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[NOTE: The link in this paste is currently not working; check the DM's Guide above for links to both guides] >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:>>98305831>Thread Question:What's your favorite fan-made OSR PDF supplement or blog post?
>>98371850>OD&D and judges guild had it down right from the start.Yep, it's the best. The LBBs don't have the best editing, but the system works great.
Slow day, huh?
>>98373596Yep. Maybe people are busy running their games. Or maybe they're hung over from the bronze match in the world cup yesterday. Either way, happens.
N00b PHB guy here. Gonna fix the links and such today.
>>98373701Done. Apparently sendspace nuked PDFs?
>>98373720Something like that, yeah. Good work, quasi-Anon!
>>98372743>favorite fan-made OSR PDF supplement Fuck me that's hard to narrow down to one choice. If I had to, D4 Caltrops 100 Wilderness Hexes is a really great pdf but its more present of mind with the current campaign being more classical fantasy. Gorgazo's Level 1 Creature Generator has been a lot of fun over the years. Broken System is just that, but it grabbed me many moons ago. Muster: A Primer for War is quite good as an actual primer but its likely longer than most people want to read as an intro. Goblin Punch's Book of Tigers, Book of Mice and Bestiary in general. >blogsAlmost all of Monster and Manuals, Dungeon of Signs/All Dead Generations, Beyond Fomalhaut, Clerics Wear Ringmail, Prince of Nothing, Hack & Slash, Mizirian's Garden, The Manse, Simulacrum, Melancholies & Mirth, Elf Maids & Octopi, the aforementioned D4 Caltrops, Planet Algol, Straights of Alain, there's a lot of blogs. Special mention to fan made being 10' Pole by Bryce. Its not always the best, but he's consistent enough and churns through modules enough its been a very useful measure over the years. The death of What's New In The OSR guy has been an unfortunate blow, everyone after that has been very clearly bought out and shills product identity rather than a broader interest. Looking at you Ben.
>>98372743newfag here anyone knows where i can find Malustrious Brood free pdf and other osr material
>>98374024>102 pages >12 monsters I even like the artfag stuff but its been deeply fucked for a while. Might be in the nusr trove but I don't think its updated in a while. Ask in general in the share thread you'll have better luck there.
>>98373994>suppsGood choices. I'm a big fan of the Vancian Magic Supplement myself.>there's a lot of blogsI know, that's why I tried to specify post, lmao. I was thinking of stuff like Jeff Rients' "Party like it's 999" post.>The death of What's New In The OSR guy has been an unfortunate blow, everyone after that has been very clearly bought out and shills product identity rather than a broader interest.Very agreed.
>>98372743Best fan-made supplement is one that came out of this website: Legends of the New Earth, a fan-made player supplement for Anomalous Subsurface Environment. The Anon who made it is a regular here
>>98374280Jeff Reint's 20 Questions is a solid post that is useful for every setting anyone makes for osr games to this day. Its overly wordy but I like All Dead Generation's series of articles on osr play, dungeon delving and design. https://alldeadgenerations.blogspot.com/p/the-classic-dungeon-crawl-theory.htmlMonsters and Manuals has a great bit on describing how ttrpg rules can operate and how flexible that can be or not and advantages of various types. https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-fundamental-principles-of-rpg-style.htmlBeyond Fomalhaut's hex crawling design and examples were quite helpful and I think one of the better explanations along with GFC's video https://beyondfomalhaut.blogspot.com/2021/11/blog-hex-crawls-simple-guide.htmlhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC-h1haFSIAThe Alexandrian and the old Melan post on dungeon design is also quite good. https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/45711/roleplaying-games/xandering-the-dungeon-addendum-how-to-use-a-melan-diagram
Forgot a few pdf fan made things that have been well used. https://files.catbox.moe/y826wi.pdfis Actual Dungeon Mastering, a good look at dungeon design and how the keying tables function with comparisons between editions.
This is an older pdf of various introduction modules with summaries that has good variety and insight. https://files.catbox.moe/jwmwte.pdf
and this one is about zoz. ifkykhttps://files.catbox.moe/36eds3.pdf
>>98375823That's linked in the OP, bro.
Stonehell on the Borderlands has had to cease play for a while, due to the early arrival of my son this morning. I was hoping to get to 40 sessions, but 36 will have to do. Maybe I will be able to bring it back in a few months when things relax.Until then I hope y'all have good games.
>>98376787Congratulations, Anon!
>>98376784Version 2.1 even. Been ages since I opened the pastebin's pastebin.
I'm gonna run a couple of B/X one shots. Something I'd like is doing basic and then expert characters, but I don't think I have the time to come up with a cool adventure and making the pregens. So I'm going with The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina and The Revenge of Rusak, from AC3 and AC8, the tile sets. They come with fully loaded pregens and they're simple (kinda boring) adventures that are easy to retouch. Has anyone here run them? Did you ever get those 80's tile sets? It feels like a really weird product for the current market, but I feel that as a child in the 80's-90's with no 3d printer or even cheap color printers I would had bought three of them. Also, these are open tables, so I need a cool attention grabbing image, but the modules don't have any and nothing all that exiting happens. Do you have any early 80's art (AD&D-B/X, BE) that is cool but doesn't over sell? No dragons or all powerful wizards, just adventurers being cool.
Should I play Gygaxian D&D or Macrisian D&D? Which is better?
>>98378846>The Kidnapping of Princess Arelina and The Revenge of RusakUnusual choice and you're right, they're kinda boring.Are you going to print out the pieces and assemble them? It is a weird product for the current market but you might be able to lean into the retro vibe. >classic adventures being cool I don't think this one is dnd in origins but it has a lot of stuff going on that works well for adventuring and exploration of a dungeon.
>>98378859gygACKSian is the umbrella term for both
>>98379245Shit. Posted a small version.
>>98378846
>>98379266
>>98378859>Should I play Gygaxian D&D or Macrisian D&D?Yes.>Which is better?Both.
>>98378859Whether to play ACKS over AD&D or B/X depends entirely on how much help you feel you want/need with the economic end, or to phrase it a different way, whether you prefer handwaving or a spreadsheet.
>>98379556I can only speak for myself but after these months of playing ACKS I don't want to go back to any previous version of D&D I have played.
>>98379607Good for you, Anon! I don't think anybody here would dissgree that, if it's the right game for you, it's unbeatable. There's nothing to touch it in its niche.
>>98378971all virtual, but I was considering taking them to gimp and using them as tiles in a vtt. I don't know how long that would take, I'll probably give that idea a couple of hours and see if I'm having fun.thanks for the picsif I link everyone 4chan assumes I'm spamming
>>98380131>all virtualI am now entirely lost on why you picked those modules when you know they're bad.
>>98380422They're quick to prepare and I wanted to do something contemporany that could be solved in a one shot. My main interest in showing the B/X mechanics to see if people vibe with them and then moving maybe to OSE adventures or a bigger module. But if you have a rec for something that could be worked in 4 hours (including chunks of dungeons or whatever) that comes with pregens with interesting load outs I'll consider it. It was more of a "good enough" choice. Switching around stuff to open paths in a railroad or changing the narrative to make it more engaging is easier than building apropiate characters or an adventure from scratch for me.
>>98380461>that comes with pregens with interesting load outsis an interesting design space I haven't thought of much at all honestly. That you're seemingly looking for slightly higher than level 1 is different enough its worth thinking about too. The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh is direct and to the point while you can likely still get a decent sense of accomplishment in 4 hours. The pregens are very basic, as would be my suggestion of using the B4 Fast packs, or just B4 for that matter although I suspect its a lot more work to read and prep if you're only using it for 4 hours. Is there any reason to not use something like https://character.totalpartykill.ca/basic/to make some pregens? Could do Hole In The Oak, its a generally well liked intro module.
Is this too broken? Its a homebrew demihuman ability>Shout: Once per encounter, you may replace one attack with a Shout. This frightens any nearby 1 HD enemies (causing them to flee for 1 turn, Save v Petrification to ignore).Not sure if it should instead become:>Shout: Once per DAY
>>98380628Why are you not forcing a morale check instead?
>>98380692Good point. In fact I like the ideal of it forcing a morale check + you adding a bonus equal to your class level
>>98380628whether its stronger or not, 1/day abilities feel a little too video gamey IMO. Per encounter is fine
>>98380547I'm doing a run of D&D tasters, I already did Holmes and AD&D 1e at level 1, I noticed a ton of character progression comes from magic items so I wanted to run something that took that in consideration but actually picking or simulating what they could find for 4-6 pregens was too much for the time I can put into this dumb project right now. This two sub par modules include not only pregens with equipment but it's also the same characters so if a player comes back they can see how their character could had changed if he kept playing for months. It's an interesting concept for showcase adventures. There are classics I really wanted to try out, like White Plume Mountain or Barrier Peaks. But for now I'm focusing on running the systems to get the experience and maybe get regular players.
>>98380461In four hours, even if it took a whole hour to roll up characters (which it definitely doesn't) you've still got plenty of time to run a decent session. >Wanted to do something that can be solved in a one shotIs the wrong way to think about it. Run the first floor of Stonehell, keep an eye on the time and players will have to think about returning to the surface once the session approaches its end. Then this "one shot" becomes session 1 if the table vibes with the system. Nothing needs to be solved other than A: where is the treasure" and B: "how do we get back safely". Everything else will be taken care of by the game.
>>98380628An "encounter" is not a meaningful unit in old-school D&D. >>98380692 is right that it should be a morale check.>>98380728Adding a bonus equal to your level to a morale check will produce insane results, it's a 2d6 roll. The highest bonuses allocated to morale checks in Basic are ±2.On the other hand, in AD&D's baroque morale system that nobody uses, a bonus equivalent to your level is basically nil and a waste of time to add into the already far too elaborate calculus.
>>98381193>These two sub par modules include not only pregens with equipment but it's also the same characters so if a player comes back they can see how their character could had changed if he kept playing for months. It's an interesting concept for showcase adventures.NAYRT but although this is a compelling argument, you could just steal the pregen PCs and use them in something better. What are the characters' levels? I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with AC3/8, but Khosura, for example, has a level span of 3-8 and is great, so you could arrange for the PCs to get two separate commissions to go into the same underworld; since the environment is the same, it'll play up the contrast in the characters. (Or if the levels are somewhat lower, use Castle Xyntillan, which is level 1-6; same principle.)
>>98380628>Once per encounterSounds like WotC or something like that, we don't do that here, as it is ill-defined and when an encounter starts and a new one ends is often unclear with running away, chases, or wandering monsters arriving mid-combat with otherwise unrelated monsters.Once per turn is what we say in D&D.
>>98381193>picking or simulating what they could findDon't overthink pregen balance to a given dungeon. This having been said, the DMG has rules for that.
>>98380628>once per encounter>once per dayFOE GYG
>>98379556There's so much in ACKS that is neither spreadsheety nor economics, though.
>>98381731NTA. Tons of magic items have once per day powers, and a few Paladin, Druid, Monk, and Bard abilities do as well.
>>98381279Tht's how I approached Holmes and 1e. It worked fine, but teaching the system and dungeoneering at the same time took a bit of a toll on me. More than it does when I'm confident with the system or I expect the group to keep going for a while. Since I saw this two adventures that are smaller and more manageable I want to see if that works better. The first one isn't even THAT bad, rescue a princess from a small dungeon-house, get and out while keeping her alive.The second one looked like a rail roady hexcrawl with just two OP enemies. That one I might drop after properly reading it.>>98381440This is trueThe first set of pregens are between 3 and 5, the lower one being a dwarf. The second I think is 7 and 9, I might be wrong. Each has different magical equipment including utility stuff which is what made me think it'd be cool. You're right I could just take the pregens I like and ditch the adventures in favor for something better.I might give the Mystara stuff a second look.
>>98381896>MystaraIs mostly garbage. It wasn't half bad when ti was still called "The Known World" though. Quality took a nosedive in the post-Gygax era, like a lot of things at TSR.
>>98381919I made the mistake of checking the gazeteers hoping to find playable content for over an hour once.
>>98381731>once per day = FOE GYG1. It should be FOSRE GYG2. Kill yourself faggot3. Oriental Adventures: Ninja can hold breath equal to their Ninja level once PER DAY4. See item #2
>>98382269NTA, but NO U, newfag
>>98382275I accept your concession.
>>98373701>>98373720Welcome back!
Greetings fellow FAGs, B/X newfag here, just played session 37 yesterday. I seek your guidance and wisdom once again. The players solved a mystery in an underground gnome village and monastery in which gnome villagers kept disappearing. Some of the monks and their elder turned out to be behind it and to use the abducted gnomes as sacrifices to their demon god. After revealing it all and imprisoning the evildoers, the gnome chieftain generously rewarded the party with a big part of his community's treasure amounting to around 50.000GP. Now for my two issues: We've been playing for roughly a year now and the group typically consists of 3 to 5 PCs. Each of them has around 3 retainers/henchmen (always forget the distinction). Which means if the group is in full attendance we have like 5 PCs and ~13 NPCs in the adventure party which really can drag out both dungeon and combat procedures as well as logistics. I usually have small whiteboards with square grid and non permanent markers where we track the marching order, light sources and combat encounters which can get a bit tedious due to the group's size. I told them that it also reduces the XP and gold they receive but they only wittingly respond that in the early campaign days I kept pointing out that they could and perhaps should hire a few NPCs to support them at times. The other issue that arised is that the players know of the royal gnome mausoleum and the remaining treasures found in there. Both the dwarven PC as well as the dwarven NPCs in the party due to their lawful alignment are strictly against robbing the gnomish graves. After the session yesterday two morally more flexible players approached me and told me their desire to try and retrieve these treasures anyway. I won't split the party mid session, I've told them they have to convince or deceive the lawful characters to support their heist (perhaps unknowingly) a separate session also feels unfair towards the lawful player. Any thoughts and advice?
In this one room of a dungeon there is this flail snail guarding treasure. Now, the party has decided to kill the thing using ranged weapons because it would be easy to kite. However, I suddenly had an idea. I want to tame it.How would you go about taming a flail snail? (And I didn't realize it, but you could use it as a very slow mount.) I got to thinking about it, and my plan so far is to buy a ton of buckets of vegetables and taking them to the snail and going into the dungeon once a day and attempting to feed it (Leaving it at a distance first, before getting closer and closer.) Are there any rules or mechanics written out for doing this or would I just play it by reason?
>>98383081Not sure what your first issue actually is. Do you feel that they have too many henchmen? Or are you rather asking for advice on procedures to speed up the management of the henchmen?As for your second issue, I would personally split the party. Maybe not mid-session, but I would allow the neutral(?) players to prepare for robbing the mausoleum between sessions and then start a session with them doing that and the lawful players doing something else, whatever they want – possibly allow them to prep that between sessions as well, depending on what it is.
>>98382089I remember going through the Forgotten Realms setting books and thinking >Okay, this is kinda cool, but what am I supposed to do with this?Stuff like one town having a retired champion, and it was good to offer training, but there was no context for the dude so I could had made him up. Or not-tibetan monks doing the thing with the 30 items and you have to pick the ones their great master had as a child, I could pre-pick them and see if anyone happens to match them... and what happens next? What does it mean to be the reincarnation of the great master? It was pretty much a 1d20 cool hooks list expanded into a book filled with pointless generic details.>>98383081Shouldn't they have some sort of keep at this point where they can stash the NPCs?
>>98383482>Are there any rules or mechanics written out for doing this or would I just play it by reason?Ask your referee. Not to be a cunt about it or anything but it's pretty much up to him whether he would even consider it tameable, what its diet is, what kind of research your character would need to do to learn these things etc. That's not really something we can tell you.
>>98383499I didn't know if B/X or a similar system had written rules for taming animals/monsters.
>>98383512It 100% doesn'tI could see a chart hidden somewhere in AD&D that could be repurposed, but the concept of collecting creatures as gameplay is more modern than that.
>>98383512Understandable! Various editions of D&D have notes in specific monster descriptions on how to tame those specific monsters. I don't think the flail snail is one, but I could be mistaken. There is not to my knowledge any first-party set of comprehensive rules for monster taming; anything like that would have to be a third-party house rule or supplement (and a good idea for one, natch!), which means your referee would have to actively opt to use it in his game. Which brings us full circle, but again, a reasonable line of thinking. There could have been rules.
>>98383512ACKS does but something like a snail is really dumb so you probably can't train it to do much.>>98383081>large parties As a player in a group with 5 PCs and 20 henchmen the key is everyone knowing what thier role and zone of responsibility is. We have 2 PCs with that form the front rank and their henchmen are the thief types and second line fighters. Another is mostly mid marching order reserve. And mind are the rear guard, healers and ranged specialists. The 5th guy joined late and has no henchmen yet.
>>98381193>>98381896>I noticed a ton of character progression comes from magic itemsFor sure this, but I think you already got good advice to use pregens of any availability as long as the levels are about right. The idea for a lot of those modules was tournament play and being able to plug in whoever showed up so the specific loadout isn't that calculated. That being said, I had also been "saving up" modules I really liked for the right group but that wasn't coming together so I just went ahead and started just running them. No time like the present, you can always run it again if you want.
>>98383081>Any thoughts and advice?Get each player to mark down on an index card or something similar the marching order of their henchmen and quartermastering details, who has the torch, etc. Likely want two copies, one for you and one for them so they don't forget. This is the assumed default setup in all cases unless specified now. You can now zoom out or abstract your own tracking/markings to units like a wargame rather than each linkboy, spearman and small but viscous dog. It declutters your map and keeps things simple. I'd use the potential conflict of interest between the greedy dwarves and the do-gooders as a great opportunity to slide in domain play with some rivalry and enmity between factions forming in the area. It might not be practical for separate sessions, but if you can pull that off and also encourage more than one character per player it lets everyone continue but its sometimes a hard sell to detach from the >I am my character mentality. Not as familiar with B/X's henchmen loyalty and alignment rules but there might be interesting things with that as well if the majority of the party's henchmen are inclined to support the lawful PC.
>>98383482>Are there any rules or mechanics written out for doing this or would I just play it by reason?Could us the rules for dropping food to distract monsters while fleeing as a base chance of it working and go from there. Something like >x successes in y attempts familiarizes the creature to you but it being a brute beast I'd be inclined to keep the feeding requirement high.
Would you guys play an airship-based OSR game with something akin to traveller where you start out potentially with shares in a ship and you go to different islands trading and exploring dungeons there? Random islands generated too, on 100-mile-hex hexmaps, and something akin to Traveller UPPs to be able to "roll up" a whole setting?
>>98384632Absolutely.
>>98384671How much deviation from B/X would be too much? Would rolling for "live events" that affect your character turn it into FOE GYG and destroy your desire to play it? What about skills that only are binary have/have nots that just apply to 2d6-based procedural rolls for specific aspects of airship travel? Like ACKS but even more restrictive.
>>98384909NTA, shouldn't you be asking your players these things instead of strangers on the internet?
>>98384632Sounds good to me. Hardest part would be figuring out how much of my knowing about boats to turn off so the game still works and is fun for everyone. >>98384909Do you mean life path generation like in Traveller or Beyond the Wall? Don't mind it and think it can be cool if done well but can end up over emphasizing the significance of starting characters and making the higher mortality potential and better ref practices of impartiality harder to keep up. Skills as a binary and 2d6 is fine as long as you don't mess up the curve. >>98385000They might be asking for players, or seeing what a general reaction to a premise is to tune it a bit before pitching it to their group. Or hoping people suggest more material. Or bored.
>>98385191>Do you mean life path generation like in Traveller or Beyond the Wall? Don't mind it and think it can be cool if done well but can end up over emphasizing the significance of starting characters and making the higher mortality potential and better ref practices of impartiality harder to keep up.That's my goal, to keep character generation to just a few rolls still. And having a single roll as a party when you start out to determine what your situation is, if you're stakeholders in your own ship, one of you owns a ship outright (requires 18 on 3d6) or if you're just crew on someone else's ship (boring because it takes away PC agency). So maybe I'll scrap that entire system, I don't know.
>>98385241>boring because it takes away PC agencyI've played no-ship Traveller before, it's fine, you just have to find a ship to book passage on when you need to get to another planet, and there's lots of adventure to be had at a single location anyway.
>>98385241Its a bit of a contrivance but shared stakeholders in the ship with debts seems like the easiest way to have group cohesion and adventuring pretense that easily ties into treasure/xp. >having a single roll as a party when you start out to determine what your situation isCould take a page from the Sine Nomine stuff and use a full polyhedral set, the results of each being ship details.
>>98383629>No time like the present, you can always run it again if you want.Not only that, but if the module really is good you'll only get better at running it with repeats.
>>98384632Honestly I'd be iffy on the totally randomly generated islands (assuming I knew about it). In my view a good referee designs the core aspects of his dungeon and milieu, and uses random generation to fill in the gaps and margins.Besides this I'm pretty sure you asked about this before and got generally positive responses, although I will say B/X might not be the best fit out of the box if you intend the game to start with roving between islands instead of dungeoncrawling.
>>98385295>>98385251That might be better yeah. I just don't know if it's better to have a random roll for your starting premise, or have it be decided by the PCs or DM. The idea is that the DM's prep can be pretty brainless, he can just roll up a starting island and some adventure hooks, available cargo, etc and the PCs have financial pressure on them right away because they mostly start out broke. I don't know if I even want the possibility of noble PCs.
