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Does anyone have any experience with Swords & Wizardry? They're kickstarting a "new release" and I wonder how it holds up as an OD&D clone.
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Aug 3, 2012 19:27
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Yeah, I went and checked out the free PDF and I wasn't impressed. It's just 1st edition when you get right down to it.
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Aug 8, 2012 15:21
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moths posted:Is there a writeup somewhere on Swords & Wizardry? It was promoted in that Reaper kickstarter, so there is probably going to be a lot more interest in it soon. Is there much to set it apart from the other old-alikes?
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Aug 27, 2012 20:50
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 WotC has opened D&DClassics, a DriveThruRPG storefront for selling products from every edition. Right now the only corebook up is the Moldevay Basic red book, but there's a bunch of modules and supplements out now. Prices for 1e & 2e stuff are pretty reasonable, and "In Search of the Unknown" is free. WotC has said they're going to start putting more stuff out next month.
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Jan 22, 2013 18:33
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Most of the pre-3e stuff is in the $5 to $10 range. And it's DriveThru so it's all the same site, login, and library.
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Jan 22, 2013 20:52
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VacuumJockey posted:"This is the game we all know, in a version borrowing from all editions, from "classic" to "3e." I think his math's a little off there.
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Dec 30, 2013 23:48
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WotC's started releasing the Gazetteers on RPGNow!  Oh, and Birthright too.
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Jan 7, 2014 16:43
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Yeah, it just went up today. WotC has been releasing the old stuff on Tuesdays, so hopefully we'll see a new one each week.
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Jan 7, 2014 17:59
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GAZ2, The Emirates of Ylarum, is up.. Looks like we're getting one gazeteer a week after all.
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Jan 14, 2014 17:47
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SirFozzie posted:Did anyone pickup Scarlet Heroes? This might be exactly what my gaming "Group" needed (two people, as two others had to drop out..) I've been going through the PDF slowly. It's got some interesting ideas. There are only four classes (the standard D&D "core"), and you don't get class abilities as you level up; your bonuses are either front-loaded or are numerical bonuses that increase automatically as you level. Plus you get 13th Age-style backgrounds called "traits" that are basically your skills. It should be pointed out that anyone can use any weapon, but your damage dice cap out based on your class. A fighter always uses his weapon's damage dice, whereas a cleric's damage die caps out at 1d6 regardless of what the weapon's normal damage is. Saves and skill checks work off 2d8, with saves always difficulty 9. Attack rolls are d20+attack bonus+target's AC, a 20 or more hits. Damage is pretty non-standard. When you roll damage, you roll a bunch of dice but don't add them up. Any die that comes up 1 does no damage, a 2-5 does one damage, 6-9 is two, and 10+ is three. Damage does overflow, so if you take out a weak enemy and still have damage left over you can apply it to another enemy. You also have Fray Dice (based on your class), which you roll on top of your normal attack which represent things like wide swings, shield bashes, thowrn knives, and minor attack spells you're doing in addition to your normal attack. The Fray Die does damage as normal, but the damage can only be applied to creatures whose hit dice are equal to or less than your level. Well, unless you're a wizard, in which case you can apply it to any creature, but his Fray Die is only a d4 so at most he's doing one extra point of damage. Monsters do have "hit dice", but they're not rolled. Any hit you do knocks a HD off a monster. So a 4HD monster is technically 4th level, but in D&D terms only has four hit points. Just as a breakdown of classes: Fighters can use every weapon to its full potential, wear any armor, +1 to hit per level, 1d8 Fray Die, and the about twice as many hit points as everyone else. Clerics can wear any armor but their weapon damage caps out at 1d6. They can turn undead and cast cleric spells (5 levels, 8 spells per level). Magic-users can't wear armor, and their max weapon die is 1d4. They do get spells (10 spells at each of 5 levels), and their 1d4 Fray Die can be applied to any creature regardless of it's hit dice. Thieves can't wear anything above leather, and their max damage die is 1d8. They get a bonus trait to cover their thief skills that starts at +3, and if they can catch an enemy unaware they get +4 to hit and does triple damage. e: I should point out that the Fray Die is rolled regardless of what you "main" action is. You can be trying to bash down a door and you can still roll your Fray Die, and it's rolled outside of your attack roll. So you can attack, and regardless of if you hit or miss, you still get to roll your Fray Die. Evil Mastermind fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Mar 23, 2014 |
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Mar 23, 2014 16:57
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Kai Tave posted:It does seem like it's pretty dungeon-crawl oriented which I'm not sure I can call a downside exactly since I'm pretty sure that's the point, though it doesn't tremendously excite me but oh well. I don't know if the full rules go into any more detail or depth regarding stuff outside of crawling through gridmaps and fighting monsters for treasure, it'd be nice if it did, but honestly even if it's just a game for going down into murderholes and looting the place it's still more interesting than a lot of other games about that sort of thing have been.
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Mar 24, 2014 16:24
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DalaranJ posted:I seem to remember some circa 2010 4ed modules with incredibly, uninspired skill challenges of the form 'Get your asses from the city to the dungeon'.
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Apr 26, 2014 02:40
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Sanglorian posted:(Unless there's something I'm missing ... Palladium is a company not a game?)
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Jun 18, 2014 15:35
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Libertad! posted:Machinations of the Space Princess was written by James Desborough, actually. He originally intended it to be a LotFP adventure, but turned into its own thing. I fail to see how that's better.
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Jun 20, 2014 17:55
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PeterWeller posted:Man, I would love a setting or game that is all 70-80s scifi/fantasy mashup drawing from Heavy Metal and Wizards and TV stuff like Thundarr and He-Man. I just found out about this, which is coming out for SWN and Fate Core. e: if nothing else, the covers are great. 
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Jun 21, 2014 00:01
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Does anyone have experience with The Arduin Chronicles? I've seen a few mentions of it today in odd places, and I know it's got a sort of sci fi fantasy thing going on, but I was wondering if anyone had some details or experience with it.
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Jun 27, 2014 22:19
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Bedroom Wall Press is making the digital versions of their retroclone-ish games free. I only know Hulks & Horrors, which is a sci-fi dungeoncrawl game. It's very Basic D&D-based, and uses THAC0 if that matters to you.
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Jul 13, 2014 19:44
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hectorgrey posted:Stars Without Number is pretty awesome. I actually wouldn't mind seeing a fantasy port for it, because I reckon the mix between old school D&D and old school Traveller works quite well. Yes, I know there's Spears of the Dawn (which is loving awesome), but I meant something closer to how Stars Without Number works, only in a fantasy setting. Probably wouldn't be too hard; you just need to work out what tech levels different weapons and armour would be, redo the weapons skills, and remove the skills that don't make sense (possibly adding a few from Spears of the Dawn if they make sense). The classes work as is, though the backgrounds and training packages will need updating to reflect changes in skills. Port in money and prices from Basic D&D, and you're probably all set. SWN is also the Bundle of Holding deal for the next two days or so, and you can get the game and all the bonus stuff for about $20.
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Aug 2, 2014 18:53
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A Strange Aeon posted:Are all those books full of random tables and stuff that could be used for other systems? I'm doubtful we'd ever play SWN as written; I tried to get someone to run it but he just used the tags for his ridiculously complex home brew. The core book is, I don't know about the others (I still haven't read them yet).
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Aug 3, 2014 02:40
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VacuumJockey posted:If you play Pathfinder, the Kingmaker campaign contains tools for domain management; I believe that they are also available as a stand-alone supp. Yeah, they're in Ultimate Campaign with the town-building stuff.
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Sep 12, 2014 14:31
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TheSpookyDanger posted:I so broken down and bought the Rules Cyclopedia. It seems smaller than I expected though. Does roughly 300 pages with a black dragon on the front about to wreck up a dude on a horse sound right? Yes. While the book itself is small, what you'll soon realize is that the text itself is dense as gently caress. Three-column layout with an 7- or 8-point font.
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Sep 12, 2014 23:42
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Also weapon proficiency.
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Sep 21, 2014 17:45
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waqii posted:Bundle of Holding has an "OLD SCHOOL REVIVAL +2" special right now (until the 19th November-ish) with a bunch of good stuff, including Labyrinth Lord, Dyson's Delves and Death Frost Doom 2:e! Um...yeah... Seriously, though, the River Knife stuff is really good, open-ended adventures. Evil Wizards in a Cave in particular, since it's a very well-written mini-sandbox.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:42
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Beyond The Wall, a B/X retroclone, has updated and is on sale for $4. It's a three-class game, very basic, with some fun character background and village generation mechanics.
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Nov 19, 2014 16:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:Now that I think about it, the idea that Paladins are better-Fighters but can only retain their better-than-Fighter-ness by being goody-two-shoes is probably where all the horror stories of DMs engineering all sorts of bullshit to make Paladins fall comes from. The game is practically telling the DM that he has to try or else this guy is going to really throw off the balance of the campaign. Pretty much. For some reason most GMs see it as a challenge, or as something they're supposed to try and do. I remember on GM from way back being proud because he had a paladin fall for going into a burning house and pulling people out, because that was technically "breaking and entering".
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Nov 22, 2014 21:50
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Well, I can understand putting obstacles in front of the paladin because a character who has to abide by a moral code OR ELSE is only interesting (or worth having in the first place) if he actually does have to obey the moral code. But for some reason people always take it way too far.
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Nov 23, 2014 00:57
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Johnstone Metzger's "Evil Wizards in a Cave" is a good mini-sandbox, and is dual stated for Dungeon World and Labyrinth Lord, so converting shouldn't be too hard.
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Dec 16, 2014 18:02
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Babylon Astronaut posted:I like racial classes. Picking a race based on synergy with your class sucks, wanting to play a race that sucks at your class sucks, and you can still call yourself whatever you want. If I was going to make a BD&D retroclone, I'd keep the base four classes, but change them for each race. So humans would be the "standard" fighter/cleric/magic-user/thief, but for the dwarf the classes would become something like tunnel fighter/stonespeaker/runecarver/mechanist, and they'd be different from the "standard" class. Does anyone have a link to a hexcrawl game in action? I understand how they work in theory and design, but I don't get how they're supposed to work in actual play.
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Dec 20, 2014 19:23
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I dunno, a naval-hexcrawl-focused RPG sounds like it'd be pretty fun.
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Dec 21, 2014 19:07
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That's pretty much the idea behind DCC's "funnel" thing (and Funnel World for DW). You start with a handful of 0-level commoners each, and you go through an introductory adventure. The ones who live become 1st-level characters and get a character class and such.
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Dec 24, 2014 22:42
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AlphaDog posted:I've heard these people exist, but only from people who like to do things other than heal. I've seen people in WoW and other computer games that like to play the healer. I've never ever met anyone who wants to play D&D as the healer. The Cleric with undead turning and combat spells and stuff, sure, but nobody wants to be the slightly worse fighter who memorises cure wounds and remove poison in all their slots. Yeah, healers didn't really become fun to play until 4e, partially because they got a bunch of abilities that were of the "main effect plus side benefit for someone else" but mainly because they made healing a minor action instead of your whole turn.
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Dec 28, 2014 18:27
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Oh, I just had an idea on how to make clerics/thieves interesting while keeping the BECMI mold. Basically, give every class a Fighter-like Mastery system. So instead of every character being a cookie-cutter version of their class, the cleric (for example) could have the following general masteries based off Gasperkun's list: * Divine Spells * Healing * Turning/Controlling undead * Belief and Followers * Buffs & Debuffs * Holy/Alignment magic When you buy (say) Healing as the Basic Mastery level, then you can heal one person for XdY hit points as a side action on top of something else, maybe limited to twice a combat. Then at Skilled you heal more HP or can heal two people at once. Then at Expert you can cure a disease. And so on and so on.
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Dec 28, 2014 18:39
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Bob Quixote posted:That sounds pretty cool - would these abilities have a cooldown linked to them (Grandmaster Healer may use this ability X times/day) or would they be encounter action based? quote:Which actions would you link their abilities to? I could see Turning undead easily linking to an attack against an undead creature (and Buffs/Debuffs follow easily from that as bolstering your allies faith when you strike down an enemy), but it's the healing one that kind of puzzles me conceptually. Mastery isn't so much about being tied to stats as it is a case of "each level of mastery improves your existing abilities or gives you a new one". For example, here's how Mastery works for a fighter: Bob the fighter take a Basic level of Mastery for longsword. This sets his longsword damage to 1d8. Then he moves up to Skilled, and now he's doing 1d12 damage, but he also gains the ability to get -2 to his AC against one hand/thrown weapon attack each round as well as a chance to deflect an attack or disarm someone. At Expert, he gains the ability to throw his sword (not far), his damage increases to 2d8, and he can improve his AC against two attacks instead of one. And so on. As he advances, he gets bonus attacks and more uses of abilities per round. Each weapon has its own abilities (axes can daze, hammer can lower a target's AC, and so on).
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Dec 28, 2014 21:40
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Yeah, I don't have the book handy but if I remember correctly you could either fully specialize in three weapons completely, or be really good with a few. Generally speaking you got all the cool stuff with two or three levels of mastery; more levels would just let you do them more often. And yeah, the whole thing with Basic fighters is that they're supposed to be the guys with the golf bag full of weapons. The Mastery rules gave you a mechanical reason to do that.
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Dec 31, 2014 03:00
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Okay, now that I'm near my book: Fighters can get up to 15 total levels of Mastery old told. That's enough to fully master three different weapons, but for the most part going from 4 levels to 5 only gives you slightly better damage. Halloween Jack posted:The tables and such in Basic were pretty generous with items too, weren't they? Even if most of what you get is potions. Kind of? The best percent chance of monsters having magic doodads was 50%, and that was just to have 1d4 scrolls. But if the GM does roll that there's treasure, you're going to get like five items.
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Dec 31, 2014 04:21
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gradenko_2000 posted:Going back to the topic of low-level Magic-Users and their lack of spells, a neat little mechanic I picked up from Crypts and Things was to use Saving Throws. In that game, you needed to make a save whenever you used "Grey" magic (mental manipulation, illusionist, transfiguration spells) and "Black" magic (direct damage, destruction, necromancy). Huh, that's a pretty neat set-up. Does Crypts & Things have equally neat stuff for fighty types?
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Dec 31, 2014 06:42
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Well, there are the upcoming 13th Age Glorantha books.
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Jan 11, 2015 17:12
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MadScientistWorking posted:Actually if I remember correctly it was an abandoned building that they were cleaning out and he pretty much equated the homeless in the building with D&D monsters. Oh man, I remember that. Didn't the guy also get upset when people understandably had a problem with this?
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Jan 19, 2015 16:44
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Bob Quixote posted:I would want to find a way to create a list of spells that are useable from character level 1 which improve over time either in terms of damage dealt (or HP healed), duration of effect or which gains certain improvements when the caster hits a certain Threshold level. Have you read 13th Age? The way spells work is that you still have spell slots, but the effects of a spell will increase if you prep them in a higher-level spell slot. So if you prep the level 1 spell "Shield" as a level 1 spell, it forces an enemy that hits your AC to reroll the attack. But is you prep it as a level 3 spell, you also get +2 AC versus the reroll. If prepped at level 5, the spell also effects attacks that target your Physical Defense in addition to your AC, and so on. Likewise, prepping damaging spells in higher-level slots makes them do more damage. Magic Missile does 2d4 damage as a 1st level spell, then 2d8 as a level 3 spell. In fact, after a certain point you actually lose your lower-level spell slots because you're just getting so good at casting spells.
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Jan 24, 2015 17:35
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gradenko_2000 posted:Are/were there any guidelines on granting the weapon mastery levels from RC based solely on character level? No there weren't; it's pretty much all "you get X proficiency slots every Y levels".
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Feb 1, 2015 06:48
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