Welcome to the Old School Renaissance General, the thread still 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 (embed)

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

>Previous thread:
>>95858122

>TQ:
Tell us about your economic ventures! What's the most expensive thing your players have manufactured (or bought) and then sold for a profit?

>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

Am I going overboard?

>>95892067
It's not very readable. Are you the Anon that was developing an automated world builder for ACKS II?

>>95892105
Sorry for the bad quality, I'm just looking for opinions on Miro and what setup people use to run games with it. That thing is the most modular collaborative board I've ever seen, but I'd hate having to run encounters on a separate app like Foundry for them.

>>95892105
>world builder for a game with less than 3k players
Doesn't seem like it's worth the effort. Even something like Shadowdark has over 10k+. Meanwhile, WotC's CEO put the rough current AD&D player estimate at .8 million.

>>95892105
Please, that's not me, I've done barely anything with UI, it's all just database tables at the moment. I need to wrap up my monster bullshit then start working on hosting a local server of my database that my VTT can pull information from to automatically update shit. You kill a monster in a dungeon room? That shit's tracked. Imagine what I could do with the data! Mostly I think I'm gonna use it to come up with stupid awards like "Most Kobold Slain" or "Most hit by arrows"

>>95892178
It's not for anyone but myself really, I just want a fucking huge world and while it's using ACKS for a lot of the economics/demographics stuff, I am of course making my own shitbrew with other widgets I've picked up over the years.

>>95892178
The... AD&D 5e playerbase?

>>95892205
>Please, that's not me
Gotcha, apologies for the confusion.

>>95892219
No clue. Probably just a CEO's best guess based on what books are selling on the digital marketplace. It might even just be what he thinks based on vibes.

>>95892205
You should feel free to make it as autistic as you want then. I'm assuming you're going for maximum autism anyway if you're splicing ACKS in.

Question regarding B/X (OSE) combat, are you allowed to make missile attacks and move afterwards within a round? Or is the order of 3a. to e. fixed and like spellcasters can't move and cast outside of certain mass combat rules, ranged attackers can't either.

>>95892240
Completely understandable my friend.

>>95892242
Oh I will don't worry. I've got a guy I've co-DM'd in this world with and he's a full blown programmer, he's constantly coming up with ideas that would make it more ridiculous and over-designed. It might be hard to believe but I'm the more reasonable one.

>>95888239
I've been thinking about it being something that people of an alignment understand but cannot speak, and exclusively the "native language" for how highly alignment-attuned creatures can speak. There are additional languages for interalignment communication (ie celestial allows for "good aligned" high beings to talk to each other regardless of the Law-Chaos axis setting.)

Might possibly secretly add it as a thing that powerful aligned characters learn to speak at a certain level due to their alignment becoming that strong. Clerics and such. Else it feels fairly silly to me to have everyone of a specific alignment being able to inherently talk in some way.

>>95889348
Out of combat more strict than in-combat/under duress. Sometimes it's like
>Player A: OK so I'm going to move around to the other side of this guy, opposite B, looking like I'm listening to C while he insults the guy. Hey B, you've seen me do this before right? So you know the drill that I'm gonna try to trip this guy while C has him distracted. I'm making a nod to your direction to confirm it.
>Player B: Yea but you forgot I'm dumb as a brick so I'm also distracted by C. You know how I'm really blunt so it's probably obvious from the start that I'm just waiting for this guy to get pissed off and swing first so I can deck him.

This kind of thing where the characters are not controlling each other but trying to make sure the "impression you get of how they act after travelling for a while" is enough to abstract into body language and anticipating patterns. It's discussing but not like, REALLY discussing. There's a lot of moments OOC that make up for the lack of true real-time communication. Sometimes it's light retconning like "Would our characters have talked about this during downtime?" which could be like "No I'd avoid doing so" or "Yea that seems like something that would be discussed over a pint."

Also allows PCs (not DM) to feed the high int/wis char info. Or high-cha feeding everyone

Reposting from last thread:

Would it be appropriate to call for a player to roll a wisdom ability check to see if their character notices something subtly happening to them in game?

Like alignment language hand signs for instance. If the signs were being used toward the player but in a low key fashion so others might not notice the use?

>>95892663
>Would it be appropriate to call for a player to roll a wisdom ability check to see if their character notices something subtly happening to them in game?
Absolutely not. If anything, the DM would make the check on the player's behalf, since the player must not know whether he passed the check or not, let alone that there was a check to be made in the first place.

There's also the issue of making it a *Wisdom* ability check. Of course you won't break anything if you decide to make it a Wisdom check, but the association of Wisdom with perception is not really something from first decade = O/A/B/X/D&D. If you'd like to keep the OSR "feel" to the check, a flat chance on a d6, or a percentage, or an Intelligence check are all alternative options you might consider. Or even a saving throw of some kind, if you want to make it level- and class- dependent.

>>95892663
stuff like that I roll for my players without mentioning, rather than pique their suspicions for any sort of reason.

>>95892288
Another anon here. Should each side follow those steps as single unit as in the whole side moves, then do missile attacks etc. or is it per unit?

>>95892790
I would agree that you should roll for the player, in secret, to see if the PC notices but

per the 1ePHB:
>Wisdom is a composite term for the character’s enlightenment, judgement, wile, will power, and (to a certain extent) intuitiveness.

Seems applicable to perception/intuiting the use of the hand signals, no?

>>95892067
>acks
Miss me with that gay shit.

If the players know what the hand signs mean, they would know what they mean.
>The party sees a figure in dark cloths, barely visible amongst the shadows of the alley opposite you next to a barrel and strewn refuse. In the low light, you can see him making hand gestures which you (PC A) recognize to be a warning: "guards approaching left"
If they don't, they could clearly see SOME sort of hand signs. It's up to them to infer or to react from there - whether they see it as some kind of warning, whether they try and whisper to that person, whether they fumble it and approach them and are noticed by the guards should play out as it happened.
>The party sees a figure in dark cloths, barely visible amongst the shadows of the alley opposite you next to a barrel and strewn refuse. In the low light, you can see him frantically making a string of hand gestures that none of you seem to recognize.
pic unrelated

>>95893006
It's OSE (I don't really care about the system since wilderness/hexcrawl stuff in the system -if any- is replaced by the one made by The Alexandrian)

>>95892663
>>95893018

>>95892288
>>95892927
Source: OSE basic rules.

Note, these are different from other clones and some editions of D&D.

>>95892178
no one cares. off-topic troll post.

>>95892288
you can move and attack per RAW, why would you think otherwise???
>>95892927
Well are you rolling side based or individual initiative?

>>95893006
youre a fucking bozo lmao, imagine an RPG living this rent free. Have a (You).

What is a good scale for doing hexes, I'm making my own hexmap for the first time <based on the fra mauro map> but I was wanting it to be a far smaller area than the actual map, something like 80-100k sq miles.
I want travel to mean something but I don't want it to be boring or a slog to travel the wilderness between the sparse villages and 2-3 cities

>>95893104
6mile is pretty standard for a small starting region.
Given you have a whole world here maybe try 2 mile hexes and if that’s too compact on up to 6

A friend and I are hoping to stir things up this weekend at our small town's annual comic con. Normally all they have going on is maybe a MtG tournament and some FotM RPG one shots (Usually D&D 5e or pathfinder.) We're running a level 3 tournament module in AD&D (One that my friend wrote. It's a three story dungeon with a dragon at the bottom and a bunch of magic items that the players are scored on.
My friend says he has prizes to give away. Hoping that the idea of an oldschool competitive tournament blows people's minds.

>>95893144
it's not meant to be the entire planet at the very least, but yeah I don't plan on having adventures outside of this map. 2-6 miles sounds alright. I've played games where one day of travel was a single hex and those games got pretty boring pretty fast

>>95892663
>Would it be appropriate to call for a player to roll a wisdom ability check to see if their character notices something subtly happening to them in game?
No.
If you must do so, do it behimd the DM screen.

>>95893165
6 miles gives you roughly three hexes of travel per day, predicated on the terrain traveled. If you put multiple points of interest or content in each hex to be found, you can really slow a curious party down even on familiar or easy terrain.

Of course more work for you, and given how many hexes are present in the map you posted, 2 miles per hex with 1 POI might still give them a ton to do and see while still being able to travel big chunks per day

>>95893104
i like 3mile hexes, myself

What’s a recommended third party monster compendium? I have MM1, 2 and Fiend Folio for first party references.

>>95893278
i like monster overhaul. skerples is the gay but its a solid book

>>95893278
judges guild: field guide to encounters

>>95893104
3-mile seems to be popular for hexcrawls. You tend to move at 1 hex/hour.

If there's more of an emphasis on overland travel, I kind of like 12-mile hexes, with "easy" and "hard" terrain. This results in:
>1 hex/day through hard terrain
>2 hexes/day through easy terrain
>1 hex/day if travelling at a leisurely pace through easy terrain

>ACKSII Hardcovers on store today
>Two Hundred and Ten Dollars
>Judge's Screen with Inserts is Seventy Five

I imagine they will be of a high quality production value , but still. . . .

Yowza!

>>95893104
It depends on whether it's meant for B/X or AD&D. In B/X, the default is 6 mile hexes. For AD&D, the default i 5 mile hexes. This is because they are the simplest divisors of travelling movement rates.

>>95894008
I don't even see why the anti-ACKS guys were scared anyone might accidentally buy those books. That's not a "maybe-i'll-try-it" price.

>>95894008
I succumbed to the hype during the kickstarter in 2023, which gave me plenty of time to come to regret the purchase. It's fine for what it is ruleswise, but I've come to realize the maximalist economic simulationism isn't my style. My biggest gripe with the books themselves is all the AI artwork inside. Even the non-AI stuff just feels kinda bland to me; I vastly would have preferred the old school black and white lineart that they had in the original ACKS book.

I will say that the Judge's Screen is nice, though $75 is a lot. DESU it's probably the only thing from ACKS that I'll end up using on a regular basis since you can use inserts for whatever game you want.

>>95892288
>are you allowed to make missile attacks and move afterwards within a round?
No. You have to move and then shoot.

>Or is the order of 3a. to e. fixed
Yes. That's the whole point of having those phases. Personally I think the best order of phases is shoot-move-fight-cast, but that's not canonical.

>and like spellcasters can't move and cast outside of certain mass combat rules, ranged attackers can't either.
No, that's a whole separate thing. You can both move and shoot a missile weapon, you just can't do them in the opposite order.

>>95892927
Basic uses full side initiative, and that screencap says as much. It's kind of wack because it means that in practice spellcasters can never be disrupted in casting.

>>95893104
This is a nice map! I like a 5-mile hex myself, but it's hard to know in advance whether you'd think that's too much or too little – your question is necessarily subjective, right?

>>95894561
it is pretty much traced from the fra mauro map, but with my own terrain of choices

yeah, I just didn't want the map to be too small to encompass an entire "campaign" of content, nor too big to be boring or a slog to cross, so far I seem like I'm settling on 5 or 6 miles a hex for my game. they are starting out in a small village I have yet to place in the moors near the bottom right.

Other than the single save instead of the save categories, and the evasion & pursuit rules, what changes does Swords & Wizardry make to OD&D?

>>95894802
Doesn’t S&W use ascending AC?

>>95894172
You pirate it and if you're a turbo autist it appeals to with too much money you spend it for a collector's item.

>>95894828
It has both, just like OSE.

Other than the thief getting done dirty, what was wrong with BECMI? I'm asking about specifics here.

not exactly an OSR system specific question but still for this thread. How "out there" do you run games. I know some OSR people that refuse to do anything but near medieval realism. and then there are people that go balls to the wall planehopping or love shit like barrier peaks. Most systems seem to support the former more than the latter imo

>>95894999
I kind of hop around between campaigns (as I actually like playing a variety of systems instead of just b/x forever) but generally I prefer the world to be around 95% normal and 5% as weird as possible with little in between.
By normal I can mean anything from Howardian tits snakes and sandals humans-only sword and sorcery where magic turns you inside out, to standard elfgame fantasyland. And those "As weird as possible" sections include things like barrier peaks, or straight up planehopping Cthulu mythos stuff.
It's always a joy seeing my players go from spending 6 months in a desert and the weirdest shit they've seen outside of being hinted at is a mummy to "we touched the mummy's glowing, rune-covered, throat-singing obelisk and awaken in a Gaigeresque nightmare world made of pulsating black meat, populated by mind-eating demons. As long as we're here no one can truly die, ever, no matter what, they just crawl out of a wet, sticky hole in the wall. So don't get your mind eaten before you figure out how to escape!"
Or, similarly, "actually the elves are descended from aliens that seeded the world with life and this was a spaceship and these are laser guns."

>>95893278
2014anon here with blast from the past reccs.

>All The World's Monsters
By chaosium back in the day, multiple volumes. Common in PDF
>The Random Esoteric Creature Generator for Classic Fantasy Role-Playing Games and Their Modern Simulacra
One of Raggi's first things, still very good. I think this was the first thing he put out after "Fantasy Fucking Vietnam" (AKA Green Devil Face #1).
>Deities and Demigods
First party, but still. If it has HP it can be killed.
>Tome of Horrors Complete (S&W edition)
Fuckhuge book. Of interest, when I went to check if this was still the "latest edition" I found this index for the of S&W monster book, may be useful for you https://attronarch.com/swords-and-wizardry-which-monster-book-to-pick

My library is ancient by this point so I have no idea what the fuck else is out there. Half the time what people would do back then is really simply reflavor things, because the stats aren't complicated and a monster's "identity" is really in how you describe it and what that description means for creative interaction.

Like you could flavor a troll as some kind of grimer-like (yes the pokemon) semi-humanoid solid putty monster that has to be burned or melted. This impacts how it moves and such, but not how it kills or dies.

>>95894008
While digging thru the rubble of dead blogs I found this, guy seems to have moved on to random things instead of being closer to the OSR-side of the net now but this feels accurate, particularly the "From Projects to Products" part: https://talesofthegrotesqueanddungeonesque.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-osr-as-afternoon-culture.html

>>95894999
The world and campaign I'm building is built around the emotion of "uncomfortable", with layers to it. I'm taking bits of inspo from all over the place. It started from a basic idea of "Alignments are real cosmic forces that power magic, cause conflict and guide societies aligned to them. They do not dictate individual behavior nor are they a straight jacket." And has led me to devising things like an encounter with a dirty-armored paladin that stands stock-still in the middle of the road near a monastery and (in a somewhat winston churchil-esque voice) barks a demand for a tithe to his monstery from any who approach, but not actually doing anything if walked around besides proclaiming that refusal to pay is "will be recorded as a suspicion". And that if asked further he's very short and only states direct answers, but essentially will explain that with enough suspicions his order will not intervene if one is involved in combat or similar duress, only rendering aid afterwards if nonthreatening as any other would.

I also have it so that opposing alignment individuals can coexist, if slightly-uneasily, because their conflicts aren't (typically) big enough to be worth a fight to the death over, just petty squabbles. That sort of conflict is on the scale of armies, allegiances, and powerful monsters.

Also, because eye symbology is associated with it, beholders are lawful good. Painfully lawful good. That just means they will eat or disintegrate chaotic, neutral, and evil characters first, and also view LG characters travelling with non-LG characters (or simply interfering with it, or entering its lair) as being impure and at risk of defection.
So basically nothing changes except for the reading if one's alignment can be sensed and the particulars of what they incoherently babble about.

>>95894999
>How "out there" do you run games.
I like the base to be AD&D 1E staples mixed with some more sword & sorcery elements like Conan, Lankhmar, some old pop-culture with a dab of my current interests that may be a bit out there like Xianxia all depending on which part of the setting you adventure.
So you get all the races even the ones I don't particularly like gnomes simply because that's part of AD&D, set in cities that range from outwardly S&S, high fantasy, science fantasy or medieval but with are inwardly AD&D adventure locales with a tone different from mudcore/high heroic stuff and look more to Vance for inspiration even when it looks shiny.
Then I have borderlands with their keeps, invading forces, wilderness that gets more dangerous and weirder the further out/down/up you go (I personally loathe random gonzo and body horror stuff), lost civilizations of varying kinds (magical tech, immortals, evil alchemists etc) and potential high-level planar adventures jumping into other settings.
I've adventured enough in generic not-LOTR ripoff land without strong D&D elements to find it dreary but I also know from experience that too much weird gets boring without relatively grounded parts of the setting to anchor it.

I think the biggest departure I make from those "realism" fags is that I treat it as a game primarily. Going on about lamplighters or candlemakers, unless I intend to treat them as an actual faction of secret cultists or evil magical poisoners to deal with is inane and little more than masturbation/wannabe authorship, the kind that a good editor would strip out as a waste of page space at that.
That also means I add in trainer NPCs for the various classes, have monk sects and druid circles they can fight to level up, homelands for the varying races, paladin orders, gods with motivations and so on even when it means I have to make concessions to my setting ideals to run a better game that fits AD&D and it's strengths.

>>95894524
You can buy nice GM screens for $20, less than that if you're thrifty. $40 if you want a "This guy spent way too much on that" screen. $75 is robbery unless it comes with an HJ.

>>95895163
Thanks for the recs, will check them out.

Loved Hack&Slash’s monster ecology book. And anything along those lines of thinking. Heck, I still have the PF1e monster codex on my shelf because it has some fun ecological and lore blurbs

>>95894172
Well the $300,000 people spent on Kickstarter that tells me that a lot of people wanted to buy them actually
>>95894999
The term you are looking for is gonzo, and frankly Dungeons & Dragons has been Gonzo since it's very first inception, so people who only played mudcore medieval realism, are shooting themselves in the dick

>>95895414
That 300k came from less than 2k people.

Today I learned that Gary Gygax wrote a supplement for OD&D that was intended to update the Chainmail rules and make them more compatible with D&D.

>pic related

>>95895442
Uh... Okay? People still spend $300,000 on the books, you didn't make any stipulation about how many people it was

>>95895564
2k people is nothing. The $300k figure is just what happens when you severely overcharge a small group that makes poor financial decisions.

>>95895587
And shady business.

>>95895462
Yes. More accurately, it's meant to add mass battles to DnD, because OD&D was never supposed to use chainmail mass battles, only man to man and fantastic combat.

>>95895587
No one said it was a lot of people, I said it was 300,000k in just pre-order sales, not including any of the other projects.

>>95895591
Hi fishfag

Why buy an ad when you could just post for free?

>>95896261
Sounds like a lot of rules I don't need while actually running the game.

>>95894989
There's a list of things that are good, debatable, and bad in BECMI in the n00b guide:
>>95892056

>>95894549
>Basic uses full side initiative, and that screencap says as much. It's kind of wack because it means that in practice spellcasters can never be disrupted in casting.
Wrong. One side does all of its actions in order, then the other side does. So spellcasters can and do get disrupted when their side loses initiative.

>>95896506
Based book reader.
t. "reverse"fag

>Help me brainstorm a lore reason...
I like my setting to have no big towns or cities, just a bunch of villages, towers, castles, strongholds, and temples of different sizes. The reason is that a town/city tends to become a place where PCs can get all the services they need, while scattering sages, alchemists, temples to get healing, and other facilities around the map forces the PCs to travel around.

So help me brainstorm a lore reason while there's only relatively small settlements in my setting.

>>95896777
>Someone laid a curse on the entire world that causes any large gathering of people to come under attack by demons.

>A plague has just ravished the land, we're talking Black Death on Spanish fly and oysters, as such most the survivors are those who were far from major population centres (Plus gives you lodsaruins to go trawling through, maybe the plague turns people into undead, orcs or undead orcs, or ghouls of course)

>The Pax Imperium proclaims that the only great city in the world shall be the Imperial city, anyone who attempts to outshine its majesty gets a visit from the Decimation de Legio (And to add to the drama/open up opportunities, the Caesar is assassinated some time around when the party reaches level 4-5, resulting in shit going bananas across the board)

Any of those work for you?

>>95896797
I like them! They could even be combined: Legend has it that Bad Things happen when a settlement grows beyond a certain size, but it could be anything: Disease, demons, earthquakes, dinosaurs, floods, drought, tornadoes, locusts, famine...

>>95896827
Hell, combine 2 & 3.
>The Pax Orc reigns over the land, most assume that the destruction brought by the savages whenever a settlement grows too large is to keep anyone from rising up against their slavery, butchery and depravity
>In reality it's how orcs reproduce, they're born from the bloody earth where mass slaughter has taken place and so they wait for a town or village to grow large enough and then they move in for the harvest
I'm guessing your players won't be going domain level?

>>95896853
>In reality it's how orcs reproduce
Interesting, makes me think of the odd reproductive system of Hârnic orcs. Perhaps beastman females/queens are infertile unless they're exposed to grounds where mass death happened.

>I'm guessing your players won't be going domain level?
They will be able to do it, like I said there ARE towers, strongholds, and temples: It's just going to be increasingly difficult to grow an individual settlement beyond a certain population.

In ACKS terms, I'm thinking of having the curse kick in from around Market Class IV, so settlements with population of up to 500 families (2,500 people) face no particular consequences, while above that threshold catastrophes start to happen, making Class IV settlements pretty rare.

So PCs who establish a big stronghold and several big villages scattered around their domain wouldn't have to deal with the Curse, but if they start to grow their main settlement above the 500 families level, I'll start rolling on a table monthly.

So Domain play would definitely be possible, but face specific challenges.

>>95895916
This guy just tried to say that it was a lot. >>95895414

Even 300k is actually a comparatively small amount for a full RPG, especially when you consider most of that money came from an even smaller pool of people shelling out for the "super ultra mega" packages that may or may not have just been the designer's friends trying to pad up the numbers, to "chum up the waters" in hopes of encouraging other big spenders and to make the kickstarter look like a success for the sake of promotion. When you remember that he wanted to spend 100k on the art alone and still ended up using AI art, 300k doesn't seem like it'd actually go all that far.

I was looking forward to buying ACKSII but the hardcovers are quite cost prohibitive.

If I own ACKS 1 books, is there anything absolutely must have or completely updated/new rules wise?

From my brief skimming of the (very large!) PDFs, it seems like the rules are just expanded or elaborated upon throughout. So it seems I could get the same feel maybe minus some of the further grains of verisimilitude by just playing ACKS1 or bx+ACKS tools?

TL;DR: is acks2 worth the dosh if i own acks1?


Also god damn I hate the new art

>>95897562
>is acks2 worth the dosh if i own acks1?
No RPG book is worth the dosh. ACKS II is very much worth the pirating.

>>95897562
It's more of a tidy up and folding in of all the best parts of the Axioms series and improving balance.
If you own ACKS 1? Eh. It's a high price.
Though since you already have the PDFs, have a read through and judge for yourself honestly.

>>95897584
It's not worth the time, let alone the money.

>>95897584
I dont agree.

I love holding and reading physical copies of books. I'm old though. I cannot into screen reading for more than 10-20 minutes at a time.

So for me to use an RPG book in any real capacity, I like to own the physical copy.

I have a huge library of PDFs to skim though, there's definitely value there. I just find that if I'm actually *reading* the PDF page for page, I end up getting the book to do that with, instead. Of course only where this is applicable, sometimes a PDF is all there is (or in cases such as this instance, I don't see the value) but I love spine-bound dead tree leaflets!

>>95897608
>So for me to use an RPG book in any real capacity,
Then that's a definite avoid.
ACKS2 is at best something you might want a table from, and even that's a very hypothetical "might." I don't think any sane person would actually try to run the game at the level where you'e need a book on hand.

>>95896261
>Abstraction rules
What even is that?

>>95896261
If they actually put that in an ad they could get sued for false marketting. Leave it to anonymous shills.

>>95897625
When you need rules for "Make it up yourself."

It should probably just market itself as a Rule Playing Game to avoid confusion.

>>95897625
Quick rules for doing things like raiding dungeons that you don't want to focus on or the like.

I know what you're going to say, 'why thee fuck would I ever not want to do a dungeon', but they're useful for henchmen being sent off to do dungeons or NPC rivals raiding ruins.
Hell I've used them for exploring a ruined city, basically scoping out to the point where entire buildings were the equivalent of rooms in a meta-dungeon with players working their way towards the centre of the city and the Ziggurat at its core.
Yeah I could've gone full Rappan Athuk and had maps for every individual building and the dangers therein, but doing it broad brush then zooming in for pivotal locations, fights, ect, kept it the location from becoming repetitive when they pillaged the noble district.

>>95897696
No, it's very obvious why people would grow to avoid actually playing certain games as much as they could. There's no mystery there.

>>95897673
>>95897713
>He's gone from throwing a tantrum any time ACKS is mentioned to being passive-aggressively bitchy
Caught a warning/ban did you, lmao.

>>95897696
>your goal is to become a manager jealous of his employees because they get to go on adventures while you're stuck managing spreadsheets

I hope the imaginary gold is worth it.

>>95897738
As one of those guys, I'll happily say ACKS is shit and the people here who try to sell it are dumb faggots.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPYgtVHa8NI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tTHn2tHhcI

>>95897738
Was that actually too subtle for you?

The good reason a game would promote that it has rules to help you avoid playing the game is because the game is such a chore the players would prefer not playing it.

>>95897794
>The only reason a game would include rules for horses or ways to increase overland speed is to help players limit the amount of time spent hex crawling
This is how retarded you sound. You do understand, don't you?

>>95897811
>only
Weird strawman. Can't actually argue with what people are actually saying, can you?

>>95897811
>The only reason a game would include rules for horses or ways to increase overland speed is to help players limit the amount of time spent hex crawling
Is that not the main reason?

>>95897811
You didn't do enough reduction, you're still trying to engage with them like they will be able to respond in kind.
A better fuck off would be
>the only reason a game would include rule zero is to not have rules for the game
which is basically where they're going anyway. Largely moot given they don't play games but that's where it'll go.

>>95897827
>Is that not the main reason?
Not in the slightest, the main reason to include them is so players can explore further afield from civilization and go places they otherwise couldn't.
Outside of that; carrying more shit, outrunning monsters, sending messages back to town.
It opens up options.

>>95897843
Oh, I know, but at that point you'll get
>Hurr, strawman
Which they're going to do anyway, but at least this way we're steering towards an interesting topic of conversation.
That being Hexcrawling and its virtues.

>>95897811
Having horses doesn't replace a portion of the game with rolls instead. Selling your game because it has "Abstraction Rules" is akin to selling a meal as being low calorie because someone else will eat half of it. I'd rather they put more effort into making the game better than putting effort into telling you how to skip it.

>>95897827
Might also increase the play-time hex crawling if the results are more efficient so they engage with it more or they're moving cavalry around. You the anon who doesn't understand time and distance simultaneously?

>>95897673
>>95897713
>>95897746
I mean it's not like the author calls the police on me if I don't use every single rule and table? I prefer lighter games but having a system spell out for me a ton of mechanics for lots of different situations sounds useful to consult, even if from time to time.

>>95897846
I was assuming you meant that the rules for horses would enable a way to skip hex crawling like some sort of video game fast travel. I didn't realize your analogy didn't make any sense.

>>95897883
The irony is that it's definitely "rules over rulings."

>>95897900
I'm a fan of rulings, but if some situations come up often and I want a finer resolution mechanic for them it'd be handy to have a book jam packed with rules and tables. If you say that hardly justifies the price tag I agree, but that's what the share thread is for.

>>95896777
Most OSR games have an implied assumption that they're post-apocalyptic. Chris Kutalik and some others wrote about this in a past age:
https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2012/08/ad-apocalypse-and-hereafter.html
And some notes on greyhawk in particular, with its frighteningly-low population density:
https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-howling-emptiness-of-world-of.html
https://hillcantons.blogspot.com/2012/09/postscript-on-greyhawks-howling.html

>>95896797
>>95896827
>Legend has it that Bad Things happen when a settlement grows beyond a certain size, but it could be anything
>Someone laid a curse on the entire world that causes any large gathering of people to come under attack by demons.
This is actually a heavy spoiler plot point for my favorite piece of fiction so I won't actually say what it is because it's better served going in blind.

>>95897562
>is acks2 worth the dosh if i own acks1?
>>95897608
>I love holding and reading physical copies of books
A duplex b/w laser printer, banker's box of copy paper from costco or something, and either a long arm stapler (for things with big enough text to be printed zine-style) or heavyweight 3-hole punch+binder may be a better use of your money if you're continually needing things in hard copy. Picrel is some I did long ago for easier reading, when I had no smartphone, tablet or e-reader.

You can also print out single-pages, or collages of screencaps from different pages, to add to your notes.

>>95897738
Good quote-image, saving that.

>>95897827
>Is that not the main reason?

>Chainmail has a man on a horse on the cover art.
>Man on horse is cool imagery.
>Include rule for horse so you can man on horse.
Simple as.

>>95897746
>your goal is to become a manager
... Y.. Yes? That's what domain-level play is. The name is derived from the titles of Conan as he aged.
>Conan the Adventurer
>Conan the Conquerer
>Conan the King

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9q-fCtykg0

>>95897967
>... Y.. Yes? That's what domain-level play is. The name is derived from the titles of Conan as he aged.
Watch now as he spazzes out and goes 'But being a King is boring and poo, why would anyone not want to be a wandering adventurer all the way up to level 10,000'
Meanwhile the reality of being a King in any fantasy setting:
>When I was a fighting-man, the kettle-drums they beat;
>The people scattered gold-dust before my horse's feet;
>But now I am a great king, the people hound my track
>With poison in my wine-cup, and daggers at my back.

>>95897883
It's the exact opposite of what an OSR game is supposed to be. GMs and players obsessing over rules is what OSR tried to avoid, ie. the whole trying to return to a simpler time with simpler mechanics and not making rules and charts just so you can keep selling more books.

Gygax even wrote lengthy laments over "ruleplayers" and how greed was the primary motivator behind expanding rulesets, and how his personal favorite way to run a game was OD&D in its simplest form. People obsessing over rules is how you end up with games where the GM and players spend less time actually playing the game and more time doing the "chores" of a game, like tennis players who'd show up, sweep the court, tighten the net, repaint the lines, and then go home for the day.

>>95897998
You spend a lot of time making and fighting strawmen.

>>95897998
Honestly, this thread in general has a problem of people getting mad that someone else plays their game with different focuses when even in OD&D you had multiple combat systems you could use and Gygax said someone could even play a dragon (just starting as a baby one).

>>95898007
>Gygax even wrote lengthy laments over "ruleplayers"
I'm pretty sure that's referring to the type of person who sees the rules-as-the-thing, the sorts that are parodied by Knights of the Dinner Table (and Hackmaster itself). Like the kind of person who has their character say
>"I shall strike thee with my plus-two flaming longsword!"
rather than
>"This sword I recovered from the ancient tomb of dal gathog! Behold as it sets aflame!"

Purely because a lot of rules in certain fashion makes the players have to parse mechanics-as-decisionmaking. Not simply asking how wide a room is or something.

>>95898007
>Gygax even wrote lengthy laments over "ruleplayers"
Gygax was talking specifically about what we, these days, would call 'Rules Lawyers'

>Obsessing over rules is what OSR tries to avoid
I disagree, story taking priority over gameplay is what OSR is most against, with inflexibility and metaplay being a secondary bugbear.
ACKS doesn't suggest Hickmanning it up, quite the opposite.
It doesn't have any buildshit shenanigans that lets players break the game.
The rules enable player agency at every step of the way, there's no 'You have to take 3 feats and give the DM a handy to access the markets subsystem', it's purely 'Here's a transparent review of the mechanics you can access'.

'Mother may I' is the death of player agency since the players don't know if doing the same thing is going to give the same results week on week.
It also gives the DM a toolbox to actually build their own settings rather than relying on cargo-cult thinking or reusing old ideas.

>>95898072
>his thread in general has a problem of people getting mad that someone else plays their game with different focuses
Just the one, c'est la vie though.

>>95898007
>GMs and players obsessing over rules is what OSR tried to avoid
That's really quite debatable, even if my own style mimics what Gygax wrote about in Dragonsfoot. My point still stands: you don't need to grind the game to a halt if the players want to do something clever, but if it's a recurring situation and/or you don't trust your own rulings it's nice to have references. Kind of like DIY tools: a hammer and a screwdriver do 90% of the job, but I'm glad to know there are more sophisticated tools available should I need them.
I get not being interested in the game, what befuddles me is the clearly emotionally charged reactions to it.

>>95898072
Based on his Dragonsfoot posts, Gygax is definitely referring to people who care more about rules instead of rulings, and even complaining about people on that forum who kept asking him to tell them how to handle certain rules, to which he'd reply "That's for your DM to answer, not me."

People constantly trying to treat him as an ultimate authority on the game probably helped contribute to that perspective.

>>95898090
>you don't trust your own rulings
You shouldn't be a GM.
If you don't know enough about something to make your own ruling, you definitely don't know enough to tell whether someone else's ruling is good enough.

>>95898107
>who kept asking him to tell them how to handle certain rules
Yes which is the type of player hackmaster refers to with that. The kind to argue with the DM over rules. Shit like
>Gygax said in Dungeon Mag number my-ass that that's not how the Multiheaded Gelatinous Cumsock's attack is intended to work, its multiple meaty whaps only hit one target, it can't split them. Yes I have a subscription to Dungeon Magazine despite being a player and not DM, why?
That kind of thing wore him out I think.
But even caring about the divide between RAW and RAI that a lot of post-80s games have is a "ruleplayer" thing, its just so pervasive that a lot of people don't realize this. That's the "renaissance" part of OSR.

>>95898072
>this thread in general has a problem of people getting mad that someone else plays their game with different focuses
This behavior is, unfortunately, endemic to the entire website. That's why the "STOP HAVING FUN" banner exists.

>>95898159
>This is what he takes from that post
This is why no one who has been here for more than a thread or two treats you with even the slightest sliver of respect.
It's because whenever anyone attempts to actually talk to you in good faith? You pull back the curtain and flash them with what a massive cunt you are.

>>95898188
What the fuck is wrong with you?

>>95898168
How could I forget? I guess shifting to hang on weird/slow boards does that to you. I basically ignore most of /tg/ now besides this thread and an occasional worldbuilding/setting one.

What a grand and intoxicating innocence I have, what a fool I am...

>>95898188
>You pull back the curtain and flash them with what a massive cunt you are.
I'm not sure if that was intentional but that is a fucking hilariously visceral mental image hahaha

>>95898159
This is exactly what I was talking about: you're clearly so riled up you start spewing nonsense. It's fine to not like ACKS, you can play whatever you like with your friends and I'm sorry if you're upset, but hating on a system because it has too many fine rules is like hating a free toolbox because you'll never use all of it: just irrational.

>>95898090
>Kind of like DIY tools: a hammer and a screwdriver do 90% of the job, but I'm glad to know there are more sophisticated tools available should I need them.
Since that anon decided to play the shit, let me give you an actual answer to what you said.
I agree, it's nice having a set of rules that lets you either recreate or reinterpret older materials without having to rely on blind mimicry.

It's like owning a car that comes with a full, old school 'here's how to fix basically everything' booklets.

>>95898192
>'Here's why I like it'
>'That means you're a failure as a GM.'
Nah, you've already had your (you) from me, you can have a go fuck yourself and be done with it.

>>95898212
Completely on purpose and why thank you.

>>95898188
Read that post again, dickface.
It's basically the underlying truth that you seem desperate to want to avoid. It's basically the foundation behind "Rulings, not Rules" concept, the understanding that books are unthinking objects and can't compete, even with a million pages, against even a half-bright GM who's actually aware of what kind of world he wants to run and what the current state at the table is, and there's no reason to be putting so much faith in their rules compared to your own rulings.

>>95898188
How are you supposed to know whether something is a good rule or not if you don't know enough to make your own ruling?

>>95898245
No one's even talking about ACKS. We're talking about Rulings over Rules.

>Rulings over rules!
You mean like pic related?
Where the GM makes a ruling that the price increase is worth 2 steps?

Abandon thread.

>>95898324
It's getting silly at this point. The ACKShill is more poison than person.

50% of the the threads are just shitflinging.
Maybe someone should go and make a "ACKShill and Fishfag Duking Out General" or whatever. Drama is not OSR.

>>95898246
Is it just me or does Soth's head/helmet design remind anyone else of a cat?

>>95898249
>there's no reason to be putting so much faith in their rules compared to your own rulings
I don't think anyone here is arguing this.
One reason people tend to try out "OSR fantasy heartbreaker" systems because they are looking for something that jives with how they like to play. The closer someone else designed things to work how you do, the less work you have to put in.
Similarly, systems and supplements are also a great collection of other peoples' "codified" houserules that you can peruse for ideas. In that respec it's reference material, not referee material. Like an artist buying art books, or an interior designer having books of other peoples' interior design.

>>95898266
You try it. If it works, good. If it doesn't, you inform your players that it's changing because it wasn't as fun as you thought it would be on your end. If they ask you to not change it, figure out a new version that compromises.

Simple.

>>95898087
>It doesn't have any buildshit shenanigans that lets players break the game.

I’m sorry I don’t even mind ACKS but the player’s companion book is buildfag central. Yes the judge can and should gate access to its contents, but that doesn’t change the fact that macris released a system for buildfagging even if it’s judge facing only (despite being called the players companion lel)

>>95898368
That would require there to actually be an ACKShill though.
There's about half a dozen people having a perfectly civilized conversation about ACKS just 15-20 posts ago. Unless it's a single overenthusiastic schizophrenic it's pretty clear there's more than a few people here that are interested in it.
Meanwhile we absolutely know for a fact by this point that it's not the same case on the other side of the coin, it's just one retard who chomps on like a pitbull whenever ACKS is mentioned.

>>95898429
Go to bed, ACKShill.

>>95898429
He's obviously baiting at this point, just ignore him. I got 3day'd at the end of last week (and properly waited for it to expire like a good boy, thank you jannies) for a "troll post" that was just joking about the situation.
So at this point it's safe to say that if there's no content in the posts about games besides shitflinging then its a risky proprosition to even bother responding.

>>95898419
>the player’s companion book is buildfag central
Can you post some screencaps and elaborate?
>judge book called "player's companion"
Reminds me of how neither the Greyhawk nor Blackmoor supplements for 0e had any setting info lol

>>95898414
>You try it.
I don't think you understand the question.

>>95898458
ACKShill, go to bed, you grumpy little bitch.

>>95898466
You only know if a rule (or ruling) works well for you/your table if you have prior experience or learned from someone else. So if you lack the knowledge and experience, you try out anything that catches your fancy. Shit that vibes with you.

If it works, great. If it doesn't, no big deal.

Arduin Fumble table attached as an example - I don't use it, because fumbles never felt very good to me past the first "haha goofy fumble". But I do like the crit table conceptually, and in practice I enjoy it for making things terrifying.

>>95898458
greyhawk is very interesting to me, since it's clearly trying to adjust math for the alternate system so things die at a rate similar to chainmail. Because someone (possibly gary) simply didn't want to just print the appropriate chainmail rules into OD&D.

>>95898419
>player’s companion book is buildfag central
You mean the custom class rules right? If so, I'd consider them the opposite of buildfagging.
Buildfaggotry is when you can pull shit like 'Oh I'm going to take 3 levels in Fighter, then cross-class into Klansman for the Bigotry feat so I can use the synergy between that and the Hatecrime subsystem for an extra 3d6 Vile damage every time I tell someone to bite the curb before attacking'

Custom class rules are entirely GM facing and just there so you can create shit for your own settings, with each class being its own, separate path that outside of a few exceptions doesn't really get choices past which class you want to be.
Could they be abused? Sure, if the GM is fool enough to tell players they can use them.
But on the other hand if it lets me, as GM, do an entire group of classes for, say, an Arabian Nights setting
>Dervish to replace fighter
>Bandit to replace thief
>Astronomer to replace wizard
>Imam to replace cleric
>Rider for Explorer/Barbarian
>Maybe a few 'secret' prestige classes that their characters can convert to if they stumble across them in the world (Demon binder, Palace Guard, Hashsassin) which'd trade more abilities for slower XP growth if I'm feeling quirky
With all the little tweaks I, as GM, want to put in there?
That's a cost worth paying far as I'm concerned.

Just don't be a retard and let your players have their hands on them same as you wouldn't let them get hold of monster abilities.

>>95898414
>You try it. If it works, good. If it doesn't, you inform your players that it's changing because it wasn't as fun as you thought it would be on your end. If they ask you to not change it, figure out a new version that compromises.
Bad rules tend to be compounding problems, especially because most obviously and immediately bad rules that would lead to immediate failures are caught before being put to print. If you don't know enough to make a ruling, you're not going to know enoygh to avoid bad rules, and by the time you're trying them out it's already way too late.

>>95897867
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I believe the premise of ACKS is that once you attain a certain high degree of influence in the world, you need to project power over vast swathes of land. So, to run your domain, and engage in actual dungeon crawling, some of that crawling must be done in a quick and abstracted manner so you can run the logistics and still have time to run high level dungeons with your more advanced characters. If one was to play out each delve, it would limit the scope without actually increasing the number of dungeons personally explored.

>>95898532
And I know, you're going to say 'But that could all just be fluff rewrites'
Sure it could.
But I could also do something quirky with the setting and split, I don't know, Fighter, into three separate classes, Dervish (Two handed fighter), Bandit (Fighter-thief) and Taureg Warrior (Horse Fighter) or something and having actual backing mechanics for it (and give them trade offs) lets me pre-build the campaign and have the appropriate input I should have as GM on where things go.

What if I want to build my own custom races for the setting? Maybe brass men from the city built by Solomon?
That's another layer of complex-bullshit in and of itself.

Modern games have put the cart entirely before the horse by making it so the GM have complete control over everything except character gen.
The reality, at least I feel, is that the GM should have the most influence during character gen since characters should fit to the world and be a natural part of it.
And then once the players are out of character creation and into the world you then it's their show from that moment on with them steering where things go and what happens.

Like I said I'd never let my players use the custom class rules.
But that's not what they're for.

>>95898497
>If it works, great. If it doesn't, no big deal.
It tends to be a big deal if a GM ends up picking up bad habits from bad rules, especially if the rules argue that if something didn't work, you didn't follow the rules hard enough. That's also how you end up with rule players/rule lawyers who value what a book says over the GM's judgements, because not even the GM has faith in their own rulings.

We're deep in hypotheticals here, but the basic principle is that a GM needs to be at the level where they are able to trust their own rulings even just to be able to know what rules to even use. The GM who blindly follows a book is barely even a GM. This isn't supposed to be some sort of dramatic or controversial proclamation, it's pretty much what almost every game says in their opening pages.

>>95898472
You don't know what the word "shill" means, ESL
>>95897607
HI fishy!

>>95897673
Not even close you lying retard.
Imagine an RPG so based that it's banned from reddit and lied about on 4chan.

Introducing some friends to B/X which they seem to enjoy but one player wants to roll the dice more. For obvious reasons I don't want to encourage excessive ability checks but what are some rolls /osrg/ would be fine with being done by the players? The aforementioned player wants to roll his own damage and NPC reactions for instance. The latter I've told him is kinda non-negotiable for me because I have to make sense out of it. Damage however seems to be more sensitive area since 5etards are used to roll it themselves, I tried to explain that from my understanding I have to also make sense out of the damage roll and describe it so the players are not bothered with meta shit like the amount of a monster's HP

>>95897758
Compelling arguments

>>95897794
Hey DM, I wanna have our henchmen raid that orc hole while we go after the dragon.
>party fights dragon
>DM rolls for abstraction delve for the henchies
Oh god how terrible

>>95898592
>and by the time you're trying them out it's already way too late.
This isn't an MMO where retroactively fixing shit causes riots and people pulling their subscriptions. You have a pool of players smaller than the number of fingers you have, if something doesn't work it'll be obvious and changing it to fit better is a nonissue.

Hell stopping in the middle of a game and realizing this to do a quick rewind is doable.
>Oh shit wait the crit rate of this happening is WAY too high for the tone I was going for.
>"Okay pause pause. You get 15 HP back, you get 5 back, you're at full instead of on the floor, and these 3 guys are back up. There's no blood everywhere (yet) either. Sorry I thought this would be cool to have it not require a second 20, but that's just too lethal and I wanna make sure everyone has fun."

>>95898668
We're talking about optional rules though.

>>95898532
>>95898621
Valid points all

It’s more like GURPS in that it’s incredibly autistic but it’s balanced, so buildfag was the wrong word for what I intended.


It’s also entirely optional content so I was being a contrarian for the sake of it and that’s wrong. I looked through the book and it’s just in depth and crunchy again akin to GURPS not 5e’s level of modern level of buildfaggotry

>>95898677
And a follow up issue regarding natural 1 and 20 whether they should do anything more than being an automatic hit or miss in B/X

>>95898690
>Hell stopping in the middle of a game and realizing this to do a quick rewind is doable.
That's a great way of having players go through suffering the bad rules, and then to add the benefit of making them lose any remaining faith they might have had in you. Most players would probably prefer "X rule was lame, let's not do that moving forward" as opposed to putting retcons on the table.

>>95898677
>but one player wants to roll the dice more
You can see if the other players would be OK if he was the one delegated to party initiative and similar things.
If he really just as a dice fetish, tell him that if he's conflicted on what his character would do, within his own control, he can always make up a target number in his head to estimate the odds and then roll it. My playgroup does this. One character is vindictive and impulsive and so her player will roll to see if she acts out at times. I have a character with low wisdom and so I RP him as being sometimes inattentive, rolling occasionally to see if he's distracted or fails to make a mental connection that was easy for me. Like setting a chance to see if he realized understood what another character was explaining to him or if he had the awareness to realize that his worship of a draconic god wouldn't be something to bring up at a polite animist temple.

>>95898727
It depends on your group, really. And if they don't like it they can suggest doing what you said, or a different one can offer to DM.

Endless issues are just "reluctance to communicate OOC problems" and no system, rules, or table-tools will fix that.

>>95898699
>It’s also entirely optional content so I was being a contrarian for the sake of it and that’s wrong.
What's 4chan without a little being contrarian for the sake of it really?
And yeah, personally I only consider it buildfagging if:
>Players are making the choices
>There are right and wrong choices
>You can do convoluted combo bullshit the writers never actually intended
>They can pregame their entire character (And therefore get salty if anything happens that fucks that pre-build up)
>It can result in imbalance between different players playing the same class or break the system in some way

>>95898699
The game isn't popular enough for anyone to bother buildfagging for it. If enough people played it, ACKS would fall apart pretty easily, but I don't think anyone needs to be concerned over that happening.

>>95898815
>They can pregame their entire character
This is I think the lynchpin of it. Dual-classing exists but it's very specific. The only sort of buildfagging shit in old school things I can think of are (optional/generally poorly regarded) things like the Bard shoved into the appendix of 1e.

>>95898677
>The aforementioned player wants to roll his own damage and NPC reactions for instance.
Cool, let him. The only things he shouldn't roll for are checks the outcome of which he shouldn't know, like searching for traps and secret doors.

I can see reasons why a player shouldn't roll for some specific reaction rolls, but they are rare. I even let them roll for treasure types and amounts if I haven't pre-stocked.

>The latter I've told him is kinda non-negotiable for me because I have to make sense out of it.
So what? He rolls, you make sense out of it.

>I have to also make sense out of the damage roll and describe it
Describe the damage? What kind of faggotry is that? "The Ogre is still standing" and "The Ogre goes down" is all the sense you need to make and all the description you need to provide.

DON'T pull out of your ass Matt Mercer-style graphic descriptions of damage that have no in-game effect.

>so the players are not bothered with meta shit like the amount of a monster's HP
Why, what's wrong with "meta shit like the amount of a monster's HP"? Don't punish system mastery.

>>95898716
>natural 1 and 20 whether they should do anything more than being an automatic hit or miss in B/X
No, they shouldn't. Gygax wrote against criticals multiple times, and he was right about it. And fumbles are slapstick bullshit.

>>95898869
>Gygax wrote against criticals multiple times,
Gygax hated fun. See his post-TSR games for more info.

>>95898869
>Why, what's wrong with "meta shit like the amount of a monster's HP"?
I recall some old supergrognard from the early years that ran without HP being known to the players. It might have been Arneson or Holmes or someone.
>system mastery
Visions of Monte Cook's website circa 2006 haunt me

>>95898890
>Gygax hated fun.
Based.

>>95898892
>ran without HP being known to the players. It might have been Arneson or Holmes or someone
Yeah, in Blackmore players didn't even know their characters' ability scores. The joke gets old soon.

>>95898867
I've said this before in other threads, but it really does suck all the fun out of playing if you know exactly where your character is going to end up.
I had a character who was originally going to be a tomahawk throwing, fleet footed savage skirmisher.
Then we found a box of muskets.
Now he's basically Sepoy Sharpe, complete with a little footline of tribal musket men to act as back up.

>>95898890
"le natty twenty" is the most obnoxious "fun" that has ever been associated with tabletop rpgs.

>>95898924
Nah, being a fun-hating faggot for fun is the most obmoxious "fun" that has ever been associated with tabletop rpgs.

>>95898924
How about auto-hit on a 20, crit on a 7 WITH a reroll to see if it actually hits (if it's a 7 again its as if you rolled a 7 on die.) No compounding the two, just two special numbers.

>>95898677
You should try reading the books and then deciding for yourself, the things that have secret results, should be rolled in secret, and the things that don't, can be rolled in the open, make of that what you will, but we both know that you aren't dedicated enough to actually devote time to learning these games let alone playing them

>>95898986
>crit on a 7

>>95898716
if you roll a 1 you miss an attack. If you roll a 20, you effectively rolled a 25.
That's it.

>>95898854
Making up sad delusional nonsense in order to justify your own personal deranged delusions isn't a good look.

>>95898677
This is some of the most dogshit posting I have ever seen. Genuinely just go play your 5e game instead of plaguing us with your drivel

>>95899057
LUCKY SEVENS BAYBYYY

>>95896777
The area is frontier so only now people are moving into the place.

Is Veins of the Earth worth pirating (author blamed mental illness for acting like a shitbag) and taking the time to read? I've seen a lot of people go "oh yea its good" but never WHY it's good or what the fuck it adds in particular besides being good for underground expeditions.

Choosy about what I even download now because I don't really need to making the books on my hard drive harder to find than than it already is

>>95899073
Buildfagging is like speedrunning. It's not the most broken games that have the most exploits found in them, it's the most popular games.
People can beat the original Super Mario Bros. in under 5 minutes because they've discovered sub-pixel manipulation tech that allows them to reposition loading zones and clip through walls in a ways that took decades to discover and some time longer to actually find ways for humans rather than scripts to do them.
Pointing at GURPS being balanced is almost funny, because that's actually a decently popular game and it has it own share of buildfaggotry for its various supplements, showcasing how unbalanced it is when people actually make the effort to look at the game.

>>95899165
>go "oh yea its good" but never WHY it's good
lmao same, that's why I never bothered to read it.
I skimmed princeofnothing's three part review of it and the tldr was
>"at times fascinating at times heartrendingly lacklustre essay into the world of the Underdark. Despite its many inimitable qualities, there is something missing. The end result is something lesser then the sum of its parts. Check it out if you are interested in the subject matter but for goddsake don’t buy the harcover."
Which jives with most of my experiences with artpunk material.
Personally i'd just download D3 Vault of the Drow and read Gygax's original conception of the Underworld (not "Underdark"!) without all the Forgotten Realms fluff that flanderized the shit out of it.

>>95899165
It has procedural underground vein/cave/system generation rules that are fine if that’s your thing.

The bestiary is cool for the setting

It has bolt on cultures for lively undergrounds

Madness and light/dark rules for the setting

Basically yeah if you want a cooler or more unusually underdark check it out, if that isn’t your thing there’s not much to glean here you can’t get elsewhere

>>95898890
Sounds like he would fit in /tg/.

>>95899193
>GURPS being balanced
GURPS is balanced around the DM looking at the book, photocopying the whole thing, and then putting big X's through everything the players are not allowed to take. It "works" but it would really be more popular if it was packed out into smaller individual booklets that did this monumental task for you.
Else yes you get monumental buildfagging if most things are just open and you simply handwave general things like "no magic" or "no noncombat professions".

>>95899201
>most of my experiences with artpunk material
Conceptually I like them but I only have Vornheim and Broodmother Skyfortress, so maybe my expectations are too high from avoiding the crap.
>i'd just download D3 Vault of the Drow
I never actually looked into that, thanks for the recc
>>95899207
Fuck, some of that sounds useful. I might go find a link then. It sounds like I'll have to screencap pages out or recopy them though. Would make sense with what the other anon put.

>>95899165
If you have a hard time finding books on your hard drive, it's because you're an incompetent idiot. If you're seriously that afraid of piracy to check out a book for yourself for free, then no amount of our opinions has anything to do with swaying you. I recommend shooting yourself.

favorite setting neutral dungeon?

>>95899165
I don't like it. I particularly dislike the non-map maps it uses: I find the idea of areas that can be connected with one another at arbitrary distances with no regard to their actual position in space revolting, for some reason.

For Deepearth-like settings I want actual zones in actual 3d space.

>>95899759
Appendix A and Stonehell.

>>95897562
If you want to run ACKS, yes.
If you just want to cannibalize it for rules to steal, pirate it.
>If I own ACKS 1 books, is there anything absolutely must have or completely updated/new rules wise?
Several things have changed, and going to check all the differences will turn you insane.
Follow my advice, buy it only if you want to run it.
>>95897696
Abstract rules are also good for rival adventuring groups, removing the need of doing a solo run with them.

man i cannot get over how much i hate the new art direction.

i think it's the way the artist uses color, and how its bold and gaudy like the black linework.. causing it to clash with said linework and fight for the equal attention just creating a visual mess.

i do think the actual content is pretty neat though

>>95900387
this is a bad example of the heavy linework, as this is very much more a painterly image as a chapter header, but further in the chapter for the other images and monster art, the linework is apparent. its very reminiscent of the original black and white linework style from the first books and maybe why I hate the color so much as well


i feel like this image is way more badass if its just black and white linework

>>95900387
This looks all fuzzy, like a crt pixelated effect. Is this ACKS? I heard they went for colour and it sucked, but didn't expect it to suck this bad.

>>95900387
The old art was also pretty bad, but yeah, that's fucking awful.

>>95900584
yep

hell yeah

>>95900387
I'm an artist. The gnolls look like they were painted individually and then put in together. The depth and perspective of the girl is all off, her legs and rabbit look way further back than her dress and body. Her hair looks like cloth too, her dagger arm is bent at a weird angle and her bicep on it + other arm looks weirdly muscular while the rest of her flesh is doughy. This is just generally bad and uncanny.

This looks like it was done by someone who knows how to render shit but does so in a way that's like polishing a turd without underlying structure, and the gnolls being blurry is a poor choice for trying to draw the focus onto the girl. Possibly the girl was painted wholy from scratch and the gnolls partly AI generated? Or the gnolls were painted over photobashed refs or something. I also get the feeling that this may have been done as a shorter (wide) image and then extended down, maybe the gnolls were done first and then Macris had him put the girl in. Or the gnolls and top half of the girl was done and then he had him extend it to include her legs to fill space.

Whatever the issues were, the overall composition and choices made were horrible, and the artist really needs to shore up his skills. He might be a lower-end dude trained for concept art and could be unfamiliar with doing full on scenes or complex back views, that would be one guess I'd make.

>>95900405
This isn't as unusual, I've seen quite a few pictures like this where some kinda crappy digital colors are slapped on some nice linework, usually as part of back cover art. It's a low-quality sign but not as egregious as the other one.

>>95900622
The fimshes are better, only problem is that several of them are just copy-pasted. A more skilled artist would have simply drawn the suggestion of many rather than detailing them all but this is way less uncanny than the others as I had to stare at it to realize that.

>>95900738
Same as the gnoll pic
+ looks like patchworked figure drawings

>>95901275
>+ looks like patchworked figure drawings
Elaborating on this, I mean it looks like the artist did each character by referencing photographed posed figures (probably an image set, there's a lot) which don't actually show dynamicism, and stuck them all in one thing. The shield lady looks like she's just reclining, not actually falling or anything. There's no real motion to her, she's just kind of there. The other characters don't seem to be interacting properly, they're weirdly distant and in too stark relief.
The lighting is also kind of weirdly inconsistent. It reeks of all them being drawn individually and then composited together.

>>95899165
The answer depends a bit on what you want out of it.

I like books like VotE because I make my own settings, and am comfortable with the rules I'm using. So a lot of what I actually WANT from Splatbooks isn't "Good rules" or "Finished setting I can run in", but is just neat ideas that I can implement to create new dungeons, settings, or give the players interesting magical items or situation-specific rules. VotE delivers that in spades. Maybe it's not worth the cost for the physical book but I downloaded the PDF and have had no issues with it.

It's a splatbook not my wife. I need it to deliver ideas, not suck my dick and use a bit of tongue.

>>95895163
>I think this was the first thing he put out after "Fantasy Fucking Vietnam" (AKA Green Devil Face #1).
You can tell how early it is by the fact that it wasn't published by LotFP. (At least not originally, he may have reprinted it under his own label when I wasn't looking)

>>95896506
>So spellcasters can and do get disrupted when their side loses initiative.
Only if you assume there's a declaration phase before initiative is rolled, which B/X doesn't state.

>>95895163
>Tome of Horrors Complete (S&W edition)
Actually trash, at least the 3e and PF versions kept the more complex abilities. Better yet to go to the source: Monster Manual, Fiend Folio, and Monster Manual 2.

>>95902242
Yes I have all three of those reference manuals. I was looking for other third party suggestions.

JG Field Guide to Encounters has been good reading so far

>>95901990
>which B/X doesn't state
B/X is two books, Anon.

>>95902281
Anon who recc'd it.
it's a wild ride, and a lot of dumb monsters, but some are gold, even among the gimmick entries.

>>95898677
>The aforementioned player wants to roll his own damage and NPC reactions for instance.
I wouldn't let him. (Assuming you mean damage dealt to him; obviously he should be allowed to roll damage for his own hits.) This is a gayass demand by my lights.

>>95901744
It was published THREE times. The latest was a LotFP jazzed up rerelease, yea.
>>95902281
>>95903403
>a lot of dumb monsters
Really do recc All The World's Monsters if you like that. It's from super early in the hobby and there's a bunch of really random shit.

>>95898892
>I recall some old supergrognard from the early years that ran without HP being known to the players. It might have been Arneson or Holmes or someone.
Some of his players claim Arneson ran games this way, but others don't, and there's material evidence that at any rate he didn't do it consistently. (And in the very early sessions he can't have, because he himself claimed that the invented hit dice when the players complained that their "flunky"-level characters only had one "chop" and thus would die from any hit until they made "hero" and got four.) My guess is that there's either a confusion with the better-established fact that he didn't tell the players the *rules*, or else he was just experimenting with hidden HP during some period of the game, which seems to have been in character for him.

>>95898910
>Yeah, in Blackmore players didn't even know their characters' ability scores. The joke gets old soon.
Not true, pic related.

>>95899201
>Personally i'd just download D3 Vault of the Drow and read Gygax's original conception of the Underworld (not "Underdark"!) without all the Forgotten Realms fluff that flanderized the shit out of it.
Arguably D1-2 is where you get more of that content, Vault is great but it's mostly just the drow city.

>>95899165
If you're going to download it, you should also grab Skerples' Veinscrawl, a pretty herculean effort to make the content actually playable. It was good enough to make Stupat cry and throw his toys out of the pram.

>>95901299
>The shield lady looks like she's just reclining, not actually falling or anything.
First thing I reacted to too. Her posture's supposed to be dynamic and convey a huge amount of motion but instead it's just static, like she's being levitated by an old-timey stage magician. You can't even tell whether she's supposed to be falling backwards or throwing herself forward for a sliding leg kick. Absolutely shit, sticks out like a sore thumb. Imagine what Frazetta or Burne Hogarth would have done with whatever this brief was.

>>95903464
>columns becoming more and more lumpy and uneven as more are added
Ahhh he's just like me, he's just like me...

i am angry about how Dolmenwood ended up.

that is all.

>>95904133
yeah

>>95904133
I found as soon I stopped being pointlessly angry at the success of other people, I had a lot more motivation to work on my own success, and my life has improved considerably since. I'd suggest you do the same anon.

>>95904133
Looks pretty damn cool! Dolmenwood is not my thing but I can appreciate how it's helping groups make the jump from 5e to OSR. Maybe someday after AI takes my job I'll sit down and write a weird little setting of my own. One can dream!

>>95904133
What are you angry about?
I haven’t followed dolmenwood since OSE advanced came out. It used to be free stuff, I’m assuming now that it’s a kickstarted product line, no more free content ?

What are some good swamp or marshland OSR modules/hexcrawls?

>>95900387
I love ACKSII but some of the the art is terrible. What is even happening?

>>95905085
*most of the art is terrible

Especially all the paintings at the chapter heads. The in chapter art can be fine, there’s some great line work. But man the coloring is comic book gaudy in the worst ways.

Good content otherwise though. Glad to have the PDFs would have been made to buy these books

If you received the map on the left as the player facing map discovered for a new adventure site.

Would you be intrigued or think your ref is a schizo or what? Does it need more detail or does it suggest enough to want to investigate?

>>95905128
Would have been mad* to have bought these books

>>95905140
In-game universe maps are fun. The one on the left is more of a mood or ambience creation map with some clues if the star anything gameable rather than a useful map. Otherwise all it does is let the players know
>there's psychedelia under the tower
So if they paid for a useful map it might not be as good. I tend to like having room for the players to add details, which the cool doodles will probably get in the way of but might work as a one-off prop.
Could go all in and just have the mystic underground tellurian emanations cause madness so all maps look like that in varying degrees to those who are primarily surface dwellers as s setting thing and start getting really artsy metaphorical with your dm provided maps.

>>95905217
Yeah it was a doodle while I was thinking of a hidden cult labyrinth under a local saint’s tomb.

PC’s sent in to recover the shield (in theory), find the tomb shieldless but cracked open stairs heading deeper.


Ideally I would translate the elements on the doodle into gameable elements. Maybe the star is clue to a secret entrance to lower levels via a full moon night’s revealing a mechanism in the local graveyard


And then the psychedelia deeper down maybe each character draw there represents some greater threat; a massive beast, an area or spell or whatever that causes madness or vertigo, etc etc


You’ve given me enough motivation to turn this idea into a bit more than a random doodle to make it more useable!

Thanks anon, I’ll post again if I actually create anything worth the time!

>>95905043
nta
Something bothers me about it, aesthetically. I think it's that this is aimed at a crowd (nu-hipsters? cottagecore?) whose members make me want to go do something else the moment they open their mouths.

>>95905140
>Would you be intrigued
yea
>or think your ref is a schizo
If the DM is otherwise not an artist? yea or is trying to ape the "artpunk" stuff, like VoTE or Vornheim, to use the phrasing of >>95899201

So it would be neat but would be one small indicator that, with enough, would also lead me to start to wonder if my DM is going to have a mental breakdown at some point, targeting either himself or the group based on what I know about him otherwise.

If the DM is known to already do art though then that falls away. A bit. It's not really a big worry in the first place unless he's showing signs otherwise of mentally falling apart. But being worried over how it makes you look is in and of itself also not really good.

But this is only because you brought up the question. If you didn't ask directly this would most likely only be realized in hindsight as one piece of evidence that was "missed" after said mental break though.

tl;dr It only matters because you made it matter

>>95904133
Yeah, it's a fucking tragedy really. Illustrates the power of selling out though, he made an assload of money.

>>95905043
>What are you angry about?
For me personally: it was pitched as a setting/hexcrawl, a weird dark one, and the early material put out for that setting was really good and promising. Then he bowdlerized the fuck out of it to please reddit pearlclutchers, made it its own standalone game, and used that to convert it into a Kickstarter cash milking engine with three fat hardcovers and a billion useless stretchgoals as seen in the pic. The actual release we got is cartoonish and censored, with a very different vibe from the original zines, AND it commits a number of terrible nogames sins like keying every single hex on a huge map. That's insanity if you were ever to actually try to use it, which anybody realizes who's ever tried to run a hexcrawl, which in turn shows you that it's written to be read. Tragic.

A particularly weird thing is that OSE was created specifically to be the (B/X-identical) system he released the Dolmenwood module for, so now there's kind of no real justification for doing that whole thing, which caused years and years of delay in releasing the module itself.

>>95905881
Ah, he fell into the sin of turning a Project into a Product, without it simply being an "increased production values to feel good in the hand" edition ...

>>95905881
Wait a minute. It doesn’t run in OSE now? It’s a standalone system???? What in the world

>>95905043
those other anons have put it perfectly. i'm fine with the guy being successful, i do think a couple of the extra goodies are neat (the cloth map would be cool to have around).

>>95905881
>it was pitched as a setting/hexcrawl
>keying every single hex on a huge map
i think this was was always the idea. the problem is it suffered from bloat-creep and went from one book to two, then two books to three, then three books + a new game system (that is 'familiar' but not B/X or 1:1 B/X-compatible).

i really did just want a nice, one-book gazetteer based on what we saw in Wormskin and other Dolmenwood books. maybe some pages would cover multiple hexes, perhaps some hexes were intentionally empty (that's fine).
and yeah creatively i followed a lot of his decisions, like renaming 'Goat-men' to 'Goat-folk' or whatever (can't have sexism with the masochistic aristocrats). and a lot of the art, frankly, is kind of shit. this player map is cute i guess, but i don't like the weird slant, and it looks a bit TOO child-like.
conversely, he was hyping up how the referee map would have all these PDF layer features... it just looks a bit flat and digital.
the original 'parchment' map looks really good.

>>95906982
Bro if it were just an add-on cloth map to go with the module as originally conceived nobody would have said shit. Everybody loves cloth maps.

(That said, this specific player map is terrible. The whole interior of the forest should be totally blank. I would've wanted the old referee's map from the Gorgonmilk era.)

>keying every single hex on a huge map
>i think this was was always the idea
I'm not going to pretend to be some sort of infallible oracle of Wormskin, but that kind of overelaboration wasn't my impression at the time and even if they did intend to do that, it was a bad idea then too.

>>95906720
Correct! He realized he could squeeze more coins out of his paypigs if he made it its own game. Pure hyperiding.

>>95906982
That map is... so cramped and cluttered. There's so much in there that it feels more like a videogame. Like a videogame based on modern layouts. Picrel is FO76 for comparison, feels very similar.

>bad art
>bad rules
>bad writing
>bad community
>bad price
Wow, some games have it all.

>>95907109
>The whole interior of the forest should be totally blank.
there is a 'blank hex map' to go with the player's map, but it really is just a blank hex map. it does have the outline of the forest (agree with you there) and hexes inside.
but...you're also assumed to be showing the players >>95906982? so they enter from the south, from the outside world... and they know where everything is. it's there in the picture.

>I would've wanted the old referee's map from the Gorgonmilk era.
agreed. it's so nice (pic). it's actually, well, a map.

>if they did intend to do that, it was a bad idea then too
oh maybe not that far back -- it would take an insane amount of zines for all the hexes -- but after Norman decided there'd be a full Dolmenwood book.

i have my issues with both of them, but Secret of the Black Crag and In the Shadow of Tower Silveraxe are solid examples of a mini hexcrawl setting with different locales, in one shiny little book.

>>95907186
>That map is... so cramped and cluttered.
The crazy thing is that the scale is actually way off in the opposite direction, operating on Wisconsin Scale. The Dolmenwood is supposed to be this overlooked forest in the rural ass-end of a duchy, but it's as big as the entire Duchy of Burgundy. That player map just looks cluttered because every castle and so on is drawn huge so it can be cartoony and "characterful", massive air quotes.

>>95907261
>but...you're also assumed to be showing the players >>95906982? so they enter from the south, from the outside world... and they know where everything is. it's there in the picture.
Right, that's the demented part. Why the fuck would you prereveal the main sites of interest beforehand in a game of exploration?! Insane. Those sites should be vague rumors at best before the PCs enter the forest, that they then have to interact with locals to track down.

>agreed. it's so nice (pic). it's actually, well, a map.
For me, it's pic related version. Don't need or want those shields and the parchment background just makes shit harder to print (including on parchment paper, ironically).

>>95907319
>That player map just looks cluttered because every castle and so on is drawn huge so it can be cartoony and "characterful", massive air quotes.
It's all fucked up. Everything is too big and its just cluttered - and not in a "cool where's waldo-esque map" way. It doesn't work as a "pointcrawl abstraction" either. Compare that to the player map for Harn. Much more subtle, but evocative.

>>95905085
>>95905128
I also preferred the old B&W ACKS I art, such a shame he didn't reutilize it for ACKS II.

>>95907186
>that map
I can feel my river autism flaring up.

40k OSR?

>>95907518
Yes, yes, let it flow through you.

>>95907319
>Why the fuck would you prereveal the main sites of interest beforehand in a game of exploration?
That's nothing. The players' book reveals practically all the main factions and antagonists, as well as their locations, from the get go.

The book is simply not written for an OSR audience, but for a WotC/NuSR/2e one.

>>95907570
>retard who pushes OSR-elitism finds even OSR games do not satisfy his elitist mindset
Did no one ever tell you that being elitist doesn't actually make you elite?

>>95905043
>they removed goat men having naked and magically drugged human slaves that they raped, bred with other human slaves and used for the equivalent of dog fighting (text description)
>they changed the back story to an NPC who was half retarded because he was the product of a goat man raping a human woman (text description)
>they removed the pregnancy and menstrual blood fetishization of witches to appease one of the old gods (literally two entries in a d10 rumor table)
>some minor renaming (goat men -> breggle, minstrel -> bard)
nta that's the extent of the changes to the setting itself
>>95906720
it was decoupled because of the OGL scare. it's still OSE advanced with setting specific house rules stapled onto it.

>>95907741
How did we go from laughing at the people who got mad at Carcosa to this?

>>95907729
I bet you think shadowdark is osr lmao

>>95907570
>players' book
total misstep. there's already the 'welcome to Dolmenwood' guide, you could just print/photocopy a single book's class/spell pages, if you wanted.

maybe it's just a byproduct of the internet age. look at the original FR Grey Box with its hueg map (and that neat transparent hex overlay).
then consider that a lot of geeky types will know what the Sword Coast looks like. they'll be familiar with Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter, etc. there was JUST a feature film!

maybe Gavin is future-proofing for the inevitable Dolmenwood video games and animated Netflix series. the second music album is now on Spotify, the vinyl records are still being pressed (not a joke).

how game breaking is giving fighters an extra attack from level one?

maybe only for one handed weapons, and perhaps even further, the second attack is at a -4 to hit and this penalty dissipates as the THACO goes down?

just spit balling here

also contemplating adding a magic-user feature to allow them to retain slots of successfully cast spells by passing an intelligence check

>>95905881
>keying every single hex on a huge map. That's insanity if you were ever to actually try to use it, which anybody realizes who's ever tried to run a hexcrawl, which in turn shows you that it's written to be read. Tragic.
honestly, I ran it on pirated prerelease pdfs for a year and that was hands down the best part of it
I got extremely tired of the twee fairies shit and that was the only real reason the campaign stopped
>>95906720
it's OSE with a couple houserules

>>95908109
Why do you feel like they need an extra attack?

>>95907527
Look for Warband! by Sword+1 for RT era slaves to darkness. There's a chaos daemons whfb bit too, I don't recall it's name.

>>95907553
Yes, in a loop, that also forks and the other fork flows into a lake with no outlet.

>>95908027
NAYRT but Shadowdark is OSR, its just a bad game. those aren't mutually exclusive. I think Dolmenwood is actually iffier, since like you said it's consciously 2e-istic both in its design and the visual style of the layout etc.

>>95908134

I think it increases the 'heroic' or iconic aspect of a dedicated fighting man and his martial prowess, without being too crazy and getting into extra-attack-every-X-levels territory. It gives them an edge when it comes to fighting that refines over time. Is my line of thinking

>>95908189
>the visual style of the layout
what do you actually mean by this?
the layout is ridiculously usable at the table, that's the OSE/gayvin trademark. you can say anything else you want about the guy but his layouts are fuckin unmatched

>>95908189
I immediately stopped reading. You're an embarrassment to the thread.

>>95908211
I'm not talking about the functional aspects of the layout, I mean that visual elements such as typefaces and coloring in pic related are evoking the late-2e era TSR style, probably deliberately.

>>95908249
Ntayrt, but I see it yeah. Looks like the black cover 2e books. Trash!

>>95908246
Nice lack of counter-arguments, or even specifics on what you disagree about. I graciously accept your concession. Act grateful.

>>95908264
Holy fuck your redditposting just gets more cringe.
I don't need to argue anything, you've outed yourself as a retard tourist.

>>95908189
>Shadowdark is OSR
>Dolmenwood is iffier,since it's 2e-istic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUs2_7SYAI8

>>95908309
>>95908320
>the sun is shining, and the hoes are mad.

>>95908211
>his layouts are fuckin unmatched
i keep seeing authors try to copy him, but they leave whitespace everywhere.
like damn pal that's space for more text or better yet, some art. look at how >>95908249 is one full spread of two blocky columns. LEARN.

Public Service Anouncement: A book's visual style/graphic design/trade dress isn't a factor as to whether or not it's OSR. I know basically everyone knows this if they have an IQ above comfortable room temperature, but... Just for the people in the back eating glue.

>>95908263
Something I noticed a while ago is that the D&D books seemed to have been about a decade late in terms of how they were aesthetically laid out.
The 2e books remind me of 80s magazine layouts, the 1e books remind me of 70s shit, the 0e stuff makes me think of 60s booklets. And 3e really feels 90s.

All just imo of course.

>>95908690
True. But the aesthetics do indicate what the author likes (or the target audience for more money-focued ones) so its a hint at what kinds of gamers the book is aimed towards. But not the actual rules/content.

>>95908690
you're wrong. decades ago, it was the TSR style: you can see AD&D DNA in Labyrinth Lord right up to later books like Tomb of the Iron God and even ASE.
then 10-15 years ago, LotFP's digest format competed with the one-page dungeon layout of Stonehell.
now OSE has came along, everyone and their grandma is doing those terse bullet points.

sorry anon, but along with Hit Dice and descending AC, this is one of the features a book NEEDS in order to be considered OSR.

>>95908109
My fighters only get a second attack if they are wielding a second weapon, but even then it issues great penalties if they don't have a high dexterity and strength. (And the second weapon may only be a dagger, short sword, or small handaxe.)

>Players find an orcish stronghold about a mile off the side of the road
>Decide to besiege it
>First attempt went poorly, they lost some men
>Second attempt went better, but due to the session going late and losing their strongest cleric, they decided to retreat and give it one more go
>This is the third session attempting to siege this stronghold.
They've broken it's defenses, and they don't realize that they've killed 2/3rds of the orcs that defend the place. I'm trying to decide how the orcs would react in this instance. I'm thinking they would give up defending the outer walls, and this time just defend the main keep. I've got the entire keep drawn out except I wanted to put a small dungeon underneath it. So I need to write that up tonight.

>>95908854
>I'm trying to decide how the orcs would react in this instance. I'm thinking they would give up defending the outer walls, and this time just defend the main keep.
Part of this is what morale checks are for. They might even abandon the place if need be. Orcs are stupid and evil, not suicidal.

>>95908888
Man, I always forget to use morale checks for things other than just morale during combat itself. That's so simple...
If they stay, I'll improve their defenses and add additional traps. If they leave, I'll have only their pets and lessers remain.

Read the OP. That is all.

>>95908913
Didn't the ACKSfag make the OP? Seems unreasonable for the rest of us to treat it like anything more than a shitpost.

>>95908249
Typeface is irrelevant

>>95908951
Him fighting against his imaginary nemesis is the 2nd worst drama in this general, only beaten by "let's argue over who gets to declare what is or isn't an OSR."

>>95908960
Germania One is the new Korinna.

>>95908951
No. Someone that wanted to troll gently because a certain other anon hates any reference to a particular fish-based commercial venture incident (fishgate, if you will) put such a reference in the thread question. All other elements of the OP have been the same for quite a long time.

Also, I know you know this already, and are just stir drama. That doesn't say anything particularly good about your psyche's makeup, but you do you, boo.

>>95909005
>stir drama
should read
>stirring drama
I can't brain today.

>>95908951
>>95908989
Do you have anything at all in the world to back that up or is this another one of your psychotic delusions?

>>95908898
You can also have their failure to exterminate the orcs in a timely manner lead to worse consequences, such as the stronghold contacting other orcs (or leaving to regroup with them) leading to a vengeance situation coming up.

>>95909058
As one of those people he keeps calling ACKShills and claiming are all the same person? I got no fucking idea what he's on about.
Usually I'd put a joke here but I don't want to feed into his paranoid delusions.

>>95909083
He says the same to me, but he doesn't know what the word "shill" means lol

>>95908771
yeah I was kinda inspired by what I remember of ambidextrous fighting back in the day playing 2 and 3e

we'll see how it works out in play

bring back these Swordfish Island flame wars, i say

>>95909005
The other elements are a problem and have been for a long time, especially if they've lead to you pointing at the OP as if it's some sort of dogma the rest of us are supposed to blindly follow.
This loser >>95908913 actually imagines that it's some sort final statement.

The /osrg/ is not controlled by an individual or even a small group. It's a general on 4chan tied to a topic, and that topic is to be freely discussed in its full capacity, including accepting the full definition of what OSR means and not some stunted one used by a few retards.

>>95909116
is this module any good

>>95909099
>>95909083
He is 100% a troll. Someone asked him to recant a story from his own table about what he actually enjoys, so onlookers could understand where he was coming from, and he deflected instead.

>>95909116
I used to like this guy's maps when WotC posted them on their old website (fuck you wizards for nuking EVERYTHING you had up during the 2000s with no archive AAAAA). They're not useful but they're fun art.

>look it up
>192 page module
Holy toledo that's a lot. I always find such things cool, but my word.
I already have Isle of The Unknown, Carcosa, and the issues of NOD that feature the Hellcrawl, so I'm probably good.

Respect for the author(s?) for putting blue ass on the cover as well.

>>95909167
>fuck you wizards for nuking EVERYTHING you had up during the 2000s with no archive AAAAA
I don't know if THAT section is there, but there's still a good bit of stuff on the Wayback Machine achives for WotC.

>>95909137
The OP text could use a solid revamp. Even just the definition from the wikipedia page works better and isn't so weirdly opinionated.
The isometric logo is objectively the coolest one, followed by the flat dungeon layout.
The starter dungeon list is fine. The game resource links are pretty messy.

>>95909167
>>95909215
oh, archive.wizards.com is just gone ;_; why not just host a few old web pages and files?!

maybe the old tools would break, but i liked the old map-a-week posts and whatnot. now where we going to find resources for the D&D Diablo game? or the tie-in adventure to the hit film Dungeons & Dragons (2000)???

>>95909167
>It WAS the ACKSfag all along
Whoa, really surprised us.

Why are you always the one at the center of the drama in this general?

>>95909083
>>95909099
>But why? Why does he still call me an autist? And shill? All I want to do is to create the perfect hex map simulator! Not for money, not for /tg/, but for my table! This database will be the first of many - they shall march out of my hard drive and sweep away every question, every incorrect number, every casual, until the very world is in the loving grip of the Pax Excelica. And then consistency will reign, and the world, and all of the players, shall bow to me in humble gratitude...

>>95909244
What happens when you use discord and don't have any fear of being banned.

>>95909231
>The isometric logo is objectively the coolest one, followed by the flat dungeon layout.
this. Dyson knocked it out the park, and the same layout translates well to 2D (either black or blue).
i like this take on it too.

of course we all know the OSR logo is problematic for some e-drama reason i can no longer recall.

>>95909231
Make it yourself next if you've got such strong thoughts. Just don't turn it into more drama.

>>95909244
No you dumbass I'm the 2014anon, I quite literally never heard of this swordfish shit before.
Call your therapist and tell them what you do on here and your concerns.
>>95909253
I'm not in any OSR discords (nor do I want to be after hearing what the fuck happened in them), I bowed out years before G+ died and I think I peeked in when it was announced and I was saving my data or some shit but have been out of the loop since.

>>95909265
Personally I like the flat one. Simple, yet characteristic.
But also because that one looks moldy when zoomed out. The flat one was designed to be a badge on blogs.

>>95909253
I'm going to take that as another admission of your psychotic delusions!

>>95909278
You sound like you think people have any reason to trust what the ACKSfag says when he's just one of those shameless guys who's happy to lie and lie often.

If you're not actually the ACKSfag, that's too bad, but precedent makes any "But I'm not him and I'm just really going hard on defending him for some reason" post look kind of hollow.

>>95909251
Maybe it's because our party hasn't got as far as domain play yet but honestly? I've only had to fuck with spreadsheets for XP distribution on returning to town.
And that's only because I'm a lazy fucker who doesn't work it out as I go.

>>95909300
Stop poking him.

>>95909278
after seeing some truly abysmal book covers with 'OSR' interpretations (not to mention 'Labyrinth Lord Compatible Product') i actually like this Old-School Essentials badge. it's simple and safe enough to fit on just about any cover, if you're selling your product as OSE-compatible.
...and yet cover designers STILL FUCK IT UP

I wonder if now that he's having a full on psychotic break the Jannies will do something about him.
He's even replying to himself, telling himself to stop, Gollum style
>We shoulds stops, they're getting upsets!
>No, we must shitposts in the precious thread

>>95909099
I've not even looked at the thread today, I've been too busy working and playing the remake of Emperor of the Fading Sun (Great game by the way, if a bit clunky, finding a relic that halved the pay for my units and another that +50%'d my tax income in the first 10 turns might have bent things a bit too much in my balance though, but hell, I'm not complaining)

>>95909327
what?
>psychotic break
>replying to himself
are you telling on yourself here?

>>95909364
Stop poking him.

>>95908109
>how game breaking is...
Who cares? Do it anyway. Balance is a spook.

>>95909316
>...and yet cover designers STILL FUCK IT UP
Indie game publishers don't know shit about fuck besides games. It's charming when they don't try to act like they know what they're doing, you get the zine look then. The clashing is uncanny and obvious. The ACKS guy fucked it with his art decisions as explained above, but it's something I've seen throughout both the OSR indie stuff and the d20 SYSTEM COMPATIBLE era.
At least it's minor. The worst thing is when there's an faint image as a background, behind small text. On every page, not as a botched attempt at a fancy thing for emphasis on one.

>>95909300
>If you're not actually the ACKSfag
I'm not. I don't like the game, it never appealed to me due to the art of the original (and now the current one is ugly as fuck). I don't really do domain-level shit so it's not appealing to me. I just don't hate it and don't care if others enjoy it.
You should try that sometime.
I am moreso a fan of Blood & Treasure. Very speedy and easy to modify. Also LotFP, since the gore and edgy stuff keeps the stupids away.

>>95909137
>RRRREEEEEEEE why would you all use my redditified definition of OSR you evil cunts!!!!!
Bro, just fucking start your own thread if you want to talk about stuff that isn't on topic here. Your niggering would *at the absolute most* just get the general renamed while your replacement """OSR""" threads would die.

The truth is, though, I don't think you even *have* anything you want to discuss anymore. You're just assmad that you got rejected and now you're sperging out at everybody, trying to pretend that you're some sort of bizarre silent majority.

Warned you.
Don't poke people who genuinely have autism.

>>95909523
>redditified definition of OSR
Man back in 2011 we were talking about shit like old WFRP1e as being good to mine ideas from for OSR shit. There was even a fuckin game made to mash the two up called Small But Vicious Dog. I think I played it a couple times back then.
https://vaultsofnagoh.blogspot.com/2011/07/small-but-vicious-dog-steals-hearts.html
Funnily enough the top download link when I do a seach is from the /tg/ archive.

I have to ask though:How did everything become D&D-fundamentalist?
I get excluding 2e due to its "grand narrative" (hickman-something someone said?) focus and push towards railroading, but other non-D&D stuff that has similar vibes in mechanics and DM practices was fair game.

Not saying the general "should" change, since there might be a good reason things are this way that I'm not aware of. I'm really curious as to what that is though.

>>95909595
>How did everything become D&D-fundamentalist?
Everything?
If you mean the OSR specifically, "old-school" has always had an implied "D&D" at the end, since that was what the revival was about: reviving the originally intended play style of the oldest, Gygaxian editions of D&D. Early iterations of this general were a bit looser about what was considered acceptable simply because the thread was tiny in population and frequently had to be bumped up from falling off the board, but all those things were always fringe and did get trolling directed at them if they looked to be taking over a thread (you may remember GLOG garbageposting, for example).

>>95909516
haven't seen any of the new ACKS stuff, but the original rulebook at least had good art and good layout. didn't know he was the Escapist guy, guessing he had money to get that done professionally.

Greg Gillespie got a lot out of Barrowmaze Complete too (although maybe it's a hot take but i dislike the Erol Otus cover). i have the physical book and it fucking sucks (thin pages) but the 180mb PDF makes you appreciate how much went into it. art on just about every page, the maps and symbols are actually vector graphics, good stuff.

these indie guys just need a FEW more YouTube tutorials, they're getting close.

>>95909595
IF YOU ASK ME, these "sandbox" games are a nu-school concept. someone read those "West Marches" blogs. if you ACTUALLY read The Lost City or The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, it's not like you can just wander off: you HAVE to follow the story! and don't get me started on Treasure Hunt...

>>95909680
>$80 hardcover
>the paper is bad
contemptforplebs.png, if Melan can get this shit right for half the price, what's stopping Gillespie?

>>95909637
That's... not really a satisfactory answer. I don't think I was around /tg/ much during that time, I was in the blogosphere and then Google+. It was a focus on old D&D but other games that also fit the same vibe were chatted about, as I said.

Like some of the more happening blogs back then were Grognardia, Tenkar's Tavern, Hill Cantons, JRients, and Dndwithpornstars. A few other smaller ones like Gorgonmilk (seems to be gone now? fuuu) and Kelvin Green too. Lots of old psychadelic comic book shit, punk and metal stuff, and so on being thrown around.

>>95909303
You really don't need many spreadsheets but they do make life easier. I just make spreadsheets for fun and am setting up a database so I can automate so much stuff I can run 3-4 parties at a time.

Could I make encounter tables by hand? Sure, but my map is gigantic so I'm gonna set up a way to procedurally generate regional encounter tables based on the most powerful monster nearby.

>>95909718
How could I forget tenfootpole.org too? Shit.

All these memories, so many dead blogs. It's like going off to apprentice as a fighter, magic user or be trained in a monastery for a decade and then coming back to see ruins and destruction everywhere.

What's some cool shit I can put in an old Goblin Witch's underground lair? She's an old lady goblin witch that looks like baba yaga, orders a bunch of orcs around, and is really into surprise attacks and blasting people's faces off

>>95909698
i got it from Otherworld Miniatures for i think £70 or something really high, but fuck it, i wanted the book.
my understanding is it was Lightning Press or another one of those print-on-demand type companies, not a 'traditional' printer. i have gotten books in better quality at a lower cost from Lulu, ffs.

>>95909718
No offense, but I'm not going to explain the entire history of the OSR blogosphere since you last paid attention fifteen years ago to you. You might find this series interesting though:

>https://osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com/2021/02/a-historical-look-at-osr-part-i.html

>>95909753
Shrunken head of her ex-husband.
Bones/skulls on strings as "alarms" (thank you Todd Howard)
Various foul potions and a cauldron, mid-brew. Use this to explain some of the more powerful orcs, they get the best. Not for human or demihuman consumption (use some kind of weird table for drunk effects) and maybe the power fades after she's dead. Drinking from the half-finished cauldron should either worse or less bad than the finished potions, depending on the tone you want.
Pig-wolves, used for hunting meat and man.
A barrel full of bones.
A barrel full of CHILDREN'S bones if you want to be worse.
A cooked dog on a spit outside the camp. Immediately make the players hate these beasts.
A crude armory. Spare weapons, looted armor crudely hammered to fit orcs.
Her spellbook. It's dirty, made of badly-tanned pig skins and written in goblin in - again - pig blood, so it would be more difficult for a magic user to cast from or learn from. Increase the cost and time it takes to copy the spells in it and give a chance that each page is ruined from attempting to decipher wtf she wrote, smudging the shitty "ink" or cracking the page.

>>95909774
I'll give it a look, thanks. I was just hoping for there to be some kind of pivotal "ok we're only doing this now" moment that could be pointed to but things rarely are that simple.

>>95909753
failed bottles of root-wine. (could even give her a Bela Lugosi accent for a convoluted triple pun.)
anyway the orcs have no idea what they're doing. some bottles are mundane poisons, some have positive effects (to humans/demi-humans), some are weird, and some are actually quite pleasant.

>>95909303
That's a neat megadungeon layout anon. Is that some sort of observatory at the top of the mountain?

>>95909821
nah you're looking at it wrong. that's a dock.

>>95909805
>>95909818
These are all great suggestions! Thank you.

If a person wanted to run an OSE game where the PCs are in an organization similar to the Night's Watch from ASOIAF/Game of Thrones, and they start out conducting raids to disrupt orc tribes and stop them from growing too large, how would you award xp? I'm envisioning the area the orcs are in to be a lot like the area beyond the wall, cold af, no real settlements of any kind up there, etc, just roving bands of orcish raiders raiding each other and points south. That seems like it really limits the opportunity for advancing based on gold = xp, because there wouldn't be a whole hell of a lot of gold up there.

Would it just be a case of "advancement is slow as fuck while the PCs are in that organization, because they're only really getting kill XP and very little treasure?"

>>95909849
If you want to contrast this with other parts of the world sure, but if you just want a run a game with that as your setting then you could shift to the silver standard or something along those lines to lower the amount of loot that they need to level up. The Wildlings weren't rolling in money but they still had fancy trinkets, valuable stuff, and other things worth looting.

>>95909848
Ohhh I see it now. Still a cool design regardless!

>>95909849
Instead of having treasure in a traditional sense, you could have things like battle standards, orcish religious implements (if applicable to your setting), maps, prisoners of war, attack plans, or even the heads of important orc war leaders to retrieve for XP.

>>95909839
nta
Your small necropolis is now a vertical multi-floor megadungeon with an observatory at the top. The gods have flipped it sidewards.

>>95909848
You're welcome.

>>95909849
>roving bands of orcish raiders
>there wouldn't be a whole hell of a lot of gold
Why wouldn't there be random shinies? Not "gold" but gems, jewelry, valuable objects. Hell even things like pillaged trade goods or weapons could be hauled back to be sold. That's how I've always seen "valuable object" treasure, and I do remember 1e has something similar for Magic Items - you get the sale value (half I think?) in XP as long as you don't use it before you sell it.

>>95909862
>>95909870
>>95909871
Is it complete heresy to just give mission XP? Like, if the lord commander sends them out to locate and disrupt a particular band of orcs for something or the other, and the PCs manage to do it, can I not just give them like a certain amount of XP for that? My reasoning is that in most games, the loot is what motivates the PCs. In this campaign, at least while they're in the Watch, it's the lord commander's orders that motivate them.

>>95909167
>I used to like this guy's maps when WotC posted them on their old website (fuck you wizards for nuking EVERYTHING you had up during the 2000s with no archive AAAAA).
If you think that is bad wait until you think about all the D&D (and other tabletop stuff) that was lost when sites like geocites and angelfire stopped existing.

>>95909912
if you're just going to do "the lord commander tells you to do [thing] so that's what we're doing" gaming then yes you could just do mission xp
however, I would say that's not a very interesting game

>>95909912
You could have some sort of bounty system. Bring back X many Orc ears and you get Watch credit for whores or the armory or whatever equal to the amount the orcs would normally drop. It removes the logistics of returning to civilization with all the loot but that might not be hugely important to you.

>>95909927
It's for a very short time only. In session 3 or 4, I want them to discover an entrance to a dungeon way up in orc territory.

>>95909912
If you want to go that route, I would recommend incorporating optional/bonus sub-objectives for each mission, that way there is still an element of player skill in how much xp they get. For example, if the mission objective is to clear out an orc encampment, maybe they can get bonus xp for also rescuing some villagers being held hostage or destroying a hidden orcish supply cache.

>>95909934
Interesting. I'll look into this.

>>95909912
>Is it complete heresy to just give mission XP?
I used to ask the same question friend. But Gold as EXP is the way to go...

>>95909912
>My reasoning is that in most games, the loot is what motivates the PCs.
which is why they're motivated by treasure.

although a lot of people interpret that in broader/specific ways: e.g. is it treasure recovered? treasure sold, or otherwise brought back to society?

so i say flip this one around. give them gold. either, gold from the commander, that's just what they get in the world (and money can be used to buy goods and services) OR the orcs have treasure which means XP.

>>95909231
>Even just the definition from the wikipedia page
This isn't reddit. /osrg/ has a much more narrow and precise scope, like it or leave it.

>>95909300
Seek mental health treatment and the light of Gary (pbuh)

>>95909346
Vidya? Sounds neat

>>95909595
Thread op dictates thread topic. Cope and sneethe

I should know better than to participate in this bullshittery, but here goes.

To some people, namely the vast majority of the users of this thread, the definition of OSR is limited to OD&D, Holmes basic, B/X, AD&D, and the retroclones based on those. It excludes the games that have very seriously changed things from the way they were in those systems, such as Mork Borg. You can call this the strict definition.

In other places on the internet, the majority of the users of those places have decided that their definition of OSR includes all those games, and also games like Castles & Crusades, Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and the farther afield games like Mork Borg. You can call this the loose definition.

Some places include everything that the loose definition includes, plus any "old school feeling" game, whatever that means. You can call this the pants-on-head definition.

When in a space, it is the responsibility of a user to use the definition of OSR that the creators and inhabitants of that space use. To do otherwise would be rude at best.

This thread uses the strict definition. There is nothing wrong with whichever definition you prefer. There are only places where that definition is not welcome, and to insist on it would make you an asshole. It's that simple. One would be just as much of an asshole to go to a place that uses the loose definition and insist that they are wrong and must change to accommodate your desire for them to use the strict definition.

>>95909912
Getting shit loot and shit XP gives them a reason to want to stop being part of the watch and go adventuring.
If I can be a bit presumptuous: SOUNDS like you're doing this as a sort of "combat tutorial" and "world intro" so they have some time to roleplay without getting too beat up off the bat. But the problem would then be the fact that this is very artificial, since overland encounters with orcs (or bandits, or similar) are often in the scale of dozens in a whole warband.

You could theoretically just have the dungeon have been discovered by some scouts who've been sneaking around out there to ascertain the Orcs' movement, and then the Lord Commander sends the PCs over to investigate it.


Even if you don't need this, maybe someone else will find it useful:
One really good "OSR Newbie Quest" is to have one of the NPCs explicitly want a map of the layout. In-person, graph paper and a pencil. In-game? For the mapper, a slate with a neck string and gridlines painted on it, and transparent wax coating one side over the gridlines. A stylus also tied to it to scratch lines the wax, and they can be "erased" by smudging with the thumb. Once the party returns back, A scribe can duplicate it and give the PCs "their copy." The Lord (or other NPC who gives them this task) pays for each floor mapped, and every few returns he can inform them that one of their sages thinks a secret door might be on one of the levels in a certain spot.

Of course, you can make it so the info is sometimes wrong too. Sages aren't omniscient! But this helps them out if they have no "auto-notice" like an elf in the party and they're just generally missing secret doors. Free to not have that aspect as well.


>>95910250
By your categorization, I was moreso wondering "why" this place uses the strict one. It's obvious that it does, but the reasoning (given my personal experiences) isn't. And I am the type who prefers to understand why and ask questions, else it bugs me.

>>95909412
Based thanks anon

>>95910250
>To some people, namely the vast majority of the users of this thread,
Please, don't try to speak for anyone other than yourself.

>This thread uses the strict definition.
No, YOU use that ridiculous definition. Hell, OSR isn't even about specific systems, it's about style, and your dumbass doesn't even understand that much while pretending he speaks for the entire thread.

>>95910287
> It's obvious that it does
You're listening to the prattle of a few retards who imagine they own this thread. They're better off making a subreddit instead of a 4chan general if they imagine that they're the ones who can decide what OSR means.

>>95907319
>Why the fuck would you prereveal the main sites of interest beforehand in a game of exploration?!
a true intention, but its also literally part of a duchy, so its not like these places are new and undiscovered, nothing on that map looks like something you wouldnt learn by just asking for some merchant to draw you a general map of the area, there are roads between most of the named locations afterall
genuine exploration is for new world settings where players are the first humans, at least of their civilisation, to come there

>>95910287
>By your categorization, I was moreso wondering "why" this place uses the strict one. It's obvious that it does, but the reasoning (given my personal experiences) isn't. And I am the type who prefers to understand why and ask questions, else it bugs me.
It basically just went that way over time. It's probably partially a reaction to all the storygames people (I'm specifically talking about The Forge types here, that called D&D incoherent and unplayable until all their games failed and they wanted to be part of the "cool new movement") or others wanting to make the OSR "their thing", like the people you'll often see called NuSR. They claim their games are OSR, when they have nothing in common with old school D&D, just to get the label.

So, long story short, it's probably a reaction to all the people trying to slide what OSR means to include their crappy whateverthefuck while also calling the people that have been in the scene since forever ists and phobes and chuds or whatever.

>>95910250
>You can call this the strict definition.
I'm going to call that the autistic faggot definition, because that's what it is.
>You can call this the loose definition.
You're aware that OSR is loose, right?
>When in a space, it is the responsibility of a user to use the definition of OSR that the creators and inhabitants of that space use.
You are on 4chan. It is your responsibility to understand that this is not a place for private chatrooms, but public and open discussion. The definition of a general is not "My personal subreddit where only my insane personal definitions are exclusively used," and pretending that's what it means is not only very "rude", but also extremely wrong.

>>95910440
ADDENDUM: Note that the definition used in this thread has been the same for several years.

>>95910456
Derived systems, compatible content, and "Broadly". Even looking at the OP it's pretty clear it's not strict, nor can it ever be without no longer being able to call itself the OSR general.

>This argument
>Again
If you want to stop people from wanting to discuss games called OSR games in the OSR general, you might want to try staying in a discord or something instead of coming to 4chan.

>>95910440
Yes, it's this. Everyone and their dog has tried to claim OSR as their own (as exemplified by one or two newfriends here), and it's caused a natural backlash against people trying to do so. Pretty much every other non-forum space has been co-opted by these people, making something like here that wants to stick to the original definition unique and worth trying to keep from being topic-drifted like all the other spaces.

>>95910512
The original definition and discussions included C&C. If you knew anything about C&C, you'd be aware of how silly your revisionist ultra-purist bullshit is.

Oh man. He's actually going for the purity spiral line!

>>95910521
C&C and its design failures--in particular, it's marketing as to how it was going to be a return to old ways, followed by its complete failure to do so--birthed the modern OSR, rather than launching it itself. OSRIC was directly sparked by disappointment over C&C.

>>95910536
He's got three arguments, and by god he's going to use them.

>>95910548
You may actually be genuinely insane.

The entire rest of the world disagrees with your personal head canon, recognizes C&C as being so foundational to OSR that Dragonsfoot even dedicated a huge portion of its forums to that specific game, and you're trying to pull some sort of True Scotsman bullshit?

>>95910548
You mean OSRIC wanted to vamp on C&C's success.
Doesn't stop C&C from being one of the first (if not the first) OSR games.

Any advice for adding psionics to BX

>>95910660
Unironically just reflavor the magic-user.

>>95910660
Any system you want to use. Psionics are always a bolt-on, so you can port it from OD&D or 1e or Arduin or do the work to make it function like a special magic-user by backporting it from 3e with a special "spell" list. I think Arduin has one in one of the tomes too, and there should be some in b/x-based scifi games you could swipe


>>95910400
It's called "being diplomatic" instead of rolling for it.
>>95910440
>The Forge types
I thought that was just its own little corner left to seethe by themselves by the mid-2010s. Can't imagine them trying to get to the OSR tables but I suppose hearing "rules light" might mean a few would try to shoehorn things. Sounds retarded and inconsequential though.
>NuSR
I have legitimately never heard of this before coming here. Is that why DCC is considered "not OSR" by some? Is it considered "the first big NuSR game" or something?

From what I can tell the first usage of "first decade" was added to the OP in march 8 of 2019 https://desuarchive.org/tg/search/subject/osrg/text/decade/type/op/end/2019-03-10/

But it wasn't consistently used during that year, it only picked up steam over time https://desuarchive.org/tg/search/subject/osrg/type/op/end/2019-12-25/

>it's probably a reaction to all the people trying to slide what OSR means to include their crappy whateverthefuck
That's unfortunate.

>while also calling the people that have been in the scene since forever ists and phobes and chuds or whatever
OK I think I might be getting a feel of this... tell me if this is accurate:
Because the... for lack of a better way to describe them, "mongrel banquet club" types and "osr redditor" types are shitbags, and they ALSO seemed to gravitate around the "artpunk" types of what used to be more-openly defined as "OSR games," this is a sort of hamfisted way to insulate the general against being the stomping ground for that kind of person, by setting a clear, limited line to define "OSR games" more narrowly?

Or am I missing something?

>>95910684
>I thought that was just its own little corner left to seethe by themselves by the mid-2010s. Can't imagine them trying to get to the OSR tables...
They didn't want to play the games. They realized their games were trash and instead started claiming to be the real purveyors of OSR games and culture
>I have legitimately never heard of this before coming here.
Google it. It's been around for a LONG time now.
>Is that why DCC is considered "not OSR" by some? Is it considered "the first big NuSR game" or something?
No. DCC is considered not OSR in part because it's based in the d20 system mechanics. Personally, I consider it OSR, because my definition is the loose one (excluding the NuSR trash like Morg Borg), but that's not how people here feel.
>From what I can tell the first usage of "first decade" was added to the OP in march 8 of 2019 https://desuarchive.org/tg/search/subject/osrg/text/decade/type/op/end/2019-03-10/
>But it wasn't consistently used during that year, it only picked up steam over time https://desuarchive.org/tg/search/subject/osrg/type/op/end/2019-12-25/
As I said, it's a reaction to how the people I've mentioned have tried to slide the definition of OSR to suit themselves. So, in true 4chan fashion, this general laid out explicitly what it means here. The idea was that the people who don't share that opinion can go have their own spaces, and the people that do can come here. Also like I said, the definition here been that way for several years.

>OK I think I might be getting a feel of this... tell me if this is accurate:
Exactly. They can have their playpens, and we can have ours (here). Everyone can play what they like and post in the space that fits them.

>>95910701
Thank you for the explanation.
I left long before everything exploded, so I'm having to piece together how all these weird things. Old scars from conflicts that started, caused a storm and then petered out in that time frame...

It makes sense that it causes some to get snappy.

>>95909912
>Is it complete heresy to just give mission XP
Yes, literally. FOEGYG
>>95909927
Not osr
>>95910250
We don't care about "other places on the internet". See >>95910014

>>95910287
>"why"
Ask r/OSR why shadowdark is on topic.
>>95910378
>>95910449
>>95910486
You're welcome to make a new thread like /todd/, where these things are on topic, they don't last long though.

>>95910660
1e phb

>>95910905
i kind of like it myself, but its certainly not perfect

>>95910911
Nothing is, but start with the fundamentals and grow from there.
ILY anon

>>95910660
I think Mutant Future has rules for B/X psionics. Can't tell you if they are any good though.

>>95910899
I was already given helpful answers by the other anon. I wouldn't make a reddit anyway, that place is foul. The diarrhea of unhelpful but conforming responses is worse than dealing with people shitposting here by magnitudes.

>>95910250
reasonable post.

language changes over time, that's fine. but my worry with 'OSR' is that its meaning might deflate or broaden like so many music genres, fashion styles, subcultures, memes...
i've flipped through neon artsy books and i've been told they're OSR. i've seen board games that have black-and-white line art, so those are OSR. dungeon synth music... a bit OSR, isn't it?

my personal bias would be towards the 'this thread' version you gave. i don't play many vidya, but look at how 'roguelikes' are no longer e.g. NetHack, but Slay the Spire. (or i guess 'roguelite') shared features, sure, but damn did that term get bastardised.

>>95911126
Gross cultural negligence is sad

>>95909821
Right in one. The dungeon as a whole the city of a race of winged humanoids who are ruled over by their undead ancestors.
Basically the Nascans from Dominions. The bit at the top is the observatory of the Ice-Cavers and Raptors, their two kinds of arcane caster.

>>95909839
But there is also a dock, that'd be area 6 which is the domain of their giant eagle riders.

are any of the Oriental Adventures modules good?

>>95909692
>b-but I've read The Lost City and you HAVE to follow the story!
You got it exactly backwards. TSR modules are, for the most part, NOT good examples of OSR play. Gygax was initially against publishing modules and for a good reason: They cannot encapsulate how D&D ought to be played, the DM should develop his own dungeon (that's what you kids today call "megadungeon"), lairs (that's what you kids today call "dungeons"), and wilderness.

The only reason TSR eventually started to publish modules is that they realised that there was money to be made there, but a 32 page module distorts play in innumerable ways: Almost no empty rooms because they would be a waste of space, either no dungeon or no setting or only a half-baked version of both, and so on.

If you want to look at what a D&D setting should be like, Wilderlands of High Fantasy is by far a better example than B4 or Saltmarsh.

>>95909849
>If a person wanted to run an OSE game where the PCs are in an organization similar to the Night's Watch
He'd be a railroad faggot. The players decide what organisation their players join, not the DM.

>how would you award xp?
Monsters killed and XP for gold or it's not tonally and mechanically faithful to first decade D&D.

>>95909912
>Is it complete heresy to just give mission XP?
Yes, it is.

>>95909941
>In session 3 or 4, I want them to discover
Holy mother of railroads. Don't plan what happens four sessions in the future, for fuck's sake. What they discover depends on what players decide to do. It sounds like you're writing a novel and forcing players to sit through it. Create a setting and let players to whatever the fuck they want. Give up control.

>>95910250
Unfathomably based.

>>95911273
alright nevermind I'm looking at them now and am immensely disappointed
I was hoping for some droppable dungeons/towns but it's all railroad shit so far

>>95909941
Railroad garbage. Write a short story instead.

>>95910701
>I consider DCC to be OSR
That's hilarious given even John Goodman disagrees.

><>

Alright here’s the start of my orc camp in the cave mouth.

The stairs leading off of the map at the north east and south parts of the map will lead into the larger cavern system I’m going to construct

>>95909912
Have you considered that you could just as easily make one of the PCs the Lord-Commander?

Here's how I'd play it if I wanted to do something like that:
>Alright lads you're members of a loose organization that guards what's left of a Hadrians Wall-esq fortification originally built to keep out the orc menace
>Here's a map of the area, I want you to pick what part of it is your personal responsibility, 3-4 hexes should do, quieter areas are expected to scout and try to keep down their numbers, breaches get additional troops sent to them by the 11 Kingdoms and those ones with little skulls are lost outposts, if you can reclaim one of those then you're going to pull some real attention and accolades. The responsibility is loose and you're expected to make your own judgement-calls and fund yourselves to an extent.
>Those areas with an outline and banner over them are the currently held parts of the wall, you might notice it's about 25%. Orc incursions are common to the south as well and beyond the wall is savage lands
>One of you is, on paper at least, the Commander, but all that means is that you can claim right of hospitality for yourself and one horse each and even that is spotty these days
>Oh and the Wall itself in an ancient thing of magic built by bullshit Warlock-Rome, the inside has passages and so on, no one has mapped those in a thousand years
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjUmULa0R-8

Wall is an immediate Mega-dungeon, players have a general overarching goal and map of the areas closest to it, it'll be their choice to strike out or try to play faction politics with the other commanders, locals, ect. You can have ruined villages, fortified border towns, ect.

Put the control in the hands of the players. I know it's hard to do that when you're used to running a story rather than a game, but trust me, it'll work.
Oh as for hostages, ect, as slaves from ACKS for saved innocents (aka: ~50GP)

>>95911344
potential key:

1 front entrance/arming tent
1.1-4 guard towers
2 smelter
3 smithy (maybe can combine 2/3 into 2 and that leaves 3 open for ???)
4 big room / staging area for ???
A is a giant fire pit that burns 24/7 (this is likely how the PCs will find this site)
5 slave pit
6 new diggings/ore veins
7 ???
8 ogre or retard strength orc experiment from another tribe
9 common area/ ???
10 slave fighting arena
11 altar and spring (C & B)
12 arena balcony for chief
13 chief's study (he's gonna be a fire mage)
14 breeding den/whelp lair
15 trash pile (maybe rats or ooze inside)
16 larder
17 a captive pit
D the boys done captured a black pudding

ideas or suggestions , working on the wandering monster and encounter tables for this map

>>95911344
looks neat. fun area for a fight if you have arrows and such, bonus points if you're using missile ranges and cover rules (it's all in B/X!).

want to explore that niche at C.

>>95911364
>>95911371
>altar
fuck yeah i found Orc-Jesus.

you could have some black pudding damage, from when they captured and/or chased it around? maybe one of those bridges is a bit worse for wear...

give it an angry wife on the wandering monsters table. an escaped slave, too? mad, may attack (reaction roll) but knows about the orcs and where stuff is.

>>95911399
yeah so far the table has
- orc patrol,
- orc patrol + leader (8hp +1 damage rolls),
- kobold scouting party, working for a young dragon deeper in the cavern
- slaves doing tasks/chores probably with some sort of modified reaction roll because they'll likely want to help the party --
maybe roll the slaves on the spot, 2/6 chance to be human and humans help party by default 4/6 to be monstrous slave, reaction for attack
- fire beetles (this idea came up because I wanted a back door into the orc fort via fire beetle route/hive path that the party could find out in the forest near the cave but I haven't fleshed that out yet)
- ? goblins maybe because goblins are always afoot


also the scale is 10' squares which makes me now realize how much larger this site is than I first visualized -- probably qualifies as a horde roll for the number of occupants ?

NEW FRED

>>95911468
>>95911468
>>95911468

>>95910287
>I was moreso wondering "why" this place uses the strict one. It's obvious that it does, but the reasoning (given my personal experiences) isn't. And I am the type who prefers to understand why and ask questions, else it bugs me.
Bro, this is a three-year-old's thinking, just asking "why" repeatedly until people flip at you. It shook out that way. Probably because we actually like and play the games, instead of mainly trendwhoring; if you look at the subreddit you can see that they spend a lot of time just collecting. They had to restrict when people were allowed to post pictures of their collections, kek

>>95910378
>>95910400
>reeee nooo you're all ridiculous!!!
No, the thread does use that definition. If you think it's ludicrous, go somewhere else. This new "acting like the smug representative of a secret majority" angle isn't working for you, 2efag.

>>95892018 (OP)
How into naval stuff are you? I was looking at the different ships you could get to go to the isle of dread, as well as the other naval mystara stuff, and while longships seem like a good one by pure game stats, I actually think more broadly, a caraval would be the best general purpose all round adventuring ship to commission/own.

relitively low crew size of 6-12 + party (so you can feasably sail it even if all npcs are somehow slaughtered), tonnage of 50 to 160 tones, has internal coverage unlike longships, and was made for some degree of deep sea sailing unlike longships (ships that made it to Americas not by Greenland hoping). You could also probably mount 2-3 cannons/balistas either side.