Thread 96417397

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:
>>96393394

>Thread Question
Have you ever used DMG Artifacts in your campaign? If you did, which?

>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

Is there a bestiary with weird magic-apocalypse mutant beasties out there? Seems like something that should have appeared at some point along this ride.

I'll take NuSR trash too. I don't mind making up some numbers, as long as the monsters are cool.

>>96417653
>magic-apocalypse mutant beasties
Are they any different from radiation-apocalypse in your mind? Because in case Gamma World and Mutant Future have plenty.

If you want something that's more magical, the Ivashu from Hârnmaster are great. Harnmaster itself is not compatible, but someone has done a conversion to D&D 5e, from which converting to D&D should be easy.

>>96417653
Carcosa might be close to what you're looking for

>>96417735
>Harnmaster itself is not compatible, but someone has done a conversion to D&D 5e, from which converting to D&D should be easy.
The rest of your post was decent, but you trolled too hard at the endThe rest of your post was decent, but you trolled too hard at the end

>>96417405
Thanks as always.

>>96417653
I was thinking Mutant Future as well: it has no standalone monster book, but does want you want well enough in its revised edition core book. There's also the LotFP custom monstermaker book, and The Metamorphica: Revised Edition, which gives you a gajillion tables to fuck around with.

>>96417653
The monster overhaul has lots of interesting variants for standard monsters, you could probably get a lot of mileage out of that

>>96417397 (OP)
Why did the guide disappear? Please repost it

>last thread is still on page 1
>plenty of image slots left
>still make a new thread immediately when bump limit hits

fucking newfags

>>96418178
>immediately when bump limit hits
We're on page 8, Anon. Also, not sure what the issue is with having a new thread.

>>96418178
The last thread was on page 7 and a few dozen posts over when this one was made. Then the mod came in and deleted a few dozen, and now it's back. No point blaming the OP here for that.

>>96418173
>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

>>96418193
>>96418200
ok i take it back

>>96417781
>There's also the LotFP custom monstermaker book, and The Metamorphica: Revised Edition, which gives you a gajillion tables to fuck around with.
Is it good? Or is it all weird cringe sex shit?

>>96418178
He needed to make it early so he could post his "you need to hate 2e as much as I do" guide, which got deleted.

>>96418379
Assuming you're referring to the LotFP thing, the Esoteric Creature Generator is good and not cringe sex shit

Did anyone ever do a decent Hyborea for 0e?

>>96418826
How is wight box? I've heard it's OD&D with chainmail baked in. The dude is apparently launching a kickstarter soon.

>>96418892

It uses d20 rolls but adds modifiers based on the armour, weapon.
Otherwise its just ODND, decent ADnD dungeon Generator. I will be backing the KS.

Its better than fagonslayer.

>ACKS might put out a book on Chaotic play/adventures/races/classes/ect
Fuck yeah, give me that shit.

>>96419994

>buy an AD

Meanwhile The Gaysic Expert spams wight box ad copy every thread nobody cares.

>>96419994
I've posted once about how I'm looking forward to having a chance to play Elric, keeping in mind that shit isn't being sold, it's just being talked about and I think it'd be neat.
You meanwhile have posted 3 times so far dropping off topic faggot-salt.
So how about you sling your carpet bag over your shoulder and fuck off back to r/osr?

How should I handle ship-related skills for a pirate centered shitbrew? Stuff like knot tying or navigation or piloting they can't really be represented by player skill. Probably would want them randomly generated so they have a reason to get hirelings. But I don't want the entire crew to be hirelings and the PCs to be unskilled outside of their class features.

I also want the game to be as little FOEGYG as possible. But I do want something mechanical for PCs skills on the ship. Some stuff will just be handled by a special roll or table (like I don't need perception, that's what encounter distance rolls are for).

>>96420255
>Stuff like knot tying or navigation or piloting they can't really be represented by player skill.
uh yeah they can

>>96419843
>>96419792
He made a fuckton of money off that Kickstarter, he doesn't need to shill here. Also no one on this board buys shit so why would he advertise to you faggots?
That said I just started running ACKS and while it's fun i really wish it was just BX with the domain rules tacked on. I don't need the extra micro rurle.

>>96420255
Player's Option: Skills & Powers may have stuff you are looking for. I recall one of the kits added by the book is a pirate.

>>96420300
Realistically practically how do I do that? Especially like piloting a ship? I guess I can see the argument for not having it at all, but I want there to be reason to kill the helmsman and it not just be replaced by another PC. But maybe that's alright.

>>96420357
Utter unplaytested crap.

>>96420581
Thanks for the unhelpful post, anon.

>>96420396
Do you mean piloting while travelling from A to B (in which case B/X and the DMG have rules for that), or piloting in combat?

In the latter case, OD&D LBB3 has rules for it, including written orders, simultaneous movement, tactical turning rate and rules for ramming and shearing and grappling and boarding and so on.

Yet another option is to use a wargame to solve ship combat. Trireme is great for that:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/1709/trireme-tactical-game-of-ancient-naval-warfare-494

If instead you want something post-gunpowder, age of sail-ish, Wooden Ships & Iron Men is your friend:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/237/wooden-ships-and-iron-men

>>96420633
Preventing noobs from wasting their time with one of the worst rulebooks ever published IS helpful.

>>96420656
I'm glad you brought up WS&IM cause I love that game and actually stealing from it would be OSR af.
I will check all of this out thanks anon.
Basically I ran a very unsatisfying nu DnD pirates game with gold for XP to get my players used to the idea and I want to try it again in OSR with my other group but I don't want the skill bloat wanking where they max some skill to plus 30. But I also don't want...no skills.

>>96420255
>>96420396
>>96420300
> just teach your players how to be real sailors to avoid FOE bro
this can't be serious

>>96420677
If you love WS&IM, you'll certainly enjoy Trireme as well. I actually use both because their movement rules are compatible, but they interact with the wind points in different ways, so it's cool to use the Trireme rules for galleys and the WS&IM ones for galeons.

I've heard Macris has run a whole campaign around sailing, so I suspect there have to be rules in ACKS II for it, though I've never used them. Maybe check that out as well.

>>96420656
>I heard bad things about a rulebook and without finding out myself I just repeat shit.

>>96420677
>I don't want the skill bloat wanking where they max some skill to plus 30. But I also don't want...no skills.
In that case, do check ACKS II out. I'm not a fan of skills, but it does use them in a relatively minimalistic way.

>>96420753
Shut the fuck up until you're able to contribute anything to the thread that compares to the quality of my posts:
>>96420656
>>96420747

Designing some sort of old school tomb. Give ideas please. I just want to drown my party in skeletons in the final battle.

>>96420850
Designing a dungeon for a specific party, let alone planning "THE final battle" for them, is FOE bullshit.

This having been said, you can mine Barrowmaze for undead stuff. It's not perfect, but it's pretty good overall: a few hundred pages of mostly undead, as well as a class on how to design a dungeon without any FOE bullshit.

This thread went from bad to the absolute worst in just a day.

>>96420780
I did contribute and without retarded whining about a book you only heard stuff about.

>>96420747
I'll also check out Trireme. I just recently got more into ancient naval battles. I saw some of the ACKS II naval rules so I might look through those again and see if they're worth using. I just don't like the profirciencies much

>>96421230
> for a specific party
yes
> designing a dungeon big bad boss and a cool battle
that has been part of the hobby since its conception you nerd

What do you guys think about Tekumel?

>>96420850
You could have a headless statue that gives PCs a temporary Clairvoyance ability if they put a fresh severed head on it. Or maybe have some rooms with unguarded treasure and a bunch of inert skeletons, which at a certain point become animate. Some of the older undead could wield weapons coated in rust or black mold or some shit that might give the target a disease. Detrimental, but of limited utility in the PCs' hands.

>>96421756
One of those things that are cool in concept but not fun to play, except that you go really hard into the setting. It needs a really special type of player to be good.

>>96420255
The game functions fine without skill rolls. If they rolled or picked Sailor as a secondary skillset for that character they know how to do it. Individual knots to not matter, go bigger picture.
If they need sailors they can hire NPCs

>>96418826

Buy an ad you fucking loser.

Nobody wants your shit 0e clone.

New players are taking a third (5 hour) session to clear Hole in the Oak.
I'm not sure what is the correct way to speed things up without becoming the "angry GM" who sours the mood. They have been very lucky with the random encounters even though I check it every single turn.

>>96423219
It's hard to help you given you give no details, but a few things stand out to be:
1. Why are you checking for random encounters every turn?
2. What is that you feel your players are slow at?
3. Are they having fun?
General comment: One of several common issues with new school dungeons is that they are overcrowded and have very few empty rooms. This creates the expectation that every single room will be a mini-adventure in and of itself, which in turn can plunge players into analysis-paralysis. Paradoxically, empty rooms can speed up play by having players switch from "I just need to take a single step for something dangerous to happen" to "I need to actively look for stuff".

>>96421510
>>96421733
Post a play report instead of your usual bullshit. When did you last play? What happened in that session?

>>96421733
The Anon you're criticising replied to the question with a specific, constructive suggestion: Barrowmaze. Do you have anything to contribute to the thread that isn't your same old meta bait?

>>96421756
It's one of those that sound better in theory than in actual play at the table imo.
If they had published more real parts of the megadungeons underneath Jakalla, instead of reskinned parts of undermountain, with it's pulp superscience i'd probably think it was better.

>>96423257

1. I supposed it would be more exciting in a horror movie way if there was a check every turn. That bite me in the ass.
2. They are still getting used to everything, me too really. I am looking forward to the time I don't have to explain every procedure or Thief skill anymore.
3. I hope. I'm a people pleaser so I had to learn to fight the urge to make it too easy on them.
>nuSR dungeons are overcrowded
A good point. Got to tune that a bit.
Nothing to say, but failure is the best teacher.

>>96423522
It's looking up, Anon. You can fix the wandering monster frequency (once every two or three turns) and you'll all get better with time.

Adding empty rooms to overcrowded dungeons isn't difficult or particularly time consuming, if you want to give it a shot. It can be a fun exercise if you take it as a learning opportunity in the art of jelqing.

>>96423522
>>96423877
oh, forgot
>I am looking forward to the time I don't have to explain every procedure or Thief skill
What makes you think you have to do that? Thief skills are in a book that they're supposed to read, and DM-facing procedures you don't have to explain, they'll infer them with time by playing.

>>96420337
He didn't make enough to not use AI art.
Or he's a scumbag. Well, likely both.

>>96424066
Post something that isn't your usual flamebait meta-commentary. Tell us about your current campaign. What are you playing? DM or player?

Gonna run this thing tomorrow to see if it works, though I'll probably have to do some homework later today. Any tip is appreciated

>>96424683
>>96424731
>>96424756
Replying here as promised.

>what is the difference between a room and a chamber?
See the attached infographic.

>And my other question is regarding the checks for generating secret doors and one-way doors. How exactly does the procedure work
What's unclear about it?

>how do one-way doors behave?
From one side they look like normal doors and they open normally. From the opposite side they are undetectable and can't be opened. They close on their own some time after the party have passed through.

>If players look for secret passages and doors is there a chance that they appear then after rolling a die or should they've been mapped and rolled for by me in advance?
If you're playing as a DM, secretly determine whether a secret passage or door is there. Remember that secret doors are found with two passes: A first quick check, at one (one-minute) round per 10'×10' sections reveals the presence and location of the door, a second check, at one turn per 10'×10' area, reveals the means to open. DMG 96/97.

If you're playing solo the rule is a bit silly, but basically it's a combined check of being present and being found: If it's there you find it, if you don't find it it isn't there. Of course you can house rule this ("discretion must prevail").

>how do you determine whether an exit is a door or not
Room = door (unless stated otherwise)
Chamber = passage (unless stated otherwise)

>does the entry count towards Table V. C.: Number of exits?
This is obvious from the fact that the table can generate zero exits. So no, it doesn't count.

>how do you treat the doors in your dungeons generally? Are they all stuck and some even locked?
DMG page 97 lists three or four door types. I've created a random table out of it, but regular stuck doors are the default.

>>96424941
Much appreciated, anon, that helps a lot!
I need to further study the DMG on doors before asking more silly questions, I guess. But generally there is no real way to open an one-way door from the other side once it has closed?

>>96424796
Curious to hear how it goes. I've never run a Zak adventure but the ones I've seen appear half the most intuitive thing I've ever seen, half impenetrable mess that seems impossible to translate to the table.

>>96425042
>Much appreciated, anon, that helps a lot!
Your satisfaction is our best reward.

>But generally there is no real way to open an one-way door from the other side once it has closed?
I don't believe this is actually discussed explicitly anywhere, but it's "common knowledge" that they're undetectable and unopenable from the opposite side.

Contrast this with one-way secret passages, that are more ambiguous: Often they mean that the passage is secret on one side but unhidden on the other.

>>96425086
>Lino Banfi

What are you guys working on lately?
My group is skipping their session today due to me being sick, so I'm gonna use some of my downtime reading up on old modules and old Dungeon Magazine entries to see if I can find stuff to add to my campaign map.

I'd like to know what you guys are up to as well.

>>96425086
>I want to grow heihachi hair, do you think it would make me look like a cool dungeon master?

>>96424796
actually i wonder if this might be too difficult for a level 2 party, full of hd5+ creatures. Might run another one instead

>>96425232
I'm doing a full write up of a campaign so far, I might even start a Substack for it given its length.

>>96419287
>It uses d20 rolls
into the trash with the rest of the NuSR slop

>>96425612
out of curiosity, where do you think the entrance is? it's sort of ambigous

>>96425759
Is this a serious question? You can tell just by the map the entrances are wherever there are doors to the outside.

>>96426045
except most outside facing doors are behind secret doors. My assumption is that you are meant to enter from the bottom

>>96426205
They're not? You can see in the key that the orange doors—"doors to exterior"—are distinct from secret and locked doors. There are orange "doors to exterior" all around the map. There are two right above and below the pterodactyl roost

>>96426259
no, what i meant is that they a separated from the rest of the dungeon by secret doors, the blue Ss, like the one in the round room

>>96426280
Oh I got you senpai. I see where the confusion lies.
You're probably correct wrt the bottom.

>>96426380
when the fuck did it start changing senpai to senpai
>>96425232
Made a megadungeon like a year ago my players are currently exploring; actually getting it to the table has been a blast but it's given me enough ideas for things I would do different that I started making an entirely new megadungeon. Not sure if it's ever going to see play but it's a nice way to pass the time.

>>96427184
>when the fuck did it start changing senpai to senpai
many years ago, kouhai

>>96425232
a one-shot for a players b-day party tomorrow.

>>96426666
Cool pick but obvious missed opportunity to make the background more exciting at each stage instead of just the character

>>96428606
NTA, but I mean there's at least one or two of those expansive background images that float around here and there. Nice to have one that just explains how the game is meant to be played rather than the long term consequence of play.

Stonehell session 21 in the books:
Party has parleyed with the Open Sore Clan Orcs to slaughter the Wolf Tribe Goblins on the first floor of the dungeon. The party encountered some drunk and relatively friendly Orcs in a guard post and poisoned them, staging the bodies as if they had killed each other. They also vandalized some of their graffiti outside of the outpost, which may spoil their plans. They rescued a battered gnome from the Orc headquarters. Then they slaughtered a few Goblins as well as some cannibal berserkers before discovering a hidden passageway beneath an altar.

I've really been enjoying this module, and so have my players. Hearty recommendation.

>>96426666
>domain game
That's just one option. My group tends to prefer high level adventuring, travelling to other planes and stuff.

>>96429992
Do they at least have a sick ship to get around in or similarly nice place to put their shit while travelling?

>>96429106
Stonehell is quite possibly the best dungeon ever published.

I presume you're using the free expansions, right? Supplements 0, 1, and 2.

feels like some people cling to parts of OSR just for the sake of authenticity rather than fun

>>96430558
Which parts specifically?

>>96430561
Race as class
Thief being dogshit at the only thing that makes it unique until higher levels
THAC0

>>96430565
>Race as class
Makes perfect sense when you want the setting to be humanocentric.
Personally I prefer ACKS 'Race as a few classes' variant, not every dwarf is a vaultguard, some are just crazy ol' mushroom fuckers and that gives cultural variety while still keeping them safe from being reskinned humans.
>Thief being dogshit
Thieves are intended to level quick, which gives them higher level henchman/options earlier. I agree they could lean into ire more though.
>THAC0
Not even going to disagree on that one.

>>96430754
>Personally I prefer ACKS 'Race as a few classes' variant
My main problem with that is that the ACKS race-class names are lame.

>>96430773
Names are names, mechanics are mechanics, one is important, the other can be easily replaced.

>>96430565
>Race as class
Not in half the basic sets or AD&D.
>Thief being dogshit at the only thing that makes it unique until higher levels
Adjudication issue mostly.
>THAC0
Irrelevant shorthand for a table lookup. Complaining about that is something tertiaries do.

What was the logic that went into FC / HD progression in the LBBs? Like I generally get what they were going for, but there are a few random spots like how Fighters get +1 to their HD at level 5 and it's not immediately obvious to me why. M-Us have a regular pattern for the first seven levels, which suddenly breaks at level 8.

I just wanted to shitbrew up a couple classes from the supplements, like retrofit Druid into the LBB style, but I'm having some trouble figuring out the pattern here. It sure is a lot easier for me to wrap my head around "1d4 HD per level".

>>96430558
We just have got some BrOSRs in this thread. You got to try to ignore them, they're particularly shitty people.

>>96431637
Ah yes
>Everyone who disagrees with me are BAD PEOPLE in my culture war

>>96430558
Investigate
>Satisfaction
in contrast to
>Fun
They're related but different.

>>96430565
>Race as class
Based and gatekeeps freakshitters
>Thief being dogshit at the only thing that makes it unique until higher levels
Good, anyone who picks thief is either a deluded dexfag or hardmode chad that knows what he's getting into
>THAC0
The math filters 5e players. 'nuff said!

Some of these BrOSR larpers go HARD.

>>96431315
>What was the logic that went into FC / HD progression in the LBBs?
None, probably. Gary (pbuh) and Dave (pbuh) were just pulling numbers out of their asses, methinks.

>>96431637
>>96432605
Can you show me on the doll where the BrOSR touched you, Billy?

>>96431315
>What was the logic that went into FC / HD progression in the LBBs?
Either it was just some playtest thing like they felt that was necessary, or else (more likely) it's just a leftover artifact of their fairly chaotic editing process. You'll notice that a lot of that stuff's the first to get scrubbed out, even as early as the supplements.

>>96430565
>Thief being dogshit at the only thing that makes it unique until higher levels
Weird to call this an OSR sacred cow given how often people have complained about it and posted proposed fixes in this general, anything from Mornardian reevaluation of what the skills actually mean, to changing the percentages, to total revamps.

>>96432595
>Good, anyone who picks thief is either a deluded dexfag or hardmode chad that knows what he's getting into

>>96429106
>>96430485
My B2 wilderness map, but using hexes instead of squares. Each hex is 100 yards.

The reason I'm quoting Stonehellfag shall be revealed in my next post.

>>96429106
>>96430485
>>96438779
Stonehell in B2, with the B2 caves scattered around the map. I have also inserted Barrowmaze there as a proof of concept (I was playing around with the scale), but I DON'T recommend you have both dungeons so close to one another.

>>96429106
>>96430485
>>96438779
>>96438781
Players' version, should be suitable for VTT although I don't use VTT

Welp, while it isn't finished I'm sharing this here as I said I would a few threads ago.

https://mega.nz/file/id51UZqa#9pZoBcVtOF3vssbZ4kON2WN9XAbGvSi-TStiB9nKTxY

A full write up of the first arc of an ACKS campaign, complete with DM notes. It's only half tidied up with images to make it pretty but hell, I'm going to be buried under next week at work so better to share now than not at all.

Enjoy, critique, meme on my DMing style, or don't. I think the campaign has gone fairly well so far.

>>96425232
>working on lately
Trying to turn SWoN faction turns into multiplayer gameplay. Seems straight forward enough, might end up making a quick reference sheet or something similar.

>>96439366
Alright, I'll take a look.
>238 pages
Holy autism batman, you weren't kiddin-
>11MB
Holy shit! How?!

>>96438779
>>96438781
>>96438784
10/10, would play fantasy adventure games in

>>96439366
>This is a deeply religious world and
I’m not letting anyone play fedora tipper in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXTv_yKAP-E

>>96438779
>Each hex is 100 yards.
as an aside, man this really puts into perspective how stupid huge the standard 6 mile hex really is. Makes me feel silly making my regional map at that scale, and putting one village in a hex.

>>96439366
You better be rightfully proud of this shit. Legendary autism and you've sold me on using oracles on my regular games. Bravo.

>>96439366
>Old school /tg/ capital C Content with someone posting their entire campaign in pdf form.
What a fucking champion.

>>96439366
Outstanding. Isn't there a hex map?

>>96440007
Shit I knew I forgot something important.
Pic related, I'll do one tweak to add that map at some point.

>>96420747
Skipped over the navel rules in ACSKII when reading it, can't tell you if they are good, but they exist.

>>96420753
He's right, though. I bought that book when it came out and I can confirm that it's absolute unadulterated dogshit.

>>96441308
This. Skills and Powers is notorious, "don't use that, it's awful" is the first thing 2e people will tell you

>>96441724
Which is *exactly* the reason he's recommended it in the first place. Because he knew people would tell him that and he could start a flamewar about it.

>>96439366
Man, I'm reposting this next thread.
The writing, the explaining of why you did things, the players decisions and how smart they play shit.
Everything is top end kino.
I'm not saying it should be in the OP. But it should sure as fuck be kept close to hand for reference on what /osrg/ gameplay is like for newcomers.

>>96431782
BrOSR need to spend more time RPing as dungeon delvers and less time RPing as 80s movie high school bullies on social media.
They talk mad shit about shoving nerds into lockers for people who obsess over 40 year old editions of elf games.

>>96442480
>They talk mad shit about shoving nerds into lockers
pearl clutching intensifies

>>96442625
The most amusing part of them claiming people are BrOSR is the fact I've never, not once, seen anyone mention BrOSR unless they were meme'ing on it.
Not even in a 'Oh this isn't the way it should be played/they're doing it wrong' way, just in a 'Man...what're you fucking doing bro?' kind of way.
I've never seen a single post saying 'BrOSR is the only way to play', he's just determined to equate people saying 'We want to discuss OSR games in /osrg/' with dudebros, like it's fucking 2020 and he thinks he can card shuffle about 'Techbros' or 2016 and he can win by going on about GamerGators or some shit.
He's such a retard.

>>96442684
I mean this with all due respect: you must be new here. Several years ago there was a very small yet very dedicated contingent of posters who legitimately did frequently post BrOSR shit every thread. They got shut down repeatedly (probably by another small yet dedicated contingent of posters) and then eventually gave up.

>>96442747
>Several years ago
Completely fair, I wasn't into osr several years ago, mea culpa.

>>96442747
Anon's still correct though insofar as unironic BrOSR posting ITT is a thing of the past, and as such accusations about it now are hilariously outdated.

>>96442786
Out of interest, what's the deal with BrOSR? I know they're meant to be heavy on domain play and 'Dude, what if no DM?' or something right?
What's the skinny and makes them different from others?

>>96442791
(But the KEK being said sure, I agree with you. I was probably just nitpicking in the first place to be honest)

>>96442800
The deal with BrOSR in short is that they overinterpreted a passage in the DMG and claimed their resulting playstyle was the one true style sanctioned by Gygax PBUH. Then they acted extremely obnoxious about it online. There were additional aggravating factors such as the gradual appearance of evidence that they hadn't even played in that style very much themselves and when they had the campaigns had basically been short-lived failures, but as you can imagine, those circumstances only increased the power and variety of mockery, they weren't a cause of it as such.

Really, if they'd just stuck to liking and discussing their new substyle they would probably just have generated some moderate polite interest, but being absolutist fags made people aggressive about pointing out where they'd obviously misread or just distorted the DMG text they relied on, and also about jeering at them. Classic FAFO really

>>96442800
>What's the skinny and makes them different from others?
Three things mainly:
1) Kayfabe.
2) Strict 1:1 time when no play is happening, with the IRL and campaign calendars in lock step (which is stricter than how Gygax played it, although they claim otherwise).
3) Braunstein using all kinds of different systems.

>>96442827
>>96442830
While I agree that their interpretation of 1:1 time is philologically wrong, I do think that autistically strict 1:1 time can lead to interesting situations.

It also goes well with solo play. The Joy of Wargaming dude (youtube channel) has three solo campaigns using strict 1:1 time (an AD&D one, a Traveller one, and a "wargaming AD&D" one) that are fun.

>>96442854
>While I agree that their interpretation of 1:1 time is philologically wrong, I do think that autistically strict 1:1 time can lead to interesting situations.
Definitely! This is why I said that if they just hadn't acted like faggots their methods would likely have generated some friendly interest.

>>96442827
It tickles me to no end that the longest and most renowed BroSR campaign uses ACKS rather than AD&D RAW.

I buy some BroSR ideas: early D&D groups played more often than we do currently so domain play wasn't this thing you do at the end of a campaign, but their bread and butter, and because of the wargaming background most early players had, this led to a more natural PvP (which is sort of verboten nowadays). Or the concept of The Living Campaign and how strict 1:1 allows for multiple groups running async on the same campaign, to the point I'd even recommend strict 1:1 on your west marches. Hell, I even liked Brozer.

Other stuff like how prevalent braunstein was in early D&D or patron play (on top of regular play)... yeah, not so sure there, and the fact that most of them don't even run their own games that way, or any way even... (not that it stops them from picking fights with grognards about the TRVE way of running D&D).

Anyway, interesting stuff once you get over their WWE bullshit and separate the chaff from the wheat.

>>96443055
I was talking to some brosr guys a year plus ago and told them they were going to get their few good ideas milked by less socially retarded people and that's basically exactly what's happened. Critical Role of all people doing "West Marches" style campaign and the Shadowdark lady tried befriending/signal boosting them but now cut all contact after they sperged. Domain play seems ready to come into fashion and ironically its most radical and retarded advocates will be completely forgotten/their specific playstyle lost under the weighted blanket of history

>>96443158
>the Shadowdark lady tried befriending/signal boosting them but now cut all contact after they sperged
Tbh she seems like the physical embodiment of "less socially retarded people milking the ideas of spergs". I don't want to sound too down on it but literally what Shadowdark is: Basic with a collection of other, less telegenic people's houserules.

>>96439366
Downloaded and started reading. This is fucking rad.

>>96442830
>with the IRL and campaign calendars in lock step (which is stricter than how Gygax played it,

>>96443178
>Basic with a collection of other, less telegenic people's houserules.
I disagree. Shadowdark is "Kiddie 5e" at best, a shitbrew à la Knave at worst:
>spammable spells
>ability checks
>difficulty class
>"campfires"
>self recharging (spammable) wands
>"luck tokens"
If you suggested any of the above as "houserules", you would be accused of trying to troll the thread.

>>96443158

And then the fad will end and most people won't like west marches, domain play or fun games, and regardless of what the rules say people will be making characters that move from pre-made encounter to pre-made encounter, with characters they describe like "Gay disaster" and "center of attention"

>>96445356
Cheers, glad you're enjoying it. If you've got any critiques or the like feel free to talk mad shit about it.
It was an experiment and it worked out pretty well IMHO, but I'm also hoping to start throwing my actual solos up on Substack at some point for a little extra beer money in my life so if there is anything anyone can say about the writing itself? Hit me with it.

>>96426666
>domain game

Nigga, I want to go on adventures not play SimCity

>>96448918
>>96443906

>>96448314
I've been researching OSR for awhile now. The impression I get is that rather than going on an epic quest you'd make a movie about, it's more like going on an expedition you'd make a documentary about. And I think you've pretty much found the perfect format. I really like how it embraces and leans into the fact that this is a game.

Things I would add/include (to this, and to other game reports of this type):
>Pronunciation guide for names
>Short explanation of certain terms
>A hand-drawn/traced map of the region
>Each section shows where on the map the events are taking place
>Each section ends with a summary of the new lore that's been established

>>96449331
It's a fair cop on all accounts. I should've finished the lore section before posting it but like I said; I've got shit coming up IRL and this would've been stuck in the bucket until New Years if I'd not just thrown it out.

I'll put my hands up and fully admit, it's a rough-as-a-badgers-arse draft.

Still, I'm glad that it's, at its core, not a bad idea. When I asked if people were interested there were at least a few 'Who'd even give a fuck's.

I will refine it at some point though, just as a matter of personal pride.

Is ACKS playable at high levels if I don't want to do a lot of spreadsheets, or nah?

>>96449830
ACKS supports a shit-ton of play styles, so you and your players "just" need to avoid those that require the spreadsheety bits.

Does anyone have any tips for running a game inspired by/set in a real historical period/region? I want to use the Fergana valley for a hex crawl. It's in central Asia, was famous for its horses in the ancient world, and was a stop on the silk road. I want to run it with a roughly 16th century setting.

I ran my first session of Wight-Box today and I learned my players really do not like the optional rule where you roll all your hit dice every day and thats your hits.

Anyway, other than that, two solid delves into a rolled up dungeon. Two hireling deaths from players pushing them into traps, they let the linkboy live, since they pressed me on the character's backstory so I said he dreamed of being a knight, and they liked that. Now everyome in town is going to know they are blackhearted scoundrels.

0e is honestly very cool.

>>96453266
>I learned my players really do not like the optional rule where you roll all your hit dice every day and thats your hits
I haven't done every day but I've tried the one where you re-roll all HD every level-up (the reasoning being that it smooths out lucky/unlucky rolls over time) and they didn't care for that either. Although it's hard to tell sometimes if players dislike a rule because there's an actual problem with it, or because it just doesn't match their expectation for how D&D is "supposed to" work. I tried getting rid of critical hits at one point too, and that went over even worse

>>96453266
No its not.

Basic Expert is a hack and pvrist.

>>96451485
Would definitely recommend the LotFP firearms rules. Other than that, my own attempt at a full historical game ended up evolving into high fantasy gonzo with my players' legion going through a stargate to rebuild the Roman Empire on Mars. So... yeah.

>>96442830
Far as I know they don't play actual Braunstein, it's been ages but last I recall their explanation of Braunstein had nothing to do with what Dave Wesely ran. (not that I think Braunstein is particularly good, it's basically freeform but limited to a small locale with fixed roles and associated goals all adjudicated by the common sense of it's referee)

>>96453315
>he's a pvrist
Is he? I thought he was another new school faggot. I've got to check his stuff out then.

>>96453500
>Far as I know they don't play actual Braunstein
They do. Griff ultimately admitted that what the BrOSR play IS a form of Braunstein, he just doesn't want them to use the word 'Braunstein' because he's got some contract with Wesely that he wants to monetise.

Probably not considered OSR, but is there a modern version of 2e? By that I mean all the fluff taken out and whittled down to clear concise no-bullshit rules to build out from, like BFRPG.

>>96439366
Having read through this I've got to say top shit man.
Top three things that stand out for me:
>Your party are a squirrelly bunch of fuckers, what the hell have you done to these poor bastards in the past?
>The use of XP for gold as the driving force behind exploration is fantastic, literally perfect, you can see moments when the players take a moment to estimate the risk and go 'Nah, not worth it', like Ccora in the temple catacombs. I can only imagine the other bullshit that was down there that she didn't encounter purely of her own choice and you, as DM, didn't force it, you let them back out of things when they could.
>You did well on acting as a neutral referee rather than a storyteller, there's parts where in reading it I could see you didn't think the players were making the best decision, or wanted things to go a different way (Like them all-in'ing on a single character at the start of the game), but you rolled with it rather than trying to make up excuses for why it couldn't be done
Kudos, plenty of Kudos.

>>96453500
I agree with this. People have been vastly overstretching the term Braunstein in the last few years.

>>96454515
What's the difference between what you call a Braunstein and what they call a Braunstein? What would you call the thing that they call a Braunstein?

>>96454665
What the fuck even is a Braunstein?

>>96454049
>is there a modern version of 2e
I don't know, I have zero interest in that crap. Just replying to point out that the following is a common misconception:

>By that I mean all the fluff taken out and whittled down to clear concise no-bullshit rules to build out from, like BFRPG.
FYI, BFRPG does not only take out fluff, it also makes important changes to the core rules.

The main one is that it runs on an assumption of no XP for gold, and although it pays lip service to the procedure by including it as an "optional rule", it fucks up all the stocking tables and treasure tables because the assumption is that you won't be using it. So whether you use XP for gold or not, BFRPG is NOT just "fluff taken out".

Now granted, if you like 2e you definitionally don't care about XP for gold. But it's a very important distinction for people who are into first decade O/A/B/X D&D.

>>96454686
You're joking, right?

>>96454725
I've heard the term and know the general history of them being pre-D&D/The original way of playing, that Blackmoor was one, ect.
I'm wondering what the specific traits are that distinguishes one from other campaigns.
So I guess less 'What the fuck is a Braunstein' more 'What the fuck is a Braunstein specifically and how does it differ from other games/ways of doing things?'
I'll put my hands up and fully admit I just want to make sure I've got a decent understanding of the concept more than out of complete, blind ignorance.

>>96454665
What I would call a Braunstein is a one-off scenario game for more players than your typical RPG group, with custom rules for the scenario and a great deal of proto-RPG play. You can get Wesely's notes for the original Braunstein online, but I forget where. If you read through that stuff you'll probably get a good idea of how it differs and what effect it had on the development of D&D. Basically though it resembles one of those dinner-party mystery games as much as a fantastic adventure game.

What they would say a Braunstein is I frankly don't know, but they use it like a buzzword, like "we're so old-school our shit predates D&D!".

>>96454049
>Probably not considered OSR
It's not, no.

>is there a modern version of 2e?
No, not in the way you mean. 2e is the most widely reviled edition of the game and the one with the least reason to exist. There's no audience for a thing like that.

Also, you seem to have confused BFRPG (a shoddy clone whose main selling point is being very cheap) with OSE (B/X with all the fluff taken out and whittled down to clear concise rules). Easy mistake, there are too many clones.

>>96454754
>pre-D&D
Yes.

>The original way of playing, that Blackmoor was one
No.
It's an adversarial rule-less game meant for long single sessions of a few hours. Each player is given a public identity, a secret goal, and possibly a secret identity. Played standing up (but no community theatre fagging), everybody is in the same space (a large room or apartment) and is free to move around and talk to each other to figure out what's going on, who's who, what the other players' goals are, and so on.

The referee is present to adjudicate actions and conflicts, answer questions, and so on.

At the end of a few hours of play, the game comes to a close. The Referee reveals the background story, the secrets, who achieved their goals, and who didn't.

>I'm wondering what the specific traits are that distinguishes one from other campaigns.
It's not a campaign to begin with. Just a single-session adversarial thing. It's arguably closer to a free-form session of Mafia, the party game, than to an RPG.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)

>>96454758
>What they would say a Braunstein is I frankly don't know,
Then I presume it WASN'T you above who said
>>96454515
>People have been vastly overstretching the term Braunstein in the last few years.
Since you don't know what it is that they're doing.

>but they use it like a buzzword, like "we're so old-school our shit predates D&D!".
No, they use it to mean a very specific thing, that is in practically all respects like Wesely's Braunstein (see description above), except they bring more structure into it by adjudicating conflicts using a reference ruleset rather than pure free referee adjudication. So e.g. they might say they're doing a "Travellerstein" if they use the rules from Traveller for conflict resolution.

So if you're extremely strict it is not precisely a Braunstein because they rely on an RPG ruleset to run the Braunstein. But I don't think that that modification disqualifies the use of the term.

>>96454800
>pre-D&D
>Yes.
>>The original way of playing, that Blackmoor was one
>No.
>It's an adversarial rule-less game meant for long single sessions of a few hours. Each player is given a public identity, a secret goal, and possibly a secret identity. Played standing up (but no community theatre fagging), everybody is in the same space (a large room or apartment) and is free to move around and talk to each other to figure out what's going on, who's who, what the other players' goals are, and so on.
>The referee is present to adjudicate actions and conflicts, answer questions, and so on.
>At the end of a few hours of play, the game comes to a close. The Referee reveals the background story, the secrets, who achieved their goals, and who didn't.
>I'm wondering what the specific traits are that distinguishes one from other campaigns.
>It's not a campaign to begin with. Just a single-session adversarial thing. It's arguably closer to a free-form session of Mafia, the party game, than to an RPG.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mafia_(party_game)
Cheers for the history lesson anon. I appreciate you giving a proper, cohesive answer rather than just calling me an asshole and moving on. That's really interesting.

>>96454809
Glad you found it useful, asshole. Perhaps I should have added that it also shares some commonalities with Diplomacy, that was hugely popular in wargaming clubs in the 60s and 70s: The negotiation phase of a face-to-face Diplomacy game feels quite similar to a Braunstein.

>>96454832
>Glad you found it useful, asshole

>>96454800
>Then I presume it WASN'T you above who said
>>People have been vastly overstretching the term Braunstein in the last few years.
>Since you don't know what it is that they're doing.
Bruh, cool your jets. Just because I don't know how they would answer a question about definitions that doesn't mean I can't tell they're overstretching the term in their practical use of it.

>No, they use it to mean a very specific thing, that is in practically all respects like Wesely's Braunstein (see description above),
So you're saying that the BrOSR guys are only running single-session chamber games but using D&D rules to adjudicate conflicts? I would have said that ongoing campaign play is more characteristic of their clique, at least how they want to be seen (as noted by Anon earlier, their games do seem to fizzle out a lot).

>>96454855
>because I don't know how they would answer a question about definitions that doesn't mean I can't tell they're overstretching the term in their practical use of it
You said you don't know what is that they DO. Seems odd to comment that they're overstretching the term, if that's the case.

>So you're saying that the BrOSR guys are only running single-session chamber games
When they play what they call a Braunstein, yes, they run single adversarial sessions. I believe they also use "new technologies" rather than just meeting in person, for obvious reasons (should probably have said this).

(Although I half-remember that maybe they've also run Braunstein sessions within a campaign. As in, there were enough player groups with competing agendas and conflict boiling over that it made sense to meet for a one-off session played Braunstein-style to adjudicate those conflicts before moving on with the rest of the campaign. Or something like that. But for the most part they're one-offs.)

>but using D&D rules to adjudicate conflicts?
D&D, Traveller, Battletech, Lancer, Star Trek RPG...

>I would have said that ongoing campaign play is more characteristic of their clique, at least how they want to be seen (as noted by Anon earlier, their games do seem to fizzle out a lot).
They do both things. What's "more characteristic" is subjective, I guess.

>>96454809
>>96454855
>>96454931
Relevant: Heated discussion between one of the BrOSR and Griff on what a Braunstein is and whether what the BrOSR call a Braunstein is a Braunstein, together with a playlist of about ~40 videos of play reports and discussions about Braunstein:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqMYLs88_6k&list=PL2mEso9dBi1pA3UvfUJsgaC-4SRdZZ80u&index=20
(I've only watched maybe three videos in the playlist, so I'm not 100% sure what's in there.)

>>96454931
>You said you don't know what is that they DO.
No. Evidently you're illiterate. You even quoted what I said, but here, I'll do it for you again so you can read it carefully:
>What they would say a Braunstein is I frankly don't know
Just take the L, pal. We're all anonymous here.

>>96455011
Okay, I'm curious then. When you said:
>People have been vastly overstretching the term Braunstein in the last few years.
Who were you referring to? And how have they been overstretching the term?

>>96455041
>Who were you referring to? And how have they been overstretching the term?
The BrOSR guys have been describing their campaigns as Braunsteins (contrary to your claim) when they clearly aren't. I've mostly seen them apply it to their "patron play" ideas of high-level faction leaders generating the setting of the campaign, which is clearly a misapplication. I *assume* the analogy is supposed to be that the patrons in question are making fairly freeform moves they submit to the referee, but I don't know that since they don't explain themselves very well and the number of potential mistakes is infinite. As I already said, they also clearly seem to use the term to imply that they're doing some sort of proto-D&D and therefore more authentic and important gameplay. They're using it for cachet, quite simply.

(There are also cases of redditoids just chucking the term around without any clear idea of the denotation, much like how they treat the term "West Marches", but I think we can agree that redditards don't count.)

>>96455204
>The BrOSR guys have been describing their campaigns as Braunsteins (contrary to your claim) when they clearly aren't. I've mostly seen them apply it to their "patron play" ideas of high-level faction leaders generating the setting of the campaign, which is clearly a misapplication.
I don't think I've ever heard them make such a claim. Have you got a link or something? The YouTube video I linked above shows a fundamental agreement on what a Braunstein is between Dunder Moose and Griff (although Griff is loath to admit it). Although of course it's possible that other people have said other things in other contexts.

>There are also cases of redditoids just chucking the term around without any clear idea of the denotation, much like how they treat the term "West Marches", but I think we can agree that redditards don't count.
Yeah, plebbit doesn't count.

>>96455260
>Have you got a link or something?
Frankly, no. I don't pay that much attention to them.

For example, I have no idea which one Dunder Moose is or how central he is to the whole thing.

(I will say though unrelatedly that Griff's trademarking of the term Braunstein is outright faggotry, not unlike the deranged overcharging for books like Blackmoor Foundations and Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg.)

>>96455315
>I have no idea which one Dunder Moose is or how central he is to the whole thing.
He seems to have become the face of the BrOSR on YouTube because he's a generally respectful and cordial guy who doesn't go out of his way to antagonise others just for the sake of it, so some people who are outside of the BrOSR will actually accept to talk to him.

>Griff's trademarking of the term Braunstein is outright faggotry, not unlike the deranged overcharging for books like Blackmoor Foundations and Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg.
Yeah, and the list of his evil deeds doesn't even end there.

>>96455460
>He seems to have become the face of the BrOSR on YouTube because he's a generally respectful and cordial guy who doesn't go out of his way to antagonise others just for the sake of it
lmao

>>96453266
>Two hireling deaths from players pushing them into traps, they let the linkboy live, since they pressed me on the character's backstory so I said he dreamed of being a knight, and they liked that. Now everyome in town is going to know they are blackhearted scoundrels.
Kek, they deserve this for using the hirelings as meat shields

>>96453354
I mean that's the sort of game I'm hoping to run. I'm roughly thinking the first few levels will be more pulp fantasy style hunting bandits lead by ambiguously magical sorcerer types, but as they explore further afield they'll find more genuinely magical shit. I'd love to hear a broad strokes overview of your game. Did you start gonzo or begin fairly grounded and work your way up to the martian stargate?

Hypothetically, let's say you're running an open-table game for a bunch of strangers. A few groups go to location POI and discover stuff and clear some stuff. Later, a different group with players who have never before been to location POI head there too.

Do you as the GM tell the new group what previous groups have done/achieved/located?

>>96458459

No, but I just update the state of the location when the first group runs it so the second group will enter the "aftermath" of the first group.

i.e. If the first group enters the goblin lair, kills all the goblins, piles all the bodies up and takes all the loot, then leaves, the second group will just find a lootless cave with nothing but a pile of dead goblins in it.

If they want to know who did it, why, and what they looted they'll have to figure it out based on what was left, not because they got an infodump at the front door.

Meanwhile, if it's been a week or so it's pretty likely something that likes dead goblin has moved in, a month later all the corpses will be picked clean and something will be hungry, and the cycle continues.

>>96454049
2e is OSR stuff. As far as a modern version you will be lucky to find anything here other than retarded whining so as sad as it is to say this but you are better off trying /r/osr, r/adnd, or /r/odnd/

>>96454049
>By that I mean all the fluff taken out
That's honestly some of the best stuff though.
>clear concise no-bullshit rules
Let's be frank. Take all the bullshit out of AD&D, and there's not going to a whole lot left.

In any case, Gold and Glory is an updated version of 2e, and I've heard it's decent, but can't personally vouch for it.

>>96460056
>you are better off trying /r/osr, r/adnd, or /r/odnd/
Indeed!

Is there anyone recruiting for online games in here? The hexmaps earlier gave me that twanging for some old school games

I'll offer an explanation on Braunstein/BroSR play, hope people here don't mind. I'm not one of them, just an interested observer.

Basically, the BroSR is interested in how to make rpg campaigns more fun and engaging, for the greatest number of people (echo OD&D: "4--50 players") and for the longest time possible.

Their definition of a Braunstein is "multiple independent actors acting in conflict under a fog of war". They claim this is the secret sauce for continued, almost addiction-like player engagement.

RPG campaigns should therefore look to incorporate braunstein dynamics as much as possible. Characters should be acting independently from each other in downtime, while coming together into various cooperating teams/parties each session. But the party is not monolithic; it can change and come into conflict with other parties.

Braunstein elements can be implemented as 1) one-off larp/diplomacy-like sessions where players are assigned roles/characters (not necessarily "session characters") and try to gain as much as possible as that character under a fog of war maintained by the ref, 2) weekly downtime downtime orders submitted to the ref, either as a character or a faction (the latter being "patron play", now out of fashion), or 3) month-long "always-on" events where orders can be submitted whenenver and are processed ASAP by the ref(s). In all cases, the actual RPG rules should be used to resolve conflict, if possible.

Braunstein elements necessitate strict timekeeping linked to the real-world calendar a) to get a handle on what's going on when, b) to make sure the resource of time is being handled fairly (important if players are working at cross-purposes), and c) to make the long-term passage of time predictable for everyone without having to ask the ref every time.

Conversely, it was observed that playing with a 1:1 time rule encourages players to pursue independent goals, making Braunstein interaction likelier.

Will write more if there is interest.

>>96460502
very interested

>>96460502
>>96460515

Thanks Anon, I'll write more.

I left off at 1:1 time. Not misunderstanding this is crucial. 1:1 time means that a session starts on the game day equal to the actual real-world calendar day the session is played in. Characters can still "play into the future" as much as they want, but they will be "locked out" of future sessions until the real-time calendar catches up.

Similarly, if we do a one-day delve this session and come back to town, this grants characters an amount of days of downtime equal to the number of days until next session. So we start seeing how 1:1 time enables longer independent downtime projects that will sometimes come into conflict.

Another advantage of 1:1 time is that all the weird AD&D downtime rules and time penalties actually get used and generate interesting gameplay and situations that can even serve as adventure hooks for the next session.

The third ingredient for BroSR play is an easy and solid system for mass battle resolution, and the encouragement to not be afraid of playing out such battles. I think it's quite clear how something like this arises from high-level Braunstein dynamics with 1:1 time and fog of war. I think posters here already appreciate the advantages of having such a system in place.

Historically, we see either the use of Chainmail, or of 1:10 scaling. The latter is similar to the "brutal scaling" idea within the noob guide, but has a couple of differences. a) the time frame is left unchanged at 1 round = 1 minute, b) HP and damage for 1:10 mass units are averaged, sp that the only random factor is the to-hit roll, c) hero-types are allowed to attack mass units by dividing their damage by 10 (exception: AOE attacks), and take 10 times standard damage from such units.

Now the last thing I could comment on would be a history of BroSR concepts and where things seem to be headed now, but here my expertise lags since I'm not in the back channels. Still, could do that if there's interest.

how does 1:1 time even work though? Does your DM call you up at 3 AM in the morning demanding you deal with this werewolf random encounter?

>>96460742

1:1 time is not minute-by-minute, but day-by-day. Also, it is flexible in specific ways.

Scenario: The players encounter werewolves while hex-crawling. The way to resolve it can be as follows.

a) we're playing in a session, so the werewolf encounter gets resolved in the session. The players hex-crawl for another 3 game days, and end the session. 3 days from now these characters will start accruing downtime till the next session.

b) we're playing a downtime braunstein where some force has encountered werewolves as part of the downtime resolution. Then the ref and player just need to find a way to resolve it before it becomes relevant for future events. i) The ref could just resolve it himself and announce the results to the player. ii) the ref and player could meet for an impromptu 30min-1hr session where they play out the encounter. iii) the encounter can be played out async via text message over 1-2 days. Pick the method of resolution that makes sense; the important thing is that the game-world start of the next significant event (e.g. session) is synched to the real-world calendar.

Can I talk about Castles and Crusades here?

>>96460885
What do you have to say about it?

It's among the first OSR games, but it's kind of fallen to the side, in part because Gygax's death threw a wrench into the publisher's plans just ast the game was starting to build up momentum and Gygax's widow also fucked them over. There's also just way more and way more accessible competition.

I have seen some people revisit the game in recent years, and while many will still consider it a weird compromise hybrid that only has the weaknesses of the editions it's built from, I have seen some give a much more positive re-evaluation, up to some arguing it's the best OSR game. That seems like a wild opinion, but I've seen wilder.

What are your thoughts on it?

>>96460885
>>96460945
C&C is boring. I don't hate it; I don't love it; it exists.
If I'd have to give it a grade, it'd be the 3rd C.

>>96454049
>83 deleted posts
>This stale bait about 2nd ed, bfrpg and WoW is still up
lmao but also JFC get it together
No one ernestly asks about 2nd ed or bfrpg.

>>96461503
That pic is Everquest stuff not WoW.

I'm playing in a Braunstein soon. My spies say one of the other people is going to try and genocide me early game but I'm not going to let that happen.

>>96461522
Good point people probably ernestly post about Everquest somewhere.

>>96458216
My idea was to keep it 100% as authentic and historical as possible, rewatched the Rome tv series, the whole deal. Then as a DM I had to find a way to make druids scary, so of course I gave them magic powers (MUs to make it more sword and sorcery). Shit went sideways from there. Soon druids went from throwing a fireball here and there to raising undead armies, and how to forget the barbarian werewolves! Rather than keeping it at that cozy level, I kept upping the ante to the point there was a whole zombie apocalypse, so the players escaped to Egypt with Mark Antony and at that point you just have to add the pyramids and Stargate, and that's where it ended.

Fun campaign (really short too, I don't think it lasted more than 20 sessions), still want to run a proper historical campaign tho.

>>96462296
You may find this video (and YouTube channel) useful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=di5Lwh6sNCY&ab_channel=Invicta

>>96461524
>genocide me
Do you have a learning disability? You can't genocide an individual, only a group.

>>96462364
>Video claims to be about Ancient Rome
>Thumbnail is two kids dressed like Harry Potter in front of a renaissance French castle with toits en poivrière.
Ignorant Ameritard detected, not clicking on that video.

>>96462364
Thanks friend! I feel we don't use curses as much as we should in our games.

>>96460830
>i) The ref could just resolve it himself and announce the results to the player.
1:1 DM here looking for advice for this style of resolution:
>The werewolves are out for blood and being a first level fighter without magic/silver weapons you have no chance to survive. You died and nobody knows what happened to you, your body is never found.
How would you handle it? Just bend and twist the universe and have these particular werewolves be talkative?

And while we are at it: How would you respond as a player without sounding mad?

>>96463195
Generally speaking, you don't hex-crawl during downtime, that's something you do at the table. Particularly at low levels, downtime activities are usually confined to things you do in a safe, settled location, which is why it's important to end every session in a safe locale whenever possible.

An exception is when characters are high enough level to move with your own army, at which point players can usually meet one-on-one to play out battles without needing the DM to join.

However, let's assume that your scenario does happen for whatever odd reason:
>The werewolves are out for blood and being a first level fighter without magic/silver weapons you have no chance to survive. You died and nobody knows what happened to you, your body is never found.
Did you read the guide? This is the kind of error/situation that is discussed in there, see the red boxed text in picrel, but probably reviewing the whole page might be helpful since you're asking this.

This is also one of the reasons why we insist so much on it being an issue when a published OSR rulebook doesn't include the core procedures. In this case, the wilderness evasion rules are omitted extremely often, e.g. Dragonslayer doesn't have them, nor does OSRIC 2.0 if I remember correctly (OSRIC 3.0 is planned to fix this).

So you would run the wilderness evasion procedure and tell the player the outcome, that in that kind of case is usually many hours (AD&D) or days (B/X) spent wandering around the wildnerness.

>How would you respond as a player without sounding mad?
If you apply the procedures consistently, the game is very fair. The encounter doesn't generally go much differently if the player were at the table.

But 1:1 time is definitely stuff by adults for adults, born of a wargaming club culture. It's not for everyone. Something something kids these days.

>>96463438
Forgot this part:
>>96463195
>Just bend and twist the universe and have these particular werewolves be talkative?
Absolutely fucking not. No kid gloves in D&D.

I give out double XP. When they get treasure home and when they spend it on something I love or is reasonable.
Now, I have thought about what if they buy a healing service from the village cleric.
Couple of wretches and one retainer is badly hurt from the last adventure. They were carried home and took to the cleric.
I have yet to figure out what healing services would cost in B/X world. Days food and water costs 1 gold coin, not peasants yearly wage. With that in mind, it should be around 100 gp per spell level, no? 500 gp? Price of the spell scroll or the inconvenience price for the cleric to lose a spell slot?
Then I can finally set up a multiplier (0.5-1.0) for the XP for Gold spent.
Thanks.

>>96463751
>I give out double XP. When they get treasure home and when they spend it on something I love or is reasonable.
XP for money spent is NuSR crap, ditch it.

>I have yet to figure out what healing services would cost in B/X world. Price of the spell scroll or the inconvenience price for the cleric to lose a spell slot?
Both the DMG and ACKS have rules for that. The DMG, in particular, is required reading.

>Then I can finally set up a multiplier (0.5-1.0) for the XP for Gold spent.
Yeah, set it to zero.

>>96463817
Can you put on a trip?

>>96462567
Genocides happen in faction braunsteins bruv

>>96465239
>t. Austrian painter

>>96465239
>faction braunstein
Oh, I see. Carry on then.

>>96463916
If you need usernames to cope it's an additional indication that 4chan might not be the right place for you. You could try reddit or facebook.

>>96465759
It's just helpful because it allows automatic post filtering.

>>96463817
I checked the page 103. It was okay, but some prices needed tweaking. Now I can set the multiplier to 1.0. Cheers!

>>96463817
Based advice.

>>96465875
Hence the tip: Those websites have built-in blocking features for folks who are easily triggered like xirself.

>>96463817
Why the hell was this post deleted, it's not trolling in the slightest, it's genuine game advice.
If you're gonna do gold spent = XP at least the carousing rules has a stamp of approval. Doubly rewarding players for spending money in ways they'd normally spend it is retarded. Your reward for spending money on a Cure spell is that you get Cured. If players don't level fast enough put out more treasure or lower the XP requirements per level.

>>96466036
>Why the hell was this post deleted, it's not trolling in the slightest, it's genuine game advice.
Two reasons:
1. Old School play is wrongthink in the storyfaggot 2etard universe.
2. Deleting random comments that don't deserve to be deleted while leaving up troll posts like >>96463916 and >>96465875 is an intentional part of the demoralisation campaign aimed at taking over this general.

It's also most likely not a coincidence that the second of those troll posts was sent almost simultaneously to the deletion of >>96463817

the mods are all interested in warhammer and mtg and don't want to deal with this super drama-filled thread for niche of a niche D&D

They don't have a plan for us, they just don't care.

>>96466178
>don't want to deal with this super drama-filled thread
Bullshit. This is the single general on /tg/ that gets the MOST janitorial and mod intervention, and there would be much LESS drama if they left us alone.

They regularly delete over a hundred posts per thread. They lurk here much of the day and often instantly delete wrongthing comments. They clearly have an agenda, for example when they instantly delete the n00b guide as soon as they see it. And they leave fishfag = 2etard = false flag fag's posts up all the time while deleting a bunch of posts that are perfectly okay.

I'd like some feedback on a dungeon room I wrote, specifically about information flow
>a treasure chest hangs on a chain, 15’ above the ground. The floor beneath the chest is dotted with a grid of slim holes. 20’ away, a large metal block hangs from another chain. Removing the chest or its contents causes the metal block (a counterweight) to drop, lowering portcullises over each door to trap treasure thieves. Lowering the chest causes spikes to eject from the holes, dealing 1d6 damage to anyone standing over them.
Details like room dimensions are omitted.
Does this read as too detailed? Not detailed enough? Are you able to conceptualize the trap through this description or is it confusing?

Incentivizing spending gold towards anything is an improvement when the players are used to not spend it at all.
>knave A finds 100gp and buys 100gp cure light wounds cast and is ready to go on another adventure next day
>knave B finds 200gp and does not cure himself because the player doesn't care knave B is suffering and will let him recover naturally for 18 days, because there is no incentive to spend gold.
>both get 200 experience points
This is a minor issue but still.

>>96466352
Bullshit, your players just need to git gud. Gold is fundamental to access a bunch of goods services. Systems that incentivise players to waste money only teach them bad habits.

>>96466454
>Systems that incentivise players to waste money only teach them bad habits.
Gabor Lux has it in his houserules.

>>96466352
Recovering naturally for 18 days is gonna cost some coin too. You do enforce living expenses, right?
DMG has about a billion methods of nickel-and-diming the PCs. Both a player issue and a DM issue. Get some fuckin skill, homie.

>>96466647
Okay? Do you consider "some guy's houserules on his blog" to be a evidence of high quality?

>>96466454
>Systems that incentivise players to waste money only teach them bad habits.
Bullshit claim given a) how many money sinks there are in AD&D and b) how often players run out of things to do with money in BX RAW

>>96466720
I trust "some guy" who has made more contributions to the OSR than you ever will over "some guy" who anonymously claims x behavior leads to ambiguous """bad habits""" with no further elaboration (because it doesn't actually)

>>96466647
Wait, so Melan is not infallible??

>>96466730
>>how many money sinks there are in AD&D
ESL? Stuff like living expenses and training costs are not incentives to spend money, they're requirements.

>how often players run out of things to do with money in BX RAW
Skill issue. Only bad players run out of things to do with money in B/X. You can buy a literal fucking army btb in B/X.

>>96466755
Still no explanation as to why systems that "incentivise" [sic] players to spend money only teach bad habits. Or what those habits are. Speak on that or continue being a fag; it's your choice.

>>96466742
>with no further elaboration
Anons are giving you explanations of what the issues are, you're just too butthurt to listen. Don't ask for feedback if you can't deal with negative feedback. Better yet man up.

>>96466825
>"incentivise" [sic]
Learn to spell English, ESL/Ameritard.

>>96466826
>Anons
lol
>explanations
Where? Why not quote them?
>Don't ask for feedback
I'm not the one asking for feedback. It's just patently retarded when people like you make bullshit claims with no elaboration and then get their panties in a twist when people call them out for it.

>>96466709
Of course I am. I have probably played longer than you. I'm not going to write a blogpost here and explain my whole heartbreaker to you.

>>96466856
Eurotard = detected
Opinion = rejected

>>96466857
>no elaboration
>>96466454
>Gold is fundamental to access a bunch of goods services. Systems that incentivise players to waste money only teach them bad habits.

>>96466825
The bad habits are wasting gold? At high levels you're gonna need those, both because of the various requirements you have to spend money on, and for domain play which is massively costly.

If your players get to 9th level and have no money left to start domain play, they've cut themselves out of the endgame, all because you convinced yourself that players acquiring money was a problem you needed to fix for unexamined reasons.

>>96466872
Please learn to read before answering.
>Still no explanation as to why systems that "incentivise" [sic] players to spend money only teach bad habits. Or what those habits are.
You have every opportunity to speak on this and yet you continue being a fag. Can't expect much from someone with as poor a reading comprehension from you, but through the boundless generosity in my heart I am giving you another chance. Or you can just concede and get it over with

>>96466911
What part of the notion that gold is fundamental to access a bunch of goods and services and therefore should not be wasted is unclear to you? What do you need explained exactly? What the uses of gold are, or the fact that since it has important uses, it should be put to those uses instead of being wasted?

>>96466861
>I have probably played longer than you.
That's only more concerning, but not unexpected. Most people shit editions, or first decade editions but like retards. You're not the first or the last.

>>96466890
Thank you for an actual reply with substance.
Gold for xp requirements get absurd in BX, to the extent that the amount of treasure PCs must shovel out of dungeons to reach 9th level and beyond leaves them positioned to establish domains multiple times over (the B/X Blackrazor blog and Prince both had a few posts about this iirc). Accelerating leveling through spending gold promotes squandering cash, which makes hording it more of a tactical decision instead of the best option that most players default to. Plus, there are globe- and plane-spanning adventures high-level PCs can go on should they wish to opt out of domain play.

>>96466945
>Most people PLAY shit editions

>>96466945
Tangentially related but are you also against carousing rules?

>>96466962
>Gold for xp requirements get absurd in BX
That's a solved problem in AD&D, which is why people around here say you should read the DMG. It has solutions for almost any problem you could run into in Basic.

>>96439366
>None who were of the surface would ever know the glories and horrors of that battle, the forays that the Exalted of the First Moon took as he fought from the back of a half-trained horror from the dark places below the earth.
>There would be no songs made of the boldness of the Sorcerer-Priests who took to flight upon the sacred bats of the temple, their spells flashing like gems in the darkness as they cast down the terrible things that they had thought their guardian-beasts, now unchained from their post and left to rend and maul.
>No art work would ever depict the march of the great statues of the temple as the things that dwelt, rut and bred in the depths below the temple were unleashed to join the fray under the control of the acolytes, barely restrained by raw magic from slaughtering mindlessly and feasting upon all present.
>No man would ever know of how the Zotz of Ēzalmic held against the winged things of the Mesa upon the steps of their great temple and claimed victory, despite all odds and, with spear, dart and magic, kept the enemy from the gate as they
had done since the True Sun was betrayed from its rightful place in the sky.
>The fall of the Night Jaguar, swarmed by the progenitors of the Cuatepachoacatl, the last great stand of the militia as they commanded those who could not fight into the temple, the daring foray of Machultec, as he and his bat-beast led the stalking Hatchlings away from the slave pens and gave the Batab the chance to rally.
>Nothing would be remembered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUnNZUXO-aI

For B/X type games I always let Clerics initiate casting while wielding a weapon (which I assume is temporarily stored on the belt while casting begins) and holding a shield (I assume the shield is strapped and the hand holding the shield is used to grab the holy symbol or some shit, as a part of the somatic components etc).

Am I way too generous, /tg/?

>>96467024
I don't really care for rating PCs based on how well they roleplayed, which is what the DMG advocates for when deciding training costs. I prefer a less convoluted system, but that's just what works best for me and my table.

>>96467093
Yes. One hand free to hold the holy symbol. You can have the PC drop a held item on the ground, but that runs the risk of a monster kicking it away or picking it up.
What spells are clerics casting in combat anyway?

>>96466996
>are you also against carousing rules?
Yeah, they're retarded and one of several things that indicate that Gygax was the better game designer and had a deeper understanding of the game than Arneson.

>>96467096
I'd agree that Gygax was barking up the wrong tree with that, but training costs are still a solid idea IMO. They're a thing your players need to do, so they won't want to lose their cash; whereas rules that encourage them to blow money are going at it in the wrong direction and tell players that money exists to be thrown out the window, which can bite them in the ass later when they don't have the money for what they need or want.

>>96467096
>I don't really care for rating PCs based on how well they roleplayed, which is what the DMG advocates for when deciding training costs
Read the requirements again. Unless you are playing with complete morons who charge into melee with their Magic-Users, performance E (the best one) is usually the norm.

I'm looking to DM a more robust OSR system, which version of ACKS is best, first or second edition?

>>96467262
Second, by far. I personally wouldn't use it as my core system (I don't like proficiencies), but if you don't mind them, it's solid.

>>96467295
Could you elaborate on why the second edition is better?

>>96467342
It's better from pretty much every conceivable point of view except for the font size and the art. I can't be arsed to summarise 1,500 pages, but perhaps someone else will humour you.

>>96467383
>1,500 pages
lmao what

>>96467342
ACKS II is mostly just ACKS I with a decade of playtesting and incorporation of all the axioms articles and content. The only stuff missing from ACKS I is like, the table mentioning how to adjust setting demographics to make a more rural or a more urban society and uh, animal arbitrage?

>>96467466
hundreds of those pages in each of the core books is
>RR
primer for macris' setting, obviously tons of spell text, chapters detailing naval voyages, armies, maneuvers, and battles, plus all the campaign mechanics. stuff you'll learn gradually as you play longer
>JJ
500 page tool kit, around a hundred pages just on creating custom races/classes/spells/magic types/etc
>MM
500 pages of monsters, rules to process monsters and create new ones.

>>96463195
>>The werewolves are out for blood and being a first level fighter without magic/silver weapons you have no chance to survive. You died and nobody knows what happened to you, your body is never found.
I've had a player in my acks campaign, immediately after looting the parties first magic weapon, tell me he is spending the next few days foraging for healing herbs. Second day out, he encounters a devil boar who hypnotizes him and takes him to his cabin before hitting him with a hammer and eating him like leatherface. shit happens. he died and nobody knows what happened to that character, his body was never found.

>>96467096
>which is what the DMG advocates for when deciding training costs.
Behold the words of our savior Ernest Gary Gygax (play be upon him), for they will set you free:
One half is role-play (alignment), the other half is actual decisionmaking (actions taken during play).

>>96467536
It's also worth noting that it might be the only place in the rules where you actually have consequences for not following your alignment (except for classes with specific restrictions like clerics and paladins of course).

>>96467576
the alignment graph from 1e is crazy [in a cool way] and implies sooo much

>>96467631
Actually looks like a tool for gaming the more I look at it now. Could print it out and attach thumbtacks per PC to it, assign a standard for PC actions and how far and in what direction this moves the thumbtack per offense.

Currently cooking up a dungeon for a game next week, how do you all decide how many empty / connecting rooms to include and how they are laid out? I like rolling on the tables but I'm also an uncreative retard

>>96467685
>how do you all decide how many empty / connecting rooms to include and how they are laid out?
This was shared by an Anon a few threads ago. Personally, I hew closer to the DMG line than to B/X.

>>96467685
>>96467685
As for the layout, I have an obsession for 3d features. Stairs going up and down more than one level, sloping passages, chasms, underground rivers, sections of a shallower level that can only be reached from a deeper level apart from secret doors in places where players are unlikely to look, and so on.

My layouts are so complex that I find I have to draw one extra map between each pair of levels to show myself all the vertical connections between the two. E.g. picrel

>>96467719
Nice one, I missed that somehow.

>>96467760
Isn't that Stonehell?

Also, in the first comment you say you follow the DMG stocking rules but the table in the image looks more like the B/X one.

>>96468153
>Isn't that Stonehell?
My hack of it. I've been making changes and extensions to it for a few years now.

>in the first comment you say you follow the DMG stocking rules but the table in the image looks more like the B/X one.
Generally speaking I do, but in that specific case in which I roll on the fly for what's there I want to have a higher chance that it won't be empty. It's easily adjusted based on the mood or situation anyway.

>>96468196
>My hack of it. I've been making changes and extensions to it for a few years now.
Not sure if it was a good use of my time. It seems everybody and their grandmother has played in Stonehell by now, so I'm not sure if I'll have the chance to actually use it. Perhaps I should have just made my own from scratch, but it's been fun.

>>96467124
>One hand free to hold the holy symbol.
Can the symbol be a neck pendant?

>>96468153
>I missed that somehow
You have to be quick to catch it before it gets deleted. It says a bad thing about 2e at the bottom, and I guess that violates the unwritten rules.

>>96467482
I love a lot of what I see but I think they kinda... 3rd-editioned, so to speak, the game?
There is stuff that is basically class features and stuff like blind-fight (the 3e feat) selectable as "skills".
I mean they go further than the BECMI GAZ here.
In a similar way all that text for the monsters.

Hey I just bought some ACKS II and was wondering if anyone wanted to play it with me? Or knew of any watering holes where it's allowed to be advertised (I know reddit goes reeeeeeeee whenever it comes up)

>>96468536
This. Basically, once these deletion sprees start up most effortposts are made with a disclaimer that 2e isn't an OSR game and doesn't belong here so that it becomes more obvious that anyone who bleats about how 2e should be welcome is an outsider who knows nothing about this way of playing and just wants to slide the thread.

>>96468618
>I mean they go further than the BECMI GAZ here.
In some sense ACKS is a Rules Cyclopedia-equivalent for B/X (created according to the preferences and idiosyncrasies of Macris, of course).

>>96467470
How did it get worse though? Anything that was clunky got clunkier. Its like mentzer saw b/x and needed it more clunky, macris saw becmi and needed it ten times more clunky, and then he took acks1 and thought yo how can i get it to be the clunkiest shit.
It's baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.

>>96468536
>It says a bad thing about 2e at the bottom

>>96468618
>There is stuff that is basically class features and stuff like blind-fight (the 3e feat) selectable as "skills".
Yep. That's why many of us DON'T use it as core rules, but only import parts as needed into B/X and/or AD&D.

>>96469150
I thought that ACKS was just a running joke based on posts I read about it until I learned it was a real game.

>>96469150
"Clunky" is not the only axis on which to evaluate a system --- not for everyone, at least. BECMI is clunky in a bad way: bad design decisions, unplaytested, and so on, and while ACKS is clunkier, it is much more carefully playtested and designed.

Now of course if for you it's very important that a system be less clunky, ACKS is a step in the wrong direction. But if you're fine with *some* clunkiness, it's a massive improvement over BECMI, that is very mediocre in the later books.

Personally, I'd NEVER use the domain, mass combat, unarmed combat, or weapon mastery rules from BECMI. They're all just bad with no redeeming quality.

>>96467156
>tell players that money exists to be thrown out the window
This is genuinely what I want. Granted I'm going for an explicitly pulpy sword-and-sorcery style for my BX game. You never saw Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser piling cash away

>>96466330
Room dimensions are important for players to contextualize the other information and start figuring out how they're going to get the chest.

>>96467536
>>96467576
>>96467631
>>96467641
Rest assured anon I know the text well; when I said "roleplay" I meant both alignment and decisionmaking. IMO and IME, bad decision making has it's own penalties; it doesn't need to be penalized twice in the form of lengthened training times. I'm also against evaluating how players play their characters in general—if they win treasure and survive the dungeon/adventure, they played well regardless of how closely they played to their character class. I understand Gygax's logic for including the rule in AD&D, he didn't want lax players to rely too much on their more engaged counterparts, but for my group that's not a problem.

>>96468338
Checked the rules and actually realized I was wrong; the cleric just needs to have a holy symbol in their possession to cast spells. Mea culpa.

>>96469345
Yes, you're correct. I omitted room dimensions from my post because they weren't relevant to my questions and I didn't want to bog the post down with superfluous details—I'm solely concerned with the description of the trap.

>>96469297
No one's ever actually played ACKS, it's only ever been argued about

>>96469393
I'm curious, are arguing against charging gold and time for training in any form, or only in favour of using a price tag and training downtime that's independent of "performance"?

>>96469433
>No one's ever actually played ACKS
Funny you should say that when an Anon has posted a literally 238 page campaign report of his multi-year ACKS campaign in this very thread:
>>96439366

>>96469315
BECMI isn't really that good beyond what is BX and some minor formatting improvements, but ACKS is in no way an improvement over it, and in most ways a severe downgrade. If its rules are the result of lots of playtesting and careful design, and more playtesting and more design lead to ACKS2, then we're talking about a completely incompetent designer who only knows how to make things worse, not better.

>>96469297
It is a joke. The people who play it don't get it.

>>96469418
Eh anon, they were never crystal clear with this shit.

>>96469283
I am not completely against skills but they should be background or something like a reroll on foraging, a reaction etc if the player properly RPs them, at best.
It's too easy to fall back to the modern "I look at my sheet for answers" - inb4 that's what casters do.

Speaking of which, how do you guys handle poison making and potions?

>>96469315
Clunky is the only axis that acks has though. The nicest thing you can say about the game is that it has a lot of rules, but they are really badly made and theres so much stuff that clearly didnt get playtested enough and probably because theres just so many rules.
Instead of polishing the rules they had they just kept adding rules and adding them and then you get shit like acks2 mass combat which is the worst mass combat rules ever made.

>avalanche of bans and post deletions
>a short time later the thread is suddenly getting shit up by astroturfed samefagging anti-ACKS posts
Shame trannies can never become women all the same...

>>96469447
>Funny you should say that
Are you capable of understanding jokes?

>>96469629
ACKS stands for
Autistic
Cunts
Kan't
Stand being made fun of.

>>96469619
>any criticism of ACKS is astroturfed + samefagging
Literally every OSR game gets criticized in this thread. If you cry samefag etc. every time you're favorite game gets shit slung at it, you're going to have a bad time here,

>>96469550
>if the player properly RPs them
What do you mean by that?

>how do you guys handle poison making and potions?
By the book (DMG).


>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
If you think ACKS is bad, you should try playing AD&D 2e. And by "playing" I don't mean reading splatbooks and crap settings in your mother's basement.

>>96469550
>potions
RAW. BX rules work perfectly fine for me.
>poisons
I don't let PCs make poison unless they are playing my homebrew assassin class because I'd rather poisons be rare and mysterious and a hassle to get one's hands on and I also want to protect the niche of my homebrew assassin class

>>96469662
I (>>96469642) actually don't think ACKS is bad, and have even taken some inspiration from the system. Don't care much for 2e though. I would play neither system RAW.

>>96469662
>crap [...] in your mother's basement
why would you do that?

>>96469677
My mother's German, she's into scat and AD&D 2e.

>>96469686
>My mother's German
Wow, an explanation for why you don't understand fun at all.

>>96469447
>I'm curious
I'm not arguing against training in any form, and if one wishes to evaluate their players' performance to determine training time more power to them. I just know it's a suboptimal rule for my table and for the game I run.

Training costs are all but explicitly intended to lengthen campaigns—which is fine for multi-year campaigns with weekly sessions, but if you're playing a casual bimonthly dungeon crawl with BX or what have you there's very little reason to include them.

>>96469425
They're not separable like that. Problem solving on ttrpgs is contextual based. Don't worry about bogging down the thread, they're arguing about culture war shit.

>>96469752
Ok in that case
>Room dimensions: 40'x50'. a treasure chest hangs 10' south of the north wall on a 5' chain, 15’ above the ground. The floor beneath the chest is dotted with a grid of slim holes. 20’ to the south, a large metal block hangs from another chain of similar length. Removing the chest or its contents causes the metal block (a counterweight) to drop, lowering portcullises over each door to trap treasure thieves. Lowering the chest causes spikes to eject from the holes, dealing 1d6 damage to anyone standing over them.

>>96469752
>culture war shit
*definition war shit
which is more autistic, especially since the people who don't like the OP definition could, you know, make a thread for their systems of choice instead

>>96469677
The ways of the 2efag are inscrutable. However, Anon is right: it is known that they shit settings everywhere. No reason to think they'd spare the basement.

>>96466330
>>96469807
Trap makes perfect sense to me. As a player, I'd try to solve it by switching the treasure in the chest for stones or the like.

>>96469629
>Are you capable of understanding jokes?
Yeah except the wasp in the jam is that everyone knows you're not joking.
See https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/93133530/#93135615
>Over a year ago the guy that posted his campaign gave a screenshot of the set up for it
>Retarded abbo-oids immediately shift gears from 'Shill, shill, shilly-shilly-chilly-willy' to 'Wow, I guess they're giving shills fake screenshots now'
Maybe you meant it as a joke, in which case, fair enough anon.
But you have to acknowledge that there's some subhuman that insists on shitting these threads up who actually believes the things you're joking about and people are sick to their back teeth of dealing with his bullshit.

I'm hyped for OSRIC 3.0. Do you guys think this time there'll be a proper character sheet or Finch will again shit something last minute using Microsoft Word before sending to print?

>>96469807
Why would a chest be hanging by a chain?

>>96470592
>I'm hyped for OSRIC 3.0
May I ask why?

>>96470635
>Why would a chest be hanging by a chain?
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x14rj6

>>96469807
My main question would be: how is the chain attached? If it's simply attached to the lid that means the chest is impossible to open without spilling the contents; if it's lashed around the chest, the chest is literally unopenable unless it's first lowered and the chain removed. That seems like it matters for potential solutions.

>>96470662
I'm mostly going to use the new release (and brand new shiny books) as an excuse for running an AD&D campaign to my group. Also I'm sold on AAC, I've mentioned here before that some of my players had issues with THAC0 so I guess it makes it worth for me to put up with the occasional opinionated editing of Finch and calling Races Ancestries.

>>96470743
Virgin Zoomers use AAC.
Oldfag Boomers use THAC0.
Chads use Target 20.
Be a Chad.

>>96468740
Try the Autarch discord, there's a LFG channel for ACKS II.

>>96471042
it's dead jim

>>96469807
The chest being only on 5' of chain changes it and makes it interesting to move away from the spikes.
Details are good, they're what players use to play the game in an engaging way.

>>96469863
It's mixed in with culture war shit, it's why they won't make their own thread. And that they've tried several times and we see that
>No one plays 2nd ed
>No one plays nusr except mothership
So they death grip here and fuck everything up out of spite.

>>96470855

Anything is better than the Gaysic Expert's Weapon Class system where you use THACO and also calculate if the weapon gets mods or not.

>>96471835

>look into this
>it's just ODnD/Chainmail

Why do you think someone else invented this?

>>96469665
Oh but anon, I meant to ask about poison for MY homebrew assassin class

>>96469662
>By the book (DMG).
I assume 1e one

>>96469662
>>if the player properly RPs them
>What do you mean by that?
That you should get a reaction reroll only if the part is roleplayed and a proper communication in character happen in the right context.
Or a foraging reroll only if you say shit like "ok we failed hunting we go for berries and look if some stream has crayfish"

>>96472110
What the fuck's a "1e"?

Also, there's only one book called "Dungeon Master's Guide" (that's what DMG stands for), so I'm not sure what you're asking in the first place.

>>96469922
Appreciate it. I like your thinking
>>96470703
Good question. I imagined it being attached to the lid but you're right that it would be impossible to open without spilling everything inside. Perhaps the chain forks and attaches to both sides of the chest, so it can be opened while suspended and stay upright.
>>96471287
Appreciate your feedback

>>96470855
I tried to use Target 20 until I realized that it fucks the math up (Delta even acknowledges this but still downplays it) so I do Target 19 instead, which sounds retarded but satisfies my need to be faithful to the original math.

>>96472562
How badly does it fuck up?

>>96472580
Iirc (it's been years since I plotted the math so forgive me if I'm wrong) it very broadly gives everyone a flat +1 to attack, which makes magic weapons and attack roll progression slightly less valuable.
Target 20 doesn't fuck the combat system up that badly but it results in inflated modifiers later in the game. I definitely wouldn't use it for saves or thief skills, as T20 fans advocate for, because I am opposed to universal resolution mechanics on principle.

>>96467641
>Could print it out and attach thumbtacks per PC to it, assign a standard for PC actions and how far and in what direction this moves the thumbtack per offense.
I felt like going to my campaign's VTT and realizing your idea. The initial placement is entirely "vibes" based, but I "started" every character in the box of their original alignment between the words of the name (e.g. between "Lawful" and "Good" for a Paladin)
1 "offense" = 1 inch move towards the corresponding edge

>>96439366
best original content I've seen in some time bravo

>>96472562
What makes you think target 20 "fucks up the math" but target 19 doesn't, exactly? Because it's bollocks: Neither one does.

Personally, I use target 21, but you can use target-whatever-the-fuck-you-want, even target 69. They're all equivalent systems.

>Delta even acknowledges this
What fucks up things in Delta's approach is that he uses the wrong attack bonuses, not target 20 in and of itself. Just use the right attack bonuses and you're good to go.

The right attack bonuses, by the way, are
>target −THAC0
So if you have THAC0 19 and you want to do target 69, your attack bonus is
>69 − 19 = +50
Everything else is unchanged, including AC.

>>96439805
Six mile hexes are great for abstract overland movement over several days. 100 yard hexes means each hex implies a single battlemat should you run that way. It's also unlikely that you will accurately model non-PC movement at that scale, whereas that's both easy and not really necessary with a larger grid.

But props to 100 yard hex guy; it probably works great for him. I'm just not gonna do that ever is all.

>>96466178
>They don't have a plan for us, they just don't care.
Bullshit. Case in point:

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

>>96472758
I do find it very entertaining out Anti-ACKS shill can't even bring himself to comment on the campaign playthrough.

I can only imagine how seething he is over being confronted by something he can't dismiss out of hand. Can you imagine?

>>96472730
>props to 100 yard hex guy
The 100 yard guy is Gary Gygax, Anon. The maps you're talking about
>>96438779
>>96438781
>>96438784
are just a conversion from squares to hexes of the wilderness map from B2, which is required reading.

>>96472785
>Can you imagine?
No. What I can imagine is tranny janny seething over it.

>>96472789
>janny so mad he spiked this post without noticing that it had nothing to do with ACKS or 2e

>>96472723
>bollocks
Lol if you're talking about just converting THAC0 to an attack bonus then yes you're correct. I was explicitly talking about Delta's method, which he calls Target 20, which I thought was pretty clear considering I mention Delta by name.

>>96445517
I mean I'm pretty sure literally all of those references are to accurately tracking in-game time, not having it by some necessity of large amounts of players running at some MMO or MUD or whatever that is tied to real time.

I think that interpretation- and the wild amounts of extra interactions it promotes- are why the brOSR is interesting, and also why they act like weird bullies that make everyone else circle the wagons. It's a way to inject drama and add meaning.

>>96439366
>Wow people really seem to like this writeup
>give it a read
>"I decided to use 2 optional rules, first of all, fate points,"
>fate points
Weren't people chimping out about fate points like last week? No disrespect to anyone, this is a great writeup and the game sounds very fun, but it's funny to me how fickle the poasters here are.

>thread has four hundred and twiggleby-elf posts according to Desu
>meanwhile ITT, the post count is *dropping* from bump limit

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

Either delete all of those posts, or delete none of them. Your job is not to promote your own personal agenda, it's to apply the rules of the website.

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

Either delete all of those posts, or delete none of them, faggot. Your job is not to promote your personal agenda, it's to apply the rules of 4chan.

>>96473022
>apply the rules fairly and impartially
1-800-COME-ON-NOW, you know he won't do that.

>>96472918
The difference is, fate points are an actual mechanic in ACKS.
Plus reading into it he treats it less as a 'get out of jail free metacurrency' and more as an actual resource since you need them to level up/they're difficult to come across.

Besides, at the end of the day you can get away with doing shit practically applied that sounds retarded on paper if you've all your other ducks in a row.
It's one thing to say 'I'm going to force my players to eat spoonfuls of raw meat at the table to help them imagine what it's like visiting the Orcish King' and another to say 'Last session I served Steak Tartare to the group and they loved every mouthful.'

>>96472918
It's called hypocrisy; ie. it's bad if you do it, it's fine if I do it.
Everything tends to have some mix of good and bad points. When you do it, here's all the bad points. When I do it, here's only the good points.

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

Apply the rules fairly and impartially. Either delete all of those posts, or delete none of them.

>>96469530
>>96469573
I like ACKS but I don't mind criticism as the system isn't perfect. However, what is clunky or Bad, exactly, on its mass combat rules? This accusation is very often levied but no one actually ellaborates on it, and here I actually want to understand as I used them and didn't ran in any real problem.

In general, being more specific about the criticism we make would go a long way into making this place more bearable.

>>96473176
Don't be naive, you're talking to someone who's never actually read ACKS, let alone used ANY mass combat rules in any system.

>>96473150
They are trying to enforce a concensus. Why is that important and why is ACKS anathema in it is the thing I don't get: That's too much vitriol for a single system.

What are they trying to enforce here? What kind of gaming culture?

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

Apply the rules fairly and impartially. Either delete all of those posts, or delete none of them, cocksucker.

>>96469573
>>96469635
>>96469642
Saying ACKS is shit = approved.

>>96469662
Saying 2e is shit = verboten.

Apply the rules fairly and impartially. Either delete all of those posts or delete none of them, faggot.

>>96473208
>Why is that important and why is ACKS anathema in it is the thing I don't get:
It's political. Look up how Macris was banned from Reddit.

What's more curious is how they're so pro-2e, and my suspicion is that they actually aren't, they just want to break this place up and will use any excuse for it.

>>96473105
You're spot on about this; I've observed a lot of people's reactions to unorthodox ideas here are entirely dependent on how they're framed in the initial post

>>96473239
>What's more curious is how they're so pro-2e, and my suspicion is that they actually aren't, they just want to break this place up and will use any excuse for it.
Either that, or the thesis that fishfag = 2etard = false flag fag is a janny or fucks a janny in the ass is true.

>>96473310
...or maybe they're just different Anons.

>>96472105
Ha, had I known! The rules I've been working with so far:
>1 week and 500 sp to make 1 dose of lethal (save vs. death) poison
>If you have some part of a creature (blood, hair, skin, etc.), you can design a poison specific to them, imposing a -3 penalty to their save. Other creatures get +3 to their save against poisons not designed for them
>If you want to make a nonlethal poison that inflicts other effects, such as blindness, paralysis, confusion, or sleep, it costs half as much.
Very lightweight, which works for BX, but I haven't play tested the system too much as only one player so far has run an assassin. I want to make them more robust, with more options and a chance of failure dependent on level, but this is what I have so far.

>>96473359
Sure, that's also possible. I've been observing this for years and even done my own experiments by phrasing certain ideas as questions at some times and assertions at others and judging the responses. It's both/and, not either/or

>>96473416
>It's both/and, not either/or
Fair enough. More hypotheses.

It's also possible that Anons who normally comment on that kind of thing have missed that one specific detail in that huge PDF.

Or that they did notice it, but they feel that the work is overall so based that nitpicking that one particular house rule would be petty and missing the point: It's one thing if you post 250 pages with a couple of FOEGYG ideas, and another matter entirely if you make a dedicated post for one specific FOEGYG idea.

Last but not least, generally speaking, if the claim that it's not a house rule but actually an official ACKS rule is true (I haven't verified), the point that ACKS is not perfectly orthodox has been made quite amply, and there's no risk of confusion on that front, so that might be why Anons are not insisting on it on this one occasion.

>>96472911
That’s funny because the 9 paragraphs after that say the opposite of what you think, FOE.

>>96473601
Hey, I know ACKS fairly well and it's actually an optional rule. It's been discussed here in the past in fact.

Yeah, it's pretty much 'ACKS gives options that are unorthodox, but they're options, so why get het up over it?'
I've always seen it discussed less as a system and more as a bag of tools to build your own OSR campaign.

Besides, like you said; the entire thing is fairly based so why throw a wobbly over it?

>>96473690
nta but I'd say it's more about sincerity.
Any asshole can (And has) kicked in the door in the past, dropped a 'What if [retarded, poorly thought out homebrew bullshit] :3c' as a way to shit up the thread.
No one is doing a 200+ page write up as a troll. So we have to assume the writer is sincere in his intentions and acting in good faith.
People are far more likely to be generous when they know they're dealing with something made in good faith.

>>96473690
This is definitely the right take. Plus, anons pretty regularly get mad about ACKS proficiencies or mention them as an optional rule system they discard, because it (rightfully) is seen as more intrusive and a bigger issue than some get out of jail points.

>>96473771
>People are far more likely to be generous when they know they're dealing with something made in good faith.
Strongly agreed.

>>96473771
>People are far more likely to be generous when they know they're dealing with something made in good faith.
In addition to this, I'm more likely to be forgiving of this shit if it's clear the person is intimately familiar with the OSR basics. It's one thing to add in some modern bullshit when you know what you're doing and are careful, it's another to do it when you're starting out, or worse, to suggest it to newbies who've never played an OSR game before.

Like, if you run with a bunch of weird FOE houserules for your very first time and your players say they "hate OSR," how do you know if that's even the case if they've never played it the way it was written?

We get a lot of it, too. "I'm gonna run OSR for my 5e players, so I'm gonna give them proficiencies and leave out encumbrance and time tracking and give them fate points 'cause I hear OSR is hard, and we'll use milestone experience because I want to ease them into it" and then, unsurprisingly, people say that's a lousy idea.

>>96473893
Hell, looking into the book he even kind of explains why they're in there.
>I leant into that, the Gods aren’t just bloodthirsty, they’re XP thirsty, they sustain themselves on Divine Power and that means sacrifices. Every age has its God and to be out of their favour is to be doomed to historical irrelevancy.
>To bring this across I decided to use 2 optional rules, first of all, fate points, you need at least 1 fate point to level up, fate points are rare and sometimes you’re bound to really want to not cock up a roll, or to save your own life, so you’ll end up inevitably spending them and having to risk being doomed by not having enough to continue your ascent.
>Unless of course you engage in sacrifices to the gods, currying favour, ect. More on the fate point mechanics in the house rules appendix. Non-humans have a lower chance of gaining fate on levelling (And have to pay more when sacrificing since their gods are more distant) but can sometimes gain it other ways outside of sacrifice
Rather than being a free resource players get to use to bullshit their way out of things, they're a precious resource you need to level up and if you don't have any then guess who is in deep shit until you find some way to get hold of one. My reading is he's also using it as an in setting mechanic to explain why the races of past ages are no longer masters of the world/the setting is humanocentric.
They've lost the favour of the gods and therefore have less high level NPCs, which is what humanity now finds itself dealing with as well.
Which is a pretty elegant way of underlining how fucked everything is with the setting.

I mean either that or it's to stop the groups little shit atheist from causing trouble given he also says
>This is a deeply religious world and I’m not letting anyone play fedora tipper in it

>>96474068
Yeah that's a prime example of somebody who's doing something generally regarded as dumb FOE shit, but who knows exactly what he's doing and what kind of results it's supposed to bring. 10/10, would play with

>>96474068
>Sure, you can play someone who doesn't follow any gods
>But you're not going to be levelling up any time soon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCcuI02yfYQ
That's fucking hilarious.

>>96474068
>>96474099
I don't think you understand why people dislike fate points.
>a free resource players get to use to bullshit their way out of things,
That's not the issue, that's some weird strawman thing.

The chief problem with fate points, and even what separates them from other resources, is that they're incredibly meta and unapologetically so. However, there's at least something to respect about the honesty of that, in which a mechanic that is clearly meta is allowed to remain meta. If you're playing a game where meta-thinking has a part, like in a game like Fate for example, fate points make sense.

It's really weird to cry about fate points on one hand, to try and decry them as >a free resource players get to use to bullshit their way out of things,
and then try to bullshit your way out of the criticism for using them with an incredibly hollow "they're gifts from the gods" bullshit attempt to apologize for using fate points.

There's actually layers to this hypocrisy, and that's incredibly concerning.

>>96474356
>They're a metacurrency so you can't make them diagetic or that's hypocrisy
>You're all being hypocri-
You do realize there's more than 1 person posting in here right?
Wait a second
>Bullshit
Ah, nevermind, it's just you thinking you've found an in on causing trouble.

>>96474393
>They're a metacurrency so you can't make them diagetic or that's hypocrisy
They're very much a meta-oriented resource. How they're used, what they're used for, how and why a player would decide to pull the trigger on their usage, it's all incredibly meta. There's a lot of reasons why most games that use Fate and Fate-like points don't bother with trying to explain them in game, because they do not function in a way that aligns with how characters would think and plan, and it's often far better to keep those things deliberately separate if you're going to use them. It's borderline on the level of characters knowing what level they are.
>Bullshit
Just repeating your word for emphasis on the hypocrisy. Are you trying for some more hypocrisy where only you get to describe something as bullshit?

>>96474356
"Oh no, not the metagaming! It ruins my immersion in the story!"
Said new school fags. Outta my way, gonna play John Fighterman the 7th

>>96474497
I like your honesty; better than hypocrisy.

>>96474497
Funniest thing is, it really is a matter of it being a practical example.
He can say hypocrisy all he wants but there really is a difference between
>Hi guys I'm just starting out, I'm thinking of running my first OSR game using PbtA, how many fatepoints should I give my party to save them from bad dice rolls
vs
>I'm going to be using these in my game, for the following reasons, X, Y, Z, here's the effect it had, here's where players used them, ect, ect
I mean shit, him giving players a bunch of random points right from the off to customize their party because they came up with a neat backstory is far more egregious if you really wanted to talk about FOE.
But the fact the party immediately metagamed the shit out of it, threw them all in one character and he had to just roll with it makes it more funny than anything.

>>96474533
I like neither your faggotry not your dishonesty

>>96474591
Good, that's why I have none of either. Now quit the whole being a little bitch act already. At least the "I only play HARDCORE RPGs because playing pretend is for SISSYS" business is mildly amusing.

I truly look forward to him whining about hypocrisy without ever 'getting it' from here until the rapture.

>>96474710
>he can't recognize when another anon has jumped into a conversation just to dunk on him

>It simply can't understand why people give more leeway to someone actually posting content over it and the shitstirring it does.
10/10, funniest shit to come out of the pdf being posted so far. Full on 'Grinch watching the Whos singing from the top of Mt Crumpet' moment.
>Maybe, he thought, OSR doesn't come from a store
>Maybe OSR is a little bit more
>...no, it's boring and clunky and bullshit and badly designed and petty and-
Meanwhile all of /osrg/: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZOXAHZbs6U

>>96474356
So you tell people that the reason they say they dislike fate points isn't the REAL reason they dislike fate points, and then tell them they're hypocrites for their position not being consistent with the fake reasons you made up for them?
Do you expect anyone to take you seriously?

Another Anon has created a new thread but forgot to link it here. Odd.

>>96474844
>>96474844
>>96474844

>>96474903
What are you talking about.

The guy doesn't dislike meta points. He uses them.

The hypocrisy is saying "The way I use them is okay, the way you use them is wrong," when the irony is that the way he uses them is just Meta points plus "this is totally not meta, guys, it's part of the setting, look, these points come from the gods."

it's fundamentally not understanding something that I just explained to you. I understand you're playing a role right now, but my god you're dumb when you do it.

>>96474995
>when the irony is that the way he uses them is just Meta points plus "this is totally not meta, guys, it's part of the setting, look, these points come from the gods."
This is you being dumb as hell

>>96475002
Do you really not...
...wait, I really think you don't.

I don't think you understand how mechanics work. What their components are. What makes a mechanic... "feel" meta or not, and how something like spell slots will inherently feel more abstract than something like a stamina system, even if you use lore to try and reconcile the players' and the characters' thoughts. Or how putting a coat of flavor on meta-points doesn't change what they are in anything but a superficial way.

There's nothing inherently wrong with using meta points. But, there is something wrong with using mechanics without really understanding them.

Now, cue you being a dumb bitch again. C'mon, show how dumb you can be.

>>96475096
nta but I'm going to make it simple for you
This thread is very friendly to anyone who doesn't act like a complete subhuman and in doing so give off a terrible first impression.
Consider how people treat you in here and follow the logical throughline to its conclusion.

>>96475110
Wow, dumber than I thought.

>>96475122
QED.

>>96475110
There's been quite a lot of subhuman activity from someone who thinks he's being "friendly". Quite a lot of screaming and raging.
Maybe you can't see the deleted posts?

>>96471856

0e is unreadable, unplayable garbage.

>>96474356
>There's actually layers to this hypocrisy, and that's incredibly concerning.

>>96475973
kek

>>96474393
NTA (lol) but the "more than 1 anon here" argument sort of falls flat here when you consider that there were multiple people decrying fate points one day and multiple people excusing their use another day. It is incredibly easy to imagine the sort of replies someone in this thread would get if today they posted about unapologetically using fate points in their game without any additional context.
Both the anons >>96474356 is replying to, as well as >>96473310, are correct that it's purely contextual, for better or for worse.

>>96475202
0e is the holy grail of ttrpg. Just because you can't read doesn't make it unreadable.