention before?
>>97654708They aren't rare. The DM expected everyone to know the answer. It is not a mystery in universe, and it wasn't supposed to be a mystery for the players, you're just demanding to be allowed to go canvas the neighborhood because you refused to look at a picture for 3 seconds so now your "character" is a brainless fuck who doesn't know what a cow is. They're going to get sick of you before long you know. There's only so many times you can grind the game to a halt for everyone so you can jerk yourself off solving the mystery of what a chakram is instead of just moving the fuck on.
>>97664614Went to NTRPG Con a few years back and had an awesome time. I'll be making it a yearly thing soon: I'd heartily recommend it for any old-school player.
>>97664614Went to a bunch in university, none were just D&D specific or osr focused, lots of different games. >>97664743>ntrpg unfortunate name
>>97664614i went to gencon a couple years back; was fun and there were cute girls. i'd like to think i've become more outgoing/charismatic since then and could have even more fun than the last time if i went again.>>97664743>ntrpglmao>>97664749you mean a BASED name.writing this as a reminder to check the ad&d dms guide, as i hear it has some more gold sinks like training for players or artisanal crafts to display their wealth. last session they all commissioned jewelry that skimmed 10% off their value "deposit" to maintain some of their wealth but then i think just made a bunch of money from the delve anyway. i was also thinking about allowing them to give money to the guardsmen at the palisade to level them up, which would allow for scarier wilderness encounters while they're camped out there. a barbarian shakedown resulting in having to expand their fortifications and unit sounds cool.obviously the money's not a problem right now but six people at like level three or something would have a pretty gnarly hoard to their name that would just be stewing in a chest back at camp for a while or something. i remember trying to run traveller like ages ago and thinking about where they'd get the literal millions to maintain everything seemed so difficult to think about and now i have the opposite problem, lol.
>>97665056>When does the AD&D DMG get good? Page 1. But you need to understand WHY it's good, which isn't trivial if you grew up on games that are not Gygaxian D&D. E.g.>I just read the 1½ pages about how characters can randomly catch a terminal urinary tract disease during an adventureAD&D and OD&D were written for a large-scale campaign run in a wargames club, with tens of players per DM, sessions often running for 8-12 hours (these were the pre-internet days), an open table, multiple PCs per player, and adversarial play.These assumptions completely turn everything you think you know about D&D on its head. The backbone of having such a thing work is some form of 1:1 time, the famous all-caps quote by Gygax:>YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPTUnlike what many clueless players think nowadays, this didn't refer to keeping track of time in dungeons, but to time when no play is happening.AD&D has many mechanics that put PCs out of commission for weeks, e.g. diseases and parasites, recovery after being reduced to negative HP, training to level up, magical research, spying and assassination, and so on. The list goes on. One of the effects of these rules is to put a PC out of commission for a few sessions (since 1:1 time), which forces the player to run a different PC, which mixes things up and forces the creation of new relationships, alliances, and so on.(Remember you can't run two PCs at the same time in the same session, since PCs run by the same player cannot be associates, that's what henchmen are for).>B-but I don't run 12-hour open table sessions for a wargaming club!What many of us have discovered is that if you DO keep strict time records, it will revolutionise your campaign by forcing you to drop the single-party, single-PC-per-player assumption.
>>97665274>What many of us have discovered is that if you DO keep strict time records, it will revolutionise your campaign(in a good way)>by forcing you to drop the single-party, single-PC-per-player assumption.Which is a good thing.
>>97665056You can skip it. The 2e DMG is better written and organized, and also is a return to OD&D's attitude of "play the way you feel best" rather than 1e's "Gygax wrote this because he thought he could actually make a consistent ruleset for every table, or as he put it 'uniformity of play world-wide.'"Gygax thought AD&D tournaments would be a big thing, like war game tournaments. That didn't work out though, and was kinda dumb in retrospect.
>>97665364If he wants AD&D's rules, but better organized, better written (and explained), and with OD&D's/B/X's philosophy, then he can look through the 2e DMG.It's not like it's the first time they took Gygax's clunky writing/editing and improved on it, a la Basic and so on.If he really wants tonal fidelity to OD&D, but wants more a more AD&D ruleset, than he should check out the 2e DMG. If he wants 1e's 'uniformity of play" thing it was trying to go for, that's a different matter.
>>97665383>AD&D's rules, but better organized, better written (and explained), and with OD&D's/B/X's philosophy, then he can look through the 2e DMG.
>>97665402OD&D, or just D&D as Gygax called it back then, promoted "alteration and free-wheeling adaptation." His own words. The 2e DMG is AD&D rules but with more options and tools for the DM. Gold for XP? Sure, if you want it. But, how about considering other options as well?The stick-up-your-butt style of play that 1e was written in mind with isn't the only way to play, and if he's not liking the 1e DMG, he should take a look at his options.
Rolled 19 + 2 (1d100 + 2)Rolling on the disease (or disorder) table.
>>97664743>playing FAGs at NTRPG ConThe community really does seem to have a knack for unfortunate acronyms.
>>97665668Why the +2, though?
Really couldn't help himself huh.
Any reason to play LotFP over. BX/OSE? Seems the former is slightly more "balanced," but I'm curious if the difference is that noticeable at the table.
>>97666000Not my thing but the skill system seems to appeal to those who want some sort of skill system without it being too much or overly fiddly.
>night sky is lit up by a bright shooting star that falls into a gigantic primordial forest>party decides to try and find it, because meteorite iron would be cool to get, and some observers even said the shooting star had a golden hue>after days of difficult travel and searching, find the shooting star [/spoiler] is actually a crash-landed Flying Pyramid Spelljammer ship, and the area is already crawling with undead.[/spoiler]It's right on the line of being silly and terrifying.
>>97666000Are you a creep? LotFP is pretty much just for creeps.
Rolled 7, 7 = 14 (2d8)>>97665897Was supposed to be +2d8. Forgot whether the dice roller needs other syntax for it or just doesn't support different dice types.
>>97666000>Any reason to play LotFP over. BX/OSE? None. But there's reasons to play BX/OSE over LotFP. For example, the to-hit values are not fucked up in BX/OSE.>Seems the former is slightly more "balanced," but I'm curious if the difference is that noticeable at the table.Not sure what you mean by "balanced" or whether that would be a negative or a positive.>>97666065>the skill systemIt's just a different way of saying the same rules. Anon can just call the default activities of B/X "skills" if he's into that sort of thing.
>>97666265Congratulations, your character has Crohn's disease.
>>97666237Get fucked normoid.
>>97666306>X is just Ysure, sometimes the variations work better for different people. Try playing games to learn these things,
>>97666228funny(?) story but i remember thinking "man wouldn't it be cool if the bbeg of the campaign came from space like that one hp lovecraft story about purple" and then elden ring came out and had that bit with the radahn festival creating a crater to the underground area and i nutted in my jorts. there was also that... cowboys on the crystal frontier book? i don't remember the name but it had a similar sort of thing where crystals fell from the sky that contained crypts that'd last until sunrise which sounded dope as shit.maybe after my players "finish" the caverns of thracia i'll have the halls of the blood king fall from the stars. or just use something from crystal frontier idk. kinda wanted to throw white plume mountain at some point too since i thought its puzzles were cool in the 5e conversion, but would probably be way more fun in the edition it was made for.
>>97666306Balanced was the wrong word. I've read classes in LotFP are mechanically superior at their respective roles when compared to the same classes in BX. My question is whether that boost in proficiency is felt at the table by players, or irrelevant within the natural flow of the game.
>>97666379>I've read classes in LotFP are mechanically superiorHere's a crazy idea: Read the actual rulebooks instead of wasting your time on blog posts by morons or plebbit discussion threads or youtube eceleb channels, and then wasting OUR times as well regurgitating those retarded takes back at us.
ACKS anon here. We got sidetracked in town because a player decided we should be private investigators instead of adventurers and I don't think the potential payout would be worth our time. That aside we were able to find 3 thief types in the big town and were able to hire 2 of them, an actual thief and something called an Antiquarian which seems to be some kind of elf thief/mage that trades all the stealth and backstab stuff for bard lore mastery. The third was some kind of dwarf thief that basically told us to fuck off and come back when we are higher level before he will work for us.Now on to my actual question. We hired a level 0 as a henchmen who has 13-15 in 4 stats but what we didn't catch is that he is chaotic. Is that an issue if our group has multiple lawful priest types? In character we have no way of knowing yet but if we find out what should the lawful characters do? Is it just he has the wrong jersey now so we can kill him in woods?
>>97663707>>97663643>>97663484Thank you all for your input. Everything actually turned out much better than expected during our session last night.Brigands are attacking the town in a few in-game-days. The PCs acquired the elemental-summoning artifact and the town raised its militia, led by a Roc-riding Champion sent from the local lord. I was expecting the PCs to hang back or lead a contingent of men-at-arms in a mass combat, but surprisingly the players were like "why don't we just perform a preemptive strike on the brigand camp?"They spoke with the Champion, who had scouted the brigand camp from the sky and learned they were posted up in the ruins of an old estate, and he agreed to aid them.So next session they plan to sneak into the camp, summon the elemental to sow chaos among the brigands, and then infiltrate the estate house where the officers are staying to take on the lieutenants while the Champion solos Warduke (we'll see how that goes).I'm proud of my players for wanting to take a risk and be heroes, and I appreciate the insight everyone gave me for how I should frame this sort of scenario. Thanks!
>>97665402I wouldn't engage, "2e is the TRVE HEIR to OD&D" is clearly just his sequel to "C&C is the first OSR game and the OSR was founded to support pre-3e editions". He's going to keep nigging as long as you nog along.
Faerun being more than double the size of Europe didn't make sense to me until I started hexcrawling it. It's a cluttered map, but there's SPAAAAAACE.
>>976665611e is the abberation though.
>>97666000Many people like what are effectively Raggi's house rules: only the Fighter getting improved to-hit rolls, the encumbrance, and indeed the Specialist skills. (Although few people seem to agree with him removing most direct-damage spells from the Magic-User, for whatever reason.)
>>97666228>Spelljammer>>97664226
>>97666561First OSR game was technically Hackmaster (if we're not gonna count the original TSR games). Also, C&C is an OSR game, you're just upset that it came out before OSRIC so your whole bullshit narrative about OSRIC being the first OSR game dies in its cradle unless you redefine OSR to try and exclude it.
>>97666581So this is what leaving /osrg/ forever is like, huh. How long did you last, like three days? Five?
>>97666493>Wasting our time >Posts whatever the fuck that waslmao evenStill checking your spam box in vain?
>>97666598More than one person thinks you're retarded.Have you spent so much time pushing your lies that you've started believing them?
>>97666228>Flying Pyramid Spelljammer shipThat's barely even a dungeon. You could clear it out faster than you could say "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks".
>>97666639>More than one discord trany trolls /osrg/ We know.
>>97666639Well maybe you should take a steer from him, given he left because a Mod directly told him to stop being a shit stirring faggot?
>>97666493>discussing /tg/ on MY /TG/? I SAYgo back you retarded faggot
>>97666718Sorry, but 2e and its settings and other products are off topic for this general, which is explicitly for pre-2e editions as you can see in the OP. Please take your conversation about this to /2eg/: >>97664226
This is just embarrassing, fishfag
If I go by this table from the DMG, does rolling a 61-90 and then a 9 mean that a human character aged 31+ can die during character creation?
>>97667339My bad, it's about the span of years in the venerable category, which is 91-120. But then the table still indicates to me that no human character ever dies of old age from 69 to 85. Which is also nice.
>>97667404>clearly stated topic of the thread>a personal grudgeSure, I guess /GURPSgen/ is focused on GURPS due to a grudge too, huh? Go discuss "AD&D" 2e there instead.
>>97666840Doesn't Mystara have value brand spelljammers though? They're called something else but they're functionally the same.
>>97667547>the topic of the thread is sandwiches>but tuna sandwich is not a sandwich and is offtopic here!!1 see I even modified the OP now!!1you changed the OP last October, moron, remember now?the topic of the thread is OSRif you want to moderate what can be discussed you should make your own discord server, or sign up for a reddit mod role or whatever the fucknow shut the fuck up about your retarded anti-2e-jihad and discuss gamesthis thread has so much bait specifically because of you, and because you are a fucking moron, and will bite literally any baityou don't even need a hook, just throw in a line, and your retarded ass will be sure to swallow that shitnext time you see a post you don't want to engage with just walk by and don't engage
>>97667608>you changed the OP last October, moron, remember now?That was a collective decision by the entire thread in spite of your seething, 2efag. Your shit has never been welcome here, we just cleared up the phrasing so you wouldn't be able to fall back on your old stupid sophisms and confuse people new to the thread.>muh bluh jihad garglYou were politely asked to take your off topic content somewhere it belongs instead of this thread, which is for OSR games, not 2e. Hardly unreasonable, yet look at your spergout!I think you should go back to your previous resolution of staying out of this general. It was better for everyone.
>>97667591I think technically all settings have spelljammer ships, because in Spelljammer you can visit different "crystal spheres" that contain them.I know you can visit Greyhawk, Faerun, and Krynn explicitely.
>>97667646Personally I think sperging out over settings is pretty gay and retarded regardless, but if we're gonna seethe about them then you'd probably have to cut most settings that aren't your own homebrewed shit since they all got books in later editions.Assuming this isn't just purity test trolling (again).
>>97667339>a human character aged 31+ can die during character creation?You're making it sound like you've never played Traveller!
>>97667719>you'd probably have to cut most settings that aren't your own homebrewed shit since they all got books in later editionsExactly. You can fuck off now.
>>97667719Personally I think sperging out over anything is pretty gay.
>>97665345This is a pretty wild response.
>>97667591If he wanted to talk about Mystara, he presumably wouldn't have used Spelljammer terminology and content from a Spelljammer book, now would he, Anon. No. It's trolling.
>>97667703>>97667705Imagine seething to the point of developing delulu to cope, lmaoNo, the entire thread agreed on this except you (and you don't count because you're a troll), sorry 2efag, hard times but that's the truth.
I can't tell who's trolling who anymore so I'm just gonna ignore everything in the last couple minutes.>>97667810Except for this post this is a good post that more people should pay attention to!
>>97667823That anon's deliberate nuisance shitposting aside, if you read stuff like the early issues of A&E Gygax is very obviously responding to the attitudes of many of the sperg fans. In OD&D he encourages people to run however they want because he assumes that the reader will understand the basis of the system. He learned the hard way from OD&D's runaway success that that wasn't the case at all, and his reaction (because he didn't want to alienate fans, it seems) was to effectively cut it loose in his public communications. He pivoted to AD&D as the main game and in the DMG he still encourages people to use their imagination with the same sentiment, only it's much more carefully phrased so he won't be misunderstood again. The distinction he's making is just him deciding that explaining what he meant in OD&D isn't worth the effort. PatW goes into this to some extent.
>>97667796Enlighten us with how the seasons work in your homebrew setting shitpost-kun
>>97667923AD&D1e was just a phase for Gygax.He really thought he was making some next-level "Advanced" game, and that he could realistically create a functional rulebook with tournaments as the focal point. But, the whole RPGA ended up teaching some pretty harsh lessons about the viability of something so subjective and interpretation-based as an RPG where players had truly infinite options for actions. And, this came alongside the rise of more "competitive" players that were really changing the dynamic of how games were run. The idea of a rigid tournament-focused game just didn't pan out, and AD&D was probably the best chance of it ever happening.The distinction Gygax is making isn't that OD&D isn't worth the effort. He's also not just talking about OD&D, but the Basic line, which was just called D&D at the time and was treated as a revision of OD&D. He's saying AD&D is intended as a robust system to provide a level playing field for people to play the same game even when playing with different DMs. D&D is for casual play, AD&D is for serious business.But, Gygax eventually grew out of that phase. He even regretted it a bit, and would complain about the competitive types many years later on Dragonsfoot. His post-D&D games were also much more like OD&D than they were AD&D, and just a few months before he died he admitted that OD&D was still his favorite to run and play. People who prefer strict 1e AD&D with a strict interpretation of the rules are sort of doing their own thing, but that's existing according to Gygax on a separate line from the way D&D (as in OD&D and the Basic family [B/X, BECMI, and descendants]) was supposed to be played.
>>97668088>blah blah blah tournaments!>even more fanficI thought you quit this general, BTFO-kun?
>>97668129>>blah blah blah tournaments!Hey completely-anonymous-person, you can go ahead and take it up with Lawrence Schick, writer of Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games if you want to dispute what he says.
>>97668088It's weird how much the chaos/law divide keeps reoccurring.D&D and AD&D2e and 1eNuSR and BrOSRI'm gonna blame Moorcock for all this.
>>97667646>I think technically all settings have spelljammer shipsDark Sun doesn't. Dark Sun is specifically cut off from the astral plane and you can't reach the outer planes. You can't spelljam to it because--it's not explained why, just cosmic isolation. You can reach the inner planes but not the via the ethereal. The inner planes don't seem to be identical with those in the Manual of the Planes, almost all the same properties except they make new paraelemental planes that don't match up with the standard. That would prevent changing settings via inner plane travel.
>>97664672You people are such dumb niggers it actually beggars belief.It’s fucking D&D you can make up whatever the fuck you want. My setting isn’t the cookie cutter bullshit right out of the box, because I don’t want my players to make assumptions based on meta knowledge, I want them to play the fucking game.It could be kobolds, it could be fucking rakshasa it is IRRELEVANT. not my fucking POINT “hurrr durr this guy thinks that kobolds are rare and exist in a quantum Schrödinger’s nutsack state of existential mystery until observed” NO YOU FUCKING DROOLING APEThe point is that this situation allows players to have some FUN in the ADVENTURE by solving a MYSTERY, not that some faggot like you who spends his time scrolling this cesspit constantly looking to lord his sterile boring unoriginal hypothetical campaign setting over randoms on the internet would have any idea about fucking FUN.You fuckers jump to conclusions so well you put the NBA to shame, making wild assumptions and sticking words in the most blatant fucking strawman since the wizard of OZ. Fuck off back to your cave, trog, and spare us your idiocy.
>>97670770Considering this all started with you claiming that showing pictures of kobolds to players is a necessary part of DMing because otherwise players somehow won't know kind of kobold their DM is describing to them, a claim that does not make a lick of sense to anyone who's ever played a game, I'm not sure I believe you about your amazing setting.
>>97670716Jesus fucking Christ, 2e settings are fucking retarded shit for nogame morons.
>>97670716I'll never understand why they can't just say "This is its own setting outside of other ones"Would that really hurt anyone?
>>97670836>Would that really hurt anyone?There are specific sorts of nerds who really realy really need everything to be tied together neatly and explained. They're generally the worst kind of nerd but are also the most profitable so lots of shit gets made by and for them.
>>97670790I don't see what the problem is. Most of the finer details about planes is just the sort of esoteric knowledge that will only impact 1% of games.
>>97667646Mystara-fag here.I believe the Immortals were highly against against any excursions of any kind. Mindflayers, gods, skyjammers as well
>>97670790finding your way to alternate planes of existence is old school culture, chudhttps://youtu.be/X9vECzikqpY
>>97671404>finding your way to alternate planes of existence is old school culture, No shit. Doesn’t change the fact that 2e settings are crap for nogames, 2etards, fishfaggots, and other subhumans.>chudCase in point.
>>97671155>I don't see what the problem is.Because you're a nogames moron.
>>97671716>>97671726fishy fishy
>>97664614Before I go through the MM and do it myself, does anyone have a spreadsheet that lists "Monster" - "No. Appearing" - "% in Lair"?I'm working on an automated hexcrawl/wilderness encounter tool. At present I have got it rolling on the tables on B/X Expert pg. X57-58 and displaying the right encounter depending on Wilderness type - Now I just need to work in the number appearing and lair chance.I'm currently looking up the monster entries one by one in the MM and typing them out, and will continue to do so unless someone has already?I tried to use AI for this but obviously it fucked it up so much that trying to correct it's output is basically the same as doing it all in the first place.
>>97670836Looking at the publication history TSR didn't say why for years. The first box set says Spelljammer creatures aren't on Athas, implying that you cant spelljam there, but that fiends can freely travel from the outer planes, implying that outer planar travel is possible for PCs too but the results of Plane Shift were up to the DM. There are no gods and commune spells instead contract powerful creatures on the elemental planes. That was it.A later Spelljammer supplement, in Spelljammer not DS because spelljammers might want to go to Athas but Dark Sun-only players didn't need to know, said that Athas was isolated, no reason given.The psionic summon planar creature power could pull in outer planar creatures including those mentioned in the Manual of the Planes, which didn't have stat blocks so you needed MM or FF, or Monstrous Compendia. A 1994 DS book listed a bunch of outer planar, astral, and ethereal creatures to summon. It also said that the psionicist could see into the astral and ethereal or shift there.A couple of years later a book, maybe the 2nd to last DS book, came out saying Athas was cut off from the planes by "the Gray" and that, no reason given, the crystal sphere around Athas was impenetrable. But before that, Planescape came out. It references Athas freely, like elemental clerics are seen as country bumpkins but the lower planes like Athasian bards.The Gray looks very like a retcon to re-isolate Athas after someone overlooked what Planescape or even Manual of the Planes implied, even though it really only mattered to people playing Planescape and even though Planescape has portals to Athas regardless of the Gray. At least one prominent Dark Sun character has a planar gate and travelled the planes widely, inspiring him to become a true god, even though the book says Athas has never had and never will have true gods for reasons.tldr; DS didn't even try to explain why until near the end of its lifespan, it just was that way.
Why are we going over stupid details about offtopic 2e settings that nobody plays?
Are there any adventures/modules that feature blue dragons?
>>97673537Because the retard's asshurt self-exile lasted less than a week and his new """genius plan""" is to just spam 2e content ITT as if it were normal to post it and it belonged in here, even though it's explicitly offtopic and he's been told so a million times.>>97673398Kill yourself, Fishfag.
>>97673607>M1 Into the MaelstromSeveral as part of a secret army. Meant to be a mass combat encounter in the middle of the module, not mentioned again after the battle and the PCs move on.>I9 Day of Al'AkbarAppears suddenly very early on and disappears just as fast.>DA3 City of the GodsRandom encounterTortles of the Purple Sage from Dungeon #6Random encounterIf you were looking for something from TSR that focussed on a blue dragon as one of the main features of a module, nothing that I know of.
>>97672331Ok well, it's done.At the press of a button I can get a terrain specific encounter type to spit out No. Appearing & whether or not in Lair.Also tacked on a NPC party generator that is pretty good but not up to scratch in terms of magic items.Published as a .xlxs but should be used as a google sheet - it rerolls any time the check box is toggled.This is fit for my purpose as a way to skip minutes of rolling and referencing at the table, although would still need to look at the monster entry to run the encounter...Maybe it is of use to someone?https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTLKRicAD-h57Ni4ltOrK9P50L19oAtYYUjJWKxV0zridq9FFkYr4t6NXVTvHm5NSrw5PnY1lc0juE4/pub?output=xlsx>>97674458Sorry lol pasted the wrong thing.
>>97673398Off-topic. Please take this discussion to /2eg/
>>97674468Thanks for sharing, Anon.
How do you indicate degrees of danger in a large urban environment, so that the players can make reasonably informed decisions about what they're getting into? Rumour tables don't have the same clarity as "depth into the dungeon" or "distance into the wilderness".
>>97674949Clever use of street/local names:"The Golden Swan" is clearly going to be a nicer pub than "The Groped Mermaid"High class names mean milk runs or very dangerous.Really low class ones mean a fight. You can't even walk through 'The Shambles' on a nice day without treating it like a PvP zone.Insert a joke about Martin Luther King Boulevard here.
>>976749491. City quarters.2. Side streets are more dangerous than main streets.3. Night-time is more dangerous than daytime.
>>97675103>>97675297Not that I'm not taking notes, but a high-class name or area also means they're in more danger if they're up to skulduggery. A thieves' guild in a slum and a guarded palace in the rich district are both clearly dangerous for example, but given a 1st to 9th+ level range there's potentially a big difference between the two and it isn't an obvious one.
>>97674949Distance into the wilderness is not a determinant of challenge level by the book, however. Of course it's fairly easy to make a game like that; it's one of the structural underpinnings of the West Marches format, for example. But in D&D as written it's more of a "you must be this tall to ride" thing: a minimum level required to at least be able to flee in reasonably consistent safety, and a minimum amount of player experience so as to know when you're outgunned.I would say the same format is if not intended then at least more fruitful when it comes to an urban environment. Getting charged by a whole platoon of city guards? Probably time to fuck off! Ask around for rumors about a given temple's security measures and learn that nobody knows because burglars have never returned? Maybe don't try to case the place when you're level 3, or at least accept that you're sending your character in as a trial balloon to see what happens, and if he succeeds so much the better.
>>97675625I'd consider urban environments less in term of danger and more in terms of long term impact.Players know the difference in terms of risk between "Billy the Blacksmith wants you to go bugger a thief wot stole 'is daughters favourite horseshoe" and "Eppingham Von Twattingham the 3rd wants you to rig the upcoming peasant race so he can outdo his rival, Chinless Charles."The former might have some consequences, if the thief has buddies, but even if Skallywag the Shoetaker is a 5th level Rogue he's not as likely to cause problems as much resources to cause long term bullshit as Chinless Charles.Basically you need to indicate using social markers rather than geographic ones. And that doesn't just mean making every major enemy a noble, it's more in terms of impression/vibes.The players know what it means if they ask for the whereabouts of Fuckhead Johnson and everyone in the bar suddenly stops talking/the piano player drops the lid on his fingers.
>>97675680>>97675696So, say, a fixed list of common knowledge about an important NPC or location that can be heard automatically just for asking around? E.g. from Conan "The king of Zamora feared Yara more than he feared death, and kept himself drunk all the time because that fear was more than he could endure sober" = don't try the Tower of the Elephant unless you are Conan-level confident?
>>97667760Is Traveller OSR still? These new rules are so confusing.
>>97674949I went with the general disposition of city districts as an overall indicator in an elevator pitch but you have to then as >>97675696is getting at, adapt that based on player character disposition and activity. Risk and exposure in urban environments is very circumstantial. Billy the Blacksmith's horseshoe buggery could be a high risk job if you're level 1 cutpurses and that thief has ties to the local gang, but might be a good opportunity to leverage that in favour of the up-and-coming rival gang. Depends on how into it you want to delve as a DM really. >>97675764For each district I went with >purple prose description >smells, sights, sounds>list of street and area names >3 long standing factions at odds >3-6 current events The last two tending towards adventures I wanted to run. The Heat mechanic from Scarlet Heroes was very useful as an abstraction of how much social waves the player characters were making and how it attracted attention of the various locals. Welcome to Corpathium is a messy bunch of old blogs to pour through but it really helped me out.
>>97675956Traveller is nice and all, but it was never OSR. OSR is the revival of first decade D&D played in a certain manner.The only non-D&D game that is arguably OSR is Gamma World because of its high compatibility and the fact that the DMG discusses crossover campaigns.
>>97675956Traveller is its own thing and it deserves better than just being called another osr game honestly.It's a unique experience.
>>97676349>it deserves better than just being called another osr gameThis. It's not a criticism to say that Traveller is not OSR, merely a statement of fact.
>>97676337>>97676349>>97676543>Photos of guys standing next to Stalin.jpg
>>97674468thanks!!>>97674949percentage of minorites to humans, and of police presence/absence vs response times
>>97676559its very clearly not OSR you mongoloid fishfucker
>>97676337Nah, that's not what OSR is or can be.If you imagine it has to be played in a certain manner, you'd have to ignore or deliberately attempt to reject all the contradictions to that certain manner that exist in the OSR and has always existed in old school gaming.Overall though, it's a big waste of life to spend so much time trying to act like it matters what's "true OSR" or not, because the goal should be "what's the most fun" and not "how can I establish the idea that a strict rule set must be followed in order so I can shift away blame and responsibility for my own decisions onto those rules, allowing to be a complete dick and just blame the system which I am supposedly forced to play?"
>Talking about Benz vintage cars>Someone asks if a Daimler Phoenix is a type of Benz>Other people confirm that it isn't, it's a different car made by a different company>Fuckhead: Wow that's a moral judgement, way to cast the Daimler out of the Benz communityIn fact, there's a stronger argument to be made that the Phoenix is a type of Benz because Diamler merged with Benz later under the Mercedes brand and both are cars, meanwhile Traveller has entirely different mechanics.For the record; Traveller is the better system, both in terms of crunch (2d6 gives a bell curve, character generation being life paths, no expectation of levelling built into the game) and fluff (Because the Third Imperium has almost half a century of passion poured into it by this point creating a beautiful pearl made from layer after layer of autism building atop each other).Sorry lads, nothing personal, I just like Traveller more.Me liking or disliking something doesn't make it an OSR game though and saying something is or isn't OSR isn't a judgement of its quality.
>>97676675OSR isn't a car brand. It's not an objective label or anything close to one.I agree that I personally don't think of Traveller first when I think of OSR games. But, considering it's a contemporary of early D&D and shares a lot of qualities with it (many that differentiate it from more modern RPGs), it's pretty much a guarantee that when people discuss old school mechanics and their interpretations of what that means, games like Traveller are worthwhile to bring into the discussion, whether limpdicks are going to fight over if they're OSR or not.Even just looking at the similarities between OD&D and Traveller versus the differences between those games and later editions of D&D provide interesting insight on how gaming has changed over the years.
>>97676741Mans, old=/=osr. Go fuck off.
>>97676607>>97676741Fuck back off to plebbit.
>>97676754I'm not saying all old games are osr. I'm saying that the lines are blurry, and I'd err on the side of including new angles of discussion.No need to go for a slippery slope. I'm not saying RuneQuest is an OSR game or anything like that.Though, it would be interesting to compare RuneQuest with OD&D and see whether any elements of it found its way into AD&D or later editions.D&D didn't develop in a vacuum. You can't really appreciate what early D&D was if you refuse to look at its environment.
>>97676796>No need to go for a slippery slope.lmao at touting the purity spiral againThe OP says what is OSR for the purpose of this general, and it's been about first decade D&D for over a decade. Make your own thread if you don't like this one. Or, like the other Anon said, go to plebbit, where OSR is any game anybody thinks is OSR.
>>97676741>But, considering it's a contemporary of early D&D and shares a lot of qualities with it (many that differentiate it from more modern RPGs), it's pretty much a guarantee that when people discuss old school mechanics and their interpretations of what that means, games like Traveller are worthwhile to bring into the discussion, whether limpdicks are going to fight over if they're OSR or not."It's old therefore it's an OSR game" = "This car was on the road at the same time as horses therefore it's a horse"Great, so in 30-40 years time 3.5 will be an OSR game by that definition?Look.Stop being silly.Please. I'm even asking politely.
>>97675764A list like that is a very good start, for sure. I think it's fine if there are also things the PCs can only learn by having the right connections or asking in the right places – similar to e.g. buying a map of a part of the wilderness, gathering more information about the level of a given challenge is a perfectly valid part of gameplay, a sensible precaution that the players can take or eschew as they see fit.But yes, most of the baseline information about stuff like powerful sorcerors, heavily guarded temples, the forces of the Overlord, "they say Muulsh the Moneylender has twenty hired bravos guarding his stash day and night, and some say he even retains a wizard at exorbitant expense!", all that should be readily available.
>>97675956>still>new rulesKill yourself, Fishfag.
>>97676337>OSR is the revival of first decade D&D played in a certain manner.>>97676543>It's not a criticism to say that [any given game] is not OSR, merely a statement of fact.Both very good and completely correct posts but you know you're replying to a troll and he'll never accept this because he's just trying to shit up the thread, right?
>>97677360>you know you're replying to a troll and he'll never accept this because he's just trying to shit up the thread, right?In situations like this, you never reply for the retard you're talking to, you refute for the sake of others that might fall for their bullshit and mistakenly believe they've got a point.
>>97676675>2d6 gives a bell curveYou were doing great up until this point. What in the name of stochastic Christ are you talking about? 2d6 gives what's called a triangular distribution, 3d6 is much closer to the true bell curve or more accurately, normal distribution.>Sorry lads, nothing personal, I just like Traveller more.That's fine though, good for you. Enjoy your games.
>>97677367Fair up to a point, but eventually the insistent niggulating shits up the thread and it just becomes retreads of babby's first explainer.That said, I'll admit it's pretty funny that he lasted less than a week before he started back in on vomiting his fanfiction all over the general. Annoying to put up with, but what it says about his state of mind is comical.
What the fuck is wrong with the guy who acts like he owns this thread?And why does he keep samefagging?
>>97677378Alright, pyramid distribution. You know what I mean, it leans more towards the average over the extremes.Which I think makes character skills/abilities have more impact.More importantly however, this isn't the thread to talk about Traveller in.>>97677393He's currently over in the last of his troll threads as well trying to pick fights with anyone he can.But yeah, he's not going to fuck off on his own, that much is clear.
>>97677398>More importantly however, this isn't the thread to talk about Traveller in.Agreed. We'll leave it at that.
>>97676597That reference might be lost upon them but I got it anon.
>>97678605>first decade D&D is "nuOSR">too stupid to even come up with a new term>thinks traveller is OSRholy shit, fucking kill yourself, troll
Today was session 57 of my BFRPG campaign. I hadn't ran for two months due to weather, illness, and adjusting to a new schedule at work. My players were eager to get back at the table.Earlier in the campaign, they found a large, abandoned, dwarven mine. So this time they decided to explore it more fully. Many sessions ago, one of the players repaired a lift that went down 120 feet into the ground, and this time they actually went down. At the bottom they found a series of dome-shaped chambers that all contained pallets of old mining equipment and various ores. In one of the chambers, they also found a group of orc children who they initially thought were gonna go get more orcs... But nothing became of it. Both parties just let each other be.In another chamber, they found an ogre who explained that where they found themselves was actually a small, peaceful community of ogres and orcs, and he gave them directions on where to avoid in exchange for some silver and rations. He also showed them a secret door that led deeper into the mine. The players also encountered two trolls that almost fucked them up, but they drove them off using fire.They found a hidden door that led into the ventilation system of the mine, and after crawling around in there, (And one of the party's fighters almost dying to a venomous pit viper there,) they managed to find a cache of dwarven treasure. Initially I made the check incredibly difficult, but one of the party's henchman opened it and inside they found lots of coinage and a magic axe and a magic bastard sword.Most interesting in this session, they found an old teleporter that is missing some parts. When translated from dwarven, it says that it requires a "Counterflux Celluloid Cannister" to be inserted before it will operate...Looking forward to next session. It's good to be back in the judge's seat.
>>97678709>OSR gametraveller is not OSR you braindead shitslurper
>>97678767>I hadn't ranESL retard
>>97678783Didn't you get the memo? Everything from before the year 2000 is OSR now. Brb, gonna watch some OSR Seinfeld>>97678857Learn English and fuck off, fishfag
>>97678857>ESLYou cant even use proper English and you accuse someone using a contraction properly of being ESL?WOWpost another fake char sheet, faggot
>>97678767>It's good to be back in the judge's seat.Nice!
>>97678908>>97678767I think I'm also gonna try to commit to drawing out and adding a little bit to my digital version of my dungeon map each night. As of right now I have most of it drawn on graph paper, which is good. But it's very messy and hard to read. I want to practice with Dungeon Scrawl to make a version of the map that looks really clean and expansive. (So later on, I can get it printed and maybe put it on my wall.)
>>97678859>Learn English and fuck off, fishfag>>97678866>you accuse someone using a contraction properly of being ESL?Not fishfag.It's "I hadn't RUN", you fucking mongoloids. If you're not ESL, you're unable to spell your own language.
>>97664614In my ACKS campaign my party took down a necromancer who had connections with political leaders, an occult network, a heretical cult, gnolls, orcs, a Dragon and his kobald and wyvern minions. They took down the necromancer, a Baron, however they got distracted by a coup plot for a few sessions came back and the necromancers alter as well as the local down was destroyed. They were tasked with taking down the heretics by the local bishop. Found out the heretics were working directly with the gnolls. They killed the guards and black bagged the heretic leader (kinda like the children of God cult). Used noiselessness to shut him up before he called for the Kool aid or an illusion. One player has a witch that can talk to animas, so he asked a farm pig if he saw where they were taking people (for human sacrifice) found out the locked basement of the grainy had dead people from sacrifice (the heretics holy symbol can make illusions). The 3 characters that are members of the church were named "the priestly Triarchy of" the city. Which will cause problems for them in the future with the Duke they're knighted under. (The bishop was in on the coup). Now they're building up troops to assist the 64 gnoll troops plus a wyvern and wooly rhino calvary. Using domains at war battles to adjudicate with some groking on the scale.
>>97679077Upon review, I see you're right. You just came in at the tail end of a bunch of fishy nonsense, and he likes to attack people who goodpost in /osrg/
>>97679237All good. Have a great day/night.
>>97679214Sounds like a very cool investigative session, Anon. Almost reminds me of Call of Cthulhu in some way. I'm not very good at running this type of things, so I'm particularly impressed. Kudos.
>>97679077alright my b bro
>>97679611The Judge's Journal for ACKS gives great advice on creating a sandbox with a "Story Web". Generally I'll make each major NPC a member of multiple factions. Be it a religious sect, family, political body or short term faction trying to get something done over months not years or decades. You can even mix factions that would normally be at odds. A baron of the duke had her daughter married off by treaty to the son of a rival duke. Making her priorities mixed. She hates that her daughter is gone, but she can't outright rally against the rival Duke. My high concept for the campaign was 30 Years War inspired. The Duke was a "protestant" and the Bishopric is "catholic" with different fantasy names. Then for chaotic groups they tend to break apart quickly because they want some demon summoned or magic item. The Kobalds are working for the dragon because they worship him as a God. The Gnolls, not so much, but they would like some of the loot in a major dungeon. This gives you room as a judge to have those interesting interactions.
>>97679890Excellent stuff. I'll have to reread that section of the JJ, then. Sounds like it might make me suck less a bit less at this.
How feasible is it to use an LLM to paraphrase parts of an RPG rulebook like spells and monster descriptions in a way that is neither copyright-infringing nor coming across as obviously written by an LLM and hence irksome to the reader?
Wow, these last twenty-or-so posts are just pure cringe.
>>97681711In-.
>>97678709>>97678605commit suicide, fishfag
>>97681754you too, kill yourself
