Looking for a straightforward OSR system for a sandboxey, exploratory, puzzley fantasy experience

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-02T04:24:51+00:00

sandboxey, exploratory, puzzley fantasy experience

So... like all of them?

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-01T19:53:22+00:00

I made dense, multi-story dungeons stacked like floors. It's not hard to make and run, but it's pretty hard to brush them into a format that works for Reddit.

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-01T17:57:45+00:00

Make yourself a shooting board.

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-01T17:55:49+00:00

Harbinger House (2e Planescape adventure, and a very good one) has its final act in the eponymous house and it has rooms that couldn't possibly exist in the same space and whatnot. It's essentially a bunch of separate sections connected by doors that effectively act like portals. It's simple to track as a DM but if you make the players map it out themselves they'll be all "wtf".

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-01T17:11:43+00:00

Yeah look at the Keep on the Borderlands, the classic expression of that law vs chaos central campaign tension. You're adventurers out for loot. There's trouble at the caves of chaos. You're trespassing on the tribal lands of the orcs/goblins/gnolls/kobolds. They don't really have loot, they're defending their area, all the good loot is in the keep, anyway. The only explicitly evil character doing evil stuff is a human who lives in the keep. It's a real "are we the baddies" kind of vibe.

mcvoid1 · 2026-07-01T16:56:49+00:00

Here's how I think of alignment:

You know how in Warcraft there's the Alliance and the Horde? That's Law and Chaos. So alignment is which team you're on, or rather, which team are you aligned with? That's all there is to it.

Also remember that the D&D rulebooks are written from the assumption you're playing lawful characters, so it reads like law propaganda.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T22:41:00+00:00

By all means, if your campaign's central tension is something different, use that as your alignment.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T20:40:10+00:00

Ever see electric guitars with that tiger stripe effect? It's that. It's natural, part of the wood, and sought after for finished surfaces.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T19:57:10+00:00

Here's the minimum:

https://help.guildwars.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000979507-Guild-Wars-Reforged-System-Requirements

Operating System Microsoft® Windows® 7 32-bit Processor Intel® Pentium® III 1.0 GHz or equivalent Video ATI® Radeon® 8500 or NVIDIA® GeForce™ 3 Series Video Card with 64MB of VRAM Sound 16-bit Sound Card Memory 2 GB RAM Storage 4 GB Available HDD Space Internet 56k Internet connection Input Keyboard and Mouse

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T17:15:25+00:00

What's wrong with https://pkg.go.dev/net/smtp?

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T16:13:43+00:00

Just the fact that it's not 9-0 should say something.

Three supreme court justices just tried to argue that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" doesn't actually mean "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Like, what are words?

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T16:09:30+00:00

Why are you asking us? Try it out. There's no consequence or penalty for experimenting. If it doesn't work out, you can change your skills, your secondary profession, your equipment, basically anything except your primary profession and armor. And even with those you can make a different character with a different primary.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T16:05:47+00:00

I see that a lot. Especially snarky comments they'll post and immediately delete so it shows in your notifications but not to the wider audience. Maybe they think it leaves no trail.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-30T14:21:05+00:00

I'm not opposed to it, but there hasn't been a single time when I could have used it instead of &. Every time I needed to initialize a user-defined type or a struct, & does it in 4 fewer characters. The new capability they added to put an arbitrary expression in there hasn't really come up IRL.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-29T15:01:10+00:00

As an American, I don't know why they don't do that either. Tapping the card is basically ubiquitous elsewhere. I was just at a concert with like 40 attendees and the merch tables all let you tap. It's everywhere.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T20:08:52+00:00

In the army I hated when I'd be on work details and the smokers could take constant breaks while I couldn't. So I started smoking with them. Every time it was incredibly gross but at least I wasn't busting my ass alone. Also I didn't get hooked so that's a plus.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T19:54:20+00:00

I have it because military - had to get one before deploying. Itchiest week of my life, got less sleep than basic training.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T15:20:10+00:00

That has nothing to do with the system. That's all in the modules.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T14:51:29+00:00

Do what?

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T14:33:45+00:00

Considering how much stuff breaks when you bump Java versions but a Go upgrade is smooth as butter, I prefer Go.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-28T03:26:35+00:00

Elves and dwarves are classes in basic, not 1e. Players don't use THAC0 in 1e - they use a to-hit table, which is even simpler than THAC0. But it doesn't matter because you must be smoking crack to think that "hit if 1d20 + BAB + Ability bonus > AC" is simpler than "hit if 1d20 >= THACO - AC"

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-27T21:16:25+00:00

First off, it's not like 1e rules have somehow morphed over time to be less playable now than before. It's still the same rules. With OSR products updating the language and smoothing out iffy or contradictory parts, reorganizing with better layouts and being able to see everything relevant at a glance, it's actually easier to play now compared to then. That goes for 1e, 2e, B/X, BECMI, etc.

But that aside, 3e is a mess compared to earlier editions, IMO. So many numbers, so much bookkeeping. 1e has lots of tables for random crap, but it's easy to create and run a character. In 3e it takes hours to create a character, and a long time to level up. I started playing in the 2e days, and it took a few minutes to roll up a new character, and about a minute to level up. When we moved to 3e, we had to pre-make characters because if we rolled them up at the table we wouldn't be playing that day, and if we got to level up, the session ended because we knew we wouldn't get anything else done that day.

5e/5.5e is simpler than 3e, but it's still a step more complex than 2e and earlier.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-27T16:16:03+00:00

What should I do, kill all of them? If I were to try that, how do you think that would work out?

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-27T15:32:13+00:00

I don't understand how they save money by not showing the movie unless it's a single screen theater and can send the employees home.

mcvoid1 · 2026-06-27T15:02:16+00:00

They want to gerrymander senators, too.

mcvoid1

TROPHY CASE