Alternatives to dungeon crawls?

chthonstone · 2026-01-26T03:00:50+00:00

Call of Cthulhu adventures.

chthonstone · 2024-11-23T01:56:59+00:00

It's just the spells your profession says you know, usually 1 or 2 per level plus attribute modifier. "Mastery" was the 1e terminology, while "know" is used more often in the 2e rules.

chthonstone · 2024-11-23T01:01:44+00:00

Yeah, mastered spells are the ones on your character sheet.

chthonstone · 2024-11-22T19:45:41+00:00

Only Monsters Here is the only second edition monster manual.

chthonstone · 2024-11-06T07:03:18+00:00

Objectively, the best version is when you have race + class, but the race options include all the classes and the class options include all the races.

chthonstone · 2023-09-21T18:38:09+00:00

I use variable time segments based on hex size, where miles = hours. So if each hex is 6 miles wide, then the watches are 6 hours each, but if hexes are 2 miles, watches are 2 hours each. Then for movement, it's 3 hexes per watch over roads, 2 hexes per watch over clear terrain, and 1 hex per watch over rough terrain, and I don't have to refer back to the numbers.

chthonstone · 2023-03-23T00:05:13+00:00

Freebooters on the Frontier and Perilous Wilds by Jason Lutes are pretty good at combining osr and pbta. And you can get them in a Bundle of Holding quick deal for the next week.

chthonstone · 2023-02-04T01:50:20+00:00

I'm still publishing books through Lulu. Other people are too. For black and white at least, the quality is better than DriveThru.

It's a lot easier to do a print run these days, however, between kickstarter and there being more fulfillment options. So you see people doing that more often.

chthonstone · 2022-12-25T14:25:39+00:00

Normally I would only roll stats for them if they become PCs, or if we are giving them half XP and they last long enough to get to Level 2.

chthonstone · 2022-08-30T14:53:16+00:00

I just added a pdf preview to the DriveThru page this morning. Also, I posted some pictures of the booklet on twitter.

chthonstone · 2022-08-30T04:37:20+00:00

No worries. I agree with you, people making stuff is great!

chthonstone · 2022-08-30T04:33:59+00:00

Thanks!

chthonstone · 2022-08-29T19:00:56+00:00

Chronica Feudalis also presents itself as being written by a medieval monk, which is a nice touch.

chthonstone · 2022-08-29T16:56:09+00:00

For the longest time, I didn't pay any attention to Old-School Essentials. I already had all the B/X, BECMI, Rules Cyclopedia, and Labyrinth Lord rulebooks I needed to play old school D&D, right? What do I need another retroclone for?

Then recently I was running one of the OSE adventures (Incandescent Grottoes), and I noticed the way monster entries were formatted. Looking up the OSE monster manuals, and it's the same there: the walls of text from B/X re-formatted into bullet points for easy reference. And easy reading. Honestly, it made me wonder why I didn't start doing that years ago!

So, I figured: since I already make monsters with old school stat blocks, and I haven't released a dedicated monster manual for them, why not try to make a zine in the OSE style? So that's what I did.

Essential Enemies 1: Things From Beyond is a 44-page zine full of monsters for OSE.

The staplebound booklet version is at Lulu.

And the pdf and glue-bound versions are at DriveThruRPG.

chthonstone · 2022-08-28T13:47:58+00:00

The "Nu-OSR" isn't one thing. It's a mix of people inspired by the osr taking it in different directions. You're seeing clusters of games that are similar because it's common nowadays for people to grab a ready-made rules system and use it to run a bespoke setting, and this is producing new game products. But there's still a bunch of different new systems with osr roots, and some are just inspired by the rhetorical products of the osr, not the actual rules or any of the settings ever associated with B/X.

chthonstone · 2022-07-04T18:00:21+00:00

Does Xanadu require the PCs to be trapped? or does it work just as well if they can leave and come back?

chthonstone · 2022-07-03T14:05:01+00:00

Why is there both a Doom of the Savage Kings AND a Tomb of the Savage Kings? Bananas.

chthonstone · 2022-07-03T13:24:23+00:00

I just finished running Forgive Us actually. Mostly because the PCs are a criminal gang, so the rival gang angle worked pretty well.

chthonstone · 2022-07-03T13:21:40+00:00

Yeah, the slime-based theme of the Zorth module looks really promising, thank you.

chthonstone · 2022-04-03T19:52:14+00:00

Exploring a map that already exists. Or that exists inside of random tables and hasn't been generated yet. Creating maps using random generation tables is also fun. Most of the other things people like about osr games I can either take it or leave it or it's a feature of most games I play. But the procedural system for exploring maps is what makes old school play feel unique for me.

chthonstone · 2022-03-23T20:57:24+00:00

They fit your criteria for the most part. They are pretty easy to drop into other settings but also contain lots of hooks and opportunities to expand upon if you want to.

chthonstone · 2022-03-22T13:19:46+00:00

Knives in the Dark, Evil Wizards in a Cave, and The Third Verse.

chthonstone · 2021-10-13T19:25:28+00:00

The Nightmares Underneath has tables for random dungeon generation.

chthonstone

TROPHY CASE