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- Mar 13, 2024
Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)
- Thread starter Surtur
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- May 25, 2024
Known about that one for years now. Not really new.
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- Oct 5, 2020
With the Halloween season getting into the swing of things the Fairfield project's annual Delta Green shotgun scenario contest is approaching. Putting my mind to the test and coming up with my own scenarios to contribute has got me wondering.
Has any one here ever gone to the effort to participate in scenario writing contests? What the general opinion on community competition? or has anyone run a scenarios around internet personalities? Some of the more cursed lolcows could make for rather chilling adventures. I don't see why the Farms could organize it's own contest.
Has any one here ever gone to the effort to participate in scenario writing contests? What the general opinion on community competition? or has anyone run a scenarios around internet personalities? Some of the more cursed lolcows could make for rather chilling adventures. I don't see why the Farms could organize it's own contest.
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2018
God damn, I fucking hate modern /tg/. It seems almost every thread I'm dealing with either gooners or leftie twats. Anyways feel free to ignore my rambling
Eh, I'm not too fond of dg, but an organizing of horror-centric ttrpgs could work
Battlefield2142EU
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 15, 2022
Didn’t the course of the azure novelization explain why her exposed chest chainmail was apart from her religion and men in her order do the same thing?
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- Dec 28, 2014
This is why I'd never play 5E. It attracts vermin.
anti SJW
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 26, 2016
The old Elfquest TTRPG is having a Kickstarter.
Official announcement.
I liked the old Chaosium system. Was also used for Runequest, Stormbringer, Call of Cthulhu, Ringworld, I think Superworld as well.
I just hope it's a pure reprint and not updated for modern audiences.
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2014
I ran all of those but the first (although I played in someone else's) and the last.
It's probably my favorite system of all time and was infinitely adaptable to nearly any setting, but without the profound autism of GURPS.
Blarmed&Dangerous
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2015
What's everyone's take on the "BrOSR?" I found them after someone here suggested that OSR stuff was less pozzed.
I'm torn. I like what they're saying about Braunsteins and domain/faction play, but I'm finding it hard to find an actual community other than a handful of isolated youtubers/podcasters/twitter shitposters. From what I can tell there isn't a discord or a forum or anything like that.
Some of them released a book recently called "BROZER" that is ostensibly a Braunstein. The essays are interesting, but I find it leans a little too hard into the silliness of old school rpgs than I really like (with factions of Romans, Martians, 'swolecerers' (bodybuilding sorcerers), the green dragon Ferigno and his otherworldly patron BOB, tribes of cavemen, etc. ).
I like a lot of their attitude and ideas about RPGs (I watched some youtube videos by these guys called Black Lodge Games that had some good insights), I just find the whole group, or movement, or whatever, kind of inscrutable, but I'd like to know more.
I'm torn. I like what they're saying about Braunsteins and domain/faction play, but I'm finding it hard to find an actual community other than a handful of isolated youtubers/podcasters/twitter shitposters. From what I can tell there isn't a discord or a forum or anything like that.
Some of them released a book recently called "BROZER" that is ostensibly a Braunstein. The essays are interesting, but I find it leans a little too hard into the silliness of old school rpgs than I really like (with factions of Romans, Martians, 'swolecerers' (bodybuilding sorcerers), the green dragon Ferigno and his otherworldly patron BOB, tribes of cavemen, etc. ).
I like a lot of their attitude and ideas about RPGs (I watched some youtube videos by these guys called Black Lodge Games that had some good insights), I just find the whole group, or movement, or whatever, kind of inscrutable, but I'd like to know more.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2020
The OSR in general suffers from the same issue all "movements" that are defined by their dislike of something (modern touchy-feely "'narrative-driven" RPGs, in this case): nobody can agree on anything other than what they don't want to be.
So it's going to be a disjointed mess of a "community" no matter which angle you approach it from, as full of cliques and gay drama as the PbtA soyboys they claim to hate. Honestly, just pick an author or a clique, see what you like about them, and move on to the next. Because these guys go from gonzo to mudfarmers to birthrighters to hardcore 3.5e cultists, with very little overlap across them.
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- Joined
- Sep 10, 2021
I think the BroSR guys have a neat idea, I'd like to play at a domain level, but I don't see it happening in any of my groups.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
No you wouldn't. They're about two steps away from being a cult.
Gygax had two very good pieces of advice in the first DMG:
You need to be rigorous with time tracking, and you shouldn't give people (especially in combat) a quarter hour to decide how they'd respond to something they'd have 2 seconds to react to in the real world. The first makes the world feel more real and consistent and ups the stakes for action, the other is just to stop people from making the game take forever.
BrOSR types have twisted that into "Games need to played in 1:1 time"
They still have some decent media and good ideas, but I wouldn't invest in the "philosophy"
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
I consider them genuinely stupid. They intentionally misunderstand Gygax's concept of time mattering, botch it on purpose, and stress themselves out with timer bullshit and constantly pressuring each other into gaming outside of the session due to their idiotic take on 1:1 timing.
Again, people legit forget one of the more important rules Gary established, much like Greg Stafford for Glorantha, is that no one DnD session is going to be the same.
That mindset is why OSR in general's a shitshow, since people tend to have styles they like and it formed in reaction to edition changes.
OSR in general is completely pointless if you just get DnD's Basic and Advanced from the old days. It does essentially everything they want given how many times they just reinvent it, 2e, or steal 5e and pretend it's not been reworked; it's trivial to get these days, and also easy to find; and it just is a smoother game than what they usually make.
In my experience, most OSR stuff in general is just rehashed homebrew they published in the face of how open the OGL used to be. It was mostly a thing due to how 3e and especially 4e screwed the pooch.
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- Nov 4, 2017
Some of the people in the OSR space do good work, extending B/X or even they're just putting a coat of paint on its a pretty good coat of paint. But yeah more than a few OSR projects are "Here's 10 pages of a bad seafood fever dream I barfed out into word that I'm calling a setting; Totally gonzo. Fighter or Wizard with some of the saves moved around and THESE VAGUELY WORDED CLASS FEATURES that may or may not be playable and/or turn into rules lawyer arguments, and maybe some random encounter tables which may or may not require you have "ANY B/X COMPATIBLE SYSTEM" to actually play their book.
(Which don't get wrong settings books definitely have a purpose but the old splats knew what they were and leaned into it, not trying to be something they weren't)
Speaking of, I need to check out ACKs economic system since that sounds like the sort shit I'm going to need to build the next campaign.
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- Joined
- Dec 20, 2018
Let me preface this by saying that I'm not an OSR guy but I like the OSR creators and a lot of their output. They have managed to keep alive the idea that high risk dungeon-crawls are actually a really fun formula and that the formula has worked for nearly fifty years for a reason. By extension, this philosophy causes even the most insufferably woke amongst them (*coughZakSmithcough*) to push back against the idea that by pretend slapfighting orcs for a pile of gold, you are somehow increasing the murder rate on the south side of Chicago. They see the value of that primitive playstyle. They see the ease of use of the rules and how easy it is to get a game going.
And then they do nothing with it that hasn't already been done a dozen times.
They release OSE and OSRIC, clones of B/X and AD&D with cleaned up writing and clarified rules. They release games that are basically that but with tweaks. They play around with setting, making it weird as fuck (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) or super serious and grounded by making it medieval Europe but with fantastic elements (Lion and Dragon.) Some of them use it as a design philosophy and try to come back to the same experience through radical means (Mork Borg) while others retreat into themselves and treat Gygax as a high priest who taught the one, true way while The G-Man was a life-long advocate of "Change it if you want to." Regardless of this, they parse his words for hidden meaning and end up coming up with 1:1 time; doing away with an abstraction thanks to a very specific interpretation of a very broad statement by Gygax (the BroSR). In all of these cases, it boils down to a design philosophy that suggests that simplicity is beautiful, your character should always be expendable and the word of the DM is iron law.
I think of all of this and I'm reading through the Rulescyclopedia. The OSR is largely built around intensifying this experience and I'm thinking about how I can complexify it without losing it's fast and intuivie nature. The first would be adding more equipment and more uses for money, which would probably simplified into just silver pieces like Mork Borg does it. The next would be adding granularity... more than three kinds of armor. Lastly, I would rebuild the magic system from the ground up. I have seen what I consider to be a near perfect magic system and it's Thaumaturgy from V:tM. I would make it a skill that levels up as you level up with options to put points where you want your character to improve rather than a single superpower with various flavors as WotC DnD has traditionally done.
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2017
I guess I do want to be clear that I view OSE and OSRIC* as valuable projects. Even just moving off the 70s (lack of) type setting that DCC slavishly conformed to for no damn good reason is a worthy endeavor; The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented but tires are a decided improvement.
I will also say that, given I'm familiar with the output, the team behind OSE didn't just make some typographical changes to B/X and call it a day. They went and released new adventures and splats for use with OSE (or any other system) and invited third-parties to release OSE content.
Also you can see they made some what seem like odd choices in breaking up the rules. The reason for this was the behind it wanted a system where they had "core rules" and "genre rules", where the plan was you could trade out the fantasy classes and equipment for Sci-fi or Eldritch Horror or Wild West or whatever Genre you wanted. The creator has mostly of abandoned that initiative; Woketards trying kill the OGL caused the creator to go full focus on his fungal fetish and is making his own System/Setting based on the OSE 'default world' of Dolemwood. But an attempt was made. (he might released Dolemwood as a OSE "genre" rule but now is stepping as far away from any OGL content as possible)
*I haven't actually really read OSRIC, but I mean just as a "we just cleaned the rules and merged errata" general sense there's still value.
I think at the heart of B/X is you have a very stripped down system that you're supposed to build as you play.
For example in core, each spell level has no more than 6 or 8 spells, but there are mechanics for researching new magic. Basically the spell list would start out sparse and as your players go through it and multiple characters, the shape the world founding new Kingdoms and researching new spells/creating new items. This is the sort of buy-in to world building most narrative games could only dream of achieving and the sort of progressive flexibility the most german austist spergulations hope in vain to reach. Because as you said, Gygax's main directive was "The only law is the DM, the only rule is to have fun. The written rules are just a guide for the GM to follow until they are ready to make their own, and somethign for them to fall back to if they lose their way"
So a lot of the OSR documents are just about "here is a setting we've already done some of the work on building up".
- Joined
- Sep 3, 2014
Hahaha, that's a good one. Mork Borg is actually more an "indie of the month" that got chased hard by everyone involved. Why? Because it rewards lazy devs and proves you can half-ass.
Mork Borg is better described as being an art book with the kernels of a game sown into it than it is anything else. It isn't rules light due to the system being as such; it's that way to cram more pictures in the book. It only focused on style, made barely enough of a game to work, and it got rewarded for it.
Hell, that "marching apocalypse" mechanic? It's not really that much different than PbtA's 'success with complications' if you really think about it. Both quirks are due to post-apocalypse, but in reality forces the DM to "random bullshit go" excuses for why issues or chaos has occured.
And honestly that's about the only thing of value an OSR game usually has, and even then it falls back to what they're doing heart of hearts: they're just selling you the homebrew they decided to publish that they ran years ago TBH.
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2024
It's depressing eh? Welcome to how I feel. Like @Battlefield2142EU said, anything that isn't 5E is sacrilege to them, and I don't mean 5E as a DnD version or even as a system, but as an identity. They're fake fans, not even nu-fans, they don't play as 5E is their personality and nothing else. They can't make Call of Cthulhu their identity because it doesn't pander to them, they sure as hell can't make stuff like Dark Sun their identity despite the degeneracy you can theoretically get up to, I bet they wouldn't even touch shit like Night Witches no matter how "girl power" it is. They're in too deep, too lost in the sauce to even think of doing anything else, even with faggotry like Lancer.
I rather another Satanic Panic because at least I know no real damage will come to it. Trannies are-and I know this isn't a correct phrase or whatever but fuck it-infinitely worse than anything these boomers ever did...to TTRPG as a whole at least.
strawberry15
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 20, 2023
OSRİC and OSE is kind of a requirement if you want to play a decent OSR game in foundry. Because one cannot just play AD&D because of WOTC.
>tbh there is not much to know about OSR. download Labyrnth Lord, or find AD&D DMG and its appendix about creating your own dungeon. Use a dungeon from old games. Let people create characters by rolling 3d62s 6 times in succession. Let them create it in a fast manner without any unnecessary elements, let them go in the dungeon of your preferance. they die? let them create another one and join the party inside the dungeon, or wait until the group manages to get out of dungeon for a breather, and then let the other one join into the fray. let them roll for more than one character.
>most of the pre made dungeons have many many empty zones that let you create your own rooms, traps, encunters, quests and treasures. It is a good way to immerse yourself into the old school play.
>If you want to create your own dungeon, create it by the Ad&d appendix. DUngeons are a world of their own. They have factions in it. In a dungeon where goblins, hobgoblins, spiders, kobolds and undead exists, yu have 5 factions that have their own relationships between themselves. hobgoblins and goblins have a tense allience because of the weakness of goblins and dominance of hobgoblins, kobolds do their own thing, spiders are animals, undead are mindless. a player and a sentient creature should not and would not go into the fight immidiately on their first sight most of the times, unless the players manage to get themselves in a room that let that faction feel threatened. Goblins might betray hobgoblins if the players are friendly and symphatetic to them. Hobgoblins migh see them useful to clean some places from undead, kobolds might be greatful to players because they have killed spiders which were a nuiciance to the kobolds and migh want the help of the players to overthrow hobgoblins from the dungeons forever, and might let the players rest and recover in their room under their protection because of this etc. Dungeons are the heart of the D&D. Exploration, Rolepay and Combat all happens here
>Depends on which game you are playing, you have a system of level up by spending gold, or level up by gaining xp. In the oldest installments, you need money to level up by spending the money to train(fighter hires a teacher, wizards spend it to find books that widens his knowledge about spells, clerics and monks use it to mind lost places, or go to a master who might gave them insight in exchange to a sevret tome where the monk or cleric spend money to find and get. etc) and i believe it is mostly the superior way to play. In this type of d&d, you focus on booty. Killing a dragon gets you nothing but maybe fame and glory. You only need the treasure of the said dragon, so what you will do is you protect the thief silently, while the thief steals the gold under the sleeping red dragon. you Use Tenser's disc to let it all out easly.
>Rules are there for a reason and if a rule is unrequired, do not put it there. THere are character sheets where it gives you space to put your whole ancestory and family tree in it. no need. In Ad&d there are rues for shapesfifting in your armor and the damge you recieve because of doing do. In 2e, there are rules of Romance for Paladins. If you play Dungeon focused game, which you shoud, but sometimes a different pace is good, those are unecessary. what you need is, stats, race and class bonuses, and equipment. Fighter fights the best, thief is there to steal, mage is there for magic. You can fight with a thef, but a lvl 20 thief is as good as a level 3 fighter when it comes to abilities at combat(an exageration but it is true in a way) In my games, a thief player will always dies first if they believe they can pull of some stuff they pull in other games. Your Ac is shit, your smg is shit, your hp is shit, you cannot, and yu should not fight. you can distract the enemeies, maybe attack once by a sneak attack but that is it. you are there to listen, scout, for finding secret doors, for stealing and for removing traps. That goblins you befriended in the dungeon? yes if you also want to have their shit with you but not want to fight, you need a thief to steal them. Wizard is there to charm person, for sleep and color spray, for using magic to carry big numbers of weight. Cleric is there to heal lmao.
>You do not need backroundi and i mean that. Backrounds are a weight that the player uneccesarily carries. Your Armor, Weapon ans stats are your Rp. You rolled 6 3d6 for succession. Your str is bad (9) but your wisdom is god (15). you are a human fighter. You have stats that tell you you should rp in that manner. You cannot pull of a plate armor but your character is deadly as a fighter not because of their physical abilities, but because their insight and perception. your fighter knows when to fight and when to attack, and who to attack. Charismatic fighter is playing different, Smart fighter has a different Ability. Hp gives you an opportunity for rp. Your fighter only has 2 hp because they rolled their level one hd badly, give them scars on his body, they are maimed, destroyed. It is a great way to create a personality.
> Dice is your god, your friend, your savior and your Judge. You are not necessarily required to use dice all the time, but when you do, do not betray it. If a player dies by literally the first attack of the first of the first combat in the fisrt room, he dies. It stings but it is how the game is. The trap kills most of the party? sorry. They did not notice the secret room here you put 80 hours to create and is the most exiting thing in your game? sorry, for that. You gave a random treasure of +10 sword with instakill everyone who is evil? that sword stays. You are not required to use dice to create an item, or most of the stuff but if you do, you must use it. "I need 1 point in charisma to play as paladin DM, can i get a point from my wisdom and put it in my charisma?" "Oh player, no you cannot. But use this frasturation in your character. Think about creating a character that had aspirations to become a paladin but was in the end deemed unqualified because of their lack of charisma. Play a LG fighter that wanted to be one, and still in the business to prove himself to them. I understand your frasturation, but this randomness is also a product of the game, and it would ve unjust and unwise to let all or one player to make these kind of adjustments."
Of course you cannot always let people play like this all the time sadly. Sometimes i am also not following the points i made. But when i follow it, it is always end up with the most iconic and fun moments in our games. A player of mine played a fighter with shit abiities, and 2 hp. He actually levelled up to 3rd level but died because of a mistake. He ws the most creative and careful player at the time because he was a peasant with a stick and bad abilities, so he survived when the op thief with 18 dex and 18 str 19 con fighter died. In the end, after his death, he managed to roll a paladin and we always saw it as a reward from the might lord of dice for his good behaviours and creative ways to play.
I played with a group came from 5e to play ad&d with me. The party suffered in the wilderness because of stupid mistakes (swimming in river while having their spellbook on them even though i ask do you carry your spellbook with you to warn him about the consequences of such an act, picking a fight with wolves, not carefully etc.) in the end only 3 lived out of 8, and they had the unluck to encounter trolls in a random encounter. with their last prapered spells, and a good crit from the paladin, they actually damged ans stunned/ blinded the troll and had the audacity to continue the fight instead of running, and paid the price. If they ra away, they had a good story to tell in game. But the game itself is something they talk all the time, they genuinely had fun.
> Random encounters are your friend all the time. For every 30/40/60 minutes pass in real life, roll for the possibility of a Random encounter, then the encounter itself. let them see eachother on the corridor, on stairs, when they are entering a room etc. They are genuinely helpful for the pacing and the feel of the game. Otherwise the game is a reactive, static, slow content burn. Random Encounter matters.
> Roleplay is happening inside the dungeon. no need to half hour theatrics under bonfire where you share beer while sobbing and telling how you miss your parents. real rp is when you save your comrade from the roper in the dungeon. the real rp is when you parley with enemy, barghain your life for a magic item you possess. Drama, Theatrics and role play is not same.
> never let the game end inside a dungeon. Even the smallest Dungeon should be big enough to require players more than one go. They need to get out of dungeon, go to the city to prapere for the next delving (hiring people to carry their items, torches etc, mending their wounds and armors, prepping spells, looking for a broad to fornicate, looking for rumors, for selling items, identify items etc). No room is safe in a dungeon unless you parley with a faction so thay you can safely rest. Resting is an entirely different type of rp. the hogbgoblins you allied with can be used the same way as the city. you gave them money to follow you in dungeon, share loot with them, let them repair your weapons and gave herbs for your wounds etc. it is basically a city inside a dungeon albeit with a more limited ability. Never end the game in the middle of combat, or just after combat. Please let them out of the dungen to have a rest. Resting players means resting dungeons. When a dungeon rests, it heals. let new creatures emarge because of player action. Goblins are dead so kobolds have all the rooms now, undead army grows because of the recent killings, slimes infest the dungeon because there are no goblin slime farmers to limit their numbers. A group of cultists settle in the dungeon when they heard the dangerous elements were mostly eliminated and they hired gnolls as guards. You cannot have that when you stop mid play. LET THEM GET OUT!
Sorry for this long ass comment. it is 3 am in here so i am stil sleepy a bit so i might have written something horrible. But i recmoend you to do it this way.
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2021
>tfw the Jewish Delta Green agent calls you antisemitic for implying that he believes in ghosts
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