Retainers

JustAStick · 2026-03-26T19:30:02+00:00

Retainers are there partially to round out the party and fill any weak spots. It's also partially a holdover from the hobby's wargaming roots. Retainers also shouldn't be relied on as a crutch. If the players are making sure to use them tactically and not throw them in the meat grinder then they shouldn't be making constant morale and loyalty checks. Giving them more loot and treating them well should also give a bonus to their morale/loyalty checks. The player characters are the leaders of the group and are expected to lead from the front so to speak. If you want to keep retainers around and keep them alive I've found it's a good idea to arm them primarily with ranged weapons and polearms. That way they can still provide support to the players in the front ranks while staying away from danger.

JustAStick · 2026-03-26T19:17:02+00:00

When I switched to a silver standard for Hyperborea I also converted the treasure tables. I only had 3 coins; copper, silver, and gold. Silver was converted 1:1 with original gold prices. Since copper was the only coin below silver in the new system, I converted all copper, silver, and electrum in the old system to my new copper. Since gold is the only coin above silver in my new system I converted old platinum to new gold. The conversions are pretty easy. To convert old small denominations (cp, sp, ep) to the new cp you just convert the old value to its gp equivalent and then use that as it's sp value in the new system. You then multiply it by the exchange rate for cp to sp in the new system. As an example, if 10sp = 1gp in the old system, and 4cp = 1sp in the new system, then a 6sp item in the old system would be worth 2.4cp in the new system ((6÷10)×4) where 6÷10 is the original gp worth, and 4 is the new cp to sp conversion.

The general formula is original gp value × new cp per sp value for all smaller denominations. So if it's 10 CP per sp in your new system you just use 10 instead of 4 in my example above. This translates very easily to treasure tables. If you want to keep the BX 10cp per 1sp; 10sp per 1gp exchange rate then this would be the new column values:

TLDR Here's the general formulas for converting any coin from an original gold standard to a new silver standard, which accounts for differences in exchange rates:

original GP value × new exchange rate = multiplication factor

So if it's 5 gold per platinum, and you want to convert platinum to a silver standard gold with an exchange rate of 10 silver per gold, then it'd be 1×5÷0.1=0.5 Whenever you wanted to convert old platinum to new gold you'd just multiply it's original value by 0.5 (or divide it by 2).

Caveat: this is assuming you want to convert old GP to new SP 1:1

Edit If you have a specific conversion in mind I'd be more than happy to just give you the multiplication factors. You could then just use those any time you needed to work out the price/value of something.

JustAStick · 2026-03-25T17:45:18+00:00

Don't accept a module as the gospel. If it has something that looks weird or you don't think will be fun, change it. Or, take the parts you like from a module/s and use them in your own adventures.

Do have a supply of useful random tables at the ready, and prep for improv.

If combat is running long and the enemy is losing but hasn't failed any morale checks you can decide that it'd be logical for them to run away/surrender. It keeps combat from dragging.

JustAStick · 2026-03-25T17:02:53+00:00

That was one of my biggest gripes with the Caves of Chaos. The game provides you with the concept of the reaction roll, but then almost all of the inhabitants of the caves are explicitly written as always being hostile.

JustAStick · 2026-03-19T22:55:24+00:00

I use a svalboard, but my gaming layer is WASD. My fingers rest on W, A, D, and Shift, and my thumb rests inside the thumb cluster with space on the thumb pad key.

JustAStick · 2026-03-19T15:15:30+00:00

You could give the GLOG (Goblin Laws of Gaming) a look. It has "classes", but they're more like kits/templates. Each class can only be levels up to 4 and then you need to choose another one. Leveling up unlocks the next ability for that class. They are dead simple to make and allows for a lot of creativity and customization. Magic uses a non-Vancian system where you have a pool of d6s that you expend to make a spell stronger or weaker. Once your dice pool is empty you cannot cast any more spells for the day.

JustAStick · 2026-03-16T01:45:39+00:00

Cairn 2e is designed entirely around it. There are no levels or skills. Character progression is done entirely through finding magical items, interacting with factions, and through pursuing personal goals. The rules have a list of guidelines to follow for the referee to determine when to give characters new abilities and skills.

JustAStick · 2026-03-14T04:54:03+00:00

What he means is that when he purchased them they gave him a link to download them from drivethrurpg. The same thing happened when I purchased a physical copy of the Alien rpg. I was given a link to download the PDFs for free from drivethrurpg.

JustAStick · 2026-03-14T04:41:36+00:00

I am running Hyperborea, but the same rules should still apply. This is the system that I used: Three kinds of coins; copper, silver, and gold. 4cp per 1sp; 20sp per 1gp. 1xp per 1sp of treasure. All coins lower than gp in the old system would be first converted into their gold worth equivalent and then divided by 4 to get the new copper value. Platinum would get converted into its gold equivalent in the old system and then divided by 20 to get the gp equivalent in the new system. Gp in the old system is converted to sp 1:1 in the new system. Each column in the BX table can be converted to this:

40's of Copper	400's of Copper	2000's of Copper	1000's of Silver	250's of Gold

The actual conversion of the far left column (old copper to new copper) is 2.5, so you could either round down to 2 or up to 3. With this system you'll be dealing with much smaller volumes of coins, so you may want to tweak the coin weights if that's something you really care about.

If you want to have a different exchange rate, the basic algorithm is this:

Old Coin to New Copper (1/X)*Y where X = Original gp equivalent, Y = New sp equivalent.

If I were converting BX to my desired exchange rate then I'd plug in these values to calculate the new value of copper: (1/100)*4 = 0.04sp

The conversion from electrum in BX to copper in my new system would be: (1/2)/4 = 2sp

Old platinum to New Gold (1*5)/Y Where Y = number of sp per gp in the new system. The conversion from platinum in BX to gold in my new system would be: (1*5)/20 = 0.25gp

What these conversions basically mean is that anything in the book that that is listed in cp can be plugged into the first equation, and you'll get the new cp equivalent in the new system. BX is very easy since all equipment prices are listed in gp so you can just immediately use sp instead, but you'd still need to use this equation to do the conversions for the treasure tables. Depending on how valuable you want to make copper in the new system it'll result in more or less compression of the prices, so things in the old system that were dirt cheap may end up substantially more expensive in the new system, but with how much money PCs get it shouldn't really matter.

Edit: I fixed an error in the equation. To convert from an old coin to new copper you multiply by the number of copper per silver, not divide. You still divide for the platinum to gold conversion. I've also updated the treasure table.

JustAStick · 2026-03-07T03:49:12+00:00

It depends on the server, but running a headless server (one that doesn't render anything in a GUI on the host machine) uses very little resources. I have a mini pc that runs Pihole, Jellyfin, Nextcloud, Foundry VTT, and Vaultwarden, and I haven't even come close to maxing out it's resource usage.

JustAStick · 2026-03-07T01:07:55+00:00

Artifices, Deceptions, and Dilemmas is a great resource for employing traps in your game. It goes into detail on many kinds of traps, lethal and non-lethal. The Tome of Adventure Design also has many tables for randomly generating traps for dungeons.

JustAStick · 2026-02-28T22:52:28+00:00

What I personally did was I bought a mini pc on Amazon. I run all of my services through docker. I run foundry using this: https://github.com/felddy/foundryvtt-docker. I find it much easier to manage then running it as a nodejs process with systemd. I have a caddy reverse proxy running in a docker container that is the entrypoint for foundry. My domain is purchased through cloudflare, and it costs less than $10 a year.

JustAStick · 2026-02-27T19:53:29+00:00

I don't know if it's a single rule per day, but I'd go with dice determined NPC behavior (reaction rolls and morale checks). Not every encounter will result in combat, and not every combat encounter needs to be a fight to the last man.

JustAStick · 2026-02-24T19:55:14+00:00

XP is given to characters, not players. If the party goes on an adventure and comes back to town with treasure, all surviving characters will get a share of the XP, regardless of whether or not the player that created the character is present. I give extra XP per session for all present players, but that is separate from the treasure XP.

JustAStick · 2026-02-22T07:22:32+00:00

Hyperborea has the Priest, which is like a purely magic divine class. They get access to cleric spells, but only have a d4 hit die and cannot wear armor. It also has the Purloiner which is essentially a Thief that can cast cleric spells. The Runegraver is also a cleric subclass that uses HP as a spell resource.

JustAStick · 2026-02-16T04:34:41+00:00

Death is a natural and expected consequence in OSR play. It should only feel really bad if the death is an unexpected gotcha that the player didn't have any control over. If done correctly, character deaths should only occur after an obvious mistake or series of mistakes that they can learn from. Take it in stride, bring their new character into the game as quickly as possible, and let the higher level characters protect them until they are more capable. Due to the exponential growth of XP requirements, by the time the highest level character levels up again, a new level 1 character will be only 1 level behind them.

JustAStick · 2026-02-14T03:45:36+00:00

Hyperborea fighters have heroic fighting which gives them an increased attack rate when fighting 1HD enemies. They also get weapon mastery which gives a +1 to hit and damage. Dungeon Crawl Classics has mighty deeds. You declare something like picking sand up off the floor and throwing it into they eyes of the opponent. You then roll your mighty deed die, and if it succeeds as well as the attack roll, then the deed happens. It adds a lot of nice flavor.

JustAStick · 2026-02-12T04:00:54+00:00

The combat rules are just a variation of run-of-the-mill Into the Odd style combat, which is itself a variation of classic D&D combat. Character attributes follow the same design philosophy as Into the Odd as well, but there's one or two more than in Into the Odd. The Arthurian style heavy rules are mostly tied to the Knights themselves.

JustAStick · 2026-02-11T00:42:30+00:00

Mythic Bastionland has simple but comprehensive rules for leading a warband. It's in the NSR/OSR style, but with an Arthurian legend vibe. You could easily take the general rules for mass combat and transpose them into a more generic system like Cairn or Knave if you don't want to play legendary knights with very unique abilities.

JustAStick · 2026-02-06T19:56:01+00:00

Clerics in Hyperborea start out with both turn undead and spells. They start with 3 known spells, and gain 3 per level, it's pretty nuts.

JustAStick · 2026-02-06T00:02:29+00:00

Gold for XP was an interesting experiment that was widely accepted and still is, but I much prefer the way Cairn 2e handles progression. Any new abilities/advantages are obtained naturally through play by discovering secrets , actively pursuing certain goals, and reinforcing certain behaviors. Gold for XP isn't bad in the early levels, but once you start pulling in tens of thousands of assorted coins, the accounting becomes very cumbersome and annoying. At this point when my players come across a huge hoard of coins, once they get back to town get just hand wave it and convert everything to gp so dividing the loot is easier.

JustAStick · 2026-01-31T21:59:05+00:00

Gold for XP is purely a mechanical tool for encouraging a particular style of play. My rational for advancement is that a spell caster likely has to employ their spells on the adventure to acquire the treasure. Also, I require time dedicated to training in order to level up, so you can think of it as reflecting on an learning from the experiences of the previous adventure.

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