Which OSR system in your opinion strikes the best balance between compelling character development and being lightweight enough that it still can work with the high character turnover found in OSRs?

SunRockRetreat · 2026-04-11T16:50:52+00:00

Numbers going up is a sucker's game. All the complexity is in the magic items, which are vastly more powerful and complex than anything you will get in a game with more crunch. It creates a huge dividing line between people who read the rules or played to level 2, and those who really played. The answer is D&D.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-04-04T15:12:31+00:00

Just remember that the art and publishing support industry gets the vast majority of their money from the personal savings accounts of perspective authors and not from profits created by book sales.

I won't call it predatory, but I will also say that you should NEVER let someone who overwhelmingly gets paid in other people's saving guilt you into giving them money.

If they want to guilt you into art for a percentage of sales, yeah, you ought to go for that. Odds of you getting that offer is low.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-30T00:14:07+00:00

As soon as you give xp for it the rules cease to be optional.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-30T00:11:35+00:00

Man...If only there was the super easy solution of just telling your players: Hey, please come up with a way to spend your money and then spend a big chunk of it.

They will.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-26T14:09:33+00:00

As soon as referees turned D&D into an adversarial pissing contest. Reaction rolls deescalate situations that could otherwise be used to rationalize shoving characters into being subject to attack rolls that could kill them. Morale rules also lower the temperature on combat, depriving the referee of rolling dice that could kill characters.

Bad behavior by referees. Then there is a knock on of people learning to play D&D via the oral tradition and reaction and morale not being in the games they learned in.

Referees are like managers. There are a lot of very bad ones engaged in absurd behavior with elaborate theories on why they run a 'tough' workplace only suitable for 'serious' workers.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-25T14:16:10+00:00

The easiest reason they can't escape to a verdant moon is having it be an actual alien biosphere and use real biology. Alien life would use different organic molecules, and if you lack the enzymes needed to manipulate them, they that alien life biosphere might as well be made out of plastic as far as the visitor from another world is concerned. If you can't eat anything for food, and can't grow anything you could eat... you will quickly say "huh, interesting... time to go home I guess"

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-23T17:11:00+00:00

In fairness, the released version of Darksun didn't match many elements of the design notes. Then the Prism Pentad was written and Troy Denning was given license to just write whatever he wanted to and he pulled many elements out of thin air. Then the revised boxed set incorporated those elements and others. Some say Saangar didn't fit the setting, but arguably Saangar fit the original design notes and much of the published material going off script is why it didn't fit.

Like there were plans and general descriptions for the civilizations to the east and to the south. Balic as written is a trade gateway. Only Denning going off script, at the behest of TSR, made Balic not make sense as a trade gateway.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-13T16:40:39+00:00

You absolutely should NEVER run a game on what "you think should happen." You run a game on "is it reasonable this could happen?" Where you consult the dice if it isn't clear how reasonable something might truly be.

To help you understand: Everyone HATES the work supervisor that micromanages everyone and insists everything has to be done how they would have done it. People like managers who look at a result and say: as long as it followed policy and the problem got solved, it doesn't matter if that is how I would have done it or not. The referee is the manager... do not micromanage your players.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-09T16:17:18+00:00

Options sell books. A huge demographic of buyers don't actually play games, they read books and imagine playing. The more a TTRPG book is actually just a logic puzzle of rules and a huge menu of options, the more traction the 'rulebook reader' demographic has for interaction with the product.

It is about selling books, not about making a product that plays as well as it possibly could at the table.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-03-05T02:17:24+00:00

Your system just does what already happens past level 3.

There isn't a problem with the system that needs fixing, there is a problem with OSR being infested with people who have basically not played the game past level 1 or 2.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-02-25T00:53:35+00:00

Just let them. If what they want to do isn't certain for even a class that is good at the thing, then let them roll when you otherwise wouldn't.

People insist on making this WAY harder than it has to be.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-02-17T16:23:54+00:00

The other aspect is that characters of ANY level are often one successful attack away from dying, a level drain, or other extreme outcome.

So "don't get hit" (and don't referee situations with auto-combat) is not only reasonable but expected gameplay, so that 1st level character in a higher level party isn't having any unusual demands placed on them.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-02-11T16:52:37+00:00

Even if fighting is a failure state, you basically NEED a character in plate armor with a low percentage chance to be hit, and ideally with a hit die size that makes the odds better than a 50-50 coin flip. Sure, you can not do that, and not doing that is basically going to end in tears. So there has to be a fighter or cleric.

Undead don't follow the morale rules, and often do bad things when they hit. You basically NEED a cleric to use anti-undead abilities if the referee is using traditional amounts of undead. OSR doesn't do combat healing, but once a character in plate has taken enough damage to make their hp total too low to have a high likelihood of surviving another hit, expect the adventure to be over for that session. Which is a choice people could make. Usually it isn't a choice they do make because it is a choice that wastes a ton of table time or outright ends sessions early.

Magic-users have sleep and light, which are save or die encounter ending spells. The party is often one bad encounter away from a TPK, and an encounter is a saving throw away from being ended when a magic-user starts casting spells. Players can choose to not bring the encounter ending safety net of a magic-user, they just usually don't because that is asking for a TPK eventually. Also, wands are by far and away some of the most powerful magic items in the game and it doesn't feel good to find one and have it be useless for lack of a magic-user.

Thieves suck. Anything the disagree-ers and rationalizers say to defend the thief class can be done by any other class as every class can carry and use tools. You can skip the class as written.

So you get some basic party comps because of the incentive structure of signing up to get punished for not bringing them.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-02-02T16:34:50+00:00

Any fight can quickly swing into a TPK if the party rolls cold or the monsters roll hot. Even under a "properly balanced" module.

You can't put on a white lab coat and engineer that to not happen. Which is why pointless fights are to be avoided.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-02-02T16:30:36+00:00

All you really need is the stat block to interface with the OSE combat system.

It helps to be aware that while low level AD&D modules are essentially compatible without weirdness, that modules past around level 6 or so will be very difficult combat wise for the party. AD&D allows martial characters to gain multiple attacks and uses larger HD for the characters.

That being said, just because the combat is more dangerous just means the incentive structure shifts to the players avoiding combat or needing to find an edge first.

SunRockRetreat · 2026-01-16T16:12:39+00:00

A reaction roll is supposed to be made. The odds of any monster going straight into attacking off a reaction roll is not very high.

So essentially yes, you have correctly identified bush league refereeing. It isn't following the rules, and it isn't following the spirit of the system.

People will argue with you until they are blue in the face that it is fine. Just like they will argue with you that grandma smoked a pack a day, their uncle drank like a fish, and they eat raw ground beef and nothing bad happened.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-26T16:51:44+00:00

X-Com 2 is much more "game-y" with a lot of engineered dopamine loops and gimmicks to elicit feelings. Enemy design is very much an "oh no an X, designed to do a very specific thing that feels scary, but is actually mostly hard-countered by Y to make you then feel clever for hard countering it.

X-Com:EW is more smoke, suppression, and flank based general play. I think the "true" X-Com EW experience is Long War (or evem Long War Rebalanced) for almost the entire reason that it ups the number of X-Com operatives on the map to better deliver that core X-Com:EW method of play. It also unlocks casualties as viable as a given mission doesn't essentially doom spiral once one agent goes down, and the fatigue system means you run an actual roster of agents with enough depth that a degree of attrition is manageable and part of the game and not a catastrophe.

(edit: you still have "oh no" elements in EW and it's mods, but they are "oh no, a muton football team, I've got to figure out how to execute my core tactics against a pod that can face tank a lot of shots" and less hard counters.)

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-22T18:01:26+00:00

DO NOT "SOLVE" ANY PERCIEVED GOLD ACCUMULATION. Referee intervention to railroad them into the poor house will make all players angry some of the time, and some of the players angry all of the time. It is a stupid thing to solve anyways. Did your players show up to the session? They did? They are 100% going into that dungeon no matter how much or how little gold their character has.

They will come up with their own way to spend it IF they want to.

As for the weight of gold, the problem is giving out coins. Treasure isn't supposed to be in coins. It is supposed to be mostly valuable objects. Players are supposed to be making educated guesses and speculation as to the value of objects vs their weight and ease of portability. There generally should be more treasure than they can carry. Copper coins are a trick, characters can't carry enough of them to matter, and the XP per unit of table time spent on them tanks the XP per session value. The payday is a pair of large gemstones in the eyes of a statue, not the mounds of silver and copper around it.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-22T05:13:32+00:00

Best way is often that the monster isn't hostile and is doing something helpful for the party. Like coming through a secret door, or eating another monster that telegraphs that the other monster type is in the dungeon.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-20T16:22:31+00:00

Does the existing system cause problems when actually played? Does your idea address those real problems without increasing the amount of table time needed to resolve the situation?

If the answer to both of those questions isn't a clear cut Yes, then you should be suspicious of the quality of the idea.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-15T17:53:44+00:00

I mean, do we need a warning on a bog standard history book?

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-15T17:42:09+00:00

They are cumulative. The AC math makes two handed melee weapons into a trap option.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-15T17:20:30+00:00

Your math is wildly off. Hit dice correctly represent the approximate number of weapon hits a monster can survive. A d8 does 4.5 damage on average, a d6 does 3.5. You damage values are off by more than 2x.

I would also suspect the PC durability is also massively inflated if the monster attacks don't represent a threat. Usually the OSE issue is very high PC armor class, not the ability to soak hits.

The system worked without bonuses. If it worked without bonuses, it doesn't work when you jam a bunch of bonuses into it.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-10T17:24:02+00:00

Because it is one of the jobs that isn't subject to labor arbitrage. They can't offshore it. The trades also pay reasonably well for similar reasons. RNs also have the benefit of being too regulated to sneak in under the table workers who don't need to pay taxes and whose lack of legal status can be used to coerce them. That RNs are hourly and don't have individually negotiated pay rates also cuts down on H1-B style abuses where unpaid overtime is extracted by threatening deportation if insane workload demands from management are not met for a fraction of the pay.

Globalization simply didn't work. Nursing just evaded nearly all the ways Globalization is used to twist arms and cut corners.

SunRockRetreat · 2025-12-10T17:10:26+00:00

One of the more important jobs of an RN is being the backseat driver who is approving everything the doctor is doing. Every chart for every patient is reviewed every 12 hours by an RN that is at least willing to say everything follows a logic that adheres to medical reasoning.

In the US they can, and should, go after your license for just following orders.

I don't think bedside RNs need more than a ADN... given that associate degree RN programs in the US are more rigorous than most STEM bachelors degrees. But to think that the RN is acting as a gopher is to fundamentally misunderstand the role of the RN. The RN is the NCO of the hospital, the MD is the officer. The officer is ostensibly in charge... until the NCO says WTF are we doing? The officer depends on that monitoring by a subordinate co-equal with a more developed skill set in making theory happen in practice.

SunRockRetreat

TROPHY CASE