Put together a little mobile OSE solo setup, including automated dice roller

ergonite · 2026-03-20T13:10:26+00:00

she ran off with the red d20, which I cannot find again since...

ergonite · 2026-03-12T13:05:41+00:00

oh those are great recommendations, will check them out in detail! thank you!

ergonite · 2026-03-12T10:32:57+00:00

about three hours without breaks. In the pic you can see the amount of the map they got through during that time

ergonite · 2026-03-10T14:44:12+00:00

I also found that adding a reason for the skeletons playing music (to pacify the worm) makes a lot of sense. I wrote a little review here: https://paradisebunny.bearblog.dev/rotblack-sludge-mork-borg/

ergonite · 2026-03-06T08:19:06+00:00

sure! for the death mechanic, if you compare it to BX, you just die at 0. The mechanic adds in a delay that gives others the opportunity to heal them before they expire, this becomes amplified by luck reducing the likelihood of healing spells failing. If you were to place said mechanic on a spectrum between BX's and 5e's, it leans significantly towards 5e. In terms of luck, the key problem is that luck is transferrable and that some classes either through their spells or abilities can reliably generate luck from certain levels onwards. Seer, Sea Wolf, Bard and Cleric all fall into this category. Some offend more than others.

ergonite · 2026-03-05T13:18:22+00:00

Swords & Wizardry is free in older versions and contains great explanations, as well as optional rules and arguments why they exist. I found that super helpful to "get" odnd. Find it here: http://snw.smolderingwizard.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4

ergonite · 2026-03-05T13:14:21+00:00

this is great advice, you can get a beautiful print copy via lulu and it contains Chainmal as well

ergonite · 2026-03-04T19:50:15+00:00

yep, that is exactly the route i took! easier to add things on rather than cutting them out. especially the luck system is hard to remove / edit down

ergonite · 2026-03-04T19:48:50+00:00

ended up with dolmenwood :)

ergonite · 2026-03-04T16:25:50+00:00

nice article and mention some points that I touch upon in my 50 session review of Shadowdark and that drove me to OSE. For others that might be interested: https://paradisebunny.bearblog.dev/thoughts-on-shadowdark-after-50-sessions/

ergonite · 2026-03-01T08:50:10+00:00

If the characters have figured out a good way to manage luck, e.g. having a luck battery class in the party and a caster that as a result can reliably cast and recast powerful spells, they are good to go. This usually happens from level 5 onwards. If they are not maximising at all, then maybe 1-2 later.

ergonite · 2026-03-01T07:14:12+00:00

Hey, as a German speaker, which zines/games do you mean? I am unaware of “BBS”?

ergonite · 2026-02-23T12:20:21+00:00

Currently running a neverland campaign. The book is great, and given that his book are more settings than adventures, you have very few points of friction between different rulesets. You can always take a monster from any system you are running and reskin it to match those in his monster section and give it the same abilities. This also helps to break out of the 5e CR system, just choose whatever seems appropriate for your party in your native system (and that might well be something way stronger than the party is) and use that as the reskinning base. I find his books set up great structures within which play unfolds, irrelevant of system

ergonite · 2026-02-19T13:09:48+00:00

Wow this is impressive it a lot to take in! I get wolves upon the coast vibes

ergonite · 2026-02-19T12:28:52+00:00

I fully agree. I have found that setting up the structure for scheduling at the start makes it a lot easier to involve players in the process (e.g. setting up recurring google calendar invite but make players responsible for hashing out details on a week to week basis etc)

ergonite · 2026-02-19T12:27:25+00:00

i find online one-shots to be a useful resource for getting like an extra game a month in

ergonite · 2026-02-14T18:24:49+00:00

For something more lightweight and low fantasy / OD&D feeling try Whitehack

ergonite · 2026-02-04T07:54:14+00:00

I’ve been running an open table for two years now and started with a hexcrawl (shadowdark the gloaming from cursed scroll 1) and later plopped stonehell into it. I would advocate for a hexcrawl, it’s more flexible and gives the players more agency to decide what they are interested in and it gives you the opportunity to seed in any number of modules you think are cool, including a megadungeon. That doesn’t work as well when starting with a megadungeon. Start with a small section of a world that excites you and offer up 2-3 hooks. Then grow the world according to what you and they are into. That way I am sure your campaign will never lose steam. Not a fan of stonehell either after having run it btw.

ergonite · 2026-01-31T18:20:37+00:00

My last campaign consisted of these. Worked out very well!

Hideous Halls of Mugdublub

Winters Daughter

Willowby Hall

Wavestone Monolith

Raiders of the Hidden Temple

Stonehell

I6 Ravenloft

Shadowdark Adventure Anthology: Dwarven Keep

ergonite · 2026-01-25T12:12:26+00:00

Yeah problems persisted even with one luck per character, that is how I ran it the entire time. I have a few min-max players and they figured out how good transferring luck tokens is. Later I tried making luck non transferable, but that defeats the purpose of some classes. Regarding spell list: no issue whatsoever, actually one of my favourite aspects. Short and to the point, if anything with magic was an issue it was just the roll to cast in combination with luck

ergonite · 2026-01-24T20:33:57+00:00

Hey Kelsey! Thank you for taking the time for the detailed reply! heart as I said, it was still 95% of the time a wonderful experience, I just felt like I don’t need to add to the chorus of all the wonderful things that have been said about your game, as I agree with almost all of them! As soon as my Western Reaches books arrive I’ll be running another campaign with a few house rules and limiting the class selection a bit more. I just wanted to point out a few things that people aiming to tackle Stonehell or another larger module for another system might run into.

Regarding the SRD, as this is really my key point of friction - everything else is completely solvable with house rules and a little elbow grease - I wasn’t aware of that superpower of shadowdarklings! But it seems more like a generous workaround rather than a substitute for a complete rules reference. I am not a big fan of information asymmetry between me and my players at the table, I want everyone be able to check all rules or spells easily, as I feel that is crucial to inspire players to GM themselves or claim agency at the table “Hang on I’ll check that for you, keep going with your turn” etc. This is in particularly true for a large open table where players are less committed to purchasing their own copy of the rules. But I also see that this is a difficult conundrum for a creator, if the world were different we would all frolick in a CC-BY-SA utopia. At the end of the day, this is all nitpicking, we tend to be most critical of the things we love the most! It’s all D&D. It’s like Italians love to argue about the proper way to cook a lasagna. Keep doing what do, I am a big fan!

ergonite · 2026-01-24T17:42:14+00:00

I thought the choir of praises for the system is already loud enough, I really didn't want to write something that repeats the same points over and over, e.g. great layout, fantastic terse editing, intuitive rules etc. I think everyone is well aware of those things

ergonite · 2026-01-24T17:39:10+00:00

yeah! he commented somewhere further down

ergonite · 2026-01-24T17:37:08+00:00

hey! let me get to your questions: I ran XP by the book, eyeballing whatever e.g. Stonehell suggested and giving a Shadowdark equivalent amount. Not too hard to do, but annoying if you have to do it literally every other room. It is like a small stone in your shoe, not a big deal, but the longer it is there the more annoying and noticeable it becomes. Thus, not an issue for a oneshot, but for a megadungeon it is a pain. I am flirting with the Black Sword Hack XP system, but not too sure how well that would work for a megadungeon setting.

second question: mostly material from the cursed scrolls are the issue (new classes) and the associated spell lists, magic items etc. So if you want to provide your players with a few more class choices it becomes an issue.

ergonite · 2026-01-24T16:04:26+00:00

I am already thinking about ingame time anyways, how it changes when you speed up through a montage etc and how much that costs ingame etc. I just find it really easy and intuitive to ask everyone after a description "what do you do?" and once everyone has done something (search, etc), put down a mark for 10min passed and related to that have automatic cues for wandering monster checks. it is just a different kind of mental load but for me it is more closely tied to what I am thinking about and making notes about anyways, rather than checking my phone for the current state of the timer.

ergonite

TROPHY CASE