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Total Party Kill posted:For any BFRPG fans, I have released the 2.0 version of my DNDBeyond-like character creator this weekend. It features lots of visual upgrades, abilities to edit characters, and artwork: That's really cool of you, thanks!
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Jan 15, 2024 00:49
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| # ? Jun 6, 2024 13:51 |
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Bundle of Holding have Arden Vul Complete for $25 (retail $109). If you've been following 3d6 Down the Line at all that's probably very tempting.
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Jan 16, 2024 18:16
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Hey, is this the best place to ask about the pre-4e Ravenloft setting, or would that make more sense in another thread?
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Jan 16, 2024 18:25
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Halloween Jack posted:Hey, is this the best place to ask about the pre-4e Ravenloft setting, or would that make more sense in another thread?
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Jan 16, 2024 19:41
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Prepping to GM my first game of OSE (and only third ever time GM'ing) - and just wanted to clarify ability checks. I'm looking to run 'Tomb of the Serpent Kings' which i'm quite happy with but one of the early corridors has a trapped door for which it's indicated anyone caught just flat out dies. There's an assumption that players will investigate the trap, but it seems like an odd place to have a potential TPK. Roughly this is how it is described/I am thinking to describe it: A heavy door, barred with a massive iron bar hung on two pegs set into either side of the doorframe. I will describe the pegs being at the bottom of slots, if asked to describe them particularly. As the players lift the bar: You hear mechanical grating sounds in the wall, and the two pegs under the bar also start to move up, seemingly of their own accord. If they keep going: In the booming echo of the bar slamming into the floor you hear an audible click as the pegs reach the top of the slots they protrude from. If at this point they don't immediately move out of the way I'm going to prompt a dex ability check (i.e. roll under Dex plus bonus on a D20) before they are squished by a giant swinging hammer. Is that fair? Should I have them roll the dex check without giving them a final chance?
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Jan 17, 2024 14:42
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It's not in any way obvious that it's a trap and not just a door mechanic from your description, but vary players should know to be cautious once you start describing anything in detail.
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Jan 17, 2024 14:49
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Shanty posted:Bundle of Holding have Arden Vul Complete for $25 (retail $109). Oh man this is tempting but I know in my heart of hearts that I will never actually run it. 
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Jan 17, 2024 15:18
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Southern Heel posted:If at this point they don't immediately move out of the way I'm going to prompt a dex ability check (i.e. roll under Dex plus bonus on a D20) before they are squished by a giant swinging hammer. That's the one where the hammer tosses anyone it hits into a bottomless pit, right? You can adjust the difficulty however you want, but I think the stated intention of that trap is to teach "sometimes things just kill you, but they'll be broadcast beforehand". If I was running it I'd probably do: * If they completely ignore all the clicking gears and movement behind the door and the wind of the bottomless pit whistling behind their back, they just go flying off into the pit. It's fine, they're level one or two anyway, it's meant to be an "oh poo poo" moment and once they're dead the trap's obvious and triggered and the rest of the party gets to go through the door. * If they take any precautions at all, even something really minor like another PC saying "I stand to their side and stay alert watching for what happens when they open the door" or "I try to grab them as they go flying", then you give them a save. * If they take an action that seems like it would defuse the trap, like just standing to the side as they open the door, no save--they're safe. The bar for this should be relatively low. The playstyle the module's trying to teach is definitely a "the RAW is stacked against you, but the GM defaults to generous when you come up with ways to stack the odds in your favor" one. Let the "I go in with no plan and don't react to all the warning signs" outcome be harsh, but reward ideas they have freely.
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Jan 17, 2024 15:28
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Drone posted:Oh man this is tempting but I know in my heart of hearts that I will never actually run it. same except I'm not even sure I'd read it
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Jan 17, 2024 15:36
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Empty Sandwich posted:same except I'm not even sure I'd read it What if when you die you end up in Arden Vul? Reading and studying the mega dungeon now might give you a big advantage in the afterlife.
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Jan 17, 2024 16:04
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Southern Heel posted:Prepping to GM my first game of OSE (and only third ever time GM'ing) - and just wanted to clarify ability checks. I'm looking to run 'Tomb of the Serpent Kings' which i'm quite happy with but one of the early corridors has a trapped door for which it's indicated anyone caught just flat out dies. I think it's really going to depend on your players. Mine, for example, probably wouldn't realize there's a trap there or that they should be suspicious based on the description you've given. Will your players take the bait and be receptive to it, or should you give them one more clue? Also, will your party care about being auto-killed by a door, or will they get salty about it?
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Jan 17, 2024 16:24
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Has this trap ever gone off, ever? It would have marred the floor if so.
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Jan 17, 2024 17:06
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A Strange Aeon posted:What if when you die you end up in Arden Vul? Reading and studying the mega dungeon now might give you a big advantage in the afterlife. I'm a reform undermountarian
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Jan 17, 2024 17:11
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Southern Heel posted:Prepping to GM my first game of OSE (and only third ever time GM'ing) - and just wanted to clarify ability checks. I'm looking to run 'Tomb of the Serpent Kings' which i'm quite happy with but one of the early corridors has a trapped door for which it's indicated anyone caught just flat out dies. For that one if they really aren't taking the hint, you can mention the huge gently caress off hammer mounted on the ceiling directly behind them. That trap is really just setup for the one later where they can't see the hammer.
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Jan 17, 2024 18:07
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The instructional call-outs in Serpent Kings communicate what the designer is going for: you need to investigate, and the price for not doing so can be death, and death is ultimately not that big a deal, especially for level 1 characters. So it's perfectly fair in that that's the sort of game you sign up for when you play low-level old-school D&D. Part of the adventure placing this sort of thing early on is to get this key point out of the way early on: it's trying to train certain things into players. I wouldn't use an ability check here (or in OSE at all, TAAC notwithstanding). Over and above the sort of gameplay that engenders, which from your perspective might be good or bad but is something old-school games didn't generally lean on, the game is going to give you average stats of about 10, which means you're typically failing over and over again even at the highest levels. There's a reason the adventure suggests you make a save instead (which are terrible at low levels, but just like everything is terrible, and will improve markedly as you level up). Heavy ability score reliance is a later thing, and only serves to highlight how badly random ability score generation meshes with those scores being the core of a universal task resolution engine (which in turn leads to the DTAS idea, but isn't really necessary if you're only using them for flavour and the odd cute but unessential bonus or penalty here and there, as they were originally intended). Xotl fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Jan 17, 2024 |
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Jan 17, 2024 18:30
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When I recently ran it, when the players interacted with the door, I described why it was strange, and since they had a thief in the party, I told them that the thief knew the door was trapped. When the thief was (surprisingly) successful on his trap roll, I explained the specific mechanism to trigger it, but they still had to figure out how to overcome it. I think traps are inherently more interesting when you know they're traps but you don't necessarily know how they work. So the danger, character class specialization, and the press-your-luck elements are there.
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Jan 18, 2024 01:09
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What're my choices for very small, brief, printer friendly versions of something like 1e rules? I bought and read Blue Hack and it's got this design decision where only the players roll, not the monsters, and that's too much. I'm looking for something that prints out to less than ten front to back pages, if possible. I may need to go recheck 5 torches deep, I think it has a printer friendly version.
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Jan 22, 2024 18:39
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Jack B Nimble posted:What're my choices for very small, brief, printer friendly versions of something like 1e rules? I bought and read Blue Hack and it's got this design decision where only the players roll, not the monsters, and that's too much. Knave 1e is like 6 pages total. It’s not free but you can see the whole thing in the drivethrurpg preview, it just has a big ol watermark across it. DCC quick start rules is free and is 44 pages, 27 pages of which rules/character creation plus 9 pages of spell descriptions, and the rest is a sample adventure. OSE Basic Rules is also free and is 60 pages, again most of which you probably wouldn’t actually need at the table.
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Jan 22, 2024 21:32
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OED Expanded is a cleaned up 0E, which makes it like 1E. http://docs.oedgames.com/OED-Expanded/
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Jan 23, 2024 03:53
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When you say 1e do you mean Basic/Expert or AD&D?
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Jan 23, 2024 04:01
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Idle thought: is Warhammer Fantasy Role Play considered OSR, because it is also a pretty old school fantasy game? I have a core book for one of the editions that I bought a million years ago for $3 off the little used book shelf at a head shop in L.A. that was in the Silverlake/Echo Park area back when that was my youthful haunt, but I've never played it, because it seems like a very different system to anything I'm used to. I don't see it mentioned much.
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Jan 23, 2024 08:16
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The R stands for Renaissance so no. It's just OS.
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Jan 23, 2024 08:20
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SlimGoodbody posted:Idle thought: is Warhammer Fantasy Role Play considered OSR, because it is also a pretty old school fantasy game? No. The OSR isn't about games that happen to be old; it was specifically about D&D (even if a lot of people have left that behind). So OSR spaces don't engage with it (at least, as an OSR thing; there's a bit of crossover in fanbases, especially amongst Brits). Old WFRP definitely has a following still, however. "Oldhammer" in general is a small but healthy niche in both wargaming and role-playing. You get guys with Rogue Trader, WFB 1st through 3rd editions, 2nd ed 40K, things like that.
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Jan 23, 2024 08:23
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Do y'all consider it worth digging through, or is it a relic of RIFTS era design that will make me want to swallow my tongue?
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Jan 23, 2024 08:30
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Yeah it rules.
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Jan 23, 2024 09:21
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It's hard to say, not knowing what you like. It's crunchier than modern games, and can be very lethal. There's a fair amount of randomness: starting skills, tables for each class. Some of its campaigns are considered top-notch. It's no Rifts, but then again what is (thankfully)? I assume if you're in this thread you have a higher tolerance for design elements that many would just dismiss. Xotl fucked around with this message at 09:29 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 09:25
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It's fine. Very deadly, but the career system is p neat.
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Jan 23, 2024 09:42
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WHFRP is generally considered to have aged pretty well
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Jan 23, 2024 10:06
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Xotl posted:No. The OSR isn't about games that happen to be old; it was specifically about D&D (even if a lot of people have left that behind). SlimGoodbody posted:is it a relic of RIFTS era design that will make me want to swallow my tongue? I will say that if you don't love the system, a lot of WFRP's best modules can be run easily in other systems. Edit: The most Rifts-like thing about WFRP is that it came out during that period in the 80s when everybody showed that their game was "smarter" than D&D by using technical-sounding language. So one of the basic ability scores is "Ballistic Skill" instead of "Shooting." Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Jan 23, 2024 |
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Jan 23, 2024 15:29
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Knave ended up being good enough, the text is quite brief and doesn't have any art. I've been watching those Dolmenwood videos listed earlier and it a nice layer of extra rules (camping, critical injuries) that I'm enjoying. They strike a nice balance between gesturing at things you see in some PC games while being easy enough to engage with in a ttrpg.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:39
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I haven't actually brought Dolmenwood (the system) to the table yet, so I'm reluctant to make any final declarations, but thus far I am really pleased with the changes it makes to the typical BX formula and could easily see it becoming my go-to D&D when I want to play/run a D&D that involves rolling to hit
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Jan 23, 2024 16:48
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I was trying to remember the name of a brief, concise D&D variant that even has illustrations of dice and colour-coded rules and spell tables. Then I remember that the name of this game is The 52 Pages. You asked for a game that was no more than 10 sheets front and back, which would come to 20 pages at most. Fifty-two is clearly a larger number than 20. But it's still a nice newbie-friendly game, particularly the spell cards.
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Jan 23, 2024 16:49
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Halloween Jack posted:I was trying to remember the name of a brief, concise D&D variant that even has illustrations of dice and colour-coded rules and spell tables. Then I remember that the name of this game is The 52 Pages. You asked for a game that was no more than 10 sheets front and back, which would come to 20 pages at most. Fifty-two is clearly a larger number than 20. But it's still a nice newbie-friendly game, particularly the spell cards. No, thanks, I'll check it out. I'm slowly working away on a d&d homebrew of my own (very funny to see Doleman Wood is probably better than anything I'll ever make but that's the nature of a hobby I suppose), and I'm enjoying reading how other systems work, and the concise ones are much more readily digestible.
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Jan 24, 2024 15:39
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SlimGoodbody posted:Idle thought: is Warhammer Fantasy Role Play considered OSR, because it is also a pretty old school fantasy game? I have a core book for one of the editions that I bought a million years ago for $3 off the little used book shelf at a head shop in L.A. that was in the Silverlake/Echo Park area back when that was my youthful haunt, but I've never played it, because it seems like a very different system to anything I'm used to. I don't see it mentioned much. I always thought it counted as OSR. I mean, Zweihander often gets categorized as OSR (At least in the places where the creator hasn't been banned for being obnoxious) and that's a pretty by the numbers WFR retroclone. Also it seems really weird to me in hindsight how adamant WFR was that you could only play as Humans, Elves, Dwarves and Hobbits. Especially considering Hobbits otherwise have no presence in the Warhammer universe...
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Jan 24, 2024 22:02
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KingKalamari posted:I always thought it counted as OSR. I mean, Zweihander often gets categorized as OSR (At least in the places where the creator hasn't been banned for being obnoxious) and that's a pretty by the numbers WFR retroclone. They kind of have no presence in Middle Earth either, if you think about it.
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Jan 24, 2024 22:11
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Hobbits aren't just halflings? There's halflings in Blood Bowl so I assumed they existed in Warhammer Fantasy.
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Jan 24, 2024 23:09
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They do, but my understanding is that it was mostly a result of WHFR. They're mentioned as vaguely existing in some of the background lore prior to WHFR 1e, but had pretty much no other presence in the setting until the TTRPG came out (Or such is my understanding, Warhammer loreheads please feel free to correct me)
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Jan 24, 2024 23:14
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KingKalamari posted:I always thought it counted as OSR. I mean, Zweihander often gets categorized as OSR (At least in the places where the creator hasn't been banned for being obnoxious) and that's a pretty by the numbers WFR retroclone. Renaissance means rebirth. Wfrp is old school, it's not reborn old school, it's like traveller and tunnels and trolls.
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Jan 24, 2024 23:15
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Were the halflings living in the moot an invention of the RPGs? I played vampire counts so you'd think I'd know who my neighbors were
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Jan 24, 2024 23:22
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Speaking of Warhammer Fantasy and Tunnels and Trolls, I remember someone (I think on RPGNet) remarking that RuneQuest and Tunnels and Trolls were reactions to D&D in opposite directions; Tunnels and Trolls is what you get when someone says "I like the general idea of D&D, but it takes itself too seriously," while the thinking behind RuneQuest is "I like the general idea of D&D, but it doesn't take itself seriously enough." My general impression from what I've heard about Warhammer Fantasy is that it's more like RuneQuest in that regard, but sometimes I hear about things like Blood Bowl that place it more on the Tunnels and Trolls side. Is it some of both?
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Jan 24, 2024 23:23
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