Thread 96186918

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

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

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

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

>Need a starter dungeon? Here's a curated collection:
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/94994969/#95006768

>Previous thread:
>>96120434

>Thread Question
What's house rules, rulings and interpretations do you implement in your OD&D game?

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

>>96181448
Add me on discord, we play OSE every week and have only missed four sessions in the last 2 and a half years.
We are currently level 7 to 10 and doing against the drow
raptor_eggs is my discord user

>player wants a suit of power armor
Miss me with that Marvel shit. Don't even know who told him that was a thing.

>What's an OSR?
>Don't know how to get started?
>The friendly n00b guide can be found here:https://pastebin.com/EVvt6P0Buntil further notice.

>>96186918 (OP)
Just finished Sinister Secret Of The Saltmarsh run as a one shot with just the first half (dealing with Sanbalet in any way was the end). Five players with lvl1 premade sheets. Two human fighters, one dwarf fighter, one ranger, one bard. I played as one of the human fighters.
>Inside the house pretty hohum
>Make our way down into the cave and scope out the smuggling operation and ship
>Our bard (kind of an idiot player) decides on his own to just start talking to Sanbalet with no plan
>I slip into the darkness and work my way behind Sanbalet while the bard has a circular conversation where he tells Sanbalet to stay away from the town and Sanbalet says he is and doesn't care about the town
>I slip out of the darkness behind Sanbalet and my DM seemed expecting total murder hobo moment but I said it looked like a good operation and offered to work for him
>DM seemed flabbergasted I wanted to work for the "bad guy". As far as I could see he was smuggled alcohol and swords and my character was cool with that.
>Roll and he is skeptical and wants the Bard and dwarf on board
>Bard flails around and starts insulting Sanbalet for having a shitty house upstairs (????)
>Meanwhile the Ranger and other human fighter have snuck off to the small boat unloading cargo. They snuck aboard, cut anchor, and decided to just ditch the rest of the party with the loot onboard
>Sanbalet gets furious
>Bard decides to just start booking it upstairs and out of the house.
>All the smugglers chase him.
>I drop out of the darkness with a dagger to Sanbalet's throat to keep him from siccing his two gnolls on me.
>He explodes fog everywhere and slips out of my grasp.
>Fuck it.
>I run to the cove where the boat had been docked

>>96187437
>Confused/shocked dwarf player follows me.
>Knolls chase her down and do like 3x damage to her HP. She dead
>I ditch my armor and loot bag and start swimming away into the ocean
>Gnolls can't follow so I live
>Bard gets tackled by smugglers as he tried to play a song to influence them
>Hes brought back to Sanbalet for a short conversation which he rolls terribly on and gets killed

10/10

>>96186918 (OP)
>What's house rules, rulings and interpretations do you implement in your OD&D game?
Almost none. M house rule is to play as closely to how Gygax (pbuh) played the game as possible.

Is Five Torches Deep good?

>>96187298
>PCs find a cool armor in a dungeon that requires a puzzle to activate a system that infuses it with magic
>+2 full plate mail armor, acts like a girdle of giant strength and can let the wearer use 2 turns of flying activated once a day
>it's cursed, the mechanism to power it up burns the armor to the PC and causes a permanent -4 charisma loss upon first attempt to remove it as it tears from their flesh

>>96187502
-4 Charisma could take the character into negative AS territory, I would avoid that. Make it halve Charisma instead. The prettier you are, the more you lose.

>>96187532
??? nigger what?

>>96187570
???

>>96187496
It's accessible. Definitely a game that puts sacred cows on pedestals more than it should, but uses easy abstractions so it doesn't feel crusty.
Also, way too much load talk.

>>96186918 (OP)
TQ: to play using chainmail (which really isnt even a house rule)

>>96186918 (OP)
>What's house rules, rulings and interpretations do you implement in your OD&D game?
Magic armor reducing the HD of the opponent, not the to hit roll.

>>96187298
There is this https://osrgcontent.blogspot.com/2020/12/prototype-tunnel-fighting-armor-i.html Maybe this can give you idea.

Do you guys answer questions about Stars Without Numbers here, or is that another FOE topic as well?

Every time I ask about games that I think would count you guys says they're not OSR enough to be on topic.

>>96191333
Don't worry too much about the local schitzos trying to kill the thread, despite what they claim they don't own the OSR, and they find something to seethe at every thread anyway.

>>96191333
SwN is fine. Good domain rules.

I wanted to say thanks for anyone who helped with my questions on hyperborea last thread. I did have one more question though. I know there is a separation of treasure class between treasure in a lair and treasure on an individual monster, but what about if there are multiple letters without any separation between whats in a lair or on the monster. Does that mean all of those rolled table results are found in the lair, or does it mean you pick one of the associated tables to roll on while the others are not present.

>>96192359
>>96191999
Okay cool.

So my playgroup has kind of gotten bored with 5e, and definitely don't plan to move on to 5e24, so we've been trying out a bunch of different systems as one shots, basically anything our DM is comfortable enough to run for a long while.

We've done PF2, Shadowrun 5e, FFG Star Wars, and now our last one we're doing Lancer but with its person-scale shit replaced with SWN, since Lancer in mechs is great but outside a mech is not even a bolted-on afterthought so much as it is an unintegrated handwave held on with a single piece of scotch tape.

The one shot itself is just going to be fully in SWN though. No mecha stuff. If we fall head over heels for it, there's talk we may just do SWN on its own. Our 5e plan before quitting was a spelljammer campaign using forward-ported 2e rules.

3 of us went full random, 3d6 down the line.
So far we've got
>Quark, but protection racket instead of running a bar. Henchmen 2.
>God stats himbo, a psyker technician with TK armory.
>Myself, somehow even stupider, nearly subhuman. Working concept some kind of nomadic hired muscle or bounty hunter who literally only knows the job. If its not survive innawoods (survive 0) or know a guy (connect 0) or stab a guy, mostly stab a guy (3), he's got nothing.
And then one guy who hasn't done any chargen yet. Normally he's first in line for chaos options, but I guess he's procrastinating or wants to actually design a character this time, I dunno.

So my questions are:

1. I'm currently considering going Savage Fray + Shocking Assailant, picking up Armsman at 2. T4 heavy melee. Am I making any classic blunders? Is being a Shock damage living combat hazard actually viable to build around? Is 3 to Stab too much, and I should generalize more? I did consider Wanderer over Shocking Assault.

2. Is our party missing anything necessary that I should mention to our last guy when he makes his PC tomorrow night when we start? For instance we have no healer, is that an issue?

>>96193078
Of note, I could also put the 14 in Int to neutralize the 4, and have 7 str, and be some kind of gunman, basically a Cad Bane/Boba Fett type lad.

Himbo has 17 str, if we really need a strength check, he's probably going to be handling it either way.

However, as a player I am just generally averse to guns. I know some people really love them, but to me personally, aesthetically, they feel unskilled, cowardly, underwhelming, and edge-cringe. Point at enemy pull trigger, even toddlers can do it, that's why you have to keep your guns locked up.

So i'd have to have a really good concept to enjoy that.
A demolitions/grenadier/artillerist would be better, but I don't think the game supports that very well. Or if it does it'd be an Expert.

Though I mean, I suppose there's nothing saying I HAVE to be a Warrior. But with a 7 14 14 4 11 9 spread and no warrior in the party yet it seemed obvious.

>>96193225
>is SWN fine to talk about? Is it OSR?
>sure
>here's my newbie SWN questions
>off-topic

Yup, that's /osrg/ alright.

>>96193312
While >>96193225 is not a helpful comment, I think here you are not going to get a lot of sympathy for or help with the character-building aspects of your questions opened up by the game's skill system because old D&D is at its base a class-and-level system.

>>96193586
>because old D&D is at its base a class-and-level system*
* and that is what gets talked about the most.

So what makes a game OSR? I'm confused. Is any dungeon crawler osr, or does it have to be a d&d clone? Either way there must be a criteria, but only the traditionalists seem to have one. So what's OSR for those who accept SWN or Beyond The Wall and other games often called OSR.

>>96193586
>>96193609
I mean, the class and level part of stars is what informs the skill and focus parts. I'm a Warrior, so I use the Warrior table for attack bonus and hit points, I get 1 guaranteed hit or miss per combat, and I get 1 extra focus for Combat. That's literally all the class does or will ever do.
If I'm not allowed to discuss focuses, then I'm not allowed to discuss classes either, and by extension basically not allowed to discuss the game at all.

In any case, a new thread just appeared about the new post-apocalyptic _WN system, so I guess I'll just re-ask there.

>>96193735
I'm not really sure what the point of making a D&D clone is, when you can just play D&D itself.
Seems like this should just be named OD&D + B/X general and be done with it.

>>96193735
Cairn and Into the Odd and Knave and Whitehack and Shadowdark are NSR not OSR though, so it's definitely not any Dungeon Crawler.

>>96193735
LBB, OD&D, Holmes Basic, AD&D 1e, WHFB 1e, Rogue Trader, DCC RPG. Labyrinth Lord, and Mutant Future are the only real OSR games.

>>96187455
So you have zero consistency, changing rulings multiple times each session?

>>96193875
Castles and Crusades and BFRPG, for all of their flaws as elution of the old school are far too important to the formulation of the OSR to leave them out. Similarly with Mazes and Minotaurs.

>>96193887
Literally never happened. Gygax ran OD&D/AD&D with consistent rules and rulings.

>>96193905
Not according to either of his sons who actually played with him, or even himself. Please actually read how he handled the rules, its all archived in his own words on dragonsfoot.
Rulings happened in the moment without care for anything that happened before.

>>96193914
>Please actually read how he handled the rules
I have that's how I know he kept it consistent.
The word you're looking for is that he didn't run it by RAW because he didn't use WvAC and speed factors except for ties and other stuff people made him put into 1E or "OAD&D" as he called it.

>>96193818
So what os the osr criteria then?

>>96193875
Dungeon Crawl Classic is not OSR. I've already had that confirmed by you guys multiple times.

But you also included rogue trader, so I know this is just bait period.

>>96194059
>you guys
Just because some discord groups have hateboners for some systems don't make it true.

>I know this is just bait
You obviously don't, 40k 1e is closer to a sci-fi OD&D than any other game.

>>96193887
>poking at our resident troll
Why.

>>96194059
Not to mention SWN is too far but saying Little Black Book Traveler is fine, when SWN is literally Traveller on a D&D chassis. Obviously LBB is not OSR, it's an entirely different RPG system.

Just a bunch of jokesters and pedants.

I don't think I've ever seen them actually discuss games or post created contributions, they just bitch and argue about what counts as OSR or about what was done in the old days even though none of them are older than 35, while otherwise having threads so slow they last like a week and a half because when there's no bitching to be had there's nothing going on at all.

>>96193818
>In any case, a new thread just appeared about the new post-apocalyptic _WN system, so I guess I'll just re-ask there.
Yeah, you'll have better luck there. Also, don't forget you can always create threads for specific discussions.

>>96193875
>>96193900
Bait used to be believable.

>>96194236
>when there's no bitching to be had there's nothing going on at all
Said he, while contributing absolutely nothing to the thread but bitching and flamebaiting and false flagging.

>>96194059
>I know this is just bait
He's clearly just joking, relax a bit.
>>96193900
>far too important to the formulation of the OSR
In that BFRPG had very little to do with it, while the widespread disappointment with C&C led directly to OSRIC and the start of the OSR movement to return to the original rules as closely as possible, sure.
King George was "important to the formation" of the United States, but it doesn't make him an American.

>>96194236
>saying Little Black Book Traveler is fine
Who are you quoting? If you mean "LBB" that's "little brown books" aka OD&D. Calling the original Traveller pamphlets Little Black Books is a reference of sorts, but a confusing one.

>>96193905
Gygax was a very reactive DM. He would change/introduce rules whenever he got outsmarted by his players. The DM's guide has tons of errata that's essentially "Someone did this, now no one else can." I mean, that's kind of how people build games.
Also, according to himself, he would ignore various combat rules whenever he wasn't in the mood for them. Gygax was very much a guy who always followed the rules strictly, about 60% of the time.

>>96194362
OSRIC wasn't the start of the OSR movement. C&C was the first commercially successful game made deliberately to capture the "Old School" style of play without having WotC's explicit approval beforehand like Hackmaster. It did this by using the OGL as something of a backdoor, which is also what OSRIC did after C&C pioneered it and showed that WotC wasn't going to legally harass them.
C&C also not only got Gygax's blessing, but Gary even converted some of his old material and even created new material for it. The name of the game even comes from Gary's Castle and Crusades society.
Calling OSRIC the start is kind of a joke, since it really did nothing but ride in C&C's wake. C&C was the game that took the big risk, and also was considerably more played than OSRIC ever was, acting as one of the largest stepping stones into the community in the early years. It's a bit outdated these days, and even in its time it was an odd-duck thanks to it needing to incorporate a lot of 3rd edition structure in order to be OGL compliant, but it definitely was reviving the "Old School" spirit, even according to Gygax and friends.

>>96194503
>style
There's your problem, OSRIC and the pre-OSR generation of games (NGR and a few others) tried to recapture the "feel" of the original games, by reworking 3e rules to resemble what their various authors felt was the "spirit" of the original games.
Turns out that's bullshit, and the games aren't very similar in practice, and it's entirely unnecessary. You can use the original rules, and OSRIC proved it, and those pre-3e "I can't believe it's not Old D&D" games are all forgotten now, with the sole exception being C&C, which is only remembered because Gygax diid some stuff for it.
C&C and its fellows were a failure, and that faiilure led directly to the OSR.

>>96194371
>reactive
Yes, in that he balanced the written game based on experiences from his own sessions but this was not something he did the next session for his players but what came about over several years of play before going into dragon magazine and later the new edition.
>Also, according to himself, he would ignore various combat rules whenever he wasn't in the mood for them.
No, he houseruled out using certain subsystems of the game (that were added for the wargaming crowd in his 70s group according to himself and his son) because he found it slowed down the game, namely weapon vs armor class and speed weapon factors. Again he explained this on DF and his sons say they same thing.
>Forget weapons speed factors. I must have been under the effect of a hex when I included them in the bloody rules
>I use it only when two closely matched opponents are in combat. In mass-melee situations the added calculation takes too much time, detracts from the action
>As I have said all too often when asked that very question, in a moment of madness i listened to a couterie of combat simulators who urged me to include that sort of detail. As a matter of fact I never used modifers, and speeds only when there was a critical duel and there wasan initiative tie.
>So yes, mia ciulpa, and I should never have put those things in there
>Psionics. as with weapons speed and the table of comparison of varying damage by armor type, was something I got talked into. I never used them in my campaign--other than the Illithids' and like monsters attacks.
>>96194503
>OSRIC wasn't the start of the OSR movement.
You can keep repeating this 'til you're blue in the face but fact remains that the OSR was a reaction to the failed promises of the likes of Hackmaster and C&C by the OSRIC crowd. It came about by wanting to publish new things for the old games which both of the aforementioned wouldn't do.

>>96194511
>There's your problem,
No, that's your problem.
You want to pretend the OSR is way more strict than it actually is, like the entire movement is centered around replicating a singular (and hallucinated) style, and largely just so you can try to bully people against playing in any style except your imagined one. You try to pretend that your style is the one and true OSR way, and then try to appeal to authority by saying it's the way that Gygax played, when the reality is that the OSR is a loose collection of different games with very different styles and interpretations of what elements of the "Old School" are worth preserving/imitating, and Gygax had a habit of contradicting himself so that it's essentially impossible to replicate a singular style in imitation of him.
We're talking about the guy who said "A DM only rolls dice for the noise they make" all the way back in 1983 and even then managed to shake grognards like yourself down to their cores. We're talking about games played decades ago, with very loose documentation, with hundreds of different and contradictory accounts, and people like yourself trying to argue that your personal interpretation is the one that everyone else needs to follow only serving to further obfuscate what little information we do have.
It's much easier just to throw those kind of fallacies out and accept that people want to play in different ways and that the OSR is really just about people who like games inspired by the Old School style, not with a sense of strict fidelity, but out of recognition that some parts of older editions were personally preferable to the direction some parts of the newer edition was going.
It's about preserving tools so we don't forget their function and can use them appropriately, not so we can live like the Amish.

How would one best go about rolling for a number between 1-9 using only a d6? Looking to achieve as uniform a distribution as possible.

>>96194773
>How to make a d12:
First roll: 1d6
Second roll: If 1-3, keep the first roll, if 4-6, add 6 to the first roll.
This gives you a d12.

>How to make a d9:
Roll a d12 as above. If the total is above 9, reroll EVERYTHING (not just the second roll).

>>96194773
Roll 2d6.
First die decides whether it's 1-3 (if it rolls 1 or 2), 4-6 (if it rolls 3 or 4), or 7-9 (if it rolls 5 or 6), and then the second die decides if it's 1,4, or 7 (if it rolls 1 or 2), 2,5, or 8 (if it rolls 3 or 4), or 3,6, or 9 (if it rolls 5 or 6).

Essentially, using the d6 as two sets of d3s.

>>96194672
You are quite possibly the only one on 4chan seething because this general doesn't fit your redditor "everything is OSR" whining, all while never actually discussing anything at all and just going into these generals to bait and seethe at people for god knows what reason.
As for Gygax the claim that a "DM only rolls the dice because of the sound they make" is a tertiary claim by some congoer and if it was said at all it was likely a joke considering it doesn't at all correlate to people who actually played with him both at cons and in his homegame, his sons reminiscence and his own advice on the subject.
>We're talking about games played decades ago, with very loose documentation
By people who are still alive, who played back then and with extensive answers to questions across multiple books and sites.
>further obfuscate what little information we do have.
Don't pretend you care about information. Whenever someone cites actual sources at you you freak out about people "deifying" Gygax.
>accept that people want to play in different ways
And they're free to discuss those ways on reddit or other threads catering to their playstyles. We've already had these discussions long before you started trolling this general.
>and that the OSR is really just about people who like games inspired by the Old School style
That means nothing and is just an excuse to sell garbage for other games like 5E under the label. It benefits no one who actually plays the games and only grifters who want to sell crap under more tags.
>It's about preserving tools so we don't forget their function
Rich coming from the one guy who shits himself whenever anyone says to use gold for xp or to actually use dungeon crawling rules.

>>96194672
Tldr and i will say "no" with confidence.

>>96194806
>As for Gygax the claim that a "DM only rolls the dice because of the sound they make" is a tertiary claim by some congoer and if it was said at all it was likely a joke considering it doesn't at all correlate to people who actually played with him both at cons and in his homegame, his sons reminiscence and his own advice on the subject.
It doesn't correlate with your imagination, you mean.
Meanwhile, another one of his quotes, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules" sails right above your head. It's almost like Gygax said a lot of stuff, often contradictory stuff, and you want to listen to the parts that you agree with and dismiss the parts you disagree with.

>"everything is OSR"
Can you point to where anyone said that? Or will you admit that's a fallacious strawman?
Those are your two options, all others will be disregarded.

>>96194857
>Meanwhile, another one of his quotes, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules"
Post a source for that quote and the other one.
You won't find one.
>It's almost like Gygax said a lot of stuff
You can't find a source for that one because he never said it.
He did however write books on being a better DM and speaks at length about rules and this was after he was ousted from TSR and had no reason to shill their rules.
>often contradictory stuff
Again cite a source or fuck off.
>Can you point to where anyone said that?
You in literally every other post. You're fooling no one but trying to expand a term into meaninglessness and no one doesn't notice how assmad you get when people shit on WotC editions.
>all others will be disregarded.
Feel free to disregard the entire thread so we can go back to having actual discussions again without your odious presence and trolling.

>>96194857
>his sons reminiscence
I wonder why his sons, who had a vested interest in pretending their father was the ultimate authority on D&D (even though he himself said he had no more clout than any other DM) and tried to build parisitic careers off of his legacy, would position themselves on an authoritarian interpretation of how their dad played?

>his own advice
Gygax's posts on Dragonsfoot have him mostly advising people to play Lejendary Journeys. I wonder why no one follows that advice though? Seems weird to go "Gygax is always right, except when I don't want to follow his advice."

>Meanwhile, another one of his quotes, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules" sails right above your head.
That's probably a "oh fuck i hope they keep buying these books instead of homebrewing" moment of panic.

>>96194911
>would position themselves on an authoritarian interpretation of how their dad played?
Because they actually played with him and echo what literally everyone whose ever played with him says.
>Gygax's posts on Dragonsfoot have him mostly advising people to play Lejendary Journeys.
Nope. At most he said "and i've fixed this in my new game" after giving an extensive AD&D answer.
>Meanwhile, another one of his quotes, "The secret we should never let the gamemasters know is that they don't need any rules" sails right above your head.
Point out where exactly he said that. You won't find a source for it.

Something ive naturally been doing for more theater of the mind play is asking about party order and distributing attacks in kind. so first attack is against front guy, second second guy, etc.

actually does a lot of leg work of making an encounter feel tactical.

also, hope you like my singular pube.

>>96194930
Nice pube.

>>96194941
thanks, I made it myself.

>>96194930
Any combat that complex i'll setup minis and a hastily scrabbled map.
Theater of the mind is fine for the dungeon but I find it just slows down the game once combat becomes complex enough that the players have to ask questions about positioning.

>>96194967
At least with nights dark terror, there is a lot of fights against hoards of mooks throwing/ hitting with singular attacks. If anything, Id think just imagining them as a swarm is less to deal with then individually giving each a model. in the last encounter it was like 7 bowmen and 9 knifemen.

Pretty sure it was the same with Keep on the borderlands if I remember correctly.

>>96194911
Gygax's sons always struck me as dirtbags, particularly when Ernie tried selling himself as a legendary DM worth $5000 a session, while promoting the idea of the "Gygax Number", where if you played with Gary, your number was 1, and if you played with someone that played with someone with a Gygax number of 1, your number was 2, etc., and this was supposed to be a huge matter of importance and prestige. The whole business with trying to establish "Gygax Day" and making a statue of him is also where things get creepy.
>That's probably a "oh fuck i hope they keep buying these books instead of homebrewing" moment of panic.
It was attributed to him as part of a review in Dragon Magazine of Amber Diceless.

>>96194927
>Nope. At most he said "and i've fixed this in my new game" after giving an extensive AD&D answer.
When he first started posting on DF, he would routinely say "Ask WotC about D&D, not me; they own the rights, not me" and beg people to ask him LJ questions and try and explain why everyone should play LJ instead. This tapered off as people kept bombarding him with D&D questions, but he'd still be much more enthusiastic talking about LJ any chance he had.

>>96195003
Ernie seemed to mostly be willing to work with scummy people rather than be much of one himself. That said I don't see any indication at all that any of them were actually misrepresenting play with Gygax since it's all stuff that's been touched on before and obvious reminiscing.

>>96193078
>1. I'm currently considering going Savage Fray + Shocking Assailant, picking up Armsman at 2. T4 heavy melee. Am I making any classic blunders? Is being a Shock damage living combat hazard actually viable to build around? Is 3 to Stab too much, and I should generalize more? I did consider Wanderer over Shocking Assault.
It's a classic but not a blunder. It's almost annoyingly effective, but that doesn't stop it from being effective.

>2. Is our party missing anything necessary that I should mention to our last guy when he makes his PC tomorrow night when we start? For instance we have no healer, is that an issue?
The cap of either regular or magic healing is each character's system strain either way, so it's really not too big of a deal if you don't have a dedicated healer.

It is sort of a big deal if you're making a guy who's all about rushing into the center of a battle and just hoping to deal out as much melee damage as possible before dying, but it's not like anyone is making that kind of character ha ha.

>>96192537
I'm not sure if this is a Hyperborea-specific thing, but usually it means all of them.

>>96194796
Come on, even a head up his own arse purity spiralist can't really think there's just one person? There are at least two.

>>96194806
>You are quite possibly the only one on 4chan seething
A lot of people seethe on 4chan but that guy's being calm and rational.
>going into these generals to bait and seethe at people
PKB

>>96194598
>fact remains that the OSR was a reaction to the failed promises of the likes of Hackmaster and C&C by the OSRIC crowd
A fundamental premise of reactions is that they come after the things they are reacting to. OSRIC itself might be a reaction to Hackmaster and C&C but the OSR predates the OSRIC crowd.
First known use of term "OSR": 11 August 2004
It referenced something already in existence
>If the 'old-school revival' continues to pick up steam
C&C's release: Gen Con 2004, which was 19 - 22 August, 8 days after the above date
Aside from the fact that he didn't try to define anything let alone what OSR was limited to, Foster's post makes no mention of C&C. He said that D&D's publishers needed to wake up and make money by reprinting "'collector's editions' of the classic games (OD&D, AD&D, B/X D&D)"
Your thesis, such as it is, becomes
>The OSR is a reaction to C&C despite the earliest mention of OSR being someone saying he wants D&D reprints because people interested in the old school want collectors editions printings of the books 20 and 30 year old books and this call for a reprint comes more than a week before C&C had been released.
Your "fact" is in fact not a fact.

>>96194503
Nice to see a sensible and fact based post. Can't wait to see the sheep in the low IQ brigade say we're the same person.

Hello /osrg/ it's the B/X newfag again. You guys keep helping me to improve. For the last three months I've been running weekly sessions between both 4 to 8 hours and players. One player is particularly passionate like myself and has attended every session so far. For the rest it depends a bit more on the schedule that's why the campaign has a bit of a sit-n-go character where I make sure the session ends back in town. I just wanted to get some further advice from you guys and opinions of the feedback I've gathered so far.
The last sessions have been grindy dungeon crawling and when the players have collected their loot outside, I pretty much let them fast travel back to town. I guess that's not too bad and even remember some Gygax quote encouraging that.
Another thing is since apart from my most passionate player, it's not always sure who can make the next session, so I am not sure whether it makes sense to let the party decide what they wanna do next time to help me prepare. So far I do enjoy the procedural nature of Old-School and having appendices as well as random tables flesh out the area between some keyed locations.
Last but not least, the broadly most critiqued issue during dungeon crawling is that it takes a lot of time for me and the mapper of the group to efficiently manage that part of the game. It's when the rest of the group isn't fully engaged and the ones sitting next to me and the mapper do follow and plan but the rest ends up chatting about off-topic stuff. I talked to my Ironman player yesterday and he was thinking about all the in-game ways to accelerate that part e.g. finding plans, maps or using some control on small animals to scout ahead. The other thing I could probably do better is encouraging rougher sketches by the mapper to not end up describing the layout square by square for maximum accuracy.
What's your experiences with these things I've mentioned? Looking forward to the collective wisdom you guys keep sharing with my noob ass.

>>96194503
>>96196411
>C&C release
Meanwhile pic related is the actual first ever mention of the OSR and it talks exclusively about returning to the old editions and playing them again, specifically in a thread about someone returning to AD&D 1E.
It's also by one of the K&K crowd to boot.

>>96194845
As opposed to all the unswerving retardation >>96194598 is spouting? I can just as confidently say "hypocrite".

>now they're debating when the OSR "started"
Do you guys ever play games or is your hobby just arguing about shit that doesn't matter?

>>96193905
he literally invented subsystems depending on who was playing with him.
He added the speed factors to make the war nerds happy.
So his style of playing is to heavily homebrew his campaign.
Ironically something purist hate.

>>96196806
I was going to reply but
>>96197109
this is solid advice. Only thing I'd add is, I wouldn't push players to make better or worse maps, I'd let them decide autonomously how much effort they want to put into it. Eventually they'll realise that time spent on mapping is detracted from time spent looting. Remember you can be reactive rather than proactive when it comes to the amount of detail you give about the exact measures on the map: You could be a bit vague and see if they ASK for the exact square-by-square information, or they're just interested in a rough sketch of the areas.

>>96197230
Point taken, but I said that because I skimmed it and was disinclined to read more thoroughly. Now I did and I'm disappointed.

>>96197681
>>96197109
Thank you guys

>>96196806
Maybe one more thing to add: I let players mainly track the weight of their armor, weapons and coins. But I feel like that still leaves too much room for exploiting "weightless" adventuring gear. Would you recommend adding weight for them or do some sort of slot based inventory?

>>96198264
>Maybe one more thing to add: I let players mainly track the weight of their armor, weapons and coins. But I feel like that still leaves too much room for exploiting "weightless" adventuring gear. Would you recommend adding weight for them or do some sort of slot based inventory?
The short answer to this is that B/X deliberately simplifies gear weight as part of its "basic D&D" concept so that you won't *have* to futz around with slot based inventory and so on in the first place. If you feel like the players are consistently abusing the limit, mind you I mean *actually* abusing it in play rather than this being a hypothetical possibility that you can imagine but which isn't happening at your table, I think the easiest and fastest way for you to fix it is just to raise the weight of the gear-abstraction, rather than fully changing the encumbrance system. If you feel like they're consistently lugging more than 80#, raise it to 120#, 160# or whatever seems fair to you. And of course, remember that any given single, significantly encumbering item shouldn't be counted in under this heading just because the PCs mean to use it for adventuring purposes. That folding ladder or rolled-up carpet can encumber in accordance with its actual weight and inconvenience of carry.

Remember that all this is done in the name of simplicity and that ripping out and replacing the entire encumbrance system mid-game is the opposite of simplicity.

>>96198458
That's fair, thanks for the advice!
For me it's mainly things like dozens of oil flasks and arrows that made me question whether they should be able to carry that much around with no effect on the encumbrance.

>>96198458
>>96198623
P.S. aforementioned passionate player was the one I've also send the B/X and OSE Classic rules as reference. He truly is invested but also tries to use the rules to his advantage as much as possible. Which is fine with me because it also helps me learn and adapt the game to our needs.

>>96198623
I see, yeah. Well, a pint of anything should weigh about a pound, or in other words, 10#, so that's easy to tally; if they're literally carrying dozens of flasks it seems only fair to count those separately. That's what I would do, anyway. For arrows I would probably just say that they can't really conveniently carry more than one quiver of 20; if you were to try it yourself you'd see how quickly it becomes unbelievably obnoxious, with straps that get tangled in things and so on.

(Realistically, an empty bottle probably weighs at least 5# again, so each flask of oil would land at 15#, but this is something I would rationalize away to make the math simpler.)

Here's a hexmap I made for an overall setting for several campaigns, and figured I'd share with you guys! It's set to 1 hex per 3 miles, and I play DCC so not OSR, but someone might enjoy it

>>96198761
>Mt. Fwooshalota
kek

>>96198759
That sounds very reasonable, thanks again.

>>96198761
Looks really cool, I appreciate that. I might drop it in as a random island for instance if the players traverse the seas.

I don't get it.
Why playing a retro-clone instead of the actual game?
Like, why playing a retro-clone of B/X instead of just grabbing a pdf copy of Moldvay B/X D&D and printing it?

>>96199649
It depends on what you mean by "retroclone".

If you mean an actual CLONE of the game, that is both identical in rules to the original and complete, with no omissions, there's very few that do that, possibly only one: OSE-Classic. Its advantage over B/X is that the content is better organised and a few obscure rules have been disambiguated. Its disadvantage is that it has no examples of play. So ideally you'd learn B/X on the original manuals and then use OSE as a reference book at the table.

Then there's almost-clones: Games that are very faithful to the original, but not quite: For example Labyrinth Lord (a few minor deviations) and OSRIC (a bunch of omissions and a few simplifications). OSRIC is the opposite of B/X: It is great for newbies to learn the game, but since it isn't complete, it's not a full substitute for AD&D. So ideally you'd do the opposite of the B/X/OSE stack: LEARN OSRIC and then graduate to full AD&D by reading all the rules that OSRIC omits.

Lastly, there's "not really clones". They're basically collections of house rules that is, shitbrews. Not sure why people play those, I guess they're not good enough at the game to come out with their own house rules.

>>96199697
Mmm thank you for the answer, it's helpful.
I was asking because OSR always interested me, and I was precisely reading OSE when I thought "why I don't just read the source material this is based on?".
So yeah thank you.

>>96199740
Posting to agree with the other Anon: B/X is absolutely a better *read* in every way than OSE, OSE is a better table reference.

>>96198957
>That sounds very reasonable, thanks again.
Hey, no problem! Happy to help, Anon. As a general principle, I'd say just remember that gear weight rule is there to make life easier for your players, not to enable exploits.

>>96199649
The "actual game" has a lot of dated mechanics. What those mechanics are vary from person to person, but just about every thinking person can come up with one or two or ten (or a hundred) mechanics that they think could benefit from being updated. Whether it's clarifying/simplifying how initiative works, or removing weapon speeds, or even bigger changes like reworking the entire underlying system, there's a lot of ways to make the game better suit your personal tastes or just generally run better while still retaining the essential "old school" soul, often even better than people who simply cling to an unchanging game with rigid and blind stubborness.

Some people think that some kind of incredibly improbable miracle occurred and they figured out the best way to play RPGs on the first try, and all subsequent efforts are misguided. Good for them, but even the creators of the game have offered updated mechanics and alternate systems to try out, so it's not really that wild of an idea to see how other people put their own spins on the game.

Even Basic went through 3-5ish official versions, and OD&D was continuously added upon/errata'd, so it's good to keep an open mind on these things and be willing to entertain the idea that the original games may be improved.

>>96199740
Glad typing all of that was useful. I forgot that there's a fourth category of games, those that *expand* on the original rulesets rather than move a few pieces around.

The main example right now is ACKS, that basically completed a bunch of rules that O/A/B/X D&AD had left half-baked. I wouldn't call it a retroclone (although some people would), and I don't use it as my core system, but it has a bunch of little things that I've imported into my games.

>>96200209
>Some people think that some kind of incredibly improbable miracle occurred
It's hardly an improbable miracle, it's simply that they conceived of a specific form of gameplay and melded the rules to that; probability aside, this literally happened, however.

>they figured out the best way to play RPGs on the first try, and all subsequent efforts are misguided
Correct.

>>96191333
on the topic of ceawford games, I kind of wonder why he has 2d8 as his skill rolls in scarlet heros, but 2d6 for the “_ without number” series.

desu, I am kind of found of how the 2d8 works, just having a number next to a character description, without the whole skill table shenanigans that the without number has, but calculation wise they are very similar.

>>96200503
>main example
It's only got a few hundred players though, going by how its kickstarter went. Probably because it's a step backwards in a lot of ways, with everything being slower (requiring more rolls and having some really weirdly long procedures for things like daily travel or domain generation) and generally unneccesarily complicated, and taking elements out of 3.pf like feats for some reason. Even its initiave is botched. Some people use it for some of its charts, but I wonder why'd the sort of person who'd put in all the effort to try and make use of them wouldn't just make a simpler and more custom and personalized version for themselves that fits their world and not the pseudo-roman thing it's trying to be (it's got a weird tone that feels like off-brand medieval). Even just using the charts in the b/x books (like the companion ones) would probably be a better starting point, because it's almost always easier to make a simple system more complex than to properly simplify a more complicated system.

>>96200706
in fact, i was thinking about cutting out all the solo explicit stuff of scarlet heros and just run it as a later day b/x because i like how it deals with traits and i like its resources

>>96200730
> I wonder why'd the sort of person who'd put in all the effort to try and make use of them wouldn't just make a simpler and more custom and personalized version for themselves bla bla bla bla
Some people are scared of doing things themselves.

I'm being serious. There's GMs who are scared of doing anything outside of a book. It means that they'd be the ones who are the ultimate authority and have to be responsible. If something goes wrong or the players don't like something, being able to say "Sorry, that's what the books say" or "that's what the roll says" means being able to deflect the responsibility.

It's understandable. It means things like a game can be very deadly. The GM isn't forced into the awkward position of either making the game soft or being personally responsible for any deaths.

It can be extreme. I know some GMs who try to put up lots of layers to separate themselves from as much responsibility as possible. Adventures? All pre-wrtitten. Rolls? Out in the open. Procedures? RAW. Rulings? Pause the game to do a google search to see if the designer made a statement. Homebrew? How dare you.

I'm not a fan. Most of my experience with these GMs have just been them being assholes and running bad games. But it's not their fault of course.

>>96200932
I think you missed the point. I'm talking about DMs who put the effort into clipping out some complicated subsystem and trying to figure out how to make it work in their own game, when there's already easier and faster methods that have existed for decades. It's people working harder, rather than smarter, and to get worse results.

>>96198761
rad, I like maps.

I'm making a GM screen, and I'm having trouble deciding which tables to put on the inside.

>>96202036
Name your edition. E.g. if you're doing AD&D by the book, or OD&D with Chainmail, a summary of morale rules is golden, but in Basic, totally unnecessary.

>>96202036
just put some frazetta/vallejo pinups on it and make the rules up as you go

>>96202640
NuSR/10 my dude

>>96196837
>it talks exclusively about returning to the old editions and playing them again
No anon, it talks about reprinting some books. Increased interest in playing in an old school is a reasonable inference for what the revival was about but it certainly doesn't talk exclusively or even explicitly about playing them.

>actual first ever mention of the OSR
Learn to read buddy because I already said that and quoted from the post
>>First known use of term "OSR": 11 August 2004
>>If the 'old-school revival' continues to pick up steam

>It's also by one of the K&K crowd to boot.
Who cares? OSR wasn't started by knk. knk forum didn't start until December 2004 bud and December 2004 is after August 2004 by which time OSR already existed.

>>96202754
>he is once again attempting it

>>96202754
The K&K are the lamest kind of villains. I'm actually kind of amazed they're still butthurt about never managing to take control of the OSR movement, despite it being two decades after their failed "civil war" on Dragonsfoot. It's actually kind of amazing that some people could take the most stereotypical concept of what the worst grognard could be, and decide "yeah, that's gonna be my personality."

This general used to be adequate.

>>96190474
do you mean to say that in the vein of the armour mods which dont increase versus AC10, that the magic armour does not reduce their effective HD to below the minimum variable?
>>96203038
the board as a whole too

>>96186926
I had an idea for a low level creature I was going to introduce for a sea adventure. It might be shit since i have not dmed anything for AD&D style games in a very long time. They are large daphnia like creatures that stay near coastlines in brackish environments.They tend to paddle or crawl when on land while floating slowly at sea. They mainly prey on anyone or anything that washes up on shore or seems weakened, becoming most active when the tide recedes They are commonly domesticated by crab man and shrimplings

>Salt Mites
>no. appearing 1d3 (3d6 in lair)
>hd- 1
>ac- 7
>attack - 1d6
>Special attack- A salt mite can spend 1 turn gorging themselves on a nearby water source to allow them to spew a projectile (1d4 damage). Anyone hit with a projectile must make a breath save with constitution modifier. A failure leads to the PC hit being knocked down for 1d2 turns.

1:6 salt mites are larger females with 2hd and have a 10 foot cone spray attack.


I also gotta ask just in case. Is the common rule for making dungeons to have 5-10 rooms per floor with 1/3 to 1/2 of the rooms having monsters? I remember that being the ratio or common place in most stuff.

>>96204469
>Is the common rule for making dungeons to have 5-10 rooms per floor with 1/3 to 1/2 of the rooms having monsters? I remember that being the ratio or common place in most stuff.
i think its common in practice because thats something like whats in bx, but it doesnt match the advice originally published under od&d and reprinted in ad&d so you will get competing arguments

>>96205310
If the calculations are correct, that's over TWICE as many empty rooms in the DMG vs B/X, that's a huge difference. Which of the two is better?

>>96205389
I think both work, and it's a matter of personal preference. Empty rooms create space for tactical manoeuvres, and they also make the dungeon feel less overcrowded.

One thing I don't like about the OSE dungeons, for example, that everybody seems to love, is how there are ZERO empty rooms, which means that the factions are all one right next to the other. I don't like that "funhouse" feeling, emptier dungeon feel more natural.

Additionally, I've long maintained that the reason TSR-published modules contain so few empty rooms, even with respect to the Moldvay stocking rules, is simply page count and space constraints. They're not a best practice, as far as I'm concerned.

But I think the range is fine overall. If your group likes exploring and mapping, make it emptier. If they don't, make it less empty. I wouldn't go below the Moldvay % of empty rooms, though. Nor above the DMG %. And maybe try to make some of the "empty" rooms feel less uninteresting: Noises, smells, foreshadowing...

>>96201748
Kek

>>96200730
The shit you say is always so tangibly wrong it's impressive that you can manage to actually type it out and not make it extremely obvious you're trolling
>>96205453
If you actually bother to read the book even once, you would see that it's dungeon stocking procedure does in fact include empty rooms

>>96205453
1/3 of dungeon rooms are empty in OSE, are you actually fucking retarded or something?

>>96205755
>If you actually bother to read the book even once, you would see that it's dungeon stocking procedure does in fact include empty rooms
>>96205766
>1/3 of dungeon rooms are empty in OSE, are you actually fucking retarded or something?
He means in some of the modules, which don't follow the stocking rules.

I like empty rooms, especially if they have some sort of feature that would make a wandering monster encounter in that room more memorable (pillars, unstable bridge, fountain etc.) or a red herring feature that keeps players on edge. At the end of my last session, the party happened across the Bhaal Furnace in Stonehell and, having previously triggered a trapped crematory, spent a good amount of time figuring out how best to get through the room without triggering an unseen trap.

The Midsomer festival of Richest is approaching in my game. The nearby town is hosting a week of games and festivities in celebration. For the players this means access to some more exotic vendors, increased prices for room and board, new rumors and the opportunity to participate in some games.
So far, I've announced a joust (using the Chainmail jousting matrix, though GW's Full Tilt rules look like fun as well), a buhurt melee, and an archery competition. What are some other things my players could participate in?

>>96205755
>If you actually bother to read the book even once, you would see that it's dungeon stocking procedure does in fact include empty rooms
Nobody's said anything to the contrary.

>>96205755
>dungeon stocking procedure does in fact include empty rooms
Anon, I know, we're commenting on a deleted infographics that shows that the DMG stocking "rules" from Appendix A have 60% empty rooms, while those from Moldvay have only 28% empty rooms. Both have empty rooms.

>>96186926
I have a contribution. You can have lunar cycles or an equivalent influence encounter tables if there are werebeasts on your wandering monster tables. It works a bit more elegantly for wilderness tables than dungeon tables, naturally.

On the appropriate cycle, the encounter range for the werebeast 'inverts.' Let's say a werewolf encounter occurs on rolls 34-36, a range of 3%. We take the two numbers, 34 and 36 and change the order, 'inverting' the numbers: we get 43 and 63. Our range is 3% so rolls 43-45 and 63-65 are altered - the normal encounters for those roll ranges occur, except the werebeast encounter also occurs. Typically these two encounters now influence each other: we encounter the werewolf or range of werewolves, perhaps having summoned normal wolves alongside them, vs. giant lizards and giant scorpions respectively.

For dungeon encounters you'd subtract the werebeast encounter number from the maximum roll to get the affected encounters.

This idea becomes very cumbersome if you have more than one werebeast encounter on your encounter table. There is also the consideration of rolling for what part of the day or hour it occurs on as well as weather, nullifying it if the moon or equivalent is not out. Still, you make werebeast encounters more common around the relevant cycle and other circumstances you set and get a chance at dynamic encounters.

>>96205389
i think i would point out that BX also has half ( i believe) the random encounter rate of od&d, and so less empty rooms are needed

>>96206282
>Nobody's said anything to the contrary
>>OSE dungeons, for example, that everybody seems to love, is how there are ZERO empty rooms
Crazy how retards like you are able to figure out how to use a computer

>>96200503
>The main example right now is ACKS, that basically completed a bunch of rules that O/A/B/X D&AD had left half-baked. I wouldn't call it a retroclone (although some people would), and I don't use it as my core system, but it has a bunch of little things that I've imported into my games.
Honestly, ACKS feels like one of the few 'complete' tabletop games out there.

Most games tend to have the wheels come off at some point or another. Not the training wheels mind you, just the wheels, all of them, leaving the entire game hurtling along on momentum and a cloud of hot air from the DM. Like they never expect you to actually get past a certain level.
ACKS just doesn't have that, it has shit for you to do at high levels.

>>96207435
You don't need empty rooms for random encounters. In fact, it's much more interesting when a random encounter hits on the same turn as when you break into a room and meet stationary monsters!

>>96207647
It seems you don't understand the difference between B/X and OSE. Picrel is probably the most famous and popular OSE dungeon: Find me an empty room in there.

You know in old editions of D&D when they had specific names for classes at specific levels? Like "Lord", "Hero", "Superhero" for fighter (If I remember correctly.) Are those called titles? Did they actually serve any in-game function other than just being a cool thing to add onto your character's name?

What OSR clone or oldschool game has the biggest list of them ranging for the most levels and I guess classes?

>>96208870
Yes, they are usually called level titles. No, they don't tend to have a function other than that OD&D used them in encounter charts instead of specifying numerical levels. The Seven Voyages of Xylarthen is an OSR game that has separate level titles for different alignment characters of the same class/level, so it probably has the most comprehensive scheme.

>>96208969
I was thinking about using them in my game, but not "officially". What I would do is have NPCs refer to player characters by their achieved "title" and just have that be a passive thing that the players might notice when they achieve new levels.

>>96208995
I think that's pretty much the intention. I've tried something like this, but the opposite- telling players "you see two warriors guarding the temple" meaning two second level fighters. Nobody caught on that I could tell. Some titles work better than others for this- "Superhero" (8th level fighter) rightly sounds goofy to most people and the cleric titles like "village priest", "vicar", and "lama" are overly specific and might not give the right impression for the character.

>>96208870
>Did they actually serve any in-game function
Sorta. The titles originate in Chainmail, where Heroes, Superheroes, and Wizards had specific combat abilities, so if you use Chainmail those apply. Otherwise, only "name" level matters, which is the point at which a series of changes happen: Strongholds, linear XP growth instead of exponential, fixed HP per level instead of rolling HD, changed rules for training to attain a new level. Everything else is cosmetic.

>Are those called titles?
Yes.

>What OSR clone or oldschool game has the biggest list of them ranging for the most levels and I guess classes?
OD&D, AD&D, and B/X have very similar titles with minor variations. AD&D has more classes, so it also has more titles overall.

What does OSRG think of playing OSR games solo? is it for TRVE enthusiasts and vanguards of the craft that is tabletop gaming? Or is it for posers, losers, retards and fags?

>>96204469
>>96204579
Just wanted to say thanks for the advice, but now i have another question about ad&d. You only get to attack at your full attack rate if you stood still for the round, right? If you move at half-movement, then you only get 1 attack it seems like. I thought it was at half attack rate or rate of fire, but I might have been wrong.

>>96209296
It's a fine tradition dating as far back as the first issue of The Strategic Review. It's not at all the same thing as playing with people but it's enjoyable in its own way.

>Or is it for posers, losers, retards and fags?
The best thing about playing solitaire is that you don't have to care about things like that.

>>96209296
The best RPG experiences I have had in the last year have been playing AD&D solo with the DMG appendices and extremely sparing use of ChatGPT. Actually completed a roguelike expedition to the 10th dungeon level as a wizard with a charmed fighter and a retinue of monsters. Then I played around int he same dungeon with some 1st level adventurers years later (I'm now fleshing the dungeon into the tentpole dungeon for a campaign with others). I also played some solo Oritental Adventures using the Daily/Weekly/Monthly charts. It worked decently well.

>>96209424
>The best RPG experiences I have had in the last year have been playing AD&D solo with the DMG appendices
Honestly, this was my experience for a long time, too. Until recently I didn't have a group to play with (or all the players I knew had no interest in OSR.) So I played solo and just used DMG appendices combined with Mythic GME and it made for a very interesting game.

I'm now playing Scarlet Heroes and I'm gonna try playing through Keep on the Borderlands and that sort of thing. See how it goes.

>>96209424
That sounds fun anon. I'd be curious to see your dungeon if you feel like posting it.

>>96186918 (OP)
>Deep Pockets and Duo Dimension never made it out of 2e
It just doesn't make sense.

>>96209296
the Bandit's Keep youtube guy has been doing a solo OD&D campaign with Chainmail for combat for a like a year now. Very procedural, using the rules for wilderness encounters and the Outdoor Survival map and stuff.
It looks fun and I think it's really a style of play that you probably have to play solo now. A lot of modern players would probably find that style of play boring

>>96209642
Duo dimension is like gaseous form combined with invisibility, except worse than both

>>96208181
>Honestly, ACKS feels like one of the few 'complete' tabletop games out there.
Still missing the "Immortal" ruleset, so that we can make our own Exalte- I mean, Godboun-, I mean "Cosmarch", and travel the Multiverse.

>>96209329
>You only get to attack at your full attack rate if you stood still for the round, right?
Yes.

>If you move at half-movement, then you only get 1 attack it seems like.
No. No idea where you got this from.

>>96210505
Arguing about what is or isn't OSR isn't OSR.

>>96210504
So you get your full set of attack after a half move still? The one attack thing was because I noticed some wording say "an attack" if you decide to half move. Either way, thanks for the help with all of my questions.

I often hear that running B/X with AD&D stuff is a great way to DM, but what are the most essential features from the DMG or PHB to port over to B/X?

>>96211405
>So you get your full set of attack after a half move still?
No, you don't. If you don't start the round engaged, either you charge and get one attack (routine), or you close without charging and get no attack (routines).

>The one attack thing was because I noticed some wording say "an attack" if you decide to half move.
Where?

>>96211856
Personally, the first thing I port over firsr are all the rules for downtime, and everything that comes included in that "package": Living expenses, training costs and time to level up, advertising for henchmen and the time it takes for them to show up, level demographics, rules for sage services, disease and parasite checks, 1:1 time when no play is happening, multiple characters per player / multiple parties but a player is never allowed to run to PCs at the same time in the same party, detailed loyalty rules, that include a bonus for playing lawful / good characters (otherwise it's just a drawback), the necessity for mercenaries to have officers to function, but the ability for Fighters to act as officers, spying and assassination rules (that I use for Thieves if I'm not using the PHB classes). The game has no SOUL for me without this set of rules.

I'm sure there's a few things that I'm forgetting because they go without saying. Dunno, Appendix, Appendix B, the figure scaling rule for mass combat, stuff like that.

>>96212075
>a player is never allowed to run TWO PCs at the same time
t. phonefag

>>96212075
Hmm, sorting through these might be the place to start for me. Thanks. Probably will make disease and parasite totally conditional, and the level demographics always seemed like something that could be flexible depending on the specifics of the mileu.

>>96210372
There's actually mechanics for transcending to small godhood.
Just small mind you.

>>96195003
>The whole business with trying to establish "Gygax Day" and making a statue of him is also where things get creepy.
Behead those who insult our lord and master Gygax!
Statues of messianic figzres are based and an important source of gp in the midwest.

>>96209296
The first rules for solo play where published in The Strategic Review by Gygax and later converted into Appendix A.

>>96212881
>Probably will make disease and parasite totally conditional
You do you, but I wouldn't. It's easy to miss the point of many rules in the DMG: In this case, the effect of disease and parasites, when coupled with 1:1 time is to occasionally force PCs to take some time off, which makes players to rotate PCs (or create a new one if they haven't already), which is something I personally find absolutely necessary to move away from the one-PC-per-player, single-party format that became the expectation in post-Gygax "D&D".

>the level demographics always seemed like something that could be flexible depending on the specifics of the mileu
Yeah, that's what the DM says as well. You have a lot of flexibility, but I like having a reference ballpark.

What exactly do you refer to with level demographics?

>>96214297
ACKS

>>96194672
Based.

>>96216428
Don't upboat your own post, fag

>>96215864
Much appreciated, thank you both!

Another follow-up noob question as I'm slowly expanding my B/X with some AD&D stuff. Which of the picrel releases are worth a read? So far I've got me the MM1&2, PHB and DMG. Why did some people told me here that the MM2 is not as good of a resource as the earlier releases in that line?

>>96208235
Found one.

>>96216910
>Why did some people told me here that the MM2 is not as good of a resource as the earlier releases in that line?
i dont know why they said it, but just that a certain portion of the book is for monsters who wont become "staple" encounters, just something you will use once
i think you should still browse through it but its a lower priority

>>96217048
That's not really empty: A special item that calls a specific monster from a specific room. Empty rooms usually just say "empty" or don't even have an entry attached to it, see for example the recent map from Khosura uploaded by an Anon.

But okay, if we want to count it as empty, that's one entry out of 60. By the B/X and DMG "rules" it should be between 17 and 36 empty rooms. The whole dungeon would feel VERY different if it had that many more empty room, and I'll boldly assert it would be MUCH BETTER if it did.

>>96217480
>>96218528
Thanks for the clarification!

What would be the best osr material for adventures within the outer planes such as Nirvana or the Abyss? Is the MotP any good or can you guys recommend me something else to expand the few clues you can gather from the PHB and the MM2 (which at least includes Primus and the Modrons)

>>96219019
>What would be the best osr material for adventures within the outer planes such as Nirvana or the Abyss?
If there's anything doing it well, I don't know it.

>Is the MotP any good
You can certainly take inspiration from it and use some very generic stuff like names of the individual planes, but it's not really directly gameable content for the most part. It's very hard not to railroad when you open up all the plains for exploration, because mapping or even just having generators for all of them is a daunting project.

If you want to do "other world" stuff, the occasional excursion into Gamma World (via Mutant Future) or into a Traveller planet (via the random generators in the 1977/1981 books) is much more likely to be successful while preserving the spirit of the game.

>>96219278
>It's very hard not to railroad when you open up all the plains for exploration, because mapping or even just having generators for all of them is a daunting project.
That's a good point. From scratch I was thinking more of smaller scale hexcrawls with a handful prepared locations and then random "wilderness" and encounter tables for the respective plane.
I don't know if there's anything useful for that gameplay among all the different 2e Planescape releases.

Newb question, but is there any generally agreed upon best house rule for grappling in B/X? I looked at the wrestling rules in AD&D and the Rules Cyclopedia and they both seem a little too involved to fit with B/X's streamlined combat system.

>>96217048
this room isn’t empty, there is a bell that summons an NPC

>>96196806
Fuck square perfection mapping, go for graph nodes. Ie: the kitchen node with a link to the vestibule node, etc. Use numbers for names if a name wouldn't make sense like exploring rooms in a cavern etc.

Grappling in B/X: Make an attack roll, on a success instead of dealing damage you can grab the target as long as you have a free hand. Once you've grappled a creature, you can move them at half speed, inflict 1d3 points of subdual damage (no attack roll necessary), and prevent them from speaking. Special circumstances, such as using a grappled creature for cover, wresting a weapon or object from their grasp, or using them as an improvised weapon, are left to the discretion of the DM. The target is immobilized and suffers a -4 AC penalty against attacks by creatures other than the one wrestling it. The target cannot move or attack, but can attempt to break free of the grapple by making a saving throw vs. paralysis on their round. Common sense applies—you can't grapple amorphous or insubstantial creatures, giants, and so on.

>>96221712
That's broken unless you allow the defender to fend off the attack as per the DMG. Grappling an armed opponent cannot be as easy as scoring a hit with a weapon.

>>96222103
Why? That's how BFRPG does it

>>96222510
Just because BFRPG does something doesn't mean it's a good idea, in fact, it's usually the other way around.

Specifically, the fact that, instead of doing damage, you get ALL of the following:
>you can move them at half speed
>inflict 1d3 points of subdual damage (no attack roll necessary),
>prevent them from speaking.
>The target is immobilized
>suffers a -4 AC penalty against attacks by creatures other than the one wrestling it.
>The target cannot move or attack
>Must lose an attack to TRY to break free, and it's not even guaranteed that he will.

Makes it much better than doing damage against everything that isn't a mook you can down with one or two hits. Which means you're inviting your players to do it almost all of the time.

>>96222510
Anon spotted a clear problem with your houserules, and that's your defense? "BFRPG does it?"

>>96219019
The closest thing I know is the series Huso's started on the circles of Hell. That's supposed to be as good as his usual high quality, but it really also bears out >>96219278's statement that
>It's very hard not to railroad when you open up all the plains for exploration, because mapping or even just having generators for all of them is a daunting project.
Huso seems to be doing his books as premade setpiece dungeons + generators, and even just doing that for the Nine Hells is a major project, unprecedented in D&D's 50 years of existence.

>>96222824
tbf, if someone published something that often implies a higher quality of playtesting.

doesnt mean that, but I can understand the point.

>>96222822
>>96222824
Samefagging aside, you don't really seem to understand what you're saying
>you can move them at half speed
losing two rounds worth of attacks to maybe move an enemy 10'-20' is a fair tradeoff
>inflict 1d3 points of subdual damage (no attack roll necessary),
Again, losing two rounds of attacks to deal 1d3 damage is a fair tradeoff
>prevent them from speaking.
This is totally fine. In the context of spellcasting (where it would most likely be applied), hitting a spellcaster can also make them lose their spell.
>The target is immobilized
Again, this comes at the cost of an attack. MUs and clerics also get plenty of options to immobilize creatures in one way or another
>suffers a -4 AC penalty against attacks by creatures other than the one wrestling it.
Very similar to how AD&D treats attacks against prone or immobilized foes (creatures get +4 to attack instead of the immobilized creature suffering -4 AC)
>The target cannot move or attack
Ok? Again, this is coming at the expense of the grappling creature losing two potential attacks to maybe deal 1d3 subdual damage or move the target a small distance.
>Must lose an attack to TRY to break free, and it's not even guaranteed that he will.
The grappler must also lose an attack to TRY to grapple

How would you do grappling better for B/X?

>>96223043
>muh samefag
Fuck off. If your response to a valid criticism is "BFRPG did it" that doesn't make your houserules look better, it makes BFRPG look worse. Which seems to happen every time this thread spends some time scrutinizing BFRPG's changes from B/X.

>>96223302
It's not a houserule if it's written in the rules of the game.
How would you do grappling better for B/X?

>>96223553
>How would you do grappling better for B/X?
He's not going to answer, and if he does it's going to be some bullshit that's so mechanically inferior no one would ever do it.
Remember, the best house rules are the ones that work for your table

>>96221269
Just do opposed hit dice rolls. If you want to make it harder to grapple, make it so the grappling character also needs to make a successful attack roll

finished first session of a small hex crawl and dungeon crawl in worlds without number I wanted to post. I think ending the day at a magic gaurden is a fine thing.

>>96223582
Did you want to contribute, or did you want to whine that people point out problems with your houserules and then don't spend their own time figuring out solutions for you?

>>96223692
Look man if you lack the balls to share what you would do at least don't respond. For the record, I handle grappling in my games by using a method similar to >>96223607 with contested HD rolls. If the character trying to grapple fails, he loses his next attack but he can still retreat or withdraw. You're probably going to find a reason to say it's retarded (while still not sharing what you would do) but it's easy and it works great

>>96223043
I'm curious: Are you the DM? Have you ever had the monsters use this tactic against PCs? How did they like being on the receiving end of it? Because if I were a group of humanoids, I'd use these grappling rules of yours every round until the party is all immobilised.

>>96223553
>It's not a house rule!
He asked for house rules, not dogshit boring fantasy role-playing game
>How would you do grappling
Opposed hit dice rolls.

>>96223760
>Y-you're p-probably gonna be mean!!
So you are just whining about other posters. Don't be such a faggot, anon. If I was gonna say something about that method of handling it, I would, but why would I? My entire and only point in this dumb argument was that saying "Somebody's published houserules do it like this" isn't a valid response to a rules criticism. Untwist your knickers already.

>>96216475
Lol. Lmao even.

>>96224273
Nta, but like he said, instead of posting about what you use, or offering any type of constructive criticism, you just started stomping your feet and acting like a bitch.

>>96218565
>>96221409
If you say so. I wouldn't consider a mundane bell a Special. There are at least 5 other rooms that are similarly Empty by my definition. Not quite 17, but still.

What value are empty rooms, specifically? Are you talking about unkeyed rooms on a map?

What do I think about Swords & Wizardry?

>>96225073
You think it's cool, but inferior to Delving Deeper

>>96225073
Inferior to OD&D proper as well as to Seven Voyages of Zylarthen.

>>96222822
>Which means you're inviting your players to do it almost all of the time.
As if someone who has enough (free) time to come up with grappling houserules is running any sort of serious game...

>>96223043
>How would you do grappling better for B/X?
I wouldn't do grappling at all as it slows down the game for little benefit. If my players want to be "clever", they lure the enemy under an anvil suspended by rope, and they don't need to use a convoluted add-on to "I hit it with my axe".

>>96186918 (OP)
How much xp should an average dungeon give per level? Like your three level starter dungeon for example? Enough to get players to lvl 3ish? Not counting restocking the dungeon which will obviously boost the xp per level somewhat.

few months ago I posted here about how I run a one-shot of hole in the oak OSE to a group of friends that never played before. it went well.
now my regular group cancelled a session and I offered to GM the same module for the half that could play today.
I hope it goes as well as last time. it was all on short notice so I didn't have time to re-read the whole thing.

>>96224795
>What value are empty rooms, specifically?
Space is necessary for maneuvering around obstacles, retreating from trouble, and to help players learn to prioritize when to search a room and when to not, because not every single room has something important in it.
Probably some more non-obvious things I'm forgetting. Empty rooms are really important.

>>96225073
That it makes changes to OD&D that are neither necessary nor good, and there are better OD&D retroclones around, for instance those mentioned in the guide:
>>96187386

>>96226069
>How much xp should an average dungeon give per level?
Delta's blog has a very extensive analysis of dungeon stocking rules and XP available as monsters vs treasure. It's important to note, however, that XP available should be PER ROOM, not per level: You can't cram the same amount of treasure and monsters in 10 rooms as you would in 100, so asking how much PER LEVEL is a completely wrong way to think to go about it, not to mention a symptom of the one PC per player, single party campaign.

>>96226069
>>96226237
The correct way to stock a dungeon is:

(1) Number of rooms with monsters in line with the stocking rules from the DMG and B/X. That's a pretty broad range of values, as shown in the infographic here:
>>96205115

(2) Tally the total XP from monsters. The XP from treasure should be between 4× and 10× the XP from monsters, so that treasure accounts for something between 75% and 100% of total XP.

That's it. Those are very broad ranges, so it's easy to stay within these parameters.

But do refrain from making dungeons that are tailored to a party in any specific regard, such as giving enough XP for them to level up within a specific frame. The WORLD comes first, adventurers explore it. Inverting this relationship is fundamentally FOE.

>>96226404
>(2) Tally the total XP from monsters. The XP from treasure should be between 4× and 10× the XP from monsters, so that treasure accounts for something between 75% and 100% of total XP.
I meant between 75% and 90%, of course.

Stop being mean to people.

Serious question.
Can the reasoning from this video on why the hope/fear mechanic is shit be applied to the "describe how you do your actions" on some osr tables?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nhvMcSFAy4
The reason is basically that for actins that constantly repeat there is a burn out of over descriptions?
This is coming from a table that use rolls and a pseudo-skill system for resolution but allow descriptions to influence the rolls or avoid them altogether.
If you go full "describe it" for every trap, every chest and every explored corner, can the game become a chore?
I read a dude said that basically they designed a "procedure protocol" and presented it for the gm sort of "this is what our characters do most of the time", which for me is insane.

>>96226778
>Daggerheart
Off-topic.

Also, your rant about "descriptions" and "influencing rolls" is incomprehensible from the first decade D&D point of view, you'll have to do A LOT of explaining what you're talking about here. Did you mean to post this somewhere else?

>>96226793
Huh?
I'm thinking in trying a more osr approach but I want to know if the style of game lead to burnout given the over narration of actions.
Is not hard to understand anon.

>>96226824
>I'm thinking in trying a more osr approach but I want to know if the style of game lead to burnout given the over narration of actions.
I have no idea what you mean by that. What do YOU mean when you say a "more OSR approach"? More OSR approach with respect to what?

Also, what is "over narration of actions"? I've been playing OSR for over forty years and I've never heard anything like that. I suspect I'm not the only one here who doesn't have a clue what you're talking about.

>>96226837
The different of for example a perception roll / check vs describing every way how you are trying to see if there is something, every test your character is attempting, etc.
That's just an example of course.

>>96226846
There's no "perception checks" in first decade D&D, they were introduced either in 3e or 5e. What we do have is specific checks to find secret doors or traps.

Having players describe their specific actions to find a specific secret door or trap relies on the DM making notes of how exactly every secret door or trap is hidden. You can do that, and some DMs seem to do, but that's not the default assumption in O/A/B/X/D&D: Searching for traps and secret doors is by default abstracted to an action that takes a set amount of time (one turn in B/X, a few rounds in AD&D). The DM makes a roll behind the screen on behalf of the player to see whether the PC (or henchman or whatever) has found anything. He communicates whether something is found, not whether the roll was successful.

The problem with coming up with detailed descriptions of how each individual trap and secret door is hidden is that it's not sustainable for most DMs, since they are such common features in D&D that you'd just end up repeating the same mechanisms.

Not to mention the fact that, with dungeons or dungeon sections that are randomly generated on the fly, for example via appendix A or geomorphs, you just don't have the time to come up with that kind of stuff. Which is why it's abstracted in many if not most cases.

Does this answer your question?

>>96226846
>>96226868
To be even more explicit: At my table, if a player starts giving a detailed description of how they're looking for something, in 99% of the cases:
0. I ignore the specific description the player gives, except in the very rare occasions in which I do have a specific description of the secret door or trap.
1. Mark the time it takes to do the action.
2. Make a roll behind the screen to see if they find anything or to simulate the check when it's not actually necessary.
3. If there is something to find AND the roll is successful, I say "you find XYZ". In all other cases, I say "you find nothing".
4. Notice I ALWAYS make the roll, both if there is something to find and if there's nothing to find, to avoid giving away information.
5. I check for wandering monsters, I say if torches burn out.
6. If a secret door was found, AD&D necessitates a second check to find out how to open it. The procedure is the same as 1–5 above, with different times to complete the action (the first pass is quicker and covers more area, the second pass targets the specific area where the secret door is discovered but takes longer). Finding a room trap is enough to avoid it in most cases, no need to disarm. Finding a treasure trap requires a remove traps check (only Thieves can find and remove treasure traps, the other characters can't even try).

>>96226893
>Interacting with the world has no value.
>it's all about rolling the right number on the dice you can't even see.
Sad

Getting some feature every level is very 3e, but at what point certain classes are too frontloaded?
An example of what consider frontloaded is the barbarian, while I don't consider the thief so because all those roll skills start very low and must be improved levelling up.

I think B/X bows are not well made and the game lacks in diversity in ranged weapons.
I think a larger, 1d8, 2-turns-to-reload crossbow should exist, and/or a 1d8 Greatbow that can only be shot while not moving (even the previous turn if you use certain rules) and has Longbow range.
The latter would only be used by Fighters and the like.

Thoughts?

>>96227636
Clerics are frontloaded.
A noob will be hopelessly overwhelmed with the 12 new spells he receives every other level.
Also Turn Undead and Alignment.

>>96227808
>B/X
>the game lacks in diversity
Have you tried upgrading to AD&D?

>>96228094
No, AD&D over-complicates it. Adding a few weapons is not adding "you get +1 vs this, you change damage dice vs that".

>>96228058
A cleric gets only Turn Undead at level 1 in many versions of the game, and spells at level 2.
And MU have 12, clerics have 8.
Which are all good things.

>>96228217
>Adding a few weapons is not adding "you get +1 vs this, you change damage dice vs that".
Except AD&D literally does this if you simply ignore the weapon vs armor rules like everyone who actually runs it.

>>96228279
And that's great. My point is to add SOME specific items I find are lacking because there is enough melee weapon diversity and not enough ranged one.

>>96228287
Understood.
These are my thoughts then: forget about your homebrew and stick with AD&D.

>>96223769
Yeah I've used it consistently for one of my home games. Combat is about 60/40 attacks and grappling (or non-attack maneuvers) when players encounter enemy humans or humanoids. Works well for my group

>>96228217
you CAN pick and choose elements anon

>>96228388
>and stick with AD&D.
It's too much I prefer to do >>96228501
like this anon said.
Which I can already do, foolish of me of thinking pros and cons could be discussed here

>>96228058
>>96228227
One thing that can contribute to frontloaded vs not is the availability of combat options at level 1 I think.
Say spears doing double vs chargers or lance while mounted charging etc is fine and simple, but options to "parry" (in the sense of decreasing the chances to be hit in one way or another) is something that could be introduced at level 1 or not, and then it could be discussed if only fighters should be able to do that (I think only Fighter-types should, in fact).

>>96228524
>thinking pros and cons could be discussed here
I think we're all nostalgic for the time people used to be able to discuss things here instead of having every question met with "play AD&D"

>>96227636
I've been playing around with recently with some class features that aren't tied to level but instead to things PCs do in the game world. It started as a way for Fighter players decide between cleave (free melee attack after felling a foe) or sweep (# of attacks against foes 1 HD or less equal to level) and then letting them learn more techniques if they recover ancient fighting manuals or train with combat sages. Works well so far and allows players to progress independent of levels, which is something I personally am interested in (though I know it's not for everyone)

>>96229128
I like how you think anon.
For one, until title level, for me Trainers are a mechanic that should be always encouraged even for standard stuff.

I allow your Cleave for standard Warrior-types (Fighters etc). your Sweep is something that people that use Two-handers and are trained in them (skilled or upper in BECMI weapon mastery, which I use in a very nerfed way) can do.

>>96226133
It went well,
they found the teleport trap and decided to explore the other side of it (believing it would lead to the wizards treasure room), after getting lost they manged to avoid most encounters by sheer luck until they stumbled upon the lizards.
after almost losing one member they scared the lizards off and took the alter treasurer, eventually they found their way to the gnome base and bullshited their way in. They learned of the stump and manged to burn it down, only 3 made it out of the fight alive and it all ended with them wounded and lost in the halls underground.
all had lots of fun, my main issue was with trying to mange the gnome base - it was hard keeping count of what gnomes I said were in which rooms.

>>96229474
Nice bro!

>>96228524
>foolish of me of thinking pros and cons could be discussed here
You want to hear pros and cons?
Con: ranged combat is already strong enough. It is entirely justified for ranged combat to deal less damage than melee as it carries much less risk.
Con: the lack of variety of ranged weapon is justified. "I shoot my bow" is not particularly interesting compared to "I strike it with my ax" or "I slash it with my sword" and even "I run it through with my lance".
Pros: having variety and powerful options makes the players who play ranged characters feel slightly better about their lack of courage to join the chaotic melee, where actual warriors test their mettle.

>>96230453
Yeah, I wanted to hear stuff like that, thanks.

Con1: You are absolutely right about the less risk, especially in a game with actual energy drain - I am not aware of ranged ED, barring perhaps some BECMI very high-HD undeads (but I don't think so).
Con2: I think that's personal taste and I will be sure to maintain/adjust the treasure tables to keep the melee in advantage there.
Pros: According to the above, I will consider further limitations for the d8 ranged, and there will never be a d10 ranged.

Thanks.

>>96230897
>sure to maintain/adjust the treasure tables
I know this is the case in OD&D (not sure about other editions) but magic ranged weapons only grant +1 to attacks and not damage unless you have magic ammunition. Seems off the bat like a good way to limit the power of ranged fighting as the players acquire more magic weapons. Also fair to assume that arrows shot by magic bows aren't themselves magical, meaning the many creatures with mundane weapon immunity would still need to be engaged in melee

>>96230897
>ranged ED
Sounds like it could be spell from SotDL.

>>96228094
Is there any realistic way of playing with initiative by character instead of doing initiative by sides?

>>96230975
Not bad anon, it's something to think about.
I could even think it counts as +1 less so you can harm creatures that need a +1 with a +2 bow, and so on

>>96230993
Energy Drain but kek

>>96231004
Realistic, sure, but it slows the game down too much, particularly in large engagements. Most people find that the cons outweigh the pros.

>>96231218
>particularly in large engagements.
I split the monsters in groups.
Then again, we play in small groups now.

Can you do two thief skills at the same time? Can my thief move silently and hide in shadows at the same time as long as he succeeds on both rolls?

>>96232721
>Can my thief move silently and hide in shadows at the same time as long as he succeeds on both rolls?
What does the rulebook say?

I've computed the value of UNGUARDED TREASURE in dungeons across editions, and there are huge differences between OD&D, AD&D, and B/X!

Which of these is fairest, in your view?
Which one do you use, or is closest to what you use?

(ACKS II is even more generous than OD&D!)

>>96231218
>Realistic, sure, but it slows the game down too much, particularly in large engagements. Most people find that the cons outweigh the pros.
This.

>>96233639
I'd forgot that Gygax warned against individual initiative! Thanks for fishing that quote up.

>96233593
I've always had the feeling that the OD&D unguarded treasure table generates roughly as much treasure as when you encounter monsters and use the monster's lair treasure letter weighted by the number of monsters actually encountered. There was a post on Dragonsfoot recently (last month?) that did the maths for AD&D dungeon monsters, perhaps you could check there.

The DMG Appendix A table is clearly too low, particularly at higher levels, where it only grows linearly.

ACKS really overdoes it. I love its "heroic" magic item system that lets you generate level-appropriate treasure (no artifacts in the Kobolds' lair), but the totals need to be taken down a few notches.

Perhaps B/X is a reasonable mean after all, but I don't think you'll break anything if you use the OD&D table.

>>96233593
I've always had the feeling that the OD&D unguarded treasure table generates roughly as much treasure as when you encounter monsters and use the monster's lair treasure letter weighted by the number of monsters actually encountered. There was a post on Dragonsfoot recently (last month?) that did the maths for AD&D dungeon monsters, perhaps you could check there.

The DMG Appendix A table is clearly too low, particularly at higher levels, where it only grows linearly.

ACKS really overdoes it. I love its "heroic" magic item system that lets you generate level-appropriate treasure (no artifacts in the Kobolds' lair), but the totals need to be taken down a few notches.

Perhaps B/X is a reasonable mean after all, but I don't think you'll break anything if you use the OD&D table.

>>96234225
>particularly at higher levels, where it only grows linearly.
in theory this should be balanced by higher level charcters clearing more space in the same amount of time, but above 10th level i would agree
if you are more familiar with BX, would you mind telling me what it averages out per room to?

>>96234643
>in theory this should be balanced by higher level charcters clearing more space in the same amount of time
Only if you don't penalise characters for what today we would call "farming", by scaling XP awarded by the ratio of total HD / total character levels, as prescribed by the DMG.

Which shouldn't be necessary anyway, because most players running 5th level characters don't usually spend whole sessions wandering around 1st level dungeons, it's slow and boring.

So PCs should, for the most part, be in a dungeon level that is more or less equal to their own, and then linear scaling of treasure is far from enough.

>if you are more familiar with BX, would you mind telling me what it averages out per room to?
I could do it only for unguarded treasures. The calculation for guarded treasures is quite complicated, although I'm working on a DB that might give that result a few weeks down the line.

>>96233058
Doesn't say anything about it, which is why I'm asking

>>96236015
Which rulebook are we talking about?

>>96236015
for what it is worth, the official answer is no

>>96232721
In theory, you could do two thief skilles at the same time, but in practice you can't Move Silently and Hide in Shadows at the same time because Hide in Shadows requires you to be motionless to work.

>>96237284
>>96238032
appreciate the reply thank you.

Gents, I’m looking for a ring and a source i can print. A ring of... Dragons Nemesis, as it were. The older the edition, the better. Does this remind you of anything?

How'd your games go this week /osrg/? Or what do you have planned for your next game?

>>96240587
Party is prepped to fight a necromancer that doesn't exist after following a false rumour. They'll be getting a some Coffer Corpses (from Barrowmaze) and possibly other nasties overnight depending on how the random encounters turn out. Other than that I'm finalising the big picture calendar for the world.

>>96198761
Cute sea dragon

>>96240587
Playing Arden Vul (session 47 this Tuesday). The main party just discovered the Midnight Road and made first contact with the heqeti, and is arranging a combined assault with the nearby varumani. The most recent session was kind of a downer, where they lost a beloved lizard man retainer to exploring some submerged tunnels and then proceeded to dig up 2- 3 different rooms in search of treasure, to no avail. A solo campaign (a player from the main party playing multiple characters) has the PCs exploring the tunnels under the ruined city, preparing to attempt to take over one of the dungeon levels and instate themselves as a faction. Also just did a one-off solo session with a different player from the main party playing a group of lizard men in search of the lost retainer. They found his bloated, disembodied arm.

Also ran KotB for the first time this weekend during a family camping trip. A party of 5 mostly-new players got slaughtered by 2 hobgoblins. The brother-in-law was interested in the map and legend on the module jacket and was inspired to draw and key his own (pic related).

>>96240587
Running X1 after B2, B/X with a fair amount of AD&D ported over. Running the Goodman Games version with B/X and AD&D statblocks retrofitted. Have to really fight my group a bit about reversed cleric spells, acquiring magic-user spells and how to deal with xp from treasure on an island with a limited economy. They're basically shipwrecked but slowly I'm corralling them into thinking smart and on their feet about travel and survival.

>>96240587
We're going to play session 14 this week with probably just 4 to 5 PCs, so we'll see what the party will do without the Level 4 Fighter and Dwarf.
Lizardmen are threatening the human settlements from the East. They've also encountered demon worshippers who try to open a planar rift to the Abyss. The MU actually hired a Level 2 Cleric from the demon worshipping Acolytes. The rest of the party isn't too fond about that retainer and plots to get rid of that chaotic Cleric.
Finally they've reached a Wizard Tower in the wilderness with the owner gone missing. Instead they were welcomed by his apprentice who offers them to activate a rune portal next full moon with the last coordinates used by the missing Wizard.

>thread is slow
>look at the rebbit out of boredom
jesuschristhowhorrifying.png
Boys, with the exception of 2efag I take back anything bad I've ever said to or about you.

>>96243865
Fight against those who would turn /osrg/ into another plebbit.

There's occasionally decent stuff on reddit, the odnd sub is slower but a lot better than the osr one. There's a greybeard who gets a bit salty whenever Chainmail gets brought up, which is funny.
I think all the bad points about 4chan and discord and reddit just make me miss traditional forums.

>>96245192
>There's a greybeard who gets a bit salty whenever Chainmail gets brought up
Wat
For what reason?

>>96245571
His argument goes that actually nobody ever used Chainmail with D&D back in the old days. Gary only put references to Chainmail in the LBBs because he wanted to push more books I guess? I dunno, I wasn't alive then.
Personally, I don't care either way, I just think Chainmail is cool

>>96245673
God, if there's one thing I wish I could erase from the OSR it's... well, no, there's a huge list of shit before that, but one thing I'd like to get rid of is this "muh we didn't do that back inna day" shit from old grogs who are apparently physically incapable of understanding that they played wrong from day 1 and their anecdotal experiences are not relevant to the objectives of the OSR.

>>96245192
>make me miss traditional forums.
Why not go to the forums that are still around today? Not trying to be snarky I'm just curious

What do you lads do if your players try to open doors but fail to do so on a 1d6? Do you just allow them to breakthrough or they get another chance to go again? What's the penalty if any?

>>96246357
>Do you just allow them to breakthrough
lol no
>get another chance to go again?
Sure
>What's the penalty if any?
Time wasted (one turn in KDD&D); extra wandering monster check with increased chances; monsters in the room alerted, can't be surprised.

Anyone managed to grab the White Box Cyclopedia off the IRC?

>>96246797
>heritages
Thanks but no thanks

3e and 4e are accused of limiting in their own ways the movement + attack routine.
While that's absolutely true, I think most people havs rose-tinted glasses about OSR games. I can see move + multiple attacks, but unless I am mistaken, the 5e move + attack + move + attack of higher levels is not a thing.

Am I wrong?

>>96249482
>I can see move + multiple attacks
What makes you think that? How do you justify your view in an OSR context?

>>96249541
Say if a troll moves and attacks you how many time he is going to attack in your opinion?

>>96249482
What do you mean by
>I can see move + multiple attacks
?

>>96249667
>Say if a troll moves and attacks you how many time he is going to attack in your opinion?
Zero. Moving and attacking in the same round is disallowed in OD&D, AD&D, and B/X.

>>96249684
I can see multiple attacks after a move but not the splitting up
Which is a good thing because otherwise one would end up with people and monsters moving-attack-moving by that logic

>>96249802
What do you mean by "I can see"?

>>96249822
I can see as feasible. Doable.
I think you are focusing on that because you cannot give a clear answer.
Do you guys just jerk each other off, or do you actual play?
Say what this guy stated here >>96249697
>Moving and attacking in the same round is disallowed
Is FACTUALLY wrong.

>>96249697
The fuck are you on about?

>>96249845
>I can see as feasible. Doable.
Rulebooks say otherwise, so not sure why you "see it" as feasible.

>>96249845
>>Moving and attacking in the same round is disallowed
>Is FACTUALLY wrong.
It isn't factually wrong. You need to charge to do be able to attack: With normal movement you can't attack in the same round. And if you're charging you only get one attack routine, so the troll would get its claw/claw/bite routine, but a high-level fighter wouldn't, because what the PHB calls "multiple attacks" are actually multiple attack routines, as clarified in the DMG.

>>96249868
>charge

>>96249888
>>charge
You are being a disingenuous fuck, but you opened a good conversation about the difference between attacks and attack routine.

But this also means the troll has the equivalent of 3e's Pounce on practical terms, the Fighter doesn't, but nobody is losing his mind over that because it's old school.
Funny

>>96249928
>You are being a disingenuous fuck
Charge and movement are two different things: You can charge and attack, you can't move and attack.

>the equivalent of 3e's Pounce
I don't know what that is, nor do I care: 3e is off-topic.

>>96249888
>You need to charge to do be able to attack: With normal movement you can't attack in the same round.
Source your claims.

>>96249958
>I don't know what that is, nor do I care
I do tho, because OSR is advertised as simpler but it has the same Figher-limiting trappings.
It's all bullshit.

>>96249960
Picrel.

>>96249965
>OSR is advertised as simpler
On plebbit, DTRPG, and by YouTube ecelebs, perhaps. Not here. We're not advertising anything because we're not selling anything.

>It's all bullshit.
Cool, play 3e then, nobody gives a fuck.

>>96250021
>AD&D
Safely disregarded.

>>96250043
>OSR
>But not the DMG
Fuck back off to plebbit.

>>96250043
Based.
Play 3LBB OD&D.

>>96250059
>Play 3LBB OD&D.
You're presuming he can understand Chainmail.

>>96250021
>We
All the three of you? This thread is dead because any discussion is impossible.
The current one is a GOOD discussion, relatively speaking, because while you are being disingenuous at least you discussed the rules.
>Cool
So you confirm the Fighter is unplayable shit in OSR too?
Thanks.

Another 2e fag tactic? Or is this a new troll?

>>96250106
In OSR, enemies can move (a charge is a special movement, but is a movement) and deliver multiple attacks, while a Fighter with multiple attacks is still limited to one.

Do you agree with the above, yes or no?

Please share some slightly-subversive things you have encountered in games or run yourself. I'm just looking for inspiration. It doesn't need to be something out-of-this-world crazy, just interesting developments like:
>The hags might not be mindlessly evil because of [reason]
>The goblins in the goblin cave have been slaughtered by an unknown enemy, corpses everywhere

I'm running a fairly generic fantasy world and feel like I need ideas that aren't as generic as, "Deal with goblins, rescue the daughters, reclaim the magical axe" etc.

>>96250053
>OSR is only AD&D, and nothing else
When playing B/X or OD&D, consulting some other game's DMG should b optional, especially when this is the kind of advice it gives.
My last reply to you, since you're clearly a troll no better than that Deep One in denial.

>>96249697
>Moving and attacking in the same round is disallowed in OD&D, AD&D, and B/X.
I'll grant you AD&D, and OD&D purely on the technicality that they didn't bother explaining how the hell combat was supposed to work anyway. But where does it say in B/X that you can't move and attack at the same time?

>>96250128
>The bandits are actually mercenaries that the local lord didn't have the money to pay.
>The town is completely crime-free. The reason is that a Lawful Neutral artifact is pacifying criminal activity.
>The dungeon is inhabited by animated dead (skeletons and zombies), but they're not aggressive: They carry out menial tasks like small repairs and clean up. They are "armed" with brooms, buckets, hammers, saws, and other tools. The local monsters know this and ignore them, and sometimes can be encountered in the same room, ignoring the skeletons while they repair a door that was broken by a recent adventuring party.
>The boring anti-quest. A big reward for a character who will water all the plants in the Wizard's tower every day for a whole year. (Requires 1:1 time.)

subversive twist: the big Lawful Church in your setting actually turns out to be pretty good guys, and isn't secretly worshipping demons, or trying to bring about "order" by destroying the world, or anything like that

>>96250128
>>96250378
The city sewers are well-maintained, free of monsters, and have no secret passages.

>>96250106
Judging by the fact that he's janitor-assisted, he's probably the latest sockpuppet.

>>96240587
This past session was mostly a breather as we redistributed all of what we found from our successful final delve of an abandoned fort and made the long trek from our camp back to town with a child we found down there in tow.
One of our PCs had been hit by a poison dart last session so he and another member raced ahead back to town in hope of a cure but passed shortly after arriving.
We have some follow up and a handful of leads on where to head next

>>96186926
Something I was lighting thinking about was a different kind of initiative rather than individual or group. one that kind of splits the difference and tries to get at people coordinating when in close proximity: space based initiative.

so if 3 people are within say 20 ft, they act on the same initiative, but your thief 30 ft away can act on thier own separate initiative. also, if you have a blob on npc archaer they might all go at once,vthen the bloob of npc swordsmen go at once, instead of all together.

that way you will usually have like 3-5 initiatives in an encounter which i think is managable AND dynamic.

>>96186926
If I wanted to do one of those daily where would you post those? In on a blogspot blog? What do you use to draw dungeons locally on the desktop?

>>96186918 (OP)

Anyone gor the retroclone chart and how they correspond with their dnd version?

>>96250772
>which i think is managable AND dynamic.
Great. Time to test it at your regular table, anon.

>>96250772
Problems may arise when groups split and reform.

>>96249697
>B/X
Incorrect. You can move defensively while "engaged in melee" and the example of play on pg B28 shows PCs moving to form a defensive line in front of Silverleaf before firing ranged weapons. The example of play also shows hobgoblins moving before engaging in melee, and while it's described as "charging," the reader can assume the word is used casually as in the system-language charging can only be done on horseback. Meanwhile. the rules never explicitly state that moving and attacking are disallowed.

>>96250999
Blog is a great spot. Not sure about software to draw dungeons locally but I like Dungeonscrawl, which is a website. I've seen people use the Canvas function on Obsidian to make dungeons, which you don't need internet for.

>>96250220
>But where does it say in B/X that you can't move and attack at the same time?
I've rechecked the rules and I was incorrect, picrel.

>>96251561
>the rules never explicitly state that moving and attacking are disallowed.
They actually explicitly say that it is ALLOWED, picrel.

While I was double checking, I've remembered why I decided to use the AD&D rule even with B/X and then proceeded to forget I had houseruled it in the first place: Without it, the B/X definition of "charge" is quite unsatisfactory for me at least: Only a couple specific monsters can deal double damage while charging, which in turn makes the ability to set the spear mostly pointless: practically nobody charges, ever.

The AD&D rule makes the choice between charging and closing meaningful. But it does require the players to make more detailed action declarations, which is not necessarily ideal for beginners.

Apologies, carry on.

>>96251324
if you are doing per turn initiative it should be pretty intuitive, moreso if you have minis, but true i could see problems if the ranges are vague.
>>96251214
ill have to.

>>96252037
Based integrity anon

>>96194672
>>96216428
Seconded.

Does anyone know where Gygax got the information for Appendix J: Herbs, spices, etc.?

>>96252037
>While I was double checking, I've remembered why I decided to use the AD&D rule even with B/X and then proceeded to forget I had houseruled it in the first place: Without it, the B/X definition of "charge" is quite unsatisfactory for me at least: Only a couple specific monsters can deal double damage while charging, which in turn makes the ability to set the spear mostly pointless: practically nobody charges, ever.
This is the reason why people later came out with "charge doubles movement" or "charge adds to damage, subtracts to AC"
Which is fiddly but is stuff that you find even in modern OSR

>>96253755
>>96252037
The funny thing about charging is that fighting on a warhorse is so obviously superior in BX (2 extra attacks every round, better movement, and another body to soak up damage) that there's no reason not to do it when not in dungeons, and yet mounted combat is barely touched on both in the rulebooks and modules.

>>96253945
>2 extra attacks every round
what? how?

>>96253948
To elaborate I know it's 2 hooves but can you attack alongside your horse, or only one of you two can?
I thought the latter

>>96253948
War horses get two hoof attacks for 1d6 damage. When in melee, both the rider and the horse can attack.

>>96252037
>The AD&D rule makes the choice between charging and closing meaningful
I think this is a good houserule.
And there is already a rule about disengaging so the "move-in" and "move-out" having a sort of symmetry in forcing you to be careful is good even for a beginner.

>>96252037
>>96252774
So... if you have multiple attacks can you close in and attack twice as a Fighter? Or only the Troll (see above) can?

>>96253956
>>96253963
Specifically, the war horse statblock on page X34 has the line "After the first (charging) round, both rider and horse can fight normally"
as a sidenote, I sometimes reflect on how Moldvay in part but Cook in particular are so economical with their language; I love the prosody of Gygax as much as everyone else but the elegance "both rider and horse can fight normally" is so refreshing, especially compared to contemporary conventions where every entity must be referred to along some standard or must be referred to as its Real Proper Name like. Can you imagine if the game came out today the passage would be like "After the first round, when a creature mounted on a War Horse may initiate a Charge, both the mounted creature and the War Horse may choose to take their standard attack actions

>>96253979
PCs don't get multiple attacks in B/X

>>96254023
As a former FF1 speedrunner I say "yes"

>>96254008
I think the all the "B* something" authors, including Frank Mentzer, have a rare gift in conveying the message with great elegance.

>>96254020
>PCs don't get multiple attacks in B/X
I like B/X but I can't decide between this and Race-as-Class as the worst decision that went into its design

>>96254023
My plan to onboard new players is to just start them in media res in a dungeon and hand them a Fighter stat block. If they die, a new Fighter walks through the door a round later presumably from some other poor sod who got thrown in the dungeon. To play the other classes they'll have to actually track down the various groups and do some basic jobs for them and then they can roll up a Thief or Mage or something.

>>96254186
NTA.
I think around level 10-12 a second attack is due (Fighter types only, perhaps Fighter and Dwarf, dunno Halfling, no Elf). No need for any AD&D 3/2 shenanigans.

Race as class... I prefer the AD&D route, but I have to admit that having some combination available to only one race adds a lot of flavor.
I see this also with some OSR say ACKS with those elves or OSE advanced I love the idea of the Gnome being some Thief/Illusionist (more or less).
It also makes some races palatable.

I presume the best compromise is in the middle. Say no Dwarf will ever cast arcane spells, etc.

>>96250128
I have a larger bandit group who are the "legitimate" rulers of a region because the Margrave is looking the other way so long as they send able-bodied men and taxes.
I'm not big on subversion though, often you just get boring times two. Just think of something interesting and pulpy to mix in instead.

>>96254317
I actually don't personally feel that strongly about race-as-class either way. But after they introduced the Thief in Greyhawk, it's crazy to me that B/X decided "nah Halflings are fighters only."
The bigger problem with race as class is in my experience, people generally fall into one of two camps: they either feel "eh I guess I can see the logic, I could take it or leave it" like me, or they absolutely HATE it.

I agree that the ad&d fractional bonus attack stuff isn't the best implementation, but I was more thinking of sweep attacks (make one attack per level vs HD 1 monsters). B/X players think it slows the game down, which is obviously ridiculous.

>>96254424
>B/X players think it slows the game down, which is obviously ridiculous.
I agree with you, it is ridiculous. In case it's the opposite due to how choices and movement work.

>>96254317
>>96254424
>>96254475
I mean, is this about some weird purism?
You can always combine race+class and race-as-class by having races allowing some classes and making separate tables.
So Elven-Fighter is different to Human-Fighter.

>>96254285
I made a random character generator that have lower chances to generate magic-users.
I tell them to generate 10 characters and pick 2, one will be his current character, the other will be benched in town.
The rest become henchmen and mercenaries.

>>96254285
>in media res
in medias res

>If they die, a new Fighter walks through the door a round later
FOEGYG

NEW THREAD

>>96255749
>>96255749
>>96255749

>>96199697
Generally good answer but
>identical in rules
>disambiguated
Pick one. If the copy doesn't contain the same ambiguities as the original then the pair are by definition not identical.

>>96245771
>objectives of the OSR
>>>tonal and mechanical fidelity to Dungeons & Dragons as played in the game's first decade

>their anecdotal experiences
This is how we played in the first decade
>are not relevant

>>96256064
>If the copy doesn't contain the same ambiguities as the original then the pair are by definition not identical.
Agree only in part. If what you have in mind is OD&D, then sure: A "faithful" retroclone of OD&D is essentially impossible because there is a very high degree of built-in ambiguity and incompleteness that is often very intentional, and rewording ambiguous text faithfully is borderline impossible

When it comes to B/X and AD&D, however:

Sometimes the rules are ambiguous on page XX but clarified on page YY.

Other times, the rules are presented in the wrong section. For example, here >>96252037 the rule that says that you can move and melee in the same round is presented in the section on missile fire.

Other times yet, rules are hidden inside examples.

Lastly, sometimes rules were errata'd or clarified in Dragon Magazine.

These are all cases in which there is some degree of ambiguity, but that ambiguity can (arguably should) be resolved while staying faithful to the intent of the original.

>>96256122
By the creators, and their close associates. Not Joe Schmo who looked at Gygax one time. Certainly not someone who misread LBB when they were 10 and ended up playing proto 3e.

>>96245673
I agree that Chainmail is cool

>>96253289
Probably the cooking section of his local library.
>>96254361
>de facto power in a region
>recognised by the de jure powers in the region
Anon that's not a 'legitimate' that's just regular legitimate.