Search results for tag #osr
I enjoy watching Wandering DMs because Paul & Dan are quite different in their referee styles.
The latest episode goes into their last weekend game, where Dan ran The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth.
I watched some of the weekend game live. Their recap goes into a great topic although it is not named. The episode is just a review of their game of The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, but the side topic (maybe the real topic) is... player expectations? the logic or lack of logic of dungeons? and it dovetails into game style preference.
In short, it is one of the topics that is ripe for people arguing on the internet!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r73CrI7pow
I certainly lean more into the camp of getting the player's involved about what kind of game is expected.
I am also not a fan of killer dungeons, nor much of a fan of many of Gygax's dungeons. Too many "trick the players" sort of set ups. But that is just my preference. And I have been here before, on the internet, and I am sure the counter argument will surface that the dungeons are "not that hard", you just have to use your brain.
Well, we've made our daylong OD&D game work for 3 hours so far. It's been ... riotously chaotic as normal for this campaign.
I even got to resurrect a Mass Effect scene! Drained orcs on spikes...
We're taking a quick lunch/bio break and restarting in 45 min.
Alt...
A scene from the first Mass Effect video game on the very first mission on Eden Prime. Humans have been placed on spikes and turned in zombie-like husks - with glowing white/blue eyes and weird blue mechanical-organic effects on their body.
@Tim_Eagon @HeyeBodo Deathbringer especially is just Senzar. It's rediscovered the same fast but mediocre mechanics, same comic book aesthetics, ultra-violence, "edge boy" girlie pinups, level 20 god mode. Nobody needs this. But if you market it to the right people, it'll sell 50,000 deluxe box copies.
#ttrpg #osr #dnd #deathbringer #senzar
Recent articles about the Deathbringer crowdfunding campaign have really crystallized for me why I've found the whole thing kind of off-putting (as much as I've thought about it, I'm not a huge fan of the 5e D&D YouTube ecosystem in general). Ostensibly, it should appeal to me as a 50-year old, straight white male who played in the 80s, likes current old-school games, and is a fan of classic fantasy, S&S, and sci-fi. But this is 2026, not 1976.
July 2026: I'm making good progress on my #Dungeon23 🫠
🐌🐢🐌🐢🐌🐢
Three years too late, but who could have guessed that actually starting a campaign in my setting would force me to make actual progress on it? 😅
Running #LiminalHorror Deluxe, an #IntoTheOdd based urban fantasy #TTRPG.
I made a quick and dirty JS character generator to save some time when rolling new PCs: https://www.whidou.fr/liminal_horror_crea.html
#OSR #DrawIO #Megadungeon #JDR
Alt...
Diagram view of a megadungeon, white modes and edges on a black background, drawn with DrawIO, labels in 21st century French.
A cluster of nodes in the top left is labelled "Plan général" / "Overall layout".
Next to it is a cluster of elliptical nodes labelled "Factions".
The first three levels of the dungeon are a huge mess of intermingled nodes. The level labels read "Parking", "Envers"/"Other side", "Bureau 33", "Congélo"/"Freezer".
Bock auf einen #OSR Pointcrawl, den man in 1-2 Abenden spielen kann? Mit Eis, Yaks, einem toten Gott und einem Raumschiff?
Hier habt ihr einen, von mir, @Seba und @simiofdoom.bsky.social . Kostet nichts. Downloadet zuhauf und erzählt es allen weiter!
#pnpde
https://sebahahn.itch.io/the-anvil-of-winter
Alt...
A haughty alien with a glowing purple sphere in its hand, with the caption "The Anvil of Winter" underneath.
Wenn jemand eine Abkühlung braucht: Wie wärs mit einem Pointcrawl durch ewigen Winter?
https://sebahahn.itch.io/the-anvil-of-winter
Das ist unser Beitrag zum diesjährigen Appendix-N-Jam. Also OSR / DnD. Dungeon war uns zu warm. Umsonst und draußen ist die Devise.
#pnpde #pnp #dnd #dnd5e #dnd5 #osr #OSE #adventure #rpg #ttrpg
Glimmermark session 56: they went down to the troglodyte cave again and tried to defeat the tribe that lived there. In between they met mostly inconsequential random encounters... and a giant leech that just dropped on them.
The fight with the stinky lizards was tough, although nobody really went all that close to death and smart spell use took care of some opponents. Lucky for them about half the tribe was out at that moment, and they managed to take down the king of troglodytes.
@HeyeBodo Forever GM: I don't do urban crawls usually. I give a little menu of interesting things, shops, etc. they can do or poke into, then back to the adventure. If they come up with something else, great.
I'm not doing another street-by-street door-by-door procedural. Even Lankhmar is very annoying to run like that, and most aren't as detailed or known.
#ttrpg #osr
#ttrpg question: IMO (larger) cities are particularly interesting adventuring milieu, but they can also be challenging for the GM, especially when cities aren’t just used as set pieces, but are meant to be spaces for interaction/exploration: You are faced with a high density of NPCs and encounters, and many points of interest.
Question for the players: Do you like city crawls?
Question for the GMs: What procedures and tools do you use for urban adventures? #osr
#pnpde Frage: Städte sind m.E. besonders interessante, aber für die SL eben auch sehr herausfordernde Abenteuerschauplätze, v.a. wenn Städte im Spiel nicht nur als Kulisse dienen, sondern echte Interaktionsfläche sein sollen: Dann ist man hoher NSC-/Encounter-Dichte und ggf. Vielen Points of Interest konfrontiert. Frage an die Spielenden: Mögt ihr City Crawls?
Frage an die SL: Welche Prozeduren & Hilfsmittel nutzt ihr für Stadtabenteuer? #osr
I could probably talk game mechanics all day. In the latest Wandering DMs, they are talking with Kelsey Dionne and Paul asks about why did Kelsey decided to have Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic in Shadowdark (which I think is a pretty good mechanic), but the real interesting thing is the follow up question of does Kelsey announce AC to the players at the start of combat. And the answer is yes. And the reason is to get the information about fail/success chances to the players quickly. I have been harping on this point for 20+ years. It is why I prefer CoC, and Star Frontiers, and Runequest. The chance of success is written down on the character sheet. It is in front of the player. It works better to convey the information about what will work and what will not work more quickly to the player.
https://youtu.be/UU-za2gIaDw?t=2702
But, do not take this as I am advocating for the "One True Way" of playing a game. Just my preference and my reasoning for it. Other systems are fun too.
If you take the various 80s TSR task resolution charts and try to normalize them to compare, you get the following set of images. By normalize, I mean I just converted them all to roll low, percent chances.
The chart based games had "bounded accuracy" long before Mike Mearls came up with the term.
Still, to my mind, Marvel, Gamma World, Star Frontiers Zebulon, TSR Conan are all just providing "degrees of success" with different chance to achieve different degrees. (Image 1 and 2)
How the designer drew the various lines of percentages just seems to be make an increasing line by whatever whim struck them at the time.
If you try to convert D&D to a chart, you end up with a pretty bland chart. (Image 3)
Alternity did not have a chart either, but it had "degrees of success" by implementing a very simple mathematical formula to compute degrees of success. If you convert the chances to a chart, it looks like all the old 80s TSR charts. (Image 3)
I worked out these charts ~15 years ago, but decided to do them again and add some more data of games I missed.
#dnd #rpg #ttrpg #osr #gametheory
Ich genieße den Urlaub auf #Baltrum gerade total. Freund*innen, die die LoFi und Pink Pony of Death #osr Cons organisiert haben sind mit dabei, meine Family ist übers Wochenende vom Festland auf die Insel gekommen und gestern hat Wanderer Bill (Grenzland Zine) mit seinem Segelboot auf der kleinen Insel Station gemacht 🙂 Auf eine Kanne Tee vorbeigeschaut wie 1 Gandalf. Ich les #pnpde Krams (#ZaluZine) und trinke Bier im Strandkorb. Hitzehölle Rhein-Main und Job-Unsicherheit sind gerade weit weg.
Recent discussion reminded me of a blog post I wrote in 2013 about how there is a connection of sorts between Alternity and FASERIP. Sadly, the wayback machine seems to have lost my images.
But I have backups!
FASERIP is a roll high on 1d100 with a chart to have degrees of success. (Image 2)
If you flip FASERIP to a roll low on 1d100 and plot the dgrees of success, you get (Image 3)
Alternity is a roll low on a 1d20 with a formula to figure out degrees of success which I will not go into here but you can read in the wayback machine if you are interested. If you convert that formula to a chart you get (Image 1)
@ToweroftheArchmage @frotz @phf
@deinol They're on archive:
https://archive.org/details/tsr09029permanentcharacterfolderandadventurerecords/page/n1/mode/2up
No THACO, the 10..0 boxes are for Wpn vs AC.
But TSR considered it DM's Eyes Only even after Judges Guild & others had republished the tables.
Part of the reason I found AD&D so off-putting, and went back to OD&D/Basic and then Palladium & RoleMaster.
A conversation about AD&D, and how the character to-hit matrices were in the DMG, which was “Dungeon Master Only!” material.
I know by the 1986 character sheet product it included a spot for THAC0. I’m curious what the early AD&D sheets looked like.
I think the 80s version of the PHB had a record sheet, but I’m uncertain.
Anyone know where I can find a scan of these sheets:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permanent_Character_Folder_%26_Adventure_Records
I was looking through old Gamma World adventurers, and it occurs to me, looking at the woman holding the stop sign in GW2 Famine in Fargo (Image 1)
I believe that is suppose to be young Mary Kirchoff
Compare the drawing to this known drawing of Mary Kirchoff in issue 9 of Polyhedron Magazine, when she became editor of the magazine. (Image 2)
She became head of TSR's book department eventually? Discovered R.A. Salvatore
https://dragonlance.fandom.com/wiki/Mary_Kirchoff
The poll asking if people use war dogs in D&D is what got me to thinking about the 80s module O2 Blade of Vengeance.
https://social.vivaldi.net/@randomwizard/116873582032858802
The provided pre-rolled character Erystelle comes with two war dog pets.
Holidays at the sea, back home in #EastFrisia, Temporary tattoo (seal!) on my wrist, beer in the beach chair, daydreaming about a new campaign for our #osr open table.
Alt...
Fake tattoo
Guten Morgen! ☕️🎧 Die letzten 25 Tickets für die #MonsteriaCon sind nun im Vorverkauf. 12.09.2026 in Münster. #PnPde #OSR #Tabletop #DungeonCrawler Man sieht sich: https://eventfrog.de/de/p/freizeit-ausfluege/gaming/monsteriacon-7479079213867213451.html
Glimmermark session 55: they decided against any of the other locations and tried to get to where the troglodytes lived under the castle.
In between they met a shadow that nearly scared them off because attempts at Turn Undead were unsuccessful with increasingly good dice results. (shadows are not undead)
Then they stormed into a cave hall full of troglodytes to save a human victim being prepared for dinner, only to be surprised by the sheer amounts of lizards.
This is, probably, my favorite adventure I have ever run. O2 Blade of Vengeance.
I do not think I would recommend it to anyone though. It is a 1 DM for 1 player module. It also is tailored to one character, an elf, returning to his homeland.
But it is full of flavor. All of the uk based modules had a certain style that is hard to describe.
I use to try and emulate this adventure with any content I put together for the groups I play with. The problem is, it takes a lot of time; time I do not have these days. Also, it is rare that a group of players even cares about the fidelity of the world, or having some kind of epic goal like the one in this adventure. "VENGEANCE". They just want to sit around, maybe drink a beer, tell some nerdy jokes, beat up some orcs, collect gold, and call it a night.
Had an interesting discussion in last nights game. One player made a thief character with an 18 charisma and 8 dexterity. They are level 2 now. They are complaining that they do not have much to do except pick locks and disarm traps in the game. Sort of complaining that they can not even hit well with their sling so they feel useless.
I said I would think on it. Note that this is in my homebrew game and I have changed quite a few things and we have experimented with some different sub systems.
I think the problem harkens back to something that is different between 1e AD&D and 4e and 5e D&D. In the modern game, there has been an effort to make each class viable. If you have a bard with an 18 charisma, then a lot of their abilities and chances to do things will be based off of charisma.
But in 1e AD&D, the benefits of a high charisma are a bit more circumspect.
There is also a bit of "how much should the game framework hold your hand"? If a player makes bad choices, is it their fault? Do they have to achieve a certain level of system mastery to be able to play the game? Or should all player choices when making up a character lead to somewhat viable characters?
Wir konnten Kapitel 1 von Buch V unserer #DnD -Kampagne, nach dem TPK, doch noch nicht zuschlagen und haben die #CairnBarebonesEdition getestet! 📝🎲
Hier der Bericht der Action geladenen Spielsitzung:
https://www.tanelorn.net/index.php/topic,118203.msg135355257.html#msg135355257
🔥🔥🔥
#pnpde #osr #ttrpg #odnd
#Avalon #ZeitDerWölfe
#CairnRPG #Cairn2e
From Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, Wintercon V (1976):
#ttrpg #osr #dnd
Alt...
GUIDELINES FOR SECTION OF THE BEST PLAYER
1. Active before passive
2. Thinking/reasoning before rash
3. Bold before timid
4. Uninjured before wounded
5. Alive before dead
6. Leader before follower
Other factors of importance ares Is the player responsible
for monster kills either through actual attack or devising
methods for others to slay? Has the player managed to ac-
quire a considerable sun of treasure above that held by
others in the group? Who located the magical items gained?
And by all means, remember to reward the fellow who causes
the party to be saved from certain destruction or who was
clever enough to avoid fighting and still managed to gain
the desired end.
I've been thinking a lot about the Cepheus Engine (the open source version of Traveller), and how it has the potential to be the core of an OSR-style game design community.
I've written up my thoughts here:
https://polyhedralnonsense.com/2022/07/02/the-new-osr-the-case-for-the-cepheus-engine/
#OSR #CepheusEngine
Nach einer viiiiiel zu laaangen Pause ist unsere hausgemachte #DnD -Kampagne wieder angelaufen. 🤠
Allerdings mit TPK in der ersten regulären Spielsitzung nach einer kleinen Session Zero. 😱
Aber lest am besten selbst: 💀
https://www.tanelorn.net/index.php/topic,118203.msg135353852.html#msg135353852
🧟🧟♀️🧟♂️
#pnpde #osr #ttrpg #odnd
#Avalon #ZeitDerWölfe
#SwordsAndWizadry
Konnte heute endlich mal wieder eine Runde #TheHallsofArdenVul an unserem online #osr Open Table leiten - morgen noch ein Arbeitstag und dann endlich nach Norden, in den Urlaub, ans Meer.
Once again, @mhd reminded me of an old RPG. If you take GURPs CONAN and you add science, you end up with Masters of the Universe RPG.
Which was already made in the 80s, by FASA, but it was a terrible game, sort of made for kids, sort of a RPG but crossed with a board game and without a referee.
#dnd #rpg #ttrpg #osr #conan #heman
I wonder if Conan has had the most variations of game systems made for the setting?
I dug into the old 80s TSR Conan box set. The rules for healing are, if you rest, you gain a bunch of points back tied to some ability score.
There is a medicine skill, if someone does a medicine check on you, you heal at double the usual rate.
So, knowing the people I play with, what this would result in, is the group will do one combat, get hurt, and then retreat back to town and heal up.
