Thread 96829321

Welcome to the New School Revolution General, the thread dedicated to games derived from the OSR movement.

>What is the NSR?
the NSR is a subcategory of the OSR, it mostly follows the same play style but experiments further with the mechanics and settings
*broadly NSR games*
*have* a gm, a interesting setting, living world
*are* rules light, deadly
*and focus on* emergent narrative, external interaction and exploration

>What is this thread for?
This thread is for system, adventure, setting, mechanics, ongoing campaigns, anything that related to the *actual* game
POST ART ALSO, inspiration and for the tg threads

>What is this thread NOT for?
Meta discussions or drama of the games and its creators aka shadowboxing with twitter, reddit and the OSRG (frens with osrbros)
>stay on topic

>games
Shadowdark, into the odd, mausritter, cairn, mörk borg (and its hacks), dungeon crawl classics, mothership, knave, troika!, whitehack, blackhack, old school essentials (we know this is just a retroclone)

>links, resources, more games!, etc:
https://pastebin.com/0W8WmbCk

>previous thread:
>>96803352

>thread question
What are the best games with large, interesting worlds that aren't inherently hostile to the player? Is a world without constant enemies boring?

>>96829321 (OP)
>TQ
>What are the best games with large, interesting worlds that aren't inherently hostile to the player?
Is there one? I mean there are great nohostile worlds and great games by i cant think of a single combination of the two
>Is a world without constant enemies boring?
Not really. It is more the domain of espionage, shadow deals, underground cults, merchant feuding, piracy etc
All perfectly fine things to explore in the NSR mindset/with NSR tulesets

>thread on page 7
>literally one reply in 5 hours
Could it be any more obvious that this general was created by that one sperg and while he has his troll version of /osrg/ up he no longer cares about this one?

Anyone play Monolith? I didn't realize it was a Cairn hack when I bought it. I really only bought it as reference because Retro Sci-Fi Rules & Traveller aren't playable out of the box and lack a lot of rules.

>>96829321 (OP)
>Is a world without constant enemies boring?
It depends on how much of an emasculated faggot you are.

>>96830727
Not heard of this. Very good artwork. Will investigate and report back.

>>96830727
>Traveller
>not playable out of the box
>lacks a lot of rules
Substantiate this claim.

>>96831704
In particular I'm referring to MG2E and Zozer games. Classic might be different. I can't substantiate because I can't remember but we distinctly had more than a few conversations that ended with "huh that's weird this thing is referenced but there is literally no rules here for it".
>>96831636
I got it PoD from Lulu for real cheap. It's a nice book but I haven't sat down to give it a try yet.

Can I talk about AD&D here?

>>96835546
sure. Which edition are you interested n?

>>96829321 (OP)
Games for your pic's feel?
>thread question
Conflict is necessary, but not necessarily with enemies. Races are always a change of pace for me, and pursuits too.

>>96835860
>Games for your pic's feel?
none that i'm aware of. something like Ace Combat, Black Lagoon, and Michiko & Hatchin rolled into one

more of the guy here: https://bsky.app/profile/dofresh.bsky.social

>>96835546
Assume this is good faith and not bait.

You CAN talk about it here, but it's not necessarily the place where you will get the most or best answers.

If you want to talk about Gygax's AD&D ("1e") played the Gygax way, you might have better luck asking on the real /osrg/ thread, which is very much focused on that style: >>96815749

If you want to talk about AD&D 2e, you might try on the 2e thread that is posing as an /osrg/ thread in a pathetic attempt to hijack it: >>96815556

The second one is also the thread if you want to talk about AD&D 1e but played in the narrativist / railroading / Hickman style, which is what lies at the core of the AD&D 2e game philosophy. However, you're not very likely to get useful answers there because the thread wasn't really created to discuss games, just to troll the real /osrg/.

>>96830719
>Could it be any more obvious that this general was created by that one sperg and while he has his troll version of /osrg/ up he no longer cares about this one?
You lads are always welcome back in the real /osrg/ while he's not there if you want to come hang out.

It's funny really, I remember that you'd get shit for liking something like, say, Shadowdark, but no one ever told you not to talk about it over there. Which means this thread doesn't need to exist and is just a divide & conquer attempt.

>>96837444
>no one ever told you not to talk about it over there
Just because saying it's shit was almost always enough to get people to stop talking about it, unlike 2e, which is an obsession of one particular psychotic individual who's been trying to use it to torment /osrg/ for years at this point.

>Which means this thread doesn't need to exist and is just a divide & conquer attempt.
I disagree. There's definitely multiple games that are off-topic on /osrg/ but deserve a place where they can be discussed. Shadowdark, Mork Borg, Cairn, Knave, Mauritter, and so on. So /nsrg/ does serve a purpose.

>>96837444
That's a strange take, anon. In 2022 we had a lot of people trying to force NSR stuff in /osrg (backed by yet another mod) and a lot of yelling for them to take it elsewhere, because it's fundamentally a different sort of game. It's been mostly quiet since then, but if anything the boundaries between OSR and NSR have only solidified, as NSR has more and more come into its own. I think it definitely deserves its own thread: I just don't know if there's enough NSR fans on /tg to keep it alive. I hope it thrives, though.

>>96837605
>>96838134
Shadowdark specifically is clearly an OSR game, come on. It's basically just another shoddy B/X knockoff. Yeah, sure, the way it was turbohyped during the Kickstarter was distasteful, but I don't think that was even the girl's fault – she just happened to be lined up to crowdfund at the moment the OGL debacle broke out, and obviously the kind of queermos who still play 5e were primed to hop on "a simpler system written by a lesbian!"

So yeah, while I agree that Cairn and the Borgs need to fuck off out of /osrg/ I think Shadowdark is clearly on topic. It's in the same niche as BFRPG: no real reason to play it, but of course it's OSR. OSR isn't a stamp of quality, people just think it is because 2e is both not OSR and far and away the worst edition of D&D ever published.

>>96838295
>It's basically just another shoddy B/X knockoff
False. It makes radical changes to the system, for example to how magic and advancement work.

>>96838134
It was obviously the same people as those complaining about 2e now, but using a different excuse. It's quite clear that don't actually care care about 2e or have anything to say about it, just look at their general now. Literally zero actual content apart from bumps saying inane stuff, like that they like the art.

>>96838639
Not sure what you're on about, currently the "We love 2e crowd" is talking about scat porn and spelljammer in their tantrum thread while /osrg/ is continuing on as usual.

>>96838753
Based on the rest of his post, I think he meant to say "complaining that 2e should be included now".

>>96838831
Good point, I'm retarded.

Who are ACKShills such retarded assholes?

They can't even leave this thread alone, and are treating it as their "Place to shit when they're not shitting in the real /osrg/ that infuriates them."

Shoo, shoo. Stay in your containment thread.

Oh goodie, fishfag has been let out of the hospital again.

>Has 2 entire threads basically to himself
>Has been left alone in both of them
>No mention of ACKS in either
>Still isn't happy
But Fishfag had been created with a hole in his heart, an (ass)hole that no possession, power, or knowledge could fill. And in his infinite greed, fishfag dreamed of expanding his dominion over the entire earth.

>>96830727
I played it with a GM who ran it without aliens and without psionics, so I can't really call it a "pure" experience, but it worked fine, with just a heavier emphasis on tech/augmentations. Can't say I loved it. I did appreciate the Group Debt thing that made it feel like Cowboy Bebop right from the start.

>>96840137
They're desperate to "control the narrative."
ie. Lie their balls off and hope people fall for it.
Just ignore their shitposts in this and any other thread.

>>96840137
You're literally the first to bring ACKS up in this thread.

>>96840372
ACKShills is just the name for the handful of anti-2e/Pro-ACKS trolls that plague the /osrg/ (and this thread too). Don't ask me why they're anti-2e/Pro-ACKs, the only reason we know those are their obsessions is because they tried to make a bogeyman out of both and then ended up combining them into one because that's the kind of retards they are.

>>96840417
>Criticizing 2e means shilling ACKS.
Meds.

>>96840417
>maybe if I spell it bogeyman nobody will notice it's me
LMAO

>>96840417
Look, I don't like ACKS, and hate the ACKS shills, but this is schizoposting.

>>96840738
If you mean it's posting about schizos, you're right.
Back when they were getting banned and ban-evading, they even tried to say that the janny also was their bogeyman. I don't think they actually care how crazy they look, or expect people to see any sanity in what they do.

But, let's not actually fall for their bait and turn yet another thread into a discussion about their drama.

To whoever posted the Overland Travel substack last thread: thank you! It's exactly the kind of legwork I was looking for when I came to /osrg/ but got blackballed.

I'll go with the Simulacrum approach by dropping the miles pretention, assigning a Movement Points pool to animals and vehicules, a Movement Cost to hexes and voilà. It's apparently how 0D&D started and as a former hex and shit wargamer it's what makes the most sense to me because you can fiddle with a lot of details with this kind of design and the maths stay super easy.

I'll get the guide to check for orientation in the morning with an Int check, the look-out to check for random encouter at night with a Wis check, the leader to roll any reaction with a Cha check and maybe a Dex check for the occasional hunter so everybody is involved and happy. Hex will be treated as containers so anything obvious is described while travelling but any hidden sites requires a whole day searching the hex itself.

Rancourt wrote something really sensitive at the end of his long study and it made quite an impression on me: if I'm using curated dungeons and not proceduraly generated ones, why would I use proceduraly generated overland and not curated one?

>>96841084
>dropping the miles pretention, assigning a Movement Points pool to animals and vehicules, a Movement Cost to hexes and voilà
What do you mean? That's exactly the same as what you call the "miles pretention": The "movement pool" is the number of miles you can travel in a day.

>>96840785
>Fishfag desperately trying to deflect and create confusion around having been caught out as also being 2etard as well as Night Land fag.

>>96841452
It's funny, all he had to do when somebody suggested he resembled the NLfag was to ignore it. But nope, not only did he flip his shit, which is evidence enough, but then he actually gave himself away in the middle of doing said shit-flipping! Now that's comedy!

>>96841452
>>96841625
Okay, you guys can shut up too. This is /nsrg/, not fishfag drama general. That was a thread or two ago, when one of you faggots did your thing.

>>96841644
Yeah, my bad, didn't notice which tab this was.

>>96841644
>you guys can shut up too
aye aye sir

>>96841084
>To whoever posted the Overland Travel substack last thread: thank you! It's exactly the kind of legwork I was looking for when I came to /osrg/ but got blackballed.
What? They're talking about it in /osrg/ *right now*, how were you blackballed over that blog post?

>>96841899
>legwork
This is like the fren card game autist, he makes these threads, refuses to engage posters and still expects them to go further than some other schizo engaging.

>>96841385
It keeps the maths simple. You don't think "48/2 -6 -6 -6 -6" but "8/2 -1 -1 -1 -1". Also you can bump up your abstracted base Movement Points to higher values without anyone batting an eye if you need more granularity, like when going from a D6 to a D12 or D100. This way you can account for more modifiers for weather or whatnot, without resorting to a -33% on top of a +50% as OSE handles it. Or you can go the 0D&D way and keep these abstracted numbers and modifiers really low.

Really, that's it. Easier math. Might be unworthy to most but as a Referee learning a new system I don't want to wrangle it for the first few sessions. Not in the ease and comfort of 2025, with so much knowledge just a few clics away. So movement points and ascending armor class it is for me.

>>96841899
I made a lengthy post about homebrewing OSE class system to something more fitting to my young table, like removing infravision for the dwarf and elf but giving them something else instead like maybe 2 in 6 chance of gem appraisal for the dwarf and 2 in 6 chance of animal empathy for the elf. Plus my players are kids so I wanted really bright and red neons pointing at the thief class by making the first encounter a high pitch voiced goblin in a jail so everyone understand we're talking backstabbing bastard here.

I was told absolutely all my shit is retarded, which I can stomach; but also how B/X is sacro-sainct design and I should not mess with the delicate balance of it, which is absolute bullshit since OSE encourage you to homebrew it from it's very first pages. I fucked off and came here and Io and Behold, someone helped my retard self instead of smelling its own farts.

>>96841951
Are you okay buddy? I used the terms legwork and hex as containers because they come from this very sustack article so I'm happy to borrow it and make it my own because as you can tell I'm a uncalled for wordy moffo that really struggle to encapsulate concept in clear words and make small posts.

>>96842683
>I was told how B/X is sacro-sainct design
That's not how things went, buddy. And, more importantly, nobody gives a shit about your grievances, this is not a women's studies discussion forum.

You might instead try sharing your ideas here again and see if you get different feedback.

>>96842958
Well first don't pretend I'm acting like a woman if you're to post some David Beckham sith according to your picture's name. Why do you even a picture like that in stock or know where to google it? Sounds gay to me desu, not gonna lie.

Second don't bring /osrg/ toxic behavior here. You can very much go and be a dick there with the others. I read enough "fishfag this schizo that" to bother with your false pretense at David Beckham admirer machismo. It's already stale to me anon, try and be better than yet another shitposter in a flamewar crusade.

Third I've been here for two threads and it's been two threads with an idiot asking for /nsrg/ to "come back home" to /osrg/. I didn't bother to answer so obviously I'm not on a mission or even butthurt. But I think there's a chance you might be that very specific poster that keeps collecting rebutals threads after threads for a weird reason so I'm done with (you).

I came here to ask about abstracted positioning during encounters and a bit more involved overland travel system then I got my answers. So, once again, I thank the anon that posted that substack link, it was really on point. You lecturing me is just bad taste anon.

>>96831808
MG2E is perfectly playable out of the box. The only thing it doesn't really have is rules for aliens.

>>96843991
>The only thing it doesn't really have is rules for aliens.
CT doesn't have them either. Or do you mean rules for procedurally generating animals?

>>96843991
Yeah, I know it's off topic, but can't help by wonder what kind of blue-moon ass rule anon thinks is vital that MG2E is missing.

>>96844869
He sounded like just another moron who has no idea what he's talking about. Not the kind of thing that is worth investigating further.

>>96842683
>Are you okay buddy?
Gee HR lady, keep your struggle to yourself, I'm not your analrapist.

>>96829321 (OP)
>What are the best games with large, interesting worlds that aren't inherently hostile to the player
Most properly designed settings have a mixture of conflict and nonviolent contact. If you've somehow made
>constant enemies
you're making a very boring game yes. Nusr using variations on reaction rolls and negotiation is key, if its skipped that its not even really adjacent anymore.

>>96829321 (OP)
what's the OP pic? is it a game?

I ran Death in Space a few days ago.
I'm not seeing how this is a horror system, but I did realize how Mork Borg it is when creating chareacts. Rolling 2d4 and substracting the later from the first is miles better than the comparison table every other MB uses.
I was a bit surprised by the "how you were meant do die" table. I didn't understand it at all, but used it anyway because I was testing the system and wanted to do it in good fatih. The conclusion we reached, and it kinda worked, is that the table is the shitty death you were destined to have as a regular joe, but instead you had a cool death doing stuff and living life. I'm not entirely sure if that's the point. If anyone can confirm or has another ake let me know.

I just played Pirate Borg.
I have no clue why you people said it didn't feel like a Mork Borg at all, it was super Mork Borg.
We ended up in an aztek tomb, two players being turned into skelletons plus a sorcerer that could make more skelletons. We took our aztek skelleton crew to take over Spain, kinda woke.

>>96854586
it kind of softens the blow of losing a character, but there also seems to be some meta, although i'm not entirely sure what they meant about it, like the void interfering with the deterministic universe? are the players part of the void?

>>96855952
Pirate is more grounded in its setting. it rarely gives you intentionally vague rolls like "a map to a place that cannot possibly exist", leaving you wondering what the hell it meant

like one game gives you a fever dream to interpret like some avant-garde homework, while the other gives you actual adventure hooks that point you toward loot and things to stab

don't die on me

>>96854586
>I'm not seeing how this is a horror system,
I didn't really think of it as one when I was reading it. More like a grimdark future game but instead of being made in the 80s it was made in the early 2020s.
Death is likely, the gameworld is fucked up and everything sucks, but its not scary its just normal.

>>96857197
true
I also found the quirks and random character stuff not only very on point (expectable) but also playable. We run 6 characters between 3 players, one at the time, and each random creation had a playable personality. No anti-party characters or confusing concepts.

>>96857197
>>96863016
>one game gives you a fever dream to interpret like some avant-garde homework,
>while the other gives you actual adventure hooks that point you toward loot and things to stab
Which other borgs (or other games) would you guys say are the second type? I like the idea of mork more than the execution.

>>96863257
I guess cy_borg is pretty playable, people keep it going for campaigns. A point in favor is that most cyberpunk games are on the heavy crunch side so a lite cyberpunk game is gonna hit with a lot of people that got filtered.

>>96863281
>most cyberpunk games are on the heavy crunch side
Frankly, what keeps the genre from ever capyuring me. While "historical" settings, fantasy or not, are "solved", tech settings 15 minutes into the future are stagnant, in comparison to 5 years of tech advances.

>>96863317
yeah, this one has very few options, like most MB games, and a general "fuck it be OP if you roll it" attitude. I think it also has extra HP compared to other games, but I might confusing that everyone rolled great.

>>96863257
>>96863016
>>96857197
I think Pirates are easier to get your head around, but there's a certain type of metal head that just gets mork borg and can instantly play long. It's a bit of a filter that I find entirely fair, not everything has to be for me.

>>96864095
still waiting for a D&D style game to get the Pirate Borg treatment. like a mix of high concept art, dense, usable content, and a strong identity, but for classic fantasy

>>96865418
Dolmenwood.

can you run starless sea in theater of the mind?

>>96866483
The DCC one? Mapping isn't that big a deal for DCC stuff and showing the players the art seems key to the vibe. I don't think you'd need miniatures or a grid though.

>>96866686
yeah i'm thinking of running it on discord+roll20

>>96865490
pretty much this
I think everyone into medieval fantasy should at least give it a look

>>96866693
Dungeons and maps can be confusing when it's only description, people don't read books and they're not used to keeping too much info in their RAM. Be ready to reinforce and re-describe over and over again.

>>96866710
speech to text might be the move then thanks for the heads up.

>>96866693
Haven't done much online play but quick search makes it look like there's maps and plugins for it already for roll20 and DCC stuff. Not sure how they work.

>>96830727
>>96831636
Am reading it right now. It's competently written, with a few small niggles here and there. The cover art is the only art jsyk. I didn't read Cairn yet, but I did read ItO and obviously Monolith is quite similar, just adapted for a fairly "generic baseline" sci-fi core. If you like or dislike Odd-likes or Cairn-likes, you'll have the same opinion on Monolith. My opinion thus far is that it does exactly what it sets out to do and is dirt-cheap, so, yeah.
>>96777664
>>96777717
>>96777751
Absolutely agree, I immediately lose any interest when I see lazy, generic-style slop AI on DTRPG or Kickstarter... The odds that the actual content in the book is novel or high-quality immediately plummets. I think everyone should be extremely vary of any project with it desu, unless maybe the writer is proven already (and even then).

>>96864095
Nah, doesn't seem like it to me, I prefer dark souls to pirates. I've run mork borgier campaigns than morkborg in other systems. It just lacks the parts that would feel like work for me to make and gives me the parts I would fid fun to make it myself.
>>96863257
I almost want to play a game disregarding rule 0, with players just being corporate slaves using the highest tech money can buy to chase rebels, but I don't think the other GM in the group would run it.

>>96866693
If you're doing online, you should have maps. It's easy and widely available, and while players can do theater of the mind at the table, online makes it so much worse for the distractions.

You could also check out Talespire (community hub Talestavern) if you have steam. It's a really cool 3D VTT

>>96867346
i bought it years ago and forgot about it. I remember i tried to make a map and to be honest it came out pretty bad looking but I know its a skill issue so maybe i'll give it another shot

>>96686823
>>96687438
>>96693000
>>96696807
Thank you anons for your support. I did read your posts before playing and did follow your advice - admittedly without special index cards/replacement characters ready, and without watching the linked Actual Play. Still, I read ItO cover-to-cover like 3 times (not really difficult desu), as well as found some nifty character sheets online (players love that) and "one page rules" to print out as handouts. I also made and printed a version of the Fallen Marsh hexcrawl to have ready.

The short of it is that it was an awesome time with many laughs; my biggest pain points were sometimes having to flip through the book and somehow forgetting to get a GM screen... With that said, all 3 players got very into it and enjoyed it. I didn't want to quash their comedic tone and allowed them to be goofy, but reigned in absurd stuff or murder-hobo attempts, as well as tried to highlight anything remotely weird or tense. They had fun adapting their characters from the starter packages: would-be pirate with a parrot, horse cart mechanic and asylum escapee, all with both grounded and quirky traits to them. I also included a generic pushover GMNPC, kinda unplanned, but to try and give them direction and inevitably show off the lethality (he's still alive tho).

Anyway, I ended up doing the Iron Coral and Fallen Marsh. I leaned into the pirate background of the 1 player: he heard about rumors of some weird giant coral popping up from seedy sailors, his old crew were too chicken to go, but he met these new weirdos at a pub and they decided to give it a go together. They caught a cheap ship to travel to Hopesend and this is where I gave them the first big choice as the boat captain offered them a dingy to immediately go to the beach near the Coral instead of remaining on the boat to Hopesend. They had some fun deliberation and decided to go directly to the Coral.

(cont.)

Does this "without number" series fit in here? I have someone questions about Ashes Without Number if anyone has experience with the Enclave subsystem.

>>96867692
Holy shit I botched that.
>this
the*
>someone
some*

>>96867437
>>96686823
>>96687438
>>96693000
>>96696807
At the Coral things were fun; my weaknesses were figuring out how much I can show/tell without spoiling room contents, but the biggest issue was that I forgot to roll on the encounter table for every time they change rooms! Unsurprisingly, one of their few critiques after the session was that there wasn't a lot of action as they explored. There were tense moments as they split up, I thought one player would straight-up die alone in the "red room" (L1,R2); a bit later two of them almost went down the shaft of no return all the way down to level 3 - but both were averted naturally. Was still quite exciting and tense for me. Later someone did faint in the red room but was saved in time, a natural learning moment. The one moment I got "worried" was when they found some absolutely minor trinket and were like "should we leave for Hopesend now?" - but they eventually decided to camp outside and decide on the next day (session). I rolled on the overland encounter table and they heard a distant horse running - one player committed to a bit where his character became deathly afraid of the CENTAUR RAPIST for no reason whatsoever. We all found that so funny that I'm now thinking of including it; perhaps they wake up to find the DMNPC missing and hoovesteps leading away from their camp...

Perhaps bold for a first session, but I decided to hack ItO with two things. First, I tried to backport the Maneuver/Feint thing from Mythic Bastionland - albeit lower in power since the players are not epic knights. Second, I decided to add more depth to the "initiative" (doesn't really exist in ItO) by 1:1 copying the system from Shadow of the Weird Wizard. My goal with these was to add some mechanical depth and choice nuance to the game, to help give players both more "meat" and agency. Ultimately neither "really" came up as there was a single and short fight. Will continue tinkering with these changes/additions before the next session.

>>96867107
>I almost want to play a game disregarding rule 0, with players just being corporate slaves using the highest tech money can buy to chase rebels, but I don't think the other GM in the group would run it.
Corp Borg?

>>96867692
go ahead anon, don't get hung up on the labels

you never know who's out there, lurking, waiting for a question just like this one. all we can do is send our post out into the ether and have a little faith

>>96867692
It's kind of its own thing, I've seen threads dedicated to it pop up now and then and sometimes people have stuff to say.
But I'm pretty sure that you'll find the same anons in this general as long as they know it exists, so add a picture they can recognize on page 0 shoot your shot.

>>96867812
>that I forgot to roll on the encounter table for every time they change rooms!
oops. Happens, part of learning to run the game but it will make a noticeable difference.
I've never run it with a gm screen personally, hadn't even occurred to me.
Sounds like it was a good time, glad it worked out. Bold's good, its a short system so making it punchy and fast is the idea.
What's the Weird Wizard's initiative system? Haven't looked at it.

>>96867901
Or Cybercops. I really just want to play 1 fucking cyberpunk game where my party holds some institutional power, instead of playing guerrilla dregs for the nth time.
Wait, I thought you were joking, I'll give it a read.

>>96868276
>oops. Happens, part of learning to run the game but it will make a noticeable difference.
Yeah, I did roll it when they spent too much time talking or making noise, just so happened to be "nothing" each time - but I was supposed to roll it like 10 more times, at least. As far as learning the game goes, I think I should sit down and write down all the core rules for myself, both as a reference and as a way to help me remember them better.
>I've never run it with a gm screen personally, hadn't even occurred to me.
I'm used to it from playing 5e with people and I do think it helps provide some "mystique" as I can roll encounters/luck in peace or flip through the book. More tension and the like as the players start imagining wtf is going on behind the screen. ItO doesn't haven an official one - I got an unofficial one from DriveThru (gotta figure out how to print it). Alternatively, I've gotten some physical GM screens from other games since the session and can just use those.
>Sounds like it was a good time, glad it worked out. Bold's good, its a short system so making it punchy and fast is the idea.
Thanks for the support and, yeah, ItO and Cairn-likes are neat but just a tad more depth wouldn't hurt. Trying to keep the leanness without bloat.
>What's the Weird Wizard's initiative system? Haven't looked at it.
So, in ItO, the PCs all go, then the monsters; Move, then Action being the action economy. In SotWW, the monsters all go first, then the PCs; Move + Action + Reaction being the action economy. Reactions are broken down into a few generic options that you can use on the monster's turn for defense/mitigation/utility - BUT you can also burn your Reaction to go before all the monsters! This is IMO a simple way to allow players to strategize about whether they want to hit first or respond to the monsters. That choice itself is the entire point, I think.

>>96868479
Corp Borg can also be about challenging the system, but you are a clog and you can do clog things. There is no expected way to stop the corporate apocalypse one way or another.

>>96868479
Blade Runner RPG, although it's more a police procedural than Bubblegum Crisis

as the Rep-Detect Unit, you have the authority to take over almost any LAPD investigation and get access to places regular cops can't, like high level corporate offices, at the same time, you still have to do the legwork, pull connections to secure warrants, equipment and support. that tension between having immense institutional power and still needing to be a street level detective is what makes it so much fun

we had a blast with it. my only worry is that the theme might be too narrow, like, how many times can you hunt replicants before it gets stale

>>96870927
>we had a blast with it. my only worry is that the theme might be too narrow, like, how many times can you hunt replicants before it gets stale
Could you adapt the setting at all? How entrenched in the Blade Runner Canon is it, mechanically I mean?

>>96871006
it's 100% locked in. the entire core loop is case files, investigation, tracking down leads, social pressure, and dealing with the stress of the job, there aren't rules for being anything else than cops.

and the tech is pure 80s cassette futurism, with vid phones and dot matrix printers

>>96871050
I meant more "Could it be adapted to other procedural situations."

Could you say, run a long term campaign about being the special police in a Casablanca-esq star port, dealing with refugees, smugglers and other scumbags?
Or maybe playing as special investigative in a more generalized setting, tracking down serial killers and the like?

>>96871063
i think it could work with some tinkering, the main change would be swapping the LAPD Resource Request table to reflect the new agency's priorities and jurisdiction. pirate the rulebook and take a look first, i wouldn't want to talk someone into spending money in case it wouldn't work.

>>96871109
Cheers, and I'll give it a look in most likely.
It feels like proper "police procedural" detective shenanigans has always been a gap in the tabletop market.

>>96868592
At hand notes help for sure. I tend to make my own quick reference of rules at the back of the rulebook on the blank index pages.
I roll everything in the open, I'm not too concerned about players looking at my dice rolls. But I've seen people use 3-ring binders with open slots on the outside and just cycle cool art through them as screens and it looked like it worked well.
>SotWW action/reaction choice
Neat, I'll look into that. Thanks anon.

I *really* like ACKS. A bit cumbersome, but macris really put in the work. Probably yhe best BX monster manual, aside from the retarded naming.
My only complaint is that he somehow created "inverse thac0" as his combat system.

>>96871550
fuck yeah anon!
ACKS is my favorite NuSR system to read through
traditional B/X and AD&D are like rudimentary systems for kids going into "dungeons" and on "adventures" compared to the simulationist ACKS' approach
I can imagine epic kingdoms and wars that play out using all the systems
I would love to actually play ACKS one day

>>96871550
>>96871718
lol, no one's gonna fall for it anymore. Everyone knows acks is shit.

>>96863317
Cyberpunk games aren't meant for anything more than a short campaign, maybe a few months or a year at most. Anything longer than that and things get unpredictable.
Think of it as repeating the same Friday night over and over, but from a million different operator's upgraded eyes.

Your sockpuppeting is not making people hate ACKS, just you. Go back to shitting up /osrg/

>>96873340
>Go back to shitting up /osrg/
Please do not

>>96875079
too late

Troll obviously false flagging with AI-generated pro-ACKS comments so he can start spamming/flooding this general with anti-ACKS comments like he's been doing on /osrg/ for the last couple of days:
>>96871550
>>96871718

>>96875692
We're aware; Please don't give him more attention than he deserves

>>96870927
Law & Order keeps making new shit and it's a less interesting setting.
I think the problem is that you need a really complete and complex case, with multiple avenues of investigation. The pre-made cases are great at this, but they're hard to prep and you have to do that if you want to make it smooth.
I had some issues crosschecking stuff in the manual. For example dealing with Wallace is explained through 3 different sections and what they can offer is way too vague. One of the cases sugests you can just scan a brain like a camera, that could solve a huge chunk of investigations. But it's just in that case.

>>96871050
I think you're the same anon.
No doubt the down time is a huge part of the game, you really want to take a break and get tricked into thinking you might be a replicant or your wife is cheating on you. Great stuff.

The need to get a retirement order before you murder a replicant is also a cool thing, but players may clash with the fact they can also shoot randos if they are threatened so they might as well shoot the replicant trying to escape.

I think it requires players to really want to play along.

>>96871905
fall for what? fall for the best nusr game on the web?
>>96873340
seek help

>>96871972
why?
I guess the genre does feel much shorter, I can easily imagine campaigns in a pseudo medieval magical world while at first I can only imagine short cyberpunk sequences. But Gibson wrote whole trilogies, there's a lot you can do in a setting that is similar to our own but has some new tech changing society. It's the same as scifi extrapolating modern stuff but at a more mundane scale.
Maybe the issue is going too hard into it, having all your ideas in the set up and nothing to keep going. The Bridge trilogy slowly incorporates VR, and then AI, and then global corporate take over.

>>96870927
Shit, it sounds fun but it's incompatible with both of my groups.
>how many times can you hunt replicants before it gets stale
That also needs better character writing than I'm willing to push for.
>>96871972
Sure, but it's not what I meant. I was trying to say every setting looks stale for someone, because sci-fi fans will each have at least one idea of how the near future should've developed. I don't run much of it because, to suspend disbelief for my groups, it innevitable gets re-genre'd into either grindfiction, Digimon/SMT or toku.

>>96877302
>That also needs better character writing than I'm willing to push for.
Not that much, but it needs players who want to engange.
You have the day divided in shifts. If you work more than three in a row you start to lose stats, if you take a break for a shift you had a series of random rolls to define what your home life is like. Then you have random events that might be related to the case intruding your personal life, family issues, doubting you're a replicant, or just random stuff like a mugging. That's the thing that connects the cases. As long as the case itself changes that's probably enough. Just like any police procedureal show.

Then the cases are solid Free League stuff. 40 pages with a dozen NPCs spread through maybe as many locations, crime scene pictures to check, and two or three roads connecting every clue. All ending in a moral dilema. You level up by either doing things by the book and gaining skills (including snitching on other players if you have evidence) or by being humane and gaining stats.

Out of the Free League games it was the only one that made me go for it. It is way too much prep for my poor NSR brain, I struggled a lot and a couple players months later still bust my balls for apologizing so much when I had to go silent five minutes to focus on reading a page or finding a description. But you have to be specific and definite if you want them to piece complex bits of info together. It's not a game about coming up with original ideas or expressing yourself, at least not in the investigation portion.

>>96877373
>bust my balls for apologizing so much when I had to go silent five minutes to focus on reading a page or finding a description.
Mine just say "he's rendering the quest" and take 5. You're trying to sell a sportscar to a family man, I want to ride it badly, but my toddlers demand I take the minivan. A group of players is nowhere near engaged for this to work, I usually just run them through meat grinders and they like it. The other is entirely consistent of lawyers, so they'd get sidetracked by actual police procedure, actual law and such, and that ruined more than one game already.

>>96877428
>so they'd get sidetracked by actual police procedure, actual law and such, and that ruined more than one game already.
an anon already posted the list of procedures that take in game time to get, including permission to shoot, and you gain xp for snitching on bad procedure from other players. It might be the perfect game for them.

But yeah, it's a very specific experience. I trust MoSh because it keeps working at open tables even with absolute newfags, BR is the exact opposite.

Have you checked The House Always Wins for MoSh? Players sell rights to clone them and are sent into a deadly game show, they get extra money if they have an over the top death. There's a subplot about the sponsors competing for control of the game and whole planet. You might like it.

>>96877373
the rulebook itself is a bit of a mess, not the worst i've ever seen, but the rules are spread out all over the place, and it's easy to miss things. our game only ran smoothly because i got hyped, read it cover to cover, and could help the GM when he got stuck

the investigation side was no problem, CoC is one of our main systems, so the GM was already used to the usual bag of tricks (clue redundancy, floating clues, not relying on perception rolls)

and it's not necessarily a problem if the investigation fails, that can happen, especially if it's in a fun, spectacular way. not everything has to get explained and understood. part of the game is just being a witness to something, accepting the mystery even if there's no resolution. who knows, maybe you'll trip over a clue for it in a future case. a good unresolved case can leave a lasting impression, sometimes more so than one with a clear cut ending.

I have so many modules I'd like to run but I'm not willing to pay for.

>>96880726
Liminal Horror in particular has way too little pirated

>>96880874
This is another one I've been requesting in the share thread for ages.

>>96871550
>I *really* like ACKS. A bit cumbersome, but macris really put in the work.
Yes, that's the only flaws I see: being spreadsheet heavy.
The longer the campaign goes, more spreadsheets get added to the pile.
Even if you're only doing the abstract versions of the battles, handling the armies and calculating BR for all the troops, commanders, lieutenants every time there's an update, is really a big effort and time-consuming.

>>96877428
>You're trying to sell a sportscar to a family man, I want to ride it badly, but my toddlers demand I take the minivan.
I feel that so bad
I'm happy running games for the groups I have, but there's so much I'd like to try and I know it just won't work.

>>96873340
>>96875692
This is hilarious. You were so embarassed by the guy's attempt to shill the system that you called it a falseflag, but he's gone right back to trying to shill it.

>>96877456
>Players sell rights to clone them and are sent into a deadly game show, they get extra money if they have an over the top death. There's a subplot about the sponsors competing for control of the game and whole planet. You might like it.
Fuck, that almost sounds like the plot of the yuri anime we were watching, or Kamen Rider Geats. Is it agnostic enough that I can reskin the sponsors as Azatoth, Nyarlathotep, etc...?
>>96882432
I tried running SRW Iwaku at least 3 times, and failed. My players are too set on WFRP 2e and FFd6.

>>96882450
he is right though those anons are falseflagging
and you know how those 2 anons are 100% sure of it?
because they know they are the only 2 ackshills on the entire website

>>96883759
Lol imagine being so delusional that you think that there's two people in this website actively going out of their way to post things to offend you.
Maybe they're just people that actually play games instead of crying about them?

>>96884562
Go back to your own thread >>96881801 and try to keep it alive with anything that isn't shitposting. Let's see how you do.

>>96884882
No, I'm going to post what I want where I want when you're going to suffer through it

>>96867357
You should! The Talestavern thing I mentioned is their community hub, they have a lot of maps/templates/and setpieces for free download to use in your own stuff, it's really handy

acks good

Any tips/rundown of how to easily convert any spell from B/X and/or ADND to GLOG magic?

>>96886512
Yeah, by not playing glog and just using bx

>>96887504
Yeah, hate to say it, but GLOG was basically the poster child of pic related. So many people on so many blogs wasted so much time trying to make it into a playable game, and eventually everyone just gave up. It's a mess.

>>96886512
You re not supposed to. You re supposed to be making your own custom spells and it implies a different design mentality from B/X

>>96887582
I really think that Glog is playable but it is the start of the nsr design for me.

>>96887614
>I really think that Glog is playable
Last time I was interested (which is admittedly years back) I couldn't find any actual play that used it. Has that changed?

>>96887718
https://diyanddragons.blogspot.com/2020/05/actual-play-glog-wizard-city-sophomore.html
Someone tried. I thinks its a little half baked and incomplete

>>96887718
Skerples has a bunch of them.

Is OSR still a selling point for a game?
Will my Traveller-esque flying-island airship-merchant game with gold-for-XP really benefit from being an OSR game? as in sticking with hit dice, 3d6 straight down, etc and not getting too far off the reservation when it comes to those mechanics?
Or is it more likely you'll be constrained by trying to fit the OSR mold?

>>96888653
I think you should do whatever you like, which is more likely to make it a good game than chasing popularity. If it's commercial success you're interested in, marketing is the way to go anyway. Make friends with the plebbit mods and Questing Beast and start an astroturfing campaign like Shadowdark did.

>>96888664
>If it's commercial success you're interested in, marketing is the way to go anyway. Make friends with the plebbit mods and Questing Beast and start an astroturfing campaign like Shadowdark did.
damn... okay maybe that is what I should do.
It's just a hard decision to make.

>>96888664
Shadowdark's "astroturf" campaign is an overblown meme. What it was is that the author had a large 5e fanbase to begin with, and SD had the good luck to launch right in the middle of the WotC-wants-to-revoke-the-OGL debacle, which was the perfect time for luring people from 5e. Basically a perfect storm for the internet to go nuts over a mediocre system being published, but it's not anything anon is going to be able to replicate.

Are there art free pdfs for pirate and cy like there is in mork borg?

>>96888653
an osr game, not really.
An nsr game with a very specific stylistic direction and a couple important procedures for facilitating the style of game you want? sure
The osr brand isnt an auto success but it is a small field where every piece of work gets reviewed and kinda promoted if its a semi playable game with a distinct artstyle and a strong theme which is what you should do

>>96888653
If it's money you want it's all about your marketing strategy, not about the quality of your game.
-Stick with OSR/NSR just so you can retain that D&D brand recognition.
-Hire a local escort to pretend to be you on your public communications.
-Lure some well established mofos to promote your incoming KS.
-Contact the KS support to say as a woman in the TTRPG industry you don't know how to make sure your voice is heard and valued.
-Open a KS with a low as fuck goal so using your ensnared influencers and KS support leverage you get funded in less than 24h and can slap a stupid FUNDED IN LESS THAN 24H sticker to your project and enjoy some more trend.
-Make few sockpuppet accounts on Youtube to spam comments about this incredible trending game on the few Youtube accounts that didn't bother to talk about your product.
-Don't waste time and energy advertising it here.

Overall be a lying psychopath and assume your average comsumer is a mindless drone eager to fill the void of its soul by copying the perceived joy of its favorite fake as fuck influencer.

>>96890041
thanks for the advice. how much would this all cost out of pocket? a few thou?

>>96889578
>An nsr game with a very specific stylistic direction and a couple important procedures for facilitating the style of game you want? sure
Yeah it won't be OSR but more like Stars Without Number. But I'd rather make my own 40 page game than an add-on for WWN.

So at that point will the D&D B/X heritage in my game design help it more or hurt it? Say for a person who casually leafs through the book at the FLGS. Or the PDF online.

>>96889146
All of those things can be true at the same time. She already had a fanbase, the timing was right, AND it was astroturfed.

>>96892675
>A few thou?
A whole lot more than that kek. To be honest anon this is not a profitable industry and trying to make bank out of it is a fools errand. Your livelihood will revolve around attracting the attention of dumb people who spend money on overpriced garbage.

>>96888653
Are you making it so the game can easily be used to run a lot of other widely available material with minimal conversion effort?
Do you actually like OSR style gameplay?
If Y, then Y. If N, then N.

>>96892675
>But I'd rather make my own 40 page game than an add-on for WWN.
Its pretty successful and well liked, where as whatever you're up to is unknown and will need social media to splash while competing with everyone and their dog for 10 seconds of fame from Exalted Funeral or some similar cluster.
Slapping an OSR™ on it will give you more traction but you'll have to stand out from the shovelware somehow.
But really, if you're not making a game because you really like it and want to share that you're probably doing it wrong because they're not lucrative unless you want to go full retard.

>>96894801
>Your livelihood will revolve around attracting the attention of dumb people who spend money on overpriced garbage.
This is the real dealbreaker honestly. "Success" consists of debasing your creativity to appeal to paypig whales.

>>96895642
Meh. Money requires sacrifices. The real problem for me is that it's a pittance for a massive sacrifice: Your time, integrity, and hobby. If TTRPGs were a gold mine I could see it being worth it, but even relative success isn't much better than what you'd get from wageslaving.

>>96892675
if by bx heritage you mean the 6 stats, the type of rolls etc then sure it will help people through familiarity alone.

>>96895642
>>96894801
I am not for going all rpg designer if you can't afford it/don't love it but come on anons.
There are plenty of stuff that are clearly passion projects that didnt compromise on their creativity doing well like Myhtic Bastionland for example.
I dont see creative compromise as a necessity to making games, just as the easier more corporate path but we are talking indie games rn

>>96896532
>There are plenty of stuff that are clearly passion projects that didnt compromise on their creativity doing well
Sure, but for every one of those there are a hundred failures. And odds are, your creativity is not really in line with what paypigs will want.
Mind you, even with that the "doing well" part is just me taking you at your word without breaking down cost estimations and funding/sales figures. For most things people think are doing well, it's probably much bleaker financially than they actually know, and a lot of game companies that push games that are relatively popular are still operating at a deficit right now, like Steve Jackson.

>>96896570
I get what you re saying anon but steve jackson games isnt an indie project done by some tg anon. Yes, major rpg publishers are having it very hard financially .
I also dont think that the paypigs want anything besides a cool idea, a decent book and good art, so you dont really hav to compromise much.
The Borgs literally made bank just on the art and many other nsr projects did so as well

>>96896591
>I get what you re saying anon but steve jackson games isnt an indie project done by some tg anon.
You're correct. They're a larger game company that knows the ins and outs of the industry, knows how to reduce expenses, has a wide variety of product lines, and a fairly large reserve to coast off when things get rough (at least according to their stakeholder reports), can push more products to a wider audience, and have immediate brand recognition.
So you're right, insofar as identifying that being an indie would be harder rather than easier.

>I also dont think that the paypigs want anything besides a cool idea, a decent book and good art
Paypigs don't really know what they want, but the answer is something eye-catching that fits whatever mood they have at the moment. Good art alone doesn't sell it. Cool ideas alone don't sell it. A decent book definitely doesn't sell it. And all three together also have little to do with it. Sadly you're gonna have to take 1-100 gambling odds on your ideas having appeal to the right people, or chase trends.

>>96896532
>Mythic Bastionland
>didn't compromise on their creativity
Anon... Mythic Bastionland is just a fantasy rewrite of Electric Bastionland made to cash in on EB fans' clamoring for a fantasy version they were too creatively bankrupt to just homebrew. It doesn't have the slightest bit of creative integrity, it's literally a purpose-made cash cow.

>>96896591
>The Borgs
They're pretty much the antithesis of what you're arguing for, man.

>>96896612
Why is an Arthurian Legends version of his passion project, that looks really designed with passion for the game, has actual cool ideas and isnt a lazy hackjob a bad example?
Because he knew he could probably sell it?

>>96896611
Corporations have different costs than a couple of artists for art and your best friends for help with proofreading, and playtesting the thing.

I am not saying it's easy to succeed and that most projects get burried in the landslide of rpg products of today but you re making it be much much harder than it is/was for most of the people in the indie scene whose whole experience is
juste keep making stuff, casually promoting them, till eventually you are well known and you can make decent enough stuff to sell them

>>96896629
>Corporations have different costs
Typically lesser ones too relative to project size, because they've already embedded themselves in the industry and have all the means needed to cut costs. It's why they form in the first place, economy of scale. Didn't they teach you this in school?

>but you re making it be much much harder than it is/was for most of the people in the indie scene whose whole experience is
Anon, most indies make fucking nothing and are abject failures. The entire point is that even success means making pennies, and even if you whore out there's not much to be had. This is simply not a very profitable industry anymore. You're in it because you're either a moron, sheer love of the game, or blessed with luck.

>>96896643
>anymore
It was never a very profitable industry. White Wolf made *okay* money at its height, aside from that only D&D is an actually valuable RPG property (and TSR still managed to go bankrupt once).

>>96896648
Nah. There was a time most people can't remember, except through rose-tinted glasses and misfired neurons, when the non-D&D market was much more lively because the consumer base was expanding. As much as people bitched about D&D back then, it actually did bleed enough people into other scenes to help spread some wealth around, and most people were more open-handed with buying all the retardedly expensive shit. Plus, overhead was much lower.

>>96896648
>TSR still managed to go bankrupt once
And that was mostly because the Blumes were incompetent crooks and Gygax was basically checked out, making deals and snorting coke in Hollywood while they robbed the till on his behalf before finally stealing the company out from under him. Only Daniel Kaye had any money sense, and when he died, TSR was doomed.

>>96896682
No, the actual bankruptcy was much later, when Lorraine Williams had driven the company into the ground publishing too many settings in too-large print runs, a D&D pyrograph kit, and Dragon Dice, not to mention that whole Buck Rogers exploitation attempt. The end result was D&D being sold to WotC.

The time you're thinking of is just when they had to bring in Lorraine to prevent a bankruptcy.

>>96896690
It's all part and parcel, IMO. Williams just delayed it via plate-spinning antics, publishing as much new vaguely profitable shit as possible to keep the lights on until the company finally bit the dust. The end started before her.

>>96896629
>>96896643
Speaking of Bastionland, passion projects and the viability of making a career out of RPGs Chris Macdowall, Bastionland creator, recently did a blog post about his career as an RPG designer. It's an interesting read.
>https://www.bastionland.com/2025/09/building-bastionland-career.html
>I designed games semi-seriously for 7 years before I sold anything
>I sold games for 6 years before I went full-time as a designer
>I’ve worked for 5 years as a full-time game designer and I’m still a company of one person with just five releases
It's sobering to think about how a career that can be considered very succesful on the NSR scene have taken 16 years to create, counting from getting his first piece of writing in print in 2009 to now.

>>96897003
Okay, having read that blog post he certainly doesn't sound invested in maintaining his creative integrity or honestly, even like he cares about having such a thing.

>>96888664
Questing Beast reviews anything as long as it isn't shit and you send him a physial book. Will he review it on time for your kickstarter? Who knows. But he if he has anything to say he'll talk about it.

>>96889386
try googling either bare bones or ashcan edition

>>96889578
>every piece of work gets reviewed and kinda promoted
not really, maybe 30% at the very best. Most of the time people won't know what you're talking about. Even in more moderated places where it doesn't devolved into meta discussion like here, there's not enough interest to cover so much material.

>>96890041
It's always surprising how much confidence people have about things so detached from reality. You live in a fantasy world.

>>96896532
>>96896612
>being this new
Mythic Bastionland was succesful because Electric Bastionland was succesful because ItO was succesful because Chris McDowal has been writing about ttrpgs since 2009. Not only multiple articles a month, interacting with other bloggers, making a discord when it was a new thing, selfpublishing, distributing, attendfing cons, collaborating with other creators. Do you think the SD woman was succesful because no other woman ever recorded herself or something? She's being doing this shit every day for years and year. That's the trick: being somewhere early, being cool enough that people like you and being constant. He still writes tables and mechanics on his blog multiples times a month for free.

The reality is that all the time spent in 4chan is time you could had spent building an audience or getting contacts. But we spent it fighting for schizo shit to people who'll never know who we are

>>96896643
>Typically lesser ones too relative to project size, because they've already embedded themselves in the industry and have all the means needed to cut costs. It's why they form in the first place, economy of scale. Didn't they teach you this in school?
are you from the 70's
corporations exist to bloat themselves and then sell the name to a bigger company and China (pre tariffs) made a print in the thousands cheaper than the best price TSR ever got.

>>96899060
>Anon begins an irrelevant rant about megacorporations because he is unable to separate his personal insecurities and angsts from the conversation
Sad.

>>96899082
how are shell companies and IPs exchanging hands related to my personal insecurities or angst? what could it have to do with anyone's personal life?

>>96899089
>How is my unhinged and irrelevant ranting indicative of my personal problems?
A bit of a self-answering question, anon. What you're saying is something I never stated anything contrary to, you know, it's just not relevant to the conversation.

>>96899116
oh, that's what you didn't understand
Mid size companies don't focus on selling products, the goal is having an IP popular enoguh for a bigger company to buy them. Instead of cutting costs they might inflate them to make the company look bigger without actually spending extra money. It's the syllicon valley model, but go watch The Profit to see people do it in every market possible.

>>96899278
>oh, that's what you didn't understand
I think you should be able to engage with the conversation before this.
>Starts ranting about irrelevancies once again.
Sorry anon, I understood all of this before you spoke. You're just too dumb and wound up to actually read what other people were posting.

>>96899311
You're the one refusing to connect what I'm saying.
Economy of scale only exists in certain fields, it hasn't been a thing in decades. All restaurants get their materials sources from the same place, Sysco usually. So you can open a new shop or have one for decades, your french fries will cost the same because they come from Sysco. That's why there are ghost kitchens in food apps popping up with the same production costs as a fast food company that's been at it for ages.

It's the same for ttrpg books. Economy of scale mattered when it was produced in the US by specialized printers. Now you can send it to chinese companies that even moving it around the world make it cheaper than any deal TSR got back in the day. There is no need for that much scale anymore, if you get the money from kickstarter or an investment you can hit almost the same margins as Hasbro. There are still people printing in the US, the Troike dudes are very proud about that.

Mid size companies no longer can dominate the market the way White Wolf did in the 90's because they can't offer prices or reach to potential writers. The only reason to have a mid size company is to build and IP to sell or selling the whole companuy. Like Talsorian and White Wolf did respectively.

>>96899394
>a million typos
>somehow Talsorian is fine
>Troika isn't

>>96899394
>You're the one refusing to connect what I'm saying.
No, anon, I simply do not care for your inability to follow a conversation.
>Starts talking about the food industry and thinks its 1-1 with how TTRPGs work
>Starts ranting about chinese companies and thinks we never outsourced to them before the 2000s
>Makes points that go completely against his own claims
>Thinks white wolf ever "dominated the market"
There are too many delusions to be worth dealing with or discussing. Sorry man, but you missed the discussion entirely and are having a rant about shit nobody here cares about while insisting we'd totally care and just don't understand (We do, you're just annoying and too dumb to realize we don't care).

>>96898952
>Questing Beast reviews anything as long as it isn't shit and you send him a physial book.
You also need to pay, generally speaking.

>>96899712
I know a couple people who sent him stuff and he reviewd it. But it took months.

>>96899794
Maybe he'll do it when it suits him. Like when he's short on unpaid content. Either way, not something you can rely on if you're in the promotion phase of your project.

>>96898952
>ashcan edition
No luck, but I did end up finding the rules reference for both, so thanks for the help. I like the art, but it gets in the way. Cyberdark kinda has a better layout.

>>96901787
The design totally gets in the way, but it's also informing you why the game is different from other stuff. It serves the purpose of those creative writing excercises WoD and other games had, and I prefer it over that.

I don't think they're particularly good games in a purely mechanical sense. The resolution mechanics are meh, the character creation is confusing for no reason (DiS replaces the convertion table for 1d4-1d4 and gives you the same results), and my main issue is that the HP is a pointless amount. It's 1 hit 80% of the time no matter what number your sheet says. Strangely when I played Pirate Borg we had 2 characters hit exactly 0hp to make the broken roll, but the 4 times I ran a MB game I didn't see that that happen even once.

>>96904045
eh, depends on how backward compatible you want to make it with original d&d:

the original used 3d6 for stats, where a +0 modifier happens about 50% of the time, while d4-d4 gives the same range but a different distribution, with +0 only happening about 30% of the time

same reason the Broken state is rare, original d&d had instant death when HP reached zero, so roll on an "exactly 0 HP" event is kinda rare, meant more as flavor than an actual, meaningful mechanic

you could change that, like Black Powder and Brimstone adds a proper death save "at 0 or negative HP roll Toughness DR12, on a success you are merely Broken"

it's like backward compatibility vs using whatever rule suits your table best, both seem fine.

>>96904779
I guess, but I don't really get the need to make it compatible tho. They could just take the mechanics they want and change everything else. Maybe they wanted some degree of similarity to propertly "fit" the OSR label and that probably helped promote the product when it was completely new. But MB hacks shouldn't be bothered by that, no one expects cy_borg to be close to OSR.

Mausritter Month is live https://www.backerkit.com/c/collections/mausritter-month
Anyone backing anything? I backed Junk City, Tales from Pwyll and might do one more but I'm not sure which

it he Japanese edition more or less readable?

>>96907816
if the rest is in the same style, much more readable.

>>96907816
have you tried fucking looking?

>>96908551
yes

>>96909224
so then take a wild guess

Looking for post-apocalyptic adventures ala Fallout/MadMax/Gamma World.
Preferably a dungeon crawl in a vault style system of old tech.

>>96909300
Anomalous subsurface enviroment, plus the fanzine "legends w earth"

>>96909370
legends of the new earth**
sry im drunk

>>96909300
Ashes Without Number just came out.

Or is that too b/x to be considered Nusr?

>>96909300
expedition to barrier peaks

>>96909442
>Ashes Without Number just came out.
Thanks, I'll pass

>Or is that too b/x to be considered Nusr?
I'd say it is NuSR, it's just not very good.

>>96910566
Oof, L take.

>>96910597
>uhm, like, yikes. can we take some time to unpack this?

>>96838617
thats what what makes it a shoddy knockoff you fucking goof

>>96910597
I agree with him, SWN and WWN were both incredibly disappointing and lame. They were my introduction to OSR and made me write off the entirety of it as low effort garbage for a few years.

>>96911290
how exactly are xWN disappointing and "low effort"

>>96912321
>How exactly
Can't really prove a negative other than telling you they lack in many ways that I found egregious. I'd sooner ask why you think they're high effort instead.

>>96912429
>asked to substantiate on an OPINION
>it's like you are asking me to prove a negative or whatever anon
nvm you obviously have nothing worthwhile to say

>>96912880
>Asked to substantiate
Well like I said anon, my opinion is that it's lacking. There's not much to keep going on about.
I notice that you can't actually substantiate why it's high effort though. I wonder why :^)

Why is so much of this thread ppl arguing about nothing and insulting, like, literally what is the point?

>>96910566
>>96911290
The "Without Number" series is mostly praised for its tables and random generation. Do you find the games itself to be lacking or those tools for generation? Or both? One thing to note and that may affect any "review" is that like 80% of each game is available for free, so it "only" costs your time to engage with them.

>>96917467
Both, honestly. I was hopeful when I picked up SWN, and the ruleset is like B/X but worse, while the generators are like those from Traveller but worse. According to my taste of course. Not claiming to be objective in any way.

I've also tried to look at WWN, and I've found zero reasons to use it over any other retroclone or original edition.

>>96917467
>The "Without Number" series is mostly praised for its tables and random generation.
I remember, and I found it very grim that something so lackluster was getting praise.

>>96917541
Fair, thanks for elaborating. I did see that someone created a free online app that basically uses the SWN tables, but, you know, it's all automated. That's neat in a pinch.
>>96917738
Grim and lackluster in the sense that such content is unimpressive or unnecessary in general? Or just think that it wasn't accomplished in an actually noteworthy way?

>>96917804
Both.

>>96917541
>>96917738
SWN and WWN work best as supplements to other systems or games. They're very much the 1kg sacks of unbleached flour of RPGs. Not exciting, but useful structural material.

It's super weird to say the without number games are mechanically lacking in a thread dedicated to a subgenre of games that mechanically boil down to "roll a d20 high". If -WN are lacking, the Borgs are downright ephemeral.

>>96919357
>If -WN are lacking, the Borgs are downright ephemeral.
The Borgs are generally vacuous, yeah. They do have one thing though: Art and presentation, which at least conveys its own unique tones and expectations and does something the GM probably can't on his own.
Without Number? Any decent GM could get whatever it has to offer by spending a couple afternoons jotting down ideas for random things. Hell they'd probably do a better job at it, too.

>>96919687
>and does something the GM probably can't on his own
... You can't find cool art and describe things? Probably shouldn't be a gm.
>jotting down random things is the same as using a table
Not over time, really isn't. External sources for generation are key otherwise the gm's own material and setups become very derivative very quickly.

It always baffles me people looked at the XYZ without number series as rules for the game. That's not what it was for. They're tools for gameworld building and maybe some houserules to use if it fits.

>>96829321 (OP)
Terror Target Gemini.

I don't know If I like the massive damage threshold being your max HP on a rolled d8 followed by a saving throw if you pass the threshold. Normally, in OSR games, you just die at 0 hp. But in this game, at 0 HP, you roll a d20 with a 5% chance of not going down, a 45% chance of surviving KOd or a 45% chance of surviving KOd but being maimed and 5% chance of insta dying. But, then this mechanic sort of doesn't matter until players amass 3,000 wen (monies) and pay for level 3. Because most enemies deal 1d6+1 or higher damage vs your d8 HP, it basically translates to bypassing this roll on most level 1 and level 2 PCs. I dunno, I'm rambling, but generally, i'd rather have 0=dead than this weird "give the PCs hopium that they might make it" system.

>>96920688
>... You can't find cool art and describe things?
Anon, Morkbork does not "find" art for you, and describing something is not the same as art. Are you daft?
>Not over time, really isn't
Sure it is, just assign random numbers to them. You could actually make more cohesive and functional tables than what Without Number offers that way, too. So not only can you get what it offers yourself, but you can get it in significantly higher quality.
>B-but you HAVE to use something someone else made for randomization because... Well just because!
Sounds like a skill issue.

Ha hah, i've noticed a lot of oldheads gushing over tables and thought it was weird. Like they even recommend books that are only tables. I have used tables here and there, but I cannot imagine just rolling for everything like some shoddily programmed roguelite.

>>96922884
>newfag tourist thinks appendix A is for using at the table

>>96922893
No, these older millenials/younger genx advocate you roll everything during the game and don't do any prep. it's weird to me.

>>96922630
Anon, you're actually retarded.
>find book with art in it
>not finding art somehow
You're trying to say you can come up with great ideas all on your own, but also that the coffee table art book does things you can't.
Post your high skill great ideas.

>>96923013
>Noprpep!
is a meme.
There are 2 varieties of tables. In-game and preparation based.
Both have uses. Neither stand on their own.

>>96923013
I'm not going to sit here and claim the be the most well read person in retard to this topic, but I read a couple of Osr/nusr adjacent and blogs and I never see people advocate for the kind of random generation you're talking about, beyond maybe wandering monster tables. Random tables are for prep, for forcing you to make connections between seemingly conflicting or disparate details.

>>96923077
>Anon, you're actually retarded.
t. Guy who thinks describing something is the exact same as a painting.
>find book with art in it
Morkborg doesn't do this either, anon. Unless you argue that looking at Morkborg is something you can do... WIthout Morkborg? Your arguments are senseless and it's obvious you're heated over a game you like getting derided by other anons.

>>96923077
It's pointless to argue with that guy, dude. The kind of person who cannot just say "eh, I didn't really like it/it didn't really grab me," but instead has to come up with a subjective yet vague reason for why something is bad is never going to have a coherent point.

>>96923114
Search any DnD topic and click on the oldest and crudiest looking guy you find. more than one of them will have some video named something like "How this book changed how I DM forever" and it's a long-ish video about rolling everything during the game with the help of some book that is nothing but tables. I used to get these when youtube decided to suggest me proffDM and his orbiters a year or so back and went out of control from there.

>>96923129
>The kind of person who cannot just say "eh, I didn't really like it/it didn't really grab me,"
This was said early on and anon insisted that you MUST back up all opinions with a dissertation of why you hold them.

>>96923129
>>96923077
>Say something retarded
>Immediately start samefagging to cover yourself
Shamelessly retarded. Might've worked better if that hadn't already been tried and this tangent wasn't started by you being giga-asshurt that some people dislike WN.

>>96923129
>>96923077
>>96920688
>>96919357
>>96912880
>>96912321
>>96910597
>>96910856
Something about these posts smells a little...
Fishy.

>>96923169
>>96923201
nou

>>96923201
ehay antcay eadray fiay ypetay ikelay histay

>>96923310
Yep, it's the fishfag. Figures you'd be out here repping dogshit like WWN and SWN lol. How's your crusade over ACKS going since you got ran out of /osrg/ buddy?

>>96910682
>>96911290
>>96912429
>>96912429
>>96916503
>>96917541
>>96917738
>>96919687

Uh oh I guess the ACKSshill is super butthurt people are talking about another game in the thread.

ouyay otgay tfobay maolay, illkaky ourselfyay

>>96923877
illk ourselfyay

>>96923331
>How's your crusade over ACKS going since you got ran out of /osrg/ buddy?
It's not going well, lmao
He's had to start claiming through gritted teeth that "ACKS is a fine game, I just know 2e belongs in this general" to try to slide now. It's not working either.