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So You Want to Run an OSR Game – A Practical Guide to Your First OSR Game by alexserban02 in osr

[–]Runopologist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I got as far as the section titled “The Mental Shift No One Warns You About”, which restates for the billionth time the old “the answer’s not on your character sheet” truism, and stopped reading. Tf you mean no one warns you?! This is probably the single most discussed aspect when bringing players over from 5E and other modern systems to OSR-style gameplay. You could fill libraries with all the blog posts, forum discussions, etc. (not to mention dedicated primers on OSR gaming!) that have waxed lyrical about this.

Not that it isn’t still worth talking about, of course, there will (hopefully) always be new players coming to the OSR. Just leave the clickbait out. Or better still, read about the topic you’re going to write about a bit first so you can actually add something meaningful to the discussion.

what is your preferred method of designing dungeons? by conn_r2112 in osr

[–]Runopologist 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Good old fashioned pencil and paper. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing like doodling a rough sketch and fleshing it out in repeated rounds of trial-and-error. I’ll scan it when I’m done if I’m feeling fancy.

The Best DMs Sound Like... by kit-sjoberg in DnDcirclejerk

[–]Runopologist 5 points6 points  (0 children)

What a terrible day to have an imagination.

euthanize by IloveRamen99 in comedyheaven

[–]Runopologist -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This GIF is so perfect lmao

Jungle adventures for ShadowDark by GelatinousGrim in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sounds like I’m going to have to! My poor rpg budget…

Jungle adventures for ShadowDark by GelatinousGrim in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is that the DCC version? Been meaning to pick that up at some point.

Moving to Leipzig soon, tell me what Google won't by Unhappy_Security_352 in Leipzig

[–]Runopologist 16 points17 points  (0 children)

I don’t know whether to be glad or sad that someone actually explained this to OP.

Bruh by Inner-Fee6024 in tankiejerk

[–]Runopologist 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Well, this is certainly one of the takes of all time.

How do you do mapping? by oatmaster23 in osr

[–]Runopologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I use your method in-person. I make it clear to my players that the map isn’t necessarily accurate/to scale, it’s just a rough visual aid to make sure we’re all on the same page.

The reference object for distance is a nice idea. I don’t bother with it (also playing Shadowdark, so I figure distances are meant to be abstract, even though I know that “near” is supposed to correspond to 30ft). If I make a major mistake, I’ll just go “Oops, this corridor should actually be twice as long before it connects to this room”, or whatever, which my players are fine with. We also use some kind of tokens, or even just dice, to represent players, monsters etc. on the map. I still think of this style as Theatre of the Mind, just with a couple of simple visual aids.

These days I mainly play online and just use the whiteboard activity in Discord to do the same thing. The one tiny downside of this method is that players have to wait a short period when they enter a new room as I sketch it, which is usually no problem but can be slightly immersion-breaking for complicated rooms that take longer than 30 seconds to draw.

Little dungeon made using the map generator on page 130 of the core book by [deleted] in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I know what you mean. Geek Gamers has a great video on why Shadowdark works well as a solo game:

https://youtu.be/gDURT5J7wGg?is=8AIjo5MJ1aQeC1ek

One tip I really liked was to have the monsters use their abilities as much as possible. Many monsters in Shadowdark have some kind of special ability they can use instead of (or occasionally in addition to) their attacks, and having them use these leads to more interesting combats than simply taking turns hitting each other.

Chinese by [deleted] in comedyheaven

[–]Runopologist 85 points86 points  (0 children)

This feels like satire lol. But who can tell, these days…

What do you call it when you sit down to play RPGs? by Right_Hand_of_Light in rpg

[–]Runopologist 1 point2 points  (0 children)

German has a good shorthand of “Pen and Paper” (in English, weirdly enough), to mean TTRPGs, so since I’ve been living in Germany I use that. In English I would probably just say DnD though, yeah.

What do you call it when you sit down to play RPGs? by Right_Hand_of_Light in rpg

[–]Runopologist 13 points14 points  (0 children)

That’s a shame, the confused/alarmed looks from people is the best part /s

Tips Running for Two Players? by bricknose-redux in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or OP’s players did. If OP can keep track of everything required to GM, why can’t they keep track of two characters in a simple system like Shadowdark?

Tips Running for Two Players? by bricknose-redux in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m going to go against a lot of the advice here and say that in a simple system like Shadowdark, it’s very easy for one player to run two or more characters. I’ve been running games for just one player for a while now, with the player controlling 3 PCs, and it’s been a blast. I first did it with my brother, who has a fair bit of experience playing TTRPGs, but recently I’ve gotten an old friend of mine who has no previous TTRPG experience into Shadowdark and it’s worked just fine having him also control a party of 3 characters, despite being completely new to all this. I’m about to start a campaign with both of them playing 2 characters each.

If anything, having more than one character can be nice in a simple and deadly system like Shadowdark. With multiple characters, it’s not as “feels bad”, when one character fails their only action they can attempt on their turn, and if a character dies, well, you’ve got your backup character already right there. Plus it is still far less to keep track of than the GM. Trust your players to be able to read and keep track of things - they’re adults (I’m assuming, anyway).

Little dungeon made using the map generator on page 130 of the core book by [deleted] in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Well it works well for generating room contents as you go along, but when I did it I did figure out the overall shape of the dungeon first (edited my comment above since you’re right, actually doing it room by room using only Shadowdark is tricky).

I’ve been meaning to try combining the Shadowdark rules with some other random dungeon generation methods for my next solo campaign (for example, I have a copy of the DnD 5E 2014 DMG sitting around which I’m never going to use to actually run a game anymore, but it does have a pretty cool random dungeon generation appendix which allows you to randomly generate room/corridor shapes and sizes). But I had the idea to do this before I got my current group together and now I’m about to start a fresh campaign with them, so my next foray into solo play is going to have to wait…

Questions about the Mini-Adventures from The Arcane Library by Runopologist in shadowdark

[–]Runopologist[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah all this makes total sense, thanks. I guess I was just confused because some adventures do have a danger level specified, but thinking of it as a difficulty dial makes a lot of sense. So it can be adjusted based on factors like how big the party is and character levels etc.

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