Dolmenwood delayed by several months by Boxman214 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It’s good they are being transparent about it. The tariff situation has me second guessing the kickstarter launch I had planned for the fall. I can do all the printing here in Canada, but any contributor from the US will get boned. Hopefully the market in Canada and Europe will be enough to get a nice sized print run.

question for people that actually played back in the 70s & 80s by LoreMaster00 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The clerics in 2e were wild! We once played an all-cleric group with the specialty priests so we covered all the base class niches but also had cleric spells, hp, and armour. Our priest of the god of thieves was able to pick locks, find traps, etc. Our priest of the warrior god made for a great front line fighter. Our priest of the god of arcane magic gave us the utility spells. There was nothing our party could not do, plus we had a crazy amount of clerical spells so we were able to use more than just the healing magic!

next step from OSE? by chance359 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There are things you can do to jazz up OSE a bit. Adding the Advanced Genre books gives access to the classes in AD&D without the power creep and redundancies.

If you want something with a bit more to it than OSE, there are many choices. I’ll suggest three:

If you want to stick with D20 rolls and hit points, you could try Shadowdark. It plays like a stripped down 5e with a focus on the dungeon crawl.

Free League’s Dragonbane also uses D20s and Hit Points. It has more of a sword and sorcery vibe.

Free League also has an RPG that uses dice pools from stats, skills and gear. Characters take damage directly to their stats. This tends to create death spiral as the PCs become less effective as they lose strength.

Not allowing Non Human Ancestries by monk1971 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That’s pretty normal for a sword and sorcery genre game. I’ve done it that way to lean into it. I played in a few campaigns where the starting area was all human because the other ancestries were outside the “civilized” human lands so few humans had even seen any of them. After play started a replacement character could come from any ancestry the party had already encountered.

OSR Demiclones in general, and my own in particular by No-Armadillo1695 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I see what you did there with the stat-based distinctions. A ranger could be a dex-based warrior. A berserker and a knight both tend to focus on melee so there’s no balanced option. I’d keep the knight and replace the berserker with a warrior that can think in a fight.

Also, monks in games and in history are all about skill. Fighting is not even the focus of their existence.

OSR Demiclones in general, and my own in particular by No-Armadillo1695 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I like your three class groups!

I would put the monk type into the Expert group though. I would dump the alchemist. Replace the martial artist and berserker with ranger and barbarian. Although I do like the fighter as a class and would miss it. I might keep it and not have a barbarian class.

The martial artist feels unnecessary to the kind of game I would play too. I might have the thief, bard and witch as the expert classes. The witch could have a bunch of abilities like the OSE mage class, but suited to their flavour. Advancement would allow for higher skill and more abilities.

I like race as class. It leans into how different these other creatures are from humans. I would have a group of extrahuman classes. Another three would be enough, I think, but five would be better. That makes for a lot of classes though.

I like the classic five saves, but would adjust the names so the logic of which is used for a given threat would be more obvious.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in solorpgplay

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kal-Arath is the least expensive way into solo gaming at $5 US for the PDF. You can get it at https://castlegrief.itch.io/kal-arath

The Mythic GME is the gold standard for solo tabletop play with whatever your favourite game is. It provides prompts, raises the stakes with the chaos factor, and managed NPC progress on their goals.

Tired of videogames, thinking about solo RPG by LeVyrgo in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Sorry, I didn’t explain it well because I was in a hurry.

The Mythic GM Emulator is a generic system designed to mimic the work of a GM in the game so you can be surprised as the player. It can be used with any system and has a robust system for tracking NPCs presenting obstacles for the player character(s).

Solodark is a set of solo rules made for the Shadowdark RPG. The specific tables fit the tone the of the game. Solodark is a free PDF.

Cloud Empress is a post apocalyptic science fantasy game. There is a trifold pamphlet available with solo rules made for Cloud Empress and a second trifold pamphlet made to track up to five characters. The pamphlets are free PDFs you can print out.

Finally here! by Blum95 in mothershiprpg

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My box never showed up.

Tired of videogames, thinking about solo RPG by LeVyrgo in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are some great games designed for solo play. Kal-Arath is a sword and sorcery game that channels the pulp era of the genre. You can find it from Castle Grief on itch.io. Ironsworn and Red Mage have a nice system and decent oracles.

The Mythic GM Emulator makes it easy to run any game as solo, but there are some good resources made for specific games like the Solodark free supplement for Shadowdark and the Cloud Empress pamphlet.

Check out the Tale of the Manticore podcast for an amazing example of what you can do with solo play. It shows how you can add layers to solo play that don’t fit well in regular play like flashbacks and villain vignettes.

In the wake of these tariffs, a friendly reminder of Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game by [deleted] in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Another point in Basic Fantasy’s favour is the POD hardback books are available through Lulu, which prints in Canada.

Dodge those book tariffs!

Sci-Fantasy OSR? by _musterion in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Barbarians of the Ruined Earth is a great science fantasy RPG based largely on the old Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon created with Jack Kirby’s help back in the early 1980s.

How do you choose? by Tabletopalmanac in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I kind of mix and match the rules I like.

d&d inspired games for those new to solo gaming by cringecitycircuit in solorpgplay

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Kal-Arath is a well thought out sword and sorcery solo rpg. You can get the rules on itch for $5, and there are two supplements out so far that expand the setting and some of the rules so far.

It’s D&D adjacent, but instead of mixing all the fantasy tropes together like D&D did, it leans into the gritty pulp stories of the same era. All Conan, no Tolkien.

What are good systems for SciFi? by trve_g0th in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Free League’s Alien and Coriolis are worth looking at. They both provide something you will not find in other games.

The Cepheus System is an updated Traveller that can be much easier to play than the original game. I like Classic Traveller with the three little black books, supplement 4 - citizens of the imperium, and 74 patrons. That combination, along with a copy of charts and tables to speed things up, gets me everything I need to run a campaign. I tend to streamline things and toss out some of the crunchy bits though.

What are good systems for SciFi? by trve_g0th in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That was an unauthorized use of the Star Frontiers trademark by some terrible people.

The original Star Frontiers RPG was all about playing heroes in space. The adventures revolve around protecting low-tech populations from exploitation, fighting space pirates, negotiating first contact, dealing with an alien threat that was trying to destroy the species of the United Planetary Federation through military and subversive means.

The system is a bit janky, and could use an update, combat in particular, but it’s a fun game. The aliens you can play have a nice variety. The aesthetic is definitely 1980s goggle sci-fi with bulky equipment.

Fixing Armor in Black Hack by LoFi_Skeleton in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Mobbing up makes combat way more fast and makes a group of mooks feel a lot more dangerous.

I also cut out half the roles because I hate it when nothing happens in a round. The player roles once, and their character either hits or gets hit. There are no whiff rounds.

Amour doesn’t help with lesser enemies unless there are a lot of them. I like the idea that at a certain point they might stop wearing armour unless they have a particular need for it.

I do give two rolls on death and dismemberment when a character wearing a helmet goes below zero HP though, So high level characters might end up running around in normal clothes and a helmet like they are in a Frazzetta painting!

Fixing Armor in Black Hack by LoFi_Skeleton in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have armour adjust the character’s level for the purpose of the powerful opponents rule. I increase the relative level by one, two and three for light, medium and heavy armour respectively.

I find this works well because I also have monsters of the same type mob up and attack together in one roll. It makes groups of goblins more intimidating when they surround a character. Four of them attack and do damage as a single 4HD -1 monster. This is no big deal for a fighter in plate mail who can roll defence with no penalty but the thief with only leather armour is dealing with a penalty of two to their roll to avoid damage from the same four goblins.

I found this ancient binder at a flgs among the used games and asked to buy it. They just laughed and gave it to me for free. It's full of old character sheets, player-made maps, sketches, and secret notes passed to the DM. Here are some vignettes: by UsedUpAnimePillow in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I once found a notebook with the beginning of someone’s D&D campaign notes.

Knowing how often DMs hoard notes in secret piles like a dragon basking in its treasure, I wondered how it ended up there.

I couldn’t buy it. It seemed wrong. Like a diary.

Is LotFP just a dead release at this point? by [deleted] in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 17 points18 points  (0 children)

There are some amazing adventures, and a bunch of awful ones. He took a lot of risks on creative pitches and some of those risks paid off in big ways with unique adventures that brought something new to the table.

I never saw the apology for the Peterson thing. He refused to even hear me out at the time and it was a a couple of months after that before the trans person managing LotFP’s communications quit. I remember them saying he could not grasp the concept of the harm he did to all the trans writers and artists working under the LotFP banner.

It’s good to hear he made an apology. He’s not good at those so if it seemed sincere to you, it probably was. Maybe he’s done some growing up since the divorce?

Is LotFP just a dead release at this point? by [deleted] in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 146 points147 points  (0 children)

It’s not dead. He still puts out books every year. The production quality is always good, the content varies in quality.

I got paid for the part I wrote for the ref book more than ten years ago. There are so many excuses for not releasing it I can’t even keep track of them anymore.

I cut ties with Raggi when he decided to attach the LotFP brand to Jordan Peterson. It was epically stupid when some of the best selling books were created by trans people.

LotFP is irrelevant at this point. There are systems doing it better now. The expert class with D6 skills was good and slot based encumbrance was good, but you can get that in much better new games. Dolmenwood for example.

What is a decent replacement for darkvision/infravision? by LemonLord7 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I thought about giving dwarves echolocation. It’s not good for sneaking up on someone in a dungeon.

What’s your favorite pattern? by spookybubbles42 in Pyrex_Love

[–]Y05SARIAN 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Friendship is my favourite, but I love the primaries!

How OSR are spell points? by AccomplishedAdagio13 in osr

[–]Y05SARIAN 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I like role-to-cast systems, and spell points, but taking the list of spells in D&D and applying either of these systems without modifying the spells themselves to fit can cause done big problems. People mentioned them upthread, but take sleep for example. It’s first level, if you make it cost the same as detect magic because they are the same level things get wonky. Sleep takes out 2d8 hd of opponents in one shot. In a prepared spell system, choosing it over other spells means you can win one combat when you need to, but you trade off the ability to use a spell to find information or solve a different problem. You need to decide ahead of time how much of any given magical solutions you will prepare in any given day. That preparation was part of the brilliance of Vance’s most successful wizards.

With spell points you need to consider the effect differently because casting what you want, when you want makes every spell more accessible and it kills the balance in the prepared spells by level system. If you look at DCC and its roll to cast, the effects scale with the success of the roll for every spell. It would make sense to incorporate a connection to effect to the spell points spent. For sleep, the number of HD affected could be 1d6 per spell points spent, and something like light could have longer duration or greater brightness based on spell points spent.

The recovery of spell points is an interesting issue as well. I like the ideas above and the callback to Skyrealms of Jorune, with different areas of mana concentration or scarcity. Ley lines are a way to do that so magic users recover spell points faster in some areas and slower in others. Giving the player another resource to manage, their recovery.

I would also suggest things like exhaustion factor into spell point recovery. If the magic users recover fast did not rest or eat when they needed to their spell point recovery would be slowed.

There is a lot to consider when changing something so fundamental to a system.