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Libertad! posted:We once played with an all-demihuman party, so we never needed to carry around torches or lanterns just to survive in the dungeon. low light vision does not mean you see in the dark, it just means a person can see in situations with little light. Low Light vision does not allow a person to see in the dark. Now infravision is a different story. items I use a lot: belt and belt pouches, large and small bags, rope, mirror, glass vials, wineskins, chalk I had a game as a player where I emptied out the yolk from eggs, and then put in a mixture of chalk and ground up glass. I used these special eggs as thrown weapons to blind foes. I also bugged my DM into letting me sup up a wagon with shocks and lock-brakes once I drew up a diagram and rolled my engineering.
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May 7, 2016 21:20
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Libertad! posted:Guy who made The Front WWIII retroclone is apparently using other people's non-public domain artwork without permission. Interestingly enough, after reading that article from Tenkars Tavern I took a quick look at DriveThruRPG where I recently bought the thing as a novelty item for a Oneshot. Turns out itīs no longer available on-site. Whoīd have guessed, huh? Kind of sad actually, considering the idea to not be half bad, if very lazy in itīs execution. Still, shameful behaviour.
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May 7, 2016 21:23
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Thanks, again with the help, all! I'd had a couple of questions concerning b/x however! First, is there a reference sheet or something I could print off in lieu of a dm screen? Second, I know I saw floating around somewhere a list of class features for b/x classes which I believe you could roll on to find a cool thing- it included MUs having a familiar that drained their health.. anyone have that?
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May 8, 2016 08:50
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Does anyone know anything about The Black Hack? People are apparently going gaga over it, but I don't know if it's because of actual content or if it's just a "latest darling" kind of thing.
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May 10, 2016 14:25
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I own it. In summary: Roll 3d6 down the line, with a single swap of any two scores To do anything, roll a d20 and get a result less than or equal to the corresponding ability score This includes hitting with attacks, or rolling against DEX to avoid getting hit by monsters, or rolling against INT to resist a spell. NPCs only roll for damage. Higher level monsters simply impose a penalty on your effective ability score for every hit die they have over you Circumstantial bonuses/penalties are represented by rolling d20 twice and taking the better (or worse) result That's the core of the game, with the rest of the 19 page book talking about class ability, advancement, armor, spells, and other such specifics. It's the new darling of the OSR because it's so simple. Same thing that happened with Swords and Wizardry where you can reskin and homebrew all sorts of poo poo because there's very few moving parts to have to worry about. It's already been reskinned into The Front as a WW2 setting, except that game was pulled out of digital shelves recently because the creator was using other peoples' art without proper permission/attribution.
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May 10, 2016 14:39
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gradenko_2000 posted:Roll 3d6 down the line, with a single swap of any two scores It's so weird how unimpressed I always am with retroclones despite being someone who grew up gaming in the eras they're generally trying to emulate. Like, I feel like I should be all about them.
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May 10, 2016 16:45
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Evil Mastermind posted:That seems rather...low-effort. Amusingly enough, you are allowed to outgrow the games and mechanics of the past  At least you can, many games and their designers canīt, as "The Secret Fire" and others have proven.
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May 10, 2016 17:18
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Mr.Misfit posted:Amusingly enough, you are allowed to outgrow the games and mechanics of the past It's also strange because they could get pretty much the same effect with something like FAE with just a minor adjustment of their thinking. quote:At least you can, many games and their designers canīt, as "The Secret Fire" and others have proven.
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May 10, 2016 17:40
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A lot of the OSR is "let's do this, except within the framework of D&D Basic (or OD&D) mechanics", partly because people don't want to learn anything else, and partly because you attach some sentimental value to BD&D/OD&D. Like, there's no real reason you couldn't use Stars Without Number's generation supplements in your Traveller, and a designer with chops like Kevin Crawford doesn't need to be using 3-18 of the six original attribute scores to produce a game that's better than Exalted (and yet Godbound still is, amazingly), and yet here we are. I hold DCC in somewhat higher regard because in that game it actually makes sense for you to be using the D&D framework, and even then DCC is actually a 3.5e "total conversion" rather than the BD&D of many other retroclones.
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May 10, 2016 17:53
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gradenko_2000 posted:I hold DCC in somewhat higher regard because in that game it actually makes sense for you to be using the D&D framework, and even then DCC is actually a 3.5e "total conversion" rather than the BD&D of many other retroclones. This may just be anecdotal evidence of a few adventures, but DCC's also not averse to extraplanar adventures. A lot of times such things are an afterthought, whether due to an unexplained cosmology in retroclones or the assumption that they need to be high-level because Plane Shift's a 5th-level spell. Two DCC modules, Intrigue at the Courts of Chaos and Playing the Game (third party), are level 1 and 0 adventures where the PCs get swooped up into another dimension. In the former, several scions of Chaos want the party to infiltrate the perfectly-ordered and "so beautiful it's practically sterile" Plane of Law to retrieve an Egg of Creation MacGuffin along with an interesting dungeon with appropriate trials. Like a scale which weighs the morality of a soul, which is used to reach a high-up key. Playing the Game centers around an in-universe board game represented by four rings, each corresponding to an elemental plane. When playing a game with a mysterious stranger, the PCs get sucked into a ring-shaped dungeon. Said dungeon's about trying to find your way through each "ring" of the planes to get to the center which has a great reward from the Elemental Lords. Libertad! fucked around with this message at 19:09 on May 10, 2016 |
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May 10, 2016 19:04
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Evil Mastermind posted:That seems rather...low-effort. I wasn't really that enthused about it. It has several interesting ideas but they don't really form a cohesive whole like Into The Odd or the 52 pages do. It does only cost $2 though. Edit: I mentioned those two games because I felt that they were in the same 'superlight' retroclone category as The Black Hack DalaranJ fucked around with this message at 01:21 on May 11, 2016 |
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May 11, 2016 01:17
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Evil Mastermind posted:Oh, I know. I mean, I've been gaming for over 30 years and I prefer the newer gaming "technologies". It's just really strange to see people who weren't born yet getting so into the style of the older stuff, especially when most of it was the way it is because we were still figuring out how all this RPG stuff worked. A lot of it is the cross compatibility that comes from basing your game on D&D as well as TSR era D&D being both very simple and easy to tinker with, not to mention since it's been around forever most of it's flaws have long been figured out so it's easy to work around, also I'd say most people either don't want to or can't adjust their thinking to use something like FATE(I fall under both, cause I find FATE to be both boring mechanically, and I literally can't wrap my brain around it's style of play, but then I'll admit I'm one of those people who prefers the roll-playing over role-playing cause I'm terrible at the latter beyond the barest minimum)
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May 11, 2016 10:21
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What's the best choice for Space Opera OSR stuff? I know someone will say Stars Without Number but that's not quite the pulpy raygun vibe I'm interested in.
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May 13, 2016 09:33
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Bullbar posted:What's the best choice for Space Opera OSR stuff? I know someone will say Stars Without Number but that's not quite the pulpy raygun vibe I'm interested in. Not really anything that works well in my opinion, at least in terms of a dedicated game for it(some of the Post Apocalypse games and supplements can work with tweaking though), cause SWN is a boring underpowered mess(it's the one OSR product I own a physical copy of that I regret buying, cause there's literally nothing in it that is remotely useful for any reason), and White Star is an incomplete boring underpowered mess, you'd be better off just modifying one of the regular fantasy OSR games for your needs(mostly just a matter of adding guns and other space era technology, and possibly refluffing Magic Spells & Items to be Super Science and/or Psionics if you don't want Overt Magic in your setting)
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May 13, 2016 12:25
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Star Wars D6 or D6 Space? 
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May 13, 2016 13:46
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Rifts, obviously.
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May 13, 2016 15:24
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Bullbar posted:What's the best choice for Space Opera OSR stuff? I know someone will say Stars Without Number but that's not quite the pulpy raygun vibe I'm interested in.
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May 13, 2016 15:39
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alg posted:Star Wars D6 or D6 Space? I actually have D6 Space but have never had a good read through it. I should though.
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May 14, 2016 00:36
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drrockso20 posted:Not really anything that works well in my opinion, at least in terms of a dedicated game for it(some of the Post Apocalypse games and supplements can work with tweaking though), cause SWN is a boring underpowered mess(it's the one OSR product I own a physical copy of that I regret buying, cause there's literally nothing in it that is remotely useful for any reason), and White Star is an incomplete boring underpowered mess, you'd be better off just modifying one of the regular fantasy OSR games for your needs(mostly just a matter of adding guns and other space era technology, and possibly refluffing Magic Spells & Items to be Super Science and/or Psionics if you don't want Overt Magic in your setting) I've been playing in a SWN roll20 campaign for a while, and while I appreciate the sentiments behind the setting and ruleset, it's really unfortunate how kludgy and pointless huge sections of the rules are. I really think every decision should have meaning, and so little on your character sheet matters. You play a game of skill whackamole. On the one and, it makes for some really weird abilities, fun DM rulings, and creates a sort of bad rules set nostalgia. On the other hand, fights take forever and spaceship combat is just awful. I have no objections to the low-power nature of the characters, though, I just think it should be more elegant. edit: Like, I really want a game that treats spaceship combat as the narrative sideshow that it factually is. You could even just give me a table of awesome character-driven poo poo that can happen during a space combat game and call it a day. But no, it's all meaningless customization that just makes things take longer. friendlyfire fucked around with this message at 06:08 on May 14, 2016 |
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May 14, 2016 04:50
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Bullbar posted:What's the best choice for Space Opera OSR stuff? I know someone will say Stars Without Number but that's not quite the pulpy raygun vibe I'm interested in. TSR's Buck Rogers game exists, and that's about all I know about it.
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May 15, 2016 12:45
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There's Hulks and Horrors, which deliberately tries to move away from hard sci-fi and instead gives you Omega Reticulans and psychic bearmen.
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May 15, 2016 18:50
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Quick question if any of you guys would know. Are there any big premade lists of effects for the Machine of Lum the Mad?
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May 16, 2016 10:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:I've got a rather unhealthy love for Strange Stars, which is a mix of pulpy 70's stuff and modern sci-fi concepts. There's a White Star supplement coming out "soon", but unfortunately there's no hard date. Given the quality of the Fate Core rules they did, I think it'll be worth the wait, though. Strange Stars is indeed a great book(really need to get a physical copy eventually), but unless the White Star supplement turns out to be really well done, I'm not sure it'd be worth trying to use White Star with it, cause again that system is a mess
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May 16, 2016 10:52
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Terrible Opinions posted:Quick question if any of you guys would know. Are there any big premade lists of effects for the Machine of Lum the Mad? 2e's Book of Artifacts has one I think.
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May 16, 2016 11:05
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Sadly the 2nd edition one basically just told you to roll on the random artifacts power list.
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May 16, 2016 11:29
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Maybe the Encyclopedia Magica entry? Or was that what Arivia referenced as the Book of Artifacts?
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May 16, 2016 14:20
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A Strange Aeon posted:Maybe the Encyclopedia Magica entry? Or was that what Arivia referenced as the Book of Artifacts? The Encyclopedia Magica (which I fought my brother for when we were dividing old RPG sourcebooks, and won) gives two versions of the Machine. The one from Eldritch Wizardry does indeed have a d100 table, with 81-00 giving "No effect (broken lever or dial)." Other entries include permanent magical (mostly spell) powers from 01-50 ("01 Levitation," "16 Move at double speed," "28 Generate a 20-hit-die fireball once per day"); negative effects from 51-70 ("51 Each time an artifact or relic is used, user loses 1 point on one ability permanently, and the affected ability may never be increased," "62-65 User becomes permanently lawful/chaotic/good/evil"), and super-powerful powers from 71-80 ("72 Time stop once per day," "73 User granted one wish per week"). Looking closer, the table was pretty clearly not written for the Machine, though, given entries like "50 Has the power of a gem of seeing when held by the owner" and "69 This artifact (which appears to be some kind of weapon) has no power whatever until it is used to kill a certain, predetermined type of monster..." So it's some other d100 table of artifact powers that the Machine is just rolling on. And the Book of Artifacts version just says, "Twenty of the internal functions remain operational. All of these have the effect of changing the occupants of the crystal box [control chamber] in some way. Of the external powers, only 15 remain functional. When triggered, these great powers cause terrible devastation and make drastic changes in the world around the machine. Of course, anyone inside the crystal chamber is unharmed." As far as I can see, it doesn't even tell you to roll on an existing artifact power table. There's a random curse table, which includes "86-90 Random result from Artifact Table 1-04: Curse." (Why did I bother to type that all up? Hopefully it's helpful somehow.)
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May 16, 2016 17:41
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After playing AD&D for a weeks, all I can say is "fighter + magic platemail + magic sword = too stronk." AC:0, +1 to hit, 2 attacks every other turn, and 1d8+3 damage. Covok fucked around with this message at 19:23 on May 19, 2016 |
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May 19, 2016 19:16
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Covok posted:After playing AD&D for a weeks, all I can say is "fighter + magic platemail + magic sword = too stronk." Just wait until we start meeting stuff with gaze attacks, breath weapons, and level draining my friend.
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May 19, 2016 23:03
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Covok posted:After playing AD&D for a weeks, all I can say is "fighter + magic platemail + magic sword = too stronk."
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May 20, 2016 03:39
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Which is exactly what they ought to be in order to have any hope of keeping up with the wizards.
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May 20, 2016 10:35
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Bullbar posted:What's the best choice for Space Opera OSR stuff? I know someone will say Stars Without Number but that's not quite the pulpy raygun vibe I'm interested in. I'm a bit overly fond of Machinations of the Space Princess. It at least has the pulp vibe down, as well as perhaps the most... I want to say expansive in what they can make set of PC alien race creation rules in any ruleset. It's possible to play as a sentient shade of the color blue, or a farscape navigator.
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May 20, 2016 19:01
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Just a heads up: this week's D&D Classics selections include Top Ballista and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks.
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May 24, 2016 15:16
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Evil Mastermind posted:Just a heads up: this week's D&D Classics selections include Top Ballista and Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. Two of the most Gonzo D&D products ever made
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May 24, 2016 22:11
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What's Top Ballista? I'm familiar with Barrier Peaks.
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May 25, 2016 13:10
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A Strange Aeon posted:What's Top Ballista? I'm familiar with Barrier Peaks. It was a sort-of extension of the Gazetter series that had rules for the "monster" races of gnomes, goblins, gremlins, and flying races like harpies, pegataurs, and sphinxes. It was about a gnomish flying city, and as such had rules for aerial vehicles and combat.
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May 25, 2016 14:09
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What would be the knock-on effects of changing 1e to use a unified XP chart ala 3e? Would any classes particularly get screwed or boosted? Not changing any of the class features, just the actual XP required for leveling.
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Jun 7, 2016 20:49
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Thieves get boned the most since their main feature is faster leveling. I'd increase their HD and/or let them attack on a better to-hit table. Or just give most of the thief skills as bonus abilities to the fighter.
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Jun 7, 2016 21:03
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I was also planning on doing more or less unrestricted multi/dual-classing, so I'd honestly expect to see thief show up as a second or third class fairly often.
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Jun 7, 2016 21:27
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I like to give thieves fighter attack tables and cleric or fighter hit points. I then allow them 3rd edition style flanking back-stabs, making them into the skirmishers they seem intent to be in 3e up. They keep their skills, weapon and armor choices. This possibly makes them as good as the rest of the main classes.
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Jun 7, 2016 23:02
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