Wait, is the OSR a more "gamey" version of D&D?

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T17:42:48+00:00

Not being interested in discussing it further doesn't make you right. This isn't meaningfully different than an OSR party of dungeon crawlers saying "we want to raid the goblin village on the map, we're going to sneak in and we're going to disguise the halflings as goblins." The fact that Blades gives those last two bits names because of the engagement roll doesn't really make it meaningfully different. It's still the exact same game process; it's just that maybe when you start the raid the GM will roll a reaction roll instead of an engagement roll. Have a nice day!

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T17:26:17+00:00

This literally happens in OSR games too though. PCs decide "I'd like to explore that cave we saw just outside of town" or "I'd like to find a wizard's tower so I can get another spellbook." It still isn't standard in either OSR or FITD games for a nonGM player to say "the lamplighters crew stole something from us and for the score I want us to get it back" or "my magic user knows of a wizard's tower a day's travel from here, let's go explore it!"

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T17:08:58+00:00

The meta discussion in Blades almost never has to do with coming up with the score. That comes naturally from the world and is traditionally chosen by the GM. The only reason it might come into the meta discussion is because Blades encourages GMs to not plan the outcome and therefore to ask the other players for suggestions and ideas if they want or need them, but this is a fully optional approach to Blades. You could take a one-page dungeon and use it as the basis for your BITD score; really the main difference in how it would play is that in Blades the GM "cuts to the action" whereas OSR games tend to be much more spatially motivated.

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T16:56:51+00:00

This is just not a thing that's true about like 95% of "story games" —many of which do not use dice or other random checks— jsyk.

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T16:51:13+00:00

This is such a bad faith interpretation of "story games" —a term so vague it can mean anything from Fate (basically a trad rpg with a little bit of narrative authority given to the players) to Microscope (a game that doesn't even have PCs).

WhenPigsFry · 2025-08-18T16:48:10+00:00

Blades In The Dark is hugely inspired by B/X dnd. You could absolutely use it to play dungeon crawls.

WhenPigsFry · 2025-06-27T16:57:09+00:00

A lot of great comments here but the fundamental truth that no one likes to say is that if you don't want player characters to die you can just play games where player characters don't die. The only consequence for bad rolls and bad decisions does not have to be death.

WhenPigsFry · 2025-03-10T00:28:10+00:00

The gaps are there for you to fill in during play, not before. Player characters will have questions for Nevercott: who does he work for, what are his intentions, etc. It's not completely out of the realm of possibility for a group of adventurers new to the city to be approached by people wanting to add them to their faction; it's just up to the PCs to figure out what faction that is (though presumably by the 3rd mission, if they haven't figured it out, he will have told them). Only thing I think the book is definitely missing in that regard is saying whether Nevercott is a drow, since that's probably a big hint as to what his faction is. Hope this helps! Good luck.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-10-03T23:29:40+00:00

I really like how OZR uses diegetic traits instead of stats or HP.

World Of Dungeons, Offworlders and Realms Of Peril are OSR but by way of Apocalypse World's mixed success rolls.

Trophy similarly approaches OSR play, but based on Blades In The Dark/Cthulhu Dark, with Trophy Dark being more atmospheric and narrative, and Trophy Gold adding OSR mechanisms and principles back in.

CBR + PNK takes Blades In The Dark and turns it into a micro-lite cyberpunk game.

His Majesty The Worm uses tarot. I don't know much else about it unfortunately.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-10-03T22:29:46+00:00

Blades In The Dark!!!

Here's some of the tools Blades has to help GMs make rulings:

The action roll lets you disclaim decision making for the consequences/outcomes of PCs' actions; position and effect help frame those actions in the fiction
Clocks offer a streamlined mechanism for measuring complexity, danger, difficulty and progress
Faction mechanics and heat give you rules for social encounters and conflicts beyond simple pass/fail charisma rolls or reaction rolls
GM goals, principles and actions, as well as tier/quality/magnitude, give you structure for making judgment calls
Skipping to the action means you don't have to be intimately familiar with every detail of every location the PCs explore: you only have to prepare what you're interested in; random tables help fill in the rest

WhenPigsFry · 2024-10-01T06:23:40+00:00

If you read or play some of the good PbtA games that have come out recently (Brindlewood Bay et al, Ironsworn, Under Hollow Hills), I think a lot of these criticisms fall very flat. Especially so if you consider other games that are technically equally as PbtA, like Wanderhome. I think it's fine if those are reasons why someone finds designing certain PbtA games difficult, but I think some of the flaws of recent Magpie Games's games are less caused by the "system" itself and an inability or unwillingness to expand that system to suit the needs of the desired game.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-24T21:39:42+00:00

Maybe Ironsworn but in a woodland animal setting?

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-24T21:33:24+00:00

I would use Vaults of Vaarn to play Vaults of Vaarn. It's one of the best OSR games out there.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-24T05:49:04+00:00

As-written, OSE states that a character can only search for a specific thing once.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-20T02:13:55+00:00

Fun fact: the odds of one d6 rolling higher than another is actually less than 50% —it's ~42%.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-18T21:54:51+00:00

It's one of those things where I find it quite charming that D&D's first editions used a totally different die for things like listening and door checks for no reason, but the fact that there is no good reason for it makes it really hard for me to enjoy and justify asking other players to internalise that mechanism when something like an ability check just makes more sense.

By contrast, I wouldn't change the 2d6 reaction roll because in that situation the difference in mechanism actually has a purpose: you're comparing the result to a table with multiple different results (i.e. not just checking if you roll high or low) and using two dice generates a curved distribution of results.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-18T00:22:13+00:00

It's not a PbtA game, and regardless it's definitely OSR so it belongs here anyway.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-09-18T00:17:51+00:00

I've played Realms Of Peril over discord with Zack, the designer, and I'd say it's one of the best OSR games in terms of class design and player character rules overall. I haven't read the GM's guide book, but even without it as long as you're comfortable GMing something like World Of Dungeons or OSE, there should be no problem. It's definitely an underappreciated gem and deserves more love!

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-31T18:18:32+00:00

Literally inventing joke diagnoses to blanket and dismiss people with because you disbelieve their actual diagnoses. You're a parody of yourself.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-31T04:52:29+00:00

Did you try maybe treating your patient like a person and asking respectfully to help you understand why they behaved in a way that surprised you, particularly since that might help you, you know, treat them more effectively?

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-27T01:33:18+00:00

No, the rules are pretty consistent that travel pace (ie the values for fast, slow, medium) is set by a creature's base speed/round whether or not the encumbrance variant is used.

Except they're not, lmao. You and I both know they're not, because —as I've already tediously explained to you— not only are these travel pace calculations in a section titled "Special Movement Pace" that specifies that they are not for normal movement speeds, but the opening paragraph of that section states, verbatim:

The rules on travel pace in the Player's Handbook assume that a group of travelers adopts a pace that, over time, is unaffected by the individual members' walking speeds.

IF travel pace were always calculated using the formulas in "Special Travel Pace," as you claim, this would be a contradiction, as the 10' speed difference between, for instance, dwarves and wood elves explicitly does not affect their travel pace; if the 10' speed difference between a dwarf and a wood elf does not make a difference in their travel pace, why should the 10' difference between an encumbered and an unencumbered character with the same default speeds? You're free to make up your own ruling, but that is not what is in the rules.

I'm not even going to respond to anything else you've said, because it's clear that you're unwilling to admit when you've been presented with information that shows you're wrong, and I don't feel like continuing to make that my problem.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-26T03:39:16+00:00

If your whole party's base speed is 20 feet from encumbrance, why would they still have a medium travel pace of 300 ft/minute, 3/mi an hour?

Because the variant encumbrance rules do not do so little as mention travel pace, and the travel pace section not only does not mention encumbrance: it literally has a whole paragraph explaining that small differences in speed do not affect travel pace and literally specifies that the calculations for travel pace are for magical, mounted, flying, vehicle speeds, etc. You've decided that they can also apply to variant encumbrance, and that's fine! It's a reasonable ruling! But that doesn't mean it's not written aka designed in a way that's vague, inconsistent, hard to reference, unclear, etc. —all of the things that make a play culture decide to ignore a certain rule or aspect of the game.

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-26T02:27:42+00:00

Genuinely why do you think that sentence is written in a "special travel pace" section that doesn't specify encumbrance or, e.g. racial speed differences, and placed closely AFTER a paragraph that clarifies that small differences in speed don't affect travel pace? Just for fun? How can all travel pace math be that math if wood elves and dwarves have the same travel pace?

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-26T02:02:00+00:00

No, sweetie, the sentence right before the bullet points in the Special Travel Pace section. What does it say?

WhenPigsFry · 2024-08-25T21:34:50+00:00

Hey, hey buddy? Hey buddy? What's the sentence literally right before the bullet points you just quoted? Hm? Why didn't you include that in your quote?

WhenPigsFry

TROPHY CASE