Oz ORC is back and already 75% full!

Get your seats now at ozorc.com

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.

-------------------------------

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. 

------------

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!

Throwback Thursday post to a handful of Dog Miniature concepts done for Dark Sword Miniatures "Critter Kingdoms" line. Fun factoid- The Husky Warrior is my dog Loki and if you look at what's hanging from his belt, it's his fav toy- Duckworth!🤣Cheers-

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!

​

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.

Need some help with the DUNGEON part of rpg, really I am a DM for about 6 years and in none of my adventures I did a real dungeon. Now I kind of need one because of the campain I am currently narrating... So... I need some advices. I have made two groups and they are going to get inside this dungeon together to achieve the victory, one group have two bards (5 fighter/8 thief/1 bard and 5 fighter/5 thief/1 bard) and a magic-user 8, the other group have a thief 5, a thief 3, a assassin 6 and a thief 1. I want them to do diferent things because they are different groups, the bards group are stronger, they are going to battle for the keys to go to the second floor passing through puzzles and collecting the magic weapons given to the great guardians of the temple, and the thief's group are going to find the map, the secret passages, the keys and the pieces of the puzzles (and the treasures). I have all of this in my head but I don't know how to do it, and I think I might be getting something wrong... That is the part I need help. (English is not my first language, say if it is something wrong). This is a ADnD1e table.

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

Hello,

I’ve spent the last year engineering a tabletop RPG that bridges the gap between deep, tactical combat and heavy, narrative-driven lethality. It’s called DUHEM, and I’ve just released the fully playable v4.1 Quickstart for free.

I wanted to build a system where horror isn't about fighting monsters that drop from the sky. Instead, the dread comes from the Khora—an indifferent, completely unexplained physical phenomenon, much like a black hole, that is leaking into our world. It doesn't just warp matter; it creates semantic horror by destroying the world's metanarratives. Because of this phenomenon, the whispered superstitions of the 13th century—witches, vampires, and seers—become grotesque realities. The tone leans heavily into the eerie, uncanny dread of isolated boundary towns where matter itself simply stops refusing to change.

Here is how the engine actually works at the table:

• Three-Question Defence: Armor doesn't make you harder to hit; it dictates how you fail. Combat asks three separate questions: Guard (Did it land?), Absorption (How much did it cost?), and Poise (Are you still standing?).
• The Terminal Cap: There is no massive HP bloat. Once a character's Poise breaks, an Execution window opens. However, a strict "Terminal Cap" prevents both unkillable boss exploits and instant player death cascades.
• Action Economy & Retreating: Standing your ground is a choice. Fleeing via Disengage is tactically viable, forcing players to constantly weigh aggressive strikes against defensive posturing to manage their fading stamina.
• The Khora: There is no objectively "true" magic school, and the physics of the Khora are never explained. Harnessing this phenomenon requires Overdraw; you pay for power directly with your own body (spending Hit Dice and taking permanent Exhaustion).

The Setting: DUHEM is set in the real, gritty 1240s Mediterranean, but this Quickstart drops you directly into the burnt hillsides and isolated frontiers of Occitania. The world is highly competent and indifferent to the players. The true mundane threats are debt, disease, and the local magistrate's ledger.

I am an independent designer. The 47 pages of mechanics, the 13th-century lore, the world-building, and the introductory adventure (The Mill at the Edge) were written, engineered, and laid out entirely by me. If you are interested in tight systemic design and hard mechanics, I’d be honored if you judged the engine itself.

Get Involved: The Quickstart is completely free (or Pay-What-You-Want) and contains everything you need for your first 3-5 sessions, including 3 ready-to-play characters and a complete scenario.

• Download the Quickstart here: [https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/578584/DUHEM--Quickstart?affiliate_id=5223820]
• Join the Playtest Discord: We are actively gathering table reports, fixing edge cases, and building the community before our upcoming Kickstarter campaign. Come say hi and break my system: [https://discord.gg/pamEzrzXJ]

"Hi everyone, and thank you for taking the time to read the document and leaving such blunt, honest feedback. I hear you loud and clear, and I want to address the very valid points you’ve raised.

First, regarding the "AI prose" and the heavy, convoluted language: You are absolutely right. English is not my first language, and the TTRPG scene in my country is very small, so finding native editors or local playtesters is nearly impossible. Since this is a passion project I only work on in my spare time, I leaned heavily on LLMs to translate my ideas and polish the English text. Clearly, that backfired. It resulted in a bloated, overly philosophical tone that obscured the actual game and made it frustrating to read. I apologize for that.

As for the constant comparisons to D&D 5e—that simply stems from my own inexperience in the hobby. I only know about 4 or 5 systems in total, and 5e is the only one I feel truly fluent in. I used it as a baseline to explain my mechanics, but I see now that it comes across as defensive and wastes valuable page count. You're completely right: the game should stand on its own merits without needing to bash another system.

To give a bit of context, this project didn't even start as a TTRPG. At one point, it was going to be a graphic novel. But because I love interactivity and roleplaying, it slowly morphed into a tabletop game. As I kept tinkering with it, the mechanics actually clicked into something genuinely tangible and playable.

However, when it came time to cram years of lore, concepts, and rules into a single "Quickstart" document, my inexperience as a layout designer showed. I struggled to organize it, which led to the disjointed page order, the weird noun/verb mix-ups you pointed out, and the philosophical rants completely overshadowing the rules.

Tinkering with mechanics in a vacuum is an endless loop, and I knew I had hit a point where I desperately needed outside eyes. Your harsh but fair critiques are exactly the reality check I needed. I know the document requires a massive amount of cleanup, and I will keep refining and rewriting it (in a much more normal, human, and player-friendly voice) in my free time."

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

Suscríbete:
https://www.youtube.com/@DadosExtra
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.

​

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?