Older D&D and Retroclone Thread: From OD&D To 4E

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Older D&D and Retroclone Thread: From OD&D To 4E

remusclaw: Dec 8, 2009

There used to be 0E PDFs before the 4E piracy freak-out take-down.

Here is a link to the outdated news from when they went up:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php...ns-for-Download

remusclaw fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Jul 22, 2015

# ? Jul 22, 2015 08:03

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 18:52

90s Cringe Rock: Nov 29, 2006

gradenko_2000 posted:

Were there ever official PDFs of OD&D/Three Brown Books and their supplements, and the Holmes Basic Set that we might expect someday?

OD&D definitely had official PDFs. They weren't very good scans though.

# ? Jul 22, 2015 08:15

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

remusclaw posted:

There used to be 0E PDFs before the 4E piracy freak-out take-down.

Here is a link to the outdated news from when they went up:

http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php...ns-for-Download

Ah, cool. Hopefully DTRPG will release those again in time the way they've been rationing out everything else.

# ? Jul 22, 2015 08:25

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

I never saw those so I ended up scanning my brown box copies.

# ? Jul 22, 2015 18:53

aldantefax: Oct 10, 2007; ALWAYS BE MECHFISHIN'

Does anybody have experience running Birthright, Kingmaker, or similar "D&D-at-the-empire-level" type of games? I used to own the Birthright campaign box (and I found it when I was moving a few years ago, though missing the main rulebook) so I was interested to find that someone made a management tool for Birthright back in 2012:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/

Historically, there has always been a concept of strongholds for sufficiently powerful player characters as part of a natural progression, and I think I've seen it in a few retroclones like ACKS (which is ridiculous for other reasons). I'm interested in hearing about how those types of campaigns are formulated, what tools are used (since there's a lot of bookkeeping), and if there are any house rules that streamline managing an empire from the get go.

# ? Jul 23, 2015 19:08

alg: Mar 14, 2007; A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:13

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Does anyone here have/own Silent Legions? I'm considering picking it up, but I'd like to know how well its own included gameplay mechanics hold up, since all the reviews I've read only ever discuss its random roll tables for horror mythos creation.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:18

Byers2142: May 5, 2011; Imagine I said something deep here...

gradenko_2000 posted:

Does anyone here have/own Silent Legions? I'm considering picking it up, but I'd like to know how well its own included gameplay mechanics hold up, since all the reviews I've read only ever discuss its random roll tables for horror mythos creation.

I bought it, but haven't dug into it much. From what I've read, it seems like it plays a lot like Stars without Number. Same general skill system, etc. The classes seem slightly more robust, and things like money are more abstract.

Edit: If you have specific questions, let me know, I'll dig out the relevant pieces from the book.

Byers2142 fucked around with this message at 14:26 on Jul 24, 2015

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:22

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Okay, things I'd like to know specifically about are:

1. Are the skills explicit as in SWN (Athletics, History, Science, Religion, Stealth, etc., or are they broad like in Scarlet Heroes?
2. What's combat like? 1d20 + attack bonus to beat AC?
3. Is there support for broad range of timelines? Could I run a modern and/or a future horror game with it?
4. Are there Sanity mechanics? Of course there should be sanity mechanics?

Basically I'd like to run an investigation game sometime but Call of Cthulhu/Trail of Cthulhu is a little bit rules-heavy for my taste, and I'd like to see if Silent Legions could work.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:36

Byers2142: May 5, 2011; Imagine I said something deep here...

gradenko_2000 posted:

Okay, things I'd like to know specifically about are:

1. Are the skills explicit as in SWN (Athletics, History, Science, Religion, Stealth, etc., or are they broad like in Scarlet Heroes?
2. What's combat like? 1d20 + attack bonus to beat AC?
3. Is there support for broad range of timelines? Could I run a modern and/or a future horror game with it?
4. Are there Sanity mechanics? Of course there should be sanity mechanics?

Basically I'd like to run an investigation game sometime but Call of Cthulhu/Trail of Cthulhu is a little bit rules-heavy for my taste, and I'd like to see if Silent Legions could work.

Ok, let me dig this PDF out:

Skill are explicit and fill 2 pages. Some are simple, such as Athletics, while others have specializations like Combat/Unarmed. Skill rolls are 2d6 + Skill Level, aiming at a set DC for the roll.
The roll in combat is 1d20 + Attribute Modifier + Combat Skill + Attack Bonus + Target AC. The attack hits on a 20 or better, natural 1 always misses, natural 20 always hits. In addition, there's a Slaughter die for damage that makes combat potentially more deadly but which most monsters and such are immune to.
Yes and no. They don't have explicit support for, say, a game in the year 2500, but the only thing that you'd need to add is the future tech and maybe tweak costs of equipment. If you look at SWN, a revolver does 1d8 damage and uses Dex. In Silent Legions, a revolver does 1d8 damage and uses Dex. Except for missing equipment in the tables, I don't see anything that would stop you running it in the future. As for modern, it lists Smartphones in the equipment list. It's meant to be played in the modern age, not in Lovercraft's 1930s New England.
There's a Madness mechanic. Madness starts at 0, and if you hit 100 you are completely lost to insanity. Every level up, you lose 10 Madness; you can also reduce Madness by taking a Delirium, but it's a gamble and could make things worse. Deliria are things like the quote below. The whole Madness rules are about two pages, and there's some good ideas there.

quote:

Personal Ritual: The PC must spend two hours each day in undisturbed calm to meditate, play, or propitiate their gods.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 14:57

Byers2142: May 5, 2011; Imagine I said something deep here...

More general impressions after thumbing through it again: it's light weight on the player's side, it takes a bit of work on the GM side because you're literally building the sandbox from scratch. If it's an IRL game you're planning, I think you can save a lot of time by taking a simple step: it's a modern times game set in the town/city you currently live in. Boom, like half of your work is done in one sentence. You'll want to build out the weird poo poo, but you don't need to spend time building out the starting area.

If it's a PbP or other electronic game, start it in a commonly known cultural touchstone. London, New York, somewhere like that. Or if you want to roll this into an existing campaign, it looks like it's fairly easy to roll in the pieces you need.

Prep time for a player, literally like 5 minutes. Prep time for a GM, an hour or two initially, maybe 30 minutes for each session after the first?

Also, the spell rules are pretty cool. 10 minutes per level to cast, and you need to be focused so no combat magic at all, and you risk Madness every time.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 15:10

obeyasia: Sep 21, 2004; Grimey Drawer

alg posted:

Expect a preview of the rulebook around GenCon.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 15:10

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Thanks for the info! That seems right up my alley and I do think I'll grab it while it's on sale.

# ? Jul 24, 2015 15:45

JonBolds: Feb 6, 2015

aldantefax posted:

Does anybody have experience running Birthright, Kingmaker, or similar "D&D-at-the-empire-level" type of games? I used to own the Birthright campaign box (and I found it when I was moving a few years ago, though missing the main rulebook) so I was interested to find that someone made a management tool for Birthright back in 2012:

http://brmanager.codeplex.com/

Historically, there has always been a concept of strongholds for sufficiently powerful player characters as part of a natural progression, and I think I've seen it in a few retroclones like ACKS (which is ridiculous for other reasons). I'm interested in hearing about how those types of campaigns are formulated, what tools are used (since there's a lot of bookkeeping), and if there are any house rules that streamline managing an empire from the get go.

I have played in one and GM'd another multi-year chumps-to-domain-level campaign. What can I do for you?

We had a couple spreadsheets, one big binder as a central definitive resource, and (mostly) ACKS domain rules when I played. When I GM'd it was hybrid ACKS/An Echo, Resounding. It was not that bad, really, and very, very fun. Game changes focus from dungeon crawl to forcing enemies into climactic conflicts where you can leverage as many of your daily resources as possible at once. Depending on system and mass combat rules used your fighter types are going to feel useless as gently caress. It really depends on how in-depth you want to go on management aspects and rules set! Generally, the best piece of advice I can give is that it's like sandbox setting design: You want to have specifics for what's right next door and outlines for everything else, and a good framework to flesh things out when you need them. When the player asks who the third duke over is, you want to be able to have that name or pull it off a table and have a table that tells you approximately how strong militarily and economically that person is. You can figure out the precise nitty-gritty stats to fit your approximation later.

The best tools and house rules, I think:
-A CALCULATOR, FOR REAL, HAVE ONE READY
-Well-tabbed and numbered index of useful pages in your sourcebook of choice for domain play right at the front of your GM notebook
-A central resource that is ABSOLUTELY definitive of any given country's stats. If you didn't ensure it was written down it didn't happen. Much less onerous than it sounds.
-A moment-by-moment and roll-by-roll log of events, one line to a roll/choice, in a notebook. This was huge for us, as we could go back a page and see what happened. Again, much less work than it sounds.
-domain-level events charts from oriental adventures (with some of the gygaxian squick removed)
-house rule / understanding that something might not exist or have status until it's asked about, like specific values for taxes n' poo poo.
-For a nitty-gritty system like ACKS, use averages aggressively for an area's stats only fully, uniquely stat out important areas
-mass combat is loving awesome and you probably won't regret putting extra work into using a detailed system for it

Anyways, what speicifics do you want to know?

# ? Jul 24, 2015 17:03

aldantefax: Oct 10, 2007; ALWAYS BE MECHFISHIN'

JonBolds posted:

- A moment-by-moment and roll-by-roll log of events, one line to a roll/choice, in a notebook. This was huge for us, as we could go back a page and see what happened. Again, much less work than it sounds.

Anyways, what speicifics do you want to know?

This sounds like it would be eminently doable with some agreed division of work (appointing someone in the group as the kingdom's chronicle keeper or just using something that tracks all rolls digitially would likely suffice).

I would be interested in setting up a game like that but I'm kind of trying to get a hold on the old rules and reconciling them with modernized rulesets. Do you have any specific things you encountered as difficulties/weaknesses of running the game aside from the bookkeeping aspects? How much of pre-campaign/pre-session setup is required to run the game smoothly? Did you use a physical notebook for record keeping, or something electronic?

# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:02

JonBolds: Feb 6, 2015

aldantefax posted:

This sounds like it would be eminently doable with some agreed division of work (appointing someone in the group as the kingdom's chronicle keeper or just using something that tracks all rolls digitially would likely suffice).

I would be interested in setting up a game like that but I'm kind of trying to get a hold on the old rules and reconciling them with modernized rulesets. Do you have any specific things you encountered as difficulties/weaknesses of running the game aside from the bookkeeping aspects? How much of pre-campaign/pre-session setup is required to run the game smoothly? Did you use a physical notebook for record keeping, or something electronic?

-Putting together your own combo of old rules and modern rulesets is going to be a lot of work, and the old rulesets aren't as good as you remember them being. There's a reason nobody's just cloning the old stuff, and that's because it didn't really hand out guidelines and rules systems that held up in play.
-The trick of the log thing is to note down the in-game date that domain stuff happens. It can be pretty important! Use a calendar that everyone understands. I used four 90-day seasons with a 5-day holiday period between fall and winter.
-Be very comfortable with elliding time. This makes the game bearable. Say "two months pass... what are you doing?" and let players roleplay it out in general terms. Use reaction rolls - that 2d6 + CHA chart is your friend for the results of everything from trade agreements to diplomatic missions that happen during downtime.

So a sample entry from my log might look like "1502, 46th Spring - Borborant the Fighter sends diplomatic mission to Duke Yuslux, rolls 12 on reaction and Duke agrees to the 50/50 split on the border disagreement."

I kept that log as a paper journal in a standard spiral-bound blue lined notebook, with each line being a new event. YMMV but that was easiest to manage at the table. I wouldn't really like having the player rolls and NPC rolls on two separate logs, but that's your call and the division of labor will speed things up. Your players will get bogged down in dates and plans and rules if you let them. Do your best to step in as arbiter of analysis paralysis when players bog down, and keep the game moving with random events as you need to.

The biggest hurdle for this kind of game is setting up prep beforehand. You need to know at least high-level stats for the other political entities of the same size nearby your players as well as names n' poo poo for what's beyond that. Any advice you read on building sandbox campaigns applies here, since you're doing the same kind of "sketch things out with 1 sentence descriptions, flesh them out as needed" work - just at a larger scale. Having really good maps is so important, because your players will need to constantly consult them. Under no circumstances should you deny your players useful maps because these are VITAL to their ability to know what's going on.

Sadly, yeah, this is the kind of game where you'll do lots of prep to set up the campaign and some before each night. Of course, using a light kingdom management system is going to help you here and keep the action more focused on what the players are precisely doing rather than what they're doing with their empire. That'll feel more like a standard fantasy game with a veneer of downtime and backdrop empire management. Personally, I tried to do my campaign prep more "post" than "pre" session - set up a short list of what needs to get fleshed out for next time, review events, then find time to prep that before the next session.

The hidden weakness is also the players who aren't interested in knowing how the realm rules work. You might get these. You'll either have to be comfortable interpreting their directives into the rules or know the rules well enough to answer questions on the fly here, and you'll probably have to manage their poo poo for them - or have them appoint another player their vizier and do it based off their directions (my recommendations).

# ? Jul 24, 2015 19:31

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

drat that's some good advice. I'd add notecards. That's the central army stat resource because you can pull them out and physically manipulate them. Also for the people who don't give a poo poo about kingdom level things, they can use mass combat in a dungeon to just walk over smaller lower level encounters with the gentleman's agreement that the interesting fights get played out.

In most OSR games a fighter's secondary stat should be charisma because reaction rolls are so important. I couldn't learn older D&D until I realized you're just rolling 2d6 four times before your encounters, such as but not limited to wandering monsters. I specifically play becmi and not rules cyclopedia because it had the avenger class, the most powerful fighter of all time. So get this: you have all the usual fighter things from od&d, basic, moldvay whatever, weapon skills*, and clerical spells at a third of your level. You can parley and claim asylum in any dungeon led by a chaotic monster, and in a lawful place like a castle you can lie and appear to be a paladin in every way.

_{*weapon skills are insanely powerful, like skilled in bolas meant that you could just wrap it around their neck and kill them on a 20. The grandmaster trainer in blackjack was the scariest mofo in the campaign.}

# ? Jul 25, 2015 06:13

LashLightning: Feb 20, 2010; You know you didn't have to go post that, right?
But it's fine, I guess...
You just keep being you!

X-mas In July Sale at DriveThruRpg - 25% off a bunch of PDFs and 15% off POD. If there was any OSR stuff you have in your wish-list, then now would be a good time to check it out. Thinking on getting the second volume of Dysons Delves, myself.

# ? Jul 26, 2015 02:34

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

How is Drive-Thru's POD compared to Lulu's, which is the only place I've ever bought them from.

# ? Jul 26, 2015 02:47

LashLightning: Feb 20, 2010; You know you didn't have to go post that, right?
But it's fine, I guess...
You just keep being you!

I'd say the same quality. My copy of Silent Legions is as nice as my copy of Yoon-Suin.

# ? Jul 26, 2015 02:59

Achmed Jones: Oct 16, 2004

I've never played 1E AD&D or Basic. I played 2E back in the day, a bit of 3E, and loved (and GMed a long campaign of) 4E. 5E is OK-ish.

I'm looking to run a hexcrawl/sandbox game. I'd really like to be able to build encounters quickly and easily (like I could with 4E), but I'd also like to avoid the stacks of modifiers that required an inch and a half of multicolored magnets and the hours-long combats of 4E. I've also no desire to leave ascending AC and other such niceties. I'm thinking something based on Basic would be cool, maybe Labyrinth Lord? I also have Spears of the Dawn and Torchbearer, but the latter seems incomplete (and a bit too dark for my tastes) and the former is based on Stars Without Number, and so incompatible with the tons of free supplements and creature lists that are online. In any case, does anyone have recommendations for someone with my background that wants to GM OSR (or similar) for the first time?

# ? Jul 26, 2015 23:53

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Achmed Jones posted:

I've never played 1E AD&D or Basic. I played 2E back in the day, a bit of 3E, and loved (and GMed a long campaign of) 4E. 5E is OK-ish.

I'm looking to run a hexcrawl/sandbox game. I'd really like to be able to build encounters quickly and easily (like I could with 4E), but I'd also like to avoid the stacks of modifiers that required an inch and a half of multicolored magnets and the hours-long combats of 4E. I've also no desire to leave ascending AC and other such niceties. I'm thinking something based on Basic would be cool, maybe Labyrinth Lord? I also have Spears of the Dawn and Torchbearer, but the latter seems incomplete (and a bit too dark for my tastes) and the former is based on Stars Without Number, and so incompatible with the tons of free supplements and creature lists that are online. In any case, does anyone have recommendations for someone with my background that wants to GM OSR (or similar) for the first time?

Basic Fantasy Roleplaying would be a really good choice, especially since it's free in PDF format and dirt cheap to buy physically and is very actively supported

# ? Jul 27, 2015 00:48

Elector_Nerdlingen: Sep 27, 2004

AD&D 1e actually works well for sandbox / hexcrawl games. Given your background, I'll just say that it has the same kinds of issues as 2e, only more so and you should have an idea of how it will play.

You could just use the basic/expert components of BECMI and do just fine too. I've done that a few times.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 01:13

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

So has anyone picked up Peril on the Purple Planet for DCC? I picked up the huge-rear end core book yesterday, and was wondering if I should also pick up a boxed set I'll never play.

e: What are the good 0-level adventures?

Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jul 27, 2015

# ? Jul 27, 2015 03:03

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Evil Mastermind posted:

So has anyone picked up Peril on the Purple Planet for DCC? I picked up the huge-rear end core book yesterday, and was wondering if I should also pick up a boxed set I'll never play.

e: What are the good 0-level adventures?

Well Sailors On The Starless Seas is generally considered pretty good, although haven't heard anything bad about any of the other Official 0-Level/Funnel Adventures and there's also a decent amount of 3rd Party Adventures as well(have yet to run into a bad 3rd party product for DCC actually)

# ? Jul 27, 2015 03:26

NuclearPotato: Oct 27, 2011

Evil Mastermind posted:

So has anyone picked up Peril on the Purple Planet for DCC? I picked up the huge-rear end core book yesterday, and was wondering if I should also pick up a boxed set I'll never play.

e: What are the good 0-level adventures?

As far as the 0-level adventures go, the one in the back of the book is pretty good. Most people point to Sailors on the Starless Sea as the best, but I've yet to run it to confirm this. The 0-level adventure in the Chained Coffin box set was pretty good, too.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 03:27

Man Dancer: Apr 22, 2008

NuclearPotato posted:

As far as the 0-level adventures go, the one in the back of the book is pretty good. Most people point to Sailors on the Starless Sea as the best, but I've yet to run it to confirm this. The 0-level adventure in the Chained Coffin box set was pretty good, too.

I ran the Chained Coffin funnel to start my current campaign, which was quite a bit of fun (very deadly, though). The currently teetering-on-the-edge-of-2nd-level survivors of that funnel just got zapped to the Purple Planet where they just started taking a bite out of the funnel from that set before we broke for the night. I'm interested to see if they will be able to overcome with character quality given that they are lacking the typical funnel character quantity. We'll see!

Given how the adventures and campaign settings are set up, I had to do a lot less heavy lifting than I would have suspected to link Chained Coffin and Purple Planet in the same campaign. I'll get my money's worth yet!

Also: Here's a fun set of random encounters I've been drawing from for the Chained Coffin setting.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 04:05

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Achmed Jones posted:

I've never played 1E AD&D or Basic. I played 2E back in the day, a bit of 3E, and loved (and GMed a long campaign of) 4E. 5E is OK-ish.

I'm looking to run a hexcrawl/sandbox game. I'd really like to be able to build encounters quickly and easily (like I could with 4E), but I'd also like to avoid the stacks of modifiers that required an inch and a half of multicolored magnets and the hours-long combats of 4E. I've also no desire to leave ascending AC and other such niceties. I'm thinking something based on Basic would be cool, maybe Labyrinth Lord? I also have Spears of the Dawn and Torchbearer, but the latter seems incomplete (and a bit too dark for my tastes) and the former is based on Stars Without Number, and so incompatible with the tons of free supplements and creature lists that are online. In any case, does anyone have recommendations for someone with my background that wants to GM OSR (or similar) for the first time?

Labyrinth Lord unfortunately still uses descending AC, but is otherwise the functional equivalent of Basic D&D (which is one of, if not the classic hexcrawl game) and even has a supplement to convert it into AD&D 1e.

If you want to keep ascending AC, I'd suggest Basic Fantasy RPG, and then just add other supplements from their Downloads section if you want to flesh out the game with more options (I'm personally a fan of the Combat Options document so Fighters still have access to AD&D-style Weapon Specialization)

The other approach is to use Target 20 so that you don't have to hand-convert descending AC and can play with any OSR game:
A player's Base Attack Bonus is equal to 20, minus the roll they need to hit an AC 0 target
When a player attacks, roll d20, plus Base Attack Bonus, plus the target's AC. If the result is a 20 or greater, it hits

# ? Jul 27, 2015 04:26

OtspIII: Sep 22, 2002

Achmed Jones posted:

I've never played 1E AD&D or Basic. I played 2E back in the day, a bit of 3E, and loved (and GMed a long campaign of) 4E. 5E is OK-ish.

I'm looking to run a hexcrawl/sandbox game. I'd really like to be able to build encounters quickly and easily (like I could with 4E), but I'd also like to avoid the stacks of modifiers that required an inch and a half of multicolored magnets and the hours-long combats of 4E. I've also no desire to leave ascending AC and other such niceties. I'm thinking something based on Basic would be cool, maybe Labyrinth Lord? I also have Spears of the Dawn and Torchbearer, but the latter seems incomplete (and a bit too dark for my tastes) and the former is based on Stars Without Number, and so incompatible with the tons of free supplements and creature lists that are online. In any case, does anyone have recommendations for someone with my background that wants to GM OSR (or similar) for the first time?

Small point of warning regarding building encounters:

Balance is really hard to predict, since BD&D character power levels are super affected by attrition! Imagine--a party of 5th level characters who have been beaten up pretty bad an used up their high-level spells versus a party of fully intact 2nd level characters--both end up having about the same number of remaining HP and remaining spells to cast, so they're effectively at the same power-level despite being super different character levels. Also, combat tends to be pretty swingy in general, since monsters tend to have pretty crappy ACs but lots of HP while PCs are often super tough but low-HP, so a few unlucky hits can put some serious hurt on your players. Balance tends to be more determined by letting the players choose which engagements to run/negotiate their ways out of than they are based on perfect combat-power-level design, so be sure not to create too many choke-points where you absolutely force your players to murder a certain encounter before they can progress any plot that might exist (especially in time-sensitive contexts).

# ? Jul 27, 2015 06:09

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

A strong party in labrynth lord min maxes their reaction rolls. Personally, I think the fighter should put cha as their secondary stat. If you're looking at labrynth lord also check out the rules cyclopedia clone dark dungeons. The rules cyclopedia was a collated version of the BECMI box sets, so the cyclopedia contains all of basic but with a ton of other things like the amazing weapon skills from the master box! Companion was domain rules, expert is the other half of B/X because technically basic has no rules for going outside.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 08:29 on Jul 27, 2015

# ? Jul 27, 2015 08:23

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Don't forget morale checks, too. Between those and reaction rolls combat isn't nearly as ultra-deadly as all the horror stories make it out to be as long as you're not throwing literal save-or-dies against the players.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 08:32

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

Dude they have rules for dropping meat as you're running. Always be dropping meat! RC gave you tons of ways to make the enemy check morale. The RC fighter is the most busted poo poo. You can throw a sword at a dude. They roll for surprise and take maximum damage if surprised. That fucker is going to trigger at least 2 morale checks, one for max damage one for dropping an enemy to 25% hp, probably two more for straight killing a dude, and one for reducing their force by however many %. From the start of basic, look at your bastard sword damage and its hurl range. You are just one shotting a level appropriate monster 1/6th of the time.

Babylon Astronaut fucked around with this message at 08:59 on Jul 27, 2015

# ? Jul 27, 2015 08:48

Power Player: Oct 2, 2006; GOD SPEED YOU! HUNGRY MEXICAN

Has anyone in this thread ever discussed alternate house rules for level draining? I think I might just steal Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's mechanics of "you attack as if a lower level but it eventually comes back once you defeat enough monsters" instead of it being permanent. IE, you attack as if you have a HD lower, but once you earn, say, 500 XP, you go back to fighting as your level and also that 500 XP is not "wasted", it still goes towards your total.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 14:19

OtspIII: Sep 22, 2002

Power Player posted:

Has anyone in this thread ever discussed alternate house rules for level draining? I think I might just steal Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup's mechanics of "you attack as if a lower level but it eventually comes back once you defeat enough monsters" instead of it being permanent. IE, you attack as if you have a HD lower, but once you earn, say, 500 XP, you go back to fighting as your level and also that 500 XP is not "wasted", it still goes towards your total.

Yeah, I run level drain pretty close to that. You lose the XP, but also gain double until you negate your deficit. It's still just about the worst thing in the game to get hit by, but it doesn't give you that "well, those 6 months of play were worthless" feeling true level drain does.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 17:26

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Since today is Gary Gygax day, I wanted to ask if anyone has any strong opinions on Castles & Crusades, one of the last games EGG wrote for. By the time I got to scanning through I was already fairly cynical about LFQW and Fighters that only ever basic attack, and the whole SIEGE skillcheck thing felt a little too convoluted for what was essentially "let's try to convert roll-under attributes to an ascending system", but maybe there was something in there that's worth looking at.

# ? Jul 27, 2015 17:42

Simian_Prime: Nov 6, 2011; When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

Question about SWN: in the Advancement section, the game mentions that you get skill points each level, but then also lists costs for training skills. Does this mean that you have to spend credits for training if you want to benefit from your skill points gained? Or are the skill points gained per level free, and the training costs just for skill points bought outside of the per-level gain?

# ? Jul 28, 2015 02:26

Byers2142: May 5, 2011; Imagine I said something deep here...

Simian_Prime posted:

Question about SWN: in the Advancement section, the game mentions that you get skill points each level, but then also lists costs for training skills. Does this mean that you have to spend credits for training if you want to benefit from your skill points gained? Or are the skill points gained per level free, and the training costs just for skill points bought outside of the per-level gain?

Yes, you need to buy training to use your skill points, and you need to do it in order. So if you have three skill points and you want to train a skill from nothing up to level 1, you need to spend the 500 for the level 0 skill and the 1,000 for the level 1 skill, in that order.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 02:39

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

Achmed Jones posted:

I've never played 1E AD&D or Basic. I played 2E back in the day, a bit of 3E, and loved (and GMed a long campaign of) 4E. 5E is OK-ish.

I'm looking to run a hexcrawl/sandbox game. I'd really like to be able to build encounters quickly and easily (like I could with 4E), but I'd also like to avoid the stacks of modifiers that required an inch and a half of multicolored magnets and the hours-long combats of 4E. I've also no desire to leave ascending AC and other such niceties. I'm thinking something based on Basic would be cool, maybe Labyrinth Lord? I also have Spears of the Dawn and Torchbearer, but the latter seems incomplete (and a bit too dark for my tastes) and the former is based on Stars Without Number, and so incompatible with the tons of free supplements and creature lists that are online. In any case, does anyone have recommendations for someone with my background that wants to GM OSR (or similar) for the first time?

I'd recommend Swords & Wizardry Complete. It's based on Swords & Wizardry Whitebox and Core, which are OD&D clones, but it's a little more complex. It's been described as an extremely light version of AD&D. It also has some nice design considerations, like allowances for both ascending and descending AC. Oh and there's an SRD, and the corebook PDF is free. That's the full book, including the art.

One good thing about S&WC is that 1E modules can essentially be used out of the box with it. I'm running White Plume Mountain with it.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 03:19

Mimir: Nov 26, 2012

Luke Crane just put out Miseries and Misfortunes, a new book that expands 1981 Basic D&D for historical adventures in 17th Century France. Classes include Chaplain, Soldier of Fortune, Necromancer, and Urchin.

I'm not much for retroclones but I could see playing this one.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 06:32

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# ? Jun 4, 2024 18:52

Simian_Prime: Nov 6, 2011; When they passed out body parts in the comics today, I got Cathy's nose and Dick Tracy's private parts.

Byers2142 posted:

Yes, you need to buy training to use your skill points, and you need to do it in order. So if you have three skill points and you want to train a skill from nothing up to level 1, you need to spend the 500 for the level 0 skill and the 1,000 for the level 1 skill, in that order.

Hmm... That's not something that would go over well for my players, I think. Guess I'll just have to make sure the credit rewards they get are great enough that advancement doesn't slow to a crawl.

# ? Jul 28, 2015 07:58

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Older D&D and Retroclone Thread: From OD&D To 4E

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