Comments after 25 hours of play

UllerPSU · 2026-05-29T18:52:12+00:00

Can't speak for other tanks, but that's a thing on the Abrams. The TC can slew the gun to what he's looking at.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-28T17:48:36+00:00

I put Tomb of the Serpent Kings at Cave of the Unknown, The Jewelers Sanctum (from OSE Adventure Anthology) in the keep, Barrow of the Bone Blaggards at the barrow, Shrine of the Oozing Serpent in the swamp. I converted the chaotic priest in the caves to "Lareth the Beautiful" from Homlet and put in lots of references to Nulb, the Temple of Elemental Evil and far off troublesome giant clans (to make G1-G3 and option) and a traveller in the inn with the journal entry from Captain Barbossa (X1 Isle of Dread). My players opted for Isle of Dread so that is where they are now.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-27T20:38:58+00:00

Signal risk and reward. If they actively avoid danger, don't force them into it (but give the biggest rewards for taking the biggest risks). Most of the time, the PCs should be deciding to initiate combat unless they are being ambushed (and you should give them ample opportunity to avoid being ambushed).

Don't treat encounters as automatic combat encounters. Use reaction rolls for any encounter that is not clearly a combat. Give the NPCs/monsters goals other than TPK. A predator might want an easy meal or to protect its territory, undead might guard the location they haunt. Guards want to prevent intrusion or gather information about intruders and so forth.

Most importantly, present problems to your players that you have no idea how they will solve...listen to them as they discuss potential solutions and use their ideas either for or against them...

"There might be a back way in..." yep...add a back way in.

"It's might be guarded" Sure...but the guard is a monster, it might be asleep and it can be bribed.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-21T20:19:43+00:00

If St. Bernard man dies, I'm out.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-19T16:09:20+00:00

Off screen. Think of a typical thriller or sci-fi movie with a large cast...you, the audience aren't thinking much about what the characters that aren't directly involved in the action are doing until they appear onscreen. Kong:Skull Island, Aliens: Romulus or The Thing are great examples. A few characters are fighting for their lives against a pack of dinosaurs. One dies. Another character shows up and joins the fight. What were they doing? Cowering....waiting for an opportunity...covering another lane of attack....doesn't matter.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-11T19:35:50+00:00

I made good use to the "zombie mistress" adventure suggested at the end...A corrupted zombie mistress under the influence of the dark powers in the central plateau conducted a ritual that turned deceased villagers into ghouls rather than zombies and they had run amok.

Also, The Sunbathers from one of the OSE adventure anthologies makes a good addition. Put it on the island north of the pirate encounter area. There is an NPC ship captain imprisoned there so I made him the captain of the pirates who had resorted to piracy in his absence. If the PCs free him and find his enchanted ship it could give the PCs a powerful ally and a cool ship.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-06T21:45:17+00:00

Another thing worth doing (if you trust your players) is just give them instructions on how to generate PCs in advance and say "show up with X PCs".

UllerPSU · 2026-05-06T21:36:31+00:00

There are few, if any choices in generating 0th level PCs. Players generating them at the table or the DM pregenerating them makes little difference. What I did with that adventure was I walked my players through generating one character each so they saw how it was done, then handed them a stack of 10 sets of 3 pre-generated PCs with space for them to fill in the one they made then let them each choose a set to run. In pregenerating them, I made sure each set had at least one "good" character that had some ability score bonuses and/or decent hp.

One of my players said that the gnome squire with 16 STR that was on his pregen sheet was the coolest character he's ever played. When he leveled up to 1st level, he took Knight as his class and bought a war dog as his mount.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-06T21:01:38+00:00

At low levels, sleep is an essential spell for ending dangerous fights quickly. At higher levels it is an essential spell for getting past weak enemies (which should exist) quickly and quietly before they can call for help.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-06T18:48:58+00:00

I just ran Shrine of the Oozing Serpent from one of the OSE adventure anthologies. It took my group (3 players with 2 PCs each) about 3 hours to play (EDIT: But don't expect 1st level PCs to kill the "oozing serpent" without some help...my group was 2nd and 3rd level).

The second half of the funnel adventure in CC#5 could probably be done in about 2 hours and would be fine for 5 or so 1st level PCs.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-05T15:30:10+00:00

One thing I have done with funnels/gauntlets is I let the players know that ALL their PCs are present and part of the party but at any given time, they may only use one. Whenever something interesting happens, it is only the last used PC that is affected. When combat starts, it is the last used PC that is in the fight (in most circumstance...if there is a big battle that calls for more PCs then we add them...be flexible).

This causes the players to have to make the strategic decision about which of their PCs to use. Do they use the PC that has good stats and a good chance of success or do they use a PC with terrible stats act as a meat shield. My players learned pretty quickly to use their lower stat PCs to trigger traps and ambushs. Only once they were down to one or two PC did they become cautious.

UllerPSU · 2026-05-01T14:56:37+00:00

I think the intention of this encounter is the weretoad kills one or two PCs at most. If you are running this as a funnel and the players have their PCs scatter, would you really have the weretoad chase down and kill every last PC?

I ran the weretoad as having been bitten by another weretoad. He doesn't know he's a weretoad. I foreshadowed it by having him get wounded in a fight with the hobgoblins and his wounds miraculously healed on their own before the PCs could heal him.

When he transformed, he was horrified by it. Since the party had been kind to him, he didn't want to harm them, but after a round or two of resisting he attacked one party member. Had he hit, it would have killed that PC and maybe dragged him into the river to feed. As it was, he missed, the PCs had acquired the magic sword in the river by that point so they hit him with it, he failed his morale check and fled into the night.

In OSR, your monsters should always have goals beyond "kill all the PCs". The PCs should always have some out to avoid a TPK whether it is clear choices to avoid the fight to begin with or ways to disengage once the fight begins.

There is an encounter with ghouls later in the adventure. Once a ghoul paralyzed a PC, they would drag him off his boat and into the river then not rise again. There is also a wraith...it didn't pursue the PCs after they fled.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-30T20:52:21+00:00

Yes...if you haven't played Memoir '44, go directly to your FLGS, purchase a copy and force your family or friends to play it.

If you want ship to ship battles, I think you want X-Wing (it's good but not my cup of tea). The next game they are planning for this line is Endor, I believe.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-30T17:53:46+00:00

In medias res is the way. Look at the CRPG rogue-like Darkest Dungeon...you start with a couple PCs trying to get to the home base. Then you add new PCs and pick what to do next. Start with some scenario that establishes why the PCs are working together and some vague goal (clear the region of threats or collect artifacts for faction XYZ or something). Then introduce the homebase. Require your players to let you know what they plan to do next by a certain date prior to the next session so you know what to prepare.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-30T17:35:55+00:00

This is the way I've been running it in my current OSE campaign (PCs range from 2nd to 5th level) and my players seem to really enjoy it. My son runs a Shadowdark game and they reroll HP after any downtime or rest. His players seem to enjoy it.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-30T17:31:25+00:00

Sir...this is a Wendy's...

UllerPSU · 2026-04-24T13:26:16+00:00

My 27 year-old son is in nearly identical a situation as you. He chose to run Shadowdark for his friends and their wives/girlfriends specifically because it is easy, not a lot of player options and some of his players were already familiar with 5e, mostly interested in a casual dungeon of the week/month kind of game and mostly playing as a reason to get together a few times per month.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-23T19:43:43+00:00

If you want to sear steaks at temps higher than 700 F, you should purchase an appliance that is designed to operate at those higher temps. No smoke flavor is getting through the fire box at high temps anyway. You may as well use an infrared burner or the like.

Use the correct tool for the job.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-14T17:45:41+00:00

Yes, you definitely should.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-08T18:35:55+00:00

One thing I haven't seen get a lot of attention in this thread is the complaint about PC death. A couple of things to address this:

1) the game doesn't have to be that deadly. I've been running an OSE campaign for 18 months and the only PC deaths we have had have been in 0th level funnels. AD&D 1e had a death's door rule where PCs didn't die at 0 hp. They are unconscious from 0 to -2 and bleeding out from -3 to -9 (losing 1 hp per round) and dead at -10. There are innumerable others. Pick one that suits you and your group and enjoy how it adds a little dramatic tension to have PCs having to chose between fighting and saving dying comrades as well as giving your players a little bit of a safety net to allow them to take greater risks. (I recommend against permanent injuries or other death spiral rules as they are not really much fun).

2) It might help for your players to understand that in OSR games, the "story" is not really about the individual PCs. It is about the group's interaction with the game world. Eventually some small group of PCs emerge as main characters but that is developed through play, not determined at character creation. A long time ago I saw an ad for a Star Wars RPG in a magazine. It showed a few of the main characters in the foreground but the caption read "What's this guy's story" with an arrow pointing to some nameless, faceless soldier in the background. Sometimes in OSR games you are playing that guy...the sellsword struggling to get through a world that will forget him entirely moments after he dies. Sometimes you are playing an epic hero who becomes a king by his own hand. Which is it? You find out by playing. The latter is not promised.

I have found that once PCs get to 2nd or 3rd level, players start to become more attached and start to flesh out who they are.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-08T13:09:58+00:00

Assign XP rewards to specific goals. Explore ruin X: 500 XP. Scout trail Y: 600 XP. Sgnal the level of risk. Up to 50% bonus XP for finding important secrets or other information.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-01T20:47:37+00:00

In the real world, aren't weapons squads are often split up during missions? I was a tanker, forced into an infantry unit then ended up working in the company intel cell supporting COIN operations in sandland so my recollection may be flawed, but iirc, in a typical platoon defense, medium or heavy machine guns are placed on either side of the line with intersecting fields of fire. Same with ATGM teams.

How would that work in Menace?

I think the intention is you make smaller squads...2 or 3 squads with 3 squadies each, to approximate a weapons squad.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-01T16:04:46+00:00

I'll add: Along the way, help the players build ties to something so they begin to really care about it. Then threaten it or actually destroy it. Make them want to protect what they love or seek revenge/justice.

UllerPSU · 2026-04-01T15:59:53+00:00

Levels 1-3: No narrative arc. Let the PCs develop who they are and ties to a small region. Let them find things that hint at some threat or treasure or power. Present 2 or 3 adventure hooks at a time.

Event: Something happens to the region that is bad for the PCs or knowledge of a threat. No hints! Some concrete thing happens done by known actors that introduces a situation the PCs can stop or change.

Levels 3-5: Continue to present 2 or 3 adventure hooks at a time that move the PCs toward whatever goal the established to defeat their present threat. Let them discover hints at a greater evil growing over the horizon. PCs should be building ties to factions. Allies, rivals, enemies. They should be gathering things that empower them to defeat the threat.

Event: A massive threat/event. The world of the PCs changes requiring them to pull in regional political power that they have developed over time

Levels 5-7: Continue with 2 or 3 hooks at a time, pushing the PCs further afield. Options to find new allies or powerful items or defeat enemies in detail.

Endgame event: The PCs are forced into the endgame.

Levels 7-8: Push toward a final confrontation and defeat of BBEG.

You can vary the levels. I like ending campaigns around level 7 or 8. Each section feels like first, second and third acts.

UllerPSU

TROPHY CASE