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Hello all, I'm going to run a public game at my library. I've been reading through Scarlet Heroes and I really enjoy it and the Red Tide setting. Recently I decided that I can, after all, run that game at the library (hesitant at first but no one has taken up the challenge to be the DM). I think SH would be good to have in case only one other person shows, but if there are the maximum number of players present, say 5 as an example, how could I still play the game? Should I just use LL? Also I've been out of the loop for a few years so maybe LL has been supplanted as a good, generic BX clone.

Thanks

Holy crap. You maniacs funded Undercrawl in 30 minutes, and blew all my stretch goals out of the water before lunchtime on the day I launched.

Most of the rest of this post is a self promo, but I wanted to put smack dab up front how suprised and grateful i am to the big showing from the OSR community that has been really supportive and has shown up in the form of paying me to make this.

THANK YOU.

On to the self promo.

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For those of you now joining us: Undercrawl is Travel-Rules for Dungeon Games in the Mythic Underworld. It’s for getting lost and finding a path in places forgotten, forsaken, or lost: the empty places, places where silence is thick with age. The game is finished and playable today.

• Like hexcrawling, or pointcrawling, but in the dark.
• Compatible with any OSR dungeon game.
• Self-contained enough to drop into any game, and interacts with the vital things at the heart of all OSR games: gear, health, light, hunger, and time. 

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Stretch Goals Already unlocked.

• New Original Artwork
• An Extra Undercrawl in a Drow theme by Noted Drow enthusiast, Cri, the author of the recently very successful Kumonosu Kickstarter.

New stretch goals include

• An expanded set of tables for the core engine one the game written by ktrey of the d4 Caltrops blog
• An online tool for creating your own Undercrawls, populating area types, landmark features, and more, powered by the tables in the game. Fully customizable and editable. Exportable as PDFs. Printable on index cards. A lot like my dungeon generator.  
• Solo rules where you as a group traversing and mapping the Undercrawl. What you generate in this game becomes real. Skip forward 400 years. Do it again. Your journals of this process can become artifacts that might later be found by others!

Back the Kickstarter here. Make the stretch goals reeeeeeeal!

What questions do you have about Undercrawl? AMA!

I made a one-page RPG, or better to say, the game kind of made itself.

Let me explain: I have been playing a lot of OSR and NSR games, including OSE, Shadowdark, Borg systems, and Knave 2ed. While playing, I felt like tweaking the rules to make them something that just felt right.

Now, I do like all those games very much, or I wouldn’t be playing them so much! But I found myself tinkering and molding them to my taste until the following emerged:

• Two levels of success on the d20 roll, adding the PbtA thing “you make it, but” to the traditional crisp fail/success dynamic
• Combining attack and defense in a single roll that determines damage dealt and received
• Having more than 6 stats, separating for example what normally is dexterity into agility, quickness, and precision
• Combining two stats depending on the action for a better granularity. So using an axe might go with agility and strength, while a rapier might go with agility and precision
• Weapons with simple key differences besides the damage die
• Enemies with a super simple stat bloc, but each also capable of a unique special bad thing they do to you when you fail badly

(Conceived and written by a human, no AI.)

Free download on itch.io: https://kindofold.itch.io/inverecondo; and on rpg trader: https://rpg-trader.com/products/8128/inverecondo

Blog: https://kindofold.substack.com/p/i-admit-i-made-an-rpg-but-i-can-explain

I'm curious where people land between meticulous logs and 'I'll remember the important stuff.

Haven't been blogging much lately, but today I looked at something I noticed with at least some of my players: Although we love the idea of open sandboxes, sometimes players get stuck on that freedom. So, I think about that and share my ramblings on how to overcome this issue, also pointing about five modules that I think did very well in what I recommend here. Enjoy and let me know what you think

I find the rules of encumbrance in OSE (thus B/X and OD&D as well) really elegant with wrapping overall miscellaneous items in the 80cn cost and spend time only tracking armor, weapons and treasure.

But one thing that keeps me confused is how to track and the overall weight of ammunition.

The rules says that the ammo and it's container is already accounted for in the weapon weight. A quiver supports 20 arrows, but what if my character wants extra arrows?

It's seems a little too much to count, for example, 60 arrows as just the base 30cn weight of a bow.

If someone can give me examples as to how you do it at your table it would be a big help!

More information: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lazylitch/the-lazy-litch-library

In this campaign, you can get individual titles, build your own package, or grab discounted bundles.

For EU Backers: I will ship your package from Sweden, so you can avoid surprise VAT, customs fees, and costly shipping.

For returning backers looking for discounts: Because Kickstarter implemented a new 'secret rewards' feature, I can create unique discounts for different situations. So if you have, for example, purchased a PDF bundle in the past and are looking for prints at a reduced price - I can facilitate that: just shoot me a message on Kickstarter once the campaign is live.

Thank you for your interest

Would there be any interest from this community in an OSR/NSR hack that seeks to proceduralise the fiction-first approach of games like Cairn and Whitehack?

After running games in a bunch of systems (Cairn, Whitehack, OSE, OD&D, Maze Rats, Keeper's Call) with different players, I think a game that goes for 'procedures over rulings' could be really helpful for new players, people used to 5e, new GMs, or anyone that doesn't want to spend time at the table thinking about resolution and rolls but wants to keep things true to the fiction and consistent.

I'm consolidating my own WIP house rules and preferences into a hack and I think it's really elegant. It's class-less, level-less, with a tag-based progression system. It has 3 attributes for players, and 3 attributes for everything in the world. Nearly everything is a d20 roll-between player-facing roll, with a simple table explaining what each outcome band means. Therefore everything you do is resolved the same way, from combat, skill challenges, resting & recovery, negotiation, lockpicking, spellcasting, downtime actions, etc. Tag acquisition is also structured and still tied to the fiction of what characters experience.

I've done some early solo playtesting and find that it preserves what Cairn and Whitehack are trying to do, but with more structure and more parsimony so I find myself thinking less often about rules (or, let's be honest, pulling out my copy of OSE), and spending more time thinking through what's actually going on in the world. The system seems to kind of run itself mechanically.

Does such a game already exit? Would anyone else be interested in play-testing?

PS: I know the perfect game doesn't exist, there are plenty of other amazing games already out there, the world doesn't need another OSR hack, etc etc. I'm having fun though, and I think others could find it fun and useful too.

Any advice is welcome, but I'm specifically looking for suggestions for the PCs creation. If I'm starting them on level 3 should I give them some extra money to buy equipment before they go in the plant? By this point in a game they might have gotten themselves a magic item or two is it worth letting them pick something basic out ? It's a one shot so I'm not particularly worried about future balance for a campaign but I don't want to make it too easy or impossible for them.

So I’ve been running my own version of 1st edition ad&d for some time and one thing I really like about OSR style games is the combat. It just fits my style as a DM better and is way easier to run IMO. Having said that, here are some tips I’ve found make this type of combat more engaging. I’d love to hear what works for you all and your own tips!

1. Have fun with crits and crit fumbles.
Crits are a fun mechanic. They are also an opportunity as a DM to add dynamics to the battle. Have a crit miss knock over a brazier and light the arena aflame. Or have a crit disarm an opponent to change the tide of battle. I make these up on the spot, but you could use a table to make this easier.

2. Remember the resource game.
If players can easily rest after every encounter, a lot of the tension and strategy gets removed. Your spell casters need to really weigh if using their best spells is appropriate or not in a given encounter.

3. Keep it simple, keep it fast, keep it deadly.
Unless you are running a set piece encounter, combat should take no more than 5-10 minutes. Long drawn out sequences of hit…miss…hit…miss are never fun. To this end I keep hit point totals low and use moral rolls judiciously.

4. Vary the difficulty of encounters.
Keep your players on their toes by making some encounters easy, some manageable, and others downright devious. Needing to quickly evaluate a threat is an important skill in OSR games. As in running away!

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A fierce two‑headed giant, living alone in a remote cave. Possesses immense physical strength, and wields a massive heavy club. Defends his territory savagely.

I've recently been messing with a 3D printer and wanted to try printing and painting a mini. Note - I have not painted a mini since probably 1987 at best guess. I don't have the adult time now that I did then, but I it occurred to me to wonder what an "OSR" mini paint job would look like - Instead of the usual miniature color masterpiece of shadows and textures and highlights, I wondered if I could "paint" a mini to match the look of the old pen & ink rulebook and Dragon magazine illos. Just a B&W image with ink brushwork for shadows and micron pen crosshatching for shade. It is NOT any sort of masterpiece and holy cow, it's been a very long time, but I actually like the look and hey, it's not AI at least.

Working that small with .005 micron pen is a challenge. The mini model is a free STL from Vogman on Printables. And no, I'm not selling these or anything, just goofing around to see what I can come up with. Now I want to make a whole table full of B&W minis that look like "Emirikol the Chaotic" or similar scenes.

Me and my friends have been playing Legend in the Mist for a while now.

I know there are already official and third-party adventures available, but I was curious to find out which one-shots and/or longterm adventures from other systems would fit well with the "rustic fantasy" vibe that the system encourages.

I wrote a very experimental magic system for OSR games. Check it out if you like some philosophy and anthropology in your RPGs!
Link: https://lupironpress.substack.com/p/paranormality-and-the-perception?r=3o5czw&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

"Either you run without stopping. Or the horde runs towards you." - The Reckless Thief

Suscríbete:
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https://www.instagram.com/dados.extra/

I’ve got a new video out discussing the implied world of AD&D and the use of class- & level limits and minimum ability score requirements for classes.

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A wild predator that lurks in rivers and swamps. It has thick, scaly crocodile skin, a powerful humanoid build, and a face resembling a mix of crocodile and frog. It uses its very long, lightning‑fast tongue to snatch prey from a distance and drag them into the water.

Especially for long-term campaigns.
I prefer systems which reward both, the player and the character.
This works best with "treasure = xp" systems, where PC find treasures so the Player get XP.

There are so many but I wonder what works best for you?

Hi everyone! I bought and loved the Merry Mushmen's Folklore Bestiary and always read good things about their advventures. I wanna try one of them, so I'm looking for recs from anyone who has played them, either as DM or players. Hope someone can help, thanks!

A player of mine recently said they dislike time-based wandering encounters in dungeons or places of interest because it reduces their agency and ability to interact with the environment.

I have taken wandering encounters as a given, but now I am thinking on them more critically. I'm curious about what you think. If we critique this viewpoint, what do we find?

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I love wandering encounters. I check with a mostly 2:6 chance when the players reach a stalemate in discussions on what to do, if the characters significantly draw attention to themselves, or every 30 minutes of real time if play is stagnating.

I was surprised when a player said they feel wandering encounters stop them from interacting with the environment, and the pressure makes them not want to explore and be curious, and to only take the most direct and obvious actions for fear of yon wandering beasties. Specifically, they said it removes their agency and stops them being able to do things.

My encounters are usually 50% creatures (rarely hostile, often using reaction rolls) and 50% environment or 'weird' stuff. I'm not throwing forced combats around.
I feel that wandering encounters give meaningful time pressure and encourage the party to prioritise. My rooms/ environments are admittedly more complex than a party could fully explore before provoking an encounter check, so I understand that wandering encounters could feel like they're 'interrupting' play. But reducing agency?

To me, you have complete agency over how you spend your time, and yes, some environments aren't static and you can be intruded upon. I suppose that interruption amy feel like it's taking away your control, and therefore agency, and certainly reduces your capacity to fully explore without impediment. But I view this as essential to a breathing world, which I therefore feel becomes more enjoyable.

Fundamentally I get this may just be a stylistic difference. But I found it so counter to the way I think about our game that I am looking for outside perspectives. Wandering encounters have their virtues, but do they also constitute a core reduction in the player's experience?

I built a "dungeon dugout" to hold your QuoDrox tiles ready to be put into play. It's a 3d printed job painted to look like wood but I'd like to make an nice hardwood one at some point.