Thread 96704041

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:
>>96671493

>Thread Question:
Have you ever gotten a friend into OSR games? If so, which one?

In this thread we won't have any shit-flinging or baby-tier retorts.

>What's an OSR?
>Don't know how to get started?
The friendly n00b guides can be found here:
>n00b DM's Guide
https://pastebin.com/EVvt6P0B
>n00b Player's Handbook
https://pastebin.com/XALkXkV0

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

An Anon has shared an awesome AzteCKS campaign report. Check it out!

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

RC > B/X.
For one, it has actual wilderness survival rules.

>>96704041 (OP)
>Have you ever gotten a friend into OSR games?
Got my old group back together to play Dolmenwood. One dropped early on for scheduling reasons, one dropped after about a year when his second character died and one is still playing coming up two years, it's been fun. The real prize will be the other DM I'm friends with but I give that a proper go till his current 5e game has run it's course.
>If so, which one?
How am I meant to answer that? You don't know any of my friends.

>>96705781
Just tell him if it's John.

>>96705639
>it has actual wilderness survival rules
No, it doesn't. What it has is proficiencies, and those don't make the game any better.

>>96705781
Which game, ya doofus.

>>96705924
It's not John.
>>96706029
Dolmenwood, ya doofus.

I recently rediscovered hackmaster 4e. I wish there were more warstories online about accredited play. Does anyone have any hackmaster stories to tell?

>>96707102
Off topic.

>>96705639
Fuck no lmao. Are you both retarded and ignorant?

>>96706029
Can you not fucking read, retard?

>>96707497
Looks like we're having two different conversations here

I really wish I could get into an OSR game but I live in Vietnam. I don't even know anyone who plays tabletop.

>>96704448
>>Literally tells you what to look for and where to find it.
Except you literally did not you fucking lying retard.
You said "it's in dragon magazine somewhere!". Now produce the issue number or go kill yourself

>>96707592
Play online. If you can stomach Discord, there's plenty of choice of communities offering open table nights one or more nights a week.

>>96707592
And you obviously have access to the internet, so fucking do something about it instead of complaining into the void.

>>96707614
>If you can stomach Discord
I've never even touched it. I'm kinda old.
>>96707617
Is online play actually fun? Seems awkward and gay but I guess it wouldn't hurt to try.

>>96707757
I'm kinda old as well. Online play isn't as good as IRL play. And playing with strangers isn't as good as playing with friends. And Discord sucks.

But maybe not playing sucks more? This is up to you to decide.

Another option is playing solo.

Is Dolmenwood OSR appropriate?
The game looks really cool, have any of you played it? Would it be a good introductionary game to the our?

>>96709013
Dolmenwood is mostly okay. Sadly, it didn't live up to its promise as it transitioned from the traditional English folklore of Wormwood to Disneywood.

As an introduction to OSR, it's not as good as B/X, OD&D, and AD&D the real one, not the 2e knockoff, of course, but it can work for the most part, and we'll be happy to help.

We have written two guides, one for the DM and one for players, on how to get started with OSR. All of the advice in there applies to Dolmenwood as well. You can read them here:
>>96705108
Do feel free to ask any questions.

>>96707592
Get some friends together and introduce them to it. Total newbies take to it better than people weaned on later TTRPGs and critical role.

>>96707607
I'm not gonna fault you for arguing with a crazy person, 'cause hey, sometimes it's fun, and we've all done that. But please don't drag the argument forward into a new thread, just let it die.

>>96704041 (OP)
>If so, which one?
>>96705781
>>96707497
I see the misunderstanding. Op meant which osr game which I interpreted as which friend. Kek.
>mfw
In my defence I did actually answer the question, if only accidentally.

>>96709013
Ignore that first guy who replied to you. He's this general's ass wart.

>>96709013
You already got some good, solid advice here:
>>96709161
I'd add that Dolmenwood CAN be run as a setting using BX (or AD&D or OD&D), it's just a matter of ignoring the freakshit classes and reducing the excessive freedom to mix and match races and classes in Dolmenwood (and OSE Advanced). If you're interested in doing that, we can talk about it. But you can just run Dolmenwood as is, of course.

Either way, I'd STILL read B/X for the invaluable examples of play and explanations.

A separate issue is that the DW hexes are a bit overcrowded with features out of the box, which does not encourage you as a DM to populate the hexes dynamically with in-lair checks and e.g. stuff from Wilderness Hexplore, but that's not what you want to concentrate on in the beginning anyway as a new DM, I would mostly just focus on getting the main procedures right.

Do let us know how it goes!

>>96709013
Dolmentard here. It's good. Race as class is better and I recommend starting with just human and have the party 'unlock' the other races as the game goes on.
My party is most bat people currently but the hirelings are all human or goatmen.
As other anon said the hexes are waaaaay over crowded.
Still if you chuck down some dungeons (Winters daughter and St Clewyds Abby are alright Necrotic Gnomes other dungeons are meh) and use it to teach yourself procedures from BX and other reputable sources you'll have a good time.

>>96711351
2etard, shoo shoo.

>>96709368
It's not an "argument". You made a claim, I asked for evidence, and you can't present it. Simple as.

>>96707237
On the fucking contrary, Hackmaster beats even C&C as a progenitor of OSR.

Just started running ACKS and I feel like the players are already learning the rules better than me. Also some of the rules, like requiring 1 week just for a cursory asking around as to where to find a mage locally, don't make sense, when just using the recruitment rules. I feel like B/X with some extra rules for that sort of stuff would be better. There's also nothing in there for stuff like alchemy, no foraging tables to get ingredients, or anything else cool like that. The magic item crafting system just seems to be "find 100 troll skulls and now you can make a +1 sword, except if you managed to kill 100 trolls then did you really need that extra +1 to hit / damage?"
I don't know what to do. It feels tempting to try to write something that is basically ACKS but better. Less spread-sheety and more focused around some kind of cellular-automata-based system for simulating domain play, plus a crafting / magic system with actual depth to it.

>>96712192
So you're ALSO a crazy person, then? I never made any claim, except that it's not good for the current thread for you to continue arguing with the crazy person from last thread
.
Whatever, this is my second and final reply to you, please go be upset somewhere else.

>>96712293
Yep, you are discovering in real time why it's better to just play D&D and add your own house rules as they're needed
ACKS is a source to mine for ideas for better games

>>96712293
>Less spread-sheety and more focused around some kind of cellular-automata-based system for simulating domain play
Be sure to look at An Echo, Resounding for an alternate, more abstract idea of how to run domains.

>>96712293
>ACKS but better.
You could wipe your ass and end up accomplishing that.

I'd like to play in Dolmenwood, but I'm the only one who DMs amongst my group of friends, and all of my online buddies are AD&D 1e purists more or less - although I'm not complaining there, I live 1e, they just don't play much else.

>>96713194
Why not adapt Dolmenwood to AD&D?

>>96713209
This, you don't really need their "we have B/X at home" rules

>>96713209
>>96713226
I don't think my AD&D guys would be interested in running it. I doubt they even know what Dolmenwood is.

I think a lot of them are like 40-50+.

>>96713240
Could pique their interest. Otherwise, if you have the capacity, running an open table, perhaps play-by-post in AD&D could be feasible, DW has bones for it you can use to achieve a proper open table.

I was hunting for a board game among my cardboard horde (got well over 200 board and card games) and stumbled upon an old beat to shit box with old D&D artwork. Turned out it housed a Basic rulebook (missing the cover) and Expert Rulebook, plus a blank character sheet for AD&D and some sheets filled out and such. Plus a copy of the AD&D Core Rulebook 2.0 CD-Rom.
I NEVER bought this. I live alone and always owned this house. I didn't even start D&D until 3e.

Where the fuck did this come from? I recognize none of the names on anything. The only used stuff I ever bought was some 3e hardback books I picked out by hand at a flea market once and this was nowhere near any of that stuff. It was sitting in a dark corner of a closet in my game storage room.

Here's the thing, I never even owned a PC with a CD-Rom drive. I jumped from floppy disc to SSD because I just didn't game on PC at all.

I'm kinda weirded out by it, if I'm being honest.

>>96713436
Scan the filled sheets and post 'em!

>>96713436
The spirit of gyxax placed it there. It is a spiritual calling.

>>96713445
Doubtful, the AD&D CD-rom was 2e, and the 2.0 version featured the real garbage like Skills and Powers. Probably the work of Satan, not Gygax

>>96713450
That's why I wrote gxax not gygax

>>96713459
kek, what's the lore for Gygax's Evil twin Gyxax?

>>96713436
Be very careful. If you play a game of that Basic set, using that character sheet, and that character dies, you'll go insane and wander inside the heating tunnels of your local college for all eternity.

>>96713240
Just plonk it in your setting, it's just a place they can go to if they want to. If you're playing AD&D the real one, not the knockoff you're well past the point in development as a DM in which you need to make some kind of contract with the players about a specific adventure box they should stay inside of. Offer options, see what they do.

Place it between two important points of interest, e.g. main cities offering different services, and see how they react to it when they travel through it.

>>96713474
Gyxax was the dumb storygaming cousin who was triggered by demons, not the evil twin.

>>96713474
"John Wayne" Gacy Gyxax was born under a full moon, on a California community college theater club's stage, during a production of Oklahoma! The fine gentlemen playing craps in an alley thee blocks away found that all their dice rolled nothing but snake eyes that night. Two of them were suspected and subsequently shot, but were saved at the last moment by a paramedic named Daniel-May P. Carachter.

>>96713536
>>96713253
I don't want to DM it, I want to experience it as a player with no OOC knowledge.

>>96713720
I'll say that anyone one with their head screwed on straight can run it via any osr with no more work to convert than it would be for converting a BX book. But if your friend group isn't into running it you might be shit out of luck, friend.
>>96713536
>the real one not the knock off.
We, FUCKING, know. Stop bringing up off topic games.

>>96704041 (OP)
That's the Rules Cyclopedia art.
That was my favorite version of DnD.
That's it. That's the post.

>>96712366
You made a claim about this rule existing in dragon magazine, but you refuse to state the issue number.
You're just a worthless little weasally worm

>>96712219
Wrong, retard. It is wildly off topic. Go start a different thread.

>>96713515
>>96713522
None of that shit ever happened

>>96715380
Yeah but it's a funny joke man, lighten up.

I played Hackmaster back when it was new, and it was fucking peak. You have to understand that a lot of the stupid rules like honor loss and encumbrance audits were deliberate hammers given to the GM to punish idiot players. They only came up when you flirted with too many barmaids or wiped out a town. Most of the time it was pretty normal 1e with crazy crits and a 20hp kicker on everything.
I ran a campaign up until level 15 or so. My players decided to pack up and leave the Little Keep on the Borderlands and start up a business, instead of going through the rest of the module. They ended up going south to some jungles to capture War Gorillas to sell for profit.
We played with the protege rules, so unless you had a trainee that you had invested time and money into levelling up, you started back at level 1 if you die.

>>96712219
he fears hackmaster because hackmaster IS GOOD

legend has it some redditor automated the entire game on foundry. sounds comfy as fuck. the only game to sell player screens alongside GM screens, to keep those nosy GMs away

>>96715740
sounds like hackmaster is where games like 4e, 13a, pf2 get their big starting hitpoint pool from. thats a pretty cool legacy. It looks peak. I wonder if they still certify gamemasters

>>96715740
>it was pretty normal 1e
>with crazy crits
>with a 20hp kicker on everything.
>with a lot of stupid rules
>with honor loss
>with encumbrance audits
>with a protegé to protect you from having to start over at level one if your PC dies
In other words, it was nothing like "normal 1e", but rather a pile of steaming garbage.

>>96715760
Quality has nothing to do with whether or not something is or is not on topic for this general you fucking retard

>>96713910
>We, FUCKING, know. Stop bringing up off topic games.

One of the common traits in people with autism is persistently-repeated phrases. He can't help it.

Ran my first session of Stonehell on the Borderlands last night.
Party: Dwarf with 18 Str, two Clerics, a thief & a MU. They roll up to the keep & hit the tavern. They hear about how the guildmaster is offering a reward for the rescue of a merchant, that the merchant was abducted by Hobgobs & that another party of adventurers have been gone for about a week. They also hear that the Priest seems like a cool guy.
A One-armed halfling by the fire laughs at the party for saying they're adventurers, calls them noobs & offers to take them to a baby dungeon, the party acquiesce. They also go visit the priest and he volunteers to come along as well.
On the way to the dungeon the Halfling points out cave A, says there's a bunch of dog-men in there. They reach the gatehouse & because it's daytime they can just walk through the gate unmolested (annoying flipping back between 0A & 0C, also that the gates map is in 5' squares, made it hard for the mapper & I). It was about this time I began running the game in turns, was kind of clunky but I think once everyone begins to get familiar with the procedure it will run more smoothly. The party cleans house, find everything (which is good? Still only ended up with 27gp & 33xp each which seems like fuck all). Rolled a 12 on the phantasm's reaction roll so I played it as they had a moment of clarity and were able to communicate with the players, talked as if the dungeon was still a prison. This was juicy lore as the party were already asking why the gatehouse was even here. We ran out of time to play through them returning to the keep, would have been nice to trigger a wilderness encounter that clues them in on the caves. I think they're expecting to find the merchant in the dungeon, not sure how I can disabuse them of that. I didn't get a chance for ||The priest to betray them|| because there wasn't really a good opportunity, seems cruel anyway but if they go out together again I will play it out.

>>96718270
linefeeds, my man, it's hard to read without 'em
don't let newfags bully you with that "reddit spacing" horseshit, either

anyone got cursed scroll 1? just started getting into shadowdark and I don't feel like paying $20 for a pdf

>>96718602
>shadowdark
A, off topic here, and B, go ask the folks in the PDF share thread

>>96718602
Wrong thread, friend. Nice minis, though.

>>96718270
Great! Keep it up, and keep us updated with session reports.

>Still only ended up with 27gp & 33xp each which seems like fuck all
The upper levels of Stonehell are well known to be treasure-poor. People oftensay it's to show that the place has already been looted by other adventurers. I don't think it's spelled out explicitly anywhere, but you could comment something to that effect.

>talked as if the dungeon was still a prison. This was juicy lore as the party were already asking why the gatehouse was even here
Nice!

>I didn't get a chance for ||The priest to betray them||
That's cool, I don't think you're in an hurry for that.

>>96718602
Like other anons have said, shadowdark is off topic on /osrg/, but it's on topic on /nusrg/
>>96652488

>>96718270
Just checking: You DO have supplements 1 and 2 to Stonehell, right? The Brigand Caves are a must have because they provide an additional entrance, and I've done the same with the Nest of Otrogg, adding a connection from there to level 1.

>>96718602
How about you shoot yourself in the face instead of any of that

>>96712542
>Yep, you are discovering in real time why it's better to just play D&D and add your own house rules as they're needed
Yeah. the problem is that I *do* need those rules, and want them frontloaded. I just don't like the stupid changes ACKS makes. Like, you can't shoot into melee AT ALL without a feat? Not even a penalty / risk of hitting your allies (the latter is more fun)? Just annoying, even if it makes some degree of sense.
I feel like the "ideas" in ACKS are worthless outside of the structure of the game that's there. Unless I just rewrite his rules to be "ACKS, but different" and without the gay pseudo-feats.

>>96712562
Is it B/X compatible?

>>96712608
Then were is the domain-level play system that /osrg/ WOULD shill for?

>>96719443
>Is it B/X compatible?
Yes, 100%
Also "wipe your ass" guy is a local shitposter with a hateboner for ACKS. Take him with a grain of salt

>>96718843
Thanks, I think a big part of what is motivating me to run the game is to have something to report here.
No one was overly bothered by the small take, but it did seem like level 2 was a looong way away when we tallied it up.

>>96718873
I have them both, haven't looked at them though.

>>96719517
The general consensus of not just this board, but humanity in general is that ACKS is a tedious joke of a system.
Methinks your diet of nothing but fried salt may have affected your brain a bit.

>>96719862
>the dumb shit I spam and spam again pretending its consensus is ACKS bad mkay

>>96719443
>Is it B/X compatible?
Pretty much. Its for for LL. Its okay as a generic tags based hex/domain setup, wouldn't use it as is but not the worst if you're in the mood for some-numbers-but-not-too-many-numbers. Semi tied to the asian setting but not hard to abstract.
There's a good discussion between the Echo guy and the ACKS guy talking about their design goals and how they ended up doing different things from back in the day.

>>96719443
I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSR; it's not a core component since the basics of the older D&D editions are centered around skirmish-scale combat and exploration, and most groups never bother with anything but the thinnest pastiche, often with the game ending before it became a practical consideration. While you can find domain rules scattered around the official editions, such as the rules provided in the BECMI Companion books, the general approach has been to leave most of those decisions in the hands of the DMs, and in a fairly abstract fashion.

Remember, this is long before GRRM asked "What was Aragorn's Tax policy?" When fantasy heroes became lords, the idea was that the decisions they should make should be more akin to the CEO of a company, rather than one of his accountants. What alliance should you pursue, what oath must be called upon; not whether the brothels should be slapped with a penny tax. When a fighting man became a lord and started collecting taxes, the rules around that were left incredibly abstract and broad, alongside rules like constructing a castle where they tried to be semi-realistic and ended up being impractical for use in most games.

>Then were is the domain-level play system that /osrg/ WOULD shill for?
You've got lots of choices. Birthright if you want an official D&D ruleset (albeit one with a lot of baggage), WWN or An Echo Resounding for a fairly straightforward OSR approach, system-agnostic guide books like Reign, or some chimeric creation built alongside the good judgement that is the prerequisite to being a DM in the first place.

I wouldn't say any should be shilled for, because Domain play has a way of being better in the mind then it is in reality, kind of like actually running a country. If your heart is set on it, you probably want to work your way into it and have a sense of what you're looking for, making recommendations something of a moot point.

>>96720386
>There's a good discussion between the Echo guy and the ACKS guy talking about their design goals and how they ended up doing different things from back in the day.
Link?

>>96720414
>Birthright if you want an official D&D ruleset (albeit one with a lot of baggage)
What's wrong with it? It DOES look cool and I know some people who play it (online creators not personally, sadly, of my IRL groups I have only gotten them into ACKS, and only so long as they don't learn too much about Macris personally...)

>>96720422
Baggage in the form that it's a setting more than a rule set, and presents a lot of assumptions based on that and your characters having the divine right to rule and what not.

It's pretty fun, but it's definitely not something you can just casually recommend because it does things like implementing large-scale abstractions but turning them into divine powers. It works in the Birthright and Tolkien-esque settings, but might not mesh so cleanly with a more grounded setting.

>>96715350
He didn't make that claim I did.
Also once again I told you where to look. I COULD look it up and tell you but honestly it's funnier watching you sperg out and fling tardcum all over the place.

>>96720483
Ah that's fair. Yeah idk if I want the "birthright" to be a literal divine thing. Thanks for the headsup

Would you play an OSR version of Sundered Skies that was basically a mix of B/X and Traveller, but with airships and floating islands?

So after 2 years away from RPGs, my passion project is dead. Now that I've returned I have new ideas I want to bring to life. Much of what is in here will probably get reused, but I figured I might as well share with you guys.
I've posted it before and feedback from anon helped me a lot. That's why I'm giving to you guys.
Use it or don't. I don't care.

The random encounters probably don't make too much sense as they were imported from another project and looking at it now I probably wasn't done with readjusting them.

/file/5mt5kn

>>96721147
Sendspace

>>96720414
>Birthright
>WWN
>An Echo Resounding
While ACKS is too spreadsheety and detailed for me out of the box, I still find lots of stuff to steal from it, while there's absolutely nothing of use for my table in those three examples you give. In fact, I kinda detest them. To each his own, I guess.

>>96720622
Depends on how you do it. If you take the best parts of B/X and Traveller, I'm extremely interested. If you take the worst parts of them, like SWN did, I'm not.

Namely, it should be 100% compatible with B/X out of the box with zero adaptation needed, including e.g. no or minimal shitbrew classes, no or minimal shitbrew spells or even traditional spells driven faggot names to sound fancy to retards, and of course XP for gold.

I have no idea what the fuck a sundered sky is supposed to be.

>>96721195
>or even traditional spells GIVEN faggot names to sound fancy to retards
t. phonefag

>>96720414
>I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSR
That's kind of a moot point though because there isn't any specific set of actions that is intrinsic to OSR.
Put down the guns and hear me out, I'm not saying 'OSR is just a vibe UwU' or any shit like that.

But the original idea of OSR was that your characters could grow and develop based on how you interacted with the world, which was treated as a real, living, breathing place.

Dungeon delving is of course the de facto XP maker but things were fairly foot loose and fancy free and the main reason it became the focus is because it was the first thing pitched to low levellers as a way to get towards mid-levels and the reason they were all in the area.
In another world, where Dave Arneson went "Fuck it, the early level hook is going to be working for the infamously dangerous Blackmoor Merchant Caravan Company which runs goods through the ass end of the wilderness", we'd all be raving, hooting and shaking our dicks about how the Caravan Phase is essential to the OSR experience since it gives your players opportunities to mark the known trade routes, begin introduction to important NPCs, find dungeons close to the routes, engage in some light dickass banditry on each other, ect.

The rules were broad and abstract, mainly because you and the DM were meant to hash out the specifics since the DM was one guy who made all the calls himself. And a major part of why those higher level rules remained abstract and vibes-y is because, like you said, most people didn't climb that high.

Personally I do feel ACKS gives the complete view of a kind of 'What if more people had reached higher level and they'd written shit down'

But yeah the central and core component of OSR is "Player driven rather than DM driven" rather than any specific action. The story is about what the gigglefucks are currently up to.

>>96720414
>I think it's important to understand that "domain-level" play really isn't intrinsic to OSR
I can't say I agree.

Domain-level play is intrinsic to OSR, and I'm fairly confident that the reason Gygax and Arneson didn't spell out how to to run it is that there were already systems for it that were very popular. Specifically, Tony Bath's book is from 1973.

While I don't have hard proof for my belief, there is some circumstantial evidence: Not elaborating on this kind of thing is exactly what Gygax did when he talked about "figure ratios" in the PHB without explaining what it means or how to do it: He just assumed everybody knew what he was talking about, and he wouldn't be adding anything new enough to the scene to be commercially successful.

Just a case of the curse of knowledge.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge

I can't take anyone who likes ACKS seriously.

>>96720422
>link
iirc it was on reddit, can't find it with a quick search of
>kevin crawford and alexander macris discussion
which may be related to macris being b& topic there.

>>96721147
I remember this. Music themed things don't do it for me but cool you're working on stuff again.

ACKS sounded promising, but there are so many weird decisions. 5d6 pick 3 for an ability score of your choice, with two more scores of your choice at 4d6 pick 3. You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time. Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll. Death charts instead of instant death at 0 hp.
I might steal some of the domain management stuff for a normie OSE game I'm planning, but the other rules are autistic and gay.

>>96722766
>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.
I actually rather like that personally, since the actual rule is "Reroll all dice, if it's higher, use that, if it's not you get a +1 instead."
It means you don't get absolutely fucked by rolling a 1 at 1st since you might roll a 6 on the same dice later. It does weight things towards the higher end of the potential HP curve since you always take the highest, but you can always change that.

>>96722766
The domain management rules are also not really something you can trust. Fairly basic things like trading breaks down pretty frequently, especially as you increase in scale and all the little "fees" accumulate to a point where trading becomes unprofitable. I really don't think they playtested the systems anywhere near as much as they should, a symptom of the size of the game.

>>96722766
>>96722797
>>96722803
I've noticed a weird trend over the last decade of osr stuff. Essentially there has been a shift from the expectation being to read and use source material that is then modified to suit the DM and campaign, to buying a prepackaged game that's someone else's house rules. I don't really get it, but I do see it. Always struck me as weird. There's usually an interesting bit or two in most retroclones but they've never been a thing I even considered running out of the box. The entire point of osr stuff was to get more modules and tables , even then expecting to modify those.

>>96722766
While I generally agree with your criticism, I don't with this specific bit:

>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.
That's not how it works, the distribution doesn't converge to any value, let alone the average --- in fact, the average is increased a little bit, for example from 31.50 HP to 33.76 at level 9 for a character with d6 hit dice.

Its main effect is to reduce the left tail of the distribution, which I think is good because there is ample evidence that Gygax tended to avoid giving very low HP to monsters, so why shouldn't players get something like that as well?

https://anydice.com/program/3fba2

>>96722766
>Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll.
This is my only true issue, it's mind boggling

>>96722897
I think practically everyone here agrees with you, but yeah, that's definitely a phenomenon in more mainstream "OSR" spaces.

>>96722908
I think his goal was to have a system that would make it easy to determine whether somebody has hit unarmoured AC for the odd spell that requires that. But yeah, I agree that the solution is worse than the problem he tried to fix.

I still think
>attack bonus + descending AC against a fixed target (be it 19, 20, or 21)
is by far the best way to calculate attack rolls.

Personally, my preferred target is 21 because then the bonus equals the probability to hit exactly, which means that when I'm in the mood to have the players roll to defend instead of the DM rolling for the monsters to attack, the roll high target is trivial: The defender has to roll over attack bonus + AC.

>>96722970
>the solution is worse than the problem he tried to fix.
This seems to happen a lot. Likely linked to the playtesting gap noted above.
>rereads green txt
Shit I'm an old guy now.

>>96722766
>5d6 pick 3 for an ability score of your choice, with two more scores of your choice at 4d6 pick 3.
>Attack rolls look like saving throws and require the DM to state the armor class before the roll.
gay

>You reroll ALL your hit dice every level, so all hp pools will converge to the average over time.
>Death charts instead of instant death at 0 hp.
based

In conclusion, ACKS is a land of contrasts.

>>96722522
Yeah... Got that feedback from a couple of people, so next project will just have regular fancy names.

Like the Wizard, Wor'khan the Vicious, who rules the cursed woods where the crawl takes place.

>>96722499
An Echo Resounding was Crawford of SWN? Damn. I think I knew that but never connected the dots because it was before Worlds Without Number came out that I even last looked at AER...and yeah that figures. Okay I will try to find it myself. Fuckin' reddit, man...

>>96723921
NTA, it was rpg.net. Also a hive of scum and lefty faggotry, but not run by the actual leftoid illuminati at least

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/domain-play-an-echo-resounding-vs-acks.692077/

>>96709013
I've been having fun with it for the last 7 months.
Dolmenwood is OSR, it's system end is quite literally OSE Advanced with the optional and Carcass Crawler rules checked. thank the OGL debacle for NG deciding to fully decouple it.
It's a pretty easy introductory game as a player. The GM side doesn't quite cover everything you need but there's a plethora of information out there.
For adventures without ascending armor class listed, you'll need to convert it but it's as simple as 20 - AC = ascending AC

>>96725754
I think this is just a link to a bigpurp thread that has a link to the rpgsite discussion. Its been a while since I did anything with therpg site but the link there isn't working. I think we're getting closser though.

>>96727809
>you'll need to convert it but it's as simple as 20 - AC = ascending AC
No, it's 19 - AC = ascAC in OSE

New pic for the OP. Made using Neverwinter Nights with CEP

Hopefully this is a bigger pic

>>96722907
>there is ample evidence that Gygax tended to avoid giving very low HP to monsters
Source? Stuff I've read suggested he was very strict about rolling HD for all monsters

>>96728998
The only Gygax module I have is Keep on the Borderlands and it sure doesn't look like he was rolling there. I haven't played any AD&D modules, maybe he rolled for those.

Anyone got any "funhouse" ideas for me to put in a dungeon?

I was thinking of putting in a spinning room or something that takes them a level above or below without them realising.

>>96729167
Traps that close off the way you just came from is a classic. Grimmtooth has a bunch of wacky things you can include.

>>96729251
Neat. Thank you.

Combining that room with that trap where the character steps on a stair and it snaps, making their foot fall into a snare of spikes that prevent removal would be devilish indeed...

>>96729167
>I was thinking of putting in a spinning room or something that takes them a level above or below without them realising.
oh that's real good, I'm stealing that.
I've had a little idea bouncing around in my mind of a "gravity-defying webwork of floating rivers" for vertically connecting certain high rise rooms and balconies within an old aquamancer's grand palace. Explorers would have to swim "up/down" the water to reach certain spots, all the while risking aquatic encounters within the roughly 20' diameter cylinders. No casting spells and no burning torches while in the water and really cunning creatures would try to push invaders out of the floating water to their doom below.

>>96729371
As someone who despises heights and swimming, you had better have a damned good reason for making me swim up those rivers. Fuck that.

>>96729251
Grimmtooth had a book full of fun traps to use. I think I see have the books somewhere in storage.

>>96729371
So basically the sky tubes from Ecco 2: The Tides of Time? Neat

>BattleaXe anon here
I'm finally done making a retroclone of warhammer fantasy in my own language and now I'm back to build
>OCKVLT
>a sandbox hexcrawl for B/X levels 1 to 9.
>it's based on a re-purposed hexmap from the SPI hex-and-counter game MechWar '77
I've played in this setting both solo and as DM with other people.
Is there anything I'm missing in the ToC?

It's supposed to be sword & sorcery, bronze-age setting with demons, making use of AD&D demons

>>96704041 (OP)
Allright, maybe I´m fucking stupid, but where in the archive is the damn Mystara stuff? I want to read about that setting straight from the gazzetters and I can´t fucking find any of them.

>>96730547
Nevermind, found it in my rage fueled state. Now off to read.

I have no explanation for why I like Mystara so much, yet hate Forgotten Realms. They've got similar vibes
Maybe it's because most of the Gazetteers have a sexy Caldwell babe on the cover

>>96730623
Honestly, it´s probably the amount of lore and freedom to truly build in Mystara compared to the forgotten realms. I wasn´t there 40 years ago and my only complaint of the setting is the existence of immortals instead of gods, but that´s just me

>>96730645
The Known World was good.

The Gazetteers and Mystarda were crap.

>>96730779
Pardon me, but aren't they one and the same?

>>96722766
It sounds so promising that you give it up before you even try? Honestly what's the point of you actually doing anything?

>>96720544
You stupid loser faggot, you make some stupid outlandish claim, you get btfo when somebody calls you out on it, and then you spend literally 4 days dancing about how "I could tell you the answer but I'm actually just too retarded to admit that I'm wrong!"
You should honestly just kill yourself instead of posting about retarded nonsense like how your dad works at Nintendo or something

>>96722424
You're an incel posting anonymously on 4chans dungeons & dragons thread.
Nobody respects you in real life let alone on this board even

>>96719862
That's fine, we don't actually care about what your opinion on my game system is, you just want a space to be able to discuss and play it without you shitting in pissing yourself every time it gets brought up

>>96721147
If you've given up this easily it's probably not worth the bandwidth to even look at

>>96730806
>aren't they one and the same?
Nope. The Known world was the default setting of the 1981 B/X edition. It was pretty nice and minimalistic although nowhere as good as Greyhawk or Wilderlands of High Fantasy and it stayed that way for a few years.

Then it was progressively enshittified and Hickmanfaggotted during the second decade, in two waves. First with the introduction of the Gazetteers in 1987, books clearly intended primarily for reading and only incidentally for playing, with very little in the way of gameable content*. Then it was renamed Mystarda deep in the 2e era, in the 1990s, under Bruce Heard.

(*) If this statement confuses or surprises you, you probably need to take a look at Wilderlands of High Fantasy, to see what a setting meant for playing looks like. Or even at Dolmenwood, for that matter: Even though it didn't keep all of its promises, it's still definitely a setting meant to be played in.

>>96719517
>"wipe your ass" guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWMOpqSBZXg

>>96731117
>>96731132
lmao at fishfag provoking himself in desperation after nobody bit on his bait for 24 hours. Either that, or you're a fucking imbecile for feeding him.

>>96731188
Well, I am willing to take a look. I heard of Wilderlands, but Dolmenwood is news to me. I´ll go and look for them. But just so I understand, Holmes and Moldvay have the Known World and Mentzer is the start of the Mystara added stuff?

>>96731321
>I heard of Wilderlands, but Dolmenwood is news to me. I´ll go and look for them.
If you do that, do check out Wilderness Hexplore, a "retroclone" that organises all the generators scattered around a dozen different Judges Guild products and making them into a usable whole. Truly one of the best RPG products ever written, and it's free:
https://archive.org/download/wilderness-hexplore-revised/Wilderness_Hexplore_revised_112913_us.pdf

1/2

>>96731321
>>96731321
2/2

>just so I understand, Holmes and Moldvay have the Known World and Mentzer is the start of the Mystara added stuff?
No. Here's the timeline:

>B/X is 1981.
It's the Known World.

>BECMI is 1983.
It's still the Known World.

>Between 1984 and the 1986 the Dual Tragedy happens: the Hickman Manifesto begins to spread and Gygax leaves TSR.
TSR starts to switch from a model of selling products to play RPGs to a model of selling products to read, because that's where the money is.

This ruins everything, and sets the stage for the mainstream D&D we know today, from AD&D 2e all the way to 5e, centred around narrativism, story arcs, railroading, single-party campaigns, character building, and so on.

>The Gazetteers start to be published in 1987
They are STILL called the Known World, and they are "just" fleshing out what was already in the Known World to begin with, although in a direction that is heavily Hickmanfaggotted and pretty much useless at the table. There's even a couple Gazetteers that are wholly dedicated to stuff like references to TV series like Magnum PI and Paradise Island The one with the magical midget that fulfils your wishes.

>In 1991, the Creature Crucibles start to get published.
The setting is still called the Known World, but now it takes a full furry turn: Tens of race-classes that practically nobody ever used.

>Around 1991 Bruce Heard starts to publish some stories about some kind of flying ship touring the planet
or something like that. Basically bad fiction. This is when the name is finally switched to Mystarda, but the enshittification of the setting had already started in 1987 and accelerated in 1989.

Picrel is the timeline of the first decade.

>>96731507
>In 1991, the Creature Crucibles start to get published.
The setting is still called the Known World, but now it takes a full furry turn: Tens of race-classes that practically nobody ever used.
Typo. I meant to write 1989.

Is Dolmenwood OK here? Seen a lot of videos pop up lately on it. And been skimming through it, and it seems interesting

>>96731507
How can you spew such idiotic bullshit so confidently?
Have you been diagnosed?

>>96731597
Dolmenwood is definitely on topic here, yeah.

>>96731507
Thanks for the hexplore.

And that´s... certainly an interesting take. I´d argue that setting books are quite good for campaign backdrops. Also what´s the problem with the Hickmans? I don´t really like some of the stuff like the gods whole attitude in that setting and the killing off Soth, just because he took a vacation near Ravenloft, but otherwise there doesn´t seem much to complain about them.

>>96731813
>what´s the problem with the Hickmans?
https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/04/how-dragonlance-ruined-everything.html

>>96731813
>>96731830
https://monstersandmanuals.blogspot.com/2012/03/hickman-revolution-and-frustrated.html

>>96719443
>the problem is that I *do* need those rules, and want them frontloaded.
AD&D

>>96731830
>comments are mostly just people telling the writer that he's insane
Kind of funny that even the people who read his blog had to tell him he's dumb.

>>96731945
Oh no, 2etard is sad again, so he has to make shit up.

>>96731813
>I don´t really like some of the stuff like the gods whole attitude in that setting and the killing off Soth, just because he took a vacation near Ravenloft
Storyshitter detected.

>>96732637
You're trying to perform something like five levels of gaslighting. Stick to one or two if you don't want to make it so obvious.

>>96732647
"Storyshitter" is too generous, storyshitters at least play. He only reads setting books and adventures as if they were novels, the prototype of post-Gygax TSR customer.

>troll hopes to pretend anyone doesn't know that only trolls say "storyshitter"

It's getting sad.

who the fuck keeps nuking the trove

>>96733495
Catamites, clearly.

Today was session 52 of my BFRPG campaign.
My players continued exploring this one section of dungeon until they found that it loops back around. They spent some time rearranging and assessing their maps. There is a tunnel at the back of this region that leads to a subterranean river, and they've decided to start mapping that portion out.
While there, they found some psychic mushroom people that use spores to communicate, as well as a treasure chest that seemed very suspicious. One of the party's thieves decided to investigate it. He made a check versus traps with a successful detection that "Something is suspicious about this chest. It seems dangerous..." Yet he opened it anyway. He told the other player characters and retainers to leave, thinking that it was something that would damage himself a little... Nope! Opening the chest did 6d6 damage to him, and vaporized everything he had on his person, including magic items. He was pissed! And tried to ask, "Why didn't you give me a chance to disable traps?!" To which everyone responded, "You just said you opened it!" So now, he's just playing his dwarven cleric.
The players also snuck deeper into the dungeon than they'd been before. They encountered a massive creature that was like a cross between a bear and a snapping turtle. They actually did really good fighting it, creating a shield-wall formation then pelting the creature with ranged and reach attacks until it was killed. Now they've found where a wizard has created an underground mushroom farm filled with fungal slave people. They are trying to figure out the mechanics of the water redirection system so that they can go deeper underground and into the underground river system. I've been waiting for this for a very long time.

>>96729167
A room full of mirrors.

>>96729167
Have a slide that goes down, but when you arrive at the bottom, you're actually a floor ABOVE where you started...

two members of my party were charmed and had to be abandoned in the dungeon in order to avoid a TPK...

>>96734508
damn, brutal. Bring some dispel magics if you go back.

>>96730031
Encounters, Hazards and Events has stuff for all the other sections but at the back. This is counter intuitive to me. Especially the rules for hex crawling being at the opposite end of the tables for it.

>>96733940
You sound like a really good DM. I'm very envious of your game, must be awesome to have your efforts pay off for the players after so much work. 50+ sessions is crazy, is this in person?

>>96733940
damn bro, session 52 so are you at about a year of games? I'm jelly

>>96734921
>>96734913
We've been playing for about 14 months or so. We play just about every Saturday, (Though sometimes we skip if I'm not feeling good, or if we just wanna play some board games.) There are about a dozen people that rotate in and out of the game, we usually have about 4 random players out of that group each session. We meet up at my friend's house, (He has a little building on the back of his property that's insulated, has heat, cooling, and a bathroom.)

This has been the most fulfilling campaign I've ever ran. It's so interesting to hear my players go back and explain all of the crazy things that have happened to them over the past year. And it's good to see that the many regions of the dungeon I've been working on are starting to come together and actually get explored. I remember when they were just concepts in my mind... Now they're shared in the mind of a dozen or so people. Just today, one of my players said that they would be driving around, and a riddle or a puzzle from my campaign would be stuck in their head, and it would sort of sit with them for days. Another player was embarrassed to admit that he looked up one of the riddles from a magical box they found on Google, and he was ashamed of himself when he discovered that the answer wasn't there... And that he was spoiling it for himself.

I've had some people dip out, I've had other people get in verbal arguments with one another over the game... It's been a really interesting year, and I can't wait to give you all an update for session 100 one day...

>>96730623
best D&D setting
https://initiativeone.blogspot.com/2013/05/od-setting-posts-in-pdf.html

>>96734606
Thanks, anon. So you're saying you'd appreciate it if the random encounters tables would be attached (or presented again) along with each settlement?
Withj settlements, I plan to present a setting-specific random encounter table, but with wandering monsters table, they cover larger areas, such as sub-regions, regions, and countries, etc.

Rumours are the same way, as well.

With regards to procedures, I'm torn if I should present it at the beginning, at the end or at the beginning of the crawl content section.

No-to-low-prep 0DND+grayhawk continued this friday. The pcs went into the necromancers dungeon, cleverly triggered a net trap with the use of a rock and managed to fight their way through two groups of bug men with minimal damage taken (2 of the 3 pc had but 1 hit point to start with :D) third fight proved too much then a fleeing foe managed to get away and alert back up. Players wanted to run but the doors behind them had closed as per rules and they couldn't get out so they were slaughtered.

We rolled new characters (a paladin, a dwarf fighter and a magic user) this time in a nother corner of the map. Coming across a pond they tried fishing but giant crabs drove them away. They however found a village near a wizards tower and helped the village with a pest toad problem. We ended the session there.

It's weird that odnd has this reputation of being slow and clumsy but I have found the rules thus far are pretty elegant and fast to play especially combat. Looking forward to adding weapon classes from chainmail in the next session to add some crunch. Rolled the dungeon like an hour beforehand. Haven't tried completely winging a dungeon at the table yet probably something you can do with a generator.

>>96735903
>It's weird that odnd has this reputation of being slow and clumsy
Yeah, I have no idea where people get that idea, but it's strangely common about all old D&D editions. I'd hazard a guess that it's the notion of progress applied retroactively -- it's old, therefore it must be crude and poorly designed because we know so much more now. (Except that, judging by modern design trends, we've forgotten a lot more than we've learned)

>>96733940
>>96735903
This is why I love this thread.

>Players wanted to run but the doors behind them had closed as per rules and they couldn't get out so they were slaughtered
Chef kiss.

>>96735903
>0DND+grayhawk
ngmi. Thief is foe. I kid. Glad your games going well friend.
>It's weird that odnd has this reputation of being slow and clumsy
I think that's a product of people getting filtered by it's layout. No one calls adnd slow and clunky even if they do think it's more complex than they'd like to play.
>>96734921
Semi related via long term games. Does/has anyone here run an open table at the FLGS? Was it good? Did you find any problems pitching to the local wildlife?

To those of you who are opposed to slop art in small non-commercial RPG projects: To what extent is your issue aesthetical (it looks like crap), and to what extent is it political or ethical?

>>96736701
90% aesthetics, and 10% AI bros are pathetic braindead zombies and I don't like to be reminded of it while I'm playing a game. Seeing slop art also makes me second guess whether the author put any actual thought or inspiration into the writing, or if they relied on AI for that too.

politics/ethics don't really enter into much for me, I don't like AI from that angle either but it's not something I think about when choosing a game

>>96735903
>a nother
My brain always sorts "another" this way, despite being totally literate and a native English-speaker. I think it's due to a verbal accent thing.

>>96736701
1/3 the way it looks, 1/3 ethical/political (kind of) , 1/3 visceral disgust that manifests deep in my stomach when I notice it. Sometimes I try to ignore that last bit but it never goes away.
With anyone being able to pick up a pencil and unending lists of public domain art already available I see no real reason I'd ever want to see it. Especially in a hobby and doubly so in this hobby.
>picrel

I don't know if anyone will remember this >>>96669475 story time post (https://boards.4chan.org/tg/thread/96609887#p96609887) from a week ago, but I learned today that the deck wasn't enchanted, our fucking illusionist cast some spell on us to make us do, it via direct message with the GM. The saves were against his spell, not the deck.

I might have killed him right then and there had I known that, or arrested him or something.
Fucking chaotic characters. Bane of my existence.

>>96736903
What a complete piece of shit. The worst part is that you wished him back without knowing about this. He already got his just desserts.

>>96736903
>I might have killed him right then and there had I known that, or arrested him or something.
Also, your friend is an idiot. "Chaotic" doesn't mean "I do random shit for the lulz", that's chaotic stupid, particularly in a dangerous setting with party members who can easily kill you.

You can always take revenge. In fact, you should, and teach that player a lesson. Except if your DM enabled the illusionist's player, he's probably a dick as well who'll take side instead of refereeing the conflict impartially.

>>96736903
But why? What benefit did he gain from this?

>>96736903
Every day I thank Allah for giving me the wisdom to forbid chaotic PCs in my campaign. Unless they're all unanimously vying for a chaotic party, of course.

>>96735721
>procedures
Might work to present them at the beginning with examples and then have just the procedures as reference collected afterwards.

I'm generally approaching a rulebook as something to use at the table in hard copy so I like having either all the tables and references in appendix or in a consistently organized way in each section.
>geography section has rules for travel at the beginning, rumours and encounters for each area at the beginning of that area, etc.
or
>all rules and tables are in the appendix (if they're short) and in the same order as the presented main sections
If the book is easy to flip through having an appendix works. Realistically either is fine as long as its consistent and easy to use.

>>96736701
Personally I don't care so long as it's aesthetic and not slop. Anything that screams of the regular AI art-styles is a no-go.
I'd rather have a Mullen piece obviously but so much art in stuff is the kind of style I absolutely loathe anyway so if AI gets me something closer to what I want that's what i'll prefer.

>>96736701
>looks like crap
Mostly this.
>small non commercial
>still has slop art filler
is the maker missing the point and that's their call to fuck up like that but does mean I'll be pirating and cutting out the parts I want instead of supporting a small indi niche project.
If the maker can't be assed to make some doodles or game with someone who can its probably not very good as a general measure.
If its free already who cares I'm going to skim it and very likely delete it in a short amount of time after noting the 1-2 ideas.

>>96738703
>>non commercial
>I'll be pirating
Not the sharpest tool in the shed, huh?

>>96739114
Non commercial =/= free.
Try again.

>>96739303
Oh, no you're going to pirate something I don't make for money, what will I do??

>>96739740
Move on with your life I hope. You're still stuck on seething right now.

>>96740479
>You're seething
said the one who threatens non-commercial projects with "piracy" out of anger

lmao at the projection

>>96715760
That does sound comfy. I've never tacked foundry but it's cool that someone has taken a good game and given it some love.

>>96737651
I do feel betrayed, having wished him back.

>>96737674
The DM is really great, I'm sure that if I had used my detect magic on my sword he would have told me where the spell was coming from; I think because we just assumed it was the deck, he enabled it.

>>96737719
I think "in character" he thinks we're too uptight and law-abiding.

I wonder if there's a way that I can occlude him from my 10ft of passive protection from evil.

>>96731507
>In 1991 The setting is still called the Known World,
>Around 1991 Bruce Heard starts
That's ambiguous at best. There was no "The Known World" product line, there was just D&D with the Known World as the default setting. The setting itself was called in, not around but in, 1991 Mystara in Dragon and RC. For some of 1991 Mystara was a word unknown outside of TSR's offices but in 1991 it got its new name.

>Paradise Island
Do you mean Fantasy Island? It had the guy who played Khan in Star Trek.

>This ruins everything, and sets the stage for the mainstream D&D we know today
>narrativism, story arcs, railroading, single-party campaigns, character building
Gygax, Moldvay, and Cook were all writing story modules before Hickman was employed by TSR. They started it, not Hickman, not Dragonlance.

>TSR starts to switch from a model of selling products to play RPGs to a model of selling products to read, because that's where the money is.
Correct. It's very possible that TSR would have folded by 1985 if not for those fiction book sales. The likely flow on effect is no more D&D including no 3e and therefore no OSR. If anyone today likes OSR, they had best say "thank you Dragonlance, OSR wouldn't be here without you".

>character building
Not only is that the RP part of RPG, but it has been present all the way through. That's why we have spells named after the characters like Drawmij (though that one is slightly dubious), Melf, Mordenkainen and Bigby (who was a NPC).

And it's why we know of Robilar who was around before D&D was even called D&D.

>>96741617
>including no 3e and therefore no OSR
OSR does not rely on 3e or the OGL

>>96741762
OSR started primarily due to the dislike of 3e and its large drift away from TSR era D&D.

>>96736701
AI looks like bad; even "good" AI still has a plastic textureless feel to it. Definitionally SOVL-less.
>>96738703
>If the maker can't be assed to make some doodles or game with someone who can its probably not very good as a general measure.
Also this. If you lack the wherewithal to find or make your own art, or you lack the taste to understand what AI art is missing, your product is not worth my time.

>>96741792
Partly true, but most of the early OSR was made up of grogs who'd been playing that way (and largely AD&D 1e) since the 70s.

My party got stomped bad by some orcs today, most of them died. They definitely played quite poorly leading up to it and while I do feel a little bad, I'm mostly just confused.
>evil buried temple to chaos populated by chaotic beings
>orcs have a toll booth and let visitors enter the lower levels to visit the sorceress, no questions asked, should they pay.
>party goes full rambo on them on first contact, slaughters dozens of the toll-orcs.
>one orc manages to escape, tells chieftain.
>party is hurt, leaves for 2 days.
>in the meantime orcs set up an ambush plan if they return
>basic plan is to set up half the orcs to watch, they run back and yell when adventurers arrive. Lure them in the back room and then have the champions + a dire wolf flank them from the other passage and prevent them from escaping.
>party kills orcs scouts, last orc manages to yell the alarm down the passage before being cut down.
>Party spends a turn successfully listening and casting detect evil, describe in no subtle terms how the orcs seem to be coordinating some kind of ambush, plus they're audible from both corridors implying a loop, plus they have a a big quadrupedal clawed creature (direwolf).
Continued

>>96742362
>party waltzes into the final room, realize their fuck up.
>they cant decide whether to stay fighting or to run, hesitate on everything
>guy 1 pours oil and retreats
>guy 2 was gonna light it and run but changes his mind and justs stays and fights
>1st guy stops to wait for his friend, direwolf goes after him. Orcs block the door and seperate the party in half.
>guy 2 does proceedingly weirder stuff like smash his lantern on wood furniture and full sprint down the other passage deeper into orc territory.
>guy 1 is killed by the orcs and direwolf in a valiant last stand, orcs turn their attention to guy 2
>meanwhile thief is hidden
>guy 2 gets flanked and trapped in a corner in the deepest possible room. 6+ orcs wailing on him.
>thief tries to save him, backstabs some orcs, finishes the direwolf, then dies
>guy 2 is able to break for it, but he broke his lantern earlier so he's running in pitch black
>to his credit he memorized the map, I ruled thay every 100 or so feet he would have to save vs paralysis or trip for a round.
>after stumbling his way through the dungeon the orcs lose interest.
>he walks away the sole survivor.
I don't even know what conclusion to draw from all this...

>>96742362
>>96742386
Has the party had dealings with Orcs like this before? Maybe they were mistrustful, and assumed they wouldn't honour the payment deal, which in my mind makes sense unless it's a well-established thing.

>one guy pours oil
>the guy who was going to light it doesn't

I've had my fill of this shit in games, I've poured oil so many fucking times and everyone just stands around dumbfounded or forgets they were meant to light it on their action.

>>96742439
Sounds like your group needs to elect a caller to herd those cats

>>96742439
>I've poured oil so many fucking times and everyone just stands around dumbfounded or forgets they were meant to light it on their action.
What edition are you playing? That pretty much can't happen in AD&D because there's action declarations.

>>96742907
AD&D 1e. Some players really like asking to change intentions.

>>96741617
>Gygax, Moldvay, and Cook were all writing story modules before Hickman was employed by TSR. They started it, not Hickman, not Dragonlance.
Bullshit.

>It's very possible that TSR would have folded by 1985 if not for those fiction book sales. The likely flow on effect is no more D&D including no 3e
Would have been fantastic.

>and therefore no OSR.
And therefore no NEED for OSR, since only the TRVE D&D would have existed.

>If anyone today likes OSR, they had best say "thank you Dragonlance, OSR wouldn't be here without you".
That's 2etard-tier sophistry.

>>character building
>Not only is that the RP part of RPG, but it has been present all the way through. That's why we have spells named after the characters like Drawmij (though that one is slightly dubious), Melf, Mordenkainen and Bigby (who was a NPC).
Bullshit. Character building is the mini-game that comes along when enough character options are presented to the player at creation, particularly through stuff like feats. There was no such thing in the first decade because you pretty much only chose a race and a class.

>>96743142
Not following. So one player declares he's going to light the oil, and then changes action? Or is it during declarations that you say you're going to throw oil and nobody picks on it?

Either way, that seems like a slightly different scenario than the one you gave initially. Sorry if I'm not picking up on something obvious.

>>96741561
>I think "in character" he thinks we're too uptight and law-abiding.
Twist his head around to face the other direction the first chance you get. Jesus

Picking locks in 3lbb. Did it ever come up pre Greyhawk? Do you gentlemen have any recommendations?

>>96736903
Masterful role playing from both you and the illusionist pally anon. My the saints Gygax and Arneson look favourably upon this and all of your games.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMyvIDLAub8

>>96743474
>Player 1 (me) declares he will throw oil
>Player 2 declares he will light

>Monsters win initiative, attack or chase us
>Player 1 (me) still throws oil
>Player 2 becomes a coward and says, "Now that the monsters are chasing us, I want to do X instead!!"

>>96743498
Bust doors open or find a key.

>>96743498
Thanks, anon.

>>96742043
That's a fairly Dragonsfoot-centric point of view that's really only a small part of the bigger OSR picture. While Dragonsfoot was one of the larger "OSR" forums and started out being centered around 1e, other forums boasted fairly large "OSR" populations and discussions, particularly En World and ironically the Wizards forums. En World was even the first place that Gygax began posting on DF.
And, even on DF, while 1e was the more dominant game on the forum, the other TSR-era editions were also quite prominent.

>>96742439
Party had some reason to be mistrustful of the orcs due to previous conflicts with them near the dungeon in the wilderness, so I don't fault them too much there. Plus there was good treasure in store for them had they won...
Strategically, lighting the oil would have helped immensly. If fighter 2 had stuck with fighter 1 and his thief retainer they could have reasonably fought off the orcs at the door and retreated with minimal casualties.

>>96742362
>orcs have a toll booth and let visitors enter the lower levels to visit the sorceress, no questions asked, should they pay.
That sounds like lame anime inspired gameplay to me.
Your players came expecting a 1974 wargame.

>>96736903
LMAO

>>96744930
Meh, I thought it was funny, and to be clear I was fully stoked to see them dispatch the orcs so effectively. I don't think that's where they dropped the ball, that came after when they gave the orcs a day to prepare, then bumbled into the ambush with no real plan.

>>96744930
That's actually exactly how the game was played back in 1974. If anything OSR play is significantly less jokey and gimmicky than it was in the game's first decade which is a good thing

>>96731150
I don't know man it's like a full dungeon level and some keyed hexes.

And I didn't give up, life just got in the way and I have another idea for a setting that I find more interesting.

>>96746264
This. I guess it's time to remind people about the Giant's Bag:
https://www.greyhawkgrognard.com/2011/07/01/giants-bag/
>>96744325
Fuck off

>>96744930
>That sounds like lame anime inspired gameplay to me.
FOE GYG

I'm building a hexcrawl set in a mostly wooded area using 3 mile hexes.

How do I make sure the players have a chance of navigating the map when it is mostly woods and how do I make my map interesting apart from the odd mountains, swamps and hills scattered around?

>>96747108
>How do I make sure the players have a chance of navigating the map when it is mostly woods
By using the standard travel rules and chances of getting lost. What system are you using? If you want to cut down on them getting lost you can let them hire NPC guides or give them some FOE navigation skill. Or just let them have map of the general area
>how do I make my map interesting apart from the odd mountains, swamps and hills scattered around?
Assuming by "interesting" you mean varied--odd mountains, swamps, hills (and glades, lakes, waterfalls, dead forests, etc.) should honestly be enough. But if not you can always add in more variation by having "dense" and "light" woodland.

>this adventure is for party's of level 1 - 3
Every single fucking time. It's kinda sad that ALL the best 'new' stuff is super low level

>>96740775
>out of anger
>ur projecting
mhm sure thing sweaty

>>96744930
Anime website.

The one thing I don't like about D&D is the way Armor Class works. It's simply too abstract for me. Armor Class should grant a character a saving throw to reduce damage or avoid death not unlike in Warhammer. Using Armor Class as a "difficulty to hit" number has always irked me, and most games do a poor job of "fixing" it (damage reduction...how innovative!).

>>96704041 (OP)
Which version of D&D do I need to get in order to engage in epic Gygaxian fantasy?

>>96747888
>Which version of D&D do I need to get in order to engage in epic Gygaxian fantasy?
B/X, OD&D, or AD&D. B/X is the easiest to get into. We have two guidebooks to help you get started, one for DMs, and one for players. See here: >>96705108

>>96747987
Thanks friend

>>96747533
Hey now, sometimes it's for levels 1-5, or even "low to mid levels".

Yeah, it's one of the more annoying aspects of the OSR that every designer takes the easy route of beginner adventures. The most recent NAP series was a response to this, though, if you haven't already checked that out.

>>96747888
Read one of his novels; learn to reject actual "gygaxian" fantasy.

>>96743464
If TSR had closed shop in the mid 80s D&D there would be people who continued to play, like their are people who play Star Frontiers and Conan and MSH despite only the last of those being supported for very long and being even somewhat widely known today, and even then a lot of that knowledge is because TSR surviced long enough for them to hear of TSR and look up other TSR stuff. You'd find them today congregating on their home made websites that hadn't been updated in the past 20 years and still had flashing under construction gifs. Something else would have expanded to the vacuum. RuneQuest might not have all its trouble, or there'd be a WEG fantasy d6 game derived from Star Wars which was just fantasy in space anyway, or everyone could be playing White Wolf games. D&D would be forgotten by everyone but them and the historians.

>>If anyone today likes OSR, they had best say "thank you Dragonlance, OSR wouldn't be here without you".
>That's 2etard-tier sophistry.
It's very simple reasoning. No Dragonlance means no multimedia product line means lower cashflow means no TSR means D&D superseded and forgotten means no 3e means no OSR. You can chime in with all your snide comments but Lorraine Williams and Dragonlance before her kept TSR alive long enough for WOTC to come into existence to purchase it. With TSR's antagonistic relationship with other game publishers, who were usually very, very small companies anyway with the owner and designers sometimes sitting in a room putting book 1 & book 2 & some dice into the box set to save money, and book publishers ad distributors in general disillusioned by TSR's lack of sales which is why they were returning unsold product for a refund from TSR, no one else would have been very interested in throwing money down the sink hole
that was TSR's financial management.

>>Gygax, Moldvay, and Cook were all writing story modules before Hickman was employed
Go look at their modules from before 1984 angry little man.

Does OSR have to be a pig orc or can it look like this?

Please r8 my vanilla enemy
-
Velociraptor: Large (6' tall) pack hunters. Aggressive, bordering on psychotic.Uses dew claw to inflict nasty wounds. Capable of basic stratagems and can open doors.
>AC 6 [13]
>HD 2 (9 HP)
>Attacks: 1 x bite (1d6) or pounce
>THAC0 18 [+1]
>Movement 120' (40')
>Saving Throws = D12 W13 P14 B15 S16 (2)
>Morale 9
>Alignment N
>XP 20
>Number Appearing 2d6 (4d6)
Leap: Can jump up to 10' high or 20' horizontally.
Pounce: Requires a clear run of at least 20' before leaping. -1 to hit, on hit: 1d8+1 damage.

Hello /osrg/,

I am new to ttrpgs, I have played 5e every week for the past 1.5 years. We finished Curse of Strahd and while I had a good time, the victory felt hollow. Strahd barely tickled us with any damage, there was no real threat.
I played a single session of BX at my first convention recently and I loved it. I want to learn to run this style of game, and bring my stupid friends along for the ride.

Im reading the bootleg Lulu printed copy of BX I picked up at the convention. I want to learn enough to run Dolmenwood as the setting appeals to me

>>96748230
Orcs absolutely have to porcine, you see it right there in the name don't you, pORCine. Porkers, get it, pORKers, is how they were in the one trve illustration appearing in the orc entry of 1977's MM and that other one trve drawing of 1976's Swords & Spells. They didn't at all look like grotesque humans in 1974's original rule books. They didn't at all look like green skinned humans in 1980 illustrations from the official AD&D model maker. They didn't at all have snouts that look more canine than porcine in the D&D cartoon. Gruuumsh, god of orcs, wasn't at all depicted as a human looking cyclops in 1980's Deities and Demigods and GW hadn't already drawn orcs as human-like cyclopes when they reprinted Holmes in 1977.

Now a question or two for you, does your game hinge upon orcs not being pig-snouted? How much difference could it actually make that you felt your question needed to be asked?

>>96748223
>No Dragonlance means no multimedia product line means lower cashflow means no TSR means D&D superseded and forgotten means no 3e
Amazing.

>means no OSR.
Who the fuck cares. We only call it OSR because the "D&D" trademark was raped and used to publish shit knockoffs like 2e, 3e and 5e.

If TSR had gone bankrupt in 1984 and no new editions had been published, we'd be calling it just "D&D". And we wouldn't have storygaming faggots such as (You) infesting the thread.

>>96748607
>If TSR had gone bankrupt in 1984 and no new editions had been published, we'd be calling it just "D&D". And we wouldn't have storygaming faggots such as (You) infesting the thread.
That's be a nice timeline to game in

>>96748230
>puckee spamming his commission again
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/1f7fyl0/artcomm_orc_by_pedro_silva/
https://desuarchive.org/_/search/image/tsy_l8sbr_q-AwGFvIghuw/
>31 times since September 2024

>>96747533
>>96748077
To play devil's advocate, there are a few good reasons why most adventures ought to be low-level
>Vast majority of PCs in OSR games are low level; characters that reach higher levels are few and far between. The early-level stage usually takes the longest because of PC deaths.
>High-level modules are harder to place in an ongoing campaign
>It's easier to adapt low-level modules to higher levels than vice versa
Obviously low-level adventures sell more and are easier to write and it would be nice to live in a world where we see more material for levels 5+ but it's not all bad.

I just read how Gygax got kicked out of TSR in the book Game Wizards and it's absolutely infuriating. I didn't even particularly like Gygax (or Arneson for that matter) but he didn't deserve to get done like that. Fucking Blume roaches.

>>96746781
You're wrong, that's not an orcish lemonade stand.
That's orcish territory expecting the players to do exactly what they did.

>>96749416
Did you miss the silly bronze plaque?

>>96748424
Just run b/x as is. Then move on to ad&d and then to the 3lbbs.

>>96749416
Maybe I should have included the bit with the actual turnstiles and "I Survived Blackmoor Dungeon" buttons.
FOE
GYG
You joyless husk.

>>96749504
>Hi! I want X
>NO! you don't actually want X, you want Y!
never change, retard

>>96747987
>Which version of D&D do I need to get in order to engage in epic Gygaxian fantasy?
>the reply starts with products that were written by another dude
LOL
no seriously, why are you such a retard?

>>96746781
>>96749510
What is this from? The First Fantasy Campaign?

>>96750123
3lbb assumed you were a seasoned wargamer. Advanced assumed you had played Basic first. Given that it seems a reasonable to do it in that order.
>>96749510
>>96746781
Great stuff. Might implement the Orcian way into one of my dungeons.

>>96750123
B/X is by Gygax and Arneson and only edited by Moldvay, Cook, and Marsh. So it very much IS Gygaxian (and Arnesonian) fantasy.

>>96748424
That's awesome, welcome. Moving on from 5e feels good and with an interest in OSR it is overwhelmingly unlikely that you'll ever want to return to 5e.
>I want to learn enough to run Dolmenwood as the setting appeals to me
Just read the Dolmenwood books then my guy. The books are great and will teach you everything you need to know. There's no reason to make everything too complicated for yourself. I'd recommend sticking to Goatmen and humans in the beginning and then expand from there. Others are reporting that the individual hexes in Dolmenwood are too crowded/busy, but that's probably not a big issue for you at this stage.

Really, just start running some games. Learn by doing. I often get the impression that OSR enjoyers spend more time bitching about what is *actually* OSR and what size Gygax's dick was instead of just playing the goddamn games.

Run Winter's Daughter or Incandescent Grottoes. I prefer Grottoes, but both are good.

>>96750123
That guy is this general's/board's ass wart. He'll spam his "guide" and link to it as often as possible, because it's not a guide, just raw propaganda.

>>96748230
For me, it's monorculus

>>96749248
Yeah. It's honestly obscene.

>>96749248
>>96750664
>gygax runs off to hollywood so he can do coke, cheat on his wife with his live-in secretary, and blow through a good chunk of the company's money on an extravagant mansion while trying to pitch a truly terrible script
>company decides it's better off without him
What a shock.

>>96750650
>monorculus
That means "little man with one testicle":
>mónos = one
>órchis = testicle
>-ulus = little man

You probably meant monoculus, "man with one eye", from
>mónos = one
>oculus = eye

>>96750712
look I get it, he was a good game designer but not a good businessman. It was just so frustrating seeing all the opportunities he squandered to buy up the shares before they sold to Lorraine Williams. It's fun to think about what a 2e would've looked like with him steering the ship, it really could've happened if things were a little different.
It also turned me around a lot on Arneson, the guy deserves credit but he also seemed like a lazy sperg and a fucking nightmare to work with

>>96750723
>completely whiffing the pun even though orcs were the topic
Autism/10

If you can replace a playable humanoid race with a human, then do so.

>>96750291
>Advanced assumed you had played Basic first.
Not necessarily. Advanced is a standalone game.
Remember that "Basic" stands in contrast to "Expert," not "Advanced."

>>96751407
Been there, done that.
Now I use 1000s of NPC races. Every session is like an episode of star trek. It's great.

>>96751150
He was largely a mediocre designer too. Main reason that D&D was a success was because Gygax rushed it out because fanzines were already publishing proto-RPGs and RPG-like appendixes and he wanted to get first-mover advantage before one of the big publishers threw their hat into the ring. Its first printing was a heaping mess and needed extensive re-writes and fixes, in no small part because of copyright transgressions, but it still managed to be the "first published role playing game" and it's been riding that for decades.

Gygax's games outside of D&D have been uniformly misses that are now all but forgotten, and D&D itself suffers from a very hit-and-miss structure if anyone attempts to play it straight. He deserves a lot of credit for capitalizing on how important first-mover advantage was, and he also deserves a lot of credit for being a pioneer in a largely unexplored realm of gaming and should be cut some slack for not having the hindsight and decades of development that we now have, but even just looking at his Lejendary Journeys game shows that even with the benefit of a couple more decades and complete freedom and control he really just wasn't that great of a game designer.

If you want to see what 2e would have been with him steering the ship, look at the game he made to be 2e's rival in that era, the legendarily bad Dangerous Journeys. Gygax had the chance to say "D&D isn't what's important, I am what's important", and basically proved that no, the D&D brand name is multiple thousands of times more valuable than his abilities as a designer.

>>96751661
>Gygax's games outside of D&D have been uniformly misses that are now all but forgotten
Didn't he made some post-apocalyptic game about cyborgs which had too much dice rolls?

>>96751769
If you're talking about Cyborg Commando, that has his name (quite prominently) on it, but he later claimed that it was mostly Mentzer, largely because everyone hated that game. But, considering that he followed CC with DJ, which was nearly as bad, I think he deserves a hefty amount of the blame.

>>96750108
You've never played, have you?

>>96751981
Mentzer though. We should probably talk more about how much of a cringey loser Mentzer is.

He should be used as the poster child of what happens if you wrap your lips around Gygax's dick.

It's not like Arneson's post-D&D stuff was any better. Did those two guys just get lucky to find each other and happen to catch lightning in a bottle?

>>96752044
First-mover advantage and community input. D&D owes a lot to the people of GenCon, which Gygax ran, who acted as unpaid playtesters and helped shaped the game tremendously, particularly in a time when getting large amounts of playtesters was a challenge.

When making a game designed to appeal to the largest group possible, hoardes of playtesters are invaluable.

>>96752044
Arneson was never a great "write things down for other people" designer and GM. He was more of an improviser. More artpunk than brosr. Some of his best ideas in play could never be translated to a marketable form.

>>96750723
And muskrat is from μῦς (mûs) (mouse) and κράτος (krắtos) (strength). It's a big strong mouse.
Etymology is fun!

>>96752044
Arneson's Adventures in Fantasy is a shitshow in regards to its rules/flavor/art/formatting/basic math, but Arneson does drop a few words of wisdom and reveals an understanding of RPGs that ironically could have really helped AD&D (as well as Gygax's other later games) if they abided by them. Of course, the game itself tramples all over that philosophy, so it goes to show the unfortunate principle of "Even if you know the right way to do something, that doesn't mean you're going to do it the right way."

Gygax always seemed to miss the "core" of what RPGs fun to play, while Arneson had an instinctive understanding of that. The sad irony is that in Gygax's last years, despite decades of design under his belt, he admitted that his favorite game to run and play was 3-pamphlet OD&D, the game before he himself bloated the system to a point where BASIC was needed.

>>96752495
kek

>>96752639
>the game before he himself bloated the system to a point where BASIC was needed
Weird alternative history: Basic was published before AD&D.

>>96752663
Yes, but Basic was in response to OD&D becoming bloated (and as an attempt to stop paying Arneson royalties).

>>96752690
what???? wrong.

>>96752690
> was in response to OD&D becoming bloated
OD&D was "bloated" by Arneson's supplement about as much as it was by Gygax's one. And Basic accepted some elements of Greyhawk, e.g. the Thief, but very little to none of Blackmoor. So your reconstruction doesn't really add up.

>and as an attempt to stop paying Arneson royalties
Bullshit, all books in the Basic line (Holmes, Moldvay/Cook/Marsh, Mentzer) list Gygax and Arneson as authors.

>>96752948
Arneson helping to bloat up OD&D is hardly something compared to Gygax running the D&D ship and focusing the game around what he thought he would sell better.

>Bullshit
You mean you genuinely didn't know?
That Arneson had to take Gygax to court in order to have his name kept on those games and still be paid royalties?

>>96752989
The lawsuit was over Gygax trying not to pay royalties to Arneson for AD&D.

>>96753020
Here's the timeline.

1974- OD&D published, Arneson joins TSR
1976- Arneson leaves TSR
1977-Basic Set is published, and Arneson discovers he's only getting 5% on the Basic D&D Rulebook which was sold separately, and not the rest of the Basic Set.
1979-Arneson sues TSR over this, with TSR arguing that Arneson should only get royalties from the rules he contributed to, and not for things like the In Search of the Unknown introductory module that came with the Basic set. Arneson argues that all D&D is built on his rules, he deserves a cut.
Arneson wins, and he gets royalties on all D&D works, including AD&D.

>>96753227
>Arneson wins
Wasn't it a settlement?

>>96753438
You're right. Sealed settlement, with Arneson getting royalties on AD&D and credit on all D&D products.

https://catalog.archives.gov/id/200185170

>>96750723
>>96750650
Sauron has only got. one. ball
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Has_Only_Got_One_Ball

>>96748607
>Timeline in which TSR fails before D&D becomes widely popular
>but D&D still popular 40 years later
Great logic.

>infesting the thread
Aww, sorry kid, does the truth bomb that there would be no "the thread" because barely anyone in 2025 would be playing a 50 year old rpg unsupported for 40 years hurt your feelings?

>>96753227
You've omitted some key details. A slightly fuller description follows.

1974 Jan, Arneson and Gygax both assign their rights to TSR in return for a 10% royalty each on sale price.

1975 Apr, new agreement, those parties agree to 5% royalty each on cover price, not sale price. This means selling product at discount does not decrease money owed per item and due to discount sales their overall money might have been a bit higher.

1977 Apr, Arneson writes a letter to TSR asking about a rewriting of rules (which he fully knows is happening) which omit his name from the rule book but list Holmes and Gygax as authors.

1977 Nov, that book is published with Gygax and Arneson as authors, Holmes as editor. TSR gives Arneson 2.5% of the box set cover price. TSR argues that the box has other contents to such as dice and geomorph tiles; these were by people other than Arneson and were sold as separate items in the past so he has no right to royalties on them; those other contents cost more than half of the total; overall, 2.5% of the box set is equivalent to 5% of half the total cover price even the rule book is itself less than half the value of the set; TSR feels it is being generous.

1979 Feb, following publication AD&D Arneson files suit claiming royalties are owed to him on the AD&D PHB and MM. He also requests his name on the books and for the court to order publication to cease until the situation in resolved. Injunctive relief was evidently not granted as books continued to be published, for example a mid-1979 MM reprint and PHB was printed at least twice in 1979 after February.

1981 Mar, out of court settlement, Arneson awarded 2.5% on PHB and MM but without credit, his name removed from other books, he sells his TSR shares to TSR.

Later, Arneson sues for and is granted royalties on MMII on the grounds it was part of a single book with MM.

>>96753514
>Sealed settlement
There's a lot of info out there for a sealed settlement.

>>96714407
Good post.
Apropos of nothing, I've finally done it. After replacing the Cyclopedia mystic with the psionic version from PX1 Basic Psionics Handbook for about two years, I've grown so entirely sick of even those relatively simplified and rebalanced psionics mechanics and finally dropped them completely from my campaign. No more psionics.
I've converted the mystic/monk into a full clerical type spellcaster (borrowing generously from the GAZ8 Hin master and GAZ12 Ethengar shaman spell lists), and it is good and right. Feels kind of like I'm playing 2nd Ed. with the Complete Priest's Handbook or Player's Option Spells & Magic again, like when I was a kid. Feels good, man.

>>96755357
>Timeline in which TSR fails before D&D becomes widely popular
TSR was already popular enough in 1983. No need for it to grow any further.

>but D&D still popular 40 years later
The thing that's popular nowadays, 2e/3e/5e, is D&D only in name. So its popularity does not reflect on real, first decade D&D in any way.

>barely anyone in 2025 would be playing a 50 year old rpg unsupported for 40 years
First decade D&D has been unsupported for 40 years and is doing perfectly fine, thank you very much.

>>96728812
>CEP
Not undead redux

>>96752495
It means musky rat.

>>96755675
What are you trying to say with those "key" details?

>>96756192
Just a heads up, it looks like Project Q has undead redux stuff. So you can just get that.

>reading the pre-publication draft of D&D
>Wisdom was called "Cunning"
>but it was still the Cleric's prime requisite
Paints a somewhat more cynical picture of priests that they rely on "cunning" instead of "wisdom". Surprising since Gygax and Arneson were both deeply religious, maybe that's why they changed it for the final draft?

>>96757074
>Gygax and Arneson were both deeply religious
I didn't know that.

>>96757074
Cunning is derived from Middle English where it meant "to know how to..." which suits use of the Wisdom stat perfectly fine.

>>96757132
Gygax was a jehova's witness and then got kicked out lmao

Were gygax and arneson still firends after the lawsuit? :c

>>96757257
Lol no.

>>96750712
>things made up by a nepo silver spoon hollywood cunt Michael Witwer who admits he was angling for a movie script with his book, that didn't know the man nor did he have any sources for his claims
Cool story bro

>>96751661
>because fanzines were already publishing proto-RPGs and RPG-like appendixes
Should be easy for you to name some then, if you weren't making things up as usual.
>been uniformly misses
Plenty of those at TSR who are still among the best at their genre, like his version of Boot Hill, and the ones outside the company outside of the last effort were killed by lawfare, not quality issues.

>>96752639
>3 pamphlet OD&D
Haven't you made and had this claim corrected like six times already?
He said he ran "OAD&D" not OD&D and certainly not just the 3 LBBs, because he didn't differentiate between OD&D and AD&D as he just considered it a continuation of it's ideas aside from the few bits he actively rejected as bad ideas like psionics and wvac.

>>96757213
Left and there's talk that it was mostly because he refused to stop making D&D after bad press rather than smoking and drinking.

What's up with this HD notation from MMII?

>>96759650
It fights and saves as a 7 HD creature, but it's fragile, so it has 8+1d8 actual HP. The -4 or -2 to hit from the description helps them stay alive.

>>96757074
IIRC, Priests and Clerics were later additions and the original classes were Fighting Man, Thief and Magic User. Cunning makes more sense for that kind of "vibe.", so it's possible they made that, then Priests, realized a Cunning Priest had some unfortunate implications and changed the name to Wisdom to avoid said implications.

>>96759650
It says right in the first para: the higher value is the larger tropical version.

>>96760056
Oh shit, no kidding. And I was so confident
>>96759730

>>96752009
>Mentzer though. We should probably talk more about how much of a cringey loser Mentzer is.
lmao this hate for BECMI is so sad
Because that's the reason for this, correct?

>>96760107
Nah, he's just pure cringe personified.
Hope he wasn't your idol or anything.

>>96759730
>>96760067
You were wrong, but your interpretation makes for a very good variant monster actually.

>>96760208
To me the cringe is people that post online private messages, for one.
Also a good numbers of posts I read here deserve scorn from people that actually contributed to the hobby, therefore I am going to give the man the benefit of the doubt.

To you? I can read the thread and be constantly disgusted by the scorn and fanaticism over here.

>>96760704
>To me the cringe is people that post online private messages, for one.
Call your attorney.

>>96760738
You are doing this because you are personally butthurt.
You are weak.

>>96760748
>You are doing this because you are personally butthurt.
Doing what?

I'm making fun of Mentzer because that's genuinely one of the funniest messages ever written, especially when you understand the context that it's written by Mentzer, a guy who's only claim to fame was riding Gygax's nuts so hard that Gygax let him add some lukewarm rules on top of B/X. That, and making Cyborg Commando, one of the most critically panned games ever.

He's writing like he genuinely imagines that he's some terrifying authority figure that can demand respect and obedience, and all with the explicit threat that if you don't bow to him, he will...

...mock you in effigy in a game? A game that failed without even being made?

Mentzer is a perfect example of someone with far more arrogance then sense, but an even better example of the worst kind of person in either the OSR sphere or gaming in general. There's really no way to paint him in a positive light here.

>You are weak.
Lol. I'm an anonymous poster on 4chan. Am I supposed to be scary?

Let me get my lawyer and my team of game experts and then you'll be scared.

>>96760704
>I can read the thread and be constantly disgusted by the scorn and fanaticism over here.
Oh, no, 2etard = fishfag is sad again!

>>96761180
You are the worst shitposter on this board, let alone this thread.

>>96761180
2e is ontopic, please stop derailing & trolling, remain ontopic.

>>96761910
2e is and has always been off-topic, 2efag. As well you know. Fuck off.

>>96762279
He know you are wrong, stupid, and have nothing to add to this or any other thread.

>>96762279
NTA, but please consider leaving this board, you persistent little cunt.

FAQ for /todd/lers:

>What's the first decade of D&D?
1974-1983.

>Why not 1974-1984?
Because that's a decade plus a year.

>How long's a decade?
A decade lasts ten years. For example, 2000-2009.

>What D&D editions were published during the first decade?
OD&D, Holmes, AD&D "first edition", B/X, and the first couple books of BECMI. See picrel.

>So was 2e published during the first decade?
No.

>So is 2e on topic?
No.

>NEW THREAD
>>96762682
>>96762682
>>96762682

>>96762667
>t. retard who acting like a toddler

>>96756004
>First decade D&D has been unsupported for 40 years and is doing perfectly fine, thank you very much.
Only because D&D was supported and popularised for that intervening period and people continued to play some version of it and remain aware of it. People would scarcely know or care it existed if new versions hadn't been continually released and adopted by players. The majority of its then existent player base would have migrated to other systems that were supported. Only a handful of grogs would hold out. At best it would be in a similar situation to MSH today.

That has had some resurgence in popularity, and that was helped along by FASERIPopedia but that only came about because of the OGL which only came about because TSR existed to be bought and was desirable enough to be bought by WOTC, and TSR only existed because of D&D and 2e and Dragonlance. If not essential then the OGL was nearly essential for the OSR as most people were reluctant to clone games lest they sued out of existence. As well MSH support finished some 5 to 10 years later than the hypothetical 1984 end of TSR so it was 5 to 10 years closer to widespread Usenet and Internet access which was essential to its revived degree of popularity both through discussion and through access to its rules and supplements.

>>96763357
>popularised for that intervening period
D&D's popularity peaked in the early 80s, and never remotely approached that level since.

>>96763415
That's not true at all. Each edition of D&D has outsold the previous edition, and the number of players has been generally on an uphill trend, with only a few periods (most notably the mid-to-late-90s) having downward trends.

We don't have any real official sales numbers for the recent editions, and the numbers for older editions are also quite sketchy, but we do have numbers like GenCon attendance numbers (which went from less than 10k in the 1980s to over 70k in the 2020s) alongside estimated player numbers from various sources, with most agreeing that the game has (except for during the 90s) been steadily growing in popularity.

There was a D&D "fad" moment in the 80s among children, but that was relatively short-lived and fairly hollow, kinda like the Rambo fad that also existed among children that never saw the Rated-R movie, and was mostly fueled by soulless advertisers taking advantage of relaxed regulations in regards to advertisements aimed at children.

>>96763621
>That's not true at all. Each edition of D&D has outsold the previous edition, and the number of players has been generally on an uphill trend, with only a few periods (most notably the mid-to-late-90s) having downward trends.

Feel free to provide hard sales numbers on this, because the only ones in existence that I'm aware of have 2nd ed underselling compared to 1st, vague ones for 3rd, and there not being any in existence for 4th or 5th but only broad dev statements that things are great.

>>96763357
Here's where you're getting confused: 2e, 3e, and 5e *are* the other systems that people migrated to. They're not real Gygax/Arneson D&D, they're profoundly different games that are branded D&D. Switching from first decade D&D to 2e, 3e, or 5e is exactly like switching to GURPS or Runequest: Different games.

You keep talking about support for the storygaming editions as if they were support for real, first decade D&D: It isn't.

So the history that we've gone through is actually much worse than if the brand name D&D had fallen out of use, because we're infested by idiots such as yourself, 2etard who cultivate the delusion that what they're playing and what we're playing is the same game. It isn't.

>>96763701
Yeah there was some digging done on this last year, and what little evidence there is says that modern sales despite being "bestest ever" according to various mouthpieces, aren't even close to matching the 80s fad years.

>>96763822
Yeah, the way I see it, OSR would have happened even if TSR had been bought by nobody and the brand name died. It was the right era for "thing that was hugely popular in the 80s" to make a big retro comeback, and those things generally didn't need to have had a string of crappy sequels made in the intervening years to "keep interest alive" or whatever he's prattling on about.
Some of the "retro revival" things that happened in the past 20 years had that, others did not. I don't think it makes a big difference.

>>96763822
>because we're infested by idiots
Yes, shown by your posts.