Older D&D and Retroclone Thread: From OD&D To 4E

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Older D&D and Retroclone Thread: From OD&D To 4E

Traveller: Jan 6, 2012; WHIM AND FOPPERY

S&W is as barebones OD&D as it gets without going back to 1974.

Here are the core rules. There's also a "White Box" version that doesn't use material from the supplements.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 05:11

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:40

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Traveller posted:

S&W is as barebones OD&D as it gets without going back to 1974.

Here are the core rules. There's also a "White Box" version that doesn't use material from the supplements.

there's also a "Complete" version that includes most of the crunch from the supplements

also on the White Star/Stars Without Number topic, personally I found both to be incredibly bland and mediocre books although I didn't read White Star all the way through, only read it through the character creation rules, by then I could tell it was very meh at least on a crunch level

also best S&W variant/derivative will continue to be Hideouts & Hoodlums

drrockso20 fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Jul 11, 2015

# ? Jul 11, 2015 05:30

hectorgrey: Oct 14, 2011

Stars Without Number takes old school D&D and mashes it with old school Traveller's skill system. If you like BECMI D&D, you'll probably like this too. The best bits by far are the sector generation rules and the GM turn rules. While they're absolutely optional and the game works perfectly well without them, they make running a living, breathing sector of space for the players to explore far simpler for the GM. They are also quite simple to extract and use with whatever system you prefer to run, if you wish (though it would be somewhat less trivial to adapt them for a different setting).

# ? Jul 11, 2015 14:23

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

I won't lie, despite being made by RPGPundit, Dark Albion looks kinda rad. http://osrtoday.com/2015/07/09/dark-albion-the-rose-war-released/

The previews look cool at least. http://www.dcrouzet.net/heroes-witchery/?page_id=206

Lightning Lord fucked around with this message at 14:48 on Jul 11, 2015

# ? Jul 11, 2015 14:44

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I must admit I don't get all the gushing about White Star either, unless people are just glad that there's more stuff happening in the OSR in general and it's not even generic fantasy. I'll have to give it a closer read.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 14:49

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

Taken as a scifi supplement for S&W rather than a complete package it seems like it could be useful with some tinkering but it also feels like it's a reskin of stuff that's already present in S&W Complete. Some of the level caps are way too low btw. In the end I hope it spurs more scifi content though. Where are the third party scenarios for SWN btw? Crawford's stuff is popular so people should make poo poo for it. Dungeons for Spears of the Dawn????? Seems like a no-brainer.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 14:57

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Oddly, in terms of OSR/retroclone stuff nobody ever seems to want to make things beyond straight D&D rehashes, classes, or adventures. People seem to be more focused on making new "cores" than expanding on what's already there.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 16:29

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

That's not as true as it was near the beginning though.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 16:33

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

One of the OSR folks on RPGnet really panned White Star, but I can't find his post; the gist of it was that the entire product is half-baked and incomplete.

# ? Jul 11, 2015 17:14

LaSquida: Nov 1, 2012; Just keep on walkin'.

So, I'm getting ready to start an Advanced Eidolons and Exemplars game in the PbP forum here. There's some implied setting in the existing beta, but not that much; do folks who are interested in that sort of game have any thought about what might work best? I'm considering something more based on ancient Mesopotamia with elements of Kirby-esque divinity, but I'm not sure if that's too weird to get going.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 19:07

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

LeSquide posted:

So, I'm getting ready to start an Advanced Eidolons and Exemplars game in the PbP forum here. There's some implied setting in the existing beta, but not that much; do folks who are interested in that sort of game have any thought about what might work best? I'm considering something more based on ancient Mesopotamia with elements of Kirby-esque divinity, but I'm not sure if that's too weird to get going.

I don't know a lot about Mesopotamian culture; what about it would fit the E&E mold?

Honestly, though, as long as you keep the Kirby-esque divinity I'm interested.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 19:13

LaSquida: Nov 1, 2012; Just keep on walkin'.

Stepped pyramids, Priest-Kings, stone tablets, bronze weapons, capricious divinities, predators of man lurking in the darkness, and outsider cultures threatening to knock down the walls.

Maybe I'm overthinking it; Mostly, I want to avoid bland fantasy-but-with-more-powers!, and kirby-esque divinity and weird sorcery science might be a better direction to go for that.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 20:09

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Personally, I'm utterly okay with the whole setting description being "Kirby-style gods and sorcerous science". Given the power levels involved, maybe it's a case of every older Exalted (or whatever they're called) or Kirby-god has an empire that is built solely by and for his desires/mindset/whatever. Warring city-states ruled and controlled by ancient people of power, each region different from the last.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 20:17

Babylon Astronaut: Apr 19, 2012

So like The Eternals during the time of the second host. That sounds dope.

# ? Jul 12, 2015 22:19

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

It sounds really awesome. Can I play a thinly veiled version of Orion?

# ? Jul 12, 2015 23:27

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

Jim Ward, the creator of Metamorphosis Alpha and Gamma World, is currently in the hospital. He's got a bacterial infection in his foot that might be complicated by diabetes. I hope he gets better soon.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 01:37

obeyasia: Sep 21, 2004; Grimey Drawer

LeSquide posted:

So, I'm getting ready to start an Advanced Eidolons and Exemplars game in the PbP forum here. There's some implied setting in the existing beta, but not that much; do folks who are interested in that sort of game have any thought about what might work best? I'm considering something more based on ancient Mesopotamia with elements of Kirby-esque divinity, but I'm not sure if that's too weird to get going.

I wasn't aware of a play by post forum here on SA. Show me it, please.

# ? Jul 13, 2015 15:28

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

obeyasia posted:

I wasn't aware of a play by post forum here on SA. Show me it, please.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/forumdisplay.php?forumid=103

# ? Jul 13, 2015 15:29

LaSquida: Nov 1, 2012; Just keep on walkin'.

Lightning Lord posted:

It sounds really awesome. Can I play a thinly veiled version of Orion?

Depends on how close to the source material you're aiming for, really!

# ? Jul 13, 2015 21:39

Ettin: Oct 2, 2010

Angrymog posted:

One of the OSR folks on RPGnet really panned White Star, but I can't find his post; the gist of it was that the entire product is half-baked and incomplete.

That'd be The Wyzard:

quote:

Hmm. I'm not in a mood to sit down and write a blow-by-blow review, so I'll try and keep this fairly brief.

Summary: The game is advertised as being White Box (a sort of OD&D retroclone) In Space. That is, indeed, what they've more or less done. However, the game strikes me as half-finished and not very well thought out. There just isn't enough new substance here.

Ability Scores, Alignment, Other prefatory matters: You aren't going to see much of anything surprising here. Wisdom & Charisma can give an XP bonus to any class, becoming in a sense universal prime requisites. That's kind of neat, if you want high stats to matter more. Even this early in the book, though, you see the authors being afraid to commit their own new or recycled ideas to paper. A whole lot of poo poo is specified as being something the Referee should make up (they do get points for calling the GM a referee. I prefer that.) Including Alignment, like whether it's law and chaos or good and evil, or whether attributes should modify how many gifts or meditations (spells) a PC should get.

That's the core issue of what offends me about the game. What we pay for is for them to actually write a game. Any old-school GM can house-rule whatever they don't like, but the way that you create mood and a feel for a given game product is to make some choices. If you want to imply a cosmic setting, say it's Law v. Chaos and talk about what that means in YOUR (the designer's) vision of the game. Don't just throw it out there.

Character Classes: There's the Mercenary (a fighter type),

the Aristocrat (a social-focused PC class, underpowered in my first impression),

the Pilot (the dude who flies the spaceship, actually not an entirely lovely class IMO, EXCEPT that one of their most important class abilities is, again, a direction for the Referee to make up whatever they think is appropriate. That is lazy horseshit.),

the Star Knight (it's a sort of cleric/jedi knockoff, I think they are not great because they basically get a spell list and they just wrote up a selection of jedi powers as spells.),

the Alien Brute (it's a fighter-type, but they get infravision, and can only advance to sixth level. Basically they suck and don't have much reason to exist IMO.),

the Alien Mystic (it's like a magic user. They get MU spells, but fewer of them and not as high level, and can detect secret doors like an elf.)

and the Robot (has some innate armor and three variant models, can only advance to fourth level. Largely useless as a PC due to limited power levels, although a technician bot henchman isn't necessarily a terrible idea for some parties. Also, the sensor hardware that robots can have is very good.)

Equipment

This would be a great place to set out the basic ideas of an implied setting by talking about technological capabilities and giving a sense of what is and isn't possible. They don't really do that. Also, starting character equipment is laughable. A PC gets 3d6x10 credits to start with, so, about 110.

A tablet computer thingy costs 100. A laser pistol costs 50. A laser rifle costs 100. You can get by spending about 30 credits on armor probably. A timepiece costs 10. A communicator costs 25. An average starting character could have armor (30), a laser pistol (50), a communicator (25), and a backpack (5). That adds up to 110. That's hilariously underequipped, and I honestly think it's just because they didn't really bother to do the math. I hope your GM throws in an energy cell with that pistol, because I didn't include ammunition and you're out of money.

You ever hear of that book, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel? You can forget it. A spacesuit is 250, well above what a starting character could afford.

My flippant suggestion is to let Aristocrat characters start out with like ten or twenty times the usual amount of money, and then they can buy everyone else equipment. This will make Aristocrats less useless and give the PCs a reason to be adventuring together, and also allow them to actually have the basic poo poo necessary to be adventurers.

Playing the Game & Personal Combat

These two chapters, I'm going to gloss over. You aren't going to see anything that surprises you. Initiative, movement rates, XP awards, etc. However, as I've been complaining above, a lot of this stuff is just a blank space. Morale? It says the GM should have poo poo run away sometimes. It's up to the referee! Well, I guess I can steal morale rules from B/X. Henchmen? The system for them is not robust, just a list of prices for whatever class, with no material about long-term loyalty, do they gain XP, do they cost more if they have more levels? Well, I guess I can steal that from ACKS.

Basically? There is not in this book the poo poo you need to run a campaign. There is all kinds of stuff that's just glossed over. Yes, I can house rule or borrow from other retroclones, but then why did I pay ten bucks for this book?

There aren't even rules for shooting at targets under cover! Is this not a loving sci fi game? Are people not going to duck behind crates and shoot lasers at each other? Am I going to get partway into combat and all of a sudden realize this rule doesn't exist?

These two chapters together are ten pages long. It's absolutely vacuous.

Starship Combat

This chapter is similarly vacuous. Starship combat is much like character combat. There aren't really rules for turn radius, acceleration, any of that stuff. In theory the Pilot class features might add some depth.

The biggest problem I have here, though, is that there is no real detail on the starships. There's a few examples with a cost, AC, armament, MINIMUM crew, HP, speed, etc. However, those stat blocks don't give any details at all on how much cargo capacity they have, what the maximum or suggested crew is (how many passengers can we take?), and you can just forget about getting anything cool like deck plans.

The biggest offender: Ships have FTL drives. The game explicitly doesn't tell you how FTL works. How long does it take? Is it dangerous? What rules are needed? You get nothing.

Incidentally, just from glancing over the rules, I think the best option for a PC ship is probably to take a Space Yacht and then modify the everliving gently caress out of it. You'll end up paying about triple or more what a Light Freighter costs, but you'll end up with something that isn't an embarrassment.

Gifts & Meditations

This is just spell lists for the Alien Mystic and the Star Knight. The former are mostly magic user and some cleric spells, the latter get some cleric-ey stuff and some jedi stuff. Star Knights only get spells up to level 5, alien mystics only get spells up to level 3 (which is lame, the class caps out at 8HD), and there are only 12 total Mystic spells. And one of them is Light, which is unbelievably lame in a setting where flashlights exist.

Yes, I can just steal more spells from all my other retroclones. In fact, you'd almost have to to run the game, unless you want everyone having the same ones.

Monsters

Divided up into two sections, Aliens and Creatures. There are a bit less than twenty alien types listed. Probably around the same number of creatures. I didn't see anything inspired or that would bring about a big implied setting, but I didn't read these parts in detail.

Monster entries are extremely minimal. You get their HD, AC, Attacks, movement, etc., that's it. No %lair, likely intelligence score, alignment, anything like that. Maybe a short paragraph of description.

Advanced Equipment

Here are more-powerful guns, armor, miscellaneous stuff, and cybernetics. Guess what! No prices or rules for availability are given for any of it. The Referee is supposed to figure that out. It's suggested that the referee determine some way of limiting how much cybernetic enhancement a character can have. The specifics and rationale are left to the referee. Awesome.

The rest of the book

There are some suggested campaign types, none of which contain suggestions for what kind of house rules you might use. It's bare-bones and lackluster. There is a sample sector. There's not really any rules here, it's only a few pages long, doesn't include much on how to run a campaign there, and since there aren't any rules for FTL travel I would dub the sector map kinda useless.

There is a sample adventure at the end of the book. At fifteen pages long, it's probably the most fleshed-out part of the entire text. It's a dungeon in space. It's full of Space Savages, who are pretty much the reavers from Firefly. They don't ever break morale, and can't be reasoned with. The suggested level range is 6-8 characters of levels 1-3. My feeling on this adventure is that it is a totally lethal meatgrinder unless A. The PCs are all third-level and very well equipped and B. The Space Savages' immunity to mental effects does NOT include the sleep-spell equivalent that the Alien Mystic might have. Seriously, there's a room with twelve 2HD space savages in it, your party is hosed if they run into those.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 06:46

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

The AD&D 1st Edition Monster Manual is available from DTRPG now

With the release of the PHB earlier this month, that just leaves the DMG.

quote:

That's the core issue of what offends me about the game. What we pay for is for them to actually write a game. Any old-school GM can house-rule whatever they don't like, but the way that you create mood and a feel for a given game product is to make some choices. If you want to imply a cosmic setting, say it's Law v. Chaos and talk about what that means in YOUR (the designer's) vision of the game. Don't just throw it out there.

I think I understand now why the OSR G+ group has gone so gaga over this game. Some of them would actually consider this a good thing.

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 12:33 on Jul 14, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 10:52

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

That's one of the things that bugs the hell out of me with the OSR crowd (apart from the "we already made this game, please stop reinventing the wheel" factor). The idea that not having rules is somehow good design and not the embodiment of the Rule Zero Fallacy.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 14:19

Power Player: Oct 2, 2006; GOD SPEED YOU! HUNGRY MEXICAN

Has anyone in this thread made a list of what 1e/2e modules are actually good? It's sometimes hard to figure out what I should be looking at, as a lot of "Best Of" lists have a lot of TPK-fests.

I've been recommended Ravenloft, Keep on the Borderlands, The Secret of Bone Hill, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and The Village of Homlet. Anything else? Any good 2e adventures?

Edit: I know that 1e is pretty easy to convert to 2e and vice versa, just wondering if there's anything specifically good from that era.

Power Player fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Jul 14, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 17:18

Angrymog: Jan 30, 2012; Really Madcats

Power Player posted:

Has anyone in this thread made a list of what 1e/2e modules are actually good? It's sometimes hard to figure out what I should be looking at, as a lot of "Best Of" lists have a lot of TPK-fests.

I've been recommended Ravenloft, Keep on the Borderlands, The Secret of Bone Hill, The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, and The Village of Homlet. Anything else? Any good 2e adventures?

I've heard that B10 - Night's Dark Terror is very good.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 17:20

A Strange Aeon: Mar 26, 2010; You are now a slimy little toad; The Great Twist

Evil Mastermind posted:

That's one of the things that bugs the hell out of me with the OSR crowd (apart from the "we already made this game, please stop reinventing the wheel" factor). The idea that not having rules is somehow good design and not the embodiment of the Rule Zero Fallacy.

What is the Rule Zero Fallacy? Never covered that in my rhetoric class.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 19:22

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

A Strange Aeon posted:

What is the Rule Zero Fallacy? Never covered that in my rhetoric class.

It's an argument that goes "the rules of this game aren't broken/badly designed/non-existent because the GM can simply fix them/make them up himself," which in a number of roleplaying games is cited as Rule 0 (if you don't like something then change it to suit your game). Basically games can't fail, they can only be failed.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 19:27

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

A Strange Aeon posted:

What is the Rule Zero Fallacy? Never covered that in my rhetoric class.

The idea of Rule Zero is that, if you don't like the rules of an RPG for some reason, the GM or group can change them. In other words, the idea that you can house rule games you run for your group.

So if you're playing a game where you (say) roll for starting hit points and don't like people getting screwed by starting with 1 HP, you can change it so you start with max HP based on what you'd normally roll. That's Rule Zero in action.

The Rule Zero Fallacy is when people invoke said rule to cover up gaps in the mechanical design of a game, be they missing mechanics ("just make something up") or flat-out broken rules ("just don't use that rule").

Case in point: in Wyzard's White Star review, he points out that there's no rules for cover, which would be expected in a game that involves gun combat. If someone says "well, the GM can just make up a cover bonus/penalty/whatever", that's invoking the Rule Zero Fallacy. It's the game designers job to put the needed mechanics in the game, not the GM's.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 19:29

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

Basically imagine if someone reviewed Skyrim except every time they found a bug they'd link to Nexus for a mod that fixed it, then ended the review by saying the whole game was bug-free and really quite perfect.

There's a certain way of thinking in the hobby that because you don't need to know how to program to "patch" a game, and because some games even explicitly tell you that "the rules are just guidelines", that therefore you can't or shouldn't evaluate a game based on running it completely as-is-where-is.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 19:40

A Strange Aeon: Mar 26, 2010; You are now a slimy little toad; The Great Twist

Interesting, I hadn't come across that concept before. But I guess in my own gaming experience I'd be hard pressed to name any rpg we've played 100% rules as written; even when we played 4E, there were house rules to make skill challenges better and fix broken math with level progression or something, and 4E is probably the game with the most explicit rule set I've ever played.

Reading the AD&D DMG, I'd be shocked if anybody played it 100% RAW as well. I guess my question is that you prefer there to be rules for things, even if most people won't ever use them? Or just that not even including rules for stuff is lazy design and shouldn't be defended as 'freeing' or whatever?

# ? Jul 14, 2015 19:49

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

It doesn't exactly mean that you should run RPGs 100% rules-as-written, but more that:

1. They should be written with the expectation that they will be
2. They should be evaluated with the expectation that they will be

For example, I know that 4E's skill challenges are bad, but just because I know what I have to do to make them work well doesn't mean that I can't say "4E's skill challenges are bad", especially when we only know how to fix 4E's skill challenges with the power of a couple years of hindsight and the internet.

EDIT: and it's absolutely a great sin of 4E that their math was hosed and then you had it fix it via feats. If someone bought and tried to play 4E sight unseen they'd still be running into those same problems, which is not good for them.

A Strange Aeon posted:

Or just that not even including rules for stuff is lazy design and shouldn't be defended as 'freeing' or whatever?

This is closer to the heart of the issue. "The designers didn't put in so many rules and that means I can roleplay so much better!" is bad because the rules are supposed to inform the fiction and because the consumer ostensibly paid for a product that they can use without having to fill in any blanks themselves. It's true that the latter hardly ever happens, but there's a difference between "I'm going to ignore this rule because it doesn't fit with the kind of game I want to play" or "I'm going to modify this rule even if I know how the actual one works because I understand how it's going to affect the game", and "there isn't actually a rule for this and now I have to fly by the seat of my pants"

gradenko_2000 fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Jul 14, 2015

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:03

Kai Tave: Jul 2, 2012; Fallen Rib

A Strange Aeon posted:

Interesting, I hadn't come across that concept before. But I guess in my own gaming experience I'd be hard pressed to name any rpg we've played 100% rules as written; even when we played 4E, there were house rules to make skill challenges better and fix broken math with level progression or something, and 4E is probably the game with the most explicit rule set I've ever played.

Reading the AD&D DMG, I'd be shocked if anybody played it 100% RAW as well. I guess my question is that you prefer there to be rules for things, even if most people won't ever use them? Or just that not even including rules for stuff is lazy design and shouldn't be defended as 'freeing' or whatever?

The problem isn't using houserules, the problem is that declaring that being able to use houserules invalidates complaints about a game's shortcomings because hey, you can always just fix it yourself.

I don't know this White Star game from Adam but based on the review it sounds pretty :effort:

So it's a sci-fi space opera style D&D retrogame only there are scant rules and little real discussion concerning

-Space travel
-Space combat (even though there's a pilot class)
-Combat when the expectation is rayguns and blasters instead of swords and axes
-Availability of advanced equipment
-How cybernetics work and what sorts of limits there should be on them
-Tech levels
-Morale
-Hirelings
-Alignment and what it means for the game

And that's not counting things like the lame spell list (Wyzard's point about "Light" being a laughable inclusion in a setting where the flashlight has long since been invented is spot-on) and the meatgrinder adventure full of fearless, never-breaking, immune-to-mental-effects space cannibals. This doesn't sound like a game so much as a bunch of vague ideas committed to paper before someone lost interest and went off to do something else. Yes, you could patch it with stuff from other retroclones or make something up yourself, but the question becomes why did you buy this then? "Hey, maybe it would be cool if you ran old-school D&D but, like, with spaceships and lasers and stuff, I dunno, work out the details yourself" isn't a radical new idea that's worth paying $10 for all on its own.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:07

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

All this tells me is, if you want an OSR space game, play Stars Without Numbers instead.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:08

Lightning Lord: Feb 21, 2013; $200 a day, plus expenses

The Rule Zero Fallacy is a criticism of the idea that criticism of a game due to it's rules is invalid because you can make stuff up. It's not automatically a statement that a game that doesn't cover every contingency is inherently broken or lovely. While I agree with the idea that you can easy bang up some cover rules for White Star, that doesn't mean that the critique that the lack of such rules is a mark against the game is wrong.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:10

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

Covok posted:

All this tells me is, if you want an OSR space game, play Stars Without Numbers instead.

SWN is a fantastic game and Crawford should get every bit of support.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:29

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

I just bought the Bundle of Holding for Spears of the Dawn. I'm also on a Cthulhu mood right now while bingeing on RPPR's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign so I expect I'll be getting Silent Legions soon too.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:35

Evil Mastermind: Apr 28, 2008

Lightning Lord posted:

While I agree with the idea that you can easy bang up some cover rules for White Star, that doesn't mean that the critique that the lack of such rules is a mark against the game is wrong.

Well, the hobby in general tends to have a problem with criticism of people's work, but that's a discussion for another thread.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:51

Humbug Scoolbus: Apr 25, 2008; The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones, and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.; Clapping Larry

gradenko_2000 posted:

I just bought the Bundle of Holding for Spears of the Dawn. I'm also on a Cthulhu mood right now while bingeing on RPPR's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign so I expect I'll be getting Silent Legions soon too.

Every one of his games are brilliantly done. :iia:

# ? Jul 14, 2015 20:58

Covok: May 27, 2013; Yet where is that woman now? Tell me, in what heave does she reside? None of them. Because no God bothered to listen or care. If that is what you think it means to be a God, then you and all your teachings are welcome to do as that poor women did. And vanish from these realms forever.

gradenko_2000 posted:

I just bought the Bundle of Holding for Spears of the Dawn. I'm also on a Cthulhu mood right now while bingeing on RPPR's Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign so I expect I'll be getting Silent Legions soon too.

Spears of Dawn is pretty legit, if you want a dungeon crawl. It's also pretty legit how he wrote it as a way of telling people who thought only European Fantasy was "of value" to go gently caress themselves.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 21:00

hectorgrey: Oct 14, 2011

It's also the only time I've ever seen Vancian magic done in a way that makes sense both in fiction and in gameplay. Some spells are rituals, and can be cast as often as you wish; others must be prepared. You can have as many spells prepared as you wish, but if you go over the limits based on level you have to make a skill roll (with penalties based on how far beyond your limits you've gone) every time you cast until you're back within your limits, and if you fail, all of your prepared spells go off at once with you as the target. Given that pretty much all of the prepared spells are combat spells, that means you're almost certainly about to die. But, if your magic skill is sufficiently high, it might be worth taking a risk on one or two extra spells.

# ? Jul 14, 2015 21:10

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# ? Jun 1, 2024 06:40

drrockso20: May 6, 2013; Has Not Actually Done Cocaine

Covok posted:

All this tells me is, if you want an OSR space game, play Stars Without Numbers instead.

SWN is definitely better than White Star, but I still found it to be an incredibly mediocre game and pretty much the only OSR product I regret buying a physical copy of(I've found Sine Nomine's output to be an incredibly mixed bag with Exemplars & Eidolons and Spears of The Dawn being their only products I don't have huge reservations about in some form or another)

# ? Jul 14, 2015 21:14

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