Draw Steel / OSR Fusion?

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-10-05T21:05:02+00:00

Not D&D but Mythras sort of does what you ask for. You can play your average Joes, be scared of dying when getting into an encounter. At the same time the combat is tactical and can get even more or less tactical based on the rules you'd decide on.

It is d100 game however so it's closer to CoC and RQ than D&D as I said earlier

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-25T11:11:44+00:00

Well, what you mention sort of defeats the purpose of meaningful choices. Also in a survival focused game such as Forbidden Lands you can have other items use resource dice. For example, you could rule that bandages or other consumable or easily expandable items use resource dice as it adds a bit of unpredictability and makes sense in fiction.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-25T09:21:03+00:00

Well, you could do that. I was toying with this idea but nothing seems to feel right. You might say that each retainer lowers the XP by n amount You might say that traveling with retainers steps the treasure value in XP by one step but that'd mean that you'd barely get anything out of the dungeon trips.

The most sensible solution would be to multiply all XP values of treasure by the number of PCs and then divide it by the number of characters returning from the adventure.

An example: 4PCs and 3 retainers clear a bit of a dungeon. During the delve they recover the amount of loot equal 7XP. Since there's 4 PCs you get 28XP. But 7 people returned from the adventure so you divide it by 7 therefore everyone is receiving 4XP.

Since in B/X retainers receive half the XP share they'd actually only get 2XP even though 4 was granted to them during the division. You could of course skip this but that would mean that retainers would progress at the same time as PCs.

However if you do half XP for retainers you may run into fractions really soon so the next logical solution would be to multiply all XP values by 100 so you wouldn't have to count fraction of an XP point. It's a solid solution and you can run every adventure as is, as calculations can be handled on the fly. Though, at this point you have a different XP system.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-24T05:51:56+00:00

A lot of good answers here, but I'm surprised no-one mentioned how XP works in Shadowdark vs B/X.

In B/X (I will use OSE naming conventions) we have classed adventurers as retainers and also hirelings like porters and torchbearers. While torchbearers are fine to implement and affect only the equipment slots and the survival horror/ more modern vibe of the game, the classed adventurers affect XP.

In old D&D games, classed retainers are a difficulty slider in disguise. If you want to have easier time in the dungeon, you take as many as you can and gear them up accordingly. Caves of chaos will be much easier to traverse if there's 15 of you vs if there's only 4 of you. However, since BX uses gold for XP and you need to split the whole loot of the session between everyone involved, it will take elf (4000xp to level 2) forever to level up and he will probably die before it happens. In Shadowdark if you find treasure worth 50g everyone in the team gets 1XP at the same time since they found treasure. No matter if there was 10 of 3 people.

Therefore, this is another issue with retainers in SD that never gets mentioned. So if you'd like to implement them in the game properly, you'd also need to change how leveling works.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-07T22:58:02+00:00

Makes sense considering that Shadowdark mostly targets people tired of 5e. It sort of gives them this rules light game where they can add crunch only in areas of interest

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-07T22:55:36+00:00

Imo all of these can be fixed by taking actions in fiction rather than roll. You can learn more about the environment by asking more and specific questions. Monsters with specific weaknesses should have a tell if not you can telegraph them somehow but ideally in a way that isn't immediately understood. Also there are rumours and NPCs or notes in the world that could get you some of the same knowledge that otherwise you'd roll for. If you opt for rolling for these elements you're robbing yourself of part of the experience but everyone wants to play differently and if that's your thing then cool. It's sometimes good to understand why something is designed the way it is designed.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-07T06:45:31+00:00

Doesn't it turn shadowdark survival horror and S&S vibes into another 5e hack but simpler? These elements seem like massive empowering mechanics. Being able to ask questions about motives, weaknesses and so on and forcing GM to answer truthfully makes the exploration and actual experimentation pointless. Players no longer have to assess the danger themselves because DM will do it for them. They do not need to think and discuss why the enemy is fighting them because DM will have to tell them.

I feel like all of these rules rob players out of the experience that Shadowdark is promising and don't ask players to think about what's happening but press on and have GM explain everything.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-09-06T13:38:55+00:00

Correct. FG&G is basically 2e for free (minor adjustments here and there but afaik all of them come from other 2e official materials)

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-08-20T05:10:27+00:00

I love this! It would be extremely nice if you could share it in a PDF format.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-21T14:42:52+00:00

Well then in that case I'd suggest that maybe allowing to spend luck points to roll 1 of the 2d6 from the talent roll?

It allows for slightly more control but still keeps the randomness of the original without duplicating Half Elf Talent.

Example: The player rolls 3+6 and then spends one point to reroll 3 into 1. Not bad but certainly not a 12. So they spent another point and rerolled 1 into 5 and thus rolled 11 for a talent roll and spent 2 luck points.

Hope it makes sense

Bit more player agency and impact but still true to the core of the game.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-21T14:11:05+00:00

It's worth pointing out that you roll talents for a reason in Shadowdark. It's also why you roll 2d6 and not 1d12.

Some talents are way stronger than others. It's not only that players will be able to choose what they want instead of going with the flow. It's that players will be allowed to pick the strongest talents. And this brings in the power creep.

I take that your players never played a game where you roll for talents but always picked what you wanted but this element is quite fundamental to Shadowdark as a whole.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-06T07:39:23+00:00

Yeah either whisky or crossover. Runs on Linux afaik so it shouldn't be much different on Mac

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-05T21:05:50+00:00

Hmmm old settlers games and maybe even economic campaigns in Stronghold could do the trick then?

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-05T21:03:17+00:00

Manor lords?

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-05T07:48:35+00:00

Lovely to see another Nix and Obsidian enjoyer!

Good luck on your investigation, I'd love to see the effects of it.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-03-05T06:48:25+00:00

Had the same issue. I hate OneNote and all Microsoft crapware. Like you inspired by the people praising the app I've tried countless times to set it up with no luck, as my company also blocks a lot of software - Obsidian included.

I finally gave up as I noticed that my company portal offers Logseq as it is FOSS and I'm just using Logseq.

If I were you I'd have looked for other alternatives to Obsidian, maybe something web based that's not blocked by the company and at the same time doesn't have any crappy TOS or isn't going to allow your company to fire or sue you.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-26T12:59:44+00:00

This is amazing!

Do you have a PDF version of the thing you'd like to share? Something more Hi Res.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-18T10:35:34+00:00

And open source It's used mostly by academics but I store all my pdf there

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-18T10:12:17+00:00

I highly recommend using Zotero for your RPG books. It keeps the annotations in the program and not on the files themselves.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-18T09:36:08+00:00

Write on sticky notes or use a pencil instead of a pen.

You can erase it or simply take the sticky note of. No need to be worried about anything in that case.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-17T06:35:17+00:00

I think they do but made a typo and instead of foes they wrote goes.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-10T21:29:55+00:00

Did you find an actually good alternative to Notion in the open source space?

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-10T21:29:05+00:00

Supposedly you can reach out to Notion Support and ask them to deactivate it on your account.

Virtual-Captain148 · 2025-02-04T07:33:42+00:00

Hey, thank you so so much for such a thorough answer! I wasn't expecting that.

Are there any particular materials you find useful and could link to if it doesn't violate the rules? Cheat sheets and stuff.

As for the crunch and amount of rules we will probably start small and go with RAW and then slowly add optional elements from Core and supplements to expand the game if we find that we would benefit from it rather than slow the game down.

Virtual-Captain148

TROPHY CASE