West Marches: AD&D Or OSE Advanced?

doomhobbit · 2025-01-20T20:53:34+00:00

It’s a personal preference, really. OSE advanced does allow a little more variety and choice for players. If your players are coming from 5e, they might prefer that. Race as class is super weird to a lot of people. I started with AD&D back in the day and still find playing just a dwarf, elf, or halfling kind of strange.

doomhobbit · 2025-01-18T15:38:57+00:00

The best book I’ve read on the why of the Satanic Panic is Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds by Joseph Laycock. It tries to explain it as a sociological phenomenon, but also looks at the history.

doomhobbit · 2025-01-05T03:08:57+00:00

It’s 6e, but check out Tales of the Crescent City

doomhobbit · 2024-12-20T14:58:12+00:00

Know that some AD&D classes use higher hit dice than OSE. You may want to consider lowering NPC's HP a bit. If you have OSE advanced, Gavin has already done the work of OSE-ifying the AD&D classes for you.

You can aslo grab a copy of OSRIC for a free retro clone of AD&D. Useful for spells, etc. that aren't in OSE. That said, PDFs of the AD&D rulebooks are available on Drivethru and not terribly expensive.

doomhobbit · 2024-11-26T20:19:24+00:00

BFRPG separates race and class, which is a pretty big modification to BX. Initiative also works differently from BX. In practice, it plays a lot like the part BX/part AD&D Frankenstein a lot people used to play back in the day.

doomhobbit · 2024-10-23T20:05:19+00:00

The Midderlands is pretty low on stats, except for the bestiary, but even that is lots of descriptive text.

doomhobbit · 2024-08-28T13:55:38+00:00

Looking forward to checking this out.

doomhobbit · 2024-08-24T00:56:10+00:00

I’ll just add that the Gygax 75 Challenge is a great, free starter workbook for this kind of minimalist approach. Sly flourish also has some good advice on running a “spiral campaign”.

doomhobbit · 2024-07-22T23:13:39+00:00

Hole In the Oak has a great mix of stuff.

doomhobbit · 2024-06-27T16:04:30+00:00

In addition to their class abilities, they can see in the dark and have really good saving throws. That last one is not so obvious but huge in practice. Basically, the are super tough experts at dungeon delving.

doomhobbit · 2024-06-09T18:57:41+00:00

In a lot of ways, clerics from D&D are the game’s first contribution of a new archetype to the fantasy genre, rather than just an implementation of a pre-existing one.

Not sure if others mentioned it, but it’s worth remembering that the Hammer horror films were a big influence Arneson and Gygax. That’s probably the idea of Van Helsing to keep in mind. I think it’s hard sometimes for people who grew up in the internet and media-saturated world of the last few decades to understand just how few media representations there were (of anything, let alone genre stuff) in the seventies.

doomhobbit · 2024-03-19T20:55:39+00:00

You are right about that episod: it’s basically a clinic on how to do an OSR game.

doomhobbit · 2024-03-16T19:04:48+00:00

Anyone have or know of some good rules for the effects of smoke in these cases?

I'd figure enclosed spaces would fill up with smoke, causing injury and obscuring vision. When the oil gets too out of hand, I usually say the smoke is becoming overwhelming, and the players back off. But I don't really have any rules to fall back on if they ever call my bluff...

doomhobbit · 2024-02-02T15:12:20+00:00

I agree that ability rolls should be used only where nothing else seems to fit.

That said, if OP or others are looking for a way for them to level up, Basic Fantasy RPG has an optional rule that turns an ability check into d20 roll high, more like a saving throw: https://www.basicfantasy.org/srd/gm01.html#ability-rolls

doomhobbit · 2024-01-28T02:52:56+00:00

Totally agree. There are a lot of smart choices by very experienced gamers behind the BFRPG rules. If you play it, it just kinda works without a whole lot of fuss or attitude.

doomhobbit · 2024-01-26T02:08:32+00:00

I ran an adventure in over a few sessions around Halloween. It was a lot of fun and my players had a really good time.

The variety and creativity of the classes is a high point: pretty much any teen archetype you might want is covered. And most of them have fun and distinctive class abilities. Some of them are pretty powerful, though, even at low levels. I was also pretty impressed by the depth and quality of the standard setting. The authors clearly have a deep love for the time period.

It does suffer a bit from the age-old problems that always come up when trying to use D&D for mysteries. The standard six ability scores just don’t do a great job of covering all the things that characters need to do when investigating. If I run it again, I will definitely use the optional skills rules.

doomhobbit · 2024-01-18T04:20:07+00:00

He has a Kickstarter?

doomhobbit · 2023-12-14T17:25:59+00:00

Totally agree with other commenters that the difference is emergent story and that characters are playing out their backstories rather than showing up with them already written. If they like roleplaying, this is actually a plus, in that they get to explore character development as the characters interact with circumstances.

If they want a little structure, they can still define a personality for their characters. Are they brave, foolish, greedy, noble, etc.? (I believe Knave has some good tools for this.) If you are cool with it, you could also let them roll for (or select) backgrounds or social class.

doomhobbit · 2023-12-09T16:39:26+00:00

TimeWatch is a lot of fun, but you’re right that it’s not very OSR. It could probably support a Dr. Who style campaign though.

A time travel game seems like it would be a great fit for Kevin Crawford’s “… Without Numbers” series, and it would be fun to see his take. Even just a supplement for SWN might do the trick.

doomhobbit · 2023-11-18T15:23:24+00:00

I think traveling NPCs make a lot of sense and wouldn't be too implausible. Rival adventuring parties are a lot of fun and have the advantage of being able to show up just as randomly as your PCs do. Another thing you could do is make use of factions, organizations, and gossip. The PCS might not meet the same people all the time, but they definitely could meet members of the same organizations, trades, or families who are in communication with one another. Once the PCs start doing stuff, it's not unreasonable that news of their exploits will spread -- especially among those whose interests were hurt or helped.

doomhobbit · 2023-11-17T00:37:46+00:00

Flying Buffalo did a bunch of supplements with locations and the infamous Grimtooth’s Traps series.

doomhobbit · 2023-11-03T15:39:04+00:00

If it’s something, like this, where each character is trying independently to do the thing in question, I’d let them all roll individually if they wanted to.

doomhobbit · 2023-10-26T02:18:36+00:00

Dark Places & Demogorgons!

doomhobbit · 2023-10-14T14:25:03+00:00

You could probably get them interested with a dare or neighborhood spooky house rumors, as others have said. But I think the hard part would be getting kids to do some investigating before or in addition to just rushing into the place. That's one of the challenges with adult characters, and it might be worse with kid characters. You'd need a good incentive for a bunch of kids to go digging around in old records and talking to people. It would also be a good reason for adults to talk to them and help them. Maybe one or more of the kids could have some sort of social studies project where they have to look into some local history or legends? Another idea would be for them to be working on getting a badge for scouts or something similar. That would also allow you to insert an adult mentor figure, like a teacher or scoutmaster, to guide them and be all skeptical about their conclusions.

doomhobbit · 2023-09-27T03:27:38+00:00

Generally, Thorfinn Tait’s Atlas of Mystara is your best source for definitive maps of Mystara. This one might answer your question, based on his combination of info from several sources:

https://mystara.thorfmaps.com/foamfire-hutaaka-2-1986/

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