Tabletop Roleplaying Games (D&D, Pathfinder, CoC, ETC.)

[The Ugly One]

Imagine, if you will, an industrial base that doesn't depend on cut-rate chinese prison labor.
Imagine things being produced by those unions lefty faggots jerk themselves raw about.
Imagine not burning an ocean's worth of tanker fuel - you know, that carbon shit you faggots scream about every chance you get.

Turns out libs are only against slavery and trashing the environment until the moment they are personally inconvenienced.

ACKS is starting to grow on me. I bought it as (expensive) reading material, but something about it makes me want to run a proper campaign. It's a natural evolution on the old D&D formula that's not as simplistic as most of the OSR games, but not as obsessed with mechanical detail as 5e or PF go for. It has just the right heft to it, in that it looks like it wouldn't be too cumbersome in play, but it has enough depth to offer staying power. The rulebooks are enormous, but most of them are just stuff to play with, not rules.

Acks is like if AD&D had been made with the benefit of an additional 40 years of hindsight.

 

[Glory To Arztotska]

the grifter who makes Coyote and Crow is being put out of business because he can't get his books done with Chinese prison labor.

NATURE IS HEALING!

 

[Farmholio]

As I was going through OSR modules which I have obtained totally legally, I had a tough time trying to find one I could potentially use for a 1st level party just starting the group. I wanted to avoid the official classics (Keep on the Borderlands, etc) for no other reason than I was curious about new retro stuff that people have created over the years. I mean all this stuff exists on my hard drive, it'd be nice for it to have a purpose beyond sating my curiosity with a quick read.

I think I'm going to write my own thing, but still, I wanted to put the question to the thread: does anyone have any suggestions for a good 1st level module that isn't an official TSR module, for any OSR system? I'd love to hear them and go take a look.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

Imagine, if you will, an industrial base that doesn't depend on cut-rate chinese prison labor.
Imagine things being produced by those unions lefty faggots jerk themselves raw about.
Imagine not burning an ocean's worth of tanker fuel - you know, that carbon shit you faggots scream about every chance you get.

 

[Adamska]

NATURE IS HEALING!

In fairness, the racial supremacists who can easily LARP as white when needed burned their money the most by being dumb enough to try and get office spaces in Cali.

They burned a lot of their resources on stupid shit even before this point.

 

[Overly Serious]

Acks is like if AD&D had been made with the benefit of an additional 40 years of hindsight.

I have never heard a better sales pitch in my life.

Going to check it out.

 

[Alabama Gamer]

I have never heard a better sales pitch in my life.

Going to check it out.

Also, the creator, Alex Macris, is a certified chud, so you can actually spend money on the product without supporting people who hate you, and there's not going to be trigger warnings or lectures on how to run a safe and tolerant table for genderblobs of all colors.

 

[Judge Dredd]

does anyone have any suggestions for a good 1st level module that isn't an official TSR module, for any OSR system? I'd love to hear them and go take a look.

Sort of.

Tomb of the Serpant King gets a lot of praise, but I don't like it. Barrowmaze and Stonehell get a lot of mentions as well but I can't give proper opinions on them because they are huge tomes.

The Weird That Befell Drigbolton, In The Shadow of Castle Silver Axe, and Through The Valley of the Manticore are personal favourites. However, they are more campaign books, and I've never got to play any of them beyond the first couple of adventures. These are all very OSR style with minimalist presentation and are hex crawls intended for self motivated PCs.

Weird is basically Colours Out Of Space meets The Stuff. Some kind of Eldritch thing crash lands, and starts leaking jelly that the local people and wildlife start eating. There are a bunch of hooks presented to get the PCs involved and a few ideas of how to set the tone. Though the intended tone is clearly silly with one adventure featuring aggressive sausage links.

Silver Axe is a traditional wilderness crawl. Very Keep on the Borderlands. Small town on the edge of civilization. A large tower the PCs are trying to get to, and lots of dungeons to explore.

Valley of the Manticore is set within a mesa. A manticore is attacking anyone who tried to leave a small area, and it's becoming a problem as more and more travelers arrives but can't leave, and attempts to organize a hunting party quickly fall apart due to other problems. Turns out the manticore is wearing some artifact of the sphynix which boosted it's int through the roof, and gives it the ability to enthrall people. So the PCs solve problems, raid nearby tombs for treasure, and eventually kill the manticore. I tried to run it as a desert Arabian Nights type setting but the players revolted each time, even when the premise is laid out in advance.

 

[The Ugly One]

Also, the creator, Alex Macris, is a certified chud, so you can actually spend money on the product without supporting people who hate you, and there's not going to be trigger warnings or lectures on how to run a safe and tolerant table for genderblobs of all colors.

You can say "I don't like pedophiles" in his Discord without being banned.

 

[Ghostse]

does anyone have any suggestions for a good 1st level module that isn't an official TSR module, for any OSR system?

I'm just going to mention that Gygax recommends PCs start at lvl 3.

Tomb of the Serpent Kings is a good OSR intro.
OSE's Winter's Daughter is decent
Its not really module at all but "Lair of the Lantern Worm" is my usual toe-dip for OSR curious. Its a small dungeon, but especially for players from 5e, it eases the "your character can and probably will die" cliff with a time-rewind mechanic (the titled lantern worm rewinds time when it dies unless killed in a specific way) so odds are good that dead characters will find themselves alive before too much table time passes.
It does losely tie into two other dungeons from the same creator whose names escape me now and you can make a mini-module out of them.

You can say "I don't like pedophiles" in his Discord without being banned.

He has a discord? Fuck you guys were saying this was supposed to be based.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

Regardless of system, if the enemies are capable of rational thought, I go with taking down other combat threats before killing PCs. Unless there's a clearly established routine of healing downed people to get back in the fight, it's almost always less sound tactically to eat damage from active combatants to kill people (provided resurrection exists). If any one of the PCs survives, the rest can be rezzed, and then nothing was accomplished. If an enemy dies to kill a PC, the PC has friends to rez them, the enemy might not; nothing was accomplished. An intelligent combatant would aim to incapacitate all party members so they can be killed at leisure, especially in a manner that would prevent resurrection. That is, of course, assuming the enemy is aiming to kill people in the first place and it's not thieves, guards, a paladin order, etc.

The thing is is they would have to have a knowledge that magic is a thing that exists and know that you're capable of resurrecting people unless they're like a 10th level wizard they have no idea that exists

 

[LovisXVI]

He has a discord? Fuck you guys were saying this was supposed to be based.

Zoomers don't know how to use forums.

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

Zoomers don't know how to use forums.

Discord killing forums will never not piss me off

 

[The Ugly One]

Zoomers don't know how to use forums.

Alexander Macris is 50 years old.

The thing is is they would have to have a knowledge that magic is a thing that exists and know that you're capable of resurrecting people unless they're like a 10th level wizard they have no idea that exists

You can pick up a downed ally with a 1st-level spell in 5e. An inhabitant of the Forgotten Realms not knowing that Healing Word and Cure Light Wounds exist is like somebody in 21st century America not knowing that defibrillators and narcan exist.

 

[The Bogwater Rises]

Alexander Macris is 50 years old.

Pretty sure he meant for new customers, but if you make a discord you are still a retard.

 

[The Ugly One]

Pretty sure he meant for new customers, but if you make a discord you are still a retard.

He moderates his own discord, and it's for talking about his game, not for planning ill-fated right-wing rallies with toxic guest speakers.

 

[Tom Bombodildo]

The thing is is they would have to have a knowledge that magic is a thing that exists and know that you're capable of resurrecting people unless they're like a 10th level wizard they have no idea that exists

In every iteration of D&D (so far as I have read, seen or played) Raise Dead is a 5th level spell accessible to life/healing sphere Clerics and later all Clerics. IIRC, it didn't even used to consume gold or diamonds to cast.

Even assuming the players do not have a cleric in the party who is able or will eventually be able to cast Raise Dead or Resurrection and the game does not take place in an official setting that would have named and statted NPCs capable of this feat, a 9th level Cleric NPC would at least represent the head of a major religious order or renowned hermit/monastic of that age and would typically be able and maybe even willing to perform resurrections in exchange for goods and/or services. Sure, toothless bums might not know about it, but anyone with decent social connections or worldly knowledge sure would. Unless you're playing some pop culture version of a "Dark Ages" Europe where the nobility are the educated 1% and everyone else are illiterate, incestuous mudfarmers, the existence of resurrection magic would not be difficult to discover. Difficult to access, sure, but not a tactical unknown even in the strictest settings.

You can pick up a downed ally with a 1st-level spell in 5e. An inhabitant of the Forgotten Realms not knowing that Healing Word and Cure Light Wounds exist is like somebody in 21st century America not knowing that defibrillators and narcan exist.

Stuff like that isn't really resurrection, though. And in all the rules before 5e (maybe 4e too? never played it) getting someone up like that to get them back in the fight is begging for them to get CON-killed by eating a single normal attack to the face while on 7 HP. So not exactly a tactical ace in the hole either.

 

[p1138]

The thing is is they would have to have a knowledge that magic is a thing that exists and know that you're capable of resurrecting people unless they're like a 10th level wizard they have no idea that exists

wtf are you talking about? Any basic adventuring PC should be aware of this. Even if someone in the party can't cast it that's why local temples and shit exist. Knowing that people can be healed, and resurrected in D&D is not some esoteric knowledge that is rare or something unless you're playing in an incredibly low magic setting at which point you probably wouldn't ever have a caster in the party capable of casting it on their own anyway.

 

[The Ugly One]

Stuff like that isn't really resurrection, though. And in all the rules before 5e (maybe 4e too? never played it) getting someone up like that to get them back in the fight is begging for them to get CON-killed by eating a single normal attack to the face while on 7 HP. So not exactly a tactical ace in the hole either.

5e parties don't rely on Resurrection to do whack-a-mole in fights. They start using Healing Word to do that from level 1. And while Resurrection is a high-level spell, not knowing it exists is like not knowing brain surgeons exist in the real world.

It is very, very rare to insta-kill a character in 5e, which requires doing (current + max) HP in a single hit. I think I've seen it happen once, and it was a contrived case where an invisible monster way over the party's level rolled a critical hit. The intent was for him to merely down a party member and run away...but well, a crit's a crit. Few level-appropriate enemies can do enough damage in one hit to insta-kill.

 

[Tactical Wizard]

5e parties don't rely on Resurrection to do whack-a-mole in fights. They start using Healing Word to do that from level 1. And while Resurrection is a high-level spell, not knowing it exists is like not knowing brain surgeons exist in the real world.

It is very, very rare to insta-kill a character in 5e, which requires doing (current + max) HP in a single hit. I think I've seen it happen once, and it was a contrived case where an invisible monster way over the party's level rolled a critical hit. The intent was for him to merely down a party member and run away...but well, a crit's a crit. Few level-appropriate enemies can do enough damage in one hit to insta-kill.

Make D&D Lethal Again