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>>98041565>Thread Question:How common are player character deaths in your games?
Oh, that's an ugly image.
>>98074282I disagree.>TQDecently common, but mostly because we're in the low levels and players have WotC brain.
>>98074282I kinda like it. Otus vibes and a lizardman design that clearly owes a lot to the PHB cover.>>98074270>How common are player character deaths in your games?Rarer now that they've got a few levels under their belts. Still happens, but mostly it's the henchmen buying the farm.
>>98073746i actually really like randomly generated dungeons because it gives me a starting spread. i usually will take that layout then pencil in loops and traps to make it less nonsensical or carve off some bits with scissors to add things like holes and scratches and stuff. i don't use them all (in fact i probably don't use most of the stuff i generate) but sometimes the layout is perfect and i use it as a poi to drop on the hex map as a monster lair or small diversion for treasure. it's good for one or two floors but as i mentioned in my original post it can sometimes give me just unusable trash or layouts that feel more or less identical (especially since there's like five(?) entrances to start with).i like white plume mountain btw if that matters.>>98073838i'll take a look at these, thanks. maybe i can use the dungeonmorphs as entrances and use the normal procedure otherwise.>>98073848i don't mind the appendix because sometimes i get some pretty good layouts, but i wonder if there's some different algorithms out there that make different looking dungeons i don't know about.
>>98075844Not a really extensive post here but you do realize there's nothing special about the preset entrance rooms except that they have a certain number of exits and are large enough for those exits not to clash immediately, right? You can just draw your own for variety if you like.
>>98076284yeah i know, i'm just saying there's only five premade ones.
>>98074270TQ>How common are player character deaths in your games?Not very common but when it happens it usually means a TPK is imminent. My players are generally pretty cagey about avoiding big danger but they are also prone to poor risk assessment when things are more ambiguous or the tables get turned suddenly. I ran a B/X game near the end of last year and session 3 was the end due to TPK. 6 PCs and 3 hirelings got wiped by 14 goblins due to really poor rolls and a series of tactical blunders. In the first three rounds they lost 2 hirelings and the toughest dwarf was seriously injured. Meanwhile the goblins had sustained maybe 3 casualties and their spear-throwers were still chucking 3 or 4 attacks per round. The party lost perspective at that point. All the melee guys committed to a 6v3 engagement, the thief started climbing a tree, I think the mage was looking for a healing potion even though none of the PCs were down. They didn't regroup and got cut to pieces.
Can anyone here recommend and old school zine or geomorph set?
>>98077780What kind of Geomorphs?
>>98077780Dyson's ones are the best for dungeons, in my opinion.There's no good urban or wilderness geomorphs that I'm aware of, they're not really easy to make because towns and wilderness have features that are non-local or they look wrong.
>>98077222>dub-a-tripsChecked.>The party lost perspective at that point. All the melee guys committed to a 6v3 engagement, the thief started climbing a tree, I think the mage was looking for a healing potion even though none of the PCs were down. They didn't regroup and got cut to pieces.This is where player skill really shows. They should have retreated when those hirelings went down, if not fleeing then at least a withdrawal to e.g. a passage corner where the javelineers couldn't reach to throw and the PCs could force a melee engagement.
>>980786936v3 isn't bad vs goblins though. They should have a hard time hitting a well armored PC.
>be me fresh baby Referee>half the party is just RPing and socializing>other half is afk from the game, I assume due to the others just running off solo to RP>Say they're having a fun time everytime I ask>went in a dungeon for three rounds of combat and never came back >currently hunting a big fat monster that's terrorizing people>After they "hopefully" kill it, want to go to another town and RP moreI get they're having fun, but we're effectively not playing the game at this point. Do I step in and say something directly?
>>98078877>want to go to another town and RP morebut anon, that *is* the game.
>>98078884>but anon, that *is* the game.
>>98078877>Do I step in and say something directly?Are you subtly encouraging them to do theater kid stuff, by doing impressions, or improvising dialogue? You can put an end to it implicitly and effectively by switching to indirect speech.Instead of:>"Welcome, proud adventurers! What equipment do you seek?" Do:>The shop's open, what do you buy?Instead of:>"Your aid in ridding the village of the goblin scourge will have us eternally in your debt!"Do:>They thank you for clearing the goblin lair nearby.
>>98078991>avoiding voices and dialoglol this hobby literally started because people couldn't resist doing it during braunstein. the people yearn to make funny voices.
>>98078991Thats kind of what I'm leaning. Just sort of choke the thought out get things done during down time without RP. I just don't wanna like shit on their parade.
>>98078693They were outdoors but the fact remains they didn't regroup. They could have withdrawn to cover amongst trees and softened up the goblin melee team with their own ranged fire. What was baffling to me was the ineptitude of the thief and MU. The thief was trying to escape melee engagement that was not an immediate danger and the MU was readying a healing potion in no proximity to the most injured guy.>>98078831Two in chain and the dwarf in plate was down to 1hp. These are still 1st level guys so I think all of them at that point could go down to one blow.The stupidest thing about this encounter is that the goblins just wanted a payoff. The party had a sack of mixed coin they could have sacrificed but their biggest treasure was some gems worth a fair amount. They reacted in the worst way possible instead of trying trickery or diplomacy.
>>98074270>How common are player character deaths in your games?Common at low levels, less at the middle, common again at high levels because I force players to play the mooks they send to scout ahead (making them count as PCs, even if the main PC that sent them is still alive).
>>98074270>How common are player character deaths in your games?They were pretty common in the one I played in, but it was absolute mudcore / hardmode D&D B/X homebrew so it was probably more than you would expect. It was actually on copper standard, which I liked because it meant you could level up from collecting mundane items, and mundane items actually had value. We were very excited just to find a chainmail hauberk, or even cloth armor. I think I would stick to silver standard for a game I would run, but it was a cool way of doing it. I lost so many characters. Ironically the MUs tended to live longest, but I played the fewest of them because I preferred a party of 3 fighters and 1 MU (no clerics or thieves in this).
>>98079536Hey it's Pixel Graveyard Anon! Always liked these li'l guys.On the topic though I think it's telling that the majority of the dead PCs on your chart are level 1.
>>98074270were oldschool lizardmen like in that pic +str/con like in 3e?because it always looks to me in the old art that they are slimmer and slinkier and like theyd have good dex
>>98079871>+str/con like in 3eI'm not sure what that means in the context of 3e because I've never played it, but in old school D&D:1. Monsters don't have Ability Scores (except in AD&D, in which they only have intelligence, and in some very rare cases a Strength score is given, but 90% of the time it isn't).2. Lizard Men are not a playable race, so they don't have modifiers to Strength and Constitution either.
>>98074270TQ: I tend to be a somewhat lethal DM, as a lot of my players tend to charge first and ask questions later. As a player, I'm currently playing in an OSE game with a DM that is a big softy, so deaths are rare and rise dead is often available.So my big issue around OSR and death is that a lot of my friends are very stuck in the mindset that anything other then combat victory with no losses is a failed state/defeat. So any advice on how I can deal with this mentality would be appreciated.>>98079536Great to see you here again Pixel-art Anon! Hope that you will post some new art soon.
>>98080010>So my big issue around OSR and death is that a lot of my friends are very stuck in the mindset that anything other then combat victory with no losses is a failed state/defeat. So any advice on how I can deal with this mentality would be appreciated.If the DM isn't doling out consequences, actual and potential, then there isn't really much you can do as a player. A big part of the combat-as-a-failure-state aspect of OSR games is that you're supposed to be regularly fetching up against encounters that can shred you if you if you're dumb enough to take a combat-oriented approach but if the DM enables such degenerate behavior then you end up with a carrot and no stick and the bad behavior is reinforced.Either try to talk the DM around to being more lethal or run your own game, I suppose. Sorry I don't have better advice but if the players are getting rewarded for combat they're going to keep focusing on combat.
>>98080010>failed stateYou mean failure, which is different from a fail state. I wish people would stop using that, since nobody knows the term, just the meme.>>98080184This is decent advice. Players will learn eventually provided the DM doesn't pull his punches. You can maybe lampshade things though if the circumstances are right. Like if the party TPKs because they're fighting instead of fleeing, then maybe next session they can hear a rumor about the hireling whose morale broke before the TPK so he ran home with whatever treasure he had in his pockets and is now a "rich man" by his standards, drinking and celebrating and laughing about his stupid bosses who didn't run. Don't mention the last part or they'll probably try to hunt him down and kill him.
>>98079536>no clericsThat probably contributed quite a bit to your mortality rate as well.
>>98080184>If the DM isn't doling out consequences, actual and potential, then there isn't really much you can do as a player.This. Can't really control someone else's game. Presumably that DM is running soft-touch combatfagging because he knows it's what your mutual friends like.>>98080223>You can maybe lampshade things though if the circumstances are right.All of the advice you're giving here is referee-oriented, though. Anon says he's a player in that game. He can't give out rumors about hirelings after a TPK.
>>98080256Oh, in that case he needs to razz them hard for being stupid and lead by example. Stuff his pockets with loose treasure and run for the hills next time they do something stupid, so he levels up while they gotta start over.
>>98080010>a lot of my friends are very stuck in the mindset that anything other then combat victory with no losses is a failed state/defeatTo be fair to them that is what they should be aspiring to achieve every combat by stacking the deck in thier favor while picking good fights.But I get what you mean and my advice is to not be afraid to hand them some Ls when they do stupid things so they become more careful or learn when to cut thier losses and run.
>>98080575Nah, this won't work either, Anon. Didn't you *read* the post at all? His DM is too soft, so the encounters are weak and easy to beat in straight combat. There's no basis for him to razz them since they're not actually playing stupid.
>>98080994>thier>thierHad to come over to the real general to talk about OSR games after all, huh?
>>98079704thanks man.and yeah a lot of them died at level 1.>>98080010>Great to see you here again Pixel-art Anon! Hope that you will post some new art soon.Hopefully. I don't know if/when we'll play that game again. >>98080248Yeah there were no clerics in the campaign as an option. Healing was based on downtime, which got expensive. So it was sink or swim to find treasure, so you could afford to stay in the boarding house long enough to heal. As well as afford medicine.
Running an OSE game soon and I have some extra trackers and rule ideas for the game and I want to see if anyone else has used theseIndex cards for containersBackpack has its own index cardsaddlebags have their own index cardThis allows players to dropa heavy bag for combat without erasing a bunch of shit and keeps everything well sortedNumeric poker chips for weightthis allows players to track weight quickly without erasing a bunch of shit on their sheet. These chips are placed on containers to track the container's weight. Armor and essentials are written on the sheet because those are somewhat fixedMetal coin pieces for moneyAlso placed on top of container index cards to notate where they're storing the coinage. This also tracks weight since coins have weight tooTreating the Map as a physical objectI'm running a dungeon-focused campaign and I'm going to have the players map the dungeon on a piece of paper with pencil (for slight misinterpretation fixes). This will represent an in universe parchment and ink map that can be stolen, lost, or destroyed in the dungeon.Has anyone tried any of these in the past? did they work well?These feel like theyd enhance the game feel and make accounting faster and easier, but has anyone tried them and found them burdensome?I'm going to be a paid GM in this game and so I want players to feel like this is worth it.Also, I want to have players prepared to die, but how do you handle this practically? Its an open table to everyone, including newbies and I'm afraid of the game grinding to a halt because a player ignored a telegraph and walked onto a trap.
>>98077780I was literally looking up RPG and fantasy fanzines before this post was made, so I would be interested too
>>98077780>>98078498Someone redraw all the geomorphs in Dave's mapper (including Dyson's) into a new generator, look for anaximand at itch io
Do you reflavor/make major changes to modules?
A city ontop of caves of chaos seems really cool
>>98081522Reflavour, no. Make changes (mostly expansion), yes.
>>98077780>>98081467I didn't properly read the thread before posting woops, I really liked the Knock! zines, they're more like books filled with what would normally be blog posts in really nice looking layouts. There's 4 with a 5th one coming out I think.
>>98081739Oh wait the fifth one is out too.
>>98077780The best zine is Echoes from Fomalhaut. The best geomorphs are Dyson's.
>>98081739Many of those actually are just glitzed up blogposts. .
>>98082216That's what he said?
>>98082237>what would normally be >they actually are just blog posts with new art These are different statements.
>>98081385I really like the idea of listing inventory separated into containers.I won't steal it though because my FOE campaign pretty heavily handwaves encumbrance, only bringing it up when there's obviously too many coins to haul back easily.
>>98082240What? They're the same concept phrased two different ways. Are you high or just severely autistic?
>>98082257Nope, you're just esl.
>>98082268I accept your concession
Sorry, geomorph question guy here. Took a nap and forgot that I asked. Gonna read through the answers after work
>>98081739I think they would be considered mooks, book magazines. I've seen issue 1 before, it was a doozy
>>98081385I like this index card idea. Even if I play on tts. We do something similar with our cart.
>>98081522>>98081526source of this?
are there any zines in the trove? couldn't find any in the OSR archive but I might just be blind
>>98082601Look in Periodicals. It contains most of the early 2000s-2010s publications and plenty of historical stuff like Dragon and its imitators. Can't speak to anything from the last 5 years or so but the G+ era is there at least.
>>98082595it's>>98081739The caves of chaos map is on Dyson Logo's site
>>98081522>>98081526This is genuinely fucking terrible. They printed this zero content garbage? It's just some guy rambling about obvious reskins.
>>98083332It was useful to me, the idea of a city on top the caves of chaos is something I genuinely want to use in the future.. Not everything will be relevant to you in those books but I personally found a decent amount of stuff to take note of and use for my games.
>>98083345No offense, but I find it really hard to believe that you needed to pay money (or pirate a paid product) to encounter the idea of a dungeon beneath a city.But, regardless of that, do you seriously not see that this: >>98081526 is all no-content filler? An LLM could do better than this.
>>98083461Whats good LLM content?
>>98083535Nothing
>>98083535I'm not suggesting that there is such a thing as good LLM content.
>>98082601Am I going crazy or is the OSR archive down?
>>98084103Yeah, it's gone. Happens every now and then, Bytee's fighting an on and off battle to keep it up. Hopefully it'll come back soon, make sure you access it through the PDF rather than a saved archive link.Do you need anything urgently? I have my own local collection and access to alternatives to Bytee.
>>98084141Nothing urgent, just wanted to make sure it wasn't a permanent shutdown.
>>98084148I'd be surprised if it is, it's always come back.
