Thread 96342662

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:
>>96297535

>Thread Question
What was the largest party you've ever run in a dungeon? What's the largest you feel comfortable running? PCs + Henchmen count, not player count.

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

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

newfag here

>>96342668
Thank you for digging up the noob guide! This will help me.
I have some questions about it.
>No or minimal character backstories. All new characters share the desire to become rich and powerful. The XP-for-gold rule is all the drive PCs need as motivation for joining an adventuring party. Don't make a backstory that's more interesting than the adventure to follow.
>No character customisation options, or very minimal ones at the most. Players should not invest a significant part of their energy and expectations on character customisation. Focus instead on offering players real freedom when it comes to sandbox play.
What's wrong with backstroies and customization? Isn't it interesting to list WHY your character is greedy and power-hungry? And for customization, isn't class selection customization?

>>96342705
>Don't impose missions
While sandbox play is the ideal, it is entirely kosher for OSR to force the first dungeon to be a mission the players are tied to. See: B2, B3, B4, etc.
Though I do like to make a small "open world" to accompany the trek to the dungeon.

>>96342705
>What's wrong with backstroies and customization?
Make the game be about the world, not about the characters. Particularly if you're playing with people who come from later editions of D&D, it's important to set the tone by making it immediately clear that this is a different game with a different focus.

>Isn't it interesting to list WHY your character is greedy and power-hungry?
"Don't make a backstory that's more interesting than the adventure to follow."
The characters' backstories are what happens to them on the first two or three levels.

>isn't class selection customization?
Falls under "very minimal ones at the most"

>>96342733
>it is entirely kosher for OSR to force the first dungeon to be a mission the players are tied to
Sure, there can be reasons to do that, e.g. like you say if you're playing with newbies for the first time. Or if you have some other kind of constraint, such as "I need to playtest this adventure that I want to publish", that can go as well. But like you say it's not ideal.

I wonder how long it will take before that one poster with an extremely characteristic writing style starts giving people angry nonsense replies

>>96342733
Someone post the picture of the 5e character at the beginning and end of the single-party campaign vs the O/A/B/X/D&D character at the beginning and end of his career.

>>96342784
Picrel.

>>96342705
> don't homebrew
I prefer to play the role of Gary and toy with systems instead of being a slop consumer.
Anyway good advice in general.

>>96342705
Like a lot of general rules, these are ... general, and can be easily twisted into harder core than thou dogma.

For example, no backstories doesn't necessary mean no land of birth, no broad interests, no character quirks. There's nothing wrong with saying "my dude was a Bossonian archer and now he's out on his own and by the way he hates witches and is inclined to mercy--okay, let's get playing".

When OSR games bitch about backstory, it's more of the "here's a significant amount of material (often painfully cliched) that I expect the GM to read and know, which shapes my expectations of the kind of content I expect to be provided for me regardless of what the GM has prepared, and which undoubtedly clashes with the equally elaborate and self-serving backstories of the rest of the party, and which makes me overly inclined to attachment to the character and thus salty when Sir Epic of Backstory is killed by a random pit two adventures in".

The overwhelming focus should be on the game about to be played, not the imagined canon in your head about what happened before it started.

>>96342830
Thank you! That makes sense. Now I get it.

>>96342803
I think the key point is "a game you never even tried." Shitbrew to your heart's content but until you're well acquainted with the space if not the system you should probably give the system a go on its own merits and then change stuff you actually didn't enjoy rather than just stuff you didn't think you'd like.

>>96342799
That pic is overdone at this point. The character arc comparison one, I mean, not picrel which is evergreen.

>>96342830
Very well put. It's a bit long but I vote for it to be added to the guide as a clarification.

How are your adventures going?

>>96343830
Great fun. The gang just fucked up some bugbears and a couple of heavily-plated firbolgs who were charming purple worms to go on an attack against a friendly village. The two worms were freed once the bugbear shaman was ganked and went on a rampage. Now the party is getting ready to head "off the map" into the lands of demon worshippers and find the masters behind all this.

Is OSE or shadowdark a good place to start my journey into the OSR, or do you guys have some other recommendations?

>>96343950
To start? OSE is very legible in terms of rules, but won't actually teach you how to play: you need both the rules and an understanding of the intent behind them to actually play an old-school game. If you're really interested in OSE, I'd get both it and B/X, because OSE cuts all the material about teaching you the game in its effort to be an extremely learnable game.

Shadowdark is NuSR stuff of the sort the thread avoids.

Depending on how serious you are / willing to have a higher learning curve, I'd suggest AD&D (the 1st edition). Even if you stick to B/X of some form, everyone should read the AD&D DMG at some point.

>group complains about gendered classes in ACKS
Like I get it but it's not that big of a deal just play sometime else. Why do you want to play a seductive male class?

>>96342705
The noob guide is a cringey shitfest filled with bad advice. Don't take it too much too heart, or you'll end up like the worst people here.

>>96343979
>Shadowdark is NuSR stuff of the sort the thread avoids.
Can't you stick to speaking for yourself instead of trying to speak for everyone else?

>>96343950
OSE is easy to use and learn, but it's kind of boring. It's paradoxical in that sense, where you have to be fairly confident as a GM to be able to build up content for it in order to use it.

Shadowdark is a weird game. It almost borders on being a parody of OSR, by putting heavy emphasis on things even people back in the day were not all huge fans of. It has a lot of style and a voice to it, but it's more angled to people who don't think the OSR is SERIOUS BUSINESS and instead think Class as Race/Gold as XP/Torch Fetization is quirky and cool.

It's a hipster game. Makes it easy for 5e players to transition into it.

>>96343830
THEY
FOUND
THE SECRET
TUNNELS
UNDERNEATH
THE
T A V E R N !
And what lies down there is going to kill us all, life is so sweet.

>>96343950
Shadowdark's an okay game to start RPGs in general, but if you're already familiar with the hobby you're better off with OSE.

>>96344077
Naw, I'm good speaking the thread consensus. Topic-shift somewhere else, tourist.

>>96344092

Start with Dragonslayer desu. It's made by a right-winger. That isn't a criticism.

>>96341719
Thanks! Can someone recommend a good alternative to Chainmail for AD&D?

>>96344232

Hellmarch is just chainmail but cleaned up>>96344225

>>96342705
>>96342799

>>96344225
dragonslayer's just meh
like it's really bland

https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/96186918/#96205115
Here you go, anon.

>>96343950
>OSE
Kiddie D&D
>shadowdark
Kiddie 5e
>AD&D
TRVE D&D

Is the above a satisfying answer?

Whatever happened with that Giantlands game? I see that Gygax jr passed away a couple months ago.

>>96342799
Needs to be updated

>>96343830
You mean our
Fantasy
Adventure
Games
Aka, FAGs?

>>96344448
"Everybody knows you never go full AD&D"

>>96343950
Shadowdark isn't OSR, and you are a troll. >>96344033
Still waiting to see your guide. >>96344448
Ad&d is the incel system. Try ODD if you want to be a big boy.

>>96344505
Why OD&D over AD&D though?

>>96344533
Less bloat.

>>96344232
Why would you need an "alternative" to Chainmail in AD&D? The DMG and PHB already have rules for mass combat (figure scaling rules are mentioned in passing in the PHB assuming everybody knows them, they're explained in the n00b guide for non-wargamers) and sieges (a whole section of the DMG, the word "siege" appears fifty times throughout the book).

It even has all the "duelling" rules from Chainmail, expanded to distinguish between weapon speed factor and weapon length, which are just one metric in Chainmail.

The alternative to Chainmail in AD&D is AD&D itself. Now it you WANT to use stuff from Chainmail in AD&D, you certainly CAN. But you don't NEED to.

>>96344225
>>96344428
Dragonslayer has a few issues, we discussed it last thread:
>>96318574

>>96344533
The relationship between OD&D and AD&D is like the one between Judaism and Christianity: They derive from the same core ideas, but AD&D worshipers think AD&D subsumes OD&D and fulfills what was promised in it, while OD&D believers deny AD&D's divine nature. However, unlike Judaism/Christianity, Gygax is both the Moses of the Old Testament and the Jesus of the New Testament.

No, I don't actually know what "subsumes" means, I just think it sounds cool, nor do I know how many ls go in the words fulfil and skillful.

>>96344495
This one isn't nearly as good.

>>96343950
I would say no. Both are unimpressive marketing attempts and they don't provide a solid ground for learning it.
My personal recommendations would be the either the Original 3LBB OD&D or AD&D 1E simply because they are where people who've played a while usually end-up after they hit up against the flaws of the other versions.
The former is the simpler system but also more unfinished and assume a whole lot more work on the part of the DM, a bit more of a do-it-yourself system.
The latter is the more complete package that requires you to read a bit more upfront. (around 338 pages combined between the PHB + DMG although a lot of that is tables you can just skim over)

My personal recommendation would be AD&D 1E with OD&D as something you can return to later when you're actually skilled enough to run a lighter game well.
Why 1E then?
Well for one it's the D&D system that holds up best over long-term campaign play, it can actually handle high level player characters as well as it can low level ones.
It has the best DMG out of any system out there, to the point that we always recommend reading it even if you're running something else. (quite a lot of it is commentary on the PHB sections as well so to get the most out of it you'd end up reading the AD&D PHB to boot)
It's the one with all the D&D cultural touchmarks in their original unexpurgated form like the drow, demons, devils, all the classic magic items and classes.
It's broadly compatible with everything released by the TSR-era D&D so you can run Basic modules only by bumping up the treasure quotas a good bit. (though personally I would ignore everything made after 1984 except the cool settings like Dark Sun)
It also has some very, very good advice for running it coming out the CAG podcast crowd.
There's a new edition of OSRIC coming out that's meant to teach AD&D 1E to newcomers specifically that's looking to be very good.
Cont in the next post.

>>96344863
So what are the negatives?
Mainly that some certain parts of the AD&D system as written is obtuse and can lead to bad interpretations that run like shit on the actual tabletop. Namely initative.
That's where OSRIC (or if you're more autistic then going on Dragonsfoot and reading Gary's own clarifications) of things like how Initiative should be handled in the best way for actual play.

So in short my personal recommendation would be AD&D 1E and looking over OSRIC as well for simpler explanations of things like Initative.
Optional stuff like listening to the grogs at the Classic Adventure Game podcast describe how they'd run a game helps as well. They give some good recommendations about pacing and only running as much of AD&D 1E as you can reliably do fast-paced on the table, which is what most people here would tell you as well. (e.g. if you need to start looking things up extensively during the game to use Weapon vs Armor Class then don't use that system for now)
What's good about that is that you pretty much don't need anything else and you're set, even if you veer off into other D&D games later you have an idea of what the full thing should be like.
>>96344724
A lot of the AD&D 1E crowd runs OD&D as well. It's moreso the osrg discord that meme a bit about it. (if you run OD&D with everything and don't stick to 3LBB it pretty much turns into AD&D-lite)
Personally I just think that if you're coming from a newer system going to OD&D can veer you into running it like the newer game rather than something that fits OD&D but your mileage may vary obviously.

>>96344863
>>96344888
>three my personal recommendations managhed to sneak in there
Hah, well at least they basically say the same thing.

>>96344863
>>96344888
Pretty nice and sensible post. I'm still not fully convinced AD&D is somehow better at long campaigns than the usual mix of OSE+DMG+ACKS most B/X DMs end up running around here, but backed OSRIC 3 so maybe I'll end up going down the AD&D path as well, who knows.

Used Nebulith to prepare a oneshot that I'll run this Saturday, as expected the mechanical aspect is shacky (a dungeon lacks clear entrances, classes don't have minimum hp unlike their base game counterparts, a few print errors, the encountes seem really hard for low level parties) but I really like the idea and I want to see if it's actually fun to play. I'll report back

>>96345017
>I'm still not fully convinced AD&D is somehow better at long campaigns than the usual mix of OSE+DMG+ACKS most B/X DMs end up running around here
I'm not sure if it's true it's actually most people run here, perhaps it's the most vocal of the posters. But they're all on a based continuum. Picrel.

>>96345017
>I'm still not fully convinced AD&D is somehow better at long campaigns
What do you need for your TTRPG system to be suitable for long campaigns then?

>>96345017
I don't really have anything against B/X, I used to play it a fair bit, but I feel it starts to strain a bit at the seams around level 4-5 and you start needing to steal heavily from 1E or other sources to get it to run after that and let the players have enough magic items and to go on more spectacular otherplanar adventures.
Personally I figured at that point I might as well run AD&D. (OD&D meanwhile is sort of built for the kind of people who want to do that from the beginning and the spells are more powerful and vague from the start)
The reason I said not OSE isn't because of the system itself but more because it doesn't have all the good beginners explanations and advice you find in actual original Moldvay B/X so you can be really mislead by the OSE core books.

Anyone play with the OSE Advanced classes?
How do they hold up?

>>96345213
Long term campaign roughly means domain play, magic research, maybe aging? and even that I think is kind of optional (ie. you can go full BECMI and allow players to discard their level 9 stronghold and become a paladin or try to become immortals). My point is that if you have the DMG and a few tables from ACKS you're not missing all that much from AD&D when it comes to long term campaigns. I question the common wisdom of "graduating" to AD&D once your B/X campaign goes beyond 50 sessions.

>>96345281
No definitely, OSE is shit at introducing newbs to B/X. 100% agree. Nothing against your arguments there.

>>96344077
>, by putting heavy emphasis on things even people back in the day were not all huge fans of.
like what?

>>96345450
Not quoted but for me personally long-term campaign play means advancement into being hardier adventurers with way more magic items and spells, bigger and worse monsters, dealing more important NPCs on an even keel, stakes and otherplanar adventuring like going to the elemental plane of fire. (the real one on the back of the 1E DMG not the shitty Manual of the Planes one)
Domain play and stuff like that is an optional extra and magic research is stuff we'd treat as downtime, or between sessions, acts.
This is where I feel most that other systems aren't as well-supported (even the ones that claim to be and act like 10th level adventuring is normal in the core books), B/X is kinda skinflint at times when it comes to money and magic, PCs don't advance for as long and it makes it harder to throw worse monsters and other planes imo.
AD&D manages to handle both out of the box without much issue (some minor issues with certain optional classes aside), which I find is fairly rare in RPGs in general.

>>96345281
What did you steal from AD&D?

>>96345593
It's been like ten years but the obvious thing that come to mind was further PC advancement like fighters increasing to-hit, more spells, monsters with more special abilities, magic items and some of the treasure tables from the DMG and I think I might have stolen some rules from UA like weapon mastery along with some early OSR stuff like the B/X companion rules and then after running it for a while got frustrated with wrangling the changes before I moved on to trying other things eventually sticking to 1E.

>>96345495
Gold as XP, Race as Class, the sort of things that even in its first few years D&D provided alternatives for because people kept complaining about them.

>>96342705
>You don't need to read (alleged) retroclones.
Welp, too late for that. I already have OSE and couple of modules for it

>>96344002
What kind of dumb faggot includes a "seductive" class to begin with.

>>96344002
What, you don't want to play as a male prostitute in a dying empire? It's all the rage these days. You could start up a brothel bastion.

>>96345692
Thanks for the insight. I often feel like the arguments for going to AD&D or stealing from it lack concrete cases of what material is worth switching over/stealing from. You provided me with good examples.

Still sticking to my B/X shitbrew (because it's my little pet project) but I'm starting to see more in AD&D than a bunch of exhausting rules.

What are some good "All-in-One" campaigns in a single book or premade hex-map areas?

>>96343387
Seconded.

>>96346260
>"All-in-One" campaigns in a single book
No such thing. A campaign is a living thing that you have to keep breathing life into, with no end to it. There's good things you can incorporate as a seed, but you'll need to keep expanding your world as players keep exploring it and messing with it.

>premade hex-map areas?
Nothing comes close to Wilderlands of High Fantasy.

OD&D's implied setting, with the reinterpreted map from Outdoor Survival, is criminally underrated. The Gillespieverse uses the same map, but his dungeons look better than they play.

Dolmenwood could have been good, but it turned into Disneywood. You could dump it in a corner of your campaign, but unlike all the other ones the kind of love this one needs is in removing shit from it more than adding to it.

Mike's World makes for a weird area around the Keep on the Borderlands. Very inspired, but rather bare bones, and with stupid rules for movement, inherited from B2, where they were a typo in all likelihood. Easily fixed. Some people swear by Carcosa (by the same author), but it doesn't click for me.

Melan's two settings (Fomalhaut and whatever the fuck the other one's called, not the Swiss one) are worth checking out, and so is Robert S. Conley's one. I think it's being kickstarted? Either way, both are broadly compatible with Wilderlands of High Fantasy, since they started off as campaigns in there.

Honourable mention for Gygax' own Greyhawk (the 2+1 publications before he left TSR).

The Known World was kinda okay but then it turned into a faggoty mess as it started to be worked on as Mystarda.

Appendix B, Appendix C, and Wilderness Hexplore combined are the best setting of the list. You could even steal some of the encounter generators from ACKS from it: its classification by encounter rarity is GOOD, and its location-based encounters pretty nice a well.

>>96345900
OSE is perfectly fine, the newbie guide does recommend it for a very good reason. Do listen to the other anons here tho and try to read the original B/X if only because Moldvay was amazing at explaining the rules to noobs.

>>96344002
>>96345937
>>96345942
As someone who most probably shares a few fetishes (slave girls/harems) with Macris all I'm going to say is... let my nigga cook.

>>96346504
Can you put on a trip so I can filter any future posts you make?

I see a lot of people recommend B/X. What about BECMI, does that just go further than most people care to?

>>96346813
>What about BECMI
This question is asked very frequently here, which is why the osrg guide has a section on it.

>>96346881
Why is everything in your guide written to be as unhelpful as possible?

>>96346813
B/X (Basic/Expert) and BECMI (Basic/Expert/Companion/Masters/Immortals) are 99% identical as far as the Basic and Expert parts are concerned. The Companion books of BECMI have some semi-useful material, but are not really needed for new DMs.

>>96346949
As always, you whine in a vague handwavy way and the guide continues to be correct. He doesn't say anything there that isn't accurate.

>>96346998
When people talk B/X, they're talking Moldvay.

>>96346998
It's not helpful in any real way, probably because the question itself is pretty stupid and isn't actually what people frequently ask about or even what was just asked.
>vague handwavey way
How much more direct can "it's not helpful at all" do you want? It'd need to be at least semi-helpful for me to bother going "oh, this is information someone might actually want, the rest is shit", but it's really just shit.

>>96342830
>>96342837
>>96343387
>>96346345
Yeah, clear and wise words. Added it in, I think it improves the section substantially. We're now at v2.11.

>>96342830
OK but how is my gm supposed to know about my rad transfem's lifetime goal of getting train'd by orc BVLLS?

>>96347416
In Soviet OSR the traps trigger you.

>>96347489
AD&D but everyone is a femboy or a butch

Are the B/X essentials books good or should I just grab the originals?

>>96347666
B/X Essentials is just an earlier, worse version of OSE-Classic.

>>96346813
I just feel Mentzer's stuff is both a bit bland and bloated and i'm not impressed with what he adds like making the thief worse by dividing it out across 36 levels. The intro CYOA is okay.

>Have a big hexmap
>It has a bunch of large dungeons on it, some of which are published modules
>Many of those published modules have notes in some areas that are like, "Connect this to another area of the DMs design" or whatnot
>"That would be a cool idea to connect all these in a massive network of underground tunnels! It'd be so easy!"
This shit is far more complicated than I first expected... I thought it would just be a matter of drawing lines between dungeons on the overworld map, but there's so many other things to take into consideration now...

>>96347913
That's basically what Rappan Athuk is. (Not recommending it, I'm not too much of a fan.)

>>96346949
>>96347190
I don't understand these complaints about the noob guide. Everything in the excerpt anon posted is basically correct, and it's arguably less opinionated than the average post on /osrg/. You really are just one person making unsubstantial complaints. When called out on the lack of substance, you instead counter that the guide itself lacks substance, but it fuckin lists examples of what may or may not be useful in each version of Mentzer's Expert book.

If you're gonna be a sperg can you at least be productive while you're at it?

>>96348398
You really need to fuck off with your whole "my opinions are everyone's and everyone else's opinions belong to one person" faggotry already.

And, how many different ways can "it's not helpful in the slightest, particularly for a n00b" do you need to be said to you? Are you actually retarded? Dense walls of information that tell a person nothing, especially someone new to OSR, with opinionated nonsense sprinkled throughout, and you're so proud of your work?

You really are so far up your ass, especially with your bullshit attempts to dismiss any criticism via your slimy little antics.

>>96348398
>I don't understand these complaints about the noob guide.
What's hard to understand?
Put yourself in the shoes of a person who's curious about OSR but genuinely doesn't know anything about it. Doesn't even know the difference between Basic, B/X, and BECMI.
Your guide isn't helping them. Maybe someone who understands OSRs enough pick through what you're saying can extract a drop of knowledge, but only with considerable more effort than anyone can reasonably be expected to put in.
You write like the worst rule books. You don't understand how to organize information, and you don't understand what information is important. When someone asks whether they should try BECMI over B/X, going over some fairly random nuances of difference between the two, with these differences rendered down to "they're a matter of preference", you've really just wasted their time.
You're something of an expert on that. Your guide is a waste of time, and you always try to bait people into wasting their time explaining obvious things to you by either pretending or just being an idiot.

>>96348557
>>96348656
Just the worst possible samefagging, every goddamn time.

No matter how much you whine, 2efag, you're not going to convince anyone. The guide is fine, and you're retarded. Take your meds and fuck off.

>>96348398
LPT: There's a specific person with a very recognisable posting style, he's been active here for a long time and most of us regulars have learnt to identify him. Most of us have come to the realisation that engaging with him will only make this general worse for everybody.

It's generally a better strategy to stay on topic by providing your own constructive opinions about whatever is being discussed by replying to other Anons.

>>96348398
>it's arguably less opinionated than the average post on /osrg/
That's thanks to how it was put together. The earliest versions were more opinionated, divisive, and less accurate than the current ones.

Thing is, we have different groups here with different preferred play styles, with OD&D, AD&D, and B/X being the main play cultures, and as a consequences we have different Anons favouring different approaches: Even when it comes to Anons who play AD&D, there's some disagreement on whether to start with AD&D directly or go through B/X first.

The guide attempts to find a reasonably broad consensus on most topics, and it does it by adapting and combining good comments and feedback from multiple different Anons.

For instance, while it does promote the "B/X first" approach, it also gives some basic information on how to get started with AD&D or OD&D instead. And in any case it tries to focus on the common core mechanics and play philosophy that are shared by all three editions, when played according to an Arnesonian / Gygaxian style.

Another example: The sections on how to get started with OD&D, with the suggestion to look up Compleat Chainmail and Greyharp rather than some of the more popular retroclones, were adapted from comments made by Anons who actively play OD&D.

Similarly, the section on BECMI was revised by someone who used to play BECMI before moving "back" to B/X and AD&D, and who still uses some of the BECMI rules.

Is the guide perfect? Far from it. But it's good enough for our purposes. And whenever actual constructive good-faith criticism has been made, it was always taken into account reasonably fast. By now, we've had multiple Anons say they got started with it and it was helpful for them.

>>96348697
>more "my opinions are everyone's and everyone else's opinions belong to one person" faggotry because he was just buttfucked

You really need to fuck off from here already.

>>96348829
Yes, incidents like >>96347369 have happened many times over the course of the guide's creation. Something is said, people find it useful, it gets added.

>>96348829
>The guide attempts to find a reasonably broad consensus on most topics,
No, it really doesn't. It jumps between being schizophrenic (when the author doesn't care and just throws opinions together) and autistic (when the author does care and needs to have his opinion go over everyone else's).

It having started off "more opinionated" (ie. raw propaganda) is likely why the foundation and structure is so bad. It may be good for YOUR purposes, which is to try and indoctrinate people into an incredibly close-minded and innacurate understanding of OSR, but it's far from actually being helpful to new people and is even the opposite. I genuinely feel bad for the people who were duped by you into thinking you helped them.

What do you think?
FOE or OSR (FAG)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ-ehbVQYxI

>>96348961
Hard to tell without knowing how he actually plays. They show a bunch of 2e splatbooks, which is bad, but then he says he has homebrewed it heavily, which may have salvaged it or made it even worse.

Even if their style is different from mine, I'm very glad for them that they've having fun for such a long time.

>>96348829
The original was MORE opionated? How?
It's all heavily slanted towards the kind of grognard style of play that certain people try to promote so hard while giving this general a bad name.
Right from the first page, it's flat out wrong about what the OSR is, and even starts by complaining about the fact that the wider OSR community disagrees with your far more narrow view.
The "defining procedures" section that follows is more of that nonsense, with some incredibly laughable bullshit to try and justify why the sacred cows you personally adhere to are so special to you, when many of them are far from fundamental and some (like XP for gold and 'slow exploration) don't add anything particularly positive and come with enough detriments that many groups have sought alternatives even as far back as Gygax's own groups in the 1970's.
It's advice is just "start with b/x and be a complete ass", and that's how you make people either give up on OSR or become insufferable grognards. There are so many more options and ways to start and play OSR, while your guide is just 5% "look, i guess i'll tell you how to start, and you should start it my way" and 95% "why I hate everyone who does things differently."

>>96348704
The guy who is always trying to make a boogeyman out of everyone he disagrees with is a real shithead.
Easy way to identify his style. He'll always try to dodge and distract with his boogeyman bullshit, kinda like... oh god, it's you!

>>96348995
https://thegamednd.com/the-rules/

Very interesting.
On one hand they seem to go the 4e way with really high levels.
On the other hand is very tone down to avoid characters past 10 level owning the game.
Also some custom mechanics:

> Over time, I absorbed rules that I liked from other game systems or I developed my own. While I don’t intend to lay out my entire rule system here, I will offer some examples of some of my rules. One example is the way we do stance and being knocked down. A character’s stance (ability to remain standing when hit in combat) is a fraction and a 10d is rolled to determine if he/she falls or remains standing. For example, a 1st-level wizard begins with a stance of 1/2. This means that if the wizard is hit for 10 hp of damage, he/she will fall on a roll of 1-5 on a 10d. If the wizard is hit for 16 hp of damage, he/she will fall on a roll of 1-8 on a 10d. A character is always down (and stunned) on a stance roll of 1 and is always up on a stance roll of 10. Stance increases with level changes or time training, from 1/2 to 1/3 to 1/4 etc.

>>96349087
Seems like it just slows combat down dramatically without much to show for it. The kind of rules I'm very wary of because its easy to let them overrun a game.

>>96349087
eww
worse than I thought

>>96349123
Which is weird because one of the points he makes is to have very fast combat to keep the game moving fast.

>>96348083
>>96347913
From what I'm understanding Megadungeons are great... But Mega-Megadungeons are an unrealistic expectation to put on yourself as a GM or on your group of players.

>>96348996
>XP for gold [...] don't add anything particularly positive
You shut your whore mouth. XP for gold is the best thing about osr and the only downside is the monetary inflation that it would cause in a setting.

>>96344820
Never said it was, feel free to post yours!

>>96349218
There's lots of downsides.
Not every encounter having treasure leads to odd XP distribution. While it's supposed to average out in the end, it doesn't neccesarily do so.
It forces characters that might only care about personal growth to also have to care about material wealth.
Divorcing XP from Gold offers a GM more flexibility and the players more freedom, since they don't have to prioritize gold extraction and can instead make choice based on whether they seek challenges or whether they just want gold.
XP for gold does have several benefits, but it also comes wirh drawbacks. I think the worst one is that it's not intuitive and often feels almost arbitrary, since tying XP to just one thing will often feel weird as it shapes the game.
XP only for monsters killed? Game gets very stabby. Players will be shaped to only care about killing things.
XP only for princesses saved? Game gets very silly, as captured princesses have to dot the land.
XP only for gold retrieved? Game gets quite greedy, treasure becomes the one-all-be-all, and lots of encounters will just be a net negative.
XP for milestones reached? Game gets gay, players start trying to lick your balls all the time.

>>96349358
>It forces characters that might only care about personal growth to also have to care about material wealth.
You're playing a game about going into dungeons and slaying dragons. If what you're doing doesn't involve gold then it's not high stakes enough for real growth.
>can instead make choice based on whether they seek challenges or whether they just want gold.
It's not really a challenge if the threat is incapable of having a hoard of wealth that can be obtained by defeating them.
>XP only for monsters killed? Game gets very stabby. Players will be shaped to only care about killing things.
>XP only for princesses saved? Game gets very silly, as captured princesses have to dot the land.
>XP only for gold retrieved? Game gets quite greedy, treasure becomes the one-all-be-all, and lots of encounters will just be a net negative.
>XP for milestones reached? Game gets gay, players start trying to lick your balls all the time.
Of all the things you listed, XP for treasure interferes with the core game conceit the least. Even if your character isn't motivated directly by wealth, if their goal isn't made substantially easier by having money to throw around your character is overwrought or underdeveloped. What do they do after the accomplish their goal? Having a shit ton of wealth ever not a good thing unless your character has a life long vow of poverty.

>>96349383
Or you can do something like award XP based on overcoming challenges, ie. gaining experience, and let players love gold for its own sake and not because their character growth is tied to it.

Or XP based on how many hexes/miles/rooms they either reach/explore/clear out. Really encourage players to move.
Or XP for checklists, which tends to suck complete ass since it makes players spend most of their time guessing what the DM is thinking, but does a great job of emulating early tournament play and is actually sort of what AD&D was built towards.

There's options for different groups. XP for gold has strengths and weaknesses, and I'm going to have to put it firmly in the "optional" category rather than the "required' category.

>>96348557
>You really need to fuck off with your whole "my opinions are everyone's and everyone else's opinions belong to one person" faggotry already.
But you literally are just one person? I mean, you even phrase this exact complaint effectively identically every time.

I don't understand how you can possibly even expect anybody to buy this shit.

>>96349571
If you don't want people telling you to stop derailing threads into boogeyman nonsense, stop doing that.
You keep doing it, and then half the thread gets deleted.

>>96349594
>muh boogeyman
See? You're doing it again. Your vocabulary and argumentation are so limited that a toddler could pluck you out.

>>96349627
I really doubt this is the first time you're encountering that term on this board.
I'm doubting it's the first time you've been accused of such either.

>>96343950
B/X (Moldvay) is widely agreed upon to be the best introduction to old school play. I myself prefer OD&D, but it's terrible at teaching the game if you're going off of the books.

>>96349680
>I really doubt this is the first time you're encountering that term on this board.
Of course not! You, personally, have used it dozens of times before. Nobody else ever does, though.

>>96349735
LBBfag here too and I totally agree. I would never advise anybody to start with OD&D when they have no familiarity with old-school D&D. Brutal, unnecessary and ineffective.

>>96349571
He's mentally ill. The same impulse that makes him post his retarded takes over and over to no reception also makes him think that he really does blend in instead of sticking out like a sore thumb every time he samefags another rant. He's sort of the general's Francis E Dec.

>>96349790
You're only describing yourself.

What's the best way to do the coordinates on a 6 mile subhex grid?

>>96349218
>XP for gold is the best thing about osr
Based and Gygaxpilled.

>>96348829
Also based.

>>96349204
>Megadungeons are great... But Mega-Megadungeons are an unrealistic expectation
Nonsense. There's no such thing as a "mega" dungeon, let alone a "mega mega" dungeon, that's plebbit NuSR talk. There's only lairs and dungeons. Lairs have a set size, dungeons don't: They grow as they get explored, which is why it doesn't make sense to add a prefix to qualify its size. Proper dungeons are effectively infinite.

>B-but what about
Modules are commercial products with a finite page count, so by definition a proper dungeon, being infinite, cannot fit in a module. The best dungeon modules leave multiple passages leading into the unknown for expansion by the DM, e.g. Stonehell.

Some other modules are lairs. For example the G series are three lairs.

Some other modules yet belong to a third category, tournament modules. They're exceptions because, having been written for one-offs, they can get away with being finite in scope while being larger and more varied than lairs.

Last but not least, modules are not necessarily good examples. Gygax himself couldn't wrap his head around the idea that people might want to buy modules. OD&D and AD&D are written with the idea that you will make your own.

>>96349845
Not a spiral, for fuck's sake. Just go by columns, top to bottom and left to right.

Also, don't skip partial hexes on the edge, they need to be described too.

>>96346949
It bears noting that early BE prints, those well before Companion was released, retained more copy pasted mechanisms than the later BE printings which were revised to bring them in line with Companion.

>>96346813
>go further than most people care to
You're probably right. I think most people don't care to slog through the game so long. B/X was going to suffer the same fate if ever it had been expanded into the promised BXC series.

In later years, 20 years later, Mentzer said that 36 levels were too many, 25 would be better. 25 isn't some deeply thought out value, it's just the midway point from 14 to 36 that he came up with for a forum post. He also felt domains should have been less emphasised, some people can just be heroes without becoming lords of domains. Really odd that the guide writer says they meet with his approval.

The Immortal set doesn't feel like D&D. It's very out there. Becoming an immortal was stupid hard. I had a quick look to refresh my memory but if I get things a bit wrong please excuse me
>30th level before you can learn a path to immortality
>three paths involve 5, 10 or 20 years in-game time
>fourth is lose all levels and memory and get to 5th level twice as different classes, then repeat but after you get to 5th you have to solo until 12th
What are you going to do, run two campaigns or tell the rest of your group to take a hike while one guy solos from 7th to 12th? What are you going to do to fill in 20 years of game time?
There's a reason that if you wanted to try an immortal campaign you just made up new characters. Then you said, WTF am I doing? and you went back to normal D&D or Traveller.

>>96346881
The guide should have that rewritten to make it clear that Mentzer didn't write War Machine, that came from Doug Niles and Gary Spiegel.

>>probably never playtested
Hey guide writer, give a credible source or fuck off with that unsubstantiated opinion.

>>96349970
alright I'll redo mine
I saw something about three-axis hex coordinates but they looked confusing and seemed to more often than not require negative numbers. So a simple "000" at the center would get more complicated from there.

>>96349970
Personally I like the spiral from the center because it allows each hex to be keyed with a simgle number instead of wack shit like the three-axis Anon >>96350412 mentions, but those specific hex sheets are still fully cursed because they break the spiral numbering, making it that much less intuitive.

But, overall I think rhombic subhexes are the best tiling, since that leaves no partial tiles.

>>96348996
>>96349358
>>96349479
You're a greasy creep. Go troll another thread please.

>>96349939
>There's only lairs and dungeons.
>Proper dungeons are effectively infinite.
Ah, so you've invented a new term "proper dungeon" which you're insisting is to be treated as identical with dungeon. Trouble is, dungeons can be found in lairs, and lairs can be found in dungeons.

>by definition a proper dungeon, being infinite, cannot fit in a module
kek, no, you're the one with the newspeak problem trying to change established usage. Even Moldvay knew what a dungeon was and that it could fit in a module..
>A dungeon may be designed by the DM, or may be a purchased dungeon, such as the one included in this set (called a dungeon module).

>OD&D and AD&D are written with the idea that you will make your own.
At least you left BX off that list because as quoted Moldvay gave his blessing to dungeon modules.

>Gygax himself couldn't wrap his head around the idea that people might want to buy modules.
Or, you could try writing correct. Straight out of the DMG.
>Various products such as modules, playing aids, and miniature figurines will be most helpful in establishing and maintaining an interesting and exciting campaign.
>Two notable exceptions to this are those the mezzodaemon and nycadaemon which are found in the AD&D module D3, VAULT OF THE DROW (TSR Games, Inc.). If you do not have this module, simply ignore results calling for these monsters and roll again.
Gygax wrote the DMG expecting the DM to have modules and encouraging him to buy more.

>>96349358
There is no "odd XP distribution" with gold-as-XP, each encounter should force players to calculate risks vs. reward and act accordingly. XP as a mechanic is the way the game informs the player of what's the correct way to play, having a "flexible" XP system sends mixed signals to the players, and if every player gains XP in a different way than the others... why even play the game together?

Gold-as-XP is the main pillar of the OSR game loop: players go into the dungeon, they find loot, survive, level up, repeat. You don't need to push them into the dungeon, the system already does that for you. You can ignore all this and award XP for whatever you see fit, but you're missing out here.

>>96350272
>Hey guide writer, give a credible source or fuck off with that unsubstantiated opinion.
Not the guide writer, reconstructing from memory so I might not be 100% accurate. Mentzer admitted on Dragonsfoot that when he was writing BECMI he stopped playtesting because he felt he was so good at writing rules and had such a strong intuition for the game that he didn't need to. This led to people deriding and antagonizing Mentzer, particularly EOTB if I remember correctly. The confrontation eventually led to Mentzer leaving Dragonsfoot, I can't remember if by his own accord or after getting banned. It's all there on the DF forums if you care to search.

It shouldn't even be necessary to have Mentzer's admission, though: That large sections of BECMI were never playtested is really rather obvious.

>>96351215
>Moldvay
This general is about AD&D and OD&D. Not about your B/X homebrew

>>96350272
>>96351343
In this comment, Mentzer comments that at some point he stopped playtesting at TSR because he felt he didn't need to. The timeline he provides, his last RPGA adventures, matches the claim in the osrg guide: His fourth and last published RPGA module, R4 Doc's Island, was published in 1983, while the Companion was released in 1984. So by the time he was writing the Companion, Mentzer had already stopped playtesting because he felt he didn't need to.

>>96351215
>Ah, so you've invented a new term "proper dungeon"
>you're the one with the newspeak problem
I'd love you to find any first decade TSR book using the term "megadungeon".

I'll be waiting.

>Gygax wrote the DMG expecting the DM to have modules and encouraging him to buy more.
It's true that Gygax initially couldn't wrap his head around the idea of a published module, he came around after he saw the commercial success of Judges Guild, which was about the time he started writing for AD&D. The timelines can get a bit mixed up because Gary didn't write the DMG in one go, it is a (mostly) harmonised combination of texts from different years.

The DMG does try to promote modules ($$$) but the bulk of its text is clearly aimed at providing DMs with toolkit and mindset necessary to create their own dungeons independently, which is the assumed default.

>>96349571
nta here
at this point I just read /osrg/ as /DnD pre ADnD2e general in delusion they actually represent the entirety of OSR/
It's ok with me because who the fuck cares if some retarded anons also think they are the final authority on a subject, just like other retarded anons all over this planet

I'm here to just read DnD pre 2e info and that's fine by me
but I put about 0 value in anything that is said here regarding other systems or topics, such as OSR in general

>>96351664
also it's fucking hilarious how closely every discussion in this thread resembles religious disputes
>it is said that Holy G. himself has had a dislike of X, therefore X is blasphemy!
>No! There is a scripture that proves Holy G. to have seen the good side of X, therefore X is approved
>Why does it matter if Prophet M. has stated multiple times ....

>>96351664
>OSR is when mudcore and players keep track of torches
>FATE is now OSR guys!
Get the fuck out

>>96351292
Odd distribution across encounters, not between players.
And I think players can handle "mixed signals" as complex as "you will be rewarded for more than just getting treasure." Players will still go into dungeons, still seek treasure, but can have some more flexibility in their thought process beyond "get gold." I think even you could benefit from learning how to have a bit more flexibility with your thinking.
And calling Gold-as-XP a pillar of the OSR game loop is what leads to something like Shadowdark.

>>96348961

I was impressed until I found out they meet once a year.

Someone explained AD&D 1E segments and Intiative to me, is this accurate?

Assuming no surprise, I narrate what the enemy seems to be gearing up to do, and then the players declare their actions in secret using a macro.
We roll a d6 for each side, and the number rolled is the segment that their actions start on.
Spellcasters start their spell on that segment and finish casting after segments equal to casting time.
Characters with multiple attacks (e.g. fighters with weapon specialization) take their extra attacks on segment 7 if they won initiative,
segment 8 if they didn't.

For surprise, the extra actions are segments. You get 1 attack or 1/5 of your movement per segment.
I rule that when one side fails a surprise check, you get the number on the die in segments,
so a creature that surprises 4 in 6 might get FOUR segments of murder.

>>96352309
Did you forget that D&D is a GAME, you fuck?
XP or, god forbid, levels for "it's been a while since your numbers went up" is a significantly worse system. All it leads to is WotC D&D considerations. Player characters can't die because then they will be permanently behind unless you arbitrarily decide they level up faster.
>but can have some more flexibility in their thought process beyond "get gold."
Again, if they don't require wealth for their goals in any way then it's not a real goal it's just playacting drama slop. If risking life for treasure is incongruent with their goal, you are literally playing the wrong games.
Name (3) character goals in games you've actually played where massive amounts of wealth wouldn't have been useful.

>>96352342
>is this accurate?
No. I know books are scary for zoomers but you need to work on your attention span and read the actual rules instead of having "someone" explain them to you.

>>96352361
You're doing some heavy cart-before-horse thinking here.
Sure, D&D is a game, but the more intuitively it's handled, the better. Caring about gold as gold and experience as experience is just so much more natural than conflating them together, and lets DMs handle both more logically/with more finesse.
I'm also not advocating for milestones either, so no need to pretend I am.
>it's not a real goal it's just playacting drama slop.
I think you might need to calm down. you're trying to meme at me and that's not how actual humans argue.

>>96352489
>Caring about gold as gold and experience as experience is just so much more natural than conflating them together
You don't realize that -because- it's unintuitive and unnatural, it's a better game rule for it because it's not the kind of rule someone would just make up and keep for the sake of it. It obviously had utility for the kind of games that D&D is meant for.
You know what else isn't intuitive? Knights in Chess moving in an L shape, but the game is better for it.

>>96351519
>I'd love you to find any first decade TSR book using the term "megadungeon".
A search on Google Trends seems to confirm that the term only started to be used in the 2000s. Picrel. For what it's worth, it's also my recollection: I'm an oldfag and I'm pretty sure the term didn't exist in the Gary (pbuh) days. I've never found "Megadungeon" to be a very useful term.

>>96352527
All of that is true. I wonder though, do you really need to keep replying to you-know-who? I don't think you do.

>>96352555
>I wonder though, do you really need to keep replying to you-know-who? I don't think you do.
I like to see internet arguments not being about convincing the other party that they are wrong ( that's usually impossible ) but for the audience of the argument to see the different perspectives and reasoning. It's not pointless.

Another merit of xp-for-treasure is that it allows the dm to remain an impartial referee rather than having to making more arbitrary and partial decisions for the players. Without pigeonholing them into monster hunters and murderhoboes that only gaining xp for killing would cause.

>>96352527
>it's not the kind of rule someone would just make up and keep for the sake of it.
It's exactly that though. It's a remnant of a time before the conventions of RPGs had been figured out and even the idea of leveling up hadn't really been ironed out. It's something that feels like it was taken from a war game campaign or board game: using gold/funds to upgrade your units (with a fancy new rank name each step of the way).
I'm not unilaterally opposed to Gold-as-XP, but I don't consider it perfect, and I definitely don't consider it some fundamental cornerstone of utmost importance. Ultimately, it's just a bit of guiding flavor and DMs work around the various inconsistencies and issues without too much trouble, but it's something that's not neccesary and may put too much emphasis on getting treasure above all other considerations, when just getting treasure alone is already a big motivation without intrinsically tying it to character growth.

Has anyone played the adventures written with battlesystem in mind? Are they just a pack of wargame scenarios?

>>96352590
>i like to soapbox for an imaginary audience
Explains a lot about you.
>allows the dm to remain an impartial referee
That's nonsense.
>without pigeonholing
You're pigeonholing your players into being treasure-obsessed munckins.

>>96352758
>Explains a lot about you.
>Imaginary audience
Most users lurk and don't post, anon.
>That's nonsense.
Everyone knowing the game rules up front allows for a more fair game than the dm having to constantly decide how much xp something was worth.
>You're pigeonholing your players into being treasure-obsessed munckins.
-I- am not doing anything. It's just the game rules. Neither does it make them treasure obsessed. A basic counter-exmaple is that magic items don't give xp, but players are still very much interested in acquiring them and often prefer them to treasure/xp.

>>96352834
>Everyone knowing the game rules up front allows for a more fair game than the dm having to constantly decide how much xp something was worth.
Gold as XP is not the only way for XP rules/values to be presented up front.
More importantly, the players are not supposed to know the exactly how gold is determined/where it is allocated, just like they're not supposed to know monster stats. Otherwise, you get metagaming.
In fact, one of the chief problems with Gold as XP is how it encourages metagaming, an inherent issue with various more "abstract" mechanics.
Kind of like how no one thinks twice about sacrificing a knight in chess if it means an advantage, because it's not actually a knight, it's just a piece named as such.

>>96352931
I just like the diegetic zero-to-hero that gold for xp allows for without it being dm fiat just saying "ok you're level 3 now because you did the plot"

>>96353155
Wanna try that again without reducing XP systems into only binary possibilities?

>>96352758
>You're pigeonholing your players into being treasure-obsessed munckins.
You guys, he's doing it again! Say the line! Say it!

>>96352590
>for the audience of the argument to see the different perspectives and reasoning
I'd tend to agree in general, but this discussion has been had a gazillion times both in other spaces and here. It's a well-known fact that fans of 2e, 3e, and 5e oppose XP for gold, I doubt you're writing anything anybody hasn't heard already.

All you're actually doing is encouraging our resident pest to keep imposing his idiot takes on us by giving him attention he doesn't deserve.

>>96354452
Sincerely, fuck off, you faggot drama queen.
No one said anything about being opposed to XP for gold.
Now quit being this general's pest while pretending you can say someone else is the problem.

>>96354582
>No one said anything about being opposed to XP for gold.
lol
lmao even

>>96354710
Acknowledging something has weaknesses or is imperfect is not opposition or condemnation.

>>96352555
Not that anon. I did a search on some sites that deal with dead parts of the net and on Old'aVista I got this https://www.oldavista.com/search?l=english&q=Megadungeon&s=1&search=Search and found nothing on wiby. So you seem to be right about Megadungeon getting started in the 2000s.

>>96351343

Im wondering if that eotb is the same turboaspie who sits around talking in the mythmere discord. He is the most joyless dead-eyed schoolteacher no fun allowed guy there.

>>96351343
Mentzer left dragonsfoot over his failed kickstarter because people kept asking why needed a quarter million for a sourcebook. He threatened to, I guess, add a region in the book called The Dragon's foot which was a home to liars and thieves, something I cannot fathom mattering to anyone ever. He also threatened to basically ban someone from DnD, I guess his plan was to go "Im super mad at Dilly Diddles over here" and every con in the world would march to his tune and ban him for life. He tried to claim someone else got on his pc and typed that then he was cancelled for chatting up an ugly woman in her late 30s.

>>96355628
>Mentzer left dragonsfoot over his failed kickstarter because people kept asking why needed a quarter million for a sourcebook.
No, he was banned for the PM in picrel.

>>96355932
So Mentzer tried to claim that he didn't actually send that message and that he had been hacked...

But the IP that the message was sent from, that is recorded by the forum's software, is the same IP that Mentzer used to post public messages on the forum minutes before and after it. Messages he admits were sent by him.

lol

>>96355932
>>96355983
The source of the screenshots is this post and the comments under it:
https://www.tenkarstavern.com/2017/09/the-pm-that-got-frank-mentzer-banned.html

>>96347369
Thanks for your hard work anon!
I'm feeling tempted to write an "/osrg/ primer to the gameplay", to cut through the noise of bad ones.

>>96347369
Addendum: you mention ACKS and BECMI's Companion for domain rules. Thoughts on the BX Companion's depiction of them?

>>96356173
Which "B/X Companion" is that? There's multiple ones floating around the internet. One by Barrataria, one by Jonathan Becker, and others I can't recall.

>>96356278
Becker! Apologies, I didn't know there was another.

>>96356286
No worries. I never read that one but perhaps someone else will chime in.

>>96355932
jesus crispin lmao

>>96355932
This is an incredibly powerful post.

I feel like it could end any internet argument.

All you'd have to say is "You sound like Mentzer."

That "Int 7, Wis 1" line is...

>>96356022
>>96356408
Here's what I have so far. Thoughts?
https://anonymfile.com/OE4nr/another-osrg-osr-primer-v10.pdf

Thoughts on my hexcrawl so far? Wanted to make something easy for an open table campaign to start. One megadungeon, one medium dungeon, a few minor ones.

Reuploading ....hopefully it's not flipped this time and it won't let me delete the old one.

>>96356838
Cool as hell! Love it

>>96356775
Maybe you can just call your style K&KA instead of OSR?
I think that would spare a lot of people confusion as well as controversy, and you could then be as strict about your own "one specific way" without trying to impose your more narrow views on the rest of the OSR.
Maybe not K&KA, but PBUH?
Also, the "think smarter, not harder" line is kinda meaningless, and the "People Die" section doesn't really sell the concept of high mortality well at all and makes it sound like something you just have to put up with, rather than something that enhances the experience.

>>96356867
>K&KA
what does that stand for anyway?
thanks for your other feedback

>>96356876
Knights&Knaves Alehouse, a small group that splintered off from Dragonsfoot because they wanted the OSR to be more strict and tried to start a civil war on that forum.

>>96356866
thanks man.
I tried to make it match what ACKS says a "borderlands" domain should have.
250 families x 5 people per family for around 1250 people living in the hex.
Talonstone is so named because of the natural sandstone arch that overlooks the city.
Cliffshadow is so named for the huge spire-like cliff that rises up, with a staircase cut into the side of it, up to the lord's keep that overlooks the surrounding forest and scrublands.
It's a bit much for a town of 980 people but I thought it was cool and I want to stick to the ACKS population rules since I want the starting domain to be "malleable" within the system, should the PCs ever conquer it.

>>96356775
Do NOT listen to the other guy, he's a troll (you can tell by his definition warring).
It looks like a good writeup to me.

>>96356867
Maybe NuSR kids and 2e fans could call their own style "NuSR" and "2e" instead? Or "todd".

>>96356933
>>96356953
Stop trolling.

>>96356838
Looks good, Anon! Keep us updated with play reports.

>>96356867
>>96356892
lol at Mr False Flag trying to troll n00bs because veterans can recognise him immediately, then
>>96356963
throwing a tantrum when he's instantly called out.

>>96356963
I actually like 2e and I am sick of you. I am legit starting to think you don't even play 2e, you just come here to shit up the thread because you think it's fun. OSR has a clear definition, and the PDF you're complaining about even has a disclaimer it's not the only right way to play. You're just a troll.

>>96356775
It's still rough, but a reasonable start. The idea of having something that is more geared at players is a good one, it offers a complementary perspective to the n00b guide, that as you say correctly is more geared at DMs. Keep at it, and ignore the resident /osrg/ hater.

>>96356997
A shortened version of the disclaimer probably should be at the front, or at least not after the claim that there's one specific way to play OSR games.
The disclaimer at least shows some willingness to move forward and understand a broader viewpoint, which is why I'm not going to pick at things like treating the game like an emulator, since that's just the style he prefers.
And while the Moldvay quote is a good one, it's sadly untrue. There's definitely at least one loser >>96356996

>>96356775
You should probably take the following out or significantly revise it:
>This may get my /osrg/ member card revoked, but I believe the way we play is not the only right way to play, or even the best way to play in all cases. You can absolutely have lots of fun in all kinds of games that are not OSR, and depending on the kind of game you want to play, something else may be better suited.

This sentiment is frequently expressed in the general and will not, as it were, get your member card revoked. All anybody ever says in here is that those other ways to play are by definition not OSR and thus, do not belong in *this thread* but should be discussed elsewhere, in the many threads devoted to them.

>>96357344
You really need to take a minute and learn how this website actually works. You keep trying to do this thing where you keep bullshitting about how you speak for more people than yourself, and hoping people fall for it.
If everyone does think the way you do, let them say it. Wait, here's already someone disagreeing with you.
>Inb4 you samefag

>>96357344
That's fair. Apologies; I have seen drama in this thread over it.
>>96357506

>>96356971
I will. I'll post some play reports here.

What do you do for names in campaigns you run? I want to have coherent names so I was thinking of a table of prefixes and suffixes. Could establish a linguistic theme while also getting more mileage than from a simple name list, as well as adding creative element. Has anyone done this? What are some tips for doing this sort of quick n dirty conlanging?

>>96358096
Get the Nomicon from Byte's trove. It's truly fantastic.

What are some old school modules with red dragons I can just drop in my hexmap? It feels kind of weird how rare dragon-themed stuff is in a game called Dungeons & Dragons.

>>96355932
You know, Moldvay was never banned from Dragonsfoot....

>>96355932
Whoever got him to send that is one of the most powerful/successful trolls in internet history

>>96355932
I'm interested to know what exactly Mentzer has against the OSR. I don't expect Google would be of much help, because all the results would be about BECMI.

Ages ago, an anon posted his 2d6 combat system. Does anyone have it on hand, or is that anon still around to post it himself?

>>96357344
Seconded. It's an unfair and unwarranted attack on /osrg/. Nobody here says that the Gygaxian/Arnesonian way of playing is the only one that exists, or that people can't have fun playing different ways. We're only very clear on what is the way *we* play. Please don't accuse us of things we don't do.

>>96357853
Anon, your heart is in the right place and you mean well and I commend you on the effort you're putting in your guide, but the "drama" you've seen is not what you think it is. It's an incessant campaign by people who actually hate the way we like to play here and have been attempting to destroy this place, erase its play culture, and turn it into something else.

You can't win bad faith people over with rainbows and song. Your attempt to make peace with them will *not* appease them, it will only fuel and embolden them.

>>96358096
I created semi-recursive tables of pseudo-latin, pseudo-germanic, pseudo-chinese, pseudo-japanese, and use them. By "pseudo" I mean that the word elements obey the language's euphonic rules but not its semantics (they sound like words from those languages but they don't actually mean anything).

E.g. if you wanted to do one for pseudo-Turkish you'd have a rule for vowel harmony that says a word can either use a/o/u or e/i/ü, never containing vowels from both groups.

You get odd results sometimes, in which case I just reroll or reload.

>>96358622
EOTB is a cunt, but that doesn't justify Mentzer going full Karen and pulling a psychotic egomaniacal reaction and IRL threats.

>>96357506
>Inb4 you samefag
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

>>96358764
>Ages ago, an anon posted his 2d6 combat system. Does anyone have it on hand, or is that anon still around to post it himself?
Yeah, it's a post from 1971. He was a tripfag who went by "Gary Perren". He hasn't been posting much lately, but Bytee has archived his 2d6 combat engine. Look for "Chainmail".

>>96342662 (OP)
>tq
we played Moldvay basic as part of a grade 6 workshop one year. they roughly split the class into 3 or 4 and I somehow ended up DMing for like 8 or 9 fellow students. making characters was chaos. I skipped the town game and went straight to a dungeon. that wasn't too bad but everyone was speaking over each other and some were acting out their actions. after 3 sessions or so, they had hirelings and henchmen too and it was too much with that many players and NPCs. I'd say 3 or 4 players with one hench each plus DM is about maximum for a good session.

>>96358767
Understood. Apologies for the mixup; I feel silly now.

>>96359867
No worries, you're new here, it's normal not to be fully cognizant of the socio-political dynamics at play, and the lack of usernames makes sorting out what's going on noticeably more difficult.

Don't let this honest mistake dishearten you. Since you are a nicer and gentler kind of soul, your Player's n00b guide has the potential to provide a nice complementary perspective to the current "DM's" n00b guide. You also sound younger. Keep at it, be bold, listen to feedback, course correct if necessary.

You're doing good.

>>96359867
I don't really get this charade. Your guide addition already had you alligning with the K&KA camp, and even treating the K&KA camp's n00b guide like it either represents OSR or the /osrg/ is already laughable.
The whole "we (because it's always an effort to speak for others) here believe in a single definition of OSR (that is absent from everywhere else except the K&KA forums)" trolling that's been done here comes from the darkest, worst sector of grognards, the minority that invaded Dragonsfoot and tried to co-opt the OSR, while then trying to perform gatekeeping, especially with their efforts to split the OSR away from C&C/2e/OSR-lite/NuSR/Anything else they don't like, which is ironic because the founding games of the OSR (like C&C and Hackmaster 4e) would probably be labeled by them as NuSR if they were released today.
Even the basic idea that the /osrg/ is seperate from the wider OSR community is ridiculous. 4chan generals are not private clubs, and anyone with an interest in any OSR game/style is going to come here. They do not need to be indoctrinated into the K&KA mindset, because aside from the whole business of there being a single best way to OSR being wrong, their way isn't even particularly that good.
It relies mostly on appeals to Authority/Tradition to justify why they play the way they do, which is why even here it's hard to recommend people just start by jumping straight into an old edition because casual players are unlikely to understand/enjoy them. And yet, the K&KA n00b "guide" is just "play b/x, also let me then complain about anything that deviates from the way I play."
The K&KA runs and works like a cult, and we really don't need that here. Even just the way they argue here is all fallacy-based, because the initial seed of their sect was all built on fallacies.

>>96360031
nta but for the record good lad for being so kind to a new guy in thread and explaining what the deal is to him.

We've got a hell of a lot of absolute cunts who hang around these threads, seeing someone being pleasant now and then reminds me why they're worth visiting.

Speaking of cunts - >>96360112

>>96351664
>>96352111
>>96360112
These religion/cult comparisons are on the nose.

>>96360143
Fuck off, you creep. The way you're trying to groom the guy into your cult is actually kind of disgusting.

Trying to take advantage of people who don't know better is probably the only way you can get your little cult to grow.

>>96360143
>We've got a hell of a lot of absolute cunts who hang around these threads
It's literally only one person with a very distinctive style.

>>96358807

desu the only interactions with him i had is that he's an annoying RAWfag and apparently thats the great satan to some people

>>96360292
You keep trying to try and convince people of that, when the person with a distinctive style is you.
Your chief move is whenever you disagree with someone on anything, you throw a tantrum, and try to deflect the argument into a game of "who can pretend their side is bigger and the other side is smaller."
You don't have legs or something?
Why can't you stand on your own two feet?

I know I should just ignore him, but I'm sorry, I can't resist replying to this one bullshit take:

>the K&KA n00b "guide" is just "play b/x, also let me then complain about anything that deviates from the way I play."
There's no B/X discussion on K&KA, only AD&D and OD&D. Picrel. So pick one:
- If it's a K&KA guide, it can't recommend to play B/X.
- If recommends to play B/X, it can't be a K&KA guide.
We all know that the actual problem False Flag Fag has, he just can't say it out loud because he knows he'd be laughed out of the general. So he has to come up with bullshit like the above.

>the person with a distinctive style is you
It's hilarious, he does this every single time, like clockwork: He takes whatever criticism is directed at him, and he tries to turn it around in what is ultimately just a very long "no you".

>>96360366
>Picrel

>>96360031
>Don't let this honest mistake dishearten you. Since you are a nicer and gentler kind of soul, your Player's n00b guide has the potential to provide a nice complementary perspective to the current "DM's" n00b guide.
Thank you, that means a lot! I will keep at it and post a second version soon.
>You also sound younger.
Late 20s, actually. I've just tried to stay kind and compassionate, and I am glad it seems to have worked.
>>96360143
Yeah, I see now that that one guy is just trying to derail the thread and consensus crack>>96360157
. Upsetting honestly.

>>96360366
What name do you want, if your clique doesn't like K&KA?
PBUH is on the table. /osrg/ isn't, because it's confusing for your microsect to pretend to speak for the rest of us.
> If recommends to play B/X, it can't be a K&KA guide.
It recommends it as an intro to OSR, probably because even you should be aware that launching right into AD&D/OD&D as a first step is a steep one.
I don't think your guide actually intends to guide anyone, and b/x as the first step was just offered as lipservice so that it at least somewhat resembles a guide, because beyond that bit of advice for a starting point the majority of your "guide" is trying to establish your dogma and is hardly a guide at all.

>>96360394
>>96360376
>>96360292
Leave him to stew before he baits you into catching a ban, that's my advice.

>>96360366
>the K&KA n00b "guide" is just "play b/x"
Get a load of him, this guy is a fucking gold mine. Here's a collection of quotes from him for the uninitiated.

>>96360112
>>96360400
>we

Hi 2efag. How's your lonesome campaign going?

>>96360385
K&KA is basically a dead forum. They only ever had a few hundred members at their height, and when OSRIC failed to gain momentum even what few members it had largely evaporated. It's not surprising that they couldn't have more than just a Basic board.

>>96360460
Hmm, yes, as we all know forum software is hard-coded so that it's physically impossible to add any forum for b/X anywhere until you reach 1000 members. Seems weird that people would design forums that way, but hey those are the ancient laws of coding passed down since the Sumerians. It all makes perfect sense and you are very smart.

>>96360394
Weird charade you've got going.
Like I said, your guide already placed you in a position where it was hard to take you at your word, and now it's at a point where it's curious why someone pretending to be a newfag would feel confident enough to try and add to a guide for newfags.

>>96360516
Were you trying to make some sort of point?
>>96360400 already explains why your n00b guide recommends b/x as the starting point; it doesn't really care about guiding n00bs beyond offering the bare minimum.
Talking about how K&KA is dead is more just about how they don't even have enough people to have a discussion on AD&D, let alone less popular games.

>>96360394
2nd anon you replied to.
Yeah, just ignore him.
Welcome to /osrg/, if you've got any questions feel free to ask them.
I'm the local ACKS autist so my answers will be completely bias by personal tastes, but hey, who isn't?

>>96360394
Ditto--welcome to the board.

>>96360394
>>96360531
The kind and compassionate part is whats sus as fuck.

>He's reached the point where 'being vaguely cordial with other people' is suspicious in and of itself.
>Being civilized is a red flag for him
Just because you act like a fucking animal doesn't mean the rest of us have to, you insipid, cum-fleching troglodyte.

>>96358842
kek

>>96359867
Juat want to weigh in and agree with the other non-deranged anon, there's no need for an apology. You're not the one shitposting, you're doing good and your idea of a player-focused guide is good.

>>96360672
Whoa, calm down, Mentzer.

>>96360672
"Vaguelly cordial" on 4chan IS kinda suspicious. But really, it's the n00b making a guide for n00bs and just happens to adhere to rhetoric that even you acknowledge is largely absent from the rest of the internet that raises red flags.

>>96360722
>"Vaguelly cordial" on 4chan IS kinda suspicious
Maybe, but know what? I've had more apologies from /osrg/ members in the 18 months I've been here than I have everyone else put together on 4chan in over a decade.
People in this thread, barring the exception, are generally a bit more chill.

>>96360722
There are lots of threads on 4chan that are pleasant and uncombative. I've never seen any significant spergout on /awg/. Usagi Storytime over on /co/ is nice every year. This general in particular used to be the nicest, friendliest and most helpful thread on /tg/, for years. Sometimes I think that's the reason this one retard latched onto it, just to spoil it, but then I remember that he actually obsesses over his hate of very specific things in other threads as well and realize he's just severely mentally ill.

>>96360713
Lol this is my favorite use of this format now

>>96360750
...are you for real? This is one of the most sperg-ridden generals on this board.
Maybe you're not seeing the deleted posts? We routinely have hundreds removed, consisting of spergs screaming in an effort to create a boogeyman while otherwise trying to control this general via other shady behavior?

Or, you're just generally full of shit.

>>96356963
>>96357506
fucking neck yourself please

>>96360777
T R I P S
I too remember when this thread was friendly and positive. Sad.

>>96360777
You really need to be quiet already.

We have the archives. They show this general being pretty typical as a general throughout its history, with all kinds of little arguments and minor conflicts. Calling it particularly "nice", let alone the nicest, friendliest, etc. is some weird ass nostalgic hallucination, if not pure revisionism. Though, to be fair, saying it was nicer than it has been in recent years is probably true, if only because in recent years we had insane spergouts for hundreds of posts, beyond even the fallout you ordinarily see on 4chan.

I want to blame discords. This general apparently has several competing ones, and that leads to mini-raids and artificial attempts to steer this general, and has people arguing not directly, but in an effort to turn this general into some kind of number's game.

Historically, the /osrg/ has been a slow general. And, as far as normal posts go, it still typically is. But, there are insane flashes of activity, with hundreds of posts in a day, with a small group (likely 1-4 people at most) arguing everyone that disagrees with them is a single person being at its center. With their singular enemy being infinitely replaced with new people as they join in on the conversation, these arguments go on forever.

Over and over again it happens, with disparate topics and voices, and with the kind of energy that likely could only come from genuinely autistic people having their beliefs reinforced inside an echo chamber. Even now.

>>96355932
EOTB is a fucking scumsucker though

>>96361496
What makes you say that? His dealing with the OSR from the very start has clearly given him OSR PTSD, but that's not much different than most people here. Other than being a 1st ed ride or die guy, I haven't seen him do anything questionable.

>>96361522
Personal interactions where he acts like a complete fool, then doubles down. He's just a slimy creep

>>96361496
Most of these conflicts are not hero vs. villain, just retard vs. retard.

B/X newfag update Session 16:
The implemented 1:1 downtime still has caused some issues because the party ended the session in the brigand camp they've occupied. I haven't thought that one through because the interaction with the surrounding world made that downtime a bit livelier and apparently too much to interact with for some players. Lesson learned for both sides, I guess since these are the dangers involved in concluding the adventure outside the safety of known towns. In the session they did a great job of having someone invisible follow the messenger who gave them the ultimatum from the Robber Baron. It turned out these chaotic brigands just wanted to scout the lost camp and prepared an immediate reoccupation. As soon as the party was informed, they've outflanked the approaching army and headed straight for the Brigand Headquarter. Roughly 60 mercenaries and a party of 5 players + 3 retainers. Again they've managed to infiltrate the headquarter at night with an invisible thief this time, who opened the gate and initiated the invasion. Caught off guard the remaining 120 brigands lead by a level 8 fighter (the Robber Baron) who was aided by a level 8 cleric and another level 5 fighter still managed to rally a defense as soon as the alarm was rung. I've tried implementing chainmail for the first time because I've felt like rolling a lot of d6s. Still have to do some homework on it but the cheat sheet was a helpful reference. It was a very close fight and it was the group's advantage that made it possible to fight the garrison and the baron in two waves. Lot's of maneuvering, using the terrain to their advantage and having the full plated dwarf in the front row gave the party the necessary edge and thus their hard earned treasure. In retrospect I could've adapted the scaling more brutally to not play hours of chainmail similar to the siege of the session before. It was another rough session but I've enjoyed the wargaming grind.

>>96362258
Continued update:
Our weekly sessions tend to last 6 to 8 hours until we get too tired. Still everyone seems satisfied so far. In the end the group is still free to pursue the kind of adventure they desire. Maybe now that they've gained some levels (most are 5 and some 4 now) and some notable gear and spells, they will consider more dangerous dungeons again if they want more treasure.

>>96362270
P.S. I forgot to mention the intrigue part of the downtime. A day before the session the MU met with the player who quit and we ran some downtime adventure. I've told the MU that I keep a strict time record and if he dies or doesn't manage to be back in ingame time for the adventure on the next day, he has to roll a new character. They still invest in underground businesses and retrieved a buried treasure from a treasure map after being ambushed by some Lizardfolk patrol. The MU kept these things secret and didn't spend his downtime to learn a new spell after reaching level 5. Instead he still pretended to be level 4 during the adventure session and had his chaotic cleric retainer still work as his invisible bodyguard. This is now an open secret because the party was informed again once XP was distributed.

Will I regret using a composition graph paper notebook for my megadungeon instead of a spiral bound one? Or just loose graph paper? My idea was that a spiral bound one can be folded over to take up less table space. But a composition one could have the left page with the key for the rooms drawn out on the right. I write small so this would work for. But it won't lie flat open and it'll take up double the space at the table.

Alternatively, I print out 1/8th inch graph paper with lines underneath for the key and print out a dozen of them and link them up with a master tile map. Like pic related but smaller squares.

>>96362673
The half-graph half-lined page looks very cool, but I'd be concerned that it's not enough lines. I've dreamed of a half-graph-half-lined page on the left hand side and a fully lined page on the right hand side, but I don't believe that that exists.

I'm also unconvinced by the 24×36 squares form factor, but that's probably not a huge deal.

As to your main question, I think a ring binder is by far the best option, because it allows you to rearrange content you've created creating. If you're concerned about table space, you can just pull out the page you need. Also, you can use like Gary (pbuh) in picrel.

>>96363327
Reminder that Mentzer worshiped Gygax harder than any man ever did.

>>96363327
>I'm also unconvinced by the 24×36 squares form factor, but that's probably not a huge deal.
That's just for my nuD&D game where I use a dry erase grid of that size. So I can make a dungeon that I will be sure will fit on my little grid. Kinda stupid, but restriction breeds creativity.

>As to your main question, I think a ring binder is by far the best option, because it allows you to rearrange content you've created creating.
I use one for my other game. Might do that for this as well. I definitely will keep my pages in that. For a megadungeon itself, I'm not sure. I feel bad to have all these graph paper notebooks and not use them, but then again many are from my school years when my mom would buy excessive school supplies when they were on sale, so I have 4 or 5 such books.

>>96351519
>I'd love you to find any first decade TSR book using the term "megadungeon".
Why would I waste my time looking for "megadungeon" when the point I corrected was your attempt to re-define "dungeon" as including something like "dungeons are potentially infinite in size therefore cannot be published in a book"? TSR writers used dungeon for things that were finite in scope from at least the days of B/X. Point proved.

>I'll be waiting.
I talked about "dungeon". You're now demanding something about "megadungeon". You'll be waiting a long long time because I'm not going to play your little game of move the goalposts.

>>96364063
>TSR writers used dungeon for things that were finite in scope from at least the days of B/X.
Sure, but that was a later evolution.

Regardless, here >>96351215 you said:
>Ah, so you've invented a new term "proper dungeon" which you're insisting is to be treated as identical with dungeon.

You got this part the wrong way around: "Megadungeon" is the new term that people are insisting be treated as something different from a "dungeon".

A couple Anons have given convincing evidence that, at least historically, the PROPER way to talk about "megadungeons" was to call them just dungeons.

Do you disagree with this?

>>96362258
>>96362270
>>96362385
sounds like a great session bro. Integrating chainmail like that, classic

>>96351472
I applaud your good faith argument and the quote but that quote, which I have read before, leads to a very long stretch from
>>Less playtesting was required.
>>my later RPGA modules were never playtested
to
>>particular rules in the main set weren't playtested

>>96351343
>It shouldn't even be necessary to have Mentzer's admission, though:
It's not necessary for Mentzer to admit it. It would be enough for someone knowledgeable about TSR to state it credibly. "Dude trust me" on this website is not credible.

>That large sections of BECMI were never playtested is really rather obvious.
Even allowing for the negative prejudice in your opinion: No, it's not. While I'm sure there are some, perhaps even you, who are going to delight in reading my next sentence, here goes anyway.
The results of no playtesting, insufficient playtesting, making no changes despite playtesting, and changes made following playtesting being lost on the way to printing could all be indistinguishable.
A writer simply might not want change a rule following playtesting, or a revision could be made and an unrevised copy sent to the printer. The result is that the bad rule persists but the assumption of no playtesting is wrong. It is wrong to say it is obvious no playtesting took place when there are plausible alternatives that lead to the same published product.
Due to TSR's multiple printings of BECMI it doesn't seem likely that an important revision to the rules was made and accidentally omitted and continued to be omitted all the way through to RC but that still leaves ignoring the results of playtesting and poor playtesting as viable alternatives to no playtesting at all.
On a contrary note, it's also possible that playtesting was conducted and the contentious rules were approved of by the testing. I'm sure some will want to categorise this as poor playtesting, if they don't like the rule, but it also makes "no playtesting" not obvious.

dungeon = 5 standard but up to 12 rooms
megadungeon = 20 rooms, usually ending in an epic boss fight against the BBEG for your campaigns current story arc

>>96364246
>>TSR writers used dungeon for things that were finite in scope from at least the days of B/X.
>Sure, but that was a later evolution.
Silly me, I meant to type AD&D, which is a few years before Moldvay and leads to:
Wtf?
AD&D's use of dungeons to describe finite regions is a "later evolution"?

LBB Supplement II has a dungeon in it. It's finite in size. The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth has a finite dungeon. I've pushed the date for your "later evolution" back to 1976. You're yet to provide any "dungeons are always infinite" evidence.

SR #1 is ambiguous at best. I'll let you look it up if you wish rather than spoon feed your the quote.

>You got this part the wrong way around: "Megadungeon" is the new term that people are insisting be treated as something different from a "dungeon".
Regardless, here >>96349939 you said:
>There's only lairs and dungeons.
>Proper dungeons are effectively infinite.
So I didn't get it wrong. I addressed solely your claim that dungeons are infinite. You're still trying to get me into a discussion about megadungeons which I'm not interested in because I never mentioned that word till now.

>>96365022
>megadungeon = 20 rooms
Lmao kill yourself

>>96358631
I'm interested to know what exactly makes you think Mentzer has anything against the OSR. Especially if, as you write, search results would all be about BECMI rather than OSR directly which implies he doesn't have a stated opinion on OSR.

>>96365022
Bait rating: 3/10

>>96365042
NTA.
LBB3 explicitly says that a good dungeon should have new levels under construction, and that Castle Greyhawk ALWAYS has AT LEAST two new levels under construction at any one time.

>LBB Supplement II has a dungeon in it. It's finite in size
Are you sure? The Temple of the Frog has a passage leading off into the unknown from room 16 of dungeon level 2.

>>96365501
The sample dungeon on the page before that one (on LBB3) explicitly shows that it has an indeterminate number of levels under it.

>>96365022
>dungeon = 5 standard but up to 12 rooms
>megadungeon = 20 rooms
GIGAdungeon = 2 floors

>>96365501
>Are you sure?
No, I'm not sure. Once you hit my age it's a miracle if eyesight is is often failing and I haven't played it since the 70s. I stand corrected.

>>96365576
>I stand corrected.
Very appreciated. I admire people who have the intellectual honesty to admit that they were wrong. Please don't take it personally if I add to the discussion: I'm not trying to dwell on it out of malice, I just find the topic interesting.

>>96365042
>The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth has a finite dungeon.
I count two points where you are told explicitly you can/should expand the dungeon further: Room #6 and River Exit D in the Lesser Caves.

(Additionally, but this is not a hill I'd die on: There's also three ambiguous passages: #3 in the Greater Caves might just be a cave that's too large to fit the map, but the descriptions of #16 in the Greater Caves and A in the Lesser Caves leaves it open to interpretation whether those descriptions are exhaustive.)

Colour Key:
Green: Just simple connections.
Red: Expansion into further dungeons/rooms required (#6) or explicitly given as a possibility.
Orange: Doubtful, possible room for expansions, although not said explicitly.

>>96343830
Ranger almost got killed by Apeman.
Wizard found a cool bird.

Is there any specific design reason for the change in HD of certain undead between AD&D and B/X?
Wights, Wraiths and Specters are particularly baffling to me.

>>96367298
Did you check their HD in OD&D?

>>96367418
Frankly no, I didn't, no familiarity.
The answers lies there by chance?

>>96366045
slices fingers off when you catch it

Do you guys DM with a laptop or physical notes? I've been a laptop DM forever and want to try going analog but I'm intimidated by the amount of crap I would feel the need to write down and keep track of when I'm so used to just ctrl+f'ing my gigantic unorganized campaign prep google doc.

>>96358807
Yes it absolutely does
>MEGAdungeons have 20 rooms, guys!!!
You're an embarrassing retard

>>96358764
Yeah, regular combat except you roll 1d10+2d6-2

>>96367965
So just try using both? What exactly is so difficult about this concept for you?
Maybe you should try learning how to organize?
Wait a second, are you the guy who posts every now and then about not knowing how to organize his campaign notes?

>>96367965
Laptop AND physical notes. I'll have between 50-200 pages of notes for any given campaign in various documents, but I'll also have a legal pad on hand to take quick notes.

>>96368060
Go to sleep, Mentzer. Go back to dreaming about licking the tip of Gygax's rotting dick.

>>96368110
The fact that you think a mega dungeon has just 20 rooms, is one of the weirdest most embarrassing posts I have seen in here in a long time.
I imagine a dungeon with 100 floors per room and at least 10 floors, would send you into a conniption fit

>>96368133
NTA, retard.

>wanted to make an osr style multiplayer online game ( kind of MUD-like, I guess)
>release that I would need relative complex npc AI and complex server state ( which means I have to save the server state for persistence reasons )
>Just regularly saving player state is already resource intensive, alone a complicated server state
Now I see why mmos are so soulless. The vital things needed to make a compelling rpg are nearly incompatible with an (m)mo.
Fug man I just wanted to make a living D&D campaign that you could drop in or drop out of.
Alas, maybe I'll have to start DMing again...

>>96368160
That's cool, feel free to not reply if you're not part of the conversation then.
I understand that learning how to use this website is difficult for youngsters like yourself

>>96368164
First off, if you want to play d&d, you should be doing that instead of something else.
Also, if Ultima online can do it in 1997 so can you. Just make the thing exist before you start trying to make it good.

>>96368207
At first I was just joking, calling you Mentzer. But your cringe-inducing attempts at banter have got me concerned.

>>96367512
>The answers lies there by chance?
Possibly? Take a look at picrel, how does it compare to AD&D and B/X?

>>96368096
I wasn't asking for advice faggot I was posing a question. Don't know what anon you're talking about but if you get this weirdly aggro at an innocuous question you're definitely more of a drag on this thread than he is
>>96368110
Yeah I like a little notebook for tracking stuff like dungeon turns and monster hp bur for actual I do it all on the computer. I like the idea of having a binder with everything I need to run my campaign but in practice I'm not sure what the payoff would be.

>>96368239
Ah, the classic, "I was merely pretending to be retarded!"

>>96368280
>I wasn't looking for advice I was just asking a question on how you personally handle this situation
Are you ESL by chance?

>>96368280
>I wasn't asking for advice faggo
advice
noun
1.
guidance or recommendations offered with regard to prudent future action.

>>96368367
>>96368348
Lmao BTFO

>>96368348
>>96368367
>>96368424
Try posting a fourth time, that'll really get him

>>96368477
Okay, but only if you give me one more (You)

>>96368330
Anon, you have mixed together two or possibly three arguments. You are the one who is retarded in this exchange.
>also NTA

>>96368270
It's closer to B/X, but there is no answer discernible there on why AD&D changed the HDs.
>Is there any specific design reason for the change in HD of certain undead between AD&D and B/X?
So anon, could you please enlighten me on the design reasons for the change?

Another difference is the turn roll, AD&D1e uses a d20 while B/X uses a 2d6 roll - stronger undead are way more difficult to turn in B/X, which is in my opinion the right call.

>>96369234
There was a noticeable power inflation from OD&D to AD&D, both in monsters and PCs. B/X often went in the opposite direction. As to why, your guess is as good as mine.

If you think that a mega dungeon is 20 rooms, you should hang yourself with barbed wire

>>96369334
>There was a noticeable power inflation from OD&D to AD&D
Although mostly correct I think some nuance is required here, you didn't just level way faster in OD&D higher-powered magical items were also more common, additionally if you played with Chainmail fighters are way stronger; they become unstoppable killing machines whose presence alone ends a fight before it's even begun.

>>96369515
>additionally if you played with Chainmail fighters are way stronger
And don't forget about Halfling thieves, absolutely bonkers.

>>96367662
Good call, think I'll use that in case of broken promise.
Though the wizard has already lost several fingers.

>>96369515
>Although mostly correct I think some nuance is required here
Absolutely. There were some random nerfings as well, for example fighters losing the ability to sweep attack opponents with exactly 1 HD. I was talking about a general trend, not an absolute rule.

Also, some monsters were buffed while others weren't, which might make some monster feel a bit less powerful than they should.

>>96369570
>Halfling thieves, absolutely bonkers
You mean picrel, I presume?

Did you find these useful?
The Cultural Basins section sucked.

>>96369815
Tome of Adventure Design is great but Worldbuilding is mid. Tons of mediocre entries across all the random tables—felt like Finch just used the most obvious ideas for each category and did little to nothing to embellish them.

>>96369495
What if the rooms are really big?

>>96369753
No, they got a +3 TH with bows/slings, a multiattack that doesn't require them to roll like a level 1, 1-4 surprise rolls, etc. a Halfling thief can literally just pop in existence 35 foot away, instantly gib somebody with a rock and cause half of the cast to drop their weapons then disappear into the bush on the same turn.

>>96369920
Ah, gotcha. Halflings were arguably balanced in LBB1 because they were limited to 4th level, but the fact that they were unlimited as Thieves in Sup-I did fuck that up.

how do you deal with non leathal damage? I was thinking you do 1/2 damage if you specify you are trying to go non lethal.

>>96370064
DMG

>>96370064
OSE offers picrel rules that I use

>>96370655
>subdual damage is noted separately
but why? surly if you hit someone with your blade, that would contribute to your ability to subdue them, not be completely separate.

>>96370727
It's not completely separate, just noted separately because it's non-lethal. I don't do that and neither do I restrict the rule to intelligent monsters. If reduced to 0 HP the monster dies or gets knocked out depending on whether the final damage was lethal or not. Surrender is something I determine with morale checks typically.

>>96370920
makes sense. I like the idea of having to estimate HP and when to transition from damage to bonkage

>>96369841
Well by definition those would be Chambers and not rooms

>>96371386
I would classify chamber as a kind of room.

>>96371492
The DMG differentiates them, so I followed the prescription of the holy Gary (pbuh)

>>96358398
B5 has a red dragon. There's debatable merit of the module but there it is.
B3 has a white one iirc. Its been a while.
The Black Wyrm of Brandonsford has a black one presumably.
Curse of The Curse of Cragbridge (the S&W version) has a not! dragon that's pretty great. I just subbed in a dragon when I ran it, it fit with the weird knightly tragedy of the module.

>>96358096
I printed out a zine format chunk of GG's book of names from the fantasy section and have been just using them at random and crossing them out so I don't have duplicates. There's different sections for various historical and cultural groupings if you want that. Its more names than you'll ever use.
Not really sure why its named after EGG.

>>96370064
What >>96370920 says, for the most part. Whenever a PC would deal lethal damage to a creature I ask the player if they want to slay the foe or just knock them out/subdue them. Fast and easy and makes taking a life a decision instead of just an inevitable feature of combat.

>>96358096
My NPC names have been described "Pynchonesque." I mostly just try to come up with something kind of silly but also vaguely evocative of who the person is. The key is to do this before the session, because trying to come up with them on the spot is terrible.

I have also looked through names from different historical cultures and copy/pasted the ones I liked into a big document.

>>96360713
What the fuck was this in response to

>>96371966
You seriously don't know how to use the archives?

>>96372067
I do now ty

>>96369815
I just skimmed through nomicon yesterday, I just want a way of generating so NPC names, found the couple of pages with normalish names (like timothy) and it was basically just a d100 list of names, I don't need the rest of the book, I don't even need that table.
I want a simple way of generating names like the Holmesian names table that don't sound as fucked up... does anyone have something better?

>>96372113
>>96371921
might do as this anon and print off some of this instead

>>96372113
fantasynamesgenerator dot com

>>96372113
Use a ai chat bot to come up with names.

>>96372294
>>96372375
These are very lame and barely functional suggestions.

>>96373855
Not as lame as someone trying to sell a book of names just by slapping "gygax" on it.

>>96367965
Laptop for downloading and skimming rules, cutting out chunks I'm going to keep for later and the general slush folders for different campaign areas, dungeons, ideas, etc. Pages and tables from various blogs, ideas anons have here, although there's been a lot less of those over the last 5 years, its bonkers.
That gets converted to hard copy for prep and at the table use. I tend to buy a book if it has more than a couple ideas I like or if it seems like a repeated use item.
>>96368280
>a little notebook
Get a bigger notebook. It helps, really. Make wrap notes at the end of the session notes so you can refer to it later in the week during prep.
>payoff
Everything in one place makes you cut cruft and copying it over/remaking it helps place it in memory for better ease of access at the table and for improvisation..

>>96373883
Don't buy it you idiot. Its free.

>>96370920
>If reduced to 0 HP the monster dies or gets knocked out depending on whether the final damage was lethal or not.
I know 3e is anathema here but they do something similar
>Instead, when your nonlethal damage equals your current hit points, you’re staggered, and when it exceeds your current hit points, you fall unconscious.
Even if expressed differently.
I do like you do anon, it's simpler. One could see it as bleeding the beast out a bit or inflicting a couple of scratches, tiring out, before a blow that is not lethal but takes them out or subdues them (up to the DM or as the players expressed their intention).

>>96371909
Interesting how a 7HD dragon is presented. In later editions a larger-than-man dragon would be 12HD in the very least.
Kinda related to the Undead HD above, and how fiends also levitated in HD number in 2e.

>>96358398
>It feels kind of weird how rare dragon-themed stuff is in a game called Dungeons & Dragons.
I guess a lot of designers avoid using them these days because they seem like a fantasy cliche. Weird shit is in fashion

That said, if you actually use the wilderness encounter tables from the books, they're as common as dirt. In the mountains, you're more likely to run into a dragon than a bear

>>96371960

You should make them Kojima-esque. "Bar Cultman" it's a bartender who runs a cult. Or Balphagorworship Guy.

I GyGAG when I hear about Gygax.
I ArneSOY when I hear about Arneson.

>>96374299
Meet my new PC, Fighting Man the fighting man

>>96374432
Heh.

>>96358398
Thieves Fortress of Badabaskor

>>96358398
Dark Tower has one as well, though it's by no means a centrepiece of the module.

20 rooms isnt a megadungeon, and if you think so, you should hang yourself with barbed wire.
And no, chambers are not the same as rooms, as per holy gygax (pbuh) and the divine wors

>>96375724
20 rooms is sufficient for the first session of a megadungeon, just add 20 each week after.

>>96369234
I think it's the other way around - in 1981 Expert, 9th level clerics auto-turn vampires, and 11th level destroy them, while in Advanced 14th level turn vamps at 4+ on d20.

In your experience, are mega-dungeons fun to run and fun to play? Anecdotes very welcome.

>>96381616
The things you call "megadungeons" are just dungeons. Dungeons are a necessary component of old school D&D since its inception:
>>96365501
>>96365509
If you don't have fun running and playing in them it's okay of course, but then it means old school D&D isn't your thing.

>>96382449
I swear every time I ask a question in the OSR general I get some snarky-ass replies. Do you not play games? I just wanted to hear some interesting stories from people who have tried mega-dungeons, and if you can't appreciate the difference between small and big dungeons then I don't know what to tell you.

Honestly, do you even play games or do you just spend your time here getting ass-blasted over whether something is *actually* OSR?

>>96382540
>Asks on the DUNGEONS and Dragons general if they like playing in DUNGEONS
>Gets a snarky reply
>Le butthurt

>>96382791
>"I just wanted to hear some interesting stories"
>Your brain: hurr durr durff derr rerpenderf furf durrr hurr dur

>>96381616
If you wanted stories, scroll up, there are several posted in the thread already.
If you wanted to ask a vapid question that includes a common misconception so that you could be mad when a friendly correction is offered, please leave.

>>96382540
you're mistaken, this isn't the OSR general. you take take your OSR neologisms like "megadungeon" and go back to where you came from

>>96382540
Stop and think about where you are before you ask those kinds of questions.

This is a homebrew question;

How do/should grenade weapons work?

I'm working on an alchemist class, and I want a good universal mechanic for throwing bombs and vials and stuff.

Right now I'm leaning towards: when you throw a grenade weapon, make an attack roll. Creatures within the AoE make a reflex saving throw for half damage against the DC set by your attack roll. On a roll of 1, the grenade is lost with no effect.

>>96382540
It's a shame. This thread genuinely used to be a good place for discussion, but around the pandemic it took a nosedive. Now even the most innocuous questions get these bizarre, angry replies.

>>96382449
>>96382975
Since the '00s, "megadungeon" has been used to describe extremely large dungeons, typically big enough to accommodate an entire campaign. The term "dungeon," while initially used to describe the sprawling labyrinths now commonly referred to as megadungeons, is an umbrella term that includes smaller locales that can be explored over the course of a few sessions as opposed to an entire campaign. It's understood that a campaign involving wilderness exploration would include a number of smaller dungeons dotted across the map.

>>96384225
I think you should consider making it so creatures within the AoE have to take a specific action to halve damage, like stopping combat to dive for cover. You can't just reflex save for half and keep fighting as normal, or at least you shouldn't be able to do that with a fragmentation grenade or similar, but it might be possible with a splash weapon.

>>96384225
>make a reflex saving throw
what's that?
>against the DC
what's that?
Here's a simpler version: attack roll against an unarmored AC; on a success everyone within 10' saves vs. breath or takes X damage (half on success), On a miss roll a d12 to see which clock direction the grenade lands in and a 1d10 to see how many feet away from the target location it lands (this way even if a character misses there's still a chance they can damage their target).

>>96384225
Idk, what do the rulebooks for your system say?

>>96384225
>Reflex save
What?

>>96384509
Given the fact that anon was asking a "homebrew question," one could assume that the rulebooks for his system don't say anything on the matter.

>>96381616
Not sure why randos are being pissy today, but in my experience they take a particular kind of player. In theory one can have a lot of variety, but some people will still get a feeling of being limited to a single space even if that space has more content than you could ever get through.

So, know your players, I guess. Unfortunately I don't know of any way to tell what kind of player category you've got until you get underway and find out at the table.

>>96384225
Garbage troll post.
FOEGYG!

>>96384225
you're lost anon, you meant to post this in the Pathfinder general

>>96384542
what game, stupid?

>>96384631
I don't know, obviously you should be asking him and not me.

>>96384478
>Since the '00s
O tempora, o mores.

>It's understood that a campaign involving wilderness exploration would include a number of smaller dungeons dotted across the map.
Those are called "lairs".

>a player totaled up their experience and claimed that they made it to level 5
>Checked the math, and saw that there's no possible way he reached level 5 already, when we're doing gold for exp
>Don't get the vibe that he's cheating, think that over the course of this long campaign that he legitimately added something wrong or misheard some value of exp that I gave him at some point
>He erases his exp and asks what he should do

What happens if a player accidentally makes the dumb mistake of adding up experience wrong over the course of a long campaign? If he's cheating, that's one thing, but I don't think that's the case here, I think he may have just made a couple of mistakes regarding the total... How do I correct this so that he can continue using the character?

What I've done so far is that I went ahead and gave him the total of experience to reach level 5, but no more... And have told him that until the other characters catch up, he will acquire experience at half the rate (Because the bulk of the party is level 1 or 2, with a couple characters being level 3, and one other being level 4.)

>>96385513
why didn't he go through level 3 and 4?

>>96385532
He did go through level 3 and 4. But he hasn't been level 4 for that long... And he certainly didn't gain the total of level 5 yet. The characters are all different levels because the party has had many different characters die or participate in sessions different from one another.
He was level 4, and he should still be level 4. There's no way that he acquired enough exp to reach level 5 yet, but we don't know the actual number of exp he has... So I don't know what to do.

>>96385513
>>96385555
This is why I'm autistic about my record keeping. I don't think any of my players would ever try to cheat but man they can be bad at math and writing shit down. You can of course always go the draconian course and not give people experience for stuff they didn't document well but even then they might document something well and just fuck something up on accident. How do you audit it if you also don't know the totals. It's simply enough to just record the total hauls and write down who went along and who died then you can recalculate the values if necessary.

>>96385584
I'm gonna start keeping a sheet with everyone's characters and EXP totals on it, and then at the end of every session I'll announce their exp gain based on what they bring back to town. I already keep so much stuff recorded and have so many dang notes after each session. It's hard to keep it all straight.

>>96385513
Did he accidentally give himself XP from his XP and GP? I've done that before

>>96385697
I think that he did something like this. I also wonder if maybe he heard one amount at the end of a session, and then heard a different amount later on, and accidentally added totals twice... Who knows?
I just need to come up with some means of fairly allowing him to keep playing and using that character if he wants to.

>>96385707
Make it easy on both of you and knock him down to 1xp away from fourth level.
Make it a point to start actively tracking the experience that you give out every session, but don't tell him you are doing so, let some time go by and then compare notes.

>>96385737
This is what I will do. That's a good idea. If I casually check everyone's character sheets before each session, I can also get a good idea of what's going on if it is off by a bit...

>>96385745
Could it be that he's been giving himself his experience bonus on his risk total XP instead of on the newly acquired XP only?

>>96386749
Remove that "risk" word, no idea where it came from.
>t. phonefag

>>96345052
We ended up playing, though the spotlight was stolen by the player who rolled the new bard class that Raggi made. It feels like the book lacks the usual lotfp horror aspect, but it is, in fact, playable. The players liked it enough and asked me to run a second session, this time I'll use one of the dungeons in the book instead of my own

>>96345052
>>96387064
Thank you for your update. You might be one of the first to run a game and give a report.

Did the bard do anything special with their abilities? I like Raggi's idea of giving the players more ways to screw the campaign and setting but there's bound to be an imbalance with classes not designed this way.

prepping a combo of B1 and B2 for my first time running B/X, was thinking of a few house rules
>for death, etiher the standard "you don't die until you hit negative 10 HP" or a death and dismemberment table, but I don't know which ones are good
>changing how spell memorization works. I've never liked how at early levels it plays like "you get to do one cool thing and then are functionally useless for the rest of the day. instead, changing it to take 10 minutes of uninterrupted rest per spell level to memorize a single spell, so being an early level caster sucks a bit less
>also probably taking the 1e training rules

>>96385513
Training costs helps avoid this shit

>>96387607
>standard "you don't die until you hit negative 10 HP
That's not a standard in any published ruleset

>>96387624
shit, could've sworn it was in 1e (which I've never played, haven't played anything before 3.5 actually)
I know it's a popular house rule nonetheless

>>96387641
It's based on an optional 1e rule for characters that hit 0 hp exactly, the very same character will also be unable to do anything except walk back to civilization and rest for a week after.

>>96387479
Let's just say that you need to be prepared for it to define the whole session (and possibly campaign if it somehow survives that long). Also do what they did at Gencon and only allow one bard to be rolled at all times, it already rolls a lot of dice by itself and doubling it will slow down the game to a snail's pace

>>96387841
I forgot to mention that I think it's really funny, though I can see it being obnoxious if you aren't in tune with Raggi's sense of humor

>>96387607
>the standard "you don't die until you hit negative 10 HP"
Nothing standard about that.

>a death and dismemberment table
NuSR faggotry.

>changing it to take 10 minutes of uninterrupted rest per spell level to memorize a single spell
FOEGYG

>>96387641
>I've never liked how at early levels it plays like "you get to do one cool thing and then are functionally useless for the rest of the day.
>haven't played anything before 3.5 actually
So you've never liked something you've never played? How fucking retarted are you?

DM the game RAW for at least a couple years before starting to shitbrew it.

>>96387641
>I've never played, haven't played anything before 3.5
It was already obvious that you've never played D&D by the fact that you're exclusively concerned with player-facing rules instead of how to run the game as a DM. Read the noob guide, focus on the core procedures listed there, learn how D&D actually works at the table and why certain rules are there, then get back to us when you're not shitbrewing D&D based on your experience with WotC crap.

>>96385513
>Because the bulk of the party is level 1 or 2, with a couple characters being level 3, and one other being level 4.)
Skill issue.
Why is the level 5 being punished in this way? It's not his fault everyone else keeps dying. Perhaps you should recommend new characters be adjusted to better reflect the level of play and level of skill in your group.

>>96387607
>>96387624
>That's not a standard in any published ruleset
Wrong. Pic related.
>>96387641
>I know it's a popular house rule nonetheless
And a sensible one to boot. Without it you will have a much higher mortality and the campaign usually falls into a vicious cycle of "low level hell".

>>96385513
>What happens if a player accidentally makes the dumb mistake of adding up experience wrong over the course of a long campaign?
Generally in my notes I have how much xp they got each session, there shouldn't be any issue with going back and adding up what the xp would have been.
Do you guys not write that shit down?

>>96388424
I've always wondered what that parenthetical
>(optionally as low as –3 hit points if from the same blow which brought the total to 0)
is supposed to mean. Does it mean that if a single blow takes you from positive to 0, -1, or -2 HP you're not unconscious yet??

>>96388240
>NuSR faggotry.
the lingering injury table (intended for use with 1e!) that served as the basis for most injury tables after was written in the 2003. the first named "Death and Dismemberment Table" was posted on a blog in 2008 (intended for use with OD&D!).
this is the ****OSR GENERAL****, not /ad&d1eraw-nohouserules/, you redditspace using faggot

>>96388462
>Does it mean that if a single blow takes you from positive to 0, -1, or -2 HP you're not unconscious yet??
I don't know about that.
But with this option i effect, if a blow gets you to -4, you insta die.

>>96388577
>if a blow gets you to -4, you insta die
Where do you see this? That's not what I understand it to be saying: The -3 thing modifies the conditions for unconsciousness, not death.

>>96388658
Optionally as low as -3.
If you are struck to -4 you do not enter the downed state where you bleed out to -10.

>>96387607
If you're running for the first time, don't use any house rules. Play the game exactly as it's intended to be ran.
Literally just try before you start digging around and tinkering.

Are you the same dipshit who keeps mentioning reflex saves and DC's? Because almost everything you say is a 3.5ism.
Please for the love of God just play the game as it is written without fucking with it, and do that for months before posting again

>>96388462
Holy fuck, are you unable to read or something? That's not what it says at all.
I think this game might be too complicated for you

>>96388462
On first read my interpretation is that ordinarily attacks cannot reduce you below 0 HP on their own, and thus other characters have one turn to bandage you up. With that parenthetical option, an attack can reduce you to -3 (but no lower) and therefore reduce the amount of time others have to revive you.

But I think >>96388577 saying -4 is just an outright death is a valid interpretation, although it seems to contradict this idea of death at -10 HP.

Assuming you stay conscious through -3 HP is retarded though, and you should be ashamed.

Session 47 of my BFRPG campaign. Players finally got around to fighting a dragon and killing it.
First round, one guy was straight up eaten. Second round, the fighting-woman tanked a swipe from it's claw and was almost downed. Third round, it spewed noxious bile everywhere and melted a magic user and thief...
A couple of rounds later, one of the groups magic users scored a critical hit, the result on the critical hit table was "Blow to the head. When struck the foe must make a save vs paralysis or be knocked unconscious." It failed and the party piled on top of it and killed it.

They managed to get quite a bit of gold, some gems, and a magic sword from it's horde.

>>96390345
Wow, you waited until round 3 for a breath weapon?
And you let the players engage the dragon in melee?
BFRPG players really are the stupidest people

>>96390596
You're the stupid one for making judgements without knowing the whole situation. Dumbass...

>>96391036
Why don't you go ahead and explain the situation to me? What went so wrong,?

>>96390345
>fighting-womyn

What the fuck do I say/do in this situation?
Player is an old guy. He's been playing with us for years but is starting to show signs of dementia. But that's not the problem. We can solve the issues of memory by just reminding him that he can ask the other players for information and asking him to remember. But I am purposefully making memory, note-taking, and map drawing be important aspects of the game. It's part of player skill. The thing that's annoying is that he acts like because he's old that he knows more about the game than anyone else, but the reality is, most of what he knows has been gathered from "Story-games" or modernist D&D where you role play everything, and I guess past DMs handwaived everything for the player's benefit.

For example, because his character has a history of blacksmithing, he thinks that he can just make weapons without having to keep track of materials. And he treats the party's inventory cart like a black hole that he can just pull anything out of without actual inventory management. He'll say, "I want to pour holy water on this dead body!" And I'll ask if he's actually carrying holy water. I look at his character sheet, and it's not written there.

I could stop playing with this dude, but I'd rather keep him as a player. So I have to talk to him, I understand that. But where should I start? What are some things I should keep in mind about this situation when I do?

>>96391110
>I have legitimately diagnosed memory issues but I don't see why that would be a problem!
You're going to have to ask him to leave your group. Tell him you are still friends and you guys can play board games and stuff, but if he has these diagnosed memory issues, then it's going to end up being a bummer for both of you.

>>96391092
It's not that anything went wrong. First off, the dragon didn't have wings. They set a trap for it outside it's lair. While setting the trap, the dragon came out and ate one of them.
The party's fighting woman tried to save the guy that was being eaten, but that's when he swiped her on the next round. Then, after the dude was swallowed, that's when it spit the breath weapon.

>>96390345
Hey, I haven't really followed your previous sessions. That dragon sure gave them some brutal run for their money. How many players did partake in that session and how many PCs and retainers did they bring? Also how did the players react to their dieing characters? Which level are they and did you had some PC deaths before? Sorry, lots of questions but I'm genuinely curious!

>>96391109
Saying fighting-man would not makes sense

>>96387607
You already got a bunch of replies but many of them were shit so I'm chipping in:

>was thinking of a few house rules
As mentioned before, when learning a new system (not just B/X), it's best practice to at least try sticking to the rules as much as you can starting out. This isn't some macho "RAW or die" mandate, it's genuinely the best way to learn a system—and thus learn how it ought to be modified.

>For death
Death at 0. Don't be a baby.
That being said, if you're really serious about exploring death and dismemberment rules, my advice is simpler is better. Multilayered tables with various categories for damage types and severity may seem captivating but in practice are needlessly slow and cumbersome.

>changing how spell memorization works.
This has a very, very high likelihood of breaking the game once the party magic-users get beyond the early levels. Exchanging one exploration turn for a free Sleep, Magic Missile, Charm Person—even Light, Shield, or Floating Disc for that matter—is incredibly powerful. Magic-users "suck" in the sense that they don't have good equipment or hp but they have a lot of advantages, namely more inventory space to stock up on oil flasks and other adventuring gear. A single spell per day is really not that bad, it essentially allows the party to bypass one challenge per dungeon expedition, and it makes the acquisition of spells and powers significantly more meaningful and satisfying to the players. I strongly recommend against this rule.
You can always beef up MUs by adding a few extra scrolls to your treasure hordes.

>1e training rules
Not exactly sure what it would add to B/X other than slowing the process of the campaign. To me this only makes sense if you intend to run a campaign weekly for years and years but that's up to you. This blog post has more info:
https://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2023/06/ad-training.html

>>96391110
This anon >>96391129 has it right. Either that or, if he's a really good friend? Play some story games with him, shift to them for a bit, let him play games that he enjoys with you.
I know, it's not OSR but sometimes the memories are more important than the game.
And the reality is, he's not going to have those memories much longer, so you're going to have to make them with the dude you care about so that you can have them for yourself.

I'm sorry you're in this situation anon. Just make the best of a bad situation.

>>96391133
Dragon without wings? Did he lose them in 'nam?

>>96391133
Very stupid. Was the dragon also of animal intelligence or something?

>>96391146
>How many players did partake in that session and how many PCs and retainers did they bring?
Six players played in today's session, each brought two characters, and they brought a small entourage of hirelings.
>Also how did the players react to their dieing characters?
Some of the newer players were shocked. One player made their save versus dragon's breath and thought they were safe. Only to still get hit for half damage, which was enough to kill 'em. You could see that everyone was starting to feel grim about the possibility of a party wipe.
>Which level are they and did you had some PC deaths before?
They are levels ranging from 1 to 4, with hirelings of levels 1 and 2. They have had many, many character deaths before this. One player has had 13 or 14 characters die. One girl has had 3 characters die, three sessions in a row...

>>96391202
>>96391166
Yes, it was also of animal intelligence. (Like, it could not speak.) This honestly isn't a true dragon. I guess you'd call it a "Drake". But it's definitely the strongest creature they've killed so far.

>>96391161
sad but still hope pilled, you got a good point. Dementia really sucks as a diagnose.
>>96391110
Call me a retard but if I remember correctly, some medical research showed a link between dementia and diabetes or that it's a form of diabetes in which the brain doesn't get the nutrients anymore from that previous diet. I think there were results showing that certain adjustments on food (have to look up which exactly sorry) can actually prevent or even reverse dementia effects. Furthermore the brain is a muscle that needs exercise in order to not get rusty. I hope your friend will be better and able to combat that diagnosis.

>>96391160
nta but can you give some ideas for good floating disc uses. My MU was complaining a little about rolling that for his first level spell, calling it rather useless and wack. I told him to think outside of the box and possibly come up with some situation specific usage for it. (E.g. carrying treasure through the dungeon, preventing floor traps to be triggered, etc.)

>>96391207
Thanks, sounds fun and wow lots of deaths indeed. Correct me if I am wrong but it seems some of them are not really cautious when dieing so often.

Floating disc is really not that complicated of a spell, and it's really just for moving treasure out.
His disappointment at not getting what he wants is just part of the game, he can either roll with it and persevere, or he can suicide and make a new character

>>96391273
>My MU was complaining a little about rolling that for his first level spell
Floating Disc is such a good spell though! It negates basically any trap or challenge that has an activating switch on the floor and it allows you to transport a bunch of items. It's basically a free short-term cart...

>>96391273
>good floating disc uses
Not going to say Floating Disc is an amazing spell—>>96391301 is correct that it's mostly just for moving treasure out of the dungeon—but I've seen some very creative uses over the years. Keep in mind that RAW implies the disc only starts following once the MU is 6' away, meaning it stays stationary at waist-height otherwise. Also the disc is as useful bringing heavy stuff into the dungeon, like spare rations for luring monsters, oil flasks, sandbags to use as cover and barricades, and so on.

The biggest hindrance of the spell is that it only lasts an hour, but if it was able to be cast multiple times with a single spell slot it would essentially allow a party a free 500 pounds of capacity.

>>96391435
>It negates basically any trap or challenge that has an activating switch on the floor
Does it? It creates a shield-size disc that only follows the movements of the caster. It can only accommodate two, maybe three PCs and the MU has to stay on the ground.

>>96391435
>It negates basically any trap or challenge that has an activating switch on the floor
What are you talking about? Do you think it's like a hovercraft or something?

What are some good classic funhouse dungeons? Seems like there's a real dearth of them, especially nowadays

>>96391487
>>96391459
You've never used it to disengage or detect traps from afar? Have you ever put liquid in it and had the liquid float just over floor level?

>>96391615
Literally what the fuck are you even talking about?

>>96391450
Man, imagine how useful the ability to move hundreds of pounds around would be, if it wasn't gimped hard just to try and make it nothing more than a treasure moving spell.

>>96391683
And what exactly would you do with it?
Are you under the impression that getting treasure isn't the exact crux of the game?

>>96374651

you see anon im called the fighting man because im the fighting man. i only know how to fight. I was raised to fight. I've only ever fought. I don't know how to do anything else. I've never known anything else. All I do is fight, fight fight all day. Do you understand, anon? Fighting all day...it takes a toll. A toll that only a man who fights all day every day can understand. Also I predict that the red mages of thay will use their mass communication orbs to destroy society

>>96392869
I actually did have a character for a long time named "fightyman the mighty".
He called himself that, because he was always large and strong, and growing up his grandfather would always tell his mother in front of him, that he would "grow up to be a fighting man!", and then at some point suffered a head injury causing him to be very low intelligence.
Trying to make his family proud, but not understanding the context remaining, he calls himself "fightyman"

whats the best retroclone for ADnD?
like, just a cleaned up version of ADnD

OSE and BFRPG are both BX clones

>>96393051
BFRPG is not even close to being a BX game, and OSE is hardly a clone, it's more a table reference.

>>96393081
let me rephrase that, they both give me BX vibes in the way that the rules look rather than ADnD

>>96393081
I don't understand what your definition of clone could be where OSE wouldn't fall under it

>>96393656
I think he means it's not a new game built off of B/X so much as a reference book for playing B/X

>>96393656
As >>96393667 said, in my opinion a retro clone is a new game built off an old game, OSE as far as classic is concerned, is less of a new game and more of a de facto rule book..
That being said, the advanced set could easily be argued as a full retro clone as it is full of new material that was created just for it.

>>96393667
>>96393988
Oh, I see.

>>96393051
>whats the best retroclone for ADnD?
>like, just a cleaned up version of ADnD
The ONLY one that's a partial attempt to be a retroclone of AD&D is OSRIC. Partial attempt because it's incomplete and makes some changes, unlike OSE.

>OSE and BFRPG are both BX clones
OSE is, indeed, a B/X clone. BFRPG is a shitbrew that's inspired by B/X and other things like AD&D 2e/3e, for example when it makes XP for gold optional and fucks the treasure tables up in such a way that even if you use that optional rule, it won't work.

>>96393988
>a retro clone is a new game
Look up the word "clone" in a dictionary.

>>96393100
>they give me BX vibes in the way that the rules look
https://www.reddit.com/r/lostredditors/

>>96394201
Look up what "in my opinion" means, retard

>>96394365
NTA. If in your opinion "plumber" means "somebody who drives a taxi cab for a living", you need to look up the word "plumber" in a dictionary.

>>96391615
With all due respect, and I'm saying this as charitably as I can: It doesn't sound like you're following the rules of the spell

>>96396077
>It doesn't sound like you're following the rules of the spell
Not that anon. Yes, it sounds like houserules or, dare I say it, nogames to me.
Perhaps it has to do with the innate desire of the pl*yoids to to solve complex problems with simple spells.

>>96396152
>pl*yoids
?

>>96396152
>dare I say
>pl*yoids
ok bro relax

>>96393051
>>96394499
Ose is a reference not a clone, and BFRPG is absolutely not a BX game

>>96393051
OSRIC but, as others have mentioned, it does have some ommissions. For my group, everybody has a copy of OSRIC and I add in things from the DMG that are missing. OSRIC 3E is currently in production and looks to be an improvement. The current rules are free on their website and I encourage you to take a look. It's worked really well for my group. After a hiatus of a few years, we've established a weekly game and just played our 20th session.
Plus one intermission session of Mothership. That game isn't very good, but my players had fun.

>>96396506
>>96396438
Try lurking more and actually playing the game before you show up to piss your pants in front of us

>>96396152
>>96396077
I think he is the same retard that has been shitting up the thread with 3.5/pathfinder stuff while admitting that he knows nothing about osr