Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General, the thread dedicated to the first decade of TSR-era D&D, derived systems, and compatible content.

Broadly, OSR games encourage a tonal and mechanical fidelity to Dungeons & Dragons as played in the game's first decade—less emphasis on linear adventures and overarching meta-plots and a greater emphasis on player agency.

If you are new to the OSR, welcome! Ask us whatever you're curious about: we'll be happy to help you get started.

>Troves, Resources, Blogs, etc:
http://pastebin.com/9fzM6128

>Need a starter dungeon? Here's a curated collection:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/86342023/#q86358321

>Previous thread:
>>95828441

>TQ
I liked the discussion about the pyramid dungeon. We should talk more about that.

>What's an OSR?
>Don't know how to get started?
>The friendly n00b guide can be found here: https://pastebin.com/EVvt6P0B until further notice.

Want to contribute to the thread but don't know where to start? Use this table.
>1. Make a spell
>2. Make a monster
>3. Make a dungeon special
>4. Make a wilderness location
>5. Make an urban set piece
>6. Make a magic item
>7. Make a class, race, or race-as-class
>8. Make a 4-10 room lair.
>9. Make a trap
>10. Roll 2D10 and combine

>>95828704 (OP)
That's not a question dum dum
TQ
>How are your time records kept?

>>95828724
>15 giant rats.. how many can attack me at once?
These are the factors to consider.

Monster size. A Giant Rat is 3' long (or larger) in B/X and S size in AD&D.

Grid or miniatures. Assuming you use a grid, you will first of all have to rule on how much space on the board a giant rat takes up. If you use the most common 3.33 foot squares (or hexes), it's reasonable to have one Giant Rat per space, whether hex or square. That leaves enough space to, in theory, have six or eight rats surrounding one of your characters. If you're using miniatures, then the bases are the constraint, but with a giant rat that's 3 foot long or larger, you'll probably get the same result.

Tactics. Just because eight giant rats can surround a character, doesn't mean they actually can do it. The characters likely has opened the door to the room, have approached the chamber from a corridor, or have met the Giant Rats as wandering monsters in a corridor. In all of those cases, they will only have to face up to three giant rats in front of their party, because only three giant rats can fit abreast in a 10' corridor, and once a rat gets adjacent to a character it cannot move anymore, so the party cannot get encircled.

If instead they were in the middle of the room, and the Giant Rats arrived as wandering monsters and surprised the party, then yeah, they will have to face 15 attacks per round.

>>95828773
>FUCK ME
I meant to reply to
>>95828634

>>95828741
>That's not a question dum dum
I'm sorry, I suck at thread questions. Have a Gygax as an apology.

>>95828741
I use this:

The other lines are other gelatinous cubes. They all follow their lines unless disturbed. I want my players to hide in the rooms with doors. Touching a stone makes it unusable for 1d6 turns so can't use it right away. Might do a rescue or item seeking quest inside the dungeon so they have a reason to stay inside and look.

>>95829007
For you >>95826630

>start making hexmap
>trying to follow Medieval Demographics Made Easy
>trying to follow ACKS rules
>realize afterward I made the towns too large
>realize that I should be labeling each "barony" that's actually inhabited versus wilderness
>realize that I don't even know what to call them, should it be by the family name or the town name that is the baron's seat?
>hexes are too small for this shit so I can't write them all on the map
>but if I write them on a key I need coordinates which I have to write tiny to fit onto the map
>start getting frustrated and stop

>>95828773
yeah I guess I am kinda in the doorway and can bottleneck them orsoemthing but everything sort of feels like I am cheating.

>>95828741
lamintaed with little magnets that slide around

>>95829047
>everything sort of feels like I am cheating
In what way?

>>95829067
Like I am just picking out what I want to happen? i guess I am not sure of my procedures so it feels like I am just not playing properly

>>95829065
Did you make the hex weather charts? I like them a lot.

>>95829071
I would give you the following advice if you were playing with friends instead of soloing:

>Don't get obsessed over procedures: You won't get all of them right on your first session, or on your tenth session for that matter! Even veteran DMs forget to make that morale roll, occasionally.

>Focus on having fun and making the game run smoother.

>If you forget to apply a rule or procedure, it's not a tragedy. If you don't remember a rule and the current pace of the game is slow, make some shit up on the spot. If you get a rule wrong or make a bad ruling, it's not a tragedy either. At the end of a session review what happened. If it seems that your players might need to know that you misapplied a rule, tell them explicitly that, next session, you will be doing something differently.

All of this applies tenfold when soloing.

>>95829170
>is ACKSII finally spiritually a true OSR candidate capable of challenging AD&D
I personally have a mixed opinion of it. There's a couple FOE things in ACKS, chiefly the whole proficiencies thing, which yes can be removed, but also not because a bunch of core procedures are defined inside a proficiency, which is a pain in the arse.

So I wouldn't use it as my core system.

However, it does deliver on a lot of things: It completes a bunch of things that were left hanging in B/X and were either not delivered in AD&D either, or delivered in an unsatisfactory manner. I'm thinking magical research rules with extremely well thought-out and playtested rules for magic item pricing, the economics of wages, services, and slaves, domain rules (even if they're too spreadsheety for my taste), rules for fishing, smoking the fish, and selling it on the market, "hijinks" for Thieves, and good rules for establishing domains in the first place: How many lairs in a hex? I could add a dozen more things to the list.

So, for me, it's a B/X / AD&D hybrid with elements from ACKS as needed. I also take some things from Original Edition Delta and Book of War, and occasionally OD&D and Chainmail as well. Mutant Future / Mazes & Mutants for when I want to go full gamma gonzo.

>>95829065
Does this weather shit actually matter in the game though? For movement rates and morale and stuff?

>>95829382
>For movement rates and morale and stuff?
And missile weapons (bows can't be used in the rain at all), and visibility both when exploring unknown areas and determining encounter distance. And mud making riding impossible.

Disneywood also uses it to modify rest checks in the wilderness, which determine whether you recover HP while on the road and IIRC also something about memorising new spells.

>>95829170
No, it's a very flawed game that's starting to resemble GURPS. Less of a pick-up-and-play game, and more of something the GM has to spend time whittling into a shape they can work with.
Problem is the material isn't even that great once you're done. Everything is so generic and uninspiring. Might as well rename itself as GURPS 2, except it stands for "generic, uninspiring record producing system."

>>95828704 (OP)
I wish to build a meatgrinder oneshot. Any tips on doing so? Premise to follow
>BENEATH WOLF CASTLE
>pic related is the map
>setting is the catacombs neneath a ruined castle, bought by a noble whose tasked the party to clear it out
>Theres goblins at the bottom left corner squatting there, fending off undead that crawl up from the lower levels
>turns out a young red dragon made it his lair, decades ago but attempted to become a dracolich.
>he failed and became an undead abomination. failed ritual sealed him in. Size prevents him from moving in passages & halls smaller than 20ft (2x2 squares)
>The residual necromantic energy is waking up the buried dead down there. Wight zombies etc.
>parties can wake said red dracolich up if not careful.
Anything I could add? Any tools or supplies I should stock it with for creative players I want it to be very grindy/ceiling, almost survival horror to force creativity.

>>95830072
Go even further than a meatgrinder, start them all as 0th level guards for the noble who gets eaten early on.
>Oubliette containing the holy symbol of a heretical priest, if they can get to it
>The failed Dracoliches lab/library containing mage spell books
>The ghost of a thief
For class access options, anyone that levels up without them becomes a fighter.
>Dragons hoard in the deepest rooms/old temple
>The grave/tomb of a knightly paladin type that may contain a magic sword
>If they can get back above there are things like old stocks of boiling oil and cauldrons that might help deal with some of the dangers
Other factions:
>Self-interested dick necromancer who is happy to help in return for undead parts
>Wererat 'King' that was ruling over the place before the Dracolich moved in, still has airs about himself
>Noble rises as a ghoul, still expects the party to serve him, occasionally eats one of they attempt to do so unless otherwise kept satiated

>>95830072
A makeshift fence made by the goblins, who made it out of hundreds of bones pillaged from mass tombs and lashed together with strips of burial shrouds.

It is animated and angry.

>>95830072
Gear:
>Shackles
>Torture chamber
>Wine bottles with vinegar
>Executioners garb including axe
>Tomb of marble statues
>Sealed Tomb of the Dwarf that built the place for its original owners, may or may not contain magic items or maps
>Stained glass window in the temple is blessed turning the room into something of a sanctuary, it doesn't stop the undead dragon but light shining through it starts melting the things skin (Treat as Holy Water damage 1/turn). And yes, they can remove it and find a lantern
>Goblins using angry skulls as ammunition for makeshift weapons
>Wight of one of the prior masters of the place who has set up a small court, wishes to ascend to vampirehood, may be willing to aid the party if they can bring it about.

>>95830290
My mistake, make that
>Decapitated Wight Head of one of the prior masters, ect, ect

>>95830072
Pressuring the players to go forth and force a rythm on the group could add tension. A creepy shadow or oozing black melting flesh filling the space behind them slowly as they progress. Forcing the players to choose path quickly and never think about resting or going back.

Dracolich whispering to one of the players as soon as they enter, promising anything to get help and escape the place, breaking the seal or if the player offer himself for "short" possession. Might do "control person" or similar spell on said player with higher difficulty as they progress.

With time going on more and more undead appears in the dungeon, some rooms filled with them. Around room 15 for ex 19 and 23 filled with zombies and a roaming pack moving around the 10 feet wide corridor around the dungeon.

Cleric in the group I hope? Turn undead? A lot of holy water? Protection from Evil? Purify food & water? Any fresh food or water brought to the dungeon get spoiled and rotten in 1d12 turns? Playing on the importance of the cleric with the light of the area and power of the holy symbols?

Some areas with magical darkness? Almost pitch black without magic light or spell. Describing the sounds and smells a lot more to get darker tone and ambiance.

A lost "thief" begging for help in a random room, starving and want to help the group but will backstab at the first opportunity. Might see him a few times avoiding the combat with the group and or undead.

To reward the players creativity, maybe something around distraction, to move the brainless hordes of roaming undead to make their way around them without fighting. Some old and unturned tombs/Altars to pray at and gain a spell or benediction. Telling the players they don't look like the rest of the catacombs to hint.

A ghost who doesn't want to fight but want to rest and have a magical item in his tomb for the players.

Using fire and oil to create barrier and create passageways and walls to avoid the major groups?

>>95827811
I'm the anon that was bitching about small text, and the anon that said he's gonna just stick to B/X. OSE is fine if that's what you're into. It has inaccuracies in its description of the alignments, but that's the only functional difference I am aware of. I just like the way BX is written and presented more.

>Dungeon food web
I looked up the MM and B/X for any monsters that have a preferred food source listed, to do some good old Gygaxian Naturalism.

Anything I should add, either because canon and I've missed it, or obvious and goes without saying?

>>95830520
>Anything I should add, either because canon and I've missed it, or obvious and goes without saying?
For instance, what do Killer Bees make honey with, in dungeons??

>>95830562
>what do Killer Bees make honey with
Archer Bushes and Vampire Roses?

>>95829382
Weather is definitely meaningful, but I find pretty much everyone that wants to do anything with it gets way too involved. If you're going to bother at all, it should be very simple, and very fast, unless it's a key part of your setting (e.g. Desert World, Arctic World).

Any new releases you're looking forward to?
I hope the new OSRIC by Finch is more of a help to running AD&D 1E currently to newbies rather than a response to the situation back in 2006.
Won't be picking it up if it has those modern S&Wisms like ancestries instead of races though.
Other than that i'm pretty much only picking up Melan's regular fantasy stuff nowadays.

>>95831174
>ancestries
Just checked out the backerkit page and looks like they're doing that. Guess i'll stick to getting a free pdf and seeing if there's anything useful in there.

>>95831311
>Just checked out the backerkit page and looks like they're doing that.
That's gross.

>>95831645
I thought that shit was bad with S&W but looking at it now it's apparently a legal thing.
When S&W switched from the OGL to the Creative Commons license the latter was put out by WotC under 5E products where race isn't used.

>>95831728
Bullshit, the 5e SRD-CC calls them races. This is pure unadulterated cuckoldry.

>>95831758
Huh, maybe it's just Finch being shit about that then. I just read someone claiming that was the reason but it wasn't from him.

Before I ask this question, let me point out that we currently have all the faithful retroclones that we need. They cover OD&D, Holmes basic, B/X basic, BECMI basic, and AD&D 1e. If that's not faithful enough, the original books they're based on still exist, and even in PDF and print on demand form. There's no need for more of the exact same rulesets.

Now, to my question: I'm considering futzing around with classes, to the point of perhaps significant changes to the classes that already exist. Almost uniformly, the changes I have in mind would increase class power, like giving fighters a damage bonus equal to 1/2 of their level (round up). Are such changes a problem as long as commensurate increases in XP required to level are applied as well?

Also note that the only class I am NOT increasing in power is the magic user, because that dude is already out of fucking control if played well.

>>95831765
Hard to say without actually testing it at the table.
Which is what i'd personally recommend if you actually want to find out.
Maybe put regular versions side by side with the powered-up versions.

To stick my nose in where it doesn't belong, I've always thought that calling the races "peoples" is a far better option than races, species, or ancestries. It accomplishes the same thing as using species or ancestries, and reinforces that the things in the list of playable peoples are PEOPLE, and things not in that list (like motherfucking orcs) are NOT PEOPLE.

>>95831761
I just double checked the SRD and I can confirm it uses races. So the moron who's made thar claim is doubly wrong: I
(1) it is legally okay to make the change (obviously, you can't copyright the words 'race' and 'ancestry'), and (2) he's doing it to shove his own politics down people's throats. I'll add it to the list of reasons I don't like the guy.

>>95829028
Same.

>Follows So you want to be a Game Master, Medieval Demographics Made Easy, Grain into Gold, Low-Fantasy Population and use procgen arcana's settlement generator for the town's map
>Procgen arcana's town lowballs the number of people to the number of buildings compared to Low Fantasy Population
>The generated buildings are too small and basic for anything that isn't a regular ass house, so I can't place anything like a big bank, a manor or a guild house
>Can't add buildings to the town, customizing tools are both too complex and useless when I just want to add a building somewhere and make it a certain size and shape
>Generated districts are nonsensical and can't be deleted or changed, just renamed
>Supposed to write a Gazetteer for the town, add landmarks and make a list of available services like inns or jewelers to sell treasures to
>Supposed to write factions and key NPCs the party will interact with too???

I can't justify this much work for free, without guidance and for players that'll never understand how deep the worldbuilding must go when they ask how much a wheelbarrow cost or where they can sell the equivalent of a small kingdom's GDP in treasures after killing a bunch of rats in some dungeon a few miles from the town without any troubles

>>95831765
>Almost uniformly, the changes I have in mind would increase class power
Why? Power inflation is already an issue from OD&D to AD&D and B/X, because monsters like dragons are not nearly as scary as they should be.

>giving fighters a damage bonus equal to 1/2 of their level (round up).
In B/X you could do it, but it's better to give them multiple attacks of some sort. In AD&D I absolutely wouldn't do that.

>Are such changes a problem as long as commensurate increases in XP required to level are applied as well?
You're making it sound like you don't really understand what you're messing with.

>>95831945
OD&D greyhawk is baked into the AD&D core rules. I don't understand your question.

>>95831765
You say that, but there is no OD&DxChainmail clone that makes sense.

>>95829028
>>95831799
There is but one path forward.

>>95832062
That would unironically be a great homework for my classes

>>95831831
First, yes, it's B/X. Secondly, I was considering increasing the thief's hit die to be equal to the cleric initially, which would almost promote him to being an additional second-line melee combatant class. That made me consider just how little niche protection the fighter has, rules as written. Hence the idea of the damage bonus, because that way the fighter has more niche protection without the inevitable slow down of play from multiple attack rolls.

As for not really understanding what I am messing with, I assure you that I do. The only real levers in the system to compensate for class power is the rate at which they advance or the level cap to which they can advance. Since I am looking at human classes, it seemed the only sensible option to consider rate of advancement rather than a level cap.

>>95832060
OD&D greyhawk has no lore. It's just a rulebook for bloating numbers.

>>95832106
The thief and it's consequences have been a disaster for the fighting man class. Reminder that the fighting man was supposed to be the trap monkey until the thief shat all over the rules and added proto-skills.

>>95832126
>the fighting man was supposed to be the trap monkey
Was he? Not being polemic, I'd like you to elaborate.

>>95832198
>How is that possible?
If only there was a way to find out!

>>95832126
I'm this guy >>95832106
I completely fucking agree. Much more than you can possibly know.

>>95832071
Figuring out what needs to be stored and how I need to store it has been a huge pain.

>"Oh monsters should be easy"
>end up need 13 tables to deal with everything
>probably gonna have to add like 2-3 more to deal with subtypes.
>god why

>>95832259
So you can generate a random encounter on the fly and have every monster stat in your database?

>>95832106
>The only real levers in the system to compensate for class power is the rate at which they advance or the level cap to which they can advance.
If you're planning on making all classes more powerful, it doesn't seem to make sense to also increase all of their XP requirements.

If instead you're planning on making *some* classes more powerful because you feel that they're not powerful enough... it also doesn't seem to make much sense to increase their XP requirements, would defeat the purpose.

>>95832259
>"Oh monsters should be easy"
>end up need 13 tables to deal with everything
>probably gonna have to add like 2-3 more to deal with subtypes.
>god why
Pretty sure it's much more than 15-16 tables if you want to include all of the ACKS relationships. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out to be 40.

>>95832275
The idea is to make rolling out huge swathes of the hex map with the monster lairs and everything taken into account. As the players clear them they can repopulate. Automate not only the tedium, but then procedurally generate local encounter tables. If there's a Vampire in one area, instead of having to make an encounter table by hand, can I build out systems that would make it so the Vampire area is naturally surrounded by undead, bats, and other spooky stuff by building that into the Vampire itself. Much of this stuff is enjoyed by DMs, curating an encounter list is certainly a satisfying art to engage in sometimes. But the scale at which I'm working at just makes it way too much work to do by hand, and thus, this nonsense.

>>95832283
It was just just 1:1 tables from ACKS definitely, but trying to generalize different things so I don't have that exact problem. Right now I'm trying to see if I can make a singular subtype table that would include different dragon forms and the different beastmen troop types. Instead of having a body type and troop type tables that I have to reference independently.

>>95832477
Sounds very cool. You're not sharing your progress on GitHub, are you?

>>95832283
>If you're planning on making all classes more powerful, it doesn't seem to make sense to also increase all of their XP requirements.

If instead you're planning on making *some* classes more powerful because you feel that they're not powerful enough... it also doesn't seem to make much sense to increase their XP requirements, would defeat the purpose.
The idea is to increase their xp requirements proportionately to the amount of power being gained. Have you not been present for all the times various was of reverse engineering the xp requirements for various classes has been discussed?

In old school D&D, the reason classes have differing levels of xp required for a given level instead of using one unified xp chart for all characters is that the classes are of different levels of power relative to one another. The classes that take more xp to level (think magic user) are much more powerful than the classes that take less xp to level (think thief).

>>95832596
>The idea is to increase their xp requirements proportionately to the amount of power being gained.
There seems to be an implicit contradiction in this.

Either:

(1) You think that, taking into account the XP progressions, the existing classes are balanced to begin with. If this is the case then sure, you can increase the power and the XP progression simultaneously. But at this point you're just making new classes that are backwards compatible with the existing ones. I'd just change their names at that point, since you can keep the old ones, if everything is balanced all along.

Or:

(2) Taking into account the XP progressions, you think that the existing classes are *not* balanced to begin with. If that's the case, why not just fix the power balance without modifying the XP progression? By increasing both you wouldn't be fixing the perceived balance problem.

>>95832809
The classes are more or less balanced as is, taking into account xp progressions. I said as much here >>95832596

Imo, there's no need to give the thief some new name like brigand if you increase their hit die to d6 and increase their xp proportionally. It's just a thief, or a variant thief at most.

>>95832283
>>95832477
Every time people talk about stuff from ACKS it sounds like they're living a nightmare.

>>95829096
check out the hex flower engine if you like that, youll get a kick out of the core ideas there

>>95832852
>The classes are more or less balanced as is, taking into account xp progressions.
I'm not sure I agree when it comes to the B/X Fighter: it definitely needs some help at higher levels, in my opinion.

No comment on the Thief's balance because it's so unique and dependent on how the DM adjudicates it that it's not very useful to talk about it in general terms. But okay, let's assume you adjudicate it well to begin with. Not saying this polemically, just following your train of thought.

>Imo, there's no need to give the thief some new name like brigand if you increase their hit die to d6 and increase their xp proportionally.
Why not? If both the Thief and the d6 Thief are balanced, why wouldn't you leave the d4 Thief as an option with a faster speed progression?

Brigand is not a bad name, by the way. In the early 1980s I'd have called it a Rogue based on the Rolemaster class names, but that was before AD&D 2e and WotC D&D ruined the word "Rogue" for D&D.

>>95832972
>If both the Thief and the d6 Thief are balanced, why wouldn't you leave the d4 Thief as an option with a faster speed progression?
Simple preference as the designer, mainly. There's no need for both, for another. Finally, the d6 thief is more in line with B/X and OD&D being essentially the same system. In OD&D, all classes get some variation the d6 as their hit die (either d6-1, d6, or d6+1).

>>95830072
Got what you were looking for anon?

>>95833037
ADDENDUM: I have also always preferred the magic user to be uniquely weak physically, which giving the thief a d6 hit die accomplishes. Also, the d6 hit die just makes more sense, because the thief still trains his body like the fighter, despite not training for maximal strength.

>>95832542
No I have not, one because it is very bespoke to my setting, it's not just out of the box ACKS, I've made decently large changes to how certain things are figured out mechanically to make it work with the structure I have. Two, I hope to eventually do a pretty big open to the public game where all this autism is the primary appeal. I doubt someone has enough energy to take and do the exact same thing, but why help the competition in that way? This shit is niche enough. This isn't just a monster generator that is generically useful, this is a very specific type of setup. I'll gladly discuss what I've done and how I've gone about it, but handing over everything is a bit much. Maybe one day!

>>95832873
I'm accountant by trade and a programmer as a hobby. I'm taking this far beyond what the system expects of you for an end goal that is beyond what the vast majority of people want to do with a game. Most hexcrawls suggest what a 15x15 starting map? I have 323,000 hexes in the world map I made.

My ideal is a campaign that last decades and includes dozens of players at once. The number of players probably won't happen but I intend to keep running in this world for a long time so investing all this time to make these systems saves it in the long run so I cope.

But ultimately I just enjoy this kind of shit, otherwise I wouldn't be doing it. You can run ACKS much closer to just B/X with some domain stuff tacked on if you want. The creator himself doesn't do anywhere near this bullshit.

In AD&D, coins are 50 to a pound, yes?

>>95833190
No, ten to a pound.

>>95833257
Dem some fuckhuge coins.

>>95833425
Yeah, there's a few rules in (A)D&D that only make sense if you take it as a game rather than as a simulation. It's on par with being able to fight when you're down to 1 hp without any penalty whatsoever or the one-minute round.

>>95833257
A little research and calculations reveals that to be about 10 times the size of the Roman solidus. why did Gygax choose such a weird coin size as his standard?

>>95833893
He was an accountant, and pretty serious on research when it came to stuff like weights, measures, distances, and stuff like that. Particularly if you take into account the difficulties of the pre-internet era.

Most other items have reasonable encumbrance value if you take into account encumbrance measures both weight and bulk, so a sack full of feathers encumbers more than its weight alone would indicate.

So coins being so heavy has to have been an intentional choice. The most likely hypothesis is that he just wanted to make treasure more challenging to bring to safety, forcing players to make choices. You'll notice that the weights of jewels and gems are also so great that they're unrealistic.

>>95833893
>10 times the size of the Roman solidus
Yep. ACKS, that is obsessed with realism, uses 100 coins to a pound.

>>95833893
>>95834104
>The most likely hypothesis
In my opinion, of course. I've never head of a different hypothesis being put forward, but if there is one, I'm all ears.

>>95833893
Gygax was a midwit.
See: Every table and chart he ever made.

>>95834104
Gygax got nearly every weapon's weight wrong, invented weapons and armor not by imagination but by pure incompetence and poor research, and most of the stuff he did get right he actually took from other people's games.
>has to have been an intentional choice.
This is some depressingly level of cope.

>>95833055
Absolutely. Thank you to the anons for suggestions.

>>95834121
>Yep. ACKS, that is obsessed with realism, uses 100 coins to a pound.
Also wrong. Roman gold coins went between 50-90 to a pound, with some ornamental/special examples going as far as 20 to a pound.

>>95830342
These are all great ideas. Important to note thought the failed red dracolich isnt sentient. Its more of an obstacle of a huge, nigh unkillable Undead monster that chases the party through the 2x2 or bigger passages. The easy way to kill it is to destroy its pseudo phylactery giant beating heart in room 33 (its lair/hoard & ritual room)

>>95834248
Your cope is that Gygax intentionally made gold coins eight inches in diameter because he wanted them to be harder to carry, when the ultimate value of a gold coin for most uses was arbitrarily decided anyway. He could also have just used trade bars like actual banks did if he really wanted people carrying bricks as a challenge.
The grand list of things Gygax didn't know, read wrong, or didn't bother to look up is far greater than the totality of what he did write. I'm genuinely surprised this is your first experience with Gygax just being wrong about something, when he's more often wrong than right.

>>95834150
>Gygax was a midwit.
Anon, this comment shows low self awareness.

>>95834248
The Solidus is one type of Roman coin, and about slightly smaller than a nickle when full, a dime after wear due to how soft gold is. They were tiny and rarely used, predmoninantly only in foreign trade.
The Aureus weighed around 8 grams, and actually looks the part of a gold coin, being closer to a quarter in size.

>>95834534
They correspond to two different periods. The aureus was in use between the 1st century BC and 4th AD, when it was replaced by the solidus, that stayed in use until the 11th century AD. The solidus was then replaced by the hyperpyron that, despite the name ("highly refined") had the same weight as the solidus (which was over 95% gold), but was instantly debased to 50% gold and then got less and less pure until it had almost no gold in it. If I remember correctly the hyperpyron lasted until the fall of Constantinople.

So the 102 coins per pound "standard" lasted longer, and was in use in the Middle Ages, which is what most D&D settings simulate.

Also, the silver denarius had a nominal weight of 4.5 grams as well, that's about 101 to a pound. But in practice it was often lighter.

So the ACKS rule is quite tenable from the historical realism point of view, and obviously quite easy for calculations.

I still use the D&D convention, though. Never felt the need to switch. But if I had a group that started discussing melting gold and silver coins to make items out of them, I might have to rule something.

>>95834248
Gary actually posted Q&As on Dragonsfoot, back in 2005, and a lot of guys kept asking him for very specific rules clarifications about AD&D stuff like encumberance, and his answers were that he ballparked the numbers, it was 30 years ago, and if you actually cared that much you should ask WotC for rule clarifications because they're the ones who own the game.

>>95834696
Back in 2005, Gygax was still trying pretty hard to get people to play Lejendary Adventures, and that really colored his posts.

Any post that mentioned classes was met with "That's unfortunate, classes are such a limitation, AD&D really suffers from having classes. Luckily, LA doesn't have classes..."
He was also very bitter about WotC and encouraged everyone to break away from playing D&D, and maybe try his new game maybe...?

A little later though, WotC extended an olive branch (and money) to Gygax, and he changed 180 back to promoting D&D as the greatest game of all time, and definitely look forward to the upcoming 4th edition, and then-
*dies*

>>95835066
He talked a lot about AD&D (because that's what a lot of people on Dragonsfoot cared about), but would bring up the "it's not my game anymore, ask WotC" whenever he wanted to avoid answering a question or weirdly just to avoid admitting he was wrong about something.
He made some three thousand posts on Dragonsfoot, and it's a strange look into the man. He talked a lot about royalties and legal matters (mostly about how everyone tried to screw him), and after being pressured for years by dozens of people to say what his favorite game was (likening it to picking a favorite child on numerous occassions) he eventually admitted that his favorite one to run, after all these years, was 3-pamphlet OD&D.

That's kind of sweet, and kind of sad, especially when you recall that the main reason he made AD&D was to try to avoid having to pay Arneson royalties. He really liked that original game he made with Dave, but the businessman in him pushed it aside so he could sell AD&D instead.

>>95835066
>>95835217
You do have to wonder how much of what he said was just shitposting because he was butthurt D&D was the big name in the hobby and his Lejendary Adventures game was already forgotten.

>>95835222
I think the reason he started posting at all is because LA launched that same year and it was an easy and free way to promote the game.

And, people just kept pestering him about that thing he did decades ago. Poor Gary, probably felt a lot like poor singer/songwriter Neil.
https://youtu.be/QFwJgXwFE-E?si=fEMcBxBYvoXOxdqp

>>95832106
>That made me consider just how little niche protection the fighter has, rules as written.
Upgrade to AD&D, that problem goes away there.

>>95834324
>He could also have just used trade bars like actual banks did if he really wanted people carrying bricks as a challenge.
But he didn't because carrying bricks around on your Conan-esque adventure sounds retarded, even in the 1970s when everyone was on cocaine.
Gary did nothing wrong, it was a product of its time.
The actual reason people idolize Gary is because he and others brought us the DMG, which remains required reading for the (A)D&D game to this day. People don't give a shit how heavy gold coins actually are or if a halberd has the historically correct weight. People like that Gary tells us that it's ok to have That Guy be struck by ethereal Mummies if he gets uppidy. People like that there is finally a gold piece value for magic items as a reference price for buying/selling.
People like that fighters finally have an edge from level one on when it comes to fighting with percentile strength and constitution bonuses, not to mention level-by-level to-hit increases.
Gary worked tirelessly to churn out Dragon articles and supplements while at the same time Arneson for example couldn't even be bothered to turn in a proper first draft instead of loose paper notes.

What people don't like is nitpickers who try to besmirch a 50 year old classic.

>>95835660
Downgrade to chainmail combat. Strongest fighter.

heres a 50g gold bar, roughly 1/10 of a pound. I prefers ACKS' 100 per pound

>>95835879
oop

>>95835773
The reason people idolize Gary is because he spent his entire life trying to build a cult of personality around himself, even before Arneson naively handed him the ideas that would become D&D. If you're part of his cult, that's kinda sad because as far as charlatans go he wasn't really that charismatic. Less of a "wow, he's so persuasive!" and more "geez, some people are pretty dumb."

I'd actually recommend you read through some of the thousands of Dragonsfoot posts. Meet your hero, as they say. He's a weirdly petty and bitter guy, gives hit-and-miss advice and often contradicts himself, and generally comes off as an unpleasant person who occassionally remembers he's supposed to be acting in front of a crowd.

Gary worked hard to make money, while doing his best to get the biggest slice of pie he could. That meant repeatedly and systematically screwing people over, ranging from ousting partners to using legal tactics to try and block competition.

There's really very little to idolize. Not the worst person ever, just a very basic sort of person who got handed a multi-million dollar idea. Him losing control of it and being bitter about never recapturing its magic was kinda inevitable.

>>95835882
And d&d coins are even smaller. Last I checked, it's 50 coins to a pound. The actually HUGE couns are the coppers, copper basically weights nothing (relative) and it is the same weight to coin ratio.

>>95835884
Go play arnesons' adventures in fantasy with the first fantasy campaigh module if you love him so much.

>>95835892
That's completely incorrect. Per the 1e PHB, coins are 10 to one pound, which is 45g each, making those 50g bars fairly illustrative of their actual in-game bulk

>>95835910
this is pretty autistic, but I made a 45g coin out of some big coins taped together and then painted it how big the coins would be if they all weighed the same using their density. I could not mentally grasp how big and hard to carry a bunch of coins was, now I can be like "this is why you can't just carry all that money"
thought about making a 10lb pouch of scrap metal as well to show what a hundred coins feels like but I'm kinda over it now.

>>95835899
Arneson is also just a guy, but he's at least the guy who had the multi-million dollar idea. Gary should be recognized for taking the $2000 gamble to bring it to market, but it should also be recognized that he had to self publish D&D because the game companies he had partnered with before rejected his proposal in part thanks to the failure and low reviews of the last work he did for them.

In an alternate timeline, Arneson might have heard about what Gygax did to Perren and realized partnering with Gygax would lead to him trying to screw him over, and he could have tried partnering with another game designer. But, Arneson only knew Gary as the founder of GenCon and father of Chainmail, and gave Gygax the chance to make a really, really cheapass game that went largely unsold for several months. D&D could have died right there, but word of mouth got the game selling and by then Gygax was already working on trying to patent the idea for himself while figuring out how to cut Arneson out as well. We're all very lucky the courts rejected Gygax's attempts to patent, then copyright the concept of RPGs, but even then he still tried suing most of the early D&D-inspired game designers.

Arneson was hobbyist. Gygax was a hobbyist predator.

>>95836008
Go make an adventures in fantasy general and fuck off.

>>95836008
who cares lmao

>>95835222
How could it be forgotten if it was never known in the first place.

>>95835217
>3-pamphlet OD&D
I vaguely recall people saying he ran it with a lot of stuff that makes it like a pared down AD&D. Maybe the Greyhawk supplement?
It's been ages since I last read about it though

>>95836273
He's changed house rules a lot, bit ability scores all nattering a bit seems to have been a fairly stable report. +1 to hit and damage, an extra spell, and so on.

>>95830562
>>95830581
Flesh. Like vulture bees.

>>95836442
>vulture bees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulture_bee#Meat_honey

>>95836458
Could be worse.

>Warning
Alright, fair enough, I can't argue with that.

>>95835884
>Gary worked hard to make money, while doing his best to get the biggest slice of pie he could.
Don't act like you wouldn't in his situation. Pushing 40 with 3 kids and no retirement fund to speak of because of JW autism.

It has been almost 10 years since I've been involved with OSR news. Back in my day it was all blogs and G+. The drama of the age was people making fun of Dwimmermount, and Zak S being outed as an abusive sex pest. The innovations were things like dice drop dungeons and Jaquaying.

>New OSRIC
Bizarre.
>Finch going insane
Also strange, he was one of the quieter ones
>ACKS popular
Never would have guessed it would become so, the art put me off from it back then.

What is the word of LotFP lately? Labyrinth Lord? DCC? Blood & Treasure?

Did Anomalous Subsurface Environment ever get finished?

>>95834324
>Your cope is that Gygax intentionally made gold coins eight inches in diameter
Laughably wrong. D&D coins would be 10% smaller than this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0z3itivD0o

>>95837520
He really should've shat on the copper coins.

>>95835997
I MADE A COIN, ITS THIS BIG

>>95837767
tho the price difference in RL value is out by like a magnitude but I can suspend that for my elfgames, if a copper is a dollar and a silver 10 dollars and a gold 100 dollars, prices seem pretty believable. I'd probably spend $200 bucks on a good backpack. dunno what all the poors are using tho, woven baskets or some such

>>95837835
>the price difference in RL value is out by like a magnitude
Just assume 15% purity for gold and silver coins and 100% purity for copper coins, which also brings the relative price ratio of silver:copper back in line. Currently:
Copper is $16.49 / kg
Silver is $1,178 / kg
So a copper coin should be 7× as pure as a silver coin for the price ratio be 1:10.

If you instead take 100 coins to a pound and all of them to be close to 100% pure, you have fixed the price of gold and silver but broken the price of copper.

(The Gold is very overpriced right now with respect to silver compared to classical and middle ages Europe, not sure why. Historically it hovered between 10× and 15× silver.)

>>95837908
yeah I figure its easier to just assume the rarity of those metals is different in game. theres no reason for gold to be valued highly for its ability to burn CD's and coat audio cords and stuff.

>>95837931
*rather than dilute the purity of all the gold

>>95837931
>its easier to just assume the rarity of those metals is different in game
Yes, but in what direction? Bronze is mostly copper, so if you're assuming copper to be 7× as rare/expensive as in the real world, you'll have that bronze items would be considered almost precious.

Alternatively, you can make both gold and silver to be much more common than on Earth. Perhaps that's what D&D implies, after all.

>>95837335
LotFP keeps trudging along, Raggi is as divisive as always but he's well liked around here. Shadowdark (OSR-like with some 5e sprinkled on top) is the new edgelord flavor of the month, which I think it's unfair.

Labyrinth Lord 2e died before being born, Dan Proctor had a meltdown and kind of disappeared from the OSR scene, only to show up every now and then to mald about former Labyrinth Lord creators moving over to OSE (or coming up with their own game like Gillespie). Labyrinth Lord is still somewhat popular here.

DCC is no longer considered actual OSR around here, went too deep into Appendix N. People comment they play it but I'd say it's not that popular.

Nobody cares about Blood & Treasure and no, ASE never got past 2-3. Glad to have you back friend.

>>95838290
Wow I'm halfway thru but so far it's a really great examination of things, I wish more people did deep investigations like this. I didn't even realize the Zak S thing was in 2019, but now I do remember poking my head back around briefly then and saw all the nonsense. I had a hunch he was probably not guilty but had too much going on (early warning of the corona stuff among other things) to bother, and ducked back out. Glad to see my gut was correct.
And no my name does not come up there. I think I stopped being active in OSR around 2014-2015. I got a bunch of money tied up in kickstarters - which did all eventually get delivered, I guess I know how to pick winners sometimes - and got involved with the double-G stuff and videogames for a while. My original online gaming group back then was on Skype, and it sort of fell apart when we swapped to discord.

>>95838375
>LotFP keeps trudging along, Raggi is as divisive as always but he's well liked around here.
That's good to know, he's always been one of the cool dudes in my mind.
>Labyrinth Lord 2e
A fucking 2e? Really? What's with all these "2e" hard-retroclones? The non-retroclone OSR games I can understand since they're new-ground but the others makes no sense to me.
>DCC is no longer considered actual OSR around here, went too deep into Appendix N
Can you elaborate?
>Nobody cares about Blood & Treasure
Sad, I really like how flexible it is. I grew up with 3.5e so having a little of that panache with the better mechanics of B&T is just great to me. I saw Stater made a 2e a couple years ago, but never bought it since I have a hard copy of the 1e and the 1e PDF is free now so it makes it easier to convince my friends to play it. And I have 10 issues of NOD on my shelf full of good shit to use (the hellcrawl is one I dream of running...)
>ASE never got past 2-3
I had a feeling. Maintaining that amount of wacky creativity is a lot of work for 1 guy. Sucks still.
>Glad to have you back friend.
Thank you.

>>95835892
Fucking retard

>>95836188
>More likely he's Griff.
So he one of those hippo creature for Spelljammer?

still a bit mind-blowing just how many people cant wrap their heads around 1:1 time

>>95838972
Sculpt my brain, Anon.

>>95838988
if your players are in town, and theres nothing pressing they are attending to, you can advance the calender days between session, usually a week, for between sessions.
Its a tool for letting PCs and the world (DMs) stretch their legs and breathe.

It is not something that kills players
It is not something youre forced to do if using
It is not something you cannot reduce or increase
Its just a handy way of getting things down without jampacking it all in one day, or arbitrarily deciding.

>>95838701
>Can you elaborate?
Hard to explain. Over these past 10 years new games have been released that have an OSR vibe but mechanically have little to do with old school D&D. I'm thinking about Cairn, Knave, Shadowdark or MörkBörg. At one point some people decided that we needed to restrict the OSR label to separate retroclones and other highly compatible games (ACKS, for example) from there new "OSR-like" games. A line was drawn and DCC happened to have way too many weird mechanics to be "proper OSR".

So, you know, autism (but not without reasons though).

>>95837156
I wouldn't. I rely on talent, intelligence, and good judgment to make my money, not backstabbing or lawsuit bullying.
The irony is Gary was given a goose that lays golden eggs and he lost it by being a greedy sociopath. Sure, he still managed to make a shit ton of money from D&D even after losing the license, but he could have made far more and secured a far better legacy for himself if he had just been even a halfway decent person.

Now, his family is working hard to deify Gary while demonizing everyone Gary worked with, with potentially thousands of dollars as the incentive.

>>95831799
>>95829028
Fuck, you guys have no idea how grognards did it/do it, do you?
You start small and let it grow organically

>>95839157
Why do people act like ACKS gets a free pass when it's a huge departure from the OSR philosophy, bringing plenty of 3rd edition ideas like feats and ludicrous amount of classes? Even if people subscribe to Foster's camp about what is OSR, that's means valuing "rulings over rules," which is the opposite philosophy of ACKS.
It's actually a direct opposite to Basic, with Basic being a deliberate effort to refine OD&D into its most, well, basic components.

>>95839401
Your definition of NuSR doesn't sound like it's based on objective metrics.

>>95839397
Because you touch yourself at night, that's why.

>>95839426
>we don't
>>95839157 just tried.

>>95839397
Because the proficiencies aren't 3.5 feats, they're just a mechanical way to encode player options
Because the 'ludicrous' amounts of classes are all optional and the idea is you use a few, not all of them.
And, most importantly, because it clearly upsets you and has for the past 3 years.

>>95839397
Not contesting your claims of ACKS, but the last line - isn't OSR moreso about anything pre-3rd edition or so? So anything from Chainmail/OG Blackmoor to 2e would be within the purview.

>>95839426
>completes
No, it just adds on top of things that were already complete, in a way completely contradictory to their underlying philosophy.

>>95839454
The first post of those was me, the others are other people. I legitimately have not been in the OSR scene for about 10 years other than a few pokes around.

I don't have a twitter so the shuttering of G+ basically ended most of my social media interactions with it.

>>95839455
That's generally how most other places treat OSR. Except some people here seem to have a much more restrictive definition, but then they also make a weird special exception for ACKS.

>>95839491
>they also make a weird special exception for ACKS.
If you wanted an actual answer we'd explain why.
But you don't so, as far as you're concerned we do it for the express purpose of upsetting (you) personally.
Literally no other reason.

>>95839504
I mean, it's pretty obvious what your reason is. Even explains why you get so upset about people talking about OSR games.

>>95839485
>>95839541
I feel like this right now.
https://youtu.be/pKarc8GjF6E

No idea what the fuck this fish line is about either.

>>95839397
because its actually good, and what advanced 2e *should* have been. Like it or not, its successful because its the opposite of shadowdark: substance over form.
Im willing to elaborate.

>>95839591
No thanks, because subjective opinions making things OSR or not, especially when they're dubious at best, is not what anyone wants to hear.
Also, did you notice Shadowdark's "success"? If you're guaging what's OSR based on if it sells, you probably should look at SD's numbers.

>>95839627
Jesus christ. 1.3 million, 2.5 million, these kickstarter numbers are ridiculous.

>>95839600
Oh. Goddamn why does everything I like have some schizos like that?
I never was interested in ACKS because of the art and aesthetics turning me off from it. To me, it felt too polished and corporate-sterile when it came out, but I never had an issue with it mechanically nor would I ever tell people it's not an OSR thing, just one I don't prefer.

I was more surprised that it managed to keep going given how different it was aesthetically when at the time I dropped out it seemed everyone was going more towards the heavy metal/"classic b/w art with the violence and esoterica turned up" visuals of LotFP and DCC.

I guess there was a hard direction change though.

>>95839667
No big. But yeah, difference between ACKS proficiencies and 3.5e feats that makes ACKS acceptable in my eyes is that you can't buildfag in ACKS.
There's no;
>'Oh I'm going to take 3 levels in Ranger with the Favoured Enemy (Bear) class ability and the Bigotry Feat so I can Prestige class into Gaybasher for a 2 level dip in order to get 4d6 anti-homosexual damage against mods.'
>"Bro we're level one, why don't you just see where the game takes you?"
>'REEEEE-'

ACKS Proficiencies are just a codified 'You can do this shit and here's the mechanics for it if relevant.'

Same with the classes, yeah there's a shitload of them, but that's because you're meant to pick a handful for your campaign usually and present them to the players as 'Here're your options for this setting'

Personally I'm a big fan as you can imagine, it works for me at least.

>>95839692
>it felt too polished and corporate-sterile when it came out
Macris has a doctorate in law or something likethat, and his writing style reflects that.

>art and aesthetics turning me off from it
I don't like the aesthetics either, the whole Sumerian thing doesn't resonate with me. Anons who like it like it because of all the Asperger's level of detail that went into its economics, demographics, domain management, and magical research subsystems. And other stuff like that.

Also, the fact that Macris is the victim of a cancelling campaign means many artists won't work with him, either because they agree with the cancellation or because they're afraid they'd be cancelled themselves if they agreed to work with him. Which means, in practice, he relies on just one artist AFAIU. And that artist has a distinctive comic book style that is kinda unusual for the D&D/OSR/NuSR scene. He's not a bad artist, mind you, but he does stand out.

>>95839837
The scary part is that his boogeymen are merging.

>>95839746
I'm one of the Anons who criticises the proficiencies and the extra classes of ACKS, but I do concede that they're nowhere as bad as the 3e and 5e buildfagging, or the completely idiotic nonweapon proficiencies and kits of 2e.

The designation of
>>95839591
>what advanced 2e *should* have been
is not far off the mark either.

>>95839902
>I'm one of the Anons who criticises the proficiencies and the extra classes of ACKS
I can respect that. On the extra classes, honestly? That's one of the things I like the most about ACKS.
You can make extra content.

One of the most frustrating things about OSR in my eyes is that because you're using the same broad strokes every game does feel kind of same-y, mechanically at least.
Yeah you can change the fluff and set dressing, but the foundations are always going to be Castle Blackmoor Basalt. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the classic OSR setting.
But the fact you know what I mean when I say classic OSR setting is a bit of a shame, what with the old OSR games being the guys before us going fucking wild, dancing on the razors edge and coming up with their own crazy bullshit that defined the entire genre.

ACKS is structured enough that you can back things up with mechanical variation and create your own distinct settings/campaigns/styles. An all dwarf campaign will actually play different to an Egyptian campaign, or a Conan-esq campaign, ect.

Yeah it can be abused and you'll always get some cocksucker who tries it on, but that's why all that should only ever be DM facing and if a player tries to go 'But I made my own class' you break all their fingers with a bit of rebar as a matter of principle.

But it does feel like you need something like ACKS if you're going to do something like, I don't know, Sir Fang becoming the first Vampire and the DM having to go 'Alright, fuck, shit, time to create clerics to redress the shenanigans currently ongoing.'
Maybe that is straight up just me though.

>>95839902
I prefer 2e's kits vs. New classes, because they feel like branching options that still maintain the integrity of the original. The ability for characters to switch/remove kits during a game is also a very welcome option, even if the rules regarding it are somewhat weak. The Final Fantasy IV transformation of Cecil from a Dark Knight into a Paladin is the sort of thing that players should be able to experiment with, even if it's nowhere near that dramatic.

Or rather, I prefer the concept of 2e's kits, since most of the execution of the actual kits is all over the place. Some are decent, most are just an excuse to try and sell books.

>>95839795
>the fact that Macris is the victim of a cancelling campaign
Jesus christ... Maybe taking a long ass break was good for me, I don't know if handling all that drama would be good for my sanity.

>>95840082
Man, the DMG really is the crown jewel of every system isn't it? Just a lot of systems used zirconia instead of diamond...
I only have the 2e PHB so it didn't seem that off to me. I assumed most of the ick came from the direction it went but maybe that's not the case.

Rules Cyclopedia doesn't differ much from the BECMI boxes proper, does it? It's a post-2e publishing but since it's mostly a reprint-compilation I'd assume no...?

>>95840023
>XP for gold
An option in 2e. Really, there's nothing stopping someone from capturing the "pure magical essence of OD&D" in 2e if that's what the group wants. You could even use later editions, and there's even some OSR Adventures, believe it or not, that are billed as 1e and 5e compatible.

To be honest, they're probably shit, but the point is that OSR is more a style than a system, and there's plenty of room for everyone to make their own decisions on what 'Old School' means on the finer points.

>>95840082
>For many of us, that's a plus. The D&D default setting is a gift that keeps on giving, and it's inexhaustible.
Amen to that, I'd certainly never talk shit about it.
But sometimes you just want to take a hit on the pipe and go
>You motherfuckers are all going to play proper capital H Heroes in Classical Greece.
And then rock on from there.

>>95840197
According to Matthew Finch, the first core principle of OSR games is:
>Rulings from the gamemaster are more important than rule books.
ACKS is a rule book fetishist's system, through and through. Where other OSR games say "use your judgment", ACKS says "use these tables and procedures."

>>95840230
who?

>>95840230
nothing to do with my table

>>95840273
Remember the hole in the Ozone layer? Finch lead a team of Navy Seals into India's budding Space Program, hijacked a prototype rocket powered by Hindu chants and incense, and rode it into a cloud castle to negotiate with Dziributi, Goddess of Ozone Layers, who agreed to close the hole in exchange for a graded Shadowless Charizard card.

Use google if you doubt me.

>>95840173
There's some greek games. I think I saw an OSR transformers game once. And MotSP is also an option for wacky space adventures (I love its vehicle rules.)

>>95840230
That's about how it works in-play, but I think at the system level it's more about how in later systems the rules are integrated tightly with the system. You can't simply houserule stuff in isolation as it has knock-on effects that can spiral the game out of control.
Contrary to this, 1e with all its weird rules and tables is moddable really easily without needing to comb through the system and check that you aren't destabilizing the game longterm by doing so. And I'd say all the OSR games I can think of work in a similar bolt-on/off way.

>>95840360
I don't know if he's the one who came up with the "rulings, not rules" thing but it's pretty accurate. That was floating around back in the early 2010s.

In terms of system... they're all mostly-compatible. FLAILSNAILS was pretty demonstrable of it working.

>>95840328
>You can't simply houserule stuff in isolation as it has knock-on effects that can spiral the game out of control.
I've seen this argument before and I think it's heavily rooted in bias. People more familiar with a system have an easier time making houserules for it, so when they try to modify a less familiar system they imagine it is just more difficult to modify.
1e is pretty easy to mechanically break, especially by novice DMs. They can even completely warp the "OSR style" by ignoring certain rules that have lost relevancy in later editions.

>>95840230
>Rulings from the gamemaster are more important than rule books.
Oh well in that case why even have rules at all, we should all just be doing it free style and jacking each other off under the table.
Are you done being a retard yet or are you going to persist?

The purpose of 'Rulings, not rules' isn't 'You shouldn't have a rule for things', because when you have rules for things players realize they're possible; what it actually means is 'When you get between the lines you shouldn't be afraid to just go 'fuck it we ball, it works/try this/ect'.'
Much like that archetypal example of the man with the fish smoker.
Having rules for fishing and trade opens up the possibility of the players actually engaging in fish economics and improving the quality of their trade goods.
The DM going 'Alright, the tribes smokers increase the value of the fish by 2 steps and means they last longer going forward' is the ruling that covers something you can't include in the book.

>>95840384
Even Gygax mentioned "rulings not rules" several times in his Dragonfoot posts.

Kinda funny, because he makes a lot of nasty remarks about "ruleplayers" and how much he dislikes them. You could actually feel some of that disdain whenever someone asked him for a specific AD&D rule clarification and he'd reply "ask WotC, not me, it's their game now."

>>95840518
AD&D was basically a collection of OD&D, the OD&D supplements and a few magazine articles for reference during tournament play.

>>95840577
Which is how Arneson succeeded in forcing Gygax to still pay him royalties despite Gary making AD&D specifically as a way to try and avoid doing that.

>>95840435
I don't think this is the case really. Or rather, the bar for system mastery to where you can understand how to effectively modify things is much higher with more current games. To avoid bogging this down with non-OSR talk I won't go into specifics though.

>They can even completely warp the "OSR style" by ignoring certain rules
It won't break the game is the thing. My view is that OSR systems are designed in a manner that allows you to run any kind of game you want, but later systems are extremely difficult to back-mod for the same feel. As mentioned you can run a transformers game or a space game with enough adjustment, and they work well.
Most of the 3.5e-era third-party wacky games like Dragonmech, BESM d20, or the WoW RPG just don't work very well. Even d20 Modern has a sour reputation. And the attempts at megadungeons for it - Rappan Athuk and World's Largest Dungeon - are amateurish.
4e likewise is very "stuck". There was a brief "Fouthcore" movement that tried to bring "old school" gameplay into 4e, but it mostly amounted to a caricature of Tomb of Horrors-type stuff duct taped onto 4e.

>>95840440
>Oh well in that case why even have rules at all
I do not miss these discussions...

>>95840629
3e is tricky, but doable if you really lay down what is actually "essential" to the "Old school style". But, that's an argument that's been happening for decades now, so I don't think it will be resolved in this thread.

Even 4e, in theory, with the stars alligned and a lot of effort involved, could be done. No one ever will, but the pieces are there, just like you could build a helicopter out of a golfcart if you're really, really good with a hammer.

On a more practical level, 5e seems pretty easy to "backmod", which is why they released those portal books that contained updated adventures from previous editions, including several from 1e. They sold pretty well and people seemed to enjoy them.

>>95840629
>the bar for system mastery to where you can understand how to effectively modify things is much higher with more current games.
More rules do lead to more complexity and more time required to master them, but that's less a function of the rules being a tightly-wound precision instrument that must be handled with extreme delicacy, and just a function of more rules being more rules.
Later editions did bring more complexity, but once familiarity with the system was reached homebrewing/houseruling was easy enough, especially because they jntroduced a lot of tools specifically for homebrewing and the general body of knowledge regarding houseruling has greatly grown over the decades.

>>95840629
>>95840735
The only way to make something based on 3.x or 5e into something resembling an old school game (I can't speak to 4e, because I didn't play it at all) would be
>to completely remove feats from the game
>remove the ability score increases every so many levels
>redesign the skill systems (different approaches necessary here because they're different in 3.x and 5e; i suspect the 5e skill system would be easier to work with)
>do some SERIOUS work on the spells, outright eliminating a lot of them and hammering the ones that remain into shape that fits in the old school paradigm
>redesign all monsters while keeping in mind that feats have been removed and skills have been redesigned

You have to eliminate the buildfaggotry that made 3.x and 5e cancerous as well. Again, I suspect 5e would actually be easier to work with in this regard. Personally, I'd just utterly remove the concept of multiclassing from either system.

Also, for Gygax' sake, get rid of the dungeonpunk aethetics and reckless faggotry in the tone.

>>95840889
All extremely debatable, and not really worth debating with someone trying to fuel the "deify Gygax" shit.

>>95840897
>"deify Gygax"
That was far from my intention. I was just being a bit cheeky. Gary was a great designer, but I see where he fucked some things up too.

>>95840915
>Gary was a great designer
I can't really say any game he worked on shows him to be even a good designer. Even OD&D is very rough and left a lot of space for actually great designers to come in and show the right way to build an RPG. He gets points for being among the first and doing a lot of innovating, but loses a lot by being completely outclassed by career designers like Jackson or Pondsmith, or even within TSR by designers like Moldvay.
I'm not sure Gygax even thought of himself that strongly as a designer. After being outted from TSR he was preparing to try and become a writer, before Mentzer "forced" him to work on Cyborg Commander and then Danjerous Gourneys, and largely just to try and take advantage of his name. Even him getting outted in the first place was partly from him abandoning the games and trying to get his D&D movie made.

>>95840889
IMO for 3.5 you would have to start with redesigning the XP system to de-unify it, so that casters level much slower. That's really a big sticking point because it's "still in the game" but through a convoluted and poorly-tuned backdoor - XP costs.

After that you can start doing many of the things you listed. The closest to an "old school" game for 3.5 off the top of my head that already exists is... Microlite20, which for many people goes too far in the minimalist direction.

>>95841021
Lejendary Adventure is actually pretty neat from what I've dug into, it just had minimal traction before sputtering out and had no PDF copies online of the original version (just the cut-down one) for the longest time.

>>95840623
The irony of the situation being that people who played in arneson's games and arneson's own The First Fantasy Campaign admit that his ruleset basically had jackshit to do with OD&D. Gygax fucked up by giving him credit when all he got was the idea and not even the idea, since the part of arneson's game that remotely resembled D&D was pushed by his players and he fucking hated it.

>>95841021
This is revisionist history with an agenda that isn't just simply to relate the facts as they were. You're clearly more interested in trying to stir up shit than discussing the point at hand, that being what it would take to make 3.x or 5e into something resembling an old school game.

As such, you can stay mad. Continue to seethe and dilate, as they say these days.

>>95840889
>>to completely remove feats from the game
>>remove the ability score increases every so many levels
>>redesign the skill systems (different approaches necessary here because they're different in 3.x and 5e; i suspect the 5e skill system would be easier to work with)
>>do some SERIOUS work on the spells, outright eliminating a lot of them and hammering the ones that remain into shape that fits in the old school paradigm
>>redesign all monsters while keeping in mind that feats have been removed and skills have been redesigned

This is what my shitbrew tries to do. There's still some buildfagging at level 1 (wouldn't be 3.5 without at least some buildfagging), but the vast majority of upgrades come from magic items. I took an interest in OSR because it reminds me of D&D's cousin, Rogue. It's not going to

What about the skill system needs reworking?

>>95841078
Yeah, "actually Gygax was bad", while framing anyone who disagrees as a blind worshipper, is just the latest tactic by this guy. It's yet another case of "who exactly are you hoping to fool with this?" sort of thing, but I don't think the guy can help himself.

>>95837335
Mentioning Blood & Treasure, one of the big things that happened while you were away was the slow realization that almost none of the several dozen OSR games that came out back in the initial boom years of the OSR developed even the smallest fan/player base. Which is too bad--some of them were clever in spots--but the OSR is really too niche of a thing, endless bandwagoners aside, to support more than a handful of games.

>>95841062
>Lejendary Adventure is actually pretty neat from what I've dug into
I actually thought it was pretty bad. The rules are really hard to get into, and it being percentile based but with d20s (+d10s for crits) for damage may be one of the worst ways to set up a game. The ABC combat system mixing segments with seconds is also incredibly awkward, and generally everything feels like ideas mushed together without really appreciating the strengths of either idea and how combining them loses those strengths.
It's better than Dangerous Journeys, but that's because DJ is truly awful. I don't think I've ever met anyone who liked that game. I don't think I've even seen anyone online have a good word for it.

>>95841217
You get (? + Int modifier) x 4 skill points at first level, and (? + Int modifier) at each level thereafter. This leads to a certain amount of buildfaggotry in and of itself. Also, that constant ramp up is combined with DCs that continue to increase as PCs continue to level up. It's an illusory increase in power over time, like the enemies in Oblivion and Skyrim gaining levels along with the player's character. If I see one more DC 35 skill check in a high level adventure, I'll lose my shit.

>>95841346
>It's an illusory increase in power over time
I guess that's one way to look at it, and given a lot of people run games in a non-"the world doesn't care about what level you are" manner it would give the Bethesda Game impression (oblivion is not quite as bad in this sense because of how the enemy types are "locked" to certain level ranges, but any location can be any level...)
If you have a world that has consistent, with dragons and liches encounterable at level 1 if you're a moron, then it moreso represents being able to take on such high DC challenges at all.

Some retard adventure writers do get annoying with the
>all the doors are locked
>and lead-lined adamantine
>and wizard locked

>the walls have a grease effect
>it's nonmagical uhhh wet rubbery mold, you can't burn, lightning or dispel it
>and it deals acid damage if you touch it

>>95841065
Revisionist? What part?
Do you want to try and say Gygax wasn't pressured by Mentzer and made CC and DJ entirely on his own voalition? Because that actually makes him look a lot worse. I think Gary himself was the one who circulated the "I was forced into it" angle to try and distance himself from being responsible for two pretty terrible games with his name proudly on them.

Or is it the "outted from TSR because he left control of the company to the Blumes so he could move to Hollywood to focus on TSR Entertainment, and the Blumes poor management lead to Lorraine Williams being in a prime position to remove him" part? Gygax sowed the seeds of his own removal, though clearly unintentionally, and to be fair I doubt anyone could have predicted it.

>>95841077
Yeah, that makes sense. When I hate something my players do, I also approach a game designer with a salespitch that's "hey, check out your game plus something my players do that I hate, isn't it neat doncha wanna sell it."

In my setting, outlined in this other thread here >>95835523
I have expanded upon traditional paladins. They can only be LG still (antipaladins can only be LE), but there is more nuance to their required behaviors. I place great emphasis on the "alignment as a cosmic struggle" thing but prefer the ninefold system over the trinary LNC one.

In place of a generic "code" there are multiple paladin orders, and these each have a Vult - a shortlist of rules and ideals. This is not an unthinking edict, but informs their motives and dictates how they may spend excess cash, downtime, and make hard choices. LG and LE Clerics may also belong to these orders, but they are less restricted. What is considered to be a Vult for a Paladin or Antipaladin, is a portion of the larger body of scripture for a cleric. Nevertheless, hardliner clerics can be roleplayed if a player so chooses.

Here are the example ones I have down

Order of the Hand
>Protect the innocent
>Heal the ill, no matter if they are friend or foe - so long as the latter truthfully agrees to surrender or truce.
>Recover magic and holy relics, they may be used to serve the Vult, fight evil or donated to Lawful Good religious purposed - Churches, clerics, other paladins - but not sold.
>Donate excess wealth to the church

Order of the Eye
>Root out evil in dark places
>Discover lost holy relics, and record them. If recovered, they may be used to serve the Vult, fight evil or donated to Lawful Good religious purposed - Churches, clerics, other paladins - but not sold.
>Provide confession for the troubled and record the good deeds of the virtuous
>Exorcise the unseen

Order of the Lily of the Valley (Antipaladin) (picrel)
>Discover new power and keep it out of the hands of others
>Kill with honor and grace, do not allow enemies to do the same
>Develop personal power through servitude and skillful training
>Make favorable deals, and hold others to their debts - Donate excess wealth to the order
>Bring glory to the order

>>95841639
And the rules around what happens if it's violated:

If a paladin or antipaladin consistently fails to uphold his or her Vult, an atonement ceremony must be performed at the earliest possibility. Failure to do so will wrack the character with vivid nightmares until it is done, preventing the statistical benefits of rest or regaining per-day abilities - no new spells may be prepared, no HP is recovered, and no conditions not caused by a lack of sleep are restored. If the Vult is intentionally, deliberately cast aside, or the character's alignment changes, he or she loses all paladin or antipaladin special abilities, permanently. A greater atonement may be sought, requiring several weeks of downtime in ritualistic prayer and contemplation, and a dangerous quest performed in their depowered state. The character may not level up while on such a quest. Success requires yet more weeks of prayer before their abilities are restored, and consumes all XP they have accumulated during the process, placing them at the minimum for their current level.

If their alignment has shifted to the opposite Lawful alignment, they may seek out an order for the opposing type to convert. This process is the same as for a greater atonement. A paladin or antipaladin character may only have a greater atonement OR conversion performed once, ever. Discarding the Vult a second time will completely forfeit all paladin or antipaladin special abilities. They may no longer gain paladin levels, though humans may dual-class to continue their adventures (the rare fallen paladin commonly chooses to continue as a fighter.)

---
Also before you ask, no I did not swipe these from the Edicts shit pathfinder does, I came up with these 2 years ago and I had not even so much as looked at anything current like that..

>>95841568
skill issue, davey-boy

My wife said she’ll play d&d with me if she can be a cat adventurer.

This seems like an opportunity to have her roll a PC as an elf, and just call it a cat.

Should the base hub town be controlled by the morally dubious rebel warlord of the previous regime or by the morally dubious post-revolutionary bureaucratic state?

>>95842056
Any other suggestions or improvements upon this idea appreciated

>>95842068
If you're running advanced you could also have her roll an acrobat. An acrocat if you will.

>>95842068
Make her wear cat ears and a collar to get in character. They'll come in handy after game time too...

>>95842056
>>95842068
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Px8Fwbzx4s

>>95842085
Hmmm I like this idea actually. I went with elf so spellcasting was an option but I can just tell her if she wants to cast spells she has to be an elf or a human wizard. Acrocat incredibly based.

>>95842096
Anon we only have sexual relations to reproduce. The sort of tomfoolery you’re suggesting edges into the realm of chaos!

>>95842232
Kek

>>95842291
>Anon we only have sexual relations to reproduce. The sort of tomfoolery you’re suggesting edges into the realm of chaos!

Theres no risk of chaos as long as you're prepared for kittens.

>>95839327
NTA, but how small are you thinking? I've seen three hexes, just town and dungeon, just dungeon, and even just the first few rooms of dungeon.

I think I lean towards just dungeon myself, although I have noticed I like putting Dungeon 1 inside of the starting village itself (crumbling Bridges, abandoned cathedrals, harbor islands, etc)

>>95842416
I never really liked the idea of dungeons being in towns. realistically you could delve like 1 or 2 times before local authorities hear about it and sends in soldiers to systematically clear the place out themselves.

>>95842522
That’s a great motivation for a delving party to start poking into new hexes to find new opportunities as the local yokels will have taken their little starter dungeon honeypot from them

there's something special about filling a dungeon graffiti table halfway with useful if fringe information or useful but schizophrenically presented information, and halfway with utterly immature garbage and nothingburgers

>>95842522
>local authorities

Hexcrawl random event
A randomized pair of outsiders (within a specific limit of high power and similar movement speeds) fly across the sky at blazing speed chasing each other.
Optional: They emerge from and/or leave through a briefly-open dimensional rift.

>an experience similar to that of a random vietnamese farmer in the early 70s.

>3d6dtl started blowing whistles and dedicating any time at all to political grandstanding, outside of the young guy being passive aggressive about shit sometimes
man
there are no osr podcasts with players that are both good and entertaining

>>95843068
There's a longform (1-2hr/vid) youtube channel about old RPG shit called (and the name is kind of cringe) "Daddy rolled a 1"
He goes over a lot of history stuff and rambles, but his voice tone is so close to lockpickinglawyer that I thought it was a secret second channel for a moment. It's not, but damn if you had them both on a collab you'd get confused.

>>95835217
>especially when you recall that the main reason he made AD&D was to try to avoid having to pay Arneson royalties
That wasn't even the main motivation for Holmes's Basic which didn't credit Dave until well into its production cycle, just Holmes and Gygax, both as authors. It was a welcome side effect, not the main motivation.

>>95841346
Right! I had completely repressed how Skills worked in 3.5. I've long since embraced 5TD's idea to make everything DC 11 by default.

>>95839285
When you stand before the pearly gates and Gary denies you a spot at his table you will wish you had never posted this.

>>95843584
nta
There's no way Gygax made it into Heaven, bruh.
Dungeons & Dragons is the Devil's game. Heavy metal and occultism all the way down. And cocaine.

>>95838003
You're forgetting about tin.

Tin was historically in very limited supply via long trade routes. One surviving recipe for Sumerian bronze was about 17 parts copper to 2 parts tin by weight, about 10.5% tin by weight but historical bronzes could be anywhere from about 5 - 40% tin by weight. Sumerian bronze only supplanted copper following a 1000 - 1500 year delay after the introduction of bronze because bronze cost so much more than copper. The situation was similar in Europe, it's likely that some European tin was exported to Sumeria once European ore was discovered, into the European Middle Ages. Bronze was more expensive than copper because tin was much more expensive than copper.

Once iron was worked, bronze weapons and armour and tools were used less than iron not because iron was better, it wasn't harder than bronze and it was much less corrosion resistant, but simply because bronze was so expensive.

Before anyone jumps in to say that iron is better than bronze, no, you're thinking of steel.

>>95839455
>isn't OSR moreso about anything pre-3rd edition or so?
Close but not quite. A lot of early OSR is pared down 3e which is not "pre-3rd edition". Retro-clones and "as played in the game's first decade" are included but not essential for OSR, except perhaps here on 4chan. But this is the same place where some people try to fool themselves jumping through hoops with some Olympic-class mental gymnastics in a vain effort to exclude AD&D 2e despite it being both
>TSR-era D&D
and
>compatible content

>>95843725
To add to that, iron ore is everywhere, and requires less complex mining techniques. Smelting and purifying it takes a ton of fuel, but wood is cheap.

>>95843851
Lets not forget that bronzeworking and ironworking require very different techniques. Bronze is melted down and cast into its desired shape while iron must be hammered in a solid state. A bronzesmith cant just go and easily transition to blacksmithing as it is an entirely different craft.

>>95836703
Pundit thinks the Weisman "Worse People You Have Never Met..." article is true. In fact, he says he already knew everything in the article.

>>95843895
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyu4u3VZYaQ

Does anyone here remember some old blog that had a partially-made megadungeon which featured some giant bronze (or brass?) doors on the entrance? I think the blog had gnoll in the name maybe, I don't remember.
He had a larger overview layout done, and I believe the first level or two partly detailed, but then the blog deleted at some point.

Back in the day I thought it was really cool and had attempted to, at random points, recreate part of the entrance to-scale in minecraft. I didn't get very far but it stuck out in my head...

I wonder how many cool concepts were lost purely because they were never 3-2-1 backed up?

>>95843937
I like to think that medieval lords would have enjoyed playing primitive RPGs where they pretend to be classical greek heroes fighting mosnters, but no one wanted to write the rules down.

>>95843725
nta but you're forgetting arsenic

>>95844246
>nta but you're forgetting arsenic

>>95844306
I meant: arsenical bronze was bronze throughout most of the bronze age, since tin was not available.

>>95842056
If you must facilitate furfaggotory from your wife, you could look to the BECMI Rakasta class to mine

>>95832106
>That made me consider just how little niche protection the fighter has, rules as written
bring back the od&d multiple attack rate against base 1hd or less creatures per level. this was his original niche and its strange to see it go away

>>95845213
But anon, we need (other) people to play clerics so we have a Heal-and-Hold-bot at all times. And thieves as well because god forbid if the players suffer even minor setbacks by falling into a 10 foot pit or have to think on how to open or bypass a locked door. It's not like you can just have a fighter/X multiclass do that, this is KD&D after all. And even if we could, Multiclasses have a level limit we will never reach, that's so gay and discouraging. Speaking of discouraging, I literally cannot even endure the mental stress of being one level behind on average due to my class choice. We can't enjoy our beers and pretzels if the DM is always hassling us about spell memorization and thief skill percentages.

>>95844684
>>95845115
Someone else explained it's because the 2e DMG has guidance that is counter to the OSR-style mindset, but his post was yeeted (I don't exactly know why since it's a valid reason, ignoring the DMG is retarded for any edition...).

I replied to him here >>95840131
As a personal anecdote, I don't know if many people asking about 2e have read the 2e DMG. There's usually talk about a few of the settings, TSR's mistakes, the PHB, funny monster binder and so on but never the DMG. So I'm inclined to trust that, absent the time and energy to check the book myself.

My question about Rules Cyclopedia went unanswered though.
If I remember right it's typically considered to be just a "BECMI reprint collection" with some stuff... removed? Like no Immortals rules or something? I haven't had the time to compare both.

>>95845213
>>95832106
My personal take is to use the Arduin Crit Table, with the 3e-style "confirmation" of the crit - second roll, if it's a hit it's a crit else just an auto-hit - and make the only things that can crit are Fighter-type classes and Monsters (player AND NPC fighter-types, friend and foe alike, but not humanoids like goblins and kobolds, actual proper terrifying things). So fighters by default have up to a 0.25%-5% chance to randomly inflict massive damage through gratuitous maiming and gore.

As so do owlbears.

>>95845516
Arduin crit table, for reference.

>>95845579
>Mostly correct. It does have a few minor changes, like the appendix with the alternative XP progressions for demi-humans and the Mystic being made a "core class" instead of an NPC-only class hidden away in a DM's section.
Ah that makes sense. Thanks.

So in line with all the OSR drama, and the Zak S. stuff seemingly turning out to be a witch hunt over tone policing….

What happened to James E Ragi 4? Last post on his LotFP substack was four years ago now. Was he just insufferable or did he actually do anything ?

>>95842522
>local authorities hear about it and sends in soldiers
Fucking retard lmao

>>95846281
He's fine

>>95842522
>The mayor sends his 4 level 0 guards
>They die
>The rest of the population is commoners

>>95843427
3rd's skills are actually task resolution mechanics rules that you can put points into for a numerical bonus to the dice roll. You can easily "fix" them by removing skill points and reworking the resolution math to be based on attributes only. But you might as well be playing AD&D with ascending AC at that point.

>>95846281
He posts on youtube occasionally https://www.youtube.com/@Lotfp/videos
And fucking twitter https://x.com/LotFP

>>95846701
They actually tried that with 5e. In the playtest version, it was much more attribute based, with attribute rolls instead of skill rolls.
Problem is, made characters feel too similar.

>>95846872
That’s because outside of the fighting man and magic user dichotomy, characters are all functionally the same — it is player skill that differentiates characters , no ?

>>95846955
I’m talking generally, and in the scope of OSR.
A thief is a sneaky fighting man and a cleric is a magic user powered by god instead of the arcane/eldritch/whatever

>>95846970
Except that is where you are wrong, a player skill determines how well a character makes decisions, but part of player skill is knowing how to play your class, and a thief is absolutely going to excel if played differently than a fighting man, and if you play him like a fighting man, he's likely to not last very long at all. Thieves have great offense and very little defense, with specific utilities, clerics have great defense with very little offense, with specific utilities

>>95846970
Do you actually play?

>>95846872
Od&d characters all had the same "skills" and they differentiate well enough through class.

KILL ALL BUILD FAGS.

>>95847036
Of course not anon, everyone here is a nogaems fag

>>95847040
>Hello /osrg/, I was wondering what you all think about AD&D multiclasses. I really like having a bunch of spells, even at level one. A Cleric/Magic-User would give me access to that. I really like the idea of chaining and combining Cleric and MU spells and try to rp as a super ner...
>KILL ALL BUILDFAGS
By Gygax, what is the matter with you?

>>95847040
>through class
That's the thing. OD&D really needs players to pick different classes, with a lot of adventures even starting with stuff like "You're going to need at least one magic user and one priest, etc."
5e tried to make it possible for two warrior-types or two mage-types to feel distinct enough not to be constantly stepping on each other's toes. It didn't work, but they tried.

>>95846413
>with it being an extremely rule-heavy game
Heavy rules are perfectly compatible with OSR: Just look at AD&D. The real one of course, not the 2e knockoff, that is off-topic.

>>95847141
We only like all-caps FAGs who reclaimed the word.

>>95846765
>He always has the exact same triggers, and the exact same retorts, makes one Wonder
And over 50% of those who reply to him have their comments deleted and are banned.

>>95847344
ACKS is considerably more rule heavy than AD&D; even more rule heavy than AD&D2e. It's rule-heavy enough that you can feel some 3.5 influence, particularly with its proficiencies, some of which are even named after 3.5 feats.

>>95834104
This is the kind of cognitive handicap that afflicts religious people as well.

>>95847097
Did I stutter?
KILL
ALL
BUILDFAGS

>>95847344
>Heavy rules are perfectly compatible with OSR:
Compatible, but opposed to the "rulings not rules" spirit of OSR. But, that's just being needlessly petty, so let's just go ahead and use the "TSR-era D&D, derived systems, and compatible content" definition and move on.

>have their comments deleted and are banned.
Have you considered your posts are getting deleted because your "2e is offtopic!" posts are offtopic, needlessly inflammatory, and you've been ban-evading just to make them?

>>95847499
The only heavy rules are the domain level stuff and generation everything else is pretty on par with 1e except the things that are there also make a lot more sense and work a lot better, such as surprise, initiative, Etc.
Even the proficiency stuff is irrelevant, because you are supposed to be rolling for your template which decides your proficiencies for you, meaning that in most cases they are just a tacked on bonus to your specific purview

>>95847634
>rulings not rules
That doesn't mean that your game shouldn't have rules or systems, it means that as a DM you should feel comfortable being able to come up with things on the fly, read between the lines, and adapt using context, instead of agonizing over a rule that you don't know exists or doesn't.

>>95847658
It's rule heavy in general. It's philosophy is definitely "the more rules, the better," and the books are definitelty not discouraging you from using the rules.
>surprise and iniative in ACKS work better
Ehhhhhhh... no. ACKS's iniative in particular makes combat more complex but not in a good way, definitely slower, and all without really adding much if any tactical depth, just a bit more randomness and little annoyances.

2e might have gone a little crazy with its kits, but it's still AD&D, and you can feel the stark divide between itself and 3rd edition. ACKS is definitely trying to blur that particular line, and the list of classes has gotten pretty ridiculous. It's not quite at 3rd's level, but it definitely was moving in that direction.

>>95847787
Initiative and surprise in 1e are such a mess that people are STILL debating how to use them.
How does acks' system of "1d6+mod, go from high to low" seem complex or slow??

Does anyone know if the "number of spells [caster] is able to manage" in chainmail refers to the number of spells known or the number of spells that can be casted per battle?

>>95847862
It's at least split into just acting side/reacting side. ACKS has everyone roll individually, every round. That adds up, needs to be tracked, and largely doesn't make the game any better.
Neither are great, and most people houserule the shit out of 1e's, but it's at least relatively brief for something that happens every round (until spells get involved).

>>95847862
not him but honestly, I've really come to hate individual initiative. team initiative is just more fun and engaging across the board and WAY less annoying to keep track of, and it completely negates that terrible stop moment of "rushing out from the shadows you see 6 figures- short, spindly, feral, tongues lolling and eyes glowing red, with wicked, rusty knives raised high. Let's spend the next 5 minutes calculating initiative." instead it's just immediately into the action. there's no stopsign or timewasting
I just wish there was a better way of determining who goes first. random d6 is kind of boring and doesn't account for anything besides random chance. which DOES have its place, but as a default I think it's kind of weak. I've seen other systems and tried them and generally preferred the way it's handled in them to just d6, but they're a bit more wishywashy
>SotDL
PC Fast - Enemy Fast -PC Slow -Enemy Slow, individual choice, only get either a move or an action on fast turns
>SotWW
(Optional) PCs - Enemies - PCs. PCs pay their reaction to go first. Not really compatible with OSR because there's no real action system. I particularly like this one, it's lightning quick and works like a charm, but yeah. it and DL do kind of have this thing where every end of round you have to ask "anybody going first/seizing the initiative?" though. which isn't that bad really
>ToA
every round a different PC tries to roll under their Initiative score (average of intelligence and a 7th Perception stat that's also used for ranged attacks and lazy non-specific search checks)
I like this one a lot too

I play in a biweekly unfortunately-pf2e game and every combat start (there's a lot of them) so much momentum and time is lost to rolling and sorting individual initiative, especially for the GM who has to do it for 3-6 enemies. it just sucks and everyone's calmed down by the time anyone actually gets a turn

>>95847634
>opposed to the "rulings not rules" spirit of OSR
I strongly disagree that that's the spirit of OSR.

>Have you considered your posts are getting deleted because your "2e is offtopic!" posts are offtopic
And posts saying "2e is on topic" are on topic. So lying about what is on topic is on topic, and saying the truth about what is on topic is off topic.

>you've been ban-evading just to make them?
I haven't been ban evading, not sure about other Anons.

>>95847787
>2e might have gone a little crazy with its kits, but it's still AD&D, and you can feel the stark divide between itself and 3rd edition
It's the opposite: 2e is much closer to 3e in design philosophy, since it's based on the Hickman Manifesto, buildfagging, and splatbooks full of character options.

>>95848128
>splatbooks full of character options
Sounding a lot like ACKS...

>>95848109
>I strongly disagree that that's the spirit of OSR.
Not my words. You'll find them pretty often wherever OSR is talked about though. Even Gary said them pretty often on the Dragonsfoot forums.

>>95848149
1. Never to the extent that 2e and 3e did it.
2. That's constantly criticised here. What is appreciated about ACKS is not that part.
3. You've conveniently ignored the Hickman Manifesto part. As usual, you're constantly moving goalposts. How long's a decade?

>>95847634
>you've been ban-evading
How do you know who's ban-evading? No need to tell us, we already know.

>>95848015
>>95848089
you guys must be bad at arithmetic. Every body rolls, then the dm calls out, 10, 9, 8....and those who rolled the number, go on their turn.
>ACKS is complex and slow compared to 1e!
again, how is "1d6+mod, go high to low" fuckin complex or slow??
I can see the argument against "individual initiative" but thats what 1e D&D did too

>>95848128
I am NOT that anon, thank God. I do NOT agree with him that 2e is on-topic here. I just gotta point out that early 3e, when it was just the three main books being designed, were about leaving the hickmanfag shit in the past and going back to the dungeon. I specifically remember an article somewhere (which of course I am having a hard time finding now) that said the focus of the game was going to be on dungeon delving and not the "psychodramas" of the previous edition.

3.x has shit tons of other problems, and late in the cycle of 3e, it went toward the storyfag crap , and was fully converted toward that through the adventure design of the time right before it became 3.5. However, for a brief moment, 3e (third edition, 3.0) was actually a dungeon delving game based around the acquisition of loot and power.

>>95848199
>How do you know who's ban-evading?
Why are you asking this again? Do you really have that short of a memory?
We know you're ban-evading because you announced it while daring the jannies to ban you again because you were so mad you bought a vpn.

>>95848149
yeah, acks sure has a dependency on combat feats and endless classes and optimized build guides and...oh wait

>>95848225
ADDENDUM: Also note that this is not me saying 3e is based or is OSR or on topic or anythign stupid like that. 3e had feats, skills, ridiculous out of control multiclassing rules, and prestige classes. It was basically a buildfag's paradise. I'm just saying, the three main books were about going into dungeons, killing dudes and taking their stuff.

>>95848229
I fuckin dare ya to find that post, bozo

>>95848225
>storyfag
It's kind of funny, because you're trying to push that invented perjorative, while Gygax would be calling you a "ruleplayer."

>>95848224
you must play with small parties with no retainers and small numbers of enemies
with ACKS you do that shit every single round. once? yeah, sure, whatever. it's still slower even then, but it's doable. but rolling every round it's objectively a fuckton slower than group initiative and, in my opinion, not worth the added weight

>>95848229
>We know you're ban-evading because you announced it while daring the jannies to ban you again because you were so mad you bought a vpn.
Imma blow your mind now. Just because ONE ANON said he was going to do that, doesn't mean you're always talking to that one Anon.

Anyway, if you care so much about bans, you should consider moving to a platform that's more heavily moderated. Or even moderatable: 4chan can't be moderated by design without introducing usernames and logins. I think you'd feel yourself much more at home on plebbit. They also consider 2e to be OSR over there, and they've banned ACKS. I'm sure you would love it over there.

>>95847634
>so let's just go ahead and use the "TSR-era D&D, derived systems, and compatible content" definition
Some people consider WFRP 1e to be OSR
Some people consider Tunnels & Trolls to be OSR
Or pre-90s Shadowrun
or the OG Cyberpunk.
Or Classic Traveller

The original Sword World recently was translated so that also might count now.

Maybe the original (parody, out of print) Hackmaster would count too, since it's a pastiche of 1e and arguably the first "OSR" game.

>>95848225
>>95848254
>>95848274
3e was indeed directly advertised as "Back to The Dungeon" when it was coming out. And it has a LOT of support for that kind of play in the core books.
But it really is the epitome of buildfagging and "ruleplayer" nonsense. The DM has to be incredibly autistic and knowledgeable about the game and say "no" a lot more than it seems, and it's the start of WotC being utterly unable to understand the mass market for each edition.
>books are beautiful, but a ballache to read in pdf format
>WotC didn't expect some sperg to reproduce JUST the SRD on a whole website, which people used to learn the game, and its rule-heavy nature meant that it was nearly impossible to expect most people learn to play it properly even without that being a shortcut
>Anime. Harry Potter. YA Fiction in general. Whedonshit. Final Fantasy. The 2000s was full of roleplaying wannabe-theaterkids who got into D&D thinking it would let them be a cool unique uber-speshul cool (double cool) person with THE POWER OF DARKNESS. Then they got annoyed by dungeonpunk and the mass of rules, but loved the buildfagging. So it became railroaded storyfag shit for a lot of tables, and even DMPCs were common as hell

The only reason 4e is an even bigger fuckup is because it was the biggest instance of D&D ceding significant market share to a competitor. But looking back at the history of 3e/3.5e is like watching a pileup on a chinese highway.

Man the books are pretty though.

>>95848347
>with ACKS you do that shit every single round.
I don't know why games keep insisting to do that. I have never been at a table where initiative was rolled every round, even for games that expressly said to do so. It's always been just one of the most common houserules and there's often very little mechanically that leans on roll-each-round in any system, just the occasional heavy tactical game where some shit lasts "until the end of the round". Which is fixed by making them actually mean "until the start of your next turn."

I need a map for an underground harem for beneath a sultan's palace the players might or might not find and infiltrate through a secret sewer entrance. I'm not finding one with quick searches, and frankly I'm not even sure what a floorplan of one would look like.
Anyone have such a thing on hand, or know where one would be?

>>95848463
>I have never been at a table where initiative was rolled every round
FOEGYG

>>95848478
I need a map for an underground harem for beneath a sultan's palace
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Harem_Topkapi_Palace_plan%282%29.svg

Does anyone know how leveling up past 12 works in castles and crusades or amazing adventures? Are there any rules differences besides classes between C&C or Amazing adventures?

>>95848347
wrong, youre just a weak gamer. dont project your failings onto me.

>>95848463
>>95848347
literal skill issue xD

>>95848427
>All opinions are heckling equally valid chuds
lmao

How close to OD&D is Delving Deeper? Were there any significant changes between version 1 and version 2?

>>95848502
>Does anyone know how leveling up past 12 works in castles and crusades or amazing adventures?
Yes.
>Are there any rules differences besides classes between C&C or Amazing adventures?
Yes.

>>95848597
>>95848623
That's FLAILSNAILS. OSR is broader.

... Or did this change since 10 years ago?

>>95848628
>FLAILSNAILS
???????

>>95846636
>The mayor sends his 4 level 0 guards
His guards are levels 1 to 4 tho.

>>95848427

I was like 11 or 12 when 3e came out and I saved my allowance for months and went to my local hobby shop, purchased the three core books. I had been introduced to the hobby years prior by my best friend’s babysitter (2e). I did not understand 3e but man I fucking loved that art in those books!

>XPNVY

>>95848685
Oops. In getting the link, I realized my memory was faulty FLAILSNAILS goes as far as the opposite direction to allow non-OSR characters in OSR games (with conversion... though in practice I don't think this happened with non-OSR games often back then.)

https://jrients.blogspot.com/2011/08/flailsnails-conventions.html

But yes OSR was basically "old RPGs in general" not just D&D.

>OSR history is now a thing.
>Old-OSR
>OOSR
Fuck...

>>95848807
>OSR history is now a thing.
>Old-OSR
>OOSR
>Fuck...
If you're the Anon who's been away since 2014, that's not even old OSR history, that's "middle" OSR history. The old period goes from when the term was first used (2004) to when it started to become mainstream. Probably somewhere between 2007 and 2009, which is when you start seeing explanations of what the OSR is to "outsiders", like Finch's Quick Primer and T. Foster's Five Things that Needed Saying.

>>95848995
>Foster is not the pope of OSR.
Correct, he's only the person who appears to have coined the term.

>>95848877
>a second, later phase in the history of OSR
>>95849011
>that's "middle" OSR history

Huh, I knew that retroclones and interest started earlier, but I wasn't aware that the concept/word "OSR" started way back then.

>If you're the Anon who's been away since 2014
Correct. I guess I was part of the middle period, starting around 09ish? Until maybe a year or two after I stopped paying attention. It could be nostalgia but that really feels like the golden age, there was a ton of shit on blogs being thrown around. The POD book market was buzzing, it really felt like the sky was the limit for what could be done. Hell I even managed to snag some bootleg 0e books in hardcover (2 volumes) and the better version of Dwimmermount - Devilmount.

What is a good way to integrate a shy and introverted player among 3 to 5 way more talkative players who tend to take the initiative? He seems to enjoy Old-School D&D but I see how he struggles to speak up in the group. Not seeking some deep psychological analysis because that's just the way he is. But I would like to get some ideas how to also give him a share of the spotlight without railroading.

>>95849143
genuinely just let him be if he's having fun
never try to force interaction out of an introvert or slam the spotlight on him
some people are just quieter players

of course it's different if he's just getting ran over by motormouths when you address him in particular, in which case just repeat the question once Yaps McGee is done and direct it at the guy you actually spoke to

>>95849143
Pop his anal cherry.

Retards fucking up the thread and half the messages deleted, useless talk and time wasting 101. We will have normal thread soon when they fucking sleep or die.

Don't feed it don't talk to it,just ignore the messages you don't want to interact with , that's one of the first few things you HAVE to learn on internet. Maybe you still have to learn it...or learn how to apply it.

>>95847862
people don't understand ad&d initiative? It's basically the same as basic or original.

>Campaign has had significant language issues so far
>Rolling up treasure for a new dungeon
>Helmet of Comprehend Languages, finally
>always like adding a Somethin' Extra to my magic items
>it also allows the wearer to detect lies, and is physically a pharaoh mask with a featureless, smooth golden faceplate
>the drawback is that doubles its weight every time the wearer chooses violence when peace was possible, and vice versa, slowing and perhaps eventually snapping the neck of the wearer under the weight of his decisions
>the weight is metaphysical and only fades if the mask is not worth for 6 months and a day
is this good or bad

>>95849745
>is this good or bad
It's perfect, stealing this ASAP for my home game.

>>95849865
>people were using "old school" in a fairly diverse manner back pre-2005
"Old school" is not OSR, though: That would be like saying that rock'n'roll "classics" are classical music.

Old school is a very relative term (like a "classic"), in 2025 many people think of 3e as "old school". And in another twenty years, there will be as many people thinking 5e as "old school". It's also used in literally all hobbies, arts, crafts, professions, sports, and so on.

The OSR, on the other hand, arose as a term referring to a specific period in a specific hobby talking about some specific games. Like classical music. In twenty years people may well be thinking of 5e as old school or about Blink-182 as a rock "classic", but 5e won't have become OSR, and Blink-182 won't have become classical music.

>>95849574
"Basically" is doing some heavy lifting there. It can be made to work in a very smooth fashion, but you simply have to house rule it to do so: it literally can't be run RAW because the rules text and/or the examples conflict in multiple places.

That having been said, if you actually play 1st ed for a while you'll quickly intuit what works vs what is going to produce terrible results at the table, and almost inevitably you'll settle on the way 98% of all other people who try to follow the rules have also settled on.

I wanna run a planescape campaign but want to integrate a bit more variety than D&D offers. What systems are good for that? I've had worlds without number suggested a few times, and troika (don't think thats osr though)

>>95850105
The "OSR" was loose. It's a term that was loosely used, loosely adopted, and even had people debating what the R should stand for.

It's more like "classic rock" being used to refer to... classic rock. Some people think that means The Who, some think that means Guns&Roses, some think it's everything in between and more.

>>95850255
>planescape
>worlds without number
>troika

>>95850420
what would you suggest instead, anon?

If I understand OD&D correctly, a fighting man attacks as a Hero beginning at level 4 and a Super Hero beginning at level 8, meaning 4 attacks against "normal men" power enemies at level 4 and 8 at level 8. that right?

If that's the case, why does the fighting man not attack that many times against more powerful enemies too?

>>95850255
Machinations of the Space Princess can probably be adapted to it, or you may be able to rip out some rules to bolt onto something else. It's based on LotFP so numerically it's very simple, but it has a huge section dedicated to alien species creation that could work for building extraplanar weirdos.

>>95850749
>If I understand OD&D correctly, a fighting man attacks as a Hero beginning at level 4 and a Super Hero beginning at level 8, meaning 4 attacks against "normal men" power enemies at level 4 and 8 at level 8. that right?
Just checking: Did you miss what happens at the other levels? E.g. he already attacks as Hero-1 at 3rd level, getting 3 attacks against creatures with 1 HD or less. Picrel.

>If that's the case, why does the fighting man not attack that many times against more powerful enemies too?
The rule is from chainmail, which has three types of combat: The standard system, for when one attacks "normal units", fantasy combat for and against monsters (like ogres, trolls, and dragons), and "man-to-man" combat when attacking non-fantasy individuals who are stronger than "normal units".

In chainmail, the bonus is being able to do any damage at all against fantasy monsters. Also allowing multiple attacks would be double counting.

So if you want to figure out what all this means, you should check out Chainmail.

>>95850328
>The "OSR" was loose.
It became loose after people realised it helped sell, so they started slapping it or anything and everything they were publishing on DTRPG. It wasn't loose initially.

>>95850888
>Alien species creation
That does sound pretty useful. I love me extraplanar weirdos. Haven't played lamentations yet, is it any good?

>>95850255
>planescape campaign
Seeing you are adding stuff from space game don't you mean Spelljammer? Alternity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternity may be a good pick as that was also made by TSR.

>>95850935
It has a really good encumbrance system, probably the most intuitive and easy-to-grasp of the "basic"-style games. The horror elements can easily be stripped out (that's partly why there's an art-free version) and most of the "weird fantasy" is in the referee book. The Summon spell is terrifying because it's randomized and some of the things on the list are dangerous to everyone within a large distance.

MotSP on the other hand is not anywhere near as dark. One of the example of play characters is named Stabitha, and there's little "factoids" about the universe on each page you can use or not. But it's not hard tied to a setting at all, it's very open.

LotFP uses ascending AC, AC numbers for (at least his early) adventures are typically listed with an armor type shorthand, for cross-compatibility. Raggi made the game because most retailers wouldn't carry his adventures without a game to go with it, and OSR was tiny at the time.

>>95851082
can you post an image explaining the encumberance system, please?

Shadowdark is better than OSE and worse than B/X

>>95851236
1/2

>>95851236
>>95851277
2/2, how it shows on the sheet

>>95851277
>>95851300
That's not bad at all. Thanks.

How faithful to OD&D is Delving Deeper? What are the changes, if any, specifically? I'm reading pic related, and it's just SO much clearer than the original LBB edition. If it's faithful, I am just gonna use this.

>>95850749
Monsters also only get multiple attacks against "normal men". Both, the fighting man and the more powerful enemy get a single attack against each other on the fantasy combat table and then the winner removes a singular hit die from the other without rolling damage.

I hold the view that it is better to throw away the fantasy combat table and have everyone get multiple attacks against each other. Throwing a lot of dice is rad.

>>95850749
If using the alternate rules, it is still one attack removing one hit die if you hit. Essentially, having multiple hit die is supposed to make you immune to receiving multiple attacks because you are no longer a "normal man". For everyone. Fighting men, clerics, magic ysers, monsters, everyone.

>>95852003
nta but that sounds like it makes 1st level extremely terrifying and weak, and also makes retainers and hirelings crazy vulnerable if level 1. Having to dodge 4x in a row is nuts.

On the other hand it makes the tables where you can encounter dozens of bandits a lot more manageable at mid/high levels...

>>95851784
>"Each character is usually allowed one principle action in each round; be it to attack, cast a spell, drink a potion, bar a portal, or whatever." - absolute misunderstanding of od&d combat
>Three pages of naval combat, which nobody has ever used in the history of any edition of D&D
>75% of magical swords can't roll for additional powers instead of all swords rolling for additional powers
It sux.

>>95852045
>absolute misunderstanding of od&d combat
Considering that Holmes basic, B/X, BECMI, AD&D 1e and AD&D 2e follow the "one principle action" pattern, it seems like you might be the one that misunderstood OD&D combat.

>>95852208
You get an attack per man that your character counts as and these attacks can be converted to parries and counterattacks. In OD&D, the alternative combat table replaces the man to man table and the fantasy combat table, not your number of men you count as you advance in level. It is the poor understanding of this feature that heavily nerfs the fighter (and everyone else to a lesser extent).

>>95852257
so does my fighter have to be three stacked dwarves in a trench coat in order to count as three men

>>95852257
NTA but, does this mean that a fighter's level is equal to the attacks it can roll in a single round? Can you elaborate?

>>95852785
It's that the alternate combat matrix doesn't replace this proggression (the cleric is on the next page). It replaces the 2d6 roll per man against normal men on the chainmail tables with the 1d20 roll per man against normal men from the new tables. monsters get one attack per HD against normal men instead of progressing like players. Normal men is basically any monster or player with one HD. If two entities with more than one HD attack each other, then they only get one attack. It's basically the later fighter's extra attacks against 1HD creatures, but everyone operates on the same principle.

>>95853078
that's interesting. Maybe I'll make use of this in solo. One thing I don't understand is this, though:

>If two entities with more than one HD attack each other, then they only get one attack.
Why is that so? I mean, a level 4 fighter against a level 2 magic-user wouldn't get 4 attacks, why?

>>95853078
Isnt this baked into the attack matrix in, say, B/X as the class-progression in there is different for each class?

Here is Gary talking about this in The Strategic Review volume 1, number 2.

>>95853252
Because they are not fighting as "normal men". They are engaged in FANTASTIC COMBAT. which is actually a fancy way to say that in pure chainmail rules, they would've switched from the man to man table to the fantastic combat table. Under the alternate combat method, characters get to become heroic as soon as they get two hit dice, as opposed to waiting to be a named attack rank like hero or wizard in pure chanimail rules.

>>95853261
It's because the table replaces the man to man and fantastic combat table, not your # of attack proggression. They are different things.

>>95851784
>If it's faithful, I am just gonna use this.
It isn't. If you're looking for a faithful retroclone of OD&D, your best option is Greyharp + Compleat Chainmail. More info in the n00b guide:
>>95828713


>>95853252
>Why is that so? I mean, a level 4 fighter against a level 2 magic-user wouldn't get 4 attacks, why?
This question was already answered here:
>>95850912
It reflects two completely different combat systems in Chainmail. He gets a different advantage, that is being able to fight alone against another "superior" unit in the first place.

>>95853252
Though in your specific example, a level 2 magic user only has 1HD, so the level 4 fighting man does get 4 attacks as a hero against him. A level 3 magic user gets 2HD and then they engage 1 attack at a time.

>>95845516
Behold the heresy straight from the 2e DMG!

>>95853623
Even if you go against the advice and do use that "optional rule" that you're told not to overuse, you still have to award XP for things like having fun, learning the rules of the game, accomplishing story goals, roleplaying and so on. So it would still be a radically different system with respect to the classical editions.

2ebroes, where do I find the movement rate while exploring a dungeon? Page 82 DMG only deals with combat movement.

>>95853873
Nevermind, found it.

>>95853623
>>95853873
>>95853880
Off-topic. Make your own thread for it.

>>95840230
>>95840440
I watched an interview with him due to the recent KS and he clarified that rules are important. What he meant, as far as I can tell from what little I asw, is that if you don't know the rule for something or there isn't one you shouldn't start looking it up mid-game but instead make a ruling and look it up later.
>Having rules for fishing and trade opens up
I disagree. That moves the focus of the game from what it's actually good at to some nonsensical economics simulation that has no legs.

>>95850749
>If I understand OD&D correctly, a fighting man attacks as a Hero beginning at level 4 and a Super Hero beginning at level 8, meaning 4 attacks against "normal men" power enemies at level 4 and 8 at level 8. that right?
he always gets one attack per level against normal targets, no need to worry about cut off points. as do all monsters per hit die as per gary
>If that's the case, why does the fighting man not attack that many times against more powerful enemies too?
they have superior parring ability and it is assumed that the number of effective attacks is reduced to the single combat rate

>Be dragon
>get attacked by four men
>They attack four times
>Be dragon
>get attacked by single man who fights as four men
>He attacks once

If using man to man tables a Fighting Man always attacks the same number of times (four times for hero, eight times for superhero) you only make one attack if you instead change to the Fantasy Combat matrix. Thus when fighting a dragon (which melees as four heavy hourse) you can either attack the the appropriate number of times with your weapon vs barded horse on the man to man matrix or once on the Fantasy Combat matrix vs dragon (12+ on 2d6 for a hero or 9+ for a superhero). Fantasy Combat matrix assumes a hit is a kill rather than doing dice of damage per hit though.

>>95853894
>I disagree. That moves the focus of the game from what it's actually good at to some nonsensical economics simulation that has no legs.
Sounds like you're still salty about being BTFO then to me.
>What, the game has rules for things that aren't just raping the next goblin in his bussy, but-but that means players might do things that aren't that! Ree-
One of the major crux of OSR is 'The game is what the players are going this session.

If the players want to engage in some economic shenanigans, then why shouldn't they have the option to do so?

>>95848807
>But yes OSR was basically "old RPGs in general" not just D&D.
No, it was literally never that. That was always just a tard misunderstanding.

>>95850912
Most of this post is correct but
>"man-to-man" combat when attacking non-fantasy individuals who are stronger than "normal units"
is mistaken, although it's a valid way to use MTM combat in your OD&D game. In Chainmail, though, MTM combat is part of a set of siege rules, sieges and escalades being a situation which naturally calls for handling soldiers as inividuals rather than parts of a block of troops. So, as written MTM rules and mass combat rules apply to the *same*, normal-type units, with hero-types fighting one another on the FCT in all cases. For D&D though that's unsatisfactory for a few reasons.

>>95853078
>Normal men is basically any monster or player with one HD.
Incorrect. A Normal-type is any monster that fights in ranked formations as a soldier (the strongest in the LBBs are hobgoblins) rather than as an individual, or any PC which has not yet attained Hero fighting capability. This includes Fighting-Men of level 1-2 and Magic-Users of level 1-6. HD is not relevant, so for example a split Ochre Jelly of 1 HD still is not a Normal-type.

>>95854115
why can't I just fucking use the B/X attack matrix and count HD as HP instead. That would minimize the rolls, and would make it deadlier for both parties.

While at it, is it possible to use a single attack matrix (as opposed to one for PCs and one for monsters) for the whole game? I know, classes progress differently. So, has anyone trieed to do such a hack or something?

>>95854730
>why can't I just fucking use the B/X attack matrix and count HD as HP instead. That would minimize the rolls, and would make it deadlier for both parties.
I've used this thing for a couple of games, does exactly that.
Just divide spell damage by 3 or 4, otherwise it'll get ridiculous.

>>95854268
>The game is what the players are going this session
Yeah, and if they're going to waste my time on sperging out about medieval economics without a hint of pulp adventuring i'm not going to waste my free time running it.

>>95854115
>each dice roll is one attack
ngmi

>>95854268
No one plays a game to be a fish merchant. That's just what happens when there's absolutely nothing else for the players to latch on to. A puddle is a lake to a man in a desert.

>>95855158
yeah

>>95854941
>>95855158
>He's back to 'Boy it sure is boring when players have options'
Give it a rest.
And by that I mean leave us alone so we can have some peace from you.

>>95854268
>>95854941
>>95855158
These kinds of things happen and cam be fun, depends on the group and how money-hungry they are.

But its easy to just wing on the fly, no need to make a book thicker for it. Its the kind of stuff that works better as a supplement IMO.

Like how vornheim has some chase rules, or 95% of what is in the arduin books, or all the stuff in the od&d supplements, or (1e) unearthed arcana. Good as options in a supplement to take a la carte, poor to include in a base book.

>>95844312
No, I didn't forget arsenic, I omitted it, and I disagree with your claims on the grounds of vagueness or being simply wrong.

>arsenical bronze was bronze throughout most of the bronze age
This is vague and poorly worded. No one's denying that bronze is bronze. I'd even say that arsenical bronze is still bronze today.

Arsenical bronze, which may sometimes be called arsenical copper depending upon composition, was present throughout the Classic Bronze Age. Some cultures had no access to tin so it was present throughout all of their bronze ages.

>tin was not available
This is wrong. Tin most definitely was available in the pre-Classical world. Tin bronze was present in Mesopotamia no later than EDIII and when it was introduced the amount of arsenical bronze produced dropped. For a short time Akkadian influence reduced the presence of tin bronze in Northern Mesopotamia but the Akkadians fell with about 1000 years of Mesopotamian Bronze Age still remaining. Southern Mesopotamia kept on trucking with tin all the while.

Adding to your vagueness is the mystery of what you're trying to convey by the Bronze Age. Different regions had different bronze ages.

For places like Britain, which had its own tin supply and its own later start to its bronze age, arsenical bronze was a short term affair. It took at most about 300 years for Britons to abandon arsenical bronze in favour of tin bronze.

Once cultures had access to tin, they used it preferentially. It's harder when cast, work hardens better, is more reliably cast due to consistent levels of tin in tin ore compared to arsenic in arsenic ores. It is superior for use in weapons, tools, and armour. Arsenical bronze is more ductile and better for making into decorative sheets. Where tin was available, which was most of the Old World through trade, tin bronze dominated.

If you want to pick on someone, pick on the Aegeans, they at least took about two-thirds of their bronze age to fully transition to tin bronze.

>>95855459
The players don't have options though. If they had actual options, they wouldn't be stuck carting fish around because every other option somehow managed to be worse.

>>95855601
>No one could ever possibly choose to engage with the world or setting in such a way of their own volition
Which box is Susie going to look for the ball in fish-kun?

>>95855634
>engaged with the world
By carting fish.
People really need to be scraping the bottom of the barrel to be seeing that as a great focus of their time. That was really the best your world could offer?

>>95855658
They were probably literally scraping the bottom of barrels.

>>95855634
Not the one that smells like fish.

>>95855601
>>95855658
Reminder that some of the most popular videogames right now for both single player and group play are ones where you have (often caricature of) a job.

>>95856176
Anon there's no point engaging with him. He's lost this argument months ago and been attempting to will into existence a reality where he has a point ever since.
I mean shit, even in the original image, the players do this
>While on the way to somewhere else between adventures
>Of their own will
>Do more than the bare minimum by making use of previous connections
>Then immediately flip the cash into something else that they already had planned
He's not going to admit he's wrong.
All there is to do at this point is mock him.

Pretty wild how mad smoked fish makes some people. Imagine having that guy at your table, and everybody is having fun and he throws a tantrum because he's not getting enough spotlight.

>>95855601
It's crazy how not only were you not at this table, but you have zero context for what they did, and yet you still have impotent baby Tantrums across the entire board, across multiple threads constantly shifting your goal posts back and forth. How long until you start talking about
>ACKS is banned from Reddit because it's a grift
>ACKS is bad because macris was subordinate to a literal Nazi

>>95856176
Yeah, but those games are actually fun because they don't force you to deal with the most mundane and boring aspects of those jobs.

>>95856228
>lost the argument
You're still mad about people calling your fish story boring. All your mental gymnastics of "IT'S ABOUT PLAYER AGENCY" and "YOU JUST DON'T GET IT" doesn't change that you think a story about people being so bored with the rest of your game that mongering fish is a welcome distraction is some grand victory.

>>95856315
It really is wild how absolutely fucking mind broken the mere mention of fish makes him.
I guess Lovecraft was right

>>95856373
>He's still at it.

>>95856388
Do you really think screaming "I WIN I WIN U MAD U MAD" makes you look like LESS of an idiot?

>>95856400
I don't think I need to worry about how much of an idiot I do or don't look like, not with you around.
Even putting that aside though, I don't think anyone is going to think I'm stupid for stating the facts.

If you really insist that I actually provide evidence of how much of a meltie you've had over all this in the past though; https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/94492356/#94513931
Still, you're certainly not absolutely gaped beyond repair over all this are you? Given you've been seething about it for 6 months, to the point where you're still trying the same arguments in the hope that this time, maybe, just maybe, you'll not get pantsed in front of the entire thread.

>>95856350
>force
Are you still under the delusional lie that the fish players were somehow forced into the situation?
> Don't force you to deal with mundane and boring
That's literally, exactly, and explicitly, what the incredibly popular job simulator games, are about, simulating mundane and boring tasks.
You're an out of touch moron who talks out of his ass after he's been backed into a corner
>>95856400
Pointing out where you are factually wrong, where you are lying, and where you are deluded, is not anywhere close to what you think you are quoting

>>95856420
Not even just the same arguments, but the ones he uses, or either childishly stupid, or blatantly incorrect, and when he gets called out on one he moves to the next one, until he eventually breaks down the veil and reveals his true thoughts

>>95856420
>same arguments
You realize that not only are multiple people in this very thread calling your story a boring embarrassment, that's going to be the natural reaction of most people, right?
You've been going on a "meltie" where you think everyone who thinks you and your story is lame is one person, when 9/10 people are going to say the same thing if they would bother to say anything about it at all.
You're getting the same "arguments" from people because that's the response your story is going to get.

>>95856429
>Are you still under the delusional lie that the fish players were somehow forced into the situation?
They had nothing better to do. If they had, they'd have done it.
>That's literally, exactly, and explicitly, what the incredibly popular job simulator games, are about, simulating mundane and boring tasks.
No. Oh god no. Even the most boring German truck simulators take efforts to try and alleviate some of the boredom that comes with the most mundane and boring jobs. They don't make you fill out your taxes.

>>95856429
Really, the fact he's been reduced to screaming 'It's boring' any time this is mentioned, like it's a Pavlovian response is delightful to watch.
He can't even engage with the actual discussion on any level and has to effectively hide in the conversational equivalent of a safety bunker.
I mean think of all the things that could come out of actually engaging with the discussion, it's an interesting example of
>How different subsystems fit together and having those systems there lets you open up the setting to more possibilities
>Verisimilitude
>Naturalism and keeping your setting grounded
>Players reacting to description during their travels and making something of it
>How non-combat random encounters can enrich a game
>Players getting to choose where their adventures go and engage with the world
All these things that are pretty close to Core OSR experience and he just can't even look at any of them because he'd turn to stone.
This is his own personal Gorgon and he's never going to defeat it because that would require reflection.

God it's funny.

>>95856445
>T-that wasn't me
>It's pure coincidence that I used the exact same desert analogy
Sure thing buddy.

While I am not on either side of the war of the fishies, I find it odd that the thing brought up as a selling point of ACKS is that you call sell fish. Now that in itself is not bad but you would think something like gem cutting could be front and center as that would bring in the gold and there a good chance the players would go into caves where uncut gems would be. Sure if the player want to do fishing to help pay the bills they should be able to do that but that not the kind of job that comes to mind when talking about this hobby.

>>95856477
You're aware multiple people responded to you, right?

>>95856522
The fishfag doesn't recognize that his story is mundane because he is a thoroughly mundane person.

>>95856522
Thing is, it's an actual example from someone's table and was more a matter of 'Here's how all those little charts, tables and shit that you keep screeching are pointless, stupid and shit actually intersect when you're playing and why they're worth having'

The fact it is something so mundane and that it worked for that group as an amusing little addition to what would have otherwise, in most systems, just been 'You get on the boat, you go there, you get off the god damn boat' with maybe a random combat encounter along the way, is why it's interesting.
Or rather, the fact that someone is so utterly ass-blasted over it, is what makes it entertaining.

>>95856531
>You're aware multiple people responded to you, right?
I know your ego is so big that it won't let you let go of an argument you lost half a year ago (Or rather, the argument about ACKS being bad that you started your rage-crusade over 3 years ago by this point, going on 4)
But no matter how big it is you still don't count as multiple people fishfag.

>>95856457
Believe it or not, people who actually play rpgs, don't do it to just have constant action, just like people who play video games. Some people are there to have a good time with their friends and dick around, it's the exact same reason why people go fishing IRL. You don't have friends and you don't play games

>>95856522
It's not even close to a selling point, and it never has been. You seem to be under the fundamental misunderstanding that this is part of the advertisement for the game, when in fact we are making fun of one person, who had a meltdown, over somebody else in a different thread talking about how they made some quick cash in the woods by smoking and selling fish, in order to buy their whatever

>>95856522
Have you ever worked in sales?
You don't get to pick what you sell. It's dropped on your desk, and you've got to figure out how to talk up its good points and diminish its bad points.
Car looks cheap? Rugged. Slow, breaks easily, and explodes? It's got 10 cup holders.
When all you've got is charts that make people sell fish, suddenly you've got a game that's all about players exploring uncommon aveneues and engaging with the world.

>>95856575
Fishfag you lost the moment you had to try to sell people a story about fishing and had to pretend it was exciting.

>>95856599
>all you've got is charts that make people sell fish
When all you've got is misrepresentative and outright false delusional statements, you eventually go back to crying about how macris is a Nazi

>>95856522
In the original story >>95854268 they were actually rescuing survivors from a destroyed town and came across the fishing spot because they were pointed to it by the locals.

But yeah, one single aspect of the system, I imagine there's probably shit for gem cutting somewhere given there's an entire book of dwarven shenanigans for ACKS.

>>95856618
Sorry, but you are the one known as fish bag, because of your Tantrums over players fishing.
Nobody is saying that fishing has anything to do with why ACKS is good.
One person made an explanation of how their players made use of the economic charts in game, in session.
No amount of your squirming, word twisting, or outright lies will change what can be seen in the archive.

>>95856667
fishfag*
Phoneposting was a mistake

>>95856672
Him getting to the point of 'No, you're the fishfag!' really is stark proof of how much being called that pisses him off.

We've seen that every time someone gets a good blow on him he starts trying to repeat whatever they did that hit him so hard.
Watching him try it with this is fucking hilarious.

>>95856652
When a group is so bored with rescuing survivors that selling fish sounds like a good distraction, you've fucked up. It's not surprising that everything done in ACKS is so bad that even selling fish is one and the same.

>>95856558
Maybe it's just me but I would gone with something with a bit more oomph like hunting.
>>95856590
It seems like it comes up as part of some argument about how ACKS is good game or not.

>>95856575
NTA, but you're not doing a good job selling ACKS.

>>95856702
You're right, every session should be just like a anime cartoons or marvel movies, jam-packed with action and quips and poses and all that cool stuff.
I hate when movies add moments of levity, calm scenes with character development, Slice of Life vignettes, and showing frontiersmen surviving by just their gumption and determination, after having survived by their steel and their blood.

>>95856709
>Maybe it's just me but I would gone with something with a bit more oomph like hunting.
Don't get me wrong, if I were shilling it (as he constantly accuses people of doing)? I'd do the same.
I'd talk about, I don't know, ruling kingdoms and building great trade empires or some bullshit like that.

But shit, it's not my story and it didn't happen at my table. I just repost it because he gets incoherently angry about it.

>>95856709
Yes like I said, every time the game gets brought up, this one specific person, Aka 'fishfag' start screeching about how one time he read a story about how some players in a session decided to smoke some fish, and how that makes the game bad somehow.

>>95856350
I don't think you can actually encapsulate how such a thing plays out in a simple greentext, to be fair.

For example I have a tendency to buy a crowbar on most of my level 1 characters. I use this to remove the hardware from dungeons.

Torch sconces, door hinges, can even have the other party members hold out a big cloth and hold a ladder so I can detach chandeliers and such. Anything that IS nailed down can be levered off.

I don't have to roleplay where I am placing the crowbar specifically, I'm doing this, I just tell the DM what I'm doing and how I'm reaching it, he tells me any rolls I/we need if it's delicate, and then it's just part of the normal ways of porting loot.

But I'm very aware that some people would HATE this and see it as a distraction from everything else. That's fine, I don't really enjoy such groups. But this habit also tends to decrease over time and levels, as the value becomes insignificant vs the weight. And the DM becomes aware of the shenanigans and adapts the dungeons to it, which also allows them to become more and more strange and fantastical.

>>95856522
Not even in ACKS, but in a game I play we "defeated" a malicious person who mutated into a horrible black goo monster (think like, venom but blobbier) without killing her, just neutralizing the magical nastiness of the goo with some lucky rolls. As a result we were able to basically have the town create a facility around this monster for collecting the goo produced as it's a useful magical reagent, and we get a cut of the profits every few ingame weeks.
The only active action we had to do for that was coming up with the idea and convincing them it was worth it compared to just killing her or researching a way to reverse the mutation.

>>95856558
>>95856709
>>95856710
I still think that kind of thing is just bloat to the core of a system. But even most have some chart of "trade good values" so maybe it was jumped off of that and is colored by Macris's lawyer thoughtprocess

>>95856667
>No amount of your squirming, word twisting, or outright lies will change what can be seen in the archive.
Take your own words to heart. No amount of your attempts to write a narrative are going to work, because everyone sees you suck at writing stories.
The funny thing is that we can see you trying to push your fish story, marking yourself out, and then acting your hardest like you're fighting against a single person, and that you "won" because... you're still raging about people calling your fish story boring every time you post it?

You suck at writing stories because you clearly don't really care about things like the truth.

>>95856710
The good thing is, it doesn't need to be sold, because the kickstarter did really well, and has been fully delivered on, his patreon makes tons of money a month, and he is still constantly selling side projects via kickstarter. Like him or not, he is living the RPG dream, he went from a tax accountant to having a product that by most metrics is both indie and wildly successful.

>>95856738
Shit, what was it someone said at one point.
Something like:
>OSR games are set in an actual breathing world, as compared to modern games where it feels like you're being dragged around a theme park by the DM and at the end of it you're going to get a t-shirt and a sno' cone for being a brave boy and slaying the dragon.
Fishfag wants the entire game to be constant bing bang wahoo. He's said so himself in the past.

>>95856763
There is no narrative to write, because we are discussing objective reality, and the archives can display everything.
You are a creepy little weirdo who throws tantrums over other people enjoying games, all stemming from a group of players deciding to have a slow moment that wasn't action-packed.
You're the autistic person at the game store that nobody wants to hang around, but yet still hasn't managed to figure out why everybody avoids him

>>95856755
>can even have the other party members hold out a big cloth and hold a ladder so I can detach chandeliers and such.
First of all, I admire the shit out of your gumption anon.
That's some 10/10 shit right there.
Second of all; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFuYIi5-igc&t=1s

>>95856763
Even the fish story stinks because it doesn't feel like there's any truth to it. It's told like the GM genuinely thinks the group is grinning and high-fiving every step of the way, when it sounds more like a group dropped into a position where the strongest motivation is to do something thoroughly mundane and they're just dealing with the shit card they've been dealt where that's the most lucrative activity.

>>95856781
Yeah, God forbid the players want to have a small side excursion doing anything, the DM might accuse them of trying to 'shill for acks' if they request downtime even

>>95856812
> I'm going to make up nonsense about how I feel and then try to transpose it onto reality and claim its fact!
The story is the story, if you feel that you need to derive deeper meaning from that, then you should be doing some deeper philosophical work to benefit all of humanity

>>95856781
>as compared to modern games where it feels like you're being dragged around a theme park by the DM and at the end of it you're going to get a t-shirt and a sno' cone for being a brave boy and slaying the dragon.
To be fair this was done because a lot of the newfags to RPGs in the '00s and '10s (maybe also the 90s? I wasn't around then but I recall some old forum posts about it) had their perception of fantasy colored by young adult novels, and the crappy movies and shows that spawned off them. People were having DMPC railroaded games that would make an old school monty haul group give the sideeye, even when the mechanics and art weren't tailored to it. This led to the now-outdated "GSN" theory and the whole storygame trend as an extreme variant.

>>95856812
>Realizing that his 'It's boring' tactic has fallen through, Fishfag attempts a new angle of attack by proclaiming 'Fake and gay' on the entire situation
>Despite having engaged with it for 6 months without doing so previously

>>95856797
You spend more time trying to write a narrative then actually looking at reality. Most of your arguing is just trying to create a story where you're right and everyone who disagrees with you is one person and wrong.
You've lost touch with reality so bad, you've spent by your own admission three years carrying a wound to your heart and trying your best to cope with that pain.

>>95856833
No, it's still boring. It's just also reeks of a GM who thinks his group loves something but they're just being polite.

>>95856856
I'm not talking about multiple people, I'm talking about you, and there is no narrative, there is the objective reality that you have had an absolute meltdown over a story about D&D players taking some time out of their session to do something other than what you wanted them to do

>>95856765
>tax accountant
That explains a lot.
Also explains that ACKS guy who's also an accountant.
It's like a system made by someone who's lost his soul, for people who've list theirs.

It's sad.

>>95856866
You weren't at that table, so you don't get to decide what's boring and what isn't, maybe the players enjoyed it and the DM thought it was boring, or maybe it was vice versa, but that doesn't matter and has nothing to do with anything. Truthfully the exact same story could have gone down in literally any game system, except it was discussed as relevant here, because when it did happen, the DM also had some numbers to actually give the players instead of pulling them out of his ass. You having a personal issue with a story that you don't like, has nothing to do with how good or bad the actual game is

>>95856878
The only reality is that you're raging right now, and it's because of >>95854941 not liking your fish story.

>>95856755
The goo ladies story sounds like a tale you would bring up when talking about side jobs in tabletop games.

>>95856891
Yeah man imagine a story about somebody who goes to Harvard to become a lawyer and then becomes disillusioned with it and instead because somewhat of an artist that is financially independent and has an active following for all of his products, what a shitty fate, I'd hate to have been him!
I'd rather have a nice Focus grouped game with millions in research and written by the best developers in the world, like 5th edition

>>95856805
Thanks. Making good use of the equipment list is really a huge part of the early game, I feel. Parlaying and the "funnel" part some talk about is rather common, but I think there's also some good times had if you're aware that there's a lot of value in anything made of good metal or precious material, that has some artistic element to like statues, or which is reasonably usable by someone else. To that end I also (depending on the character) have a tendency to loot enemies' shoes. Good shoes are valuable! Even if just a few coppers.

I feel like this also trains a DM to be more aware of including "useless but valuable" loot if they're not used to thinking that way. Most DM/GM guides include it, but IME it's rarely at the front of the mind.
I'm also reminded of some old anecdote about some party stealing the doors off of higher level dungeons too, because they were made of adamantine or mithril or something.

>video
Kek I never saw this one before, thanks for that too.

>>95856744
Yeah, it's not really something worth getting worked up about.

>>95856866
>No, it's still boring. It's just also reeks of a GM who thinks his group loves something but they're just being polite.
Now you really are just making shit up
>Group is the one that decided to go fishing
>Group are the ones that wanted more money
>DM was just describing the scene and letting them do as they will
Fuck, you don't even believe that given how earlier in the thread your melty-tactic was 'Well if I were DMing and my group decided they wanted to do that I'd beat them with a stick and refuse to DM ever again because of them wasting my time, a-bloo-bloo-bloo
In fact it's right here >>95854941
God it must be hard being you, you really do have to defend every single choke point to the death all on your lonesome don't you, even the ones on opposite ends of the spectrum.
Then again I guess you've got a lot of experience with being on a spectrum already.

>>95856891
This is probably the worst thing you could try to latch onto. Gygax was an insurance adjuster and strong protestant.
>inb4 FOEGYG
Not the point.

>>95856946
>Then again I guess you've got a lot of experience with being on a spectrum already.
If he was autistic there's a strong likelihood that he wouldn't be acting like this.

>>95856898
I do get to decide what sounds plausible though. If you tell me a story about how you think your group loved something, and it sounds dull as fuck, I can't really stop from assuming either your group didn't actually like it, or your group is so broken down that even selling fish is welcome.

Let's be fair. I don't think anyone else in that group is going to be running around, telling people that the highlight of their adventure was fish selling. Even the GM probably wouldn't say that.
What we've got is someone telling a time-wasting story about something even the members of his group probably don't really care about, and all because he feels pressured to try and explain why people should buy his game. And, whenever this is pointed out, he flips out, because he thinks no one in their right mind could be bored by him telling such exciting stories.

>>95856965
>What we've got is someone telling a time-wasting story about something even the members of his group probably don't really care about, and all because he feels pressured to try and explain why people should buy his game
Or he was explaining how he felt a mechanic provided by a system was useful in some side event for his table.
You don't have to buy the game to use that kind of mechanic, it can be entirely a DM-side thing hidden from the players or printed out on a separate sheet... And people are usually going to state that they enjoy a game if they... enjoy it.

I think your "shill detector" had a false positive, and it makes you look like you're tilting at windmills.

>>95856388
SAAAAAAVE ME FISHERMANNNN

>>95856965
>why people should buy his game.
Still holding onto that 'Marcis is personally here shilling ACKS and paying people to do so' conspiracy of yours eh?
>Despite the Kickstarter being over for, I don't know, a year? A year and a half by now?
You know, it'd be much harder to recognize you if you let go of it.
But then again I suppose that'd take the entire crux you're constantly trying to work towards out of the picture wouldn't it?

>>95857002
Calling Shill on anyone who even mentions ACKS apart from in a 'This is the most dog shit thing I've ever read and I wish the 3 generation punishment upon anyone who speaks of it' context is one of his basic tactics.
It's well documented by this point.

Most the people in /osrg/ have this fuckers brain on a thumb drive somewhere, we could tell you if he lives in his mothers basement or attic by this point.

>>95856891
Whoa whoa whoa the creator is a lawyer, not an accountant, speaking as the accountant ACKS guy, our professional exam is harder so don't lump lawyers in with us. I get accountants are dunked on for being boring but who cares where I get my jollies from. We do just as much dungeon diving, looting, and all that jazz as anyone else, I just get to be pleased in the background that the numbers are all balanced. And hey, if my players want to go sell fish because players just want to random stuff, I've got numbers for that, and if they don't, that's fine too, they'll do something else equally stupid I'm sure.

>>95857002
>Or he was explaining how he felt a mechanic provided by a system was useful in some side event for his table.
The original context of the guy telling it was fishfag having spent a month or two shooting his mouth about how the tables were useless padding that no one could ever find a rational use for in any context and blah-blah-blah-ACKS-bad.

In fact; https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/94415189/#94427591
Have the original context from the archive.

>>95857058
>the accountant ACKS guy
Ayy, my man.
What charted body?
>inb4 Fishfag sees two accountants talking about ACKS and spends every thread from here until judgement day banging his bongo about how 'ACKS is so bad and boring and doubleplusungood that only accountants play it, ree'

>>95857002
>Or he was explaining how he felt a mechanic provided by a system was useful in some side event for his table.
Useful? It lead to a diversion with nothing interesting happening except a payday, and only after a lengthy series of steps and calculations. If the game system ends up encouraging that, something is probably wrong with the game system.

Seeing this play out in other games would have been quite different. Even if there was an area that was randomly generated to have an abundance of fish, the GM might have felt the need to add something interesting so it's not a complete waste of everyone's time. But, with the GM having the horrible belief that if he's rolling on charts and making calculations he's doing something productive, the story boiled down to being so mundane it's kind of bizarre that we're even being forced to discuss it because the fishfag can't seem to let it go and refuses to even try to see why people keep calling it boring.

>>95857058
I always kind of thought the Parks and Rec accountants were a parody, not a reality.

>>95857095
>Even if there was an area that was randomly generated to have an abundance of fish, the GM might have felt the need to add something interesting so it's not a complete waste of everyone's time.
You mean like a nearby fishing camp that they were interacting with as well?
Or, let's be honest, what you really mean is 'There should've been a combat encounter'
Literally Marvel tier 'I can't coom unless there's a forced fight scene.'
God you're pathetic.

>>95857114
The way you escalate in order to produce a strawman is weird. It's like you understand you're just arguing like a dumb cunt, but you don't mind because being as much of a dumb cunt you can be has been your shtick from the start.

>>95857114
>You mean like a nearby fishing camp that they were interacting with as well?
Oh wow, how exciting. Maybe they can share their tax forms.

>>95857127
>>95857135
>He's now resorted to samefagging again
Lel. Gottem.

>>95857145
>he's resorting to samefag accusations as a diversion
Seems like you got hit where it hurts.

>>95857145
The most exciting thing about your story was that there was a nearby fishing camp. That's actually kind of sad, especially because that was your effort on doubling-down.

>>95857135
>>95857127
The simple fact is, this exact same story could have come up in any system, at any table, but it's brought up as relevant here because in this specific instance the system also supported the actual numbers for the players actions, and not the DM pulling something out of his butt arbitrarily. The simple fact is you don't like what these players did in their session, and in your distorted view, that somehow reflects on the system itself.
You're trying to use it as ammunition in your hate campaign, and when that fails you break down and start crying about other things you don't like

>>95857172
Diversion from what? You admitting that you can't comprehend the idea of a scene without combat?
They had something to interact with nearby, multiple things even assuming the abandoned town was within a hex or two and it didn't even register for you because it wasn't a bing-bang-wahoo combat.
And then your only response to that being pointed out was
>Wow they can do their tax forms together
You've got nothing, mostly because you are nothing.

>>95857172
If the posts weren't exactly 1 minute apart we might believe you, but you've already outed yourself multiple times

>>95857182
Nobody's claiming it's exciting, nobody's claiming it's important. All they are claiming is that things like that happen in games, and in this game, the system supported the player's actions instead of hand waving them

>>95857190
>The simple fact is, this exact same story could have come up in any system, at any table,
And it would have been a boring story. A story that didn't reflect well upon the table, and most people would forget about it ever having happened. No one would go "Oh man, I'm so happy that we played through that and we did so because the system made it the most lucrative way to spend our time. Great system."
I feel like you actually need help. Do you need system recommendations to help you become interesting? It's at the point that just about anything short of GURPS would be an easy recommendation to help you avoid using charts like a crutch for being unable to come up with any interesting ideas, and even then GURPS still actually has some interesting ideas and mechanics scattered in some of its books so I can't really hate on it.

>>95857199
But they're not exactly a minute apart.

>>95857217
>Nobody's claiming it's exciting
Fishfag has been raging over people calling it boring for three years now.

>>95857194
>You admitting that you can't comprehend the idea of a scene without combat?
You're actually continuing with your fight against your strawman?
Why even bother tagging posts if you're not actually replying to the person that made them?

The fact it is such an innocuous story really is what makes the entire situation so funny.
All it would've taken on the part of Fishfag is for him to read it and reply with 'Not my cup of tea but you do you I suppose'
But because it's ACKS-related and anything even remotely ACKS-associated is his own personal Helms Deep, he had to go:
>Jeffry Dahmer, Pol-Pot, Jimmy Saville, Adolph Hitler, People that include fishing in their campaigns
Revealing himself as a complete fucking lunatic in the process.
Now basically everyone in thread can ID him on sight. Meanwhile if he'd just kept his head down he could've gone back to negging ACKS on the low-key and probably shit up threads from here to eternity with it.

>>95857292
Do I dare scroll up to get the context for whatever this shit is?

>>95857292
More of your attempts at spinning a narrative? You're really shit at writing stories.

>>95857306
Just the resident chimp having his bi-threadly tantrum and everyone laughing at him.
Honestly, not much interesting, but it is a bit amusing

>>95857314
Your stories suck.

>>95857314
You chimped out over people calling your story boring, and when it was pretty clearly explained how and why it was boring, you switched to "Uh, yeah, it was boring all the time, I knew that, but you're still mad!!"
Just take the L like a normal person.

>>95856946
>earlier in the thread your melty-tactic
Not quoted but >>95853894 >>95854941 are me and those are my only posts ITT because I went off to work after posting it.
All the other stuff posted and going on about ACKS I have nothing to do with, and didn't even know it was a thing someone's been sperging about in previous threads, personally I just find the idea of "let's make the game about something it's shit at doing" a bad idea and much like a lot of people who want narrativist mechanics I find it a dreary focus for a game session. As a minor diversion idgaf but if they start wanting to run a game of merchants i'd either tell 'em that i'm not willing to run that or make it a game about their loot being stolen by raiders from the nearest dungeon/bandit fortress/thieves guild of nearest metropolis.

>>95857325
>>95857326
>Immediately after being called out on samefagging he makes sure to do two posts exactly a second apart
Dance for us more, monkey, play your accordion and dance.

>>95857362
>people who want narrativist mechanics
Those people are in the wrong thread.

>>95857095
Uh... Are you sure OSR games are right for you? Half of the OSR games out there reproduce the attack tables (which is NOT THAC0, that's superficially similar but is a calculation rather than a table lookup). And there's oodles of these kinds of charts for handling different situations and scenarios. OSRIC has a table of hirelings that includes a limner, and about as much space dedicated to sage hirelings, including a big weird table of sage fields of study, as the assassin class. Both are almost 2 full pages.

OSR is also the general realm of gaming where tracking encumbrance is often considered to be important rather than an inconvenience, and there isn't a large portion of people who will pipe up about how much they hate alignment or vancian magic.

So I ask you, what is it you actually want to DO during a game? Give us a story about one of your sessions. It would help clear the air a bit since you seem adamant that other people are playing in ways which appear insane to you, but there's no context as to the way you like to play. So how do you?

>>95857292
Why do you treat this board like we're supposed to be idiots? The whole thread is still here, and it doesn't resemble your post at all.

>>95857405
Give me the tl;dr version, your post is a mess.

>>95856962
>inb4 FOEGYG
You, I like.
You truly are a
Friend
Of
Earnest
GYGax

>>95857362
>All the other stuff posted and going on about ACKS I have nothing to do with, and didn't even know it was a thing someone's been sperging about in previous threads, personally I just find the idea of "let's make the game about something it's shit at doing" a bad idea and much like a lot of people who want narrativist mechanics I find it a dreary focus for a game session. As a minor diversion idgaf but if they start wanting to run a game of merchants i'd either tell 'em that i'm not willing to run that or make it a game about their loot being stolen by raiders from the nearest dungeon/bandit fortress/thieves guild of nearest metropolis.
Hell I can respect that. At the end of the day the DM has to be into the campaign as well.
Personally though, that's kind of what I like about ACKS. You can do a solid merchant game, or thieves guild game, or Kingdom building game, with it.
You don't have to do any of them, but the option is there and its supported in such a way that it will lead to an interesting game rather than the DM being stuck going 'Shit, this is going to get really boring really quickly because I'm stuck making it up as I go'

Historically, in the real world, merchants were basically one of the 'adventure classes', right up there with crusaders.
Going exotic places, trading with strange peoples.
If you pitched a campaign to me as 'You lads are going to be involved in a great big hulabaloo about Pepper, I'd probably be pretty suspect.

But check out the life and adventures of Romano Mairano and you can see the potential there, from pirate skirmishes to trading with Saladin, to the Pope going 'Know what, fuck you, half the city is excommunicated because I'm sick of your shit.'
It's refreshing to have a game that opens up new avenues like that.
I mean shit, fundamentally I want a game where you can:
>Play a necromancer and build a giant bone army
>Re-enact the Conan novels complete with becoming King
And ACKS can do both, so I'm happy with it

>>95857412
>Shit he asked me a direct question, I better play retard to avoid answering it
What is it you actually want to DO during a game, retard?
What do you consider to be a good, entertaining session? Lay it out for everyone.
>inb4 'Well you were rude to me so I'm going to duck the question, hahah'

>>95857475
>You can do a solid merchant game, or thieves guild game, or Kingdom building game, with it.
2014-Anon here who doesn't care for ACKS due to the aesthetics of it.
What you wrote encapsulates the intention of the system. It's why it's even called "Adventurer, Conquerer, King System", it was intended to expand upon the domain-level play and more smoothly transition into it, taking some inspo from how BECMI segmented the "tiers." This was, if memory serves, not long after Paizo had come out with the Pathfinder 1e Kingmaker adventure path, which was all the rage among the 3.PF crowd and OSR people looked at PF smugly like "heh, they reinvented domain-level play." So stuff like that was in the general TTRPG cultural consciousness.

I don't know why someone would be upset at the fact that such a game to facilitate this style of play exists.
>rather than the DM being stuck going 'Shit, this is going to get really boring really quickly because I'm stuck making it up as I go'
This kind of depends on the DM. Different people are great at seat-of-the-pants ideas for different subjects. Some can come up with NPCs on the fly, some with monsters on the fly, some with locations, some with items, and some with "minigames". All depends on the DM, different tools are useful for different tables.

>Historically, in the real world, merchants were basically one of the 'adventure classes', right up there with crusaders.
>But check out the life and adventures of Romano Mairano and you can see the potential there
My stance is that most OSR adventuring parties actually resemble victorian colonization efforts moreso than anything medival. Just with the tech rolled back.
>porters, often hired from local people and who are at great risk of bodily harm
>cutting through hostile, alien terrain
>ruins of dead civilizations (akin to irl pharonic egypt, axsum, mughal, aztec, etc)
>subsisting off of weird potions to not die (quinine tonic water vs malaria)
>conquering savages
All adds up.

>>95857568
>I don't know why someone would be upset at the fact that such a game to facilitate this style of play exists.
Well we all know the real reason he's got such a blistered asshole about ACKS. It's just that he'll lie about it (right up until the point he shifts gears to raving about how he's got footage of the author swearing the Siegfried Oath while doing Der Guten Tag Hop-Clop only to be given the old 'fuck off retard', then pretends he didn't do that come the next thread.)

>>95857604
As an OG member of the Pembrooktonshire Gardening Society, I will say that's fucking stupid as shit. If someone makes a good game then they make a good game.

>>95857687
As always, no need to believe me. If you're even mildly curious the archive awaits and you can see him engaging in this bullshit for the past 3 years.
He's an actual honest to god freak.

>>95856696
>We've seen that every time someone gets a good blow on him he starts trying to repeat whatever they did that hit him so hard.
And shortly after it's comment deletions and bans. It's never fishfag = 2etard that has comments deleted, though. Wonder why.

>>95857405
>Uh... Are you sure OSR games are right for you?
I like OSR games that embody "rulings not rules". Even Gygax said he preferred super simple OD&D over AD&D and wouldn't look up any chart if he could help it.

If you like chart-heavy games, that's you, not OSR as a whole. And, if you enjoy charts, you probably should do your best to be wary of relying on them. It's very easy for GM's become a slave to them, something I've personally seen happen with less-than-confident GMs. It's very easy to fall into a routine of looking things up, rolling on charts, waiting for an interesting result to appear, and allowing your actual GM skills to atrophy.

>>95857568
>I don't know why someone would be upset at the fact that such a game to facilitate this style of play exists.
No one's upset if it's done well.

>>95857475
>Historically, in the real world, merchants were basically one of the 'adventure classes', right up there with crusaders.
Not that anon, but so much fucking this. Vikings were traders, explorers, raiders, mercenaries, conquerors.

Also, on the fish thing... Players genuinely enjoy finding things in the game world they can turn to their benefit. If the players are excited about something that comes up randomly like abundant fish, and they want to put in the effort and are having fun with it, I would be hard pressed to not let them do it. The DM included the information about abundant fish in the game. The players took it and ran with it, turned it into a little side venture, and had fun doing it. This sounds like a win all the way around to me.

In the end, things like that which contribute to and facilitate player agency or enhance the feeling of immersion in the game for a particular group are why these games are so awesome to begin with. Groups that don't find those things fun don't have to use them.

NEW THREAD
>>95858122
>>95858122
>>95858122

>>95858045
I think this is a misreading of what I intended.
The charts are there, you don't have to use any particular one. The most-used ones can be placed in some easy-to-access area - that's what a DM screen is, but the rest are (primarily) to be used during prep.

It's not like 3.5 where, while still being for prep, the charts are carefully set up to produce a certain result when combined with other things in the rules and there's weird ripple effects if you ignore them.

It's why I said before >>95855473
A lot of these kinds of things are better placed in supplement books. Use them if you like them, ditch them if you don't. Very little of any OSR is really "needed". The far "stripped down base rules" end of what an OSR game looks like while still being OSR (and not some more story-game-esque thing like Trollbabe) is probably Carcosa. The opposite end in my mind is something like AS&SH, but I'm sure someone else has 1-upped that by this point.

>>95858093
>Also, on the fish thing... Players genuinely enjoy finding things in the game world they can turn to their benefit.
That's not purely what they enjoy. That's what games move them to do.

An unfortunate reality of games is that from the way they're set up, players may actually actively work against their own enjoyment and entertainment. Even if they would prefer to be doing something else, the incentives at play can make it difficult for them to go do more fulfilling activities. This is an ancient problem, and one that hits hard with video game RPGs in particular, with some games becoming frustrating grinding loops that players either suffer through in hopes of the game getting better or just they just drop the game entirely.

Players try to maximize rewards and minimize risk, which is logical to do, but taken too far it can lead to situations where players are not facing any real challenges or making any major discoveries, and are instead focused on safe, mundane activities with clear returns.

Imagine a game where going into a dungeon is a risky endeavor, but nets you only 10 gold. And, running a hotdog stall right outside the dungeon is 100% safe and nets you 20 gold. No matter what exciting things you put in that dungeon, no matter how much the players even know they would prefer to go in, there's going to be a very strong incentive to just run the hotdog stall and hope something exciting happens, especially if the players try "thinking in-character". Players stuck in a dull and depressing grind will still try and eke out entertainment from it, but you really can't call that a "win all the way around" if that happens. That's a multi-part failure and should be recognized as such.

>>95858222
>Imagine a game where going into a dungeon is a risky endeavor, but nets you only 10 gold.
Sounds like BFRPG to me.